The Future of Real Estate: Why Virtual Assistants Are a Game Changer

Mike Hambright (00:00.918)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the show. I’m really excited to be talking to Bob Lachance today, virtual assistant expert. He’s the King VA. So I know I just made up that title. He did not give himself that title. But we’re be talking about how to use virtual assistants in your business. I can tell you somebody that has about 80 virtual staff members across my companies. It will revolutionize your business if you know how to manage them and if you kind of treat it right. So Bob, excited to have you here today,

Bob Lachance (00:08.59)
you

Bob Lachance (00:25.58)
Mike, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

Mike Hambright (00:27.476)
Yeah, yeah. So we’re going to talk about virtual assistants today. You’re also obviously a real estate investor, did a couple hundred deals last year. So crushing it there too. Tell me what came first, the chicken or the egg? Was it you were a real estate investor? I know this answer to this already. You were a real estate investor before you were a VA aficionado.

Bob Lachance (00:44.564)
Yep, I started about 20, 21 years ago today. So was definitely an investor first and then jumped in. You know my story, jumped into a little bit of real estate education side of things while I was investing. then 2013 is actually when I got introduced to what a virtual assistant was. I never knew it. I just knew that our student base and myself were a little overwhelmed with tasks and so.

Mike Hambright (00:48.021)
Okay.

Bob Lachance (01:11.448)
I was looking out there for some sort of solution, whether it’s a product or a service. think, you you started pretty much kind of the same way, because you realize you’re overwhelmed. You didn’t have enough time to actually do the tasks. So I hired my first VA and then a light bulb went on and said, you know what? Our student base can actually use this. So I kind of married the…

Real estate education platform that we helped set up with the virtual assistant world on the investor side. So put it together, 2014 is when I launched my first company.

Mike Hambright (01:45.334)
Yeah, it’s one of those things where you’re like a lot, you I know a lot of people that provide services or software services and products for the real estate investing industry, but it’s a necessity is the mother of invention, right? You found some ways you needed it in your business, you needed help and you found out a way to do it. And you’re like, you know what? Other people need this too. maybe that could be.

Bob Lachance (02:03.758)
Especially on the labor side because you look at you know, I know every state is different but you look at the way, you know, the world is going You know, you look at the minimum wage keeps going up and up and up I’m in Connecticut. I think minimum wage is up to $15.69. So I Don’t know about you but in my area if I hire someone that’s minimum wage, they’re not too qualified So it gets very very challenging as small businesses

Mike Hambright (02:26.976)
Right.

Bob Lachance (02:31.374)
to actually build up and hire someone in-house if minimum wage keeps going up to, you know, 14, 15, 16, 17 plus dollars per hour.

Mike Hambright (02:39.198)
Right. And even then, you know, you’re competing with big, you know, somebody could go work. If somebody could go work at McDonald’s for that and they get benefits and all those other things, right. And you can’t provide those things. It’s like, why wouldn’t somebody just go work for a huge company that not only pays minimum wage or maybe a little bit more and has all the benefits and stuff they might need as well. It’s hard to compete as a small business.

Bob Lachance (02:56.194)
Yeah, in the beauty of virtual.

Right, and I know that the virtual assistants you hire, the virtual assistants that come through our company, they all have four-year college degrees. So it’s very, very important. That’s why I think outsourcing, COVID was kind of an interesting thing where it opened everyone’s mind more to work with offshore companies or to outsource and work from home, things like that. So I think it’s opened a lot of people’s minds of using virtual assistants more.

Mike Hambright (03:08.853)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (03:23.456)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (03:27.156)
Yeah, yeah. So I want, I’ve been using VAs for a long time and we even have executive level people on our team that I talked about that are, you know, we had a controller, we had, that was overseas, not so much of.

Well, I think a lot of times when people hear the word VA, they assume administrative VA, right? But there’s, you can have virtual team members like all over the world that do amazing things. so, but let’s talk about if, and by the way, for those listening, I want to kind of escalate this. We’re going to talk about entry level. Like if you had it to do all over again, or you’re just starting, here’s where you’re at. And then we’re going to kind of elevate it up to like, what are some more advanced things that virtual staff can do for you that you might not think that they can do for you, but it’s possible. So let’s just talk about like kind of getting started.

With all you know now, I’m sure that you were probably the same. You had them doing basic tasks and then you’re like, you know what, with the right training and the right support, like they can do way more. So maybe talk about what’s possible now for those that are just getting started.

Bob Lachance (04:24.396)
Yeah, you know, in, know, we look at businesses when you’re first starting out, you say, right, what is the first thing that you need that we all need? Of course you need leads, any business needs leads. But if you don’t have a presence out there, you know, you’re, pretty much behind the curve. Look at social media you have. I know for us in our area, my, most of my real estate is in Connecticut, but I also do a little bit in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, but mostly what we do is Connecticut. And we have a lot of competitors out there that are on social media.

So I think it’s very, very important for all of us investors to get content out there. Now I know some, you know, some new people that I talk to say, all right, well, Bob, I don’t have anything I’m working on. What kind of content I’m going to do. So what we always promote is say, all right, walk through a property. If you get leads, walk through a property, grab your phone, record exactly what you’re going to be doing when you, when you do a walkthrough. As soon as you take that recording, you can upload it up into a Google drive, send it off to your virtual assistant.

and they could cut up little snippets. So what happens is you could do two walkthroughs and you’ll have content for a month to be able to post. And then obviously other things are posting articles, posting, they could also write content. There’s things like that that get your face out there and always be relevant because when people see you a lot, they relate that to you doing business, no matter how new you are or how seasoned you are.

Mike Hambright (05:50.132)
Yeah, yeah. So let’s talk about, you know, think one of the biggest challenges is that a lot of people will listen to guys like us and like, hey, I hired a virtual assistant one way or another. And they’re like, yeah, I tried it. It doesn’t really work out. And it usually means for them, like, so I’ll just do it myself, you know, which is not good as an entrepreneur. Like you didn’t sign up to be doing to be like, you know, CEO and chief bottle washer. Sometimes you got to do it, but.

But you as an entrepreneur, you have an hourly rate that is generally well above the administrative level, right? So you need to find a way to outsource those tasks. And in my experience, a lot of the reasons that they quote don’t work is…

They didn’t do a great job of setting the expectations of the responsibilities of that assistant. And they didn’t do a great job of training them so that they knew where to go to for, because in my experience, especially I know a lot of your virtual assistants at Riva Global are in the Philippines. And in my experience, Filipino virtual assistants definitely want to please who they’re working for. Like they have a lot of pride in their job and things like.

Pardon me, things like that. if it’s not working out, I don’t think it’s, you know, could have mishired a person just like you could anywhere, but it’s often because you didn’t really set them up for success. So would you agree with that?

Bob Lachance (07:09.358)
Yeah, you know what’s funny? I made that same mistake when I first started working with virtual assistants. I literally, when I got my first VA, this is back in 2013, I wanted them to build a buyer’s list. And then I also wanted them to do some of my bookkeeping. And then I wanted to do some cold calling. would just, they didn’t add up. So one of the common, common mistakes that I made and I see people make is they’re not quite sure what they want the virtual assistant to do. They have a, they know they’re extremely overwhelmed.

Mike Hambright (07:25.142)
Yeah.

Bob Lachance (07:39.574)
So that’s one of the things that we do. set up calls, obviously strategic calls with our team that could walk through that with you. And I always say, all right, look at your business. know, Mike, you have over 80 virtual assistants and you broke down exactly what you want your VA’s to do through a job description. So if you want them to do lead generation, maybe you want them to focus on cold calling as an example, right? Or you want them to do texting or.

however you want your virtual assistant to do. Maybe it’s taking inbound leads from your direct mail as an example. But the idea and the thought process is you have to make sure you know exactly what you want your virtual assistant to do. It’s the same thing with hiring someone in office. You know you need help, what do you need help with? So what I would recommend you do is just grab your calendar and almost do a day in the life of yourself on what you need to outsource first.

you’ll realize that once you actually start outlining what you do on a daily basis, you’ll realize all of the non-producing tasks that you’re doing that you can outsource.

Mike Hambright (08:43.05)
Yeah, and I think people just need to think about, they’re still hiring people, right? And then one of the reasons I sometimes don’t even like to use the word VA is because it.

sends this connotation sometimes of just like some faceless like assistant out there. But the reality is, like my, my, you know, my main assistant has been with me for I think like 13 years now. She’s amazing, right? But she wouldn’t like being on the phones and she wouldn’t be good at it. She would do it if I asked, but she is more of a executive assistant type thing, just detail oriented, like somehow remembers to do all the shit that I asked her to do. And she’s very methodical about it, right? And so like,

Bob Lachance (09:20.611)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (09:24.094)
I wouldn’t hire somebody in my office that is an outbound cold collar and an admin because the admin skill, you typically need people that are very detail oriented and methodical. And you know, the phone based person needs somebody with tough skin that doesn’t get told to screw off like all day long, but they don’t necessarily have to be, I’m not saying you should hire anybody that’s not detail oriented, but it’s not as detailed. A sales or sales function is generally not.

doesn’t require as detail oriented as an admin or somebody else. yeah, yeah, we do too. Yeah.

Bob Lachance (09:53.528)
Yeah, yeah, we do predictive index to offset that. Yeah, to make sure you laser in exactly what tasks you’re looking to actually do and it matches with.

Mike Hambright (10:02.024)
Right. Yeah. we’re, you we’ve looked, you might hire graphic designers or, you know, you’re looking for people that have a skill in that, not just some random, I mean, there’s AI and stuff now to where a general administrator, virtual assistant could probably figure out how to use the AI tools and stuff, but they’re not a trained graphic designer that that’s really their craft and what they love to do. Right. Yeah.

Bob Lachance (10:22.19)
Correct, correct. And it’s funny you said that AI. AI is actually a really, really good tool. It doesn’t take the place of a human. It’s just a, it’s a very good tool. Once you’re trained on that, it can be very, very powerful.

Mike Hambright (10:34.324)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So what are some tips you could maybe share for people to kind of better manage? mean, so you guys, you know, when you guys are hiring, not you Bob, but listeners, when you hire a virtual assistant, can hire, you can go hire somebody yourself on Upwork or somewhere like that where you’re hiring them, they haven’t been proven, it’s up to you to vet them out, do background checks, check their work, whatever. And then it’s up to you to kind of…

manage them, you can use tools where you’re monitoring, you know, they have basically clock in and you can monitor their screen and you can do all those things and then you have to pay them and everything. So that’s kind of the do-it-yourself model, right? Then there’s the totally, there’s kind of done with you, people will place a virtual assistant and you pay them a fee to maybe place them, but then you,

you’re still responsible for managing them and paying them and stuff. It’s almost like a headhunter that just kind of plays them. And then there’s the done for you where they’ll hire them for you. By the way, if they don’t work out, they’ll replace them for you the next day. You’re gonna pay the company and the company is gonna pay the person. They’re being managed by somebody. If they’re not doing well, they get coached and all that, which is more of what you guys do at Reva Global, right? Is the kind of done for you model.

Bob Lachance (11:47.276)
Yeah, so we, yeah, we do the dump for remodel. We’ve, I’ve tried everything, you know, just obviously Mike, we’ve been, we’ve been around for a long time in business and we’ve tried every different type of model. we found that the best model that works for the majority of individuals that we work with is they want the white glove treatment, right? So we, we have a whole team in the Philippines that does sourcing and recruiting. We have a training team, we have a placements team, operations and HR as well. So.

Mike Hambright (11:51.819)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (11:55.85)
Yeah.

Bob Lachance (12:16.482)
They handle all of that exactly what you just said.

Mike Hambright (12:18.922)
Yep. So whether people that are listening are doing it yourself or not, you need to be able to act at least like a done for you company. I mean, the easy button is the higher a done for you company like Reva Global. But let’s talk a little bit about like what actually goes into this because people just assume it’s the easiest thing for real estate investors to do is throw money at stuff. But it doesn’t always work out that way. Right. It doesn’t always work out well. And so

Bob Lachance (12:38.072)
Yes.

Mike Hambright (12:41.61)
I mean, let’s talk about kind of, I just want to emulate, if people are doing this themselves or they already have virtual assistants that are working for them, like what are the things they need to put in place to properly manage somebody so that they’re most effective?

Bob Lachance (12:53.774)
Yeah, I think you should always have a start-of-day report and an end-of-day report. These are very, and this is very important because when you’re working with a virtual staff, you want to make sure they show up, right? You want to make sure they fulfill what you want them to fulfill. So let’s use an example of, you have a lead, let’s say you’re using a lead manager and your virtual assistant is in your CRM and you have, I don’t know, two, 3000 old leads. So what they’re doing every single day is they’re re-engaging.

whether they’re texting them through your software or they’re cold calling with the idea of getting those sellers warm again to send an appointment for your in-house individual or you could be the salesperson yourself as well. So they’re going in and they’re doing this repetitive task to get that lead back up. That is a, for me, that is a necessity for all of our businesses to have because you know, whatever type of marketing you’re doing, whether you’re doing TV, you’re doing radio, you’re doing direct mail, PPC, all that kind of stuff.

you will have leads in your database that you either couldn’t get a hold of them again, talk to them once, and then you just can’t get a hold of them again. So that’s very, very important for you to always get those leads back up and running. I mean, you know this, you and I have been in business for a long, long time, and a seller may not be ready today. Because there’s a lot of stuff that happens in all of our lives, whether it’s…

you know, a death, divorce, et cetera, et cetera, stuff happens that we don’t know. So it’s always, you know, if someone raised their hand one day to say, yes, I want to sell their house, they may be more motivated next month or the month after, because we don’t know what happens.

Mike Hambright (14:36.18)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the money’s in the follow up, right? So I say this all the time, like a lot of real estate investors will market to somebody that so most of the people that we buy houses from, like truly distressed sellers have often been distressed for years or decades, right? That’s just like, when you go to some of these houses, they have been updated in 30 years, like the distress started a long time ago. It’s just

you know, there was a straw that broke the camel’s back, if you will, eventually as to when you bought that house. And so there’s no doubt. There’s a ton of people that have been, as real estate investors, a lot of times we market to people and we expect like an immediate result from somebody that’s been distressed for years or decades and found a reason to not call us or sell yet. you know, I don’t wish this on anybody, but the level of distress that a lot of those folks have will only get worse with time.

Bob Lachance (15:25.262)
I’ll get

Mike Hambright (15:25.984)
Things will deteriorate, health will deteriorate, house will deteriorate, finances will deteriorate. Like all those things are probably, again, I don’t wish this on anybody, but realistically, not getting better for most.

Bob Lachance (15:37.314)
Yeah, and I’ll give you good example. Literally, our top acquisition guy came in the office. He’s like, hey, we should buy it because we’re doing some buying holds as well. So he said, hey, we have a great opportunity. Properties in Southington. It’s a side by side duplex and it’s a hoarder house. So one half is the gentleman lives in there. The other half, the guy hasn’t paid in three years. So, and this is the stuff to your point. We don’t know this, that there’s a lot of individuals that have

pain for one, two, three years. The guy that’s living in the house, the owner is such a nice person that he’s been paying all of it, literally all of his oil or his gas bill, his electric bill, so they don’t shut it off. But he’s been in pain for three years and finally he raises his hands like, I can’t handle anymore. Could you guys help me? So that’s a perfect example.

Mike Hambright (16:24.842)
Yeah. Yep. Yep. So let’s talk a little bit about kind of myths of what VA is, you know, more important than I guess can’t do. what are some things that obviously there’s some obvious ones, but in the real estate investing space, like what are some obvious ones that probably wouldn’t be a good fit for virtual assistants?

Bob Lachance (16:43.182)
Yeah. So I use virtual assistants for almost everything, but one of the things that I recommend or I don’t recommend you have your virtual assistant do, and that’s actually closed deals. So be your closer. And I know some people may argue with me on this. However, I’ve been doing this for a long time and I’ve tried it. Yeah. So appointment setting, yes. Following up and lead generation, 100 % VAs are phenomenal to do. Phenomenal.

Mike Hambright (17:00.904)
And you mean acquisitions? Is that what you’re referring to? Yeah.

Mike Hambright (17:10.283)
Yeah.

Bob Lachance (17:11.16)
But actually when that lead gets there, it’s actually putting it to paper, getting the seller to sign a contract. Because a lot of times they just don’t know your business like you know it. You could have different types of exit strategies. You could buy and hold. You could wholesale, right? You could rehab. You know your business or your acquisition guys in your office know your business better than any virtual assistant ever could. And this is just, you know, I’ve tried everything. I know some may disagree with me, but I would say that one.

Mike Hambright (17:20.448)
Yeah.

Bob Lachance (17:40.306)
you should keep to yourself or to your in-house staff.

Mike Hambright (17:43.925)
Yeah, those leads are so valuable. I agree with you. I, that’s one that I, I’m not a huge advocate for. know some people that have used, well, it’s, you could use a virtual acquisitions person if you’re buying over the phone, but they’re generally US based. But you know, I just think there’s a lot, there’s some cultural differences. And so let me ask you this, Bob, you did over a couple hundred houses last year. Are you buying in person or are you buying over the phone?

Bob Lachance (18:08.92)
We buy all over the

Mike Hambright (18:10.358)
All over the phone, okay. Yeah, so I’m the advocate for the other way. I just, don’t think, think, I mean, clearly people do it because you just proved that you did over 200 houses, buying virtually, but I was raised up and what we did for my whole career was belly to belly, like buying in person, right? And I just, I have a general feeling that you can’t compete against me if I’m sitting at the kitchen table with them and you’re calling them on the phone. But I do think that COVID changed that a little bit.

Bob Lachance (18:18.764)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (18:36.34)
people just got more comfortable with doing stuff virtually. But yeah, obviously if you’re buying in person, you can’t buy with a virtual person. Go ahead.

Bob Lachance (18:39.502)
Hey, I’m still surprised they do it.

I’m still surprised they do it. Even to this day, I am still very surprised that it happens. So in Connecticut, like I said, we do it in a bunch of different states. In Connecticut, we’re doing a hybrid now to where you’re right. Meeting someone face to face does bring up your probability of getting that property under contract 100%, but they still do it virtually.

Mike Hambright (18:47.284)
Yeah.

Mike Hambright (19:09.472)
Yeah, and you have to decide as a business owner, it like, you know, it’s clearly more efficient to do it on the phone, because you’re not spending, your acquisitions folks aren’t spending half of their time in the car driving from appointment to appointment, or showing up and there’s a no show, and you just wasted a third of your day on that, or whatever, right? So, it’s a balance.

Bob Lachance (19:25.794)
Yeah, it is an interesting model, though. I think for all of us, too, a lot of it is getting by the mental hurdle that you cannot do it over the phone because you can. And it took us a while to finally understand that people psychologically will do it. Whether we understand it or not, it happens.

Mike Hambright (19:49.334)
So Bob, what are some things that people, I think everybody knows you could use virtual assistants to help with lead gen, follow up kind of specialist, maybe even lead intake. But what are some things that you guys provide virtual assistants for that kind of surprises some people that they can do?

Bob Lachance (20:08.492)
Yeah, a lot of, I’ll just use property management as an example. assistants could do anything from leasing, intakes to bookkeeping to invoicing. We have a lot of virtual assistant clients that are in the property management side because anything you can think about this, anything you could do over the phone, we have a portfolio as well and I cannot stand getting a phone call from a tenant.

Mike Hambright (20:12.309)
Okay.

Bob Lachance (20:36.77)
where a virtual assistant is phenomenal at that because what we do is we create the frequently asked questions and answers to it, give them the virtual assistant and they can handle every single question that comes over from a tenant. I think that’s a big one. That’s a big one. Yeah, we also have…

Mike Hambright (20:52.596)
Yeah, it really comes down to if you can, if you can, if you have a process for it and you can train somebody on it, I mean, they can do it right.

Bob Lachance (20:59.823)
Yeah, yeah, we have, you know, we have attorney clients as well, because there’s a lot of paperwork, anything that you haven’t, you do paperwork for. We have mortgage brokers as well that, you know, connect. There’s a lot of paperwork and follow-up, follow-up in the mortgage world as well. So those are just some of the things that obviously may not be, you know, some of the things that you think of right away.

Mike Hambright (21:22.548)
Yeah. So, and aside from like, obviously as time goes by, more and more people or businesses are comfortable outsourcing stuff, especially small businesses. But do you see any evolution? Like what are some evolutionary things you see happening over the next few years in the kind of virtual staffing space? Anything pop out at you?

Bob Lachance (21:41.718)
Yeah, I think, I think, you know, for me personally, as minimum wage keeps going up, I think that we all have to, and I know I have a virtual sysco, whether you use my company or not, I think everyone has to look at outsourcing. Whether you outsource in the United States or you outsource to a different country, I think because of costs keep going up and up and up, we all have to be open-minded to working.

with somebody remotely. It could be someone in another state or another city, not in your office in particular, but we have to because costs are just continue to go up.

Mike Hambright (22:21.29)
Yeah, yeah, and it really is a no-brainer when you start to realize that you can scale. A lot of people that are listening to this might be home-based now, so you don’t have an office anymore necessarily, and so it really is kind of a no-brainer. I don’t know where we’d be without being able to staff. Here’s the truth. If you think of whatever market you’re in, there’s talent around you in your market, but not…

when you look at the whole world and you’re agnostic to where somebody could come from, like it opens up so many doors that you don’t have to settle for not being able to find somebody right near your office. And truthfully, in my experience, Americans are kind of lazy. And so it’s real easy to find people that don’t really want to work anymore and they might take the job, but they’re not that efficient because they’re just lazy.

Bob Lachance (23:10.542)
It is interesting that you say that because we’re always hiring here in Connecticut as well. And it is a lot harder. For some reason, people are getting lazier and lazier. Hopefully now we’re going to undo what’s been done for the last four plus years. But hopefully now the hard work comes into play. mean, how we all grew up, know that, Mike, how we grew up is a little different than how our kids are growing up.

Mike Hambright (23:35.478)
Oh yeah, yeah, my wife and I make the Gen X jokes all the time. Like we would just, you know, break your neck and rub a little dirt on it and that’s just not that way anymore,

Bob Lachance (23:43.982)
Oh, no, no, it’s not. I mean, I look at my own kids, it’s a little different. know, we are brought up a lot, a lot different, you know, so, yeah, part of the game.

Mike Hambright (23:50.206)
Yeah, for sure, for sure, for sure. Well, we’ll toughen those kids up one way or another. Well, everybody, know, virtual assistants are a powerful tool to use in your business. We’re gonna add a link down below for how you can contact Reva Global to learn about how they might be able to help you. And of course, a bunch of links that you can connect with Bob as well. So Bob, really great to see you, buddy. Thanks so much for joining us today. Yeah, looking forward to our paths crossing again, buddy. We’ll see ya. Everybody, see you on the next show.

Bob Lachance (23:54.53)
Right. That’s right.

Bob Lachance (24:12.792)
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. Awesome. Thanks.