Justin Stoddart 0:00
Think Bigger Real Estate Show, I’m your host Justin Stoddart thrilled about today’s episode, I think it’s going to give a lot of real estate agents a solution to a problem that they’ve always wanted to have solved, which is how do I get more time in my life? You know, there’s endless coaching programs, endless ideas, even here on the Think Bigger Real Estate Show. We’re constantly giving you ideas of how to improve your business and how to improve your life. And the reality is, none of those are any good if you don’t have any time or capacity to implement them. So I want to welcome today’s guest, Bob Lachance. Let me give you a quick rundown on him. And then I’ll let him talk a little bit because he’s the guy that actually you know, I listen to, he spent eight years playing hockey at some of the highest levels. And he both here and in other countries, got into the industry in 2004. He’s founded multiple real estate coaching businesses. And he now does a lot of investment properties. He’s done over 1,000 In fact, investment properties, over 700 short sales. And I’m one thing that he’s really excited about that we’re going to talk more about today is the company he founded called Reva Global, which is a company that helps real estate agents outsource things that they should not be doing so that they can focus on doing things they should be doing. So Bob, apologize for the long intro, but man, it’s your fault. You’ve got too many accomplishments. So thank you for being on the show, man. Super excited to have you here.
Robert Lachance 1:17
Absolutely. Well, I definitely appreciate you having me, you’ve had an incredible list of individuals on your show and I’m a huge fan so I really appreciate you having me.
Justin Stoddart 1:26
Yeah, man. I appreciate that. That’s super fun to hear. Let me start by this so so for those of you that are just tuning in Bob and I found that we have something else that we’re passionate about beyond just the real estate industry which is that of being dad’s you should have heard Bob light up his he started telling there are we start telling stories about kids growing up and having them experience kind of athletics. So, Bob, you played sports at the highest level. We’re going to get to that here in a second. Let’s talk first and foremost about what is your favorite part about being a father?
Robert Lachance 2:01
I think it’s probably teaching them and seeing them grow up. I know you have six kids, which is absolutely insane to me, I have three kids my oldest is 15. But I think it’s teaching them the little things in lives and in their lives and also coaching them so I coach ice hockey for them all the youth sports grown up so it’s really a pleasure to see them grow and teach them the little life lessons that you know I’m sure that you’ve you’re teaching your kids as well. Yeah,
Justin Stoddart 2:28
yeah, that’s awesome man. I’m part of the mission of this show, is to not just help people have better lives are better businesses as a result of what we talked about, but better lives. And I think you know, one of the greatest impacts that people can have is within the confines of their own home and the impact they can have on the next generation so super love the fact that you are a committed dad I think that that says a lot about you so super. Thanks so much for sharing that. Let’s talk about your hockey career again. We’re going to start with all the good stuff. Everybody gets into real estate stuff at the end but you played all the way up to NHL level right?
Robert Lachance 3:06
Yes, I got drafted by the St. Louis Blues who happens to now be in the Stanley Cup Finals against the Boston Bruins which is pretty cool. So it is my team I played in the-so the equivalent of the triple-A in baseball, I played triple-A and hockey for four years here I played one exhibition NHL game, proud to say point a game so that’s pretty good. One is this one. And then I took that over to Europe. I played in Italy, Milan, Italy, Hamburg, Germany, Switzerland, core Geneva, Lugano, Switzerland, for the remainder of my career, and then I happened to jump in a real estate right after that.
Justin Stoddart 3:49
How does hockey compare over there in Europe to here is it more popular as popular that’s popular?
Robert Lachance 3:57
It’s in different countries. So I played on and obviously soccer as they call football over there and not our football but soccer is extremely, extremely popular. So hockey, not so much Germany a lot more. Switzerland, very, very popular.
Justin Stoddart 4:13
Very cool. Now, tell me what’s the biggest lesson that you learned from hockey that’s benefited your real estate career.
Robert Lachance 4:20
You know what I think the most important thing in any business is actually the work ethic, you have to have to be successful in anything. It’s, you know, you put in hours an hour, it’s kind of like, you know, if you’re a Top Producing real estate agent, you just don’t fall out of bed and be a Top Producing real estate agent. It takes the years of practice the years of creating systems, falling through those systems consistently and implementing those just like anything, right? You have all the training, but you also have to take the action and implement all of that training to be successful. So I think that is probably the biggest thing for me.
Justin Stoddart 4:54
And I just saw that you say that the ratio of practice time versus playtime was pretty one-sided right? You practice and you like you said, you follow systems and processes in order to get better not to say that you should spend all of your time planning and prep right we learned that on our previous episode Justin Okay, that that’s a bad idea.
Robert Lachance 5:16
What a great episode too.
Justin Stoddart 5:19
But this this concept of, of actually having a process and I’m sure that to become a hockey player at the highest level, you had to be organized, you had to have, like, just put in massive amounts of time to get to that level, which is what you’re saying is very similar to get to the point to where now you’ve done over 1000 investment properties, those same principles carry through.
Robert Lachance 5:42
Yeah, and here’s one of the things I do want to say it takes patience to, you know, if you set a goal to sell, I don’t know $10 million of real estate as an example, it’s not going to happen in the first month. It’s not going to happen the second month unless you live in I don’t know San Diego or LA or something and you get that one deal that is lucky but to do it on a consistent basis. That is important for everyone to know that it takes the time it takes building and as you go along you have to build your team you build your partnerships, you know a lot of those the past episodes that I listened to from like Lars Hedenborg, I believe that’s a say and Jim- yeah Hedenborg. So he talked a lot about for he’s from the real estate B school, he talked about setting up systems in getting help in reference to implementing those systems and doing it consistently. I think that’s, that was a really big takeaway took away from that. And he’s 1,000%. Correct.
Justin Stoddart 6:37
Let’s talk a little bit about your passion for helping agents outsource and which is kind of down the path, you know that you’re headed right now. Interesting. mentor of mine, Chris Suarez mentioned how NAR did a study that identified that real estate agents 80% of their time is spent on functionary activities. So 14 out of 15 hours right now spent doing activities that aren’t fiduciary activities that don’t necessarily require you to have a real estate license, they don’t actually bring huge value to the client. Now they’re important, don’t get me wrong, like they have to happen. But they don’t necessarily have to happen by the agent. Correct?
Robert Lachance 7:16
Correct. And that’s actually funny you say that, because, you know, every time he comes to me, they said, Bob, what? You know what, exactly? I know, I need help. But what can you guide me exactly what the help you need? And I always break it down into two categories. One category would be all right. Do you want to do you want help to get your time back? Or do you want to help you make more money? So it’s really time in business, growth and money. On the time side, you can look at all of the tasks that exactly what you just said that should be outsourced, you shouldn’t be doing those. And that’s one of the things I’ll share with you, I’ll send you over as a contractor closed document that has 88 tasks that you should outsource it, you know, we all here the transaction coordinator, right, everyone knows what a transaction coordinator is, we have so I broke it down. And I’ll show you this. So for those individuals, I’ll send this out to you. So all of your listeners here, it’s really, it’s really broken down into four different sections. That’s the pre-listing tasks. That’s the listing tasks, you have the sale pending tasks and the post-closing tasks. And there’s Ada within those that are when you start really breaking it down to learn in when everybody looks at those, they’re going to be saying, Why do I Why am I doing this? Because it’s just a waste. You know, my opinion is, if any real estate agents sitting on their butt like I’m doing right now, then you’re not making money should be on your feet, building relationships, building your network, building your sphere of influence, etc. And that doesn’t happen when you’re sitting there, you know, talking to an attorney and putting stuff into a CRM, etc, etc. Interesting.
Justin Stoddart 8:52
Yeah, you’re right, those things need to happen. But interesting, that distinction of sitting on your butt versus up on your feet, is it you’re right, some of the deepest relations are made face to face right. Now, should you have a social media presence? Absolutely. Right. But a lot of that can happen. And best happens when it’s out in the field like you documenting. I just went to a listing appointment, I just had an a, like a meeting with an attorney. And here’s where I realized that I can be a value to my clients. I mean, just that kind of content is super rich, it’s real time it’s authentic. And it’s awesome. Because it just happened, and you just help somebody with that. Right?
Robert Lachance 9:28
Yeah. And I let me add to that, sorry, I’m interrupting. Because that was an awesome point. Because, you know, if you just leave a closing, you talk to an attorney, that’s way different than being in a listing appointment, and you already have another closing, that’s going to happen, all of a sudden, something happens in the world blows up, right, and they get an attorney call an attorney saying, Hey, you got to get a hold of, you know that this, there’s a potential lienholder here, you got to get ahold of this person, this person, now you’re out of your flow and your listing appointment and end up losing that listing appointment, or whatever it just, it’s there’s always upon hours, just like you said, that is wasted from getting those calls and not having a transaction coordinator as an example, which is a perfect, perfect role for virtual assistant.
Justin Stoddart 10:12
You know, funny you say that, another one of my mentors, he mentioned that prior to going into a listing appointment, he would purposefully turn off his phone 30 minutes prior, like he didn’t want to hear from anybody for fear that he would get one of those calls, right, like one of the calls Murphy’s Law, right, where it comes right before and all of a sudden closings delayed, and like the moving truck is waiting, and now you’ve got to walk in a listing appointment, like your head’s not in the right spot to step in, and for it to be game time. And so I think you know, what you said there is even taking it to another level, which is, how can I be sure that some of these activities are never me. So where that stuff doesn’t know, granted, there are certain problems that you, as the CEO of your company, are going to need to solve, and you’re going to need to be involved with it. But you don’t necessarily need to be, you know, on the ground floor, catching all of it, hearing all of it sometimes, again, you’ve got good systems in place, a lot of that can be dealt with before it ever gets to your desk ever gets to you.
Robert Lachance 11:07
Yep, exactly. And, you know, you look at the top earners in real estate agents, right? Do you ever hear of a disc profiling, personality? personality, behavioral assessments, we do all of that. It’s kind of interesting when you look at real estate agents, and the top producers are typically high DS and high highs, right? where, you know, they’re true go-getters, they’re just drivers, they’re entrepreneurs, they just want to get, you know, either a listing or a buyer, buyer representation agreement, getting a buyer and seller under contract, that’s what they want to do. And then as soon as they get it, they’re on a high, right, then they go home. And then all of a sudden, it’s you sit to take a balloon, it’s like, now their energy is just SAP because they look at their computer. And they’re like, oh, man, I just fill out this listening room and I’ve got to input it into the MLS, I got to input into the CRM, I got it, you know, I kind of go through all of these tasks, where they want to just be out and they don’t make it money doing that exactly what you just said.
Justin Stoddart 12:02
Yeah. So let’s talk a little bit about Reva Global, I’m going to put it up here on the screen, because I think people need to be aware of this, that there’s an option for them, right? And I think sometimes people are like, Look, I’m not good at hiring people, every time I have it hasn’t worked out, well. They don’t do as good a job as I do. And now I’ve got this big salary. In order to get a good person I get like, I gotta pay them super well, maybe your businesses to a point where you should be hiring somebody. But maybe you’re at a point where you could just start to outsource some things right. Talk to us a little bit about. So transaction coordination work is one of the key things you guys do. Right? It sounds like, correct. What are some other key things, Bob that you think people ought to be outsourcing, that you see them not outsourcing?
Robert Lachance 12:43
So when you break it down to the example I gave earlier, which is time and money, right, so time, you could actually put transaction coordinator under money as well. But we’ll put that on our time. Because you get your time back and you should be out there, networking, building your sphere, we covered that. But the other side of money and helping you-you make money is working on all of the leads that you get in your business. So for example, many brokers, many agents, etc. They buy, whether they’re Zillow leads, whether their realtor.com leads, red X leads wherever they get them in, right? So what happens is they buy those leads, and they are dialing all of those leads. And if they pick up the phone and the outbound dial one lead, they don’t answer them, they never follow up with them again, they dial in alone down there. So they keep dialing, dialing down until somebody answers and the average Connect rate is not too high for someone to actually answer the phone. So what we do is actually, we have a whole process where we train our virtual assistants to follow up with those leads, right? So the first call you buy those leads because invest agents invest a lot of money on buying leads typically live. And this is not everybody, but many of them do. So when you’re going to do that you gotta turn I always look at how are we going to monetize when we pay for something as a lead? How are we going to monetize those leads? Right, I think it’s really, really important. And so the system that we have is, number one, you buy the lead number two, the first call should be done by the agent. And if they leave the message, they introduce the team, they introduce themselves, and then they pass it off to the virtual assistant. And you could break it up into three categories. You go warm, Luke, warm, or cold. Going however you want to categorize it, if it’s in a neighborhood you really, really love, guess what? That’s warm, right? different type of property, sellable property, location, etc, right? So what we do is you have your virtual assistant call every seven days. Right, so now you’re calling every seven days until they tell you to stop calling them. right for me personally, if I’m going to do that, I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to stop doing it because it’s so much work on my plate, right? Imagine calling everyone every seven days, and you have 100 200 300 leads. So if it’s a lukewarm you have your VA call every 21 days, if it’s cold, you haven’t called every 30 days, because could also add a text message in there in an email all done by a virtual assistant. Because what is it 70% of all properties, whether the listings or getting someone under a buyer representation agreement 70% it’s all done through follow up.
Justin Stoddart 15:16
It’s just a seven out of 10 of those clothes, we have followed up. You know I’m going to throw in another component here that’s that came to mind as you’re describing this is to have an agent doing that work. It’s a little bit of an energy drain, right? My guess is that they’re not dialers by trade or dialers at heart. Yes, they want to scale their business. Yes, they want more leads, but they don’t necessarily want to be the ones that are always making those phone calls. And so in addition to protecting time and money, it’s also protecting energy right at the end of the all of us have a certain limited amount of energy. And if you put an agent long enough doing an activity that drains their energy, doesn’t matter how much more time of the day they have their not gonna have a desire to want to do anything else, they’re going to screw around surfing Facebook, right. So I think what this can do also is have them ask the question of what’s, what are the activities that I do that fire me up that actually put more energy into my tank? Right? There are certain things that we do. But although it’s an expenditure of energy, it’s so much aligned with who we are in our passion. For me, it’s these interviews, right? I walk in these interviews with more energy than when I got onto the, you know, got onto the conversation. So I think finding out what is your sweet spot? What’s the thing that you absolutely love to do? And then, like spend more time doing that and everything that doesn’t fit within that not everything, right? I mean, the reality is there are some things that you might have to do that you don’t love. But the more of those things that you don’t love that you aren’t great at that suck your energy as opposed to rebuilding your energy. Look at outsourcing those right, take a look at like Reva Global to say, Hey, can you guys take care of this? Do you guys have an option for getting this off my plate?
Robert Lachance 16:57
Yeah, and I think I think I could add to that, because, you know, the, you know, hundreds of agents that I’ve worked with for the last five years, right? I look at that, and it’s the same pain points, it is that time right on one side of it. Because, you know, majority of age, I’m just using this. It’s not I don’t know the exact stat, but many agents have families just like us, right. And if you want to you and I gotta tell you a funny story to in a second. But if you want to have dinner with your family without the phone blowing up, and you having to answer all those calls, it’s tough to do, right? Back in 2005, after I started in 2004, I got my real estate license 2005 I listed this property as a short sale property and Gilford, I do you mind if I go off on a little tangent here. So I’m sitting there in my family eating dinner. And, you know, for me, I’m more of I like going out and, and, you know, networking and building my businesses, etc, etc, right? So I kept getting a call my phone was sitting right here, it blew up and ranked 55 times for this one property, Guilford. I picked up the phone, I looked over my wife, I’m like, dude, I’m done, I’m out. I’m no longer going to be listing a property ever again. So now, I learned from that to build my team. And I built my sphere of agents around me to handle all of that information. And that is a perfect thing to do, as you know, as an agent, and I know everyone’s building teams now. But a virtual assistant is, you know, they do a lot for me on the investor side is they do all call answering for me. So all my leads and all my marketing that I send out, they do live to answer as well. So that’s one of the things that you could do as an assistant.
Justin Stoddart 18:34
I mean, Case in point, right? How in the world do you do the amount of business that you have? And the timeframe that you’ve done? There’s only one answer, which is you figured out how to outsource some stuff? Yeah, I mean, Europe, you’re a product of the product. I
Robert Lachance 18:47
I am and you know, it’s funny, someone asked me the other day is why did you start this company? So through the years back in 2004, and I started investing in starting a couple of education programs. There was one thing that I noticed, and that was within agents and investors and all real estate professionals is that everybody needs a little more help, right? Everybody needs a way to get their time back. But everybody needs assistance and affordable assistance, right? Because I live in Connecticut. And if I had to hire somebody would cost me you know, 20 plus dollars per hour. Plus, I have to pay their insurance, I have to pay, you know, taxes, etc, etc. So before you know it, I’m paying this person net out of my pocket 50 something thousand dollars, right? So I’m like, What is it, there’s got to be an answer. So it took me a long time. And in 2013, I got introduced to the virtual assistant world. And then obviously, with my education and training background, I had an idea within that 2013 before I launched this, how do I actually take what I’ve learned in training, but implement that in the virtual assistant world. Now for you know, those of you listening, if you’ve ever started a company in the Philippines or another country, it’s obviously not easy, right? If you started here in the United States, it’s easy, but you know, figured it out, you know, through a lot of a lot of wins a lot of losses, figured it out to where now we set up a whole recruiting company train our recruiting department, training department placements and operations and HR, etc over the Philippines. So it’s pretty, it’s pretty cool.
Justin Stoddart 20:19
So that obviously makes it affordable for for for people right to outsource they’re not writing American wages, right and gives them the ability to really serve their clients at a really high level. And really be as, as I understand it, a great blessing to people in the Philippines, right that like the amount that you’re able to pay them is a tremendous salary for them and their family. Right. It’s a unity.
Robert Lachance 20:45
Yeah, and I just came from there, which is it’s, I’ll be honest with them, it’s such a, such a great feeling inside, you know, we pay for all their health insurance. So it’s just a very nice thing that we could be able to commit and get to them. And, you know, I met a lot of there, a lot of our teams, our support teams, family, their kids, etc. And it was just a great time. And it’s, it’s really nice to see how it really humbling and gratifying how you can help change people’s lives and the best of the best. So I’m blessed.
Justin Stoddart 21:18
What do you think about that, you know, I know a lot of real estate agents, their true passion is to impact other people. And one day, once they get their business to a certain spot or they, you know, they’re going to go you know, serve in a third world country. And what I hear you saying is that like, actually, by living a better life yourself and spending more time with your family and outsourcing some of this, you can actually be of great service to people living in the Philippines.
Robert Lachance 21:41
Hundred percent. And you know that if any of you on this call has ever worked with Filipino virtual assistants or anybody in the Philippines, incredibly loving, a family oriented just very, like servant leadership and just serving individuals. So if you have a chance to go there recommended. I do want to say there’s a ton of traffic though. If you go there, you’re going to be sitting in traffic for a long time. But um absolutely incredible.
Justin Stoddart 22:09
Great stuff man such so fun to have this conversation with you and hopefully open up some minds and paradigms about man Justin all this stuff that you share the things that your real estate, these guests that you bring, I want to apply it. But at the end of the day, I get off watching your episodes and I don’t have time. Well, guess what? Bob is your answer. Right? He’s going to send to me a copy of this report of stuff that you ought to be outsourcing, I’m going to put it in the Think Bigger Real Estate Group. So if you’re not yet a member of that, go find the group on Facebook, I’m going to put it in there. And you’re going to go through and going to start to identify things that you can be outsourcing so that you can have time to build the business you won’t have the life that you want. Bob, I’m going to end with this question. It’s kind of our signature question of the show. What is it that you do some intentional activity or practice that you do? That helps you to be a big thinker, obviously, with what you’re doing? You’ve built companies in other parts of the world, you’ve done some amazing things. How do you do it? Like how do you consistently think bigger teaches,
Robert Lachance 23:05
you know, it’s funny I listened in this is to do two different things. Number one, I listen to podcasts. I listen to your podcast I get so for every single podcast, if you get one thing, you take it and you implement it, you get an idea, you take an implement it, that’s one of the things that I do. I also read books, and I implement those books. I’m reading a book called Traction right now. And really, it’s transforming my business. It’s It’s amazing. So those are two of the things that I do and I highly recommend that book. It’s really incredible. To say it’s called EOS entrepreneurial operating system on what it’s based on. So I highly recommend that. But those are the two of the things that I do.
Justin Stoddart 23:43
Killer, who’s the author of that book? Do you remember? Because it’s funny.
Robert Lachance 23:46
You know, Gina Wickman.
Justin Stoddart 23:48
Okay, perfect. Because I actually had a good friend and client of mine who recommended yesterday he’s like you need to retraction with what you’re doing with think bigger, you’re going to love that book. And I want an audible today actually. And there are a few books called Traction I was like which one is I didn’t have a chance to reach out to him yet. So I’m sure the same one.
Robert Lachance 24:03
I’d recommend too to buy it. So I bought it for all of my team, all my manager, team members. So everybody is following that now. Some really, really incredible if you have me on again in another six months, and you know, or just touch base, give me a call. I’d love to share what the results of that book are
Justin Stoddart 24:23
done. Done. We’re booking it, man.
This has been so much fun. Thank you for contributing so much to the think bigger real estate audience. Really appreciate you and appreciate the guests that have tuned in to watch this live and of course a thank you to all of you that will watch this later on. If you do both Bob and I the favor. If this has been valuable at all, will you write it in the comments just put value valuable and even if you feel so inclined, share this out? Bob’s impact will be further spread to more people and frankly, you got a message that I want to share with more people, Bob. So thanks again for tuning in and for being a part of this.
Robert Lachance 24:59
Awesome. Thank you for having me. Really appreciate
Transcribed by https://otter.ai