Generating Leads With The Right Marketing With Bob Lachance

When you’re starting out in real estate or any business, lead generation is vital to learning. Getting leads isn’t possible without consistency and a good marketing plan. Learn how to budget, market, and fund a marketing plan in today’s episode. Join your host Jeff Rutkowski and his guest Bob Lachance on how to generate leads in real estate. Bob is the founder and CEO of REVA Global, LLC and is the host of the Friday Coffee Break Unfiltered Podcast. Learn all about marketing and how it can generate leads—from direct mail to the old fashion way of door knocking. Learn Bob’s marketing strategy and get inspired to make yours.

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Generating Leads With The Right Marketing With Bob Lachance

We have an incredible episode joined by Mr. Bob Lachance. Former professional hockey player for the St. Louis Blues turned real estate investor. We’re going to be getting into marketing and lead generation. Bob is going to share some of the top ways that in his business, he is generating leads. Let’s kick it off as always with our Word of the Week segment. Our word of the week is lead generation because that’s what we’re going to be talking about.

What is lead generation? What is a lead? Lead generation is vital. Your business depends on generating leads, which are potential deals. Think of a lead as a response to any marketing that you’re doing in your business. The marketing goes out and the lead comes in. Maybe you’re doing direct mail marketing, online, Facebook ads, running your online presence or maybe even text message marketing. When that goes out, the lead is the response to that marketing.

We know that real estate is a numbers game. Fifty leads, you write about 25 offers, you get 1 or 2 deals. It’s a response to any form of marketing. I remember one of my first leads. I was marketing to a probate list via direct mail. I remember that phone ringing, getting so excited seeing that response to marketing. I answered that phone and I got cussed out for about 30 seconds and said, “Never send me a letter again.”

I ask you this question, “Was that a lead?” It was a lead. Not the type of lead I prefer but nonetheless it was a lead. It was one closer to that one that is going to turn into a deal. You are going to love Mr. Bob Lachance. He’s a former professional hockey player with the St. Louis Blues. Before landing with the Blues, he won a national championship with Boston University. He went and played about eight years over in the Europe Leagues before landing with the Blues, played a handful of years there and then turned real estate investor. He’s also built multiple successful companies including a virtual assistant company that manages over 400 VAs all across the world serving real estate investors just like us. Let’s get into it.

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We have a stud on the other end of the line here, Mr. Bob Lachance. I particularly feel honored to be doing this interview because Mr. Lachance was my very first coach when I started investing in real estate back in 2007. Before real estate though, he had a pretty big-time career in some professional sports. In 1992, he was drafted in the sixth round to the St. Louis Blues. He won a National Championship with Boston University in 1995 and then went on to play 8 years as a professional hockey player, 4 here in the US and 4 in Europe.

2004 is when he got into the real estate game and since that time, no big deal, he’s just over 1,000 deals in the books. He also is a serial entrepreneur. Owns a few other companies, one of them being a VA company where he has about 400 virtual assistants that service real estate investors and medical companies all across the country. I want you to lean into this episode. It probably is a good idea to pull out your notebook and pen because you are going to read about some nuggets that can change the game for you as a real estate investor. Mr. Bob Lachance, welcome to the show.

Jeff, thanks for having me. This is awesome. I love the booth over there.

We call it the bunker, Bob. The street that we’re on here is Bunker Hill Street in San Diego. It has this bunker feel to it. If we had an earthquake in California, I’d be just fine. We have to get you out here live one time.

I love the Rocky right behind you.

It’s not complete unless you got Rocky on the wall in some way shape or form. “It’s not how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you could get hit and keep on going.” I’m excited to get into this, Bob. I look to you as one of the people that were instrumental in me getting into this game and succeeding as a real estate investor with over 1,000 deals in the books and hundreds of short sales. Talk to the readers. What do you have going on in the business? What does your business look like at this moment in time?

A lead is a response to any marketing that you’re doing.

I have two main businesses and a couple of businesses on the side as a serial entrepreneur. I have a virtual assistant company that has over 400 virtual assistants. A little bit of what that looks like, we service real estate professionals all the way from real estate agents. We have a number of students that use our service, a lot of our coaches. We also have a lot of eXp agents that use our service. All medians of real estate whether it’s agencies, brokerages, mortgage brokers, real estate investors.

The other side of my business is real estate investing. My team, we’re averaging about seven deals a month that are closed. We got another property under a contract which is 36 properties. We’ve done over 1,000 deals. I have myself, my business partner and our main acquisition guy. We have an office manager and ten Vas that are working on our team. We’re also adding a disposition individual and also another acquisition person. That’s a little route out of what I’m doing.

You have seven deals a month. What’s your exit strategy? Do you have a specific focus? Is it wholesaling, rehabbing or are you letting the deal dictate the exit strategy? What’s your focus there, Bob?

We do a lot of stuff. We’re doing probably about 80% wholesaling. We have some wholetailing in there, which means we’re getting properties that are good discount because our team is very well-trained in sales negotiation. We’re doing some wholetails, which means we’re buying it, funding it out with cash whether it’s private money, hard money or our own money and listing on the MLS without doing any work. We also do a couple of flips here and there. We also do some novations, which is a higher-level exit strategy. We’re picking off some buy and holds as well. That’s a little bit of an overview of what we’re doing.

Bob is operating out of the Connecticut real estate market. West Hartford, is that still accurate?

What started to move our office over to Cheshire. We miss you guys and also the CT Homes team over in Connecticut.

I am born and raised out of Milford, Connecticut. CT Homes got their start in New Haven. I do miss you, Bob but outside of that, I don’t know how much I miss Connecticut. It’s hard to beat 72 and sunny all year round out here in San Diego. Somebody’s got to do it.

Good point but I’m happy that seasons are changing.

Eighty percent of the deals are wholesale. If I’m a rehabber in Connecticut, I’m thinking about getting Bob on my wholesaling list, delivering me some leads. What marketing campaigns are you running? Which ones are you finding the most effective and why?

We stay pretty consistent. We use what’s called a 10/10/10 model. We do 10,000 cold calls, 10,000 text messages and 10,000 pieces of direct mail for each one of our acquisition people so 10,000 no matter what. I’ll break it down. Ten thousand text messages to new leads every month. Ten thousand cold calls but then on the direct mail side, our head of acquisition and our main acquisition managers who are Adam and Ian, we do 10,000 direct mail pieces for each of them per month.

 

What’s the lead class that you’re targeting?

We do out-of-state owners. One time we got a text message lead that came in at 9:00 PM. My business partner Adam gave them a call, locked them up, ready to hand in $65,000. The ARV is about $205,000. That was pretty much a slam dunk. That’s not normal. I’m going to be honest with you. That’s not the norm. I want to make sure I set expectations correctly. Some statistics in our office, when a lead comes in, it takes about 100 to 150 days for us to get that property under contract. There’s nothing in real estate that’s get rich quick at all or, “I throw one piece of mail. It should equate to $100,000.” It doesn’t work that way. It’s consistency in our business, which is very important.

Consistency is the key. You are right. You hit the nail on the head there. We talk with a lot of newer investors that would run one campaign and abandon that campaign. Maybe they don’t get the results they’re looking for on the first one. How long are you running a campaign before you’re making adjustments or switching to another one? What do you have to see or not see to abandon a campaign?

Honestly, I don’t abandon a campaign. I just change the lists. I use Realeflow. We use our AI leads and then we expand from that. We’ll go from non-owner occupied, jump into pre-foreclosure and into vacant lists. All the lists that are provided in Realeflow are exactly what we go through. One of the things that are working well for us is properties that have been owned for over two years because the appreciation has gone so high since COVID, to be honest with you. They’ve just gone up and gone up. I found that if somebody has owned a property for over two years, that’s what we’re going to target. Whether it’s non-owner occupied or whatever it is, that’s one of the big things for us.

One thing I love about you, Bob and I’ve learned over the years is automating the process as we preached at FortuneBuilders. Setting up an area of the business, firing yourself, placing people, VAs or technology in line. What areas of the business do you personally have your hands on? What part of the deal are you coming in? Are you the closer? Where do you come into play?

This is important for everyone to read about. When you first start out, you’re going to be a one-man-show or a one-woman show. I started in 2004. Fast forward, I take care of the marketing side of it. I set up the marketing campaigns and run those. I also take care of financing and funding because we’re having a big influx of properties we’re getting at a very good discount.

Even though the real estate agents come into my office saying, “There’s no product.” There’s a product if you implement the systems on a consistent basis. I handle marketing, financing and all our business. On the financial side, there’s a lot of bookkeeping behind the scenes that you have to run to keep the machine going. Adam runs all of our acquisitions and disposition.

You got your hands in the most vital pieces which are marketing, finding the deals and finding the money, overseeing those two areas. That’s something I’ve had the opportunity to teach and train investors all over the country. I always make a joke. There are vital parts and important parts of the business. I’ll ask them, “In your opinion, what is the difference between vital and important?” I always explain it this way. “It’s very important on September 22 for my wife to buy me a birthday present but it is vital that I buy my wife a birthday present on her birthday which is March 1.” In my opinion, our business life depends on our marketing.

Have consistent marketing campaigns going out. We do it every week. We’re cold calling and text messaging Monday through Friday. We’re doing direct mail drops every single Monday. If you don’t have that consistently, you will be out of business. I’ve made this mistake a million times throughout the years where you send out a bunch of marketing, get a lot of calls and get very overwhelmed. You get a property under contract, you may start a rehab and then you stop everything. You get very overwhelmed and then you stop.

Once that marketing stops, you’re going to have a very big challenge ahead of you to get re-ramped up. My first deal was when I first got into real estate when I retired from hockey, that’s exactly what happened. There was no education program around like FortuneBuilders. I started from a course about that thing. I read the whole course but one thing I learned from it was the farming area. Meaning, you get in your car, drive up and down neighborhoods, see and look for any type of distress in a property like a roof with shingles falling and high grass, all that good stuff.

Your business life depends on your marketing. If you don’t have a consistent marketing strategy, you’ll be out of business.

What I did was I called on every one of them. I would door knock them first and foremost. If they weren’t there, I would go home and would skip trace them. Back in the day, I had to rely on 411.com. You then have skip trace services. Realeflow has a skip trace service inside of their other skip trace services. That’s how I got my first deal. I called on the individuals of a vacant property, made an offer and they accepted it. I was scared because I didn’t have money lined up. I wasn’t an investor. I came from the hockey rink. I knew nothing. That’s the way that I got my first deal.

The takeaway there is implementing on a consistent basis. When I bought that deal, I rehabbed it. I found contractors and fumbled around. Ended up doing well but that took two months. The point of how we got here is I had zero marketing. I didn’t even know what marketing was, to be honest with you. I didn’t have anything consistently done. I was catching my tail. I didn’t get another deal for a long time after that.

That’s a common mistake. I can remember starting off, bringing you my first deal and getting your wisdom as a coach at the time. I made the exact same mistake. As soon as we got into that deal, I cut off the marketing. It’s great that you do a deal and make some money but then it’s like you’re starting the business all over again after each deal. What is your ballpark in your marketing budget? What are you putting into your marketing on a monthly budget?

We spend about $10,000 a month which is a lot but everyone can pare it down to whatever their budget is. If you’re going to do a $5,000 budget, for us, I have my virtual assistants doing all of my text messaging and cold calling. That’s going to be a cost right there and then pair it up with direct mail. I would highly recommend setting up every single Monday so it goes out consistently. If you have a $2,500 budget for marketing, break it up per month. That’ll get you consistent leads to where you start consistently whether you’re going to wholesale it, rehab or buy and hold. Whatever your exit strategy is, you will get consistent leads that way.

It’s a numbers game. Roughly generate 50 leads, write 25 offers and get 1 or 2 deals. It’s great wisdom there. You mentioned door-knocking. That’s one of the ways I started out as well. For the new investor that doesn’t have $2,500 or $10,000 to invest on a monthly basis, what are some forms of free marketing or maybe just require time investment that you would recommend for the new investor?

If you’re by yourself and you have a lot of time on your hands, you could also partner or work with someone whether it’s a JV partner that has resources and money. Don’t always look at it saying, “If I have time but I don’t have other resources.” You can always work with somebody else. That’s a very important point there. For some free marketing, you could scrape leads off of Craigslist. We had a deal that we closed on Zillow for sale by the owner. The guy wanted to move on to state. We made an offer. We got it for $70,000 and wholesaled it for $75,000. We made a quick $5,000. There’re ways to do that way like the Facebook marketplace.

You have to start looking at properties that are rented. A lot of landlords are getting beat up because of the whole COVID restrictions where you can’t evict. There’re a lot of landlords that just want out. You could pull a list from Realeflow in reference to non-owner occupied or rental properties. You could get them skip traced and cold call yourself. That’s going to be a very inexpensive way to get motivated sellers.

What’s the talk track? What’s the script you’re giving your Vas particularly to the landlords?

It’s simple. It’s the same script. Your opening script is, “This is Bob from Perch Rock Management. I’m just looking at your property here at 123 Main Street. We’re looking to see if you’re interested in entertaining an offer.” You’re then going to go into a little more script. That’s all we want to know. You’re opening the door. The job of any virtual assistant is to gauge seller motivation and then pass that off to you because it’s our job as acquisition individuals, owners of our company to turn that lead into money.

There’s a reason why we have sales negotiation training and modules that we have on the mastery site. That’s a perfect example. I’ll be honest with you. Adam is ten times better, that’s my business partner, in real estate closing than I am. We sent him through all of the training. He’s a master. He took Andy Tanner’s training, which is phenomenal. He uses all of the techniques that he learned from Andy into what he does on a daily basis on the phone. He had a lot more experience than me. Was I very good back in the day? I was way better back in the day because that was my role.

 

For those of you that aren’t familiar with Andy Tanner, he is Than Merrill’s sales and negotiation coach. He hosts The Cashflow Academy. I highly recommend it. The point that you made there, Bob, was so vital because one of the most common mistakes is not just real estate investors but business owners. It’s that fixed mindset, “If you want something done right, you got to do it yourself.” Not relinquishing control and understanding that people on your team are going to do things better than yourself. Put them in their areas of strength. Was that something that came naturally for you? Was that a struggle in the process? How do you deal with that?

I always like working with a team. If I think I could do better than somebody else, it doesn’t matter if I can or I can’t. It’s the natural path to growth. My whole background was sports. It doesn’t matter if you’re the best person on that team. You can’t win unless your teammate is there. If you have someone who could pass the puck, some who could score, some who could play defense or play goalie, it doesn’t matter. You can’t do it yourself.

People always use analogies about professional athletes. Let’s say, tennis players. They still need a coach. If they don’t have a coach, they’re going to struggle with what they do on a daily basis. Even Serena Williams who arguably the best tennis player ever to play this game. People may argue with me but they can. She’s phenomenal but if she didn’t have the right coach pushing her every day, holding her accountable every day, she wouldn’t be where she is. That’s an important takeaway.

Professional sports do generate so many great analogies. I’m going to make some friends with this statement but I’m going to make some enemies. I love to do England Patriots. I love the team-first mentality. I love the next man up. “Do your job at a high level.” Outside of what you just mentioned, what are some things that you learn playing sports at such a high level that have carried over into your business and helped you succeed?

There are lots of similarities between sports and business. In sports, you get knocked down a lot. You mentioned that about Rocky. It’s how you get up. You get beat up pretty good in the sporting environment and you have no choice. You’re either going to quit or you’re going to get back up and keep going. We won the National Championship in 1995 but the one thing you didn’t mention is that we lost the year before in the National Championship, 9 to 1 on ESPN, on national TV, which was very demotivating. However, it was probably the best thing that ever happened to us.

The next year, we came back and we beat everybody by four goals to win the national championship. We were extremely focused. We worked as a team when we’re working out together. In all practices we’re extremely motivated. We had a lot of grit. To anchor back to what you’re saying, what do sports give you? Sports show you how to be successful even after you get knocked down. In real estate, you’re going to get beat up sometimes but that’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with that. How many times has this happened when you have a closing that you’re going to make $50,000 and all of a sudden, it just goes away but then you got to keep going? It’s part of real estate investing. It’s part of the game.

One of the sayings we have around here that I’ve adopted is, “You either win or you learn.” You’re going to fail along the way. You’re going to get some bumps and bruises but as long as you learn from that lesson then it becomes an asset that empowers you moving forward. That’s great advice. I don’t know if I ever asked you this or I’ve ever heard but in 2004, you entered the real estate game. What was it that inspired you to get into real estate? What sequence of events occurred for you to end up as a real estate investor?

The sequence of events was simple for me. I played professional sports and I left school early. In my fourth year in college, I was two core classes short to get my degree. I had a decision to make. I was going to go back to school, get my degree and have the chance of someone else literally owning what I do for the rest of my life. I would have been pushed into going into some industry or job. It was tough for me to be employed. That’s the best way to put it.

For me, it was either I was going to own my own business or be owned by somebody. That’s just the way I looked at it. I know not everybody looks at it because I have nothing wrong with having a side hustle. When you have a real 9:00 to 5:00 job and you have a side hustle that you want to take over for your main hustle, I understand that side of it. For me, I never wanted to be owned by somebody, to be honest with you.

The mission of FortuneBuilders is to empower people whose purpose is through financial education. There’re many people reading this. You are wired as an entrepreneur but you’re working as an employee. It doesn’t feel good. It’s one of those things. One of the first episodes we did was with Elena Powers. She and Andrew shared about being stuck in that corporate world and then when they made that step of faith, they realized, “This is how I’m wired. This business fits the way I think. It fits my mindset and all of that.” With you, a serial entrepreneur, I can’t imagine you working a 9:00 to 5:00. You would be miserable.

The main job of any virtual assistant is to gauge seller motivation.

Let me add to that too because it’s important that we talk a little bit more about the side hustle. A side hustle can be you have your 9:00 to 5:00. You’re taking any extra income and building it passively. That, a lot of times, helps you get in the game where you could look at it like, “What is your overhead that you need to make every single month?” Once you take that extra income, you start buying and holding. If you can replace what that income is you’re way ahead of everybody else. There’s nothing wrong with a side hustle. There’re a lot of people that go back and forth about the side hustle. As a serial entrepreneur, I have no problem with a side hustle. I feel like I’m not doing anything unless I have a side hustle.

You realized, “I got to go work for somebody else.” I bet on myself. You could have created a laundry mat. How did you get into real estate?

First and foremost, I knew there were zero barriers of entry to get into real estate. It doesn’t take much. You don’t need a license, a degree or anything. That was the first reason why I did it but real estate investing always appealed to me. My father was a contractor growing up. Full disclosure, I knew nothing about building a house or being a contractor.

I worked for him. I was a gopher. I followed and made me go for this, go for that. I can tell you how to broom up a place as you read about it. I was the best broomer you could hire at the time and that’s no joke. My father’s main goal was for us to get a full scholarship to college in hockey. That was his main vision. He didn’t teach us that industry.

He had some properties growing up. He owned some land. I looked at some of those things and took from it. That was one of the things that I always looked at. I would always look at houses. There’s no main reason why real estate was my path. I knew I wanted to work for myself and build a team. I bet on real estate at the time.

You picked probably the best asset class to create wealth in our country for sure. For many years, you focused on the niche of the pre-foreclosures. You owned a short-sale company. Talk about your experience there. How much of that are you seeing in the market with the market appreciating at an exponential rate?

When I started, it was ‘04. My first deal was a rehab project. It went pretty well. I made $32,000 and then I realized I had zero systems. I had no marketing, nothing. I joined my local real estate investing association and you’re a part of it. That’s where I met Than, Paul and Conrad. You got to realize that this time, I was very impressionable. I was going to go where any shiny object went.

When you first start real estate, you don’t really know where to go and that’s where I was. A short sale speaker was speaking on stage and then when he was done speaking, I bought his course. I was a buyer. I was investing in his education which is the best thing ever. The next meeting, I went around to ask about half of the crowd who the best person in short sales was in reference to the investors in Connecticut. They all pointed to the one gentleman whose name was Pat Precourt. I went up to him, introduced myself and said, “I’m not looking for a job or for any money. I’ll work for free. I just want to learn the industry.”

You closed over 700 short sale transactions in that time.

We closed a lot, a little history on systemizing your business. I started first door-knocking for a year straight from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM every single day. Pat would give me a pre-foreclosure list and I would knock on doors from Monday through Friday. I would go home, skip trace and use 411.com. I would look for their phone numbers and dial them until about 8:00. At this time, I had only one son so I’d have to manage hanging out with him and my wife, cold calling, eating and all kinds of good stuff. That’s how I got involved.

 

I replaced myself and added another door knocker in my place. Another year went by, I started negotiating. I replaced myself from negotiating. We started a short sale company, which was nationwide. We also created a short sale flagship system. We started offering that. We started a coaching program on the short sale side from that time. To answer your question, am I seeing a lot of short sales for us? I’m not because of the foreclosure moratorium that’s going on but do I see the floodgates opening up in about a year? I do.

Over 700 short sales completed. One of those was a property that I owned at the time. One of my first deals with FortuneBuilders was a property. I don’t know if you remember this, Bob but I met you somewhere in Connecticut. You were with Than, Paul and Conrad. Pat might have been there as well in your teaching. I was a real estate agent trying to cross over into a real estate investor.

I had a property in Orange, Connecticut at 620 Saddle Ridge Road. I was an agent and I found a buyer. The buyer backed out on the closing. I was planning on a nice commission check as an agent and it didn’t come in. I remember complaining about it to you and you’re like, “That’s great.” I’m like, “What are you talking about? I just lost $15,000 in a commission.” You’re like, “You can buy it. You could step in.” It was a short sale if I remember correctly. I totally agree with that. Not much just because of the market that we’re in but I agree with you in the future. In your opinion, Bob, what is the biggest opportunity in our current market?

This is what’s coming into my office. I can only speak to what’s coming in my office. I’m part of a bunch of masterminds and working with students as well. I am seeing the non-owner-occupied rental properties being the biggest opportunity because the small landlords are having a very difficult time with getting tenants out. That’s what I’m seeing. If you do a very good job at negotiating with the tenants, you are going to do very well. Meaning, negotiating with the tenants to either get out or if you have a buyer’s list and the buyers buy properties with tenants that aren’t paying in there. Those two opportunities are number one.

I’ll say it again. Those are non-owner-occupied rental properties. Number one, you could get bigger discounts because the smaller landlords are having a tough time paying their mortgage. On the other side, if you’re good at negotiating Cash for Keys, get the tenants out. It’s a very good opportunity for us as investors.

You’re looking for those landlords that are feeling the squeeze and the crunch from the current situation, tying those properties up and then have the buyers on your list that are cool buying it with the tenants or doing the Cash for Keys. What amount of cash are you having to come out of pocket to have tenants get out of there for you?

It’s all a different range but one of the biggest spreads we had, we bought it for $45,000. We made a little over $70,000 and we gave the tenant $10,000 Cash for Keys, which is a little higher than you ever want to do but you get them out to make profits. It’s worth it.

For those of you that are reading and want to get started in real estate, many of you are wired to be an entrepreneur. You know it. You’re in a job you’re not happy with. You’ll never be happy until you step out and start a business of your own. FortuneBuilders have a free one-day investing class. Go to FBShowBonus.com.

You could sign up for a free one-day virtual class with the founder of FortuneBuilders, Mr. Than Merrill. It’s a class designed to teach you how to get started in real estate and how to transition like I and Bob did. Bob, top three pieces of advice for a new investor. What are things that if you could go back in time where you wish people had told you in the beginning stages of your business?

Number one, it always goes back to marketing and being consistent with your marketing no matter what. Whatever niche of real estate you’re in. If you’re a rehabber, even if you get that property under contract, you’re busy rehabbing and managing it before you set your systems up, you can’t stop marketing. That’s number one. It’s very important.

You’re only as good as your team.

Number two, you’re only as good as your team 100%. It’s okay to outsource a lot of the stuff that you’re doing to somebody else. If you’re a perfectionist like no one could do better than you, they always can. Give someone else some credit for doing that. If you could outsource even 20% of what you do, that means you can focus on other income-producing activities that you can do with your business. Finally, I would start buying and holding immediately. That was one of the things that I made a very big mistake on. If I started buying even one property a year, I’d be able to do a lot of properties and a lot of doors. A lot of us make that mistake.

If you don’t remember anything else from this episode, remember that third point. I agree with you, Bob. In hindsight, I didn’t start buying and holding properties until 2014. It’s probably my biggest regret. Even if it’s just 1 or 2 properties a year, the long-term benefits, you will make more on one little rental property over the course of your lifetime than the best rehab deal, best wholesale deal you’ll ever do between the monthly cashflow that you’ll realize from these rental properties from all the multiple streams of tax benefits.

The IRS tax code is designed and benefits most business owners and real estate owners, plus appreciation. If you haven’t noticed that prices in our current market are going through the roof. As long as our government continues to print money, prices are going to continue to rise. It’s 1975 since we switched off the gold standard. It’s been an average at 3% year over a year where real estate long-term goes up.

I wanted to put some extra juice on that last comment, Bob. I couldn’t agree more. That’s the biggest thing somebody could do. You don’t need to be a full-time investor. Maybe you’re working a 9:00 to 5:00 that you love and that’s great. Buy a property or two on the side. Just stack those things up like you’re playing Monopoly and you will not regret it. I want to know, what is the driving force behind you as an entrepreneur? What is your why, as we call it here in FortuneBuilders? Why do you do what you do? How do you maintain that focus and driven mindset that you have?

You look back through the years and why you do it. For me, it is the time freedom I have. Don’t get me wrong. I work a lot. I do. I have a virtual assistant company with 400 VAs. I have a real estate company that is doing well this time. When you see people on other podcasts, they’re like, “I only work twenty hours a week.” That’s not me. I work very hard but I love it.

I’m reading a book called The Motive. It’s a very good book. It’s a leadership fable. It talks about CEOs, business owners and the two main reasons are why people become business owners. One of them is positive. One of them is negative. They just talk about CEOs. In this book, it said, “In the end, people become CEOs because they like to help other people and serve other people or because they feel like it’s their right because they accomplish something and they should have that title.” Mine is 100% the first. You’ve known me for a long time. I love giving back.

My why is when I start a company, I do it for the team. You always have to give before you get back. That’s important for everybody especially in this real estate industry. There are lots of selfish real estate investors. I don’t mean that in a negative way because I’ve been in this business for a long time. I was selfish at one point as well right back when I first started and then I got mentored the correct way from the correct people to see the things through the correct lens. If you look at it as a team first, you will get way further in life and you won’t take advantage of people. You will look at things and say, “How can I help this individual?” I promise you, fast forward years ahead, you’re going to need their help later on. It’s a very important thing.

You’re dropping some incredible nuggets here. Whether you call it reaping what you sow, paying it forward or karma, you’re absolutely right. It’s the Law of Reciprocation. In this business, I’ve seen it time and time again. The most successful investors I know are by far the most generous in terms of giving to others and building their team. I love to hear that kind of stuff. You’re a married man. You have some beautiful children of your own. Does your wife work with you in the business at all? Is there any interest from your kids to follow in their daddy’s footsteps one day?

My wife runs REVA Global Medical. She runs our medical division. Before she got extremely busy on the medical side, she was running our projects when we’re doing our rehab. She’s got a phenomenal eye on that. My kids, we talk business all the time. They’re interested but I don’t push it on them because we talk both REVA, the virtual assistant side of my business and my real estate. They know what we have and what we own as assets. Those are the conversations that we have in front of them all day long. I don’t push them. Remember how we all grew up. Through repetition, it’s getting embedded in their minds.

It’s been an honor for me to have you on the show. We’re going to close this thing out here with our final segment. We call this The Fear Factor, Bob. You and I both know working with thousands of students over the years, probably the biggest thing that I hear from new investors or investors looking to scale that business and make it to the next level is the fear factor. Typically knowing what they should do, knowing the steps to take but not taking it because of that big old, ugly fear. Let’s start with when you started out as an investor. What were the biggest obstacles in the area of fear? How did you overcome them? How do you deal with that?

 

There’s always a fear of the unknown. You just don’t know what’s next. The fear of, “Where’s my next deal coming from?” That’s a very big fear factor with a lot of individuals that are starting out in the business, even individuals that I talked to on a very high level. “Where’s my next deal coming from?” How I overcame it, I got a mentor. That’s first and foremost. Pat Precourt was my mentor.

Getting education is number two. Getting coaching, no matter what, is number three. You always have to have some accountability partner. It could be a spouse or a friend but you always have to be accountable for goals that you set. That’s extremely important. That’s a great way to overcome any one of your fears. Someone’s got to keep pushing you into the direction you want to go into.

That would be true for when you got started and true, those same four principles. As you were going through, I was checking the boxes. I got 3 out of 4 in my mind. You have an accountability partner. You meet with them once a week. What is the rhythm there? What do they provide for you?

Accountability has a couple of different sides. Number one, it’s important if you say you’re going to do something, first and foremost, you better do it. I mean something business-wise. If you and I are business partners and my job is to take care of marketing and finance, I better be making sure that that phone keeps ringing because that’s my job. I better be raising money, getting private money lenders, hard money lenders so when we do have a deal, we better have money or I’m letting you down.

We meet every week. With my virtual assistant company, I meet every single morning with different departments, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We have Friday off because I have a podcast as well on Fridays. With my real estate company, we meet every single day on different departments and different sides of the business. It’s like the book Traction or Scaling Up. We both read both of those. Those are important books and are incredible.

Bob Lachance, I appreciate you coming on. Any parting words or one last piece of wisdom you want to impart to the audience?

It’s very important that as you rise to the ranks, stay very humble. You will have successes and failures in real estate and that’s okay. I would also anchor that back that a great way to overcome any type of failure is to start buying and holding today because failures are way easy to overcome when you have a steady income coming in. That’s what I got.

I want to thank everybody for joining the show. Subscribe, follow, like but most importantly, I always ask, if you’re thinking of somebody that this would help them, please share. Tag them on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube. We are on a mission here at FortuneBuilders to empower purposes through financial education.

Specifically, I interact the most on Instagram. @FortuneBuilders is our address there. DM me or the company. Fire away questions too. We’re going to be doing some Q&A sessions after these episodes in the future. I’m curious to see what’s on your mind, what you’re thinking and what questions that we can answer. If you want any more information on our guest Mr. Bob Lachance, you can visit FBRealEstateShow.com to get some more information on him. We will see you next episode. Take care.

Important Links:

• Bob Lachance
• Realeflow
• FortuneBuilders
• 411.com
• Andy Tanner
• The Cashflow Academy
• Pat Precourt
• FBShowBonus.com
• The Motive

About Bob Lachance

Bob Lachance has been an active business owner and real estate investor since 2004. Bob is an entrepreneur by nature and currently owns, operates and manages many different businesses around the world. Bob helped create the top Real Estate Education and Mentor/Coaching program in existence today, FortuneBuilders, INC. Bob also created one of the premiere Real Estate Virtual Assistant Staffing companies, REVA Global, LLC (REVA). Bob is an expert in the real estate investing space and has an incredible reputation for creation, implementation and execution.

Prior to getting into the business sector, Bob had a successful 8-year professional ice hockey career which allowed him the privilege of traveling and living all over the US and Europe. Bob was also a member of the 1995 National Championship Boston University Ice Hockey Team.