S3E40 – Bob Lachance – From Pro Hockey to Entrepreneur

Key Timecodes

• (00:42) – Show intro and background history
• (05:11) – His background as a hockey player
• (06:25) – His VA and real estate business models
• (07:24) – Deeper into his real estate background and strategies
• (11:11) – How to start investing in real estate and buy the first property
• (12:38) – Deeper into his VA business model
• (14:05) – Understanding his team overseas
• (14:32) – Deeper into his VA business model and strategies
• (17:02) – How his virtual assistants’ team training works
• (21:36) – The pros and cons of using the VA workforce
• (24:40) – How he scale his VA business
• (27:16) – Finding great talent around the globe
• (31:03) – What is the worst advice he ever received
• (31:37) – What is the best advice he ever received
• (32:50) – Guest contacts

Transcription

[00:00:04.540] – Intro

Hey, this is Sean Tepper, the host of Pay Back Time, an approachable and transparent podcast on financial independence. I’d like to bring on guests to hear authentic stories while giving you actionable takeaways you can use today. Let’s go. My next guest was a professional hockey player who talks about his transition to real estate investing, then on to real estate education, and then finally onto starting and growing a virtual assistant company. In this episode, we talk about the pros and cons of hiring virtual assistants, how to get them up to speed fast, and how to leverage their skills to help scale your company. Please welcome Bob LeChance.

[00:00:42.910] – Sean

Bob, welcome to the show.

[00:00:44.520] – Bob

Sean, thanks for having me. Appreciate it.

[00:00:46.330] – Sean

Good to have you here. So why don’t you kick us off and tell us about your background?

[00:00:49.900] – Bob

All right, I’ll give you a two second rundown because we’re going to be going far back here. So I started my investment career. I actually have two different businesses right now. I have a real estate investment company that focuses on flipping properties and we can get into that after and also passive income, etc. Passive investing and also a virtual assistant company. I started that most recently back in 2014. It was my first company I started. But prior to real estate investing in 2004, I played professional hockey for eight years, four years here in the US and then four years in Europe. Then towards the end of my career, I was trying to think of what was I going to do? I know a lot of your listeners are trying to think of different types of things to do and how to make extra money or looking at other careers or what have you. So I had to look at all of those avenues and I decided to jump into real estate investing back in 2004. First thing I thought I was was a rehabber, which is buying, fixing and flipping, which was my first property I did.

[00:01:51.100] – Bob

But after that, I realized I had no systems, no processes. I didn’t have the information that obviously you give all of your individuals that are interested in stocks. I didn’t have that back on the internet. It wasn’t like that. There weren’t programs around like yours. So I had to read a lot of books and network around, etc. So I joined a real estate investment association and I saw a speaker speak and I was shiny object guy back in the day. I would have jumped into anything because I really didn’t know what I wanted. It’s a common thing when you don’t know what avenue you want to go in. So I decided I was a short sell investor, which meant that your negotiated debt was up here. You’re going to negotiate debt down so you could purchase the property and resell it at a profit. So I jumped into that industry for a long time. And then I have a business partner back then in that industry, more like a mentor because I really knew nothing. I came from the hockey rink in the hockey locker room into business, which I knew is zero. And so I obviously needed mentors, coaches, just like you do in sports, right?

[00:02:52.590] – Bob

Just like you’re doing everything, just what you’re doing right now, right with ticker. Same exact thing. I got a mentor, ended up becoming business partners, helped start a couple of real estate education programs through that time. Started first one was in 2000, I think it was five or 2006, and then we started another one in 2007. And then through that time, I was also investing and also running that business my job, my main focus was to build up the coaching program because it was an education platform with coaching inside of it and training. So I had to build that up behind the scenes. But throughout the process of investing myself and also working with students, I really realized there was a huge need, and this is my other business that I have today, there was a huge need in our student base. So what they would do is they would sign up for a program to make money in real estate. But when I would have a call with them, a coaching call, if you will, and I would give them homework assignments or action items to do. And then a week, two weeks later, I realized that they didn’t have time to do it.

[00:03:51.090] – Bob

And you peel back the… They were working part time or full-time. They just didn’t have the right time to do that. And I was looking for an industry or a product or whatever it was, a service that would fit the need of helping somebody get their time back. Then 2013, I got introduced to what a virtual assistant was. Light bulb went on. Virtual assistant for anyone listening to this is… It’s more common today because what COVID happened is the remote workers and all of my workers today are the Philippines. So in 2013, I got introduced to what a virtual assistant was. I hired my first one. Light bulb went on. I said, You know what? This could be a business. So 2014, I launched my first company. I had to understand how to build a company in a different country, which is obviously had its own challenges, and then also have sales marketing over here in the United States and really put them together. So I tested that for two years. It worked, ran that company for about four years, went through a business partner breakup. Then I started my new company in 2018. Fast forward today, we’re at about a little over 1,000 virtual assistants that work with our company.

[00:04:59.970] – Bob

I’m on the real estate side, we’re at about a little over 20 people that work for us on that company as well. I know I said a lot, but hopefully we’re going to pack that.

[00:05:12.100] – Sean

I love it. We’re going to make sense of this madness here. I got to go back to hockey because we got some athletes in our audience here. Who did you play for?

[00:05:23.090] – Bob

I signed with St. Louis Blues. I was drafted by them. Signed with them. I played one game with them. It was preseason. I played one preseason game with them. Then I played in Worcester for two years, Indianapolis, Orlando. And then the countries I played at was Italy, Switzerland, and Germany.

[00:05:40.270] – Sean

Nice. Okay. I like the vigor of an athlete. And you know, I would consider myself an athlete. I got into college swimming. I did not see it through D1 level, but trust me, when I say there’s a lot of kids that are a lot faster than I was. But it’s this mentality that I like of athletes, like this full speed ahead, charge forward, let’s try something and let’s just get after it. Even though I don’t know a whole lot about it, and that sounds like where your head was at, let’s try something, let’s get it out because that sounds like what you did with real estate investing. And then with the real estate education, it all there. Once you started to create some systems and processes, you could create some structure to create that business. And then it sounds like you’re placing a lot of emphasis on the VA model. If you could tell me, based on percentage, what percentage of your time do you spend on real estate investing and what % do you spend on the VA model?

[00:06:39.100] – Bob

So right now it’s probably about 60 40 on the VA side. I have some fantastic people that work for me and with me, I should say. My virtual assistant side, I have an absolutely incredible director who handles a lot of that stuff. When you’re established for a long time, the main role, especially on the VA side, is marketing and sales to get in the funnel when you have the back end operations set up. Because when you have that back end operations set up, a lot of it is it’s the lead generation on the front end that comes in and then closing that sale that allows the ship to keep moving, if you will, on that side of the event. And I spend about 40 % of the time on real estate. I have a phenomenal business partner there where we divide and conquer the roles that we need to do.

[00:07:24.190] – Sean

Nice. I like to probably spend a little time here on real estate first and then go to VA. The reason is we’ve got a lot of people in our audience that are trying to turn the corner. They’re working for somebody, they get a full-time job, and they’re thinking about, what is the shortest path from A to B to get me out of my full-time corporate grind so I can create some passive income. So I feel like you’re probably going to see a little easier effort going the real estate route than creating a VA business, would you agree?

[00:07:54.410] – Bob

Correct. Yeah. 100 %.

[00:07:57.730] – Sean

Okay. So let’s dive into that. What do you focus on, I assume, is residential. Is that correct?

[00:08:04.250] – Bob

We focus mostly on residential. I’ve owned a 10 unit building. I also invest in the syndication, which is I invested $100,000 to get extra amount of return. So that is truly passive. So if you asked my opinion, someone’s working full-time, you could take two routes, just like you teach. Same exact things that you teach. You could take, let’s say it’s 10 % of each paycheck, don’t own account. And once you have enough money to buy a property, 20 %, 25 % down, once you have enough money for that to put down, then you could purchase a property. And you keep doing that. Think about this. Really look at this and say, all right, you buy one property a year. You and I both know, 20 years goes just like that, 20 years flies. I know the younger generation doesn’t understand that, but I’m turning 49 soon. So I look back and I’m like, you know what? If I would have just bought one property a year, think about how much property is appreciate it and they will always appreciate it. There’s two things when you rent out a property, properties often appreciate but they’re also paying down the debt.

[00:09:08.720] – Bob

You have a renter paying down the debt. So before you know it, you own all of that equity in between. So that’s the advice I would give is just it’s a long game. There’s no get rich quick in stocks. There’s no get rich quick in real estate. There’s no get rich quick in anything. So it’s a long game. And I think the best advice I got was just nothing happens overnight. And I’m listening to a book on tape. It’s by 50 Cent and Robert Green. It’s called 50th Law. And I got that today actually really good. It just hit me there. And I’m like, you know what? You’re right. Nothing happens quick. And that’s okay. We got to understand. We got to enjoy the journey, even though.

[00:09:49.240] – Sean

Sometimes the journey is painful. True, totally. Jumping back to the real estate, you mentioned the two routes. You’ve got the route of buying a property and the other route is syndication, which we’ve had some people on the show that talk about that. You had a great example there. Take $100,000, put it into it, and then you’re getting paid. Usually, I find the percentage, and maybe you agree, is about 10 % per year.

[00:10:10.700] – Bob

Yeah. And sometimes they go down, sometimes they go up a little bit. But I’m happy to tell you.

[00:10:15.500] – Sean

So let’s say it’s the route of buying property. It sounds like because you’re a systems person, you probably like to leverage a property management company to be fixing toilets and changing lights and all the good stuff.

[00:10:28.760] – Bob

Yeah, especially when you’re working, that is a headache. And I’m going to be 100 % transparent with it. What we do here is we are on the road to get to 100 single family units. That was the path. And then you got calls all the time. I’m like, all right, now we got to systemize everything. What we did, though, is last year, everything was a high the market. We dumped everything. We sold all of it, which was the best thing ever because think about this, if I get $50,000 today, how many years is it going to take you to make $50,000 on one property? That was my mindset. You got to pay taxes. I understand all that stuff, but we decided that, hey, that was the best route to do then. And now we’re looking back into multifamilies or syndications and maybe jumping back into buying single family houses at a.

[00:11:10.020] – Sean

Cheaper level. Got it. Before we jump over to the VA side, because I want to spend a bit more time there. Do you have any tips here for getting into real estate? Buying your first property.

[00:11:22.230] – Bob

Yeah, you know what I would do? It’s very simple. I would work with real estate agents on the retail side, but the most important thing, and I know I anchor back, I keep talking about what you teach is investing in stocks. It’s the same thing. Educate yourself first, because if you don’t understand what cash flow means, you don’t understand what different types of terminology is, you could get burned. So just do due diligence. I’m a fan of coaching and mentoring. Like I said, I don’t do that any longer. But my recommendation would be if you’re looking to get into some space, you got to invest in learning what that industry is all about because that’s how you’re going to make money. I think it’s very important because if you spend $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, $20,000 on a education program, these education programs are set up for us to succeed. It’s not like back in college. I don’t remember what I learned in college. I was a sociology major. I don’t know what that means. I know what it means, but my point is, to your point is, what we learned in college, there was no action steps to what you learned.

[00:12:28.110] – Bob

And typically now, when you look at business coaching programs, they teach you and they give you the roadmap. If you take the action, you’ll be able to make money. But if you don’t, of course, it’s going to be worthless.

[00:12:37.780] – Sean

Right on. All right, the VA business. Now, this is a very straightforward business model. You got a team overseas and they’re handling calls and customer support and all that good stuff. Why did you decide to get into this model?

[00:12:52.500] – Bob

When I first decided because I’ve always been, even when I played hockey, I was more of an assist guy than a goals guy. And I always like everyone succeeding, everybody winning. So when I was working with my coaching students, well, there’s two reasons. One, I need help in my own business. But working with tens of thousands of coaching students, it’s always looking for how the heck can I help them? Is there a service or product? What is it that could help them actually accomplish the goals that they set at the beginning? And when I would get on coaching calls, it’d be like, Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you do it? It was a common theme. And then finally, like I said, in 2013, LifeL ead went on because I learned what a virtual assistant was and what they did. I’m like, all right, I got to figure this out. So at that point, I said, I helped start a real estate education company. How can I marry those two industries together to create something for real estate investors?

[00:13:43.930] – Sean

Got it. Okay, so this VA company, it sounds like it’s specifically focused on supporting professionals in the real estate industry.

[00:13:51.290] – Bob

It started that way. Then it went to medical and went to marketing companies. It goes to flooring companies. Now it goes to different verticals, real estate coaching programs or other any industry that needs help virtually.

[00:14:05.880] – Sean

Got it. And with the teams that you have overseas, are they more focused on phone call support, email support, or a mix of both?

[00:14:15.490] – Bob

A mix of all of it. So it’s lead generation, it’s phone support, it’s email management, it’s calendar management on the medical side, prior authorizations, insurance verification. So a lot of phone support and and a mix of both.

[00:14:31.500] – Sean

Got you. And with that model, I assume this is a play where you’re probably doing a monthly contract with businesses. Is that right?

[00:14:40.630] – Bob

Yeah. So we keep it very simple. We don’t lock anyone up in the contracts. Other countries or other companies do. I floated that model, but here’s the way I look at it in business. And I say I’m a service provider, and if I provide a service, you’ll stay. If I don’t provide the service, I didn’t like it. So here’s what happened. There’s another company that locked me into a year. We changed emails and changed domains and never got an email renewal. Now, I was like, Well, no, you’re locked in for another year. Now, that to me is just not a good way to do business. It’s garbage. This happened last week, and I’m sitting on a business partner. We’re snap and we’re pocket players. The language is probably not the best coming up. It’s just part of how different industries do it. But for me personally, as a service provider, I would never do that. So the only we ask is, hey, if you’re looking to cancel, just let us know, just give us a two week notice so we can work with the VA to replace them, etc. So we just ask for it.

[00:15:39.990] – Bob

We don’t lock them into contracts.

[00:15:41.300] – Sean

I love that. It’s like put your money where your mouth is situation. We’re going to work our butts off for you. But if you don’t like us, you can go elsewhere. And that it’s like, oh, okay, we’re dealing with something different here.

[00:15:54.390] – Bob

That’s why we invest a lot in our customer service, too, and actually give them a great experience, et cetera. So that’s on the business side that’s really important for us to make sure that the customer service side is very good.

[00:16:05.850] – Sean

What I want to do is I want to look at this through the lens of not somebody like a listener who wants to create a VA business. I want to look at this through the lens of how can you efficiently scale your business using VA talent? That’s the direction I want to steer this. And I’m going to be somewhat selfish here because we at Ticker, we’re starting to grow, and I do a lot of the customer service which is in phone calls. I love doing Zoom calls with customers just to really learn more. But it’s a lot of emails. I try to time box about a half hour to an hour per day. And at some point, I’m going to need to hand this off to somebody that’s got… One, they got to love talking about stocks. They don’t have to be an expert on it, but they should love to talk about stocks. They should love talking to people and talk to people like… I always say you need to talk to people like you’re having a beer with them or having a cup of coffee with them. No corporate speak.

[00:17:02.020] – Bob

Absolutely.

[00:17:03.000] – Sean

How would you suggest or recommend bringing out a virtual assistant to get up to speed? And how long do you think it would take?

[00:17:10.320] – Bob

Yeah. So whether it’s a virtual assistant for my company or it could be a virtual assistant in the United States, too. All mine are in the Philippines, it could be the same thing. So what I would look at and I would chunk it down. What you’re looking at, too, is the email management and also almost like onboarding, too. You can look at different processes. So on the onboarding side, what we do in our own company is we give them a white glove treatment. It’s really the touches. It’s really staying involved with them. So for you on the email management, you’d have to put together… You could use Loom as a perfect example to record all your calls and say, Hey, listen, this is exactly what I want you to do, and this is how you do it. The best way, even in our own business here in America, we… So we do in our real estate company is we record everything via video. And then that’s a great training platform to bring on somebody new. So chunk all the stuff that we do down into probably five minute videos. And then when we have a new individual come on, whether it’s a virtual assistant, do the same thing with our VAs, when they come on, they know exactly what those tasks are.

[00:18:12.550] – Bob

Because if you give them too much stuff, if you want them to do bookkeeping and calling, they don’t match. It’s going to be a… Both of them will blow up because I don’t have those two skill sets. You may, but I don’t. So I have a certain skill set. So make sure that all of those tasks are chunked up and they’re a line in what you want. If you want somebody that’s more social, like you said, and on the phone, then what you’ll do is you’ll interview for that type of individual. But like I said, take a step back, do chunk video and chunk up those videos and put them into… You can use Google Drive, put over the Google Drive and use those as a training platform.

[00:18:52.790] – Sean

I really like your suggestion there with Loom. We use Loom and anybody out there. We use it for a lot of beta testing software. Sometimes instead of taking screenshots and using text, you can just record a short Zoom, send them the link and be like, Here’s the bug we’re facing. Yeah, done. I could see the same way with emailing. And sometimes the questions we would get you go into ticker the platform. So the Loom video could show that process, like, get email, go to this part of tool, figure out the information and then send response to customer. And like you said, do one to five minute long videos, keep them batched together. That sounds pretty logical.

[00:19:37.950] – Bob

Yeah. And I look at that, too. And then typically, you probably set up the same thing where whatever training and education that we have, you got to put it in systematic order, just like.

[00:19:46.700] – Sean

You guys did. Right. And to get up to speed, if you want to bring out a VA, what expectations do you set for training until somebody is really like, you can take your hands off the wheel and they can run on their own.

[00:20:02.780] – Bob

Yeah, and it depends on tasks and how good you’re… We put them through a month training here on the real estate side. So they have skill sets of cold calling, skill sets of hot message, skill sets of social media. They have certain skill sets. I always say it’s an 80 20 rule. We all know 80 % of the same thing. Our business, let’s say your business compared to someone else’s competitor business, it’s really 80 20. You probably do maybe 70 % to 80 % of the same thing, but 20 % is really where the magic happens. That’s how you separate yourself. You’re way better than your competition. And that’s the 20 % that’s needed on the training side. So I would say probably whatever task within that 20 %, you’re probably about two weeks to get up and running. Even if they know 80 %, you’re still going to want to teach them that extra 20 %.

[00:20:51.350] – Sean

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[00:21:59.780] – Bob

No, absolutely. Here’s the way I look at it. We could use the medical field as a perfect example. Medical field, if someone’s doing prior authorizations or insurance verifications as an example, here’s your decision. You’re going to hire a virtual assistant at either $10 to $12 an hour, or you’re going to hire an inhouse nurse for $70,000 a year. That takes up desk space, that takes up insurance, that takes up all those things that an employee costs. I don’t know how many dollars an hour that is. Probably 25, 30 dollars an hour compared to 10 or 12. So that’s really that’s what I like as a small business or a growing business, we always have to look at what we’re spending on a daily basis. No matter even if we’re making millions of dollars, we still have to look at what we’re spending on a daily basis. So for me personally, if you could do the same job, I’d much rather spend 10 to 12 dollars rather than 70 plus thousand dollars for an individual. And again, that’s just me. Some people have more comfort in somebody in an office, but I’ve been running business for a long time using VA.

[00:23:01.750] – Bob

So for me, I’m very comfortable.

[00:23:03.900] – Sean

With it. You get it. And I know some people might be worried, well, am I going to get the same quality service, the same white glove treatment to my customers if using those two options, comparing them against each other? How would you answer that?

[00:23:21.620] – Bob

So the way I answer it is you look at all these huge companies, whether it’s Verizon, AT&T, everybody uses overseas staff. They all use them. So it’s a very common place. So for me personally, when you call, if you have a question with your bank or your credit card, guess where you’re going? You’re not going to the local Bank of America here. You’re getting routed over to Philippines or wherever it is. So that’s more common place. So that’s what I would say. We are trained now since after COVID. Everybody is trained now to say, Okay, they’re working virtual. So it’s not a big deal anymore if somebody’s in the office anymore.

[00:23:59.610] – Sean

Right. And I’d say COVID has really made it a lot more, I would say, accessible to have remote people all over the world. I’ve worked for a lot of large companies, and prior to it, I did a lot of remote work. But once COVID hit, it’s like, okay, everything is via Teams or Zoom. And now this is just another Tuesday. This is what we do. You could have somebody from the Philippines, somebody from India, for example, we use a lot of our software engineering team is mostly from India. From India. They do a great job. So you can find talent from wherever. Agreed. 60 40 split on your business is 60 % spending in the VA business. Where do you go from here? I want to talk about the scalability of your business at this point. How do you scale this business?

[00:24:54.030] – Bob

On the VA side, I’ll give an example. On the virtual assistant side, scaling is just the sales side. It’s always you’re looking at all of your attrition. You’re looking at new clients coming in and how long you keep them, etc. I think scalability in any business is looking at your main product. So let’s say my main product and service in my VA side is real estate. It’s always the Warren Buffett model. You’re always looking for anything outside of whatever is bringing you in the amount of money. You see Warren Buffett off the documentary, but it’s a great documentary. He invests and he owns 51 % of this company, 51 % of this company. So it all goes back in a Berkshire Hathaway, which is pretty interesting. And you also look at the model of a grocery store. The only reason why I know this is because my buddy owns two grocery stores and he told me about how the profit margin goes. I didn’t know this. It’s actually for me, it was really important as a business owner to understand this. Because when we all go to a grocery store, typically we want ketchup, mustard, or pasta, whatever’s inside the middle of a grocery store.

[00:25:57.040] – Bob

That’s about probably about a 2 % to 3 %. If I’m off by a little, someone’s listening this, I do apologize. I’m just telling you what I heard. It’s about 2 % to 3 % profit margin. And on the exterior, it’s about 30 %. You got flowers, you got deli, you got bakery, you got everything that’s on the exterior. So if you look at that model, it’s an interior exterior business model, if you will, because that’s why when you step into the store, they don’t throw you in the middle of the box. They throw you on the exterior where they make the most amount of money. And then Stewart Leonard does a great job of actually how they actually move you in and out of the aisle. So it’s pretty interesting when you look at that as business models. That’s why I love your podcast because you talk a lot about these business models. And even if it’s not your main business, you could still get ideas to implement your own.

[00:26:46.700] – Sean

Yeah, I agree with you. That right there is a gold clip of 2-3 minutes because I know a lot of different business models. And I’m like, I always think about grocery stores as the exterior is like, that’s where the healthy food is. And then you got the junk food in the middle. Well, that’s really fascinating to know the profit margin differences between interior and exterior. That’s awesome.

[00:27:09.350] – Bob

And businesses always follow the money, right? Wherever they start it off, it’s really… It’s really it’s just how it is.

[00:27:15.570] – Sean

That’s it. To summarize here, this is really good to know for the listeners out there, and we’ll have a key take away I’ll ask for you, and then we’ll jump in with the rapid fire round. So the VA model I’ve always been aware of, and again, we have a great team from India, and I’ve worked with large companies that we also have engineering teams from India or Bangladesh, and it can keep your costs lower and you can get really good talent. And on the VA side, that’s really good to know we could potentially get some good talent from the Philippines. Now, do you have a key take away you can give to business owners out there that are at that inflection point? They’re looking to hire somebody. What would you say is the next best step to find some additional talent?

[00:28:01.850] – Bob

Yeah, what I would do is I would look at exactly what you’re looking for. So if you’re looking for individuals that communicate very well and are on the customer service side, whether it’s lead generation outbound dial in and text messaging or social media management, the Philippines is great. So like you said, the engineer type individuals are more in India. So really know exactly what you’re looking for because in the Philippines, English is one of the primary languages. A lot of people don’t know that. I didn’t know that until I first started this company, the 100 % transparent, because I’ve used individuals from different places. But you got to know exactly where you’re pulling from and understand the best talent like he said, engineering, you get a lot of your engineers from India. Very good. But on the customer service side, not as good. This is what I found. So some of the list may have found something different, but that’s what I really look at and what fits you and your business on that side of it.

[00:28:59.390] – Sean

Right on. Yeah, that’s a great tip on figure out what role you’re looking for and then look and probably network with guys like yourself and, hey, can you give me 15 minutes? Half hour, whatever lessons learned. Where would you go? You can find good talent from around the globe. Cool. All right, well, let’s dive into the rapid fire round. This is the part of the episode where you get to find out who Bob.

[00:29:23.040] – Bob

Really is. Oh, no.

[00:29:24.970] – Sean

If you can, try to answer each question in 15 seconds or less. You ready? Yes. All right. What is your favorite podcast?

[00:29:34.510] – Bob

Favorite podcast, b esides this one. Besides this one, I have one called Pucks the Properties as well from individuals coming out of some athletes and hockey players coming out of Lockerham. O bviously, besides those two, I would say Andy Fricilla has got a great one. I like listening to his podcast. Bradley Leet as well, not all.

[00:29:57.020] – Sean

Nice. Good tips. All right, next question here. Is a recent book you read and would recommend?

[00:30:02.970] – Bob

One we were talking about is 50th Law, I would say, by 50 Cent and Robert Green. But I’d say the one that I gift mostly is Compound Effect by Darren Harding.

[00:30:14.190] – Sean

Nice. 50th Law. You piqued my interest there. Both those books. But I’m going to Amazon here after the podcast.

[00:30:23.430] – Bob

It’s a good one. I didn’t know about it. It’s really good. It’s about 50 cent when he was on the street selling drugs and how that actually equated to his success and relates to business. It’s really good.

[00:30:36.150] – Sean

I love stories like that. There’s so many lessons learned. People probably don’t realize. Cool. All right, we got a movie question here. What is your favorite movie?

[00:30:45.600] – Bob

There’s two of them. Shawshank Reduction and Good Will Hunting.

[00:30:49.590] – Sean

Those are two of my favorites. See, I always say we’re going to find out who somebody really is. See, this guy likes good story, good writing, good character development. Both are great movies in my book. Nice calls. All right, we got a few business questions here. What is the worst advice you ever received?

[00:31:09.610] – Bob

You can make money in any business quick. You get anything, get rich quick. When you’re looking at late night TV, that’s all crap. That’s all junk. It takes time. So I would say that’s the worst advice I think anybody could give anybody. Think about this Bitcoin back. I never even understood it. You see all these people making money. All of a sudden, before I know it, they all lost it.

[00:31:32.570] – Sean

That’s it. Yeah. Gone. Sounds too good to be true. It usually is. Yeah. All right, flip the equation. What is the best advice you ever received?

[00:31:42.180] – Bob

The best advice along the same lines is business is a long game. You have to have vision in your business. You have to have belief. I think you’re only as good as the team that you have. You’re only as good as the team that you work with because I can’t do anything alone. You can’t do everything alone. You have to do it only as good as individuals that are beside you. And I think that’s very important because a lot of people don’t understand that.

[00:32:08.420] – Sean

Totally agree. All right. And last question here is the time machine question. If you could go back in time to give your younger self advice, what age would you visit and what would you say?

[00:32:17.860] – Bob

That’s a tough one. I would probably say when I first started working, I would say I should have started buying properties back then or investing in obviously stocks. I would have started investing a lot quicker than I did. I was always looking at, well, I’m going to start investing then. Well, I’m going to start investing at four and a half, 10 years is gone. You’re like, I wish I could go back and just start little by little. Just whether it’s 5 %, 10 % of each cheque, put it on an account. That’s what I would definitely go back and change.

[00:32:48.570] – Sean

Nice. Good advice. All right. And where can the audience reach you?

[00:32:52.280] – Bob

Well, you can check me out on Instagram or Facebook or LinkedIn @reva global. R eva global. Com. Com. You can send me an email, bob@revaglobal. Com. Those are a lot of places to.

[00:33:08.020] – Sean

Get all of me. Absolutely. And we’ll be sharing all those links on our page and syndicate that out to the social channels.

[00:33:15.480] – Bob

Cool.

[00:33:15.640] – Sean

But thanks for joining me. This was awesome. We actually haven’t had somebody on to talk about VA, that business model. I think a lot of people are here. They can start thinking about creative ways to scale their business using VA. So again, thanks for your time.

[00:33:30.930] – Bob

Appreciate it. Thank you for having me.

[00:33:32.240] – Sean

All right, we’ll see you, Bob.

[00:33:33.540] – Bob

Cool. Thanks a lot.

[00:33:36.700] – Sean

Hey, I’d like to say thank you for checking out this podcast. I know there’s a lot of other podcasts you could be listening to, so thanks for spending some time with me. Also, if you have a moment, could you please head over to Apple podcast and leave a review? The more reviews we get, the more Apple will share this podcast with the world. So thanks for doing that. And last thing, if you do hear any stocks mentioned on this podcast, please keep in mind this podcast is for entertainment purposes only. Please do not make a buy or sell decision based solely on what you hear. All right, thanks for your time. Talk to you later. See you.