From Hockey to Real Estate: Creative Solutions in Property Investing with Bob Lachance
Jul 05, 2024Season 3Episode 20
Derek Marlin
In this episode, Derek Marlin chats with Bob Lachance, an experienced real estate investor and CEO of REVA Global. Bob shares his journey from professional hockey player to successful real estate investor, offering insights into smart investment strategies, market trends, and tips for scaling your ventures.
00:00 Introduction to Raising the Flipping Bar 00:30 Meet Our Guest: Bob's Journey from Hockey to Real Estate 01:50 Bob's Real Estate Milestones and Fortune Builders Experience 05:45 Introduction to REVA Global: Virtual Assistant Services 07:50 The Benefits of Using Virtual Assistants in Real Estate 15:14 Creative Problem Solving in Real Estate Investments 20:06 Building a Successful Team 20:23 From Solopreneur to Real Estate Investor 22:13 The Importance of Outsourcing 22:53 Working on the Business vs. In the Business 23:16 The Power of Training and Quarterly Goals 24:25 Recommended Books and Resources 25:37 The Value of Masterminds and Coaching Programs 28:43 Navigating the NAR Lawsuit Settlement 30:53 Strategies for Expensive Markets 32:11 Insights on Institutional Investments 33:37 Final Thoughts and Parting Advice 35:00 Closing Remarks and Disclaimers
------------------------------ The recent NAR settlement is reshaping the landscape for real estate agents! Now that you can negotiate commissions differently, it’s more important than ever to align with a brokerage that supports your growth and adapts to industry shifts. Choose ELEVATION because we thrive on innovation and transparency. We understand the new demands of the real estate market and are ready to help you navigate these changes successfully. With ELEVATION, you’re not just surviving the changes—you’re thriving in them! --------------------------------- References:
In this episode, Derek Marlin chats with Bob Lachance, an experienced real estate investor and CEO of REVA Global. Bob shares his journey from professional hockey player to successful real estate investor, offering insights into smart investment strategies, market trends, and tips for scaling your ventures.
00:00 Introduction to Raising the Flipping Bar 00:30 Meet Our Guest: Bob's Journey from Hockey to Real Estate 01:50 Bob's Real Estate Milestones and Fortune Builders Experience 05:45 Introduction to REVA Global: Virtual Assistant Services 07:50 The Benefits of Using Virtual Assistants in Real Estate 15:14 Creative Problem Solving in Real Estate Investments 20:06 Building a Successful Team 20:23 From Solopreneur to Real Estate Investor 22:13 The Importance of Outsourcing 22:53 Working on the Business vs. In the Business 23:16 The Power of Training and Quarterly Goals 24:25 Recommended Books and Resources 25:37 The Value of Masterminds and Coaching Programs 28:43 Navigating the NAR Lawsuit Settlement 30:53 Strategies for Expensive Markets 32:11 Insights on Institutional Investments 33:37 Final Thoughts and Parting Advice 35:00 Closing Remarks and Disclaimers
------------------------------ The recent NAR settlement is reshaping the landscape for real estate agents! Now that you can negotiate commissions differently, it’s more important than ever to align with a brokerage that supports your growth and adapts to industry shifts. Choose ELEVATION because we thrive on innovation and transparency. We understand the new demands of the real estate market and are ready to help you navigate these changes successfully. With ELEVATION, you’re not just surviving the changes—you’re thriving in them! --------------------------------- References:
Welcome to raising the flipping bar, the go to podcast for aspiring and seasoned real estate investors. I'm your host, Derek Marlin, and I'm the CEO of Elevation. We're a real estate investment company based right here in Denver, Colorado. We'll dive into smart investment strategies, market insights, and essential tips for scaling your real estate ventures. Whether you're making your first investment or your hundredth investment, this podcast is your blueprint for success in the ever evolving world of real estate investing. Get ready to elevate your real estate game and begin your journey with me. Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of raising the flipping bar. I'm your host, Derek Marlin, and I'm excited to have a great guest, somebody who is an experienced real estate investor, somebody who's in a very experienced business owner and actually a company that we use from a service perspective. So Mr. Bob, a chance. Welcome to the podcast. Appreciate you. Thanks for having me. yeah, absolutely. I always start off our podcasts and I would love to hear something that, whether it's. A fun fact, something super unique. Something crazy or whatever. It doesn't have to be real estate related to kind of kick things off. So our audience gets a chance to know like, all right, who are you? And give me something crazy or fun about you. A fun fact. I played professional hockey for eight years before jumping into real estate. Everyone always asks me if I have all my teeth. So this one, the front one here is fake. So that's a, that's a quick fun fact. I love it. Okay. That also means that you were obviously very high level hockey player because you don't have all your teeth or you've got one that's fake. So that to me, not knowing much about hockey that legitimizes everything. It does. It does. and remind me what? What system were you in? Where did you play? So I got drafted in St. Louis, St. Louis Blues organization played in their minor league for two years, two more years here at us and played in Europe for four years. Oh, nice. And where in Europe were you playing? Italy, Germany, Switzerland for two years. So love it. So that's a super fun fact of being a professional hockey player. That's fantastic. I want to kind of jump into kind of how I learned about you and about your company is I was actually listening to, and this to me shows the power of podcasting is an episode that you were interviewed by Mark Delatorre with the mistake free real estate podcast. It was definitely a number of years back, but I was super impressed by your experience in investing first and then also, opening up a complimentary business, but man, you've got like 20 years experience. And the way that I always like to phrase this question is tell our audience a little bit about maybe a couple of milestones that summarizes your journey to kind of get you here to today. Yeah. as you know, the real estate's got its ups and downs. In real estate, the one takeaway I just want to give everyone is you always have to look forward, right? Even if you get knocked down a little bit, you always get up because real estate will always be there. That's one thing. So, when I first started, I started door knocking. So when I first got in, I had a list of pre foreclosure properties, door knocked, and then once I started door knocking, these are all pre foreclosure. I learned how to do short sales. And then after that, I learned how to own a business. And then I got into real estate education. These are just some milestones. And then, while I was in real estate education, I was coaching, also doing the business fast forward. I got into the virtual assistant world and then. I'm out of coaching, but now I own multiple businesses, not only in the virtual assistant world, but also in, wholesaling world, if you will, Nice. Okay. Perfect. I also kind of want to hear a little bit about your experience with fortune builders, cause that was a really big brand. It was, a TV show or the folks, up in new Haven, that were on that TV show. Tell us a little bit about your experience there. Cause I think that's unique and not a lot of people have that and things have evolved a lot since then. But tell me a little bit about that. it's pretty, pretty funny story. So when I started investing back in 2004. Those guys, Dan, Paul Conrad, who own fortune builders, obviously are good buddies. They're investing in Connecticut as well as before they moved to California and we met each other through the real estate investing association. Obviously I played pro hockey, fan played pro football. So there's an instant connection there. My business partner, at the time also was a rugby guy. So, you know, we were all in sports. It's interesting, the connection that sports has with a lot of us, individuals out there. We started, doing short sales, my business partner, Pat Precourt at the time. And I started doing short sales and then would always call me saying, Hey, I got a deal with bank of America. What do I do? So we would wholesale them properties and sell them short sale properties. We would negotiate some deals for them. And then fast forward, they started getting more and more involved in the Rio group, real estate investing association. And they created a wholesale They started traveling around the country So, uh, Pat and I at that time started doing a short sale coaching for a company down in Florida and then fast forward 2007, Dan calls us up, said, Pat, Bob, you guys want to be partners? We've never run a coaching program. Let's sit down. So we mapped it all out and we ended up partnering for a long time until. Until right around COVID time. So we were working with those guys for a long time and helped them build up the backend of it while they took care of a lot of the businesses or that other side of it, marketing sales. And we handled the fulfillment and helped grow that in the backend, which was an awesome, awesome time. Love it. Okay. Wow. That was a lot longer journey than I thought because that show had been only out for a little while. And then the fortune builders brand was really kind of large and traveling all around for a while. But I didn't know that you guys worked together for that amount of time. Was awesome. I know one of the things that, um, I got out of it was obviously I learned so much, literally, I got an MBA in business through all of that process growing from zero to, I don't know what the exact sales was, two, three hundred million dollars. I could be off by a little bit, but it started growing the company and it was an awesome journey and I learned a lot and I got to see things behind the scenes that I never got to see in a hockey locker room. That's for sure. Yeah, that's probably well said. Well said. Let's kind of turn a little bit to what is one of your main focuses today, which is Riva Global. Tell our audience a little bit about who Riva Global is. Give us the overview of the company. Then I got a couple more questions for you. Absolutely. Riva Global is a virtual assistant company. It's a staffing company. So we have everything from real estate professionals, and that falls under investors, agents, brokers, mortgage, attorneys we have underneath there, lenders, etc. So it really covers a gamut of real estate professionals. We also have a medical division as well that does, you know, works with practices and doctors, etc. On the other side, that's a whole separate industry, but obviously we're talking about real estate right now. So we service everyone, you got to look at what we do in our business. We are typically small businesses. And when you start looking at what's going on today with minimum wage, just rising and rising and rising, but I know you guys here, I live in Connecticut and minimum raise jumped to 15 and 69 cents. That's minimum wage. So for me to hire anybody here in Connecticut at minimum wage, a lot of them can't speak English. A lot of them have, dropped out of high school. You just don't get the level of individual that we need. I started in 2014, my first virtual assistant business and all of our virtual assistants are out of the Philippines. Everyone has a four year college degree, and they have experience in call centers, experience in admin work, experience in phone work. So they do everything now that, a lot of individuals and business owners, after COVID, a lot of us are more, I guess are used to outsourcing tasks in your business. And we're now more open to it since a lot of people don't want to go to work anymore, meaning in office, they want to do remote work. So now everyone's like, all right, we not only have to look here in the U S let's start looking around the world. Yeah, totally. Well, tell me a little bit about how the vision has changed maybe from your early vision of what the company was and you guys been doing this a little over 10 years, I believe kind of where it stands today because you guys have made significant changes and growth. Yeah. You know what? One of the things I realized is every one of us, every small business is either looking to save money or make money. Right? So you look at no matter what, because like I said, costs seem to be rising and rising and rising. So we have to look at what could we do in our businesses to cut back costs. And one of them is obviously working on staffing and working with a virtual assistant. You're either, I mean, you know that in Denver or in Colorado, you guys, just the cost of employment is very high. So if you're going to pay somebody 67, 80 grand, you could pay a virtual assistant, You know, 15, 20, 000 a year. So you save and a lot of those tasks are the same. So for instance, I don't know about you, but if you're going to be, you're going to be working on the phone, it's very difficult to get somebody for me to pull off, not pull off the street, but recruit for it. And really stick long term if somebody is going to be really calling on the phone all day long. It's just a perfect task for a virtual assistant. Also admin work. We have. Like I said, we have property managers, we have investors, we have agents and a lot of the lead generation on the front end, it takes time, but it also, the one thing I've realized is that it burns you out if you're the one doing it. So it's a great task to outsource. Yeah. And the thing that I love about your guys company, and we're always big proponents of we're a current client and we have been now for about a year. So we can kind of put our money where our mouth is, is that you looked at essentially doing it yourself. You say, Oh, I can go find a VA, whether it's the Philippines or there's some new kind of trends in our market where folks are doing stuff in South America. But essentially you have another employee who has no idea about real estate and you're saving a cup saving air quotes a couple bucks an hour. What I really love about what you guys do at Riva is you have a customer success manager who oversees your VA, and then you guys give a ton of scripts and a ton of training before that. So either a person coming in. Worst case scenario cold already has a lot of real estate experience or the woman who started as originally my executive assistant. And we've since promoted her to our overall sales assistant. Not only does she have that four year degree and you guys pay, a really healthy livable wage equivalency over there, but she had worked for another investor for five years before that. So she's bringing ideas to me. So to me again, I'm, I know I'm preaching the choir here, but I don't know why people would try to reinvent the wheel on their own to save like three bucks an hour, which is not even one Starbucks here versus having a person who's like super dialed. Like, again, I, it just blows my mind, but we've been so happy. And I'm sure Some of your other clients, maybe we lean in on this question to maybe the investors, what are some of the benefits that the investors, whether it's leaning in towards wholesaling or cold calling that your folks are doing to give people a leg up on the competition? Yeah, you know, it's funny. One of the things that we do, and I just did this presentation, I'm part of a number of masterminds. I know, you know, one of them that I'm part of, that I think they will get into in a little while, but I just did a presentation on, creating flow charts and models, which I think is really important. So for us investors, a lot of times when we're talking about One of the things that I found and what I had a tough time doing, back when I first started is knowing that I needed help and not understanding what tasks to outsource, right? We all know if we're a solopreneur, we know, all right, we are going to be burned out if we don't help. Outsource a lot of stuff. So what we did is we put together a bunch of flow charts to show, potential clients and how they best can use virtual assistants and you break it down. Look at all of our businesses. You start with branding, right? We all need branding in our business. Right this podcast is a perfect example of branding. When we're off of it, you chop up all the videos and you send them out to all the social media sites. That's an example of branding. So we have Pucks to Properties is our, podcast that we do on the real estate side. It's pretty cool. So, and, but we do the same thing that you do. Once we're done, then we send it to our virtual assistant. They chop it up and they do all the work behind the scenes. So that's a perfect example of branding. And we could do, you know, any investor could maybe walk through one of their rehab properties and they could do videos. Once they're done the video, send it over the virtual assistant and they could brand for them. Because that is another job in and of itself. You're either going to hire an expensive marketing individual or you could hire a virtual assistant that could do very equivalent things to what that looks like, right? So that's, again, that's just an example. The next side of it could be admin work like you're talking about, executive assistant. And then once they go through there, you go through a marketing side of it. And marketing, what I look at is like lead generation. If you're doing calling, you're doing texting, you're responding direct mail, you're responding to PPC, PPL, whatever that looks like to actually gauge the seller motivation to where then it moves over to your sales team. So that'd be just kind of some examples on the front end. Well, one of the cool things that we found out that I just didn't know, and I probably should have researched a little bit more, but culturally folks in the Philippines, and this is just at least what we've found is our super task oriented and super, well, that fulfills at least the folks that we've worked with. We learned along the way to be really organized upfront and, and again, this is kind of that flip tip or pro tip for the folks listening and watching is. To your point, have the flow charts, have organized systems, give somebody the most robust job description that you can, because they will run with it and they will do so, so much. But early on, we found out that, our assistant, Lay, who's just a rock star, didn't want to make a mistake. And for us, man, especially being investors, I'm like, our mantra is fail forward, go a hundred miles an hour, do the best we can. We know we're going to mess up and that's okay. But having those systems and those checklists, and then once we gave her those guidelines, I mean, she would then come back and say, Oh, I know what you wanted me to do. I did this and I also researched these nine things. And what about that? And again, there were times where I, every once in a while with some of our local agents, I was like, Hey, by the way, one of our teammates in the Philippines just did this and she did it at four in the morning and did it on the same day. So like, there's a little pressure that sometimes get puts a on our folks here locally. So that was just a cool, like anecdote that we just got as a benefit. I'm sure your staff sees that, but again, just wanted to give a shout out and more, for our audience to show, like give people a systemized checklist and people will crush it. Yeah. And I want to add to that, especially on upfront, just know, have an idea of what you want to do, because that's one of the things that I've seen a couple of our clients have had challenges up front. They came to us and said, I know I need help, but I just don't know what to do. And our team can help you. We could walk through, we have, strategy sessions as well. We can walk you through that process. And we do have some, like I said, pre done process maps that you can look at as well, and we can help build those, you know, if you're having a little difficulty on the front end of knowing what you need to outsource. So we're going to take a quick break and tell you about the next elevation Academy. If you're looking to dive deep into real estate investing, this is definitely the event for you. Our Academy features over a hundred step process to help you navigate every single thing from market analysis all the way down to every aspect of project management. So this is tailored for both beginners and seasoned investors. And our one day intensive training will equip you with the strategies and insights needed to elevate your real estate investing game. Spots are definitely limited. So click on the link below in the show notes to sign up and transform your approach to real estate investment. Okay. Let's get back to the episode. Cool. I want to transition a little bit and learn cause you are both a very active investor, which is what I love because a lot of times, people will do stuff and it worked nine years ago in a different market. You're actively investing today. So, maybe before we get into some of the nuts and the bolts and nitty gritty from the investment side, maybe give our audience one of the craziest stories or one of those just Insane things that happened from an investment standpoint, because I always ask everybody, because sometimes people are like, man, this just happened. And I'm the only one it's happened to. And I think unfortunately, or fortunate for us is if we can share these crazy stories, people can listen to say, well, at least it's not that bad. So you got a crazy one for us or something we can maybe share with our audience. Well, I, yeah, I have a good one. Actually, that's important, especially if you're working on multiple properties at once. So our real estate investment company, we had, I think we closed about 185 transactions last year, and we're looking to do that or more this year, but one of the deals, which is very important because if you have a bunch of properties that are sitting on your plate, every seller's in a different situation. What I mean by that, we had a three family property in Hartford, This is Connecticut and they wanted to get rid of it. They lived in one of the units. They were sick of tenants, et cetera, et cetera. And then they wanted to move to Massachusetts, Western mass. Well, we happen to have a property in Springfield. So our acquisition guy was like, let's see if we could put this creative deal together. So we ended up selling this property and the same day closing on the property in Springfield. So it was a very big spread. You put those two together. It was a very, very big spread so that the outcome was, we always train our acquisition guys to always think out of the box and he's like, all right, I have a couple of commissions that are tied to both these properties. If I could put them both together and we could, you know, sell two properties in one day, that's a huge benefit for that seller. Huge benefit for obviously the buyer that's coming in and obviously us. Yeah. that's cool because one of our company missions at Elevation is to be creative problem solvers. And I really try to drill that down to our team all the time because people can usually for the most part, compete on price. They can kind of compete on convenience, but you're right. If you're solving multiple problems and you're working as we call it upstream or downstream from these sellers problems, I think you're going to win more often than hopefully your competition. Yeah, it's just, it's like you said, thinking out of the box, it's, we're pretty lucky here too, because we hire athletes, military, etc. And we always have meetings every single day to brainstorm about the stuff that we're talking about right now. I started this business 2004, my business partner, 2018 on the real estate side. So, and all of our clients are part of mastermind. So we see all of this creative stuff to where if you just hire someone, they don't have the same experience that we all do. So we get to give that experience to them as well. Along those lines, there's definitely a lot of people in our audience that are similar to you in that either they are running multiple businesses or they are thinking about opening up different divisions. Like how do you balance your time between your real estate investment company and what you're doing with Riva global, which is a big business as a standalone. How do you balance all that? Yeah. So at the beginning, every business, you're going to be spending a lot of hours, right? There's no question about it. So how I do it today, let's fast forward. I've been, in the virtual assistant business for 10 years and then real estate business, 20 years. I've established my real estate business. Pretty good. Now I have a business partner that is incredible. That takes care of, some of the things that I don't. So we divide and conquer on what we do there. So I'll just give you a little bit of my schedule. On the virtual assistant side, I ticker a lot of what I do in the morning. From 9 a. m. to probably about 1130, I do all my meetings, my, my virtual system meetings, then I'll have periodic, obviously podcasts like this, right? That are certain times of the day. And then the rest of the time I spend either, talking to clients on the virtual assistant side, and also working with my team here in the real estate side, because we do virtual On our real estate side. We don't go see appointments and I don't go see any of those. I own the business now. So we have a fantastic team that we built that handles a lot of those things. Whereas now I'm in the owner's box. I love hearing that because I'm a sports guy at heart. So we have kind of this fun, I'm going to call it a quasi parallel where you actually were a player. So you're on the cooler side of the coin. I worked in professional sports and worked on the business side in the NFL for the Broncos for six years. What I loved, and I actually had a podcast that I recorded earlier, and I love the sports analogy of, yeah, you're playing, And then maybe you're coaching and then maybe you're the GM, but I love your comment. You just made up the owner's box because I remember Mr. Bolin, the owner of the Broncos, at that time they've since obviously sold to the Walton family, but he would sit up in his, either his beautiful 50 yard line luxury suite, during games or, but the cool thing was, is even over practice, but he oversaw everything at the beautiful training facility in South Denver. And he would just sit up there kind of with his arms crossed. But he saw everything that's going on and he really just helped, empower his GM or his coaches or whatever else. Maybe talk a little bit about, it sounds like you've got a great team and a great staff. Where was that tip? Do you have like a certain tipping point or a certain revenue or something that helps you say like, Hey, I either need to, or I can, I want to add this person to the team. Cause you're right. You can't do everything all the time. There's not enough hours in the day. You have to be profitable first and foremost. And I think so if I have to start over again, I mean, I'll just tell you my story real quick is I was a solopreneur right before I started door knocking. I got lucky that literally I read a book on how to, I thought I was a flipper at this time. So it was back in 2004, my first deal. I drove by a house and made an offer. They accepted it. Because I read a course like that big, but it's all about real estate, but all about nothing. But I I got in the business, a different world back then. So call out an agent house and it's listed for 185 grand. I offered 135. They accepted it. I'm like, Oh, what do I do now? I didn't have any contractors. I didn't have financing. I didn't know what to do. But put it all together. I ended up making 32 grand, but I also realized that I had zero systems, zero process, but I was working by myself. Well, what I did was I was working by myself, but I did add contractors. I didn't know this at the time, but it started with me and then I added contractors and I'm like, all right, I really don't know this game. So I joined my local real estate investment association. And then that's when I got into short sales. I introduced myself to another individual that, was the best short sale guy in Connecticut, which is Pat Precourt. Went up to him, said, Hey, I know nothing about short sales, but I want to join a team, shook his hand. We ended up being partners for 10 years, but I door knocked right after that because he said, Hey, I need a door knocker. I don't know what door knocking is, but I'll do it. I was so brand new. I played hockey for eight years and I was in a hockey locker room where you don't learn anything. I was not a business guy at all. I had no idea, right? But I knew how to work. So that's how I got started. But to answer your question is when I door knocked. I had some success there and I said, all right, how do I remove myself? Cause I already did it. So then I hired another door knocker all on commission. And then I started negotiating with banks on the short sale side because all short sales. And then from there I moved into one of the owner's box because I became business partners. Now I, I brought someone in to negotiate short sales for me. So that's the thing. So to answer your question is once you have success, you can outsource it. And sometimes it's not a dollar amount. Sometimes it's, you could hire a 1099 who's on full commission. There's nothing wrong with that. But nowadays, if I fast forward today, I would obviously own a virtual assistant company, but what I would do is I would first look at marketing because none of us have a business unless you have leads. So look at all the marketing channels that are available today, whether it's PPC, paper lead, PPL, texting, calling, direct mail. Look at what that looks like and then learn it and then outsource it. So if it's through an in house person or a virtual assistant, Yeah. And kind of along those lines, can you maybe give the audience of one thing that you do where you work on the business versus in the business? And that obviously comes from the Michael Gerber book e myth, but yeah, those big picture things that really help you, that are, important but not urgent versus Hey, it's day to day. I got to return emails. I got some phone calls to make. Maybe I gotta, meet with my sales staff. What are you doing? Maybe is your number one thing on the business to help with success. mostly it's training right now. So you're training your sales guys. We have acquisition team, dispo team. We have obviously virtual assistants that work with us, but mostly it's on the training side because the better they get. The better office for you. We're always looking to three months. So we do everything quarterly. So we have quarterly bonuses, quarterly revenue, quarterly goals, et cetera. So we break everything up in a quarter. Next week. We have a consultant that's coming in, for this quarter or for last quarter, just see what we're doing to keep moving forward. So I would say training and also having, many of us are, Small businesses, let's call it what it is, but there's individuals like yourself or myself that we could, you know, have come in and just sit around, maybe have a beer or whatever, a coffee, and just talk about business and see where they're at and where you're at and set goals. I think that's in a very inexpensive way. If someone doesn't have the budget to bring in a consultant, just talk to investors in general that are more successful than you and see what they're doing. So I think that is one of the things that I would do. I would do differently or not differently that I would continue to do if you just started today. Yeah. And is there a certain either book that you recommend for folks in the business or a certain podcast or some content that people can use as a good takeaway where you're like, you know what, if you consume this, this will really help get you further along. Yeah, besides your podcast. I 100 percent for me, the book that I absolutely loved is obviously Rich Dad Poor Dad. I just gave it to my 20 year old son, but I would say Compound Effect. By Darren Hardy. It just shows how the little things you do every single day starts compounding on each other because in real estate and the older we get, it gets clear and clear and clear real estate is not a get rich, get rich quick business. You have to look at it and say, you will take your lumps, but in the end of the year, you're going to get, you're going to keep moving forward. You're going to keep moving forward. Cause I could promise everybody what they're starting today in real estate is going to be way different 20 years down the line. I look at what I did. I thought I was a rehabber. Then I was a short sale guy. Then I was a coach. I owned a coaching program. Now I'm in, you know, virtual assistants. Now I'm wholesaling doing all this kind of stuff. So it just changes. Throughout the process, but to have that vision and that focus longterm. and what I like about that is you're right, things change your goals and your visions change. And even though I've got it a little kind of lower in my notes, but I think this is honestly the perfect time to bring it up is, we've talked in the past about different masterminds and different support groups. Is there something that you, maybe just your overall endorsement of masterminds, some of the stuff that you're a part of, because you can do the training, you can do the reading, you can then do the work, but if you don't have a community to lean into, and ideally one that's maybe a little ahead of you. I think it's great to give back, but maybe just talk about your experience with mastermind and some of the things you've gotten out of it, or maybe some of the stuff you're a part of. Yeah. I'll add to that too. I mean, I also think if you're brand new, you should join a coaching program or a education program, something along those lines that that's first and foremost, I'm out of coaching now, I'm just saying it will catapult you to where you need to go, but you have to implement what you learn that's first and foremost. So let's fast forward to now. I think. Once you hit a certain level, you should 100 percent be part of every community can, and you should be joining masterminds because the beauty of masterminds is you'll get people from every different state in the country and every different level and different industries, some self storage, some apartments, some single family, and you get to hear different people's stories. I remember back 2005. There's a guy by the name, I think it was Michael Gerber. he was a sales and marketing guy and he would have a CD that would come out. I think we were paying a hundred bucks a month. Every time that CD came out, it was the best, I think 30 minutes to an hour, but you know, it's just like a podcast today, but I was buying that and it would be stories of other people's businesses. My point being is if you get access to all of these individuals and you know their, mistakes that they made, the wins that they made, how they overcame, you know, adversity, you learn from all of this. And if stuff changes in different states, you know how to deal with it in your state. I love it. I definitely think that's something that our audience has to take away. I love it early on. You should get some education. And it's funny because that's where I got experience are exposed to fortune builders is when I first started. I originally was a sports marketing guy. Then I was in finance. My whole family is I'm originally East Coast guy myself. And we were all wall street people. And my family was, and I did finance for a little bit, but I'm like, how the hell do I figure out real estate? And so I did, I paid for it, took every single course that I could take. And I always got up to the couple hundred dollar range. I never took the leap at that point for the super premium packages. Looking back, had I done that, I probably honestly would have been further faster. So I thought I was figuring it all out. But whatever people's comfort level is, get some sort of education, get some training, find people have done it and can help implement the system. And then you hit the nail on the head. You have to do it and you have to do it consistently. And it's going to take twice as long as you think, but that's the only way to make this business work no matter where you're at. In my opinion. Yeah. And like I said, it's every business is the same thing, right? It's whether it's real estate or another business, everything's got to be done consistently. And that's a good point. And I see that to be a biggest challenge with a lot of individuals. They say, well, especially the joint coaching programs. This doesn't work, Derek. This doesn't work, Bob. But I only sent out one marketing campaign the last two months. I mean, you gotta do things every single day to move forward. I think that's super important. Well, and then you're going to have obstacles in your way too, that you can't see coming. And so something I want to kind of ask you about is this NAR lawsuit settlement. I like it because you've got business experience, you've got real estate experience, you've got brokerage experience. I know we have another kind of parallel from, licensing standpoint with DXP. Tell me a little bit about what you're seeing. And I love, you can see stuff from a 30 foot perspective with all your, Clients across the country. It does this lawsuit. Have you freaked out? What are your clients saying? Just give me an overview of where you kind of think we're at. And then I'll ask you where you think we might go. Here's what I think. I don't know, but here's what I think, and I said this when it first started. I think that the mortgage companies, just like VA just came out with something, they're going to pad in the buyer's commission. This is just my opinion because, I'll tell you one thing, if you're dealing with an FHA buyer that's not sophisticated. They're not going to be driving around, going to Zillow, knocking on doors, calling the seller, say, Hey, could I see your house? It's not going to happen. Right. So it's going to be the, and there's going to be levels that buyer has to be protected. Could you imagine that an appraiser, if they got a hold of someone who's not educated? It's just would be in mortgage, the mortgage, industry would handle all that. It just doesn't make sense because I'll tell you what I'm looking at a property right now. I don't want to call to get show instructions. I don't want to deal with the paperwork. I don't want to deal with the contracts. Like, and we've been in business for 20 years. So you just, I think it's going to work itself out to be 100 percent honest with us. So I'm not worried about it. We've been through a lot of ups and downs from COVID back to the financial crisis going backwards and. You always figure out a way around it. It always works itself out because that gnar, uh, that didn't make any sense. It still doesn't make any sense to me. no, I agree. I think as they say, sometimes you can't fight city hall. And so you're just going to sit on the sidelines. And what we're seeing is I agree with everything you just said, but also that it's an opportunity. And it's going to further clear out the market from, crappy agents, crappy investors, not everybody, and some crappy lenders. And then if you can just survive, I think truly heading into 2025, people can thrive. Yeah. So I think that's obviously super important. Maybe a little bit of, of context would be great too, from your clients that you are helping. And then really you guys are in this as well, being a more expensive market, but Denver and Colorado in general is fairly expensive. You think about the Austins of the world, the Seattles, California, a lot of the Northeast where you're at, are there certain things that folks that you're, helping maybe from Reva side that are doing that are helping them succeed in more expensive markets when it comes to the investing side of things. Yeah, you know, in a lot of things, it's direct to seller marketing. I know there's a lot of different like rules and regulations in place for cold calling text messaging. It's still going direct, finding them online, creating, PPL, pay per lead, et cetera. It's still the same stuff that we've been doing for a while in our market. In Connecticut, it's a higher market too, in different areas, but it's going direct to sell and having multiple channels. To get to those sellers, because if they see us, whether it's branding here online or whether it's going direct to seller, they're seeing you more and more. So I think that's still been working because we're in how many different markets right now? We're in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Florida, Georgia. Where else are we in? I think A couple more markets. We got out of a couple of them. I think, that, ever since hedge funds stopped buying. So we're in some of those hedge funds area to sell them, but they pause in the buying when they come back, we'll jump back and more in those markets as well. Yeah. And I think that it is a parallel to our little bit as well. And that's another great thing that I wanted to bring up and be sense of your time. But yeah, working with institutions, we're very blessed to have that experience. You've done a lot with them. Is there something that you're seeing on the horizon? We did a lot of acquisitions, obviously in 2021 and 2022, they've paused we're doing, we're calling it strategic dispositions, meaning they're not selling the farm. They're just looking at their low performing assets or they're paying in the S runners or whatever. We're doing some, what are you seeing from the institutional side of things? Cause you've got such great exposure in different markets. Yeah. You know, and I'm seeing the same thing. We have a podcast or a mastermind. We're just at, I was just at two of them. And my business partner came back from one of them. That's exactly what's happening with them. And that's the word on the street is that they are selling the lower assets and non producing assets because they went on a buying spree and they got probably the bottom 5 percent that is bad. They're getting rid of, and, dumping those in the market. So we're seeing the same exact thing you're seeing. And are they giving you any indication or maybe even from the mastermind feedback that you get that whether it's a certain interest rate or a certain market environment where they say, Hey, to your point, I don't think they're ever going to buy like the heyday. But where they might ramp up buying, are they still going to be a net seller? Are you hearing anything along those lines? I'm here and I always hear the same thing soon. We're going to start buying soon. It depends on market. Like, I think they're still buying a little bit in the sunbelt. But up here, they never really jumped into Connecticut, but I know that Ohio, things like that, but in Connecticut, we never had to deal with that. It's only the virtual investing where we found them. Okay. Interesting. Cool. Well, I'm going to give you a second to think of, maybe something that you'd like to leave the audience with. And I'll do a couple of housekeeping notes on the way out. But we always say to everybody, obviously like subscribe, but definitely interact with us. We've got a really exciting, very high level guest on the episode today, which we're super excited about. So just connect with us, whether it's about Colorado real estate, Denver real estate, whatever. Just find a way to get involved with us. But, Bob, I really want to thank you for your time, but I'd love to see if there's anything else that maybe we haven't covered or just some parting thoughts you want to leave our audience with. Yeah, I would say this, a little bit what we talked about before. If you're newer to real estate, I would highly recommend, building your community and working with mentors, working with coaching programs, things like that to get you to the next level and help build a foundation for you because we all need a foundation in our business. Right? And then if you're more seasoned, I would say, Jump into masterminds, listen to podcasts every single day, listen to people's stories, listen to their failures. So then you know where to go and how to help when you actually do get knocked down. That's okay. And I would continue to, read books, books on tape. One of them would be compound effect. It was very instrumental for myself. thank you so much. And just in general, thanks for starting up Riva Global. We've had great success with it. We're going to be adding new staff and then we'll definitely put in the show notes for our audience. Get you guys a great promo. I definitely can't recommend it enough. So Bob, thank you so much. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it. We'll catch you on the flip side. Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of raising the flipping bar. If you found value in our insights and stories, let's keep the conversation going, connect with me on social media, and be sure to share this episode with friends or colleagues who might benefit your feedback and reviews, help us grow and reach more listeners like you. So please, if you enjoyed this episode, leave us a review. Thanks again to the elevation Academy for sponsoring today's show. If you're interested in learning more, click the link in the show notes below. And remember every property. Tells a story. Every deal brings a lesson. Keep reaching for those goals and we'll catch you on the flip side. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for listening and watching raising a flipping bar. Just a basic overall disclaimer is that a, this is not legal advice. B, this is not tax advice. See, this is not financial advice. I hope you get the gist, but I'm obviously not a lawyer, not a CPA. Hell I'm not even a real estate agent actually, but in general, we hope you get a ton of value out of this, but there is a bit of a disclaimer. Please consult a professional if you have any questions whatsoever. Thanks for tuning in.
