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*****Thank you so much for listening to the Making Money in Multifamily Real Estate Show! This show covers everything to do with Multifamily Real Estate Investing to help you, the listener, become an expert in your real estate ventures. The host, Dave Morgia, brings on guests who are already experts in their respective fields to discuss what principles and practices they follow that have helped them achieve their success so far.
Bob's Background:
In this episode we cover:
Connect with Bob:
Connect with Dave:
Other ways to listen/watch:
Follow or Subscribe:
If you enjoyed this episode or like the show, please subscribe and leave a review! It is a huge help for just a little effort
*****Thank you so much for listening to the Making Money in Multifamily Real Estate Show! This show covers everything to do with Multifamily Real Estate Investing to help you, the listener, become an expert in your real estate ventures. The host, Dave Morgia, brings on guests who are already experts in their respective fields to discuss what principles and practices they follow that have helped them achieve their success so far.
Welcome to the Making Money in Multifamily Show, where we discuss everything to do with multifamily real estate investing. We believe it's the best way to gain financial freedom and build lasting wealth. This is where you'll find it the best information and practices to help you succeed in your real estate business, whether you're already experienced or just starting out. Here's your host, Dave Morgia.
Dave:Hello, listener and welcome to the show. I'm your host, Dave Morgia. And with me today is Bob Bob, welcome to the show.
Bob:Hey, thanks for that.
Dave:Yeah, it's going to be a great one today, Bob. I got a good feeling. And before we get to dive in, I just want to give a little background on you. So for the listener, Bob is an expert in building businesses through automating and outsourcing responsibilities. Pretty much all of that goes through VA work, virtual assistance. And that is because he is the founder of Riva global, which helps train and pair real estate virtual assistants to their investors. So pretty much. Training up VAs, marrying them to investors who need the help to basically open up their calendars and work on the things that are going to make them kind of those higher per dollar hour tasks. And I just want to add this at the end. We were talking about a little bit before we jumped on Bob, but he is a pro hockey player background in that 1995, BU national champ with the Boston university played for the blues. Just had to throw that in there. I'm kind of geeking out a little bit, so excited to have a pro hockey player on the podcast. Finally, uh, Bobby, I, you just want to kind of take your.
Bob:Yeah, appreciate it. No, it's um, so along road, obviously from this time, uh, from 19 95 96 to now, so that makes it, you can tell how old I am right now, but, um, you know what, uh, it's pretty much a ride to get to, you know, where I'm at right now. I started, I played professional for eight years, four years here in the U S four years in Europe. And then, um, at the end tour, when I was getting towards the end, uh, when I was in Europe, You know, many individuals when you're at a crossroads, you're trying to figure out what industry to jump into. Chose real estate. And the main reason is you might get a laugh at this because I never finished college. I had two classes before I got my degree and, uh, I was offered a contract. And, uh, so you know, when you're a young kid, you don't really, you know, you don't, um, value education, if you will, when you're. Now, I mean, I think it's, you know, everybody should be going to school getting educated, but back in the day, it didn't my thought process as well after that was, you could always go back to school. So, you know, you fast forward to today. Guess what? I never did. Never
Dave:finished two classes
Bob:away. Two semesters away, never finished. So, uh, anyway, I jumped into real estate because there's no barrier of entry, right. She didn't need a degree at any and anything. Um, so I jumped into real estate in 2004. Um, I got into it. I'm thinking I was a rehabber. So the first deal I did was a rehab project and up doing pretty well, um, within two months made about $32,000, but I also realized, um, I didn't have enough another project. So I looked at myself in the mirror and I'm like, I do not have a business. I don't really know what owning a business means. You know, in, in my mind I just got lucky. Right. So, um, I joined a local real estate investment association. Um, and I bought a course on, uh, how to flip properties, you doing short sales. And so I got hooked on that. Did short sales for, I don't know how many years probably did over seven, eight years. Short-sale transactions. And that side of it also rehabs along the way, um, helped start a couple of real estate education programs, which were pretty sizable in the United States. One of them is still around today. And then, uh, 2014, I launched my first virtual assistant company. So, um, and nowadays we have over 500 virtual assistants, not only on the real estate professional side, but also on the medical side, my wife runs a. We have a global medical, which, um, services, uh, you know, Dennis's, uh, hospitals, um, and fertility practices, et cetera. So, um, we, we do a lot on both sides and real estate in that. And I also have a real estate investment company. So kind of, you know, do my doing a lot of stuff on the entrepreneur side. No,
Dave:that's amazing yet. Uh, what I read it was for four businesses and then the consulting on a bunch of, uh, of mentorship programs. So it's incredible to see you juggling so many things. And I mean, obviously it kind of goes back to the theme of today. I'm sure it has to do with how you're able to outsource your own time and, and the tests that you just don't have the bandwidth to do. Um, I want to dig at first though, is you started in real estate and then. You've gotten into a couple of different avenues of, it sounds like you're doing, you have kind of more established real estate firm now, but was it somewhere along the line, just a realization to you that you're better at working on. The business and not necessarily what the business is. Um, was that kind of a light bulb to you that made you want to pursue this, uh, VA uh,
Bob:venture? Huh? How did that work out for you? Yeah. And that's a great question. And I've always been a Vose, had a server mentality, right? You always give you give first, before you get anything in return. Even in hockey, I was more of an assist guy than a, than a goal score. I didn't care. Like, yeah, you could get three bowls and I'd be like, Hey, fantastic. That means we won. Cared at all. If, if anyone even knew my name never cared, same thing in business. So, um, when, you know, we helped start the, the real estate education program. We were running that we are working with students and one of the biggest pain points for them, um, was obviously there. They didn't have enough time, you know, a lot of clientele of yours, right? You, you look at them and they're working a job, or they're a profession here and you're raising money so they can invest in something passive. Right. As an example, same thing. Same clients would be coming in wanting to get educated by us. We were teaching them real estate, investing in all different kinds of stuff. So, um, in my mind the whole time, I said, there's gotta be some sort of service out there to help them actually fulfill the tasks while not having to quit their job. So, you know, it started in, um, we started this company in 2007 and then fast forward, 2013, I got introduced to what a virtual assistant is. And I never, you know, true transparency, never knew what a virtual assistant was, but right. When I got introduced the light bulb went on, I'm like, all right. So the education company, you know, um, we help set up, help create the whole training behind it. And I'm like, well, why don't we marry the two industries together? So 2014 launched my first company, um, with a, it was kind of like a beta to see if it actually worked and people there was a need for it. Um, and loneliness. There was a very good need for it. And now, um, you know, fast forward, however longer after that, what is it? Uh, seven years later. Yeah. Uh, here we are.
Dave:Yeah. And it's interesting. I love the businesses built out of necessity and you were in the business wanting something, needing something. So you decided to build it. I think right there there's little to no risk. Um, as far as market mangoes, because there's tons of investors, active investors, just like you, that wanted that type of skill set or business structure to be able to scale further. So. There. I mean, I'm sure there was some moments where you were wondering whether it was going to take off, but, you know, having that need that necessity where you just build that out and then able to share that with others, it kind kinda makes it a more interesting adventure.
Bob:Yeah, and they trust me, there's a lot of pain, right? You need to set aside, you need to set aside a chunk of, of money, right. To set it, start any company. So I just start up, you know, I think about the, my company's out of the Philippines right here. I live here in Connecticut, in the United States. Out of the Philippines, we had to create, um, a recruiting team. We had to create a training team, had to create a placements, team operations, all that stuff, HR accounting. So they had to build it up from scratch. So to actually understand how to run a company in a, in a different country was a very new, you know, it was a learning curve for myself too. So, um, but I think business. That's why business is so fun, right? If you look at any type of business, you know, a lot of them work the same, but different components, right? If you pull yourself out of it, and that's why, you know, the reason why I started this company as well, I mean, you nailed it is because if there's a need and how do you pull yourself? If you're, if you're an entrepreneur, how do you pull yourself out of the day-to-day and, and put people into those roles? So you could continue to build your company, right? It's the same thing for any type of.
Dave:So let's switch gears here. I love the background. I think having that kind of switch come on and realizing that you have needs and to step back and build, instead of just move forward is, is key. But let's go over those needs for a minute. What were you looking to get out of it? What do you provide now? How does it all kind of work?
Bob:Yep. So if you look at let's, let's look at, um, two sides of our business, right? You got real estate and you have the medical side, right? The medical side. You have to look at what's going on nowadays. It's very tough to hire a lot of people. Seem to not want to work. I don't know what it is, but they seem not to want to work. You have minimum wage going up here in the United States, right? So every, you know, every state's a little different, but every state it is climbing up. So, um, our wages in the Philippines stay the same. We charge about anywhere from. $10 an hour to, it changes a little bit different on the med side. Right. But if you look at the med side, you have, um, you know, doctor's offices that they're having a tough time finding people. So we do, you know, uh, prior authorizations, um, uh, taking calls, triage a lot of stuff that the doctors know offices need that they can't get help for. Right. Insurance verification, just individuals on the phone call. So that's a little bit on the med side, on the real estate side, you know, I look at my business and the reason why we started this, um, real estate investing, whatever type of niche that you're in, there are tasks that you need to get off your plate for you to continue to build your business as an example, right? If you have, um, a rehab company or a wholesale company, which you, you know, what you need lead gen. I can't be sitting there every single day, cold calling potential sellers, because I need to raise money to find more money from. Maybe my syndications or maybe my rehabs, uh, that I want to keep building. So there's a lot of moving parts in the real estate industry, right? Whether it's, um, whether it's marketing, whether it's acquisition, whether it's making offers, whether it's following up with, with leads, because in any industry, uh, 70% of your, your deals that actually get closed doesn't, doesn't matter if it's real estate it's 70% of them are from follow-up. And if you're a one man show, you are losing so much. So much money. So just to, I don't know if I answered your question. I kind of, sometimes I go off on a little tangent there, but let me know if that answered your question. No, no,
Dave:you're doing good. I'm going to pick further in almost pretend to be a customer. I'll say so what do you, what do you do when someone. Has the realization that they have a need to get their hours back to eliminate these low dollar per hour tasks. But what do you say to them when they don't know which ones to start with or how to address.
Bob:I say, take, you know, one to three weeks, grab your calendar and I would start tasking out each hour, what you do each day. And before, you know, within two to three weeks, you will have a list of $10, an hour tasks that you can't be. 'cause. If you're doing 10 hour tasks, you have a $10 an hour bank account. That's typically how that, how that looks. Right. So what I would start doing, it's almost like a time and motion. Don't know if you've ever heard with time and motion is it's, it's really documenting what you do on a daily basis. It absolutely sucks doing it. So I'm just going to set the stage, however, when you're done, it's one of those things, when, you know, it's kind of like, like, uh, when you first start lifting again, right. And you get your body gets sore. And then, uh, two, three weeks later, you're like, oh, this feed now I feel really good. That's kind of, that's a feeling that you get when you're actually identifying all of the things that you do on a daily basis. But I promise you two, three weeks is done. You're going to be extremely happy. And you're going to realize what you have. To take off your plate because you're going to realize there's some, there's some income producing tasks and non anchor producing tasks, right. And that's, that's what you do now. You outsource all those non anger producing tasks
Dave:and the next portion of it. So you identify your needs. And I think that's the, the calendar idea is great. Um, Just another added bonus to that. Uh, for me personally, I've done that before and you find ways to time block and be a little more creative with your time, just in general, even if you didn't eliminate tasks, I found ways to be more efficient. Um, and obviously, you know, you're looking to dispose of some low-level tasks. Um, but what do you say to the people that aren't sure how to kinda kick that horse and. Prime that VA for success to add more time into your day to train them and all these things. Um, it's almost chicken before the egg, right? It's like, how do you add more time to be able to set this person free so that you can finally remove the time? It's very a catch
Bob:22. Yeah, for sure. But first it has to go with, you have to start with the end first, right? What is your company? Is it to close more deals? Is it to make more money? Like what is your company goal? And if your company goal is in the end, um, if you're a real estate investor, right? It is, um, I need more leads in my business. Right. Now we could identify that because if you need more leads in your business, then you need to do something in a consistent manner. So if it's marketing right, then you consistently, let's say it's a social media posting on the branding side, you know, for me. No. I took a, I took a course and I was all fired up. Right. I'm like, oh, I love this. This is awesome. I'm going to do this every day. Well, guess what happens? You start on Monday. You're all going home. You do that task. You start on Tuesday, do that task Wednesday, your buddy calls you. Hey, I got a, a, you know, I got an opening in my foursome, right? For my, uh, for a, a golf league. All of a sudden, now you go there, you have a couple of beers and then boom, guess what happened? You didn't post. So now before, you know, Next week happens. It happens again, but then you have a work trip. So before you know it, now you just start getting lazy and you stop. Right. So those are the perfect kind of tasks. Everything that we do in our business has to be done consistently. Doesn't matter again, what businesses it's going to be a real estate could be medical. It doesn't matter. We have to do those. And I know in real estate, If you don't consistently drive leads, you will be out of business. That's just how it goes. Right? So you have the marketing, the branding side, but you also have in our world, you know, cold calling is big. Direct mail is big. Texting is big, you got online content. All of those things help drive leads. And if you're doing that yourself, And you miss a day. That means you have a day of no leads coming in. So great things to take off your plate and continue to outsource on a consistent basis because business is a consistent thing. If you're a solopreneur and you pull yourself out, phone's not ringing anymore. Leads are not coming in. Money's not being made. So that's, that's how you have to think about it when you pull yourself out.
Dave:Yeah. So pulling yourself out. Yeah. I agree with you kind of the north star. What are we trying to accomplish? And then working backwards, whether you're hiring somebody or just want to figure out what your tasks should be in general. It's key sometimes. And I experienced this myself in the past. So I'll say from experience, it gets to be hard to know what you need to give away first, either because it's something that you have refined to a process, but you don't know how to teach or because it's something that you don't know how to guess. Relate to someone yet. So, so what do you say to those types of tasks that are definitely a low level task? You aren't really sure how to make it a repetitive process.
Bob:Yeah, so we, we train our virtual assistants on, um, probably 80% of the stuff that you're talking about, but what I would do, it's always the 20% anyway, that that fits you and your business. So what I tell everybody, I said, you know what, grab a screen, grab a video and do a 10 minute video on that. Or do a 20 minute video. Now what you're doing, you're starting to, you're not only able to now outsource that particular task and create a training video. But what you're doing now is you're really systemizing your business without even thinking about it. So now you create folders for each department of your business, whether it's marketing, whether it's acquisition, whether it's whatever part of your business it is, you create training folders for those tasks. Right. So I think that's a very important part that a lot of people miss is that, um, whether you use it for a virtual assistant, whether you use it for somebody in house, it just, something very good for you to create more systems and processes for your own business. You're making
Dave:me very happy. Cause that's exactly what I finally figured out when I was very, very young in this business. I was trying to teach and teaching virtually is very hard. I mean, this was before zoom and you learn, you know, zoom and all of that. Remote COVID, uh, related activities that can help further your business, but recording and having it set in stone and then writing down the steps. So you can read and then see all at once is definitely something that'll help kind of accelerate any type of teaching for
Bob:sure. Yeah. And I learned that from, uh, give a shout out to my, my buddies, me and my old partner, pat court. He actually taught me that. I said everything that you do, you have to document every single thing, because if you want to change positions, you know, you, you create your own system processes and document it and pass it off to them. Now you can then be more valuable in a different role. So I'll give him a shout. I learned that back in, uh, 2004.
Dave:And then we talked about kind of etching out the weekly, uh, tasks that you ended up doing. And you mentioned it briefly, but I really don't want to gloss over. It was assigning the dollar per hour. Amounts to that. I think that's key because you're going to prioritize what you need to get rid of first and getting over my previously mentioned hurdle of not knowing how to teach, assuming, you know, and can, can learn or go through a company like yourself where you can, you know, get that done pretty easily. And the only friction is what we should do first. How do you honestly determine that with kind of an unbiased lens? What is a low
Bob:dollar per hour? 10? So it gets back to that consistency. Right? So whatever industry you're in, um, whatever that needs to be done, repetitively every single day, it's something that we, as entrepreneurs will drop the ball. So if it's cold calling right as. Have somebody cold call for you. If it's text messaging and calling, have somebody to do that. If it's, if it's, um, sending out direct mail, you know, you could do that. If it's one click of the button or offsetting someone else to go find the right list, you know, you train them on that, uh, send it off to the direct mail company and then calls need to come back. So someone needs to answer those calls as well. So you have to look at that and identify each department and show exactly what those repetitive tasks are. You will you'll realize that once you do that, you like. Huh. All right. And here's the thing. And I think this is the toughest thing for any entrepreneur. Everyone thinks they're the best at everything, right? That's the toughest part. It is, but watch try it. And you'll realize even if somebody's 80% as good as you who cares, you will make more money because you took yourself out of that spot. While you keep building your business over here. Hey, I had the same challenge. You have the same challenge. I'm sure many people listening to this have that same thing. Trust me. It doesn't matter if you're 80% as good as you they're going to be. You're going to win in the end.
Dave:Yeah. I mean, uh, just some walky math here, but if you have a second person, that's 80% is you, then you got 1.8 of you, you know? So it's you got, you got almost double of what you could do before. And I like your point about the frequency. It makes a lot of sense. If you have. You know, certain tasks that takes up 50% of your bandwidth, obviously just by nature, that's a low level task because it's just repetitive and probably relatively easy if you can do it that many times in a week, so just get rid of it. So yeah, really, really appreciate that.
Bob:Yeah, a hundred percent, a hundred percent.
Dave:And then getting into, I guess, um, niching down on a virtual assistant versus training for an executive assistant, which is kind of a word thrown around there a lot. What is your opinion on that? How do you, uh, you know, balance the two I'm sure there's, you know, uh, situations where both apply, but could you just kind of expand on that?
Bob:Yeah. You know, executive consist or executive assistant allegory agree them. And a lot of people kinda, they coined that phrase. I don't even know sometimes what they're talking about when they, when they say that. But a virtual assistant in, in my mind is somebody that will take those repetitive tasks over. Right. And consistently do them. An executive assistant is somebody who will, you know, be right by your side all the time. Right. It's somebody that is going to, you know, it's, if it's somebody virtual, they're going to be tied to your hip, they're going to be available 24 hours a day. You're going to send them a message. You know, it's just like a, uh, a, an executive assistant, like a, a kick butt office assistant. Right. That to me is like an executive assistant higher level individual. Um, and that's the way I look at it. I know some people may have a different type of definition for it, but, um, that's what. Yeah,
Dave:I just, I like to have those dilates, cause some people will preach. You should be aiming to have every VA become an EA and they should be in multiple phases of your business. But I think there's a lot of validity to, and saying, they're going to nail the one corner of my business that I need them to now, you know? So, um,
Bob:it goes both ways. Let me add this. If you ever hear anyone out there saying virtual assistance should run their business, they're selling something because I could tell you, Hey, I have over 500 virtual assistants that work for me. Right? And I could tell you if you're relying on someone else to run your business, you will be out of business. Very, very short. Right. Um, you cannot outsource your business. You could delegate tasks, but you cannot outsource your business. Trust me, I've tried. It doesn't work. Right. So, um, just be, just be careful what, you know, what everyone's listening to. Um, you know, we're fortunate. I think, I think everybody should do this. You know, I have a service business, but also a real estate investment company. And I use my virtual assistants to prove that. By using them in my real estate business. So my whole business is run by my virtual assistants, driving leads, doing those mundane, mundane tasks that we've talked about. So make sure if you're going to use some service or listen to somebody, make sure that that individual or those people are using their service again, I may be a little different than a lot of people, but, um, I think it's, I think it's important to know.
Dave:No, that's funny. Um, it just kinda sparked a memory in my brain. It'll be a little tangent here, but when my parents built their house and hire their contractor way back in the day, about a decade and a half ago, we went and saw his house. Cause it's like, we need to see his house to make sure his house is nice and he can put a nice home together. So obviously that went well and everything, but it's like, if you, you know, it's kind of just a Testament to your own skills and your own profession. So, so yeah, I just wanted to throw that out there. Um, but we're eking into. Bob kind of the professionalism and performance of these VA's. So once we kind of initiate the process, get them onboarded and everything. How do you continue to evaluate and calibrate and iterate with these people? Um, to make sure that they're not kind of getting off.
Bob:Yeah, no, that's a fantastic question. We actually set up a structure, little different than other companies. We have a management structure. We call them client service managers that oversee the client and virtual assistant pairs. So we have about it's one CSM to about 20 to 25 pairs. So every single week they do check-ins they do client check-ins. They do VA check-ins. They have coaching, they have calls. They have, they listened to, uh, if, if you want as a client, if you want the CSM to listen to calls, they'll do some QA calls and check-in calls. They also, um, one of the things that we do pretty unique is we make sure that our virtual assistants do a startup. And an end of day report. So you know exactly what the outcome of those tasks are at the end of the day and our client service managers, proof each one of those, um, individual entity reports to make sure that they're fitting within your goals. So we actually put another layer of management on top of that, but that's a great question. And
Dave:that is kind of eking into my next one. I love the whole data-driven aspect. That seems like that report is very. Brass tax get right to the numbers. What did I didn't I accomplish type of thing. So what are some of your favorite KPIs or metrics or whatever you want to call it? Um, I guess we'll just pin it to real estate, obviously with this show, but on that side of things, just call it lead generation. What are some of your things that really you think. Relay properly good performance in a VA.
Bob:Yep. Well, you look at number of cold calls. If, if you know it, depending on, if you, what type of dialer you have, there's a certain number of calls you should make per day. So typically in that side of it, it's number of calls. Number of connect. Average talk time. And in the end, your end goal is to get leads. Number of leads sent over. So that would be an example of that same thing in the text message side, number of text messages, set, number of responses, right? Number of replies, and then number of leads on the medical side. Um, you know, when you're doing insurance verifications, that simple, right? You're looking at, you're saying how many insurance verifications could you do within an hour? How many. Per day, et cetera, because what happens is in that world, you have all the insurance verifications. If it's a, an office they go into what's called a queue. So then the virtual is going to pick up the phone and do all those mundane tasks that a nurse here in the us has to do. So do you want to pay somebody in the U S 60, 70, $80,000? Or, you know, do you want to pay somebody a quarter of that or a half of that? Right. So let's take a look at.
Dave:And getting into more of correcting actions or rewarding actions, even where does it go from there? So you see the data, you have some opinion on it. Where do you go at that point? I'm sure that involves a CFM to some extent to a CSM rather, but, but how that work out for you?
Bob:So it works out. Good. So I'll give you, so my, so for me, I've, uh, three text messages. I have five cold colleges, my own real estate business, me personally. Right? So every single day I'll get an end of day of rapport. And in the end, my CSM will look at that report. And if it's all. Right one day after the other or the other, we look at it and we say, okay, um, you know, lane, how come our numbers are like this? And what she's going to do is then she's going to oversee talk to our cold callers and look to see what's going on there, uh, where they absent one day. Right. Which obviously we'll know because I'll get an email from that, but there's, there could be a, um, a, a reason why maybe there was a tool issue, right? If you're using a tool in the United States, sometimes we have a. Glitch with technology here. It's the same thing. So there could be some reasons why those numbers are off, or guess what? Maybe I didn't send them enough data, so they didn't have enough phone numbers. So now we have to reload the dialer with more phone numbers as an example, but you'll get that data and your CSM will, will be responding to me saying, Hey Bob, we need more data. You need to get a more, another list with more skiptrace numbers to put it back up in the dialer. So that would be an example of what they would do.
Dave:And in your learning of this whole process, kind of the onboarding, the data-driven decisions, the corrections, or the, you know, affirmations, what was one of the things that took you the longest to pick up on that really kind of launched you guys forward? Whether it was before you started the actual company or during the actual
Bob:companies building. So one of the things that launched us launch us forward, um, I mean, that's Prudential that you got to make sure when we first started that there was a need for, for what we're offering and what we did. And, and I always think again, I guess that'd be four. I always think about you the client first before me. So I don't think sales, I think fulfillment, I'm more of a fulfillment guy, right? So like, you know, that's why I, I, the education company, we. I built a backend, the fulfillment side, the actual, you know, the service and the product. I never took care of sales at. All. Right. So that's what I look at first is the individual service that we are creating what you need. And then we create the training behind it and everything that we're going to teach, all of our virtual assistants is what you need. Then I'll also take. And my own business to make sure it works. So I always start first with the back. If you know, already, there's going to be clients for you. You know, I focus more on the foundation and building that thing up and then going to, you know, find the clients.
Dave:Now, like you said, if you know the market's there and we talked about earlier, but it's kind of an easy sell at that point. So just build a good and a good product. Right? Don't don't worry about getting it out too fast. So really, really interesting stuff. Uh, Bob, I'd like to get into the five key questions, as long as you're ready to hit
Bob:these, let's do it.
Dave:So, first one here, if you could only pick one trait that explains your success, what is that trait in?
Bob:Um, I would say probably delegation. Um, I think as an entrepreneur, everybody needs to delegate. You cannot be a solar preneur. Um, um, you can, but you're going to hit. And you're going to keep banging into that ceiling and you won't be able to go high unless you delegate. So I think, um, being able to delegate, but, but I always recommend when you delegate, try it first, do it first. So then you could teach somebody then delegate it. Right? So again, I may look at it a little different, but I think delegate delegation, um, is the only way that anybody could grow. I know scale is a big word nowadays, but anyone, unless you want to scale or grow, you have to.
Dave:No, that's a perfect answer. Uh, you know, considering the talk we're having today, and then the next one here is a, what is the most uncharacteristic thing you have done in your business and why?
Bob:Most uncharacteristic thing, I would have to say, uh, when COVID hit, um, I know everyone, you know, did different things in their businesses. Um, we actually had to scale back our support staff because our overhead was. Very high. We had no idea where that with Penn Damache was going to go. We lost about 30% of our business at that time. So when you have your support staff there, we had to furlough, we had to scale back, lay people off. Um, that's not me. I don't like doing any of that. Um, and that was hard. That one, that one hurt pretty, you know, and that one hurt, hurt, hurt a lot of people. Right. I heard a lot of business owners that actually care. So I think that was probably the most uncharacteristic thing that ever did. That's it?
Dave:No. And I appreciate you saying that out to the world. It's I think I'm sure, probably a Testament to your character. And like you say, you didn't want to do those things, so it all kind of adds up, uh, so appreciation and that, and then, uh, can you name a time where you felt like you were not going to end up successful and how did you overcome that fear?
Bob:Again? You got some good questions here. Get people thinking at the end. Yeah, I like it. I would say. This was a, went through a partnership breakup. So when you go through a partnership, breakup you question, um, cause every partnership you do, certain, certain you handle certain departments in your business, right? And typically what happens is, you know, you'll handle it. Some people will handle marketing and sales up front. You'll handle all of the fulfillment, backend and operations behind the scenes. So, um, I think it wasn't, it, wasn't where I, uh, I felt like I was not. Not going to be successful. I would just say it was, you know, you start questioning things sometimes. Um, but one of the ways that, uh, overcame it is, you know, being an ex athlete, I'm very good at, um, taking pressure, taking heat, just, just being backed in the corner and fight. So, and winning. I know one of the things that, uh, you know, my wife is a, an ex gymnast. She was a gymnast at university of Florida and, and, uh, I got her on board. And we went through that partnership breakup. She joined the team and it was actually, it was a blessing in disguise that that happened because now your team together with someone that you gel with and you work your butt up, you, you know, you, you, uh, you dig out of it. And the other thing. The individuals that actually went with me, um, in the Philippines, uh, they were the best of the best of the best. So the right teammates went with you and you realize pretty quickly, if you build the right culture and you have the right team, you will always win. A lot of people don't understand that. The first question they asked me about a trait that explains your success. I think the second answer is if you build and you have the right culture, you will win 99% of the time. Yeah.
Dave:I couldn't agree more. It's it's the who, not how mentality. Right. So if you had a stumble stumbling block, just, uh, just make sure you have the right team and you'll figure out a way to get through it. So couldn't agree more. And I'm pretty much the flip of that. Bob, can you name a time where something in your business went perfectly and what did you do to make that a real.
Bob:I would have to say, uh, in business, um, very recently I think business is like a chess game. Right? You could have the right people in the wrong seats. It's moving those people into the right positions. So very recently we had, we had a little movement go on with our upper management. Um, And the pieces end up falling in the correct place. And now we're in such a, on the management side and an extremely, extremely good place today rather than, you know, a year ago, if you will. So it's really, and it just never changes, you know, this as a business owner, moving pieces around and. Chess game or the puzzle pieces to fit where they are. Um, it ebbs and flows, but right now, um, that's something that actually went perfectly because those pieces moving around in the right spots now.
Dave:Absolutely amazing. And then the last one here, Bob, what have you been focusing on lately to improve yourself or your business?
Bob:Um, two things. One, I would say the leadership side, um, because I think, you know, to have successful companies. You have to be a very good leader, right. Um, because, um, not only you, but your team members have to be very good leaders. 'cause you look at every department of a business, um, everything trickles up there, the individuals that manage those departments have to speak your language. They have to be part of your culture. They have to believe what you believe. You have to all be moving in the right direction. So I think that the answer on that side of is that not only leadership for yourself, but also getting the right people on the bus and teaching them the leadership through your eyes. I think that is, you know, for me personally, that's where doing a part of a lot of masterminds and, and working in talking to individuals that are successful, um, we can have these conversations about leadership and what they're doing in their business and what they're not doing, or what's worked what hasn't. So I think that's really, really important on the leadership side. I don't know if that ever ends, I don't think that ever ends. Um, so. That's the answer for that one? No. And
Dave:I agree with you, I think as owners, leaders of the business, the more loud and proud you are of the message, the more clear it is, it'll either be a self-selecting group that sticks with you, or you'll find out quickly who, uh, you know, doesn't agree or want to kind of join along and the fun. Um, so having it be, you know, simple and clear eliminates a lot of the, the, what if so, couldn't agree with. More.
Bob:Yeah. And I think, I think a business just around them that often, and we talked though these questions were phenomenal because it makes you think outside the box and stuff that you probably haven't thought about. But, um, I think the team is the most important, most important part, obviously with the culture stuff. But, you know, you're only good as your team, um, as you grow. And obviously this is going back to sports. I learned this stuff growing up, playing sports, um, but business is a. Right. I've phenomenal, phenomenal leaders, phenomenal, phenomenal. Um, my director of the Philippines is, is the absolute best, um, individual in the world. Um, our team over there is phenomenal, you know, working here and my wife. She's incredible. So just looking at the team members that you have and that you move into different roles. I think, you know what, um, For everybody. That's the, that is extremely important because you don't have a good team. You know, you're going to start losing team members. Cause they're not going to be happy. They're not going to be fulfilled. They're not going to be, you know, they're not going to see, um, what you're accomplishing. So I just wanted to make sure I didn't, I didn't miss that part of it because all these questions actually lead to everything, everything I just said.
Dave:Yeah. I. Maybe these questions that belong on long time ago. And my thesis on it was, is I want to actually get in and make people pause and think for a second. So getting in the minds of, of, you know, superstars like you, it really helps me think. And obviously I'm grateful that you're able to think for a minute on it too. And maybe think about some things that maybe you haven't in a while. So just as you're today, Bob really appreciate the time. And before we get going, just want to let the list or know how they could reach.
Bob:Absolutely check out our website@rivaglobal.com. You can also, if you're interested in the medical side too, there's a, um, there's a tab on top, um, that clicks down that says medical, virtual assistance. So check out Riva global.com. You can send me an email as well. Um, it's Bob at Riva global, R E V a global.com.
Dave:Once again, thanks so much for your time today. I appreciate
Bob:it.
Dave:Thank you for listening. This has been the Making Money in Multifamily Podcast. If you have any questions, comments, or would just like to connect, please feel free to check out the show notes for how you can connect or visit longviewacquisitions.com