Should You Start a Real Estate Team?

Should you start a real estate team? If you’re a successful agent feeling overwhelmed, maxed out, or wondering if building a team is the “next step,” this episode is for you.

In this episode of the Happy Agent Co. Podcast, Lindsay Dreyer breaks down the real answer to a question so many agents ask: Should I start a real estate team? And spoiler alert — the answer is not always yes.

Lindsay shares the honest truth about what it actually means to build a real estate team, including the time, leadership, systems, money, and emotional labor it requires. She also explains why starting a team is not just a growth strategy — it’s a full business model change.

If you’ve ever wondered whether a buyer’s agent, admin, transaction coordinator, or team structure would help you grow your business or get your life back, this episode will help you figure out what problem you’re really trying to solve.

This is a must-listen for solo agents, growing agents, team leaders, and anyone trying to decide between staying solo, building support, or creating a more scalable real estate business.

What You’ll Learn:

•  How to know if you’re actually ready to start a real estate team
•  Why starting a team is a business model change, not just a growth strategy 
•  The real difference between needing a team and needing better support systems
•  What most agents underestimate about team leadership
•  The financial reality of building a team, including time, expenses, and profitability 
•  Why some agents thrive as team leaders — and others hate it 
•  How to tell if you’re trying to solve a capacity problem, systems problem, or ego problem
•  What to ask yourself before hiring a buyer’s agent, admin, or transaction coordinator

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Transcript

Should You Start A Team?

SPEAKER_00 0:34

Hey friends, I am Lindsay Dreyer, your host, real estate coach, mom of three, and brokerage owner who really wants you to just love, like really love your real estate business. Today we are diving into should you start a team? And this is a question that circulates through real estate offices, lots of Facebook groups, honestly. And if you're in too many Facebook groups, like it gets overwhelming. And coaching calls, I think on loop. And it sounds like being ambitious, it sounds like, yeah, growth is a great thing. And it definitely sounds like the next logical step for any agent who's doing well. So big ups to you if you are doing so much business, you can't handle it. But I want to honestly answer this question today of should you start a team? And this isn't going to be the way the industry answers it, which is usually yes, scale, build your empire, leverage your way to freedom. But I'm going to give you the real answer. And this is the answer that takes into account who you actually are, what you actually want, and what starting a team actually means in terms of the cost to your time and your energy and even financially, because I have been on every side of this. I've run a team, I've owned a brokerage, I've watched agents start teams for the right reasons and totally thrive. I've coached agents who have teams and they're thriving. And then I've watched agents start teams for the wrong reasons and watched them unfortunately quietly fall apart. So today we're having the honest conversation of should you start a team? First, I think it's important to ask the question of why does everyone think they should start a team? And why does this question come up in the first place? Because it is almost never random. It usually shows up at one of two moments. The first moment is you are doing really well. Business is good, referrals are coming in, you're closing 20, 25, 30, 35 deals a year. And then someone, a colleague, maybe your broker, a coach, a podcast tells you that the next level is to build a team. I remember this was probably like 10, 15 years ago, where like everyone was starting a team. I called it team fever because it was like a joke. It was like a single agent who is like, I'm the Lindsay Dryer team. And you're like, oh no. Like, is this just like a status symbol? Because I do think it has become that a little bit. There's like some shame if you don't have team or group on the end of your name. And I also think there's a little bit of like you're leaving money on the table by staying solo. And that like leverage is the answer. So that's the first moment is like you're doing really well, you're crushing it, you just can't handle everything that's going on. You want to keep growing. The second moment is you're absolutely drowning, you are overwhelmed, you are reactive, you can't keep up. And someone suggests that adding people to your team will fix everything. That if you just had a buyer's agent, a TC, a salaried admin, you'd finally be able to breathe. And both of these moments are real. Like agents get to this point, and it really is this sweet spot of like 20, 25 to 35 deals where it's just not feasible anymore. And like there's nothing to be ashamed of. It's just capacity. And if you have grown your real estate business along with being a parent, your capacity actually starts diminishing because and you're like, why can't I do 35 deals like I used to? It's because you're a mom now. Like, that's why. And you want to actually be a mom, which is really great of you. Um, but this is real. And I want you to know that starting a team is not the only growth strategy available to you. It is actually a fundamental business model change. And there is a massive difference between a growth strategy and a business model change. And a lot of real estate agents don't understand that flipping to a team is actually a complete rework of how their business works. Our industry is obsessed with teams, and brokerages honestly love teams because if you're a brokerage, you want to keep growing production, you want to keep growing sales, you want to grow agent count. And the easiest way to do that is to have teams at your brokerage because that team lead is essentially acting like a baby broker, a baby office manager, where they're training agents for you, they're bringing agents on board, and you actually don't have to do extra work. So this is the dirty secret is that teams are essentially a way for brokerages to outsource what they should be doing. The second piece is that there is an ego piece involved in being a team leader. Like it sounds impressive to have Lindsay Dryer team, or it sounds impressive to be the team leader or the founder. And that definitely is part of the pull. Like, real estate agents never get a promotion. So we create ways to make us feel like we get a promotion. Like, really? Like, can you imagine? Like, we're just in this job for like decades, and I'm not getting promoted to CEO. So, like, why not just call myself CEO? Like, that sounds great. And then there are two kinds of agents out there. There's agents who think that a team will fix their systems problem. And honestly, it usually doesn't, it just multiplies it. And then there are agents who think that creating a team will give them their time back. And it might eventually, but a lot of times it doesn't at first, or if ever. So teams don't always solve a business problem. And creating a team really does amplify whatever's already there, good and bad. So at this point, you're probably like, Lindsay, like, do you hate teams? And no, the answer is I don't. But I want you to understand the real honest truth about what starting a team involves. So I'm going to walk you through what starting a team actually looks like and is not going to be the highlight real version, but the real version. Because I think a lot of agents go into this without fully understanding what they're signing up for. And I always give it to you real. I want you to go in with eyes wide open. So the first piece is you are now a manager. Are you ready to be a manager? And this is the thing that nobody tells you enough. When you start a team, your job changes. You are no longer just a real estate agent doing what they want. You are now a manager. You are a trainer. You are a culture setter. You are the HR department. You are a coach. You are a conflict resolver. And some people are genuinely built for that. Like I know that I am, which is part of the reason why I owned a brokerage for so long. They love developing people, they love building something bigger than themselves. You get energy from leading a team. And if that's you, that's great. That actually really matters. But there's a lot of agents that start teams and then discover six months in that they absolutely hate managing people. It totally drains them. They don't want to hold people accountable to their goals. They don't want to be checking in on people. They get frustrated because they know they could do the job better and they don't want to sit down and train that agent on how to do their job better. And honestly, these agents who start these teams, they just miss being an agent. They miss having the freedom and time and energy to just do the work for themselves. And that is real. Like that is not you're a bad person. It is just information about you and it's information that you need before you hire your first person, not after you hire them. And here's something I want to be like a little bit honest about is that I'm a bit of a rare breed in this conversation because I'm genuinely both a systems person and a people person. I lean a little bit more towards systems, but looking back, that combination is a really big part of why running a team and a brokerage worked for me. The systems side meant that I could build the infrastructure that the team needed to function, that they actually plugged into. And the people side meant that I actually enjoyed the leadership part, the development, the coaching, the culture building. And what I found is most agents are stronger in one than the other. And that's not a problem. Like you are either a systems person or a people person. And maybe you're like me and you're a weird combination of both. But knowing that about yourself is really, really important on should you start a team, because neither one makes you wrong for wanting a team. But knowing which one you are and being honest about where your gaps are is how you build a team that doesn't eventually make you want to burn it all down. I want to get into a little bit more specifics of like what the day-to-day of managing managing a team actually looks like. And I think the hardest thing, especially if you're staying in production, you're saying in which most team leads are, they're in production and they're also managing a team, is that you now have more people who have access to you. And just like you have to set boundaries with your clients, you also have to figure out how are you going to set boundaries with your team. But this team that you have, they're relying on you to do their job. And so this means that they're going to be calling you with questions about contracts or deals. They may have a home inspection that they need you to review. They're going to want training. They also want culture. So doing like fun events and celebrating them and making sure you have an environment that's collaborative and also, you know, like they feel appreciated. This is a full-time job. So if you're in production and also running a team, it is hard to do both at the same time. I'm going to be honest. Like there was a point in my life where I joked with my husband. I was broker by day, real estate agent by night and weekend. And even then, broker kind of never turned off because if someone had, if my agents had a question or needed something, like I had to be able to answer the phone for them. So there is a significant amount of time and energy that you're investing in training your agents and retaining them and then honestly recruiting to your team. So that is, I don't like, I don't want to understate that because it is a lot of work. Now, should you not do it? I'm not saying you shouldn't do it. And there are ways to make it work. Um, but I just want to be real about thinking through what this entails. And I'm not saying you have to hold every single job. You can always hire help or get people to like help you or outsource things, but you want to make sure that you are coming into this with eyes wide open. The other thing is the emotional labor of managing other people's businesses, their problems, and their pipelines. And this is a really hard one because people are going to run their businesses the differently from the way that you do. Um, you can train people in your process, you can train them on your technology, but ultimately they're going to operate the way that they're going to operate. And that is really difficult sometimes because it either requires training and mentorship to get them to a point where they're running at a level you want them to run at. Um, or it just requires like being the police, which is really hard. Like there's I'm I'm gonna use the word confrontation just because I there's like a lack for a better one. But there is a significant amount of confrontation involved when you're running a team, especially if you want a high-performing one that gives really great service to your clients because you're going to have standards and you're going to need to hold those people to your standards. And that is one of the hardest parts. I think you're probably hearing me say like one of the hardest parts about everything, but like that's a really hard one for people to get around because you want to be have a friendly relationship with the agents on your team. And being the police or like making sure that they are upholding your standards, it is a really emotionally labor-intensive job because no one wants to be having those like, I almost think it's like parenting conversations where you're like, hey, disappointed with how you performed there. Here's how we could do this better next time. Like, are you gonna be doing better next time? So it is really hard. Um, I do think I got to be a better team lead or better broker donor when I became a parent because I saw that it's not, it doesn't reflect on me. It's just there's a completely other separate person over there. And it's my job to lead them and hopefully guide them to the right decisions and the right actions. Um, so I want to close out this section by just asking yourself honestly, like, are you a people person? Are you a systems person? Are you both? And what does that mean for how you need to build your team? The next thing I want to talk about is the financial reality check of running a team. So let's talk about the money because this is where team math gets complicated really fast. And it's not just about money, it's about your time and your energy that you're investing and what the return on that time and energy is. Here's the pitch: you bring on a buyer's agent, they close deals, you take a split, you make money without doing the work, it's leverage, it's passive income. And like, isn't that everyone's dream? Hello. But the reality is a little bit more nuanced than that. In the beginning of a team, and it's usually the first six to 12 months at a minimum, is the team is almost always costing you money before it makes you money. You might be paying for leads, you're probably covering some expenses, you're spending time and energy training someone instead of closing your own deals or doing your own lead generation or prospecting or nurturing your database. And your personal production almost always dips because your attention is divided. And that's not necessarily a reason not to do it, but it is a reason to go in with a financial cushion and a real plan, not just a hope that it will work out. So if you don't know your numbers right now as a solo agent, please do not start a team. Not yet, because the financial complexity absolutely multiplies the moment you add another person. And you need to understand your own PL before you're responsible for someone else's income. This is actually the perfect place to mention my deal dashboard. It's a free resource I put together that's basically a Google Sheet that allows you to track the financials of your business. And it is a version of the one that I still use with my brokerage where we sell over 150 homes a year. And it is so crucial. So if you want to start practicing tracking your financials, get the deal dashboard at happyagent.co slash dashboard. So that plug aside, let's talk about the real cost of starting a team. Again, we talked about the leads. We haven't even gotten into splits and the tools that you're going to need to provide, the time, the training. And I think conservatively, as I mentioned, like you're probably not going to see a return on your time and energy and money invested with your team members for at least six months. I mean, you're lucky if it's before six months. But your personal production is going to take a hit. It always does. And that usually will breed a little bit of resentment because you are now making money through other people instead of you directly making it yourself. And that makes real estate agents furious. The successful, competitive real estate agents absolutely cannot stand it. And this is usually when they're like, fuck it. I am not having a team anymore. I'm going back to just being by myself and producing because I don't want to be responsible for other people and their production. So you need to run a like true pro forma, like run the analysis, run what your expenses are, run how much money you need to make net, what your splits are, how much you think your like team, your buyers' agents are going to be making in that year. Like, what's the company dollar or team dollar in your sense? It's like how much are they contributing to the team? If you don't know your numbers as a solo agent, adding a team is not going to make that better. And it is just going to be more chaos. So getting clear on your financials and what that means for you and going in with eyes wide open is super important. The next thing I want you to think through in addition to your financials is what problem are you actually trying to solve? And this is where it becomes clear that this might just be an ego thing, which, you know, it happens. Okay. It happens to a lot, people. But here is the question that you need to ask yourself what problem are you trying to solve? Because the answer to that question tells me almost everything I need to know. If the answer is I have more leads than I can handle and I want to convert more of them, a buyer's agent might actually make sense for you because that's a capacity problem and adding people can solve a capacity problem. If the answer is I'm overwhelmed and I need help, what kind of help? Because overwhelm is usually an operations problem, not necessarily a headcount or you need more people like on your team problem. A really good transaction coordinator or an admin could potentially change your life for a fraction of the cost and the complexity of starting a team. If the answer is I want to make more money without necessarily working more, a team might get you there, but there are faster and simpler paths like more intentional prospecting, better conversion, raising your average sales price. So before you build a team, make sure you maximize what you already have built. And the last one, which is really popular, is I want my life back. And I want to say with kindness and tell you that a team in the early stages is going to take more of your life before it gives any of it back. And that isn't necessarily forever if you're doing a good job growing the team, but it is real. And I want you and need you to know that going in. I have seen solo agents that are doing so much in sales. Like they are doing a hundred deals a year with just a transaction coordinator showing agents and an admin. So you can stay solo with support and not necessarily build a formal team where you are responsible for people. Um, it is absolutely based on your goals, your needs, your personality, how you work, and what you actually want. A team is one solution. And I want you to make sure that it's actually solving the problem you have and not the one that you think you have. Okay, so I know a lot of this probably sounds like I'm anti-team, and I am 100% not. I like literally built a team and have been running one for 15 years and under my brokerage. I have seen teams work beautifully, and I have watched agents build something that they are genuinely proud of, that does give them more freedom, that gives them more income, and gives them more impact than they could have ever had solo. So let me tell you what those situations have in common, those people where a team actually made sense and worked for them. The agents who thrive as team leads almost always share these few things. They have strong systems in place before they add people. So they have a really clear, documented way of doing business that works that agents can plug into. This is marketing, usually. Um, it is also TC or a way that they do client service. So this is a system that's essentially plug and play. They also really enjoy developing and leading others. It gives them energy to see people succeed through their mentorship. And that's a big one. Like they, it isn't about money, it's about they actually really truly get pleasure and enjoyment out of seeing other people succeed and developing them. They also have a clear financial picture and enough cushion to invest in the early stages. And this can be a year, two years, three years. I know for me, it was actually two and a half years before we got to a point of profitability. And they're not necessarily starting a team to escape problems, but they're starting one to expand their vision. And for me, it was I have a unique way of doing business. I have a unique way of seeing how an agent interfaces with its teamslash brokerage. And for me, I wanted to create an ecosystem where agents could focus on what they do best, which is build relationships and sell homes. So my vision was we're in one-stop shop for real estate agents. We have in house marketing, we have a transaction coordinator in house, we have an admin in house, we have showing agents, we have people who will do open houses. So it really is a truly supportive place. And that helps with my recruiting, that helps with my retention. So I was building something that I had a vision for. It wasn't just I'm gonna Start a team, it was, I really want to do this differently, or I want to do this in this specific way. So that combination of systems, leadership, being financially clear on what you want, being growth driven, that is a foundation that a team can really be built on. And you do need to be in it for the long haul and have a really solid plan. The best time to start a team is when you actually don't need one to survive. It's when you can afford one to just grow. And really you have like that drive, that time and energy to invest, because it is an investment that will pay off down the road if you do it well, but it is an investment. It isn't just like snap your fingers and you're starting a team. So if after listening to this episode, you want to think through do I want a team? Should I start a team? Here's what I want you to do: sit down with these three questions and write out your answers. I want you to be brutally honest, not the ones that necessarily sound good. You don't have to share this with anybody. Question one is what problem am I actually trying to solve by starting a team? And I want you to name it specifically. The second question is, is a team the only way or even the best way to solve that problem? And then three, do I have the systems, the financial clarity, and the genuine desire to lead people that a team requires? Those are the three questions. And there's a bonus fourth because of everything we talked about today, but are you a people person, a systems person, or both? And be honest, because that answer shapes how you might build a team and where you would need support. Starting a team might be exactly right for you, or it might be the wrong solution to the right problem, or it might be something you come back to in two years when you've built the foundation that it actually needs. And all of those are valid outcomes. What's not a good idea is making a major business model decision because it sounds like the right next step without asking whether it actually is the right next step for you. You get to decide what your business looks like. That's the whole point. That's what I coach on. Like all of my coaching clients have different businesses, and we decide what growth looks like for them, what right systems there are. Like we run through the happy agent method, and that really is what it's about. Is there's no one size fits all like way to be successful in real estate. And I want you to know that. So if this episode made you think, share it with an agent friend who's maybe been asking the same question. And please leave a review if you haven't already. It genuinely means the world to me. I'll be back next week. Until then, stay happy.