Scaling a Real Estate Team Starts with Systems, Not Headcount
When real estate agents talk about scaling their business, the first question isn’t how many people to hire, it’s whether the infrastructure already exists to support growth. Toby Levine recently worked with a New York City agent who had been in business for a decade, carried ambitious revenue goals, and believed that the right support could multiply their sales production within two years. When they began working together, the agent had one junior agent and an operations manager who wasn’t working the right fit. Toby’s first move wasn’t to post job listings, instead, she spent time observing how the team functioned, watching how deals moved, how communication flowed, and where breakdowns were happening. She sat in on meetings, tracked task assignments, and asked the principal agent how things felt, not just how they looked on paper.
Evaluation is a critical step in scaling a team. ST³ Consulting specializes in building operational infrastructure for teams and agents of all experience levels, and Toby’s approach was to embed herself in the agent’s business for the first couple of months, gathering a comprehensive view of how the team operated before making any recommendations. She prefers this individualized approach to the standardized outlook that many coaches have.
What the Evaluation Revealed
The agent was ambitious and driven, but the team was held together by informal routines and the principal agent’s personal oversight. There were no checklists, no templates, and no clear process for what happened when a cold lead came in. The junior agent, who had been with the team for a couple of years, was capable of doing more but had not been given the authority to step up. The operations manager who was leaving had created gaps rather than systems, and the principal agent was spending significant time on tasks that should have been delegated.
The agent admitted early on that they weren’t sure the team could handle operations on their own. That hesitation is common, and it underscores a major growth constraint for many teams: without clear delegation and structure, even talented agents can struggle to scale effectively. By identifying this dynamic early, Toby could focus on building a structure that would allow the team to function effectively before hiring anyone new. The issue was not a talent problem; it was a structural one.
Scaling successfully requires the principal agent to trust their team while putting the right operational supports in place. In this case, the junior agent needed more responsibility, the new operations manager—once hired—needed clear guardrails and decision-making authority, and the principal agent needed to focus on high-value listings rather than micromanaging operations and deal flow.
The Plan That Emerged
After the evaluation period, Toby developed a prioritized action plan. First, the agent needed to hire the right operations manager and delegate the administrative work that was consuming too much of their calendar. Second, the junior agent had to be empowered to own more of the process, which required the principal agent to trust the systems Toby was building. Third, they needed to hire and train new agents to handle cold leads, which were the biggest driver of the growth the agent was hoping to achieve.
None of this would have worked without systems. The cold leads were coming in at high volume, and the principal agent wanted new agents with limited experience to take them on. That meant creating boilerplate processes based on the principal agent’s experience and preferences including scripts, follow-up sequences, templates and more, that allowed less experienced agents to operate with confidence. The principal agent still needed to be involved and available to communicate with team members, but they no longer felt confined to approve every decision. It meant stepping away from micromanagement without abandoning oversight. A fractional COO implements infrastructure that a full-time hire would take months to build, and Toby’s role was to create the scaffolding that would allow this team to grow without the principal agent becoming the bottleneck.
One of the most important lessons from this engagement was that the plan had to align with what the agent believed they needed, not just what Levine recommended. "My experience only goes so far if the agent is not willing to implement my recommendations," Toby says. "If they feel very strongly that they know what’s best and they know what they’re willing to put in, then a lot of the time, I defer to that. This is their business. They get to choose how they run it." That flexibility, combined with problem-solving around the systems the agent already trusted, was what made the plan successful.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What’s the difference between hiring a coach and hiring a fractional COO for a real estate team?
A: Coaches assign homework based on templated recommendations designed for the masses. Fractional COOs execute the tasks and initiatives that actually free up the agent’s calendar. Toby Levine works with agents in NYC and beyond to implement individualized operational systems, not just advise on them.
Q: What’s the biggest mistake agents make when trying to scale their teams?
A: Hiring more people before the systems are in place to support them. Without documented processes, clear delegation, and operational structure, adding headcount just creates more chaos.
