June 18, 2025Lauren and Mie strip away the gloss of real estate and expose the operational chaos, emotional exhaustion, and leadership gaps that silently sabotage even the most driven teams. From the myth of “bad leads” to the hidden cost of poor follow-up systems, this episode dives deep into the real reasons agents burn out and teams underperform. You’ll discover why onboarding chaos, lack of structure, and unchecked CRM databases are bleeding revenue—and what top-performing teams are doing differently. Packed with actionable frameworks like daily downloads, 30/60/90 onboarding roadmaps, and mindset shifts that actually work, this episode is your tactical guide to scaling a business that’s both high-performing and human.
Chapters:
- 00:00:00 – What Success Really Looks Like in Real Estate
- 00:00:19 – Real Estate Is Chaos—Here’s How to Lead Through It
- 00:00:54 – Meet Your Hosts: Lauren & Mie Unfiltered
- 00:01:45 – Why Emotional Regulation Is a Superpower
- 00:02:40 – Want Freedom? Start with Structure
- 00:02:58 – The Lead Problem No One Talks About
- 00:05:50 – How to Build a Team That Actually Performs
- 00:12:35 – The 15-Minute Habit That Changes Everything
- 00:15:37 – Real Leadership = Clarity, Not Control
Links and Resources:
- Reside Platform
- Reside Platform Website
- Lauren Holland on LinkedIn
- Mie Yamashita on LinkedIn
Thanks so much for joining us this week. Want to subscribe to the Reside Platform Podcast? Have some feedback you’d like to share? Connect with us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and YouTube to leave us a review!
Episode breakdown: leading a team through the chaos
Lauren Holland, director of team operations at Reside, and Mie Yamashita, who coaches production for teams across North America, sat down to talk about the parts of real estate nobody covers in licensing class. Their argument is simple. Chaos is the default setting of the business, and the teams that do well are the ones that put structure underneath it.
Lauren came into real estate at 22, and she says the job turned out to be 80% emotional regulation: for clients, for the team and for yourself. Mie adds that agents often expect the work to get easier after a few closings. It doesn’t. It changes, and you have to get stronger. What usually makes it feel harder than it should is a missing plan or process.
Audit follow-up before blaming the leads
When teams say the leads are bad, Mie usually finds a follow-up problem. In one review with a team, she found more than 400 leads from a single source over the past year, about $10,000 worth. Over 300 of them hadn’t been touched in more than 30 days and had only one attempt on them, while the team kept paying thousands a month to bring in more.
Lauren pointed to the other side of the same coin. One top agent she worked with contacted a single lead for five years, more than a hundred times, before that person said they were ready. Her advice is to look at your P&L, ask whether each lead source is earning its spend, and audit the database. Mie tells team owners to go inside the CRM and look at what agents are actually doing, because there are almost always pendings sitting there that nobody has followed up on.
There’s no such thing as a bad lead. There’s high quality leads and low quality leads, but there’s no such thing as a bad lead.
Mie Yamashita
Hold a 15-minute daily download with your admin
Mie has been pushing team owners to meet their admin every day for 15 minutes and protect that time. The meeting covers the day’s numbers, the calendar, where the pendings stand, which projects are moving and any answers the admin needs. Skip it, and you end up chasing each other for three days. Admins aren’t mind readers, and they need systems, clear responsibilities and shared calendars to do the job.
For visibility into daily work, Lauren suggests an end-of-day recap: what was on the plate, what actually got done and what moved to tomorrow. Mie adds that when an admin takes on a project you asked for, follow up on it. Most admins want to know their work was noticed. Lauren also tracks projects in a simple task list with an owner, a due date and a priority for each item, and the weekly review takes her and her leader less than 30 minutes. It doesn’t need paid software. A Google Sheet works.
Give agents a specific weekly prescription
Mie’s point is that “be a team player” isn’t an instruction. Agents need a simple scoreboard. Her weekly baseline is to add five people to the database, hold two met consultations and show up to the team meeting and call nights. Broken down by day, that means four two-minute conversations, showing up to the huddle and adding one person to the database.
She also wants the celebration aimed at lead measures, not only closings. Lauren suggests pulling up the CRM leaderboard in weekly sales meetings and recognizing whoever is consistently at the top. If it’s the same person every week, celebrate them every week, because they’re the one doing the activity.
Most people want to do well. They do. And if they’re not doing well, it’s not usually because they don’t want to. And if you don’t define what success is going to look like, they’re gonna guess. And they’re usually gonna guess wrong.
Mie Yamashita
Write a 30-60-90 day plan for every new hire
Recruiting gets most of the attention, but Lauren says onboarding is what teams underestimate. Without a week-by-week roadmap, new agents flounder or leave, and the same holds for staff. Her method is to take the job description, list what the person needs to learn, and chunk it into the first 30, 60 and 90 days. When she hired someone in client success, the first 30 days had one goal: learn how to onboard a client from start to finish.
Show up daily, in person or not
Neither host thinks a physical office is required. Lauren recommends getting on a call with the team for 15 minutes every day to talk about wins and priorities, then moving into script practice. Mie wants role play at least three times a week and up to five. When she started her own coaching program at the start of COVID, the group spanned eight locations in two states, and she ran a 30-minute morning call every day at 8:30 with 50 to 60 people on it.
Leaders, answer your phone, get back to your team.
Lauren Holland
Lauren is clear that this doesn’t mean picking up at 10 PM. Set a window for when you’re reachable, keep that boundary and tell your team what it is.
Key takeaways for team leaders
- Before you cut a lead source, check how many of its leads have had more than one attempt in the last 30 days.
- Inspect the CRM yourself. Untouched pendings are often already sitting in it.
- Meet your admin for 15 minutes every day and cover numbers, calendar, pendings and open projects.
- Give agents a written weekly prescription and a scoreboard, then celebrate the activity, not only the closings.
- Turn each job description into a 30-60-90 day training plan before the new hire starts.
- Answer your team’s calls inside a window you’ve set and shared.
