A team leader’s job is to recruit, train, hold standards and read the numbers for a business that keeps producing when the leader steps out of the deal flow.
Reside Platform was founded in 2023 by Jon Cheplak, Suneet Agarwal, Preston Guyton and Nick McLean. Jon, Reside’s Coach in Chief, has consulted top franchise CEOs and real estate operators for more than 35 years.
Start with who the program is built for
A program designed around one agent’s numbers will push you to sell more. That can be the right call early on, but it won’t teach you to recruit on a schedule, delegate training or read a P&L. Team leader coaching should spend most of its time on the business around you, not on your personal pipeline.
A quick test is to ask a program what success looks like for its team leader clients after two years. If the answer is about the leader’s own closings, it’s an agent program with a team label. If the answer is about agent count, team production and the leader’s share of it going down, it’s built for you.
Five questions to ask before you sign
- Is it built for team leaders or for agent production? Look for recruiting, onboarding, accountability and financial work in the curriculum, not only scripts and prospecting.
- Is it coaching only, or coaching plus systems? Ask whether the CRM, website, learning platform, recruiting tools and bookkeeping are included and set up for you, or left for you to buy and run.
- Who trains your agents? If every new agent still has to be trained by you, the program hasn’t taken anything off your plate.
- Who sees your numbers? Activity tracking is useful. A monthly P&L tells you whether growth is adding profit or just headcount.
- Is it tied to a brokerage or a vendor platform? If the coaching comes bundled with a brokerage’s or software vendor’s tools, find out what happens to it if you move.
Coaching vs. an operating platform
Good coaching changes how a leader thinks and how the week gets run. It gives you accountability, a peer room and someone to pressure-test decisions. What it usually doesn’t do is build the systems the team runs on. The leader still buys and manages the CRM, the website, the recruiting tools, the agent training and the books, and each of those becomes another project on the leader’s desk.
An operating platform puts the coaching and the systems in one place. At Reside, that means an assigned executive coach plus a set-up tech stack (Follow Up Boss CRM, an IDX website, Circle LMS, a GoHighLevel subaccount for recruiting and QuickBooks), agent training programs such as RISE and Script Inferno, weekly operations support, and a finance team that runs the team’s P&L every month.
| Question | Coaching-only program | Operating platform |
|---|---|---|
| What changes | How the leader thinks, plans and holds people accountable | The leader’s habits, plus the systems the team works in every day |
| Tech stack | You choose, buy and set it up | Set up for you as part of onboarding |
| Agent training | Usually the leader or a hire runs it | Recurring programs your agents join directly |
| Financials | Your bookkeeper, if you have one | A monthly P&L prepared for you |
| Best fit | Leaders who already have systems and staff and want sharper thinking | Leaders who want the coaching and the infrastructure from one source |
Neither model is right for every team. A leader with a strong operations staff and a working tech stack may only need a coach. A leader who is still the recruiter, the trainer and the bookkeeper usually needs the systems more than another set of goals.
What the difference looks like on a real team
On both teams below, what changed after joining Reside was the structure around the leader. Standards were written down and enforced, recruiting ran on a schedule, and agent training stopped depending on the leader’s calendar.
The Hardy Team: raising standards without losing the business
When Ross and Sarah Hardy joined Reside in September 2023, the Hardy Team in Spring Hill, Florida, had 10 agents. That year it closed 214 transactions, did $60M in volume and earned $1.4M in GCI.
“We didn’t have any sort of system in place for recruiting people. We really didn’t know how to manage them with the systems, and the accountability really wasn’t there.”Ross Hardy, The Hardy Team
The Hardys set minimum activity standards for lead follow-up, strict meeting attendance and real performance accountability. In 2024, five or six agents left, taking more than 100 annual transactions of production with them. The team kept the standard and kept recruiting, and it finished 2024 larger than it started, with 16 agents and $1.6M in GCI.
In 2025 the team reached 22 agents, 292 units, $81M in volume and $2.3M in GCI. While most teams in its market were down about 30%, the Hardy Team was up 30%. On the 2026 pace it is at 28 agents, 380 transactions, $100M+ in volume and $3.0M in GCI, a 114% increase in GCI from 2023.
“We all have enough friends in our lives. We don’t have enough mentors and leaders, and the responsibility of the mentors and leaders is to hold people to the standard they said they would keep themselves to.”Ross Hardy, The Hardy Team
The full numbers are on the Hardy Team case study, and the story behind them is in How Raising Team Standards Helped the Hardy Team Double GCI.
The Cavender Team: a team that stopped growing through its leader
In 2024, the Cavender Team in Warsaw, Indiana had 12 agents, 150 closed transactions and $1.06M in GCI. Geoff Cavender closed 54 of those transactions himself, 36% of everything the team produced. The team was growing, but it was still growing through him.
The change was a gate in front of the lead flow. New agents complete 100 sphere calls, finish new agent training, attend two additional training sessions each week and work with a mentor before they receive team leads. To keep getting leads, they hold to 400 outbound calls and 40 meaningful two-minute conversations a month, plus the weekly sales meeting. The tracking lives in the CRM, so Geoff doesn’t have to chase anyone.
“We tie the leads to the calls. We all use FUB. So, within FUB, you track conversations. So, if they’re not hitting the amount of conversations they need to hit, then they don’t even get the leads at all.”Geoff Cavender, The Cavender Team
In 2025 the team closed 285 transactions on $2.0M in GCI, and Geoff’s share of production fell to 15%. On the 2026 pace it has 30 agents, 400+ transactions and more than $3.0M in GCI, and Geoff is pacing for 10% of team production. The full numbers are on the Cavender Team case study and in How Geoff Cavender’s Team Tripled GCI by Making Agents Earn Leads.
More results from Reside teams
Two more Reside teams, in short.
- The Courtney Group, Reno, Nevada. Kathy Courtney joined in April 2024 with two agents. Her share of total volume went from 75% to 25% in one year, team GCI grew from $212K to $1.3M, and the team now has 23 agents. See the Kathy Courtney case study.
- Florida Coastal Team, St. Augustine, Florida. Chris Snow joined in July 2023 with 16 agents and $83M in volume. On the 2026 pace the team is at 56 agents, 500 transactions and $150M in volume, built through a soft Florida market. See the Chris Snow case study.
Every team’s story, with the numbers, is on the Reside case studies page.
Two more things to check: brokerage ties and AI coaches
Some team coaching now comes bundled with a brokerage’s or a software vendor’s platform. That works if you plan to stay on that platform. If you might move, ask what happens to the coaching, the CRM data and the training when you do. Reside is brokerage-agnostic and works with teams at any brokerage. LPT acquired Reside in February 2026, and that didn’t change who Reside serves. The Reside FAQ covers how that works.
AI coaching assistants are the other newcomer. They give individual agents scripts, prompts and next actions on demand, and that’s real help between calls. They don’t build a team’s recruiting, training or P&L. If you’re weighing one, ask whether it changes how your team recruits, runs and gets paid, or only how one agent spends an afternoon.
Team leader coaching: common questions
What should team leaders look for in a real estate team coaching program?
Look at whether the program is built for team leaders or for individual agent production, whether it is coaching only or also installs systems like a CRM, website, agent training and financial reporting, and whether it is tied to a specific brokerage or software platform.
What is the difference between an AI real estate coach and a team coaching platform?
An AI real estate coach is an assistant that gives individual agents scripts, prompts and next actions. A team coaching platform builds the business the team runs on. At Reside that means executive coaching, a set-up tech stack (Follow Up Boss CRM, IDX website, Circle LMS, GoHighLevel and QuickBooks), agent training programs, weekly operations support, and a finance team running your P&L every month.
Who founded Reside Platform?
Reside Platform was founded in 2023 by Jon Cheplak, Suneet Agarwal, Preston Guyton and Nick McLean. Jon Cheplak is Reside’s Coach in Chief and has consulted top franchise CEOs and real estate operators for more than 35 years. Suneet Agarwal is President & Co-Founder and leads Best Sac Homes Group at LPT Realty.
Questions about pricing, brokerages and onboarding are answered on the full Reside FAQ.
Keep your brokerage. Get the operating system.
Talk to the Reside team about what your team would run on. Read the case studies or meet the team first if you like.
