Real Estate’s Best-Kept Secret: Operational Power Plays with Lauren Rathgeb-Holland

This episode is hosted by Mie Yamashita and features Lauren Holland, a powerhouse in real estate operations with a knack for scaling teams to unmatched levels of productivity. Lauren shares how she went from being an executive assistant to overseeing operations for 70+ teams nationwide, telling the strategies, systems, and culture shifts that drive profitability. She explains the three essential steps to scale—defining the right hires, streamlining transaction and listing management, and creating a culture of productivity—while tackling the tough questions about leadership, accountability, and building a business that lasts.

Chapters:

• 00:00:00 – Opening the Door to Transformation
• 00:00:46 – Meet the Dynamic Duo
• 00:01:33 – From Assistant to Operations Guru
• 00:03:38 – Unlocking the Profit Puzzle
• 00:05:05 – Productivity: The Secret Ingredient
• 00:06:33 – Standards That Shape Success
• 00:11:41 – The Art of Leading with Connection
• 00:16:35 – Scaling Starts Here: First Moves
• 00:21:45 – Juggling Workloads Like a Pro
• 00:22:20 – Your Guide to Scaling Smarter
• 00:26:40 – Tech That Drives Your Team Forward
• 00:28:08 – The Fine Line of Tech Investments
• 00:35:09 – Leadership’s Unsung Hero: Communication
• 00:38:23 – Wrapping Up with Actionable Gold

Links and Resources:

• Reside Platform
• Reside Platform Website
• Mie on LinkedIn
• Lauren on LinkedIn

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Episode breakdown: scaling a team through operations

Lauren Rathgeb-Holland is Reside’s director of team operations. She started in 2018 as an executive assistant and has since worked as a transaction coordinator, listing manager and operations coordinator for teams across the country. In this episode Mie Yamashita, Reside’s director of team production, hosts and asks her how teams turn operations into profit.

Lauren breaks scaling into three steps. Define who you hire. Set up listing and transaction management so agents get their time back. Then build a culture of productivity that produces repeat and referral business.

Make standards visible and hold them

For Lauren, productivity starts with people showing up. When one agent skips the office or the morning call and nothing happens, others notice and start skipping too. She calls it a domino effect, and it works in the other direction as well. When people come in and make calls, the rest of the room starts asking whether they’re working hard enough.

You have these things written in your standards and your missions, but it’s just writing on the wall.

Lauren Rathgeb-Holland

Her fix is to put the numbers where everyone can see them, whether the team has one agent or 30. That might be an appointment tracker on a TV screen or an admin writing each agent’s pendings and closings for the month on a board. Virtual teams get the same treatment. “Everyone has a square” means agents join the 8:15 Zoom call, and if school drop-off gets in the way, the team can shift the time a little. If people still aren’t showing up, Lauren suggests the leader look at their own leadership first and ask what needs to change.

Mie adds that the leaders whose agents show up are the ones who stay connected. When people missed her early coaching meetings, she texted to ask if everything was okay, and only moved to a direct conversation about the standard if nothing changed.

Hire one strong operations person first

Team leaders often ask Lauren who their first hire should be, expecting a list of roles. Her answer is one operations specialist who runs client care, transaction management, listing management, marketing, agent onboarding, the weekly sales meeting and event planning. When that load gets heavy, the next step is a virtual assistant for that person, not another full-time stateside hire. Suneet breaks down the full real estate team structure he recommends, including hiring order.

If you get one really strong person, you don’t need five people in place to run your operations. You need one person, who’s the who, that’s going to get you from 30 to 70 to 100.

Lauren Rathgeb-Holland

Lauren puts the ceiling for one strong person plus a VA at somewhere between 150 and 200 units. She sets a solid transaction coordinator’s load at 50-plus files, a number she knows because that’s where she needed help herself. On pay, she says to look up the average salary for the role. Hire at the low end and expect to train and develop that person. Hire at the top and you’ll train less. Either way, look for someone adaptable who can handle a derailed day.

Know your numbers before you add tech

When Lauren asks teams how many pendings they’re carrying, even large teams go back and count by hand. She wants a dashboard that answers on sight, for example nine buyers and eight listings under contract, five active listings and 10 pre-listings coming soon. Numbers also take the heat out of agent conversations. A leader can point to days in the office, calls made, conversions and pending count, and the talk can stay positive.

The same discipline applies to the P&L. Go line by line and ask whether each expense is still earning its place. Mie’s example is a team paying for an expired-listing data tool that no one on the team uses. Lauren’s base stack is a CRM (Reside coaches teams to Follow Up Boss), an IDX website and free tools like a Facebook team page. A transaction management system comes later, once the team has reached a certain level of profitability.

Run the morning call so admin can work the back end

Lauren’s daily structure starts with everyone on one call, in person or on Zoom so no office feels like an island. The team shares what they’re grateful for, the appointments set and met, and each person’s calling focus. They check who doesn’t have a pending on the board, rally around open houses and role-play scripts, then go into lead generation. She wants agents prospecting at least three hours a day, ideally 8:30 to noon, with appointments after.

That block is when the admin does the back-end work. They follow up with title companies and lenders, call past clients, and call sellers every Tuesday with a check-in even when there’s no update. The goal is a client experience strong enough that the team earns a five-star review on 30 to 70 percent of closings, which feeds repeat and referral business.

While the agents are lead genning, admin has time to go do all the minutiae and take the 80 percent off of their plate.

Lauren Rathgeb-Holland

Key takeaways for team leaders

• Scale in three steps: define who you hire, systematize listing and transaction management, then build a culture of productivity.
• Put appointments, pendings and closings where the whole team can see them, and hold the standard on showing up, including on virtual teams.
• Make your first operations hire one strong, adaptable person, and support them with a VA before adding more staff.
• Build a dashboard so you can see pendings and listings without counting, and review your P&L line by line.
• Start each day with a team call, then protect a morning lead-generation block while admin handles the back end.