Sometimes small is the best way to go.
During last month’s BAM webinar, Byron Lazine, Lisa Chinatti, and Luke Acree broke down four stages of team growth and two proven paths to building a $100+ million business. One is the mega, enterprise-style team. The other is a lean, highly profitable Rainmaker model that eventually evolves into what they call a “Navy SEAL” team.
Both can produce nine-figure businesses. They just get there very differently.
Here’s why some team leaders intentionally choose the smaller path.
The Rainmaker Phase: Too Many Leads, Not Enough Hands
At the Rainmaker stage, the agent is producing at a high enough level that leads outpace their capacity to handle them. This pattern showed up across the 50-plus team leaders Luke Acree interviewed for this project.
The first hire is admin help:
- Transaction coordinator (TC)
- Showing agent
- General admin support
The second hire is the first buyer’s agent.
At this stage, the team leader is still the main producer. When a Rainmaker team matures, staff outnumbers 1099 agents on these teams. And as Byron explained, the team leader/owner is still the driving force behind the team’s success.
“Ultimately, this team is primarily driven by a team leader, a team owner who is still in production and driving north of 50% at the minimum of that business.”
A few specialized 1099 agents (buyer’s agents or listing agents) support the producer. Staff remain the core of the model.
Why W2 Staff Beats Giving Up Commission Splits
As soon as business grows, the instinct is to keep adding agents. Lisa Chinatti argues there’s often a more profitable option: invest in staff before giving away more commission.
“It’s always cheaper to pay somebody on a W2 on an hourly rate versus starting to think about giving up percentages of commission.”
Take a transaction that runs about 20 hours of work start to finish. Compare what an hourly rate costs you to handle it against what you’d give up in a commission split on that same deal. The hourly rate wins almost every time.
A W2 hourly rate for handling a transaction is a fixed, one-time cost. A commission split recurs on every future deal that agent closes.
Beyond the math on a single transaction, W2 staff remove other ongoing costs:
- Managing 1099 agents
- Training them
- Holding them accountable
Why Luxury Markets Produce the Strongest Navy SEAL Teams
There’s a simple reason luxury markets produce the strongest Navy SEAL teams. Higher average sale prices mean each transaction produces enough gross commission income to support a larger W2 staff without needing dozens of agents.
Instead of chasing more headcount, these teams build operational leverage. A handful of elite producers supported by exceptional staff can generate the same volume that larger teams need far more agents to achieve.
Byron explained it this way:
“It works really well when those listing appointments are seven figure listing appointments each and every time, which is why you see this more commonly executed in a luxury market.”
The Naples, FL, market is a prime example:
- High price points
- Strong Navy SEAL operations
- Few mega/enterprise teams
The Navy SEAL model can work in other markets, but luxury is where it shows up most consistently.
Staying in Production: How to Know If It’s Right for You
Of course, none of this works if the team leader is trying to build a business around work they don’t actually want to do.
That’s why Byron and Lisa recommend answering one question before deciding how to scale:
Should you stay in production at all?
Byron and Lisa walked through a simple exercise for figuring out whether staying in production is the right long-term move. Sort everything you do in the business into four categories:
- Love it, great at it
- Like it, good at it
- Good at it, don’t enjoy it
- Not good at it, hate it
Lisa hit 110 personal transactions in a single year before building her team, then moved out of production entirely. Byron used her own numbers to make the point.
“You crack triple digits in a single year. [She’s] great at it, but she doesn’t like it. So it’s the third category for her.”
If you love selling and you’re great at it, especially at higher price points, that’s a signal to stay in production.
On the other hand, if you’re not disciplined about saving money or investing it back into the business, scaling past this model can easily create more problems than it solves.
Building Your Own Rainmaker/Navy SEAL Plan
Run this exercise on your own business this week. Sort what you do into the four categories, and be honest about where you land, especially on the things you’re good at but would rather delegate to someone else. There’s no shame in it. Be brutal.
By the way, this model tops out well above what most agents assume.
A Rainmaker/Navy SEAL team can run $300 million to $400 million a year, built on a lean staff and a team leader who never left production. Nine-figure GCIs aren’t just for mega teams.
But as with any team model, it’s all in how you run it. The hardest part isn’t deciding which model sounds better on paper. It’s knowing how to build it in the real world.
How many agents should you hire before adding staff? When should you step out of production—or should you ever? What systems need to be in place before you scale to the next level?
Those are the conversations Byron Lazine, Lisa Chinatti, Luke Acree, and a room full of top-producing team leaders will be having at BAM Camp: Team Leaders this September in Scottsdale.
This is an intimate, two-day working session designed specifically for team leaders who want to grow more profitable businesses, whether that’s building a lean $100 million Rainmaker team or scaling toward an enterprise operation.
If you’re responsible for growing a team, you’ll leave with practical recruiting strategies, organizational frameworks, and operating systems you can put into place immediately.
