For 18 months straight, now, Lisa Chinatti has guaranteed new agents an accepted offer within their first 90 days on her team. Never once has she had to write a refund check.
In her conversation with Luke Acree of ReminderMedia on the Stay Paid podcast, Lisa spoke candidly about mistakes she made while building her 140-agent team. Out of those mistakes, she’s built systems that have made her broker-owner of the #1 real estate team in Massachusetts.
One of those systems has to do with onboarding new agents, including those who still have a day job. She explains the fee and the guarantee that backs it, along with the accountability system that runs after onboarding.
Lisa will be walking through more of this live at BAM Camp: Team Leaders on September 22 and 23, 2026, in Scottsdale, Arizona, alongside Byron Lazine, Tom Toole, George Laughton, Luke Acree, and more, including Gino Blefari. More on that in a bit.
First, let’s get into Lisa’s onboarding, which starts with two very different schedules, built around how her agents live.
A 5-Day Onboarding Built Around Two Different Schedules
Every new agent on Lisa’s team goes through a five-day onboarding program. This year, she added a second track built for agents who still hold a full-time job elsewhere.
Here’s how Lisa describes the setup:
“We have a five-day onboarding. One of the changes that we made this year is that we have a path for dual career agents. So every other week it’s daytime Monday through Friday from 9 to noon and then every other week it’s Monday through Friday from 5:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.”
To recap, the five-day onboarding plan looks like this, alternating week to week:
- Daytime track: Monday through Friday, 9am to noon, one week
- Evening track: Monday through Friday, 5:30pm to 8pm, the alternating week
New agents pick the track that works best with their schedule.
Why She Built an On-Ramp for Agents With a Day Job
Lisa added the evening track because some of her strongest producers already had full-time jobs elsewhere. To her, that kind of production while juggling a day job counts as proof the model works.
In her words:
“Two reasons. One is that some of my top performers have full-time jobs, but still are kick-ass agents with crazy drive. And they have no desire to quit their full-time job, but will still sell 10 to 12 houses a year. And to me, that’s proof.”
The second reason comes from a pattern she’s seen play out again and again. Agents join the wrong brokerage and burn through their savings. Then they get forced to take a job before they’ve had a real chance to prove themselves.
The dual-career path gives them a way back into the business without requiring them to quit that new job first. Within six to nine months, once they’ve built a pipeline and closed a few deals, most of these agents make the leap to full-time.
Here’s how she puts it:
“If we can show them that they can build a pipeline and get some closings under their belt, they start to believe in themselves enough to quit the job and become a full-time agent.”
The $500 Fee and the 90-Day Money-Back Guarantee
The fee for getting started is $500, which pays for the training itself.
The guarantee is a core element of the marketing strategy framework within the Entrepreneur Operating System (EOS). Under that framework, Lisa treats her own agents as the real customer of the brokerage.
Here’s how she puts it:
“Through EOS, we’ve defined that our customer is not the home buyer and seller. Our customers are our agents, right? And so our guarantee is written to our agents, and our guarantee says that if you follow our system and our processes, we guarantee that you’ll get your first accepted offer within your first 90 days with us or we’ll refund your onboarding fee.”
She backs up that promise with specifics:
“So, we charge $500, and we give them their two open house signs and a stack of business cards. Then we set them up with all of their accounts and systems and it basically pays for their training.”
Eighteen months in, she has never had to write that refund check.
What It Takes to Earn the Guarantee
The guarantee comes with real requirements agents have to hit:
- Complete the onboarding program in full
- Take a set number of leads
- Set up a certain number of safe searches in RealScout and log a set number of calls through Follow Up Boss
- Meet one-on-one with a sales manager a set number of times
Lisa sums up why this combination works:
“Just taking leads without following up with them, you’re not going to sell a home. But if you’re making the calls and taking the leads and using the tools and the systems, it’s impossible not to sell a home.”
The Accountability System That Runs Without Her
Lisa doesn’t ride her agents about performance day to day. By her own description, she’s about as relaxed as a broker-owner gets on that front.
Which is why she’s built in a system that relies on the agent’s own actions (or lack thereof).
Here’s how she puts it:
“I’m as lax as they come. So no accountability on that front at all. What we say is after the onboarding fee, I won’t charge you another fee. Not a desk fee, not a monthly fee, nothing. As long as you sell five houses a year. If you don’t sell five houses a year, I’m going to charge you another $500 at the start of next year. So that kind of self-selects.”
So far, no one has paid that $500 annual fee. Agents either leave the brokerage before the year is up, or they’ve already sold the five houses needed to avoid it.
For team leaders, the real appeal is structural. The standard stays the same for every agent, and no one has to make a personal judgment call about who stays and who goes.
What Team Leaders Can Borrow From This System
You don’t need Lisa’s exact numbers or her exact tools to use this approach. The underlying moves work for teams of any size.
Start with one piece:
- Pick one real barrier that’s stopping agents from joining or succeeding on your team, whether that’s scheduling or cash flow.
- Attach a guarantee or standard to it specific enough to measure (not just a vague promise like “I guarantee you’ll see enough progress to justify staying on board.”).
- Build the accountability into the fee or comp structure itself, so it doesn’t depend on you enforcing anything after the fact.
Look at your own onboarding process. Where are you counting on personal follow-up to keep new agents on track, instead of a system built to do it for you?
Want to hear this straight from Lisa? She’ll be at BAM Camp: Team Leaders on September 22 and 23, 2026, in Scottsdale, Arizona, alongside Luke Acree and a room full of team leaders working through the same problems. Check out the event page for more details.
Spots are (very) limited for this event and are close to selling out. Save your spot while you still can.
