Episode 717: Stop Doing It All Yourself: Build a Dream Team That Actually Works - Your Daily Real Estate Podcast with Tristan Ahumada

Summary4 min read

Episode Overview

Podcast: Your Daily Real Estate Podcast with Tristan Ahumada
Episode: 717 - "Stop Doing It All Yourself: Build a Dream Team That Actually Works"
Date: November 16, 2025
Host: Tristan Ahumada

This episode centers on the critical transition real estate professionals face when they stop doing everything themselves and begin to build a highly functional team. Tristan shares practical advice, step-by-step processes, and personal stories to help listeners identify hiring priorities, leverage their strengths, and efficiently grow their business with the right support staff, both virtual and in-house.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

The Imperative of Team Building

Growth Requires Help: Tristan emphasizes that scaling a real estate business is impossible alone. The journey starts with the first admin hire, and each subsequent team member plays a vital role in freeing up the business owner’s time.
Facing Fear: “It's not as easy as it looks. Super scary.” (00:13) – Acknowledging the emotional challenges in making the first hires.

How Tristan Started: Personal Experience

First Hire – Admin to Director of Operations:
- Began with a basic admin (“Just hired an admin. I call him a director now—Director of Operations. But it started with a simple admin.” [01:08]).
- Outlined specific tasks: uploading MLS properties, nurturing the database, ensuring effective social media posts, editing videos, and running ads.
Progression to a Second Hire:
- After generating revenue and feeling the benefits of leverage, Tristan hired a marketing specialist to focus on growth areas like graphics, video editing, and social media content.

Identifying What to Delegate

Start With Your Strengths:
- “You want to leverage out the things that you're already amazing at so that you can keep an eye on it... Because you live this. And more importantly, that's where most of your business is going to come from initially.” (03:40)
- Resist the temptation to copy others' strategies. Instead, focus on amplifying what already works in your business, especially with past clients and established channels.

Building Out the Team – The Flowchart Approach

Tristan shares a breakdown of essential team roles, each tailored to different needs within a real estate business:

Marketing Director:
- Handles ads, social media content, and branding.
Creative Director:
- Oversees videos, design, and ensures creative output stays current with market trends.
Director of Communications and Concierge:
- Manages relationships, scheduling, HR onboarding, direct communication with past clients.
- Notably, Tristan relies on a US-based staff member for this critical relationship-focused role.
Director of Technology:
- Manages systems, data, websites, and agent accountability (Trenton—based in Denver).
Lead Coordinator / Sales Manager / Inside Sales Agent:
- Oversees the sales team. Example: Tristan’s top agent, Mark Rader, took on these duties, maximizing his strengths and benefitting the whole team.
Quote Highlight:
- “It's not just a social media person, it's not just an admin. They wear many hats and those hats have a lot to do with your business. Specifically.” (05:55)

Action Point: Access Tristan’s Team-Building Resource

Listeners are encouraged to message Tristan on Instagram to receive his interactive virtual staff flowchart (“If you message me, it's an interactive chart. I have it on a website and you can literally take a look and take a look at the different circles in there.” [00:33])

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On Growth Mindset:
- “I want you to grow your staff. I want you to hire your first admin. I want you to hire your second staff member, your third, your fourth, whatever it is. I want you to do a great job.” (00:01)
On Focusing on What Works:
- “Where is most of your growth coming from? I think that's one thing we forget. We're like, whoa, Joe's doing so great over there with that. Ooh, Joanne's doing great with expireds. I wonder if I should do that. No, the answer is no.” (03:19)
The Many Hats of Staff:
- “They're not just doing one thing. It's not just a social media person, it's not just an admin. They wear many hats and those hats have a lot to do with your business. Specifically.” (05:55)

Important Timestamps

00:01: Tristan’s motivation for listeners to start building their team.
01:08: Personal story of hiring the first admin and expanding staff roles.
03:19: Advice to focus on amplifying your own growth sources, not copying others.
03:40: Leveraging strengths when hiring (“You want to leverage out the things that you're already amazing at…”).
04:45: Explaining key staff roles and how each supports business growth.
05:55: The importance of staff versatility and their multiple hats.
06:35: Offer to provide listeners with his team-building chart through Instagram.

Summary Flow

This short, actionable episode provides a pragmatic road map for expanding a real estate business through targeted hiring. Tristan draws on his personal journey, highlighting that the right hires — admin, marketing, creative, communications, technology, and sales — are essential for scaling. His approach prioritizes delegation based on strengths, leveraging what already yields results, and ensuring that each team member’s role evolves with business needs.

Listeners are left with a practical invitation: reach out for Tristan’s team-building chart and take concrete first steps to stop doing it all themselves and start building their own dream team.

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Transcript1 lines

[00:00]
A
I want you to grow your staff. I want you to hire your first admin. I want you to hire your second staff member, your third, your fourth, whatever it is. I want you to do a great job. And I've learned over the years that it's not as easy as it looks. Super scary. And I want to simplify it as far as identifying who would be next based on your strengths. Right. I have a chart for you. This is episode 717. If you message me, it's an interactive chart. I have it on a website and you can literally take a look and take a look at the different circles in there. But I want to go over the main ones and how I got started so that you can duplicate it, get some ideas and just get going to that next level. I'm Tristan. This is your daily real estate. It's a podcast, it's a show, five to ten minutes every single day on things you need to be doing for your business today. This chart is all about building your virtual staff. Look, you can have in house staff. I do. I've got a few in house. I've got quite a few in the United States, but I have also quite a lot of people in my staff that are outside of this country. And it all started, let's go, with the virtual staff. It all started with one, one director. And it was just an admin. Just hired an admin. I call him a director now director of operations. But it started with a simple admin. I said, hey, these are the things I need. And that's why yesterday I went over that prompt, right? To find out what the job duties are when you plug in those things for me. I needed somebody for the businesses I was going to run. I was like, well, I need somebody if it's for real estate. I need somebody to help me with all the things that I'm spending a lot of my time with, which is uploading, uploading properties into the mls, reaching out to my database, just nudging them and nurturing them with a real voice, making sure that we're posting the right things on social media. Longer term, the things that are kind of fillers, make sure it's the right messaging, right? I need somebody to edit my videos that I do so we can move faster. I need somebody to run some Facebook ads for me, meta leads like Instagram, Facebook. And then I need somebody to create the right graphics for everything that I want to put out there. So YouTube, regular graphics, flyers to look at my postcards. But the thing is, this one person would cover so much. And I realized after we started bringing in some money because now I had leverage and I was focusing on relationships, that I could hire a second person and that second person for me, because I wanted to alleviate some of that work for this one admin that became my director of operations. I wanted to alleviate time so he can plan out a better plan for all of us, me and him. I said, well, why don't I bring somebody on the marketing side so that they can edit and they can create the graphics? So then that was my second hire because we started growing a lot on social media. So I made sure that I looked at where is most of our growth coming from? Same question to you. Where is most of your growth coming from? I think that that's one thing we forget. We're like, whoa, Joe's doing so great over there with that. Ooh, Joanne's doing great with expireds. I wonder if I should do that. No, the answer is no. Don't start like that. You want to. You want to leverage out the things that you're already amazing at so that you can keep an eye on it, you know, if it's actually growing or not. Because you live this. And more importantly, that's where most of your business is going to come from initially. So if you're saying, tristan, most of my business comes from past clients, great. How can you do a lot more with your past clients, those people that already love you, by getting somebody to help. And remember two episodes ago, we had that three part series of Hop H O P. I mean, you could literally take hop. Meet. Your brand meets them at home, your brand meets them online, your brand meets them in person. And you can have a virtual staff member. Create an amazing plan that keeps your brand in front of your clients long term so that you can get more business from this. That's the key, really. And that's how I would stack it because I'm looking at my virtual little staff flowchart here that I have for you. By the way, this is episode 717. If you need this, I'll send it over to you. Just message me on Instagram. Here's what I got. Marketing director handles ads, social media content and branding. Creative director manages videos, design and creative output. This one has become more important than I thought over the long term because they're also keeping an eye on the trending things, right? Director of communications and concierge. For me, this person handles. They handle a lot of my relationships because I email them with everything, they handle my schedule, handle part of the Onboarding, hr. They could in essence handle communication with past clients directly. My director of communications and concierge, she's in the United States and so I lean on her a lot, like heavily. Not director of technology. Manages systems, data websites and agents accountability. You all know him. If you've been in my world enough, it's Trenton, right? He has now extended to do a lot more, but that's how it started. He's out of Denver. Lead coordinator, sales manager, runs the sales team and inside sales agent. This one was somebody else. But what happened over a longer period of time was one of my top agents, who you probably know is Mark Rader. He kind of took on that role. He handles all our ISA team. He helps me in the coaching side. He helps on the sales team. He's probably the leader of the team now. As I've grown, he's done a much better job. So anyway, some differences there. Those are the things that I would look at and say, where in my business can I start implementing this? So it's not just a social media person, it's not just an admin. They wear many hats and those hats have a lot to do with your business. Specifically. If you need this, message me on Instagram. I'll send this over to you. Have an awesome day.