Think you’re a solo agent? Think again—your success depends on the team you build around you.
Chris Cook draws a brilliant parallel between real estate and professional baseball to drive home one powerful point: even the greatest players can’t win alone.
From broker managers and accountability coaches to CRM specialists and mastermind groups, he outlines the roles that elevate agents from average to elite.
But it’s not just about having the right people—it’s about being the right kind of agent.
Chris challenges listeners to rethink their definition of “coachable” and to take full ownership of their growth.
If you’ve been grinding alone or feeling stuck, this episode will make you ask the tough but necessary question: are you building the right team—or trying to do it all yourself?
Listen For
4:14 Who is the first person you should recruit to your real estate “team”?
5:51 What roles should make up your personal real estate support staff?
6:58 What does it really mean to be coachable in real estate?
13:46 What’s the missing piece when you feel stuck in your business?
Connect with Chris, Sales Representative | Team Lead at The Haylard Group – RE/MAX Hallmark ®
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Read the Summary Below
Building Your Real Estate “World Series” Team
In this solo episode, Chris Cook uses a baseball analogy—specifically the support system behind a World Series team—to explain what it truly takes to succeed in real estate. Just like a championship baseball team relies on managers, coaches, trainers, and specialists, a high-performing real estate agent needs a strong support structure behind them.
Chris outlines the essential “team” every serious agent should build around themselves: a broker manager (the general manager), an accountability coach, listing and lead generation support, transaction coordination, mindset and wellness guidance, financial strategy, CRM systems, and peer mastermind groups. Success at a high level is never a solo act—it’s the result of intentional collaboration.
A major focus of the episode is coachability. Chris challenges the common misunderstanding that being coachable simply means listening and following directions. True coachability is a two-way relationship: the agent engages, questions, implements, gives feedback, and grows alongside the coach. The best agents don’t just take advice—they actively participate in the feedback loop that pushes both them and their coach to higher performance.
He also emphasizes the often-overlooked role of the broker manager. While they may oversee many agents, they naturally invest more time in those who are engaged, accountable, and committed to growth. Coaches “play favorites”—not based on production, but based on effort and coachability.
The central message is clear: if you feel stuck, the missing piece is often not more information—it’s better engagement with the people already around you. Real growth comes from building your support team, leaning into coaching, and being willing to do the uncomfortable work required to elevate your game.
Full Episode Transcript
Chris Cook (00:08):
Welcome to this episode of Mind Your Real Estate Business today. It’s just me. But the good news is this is a conversation that I would have essentially with any real estate agent that is either just getting into the business or is finding themselves maybe overloaded with information that there’s a lot of different things that need to get done. But just one of you. So today while we’re recording this, the Blue Jays are going to be heading into Game three of the World Series. And so I thought it would be relevant to talk about what does it take to put together a winning team in baseball, the quintessential team sport. And I always found baseball to be particularly interesting because of how many coaches and support staff it takes to be able to bring that group of individuals together to be able to perform on the day and to be able to rise to that exceptionally high level of winning a World Series or competing to win a World Series for that matter.
(01:18):
So what I did is I went on not being a huge baseball fan, but being a fan of sport and understanding how things come together to one big picture. And so what I did is I went on chat GBT as we do these days, and looked up all of the different support staff that goes into a winning baseball team or really any professional baseball team for that matter. And so what it did is it gave me a list of 12 to 15 people that would be actively involved. And so you’ve got, obviously you have your manager, then you’ve got your bench coach, your pitching coach, hitting coach, first base coach, third base coach, you’ve got a bullpen coach, your strength and conditioning coach, your trainer, your sports psychologist, and then a group of private coaches that any single player would have that would help them maybe with their swing, maybe they have a physiotherapist or any number of those sort of things.
(02:21):
So there’s huge number of individuals who are responsible for bringing the big picture all together in one. And then of course you have your manager, the guy that’s always perched on the dugout looking extremely nervous and serious that orchestrates everything. He’s the guy that calls the bullpen, he’s the guy maybe giving signals out to the other coaches, which then is relayed on to the individual players. And so what really got me thinking is I was watching the baseball, the last baseball game, and I was looking at the various different coaches and I thought, how many similarities are there to real estate? Because as a real estate agent, that’s what I do. Everything gets tied back to that world. And I started thinking about all of the people that have been involved in my career and to be able to get me to where I am now.
(03:15):
But then now also being on the coaching side and working with the leadership team within the brokerage. I started to break this down to if I was an agent, if I was a solo agent in particular, but I wanted to really raise my level to high standard where I was essentially the Toronto Blue Jays of real estate here in the city, what would I have to put around me? And this is quite important I think, to any skill development. If you want to be at the highest level, you need to put a support staff behind you to be able to take you to where you’re going. And I think if you take a look at a lot of teams, we’ll see a lot of support staff behind the individual agents that are helping with some of that heavy lifting. So here’s the list of things that I put together that I think are an essential part of building a team.
(04:14):
And I think first of all, if I was starting out as a real estate agent in this business and I really wanted to build a strong team around me, where would I want to start? How would I start that process of putting all the right people to be able to bring me to a higher level of success? And I think that the one person that really comes to mind is that broker manager in your office. That person is the starting point for you to be able to put everything else around you. They are your general manager, so the broker manager, the general manager, they’re the person that’s going to help you orchestrate all of the other pieces and to be able to get you off the ground before you can start hiring in all of the other layers, they’re going to be the person that can help you look at what the long-term strategy is of where you want to go, help you map that out.
(05:06):
And then as you start to go through it, I started looking at some of the other things. Obviously you have an accountability coach, which can also be your broker manager. It can be a listing specialist, lead generation specialist, transaction coordinator, mindset and wellness, financial CRM and market analysis. And then the other thing that a brokerage can really do and that a broker manager can set you up with is a mentor or a mastermind group where you can bounce ideas off of your peers and be able to get to that higher level. That would be essentially, if I was to use the baseball analogy, that’s your team.
(05:51):
Those are the other players on the team that you are maybe like-minded with that are going to help you to be able to get to that next level. Now, this is the part where I have some real personal experience is how to be coachable. And I think a lot of people, they misunderstand what that term coachable really means. It doesn’t mean that you listen intently, and it doesn’t necessarily even mean that you’re going to do absolutely everything that the coach tells you because listen, I’ve done a lot of coach, I’ve been coached a lot and I have been a coach. Those two elements while important, they’re not the essential part of what brings somebody to the highest level. What I think about coachability, I think about an athlete or an agent that the connects with the coach in a way where they start interacting, where it’s a two-way relationship.
(06:58):
Where in this particular case, we’ll say the agent is interacting with the coach is challenging. The coach is telling the coach what they need, and then the coach is helping to deliver that while at the same time the coach is developing new ideas and challenging that agent to further build and develop their business. Now, the first guest that I had on this podcast was my sports psychologist, Dr. Colin Guthrie, and we had talked about this was this feedback loop where the agent is giving feedback and really pushing that coach to be better to coach at a higher level. And then the coach is pushing the agent to also do that same thing. And what happens is you get this feedback loop and a really positive feedback loop that is going to build that relationship where the coach gets better because of the relationship with the agent, and the agent gets better because of the relationship with the coach.
(08:10):
And that’s where I think true coachability, that’s what true coachability is. It’s not just listening blindly to what that coach has to say. It’s about mutual respect and growth together. And that’s where I think a lot of athletes really do rise to the top where they become that superstar on the team. And where I think a lot of agents fail, let’s call it, I’d be guessing at the number, but let’s say 80% of real estate agents that engage with coaching fail because they are not engaging at all. They’re not doing the things that they’re being directed to do. If that’s all you did, if all you did was follow directions, then it’s going to get you good ways there, but it’s not going to make you a superstar. What makes the superstar is that is getting to that place where you’re working with a coach that is going to really drive and grow your career and your development essentially that general manager.
(09:26):
And I think there’s a lot of athletes out there that have that relationship with their coach. And I’d go through and I would say, does Vladdy have that relationship with his batting coach? I don’t know, but I’m going to assume that he does have a very close relationship, at least one or two coaches that has really pressed him and got him to that higher level using a golf analogy like somebody like say Tiger Woods had a really close relationship with his father who was also his coach, but even that guy put other people around him to be able to push him and develop him to an even higher level. So what I want to talk about and or continue to talk about here is the importance of the role of the broker manager. And I think this role is oftentimes overlooked by agents because the broker manager has a lot of other agents under their purview.
(10:35):
But what I want to stress is that while there’s a lot of agents, let’s say there’s 200 agents that are at that particular branch or that brokerage and one broker manager, does that broker manager split their time evenly across all 200 people? No, they do not. Some people aren’t going to engage with the broker manager at all. Others are going to do it at a surface level. They’re going to go to them whenever they have a question. But a select few are going to engage with the broker manager to really help drive their business. And a lot of broker managers have the ability to be able to drive your business and to help guide it in a way that’s going to be successful in the future. Now, here’s the thing that I, and I’ll speak for a lot of coaches here and a lot of broker managers is I, and I know a lot of my colleagues do play favorites when it comes to coaching and support and our roles as coaches or broker managers, we play favorites.
(11:40):
And our favorites aren’t necessarily the people that are crushing it, that are doing a hundred deals a year or something like that. Our favorites are the ones that are coachable, that are coming to us for continued feedback, that are challenging us from a coaching role to be able to elevate our game, like what I said. And we’re again, challenging them. They’re the ones that reach out maybe because they have something to celebrate. They’re not just asking us for something, but they’re like, Hey, this happened. I did this thing that we had talked about that we had developed, and it meant that this other really great thing happened and I wanted to share that with you. That’s the definition of a coach relationship where I would want to put more into that relationship as the coach, as the person that’s directing that agent.
(12:42):
And this is the thing is once you have that, you have established that relationship with one person. It’s something that becomes infectious where you do this more and more and more and other people want to work with you, and then you’re able to put that team around you because you are so coachable, because you’re so likable, because you are executing the training, you’re doing the things while at the same time really questioning if it’s the best thing at the right time. It’s not always an easy relationship, but it’s one that I think will reap a ton of rewards for you. If you’re one of these agents that’s wondering, how do I get to the next level? How do I up my game and how do I get to a place where I am going to be able to find that missing piece? If you’re one of those agents that is feeling like something’s missing, but you can’t put your finger on it, the chances are that there’s going to be a coach.
(13:46):
There’s going to be a broker manager or somebody in your life that has an outside perspective, and maybe they don’t sell as much real estate as you, maybe they don’t have as much relevant experience in terms of actually going out and doing deals, but they have an outside perspective and they’re able to look at you and look at your business and give you that insight that you need to be able to make it to that next level. I find that a lot of people, not just real estate agents, but people, whether they’re athletes, real estate agents, business owners of different kinds, guides, if they’re feeling stuck, a lot of the times they’re feeling stuck unnecessarily because all they really need to do is ask for that input and be willing to take the advice that’s coming back to them. Really think about that advice. How does that apply?
(14:44):
How can I use it? And then continue that relationship, continue that dialogue with the person that has given you the gift of their professional opinion, their direction, and their advice. Not to dismiss it because maybe it’s inconvenient or difficult, but to really think about, okay, this is what’s going on and this is what I’m going to put in place going forward. This is how I’m going to interact with that person going forward. So while this is a shorter podcast than what we normally do, I want it to be concise, and I wanted to make sure that I had this opportunity to reflect on a lot of the conversations I’ve had with other agents, with other professionals in the business, with my colleague, Micah from last week, to really stress the importance of how many people are around you in your life right now? How many professionals within the brokerage really do care about you and your development? And ask the question to yourself, am I truly coachable by this definition that I’ve given? Am I open to doing some difficult things to be able to get myself unstuck and to get to the next level?
(16:13):
Thanks for listening to this week’s episode of Mind Your Real Estate Business. Please leave a rating and review and forward this to a friend or colleague. Thanks for listening, and we’ll chat to you next time.
