The $400,000 Assistant: How One Denver Agent Built a Team That Runs Without Him
- Jerad Larkin
- 16 hours ago
- 7 min read
When should a real estate agent hire an assistant?
Most agents should hire back-end support once their production can cover roughly $60,000 in salary, and that first hire should own marketing and operations so the agent can stay in front of clients instead of doing paperwork at 10pm.
At the Unfiltered Event this week I sat down with Jason Cummings, one of the top-producing agents in Denver, and asked him the question every agent in that room was actually thinking: what are you doing that the rest of the top 5% either aren't doing or aren't willing to do?
His answer had nothing to do with lead generation, scripts, or a CRM. It was about payroll. Jason has built a five-agent team around back-end support so complete that he hasn't posted on social media in seven years and doesn't look at his own marketing. He pays his operations lead $400,000 a year. His total payroll runs around $500,000.
I'm Jerad Larkin, Account Executive with Chicago Title of Colorado. I work with agents across the Denver metro every day, and the gap between agents doing $5 million and agents doing $50 million is almost never talent. It's what they've built underneath themselves. Jason's answer is the clearest version of that I've heard, so here it is in full, plus what I think an agent at any level can actually take from it.
Watch the interview
The full conversation runs about eleven minutes. If you only have two, jump to 1:07, where he tells the story of the hire that changed his business.
The hire that changed everything: 288 applicants, one interview
Jason didn't stumble into a great assistant. He went through a bad stretch first.
Before Samantha, he had four or five employees. His words: good employees make better people than employees. No imagination, no skill set. He had to go through what he called the shuffle before he understood what he was actually looking for.
Then he did something most agents never do. He put a resume finder on Indeed and worked the funnel like a real hiring process:
Screened 288 applicants
Samantha was the twelfth he screened and the first he interviewed
She was also the last interview he did
That's the part worth sitting with. He interviewed one person. Not because he got lucky, but because he screened hard enough beforehand that the interview was a formality.
What she owns now: marketing, operations, brochures, property websites, listing prep, inspection items, social media. She also has access to his personal text messages and email, and answers business inquiries within three minutes while his phone sits face down.
His summary of why it works: once you find talent, get out of the way and let them do them. Don't micromanage.
Why he hasn't posted on social media in seven years
This is the line that stopped the room, and it's the one people will misread.
Jason isn't anti-marketing. His team's marketing is relentless. Every listing gets brochures and a property website. What he's saying is that he personally does not touch it, and hasn't since roughly 2019.
He said it plainly: I don't really know how to.
The lesson isn't "stop posting." Most agents reading this should post more, not less. The lesson is that at a certain volume, the agent doing their own social media is the bottleneck. Jason decided his job was real estate, and marketing was someone else's job, and then he actually paid someone to do that job well.
The real numbers, since nobody publishes these
Jason put his payroll on the table in front of a room full of agents, which almost nobody does. Rounded:
Samantha, operations lead: $400,000
Alex: $100,000
Alex's assistant, a VA: roughly $30,000
Plus a transaction coordinator
Total: around $500,000 in payroll
He also gave the historical benchmark. Eight years ago the rule of thumb was that you needed to do about $18 million a year in volume before you could reasonably carry a $60,000 employee. Adjusted for inflation, that number is higher now.
That benchmark matters more than the $400,000 headline. Most agents are not hiring a $400,000 operations lead. They're deciding whether they can afford their first $60,000 hire, and Jason's answer is that you need enough production to carry it, or you need a partner.
What he says no to
Jason turns down 20 to 30 listings a year on purpose.
The categories he walks away from:
Sellers he can't get to the right price
Owners who bought in 2022 and are meaningfully upside down
The FSBO-style buyer calling him cold to tour his listings
Anyone where the mutual respect isn't there, or where he can't do the job authentically
He was honest that this took years to learn. He described himself as a sucker for good people, someone who used to stretch and take the tricky listing because he liked the clients. Now he doesn't.
If you're taking every deal that comes your way and wondering why you're exhausted, that's the part of this to sit with.
The two roles he's adding next
Both of these are worth stealing, and neither is common in Colorado.
A full-time creative media director. Not a contractor, not a per-listing videographer. A full-time person, 50 hours a week, doing nothing but content for his team. Whether Jason is on camera that day or in appointments, that person is out shooting, running a drone over Cherry Creek, producing. He cited Ryan Serhant doing this in New York roughly ten years ago and noted nobody has done it in Colorado.
A client concierge manager. One person whose entire job is calling past clients. Not to ask for referrals. To ask how the house is doing, whether the HVAC needs service, whether they want dinner reservations at the new restaurant in Cherry Creek on Friday. He described it as a Four Seasons concierge for his database.
His own framing: it's a couple hundred thousand dollars on top of an already high payroll. But the concierge role in particular is cheaper than most agents assume, and the retention math on a database that gets nurtured like that is hard to argue with.
If you can't afford a $60,000 hire yet
Jason's advice for agents who aren't there was specific, and it wasn't "work harder."
Join a team that genuinely has amenities. Not a team that says it does. One that actually handles your social, your brochures, your property websites, your listing prep, and your inspection items.
Or partner with another agent in your office and split a hire between you.
Then reinvest in talent as production grows.
He also pointed at the results on his own team as proof it isn't about him. Jamie was doing 8 deals when he found her four years ago and is on pace for 50 this year. Anna went from 12 to 40. His read: that has nothing to do with me, it has to do with Sam and Sam's processes.
That's the argument for systems over hustle, made with names and numbers attached.
Why he left Compass for Serhant
Jason spent seven years at Compass and recently moved to Serhant as a founding agent in Colorado. He was candid that he gave up a lot to do it, including a referral network he had spent years building among the top agents in the country.
What moved him was a series of conversations. He talked to Ryan Serhant twenty or thirty times over several months. What struck him wasn't the TV version. It was that the guy picked up almost every call, answered FaceTimes, worked out at 6:30 in the morning, and had a very clear picture of what he wanted to build.
His conclusion: I think he can make me better.
Whatever you think about brokerage moves, that's a clean framework for evaluating one. Not the split. Not the brand. Whether the people there will make you better.
What I'd take from this if I were a Denver agent
Three things, in order of how quickly you can act on them.
Audit where your hours actually go for one week. Not where you think they go. Most agents find fifteen to twenty hours of work a $25-an-hour person could do. That's your first hire, and it's usually a part-time VA before it's a full-time employee.
Screen harder than you interview. Jason screened 288 people to interview one. Most agents interview five and hire the most likable. The screening is the work.
Decide what you say no to before the listing appointment. Write the categories down. It's much easier to decline a deal against a rule you set in advance than to talk yourself out of one in a seller's kitchen.
As an Account Executive with Chicago Title of Colorado, I see the back half of this every day. The agents with real operational support have closings that run clean, because someone on their team is watching dates, disclosures, and inspection items while the agent is out winning the next listing. The agents doing it all themselves are the ones we're chasing for signatures at 9pm the night before closing. Building the team doesn't just grow your business, it makes the last two weeks of every transaction dramatically less painful.
Frequently asked questions
When should a real estate agent hire their first assistant?
The traditional benchmark Jason cited is roughly $18 million in annual volume to comfortably carry a $60,000 employee, and that number is higher today with inflation. If you're not there, the realistic paths are a part-time virtual assistant, splitting a hire with another agent in your office, or joining a team that already provides marketing and transaction support.
What should a real estate assistant actually do?
On Jason's team, the operations lead owns marketing, brochures, property websites, listing prep, inspection items, social media, and client communication. The principle is that the assistant takes everything that isn't a conversation with a client, so the agent stays in front of people.
How much do real estate assistants get paid?
It ranges enormously. A virtual assistant may be $25,000 to $35,000. A capable transaction coordinator or marketing assistant in Denver typically runs $50,000 to $70,000. A true operations lead running an entire team, like Jason's, can reach $400,000. You're paying for scope and judgment, not tasks.
Do real estate agents need to post on social media?
Most do. Jason is an exception who has a full marketing operation handling it for him. If you don't have someone producing content on your behalf, you are the marketing department, and stepping away from it is not a strategy.
Is it worth turning down listings?
Jason turns down 20 to 30 a year and credits it with protecting both his margins and his reputation. The test he uses is whether he can price it correctly and do the job authentically. Taking a listing you can't sell costs you money, time, and a seller who tells people you couldn't sell their house.
Want more of this?
I run classes and events for Colorado real estate agents on marketing, AI, and business growth, and I send a weekly email with tools and tactics you can use the same day.
Jerad Larkin
The Mile High Title Guy
Chicago Title of Colorado
303.630.9430 | Info@MileHighTitleGuy.com
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