140 Agents, 60% Growth: How Ruben Luna Built a Team That Doesn't Run Through Him

Dave Richards and I coach agents all over the country, and we hear the same thing everywhere we go. The market’s bad. Nobody’s buying. Now’s not the time.

Meanwhile, Ruben Luna, CEO of The Luna Team at eXp Realty, grew his team 60% year over year. He runs about 140 agents in Phoenix’s West Valley. So I asked him for the secret sauce, the one thing. His answer: “There’s no secret sauce, besides staying consistent.”

Dave is Ruben’s coach, so this one felt like family. If you’ve ever wanted to build a real estate team, or you already have one and it feels like it’s pulling you backwards, this conversation is the playbook. Here’s what I hope you take from it.

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Focus on Your Agents’ Actions, Not the Market

When I asked Ruben what keeps the momentum going, he didn’t talk about rates or inventory. He talked about his people.

“We don’t concentrate on what the market is doing. We concentrate more on the actions of our agents.”

If the team has a goal, they don’t care whether the market goes up or down. They care about what the agents need and what needs to be done to hit the goal. Maybe that means working a little harder. As Ruben put it, “The market’s going to do what it’s going to do. Our job as a team, leading our team, is to make sure that our agents have the right perspective of what it takes to be able to survive any kind of market.”

That’s Focus, the first burner in FIRE. The 87% watch the headlines. The 13% watch their own activity. You can’t control the market. You can control what you and your people do this week.

Hire for Overwhelm, One Seat at a Time

Here’s the golden question I get all the time: “I want to start a team. What’s my first hire?”

Ruben’s first warning is that people say “I want to build a team” way too lightly. “It requires a ton of work. You got to be patient. You got to be very consistent.” And you have to put your agents ahead of your own priorities.

Then he gave the clearest hiring rule I’ve heard in a while. He looks at the gaps. “At what point am I getting overwhelmed? And then when I’m getting overwhelmed on doing certain things, then that’s going to be my next hire.”

For a producing agent who’s starting to scale, he doesn’t start with buyer’s agents and listing agents. He starts with an assistant. What can that assistant take off your plate so you can keep delivering a great experience to your clients?

When the assistant gets overwhelmed, that’s the signal for the next seat. A transaction coordinator. A showing agent before you get to a buyer’s agent. “I’m always hiring as I go, depending on where I feel that I’m getting overwhelmed.”

Dave added the question that should come before any of that: what’s your why? Is it leverage? Do you want to pour into people? Because a successful agent becomes a magnet. People want to hang around. And if you’re not careful, Dave said, “you just kind of get people that are just kind of clumped on you,” and that’s not really a team.

He reminded Ruben that when they started working together, a huge percentage of The Luna Team’s business was Ruben’s personal production. Today it’s a fraction. “You got to free yourself up in order to be able to grow.”

Ruben admitted it was hard. “I’m a ball hugger, but I learned to let go.”

The Prison You Build With Your Own Production

Then Ruben named the real problem.

“The biggest problem here is that we fail to train. We don’t take the time to train them. And now those hires are pulling us back just because we don’t take the time to actually train them the way we want to.”

Dave called it what it is: “You kind of create your own prison.” You don’t have time to train your people because you’re busy with your own production. But because you don’t train them, they need you more. They don’t move forward. They pull you back. And around it goes.

I met with a team leader who went from nobody to 35 people in three years and asked what he was doing wrong. My answer: “You’re taking all their calls. You’re going on all their listings. You have no way to scale.”

You might lose a couple dollars in your pocket for the next six months or the next year. Look at the return on that investment down the road. It’s hard to become a leader while you’re still the top producer on every deal. At some point you draw a line in the sand and decide to leverage your time.

The Operations Hire and Why Systems Need Teaching

For Ruben, the hire that changed everything was an operations manager.

Think about what it takes to learn a system or a program and implement it. “That right there alone, it takes a whole lot of time. And then teach it to the team, it takes even longer.”

This is where Ruben sees brokerages and teams break down. “You have all these systems and processes and everything in place, but you’re not teaching the team, the agents, how to use it. Then what’s the point?”

An ops hire isn’t cheap, and you’re handing over your baby. Dave said that was the hire that lifted the lid for The Luna Team. But he also warned smaller teams not to over-structure. A small team can pivot fast. Moving 140 agents is like turning a cruise liner. So use your speed, and lean on the training already around you, including your brokerage, instead of custom-building everything.

They Leave You for What You Promised on Day One

A lot of people starting teams think they have to buy value. I have to buy leads or they’ll leave. I have to get a big building or they’ll leave.

Here’s what I’ve always told people: they leave you for what you promised on day one, not day 100. If you promise it on day one, you better still bring it two years later. If you tell an agent they get a one-on-one with you every other Monday and then you start canceling, they’re going to blame it on the split and walk.

Ruben’s numbers back this up. “Thankfully most of our team members do stay with us. I mean, our retention is huge. It’s like what, 80 to 85%.” He has team members who have been with him for 15-plus years.

How? “We have a very strict schedule and we follow through. What we promise, that’s what’s going to happen every single week.” And because of that, “most of our growth has been word of mouth.”

Dave added that there’s no right or wrong value proposition. Teams go wrong when they don’t know what theirs is, throw out promises to get people in the door, then change direction two years later.

Ruben’s own version is simple: lead by example. When agents see what the leaders do every week, they see the value.

Six Months of Consistency

I flipped the script and asked Ruben about the independent agent who’s been in a couple of years, done a few deals, and is struggling. What’s the one thing to change?

His first answer was blunt: put yourself against the wall. Too many agents have a plan B. “It really surprises me how simple it is to create business, but how hard it is for agents to actually take advantage of it.”

His prescription: “Have a plan that you can stick with for at the most minimum six months.” You’re going to get discouraged in the first couple of weeks when nothing happens. “Give it six months before you give up.” Then look back and decide whether you need to change course. “Before you start making changes, stay consistent for six months.”

And start now. “If you want to make changes, you got to start now, because tomorrow is going to be the same thing.” The changes don’t have to be huge. You can change direction today. The results take time.

Dave tied it to burning the boats and to who you surround yourself with. Hang out with struggling agents and they’ll keep feeding you the same negative story. “Winning begets winning.”

That’s Resilience and Execution together. Pick the plan. Run it long enough to find out if it works.

Treat the Business Like a Business and the Job Like a Job

Here’s where I’ve landed after all these years. You need to treat the business part like a business. You need a P&L. You need an LLC. You need a bank account. But treat the job part like a job. Show up when you don’t feel well, like someone could fire you.

Think about that bad job you showed up to for two years, the one that paid you $6 an hour and you hated. What would happen to your life if you put that same effort into your business?

Ruben agreed. New agents don’t understand how many hats they’ll wear, “from CEO to marketing to being a realtor.” They hear “I’m my own boss” and miss how much work it takes just to be somewhat successful early on.

He also asks himself a question before taking a day off: do I deserve it? If you’ve built a business that can run without you for a day or two or maybe a week, then go relax. If you haven’t, the business isn’t there yet.

Dave shared that his grandfather owned a Harley-Davidson shop and worked 80 hours a week. That’s what owning a business actually looks like.

Your Next Move

One thing to do today: write down the tasks that overwhelmed you last week. Circle the one that keeps pulling you away from the work only you can do. That’s your next hire, your next system, or your next training session. Then pick the plan you’ll run for the next six months, and don’t touch it until you’ve given it a real shot.

If you want a structure for that, grab the free 13% Cheat Sheet. It gives you one 10-minute move for each FIRE burner, so you can get a win today. And if you want the full picture of how the 13% think, act, and execute, grab The 13% here.

Catch the full conversation on The 13% Podcast YouTube channel, and if you’re an agent in the Valley looking for a team built on consistency, check out The Luna Team.

Keep grinding.

Lance