Your First 90 Days
as a Texas Real Estate Agent

Three jobs, in order. Get operational: complete onboarding paperwork, join your local REALTOR® association and MLS, activate lockbox access and contract software, set up transaction management, and establish a CRM. Build the skill: learn the promulgated contracts, build contract templates, run comparable sales, preview homes, and shadow an open house before a client depends on you. Work the sphere: organize everyone you already know, announce what you do, and stay in front of them consistently.

What a new agent should not do is measure themselves on closings at day 90. A first transaction requires finding a client, going under contract, and surviving the option period, financing, appraisal, and title — a sequence that frequently extends past 90 days even when everything goes smoothly. Measure setup completed, skills built, and conversations had instead. Those are leading indicators and they are within your control.

Kick Start is a structured onboarding program for new agents at JLA Realty, organized into six weekly segments with defined tasks, detailed explanations, a tracking checklist, and supporting documents. It covers getting operational, building your professional identity and database, announcing to your sphere and practicing core skills, meeting transaction partners and writing a business plan, hosting open houses and building buyer materials, and developing listing-side presentations and consistency habits.

It is designed to be completed in six weeks but is explicitly self-paced — taking longer is fine and working ahead is fine, since agents have different schedules and commitments. Supporting materials include full Buyer and Seller transaction checklists, Working with Renters communication scripts, a goal-setting worksheet, and a recommended reading list. Electronic copies are available on request so agents can adapt them to their own branding.

Three layers. The Master Training Pathway provides self-paced access to 60 courses that members can work through on their own schedule and revisit whenever a live transaction raises a question. Boot Camp is hands-on Texas contract and promulgated forms training, and it is the single highest-value session for a newly licensed agent. And a standing weekly live calendar runs throughout the week.

That calendar includes the M.A.D. Call with Broker/Owner John Altic on Mondays from 9:00 to 9:30 am Central, a Weekly Organization Call on Mondays, the S.O.A.R. Mastermind on Mondays, T.H.R.I.V.E. Training on Wednesdays, Real Talk About Real Estate with John Altic on Thursdays, and Perk & Purpose. Texas continuing education is also offered at no cost to agents. Schedule is current as of publication and subject to change.

Yes. Broker/Owner John Altic runs two live Zoom calls every week that any JLA Realty agent can join without an appointment: the M.A.D. Call on Monday mornings from 9:00 to 9:30 am Central, focused on motivation, accountability, and direction to open the week, and Real Talk About Real Estate on Thursdays, covering current industry topics, market conditions, and the challenges agents are actually facing.

For a newly licensed agent this matters more than it might sound. Most new agents never speak with the broker who carries supervisory responsibility for their license. Two standing weekly opportunities, plus access to Founder & Leader Jeremy Williams and experienced producing agents, means questions get answered by a person rather than a ticket queue.

A VIP is someone who knows you well enough to recognize your number and answer when you call. The Kick Start Program asks new agents to list 50 of them and load them into a CRM, and it is the highest-return exercise available to a brand-new agent because it costs nothing and requires no weekday availability to build.

The challenge the program names directly is that most of your VIPs do not currently associate you with real estate. If asked to list the top five things they think of when they think of you, real estate would not make the list. The goal is to change that — first so they think of real estate when they think of you, and eventually so they think of you first whenever they think about real estate.

New agents routinely chase strangers through paid lead sources while ignoring hundreds of people who already know and trust them. Building and consistently working the database outperforms that approach substantially in year one.

Timelines are set by your local association, not by the brokerage, and they carry real consequences. In Houston, HAR requires joining within 30 days of affiliating with a brokerage — failure to do so may result in your license being returned to TREC. HAR also requires attendance at its orientation within 60 days; missing that window can result in membership being canceled with dues not refunded.

Other Texas associations set their own requirements. Confirm the specific timelines with the association serving your market as soon as you affiliate, and put both dates on a calendar immediately. One sequencing note: MLS access flows through your sponsoring broker, since brokers hold the participatory membership and agents join as subscribers under it, so confirm your broker is a member of that MLS before applying.

Onboarding paperwork is processed through Macromodus. Transaction documents and commission processing run through BackAgent — all transaction documents are uploaded there before closing for manager approval, after which a Commission Disbursement Authorization is sent to the title company authorizing your commission at closing. Contracts are written and sent for electronic signature through ZipForms, which is included free with Texas REALTORS® membership.

You will also need MLS access and a lockbox key through your local association, a showing management app on your phone, and a CRM. On the CRM, BoldTrail with an IDX website is available to individual agents at a reduced rate of $50 per month on a 12-month agreement, and it is entirely optional — a spreadsheet or another CRM service works, and the important thing is tracking your network systematically rather than which tool you use. Pricing and program details are current as of publication and subject to change.

Some new agents do, often through their sphere of influence, and lease transactions frequently come sooner than sales. But it is not a reasonable benchmark to hold yourself to, and no brokerage can guarantee it. The timeline works against it: you have to find a client, get them under contract, then survive the option period, financing, appraisal, and title before anyone is paid — a sequence that often runs past day 90 on its own, before accounting for the weeks spent finding that client in the first place.

Results depend on your market, your effort, your skill, and conditions no one controls. The more useful question at day 90 is whether you built the habits that produce closings in month six: an organized and actively worked database, contract competence, consistent prospecting, and a defended calendar.

Time blocking means identifying the activities that actually build your business and assigning them dedicated, defended slots in your calendar. The Kick Start Program treats it as foundational because it addresses the central difficulty of self-employment: you set your own schedule, and nobody assigns you work.

That freedom is what most people find appealing about real estate and what most new agents struggle with. Competing demands — another job, family obligations, ordinary life — fill any unstructured time. Agents who last are the ones who put business-building activity on a calendar and treat those blocks as unmovable. Motivation fluctuates; a calendar does not.

You do not need to know every task upfront. The program's guidance is to start blocking time for business-building activity now and refine what fills those blocks as you learn what the work actually requires.

Boot Camp first, without close competition — if a new agent attends only one training, contract and promulgated forms training is the one, because that is where new agent mistakes become liability. From there: Back to Basics, ZipForms, Loans 101, Title 101, an RPR or CMA class, MLS platform training, Credit Repair, Personal Branding 101, and Social Media Marketing.

Alongside those, the Master Training Pathway offers self-paced access to 60 courses that can be taken in any order and revisited whenever a live situation calls for it. The practical approach is to prioritize the live sessions covering contracts and transactions, then use self-paced material to fill in around your schedule.

No. Agents affiliated with JLA Realty are independent contractors, not employees, and control their own schedules, business methods, and working hours. The Kick Start Program is explicitly self-paced — its own guidance is that agents work at their own pace, that taking longer than six weeks is perfectly fine, and that working ahead is equally fine, because agents have different schedules and commitments.

No session on the training calendar carries mandatory attendance and no task carries an imposed deadline. Some items are genuinely time-bound, but by third parties rather than the brokerage: association and MLS membership timelines are set by the association, TREC education and renewal requirements are set by regulation, and transaction documents must be submitted for commission processing to occur. Those are noted as such rather than presented as brokerage rules.

It is the most direct way for a brand-new agent to meet buyers who do not yet have representation. You do not need your own listing — open house opportunities are regularly available through the JLA Realty agent community, and you can reach out to the listing agent and offer to host.

The program suggests shadowing an experienced agent's open house first to see how it is run, then hosting your own. Practical guidance from the program includes placing signs out a couple of hours early, promoting on social media before and during, considering door knocking or flyers for neighbors beforehand, preparing property flyers with your contact information, providing a way to capture visitor contact information for follow-up while respecting those who decline, opening blinds and turning on lights, arriving on time — particularly when hosting for another agent — and securing the home and tidying before you leave.

Yes, and many new agents overlook them because commissions are lower than on a sale. That is a mistake for three reasons. Lease transactions generate income sooner, which matters when your revenue cycle is otherwise measured in months. They expand your client base quickly. And lease clients frequently become buyers over time and serve as referral sources well before that.

The Kick Start Program includes a full Working with Renters communication sequence covering the initial meeting, application submission, showings, approval, lease signing and funds, utilities, move-in, and the inventory and condition form — so a new agent can run a lease transaction professionally without improvising the process.