A full-time operations hire is a significant financial commitment. Between salary, benefits, payroll taxes, equipment, onboarding time, and the ongoing overhead of managing an employee, you're often looking at $60,000–$90,000 or more per year before they've produced a single deliverable. For many agents and smaller teams, that number doesn't make sense — especially when the actual need is episodic: a system that's broken, a hire that needs onboarding, a busy season that needs coverage. Fractional support means you pay for exactly what you need, when you need it, with no payroll, no benefits, and no long-term commitment. You get the expertise without the overhead.

Operations support in real estate is a wide lane. On any given project, that might mean building or rewriting SOPs, cleaning up a CRM, designing onboarding materials for a new hire, creating a transaction coordinator workflow from scratch, auditing your tech stack, writing job descriptions, building training documentation, or providing coverage support during a busy season or a leave of absence. If it involves the systems, processes, and documentation that keep a real estate business running, it's probably something we can work on together.

A TC manages active transactions — they're in the weeds of individual files, tracking deadlines, coordinating with title, and keeping deals on track. X Marks the Ops works at the operations level, meaning the systems, processes, and infrastructure that make everything else run. Think of a TC as the person who manages each voyage. I'm the one who maps the route, builds the ship, and makes sure the crew knows what to do. Many clients use both — and if you ever find yourself without TC coverage, I can step in and handle files directly while you get back on your feet. Some engagements include building the very workflows a TC will eventually use.

Every engagement follows the same path: a free 15-minute discovery call to make sure we're a fit, followed by a 60-minute scoping call where we map out exactly what needs to happen. Within 48 hours of that call, you'll have a written proposal with scope, price, and timeline. Once you sign and the deposit is in, work begins. For Charting the Course and The Jolly Roger packages, full payment is due upfront. For Buried Treasure, a 50% deposit is due before work begins and the remaining 50% is due the next business day after delivery. For the First Mate retainer, payment is auto-billed monthly. Nothing starts until we both agree on what success looks like.

Both. Solo agents often need operations support the most — they're running their business entirely on their own and don't always have the time or headspace to build the systems underneath it. Teams and brokerages tend to have more complex infrastructure needs. The packages are designed to scale either way, and the scoping call is where we figure out exactly what makes sense for where you are.

If it becomes clear during a project that the scope is larger than originally mapped, we'll talk about it before any additional hours are used. A change order outlines what's being added and at what cost — nothing gets added without your approval. If you consistently find yourself needing more support than a project package provides, the First Mate retainer is usually a better fit and gives you a guaranteed reserved block each month at a lower hourly rate.

Because the calls are for gathering information, not delivering solutions. I need to understand your full situation before I can give you advice that's actually worth following — and that understanding takes a scoping call and a proposal, not a 15-minute conversation. Giving quick fixes on a discovery call is how you end up with generic advice that doesn't fit your actual business. The proposal is where the real work begins. That said, if something comes up that I can point you in the right direction on, I will — I'm just not solving your operational problems before we've even agreed to work together.