Commercial Agent Business Setup Checklist

Runway is the number of months you can cover living and business costs while no commission arrives. Build it before you need it.

• Write your personal monthly need from three months of bank statementsUse real statements, not a guess. This is line A of the first-year budget sheet, and it drives everything else in this section.
• List every business cost from a bill, quote or official page, then divide by 12Cover license renewal, association dues, E&O and brokerage fees, data, marketing, phone and software, vehicle and education. Do not guess prices. The IRS 2026 standard mileage rate of $0.725 turns planned business miles into a cost, and a mileage log supports it.
• Compute runway needed: monthly burn times (months to first check plus cushion months)Illustration: $4,000 personal plus $500 business is $4,500 a month, and 9 months to first check plus 3 cushion months is 4,500 x 12 = $54,000. Plan for no commission in the first 90 days. One training-company guide describes little income for 6 to 18 months, which is a guide, not a survey.
• Get your split, fees, payout schedule and E&O terms in writing from your brokerCommission is paid to the brokerage, never directly to you (F.S. 475.42). Ask what fees come out first, how many days after the brokerage is paid you are paid, and who pays for E&O, data and desk fees. Splits and models vary and are negotiable.
• Open a separate business account and a tax reserve account, and set a pay-yourself amountThese are practice, not law. Illustration: reserving 30% of every commission is a placeholder, and your CPA sets the real number. The reserve is for the tax bill, not for spending.
• Book a CPA before your first check and plan for self-employment and estimated taxMost brokerages treat associates as independent contractors, and commissions are typically reported on Form 1099-NEC. Self-employment tax is 15.3% on 92.35% of net earnings, and estimated payments use Form 1040-ES. Ask your CPA for a safe-harbor plan.
• Choose a bridge plan for any gap: savings, flexible income, lease checks, co-brokeringShrink business costs first by sharing a data seat and using free county records, but never cut E&O or let the license go inactive. Do not put living costs on credit cards or take a deal outside your specialty because cash is tight.

Proactive work has no deadline, so schedule it first or reactive work will fill every hour.

• Sort every hour into revenue-producing, deal work, research and learning, or adminIllustrative rookie split on a 40-hour week: 22 revenue hours (55%), 2 deal hours, 10 research and learning hours and 6 admin hours. It is practice, not a benchmark, and your broker may set different expectations. Set a floor for revenue hours.
• Build the ideal week before the week starts and block prospecting calls firstExample: calls Monday to Friday 9:30 to 11:30 (10 hours), follow-up 5 hours, appointments and site visits 5, referral meetings 2, deal management 2, research 6, learning 4, admin 6. Schedule meetings around the blocks, not the reverse.
• Give industrial owners and single-tenant NNN owners equal weight in your first 90 daysSplit calls between an industrial farm and an NNN farm unless your broker directs otherwise. Research differs: bay size, clear height and power for industrial; tenant, remaining lease term and rent steps for NNN.
• Confirm lawful calling hours and do-not-call rules with your broker before you dialSee Course 23 Lesson 4 and Course 27 Lesson 5 for the rules. Keep a do-not-contact flag with a date and honor it in every list you export.
• Batch email, silence notifications during blocks and publish your office hoursCheck email at set times, keep client phone calls on, and tell contacts when you reply, such as same business day by 5:00. Use an urgency test: a contract or lease deadline inside 48 hours, or a real client emergency.
• Run a daily plan and close, a Friday weekly review and a monthly reviewFifteen minutes to pick your top three and 15 to log next steps, one hour on Friday to review the scorecard and book next week, and 90 minutes on the first Friday to compare hours, pipeline and cash against runway. Pick time off in weeks with no deposit, diligence or 1031 date.

Commercial data is owners, entities, properties and deals, not a list of people.

• Ask your broker which CRM the firm provides, who owns the data and what you can exportTest any tool by exporting everything before you commit. A spreadsheet is acceptable for your first 100 owners if every row has a stage and a dated next step.
• Set up six linked record types: contact, entity, property, deal, task and noteType each owner once and add links, not duplicate records. Give each party a role on each deal, such as seller, buyer, landlord, tenant, lender, attorney, title agent or QI, because the role belongs to the deal link, not the contact.
• Add core fields: decision-maker, role, do-not-contact flag, source and dateFor entities, record the legal name exactly as on Sunbiz and the status with a check date, and recheck before any meeting where the owner will discuss signing. Fewer fields filled in every time beat forty fields half empty.
• Add asset fields for industrial and NNN only where you will use themIndustrial: clear height, bays, dock and grade doors, power and yard acreage. NNN: tenant, lease expiration, options, rent bumps, whether the guaranty is corporate or franchisee, and owner-stated NOI until verified. Store the parcel ID as your match key.
• Load lists in seven steps: back up, group by owner, normalize, verify, tag, search, mergeIllustration: 300 parcel rows but 220 unique owners means 80 rows collapse (26.67%), and at 6 minutes a touch a pass drops from 30 hours to 22. Merge duplicates and keep the history instead of deleting.
• Log every touch within 5 minutes with a dated next step and work from saved viewsSave four views: Today, Overdue, Tier A and Appointments this week. Run the Friday reports (overdue follow-ups, pipeline by stage, activity, source of business, referral tracking) and merge duplicates in a 30-minute monthly block.
• Record opt-outs, consent and recording notes, and store no data you do not needFlorida generally requires every party's consent to record a call (F.S. 934.03), and your broker may bar recording. Never store Social Security numbers, bank details or wire instructions, and ask your broker how long CRM notes are kept and who can see them.

One organized file and one deadline calendar per deal, built the day the contract or lease is signed.

• Create the same nine numbered folders on the day a deal starts00 Agreements, 01 Property, 02 Leases and financials, 03 Offers and LOIs, 04 Contract and amendments, 05 Diligence, 06 Financing, 07 Closing, 08 Communications. Link the CRM record to the folder rather than storing files in the CRM.
• Name files date first, then property, document and version, and never overwriteExample: 2026-10-05_[Property]_PSA_v3, with one clearly marked EXECUTED copy. Keep drafts in a subfolder and confirm the commission terms match what the closing agent receives.
• Put every contract date on one calendar on contract dayEffective date, deposit due, title objection, estoppels, diligence expiration, financing contingency, closing, 1031 day 45 and day 180 for exchange clients, and lease commencement. Count days the way the contract counts them, and ask the attorney if unclear.
• Set reminders at 7 days, 2 days and the day itself, and calendar the hard date twiceUse two apps or devices. Calendar the deposit goes-hard date on the contract date and again three business days earlier as your internal go or no-go meeting. Your job is to track the dates, not interpret them.
• Keep a deposit log and never hold or move client money yourselfRecord amount, due date, holder, written confirmation, receipt and release terms. Under F.A.C. 61J2-14.009, an associate who receives a deposit delivers it to the broker by the end of the next business day. Confirm the current rule with your broker.
• Confirm verbal agreements in writing the same day and put amendments in signed writingSend the summary by email and save captured texts to 08 Communications. Send the client a written status on a fixed day each week, and within 24 hours of a deadline change, as good practice.
• Verify wire changes by phone and hand a complete file to your broker of recordNever email wire instructions, and call a number from the contract or your own records. Under F.S. 475.5015 as summarized in the lessons, the broker keeps records at least 5 years from receipt of funds or signing, and longer with litigation. Ask for the written retention policy and label the folder with its keep-until date.

Free public sources first, paid platforms inside their licenses, one paid tool at a time.

• Bookmark public sources for each county you farm and log the source and date of every factOrange, Seminole, Osceola, Lake, Polk, Brevard and Volusia each have a property appraiser, clerk official records and GIS. Add Sunbiz, FEMA flood maps and state traffic counts. Appraiser square footage is a lead, not a fact, and land-use code is a tax class, not zoning.
• Build a six-tab starter workbook: Inputs, Rent roll, Operating, Debt, Returns, SensitivityOwn the math behind every tool: NOI, cap rate, DSCR, loan constant, amortization and a sensitivity grid. Illustration: NOI of $210,000 on a $3,500,000 price is 210,000 / 3,500,000 = 6.00%.
• Use the site deal analyzers and calculators as screens, not broker opinions of valueUse the deal analyzer for a screened NNN deal and the industrial deal analyzer for warehouse or flex. Enter your normalized NOI, write your assumptions beside every result, and label cap-rate ranges in tool copy as estimates, not closed comps.
• Ask your broker which data and listing platforms the firm licenses before you buy a seatUse paid platform data in the meeting and do not republish comps, photos or listing text unless the license or owner clearly allows it. Never share a login, and write the source and as-of date on any comp you show.
• Follow your firm's AI policy, keep client data out of public tools and verify every numberNo owner contact details, tenant financials, rent rolls, LOIs or contract drafts in public tools. Recompute what a tool tells you: NOI of $180,000 on $2,400,000 is 7.50%, not 6.5%. A licensed person reviews before anything is sent.
• Turn on a password manager, two-factor on email first, device encryption and backupsEmail is the doorway for wire fraud. Keep client documents in the broker's system, test a restore of your own working files, and add paid tools in phases only when a live deal needs one.

Your first year is decided by how well you use your broker, your teammates and a few associations.

• Bring your broker of record drafts before anything binds a clientBring draft agreements, signing-authority proof, deposits the same day, offers and LOIs when received, and marketing drafts before publishing. Report honestly, and never take a side deal that bypasses the brokerage.
• Ask what you owe when nothing closes before you join or signAsk about fixed charges, per-deal and monthly fees, who pays E&O, data and signage, how leads are assigned, who approves marketing, how disputes are resolved and what happens to pending deals if you leave. Splits vary by brokerage and are negotiable.
• Earn a place on deals with analysis, and agree your role, share and credit in writingOffer a finished deliverable, such as an owner and entity research sheet on an IOS site or a lease-by-lease rent summary for a single-tenant NNN property. Have the broker sign the one-page note, and get the broker's approval on any team name (F.A.C. 61J2-10.026).
• Confirm co-broke fees in writing before sending an OM, and reply within one business dayWork through another broker's client, share only what your client approved, and never rely on a verbal promise about a fee. Send a short thank-you after the deal.
• Pay referral fees only between licensed brokerages, through your broker, in writingF.S. 475.25(1)(h) bars sharing a commission with or paying a referral fee to an unlicensed person. Thank CPAs, attorneys and lenders with a note, ask your broker before any gift, and track every referral in your CRM.
• Join one or two associations, find a mentor and plan CI 101 for year oneOptions include a local Realtor commercial council, a development and industrial group, ICSC for NNN and retail, and the Florida CCIM chapter. Verify prices and mentor programs on each group's page, and keep a deal log of type, dollars and your role from day one.

Commercial owners hire the agent they have watched be specific, responsive and honest for a long time.

• By the end of Month 1, have a LinkedIn profile, one-page bio, simple web page and headshotAll of it is advertising. Use the title Sales Associate, and carry the licensed name as MaxLife Commercial, a division of MaxLife Realty LLC, next to contact details (F.A.C. 61J2-10.025). Your broker of record approves the format.
• Claim only what you can document and say assisted on a broker's dealDo not call yourself an expert or top producer, and do not cite volume or awards you cannot document. State your start date, that you work under a broker of record and what you are studying.
• Schedule one dated market note a month with a named sourceLabel cap-rate ranges on site pages as estimates, not closed comps, and never republish a data platform's comps or photos without permission. Keep sold-and-leased summaries generic and get the client's written permission and your broker's review first.
• Ask every closed client for an honest review the same way, and never pay for sentimentSend one generic request to every closed client, thank the reviewer afterward without a gift or discount, disclose any connection, and never delete or hide a genuine review. Get written permission before naming a deal.
• Put the Academy course order on your calendar and start Courses 23 and 27 in Month 1Suggested path: Courses 01, 02, 03, 13, 17, 09 first, then 12, 10, 11, 21, with the playbooks 23, 24, 25 and 22 and compliance course 27. Reading time for the first ten courses is about 1,175 minutes, or 19.6 hours.
• Schedule your 45 post-license hours early and check your renewal date on DBPRUnder F.S. 475.17 and DBPR guidance, a new sales associate must finish 45 hours before the first renewal or the license is null and void. Later renewals need 14 hours of continuing education, and renewals fall on March 31 or September 30. Confirm on your DBPR record.

These targets are examples, not benchmarks. Replace them with your own, and review them every quarter.

• Month 1: runway on paper, accounts split, CPA booked, CRM live and profile publishedThis is the foundation. If you cannot state your monthly burn and runway in months, stop and finish the budget section first.
• Months 1 to 3: build a defined farm of 250 to 400 owners, not seven countiesExample target from the course. Finish Courses 01, 02, 03, 13, 17, 09, 23 and 27 in the first quarter, and use Course 23 and the weekly plan checklist to size each list.
• Months 4 to 6: hold 125 dials a week and expect first appointmentsIllustration: 125 dials x 12 weeks = 1,500 dials, x 8% = 120 conversations, x 5% = 6 appointments. The conversation and appointment rates are course assumptions, not market data. Finish Courses 12, 10, 11, 21, 24, 25 and 22.
• Months 7 to 9: sign a first engagement and run every deal from a calendar and folderThe engagement may be a listing, tenant representation or buyer representation. Use the deal file and deadline calendar from the first day, and hand a complete file to your broker of record.
• Months 10 to 12: send review requests, ask your network for referrals and decide on focusSpecialize on evidence, meaning where appointments and the best conversations came from over two quarters: industrial, NNN or both. Work retail, medical office or land with a senior broker first.
• Hold a 90-minute review in the last week of each quarter: keep, stop, startKeep what produced conversations, stop only after enough volume (Course 23 says do not call a leak on fewer than 100 dials or 5 appointments) and start one new thing. Track cash received, but do not target it.
• At month 12, rebuild the budget worksheet with real numbers for year twoIllustration: three invented deals can total $50,750 of associate share and still leave a large shortfall against a $48,000 year of living costs after expenses and a tax reserve. Your numbers come from your own agreements, and a CPA sets your tax plan.