After trying to build separate national expansion teams for decades collectively, David Lewis and Marissa Canario didn’t think a national team was possible. Until they found each other, along with co-founder Bobby Moats, and created a first-of-its-kind venture focused on the agent.
The aptly named Ryse Real Estate Group arose in January 2026 from the need to find a better way to scale a team nationally without the barriers the three leaders had faced on their previous expansion teams.
Moats and Lewis founded the team together. They met during their time at Livian, a Keller Williams expansion team with roots in 33 states, according to its website. Moats serves as LPT Realty’s SVP of Agentic AI and as co-founder, CIO and Head of Industry at Speculo.ai, an AI-powered database platform that was acquired by LPT in July 2026. Its AI teammate, Remi, won an Inman Innovator award for Most Innovative Lead Servicing Solution in 2026.
Lewis brings over a decade of experience building national expansion platforms at Livian and Five Doors Network and serves as the CEO of Ryse Realty Group.
Ryse’s Chief Growth Officer, Canario, came along later after leaving United Home Group, another KW expansion team that’s active in 167 U.S. markets and five international markets, to join their current brokerage, LPT Realty. Founded in 2022, LPT is one of the fastest-growing brokerages, ranked No. 11 on Real Trends 2026, with $23.62 billion in sales volume. Its parent company, LPT Aperture Holdings, filed to go public in July.
Together, Moats, Lewis and Canario have forged a path forward in what they believe is a first-of-its-kind national team, which they prefer to call a platform.
Ryse currently operates in eight states — Texas, Illinois, Georgia, Tennessee, Massachusetts, Wisconsin, New Mexico and Idaho — and 10 markets — Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Atlanta, Boston, San Antonio, Austin, Milwaukee, Albuquerque and Chattanooga. Its leaders plan to enter another 10 states over the next year.
Currently in growth mode, the team is projecting 1,000 transactions in 2027. Growth, they say, is spurred through finding like-minded agents and absorbing existing teams through acquisition.
Not your typical national team
Even with a large geographical footprint, they consider themselves one team, with submarket leaders to help lead in each locale.
“We consider ourselves a platform, not a team, because we do have different little subsets, but it’s one team across the country,” Lewis said.
When most people think of teams, they think 50-50 splits, one team leader who’s in production, dominating one city.
Other teams start small, and then get big, Lewis said. Ryse actually built big — nationally — before going small.
“We wanted to get out of that mindset because we don’t think it meets the needs of today. [When the average agent] went to a team before for opportunity, they went for a team because that team was kind of the gatekeeper for their success,” Lewis said. “Doesn’t really match the market of today. So like today, we believe that you can provide a high level of service and value and opportunity for those agents without putting them in that traditional team mold.”
The plan in the original version of an expansion team was to dominate one market, and then move to another market with the exact same model, built around the one team leader, Canario said. What makes a team successful in their market is typically the original team lead, and it becomes incredibly restrictive because team leaders can’t duplicate themselves into another market.
“And that’s where failure usually lives in expansion and national growth. You can’t replicate the one leader,” Lewis said. “So what we did was eliminate the rainmaker or the one leader and the need for that person to be prominent in each market. We built it around the individual needs of the agents and servicing those [needs], which is why we prefer platform.”
The original expansion teams began at Keller Williams, and all three Ryse leaders have that experience.
“The thought, the concept, the vision was incredible … when you pair multi-market expansion into multi-market, multi-layered leadership is where a lot of the friction happens, and I don’t think it’s anyone’s fault. But when you have regional leadership to work through, and you have market center leadership to work through, and you have other local leadership to work through, it creates a lot of tension for a team to expand,” Canario said.
Lewis and Canario agreed that it slowed down national expansion significantly, which is a big part of what motivated them to break the mold.
In a franchise model, every single partnership has to get permission from a local franchise owner, a regional owner and, ultimately, national leadership, Lewis said.
“It was really hard to make work. We made it work. I expanded into 167 markets. It worked, and there was a lot of constant back and forth around that,” Canario said.
A new mold emerges
While Ryse does have a similar 50-50 split structure with its team members, it’s not structured around a team leader in each market. Instead, they have identified market leaders, who are the hyperlocal, boots-on-the-ground leaders, but in more of an accountability role than as the face of the team.
“We needed people who could field the questions and give that little bit of local market knowledge. So that’s where the market leader comes, but they’re not the driver. Ryse is the driver of the opportunity. Ryse is the creator of the value. They’re just there to be a figurehead locally to help the agents with the questions and a little bit of accountability for those who want it,” Lewis said. “And that is kind of our thesis on how we cover the entire country, and it’s simply because we asked the agents what they wanted.”
Most organizations go wrong by focusing on middle management and serving what the leader needs. But servicing of the agent gets kind of lost in translation, Lewis said. They threw out the ego and the individual team names and focused on what the individual agent needs to be successful, which is great training and systems and tools that meet the market of today, he said.
To get those opportunities, agents are onboarded and work their way up the ladder.
Every agent who comes onto the team goes through a launch training, where they learn about the different types of leads, how to work them and what the KPIs and expectations are.
Then they graduate to a certain type of lead. Once they meet the KPIs there, they graduate to live transfer leads.
“And so we have this earning-of-rung system. So the agents are learning, and they are learning how to deploy their skills across different types of leads, and so that also makes us more successful with our lead partners because we are training agents, and they’re going by skill level. And I think that when you have a national team, you have to do that, or you have a really large mess,” Canario said.
In most team settings, it’s the team leader who dictates the goals for each agent. Part of breaking that mold for Ryse means focusing on what its parent brokerage LPT calls “individual definition of success” or IDOS, meaning that rather than trying to find agents who fit into the existing team’s culture, when agents come to Ryse, leaders will focus on the agent’s goals and find the best opportunities for that agent. And that’s ongoing throughout the tenure of a team member. If an agent needs to step back due to having a baby or dealing with a natural disaster, they can, without being penalized.
“We are essentially, for the first time ever, molding a platform around [agents’] needs and wants and goals, as opposed to trying to take them and fit a square peg in a round hole,” Lewis said. “Agent seasons change so drastically and so dramatically and so quickly … but those [agents] don’t go anywhere. They don’t leave real estate. Their needs and goals change, and we’re able to support that.”
“That creates this team-for-life concept where they don’t have to leave the team. Where in other formats they might have to leave the team. They could maybe come back, but ultimately, as their season changes, we can adapt with them versus their opportunity going away,” Canario said.
This really only works on the rails of a brokerage like LPT, Lewis said. Being in “spiritual and business philosophy alignment” makes it possible.
“You’ll see the similarities through and through because LPT was built to meet the needs of the agent in the market of today, and we think that Ryse is the first iteration of a true nationwide platform that abandoned all of the old philosophies, all of the old rules to actually do something different and innovative,” Lewis said.
No one-size-fits-all approach
When it comes to leads, Ryse is open to all possibilities. Rather than sticking to one uniform approach, they cobble together the best lead sources for the area.
“We learned that lead sources are not all created equal. They go through the seasonality that the rest of us do. But also, they’re very market dependent. Certain lead sources and certain programs and platforms work better in [some] markets than they do in others,” Lewis said. “So when we enter a new market, we take a very exploratory approach. What’s working? What’s not working? What are they using? Where are people having success? And honestly, what’s available?”
They’re open to every national platform and every startup platform, Lewis added.
“Now, where we think we’ve really hit the innovation piece is on our sphere or effort-based deals, which means if you put your sweat equity into it and earned it, or if it’s someone that you knew from your world, we allow our agents to earn into 100 percent commission on this,” Lewis said.
Ryse takes a similar approach with its tech stack as it does lead providers. They use Follow Up Boss, Ylopo’s Maverick, proprietary AI and LPT’s platform, with the goal of using AI to bridge gaps and using as few systems as possible.
The company gives agents what they can give but is also open to using whatever is the right fit for the business, Lewis said. Plus, he said, it helps that they’re not forced into a national adoption of anything because it can be very limiting, and some tech works better in some areas than it does in others. “We just don’t want to limit anyone,” he said.
“Honestly, I think that’s our superpower as leaders, too. We embrace the fact that what works today won’t work tomorrow,” Canario said.
