Kevin Cottrell

“Shon and I have known each other for probably 15 or 17 years. I actually met Diana, his mom, and Tony before I met Shon. And the way that this relationship started was that I was in coaching with the Mike Ferry Organization and obviously Tony and Diana had direct involvement there. And I was actually coached by Mike ferry and then Debbie de Grote. And in the course of a lot of the live events, I met Diana and Tony because I was in central Texas. Actually, the first time I ever met Shon in person was at a live event where he was doing some training. You know, he started that training with them in the Colorado market, and he happened to be down in Texas MAPS his mom came down with her relationship with Gary Keller to start the maps coaching program initially.”

“It’s one of those things where there’s a short list of people who are really truly influencers in the real estate space. I’ve been to a number of his live events, and he does have a lot of influence. I mean, every time he announced that he’s doing an event or he’s doing something related to a training the room is full, and I think that is really confirmation of his influence.”

“You know I’ve seen a lot of trainers and a lot of coaches over the years. I’ve been in the real estate business for several decades, and what I observed is that Shon has keen understanding of various key elements, and this is why I think he has so much influence. He understands everything from a solo agent level to somebody who wants to be a big producer and run the business efficiently because that’s one model, and then there are others who get to the point where they want to grow big teams and organizations.”

“At one point when he was heavily involved in the MAPS program, there were lots of discussions about expansion. I was able to observe when I was at Keller Williams, his expertise in working with people that really wanted to build large organizations, which look a lot more like a corporate entity than what we typically observe with real estate production, where an agent’s out there putting signs in the yard themselves, and sometimes taking their own pictures.”

“Shon really taught people to build a business, and I saw him work with some of the biggest producers and the biggest organizations, and I think they were gravitating towards him because he knew everything from the scripting and the nuances of how to get the team and keep them on track to the point of running a profitable business from a P&L standpoint, and also understanding all the moving parts of expansion and production as you get to higher and higher levels of production.”

“I’ve been with a number of coaching companies, and some of the differences with Shon is that he acts a lot more like a true strategic business coach. He does have that expertise around scripting and the sort of “roll up your sleeves, we’ve got to get everybody focused on the right things to say to work with buyers and sellers operationally”, and what the key people are that you need, but he really is not so much formulaic.”

“I mean, some of the big coaches you see on stage that have these big events, it’s really the same thing again and again, and it’s very in the box, “we do this a certain way”. If you’re in coaching with them, it’s the same thing on a coaching call every week. Shon is, in my observation, I was never coached by him, but I certainly know him well enough that I know how he coaches is much more strategic and business focused than formulaic. I think he’s able to do that because of his experience, not only from a production standpoint, but also in the family he grew up in because he really was able to observe some of the different models of coaching and build something that was sort of the next step up in terms of the coaching model.”

“I’ve known Shon long enough and actually had some direct interactions where we work together to resolve things. He’s got impeccable character and integrity. He is very much about doing the right thing. I think he would be the first to walk away from a business position or a transactional issue and also coach agents to do the same when it would be damaging reputationally or the wrong thing to do. So I, you know, I look at him as somebody that has absolutely the utmost in character integrity.”

“My long relationship with Shon also included the entire due diligence and vetting process before he joined eXp. He and I met together in person and central Texas in the Austin area, and I was able to work through with him the due diligence process. I can tell you that the reason he’s done so well in growing an organization is that right from day one, the very first meeting and conversation we had, he really wanted to understand the business model, how it fit for agents, whether they were a solo producing agent, a person who was looking to build a team, and wanted to make sure that if he was going to put his name and reputation behind it, but also you’re going to look to build something that there weren’t any hiccups, and there weren’t any surprises. I think that speaks to the fact that his reputation has carried through to him building and being an influencer to eXp.”

– Kevin Cottrell, eXp Realty