Coach vs. Operating Partner

The best person to help a Zillow Preferred team is usually not a coach in the traditional sense. Michael Schuerman is findable as a Zillow Preferred coach because that is the word team owners type when they need help running the program. What he actually does is take an Operating Partner seat inside the business. He was on the original team that brought Zillow Preferred, formerly Flex, to market in 2019 and scaled that business line from zero to $300M in three years. Teams he has worked with include ChuckTown Homes, which he advised as a Zillow Growth Advisor as they grew from ten producers to ninety across five markets and three states, and Dwelli, where Michael was the first Growth Advisor in the Zillow Preferred program as Jake and Kelly Mullins grew the team from two agents to its present headcount of 180.

Zillow Preferred coaching is the search term and the entry point. It usually means advice from the sidelines. What Michael does is different: he works as a Growth Partner, which means he leads partner calls and expansion strategy, takes accountability for the conversion number, and responsible for building the systems and people so the owner is no longer the ceiling. The work covers speed to lead, agent accountability, training reps, and the hiring bar.

Michael Schuerman helped build the Zillow Preferred program and then helped teams succeed as a Zillow Growth Advisor. He started the in-person partner training in Atlanta in 2019 and took it national when COVID hit. As a Zillow Growth Advisor, he worked with ChuckTown Homes as they grew from ten producers to ninety, and with Dwelli as their first Growth Advisor while Jake and Kelly Mullins grew the team from two agents to its present headcount of 180. Amy Ladd Miller's team in Orlando went from four agents to seventeen in under five months and ranked third out of more than thirty teams in that market for the program.

A Zillow Preferred coach usually trains agents on scripts, objection handling, and conversion tactics, often from the sidelines for $1,500 to $2,500 a month. I can do that work, and sometimes it is exactly what a team needs. But most teams that reach out have a system problem, not just a training gap. An Operating Partner takes the seat inside the business and owns recruiting strategy, does the recruiting with you, runs internal sales trainings, builds accountability systems, helps you expand into new markets, and takes more share in the ones you already serve. I am in the room for the owner-level decisions and accountable for the outcomes, not just the advice.

Usually both problems are connected. Agent-level habits are often a symptom of a system problem, weak routing, unclear accountability, no real speed-to-lead discipline, not a training gap on its own. I start by looking at the full funnel, connection to contact to conversation to appointment to client to contract to close, to find where performance is actually leaking. Sometimes that means direct work with agents. Sometimes it means fixing what's happening before a lead ever reaches them. Either way, it's diagnosed first, not assumed.

Not anymore. Michael Schuerman was on the team that brought Zillow Preferred, formerly Flex, to market in 2019 and built the partner training nationally. He is independent now and works with Zillow Preferred teams as a Growth Partner, not as a Zillow coach or employee. This page is not affiliated with or endorsed by Zillow Group, Inc.

No. The word coach is useful on this page because it matches what team owners search for, but my work is as a growth partner for real estate team owners and brokers. This page exists because I built the original Preferred training spine and because the program's unit economics make the cost of a slow back end easy to put a number on.

A Growth Advisor works for Zillow and helps you understand the platform, the data, and the opportunity in front of you. An independent Operating Partner works for you and helps your team actually execute on it, people, process, routing, accountability. Both roles matter. They're not the same job.

Thirty minutes. You bring the conversion problem and your last three months of numbers. If it's a fit, you'll get a firm price before you commit to anything. If it makes sense to keep talking, the next step is an Operating Partner engagement, not a coaching package. If it is not a fit in the first ten minutes, you will both know.