Next Level Agents: The Kevin & Fred Show - Interviews with the best and brightest minds in the real estate industry

This week's episode is a little different — and that's the point. While Kevin and the crew were out of town, Dustin Runyon stepped in to host the weekly eXp mastermind, with Kody Weitzel joining to break down exactly how he's on track to close 240+ deals and $72 million in volume this year. It was too good to keep behind closed doors, so we're sharing the full conversation here.

If you've been wondering what actually separates mid-level agents from the ones quietly stacking seven figures, this is the episode. No hacks. No funnels. No "secret strategies." Just the boring, unsexy, repeatable stuff most agents refuse to do — and the mindset that makes doing it feel easy.

What you'll take away:

Why "business shape" is the real difference between agents who hit their numbers and the ones constantly chasing them

The Level 10 Open House framework Kody used to scale from 64 deals his first year to 240+ deals today

The five pillars Kody runs his entire business on (and why he doesn't need a sixth)

The follow-up rule worth $7,500+ checks: never stop until they buy, sell, block, or die

Why most agents work harder avoiding the work than they would just doing it — and how to break the loop

Ready to stop tweaking and start scaling? If this episode hit home and you're craving the kind of mastermind that actually moves the needle on your business, head to nextlevelagents.com/exp to learn what it looks like to plug into our community. Or check out the events tab at nextlevelagents.com for our upcoming virtual and in-person masterminds — the same kind of room where this conversation happened.

Here's a question worth sitting with this week. Do you want to be interesting? Or do you want to make people feel interesting?

Most agents are chasing the first one. They walk into listing appointments, recruiting conversations, and team meetings trying to prove how much they know — their stats, their scripts, their systems. Meanwhile, the agents who actually win are running a completely different play. In this solo episode, Kevin Kauffman breaks down why the agents people keep choosing aren't the most impressive ones in the room. They're the ones who make everyone else feel like the most impressive ones in the room.

What you'll take away from this episode:

The honest question to ask after every conversation — did they walk away feeling impressed by you, or feeling more capable themselves?

Why most agents lose business by trying to prove how much they know

The recruiting shift that turns "pitching the model" into a conversation people actually want to have

The leadership question every team builder needs to answer — do my agents feel more dependent on me, or more capable without me?

A simple 4-step framework you can run in your next conversation tomorrow

If you want to lead a business and a team that compounds trust over time, the way you show up in conversations matters more than any script, system, or stat sheet. That's exactly the kind of leadership we've built at Next Level Agents — a community of agents who win by making other people more capable. If that sounds like the room you want to be in, learn more at nextlevelagents.com/exp.

Please leave us a review at https://ratethispodcast.com/nla⁠⁠⁠⁠

Most of the bad decisions you've made in your business didn't happen because you didn't have enough information. They happened because of how your brain processed the information. In this episode, Kevin breaks down the difference between your fast brain and your slow brain, and why most agents are running their entire business in reaction mode without even knowing it.

Then he walks through the six biases that are quietly costing you money, time, and momentum right now, plus a simple framework borrowed from Jeff Bezos that can change how you make every big call from here on out. Big shout out to Ben Kinney, who first brought a lot of these ideas to Kevin and the other PLACE operators on a recent Zoom and sparked this whole episode.

What we get into:

If this one pushed you to think differently about how you run your business, share it with somebody on your team, a member of your brokerage, or a friend who needs to hear it. Better decisions compound. The more people around you making them, the faster everything grows. To see what real coaching, community, and next-level decision-making looks like inside our world, head over to nextlevelagents.com/exp.

Here's a question worth sitting with this week. Do you want to be interesting? Or do you want to make people feel interesting?

Most agents are chasing the first one. They walk into listing appointments, recruiting conversations, and team meetings trying to prove how much they know — their stats, their scripts, their systems. Meanwhile, the agents who actually win are running a completely different play. In this solo episode, Kevin Kauffman breaks down why the agents people keep choosing aren't the most impressive ones in the room. They're the ones who make everyone else feel like the most impressive ones in the room.

What you'll take away from this episode:

The honest question to ask after every conversation — did they walk away feeling impressed by you, or feeling more capable themselves?

Why most agents lose business by trying to prove how much they know

The recruiting shift that turns "pitching the model" into a conversation people actually want to have

The leadership question every team builder needs to answer — do my agents feel more dependent on me, or more capable without me?

A simple 4-step framework you can run in your next conversation tomorrow

If you want to lead a business and a team that compounds trust over time, the way you show up in conversations matters more than any script, system, or stat sheet. That's exactly the kind of leadership we've built at Next Level Agents — a community of agents who win by making other people more capable. If that sounds like the room you want to be in, learn more at nextlevelagents.com/exp.

Some of the worst decisions you'll ever make in your business won't come from a lack of knowledge. You'll already know better. You'll just make the call in the wrong state of mind. That's the trap Kevin Kauffman is unpacking in this solo episode, and it has a name: the stupid zone.

The stupid zone isn't about intelligence. It's about the predictable conditions that push otherwise smart, capable, high-performing agents into decisions they'll regret. Kevin breaks down the seven factors, the way they stack on top of each other, and the single skill that separates top performers from everyone else.

The 7 factors that create the stupid zone:

When three or four of these stack up in the same moment, every decision you make in that window deserves a second look — including the ones being engineered for you on purpose by people who understand exactly how this works.

If you want to build a business and a life around decisions you'll be proud of a decade from now, the room you spend your time in matters more than almost anything else. We've built Next Level Agents to be that room — a community of agents who'll tell you the truth instead of telling you what feels good in the moment. Learn more and find out if it's a fit for you at nextlevelagents.com/exp.

Most agents think the market is what's holding them back. Or interest rates. Or the latest industry shake-up. Lucas Sherraden has news for you — it's none of those things. It's the story you keep telling yourself about all of them.

This week Lucas joins Kevin to break down what actually keeps real estate agents stuck — and spoiler, it's a cage most people can't even see. Lucas walks through how he went from $100K in credit card debt to running nine brokerages, why "I'm a relationship person" is the lie agents use to dodge prospecting, and why the most coachable people in the world are also the most stubborn. He also opens up about the conversation with his late mother that became the reason he wrote his upcoming book, The Uncaged Leader.

What you'll hear:

Why your preferences are quietly running your business — and how to take the pen back

The one question ("what else could this mean?") that changes how you handle every objection, every expired, every cold lead

Why most people who think they're self-aware actually aren't — and what that costs them

How to reframe recruiting from a notch on the belt into a mission worth waking up for

The two-minute conversation with his mom that rerouted Lucas's entire career

Why curiosity beats judgment in every market condition

Ready to do something with this?

If something in this episode hit a nerve, that's probably the bar of your cage. Don't ignore it. If you're ready to figure out what your next level looks like inside a community built around this kind of leadership, head to nextlevelagents.com/exp.

Connect with Lucas:

The Uncaged Leader (book + pre-sale waitlist): https://theuncagedleader.com/

Motivation gets people started. Clarity gets them paid. In this solo episode, Kevin Kauffman makes the case that the real estate industry's obsession with hype, events, and fired-up energy is actually getting in the way — because what most agents need isn't another pep talk. They need a plan.

If you've ever watched someone leave an event on cloud nine and then quietly drift back to old habits by Wednesday, this episode explains exactly why that happens — and what to do instead.

In this episode, Kevin covers:

Why motivation is overrated — and what actually drives consistent results

The real reason most "unmotivated" agents are actually just confused

How vague direction creates decision fatigue and kills momentum before it starts

What clarity actually sounds like in practice (with real examples)

The one question to ask yourself before every team meeting or coaching conversation

Why the leaders who win aren't the ones who fire people up — they're the ones who make it easiest to take action

Ready to be part of a team that leads with clarity, not just hype? Come see what we're building at Next Level Agents: nextlevelagents.com/exp

And check out our upcoming virtual and in-person masterminds on the events tab at nextlevelagents.com.

Most leaders think they have a team problem. What they actually have is a communication problem — and there's a difference. In this solo episode, Kevin Kauffman breaks down why saying something once doesn't count as leadership, and what it actually takes for your message to land, move people, and create real change.

If you've ever felt frustrated that your agents, your clients, or your team "just aren't getting it" — this one's for you. The problem probably isn't them.

In this episode, Kevin covers:

Why "I said it once" is the biggest lie leaders tell themselves

The difference between people hearing you and people feeling you

How to close the gap between clarity and conviction in your communication

Why repetition isn't redundancy — it's a requirement of leadership

The shift from asking "did I say that?" to asking "did it land?"

What it means to lead clients, not just agents — and how this applies to you right now

Ready to be part of a community where leadership like this is the standard? Come see what we're building at eXp and find out if Next Level Agents is the right fit for where you're headed: nextlevelagents.com/exp

And check out our upcoming virtual and in-person masterminds on the events tab at nextlevelagents.com.

Most agents are trained to be fast — fast to respond, fast to solve, fast to give an answer. But Kevin Kauffman makes the case that speed might be costing you more than it's earning you. In this solo episode, Kevin breaks down the communication shift that separates average agents from the ones people actually want to follow.

This one is practical, tactical, and honestly a little uncomfortable, because it means slowing down when everything in your training says speed up. If you're leading a team, working with clients, or trying to grow your business through recruiting, this framework will change how you show up in every conversation.

In this episode, Kevin covers:

Why jumping to your opinion first quietly kills your influence even when you're right

The order of operations that high-level communicators use (questions → curiosity → understanding → opinion)

Why understanding creates permission to lead and why authority, experience, and numbers don't

A real-world listing appointment example: how to handle the seller who insists their home is worth $750K when the comps say otherwise

How the same framework applies to recruiting conversations when an agent says "I'm thinking about staying where I'm at"

The four-step framework: Clarify → Explore → Validate → Lead

Why leadership isn't about having the right answers, it's about getting people to move

If this episode fired you up and you're thinking about what it would look like to be part of a team that coaches, mentors, and actually invests in your growth, check out what we're building at eXp.

Learn more at nextlevelagents.com/exp

Want to catch us live? Head to the events tab at nextlevelagents.com for our upcoming virtual and in-person masterminds.

Most agents aren't losing because the market is bad. They're losing because their view of the market is distorted — and they don't know it. In this solo episode, Kevin Kauffman breaks down the psychology of misperception: why we default to worst-case thinking, how that drives bad decisions, and what it actually takes to see clearly in a chaotic market.

This one hits different. It's not tactics. It's the foundation underneath every tactic — and if it's cracked, nothing else works.

Key themes from this episode:

Why the data says the world is improving — even when headlines say it's falling apart

The "two types of people" trap that makes you misjudge your market, your clients, and your competition

How blame creates the illusion of a simple explanation — and keeps you stuck

Why urgency is the enemy of clear thinking and strategic action

The difference between reacting to a moment and responding to a trend

Why high performers aren't the fastest — they're the most consistent and the most accurate

A simple playbook for slowing down and asking better questions when things feel chaotic

If this episode made you think differently about how you're showing up in your business right now, that's the point. The agents who win long-term aren't the most emotional — they're the most clear. If you're ready to build that kind of business, come find out what Next Level Agents is all about.

👉 nextlevelagents.com/exp