TEAM TALK
The Spears Group
‘Doogie Howser’ of Real Estate Leads Top Florida Team
A
By Barbara Pronin self-described “serial overachiever,” Jonathan Spears was enrolled in college at the age of 14, and in 2010 earned his Florida real estate license just after his 18th birthday.
So, it is little surprise, as he celebrated his 30th birthday in January 2022, that the boyish-looking entrepreneur leads the very successful 11-person Spears Group, under the aegis of Scenic Sotheby’s International Realty, serving a high-end clientele in Northwest Florida and closing more than $1 billion in sales in under five years. “My friends at Florida State called me ‘Doogie Howser’ because of my age,” says Spears. “I didn’t even
88 April 2022 RISMedia’s REAL ESTATE
know who Doogie Howser was for a while—the impossibly young doctor on a TV show in the early ‘90s. I only knew that I was focused on getting my degree and starting to make my mark in the global economy.” In 2011, with the real estate market in an oversaturated and underperforming state, the 19-year-old went to work for a small boutique real estate firm. His business came primarily from short sales.
“I learned a lot about price and value,” he said. “I was beginning to gain experience in the luxury market, and I quickly learned how to go from reactive to proactive and make my phones ring.” In 2015, he joined the newly founded Scenic Sotheby’s International, and with his first hire, administrative assistant Sara Mallet, at his side, closed more than $45 million in Emerald Coast properties in his first year with the company. Barbara Pronin: What is it about real estate that attracted you, Jonathan, when you clearly had a world of choices coming out of school? Jonathan Spears: I’ve always had an advisor’s mindset, for one thing, and I knew how to articulate data. I had planned to go to London and study international business, but the more I learned about how the real
