Real estate agents are grappling with a public perception crisis, and the industry's own messaging may be partly to blame. Courtney Poulos, Founder of SERHANT. CA and Team Lead of ACME | SERHANT. in Los Angeles, describes it as a “mirror problem” – a disconnect between how agents see themselves and how they are viewed by clients and the public.
“A lot of people see real estate agents as overpaid paper pushers who don’t earn what they make,” Poulos says. “And while the class action lawsuits and the public relations battles are largely driven by forces outside agent control, the way we show up, how we communicate, how we position ourselves, that is on us.”
Poulos recently completed Harvard University’s Advanced Management Development Program (AMDP) at the Graduate School of Design, where she studied alongside urban planners and developers. The experience reinforced her belief that agents often fail to view themselves as senior-level executives. “The only thing that is really missing is real estate agents considering themselves as senior-level executives in a business. We are not taken as seriously as we ought to be, like a lawyer,” she says.
A recent incident underscored the issue: a client chose to rent rather than sell and attempted to negotiate her commission below the cost of marketing already spent. “That is the level of disrespect I am talking about,” Poulos says.
One key insight from her Harvard coursework came from Carmine Gallo, a communication expert who trains executives globally. The lesson: audience-centric messaging – starting with what matters to the person you are trying to reach, not what makes you look credible to peers. “Real estate agents fall into the trap of marketing to each other,” Poulos says. “We post about our sales for other agents to see. We compete on metrics that our clients don’t actually care about. And we miss the opportunity to explain, in plain terms, what we actually do and why it matters.”
Poulos argues that the core work of an agent – data analysis, risk management, negotiation, and client relationship management – mirrors that of executives in any complex industry. “We protect our clients. We navigate. We clarify. That is the message. And most agents are not saying it,” she says.
To address this, Poulos is developing workshops and seminars, with the first session launching in Orlando this week, open to agents at all brokerages. The goal is to help agents build messaging that resonates with clients, the press, and regulators, and to rebuild public trust. “If what we can clarify for the public is that we are not overpaid, that we are experts, and that our public relations battles are not actually about whether we deserve to be paid, then we start to reverse the narrative,” she says.
Poulos’s firm, ACME | SERHANT., was founded in 2011 as a boutique brokerage in Los Angeles and as of April 2026 operates under the umbrella of the national firm led by celebrity real estate agent Ryan Serhant. Agents interested in participating can reach out to courtney@acme-re.com.
