Real estate agents are undervalued, and the industry itself is partly to blame, according to Courtney Poulos, founder of SERHANT. CA and team lead of ACME | SERHANT. in Los Angeles. Poulos, who is completing Harvard University's Advanced Management Development Program (AMDP) at the Graduate School of Design, says agents need to change how they communicate their value to clients and the public.
“We have a mirror problem,” Poulos said, describing how agents are perceived as “overpaid paper pushers.” She noted that while class-action lawsuits and public relations battles are driven by external forces, “the way we show up, how we communicate, how we position ourselves, that is on us.” Poulos cited a recent example where a client tried to negotiate her commission down to a figure that would not cover the marketing she had already spent on a listing. “That is the level of disrespect I am talking about,” she said.
Poulos believes the core issue is that agents do not see themselves as senior-level executives. “We are not taken as seriously as we ought to be, like a lawyer,” she said. Her Harvard experience, working alongside urban planners and commercial developers, sharpened her observation that agents fall into “the trap of marketing to each other.” They post sales numbers for other agents, competing on metrics that clients do not care about, and miss the opportunity to explain in plain terms what they actually do: data analysis, risk management, negotiation, and client advocacy.
One of the standout sessions in her AMDP coursework was led by Carmine Gallo, who trained executives on audience-centric messaging. The discipline, Poulos said, is starting with what matters to the person you are trying to reach rather than what makes you look credible to peers. “We protect our clients. We navigate. We clarify. That is the message. And most agents are not saying it,” she said.
Poulos is now translating these ideas into a series of 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 holds up with clients, the press, and regulators, and to rebuild public trust in a profession that has taken a significant reputational hit. “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 said.
The housing market, she added, has “a lot of good stuff going on, despite the headlines. It is the moment for something optimistic.” ACME was founded in 2011 as a boutique brokerage in Los Angeles and as of April 2026 is now ACME | SERHANT., under the national firm led by celebrity real estate agent Ryan Serhant. Poulos graduates from Harvard in July.
