Real estate agents are facing a crisis of perception, and according to Courtney Poulos, founder and broker-owner of ACME | SERHANT. in Los Angeles and a member of the SERHANT. CA founding team, the industry has only itself to blame. Poulos, who graduates from Harvard University’s Advanced Management Development Program (AMDP) at the Graduate School of Design in July, says agents must start seeing themselves as senior-level executives to change the narrative.
“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. And we are still contending with a degradation of our perceived value, even at the senior level,” Poulos said. She recalls a recent incident where a client chose to rent a property rather than sell, then tried to negotiate her commission down to a level that wouldn’t cover her marketing costs. “That is the level of disrespect I am talking about,” she said.
Poulos’s AMDP coursework, which included a session led by communication expert Carmine Gallo, highlighted the importance of audience-centric messaging. “Real estate agents fall into the trap of marketing to each other,” Poulos said. “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.” She argues that the core of real estate work—data analysis, risk management, negotiation, and client relationship management—is comparable to executives in any complex industry. “We protect our clients. We navigate. We clarify. That is the message. And most agents are not saying it.”
To address this, Poulos is developing 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 resonates 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. “And the housing market is a place where there is 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. For more information or to participate in the workshops, agents can contact courtney@acme-re.com.
