When I started out, I thought my job was to make people happy.
Not “help them,” exactly. Happy. I wanted every client to walk away from every conversation feeling good, and I quietly believed that if I could just keep everyone smiling, the rest would take care of itself. It’s not the worst instinct in the world. But it led me to make a mistake I still think about.
I had a seller. Lovely people, a home they’d raised their family in, and a number in their heads. A big number. It was more than the market was telling me the house was worth, and I knew it the moment I walked through the door. This was my chance to say so. Kindly, but clearly.
Instead, I softened it. I told them what they wanted to hear. I nodded along with the number because pushing back felt uncomfortable, and because some part of me worried that if I didn’t, they’d find an agent who would agree with them. So we listed high.
And then we waited.
The showings trickled in and then stopped. The feedback was polite and unanimous: beautiful home, priced too high. Every week the listing sat was a week that home lost a little shine in the eyes of the market. Buyers started to wonder what was wrong with it, when the real answer was simply the price. My sellers grew anxious. I grew quieter. We eventually dropped the price, then dropped it again, and the home sold for less than it likely would have if we’d priced it right on day one.
Here’s the part that stung: they were disappointed in me. Not because I’d been unkind, but because I hadn’t been honest when it mattered most. I’d traded a hard conversation up front for a much harder one later. And I’d cost them real money to do it.
What that experience taught me is something I now consider the whole job: being liked and being trusted are not the same thing.
The agent who tells you only what you want to hear isn’t protecting you. They’re protecting themselves, from an awkward moment, from the small risk of your disappointment. Real guidance sometimes means saying the thing that’s difficult to hear, in the moment it’s least comfortable to say it. That’s not a failure of warmth. It is the warmth. Caring about someone’s outcome more than you care about their momentary approval is, I think, the most respectful thing you can offer a person making one of the biggest decisions of their life.
I run my business differently now because of that seller. I’ll still be kind, since that part was never the problem. But I won’t shade the truth to keep a room comfortable. If I think a price is too high, I’ll tell you, and I’ll show you why. If I think a home has a flaw you’re glossing over in the excitement, I’ll name it. If the honest answer is “this isn’t the right one, let’s keep looking,” you’ll hear it from me even when it costs me a faster sale.
That early mistake gave me the thing I value most in this work now: I sleep well. My clients know that what I tell them is what I actually believe, not what’s easiest to say. And more of my business comes from those very people, the ones I was once afraid to disappoint, than from anyone else.
Turns out you don’t build trust by being agreeable. You build it by being honest, especially when it’s hard.
That’s a lesson I only learned by getting it wrong first.