From Friendship to Funnel: Why Agents Quietly Quit Running 'Relationship-Based Businesses'
A mini-series on why the industry's approach to relationships is unsustainable—and how to build something better
A note before we jump in: This week, I’m doing something different. Instead of one essay, you’re getting four—a mini-series exploring why the real estate industry’s “relationship-based business” model is fundamentally broken, and what we could build instead.
Here’s what’s coming:
Today: “The phrase that’s killing authenticity in real estate”
Tuesday: “Why ‘relationship-based business’ leaves agents lonely and inauthentic”
Wednesday: “From likable to credible: How clarity on values creates a real offer”
Thursday: “Replace relationships with relevance: What agents should offer instead”
Build a ‘relationship-based’ business they said…
I spent years believing I was doing it wrong.
Every relationship in my life started to feel like a pipeline waiting to be tapped. Every conversation, every coffee, every casual encounter became an opportunity to “build my business.” The industry taught me this was normal—that this was what it meant to run a “relationship-based business.”
But here’s what nobody tells you: when you operationalize relationships, you destroy the very thing you’re trying to build.
The industry doesn’t just encourage you to lean on relationships—it teaches you to systematize them. Touch your sphere 33 times a year. Send birthday cards. Drop off pumpkins in October. Ask for referrals in every closing gift. Track every interaction in your CRM. Turn friendships into funnels.
This isn’t relationship-building. It’s relationship-mining.
And I guarantee the genuine relationships you’ve built that actually resulted in business didn’t feel like this. They didn’t feel commodified or calculated. They felt natural, mutual, and real.
The phrase “relationship-based business” has become industry dogma—so ubiquitous that no one questions it anymore. It sounds harmless. Human, even. But it’s created a generation of agents who feel lonely despite being surrounded by people, inauthentic despite meaning well, and exhausted from trying to maintain the performance.
As Robert Glazer writes: “Clarity on your core values is the key. With alignment, work energizes. Without it, even success feels empty.”
This is the uncomfortable truth: you can’t build genuine relationships while simultaneously treating them as business assets. You have to choose. And the industry hasn’t given us permission to choose differently.
Until now.
Tomorrow, we’ll explore the cost of this approach—why so many agents feel hollow despite “doing everything right,” and what happens when you try to be everything to everyone.
