S2 E30: Old Habits Die Hard | Setting Boundaries, Managing Client Expectations, and Beating Burnout in Real Estate

Ten years in real estate and Brittney is still learning one of the hardest lessons in the business: you cannot pour from an empty cup. 

In this episode of Closing Chapters, she gets refreshingly honest about the people-pleasing patterns that have followed her throughout her career and what it cost her when those habits caught up with her recently.

From running CMAs at 10:30 at night to promising a listing report over a weekend while raising two kids and managing a marriage, Brittney walks through two real, recent examples of what happens when agents set unrealistic expectations to avoid disappointing people.

Spoiler: the mistakes still happen, and now you are tired too.

This episode is equal parts confession and strategy. Brittney shares the simple but powerful shift she made to her welcome email after making a costly error on a rushed transaction, and why she believes the real estate industry's obsession with instant gratification is creating burnout on a massive scale.

If you have ever said "I will get it to you tonight" when you absolutely should not have, this one is for you.

Key Takeaways

• People-pleasing in real estate is not a personality quirk; it is a business risk that leads to mistakes and burnout.

• Setting clear operating hours and response windows is not unprofessional. It is essential.

• Rushing to deliver results is not the same as delivering quality results. Slowing down often produces better, more accurate work.

• The instant gratification culture in real estate pressures agents to overpromise and then underdeliver.

• Updating your welcome email or intake process to set time expectations upfront is a low-effort, high-impact boundary.

• Agents are allowed to have families, weekends, and lives. Clients generally understand if you communicate clearly from the start.

• Mistakes made under pressure are not just frustrating. They can have real consequences that show up weeks later.

• Breaking old habits takes intentional systems, not just good intentions.

🎧  If this episode hit close to home, please subscribe, leave a review, and share it with a fellow agent or real estate professional who needs permission to slow down. Your support helps this podcast reach more people in this industry who are navigating the same pressure every single day.

Closing Chapters Podcast: Where Every Mission Has A Story

Thanks for listening. We talk all things military real estate, my transactions, the mistakes, the wins, and simple plays you can use right now.

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Disclaimer: This podcast education only & is not legal, tax, or financial advice. Talk with your own pros about your situation. Opinions are my own.

© 2025 Brittney Frye. All rights reserved. Realtor, license # 352197 in NC. Brokerage: REAL Broker l Military Division

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

Hey my friend! Welcome back to the closing chapters podcast where every mission has a story. And the one thing for me is time management expectations with my customers and clients. What do I mean? Across the board, I am a people pleaser. I want to make everybody happy and I don't want anybody to feel like they are not getting great service from me. Hello, hello, my friends. I have been doing some reflecting and I wanted to bring that to you. I am about to hit my 10-year mark in real estate. At the time of this recording, yesterday was my 10-year wedding anniversary, and May 1st is my 10-year anniversary for real estate. And there is a lot of things that I have grown and learned and perfected over the years. And there's some things that you're still learning. This world is ever changing, especially when it comes to like our forms and the way that we are supposed to handle business on the day-to-day when we are negotiating. So that's really interesting. But there is one thing in my business that consistently comes creeping back into me. And it just goes to show that we all we are always having to readjust and reset and remind ourselves of what we need to do to set proper standards. And the one thing for me is time management expectations with my customers and clients. What do I mean? Across the board, I am a people pleaser. I want to make everybody happy and I don't want anybody to feel like they are not getting great service from me. And I mean that with my heart. If you know me, you know that's very true. I will do things that I should not do that do not help me in any way, shape, or form because I want to just make sure everybody else is okay. And that's just how I'm wired. But the business component that comes with that is that I'm wanting to meet everybody's instant gratification. So I have a very hard time setting proper deadlines or expectations on when I will report back or when I will give you this documentation where when I can like how quickly I can do anything. So there's a couple of instances recently that are just like very easy to pinpoint to show this. And nothing that like the things that I am stuck on that I'm like rushing to do, it's not a normal standard. And I know that logically. I know if you go to a doctor's office and then you go get blood work done, you're not hearing back from the doctor within an hour of your blood work being done. Unless it's a very particular situation and like they're waiting on it and whatever have you. But in general, especially after hours, I guess maybe that's the piece. So if you go to an appointment at four o'clock in the afternoon, right? By the time you're done with that appointment and you go get a blood draw, you are not expecting to hear from that doctor before 5 p.m., right? You are expecting that you will hear from that doctor in the next day or two. Oh, by the way, it's a Friday at five. When are you gonna hear from that doctor? Monday? Tuesday? And that's okay. That's reasonable. In in our world, that should be okay. That should be reasonable. However, I think a lot of times there are people like me that set these unreasonable expectations of, oh, I'll get it to you. I'll I'm gonna go home and I'm gonna work on it right now. And ignore the fact that we like actually have families at home waiting for us and lives and other appointments and other people. And we just want to make the person in front of our face at that given moment feel special and heard and understood and satisfied with us. So that is a trap for creating burnout and also creating mistakes. Okay. And I'm gonna show you how. Like I need to set the boundaries and follow it. So recently I had clients in town, and we were trying to do things very quickly because there was a family member in town with my client. So it was, I'm going to be here a maximum of seven days. I want us to see all of the houses, get under contract, and get through the home inspection before I leave. Okay. That's not a simple task. This was a first-time home buyer. We were going to see 15 to 20 houses between two days, confuse the heck out of this kid, have to revisit a bunch of properties back and forth, back and forth, which is all fine. But then it was like, what about this house? What about that house? Can you run the numbers on this house? Can you run the numbers on that house? So I was showing houses for several hours and then going home and trying to do these reports and research until 10:30 plus at night. Same deal. When it was time to write the offer, it was already like at the end of the day. And it was go home, do a CMA comparable market analysis to make sure that we're in the right price point, right? I can prove our offer that it's reasonable and then write the offer and get it all over to me. Okay, so I did that, and I made an error, and that error impacted me. And that was really frustrating and upsetting, right? Now the reality is that like I owned that air and I took the punishment for it, but it's because I was trying to have instant gratification. I was trying to do too much too quickly instead of slowing down, taking a beat, and running my business like an operating business. What I should have said is I will work on these numbers for you first thing in the morning and work on getting an offer together for you and then have it submitted by the end of business day tomorrow. That's what I should have said. But I did. And I made a mistake. And I didn't even realize that mistake until two weeks later when a lender was asking for a document because I was just go, go, go. Like on to the next thing. Got the contract, get the home inspection scheduled. Like I and I allowed that. I allowed that person to tell me, I want to do this, make it happen, and I ran with it instead of saying, I will try my best. However, this is a probably unreasonable expectation, and this is the normal cadence, and we will do our best. And sometimes if we slow down instead of rushing, we're gonna actually get things done faster and more succinct. So, anyhow, that's that was like my one recent example. And then I have another example where it's I went to a listing appointment on a Friday, on a Friday, okay, and it was like a hey, I'm gonna start working on some numbers for you. By the way, this is an oddball property. So I'm gonna get my appraiser to come by and give an opinion of value, which I'm paying for as a part of my listing agreement because I want to be sure in this. There's not a lot that I can use to prove what the value should be reasonably, because it was just unique. It's a unique property. So I said I will run my numbers, but I just I should really just want to know what the appraiser's opinion is because there's some things I'm just I don't want to leave money on the table for you or set an unreasonable expectation. If I am certain of myself, I am not going to second guess myself. But if there's a moment where I know, this is a weird one. Like I should, I should have the third-party professional that gets to deem the value of a property come in and do that. Because then if we get under contract and we're having concerns or issues, we actually have some documentation to prove, hey, no, we we double-checked ourselves. We know this is an odd guy and we've got proof that we're okay here. And because ultimately, realtors are allowed to give a price range. We are not allowed to say, this house is worth this amount. Not our job. We can get in lots in trouble if we go to a client and say, your house is worth X amount. This is your price tag. Nope, that's not my job. So we pull in the person that can say that. And then that third party person has a lot more clout. Heaven forbid we have a concern later on to be able to say, yeah, no, I I looked at the comps. This is what I did, this is where I'm pulling from. This is a reasonable price. That's all going on. But I got a message saying, Hey, I thought you were working on this report for me over the weekend. Why don't I have it yet? I did start working on it and I have one variation of it, but the variation that I have is like a, okay, these are the properties that are close to you in location and in theory, but they don't match your property. So then I'm working on a secondary report that is, these are the properties that match your property, like the actual structure. However, the land is different, like it doesn't have all the same amenities or things going on with it. Yeah, it's just a little bit wonky. But I said, I'll work on it this weekend. And then over the weekend I did work on it a little bit, but I did not give a hard deadline. And also, oh, by the way, I have a three-year-old and a six-year-old and a husband that want my attention and want me to spend time with them and go do things as a family on the weekend. So why did I promise my time away? I don't know. Just because I wanted to make them happy, but now I haven't made him happy. Now he's second-guessing me because I didn't get it to him fast enough. Versus if I would have said, hey, give me to the end of the week because oh, by the way, we're scheduling an inspection for the house, we're scheduling an appraiser for the house. So like I've got to stop and make time to do those items too. And there was some back and forth with that. So there's other things going on in the picture that I'm also doing for your property, and it's not ready to be listed quite yet. So, like, priorities. So, anyhow, that is going to be a new goal for me in my business. And I actually had made a big shift as soon as I had made the error with the first transaction that I was talking about in this episode. I changed in my newcomers, my welcome email, hey, just to set the standard. These are my normal hours and oper like the this, these are my normal days and operation hours. If I choose that it is time is of the essence, it is necessary to walk outside of those hours, then so be it. But I will be doing that on my accord, not on your accord. So that feels icky to me, to be honest. It feels really icky because I just want to make people happy. However, there has to be some sort of guidelines and parameters because you people take that and run with it. And they just, I mean, logically, I'm sure logically, people understand that I am a person just the same and that I have a family, and that everybody knows that I have children whenever I start talking to them. I tell them that I have little littles too, so I'm have to be more hands-on, and usually in the evening I can get caught up with some things, but also I have a husband that probably wants a little bit of attention from me. And that typically is what happens is like we we take care of our kiddos, and then once they're in bed, it's like, all right, babe, I'm gonna go do some more work now, and I'm not like actually giving the attention to my marriage that I should. So it's time for me to flip the page, start a new chapter, and really create some sense of stability or start balancing a little bit better in my business. Are there gonna be nights where I just need to do something because it has to be done? Yes, absolutely. But am I going to try harder to set better expectations and put in a better buffer? Yeah, absolutely. And in our world, just so that you know from the customer side of things, like we should not be operating from a place of fear. However, because of this whole sense of instant gratification, it's so often that it feels like if I don't say I will do it right now and get it to you as soon as possible, then you're just gonna pick up the phone and start calling anybody that you know to find someone that will just do it and do it right now, regardless of whether they are a quality person, have experience under their belt, truly want to serve you, or if it is just simply a transaction that they can wham-bam, thank you, ma'am, and get on to the next one. And that's not how I desire to operate. Like I truly care about my customers and clients, and I work by relationship. So I want to do the right things because it's the right thing to do, not oh yeah, let me just knock that out for you and go print a report off of the internet that I found somewhere. I do a lot more involved things, and that's because I want to be sure of it and I want to prove it to myself and to you. I want you to see, hey, this is why this matters and this is what I'm seeing. And then you have the confidence and the trust in me that I have done the research, not here's a report and this is what the internet says. No. So keep in mind, my friends, that if you are talking to real estate professionals, this is a common concern. It is not just a me thing, and I know that I talked to so many professionals that we truly have a hard time shutting it off. We really just want to make other people happy. We wouldn't be in this business otherwise. A lot of us wouldn't be in this business otherwise. And we want to do a good job for you. But in order to do a good job for you, we also need to slow down, take a breath, and actually complete our tasks in a timely manner, not in a rushed, hurry up and get it to you manner. So please send me all the encouragement that this is the right move to make, that it is good to honor boundaries. I need that validation. I am, I honestly know you shouldn't need external validation, but that's one of those things where when somebody just tells you, yeah, Brittany, that's okay. And I can, I can respect that, it just makes you feel like, all right, I'm okay. Like I can do this. So give me all of your insight. Have you been in this position before where you have promised yourself a way and then realize that is not the way to do it and had to retroactively fix it? And how did you do it? I it's really hard to break old habits, right? Like 10 years of just being at everybody's back and call to put the line in the sand is very, very, very, very hard for me. So I would love your insight. I would love your opinions. Like, how can I do this in a healthy manner that is going to keep my clients happy and my business healthy and also allow me to do things to the best of my ability? So give me your thoughts, and I cannot wait to catch up with you soon. Hey! I just wanted to say thank you for being here and listening in on this episode of Closing Chapters with me. I truly enjoyed putting this content together, and I hope that you enjoy it too. If so, could you like, subscribe, and share this episode with somebody you know that will enjoy it just as much as you did? Thank you so much.