About Lance
I’ve come to realize that human connection is the driver of all great things.
Especially this one.
Eighteen years ago, at the lowest point of my life, I was loved by a room full of strangers until I learned to love myself. Everything I have is because of somebody else. None of it is my own great genius.
The short version
Twenty years inside this business.
My name is Lance Pendleton. I started at Apple, as an educator. Then I was chief innovation officer at the largest Sotheby’s International Realty affiliate in the country. Then I spent about four years as national head of agent development at Compass, where I built the learning and development programming as the company went from roughly six thousand agents to thirty-four thousand.
Somewhere around 1,500 times, I have stood in front of a room of agents. TEDx, Inman, and a great many hotel ballrooms.
My background is in behavioral psychology, and that is the lens on all of it. I am still licensed, which matters more than it sounds — I am not describing a business I left.
Apple · Sotheby’s International Realty affiliate · Compass · TEDx · Inman
Where the consumer research comes from
I host a podcast where I interview consumers, not agents.
It is called Consumed, and it is the national podcast for Homes.com. The whole premise is that this industry runs an endless number of agent panels and almost no consumer panels — so we spend a lot of time telling each other what buyers and sellers want, and very little time asking them.
Hundreds of those conversations later, the thing consumers ask for most is not expertise. It is partnership. Their word, not mine.
Which is inconvenient, because almost nobody in this business is positioned as a partner. Everyone is positioned as an expert.
What I actually believe
We are not in sales.
We are consultants, advocates, advisors, and educators. Four hats, and none of them is closer. Drop a price low enough and the house sells — that is supply and demand, and it has nothing to do with you.
The best mountain climbers still take a Sherpa, even up a mountain they have climbed before. Not because they can’t make the summit, but because someone has to help them pack, pick the base camp, and read the weather. That is the job. That is the whole job.
And the bar to entry in this industry has been low enough, for long enough, that consumers built their expectations around the worst of us. That is not your fault, and it is still your problem — which is why differentiation is the only word that matters right now.
Why I built this
I kept telling people to take care of their sphere.
And then I watched them go home to tools that made it impossible. For years. From the front of a lot of rooms.
So I built the one I had been describing. That is Reframe Mind. Then I built the room around it, because a tool by itself was never going to be enough.
It never is. That is the whole thesis, and it is also just true of my own life.
How I coach
Gratitude before credentials. Empathy before authority.
Strengths-based, never deficit-based. You are not broken and I am not going to coach you as though you are.
No shame, no scoreboard, and no calling on people who didn’t volunteer.
Short and finishable. If a program needs you to have twenty-five things on your list, it was designed for somebody with a different week than yours.
I over-share and I leave real room for push-back. Ask me the uncomfortable thing.
All wisdom is plagiarism. Only stupidity is original — and I did not come up with that either.