Her staff understood that Claudine wanted clients walking through the door and seeing their own vision projected on the crisp surfaces. Their personal canvas. To be inspired. Clients respond to the minimalist nature of the office. The employees who knew Claudine best understood another reason for the crisp white offices was that this choice, minimalism, was easiest to defend. Abstract enough to talk about and appealing to both the avant-garde and the traditional. She applied the same philosophy to showing houses. Most agents believed in staging, creating a sense of home, hoping that would tap into a client’s sense of comfort, of belonging. Not Claudine. She preferred to keep a house empty, to encourage a prospective buyer to use their imagination—or, rather, for her to impose her imagination on them. Lately this approach had also been a matter of necessity. Staging a home was another expense Calhoun + Calhoun couldn’t afford.

Claudine stepped out of her office and summoned her staff.

“All right, everyone.”

They surrounded her in seconds. Looking around the half circle of attentive faces, Claudine was proud of them. Proud of them because she had picked them. She had curated the team carefully. Purposefully. There was very little she did without purpose. She knew the importance of a balancing act. That creating the right army could be the difference between being basic successful and stinking-rich successful. Every one of their employees had a unique talent that made a noticeable contribution to the business.

Rashida was the listener of the group. The agent for those clients who needed a therapist as much as a new home.

Louisa was the data nerd. She had come from a career in analytics and was brilliant at tracking the latest trends. Most recently, she’d worked on Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign. But after reading a Harvard study that concluded the human life span was longer in Colorado than D.C., she packed her bags and headed west.

Natalie had spent time in the Army Reserve and her fastidiousness made her the agent best suited for the more high-maintenance customers, those who found flaws in every little thing. She could anticipate their issues before even they could and steer them out of sight.

Alice was the landscape expert—the agent for those who cared more about what surrounded a house than the house itself.

John was the agent for the old divorcées, the ones whose husbands had abandoned them for a newer model and who were eager to drop their hefty settlement on a place unsoiled by infidelity. Maybe John would like to move in with them, they’d joke. He’d laugh and flirt—and more, Claudine guessed, given the constant rotation of Rolexes and Omegas and TAGs on his wrist. He wasn’t doing that well in sales. None of her agents were. Not lately.