I wanted a circle of agents who put people before paychecks. So I built one.

First, who I am.

I have been selling real estate for close to fifteen years. In that time I have worked with thousands of people and closed hundreds of millions of dollars in home sales. I have sat at hundreds of kitchen tables, and I have made every decision the same way: the seller comes first, and their profit comes ahead of my paycheck. That is not a tagline. It is how I have worked since my very first listing.

Then, in 2023, everything shifted.

I put real focus into building my YouTube channel. I thought it would help me sell more homes close to home. Instead, something bigger happened: sellers started finding me from all over the country. And rather than growing my local business, we found ourselves doing something I never planned for, connecting those sellers with great agents wherever they lived. We had become a referral network.

But I am not a typical referral company.

Most referral companies are matchmakers with a spreadsheet. I am an agent who has done this for close to fifteen years, so I know what a great agent actually looks like. I know the ethics, and I know the tricks, the ways this business can be played at the seller's expense. And I know the hardest truth of all: a handful of agents who put themselves first ruin it for the many of us who put the client first.

Finding great agents is the hard part.

When I started referring sellers and buyers across the country, it could take me a very long time to find the right agent. So for the past three years, my daughter Lisa and I have dug in, agent by agent, all over the country and even around the world, looking for the ones who meet our criteria: deeply experienced, with genuinely great reviews, and well-rounded people you would actually want in your corner. When we find one, we want to send them business again and again.

But there was one thing I still could not see. You cannot read an agent's values off a website or a marketing photo. I could measure their sales, their experience, and their reviews, but I could not know the thing that mattered most to me: did they share my values, and would they put the seller first when it cost them something?

The best agents recognize each other.

Here is what I have learned: you find great agents because they are already in your circle. We gravitate toward each other. We are the agents who can see this industry being torn apart, and who know, every single day, that we change our clients' lives for the better. We make them more money. We give them less stress. And we feel it when a seller makes a decision that is going to hurt them, or hands their home to an agent who is not as experienced, or who we can tell is not being truthful with them.

So Lisa and I decided to do something about it. The way to be sure the agents we refer to hold the same values we do, transparent, self-accountable, and always for the client, was to ask them to say so out loud and put their name to it. We call it the Protect The Seller Circle™.

It is bigger than any one referral.

Joining the Circle does not mean an agent gets a referral from us. What we are building is bigger than that: a database of the most ethical, transparent, and self-accountable agents in the country, and one day beyond it.

And the sellers and buyers we send them are not ordinary leads. They are people who have done the work: watched hundreds of hours of my videos on how to sell a home, downloaded my free resources, read my book, Sell Your Home Without Blowing Up Your Life, joined my private community, and reached out to me again and again. By the time we introduce them to an agent, they are some of the most prepared, educated clients that agent will ever work with.

They are not internet leads or cold leads. They value me, and they trust me. And because they trust me, they have trusted me to find them an agent who has real experience and, just as important, shares the values I hold.

Here is what it means to be in it.

The Circle is free, public, and human-reviewed. Every agent in it stands for the same thing and is held to the same standard: the client, first and always. To join, an agent puts their name on a commitment, in their own words: be transparent, name every fee and conflict before you are asked; be self-accountable, tell the truth even when it is hard to hear; and always do what is best for the seller, put their profit ahead of your own paycheck, and never buy a listing with a price you know is too high. A real person reviews it, agents reaffirm it every year, and it can be revoked. It cannot be bought. It is not a badge, it is a promise someone is accountable to. And for sellers, it is finally a way to find those agents on purpose.

This is a movement, and you're invited.

You are the average of the people in your circle. I want the transparent, self-accountable agents in mine, the ones who do what is right when it is hard, and I want to be in theirs. When the best agents in the country stand together in one circle, we all get stronger: for our industry, for ourselves, and most of all for the people we serve. Because a home is never just a transaction. It is often the largest asset a family will ever own.

This is bigger than any one of us, and I cannot do it alone. If you are selling, come find an agent you can trust, and nominate the great ones you already know. And if you are one of those agents, and if you have read this far, you probably are, come stand with us. It is free, there is no catch, and you are never required to take a single referral from me. The Circle is simply yours to carry, a way to show your clients exactly how you are different.

My goal is to build a better industry, one where educated consumers are matched with agents who are strong, transparent, self-accountable, and truly for the people they serve. This is not just a business. It is a movement, and it is going to change real estate forever.

This is my mission. I'm Kati Spaniak, and this is Truth in Real Estate.®

By the numbers.

• 80,000+subscribers on Kati's YouTube channel
• 1M+hours of content watched by sellers
• 6,000+sellers in the community
• $2B+in seller business referred to trusted agents
• $500M+in Kati's own personal home sales