How this $150M+ Team Leader Made Emotional Intelligence the Center of His Business

Scott Harris,
Magnetic

The launch of Scott Harris’ boutique real estate company Magnetic didn’t start with a business plan. It started with a book.

While writing The Pursuit of Home: A Real Estate Guide to Achieving the American Dream, Scott began putting words to something he’d always felt but never fully defined: that every real estate journey has an emotional arc, and that the best agents are understand that arc and are able to guide their clients through it.

The name Magnetic came directly from those ideas.

“I dubbed what I was doing as ‘the ‘Magnetic Method,’” Scott explained. “You activate your desire, you align everyone involved, you amplify that signal, and then you attract the home you want.”

What started as a framework for helping clients clarify what they love became the foundation for how Scott runs his company.

“In writing the book, it started to clarify how I work,” he said. “It really led to the launch of Magnetic, because I had a much better understanding of how we do what we do differently.”

​​At its core, the philosophy behind both the book and the company is about connection. Scott believes that real estate agents need to be able to understand the emotional world that underpins every transaction. Guiding clients through that emotional world with empathy and care is what gives Magnetic its pull and what continues to set Scott’s team apart in one of the most competitive markets in the country.

Understand the client’s emotional arc

For Scott, every real estate experience mirrors what mythologist Joseph Campbell called “the hero’s journey.”

“I had this epiphany that the real estate home buying journey is a hero’s journey,” he said. “There’s this whole emotional world underneath a transaction that everybody has to go through, but no one talks about it publicly.”

The real estate industry projects a lot of glitz and glamor. But Scott argues that 99% of the transaction is far from those TV-ready moments of receiving your keys for the first time. Buying or selling a home is much more than a transaction, it’s an emotional transition.

In the book, one of Scott’s key tips for buyers dreading that slog is to find an agent who actually speaks your “house language.” And agents who want to better speak the language of the consumer have to understand that emotions, more so than anything else, are driving the transaction forward.

Build your EQ like a muscle

There are a lot of skills you have to master to succeed in real estate: pricing, negotiation, marketing, operations. But Scott Harris argues that emotional intelligence (EQ) belongs at the top of that list.

“It doesn’t matter if you’ve been doing this for two years or twenty,” he said. “Of course you need to be informed, but beneath that is just reading your client, understanding what they’re going through in that moment, and paying attention. You have to be able to go that level deeper.”

In The Pursuit of Home, Scott describes how most clients start their search in what he calls “opposite mode” — they know everything they don’t want before they can articulate what they do. Guiding them through that uncertainty requires patience, presence, and curiosity. The client is contending with complex emotions they don’t necessarily understand, and too many agents react with frustration instead of empathy.

To those agents, Scott says: “You have to up your EQ. This isn’t a game to just close a deal. The work agents do gets to the heart of who we are as human beings.”

Building EQ, in his view, means replacing reactivity with reflection. It’s noticing how clients respond, sensing when fear or fatigue creeps in, and adjusting accordingly. When agents operate from that level of awareness, trust builds faster, decisions come easier, and the entire experience becomes more meaningful.

“It’s the caring part, combined with somebody who knows what they’re doing, that opens people up and allows them to have the experience they need to have.”

Lead from the inside out

For Scott, building Magnetic was as much an inner exercise as a business one. After two decades in real estate, the decision to launch his own company required the same self-awareness he asks of his clients: clarity about motivation and intent.

“If this is an ego thing, don’t do it,” he said. “If this is about serving your clients in a way that delivers on a much bigger promise to them, then do it. But it should be about something bigger than yourself.”

By approaching leadership with that mindset, Scott has created a culture at Magnetic where emotional intelligence isn’t just encouraged, it’s operationalized. Agents are taught to slow down, listen carefully, and connect deeply before they act. The result is a company that feels grounded, confident, and truly aligned with the values it represents.

When agents lead with empathy and self-awareness, everyone they serve feels it. And given the nature of real estate, that service can be life-changing.

“The work we do is sacred,” Scott said. “It’s about helping people move forward in their lives.”

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