Who is Elisa Cool Murphy: The Unfiltered View from Inside Cool Murphy Real Estate
- Elisa Cool Murphy
- 4 days ago
- 8 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
I Dodged This Like a Nervous Bunny.
If you're following along, you know I've been writing an agent spotlight post every week for the past four weeks, and enjoying every minute of it. Until now. My agents asked me, ''when are you writing the piece about you?"
The truth? I dodged this commitment like a nervous bunny.
Ugh! Not because I didn’t know what to say, but because I love writing, just not about myself. Find me a person who does and have them share their secrets, pretty please. I wanted this to happen on its own.
Except it didn’t. So I tried another approach. I asked my team to field the same questions I'd answered for myself when writing their posts. I then asked my computer to help me craft it into an honest tell-all outline.
So here it is. This is me, stripped. (To quote Christina Aguilera, 2002.)
This is the view from inside Cool Murphy — not the Instagram version, not the polished listing version — but the truth underneath it all.
Clarity in the Chaos
The first thing you should know about me is that I see structure long before I see pretty.
In real estate, most people react to what’s loudest. The drama. The timeline. The panic. The pressure. The shiny thing. But I was raised in institutions where structure was the calm: publishing, journalism, the Air Force. My moral compass was set early — truth matters, precision matters, clarity matters.
Craig said it best: “She diagnoses the real issue underneath the story you think you’re telling her.”
It’s true. I hear the thing between the lines. The thing that’s actually holding the deal up. The thing the client didn’t realize they said. The thing the agent didn’t know how to name.
I don’t do it to be impressive. I do it because people deserve someone who can see past the noise.
And in a city as slow to adopt new systems as New Orleans, that clarity becomes a lifeline. A steady hand on the wheel through waters that move differently here.
And I coach all of the agents at Cool Murphy Real Estate (yes, we're our own brokerage) to do the same. How? They'll tell you what I'd tell them. "If you can't find good answers, ask better questions."
Truth, Delivered With Care
Truth in real estate is subjective — not because the facts shift, but because our access to them depends on trust.
Clients only tell you what they feel safe sharing. Vulnerability only arrives when it has somewhere to land. And every promise we keep — every “I’ll call you back” that actually happens — opens the channel wider.
Desiree calls me a truth-teller, but never a hammer. She said, “Those conversations are where the growth happens.”
I’d say it this way: It’s not about tough love. It’s honesty delivered with care.
Truth, in its essence, is a practice.
And that practice came from two places:
1. My childhood in the military
Growing up on bases across England, Germany, Alaska, and Texas —you learn to adapt fast. To read rooms. To observe before acting.
And then you learn that truth isn’t a performance; it’s consistency. It's giving yourself permission to stand still, just be, and be loud when it's needed.
You don’t get to decide the circumstances, but you do get to decide the actions you take in light of them.
2. My years in publishing and journalism
Before real estate, I spent years surrounded by reporters and editors —people who believed in facts, in sourcing, in fairness, in discipline. In 2007, pre-NewsCorp ''We Are the World's News Source" was the slogan at the Wall Street Journal, and we meant it.
In those rooms, delivering on what you said you would do wasn’t extraordinary —it was the baseline expectation. David Ogilvy said it best: "We pursue knowledge like a pig pursues truffles." It was a slide in almost every pitchdeck we used at Ogilvy & Mather (that's PowerPoint for you non-corporate types).
That stayed with me, too.
So when a client trusts me with a major life transition,I treat them with those same values. I hold that truth with the discipline of someone who spent years learning that accuracy is a form of care.
We Don’t List Homes. We Launch Them.
Real estate has trained us to ask the most unimaginative questions possible. How many bedrooms?How many baths? Square footage? Parking? Granite? Quartz? Updated “for modern living?”
It’s a census form. Not a conversation.
Every other field — writing, preaching, theater, branding, anything that requires persuasion — starts with one question: Who am I talking to?
But when we market homes, we suddenly forget how humans work. We write for “everyone” and end up speaking to no one.
There is no buyer named “everyone.” There is no family named “someone.” There is not a single human on this earth whose name is “anyone.”
And yet the industry keeps building content for them.
I don’t play that game.
If the whole point of this business is helping someone find a place where their life makes sense,then the questions we ask should actually matter.
Not:“ How many bedrooms do you want?”
But: “Do you want to wake up with two acres around you and text people to come visit? Or do you want to squeeze into 1700 square feet, walk a block and treat the coffeeshop where everybody knows your name like your office?”
Which kind of life are you actually choosing?
That’s the job. Not the boxes. Not the specs. Not the scripts.
Matchmaking.
We are in the quality of life business. It's our job to match each individual not with their dream home, but the home that supports their dream life.
Sounds complicated? It's about as complicated as dating. Same rules apply. You wouldn’t upload a 3D video tour of your naked body and a medical scan to Bumble. You choose a photo, a feeling, a version of yourself meant for the person you want, not the crowd at large.
Homes work the same way. You present them to the right buyer —the buyer who will feel something. The buyer who sees potential instead of price. The buyer who can both love it and afford it. (Those are not the same thing, and pretending they are is how deals die.)
This belief — that every home deserves its own go-to-market plan —is why I built the Design Lab at Cool Murphy, and the next few blog posts following this one will focus on that, what it is, who makes it work, and why. But I digress.
I built The Lab not as a vanity project. Not as a buzzword. But because I was tired of watching good homes get shoved through a system built for speed instead of care. And it's a method that works.
The MLS is a filing cabinet. Zillow is an ad platform disguised as a pretty Craigslist. Neither is a strategy. And then there's that commitment to truth.
And sometimes telling the truth sounds like this:
“The buyer thinks your things are ugly.”
I told my own mother that. Not because her things weren’t meaningful —they were the objects of my childhood across England, Germany, Alaska, Texas. Hand-carved, hard-earned, rich with memory. Expensive.
But to a Gen Z buyer who dreams of West Elm while deal-shopping on Wayfair? It read as “grandma.”
That’s not an insult. That’s clarity. And clarity is how we win.
We don’t list homes. We launch them. And launching requires precision, honesty, and intention —not the same description you copy-paste for your next three listings. And certainly not fill out this form; ChatGPT will do the rest. No offense, Chat.
The Constellation
Cool Murphy is often described as a boutique, which means small, but that’s only if you think in terms of headcount rather than impact.
We are a constellation — bright points, each with a purpose:
Craig, my historian and architecture encyclopaedia, the grounding force who keeps us true.
Desiree, our skeletal system — upright, structured, consistent — the one who makes every detail shine.
Ashley, our muscle — the executor, the producer, the quiet ninja who transforms vision into reality.
Darcie, the life blood. If there was a way to bottle infectious energy, determination and good vibes it would be branded with the label, Darcie Braai.
Jess, warm, expansive, and with x-ray vision, allergic to B.S.
Brittany, steady and sharp, she's all of us, caffeinated, the connective tissue of our culture.
Sara, our spirit guide — always holding humanity at the center of this work, the woman who built an entire guide for neurodivergent buyers so the process would feel safer and possible.
And then the partners we trust across the city and across the country —from wall repair to creative financing. If you need help in another state or even another country, we’ll find it. That’s part of the job. Building that network? Part of mine.
This isn’t a brokerage built on headcount. It’s a house — in the old sense of the word. A place where people feel safe, seen, and known. A place where different strengths create something larger than their sum.
Some of us are middle-aged theater kids. Some are book nerds. Some are 90s cheerleaders. Some are mid-50's first-edition collectors. Some are all of those things.
Are you?
The Book, the Nudge, and the Moment of Clarity
I wrote a book. It's called Prepped to Sell. It's on Amazon right now. But it was never supposed to come out this fast. I was waiting for it to be perfect, which meant it might never arrive.
But when unfinished pages leaked, something clicked: The world didn’t need a pristine version. It needed a true one.
And this book is exactly that —raw, candid, uncensored, deeply practical, occasionally uncomfortable, and entirely me.
This is what I believe:
Homes deserve to be launched, not listed.
Strategy should feel like relief, not pressure.
Clients deserve someone who can hold the emotional weight as much as the logistical.
Agents deserve leadership that sees their gifts and builds toward them.
Truth belongs in the room, not the fine print.
Desiree said, “She creates calm in situations that should feel absolutely chaotic.”
That is the heartbeat of this book and the reason I finally stopped protecting it.
The Future Is a House, Not an Army
People talk about moats — building defensibility, protecting turf, owning territory. I have no interest in that.
This city doesn’t need more empires. I'm ego-adverse. What's needed is more care, more craft, more clarity, more people who can think. And who can deliver truth with care.
The future of this work is a house —a guild of sorts —but not exclusive, not hierarchical, not ornamental.
A house of:
truth-tellers
strategists
caregivers
creatives
people who see the humanity in the transaction
people who know how to disrupt gently, without breaking the city they love
People who can take a night off, put the phone on airplane mode, and trust the systems, the team, the structure beneath them —because that’s what we’re building here.
Will it happen? Darcie said it best, "I’ve stopped wondering whether Elisa can pull something off… she always does. After a while, you stop questioning it. You just watch it work.”
If You Want the Whole Story
This was the taste.
The book is the meal. Prepped to Sell — hardcover and ebook available now.
What My Team Says (A View From Inside)
From Craig:
“Elisa adapts the freshest ideas from major markets into something that feels uniquely, authentically New Orleans — and her clarity has reshaped the way I work.”
From Desiree:
“She’s a truth teller in the best way — the kind who helps clients feel informed, in control, and confident. She leads by making people better.”
From Darcie:
“She changes everything with one small shift — one word, one angle, one reframe — and suddenly the whole plan makes sense.”
Bottom Line
If this is the world you want to work in—if this sounds like the house you’ve been looking for—message me, let's get a non-committal coffee and talk possibility. I want to know you.
If you know someone like this who is hitting a ceiling, feeling the burnout, and who would like to stay in the business but also disconnect once in a blue moon (or every Saturday), send this to them, please.
Contact Her -
email: cool@coolmurphy.com
Facebook: @homeinneworleans
IG: @coolmurphynola
YouTube: @coolmurphynola
phone: 504-321-3194
Voted Neighborhood Favorite by Nextdoor three years in a row, Cool Murphy Real Estate is a top-producing, licensed real estate team based in New Orleans, brokered by Cool Murphy, LLC.
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