Realtor Kim Coulter has a passion for mentoring young girls. A former model, she’d often gather a group of 9- to 16-year-olds at The Lookout Mountain Club to school them in posture, skincare and making their smile their best accessory.
She also taught them to be self-confident instead of envious of others.
Coulter would begin these events, called “Teen Tween Self Esteem,” by showing the participants a photograph of herself in the seventh grade, or as she describes it today, her “tomboy phase.”
Instead of joking about who she’d been, Coulter would paint a picture of a childhood spent growing up on the cliffs of the Tennessee River, of water skiing nearby, learning where eagles nested and watching extraordinary sunsets with her adoring parents.
Coulter would then show her mentees a high-fashion photograph of her in Vanity Fair or Glamour magazine, looking very much like a woman who’d been destined to become a professional model.
Coulter would say a persistent drive for success defined the lady in the photograph, who landed clients like L.L. Bean, Bloomingdale’s and Neiman Marcus and spent four years as Cindy Crawford’s double in Revlon commercials.
She shared these things not to elevate herself but to inspire the young women to believe they could become whatever they envisioned.
Coulter wasn’t spouting platitudes but sharing the truth of her life as she saw it. A closer look at her accomplishments would suggest one can also continually reinvent oneself as life plays out.
Growing up in Chattanooga
Coulter, 55, grew up in the shade of two towering Chattanooga trees: the late Gail and Bearl Coulter, who co-owned Gailco Galleries for 38 years.
She describes her father as a star collegiate basketball player who made straight A’s in school and loved to wheel and deal in the art business.
Coulter says her mother complemented her father with a different set of talents. Whereas Bearl had the business smarts their gallery needed, Gail was a creative force who loved engaging with others and brought her people skills to their endeavor.
Gail also was a professional model, a fashion coordinator, a Miss Universe runner-up, the first female president of the Kiwanis Club of Chattanooga and a breast cancer survivor.
Gail died in 2010 at age 66 following a subsequent bout with cancer. Bearl followed her in death at age 67. But instead of dwelling on their absence, Coulter reminisces about how her parents met on a fashion runway and then built a life, family and business together.
“They made an incredible team,” Coulter says. “I’m half and half of who they were. I have the creativity and people skills of my mother and the business savvy of my father.”
Coulter laughs at the thought of being an even split of her parents’ DNA. But like every child born in a nurturing home, she’s more than a composite of their diverse physical traits and personalities: She’s an extension of their philosophies of life – a memorial to two people who poured themselves into their two daughters and their community.
This is partly evident in Coulter’s success in modeling, which she says was a result of the work ethic her parents had instilled in her.
Modeling success
Coulter was a business major at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville in the 1980s when a Chi Omega sorority sister who was studying fashion asked her to serve as her assistant during shows. While in Atlanta for work, an agent asked Coulter if she’d ever modeled.
She had. At the age of 4, Coulter appeared with her parents in an ad for Delta Air Lines in Southern Living. Although she enjoyed the photo shoot, which took place at The Read House, she retired from modeling so she could enjoy being a kid, she jokes.
The agent’s query placed Coulter on a path she walked for two decades. After paying her dues in Atlanta and Knoxville, she moved to New York, where she spent 15 additional years in front of cameras, modeling for Victoria’s Secret, Saks and Ann Taylor, among others, and appearing in numerous commercials.
Photos from this stage of Coulter’s career don’t contain a drop of the sweat she poured into her work after arriving in the Big Apple.
“I went up there without knowing anyone,” she recalls. “Then I started making cold calls and setting up interviews. I booked L.L. Bean after I mailed a package of photos and my resume to them.
Coulter says she worked nearly every day and secured the same clients year after year because of her work ethic. “There are a ton of smart and beautiful women out there, but I was constantly booked.”
Despite her packed work schedule, Coulter found time to marry and have two children while living in New York City.
She also fell in love with real estate when she and her husband at the time purchased two adjacent condominiums – one of which was a foreclosure – and then combined them into a single unit they later sold for a $900,000 profit.
The entrepreneurial strands of Coulter’s DNA sprung to life when she sold the condos. But she knew selling real estate would be demanding work – and she wanted to have enough time to pour the nurturing her parents had poured into her into her daughter and son.
“I knew real estate would be all day, every day, and I didn’t want to do it while my children were young,” she explains.
In the end, this involved not only placing real estate on a back burner but also returning to Chattanooga.
“My daughter spoke several languages and could hail a cab at the age of 4,” Coulter says. “But when my son was born, I felt like he needed a yard instead of a concrete jungle.”
By the time Coulter landed in Chattanooga, she was single, which placed additional demands on her time. To provide for her household – and placate the part of her that was eager to become a business owner – she started Style Makers, a business focused on boosting the self-esteem of young people and dressing teens and adults for success.
By 2015, Coulter’s children were older and more self-sufficient, so she felt comfortable shifting to real estate. So, she earned her license, hung it at Keller Williams Greater Downtown Realty on Jan. 1, 2016, and went to work.
Local Realtor makes waves
The headshots a photographer snapped for Coulter’s real estate business don’t reflect a drop of the sweat she’s poured into her work as an agent. In a nutshell, she says she was right: Real estate is all day, every day.
Coulter wouldn’t have it any other way. In addition to employing the business sense her father passed on to her and the people skills her mother gave her, Coulter is drawing on her dogged work ethic and her experiences growing up on the cliffs of Tennessee to identify and sell million-dollar lake properties.
Coulter has a flair for making it look fun, if not easy. At the launch of a recent open house, for example, she drove her father’s 1985 Welcraft to the property, docked the boat and then catwalked to the front door to unlock it for potential buyers.
As much as Coulter enjoys slicing across local waters to show houses, she says she takes her work seriously. This led her to earn the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing’s Certified Luxury Home Marketing Specialist designation in 2021.
“I love learning more about this industry,” she says. “It’s my calling and my passion. I go to sleep thinking about real estate, I dream about real estate and I wake up excited about the day.
“But a home is also someone’s largest investment and an important decision, so I not only love to learn more about this ever-changing industry, I also take every opportunity to do so.”
One pairs of clients, Dr. Doug McCloy and his wife, was so impressed with Coulter’s work on their new lakeside home, they named their dock “Kim’s Landing.”
“She knew the area and knew what she was doing and placed us in a house in a tough market,” McCloy, an optometrist, says. “From the moment we met her, she treated us like family and took the time to get to know us and what we wanted. You would have thought we were her only client.”
McCloy adds that Coulter had the tenacity he and his wife believed they needed in this market, but her interest in forming a personal connection with them enabled their trust in her.
Coulter’s success doesn’t stop at the waterfront; she’s also sold luxury condos downtown, homes on the mountains and new construction across the city. Investors from across the U.S. who have their eyes on Chattanooga also seek her expertise.
Coulter’s efforts yielded close to $8 million in sales in 2021 and placed her in the top 10% of the more than 400 agents at her office.
While Coulter is pleased with her success, she says real estate is as much about serving her buyers and sellers as it is making a living.
“Buying or selling a home can be stressful, so I try to take the burden off clients and be a good listener and problem solver,” she says. “For me, real estate is about the Platinum Rule. The Golden Rule tells us to treat others how we would want to be treated, but the Platinum Rule tells us to treat our clients how they want to be treated.”
When Coulter dwells on her parents, she not only considers how they taught her to work hard and pursue her passions but also how they demonstrated the importance of charitable work.
With this in mind, Coulter has produced multiple fashions shows for the Siskin Children’s Institute, emceed for The Performing Arts League, co-chaired the Grateful Gobbler Walk and spoke at a Women of Distinction event that benefited the American Lung Association.
(The latter was particularly important to Coulter, as her father died of lung cancer caused by the high level of radon in the home he shared with her mother. To this day, Coulter advises her buyers to test the houses they are considering purchasing for radon, an odorless, tasteless, invisible gas produced by the natural decay of uranium in soil and the second leading cause of lung cancer after smoking.)
Coulter says she’d be remiss if she credited her parents with passing on only their work ethic and love for philanthropy and didn’t mention the exuberant enjoyment of life, or as she calls it, the joie de vivre, they also gave her.
To this end, when Coulter is not helping people with their real estate needs, one can find her teaching yoga, relaxing on her boat or watching football with her children.
These children are the ones who inspire the greatest measure of Coulter’s joie de vivre. Her daughter, Olivia Plunkett, is a 2018 graduate of Girls Preparatory School in Chattanooga and a senior at UTK. Coulter’s son, Matthew, is a senior at McCallie and defensive end and a tight end on the school’s championship football team.
When Coulter gazes at him, she sees an underdog who exceeds expectations.
“He’s tall and skinny but strong. I told him to never let his opponents see him coming. I said, ‘They’re not going to expect you to be strong.’ And he was incredible.”
The skills Matthew has displayed on the gridiron and the grades he’s earned in the classroom – nearly all A’s, just like his grandfather – have drawn the attention of eight colleges, which are recruiting him to play for them.
Meanwhile, Coulter’s daughter has completed the coursework necessary to become a Realtor. Although Coulter is trying to contain her excitement, she says this could be the beginnings of the Coulter Team.
“I wish my parents were here to see all of this,” she texts a few days after first speaking with the Hamilton County Herald. An emoticon with a tear follows her message.
Even though Coulter’s parents are no longer alive and her children are branching out from their hometown, Coulter says Chattanooga will remain her home.
“I tell my clients I could live anywhere in the country. I’ve lived in New York, Atlanta, Chicago and Northern California, but I chose Chattanooga for raising my children and starting my business. That’s how much I love this city. It’s a gorgeous place.”