As Dexter Gouger and his wife, DeAnna, arrived in Flintstone during their search for a place to relocate in 2018, he noted that the small Georgia town felt like home.
Gouger, a Realtor with Keller Williams, says he made the comment to his wife moments after the tires of their vehicle began rolling across Flintstone asphalt. Since then, his first impression has become a lasting one, and he and DeAnna are now living in the town and loving the laid-back lifestyle.
“It’s not congested, we’re 15 minutes from downtown Chattanooga, and the people there are my kind of people.”
Gouger clarifies that his people are the kind who don’t have much but consider themselves to be rich in other ways – much like his family as he grew up in Suck Creek, an unincorporated community in Hamilton and Marion counties.
Or, as Gouger calls it, “the redneck little brother of Signal Mountain.”
“My brothers and I had teenage parents who raised us in a single-wide trailer. They kept us grounded and they were as good at parenting as you could expect teenagers to be.”
Gouger continues to plumb his childhood for ways to explain why Flintstone feels like bedrock.
“We didn’t have much money, but we had family that helped us. And we helped others in any way we could. We’d harvest more deer than we needed because we fed three other families.”
Gouger sounds like he’s going to repeat himself as he starts his next story; however, he’s not discussing where he lives but the business where his license hangs – Keller Williams Realty on Lee Highway in Chattanooga.
“When I came here to meet (CEO and team leader) Jay Craig, it immediately felt like home,” he says. “It was the same feeling I had when I crossed into Flintstone.”
Gouger wasn’t a new agent when he pulled into KW for his meeting with Craig, but he wasn’t seasoned, either. He’d earned his license 10 years earlier as he was searching for a career that appealed to him. However, his hunt bore a closer resemblance to a game of darts than to a thoughtful exploration of his interests and skills.
“I entered my fourth year of college as a pre-med student. My younger brother had a heart defect when he was born, and we spent two months living on couches at Vanderbilt while his doctors tried to figure out his situation. The staff there went to great lengths to make us feel like he’d be OK.
“I loved the idea of helping others like my brother’s doctors had helped him, but then I job-shadowed someone in the medical field for two weeks and hated it.”
Gouger was desperate to find a replacement for medicine but lacked ideas, so he tried “anything and everything,” he laughs.
“I started a notary program, but never finished it. I also considered going to surveyor school. And I earned my real estate license. I was hoping to hit a bullseye.”
Finally, Gouger’s mother, an English-as-a-second-language teacher, suggested he try education. He took her advice and, after graduating, settled in at Chattanooga Valley Middle School in Flintstone, where he joined the special education staff and coached football, baseball and golf.
This is where Gouger learned something about himself that he’s still dealing with today: he likes to be busy. He actually says he likes to help others, much like his parents taught him and his brothers to do, but his efforts often fill his calendar to bursting.
In addition to teaching and coaching, Gouger agreed to serve as a youth pastor at the St. Elmo campus of Silverdale Baptist Church during his third year at Chattanooga Valley. Three years later, he transferred to Ridgeland High School in Walker County, where he thought he’d be able to keep a lower profile and avoid coaching after hours.
Gouger’s good intentions dissolved like sugar in water when a group of students implored him to lead the school’s Beta Club, an honor society. When he arrived for the first meeting, he saw 150 participants gazing at him in anticipation.
This same group of students later cajoled Gouger into starting a tennis team and serving as its coach.
Gouger says he relied on “too much caffeine and just enough anxiety” to survive days that began early and ended late. He finally applied the brakes when his wife declared enough was enough.
“DeAnna said, ‘I need to see you before 9 o’clock in the evening.’ And then we started talking about what we wanted down the road. Neither of us were getting younger, and we wanted to have kids.”
Gouger held on to his real estate license after college but had no time in his schedule to build his business, so he typically referred clients to another agent. Then he made a shocking discovery during his sixth year of teaching.
“I looked at the past year and realized I’d referred $2.5 million worth of business to another agent. I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ and started doing real estate part-time while I taught. After I topped my annual teaching salary in six months, my wife and I took a leap of faith and I turned in my resignation.”
Gouger says growing up with nothing made quitting his teaching position and switching to real estate full-time easier, as he knew he’d simply end up where he’d started if he failed. However, he’s been full-time since May, and he says business is good.
Now Gouger is mentally preparing to expand his real estate team. He says the challenge will be figuring out how to bring on people who can contribute without sacrificing his status as the name and face of his business.
“Last year, I was doing everything myself. Then I hired a transaction coordinator, and the next thing will be to hire either an office administrator or some new agents. Whatever I decide, I’ll do it slowly. I don’t want to talk with a client and leave, and then they speak with three other people from my office before they talk with me again. Essentially, I want to keep it ‘small town.’
“In a small town, the businesses that do the best are the ones that make people feel like they’re someone. And I don’t want people to feel like they’re being milled through a big machine.”
As thrilled as Gouger is to be in a position to accommodate growth, he says he misses spending more time mentoring youth, he laments. His youngest brother is 10 years younger than him, and the relationships he built with his students and the kids in his youth group often resembled that of an older and younger brother, he says. Gouger still meets some of the teens with whom he was the closest for a weekly Bible study, but his present priority is ensuring his wife sees him before he’s spent the day’s sunshine.
This might be part of why Gouger rises before dawn to feed a passion he’s nurtured since he was a kid in Suck Creek: hunting. Deer and turkey seasons are open in Tennessee, and he wakes up eager to immerse himself in the outdoors and bring home food that will feed the people he loves.
“I love the silence of the outdoors,” Gouger says. “You have to be quiet and still, and make sure you’re invisible. It’s peaceful.”
Perhaps it even feels like home.