When Realtor Jennifer Nelis returns to her Ringgold home after meeting with a seller or showing a home to a buyer, she smiles at her companion and says, “Hello, Handsome.”
Both real estate and the attractive roommate are a marked improvement over her former life in Florida, says Nelis, 52.
“I’d wake up at 5:45 every morning, my head slumped over, and ask, ‘What do I have to do today?’” Nelis recalls. “I think that’s how most people spend their lives.”
Nelis was born and raised in the Sunshine State – and she says there was a time when she thought she’d also die there without having truly lived. While she says she yearned for change, she was stuck in a muddy rut that included mundane, unchanging work in organizational communications – a job she held for 24 years – and she couldn’t generate enough friction to escape.
Nelis breathes a weary sigh after she mentions her previous employment, as if a part of her hasn’t fully shaken off her old shackles and still expects to awaken in Florida, staring at “5:45” on her alarm clock.
“My job had become stagnant and there was no room for growth,” Nelis expounds. “If I was still there, I’d be doing the same thing I was doing the day I left. I’d be doing the same damn job, clicking on the same damn buttons and reporting to the same damn boss.”
Fortunately, Nelis’ life in the Chattanooga area is not a dream. She owns a home, has forged a stimulating new career and is sharing her life with a good-looking roommate, who’s always waiting for her to return.
Nelis says she owes it all to a leap of faith she took in 2017.
This leap initially looked like a stumbling hurdle, Nelis admits, her palms raised in concession. She moved to the Chattanooga area to begin a new life with a friend, but that relationship “crashed and burned” upon their arrival, and Nelis says she thought she’d made a mistake that could eclipse the Tennessee Valley.
A diagnosis of cancer a few months later compounded Nelis’ troubles.
“I thought I was invulnerable,” she recalls. “And then I hit a truck that was suddenly barreling down the highway head on. I thought, ‘I could die. I might die.’ It was the darkest time of my life.”
Nelis says the irony of her mindset during this time is she’s a hopeless optimist. In fact, she has a habit of squashing pessimism wherever she sees it, she adds.
“I once sat down at a table of communications people who were being very negative. They were talking about an economic impact study they were doing, and everything was negative, negative, negative. I was the new girl, and I wasn’t supposed to rock the boat, but I said, ‘What’s with the negativity in the room?’ That’s what I do. I’m not a negative person; I’m the one who says, ‘Let’s flip this coin.’”
The dark cloud over the table lifted and the conversation brightened, Nelis says. Likewise, the scourge of cancer left her body during treatment, and in early 2020 she held a blank slate in her hands.
Nelis decided her next chapter would include real estate. She initially says her reason was simple: “Everybody thinks about being a Realtor at some point in their life,” she quips.
Actually, Nelis wanted to do work that had a purpose, she clarifies.
“In Florida, if I went in at 8 a.m. and I didn’t feel like working, I could spend the day on Facebook and no one would know. I felt like I could live the rest of my life and not make an impact. Real estate seemed to offer a way for me to help myself and others.”
Real estate was a second leap of faith for Nelis. And, once again, she stumbled out of the gate after she hung her license at Coldwell Banker Kinard Realty. She chalks up her faltering early performance to the emergence of COVID, which complicated the learning process.
“I had to figure out a lot of things on my own – and I made mistakes,” she remembers. “The first time I showed a house to a pair of buyers, I knew it was their house, but I didn’t know how to close the deal. An agent from another company closed it instead.”
Then came the day the now-retired Kinard agent Becky Maples took Nelis’ hand and brought her to a showing in a gracious effort to show her the ropes. When the buyer backed out of the deal the day before it was scheduled to close, Nelis kept her cool and told Maples she had another buyer in mind – herself.
“Every house I walked into, I thought, ‘I like this one. I should buy it.’ So, when Becky called me and said, ‘The buyer is backing out,’ I said, ‘That’s not a problem.’”
The guidance of Brandyn O’Dell, the director of agent development at Kinard, also helped to unlock Nelis’ inner Realtor. O’Dell taught her to have a servant’s mentality, she says, and to give more to her clients than she expects to receive from them.
“I’m not trying to sell houses,” Nelis continues, “I’m serving as a real estate adviser.”
Nelis also expanded her sphere from the two people she knew when she arrived in the Chattanooga area to a group of past clients who serve as her ambassadors.
“If my people are at a church event or a party, and they hear someone across the room say, ‘We’re thinking about selling our house,’ they’ll butt into that conversation and say, ‘I have a girl for you.’”
Nelis facilitated a handful of deals her first year and then did well enough in 2021 to earn recognition at Kinard’s annual award’s luncheon. “I was shocked,” she laughs. “I said, ‘That award has my name on it!’”
The award was for selling $2 million worth of residential real estate in 2021. Nelis upgraded her award to the $5 million version in 2022 and has already delivered her best performance to date this year, selling close to $6 million worth of real estate in the last five months alone.
“This has been my best year yet. But it should have been. I’ve been getting up before dawn, going to bed at midnight, and working the whole time.”
O’Dell compliments Nelis’ work ethic and then says her success is due to more than her pressing her nose to the proverbial grindstone. “Jennifer outworks 99% of local real estate agents. But she’s successful because she treats people the right way and puts them before herself.”
Nelis has even found a way to combine her hobbies with her business. An avid gardener with a thumb as green as spring grass, she turns her annual bounty into jars of jellies, pasta sauce and more. Many of these end up in the recently purchased homes of her buyers as closing gifts.
“That how I do things,” she says. “I like to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. I always ask my clients, ‘What’s your biggest issue? What do you need?” If they need help with homeowner’s insurance, I reach out to my extended network. I pay attention to the little holes and help to fill them.”
Nelis has certainly filled the empty spaces in her life. She has a job she loves, she says, and when she’s finished showing houses, she returns to her 1,300-square-foot home and her cat, whom she’s named Handsome.
“I wanted to be able to come home, walk in the door, and say, ‘Hi, Handsome,’” she laughs.
Nelis says her successful battle against cancer opened the door to not just these changes but others, as well, including alterations to her morning routine.
“When my eyes open, I no longer say, ‘What do I have to do today?’ I say, ‘What do I get to do today? I get to meet with a seller and see how I can help them. And I have buyers who want to look at houses.’”
Nelis then says the things for which she’s grateful out loud. “I’m grateful to be alive, for one,” she says. “I’m also grateful for my coworkers and my brokerage. And I’m grateful for the chance to make the best of every day.”