When Jackson Malcolm wants to unwind, he discards the shackles of everyday life and dives headlong into nature. He’s not selective about what he does in the great outdoors, either. Whether he’s hiking, paddleboarding or whitewater rafting, he says the open air is one of his favorite places for hitting his reset button.
“I feel like creation is the best place for me to think and recharge,” muses Malcolm, 25.
Whatever Malcolm is doing as he’s relaxing, he can go farther. There’s always another bend in the river to explore, another hill to climb and another mile to run. He often accepts the challenge, eager to drink in every ounce of the experience.
As if this attribute was coded into his DNA, Malcolm stays in character after he returns home and punches in at work. As a Realtor with Keller Williams Greater Downtown Realty, he says every listing appointment, showing and home sale is an opportunity to do more for his client.
“I’m an up-and-coming – and very hungry – Realtor,” Malcolm says. “I promise people that I’ll give them 100% and that I won’t cut any corners to get there.”
By “up-and-coming,” Malcolm means ambitious, not young, he says. Although he’s a fresh-faced twentysomething, he’s been in real estate for seven of those years and gained experience in several facets of the business beyond home sales.
Malcolm’s first taste of the trade came during a summer internship with Tiffanie Robinson at SVN Second Story Real Estate Management. A native of Johnson City, Malcolm moved with his family to Chattanooga in time to become a freshman at Ooltewah High School. He was a rising sophomore at UTC when Robinson asked him to make cold calls for her and exposed him to the world of real estate.
“I come from a family in which you made your wage and that was it,” Malcolm recalls. “I didn’t know there was a different world out there. Working for Tiffanie changed my perspective, and I’ll always be grateful to her for that.”
Malcolm left UTC clutching a finance degree, but instead of looking for a position with a corporation, he joined a couple of friends in launching a property management company. He intended for the business, and any other entrepreneurial efforts that followed, to serve as a hedge against the kind of unexpected job loss his father suffered after moving his family to the Chattanooga area, Malcolm explains.
“We were rooted in Johnson City, but my dad felt like God called him to move down here, which was hard for a small-town family that had been in the same place forever. But he did it, and the company ended up eliminating his position. By the time I was a freshman in college, I was thinking, ‘How do I not let that happen to me?’”
Launched on the eve of the COVID-19 outbreak in March 2020, Tunnel Property Management did “exceptionally well,” Malcolm says, and in 2022 he and his partners sold the company to Evernest, a national real estate and property management firm.
“The real estate market in Chattanooga was booming during those years. A lot of people in town and from out-of-town were buying rental properties, and they needed people to manage it. So, we did very well.”
Malcolm isn’t exaggerating. When we and his friends sold their brainchild to Evernest, they were managing more than 300 homes.
While success has its spoils, it also has its costs, and Malcolm says he needed to switch to work that would allow him to cut back on the scope of his responsibilities and the number of hours he was spending on the clock.
“After leading a large team for a couple of years, I wanted to worry about only myself.”
Malcolm believed becoming a Realtor would give him the lone wolf experience he was seeking. He also wanted to leverage his lessons in property management into a career in home sales.
That said, Malcolm adds that he didn’t know how much he didn’t know.
“I’d owned a property management company, and I’d bought a lot of rental houses on my own, so I came into this thinking, ‘I know real estate; I’ve been doing this for years.’ But being an agent has been an interesting new challenge. The property management and investment worlds are numbers-driven, while home sales primarily involve emotions and feelings. I work with a lot of investors, but my bread and butter is helping people buy and sell the homes where their lives happen, so it’s been a different kind of experience.”
Working at KW has helped him to make the transition, Malcolm says.
“Friends who were in real estate told me the training and agent support are exceptional here – and I’ve found that to be true. I’ve done four or five deals this year alone by sitting in the kitchen and talking with people.
“I’ll be eating lunch, and someone will say, ‘Man, I have a listing I can’t move,’ and I’ll have a buyer for it. Or somebody will have an investment property I wouldn’t have learned about otherwise, and I can kick it over to a client.”
Malcolm says he enjoys his present work as much as anything he’s done.
“I’ve always thought of work as going to an office and doing whatever my boss tells me to do, but being in sales allows me to spend my days speaking with and serving interesting people. That’s exciting.”
Also thrilling to Malcolm is the time off he’s rediscovered since becoming a Realtor. With the rigors of property management behind him, he’s learned that a day’s work can consist of eight hours, and that his life is better when he’s keeping that kind of schedule.
“I try to be intentional about working close to 40 hours a week,” he notes. “I sometimes have things to do at night, but I try to keep it at a sustainable level.”
With no spouse or pets to fill his free time, Malcolm can do as he chooses. Some days, it’s a run; other days, it’s a hike. During a weekend in October, it was a whitewater rafting excursion in New River Gorge National Park and Preserve in Southern West Virginia.
Malcolm says there is one thing he strives to do every day, and it involves not a river on a map but the metaphorical waters that have coursed through him since he became a Christian: he endeavors to build and share his faith.
Whether Malcolm is writing a contract, eating lunch at KW, meeting with an investor or tending to one of the countless minuscule tasks people perform every day, he says he wants to glorify God.
“I even view real estate as a gift from God; it’s my responsibility, and it’s how I worship Him. Yes, it’s also how I make a living, but it’s bigger than that. I have a responsibility to God to use the knowledge and talents He’s given me to help my clients better their lives.”
As Malcolm lives out his Christian faith, he teaches others to do the same. He does this in response to Jesus’ instructions in the Book of Matthew in the Bible to “go and make disciples,” he remarks.
“When I was in college, a fellow I knew taught me the things I hadn’t learned in church, including how to have a relationship with God instead of attending services on Sunday and then going about my week. So, now I disciple younger men.”
Of course, Malcolm’s phone can ring at any time, and it could be a client calling, so his work rarely recedes to the back of his mind. His thoughts are presently occupied with his business plans for the upcoming year, he admits.
“My goal this year was to double what I did in 2023, which was my first full year of being a Realtor. I was already in the business and had connections when I earned my license, so I had to work hard this year to double what I did last year.”
Fortunately, Malcom adds, he’s close to achieving his goal for 2024. He believes this will position him well for 2025, when he intends to double his sales again as well as start a small team, he announces.
“After a couple of years of worrying only about myself, I’m remembering how incredible it was to make a positive impact on people. You can accomplish more things with more people, and your work can be even more satisfying.”
So says the fresh-faced 25-year-old Malcolm, who’s eager to see what’s around the bend in the river, at the top of the hill, and a mile down the road.