Realtor Patti Cole doesn’t just claim Signal Mountain as home; Signal Mountain claims her.
“I was born and raised on this mountain,” she says. “My mom and aunt both worked for the Town of Signal Mountain for 40 years. My roots on this mountain go so deep, I couldn’t pull ‘em up if I wanted to.”
Because Cole grew up here, she’s one of those rare locals who can chart the town’s development in childhood memories. Back then, it was smaller, quieter, the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else. It still feels that way to her. But now, she laughs, she can’t go to Pruett’s Market without running into a half-dozen people with questions about a listing.
“That would be unusual,” she says. “People will stop me to ask what I have listed or about a house they’re interested in. It’s organic. Those impromptu conversations – they help my business and are part of why I love this place.”
The running joke at Pruett’s Market is a reminder that small-town life comes with its own choreography.
“When my husband and I go into Pruett’s, he says, ‘You get 45 seconds per person,’” Cole laughs. “He’s not kidding.”
A life built on lists
A few minutes with Cole are enough to reveal how deeply and joyfully task-oriented she is.
To illustrate, she lifts a notebook and flips to a page packed with scribbles – tasks numbered one through 15.
“This is just today,” she says.
Cole has been filling notebooks like this for over a decade. There are at least 15 of them.
“I need to throw ‘em away,” she says without conviction. “I haven’t ever gone back, but it’d be fun to look at what was going on in 2010.”
Her lists are the connective tissue of her life. She scribbles them in the morning, and the act of writing, crossing off and transferring tasks gives her a sense of accomplishment.
“If it’s not written down, it didn’t happen.”
A former nurse, Cole manages life like she once managed patient charts. Walk the dog? Write it down. Call the accountant? Write it down. Go to water aerobics? Definitely write it down.
“Once it’s written down, I have to do it,” she says. “Even the things I don’t want to do.”
What does she dislike doing?
“I don’t like getting things together for the accountant,” she admits. “I despise it.”
But she still writes it down. And crosses it off.
Becoming a Realtor
Cole is one of those people whose path into real estate looks linear only in hindsight. After graduating from UT Memphis with a nursing degree – a shift from the accounting courses she’d first attempted at Memphis State – she landed on an indigent-care floor, working with interns and residents treating patients with advanced conditions.
“Just about everybody we saw was textbook,” she says. “You could go to the textbook and it would say, ‘This situation might look like this’ – and that’s exactly how they presented.”
Cole remembers those patients with warmth.
“Those sweet patients appreciated anything we gave them. If you brought ’em a glass of water, if you rubbed their back – whatever.”
Cole later moved to Nashville and joined the cardiac unit at St. Thomas Hospital. It wasn’t for her.
“I was looking at numbers on a monitor,” she says plainly. “There wasn’t as much one-on-one time with patients.”
A friend eventually convinced her to take a job training hospital staff on pressure-relief beds. From there, she transitioned into medical sales, which she did until the birth of her son made the travel unsustainable.
Her next chapter came from across the street where she now works.
“I bought a business from my neighbor,” she says. “She’d started a business that helped people with their medical paperwork.”
But people in Cole’s world had been nudging her toward real estate for a long time.
“They said, ‘You’ve been on the mountain forever. You need to go into real estate,’” she recalls. “And when my kids were old enough that I could leave them for small spurts of time, that’s what I did.”
The heart of the work
To Cole, the rewards of real estate aren’t measured in sales totals or production rankings. They’re measured in the victories that happen between contract and closing.
“There’s nothing more gratifying than walking away from a closing after obstacles have been overcome and emotions have been tempered,” she says. “A big part of what we do is tempering the situation and saying, ‘Stand back and look at the whole thing.’”
Cole’s stories show the truth of that.
She tells one about a recent listing that drew an offer far below the asking price. While this upset her sellers, the parties worked it out, closed the deal and formed an enduring friendship.
“Even before we closed, the little couple who bought the house said, ‘Can we visit the sellers so we can learn more about the house?’” she says. “They were there for three and a-half hours.”
The sellers later invited the buyers to church.
“To this day, both couples adore each other,” Cole says. “The stories I can tell are about more than real estate.”
This is why Cole worries the industry has shifted too far toward efficiency for efficiency’s sake.
“Real estate has gotten too transactional,” she says. “I think we’re losing what it’s really about.”
Taking the helm
The Crye-Leike office on Signal Mountain has been part of the community for roughly 35 years, long before Cole joined as an agent. Back when she started, the office bustled under the presence of her mentor and first managing broker, Dot Heggie.
“She was an icon,” Cole says. “I could not have asked for a better broker.”
Dot sat at a desk where Cole’s now sits, and their relationship was built on constant drop-ins, endless questions and unwavering attentiveness.
“I’d come to the door with yet another question, and she’d turn around and give me her full attention,” Cole says. “I had the best.”
So when Crye-Leike approached her about becoming managing broker, it felt like the natural progression. But she resisted. Heggie had worked in the office all day, every day, and Cole worried she’d lose the freedom she cherished.
But times have changed. Brokers aren’t anchored to their desks the way they once were. And as Cole thought about it, the desire to serve the office – to restore its energy, rebuild its presence and help a new generation of agents – began to outweigh the hesitation.
“My heart is in this office,” she says. “I want to see it bustling again. I want this place to be the powerhouse Crye-Leike once was. And if I can do anything toward that, I would love to.”
Cole oversees a small team – six agents, including herself – and plans to grow the office “intentionally, not by leaps and bounds.”
She wants community presence and engagement. She wants people to know Crye-Leike is there – wedged between a salon and a Chinese restaurant in a shopping center off Taft Highway.
“You’d be surprised how many people who’ve been here forever don’t know we’re here,” she says.
At home on the mountain
Cole’s husband also grew up on Signal Mountain. The two married in Nashville and eventually returned home to raise their children – Cutler and Emilee – who live nearby.
Their social circle reflects their deep roots on the mountain.
“My husband has a whole tribe of friends,” she says, describing him as “not like most men” because of it. “We have a supper club we’ve been doing for 25 years. And I have another group of friends who all went to Signal Mountain Junior High together. So we get together, too.”
Cole’s life outside real estate also is knitted with service.
She volunteers with the Night Owls program at Signal Mountain Presbyterian Church, where she’s been a lifelong member. The program gives parents of children with mental disabilities four hours of respite while volunteers care for the children.
“We keep the children so those sweet, exhausted parents can – for four hours – breathe,” she says.
Cole also delivers flowers to shut-ins, though she’s stepped back temporarily while adjusting to her new role.
For her, it all circles back to the mountain she’s rarely left – a place where family, friendship and service are simply part of life.
A future of mentoring
Not long after stepping into her new role, Cole found herself digging through old files left behind by Heggie. One thing stood out among the old papers: a personality test Cole had taken years earlier.
“It said that I’m a mentor,” Cole says. “I thought, ‘That’s what I’ve always done!’ And now I want to mentor agents. It made sense.”
The test affirmed that the role she once resisted might actually fit her more naturally than she imagined. The same qualities that guided her from nursing to medical sales to real estate had guided her into leadership – a role rooted not in authority but in service and connection.
Cole’s ambition now is to create a Crye-Leike office that feels like the one she joined years ago – a place where agents work, ask questions, share stories and learn from one another.
“Things used to happen so organically,” she says. “I want that again.”
She now builds lists not only for herself but also for the office – a covered dish luncheon here, a new community event there, a plan for growing the team deliberately and thoughtfully.
And somewhere in those notebooks, likely tucked between “Water aerobics” and “Pick up HoneyBaked ham,” is the evolution of her purpose: to lead by mentoring, to mentor by caring and to care by doing what she’s always done – showing up, listening closely and giving people her full attention.
Just like Dot once did for her.