“God, just tell me what to do.”
Priscilla Smith was on vacation in Florida, praying about her future. She was standing at a divergence along her career path, and was torn over which way to go.
One trail continued along Smith’s current bearing: marketing director for Crye-Leike on Gunbarrel Road, a position she’d held since early 2011. She liked assisting the Realtors at the office. “I helped agents brainstorm and create marketing plans. I enjoyed thinking outside the box on properties that, for one reason or another, were challenging,” she says.
The other trail was, for her, virgin territory: working as a full-time agent. “As I helped agents, I’d get pumped up. I thought it would be fun to be a Realtor. I’d be doing marketing in combination with serving people.”
By the time Smith had traveled to Florida to celebrate a sister’s birthday, she was already an agent – she’d taken the class and spent the money to activate her license. But she’d been dabbling. The time to commit to one direction or another had come, and as she stood at the split, she was torn. So, she talked with God.
“Just tell me what to do. I’ll make the wrong choice,” she prayed. She says the answer came as clear as a crystal.
Smith kept the details to herself. Then, a couple of weeks after she returned to Chattanooga, the human resources manager at her office called her and said, “It’s time to choose.” Acting on faith, she told the man her decision: she’d become a full-time agent.
Since that moment, Smith says, she’s been blessed beyond her expectations. “Some agents work for six months before they have a client. But from the moment I decided to become a full-time Realtor, I’ve been getting referrals. I’ve also had several closings, and I have property listed.”
Smith counts among her blessings the ability to cover her real estate expenses with her earnings. At the onset, she was prepared to tap her personal reserves to maintain and grow her business, but this has not been necessary. To her, this is confirmation she’s heading down the right path.
Plus, Smith couldn’t be happier with the work. “When someone comes to me with a challenge, I like to turn that around and surprise them. That makes me feel good,” she says.
Road to transformation
Smith was born and reared in Pensacola, Fla. But life in the small tourist town didn’t excite her. She issued municipal bonds for a law firm for a decade – the mere mention of which causes her eyes to glaze over – and then, in the wake of Hurricane Ivan in 2004, co-founded a non-profit called Be Ready Alliance Coordinating for Emergencies, or BRACE for short. The work was more up her alley.
“During Ivan, we saw a lot of duplication of services, yet people were falling through the cracks because there was no central point for all of the help pouring in. We became that convening organization,” she says. BRACE started with a $10,000 grant from The United Way, and by the end of its first year, had $350,000 in funding. In 2011, the White House awarded the organization Best Practices status.
Smith met her now ex-husband, an emergency planner for The United Way, at BRACE. When he returned to his hometown of Chattanooga in 2007 to work with the local United Way, she came with him. She’s not shy about sharing the details of their short-lived union.
“The formation of BRACE brought us together. It was our passion. But once we moved away from it, we discovered we had different interests, so we went our separate ways,” she says.
Divorce is a personal detail many people keep to themselves, but Smith shares it because it was a precursor to big changes in her life. Although her marriage had ended, Smith stayed in Chattanooga, as she’d fallen in love with the town and its people. Then her brother, an iron welder, moved to Chattanooga to live with her. Also, she quit her job as an administrative assistant. “Suddenly, all of these decisions were coming at me, and they were going to be significant. Transition isn’t the right word for what happened to me. It was a transformation,” she says.
Smith had toyed with the idea of becoming a Realtor in her twenties, but hadn’t followed through. A help wanted ad calling for a marketing director at Crye-Leike piqued her interest, though, as she’d loved doing public relations for BRACE, so she applied for the position. Following an interview with Harold Crye, she landed the job.
The transformation Smith experienced included another change about which she openly speaks: She became a Christian. Brought up in a non-religious home, Smith didn’t believe in God or the Bible, she says. However, her brother had been “saved” prior to moving in with her, and the changes she saw in him planted the seeds of faith in her. As Smith looked at the events that had altered her life, including Crye-Leike hiring her, those kernels sprouted.
“I could no longer deny the presence of God in my life,” she says, “so I was saved around the time I started at Crye-Leike. And I felt as though the people here were feeding me. Everyone who came through my office door helped me on my journey to become a better Christian,” she says.
Moving forward
Smith will end her tenure as marketing director on February 5 and begin working full-time as a Realtor. She’s looking forward to the experience. “My gut tells me 2013 is going to be amazing. This is the year that will help people in real estate begin to cope better with the difficulties we’ve had. According to the reports I receive, the conversations I’ve had with other agents, and even the news, the market is improving,” she says.
If the harvest is equal to the work, then Smith will produce a bumper crop. She admits to being a workaholic, to the point where her co-workers joke about putting a cot in her office. “I’ve always been that way,” she says. “So, I don’t have a social life.”
Smith laughs as she says this. She’s certainly not been bashful about sharing some of the intimate details of her life, so it should come as no surprise that being single, or rather married to her work, doesn’t bother her. Besides, she’s content, and she’s where she believes she belongs, and that’s certainly nothing to hide.
“Chattanooga is where I’m supposed to be. I’m actually happy for the first time,” she says.
Although the agonizing decisions and period of change are behind Smith, and she looks to the future with great expectation, one thing remains the same: She still begins each day with a simple but burning prayer – “God, just tell me what to do.”