Phillip Cantrell CEO

Born and raised in Nashville, Phillip Cantrell graduated from the University of Tennessee in the early ‘80’s, then followed in his father and grandfather’s footsteps by embarking on a career path in the commercial printing industry. That career would take him on a 20 year journey. Starting out in sales and working his way up the ladder of some of the largest companies in the area, Phillip spent the last 6 years of his printing career as the general manager of one of the largest companies in the area. During that tenure, he was responsible for building the team that helped the company experience unprecedented growth by increasing sales six fold, along with accompanying increases in market share and profitability.

Simultaneous to his printing career, Phillip began investing in residential rehab properties as early as 1988. Beginning this venture by moving his family into the properties he purchased and doing much of the work himself, he then progressed to spinning off the investing activities into a separate company, with full-time tradesmen and staff. Within a year, it became obvious that a career path decision needed to be made. Either sell the rehab company and continue in commercial printing or move full time into the real estate industry. Given his love for real estate, the choice was obvious, and the 20 year printing career came to an end.

Once the decision was made to become a full-time Realtor® and investor, it was a natural evolution of this “new” career to set his sights on obtaining a broker license and eventually opening his own company. As with most activities in Phillip’s life, it’s 110% effort or nothing…and failure is never an option! That first year as a full-time agent, his sales exceeded $4.8 million and continued to climb from there, with personal production (not the team, not the company) in 2006 exceeding $21,000,000, including both residential and commercial transactions.

Along the way Phillip, in conjunction with partners, opened a real estate company in west Nashville, quickly growing it into a 100+ agent firm before converting to a national franchise brand. Following a series of discussions with a major custom home builder in the area, Phillip decided that his future lay in the hands‐on assembly and management of the team that would provide this builder with major growth. In doing so he allowed his partners to buy him out and Phillip focused his career on personal production. Doing so quickly catapulted him into the top 1% of Realtors®in the area and earned him numerous sales awards.

A very strong believer in continuing education, Phillip has earned the Education Achievement award for the past several years from the Greater Nashville Association of Realtors®and possesses the GRI (Graduate, Realtor® Institute) designation, the e‐PRO designation and the CBR® (Certified Buyer Representative) designation. Recently Phillip has been accepted by the Council of Real Estate Brokerage Managers as a CRB‐Candidate (Certified Real Estate Brokerage Manager), the highest professional designation offered by the National Association of Realtors®.

Kimberly Ivery Director of Training, REALTOR®

“Everything has changed, and yet nothing has changed. You still need to get listings, find buyers, have the right team in place, adapt to the rolling tide of changes in the market and monitor your online presence. What has changed, perhaps permanently, is the way we conduct our business.” 

Kimberly Ivery is an accomplished Nashville area business owner who has dedicated over 10 years working in the Real Estate Industry and 15 years in the Multifamily Industry as a Trainer. As a transaction coordinator, she closed just over 900 Real Estate Transactions. As she learned Real Estate from the ground up, she developed a strong passion for improving all aspects of the business and has developed many training tools to assist people in every level of the Real Estate business. She travels around the Southeast educating and training employees on all levels of the business. 

Drawing from her experience in Real Estate, she has built a solid reputation for capitalizing on new trends and technologies and streamlining business tasks in order to boost Real Estate business initiates and help agents and companies reach their goals. While Kimberly has an aggressive business personality, she is also very compassionate and works diligently throughout her training and education processes. Today, Kimberly serves as the Director of Training of Benchmark Realty based in Cool Springs, Tennessee. 

Melissa Floyd Compliance

Gus Phillips Director of Products & Services