Setting the Stage For Success BY MAEGAN CARRASQUILLO, STAFF WRITER
“Be bold enough to use your voice, brave enough to listen to your heart, and strong enough to live the life you’ve always imagined.”
50 Volume 11 Issue 1
Focusing on agent success is what EXIT Realty Blues City Broker/Owner, Eddie Aeschliman, credits as the key to making his five-location, West Tennessee operation exceptional. Beginning his real estate career 18 years ago at EXIT Realty Horizons in Las Cruces, NM, Eddie would then move to Florida in 2008 and work with EXIT Realty Oceanside, then to Jackson, TN in 2010 where he met and placed his license with Janet DiChiara, the owner of EXIT Realty Select. After studying and meeting the love of his life, Renee, in Jackson, he moved to nearby Collierville to be with her, but quickly learned not having a local office made things difficult. “I tried to convince my broker to open a Memphis office, but she encouraged me to buy one,” he explained. “At Christmas in 2014, I approached my mom, Bonnie Aeschliman, about going into business with me and opening an EXIT brokerage in Collierville. She has an entrepreneurial spirit, had sold her business, and was going to retire, but she liked the idea and suggested I take my future inheritance to get started, predicting I’d waste it anyway!” Eddie took the investment with the caveat that his mom relocate from Wichita, KS, get her license, and help him launch the business. Bonnie studied housing and interior design in college and thought being a REALTOR® was a good fit for her and was excited to start a new venture with her son. She chose to put many of her commissions back into the brokerage as she was thrilled to see it grow; commissions that were instrumental in opening subsequent offices over the years according to Eddie. “I’ve been with EXIT my entire career. I love being in the business of helping grow agents so they can sustain themselves, have a career, make a living, invest in real estate and grow long-term income,” he said. Eddie considers it his mission to help agents, so he established the Blues City Real Estate School. Pre-COVID, the local college was providing pre-license education for the community, taught by his previous Broker, Janet, but restrictions dictated only 10 students per class, so he and Janet teamed up to open their own real estate school at the Jackson Chamber of Commerce where they had a large enough room to safely distance up to 30 students. Since the fall of 2020 they have offered prelicensing, broker, and continuing education classes with several different instructors. “The Tennessee Real Estate Commission determines the content but then each trainer takes that basic outline and adds in current trends in real estate and provides real life examples and insight,” Eddie explained. “For education at my brokerages, we focus on how to grow each agent’s business. We match their skills with the technologies that will return a reward of more listings and buyers.” EXIT Realty Blues City works with agents to help get them up and running and to Eddie that means doing everything in the EXIT plan from training, branding, technology, to office culture, saying, “My biggest advice to new agents is to find a great coach and mentor who’s invested in you beyond what you bring to the office. Find someone who’ll share the hard and helpful lessons at the same time.”
