Benchmark Realty’s founder shares how humility, systems, and people-first leadership create long-term success.
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Show Notes:
In this episode, Adam Torres and Phillip Cantrell, founder of Benchmark Realty and author of Failing My Way to Success, on how he built a thriving real estate business from the ground up. Phillip shares his 4–4–2 record of wins, losses, and ties, along with his proven Four Cornerstones of Success — Delegation, Observation, Working Smart, and Compassion — offering a roadmap for entrepreneurs ready to turn failure into growth.
About Benchmark Realty
An Innovative Approach to Real Estate Agent Careers and Opportunities!
In March 2006 Phillip Cantrell launched Benchmark Realty LLC with his wife Amanda. As a result of the economic downturn in late 2007 they sought to reformat the business under a new, more sustainable model. Based on extensive research, a new business plan was formulated and re-launched in February 2008 under a revolutionary brokerage model. Under this model, Benchmark agents keep 100% of their commissions AND enjoy complete freedom to structure each and every deal. No commission splits, no desk fees, no technology fees, just a low monthly fee.
The company has seen rapid growth since then, consistently adding 9‐12 new agents to the roster each month. In fact, the firm has seen a doubling in all major indicators for each year of the past 4 years. Those indicators are: gross sales volume, gross commission income, profitability, transaction count and agent count. This cumulative success has pushed Benchmark to the top of real estate firms in the Middle TN area and perhaps into the top 10 in the entire state of Tennessee.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to be an guest of one of our shows, you can head on over to mission matters.com and click on BR Guest to apply. All right, today I have Phillip Cantrell on the line and he’s founder over at Benchmark Realty, and he’s also author of the bestselling book, failing My Way to Success which shows anyone how they can make it in business.
Philip, welcome to the show. Hello, Adam. Thanks for having me today. Pleasure to be all right. So we got a lot to talk about today. So I definitely want to get into your book a bit here. So failing my way to success. Also we want to get into some of some of the things that you, that have made you successful and specifically getting into your 4, 4, 2 win-loss, tie record, even what that means, and also your four cornerstones of success.
But before we do that, I wanna know, how’d you get into the real estate business? I mean, you built quite a sizable business there. where’d all that begin? Well, it’s an interesting story. I actually spent 19 years in the commercial printing business in Nashville before I started buying houses on the side and fixing them up.
They call that flipping now, but we didn’t know that term back then. Back in the olden days. Mm-hmm. We called it rehab investing. So I started doing that on the side, running a parallel career. And then finally in, 2000, your WA 2K. I just kind of blew it up and said, I am done with I am done with commercial printing.
I never really liked it. I just kind of fell into it accidentally coming outta college and transitioned over to be a rehab investor in real estate. And then worked that into working with high end new construction built in Williamson County, which is just south of Nashville, Tennessee. And you probably heard that in my accent, didn’t you, in Nashville, Tennessee?
Just a bit. Just a bit. Just a bit. Just a bit. It’s okay. Yeah. I am what I am. Right. So transitioned that into starting a, a real estate brokerage called Benchmark Realty in 2006, and managed the merger of Benchmark into United Real Estate Holdings in 2020. So I am now in the phase of mentoring, consulting, counseling, coaching, helping, helping others learn from the mistakes that I have encountered throughout my career.
Hmm. I love it. it’s a great story and one of the things that I think is interesting is that you really, so real estate was, I mean, you, you transitioned into it and that’s pretty interesting to me. Like that wasn’t the initial plan. And this is your version of kind of breaking out of corporate America, which in your case would’ve been the printing business, so to speak, and then find taking another path.
Am am I off on that? No, you’re exactly right. And it’s kind of funny in my, in my look at my whole career, 42 years, 43 years now I have actually founded or controlled 10 separate businesses. And it, I really didn’t realize that until I sat down one day and started listing them because the journey has just been kind of going here and going there, doing this, doing that.
Some worked, some didn’t. That’s the four, four and two record that we were talking about you mentioned earlier. Mm. And some were in commercial printing industry and some in the real estate industry. Most in the real estate industry. Mm. We. the, the crisis of 2008 kinda rocked our world, as you can imagine.
You probably heard about that. Oh yeah. In the financial crisis. And so we reformatted and relaunched benchmark with the five agents. And today we have nearly 2000 agents. So affiliate agents, agents across Tennessee, Kentucky, Alabama, and Georgia. What an interesting journey for sure. What an amazing story.
I wanna, I wanna switch it up a bit here. I wanna get into your book a bit. So first off, what caused the book? Like writing a book? A lot of different ways. I’m by the way, for and you may not know this Philip, but we’re book publishers here as well, so we’ve published over 400 authors and so I’m biased.
If I, anybody that I can talk, that’ll talk to me, I’m like, Hey, launch a book, launch a podcast. That’s it. But that is also our business. But those two things, if I can think, if I can trace back two important points in my life. One was launching a book, changed everything. Two was starting a podcast changed my entire life, and so I’m so I’ll, talk to, I’m blue in the face to that, but I, but I’m biased, right?
So I’m always interested when I hear new like authors or authors that come on the show, like, why’d you even go down that path? why? Why a book? So Benchmark Realty is obviously my capstone company. Of course, I’m 56 years old now, and it was the, it was the one time shot to really, to really go big and, and you know, the accumulated wisdom that you have in business sitting down and thinking through this and realizing that unless we transmit that knowledge, that information, yeah, those lessons we’ve learned through future generations, then it’s mm-hmm.
Technically lost. And they’re nothing to repeat. The same doom loop that we stepped into because nobody taught us. So if there’s one reason that I did this, it was to share, share knowledge with the legacy that comes behind it to help others. And I have a strong belief in that. Strong belief that we have an obligation and I’ve had my liquidity event.
Mm-hmm. The temptation is to take the money and go to the farm or the beach or whatever. And I think that people who do that are making a bad mistake. They’re not helping society, they’re not leaving the world a better place than when they found it. And that, to me is, problematic. And Philip people are think that they’re gonna think that I have you on the payroll giving an answer like that.
No, but that’s, that’s what I say though. I’m like at the end of all of this, we’re not taking it with us. Like if you don’t give that knowledge, I like to just say pay it forward. And those aren’t my words. A lot of other people said, and there’s different ways to pay it forward. And in the past maybe it was simply, which I don’t, I still don’t think is bad.
Philanthropy, writing a check, other things like that. But the knowledge, like the knowledge is what moves humanity forward. It’s not necessarily always another, and another, something with our name on it out there, sometimes no knowledge. It’s the knowledge. The knowledge is the hard part really.
And that’s the part that lets other people build from it, in my opinion. Exactly. Well, I a hundred percent agree with you. You know, knowledge is a, what I call a compounding effect, right? Mm-hmm. I can give you a dollar and you’ve got a dollar and maybe you go invest that and maybe you get a little bit of money off of that.
Or I can teach you how to earn a dollar. Yeah. And then you can go make a million of them. and I think that that compounding effect is a moral obligation to be honest with you. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I just strongly believe that and, I see it happen over and over again where. Guys my age, they, they, you know, old white guys, they take the money and go to the farm and they really haven’t helped anybody.
They will I leave to my kids and my kids help. Yes. And that’s great and that’s awesome. Mm-hmm. That’s what you should be doing. But you also have a greater obligation to society once you have experienced these travails through business. For sure. So let’s get into your this win-loss tie record. So 4, 4, 2.
Obviously everyone wants to win in business, but can you talk a little bit maybe about the losses along the way and maybe even the ties and like what those taught you? Well, yeah, absolutely. I mean and I actually wrote an article on this talking about my lessons. My greatest mistake I ever made is the title of the article, and I think if you take all that and boil it down, there’s a common theme that runs through that.
The common theme for me was believing my own hubris. I got sold on my own pr, I believed that I was really rocking and rolling. I believed that I was really knocking it outta the ballpark every time I swung the bat. Hmm. And when you get to that point, that’s when the fall happens. You know, the Bible talks about pride goes before a fall, and that’s, exactly what that’s exactly what the writer meant when he said that.
In many cases, throwing good money after bad, continuing to double down on bad decisions because of your pride inevitably leads to really negative outcomes. Mm-hmm. and failing to do sufficient research on the front end is another big look. We get enamored with the next glittery object, particularly as real estate people.
I mean, just the next shiny object. We’ve just gotta have it, gotta have it gotta, and this is society in general. But to say, I have friends that like this X, Y, Z product, and so therefore I’m gonna go start a business. That is not research. That is, that is an emotional decision making process, which never a good Oh man, not, you just not hurt some people that are doing that as mystique.
Sorry, I’m just being honest, you know? But it’s a, it’s something that you have to look out for. So, talk about this in the book about the importance of doing your diligence before you start a business, because I learned the hard way. What happens when you don’t? And it can be a big mistake or it can be a small mistake, but it’s still a mistake and you have to learn from your mistakes.
Every one of them. Yeah. You know, I have learned with lots of zeros behind it, and those are mistakes you do not forget. Yeah. Yeah. I, like, I like this point a lot because it just, I think it humbles us no matter where we’re at in business, if we, we’ve had some wins, had some losses, like, and it’s also makes it human that, hey, we, we’ve all been there and if you’re newer to business or newer and you haven’t had.
Some of those, it’s okay. I mean, time’s gonna teach you, whatever lessons God has in store for you. So not, talking on that, but you, it’s okay. It’s okay to be new. It’s okay to be just getting started. So I wanna get into a bit into your frameworks here. Your, your four cornerstones of success.
How’d you come up with those first off, and, and what are they? Well, they are again, based on the lessons that I’ve learned throughout my life. And then what I tried to do was, I am a big, they call it journaling, but I don’t call it journaling. I have a binder that I carry around and the thought comes to me, I write it down, and I would advocate that everyone needs to do that.
I have a binder that it’s little black notebook. It’s not really a binder, but when I have one for business meetings where I make notes during meetings and I have one for, thought. And sitting down one day and you, and you write these thoughts down, and then it occurs to me, there’s a pattern to what I have experienced.
And so how do you categorize the pattern and then try to identify and put a label on the pattern. And I came up with the the four corner spans and they are delegation, observation, working smart, and compassion, and I can explain each of those. So, mm-hmm. So delegation is, is where. I learned a long time ago that I can’t do everything myself.
Type A personalities have a strong tendency to want to control, to not let go, to not hold others accountable. but at the same time, we despise it. We want to get it off our backs want to get it off our necks. We get tired of everybody depending on us, but subconsciously we crave it. So therefore, it is a strong problem to not want to delegate things.
It was for me. And then I realized that until I learned to amplify myself through others, that I was never gonna grow a business. Mm. And probably most of my failures came from that inability to actually let go, delegate a sign test and then step back and let people do their job. You know? And I think general George Patton said that one time.
He said, never tell somebody what to do. Tell ’em what needs to get done, what the mission is that needs to be accomplished, and then let them figure out how to do it. and that was a, yeah, go ahead. Sorry. No, no. I love that. I’m always like, I’m just cracking up because that’s what I always tell the people.
I’m like, put me in the game, coach. Come on. What’s the mission? I don’t think people quite, I think those, those words are they’re more true today than ever. You gotta be in the game. What the mention, let’s get in there. Yeah. Yeah. So the, second one is observation. And observation sounds simple, but it’s really not many people in particular industries and coming from real estate, it’s very, very happens very often in this industry is we don’t look outside the industry for potential.
So. So that’s the observation, is look at other industries for best practices. And this is where my previous exposure to another industry helped me tremendously when I got into this industry because I got into the real estate. I’m not from real estate, so I didn’t think mm-hmm. If a traditional real estate broker is a traditional real estate brokerage owner would think I looked outside our industry and studied the best practices and then reformatted and reformulated them for this industry.
And if they are a best practice, they are a best practice because business precepts are universal, right? Mm. You know, you, you sell it for more than what it costs you to build it. That’s, that’s the basic principle. And, so applying that in a new industry seems like rocket science at the time. But when you think about it, it’s really incredibly simple.
It is really simple. And the working smart, which is the next one, is document your processes. When you find a standardized way of doing something, document that, write it down. Don’t just, don’t, just think, well, I’ll remember that because you won’t, and you will always do it a little bit different. Maybe it improves, maybe it doesn’t, but if it’s written down, then you actually can go back to it, reference it.
Sand on it, polish on it, refine it, make it better. And so we have a series of every business that we do now, we have a series of manuals, we have a process, the way we do things, we will document that in a manual and we refer back to it constantly improving it, but always referring back to it. And the last one being compassion.
you can distill that down to understanding that you have to. Loves the people you work with or you need to do something different. you have to have compassion for, and I’m not talking about inviting ’em over to the house for dinner every night, but I’m talking about realizing that.
Earl Nightingale said it if you know who that is. He said you can have everything he wants. Oh, I know, I know Earl. I love Earl. Like her on the show. Yeah, that voice right, that voice. There you go. There you go. He would’ve been a great podcaster. Could you imagine if that existed back then? Oh my gosh. Yeah.
I know he was radio and other things, but go ahead, continue. Yeah, so diver, let, let me say this, make the saying, and then I’ll tell you a story about Earl Nightingale, but he said, you can have everything you want if you help enough other people get what they want. And bottom line is if you focus on serving others, whether your customers or your team, the success you’re seeking will naturally follow.
That’s the way the universe works, and people don’t understand that because they focus on the profit before the service and they get it backwards and they never really take off. But if you focus on the service and forget about the money, the money will take care of itself. I promise you. It’s the way, it’s the natural order of the universe.
It has to happen every time. So the story about Earl Mining gi mm-hmm. They used to, you know, the little cassette tapes that used to buy 12 in a pack or eight in a pack, or six in a pack, and you would, it was a course. That was when I was in commercial printing. I did a lot of, I was sold printing.
That was one of my tasks. I became general manager, but I started out in sales. And I would listen to those cassette tapes religiously. Every time I got in the car, I was having Earl Nightingale pounding in my head. So that was my first exposure to this, to the benefits of mentorship, of listening to something repeatedly over and over and over again until you internalize in your subconscious psyche.
He’s a good man. He was a good man. He’s passed away now. Mm-hmm. Obviously. But there a lot of his stuff on Napoleon Hills work, I believe. Oh yeah. And Zig built off of them and so on. Yeah. And, and that’s, and I think that’s one of the great, that’s a good example of individuals that paid it forward in terms of their, their experience and their work.
Now sure, that may have been their business. Yeah. But for others out there, because we have different distribution channels like social media, it’s easier to put to print a book. Nowadays, there’s other ways to get your content out there. And that’s just a great example and we’re still talking about them and that’s part of their legacy, but that’s not why they did it.
They were helping a lot of people and that’s how we both benefited. ’cause I’ve listened to this stuff, I can’t tell you how many times along with the Napoleon Hill and, and you know, Zig and, you know, all the people that have built on that work, Les Brown. And the more the contemporaries, I mean lots of other individuals.
So, philip, man, this has been a, a great conversation. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Good. Your book Failing My Way to Success. How do people pick up a copy and how do people follow your brand? How do they connect? Well, I appreciate that it’s failing my way to success lessons from 42 years of winning and losing in business, and I’m fairly transparent about the, about the law that’s in there.
It’s a very unvarnished book, so you can pick it up on Amazon, of course. Just Google my name Philip Kentrell. It’s Philip with two Ls and my website is Philip Cant trail.com, very creatively named. Amazing. And for, for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put some links in the show notes, so you can just click on the links and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your first time with Mission Matters and you haven’t done it yet, hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day are bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new. To help you along the way in your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and Philip wishing you much more continued success with that bestselling book.
So thanks again for coming on. Thank you very much, Adam. Enjoy it.
