by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
Being a Realtor can be tough when no one knows your name. But, how is it when everyone knows your name?
Jennifer Sexton, wife of Brian Sexton, play-by-play announcer for the Jacksonville Jaguars, is a Realtor with Prudential Network Realty. She has been in real estate for three years and says it’s working out pretty well for her.
She has recently started advertising with the Jaguars on their game day and Wednesday night show.
“Brian does my commercials for me,” said Jennifer. “He says, ‘Call my wife, Jennifer Sexton. She and her partner Sue work for Prudential.’ I get tons of Realtors coming up to me saying they heard my husband doing my commercial. It has definitely paid off.”
She said she does get asked quite often if she is married to the “famous Brian Sexton.” Customers often don’t know what her husband does until they start talking and the name recognition clicks.
“Then, I get asked like a million questions about the team,” said Jennifer. “It’s fine. I like talking about it because I am a fan.”
Jennifer said she enjoys being married to someone tied to the Jaguars since the beginning.
“It’s been a lot of fun,” said Jennifer, who works in Prudential’s Atlantic Beach office. “I was never a football fan. But, since I’ve been married to Brian and he has had a position with the team since its inception, I’ve sort of grown with the team and watched the whole thing unfold. So, it’s been a fun ride. There are a lot of events and neat things that he gets to do.”
Jennifer has a degree in marketing from the University of Tampa. After college, she worked for an advertising agency in Tampa. She then moved to Jacksonville to do advertising sales for WOKV AM-600.
“I was always in sales; that’s where I met Brian,” said Jennifer. “I moved to Jacksonville in 1991 to go to work for WOKV, the news talk station. That was my first sales job, selling radio advertising.”
Jennifer was there for seven years before leaving for a short career in pharmaceutical sales.
“The whole time I was in sales, my mom kept saying I needed to get a real estate license,” she said. “Right before I decided to get pregnant, I went and sat for the course and got my license.”
Jennifer went to work for Watson Realty. She practiced real estate during her pregnancy and after her son Keegan, now 2 1/2, was born.
She was even on the phone, calling clients while she was on the way to the hospital.
“I love the flexibility of it,” she said. “I wish that I had listened to my mom when I came out of college and went into sales. I see the young people in my office that are making the big bucks selling real estate. They have the flexibility and don’t have children. I think, ‘Why didn’t I do it then when she told me to do it?’ That’s one of the nicest things about it: the flexibility. You are always meeting people and it’s a nice sale. You are actually helping someone find a house.”
Jennifer has been with Prudential Network Realty for two years. When her mother, Sue Schuman ,who was a Realtor in Chicago, moved to Jacksonville two years ago, they decided to partner up and join Prudential Network Realty.
“My first year was by myself and he [Keegan] was born that first year,” she said. “The second year is when my parents moved down and my mom and I partnered up and went to Prudential. She got me into real estate. She has so much experience in real estate but didn’t know the area. I have lived here since 1991 so I know the area, but don’t have the expertise that she has. So, it has been a great partnership.”
Balancing parenthood with a career in real estate has worked out well for the Sextons.
“With having my parents down here and my mom as a partner, it makes sense if we are partnering everything 50/50. While one of us is showing houses, the other is watching the baby,” said Jennifer.
When both are busy, either Brian, babysitter or daycare has her son.
“I love it,” said Brian. “It is a way of life. I’m not the most patient person so it challenges me. But, I live to come home. Not that I didn’t before, but I am much more efficient with my time so that I can scratch out time with him during the season.
“I leave early in the morning and come home late at night four days a week. So, I try to make sure I get everything done while I’m at work so I can be home on Friday.”
Brian is gone a lot during the football season, but in the off-season, he has a lot more flexibility in his schedule.
Originally from Missouri, Brian has a bachelor’s degree in journalism with an emphasis in radio and television news from the William Allen White School of Journalism at the University of Kansas.
“After college I went to Chanute, Kan.,” said Brian. “It had about 8,000 people. I worked for a radio station there and did the morning drive show, sold advertising and hosted a daily show called “Swap and Save,’ which is little old ladies selling their curtains on the air. I did the afternoon drive show, mowed the grass and paved the blacktop. You are a jack-of-all-trades in a small town.”
Then he went to Wichita, Kan. for a short stint before going to work for the company that eventually bought WOKV. They moved him to Jacksonville in 1994.
“They moved me down here to be a sales guy and part-time second sports director,” he said. “I talked my way into the job. I didn’t move here to be the voice of the Jaguars. I moved here to be in sales. I talked my way into the WOKV sports director’s job and the Jaguars wanted to host a radio show with (then Coach) Tom Coughlin. They didn’t have a play-by-play guy yet to do the show so they asked WOKV if they could use me.”
Brian started doing the show and really hit it off with Coughlin.
“Tom is so much like my father that it is scary,” said Brian. “So, I was really able to relate to him. He was a natural teacher and I was a young fresh mind. So, one night Mr. [Wayne] Weaver came out and sat in on the show and liked what he heard so he asked his people to ask me for a tape. Wayne heard the tape and decided he wanted a fresh voice that people didn’t have an opinion of here, didn’t have an accent and that could be his guy. He liked it and thought that if he gave me some help that I could be a long-term guy for him.
“They gave me the play-by-play job. It’s been a dream ever since. It’s been like Camelot. I have the job I always wanted. It’s beyond my dreams. I got lucky to be in the right place at the right time. I worked hard for it. Chanute, Kan. was a hard beginning. I graduated with honors from college and I was working for $9,000 a year in 1991. My folks thought I was crazy.”
Brian emcees many Realtor events including the Laurel Awards and Northeast Florida Builders Associations Sales and Marketing Council’s fashion show, so he is already well known in the Realtor community.
“They called and asked me to come down and speak at one of their breakfasts,” said Brian. “I went down and talked to them and, before I knew it, they were calling me for the Laurel Awards and the fashion show. They are nice people. Obviously, now I have a tie with my wife, but I try as part of my job as the Jaguars’ play-by-play guy and community ambassador to do a lot of things for a lot of different people. They just were persistent. Either I do a good job or they can’t find anyone better.”
Currently, Brian does three radio shows, three television shows including game day, which is nine hours of radio and television. He also writes a column for the team’s newspaper and contributes to the team’s website. In the off-season, he plays in charity golf tournaments, goes to black-tie charity galas and talks to every Rotary, Boy Scout and civic organization that wants him to come out.
With Brian’s busy schedule, Jennifer’s leap into real estate took a little getting used to on Brian’s part.
“At first it was tough because she was working nights and weekends when others were off work and that took me some time to get used to,” said Brian. “When I was home, she wasn’t. I didn’t like it. But, she has done very well. I think she has distinguished herself among her contemporaries, so now I am very supportive of it. Being the husband of a Realtor means adopting that lifestyle more so than she adopts mine. It has worked out great, I have grown into it.”
The Sextons, who have been married for five years, live two blocks from the beach in Atlantic Beach.
Jennifer attributes being a Realtor to helping her build her dream home.
“If I was not in real estate, I wouldn’t have picked this up the very first day it came on the market,” she said.
The house was a little brick house that they leveled. With Jennifer acting as the general contractor, they built their dream home, a beachy cottage-type house.
“You can act as your own general contractor as long as you live in it,” she said. “I hired all the subcontractors and general contracted the whole thing.”
She used Cote Architectural Design to design the house from pictures she brought him of what she wanted.
“In the last year, she was a mother, which is tough with a toddler,” said Brian. “She was a wife, and a wife of me is exceedingly tough, And she was the contractor of this house and a Realtor. She has just been amazing this last year. She has wide shoulders.”