Amanda McMillan with @properties Christie’s International Bucktown shares her story on how she got into real estate and describes what’s it like being a third generation realtor. Amanda discusses how she grew her business to become the top producing agent in her market. Amanda also talks about the importance of training and also learning how to trusting your intuition.



If you’d prefer to watch this interview, click here to view on YouTube!



Amanda McMillan can be reached at 773.537.1300.



This episode is brought to you by Real Geeks.











Transcript



D.J. Paris 0:00Today we're going to be talking to not just the top 1% agent, but literally the top agent in her local market and do a deep dive into how she got there and how you can do the same. Stay tuned. This episode of Keeping it real is brought to you by real geeks. How many homes are you going to sell this year? Do you have the right tools? Is your website turning soft leads in interested buyers? Are you spending money on leads that aren't converting? Well real geeks is your solution. Find out why agents across the country choose real geeks as their technology partner. Real geeks was created by an agent for agents. They pride themselves on delivering a sales and marketing solution so that you can easily generate more business. Their agent websites are fast and built for lead conversion with a smooth search experience for your visitors. Real geeks also includes an easy to use agent CRM. So once a lead signs up on your website, you can track their interest and have great follow up conversations. Real geeks is loaded with a ton of marketing tools to nurture your leads and increase brand awareness visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod and find out why Realtors come to real geeks to generate more business again, visit real geeks.com forward slash keeping it real pod. And now on to our show.



Hello, and welcome to another episode of Keeping it real the largest podcast made by real estate agents and for real estate agents. My name is DJ Parris, I'm your guide. I'm your host, and I have a few quick announcements. We're gonna be speaking in just a few moments with Amanda Mc Millan a top top top producer. But before we get to Amanda, just a couple of ways you can help us and we'll help the show. Best way is two things. Two things. First is to tell a friend think of another agent that doesn't yet know about our show probably somebody in your office or another agent you meet out there who would like to learn from top 1% producers tell them about the show. The second way to check out our sponsors they are the reason we can keep paying our bills and producing episodes we love our sponsors and the services and products they provide are truly amazing we vet them thoroughly to make sure that we only present you with services and products that would actually help you build your business okay guys, help us out those two ways thank you in advance and let's get to the main event my conversation with Amanda McMillan.



Hey, today on the show we have Amanda McMillan from Chicago home partner here in Chicago with at properties Christie's international real estate. Let me tell you more about Amanda. Now Amanda McMillan is the CEO of Chicago home partner which is an intimate group consistently ranking in the top 50 City agents for both number of transactions and volume. And I'm going to pause in reading Amanda's bio here because there's 46,000 Real estate agents in the Chicagoland area. So this is a very very big, amazing statistic that she is in the top 50. They have been the number one team in the app properties Bucktown location, which is also one of the very top Buck add properties locations for the last eight years and as close over 58 million in 2022. Now over the past two decades, Amanda has operated one of the most profitable real estate teams in Chicago, accumulating hundreds of outstanding reviews from raving fans across Google, Zillow, LinkedIn and Yelp, successfully navigating to financial crises, crises, one worldwide pandemic, the birth of two children hosting a BA he hosts a biweekly podcast at Chicago real talk.com. While remaining a social introvert at heart and maintaining a 95% referral based business. I would like everyone to visit Chicago, real talk.com And that's going to redirect you to Amanda's YouTube page. And I'm going to encourage you even if you're not a Chicago realtor, most of you listening are not the reason I want you to subscribe is I want you to pay special attention to hear how Amanda talks about the real estate market. How she informs her clients. This Her videos are amazing. And she is just a wizard at this. So please go subscribe Chicago real talk.com. We will have a link to that in our show notes. Amanda, welcome to the show.



Amanda McMillan 4:47Well, thanks so much for having me. It's great to be here.



D.J. Paris 4:51I'm excited to have you actually Amanda works very close to where I live. So we were just chatting about are sort of similar neighborhoods, but I am I've not met you before. So I'm so excited. Usually, I talk to people who live like far distances, and you're actually about as close of a distance, but yet we haven't met. So I'm super excited to have you on the show. And I think because you describe yourself as an introvert, you know, you're not, you don't make your presence quite as known as some of the other agents here locally, which I actually respect a lot, because I think that is the inclination of agents is to, you know, sort of yell it from the mountaintops, how great they we are, and I feel like you just you show don't tell, which I think is even more impressive. So I just wanted to honor you for being you know, less in your face, I think, which I always respect agents that are a little bit more subtle. And you certainly fall into that category. I hope, I hope that comes off as a compliment. Cuz it's like the best compliment I could think. I don't know that I said it in the best possible way. But it is it is a compliment.



Amanda McMillan 5:57No, absolutely. It's been it's been a heck of a ride. And yes, I, I will now say 21 years later, I tell people that I'm an extroverted introvert, because I've had 21 years in this business in which I've had to train myself to be a little bit more extroverted but, but I absolutely will be the person to say that the personality type that the media really shows out there doesn't necessarily all always go hand in hand with a top producer.



D.J. Paris 6:21Absolutely. And I would love to, you know, I think too, you know, ever since the pandemic started, and this is not in any positive thing about the pandemic. But one thing that did change is I think introverts in particular, people got used to working more remote, you know, doing zoom meetings. And I think for introverts that probably was like, so wonderful, because it allowed introverts to be in their sort of native environment, where they're most comfortable, their energy is not being depleted, as much as and so I just think, like, never been a better time to be an introverted realtor and the fact that introverts are kind of people are learning more about that and learning more about what they need and how they process information differently. So I think that is super cool. I always, there's so many times where I've talked to people wanting to become realtors, and they go, Well, I'm introverted. I don't know if it's a good fit. I'm like, oh, no, it's a good fit. You just have to learn how to do things, you know, maybe differently than somebody who's, you know, really out there. And, you know, being being super, super social. Not that you're not of course, I'm sure you are.



Amanda McMillan 7:24I've always actually said I think most consumers on the outside would be surprised to learn how many top producers are actually more introverted in their personality style than than the other.



D.J. Paris 7:36I agree. That's almost been not every I would say more than half of the top producers that I've interviewed, I suspect would identify that way. We were talking about Carrie McCormack, somebody who works at your firm who comes on our show a lot. She definitely considers herself that way as well. So I think there is something to it. That is again, very exciting for for anybody listening, who might think gosh, I'm not quite I don't get as much juice out of, you know, being extroverted as I do introverted. So but I want to start at the very, very beginning of of how you got into real estate, why real estate? And can you walk us through that journey?



Amanda McMillan 8:12Absolutely. It's been a heck of a journey. That's a great word for it. I am first and foremost, a third generation realtor. So I was born into it. It was in my blood. I will tell most people my first experiences with it was when I was working. My mom's open houses and broker opens when I was a teenager, she would essentially pay me $50, which was a tremendous amount of money. Money said, you can't answer any questions. You sit there. And if anybody says anything, you give them my card. So I wasn't doing anything unethical or wrong or anything like that. But that was my introduction. As I moved into my young adult years, I absolutely will say that I think the backing behind why I ended up in this industry is because when we were around the dinner table, and we were talking about life aspirations, my parents would continually say to me, to myself, and my sister, they said, Girls, when you grow up, you can be anything you want. You want to be a movie star, you want to be president you want to be doctor, you can be anything you want. What do you want to be sidenote, you can't go into real estate. Now, the reason they said that is that my mother sold residential real estate for 30 plus years, my father was in commercial real estate for almost as long. You know, as I like to tell people,

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