Real Producers Magazine Article



MARY JEFFREY & KATY JEFFREY MCALEXANDER - A Reputation You Can Count On

Mary Growing Up

Mary was born and mostly raised in Chicago, but moved to Memphis when her dad took a new job here. They left Chicago when she was 16, with two weeks left in her junior year of high school. It was a difficult transition, but as the saying goes, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and Mary realized that it was possible to make new friends and create a new life. She always thought she would move back to Chicago, but never did because she found she loved it here. She attended Memphis State, but after two years, she decided she was ready to get out into the world.

Mary Starts Working

She started out in the restaurant business where she worked first as a waitress and then as an assistant manager at a nightclub in Overton Square. In 1983, she and her husband, Michael, moved back to New Jersey for his career, and they remained there for the next eight years. Mary landed a job with FedEx as a customer service agent in their call center. She loved FedEx, but the job was fairly limited and she wanted more. She just didn’t like a sit-down-at-the-desk, 40-hour-a-week job.

Mary Gets into Real Estate

Mary decided to get her real estate license in New Jersey in 1988 and went to work for Weichert REALTORS®. She ran one of their rental offices as New Jersey’s real estate market was founded in rentals, and that’s where the money was. She did very well in rentals, but always knew that in a different market, she’d like to pursue sales. When the family moved back to Memphis in 1991, she immediately got her TN license, went to work for Crye-Leike, and has been there ever since.

Mary and Katy Team Up

Mary and Katy are a very well-bonded team. They share clients and responsibilities but have separate spheres of work. For a long time, Mary was always at the office while Katy preferred to work some days from home, but they were constantly in touch by phone.

That has changed, however. Since Katy became a Broker, she’s in the office much more now. Mary loves working with Katy and has tremendous respect for what she has learned and accomplished. “She brings so much insight to the role. She is very deliberate, knowledgeable, careful and responsible.” Mary admits it’s a little weird to have her daughter be her boss! Katy says, “I grew up in the office for which I am now the broker. I work very closely with my mom; however, due to the fact that she is licensed in MS and I am not, we are not officially a team. I hope to get my MS license in the not-too-distant future.”

Katy Reflects on Working with Her Mom

Katy is grateful that her mother has been her mentor throughout her real estate career. “While working with a family member can be an interesting dynamic, I know I’m incredibly fortunate to have her by my side. As a veteran agent who knows her way around the sales contract better than most attorneys, she is a go-to person in our office for both new and seasoned agents struggling to navigate tricky transactions. She has impressed upon me the importance of knowing the paperwork and being able to explain it to my clients so they always know what they are signing. She has taught me to never take the easy way out and that shortcuts usually amount to more headaches on the backend. She shows me so much grace when I make mistakes, and every failure is turned into a learning opportunity. She challenges me to work through my own questions but is always there to provide guidance when the answers come up short.”

About Katy

Katy was born while the family lived in New Jersey, but she was raised in Memphis. She graduated from UT Knoxville with a degree in Management and a focus on Entrepreneurship.

Katy moved back to Memphis and started her first job within three days of graduating college. She went into the transportation industry because the economy was in the very beginning stages of recovering from the Great Recession, and that field is where most of her contacts were. She started as an “Appointments Specialist,” which is the position for which she had interned the previous summer. She quickly moved up the ranks and then switched companies. She was an Operations Manager when she started doing real estate part-time. After a year and a half of being a part-time agent, she decided to make real estate her full-time job in April 2018.

Katy's Interest in Real Estate

Katy says she always wanted to be a real estate agent. For as long as she can remember, her mom would throw her in the backseat and take her on showings whenever childcare fell through. Katy loved looking at all the houses. In college, she spoke to her academic advisor about pursuing real estate, but this was during the housing crisis, and she was dissuaded from it. She started studying for her real estate exam in 2014. She studied for it for two years because she couldn’t stand the idea of not acing it the first time around. She was definitely over-prepared when she finally took the test in 2016.

Katy started out part-time because at that age, she didn’t have very many friends interested in buying real estate. She wanted the stability of a regular income but absolutely hated her desk job. Every time she would talk to her mom on the phone, she would be out doing something cool in an exciting part of town, working with interesting people and dealing with problems that were vastly different than the ones she had faced the day before. Katy knew pretty early on that she wanted to make the leap to full-time, but it wasn’t until she got married and was eligible for benefits through her husband’s job that the timing felt right.

Mary Reflects on Katy's Decision

Mary recalls when Katy first told her that she was considering a career change and getting her real estate license. “I didn’t think much about it. She kept bringing it up every so often and I finally let her know, it’s not my decision. I just reminded her that she knows what this life entails – long hours, nights, Sundays, sudden changes of plans, having to be on the phone while on vacation, etc. I just reminded her what she’s grown up with, that she knows what real estate life is like, and that it was a decision that she had to make on her own. I didn’t want to influence it one way or the other. But I also let her know that if she decided to become an agent, I’d 100% be in her corner. I’d help her out, but it absolutely had to be her own decision. She chose to do it and I’ve been her cheerleader ever since!”

“She brings so much insight to the role.
She is very deliberate, knowledgeable,
careful and responsible.”

Katy Reflects on What She's Learned from Mary

She has taught me to always stand up for my client’s best interests, even when that does not make you popular among other agents. Her career motto, “No commission is worth my reputation,” which I have adopted, is reflective of the type of agent she is and the type of agent she has taught me to be. People tell me all the time how lucky I am to have her as my mentor, and I feel it every single day. She makes me more confident. She makes me better.

As a working mom herself, Katy looks back in awe at the way in which Mary was able to work 60+ hours a week, be a consistent top producer, and still manage to stay so hands-on with the kids. Mary was always the Room Mother at school or the Team Manager of the soccer teams. She worked around the clock but made it to every soccer game.

Katy continues to tackle the aspects of her new role and stay well-informed. “While I’ve always prided myself on staying up-to-date on current events, I am now hyper-focused on industry changes in a way I haven’t been before. There’s a lot happening in the economy and in the legal system that is going to shape our day-to-day activities, and I want to be on top of it all so I can share that knowledge with our clients and fellow agents.”

Katy adds that the most rewarding part of the business is that their office has so many agents whose careers are just taking off right now and absolutely flourishing. As a new broker, she admits she has little-to-nothing to do with it, but still finds it so exciting to see their hard work translate into big success.

As for the rest of Katy’s family, she and her husband Jeff have been together almost ten years and have been married for five. They have a two-year-old daughter, Jillian, and another, “Baby No Name,” that they are expecting in June. They love going to the park together, and Jillian is just starting to get into extracurriculars. She is currently signed up for soccer. Right now, she just has a weekly practice, and while she understands the shuffling back and forth is grueling, it’s given Katy a tiny glimpse of what it will be like to attend various sporting events for her when the time comes, and she simply cannot wait to chase her around from activity to activity.

Mary still loves every aspect of her business and thoroughly enjoys working with clients together with Katy. She hopes that her clients will become Katy’s clients when she decides to retire because she knows they will be in very capable hands. Mary is looking forward to playing with her grandchildren and traveling more with her husband.