Give Where You Live: Tim Ambrose on Turning Community into Connections
Most speakers who are asked how to build a business answer with marketing. Post more, farm a neighborhood, buy the leads, work the database.
Susan Munkner asked our September 3 guest a narrower question, and got a different kind of answer. She had noticed what everyone in this room notices, which is that new agents walk through the door almost every week. So she called a friend and asked him this: how does a newer agent build a business when they cannot lead with twenty years of experience and thousands of closed sales? How do you become recognized in your community?
Tim Ambrose said the fastest way to be known in a community is to be useful in it.
Susan introduced him with a warning that he had sent her the shortest speaker bio she had ever received, barely one sentence, so she had asked a chatbot to fill in the rest. Tim took the microphone and asked whether he was allowed to approve the AI's description of him. He has been a REALTOR® in the East Bay long enough to remember when this meeting was held at a Hometown Buffet, which he offered as evidence of the council's staying power and, he admitted, of his own mileage. He served as 2018 President of the Bay East Association of REALTORS® after a year as president-elect, has held numerous Bay East leadership roles, and has served on the California Association of REALTORS® board of directors. He also sits on the board of Love Never Fails, which works against human trafficking and supports survivors.
Who in here volunteers?
Rather than talk at the room, Tim asked it a question and then walked the microphone around. Hands went up, and the answers kept coming.
Martha's Kitchen in San Jose, nine months in, serving the unhoused. Meals on Wheels in Fremont, sixteen years, once a month now instead of once a week, because it keeps her connected, plus a seat on the board of Adopt an Angel. Music for Minors, teaching music in public schools once a week. Kiwanis for twenty years, or twenty-four if you count the high school K Club that gave her leadership in the first place. Sonat is treasurer of a Cambodian children's dance group that performs each year at Cambodian New Year, free for anyone to attend, and is raising money for costumes. Margo added hers to the list. Susan herself is president of Partners for Change Tri-Valley, which provides education and mentorship to people experiencing homelessness and poverty, and which she started the week before COVID shut everything down.
That was the point of the exercise. After one of the answers Tim asked the room who already knew that about him. Nobody did.
Who knew he did that? Nobody. See, that is what is good. It helps you to let others know what you do.
He also spoke about Glide Memorial in San Francisco, where he has served breakfast, and rather than describe it himself he called up Ingrid, who had been, so the story would come from the room rather than from the front.
Glide Memorial, from someone who has been
The open house that was not a coincidence
The best argument Tim made he did not make himself. He called up Steve Medeiros, warned the room that Steve does not like to talk, and let him tell it.
Steve had clients who asked him to meet them at an open house. He was in a hurry. He pulled up, barely looked at the sign, and went in to find his clients already inside. The listing agent was Tim, who Steve knew from serving together on the Local Government Relations committee. This was during a stretch when knowing somebody genuinely improved your buyers' chances. Tim turned to Steve's clients and told them they had the best agent in town and that this was a no-brainer.
They got the house.
Steve was careful to say the buyers paid top dollar. The relationship did not buy a discount. What it bought was a listing agent who could tell his sellers, with confidence, that this was an agent who would close, and who was therefore worth a fair look.
There is a second half to that story. The two of them served on that same committee, and it was Tim who told Steve he should run for treasurer. Steve said he was not ready. Tim said he was. Steve ran, and lost. He ran again, moved up the ladder, and was sworn in as president of Bay East himself in 2023. Tim's own start was the same shape: the late Judy Rose talked him onto a Bay East housing committee when he was new, then told him he ought to run for president one day, which he thought was ridiculous at the time.
Left to right in the chairs: Steve Medeiros, Tim Ambrose and Chuck
The part with numbers in it
For anyone who needed the business case spelled out, Tim pointed at the National Association of REALTORS®' newly released CARE report. 64% of REALTORS® volunteer on a monthly basis. Among brokers it is 78%. People do this because it grows their brand and their business, not only because it is decent.
He was equally direct that giving is not only time. It is money, to an association or a nonprofit or wherever you find your place, rather than every commission check going straight into your pocket.
How do you say no?
The best question from the room was about limits. You cannot join everything. How do you decide, and how do you say no?
Tim's answer was to find where your passion actually lies, because the committee you joined out of obligation is the one you will start missing. He compared it to kids and sports: the child who asks to go to practice is the one who ends up good at it, and the child asking whether they have to go is telling you something. Saying no, he added, does not have to mean never. It can just mean not now.
Pick one date. Show up. That is it.
He closed on the smallest possible commitment. Choose your cause. Book one date. Bring someone. Be prepared. One day on the calendar, defended, because the things that get away from us are the things we never actually scheduled.
The rest of the morning
Three people were at TCMC for the first time. AJ Elias of Meriwest Credit Union, who works in commercial and consumer lending, was invited by a friend he used to work with, and mentioned in passing that he speaks seven languages. Victoria Miku is new to real estate after a career in high tech, most recently at Adobe and Salesforce, and told the room she is hoping this is a new beginning. Her fun fact, that she was once in a hip-hop dance troupe, cost her nothing and earned a running joke that lasted the rest of the meeting. Michael Pierro joined Coldwell Banker in Fremont after thirty years at AT&T, and was referred in by a member.
Winston Wang led the Pledge of Allegiance, and the applause afterwards was interrupted so the moment could be staged properly for the camera.
A candid photo, on request
First timers also learned about the golden coupon: bring somebody next week and you get in free.
Jim Lopez and the golden coupon
The Super Tour lineup went up on the screen before the speaker, as it does every week, and the fifty dollars per home went back into the room as a hundred percent give-back raffle.
The lineup goes up
Announcements ran long and cheerfully. The Women's Council of REALTORS® Alameda County holds Wine, Chocolate and Friends on Wednesday, October 14 in Livermore. The Bay East Foundation's Cheers to the Future is coming up at $75 a ticket, with dinner, a drink, a raffle, an auction, a cake auction and a live band, and roughly twenty tickets left when we met.
The table by the door
Watch it
Tim covers more than fits here, and the room's own answers are the best part. This opens where Susan introduces him.
The council recorded the meeting. This opens where Susan Munkner introduces Tim, and runs through the questions to the end of his talk. watch it on YouTube.
Thank you
Thank you to Tim Ambrose for a talk that reframed volunteering as something other than an obligation, to Steve Medeiros for standing up and telling the story that proved it, and to Susan Munkner for asking the right question in the first place.
Coming up: Kim Falahati on the stress-free move on September 10, and Newark Mayor Michael Hannon with a city update on September 17.
We meet Thursday mornings from 8:45 in Fremont. Guests are welcome, and the speaker calendar has who is coming next.
Photographs by Scott Capen, Scott Capen Photography, who shoots our Thursday meetings. The meeting was recorded by Tom Bigley, who runs the camera and the Facebook Live every week. Written by Harv Balu.
The conversation