Changemaker
As a small broker, being involved with ABoR has not only helped him grow his business, it’s put money back into his pocket. Learn how Jacob has leveraged his connections and skills from his advocacy work at ABoR to enhance his brokerage and his community.
On ABoR’s Value
I use the labor union metaphor. ABoR is our trade group. They represent who we are and our interests to help our businesses. And through TREPAC and the advocacy end of it, it helps us maintain our high profile and value. They’ve allowed me to run a very small brokerage. With the Association, I’ve always been able to do what much larger brokerages are able to do by accessing its tools and information, committees, and everything it offers. It saves me a ton of money. A lot of agents pay a ton of money to have their brokerages supply tools that ABoR already supplies with our membership. There’s a lot to gain from ABoR. Just between the programming and education and all of the volunteer opportunities, you’re making your career by being involved. I always learn something every time I see one of their speakers.
The committees are fun because you get to meet a lot of people who have a lot more experience than you. I don’t always know all the answers, but thanks to the committee work and things I’ve done with ABoR, I know people who do and I have a rapport where I can just call them up and say, “Hey, I don’t know the answer to this. What is it?” And then they typically know it.
Advocacy at ABoR
I’ve chaired some of ABoR’s Policy Teams probably three or four times now because it’s super interesting, and you get to kind of hear what’s happening in the backend of our government. With being involved with the Legislative Management Team (LMT), I wanted to be knowledgeable and I wanted to be able to speak knowledgeably about what was going on in Austin and what was going on with lawmakers and politics. Traffic was always such a big deal, which is why I’ve chaired that committee a bunch. It would really help me stay in the know if someone asked me, “Hey, what’s going on with this bond?” Or, “What’s the deal with traffic? Are they ever going to fix it?” And I could be able to speak from a position of knowledge about those things. That was helpful for both me and my business, showing value to my clients.
On Advocacy in the Community
Through my work with the LMT and TREPAC, our neighborhood here was trying not to be annexed by the City. And so, we were able to successfully lobby the state government to include us in a bill where the City of Austin would have to give us a vote. The City of Austin was going to lobbyists at the initial go-round and we were cut out right at the end. So, this last session we had to get back into the bill and we were able to successfully do that. I was able to take some of my knowledge from the LMT and apply that to make my taxes a little bit lower.