Hi, I am Bud Condon, President of LeTip of South King County. I am the last of our Charter Members when we chartered as LeTip of Southcenter in 2002. I have held Board positions every year since joining, all 18 of them, primarily as President, VP, and Treasurer. I am a Platinum Badge Holder and hold the Residential Real Estate Chair.
Early in my business career, following 5 or 6 years on active duty as a US Navy Officer serving on destroyers, submarines and Recruiting Duty for Officer Programs, I returned to my Seattle, WA. I went to work for Ford Division, Ford Motor Company in their management development program progressing to Zone Sales Manager working with Ford dealers as their “Ford Man” assisting with issues with their daily operations of selling Ford cars and trucks, and forecasting sales trends for the next couple of months making sure they had sufficient car and truck inventories from assembly plants to meet their projections.
Ford moved my family to the Portland, OR area to take over a new territory where I had more and more emphasis on working with the sales training of the car and truck sales personnel, which I thoroughly enjoyed. After a couple of years, I started my own Management and Sales Training business in Vancouver, WA which I ran for 15 years.
It was during those 15 years that 4 other men, and I were each independently reading Napoleon Hill’s classic book, “Think & Grow Rich”. We decided it would be neat to meet weekly for breakfast and to discuss a chapter of the book. These meetings developed into very interesting discussions, and we each learned a lot about one another. At the end of the 13th chapter, it hit us, what are we going to do next week? We decided to meet the next week and talk about it.
We met and decided that we had learned a lot about one another and had new relationships developing. Some of us had even done some business among ourselves which was fun and profitable. Why not continue meeting weekly and invite some others to meet with us with the intent of developing new business relationships at the same time more sales through referrals and thus more profits.
Thus, was born our first exposure to “networking”, and we didn’t even know what it was, we called it a “Tips Club”. By the time I left Vancouver a year later the 5 members had grown to 20.
Then, in 1980, it became time to return to the Seattle area for family reasons and I ventured into the Real Estate business. While attending a Brian Buffini seminar on building a strong Real Estate business, he recommended we check into LeTip International, the best networking organization he knew of. I knew of several Buffini agents who were members of LeTip chapters locally and they all agreed it was great.
No Chapters were available with vacant Real Estate chairs, so it was suggested to start a new one. That very week, one of those agents told me there was a chapter forming in the area of my residence, I should check it out. I did, 4 other Real Estate agents were at the 2nd organizational meeting. By the 4th or 5th organizational meeting, I got the chair. I’m sure, because of my experience with the Vancouver Tips Club.
After the 5 Reasons to join LeTip, I end each meeting with a “Thought of the Week” from my 20+ year collection of Quotable Quotes. For example, Lincoln once said. “Good things come to those who wait – but only what is left by those who hustle.” Another one I like really fits in with our LeTip philosophy, “There is a destiny that makes us brothers, no one goes their way alone. What we pour into the lives of others, comes back into our own.”
