Lee and Marie Christopher, one of our most frequent blog commenters, with their awards. You can see why they are friends; they both love their hats.

We were pleasantly surprised last night when the Cameron Chamber of Commerce started giving out awards of excellence, and suddenly they called out Lee’s name! We’d just been clapping our heads off for our friend Marie Christopher, who was singled out for her work at the library, so it was all exciting!

It was wonderful to have Lee’s work with fixing up houses and making the community better acknowledged. It never hurts to be recognized! All in all, it was a great event, and the Chamber really did an outstanding job of making sure people who work hard for Cameron are celebrated. All the honorees really deserved to be in the spotlight! Plus, we all got to eat delicious 44 Farms burgers and listen to a wonderful talk by the host of the longest running independent television show in the US, Bob Phillips of the Texas Country Reporter.

“I’d like to thank my team, and especially my wonderful spouse, for their help in achieving this honor,” Lee didn’t actually say.

Now, do we do our work to get recognition? Of course not. Lee would be Lee no matter what. But this little award, with the name of our two businesses interestingly comingled, does show how the “networking” part of real estate redevelopment can pay off. Being in the Rotary Club and the Downtown Redevelopment Committee has paid off. I was impressed to see that Lee is friends with the City Manager, the DA, the County Judge, and even our State Representative, Col. Terry Wilson, who it turns out, also likes to renovate houses! That must have helped him blow off some steam when he was in the midst of his long military career.

It’s amazing to see how hard working and dedicated the local and state officials, the law enforcement officers, the fire department, and the business owners in this town are. If you’ve never lived in a small town and think it’s just a bunch of lazy bumpkins, well, you’d be totally wrong.

Many, many thanks to our friend Melanie Reed, her assistant, Maddie Koustron (whose family lives right down the road from our ranch), and everyone who worked so hard to put on this program. We’ll keep helping the Chamber and the community, because there really are some wonderful people there.

What You Can Learn

We know what they meant! And we are so grateful!

So, if you are looking for sources of funding, new properties to work on, or contractors to bring on your team, don’t forget to network outside of real estate! You’ll never know who you will find. How have you branched out and grown your business? So share!

An award-winning bunch. They also gave out awards to some deserving students, too.

PS: Here are all the award winners. That’s a lot of a city of less than 6,000 people!