Toni Reece: Hi there. I’m Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living magazine. Today I have Dave Mattes with me. Hi, Dave.
Dave Mattes: Hello. How are you, Toni?
Toni: I’m great. How are you today?
Dave: Fantastic.
Toni: Take a moment and tell us a little bit about yourself.
Dave: Again, it’s Dave Mattes. I am a realtor with RE/MAX of Reading. I have a great real estate team there at the office, and also have a family of, what is it, five? Only four are living with me now, in Sinking Spring.
Toni: Have you lived in Berks County forever?
Dave: My whole life, yeah.
Toni: Oh, that’s good. Alright. So, are you ready to get into the Project?
Dave: Let’s go for it.
Toni: What does inspiration mean to you?
Dave: Inspiration to me means demonstrating ideals, I guess. Just showing by example of the right things to do for your community and just a better way to live.
Toni: Do you know when you’re inspired?
Dave: Do I know when I’m inspired?
Toni: Mm-hmm.
Dave: I think I do, yeah.
Toni: What does it feel like?
Dave: It feels really good, because I think in this day and age — and I’m sure in every day and age — there’s a lot coming at you, and it’s hard to feel inspired. Therefore, I think when you get a brief glimpse of it, it feels really good. Makes you happy.
Toni: Do you remember the last time you were inspired?
Dave: I went to the RE/MAX convention last week or so with my wife, and that is always just a tremendous event for us.
Toni: How so? How do you correlate that to inspiration?
Dave: Well, it’s on a number of levels, actually. It’s professional, but they have some tremendous speakers. They had Marcus Lemonis. They had a guy named Hal Elrod. Daymond John, now, that was more of a — well, it wasn’t just financial. It was, “Hey, here’s how I did it.” That kind of thing. Then the other thing is about it, from a professional standpoint you’re surrounded by other like-minded professionals, and half of them are kicking your butt…I don’t want to say kicking your butt, but they’re doing exactly what you might think you want to do, and the other half are there for the same reason you are, to be uplifted by being surrounded by other pros.
Toni: So, the whole thing for inspiration for you is really when you either uplift or are uplifted.
Dave: That’s exactly right.
Toni: Okay. So, how do you take that, when it happens to you, and put that into practice here in Berks County?
Dave: Well, for me it’s an ongoing thing. I have a Facebook business page, which a lot of people do, but I just try to be as positive as I can about this place. Here we sit in Reading. I was a little disappointed on my way in to the interview with the amount of trash on the street, but I just try to be constantly in a positive light about the city. I guess that’s probably the best way I could put it.
Toni: Okay, so you use your platform to share positivity about a city that doesn’t always get that.
Dave: Correct.
Toni: That is the community. Are there other ways that you try to uplift? Other things that you do?
Dave: I play music. I’m in my praise band at church. I think that positively plays an instrumental part in the people that come to that service, and for me, of course, as well. Let’s see. Very involved in the community. I would love to be even more involved, but I really do have a thriving business, so it’s hard. I’m on the board of Genesius Theater. My wife and I are on a board of a foundation called SPARKS. I feel like it’s a put your money where your mouth is kind of thing. It’s not just money, but it also is action for the community.
Toni: So, you really try to give back to the community?
Dave: All the time. Every day.
Toni: Did that come from someplace particularly, or was that action of giving back to the community, was that inspired by something in particular?
Dave: Well, I’ll be honest. I came to that late. I don’t know that I paid attention to it, or maybe I just missed it when I was a kid with my family growing up. I came into this business in 1995. Left it, came back in 2005, and for some reason, from that point forward just seemed to look at things a little bit differently. People get into the real estate business and they don’t really treat it like a business. My eyes just sort of opened up at some point. Then, I did Leadership Berks — I’m sure you’ve heard of Leadership Berks — in 2010.
Toni: Sure.
Dave: That was massively eye-opening about what this community really needs to keep it going. I hope that makes sense.
Toni: Do you remember the feeling before and after when you didn’t and now you do?
Dave: Yeah. I don’t really pay that much attention to how I felt before and after, but I do know that I have a responsibility to do it, and to continue to do it, and to inspire others to do it.
Toni: Fantastic. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Dave: I was thinking about this. The guy that inspires me the most — he wouldn’t even begin to think about this — but I have a tiny little newspaper quote of something that he said when The Reading Eagle first did their business section, and they did the section in the end where it’s “get to know” this person. What is it?
Toni: Something like that.
Dave: Yeah. John Widenhammer essentially, there’s always that one piece of advice that you would like to give or someone’s given you, and it is, “When you think you’re done, you have a really, really long way to go yet.” I’m paraphrasing it, but I literally have that taped to my desk, because I think that was, again, when your eyes are kind of open, you just sort of think about how much further you can go along the way, I guess. So, John Widenhammer is a good one. There’s just a ton of great people in Berks County.
Toni: Anybody else you want to give a specific shout out to?
Dave: Well, I’ll tell you what. I’ll give a group a shout out. This is an unknown thing, but I’m in a business networking group that meets on a weekly basis. Our sole purpose is to refer each other. It’s called Berks County Networking Association. The reason I’m bringing them up is, yes, we refer each other. We have breakfast every week, but we give back to the community so much it’s unbelievable. We’ve done the Food Bank. We work on Hope Rescue Mission. The Dream League. Item after item, it comes up, and it’s just amazing how much that group gives back. That’s a plug for them, but honest to God, it’s a group of about 30 people, and once you come in the group, it’s addictive.
Toni: What would you like your legacy to be?
Dave: My legacy. Well, I think it goes back to what we talked about early on, and that is that you have a responsibility to do your best and give the most that you can afford to give to the community. This is really cliché sounding, but to leave the place better than when you found it.
Toni: And you’ve been inspired to do so. When you dig a little bit deeper with you, there’s a lot going on underneath there that as far as how you uplift and how you inspire, and what you participate in. So, for all of those efforts, thank you for the community and for showing up for the Get Inspired! Project.
Dave: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.
