Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece, and welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Jaime Perez with me. Welcome, Jaime.
Jaime Perez: Hello. I’m Jaime Perez. I’m a real estate agent with Berks Realty Group. I’ve been a real estate agent in Berks County for about 16 years now. I’ve helped approximately 1,500 or so families in that time buy and sell real estate in the area. I’m also an entrepreneur in the area. Generally, I feel that I’m a great community member. I like to do many things in Berks County. I’m a huge fan of Berks County in general; Reading Phillies, Santander Arena — I’m there all the time. I literally go to tons of shows there. Restaurants. You name it. I know Berks County pretty well, and I feel that it’s an awesome place to live, work and play.
Toni: I agree with you. Well, thank you for showing up for the Project. So, let’s go into this. What does inspiration mean to you?
Jaime: I think for me, inspiration is just that ability to never quit, which is maybe an odd answer for that, but I think that when you’re determined to succeed, you’ll find the inspiration that you need to do things, and to just get up and try different things, and do things that other people aren’t doing, or pursue your own dreams and just remained inspired. I think inspiration is like a state of mind more than it is a thought. It’s just that ability to look at things and try to see their maximum potential versus what they currently are or what they were in the past. Take a look at something and say, “How can I make this better?” or, “How can I repurpose it in a different kind of way that modernizes it or makes it better or makes it more useful to the community?” That’s how I look at things, and I try to always have that glass half-full perspective about everything. That’s helped me remain inspired to always remain positive.
Toni: That’s fantastic. How do you put that definition — I mean, there was a lot there — I love the phrase, “It’s a state of mind.” Being inspired is a state of mind. How do you put that into practice here in Berks County?
Jaime: Maybe through my work. I mean, I offer people opportunities all the time, or I try to highlight opportunities and things like that. Just myself as well, I’m pretty fearless when it comes to Berks County. I mean, if there’s a new restaurant or a new business or whatever, what I do is I just walk in and check it out and talk to people and see what the products are and who the patrons are. If I know people that would benefit from those products, services, or merchandise, I definitely try to point those people to that business and just build almost like a referral network up for that type of business.
Also, if I know ways that business can improve, I will also tell them that as well. I’m a big believer in providing feedback. A lot of times my personal thoughts on feedback are that feedback comes from a place of love, because if you didn’t care enough to not love a certain thing, then you wouldn’t provide them with feedback, because you wouldn’t care if they succeeded or not. You would tell everybody else but them. That’s a sad thing, because that happens all too much in Berks County. If there’s a restaurant that opens up, people don’t like the food, or they thought the service was a certain type of way, they won't tell the owner. They’ll tell their friends. I think that that’s big.
I will typically go to the owner after my experience or whatever, if it’s a new restaurant, and just tell them, “Hey, I like this. I like that. I thought this menu item could have maybe been different in this way,” or, “I thought your presentation could have been different.” I share that type of feedback with the local community, because I want them to be great. Ultimately, they are a reflection of Berks County.
Toni: You promote and support Berks County, so when you are inspired by something and you’re in that state of mind of being inspired by a new business or somebody that’s trying to do some good, you will meet with that person and also try to support them by providing that feedback, and you’re inspired to do that.
Jaime: Absolutely. Absolutely. A lot of times, it inspires them too, because it’s amazing to me the times that they’ll say, “Oh, I didn’t think of that,” or, “I didn’t know that,” or, “No one ever shared that kind of feedback with me.” Most of the time, people are very open to that type of feedback, especially in that setting. They want to be amazing, but if you don’t know how to do that or if you think you’re doing it right, how do you achieve that level of success? How do you fit into the Berks County mix if you don’t know? It’s important to be candid and honest with those things. No one has ever been mean to me or nasty to me about that. They don’t maybe always listen, but I feel good, because at least I told them. I did my part in providing the feedback in a nonpublic way.
Toni: In a form of inspired support.
Jaime: Exactly. I don’t do it through Yelp or Facebook or anything like that. I literally will try to see them or call them up and just do it in a private way. “This is my experience,” and this and that. “I want you to be great.”
Toni: So, who in Berks County inspires you?
Jaime: There’s a lot of people in Berks County that inspire me. Besides the usual, like my parents and things like that, I would say I am inspired by someone maybe like an Alan Schumann. I like that he is so creative with things. I mean, he sees these blighted properties that aren’t being used, that aren’t being utilized or whatever, and he just comes up with a whole total different vision for it. His ability to just see what the community needs is really, truly impressive. I would say someone like that, or a John Weidenhammer, same thing. Always very forward thinking. “What does it need?” These are people that can get the resources in place, and more importantly, get the human capital — the people behind them to support them to push it up, because it really needs to have an all hands-on-deck type of perspective to it, and not everyone can engage people in that way.
I think that that’s what they bring that’s unique to the community. I would say that they inspire me to want to be like that, to create that level of engagement from my peers, especially because I’m younger than them, so in time our generation is going to need to be the leaders, so we need to learn how to do things and how to keep things alive, create new traditions that are going to cater to our generation and to the generation that’s going to come after us.
Toni: Well, that’s a great segue to what would you like your legacy to be?
Jaime: It’s interesting, because when I read that question, I really never gave thought to that, because I see legacy as such a long-term thing, and I definitely don’t feel like I’m even halfway there. I guess if anything I would want my legacy to be someone who just connects people and connects them to things that they need or connects them to people that are beneficial, and just someone in the community that creates engagement between people. If there’s a big festival, I hope that I can find a way to get a million people to go to that festival, or to get people to just see beyond their normal confines of thought would be what I would like my legacy to be.
Toni: I have said this many times in this interview project that people believe that legacy is something that people remember you for afterwards; but legacy is also what you’re doing now. People live their legacy. Based on how you’ve answered the questions in this project and based on your reputation in the community, I would say that you are living your legacy.
Jaime: Thank you.
Toni: Way to go.
Jaime: Thank you.
Toni: Thank you for showing up for the Project.
Jaime: Appreciate it very much. Thank you so much.
