Listen to the interview here!
Toni Reece: Hi there. This is Toni Reece. Welcome to the Get Inspired! Project for Berks County Living Magazine. Today I have Rob Metzger with me. Hi, Rob.
Rob Metzger: Hello.
Toni: How are you?
Rob: I’m doing fine.
Toni: Good. Rob, tell me a little bit about yourself.
Rob: I am pretty much a Berks County native, even though I was born in Seattle, Washington. I’ve grown up here my entire childhood, gone to school around here, got married around here, and have been residing in Wyomissing my entire adult life since I’ve been married. I operate currently two businesses in the area, soon to open up a third.
Toni: What’s the third one? Can you say?
Rob: Yes. The third one is Chatty Monks Brewing Company in West Reading.
Toni: What an interesting name – Chatty Monks Brewing Company. Is there a story behind Chatty Monks real quick?
Rob: There is a story behind that. It really comes into play with one of my partners and great friends, Joe Ellis. We were sitting and enjoying one of our own homemade craft beers, and we were fantasizing about the idea of opening up our own brewery and pub. We were trying to come up with an idea of what we would name it. Because we’re such Belgian lovers of beer and into the trappist style beers, we figured that the name had to have “monks” in it. What we ended up settling on was “Chatty Monks.” We ran it through some friends to see what they thought, and it really stuck.
Toni: That’s fantastic. See, you were inspired and you brought it to fruition. That’s great. Let’s go into the first question. What does inspiration mean to you?
Rob: What inspiration means to me today in the environment that I’m in is it surrounds the idea of taking a concept, something that you have passion for, something that you want to do, and taking it to a level that brings other people into the fold and brings them into an idea that allows them to buy into.
Toni: So you have this idea, but then the inspiration grows as you take that idea and almost execute that idea, right?
Rob: Correct. It doesn’t really come to fruition until you see the marketplace grab onto something and they feel that it’s hot and exciting, and it’s something that they want to be a part of.
Toni: And they’re inspired.
Rob: Absolutely.
Toni: They’re inspired by it. Have you been through this often where you’ve been inspired by an idea and executed that idea and watched that type of inspiration grow?
Rob: Yes. I would say with my primary business that I’m involved in in which I assist people in retirement planning, I’m very inspired by the stories behind the people that I get to know in a very personal relationship, and I take ownership of really wanting to see them succeed. These people in and of themselves, because the type of people they are, they make you want to fight for them and work for them and be successful for them and hold their hand and walk through that process of making sure they reach their retirement goals and the things that they want to achieve.
Toni: It’s a great lead-in to the second question, which is, when you are inspired like this, how do you put that into practice? It sounds as though there’s been several ways you do so. How do you put that into practice here in Berks County?
Rob: With the current situation I’m involved in with opening up this brewery, the way I put it into practice is I’ve gotten several people on board with me that are very good friends of mine to bring them in the fold, and they help me bring this concept to a much greater scale than I could ever do on my own. It’s very difficult to do anything on your own. The more help that you get, the more energy that you can get behind an idea and get them to buy into and sink their time and efforts and money into. It gives you a much greater chance to influence those around you and to make the idea take off.
Toni: Rob, how do you do that? From your perspective, you’re inspired by a thought, an idea, and a concept – what do you think it takes to inspire others to stay with that?
Rob: That’s a tough question, because most of the friends that I’m involved with really have not been involved with business before, and have pretty much worked jobs. From their perspective, I don’t think they look at things the way I look at it. It’s a bigger challenge, and a little bit more nebulous to them. Really what I try to do is I try to plug in them in their strengths and the areas that I know that they’ll shine in where quite frankly, I won't shine in certain areas because I don’t have all the strengths I need to pull this idea off. I empower them from that perspective and let them do what they do so well, and then they see the bigger picture when it comes to fruition.
Toni: There the inspiration just continues to grow, and that’s pretty cool when that happens. Who in Berks County inspires you?
Rob: That’s a very easy answer for me. I have an aunt. Her name was Esther Moyer. She passed away several years ago. She was very well known in the area. She owned the Corita Shop in downtown Reading that was located at 137 North Fifth Street. It was a women’s specialty shop located in the Callowhill district of Reading back in the days when the Heather Shop and Pollack Furs and all those merchants were together on that two-block area. She was in business for 50 years, and she finally hung it up just several years before she passed away.
The reason why she was inspirational to me was she did not have a college education; she worked literally as a teenager in the knitting mills over where I believe the VF outlets are. She really worked hard and fought for herself. Back when the whole feminism movement didn’t exist, she was the first one that participated in that back in the 1930s. When she opened up her business, it was all on her shoulders. She worked those 50-, 60-, 70-hour weeks. She did all the buying; went to New York; did all the things that needed to be done to run her business.
What she did in translating to me when I went into business was she sent some very clear messages. The first was, “Don’t let your ego get in the way of your business. You’re here to serve people. The success will come after that.”
The other thing that she did for me was she encouraged. She just always would tell me, “You’re going to be successful. You’re going to be great. You’re going to be awesome.” Even if I might have been down and out and disappointed over the way certain things were going in my business, she never tried to fix a problem. She never tried to tell me what to do. She just patted me on the back with more encouragement. Quite frankly, you need to hear positive reinforcement when you’re going through struggles.
Toni: Do you find yourself doing the same for others?
Rob: I would like to think that I do. I have employees that work for me who I care for deeply, and I realize that they make me what I am. Their contributions that they make to my business and serving my clients, I can't do it without them, and I would not be showing any level of success if it wasn’t for their efforts.
Toni: What do want your legacy to be?
Rob: Again, to me that’s a nebulous question. I don’t ever think about leaving a legacy as much as I like the idea of knowing that now that I’m putting this project together in West Reading that the family is going to have another retail establishment in the city of Reading again. We’ve had that for 50 years, and that’s coming back in a different form.
Speaking to family, I guess I would say leaving a legacy to my kids. As busy as you are with the different businesses you’re involved in, it’s so hard to, with the busyness of life and getting with the kids and being able to do things with them, I’d like my kids to think that I always did what I felt was best for them; that I always was fighting for the lifestyle that I’ve worked so hard to give them access to, and to give them a good jumping off point into their adulthood.
Toni: I would imagine, as you spoke so wonderfully before, it’s also for you about serving.
Rob: Absolutely.
Toni: And encouraging. So legacies are not just things that occur when people think about afterwards – they’re how you live right now, and it sounds to me very much as though you are living an inspired legacy. Congratulations to you, and thank you so much, Rob Metzger, for being part of the Get Inspired! Project.
Rob: Thank you.
