The Brad Weisman Show
Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real estate, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! #TheBradWeisman #Show #RealEstateRealLife
The Brad Weisman Show
From Criminal Justice and Kidney Disease to "The Bearded Realtor"
Hi This is Brad Weisman - Click Here to Send Me a Text Message
Meet Matt Koch, "the Bearded Realtor", with a background in criminal justice who used to work security at a nuclear power plant. I know it sounds like a character from a graphic novel, but that's our guest for you! From battling kidney disease to becoming a successful Realtor, Matt has a knack for resilience and reinvention. His authenticity and creative strategy make him a standout in the real estate industry. Don't miss out on the chance to learn how he leverages fun and engaging videos to create a high-level real estate sales machine.
Matt's journey is not just about selling real estate, it's about the metamorphosis of an individual who turned adversity into opportunity. He traded security and radiation monitors for Open Houses and Dream Homes! Buying his first house wasn't as smooth as you might think. Just as he was settling in, a kidney disease diagnosis forced him to leave his career in criminal justice. But that didn't stop him - he found a new path in real estate and flourished. Join us as Matt shares his personal journey and the often overlooked, multifaceted role of a Realtor. Ready for an inspiring story of resilience? Matt's got you covered.
#mattkoch #thebeardedrealtor #bradweisman #thebradweismanshow #realestateandyou
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Welcome to The Brad Weisman Show, where we dive into the world of real estate, real life, and everything in between with your host, Brad Weisman! 🎙️ Join us for candid conversations, laughter, and a fresh take on the real world. Get ready to explore the ups and downs of life with a side of humor. From property to personality, we've got it all covered. Tune in, laugh along, and let's get real! 🏡🌟 #TheBradWeismanShow #RealEstateRealLife
Credits - The music for my podcast was written and performed by Jeff Miller.
Hello, this is Brad Wiseman. You're listening to Real Estate and you. We are back in the studio and we have guess what? We have another realtor in the studio with us today. Well, the show is still called Real Estate and you, so we're allowed to have real estate in here and we're realtors in here. That's just good. Matt Koch, how are you doing?
Speaker 2:I'm fantastic, my friend. How about yourself?
Speaker 1:I noticed you have a beard. I sure do, yeah, and I heard that you're called the bearded realtor. I sure am. That's amazing, the bearded realtor. And we've known each other at least two weeks. At least two weeks, yeah. So it's been great getting to know you. Yeah, likewise, that's the end of the show. That was it. That was it. We're done Good to see everybody. Yeah, that's it. So, no, I'm super excited that you're here. I met you a couple of weeks ago. You were here to do some helping out our agents. You were here to serve, basically to talk about your business. You have a lot of interesting stories, I sure do. You have your criminal justice. You have your working at a nuclear power plant, something like that, right. You have this medical thing we're going to dig into, which is pretty serious. But the cool thing you're doing right now is you're doing real estate at a real high level and you're doing it different than everybody else Always, always looking to do things different.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the beard. Yeah, the beard. So did you always have a beard? No, no, so you grew it just to be a realtor. Yeah, you could say that.
Speaker 1:Pre-requisite for realtor Must grow facial hair.
Speaker 2:Must have a beard, that's right. Must have a full tattoo.
Speaker 1:Oh, I love and the tattoos are great. But that's nothing different anymore. The beard is for real estate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, 100%. I mean, when I got in real estate six years ago, nobody really had a beard like I did, nobody really had tattoos like I did, or they were covered. Yes, when I got in the business, I was like I'm not going to be anybody. I'm not, I want to be who? I am had the beard, had the sleeve, short sleeve shirts all the time, I mean this is who I am. My clients love that about me. You know what? Because you're real, I'm real, I'm a real human being. I'm not trying to sell anybody anything. I'm not trying to be fake. This is who I am. This is what you get I love that.
Speaker 1:You know, and more and more. I wish I would have been like that. When I first started in real estate, I had a ponytail down the back of my back. I could see that I was on. You know, I was in music and things like that, and I always hid it. Ok, I hid it Because I don't know if it was back in the early 90s to mid 90s where maybe it wasn't quite as acceptable or whatever. But I love that you're doing that. You know why you cannot connect with people, which is what we do in this business. We connect, we connect, we connect, we connect. Yep, we connect. They look at the person first to see if they're real. Yeah, and they listen to you, they watch your actions and it doesn't matter what you wear I mean within reason. It doesn't matter what you do or what you wear. If you're real and they know you're there to serve them, to help them, that's it.
Speaker 2:Exactly, I 100% agree with that, and that's what it's all about Building relationships, connecting with people. That's exactly how I built my business, yeah.
Speaker 1:And it's working. It's working. Tell me some of the stuff you're doing, then we're gonna dig into some of your past. Tell me some of the stuff you're doing to set yourself aside, besides the beard.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, besides the beard. So I run a team. I run a team with Karissa Garpsis where they catch Garpsis Realty Group, primarily in Lancaster, but we kind of go everywhere. Our biggest thing is we are. It's all about media, it's all about the video.
Speaker 1:It's all about marketing.
Speaker 2:Anybody could sell a house in the last couple of years. I mean put a house on the market. It sells itself right. Absolutely. We wanted to do something different. We wanted to come in doing fun videos, not just through COVID. There was videos out there. It was just a walkthrough of the house Nobody's talking, nobody's seeing anything. I wanted to change that. I wanna have fun with it because that's who I am as a person and you do.
Speaker 1:I've seen a couple of your videos and they are definitely fun. They're fun to watch, even if I'm not looking for a house. I'm gonna watch it just because it's fun. That's fantastic. There's one you're actually on the toilet Now. You were not really on the toilet, you were sitting on the toilet acting like you were telling the camera person no, no, no, no, not now, but that was cool.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was fun, it's real, it's engaging. At that point, because we were doing a lot of videos, we listed a decent amount of houses, so even we need to get more creative and change how we're doing videos.
Speaker 1:And I was like well.
Speaker 2:I haven't done that yet, so why not? Let's do that.
Speaker 1:And that's what we do. You know what's cool, too, about that, and we tell our agents this and we, you know, as far as our training, you know, what I like, too, is that you had said before, just a couple seconds ago, during COVID or right after COVID, basically you could just put a sign in the yard and things were gonna sell. Now, yes, you would run into things where you need a realtor negotiating things like that, but the actual agreement of sale was gonna happen. I love the fact that you didn't get lazy. Exactly, a lot of realtors got lazy. They were taking pictures at night on their phones where there's no lights on or there's jeans that are still in the bed, dirty, you know, and I think that that is just. That is not good.
Speaker 2:It's not good at all and we made it a point, you know, during COVID and even moving forward, we haven't deviated from the plan, and that's marketing. Our goal is to get as many eyes as possible on someone's home and we do that through marketing and, honestly, we do it not only to showcase their home but to get more listings. Right, we wanna get more listings. How do you do that? Everybody knows who the bearded realtor is. Everybody knows the catch-garpless reality group because of the reach on social media YouTube, things like that that people are seeing through these videos.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite social media source Like? Is it Facebook, instagram? What works for you? Yeah.
Speaker 2:I would say it changes, but lately it's been Facebook I've reached and our exposure through Facebook has just been it's just kind of taking off the last couple of months. Awesome. I've always enjoyed Instagram too, because Instagram is more like reels and just picture slideshows and that's not as much verbiage. Yeah, exactly, and I like the story aspect on Instagram. You do it on both platforms, but I feel like it kind of started on Instagram Absolutely and becomes a little bit more interactive that way. But as far as you know, our business engagement Facebook has been better. Yeah, yeah, Well, let's rewind.
Speaker 1:Cool, let's rewind. Let's go back a little bit. You weren't always a realtor. Then again we talked about this. We were never a realtor from basically high school, except for me, actually. You know what's funny about that? I started in real estate when it was 22, in 1992. So I am, I was pretty young to start out with that so. But then I was in music before that. So you know, most people know you're never gonna make it music, so you have to have something to go into. So but go back now. You were not. So at a high school you go to school.
Speaker 2:Correct, so you went for. I went for criminal justice so I stayed local. I was born and raised in Lancaster County. Decided to stay local, I went to a school called York Tech but I went to the Lancaster campus and the reason why I chose that school over you know I was going to go to Shippensburg. There was another one that I was looking at going to. The cool thing about YTI is they get you ready for the police academy. So, as a lifelong dream of mine was to be a police officer, I could totally see him as a police officer.
Speaker 1:Hugo, right, that's right. He looks like he's packing. Right, he does. Maybe you are Maybe you are. That's fine and we're okay. We're friendly with that, but no, so I can totally see you as a cop. Yeah, that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely. It's something I wanted to do as a kid. I got involved, I did a couple of camp cadets and you know that's when you're younger you can experience like a week of what a police academy would look like, and they bring in different you know things that you could do Helicopters, dogs and stuff like that. So that was cool. And then so I went to school for criminal justice and the cool thing about YTI was they were getting you ready for the next step, which is the police academy. Okay, it was very regimented I had to wear a uniform, I had to shave, I didn't have a beard, then you had to shave, yep, no beard. Do we have any pictures?
Speaker 1:of that? Yeah, somewhere I was looking on Facebook. I don't think I saw any pictures without beard, you were trying to find some huh.
Speaker 2:Yes, I was.
Speaker 1:Yes, I was that doesn't surprise me here, go get a razor. Yeah, that'd be bad, yeah, that'd be really bad. Not good for marketing.
Speaker 2:I need to insure this thing at this point.
Speaker 1:It's no longer just a beard. Yes, exactly, it needs to be insured.
Speaker 2:That's right. So, yeah, I went to YTI, graduated with an associate's degree in criminal justice and then I worked for a private investigation company for a little bit, and primary role at that point was I was undercover in grocery stores catching shoplifters.
Speaker 1:Nice.
Speaker 2:It was fun. It was fun. I was in management for a loss prevention for a little bit, but then I ultimately I got hired at Three, my Island.
Speaker 1:So you went into nuclear?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I did a nuclear security at Three my Island for a handful of years and I didn't go to police route. It's one of those things that the economy had shifted at that point. It used to be that you can get hired at a police department. They send you to the police academy while you're making your salary. It shifted.
Speaker 1:The market time shifted a little bit. What year was this?
Speaker 2:I graduated high school in 2007. Oh God yeah.
Speaker 1:I knew you were going to say that.
Speaker 2:OK.
Speaker 1:He'll go next time. Can we have?
Speaker 2:an age limit for people who are too young, jeez.
Speaker 1:He's old enough to be my child or young enough to be my child. I get that a lot.
Speaker 2:I think I'm actually the youngest person on my team too, thinking about it Unbelievable.
Speaker 1:That's good, though there's nothing wrong with that Good for you at all. We'll talk about you later, but that's OK.
Speaker 2:And then I graduated from YTI in 2009. And yeah, so I was going to go to the police route and I wound up getting hired at Three my Island, and I was like, ok, I'm going to do this. And it was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:That's a glowing experience. Right, it is glowing, I like it. I see what you do there. I like that.
Speaker 2:So I did that for a handful of years, almost five years, wow. Through that process is when I discovered that I had something called kidney disease.
Speaker 1:Yeah, this is the part that I saw on your. I was looking at your Facebook stuff and your social media and it was weird. All of a sudden I see this You're in a bed with a hospital gown on and there's another guy there that's in a hospital gown and says about the kidneys. I guess he gave you his kidneys. His name is Dave, I guess Dave Garpsis, what so how did you figure this out?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the kidney stuff. I went down for a physical one year, so every year I had to get a physical. We carried 40 pounds of gear, we had to respond to bunkers during a contingency All that fun stuff, I hear just thinking real quick, with being in a nuclear plant.
Speaker 1:Did you think cancer? No, because that would be my first thing.
Speaker 2:I would think I'd have like a lump, something you would think right away cancer, yeah, I get asked that question pretty much every time I meet somebody and I tell them, oh yeah, I had a kidney transplant and we talk about it, they're like, oh, did you get it from the nuclear?
Speaker 1:power plant? Yeah, it's not that I know of. Yeah right?
Speaker 2:But I don't think so. No, right. No, I discovered it because I had to get a physical every year and the one year I went down I was in my mid-20s and my blood pressure was like through the roof and I remember my doctor took my blood pressure like four times because he's like this isn't right, this can't be correct. So that's from the kidney. Yeah, that's amazing. So when you have kidney disease and I wasn't in kidney failure at that point but when you have kidney disease, your kidney and your heart kind of go hand in hand. So typically people I mean there's a whole bunch of different diseases that cause kidney disease specifically but typically you either have diabetes or high blood pressure. That's like the two indicators. And I don't have diabetes but I had high blood pressure. So, yeah, I wanted to have an. I literally got disarmed, sent home and I never went back Unbelievable.
Speaker 1:Yeah, at that moment just talk about upside down, right, completely upside down.
Speaker 2:I literally just bought my first house, like a couple weeks before that. Wow, married or no, yet I was you were married OK. And I wasn't sure what I was going to do. I was yeah, it was kind of wild.
Speaker 1:But here's the thing. There's moments you know, obviously it's very surreal and all these things go on. Did you still think, oh my God, what am I gonna do for a living now? Or does your focus immediately go to holy shit, I gotta get this fixed or I'm in trouble.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, for the first time in my life, because growing up, like I said, I always wanted to be a police officer. I always wanted to get in the criminal justice field somewhere and I did that. I became a nuclear security officer and for the first time in my life I was like what?
Speaker 1:the hell am I gonna do with my life? I had no idea.
Speaker 2:So I went through the process. I found out that I had kidney disease. I had to get a biopsy of my kidney to determine what it was. I had something called IgA neuropathy. Long story short is I have everybody produces antibodies. My antibodies become abnormal and they attack my kidney. So my antibodies attack my body. I don't know why. Everything are just the kidneys, just the kidney yeah, so your antibodies don't like kidneys. They don't like kidneys, they just don't like kidneys and the bummer thing about it is like I still have that disease, Like there's no cure for that disease Gotcha.
Speaker 1:So we have to be careful with the new kidney, Exactly yeah, so, yeah.
Speaker 2:So at that time I was diagnosed, wasn't sure what I was gonna do with myself, and I wound up getting hired for a company called Clark Associates and Lancaster. I did a couple of years of just customer service, yeah, and for the first time in my life I actually got let go from that job. Oh wow. And so I found myself for the second time in my show. I'm only 34. Yeah, I turned 35. Next, I forgot about it. I forgot for a second. I turned 35 next week or next month. It's starting to affect your brain. It is. I'm getting up there.
Speaker 1:Wait, wait he gets much first. By the way, who the hell is this guy right here? I don't even know who you are, yeah, so you get laid off or you get. Yeah, I got, let go, let go. Yeah, I got let go, wow it was one of those things. That's not a good feeling either. No, I played sports my whole life and I've always.
Speaker 2:I started working at a very young age, so I feel like my work ethic has always been pretty high, so to get let go from something that wasn't used to me. That's definitely not good Blessing and disguise, but I wasn't used to it. It was literally two months before my first daughter was born. Oh my gosh. So I found myself for the second time in my life like what the hell am I gonna do with myself? What? am I gonna do with my life. I have a criminal justice background, which I can't really do that line of work anymore because of the kidney disease, and I have a customer service background and I didn't really wanna work in a call center again because it was kind of miserable. So I can't picture you in a call center.
Speaker 1:I could just see you striking up conversations with them on the phone, like hey. So what are you doing today? Well, you know, yeah, all the time.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So yeah, a good friend of mine, a good buddy of mine that I've known since high school times, we had gone up to Cigars International. It was like a Tuesday or Wednesday. And we got up to Cigars International. We were sitting out on the deck.
Speaker 1:I love it up there. It's beautiful. Yeah, you can look over and see the mountain from the deck. I go there with my father. That's awesome.
Speaker 2:I can't have cigars anymore unfortunately, or I actually don't drink anymore either, oh yeah. I was gonna ask you though you can't do either, no, no.
Speaker 1:I could have a beer too if I wanted to, but it's kind of like well, it's a point at that point, yeah right.
Speaker 2:Because I can't really have more than that. So, yeah, we were sitting at Cigars International and it was like a Tuesday, like a noon, drinking a whiskey, having a cigar, and I looked at my buddy and I was like, so this is what it feels like to be retired. Yeah, Yup, and shortly. I don't remember exactly when it happened, but at some point in that week time I came home and I told my wife I was like, hey, I'm gonna get my real estate license.
Speaker 1:But why Did you know a realtor? Did you see realtors? Where did that come from?
Speaker 2:You know I've always been fascinated with real estate. Even when I was working through my island, I've always been fascinated with real estate. I've always been fascinated with the architecture, helping people that's just kind of what. I'm wired that way and investing in real estate. I always just thought that was such a cool thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So what do you think about it now? You still think that I love it. I still do. Hey, 31 years dude, I'm still doing it.
Speaker 2:I just can't, like I can't picture at this point in my life I can't picture doing anything else. Yeah, like I probably wouldn't.
Speaker 1:It's the ultimate serve. It is Because, I mean, we all need a home, we all need help getting a home, most likely, and you know, we have that cool job of being able to do that Absolutely. And it's funny because we don't just sell real estate, we become psychologists, we become friends, we become helping you know anything Absolutely. It's amazing what we do.
Speaker 2:What's so great about it is and I tell people this all the time, like I'm not a salesman whatsoever my job is to help guide you through the process, one of the biggest processes you're ever gonna have to go through. I'm gonna. I'm here to give you the information, give you the facts and guide you through the process Absolutely. And through that process we make so many friends. I've been able to reconnect with so many people from my past life, whether it be at Thream Island, previous jobs, high school, college, helping those people buy and sell real estate, and you're just building relationships Like I've built so many really cool relationships in the past couple of years. I never thought that's what real estate would be about.
Speaker 1:So you're getting. So referrals is that's where you get pretty much where you get your business.
Speaker 2:A lot of our business comes from referrals, yeah referrals, social media that's like where I built my business. Spending money on online leads is not the way to go. I never understood that. Yeah, never understood that. That's something we've ever really. We didn't really when I was an agent on my own, I never did it. When you have a team, do it a little bit. Yeah, just to give to the team.
Speaker 1:Exactly, yeah, obviously, yeah, exactly. That's amazing. So things are going good with your health, though. Now they're, you're on and you still, and the story I thought that was interesting is the person that donated the kidney is actually your business partner's husband. You got it, that's, and it didn't, so which came first?
Speaker 2:So the kidney came first and I'll tell you the story about that. So when I first got into real estate, I worked for another company, another brokerage, and that's the same brokerage that they were at. Oh, okay, and I went. When I went through real estate school, I was actually going through school with my now business partner, carissa. Her mom was going through it. Oh, okay. So I kind of met them through that. I'm a huge Packer fan and Dave's a big Lions fan.
Speaker 1:Oh gosh, we always had a lot of banter. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So that was really the extent of our relationship and we saw each other. We said hi, talk, banter, and that's it. And I was only at that brokerage for three months, so it's not like we were friends outside of real estate. I, they, just we stall each other and passing kind of thing, and this is the guy, and this is the guy. This is the match, which is crazy, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 1:It's crazy the fact that he meet, you know that this person came into your life and then, all of a sudden, that's the match for the kidney. It's just, and it's not easy to be a match, right? It's not?
Speaker 2:And then even to back up one more for the first time in my life. Like I said, I got let go from a job, yeah, and I got into real estate and my kidney failed on me earlier than what doctors projected it to fail on me. Okay, got it. So, like I look at all this like man, all this happened for a reason. Yeah, what a blessing. In disguise, oh, absolutely yeah, cause look at what you're doing Exactly.
Speaker 1:Do you don't think you'd be in real estate if the kidney thing didn't happen? Obviously, probably not, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, probably Really crazy, cause I really did enjoy working at TMI it was a lot of fun. Yeah, absolutely, it's like you know, I played sports my whole life. And working at TMI, you're on a crew and you're with the same people. It becomes like a sports team. Yeah, they're your guys and girls. You know it's a lot of fun. Yeah, so I don't think so. I don't know. Yeah, I don't think I would be.
Speaker 1:Let's dig into real quick. You're, you have a wife I do, sarah. And then let's talk about your kids. You have three children, I do, and there are three girls.
Speaker 2:They are three.
Speaker 1:Yeah, do you have a shotgun Girls? I have a couple. Do you clean them All the time, like on the front porch, all the time? You're going to need to do that more 100%. Yeah, you're going to need to clean that more.
Speaker 2:And maybe even a dog next to you. Yeah, you know, like a, my dog's a big teddy bear. I have a big golden doodle.
Speaker 1:I used to have a German Shemmerdoodles. Oh, you might want to go with like more, like a pit bull or like something more intimidating.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, moose is my golden doodle. He's seven now. So ages of the kids yeah, he is six. Hmm, audrey is three, she'll be four in January and Emily is the baby. Emily is. She's turning nine months here soon. Dude, you got your hands full. I'm in trouble you are.
Speaker 1:I'm in trouble, holy mackerel. So where do you, where do you see yourself before we wrap it up? Where do you see yourself going the next five years? What, where? Where does the real estate go? Is there any hobbies? Is there anything you want us that you aspire to do besides real estate?
Speaker 2:You know I think about that sometimes. I I love going to the beach though so finding, you know, I have a cabinet in the Poconos and I saw that keeps saying, like man, I really want to get a place at the beach, yeah, so at some point when the team's kind of running itself, yeah, going to the beach and just taking the family, having the memories, having given the experience, absolutely I would be ideal.
Speaker 1:The Poconos thing I did see pictures of that and it looks really nice. It's a neat spot, yeah, but that's awesome. So well, I wish you the best man. Yeah, I wish you the best and keep working hard. Stay in touch, yeah, when we have the name change of the of the show, which we've been kind of teasing people with. Once that happens, we'll have you come back cool, because we want to have a lot of the people that were on his guests on this show to come in for the next show, too, sounds great, I'll be there.
Speaker 2:Great man.
Speaker 1:I wish you the best of your health. Awesome, I appreciate that. Thank you. All right, take care, buddy. All right, there you have it. Matt Koch oh, my gosh, I'll tell you you got to go see his videos. Where do we see your videos at?
Speaker 2:You can find me on Instagram, facebook, youtube, if you just type in the beard and realtor on Google.
Speaker 1:You'll see him. You'll see it because you're. He's the bearded realtor. There is no other exceptions. Right, that's right, that's it All. Right. There, you have it All right. Check us out again next Thursday at 7 pm. Thank you, you're welcome. Thank you.
