The Business of Homes Podcast

Episode 006 w/ Greg Pihs Transcript

Michael Conrad
Hey everyone, Michael Conrad here with the Business of Homes podcast. I'm excited to introduce Greg Pihs today, who many of you know is a high energy guy who's done some really great stuff in the coaching side of real estate. But we no surprise that we jumped right in to a discussion about branding and the difference between your personal brand and your business brand.

Michael Conrad
And this is a particular subject that's important to me because my brand, who my business is and who I am in it has changed over time. So come along with us and I hope you enjoy. Sure, you wear a real attorney name badge on your chest, but you are a practitioner of business and a philosopher of business and a teacher of business and a lot of things.

Michael Conrad
It really kind of falls between real estate and many other areas.

Greg Pihs
Definitely gets in that a prolific zone, I think a little bit. Yeah, Yeah, I think I think it was very smart of you to separate yourself from the business. We just don't know it. We don't know. We don't even. Okay, so we launch a business and we think us because we're going to put our name on it. I literally hear people say like, I want to, you know, I'll put my name on it.

Greg Pihs
It's going to be good to go. And much like you said, the business should be to say bigger than us is. Okay. Yes, the business is bigger than us. Yes. Okay. But also we're bigger than the business also. We're bigger than the business. And then and then the realization is that there is a personal brand and a business brand, and they're two different things.

Greg Pihs
So the personal brand, your personal brand is who you are. Your business brand is what you do.

Greg Pihs
People connect with who you are and they pay you for what you do. So you guys created a business brand, and in your business brand, you took whatever you learned along the way from business mentors classes. You built a business plan. You figured out who you were going to serve, you figured out what problem, what pain points were there.

Greg Pihs
You figured out how you were going to help them uniquely in your own proprietary blend. There's there's all different company realtors out there. Whatever field you're in, there's a whole bunch of people in that field. Your business brand is how you create it. Your unique proprietary blend, identifying who you work with, what problem you solve, and then the unique process that you take them through so that everyone that goes through this process has to come out on the other side with the result, which is your service.

Greg Pihs
So that's your business brand. And then most people, we get them, we get them confused. So we think like I'm a realtor. No, you do real estate, you know, I sell homes. That's what you do not not who you are and then who we are. But what? The first thing that I think is important is to identify our core values.

Greg Pihs
Those are kind of like buzzwords for people like your core values.

Michael Conrad
Yeah. What are your core values?

Greg Pihs
Yeah, right. Okay, let's pause for a second. Let's get off the buzzwords. Let's. Let's go from core value to value. Value is what's important to you. So if if we look at we look at it like we shouldn't talk about this. I mean, talk about a little bit. We went through a time recently as a as a as as a whole world, as a society in which we went through some things.

Greg Pihs
Some people valued freedom over safety. Some people valued safety over freedom. Okay. I don't care whichever side you're on. Whoever valued safety over freedom was ready to fight for that side. Whoever vowed freedom over safety was ready to fight for the other side. We love each other, though. There was an opportunity for us to realize that we had a difference in core values.

Michael Conrad
It put it on display. And I think that's I think that's what a lot of people don't realize, is that the get the buzzword that I always heard was MVVC, mission, vision, values, culture. Do you have a way to explain those things to others? And really, quite frankly, if you've been in business for more than a minute, can others explain your mission, vision value and your culture to somebody else?

Greg Pihs
Very simplistically.

Michael Conrad
Is it bleeding out of you in such a way where it's visible to others? And so a lot of times we treat this like a private reality. Yes. Yes. Either we don't develop it at all, right, or we sort of have a vague sort of squint your eyes sense of it. Yeah. A few of us, myself included, few of us write it down on a piece of paper or put it on a wall so we can look at it.

Michael Conrad
But these motivators are real, and they cause different kinds of action. They cause they build different kinds of business. And that was put on display over the last handful of years when those values got elevated to the.

Greg Pihs
Surface, got challenged, and the realization for the values when that when those values got put on display, we saw people act in ways that literally some people, I'm sure plenty of people, there's relationships that are probably still strained, but there's relationships that have made amends now. Okay. We saw people act a certain way. We didn't think they would act.

Greg Pihs
Your values, your values. You don't get to override. Your values are controlling the essence of who you are. That's your friend. When everything was all done, that's your friend again. But while I was going down, my values and it's happening at an unconscious level. So until we take the opportunity to write it down, explore ourselves so we know business.

Greg Pihs
So what you just said, which by the way, I never heard it like it, and literally going to borrow that.

Michael Conrad
Mission, vision, value, culture, MVVC.

Greg Pihs
MVC, love it, love it. Beautiful formula. So that same formula, that's how you'll figure out what's going on for the business. Same for you. What's going on for you? Yeah.

Michael Conrad
And for our listeners here who might be new in business or maybe trying to get off the ground, having to write down a mission statement feels like having to write a research paper because it feels so such a big mountain to climb. And the advice that was given to me is it's got to be one sentence. It's got to be like less than 15 words.

Michael Conrad
And if you can't boil your mission, kind of the why you're in business, I mean, that's like the most core gold nugget inside of you, of like why you bothered to work for yourself rather than somebody else. If you can't boil it down to one sentence and 15 words or less plus or minus couple of words, then your mission is overly complicated.

Michael Conrad
And I am here like an AA meeting to say my name is Michael Conrad and I overcomplicate the mission on a regular basis.

Greg Pihs
I'm good at.

Michael Conrad
It and I am great at Overcomplicate.

Greg Pihs
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Michael Conrad
And so my staff around me and you know, those that I'm watching and following, either in overt ways or in subtle ways, are encouraging me to continue to simplify my mission, which of course stems out of your values. And so the values lead to the mission. And then, of course, your vision is how you let the mission expand out of you and into others that might work alongside of you.

Michael Conrad
I would be like a colleague or maybe an employee or partner, and then culture of course, is that shared feeling that we all have mostly spoken about by others. You don't really get to say what your culture is. You can you can write it down, but I'm not sure everyone believes in it. Culture, of course, is going to be born out of what people say, which leads us back to what we keep talking about today and that's branding.

Michael Conrad
Brand is not your marketing. People are like, Oh, I'm doing branding. No, you're doing marketing. Marketing is what you are trying to tell the world. You are.

Greg Pihs
Saying go.

Michael Conrad
In, it's now in reverse. You've done the marketing. Now people are going to be reflecting it back to you. What they're doing is they're branding. You remember where we got the word branding from the Old West days and we had the hot iron and we were branding a cow, right? It's an action that someone else is doing to you.

Michael Conrad
They place a brand on you and so branding in a lot of ways isn't a direct action that you do. It is an indirect actions like the Force man. It's like very Zen. You got to you can only influence your brand. You can't actually do anything to change it. All you can do is change your values, adjust your mission, and then have that message be coming through in your marketing.

Michael Conrad
And then with any luck, if you actually do what you say you're going to do, then it becomes branding. When someone else says it's about you.

Greg Pihs
Well, let me suggest to everyone out there and you know, people will die just the way they want personal brand, separate from business brand. So I'm going to suggest your business brand is an entity that you get to bring to life from Ground Zero. So your business has values. And based on your business values, you'll make decisions you already exist.

Greg Pihs
Maybe you identify or not. You make decisions. And then based on those decisions, you'll get feedback about the experience your client had or the brand. And then if you're like, Hey, I want a different Brando in a different culture. I want my clients to have a different experience. Your business is an entity all of its own. So. So I'm going to suggest I'm going to suggest don't realign your values for whatever you want your business to produce.

Michael Conrad
Ooh.

Greg Pihs
So that's that's where you get to keep the essence of personal brand. Think about every business we ever launch in life. And I'm going to suggest for entrepreneurs, every business now, most of us, if we if we are involved in the delivery of our product or service, you're self-employed and you own a job, good. You got out of the employee place, but you're not a business owner yet.

Greg Pihs
You're a business owner and you can step away from the business, come back a month later. More money's in the account. Don't we think about a business? We want to be able to separate ourselves. Every business, whatever launch. I'm going to suggest we should start with the end of mind. Is it to sell or is it to pass down on the family?

Greg Pihs
We shared it and launch it to flop.

Michael Conrad
Yeah. This concept of legacy is really interesting and taking us full circle. Legacy in the orientation towards legacy becomes this funny sort of focal point and it's why people put their names on things, right? Like people attach their names famously to all sorts of businesses from attorneys on downward because they want their personal legacy to survive them. And I would argue that a business that provides excellent information to the community serves the community and provides a way for others to meet their goals and maybe a way for your next generation that survives you to sort of have something more than you did.

Michael Conrad
That's the legacy, way more than the name and the lot of ways to make.

Greg Pihs
And I think I think a lot of it came from and then, which I believe we're seeing a lot of evolution right now. Once upon a time, like we don't know, we don't know. You know, we evolved as a species once upon a time. I don't know if we actually thought that, like the talent was like genealogical. But we we understood that if you have a business, it gets passed down to the family.

Greg Pihs
You don't get rid of the family business right? So of course, you put the name on it because it's going to be the family's forever. We now know, like businesses don't live forever.

Michael Conrad
And kids don't always want to fall in line.

Greg Pihs
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So so yeah. So you want to you want to separate. Allow yourself to have your values. Greg is this person and then he does this or he and you want you want people to think of you if you're in real estate and it all, it really depends what you want, right? But if you're ready to scale and take it to a business level, you got to figure out, okay, what your systems are and implement other people.

Greg Pihs
You want people to think like, I want people to think of me like Greg is X and he owns a real estate team, right?

Michael Conrad
That's a secondary piece of the identity.

Greg Pihs
But think of it as like you want them to say, I'm going to suggest some projects. You want them, you want your people to think of you as someone that owns a business, not does a thing. You are a person and you own a business with the exception of with the exception of I'm going to give one small exception.

Greg Pihs
If you're self-employed and your goal is to stay self-employed, self-employed, i.e. if you're a real estate agent and you go out and you if you get your leads and follow up with them and take them to the even if you have a transaction coordinator, which is a start, but even if you have a transaction coordinator, you're the one that has to deliver all of it.

Greg Pihs
So you do the business, you are the practitioner inside of your business if you want to stay there, which you can, because maybe you're like, Hey, I'm just going to get as much money as I can for the next 20 years and invested in real estate, I don't know. But the realization is we can't retire from a job.

Greg Pihs
The self-employed means you own a job. You don't own a business. Yeah, if you're happy being self-employed like you're a realtor, you're delivering the product, You make so much money, you're serving enough clients, you're working in the right clientele. In that situation, If you know you don't want to scale out of self-employed to business owner, your personal brand can then be your business brand because you are the business in that situation.

Michael Conrad
Okay, so alert hard truth number 37 things they don't teach you in real estate school and that is that developing yourself as a real estate practitioner means that you work for a job effectively and that there's a big difference between having that team, something that survives you, something that works on behalf of you, and this whole concept of like entrepreneurism and business building and branding thing and all of this.

Michael Conrad
Again, you're not taught that in in real estate school. You know, this is something you have to learn either the hard way or you have to become self-educated through a podcast like this or reading or following, you know, folks in this community. And I would think that this is probably one of the biggest conversations that today's realtor I don't care how long you've been in it, 20 years, two years.

Michael Conrad
Today's realtor needs to know why. Because we're in a saturated market and we have all of these digital tools available to us. And so more people are aware of the job that you do. And so more people might jump in based on perception then. Yeah. And so separating yourself from the job and building a business becomes an essential question that needs best.

Michael Conrad
I'm not saying everyone has to do it. I think you're right. Some people are good with staying as a practitioner. Classically the doctor that works for the hospital practitioner versus the doctor that owns a practice, it's a business. And so we aren't really real estate practitioners unless we're doing all the work and really, to your earlier point, this idea that it's an overlay, you work in real estate, that's not who you are.

Michael Conrad
Yeah. And you have to be someone who's customer service oriented, who is staying educated on market dynamics. There's all these things that you have to embody and the real estate piece is just a piece.

Jake Hall
Hey, everyone, it's Jake, director for the Business of Homes Podcast. I hope you've been enjoying today's episode, beginning with Greg explaining the difference between a business and personal brand, how important it is to refine your vision and how your business is a secondary piece of your identity. When we return, Michael and Greg talk about the value of knowing what you're heading towards, how to mix your business and personal brand and so much more.

Jake Hall
You don't want to miss it. Don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram @thebusinessofhomespod, where you can interact with us and see some great bite sized pieces from all our episodes. Are you listeners out there? Did you know our entire podcast are filmed and are on our YouTube channel? Check it out next time you want to see our amazing guests tell their stories.

Jake Hall
And are you currently watching this episode in video format? Don't forget to follow us on your preferred audio streaming service to take us with you on the go. Lastly, do you have any feedback or want to suggest someone for the show? Email us at thebusinessofhomespodcast@gmail.com. Please enjoy the rest of today's episode with Greg Pihs.

Jake Hall
Let's get back to it.

Michael Conrad
And I would say that coming into the real estate market, you have to be able to know at least a little bit of where you're going. You're allowed to change your mind along the way. I've met a number of people, myself included, that kind of had a general sense of where I wanted to go and then change course along the way.

Michael Conrad
And so but knowing what you're going towards, I think is an important piece of this. And then laying the groundwork in that plan, you know, becomes an essential piece of this. So you have to be willing to put some sacrifice in, put some time in, period. And this and again, circling back around to branding because it's so.

Greg Pihs
So yeah, yeah, that's what it's all about. Yeah.

Michael Conrad
And this idea that can I build something that is bigger than me, do I even have the ability to build a team? Do I have anything unique about the idea about myself? What is it that I am branded as currently and can I parlay that into a team or do I need to kind of reshape my business identity into something else?

Greg Pihs
And here's another thing. So so you talked about like, let's say you started with one theme or thing and it got a little bit of traction. Now you're launch a team and you're like, But everyone knows me for cheesesteaks and that's that's hot. Dogs abruptly switch over. You'll probably find out people aren't looking as much as you thought they were and don't even realize.

Greg Pihs
But if they do make a post every day, if you're really lazy, just do it once a day. And in 30 days no one or everyone will have forgot that you used to do cheesesteaks. All they know is you do hot.

Michael Conrad
Yeah, the the news cycle is is rather forgiving. In fairness.

Greg Pihs
Yeah. They're going to forget you done hotdogs. By the way, if someone says, I thought you used to do hot dogs, I did. You do cheesesteaks Now I do. Why did you change? You stay the same.

Michael Conrad
We all change.

Greg Pihs
Yeah, we all change.

Michael Conrad
It's time. Okay, so let's dig into that, because when you start to wrap your mind around a business plan or your values and you start to put that marketing and that messaging out and gosh, you're actually getting a good reflection, that branding that is being applied to you is exactly what you want it to be. But then you've got to make the change.

Michael Conrad
What do we do with that difference, that resistance? We're like, Man, I put all this effort into building this brand for myself, and now I want to take it a whole new direction for my business. This again, the separation between personal and business. How do we deal with those mismatches? Sometimes.

Greg Pihs
Beautiful. I love it when you take the journey of learning the personal brand. The personal brand stays with you forever, forever, forever and ever. Your top three core values are likely to never, ever, ever change in your life. Change in business brand. You can change it any way you want. You can own ten businesses because people know your personal brand when you finally launch for the business can evolve and change and should continuously.

Greg Pihs
How quickly? Sometimes. Quickly, sometimes stays well for a while and clicks feedback. Or maybe it's winning hard. The brand is allowed to change the company brand is allowed to change exactly way it needs to for the for the for the for the prospect for your clients. You're always looking to let's just cut it real cut and dry. Ecology is the study of consequence and what I tell people, the study of consequence check self to self, self to others than self to society.

Greg Pihs
Ecology is when I do this, does it benefit me if I make more money? The answer's yes. But I said self to self, self to other. So after self to self did I increase their experience? Yes. Good. Now does their increased experience and my increased income benefit society? Well, I do this through through nonprofits that person now they have a house so they don't have to.

Greg Pihs
Yes a college is all they're the byproduct of that. If you operate with ecology is your clients continue to get a greater and greater experience. If I was to ask you if I was to say if I was to say to you, we're going to have an experience together, I would like to try to make it an experience so amazing.

Greg Pihs
That is the pinnacle of experiences in your life. There's no reason for you to say no to that.

Michael Conrad
Yeah, this this concept of experience also continues to rise to the surface that we as service people, we sort of all generally fall into a service category. We're not building widgets in some factory as service people. We can get tricked that our brand is the doing it is the service itself and something that I've been working on a lot as an entrepreneur over ten years and my piece of encouragement to the world out there is turn your business brand into an experience oriented business rather than a service.

Michael Conrad
You can be replaced by a robot or chat. And if that is even remotely possible and we've seen a lot of disruption in the tech side of real estate over the last 20 years, then you're not providing that experience that's irreplaceable. There's only one Michael in the world, there's only one Greg in the world. And yes, we might both fall into commonly practice sort of categories in real estate, but no one's like us.

Michael Conrad
And so make the experience, make the brand about the experience so that there's a better stickier adoption with your consumer base.

Greg Pihs
I love it. I want to give you one more thing. So think about your most vulnerable moment in life. Whatever that chapter, not like a single moment. So we're not just like like if there was everyone's free and clear, but like, if something a tragic event or something we're looking for like a chapter in life, something that was six months, a year or two or three years, four years, five years, ten years, okay.

Greg Pihs
That most vulnerable chapter in life. Who were you then? So my most vulnerable chapter, I mean, there's two, but my most vulnerable chapter. I was a child. I've survived horrific child abuse and I won't go down that that rabbit all day. But okay, so who are you when not not just like I was a child. Like, maybe you were like all the things about you.

Greg Pihs
Okay, I was. I was a struggling entrepreneur. I was a single mother. Okay. Who were you in the most vulnerable. And then what was the process like? What helped you get through that process? I think I'm Ed, my left said you are uniquely qualified to help those one chapter behind you. No book can teach anyone what you know about the chapter you just lived.

Greg Pihs
And I say just I mean anywhere behind you now, if you're still going through it. The worst chapter pause. You need guidance. You're not out. You're not ready to start leading other people yet. Continue the journey. Enjoy the journey. So I have childhood trauma like crazy, intense while blow your mind. Childhood trauma. I struggle with that for just like a little bit over a quarter of a century.

Greg Pihs
So just a quick little boat here. All right. And I finally I took a self-development journey which led through several different modalities. But there's a few modalities that just like, whoa, like change things for me. So those modalities are what helped me through. And today I'm a business professional, so it's almost like I have a personal brand in which I help business professionals heal childhood trauma.

Greg Pihs
I'm a real estate agent, so you have to figure out who do you work with and what problem you solve. Let's just say real quick, I work with first time buyers and I help them by their first home with zero down. Let's just roll with that. Bring in Old Faithful there. So that's what I do. So now I can if I want to mix the two, I can say I help first time homebuyers that are struggling with childhood trauma or past trauma that's playing out in their life today in a way that holds them back from doing things like purchasing a home.

Greg Pihs
Now we've blended the two together. You don't have to blend the two together. You could completely and totally be separated because every time you launch a new business, you're still this person that serves people. In this way. People get sent to you, you funnel them to whatever business allows them to have the experience that creates the change they desire.

Michael Conrad
Yeah, and you're not having to help everyone and you're not having to have all the answers. So this idea that you're one chapter ahead of someone and that someone else is one chapter ahead of you, those of us in the entrepreneurial world, in the business world, we're constantly looking at books, the podcast, the YouTube channels to help us make sense of what is immediately in front of us.

Michael Conrad
Someone shine that flashlight on my pathway just a couple more feet in front. And you now also have that same responsibility to shine it behind you. And so a lot of what this podcast is about is about peeling back the curtain, dig it into the philosophy, the business of homes, so that we can shine that light a little bit behind us and say, Yeah, I've been in ten years of business, but I've had some really hard goes at it and I'm here to sort of make sense of it in real time.

Michael Conrad
But also inspire those that are in the middle of it as well. Yeah, And so we've sort of touched on so many amazing things. We could probably talk about branding, which is such an important part of business all day long. I'm really appreciative, Greg, because I feel like you bring such an incredible focus conversation around the cause. That is really the skill often of every real estate agents day to day, which of course is your business and your practice.

Michael Conrad
But it is of course the experience. And so I'm really grateful for your time. We will have to have you back and go deep in the weeds on all the other stuff you're doing. But today I'm just glad that we got a chance to lay some of this down so that others can learn to super awesome.

Greg Pihs
It was great being on the podcast. I love everything and sharing what you're about. And just like you said, for those of you watching, for those of you that are one chapter behind, use this. Figure out what light you can have shined on. Sit with yourself. Create a small action plan and launch. Now the clock's going to take anyway.

Greg Pihs
The future is going to arrive. We're going to be somewhere.

Michael Conrad
That's right. And I'm Michael Conrad. Thanks for being with us. And we'll catch you next time.

Jake Hall
Hey, everyone. Jake, again, director for the Business of Homes podcast. I hope you've enjoyed today's episode. A huge thank you to Greg Pihs for being a part of the podcast. Go follow him on Instagram @gregpihs and that's P-I-H-S, and let him know how much you enjoyed his story. Don't forget to subscribe on your preferred listening platform and make sure to follow us on Instagram as well @thebusinessofhomespod.

Jake Hall
Do you have any feedback or want to suggest someone for the show? Email us at tthebusinessofhomespodcast@gmail.com. Thank you again for listening and we'll see you soon.