What would it take to walk away from practicing law and open a restaurant on the first night you ever worked in one? In this episode, Jon sits down with Peter Danis, Founder of Figlio Wood Fired Pizza, to talk about 35 years of building a restaurant business around people, and the licensing program he calls Figlio 2.0.

🎙️ About Our Guest

Peter Danis is the Founder of Figlio Wood Fired Pizza and a graduate of the Ohio State University College of Law. Peter traded in his lawbooks for cookbooks in 1991 when he and his wife Laurie (also an attorney) opened their first Figlio Wood Fired Pizza restaurant in Grandview, where they have been serving award-winning wood fired pizza and pasta for the past 35 years. They licensed their Grandview location two years ago to one of their long-term managers and sold their Arlington location to a real estate developer who bought out their lease. They retained their Dayton store to use as a training facility for future licensees of the Figlio concept. Peter is a past President of the Central Ohio Restaurant Association. He has been a frequent motivational speaker throughout the community and has been a guest lecturer in the Ohio State University Entrepreneurship Department, the University of Dayton, and the University of Michigan Business Club. In their spare time, Peter and his wife raise puppies to become service dogs for people with disabilities through Canine Companions for Independence. Peter also raises chickens in his backyard next to his wife's 20,000 bees.

🧱 What We Cover in This Episode

The delivery room moment that turned two attorneys into restaurant owners

Opening a restaurant with no restaurant experience, and why innovation comes from the outside

Manager meetings where the whole team applauds each other's failures

Laurie's ultimatum and what Peter calls Columbus's first full-service non-smoking restaurant

Hiring the bartender who made the best pasta Peter had ever had

Pairing creative people with analytical ones

Price to value in the 2009 recession, and keeping four managers on full salary through COVID

Knowing you're number eight in an employee's life, and letting them lead the dance

A 125% industry turnover rate, and 35 years without losing anyone to the same job at another restaurant

Figlio 2.0: a license already running in Grandview, the goal of 100 new owners, and a small percentage going to each owner's local food bank

Don't worry about what the people out there think

💼 Key Takeaway

"Every job is very, very important, which is why I interview and hire every person because I think that's the one thing I can do."

🔗 Links & Resources

🌐 Figlio Wood Fired Pizza: figliopizza.com

📱 Follow Figlio on Instagram: @figliopizza

📍 Figlio Grandview on Instagram: @figliopizza_grandview

🎧 Subscribe & Follow

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Website: ColumbusBrickbyBrick.com

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Know someone building a team, in a restaurant or anywhere else? Send them this episode.

Every Brick Has a Story. We're Here to Tell It. 🧱

#ColumbusOhio #RestaurantBusiness #CompanyCulture #ColumbusRealEstate #FiglioWoodFiredPizza #ColumbusBrickByBrick

When Gagan Timsina went looking for a home for his parents, every agent account he found was talking about itself. So he started talking about Columbus. In this episode, Jon sits down with Gagan Timsina, Visionary at The Columbus Report, to talk about how a page about Columbus developments became a real estate business, and why he is now putting more of himself in front of the camera.

🎙️ About Our Guest

Gagan Timsina is the Visionary at The Columbus Report, one of the fastest growing media pages in the state, and a licensed real estate agent in Columbus. When his mom asked to move here, he started researching the city while living in New York and spotted a lane nobody was covering: developments and projects. His first video, the top 10 developments coming to Columbus in 2025, pulled 250,000 views. He reached 27,000 followers before he got his license here, and today he leads a team of about seven.

🧱 What We Cover in This Episode

How his mom's move, and 77 cousins, brought his family to Columbus

Spotting a blue ocean in Columbus developments while living in Rochester, New York

Replicating a 250,000-view first post with the 80/20 rule

The team of about seven behind the page and the goal of 500 pieces of content a week

How distribution across four platforms turns five pieces a day into 500 a week

The best agent, the most well-known agent, and being known well

Operationalizing generosity, with Columbus as the one he's helping climb the mountain

Kindness as a business model, and showing more of the person behind the page

Learning Muay Thai in Thailand and the confidence that came with it

Volume negates luck: 3,000 posts in a single year

Lead swapping, and where The Columbus Report goes next with developers

💼 Key Takeaway

"Your niche is the incubator. What you choose to do outside of real estate is what will get you clients."

🔗 Links & Resources

📱 Follow The Columbus Report on Instagram: @the_columbus_report

🎵 The Columbus Report on TikTok: @thecolumbusreport6

👤 Gagan Timsina for agents, on Instagram: @gagan.leads

🎧 Subscribe & Follow

New episodes drop every week. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation with the people building Columbus.

Website: ColumbusBrickbyBrick.com

TikTok, Instagram, Facebook & YouTube: @ColumbusBrickbyBrick

Know an agent trying to build a following from scratch? Send them this episode.

Every Brick Has a Story. We're Here to Tell It. 🧱

#ColumbusOhio #RealEstateMarketing #ContentCreation #ColumbusRealEstate #TheColumbusReport #ColumbusBrickByBrick

Nine months into his real estate license, Conner Kochansky had not closed a single deal. In this episode, Jon sits down with Conner Kochansky, Real Estate Agent with RE/MAX Impact on The KR Group, to break down how he got through that first year and built a business he does not have to burn himself out running.

🎙️ About Our Guest

Conner Kochansky is a Real Estate Agent with RE/MAX Impact on The KR Group in Columbus, Ohio. He got his license in 2022 looking for an education in sales, and spent his first nine months without a closing. He worked part time out of a bar and event space, building clients through the people he met there, before going full time in August 2024. Since then he has grown into a top producer, sold 33 homes last year, and is finishing his second book on self belief while building systems that let him step back from working every weekend.

🧱 What We Cover in This Episode

Why Conner got into real estate looking for an education in sales, not a love of houses

The first nine months with zero closings, and the client who backed out mid-honeymoon

Working a bar and an event space to stay in the game while building a client base

The social media marketing side hustle that led him toward real estate in the first place

A TikTok video that hit eight and a half million views right as he went full time

Going from 33 homes and just under $9 million last year to a pace near $10 to 12 million this year

The mountain-high, mountain-low first year of going full time

Building leverage with a mentee agent and a buyer concierge instead of showing every house himself

The team philosophy of selling the client on you, not just the house

His first published book on serving tables, and the one on self belief he is finishing now

What his ideal day looks like five years from now

💼 Key Takeaway

"I know if I do the right stuff today, it's gonna translate four or five years down the line."

🔗 Links & Resources

📱 Follow Conner Kochansky on Instagram: @connerkochansky

📘 Conner Kochansky on Facebook: facebook.com/conner.kochansky.1

🏠 Styer Hospitality Co, furnished short and mid-term rental management: StyerHospitalityCo.com

🎧 Subscribe & Follow

New episodes drop every week. Subscribe so you never miss a conversation with the people building Columbus.

Website: ColumbusBrickbyBrick.com

TikTok, Instagram, Facebook & YouTube: @ColumbusBrickbyBrick

Know an agent grinding through their first year with nothing to show for it yet? Send them this one.

Every Brick Has a Story. We're Here to Tell It. 🧱

#ColumbusOhio #ColumbusRealEstate #RealEstateAgent #RemaxImpact #TheKRGroup #ColumbusBrickByBrick