The Culture is the Company: Leadership Lessons from a 100-Year Legacy
What separates a good real estate brokerage from a legendary one? Mike Pappas of the 100-year Keyes Company says it starts with culture.
What does it take to build a real estate company that lasts not one generation, not two, but four? Mike Pappas, president of the Keyes Company in Florida, has spent four decades answering that question through action. In a recent conversation Real Estate Unscripted Podcast with Darryl, Pappas — joined by his daughter Christina, the company’s next-generation leader — pulled back the curtain on the philosophy that has carried a family brokerage from 1926 to nearly 100 years of continuous operation, 50 offices, and over 4,000 agents.
The lessons he shared aren’t complicated. But they are rare.
Related reading: The Power of Language in Shaping Company Culture
Be You — Nobody Else Can
Early in his tenure, Pappas received advice that changed everything. His father’s first marketing director, Bob Furman, told him simply: “Mike, be us. No one else can be you.”
It sounds obvious, but it isn’t. Especially for brokers who spend their careers watching competitors, chasing trends, and recalibrating their identity every time the market shifts. Pappas watched other firms try to out-tech, out-discount, and out-rebrand the competition. The Keyes Company did something different — it looked inward.
When the company recently underwent a rebrand heading into its centennial, the process wasn’t about modernizing for modernization’s sake. It was about excavating what had always been true. They reviewed old maps, pulled out heritage imagery, and landed on a dark Florida Everglades green that felt like the landscape itself. The tagline they trademarked — Your Home Here — wasn’t invented. It was discovered, already living in the DNA of who they’d always been.
For brokers struggling with identity, that’s the starting point: not what you want to be, but what you already are. Write it down. Get it on the wall. Your culture isn’t a marketing exercise — it’s the operating system of your entire organization.
Related reading: Forbes -Six Ways To Build Culture At Your Real Estate Brokerage
Culture Isn’t a Plaque on the Wall
Pappas is quick to acknowledge that having core values and living them are two entirely different things. The Keyes Company had been operating by their values for decades before they were ever formally written down. The exercise of articulating them didn’t create the culture — it captured it.
“We were living them,” he said, “but then Christina was able to articulate it, and it brings it back for new people.”
This is a critical distinction for growing brokerages. Culture lives in behavior. It shows up in how managers talk to struggling agents, in whether the broker fights for someone having a hard quarter, and in how the company celebrates a $28 million deal. Mike Pappas described walking into one of his offices just to celebrate an agent’s big win. That’s not a policy. That’s culture.
One of the Keyes Company’s core values is “enjoy the journey.” Not as a feel-good platitude, but as a genuine operating principle — because Pappas has watched too many people spend their careers chasing a destination they never quite reach, only to look up and wonder where the time went. If your agents don’t find meaning in the day-to-day work, no commission split will keep them long-term.
Related reading: NAR – Retention Series: Create a Culture Your Agents Won’t Want to Leave
Fight for Your People
Pappas’s father had a saying that Mike has carried with him for 45 years: “If you don’t like them, they shouldn’t be on your team. But if they’re on your team — good or bad — you better fight hard for them.”
Think of it like a sports coach. A great coach doesn’t abandon a player who’s in a slump. They stay in the arena late, they adjust the game plan, and they find a way to get that player back on track. What they don’t do is quietly let the player disappear while the team moves on. Your agents are watching how you treat the ones who struggle. That’s how they know whether to trust you when they’re the ones struggling.
This doesn’t mean keeping the wrong people indefinitely. Pappas is clear that the goal is to help every individual maximize their potential — and if that aligns with your company, you build something together. If it doesn’t, you part on good terms. But you never stop caring about the person.
The Why Has to Run Deeper Than the Transaction
Perhaps the most enduring message from Pappas is also the simplest. Real estate, at its best, is not about transactions. It’s about transformation. Homeowners have significantly higher net worth than renters, lower divorce rates, and higher graduation rates. When you help someone buy a home, you’re not just closing a deal — you’re changing the trajectory of a family’s whole life.
Brokers who internalize this don’t burn out. They recruit differently. They retain better. They attract agents who want to be part of something meaningful, not just maximize their split.
Pappas described his own career shift from hospitality to real estate, and the realization that hit him: upgrading someone’s hotel room is wonderful, but putting a roof over a family’s head is transformational. That clarity of purpose has driven nearly 50 years of leadership.
Related reading: How Top Brokerages Engineer Growth in Uncertain Times
Final Thoughts
A century of business doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone decided, in every generation, that the people matter more than the production numbers — and then built every system, every policy, and every conversation around that belief.
The Keyes Company didn’t survive 100 years because the market was kind to them. It survived because they were clear about who they were, relentless about caring for their people, and disciplined enough to write the plan down.
That’s a blueprint any broker can follow.
For Your Agent…
What you do matters more than you might realize on a slow week. The average homeowner has a net worth of roughly $400,000 compared to $10,000 for the average renter. Every client you guide through a transaction isn’t just closing a deal — they’re changing the financial trajectory of their family. That’s not a small thing. That’s the whole thing.
This market is asking more of all of us right now. Listings are sitting longer, conversations are harder, and clients need more from you than they did a few years ago. Good! This is where great agents are made. The ones who lean in when others pull back, who work their database, sharpen their skills, and refuse to let fear set the agenda — those are the ones who will look back on this period with real pride.
You chose a profession with no ceiling and no inventory — just your talent, your relationships, and your commitment to the people you serve. We are in your corner. Now go show your clients what that’s worth.
Darryl Davis is an award-winning international speaker, real estate and business coach, and best-selling author of three books, all published by McGraw Hill Publishers.
For more than 35 years, Darryl has spoken to and trained more than 600,000 sales professionals around the globe to more than double their production year after year. His book, How to Become a Power Agent in Real Estate, tops Amazon’s charts for one of the most sold books to real estate agents.
He was awarded the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation by the National Speaker’s Association, which is given to less than 2% of all speakers worldwide.
Whether from a stage or Zooming into a virtual room, Darryl’s extraordinary humor, relatability, and natural gift for teaching real-world, results-producing skills and mindsets to audiences have made him a client favorite throughout his career.
Audiences will laugh, learn, and ultimately walk away better prepared for a changing world, with the tools, skills, and training they need to build their businesses with more ease and less stress and to design lives and careers worth smiling about.
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