Dave Liniger on the Perfect 10: Craft Your Path to Success EP 474

Speaker A
Can I cut 5% out of the budget and still have time to go to my daughter's game? Watch me. Copilot for Microsoft 365 helps you streamline, automate, and unlock innovation so you can work faster and smarter. Learn more at Copilot Dot Microsoft three six five.com dot. Earning your degree online doesn't mean you have to go about it alone.

Speaker B
At Capella University, we're here to support you when you're ready. From enrollment counselors who get to know you and your goals to academic coaches who can help you form a plan to stay on track. We care about your success and are dedicated to helping you pursue your goals. Going back to school is a big step, but having support at every step of your academic journey can make a big difference. Imagine your future differently at capella.edu.

Speaker C
Coming up next on passion struck, Darwin. Has been attributed to Saddam saying the strongest of the species survives. That's not what he said at all. He said the most adaptable of the species survives. The dinosaurs were the strongest.

Dave Liniger
They disappeared 70 to 100 million years ago. The mosquito is still with us. The mosquito has proven to be more adaptable than dinosaurs ever were. And so adaptability is an incredible part of being a leader and leading other people. You have to learn to adapt to it.

You can't be afraid. 25 years ago, technology started coming in the industry, and I kept saying most real estate agents don't need technology, they need a customer. Welcome to passion struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R. Miles, and on the show we decipher the secrets, tips, and guidance of the world's most inspiring people and turned their wisdom into practical advice for you and those around you.

John R. Miles
Our mission is is to help you unlock the power of intentionality so that you can become the best version of yourself. If you're new to the show, I offer advice and answer listener questions. On Fridays, we have long form interviews the rest of the week with guests ranging from astronauts to authors, CEO's, creators, innovators, scientists, military leaders, visionaries, and athletes. Now let's go out there and become passion struck. Hello, everyone.

Speaker F
Welcome back to episode 474. Passion Struck consistently ranked as the number one alternative health podcast. A heartfelt thank you to each and every one of you who return to the show every week, eager to listen, learn, and discover new ways to live better, to be better, and most importantly, to make a meaningful impact in the world. If you're new to the show, thank you so much for being here. Or you simply want to introduce this to a friend or a family member and we so appreciate it when you do that.

We have episode starter packs, which are collections of our fans favorite episodes that we organize in convenient playlists that give any new listener a great way to get acclimated to everything we do here on the show. Either go to Spotify or passionstruck.com starter packs to get started. I am excited to announce that my new book, Passion Struck, won best nonfiction book at the International Book Awards. Such a humbling award. It also is a winner at the Eric Hoffer Book Awards, the best business minds Book awards, and won the gold at the nonfiction Book Awards.

In addition, the next big Idea club recognized it as a must read in February and you can purchase it on Amazon or go to passionstruck.com dot. And in case you missed it, earlier this week I interviewed James Ray and Monica Berg. James is the visionary leader who transformed Ashley Stewart against all odds, and in this episode we discuss James story, which is one of resilience, innovation and the transformative power of kindness. In my inspiring conversation with Monica Berg, we dove into personal growth, overcoming fear and finding true fulfillment. Discover how to unlock your potential and live a more intentional life.

Don't miss this enlightening episode with Monica Berg. And if you liked that previous episode or today's, we would so appreciate you giving it a five star rating and review. They go such a long way in strengthening the passion star community where we can help more people to create an intentional life. And we and our guests love to hear your feedback. Today, I have the honor of speaking with an extraordinary leader, innovator and visionary in the real estate industry, Dave Lineiger.

Dave co founded Re Max in 1973, revolutionizing the real estate world, his unique business model that combines maximum commission concepts with unparalleled support services. His journey, however, started long before that. From serving in the Air Force during the Vietnam War to navigating the challenging landscape of entrepreneurship. Dave's life is a testament to resilience, innovation and the power of determination. We'll explore how his military service shaped his career, the key challenges he faced while revolutionizing the real estate industry, and the inspiration behind creating the maximum commission concept.

We'll also delve into his adventurous spirit, his remarkable recovery from a life threatening infection, and how these experiences have influenced his approach to life and leadership. Dave's insights into building resilient teams, fostering innovation, and the importance of continuous personal development are not to be missed. His newest book, the Perfect ten, encapsulates over five decades of wisdom and offers invaluable lessons for inspiring entrepreneurs and seasoned business leaders alike. Get ready to be inspired by Dave Lineager's incredible story of overcoming obstacles, pioneering change, and leading with vision and heart. Thank you for choosing passion, struct and choosing me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life.

Now let that journey begin. This black Music month, State Farm wants to take a moment to recognize the undeniable cultural influence of black musicians, composers, singers, and songwriters. From folk music to rock and roll, jazz, and more, black culture has shaped almost every genre of music that exists today. Join State Farm in celebrating this month and beyond. Like a good neighbor, state Farm is there.

Speaker H
Texting between two different kinds of phones makes photos blurry, ugly, and security risky. Not just that, it also makes video calling, editing messages, or leaving a group nearly impossible. With WhatsApp, everyone can enjoy seamless messaging with the protection of end to end encryption. Streamline your messages across all devices on WhatsApp. Message privately with anyone you want.

Click the banner or download now to learn more. Earning your degree online doesnt mean you have to go about it alone. At Capella University, were here to support you when youre ready, from enrollment counselors who get to know you and your goals to academic coaches who can help you form a plan to stay on track, we care about your success and are dedicated to helping you pursue your goals. Going back to school is a big step, but having support at every step of your academic journey can make a big difference. Imagine your future differently at capella.edu.

Speaker C
I am absolutely thrilled and honored today to have Dave Lineger on passion struck. Welcome, Dave. Hey, thank you, Todd. It's nice to be here. Dave.

I always like to start this out by giving some background on the individual who I'm interviewing for the audience. And you and I both happen to be veterans. You served in the air force and in Vietnam, and I was wondering how your time in the military laid a foundation for you for the rest of your career. Well, I was born on a farm in Marion, Indiana, not necessarily a good student. I was certainly smart enough.

Dave Liniger
I went to college because my parents said, you're going to go to college. And I didn't have the maturity or the soft discipline to study. I didn't have a goal of what I wanted to be. Some people are blessed by thinking, I know I want to be a doctor. I want to be a nurse or whatever it might be.

And I just did not. And so after struggling for a couple of semesters, I joined the United States Air Force. I served five and a half, six years on multiple locations and the air force was outstanding for me. It gave me a chance to grow up, mature, and it also allowed me to figure out discipline. Obviously, if the military tells you to be someplace on time, you have to be there.

I had my good work ethic from growing up on a farm, and so the extra five or six years gave me the ability to be more mature and ready and capable of going into business. Your story sounds a little bit similar to my father's. He started out at the University of Detroit. Things weren't going the way he wanted. He ended up enlisting in the Marine Corps, and he went to Cambodia before Vietnam, but came out of it, and it completely changed his life trajectory.

Speaker C
You ended up going to the University of Michigan, and then on from there. I wanted to talk about your journey at Re Max, because you ended up co founding this, if I have the date correct, in 1973. What were the challenges that the industry faced at that point in time, and how was re max revolutionizing that through its business model? Traditionally, in that time period, real estate agents work for the owner of the office on usually about a 50 50 split. The agent got 50% of the commission for their income and also to pay their personal expenses, such as automobile insurance, entertainment, realtor dues.

Dave Liniger
And obviously, there are no salaries in the real estate industry, and so they have to pay their own 401K, Social Security, etcetera. The company used their half to provide an office space, secretarial, clerical, advertising, marketing, and to earn a profit. The turnover rate in the real estate industry was horrendous. All the part timers and beginners that came into business really had struggled to make a living. They were trying to learn a business, trying to figure out property values, trying to find customers, and going for months before they got their first closing.

And it was a mess. I ended up thinking about, why not have a co op like a group of doctors, lawyers, architects, dentists that were highly experienced, that would band together, work out the same office space, pay the fair share of their expenses, plus their own personal marketing and advertising, and keep the vast majority of the commission for themselves? And the end result was that, as we proved, it worked. Liagus really worked basically on a 80 515 split. So this started to revolutionize the industry, but the powers to be hated it, because if it succeeded, it meant they were going to have to pay their top producers more than a 50% split to keep them.

So the industry banded together, tried to do everything they could to drive us out of business, and really, they didn't have to try too hard. I was making enough mistakes by myself, that I almost did that to myself. But once we had proven the concept, the sky was the limit. And you guys have dominated for years. However, more recently, there have been some new models.

Speaker C
I say recently because Keller Williams has been around now for, for a while. Gary Williams was actually one of my neighbors when I lived in Austin. But you now have Keller Williams, you have a newer one. Exp how, given those models, do you think real estate is changing, or do you think its changing at all? And do you think its had any impact on the industry?

Dave Liniger
Steve well, in the last 50 years, the industrys changed dramatically. In 1973, we had a single page form for a listing agreement, and now the listing agreements are dozens of pages. The purchase agreements, FHA, Va, or cash or whatever, they were one to two pages. Now they're 40 and 50 pages. The litigation explosion that occurred in the seventies and on, all of a sudden, the realtors were held to a much higher standard.

The business became more complex. You had buyer agents versus seller agents, dual agents, and it changed dramatically in the seventies. Realistically, that's when franchising came about in the industry. And also in the seventies, Sears came in and bought the Coldwell banker, and then Bridgel came in, Merrill lynch came in. And so by 1978, there were 178 so called national companies, and the franchise salesmen were all running around saying, hey, the nationals are going to control 80% of the market in five years, and if you dont join ours, youre going to be left behind.

So to take it a step further, that was never going to happen. But today, over 60% of the business is done by approximately ten national companies. So it has had a tremendous impact on the industry itself. There is lots of room for different types of competitors. There are certainly the vast majority of the new agents are not qualified to come to remax and pay us in advance every month of their pro rata share and wait to find a way to make commissions.

Our niche is relatively small. We really recruit from the top 20% of the agents out there, and that makes ours highly qualified. But the top 20% of our competitors are highly qualified, too. So there is room enough for all kinds of different concepts. Remax continues to thrive.

We see 9000 offices, 145, 150,000 sales associates in 110 countries. Yeah, it really is a vast network that you ended up building. But I understand, as with any venture that anyone gets into, when you start doing this, you make mistakes along the way and you learn from them. What were some of the biggest leadership lessons that you had to learn as you were building the company. I think the first thing was that I was very inexperienced as a leader and as a manager.

And so as I struggled the first couple of years, at least I had the common sense to sit and talk to my managers of my offices who were 20 years older than me and had a lot more experience. I said, what did you like best at the company you used to work for? What did you dislike the most? What do you like best about rematch? What do you dislike the most?

What do you like about me and my management? What do you dislike the most? When you ask for criticism, they're going to give it to you honestly and learn from that. I learned that I didn't want to fail. And so since I didn't want to fail, then I had to take the advice.

So I think the most important thing to figure out as a entrepreneur is you don't have all the answers. A lot of times your staff can contribute heavily. In the relapse history, we haven't come up with a single great idea out of the ivory tower group, but with the vast number of agents we've got, we have an unending source of good information and good ideas. Some of them are poor and some of them are radical or crazy, but some of them are darn right amazing. I think the first thing is you got two ears and one mouth.

Use them appropriately. Listen to your employees or your independent contractors. They're on the front line. They know what's going on. The second thing I would say is the biggest leadership failure was I didn't fire people when they should have been fired.

Unfortunately, in a company that grew like ours did, the bookkeeper you had with one office is not going to be the chief financial officer. You're going to have with, say, 110 countries. The attorney that could come up with a contract for real estate sales on a property is not going to be your chief legal counsel. There's a staff 20 and 20 outside attorney firms worldwide. And I know I used to brag, the first 38 years of the company, not a single one of my vice presidents resigned or left me, period.

And I thought that was a good thing. If they can't keep up and you try to talk to them about that, you give them their reviews, you make your suggestions. Just not everybody can continue to grow with the company the way they should. And if you don't fire them when you should, you're hurting everybody in the company. Number one, you hurt the employees that are working for them because they know the person isn't worthwhile.

And you hurt to the individual because you pigeonholed them, and there's no more future for them. And finally, you hurt yourself and your shareholders because you're holding your growth back. So I think the biggest disappointment I had was not having the personal courage to look at people who I considered friends, that we had traveled, worked together, been together for decades, and they couldn't keep up the pace. And so I just didn't have the personal courage to face up to the problem of this wasn't working for anybody, and we should be able to separate some way and fashion, shake hands and stay friends and let them find a better position where they're going to go further. And for us to replace them with somebody who can do it better.

Speaker C
Yes, I experienced this myself in a large organization. I was a senior executive at Lowe's, but one of the first outside officers that they had brought in, and I saw the same thing. We had some very talented people in the organization, but the organization had grown beyond what their capabilities were because they had never seen anything beyond the organization itself. And so having to make some of those decisions, while it was hard to either demote them, move them out of the organization, or into different roles, it was holding back the progression that we were going to make at Lowe's. If I had kept him there, I think that's an important lesson to talk about.

Dave Liniger
You bet. Well, Dave, you have lived life experiences that many people couldn't even imagine, and you have this adventurous spirit that's led you to engage in everything from scuba diving to. When I was at Lowe's, I lived next to a lot of NASCAR drivers. You were in auto racing yourself and even a helium balloon flight across the world. How have these experiences shaped your own perspective on life and leadership?

Well, if I had kept selling houses, I would have burned out probably in five or ten years. The fact that I started the organization and I had the capacity to grow as the organization grew, it made the business life extraordinarily interesting. I used to reach out to other businesses. I'm involved in probably 2022 different businesses right now. I find that learning a new business, the curiosity that I've got, I can apply almost the same business skills that I learned from raising, say, arabian horses or driving a NASCAR car or owning a NASCAR race team.

It's all about leadership, and it's all about team building.

The team building is probably the third most important lesson that I've learned, is you can't do everything yourself. When you are inexperienced and you don't have a lot of capital and you start your business, you're the chief of cook and bottle washer because you have unlimited time and very limited money to hire other talent. Once you become successful and profitable, you can reinvest those profits and hire people that are better at you in each of the other areas of skill that you need. And when you look at Remax, I mentioned in the 50th convention a year ago, I said, Dave and Gail Leninger are mere footnotes in the growth of this company. This company was built on the backs of hundreds of thousands of agents and brokers and franchisees over a period of 50 years.

And if anything we've done has been right, it's the skill of team building, putting the team together, putting the people on the bus, getting them in the right seats and moving forward.

Speaker C
Yes, and that's actually one of the six principles that you talk about in your new book, the perfect ten principles, or the perfect ten. And this is one of the ten principles. I understand that putting people in the right seats on the bus is essential. It's something that I, I've had to do in my own career. What qualities do you look for in the people that you put on the bus so that you ensure that you have a team that's going to foster collaboration, but also not have group think, because you need to have individuals on these teams who are diverse as well?

Dave Liniger
Well, I think when you look at hiring, three or four things come to mind immediately. Number one, what is their level or degree of honesty and integrity? There's no such thing as being a little bit honest or a little bit dishonest. You either are or you're nothing. And that goes a long ways towards building a team.

The second thing is a great work ethic, and that is building a business is hard, back breaking work. And in the case of Remax, I traveled for the business probably 200 to 250 days a year for almost 40 years before I start backing down a little bit from there. And so having a great work ethic is very important. I think you look for people who are collaborative. And finally, I think what you have to look at is what's their passion?

Why are they doing this? Are they doing it for a paycheck, for profit sharing, for an annual bonus? Or have they fallen in love with the business? And that's what happened with us. We really like our franchisees and our leaders, especially like the agents part of our world that you can't replace.

And I haven't worked a day since I started remax. Every day it was an honor, and every day it's been a pleasure. And so if you're doing what you love, you'll do it better than anybody else could do it. This black music month, State Farm wants to take a moment to recognize the undeniable cultural influence of black musicians, composers, singers and songwriters. From folk music to rock and roll, jazz and more.

Speaker G
Black culture has shaped almost every genre of music that exists today. Join State Farm in celebrating this month and beyond. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.

Speaker B
Earning your degree online doesn't mean you have to go about it alone. At Capella University, we're here to support you when you're ready. From enrollment counselors who get to know you and your goals to academic coaches who can help you form a plan to stay on track, we care about your success and are dedicated to helping you pursue your goals. Going back to school is a big step, but having support at every step of your academic journey can make a big difference. Imagine your future differently at capella.edu.

Speaker C
I love that you brought all that up. I was interviewing earlier today Jerry Hussey, who you probably are not familiar with, but he is the top sports psychologist in Ireland and has worked with a number of their Olympic athletes. He works with the national rugby team, their national sailing teams, etcetera. And as we were talking, I asked him about Olympic athletes and how does he go about training and helping them? And he said that he always asks a Olympic athlete why winning a gold medal means so much to them.

And he says, you would be surprised how many when you ask him the question, why is the medal the thing that you want more than anything? Can't even answer the question to why they want it. And he said, what he has found is that those Olympic athletes who have been the most successful are the ones who aren't driven by the medals, but they're driven by the journey of conquering their fears and going after their passion. Do you think the same thing goes to people who work in the office? Because I have found my own self that people who are constantly chasing success are so motivated by ego that it gets in the way from them performing the job that you would want them to do, because they get in their own way and that of their peers.

Dave Liniger
I did a podcast with General Crystal, and I asked him a similar question. I said, the people that you're trying to promote have got very strong egos. How do you feel about that? And they're driven to succeed, and they're driven to make their next promotion and possibly become a general themselves. And he said, well, if a person's in this only for themselves, the people beneath them will see it, resent it, and won't give them 100%, he said.

But if they're a leader and they talk about as a team, we're going to win together, meaning that I'm not just chasing my promotion, but as we win, you, too will get recognition, promotion, higher pay raises, and that sort of thing. And so if you're a strong ego, and the ego is about the team and not just about your own personal accomplishments, you will be followed by the majority of the people. I love that you bring Stan up because I also featured General McChrystal in my book, which just came out last month, and I interviewed him and a long term friend of mine, Keith Crotch, who was the chairman and CEO of Docusign. And this chapter is all about a concept that I call garner leadership, but it really comes down to being eyes on and hands off. And what General McChrystal really talked about was this concept of being ambitious.

Speaker C
You need to have the ambition to succeed, but at the same time, you need to be humble in the way that you're leading your troops. And so I think he's an excellent example, as you just brought up, of someone who has perfected both, but looks for people who have that humility in them, but they are also driven to reach new heights. So I appreciate you bringing him up. Cool. So when I think of the perfect ten, my mind goes to things like gymnastics or diving competitions, where trying to achieve a perfect ten is something that world class athletes might achieve once or twice in their entire career if they're lucky.

Why were you drawn to this as the title for your book? It's a little lengthy, but it's fascinating. And then, I'm sorry, 2017. We started a survey of our employees, and it's called the net promoters. Four.

Dave Liniger
Are you familiar with NP's? Yeah, I'm very familiar with it. It was core metric that we used at Dell when I was there. Okay. Basically, for the audience, you asked one simple question, and it's easy for somebody to answer your survey.

That question is, on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest likelihood, how likely is it that you would recommend a friend or a relative to work alongside of us in this organization? If they. Nine or ten, they are promoters. If they give it a ranking of six, seven and eight, they don't count. And they give you a ranking of one to five, they're detractors.

So you take the total score of all the promoters detract from that, the minuses from the detractors. And that gives you your net promoter score. And at the time a survey had just been done of airlines. United Airlines got an overall score of two and Southwest Airlines got an overall score of 62. Now you have basically the same people, same aircraft types, same manufacturer, same routes, same discount fares, and one group is highly praised and the other group is down in the bottom of the list.

And so it really comes out to the people make the difference. It's the leadership and it's the direction that people take you. To put it in perspective, we did our net promoter score and the overall score in the United States was 72, which is right alongside of Amazon and Apple or Google and so on. And so that's very refreshing for us. But in doing this, we followed every single agents response.

Second question you can ask, if they answer the first one is why? And in the case of our people that got the highest rankings in their offices, and some places 200 agents in an office and they got a perfect ten. And you look at the comments why? And theyd say my broker is the finest one ive ever worked for. She really cares about me and my family.

If I ever have a problem, her doors wide open, shell help me solve it. And you look at the people that we had that were down to the -100 and the opposite reaction was. And I said, well my broker doesnt care about me. I had nothing appraisal problem. And he said you have to work it out for yourself.

Im busy selling houses myself, I dont have time for that. And so it was this leadership. People join companies and they lead managers. Well, we had 4000 offices in the United States and 200 of those offices got a perfect ten on their scores. And so at the next convention we spent an hour or two going over it, showing the difference in leadership and management styles.

And I announced to the room, these are the 200 people that were the perfect ten. And so it drew me into this concept of you can have it all. Some people become incredibly wealthy, but they lose their family, the kids hate them, they're lonely and maybe they have pushed too hard there. And I addiction of some kind. They're just mean, nasty people.

And when you look at in the same company, perhaps in the same city, you got one outstanding leader with 200 agents. It's got this perfect score, theoretically a perfect life, and you've got another person that's got this -100 so this perfect ten is trying to tell people you can have it all, but just like an Olympic athlete, maybe once or twice you will have the absolutely perfect gymnastics or diving motion or whatever it is, but it's what you try to achieve. And so what I've tried to do with this book is cover all the different areas of being an entrepreneur, a leader, a manager. I talk about business a lot with scalability, but I also spend a lot of time talking about personal promotion, of personal development, of making a difference to the world. And the real question you have to ask everybody is, why are you doing this?

And the stronger the why, the more likely it is you're going to do it with excellence.

Speaker C
Dave, speaking of personal development and personal struggles that you have to overcome, you ended up having a life threatening staph infection in 2012. And as I have done research, you made a split second decision to choose life over succumbing to despair. And it's something that I've seen happen to a number of veteran friends of mine who might have lost a limb or had some other tragic event happen to him in combat. Wherever they had a choice, they could either in some cases, drink themselves to death, or they could choose a different path than the one that they were on and choose to believe that anything was possible in their life. Can you describe the moment or decision for you when this happened and how it impacted your outlook on life and business ever since?

Dave Liniger
I would say there's two parts to that. I was in a coma for three months. They found out that MRSA had attached itself to my lungs, my organs, and my spine. And so when I came out of the coma, I'd flatlined a couple times, and I was quadriplegic. I had gone into a fetal position.

My tendons had tightened up on me. I looked like that was just my hands and legs all tucked in. And they did some nerve tests on me. And when they finished, I asked them, well, what's the verdict here? How soon am I going to start walking out of this place?

And with tears in their eyes, they said, well, the nerve damage is too significant. The spinal cord damage from us doing your back surgeries and trying to give the, the disease off of your spine. And it's unfortunately, we don't believe you will ever walk or use your hands again. And that night, this little pity party, I'm sitting in there by myself and thinking about it, and I just quit. I don't need this.

I've done everything in the world I want to do. I'm just going to die. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought, you're a lousy hypocrite, going around the country, around the world, giving all these speeches forever about you can accomplish anything you want. Think and grow rich. Set a goal step by step plan.

Organize your plan. Get a mentor group, a group of people that will support you, and you can accomplish anything. Just never quit. And I made up my mind that night. I had not got to quit.

I was at a rehab center of spinal cord injuries and triadic brain injuries, and so about 100 patients at any one time. And you looked around at the therapy rooms, you saw how damaged everybody was. And I started thinking, well, look at those guys. They're in a wheelchair, and they're playing basketball or they're playing hockey or whatever it might be, and they were banging at each other. They knocked the other guy out in the squeal chair, and of course, they just dropped to the floor.

Able watching person come out, straighten them back up, tighten their seat belts off. They would again. I just figured out, well, if I can get the use of my hands back, I'll be the best darn paraplegic there's ever been and still be a man. That kind of set me down the path. I was never going to quit.

Speaker C
Well, one of the things I have unfortunately had to observe over the last three to four years is my sister, who is still alive, is battling pancreatic cancer. And it's definitely showed me how quickly your health can be taken away from you when you least expect it. How has this personal experience reshaped your perspective on your wealth and life priorities? I've always appreciated life. I enjoyed adventure sports.

Dave Liniger
I've done some of the most exciting things in the world that there is. So I guess I could say I've had a life well lived, very heavily involved in philanthropy for over 30 years. We made more money than we could ever spend and found the right causes to help do stuff like that. When it just comes down to it, nothing really changed for me. Time magazine, ten years apart, ran a magazine full of happiness, and it was the first time I read it.

They had a happy face on the COVID and ten years later, they had 40 happy faces on the COVID And one paragraph stood out to me at the time, deepwatting. It said that studies of people who have a spinal cord injury and perhaps are going to be in a wheelchair the rest of their life. They found out that the typical person achieves the same level of happiness that they have at the time of the accident, within five to six years. The human mind is very resilient, and once you accept what's happened to you, then you play with the hand that's been dealt to you and the resilience the grit that you're faced with, that's how you win. The one thing I have discovered is I've always thought I was a kind person.

Grew up a Boy scout, of course, helping other people, opening doors, carrying packages, how can I be of service type of thing. I thought that was pretty normal. But once I was handicapped, learning to get around an electric wheelchair at the time, before I could walk again, and I get stuck in places, trying to go through a door that didn't open automatically, and getting caught up with only one hand that everybody would jump up to help. I can remember we had somebody grab a parking spot in front of you and throw a bird to you, and you think, well, you miserable jerk. But then again, you start thinking, I wonder if that's the person that pulled my wife out of the airplane crash and saved her life.

And maybe he's just having a bad day. I had gang bangers when I walking in the store and I couldn't get a door open. I was using two canes and one of these guys with tattoos, and he's had on backwards. Excuse me, sir, let me get that door for you. I think there's far more goodness in most people than we realize.

And I think I really started discovering that when I myself came to an arab time when I was in personal need of everything. Couldn't shave, I couldn't eat, I couldn't move my hands, couldn't wipe my bottom. And I had these unbelievably compassionate nurses and therapists that had to take care of me like I was a one month old baby. And you just find that there are people, almost everybody is kind in a way, one way or the other. But you also see how incredibly compassionate the medical and nursing staffs and the therapists are.

Speaker C
So I happen to be engaged to a nurse practitioner who spent ten years in the ICU. And I just see how empathetic she is and difference she has made in so many different people's lives. And your story made me think about. Over lunch, I was reading about the life of Paul Alexander. I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, but he.

And he died today, 78 years old. But for over 70 of those years, he was known as polio Paul because he lived in an iron lung for 70 of them. And it was just amazing that throughout all of that time, he was able to go to college and spent 30 years as a trial lawyer, authored books, gave keynote speeches and everything else. So it is just a great example of what the power of your mind can do. When you don't let yourself see limitations.

I thank you for sharing that and your different perspectives on it. John, I make one other point about that in the being in a center with spinal injured and traumatic brain injured. The majority of them are young men, usually between the ages about 15 and 23 or 24. Our boy babies don't mature like a woman's does. And so a lot of us aren't mature enough to even have a driver's license, probably until you're 30 or 40.

Dave Liniger
But that's another story. But I. The thing that's interesting about being there is I told my nurses, the therapist, I said, look, I wanted a lot of things in my life. I failed at things, but I've gotten back up, so you're not a failure if you don't quit. And so I begged them to ask them politely.

I said, work me harder than any patient you've ever had in your life, and I won't let you down. I will never quit, and I will be a success story for you and your medical care. And they did work me hard, and it took me almost nine months before I was able to take a single step in braces and double crutches. But I had a lifetime of successes and failures, and I knew I could do it. And then if you looked at most of these young male patients, they didn't want to do the therapy.

They would say, it hurts too much. They wanted to watch television. They wanted to play a game boy, or they wanted to talk to their friends. And here the parents and therapists, nurses are begging men, you can't get better if you don't put in the pain. You've got to work your way through it.

And there was a young kid that came in nationally ranked, the national champion in Ludacross, and he was 18 years old and been driving a motorcycle or moped or whatever he had from age of four. And he was doing the dramatic backflips and jumps and spins, and he ended up with a lower back injury and left him paralyzed. He was the same as me. He had those short 18 years of lifetime failures and successes, and that gave him the courage to move forward. They say courage comes from confidence, and confidence comes from experience.

And so those of us who have been fortunate to live through whatever the tragedy is, whether it's a loss of a parent child or a lover, maybe it's financial difficulties, maybe it's medical difficulties. Whatever it is, you keep going. And that gives you the confidence and the resiliency to never quit. Thank you so much for sharing that, that is such profound advice. I want to go into perfect ten a little bit more.

Speaker C
In it, you draw wisdom from a wide array of sources, including colleagues, your personal experiences which we've been discussing and also historical figures. And one of the core principles is based on the lasting influence that Ernest Shackleton had on you. Can you explain how his leadership qualities inspired your approach? I actually studied certain earnest for a couple of years. A management leadership group had actually come up with a study plan and I bought the rights to it and customized it for the Remax organization.

Dave Liniger
And I taught over 6000 students an eight hour course in groups of anywhere from 50 to 100 over a period of three or four years. It had an influence on all of us. Shackleton was the famous Arctic explorer. He's most famous for trying to go to the South Pole. And he was in a wooden ship with almost 30 other guys.

He was the captain of the leader of the expedition. They got caught in the ice and then the ice actually froze around the ship. Bear in mind, this is early 2000, I'm sorry, 1900. There were no telegraphs or radios or anything like that. And as they were there, they said, well, at least we're warm, we got food in the boat.

And after a few weeks, the ice started getting firmer, started crushing the boat. So Ernest got everybody off the boat, made him take all the lifeboats which were heavy, wooden, huge boats. Of course. They crammed as much food and everything they could get. These individuals then watched as the ship finally imploded.

Interesting enough, they were marooned for 22 months. And the story of Shackleton and his leadership is that at the end of this period of time, every single man that made it, he didn't lose a single mandeh and every single one wrote in their diaries he was the finest leader they had ever had. The thing that made him such a great leader was at that era the way of leadership was the general tells somebody jump and they ask how high on the way up and do it my way or the highway. Typical male leadership principles that has been changing and evolving. But he was born and he had seven sisters.

So he was the only boy with all his sisters. And he started emulating a lot of things they did. Today, we know that women leaders often do a better job than men and that's because they're more inclusive. There are exceptions to that, of course, but they're more likely to be empathetic to somebody else's needs or wants. They're more likely to ask people for advice or for their opinions than a man is.

When you look at real estate agents, women started coming in the business really in the 1970s, and the men were against it, of course, but this is a mans business, not some part time housewife. And that was foolish. Women that were full time made as much money as other full time men. They were actually better at sales because they didnt sell. They looked at a house through the eyes of the woman, which was schools, playgrounds, churches.

They looked at the house inside. She didn't care what the shingles looked like or what the foundation was, but wouldn't know how many steps there were. Is the laundry on the same floor as the bedrooms? Because that's running up and down the stairs is always a pain. And so we found that women have very special pace and leadership.

If you look at remax history, in the first five years, 80% of my sales force were women. Multicultural, which was very unusual for that time period. Now the rest is history. 65% of our sales sports in the United States are female, which is online with the industry average. I got 75% of my public board are women.

Two of my five CEO's in the 51 year history of the company were women. And of our franchisees, our leadership and so on, over half of our offices are now owned by a wife or a husband and wife together. And so sometimes the best man for a job is woman. And Shackleton approved that, very similar attributes of many women leaders today. Thats a pretty fascinating look at how the world works.

Speaker C
It is a fascinating look. One of the fascinating things that I think thats happening right now is the evolution of technology. And you have seen a number of companies, whether its zillow, Redfin, which is closer to what re Max does, and others, try to disrupt using technology. And I know that there are a lot of listeners right now who are worried about how automation AI other things are going to impact their jobs. Embracing change is something that you cover in the book.

Can you give some life examples of this for someone who's listening to this, your advice to them on how they should approach changes that come at them in their life case? Well, my primary industry trophy business and the massive changes that occurred in the last 50 years are pretty incredible. I used to brag because we had the best agents in the world and we can prove it statistically. And I said theyre the reason we succeed. But it really started dawning on me a few years ago that they succeed not because theyre the smartest or the strongest.

Dave Liniger
Darwin has been attributed to Savin saying the strongest of the species survives. That's not what he said at all. He said the most adaptable of the species survives. The dinosaurs were the strongest. They disappeared 70 to 100 million years ago.

Mosquito is still with us. And so the mosquito has proven to be more adaptable than dinosaurs ever were. And so adaptability is an incredible part of being a leader and leading other people. You have to learn to adapt to it. You can't be afraid.

25 years ago, technology started coming in the industry. And I kept saying most real estate agents don't need technology, they need a customer. At the time, you didn't get customers from technology. Now, of course, with all the portals that you can generate leads with, but you have to look at it. Right now we're selling about 4 million resales a year.

That makes 8 million transaction sides. And these portals are contributing 100 million leads a month. And so if you're getting a billion leads a year in a country with 350 million population, I don't know how much of that is adult age. Most of those technology leads are very long to incubate and make them come to a closing and making a commission. So all the technology companies kept saying, if you don't buy the latest and greatest shiny thing, you're going to be out of business.

As a matter of fact, we're going to put you out of business because we did answering services, we did that to book publishers, we did that to the blockbuster, whatever it might be. Well, they come find out about five years ago, they changed their story and they realized that the realtor is the center of the transaction. The people buying or selling property are doing one of the most complex things they can do. It's one of the two or three most stressful times in a person's life. And everybody's looking for a trusted advisor.

And so you can't replace the trusted advisor. You can buy DVD or CD or a book off of Amazon.com. but it's very difficult for the majority of people to say, okay, sight unseen. There's a house in Vail and I live in Chicago and that looks like a good one. I'll just buy it off the Internet and make an offer.

It doesn't happen. People want to touch it, see it, they want to walk around the neighborhood, they want to get a feel for it. And so the agent is still the most important aspect of the real estate transaction. We can use technology to make our life easier, to organize ourselves, to keep track of our business, but it is not going to disintermediate realtors.

Speaker C
You probably didn't know this about me, but I, for a period of time was the CEO of buy owner and then we bought the other buy owner and I got really versed in real estate in a short period of time because I didn't come from it. But we do it yourself business I think has been on a slow and steady exit out of this as the role of the realtors become more and more profound. But we were trying to look at different ways that we could minimize the realtors role while still allowing the owner of the house to play a significant role. And its a very difficult thing to do because I dont think most owners understand all the complexities that happen when you get into different transactions. Whats your thoughts about the buy owner type of market and whether you think thats going to come back or whether you think thats something thats heading out?

Dave Liniger
I don't think it'll come back. The real estate transaction is far more complex today than it was even ten years ago and that most people are quite willing to pay the commission if they get the correct amount of service. Dave, I just have one last question for you. How do you hope that perfect ten will be a source of inspiration for future generations? Well, to me it's a legacy.

I had so many people help me as this young, naive business person or even helped me in service when I was just a slick sleeve and hadn't gotten the rank yet, that it's up to the older generation to take care of the younger generation in some fashion. And so many hundreds of people, thousands of seminars, various courses and personal friendships, advice for some mentors has helped me be the success I am today. I hope that the wisdom I share in the book, which is about 25% my experiences and remax some of my other businesses. But basically we researched this whole entire book with full time researchers for two years. And so we bring out the best business practices of the visionary leaders of Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, whatever it might be.

And this is a hand back to give the next person a handout. Dave, thank you so much for being here today, sir. It was such an honor to have you on the show. Thank you, John. Good luck to everything you do.

Speaker F
What an incredible interview that was with Dave Linegar and I wanted to thank him so much for appearing on today's show. Links to all things Dave will be in the show. Notes@passionstruck.com dot please use our website links if you purchase any of the books from the guests that we feature here on the show. Videos are on YouTube at both our main channel at John R. Miles, where we post our long form interviews and passion struck clips, where we take two to eight minute segments from the interviews and post them there.

Go check it out and join over a quarter million other subscribers. Advertiser deals and discount codes are in one convenient place@passionstruck.com. deals please consider supporting those who support the show. You can connect with me at LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram or TikTok at Johnr Miles, where I post daily. And if you want to exert your courage muscles, then sign up for our newsletter or live intentionally, where each week I post a new courage challenge.

I also have another challenge for you. I'm excited to introduce the passion struck Quiz, which is a unique opportunity for you to find out where you sit on the passion struck continuum. Are you an orchestrator, masterfully balancing different aspects of your life with passion and purpose? Or are you a vanquisher, conquering challenges and turning obstacles into opportunities? Take the quiz on passionstruck.com and it'll take you just ten minutes.

You're about to hear a preview of the Passion Struck podcast interview that I did with holistic health expert and bestselling author Amy Lee McCree. Explore her latest insights on developing innate intuition, harnessing universal energy, and enhancing personal well being. Discover practical tips from her brand new book, Aura Alchemy, and learn how to transform your life from the inside out. Don't miss this enlightening conversation with Amy Lee Mercree. The aura is simply the field around the body, just like I the atom, the molecule.

Speaker I
In my work, the organ, the meridian, and traditional chinese medicine. They have fields. Fields are part of life. They're scientifically proven. Why wouldn't we have a field?

Why wouldn't your pet animals, plants, living things have a field? They are already made of electromagnetic charge. So I take it to a science place. Remember, we rise by lifting others. So share this show with those that you love and care about.

Speaker F
And if you found today's episode with Dave Lineager inspirational, then definitely share this with family and friends. The greatest compliment that you can give us is to share the show. In the meantime, do your best to apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen. Until next time, go out there and become passion struck.

Speaker G
This black music month State Farm wants to take a moment to recognize the undeniable cultural influence of black musicians, composers, singers and songwriters. From folk music to rock and roll, jazz and more, black culture has shaped almost every genre of music that exists today. Join State Farm in celebrating this month and beyond. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Can I turn 150 pages into a five minute presentation before today's meeting, watch me just ask co pilot from Microsoft 365 to create a presentation from a file, and it will instantly turn a word document into a PowerPoint presentation for you.

Speaker A
Copilot for Microsoft 365 helps you streamline, automate, and unlock innovation so you can work faster and smarter. Learn more at Copilot Dot Microsoft three six five.com.

Dave Liniger on the Perfect 10: Craft Your Path to Success EP 474

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1. Introduction to Dave Liniger

2. Leadership and Resilience

3. Building a Team

4. Lessons from 'The Perfect Ten'

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