Hello again, everybody, and welcome back to the accelerator with Michael Coniff.
That's me.
We're a podcast that goes out to people interested in startups and even roll ups
and everything to do with being an entrepreneur.
We're a companion podcast to the angel, which is more on the money side of things.
Today we are joined by an extremely distinguished businessman, entrepreneur,
somebody who really has done a lot to help people.
Dave Linegar is.
former top executive, one of the top executives at least at Realmax.
Did I say that right?
No, I got that wrong.
Remax, excuse me, Remax.
And Dave has written a book called The Perfect Ten.
Is it okay if I call it a self -help book for entrepreneurs, Dave?
Okay, so tell us first of all, tell us about
Sort of in a nutshell, your career with Remax, which grew into one of the great
real estate empires in the world, how did that come about?
And what was your role in that growth?
Well, I was in the United States Air Force for several years.
During part of my enlistment when I was stateside, I started buying and fixing up
houses and eventually led me to get a real estate license, not to ever sell real
estate, but to save the commission on my deals.
As I got out of the service, I realized I was going full time into real estate
investing.
I might as well get a broker's license.
and start my own company.
I moved from Scottsdale to Denver in 1971.
Did a residency for six months to get my broker's license.
And then I founded Bremax in January of 73.
Since that period of time, it was a very hard start.
Controversial, industry did not like my ideas, but we have now grown to...
being a very recognized kind of icon of the industry.
We have offices in, let's see, 9 ,000 offices, 110 countries, and 150 ,000
agents.
And what was, you said it was a hard start.
What made it hard and what was the new wrinkle that Remax was bringing to the
business?
Excuse me.
shared their commission with the owner of the office.
And if it was a listing, the owner kept half the agent, he half.
If it was the buyer, the company kept half the agent kept half.
So it was a 50 50 split around that.
Uh, what we looked at was why not take experience realtors, no beginners or part
-timers and operate like a co -op, a group of doctors, lawyers, architects.
dentist, share office space, share the overhead costs, pay our own personal
expenses, and keep 100 % of our fees for ourselves.
Quite controversial because if it worked, the agents were keeping 85 .15 instead of
50 .50.
So the powers to be, the big successful companies, they all fought the concept,
said it wouldn't work, it would never happen.
They did everything they could to drive us
business.
They didn't have to work too hard.
I was making enough mistakes.
I probably could have done it by myself, but as it is, you learn to be a street
fighter.
I didn't have a college education.
And so I supplemented my weaknesses.
First hire I made was to hire an administrative vice president.
I would be the recruiter, the sales manager, the trainer, and the
administrative vice president.
would run the company, find the office space, hiring secretaries, bookkeepers,
set up legal contracts, furnish and organize the businesses, that type of
thing.
And the 28th person I interviewed was a superstar.
She had just moved to Denver.
She was a trailing spouse.
Her husband was going to be a MayDNF manager of a
of a chain of stores.
And so she was looking for a new challenge.
Uh, she was confident.
She was, uh, very smart.
Uh, she had an excellent, uh, resume, uh, lots of experience in management and
marketing.
And it was just a home run.
So I lied to her and told her that I was going to build the largest real estate
company in history of the world.
If she'd helped me do it, she could run it.
And that's.
name?
Her name was Gail Main and that started us off on an interesting journey.
We were partners basically for the first 10 years.
And after that we became married.
And so my best friend has been my partner for 50 years and my wife for 40 years.
It worked out extremely well.
And the important thing is you're still married.
That's great.
And I want to point out that you're coming to us from your rather expansive ranch in
Colorado.
So all that hard work paid off, to say the least.
I'm curious about the shifting of the business model.
How did you, if you're giving all of that or most of that income to the realtor, how
are you?
How does Remax make money?
How did you make money?
Originally we had a management fee that was paid to the company every month for
overseeing and doing the business.
Eventually we kind of switched to a 95 -5 model, 95 % to the agent, 4 % to the
broker that owned the office, and 1 % to headquarters, plus our regular fees.
So it became financially lucrative for all three parties to the arrangement, and it
has worked out extremely well for everybody.
So what made you realize that you had to change the business model to do remax?
Well, the business model as it was, was a high turnover business.
There are no barriers to entry for an agent to get a license.
In some places, it's merely a check and maybe a test in a 30 hour course.
So agents come in, they think it's going to be a nice, easy job.
Drive around a nice car, entertain people, buy lunches and dinners and make big
commissions.
The problem you get into is there are no salaries or...
uh, advances in the real estate business.
So in essence, you're in business for yourself, but by yourself.
And, uh, you have to find out how to make a commission.
And often you don't make one in the first six months.
And that's pretty damning.
It's, uh, consumer federation, uh, just put out a pretty big study a couple of
weeks ago, 50 % of the realtors in the United States have not closed the
transaction.
in over 12 months.
Wow.
That's not surprising really because also because there's so many, the market goes
up and down.
It's variable by region, city, town, all sorts of things.
Well, let me ask you about the Perfect 10.
So I know you've got other business interests.
There's lots of things you could do.
Why stop and why write this book?
a lot of people helped me along the way.
I didn't have a formal education.
I blew my opportunity for that.
I realized I wasn't mature enough to go to college.
The military gave me six or seven years to grow up and become a real human being
instead of a teenage boy.
So I learned a lot from it.
A lot of people helped me on the way.
When I first started the company, it was dreadful.
I made all the mistakes you could, but I didn't want to fail.
So I sat down, swallowed my pride and I talked to my managers.
I had eight of them.
They were all 20 years older than me.
And I said, look, what'd you like best about the company you left?
What did you dislike the most?
What do you like most about Remax?
What do you dislike the most?
What do you like most about me?
What...
Do you dislike the most?
Can you teach me with your maturity and your success and my idealistic idea of I
can build this empire?
Can you train me to be the leader you want me to be?
And they did.
They flat out did.
They said some things, they hurt, but I realized, yeah, I'm making those mistakes.
Okay, I'm gonna fix it up.
So every meeting, I wrote them down.
I listened to it with a...
open mind instead of being angry and said, okay, if everybody else sees the problem
and I don't, you must be right and I'm wrong.
So let's fix it.
I've kept an open.
and you started in 73, how old were you when you started the company?
27, okay, so you're a young guy, you're in your 20s, but it strikes me that you had
turned listening into an art.
So, and I think that, you know, asking people, how can I do better?
What am I doing well?
What am I doing wrong?
It's like, so isn't that so obvious, but people...
I don't think it's part of basic management training, is it?
it should be.
You know, in the military for generations, it was the command down concept.
The general said jump and the private had to say hi on the way up.
When they started creating the special forces, whether it's SEAL teams, Delta,
Rangers, whatever it might be,
Uh, it's a different attitude.
Uh, usually it's a smaller team, eight to 10 people usually have an officer
involved.
Almost everybody else has got more time.
So they're mostly NCOs.
Uh, there's nothing sacred about the officer.
Uh, if you're in the field.
Sure.
So this is not the whole military, but in an elite team you're saying, you know,
hierarchy kind of doesn't disappear, but it has a different meaning.
And the SEAL team leads from the front.
Uh, the generals and most of the military lead from the rear.
They're too valuable to get injured or hurt.
And so you're right with your leader.
And so when you design a, a concept for a, uh, job that you're going to accomplish,
all eight or 10 people are equal.
Uh, there's no, yes, sir.
No, sir.
There's no saluting by the way, in the field.
There's never saluting because the officer is the first one the sniper takes out.
And were you yourself in Delta Force?
Okay.
So this is kind of, again, by observation and listening and keeping your ears open.
And so everybody puts the plan together together.
They rehearsed together.
They actually do the, uh, the, uh, mission together.
And when they're done, they download and reassess what we're right, what we're
wrong.
And so it might be a lowly private that looks at the lieutenant and says,
lieutenant, we cleared the room.
You were supposed to go left.
What you did was you went to the right, right underneath my gun sights.
And if I'd been less sharp, I'm not a shot you.
And that the lieutenant says, I knew when I went right, I should have gone left.
It was my bad, my mistake.
Thanks for calling me out on it.
I'll work on it.
And so.
is this represented, this kind of concept, these concepts represented in your book,
The Perfect Ten?
We talk about a servant leader.
We talk about a democratic leader where you take the ideas from everyone.
And by the way, Remax is an extraordinarily successful company.
Every single great idea in our company has come from the field.
The foot soldiers in the trenches that are out there talking to people day in and day
out.
Now they bring us some wacky ideas and so you don't have to take every idea that
comes.
but just be open -minded enough to say, when you have 140 ,000 people, there's a
lot of mind power out there and you can make changes.
You can't just keep doing yesterday's business with yesterday's methods today
and expect to be in business tomorrow.
You know, it's interesting.
I've seen something similar to this.
I actually just had a Zoom before this podcast with a couple of entrepreneurs who
had a modest exit and are now cooking up their next thing.
And part of it is like, I'm thinking to myself, well, why are they talking to me?
They know I'm not going to give them money.
I don't know enough about...
what their space, but basically they were doing a pretty good job of listening and
indirectly tapping into my network, of course.
But I think that, and I had another situation where two entrepreneurs who had
worked together, one was a CTO, one was a CEO, have a new technology.
And basically they're telling people about it, select people, and they're listening,
right?
They're listening to what the feedback is.
So it sounds to me that the one thing that really enabled you to be tremendously
successful was your willingness to listen and not just, let me put it this way, not
just to listen, but to hear.
know, I mentor a lot of people and they all nod their heads and say yes while I'm
speaking and answering the questions, but you know that only three or four out of
100 are gonna do something with it because...
Why don't more...
What holds people back?
don't like to change.
They can agree with you that they need to change, but they'll listen.
They'll say that's entertaining.
Hey, that's a good idea, but they won't implement it.
My most successful mentees have been the ones that were really thirsty for the
knowledge, took notes, would call me back up four or five days later and say, can I
have five minutes of your time?
I did this and this and this like you recommended, and this is where I'm at.
think that's, excuse me for, yeah, excuse me for interrupting, but you know, I
always take notes except during podcasts because I'm trying to concentrate on the
guests, but, but it's such a simple thing and it enables you.
And by the way, these new note takers, these new AI note takers, I honestly,
Dave, I've been, I've been
of amazed at how much I miss even though I take notes and even though I was a trained
reporter, journalist, right?
I supposed to know how to do this.
How much that I missed and then how much there is really to follow up upon as you
go forward.
So what are, I also want to get at what are some of the most important precepts
that represent the Perfect 10.
Tell me why the Perfect 10, why that name, why that title?
Perfect 10 is the concept that in platform diving, in gymnastics, in horse ice
skating,
They have judges and you do your performance at the end of the performance.
You're looking desperately to the judges.
We're going to write on their cards, seven, six, five, hoping, hoping not only
will I get a 10, but will I get a 10 on all seven judges cards?
And yeah, especially if you're American.
So anyway, uh, that started the Genesis, but.
Have you heard of net promoter score as a business way of judging customer
satisfaction?
So NPS is a very simple set of one or two questions that you can ask a customer.
For instance, you can ask them to rank how likely it is would you recommend our
business to a relative or a friend?
And then they rank them one being worst and 10.
I think we've all filled out a lot of those online, right, where you asked for
feedback.
Yeah.
So what you do is you take all the nines and tens and those are promoters and you
take the six, sevens and eights and ignore them.
They don't care.
And you take the one through fives and they're detractors.
You get your total score and you take your promoters, less your detractors and that's
your score.
So in 2017, one of the stats we looked at was United Airlines got a two.
and Southwest Airlines got a, yeah, and Southwest got a 66.
Now they have the same planes, same Bowings, same destinations, same discount
prices, and yet totally different satisfactions.
One, well maybe United's flight attendants have all been around with seniority.
They knew what it was fun to fly 30 years ago.
And first class was first class and now everything's a cattle car.
They're overburdened.
There's burnout and they're tired and they're just waiting to get that
retirement check.
Southwest was a much younger company, younger employees, happy -go -lucky kids
that were, you know, just flying for the first five or 10 years.
They were excited about their job.
They laughed and joked with the audience.
The pilot makes a bad landing.
They want him to grab the mic and say, well, welcome here.
Yeah, they use it's a very intentional use of humor and comedy to kind of create
community and to be personable and it really makes them human beings, doesn't
it?
so to get to the point, rematch to the net promoter score.
We knew every agent, every office in the United States and Canada.
We sent out a letter from me on an email that said, nobody will see these and your
name except for one person.
Me, I'm the founder of the company and I will not divulge who tells me anything,
but we will develop a scorecard for each company, each office.
Et cetera.
Open rate was fabulous.
I'm very popular in the company.
I've been speaking to them for 55 years.
I'm one of them.
We got an overall score of 72.
So that's the same as Google, Amazon, Apple, et cetera.
That's just about the highest you can get up to.
So.
We looked at the individual offices.
We had 200 offices that had the responses that were perfect 10.
200 out of 4000.
And that's offices like Anchorage.
We have a woman up there that's just a fabulous manager and then the second
question you can ask.
Why?
And about half the time they'll tell you why, and so if you give it a 10 why I've
got the best manager in the world.
She cares about me and my family.
Every time I have a problem, I can go to her and she's got a smile on her face and
said, we can work this out.
So you go through those answers.
We had 200 that got an actual minus 100, the worst you could get.
And that's 200 out of 4 ,000 offices.
And we looked at their comments and it was my broker's a jerk.
He doesn't do a thing for me.
I had a problem with an appraisal and he says, I don't have time to help you.
Do it yourself.
And so it really comes down to outstanding leadership at the top, caring for the
people that are there.
Now, if you looked at the
fix the problems at the bottom?
Yeah, we gave him a report card and we told him these are your deficiencies and
if you can't get up into the mainstream, we're not going to renew your franchise.
Okay, so there was a little carrot and stick.
There was some stick in there.
Oh, a lot of stick and carrot.
And so if they, I can't want to make somebody more successful than what they
would have make themselves.
And so if we can do the study and we can say, our analysis says, this is what's
going wrong.
This is what you need to do to fix it.
If they don't fix it, then it's too bad.
I can't fix it for them.
What do you think is the one or two lessons that you would like to people who
read your book to take away from?
And I know that you're a believer in Napoleon Hill, think and grow rich, which
I still think is the not just me, but is regarded as the classic of the self -help
field.
And sometimes I feel like everybody is just riffing on Napoleon Hill.
from the 1920s literally on Andrew Carnegie sent him out to interview the
most successful people in America and he came back with You know, you need purpose.
You need a plan.
You need goals.
You need deadlines So what do you see in addition to those sort of obvious things
and well -known things?
What what what is kind of the the secret sauce and what you're telling people?
in this book
in this book, we got 10 sections with 10 great ideas on each one.
One section's on leadership, one's on scalability and making your company
bigger, one's on team building, one's on personal development.
And so I've tried to take the lessons that I've learned, not only from my
experiences, but we had researchers that helped us and we looked at how about 75 %
of the book is based on...
Amazon, Google, Apple, the other thought leaders of the last two or three
generations to say, this is how these people took a simple concept and made it
incredibly successful for everybody.
So for instance, I've got a chapter on Sir Ernest Shackleton.
Shackleton was an Arctic explorer.
He tried to class.
the South Pole.
And in the process, they got iced in, ice flow collapsed around them.
They were going to live on the ship until the ice melted, but the ice started
crushing it.
And they realized the ship was going to sink.
So he took them out on the lifeboats, put the lifeboats on the ice flow, took all
the food and everything they could carry with them and got away from the ship and
it sank.
They were marooned on the ice for 22 months.
There was no radios, no telegraphs, no newspapers, and it was in dark half the
year.
And he saved every one of his men.
He finally sailed off in one of the lifeboats with a sail and two or three
other explorers.
And they went 700 miles in rough seas to a whaling station and got a boat back and
saved him.
All the men wrote in their journals that Shackleton was the finest leader they had
ever followed in their life.
And in his journal, he talked about, he wanted to kill half of them and he was fed
up with them.
But, but the thing's amazing was he was such a kind leader.
He cared about them individually.
He met with every one of them every day for the 22 months.
He didn't let them have clicks.
They had to change the tents, two and three people to a tent.
And after a week they had to be with somebody else in another tent.
It was a group effort to survive.
They survived happy.
They didn't lose weight.
They managed to live off of seals and fish sometimes.
But he was a brilliant leader.
And the thing's interesting, the thing's most interesting to me, he had, I think,
six or seven sisters.
and he grew up with no boyfriends.
And so he grew up around girls.
And as you know today, people acknowledge that women often are better leaders and
better managers than men.
They have a more of a consensus building feel.
They don't like altercation.
Most of them do not just try to be command and control.
They try to do things.
more democratically, what's your idea, what's your idea?
A lot of those things are incredibly important in today's management and
leadership style.
The command and control is gone forever.
Yeah, it's a different, it's a different world, but it's interesting from the
Arctic Tundra to, to remix finding the threads there.
So let, let's, you know, every day, it seems like I talked to entrepreneurs who
are struggling.
It's a struggle, right?
You said how hard it was when you began.
And I'm as a mentor with mentees, you're probably hearing.
People are telling you things aren't working out, that they're having problems
and whatnot.
What's the most important thing to say to an entrepreneur at what I would call the
moment of truth?
When it's kind of, it wouldn't necessarily be easy to give it up, but they're
certainly thinking about it, right?
Because they're like, it's so much trouble.
So what is the thing they need to think about right at that moment?
It's very simple.
Why are you doing this?
Why are you abusing yourself?
Why are you getting killed?
Why are you taking all the lumps?
What is it that makes you go?
And what that comes down to is what were you doing it for?
Why were you doing it?
What was your mission?
My mission in Remax had nothing in it written about mission goals, vision,
anything.
It was I want to make life better for top producers.
because there's so many beginners and part timers and losers in my business.
And the overhead is wasted on trying to make one out of 10 successful and watching
nine out of 10 fail.
And so my idea was why not do this co -op only with good successful people you were
proud to be working with and us keep the majority of the money and have the
lifestyle we wanted.
And so when your passion is that, uh,
There's a reason for what I'm doing this and it's not chasing the almighty buck.
You can't quit.
That's, that's your life.
That's, that's the dream you add.
My dream wasn't to make millions.
I did.
I certainly did, but you can get everything in the world you want.
As long as you help enough other people get what they want.
And so, uh, I think that's, that just comes to the stick to the, the grit, the
ambition that I will not fail.
I will not quit.
Yeah, yeah, no, that's that's really well said I want to remind everybody this is
the accelerator with Michael Kahn if we're the companion podcast to the angel Make
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just begin with the letter A.
Our guest today is, it's really been a privilege, the founder of Remax, Dave
Lineger.
He has written a new book.
It's out, right Dave?
The Perfect Ten.
Is it out and can you buy it now?
The official publication date is March the 24th or 26th.
Coming up, coming up soon in a couple weeks.
But I want to say like I've read, I've read big portions of this book.
I read a lot.
I've read a lot of self -help books and I think this is really one of the best ones
I've read in part because you, you kind of incorporate a lot of other ideas and other
books just as you're, you're just as you were a great listener as a CEO.
So we want to thank you for so much for being with us and wish you best of luck.
Thank you, Michael.
That was fun.
and the snows of Colorado.
And thank you all out there.
As we like to say, we'll be back with another podcast before you know it.