Habits and Hustle - Episode 331: Dave Liniger: Lessons Learned From Achieving True Independence, Extreme Wealth & Huge Successes

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Think you need a college education to get ahead in business? Think again.  Whether you get a formal education or not, the key to true success comes from grit, hard work, perseverance, mentorship, and an unshakeable mindset.  In this episode of Habits & Hustle, I’m joined by Dave Liniger, the chairman of RE/MAX, the leading franchisor of real estate offices throughout the world. Together we discuss how to achieve true longevity in business and the key elements of determination, persistence, and the mindset required to build a global business from the ground up. We discuss the relentless pace of today’s world and how adaptability, rather than strength, is the key to longevity and success. He shares his experience of grit and determination, particularly through a life-changing accident that left him temporarily paralyzed. He also shares insights on building courage through experience and the mental resilience that enabled him to overcome his paralysis, and the value of real-world experience and leadership skills over academic qualifications. Dave Liniger is the visionary leader of the Denver-based global real estate franchise RE/MAX. He’s a serial entrepreneur, lifelong philanthropist, an adventurer and avid sportsman, Dave hosts the ‘Ambition and Grit’ podcast and is a best-selling author.  What we discuss… (03:13) Achieving success through determination and persistence  (06:40) The reality of real estate competition and longevity  (25:40) How to achieve leadership success without a degree (48:49) Overcoming the inevitable obstacles of life and finding confidence in your darkest moments  (55:08) The importance of finding mentors and executing on your goals (57:04) You need exceptional salesmanship & here’s how to do it  (01:01:46) The true influence of social circles on behavior  …and more! Thank you to our sponsors: Pendulum: head over to pendulumlife.com and use my special code HUSTLE15 for 15% off your order. Therasage: go to therasage.com and use code B-BOLD for 15% off Find more from Jen:  Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/ Instagram: @therealjencohen  Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagement Find more from Dave: Website: https://daveliniger.com/ Instagram: @davelinigerofficial Order the Book: https://daveliniger.com/books/

Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle. Crush it! Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, Therisage. Their Tri-Lite panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body. It's a portable red light panel that I simply cannot live without. I literally bring it with me everywhere I go. And I personally use their red light therapy to help reduce inflammations in places in my body where honestly I have pain. You can use it on a sore back, stomach cramps, shoulder, ankle. Red light therapy is my go-to.

Plus, it also has amazing anti-aging benefits, including reducing signs of fine lines and wrinkles on your face, which I also use it for. I personally use Therisage Trilite everywhere and all the time. It's small, it's affordable, it's portable, and it's really effective. Head over to Therisage.com right now and use code BeBold for 15% off. This code will work site-wide. Again, head over to Therasage.com and use code BeBold for 15% off any of their products. We have the co-founder of Remax, which is the biggest real estate conglomerate ever, right? And the world in its sense. And you were the co-founder of it. How many locations, how many thousands of real estate agents,

Dave, have you compiled over the years? Jennifer, we're at 110 countries, 9,000 offices, about 150,000 agents, and probably about 50,000 various employees. Wow. And you were basically running the ship until 2018, right? Yes, I co-founded with my future wife, Gail, in 1973. We ran the company until I passed the baton along to Adam Contos about five, six years ago. Still heavily involved with Remax. We're public, we still own about half the company. So we're involved with the company about 80 to 90 days a year. Oh, you are, wow.

And you spend most of your time now doing, are you still doing speaking engagements and all the things, right? Yes, for the company, we do the quarterly public SEC board meetings three days in a row, four times a year. We do the major conventions, we do the major advertising productions, we also participate in the shareholder investor meetings, and then we do a great bit of

traveling around the world for the company. And your new book that's coming out is called The Perfect Ten, right? That's correct. First of all, I want to just say this, which I find, I mean, your success is just above and beyond. Now, I always ask this question to people, because you have to have some form of determination, persistence to get to be that size. Was that something that was innate in you, or did you have to become that?

Is it a skill that you worked on? No, I had to become that. I grew up as a farm boy in Marion, Indiana. I was at a couple of parents who were awesome. They taught me a great Midwestern work ethic. I got Midwestern values, Boy Scout, Cub Scout, you know, the normal stuff growing up, part-time jobs, great parents. I was 17. I expected that I would go to college. I had no interest in college. I went. I was very smart. My SAT scores were awesome. I failed out. I tried it a couple semesters. I just didn't work for me. I was immature. I discovered freedom a couple semesters. It just didn't work for me. I was immature. I discovered freedom. Mommy and Daddy didn't set me down and tell me you're going to do

your homework every night. And unfortunately, I didn't have a vision, a goal of where I wanted to be. Some people are fortunate. They go to college and they say, I want to be a teacher, a doctor, I want to be an attorney. And so they're off on their life's journey. I tried it and I just couldn't make that quite work. So the end result was I knew it didn't work for me. I knew I was immature and I joined the United States military. That five or six year time period gave me the time to grow up, become more mature. It exposed me to the real world. I got to know real life heroes and I was able to start my path down to being a successful leader.

Ended up getting a real estate license, did extremely well at it and the rest is history. I mean, would you say time was a big piece of it? I mean, obviously the world is different today than when you started Remax in what year 1972? Yeah, 73. The real estate industry was undergoing a dramatic change. Up to that time, there were a lot of small companies, one and two person companies. In most major areas, there were one or two dominant players that had about 50% of the market. They

had grown for 40 or 50 years, they had market share advertising, they had brand name awareness, training tools and stuff, and then there's no barriers to entry to starting your own little shop, and so the end result was the two companies dominated. So at that time franchising started in the real estate industry. Century 21, ERA, dozens of others started franchising and said, look, you can't compete with the biggest company in town. You're just small. You don't get any group purchasing. Put on our jacket, our color, we'll be at 50 offices banded together, and you will be as big as your competitor and you can succeed too. In that time period, three public companies came in. Caldwell Baker was a commercial company. Sears

bought them and said, we're going to make you the largest residential company in the country. Merrill Lynch came in, said the same thing. Prudential came in. And by by 1978 there were 178 national real estate companies, or five years before there were none. And at the convention, the franchise salesmen were all running around saying, oh, in five years, you know, this industry is going to be dominated by, you know, five or six players, 80% of the market. If you don't buy one now, you're going to be pushed out. Obviously, there's never room for 178 companies.

And of those that were then, seven or eight of us are still around. The rest went away and, but it took 50 years, 45 years, and the nationals, we account for about 60% of the U S business. Wow. So even if it was different timing there, your ability to stand the test of time and to even be relevant and standing up, 50 plus years later, what is the secret? What made you guys stand the test of time versus all the other competitors? What made you guys different?

What makes you guys different? What makes you guys different? First place, Jennifer, we operated our commission structured differently at when we started. Typically an agent worked for a company and the company got half the commission to pay their overhead advertising, marketing, rent, et cetera, and make a profit. The agent used their half to have a living. If you split it four ways between listing company and selling company, you each got a quarter of a percent. So we decided to model ourselves after a co-op. A group of doctors, lawyers, architects, dentists, that decide, hey, we're all experienced, let's all get into one company, we'll share the

expenses of running the business, and keep most of the fee for ourselves. It was radical. It was radical. It actually worked. At that time, the agents became maybe getting an 85-15 commission split. So far different. Very difficult to implement. The industry hated it.

They said, you know, we're rent a desk. You don't care about your agents. You just take a fee to be in an office. But in reality, we ran our company just like every other good company. We just made it different. The agents were in business for themselves, but not by themselves. They had 20 or 30 professionals around them. It took five years to convince the world it worked.

And after that, it was very easy. Did everybody copy you? Did Century 21 and Goldwell Banker and all the other competitors, did they end up taking your business model and just replicating it because it's shown success over time? No. The problem they had is a universal problem in the real estate industry, and that is 20% of the agents do 80% of the business. As a matter of fact, Consumer Federation came out a few weeks ago and showed that 50% of the 1,500,000 realtors in the United States have not closed the deal in 12 months. So we have a business that is extraordinarily filled

with part-timers and beginners, turnover rates are unbelievable. Everybody thinks it's an easy job. Get in your car, tour around, buy a nice lunch, show houses and get a big commission. It is much more difficult than that. The new people have to learn the business at the same time earn a living. And so it's very difficult to do that.

It's hard to get started as a beginner with no experience, but if you make it five or 10 years, you've got hundreds of satisfied customers, then you live off of referrals and it's an easy job. Wow. So what do you think the secret is to longevity? Well, two points. Success, longevity. Yeah. Two points is we had the best agents. We couldn't hire beginners and part-timers. Somebody had to

pay us every month to work for us, let alone most agents just went to work for somebody and waited to make a commission. In our case, they had to pay up front every month, so we didn't get the beginners and part-timers. Our people outproduced the competition three to one with twice the experience, and so that makes them very sophisticated. We pull our people out of the top 20% in the country. The second thing that we discovered was we lived through nine presidencies. A couple of them were stupid, a couple of them were crooked, several of them were just godawful.

You can look back on it, and we still made it work. We went through seven recessions. Theoretically, we're probably in the eighth one right now, and we made money in every recession. And at the time, I said it was outstanding leadership, management, and outstanding agents. I've come to find out it's different. As I started writing the book, I really started analyzing, why did we make it? And the truth of the matter is, you often hear that Darwin has said, the strongest of the species survives.

He never said that. Darwin said, the most adaptable of the species survives. The dinosaurs were the largest, most successful, biggest 100 million years ago. Mosquito is still here, and the dinosaurs are gone. And so the top producers, the ones that are creative, we live in a sea of change. The change is accelerating due to the internet, technology, laws, society, accelerating at a faster and faster pace. The top producers know how to give good

service. They have a book of business of people that like to use pace. The top producers know how to give good service. They have a book of business of people that like to use them. The technology does not replace a trusted advisor, and the top producers are the ones that are most easily adaptable. And so you have to lean in and adapt the changes. You can't do today's business with yesterday's methods and expect to be in business tomorrow. That's a great answer. So adaptability, what you would say is the number one key to success. I would think so. And your book is called, let's just say the title, complete title.

It is the Perfect Ten, Ten Leadership Principles to Achieve True Independence, Extreme Wealth, and Huge Success. Okay, so is adaptation one of those principles? What is another big principle that you feel will make you a great success? And you can obviously use your own experience since you have so much of it. And your life, by the way, is amazing, but we'll talk about that after. Thank you, Jennifer. I owe my success to hundreds of people. I started pretty naive, very uneducated. I wanted to succeed, but I knew I was starting with a disadvantage.

The first thing I did was I interviewed 28 people for the position of administrative vice president of Remax. I turned down 27 and the 28th was a star. I knew I could be a sales manager. I knew I could teach how to sell real estate. I thought I had some leadership, but that was it. And I was looking for somebody that could you lease the office spaces? Could you furnish them? Could you set up computer systems? Could you hire the secretaries and bookkeepers and make contracts with accounting companies and attorneys and actually run the business.

And I was very fortunate. My 28th interview was a woman by the name of Gail Main. She was my age. She had just moved from St. Louis. She was a trailing spouse. Her husband was going to be a general manager of media and F department store. And so she was looking for something temporary. She had worked for Ross and Perina at marketing and management degrees. And I sold, I told her I was going to build the biggest, most successful real estate company in the history of the world. And if she could help me do it, she could be the CEO and run it. And, uh, she was naive and gullible and she bit and said, okay,

let's try it. And it worked. That's amazing. Yeah. Best sale I made. Best sale you made. We struggled the first five years. Our financial backers dropped out.

We went into recession. The year we started with the first oil embargo, the industry's trying to drive us out of business. And I was doing a pretty good job by myself. I didn't need help pushing me out of business. I was just dumb. And we were totally committed to it. It was the cause we wanted to improve the life of real estate agents.

It wasn't ever about making money. It was a cause for us to change an entire industry. Well, by the end of the first ten years, all five of the original officers were divorced. We had fallen in love with our company. She was the most beautiful mistress in the world. She was called Remax. We went from nothing to nobody, standing on the stage with thousands of people at our conventions. And we were taking on the world, taking on all the competition, and winning place after place. So we got lost. We ignored our families. We went into the work 18 hours a day, seven days a week. It was exciting. It was all inspiring. It was just, wow, what a world. But we threw away

our personal lives. And so a lot of this book is written around lessons learned being a street fighter. They don't teach you this stuff at Harvard. And unfortunately, if I'd gone to a good school and I had made good grades and I paid attention, the trail would have been a heck of a lot easier. But as it is, like many entrepreneurs, I didn't sift the mold, I didn't make it work.

And so we went down through the College of Hard Knocks. Now it's a hell of an education, just most people can't afford the tuition. And so this book was basically based on the fact that we knew we started behind, we were desperate to make it work, we knew we were failing failing and we were willing to accept criticism and advice from other people. So Gail and I were 20 years younger than our managers. And if we were struggling, and I finally looked at my management team and I said, come on guys, what'd you like best about the company you used to work for?

What'd you dislike the most? What do you like most about Remax? What do you dislike the most? What am you like most about Remix? What do you dislike the most? What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? And be honest with me, how do you grow me up to be the leader you want me to be? And that hurt?

I didn't have a thick skin. I wanted my dream to survive. I was willing to take the hits. And they were very vocal about it. And so basically, my company grew me up into the leader I eventually became that followed by hundreds of books, hundreds of lectures and seminars, conventions, mentors, and people that helped me up along my way to success. So part of this concept of this book is it's my legacy. I started without a dollar. I ended up

extremely successful financially, but I also succeeded personally. I went through a very nasty divorce. I realized that the kids were not being properly taken care of. They didn't have the male and the family that they needed. My wife was, you know, bored with the world and she was off kind of starting her own career. And so I woke up in 1978 and said, Hey, I expected my stay at home wife to take him to the soccer game, the baseball games, the school plays. And I was off building the empire. I caught it in time. And I said, man, I have mismanaged this. I'm throwing away my family. So I lost the marriage, but I didn't lose the kids. And so in the nick of time, I realized what was happening and I cut back on my hours. I made my hours more meaningful,

the ones I worked, but I said, no, there's time for family time, there's time for the evening, etc. So what I've done with this legacy book if I can is admitted to mistakes and failures I did. I talk about some successes I managed to eke out, but it's basically 10 major sections. Of those 10 sections, 10 major ideas. So you have 100 ideas on the perfect 10, whether it's leadership, management, entrepreneurship, scalability, personal development, handling change, etc. And it's meant to, you don't have to read all 500 pages, but if you're having issues with, well, I've started my company, but it's not scaling the right way, well, I can't figure out how to build a team. This is a world of experience.

About 25% of the examples I use, Jennifer, is things that I personally saw, lived through, and learned about. The best 75% is my education of I watch Google and Amazon. I've listened to great authors like Jim Collins, who wrote some books on good to great and all that sort of thing. I studied business. I studied everything I could figure out of how do I make our dream successful? And we became an incredible success story. So my book is meant as a hand up to somebody who's struggling too, and they're in a leadership

position. They own a small entrepreneurial shop. a hand up to somebody who's struggling too and they're in a leadership position, they own a small entrepreneurial shop, they want to grow bigger. Everybody's a leader. If they're involved with Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, you're leading children. If you're in your church group and you're doing Bible studies, you're a leader. If you're a parent, you're darn sure a leader. Or if you're in business, you're probably in a leadership position someplace. So this is all about leadership and growing up. So, right. So let's start with, not start, but what is, what would you say would be your definition of success then?

We've had a lot of success. You've had a lot of failures. Success is a simple formula. I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, where I want to do it, with who I want to do it, and where I want to do it. A very simple, simple statement. It is not dancing to the drum beat of somebody else, not meeting somebody else's expectations. It is, I have matured to a point, my time is limited. As us pilots say, I've got a lot less runway in front of

me than I have behind me. Or another way of saying it is, if you look at a roll of toilet paper, the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes. And so the whole point is, what do you want to do with your life? You have X many hours a day, and it gets shorter and shorter. It's, I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, where I want to do it, how I want to do it, and most important, with who I want to do it. That's success. I love that. I love that. So really, autonomy is your definition of success. Autonomy is a good word. Shall we use the word freedom? Freedom is a good word, too. So really, autonomy is your definition of success.

Autonomy is a good word. Shall we use the word freedom? Freedom's a good word too. So, you know, I became wealthy. Wealthy really is the greatest example of freedom there is because now you have freedom of choice. You can go to work or stay home. You can start something else or you can do nothing.

You can choose who you want to choose to be with. And so this book is truly about unhandling your life and having a life that is meaningful to you. Everybody wants to talk to balance. There's no balance in life. It's just, literally, there's no balance in life. It's just, it's so overwhelming in so many different places that different times of your evolutionary growth, you are out of balance. You have to be. Your business is struggling. I'm sorry. It's an 18 hour day. I had an absolutely awesome man that grew up in my company for 15, 20 years. And I went to my board and said, look, I'm, I'm older now and I'm confident in who I am. I want to be just chairman of the board and a mentor and a financier.

And he's ready to take my position. He came up from the bottom. He was a SWAT guy. He's a Marine. And yet I mentored him for 20 years. And they said, Dave, he doesn't have a college degree. And I laughed at him. I said, well, neither do I.

And they said, yeah, but you're a public company and you're an icon and everybody knows you built what you built. He doesn't even have an undergraduate degree. So I went to him and I said, Adam, I want you as my CEO, my public board has said you don't have a degree. So we went to Denver university. They waived his undergraduate degree on life experience, and he got 18 hours of study in two years.

Interesting enough, 2000 hours a year for remacs, 200 hours a year as a cop, 18 hours in 18 months, 1800 hours. He got a 4.0 and he became the CEO. So here's a dumb cop Marine that came up through the ranks showed he was totally committed became an incredible leader. He was an incredible leader in the military, he was an incredible leader in the cops and so that transitioned over to being an incredible leader handling rematch and so it's what you make of the world. 100%. This is an amazing place. And I think that there are certain skills like that you have innately. You can obviously

get better with them with practice and time, but it sounds to me, and I talk about this a lot on this podcast, right? People who are too smart, academic tend to overthink things versus other people who are bold. My whole, my whole thing is about being bold. And you know, other, some people just, they overthink to a place of analysis paralysis where they make no decision or poor decisions versus the other people who have much more EQ, emotional intelligence, street smarts. Like you mentioned to your, you mentioned the first one of the first things you said on this podcast was I don't have a, I don't have a college

education, but I sure, I sure learned how to street fight. And in your book, you talk about the four lessons that you learned street fighting. You're not going to learn that at Harvard. I tell you that, but do you want to talk about your, the four lessons that you learned street fighting are? Well, it's pretty simple. I have black belts and three styles of karate. I got my first one when I was 19 in Vietnam. I ended up moving from one style of karate to another. The first one, it was the only instructor I had,

and it was taekwondo. But that was really meant for people with longer legs and longer arms, a lot of kicking and punching. And I was kind of short and squatty. And then I went to Kenpo, which was more of a Korean style, short and squatty people. And it was a different style. And then I eventually merged and went into Shotokan. And so a lot of people will train hard, get in a black belt and think that they're qualified to, you know, to protect themselves if they get into a fight. Well, they're a hell of a lot more qualified than somebody that doesn't know anything. But I'm sorry if you get

into a street fight with the gang bangers that have served 10 years in prison that have known nothing but violence and I'm talking acute violence that you and I can't imagine and they get into a street fight there's no rules. Now, but you can gouge eyes out you can kick somebody in their testicles it doesn't make any difference there's no rules the only rule street fighting is survive and live, don't die. And so if you ever have to go to a knife fight, take a gun. And if you have to go to a gun fight, take a gun, a machine gun, and maybe four or five friends that have machine guns. Right. And I mean, this, that's the whole thing about street fighting is entrepreneurs

who didn't get the advantage of a college education, they start a small little Mexican restaurant, they start a small little Italian restaurant, they start a doggy daycare, and all of a sudden, without formal education, they're faced with all these problems. Those that can't figure their way out of it will fail. Those that have the persistence and the grit will say, I'm not gonna quit, how do I do this? And so you find out, yeah, there's a storybook answer. There's a textbook out of Harvard that says, you should do this and you should do that.

But in reality, you find out the jungle you're in, and this is the fight you're going to have to win. That doesn't mean you're bloodthirsty or nasty or awful. It means you get street smarts. You start figuring out what are the shortcuts I can take to survive. I have to feed my family. I have to make payroll. I have to pay the rent. I didn't anticipate any of that when I started my own company, but man it rears its head awful quick. So you either sink or you swim. No, I agree. What would make a great leader? Well, when you start talking leadership principles. I have a friend by the name of Darren Hardy. I don't know if you're familiar with Darren or not.

Darren's your mentor. I read that in the book a few times. He is one of the most brilliant men I've ever met in my life. And he taught me a while back, he said, all great leaders have one common factor. They sell hope. And so whether you're Martin Luther King, selling hope for equality for people of your race or of all races. And of course, he had a tremendous following of white people that felt the same way that

blacks and people of color should have equal opportunity. Or you have a religious figure like Jesus who is saying, be kind and turn the other cheek, etc. He was selling hope that there was salvation to basically to slaves and to the Poor people of the world not to the kings and the queens or you have a Reagan who was saying Make America great or you have Obama whose only slogan was hope Or you get Trump who said make America great again all great leaders are selling hope to their followers that we can have a better life than what we

currently have that's the first inspiration of leadership is in leading you have to sell hope to the followers that we can do this you have confidence not arrogance and we're going to make the world a better place. What is the difference between, where is the fine line between confidence and arrogance? Yeah, that's a toughie. You know, I had Stan McChrystal, four-star general, on a podcast two days ago, and I asked him the same question. And I said, can ambitious people as a leader really turn off the followers?

And he said, yes. He said, if your ambition is only for you, everybody around you knows you're gonna do what the hell you have to do to become who you wanna be. And that stands in your way. But if your ambition is, I want my entire team to win, all of a sudden that sells. So the ambition is we're going to win together or we're going to fail together.

It's not, I'm going to win and get the four stars and you get nothing. It's we're in this together, we're all going to win or all going to fail. All of a sudden, the arrogance goes away. Now it is my boss cares about me as much as he cares about himself. Let's make this thing work. That's a great idea. Right. So it's about the idea of we versus I basically. There is no I. Right. There is no I in anything that I have done. I am

humble about that. Gail and I became romantically involved about 10 years after being partners. I was blessed with the fact that she absolutely for that 10 years was the best partner I could ever add. We never had an argument. We respected each other's position and we gave each other the freedom to run our jobs. Interestingly enough, we got married. So 40 some years later, not only we've been partners for 50 years, but married for 40 years, we've never had an argument. Seriously? Yeah, seriously.

How? So that's mutual respect, the ability to sit back and understand if somebody's frustrated and maybe a little bit angry to shut up and maybe go with the blows for a while and try to reason with each other instead of being angry with each other. I'm very fortunate. I have a life partner and a business partner

that has been the most successful partnership I could ever have. So you pick really well. I'm a very picky person. And you pick well. What is your secret to being a really good picker? Make a lot of mistakes and be a bad picker. So basically frogs and the prince. You got to kiss a lot of frogs, right, to get to a prince.

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Pendulum product membership with this code, Jen Cohen. So go now to PendulumLife.com and use my code at checkout. Trust me, you background is extraordinary. So here you are, you are the founder of the most successful real estate, you know, empire of all time. You are a NASCAR racing car driver, which is unbelievable. You're like an adrenaline junkie. The stuff that you've accomplished, which, which to me says something in itself, right? Like, it's no, it's no accident that you've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've accomplished something. You've the stuff that you've accomplished, which, which to me says something in itself, right? Like, it's no, it's no accident that you were able to build what you built, right? There's like a through line in your personality. Obviously, you are fearless. You're not scared of taking risks. You are obviously able to put yourself in really scary situations. Like, again, I started this podcast by saying, were you born like this?

And the truth is, you know, then you have this accident that they said you were going to be paralyzed, right? When you were an adrenaline junkie, not able to jump out of planes, scuba dive, do any of these things that you wanted to do, and you persevere through that as well. Can you just talk about your level of grit and determination and perseverance? And how does someone build that

when they don't naturally have that ability. Nobody has that ability. Courage comes from confidence and confidence comes from experience. And so you can't expect somebody with zero experience to have the courage of a warrior. And so if you go to basic training and they put you on your belly

and you got your arm cradling your gun and you're inching along and they're shooting live machine gun rounds six inches above your helmet and if you make a mistake friendly fire is going to kill you. So your first friendly fire is controlled and it scares the bejeezy's out of you because you're an 18 year old kid that's just dumb and stupid and you made a mistake and joined the military. Well they do that to you several times and it goes into your psyche that I can do this, I can do this, I can live through this, move forward and the first time that you get thrown into a live fire military action that you may die

and they're not shooting over your head you've already experienced the terror and the fear and peeing your pants okay it happens and all of a sudden it isn't as terrifying been there done that It isn't as terrifying. Been there, done that. My first time on Daytona, a two and a half mile track, and I looked to the right as I went on the track to the infield, and it was a mile down to the right, and a mile down to the left, and I'd been driving a three-each mile track on a local track at 120 miles an hour now we're stepping up to two and a half miles at 200 plus mile an hour and they told me all you do is you put your foot on the accelerator and when you get to the corner turn do not lift your foot off the accelerator do not touch the brake and the car will hold

and I can guarantee you Jennifer, on the first turn I didn't need a seat belt. The pucker factor was so tight you couldn't have got me out of that fire suit and that seat with a crowbar. And all of a sudden four or five laps later I realized it's designed. The banking is designed to hold this car and everybody else's car is holding it and mine's holding it and then it was fun. Then it was, hey this is a hoot. This is more fun you can have with your clothes on. And then when you get into a wreck or two or three and they're a lot safer now than they were 20 years ago, but even 20 years ago, most of the time you got a broken rib or wrist or something. And unfortunately, two or three drivers a year would die,

but most of the time you total a car and you get out and walk away. And so all of a sudden courage comes from confidence and confidence comes from experience. And by the time you've gone around a racetrack, 500 times in a race and you've done it for over 400 or 500 races, it is no different than getting on the super speedway and driving around in the super speedway. It is, it's just the way it works. But how about you're watching? How about when you became paralyzed? Oh that's an amazing story. They did all these tests. I was in a coma for three months,

a flat line on Valentine's Day of all things, 2012, two months into my coma, or two weeks into my coma. And so when I woke up, I had the mental ability of a six-year-old. I was a total quadriplegic. They did all the nerve tests and said that my nerves were shot. At my age, I would never regrow them. And I apologize to your audience. I looked at the doctors and I said, well, let's get this shit straight. I said, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. My name's Dave Lenniger. I'm going to walk out of this place on the day I leave there and you can kiss my ass." And they said, well, you can't talk that way. We're trying to save you and help you. We got psychologists who are going to teach you how to live with being a quadriplegic. And I said, no, you're not. If I can't walk, I'll kill myself. This is my vow to you.

I'm walking out of this hospital. I didn't. I sat with my therapist, my nurses. I said, I'm the toughest SOB you've ever met in your life. I'm ex-military. I will never quit. Your job is to not let me quit. I don't care what it takes. I will never quit on you. Don't quit on me.

And it took forever. And the stretching and the growing of the tendons and getting feeling back in my fingertips and getting to the point where I could drive an electric wheelchair and it took me 12 months of back breaking 12 hours a day and I made it. And so you walk now? Oh yeah. I use an electric wheelchair about half the time, but I usually walk about 4,000 to 5,000 steps a day, still play a little bit of golf.

I had a wonderful German Shepherd Max, I got him when I was a quad. He taught me how to walk, I could balance myself. He was 120 pounds between a cane and him and I had you know braces on my legs. Eventually I got rid of the braces and then eventually I could walk with just Max on the cane and the dog was within a foot of me every day of my life until about September when I lost him. every day of my life until about September when I lost him. And his replacement is one of these sons from these five litters who is absolutely awesome, smart, and he's by my side all the time. So I learned how to do it. I managed to make it in the rehab center for spinal rehab because I've gone through a lifetime of successes and failures and you don't win every time and I had learned how to handle that. The

majority of the people that have a spinal cord injury are usually 15 to 22 years old and they're male. The little boy babies brain doesn't work like a girl babies does and girls are mature and have some common sense at age 18 boys don't figure it out until they're 20 or 25 and in my case I probably didn't figure it out until I was 65 or 70 but it's basically boy boys hurt themselves they're on a skateboard without a helmet they're on a bicycle without a helmet they get drunk and get on a skateboard without a helmet. They're on a bicycle without a helmet. They get drunk and get on a motorcycle at a hundred miles an hour because they're stupid and they're a construction worker and they don't put a safety harness on

because they think they're macho. They walk along the roof of the building and they fall off and they're paralyzed. The interesting aspect of the rehab center was I was the oldest person there. They don't have old people there. Old people die and I made it. The majority of the kids wouldn't get up and do the physical therapy. It hurts. I mean I'm talking incredible pain. They want to watch TV. They want to give up. They want to play on their Xbox and their parents are kissing their butt and the nurses are begging them. You've got to do this to get better. The doctors are trying to tell them you got to do it better and they just say I'm screwed for life you know my legs don't work anymore I don't

have any future they never had any success to build on they never had the failures they had to overcome to become a success the same time I was in there's a motocross rider he was 18 years years old, a national champion. He drove dirt bikes up these mounds and did flips and inverted himself and rolled over and landed. He had national champion and he broke his back. The first thing he said to his therapist was the same thing I had said, just 50 years younger. He said, I'm not a quitter, I'm a winner. I know I'm screwed. I'll never walk again. I will be the best quadriplegic you'll ever know in your life. I want to go to college. I'm going

to get a degree. I'm going to make something of myself. Help me do it. And he would go out and take every minute of physical therapy he could get. He had had a lifetime up to age 18 of overcoming obstacles and finding out I can do this. I failed at this, but I can do this. I'll try again. I'll try again. So this attitude, this simple equation of confidence comes from experience and courage comes from confidence is what's missing for most people. Most people start in a sales job

and they don't make it work and they quit because they get told no and they can't handle somebody telling them no. Once you beat the confidence, it's not arrogance. Maybe arrogance helps a little bit, but once you have the confidence to do it, Katie bar the doors, man, you're gonna get it done. Yeah, I love that.

How old are your kids now, Dave? They're all in their 50s. How old are you? I'm 78. Okay, I have a question for you about your kids, because now your kids obviously grew up very privileged, right? They had a father who was very successful, made a lot of money. How do you not spoil your kids, for lack of a better word, into getting too comfortable with being wealthy, where they lose that ability to put in the hard work, have the grit, have the hustle that their father had, right? Because sometimes, like, I see it all the time from where I live. You know, you come from an upper middle class,

upper class families. How do you not create a soft child? I never give them a damn thing, except for my love. Is that true? I never gave them a car. They had to buy their own car. They had to have their own part-time job. I told them I'd pay their college education,

but they had to work the entire college education. All four of my children worked at McDonald's as they were teenagers. They all worked at a dozen different part-time jobs. I told them, I am an unusual person. You will never work in my company because I don't want you number one to follow in my shadow and think you have to fill what I did because I am a one in a million and number two I'm never gonna promote you over the vice president that built the company with me you did not hit the lucky gene pool so your original mother and my wife Gail and I love you and we're going to help you move forward and become human beings. But it's not an easy road and we're not going to give you

a damn thing other than our love, our attention and education. And you're going to have to make your own way. And if you make your own way and you have a business idea, I will be your partner. I will fund you. I will help you build your business. You can buy me out for a dollar after it's successful and you run your business. And as it ended up, I'm very fortunate. I have four of the greatest kids in the world. They've all found their own way. Interestingly enough, the oldest boy is now a partner with me in a family business, a private equity company, and we've worked our way through that. But, you know, going through grade school, high school, college, they had to pay their own way and they had to earn it and they had to become a good citizen. And so no drugs, no problem.

They love me. They love their mother. They love Gail. A very forceful man. This perfect 10 concept is not about you have a perfect life and everything's just la la. Maybe somebody has a fairytale life. I am incredibly disappointed that I screwed up my first marriage. Multiple tours overseas in the military, leaving a wife at home

who was young, working 18 hours a day for seven or eight years trying to build remacs. That wasn't fair. I made my mistakes. And so I tried to make up for them. And the end result was, I did get the perfect 10 life. When I was in the hospital for almost 11 months, all four children took turns by, you know, hours of the day of staying with me 24 hours a day. So I was never alone. of staying with me 24 hours a day so I was never alone. Wow. So that says that you- It's my life. Your life, that means that your life has meaning.

That is success to me because your kids actually love you. I think so. I've told them, I've taken care of you while you're alive. You don't get anything while I'm dead. Obviously they will. Ha ha ha ha. So what's your belief system on mentorship then? Do you believe in mentors? You have one. I know you like this guy Darren. Already you talk about him a lot. You know, I've, I've been very fortunate with a series of mentors, both in the military and in the civilian world. And mentoring is very important. The thing is fascinating about being a mentor is I've mentored probably two or three

hundred people in the last 55 years. And in reality, maybe five or ten of those really executed what our conversations were. And in the vast majority of the time, people sat there and listened, said, oh, that's a good idea, that's a good idea. And they walked out and never did a thing with it. And that's discouraging because the knowledge is out there. All we do is give you the knowledge. It's up to the individual to execute.

And you can actually tell they're not taking notes. They don't call you back. They don't say, Dave, I tried this and it didn't work. What am I doing wrong? They just say, Oh, thanks. See you next time. And so why talk to a wall when they're not gonna execute them? Yeah, that's a great point.

I think what I say is it's 99% is perspiration, 1% inspiration, right? I mean, obviously you can talk to a wall and I think that's the same. I get a lot of people asking me, oh, I want an information session. And then I give them advice and nothing ever gets done with it too. So I'm on the fence with mentorship.

So I wanted to ask you about that. The last question is you were the main sales, like you taught sales for Remax, for your own company, for the majority of your career, correct? Yes. What makes somebody an exceptional salesperson and how important is sales to any business? I mean, you're a real estate agent, yes, but isn't sales like the crux of any successful business? If you can't sell, you're kind of screwed.

If you can't sell, you can't market, you can't stay in business. So sales is everything. You hear there's a natural born salesman. Uh, nobody's natural born at anything. I don't know if you've ever seen in a couple of the success magazines, I don't know if you've ever seen in a couple of the success magazines, Robb B. Ford, Wall Street Journal, there's a man, the half body, a male muscular,

and he's got a hammer and a chisel and he's making a statue of himself. It's called the self-made man. I don't know if you've ever seen that. It's everywhere. Yeah, I have seen it. And so the laughter is, no, there is no self-made man. Other people made you what you are, whether it's your parents, your peer group, your friends, the business you decided to go into, the people you followed. And so mentoring is important, but in salesmanship, there's no natural born salesman. There are two types of salespeople. There are hunters and there's farmers. And the hunter has the attitude of,

I wanna go chase the enemy down or the animal. I wanna kill it and throw it on the fire and I'm gonna go get another one. And the farmer has the attitude is, I wanna go get it, but I want him to be my lifelong friend and buy from me the rest of my life. You have to have both.

So when you build a sales team, you got to have the hunter that's willing to go out and take on the world by themselves. But you also have to have the stabilizing influence of somebody who says, I'm not in this for one quick deal. I'm here to make you my customer for life. Both of them fit in the equation. Often you'll find out that the one that wants a person for life eventually Both of them fit in the equation. Often you'll find out that the one that wants a person for life eventually moves out of sales and goes

into servicing as a regional director or a franchise manager that keeps the equation going and keeps that person buying from the company for 20 or 30 years. Sales is a learned trait. Everything that we as adults learn, we learn by memory. Mimicking. You have a baby, it's born, mommy and daddy play baby face and say all kinds of stupid baby shit to them and they're laughing and smiling and the baby starts to smile back. They are mimicking the smiles of the parents. If they don't smile in two or three months they probably have autism. That's one of the first signs. And so but the normal people that don't have autism, they mirror the parents. By the time they're five years old, daddy I'm eating all my green beans

because I want to be big and tough and strong like you." And the daughter says, Mom, you know, I'm eating all my food and I will learn how to be a cook and have a wonderful family and you're just the most wonderful mother in the world. And so they mimic parents and that goes away at a bit, age seven or eight. And little Astrof, they just, oh, I'm going to imitate the other eight and 10 and 12 year olds. Now that's bad enough, but then they get to be 15 or 16, and they mimic other 15 or 16 year olds. And then they go to college, and they mimic each other. And of course, the whole thing is, we're smart and our parents are stupid. And so that's just a mimicking deal. And then they start mimicking the people at the office.

That's just a mimicking deal. And then they start mimicking the people at the office. And if the woman that they admire dresses sharply and she's very confident, they'll start following that leader and acting like that leader. So we go through our life mimicking things. So if I can close out with just a great idea for you, that is if you're a ditch digger

and you ditch dig and all your friends are ditch diggers, you will dress the same way they will. There's nothing wrong with being a ditch digger. You probably didn't get the education. You're in a lower social economic group. That doesn't mean you're bad or you're wrong. It just means those are your circumstances. You'll go to the same bar on Saturday night and drink the same beer,

the same label on Saturday night, and if you take a vacation, you will go to the river or the lake and you'll go fishing or you will go hunting one week a year, and you will drive the same pickup truck and you'll have the same jokes, the same vocabulary, and the same whatever. If you're cardiologists and you went through four years of college, three years of medical college, two years of residency, and you're in a hospital setting, and every person that hospital setting has a college degree degree and the other cardiologists all have Mercedes Cadillacs because they can afford it and they all send their kids to private schools and if they take a vacation it's to the Swiss Alps or to Aspen and you'll

have the same vocabulary and tell the same stories and go to the same churches and join the same country clubs. That's the game. You will mimic the people you're around. Jim Rohn, great philosopher said once, you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And so when you and I look at each other and we talk about all the business people we've met, we've been surrounded by literally the best in the world. Not everybody gets that opportunity, but everybody can make that opportunity. Yes, we can.

We can, we can change our own circumstances. We can take control. Right? Absolutely. Dave, okay. So I loved your book. Where can people find more on the book? When the book, where is the book sold?

When's the book, like tell us about where people can find you. Perfect 10. You can go to Amazon and pre-order. You can go to davelenegard.com. We have lots of good management leadership ideas on it. You really do. And also I wanted to say one other thing quickly. When I was reading your book,

I saw you said something about go to relentless.com and it took me to Amazon. And I had no original. Yeah. The original name for Amazon was going to be relentless and the attorneys talked him out of it. But he had already had the domain done. And so if you type in relentless, you go to Amazon. That was amazing. I didn't know that. I checked, I tried that.

I'm like, Oh my God, that was really cool. That's really interesting. And Amazon is the largest river in the world. And that's why that, yeah, that's what I met in the largest river. So it's an amazing story. So the world's amazing. I love it. Dave, thank you so much for being on the podcast. I appreciate you very much. You're such an inspiration, really are. Well, thank you, Jenner. It's fun to share ideas with people

and you hope that maybe they'll catch one or two good ideas of making more money tomorrow. Yeah, I caught a few more than one or two ideas. I actually haven't even finished your book completely because I was legitimately reading it and taking notes. And I have to say, I'm very impressed because you meet a lot of people doing this work, right? And you're really one of the people that I admire. Your life has been phenomenal. And what you've done and how you express it. Like I said, I want you to be my mentor and I'll listen and I'll execute. Well, I'll tell you what, I was in a coma for quite a while back in 2012. Came out of quad. They tried to put me in hospice three different times. My friends and

family said, absolutely not. If we run out of insurance, we've got the money. We'll give him every chance he's got. And so I've got a paper I've been writing since I died to say all those people, all those doctors and nurses and therapists, and what they did for a 60 some year old person. And what I accomplished after I survived of taking Remax Public, bought a 3,500 acre ranch, has started eight or nine different businesses and have been able to give several hundred million dollars to various philanthropy efforts of what's the impact of your life, of what that extra

10 years was worth. So I don't know if I got another day or if I get another 10 years, but I'm paying back the doctors and nurses, my family, everybody that helped me survive by stating, hey the world's a wonderful place, pass it on to the next person. That is amazing. Good for you. I'd love to have you back. I have so many other questions, but we could do it another time. Wow.

I mean, the fact, okay, I got so much. Do you mind if you come back for like a quick one, maybe for 20 minutes sometime soon? Anytime you want, thank you. Where do you live? I live in south of Denver. It's Castle Pines. It's a golfing community, mountainous. Spend part of my

winters, a couple five days a month in Scottsdale where I'm at today and then in the summers I spend a lot of time up in the ranch. So I actually have a 3,500 acre ranch with a abbey of 28 nuns that are on the property that guard my home for me. Wow. I've taught them how to shoot and do self-defense so they're well armed. Nuns and guns. My god that's amazing. Wow that's awesome. Okay well I going to be in touch with you. I'm sure I can find your info. I'll get your information. But like I said, you are incredible.

Incredible. Thank you. Thank you, Jennifer. I appreciate the compliments. Bye-bye. Have a great day. Bye. Bye. Bye.