Leap Academy with Ilana Golan - Dave Liniger, RE/MAX Co-Founder: How to Disrupt an Industry and Turn Failures to Fortunes

Episode Date: July 16, 2024

Dave Liniger went from pinching pennies while saving for his first property to owning 21 single-family homes at age 21. Despite fierce opposition and financial turmoil, he implemented an innovative commission system that empowered agents to maximize their earnings. His unique model not only transformed his company into a global real estate powerhouse but also revolutionized the entire industry. In this episode, Dave shares his incredible journey of perseverance, highlighting the principles and mindset shifts that drove him to success. Dave Liniger is the co-founder of RE/MAX, a real estate empire that spans over 115 countries with more than 142,000 sales agents. He is also a decorated Air Force veteran and serial entrepreneur.   In this episode, Ilana and Dave will discuss: - Dave's journey from military service to real estate - Disrupting real estate with RE/MAX - Financial struggles and industry resistance in the early days - Building confidence through small wins - The importance of humility in leadership - How the military prepared Dave for business challenges - Turning personal adversity into a motivational force - Dave’s unyielding determination to recover from paralysis - The power of selling hope as a leader - And other topics…   Dave Liniger is a legendary figure in the real estate industry, renowned for co-founding RE/MAX with his wife, Gail. He revolutionized the real estate business by introducing a model that significantly increased agent commissions. RE/MAX has now expanded into a real estate empire that spans over 115 countries with more than 142,000 sales agents. Dave is also a decorated Air Force veteran, serial entrepreneur, philanthropist, adventurer, and a passionate advocate for perseverance and leadership. He is the bestselling author of The Perfect 10 and the host of the Ambition and Grit podcast. After retiring as CEO in 2018, Dave continues to serve as Chairman of the Board at RE/MAX Holdings. Connect with Dave: Dave’s Website: https://daveliniger.com/  Dave’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dave-liniger/  Resources Mentioned: Dave’s Podcast, Ambition and Grit: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ambition-and-grit/id1674022837  Dave’s Book, The Perfect 10: 10 Leadership Principles to Achieve True Independence, Extreme Wealth, and Huge Success: https://www.amazon.com/Perfect-10-Leadership-Principles-Independence/dp/1637631839  How I Turned $1,000 into a Million in Real Estate in My Spare Time by William Nickerson: https://www.amazon.com/Turned-into-Million-Estate-Spare/dp/1607964244  

Dave Leninger, co-founder of Remax, global real estate franchise. You know, you see the balloons all over the place. You co-founded it with your wife, Gail, 1973. And for those who don't know, Remax has expanded to over, I think, 9,000 offices, over 110 countries, 140,000 sales agents. But Dave, before founding Remax, that's not necessarily where you've been when you were in the military. Did you even know that you're going to start such a disruption? Actually, Ilana, I did not. I'm a farm boy from a small farming community in Indiana

called Marion, Indiana. I grew up on a 40-acre farm. My parents were business people. They sharecropped the farming out to local farmers. I came up through basically an agricultural school. I learned a great work ethic, which is very common of farming people. And I had great parents. I did not necessarily do well in school. I'm very bright. I was the first alternate for the Air Force Academy. Knowing what I know now, I would have found a way to break his legs or something, and I would have gone to the academy. But it didn't happen. So I went to university for two or three semesters. I did not do well. I didn't have mommy and daddy there to make me sit down and study at night. I had fraternity brothers that taught me all about co-eds, beer, pizza, and partying.

Having fun? Yes. And I had my first freedom of my life. I didn't have to be home at 10 p.m., didn't have to answer anybody, and I made a fool of myself. So I realized at the time I was very immature. I started in college when I was 17. I was slightly built. And so I decided to join the Air Force. And that was the best decision of my life. I joined the Air Force and it gave me six years or so of a chance for the little boy brain to develop. We all know, scientifically proven, girls are mature by the time they're 18. Most of us boys don't make it by 25 or 30. And it's just the way that the brain works. And so it bought me six years to

look at real heroes. I don't look at heroes like movie stars, football jocks, basketball people. That's nonsense. Real heroes live and die and fight for their country. And I was surrounded by the best during the Vietnam War. And we learned a lot by mimicking. And so as I came up through the ranks, I wanted to be the best I could be. And I was naturally drawn to very strong leaders. As my growth progressed, I realized that the mistake I'd made is I should have gone in the military for four, five, six years and then gone to college. I would have been more mature. I would have learned discipline. I would have better focused on my goals. But those are mistakes of a lifetime. And I certainly couldn't go back

and do anything about it. So you go to the military. Again, I always half joke that at the age of 20, we share some of the military experience, but at the age of 20, I had more responsibility than I've ever had since. And you jump in the water, you learn discipline, you mimic really incredible leaders. But then you left the military, a more grown up person, and you started real estate. Tell me a little bit more around what made you eventually create this legacy or this incredible company? When I was stateside in the military, I'd read a book about how I turned $1,000 into a million by William Nickerson.

It was a bestselling book. It was actually a college book on property management. It was about buying and selling property and investing. And in the military, I was broke. I was an en and selling property and investing. And in the military, I was broke. I was an enlisted person at the time. And I thought, how can I make more money? So I worked part-time jobs and made enough money to make a down payment. And on that time, this is 66, on a $10,000 house that I sold for $15,000 or $16,000 six months later. I made more money on that house than I did on three part-time jobs and my full-time military pay. And so the die was cast

and I decided I'd become a real estate investor. And by the time I was 21, still in the service, I owned 21 single family houses. And my wealth was incredible compared to being a staff sergeant or an E-5 in the service. And somewhere along the line, I thought, I ought to get a real estate license and save the commission on my own investments. I had no desire whatsoever to be a salesman. I didn't think I could sell. I was skinny. I was young. I had a

crew cut haircut. Everybody knew I was in the military, part-timer. And I tried it for months. I did not make it work. I finally did, became incredibly successful. And when I got out of the service, I said, hey, I hate the desert. I've heard of God's country, Denver, Colorado. And on Halloween night of 71, a few weeks out of the military, we moved to Colorado, got a broker's license, started Remax in 1973. Absolutely incredible. You already were basically an entrepreneur in the making all the time. That was your personality, it sounds. But how did that become from somebody who buys real estate to somebody who is a complete disruptor in a very hard market? Tell us a little bit about how you started Remax. What were some of the challenges?

It's a very big difference. We've both been in the military. And as you know, the military teaches courage comes from confidence and confidence comes from experience. So when you're in the military, they try not to kill you, but in basic training, they put you in military situations. You have to crawl on your elbows and your toes and go underneath hanging wire and contolment fencing, and they shoot machine guns over your head as you move forward 100 yards in maybe 20 minutes. So they try to make sure they don't hit you, but you do learn to keep your head down,

and you know death is inches away from your face. You do that five or six times in training, and the first time you come under fire in action, you've already been under fire. You've built this courage from confidence, and confidence was the experiences of already doing it five or six or ten times. That's how you learn. So I guess what happened was that I learned confidence in the military from combat. I learned confidence as a real estate agent when I started succeeding. I tried for six months. I failed for six months. I had a magic day, met some people. I made four sales and a sold listing in 48 hours.

And all of a sudden, I didn't look at myself as a skinny, scrawny military with a crew cut haircut and a Volkswagen with no air conditioning and a cracked windshield to, hey, I'm a superstar, man. I made five deals in 48 hours. And that changed the whole world for me. It was finding my own confidence that, hey, somebody wanted me. You go from that to creating Remax because at that point, you know that you can create this business in a box and give it to more people. Talk to us a little bit about how did that form?

It was a disaster. I had this naive belief in myself that I could build a company that would change the world. The real estate industry at the time, real estate agents shared their commission with the owner of the office. It was about a 50-50 split. The office used their half to pay the overhead, marketing, secretaries, rent, and make a profit. The agent used their half to pay for their car, their own personal expenses like social security and health insurance, because there are no salaries in the real estate industry. And they tried to keep what was left. So it wasn't a 50-50 split. It was a 50, maybe 30 split by the time you took all your expenses in. And so I just said, what would happen if you

had a co-op like doctors, lawyers, architects, dentists that work together in the same facility, have their own customer base, they're in business for themselves, but not by themselves. And they keep the majority of the commission for themselves after their share of the expenses. And it ended up that under that, they were making about an 85% split instead of a 50-50. It was a terrible thing to try. The industry hated it. They knew if I succeeded that they would have to raise the pay of every agent out there. And today, 51 years later, the average split is over 80%. So it changed an industry, but it was fraught with problems. My investors pulled out.

The oil embargo hit, the first one. The recession of 73. Interest rates skyrocketed. Real estate sales dropped off. I had opened my offices. My investors all filed bankruptcy, didn't give me the money, and I'm stuck. So the first three years was just survival. The first year, I got 21 agents. The next year, I doubled to 42, the third to 84. At that point, I almost broke even,

but I had $600,000 in short-term debt, staving off bill collectors on a day-to-day basis, trying to stay alive, and just was not making it. So if I can share with your audience, the first really great thing I did was when I founded the company, I knew that I was a salesman. I thought I could be a leader. That's been a lifelong journey, by the way. And I thought I could motivate people, but I knew I didn't have a business background. And so I advertised for a vice president of administration.

And I interviewed 27 people, and all 27, by the way, were women. I turned them down. I didn't like any of them. And the 28th was magic. It was a girl by the name of Gail Main, just gotten married, a trailing spouse, following her husband from St. Louis to Denver. He was going to run a Maydian F apartment store. And she had several years of experience at Ralston Carina in marketing and management. She had marketing and management degrees. And I said, what I'm looking for is somebody that would let me go out and recruit agents

to build my company, make the speeches. But I need a behind the scenes person that can lease off a space, furnish it, buy furniture. We didn't have computers. We had a fashion machine and we had an IBM Selectric II typewriter. Hire the secretaries and the bookkeepers, set up contracts with attorneys and so on. So I need a business leader that will do that. Let me do the two things I know how to do, which is I can sell houses and I can teach people how to sell houses. And as it happened, in this third year, the bill collectors were severe. We were skipping our paychecks. It was

a disaster. And she took me aside. We'd become very good friends. And she said, why don't you do what you're good at? You're excellent. You're spinning your wheels, wasting your time. You're trying to protect me from the bill collectors. I'm strong. I'll handle the bill collectors. You go do your thing. I'll keep the company alive. We're never getting out of this hole if we don't grow. She did an exceptional job. And year four, we jumped from 84 to 134. Year five went to 289, making a profit, all debt paid off by the fifth year. And the thing that was fascinating was she had grown into the role of being president and CEO. I didn't care about titles.

I'm chairman of the board and majority owner. And so she earned that. But our success was so great that, interesting side note, in 1972, there were almost no women in the real estate industry. It's like less than 2%. Women came in in droves in the 70s. Single moms, women that went to college and got a degree that didn't count for anything, ended up getting divorced. A lot of times weren't getting the child support and the care that they needed. And real estate was perfect for women.

The men that dominated were old, white, and white haired. They had quit civil service. They'd been military. They were retired cops. And so you looked at them and you said, well, hell, I don't know how long you've been in the business, 10, 20, 30 years. You're middle-aged or older. It's hard to get started when you're a kid. So the end result is women started flocking to the business. The two biggest companies in Colorado did not hire women. You could be a bookkeeper, a paralegal, or a receptionist. No, sales was a white man's job, man. They didn't do multicultural. So here's the key.

In the first five years, Alana, I didn't get one man from the top two companies in town. They said, if you make it work, we'll join. But right now, we're the best company in town. They said, if you make it work, we'll join. But right now, we're the best company in town. At the end of five years, 289 agents, 80% women are multicultural, and we kicked their asses. And in the next year, 300 men of the biggest companies in the country joined my band of ladies. And the rest is history. Oh, my God. What an incredible story, Dave. How do you not give up? You went to, sorry, it sounds like you said disaster. How do you not give up? The military taught me two things. You never quit, stay in the fight, and you never leave anybody behind. If the real estate organization, my competitors, and we were failing,

had not said, you're crooks, you're rented desk, you're sleazy, you're downgrading the industry, they didn't know what the hell they were talking about. I was running my business better than any of them. I spent more time on training, more time on helping people make commissions. It was the dream job, but they were all against me. They had to be against me. I would make them change their commission splits. If I'd been a good old boy and they'd put their arm around me and said, Dave, wrong timing, man. You hit the embargo, you hit the interest rates. It's too bad, man. You're a good guy, but you just got overwhelmed. If I'd had that out,

I think I would have chickened out, said I quit and filed bankruptcy. I didn't have the out. These bastards were trying to kill me and kill my reputation and kill my family and kill my office. And I said, never in my life will I quit or will I give up. And what Gail and I told our creditors, the same thing. We're making advances. We're making gains of agents. It's inevitable. We're not losing agents at all. Every month we're stronger.

We're going to make the money. We'll pay you cash today and maybe 2% or 3% of what we owe you this week. And within three years, we'll have you paid off. And they believed us, and we made it work. You just don't quit. What's really, really important, I think, for our audience, and you write about it in The Perfect Ten, and we'll talk about it later,

but one of the big things that you say, you can't start just because you want to make money. You can't start just because you want to make money. You can't start just because you want the wealth or the fame. It has to come from something within that will lit that fire that will let you not quit. And that's what I'm hearing even now. My fire was I wanted to improve the life of the top producing agents in the country. Too many billionaires, too many part-timers, too many losers, not giving good service. And I had become a top producer. I had to do co-op deals with people who were losers that I had to do both sides of the deal because they were just

stumbling around, didn't know what they were doing. And I wanted to be surrounded by the best. Jim Rohn, a philosopher, made a comment 40 years ago, I suppose. He's been gone a few years, but it stayed with me my entire life. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So if you're a ditch digger, and that's honorable, that beats the hell out of being a drug dealer or whatever. Usually, you're uneducated, language or immigration problems. It's dirty. It's filthy. You will spend your time in a ditch with other ditch diggers. You will pick up their jokes, their habits. You'll dress the same way. On Friday nights, you'll go to the same bar or tavern and you'll drink the same beer. If you get a vacation, you'll go to the lake or the river and you'll fish or you'll camp

and you will have the same language and education as those individuals. If, on the other hand, you're fortunate and you had parents that were more successful, and you end up going to college, and say you want to go into the medical industry, and let's say it's a doctor. Well, you'll do four years of study, you'll do three years of medical study, you'll do two years of residency. Everybody in that hospital you're going to be dealing with is a nurse, or physical therapist therapist or a doctor or whatever that has four to seven to eight years of experience. Their income, their socioeconomic group is much higher. You would drive the same Mercedes or Cadillac. You belong to the same country club. You'll take your family to Aspen or maybe to Switzerland or Paris. And that's your lifestyle

and your language and your vocabulary will mimic the people you're around eight and 10 and 12 hours a day. And there's a Harvard study that proves, they say they've studied it, 98% of your financial success will be from the people that are surrounding you that you mimic. It'll have nothing to do with your grade school, your high school, or your college education. I agree a thousand percent. You need to choose wisely the network that you're with. And it is a choice. Take you maybe a little bit fast forward within the company, you understood branding and innovative marketing, I think way before anybody else. And you created this hot air balloon and the brand awareness and you rode yourself those crazy adventures. So we'll talk

about that. But you understood things that usually people didn't quite follow, like you were ahead so much on the curve. What made that so clear to you that you need something so distinct? Alana, you're being very kind to me. The truth of the matter is, I was stupid, but I was frustrated. I'm fighting the battle battle and I'm having a tough time with it. And so I sat down with my eight managers and they were all 20 years older than me. They bought into my dream, but we're still fighting the good fight. And I said, guys, tell me something. What'd you like best about the company you're with before? What do you dislike the most? What do you like best about being here? What do you dislike the most? Tell me honestly,

what am I doing right? And sincerely, what am I doing wrong? I'm younger than you. Teach me how to be the leader you want me to be because I don't want to fail. I have used that my entire life because I realize everybody's smarter than me at the time. Now I've got 50, 60 years experience. Now I can teach. And so the end result was they literally saved our company. Every good idea in the history of Remax came from the field. None of them came from the ivory tower. It came because we listened, we watched, we evaluated, and we said, hey, that's a great idea. Now, there's some pretty goofy ideas out there too, but you watch to see if they work. And if they work, imitate it, duplicate it, take that idea and

take it to the next convention and say, wake up, everybody, wake up. This is a great way of running your business. Do this. And so in essence, the ivory tower doesn't count. The entrepreneur, if you'll excuse my language, please, there is a founder's syndrome. And the founder's syndrome is your head's up your ass. The founder believes I am impossible to fail. I am smart. I am tenacious. I know better than everybody what should be done. And fortunately for me, I got beat up so bad and was on the verge of failing that I reached out and said, please help me. I don't want to fail. And they reached out and gave me a hand and said, okay, pay attention, you idiot. That saved Remax in the early days. It was not heroic efforts on my part. It was my finally figuring out, I'm lost.

I think I'm really good at what I'm doing, but I ain't working. We're not getting there. And you have to understand is the people in the front line are so smart. The warriors meeting the customers are making it happen. They can see through bureaucracy. They can see through your mistakes. And in most cases, they're afraid to tell you because they're afraid they're going to get fired. In my case, I managed to convince everyone, I'm really serious about this. You can tell me anything

in the world. It might hurt, but say it diplomatically, maybe. Don't kill me, but please help me. And there's nothing wrong with the founders saying, please help me. The place founders get in the trouble is they're so obstinate. I'm the one, I know it, I invented this. Then they fail. Absolutely agree. But I think it's so rare to see somebody so humble and so willing to listen, because if I take myself 10 years back, I was the ego person. I was the person that knows it all. I needed to go down the spiral in a pretty deep way to realize, no, I don't now start

listening. And I wonder if there's a shortcut to that. I wonder if there's a way to get out of your way without the slap in the face, or you actually need to get the slap in the face in order to actually start listening. What do you think, Dave? I honestly think somebody has to beat the hell out of you for you to wake up and say, I don't like this. Please don't hit me again.

Let me give you a perfect example, okay? I'm a military man. I feel that my word is my honor. And I'm an honorable man in that if I owe you money, I will pay you. No matter what happens to me, I don't care. I will pay you. That's a moral obligation. The universities are stupid. They teach the tech people, oh, the faster you go

bankrupt, the faster you'll be a billionaire. Go out and start a company that fails in two weeks, file bankruptcy, start another one. That's a learning environment. That's absolute crap. When you file bankruptcy, you hurt the little guy. You hurt your vendor. You hurt the landlord that gave to you because they don't get paid. They get screwed in the process. You can't deal in business that way. You deal in business with a handshake. You put it in writing to protect all the parties. But honestly, you can't take and use people. That's stealing. And so my moral thing is, I will pay you back. Whatever it takes, it will get done. So when you start talking about getting beat up, you start talking about failing, don't be fast to fail. Make sure you succeed. Make sure you can keep your commitments.

If you get behind transparency, like Gail did, go to the bill collectors and say, look, this is exactly what we owe. Here's four yellow pages. These are the debts we owe. And we have now reached break-even. And we're starting to inch down a little bit each month. And every month, we're going to inch down bigger and bigger. We'll pay cash now.

And we'll pay you a little bit of what we owe you. And within two years, you'll have it all. And those people and their kids are still suppliers to Remax 45, 50 years later. And, you know, Dave, you also in your beautiful memoir, My Next Step, you also share a really dark moment in your life. Can you tell us a little bit what happened and how did you recover? Let me give you a little background, Ilana. When I was six years old, I was adopted. And my parents were business people, but we sharecropped out the land and I worked as a farmer. And I asked my dad one day, I was six or seven years old. And I said, hey dad, why do we live in a dirty, muddy place like Marion, Indiana?

We went to Arizona and it was beautiful. And we went to Florida. It was really beautiful. We saw the Grand Canyon. We went to California on vacation. Why do we live in a mud hole like Marion, Indiana? And he says, my parents and my grandparents were raised and lived here. Our business is here. Our Episcopalian church is here. Our friends and neighbors are here. And this is a beautiful place to live.

And I said, but I don't want to live in a mud hole. I want adventure. I want excitement in my life. And of course, I'm the idiot kid that's watching John Wayne and Rama, King of the Jungle and whatever flight movies are on. And he finally gives up and he's the gentleman. He only swore at me once, but I had it coming. But not that day.

And so he said, you live in my house. You eat my food. You'll do exactly what I tell you to do. And when you turn 18, you can do anything in the world you want. And I said, yes, sir. And the day I turned 18, I wrote him a love letter. I said, dear dad, remember the conversation when I was six or seven years old and I told you I wanted an adventure and I wanted to get the hell away from Marion, Indiana. Well, I just want you to know I'm in a place called

Vietnam. There's tanks, there's jet planes, there's helicopters. There's guns. There's ammo. There's firefights. There's pythons. There's cobras. There's tigers. This is the most fascinating place I've ever been in my life. And I'm never, I promise you, never in my life will I ever go back to Marion, Indiana. I'm cracking up here, Dave. So what does that mean i had this wonderful life of adventure and the wealthier i became

the more adventuresome i could become i could spend three million dollars trying to fly a balloon into the stratosphere around the world i drove nascar for 10 years i paid my own bills for it that's a multi--dollar sport by month. I flew every plane you could get. I'm typerated in nine different jets, seven of them being military. I was never a military pilot. I've got over 200 skydives, over 5,000 scuba dives. And so I had the life of the adventure.

In 2012, I had put off back surgery for two years. I had a wonderful surgeon that says, I don't want to cut until I have to. I'm going to give you steroid shots in your spine. I was on a speaking tour. I called my assistant and I said, my back's going out finally. I'm not going to be able to make it. I woke up paralyzed that night, waist down, got a jet in, picked me up, took me to Denver. They admitted me Sunday morning at 5 o'clock in the hospital.

They said we'll operate on Monday. By 7 o'clock a.m. in the hospital, I had gone into toxic shock, and they had me in intensive care. They couldn't figure it out for three or four days, but they finally found out I had MRSA. It's a type of a staph infection that military vets from Vietnam who had been soaked in Agent Orange get when they turn 65 or 70. So I flatlined two weeks later on Valentine's Day. I was in a coma for three months. When I woke up, I was a quadriplegic. My tendons had all shortened up. I was in a fetal position. And the prognosis was put him into hospice, he's going to die. So one hospital that Gail had been in with a traumatic brain injury in 83 from a airplane

crash, and we had been big donors to the hospital, said we'll take him. Only intensive care patient they had, I looked at every doctor, I had the mentality of a six-year-old, and I said, I'm walking out of this hospital. And all eight doctors, each one a specialist, had examined me and said, son, tell that to somebody that's 60-some years old. You're never going to walk again. We're going to hope for the best and train for the worst. And they were wonderful doctors.

They're afraid of promising because if the promise doesn't come true, they get sued. Well, you told me I'd get better. And so the doctors are negative. The nurses and the therapists are great. And I managed to get through to the therapist. And I said, I want to tell you something, please. I want you to work me harder than any patient you've ever worked in your life. I will not fail in front of a woman.

And I said, I won't quit. Push me hard. And they did. And I didn't quit. I worked my butt off. I kept telling the doctors, I'm leaving here by the 1st of June. And it would come and go. I've changed it to the 1st of July. It'd come and go. I'd changed it to the 1st of August. The doctors had no sense of humor. And they said, you're never going to walk. And I said, I'm walking out of this hospital and you can kiss my ass. That's not a very nice thing to do. But I was totally into, I'm walking out of here. Now, if I had a total spinal separation in today's medical ability, I couldn't walk. So early in June, they put me into a hospital room to do an EGT test where they put sensors

all over your body, hooked up to your nerves. And then they take this prong with a needle and they stick it down through your nerve all over your body 200 times and send electrical pulse and see where the nerve reacts along through the whole body. It's one of the most painful things you can go through. And I made the two hours. It hurt worse than anything I've ever done in my life. I looked at the doctor. I said, what's the prognosis? And he says, well, send a report to your doctor tomorrow. And I said, I've just gone through two hours and you are my doctor.

What the hell is my prognosis? And he looked at me with tears in his eyes. He said, I've just gone through two hours and you are my doctor. What the hell is my prognosis? And he looked at me with tears in his eyes. He said, Mr. Linegar, I'm sorry to tell you, you've lost your peripheral nerves around 360 degrees above your ankles. You will never walk the rest of your life. My daughter started crying as she was watching and they took me back to my bed. And I asked her, please go to dinner and have dinner with your husband. I had a pity party for about 15 minutes. Then I got angry. I said,

screw this. You're an absolute hypocrite. You've run around the world 250 days a year, six million people I've spoke to in person person and said, you can do anything you want to do. Find a way to do it. I'm going to find a way to do this. I don't care. I've watched the hockey players. I've watched the basketball players that are in wheelchairs in the gym. They got a helmet on. They beat the hell out of each other. They're still manly men and they roll upside down and an able-bodied person runs out, puts them right side up, and they're back in the fight. I said, if I'm going to be a quad, I'll be the best quad there ever is in the world.

If I'm a paraplegic, I'm kicking everybody else's butt. I'm going to be the best paraplegic there is. And the next morning, my least funny doctor looked at me, 5 o'clock in the morning, and says, well, what'd you think of your test? And I said, two things. Number one, it hurt. He says, you're the only person I know that's made two hours.

What else? And I said, I don't like the prognosis. I'm going to walk out of this place. The first time in all those months, my biggest skeptic looked at me. He said, Dave, I believe you're going to walk out of here. You may be in steel braces. You may be in double crutches. I've never seen anybody so driven, so hardworking to make this happen.

And months later, we had a party. I invited 100 of my technicians and nurses and so on and the doctors to Del Fresco's steakhouse for a beautiful evening, thanked them all, had a cocktail party, apologized to the doctors for saying, you can kiss my ass because I'm walking out of here. And I got up out of my chair after 18 months of therapy and walked across the room. People that don't see me, I'm literally crying right now. I don't know how you were so strong. You had the beautiful mantra that you share in your book, just 10 steps. And I think that's so relevant to everyone. Can you talk a little bit about that? The thing's interesting about being in a wheelchair.

I was in incredible pain. And to take a quadriplegic and try to get them to sit up is a lengthy process because your heart's used to being laying flat for six months. And they put you in a tarp on your bed. They roll you to your side. They tuck it under your body. They roll you to your side. They tuck it under your body. They roll you to the other side. It's a three-point harness. They pick you up on a cable, bring you over. They drop you down into a wheelchair. And so when they did that, I was in shock and awe. And I thought, oh my God, everybody is convinced I'm going to be in a wheelchair the rest of my life.

And I don't even have the use of my hands, et cetera. And so it was incredibly painful. They brought me back, put me back in my tarp, put me in bed. I'm laying there. I had a favorite nurse. She is an incredible woman. And she sees the tears in my eyes and says, Dave, what's wrong? And I said, nobody believes me. They put me in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. And she looked at me and said, that's not

true. This is the stage we're trying to get you through. You can't go from laying down to standing up. We don't know if you're going to be able to make it, but a wheelchair is freedom and independence. The wheelchair means you can choose on your own where to go, when to go, and where to go. This isn't the end, but it's the start of a beginning. Whether it's going to happen for you or not, I don't know. But don't look at it as defeat. Look at it as a necessary step. She changed my life. I had the greatest support group in the world.

My friends, my children, everybody was cheering for me. Every single one said, damn right, you can do this. Do it. Prove them wrong. Work your ass off. Make it happen. Without that cheering squad, I would have failed. And what happened afterwards, you still live an incredible life. You're mentoring, you're giving back, philanthropy. You have your hobbies in the sports and you're involved with so many things. You know, I want to also talk a little bit about the perfect 10 because you have a lot of very important 10 principles that built you. So share with us a little bit, Dave. Alana, if I can, it's really tough to going completely independent, in charge of the world, billionaire

basically, unlimited money, unlimited friends, 22 corporations, PR like you wouldn't believe. It's crazy to becoming a quadriplegic. I didn't eat for six months. They had to feed me with a feeding tube because laying flat on my back, I choked to death. My toilet was my bed. I didn't eat for six months. They had to feed me with a feeding tube because laying flat on my back, I choked to death. My toilet was my bed. I couldn't shave. I couldn't brush my teeth. I couldn't hold somebody's hand. The humiliation is incredible to have been that strong and that powerful to be that powerless.

And the caregivers try to be kind. It's no different to them from changing the diaper of a baby. But unfortunately, this is a 200-pound baby that really has big diapers. And so you sit there humiliated with this. And my skin had so much damage to it because of the nerve damage that I couldn't have a sheet on me for almost six months. I laid with a cloth against my groin. I tell everybody it was a pillowcase, but most of the people say, well, no, it was probably a hand towel. I had a huge bed sore on my bottom, which comes from being on your back for six months. It was just a disaster. And yet you find a way to stand up and fight. Now here's an interesting thing about a spinal cord or a traumatic brain injury clinic,

hospital. It's mostly men. It's mostly young men. Young men are stupid. At 16, 18, 20, we get drunk on a motorcycle. We get on a skateboard. We do backflips on our skis. We're a construction worker that says, I don't need a helmet or falls off of a two-story roof because they didn't have a safety strap on. And so the majority of the patients are young men. The thing that's interesting is while I'm trying to recover, I'm begging to use every machine they've got and begging my therapist, please work me harder. Give me a night session. Put me on the weights. The kids are sitting in their beds, belly aching, and the parents and the therapists and doctors are saying, you got to do PT. The kids are saying, no, it hurts

too much. I'm screwed. That's my life. I don't care. Let me watch TV. I want to play on my Game Boy. I don't want to do this. And they're literally kissing their butts saying, get out of bed and do as best you can. The same time I was injured, 18-year-old motocross national champion that was doing all these dirtback bike things, going up the hills and flipping upside down and turning two times, broke his back, lower C4 cut, spinal cord was done. Today, science can't fix it. He told the nurses and the therapists the same thing. Work me harder than anybody you've ever worked. I'm getting out of this place. I'm going to college and make something of myself. I'm not quitting. I'm not a vegetable. Help me. From the age of four, he had been riding motocross. He had broken arms,

broken legs, he had concussions. Every time he got back up and he trained and he trained and he trained, and he's the national champion when he broke his back, he had gone through life's ups and downs. He had faced the challenges of there is failure, get back up in the history, go forward. He had the life experiences like I did that these kids are saying, oh, I don't want to do my therapy. It hurts too much. And so experience in making mistakes in life, overcoming the challenges, it's part of being a human. All of your listeners out there, they have problems. They've lost a parent.

They've lost a child. They've gone through a nasty marriage. They've lost some money. Maybe had to file bankruptcy. They've been wronged by people, and they can't figure out how to get even. That's the ups and downs of being a human being. And so if your listeners take anything away from this, is that's life. That is life. It is just not all rose garden. Maybe a few people just got lucky. If you're born in the United

States of America, by the way, 2% of the people are, you've already hit the jackpot. Do you understand that? You weren't born in China, the Soviet Union, or Africa. You're not starving to death at age two. You hit the jackpot. 2% of the people, you're already in the most successful freedom place in the world. You are the luckiest people in the world. Why would you throw it away? Why would you bitch and complain I've got a bad personal philosophy? And an incredible one, because I think one of the things that we see again and again is that, again, it's usually not the challenges that stop you.

It's your belief about the challenges that stop you. It's the meaning that you attach to these things that stop you, right? And you decide if you're stopping or you're continuing, and you're just able to somehow get that strong mindset that just lets you continue. And you show it again and again in business, you show it in recovery, you show it in everything you do. And that's why you were able to create this empire. So talk to us a little bit, because I think a lot of what you do now, as far as I can see, a lot of it is about giving back, mentoring others. I think the Perfect 10 is a great example of giving back, you know, everything that you learned. Talk to us a little bit about that, Dave.

Ilana, things happen in your life and doors shut and doors open. So I'm 78 years old, and that means I'm different. When I was driving in my 50s with the best NASCAR stars in the world, I was competitive. That door shut. I could no more at age 78 get into a Rolex or NASCAR or an F1 car and have the physical or mental ability to be competitive. That door shut. I really could still skydive. I probably don't want to with my back injuries. I do scuba dive. My doctors say it will kill me. That's okay. I'm still scuba diving. But all of a sudden, the day came, the wake-up call was, all right, your life of those adventures is gone. What other adventures are important to you? So allow me to try to explain this to entrepreneurs that have a dream. I've been in REMAX 51 years. The greatest adventure of my life was taking a company from one agent

to 150,000. The stories of the 51 years are unbelievable. The challenges are crazy. The successes are unbelievable. The greatest adventure of my life was building this empire. Because I was younger than everybody at 27, I've watched thousands of our successful people reach retirement age. And so many thousands have called, videoed, or sent me a letter to say, I love you. You changed my life. You changed my family's life. This has been the greatest career I've ever had in my life. And it's because of you. So that beats fan mail anytime. It gives you this feeling of self-fulfillment that says, I didn't waste my time. I created something that was so cool.

And so when my wife and I sit here, we're aging very rapidly, and we're sitting here and saying, what was our legacy? Our legacy is we sold hope. And if you remember in the book, I talk about the 10 most incredible aspects of being a leader. And if I can remind you, the number one thing I say in the book is great leaders sell hope. Martin Luther King, controversial in his era, today I think accepted as being a phenomenal individual. We could have equality. We could be next door neighbors. We could love each other. He's left an unbelievable mark on the world. You can look at Ronald Reagan. What did he sell? Make America great again. What the hell did Trump do? Make America great again.

What did Obama say? Only one word. Everything on his campaign was hope. Leaders sell hope. Religion, social, political, economic, makes no difference. Every one of us wants to follow somebody that is giving us the hope that we can go further, better with them than we can without them. So if I might tell you a little secret about hope, our job as leaders is not to motivate anybody to do anything. I can put a gun up to your head and say, Alanis, stand up. If you don't stand up, you're an idiot, right? That's a crazy man talking. The minute the police nab me and put my ass in jail, you never have to think about me again. It's traumatic, but you're not motivated to do anything. You are motivated to save your own life if I put a gun on your head. I used to try to figure out why I couldn't motivate

REMAX agents to make more money. And back in the 73 era, our first big club for awards was the 100% club. It meant you $100,000 a year in commissions. At the same time, the average commissions was 50, and the 100% guys were making $100,000. I'd sit there and talk to the 60,000 people and say, what's wrong with you? You got the techniques, you got the knowledge, you're in the same office, you got the same leads. And over several years, they finally convinced me. Boss, I don't want to make $100,000. I made $100,000 when I was 55. I'm 65.

I got five rental properties. I've got five grandchildren. I got social security. I've got good savings. And I only want to do seven or eight deals a year. I've got 30 years experience. The seven or eight deals I do are not part-time. I'm as proficient as I ever was. I just want to live my life differently. And it finally dawned on me that the mission of a leader is not to

motivate anybody to do anything. The mission of a leader is create an environment where people can achieve the level of success they want. It is not fair for the boss to say, you're going to achieve my goal of what I want. No, the answer is, I'm going to create an environment where you can achieve what you want. Which is so beautiful, Dave, because people do want different things.

And it took me a while to understand that. And right now, so you have The Perfect Ten, which is an incredible book. You have it here also on your desk for those on YouTube. You also have a brilliant podcast. I don't know if you want to talk about it, Ambition and Grit, which I actually find incredible also to learn franchise a little podcast. I don't know if you want to talk about it, Ambition and Grit, which I actually find incredible also to learn franchise a little bit and a little bit of tips

from you on that, which I highly recommend as well. Just last words. And also if there's something that you would share with your younger self, Dave, that you think our audience will appreciate? I have a saying I picked up. Everything in The Perfect Ten, I've tried to say, I credit to other people. There's very little original thought. I've got a lot of quotes. I try to give credit where credit's due. There's a few places I don't know. Until anybody finds it, I've Googled it. I've done everything I can. Send an email to DaveLeniger.com. In the next publication, I'll show it.

But the truth of the matter is, when you look at the world, we all have benefited from each other. There's a concept called the shoulders of giants. And it was basically, I think, Sir I. K. Nukin said it. If I have seen further and gone farther than anyone else, it's because I was on the shoulders of giants who showed me the way. In Greek history, and I am so sorry, I have not told this story in over 10 years, and I will have this all screwed up. So anybody that wants to see it, Google it. I'm giving you the four names, but do Google it. It's the most amazing quote in the world. And Socrates was the first great thinker in Greek history, and he traveled and walked and taught

his concepts. I think it was Aristotle that was Socrates' student, and he did that too. And then, I'm sorry, the third one in line was the third person, and the fourth person was Alexander the Great, the four single biggest leaders in the history of Greece. One talked to the other, to the other, to the other, which shows you the value of mentorship. It shows you the value of having a mastermind group that will train and teach and encourage. If you want to lose some weight and you go to a friend and say, will you be my accountability partner and help me? And they laugh and say, oh, you've tried to lose weight 10 times. It always comes back on.

That's the wrong partner. If you look at somebody that's healthy and fit and you say, I really do want to do this, can I mimic you? And they say, yeah, that's your partner. He says, we're going to the gym four times a week. You ever miss, I'm not your mentor again. You go and you get the team that will help you achieve your goals. It's not a cheap ride because you have to pay back. You have to help them achieve their goals. There's no free ride.

If you want a friend, be a friend. Oof, that's powerful, Dave. That was an incredible talk and I could probably talk to you for hours. I'd like to meet you in person. We should. We have a lot in common, but just not as crazy as you may be. F-16 instructor pilot. So on my part, I have to tell you the things I admire in the world. I admire people who stand up for their country. The Mormon church teaches their children, you need to do two years of service during your right to be an adult. In Israel, they teach the boys and the girls,

we're under threat at all times. You owe your country to be a military professional. In America, we've had that during certain times of our life, and that's fine. We didn't all get here by gift. The birthright of being birthed does not mean you're a citizen. There is a satisfaction in most people, men and women who serve,

that I've earned my place in my country. So on my part, to an F-16 instructor pilot, I would tell you, thank you for the service. I love you. I appreciate you. And you've given back to your world. Oh, Dave, I'm almost crying again. This was such a beautiful conversation. That was so honest. I was so looking forward to it. I told you that before the recording. The more I was reading about you,

the more I was learning about you throughout the time. I knew it's going to be special, but I didn't know how special. So thank you so much. Good luck to you on everything you do.