Dave Liniger - Chairman of the Board and Co-Founder at RE/MAX, LLC | A Billion Dollar Real Estate Empire

So I'm super curious why Ernest Shackleton was so important that you decided to dedicate an entire chapter of all the different things You can talk about in your life and your business to this guy. So maybe break it down Sir Ernest was an Arctic explorer just prior to World War 1 He decided to make an expedition to go to the South Pole What he did as a leader to hold the team together to tell them we're never gonna quit We're never giving up. I'm going to get you home. What does passion mean for an entrepreneur? How did you find passion? How did you architect passion? Maybe it's not finding it. Maybe it's building it. The internet has changed everything. It's the equalizer. It's bringing education to millions of people that never had that opportunity. Nice seats for America is the greatest hotbed of entrepreneurial spirit in the world. You know if you were gonna build something, how do you manage all these different people? What's the strategy so you get it right? If you look at today's generation Z The concept of prejudice is so far removed than any previous generation. Well, this is very strange. Maybe taboo Welcome to success story. I'm your host Scott Clary. The success story podcast is part of the HubSpot podcast network HubSpot is a huge supporter of the show. I'm a huge fan of HubSpot Not just because they support the show because they support entrepreneurs And if you are an entrepreneur, you have some problems that a lot of entrepreneurs have productivity And it's not a secret. It's nothing to be ashamed of. You're not the only one that has this problem And why do we have this problem? Well, all the tools and the tech that we're using They're massively over complicated. We have tons of time consuming tasks. Our teams are not getting the information They need to close the deals connect with customers whatever it is as entrepreneurs and our teams We all have productivity problems But HubSpot's customer platform truly helps it was built to save time and make your job easier So you can get back to building your business. No more hours wasted on time consuming tasks No more chasing down prospect info if you're trying to close someone No more one system for this another system for that HubSpot can help you find leads reach prospects deliver the insights you need to convert them to customers All in one place plus HubSpot AI can literally do more work for you So you can focus more on scaling your business because HubSpot knows you have massive growth goals And they're here to make your productivity problem go away Visit HubSpot.com to learn how they can help you grow better All right, Dave. Thank you for coming on. I appreciate you a lot Um, it'll be a lot of fun. I want to I want to kick this off with One of one of the chapters in your book Which I don't always jump right into the book But I thought this was an interesting chapter. So you wrote an entire chapter on Ernest Shackleton So I'm super curious why Ernest Shackleton was so important that you decided to dedicate an entire chapter Of all the different things you can talk about in your life and your business to this guy So maybe break it down So sure Ernest Shackleton was a rather amazing individual Uh, as many he rose He had clay feet He was a womanizing drug Eraser but uh When you start talking about leadership and management He was superb I discovered him through studying things And there was a management leadership development company that had made a The eight-hour program on his leadership lessons I looked at it. I fell in love with it and I said I'd like to buy the program from you and customize it for remax audiences The people were awesome. They were very kind to me. We put a program together Of course remax has its own tv studios. It's a long communication department And we put this amazing story about this individual Sir Ernest was an architect explorer And just prior to World War I starting He decided to make an expedition to go to the south pole And so uh, he got funding and grants from the British government They had a boat called the endurance He ran an advertisement 5,000 people responded To they wanted to go on the adventure And I think he picked 27 individuals So The casting off and World War I starts that moment And everybody stops and they said Put us in the war We'll do this after the war And the king said No, this is an important Effort We've got millions of men that we can put into the war continue So they continued They refurbished themselves got extra food and stuff and they went into the Ocean Newt South Pole and they hit it wrong. They got frozen in And as the ice flow Frozen on them They said well least you know We got all the food everything we need we just stay in the boat And then all of a sudden as the ice got stronger and stronger It started to crush the boat And it was the old wooden sided boat And so waiting for the magic day He got everywhere together and they said we're gonna have to get out of the boat Live on the ice And then they Made their medic escape Took the lifeboats moved them a few hundred feet from the boat Safety home and everything The ice flow crushed the boat and sank it And by the way, they found that boat about three years ago I said oh anyway about this Yeah, I heard about this and they said yeah So anyway So Ernest was a unique leader at the time At the time the leadership principles were basically military Command here worker here the king says or the general says Jump and servant has to say I'll eye on the way up And that's the way Management worked through most of the 1800s This is like back in 1907 or they're about It was a strange event in that Ser Ernest was one child A son with a camera remember for its sixth or seven sisters He was heavily influenced as the only boy in a family of six or seven sisters And today we talk about the difference between male leadership and female leadership And often people find out that women are better leaders they're more uh Cooperative they're more the rule by consensus They give everybody a chance to speak and give their ideas And it's kind of a Democracy but we all get something to say about it. Let me move forward So he's putting this desperate situation There are no telegraphs no radios Know anything You know it's 100% dark Six months out of the year the only food source they've got Is occasionally a break in the ice where they can eat walrus and fish penguins So they had some stores with them in when the Story was over The end of the story he knows they're dying they get in a This light boat with two or three other individuals And they sail with nothing but a compass heading and they go to a wailing station 700 miles away Plus or minus a half a percent they would have died They hit the island and they lived They get the rescue effort they come back At every single and came back alive In their diaries Every man said he was the greatest leader they had ever followed In his diary he said I hated half of him I just wanted to shoot him But I had to keep him going And the story in this chapter, which is you know, they took your 60 pages Is what he did as a leader To hold the team together To be optimistic realistically To tell them we're never going to quit. We're never giving up. I'm going to get you home And the fact that every single one of them wrote in their diaries later that he was the finest leader They ever followed their life. It is an amazing glimpse of today's leadership style I love this so this is way way ahead of its time way way ahead of its time But you look at you look at your background So you were maybe give me just because I I know that you came from the military And I'm also curious How you led such an incredible organization And you were a forward-looking leader But you came from that same Military background albeit you know several several years later But still you also I mean you are also from a time when there was still a very strict Higher-archical leadership, but the way that you built remax I think that you were very Forward-looking and that's why you speak about this story in your book Because this is like the way that you lead the way that people should lead So maybe speak about some of the influence that the military had or didn't have On how you built the company Well Scott, I grew up on a farm in Marion, Indiana Farming community might perhaps had 48 cars that we share cropped out and they had small construction business And I was adopted My father stepfather was An engineer graduated valedictory at least class and Purdue in 1944 Whatever it was He's a he's a fine gentleman. He's always kind and caring to me My parents never understood me I'd think that that was probably ADD Uh, I was pretty smart but I was not Into studying And mommy and daddy said you're going to college And so I went to college and I failed out and Mommy and daddy weren't there to tell me sit down shut up and study and get your lessons done every night And fortunately I discovered fraternities and girls And a little bit of beer and Well the rest is history and it didn't work And what ended up happening was I was smart enough But I didn't have the goal I didn't go to college like some lucky people would say I want to be a doctor. I want to be a lawyer I want to be a nurse. I want to be a businessman I just wanted to be rich So if I can that grass one second And that this pisses whole story into perspective I'm six years old standing in a cornfield Mary an Indiana and I looked at my father and I said Tad Why do we live in a place like Mary an Indiana? It's muddy. It's ugly. There's nothing here Animals do anything we have a rabbit since squirrels Why don't we live someplace nice And he said well son My parents and their grandparents were born and raised in this county And that this is our community and this is our church. These are our friends and this is where we live And I said Tad We went to California on vacation. It was beautiful. The ocean is amazing. We went to Arizona We went to Florida. These are beautiful places Why don't we live there we can have church and friends and family and everything and live in a beautiful place And my father very kind man We had an amazing relationship Any of the many sits son You live in my house. You eat my food. You're doing exactly what I tell you until the day you turn 18 And you turn 18. You're free. Do whatever you want And I looked at him at that age and I said Tad I want to be a soldier. I want to be a I want to skydive. I want to scuba dive I want animals all over the world. I want a life of adventure I want to go look for some kind of treasure. I want to do all these things and you can't do them in Mary an Indiana When my 18th birthday I sent my dad from a place called Vietnam a letter As a dad there's tanks. There's helicopters. There's actually tigers in the forest And there's big snakes And this is a loot This beats the hell out of Mary an Indiana. I ain't never going back And then I went off to The strangest life you could ever live I've done 5,000 scuba dives I've got thousands of hours. I own my own Jet fighter airplanes I've done over a hundred and some two hundred skydives I've had this Adventure with NASCAR. I drove for 10 years. I own NASCAR teams for over 10 years I've had this fabulous life filled of death-defying things And you know what the greatest adventure of all was? I started remex with no money One employee and the next 51 years Bill one of the largest most successful franchise organizations in the world Now that is an adventure. I love that You know You took a 180 from what you did growing up You completely went in like a different direction And then I guess You know the question is What did what did that life What what did that life teach you the the the skydiving the fighting and Vietnam the all that what did that teach you About running a business. How did you turn that into a success that like one of the most successful Real estate organizations in the world Scott, but the military did it's a key me time to become an adult At age 18 and 19 it's proven scientifically Boy babies brains are not finished yet Women are mature by 18 most men don't get there until 25. I like to tell everybody I really never should have been given a driver's license until I was about 65 Because I was stupid. I was a risk taker. I was just dumb, you know, I just You know immature naive that's stupid The military gave me five or six years to grow up And I'll tell you what when you watch people die When you stand on a flight line and you watch the pilots fly out every night And 96 planes leave And only 92 come back That's life-changing All of a sudden you start to grow up really quick And you don't sleep in if you've had a little much too much partying If you're not on the job at 701 You're up and you're in a lot of trouble. They taught me discipline. They taught me maturity I got to learn from real heroes not sports heroes Not political heroes. I got to watch men and women There were the heroes of my generation And we are an unpopular warrior and an unpopular place And I got to watch the sacrifice the humility the Leadership and to some extent bureaucracy And that gave me the six or seven years of extra maturity That when I started remakes I had life experiences Three few people have ever expressed When you look at starting remax, you know, you speak a lot about how people have to find their why Um, how did you know that real estate was your why? um I was broke. I was an illicit man Yeah, uh I worked three part time jobs in addition to the military job when I was stateside I got enough money to buy a 10,500-hour house Uh, today there would be probably 250,000 Uh, I flipped it in five months and I made five thousand dollars There was more than my military and three part time jobs for a year And the dye was cast so I started buying and selling houses And I read all the books on investment Um, and somewhere along the line even though I was part time in the military I got a real estate license not to ever sell But to save the commission on my investments And the goal was I'm gonna have 21 houses by the time I'm 21 years old And I'm a combat soldier So that's really weird And when I went off to the war Uh, my young bride She was left at home with a child or two and she had to manage these properties and it all worked out So I don't love at the real estate industry and by mistake I lived around my office all these losers My real estate business is 80% of losers And I looked at these old people Scott, they were old They were 40 and 50 and 60 years old And they would find a deal once every four or five months And I'm thinking, I'm a young hard charger, I can change the world And the rest is history I did I love that and you know you think you think like um When you got into real estate You just wanted to disrupt I mean do you think that there's still That amount of opportunity in wealth building and disruption in real estate When you fast forward to 2024 is when you start it Scott, they're always taking industries and up evil right now I know It's a very cyclical business We've been through nine presidencies Two of them were absolutely stupid, two are absolutely crooked Two or three of them were halfway decent And the rest I don't care about And my company made profits through all those administrations We've been through seven recessions Made me wear in the eighth recession now And we made money in all those recessions And so you deal with the And it's been dealt to here And you find a way to adapt You overcome you go under you go around you go through But you don't quit The Nine states of America Is the greatest hotbed of entrepreneurial spirit in the world And during the pandemic We've had a revitalization Of people who are sick and tired of the old way Don't want to work for the man That want to say wall branch out and do my own thing I'll give it a try So our Economy is made up Largely have the United States government Throws money down the toilet purecratic worthless And then you have major companies And you see the technological marvels of Apple and Google and Amazon And Microsoft and the changes they have brought about And then you have Normal businesses Big businesses And you think you have small businesses Our small businesses Account for a third Of the crucial national product It's the small moment pop shops It's the small McDonald's The small landscape guy I'm sorry the Opportunity today is greater than any time in our history I love that I love that you're very optimistic Because you know people are very Short-sighted when it comes to Opportunity in the market right I think they're right now I mean you just talk about real estate in particular You talk you can talk about all entrepreneurship We talk about real estate in particular A couple of class action lawsuits have been brought against real estate companies The the whole buy side representation I'm not from the real estate But I know there's a whole bunch of issues with like buy side representation And commissions and I know enough people that are that run their own brokerages that our agents of course that Feel like it's been all been you know sort of the The the rugs have been pulled out from under them and this is the worst thing to ever happen So you think that Regardless of all the shit hitting the fan moments The market self corrects. There's always going to be more opportunity. It's never going to Really really disrupt or ruin an industry regardless of This regulatory here this legislation here this class action there Oh industry's good destroyed and some of them never recovered Um What do you feel that's what happened is that is that what could happen or no? No Nonlerous abisms yet But Darwin is supposedly said The stronger so the species survives He never said that Darwin said The most adaptable of the species survives The dinosaurs a hundred million years ago with the strongest animals ever known They're gone the mosquito is still here And so this concept of adaptability and accepting change has become paramount in American business The rate of change is so fast and accelerating so fast That if you stick your head in the sand like an ostrich You're left behind You can't do today's business with yesterday's methods. They expect to be in business tomorrow It's quite simple and so The speed of changes happening Does not mean that it's devastating. It just means it is just changing so fast The internet has changed everything. It's the equalizer It's bringing education to billions of people that never had that opportunity The whole world is going on to be neural And that is a good thing for society When you look at because the book lists tons of entrepreneurial traits Things that are required or at least They should as somebody should have some of these traits to be successful You mentioned like taking risks innovation Persevering through failure Is there one trait and this is like this is going to be obviously I know all the traits are important But you know you humor me bear with me Is there one trait that you think is is critical is like you can't be an entrepreneur without this no I think entrepreneurs or leaders And as you know, I have a chapter of the talks about leadership And another chapter of the talks about management. So let's go to leadership There's one common trait of all great leaders Which is the same for all great entrepreneurs And that's basically leaders sell hope If you look at Martin Luther King Controversial in my generation During the peace marches and so on of Vietnam era Martin Luther believes in Peaceful transition He was trying to sell the idea that black people brown people yellow people and white people in our children Could all have a better future because We are equal in God's eye He attracted tens of millions of followers If you look at Ronald Reagan He came into office basically How Hollywood actor and all he did was he sold hope He said make America great Donald Trump They came in 20 years later 30 years later make America great again Hillary campaigned on Hillary strong That's so phony that didn't tell you anything A Brock Obama said Hope The only word he had on his The pelp and Hope We're going to build a greater nation together So in leadership politics right now very divisive But in reality the people that we respect Whichever political part of your with are selling a hope that Your standards your values your moral Feelings your family are going to have a better Generation than we do The leadership when I sold remax It was I'm making a better life for real estate agents Instead of a 50-50 commission split And the broker taking it all Why don't we work like a co-op We work together pair on expenses and keep the majority of the fee for ourselves It was We were destined to owe for a better outcome for our careers So all leaders no matter what you do It's selling hope so if you're a small person with the embergers stand And you have probably multi-cultural multi-generational uh Workforce What are you selling to those people? You sell your values. We're going to have the best-tasting hamburger in the world And by the way, I mean some of you are here to make part-time money so you can go to college And you can make a life of yourself and you're going to learn some great work ethics here And so I'm selling hope I want to get you to college. I want you to get to college. I want you to be successful It's it's it's true for everybody great leaders Find a vision a mission and they work towards it When you when you look at the size of what you built in the fact that you built this This value of hope across remax How do you get people to buy into that vision? Well the first one or two are pretty tough Ha At first four five hundred words of tough. Once we had proven the concept over five years, it was a simple task. It worked. Our average agent was keeping 85 percent of the commission, whereas top producers throughout the industry was getting a 50-50 split. So the proof of the pie was in the pudding. Every place we went for the next few years, all we heard was were different. In Chicago, they said, you guys don't even wear a coat and tie to work. Be successful in Colorado or Chicago, you gotta have a coat and tie, or whatever women wear. We went to Atlanta, and they said, never work here. We're genteel. We wouldn't steal agents from each other. Uh, nonsense. We went to Quebec, and they said, you didn't even speak French. And yet, remax worked every place we went. Audit and ten countries. All the roles are different. We're in socialist countries, capitalist countries, we're in communist countries, we're in dictatorships. It works. We're in places that have never had a licensed law. That'll die when we franchise laws. At 70 percent of the places we're in don't have multiple listing services. None of them have training, and you look at it, and it works. And what we found out was everybody in every market we went to says, we're different here. We're not like you guys in Denver. And they're right. Religious are different, governments are different. The rules are different. But you know what we found out? Human beings are the same. Every one of us, me and you, Scott, we were to do better for our family. We'd like to make more money. We'd like more respect. We'd like to make more money our way. We'd like to protect and take care of our elders. We would like to protect and take care of our children. We would like to raise our children in our home to our moral standards, to our religious beliefs. We'll have to be the interference of somebody else. And the key to Remax's success is we've never said that the Remax concept of the Remax system is an American concept. Our system is one of we tried to create an environment in a real state office where every person there can achieve the ultimate success they personally want. We don't say we want every way to make $100,000 a year. They don't. They have different drives, different ambitions, different ages, different requirements. What we say is, create an environment where people have the greatest opportunity to live up to their achievements that they personally want, not the achievements the company wants. I just want to take a second and thank the HubSpot Podcasts Network for supporting success story for part of the network. If you love podcasts, the HubSpot Podcasts Network has other incredible podcasts like Entrepreneurs on Fire hosted by John Lee Doomass Entrepreneurs on Fire is one of the OG Entrepreneur Podcasts. It really stokes inspiration, share strategies to fire up your entrepreneurial journey to create the life you've always dreamed of. It has unlimited energy value and consistency. The podcast is truly for anyone who wants to learn more about entrepreneurship. If you like fast-paced, packed with value stories as shows for you, John brings on great guests. He speaks about failures, aha moments, what's working for them currently. If you love podcasts, go listen to entrepreneurs on Fire wherever you get your podcasts. It's very interesting that the shift, it's a shift from company driven to a human driven. You're very human driven because you're focusing on the human for you're like a human-centric organization. I guess that's why it was successful, but I'm just thinking of other companies that do that well. I don't know the policies of like the apples and the Amazon's, but you definitely don't hear that from the employees of that company to the same degree. But I think that aligning the company mission with the human mission, I think that's very important. If you look at my book, it's probably about 25 percent of it, came from the college of Ardenox, and in the stakes I made and the people that helped me succeed, and I was mentored by so many people. I was given a hand up so often, but if you look at the last 30 or 40 years of American business, it's changed dramatically. If you look at the impact that Apple, a Google, Amazon, Facebook, whatever it is has had on our world. It is truly amazing what they've done. The entire concept of leadership, of groupthink, of servant leadership, is changing so dramatically, and Darren Hardy, I don't know if you've followed Darren at all, but he's a mentor to me. It's extremely enough that at age 21, he was my top agent in California, and now 25 years later, he was one of the most impressive individuals I've ever worked with. He is saying that's repeated now. What's your definition of success? I want to do what I want to do, we don't want to work, I want to, with who I want to, and how I want to. That is independence, that is success. Those five factors are, I want to do it my way. When, where, what, how, and with so, and the best companies in the United States right now, are those that are preaching that kind of philosophy? Do you feel like those companies, the fame, the Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, whatever, all those large companies? Do you feel like they do it? Are they world class at doing that? Yes, they are different. They, they're collaborative. They're built on consensus by an entrepreneur that wants to win. If you look at the old military, the general says to the soldier, when I tell you jump ask how high on the way up, if you look at special ops, I don't curl that's delta, green beret, seals, rangers, or whatever it is, it's entirely different philosophy. They're usually a tight net group, a team of eight to ten. You may have one officer in the group, you probably have a varying group of ages. When you plan a mission, everybody has a voice in the plan. Every single person sits before you're going into this battle round and says, what, what about this? What about that? Have you thought about this? The lowest soldier that least in rank can look at the general or look at the captain and say, I don't like this. I think we're exposed. And you can chat it out. That's consensus building. When you go in, there is one leader. You're in a combat situation. You know what happens if the leader is down. Sex person is next one meter, third person is the next leader and if you get home great. When you come home, the first thing they do is not a military hierarchy. It's a sit-around. Depending on the leader, maybe they're going to grab some beers and if the person's too strict, they sit around drinking coffee. But anyway, everybody has a right to say, well, we're right. Well, we're wrong. And the lowest person can say lutes in it. You broke right when you were supposed to break glove and I covered you with my gun. And if I had squeezed the trigger, you were dead and we were lost. You made a mistake that almost ruined this mission for us. And that leader has got to look at that person and say, you're absolutely right. I was rattled. I forgot. I went the wrong way. I'll learn from that. Thank you for putting that out. That isn't a rear-ending statement on those two individuals apart. It's 14. We win by a team or we die as a team. We all want to come home. And so when you start looking at American businesses today, this autocratic top-down nonsense doesn't work. Even in the smallest groups in a business, smallest groups in a church, smallest groups in a philanthropy, you still have to do things. Consensus. Everybody wants input. Everybody wants to be able to argue. And everybody knows I win some. I lose some. And I can be a party person. If I didn't get my way this time, I had my chance to express myself. You've done that. I mean, you did that in Remax to the degree of you were building this consensus and team concepts. So I think agents were sharing resources. You were sharing all this all this stuff. Were they sharing leads at one point as well? Like you had everybody working together and collaborating. And I think that's something that, like you said, when Remax is doing it, maybe you are slightly pioneering now, it seems to be the status quo. But that's how you build this high-performing team culture. I love it. You know, if you're sculling outside of New England, and you got everybody in the boat, and you got the R, ors in the water, and if Warren is dipping the horse here in the other one's waiting and dipping it, you just go around in circles. Yeah. And so teamwork is worth about. I would tell you this much. Later 50th anniversary a year ago, Remax, like 51st this week. And I made a comment, my presentation, and I said, you do have to understand. I just got five standing invasions today. But Gail and I, founding this company, are mere footnotes to the story. This company was never built by David Gail. It was built by hundreds of thousands of agents and brokers over 51 years that collectively figured a way to make this thing work together. You build gigantic enterprises with consensus, following a common vision, having a common mission, being proud of what you do every day. And then just accepting the world, it's going to change. You have to be adaptable. In the military world, you plan, and you plan, and you plan, and the first time a gun goes off, the plan goes to hell. But the fact is, you've planned 30 different plans, what happens, and when that shot goes off and the initial plan A doesn't work, you've already thought about plan B through 35 B. I want to talk about a couple more entrepreneurial lessons that you've learned over your career. You speak a lot about failure. I think failure is really really an important tool for people. How did failure play its part in your career? What was the failure? What was the multiple failures? I'm sure there was thousands across the career. But pick something that stood out, or a few things that stood out, how did it impact you? When we first started, I was so damn musical. A ego was so big, I had the way. And yet the industry tried to kill me. They literally wanted no us to fail, because if we succeeded, it meant they had to pay all their top producers more. And they were trying to drive me out of business. And the things we were marked with, they didn't need to drive very hard. I was succeeding pretty well by myself with all the mistakes I was making. But I won't tell you, I'd want to win. I do not quit. I don't want to fail. And if you want to win bad enough, swallow your pride, and I sat with my teams, and I said, what did you like best about the company you worked for before you joined Remax? What did you dislike the most? What do you like best about being with Remax? What do you dislike the most? What do you like best about me? Dave Lenterier as your president CEO. What do you dislike the most? I'm 20 years younger than all the people I let. And I said, teach me, train me, mentor me, to be the kind of a man you would like to follow. Now that hurts. To make yourself that vulnerable, and know that you've opened the door to hell, and you said, okay, I know I'm screwing up, but tell me how. And some people are diplomatic and some people are just flat forceful and say, you know, you just don't keep your word. You promised you'd do this and this and this, and you didn't. And all of a sudden, you realize I did talk about that in one of our meetings, and I didn't keep a written record of it. And so it's not in front of me, to do this. And so I screwed up. And so most entrepreneurs don't really understand your followers will forgive you. If you're upfront and transparent and say, I know I've made some mistakes, I don't want to make the same ones twice. Help me here, please. Grow me up a little bit. That's the great part of remaxing successes. I had so many failures, but I was willing to take the blame for them myself. If the team wins, the team wins. How long did it take you to get rid of the ego when you first started out? It took probably about three years. It was pretty disastrous. Once I grew into my position, I became mature individual. The journey is a journey. There's no end. It's just a journey. I know. I think it's just very smart lesson. Special people that are just starting out, because I think that the first version of building your own thing for many entrepreneurs, they all think they've had everything figured out. They think they're gods' gifts to business, and they probably had some success, and they made some money in their career, and then they start to build. And I think the life slaps them in the face really quick. So I give you a little interesting tip. Yeah, yeah, of course. Reading this the other day. Do you know what the average age of a person starting their own businesses? I don't know. What is it? 47. Everybody's not a Stanford dropper. No, everybody thinks that Bill Gates started Microsoft when he was 20 and Facebook was started by such and such and all that stuff. The typical entrepreneur comes through life, learns life lessons, watches the idiot pauses he works for, and at some point, he or she says, I can do this better than you can. You're an idiot. And so the thing's happened is everybody looks back on each generation, and the older generation says, these young fools didn't know anything. Man, well, I went to high school, I had to walk up, he'll downhill both ways to school, and it's no storm. And they just sit here and play on their iPhones. The truth of the matter is every generation in Rema, I'm sorry, America's history in the last probably 150 years has been better than the previous group. We've had different experiences and nobody in our generation, the millennials, understood the famine, or understood the depression, or understood World War I or World War II, but understanding it's not the same thing is living. And so if I can make a political statement here, I'm sorry. Careful, David. The Civil War, most people treated blacks very poorly. There were blacks that fought on both sides of the war, by the way. And by the time we got the World War I, reconstruction came about. People were giving mouth service to everybody, should be people. But in the military, there were black military companies, there were white companies, and the blacks were led by white men. And by the time you got to World War II, it started to be much more segregated. By the time you got to Vietnam, we had black lieutenants, captains, and majors in combat running white troops for the most part. And so we see this gradual transition over a hundred and some years of getting rid of the racial inequality. If you look at today's generation Z, generation, whatever, the concept of prejudice is so far removed than any previous generation. Everything's about a teen. Everything's about a group. Teenagers date in groups, and they don't care whether you're a pink or yellow or black or whatever. And they don't look down on mixed marriages as, well, this is very strange, or this isn't maybe taboo. This is life. And so I think that we are progressing as a human species extraordinarily well. I agree. I fully agree, which means that sometimes the lessons that may be a previous generation has or the experience that a previous generation has, it may not be applicable to the current environment as much as the current generation's experience. I wouldn't go to my parents and my grandparents for advice on a lot of stuff that I'm dealing with right now. Because it's a different generation. There's wisdom. There's wisdom in history, for sure. There's lessons in history. But I mean, it's too full, too. Why do we come to this conversation? Because we said that people shouldn't get an ego. So you can't have an ego. You can say that, listen, I've lived and learned experience. And I know, I know, I know a little bit, but you still have to humble yourself when you're building anything. So you don't know more, it's not like, yeah, maybe you know, contextually more relevant information than your parents or your grandparents. But it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean that you're still going to be flawless in as you build something. You still have to, you still have to humble yourself regardless, even if you are more forward looking generation or individual. I mentioned, Scott, I mentioned in the book, I listen to learn from Darren Hardy, and that is the first time in history that we have five generations working in the workforce at the same time. Yeah, we still have the matures that were born before World War II ended. Then you got the baby growers, and then you got the the millenials and the ends and whatever. You got five distinct working groups. And the two youngest ones now make up 50% of the workforce. And so all five have common things that you lead from, but all five are unique to their generation. And so today's leader, whether you're a young person, 27 years old, banaging people who are 70 years old to 18 years old, or whether you're 65 year old, reversing that, you have to be cognizant of most people have common traits that they want to work towards, but they have common or they have uncommon disparities of how to get there. This is a unique leadership error never occurred in history, it ever. That's tough. So to be successful, to build a good business, you got to understand these five generations. You know, if you were going to build something, how do you, how do you manage all these different people? What's the, what's the strategy so you get it right? I think the strategy is understanding the differences. I think the strategy is you get two years and one mouth shut up. Listen, you know, we recently had a change in CEOs and the remax organization. We found somebody I think is delightful. The first five CEOs in 50 years were all inborn. We all came from the real estate industry. It was all people that I hired. I promoted. I mentored. And for the first time, we brought an outsider in. And so he was managing a much larger enterprise than ours. Ten times our size. And the board asking me, so what are you going to do? You're first under days. And he said, I'm going to listen. I'm going to begin eat populations. I'm going to listen to every person I can. I'll meet every person I had orders. I'll meet the key brokers and franchisees. I'm a meter competitors. And I'm going to use this as a learning period to where I get a firm base of understanding. And then we will start leading. He's doing a pretty good job of it. And he has done the listening and I'm proud of him for that. But I mean, that's that's our world is we must listen to everything around us. The leader is going to have to make the decisions. You can't be a democracy and say, how many people want to give the secretary a 10 dollar race this week? That isn't you're abdicating your leadership. But leadership is listen, feel. What's everybody else feel? And then make your plans. The last, I think the last sort of entrepreneurial trait that you speak about quite often is passion. And from what I understand, you are your exemplifying passion because I don't think you've been cut a check in several years now. But you're still like, you're still like rolling up your sleeves sometimes. So what does passion mean for an entrepreneur? How did you find passion? How did you architect passion? Maybe it's not finding it. Maybe it's building it. I don't know. But talk me about passion. Passions individual, teach individual. And some people, I don't know how to feel passion about anything. Well, if you talk to most mothers that have a baby, they're pretty damn passionate about this child as my child. And I'm going to give it the best life I can get it. And some mothering instinct. I have been passionate about what I do since the day I started Remax. I've never done it for the money. The money comes. But it's I had this vision. I thought there was a better way for Rosalie to be comfortable, especially the top producers. And so, you know, each person, you have your own vision. You have your heart. Do you know what counts? So I've been fortunate to be a traumatic brain injury hospital, spinal cord injury hospital for nearly a year. I was in a coma for three months and they told me that I could never walk again. And I leave an alley. I made it. But my passion was, I know how to win. And I have failed. So I can remember coming out of my coma, three months, incredible pain. One hundred percent of quadruplegic. I couldn't eat. They had to hand feed me a grape or a little bit of water. And they had a feeding tube in my tummy because I was flat on my back and I would choke to death if I tried to swallow milk. I couldn't brush my teeth. I couldn't shave. Couldn't feed myself. Could not pipe my own bottom. And I went from being a billionaire independent, powerful individual to where I was 100 percent dependent on somebody else to take care of me, hour by hour, minute by minute. And my passion was, I'm walking out of this place. My doctors did all the nerve tests. They looked at me and they said, we hope for the best. We train for the worst. I won't teach you how to be a quadruplegic and be happy. And I was very forceful with them. A bit of foul mouth by the way. And they kept saying, you never walk out of here, wake up, be realistic and allow us to help you. And I told every one of them, I said, get this shit straight. I'm going to walk out this hospital and you can kiss my ass. Well, as it would happen, I had three different gold dates. They changed three different times. What I went home, I went home as a quad. And I said, I'm going to walk. My passion was, I can do this. I went back to hospital, eight hours a day, six days a week. The most excruciating physical therapy you can get. I had the most wonderful service dog that SWAT team found. And Frankfurt came to me before I could really walk or anything we learned together. And the magic day came with a wonderful dinner, a huge steakhouse invited 200 people from the medical facility that had been involved in my care. I was in my electric wheelchair and I said, I will unapologize. I told all of you, I promised you, I committed, you could kiss my ass and I'd walk out of the hospital. I obviously didn't succeed. I said, I appreciate the care that everything you did for me. And I said, by the way, I got on my chair with a cane, now walked across the room. My dog church cried. So passion is this belief of I can still have a better life. My fallback position was I watched the wheelchair guys that had their hands and arms years. And they were trying to play basketball and they beat the hell out of each other. They knock everybody upside down and they able bodied nurses had run out, sent them back up and they keep playing ball. I watched them with the ground hockey they were doing with hockey sticks beating the hell out of each other. They were still manly men. And I'd made up my mind that particular night. Okay, if I'm stuck being a paraplegic, I'm going to be the toughest paraplegic anybody's ever met in their life. And fortunately, I did pretty good. I'm the one and a million, my nerve damage was as extensive as the tests show and that I have my second chance. But passions is what's about. I haven't worked a day in my life, period since I win the military. I love the military. I love the camaraderie. I love the men and women I served with. When I started the Roasty business, I fell in love with realtors. They work hard. 80% of them fail. They're trying as hard as they can. There's no, there's no salaries. It's got a tough job to break into. Everybody thinks it's easy. It's not. But what's you do it and you're providing world-class service? You're in a different fraternity. And so, to anybody that's listening to this program, if you're passionate about what you want, if you are willing to die for what you believe in, you won't quit. You only lose if you follow. That's the lesson. That's the lesson I want everyone to take away because if people can find that passion in their life where they never work a day and they apply that to their job, their relationship, their health, physical health, mental health, whatever it is, then you can't lose. You can't lose because that's super. Look at what is done. Look at what is done for you. I mean, it's incredible. If you were going to leave the audience with one last lesson, something that maybe we didn't go into that was important for you, what would you want to leave them with? Something you learned over your career. So, Scott, I was always a kind person, I think. There are people that will tell you, I was me, it didn't nest in. Being a fighter, I've been in a lot of fights. That thought I've always been honest and kind. When you go from incredible independence and you remember being a boy scout and helping people across the street, or helping old lady with the grocery bags, and finding a self-worth in, you know, I can give back a little bit. The thing that's most remarkable about becoming a quadruplegic and finding your way back from that was I found out how incredibly kind the everyday person is. You're out in a free way, you're going into the parking lot, you get cut off, somebody haunts their horn, they throws the bird, and you think you idiot, and you're going to have some road rage here and shoot the bastard. No. Then maybe you catch yourself in a molar of sanity and you say, you know, my wife was in a plane crash. There's this 18 year old kid. The plane was on fire and he went in and saved her life. I've never met him. I've never shook his hand. Maybe that was the person and he's having a bad day or I'm having a bad day. And what I've found out from going from total independence to total dependence is how kind people are that are dependent. I have gone to the grocery store and struggling with double crutches trying to get a door open and had gang bangers with their baseball cap on backwards. Say, excuse me sir, let me help you the door. That was never occurred to me before I was the person in need that this individual that many of us would look down on and say, well he screwed up, but he still had the humanity to say, sir, can I help you with your door? And so in other words, the message is the world is so filled with kind and caring and wonderful people ignore those flights and the bumps and banging on each other's and times happens and be grateful for all the people in the world. Love that. Working people, working people connect with you, working people get your book. I mean, Amazon and all the other places they would probably buy books. But what's the social you want to send people to either web? You know Dave Lenniger.com. Okay. I keep it updated constantly. My legacy now is I'm trying to help other people achieve the kind of success that I and many of my friends have achieved. There have been so many remarkable people who've helped me along the way that reached around, reached down and helped me get up the next step of the mountain. And it's, you know, it's more of those things. You know, I'm 70 years old. I can't drive NASCAR anymore. I really can't skydive much anymore. I can't get in my sports cars and drive 200 miles an hour. I'm probably not supposed to scuba dive. But I mean, all this adventure things I had, you know, that there are chapters in your life. And sometimes the door closes on that chapter that doesn't mean forget it. Wonderful memories. It's just awesome to have had the experiences. But what do you do at the end of your life? And that is okay. I don't know that money and limited food have got, you know, three homes or ranch and like, you know, a loving family and four fabulous kids, unbelievable wife. And so what is left? How do you help other people along? How do you help people like they help me? And so the things that I talked about is from the heart period. When you look back, are there any things that you regret? Only you. You know, when I started at the military, I spent too much time in the military. It was not fair to a young bride with a couple young children. And when I started remex and I started achieving incredible personal success, well, I had a state home wife and her job was you raised the kids until they're adults. And then I'll be a human being and talk to them. And that that was not fair to her and that ended up in a divorce. Not her fault, I might fault and just does happen. So you're going to have regrets in your life. You're going to regret things that you say to people that you should not have said. You're going to regret the way you behave someplace or the way you're acted to somebody. That's a human being. You got to find in your heart the ability not just to forgive those people that have interviewed. You got to find a way in your heart to forgive yourself for being stupid because human beings are basically stupid. We come into the world naked, frightened, scared, shittless. And we all die the same way at some point we do die. But we all start the same place. So I think the most important thing to say is a great life. We have tragedies. We have unbelievable difficulties that happen in people's lives. The vast majority of especially in the United States have an incredible lifetime compared to any other generation in history. It's a wonderful world. If you were going to tell your younger self, your 20 year old self, one lesson, what would that be? Oh God, I wish I had paid attention to my parents when I should have.