Dave Liniger: Top Leadership Principles to Achieve Extraordinary Entrepreneurship Success | Leadership | E323

When Dave Liniger co-founded RE/MAX, the early days were rocky. Believing he had all the answers, he led with aggression and stubbornness. But Dave soon realized that if he wanted to succeed, he had to change. He embraced being coachable and became willing to ask for feedback. Decades later, he has transformed RE/MAX into a global powerhouse and earned his place as a true real estate icon, inspiring countless entrepreneurs along the way. In this episode, Dave shares the entrepreneurship lessons and leadership principles that have guided him over the last 50 years leading RE/MAX. In this episode, Hala and Dave will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (02:45) From Farm Life to the Air Force (03:45) The RE/MAX Origin Story (06:57) Hard Lessons & Tough Feedback (10:55) What Success Really Means (15:44) How to Make an Impact (20:23) Leadership Traits That Build Trust (30:23) Why Honesty Wins in Leadership (32:31) Revolutionizing Real Estate (36:55) Leadership Secrets for True Success (47:08) Hiring Right, Firing Fast Dave Liniger is the co-founder of RE/MAX, one of the world’s most recognized real estate brands with over 9,000 offices in more than 110 countries. Starting in 1973, Dave and his wife Gail redefined the real estate game by creating the groundbreaking 100% commission model, empowering agents to keep what they earn while benefiting from top-tier support. He’s a multi-venture entrepreneur, having dabbled in industries like oil drilling, NASCAR racing, and Arabian horse breeding, among others. He is also a philanthropist, adventure enthusiast, author of The Perfect 10, and host of the Ambition & Grit podcast. Resources Mentioned: 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 Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill: https://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Landmark-Bestseller/dp/1585424331 The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield: https://www.amazon.com/Success-Principles-TM-Where-Want/dp/0060594896 The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy: https://www.amazon.com/Compound-Effect-Darren-Hardy/dp/159315724X Kaizen: The Japanese Method for Transforming Habits, One Small Step at a Time by Sarah Harvey: https://www.amazon.com/Kaizen-Japanese-Method-Transforming-Habits/dp/1529005353 Sponsored By: Airbnb - Your home might be worth more than you think. Find out how much at airbnb.com/host Mint Mobile - To get a new 3-month premium wireless plan for just 15 bucks a month, go to mintmobile.com/profiting Found - Try Found for FREE at found.com/profiting Working Genius - Get 20% off the $25 Working Genius assessment at workinggenius.com/ with code PROFITING at checkout Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify Indeed - Get a $75 job credit at indeed.com/profiting Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new All Show Keywords: Entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship podcast, Business, Business podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal development, Starting a business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side hustle, Startup, mental health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth mindset. Leadership & Team Building Leadership, Productivity, Networking, Goal Setting, Time Management, Problem Solving, Decision Making, Leadership Skills, Strategic Planning, Mindset, Time Management, Team Building.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Hala Taha?

  Today's episode is sponsored in part by HeyGen, Shopify, Indeed, and Northwest Registered Agent. HeyGen helps you create AI avatar videos without being constantly behind the camera. Get your first three videos for free at heygen.com/profting. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you grow your business. Start your $1 per month trial at Shopify.com/profting. Indeed helps you attract interview and hire all in one place. Get a $75 sponsored job credit to boost your job's visibility at Indeed.com/podcast. Northwest Registered Agent gives you the tools and guidance to build a complete business identity. Start using free resources at NorthwestRegisteredAgent.com/YeahFree.

• 0:45Hala Taha?

  As always, you can find all of our incredible deals in the show notes or at YoungAndProfiting.com/deals.

• 0:51Speaker 01

  How do you want to change the world? Why are you so passionate about this business that you're starting?

• 0:57Hala Taha?

  What's your advice to leaders to get better at receiving feedback, no matter who it's from?

• 1:02Speaker 01

  Ignore it. Everybody has an opinion. That doesn't mean everybody is right. Loyalty is a two-way street, and loyalty starts at the top going down, not the down going up. Your job is to create an environment where the people that work for you can achieve the level of success they want. The number one most important factor of a leader is a leader sells hope.

• 1:27Hala Taha?

  What does success mean to you?

• 1:29Speaker 01

  The best definition I have ever heard of success is...

• 1:49Hala Taha?

  Young and Profitters, welcome back to the show. And today we have a true real estate icon joining us, Dave Liniger. Dave Liniger is the co-founder of RE/MAX, which he co-founded with his wife Gail in 1973. RE/MAX is now one of the largest real estate franchises to have ever existed, and he's got over 8,000 offices, 125... Thousand sales agents. He's done an incredible job leading this organization over the past five decades. Dave is no longer the CEO at RE/MAX, but he still holds a leadership position as chairman, and he was CEO for 45 years plus. Dave is going to tell us all about his leadership principles. He's got a new book called Perfect 10, which we're going to be discussing.

• 2:32Hala Taha?

  So without further delay, here's my conversation with the real estate mogul, Dave Liniger. Dave, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast.

• 2:41Speaker 01

  Hey, how are you? Thank you very much. It's nice to join you today.

• 2:44Hala Taha?

  I'm really looking forward to this interview because we are speaking right now to a real estate legend. You have built a remarkable legacy in the real estate industry. You're the co-founder of RE/MAX. It's one of the largest real estate franchises in the world, and you led that company for 45 years plus as CEO. You're still involved 50 years later, and that's a long time in leadership. So my first question to you is how your leadership style has evolved over the years? Because I could imagine with all that experience and so many years that it's evolved several times. So that's my warm up question to you. How has your leadership style evolved?

• 3:22Speaker 01

  How I was very young when I tried to go to college. I was just barely 17. I wasn't disciplined. My mommy and daddy weren't there to tell me to study every night, and I failed. Not failed because I was stupid. My ACT scores are out of the world. I was undisciplined. I didn't have the maturity that I needed. I finally gave up on this college route and ended up joining the United States Air Force and went to Vietnam. I spent six years in the Air Force. It bought me six years to mature as a young man.

• 4:05Speaker 01

  So everybody knows, young women, they're pretty mature at 18. And young men, sometimes it takes them an extra 10 or 20 or 30 years to get there. And that bought me the time to mature enough to where I knew where I wanted to go.

• 4:23Hala Taha?

  And so you actually started your career and you started as an entrepreneur before you even had a college degree. You didn't have a college degree or a management degree. Did you have some level of imposter syndrome before you started RE/MAX because of this?

• 4:37Speaker 01

  No, I was so confident in my abilities, being a combat vet, that I just felt I could bull my way through the China closet and we'd be okay. So the thing that was the defining moment was I realized I was not sophisticated. I did not have management experience to speak of. And I looked for an administrative vice president. By the way, they were all women. I interviewed 27 people. I said no to 27 and the 28th was magic. It was a woman by the name of Gail Main. She was a new bride, trailing spouse, followed her husband to made DNF stores from St. Louis,

• 5:22Speaker 01

  where she had had her college and her management experience. And he brought her to Denver. She really wasn't serious about being an administrative vice president. But I told her, I said, look, she was charismatic, she was confident, she was well poised. I said, I don't know how to run a real estate business. I can be a sales manager, I can be a trainer, but I need somebody that could find office space, rent it, buy furniture, hire secretaries and bookkeepers and receptionists and run the company. And I got lucky. I was so lucky. She said yes.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  I told her I was going to build the biggest real estate company in history and she very naively believed it. And so, fast forward 10 years. She ran the business. I was on the road selling franchises, opening offices, expanding the company. And we both grew together. But we complemented each other's abilities and lack of abilities. And so I'm the super salesman. She was a super leader. And she did end up becoming CEO of the company. We were not romantically involved for 10 years. And at the end of 10 years, every officer I had had become divorced.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  We fell in love with this crazy mistress called Remax that, hey, stand on this stage in front of a thousand, 10,000 people. And it's mesmerizing. And so it was just natural that we had no friends outside the company. And she and I became incredibly close. So I have to tell you, 51 years as my partner, 41 years as my wife. And she was awesome. And we made the perfect pair, complementing each other.

• 7:20Hala Taha?

  Oh, I love that story. And I love to hear how you were able to create a successful business with your partner. And I love to hear that it actually started as a business relationship and evolved into something more fulfilling and romantic. So I'm going to get to hiring later on in the interview. But first I want to focus on your leadership management style. When you first started at Remax, how were you as a leader compared to how you are as a leader now?

• 7:47Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, I was stubborn. I was too aggressive. And I thought I had all the answers in the world. And fast forward 50 years, growing up and maturing and figuring it out is I look back on those days and think, oh, my God, how the hell did we succeed? And in essence, I am the direct result of people, mentors, managers, leaders, books, seminars, of trying to find my way to success.

• 8:27Speaker 01

  And I was blessed with the most amazing group of people around me that when I was failing the first two or three years, I sat down and I said, I'm screwing up. I know I'm not doing a good job. What am I doing right? What am I doing wrong? And Realtors will tell you the truth. Our managers of our offices that Gail and I started were 20 years older than us. And they sat down and they took me to the woodshed. And I said, I'm coachable. I'm not smart, but I'm sure coachable. Tell me how to be the leader you want me to be. And those

• 9:07Speaker 01

  people and all the other things that happened in 50 years changed me immensely as a leader and a human being.

• 9:16Hala Taha?

  Feedback is so important. And maybe we can start here when we're thinking about leadership and principles and things like that. I'm an entrepreneur. I have 60 employees and I can easily take feedback from the closest people that work with me. But it's really hard for me to hear feedback from other employees that don't work directly with me because I feel like they don't understand how hard I'm working and everything going on behind the scenes. What's your advice to leaders to get better at receiving feedback, no matter who it's from?

• 9:50Speaker 01

  Well, this isn't the answer you want. It's ignore it. Everybody has an opinion. That doesn't mean everybody is right. If you're succeeding at what you're doing, criticism comes with a job title. And everybody's gonna think, I could do her job better than she can. That's nonsense. If you're the entrepreneur and you built the business, some clerk in the mailroom has not got the ability to tell you how the hell to run your business. So I always tell everybody, you will get advice from many sources. Whatever you do, you're

• 10:30Speaker 01

  the boss. You own it, you live with it, and you die with it. Never let an attorney

• 10:38Speaker 01

  Or an accountant, or a consultant, run your business. If they run into the ground, they walk away and you pay their fee. You are the person responsible for your corporation. Believe in yourself and charge forward. Listen to your confidants and be willing to accept criticism. It's okay, because we all make mistakes. But you just can't take the people that have no concept of what it's like to be responsible for an enterprise.

• 11:12Hala Taha?

  I totally agree. I'm happy you gave me that advice because that's what I told my confidants. I had a situation where somebody gave me this book of feedback. And when I read it, my heart sunk because I was like, man, she has no idea what she's talking about. I can't listen to this feedback and I kind of just threw it away and moved on. So I'm glad you're on the same page here. So Dave, you've got this new book. It's called Perfect Ten. Ten Leadership Principles to Achieve True Independence, Extreme Wealth, and Huge Success. Now, I have a lot of people that come on the show and especially lately, a lot of people don't define success with money and working harder and independence and things like that anymore.

• 11:54Hala Taha?

  So I want to understand your perspective of what success means. What does success mean to you?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Each individual has to determine success for themselves. The best definition I have ever heard of success is bannered about by three or four of the platform speakers. And it's very simple. I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, where I want to do it, how I want to do it, and with who I want to do it. And that is success. So I'm 79. I had a critical injury 12, 13 years ago. I survived it. I can't do the things that I did before. I drove NASCAR, I flew aerobatic jet planes, I scuba dived all over the world, I skydived. I did all these things.

• 12:45Speaker 01

  And all of a sudden, you wake up and you're paralyzed. I was a quad for almost a year. And so. Then you start thinking, what is success? And I realized doors open and doors close. And as much as I'd love to be at Daytona in February, leading the pole, it ain't never gonna happen at a man my age with my reflexes and my strength and my ability. So the door's closed, but other doors open up. So I was very fortunate. One time I had a dinner with a marvelous actress.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  She was 30 years older than me. And I asked her about, well, you were young and you were extraordinarily beautiful. You're a screen star. What's it like now to be in your 60s? And that dinner was a lasting impression to me. She said, when I was young, I was like a vibrant, young, wild, tasty wine. And now, 30, 40 years later, I'm a different taste of wine. I've mellowed, but I'm still strong and I'm happy with who I am. I've never forgotten that conversation because that's our world. We all will age.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  And the starting quarterback that was MVP after 35 is never going to be there again. And so you have to come to a feeling of that was then, this is now. Who can I be now?

• 14:28Hala Taha?

  I love that. I love that concept of your goalpost's always changing and that there's different goals at different stages of life. I think that's really beautiful. What was your goal in writing The Perfect Ten? Why did you write this book?

• 14:42Speaker 01

  A legacy? I was helped by dozens and dozens of people. Building a real estate company with major conventions. You hire the best speakers that are out there. You become bosom buddies with them and they accept their check and you get their advice. But you grow. And I made so many mistakes because I was so immature and uneducated. The College of Hard Knocks is a hell of an education. Most people can't afford the tuition. And so. There's not an original thought in the book. I tried to put that in the foreword of, hey,

• 15:24Speaker 01

  I have learned from the shoulders of giants of the very best in the world. None of this is original to me. It's all been passed down over hundreds of years. And the knowledge Aristotle, anybody back in the time is just as relevant today. It's 2,000 years later, and we still think the same way they thought. Our abilities have changed because of education, but in reality, common sense is common sense. And so every one of us should learn everything we can from anybody else.

• 16:05Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I totally agree. And I know you're such a proponent of reading. And I loved reading your book and hearing about the stories from other entrepreneurs and writers and things like that. So a lot of people who are tuning in, they are entrepreneurs. And I know that you invest in businesses. And in your book, you say, the most important question that you ask an entrepreneur when considering to invest in their business is why are you starting this business? And you say, there's just one right answer to this. You're not looking for any answer except for one right answer. Can you tell us this answer? And why responding in this way is so important to you?

• 16:41Speaker 01

  How do you want to change the world? Are you starting this thing to get rich? Are you starting this thing to dump it in five years and walk with a big paycheck and retire in Tahiti? What's your cause? What's your why? Why are you so passionate about this business that you're starting?

• 17:03Hala Taha?

  Why is passion so important to you? Because a lot of people say, don't follow your passion. Passion doesn't make you money. But why do you feel like passion makes a good entrepreneur?

• 17:12Speaker 01

  If you're dreaming, dream big. Shoe for the moon. Don't have little bitty goals. Have a giant goal. My goal was to build the largest, most successful real estate company in the history of the world. With big dreams come big obstacles. If you have a passion and you believe it and you go to sleep at night thinking about it and you get up in the morning thinking about, I've got to get to the office because this is, this is my world, this is my passion. You can get over the day-to-day mistakes and problems that you will face. You have to be a dreamer. You're an entrepreneur, you know that.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  I can make the world a better place. I'm not here to make more money. I'm here to change people's lives.

• 18:03Hala Taha?

  It's so true. When building my company, I pay attention to the numbers and stuff, but that's definitely not what motivates me. What motivates me is just keep building and innovating and growing a team and making an impact. So when it comes to entrepreneurship, you obviously are literally one of the most accomplished entrepreneurs in the world. Can you talk about the personality traits and the skills that you think are conducive to entrepreneurship?

• 18:27Speaker 01

  I have a marketing background, sales background, selling franchises and so on. A lot of people say the marketing person is not going to be a good manager. Not going to be a good leader. I totally disagree. If you're a real estate agent and you're service oriented and you give a damn about your customer and you care more about them than you do about your commission, you couldn't be a success. Zig Ziglar, motivational speaker from, God, 40 years ago. And he said one time, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you care.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  And that even at age 20, as a real estate agent in the military with a crew cut haircut and 130 pounds.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Like I'm somebody's teenage kid. I succeeded because I managed to convince the customer. I will work my tail off for you and I will never sell you something that's not right. And I don't care if I make a commission or not, I'm going to solve your problem. Once I had that reputation, it made no difference if I was 20 or 30. And so I think the most important aspect is you do have to have a passion. You have to figure out what difference am I going to make in the world? Now, if I can say this very modestly, for 10 years, I was the youngest person in REMEX.

• 20:00Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, 50 years later, many of my people I sold to in the seventies and eighties have retired and passed away. The biggest joy I have in my life is having letters sent to me and my wife. You changed my life. I created wealth for my family. I never had the life I thought I would have. You have impacted me so immensely. I want you to know that before I die. That's what leadership is. Leadership is not stock options. Leadership is not, I'm CEO, look at me.

• 20:40Speaker 01

  Leadership is, did you turn around and put your hand down to help the next person come up a couple more steps up the mountain? And that is total gratification.

• 20:52Hala Taha?

  I completely agree. I feel like the impact you make on other people is such a big part of leadership and getting motivated as a leader. Another aspect that you call out in your book in terms of what makes a good leader is optimism. And you highlight the power of optimism in a story with Ernest Shackleton and his crew's survival in Antarctica. Can you share that story with us?

• 21:15Speaker 01

  Ernest Shackleton was a unique individual. He was born in a family and I can't remember six daughters than him, the youngest. And the daughters had a unique impression on him. In an era, 1907, 1910, where the general said, jump, and the private had to say, how high on the way up? Command and control. He was unique. Women are unique business people. And most of them are more compassionate. Most of them like to ask everybody's opinion.

• 21:59Speaker 01

  And how are we going to succeed at this? Instead of a command and control situation. So he was a hundred years ahead of his time. They get stuck in the ice near the South Pole. They get frozen in. The ice gets stronger and stronger. They're happy in their little boat. They had food, warmth, and the boat starts to crumble. And they have to get out and live on the ice flow. And so he had 27 men. They got out on the ice. And they had to live for over a year and a half. At the end of their journey.

• 22:42Speaker 01

  Every man wrote in their diary. He was the single greatest leader they'd ever met in their life. He put people in tents, two and three people to a tent. And every day he visited each tent and sat and said, how are we doing? What's your thoughts? What do you suggest we do? Do we pull our lifeboats and try to get to land? Do we do this? Do we do that? It was a very feminine management trait at that time, which is very unusual. And so he brought them all home alive. By the way, in his diary, he wanted to kill them. He literally had three or four people he just wanted to shoot.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  But he didn't. He was one of the greatest leaders we've ever seen in our lifetime. And every man, and I'm sorry, it was all men. Every man said, this is the greatest leader I've ever worked with. That's an amazing story of survival. In desperate means, with not enough food, not enough sunlight, not enough warmth, and he brought them all home.

• 23:51Hala Taha?

  And I know that one of the things that he did was actually lead by example. And he was helping them on the ground. He was very hands-on in making sure that everybody was going to be okay and everything got done that needed to get done for survival, right? But I know that, bringing it back to modern times, the more that you scale your business, when you first start as an entrepreneur, you're more hands-on because you're starting the business from scratch, you're involved in everything. But then as you hire and scale and hire and scale and hire and scale, you naturally start to just get more strategic and less hands-on. So how can we actually lead by example as our company scales?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  I have a concept I read about called "We All Carry the Boxes." I felt as a leader that I had to do everything that my employees did to prove that I'll work just as hard as you will. I had an interesting situation with a black gentleman that became one of my best friends of my entire life. I was going on speaking tours five days a week. I always took some younger people with me to set up the meeting rooms and just help set up the autograph booths and all that stuff.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  And this young gentleman, every place we stopped and we flew in, would grab my briefcase, grab my suitcase, "Let me get that for you, Mr. Linderger." He was like, I finally looked at him and I said, "Koran? I'm a man. I can carry my own damn briefcase." The last stop of the week was Washington DC, Dulles. We were at a Marriott and I had a whole bunch of stuff I was carrying, briefcase, suitcase, overhead projector and all this crap. And I got to the door, I said, "Koran, would you get the door for me?" And he looked at me and he says, "You're a man. Get your own damn door."

• 25:53Speaker 01

  I knew on that moment, he was not scared of me. I knew at that moment, he had a sense of humor. And he just didn't give a damn. And he became one of my top officers in my life and one of his friends because he showed the aptitude of, I'm not kissing your butt. You know, you'll be temperamental with me, I'll be right temperamental back with you. And I was 30 years older than him. And so, you know, when you look for leadership, you look for people that are afraid. You look at people that are willing to just grab it and go for it. And he was.

• 26:33Hala Taha?

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• 27:15Hala Taha?

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• 27:49Hala Taha?

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• 28:32Hala Taha?

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• 28:52Hala Taha?

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• 29:36Hala Taha?

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• 30:05Hala Taha?

  I know building trust and credibility is so important for team building and for people to follow you. What is your best advice for building trust and credibility with your team?

• 30:16Speaker 01

  The first thing you have to understand is loyalty is a two-way street and loyalty starts at the top going down, not the down going up. It is your responsibility to be totally 100% loyal to your employees. Herb Kelleher, founder of Southwest Airlines, gave a speech, I was sitting in the front row, and he said, "The customer is not always right." He said, "If you have a drunk passenger who is harassing your flight attendants and being just a mess, throw him off your fucking airplane." He took the side of his employees

• 31:00Speaker 01

  and said, "You're valued to me more than that customer is. The customer's not always right. My employees are doing their job. If they're right, we don't want that customer." Loyalty starts top-down. If you're loyal to your employees, your vendors, your customers, the loyalty will be replayed.

• 31:23Hala Taha?

  I know that in your book, you also say you have to be fair and responsible to all your stakeholders, right? You can't just only focus on your customers. You've got to think if you've got shareholders, board members, employees, vendors, there's so many other people to care about. So I know there's a lot of priority balancing. How do you suggest we handle that?

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Oh, this is controversial. I think that everybody needs to be treated fair, but not equal. So if I have a good franchisee in Canyon City, Colorado, that has 15 agents...

• 32:03Speaker 01

  And that individual calls me and says, Dave, will you come to my Christmas party? Or you come to my New Year's grand opening? And I have to say, no, I have 9,000 offices and I can't be there. But I can do a DVD or a hyperlink and say hi to everybody. If my biggest broker in California has 100 pre-max offices, and he says, can you fly out to my meeting with my agents? The answer is, hell, yes. I'm sorry, I can't go to 15 agents. I can go to 2,000 agents.

• 32:44Speaker 01

  And so you have to start prioritizing the fact of everybody's valuable. But you have such limited personal time to care for the network. You have to run the business. You have to do all the things you have as a entrepreneur. And you still have to try to have friendships and personal relationships. And so fair, but not necessarily equal.

• 33:13Hala Taha?

  Such good advice. You also highlight vulnerability as a leadership strength. So how do you suggest we be more vulnerable?

• 33:21Speaker 01

  It's easy. Just be who you are. If you make a mistake, admit it immediately. Don't be phony, don't be false, don't be superhero, don't be Wonder Woman. Just say, hey, team, I screwed up. I made a mistake. I'm sincerely sorry, I will not make the same mistake twice. And it's amazing. Your employees will be very forgiving. They don't want you to be God. They don't want you to be different than them. They want to know that you're a human being.

• 33:56Hala Taha?

  I learned something from Howard Behar. So I interviewed Howard Behar years ago. He's the president of Starbucks, former president of Starbucks for many years. And he told me something that I'll never forget about leadership. He said, only the truth sounds like the truth. So he had a period of time where he had to lay off thousands of employees at once. And he was debating on what he should tell people. And his assistant told him, Howard, only the truth sounds like the truth. And he went into his team and he told them, we've got to lay people off because of XYZ. He just told them the truth and everybody was really understanding. And I never forgot that lesson because I feel like as a leader, sometimes you just gotta tell the truth.

• 34:39Hala Taha?

  And people usually will accept it and be kind about it and understand.

• 34:45Speaker 01

  People are incredibly kind. They like transparency. They like honesty. And the hardest thing in the world is laying people off because of the economy or whatever it might be. You're affecting their lives. You can't sugarcoat it. And I had to do layoffs twice in RE/MAX's history. And I'm sorry, I'm a manly man. I cried both times. They knew that I hurt having to lay them off.

• 35:16Hala Taha?

  So, speaking of RE/MAX, let's talk about RE/MAX for a bit and some of the entrepreneurial things that you learned along the way. Can you tell us about how you first came up with the name of RE/MAX?

• 35:28Speaker 01

  Well, we sat around having shots of tequila, some salt and lime. And nobody wanted to call it Dave Lenninger Real Estate. I thought that was pretty egotistical. And at the time, ASO had just changed the name to Exxon. They'd spent millions of dollars on this trademark, only to find out it was a foul language in a different country. But anyway, it was five letters and a couple of slashes and we sat around and we said, well, RE/MAX. That's real estate maximums. Maximum commission to the agent. Maximum service to the customer with no part timers or beginners. Maximum profit for the broker owner.

• 36:12Speaker 01

  And we came up with RE/MAX and we looked at that and said, eh, somebody's gonna think there's a Mr. or Mrs. RE/MAX. We took the periods out, threw a slash and... Five Vietnam vets, so we had a red, white, and blue sign. A lot of market research went into this.

• 36:31Hala Taha?

  Your balloon logo is one of the most recognizable logos in the world. So you, as an entrepreneur, were really good at recognizing opportunity. Can you talk about how you disrupted the business model that was traditionally in real estate and how you disrupted it?

• 36:48Speaker 01

  In 1973, the traditional commission split between the real estate agent and the owner of the office was 50/50. The owner of the office used their 50% to pay overhead, marketing, secretaries, rent, et cetera, and make a profit. The agent, they had their 50%, but they had to pay for their automobile. Nobody pays for retirement for real estate agents. Nobody pays for social security or insurance or whatever. And so, in reality, real estate agent never did make 50/50. After paying their own personal expenses and stuff, they were more like, I don't know, 80/20 or 75/25.

• 37:32Speaker 01

  And so, we looked at it and said, why not have an office like a group of doctors, lawyers, architects, or dentists that shares office space, pays their own personal expenses and they're part of the office space, and keeps the majority for themselves? Cheaper than going into business for yourself. And the end result was, as we started the company, the split changed about 85/15. So, very controversial. The industry hated it. They hated me. Today, I'm an icon. But I outlived everybody because they were all in their 40s and 50s when they were trying to drive me out of business.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  And so, as a model, we changed the entire real estate industry's commission splits.

• 38:21Hala Taha?

  Yeah, and something else that you did differently is that your perspective of who the customer was changed. So originally, the customer was the buyer, the seller, and now the customer was the agent. Can you tell us more about that?

• 38:35Speaker 01

  I decided that I was not in the real estate business. I was in the real estate agent business. And my job was to create an environment where real estate agents could be more successful than any place else in the world. They were in the real estate business. They handled the buyers and sellers. We stuck with that for 50 some years. It is the backbone of our company. Our average agent has twice the experience and three times the sales volume of other full-time realtors in the world. And it worked.

• 39:10Hala Taha?

  Now, how can people outside of the real estate industry took what you did and leverage it for their industry?

• 39:17Speaker 01

  As we started to expand RE/MAX from Colorado with an amazing success story after five years, and we went into various markets, and we went to Atlanta, and they said, "Well, we don't steal each other's agents down here. We're kind of genteel." And we went to Chicago, and they said, "You guys are cowboys. You wear cowboy clothes and blue jeans. We're sophisticated. We have coats and ties." Went to Quebec, they said, "You don't even speak French." So everybody said, "We're different. We're different. We're different." And as we went around the world, every country is different. We're in socialist countries. We're in communist

• 40:01Speaker 01

  countries. We're in democracies. We're in countries that 80% of the countries we're in don't even have a multiple listening service or realtors. And everybody keeps saying, "We're different." And in every country we went to, we became incredibly successful. And the thing's fascinating about the success was, I couldn't figure out why, with all the differences. And it finally came down to, human beings have some common commonalities, if you will, what human beings want. We want to raise our children to our moral standards and our religious beliefs, not somebody else's. We want to make more money so that we can provide

• 40:45Speaker 01

  elder care, or childcare, or provide for our children.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  We want to do our business our way. I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it, where I want to do it, how I want to do it, and with who I want to do it. So it had nothing to do with the commission split, working in 110 countries. It had everything to do with a leadership concept of, I have one job in this real estate office. I'm not here to motivate you to become more successful. I can put a gun to your head and say, stand up. If you don't stand up, you're an idiot. The minute the police take me away, you never have to think about me again. My job as a leader, for any person that's listening to this podcast, your job is to create an environment where the people that work for you

• 41:36Speaker 01

  can achieve the level of success they want. We had 100% Club 73, making $100,000 a year, which is unreal figure at that time. And I couldn't figure out, why in the world didn't everybody want to work that hard? It took me about 10 years to figure it out. And there are people who are very happy at age 60 are not going to work 18-hour days anymore. They've got good clients, they've got referrals, and they want to have time to golf and be with the grandkids, and they're happy making $60,000 a year. And so it finally dawned on me, this, not my responsibility to say, everybody should make $100,000 or $200,000 a year.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  I'm supposed to create an environment where they can achieve the level of success they want. Period.

• 42:28Hala Taha?

  I love that you called that out. I literally had, in quotes, to say next, "Our job as a leader isn't about getting everything we can from somebody. It's about creating an environment in which people can achieve as much as they want." That is so powerful. So aside from payment structure, so I know that you really changed the game in terms of the amount of commission that people make, where if they sell more, they make more. Aside from the payment structure, how are you creating an environment in which people can achieve as much as they want?

• 42:58Speaker 01

  If you read the book, I talk about leadership. And the number one most important factor of a leader is a leader sells hope. I don't care if it's Martin Luther King. He's talking to brown and white people of our children can do better. They can be equal. We can live in the same neighborhoods. We can have the same advantages. And he was nonviolent and he tried to preach. There's hope in the future for us. If you go back to Reagan, Reagan said, make America great. The only thing Trump did was say, make America great again. Hillary said, stronger with Hillary. Nobody gave a damn.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Obama had one word, hope. And he won. And so great leaders have to be optimistic, but they have to have a dream. And they have to sell to their followers that we together will have a better life together. And so as an entrepreneur, I had dozens of people tried to hire my officers away from me in the seventies and eighties and nineties, offering them twice what they could make. And they never left because we had our dream together. And we had this optimism that we would change the world. And we did.

• 44:26Hala Taha?

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• 45:08Hala Taha?

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• 45:43Hala Taha?

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• 46:28Hala Taha?

  So I recommend you take a shopping trip through a few live shows, see how it works, and maybe you'll be inspired to start selling too. Search Whatnot, W-H-A-T-N-O-T, in the App Store. Download and start selling right away.

• 46:44Hala Taha?

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• 47:26Hala Taha?

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• 47:50Hala Taha?

  So I know one of your mentors was Dave Stone. And you said that his mentorship was really instrumental in your early success. What were some of the key lessons and strategies that you learned from Dave that you then carried on throughout your career?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  I'd been licensed for six months. I had no intention of being a real estate agent. I was buying investment properties. But I got a license to maybe say to the commission. And I looked around at these old people in my office. I was still in the military and they were old. I mean, some of them forty, fifty, sixty years old. And they'd make a deal once every three or four months. And I thought, man, I could do this. And six months into it, crew cut haircut, one hundred and thirty pounds Volkswagen with a cracked windshield and no air conditioning in Phoenix. In the summer. And not one deal. I quit. I got my little cardboard box.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  My manager stood there and said, I didn't think you would ever make it. And I said, well, why the hell did you hire me? And he says, we're in the roasty business. Everybody's got a mother, a brother, a next door neighbor and a best friend. You know, you never know when you can get a deal. I'd paid to go to Dave Stone's seminar, twenty-five dollars. This is, God, nineteen, I don't know, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, whatever it was, Mountain Shadows, Country Club in Scottsdale. I went, I sat in the front row. Even though I'd quit. And he was mesmerizing. He was so smooth. He was so cool. He had a gift to gab for everything and he was talking about how to handle objections,

• 49:34Speaker 01

  how to do this, how to do that. And I'm sitting there, every break I jumped up and grabbed his hand like an idiot, groupie, and I said, "Oh, oh my God, Mr. Stone, that's fascinating. Man, if I had your, your gift, I could be a success." He says, "How long have you been trying?" And I said, "Six months." And he says, "Well, how many deals have you got?" And I said, "None." And he says, "If I were you, I'd quit." And I said, "I did. But I'm going back. I'm going back to work today. I can do this." Strange world. I'm going home that night, my stupid Volkswagen with a cracked windshield and no air conditioning. Latino girl, probably about twenty or twenty-one, is talking to her

• 50:19Speaker 01

  father, half-English, half-Spanish. I stopped in to get a gallon of milk for the kids. And I said, "Excuse me, are you talking about real estate?" And she said, "My father's moving to Albuquerque and we need to sell his house, but we don't know how to do that." And I looked at him and I said, "Senor, do you know how much a real estate commission is?" And he said, "No lo comprende," or something, I don't know what he said. I said, "Do you know what title insurance is?" "No lo comprende." I said, "He needs me. I'm a Realtor." I followed him home, listed the house. I'm, "This is terrible. Ten thousand five hundred hours. That house today would be two hundred and some thousand dollars."

• 50:59Speaker 01

  Two full-price offers that night. The next morning, I'm laying in bed with my wife, slapped her on her bottom and say, "Wake up!" And she said, "What?" "You're sleeping with one hell of a fine Realtor, man. A hundred percent of my listings have sold for full price in less than two hours."

• 51:18Speaker 01

  That day, I took the girl and her fiance and sold them a house. That afternoon, I sold their best friend's a house, and the next morning, I sold their friend's a house. So in basically forty-eight hours...

• 51:34Speaker 01

  I hadn't sold a single Anglo person a house. The girls hugged me and kissed me and said, oh, my God, my parents don't even own a house. And we now own a house. And the guys slapped me on the back and shook hands and said, hey, amigo, this is fabulous. My parents don't own a house. It was set. I did three hundred and sixty five transactions, part time, still in the military, in the next three hundred and sixty five days. The only difference was those four customers gave me the confidence to be able to look at the next customer and say, well, I made three deals this week.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  The same Volkswagen with a cracked windshield, the same hundred and thirty five pound combat soldier, and overnight, Stone changed my life. He gave me the confidence. I followed him. He helped me design Remax when I designed it. He gave me a three hundred page manual on why it would never work and a twenty page attachment that said, but if you do this and this and this, you will. And I was very fortunate. I had this unbelievable, remarkable man that changed my life.

• 52:50Hala Taha?

  And how did you get him to be your mentor if you were struggling? Like, what were the ways that you actually got him to be your mentor?

• 52:58Speaker 01

  I was so aggressive. I was just a groupie. He had to look at me and think, you idiot. But I pushed it, I pushed it, I pushed it and ended up becoming one of the best friends of my life.

• 53:14Hala Taha?

  I have a similar story. When I was first starting out in podcasting, I went after literally the top podcaster in my field, Jordan Harbinger, and I would just send him stuff, information that I had, showed him that I was working hard, working hard, and finally he started helping me. So that's how you have to do it. You have to show that you're really, really eager and you really, really want the help and you're willing to work hard for it.

• 53:38Speaker 01

  Lots of people will ask me to mentor them. And as you get older, you're very young, but as you get older, you start measuring your hours and saying, what's important to me? And what's important to me is giving a hand down to help the next person get up the mountain. And so many people have been kind to me in my life. And so, you know, that becomes part of what do you want to do as a mentor? The problem with being a mentor is nine out of 10 people will nod and take notes and smile, but they won't execute. They'll ask you for advice and you tell them the advice and they say, oh, that's wonderful. And they won't execute the next day.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  And so you get to the point where you don't want to mentor people because you're wasting my time.

• 54:28Hala Taha?

  I prefer for people to intern for me now if they want my mentorship because I feel like that's the way that I can teach them and it's mutually valuable. And then they can move on if they want to move on or get hired if they want to get hired. That's my preference now. Let's move on to strategy, hiring and firing. I know we don't have that much time left, but I definitely want to understand what is your strategy around hiring and firing at RE/MAX?

• 54:51Speaker 01

  Firing is tough. I used to brag for 38 years, not one individual had left RE/MAX as one of my officers on their own. I didn't fire anybody. I took a seminar, can't remember where, and it was the first time you think that you ought to fire somebody is the day you should fire them. And yet, if you're a realtor or you're a salesperson or an entrepreneur, you want to be liked. And so you tolerate nonsense from idiots. And the day you finally have the guts to fire somebody, the next morning you get up

• 55:36Speaker 01

  and say, why the hell didn't I do that 10 years ago? So the problem with me was my officers traveled with me constantly. We did 200 and some speaking days a year and officers went with me. We had breakfast together, lunch together, dinner, flights together and cocktails. We went to each other's marriages and divorces and cancer with our parents and our funerals and whatever.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  It's hard when you're close friends with everybody. So I take this course. And I came home to Gail and I said, "We got four of these guys that I've worked with for years and they don't have fire on the belly anymore. They feel entitled. They've been here 25 years. I don't have to work that hard." And I said, "You and I still work this hard. I've got to solve this problem." She and I brainstormed and role-played. And I called each one in individually and I said, "Hi. It's time for a serious conversation. I've talked to you for two years about, I don't think you've got the fire on the belly and I don't think you care about the network like we do.

• 56:49Speaker 01

  So I've made a decision. And that decision is, I can fire you and give you a two-week severance package, or you can resign and I'll give you a one-year severance package. Which do you want?" And that starts the argument of, "No, no, no, no. Oh, you don't understand me. I really work hard." I said, "Nope. I'm sorry. My decision has been made. I'm done. This is your decision. Two weeks severance? And I fire you? Or you resign? And I'll give you a year's severance." All four of them took it. The next day was a company-wide meeting for the employees at headquarters. 400 people.

• 57:34Speaker 01

  We do the meeting. We put out the awards and talked about the updates. And at the end, I always said, "Are there any questions for me?" So I'm fairly conservative. I have a very liberal, left-wing Democrat in the editorial staff. And he stood up and he says, "Dave, what the hell did he have on you that you didn't fire him 10 years ago?" And now I'm in front of 400 people. And I said, "I didn't have the personal courage to be the leader that you deserved. And that I finally realized that when I don't fire somebody that's incompetent, I have three groups of people."

• 58:18Speaker 01

  I hurt the individual because they're pigeonholed. I'm never going to promote them or give them another pay raise. I hurt the people that work for them because they know that person's an idiot. And I hurt myself and my shareholders because I didn't have the personal courage to face up to a friendship challenge of we were no longer a good fit together. And the room applauded. I was vulnerable. I said it was my mistake. It's my fault. And they accepted it. So when you talk about leadership concepts, firing is the most important thing you can do. If you have somebody that's abusing, nasty, just unkind to their employees,

• 59:04Speaker 01

  you're tolerating that. The fact that you don't make a decision is you made the decision. If you can't make the decision, fire them. You've made the decision. I'll put up with their crap.

• 59:15Hala Taha?

  It's so true.

• 59:16Speaker 01

  It's a tough deal. That's why we get paid the big paycheck, right? And so when you talk about leadership, that's the hardest thing. Hiring? You should hire very, very slow and fire very, very fast.

• 59:34Hala Taha?

  Yeah, with hiring, I love something that you mentioned in the book about hiring salespeople that I just wanted to touch on before we go. You said to hire both hunters and farmers, which I loved. So tell us about that.

• 59:47Speaker 01

  In the sales field, there are hunters and farmers. The hunters live for the kill. They want to go out, kill something, put it over their shoulder, bring it back to TP and put it on the ground and say, hey, let's have some food. And they want to go out and hunt again. Farmers, they are slow, methodical. They want to build relationships. They want a lifetime experience with this individual. You need both salespeople. You need farmers that will have the patience to build relationships over periods and periods of years. But you still gotta have the hunters that can go out and score the kill.

• 1:00:29Hala Taha?

  Dave, this was such an awesome conversation. I feel like we learned so much about your own personal entrepreneurship journey and as well as your leadership principles and everything like that. I always end my show with two questions that I ask all of my guests. And this can be outside of everything that we talked about today. Just answer it from your heart. The first one is, what is one actionable thing our young improfitters can do today to become more profitable tomorrow?

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  I think the most actionable thing is, you have to be a lifelong learner. One of the biggest deficiencies I've seen in many of the officers that I've hired is, they got their college degree, they know it all, they don't buy a book. If they buy a book, it's fiction. And they don't continue to study and find out, how do I build my business? How do I build my, my life? That's the most important aspect of, the most successful people I've mentored are sponges. They will learn from everybody, everything they can, and they will execute.

• 1:01:30Hala Taha?

  And I know you're a huge, huge reader. So what recommendations do you have in terms of books that us entrepreneurs read?

• 1:01:37Speaker 01

  The old classic is Think and Grow Rich.

• 1:01:40Hala Taha?

  Yeah, I love that.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  By Napoleon Hill. It is tried, it's tired. Half the book is worthless. The first half is pretty darn good. I think the best book out there is Success Principles by Jack Canfield. And it is a fabulous book. It's big, it's six, 700 pages, but it's three to four page chapters that you can pick and choose what you want to learn from. It's very motivational. The other thing is, The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy. And it is little steps. Done repeatedly over years gives you amazing results.

• 1:02:26Speaker 01

  And the final one would be Kaizen. And that's the Japanese concept of 1% improvement of 100 things every day. And not 100% improvement once a year.

• 1:02:39Hala Taha?

  I'm going to make it my mission to read all four of those books by the end of the year. Thanks to you. And what would you say? This is the last and final question. What is your secret to profiting in life?

• 1:02:52Speaker 01

  Profiting in life is what is your goal? And so if your goal was to reach 65 and retire and go fishing, then you've been successful. I have an interesting company right now. It's called Porta Subs. It's a sub sandwich company. The highest best quality sub sandwich in the world. It's based really in Nevada with a couple adjoining states. And I bought it from the guy that retired. But I'm developing it very rapidly. And regional developer model, we've got 20 some regions sold. We're going to expand, will be worldwide in no time at all.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  The thing was fascinating to me about it was in the real estate business, I changed. I should say, Gail and I changed the world because we hired women. And in 73, that was not popular. The part time housewife was like, well, they're not serious about the business. They're taking jobs away from a white man, all of that crap. It was an old white man's, white haired deal. So we changed a lot of lives, but we changed it with women. Eventually we changed it multicultural as we became big and successful.

• 1:04:12Speaker 01

  Porta subs is amazing. It's much less expensive to start a sub sandwich shop than it is to start a McDonald's for $10 million. And it is a chance for multiculturalists to get their foot into private ownership of an enterprise. And so 65% of our franchisees are multicultural. In most cases, they're the first person in the family to own a business. And it's been around 50 years. And so we have multicultural people whose children are the first children in their family to go to college and are now taking over the business.

• 1:04:55Speaker 01

  And so to me, entrepreneurship is about getting a chance to get your foot in the door. And so a lot of times, the first generation are immigrants. They may be a teacher or a doctor in a foreign country that can't do that here. And so they become a janitor or whatever, or carpenter. Second generation usually is one of the trades. And the third generation are small business owners that are hiring the trades. It is a wonderful evolution of people having a chance to build family wealth.

• 1:05:30Hala Taha?

  Well, Dave, thank you so much. I feel like you gave so much information, your wealth of knowledge. I'm so happy that you're giving back and building this legacy. Your book was so wonderful. Where can everybody learn more about you and everything that you do?

• 1:05:43Speaker 01

  davelindiger.com. You can follow me along there. There's all kinds of things like God knows what, Facebook, Instagram, et cetera, et cetera. But it's a pleasure to be able to give back and maybe help the next person one more step up.

• 1:06:00Hala Taha?

  Thank you so much, Dave.

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  You're a delight. Thank you full much.

• 1:06:07Hala Taha?

  Yeah, bam. I really am blessed to have this job. I love my job because it's so amazing to speak with true business legends like Dave Liniger. I got to hear the story behind a company like RE/MAX, how it got its start, how it scaled, and how it's turned itself into an iconic brand. Dave has lived and breathed being an entrepreneur for decades now, and has experienced the highs and the lows that go with that. I loved hearing the question he likes to ask other entrepreneurs when he's considering to invest in their company. "Why are you starting this business?" It's a simple question, but it's an answer that can tell you everything you need to know about somebody's motivations, their drive,

• 1:06:48Hala Taha?

  and whether they have a chance at succeeding. Like Simon Sinek always says, "What's your why?" Dave also knows a few things about when and when not to take feedback as a leader, be willing to accept criticism, but also be strong enough to believe in yourself and discard feedback that's not helpful. Dave also learned the hard way why sometimes you have to fire a low-performing employee. If you don't, you're hurting three groups of people: that employee who you will never promote, the people who work with them and who know that that person can't do their job and so it brings them down, and finally, yourself and your company because their continued presence at your company shows you that you

• 1:07:28Hala Taha?

  don't have the courage to make a tough decision. And that will definitely impact your confidence. After all, leadership, as Dave put it, is really the impact that you have on others. It's not about getting everything that you want, it's about creating an environment in which others can achieve what they want. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting. If you want to have an impact on others by sharing some of these leadership lessons that you learned today on the podcast, then please, share this episode with somebody who could use it. Spread this podcast by word of mouth. And if you did enjoy this show and you learned something, then take a couple minutes and drop us a review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to

• 1:08:10Hala Taha?

  your podcasts. Guys, I'm not lying when I say that I check my reviews every day. This is a platform that does not have two-way communication. It's not like social media where you guys can DM me or comment. The only way that I know that you guys are really listening and appreciating the show is by writing me a review. I check them out all the time. I want to know the good, I want to know the bad. Tell me what you think about the show. And if you prefer to watch your podcast as videos, you can find me on YouTube. Just look up the show, Young and Profiting, you'll find all of our episodes on there. If you want to find me on Instagram, it's Yap with Hala, Y-A-P with Hala. Or LinkedIn, search my name, it's Hala Taha. And I of course want to take a minute to shout out my amazing production team.

• 1:08:54Hala Taha?

  Thank you guys so much for all your hard work, all your dedication. You make the show what it is. This is your host, Hala Taha, AKA The Podcast Princess, signing off.

• 1:09:20Hala Taha?

  Hey Yap fam, if you're growing an audience on social media but struggling to turn those followers into actual customers, I've got a podcast recommendation for you. It's called Build Your Tribe, hosted by social media expert and entrepreneur Brock Johnson, right here on the Yap Media Podcast Network. Brock shares practical strategies to help entrepreneurs and creators grow their online presence and turn engagement into revenue. Whether you're trying to create content that gets noticed, grow your email list, launch a digital product, or figure out how to monetize your audience, Brock breaks it all down into simple, actionable steps you can start using right away. Because growing a following is one thing, building a profitable business around it, that's a whole different game. If you're ready to grow your audience and turn that attention into something bigger,

• 1:10:05Hala Taha?

  check out Build Your Tribe. Subscribe today on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you listen or watch podcasts.