Real Estate Rules! Eagles Don't Flock!

EvrybdyWins.gifBiz books tend to predictably focus on the Apples & Microsofts & GEs & Southwests & Wal*Marts … not the “mundane” world of real estate & real-estate services. Yet the industry is a monster and an economic bellwether of the first order. The 800-pound gorilla, with 100,000 agents, 32-consecutive years of growth and about $400 billion in annual transactions, is RE/MAX. And now there’s a highly instructive book on their wildly successful origins & practices: Everybody Wins, by Phil Harkins and Keith Hollihan. Founder Dave Liniger, who upset every apple cart in sight with his contrarian ideas, belongs in the same league as a Sam Walton or Jack Welch, as I see it. I love it when enormous, overlooked (by the “guru establishment”) corners of the economy grab the limelight. Big “secret”: Hire only the Best … and kill yourself to find them & support them. It’d be no surprise, except that it remains, still, the exception to the rule. (Contrarian idea, in the age of team mania: “Eagles don’t flock.”) RE/MAX considers themselves a “Life Success Company” … not a real estate company—and they act the role brilliantly. I put together a few slides from the book—for your perusal. (And thanks, Acela again, for the live power jacks.)