Originally published in the March 2005 Issue of Link & Learn. 

One day shortly after Dave Liniger co-founded the national real estate firm RE/MAX, an ambitious employee came to work at 5 a.m., hoping to beat his notoriously early-bird co-workers. Instead, he caught the workaholic Liniger in his underwear crawling on the floor amid piles of paper. Liniger had been up all night, putting together a big mailing that had to go out that morning.

That 32-year-old story, from the new book Everybody Wins: The Story and Lessons Behind RE/MAX (John Wiley & Sons), begins to explain the appeal of one of the most unlikely publishing successes of 2004.

A corporate history of a company that brokers property is not exactly ''The Da Vinci Code." But if the key to real estate is location, location, location, then ''Everybody Wins" has located the literary equivalent of prime real estate, nesting on business bestseller lists from The Wall Street Journal to Barnes & Noble to Amazon.com. The book is in its third printing, with more than 100,000 copies in print.

''This is clearly the biggest hit that I've had," says coauthor Phil Harkins, who's written three other leadership books. Harkins, chief executive of Linkage Inc., a Burlington consulting firm, partnered with Brooklyn writer Keith Hollihan on ''Everybody Wins."

With 100,000 agents in 52 countries, RE/MAX brokers more property transactions than any other real estate company on the planet -- almost 2 million a year worth almost $400 billion, according to the authors. In North America, where the book reports that 1.2 million people make a living as real estate agents, those affiliated with RE/MAX represent 7 percent of American agents and 18 percent of Canadians -- a nice starting base of potential readers.

While ''Everybody Wins" lapses occasionally into management-primer mush (''Create a culture that honors princes and princesses"), it strives for a novelistic narrative with colorful personalities, none more so than Liniger, a college dropout from Marion, Ind., who served in the US Air Force, has raced on the NASCAR circuit, scuba-dives in dangerous waters, and aborted an effort to be the first person to fly a balloon around the world. Today he's 59, and the company chairman.

''I think it's interesting that a book about a single company in the real estate business seems to have captured so many people's interest," says Sara Nelson, editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, the industry news magazine, ''because it is not explicitly a how-to book nor is it about a quote, unquote sexy industry." But, she added, ''An interesting narrative about compelling people is the Holy Grail. That's what people want to read."

Moreover, everyone has had some contact with the real estate business. Books about real estate have been hot sellers for Wiley in recent years, says Joan O'Neil, Wiley's vice president and publisher, in part because of timing: As the stock market tanked and then treaded water, real estate became an even more attractive place for investors to park their money.

The mediocre business climate also has executives and entrepreneurs scrounging for ways to prosper. Now comes a book that details how RE/MAX (short for ''Real Estate Maximums," dreamed up by the founders over a bottle of tequila to convey the maximum gains they envisioned for agents and customers) has grown every year since its founding in 1973 in the hostile, high-interest rate wasteland of the Jimmy Carter era.

The authors confess to having fallen hard for RE/MAX and especially Liniger, the book's hero.

''If you are looking for criticism, skepticism, or negativity, you will not find it in this book," they write. Mercifully, that disclaimer isn't true. Mistakes are invaluable teachers, and ''Everybody Wins" mentions some beauts that almost cost Liniger his business. Early on, excessive debt and Liniger's highhandedness led to a payroll pinch, unpaid taxes, a branch managers' revolt, and a close call with bankruptcy.

Still, ''This is an up book," says Harkins in an interview. ''It's about a company that started from nothing. . . . I think this is like a story of a dream come true, in that it's about the American experience."

Harkins has gotten letters from academics, small-business owners, and even a few Fortune 500 executives who have read the book. One writer, a hardware store owner, said he planned to change the way he paid employees after reading it. ''I'm thinking about changing the way I do my business as a result of writing this book," says Harkins.

The authors explain in plain language how RE/MAX succeeded in a cutthroat industry. Instead of the firm splitting sales commissions 50-50 with agents, Liniger charged agents a fee to affiliate with RE/MAX and then let them pocket the entire commission, figuring they'd be motivated to work harder and sell more. Liniger combined that commission structure with a cunning brand strategy, advertised by that ubiquitous balloon logo on TV ads and signs.

RE/MAX also operates its own satellite TV channel. Nancy Edmond, a RE/MAX agent from Concord, read the book after seeing a plug on the station. A RE/MAX agent for six years, Edmond thought ''Everybody Wins" accurately captured the company, ''the dream and [that] you do have to be a different type of person" to work there. ''You have to want some independence and realize you do want to do better," she says.

Imitation isn't always the sincerest form of flattery. Sometimes acknowledgment is, and perhaps the ultimate compliment to ''Everybody Wins" and RE/MAX is the fact that the website of competitor Century 21 recently posted a news blurb about the book's success.

Purchase this book

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About the book's author: PHIL HARKINS is president, CEO, and chairman of the board of directors of Linkage, Inc., the company that he founded in 1988. Phil has authored and edited several books, including Everybody Wins: The Story and Lessons Behind RE/MAX (John Wiley & Sons, 2004); The Art and Practice of Leadership Coaching (John Wiley & Sons, 2004); and Powerful Conversations: How High-Impact Leaders Communicate (McGraw-Hill, 1999). He has spoken on these and other topics at more than 400 conferences, seminars, and programs around the globe.

This issue of Link&Learn was published in March 2005, by Linkage, Inc. (http://www.linkageinc.com). Please direct copyright and additional questions and comments to LinkandLearn@LinkageInc.com