Before joining RE/MAX, Adam Contos ran a SWAT team, working for a local Sheriff’s Office. He describes the job as “kicking in doors, blowing things up, and saving people.” In this episode, Adam shares that while his current professional life is completely different, his approach to leading high-performance teams remains the same. His goal is to break down barriers, blow up conventional thinking, and help as many people as possible achieve success.
“We face two kinds of pain in life,” Adam said. “We face the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. So many people get through life and they start looking back and have this pain of regret of not opening their eyes and saying, ‘I’m going to face that pain of discipline, of subjecting yourself to finding out what being successful means.”
Adam got an early start subjecting himself to the pain of discipline. On graduation day from Cherry Creek High School near Denver, when most of his friends were attending parties, he was packing his bags for boot camp after deciding to join the Marine Corps, something his uncle had done before him. Although Adam was an excellent teammate on his high school track squad, it was as a Marine that he began to develop his understanding of what made a great team.
How do you scale your organization in a way that values the people who are building it? Listen now!
You will learn:
- 5:00 How to distinguish what you can control.
- 6:00 How to lead from the front.
- 12:30 How to use success as a stepping stone.
- 18:30 How to recruit people to FIT your culture.
- 24:00 The difference between a Super Bowl team and a Pro Bowl team in business.
You will learn:
- 6:00 How easy it is to cut corners in practice and why you’ll suffer as a result.
- 8:00 How to emphasize the power or “we” on your team.
- 11:00 How living and working in Japan in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster taught Lane that caring was the universal language of respected leaders.
- 15:00 The level of employee interaction required to achieve success.
- 18:30 The difference between being accountable and responsible.
- 27:00 How to identify a meaningful friend or mentor.