RE/MAX Co-Founder Walter Schneider’s appointment to the Order of Canada honours a legendary business career.

History is, thankfully, full of business success stories of men and women who have achieved professional milestones worthy of any business Hall of Fame. It is a long list of noteworthy achievements for which we should all be very grateful as business success creates jobs and opportunities.

A much shorter list in business history is of those rare individuals who, in retrospect, actually changed the way their professional field operated, true innovators who took a new approach to an existing industry and made it succeed with a methodology that remains in place today.

Walter Schneider is just such a trail-blazing pioneer, a man who changed the way the real estate industry operated in Canada and, this last December in recognition of this achievement, he was granted the nation’s highest civilian honour and named a Member of the Order of Canada, one of only 87 Members named in 2024.

“It was emotional,” said Schneider, recalling how he was informed of the honour in a recent interview with Dolce. “I was driving in my car and a number came up on my phone with an Ottawa area code. I know a lot of people in Ottawa, but I didn’t recognize the number. A young lady named Emily said she was calling from the Governor General’s office. She asked if I was Walter Schneider, and I thought, ‘Are they trying to sell me something here?’ But I was very moved by it and obviously honoured by it.”

It was not a sales pitch Schneider received when he picked up his phone, but a call of gratitude for his service in the betterment of his country. The honour is well deserved for the impact Schneider has had on his industry.

In 1980, Schneider and his partner, the late Frank Polzler, founded RE/MAX Integra because they both saw an opportunity to effect change (Including the regions Ontario, Atlantic Canada, and the United States, New England, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin.)

Forty-five years ago, the Canadian real estate industry was controlled by banks and trust companies, with a few national brands that saw profits heavily favouring brokers. Real estate is an up-close-and-personal industry that relies on personal relationships, with agents at the core of that. The result, however, was that the industry was running on an inherently flawed business model that saw top-producing agents subsidizing non- producers. How long would those top producers hang around? Not long.

Schneider and Polzler recognized this professional pain point and saw an opportunity to keep those top producers and bring the cream to the top. Thus, RE/MAX Integra — the “home of the top producer” — was born.

The RE/MAX Integra agent-first business model was simple but revolutionary in Canadian real estate: this new business model meant agents kept their commissions, which naturally attracted the top producers, and the best agents joined the company to stay and conquer. The result, according to an MMR Strategy Group Study of Unaided Awareness, is that RE/MAX is recognized as Canada’s No. 1 name in real estate.

Schneider had a humble beginning as the child of immigrant parents living in a modest home. It was where he learned about real estate by seeing firsthand the importance of having a roof over one’s head. “We lived in inner-city Toronto at Dundas and Dufferin,” says Schneider. “I grew up in a little semi-detached house, and we had boarders in our house. My parents used to rent out a room so they could make the monthly payments. Our kitchen table was always full of strangers all the time as they would rotate in and rotate out. But it was a terrific childhood.”

His parents were his role models, teaching him hard work, discipline, commitment and right from wrong. He graduated from the University of Toronto with a degree in Liberal Arts, having not qualified for the MBA program. Years later, after having started many businesses, when Schneider was asked to speak to the graduating class of MBA students, the irony not lost on him. “I have the greatest respect for those with many degrees, but I still believe in the school of hard knocks,” he says. “Life is never a straight line; there are always many zigs and zags.”

His strong business foundation helped him in his early career when he developed his partnership with Frank Polzler. “I was very lucky as I had an incredible business partner for 40 years,” says Schneider. “Frank was 20 years my senior but certainly he was very instrumental and very pivotal, teaching me things. I always said my partnership with him was a gift as it was a free look into 20 years down the road. When we started RE/MAX, I was 26, and he was 46. He was married with kids, and I was single, so you get to have what I call a ‘free look’ around the corner with none of the bumps and bruises along the way. Those came later.”

As one of Canada’s most successful business entrepreneurs, Schneider has seen a lot and he has learned even more. He has developed a few tried- and-true guiding principles to help those who will come after him to build brands or businesses. Today, he continues his role as Co-founder of RE/MAX Integra and owner and operator of RE/MAX Europe.

“PEOPLE QUIT TOO EARLY WHEN THEY’RE BUILDING SOMETHING. IF IT WAS SO EASY, EVERYONE WOULD DO IT. IN THE JOURNEY OF BUSINESS AND LIFE, YOU DEVELOP A LOT OF SCAR TISSUE.”

“Firstly, it takes longer than you expected. Secondly, it’s going to have more energy than you anticipated, and thirdly, you’re going to go over budget,” says Schneider. “I think that what often happens is that people quit too early when they’re building something. If it was so easy, everyone would do it. In the journey of business and life, you develop a lot of scar tissue. This was crystallized by a friend of mine a couple of years ago over lunch when I said, ‘Geez, this body of mine has a lot of scar tissue on it.’ He then said, ‘Did you know, Walter, that scar tissue is the toughest tissue in the human body?’ And I thought that’s very true. You should take pride in scar tissue.”

One of many who share that scar tissue is Dennis Curtin, a lifelong friend of Scheider’s who was also part of the original foundation blocks which built the RE/MAX business those many years ago. “Walter and I have known each other for over 40 years,” says Curtin, now President, Regional Services, Inc. “I have watched him build RE/MAX into the powerhouse it is today. I have also witnessed firsthand my best friend create an enormous legacy with his many generous contributions to so many worthy causes. He truly is one of a kind.”

Schneider’s business successes have allowed him to give back and he participates actively in philanthropy. He has sat on three non-profit boards of directors, including that of the prestigious Canada’s Walk of Fame.

“Walter’s wisdom and generosity are unmatched,” says Jeffrey Latimer, CEO of Canada’s Walk of Fame and Partner, LOFT Entertainment. “His wisdom, however, in one area has added one of the most important statements of truth to my life story, and that is ‘Money and power only make you more of who you already were at your core,’ Walter is incredibly kind and giving, but it comes from a different kind of heart than others. His success has only made him a bigger, more powerful version of the wonderful man that he has always been.”

Schneider and his wife Maria are both Life Legacy Members of the David Foster Foundation based in Victoria, British Columbia, started by the musical legend and dedicated to providing financial support to Canadian families with children in need of life-saving organ transplants.

“Walter Schneider has been such an important person in my life. His dedication to my foundation is unparalleled and I will be forever grateful to him,” says Foster. “But his good deeds and philanthropy don’t stop there as he has dedicated his life to the service of others, his generosity knows no bounds and his business savvy has been well documented throughout his career. Smart, kind, generous and extremely philanthropic, a family man and darn good looking too! It’s only fitting that Walter has received the most prestigious Order of Canada — a GREAT choice! He continues to make Canada and all of us proud!”

The Schneider Family Foundation, also near and dear to his heart, contributes to many charitable organizations, with a renewed focus for the foundation coming shortly.

“Our family has been very blessed, and what we are doing right now is stepping back and trying to figure out something that’s really central to us as a family, as a legacy piece,” says Schneider. “We’re in the early stages, and my daughter and my two boys, of whom I am so proud, are driving that, and we’ll see where we land.”

Business innovator, change agent, visionary, philanthropist and a graduate of the school of hard knocks, Walter Schneider is a grateful Canadian who believes he lives in the greatest country on Earth. What an extraordinary gentleman, which his country can be extremely proud to call their own.

INTERVIEW BY MARC CASTALDO