Blefari, 48, is a real estate salesman who's selling more than property. He's selling a way of life and a way of doing business. And his venue is Intero, a real estate company that opened its first office in Morgan Hill last October. A year later, Intero boasts 13 offices and more than 500 real estate associates, with a large headquarters in Cupertino. Just last week Intero launched its foundation as a way to give back to the community, which is part of the Intero philosophy.

Blefari has based the philosophy for his business on years of studying positive thinkers. It's a religion with him.

In fact, he feeds his passion for self-improvement by listening to tapes by positive thinkers and motivators such as Og Mandino, Norman Vincent Peale, Earl Nightingale and Zig Ziglar.

He listens when he walks the dog, when he gardens, when he cleans his closet. He listens to them over and over and has been since the early 1980s. "I brainwash myself," he says. Adages roll off his tongue every few minutes: "What you focus on expands." "Casualness creates casualties."

Across the chest of his Intero T-shirt are the words, "Change your thoughts, Change your life." Blefari is evangelical about his philosophy of self-improvement. John Thompson, 39, who runs Intero's Los Altos office, says he recently saw Blefari package up motivational tapes for a tenant who hadn't paid rent for two months. "Gino made a deal with the tenant that if the tenant listened to the tapes and told Gino what he learned, he wouldn't kick the tenant out of the building."

Blefari says he hires agents who want to improve themselves. He says, "If you work harder on yourself than you do on the job, you'll do your job better. You'll serve your clients better."

"Anyone who comes in and the first question out of their mouths is, 'How much is my commission?' doesn't belong here," Blefari says. He says he picks the best leaders and tells them to use their own judgment and do what's right. He says they leave him alone. "If they aren't doing the work," Blefari says, "I am their worst enemy. I will micromanage every little thing, and they will either leave or get better."

But his employees and associates love working under him.

Tom Tagnoli, vice president and managing partner at Intero, says is why he left NRT to follow Blefari. Tagnoli says, "Gino is all about making you a better person. He's the kind of man who will fight for you."

Sitting on Blefari's desk is a framed copy of the poem "If" by Rudyard Kipling. Blefari, who grew up in Sunnyvale, says he is dyslexic and was a terrible student, but on a $5 bet with a teacher, he learned the poem by heart when he was in the sixth grade. Ironically, that poem has been something of a spiritual rudder for him ever since.

"Not doing good in school made me better in sports," Blefari says. "I could run faster than anyone else." But the appeal of sports may have had more to do with the competitor in him. According to Blefari, Realtors are the kind of people who are sick to their stomach if they are not in the top 10 percent. "Real estate is not for the weak-willed or faint of heart," he says.

When Blefari hit the real estate world in 1984, he made that top 10 percent right away at Fox and Carskadon, a company that no longer exists. When he joined the Contempo office on Miller in Cupertino, he rose to partner and helped take the company to record success.

After NRT bought up real estate companies such as Seville, Century 21, ERA, Cornish and Carey, Better Homes and Gardens, Coldwell Banker and Contempo, Blefari rose to senior vice president at NRT, which meant he had 50,000 agents and 850 sales offices under him. He was set for life.

But he began formulating his dream—a real estate company run by professional Realtors. He says he wanted to put competition back into the world of real estate. He wanted a company that had a more personal relationship with its agents.

With the financial backing of a private Colorado investor—Mercury Companies, which, among other businesses, owns title companies—Blefari left NRT to begin his company.

"If you don't take a risk, you stay where you are." Blefari says. And the Intero dream was definitely a risk. He knew competition would be tough.

But Blefari likes things tough. He says that's how people get better. "Look," Blefari says, "Kennedy chose to go to the moon—not because it would be easy but because it would be hard. And look what we learned."

And of his competition, he says, "The best thing for David was Goliath."

The word intero is Italian and Latin for "entire" or "whole." Blefari says his goal is for everyone to build a better self-image and be well-rounded—physically fit, spending time with their families, living below their means and working on their personal growth.