- Introduction to Alex Meierhoefer
- How Axel got into Real Estate Investing
- Axel’s first property acquisition experience
- Emotional connection of the process
- Mindset Manual
- Financial freedom to secure future generations
- Contact Number: 843-619-3005
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Transcription
CORWYN:
So good morning, good morning, and good morning guys. Welcome to another fabulous episode of Exit Strategies Radio Show. Hey, I am your host, Corwyn J Melette, broken and owner of Exit Realty Lowcountry group in beautiful North Charleston, South Carolina. Hey, If this is your first time listening to this show you, Sir or Ma’am, are in for a treat. Because our mission here is very simple. That is to empower our community through financial literacy, and real estate education with legacy building. That is what we do. And guys today is no different. No different as you’ve been taking this journey with us over all these years. And I’m always amazed at how far we have brought this show. And I am intimidated by the vision that I am still yet half of where we’re going. We’re bringing you the best speakers, we’re bringing you people that are in the field. We’re bringing you visionaries and thought leaders in a legacy building in real estate, investing in real estate sales and protecting assets, making your money work for you. All of those things. And I’m super duper excited because we get to continue along that same vein on that road today. All right, so guys, look, I’m not gonna steal his thunder. I get to introduce to you today none other than Dr. Axel Meierhoefer, And did I get that right?
AXEL:
Pretty close. Yeah, you did.
CORWYN:
Awesome. Awesome. So I’m looking, if you don’t mind. I’m gonna call you Doctor A. And that’s for [inaudible]. I love it. I love it. So if you don’t mind, please introduce yourself and who you are. And what it is that you do?
AXEL:
Absolutely. Thank you for having me on the show. So my name is Axel Meierhoefer. Like Corwyn was just saying, I’m originally from Germany, and came over with a military exchange program to the United States. And when I finished my service, I decided to stay since we stayed overall in the military assignment for six years here. And you know, at all, it was very little and it made sense to stay, I got an offer from a company to immediately switch and become an employee and an executive. And then in 2005, I started my first business, mainly in the consulting field. And then more recently started Ideal Wealth Grower, which is very aligned with what you were just saying, we are trying to help people invest in residential real estate through a mentoring program that replicates what I did for me to build, like the time freedom that we now have, and enjoy through the portfolio that we develop, and help other people to do the same thing because I’m just a normal guy, a military officer who thought okay, how can real estate help me to become financially independent? And it did, and now, obviously, other people said, hey, I want to do the same thing, but I don’t want to make any mistakes, can you help me and that’s what we do.
CORWYN:
So, you know, we, we were looking at, you know, kind of leading up to this show doing, I mean, just checking out your website and such and what I like something that kind of stood out to me, and some of the content and stuff that you had is that you’re very big on people building a legacy and you know, and that’s something that we sometimes you know, we overlook, even though we desire it, we overlook it. So I want to touch on kind of a few things as you’re doing a lot of different things to get the word out to people so again, thank you so much for being on our show today. But what first got you into real estate investing what was the driver for you?
AXEL:
What part of it? It’s kind of like a two-fold answer I have to give the number one thing was probably just the sheer fact that as a military officer or you get moved around every two or three years and sometimes I have to save when I was still in the German air force. They don’t have anything like the United States Air Force, whether it’s such a thing as base housing or anything like that. So it was very clear when I was in the German air force. Every time we got moved, we had to kind of find a place to live. But then even when I came over here to the US side, I was still legally kind of like, attached to the German side. And so I wasn’t eligible for base housing. And then after I retired anyway, I mean, like every other person in the country, you have to find your place. But that journey included 11 different places, sometimes for rent, sometimes purchasing. And, when you go through that many different properties, you start looking, you know, like, what do other people do? So that’s the one part. The other part is I mentioned earlier that I retired from the military around 2002. And anybody who remembers that was the time when this kind of dot-com crash happened in the stock market. And for me, when I said, Okay, I don’t have a full life ahead of me as my work life anymore. I have maybe another 20 years that was my thinking at the time. So I have to find a way to my efforts to build something that can be my retirement income in addition to the military. And if you try to imagine right when you’re trying to think when going through that thought process, the stock market completely crashed so for me that meant Oh, I don’t want to be in that I need to find something else. Right. So the combination of having seen and been in many, many properties, and then doing some research revealed to me that most people that were way more successful, I’m always quoting other Arnold Schwarzenegger as another fellow European immigrant, who made millions and millions, 100 times more than I ever made, but when he had to answer that question, he answered it by investing in real estate. And I thought, well, that is probably a good thing to do research more and found out, okay, a lot of people, when they have some success or when they really ask themselves, how do I build a legacy? How do I generate a better generation of wealth, they conclude real estate is the right place to be. So I then started it for myself. And for the first, like I said, from 2002, to about 2017 or so I only did it for my family. And then when you know, it’s a thing if you and I would have been friends at the time, and we come together and, and talk a little bit, Hey, what are you doing? What am I doing? And I would say, Okay, well, I just got myself another property while I’m waiting to get another property very soon, these conversations lead to the point where most of our friends and family said, Hey, this is interesting. Could you do this for me? And then the next step was, hey, this is interesting. I’m pretty sure there are other people out there who would want to do the same thing, can you maybe, and so that constant notching, if that’s what we’re going to call it, led me to say, Okay, what I believe now, and this is a little bit telling you about my personality, I would never want to advise or suggest something to other people where I don’t comfortable using said, I think, and believe that I’m enough of an expert to do this. And number two, I have done it myself before. Right. And so when I went through this kind of 10 years of gaining experience, then ultimately, we created Ideal Wealth Grower, created the website, created our podcasts, and all those kinds of things. And we’re still a little relatively boutique(?) operation because I like to take people by the hand at least for the first few investments. So they gain that confidence that no matter where they are financially, or where they’re coming from, that they can do what I have done as well. And I’m just a normal person.
CORWYN:
You know, and I appreciate that attitude. Because it’s something that I share with people as well, you know, I don’t believe I’m anything special. But I’m here to help you. We’re here to engage and help, you know, get you further down the road. Now you guys have a very ideal [inaudible] robust website called the Ideal Wealth Grower. And there’s, you know, for our listeners, guys, you know when you get the opportunity, I want you all to go, you know, quote, unquote, I say, go break the website, let’s go inundate the website with inquiries, guys to get this information, again, idealwealthgrower.com. So that you can benefit from that– you have your podcast posted there. So there are episodes there. You also have– there’s a free giveaway there as well. And I’ll let you talk about that. But how did you get started, like with your first property, like, if you could describe that, that process, but if you don’t mind? Let’s take this a little bit further. Describe the feeling when you accomplished your first acquisition.
AXEL:
Yeah, so the first property was basically out of the very end of my military service. My wife and I had basically– a house built for ourselves, and I was responsible for the development of a multinational training center between the German military and the US military, which also meant that about 800 German soldiers would come to a relatively small city in the United States, and they needed housing. And so the builders in the community all got together with the City Council. And so I was like, as they say, in German, as well known as a peacock, because I popped up all over the place, you know, for all these meetings in the newspaper, and you wouldn’t even believe all the mistakes I made. But to your question on real estate, when I realized, okay, how is this going to work for these German families coming over, I was able to get some guarantees for the local builders, that the German government would guarantee to pay the rent for the duration of the contract that they had with the US military, which was 19 years, right. And so if you are better than you say, Okay, I build a house, even if you own it yourself, or you sell it to someone, you can sell, in addition, and rent guarantee, basically by a government, that makes it very juicy. And I had thought everybody and their grandmother would jump on this opportunity. But to my big, big surprise, it was probably so unusual, that very few, much fewer people than I thought would do it. And I thought while it’s kind of going to what I said earlier, I– at that time already had the thought where maybe I need to be the guinea pig and just show that it can be done. And I bought a property like two streets over from where we were living, I had the crazy idea that I would be a good property manager, which I was. But that was the first thing and one thing when you said, you know, touch a little bit on the emotional component of the feeling. For me, keep in mind that this was before I ever started my first own business, it gave me this first inkling that my role had changed from kinda like a recipient of orders from the military, or a recipient of external input to really becoming somebody who is now responsible on the one hand, but also with that responsibility being in charge. So my whole view of okay, even though it’s just a house, but it’s something that I have, and that I can influence, I can determine what to do with it, and who is in it, and how much it’s supposed to cause. And I got very motivated and excited. Even though there are several stories if you want to hear that that was in the end, like many other real estate investors will probably tell you or have told you on your show. The first one is typically a struggle and doesn’t make a lot of money. And that was true in this case, too. But it taught me a lot of lessons. But the emotional thing was for one I was proud with together with my wife that we were people who had more than one house. in mind. I mean, most people say the dream is to get a house with a picket fence and stuff. And then you’re kind of there to have another house that was kinda like, you know, and this little bit first inkling, wow, we are now investors. Now we have kinda like a business even we didn’t, we didn’t have any name for it or stuff like that. So that was, I guess, the best way I can describe it.
CORWYN:
So that is, that’s interesting because you went from being a receiver to a giver, or providing that contribution. So when I, as you explain that transition, that was my immediate thought that, again, now you’re a provider, if you will, of housing and creating opportunities for people versus being or merely being the person that the opportunities are created for. And that’s empowering. I mean, you’re able to empower people, you know, through that.
AXEL:
Yeah, absolutely. And if you don’t mind, I mean, you mentioned earlier that on our website, we have this kind of gift. And obviously, this is also available to your audience, if they just go to ideawealthgrower.com/free, they have access to that free gift. And what it is, is basically because you just said when I heard this, something triggered in my mind, for me, this was also like I just described a shift in my mindset. And I’ve seen it so many times over time, and in so many discussions that I ultimately thought, Okay, now we’re kind of jumping like 15 years forward from this first house, I thought it would be helpful for people to have something that they can go through and do some exercise and stuff. So I created this gift. It’s called the Mindset Manual. And what it identifies is on a spectrum, I created a spectrum that has on one end, victimhood, and the other hand, the creator of your future. And so the first part of this mindset manual has a few exercises for anybody who downloads it to go through and say let me find out where am I on the spectrum. Am I a total victim and am I a total creator or somewhere in the middle? And then in the second part, it gives you some exercises and suggestions. What could you do, if you find yourself anywhere on the spectrum, but you want to get closer or ideally to the creator of your own future, what can you do? And then the third part is a little story for somebody who discovered for himself, not even so much a victim, but that he was doing a job, actually, in this case, an accounting job. And realize, I really– it’s not fulfilling anymore. It was exciting and interesting in the beginning, but now it’s just super repetitive. I’m not excited emotionally anymore. And so without taking all the story away, he discovered something else that he loves to do and ultimately was brave enough to do it. Because that allowed him to create his future. And with real estate investing, I believe the same thing is true, you should If you can get your mind in that, in that space, become the creator of your future, because that will ultimately lead you to what we call the time freedom point where you have enough passive income coming in, to have the freedom to decide what you want to do with your time rather than somebody externally, whether it’s your boss or whoever is telling you what you have to do to make enough money so that you can afford your life.
CORWYN:
That is powerful. You know, we have this conversation here on the show. My mind is blown about I’m trying to keep everything together, over here rolling my head. Yeah. Because, you know, because we talk about this, you know, that, you know, for you to be successful at what we’re talking about, know, if you be successful as an investor, you have to have the right mindset, you know, people oftentimes, you know, there are people you know, that tell you, to start with the end in mind, and I get it, but some people focus on living the end, and don’t take the path to get there. So they don’t have the right mindset. Because the mindset is required, requires diligence, commitment, and several other adjectives that many people get off the bus on, so to speak, and don’t follow through, you are committed, you’re committed to making a difference. You’re committed to, you know, creating a legacy, financial freedom, or independence for your family and those around you. And now you’re sharing the wealth of knowledge that you gained in that process with others so they can duplicate it.
AXEL:
Yeah, if you don’t mind me saying, I mean, I like the analogy. If we look at our own lives, wherever we find ourselves right now, and try to find analogies, then I would say the first one is when you went to school, you were only allowed to graduate when you reach a certain level of mastery, then you went in whatever kind of profession you went. But you were then again, a novice and had to go through a certain process, process, and steps and gain experience before you could claim that you have reached a certain level of mastery. And that’s basically what I do with our clients at Ideal Wealth Grower is to say, I’m– not to brag, but when you’ve done something for 15 years, you have reached a certain level of mastery. And it’s always easier when you have somebody like the person who has done it before, who can show you as a novice or apprentice, how you can kind of advance the experience and the knowledge to also get to that level of mastery. I think people make it some time down like that process, even though we live through it over and over throughout our life somehow doesn’t apply to investing. And I want to caution anybody who is listening to us, it does apply pretty much to every frame of life. If you have the goal to master something, you have to be willing to go on the journey, put in the time, and learn the stuff, and obviously, it goes faster if you have somebody like me, who is providing mentoring or other experts, but to assume there’s something like instant wealth or instant riches or instant mastery, it just doesn’t exist.
CORWYN:
And that is an assumption. You know, we I’m in this season now, where, you know, I tried to live, I limit social media, I’ve been on this thing of kind of limiting, you know, over some time. So now I whittle myself down significantly as to what I expose myself to on social media because there are a lot of people that, essentially are trying to sell a course or sell this or sell that, like it’s a get-rich-quick scheme or instant overnight success. When those of us who are out here in the field, do it we know how much it takes and what the commitment is, and oftentimes it takes a period to achieve that wealth. Wealth also– so I’m gonna kind of change gears here. Wealth gives us freedom. One of the first things it does is, gives us back time or give us time then give it back because you don’t spend the time, you spent it. But it creates the opportunity for you to have more time. Because most people, which we know if you go to Robert Kiyosaki, he’s, you know, book Rich Dad Poor Dad before four quadrants. Most people trade time for money. When money is making you money, then you’re able to gain more time. Give us your thoughts on that what freedoms come about when you’re successful at real estate investing.
AXEL:
Yeah, I think the two words and that’s why I don’t know if I coined that term or not. But what we’re using as the term in this context is the time freedom point or time freedom as a term. And what we mean by that is, you have two options, you can have other people telling you what you’re supposed to do during certain times of the day, that week, the month a year. And because they can tell you that they compensate you with money. Or for that same amount of 168 hours, we all have every week, the more independent you get financially, the more freedom you have to be saved, and directed when it comes to what do I want to do with these 168 hours. So a lot of people were 40, 50, 60 hours a week of those 168 hours, direct– being directed by some other people. And then we also need to sleep some so most people have less than half, really to direct themselves on what they want to do with the time that we all have, which is all the same 168 hours. So financial independence, or financial freedom, as we call it, by creating a passive income portfolio in residential real estate more and more allows you to determine what do I want to do with those 168 hours, and not somebody else telling you, and the legacy part of that, is that why you and I and anybody who is just starting now has to put in that time to build that portfolio, you massively shorten it for the next generations because they were already much, much earlier in life, have the opportunity to have this freedom to decide how they want to use their 168 hours a week. And it’s not for encouraging them to be lazy. But one thing I wish somebody would have taught me when I was younger, was you want to do ideally the things that you’re passionate about, and not the things that pay you the most. And that is what financial freedom from a legacy perspective brings you is you can say my children and their children have the true opportunity to first find out what’s your passion, and then live Your passion, knowing that there will always be enough money coming in, because generations before you have helped you to develop that so that you can live their passion, I believe people who do live their passion. And for me, one of the biggest examples is Elon Musk. Nobody voluntarily works 100 or 128 hours out of 168 hours a week, if you’re not passionate about it, right? and all the other bullshit that, I’m sorry for my French, but all the other stuff that we hear in the media is in, I believe, to a large extent just envy, the guy is living what he’s passionate about, and you can afford it. And even though we do not necessarily need to get become billionaires, but when we can get to a point where we have assured income every month from our investments. So we don’t have to worry about how we pay our bills, then we are in a sense in the same position that we can find out as always wanted to be a guitar player or an artist or a sculptor, or photographer or whatever. And I know, I may never be as good in it that it pays me the big bucks. But I don’t need to because my passive income out of my investment covers me to really enjoy my life. And if we live our passion, I’m kind of preaching a little bit. But if we live our passion, life is so much more exciting. Right? And that’s ultimately what I find is very motivating for people who get into our mentoring program and work with me is to say, yes, it’s a struggle a little bit why we’re doing and why we’re on this journey financially, mainly, but there is a strong purpose and motivation behind it that makes us keep stick to it.
CORWYN:
You know, it allows us to live a life if you will, by design, you know,
AXEL:
If you’re looking at it on a lifespan, right nowadays, we know that men live about 80 years, women about 90 or so something like that, you know, and if you look at it from that perspective, and you know, I can tell most people need about 10 years dedicated to developing the passive income portfolio in the bigger scheme of things. Now, we’d like to do it as early as possible. So if you start at 25, you’re done at 35. Now you have the remaining, 50 years or 55 years to play, Right? if you started that later, you might still have 30 years or 40 years to play. So dedicating 10 years or thereabouts, to build this legacy portfolio for your generation, and then have it forever, I think is massively worth it.
CORWYN:
That is awesome. That is awesome. Because that is really what this thing is about. That’s really what it’s about, it’s about making sure that you position yourself so that you know you can sustain in the years when you can’t work and when you can’t trade the time anymore. Because you physically are not able to you set yourself up to have money still coming in to able to take care of yourself, and then you’re able to transition that to your family to your children or heirs for them to get a jumpstart going forward. And they add to it. And this thing becomes a compound or snowball effect where at some point in time in the future, your family is benefiting from a massive legacy. And all you’re doing is continuing to add to it, each generation adds to it. And you have wealth that is how wealth has been accumulated in our country, by people that do this next generation yet they may have inherited, but they add to it. So for the next generation.
AXEL:
I agree with COVID, that if people have done anybody that I have met in our programs, and even before and around it, and outside of it is anybody who has had like four or five years that conclude and they start performing, there’s a certain component of addictiveness to it. So when you say, you know, the next generation is going to add to it, if they see what’s already there, and how it works, it’s a little easier than for you and me and your audience who might be thinking, okay, you know, should I get into this? Should I start this and if there’s no history about it, there’s a little bit of a hurdle? But when you have family members who inherit 10 or 15 properties that are performing and paying like four or five, $8,000 a month because the longer the family had them, the more they get paid down. And the income that you make from it gets bigger and bigger, it is very, very likely that somebody says, Wow, I see this money coming in, maybe I can do something, it’s a different dynamic than somebody like you and me who had to start without any history of it. We just had to work on it. But I can tell anybody who is listening, this stuff gets addictive. As soon as you have a few successes. And my mentoring clients, I always went when they start getting to ramen soup kinda talk, you know, I tell them, Hey, you don’t have to die down to live that much, just so that you get the money to invest in the next property sooner. Right? Like, you should enjoy life too. But that’s a little indication, right? Like if you had a few successful ideas, and you start thinking, how can I take more of my money for investing and less for consumption, it needs to be a good balance. But this kind of aspect of you know, it’s so fun. When you see it works, then I’m very optimistic my daughter, for example, will benefit from it, when when I finally turn it over to her and her kids, if she ever has any, we’ll probably see it to be Hey, this is cool that we never have to be worried. If we get Social Security or income or have a job or anything like that we can do what we love to do.
CORWYN:
Thank you so much for today, you have provided some significant insights into real estate investing, and starting to create, establish, and build a legacy. So if you don’t mind, how can our listeners get in contact with you? Where can they reach you at? For more information? Do you offer mentoring, to prospective real estate investors? Where can people get in contact with you at?
AXEL:
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you mentioned it already. The website is idealwealthgrower.com. And mentoring is the active component. But what we also do in the same context is everything that I have been very relationship to providers, insurers, lenders, and so forth is part of that. And our web guy, our little elf that we talked about before. My little web guy has made it so if you just hang around on the website for one or two minutes, you get invited to the newsletter, you get invited for a call, and so forth. So it’s really easy. Whichever way you prefer to get in touch with us. As soon as you just go to the website and spend a few minutes.
CORWYN:
Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for our listeners, guys. Please go out please check out idealwealthgrower.com. Reach out to Dr. Meierhoefer and his team and let’s get you started. There’s no reason for you to delay. Real estate is an opportunity. Forget what the masses are saying forget what the media is telling you to believe, listen to professionals, and mull over the people who are doing it so that you have a better understanding as to where, what’s going on, and where your opportunities lie. For our listeners again, thank you so much for tuning in. Dr. Meierhoefer, thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you for being part of the Exit Strategies Radio Show Family, we humbly appreciate you taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us today.
AXEL:
Thanks for having me.
CORWYN:
So, um, guys as our listeners yet again, y’all know, I like to do this stuff three times. And I’m gonna tell you all the significance of that three at some point in time in the future on our show. But again, thank you so much for tuning in. Thank you for listening today. Thank you for taking notes, and starting your journey, whether it be starting in your mind or taking the initial step beyond that of action toward your dreams towards creating a legacy for you and your family. Y’all know how I feel. Y’all know what I say? But I’m gonna do it and I’m gonna say it anyhow, which is I love you. I love you. I love you. And we gon’ see you guys out there in those streets.
