How to Build a Real Estate Empire by Thinking Like a Business Owner

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In this conversation, Dr. Axel Meierhoefer shares his insights on real estate investment, discussing his unique approach to mentoring aspiring investors. He emphasizes the importance of mindset, market trends, and building strong relationships in the real estate industry. Dr. Meierhoefer also reflects on his personal journey into real estate, highlighting key experiences that shaped his investment philosophy. The discussion culminates in a call to action for listeners to explore opportunities in real estate and consider mentorship for their investment journeys.

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Axel Meierhoefer (00:00)
So you better give me a deal. And you know, any banker knows that there are a hundred or a thousand or 10,000 other bankers all over the

And by the way, I mean, if we were to work together for real, I would also say, well, if your offer as a regular bank is not good enough or you’re using FHA funds, we might go to a DSCR lender who may not even care if my client Quentin has the necessary income because there is a lending vehicle that purely looks at what’s the performance of this property that we want to buy, regardless how much money Quentin makes. So keep in mind, Mr. Banker,

That’s what we’re looking for. Now you show us your best deal.

Quentin Edmonds (02:15)
Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Real Estate Pros podcast. I am your host, Q Edmonds. And you know what I’m gonna say? I’m excited to be here today. I have another fantastic guest and I’m gonna let him walk you through the different things that he does. I’m just excited to have him here. I’ve been talking to him, full of experience, full of knowledge. And I know we are going to be in for a treat as we look through his lens and as he give us some valuable nuggets that we can have.

everyone is podcasting. So I want to introduce you all to Mr. Dr. Axel Meierhoefer Dr. Axel, how you doing today,

Axel Meierhoefer (02:57)
I’m great Quentin, thanks for having me. ⁓

Quentin Edmonds (03:00)
Absolutely. Thank you, sir. Thanks for being here. Thank you for giving us, your valuable asset of time, right? So thank you for giving us your time today. And listen, I want to, I want you to take us into your world. I want you to tell us what your main focus is these days. If you want to give us a little bit of an origin story of how you got into real estate, how all this started, we would love to hear that. And then tell them what part of the world you’re in, what markets you’re operating in. And so Dr. Axel, you have the floor, sir.

Axel Meierhoefer (03:31)
Okay, well, thank you. ⁓ While the origin story is I’m originally from Germany, you might still hear a little bit of an accent coming through. ⁓ I came to the United States with the Air Force, because I was lucky enough to participate in an exchange program, where I took on the job of ⁓ US Air Force Fighter Squadron Operations Director, and he took on my job. So I learned how to fly F-111s and he learned how to fly my plane.

And ⁓ after that was supposed to end within about three years, I was kind of surprisingly told, hey, we want you to stay in the US and help us with the project at another Air Force base, but for the German side. So I did that. And in the context of that project was my first little glimpse into real estate, because the project included to bringing 800 German military families to New Mexico.

to support the operation, the cooperation between the United States Air Force and the German Air Force. But these people obviously needed to live somewhere. And so as the lead project manager, I spoke to like the city manager and the people in town and so forth. And we discussed how can we do it and what would the community like? And the community very clearly said, we don’t want to have ⁓ something. And I know this is a tricky term, but like quote unquote a ghetto somewhere between the town and the base.

where this group of Germans live all by themselves, no integration, nothing. Ideally, what we would like to see is that they live amongst us, they get to know us, we get to know them, we benefit from each other

and so forth. And so that meant, because obviously 800 families needing housing, no place, a small city of like 30,000 people isn’t prepared for that. Right? So we discussed how can we do it and

I was able to negotiate with the German government that the rent payment for these properties that were to be built would be guaranteed by the German government as market rate rents for as long as the project would run. And the initial contract that we signed was for 19 years. So you could basically make a calculation and say, okay, if I build a house, let’s say that takes a year, the next 18 years, I will get market rate rent. And if I do my calculations right,

in 18 years or less, the house should be paid off. So I have a house paid off by the German government, people having lived in there. ⁓ And then I own a house, right, which was brand new 18 years ago. So the interesting thing was, and this is where my exposure came in, I wasn’t in construction or anything. I was only remotely involved in it. But when these first houses started to get ready to basically be ⁓ bought or owned by someone,

We put it out and a few real estate agents in the city basically bought a few, but nobody else. And I couldn’t understand it. I thought I had communicated well enough that this is basically government guaranteed rent. I think maybe what may have happened at the time, I wasn’t familiar with section eight and stuff like that. Some of those government programs have not the greatest reputation. So maybe I, for lack of my knowledge, I didn’t communicate it well.

Anyway, I thought for some reason, thought, okay, maybe they just want to see that I believe as much in it as I’m talking about it. So I decided to buy one of those houses. That was basically my very first investment in real estate in the United States. And then later I retired from the Air Force and started ⁓ as an executive in a software company, lived for rent, but wanted a house for myself. So got that house, then relocated.

back to New Mexico and that was at a time when the big financial crash happened around 2010. I know the crash started in 2008, but it was still pretty much going on in 2010. And we were in the process of relocating to New Mexico. I had just recently started my own business at the time. And so the question was, what do we do with this house that we had bought?

And looking at the prices, we would have actually lost money. So we decided, OK, let’s turn that into our first investment property. And then basically from 2010, 2011 until 2016, we had a rental property. And ultimately, when the tenant said, OK, we are now financially recovered from this financial crisis, we want to get our own house, my wife and I were like, OK.

So everybody I knew at work and in my business and friends and family, when they asked me, hey, Axel, what you’re up to? I was talking about, I’m looking for this deal. I’m calculating this rent. I’m seeing if this state or that state would be a good thing. And so ultimately they also, you know, meet me three, four or five months later and said, Hey, what happened to this thing that you told me about last time? And I started telling them, right? Okay, we bought this property. We got this one rented. This renovation is finished. And people started asking, Hey,

Can you help me too? I always wanted to get into real estate, but I was afraid. I don’t really know enough about it. I don’t want to make an expensive mistake.

So I started doing that until my wife said, you know what? You’re spending an awful lot of time for doing all of this for these people. And I appreciate that you like to help, but shouldn’t you get paid for that? And that’s when I developed the mentoring program and developed it into what it is today. started to the proper business name. It’s called Idea.

the wealth grower, is kind of self-explanatory, I think, and really made it official. So for a long time, and I still have both companies, I have my consulting company, and then I started basically the idea of wealth grower business separately. And the goal is and remains today to help people through mentoring and through access to all the resources that I have to build their own portfolio. Now you said, where do we do this?

Obviously, it changes a little bit over time. When I first started, I made investments in Iowa and Illinois. Illinois, wouldn’t do any more today, but at the time it was a good thing. I made investments in Florida and I made investments in Ohio. Now I’m lately more into this area, Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia. But what all these locations in big picture tell you is, and this is part of my approach, I learned living in California,

that you need to invest where you find the best performing properties. A lot of people know location, location, location, and I’m not saying this is wrong, but for me and my approach, this is the second thing. The first thing, the first question is, where are the high performing properties on the state level or maybe city level or metropolitan area level? And then within that,

If you say, OK, I like Cincinnati, Ohio, or I like Huntsville, Alabama, or you pick the place. Now we go in and say within that area that has a lot of high performing properties, where are the good locations and where are the not so good locations? Right. And so that’s basically part of the philosophy. And yeah, and that’s what we’re doing on a regular basis now since 2016 is basically helping people help themselves become successful.

Quentin Edmonds (12:53)
I love it. Thank you for the fascinating story. Listen, I love stories. I think everybody has a story. think everybody takes control of their own story and narrative in different ways. And I love how you explain and tap a tip of a hat to your wife for saying like, hey, you’re spending all this time doing this. Why not get paid for it, right? And so the beautiful thing about business is that most of time,

a good fuel for the fire is to do something that you enjoy doing, to do something that you would do for free, that you would do for free, but still get paid for it. So I love how you found a passion, you found the joy, wanting to help people as you admitted you were loquacious, you liked to talk. So this is something that you just naturally like to do. But then your wife coming in and said, babe, let’s get paid for this at the same time.

Again, tip of the hat to our wives. Our wives are there to really just help us in some time, help us stir the ship just to get it right back on track. So hats off to her. I do want to ask you about some of your personal strategies. Coming from Germany, you came here, Air Force. I’m just sure there are different personal strategies that you’ve picked up through the years that really are core standards for you.

I know some people, know, it’s gym, meditation, it’s different things, right? So, Dr. Axel, what are some core strategies personally that you found that have really helped you along your journey in life and business?

Axel Meierhoefer (14:33)
Well, on first thought, I would say it’s probably two things. The one is, and I’m trying to help my clients to develop them if they don’t have them yet, is to have some personal principles. I’d like to sit down and maybe, you know, like end of the year timeframe that we’re in right now or early new year when we’re doing new year’s resolutions and stuff to sit down and think.

Quentin Edmonds (14:48)
Hmm

Axel Meierhoefer (15:42)
What are really my principles? How do I actually act when I’m looking back the last year or maybe the last three to five years? And what can I learn from what I’ve done? And I don’t mean this in a negative way. I mean this, for example, to me, I know when I first started that I didn’t analyze properties deeply enough. Or another one is I had not

enough appreciation of the importance of relationships. The third one is the realization, what is your own role? When we talked before we started recording, Quentin, remember I said one of the two big things in my mentoring is helping people to develop the mindset of a business owner.

Quentin Edmonds (16:13)
Mmm

Axel Meierhoefer (16:34)
And one of the core things and core principles of being a business owner is you’re growing your business by bringing people in who work for you, especially, or ideally people with skills in areas where you’re lacking, where they’re really good. Now, if you apply this just for a little, and we can dive deeper if you like, if you just think for a moment, here we are, we are making the decision. We want to build a team.

to be able to develop a passive income real estate portfolio. So who do we need? Well, how good are you or I in banking? I know I’m not that great, so I need a banker. I need to hire a banker. And I know that banker will get a salary, in our case, in the form of interest. I know I don’t want to be good in property management. So we need to hire a property management.

Quentin Edmonds (17:18)
Hmm.

Axel Meierhoefer (17:32)
organization or person. And we know we have to pay that with eight to 10 % of our rental income. We need to hire somebody when we are buying a property in, say, Huntsville, Alabama, and I’m sitting in Santa Barbara and San Diego, like now I’m sitting in San Diego. I’m not interested to go and inspect the property myself in Huntsville, Alabama. So I’m going to hire a professional property inspector.

And I know the guy gets or girl gets four or $500, but until I know what I need to look for to get an 80 page report, it’s a lifetime of experience. No, I hire that and on and on from that. So we understand fundamentally that if we were tomorrow to start any kind of business because we have a great idea. And as soon as that business starts, even showing a little bit of promise, we need to bring people in.

So what does that mean for you as the business owner is you have to learn to be a leader. You have to learn and make it very clear in your communication, for example, to a banker that you go to and say, hey, let’s say you and I were to do this together. We found a banker and we have a call with this banker. And I would say, hey, Mr. Banker, Quentin, my client,

Quentin Edmonds (18:36)
Hmm.

Axel Meierhoefer (18:56)
wants to buy property on 123 Main Street in Hanswell, Alabama, and we want a mortgage, what can you do for us? We want to do 20 % down, lowest interest possible. Ideally, we want you to convince the people to cover closing costs or pay down the interest or anything to make the deal as interesting as possible. And I, as Quentin’s representative, want to also make you aware that there are 20 other banks in the area that we are considering.

Right. And that’s a totally different approach than basically going with your bloody knees, crawling into the bank and telling them, could you please find it in your grace to give me a mortgage? No, I’m hiring you. I’m going to pay you 360 months in a row. That’s what I’m signing up for.

So you better give me a deal. And you know, any banker knows that there are a hundred or a thousand or 10,000 other bankers all over the

And by the way, I mean, if we were to work together for real, I would also say, well, if your offer as a regular bank is not good enough or you’re using FHA funds, we might go to a DSCR lender who may not even care if my client Quentin has the necessary income because there is a lending vehicle that purely looks at what’s the performance of this property that we want to buy, regardless how much money Quentin makes. So keep in mind, Mr. Banker,

That’s what we’re looking for. Now you show us your best deal.

You can see from the attitude, from the energy, from the way it’s communicated, we are on peer level at least. They should, and you know the saying everybody in your audience knows it. The old saying is, and is still true in my opinion, the customer is king. Well, if that’s true, and I believe it is, the bank should treat you as a king or queen.

Quentin Edmonds (20:36)
Hmm

Axel Meierhoefer (20:53)
Property management should treat you like a king or queen. The inspector, the appraiser, the insurance people, all the people that we need to have on our team need to know who is king or queen. That’s why I say to my clients, what I’m helping you with, finding the properties and invest and make the analysis and teaching you is to basically get you to be the queen or the king of your empire.

Quentin Edmonds (21:06)
Hmm.

Dr. Axel, thank you, man. I I’m taking notes as you talk and ⁓ listen, you talk about building principles. And this is what I synthesize, building principles, but also building strategies, building systems, building teams. And so these are the things that you need to be putting in place as you build, as you said, so you can be the master of your own fate, the king of your own business.

Again, controlling your own narrative, right? You are the brand, you are the business, you are the person that power and put these things in place. And so I think one of the last questions I want to leave you with, I want, because you talked about building key relationships with bankers, inspectors, property managers, I even wrote down lawyer, right? So what are some key things you look for when you’re building relationships? Are there some key things that you look for with making sure that you are

connected and tethered to the right person.

Axel Meierhoefer (22:22)
Well, there’s this couple of things. is and this is an interesting thing because it is a cultural aspect. I don’t know how much you are aware of it or not, but there are cultures in the world like South American cultures are pretty well known for it. Asian cultures are pretty well known for it for what I’m about to say. And then there are like European cultures and to a more or lesser degree.

North American cultures who are on the other side. What do I mean by that? There are, and I’m coming from it as a Northern German guy, I’m coming from a culture where everything is very matter of fact. So as I grew up, when the question was, do we make a deal? Almost irrelevant what the content of the deal is. The question when we looked at a deal to answer, do we do it or don’t we? Do we sign or don’t we sign is?

Do the numbers make sense? Are the variables considered? Is whatever we’re dealing about a good thing? Are all the pieces in place you spoke about systems or that stuff? And we are doing this by talking about what the variables are and then confirming that all the relevant things end up in the contract. And if they are there, then we sign. So how does this look in reality? And I’ve seen this many times before.

A person from the United States wants to make a deal with somebody, let’s say, in Norway. They email back and forth a bunch of times, have maybe a few meetings a bunch of times, then they have agreed that all the framework is there. Then they email the draft of the contract over. And then, at least this used to be the case, some do, some don’t anymore, fly over, meet in a conference room, have a little cup of coffee.

Both sides have their lawyers there, look over the contract that nothing has changed, and they ultimately, let’s take it an hour or two or three, something like that, and they sign. And they might go out to dinner afterwards, and then they’re done and they fly home. Now, the other version of culture is, and this goes to answer the question that you asked me, where if you were to do this, by the time you come in the conference room and put the contract on the

table, they would say, Quentin, it was so nice to meet you. I think you’re a nice person, but we decided not to do business with you. And you would say, well, why is that? I thought I did everything. Aren’t the numbers all right? Is there something wrong in the, in the contract? And what they basically in a nutshell would say probably a little nicer than I’m going to say is Quentin, you and your business may be great, but we don’t know it from anything else. We don’t know you.

We don’t know how you work. We don’t know what your principles are. We don’t know how you take. And we had no opportunity. You told us you’re coming in at 10 in the morning and your flight is leaving at 6. We just don’t work that way. So what were they actually looking for is fly over, on in on Monday night, spend time with them, take them out to dinner. Let them show you their place.

invite them to your place, maybe bring a little gift, ask them stuff that goes like you asked me, what’s the personal backstory on how did you get into realistic? Learn about their personal backstories and be open for them to ask you too. And at some point when you get the feeling that, I get more and more of warm fuzzy that I know who these people are, which also would by the way, indicate you, however you were brought up that you might want to do business with them or not.

You can probably assume that they might be at a similar point and you can bring it up to say casually, hey, by the way, when do you think you’re ready that we start actually talking about the contract? And then they might say, well, yeah, you’re right, man. Maybe we go out tomorrow for this hike that I spoke about. And then afterwards, we sit down. If you are not willing to do this, this upfront work, this development of the relationship,

Quentin Edmonds (26:22)
Mmm.

Axel Meierhoefer (26:38)
And it’s a little bit akin, if you bring it back, I mean, I could have answered shorter, but I wanted to give your audience a little bit of what the cultural implications are. It’s kind of dating, right? And if you think you want to have a lifelong relationship with a person by meeting them once, taking them to McDonald’s, paying for like coffee and ice cream and then say, okay, let’s get married. It’s very risky. And some cultures are willing to take that risk.

which is what I meant by, you know, Europeans, North Americans and stuff, because we have been conditioned this way. But really true deep relationships mean you do dating, you do however many dates it takes until both sides really feel, okay, this person is ready to commit, right? Remember that word commitment? Yes, Right. So ready to commit means we did all the upfront stuff.

which in business is the same to say, I’m ready to commit to sit down and evaluate the contract. And I mean, for me, if I had the means at the time, I would have said, that’s akin to a pre-nup, in a way. And you can do this when you like each other and got to know each other and you know that it’s not in a malicious way. just to say, there are assets to be protected, and this is what we put in the contract.

Quentin Edmonds (27:41)
and

Mmm.

Axel Meierhoefer (28:03)
So how do you build these relationships? You got to go down to get to know the people. Ask them, why do you run your property management organization this way? Or ask them, what makes your bank better and different to all the other ones? How long are you in this job and still planning to be in this job? Or am I going to have a different person to talk to every time I have a need for any kind of money?

Quentin Edmonds (28:30)
Hmm.

Axel Meierhoefer (28:30)
And on and on, you can make a long, long list of those examples. So the relationship is actually, how much do we know each other, appreciate each other, and in the context of building a portfolio. Because we are not just buying one property, we’re building a portfolio. We basically know, in my case, with my approach, out-of-state turnkey investing, the idea is to build the portfolio so that it generates passive income for us.

ideally so much that we don’t need to go to work anymore and exchange time for money. And in my personal case, because I’m a little older, there’s also the thought I planning and operating and strategizing about it, so that when I am going over the rainbow bridge, it will still continue to generate passive income for my daughter and my grandson and his kids and so forth. Right. So

Now, think about this from a relationship with property management or the bank or whoever else you need on the team. You can literally say either because of the mortgage, I’m starting a 30-year relationship with you. So you better have really great appreciation for each other. Or you can say, I’m making a lifelong commitment to you and to this deal because I am planning to keep this property.

Does it mean that we never sell? No, it doesn’t mean that. But in the beginning, we’re not planning for a divorce. We’re setting everything up so that we have a lifelong relationship. And that’s also why it’s worth to make the effort. Right. And I’m trying to teach people while they’re in our mentoring program, how to start communicating with a good balance between confidence as the owner of your empire.

but with also appreciation for the value and the person on the other end, not just the deal or the numbers or the contract, but the person. And that’s why I had to learn this. I’m coming from northern Germany, then I came to North America. It was, in that sense, easy because it’s similar, but it is not really very good in and of itself systematically to build these deep relationships. And on the other hand, when you do,

I mean, I have properties in my portfolio that I bought day one and never sold and they might actually go over to my daughter.

Quentin Edmonds (31:00)
⁓ Dr. Axel, thank you for taking your time with your explanation about relationships. As you talked, it made me think about when me and my wife were dating. We used to always say to each other that dating is gathering data. That’s what dating is. And we have to go on several dates in order for us to gather data about each other. And so as you was talking,

I wrote down three C’s that you said, but I’m gonna add one C to it. ⁓ So I wrote down communication, culture, community, and commitment. Communication has to start, ⁓ of course, that’s how we start the dance, right? The communication. But I need to find out your culture. Like, what matters to you? And that’s how you talk about sitting people down, taking them out. What matters to you? Where do you come from? What are your core principles?

And once I find out your culture, I can find out if you and I can be in community. I always say community means common unity. When I find out your culture, are we in common unity with each other? And when I find out if we can be in common unity, OK, then I can go ahead and make a commitment. So I absolutely love how you broke down talking about relationships. ⁓ listen, I wish I could talk to you forever. I am really up on time because I have another one at 12.

But I thank you so much. This was so good. Learn about your mentorship, learning about your journey, learning about what you do for your clients, for other people that’s underneath your tool niche. And so listen, if someone wanted to reach out to you, connect with you, learn more about what you’re doing, how can they get in contact with you?

Axel Meierhoefer (32:46)
Well, if you just keep one thing, our organization, like I said at the very beginning is called Ideal Wealth Grower. And so the website obviously is idealwealthgrower.com. And if you go there, there is on the right side is a button that’s called discovery call. So you click on it takes you right to my calendar, you can arrange a complimentary call, we can get to know each other, we can talk to each other, we can see if there is a basis to work with each other.

The other thing I would say is we are pretty much under Ideal Wealth Grower on all the common social media sites. So if you were to, for example, want to get a newsletter, you can go on Substack and sign up. free. And then you get a weekly newsletter. We have a podcast called the Ideal Investor Show. So all these kinds of things that are related, but fundamentally, if you want to see if what we do is something that you want to consider, go to idealwealthgrower.com and just book a discovery call.

Quentin Edmonds (33:46)
Dr. Axel, thank you so much. ⁓ One, like I said, thank you for your time because time is valuable. And as you know, you can pay a premium for your time. As your wife has showed you, like we’re gonna do consulting, we can pay a premium for time. So definitely thank you for your time. Two, definitely thank you for your story. I put a high value on people’s stories. Everybody has a story.

Take control of your own narrative. And I’m sure that’s something you would tell people within the mentorship. If you’re going to be a king, be the king of your own castle. So thank you for your story. And sir, thank you for your perspective. Thank you for the way you think. I’m glad that you brought your thought process to this platform because I really believe you’ve given sprinkled enough seeds for people to have a mind shift, a mind shift or mindset change around some of the things that they’re doing. And so I really have to say thank you so much for being here. I appreciate it so much.

Axel Meierhoefer (34:43)
Yeah, thanks, Quentin, for having me.

Quentin Edmonds (34:45)
Absolutely. Well, listen, y’all heard Dr. Axel. You cannot tell me you did not get value from this conversation. So please check him out. The ideal wealth grower. Definitely checking him out. But definitely make sure you’re subscribed here. That way you can keep coming back because we’re going to continue to bring up incredible people just like Dr. Axel. So sir, thank you again. And everyone else, we will see you on the next time.

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How to Build a Real Estate Empire by Thinking Like a Business Owner

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