On Becoming Financially Free Through Passive Income with Dr. Axel Meierhoefer

Dr. Axel Meierhoefer has a successful career in the Air Force as an Assistant Director of Operations. He founded a consulting company in 2005, the great recession brought some turmoil around 2009, and which kind of helped him transition into real estate. Where he now helps people create and preserve our wealth by buying one to four-unit complexes throughout the United States and other locations.

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Brett:

I’m excited about our next guest. After a successful career in the Air Force as an executive role for a software company. He founded a consulting company in 2005, the Great Recession brought some turmoil around 2009, and which kind of helped him transition into real estate. Where he now helps people create and preserve our wealth by buying one to four-unit complexes throughout the United States and other locations. Please, welcome to the show with me,?Dr. Axel Meierhoefer , how are you today?

Axel:

Yeah, very good, Brett. Thanks for having me.

Brett:

Absolutely. Glad to have you on the show. Tell us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?

Axel:

Yeah, absolutely. So the Last Name is Meierhoefer, which is a very German name. And that’s also where the accent is from. And like you started out the story is basically I came over here as an exchange officer with the US Air Force, there’s a program where you literally take the other person’s job. So I became an assistant director of operations. And the guy who had that job took over the flight school that I was responsible for and did that for a while. And we thought, after two years, we would go back or maybe three years would go back to Germany. But after that assignment, I was told there was a need for a project management job at the US Air Force Base. And I did that and therefore six years, and ultimately, when you can fly anymore, you get close to retirement age. And you can decide, I always said, if you want to fly a desk, or you want to get out, so I decided to get out was immediately recruited into a software company in Santa Barbara, which we’ll probably come back up again when we talk about the capital gains tax and worked for them for four or five years before I started my own business. And then, like you said, came up with this question, how do you actually work and develop some income, passive income for retirement and over time, and over the years, develop this passive income strategy, first of all myself, and then people said, Oh, you got to share it. And you gotta put it on the web and stuff like that. And so I started doing that. And now we’re helping other people do the same thing, basically, walk the same path that I’m walking.

Brett:

Amazing. And you’re out of San Diego. Now, I spent a little bit of time in college, which is an amazing place and you buy in for plexes, in or single-family up into a four Plex, in multiple locations. And we’re talking about building an ideal real estate wealth, and growing that and what that looks like, here in a minute. But before we go there, Dr. Axel, I want to take one step back. And I believe that we all have been given certain gifts in this life. And these gifts have been given to us to be a blessing to others. So I’m curious, maybe one or two gifts that you believe you were given and how does that help how you help bless people today?

Axel:

Yeah, I don’t know. I really think you nailed the hit the nail on the head because it’s really a gift given that I wouldn’t even be able to say where it came from what I always say if somebody were to ask me what’s my superpower, then it’s probably the ability to see the big picture much before other people see it, right. Like you can oftentimes look at things incrementally or right before you know so ahead of your nose or something like that. And somehow I don’t really know how to do it. Honestly, I oftentimes get people to tell me where did you see this? How did you anticipate this and that’s basically you know, see things in the big connective frame and that has helped me a lot of times to avoid mistakes or develop strategies and stuff like that.

Brett:

Amazing. Absolutely love that and so now let’s dive right into what it is that you do. By the way, you can find more about Dr. Axel and I won’t even try to pronounce his last name. Just know that it’s Dr. Axel and?idealwealthgrower.com . So Dr. Axel, what’s the number one away from a two or number one secret, or the first Secret to Building your portfolio with cash flowing producing one to four units throughout the United States?

Axel:

When the one number one thing, and it’s very close to the number two thing is performance is really becoming clear in your thinking. Or if you, you know, have somebody to help you, as a mentor or as a coach really become clear. How do you define performance for yourself? So in our case, we basically use as an initial anchor for performance, the 1% rule, meaning like you, you look at the property, how much do they want to sell it to you for, and you take 1%, and that should be your monthly rent. So if I look at any properties here in our area there are anywhere between about 650,000 to a million, which means even if I get the lowest end $650,000 property, I would have to get 60 $500 a month in rent, to meet that performance. And that is pretty much impossible to find. And that’s why we said we need to find a place or places out of state where that is possible. So performance, I would still say is probably number one, closely followed by the selection of the turnkey provider.

Brett:

Okay, so make sure we gather that for the listeners. So performance, close, number one, you defined performance, or how do you define difference for yourself? So make sure you have a clear vision for what winning is, right? Let’s define what’s, you know, what’s going to score the bucket and what’s not going to score the bucket, right, what’s going to get the base hit the double the triple the home run and one way to politically apply that is using what’s called the 1% rule, which states if I can buy something, let’s say for $650,000, I would like to have at least a $6500 of rent, right? 1% of that on a per monthly basis. Is that a fair summary?

Axel:

Yeah, that’s perfect.

Brett:

Excellent. And then you said the second one was?

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