Firing The Man
THANK YOU TO OUR 25,000+ LISTENERS! We are so thankful to be one of the TOP E-Commerce Podcasts delivering high-quality authentic content to you! Serial Entrepreneur’s David Schomer and Ken Wilson share tips, advice, and insider knowledge about all things Amazon FBA, Walmart WFS, and E-Commerce. Discover how you can create multiple income streams by selling physical products online so that you can have the time and freedom to do what you love - whether that is spending more time with family or traveling the world. Ken and David have successfully created several six and seven figure online business ventures. During the journey, they have had major wins, losses, and lessons learned. This podcast will teach you about selling physical products online through platforms such as Fulfillment by Amazon, building a team, outsourcing, listing optimization, pay per click (PPC) advertising, driving traffic to your listings, and productivity tips / life hacks that will provide a path to be successful in building your online business. It’s a mix of interviews, special co-hosts and solo shows from Ken and David you’re not going to want to miss. Hit subscribe, and get ready to change your life.
Firing The Man
The Truth About Passive Income in Real Estate with Axel Meierhoefer
Want a clear way to replace your paycheck with rental income without turning your life upside down? We sit down with Axel Meierhoefer, founder of Ideal Wealth Grower, to unpack a practical, numbers-first system for building a cash-flow portfolio you can run in minutes a month. Axel shares how he went from Air Force officer to corporate executive to investor whose properties now cover his lifestyle—and the key pivot points that kept him from getting wiped out in 2008.
We get specific. Axel breaks down the 1 percent rule as a fast screen for deals, then shows how to validate taxes, insurance, maintenance, and financing so you’re confident before you buy. He defines what a true turnkey provider looks like—integrated construction or renovation, real estate sales with lender relationships, and full-service property management with clean accounting—and why building clusters of four to six properties in a single market gives you leverage and simplicity. You’ll learn why distance doesn’t matter when your team and processes are tight, and how forming an LLC helps you show up as a business owner who sets standards and holds partners accountable.
Market selection starts with purpose. If your goal is income replacement, target stable, mid-sized markets where price-to-rent ratios still cash flow; if your goal is asset growth, newer build-to-rent options with rate buy-downs might make sense even at breakeven. We dig into corridors like Dayton to Cincinnati, parts of Alabama, Georgia, and Ohio for cash flow, plus select Florida pockets where new-build pricing is temporarily depressed. Axel also tackles the timing question head-on: inflation and dollar erosion make fixed-rate debt an asset, so waiting for the “perfect” price can be more costly than buying a property that fits your plan today.
By the end, you’ll have a blueprint: define your purpose, let the numbers lead, choose the right markets, and build a professional team that makes distance irrelevant. If you’re serious about replacing your W‑2 income with durable cash flow, subscribe, share this episode with a friend who needs it, and leave a review telling us your investment goal for the next 12 months.
Website: idealweathgrower.com
Ready to scale your Amazon business? Click here to book a strategy call. https://calendly.com/firingtheman/amazon
Welcome everyone to the Firing the Man Podcast, a show for anyone who wants to be their own boss. If you sit in a cubicle every day and know you are capable of more, then join us. This show will help you build a business and grow your passive income stream in just a few short hours per day. And now your hosts, serial entrepreneurs David Shomer and Ken Wilson.
SPEAKER_01:Welcome back to the Firing the Man podcast, where we sit down with real entrepreneurs who are actually doing the work, building wealth and owning their financial future. Today's guest is Axel Meyerhoofer, the founder of Ideal Wealth Grower, a company that gives everyday people a real blueprint to escape the stock market casino, get out of corporate handcuffs, and build long-term freedom through cash-flowing real estate. Axel isn't your typical real estate influencer. He's a former Air Force officer and corporate executive who personally built a portfolio that now covers his lifestyle entirely through passive income. And he teaches others how to do the same, with a focus on education, numbers that make sense, and sustainable wealth creation, not hype. In this episode, we're going deep on how to build a real plan to leave your W-2 job, where investors are getting crushed today, and how to avoid it, Axel's framework for buying properties that pay you forever, the mindset shift from saving to owning assets. Plus, he shares the mistakes that almost cost him everything and the exact strategy he's using to create generational wealth without gambling on appreciation. If you're trying to replace your income, fire your boss, and build a portfolio that pays for your freedom, this is a conversation that is going to hit hard. Axel, welcome to the show. Hey, David. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. So I'm I'm really excited to get into this. Uh while we often talk about uh e-commerce on this show, we at the end of the day, we're all after financial freedom. And and that is kind of the crux of this show was firing the man and and regaining that freedom, and and doing that through real estate is an outstanding way to do it. And so, you know, let's start out with your origin story. You spent years in the military in corporate America building a portfolio that that covers your lifestyle. So what was the the moment that you realized that you needed to become an investor and not an employee?
SPEAKER_03:Well, there were kind of two moments. The one was still while I was still in the Air Force, I was leading a project to build a flight training center for the German Air Force at a US Air Force base in New Mexico. And the question came up, do we want to have like a little ghetto where all these German people that are supporting the operations would be living with their families, or do we go for some level of integration? And we obviously went for the latter part, but that meant in a in a city that had about a population of 25,000, 30,000 people, to integrate 800 new families within a very short period of time. And even the builders that were in the area did not have the capacity to quickly build those houses. So I negotiated a deal with the German government to say we are guaranteeing that for as long as the project exists on this Air Force base, the rents for any of the German people, military members will be covered by the German government and they will be market rate. And I totally assumed negotiating that and making that public in press releases and stuff like that would attract a whole bunch of people. Now, admittedly, New Mexico is maybe not the highest populated place in the world. But we basically for got pretty much crickets except for some people that ran real estate agencies or that were builders. And so ultimately I thought, well, maybe I need to show that I'm not just talking, that I'm actually doing it. And so I basically invested in my very first property as an investment property to demonstrate, yeah, I'm not just an executive on the military side, uh, kind of like a uh leading officer of the of the project, but I'm also willing it to do it with my own money, which was very little because the deal was just really too good to let go. Um, and then the second point in time was when I got out of when I fired the man, I need to say it this way today. When I fired the man and started my own business, I realized, okay, I came from a background where I was first protected by the military and then protected in a sense, at least longer term, by a 401k plan. And now I'm on my own. How is retirement going to look like? And this previous experience of investing helped, but it was also 2005, just a few years removed from the dot-com bubble. And so I didn't want to do stocks, and I was like, okay, what do people do if they don't do stocks? And I found with a little bit of research that almost everybody does some form of real estate.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Absolutely. So that was that was investment property number one. And and uh can you walk us through what what's your in investment career looked like? Has there been a a certain market or industry or area that you focused on?
SPEAKER_03:Well, what happened after I I retired from the Air Force, I was recruited almost immediately by a software company in Santa Barbara. And so the first funny story was that we had no idea about the area. So we first rented a place, then found a real estate agent and said, okay, we don't really want to be tenants, we would like to own a place. And I still remember she said, Okay, well, how much are you looking at to spend? You know, what kind of a house? And I look at my wife because New Mexico, where we had come from like six months before, the house at the golf course, custom built brand new, cost us$199,000. So I thought, well, I know the area is a little bit more expensive, so how about$300,000? And there was this pause, and she looked at me and she said, To be totally frank, you're lucky if you get a garage for that in this area. So I'm like, okay, um. Well, um ultimately we found a way and it cost six hundred thousand dollars, so we had to finance all kinds of tricks and stuff. Literally, and I have to say in hindsight it was a good decision, but I went with a 7-1 adjustable rate mortgage because that was the only thing I could afford to make a$600,000 deal work. Um, so that's basically how we got a house, and you mentioned in your intro that there was a spot or point on the timeline where we almost got wiped out because people probably um remember that there was a really, really bad real estate crisis in 2008, 9, 10, right around. And so that house that we had bought for 600K and that had gone up to almost 900 suddenly collapsed in value down to 575. And my consulting business had, for some strange reason that only the universe knows, gotten all kinds of really good clients on the East Coast. And for anybody who's ever done this for any prolonged period of time, flying out from like Los Angeles to Philadelphia Sunday afternoon, and then working, working, working, getting on the plane as soon as possible on Friday, flying back so that you can see your family for a day and a half, gets pretty old pretty quickly. So my wife and I said, well, we have to find a way to get a little closer to the East Coast. And since we knew New Mexico, we decided it would be nice to live in Santa Fe. We always like the area, it's a super nice area for anybody who ever has a chance to go there. So we found a house there and then realized that our house in Santa Barbara had fallen below our asking price after, just to let that sink in, seven years of ownership. So this was the second point in time where if we had accepted that deal, we could have been kind of wiped out and there wouldn't have been any more investing. So I thought, okay, well, we want to do investing. We had done it once in New Mexico, so we're just turning what was our residence into a rental. And um, and then we have to find something really creative. So we did owner financing in Santa Fe, which nobody had ever done in New Mexico, just so that we could get a place in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and just to make your audience members and maybe you, David, smile a little bit. So we move from Santa Barbara to New Mexico, rent out our house, make that basically our real start of our real estate investing portfolio. And within nine months, all my clients who used to be on the East Coast transitioned to San Francisco.
SPEAKER_01:That's funny. That is funny.
SPEAKER_03:In hindsight, I find it funny too. In the moment I thought it was a cruel joke, to be honest. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Pride needed some time to to turn the corner from a bad joke to being funny. So um, okay. I so I as I mentioned at the beginning of the show, um, I'm a Biden hold investor, and uh I talk to people about it. You know, I let them know I have a handful of rental properties, and and a lot of people say, Oh, I want to get into that. But they never do. You talk to them five years later and they'd say, Oh, I I want to get into that. And and so this is kind of a two-part question. What do you think is holding those people back? And if somebody is interested, how can they how can they go from being interested to to taking action on their first investment?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, thank you for that question. I I have a theory with very little empirical evidence, so I want to caveat it a little bit that way. But I believe when people in their mind start realizing that they would like to invest in real estate, in my experience, they're not typically in rural America. They're more likely somewhere in areas where you have a relatively good paying job, probably I'd say, either close to a major metropolitan area or within 50 to 100 miles of a beach. And what you find is there is this gospel that anything that has to do with real estate for yourself, you don't like probably anything more than like a 30-minute commute between your residence and your job. That's gospel regardless of COVID and all the other stuff and work from home and everything that we had. And for investing, it's basically you don't want to really own stuff much further away than an hour from where you live, so that if something happens to your assets, you can take care of them. And so what I teach in my mentoring program is to say, no, that's all gospel. And there's nothing wrong. You can believe stuff, but when it comes to making money, it's not in belief, it's in hard evidence. And hard evidence dictates that you should look for properties that perform, not how far away from your house or from your residence are they. And that basically translates into a good ratio between the price that you pay for the property and the rent that you can make. Or you can say, like I tell a lot of clients when they say, well, haven't yet decided if they want to sign up, how do I know that I'm at least in the ballpark? And I always say, go find, you know, find any kind of house on Zillow or wherever you go, and check if it's reasonable to make 1% of your purchase price in rent. Anywhere in that ballpark. Now we don't have to debate is it 1.1, is it 0.8, is it 0.1 No, just in the ballpark. And you will find in the vast, vast majority of these major metropolitan areas or 100 miles or so, 5200 miles from the beach, you just don't find that. Or it's it's super, super rare. And by the way, anybody who is listening or watching or whatever who knows those places, please let both of us know, because we want to invest there. You know, so but uh the reality is so you you you want to find those places, and that brought me, uh just maybe as a bridge to to your next question without leading you, but uh is what brought me to turnkey investing.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, absolutely. And I and I just want to reiterate that that point that you made because I think it's it's a really good point. The the one percent rule is if if you can rent something out for a thousand bucks a month that you can pay at one hundred thousand dollars, generally that's gonna cash flow. And I am a retired CPA and am so I'm a spreadsheet guy. I'm a spreadsheet guy. I have a very elaborate spreadsheet that tells me what's the optimal offer price. Uh, it's got multiple tabs, it's it's a work of art. Now, in most instances, if I were to apply the 1% rule, which is very easy and you can do in your head, uh, and I compare the results of that to this elaborate spreadsheet, I oftentimes end up at the same answer. And uh and so um the so yeah, absolutely. I just want to reiterate that because it's such I think a lot of people look at real estate investing as, oh, it's very complicated. How no, how do I know if I'm getting a good deal? And I'll tell you one thing I love about it is everything is known or knowable. You can get an insurance quote, you know what property taxes are, you can talk to a bank and know down to the penny what your payments gonna be. And it repairs and maintenance, there are really good schedules out there that'll give you estimates. And you know, when I do a product launch in my e-commerce brand, I've got no idea how it's gonna do. I I it's and so um and so yeah, I I really good point that that you made there. Now I I wanna let let's get into turnkey investing and and uh as you answer that while you got into it, can you first kind of define what is what is that? What does that mean?
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, so there's a lot of different definitions out there. So I've div developed my own and I keep preaching it because I believe strongly and I hope that for the audience it's easy to understand. There are basically three pillars, in my opinion, that really important to a good deal and a good relationship. The first one is you want the turnkey provider, the company that you're going to work with for a property, or what I actually suggest for our clients to build clusters. Look at a particular location, look at their economic and all these other variables. And when you decide, okay, this location I want to start investing in, have it already in your mind that you would be willing to buy four, five, six properties, build that kind of a cluster. I only want to say this up front because if you go in with that mindset, that also means maybe it takes you six, eight years to buy those six properties. So it's going to automatically lead into a longer term relationship. So pillar number one for the turnkey provider as an organization is they need to basically be a contractor. In two ways. Number one is if they mainly do renovations, they need to be contractors to what I call finding the ugly duckling in a good neighborhood and renovate it. The other opportunity or option is the same contractor, and then some combin uh companies that I work with, they do both, is they develop an area in a desirable mid-sized town or region. Like one of the ones that we like to invest in right now is basically that corridor between Dayton, Ohio and Cincinnati. That's about 80 miles corridor, and it's not really a metropolitan area unless you were really to count every person living along that corridor. But that's one of those corridors where you can still find properties that meet the 1% rule, or you can find like a 10-hectare plot that is part of the master plan and developed what I would call build-to-rent properties. So that's number one. You need to have one component of the company to be contracted. Number two is basically what anybody that has ever bought a property call a real estate agency. So basically all the activities that a regular real estate agency would do, some very few have even an attached title company or have a very good long-term relationship to a title company that is very familiar with outside investors, outside meaning like a thousand miles away investors, right? So they, for example, have it set up that you get your notarization anywhere in the world online, right? Instead of having to appear or having to do all kinds of hoops to jump through. So the middle part, the second pillar is this basically real estate agencies so that they sell you a property that actually appraises. Because we need to have that for financing. And oftentimes, if they do their own construction, they also negotiate deals with the local credit union or something like that, bow down, buy down the interest rate. That's typical what like an agency would do. And the third, and in my opinion, most important component to be also pillar number three in the same organization is property management. With all the bells and whistles, so with an owner portal, with a tenant portal, with like tracking for any penny that goes, like saying this to you, David, as the CPA spreadsheet guy, every penny that goes in and out to be trackable b on all sides, on the tenant side, on the property management side, and on the owner side. And if you have these organizations like I have several that I partner with, you can basically run these things from Bali or from the Cayman Islands or from Timbuktu or whatever other exotic place you want to say, because the distance that you are away from wherever the property is is pretty much irrelevant.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely, absolutely. I I you nailed it on the trifecta of of your real estate team. When you are we had talked about a lot of people think that they need to invest locally. And that may be because finding a real estate, you know, you may go to church with the real estate agent, you may, you know, have an uncle that's the contractor, you you may know someone in property management. If you're investing long distance, how are you? Forming those relationships.
SPEAKER_03:Well, the first thing is that I do for all our clients, and I know some people debate it, but my intention behind it is different than most people do, and that is every client starts out with forming an LLC. Now, the purpose is not, even though it is one of the benefits, is getting legal protection and and corporate protections and stuff like that. But the in my opinion, much more important component, and that's the answer to your question is if you haven't what are we calling it? Um fire the man, if you haven't fired the man, then you oftentimes don't have the mindset of a business owner. And to answer your question, David, how do you build the trusting relationship, for example, with the turnkey provider or with the property manager? By showing up as an equal high-level partner. You run a business, this business is hiring them just like an owner would hire an employee to do a certain service, and you're monitoring everybody if we talk for those who haven't fired their man. Anyone is familiar with performance reviews? If the bank is not performing, the mortgage company is not performing, property management is not performing, what would any normal employer do? You would let him go and find somebody else. So it's more a matter of attitude. How do you show up? When you talk negotiate terms on financing, terms on property management fees, the agreements that your property management is basically signing with the tenants on your behalf, but what are the criteria that you are willing to accept? All those kinds of things are a matter of attitude. How do you show up? So a lot of what I'm trying to do by creating the LLC is to teach people to learn how to be a business owner. And the answer to your question ultimately becomes, and this is why this is a process, right? Like you don't sign up for my mentoring program, and then two months later you're suddenly there. It's a year-long program, not that we talk to each other every day, but every time there's an interaction, one of my clients, some are very self-confident, some are not so much, some like more hand holding, some like less. But I have gone as far as saying, okay, you have your monthly call with property management of the turnkey provider, and we make it a three-way and I'm there. And when you have some things that you're unhappy with and you don't know how to phrase it, then let me show you once or twice. And then you see how it's done, and then you do it next time. I still be there if you want me to, and after the second or third time doing it yourself, you will have the confidence because what everybody, I can really unequivocally say this. Everybody I've taken through this, when they see how somebody reacts, when they realize, holy shit, I use this French term here, sorry. Um holy shit, this this person knows what he or she is saying and they argue, they approach me business to business. Not a person who is basically a novice who happens to have a property somewhere in Timbuktu and wants to deal with a professional. No. We are professionals, they are professionals. And by the way, if they don't behave or act like professionals, as the owner and as the person who hired them and pays them, we have every right to call them out on it. And so as you learn that, that's basically the answer number one for why can you be however far away, and why is it so important to learn what it means to be a business owner?
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. I think that's a a really, really good answer. Um, and to someone getting into real estate for the first time, um, you know, by having that LLC, by acting as a professional and not as an as a novice, I think really moves the needle in how people react to you. And and so well, one thing that that you had talked a little bit about, but I'd love to go a little bit deeper here, is where to find deals. And it seems that uh, you know, I was talking to somebody in Denver the other day, and we were talking about that ratio between what something rents for and what you can buy it, and it really wasn't favorable. Um for someone just getting started, if they say, Okay, uh the property doesn't need to be within 10 minutes of my house, it can be a thousand miles away. It it your next step is like, okay, well, where do I start looking? And I will I'll share with you my own, and uh, but I'd love to hear yours. Um, I live near St. Louis. St. Louis has a declining population. On a map, I put a 50-mile radius around it. I like to look at gr like increasing populations, growing construction permits, and I like to have a good school district surrounded by poor school districts. And that is kind of how I find properties and how I look for them. And so um, you know, for somebody that is coming to the realization I don't need to buy the house down the street, I'm gonna start looking, what would be where would be some good places to start?
SPEAKER_03:Well, you might be surprised, but my initial response would be before we look at a geographic location, let's answer the question of what's the goal or purpose of your investment. Right? So because it makes a huge difference. If you say, okay, the purpose is to grow asset value rather quickly, you might be willing to forgo this 1% ratio as long as you break even, and it has a little bit to do with what the interest rates are that you can get for a deal, you might in some cases be better off to get a newer property that the builder really wants to get rid of and is buying down the interest rate, and therefore your payment is relatively modest, and with the rental income, you can break even or maybe maybe make fifty or a hundred dollars positive cash flow. But even if you just break even, then in a location that has every opportunity, like you were just saying, you gave some examples about economic um criteria and stuff, if if that location has a great opportunity to appreciate well, and your time horizon, let's say, is five to seven years, which is the average cycle that people stay in a property, then finding those kind of properties for the purpose of increasing asset value is the right way to go. If on the other hand, you do my approach where I started investing because I said I don't want to work forever, and at some point I want my investments to pay for my life expenses, which also means I don't really intend to sell the properties. Yes, I like the appreciation, the increase in value, but the main thing I'm looking for is cash flow. So then I go into properties and locations where I can get maximum cash flow for a nice like A minus, B plus, B, maybe C plus at the outset. Um, or get a really interesting BTR deal where somebody maybe overbuilt and now they have lots of properties. There is an example, a friend of mine invested uh in recently, like about six months ago, in a new development in Austin, Texas. They had so massively overbuilt that those properties went for 35% of what was originally on the brochure when they started the development. Right? So they're still not making great cash flow, but the property is part of what makes a good deal is how much you pay for it in the beginning, right? We all know this. So that's why my first response is tell me what is your goal, what do you want to accomplish with your investment. The second part of that, by the way, is to say, is it purely for you based on your age, or are there any other motivations? Like in my case, when I started, I was already in my 40s, and I said from the beginning, I know I wanted to cover my life expenses, but it's ultimately also to secure the life of my daughter and now my grandson. Right? So from a legacy perspective, not everybody has that, and it depends if you're in your 30s or maybe early 40s, you might not think that way. But anybody who's a little older and says, okay, am I really only doing it for myself or is it for generational wealth? Well, if the latter is the case, then you might also want to say, okay, am I better off buying more older renovated properties that really cash flow very well? Or if I have this really longer time horizon ahead of me, am I better off to buy properties that are fairly new, anywhere between zero and five years old? I know they cost a little more, but they're probably in A or A plus neighborhoods, and they will be around 50, 60, 80 years. So that generation that I'm building this for, instead of just for myself, will not have to sell anything, will not have old properties that they have to 1031 or anything like that. Right? So those are just three little scenarios that are important to say where do you want to go. Now, if somebody came, let's just for the sake of argument, David, since you asked me, and says, I want to maximize cash flow right now. I would probably recommend like one provider that we have that covers the Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee area. One provider that we have that is in Ohio that I really like. And we used to have one in Idaho, although these guys have real struggle economically. So while the provider is really good and it's a very nice long-term relationship, I haven't really seen the economic data to support new investments there. But those would be like three locations I see right now. There's one other little thing for people who want to maybe mimic a similar deal to what I mentioned about Austin, Texas. There are some pretty, pretty amazing deals on new builds in Florida. But you have to be willing to basically forgo cash flow. You might break even or make a very little bit, but the prices are really depressed. And I have to say, this is for your um editor to decide if you want to cut it out or not. Um if Mam Dani does what he threatens to do, those prices will go up massively in the next two years. So if you can get in the next six months, you will have an amazing appreciation. But I'm not sure that he can actually get the state assembly to approve what he wants to do. If they do, there will be a huge, massive outflow from the New York City state or New York State. If they kind of throttle him a little bit, then I think it will be less than people and anticipate.
SPEAKER_01:I had heard, I think it was Patrick Bett David, uh, who had said there are there's a trillion dollars of of wealth that has moved from New York to Florida in the last decade.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, that's cool. But the question is, will there will there be another wave like that? And it depends on how radical uh the implementation is gonna be.
SPEAKER_01:Absolutely. Absolutely. So okay. So continuing on with our our real estate discussion, I think a lot of people getting started would they will come up with some excuses. Um and one that I hear, and and and it echoes in the back of my mind, is I'm gonna wait for prices to come down. And you figure the the economic cycle tends to go in in 10-year waves, and really we haven't seen a pullback since 2008. And so for people getting in on properties as we sit here talking in 2025, you it it sometimes could could feel like uh you know, maybe I'm buying at the wrong time. And so w what's your thoughts on timing the market and uh and just the status of where we're at in 2025?
SPEAKER_03:Um my response is probably surprising you a little bit because it's not a real estate response because real estate is in acting in longer cycles. So I think the a little bit more easy to understand response is in the stock market. And I challenge everybody who might say something like this. I my if we had a one-on-one conversation and David, you were the person and you had said that to me, I would say, mm, how likely would you have liked, or how much would you have liked to buy, let's say, Amazon stock at$10 a share, or Microsoft at$9, or Apple at$15. Would that be interesting to Well, if you go back in the Wayback Machine, that's kind of like a little tool, I don't even know when they came out. Yeah, maybe like Apple did the iPhone in 2007, so there may have been a little bit of internet available. I bet you for those and many, many other companies that are still around and that we all know, the people at the time said, This is completely crazy. This this Amazon thing, nobody is gonna buy, fill in the blanks online. Never. We're gonna go to the store that we've been going in for 10 years or to the bookstore or whatever. People have said, I was there, I'm old, right? Like, so I can attest to the fact that people said, My wife, by the way, was one of those. Why do I need all this crap on the phone? All I want to do is phone calls. Right? People said, you know, it's, you know, I I don't need any new operating system all the time, and I have no idea what this office thing is. I can barely do like Windows and email, you know, like that's about and I can tell you a hundred more stories about this kind of stuff. So the the point is a perception of price being high or low depends on how much do you see the future being positive or negative. And when we bring it back to real estate, one of the things that fits into real estate more so than stocks is do you honestly believe that there will be no more inflation?
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_03:Number two, question Do you honestly believe that the devaluation of the dollar is going to stop? No. No. If you take those two things together and you just go in your mind for one second through the example of what is a 30-year mortgage, it basically says you have 360 payments and I'm accepting in 360 months the same amount nominal, like$567.75 amount, knowing that that amount of money is worth purchasing power, maybe a hundred bucks at your last payment. Now, here comes the mind thing to ask yourself. If you take a property, three bedroom, two baths, thirteen hundred square feet, is that ever going to change as long as the place stands? No. No. So the thing that we're doing is we're saying today, in our today's dollars, these thirteen hundred square feet require eleven hundred of these green pieces of paper. And in ten years, when these green pieces of paper have lost a lot of value, it takes fifteen hundred or sixteen hundred of those. And in twenty years it will be two thousand of those. And in thirty years it will be three thousand of those. But the thirteen hundred square feet is still the thirteen hundred square feet. And if you keep it up, it hasn't really much changed. A well-kept property is a well-kept property. The only thing that differs is that the value of these green pieces of papers go down, and you have this beautiful thing that the bank told you today. I know all of that, but I'm still okay if you give me this devalued money in 30 years from now. That's actually the whole picture of that, and that's why, you know, that's in my opinion how you need to look at. And anybody who says the market is expensive, you should not look at that for any kind of what I would call a value investment from what is the current price. But again, and I like this word a lot, as you have probably found out, what is the purpose of my investment? If you could get let me just say the last thing to be really drastic. If those 1300 square feet would be away available for$50,000 and you would make$200 cash flow, you would take it. And if you add one or two zeros, you would still take it.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's a really rational response that that removes a lot of emotion that is often comes along with investment decisions. And it really kind of presents an obvious answer to um, you know, what's my next best step, or should I do this, should I engage in this?
SPEAKER_03:And so Yeah, that's one other thing, David, if you allow me, and this goes to the LLC side, right? If you were to apply the same argument and you're the owner of a business and you want to hire somebody, would you ever say, I hire somebody who I know is less good and works for less money, or I why I wait until I can find somebody who is working for 20% less than what a fair market rate in wages would be right now. If you really have the need, whether that's an investment need or the need for a service, you hire them for what they're worth. Now, yes, you look at the beginning, and that's what we went through. Like, how do we evaluate a property? How do we evaluate the market? You mentioned like the economics and are the inflow, outflow, all that kind of stuff. But when we made the decision, okay, this one is supposed to be it, then that's similar in an LLC, a qualified hire that can do the job to fit the need that I have right now. If your need is I want to invest to build cash flow, well then you find the proper property and the proper turnkey provider and you made the investment because you looked at the criteria and came to the conclusion it meets the purpose of my investment.
SPEAKER_02:I uh Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:I think that's a a really really good point and a really good way to go about it. Um can we talk about uh your coaching program? Who who's a good fit for for people that are interested in getting in getting started in real estate and what types of people do you work with?
SPEAKER_03:I found it's it's two and a half kinds of people. I know this sounds a little funny, but uh the one is somebody who hasn't uh fired the man yet, makes good income, understands or has this notion that real estate is a good investment. But has the one caveat, and that's the one that I want to help with. It's my main purpose I don't have a lot of time. I'm pretty busy between my job and my family. I don't have a lot of time. So the approach that I'm teaching that we're doing with the turnkey providers allows me, I'm the living example. I have a portfolio of nine single family properties, and I spend literally 90 minutes a month on managing them. So people who say I have good income, I want to invest, but I don't have a lot of time, which by the way also applies to a lot of uh current stock investors who say, Yeah, but I need to keep an eye on it because if something goes down the drain, I need to react. While real estate is not like that. Right. So that's the one group. The other group are basically small business owners who make good business, make good money, make good profits, and they want to find a way to basically make the profits work for them. And they then decide in those cases, oftentimes we don't even need to do an LLC. They already have a company, and the company is then buying the assets to just strengthen basically their balance sheet. And then the half one is every so often we get an accredited investor who says, okay, I know it's good. I have the money, I just need somebody who's basically doing it for me. The funny thing is that the mentoring sessions are rarely very deep compared to somebody who's is more interested to learn because it's kind of like the cheapest version of a family office in a way. You know, like they just say, okay, I have a couple hundred thousand. I I have one of those, I love him dearly. But those are the kind of people who say, okay, I buy three single families and a fourplex in a year. Right. But he still wanted me to help him and do the stuff because his expertise is in a totally different field, which is great, right? And I love the trust, and but those are very rare, that's why I call him uh half.
SPEAKER_01:Very good. Very good. All right. Actually, I feel like we could probably stay on this podcast for for another couple hours chatting real estate, but uh I do want to wrap things up, but before we do, we have something called the fire round. It's three questions or four questions that we ask every guest at the end of the show. Are you ready? Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:All right. What is your favorite book? The Wesie Gardener from John Sephoric. That's a good one.
SPEAKER_01:Uh what are your hobbies? Gardening is one of them. Very nice. Very nice. What is one thing you do not miss about working for the man?
SPEAKER_02:Well, two things if you allow.
SPEAKER_03:One is the hierarchy stuff, because even though there has been talk about flat hierarchies, I've never experienced it and I don't think they believe uh they exist. And a little bit depending on industry, all that regulatory bureaucratic stuff. You know, I mean most corporations where you would call them a man, I would say they will take a long time. And I am hoping, I'm really begging and hoping that AI is gonna force them to get rid of all this kind of stupid stuff that you're sitting in your 27 sexual harassment training or something like that.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, yeah, let's hope for everybody. Uh you're you're spot on there. And final question: what do you think sets apart successful real estate investors from those who give up, fail, or never get started?
SPEAKER_03:Finding somebody who shows you the path.
SPEAKER_01:Outstanding. Outstanding. Axel, thank you so much for your time today. For all of our listeners, if they're interested in getting in touch with you or enlisting in your coaching program, what's the best way to do that?
SPEAKER_03:The easiest is just go to ideawithgrower.com, and in the top right hand corner there's a little button that says discovery call, and then you get to my calendar, book a time, we talk about it. And if you like each other and want to help each other, then we do it.
SPEAKER_01:Outstanding. I will post a link to that in the show notes. Axel, thank you so much for your time today and looking forward to staying in touch.
SPEAKER_03:Yeah, David, thank you so much.
