There is so much to be learned during times of war, and that includes lessons about winning in real estate. Ava Benesocky and August Biniaz delve into business strategies from the involvement of the United States in today’s ongoing conflicts with Dr. Axel Meierhoefer, an Air Force vet-turned-real estate investor. Together, they discuss the most important nuggets of wisdom from the battlefield, from the right strategies to win against a more powerful enemy to the best way to prepare for a full-scale war. Dr. Meierhoefer also shares insights on how the Iran War and the oil crisis can be resolved, as well as what he would tell President Donald Trump if he were to find himself with him in the Situation Room.
Get in touch with Dr. Axel Meierhoefer:
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- Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-ideal-investor-in-the-age-of-sustainable-abundance/id1584725819
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About Dr. Axel Meierhoefer
Dr. Axel Meierhoefer, host of the IDEAL Investor Show, is an Air Force vet turned real estate investor, and Age of Abundance investor.
Using strategies like the 1031 exchange, turnkey, and more – Axel now owns multiple properties in different countries & states (such as Ohio, Idaho, Illinois, Florida, Belize, Panama, Spain, and more).
Currently, he is in Spain, enjoying retirement with his wife.
US, Israel, Iran War & Business Strategy: What War Teaches About Winning In Real Estate With Dr. Axel Meierhoefer
We have an incredible episode for you. I just wanted to say something a lot of the readers and a lot of people who know you, August, they know August as a Chief Investment Officer and as a real estate private equity guy. Unbeknownst to you, August is actually a military and geopolitics expert and he does many talks around the world to huge audiences and that audience consists of myself, Apollo and Atlas. We believe in him and one day, I think you’ll really go big.
We’re trying to grow my audience in that sphere. Right now, I’m focused on real estate and private equity. Yes, I’m also an expert in that space but it’s something that affects life. Politics, geopolitics, wars taking place as is happening currently, it affects our everyday lives. Gas prices have gone up 35%, at least here in Southwest Florida but they’re part of our lives and it really excites me.
I think if I wasn’t in business, in finance, in real estate, I would definitely either be in the military or politics, that’s where I want our sons to go. I definitely want our sons to get involved in politics. They’re both born here in the US they’re Americans and hopefully, one day they will be involved in either initially military but eventually the politics because politics matter.
Atlas is really taking a liking to learning all this stuff as well because Daddy is very passionate about it.
Touching on the current war in Iran it was it seemed like it was a war that they were really setting us up for. We knew that it was going to be Afghanistan went down and then it was it was Iraq, it was soon after obviously in recent time was Syria and then now Iran. That goal that that was put into place by Israel and the US finally took place and American and Israelis attacked Iran. Killed the Supreme Leader on the first day of the war. Usually the leader gets killed a little bit farther down but they killed him on the first day of the war.
We’re watching at what’s happening me as myself as an Iranian Canadian, Iranian American person whose heart has always felt American even at the times when the Iran was going to a war with Iraq and Iraq was using American weapons or American planes and bombs to bomb Iran I actually still felt American. I wanted to end up here one day and that’s why I came here and both of my sons were born here so I have that affinity with the US with the idea of United States but when the US is attacking Iran, a lot of people ask me about my feelings, how do I feel about it?
The best analogy I’ve come up with is as if as a country of Iran as an Iranian the Islamic Republic feels like a cancer, feels like Iranians are having cancer. What the American and Israelis are doing is basically chemotherapy for that cancer. Chemotherapy still hurting, still killing you in the process of killing the main cancer. That’s how it feels. It feels like a patient having cancer and getting chemotherapy to try to relieve it from this cancer that exists in Iran.
Our guest comes from a military Air Force background. Interestingly enough, he served for the Air Force in Germany and the US. Not too long ago in history, when you look at it, Germany was at war with the US with the allies and the German army did tremendously well, the German Air Force did tremendously well but they were defeated, which changed the fabric of the world which resulted in half the world, the Eastern part of the world becoming communist with the Soviet Union expansion and what have you. These things that happen every day some of us just leave it on the sideline but it affects our everyday life. We’re going to get our guest to jump on and maybe we can get our guest to come on, Ava.
We’re joined by Axel Meierhoefer. Welcome to the show, Axel. We’re really grateful that you’re here with us.
August and Ava, thank you for having me.
Serving In Both The US And German Militaries
Obviously to the show, chatting with you, it’s obvious you have a German accent. How did you serve in the US Air Force? Obviously being German or at least having a German background.
What happened is I joined what’s called Flight Test organization in Germany which is basically if you think about it, a combination or cooperation of civilian companies who build military planes and also civilian planes and the military. In that particular case, I joined the test team organization to develop a new version of the plane that I had been flying in regular service.
Every time or most of the time, these pieces of equipment, August, you mentioned like large military budgets in the US and a large military industrial complex so it’s obvious that a lot of the top smartest technology would come from American companies. If you think about it, when you’re actually in testing there are no books already made, there is no military philosophy. If a company builds a piece of equipment they build it from an engineering perspective and then when we, meaning like when I was in the Air Force wanted to translate it, there was no other way than going to these companies.
For about two years, over and over, my wife and I went to American companies in the United States for me to get the training. At some point, my wife said, “It would actually be nice if we could have a longer stay than just these like 3, 4, 5 weeks at a time.” I looked into this and found that there was actually a long-standing exchange program between the US Air Force and the German Air Force so I applied for it and then ultimately got selected.
The director of flight operations of a US fighter wing came to take my job. At the time, I was responsible for theoretical flight training, like all the theory you need to learn to be ready to go into the plane. He took my job and I took his job and so he learned how to fly the plane I was flying and I learned to fly F-111s. That’s how that actually happened and I did that F-111 flying for not quite three years and then I was reassigned. I thought I would go back home but I was actually reassigned to another US base, actually the home of the stealth fighter, the F-117 in New Mexico, and helped to build US Air Force, German Air Force combined flight training center, and then I got too old and I retired.
What The American Military Did Better Than Germans
Talk to us about that transition bit as well because instead of just being getting training in the US and going back and training your compatriots, you were actually now moved to the US. I guess you’re getting paid as a US Air Force officer as well. How was that transition like? Was there things that Americans did better than the Germans? Were there things that the Germans did better than Americans? How was your first glance at it? I know we’re looking at just for example American made cars compared to German made cars, you can tell the difference right away. My Cadillac Escalade drives great but our Mercedes is not bad as well. I’d love to hear your feedback there.
It is hard sometimes to put things in these black and white right or wrong comparisons because in my experience, the older I get, the more I realize things are not just two sides of a coin or something like that. There are all kinds of shades of grays and different variants. To point out a few things. One thing I would say since I experienced both what the US side or the US military does much better on the internal affairs, so to speak, is really taking care of their own.
The US military does a good job of managing internal affairs and taking care of its own. Share on XIf you look at a US Air Force base, you have a commissary, you have a hospital, you have a dental clinic, you have an oil change place, you have a little shop, you have housing, and on top of that, all the things necessary for operations. If you go comparatively to a German Air Force base, you basically have only the things that you need to operate, like for a fighter wing like I was in, you have a runway, and your technical buildings, and you have some barracks and stuff like that, and some office buildings and so forth, and everything else is external in the community.
The camaraderie aspect is like really feel being taken care of. Maybe between the two of us, what was completely foreign for my wife was that there was like an officer’s wives club. She was, on the one hand, already a little exotic as the only non-American person on the whole base, and then because of my rank, you have obviously a much larger number of people so if you’re like a major or lieutenant colonel, you’re already further up in the pecking order.
The top rank, by the way, in the bases that I was stationed was a colonel, so I was like two levels away from that. That’s the other funny thing that wouldn’t fly at all in Germany, is that the women treated each other as if they had the ranks of their husbands. She came back from the first time and she said, “They all called me Major Meierhoefer’s wife or ma’am, or stuff like that, as if I had done anything. ”
That was a little bit different. Back to your question. The internal thing is really a strong community, which is way less in comparison to Germany. The other part, the external thing that I even had to get used to because I was so totally not used to it is the enormous appreciation that the US public has for service members.
I was completely shocked. I was actually starting to wonder if people meant it seriously when they said, “Thank you for your service.” yes, I provided 22 years of service, it’s all true and it’s super appreciated like, makes me actually a little emotional to be honest but that totally didn’t exist. I don’t want to poo-poo it too much, but there were times where people in my unit in Germany were asking for permission not to have to wear uniform on the way home, because it took them through the center of the city and they always felt like they were sticking out.
They were running the risk of basically being like, “Look at this idiot who is actually serving for the military.” that’s a really different environment. To me, it took us like 2.5 seconds to get used to, but every once in a while, you had to ask yourself, “This is really very different.” one thing I want to also say, August, to your question, because that is sometimes forgotten and I think it was really important.
The service in the other military’s organization, like me as a German Air Force officer serving in the US Air Force, was really absolutely complete. If what is going on right now with Iran would have happened at the time, I would have flown the F-111s in the Strait of Hormuz. There was no such thing like you’re half there and not really, and if something happens you go back.
We’ll get to that point, very important.
I’m just saying like I had that job, I was part of the unit, I wore the same US uniforms, everything.
= you would have been deployed, basically, you’re saying.
Yeah. It’s basically like you really becoming a member of the other service. It’s same thing. If there would have been something in Ukraine and Germany had decided to participate, my counterpart would have basically been part of that. I just wanted to point out that you we had to sign that we completely understand that we are now part of the other service and no longer of our home country service.
Of course. Now going back to a couple other things, I want to touch on this a bit, but you have to take this with the idea, the understanding that there is restrictions on Germany even as of for any type of military expansion. I think there is restriction on developing fighter jets or some other there’s 30,000 American troops that are stationed in Germany.
Also keep in mind, after World War II, the German as a people, they were forced to put their head down in shame of what the Nazis did to the world and the whole Holocaust and everything else. Maybe the ideas of being patriotic and being a military officer was shunned upon because of that history, not because people don’t appreciate what they’ve done.
Touching on this as well, what I noticed as a Canadian who lived in Canada most of my life and coming to the US, they’re not only more patriotic when it comes to their servicemen and people in the military, they’re also more patriotic when it comes to sports. Many other things Americans do. They’re just more patriotic as a nation. When it comes to their flag, when it comes to their national anthem, they’re just more exciting. It might be because of the heat, it might be because the type of people that came from Europe and settled in the United States.
What The German Military Did Better Than Americans
I see the Canadian counterparts as much more risk-averse, for example, when it comes to the investing world. I see them much more maybe almost borderline antisocial, the Canadians are. They like being in seclusion. Americans are much more outgoing and exciting, so there is those factors as well. Going back to the question I had for you about what the Americans did better. You talked about that outside of the military when it comes to availabilities they have maybe that’s because of the budget, maybe because of the passion the people have that military people did live, maybe more excitement there. What was better than the Germans did than the Americans?
The one thing is that you don’t constantly have to ask the question, “Do we have budget for things?” that should be in my opinion and in the opinion of any, like, military member should be a normal thing. That has obviously part to do with how big the overall budget is, but it’s just a common understanding that if you want people to voluntarily serve in the military, which is the system that that we have in the US, that you need to provide a lot of things.
War: Every military member should not have to constantly ask the question, “Do we have a budget for things?”
There’s also then this component of largesse. I give you one quick example of a real contrast that I experienced. I came to this unit, did my training, and then took this role of director of operations. I walk into a room where you normally plan your missions, making your maps and preparing your stuff and making a plan and there were these shelves with binders. I had never seen something like that, so I walk in and get the tour, and I stopped the guy who gives me the tour and said, “What is this for?”
There can’t be that many binders to plan missions. He said, “No, these are all the SOPs, the standard operating procedures that basically describe pretty much anything and everything that can happen between accepting the plane from maintenance, flying the plane on whatever mission you can imagine, coming back and giving the plane back to maintenance.” I looked at that and I’m like, “That’s crazy.” we had maybe 5% of those number of binders than they had.
Ultimately, as I got a little bit more accommodated and got to talk to the crews and I was planning a mission, and I pointed and said, “Guys, all this stuff here, they said this is all your SOPs.” They had just come back about a year and a half before from the Iraq War at the time. I said, “Did you literally take all of this to Iraq?” they said, “No, they all stayed here. When we went to war, we didn’t have any use for these SOPs.”
That is the one of the stark differences to the German system. The German system, and I hinted to this before we started recording, Ava, is really goal-oriented. You identify a common goal, but you’re not necessarily saying, “Here are twelve binders that describe you how from where we are right now to accomplish this goal.” It says, “Here is where we are, analyze your current situation, look at what we want to accomplish, and find a way.”
You mentioned the German military in World War II or even in World War I, I think if you really ask the strength of the allies versus this comparatively small military that Germany had, that difference that is still in existence, I believe made a huge difference, because some very gifted, especially tactics and strategy gifted people, found ways.
Not because they were in binders, not because they were in books, not because they were in checklists. They found ways to accomplish the goal. Sometimes they did and sometimes they didn’t. Most of the time when they did, they had surprised somebody. That is a really big difference that I had to get used to, because if you have that many rules, that also means you’re constantly walking the on the edge of doing something wrong and breaking a rule.
I had the great pleasure of actually, and you can debate if it’s a pleasure or not, but a few things that I brought from Germany about how we actually conduct our missions with the German military had to do with how to be very successful in hitting the target. I had the great pleasure of teaching those things to my fellow pilots in the wing, and we became the best squadron of the wing because we did it the German way.
The SOPs, we’re very familiar with that because I’ve literally built out so many SOPs in in our company here, but it’s it really is about getting the right person in the right seat, so they probably really focused on that obviously first.
Military Advice For The President
It’s also about being pragmatic and not perfection and following rules to a fault, but rather being pragmatic. We have a lot to cover. Let’s go on. I’m going to be putting you on a little bit of a hot seat here, Axel, my friend. I have an image pulled up here. It’s President Trump in the situation room. He’s sitting next to Marco Rubio, he’s sitting next to JD Vance, his Vice President, and a few others.
I want you to picture yourself in that room. In this room, he also has the Prime Minister Netanyahu, he’s got the Israeli Prime Minister on his screen talking with them. Obviously, the Israelis have had a bone to pick with the Iranians for a long time because of their proxies, Hamas and Hezbollah, and so many other things that have happened over the years. They seem arch enemies, but pre-’79, they were best friends when the Shah was in power, and even it was fashionable for Iranians to go get surgery done in Tel Aviv and come back and so on. It’s weird how the world has changed.
You’re sitting in this situation room with President Trump, and the New York Times has published a report on this on February 11th, 2026. You have Netanyahu that comes to the White House. He’s there in situation room, the Mossad is on the screen behind him, and basically, they’re discussing the Iran situation. They’re discussing this idea of regime change, that’s the goal, to topple the regime.
Again, you’re sitting in this room. They’re talking about missile program. Some people within Trump’s administration, within Trump’s military, are worried about the Strait of Hormuz, they’re worried about the missiles that Iran has. The Israelis are telling them that, “We’re going to blow up all their missile stockpiles, we’re going to blow up all their tunnels, they won’t even have a opportunity to use these missiles and close the Strait of Hormuz. Retaliation against US interest would be minimal.”
That’s what they tell they tell Trump. Trump turns around and says, “Sounds good to me.” Every one of those assurances has turned to be wrong. The Strait of Hormuz is closed. Iran and US and Israel are in a two-week ceasefire, but one of the Iran’s requests was that Lebanon doesn’t get bombed, and the Israelis are bombing Lebanon as we speak, so they probably don’t want this ceasefire to go on.
Trump turns to his advisors, so he turns to JD Vance and asks JD Vance, “What do you think I should do?” again, like I mentioned, this is actual factual from New York Times, it’s an actual report and JD Vance says, “I think this is a bad idea, but if you want to do it, I’ll support you.” Marco Rubio says, “If the goal is regime change, we shouldn’t do it.”
Chong, the COM’s director, contradicted everything they said for eight months about Iran nuclear facility being destroyed. He’s saying that if you guys go ahead with this, this contradicts that we blew up their nuclear facility, so why are we even doing this? The CIA director says, “Regime change is possible if it only means killing Ayatollah Khamenei.”
After hearing all of this and they don’t even have the Treasury Secretary or the Energy Secretary, two of the people who going to manage the largest oil supply disruption in history, in the room. Trump makes a decision to go ahead. The next day, aboard Air Force One, 22 minutes before military deadline, Trump sends six words. “Operation Epic Fairy is approved. No aborts. Good luck.” New York Times says this. You’re sitting in that room, what’s the advice you give the President of United States in this situation?
The first thing is. It’s not just being asked and giving advice as if you were brought in for one minute and then have to leave a minute later. I would have wanted to know, before I even say anything, “Where does the urgency come from?” I have the strong suspicion the urgency comes from Israel. My next question would have been similar to Marco Rubio. “Do we mean regime change, like Cath Patel said, or do we mean we want to free the Iranian people?”
I would say to Trump, “If you want to be the person who is no longer known for not going to war, then you should be known for the person who freed a people. If you want to do this, my advice would be. Let’s prepare properly.” What does that mean? That doesn’t mean that we dance to the Israeli demands or requests, but that we strengthen everybody in the region anti-Iranian people to be ready.
War: If Trump wants to be the person who is no longer known for not going to war, he should be known as the person who freed a people.
The Kuwaitis and the Qatars and the Saudis, with air defense capabilities, so that if they even can launch anything, it would not get any more than like maybe 5,000, 6,000, 10,000 feet off the ground. I know a little bit about air defense and stuff from my background, so you always have launch, then you have a cruise, and then you have a targeting phase. The systems nowadays should be capable, based in comparison to what Iran has, to get them basically as soon as they get in the cruise phase.
If preparation is done properly, these other countries would have also had an opportunity to do something on their own, so none of their oil or gas infrastructure would have really been threatened or destroyed as we now know in hindsight. The other part and I’m a big Elon Musk fan, would have been. Let’s see how much Cath Patel can get more Starlinks into the country. Make sure that the people on the ground not just those that did the protests over the Christmas holidays, but millions upon millions of people on the ground are ready and prepared.
If I were really in that room, I would have said. “Mr. President, I don’t think we are in any hurry. If we do this in June, or we do this in September, or we do this to get them freed up for Christmas or whatever it is, maybe we want to say we want to get this done by the 250th anniversary of the country but we need to be properly prepared.”
In my opinion, even though I only have access to what the public information is, this was an extremely unprepared mission so far, and that’s also why we see the results we see. The little other thing I would say is don’t underestimate the fanaticism of a religiously led country. We in the Western media always only hear about the people who protest, and I’m not saying they don’t exist, but in comparison to the overall population of the country, we can’t just make the assumption that 90% of the people are just sitting there waiting for their opportunity.
We need to make them ready and we have the technological capabilities to get them ready. We didn’t do that. Now we’re all surprised. Yes, we got the supreme leader, but it’s not that the millions and millions and I’m not saying they don’t want to be free, I’m very convinced they want to be freed but they weren’t prepared, they don’t know what to do. That would be my thing. I would say, “Why are you in such a hurry?”
Conceptually, you would be for some war. It’s just the timing wasn’t right and your advice in that room would be, “Don’t attack right now.”
That’s one thing, there’s another component that is very important and that is how believable are you? There is what we see in the public and then there is still, I would call it diplomacy and there is a military diplomacy and then there is a political diplomacy. I think there would have been very easy ways to just show the people in Iraq with power what is going to come to them if they basically want to play the we will fight to the last drop and stuff like that. That goes a long way with preparing the public in my opinion.
The question would have been do you want to live or you don’t want to live? If you then go and do what happened in the first day of the war and ask the remaining people, “I ask you one more time. Do you want to be next or not?” That’s a different scenario. My answer to your question is to me looking from the outside just on public information as we all have, this was for whatever reason done by somebody putting pressure on the president to do something unprepared. Now we are in a situation where we don’t really know how to get out of it without losing face.
Yeah, I tend to agree with you. I think it’s a brilliant take on what’s happening, but in their defense, I have to say that I’ve personally seen videos of Starlinks being captured by the IRGC as they were coming into Iran. They should have maybe brought in it earlier but there were a few containers of Starlink that were captured. The Americans send in a lot of weapons also through the Kurds, it just happened that the Kurds kept the weapons and they never let it get to the Iranians.
I mentioned, August, that’s a matter of preparation. They kept them probably because nobody was willing to really tell them what they were for, at least not in plain language. The other thing, I just want to remind everybody reading, Starlink went into Ukraine after Russia had already started the war and had already shut down all communications, and we’re talking tens of thousands of systems. You’re not telling me that the CIA, if properly prepared and had the time and had actually the logistical support and everything, couldn’t have inundated the country with those capabilities. It’s, again, if you think about it, just a matter of preparation.
How To Go Against A Powerful Adversary
Axel, I’m going to change the conversation a little bit here. You spoke about this concept of inferior military battling against a superior military, that because of the lack of high-tech military hardware, they’d have to be more goal-oriented. I would love for you to describe this about more how it works in a war setting, but I also want to continue the conversation and bring that back into a business sense. If a company is in competition with a much more powerful adversary, can the same logic and strategy be in a business as compared to a war?
While the short answer would be yes, but I guess you want to hear a little more. From a military perspective, I think because so many people saw it and I know the movies are never really quite the real thing, so I’m probably one of the people most aware of that but if you think of it from a illustrative point of view, there is this scene in the Top Gun Maverick the last, most recent Top Gun movie where Maverick is basically trying to prove the point that if done right, with full intentions, one plane in this very short period of time, going through this insane hilly mountainous terrain, can deliver a devastating kill on that one target.
Now they made it super gut-wrenching and like you were sitting there and looking at the clock and stuff like that. The point is, to your question, that demonstrated how much impact each individual effort has. That would be basically my answer to you. I’m not saying work more or work harder. The real answer would be smarter but the fact is if you have this tool, and this tool, like in this case, this fighter jet has these capabilities, then use all of it. Maximum full effort, full concentration to hit the target in this case, or hit the goal.
It really only takes one. On the other side, oftentimes the assumption is, “Okay, we do everything with volume.” That’s a little bit, in my opinion, also what I hear to go back to August’s point about the war, the US military leadership right now seems to think just because we have this insane volume of weaponry that we can bring this to bear. If anybody ever looked at the Strait of Hormuz or that little island where the oil refinery facilities are that’s a tiny little island, you can’t just say, “I send 1,000 jets,” or “I send 1,000 missiles or stuff.” They would all not really be effective. Probably half of them would kill each other on the way there.
The sheer volume of power is not necessarily always the thing. Now for business, I would say in my experience, I mentioned earlier this approach to say what is my goal? If you allow me, I can spend a minute on how did I actually get into this real estate stuff. I was living in Santa Barbara, California, so for most people that ever been there, it is a super beautiful place but also quite expensive.
The sheer volume of power is not necessary to achieve success. Share on XI got fascinated with real estate investing. I saw in your video, by the way, Ava, that you said anybody successful has at some point in their life started investing in real estate and probably never stopped. I was at that point I wanted to invest in real estate, looked around, got spreadsheets and all the good stuff Germans do, and looked and came to the realization. If I want cashflowing real estate, I can’t get that in Santa Barbara, California.
Now the volume approach would be to say, “I need to freaking find a way to make more volume in the sense of money,” because if I have enough money, I can get properties and then maybe I can, like you guys do in multifamily get enough students from UCSB or something like that to rent individual rooms and still make a few dollars positive cashflow. You can go and say, “Okay, what am I really looking for? What is my real goal?”
What I found is. My real goal is full control over the cash-flowing asset. Something like a single-family home, duplex, triplex, fourplex. The rules, a government difference between commercial real estate and residential real estate and all that. That was the cash flow was the goal. People always said real estate is location, location, location. I’m sure you have heard that 1,000 times. No. It’s performance, performance, performance.
You then have to look at the location and find the location where that performance is possible. That got me into turnkey investing, because that was for me the only solution to say I’m sitting in Santa Barbara, California. I’m not going to move to Idaho or Ohio just because the properties are there. I want the properties, but I don’t want to move. The solution for that was turnkey investing. That’s the goal orientation. Not to say, “I have to wait until I’m a millionaire and then I can invest.” No, you have to find a way to get to your goal even if you’re not a millionaire, or like for the US military, you would say a trillionaire.
A lot of people do say the location, location comes first, but this performance, performance.
How To Scale A Business Through A Goal-Oriented Approach
Expanding on that a bit and the reason this as one of our questions for you was because of where we are. Our firm, CPI Capital, is in is we’re in multifamily but also built-to-rent, BTR. We do acquisitions, already existing multifamily utilizing the value-add model, well, we renovate and force appreciate asset in Florida and Texas, but we also do ground-up development, which is building built-to-rent communities.
I think us expanding into built-to-rent was exactly that. We knew that our infrastructure in-house for acquisition was very strong for analysis and so on, our investor relations was strong, we had equity on the sidelines ready to be deployed. It was just deals were not making sense on the multifamily side and they were making sense for us to look at built-to-rent. Coming back onto, let’s say, CPI, a boutique smaller firm, has done a few deals, been around for several years now, but also looking at the Goliaths in our space. Looking at these leviathan firms like, let’s say, Greystar, which is the largest multifamily owner in the US, they’re property management firm as well, but they’re the largest multifamily owner in the US.
Interestingly enough I want to say this is separate component, but it’s very interesting in the multifamily space, when it comes to the market share and when it’s compared to other industries, for example. Banking, JP Morgan has a 17% market share, iPhone, Apple has a 40% market share, Nvidia, I believe a 60% market share. These are huge market shares that these companies have. Multifamily, when it comes to Greystar, which is the largest owner, is less than half a percent It’s like 0.3 % of market share.
It gives us an idea that this is not an industry where one huge firm or a few huge firms completely control it. There is an ability for us to get in, and a lot of assets that we go after, these larger firms don’t go after because we’re in the middle market, so and we buy value-add, not core-plus. We don’t buy brand new assets or just a few years old, we buy older ones that need renovation.
I’m just wondering how being pragmatic, how being goal-oriented could provide support to a firm like CPI aside from ideas into bringing on a different asset class and focusing there. On the multifamily side, how do we how do we scale using this idea of being goal-oriented? Do we look inward? We can’t control external. We’ve got to look inward at team members we have or what we can do differently, for example. Hard question to ask.
My starting point and that may not necessarily really be relevant whether it’s like BTR, which I want to congratulate you of seeing that. To me, this is very obvious, mainly because I see who are the people that will have money in the future and where do they want to live. Both through the investing lens as well as on the comfort of living lens, for me BTR is the answer, but we can expand on that if you like. Fundamentally though, and going back to what Ava asked earlier, is really. What do you want to accomplish with your firm?
For me, if you ask me the question, my goal is to help people start the development of a passive income portfolio. Size is secondary in a way, because I’m not counting if I’m helping 50 people or 100 people, as long as I’m saying I’m fulfilling the mission and the vision that I have. The more the merrier, no doubt about it, but it’s not a competition in the sense of who has more doors, at least in my opinion it’s not. It’s a question of, for example, if you say. Okay, you buy certain kinds of property because you part of your vision is the quality of the space that you ultimately, on the one hand, provide to the tenant and, on the other hand, provide to the investor.
Now for me, for example, when I’m asked, “Why are you not in multifamily?” or when some of my clients suggest, “Well, I’m thinking I might be learning from you how to buy a single family or duplex but ultimately I want to do multifamily,” my answer is control. Now I’m not saying CPI should do this, but one way if you wanted to differentiate yourself would be to say, “Okay, would multifamily syndication be one way where you give the limited partners some more control than they would ever get in a REIT or a Grayscale?”
I would always say it starts out with asking yourself, “Why are we doing it?” By the way, my personal opinion, regardless what the names are, a lot of this hedge fund investing and so forth is just as an alternative to all the different asset classes that they can be in. They analyzing their market and saying, “Okay, which asset class gives us the highest probability of success to our investors?”
Where the investor oftentimes has no clue what they’re actually investing in, if it’s stocks, if it’s ETFs, if it’s commodities or real estate. They only want to see either directly or indirectly that their mutual fund makes 5% or 6% per year. They look at, obviously as next step, they look at how many fees can we collect for that.
You and I with your company, I with my company, and thousands others like us, we are much closer at the face and at the contact with the investor. Our companies, at least I believe from what I saw on your website and what you’re doing and your content, you are also much more involved with the people that actually invest with you or where you basically offer a product, and same with me. The intention is different, the vision is different, and then you have to ask yourself, “Do you really even have to care about the market share or what other people do and what their motivation is?”
If you take this step backward one moment and say, “Okay, if you wanted to start a car company, would you ever have started an electric car company?” Most people would say, “While if I would have any chance of success, I start a car company.” even that has not been successful in 100 years in the United States. Tesla started as an electric car company, which was double hard. The point was electrified transportation was the vision.
It wasn’t just, “I want to make a cool electric car.” it was getting our transportation electrified so we don’t have the potential impacts of climate change. The vision completely different from the Fords, the GMs, from the Mercedes or BMWs. That would be my answer to you. Ask yourself what is your vision and the thing that you want to accomplish, and be 100 % focused on that and let the rest of the world do their thing and their focus on their vision.
Incredible response. Yeah, very nice, Axel. Thank you. One more do we have time for one more question before the next round of the show?
Absolutely.
Difference Between Mechanical And Artistic Performance
Alright, so let’s this is totally different concept we’re going to be discussing. I’ve heard you speak about this concept before on other shows. I wanted to bring it back because it’s something that interests me. I’m paraphrasing you, but you described this idea of mechanical performance versus artistic performance. You talked about in aviation particularly in the military where is almost muscle memory.
It’s not your reactive brain, it’s your limbic brain, but you also discuss this concept that some people are just better at it. You talk about you’re landing in a runway where you’ve never landed before, but your muscle memory makes decisions that somebody sitting next to you says thinks that you’ve already have flown into that airport in the past because you are interpreting it differently that somebody else would.
You’re doing that creative part, the artistic part much more smoothly. I’ve always wondered about this in in many different practices in life, some people just do things much better than others, some people are more mechanical, some people are more artistic, but I’ve always wondered about the world of medicine. Particularly surgical medicine and I have a good friend of mine who is a surgeon. He is a urologist and he does actually surgical for bladder and kidneys and what have you. I asked this question from him like, “When you’re in the operating room, is it noticeable right away that some surgeons are just really better than others?”
“What if some surgeon is getting the job done but they’re just not artistic enough to get the job done the right way? Do they do they lose their job? What happens?” He’s like, “No, it happens in medicine and there are some people that just are not the best. Even though they’ve done the schooling, they’ve done all the practical work, but they’re just not the best so they have to move on to something else, but some people are just great at it.” Now I want to bring that back for you to discuss the concept in a bit more, but discussing that also in in life as well.
For example, with CPI, when Ava, myself and another partner of ours started CPI, we initially had different positions within the company. I was initial investor relations and I thought I was doing a decent job until Ava started connecting with investors and getting on calls. After just listening into a few calls and the performance, I soon realized that this was terrible idea for me to be in this position at all because I’m very analytical, I talk with my hands, I’m a bit loud I say it how it is, last thing I want.
When I’m talking to investors, I’m a man, I’m a strong man, last thing I want is asking for somebody for money, it almost feels like I’m begging for money so it didn’t it didn’t feel good personality wise, but Ava was incredible like it was unbelievable the type of people getting on calls with her and investing with us. She took the reins there right away because she was just better at that. Talk to us about this concept how it plays into business and life and love to hear more about it.
I guess it’s not explained or addressed in in a sentence or two. The first starting point is to say am I doing something, am I learning something that I’m actually interested in? Interest and talent is oftentimes on the same side. If you’re forced to do something that you’re totally not interested in and potentially also not talented for, it’s probably not going to be good. It might be like what you just described. I’m not saying you’re not talented but it may not be serving your talents well compared to what you said that you do and what you’re doing CFO now is probably closer to your talents.
If you are forced to do something you are not interested in and potentially not talented for, it will not probably go well. Share on XYou want to first find something that is aligned with your talents just to get started of learning whatever is needed to learn to get reasonably good at it. Now the comparison between you and Ava is also not quite right because a female has much more intuition and emotional connection and stuff, you and I could never compete with Ava. We have to put that aside it’s not totally fair.
Even if we were both equally talented and interested with something, there comes a point where you can say, “I learned.” We spoke earlier about all the rules or the standard operating procedures, we used and learned how to apply all the tools and so forth. To your example with the surgery, there’s obviously also procedures, there are tools to apply, there is the knowledge of how the body looks like on the outside, the knowledge on how it works and how it looks like on the inside when you start the surgery and make your first incisions.
One thing that happens that is an important attribute is experience. What that actually does is you are fundamentally talent in performing certain tasks in a certain order to achieve a certain goal. Now you’re doing it more and more, meaning like you gain experience and you can get better and better in just doing the mechanical part. Where talent and this artistic part comes in is to say, “Do I see things that go a little left and right above and beyond what the book says?”
You say, “Okay, while this particular patient that I just opened for this bladder surgery, the bladder is much bigger than the X-rays show,” or what we thought was the bladder was actually part of the bladder and a hernia. Now you could say, “That’s totally new. Let’s close it up. Let’s go back to the beginning and see what we do,” or in a way the art is.
I’m not talking about medical law and all that. I’m just talking about the situation is to say, “I can find a solution by asking a nurse to give me a tool that normally has nothing to do with this surgery. To move this hernia part out of the way, really analyze the bladder in the moment, in situ and make a decision that is the best possible decision aligned with my talents to help the patient.”
The more you do this, the more you become aware that all the stuff you do, you doing the incision and later on you doing the sutures and you might do the most beautiful sutures and stuff that all becomes what you called in in aviation knowing the thing inside out, knowing where all the buttons are and doing this almost like subconsciously.
What’s interesting in my experience is that you are basically freeing up brain capacity. I like the analogy of driving. If you are someone who always drives from A to B to get to work and you driving the same route every day, there comes a moment or the point where somebody might say, “August, can we have this call a little bit earlier than normal? I know you’re on your way. Can you put it on your phone? I know this is a little weird but can we do the Zoom call on the phone?”
You say, “I’m not normally doing this but let’s try it.” You put it in your little phone holder and you do the Zoom thing and you can have the Zoom call and you getting from A to B no problem. You wouldn’t even know that there were a few new signs or stuff, your subconsciousness just drove you from A to B. At the moment where there is a construction on your day-to-day route and you now have done this five times but you have to go a different route to do the construction, you will probably say, “Guys, sorry. I can’t do the call right now. I need to concentrate on driving.”
The artist is so talented that he or she can still do both and the surgeon is so talented and so artistic to say, “I have all these unexpected circumstances and I’m not giving up. I’m willing to try something that goes above and beyond the norm or the procedure or the binder in the shelf system,” like I mentioned earlier. Another analogy that I like to give that also applies to business, I see myself and I oftentimes encourage people that I work with and maybe this applies for you or you want to apply it for yourself is to see your role as the conductor of an orchestra.
When you go to that analogy and you say, “Does the conductor need to be able to play every instrument to the artistic level of the number one violinist and the number one cello player and the number one bassist or stuff like that?” No. The role of the leader is to be the conductor of the orchestra but even that has artistry because if it wouldn’t, we wouldn’t differentiate between like the New York Symphony and some small-time town high school band.
You can only achieve success if you are a disruptor or if you do something different and better than anybody else. Share on XThat recognition artistry in basically the instrument, artistry in surgery, artistry in how we lead our business is the aspect that goes above and beyond the expected procedure. It takes talent, it takes obviously energy, vision, it takes the willingness to try. That’s actually, by the way besides if you have all the other things and you are somebody who says, “I feel so closed in that I’m not trying to do anything different,” then we are back to your earlier question to say how can a smaller company in the same space succeed against these big Goliaths.
In industry in business, we have seen it, either you are disruptor in the way in what you offering, like all the ones you listed down they were all disrupting the industry that they were in or wanted to be in initially, or you did something different and better than anybody else. That requires to be willing to go a little bit above and beyond to be willing to try something and obviously you can try better when you already have a wealth of information and experience. You don’t want to have an apprentice try all kinds of crazy stuff. When you’re working your way to either the artistry I also lately like to use the term mastery. If you have to go to master something or reach mastery there comes a point where the normal procedure set is just not applying or working anymore.
I love that. Thanks for that, Axel. This was incredible.
It’s a guest that we have to get back on the show. I’m literally going to send Axel an invite to come back on the show. We have a lot more questions, a lot more stuff to cover, but let’s get to our next segment of our show, if you’re ready for that.
The 10 Championship Rounds to Financial Freedom
The 10 Championship Rounds to Financial Freedom. There’s ten questions, Axel, are you ready?
I’m ready.
Okay, let’s get into it. First question, who’s been the most influential person in your life?
For business, probably my grandpa.
Touch on it a little bit if you’d like.
Yeah, I would love to learn more.
He had a lot of those sayings that in the beginning didn’t really make much sense, but he enforced things like punctuality. He enforced something that has always served me very well is respect people for who they are, not where they come from or how they look like. Meaning like color or heritage or any of those things.
Another one that he had or that he often times said is for me the interaction with somebody, let’s take like we have not met before. If we were to somehow do business or just hang out, I would say, “August and Ava, the barrel is full. The only thing that you can do is screw it up.” This notion that you have to earn respect, you have to earn the engagement, you have to earn your standing, he said “No. Treat people at a 100% level as if they have everything that you could ever expect and they can screw it up, you’re not the one that’s screwing it up.” That’s one of them. He had another one that I really liked. When I started looking into stock investing was don’t ever believe a statistic that you didn’t manipulate yourself. Those things and a few others.
Next question, Axel, what is the number one book you would recommend?
There’s so many. One that has really been profound that I’ve recommended many times is called The Wealthy Gardener by John Soforic.
The Wealthy Gardener
We haven’t had that one before.
What is it about?
John wrote that book to prepare his son for the financial world. The story is basically about somebody who built a farm from almost nothing, became wealthy without being one of those shiny object wealthy people, and is now looking who could actually help his son to be successful. If I remember right, he said he knows the farmer knows that he is going to die pretty soon.
That’s like the setting and it has many really helpful little sayings or little things. The beautiful thing that John did is if you go to the website for The Wealthy Gardener, it takes all these little quotes and you can click on them and it gives you a little bit of a vignette of what they are about and where you find them in the book. Even after you read the book and you say, “I can’t really remember 89 different things,” but you can go back and check in with them.
I love that. We’ll add that to our list to read. Thanks for that. Next question, if you had the opportunity to travel back in time, what advice would you give your younger self?
That brings back this grandpa thing. I would tell myself to ask him a little bit more detail exactly what he is doing with the newspaper. To explain this, he was a patent lawyer. He went to work in the morning, came back. I was raised basically by my grandma my parents dropped myself and my sister off in the morning, went to work, and then picked us up like 5:30, 6:00 in the evening.
He came back about 4:30, 5:00-ish in the afternoon. The first thing he did, he brought the newspaper, took it out, threw everything away except for the business section, took out a pencil and started annotating stuff. Even though he taught me a few things, but I never really asked deep enough. Many years later I was grown, I was out and doing my thing, he died, and everybody was shocked that he had a six-figure stock portfolio. Nobody knew. I have to say this was 1981 when he died. It’s been a while. That was really something for somebody at that time, regular normal person employed. I should have asked.
Next question, Axel, what’s the best investment you’ve ever made?
For really investment, Palantir.
I started watching YouTube videos, came across a guy named Tom Nash and he was talking about this company that will revolutionize or help us revolutionize because they are an AI company that nobody was taking seriously because they were seen as a consulting company. He always said from the first time I watched it, no they’re not a consulting company, they’re really an AI company.
They had gone IPO with like $50 or $60 a share and then crashed down to si$6x. I started listening. This is interesting and then when they got to $10, I had understood enough to say, “I think I need to get into this.” By now, they might be at $130, they have been up to $200, so that was basically 20x my money. I wish I would have done more. I have never had anything that 10x or 20x or anything like that.
Palantir is controversial. You got Peter Thiel as one of their initial investors and they have a component with intelligence and doing surveillance on American public and all this stuff. There is a huge movement on X against Palantir and its founder who’s got his crazy hair and all that stuff, but yeah, no, that’s great. Let’s go to the next one.
Next question, Axel, what’s the worst investment you’ve ever made and what lessons did you learn from it?
I was involved while I was still in the Air Force in what we call a little stock investment club where we all had very little money or very little understanding of investment, but we said well we can probably do something like $100 a month just to learn about the market which we actually didn’t in hindsight. We said, “With that little money, we can only really do penny stocks.” You have to keep in mind, that was at the time the late ’90s when every Pet.com and August.com and Ava.com and everything like that came out. We had all kinds of like and then the dot-com bubble burst and it was almost like a flock of pigeons and the cat came by and they all flew away.
Next question, Axel, how much should you need in the bank to retire today? What’s your number? How much would you need?
It’s more of a metaphorical question, but is there a dollar amount you need to retire now? I know you’re somewhat retired already.
I don’t look at it that way and that’s why I was also a little bit taken aback. I’m looking at the cashflow side and would say about $8,000 a month. If you were to look at my bank accounts, I probably have no more than like $10,000 in the bank because it’s just wasting away there. My money is invested all over the place.
Next question, Axel. If you could have dinner with someone dead or alive, who would it be?
That’s again so many choices. I think I have to say Elon.
It’s probably the most common answer we get for that question.
I’m watching a lot of stuff and there are some things that I’m so annoyed I can’t even put it in words why nobody asks him. It’s getting a little better but I don’t know why people don’t watch previous interviews to come up with different questions but get him asked the same thing over and over again and he obviously gives the same answer over and over again.
Opportunistically, I would probably have to say Warren Buffett, because I don’t know, I wish he has another 25 years but it’s probably unrealistic. My philosophy is literally what he said, only buy stuff and be invested in stuff that you understand and I would like to poke into that a little more. Also, why do you have $300 billion in the bank? I want to know.
For this next question, go ahead ask it and I’ve just got to preface it.
Of course. The next question, Axel, is if you weren’t doing what you’re doing today, what would you be doing now?
You’ve had both careers. Air Force, now with coaching and wealth building and real estate investor. Was there something you ever aspired to be in, something you wanted to be, race car driver or something else? Was there anything else in life you ever thought about doing?
I drove the fastest race cars around so I wouldn’t want that. People actually asked me if I wanted to do airplanes. I had like NASCAR, Formula 1, whatever analogy, why would I want to do a school? Like anyway, or airbus for that matter. What I’m still dreaming about and I haven’t really quite given up is I would like to do a little eco village on the hillside overlooking the Mediterranean.
That would be my thing. I would plant edible hedges everywhere, nothing that is just green. Why not do wine or like the trees would be like mandarins and peaches and nectarines and stuff. Maybe at the bottom have something for rvs if they just want to come through and hang out for a little while and I don’t know if they’re tiny homes or casitas or something. I have the whole thing in my head.
That’s almost like a part-time somebody who runs a vineyard.
Yeah, in a way. I have a friend who is specializing, for example, in reclaiming water in architecture that is basically reclaiming things. That would be something and every everything, every little roof and opportunity would have a solar panel and I would probably have a Megapack from Tesla in somewhere hidden in the forest to store the energy and stuff. Ideally, I would make it not just for myself but for other people to enjoy it but making it totally environmentally self-sustaining, you know.
Next question, my favorite question. Book smarts or street smarts?
The one first and then the other.
Book smarts first and then street smarts. I like that. That’s what we’re going to instill in our son. Do you want to talk about that at all?
I’ll give one quick example that applies to myself. I was told that if I wanted to be successful in business after the military, I should get a degree. Now I had a Bachelor’s degree but that somehow was supposedly not counting properly. I went to university to get a graduate degree and the question was what are you interested in?
We’re back at the very beginning of our interview and I said I’m really interested in seeing how leadership works in business since I was involved and had lots of 22 years’ experience in the military. I studied that all the way to a PhD in Leadership and Organizational Management and was working in a software company as an executive. That was about like as much clashing two sides the reality of how the founder ran his business and what I learned in theory book smarts.
O I did it the wrong way around. I was living it as an executive in a company pretty hierarchically organized by the founder and then getting the book smarts. It led to me to say, “I can’t do this any longer.” I quit and start my own thing because if what I’m learning is applicable and I’m learning it because I believing in it, then I have to show that it can be done. If I wish I would have done it the other way around, then I would have never worked for that company.
Last question, Axel. If you had $1 million in cash and you had to make one investment today, what would it be?
If I had to do it today, I would probably buy Tesla.
It’s trading at 300% earnings compared to anything else. It’s like 5x to earn like compared to the next one in line, let’s say Nvidia. It is the most inflated company.
Ava, can I borrow your time machine? I want to take August and put him in when Steve Jobs and Bill Gates went to IBM and they said that about personal computers or when Jeff Bezos said, “We’re going to make it so that people can buy everything online,” or to Nokia when somebody said, “Did you see these crazies at Apple, they have touch screens?” They honestly believe nobody wants buttons and little blackberry wheels anymore. We can go for a year-long trip, August, to hear those statements. That’s all I have to say. By the way, Ava, if you didn’t have said today but maybe in June, I would probably have said SpaceX.
I think SpaceX just bought Grok, so they just bought their AI company, so they’re going public soon or something is happening.
Supposedly in June or July 2026. I wouldn’t buy it for Grok or AI or stuff like that. I think what spacex has built and is building is really literally going to be our future.
Discussion Wrap-up And Closing Words
Axel, just quickly let everyone reading what’s the best way that they can reach you please?
If you go in any platform of any kind and put in Ideal Wealth Grower, and then you find our social media presence or our website, and if you go there at the top right-hand corner there’s a little button that says Discovery Call, and that gets you on my calendar. We talk just like we have been talking the three of us here and we see if there’s something that I can help you with.
IdealWealthGrower.com. Thank you so much.
Axel, this was incredible.
You’re welcome.
