030: Accelerate The Momentum of Your Business and Become More Successful with Dr. Axel Meierhoefer

I have culture that is informed by principles and I don’t necessarily say what other people’s principles need to be, because they vary. But for me, and I would clearly say and I say this to everybody that we consider bringing onto the team as, ‘here are certain principles and I would like to know how they align with your own principles? because if you have certain things that you don’t agree with, then that could be an indicator that you probably don’t fit us so well, because we really live by these principles’.

#00:01:05-0# Neil : Hello, it’s Neil Ball, thank you so much for joining me today on the entrepreneur way. The entrepreneur way is about the entrepreneur’s journey, the vision, the mind-set, the commitment, the sacrifice, failures and successes. I am so excited to bring you our special guest today, Axel Meierhoefer, but before I introduce you to him, I have got a little quote for you to think about, Og Mandino said, ‘take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.’ The entrepreneur way asks the questions, so we all get the insight, inspiration and ideas to apply in our businesses. Axel, welcome to the show, are you ready to share your version of the entrepreneur way with us?

#00:01:56-2# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Yeh absolutely and thank you for having me.

#00:01:59-6# Neil : It’s a pleasure, thank you for joining us. Axel Meierhoefer was born in Germany in 1961 and his early career was with the air force. Eventually he moved to the United States and he had to cope with several obstacles to get to the point where he is today, whilst inspiring, learning, teaching along the way. He has provided mentorship to several aspiring entrepreneurs and individuals, who have received rich dividends in his presence. His leadership abilities, combined with his facilitation skills, makes his sessions very interesting. He teaches, motivates, coaches, mentors, inspires, manages his own fears and encourages others along the way with immense support. He certainly is someone to look up to. Axel has also written two books previously and his most recent book is newly published, when the title of which is The shift in coaching dynamics. Axel, can you provide us with some more insight into your business and personal life to allow us to get to know more about what you do, and who you are?

#00:03:09-2# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Yeh absolutely, my personal life, like you said, I was originally born in Germany, joined the air force after school and had the pleasure of flying with many of the other partner countries who make up NATO in the European area and then got an opportunity to be in a test environment, that required me to go over to the United States quite a few times to learn directly from the manufacturers off several of the systems on how to operate them and integrate them into the plane and then test them and then that basically bought me and my wife and our daughter being a little baby at the time over to the US and triggered this kind of interest to say, ‘hmmm it would be really cool if we could spend some extra time’ and I found that there was an exchange programme with the US airforce where you can literally take somebody’s job and they take your job and I did that for two years. And then at the end of that, when we thought we would go back to Germany, got another assignment for a huge project, which brought me pretty close to retirement and then ultimately the question became, ‘ok are we going back? or do we have an opportunity to stay?’ and I got an offer from a software company which allowed me then to transition out of this government military environment into the corporate environment for four or five years in an executive role, and that in turn triggered to me this kind of entrepreneurial spirit that innovation spirit that exists at least in my experience more in the US than I experience it in Germany. #0

#00:04:37-3# Neil : Mmm hmm

#00:04:37-3# #Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : To try to start my own business, so I founded my main company, AMC Consulting in May 2005. And have been at it ever since, I did a few other start-ups in similar directions. And what we really focusing on these days, 11 years later, is to help small and medium size businesses or start-ups to either in a more affordable way learn how to fish in the context of marketing and building their business. Or for those, who are a little further who have already reached like a million plus in revenues annually to actually do a lot of that fishing basically for them, to present them a certain agreed upon number of prospects that are along the lines of what our clients have identified as their ideal prospect. So that they then only have to basically convert those prospects into their client. And using online media mainly for this full service created to grade for you as linked in and a very elaborate and complexed way of using linked in to do this and then for my maximum in-term institute for the organisation said either don’t want to spend as much money or want to learn more about it than says, we have to make some in-term institute which is a subscription way of learning, we have about 70/80,000 dollars worth of content that we make available and I say, it’s kind of similar to Microsoft Office. Any user that I know, uses maybe 5-15% of what’s in it and thats kind of how the institute works, we provide you with this awesome environment of content, but you at any given time probably only need 10-15%

#00:06:23-5# Neil : Mmm hmm and how do people access that content, is it you say is it a membership site?

#00:06:29-3# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Right, it’s a membership site, and I have learned over these 11 years that however good your reputation is, or what people can find about you and your organisation online, they like to typically try things out, so what we basically encourage is if somebody goes to maximuminterminstitute.com go to the website and just sign up for something. You get a free video training service or an e-book or things so that you can get familiar and we kind of what’s called a ‘drip campaign’ we send you information that is useful for building your business. And if at any point after that has started, you come to the conclusion, ‘I would really like to get on the inside’ you know I call it basically like a gate. On the outside, we provide you with tons of valuable information, if you really want to actually start applying it and get our hand holding coaching mentoring, all those things, you kind of need to walk through that gate and go to the inside and by walking through that gate, you become one of our subscribers and then you have access to everything.

#00:07:30-4# Neil : Mmm hmmm, and you have also written a book recently, the shift in coaching dynamics what can you just tell us briefly what that is about?

# #00:07:39-9# GUEST 1# Well one of the things is when I came out of the military, I realised that to be successful in the business world, at least I told that to myself. I am no longer necessarily sure that that is really true but at the time, I said to myself, that I had seen in the corporate world you needed to have some academic foundation, so I got a masters degree and a Phd in leadership, organisation and management. And in that context, I was asked to conduct a study for the dissertation, so I conducted a study about how does business coaching actually affect businesses and their success?

#00:08:16-8# Neil : MMmm hmmm

#00:08:16-8# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : And the book that I wrote recently based on that study, is basically describing my findings in a more digestible way and the findings go in the direction that ultimately, we really talk about a person. We are not talking about a business owner or a manager, or an employee, and a father and a mother, and her spouse, on the other hand, it’s really a person. And the shift in the dynamics that I am describing, is when you are actually going through mentoring and coaching sessions, where comes the point where especially in the business environment, the person that you are asking questions to asks the coach or mentor. It’s out of answers.

#00:09:00-8# Neil : Mmm hmm

#00:09:00-8# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Thats what I found is what I call the ‘shift moment’. Where you really have to start digging deep and start switching from looking at the past, and answering questions on the content side, which is very common in business. And think, where do I want to go? how can I accomplish this? how does this align with my talents, how does my passion and the things that I am emotionally connected to really drive what I want to do? And not so much, ‘how do I get a pay check? or is my work right now the work good or bad because I have a good or bad boss?’ or stuff like that. That shift, as a person, to realise how does what I want for me, for myself and my family, align with what I do most of the time during the day? And then when you start identifying that, how can I actually create a path that takes me from where I am right now to that goal? thats when for me at least it gets interesting, and that is what the book describes.

#00:09:57-7# Neil : Mmmm hmmm, and coaching for businesses, I talked to quite a number of entrepreneurs, and some use coaches and some don’t, what do you think the main benefit to people are to have a coach when they are in business?

#00:10:12-0# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : I would have to say there are three layers and I have identified over the years, the first layer is when you are in typical more common employee role up to and including a management role. And the coaching there can actually provide especially when it is external, when it’s not happening within the peer group that you are working in but with an external coach. You have basically a new additional perspective that is completely free of all the political internal influences that happen. You know, who likes who and who can say what to who and what are the rules of communication? and so forth, so all that falls apart, in a way when you can have an external coach when you can openly discuss the challenges and issues that you are facing.

#00:10:57-5# Neil : Mmmm hmm

#00:10:57-5# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : And get benefit from that to basically come to an alignment between what do you want to achieve with your career? and where are you right now? And you will find that from me when we are talking about anything that has to do with coaching or mentoring, it’s always goal-oriented. The second layer that I have seen is people that are in the transition between currently in some form of management role, into early stages of executive role. In that area, it’s basically more having somebody who you can test ideas with. There is more maturity on how the business works, but in the business context, where do you normally have the opportunity to talk to somebody similarly or more experienced than you? to kind of discuss and test some ideas with and really kind of go through scenarios of what would be potential outcomes. That’s actually that second layer in my experience, often times mixes coaching and mentoring, almost up to the 50/50 point.

#00:11:57-5# Neil : Mmmm hmm

#00:11:57-5# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : And then the third layer is on the strategic level with more experienced executives in my experience is ‘the coach becomes basically the only person who can openly talk to. Without political, financial or other consquences and really discuss strategy.’ and the difference there between the second and the third is really that, in the second layer between management and executive, you are still more in the day-to-day and maybe looking a little bit back and a little bit forward. On the third layer, a level with the executive level, you are really almost exclusively looking forward and maybe a little titbit out of my book is in my study, I ask people, it’s kind of like a tricky situation, that the word coach both applies at least in the United States, applies for sports. Like I know, like in the UK, you call like a soccer team, they have a manager, right? In the US, the same role, will be called, ‘the coach of the team’. But what we are talking about is, helping people to achieve their goals, in the business sense, or in the private sense, in the live sense. So I said in the study to these coaches that I interviewed, if their word would not be available for what we are talking about and exclusively only available from now on in sports, what would you call it? And the overwhelming number of people that I interviewed found as alternative words for the word ‘coach’ either guide or pathfinder. And I think that is very fitting when you put it into context of achieving a goal together.

#00:13:29-8# Neil : Mmm hmmm and just one other thing, whilst we are talking about coaching. Obviously some people also join masterminds, where do you think masterminds fit’s in relative to coaching? Do you think it does? or do you not?

#00:13:42-2# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : For me, I think mastermind has a combination of consulting, combination and mentoring. And I personally think it is beneficial when your main interest is diversity of information. If the mastermind consists of a number of a number of different people that represent different experiences in different industries, and they can all in some ways synergistically help each other. Right, so if I would have to draw a picture, I think the mastermind is more helping you on the horizontal level. Multiple views, multiple pieces of information that can all inform your decision making. And if you talk about the business or the live coaching that you do one-on-one, it is more vertical, it goes more to the depths, ultimately like I described earlier, all the way hopefully to that shift moment, where you from which you can then really start focusing on yourself, and where you want to go and where you want to take your business.

#00:14:41-1# Neil : Mmm ok, thank you for that. Axel, what is it that drives you?

#00:14:47-2# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well what drives me is basically the model that I set pretty early on when I started the business, and that model is called, ‘helping others help themselves become successful’. And the different modalities that you mentioned when you introduced me, whether it is coaching, mentoring, consulting, facilitating, running the business all basically feed into that and I always say it is probably my greatest joy to see the kind of sparkle in people’s eye when they get something or they come back to the next session or the next call or whatever it may be, and say, ‘man I got to tell you what happened to me since we last spoke.’ And tell me some success that they may have surprised themselves about.

#00:15:29-0# Neil : And what do you enjoy most about what you do?

#00:15:29-0# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well for one, the aspect like I just said, to literally help somebody and their business. And then the other aspect, almost equally I would say is building and working with my team.

#00:15:44-2# Neil : Mmm hmmm, and when you are not working, how do you relax?

#00:15:50-1# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well I like reading, and I try to integrate more and more walking, because it is supposedly good for your health and your weight. Ha ha

#00:16:03-1# Neil : And do you have any entrepreneurial role models? #00:16:07-

#00:16:07-2# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well I like, and I follow a couple of people, like for example, one of them is Brendan Burchard.

#00:16:12-5# Neil : Ok, yeh

#00:16:12-5# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : I am really very fascinated, I was probably one of the very first people who brought the book called, ‘the golden ticket’ that he wrote about his experience kind of like an out-of-body experience, based on an accident all the way to now. I wish I would have as fast a trajectory, but one of the things that informed me based on what he has done, is to call the institute that we have, the maximum interim institute because my goal with that is really to accelerate the momentum for people who really want to become successful.

#00:16:44-6# Neil : Yeh

#00:16:44-6# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : So that would be one, another person that I look up to, who I started with and who was more successful than me, is Greg Reid. He has a great book, he wrote when we first met, it’s called, ‘three feet from gold’ for anybody who kind of wants to step back a moment and say ‘hmm, where am I in my development and the development of my company?’ I can highly recommend them.

#0 #00:17:09-3# Neil : Thank you for that. Axel, can we go back to the time before you were an entrepreneur? and can you tell us what difficulties you had to overcome when you started your business?

#00:17:22-0# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Oh yeh, we definitely can, well one of the things was that I had always assumed that the way things work in the military and what I experienced when I was in corporate world, would be very different. Because I would basically have the power, as the owner of my business. What I started to learn over time and am very conscious about now, is number one, the learning never stops, and there is at least for me, a high tendency to make more intuitive gut-based decisions. Mainly informed by what I felt, and I am saying this deliberately that way and not what I really knew would benefit the purpose of the business. And so that naturally resulted in some stupid decisions like I had a really great contract very early on, which completely screwed up my view of what it takes to get business. I just thought, ok, well I am three months in business, I get the first big contract we are implementing and executing on that contract. As we came towards the end, I was wondering ok well, I just basically sit here and wait until the next thing comes. And anybody who is listening would know ‘no that is not how business works’ but I got kind of a little bit screwed up by that initial success. And many many other similar experiences, where it took quite a bit of learning and there are some lessons learned, I am happy to share.

#00:18:53-8# Neil : So Axel, what would be some core things that you would do differently?

#00:18:58-4# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well one thing that I would pay more attention to for sure, is the structure of the business to begin with, to really ask yourself the question. What kind of business do I want to have, or even more so, do I want to have a business? One thing that I learned four or five years in, is to ask the question, do I want to have a business or practise? Where practise makes the differentiation, practise would be where everything revolves around you, and your capabilities. A good example would be lets say, dentist. Right, if the dentist is no longer there to, particularly if you have a massive company with multiple dentists but normal dentist practise, if the dentist is not there, business is pretty much zero or very close to it. Business in comparison to practise would be building a systematic approach to something, like we do for example, with the Max Momentum institute, we have subscription, we have content, we have either full-service, or teaching people how to learn the things that we know from us so that they can apply it themselves, it’s all very systematised and it allows ultimately for somebody like me to step back and say, ‘as I am building a better better team, people hopefully with better talents and capabilities than me, I can step back in the system and the business will still run.’ I did not ask myself that question, in the beginning and that meant, how did I structure the company? and how did I go about it? and made a lot of mistakes there. The other aspect is ‘what do you conceive where you think you want to go? Do you really want to have a company with 100’s or 1000’s of employees, that is ultimately publicly traded?’ that informs if you start out with a limited liability organisation or an incorporation and how you structure it? do you have shares or not and all that kind of stuff. And I have not had the foresight because I thought I was busy with my inspiration of the business and did not understand that at that early moment I had the time to spend on that too. And for anybody I am advising these days, that wants to start a business, I am advising them to spend the time now when they are excited and inspired to what they want to do and spend a little bit of time on that structure.

And then the other aspect a little bit further in a nutshell, I would say, don’t be cheap. I have found that especially nowadays, so many things that are initially offered to you as like downloadable applications and all kinds of business tools that are starting out for free. And trying something, doing a trial is fine, but if it is consistently free or the whole business model is well at some point will get you because we advertise or something, I would recommend to stay away from it. I am surprising myself the last few years to actually subscribe to the saying it takes money to make money. And there is this certain quality aspect that comes with it, it does not mean that the most expensive thing is the best. They have the saying here you know, if it sounds to be too good, it’s probably fake or it’s probably wrong or it’s probably faulty or something like that. You know, so I would always say, spend a little extra time to analyse what you really need, what tools do you need, and don’t only look at it ‘what’s my cash flow? What does my budget allow?’

#00:22:19-8# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : But what do I need? and maybe you can find the tool that is in the middle, where the spread between value and price is in a good relationship, and then be willing to spend the money.

#00:22:33-8# Neil : And did you have any doubts that delayed you starting your business?

#00:22:40-7# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : No not really, as far as starting it, but I definitely have to say if based on what I know now, 11 years later, I know that I could have accelerated much faster than I did, and one of the things that I did, I did not really spend a whole lot of time identifying who are the people who could really help me who already do something similar to me in a successful way, and learn from that. So one of the lessons that I have learned in that context when you are talking about networking is to really identify 3-5 people who are massively more successful that you identify as people you want to model yourself after, and try and build relationships with them.

#00:23:22-0# Neil : Ok and what mistakes did you make that slowed your journey?

#00:23:28-7# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well one of the things is I would say is the feast and famine cycle that I fell into for a while. First couple of years, first three years, was you know, not really having spend too much time or any time at all on building a team. So it was mainly me and a few helpers, and when we had work and we had good work and we got good money and we were mainly occupied with actually delivering what we promised to our clients. But then we did not have any time left to do marketing, and business development and so forth and then when we were done delivering, we were basically starting over, almost and then it takes a while until you have created enough interest to get a new contract and then you deliver on that contract and again don’t have time to do marketing. So I call that the feast and famine cycle. And I have overcome it ultimately by building a team where certain people on the team, are dedicated to always do marketing to always provide content, to always look for new clients, to always have more than two or three clients and so forth. Now this may be specific to a service-oriented business like ours is, but I think those lessons apply in general, if you stretch yourself too thin, you go through these feast or famine cycles.

#00:24:40-9# Neil : Yeh I think quite a few businesses probably do that. What are some of the things you did before you started your business? that would be helpful tips to some of the listeners who have not yet taken the first step on the entrepreneur way?

#00:24:55-4# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : One of the things I can definitely say and might sound a little old fashioned because I don’t know if these things are available as kindle versions or something, but I got myself a couple of books, that describe what makes businesses successful. For example, one of the more famous ones is called good to great, another one that I really like from one of the people that guided me in my academic studies, is John Cotter, he and a German guy wrote a book called our iceberg is melting, and what that really addresses without going into too much detail is when you are getting yourself into this starting position, it’s a huge change. And it’s not just a huge change for you, but it’s a huge change for anybody around you in your family, in your network, and then for all the people that you might want to attract to actually get your business going. And having some idea of ‘how does change work?’ and ‘how do I implement change?’ our iceberg is melting is really nice for that. So in a nutshell, I mention a few other titles, get some well-rounded information about what has made businesses successful, and I am actually a big subscriber to say ‘stay away in your mind-set from the shiny object.’

#00:26:09-4# Neil : Yeh

#00:26:09-4# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : I mean you could argue these days that you know, looking at facebook, linked in, whatsapp and some of these companies, they went overnight from nothing to a billion dollars. But that is not really the normal thing for hundreds of thousands, if not millions of businesses that get created, they are not those business models, they are more the traditional, you have to basically develop it, you have to have a good idea, you have to do marketing all these things. And how to do that successfully is described in a bunch of really good books that I would recommend for people to go. It sounds a little dry, but when you try to balance your innovation, your inspiration, your energy, for what you want to do. With a little bit of reality, of what have others done to be successful in the long-term, not just on the short term, I think it’s very helpful to do that.

#00:26:57-2# Neil : Mmm yeh, some great advice there. Can we now talk about your entrepreneurial journey Axel? and can you tell us how important you think culture is in a business? from the beginning?

#00:27:11-5# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well I think it’s very important and it goes very directly, at least for me and for other business that I really cherish. Is to have culture that is informed by principles, and I don’t necessarily want to say what other people’s principles need to be, because they vary. But for me, and I would clearly say, and I say this to everybody that we consider bringing onto the team is, ‘here are certain principles, and I would like to know how they align with your own principles’. Because if you have certain things that you don’t agree with, then that could be an indicator that you probably don’t fit us so well, because we really live by these principles. Like and to just throw out a few, one is for example, under promise and over deliver. Punctuality, that is just the german DNA speaking I guess. You know, punctuality has to be that you have got to be dependable. We go as far with the institute as well as with the full cradle to grave full service marketing programme, that when somebody commit’s to work with us, like typically the committments are for a year, if we have not achieved what we agreed upon in the beginning of that year, we will keep working for you for free until we get there.

#00:28:28-9# Neil : Yeh

#00:28:28-9# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : And that is one of those principles, and there are not necessarily that many real businesses out there that really do it. That give you all kinds of money-back guarantees after 60 days and I have not even finished reading the book in 60 days. Right, so I am not saying guarantees are bad, but they need to be valuable. And they go back to the principles and that I think very much informs the culture of your business, because you can test on a regular basis, ‘are we living by our principles?’ and that informs our culture or not.

#00:29:00-3# Neil : Mmm yeh.

#00:29:00-3# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Right? and I found that to be really really important and then ultimately, it sounds again like it’s somehow tricked or so, but it really isn’t because if everybody knows what the playbook is, you can have real fun, you know? and you laugh and you do the things because you know exactly what to do.

#00:29:19-7# Neil : Ok, knowing what you know now, is there anything that if you had known it when you started out would have helped you to shortcut the learning curve?

#00:29:26-7# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Absolutely, yeh, I think we have too much focus on profit, and I know that comes initially because sometimes you know, you ask yourself, ‘ok, how can I generate money so that I can sustain myself and my family and so forth?’ that’s besides the business idea that is often times in my experience what triggers people to say ‘ok if I could do it myself, I can be more successful than doing it as an employee in a company.’ But that also begs the question, ‘where do I get the money to sustain myself and my family?’ What I have done wrong is when we had started to become profitable, that I did not invest enough of the profit’s in building more team. So I think, really be willing to be a bootstrap as much as you possibly can, and see the multiplying effect that you get when you bring people in that are aligned with your vision and what you want to do. And then do it together with them. It’s, the leverage that comes from that, I think is often times way under estimated.

#00:30:32-5# Neil : And how much does gut feeling influence your decisions in your business?

#00:30:37-4# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well I think basically for me, I have two modes that come with that is, if I have a pretty strong idea that I can get enough information, and when I say enough, I mean by that to overcome that it feels like a gut feeling uninformed or only partially informed decision. I tried to get that information. But what I have gotton, I believe much better at is judging how much effort is required, to get that information and when that effort looks like overwhelmingly too much, I am now at the point where I feel I can trust my gut enough to not get myself into massive trouble. But I also want to qualify that a little bit, if you had asked me this, say six, seven years ago, I would probably say ‘my gut would have gotton me in trouble more than I want it to.’

#00:31:41-6# Neil : Yeh, I think it’s got us all in trouble sometimes hasn’t it?

#00:31:45-4# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Yeh

#00:31:45-4# Neil : Life is made of constant change, whether we like it or not, so and many would say, the only constant is change, Axel, how do you try to keep up with change?

#00:31:58-3# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well one of the things that I have to say that I am quite happy about is, you know, definitely in the second half of my life for sure, that I have always been fascinated by technology, and I find now more so than ever that, that has allowed me to understand and apply what is available nowadays, if I think back 20/25 years when we just started to have computers, what I paid and what they could do is laugh about it, but when you don’t keep your interest in technology for example up, then it’s almost kind of like a wave and then you are not surfing it, you are being overrun by it. So that is definately one of the things that I would point out, to anybody regardless who you are, and what ages. Look at what is taken and I don’t mean just computer and internet, you know, I mean like engineering stuff and so forth, because there is amazing stuff going on and you often times get, I have often times been surprised. How it informs what we do with our business, who we serve, who we approach, who we get together with.

#00:33:00-4# Neil : And what is your favourite book on entrepreneurialism? business? personal development, leadership or motivation? and can you tell us why you have chosen it?

#00:33:12-4# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well those are many topics, I would not say there is only one book. I think from a business point of view, I would definitely say the e-myth. I would definitely recommend that to anybody who is considering starting a business? Mainly also because of the principles, that are discussed there. Motivation, I like the golden ticket like I mentioned earlier. And then good to great has been really helpful to me and some of the other books that Jim Collins wrote later. Mainly because, you know, you kind of have to trust your gut to some extent to say, ‘I know that this is going to be successful.’ at the beginning and you may not have a lot of imperial information, and having a source like ‘good to great’ that chose you. What does it mean to be a level 5 leader? Which is described in it and what have businesses done and how have they been able to be successful for 10/15/20 years in a row? and how does the owner of the business dealership actually act to make that happen? I think that is very helpful and can be really like a guideline, almost like a living principle that you can apply for yourself.

#00:34:28-1# Neil : Everyone, when you have a busy life, listening to audio books is a great way to expand your knowledge in the time that you may be doing other things, such as driving or when you are at the gym. We have a special offer for you of a free audio book of your choosing, to choose your free audio book, go to www.freeaudiobookoffer.com. As long as you have not already signed up, then you will qualify. Axel, what I would like to do now is talk about some things in the future a little bit, or to speculate about things a little bit so what one thing would you do with your business if you knew that you could not fail?

#00:35:05-8# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : I would basically create a real estate based retirement plan,

#00:35:13-1# Neil : Ok and what skill if you were excellent at it would help you the most to double your business?

#0 #00:35:23-8# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : To find the ideal client quickly.

#00:35:28-5# Neil : Ok and in five years from now, and if a well-known business publication was publishing an article on your business, after talking to your customers and suppliers, what would you like it to say?

#00:35:42-0# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : About the business, I would like it to say that we were able even over all these years to maintain our growth rate at 20% plus. And though even though we have that, and have demonstrated to maintain that, that we have not given up on our principles? Our dependability, our trustworthiness, our absolutely over-delivery over the things that we promise, and that if we make a commitment, we absolutely do everything conceivably possible to keep it.

#00:36:12-7# Neil : Ok thank you for that. We are now at the part of the show where you share three golden nuggets with us, so Axel, what is your favourite quote and how have you applied it?

#00:36:25-5# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well one of the favourite quotes and there are many variations, is you should never try, you should do. And I can’t even say who do I tribute that to, but that’s one of the things that I find is really most important, don’t try, just do it. And you will see most of the time, it is successful.

#00:36:44-8# Neil : And how have you applied it?

#00:36:50-5# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : When I doubt that, should I do it this way, should I do it that way? or should I try this and that, I go back to that, or somebody kicks me in the butt and says ‘go back to that and just do it.’ And maybe this is actually maybe a second golden nugget is, ‘try to find sooner rather than later a mentor for yourself.’ and my mentor is, his nickname is ‘butt kicker’ I basically got him because my friend Gregg Reid who was massively successful, way more than I was, even though we started at a similar level, I asked him, ‘hey Greg, how did you get there? How did you have this amazing success? Ultimately becoming chosen for the Napoleon Hill Foundation to be one of their prime people and stuff? and he said, ‘I got myself a butt kicker’ and I don’t know why, at some point, I said, ‘hey, can you introduce me to this guy?’ and we are still joking to this day, years later that every time when I am doubting stuff, I say, ‘I have got to give David a call and have him kick my butt a little.’

#00:37:50-9# Neil : Ha ha ha

#00:37:50-9# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : So having a mentor is definately one of the three that I would recommend.

#00:37:58-4# Neil : Ok, you say one of the three did you say?

#0 #00:38:00-3# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Yeh, I mean like I said, you know, don’t try, just do you know number two would be get yourself a butt-kicker or mentor if you don’t like work. And the third one, like I said earlier, and I could elaborate on that a lot. But it’s really ‘be willing to spend some money to make money’

#00:38:22-8# Neil : Yeh ok. And you say you could elaborate on that?

#00:38:30-1# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well the thing is I have learned over the years, at least I would go as far by now to say, I have learned it. It took me a very long time to learn it. At least for my upbringing, I often times had the reaction that I had these kind of levels in my head, if somebody said, ‘ok I have a certification programme for you to learn this particular skill and it will allow you to serve ten more clients per year.’ and I say, ‘oh thats interesting, how much is it?’ and they said, ‘£5,000 bucks’ my brain switched off and did not even look at what the outcome potential was, that immediately jumped to £5,000, it’s a high number, this is expensive, I probably cannot afford it.’ And I had to learn literally to say, ‘hold it, hold it, hold it, don’t just jump to the number because admittedly $5,000 dollars is a lot of money.’ But what is the potential that it creates? What are they offering? do they follow the same principle? what happens if it does not work right away? And if everything that comes after just being shocked by that number, is good, I now am willing to say, ‘yeh that’s an investment that has 10 x 15 x 20 x leverage. So if I get ten new clients, make a $150,000 dollars more a year, the $5,000 dollars is nothing. Right so that is one of those you know to say, ‘well sometimes I remember 6, 7 years ago somebody offered me a $499 dollar learning programme for something.’ That I now know in hindsight was a huge success, and I was so shocked by spending $500 dollars for an online learning programme that I did not do it.

#00:40:10-6# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : That does not mean that I am advocating that everybody should jump and buy everything that is out there. My point is, don’t just be automatically shocked by a number that out of your life experience sounds like a lot of money, and make that so, such a barrier that you are not willing to look beyond and say what does it do for me? if it fulfils what the person or the organisation that offers me the opportunity is promising.

#00:40:37-6# Neil : That is some great advise there, thank you for that. And what is your best advise to other entrepreneurs?

#00:40:47-7# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well I don’t know if I would call it my best advise, but one thing that has served me very well is surround yourself with five people who are, you know around five, you know maybe four, maybe six or so, that are successful in what you want to do, and try to make them kind of like your focal point, don’t waste your energy on people that you have to drag along. I think that is probably, one of the best things that I can say.

#00:41:12-1# Neil : Ok and do you have any favourite online resources that you could share with us?

#00:41:20-4# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Well for me, my favourite platform for sure is linked in. And I don’t know how much that has grown in the UK lately. I think now it has by now I think, 350 million members, if you are willing to really go a little deeper, and I am more than happy to help your listeners with that. And it does not necessarily have to be for money, I mean they can go to my profile, take a look at it, they can look at the postings in Pulse that we do, and anything, they can contact me, I am always willing to help, it’s not immediately in exchange for money. But linked in is an awesome awesome platform, especially if you are willing to spend a little bit of time and learn about all the things that it has. It can be your HR department, it can be your marketing department, it can be your networking department, it’s just amazing what you can do with it.

#00:42:10-4# Neil : Yeh it’s a great tool. Everyone, if you did not manage to get a note of Axel’s favourite resource or his favourite book, you can find the links on Axel’s shownotes page, just go to theentrepreneurway.com and search for Axel, or Axel Meierhoefer in the search box. Axel, is there anything else that you would like to add about your business?

#00:42:33-8# Neil : Well I would just like to re-iterate, we really mean it when we say ‘our model is helping others help themselves become successful’ and you can decide yourself if you rather want to come and take a look at Max Momentum institute, and see what we give you when you are outside the gate to make the decision if you want to walk through and join us on the other side of the gate, or if you feel like you are a little further and you would like somebody to do the search and the campaign and the data bases and everything that it takes to get a certain number of your ideal prospects presented to you on a monthly basis. Then I would say, ‘just contact me and I am happy to talk to you, describe what we do and how we do it.’ and then maybe we can get together.

#00:43:18-1# Neil : Axel, it’s been an honour having you on the show, you have certainly given us a lot of useful information and advise and your experience, from various things that you have done in business. So thank you so much for coming on the entrepreneur way.

#00:43:32-2# Axel Meierhoefer, Max Momentum Institute Founder : Yeh thank you Neil, I really enjoyed the time with you, and thanks for having me.

#00:43:36-6# Neil : It’s a pleasure, you are welcome.