From Mechanic to Full Time Investor

Brett McCollum (00:00.888)
All right, guys, welcome back to the show. I’m here today with Michael Manghum. And today we’re going to talk about how Mike went from a mechanic to a full time real estate investor. Guys, at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, and real estate entrepreneurs to 5X their businesses to allow them to build the businesses they’ve always wanted and to allow them to live the lives they’ve always dreamed of. All right, without further ado, Mike, how are you, man?

Mike (00:27.566)
I’m doing great, how about yourself?

Brett McCollum (00:29.398)
I’m doing great doing great. Thanks for being on the show with us today Perfect. Yeah, so Mike we talked a little bit off-camera kind of got to know each other a little bit here Why don’t you tell the people a little bit about yourself where you’re from, you know, catch us up to speed a little bit

Mike (00:31.222)
Okay, problem, pleasure.

Mike (00:45.134)
Okay, yeah. Well, I live in Florida now. I’ve been here for five years, but before that I lived in Denver, Colorado for 35 some odd years. Started in the motorcycle business, had my own motorcycle shop for many years. I actually road raced motorcycles for quite a few years, but I retired in 92, so that was quite a while ago. you know, it was just…

entrepreneur at a coffee shop, several businesses, that type of thing.

Brett McCollum (01:12.774)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (01:18.918)
Serial entrepreneurs, they say, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And then, how long, yeah, we talked about that a little bit. How long ago was that when you sold the businesses?

Mike (01:22.19)
So we sold our businesses. Go ahead, I’m sorry.

Mike (01:31.502)
talking about 18 years ago 19 years ago

Brett McCollum (01:35.876)
Okay, yeah, so you’re running motorcycles, you’re doing all that. I mean, how long did you have the, like, I know we’re talking about that a little bit, how long did you own the motorcycle shop? Like, how long were you doing that for?

Mike (01:52.219)
I owned the shop itself for 15 years.

Brett McCollum (01:56.06)
Wow, okay. Yeah, in…

Mike (01:58.638)
the for 12.

Brett McCollum (02:01.339)
Wow, and that was both in Denver, correct?

Mike (02:04.226)
Yeah, that was in Denver. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (02:05.881)
Yeah. Wow. Very cool, man. Yeah. And then you mentioned the snowmobile thing too, right? Did I remember that right?

Mike (02:13.154)
Yeah, did that too. And we did some snow removal too in Denver, of course.

Brett McCollum (02:16.379)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, not in Florida, right? That’d be a bad business to be in, right? man. Yeah, okay, and then, all right, so how did you get into real estate? Like, what does that look like? I mean, you’re doing this whole entrepreneurial thing and now real estate?

Mike (02:21.693)
Not good.

Mike (02:31.072)
Well, we, yeah, we, I had this brilliant idea that I would go to work for somebody else and sell my existing businesses. I was tired of running a business. Sandra thought it’d be a good idea to sell and had a job offer from a major dealership there to manage it for them and sold, liquidated all the businesses. Made, made some decent money doing that and went to work for somebody else. about two years later, I decided,

That’s just not for me. I just can’t work for somebody else. We looked into several different business opportunities, franchise opportunities, like sub sandwich places or liquor stores, that type of stuff, and didn’t know what we were gonna do. Just saw a late night infomercial about real estate and got involved that way from the ground up.

within a year I’d made more money doing that than I’d ever done in my other businesses so it was a move. That was 2008.

Brett McCollum (03:32.603)
Wow, what year was that when you watched that infomercial? Okay, 2008, yeah. So you watched the late night infomercial and was, like how long was it from the infomercial to implementation, if you will, from that infomercial?

Mike (03:53.112)
So.

We actually ordered the books from there and then we got contacted for higher education opportunities and we signed up for that and went through that and I would say, I mean, we implemented it immediately, but it was a learning process. know, I knew nothing. All I’d ever done was bought and sold my primary residence. I didn’t know anything about investing. So it took a while studying and attending, you know, real estate groups and

took us exactly almost to the day six months from starting before we did our first transaction wholesale deal.

Brett McCollum (04:33.595)
Wholesale deal, yeah, I was gonna ask you. so wholesale, yeah, that’s where a lot of us get our start, right? In the wholesale space. I absolutely love the wholesale world. I agree, yeah.

Mike (04:40.002)
That’s the best place to start in my opinion. To me that’s where you want to start. You don’t have to risk your own money and get all the same education. You to know what you’re doing in order to wholesale properly. But there’s no risk.

Brett McCollum (04:54.147)
Right, and it’s kind of the fundamental foundation of all deals too, isn’t it, right? Like, you’ve gotta get it at a discount for it to work, you know? So, yeah, very cool. Man, that’s really cool. So, you go from, you had the motorcycle shop, you had the coffee shop, you have the snowmobiles, now you’re running a full-time, well, let me back up a little bit. Did you go full-time immediately, or like, what did that look like?

Mike (05:01.73)
That’s right. That’s right.

Mike (05:21.354)
I did, which I don’t recommend, you know, if you’re working a job you probably want to stay there a little bit, I quit my six-figure-a-year job cold turkey and just went taking massive action immediately.

Brett McCollum (05:31.055)
Wow. Off to the races.

Brett McCollum (05:37.295)
Well, what was that like back? I mean, I mean, we all know the real estate market in 2008, you know, and that’s the kind of a funny timing to jump into the REI space, right? It’s like, let’s jump in the middle of what is now known as the great recession, you know, like what did that look like for you?

Mike (05:59.31)
And from where we were, it was really great. I mean, we were dealing directly with asset managers at the banks at that time and bought a lot of REO properties. We were stopping foreclosures for a lot of people and making sure they got some money and we’ve got some money. So, I mean, we did a lot of business during that time frame. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (06:07.076)
Okay?

Brett McCollum (06:18.501)
Good timing.

Yeah, man. Okay, so I bet from 2008 till 2025 now, right, when we’re recording this, it’s been rainbows and butterflies the whole time, hasn’t it? You’ve never had any issues, it’s always been perfect, right?

Mike (06:39.01)
Well, sometimes. our main issue is always deal flow. there’s been some times that are, that it was a little slow here and there, but it’s never anything to worry about in the, you know, from.

Promoting a business with 80 employees and three departments, etc, etc, down to what we do now. It’s almost like being retired and making money compared to that. We love real estate. It’s such an awesome business. We’re really happy. We’ve done it from home. We had an office in Colorado, but here in Florida, we don’t have an office. We have an office in the house.

Brett McCollum (07:09.957)
Yeah, very cool.

Brett McCollum (07:20.101)
Do you, in your wholesale business, do you operate mostly out of Florida, out of Denver, or nationally, what does that look like?

Mike (07:28.142)
We operate in multiple states, but the majority is Denver and Kentucky. We’re moving into Nevada now. Nevada is a really, looks like a really up and coming hot.

hot state. Definitely there are certain areas people are moving out of Las Vegas and moving out of California coming across the border. There’s some really interesting towns in between Vegas and the border. So we’ll do that and do it virtually. I’d say the last five or six transitions we did I never set foot on the property or met people face to face. Virtual wholesaling is fun.

Brett McCollum (07:56.304)
Mm-hmm.

Brett McCollum (08:08.677)
Yeah. What, yeah. So you mentioned deal flow a little bit. Any other like particular like challenges that, know, you’ve been doing this a long time. So you have a lot of wisdom behind you that you can speak to some of the newer folks in the industry. know, what, what’s some set of challenges, something, something you walk through that maybe you can say, I’ve walked through this and I’ve come out the other side.

Mike (08:33.718)
I would say again, is based on finding the good deal. Got to find those good deals. putting together the marketing that actually works. We’ve done things that don’t really work. put some time into that and the results weren’t that good. But we’re always in the position and the mindset to switch. If it’s not working in X amount of days and we’re not getting a return, we’ve got to.

change what we’re doing, which we do, until we find what’s working. That has been a challenge. It’s a little bit of a challenge right now in the current market, you know, with the high interest rates. It’s a little bit slow, but it’s not bad. Not bad, you just got to go into the right cities.

Brett McCollum (09:05.743)
Yeah, very wise.

Brett McCollum (09:19.813)
What are you doing today that like, it’s slow, I agree with that, we’ve seen that in some of our stuff too. What are you doing that gets your target audience in front of you? what’s kind of, are you shifting some marketing around, I’m assuming. What does that look like for you right now?

Mike (09:43.282)
we do several things in that area we’re always of course looking for upcoming

fast moving markets you know we’ll go in and check the population growth and the unemployment or the employment issues year to year to find those locations and right now I’m currently I’ve got a 28 lot mobile home park under contract in Longmont Colorado. I’ve got some land here in

Brett McCollum (10:02.744)
Okay.

Mike (10:21.294)
Punta Gorda, which is just south of where I live, a couple of lots. And believe it or not, this is funny. is really funny. Bandit signs in this area, they work great. Denver, that’s a waste of time. They’ll take your sign down or cut it in half or cut your numbers out or whatever. They hate it. I got signs here that stay so long, I got to go re-ink them. They stay up so long. But I’m pulling, you know…

Brett McCollum (10:39.674)
Right.

Brett McCollum (10:46.298)
Yeah.

Mike (10:50.35)
two or three sellers a week off of my bandit signs here locally. the two lots we’ve got in Punta Gorda came from a bandit sign. I’ve got a call today I’ve got a make to a developer who’s got six or seven houses here in Port Charlotte near where I live that are two are finished and four are incomplete. I haven’t talked to him yet but sounds like he ran out of money.

Brett McCollum (10:55.387)
Good old bandit science, man.

Brett McCollum (11:08.943)
Uh-huh.

Mike (11:18.958)
We’ll see. So it’s so funny. I moved down here and I immediately hooked up with the local investment club, talked to the president. It’s actually the biggest one down here I could find here in Sarasota, Florida. And they asked me about bandit signs. And I said, well, I use a bandit sign. They don’t work. They’re terrible. said, well, as we buy and sell our properties via bandit signs.

Brett McCollum (11:39.338)
Right. That’s why it’s work.

Mike (11:45.398)
I mean, that is old school. It doesn’t get any older school than that, right? That is old school, but man, it works. That’s kind of, that’s what I’m doing today. Yeah. And then the clubs helped tremendously.

Brett McCollum (11:45.691)
Good old classic, classic Vandant sign back in the game. Yeah. Yeah.

Brett McCollum (11:56.858)
That’s really great. Yeah. No, I mean, so that’s kind of the, yeah, that’s something that I think is really powerful to think about is, you know, that, you know, just classic marketing methods can still, you know, they work, you know, if it works, it works, it works, it works. You we don’t have to, but you wouldn’t have known that though, if you weren’t always testing, always like knowing that like, Hey, you know what? I’ve been doing this and you’re measuring your results.

So you know when it’s probably time to look, know, time to pivot to the next part, because I’ve been working. So that’s experience, you know, that you’ve just were sharing. I don’t know if, so if people are listening, I want you to kind of go back and listen to Mike a little bit. And that’s a lot of wisdom that he just said there. I’m always marketing, I’m always testing, I’m always doing different things. And he came back to something that just didn’t, over the years, it’s not like how, that doesn’t work, you know?

And yet it’s classic, it still works. So good on you, Mike. That’s really cool that you were able to, I mean, because I know a lot of us real estate investors, we have a little bit of pride, right? And like, oh, I know what works, that doesn’t work. Good for you, that’s really cool. I’m glad you brought that up.

Mike (13:06.424)
Yeah.

Mike (13:09.87)
you

not you know something else we have you know had times when like I said before we tried the marketing that just didn’t really produce so you just have to be able to watch that like you said and

change up rapidly and always don’t ever stop. We made that mistake too at one point we were just doing a tremendous business and we backed off on our marketing. Big mistake don’t ever do that. Always continue to market no matter what the status is.

Brett McCollum (13:40.389)
Mmm.

I’m, yeah, I’m gonna tee you up for this one, why not?

Brett McCollum (13:51.471)
Why not stop marketing? What’s the reason why for that?

Mike (13:57.4)
Gosh, you want to always have a deal flow, right? Always get your name out there, always grow your business, meet new people, meet new investors, sellers, everything. You just have to get your name out there always, constantly. And our main purpose is, of course, to…

is for deal flow. That’s, we find a good deal in our business, everything else pretty much falls in line. We don’t have any difficulty finding buyers for good deals in our wholesale business.

The main issue is, as we all know, is just finding that deal.

Brett McCollum (14:36.857)
Yeah, so when you slow down the marketing, the deal flow slows down too. Yeah, I mean, it’s pretty simple, right? Yeah.

Mike (14:43.049)
Absolutely does. it, you know, that reflects in your deal flow, you know, like 30, 60 days away. So for us anyway, it has, it’s the way we track it. So you just, man, don’t ever stop. Make a lot of money, you need to invest a large amount back into marketing.

Brett McCollum (14:54.383)
Yeah, no, you’re not wrong. That’s really.

Brett McCollum (15:06.243)
into marketing. Yeah, what percentage of your, I’m assuming you probably have this dialed in, what percentage of your, let’s say, gross profit are you reinvesting into marketing?

Mike (15:20.714)
I’d probably right into 20%.

Brett McCollum (15:24.633)
Yeah, yeah, that’s about right. Yeah, so, I mean, that’s the nature of the business, you know, it’s the lifeblood of our business, right? If you don’t have lead flow, you don’t have deal flow, you know, so. Yeah.

Mike (15:37.144)
That’s right. And to be creative, we were talking earlier, you know, I have a real estate investment club in Colorado and a couple of meetup groups and one down here in southwest Florida where, you know, we just, you meet people that way. You meet industry related people, maybe not just sellers, but people that you can use in your business by running those type of organizations. So that’s always worked really well for us.

Brett McCollum (16:03.141)
Well that’s a good, yeah that’s a good transition Mike. I wanted to ask you that because you did tell me that a little bit off screen a little bit. So, alright, you’ve been, you know, you’ve been wholesaling. I know you mentioned earlier too that you’ve done the flips, you’ve done the, you’ve done ground up construction. You know, and now today, like, well actually let’s pause there. So, walk me through that season of flips and ground up. Like, I know you’re wholesaling today but when, like,

How did you do that? Like, what did it look like?

Mike (16:36.398)
well the flips I just marketing techniques instead of wholesale the ones that looked really good we took on ourselves some we used private money and some we did joint ventures with developers that type of thing put the put the money together did the flips the ground up development I’ve done one of those and that was

Brett McCollum (17:01.423)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (17:02.958)
I used to have black hair before I did that ground up development. So we pretty much scraped it to the ground and overbuilt it. And the partner I was involved with was just into making it the most beautiful thing like he was going to live there. And we all know that can be a mistake, but it was in a very nice high end area. our $120,000 profit.

Brett McCollum (17:06.011)
Yeah

Mike (17:31.498)
and nine month turnaround turned into 18 months and about 62,000. So for us. the day that I got that property under contract, I had a developer offer me 35,000 to assign that contract to her. So I.

Brett McCollum (17:39.301)
Yeah.

Brett McCollum (17:50.629)
Hindsight, right? Yeah.

Mike (17:52.47)
asked and my wife and I had a discussion and she said well look what we made and I just had her do a little mathematics on the ROI. It’s 62 with all the time and effort and money we put into it or 35 you know 100 percent. So I hit myself in the head for that.

Brett McCollum (18:07.673)
Not to mention the stress, probably, yeah, I bet.

Mike (18:14.05)
but it turned out beautiful and we got it sold and we sold it for less than it was projected. Anyway, I’ve got friends in the business that do great work on scrapes and developments. In Denver, they like a certain size lot and they can plug in their house right there. They’ve already got plans for it, boom, put it up. They make great money doing that. It’s just not for me. But that’s what’s awesome about real estate. There are so many avenues to pursue that you can…

Brett McCollum (18:24.389)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (18:44.202)
Excel app if that’s your deal.

Brett McCollum (18:46.735)
Yeah. Well, very cool. Yeah. I didn’t want to, I didn’t want to miss that. So now you also told me that, you kind of touched on the second ago as well. You’ve got a couple of like investor clubs that you’ve started. you know, talk to me a little bit about that.

Mike (19:03.768)
Well, we started the Denver Association of Real Estate Investors 12 years ago. And it’s been really a great thing, great program. We brought a lot of people together. know…

People, attendees have done business between themselves and they’ve met good people, good title companies, attorneys. It’s just a win-win situation. And as far as me being the president of the club, it’s, you know, everybody comes to me first. So it’s been a really excellent marketing tool.

where I’ve met sellers and buyers and private money individuals, from doing that. So it’s really been a great experience.

Brett McCollum (19:50.275)
Those clubs are still running today.

Mike (19:53.166)
Sorry.

Brett McCollum (19:53.99)
Are those clubs still running today? Are you still operating them? Yeah. And how do you operate them from Florida?

Mike (19:56.29)
Yes. we’ve like,

We’ve got two meetups in Denver also, and then one in Southwest Florida that we’re working on going to live meeting here in Southwest Florida. We’ve just been doing Zooms. That’s what we’ve been doing with the club in Denver since I moved down here. But we’re working on getting two individuals to start running live events up there again. So we’re excited about that.

Brett McCollum (20:13.999)
You’ve been doing Zooms on the other ones.

Brett McCollum (20:27.301)
That’s really cool. Yeah, that’s huge. mean, I think networking and community and, you know, definitely, if nothing else for people, then having a place to share like minds, you know, together to be able to, you know, I don’t know about you, Mike, but with my friends, some of them, what do you do? I still don’t know what you do, Brett, you know, like they still don’t, you know, and being able to be surrounded by people that actually, you know, are, they get you. That’s a really powerful thing too on the relationship side of it. Not to mention the marketing, like you said.

Mike (20:46.21)
Yeah. Right.

Mike (20:59.63)
On that note, I attend a mastermind meeting here in southwest Florida that is mainly experienced investors that talk about their issues with tenants and taxes and zoning and all that type of stuff. So I recommend that anyone that has that ability to go attend those.

Attend as many those face-to-face type meetings as you can. You can really meet some good people. It’ll help you in your business.

Brett McCollum (21:32.889)
Yeah, no, think that’s super powerful. you gotta grow. well, tell me about another great transition. Mike, growth, moving forward, like what does the future look like for you? What are you doing next?

Mike (21:46.68)
Well, what I’m doing next really as far as short term is to put all together the marketing flyer for that trailer park that I have under contract up in Longmont Florida and put it out to my investor buyers and I work with a group of, work with the credited investors and put together.

deals that way and so we’re going to present that to them but I have to get that all put together as far as expenses and NOI and taxes and insurance and all that stuff put together in a nice presentation with pictures and so I’ll be working on that probably today I should have that all completed and sent out but these guys do syndications and have a tremendous track record of closing deals so we’ll see if it’s something they were interested in putting out.

Brett McCollum (22:17.68)
Mm-hmm.

Mike (22:46.126)
to their list of accredited investors. And I also have supplied them with several accredited investors and make a little money on that on the side too.

Brett McCollum (23:02.395)
Very good. So staying, stick right now.

Mike (23:03.018)
Again, this business is so awesome. There so many avenues to pursue.

Brett McCollum (23:07.971)
Yeah, right now we’re just sticking with the wholesale operation it sounds like, right? Yeah, very cool. Well, Mike, we’re kind of running up on our time for the show today, but I really enjoyed having you on with us. If there’s anybody that maybe wants to connect with you a little bit, where should they go? How could they maybe get ahold of you?

Mike (23:30.072)
well the easiest way maybe I shouldn’t but I’ll just you know my cell phone is a great way to contact me just text me 7-2 should I give the number out is that alright? yeah it’s a 7-2-0-3-3-1-2-0-1-2 just text me and just say you saw me here and I’ll contact you and help you we

Brett McCollum (23:41.819)
Only if you feel comfortable, yes sir.

Brett McCollum (23:55.653)
Yeah, perfect. And we’ll have that in the show notes as well.

Mike (23:57.826)
We coach, we do coaching too, one-on-one coaching. So we like helping people in that way. yeah, I sure had a, a, yeah. Well, I appreciate that. It was fun. Yeah, I appreciate it.

Brett McCollum (24:03.288)
Awesome. Yeah, and guys, Mike’s been in the industry a long time. There’s a lot of wisdom to offer there. Yeah. Very cool. Absolutely. Well, Mike, I’m glad you, yeah, absolutely. I’m glad you had us on the show today. Guys, I hope you enjoyed the show and we’ll catch you guys on the next one. Take care, everybody.

Mike (24:21.844)
All right.