Mike Ayala
Mike Ayala has been a guest on Collecting Keys, the real estate investing podcast hosted by Mike DeHaan, Dan Austin and Dylan Koch.
Generate Massive Income: Taking Risks For Big Wins In Business w/ Real Estate Investor Mike Ayala
Mike Ayala walks through his path from a jail stint and plumbing apprenticeship to building an HVAC company that hit the Inc. fastest-growing list, selling it in 2014, and assembling a 20-community mobile home park portfolio. He explains why high-margin operating businesses gave him room to make mistakes, how mentors funded his early deals with seller financing and 100% borrowed money, and why he now wants to get back to faster-growth income instead of relying on slow-growth real estate.
Key takeaways
- Start with a high-margin business: in HVAC and plumbing, a bad hire or a $400,000 bankruptcy could be fixed by selling more, while real estate gives you no quick lever to raise revenue.
- Jim Collins' flywheel idea applies to investors too — several activities in a business often drain the one or two that actually make money, and killing them is the hard conversation most owners avoid.
- Ayala bought his first mobile home park (72 spaces, $475,000) by assuming a note from a private investor and borrowing the $80,000 down payment from a mentor he had only gone to for advice.
- Mentors and private lenders help because it's a win-win — they make money off your time and deal flow and don't want to be out hunting deals themselves.