Beyond the Deal

From Corporate Hustle to Multifamily Mastery: The Journey of Mike Angelo

• Michael Wagman • Episode 1

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In the debut episode of Beyond the Deal, host Michael Wagman introduces his business partner, Mike Angelo, as they share the transformative journey from a high-pressure corporate career to multifamily real estate success. Mike reflects on his leap into real estate investing, the lessons learned from early mistakes, and the drive to secure financial freedom and family balance.


Discover how Mike’s commitment to resilience, integrity, and continuous learning turned challenges into opportunities. With insights into multifamily syndications, the importance of networking, and strategies for long-term success, this episode is a masterclass for aspiring investors.


Key Takeaways:

✅ Why multifamily investing is accessible to everyday investors

✅ Building resilience through setbacks and learning from failures

✅ The critical role of mentorship and community in real estate


Tune in for a discussion on the highs, lows, and lessons of real estate investing, and find inspiration to pursue your goals with determination and grit.


Timestamps:

00:00:00 Introduction to Beyond the Deal Podcast  

00:02:53 Discovering Syndication in Multifamily Real Estate

00:05:51 Transitioning from Employee to Real Estate Investor  

00:08:19 The Value of Education and Networking in Real Estate  

00:11:06 Building Success in Real Estate Investing  

00:13:54 Sales Resilience: Overcoming Rejection  

00:16:42 Importance of Integrity in Real Estate Investment

00:19:29 Key Roles in Multifamily Real Estate Investing

00:22:05 Becoming a Remote Family

00:24:56 Ending Remarks 


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Follow the host:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelwagman/

https://www.instagram.com/nimble_capital_group/

https://nimblecapitalgroup.com/


Follow the guest:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikeaangelo/


Interested in mentorship and learning how to raise capital? Let’s build your life of freedom. Book your free discovery call here: ⬇️

https://calendly.com/mwagman/capital-coaching-exploration

Welcome to Beyond the Deal, a podcast where we go deeper than the numbers and we discuss the stories and practices that lead to success in life and business. It really opened my eyes to the fact that people like us could buy apartments. I always thought it was the big corporations that own most of those big multifamily units. If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you'll get the result you want eventually. We have to keep pushing because it's so easy to quit, right? When you hear a thousand no's, that's why we do what we do so we can have the freedom, choose the kind of lifestyle we want and not be, you know, slaves to a 95. to every interaction. Welcome to Beyond the Deal, a podcast where we go deeper than the numbers and we discuss the stories and practices that lead to success in life and business. I'm your host, Michael Wagman, and I've been able to raise millions of dollars for real estate deals while traveling around the world and living a lifestyle of freedom. Today on the show, my guest is none other than my business partner, Mr. Mike Angelo. Thanks so much for being here. Hey, great to be here, Michael. well This is exciting to get this thing kicked off. Looking forward to it. Yeah, I figured you were really the appropriate first guest. There's really nobody else it could have been. Thanks for agreeing to do this. Let's get into it a little bit. We'll obviously get to how we met and everything like that, but before, tell the listeners a little about your history and how you ended up here. Yeah, Yeah just going back probably around five years. I spent 20 plus years in the corporate world trying to climb the ladder in the construction supply space, I was a VP of sales. While I love the the career, I loved all that good stuff, the challenging thing for me was my personal health and being away from family and the stress it caused. I was looking for an out. You know The stars aligned. I learned a little bit about real estate through podcasts and found myself right around 2019. I had an opportunity to jump in and do this full-time. Took the leap, talked to the wife, got the blessing and support and went at it full-time. We'll talk about our story and how we met, but it's been an awesome ride so far. For the listener's info, we are mostly doing multifamily, but that was not your first foray into real estate investing, was it? It was not. It definitely was not. Like I mentioned, I was a sales guy, and so back in '07, I I dabbled in the flipping world and got into a flip or two. I got two exactly. One went really well, one didn't, and and the one that didn't cost us a lot of money, and it was right as the market was changing back in, again,'07, '08, and I made you know a list of mistakes on that second one you know If you ask my wife about it today, she'll still go oof, and she'll remind me of the pain we went through. That was That was my only real estate experience at the time, and 10 years fast forward, that was all I did. I basically left that world, went back to my sales career, call it, and I just spent time doing that until we got into full-time multifamily investing. How did you hear about multifamily and syndication in the first place? Honestly, Michael, I I stumbled upon it, just going through podcasts. You know I had a long drive from from my home here in Chandler into Phoenix every day, so it was an hour, hour and a half drive, just scrolling through Apple Podcasts, and I ran into something called multifamily. This particular host was talking about syndications, had never even heard of the word, and was just fascinated by it, so I just really started to absorb it. This is like middle of 2019, give or take, and so just really opened my eyes to the fact that one, people like us could buy apartments. I always thought it was the big corporations that owned most of those big multifamily units. And you know you and I were kind of destined to buy single family homes or maybe a couple of those. That was all I could see in the lens that I had up until that moment. And then it completely opened my eyes. I was like wow this is exciting. There's great money to be made. There's others you can help. So I dabbled in a couple deals. That's how I got into it. As an LP. Exactly. So while at the time I wasn't looking to do this full time at all, I was just like here's a great way to supplement some income. and start to grow your wealth. I invested with a couple different operators. I vetted them. I went through the process, listened to them, had phone calls with them, a bunch of emails, felt good about the deals that they had. I didn't know that much about it at the time. This was a little bit of a dip my toes in, get some education while I invest. Those deals worked out really well. A couple here in Phoenix, a couple out in in the Utah market. It was good. It worked out really well. For our listeners, can you tell them how much you invested in these first couple of deals? versus you know if they were to go buy something themselves what that might cost from a time and financial commitment? Yeah so this is a great question and I you know I had my board up and I did the math I said you know how can I replace my income I was really kind of the math or how can I work towards replacing my income so I said well if I go buy a single-family rental I did the math it's gonna cost me 350 to 400 this is pre COVID and so here in Arizona you could buy a house for $300,000 and you know with the mortgage where it was and all that kind of good stuff I would net about call it 500 bucks a month at best right and that would cost me 20% of $300,000 right minimum right so you're talking 60 grand I got to put into a deal. As I looked at these operators, my first deal I invested was $50,000 and I was there paying 7% so I was basically making about $400 a month. They ended up moving it's about 9% within a few months. I was earning the same amount of return 400-500 bucks a month on my original 50 grand and I didn't have to do anything. I didn't have to be a landlord, I have to find leases, I didn't have to fix anything. It was literally park your money and do this My head was like, wow, how do I multiply this times 10? I ended up putting in you know a couple hundred grand, about 250,000 in four different deals. A couple through my IRA, a couple through cash. It was just a way to feel the market out and just really see, is this truly possible? Then I got the opportunity to, hey, what if I played on the active side and on the passive side? Now you're really double dipping in a way, just really maximizing that growth. This is probably a pretty good opportunity here to talk about how you and I ended up as partners. Why don't you walk us through sort of that transition from being an employee to now being a full-time real estate investor. So you know basically January 2020, I decided to start this company and I got you know again full backing from from the wife, got some capital to work with and I went and get some, I wanted some education because just like in anything else, you know this is, I ran businesses, large corporations, but this was completely different. Running apartments or running multi-family operations is a business and so I wanted to get educated so signed up for a mentorship program, it was a 12-month deal and as I'm going through you know the education, which is all really good, it's a couple of fundamental things, analyzing the deal, finding how to talk to brokers, brokers are folks that sell us deals, and then putting offers together. So there's a couple different parts and pieces. I was doing all of that stuff along the way and every week we had a call with the mentorship group and you had a Facebook group that you're a part of to help build your community, build your own confidence. Fast forward about four months of just grinding through a bunch of deals I had a great offer that I put in on a deal here in Phoenix and one of the things you got and you know this Michael right but the the fans or the folks listening to us they may not know when you're going to buy an apartment building even if you have a few million bucks you need a sponsor that's going to qualify for the loan right your your bank is not going to just loan anybody money on an apartment because it's a business right they need to know that you have experience so I didn't have a sponsor well I did have a sponsor my sponsor just bailed on me right through this process I was the guy Deals. He was the one that was going to sponsor it, find the equity and he bailed literally on the 11th hour after I had an offer that wasn't accepted, but I was #3, right? So there was I was in what they call best and final. This is like a 54 unit deal here in Phoenix. I had to sharpen my pencil and find a new sponsor. I was in panic mode because I didn't want to ruin my reputation with this broker. I went on this Facebook group and I said, Hey guys, here's my deal, here's my situation and Michael happened to answer the message. He happened to be in the same network and he happened to be in Phoenix. It was funny how we found each other that way. Fast forward, he connected us to a sponsor, that sponsor ended up helping us buy our first deal. We didn't buy that deal, we didn't win that deal, but it was a start to a great relationship. Very true. So for anyone listening, I would say, you know, the mentorship group that Mike and I did was expensive. But if you are looking to get into real estate and and you kind of don't know where to start, and let's say you have five,$10,000, some of them are, you know, 20, 40,$50,000, but even if you have five to 10, I think the value that you get out of education and specifically the network, being in the same network as other people who are actively doing deals and like who are, where you want to get to, it's invaluable. So if you are thinking about getting into this industry, that is such a good place to start. Mike, what do you what do you think about the mentorship we did? 100%. If you only go in and you're trying to value it on the the amount of education or the level of education, it's like going to Harvard and getting a junior high degree. That's it. You're not going to get what you need to get out. But being around people that are actually doing it, sometimes it's hard because we're all working remote you know at that time, we were in our own little bubbles. But if you're not connected and around people actual deals, very improbable that you'll actually ever get anything done. Because again, you need a team. This is not an individual sport. You got to have a great team. There's so many different hats that you know you and I both wear today, even though now we've been you know somewhat successful and bought some deals and got some properties under our management. It takes a lot every single day. You got to have people around you. So if you want to get in, maybe figure out a skill set, but definitely get around people doing deals. So speaking of skill set, you underwrote more deals than anybody I've ever heard of before we even bought our first, right? So you mentioned sharpening the pencil, and in your case, that is quite literally. So why don't you tell the folks listening how many deals you underwrote before we even got our first under contract? yeah It's a little embarrassing now that you put it that way, but but we underwrote a lot of deals. So this is like going to the gym, doing reps. When you get into this, you have to figure out which skill set you want to choose. I chose the underwriting and deal finding, deal analyzing role, and I was going to take that to a sponsor who was going to help us qualify for the deal. So how do you do that? You have to call a lot of brokers. Again, brokers are the folks that are selling these properties. You have to reach out and get as many deals in in your inbox because it is literally like finding a needle in a haystack. and I went through over 1,000 deals to put in one offer, to win one, but we we were well over 1,000 by the time we actually won the first one. But hundreds of offers, you know lots of deals, hours and hours underwriting, going through spreadsheets to then understand that there's market dynamics, there's property dynamics, and all that work I have zero regret because it it helps me today if Michael said, Hey, I got this deal, I could do a back of the napkin, probably in my head to go, No, I'm not interested, or maybe we are. It's a great skill set to have have. And especially when you're talking to investors, you have to be able to really understand the the weeds and get into some of those nuances because real estate is so market specific, property specific. You just can't apply you know a lot of vague things to it. So I loved doing it. It was painful. We have a team now that helps us do that, which is great. But yeah, that that was how we got our first deal, going through all those pain points. Yeah. And you mentioned multifamily in particular, but also most commercial real estate investing, really on this level, anything that involves raising capital from investors, it's going to be some sort of T-board. You need to have specialization. You need to treat this like business because it is a business. It's not, I'm gonna go buy a house and I need to you know keep everything in an Excel file and hopefully the numbers work out. No, this is other people's money on the line and your money on the line, and you need to be you know as professional as humanly possible. So you know the thing you said about the back of the napkin, I don't have that skill, but I I don't want that skill either. That's why we're business partners. That's right. And I think in building a great team, you really need to find folks that compliment you, not replicate you. We don't need another mic here. We have a mic, we need a Michael. We need someone that can go out and find some investors, build that camaraderie, build that trust, and get get us to the next step. So it's it's definitely team sport, I love that. So can you share a defining moment, you know whether it's within our last four and a half years together or even before that, but something that really significantly influenced your path and brought you to where you are today? There's probably been a few. I think I always go back. I actually think I recorded it. One of the things I always encourage you to do is as you're going through this journey, just record yourself. And the family and I. We go to San Diego in October. And so the the first year, which would have been COVID of 2020, our first kind of year, I was 900 plus deals in we hadn't won anything. And I'm sitting running around San Diego just doing a little morning run and I recorded myself. And I was looking in front of these like 30 story apartment buildings and I'm like one day we're gonna buy one of these, we're gonna build one of these, we're gonna be a part of this. And again, at the time, we own nothing, right? We were just out there trying to trying to get it done. And that was it was like this switch hit that I'm like, we have to keep pushing Because it's so easy to quit. When you hear a thousand no's, you know it's it's easily frustrating and can you know completely demoralize you. I go back to that moment because I went back to the room, fired up the computer and we went and started looking for more deals and all I did was call a couple more brokers and I think within a month or so of that visit we had that deal, we started to underwrite the deal that we ended up buying which we closed in May of the following year. It took us a long time but we stuck with it. I think that was a moment where I was like the only way this is going to work is just resilience. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, if you're putting yourself in that position in the first place to hear no, then you're probably putting yourself ahead of 99% of the people because they're not willing to risk that in the first place. Ohh God, rejection, ohh no, I'm so terrible. No, if you actually just take the action and you put yourself out there and somebody says no, then you're so far ahead of everyone else because nobody else is asking. That's That's a hundred percent correct and I think that my sales background We got rejected on a daily basis for whatever different reason it was. We were too expensive, not interested, whatever. And you just have to have that thick skin and to know, you know in your mind, you are bringing value to every deal. And I still have that written up. You know Bring value to every interaction. And so if you take that approach and you just stay with it, it'll happen. Absolutely. You just can't give up. And I think you and I both learned that in our sales backgrounds. It is kind of a numbers game at the end of the day, right? If you keep doing the same thing over and over again, you'll get the result you want eventually. Yeah, that's right. 100%. So speaking of that, are there any sort of daily practices or habits that you employ now that are fundamental to the way that you're living your life and that have been contributing to your success? Yeah, I think this job is highly stressful. And so the last, really, probably the last year, I've now really programmed myself to focus on health, since you and I have met, like we've been on the health journey but just really dialed in where I'm getting up

15 to 6:

00 it just really depends on the day and I'm at the gym I'm at the gym and I'm doing a 45-minute workout I've been on a streak now for the last five weeks where it's seven days so every day I'm at the gym and that really helps me set up the day and what I used to do is I used to get up and look at my e-mail and then I'd go to the gym so I stop looking at my emails I hit the gym finish with the sauna and stretch and so it kind of just like sets me up calms me down I listen to a bit of podcast. I have a book that I'm listening to which is nothing to do with real estate. It's like science fiction nonsense but I need that. I need that to kind of just start the day, get home and then you know this, I have two kids and I help them get ready for school, making them lunches, running 30 is when the the office day starts and I'm okay with that. I'm completely okay with that because I work all kinds of other hours on a regular basis. We have that freedom to be able to do that. I can work till midnight if I want but that morning routine has been I think a really really a big saver for me and just creating routine but creating like now this like what am I gonna do at the gym today like that's what I'm thinking about when I'm waking up you know it's awesome. Absolutely your wife and your your two daughters and two dogs now. Two puppies within the same year so you know that's a hectic thing. Here you are running a big company and and your wife still works well right so you know having that balancing act it's really important to prioritize what matters in life and I think that's why you and I got into this in the first place that's why we do what we do so we can have the freedom, choose the kind of lifestyle we want and not be you know slaves to a 9-5. Do you have any core values or philosophies that that really steer every deal you do, what decisions you make? Integrity man, all day long. It's just got to be integrity and we can talk about a deal. I think you know which deal I'm talking about but there's so many things that can go wrong. The The integrity piece is so critical because it's easy for any of us to put something on a spreadsheet, put something on a presentation to go, Yeah, this is the return you're going to get. But if can't stand behind it and defend it. You know Does it always work out correctly? It doesn't. That's when the integrity part really kicks in. I look through the lens of, are we doing the right thing for us and our investors? You and I raise money from private investors. Not only are we bound by legalities of the Securities and Exchange Commission, but just our own morals. How did we get our first deal? It was friends and family. How do we get our second deal? More friends and family. The last thing you want to do is to ruin those relationships by being irresponsible. Yeah, and I think anybody who's ever owned real estate before knows that stuff happens. All sorts of stuff. Yeah If you've owned a single family house and things start breaking, imagine what happens when you own a 40, 50, 60, 100 unit building, right? And we've had tenants drive cars through walls, we've had pipes explode, we've had, you name it, shootings, all sorts of things. But it happens, it's life. And And in those moments, you just need to be able to look at your investors and be like, Hey, this happened. This happened, here's what do about it. I think that's the big thing. We took action. You know We're present on the property. We're not just like these, Hey, let's take your money, and then someone else is managing it. That's not us. We're rolling up our sleeves and and literally doing work, kicking tenants out if we need to. We've We've all had to do some of that work. That's not ideal, but it's part of who we are. To me, it goes back to your your question. It's all about integrity and doing the right thing. You know If you were speaking to somebody who was maybe about to get into real estate investing or looking to IDP or GP or even just a first-time flipper. What advice would you give to someone in that position who maybe is trying to emulate where you've ended? So a couple things, you mentioned flipping. I think there's such a mind shift from folks wanting to get into real estate. I'm going to use real estate in air quotes because it does encompass a lot of things. I know you have your background where you did single-family, you did small multifamily and you immediately saw the benefit of larger is better. To me it's the first thing is is if anyone's listening or wanting to get into this, think like You really got to think ridiculously big and that might seem impossible and maybe obnoxious. I think it's obnoxious. When I went to my wife and said we're gonna go buy, you know we have$80 million under management. So So we manage around $80 million of real estate. Five years ago if someone said that to me or if I said to my wife she'd look at me like I was insane. How do we do that? Well we we took a team, it took us five years, so it takes a long time but we thought big. Could we own 80 single-family homes? It would be impossible to manage. There's no way. So So that's the first thing is just think about like which bucket, which lane you want to choose. We chose multifamily and we're nimble capital, so we're going to pick a few different avenues along that way. But apartments make a lot of sense to us. And the other thing I would just think about is what's your skill set? What do you bring to a team? What are you good at? What do you want to be good at? Maybe you don't know anything about this, but you're really good at analyzing. You're really good at talking to people. You know, we have like 5 hats that people need to wear. I don't know if you want me to go through that, but I can go through that. Yeah, yeah so it's finding the deal. Deal sourcing, so that means talking to brokers, being able to have that relationship, the deal flow piece. You need someone to analyze those deals, who's gonna go through and underwrite, we call it underwriting, just analyzing the deal and putting it together. You need a sponsor, that might be one or two people. A sponsor's gonna be the person that's gonna sign on the loan. If you buy a $10 million deal and you're gonna borrow 7 million, 70%, that means somebody on your team or collectively needs to have a net worth of at least$7 million. And let's say the mortgage on that is$250,000 or $300,000 a year. You need someone to have at least that kind of liquidity available. So that's sponsorship. That's a huge piece. The other piece of that is the experience. Someone that has actual apartment experience. So if you're buying a 20-unit apartment and all you've ever owned is triplexes, it might be tough to qualify for that same loan. So there's your fourth hat. And then your fifth hat is who's gonna go find the money? Where are you gonna get investors? How are you gonna source that? It can be all five could be one person, right? Really hard to do. Multiple people wearing multiple hats. Yeah, absolutely. And then did you mention asset management too? I did, that's the sixth actually. So actually technically a sixth, right? So once you buy the property, everyone thinks that's the hard part is just buying it. No, the hard part's running it, right? So once you own the deal, who's gonna run it? And it's not that we directly, right, so we don't manage any of our properties directly, we use a third party property manager, but someone needs to manage that manager and also steer them towards the business plan, you're validating and vetting all the things that they're doing, managing expenses, so you need an asset manager. So really a six-person team if everyone had one job, that would be what it looks like. So what future aspiration or objective are you pursuing? What does the future look like for Nimble Capital Group and specifically Mike Angel? Yeah, so you and I talk about it a lot. We We both live very different lives, by the way, so you're out traveling a lot and that's something that my wife and I love to do. We We just Europe this year with the kids. So I think once our kids are a little bit out of school, having that freedom to go out and do that is the personal side is is just more freedom to leave when we want. Our business allows us to do that. My wife's business actually allows her to do that too. It's just a matter of when can we go do that. So that's our personal side. I think in the next five years, we really want to just be completely remote as both both kids will be kind of out of school. Then on the business side, I think we're moving down a trend where we have our development projects in the works. I'd love to see more of that activity only because there's still such a shortfall of supply of housing. We're niching into certain markets where we think we're experts and we believe we can provide value to. You know In the value-added apartment space, there's a lot of competition in that. There's a lot. But there's still things we can do. At the end of the day, I think we want to always gear our our business towards where our investors are are seeking opportunities or seeking returns. We're going to dabble in a few different things I think over the next year, especially in the 2025. There's a few other areas is within real estate or within you know different models, call it debt, call it equity pieces, that I think will give us a better portfolio for our investors to dabble with, right? So I'm interested and fascinated to see where that's going to take us. And then lastly, I want to say, are there any books, podcasts, tools that profoundly affected and are still being used every single day in your life at this moment? So there's a bunch, right? Everyone always says, you know, Kiyosaki, right? But I think Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich is is a great one. I think I go back and I think about financial planning in general. We were never taught that in high school. My parents were immigrants. They came here, got the job, went to college, did the whole thing, right? We're kind of taught to work, go to school for 40 years, you know, get your job and then retire. And so there's so many other ways to make money and grow wealth. And so I just think about financial planning. This is a book I'm giving away right now. We did this on our last podcast. written I think in the early 2000s but your money your life really good Joe Dominguez simple simple simple about wealth planning and you know a very simple example like for my kids we opened a Roth IRA for my 11 year old she's 11 so Roth IRA I'm gonna pay her about 2,000 bucks a year she's helping me with marketing and doing some very simple ad work for nimble capital I get to pay her if I put only $6,000 in between now and when she's 12 and she doesn't touch that by the time she's 65 it's a couple million bucks Think about that, the power of time, right? And in real estate, you know if she was owning a piece of real estate over 40, 50 years, how much would that be worth? I think just planning and thinking around those kinds of things is what's helped us. Where can the people find out more about you, Mr. Angelo? Great question. So definitely on LinkedIn, it's it's Mike Ashish Angelo. I'm a multifamily Mike on Instagram and TikTok and then you can call me. Something I challenge you, we talked about this earlier, people don't take action. I would suggest if you're interested in what we do, what we do, reach out to us, call me, it's 909-730-5096. Shoot me a text, let's set up a time to talk. Thanks so much, Mike. Thanks for coming on the show. Thanks, Michael. Cheers.