Drive to Succeed

Drive to Succeed

ENTREPRENEUR by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

From poor beginnings to pouring concrete, Bill Manfull has come a long - and prosperous - way in a colorful life. Says Manfull: "I'm just a simple working guy who happened to make a lot of money."

By nearly every traditional measurement, Bill Manfull shouldn't be successful at either his profession or his hobby.

Take his day job, that of a real estate developer. He didn't go to college and he has no formal real estate or development education. By his own admission, he doesn't have a concrete plan for figuring out what projects to do. It's more of a dream it and visualize it kind of thing.

Manfull doesn't have a company office outside his home, much less a focused mission statement. His main company, Manatee River Community Development Corp. has few employees and doesn't even have a Web site, a place for Manfull to boast about his doings. He rarely uses e-mail.

Yet Manfull, 47, is one of the more successful developers in Greater Bradenton. His Gulf Coast area projects include turning the 29,000-square-foot Miller Furniture Store - a three-story, 1920s-era complex in downtown Bradenton - into retail and condos; permitting and selling landfills in Bradenton and other nearby areas; and putting together a 225-unit housing project in rural northern Hardee County.

Manfull's latest development is a smaller, yet highly visible project in Palmetto. Manfull bought 1.9 acres in a rundown part of the city's historic downtown earlier this year for $1.5 million. He plans to build a $20 million-plus combination of condos and storefronts on the land, using a Key West theme. (See related story.)

Manfull's past and present non-Floridian holdings are just as diverse and even more quirky. The current list includes the Montgomery Motor Speedway in Alabama, which he now he rents out as a parking lot for Hyundais, a decision he made after losing $500,000 in one year of running it as a racetrack. Manfull also holds a minority ownership stake in Billy Ballew Motorsports, a racing team whose drivers include NASCAR star Kyle Busch.

His past portfolio includes a 340-acre limestone mining facility and a multimillion-dollar 750-boat slip marina in Tennessee, both of which he sold a few years ago, the latter at a sizeable profit.

"I'm just a simple working guy who happened to make a lot of money," says Manfull, who, when he's not at a job site pouring concrete or painting fences could be found walking around his home office in flip flops, denim jeans shorts and a fishing T-shirt.

"I've never met anyone like him," says Gene Bay, a Manatee County homebuilder and former senior commercial lender with Liberty Bank who has known Manfull since the early 1990s. "He uses up his time of the day real well."

'The Super Bowl'

But a fast-paced flurry of buying, selling and developing is only half the Manfull story.

There's also his other job, that of being a professional racecar driver for NASCAR. He has no formal racing education, isn't the son of a famous driver and he didn't even race for real in an official event until 2002, when he was 42 years old.

It was then that Manfull actually got his start, by entering, and then winning, seven consecutive races on fan participation night at DeSoto Speedway. Going from fan to participant, Manfull says, was sort of like going from "high school football to the Super Bowl."

Yet while Manfull didn't challenge Jeff Gordon or Tony Stewart for racing supremacy, he did make a name for himself in the sport. He has qualified and finished races in two prominent race tours, the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series and the Hooters Pro Cup. And in 2004, Manfull became the first driver to race in a Truck Series and Pro Cup event in the same day, spending nearly 12 hours in a racecar at Bristol Motor Speedway, one of the sport's top venues.

Manfull raced regularly for NASCAR and other racing tours for three years until he gave it up in 2006, save for the occasional event. Manfull says he learned, via his wallet, the old racing adage: "The only way to make a small fortune in racing," he says, "is to start with a large fortune."

Finally, there's this: Manfull, a Bradenton native, basically grew up in poverty and on his own from the time he was 9 years old. His mom died when he was 2, his dad was an alcoholic and his step-mom, whom he lived with in Tennessee, was rarely around, he says.

Manfull graduated from high school in Tennessee when he was 16 and spent the next decade working two, sometimes three jobs, usually in construction or in some related field. His home back then, when things were really bleak, sometimes consisted of a friend's couch.

A visionary

Of several turning points in Manfull's life, one that stands out is The Bet.

It was a simple wager between Manfull and his sister's husband, made 30 years ago in a moment of macho bravado: Could Manfull, then 17, last a week pouring concrete?

Turns out he could. Manfull was so good at it, in fact, it became both his passion and his main source of income. After winning the bet, he took a job with Bradenton-based Singletary Concrete.

Even though Manfull liked the work, and the money, he was ambitious for more. So on his lunch breaks and after work, Manfull began a side career of buying, fixing up and flipping houses in Bradenton. "Instead of going out and drinking with my buddies all night," Manfull says, "I was fixing up houses."

That was in the early 1990s, long before the Gulf Coast housing boom. Manfull learned the development business by buying, fixing and flipping houses for profit - mostly - as well as by watching others.

One lesson he learned early on was to look at every potential deal before turning it down. It was that keep-his-options open philosophy that led Manfull to buy the racetrack in Alabama as well as property on what's known as Walker's Island in east Bradenton, near State Road 64 and Interstate 75, where the Braden and Manatee rivers connect.

Some proverbial experts deemed both of those failures before Manfull took a peek. The racetrack - which Manfull discovered was for sale through an unsolicited flyer that showed up at his house one day - is still a work in progress, and a losing one at that.

But Walker's Island, where Manfull built six Key West-style town homes in 2005, has turned into a moneymaker. Three homes have been sold or are rented out and three are currently for sale.

"Bill's one of these guys that looks around and sees things," says Bay, now Manfull's occasional business partner. Bay now runs H. Bay Enterprises, a Bradenton-based custom homebuilding firm. "When he looks at a corner of property he dreams about what it can be."

And what about Manfull's passion for pouring concrete? He loves it so much, he can be still seen at the helm of a job from time to time. Not just because he says he wants to relate to his subcontractors, he says, but also as a way to blow off a steam. "It's hard work," Manfull says, "but it helps me relax."

Positive focus

While Manfull has been involved in so many projects over the last decade - there are currently 27 LLCs registered under his name in Florida, including a ranching and dairy company, a racecar repair business and a waste and recycling operation - he concedes not all of them have been profitable.

His business dealings have also ended up in court various times. For example, according to Manatee County records, Manfull has had a stake in at least seven properties that have been a part of foreclosure proceedings. The listings range from as far back as 1994 to as recent as 2005.

Manfull has also been involved in more than a dozen civil and small claims cases, both as a plaintiff and a defendant. Most of those cases were in the mid to late 1990s.

And just as there are people who claim to have been burned by Manfull in one deal or another, the developer says others have taken advantage of his goodwill. That's led to his latest business philosophy, a with him or against him creed that's the closest thing Manfull has to a mission statement.

Bay calls Manfull the most honest developer he's ever worked with. Indeed, Bay says he's built dozens of homes for Manfull over the last decade, totaling millions of dollars, on handshake agreements.

And Mike Mizell, whose Bradenton-based Mizell Land Clearing has contracted with Manfull for several jobs over the last seven years, says he's seen both sides of Manfull, while personally experiencing the good one. On one side, Manfull has given Mizell constant work when things were tough, and on a personal level, Manfull took Mizell on his first plane ride and his first trip to the Florida Keys.

But "don't ever cross him," Mizell says, "because he won't ever do business with you again."

In addition to being big on loyalty and dedication, Manfull has picked up some other business to-dos during his 30-year self made career. For instance, he has an athlete's short-term memory when it comes to failed business deals or losses he's taken on projects. He blocks out the bad news, he says, to focus on the good news.

Another Manfull mantra: Maintain, whenever possible, a strong equity position in any project. The Palmetto Town Center is a good example, Manfull says, as he's building the project in deliberately slow stages, so as to not go into heavy debt. The plan is to work on the project in $1 million sections, a go-slow plan only enhanced by the slumping real estate market.

"It's easy to finance one stage at a time," Manfull says. "There's no sense going $15 million or $20 million in debt."

Keep it Beautiful

Bill Manfull says he cares little about dressing up in expensive suits for business meetings, just to put on a fancy facade. The Bradenton-based real estate developer and part-time NASCAR driver jokes - sort of - that the only suit he owns is a $2,000 fire protection bodysuit for racing.

Manfull does, however, put a high premium on making his properties fancy.

Just like first impressions when meeting a person, Manfull says first impressions are integral to development, whether selling a $200,000 condo or a beachfront house. And that goes for any stage of the project. Says Manfull: "It's all about making things look beautiful."

The beautification efforts stretch to Manfull's home life, too: He says he's spent about $1 million on landscaping and upkeep on his property in northwest Bradenton, which includes a 12,000-square-foot house.

Another first-impression effort can be found in downtown Palmetto, at Manfull's planned Palmetto Town Center. There, Manfull recently spent $5,000 to paint a worn-down looking picket fence white, in addition to paying a crew to paint the exterior of a building he plans on tearing down.

Palmetto Town Center

About two years ago, Bill Manfull was riding his motorcycle around Palmetto, around the time when he says the Gulf Coast real estate market was "still stupid." That's when he first noticed property for sale near Fourth Street and 10th Avenue, a block from the Manatee River in the city's downtown historic district.

Manfull, a Bradenton-based real estate developer, thought the area was ripe for a makeover, but he balked at the high land prices for what was basically a rundown part of town. But when a Palmetto official contacted him in January and told him the property was still for sale, Manfull took another look.

He bit this time, spending $1.5 million for 2 acres, on which sits 13 vacant manufacturing, retail and office buildings totaling 52,000 square feet.

Manfull's redevelopment project calls for 88 condos and 26 stores to be built over three to five years, replacing the buildings. The residences will be a combination of lofts, starting in the 600-square-foot range and working up to one- and two-bedroom condos. Prices are expected to be between $160,000 and $200,000.

One goal of the project, Manfull says, is to provide a way for people in service industries, such as police officers and teachers, to own a home in an up-and-coming area near where they work. While there is still some final permitting and approvals to go through, the bulk of the first two phases of the project have been approved by city officials.

"All the business downtown will do better if more people live and work here," says Tonya Lukowiak, director of Palmetto's redevelopment agency. "We are thrilled with this project."

Manfull says he initially came up with the blueprints for the project, to be called the Palmetto Town Center, while sitting on a deck watching the sunrise on vacation in the Bahamas.

He settled on developing it under a Key West theme, similar to a smaller project he put together two years ago in east Manatee County, on the banks of the Manatee River in an area known as Walker's Island.

Another key component for the Palmetto Town Center, Manfull says, is transportation. He says there are plans to have a scooter store open up as one of the retail components, so residents can easily get around town by renting a moped or scooter. Manfull has also bought and imported a few Rickshaw taxis from China, with plans to make them available to residents of the complex.

Construction on the first two phases of the Palmetto Town Center could begin as soon as late September, and the first building could be move-in ready by the middle of 2008.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Industry. Development

Who. Bill Manfull

Key. The real estate developer doubles as a professional racecar driver