How Mike Brooks Battled in the Ring and Won Top Broker in Equipment Financing
“Equipment Financing is HUGE,” declares Mike Brooks, CEO of New York-based Best Connect Capital and recent winner at Broker Battle 2025 in the equipment finance category at deBanked CONNECT MIAMI. If his name sounds familiar, it’s probably because he appeared on stage as one of six finalists in the previous year’s competition. He refused to give up after his loss and returned this year for round two, leading to him securing a title and prizes along with it. To hear him tell it, it had been a long road to get there.
When Brooks got his start as a 27-year-old broker in 2015, for example, he had technically been battling in a ring for most of his life already.
“I had [boxing] on my mind in high school, without any influence,” says Brooks, “and I walked into a gym one day and the rest was history.” That history includes 60 fights in just amateur-level boxing, resulting in 45 wins and 15 losses. When he followed that at the pro level he went 11-2-1.
“I started fighting at the regular club shows, the Golden Gloves, the metro tournaments, national tournaments, and at one point, I was ranked number seven in the whole country,” Brooks recalls. “I beat some really good fighters, lost to some really good fighters and I made it to the highest levels in the country.”
Some of those fights even aired on live TV. As he bobbed and weaved for years in the ring, he started to think about what a possible career in business might look like afterwards. When that day came, he went to work for a local financial service company on Long Island who taught him about helping small businesses access working capital. Eventually he realized it was a business that he was uniquely suited for and now he runs his own company doing it.
First, there’s the endurance aspect, he explains. There’s a lot of calls, leads that don’t pan out, and heartbreak that hits when deals get declined at the finish line.
“A very small percentage of people can be a successful broker,” Brooks says. “You have to be able to take rejections all day long.”
To that point, Brooks noticed that as the industry grew he was not the only broker offering revenue-based financing to a client. Sometimes there were even as many as four or five other brokers talking to the same client at the same time, which meant that he wasn’t going to win every one and he did not want to bend his ethics just to eke it out. That’s when he started considering another approach and expanded his offerings.
“An equipment financing deal was my first big check during [the covid] lockdowns,” Brooks says. It was a $200,000 deal for a packaging plant. The terms were very attractive and he had the help of an equipment finance veteran who mentored him through it. When it worked out, he knew he had something very big in his arsenal and he’s been offering it ever since to anyone that qualifies for it.
“I said to myself anybody that needs equipment, this is a no brainer right here,” Brooks recalls of it. Now Brooks says when there is competition, he’s almost always the only one asking questions about equipment and the only one prepared to actually move forward with a deal tied to it. Of that experience, Brooks says he’s realized that some brokers have become so accustomed to the mindset of telling customers to take a specific deal, that they don’t stop to consider what they actually want. So his approach is to go in and diagnose what it is they’re trying to do first and then advise them of their options accordingly. And that’s what he does day after day.
At Broker Battle 2025, it was very much like time spent in the office. He was expected to be his normal self, but on stage in front of a large audience, while three judges played the role of prospective client and asked him questions about what they should do. The end result of it all was that Mike Brooks, former fighter in the ring, walked away as the Broker Battle champion in the equipment finance category in 2025.
“It felt amazing to be able to showcase what I do on a daily basis,” Brooks says, making it a point to say that even the venue took note of his win and offered him a personal congratulations on social media.
In the final photo-op on stage with his prize check, Brooks was the epitome of his dual life—the suit and tie spoke of business, while the cigar and sunglasses hinted at his former life in the ring. “I was a crowd pleaser,” he jokes. “You want to be like ‘bam bam bam’ and the crowd to be like ‘AHHHH!!!’ I want them to do that. I had a great time at deBanked.”
Last modified: March 6, 2025
Sean Murray is the President and Chief Editor of deBanked and the founder of the Broker Fair Conference. Connect with me on LinkedIn or follow me on twitter. You can view all future deBanked events here.
