

      <h2 id="chapter_39693972">Don&#39;t let the tax tail wag the freedom dog</h2>


        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>0:00</time>
      <p>
          Again, 1031 sounds great on paper. When you start digging into it, it c- it can be very complicated and it can be very restraining. So what I try to tell people is, &quot;Hey, don&#39;t let the tax tail wag the freedom dog,&quot; because we&#39;re talking about investing, but really we&#39;re talking about freedom.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>0:17</time>
      <p>
          If you&#39;re within three feet of me, we&#39;re probably talking about real estate, much to my family&#39;s chagrin. But here&#39;s the thing. Most people see 7% rates and freeze. I see opportunity. They&#39;re waiting for the perfect deal, and well, I&#39;ve analyzed thousands of them, and perfect just doesn&#39;t exist. So I talk to operators across every asset class, flippers, multifamily syndicators, note investors, and whatever else is working. No sales pitches allowed, just real lessons from people actually doing it. I&#39;m Ed Mathews, and this is Real Estate Underground. Greetings and salutations, Real Estate Undergrounders. It is Ed Mathews with
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693973">Meet Tom Dunkel and Eagle Capital Investments</h2>


        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>1:00</time>
      <p>
          the Real Estate Underground. Thank you again so much for making us a part of your day. Today I&#39;m meeting with someone who I am just getting to know. It turns out it&#39;s a small world. We&#39;re both from the same part of the world. Tom Dunkel from Eagle Capital Investments, thank you so much for joining us today and welcome to the show.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>1:18</time>
      <p>
          Hey, Ed. I appreciate being with you and all the listeners today.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>1:21</time>
      <p>
          Welcome to the show. For those folks who haven&#39;t discovered you online or don&#39;t already work with you why don&#39;t you tell us a little bit about you and and your company?
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>1:30</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, sure. I&#39;m Tom Dunkel. I&#39;m the man- managing principal at Eagle Capital Investments. And basically this is a fun project for me. It&#39;s a new venture. Basically what I&#39;m doing is I&#39;m looking for deals for myself. I&#39;m I&#39;ve been a full-time investor for 20 years, and so I&#39;m looking for operators that I come to know and trust in multifamily self-storage, mobile home parks. I&#39;ve got a really sharp guy in medical office, and then I also love to do lending. And so basically what I&#39;m doing, Ed, is I, as I&#39;ve built up a network of investors over my 20-year span, I&#39;ve r- raised over $50 million of private capital from that group. And basically they&#39;re just looking to me to take advantage of my experience and my network and help them place dollars into these into these alternative investments, which, is really how you get true diversification, right? It it&#39;s not stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. It&#39;s not, mid-cap, large cap, small cap. It&#39;s not value and growth stocks. That&#39;s great i- to get started, but at a certain point when you&#39;re building your wealth over time, you really need to diversify into into these other types of asset classes. &#39;Cause I know like I remember way back when when a tsunami... You remember this, Ed? A tsunami hit Japan and it caused the US stock market to drop 10 or 15% and I, back then, I was just, starting my investment career, plugging, money into my 401and such. And I was like that makes no sense whatsoever.&quot; But
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693974">Why true diversification lives outside the stock market</h2>


        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>3:00</time>
      <p>
          you know what? Today if a tsunami hit Japan, it&#39;s not gonna impact my multifamily investment out in Phoenix or my self-storage investment down in North Carolina. I just I just really helping investors, find great deals.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>3:15</time>
      <p>
          Yeah. Excellent. And, it&#39;s interesting. You have a mix of really interesting assets. And, one of the things that, that we&#39;ve al- we&#39;re always talking about here at Clark Street is, take what the market&#39;s given you, right? And- there has been a, so we flip houses, we do multifamily, we do a couple of other things now, land development and whatnot- for that exact reason, right? Is that, Fukushima could get hit by a big wave and people here overreact, and for six weeks it gets a little bumpy, and I&#39;m not a big fan of that either. That&#39;s right. So yeah, I- I think that getting, helping folks, at least in part get off that that stock co- stock market rollercoaster is always- a prudent thing to do, for sure. One of the things that you talk about is safe investing, right? And so- i&#39;m a huge, I&#39;m a huge proponent of frameworks &#39;cause
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693975">The SAFE Investing Method: Sponsor, Asset, Financials, Exit</h2>


        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>4:00</time>
      <p>
          it helps simplify what can be some fairly complex topics. And so I&#39;m curious- Yeah if you can tell us a little bit about your approach and, we&#39;ll get into the playbook and all that, but I&#39;m curious about that.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>4:12</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, sure. One of the things I&#39;ve learned over the years, and you j- you just touched on it, is having a framework to screen opportunities to invest in is necessary to avoid making bad decisions. It&#39;s... So over the years, Ed, I&#39;ve just, I&#39;ve developed this framework. It&#39;s called the SAFE Investing Method. And so it&#39;s an acronym, so don&#39;t come to me later and say, &quot;Ah, Dunkel said- You told- investing was safe.&quot;
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>4:41</time>
      <p>
          Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>4:42</time>
      <p>
          So SAFE is an acronym. And basically it&#39;s a framework that allows investors and myself included, I use it every day to help screen and evaluate investment opportunities. So just real quick and I go into depth in the, into the SAFE method in my book. But SAFE is is an acronym. S stands for sponsor. Who are you doing business with? Who are you writing your check to? What, what&#39;s their background? Are they a criminal? How long have they been in this asset class? What&#39;s their track record, what&#39;s their background, all those kinds of things. And to me if you&#39;re getting ready to write someone a check for 50 or 100 grand or something, that gives you the permission to ask tough questions- Heck yeah about, have you ever been in a... Have you ever had a foreclosure? Have you ever been through bankruptcy? So you wanna find out, as much as you can about who you&#39;re doing business with.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>5:32</time>
      <p>
          Yep.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>5:32</time>
      <p>
          And so once you&#39;re comfortable there, you feel like you can sleep at night, really that&#39;s really the bottom line. You wanna be able to sleep at night. Then you move on to A, which is asset. What is the asset you&#39;re investing in? If you can&#39;t explain it to your kid or your, elderly parent or something, then you probably don&#39;t know it well enough to put your money into it. So what we do, with multifamily for example, it&#39;s &quot;Hey, we&#39;re investing in this apartment building. It&#39;s in this market, and this market is good because of ABC, XYZ. The economy&#39;s growing. There&#39;s external investments coming in, building a new factory,&quot; or, whatever it is. So you gotta look at the market and to really understand that asset. And then from there, if you&#39;re comfortable and you can sleep at night knowing what you&#39;re investing in, you can explain it to your kid, then you go on to F, which is financials. So you look at the financial projections. Has the sponsor hit these kinds of projections before? Does the market s- support these kinds of assumptions, right? A lot of people make these big assumptions about, &quot;I&#39;m gonna raise the rental rates, 20% in the first year.&quot; It&#39;s it&#39;s... is that possible in that market? Maybe it is, but you gotta do your, you gotta dig into it and figure it out.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>6:43</time>
      <p>
          Right.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>6:44</time>
      <p>
          And then, once you get comfortable with the finances, and which includes the tax implications, you wanna understand that, then you go on to E, which is exit. How do you get out of this thing, right? You can&#39;t go to schwab.com and click your way out of a syndication deal. It just doesn&#39;t work that way.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>6:59</time>
      <p>
          Right.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>6:59</time>
      <p>
          Or at least not yet. I know there&#39;s some some rumblings about some- Tokenization&#39;s coming,
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>7:03</time>
      <p>
          but we&#39;ll
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>7:03</time>
      <p>
          see marketplaces out there, so we&#39;ll leave that for another another day. But you gotta know that your money is going to be tied up for a certain period of time, and you also need to fully understand what has to happen for you to get your money back. Are they selling the property? Are they refying the property? Is there gonna be some other kind of recapitalization, so you need to go in eyes wide open knowing that your money&#39;s gonna be tied up. And you know what? If you&#39;re saving for college or you&#39;re saving for something else that&#39;s more, more short-term, don&#39;t tie that money up in like a development deal that might take seven or 10 years, right? So you gotta make sure that your investment horizons line up with, what you&#39;re trying to do with that money.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>7:47</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, absolutely. Yeah timeframe is one of those key conversations you have to have, right? Is, if you&#39;re saving for your daughter&#39;s wedding and she&#39;s 25 and madly in love and, probably gonna get engaged
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693976">Taxes and the lazy man&#39;s 1031 exchange</h2>


        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>8:00</time>
      <p>
          in the next couple of years- a 10-year development project is probably not where you wanna put your money, right?
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>8:04</time>
      <p>
          That&#39;s right.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>8:05</time>
      <p>
          Yeah. That&#39;s right. So one of the things you talked about was taxes and I know that you have some some some- Hardcast&#39;s beliefs in how to manage that effectively. Why don&#39;t talk us through some of the things when you&#39;re thinking about tax considerations since it&#39;s that time of year. What do you- Sure what do you tend to look at?
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>8:24</time>
      <p>
          Sure. That&#39;s a great question, and my views are probably a little out of the mainstream on taxes, I have to say. &#39;Cause a lot of people say you just 1031 exchange, and then you 1031 exchange again and again and again and again until you die, and then your kids are gonna get this step up in basis, and how awesome is that?&quot; And- Yeah and look, maybe there are people out there who can e- effectively do that, and they can stick to that discipline and do that kind of roll forward strategy with the 1031 exchange. But, my question to those people is, w- what are you g- you know, are you hoping to live a long life? And if so, like my mom just turned 90, right? She doesn&#39;t wanna be managing any properties, like she- at 90 years old. And so i- is it a good strategy? Yes, it can be a good strategy, but I like to do what I call, and I have, I&#39;ve stolen this term from some other investor friends of mine but they call it the lazy man&#39;s 1031 exchange. And so what that is, Ed, is basically y- if you s- if you sell out of a property this year, for example, so here we&#39;re at this time of this recording, we&#39;re in early February, right? So you- you&#39;re gonna have that capital gain on your tax a- form, come next spring, right? In the meantime, you can take those proceeds and you can invest in another deal that&#39;s gonna give you like a fresh depreciation pop so you can shield that income over the remaining, part of the year. And so why I like that is, i- you h- it gives you a lot more flexibility, right?
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>10:04</time>
      <p>
          Indeed.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>10:05</time>
      <p>
          Because 1031 exchange, you have so many rules, right? Yeah. You have to take title in the same name that you had title in the prior investment and you have to be an owner of the property, right? You can&#39;t be an owner of the LLC that owns the property. Or I guess you could, but then everybody, all of the owners- Everybody does, of the LLC have to, everybody has to polka. Yeah. Everybody polka into the next deal, right? And so wh- what, what are the chances of that happening if you have 20 or 30 invest- yeah. S- zero. 20, 30 investors. Again, 1031 sounds great on paper. When you start digging into it, it c- it can be very complicated and it can be very restraining. So what I try to tell people is, &quot;Hey, don&#39;t let the tax dog... don&#39;t let tax tail wag the freedom dog,&quot; because we&#39;re talking about investing, but really we&#39;re talking about freedom, don&#39;t let the tax tail wag the freedom dog because- Are you going to pay some taxes when you&#39;re in a deal that sells? You know-
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>11:02</time>
      <p>
          Probably
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>11:03</time>
      <p>
          we, you probably are. But to me, I look at it as a freedom tax, so I&#39;m getting out of these investments and I&#39;m going into these investments because why? Because... and I work with a lot of investors, Ed, that are tr- that are trying to get out of active management of- properties and get into passive. So that bridge, I haven&#39;t found a great way yet of completely avoiding taxes, not a great legal way-
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>11:33</time>
      <p>
          Yeah
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>11:33</time>
      <p>
          of avoiding taxes. Oh, there are
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>11:34</time>
      <p>
          plenty of ways. You&#39;re going to jail for most of them.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>11:36</time>
      <p>
          That&#39;s right. That&#39;s right. That&#39;s right. So I just say, &quot;Hey, you know what? I know one, I know no one likes to do it, but y- if, if you bite the bullet and you pay the taxes...&quot; And let&#39;s face it, capital gains rates are lower than ordinary rates, so you&#39;re, you get a little break there. And if you do the lazy man 1031 exchange, now you&#39;re on a path to passive income and more freedom so that like me, you can come down south in the winter and have free time to spend with your family. But the toll is you got to pay some taxes. So once people get over that little hump, I think it, it opens up a big world for them.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>12:17</time>
      <p>
          Yeah. And, keep in mind you&#39;re only paying taxes on the money you make, not the money, not your principal, right? That&#39;s right you are managing some or all of that through either forcing depreciation on the next asset. The big beautiful bill certainly helped with that bringing back- 100% depreciation. Yeah or Delaware statutory trusts, or there are probably any number of other ways to do it. Right because yeah, speaking as somebody who&#39;s 56 years old, I don&#39;t know how long I want to manage, actively manage- My properties. In fact, I don&#39;t. So- I can, I c- I&#39;m your, I&#39;m one of your guys. That&#39;s- that&#39;s it. It&#39;s like, all right. My days of- Yeah swinging a hammer and pushing a paint brush are well behind me. Yep. So let&#39;s talk about your book, The Wealth
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693977">The Wealth Builder&#39;s Playbook and being the &quot;who&quot;</h2>


        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>13:00</time>
      <p>
          Builder&#39;s Playbook. You know- Sure it is an excellent tool for kind of laying out, okay, here&#39;s how we get from point A to point Z. So- why don&#39;t we, let&#39;s talk about your vision for how you s- you become a steward for your, your, partner&#39;s capital.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>13:18</time>
      <p>
          Sure, yeah. So yeah, if you&#39;re into golf at all and, and maybe even into bourbon and investing, y- I think you&#39;ll get a kick out of my book. Yeah. I tried to have some fun with I tried to have some fun with it and basically it&#39;s it&#39;s every chapter is its own story. So the guys, they go out and play golf and the one guy is stressed because the stock market dropped, 20% in the last year and then but the other guys are fine because they&#39;ve been investing in, these alternative assets. And so anyway, so I have a little bit of fun with it. But basically each each chapter just tries to paint a picture of, the difference between, traditional investing and just be- having too much wealth tied up in one place as a, as, compared to being truly diversified. Shifting to more of a passive mindset and and really it&#39;s about who not how, right? So the- and there&#39;s a great book out there called- Yeah Who Not How. Yeah. And so basically, Ed, I try to be the who for, for property owners, and active investors, and business owners who wanna, do less of that active stuff and do more of that passive stuff. So I can be their who. They don&#39;t have to figure out how. I already know how. So they- I can be their who, they can come to me and we can map out a plan for them specifically. Every, every investor is different, right? Every ind- investor has different different goals and aspirations and timelines, and risk tolerances and all that. So basically I tell stories in the book about those different- kind of aspects. And ultimately I can be that, that who the resource, the guide to help them, make the transition. &#39;Cause it can be daunting, right? There&#39;s, like we were just talking about, we touched on 1031 exchange, and there&#39;s so many moving parts and things to be aware of out there. Do you have a due, do you have a due diligence process that&#39;s been tried and true for 20 years? If not, you can, step into the book and learn about the SAFE method, or you can just, give me a call. We can, work on your investment plan together and you can rely on me and my team to to do the SAFE method and find the key, find the key operators and do all that cool stuff. But it was a lot of fun writing the book. And it&#39;s available out there. It&#39;s fun to be an author and have my stuff show up on Amazon. But it&#39;s it was a lot of fun to write and I think also has some good educational tidbits in there too.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>15:41</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, and I... You&#39;re being humble. It&#39;s not just being an author. You are a best-selling author, to be clear. The fact is- Sure is that the, the reason I mentioned the book, and then one of the main reasons I wanted to have you on the show was because, the book is outstanding. And it&#39;s a roadmap for people who either... if you wanna do it yourself, so be it. But you know- in terms of understanding. And it&#39;s one of the things that I always respect about how hard it is to write a book, is you&#39;re basically compressing, a decade or two of your life into, 200 pages. And it&#39;s not a trivial thing to do, but it&#39;s also a very generous thing to do because there are still people out there, m- your partners and our partners here are probably very similar people in that they&#39;re business owners, they&#39;re busy professionals. They, they&#39;re experts- in what they do. They&#39;re great at it, but they don&#39;t necessarily want to get great at real estate too, right? And- That&#39;s right you becoming the who in their life is is certainly a, a huge value to other folks so that they can focus on, if they want to peel off a portion of their- of their assets- and invest in something that isn&#39;t going up 16% and down 19% and up 12%- and down 4% and, if you enjoy that, so be it. Hey- that&#39;s your thing. But me, I&#39;d I&#39;ll take slow and steady. You know- and obviously real estate is one of those great assets depending, regardless of the,
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693978">The buy box: mobile home parks, co-living, multifamily</h2>


        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>17:00</time>
      <p>
          the asset class itself, the subclass. You know- For sure it&#39;s a great way to do that. So in terms of the the business itself, you have, you&#39;ve mentioned a handful of different assets that you chase. What does your buy box look like?
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>17:17</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, great question. Before I get, even get to the deal, right? So the first step in the SAFE method is the sponsor, right? So I spend a lot of time trying to find the sponsors who I feel like are have the character and the track record and the background. And the, of course, the ex- the experience, all of that. And the team too. Y- I, if someone sends me a deal and they&#39;re like, it&#39;s joesmith@gmail.com, I&#39;m like I&#39;m like, &quot;What? What is this?&quot; Yeah. So I, through different masterminds and conferences and, just local meetups and, I just try to find those those investor- those operators- Yeah who I&#39;d be willing to invest in myself. And so that&#39;s really the first big step. And for me personally You know, I really need to have met that person in multiple times and preferably in person at least once, you know- Yeah so you can, get to know them and their family and break bread and, see how they act in public. Like- are they really nice on the Zoom call, and then you go out to lunch and they&#39;re a jerk to the waiter? They&#39;re a jerk. So it starts there. But yeah, but as far as asset classes I, I try to look at macro trends. And really, Ed, and I think I made this clear earlier, but just to reiterate, like I&#39;m looking for deals for myself, and I&#39;m looking for And then investors tag along with me. But for myself at this stage of my career I&#39;m a little, I&#39;m a tad bit older than you, and so I&#39;m looking at capital preservation, I&#39;m looking at cashflow, right? If there&#39;s a little growth in there, hey, that&#39;s a bonus. If there&#39;s some extra tax advantages, hey, that&#39;s a bonus too. But really it&#39;s capital preservation and and cashflow. And so that, that puts me in a position where, I really like private lending. You&#39;re secured in first position. I really like that. I like getting the checks every month. So that&#39;s great, and that&#39;s high yielding typically. I do really like the macro trends of trying to solve this housing affordability crisis, right? Like most things &quot;Oh, the government&#39;s been working on this for frigging forever,&quot; and they&#39;ve made no, no traction whatsoever at all. But it comes to the entrepreneurs that are finding the solutions. So s- great solutions for the affordability crisis are mobile home parks, right? That&#39;s one. So that&#39;s it&#39;s a place where a family, a low-income family can actually own a little piece of America themselves. They can raise their family. It&#39;s affordable. And it&#39;s not it&#39;s not subsidized, right? So I know like back in my days when I had rental properties, I had some Section 8. Section 8&#39;s great as long as, you&#39;re friendly with the Section 8 inspector that comes by the house, right? And so that&#39;s like a subsidy, a su- subsidizing kind of thing, kind of program. It&#39;s not really affordable for the renter. It&#39;s that sub- that subsidy- makes it affordable. So that&#39;s why I like mobile home parks. And then I also like, Co-living situations. So- Yeah like I&#39;ve done business with a guy in Philadelphia for many years who he&#39;s got his system down where he&#39;s he&#39;s taking a s- basically a single family house. And there&#39;s a lot of things that have to be right, like it has to be the right type of zoning and this and that. Sure. But basically instead of renting out like a row home in Philadelphia for 1,000 bucks a month, he breaks it up into rooms-
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>20:54</time>
      <p>
          Yep
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>20:54</time>
      <p>
          and and can get like $800 per month per room because he&#39;ll, it&#39;ll be furnished, it&#39;ll have a TV in it and whatever. Yeah. And so now instead of renting that one house out for 1,000 bucks a month, you&#39;re renting it out for y- 3,000 bucks a month- Yeah because of the way that you&#39;re able to break it up. And so I like that as far as an economic, revenue model But I also like it because these are low-income tenants. He&#39;s actually geared his business toward people who are on Social Security, so he knows they&#39;re getting a check every month, or dis- some kind of disability payment, so he knows they&#39;re getting that check every month and the rent gets paid the next day kind of thing. So he makes sure he has that cashflow, dialed in and matched up. But I really think those two places, in addition to, regular multifamily, class, Class C, Class B multifamily, I think is... the housing affordability issue is not going away any time soon and I just... everybody needs a house, needs
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693979">Where self-storage sits after the boom</h2>


        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>22:00</time>
      <p>
          a roof over their head. So I think between between mobile home parks, cohabitation and then, good old fashioned multifamily, I think that&#39;s a good way to, to play that macro trend.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>22:11</time>
      <p>
          Yeah. And you mentioned self-storage as well, and I&#39;m curious what your thoughts are on where that-
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>22:15</time>
      <p>
          Yeah
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>22:15</time>
      <p>
          that was a pretty- Yeah big consolidation that was going on over the last few years, so I&#39;m curious where you think that market is.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>22:23</time>
      <p>
          For sure. Yeah. S- self-storage is another, a great spot. And of course when I was chief investment officer at Belred Storage Group for five years, we started that and we, we caught the the COVID boom there, which was awesome. But yeah, s- self-storage is great because you&#39;re, you&#39;re not having to deal with tenants, right? You don&#39;t have toilets and plumbing and s- and the beautiful thing there is if you do it right, if you&#39;re managing things right, you can get someone on auto-pay, and so it becomes like a Planet Fitness membership, right? Like- you forget about it, next thing you know, you&#39;re just, getting this $100 charge every month or whatever, and then two years later you&#39;re like, &quot;What&#39;s in that storage unit? I don&#39;t even remember.&quot; Yeah. But that&#39;s what people do. I- it&#39;s an American phenomenon. There is storage in other countries, but it seems here in America people love to pay thousands of dollars to store hundreds of dollars worth of junk that that no one ever wants. So- hey, it&#39;s a, it&#39;s... now all that being said the, it&#39;s another one of those areas where, it&#39;s very similar to multifamily, right? So we&#39;re looking at, finding good solid markets that are growing- Yeah and the population is growing, and there&#39;s a good solid base of renters because renters use storage more than more than homeowners do. And so yeah, I think there&#39;s a lot of longevity in the self-storage space. We definitely went through this big rollercoaster the past few years, so now it&#39;s just back to good old-fashioned, finding good deals that, you make your money when you buy kind of thing, and then just operating it really well. And so I know at Belrose Storage Group and other self-storage operators, they&#39;re really leveraging technology
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693980">Using Claude and Manus to move faster</h2>


        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>24:01</time>
      <p>
          so that they can try to minimize their their overhead and their personnel costs, which ac- any business owner knows out there that personnel cost is a big ticket item. S- but storage is not going away. It&#39;s it&#39;s here to stay, and another, great way to diversify your investment portfolio.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>24:19</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, so you mentioned tech, and I&#39;m a recovering techie myself. So I&#39;m curious, how do you use... one of the things, a lot of our firms aren&#39;t that big, right? Our- Sure we&#39;re 10 people here. I don&#39;t know how large your firm is. But the, the fact is that the I look at technology as a force multiplier. And so I&#39;m curious, how you use... And it doesn&#39;t necessarily have to be AI. Although, so be it. But- i&#39;m curious how you use technology within your own operation to make things go.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>24:51</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, sure. I&#39;ve definitely been a big adopter of AI, and that&#39;s really helped me to accelerate my review of offering documents, offering memorandums. It&#39;s also helped me and I know I could do a much, much better job of this, and it&#39;s just, one of those things on the to-do list that I just got, haven&#39;t quite gotten to yet. But as far as putting the SAFE investing method into an AI agent and putting that logic in there I think it is a no-brainer. Just haven&#39;t gotten around to doing that yet be- because there are tools out there. Of course everyone has probably heard of ChatGPT, but there are other tools like Manus for example is designed for deep research. You could give Manus so actually this is kinda how, what I&#39;ve been doing recently. I&#39;ve been using Claude- Yeah to come up with to develop a prompt. So I go back and forth with Claude to develop a prompt that then I copy and paste into Manus to go do a deep research project. If I wanna f- if I wanna find out about hey, what&#39;s the multifamily outlook in Phoenix, Arizona I can work with Claude to come up with the good, a good long, juicy prompt that I can then copy and paste into Manus. And then Manus has this ability to go do this deep research out in the world, and it can come back to me and give me all kinds of juicy information that helps me as an investor decide hey, is that a good market that I wanna go deeper in? And, &#39;cause I do have a couple operators out there who I&#39;ve gotten to know and trust, and I just, I&#39;m a, I&#39;m a fan of that market. The southeast is also great. We&#39;re playing kind of the ride the, Sure demographics kinda, kinda wave.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>26:36</time>
      <p>
          You
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>26:36</time>
      <p>
          bet. So that&#39;s definitely been a big change I would say just in the last, couple years.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>26:42</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, same here. The, we use artificial intelligence for so much, right? In terms of evaluating deals, in terms of- presenting those deals to, our investor pools. Y- in terms of automating our back office. There was a point where we had a whole
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693981">Lightning round: purpose, significance, and legacy</h2>


        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>27:00</time>
      <p>
          bunch of virtual assistants that now are AI agents, right? And some of- Yeah those folks do other things here, and some of those folks- aren&#39;t here anymore. And, That&#39;s right yeah. It&#39;s it&#39;s a fascinating time. I don&#39;t want to go too far down that rabbit hole, &#39;cause we can talk for days about that stuff. But- Yeah,
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>27:16</time>
      <p>
          definitely
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>27:17</time>
      <p>
          so I&#39;m curious about, Actually, let&#39;s move on to the lightning round and get into the final five. One of the things that I&#39;m always interested in learning about is y- you&#39;ve had a very successful career. Obviously, y- you&#39;re, y- you have the time freedom to be able to take your family down to on vacation for extended periods of time, which is pretty much why we do this, right? Yeah, but nevertheless, on Monday morning you get out of bed like a shot and go to work. And so I&#39;m curious, I look at that as purpose, right? So I&#39;m curious what gets you out of bed on Monday morning. What&#39;s your purpose?
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>27:53</time>
      <p>
          Yeah. It&#39;s a great, it&#39;s a great question, Ed and, I&#39;ve sat in on countless presentations and people will be up there, they&#39;ll say, &quot;Hey,&quot; they&#39;ll have a picture up on the screen of themselves with their family and they&#39;ll say, &quot;Hey, this is my why.&quot; And that&#39;s awesome and that&#39;s great, and it should be your why. Yeah. Your family should be your why, &#39;cause that&#39;s why we&#39;re doing it. But to me, and maybe it&#39;s just a function of my s- my stage of life now, it&#39;s a- and I encourage other people to start thinking this way, is if your why is just your family, you really need to start thinking bigger than that. Because- Got it if you are, if you do strive to, to be an achiever and make a differ- be a difference maker and reach a level of significance, not just success, but significance in life, like you need to start thinking bigger. So of course, you&#39;re gonna take care of your family. Of course you&#39;re gonna, pay for their college and, all that cool stuff and... But, you gotta then start thinking about that next concentric circle out from there and out from there and out from there. And so where I&#39;m at, because, I&#39;m an empty nester now, right? My, my son&#39;s doing awesome. He&#39;s in the Navy. My daughter&#39;s, she&#39;s actually abroad in Paris right now studying. She&#39;s kicking butt. Our other daughter just got back from a semester in Italy. So anyway, so we&#39;re doing great on the family front. But now I&#39;m I&#39;m really wanting to just get the knowledge out of my head and out into the world of of the next wave of investors maybe they can avoid some of the mistakes that I made, or maybe they can, learn from some of the successes I had or whatever. And so I feel like the more investors that I can help reach their goals so that they can, maybe send their kids somewhere cool or, or spend that time with their family, where they want to, not where they have to I, I think that&#39;s what gets me out, out of bed in the morning.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>29:41</time>
      <p>
          That&#39;s awesome. I love that. Yeah and I know you are very active with Tunnel to Towers and handful of other- Really important charities. So thank you for all that you do.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>29:53</time>
      <p>
          Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>29:54</time>
      <p>
          So in terms of the, and I love the idea of leaving
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693982">The best advice he ever got</h2>


        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>30:00</time>
      <p>
          a bigger footprint, right? It&#39;s- it&#39;s it becomes legacy, I think is probably the- the good word for that, right? One of the things that I&#39;m always interested in learning more about with leaders like yourself is, the mentors that you&#39;ve had along the way. And I&#39;m curious about the best advice you ever got and who gave it to you.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>30:19</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, man that&#39;s so important. I&#39;ve had countless mentors along the way. Some I, paid to be in their group. And others I did not. Others were just, networked my way to or, friend of friends or that sort of thing. But yeah, I have to say man, it&#39;s tough to narrow it down to one, one piece, but I do remember, it&#39;s just... since you asked me the question, one of the first things that popped in my head was one of our, one of our big whale investors, we, the big guys, you call them whales, right? He&#39;s like a nine-figure net worth guy, and he&#39;s just basically been a full-time investor for a long time. And I remember one of the things he said to me and my business partner, Joe, a while back was he&#39;s &quot;You...&quot; &#39;Cause he had done some deals with us, and- Yeah and we built up that level of trust, right? And so he told us, he said, &quot;Now that we&#39;ve gotten over that initial trust hurdle,&quot; he&#39;s I&#39;ll look at any deal you, you want me to take a look. I might, I&#39;m probably not gonna say yes to all of them.&quot;
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>31:20</time>
      <p>
          Sure.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>31:20</time>
      <p>
          But he said, &quot;You guys, the way that you&#39;ve presented yourself, the way that you&#39;ve built up the level of trust,&quot; he&#39;s &quot;That&#39;s the biggest thing.&quot; And that&#39;s why the SAFE method starts with S for sponsor. Because that&#39;s one of the things we learned from him that&#39;s just so important, is just knowing who you&#39;re doing business with. &#39;Cause from there, once you have that trust built up, then it&#39;s, things flow so much easier from there.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>31:46</time>
      <p>
          I talk about it in terms of our process of dating versus getting married, right? That first set of meetings and then ultimately the first investment. Yeah. You&#39;re still dating, right? And y- at some point you earn the right to ask for their hand, but, that takes time, right? And- Yeah a whole lot of performance. Okay, awesome. And so I&#39;m also curious about, I, I fundamentally believe we will learn way more from the times we stub our toes than from the successes the home runs we hit. And a- and so I&#39;m curious about a decision that you look back on over your career and go, &quot;Man, I would love to have that decision back.&quot; What was that, and how&#39;d you handle it?
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>32:27</time>
      <p>
          Oh, man, that&#39;s another hard question, Ed, but &#39;cause, I look at... I look at every decision, whether it turns out to be right or it turns out to be wrong as just a it&#39;s the trajectory I&#39;m supposed to be on. Yep. When I look back and I&#39;m like, &quot;Wow that, that didn&#39;t really work out too well,&quot; but anyway, I&#39;d have to say it had, it take, it&#39;s taken me back to my corporate life. I&#39;ve made plenty of mistakes during my entrepreneurial career the last 20, 20 years, but I I took a job that I knew wasn&#39;t a good fit, but they, the guy I was interviewing with, the CFO
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693983">A decision he would take back</h2>


        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>33:00</time>
      <p>
          of this publicly traded company he kept after me, and I literally was telling him in the interview like, &quot;I don&#39;t think I&#39;m a great fit for this position.&quot; Maybe I should have stuck to my guns, &#39;cause the irony is that position ended up being really lucrative for me and allowed me to go out and start my entrepreneurial career, so it&#39;s a little weird in that regard.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>33:19</time>
      <p>
          Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>33:19</time>
      <p>
          But but I feel, but I also feel like I kinda wasted a year as far as, just being in the, square peg in a round hole. So I kinda wish that I had maybe been more assertive and said-
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>33:31</time>
      <p>
          Yeah
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>33:32</time>
      <p>
          and said no. Yeah. But it&#39;s hard when they&#39;re throwing money and stock options at me and all this stuff, and- it turned out I was right. Turned out it was not a good fit at all, but I, but I can&#39;t say that I regret it. I just say that, I would say, I learned from it- Learned and, yeah, exactly.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>33:49</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, I think we&#39;ve all had those experiences. I started with a company that shall remain nameless. Yeah. And y- awesome people, amazing product. It was a technology company. I was brought in as a change agent, and
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693984">On the nightstand: Invest Like a Billionaire</h2>


        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>34:00</time>
      <p>
          about six months into it I&#39;m like, &quot;These folks don&#39;t wanna change.&quot; And I stayed for another year, and I, I- Yeah I look back and go I probably should have just, moved on.&quot; Yeah. But it, Yeah it is what it is. And I got a lot smarter coming out of it and- Cool sounds like you did as well. In terms of the how you take in information I&#39;m curious about the book on your nightstand, whether it&#39;s virtual or real- physical book and who you&#39;re paying attention to these days.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>34:27</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, great question. I- I&#39;ve always had for many years now, I&#39;ve had the Bible on my nightstand, and so I definitely like to read that. The different stories in there. Some of them I don&#39;t understand, but some of them are good to learn from, for sure. But as far as business the book that I just finished is Invest Like a Billionaire by my friends Bob and Ben Frazier. They run Aspen Funds, which is an amazing organization. And luckily I&#39;ve gotten to know those guys a little bit personally, but I thought the book was fantastic in terms of, laying out an alternative investment strategies. They talk about the lazy 1031 exchange that I talked about earlier. And so yeah, I would encourage people to go check out Aspen Funds. And here&#39;s the cool thing, it lines up perfectly with what I&#39;m trying to do because sure, you can go to Aspen Funds and you can, you can invest your 50 or 100,000, but you&#39;ll be in their, their lower tier. But if you partner up with me and my other investor partners, we... and we go to them with 500,000 or 1 million, then we all get better economics.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>35:30</time>
      <p>
          Right.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>35:30</time>
      <p>
          So that&#39;s the crux of my business. And I always forget to bring that up when I&#39;m talking about Eagle, but- Yeah that&#39;s one of the that&#39;s one of the advantages too about about collaborating and doing deals together.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>35:41</time>
      <p>
          Absolutely, yeah. If I&#39;m sitting in our conference room and we are having a conversation with someone who wants to invest, 50 grand it&#39;s a- it&#39;s a, rigorous conversation, absolutely. But I&#39;d be lying to you if I, if I- if I didn&#39;t say, if somebody says, &quot;I have half a million dollars to invest,&quot; I don&#39;t sit up a little straighter, right?
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693985">Defining success as an empty nester</h2>


        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>36:01</time>
      <p>
          That&#39;s
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>36:01</time>
      <p>
          right.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>36:01</time>
      <p>
          Yeah all the last part of the lightning round is success. How do you define it in your life?
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>36:09</time>
      <p>
          Sure. It&#39;s a big question, but it&#39;s something that everyone out there, should think about for themselves. You know- Yeah your definition of success is gonna be different from mine and different from other people. And so just make sure you go into it with that kind of a mindset and that kind of conviction because, the, you don&#39;t wanna, you don&#39;t wanna necessarily follow the Joneses or whoever. You wanna have your own definition of success. So for me, my definition of su- success at this stage is, being able to just, Spend time the way that I want to spend time and spend it where I want to s- spend it. So having that geographic freedom and that time freedom- Yeah is just tremendous, and it really adds to a nice quality of life. Like I mentioned earlier, an empty nester at this point. So my wife and I are just able to, enjoy, tr- traveling and visiting family and then also, spending time on the causes that are important to us. Like you mentioned Tunnels to Towers earlier. I&#39;m also I also started a scholarship for a business school friend of mine who unfortunately passed away from ALS. We, so we spend time on those kind of philanthropic endeavors as well. So if, so that&#39;s what success means to me. And the, and as I mentioned also earlier, now I&#39;m striving for, like you&#39;ve said, I like the way you put it, the bigger footprint, right? So helping out investors out there mentoring young people. I started doing that the last couple years. That&#39;s a lot of fun, and it gives me a lot of hope for the future. There&#39;s there&#39;s some really sharp young people out there that are going to accomplish some amazing things.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>37:39</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, we&#39;re gonna be fine.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>37:42</time>
      <p>
          Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>37:43</time>
      <p>
          So when not talking about real estate, what do you like to do? You just alluded to a few things, but
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>37:48</time>
      <p>
          yeah. It, yeah, and so golf is a big thing. Yeah, I&#39;ve been, I&#39;ve played golf since I was a kid, and that&#39;s that&#39;s always fun and and frustrating at the same time, chasing that little white ball around. But I&#39;ve also played music since I was a kid.
      </p>

      <h2 id="chapter_39693986">Golf, a rock and roll cover band, and where to find Tom</h2>


        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>38:00</time>
      <p>
          So I&#39;m in a a rock and roll cover band. A bunch of, 40 and 50-something-year-old people up on a stage. And but you know what? We sound pretty darn good. And so I play rhythm guitar and sing, so it&#39;s I have a lot of fun doing that. It&#39;s good creative release.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>38:15</time>
      <p>
          Yeah.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>38:16</time>
      <p>
          And and just something to, just keep me working and keep me- Yeah s- learning new things and being disciplined,
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>38:23</time>
      <p>
          right on. How can people learn more about you or your company?
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>38:27</time>
      <p>
          Yeah. This has been great, buddy. Thank you. Yeah, again, I&#39;m Tom Dunkel. I&#39;m managing principal at Eagle Capital Investments. If you go to investwitheagle.com you can find a copy of my book, and you can also find your way to my clone, which is on... We talked about AI earlier. On the screen here- Yeah you can see it. If you go to tomdunkel.ai, you can talk to me virtually, talk to my clone and ask questions about investing or golf or Just don&#39;t ask any questions about the Philadelphia Eagles, man. They really let me down this year. But anyway it&#39;s... Those are the easiest ways to get in touch with me, and I&#39;d love to ultimately get on the phone and have a chat with you with whatever you wanna talk about- Awesome investing or golf or whatever.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>39:11</time>
      <p>
          Yeah, I kinda suspected you were an Eagles fan, so I went out of my way not to mention the Patriots
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>39:16</time>
      <p>
          that&#39;s all right. You, you got us once. We got you once.
      </p>

        <cite>Ed Mathews</cite>
      <time>39:18</time>
      <p>
          All right. Hey, Tom, thank you so much for your time today. It&#39;s a pleasure to see you. It&#39;s great to see you again, and I wish you continued success.
      </p>

        <cite>Tom Dunkel</cite>
      <time>39:26</time>
      <p>
          Thanks, Ed. This was a lot of fun. Take care.
      </p>