How to Clone an 8-Figure Business with Tom Dunkel

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Hey, stallion. One of the things that you've probably heard before is the idea that there's riches in the niches, right?

100%, yes.

As we were listening to our guest today, Tom Dunkle, he. He shared that he had to go through that the hard way without understanding that what his niche was, was so important. And he talked about a lot of hardships early on, and then ultimately, when he found his unique ability, his unique gifting to the world and talent and applied that in a very specific area, he had amazing results. But he also talked about when he didn't and some of the failures.

Oh, man. If. If you have been considering your own financial freedom journey, like, just getting started, and you've had the question of, but what if I fail? This is a podcast you need to listen to because you're going to hopefully save a lot of heartache that Tom has gone through on your behalf. And he's. He's done such a great job of summarizing what it takes to be successful in this journey. And that's. That's what I love. Like, if you've considered. And how important is a team or can I just do this alone? You're going to want to hear his examples of, like you said, his unique ability and how he's able to find others with their unique ability to support him along the way. What else did you gather from that?

Well, you know, one of his things was, is that you have to get educated. And I know that that's why you're listening to this podcast. You're looking not only for inspiration, for ideas, but also ways to increase your knowledge to become more educated on a specific subject. Maybe infinite banking, maybe it's passive investing. Maybe it's building infrastructure, maybe it's learning more about Tax strategy. There's so many different ideas out there, but we have to get educated. We have to learn what the experts have already learned. We want to compress time. We listen to podcasts. You probably listen on this one at 1.5 speed. If I start talking faster, it really messed you up, right? It's impossible for me to talk. But I, I think that the beauty of it is that you listen to a person like Tom Dunkle, who's created an eight figure revenue business, and you don't get that opportunity on a daily basis to get that sort of insight. So while it, you know, as learning about their successes and their lessons and the things that they're doing well now, it, it seems repetitive. But don't miss the opportunity to listen to what someone who's had amazing success has given you insight on, because this is an opportunity for you to have a mentor that is literally on a podcast. And Stylian, you and I talk so much about the, the need for mentors, the need for mastermind, the need for community. And I'm calling to you right now, Trav, if you've not already taken advantage of this, go to what's what wall street.com free call and, and talk to one of our coaches about how you can get in more community, how can you get coaching, how can you get into masterminds? All of these things exist. If you're ready to invest in yourself like Todd Dunkle did, let's listen to all those things that he shared right now.

Welcome to the Wealth Without Wall street podcast, your guide to understanding how to get out of the Wall street rat race and start your own mailbox money lifestyle. Now, don't let these handsome Southern draws fool you. These financial minds are teaching our country to enhance savings, increase cash flow, and create passive income, all without the help of Wall Street. Are you ready to break through now? Here are your hosts, Russ Morgan and Joey Murray.

Wealth Without Wall Street Tribe. So excited to introduce you to our new friend, Tom Dunkle. And Tom, so glad to have you.

Hey, Joey, Russ, It's a pleasure to be here today with you and all your awesome listeners. Thanks for having me, man.

Pleasures. Are as excited to dig into your story. You and I were having a conversation a week or two ago as we were just prepping for this. And you shared that between 2004 and 2008, you had a heck of a four year run there where you lost your dad, you lost your job, and then your mom lost half the money that your dad had left her because of a market crash.

My guess is that those events shaped your perspective, and I would love to hear what those thoughts and insights came from that time frame.

Yeah, sure. You know, it's, it's interesting, guys. You know, I, I, I had a really great, you know, upbringing, childhood, all that. I didn't really face a lot of adversity, and I've met so many people. I'm sure you guys have, too, and especially in this real estate and investing community that have come from, like, really horrible backgrounds and have raised to great heights. But, you know, I had a, I had a very, you know, kind of cushy upbringing compared to all that I had. My parents were together, I had a great education. And so when I got out in the world and started doing my entrepreneurial thing and, you know, then all of a sudden, you know, I started facing those hardships that I, looking back at them, you know, I really needed to go through that to really kind of harden myself and just, you know, find the grit inside of me that I needed to, to, to grow as a person and as an entrepreneur. But yeah, it was, it was a rough time, and it just brought to light for me how important it is to find alternative ways to, to put your money to work. Because I had been working in publicly traded companies. I saw how the sausage was made. I saw that, you know, the, the disclosures that they make in their public filings, you know, really aren't disclosing very much. But it was so it just kind of gave me a sour taste in my mouth about Wall street and about the whole, you know, Wall street monster and the tentacles of it, the, you know, the, the financial advisors and the mutual funds and the this and the that. So I knew there had to be a better way. And so I started getting into real estate. And that's where my eyes are really open to a lot of different things. Not just fixing and flipping and rental properties and things like that, but also, you know, lending and distressed mortgage debt and other commercial real estate asset classes and all those kinds of things. So I felt like if I could get smart on those kinds of things, then I could really help out my mom, who had just been through a lot with losing her high school sweetheart and then, you know, and then losing half of her nest egg to the, to the, to the Wall street casino. So I felt like it was upon me to go out and learn those things so that I could not only do great things to help my mom, but also help myself. And then as I've grown through all this, the last 17 years now I enjoy sharing with others, which is why I'm really grateful to be on the show today.

So thank you, Tom. That is awesome background of how you got to where you're at today. Talk a little bit about.

You'Re facing this. Hey, I need to find a better way. And you just kind of quickly ran through those. What were those things again? In what order did you start to tackle this and were there any resources along the way that you felt were helpful?

Yeah, sure, Joey. So I had a, like I was saying, I had a great background, I had great education. So I figured, hey, if I could just. When I got ejected from corporate America, when I got fired and then out onto my entrepreneurial life, I knew if I could just find the right system and the right process, I could, I could use my background and my financial savvy to go ahead and execute on a plan. So I actually ended up finding a franchise which folks out there may have heard of, is that we buy ugly houses. Folks that do. Homevestors is what they're called. So, so I started with their system, which is very heavily marketing base and putting a team together and making wholesale offers on properties. And so that's how I ended up, you know, getting, getting started in real estate. But I ended up being pretty bad at it. So we can get more into that if you'd like.

But, well, so, you know, in our conversation, you said, yeah, we did the fix and flip thing. We bought a bunch of rental properties. I even recall you saying that the, when you sold your last real rental property was one of the best days ever. Explain that for the person who thinks, oh, I need to own real estate or own rental properties, and that is the thing I should be going for. Why was owning real estate rental properties not a good fit for you?

Absolutely. Well, here, here's the, here's the reality, right? So when you're like a homebusters franchisee or you're a, you're a wholesaler, right? You're out there making aggressive, low offers on properties, trying to pick them up, and then you've flip the contract, right? You know, you try to make your, your little wholesale fee there. Well, what ended up happening with me is I failed at doing that. I didn't make good offers. I ended up getting properties under contract too high. So I was not successful in wholesaling that contract.

So.

But I didn't want to walk away from the seller who I had promised them. I said, hey, you know, I'm going to buy your house. So I ended up buying those houses So a lot of those ended up being my rental properties.

So then it kind of forced me into kind of fixing and flipping because again, I wasn't really prepared for that. I didn't have the downline of buyers who were going to buy my wholesale deal. So I ended up holding onto a bunch of those. But I just learned pretty quickly, Russ, that being a landlord was just not my thing. Hired a property management company to kind of take over and hopefully do a better job and be more professional about it. But, you know. Prof. Property management companies, I know it's a very thankless kind of job, but I just couldn't find one that really was executing the way that I wanted them to. And as a numbers guy, right. I had my spreadsheet together. It was going to show me, you know, here's the rent I'm going to get and these are my expenses. And it just never was able to get there. So. And then of course, you know, we're talking, you know, 2006, 7, 8, 9, 10, you know, that whole period of time where the market was really working against me. So when I did finally get out of that, man, it was such a relief and it freed me up to then spend my time in other places where I really, where I was better. Right. It was more, it was closer to my unique ability for Dan Sullivan fans out there.

Let's talk about that. So what was that unique ability? Where did it lead you? I think that that'd be interesting for us to hear.

Sure. Yeah, I think. Well, I, I figured out pretty early on my unique ability was not dealing directly with tenants. So that was a little rough. But no, I think my unique ability is more in the, the business kind of the planning, putting the teams together, identifying the, the opportunities and then coming up with a plan to execute on those opportunities. So those were kind of the things that I had learned throughout my corporate life as a, as an, as a financial analyst and an mba. So that those are kind of things that I was much better suited for as opposed to sort of the hand to hand combat of the landlord tenant world.

And so what business kind of fit that model for you?

So we ended up in the distressed mortgage debt business, which turned out to be great.

After going through the crash, I connected with my business partner, Joe Downs. We became partners in 2010 and we started buying distressed mortgage notes. And it was one of those things where we kind of scraped up our last few bucks that we had left over after the crash and we bought our first portfolio. We bought six loans for like 12,000 bucks. And here in a couple weeks, we're probably going to be buying about our 11,000th loan.

So it's been kind of a wild ride. But that business, to me, it just resonated more with me because of my corporate finance background and understanding capital markets and the mortgage industry, and also just wanting to play the real estate game just in a little bit different way through the paper and not through the bricks.

Wow, man. Anybody that has bought 11,000 mortgage notes, I mean, I feel like that could be its own podcast. But I know that that's not the main thing that we wanted to talk about today. I'm curious, though, what lessons did you learn from that? Like, what allowed you to be successful in that business that, you know, we could apply today?

Sure. Well, I think there's really three main things that came out of my experience that we're now applying to getting in other. Other businesses. One is find a niche. So, for example, I'm outside Philadelphia, so the Philadelphia, you know, wholesaling and fix and flip and rental market. I mean, talk about competition. It is really super competitive. Very low barriers to entry. So, you know, kind of the exact opposite of a niche. Right. So. So buying distressed mortgage debt, I mean, that's. That's a niche. Right? And then, of course, you know, we had to put our team together, and at the time, you know, it was really just me and Joe. So we just went to the third prong, which is, you know, getting educated. So at the. At the time, there were only a handful or actually less of conferences and resources where we could learn about distress debt. So we just really dug into it ourselves. And, you know, we talked to the people we met with, the real estate attorneys, we talked to the bankers, and we just kind of put together all of. All of our knowledge, you know, really organically. There's only one book on investing in debt from back then. I'm sure there are more now. So we knew it was a niche. We kind of created our team ourselves, and then we got educated and we went deep into that niche. And I think what happened then was it allowed us to make those connections and meet those people that could help us grow our business. And thankfully, over the years, we've now generated over $53 million of revenue in that business. And it's largely because of really those three things. Finding a niche, putting a great team together. Not just your internal team, right, it's your internal team, but also your team of professionals outside of your internal team, and then just going deep and getting educated and immersing yourself and really being obsessed with it. So those were really the three key things that allowed us a lot of success in that industry.

Yeah, success. 53 million. Is that good, Stallion?

I think that equates to good. Yeah.

For those people who are interested in the distress debt space, you said there was one book, obviously, that was the initial entry for you. What's the name of that book?

It's called Invest in Debt, and I think the guy's name is Jim Napier, and it's about this thick. It's a really thin, small book, but it's very interesting. He talks about all kinds of strategies in there about. About how to use debt as a vehicle to create wealth. It's pretty cool.

All right, that's awesome. So Invest in Debt by Jim Napier. All right, team, if you're. If you're interested in investing in debt, either you can see Joey or I, because we'll be happy to allow you to invest in some debt. We have, where you go to that book, probably a better. Better source of knowledge than us. All right, so I'm really interested because we have a lot of entrepreneurs come on the show and share their story, and they talk about having success in an area. And there's, as you mentioned, I love that there was lessons that we could apply from that, like finding a niche and building a team and getting educated. Education and the way we invest in ourselves. So vital. Have you made the classic entrepreneur? I don't want to call it mistake, but. But typically, as. As entrepreneurs, we. We attempt to build something else, right? This is going well. I've conquered the world here. Let me go build something else. Have you done that? And if so, tell us a little bit about how that went.

Oh, 100%. Yeah. You know, as an entrepreneur, you know, once you kind of get that bug, you know, then you. You start seeing these shiny objects, and then, you know, you just start smashing through walls to just try to, you know, go make something happen. So, yes, of course we did that. We started having some success in the distressed debt business. So then, of course, you know, kind of the. The. The cousin to distress debt, of course, would be doing, you know, actual loans. So we started a high. High, I guess high interest, or I guess we call them hard money in hard money loan business. There we go. And we failed at that. We again. And looking back on it, I know why it's not a niche. Right. Again, we were trying to do hard money loans in the Philadelphia market. And, you know, you can't swing a dead cat around here without hitting a Bunch of, you know, hard money brokers. So.

We went into a very competitive industry. We didn't have the right team together and we just went into that business without really getting very educated about it. And, you know, because of course, the back end, once you make the loan, now you've got to service the loan and there's all those kinds of things. So we learned all that the hard way. And we were so bad at it the first time we shut that business down. We decided a couple years later to try it again, but we didn't learn any lessons and we failed a second time in our hard money lending business. There we go. I don't know why I had a hard time saying that earlier. Hard money lending.

If you've listened to our show for any length of time, you've heard us talk about infinite banking and how we were able to use that concept to create over $50,000 a month in passive income. But it's just not that easy to figure out how does this all connect into my own personal system?

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Find out how close you are by taking our 32nd quiz at wealthwithoutwallstreet.com quiz. Outside of hard body lending, did you do anything else or did. Did you just go back to the mortgage debt service or, excuse me, Mortgage debt purchasing company?

No, we had the. We had the. We had to fail and fall on our faces a couple other times. So we actually, we. We got involved with a title company. We thought we could help grow that business, but again, super competitive, not niche at all. And then, believe it or not, we actually were trying to fix and flip some residential houses as well. And so we did really horribly at that. So. But thankfully we kept at it and we ultimately now have a. Have a great business that we can talk more about when you guys are ready.

Tell us. I mean, I mean, unless it's hard money lending.

Yeah, third time is not going to be a charm. We're not going to even go there now. So. So, you know, we did want to Find a business that, that was in a niche that, you know, where we could build a team and where we could get educated and put a really solid business plan together and then go after it. And so after looking around and failing several times, we started hearing about self storage about 2017, 2018. We ended up on Scott Meyer's email list somehow or another. And my partner Joe saw that they were coming here to Philadelphia. So Joe went and did a weekend event with them back in like 2017, 2018. And he's saying, hey, you know, I think there might be something to this. So he kind of brought me in and we, we started going to the conferences and then it just sort of started clicking with us like, hey, this is a business that's largely very predictable, recession resistant and it's very, it's a very fragmented industry. So you know, even those big guys that you've heard of, public storage, extra space, you know, they only control a small portion of the overall self storage market. So that we saw a lot of opportunity in the dislocation and the fragmentation of the, of this industry. So we joined Scott Meyer's Mastermind group in 2019. And through that process we discovered that, you know, we really were lacking some team members, we were lacking some skills. And because Joe's, you know, good at, you know, a lot of, he's good at like the negotiations and that sort of thing, I'm good at the numbers and the spreadsheet nerd stuff, but we weren't able to find the off market deals. And so through our mastermind experience, we met up with Tim Kaine, who's now our third partner. And he's an expert at finding off market deals. But he didn't have the financial side of things, so it was a great fit for us in that regard. And then of course, once you find them and you do the due diligence and you get them closed now, you got to run the thing right. So we didn't have that operational skill set on our team either. So again, through the Scott Meyers Self Storage Mastermind group, we found Catherine east, who is a nationally known operations expert in the self storage space. So we brought her on the team and it wasn't until then that we felt comfortable enough to really go out and start building that business. So we didn't buy, even buy our first facility until August of 2020. And since then we've, we've acquired 14 facilities for almost $41 million.

Wow. Have you guys been able to exit any of those yet? Are you still holding all 14 we have.

We've. We've exited three and we'll exit one more before the end of this year. And all of those fortunately have. Have been exited at above projections. So our investors are super happy with us.

So I would love that, if it's all right, let's dive in here because the interest level in self storage is high and that there's. There, there is information out there, but it. Just applying your three points to it, I would love to go through that. So you talked about a niche. Clearly, self storage is a niche. How. How do you identify the niche within the niche? How do you identify the type of property that you're going to buy and the, the geographic location of where to buy? Or is that even important? Sure.

No. 100%, Russ. That's. That's very important. So, so we're similar to multifamily. If there's folks out there who are familiar with multifamily.

Right.

We're looking for markets where the population's growing and jobs are growing. Infrastructure investments are being made. We're looking for a solid level of household income and low crime and those kind. We're looking for a nice mix of renters versus owners. So it lines up pretty well with what multifamily investors are looking for. So those kind of criteria are pushing us into sort of the south and the southeast us. So our facilities are in Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Florida and Kentucky. And, and we do have an outlier in New York State, but it's in a niche area that, that has a growing population. So, you know, we're definitely looking for that. And what's interesting too, Russ, is as we've gotten ourselves into the storage industry now, we're finding niches within the self storage niche that we're looking to exploit going forward.

Talk. Talk about that like, because as you were talking, I was like, I wonder, is he. Is he building these? Is he buying existing? Are they dilapidated, like totally value add or like what. Is that what you're talking about or what other niche would you say?

Sure. Well, we are buying, primarily buying value add. Existing facilities and their value add, not so much in the sense that the property is distressed. They're value add in the sense that they're not being run like businesses. A lot of self storage owners are onesie twosie facility owners that don't really run it like a business. Their mom and pop mentality. They're just looking to keep their units full and just keep the mailbox money coming in because the last thing they want to do Is have to do any kind of marketing or social media presence or website or anything like that to try to fill an empty unit. So what they do is they keep their rates artificially low, which keeps their occupancy artificially high. But they're okay with that because that's their metric. They just want to be full. We want to maximize revenue. So when we acquire a facility, we're looking at what are the characteristics of the competition in that market. Are they all full? What are their rates, what are the rate trends? And so we do a deep dive there. So when we buy a facility, we know that we have room to push the rates 20, 30, believe it or not, there's some facilities out there that are run by moms and pops that are 50% below the competition in that space. So it's pretty crazy. But one thing that we're finding is contractor storage. So we acquired a facility in North Carolina that is geared towards contractors. And so we like, we are really, it's early, we're still learning, but we really like the prospects for that niche within the self storage niche.

What is it about that specific niche that has you most interested in that?

Yeah, so you know, it's interesting what we're experiencing now. You know, a lot of people, a couple years ago, they used to say that self storage was recession proof. And then now they're like, oh, it's recession resistant. But what we're finding is that with the slowdown in the residential real estate market, you know, those transactions are way, way down, which means that there's not a lot of movement of, in those, in that consumer market. And so, and that's what's been driving down occupancy and rates at a lot of facilities across the country. But what we're finding is that this particular kind of facility that's geared more towards business to business as opposed to business to consumer renting is it is more resilient. So I don't know if you've tried to have an electrician or a plumber or a carpenter come by your place anytime recently, but those guys are extremely busy. So this facility has units that are oversized. So instead of like a 10 by 10 at a normal consumer facility, these, these units are like 18 by 25 with a 20 foot ceiling and a 14 foot roll up door. So someone can, and a contractor can drive their van or their truck in there and they can store their materials, they can store their equipment. And so that is a great customer to have because they've got expensive stuff in there. So you know, they don't want to be locked out and, you know, have their stuff auctioned off. But also these, these smaller contractors are really, really in demand. So we, we feel like that customer is going to be around for a longer time, so they're going to pay more, pay on time, and be there longer. I mean, that's a great customer.

I love that. So you really have already hit on the team aspect of what you guys needed in order to build out this. And I love going into the niche. Talk a little bit about the education, because I was recently at an event and we were talking about self storage, and they were talking about the swings from the. The baby boomer demographic, who has notoriously owned a lot of things and have a lot of things in storage. I know my in laws have, in the past, we, we sold. They sold a lake house, and instead of selling it for 10,000, the furniture with it for an extra 10,000, they got mad and decided they were going to hold on to it and prove everybody wrong. And so they put it in a, you know, in a store for 350amonth for the next two years, and then they decided to get the stuff away. They really showed that group. Right. So as compared to now, we have a whole different generation, like with the millennial generation, who seem to be minimalist. Are you seeing any swings in what's happening with where people are stored and the type of stuff they're stored, any of that kind of stuff?

Yeah, there's a little bit of that going on. But, you know, you'd be surprised. Millennials are still, you know, they are still heavy consumers, right? They're buying stuff on Amazon left and right. And while they might be, generally speaking, looking for smaller homes, smaller dwellings, they still want their toys, right? They still want their mountain bike and their kayak, and they still need a place to store their holiday decorations and such. So the millennials now being the biggest generation out there, consumers, we see that as a good thing because the numbers show us that. So the popularity, what they call the market penetration for self storage, is steadily increasing as the Millennials are maturing. Because believe it or not, those young millennials, they're already in their mid-30s at this point, but they love technology. And we learned that over Covid. Right? So when we have all of our facilities, that's another one of the value adds that we do, is we put our facilities on software platforms where we're maximizing the use of technology so that any consumer coming along can rent a unit right, from their smartphone and so the millennials love that. Right? And during COVID no one wanted to interact with anybody else, and so they jumped right on that. And they were running units from their smartphones, and when they do that, they get their gate code texted to them right away so they can go right into the facility again without having to interact with a human, drop off their stuff and be on their way. But what's cooler about that is, you know, from the business side of things is they're entering in their credit card information, and so we put them on autopay, and it turns into more of like a Planet Fitness membership where, you know, it's more of a pain in the butt to cancel it than to just, you know, put up with the, you know, the $10 increase that month or whatever it is. So, yeah, so we. Yeah, we love that. And we're excited about the millennials.

You guys have the judgment free zone too. Like, we don't care. You just keep as much stuff here as you want to for as long as.

That's right. We won't tell anybody how many units you're running here.

I. I'm thinking stallion, that some of these millennials are even more advanced than I've given them credit for because he's. Joey, tries to put himself, he calls himself as a. What do you, Zennial or something like that. What's your turn?

Let's get it right, Russ. It's a zinnia.

All right.

Zennial. Right.

Right on the edge of Millennial and Gen Z.

Okay.

Yeah, we don't buy it, but as I give him, you know, I love putting him in with the millennial, but my guess is you got some of those people out there, like, looking at a self storage, climate controlled facility and saying, hey, why don't I just use this as my daily office? Like showing up, you know, pulling up.

The deal, doing work out of there. Yeah, well, forget the daily office. You know, sometimes we have trouble with, frankly with homeless situation where people are, you know, they're renting a unit and then, you know, next thing you know, they're. They're living in it.

So.

Which, of course. Oh, wow. Isn't. Isn't safe.

Yeah.

Or healthy for anybody. So, yeah, we have, we do have to combat that from time to time. But, you know, it is an interesting idea and it kind of goes along with the contractor storage idea that we. We talked about a minute ago. Where, where a contractor or a. You know, we've heard of pharmaceutical sales reps. Right. They. They need storage for their pharmaceuticals. But they also need a little place to work. So that's again where that contractor storage model could come into play.

Super interesting. Super interesting. Now, under the education like topic we were talking about, you mentioned Scott Meyer's program. Obviously we've had him on the show. Great guy. You obviously learned a lot through that process. Is there any other resource that you'd say, hey, you want to get in the self storage game? Maybe I can help you save a little time by going to this, this or this?

Sure. Well, you know, I mean now, you know, they've popped up all over the place. You know, there's all kinds of books and magazines, but the two industry associations are pretty powerful and pretty valuable resources. So you've got the ssa, you've got the Self Storage association. So they have a national event every year. But then what's cool about that is they also have quarterly regional events. So if you don't want to travel far, you know, chances are, you know, one of those SSA events will be in your backyard. But the big one is iss, the Inside Self Storage. So they have a, they have a massive event every spring out in Las Vegas. And actually I just, just got word this week, uh, that I'll be speaking there, uh, this coming, uh, April out in Las Vegas. So haven't decided, you know, like what kind of feather outfit I'm going to wear yet. But uh, but so that should be a lot of fun. But yeah. So inside Self Storage, they have a magazine, they've got a ton of resources on their website and Self Storage association. You know, Scott Myers is a great one. There's some other educators out there I'm sure, you know, you could Google, you know, self storage, investing, education, there's all kinds of resources out there. It's really become, you know, pretty popular.

That's very cool. Well, congratulations. I know that's a huge achievement to be asked to do that and thank you. We're like a men's, you know, small. Joey and I spoke out there recently. He may still have his feather costume. He didn't.

Sure.

I think it was more chaps or something like that. I don't know. Well, we appreciate you coming on Don. This is interesting. Thank you for being open and sharing just kind of that experience. Obviously the things that happen in our life have for reason. There's a purpose behind them and, and I love to see how you've not only built an amazing business in the debt space, but then now have taking the lessons that you've learned there, not only sharing it with us. But also been able to build a business in the self storage space that seems to be blossoming very well. If our audience would love to connect with you, whether it's on self storage or anything, where would you have them go?

Sure. Yeah. This has been, this has been great. Russ and Joe, I appreciate the opportunity. Yeah. Again, I'm Tom Dunkle. I'm the chief investment officer here at Bellrose Storage. B E L r o s e-storagegroup.com and we're all over Facebook and LinkedIn, so it's pretty easy to track me down. But I tell you what, I'll challenge somebody out there. If you give me a call on my cell phone and give me my cell phone number, I'll tell you the astronaut that I had lunch with back when I was doing m and A work in the aerospace industry. But my cell phone number is 610-761-8940.

Wow.

That's, that's, that's the first guys you get a chance to. To call. Yeah. You don't know how engaged our audience is.

We'll see.

I'll send you. All right. I'm looking for Tom to change his number. Thrive. Let's see, let's see how. Tell me that number one more time. We'll put on a billboard here in Birmingham.

Just a little.

Yeah.

All right. Well, Tom, thank you so much. You had a lot of fun, a lot of great lessons, and thank you, tribe for listening to this. This is why we do this, is to be able to give you insights from successful entrepreneurs, but also to be able to listen to their failures. Right. Success leaves clues, but also failures teach lessons. And we've got to learn both of those from Tom today. If you found value, take time, review the show and also share it with someone else so that they can take action on their path to becoming financially free. Have an amazing day.

This has been the wealth without Wall street podcast. Don't forget to subscribe to the show to break free of the Wall street mindset and begin building wealth on your own terms in places you understand so that your wealth will never run dry. See you next episode.