What if building wealth didn’t require chasing every shiny opportunity—but instead mastering a repeatable investment framework that protects capital, manages risk, and compounds returns over time?
In this episode, we sit down with Tom Dunkel, Chief Investment Officer and co-founder of Belrose Storage Group, to unpack what it really means to invest smarter—not harder—in today’s real estate and alternative investment landscape.
Tom brings decades of experience in finance, underwriting, and value-add real estate, with a sharp focus on self-storage as a resilient, cash-flowing asset class. We dive into how disciplined underwriting, clear decision filters, and investor-first thinking can dramatically reduce mistakes while increasing long-term upside. This isn’t about speculation—it’s about building systems that help investors make confident, repeatable decisions even in uncertain markets.
Whether you’re an active operator, a passive investor, or a capital allocator looking to protect gains while creating impact, this conversation will challenge how you evaluate deals, risk, and opportunity. If your goal is to grow wealth with intention—and fewer headaches—this episode is for you.
Episode Highlights Here:
Brett
Before we jump into this episode, I want to invite you to join our community to help you become a better steward scale to billions and ultimately give more or all of it away. All I want you to do is to click the subscribe button right now. I love your support. It’s incredible to see your comments, and we’re just just getting started. I can’t wait to go on this journey with you. Thank you so much for subscribing. It means the world to me. Welcome to the build to billions podcast where we got successful entrepreneurs and investors are on their journey from millions to billions. We believe the key to scaling and compounding your wealth starts every single day with the mindset and practice of stewardship over ownership and applying billionaire biblical principles. Our ultimate goal is to help you scale and compound your wealth and life so you can give more all the way to help MVPs. My name is Brett Swarts. Each and every episode, we’re joined by some of the world’s top entrepreneurs, millionaires or billionaires, where they share their secrets, insights and wisdom with us so we can compound and make a bigger impact. I’m excited about our next guest. He’s out of Pennsylvania, and he brings over 30 years of real estate finance and investing experience as the Chief Operating Officer of Eagle capital investments, and he works alongside his world class team of professionals. He makes his mission to find great investment opportunities for his clients by helping them meet their wealth and guiding goals and so much more. Please welcome the show with me. Mr. Tom. Dunkel, Tom, how we doing?
Tom
Hey, I’m doing great. Brett, it’s great to be with you and all the listeners today, I’m looking forward to our chat.
Brett
Excellent. And for our listeners, continue for the first time. Would you give us a little bit more about your story and your current focus?
Tom
Yeah, sure. So little bit about my background. So, you know, got out of business school and headed into mergers and acquisitions in the aerospace industry. So I had a nice
run in corporate world for about 1112, years, doing deals, you know, raising a lot of institutional capital. Private Equity did some, you know, big, big debt facilities acquired a bunch of companies, and I was just surrounded by some amazing people, Harvard undergrad Wharton undergrads. It’s Naval Academy guys, anyway. Just an incredible environment for me to learn as a young professional. You know the how finance is really done, how deals are really done. You know what to look out for, how to structure your team, you know, all of those kinds of things. So really kind of build a great foundation for me. Brett, so that one ultimately, you know, fast forward to 2006 I get fired from my corporate finance job, I was
able to kind of go out and, you know, start my own thing, which I had been wanting to do for a longtime. And, you know, little did I know is heading right into the great recession. And so, learn some hard lessons there those first few years. Because, of course, I had, I had the great education, had the great background. But you know, when you’re when you’re out there on your own, and you’re the guy that has to make the decisions and put the team together and, you know, lead, those are different skills that didn’t really have, so I'm trying to learn those on the fly while the market is crushing me. So, it was a pretty, pretty challenging time, but, you know, I wouldn’t change it for the world. You know, it really kind of thickened up my skin. And now here, you know, 19 going on, 20 years later, you know, I’ve been able to do some pretty cool things in and around real estate, built a couple eight figure businesses, and, you know, built some teams, made plenty of mistakes, had tons of failures, but had had some pretty solid successes as well. So today, I’m focused on helping the investor network that I’ve put together over the years to diversify their wealth into alternative investments with world class operators that I’ve personally come to know like and trust and invest with over the years. So, we call that a fund of funds model, and that’s what Eagle capital investments is all about
Brett
awesome, by the way. Can you learn more about Tom? Talk about going to Eagle capitalinvestments.com it’s Eagle capital investments.com and So Tom, this is really cool. So, you invest with you guys, and you get a chance to get to multifamily housing, mobile home parks, self-storage, medical office buildings, private lending. What have you found is the preferred one in this marketplace, and how are things going?
Tom
Yeah, great question. You know, it with all the uncertainty right now, you know, are we going to in a recession? Are we not? You know what’s going on with the tariffs, where interest rates going? Yada yada, you know, it’s, it’s a challenging time right now. So, I’ve, I’ve really settled into private lending as my investment of choice right now, Brett. I mean, I’m still investing in multifamily. I did a deal earlier this year. Still have plenty of holdings in self-storage. But for right now, as far as deploying new capital, I really like private lending, because it’s secured in first position against a hard asset. I’m getting payments every month, and so I can kind of collect those payments and secure that capital while I’m waiting to kind of see how things unfold.
Brett
So, if you like this little, short clip of the interview I just did, click over here to watch the full interview, and please don’t forget to subscribe. Thanks so much, everybody. You. You.
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About Tom Dunkel
Tom Dunkel is the Chief Investment Officer and co-founder of Belrose Storage Group, where he oversees investment strategy, underwriting, and capital structuring for value-add and development self-storage projects across the United States.
With more than two decades of experience spanning finance, investing, and real estate, Tom brings a disciplined, analytical approach to capital allocation. His background in corporate finance and deal analysis informs Belrose’s investor-first philosophy—prioritizing risk management, downside protection, and repeatable decision-making frameworks over speculation.
At Belrose, Tom is known for translating complex investment concepts into clear, practical tools that help investors make better decisions with confidence. He is the creator of the S.A.F.E. investment evaluation framework and is a frequent guest on real estate podcasts, where he shares insights on underwriting, market cycles, and building resilient portfolios.
Tom is passionate about helping investors move from reactive investing to intentional wealth building—focusing on smarter strategies that align capital with long-term goals, cash flow, and impact.
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