Saying your business has values is one thing; actually allowing those values to guide your business decisions is quite another. When your values align with your purpose of serving others, meaningful success inevitably follows. Annie welcomes David Gunderman, real estate agent, investor, and co-founder of The Gunderman Group in the Bay Area. Learn how David’s theater background and near detour into law school have uniquely influenced his approach to real estate, blending creativity, authenticity, and a commitment to doing what’s best for clients.
Values-Aligned Work
[00:11:25] “Our work is so deeply therapeutic in real estate sales and helping people transition between different parts of their lives, a lot of times people are moving from one identity to another identity. It could be a divorce, it could be the loss of a parent, it could be a job change, but there's a lot of roiling transition in their lives and I think that understanding or being able to empathize with that moment in their lives and being able to sort of care for it is a big part of it.”
[00:39:42] “I just have to reinvest in my values right now. And that is how our team operates. There's so many values that I could go into, but what I'm learning, because as you grow and scale, you can start to lose your core value structure. And the last few months I've been like let's get back to who we are as people and what started this whole thing.”
[00:49:01] “I want my business, our business, to reflect the value that we feel, which is that we care for one another. We care for these clients and we put their interests above anything that's financial.”
Connect with David Gunderman
Website - https://thegundermangroup.com/
Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/thegundermangroup/
Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/TheGundermanGroup/
Audio/video editing and show notes by Podcast Abundance. Find out how they can help you too by visiting www.podcastabundance.com/services
00:04 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Hey there, I'm Annie Dickerson and on today's show we have the pleasure of having one of my good friends, david Gunderman, on the show. David is a real estate agent here in the Bay Area. He's also an investor and he's the co-founder of the Gunderman Group, which is a very well known real estate group here in the East Bay of the Gunderman Group, which is a very well-known real estate group here in the East Bay of the San Francisco Bay Area. I've known David for a number of years. You know how sometimes you meet those people. They just have this spark about them, this energy, this kindness, this compassion that draws you into them. Well, david is one of those people. He's authentic from the get-go. He is who he is and he's just such a warm, compassionate person. In this episode he talks about his amazing story of how he went from theater into almost law school but then to a career on Broadway and by happenstance he moved out here to the Bay Area and got into real estate kind of kicking and screaming, which is how I got into real estate, but has really found his calling through it, and it's something that has brought together all of his passions in a variety of different areas.
01:27
Right now, as we are embarking on another new year, it is a great time to really focus in on your values, who you are, who you've been, who you want to be and David talks a lot about that in this conversation, because he's a values-driven person and his business is also very driven by his values and who he is and who his team is and how they serve their clients and their community. So, as you listen, start to think about your own journey and how you got to where you are today, because wherever you are right now and however you happen to find this episode, it's meant to be that you're listening to this right now. I guarantee you there's important threads and important messages in this conversation for you, wherever you are in your journey. So I invite you to reflect on your own journey as you listen to David talk about his journey, think about how you got to where you are. What are those things on your resume that you're listing Like you did this or you've accomplished this, you got this promotion, but think about really what brought you from one thing to another, about really what brought you from one thing to another, whether it's career-wise, family-wise, friends, hobbies, anything because I think that those things are the gold nuggets that show us who we truly are, that shine a light on why we're here and what we're here to do. So reflect on those things, especially at a pivotal time like this where we are embarking on a new year. Things especially at a pivotal time like this where we are embarking on a new year, a new start, new beginnings, new hope, hopefully some optimism for the year ahead. With that, before we dive into our conversation today, community has always been a big part of who we are here at Good Egg Investments, and I know it's a very important thing to David as well, because he's built a very deep and meaningful community here in the Bay Area through his clients and his team. And it's the same with us and our investors. And in the show I talk about, how often our investors have never met us in person and yet they know us and we know them through the power of community. So if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I want to be part of a community of people looking to build wealth, people who are passionate about real estate investing, whether you were just at the beginning or you're a seasoned investor, we welcome you to join what we call our Good Egg Investor Club and through it, we'll be able to share opportunities with you to build your own wealth, share information and resources so that you can educate yourself and become confident and comfortable investing in real estate if it aligns with your goals, and meet other investors as well who are on the same path. So to do that, just go to goodegginvestmentscom. Slash invest.
04:27
With that, let's dive into my conversation with David Gunderman. David, welcome to the show. How are you Good? Hi Annie, how are you? Oh, my goodness, I am so excited to have you on the show. We've known each other for quite a while and I've heard pieces of your story here and there, but we've never sat down to really dig in. So I'm excited to get to ask you all the questions and to share your very unique story with the listener today. So, first off, some people grow up, and I have friends who all their lives they knew they wanted to be a doctor, and so they went down that path and now they're a doctor. Some people, all their lives they knew they wanted to be in real estate, and now they're in real estate. But you, I don't think you had that kind of story. You had a very different path that you had wanted for your life or projected for your life, and somehow real estate came to be part of your path. So take us along that story. Share with us. How did you get into real estate?
05:29 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I think it's fairly common for people in real estate to not have thought they were going to be in real estate. I think it's a lot of people who end up there for various reasons and no, I did not expect to be here and I want to say, of our 23 person team and all the real estate we sell, we're closing in on $3 billion of sales. A lot of people have a similar story to what mine is, which is unusual. A lot of us were creatives. I grew up in suburban Los Angeles and was a total theater kid. It's just my focus. I was a total theater geek.
05:58 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
How did you even get into theater in the first place? You like to sing and dance and perform as even a little tiny kid, or where along the path did you get into theater or even know that theater was a thing?
06:10 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I don't know the answer to that. I think we're all sort of pre-wired to certain things and I'll just say that at some point in my formative years, I want to say around fourth grade, I met a small group of friends, two guys in particular. They just explored their creativity and we did it together and we had silly little skits we did and just things that got us going. It became this sort of hybrid of both creativity and a social anchor. Growing up, we're all sort of looking for our people and something that grounds us in who we are or helps us self-actualize. And theater for me I think for a lot of young people, when kept in its purest, most creative, most abandoned form, also kind of becomes a bit of a therapy world for people. You're doing a lot of trust exercises, you're sharing things, you're being vulnerable, you're exploring emotions. For me and I think for a lot of other people, it took a deeper anchor in your life in those formative years and both this great creative outlet, it becomes the social circle and it also has a lot of emotional work involved in it, which you know. Obviously that can go in a bad direction too, but fortunately mine was all very, very pure. It was all very wonderful. It became magical. We all have our struggles and my struggles.
07:20
I think classic theater struggle. I don't sound like a horrible stereotype, but a lot of my struggles had to do with the fact that I was gay and that's a hard thing to grow up actualizing around and theater was a safer place for that. I don't want to say it was a safe place for it because it was still back in the 80s. It was still not safe and when I went to UCLA to study theater there were hundreds of people in that theater department. Almost none of the men were gay. Within four or five years of leaving that program, almost all of them were gay. It wasn't a totally safe space back in the 1980s but probably more than anything it was just a place to really explore, to feel abandoned to feel safe.
08:00 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, I don't know that I ever really connected those dots. That theater almost serves as a therapy for people, like you said, because it gives you a safe space to explore those emotions, because you get to play somebody else, you get to experience those emotions as another character and really build around their emotions. But try them on for size and experience them for yourself.
08:17 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I sometimes still joke that people sometimes reflect back on their high school or college experiences and the lore of them can be oh, we were drinking so much beer or smoking pot or something like that. My group of friends all Friday nights were like maybe a wine cooler and a night of freeze improvs in someone's living room. We literally get together and geek out and do improvs together. So I don't have a lot to relate to A lot of other people relating to their party years. Ours were just really innocent. But also again, it created this exploration of what it is to be human and to feel things and to laugh and feel and it was extraordinary.
08:52
Like so many endeavors, just in general, it becomes so deep in you.
08:55
It becomes such an identity thing which is further down the road in this conversation, but I've seen that happen to so many people who are in arts. There's someone in our group who's very deep into sports. When you sort of have this passion as a young person and it consumes you and it isn't something that's going to carry you through life, there's a period of time when you have to detach from it and it's a painful grieving process because it's such a deep part of your identity. At that point and we see that a lot in our work which is our work is so deeply therapeutic and real estate sales and helping people transition between different parts of their lives is a lot of times people are moving from one identity to another identity. It could be a divorce, it could be the loss of a parent, it could be a job change, but there's a lot of roiling transition in their lives and I think that understanding or being able to empathize with that moment in their lives and be able to care for it is a big part.
09:44 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Well, dig into that transition period for you for a moment. How did you know that theater wasn't going to care? Did something happen where you were like, oh, actually, this isn't my path? Or how did you know that theater wasn't going to be the thing for you?
10:00 - David Gunderman (Guest)
So I'll go back and capture the journey a little bit more, which is I graduated high school. I went to UCLA for theater. I was a studios person. I got a BA from UCLA. I graduated summa cum laude. I was just not feeling fully comfortable with the idea of insecurity of the business. That was really sort of eating away at me. So I had made a half-baked decision to go to law school. I was going to say, oh, that was fun, and take a safer path was going to say oh, that was fun and take a safer path.
10:26 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Wait, wait, wait. Out of all the things that you could have chosen, law school seems so far away from a BA in theater. How did you happen to choose that?
10:34 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Well, I'm glad I didn't. By the way, I think I would have been not a happy lawyer. I think I might have been an effective one. But why that? Just to get more into my own psychology. I mean, growing up in Los Angeles, los Angeles for me felt like a very materialistic place. We were a very suburban, middle-class family. I think I was really worried about money and my ability to make money. I didn't really come out until I was a good chunk into my 20s.
10:57
I think I was pursuing a path of expectation and I think one of the things that resonated with me about the law was I'm a justice guy. I just really love justice and that's why I think I would have been really unhappy in the law, because the law is not always about justice, and I think that would have really eaten me alive. So I'm glad I didn't pursue it. But I think, also, just taking the LSAT, as you're sort of dabbling with it, it was all these logic games LSAT I just crushed, because there's something about those conversations or those problem solving techniques that just really resonate with my brain. So there were just little messages that said this might be a good path for you in terms of you being able to make money and satisfy your ambition, and there were little signals that this might work out. And also, law school doesn't mean you're going to become a lawyer. It just felt like a subject matter that I would find interest in.
11:40 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah Well, speaking of money, what did you learn about money growing up? Tell us about that. Did you have an allowance? Were you a saver? Did you spend money on a lot of things?
11:50 - David Gunderman (Guest)
My dad was born in 1929. And I think that I grew up in a classic sort of family that was post depression. There was money but it was a little scarce. My dad was the classic stable. He was a Navy officer, worked in the Merchant Marines. He ended up working in the aerospace industry as an engineer. He worked for Hughes Aircraft for those 35 solid years, commuting an hour and a half each way each day, working his way up the management ladder and providing for his family.
12:16
I remember also my mom. She was an interesting sort. She just tried all kinds of things. She was always restless and unhappy and trying to find her path. And one of the things she did that my father credited her with really saving our family financially was she at one point helmed the purchase of a six-unit apartment building in Van IJs and just getting in there cleaning up the units, trying to raise the rents a little bit, and that meant that we as a family were over there. One unit got rented, that person left. They sort of trashed the place. We'd have to go in and roll up our sleeves all weekend and pull out the stove and get all the grime out from behind. We all were involved in this project of trying to make a little more money for our family, and they did a few of those no major home runs but little base hits, and apparently it supplemented our income in a way that was more meaningful than I fully understood at the time.
13:09 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
How old were you around this time?
13:11 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Oh, I was probably about 13, 14.
13:13 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Okay, Were you like ah, I don't want to spend my weekend doing this. Or did you have some understanding that this contributed to your family's income in some way?
13:23 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I think it was both. I didn't really want to do it, I didn't feel like there was a lot of choice there, and I'm also just a pleaser, so I was not one who was going to rebel or kick up too much fuss, but I just remember being really unhappy while doing it.
13:36 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
13:37 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I'll associate smells with the experience Like I'm smelling things right now.
13:42 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
I can imagine, and it's like I'm smelling things right now, uh-huh, yeah, I can imagine.
13:44 - David Gunderman (Guest)
That I don't want to describe.
13:46 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
I'm sure, but they say those smells are the sign of a good real estate deal. When you can look past that. Anyway, when I was growing up, my parents never invested in real estate. They didn't buy a house, they didn't invest in real estate. They didn't know the first thing about it. But it sounds like your mom at least experimented with it and for better or worse, you got sort of a front row seat into a little bit of what that was about. Did that scare you? Were you like I'm never going to do that in my life. I'm never going to buy a piece of real estate and rent it out. This is the worst.
14:17 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I wasn't thinking that deeply about it. I think my focus was in another place. I was being a good soldier with the family business, but it wasn't anything that was capturing my imagination. I mean, I guess, if anything relative to this conversation my dad's respect for what she did and the impact it had is probably the biggest takeaway I had from it is that that was a means where she was able to do something that the breadwinner of the family gave her proper due for and that, for me, meant that real estate investment she made was meaningful. It's a seed that real estate can have an impact on people's lives.
14:54 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
I'm so glad that you said that, because that's part of the reason we started our business was to help women and moms to get into real estate, because a lot of them don't see real estate investing as something that they can do contribute financially to her family in a meaningful way. Or for a mom who's working full-time to say you know, I'm going to supplement the family's income, then I'm going to go to part-time so I can spend more time with the kids. To have that flexibility and just a different avenue to create a stream of income for the family can be something that's really impactful.
15:34 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Of course, and there's so many barriers to people for either doing it or feeling comfortable doing it, or getting educated about it, or feeling there's just so many barriers. I don't know if they're institutional or what the exact adjective is, but I'm just so glad that what you're doing, in terms of what your mission is. You know me, annie, I can't help but get a little political, but I guess this isn't at all controversial or surprising. But in my work I see so many marginalized groups and there's so many degrees of which group we're talking about and what their life experience is. But I see marginalized groups just not getting the benefits of real estate and it's so gratifying for us when we can help.
16:11
No one can predict the future, which is always so. You don't want to be so arrogant to always assume that you know what's best for someone and that something's going to work out well for them, but for the most part it does, and you hope that the past is a reflection of where the future is. It's just so gratifying when you can help somebody who couldn't get ahead find their path and start to get ahead. It's so meaningful and gratifying in a grand scale when you can look back 10 and 20 years and see that the impact it did have. You encourage them to try. And when you even check in, or they check in or you run into them and they say, like that changed my life. That's everything.
16:47 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
I'm totally on the same page and that's why we're such big advocates of education and just getting the word out there about how all this works, so that people can gain the confidence to try it for themselves. I think about my mom. Since I learned about real estate investing, she and my dad their whole lives. They just saved up cash. That's all they knew.
17:08
My dad bought some stamps at one point. He was convinced that the stamp collection would be like the ticket. But no, that didn't go anywhere and they barely invested in the stock market, maybe just a couple thousand dollars, never bought a house. So when I learned about this real estate investing stuff, I said, mom, I'm going to help you invest some of your money and little by little she's been growing that little pile of money. It's such a relief, not only to her but also to me, that for the rest of her life her money is not going to go down, it's going to go up, as most people are so worried that they're going to outlive their money, outlive their savings through this vehicle. She's able to create this engine to continue to create wealth, which has changed her life, changed mine too.
17:57 - David Gunderman (Guest)
The other thing that's on my mind investment wise, I'm not a savvy investor and I'm a fearful investor. I've always been a fearful investor. I just don't know who to trust and where to turn. And there's things that in my marriage with Andrew, like there's just things that you, as a partner, you decide what you are and are not willing to put up with. And Andrew's a little older than I, am in some ways wiser than I am, and I mean, historically we could have made a lot more money in certain ways, in so much as Andrew made it very clear that he did not want to be a landlord. And I get it. That's a hard thing, especially when you're raising kids and you're running a business, and even if you were in the project, there's just things that happen. And so we made a decision me reluctantly six unit apartment building flat, yeah. And I was like, okay, I can be a landlord. Yeah, I get it, there was money to be made there that we didn't make.
18:51
But the thing that's also on my mind psychologically is I think of my generation of friends, a lot of our parents, who even had these really stable jobs. I think about one friend whose father was a doctor in Michigan and right as he hit his retirement years, like that stock event happened and so much of that nest egg was suddenly wiped out. And it just chills me to the bone to think of so many people whose 401ks and everything are just in one place. And yet I think again, there are these barriers to understanding, like how can I get my money spread out into different types of vehicles so that there's more of a hedge? And that's another reason why I'm grateful for what you and others like you are doing, which is just to provide access to people to this diversification of their life savings, because you can't have it all in one place.
19:30 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, it's the scary thing out there, especially with all that's changing, that you got to hedge a little bit, and it's hard sometimes because you work a busy job and then at night and on the weekend you want to relax. You don't want to have to dig and read things that you don't understand to try to put your money in a place that makes you fearful and nervous. So I totally get it. You get on the train and the momentum just takes you to retirement and you just stop thinking about it and you're like, oh, this must be good enough.
19:59 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Well then, the next barrier is who do you trust?
20:01 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Right.
20:02 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I know this is you asking me questions. But like how do you and be trust in your clients, like how do they know that they can trust you? That's got to be a difficult thing. Like this is a big leap of faith for them.
20:12 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, it's a really interesting thing because you know my husband well and you guys are both in residential real estate sales locally. You get to meet the person. You see them face to face. You can go out for coffee with them, you tour the houses with them, you get to know them and if anything goes wrong, they can come find you. So there's that trust built in that they've met you face to face. Most of our investors have never met us. They've Googled us or found us online. Word of mouth is better, because then there's the trust of the person who referred them to us.
20:48
There are people who Google how to invest in real estate and they find something that we've written, or a podcast like this that we've done, or a video that we've created, and they just start to listen or they start to read and then they go into the rabbit hole and they say, okay, what else? What does this term mean? And they keep going, keep going. Eventually they build enough of their own confidence and understanding that they say you know what? I think this makes sense for me and I think I understand it enough to try it out Maybe not with all of my savings, but you know a small piece of it just as a proof of concept. I'm astounded every time we get a stranger from the internet who says hey, I've read all your stuff, I've listened to all your stuff, I really love what you're doing, I want to give it a try. And they wire us 25K, 50k and it's a big responsibility for us and we never take that lightly because that's somebody's very hard earned money. Most of these are families, so we try our hardest to take very good care of them and their money.
21:55
But yeah, it's not always easy and we personally invested in some bad eggs out there that we thought we trusted. It's hard because you get to know somebody, you think that you've done all your due diligence and there's other people who trust them, and so you put your money with them and for one reason or another, either intentional or unintentional, it doesn't go according to plan. But you know, I always say that's part of the tuition For anything. You go to school, you learn to become a doctor or a lawyer or whatever. You paid many years of tuition to learn to do that thing. Well, investing is kind of the same way. Sometimes you hit a home run on the first try, but other times it's a base hit or God forbid, it's a strikeout, but you learn something from that and you pay some tuition along the way. That gets you to the next place, where next time you know a little bit better the questions to ask.
22:49 - David Gunderman (Guest)
For sure.
22:50 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
So take us back to law school. You graduated, you got a theater degree and you're like OK, this isn't practical money. Wise, I wanted something that's going to make me some more stable money. You decided to take the LSAT. Did you actually apply for law school?
23:04 - David Gunderman (Guest)
While I was in college I was working professionally in theater and doing some commercials and things in Los Angeles. I had all my union cards and all that. And then, while I was filling out law school applications, I got cast in a Broadway show out of an LA audition and I thought, well, this has been my dream. I got to go do this. Yeah, this will be differentiating on my law school applications in a year or two. So I applied in New York and my life changes like 10 years zip by that show. I cast another Broadway show and I was a working actor for 10 years. I bought another great real estate.
23:30
Story for me is like I was in some roommate situations I didn't love. It was in the early nineties and this opportunity came along to buy a studio apartment on the Upper West Side of New York for $49,000. It was all renovated. I borrowed $5,000 from my parents, very lucky to have been able to do that. I paid it back very quickly and bought this studio apartment with a $600 a month maintenance. So I sort of anchored my finances in this thing that I could afford and even though I was working three or four regional theater jobs in one year or another and pulling in an income of $22,000, $24,000 a year. Living in New York City. I could get by and I wasn't having to run around or take on jobs I didn't want to do in between because I had a financial base that was completely affordable and gave me the life I wanted. So, again, freedom from real estate in that moment and taking advantage of a down market, so that was awesome and I could have kept doing that forever.
24:21
You asked earlier like well, how did you know to get out or to move? And the hard thing about theater is I got to do some great things Like I did a ton of shows and I started a theater company upstate New York with a bunch of friends and I have a dear childhood friend who's a big Broadway producer and when I wasn't working I was running around being an errand person for him, or he and I were also very much caught up in the days of ACT UP in the world of AIDS activism and LGBTQ activism. So we were involved in civil disobedience and things like that and he was such a producer. Our civil disobedience was just a hot time politically for the LGBTQ community and be stopping traffic on Fifth Avenue and we'd have Susan Sarand in there and helping her get arrested and just producing political events. I was just hanging out with him, but that relationship informed so much of who I am or nurtured who I was as a person.
25:12
He was the first person to produce Hedwig and the Angry Inch in its most raw forms and eventually produced it on Broadway and that's where he won his Tony Award, which was this radical piece back in the day. And just to be in the midst of that was extraordinary and seeing what he was doing and seeing this theater piece that even I couldn't understand, he was able to see it. That's his genius. He even said to me at one point, like I'm watching John Cameron Mitchell crack eggs on his chest and smear makeup and sort of scream and shout and I thought, oh, that's not my cup of tea. But wow, my friend David, who was a producer, at one point like should I get the film rights for this? And I was like, oh, david, this is never going to be. And you know, of course it was. It was a rich and wonderful time. I have so many good stories I won't go into them.
25:58
But there came a point where for me as a I don't know Enneagram 3 or ambitious person. It was wearing me down. This trajectory of A doesn't lead to B, to C, to D, to E, and theater is always like A, b, c, d, back to A, a, b, c, d, e, back to A. For me that was that wore on me Also. I was just like I want a dog. I can't have a dog and like be working in Cincinnati and then in Dallas.
26:21
So I was going into my 30s and that voice of I need more stability in my life was reemerging. And I was fortunate to have been on a national tour of a Broadway show and while I was in the Bay Area I met my husband, andrew. That was an extraordinary life change because it was just a deep connection and led to a year and a half of long distance relationship and a point where I said to him you know he was going to move to New York and stay in my studio apartment and I said, well, why don't I move out to the Bay Area for a month? We'll just see how that goes? And I just never went back.
26:53
But that beginning of that grief process of am I in this new environment and I did theater around San Francisco, but it wasn't particularly satisfying and working at a magazine called the Industry Standard for about a year and a half which covered the internet economy, and that imploded when the first dot bust happened in the year 2000. And in the five years since the day I met Andrew we had a year and a half relationship. I moved out, I sold that apartment in New York, it gave us a down payment to buy a modest house in Alameda. I had gone through job transfers and we were adopting two kids out of the foster care system, like in a five-year thing, like every bit of our lives changed. But what happened near the end of that five-year period was everyone at the magazine was like the magazine folded and there were just no marketing jobs or jobs anywhere to be found that were particularly interesting.
27:45
So I held my nose and went into real estate because, as a complete default, getting to your first question, if you told my 25 or 15 year old self, I thought it was a sales job and I wanted nothing to do with it. I was doing it simply because my real estate agent was a totally nice guy. He was not some solicitous, predatory monster. So maybe I can do this while I'm waiting for a marketing coordinator job to show up. And it turned into this incredible career that I did not see coming and small business and changing people's lives and partnering with my husband and creating a 23 person team based on values and connection between us all. And it's just been the best, most unexpected ride I could have ever imagined.
28:18 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
I mean to see you on this side of it and all the success that you've garnered. I don't think there's a homeowner in the East Bay, in the Bay Area, who doesn't know the Gunderman Group. Everybody knows the Gunderman Group. Your signs are everywhere. You're well-renowned for your quality in not only the homes that you put on the market but the service that you provide people, and I think you're so well known for that and I'm an Enneagram 3 too, by the way, and I totally get it.
28:49
This whole wanting to create and build and achieve and have an impact. I mean it's so funny. Our stories kind of mirror each other in similar ways. Because I also went kicking and screaming into real estate. I was like, well, my husband went into real estate. I can't go into real estate too. That would be ridiculous. And here we both are. I want to ask you this because I think, looking in from the outside, a lot of people like you and I had a certain perception of what real estate is. They have this notion. It's almost like used car salesman that pushy, sleazy, untrustworthy person who just wants to sell you on something. But you've created this values-based business, this beautiful business. But you've created this values-based business, this beautiful business. There's creativity in that, there's love in that, there's nurturing in that. Tell us a little bit about that journey.
29:42 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Thank you for all that. That's so nice of you to say. This is a moment, too, I want to say, like we're just post-2024 election. Everything is so raw right now and we're doing some team restructuring and it's just pushed me into this zone of reflecting on who we are and how we got here and really like, what's our genesis? We're 25 years in, like what is it that matters? And as we sort of move towards whatever this next chapter is, or is there a legacy and does it push forward?
30:07
You have these moments when you have to go back to your mission, go back to your values, and we've been on that and I just feel like we as a country are in that moment too where, like, if you look at the values of democracy, they're just really challenged right now. I find that's my point of view on it it's just a time to really get back into like, who are you and how you're going to show up in the world, you know as, again, a justice person and an Enneagram three or whatever and a pleaser. I just have to reinvest in my values right now and that is how our team operates. I love that it's a group of people that have these mostly creative backgrounds. There's so many values that I could go into, but when I'm learning, as you grow and scale, you can start to lose your core value structure. It can start to get too far away from you because you're doing too much. The last few months I've been like no, no, no, let's get back to who we are as people and what started this whole thing. And that's been a process in the last couple of months and it's now coming to a point where it's getting really in my mind sharp again and now I'm really excited to go into the next iteration.
31:05
But those values are, if you're fortunate to have I don't know a traditional family. Traditional is such a weird word for me, but you're no good to your partner unless you're good to yourself, and your partnership is not usually as healthy for your children unless like those sort of ways that you ripple out and for our team. Right now I'm back in reinvesting in the fact that we have to really care for one another. Like when we get really busy, we get sloppy with one another. We're not as kind or respectful as we need to be. So I'm trying to pull everyone back into like whoa, let's get really kind and gentle and respectful again, because there's just been a couple of moments of sloppiness among us and it just starts to fracture. So get back to that gentle, loving kindness again and then when we have that center, our clients feel it.
31:45
So some of the values that tie us together are we represent people and not price points. We don't segment. We're not just all high-end, which I respect. Some people just want to market, segment and be who they are, but that's just not who I am. I just love again changing a person's life and actually some of the most gratifying deals we've ever done were not very lucrative. So that's a value that our team shares.
32:09
We always know that we're advisors and not deciders. We're always deferential. We just kind of come in not being arrogant about what we believe. We know markets are dynamic and the advice we can give the market could shift. So we have to be very humble about the advice we give and just be really thoughtful in terms of understanding.
32:27
I think the expertise we can bring is giving them a broad understanding of every real estate transaction is baked into the future. So like, what is the minefield in front of you? The potential minefield, mind you, there could probably a pot of gold for most people at the other end of it. But there's a minefield in front of us right now. There's a lot of places you can misstep and just getting all of us so sharply focused on all the nuances of this terrain we have to cross to get where we want to go and explain to the client, no matter how sort of exhausting it can be, like all the nuances of this thing, instead of just being like, oh, I got this, like come along, trust me, people feel so empowered when you're just giving them so much information as you go and giving them the power to control it. They resent it when you don't have an opinion, like they're hiring you for your expertise and opinion. Your expertise needs to include optionality, and that optionality comes with opinions, and so that's something I think we really enjoy.
33:18
I just really enjoy and our group really enjoys being good at what we do. I know I'm going in a lot of different directions, but the other thing that I just love about it and maybe this goes back to this whole theater thing is I love understanding consumer behavior and consumer psychology and trends and lights team properties up on the listing side that just are unexpected or bold or just garner more attention than the competitors do, because someone is less imaginative than we are and doesn't quite understand that putting everything into a beige story is not the best way to pull attention to a house, but giving it a rich, dreamy, bold story actually creates more viewership and more action, and not everyone feels safe doing it. That's another thing I love about our team is that we are really good at deconstructing all the experiences we've had and understanding human nature. And what we do more than anything is we just sit around telling stories about this person and that person and this deal and that reaction. And what can we learn from this that can apply to the future?
34:14
And when we find another house like this that needs another buyer like that, what did we learn? That bridged it successfully and where did we misstep? And it's just fun. It's just fun, especially when you're in the room with people who spark you. That's what's led to our success is creating a community of people who are values aligned, who are creatively bold in their choices and have each other's back and have the back of the clients as well. Like we just never, ever, ever sell anything. That's not our jobs. We are not salespeople, we're advocates, we are strategists, we're negotiators. I've never sold anything in 25 years of doing real estate.
34:50 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Love that and, if I could pull the thread through, I mean thinking all the way back to the top of the conversation. When you got into theater it was like you found this group of guys and you really connected. You were just doing fun little things, but it was that human to human connection that really brought you together and it seems throughout your story whether it was on Broadway or even thinking about applying to law school and the justice that you were bringing to people, to moving out to the Bay Area and through the gay rights movement, through now, what you do with your team and empowering them, to empower their clients it's been this human to human connection this whole time of you just wanting to have that impact with other people, to create that experience for somebody that lights them up, that changes something in their life. It almost doesn't matter what you do. I've gotten in a little bit of human design and my type is a manifestor and manifestors are always concerned about having an impact.
35:54
My whole life I was like I'm not having a big enough impact. I got to keep going from here to there, to there and I heard recently somebody say as a manifestor, you don't have to have impact because you are the impact. I think that's so true for you and your story. Is that all along true for you and your story? Is that all along all these things that you've done, you have been that light for people. And it's very clear as you tell the story that you were never out to make a big pile of money. You were never out to really make a name for yourself. You just wanted to have that connection with people and it's no surprise to me, with that as your anchor, all the success that you've had and all the people that you attract to you because they want to be part of that light.
36:39 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Thank you so much for that. Also, I just really love collaboration. The theater things I always enjoyed were these collaborative pieces where everybody's getting a voice and like it's not just like some dictatorial person telling you where to stand, but we're all sort of throwing out ideas and one idea sparks another idea and something starts to evolve. So that's another value of our team is, although I'm the leader of it, my husband and I are the leaders of it. Like I don't love hierarchies, I like us all to just be like a working ensemble and for me that's another life lesson, especially right now my concerns about broad capitalism.
37:16
I feel like capitalism is run amok. I mean, I really love capitalism. It's a wonderful thing in so many ways and the freedoms it creates, but it just can't be the altar at which we all kneel. I guess I'm a social democrat. I just want the money we make to serve the collective, not the individual.
37:32
I just think that we've lost our way with CEO being crazy. Like my dad's generation, it was easier to get by. Companies took care of their employees in ways that we don't do anymore and just that ethos of caring for one another has broken down a lot and I want our business to reflect the value that we feel, which is that we care for one another and we care for these clients. We care for them, we put their interests above anything that's financial and that is what makes everything.
38:01
If it was just a job trying to collect a check I just couldn't do it. It would be so meaningless and I see people in my industry afraid to be themselves or afraid to be. I don't want to offend anyone. I don't want to be too much of one thing. People won't want me if I'm too big in this direction and I've always been outspoken and political and I just think it helps you find your people, people so deeply want authenticity or someone to stand for something. When you stick your neck out a little bit more, in my experience, that has more impact.
38:30 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, I recently just read that humans are the only species that have the capacity to be inauthentic to ourselves. Isn't that funny? Like a deer is a deer, a lion is a lion, that's just their nature. But a human, we do all sorts of things to not be who we are, to please people, to do what other people expect and to not be ourselves.
38:53 - David Gunderman (Guest)
When you say that, I immediately think of my pets, and they are so. Whoever they are, whatever they are, you know.
38:58 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, they're unapologetic. Well, david, you have just such a phenomenal story and, like I said, you're such a shining light. It's so inspirational to watch you, especially at a time like this, to continue to double down and really center yourself and your team and your clients and your community on those values. With that, david, we're going to move into the last part of our show, the Life and Money Show Spotlight Round. We're going to ask you three questions. We ask all our guests you ready All?
39:26 - David Gunderman (Guest)
right. I don't know what they are.
39:27 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Okay, this is the best, all right. The first question is about your life and money, so share with us one thing you're doing to live a meaningful and intentional life by design, something that you're living your best life. What's one thing that you're doing to live your best life?
39:44 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Financially or in any category.
39:46 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Any sense.
39:47 - David Gunderman (Guest)
With this moment. It's such a fraught moment. I'm stuck in it right now. It's funny. When we set up this appointment, I thought to myself oh my gosh, by the time I do this, the election will be over. And then here I am.
39:59 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, here you are.
40:02 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Here we are. Yeah, For me again, I'm having this deeply reflective moment of getting into values. I'm sorry to repeat myself, that's what's going on right now.
40:09 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
I've heard from more than one source that we are at a time of this massive rising in the collective consciousness lightning fast, faster than we've ever experienced before, and what it requires is intense polarity. Good, think about your health. You're feeling good. It's not going to motivate you to make any changes. You're like I'm good as I am, but when things start really getting rocky, that's when you make changes. So this polarity that we're experiencing right now is required in order for us to then catapult into that next level of consciousness, which is why we're seeing, in this darkness, people like yourself really doubling down and saying you know what? I'm going to pay that no mind, I'm going to focus on what I can control and I'm going to be the light for people, and I think we're already seeing so much of that, and I think we're going to see more of that.
41:07 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I think the more of us that are engaged in our lives in that way, we're just going to find this intersectionality, we're gonna find each other, and that's how it's gonna get richer and deeper and ripple out further and further and further Like we all have to just find each other and find that intersectionality with each other and create a world that we all wanna be a part of.
41:24 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Absolutely All right. Second question is about others' life and money. Share with us a life or money hack, and by hack we mean loosely a tool, a tip, a resource, a book, anything that has helped you on your journey that you think may help the listener as well.
41:43 - David Gunderman (Guest)
A hack. I don't know if this is a hack, but for me when you said book, it triggered something for me. I've joined this book club that is L-Men and I've been reading again and the thing that's really interesting to me is I found some books recently that were just completely mind expanding in terms of understanding the world and the experiences of others. And somebody who thinks of himself as being a deeply empathetic person, I've discovered some of my own limitations around the experiences of others. So I'd say one of the books that just really had a deep, life-changing impact on me is Kathy Park Minor Feelings so many of the themes of what have been in sort of this generational trauma and institutional racism, things like that, which I think I know a lot about, but there are some voices that are teaching me that like, oh, I've really just skimmed the surface of understanding what this experience can be like for others On Earth.
42:32
We're Briefly Gorgeous is a wonderful book by a Vietnamese queer author that is extraordinary in a sort of intersection of prose and poetry. I'm just getting into reading and my reading isn't taking me into investment places. It's taking me into deeper human connection.
42:50 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
Yeah, that totally tracks and that totally makes sense. Minor feelings that's on my list. I remember when you and Andrew told us about that. I know Joe's my husband is reading that now. He's had profound insights from it and so I'm excited to read it too. All right, final question is about life and money in the world. This one should be an easy one, I think, for you. What's one thing you're doing to help make the world a better place? However you interpret that question.
43:18 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I'm just staying in my lane of. I think what I've been doing has been feeling fairly meaningful to me. What's interesting to me is that as we've grown, we've had this temptation to lose ourselves in the process of scaling. But what I'm excited to do is figure out how to scale and not lose ourselves, because then we're affecting more lives, but we're doing it in the same meaningful way. We were able to do it in small ways. I feel like I've been on a meaningful journey, career-wise and money-wise, in helping others. I just want to align with people who share values, if we're going to scale this thing, that we're just doing it in an intentional way that just respects how we all got here in the first place, and I think that's how we're going to broaden our impact. I couldn't agree more.
44:07
I'm trying also to stay grounded in terms of making sure I swim, get up at five in the morning, I'm swimming three days a week. I'm doing things. I'm hiking. I went to the Grand Canyon with my daughter and we were off the grid for two weeks and I've just brought back a stone and I sit in my backyard and rub it and bring back the canyon in my mind. I'm just trying to stay very grounded in nature and this place and the wonder of the universe and all the things that we have around us and people and energy and all sorts of wonderful things. I'm just trying to not get so chaotic that I lose that, because I think it's such a wonderful vibrating force underneath us all that I often just ignore and forget is there. I'm trying to really lens out from this moment we're in and see the beauty in this place and in the people who inhabit it and hopefully that seeps into everything else we're doing place and then the people who inhabit it, and hopefully that seeps into everything else we're doing.
44:56 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
I think that's a beautiful foundation and anchor to everything that you're doing, and what a great example you're setting for your team and your clients too, that you're filling your own cup first and you're making sure that you're taking care of yourself, that you're seeing the beauty and the wonder and the curiosity and the playfulness so that you can then bring that into your team and your interactions, so that they can then spill that energy out into the community. And that's how we have impact. I used to think that impact meant changing other people. Now I'm like no, no, no. Impact starts here first, with me taking care of myself and being that most authentic version of myself. Then that spills out into everybody else.
45:35 - David Gunderman (Guest)
I love what you said about curiosity too. The more curious we are, the more we just learn. Yes 25 years into an industry and still being so curious about how to make it.
45:43 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
You're still going. Yeah, I love it. Well, david, your energy is infectious and your story is so inspirational. I know that especially people here in the Bay Area, but even people who are all over the country and all over the world listening, may want to learn a little bit more about you and get in touch with you or your team. So tell us, if they did want to follow up, what's the best place that they can go.
46:06 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Oh, please reach out. If that's true, our business is thegundermangroupcom thegundermangroupcom. You can also follow us on social media Instagram, facebook, at ampersand the Gunderman group. My phone numbers and emails are in all those places.
46:23 - Annie Dickerson (Host)
So I would love to hear from you, amazing David Gunderman, real estate agent, investor and co-founder of the Gunderman group. David, this has been such a joy. Thank you so much for being here with us and our listeners joy. Thank you so much for being here with us and our listeners today.
46:36 - David Gunderman (Guest)
Thank you.