Seth: Hey everybody, how's it going? This is Seth Williams and you're listening to the REtipster podcast. Today I finally get to talk with a guy that I've been paying attention to on Facebook for the past couple of years. His name is Matt Peterson.

Why have I been paying attention to Matt? Because he's clearly somebody who has found his stride as a land investor and he seems to be doing really well in the business. From what I understand of his story, I don't actually know a ton about him. I just know he's doing pretty well and there's a lot we can learn from him.

But from what I know, he started as a part-time land investor back in July of 2016. And in his first year, he bought 72 properties and sold 54 of those, half for cash and half on terms. So, he kind of has experience in both realms.

In January 2019, he pulled the plug on his corporate job in project management for a Fortune 200 company. And he decided to jump into land full time, and to date, as of May 2022, he's got two full-time employees and a few VAs as well.

The fun thing about talking to people like Matt is that whenever we have conversations like this, it's a really cool reminder of how everybody is a teacher. We haven't even gotten into the details of his business yet, but I already know this guy has a lot of unique experiences and he knows things that I don't know and that a lot of you probably don't know either.

So, I'm just really curious to learn how he's gotten to where he is. And hopefully we will walk away with some good “aha’s” from this. So Matt, how are you doing? How's it going?

Matt Peterson: Good, Seth. Thanks for having me. I’m happy to be here.

Seth: Awesome. Yeah. I’m glad to have you.

Matt Peterson: First podcast ever.

Seth: It's a good place to start, right?

Matt Peterson: Oh yeah, for sure. I love all the content you put out and read it and get all your newsletters every day and enjoy them. So, I'm glad we could make some time for this.

Seth: Cool. So, you're not somebody who just marks those as spam and moves them to your trash can.

Matt Peterson: Nope. I look at them. I look at them.

Seth: Awesome. Thank you. I appreciate that.

Matt Peterson: It's good reading material.

Seth: Yeah. So why don't we just start from way back when. How did you first learn about land investing and what made you decide that there was something here and that you wanted to give it a shot?

Matt Peterson: Yeah. My story is the same as a lot of people, it started back in 2016. There were not a lot, I guess, but anyone that's still around and kind of started where there were a lot less of us and it was pretty easy. I'll share some numbers with you here soon, but I got a lot more acceptances back then for offers than I did now.

And how I got into it, basically, I heard Mark Podolsky on a podcast. It was The Side Hustle Show podcast. And I was commuting four hours total for work every day and working like a 12-hour shift on a construction project site as a project manager in construction and just listening to podcasts back and forth, back and forth every single day and heard that. And I was like, “Man, that could be fun.” I'm outdoors. I like hunting, hiking, fishing. I'm like, “Maybe I could flip land. We should look into this.”

So, I started looking into it, ended up buying his course, and then didn't love it. And so, I went to a different course, bought that. And then, that worked really well. So that was July, 2016 I bought the first course. August, 2016, I bought the second course. And my first mailer went out September 24th of 2016. 958 blind offers to the middle of nowhere, an hour west of Lubbock. So, most people call it West Texas, but way up in the panhandle. And from that 958 blind offers, I bought 30 properties.

Seth: 30 properties from that many blind offers?

Matt Peterson: Yep.

Seth: Holy cow, man. That is sort of different than today, isn't it?

Matt Peterson: It was a really successful campaign. And my whole idea at the time was I didn't want to compete with anyone else that I was seeing. So, I literally chose a county where there were no properties for sale, not a single one. I just sent it and it happened to hit. And I did really well in that first county. So, that was lucky.

Seth: Did you pick that county specifically because there was nobody else there or was there some other criteria you used to select that place?

Matt Peterson: Man, I was trying to look back and think about that. I can't really remember, but I remember looking for somewhere where there were no properties for sale. I can tell you what it was, Cochran County in Texas. I don't hit that anymore.

Seth: So, we can all flood that place now.

Matt Peterson: There you go. Yeah. I mean, I wouldn't really recommend it. I still have some properties there that I sold on terms long ago and I get a lot of letters for that. So, some cheap land.

Seth: Yeah.

Matt Peterson: What I ended up learning about that, and I tried to look this up too, but I couldn't find it before we started this. There was this one area in that county that got split up by somebody and it was being sold to… And don't quote me if this is incorrect, but this what I remember from back then because somebody mentioned something about it.
One of my sellers said they bought it so that they could get in-state tuition at the University of Texas at Austin. And I Googled it and looked it up and sure enough, if I remember correctly, the University of Texas at Austin did this thing where if you were a landowner in Texas, you got in-state tuition, then I Googled that a few minutes ago to make sure I was right. And there were a bunch of articles on it.

So, somebody just bought a big chunk of land, cut it up. There are easements in there. The roads were never bladed in. Some of them were, but not most. And there happened to be a bunch of properties there that people got out of college and then they wanted to sell. So, I just happened to hit them at the right time.

Seth: In-state, that basically just means it's a lower tuition because you're an in-state property owner?

Matt Peterson: Cheaper, correct.

Seth: Cheaper. Gotcha.

Matt Peterson: Instead of out-of-state tuition.

Seth: Interesting.

Matt Peterson: Yes.

Seth: It's interesting to figure out those little pieces of knowledge, because sometimes that can give you a competitive edge in terms of why to go to a certain place or how to market the thing. And I've heard similar stuff from other people in the past. There were certain foreigners or something like that, where there's some benefit they get, if they own land in the U.S. versus not. I'm not even getting good at it because I don't even understand all the details. But there's stuff like that where it kind of gives you a new angle you can work at.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. It gives you new buyers, honestly.

Seth: Yeah.

Matt Peterson: I've bought properties from people overseas and I think I've only sold one to somebody in a different country. And they were in Canada.

Seth: Yeah. Cool. So, when you were getting started, where did you get your lists from? What were your first few steps?

Matt Peterson: I started with RealQuest and now I use DataTree. I think DataTree has a lot more features and functions and you can sort and whittle it down a lot better over a group for what I do now. So, RealQuest is still good. And for a while there, I used both of them. I plugged both data points into each of these and then saw what the results were. Because some counties are better than others in DataTree and some were better than others in RealQuest.

Seth: Yeah. It’s good to have a couple of different sources. You can kind of cross-check them back and forth. I don't think there really is a data service that nails everything perfectly. Sometimes you're going to see gaps or holes or just quirks about how one works. So, it's nice to have a backup, if you can justify the expense.

Matt Peterson: You just have to analyze every single time you pull data. And that's what I do all by myself still. So, it's not quick. I probably do it in like 30 minutes or so just to make sure I have exactly what I'm wanting.

Seth: Yeah. So, buying, what was it? 72 properties your first year. That's a lot for a first year. What kind of volume are you doing today? Is it similar or higher than that?

Matt Peterson: It's honestly a little lower than that because I'm doing bigger properties. But for example, the first two properties I bought were one-acre properties and the guy, I hit him with one mailer and he ended up having two properties and I bought them for $250 each and then I sold them basically overnight for $1,000. So, $500 and I sold them for $1,000. And that worked really well. It scared me to death to do that. I was like, “What am I doing? What's a deed?” And since then, we've just been growing and growing and growing and growing. And last Thursday, I closed the biggest acquisition money-wise to date. It's not a huge property. It's only 5.8 acres and I got it for about $71,000.

Seth: Sweet. What do you think it's going to sell for?

Matt Peterson: It'll be listed really soon as is. It's in the middle of a small town in Texas and it's like one of the only undeveloped properties in that town and there are neighborhoods on every side. So, we're going to list it as is, but we're going to market it as if it had the potential to be a neighborhood or something. And after we get it listed, we're going to look into all the subdivision rules. We've already looked at them, but it's going to take a while to plot it out and get all the subdivision rules.

So, either a developer wants to come in and buy it as is, knowing it has the potential to do that, or cutting it up into like a neighborhood and then selling off all the little lots. But it's right along the business highway in the town. The strip along the business highway is commercial and then everything behind it is residential. So, it's a neat little property.

Seth: Do you think you're going to double your money on that? Any idea?

Matt Peterson: There are not tons of comps that have sold, but there are listed comps right now that are put at… ours would be $350,000 easy as it is. But if we cut it up, it'll get a lot more than that just because it's individual residential lots.

Seth: Have you done that a lot? Do you subdivide stuff?

Matt Peterson: I've subdivided in the past. I've never done it where we had to plot it out and get it approved with the city. It's always been just subdividing based on the legal description. And then I get new APNs with the county. Mainly Texas stuff. It's easier to do that in the middle of nowhere in Texas.

Seth: Yeah, totally. Yeah. I know. Sometimes I hear, “Yeah, just subdivide it.” It’s like, “Well, you got to know how it works in that area.” Is this a rubber stamp-easy thing or is it years of trying to get approvals and all this stuff?

Matt Peterson: Yeah, in Texas it's pretty easy in most parts. Well, unless you get into a city. Generally speaking, if you keep anything over 10 acres, you don't have to plant it out and get approvals. Like the last subdivision I did, it was 166 acres and I cut up into eight 20-ish acre properties and that increased the values substantially, very large. So, it's definitely worth doing if you can figure it out. Once you do it once somewhere, you know how to do it from then on.

Seth: Yeah, totally. A few things come to mind. So, you got two employees. What are they doing for you exactly? What roles do they serve and what kind of work is left on your plate versus their plate?

Matt Peterson: It is kind of two employees, but I had my first hire full time in September of 2020. And then the second one is my brother. He ended up wanting to quit his job too and ended up coming on with me last March-ish. So, he kind of does the same stuff that I do. But then the lady that works with me, she answers all the phones for both acquisitions and sales, responds to all the emails, all the messages we get. All the acquisition calls come into her and then she fills out a spreadsheet.

And then I go through them and look at what do we want to move forward with, what do we not want to move forward with? And I flag them for her to take action on. And now we close everything through the title. I don't do any self-closing anymore. It's all going through title companies. It's just a standard purchase agreement, one-page purchase agreement we have that she fills out, sends it to someone on DocuSign and then it comes to me on DocuSign and then off to the title company.

And then once we get that, we're still selling in-house as well. So, I haven't broken into using realtors or brokers much at all yet. The first two I've had with a realtor or broker are when I sent it to them three months ago. And I’m not having a great experience, let’s put it that way.

Seth: Yeah, definitely. That happens sometimes. I know there are different ways you can sort of seek out those land-specialized agents and that kind of stuff. But even then, it's kind of like hiring people. You can do your best trying to find good qualified people, but you don't really know until you just jump in and see what they can do. And sometimes they can't do a whole lot.

Matt Peterson: I would love to find some good land agents. I would definitely do it, but I sent two properties to this broker and I couldn't find the listing anywhere. I'd look on their website and dig and dig and dig. And I had it professionally drone and gave them the drone footage and they had like one fake photo of it. And last week, I gave them a call and told them we need to up this game a little bit.

Seth: Yeah. Awesome. So, it sounds like you're still figuring out the land agent thing if that ever happens. So, for the most part, in terms of selling stuff, it's all handled in-house, right? Either with you or the lady that works for you.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. It's all in-house. I've got VAs that will edit the photos. And if you look at any of our listings, we've little descriptions on the photos and then our logo. So, the VAs will do that. But other than that, it's all in-house. We've got templates and stuff where a lot of it is copy and paste, but now we're trying to make our listings.

When I first started this, my listings were pretty basic and now I try and do a lot more to where a lot of stuff is hyperlinked. I'm giving documents that you can click on and download. And it's pretty in-depth. It takes quite a while to list everything. But I think it reduces the number of questions we get. Because we've gotten a lot of feedback from people saying, “Hey, your listings are great.” Whenever I see a for sale sign and it doesn't have a price on it, I'm like, “Why? Why would we want to do that?” So, we put everything on there that we can, and it helps reduce the call volume on the sales side.

Seth: What listing websites are you finding get the most traction for you? Is it kind of very depending on the market or is there like a standby where it's like, “Yes, it's always got to go here, this is where most of the sales come from?” Is there such a thing? How does that work for you?

Matt Peterson: We use land.com for pretty much everything and got a signature membership and can do 30 properties on there. But I've got eight to list this week. So, we've got something like 50 properties in inventory right now.

And so, we kind of rotate them through that 30-listing category, and put it everywhere else, Facebook Marketplace. We started using Land Listing. But when I look at where the traffic comes from to our website, Land Listings was at the bottom still. They're definitely growing, but I guess they are not as popular as land.com still or Lands of America or Land Watch since they own all of those. I think most qualified buyers come from Lands of America and Land Watch or Land and Farm.

Seth: That's great to know. It sounds like you've got your stuff figured out in terms of putting together good listings. When it comes to photos and that kind of thing, what's your best system for that? Are you just calling up or doing Craigslist postings for local photographers or finding them somewhere else? What's your best solution? I know sometimes that's a hassle to get reliable people who can actually do a good job.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. A lot of times in all the land groups now like yours and all the other ones on Facebook, you can just search for the keyword, like whatever state or county you're looking for and put a drone in there also and find them that way. Drones.io posts a lot of things there. But generally, if it's a new area, I usually use drones.io if I can't find anyone online that looks like they actually do land stuff in that area or land photography in that area. And once I get a good one in an area, then I keep going back to them because they know what I want, I know what they can do. And it's easier.

Seth: When it comes to the drone photography thing, how critical is it to get drone images from the air versus just relying on somebody taking a picture from their phone on the ground? Does it make a huge difference? And do you get both or is it just drone pictures?

Matt Peterson: 90% of our buyers comment on, they love the drone footage and they want it after they purchase a property so they can have all of it. And for all of our droning, I created a ride-up over the years. It's changed and I added two, but it's basically, “Hey, here's everything I want. I want it at ground level. I want it at 100 feet. I want it at 200 feet or whatever is under the legal limit. And then I want directions and all this. I want to loop around the property. I want to fly through the property.” It's extensive, but it gives us everything we need.

Seth: Do you get video too or just pictures?

Matt Peterson: Yes. Both. Because with the videos, I can go through it and pause it and then take snips myself. So, it gives me a lot more options for angles and stuff.

Seth: Yeah. That's the cool thing about them. Do you have a drone, by any chance?

Matt Peterson: Oh yeah. I've got a couple of them.

Seth: Yeah, I do too. It's kind of funny. The novelty of having pictures from the sky like that, it's hard to get bad pictures. You sort of point in which way, and as long as your property is in the frame, it just looks cool. It's just like, “Oh cool.” It looks different than what you'd normally see with just some cheap-looking images that somebody shot from their phone.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. It's awesome. It's great technology.

Seth: Yeah. How expensive is it to hire the typical drone photographer for your properties?

Matt Peterson: I try to pile them up so that they can hit a bunch at a time. And I always want more than five if I can wait and get enough acceptances in. But it varies anywhere from probably $250 to $350 per property. But that's like rural stuff. It gets out there and they got to travel.
And some of the guys will even ask if it's okay to camp on the properties because they don't want to drive a couple hours back to the nearest town to get in a hotel. And so, it's best to pile them up for us at least. We mail certain areas a lot. So, we send out a lot of mail and we get a lot of acceptances in and can usually get a good pile for a photographer to go hit.

Seth: Does it end up being cheaper when you do it like that?

Matt Peterson: I've never really asked for that much of a discount because I know I'm buying all these. So, anything I send them to, I'm pretty sure I'm going to buy unless there's something crazy on the property, which has never happened.

Seth: And I guess maybe that's another question. How do you know you're going to do it? Is it because you have a signed purchase agreement or you've already closed down on it? Or at what point are you like, “Yes, it's a go, spend $300?”

Matt Peterson: It's usually always in title at some point. And I'll have like a back out exception in our purchase agreement to the sellers. “Hey, by signing this, you agree to let us go see the property and if there's anything like waste or whatever on the property, squatters, we can back out.” And they agree to that. I've never had it happen, knock on wood. I hope that never happens. We'll see. Probably it will, eventually.

Seth: What role does seller financing plan in your business these days? Are you actively trying to do them that way or you just keep people the option? What are your thoughts on that?

Matt Peterson: It was really big for a few years there. And probably the first three to four years I was in, business seller financing was very popular. I don't know the exact splits, but probably 75% to 80% of our sales were going to seller financing and we still have 40-ish notes. But now that we've gone into more expensive properties and more higher- priced properties, people tend to buy them for cash. It's just a different clientele and different audience that you're pitching properties to.

Seth: How expensive is that? At which point they start becoming more cash than seller financing? Is it like over $100,000 or something?

Matt Peterson: I think we've sold like two on financing this year. I think that at a sales price of probably $25,000 - $30,000 and over it becomes substantially less popular to do.

Seth: Yeah. Is that because they're going to buy it and build a house on it or they're just super wealthy people? I don't know, what would be the reason? Do you have any sense as to what's going on there?

Matt Peterson: I'm not sure. The higher price point properties, it's probably just people… The term in our industry is basketball properties, right? That was going bone to the other lane flippers. I think it's just more of a clientele base probably for different areas. We're working in different areas now too. So that's not the dessert squares that are super cheap, that you can become a landowner very easily for a hundred bucks a month or whatever you want to do.

Seth: Yeah. So, what do you have going for a CRM system? How do you manage all this activity? Is there anything super fancy you got going on?

Matt Peterson: I do not have the CRM at all. I still use Excel for everything. We use Microsoft OneDrive for our shared folders, but everything's in Excel. It works. I had a call with one of the people that sets up CRMs for a bunch of the land flippers the other day. And I haven't pulled the trigger on it yet. I probably will at some point, but I mean, honestly, we're usually doing like 50 to 60 properties a year at this point. And Excel's not that hard. I go through it and I say, yes, yes, no, no, yes, yes, no, no. And send the contracts to title and close them. So, it could be better. There are always ways to improve, but we're working on Excel still. What do you use?

Seth: Yeah, I'm the same way, honestly. I think it's just because I'm not doing crazy volume. So, the need just isn't there. Yeah, it's kind of like you said. It could be better. It's not like it's perfect or anything, but I get it. I don't need training to figure out how to use Excel. It's just there. I know the formulas. I know how to make different spreadsheets talk to each other and all this stuff. And it's just easy from a training standpoint.

There are CRM systems where it literally takes weeks just to figure out how to use the thing. And if you're doing like 50 deals a month or something, I get it. It can totally make sense. And if you've got like a bunch of different team members involved, I totally think there's a time and a place for that.

And there's also different CRM systems that aren't even really CRM. Like they might handle one stage of the process, but not everything from start to finish. So, I don't know that there's like one correct answer for everybody, but for the way my business currently works, I just don't really need it, but I can see how some folks would. So, it kind of sounds like you're almost on the line. It probably works, but maybe…

Matt Peterson: Because I know you can make this business explode very quickly if you want to. For me personally, I don't know if I want that large of a business. Do I want to handle all that? I'm very comfortable with where I'm at, what I want to do. And like you said, for like 50 deals a month, instead of doing that volume, can I just go up in price point and do five deals a month for much, much, much more expensive properties or can I buy five subdivided deals and cut them up into whatever every month. Or even every year you do five a year and do very well still. And there are guys doing that in this game. Most of them are silent though. You don't know a lot of the names unless…

Seth: Yeah, that's very true. Yeah. I talk to people all the time who are huge, way bigger than anything you ever really hear about in Facebook groups and that kind of thing. But like you said, they don't want to talk about it or they're not really looking for fame or notoriety or being known. It's just like, “Hey, I got my thing. It's working really well. I'm going to keep it to myself.”

Matt Peterson: Yes. I love seeing those people or hearing about them.

Seth: Yeah, I do too. It's cool just to know a lot of stuff is possible and sometimes I see the assumption that people have, almost sort of like your situation. It's like, why don't you just leverage this to the full tilt and start making millions a year? Like, how come? What are you waiting for? But some people don't want that. Maybe it's about enjoyment. Maybe it's about being able to manage your life. Maybe you have enough. It's not like it's the wrong thing to not go that path that everybody assumes you're supposed to take.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. It's all about the lifestyle and if you want that.

Seth: Yeah, exactly. Do you have an idea, I don’t know, maybe it's too soon, but is there a CRM system you're looking at that you think might be a good fit for your size business?

Matt Peterson: Honestly, I have one call with the girl that does it and that's all I've gotten to. So, I'll look at them at some point. But it's not required, right? It's not a necessity for my business to have that. So, it's kind of like, “Okay. If this is going to actually make myself and the people that work with me happier and make our lives easier, then yes, we'll do it. But if not, then why would I do it?” So, I'm still trying to figure them out, but we'll see. We'll see what happens.

Seth: Yeah, man. Yeah. If you can, keep me posted on what ends up working for you, if anything.

Matt Peterson: Will do.

Seth: When you think back on all the deals you've done to date, are there any examples that stand out as remarkably cool deals either because they're big or their circumstances were interesting or the profit margin was exciting? Anything like that coming to mind?

Matt Peterson: Yeah. Lots of them. There's a lot of deals that have been really cool, but I've got some very odd ones. I bought a property, and this just happened. I bought a property in the middle of a national forest in New Mexico and had a cabin on it. It's connected to another property.
So, we bought the one that has a cabin on it. The other property has a better cabin on it and they wanted to sell also, but then they got sick and went away for a while. We couldn't get a hold of them. These are only two properties in the middle of this national forest. I mean, they are prime. And I even had a local broker go out there. My brother and I went out there. The local broker evaluated them for us and everything. And I can't even make this up. A few weeks ago, a wildfire went through the area, completely burning down everything.

Seth: Oh, no.

Matt Peterson: So, I don't know what we're going to do with that now, but it's still a really cool property. Like a creek runs through it. It'll probably be a long-term hold property, I will say, until the forest grows back. That was unfortunate, but we'll see.

Seth: Do you know how many years it would take for the forest to grow back the way it was? Are we talking like 20 years or something?

Matt Peterson: I'm not sure. I know that when I was in college, man, I think that was 2008-ish. A fire went through Bastrop, Texas. I grew up in Austin. So, it was between Austin where I went to college, kind of. I'm trying to remember what it looked like the last time I drove there. And I think there are trees growing back, but it definitely doesn't look the same. I'm not sure. But property taxes are minimal, so it's a cool property. I know it'll be cool at some point. I've got a few different ideas to see what happens on it, but that was an unfortunate one.

Seth: Yeah. It begs the question though. How do you quantify the value of the dirt versus the trees that are on it or the view? There are these different intangible things that I don't really know how… Like it's definitely worth something. You can't deny that, but how do you know that and really, accurately estimate it? I don’t know, it’ll be interesting to see other properties in the area, if the values plummet because of that, although it sounds like there are probably not many comps around there, right?

Matt Peterson: No. I had to send a local broker out there. I had no idea what it was worth. So, we've got a few different things working at the forest service. It's like two miles off a county road and it is through some rough stuff. It's through the national forest. So, the forest service was supposed to be issuing us an official legal easement to use that road and they gave us the codes for all the gates already.

And then we've also applied for elk tags for that property. We should be hearing about those in June. So, coming up here in a few weeks and if we get those, we might be able to work some other angles like local hunting guides. I don't know, I'm not sure on all the legalities of hunting in New Mexico, but this property had all… Well, I guess it had, since it burned down. But it had all the qualifications to be able to apply for the permit. And then I think it's like a drawing system. So, we had to wait for the drawing to happen and that was supposed to happen mid-May. We were supposed to hear by mid-June whether we get an elk tag or not. So, I don't know what the fire does to that though.

Seth: Yeah. So, elk tag. What is an elk tag?

Matt Peterson: It's just for hunting. It's a hunting license basically, but you need a state-issued tag in order to hunt the elk.

Seth: Gotcha.

Matt Peterson: I've never done it in New Mexico. So, I'm not sure of the exact laws. I read through them and applied, but I'm not sure if we'll get it yet or not.

Seth: You mentioned earlier that you sent out a lot of mail. So, what is a lot of mail? How much mail do you send out?

Matt Peterson: Last year, 2021, I sent out 108,000 blind offers and we bought 64 properties from that.

Seth: Cool. And that was targeting higher-end, larger, more valuable properties?

Matt Peterson: Mostly, but there are still a few areas that I've just been working for so long that I'll hit those areas like once a year still and pick up a couple properties here and there. Or just areas that I like to go to, or I often go to myself and it's still fun for me to flip them there. But there were a lot more acceptances than that. I don't track the whole response rate and acceptance rate, but our log is stacked full of acceptances still. And we just take the best of the best ones. There's always a honey pot to go back to and dig into if we need to.

Seth: Yeah. But it sounds like the acceptance rate has clearly gone down from what it was when you started. When you sent out less than a thousand, you got 30 deals out of that.

Matt Peterson: Oh yeah.

Seth: Kind of a different world. Would you say those were different caliber properties though, when you started versus what you're going after now?

Matt Peterson: Yeah. Especially at the very beginning, where I was buying them for $100 to $250 for an acre in the middle of nowhere, West Texas. And now, the price point is much higher for the acquisition. So yeah, it's a higher caliber property for sure.

Seth: Yeah. I've heard a similar sentiment from other people who are similar to you and who are making some pretty good money from the land business. They're not obsessing over response rates. It's just blasting out a ton of mail and something's going to happen. And it does. But they're not paralyzed by, “Oh no, the percentages change. Everything's broken and I can't do this anymore.” They are like, “Just keep the wheels going and it'll keep happening.”

Matt Peterson: Yeah. I've never tracked that because I'm like, “That's a pain.” That's not going to work for me. And instead, I'll keep X amount of acquisition dollars in the pipeline at all times. It's a couple hundred thousand dollars in the pipeline at all times, just so we know, yes, there are properties coming up, that'll close every month for us. And that's a lot easier than tracking the acceptance rates and all that. It's like, “Okay, we know we're good, we'll be alright if we keep this much coming in.”

Seth: That makes me think of a good question that I think a lot of full-time land investors and even people who want to do this have. A question that a lot of us kind of struggle with is how do you decide how much money to take out of your business to live on or buy a car, do whatever you want to do versus saving all of it and plow it back into your business. Is there some ratio you're paying attention to? Because you really could indefinitely do that, never take money out, because you can always justify needing more cash to buy more properties. But where do you draw the line?

Matt Peterson: I didn't pay myself anything until I started in Q4 of last year. So, I started paying myself like six months ago. I rolled everything back into the business. Every single penny, I just rolled it back into the business so that I could keep growing and growing and growing and it has worked really well.

And now usually, I don't have a set payment for myself. I take enough to live off of obviously, but then anytime we have a big cash sale or something like that, I'll take X percent off that. That varies based on my personal expenses. Do I have something coming up I need money for? Do I not? If I have enough to live on for whatever I'm doing at that moment in time, then I'll just roll it back into the business. I think it compounds a lot quicker because I don't take loans. I finance all the stuff myself. So, it's a lot easier to grow if I have more money in the business.

Seth: Absolutely. But you went full-time in 2019, right? So how were you getting money from then until six months ago when you started paying yourself?

Matt Peterson: I had a bunch of savings myself and I've got a rental house that I rent out that gives me good income every month.

Seth: Gotcha.

Matt Peterson: I have a few different things going.

Seth: Yeah. Maybe we can segue into that topic. So, when did you decide, “Okay, I can quit my job, I can do this full-time?” What did it take for you to be comfortable doing that?

Matt Peterson: Honestly, at the first end of 2016, I was very new, but I proved the concept. And then, at the end of 2017, we'll say, was the first full year that I was actually mailing a lot. It was like a thousand a month. There weren't very many. I had made nearly three times what I was getting paid at my corporate job. So, I was ready to bounce that time. That was the end of 2017, but I just wanted to keep doing it on the side for a while and had some good things going at the corporate job and could do land nights and weekends and held out two more years. And then, the concept was really proven. At that point, that was three years in. So, it was a no-brainer at that point. I was costing myself money to not be full-time.

Seth: Yeah. Because I did a very similar thing where I could have quit a lot sooner than I did. But for me anyway, I can't speak for you, but for me, I think I was scared. What if this stop working? Or what if there's a dry spell or what if something goes wrong? And even though the job was making a lot less, for some weird reason, it felt more secure when it was honestly costing me a lot. It was a huge bottleneck keeping me from doing a lot of stuff that I could have made a lot more money from. It just took me forever to finally get comfortable enough to make the leap. Was that a similar thing for you where it was like a security blanket or was there another reason like benefits or trying to save up more cash before you want to pull the plug or something like that?

Matt Peterson: Yeah. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to take this full-time, but I didn't want to do it too soon. And yeah, since I was reinvesting everything into the business and continued to do that for a while, I wanted to save up the cash to live on for a while before I'd have to start paying myself. I guess I've never been scared of the downtime, if this ever stops working, because it's always worked. Everything sells, everything always sells. And if not, you can do something else with it. Like kind of a lot of your podcasts and stuff talked about Airbnbs and nightly rentals and tip camp. I mean, you could do so many things with these properties. Storage units, billboards, whatever.

So, I think if something is not selling, you're just not looking at it from the correct way, I guess, if that makes sense. Instead of just trying to sell the land, what else can you do for it? Or, if you're not offering seller financing, offer it because that opens up your buyer pool to a lot more people.

Seth: Yeah. Have you had any properties that didn't pan out well, like “Oh, I shouldn't have bought that one?” Or you either lost money or broke even? Or have you always done really well on everything?

Matt Peterson: We haven't lost money on any property. We've had a lot of weird situations. I just closed an odd one in New Mexico, another one in New Mexico, that sold on terms. The guy was paying for a long time, ended up moving his whole family to the property and travel trailers or something. And then he vanished. The guy owning the property next to it, calls us out of the blue and says he's been paying those payments to us the whole time. And I'm like, “Okay, do you have proof?” And he goes, “No, but they already deeded the property to me.” And I'm like, “I hold a lien on the property. So, you need to pay me off still.”

Seth: Yeah.

Matt Peterson: And it got a little hairy there and I ended up having to hire an attorney to deal with his attorney, we'll say, but we still came out on top. It just took a while. We still made good money on that. So, it was just a pain.

Seth: Do you like doing this seller financing thing or is there any part of it where you're like, “Oh, I hate this?” I kind of got frustrated with it, honestly, my first couple years of doing it just with people flaking out on me. You're really developing a relationship with these people. It's not a one-and-done thing. It's like, you're going to know them for years until they pay you off. And it gets even more annoying when they don't do what they say they're going to do. So, has it ever been a problem or an annoyance to you or you are totally content and happy to deal with that?

Matt Peterson: With a lot of the cheaper properties, there were a lot of annoyances. But now we're going after more expensive properties, and seller financing them, I've had fewer and fewer problems. So far, everyone that's defaulted or something, we've been able to work out a deal like for COVID. COVID hits and so many people lose their jobs and people stop paying. So, I reached out to them and I changed their terms. Many, many, many of my customers were asking what can you afford to pay me monthly? We'll change it for a while, just so we can keep going. And then we can revisit this again when you get another job or whenever this weird pandemic thing we are going through is over. I’ve never not been able to work anything out with people. I love the cash deals, but terms deals, honestly, since they're automatic, most of the time, I'd probably say 85% of the time, they're fine for us.

Seth: How are you collecting payments and managing all that stuff?

Matt Peterson: GeekPay.

Seth: Using Actum or Stripe or taking credit card payments or ACH? What's working for you?

Matt Peterson: We have Actum and Stripe. The monthly payments are Actum-like deposits, and down payments are Stripe.

Seth: Have you found that one of the others is more reliable in terms of people paying? I've heard this thing, and I can see some rationale behind it that using ACH payment is more reliable, even more reliable than having multiple sources of credit card payment because it's their actual bank account. Like it's easier to just cancel a credit card and be done. But when you got their bank account, that's everything. Have you seen any trends with that or not really?

Matt Peterson: We only take the monthly payments with ACHs, so I'm not sure about that.

Seth: Yeah. Do you know what your default rate is or anything? How often do people miss payments or stop paying?

Matt Peterson: During COVID it got weird there for a little bit, but if we take that year out, it's probably 15% default rate-ish in that area.

Seth: It’s not too bad.

Matt Peterson: Yeah, it's not too bad, but I think a lot of it is like contacting the people that are having problems, paying and saying, “Hey, I get it. You're at a hard point in your life, whatever's happening,” and saying, “What can you afford?” and then just change our terms. And that's a lot easier. If we're getting our money back very quickly, typically on terms deals, it's a lot easier than having to go through the default process. Because I don't use land contracts anymore. I close like a banquet on your house. So, everything is recorded.

Seth: Like a mortgage?

Matt Peterson: Yes.

Seth: Yeah. So, do you think you want to do land flipping indefinitely or is there some destination that you're headed towards? Do you want to evolve into a different type of real estate or business? What's your 5- and 10-year plan if you have one?

Matt Peterson: Keep growing this, but I don't know how much bigger it needs to get at this point. I’m pretty comfortable. My whole team is very comfortable. We could 10X this pretty quickly, honestly, but I don't really know if we need to, which is moving into bigger property types and more things that we're going to either do subdivisions on or build houses on or put storage units on. Just creating different types of income. Like what you said earlier, if land ever doesn't work and you've got a couple hundred storage units, people always need the store stuff. So, just having different streams of income.

Now I'm looking at every property that we acquire in a different light of not just flipping the land, but saying, “Hey, okay, what else could this be used for? And does this make sense?” If it makes sense, I haven't pulled the trigger on it, but I personally hold a bunch of our properties that I know other things could go on. I just haven't worked on those projects yet. Like Airbnbs in certain areas are huge. And I know that I can put cabins on properties and rent them out very easily, and make a lot of money through Airbnbs. That can be an option in the future, but I haven't done that yet.

Seth: I know that's one of those things where it's like, I don't doubt you. I'm sure that's correct. But it's also like a whole other business you got to get into. It's like, where are you going to find the time to do that plus land? It's not easy.

Matt Peterson: I did the campsite rentals. I still do some campsite rentals, but it is a lot of work just dealing with the people because these are rural properties. They're in the middle of nowhere, and it is a lot of work for not as much return on investment.

Seth: Are you referring to the Hipcamp type thing? Is that what you mean?

Matt Peterson: I've got them on Airbnb, but yeah, it's Hipcamp basically. It's the same concept. It's just a campsite on Airbnb.

Seth: Let's talk about that. What are the hassles? Do people trash your property or something or make too much noise?

Matt Peterson: No. It's just so rural and there's no cell service out there. They don't look at all my maps and download them offline. They are going to have problems getting there and people have to drive an hour and a half back to the nearest town to call me. It's kind of a pain. I do it on a bunch of properties that I want to keep myself just so that there is some sort of income coming in, but it's on as little work.

Seth: So maybe the takeaway from that, unless there's some other issue is to make sure you buy properties with cell service. Would that maybe solve most of your problems, do you think?

Matt Peterson: That would solve a lot of them. Yeah. If I could just give them a pin and they could put it on Apple Maps or Google Maps and drive to it, but when you don't have cell service, not many people can find things.

Seth: That's kind of the crux of the issue because once it is within cell range, it's probably a more populated area and you probably can't camp there anymore. So, you have to find that sweet spot where you can do that and there's cell service. I'm curious how much do those make per night? And how big are these properties?

Matt Peterson: I've only got really big properties anywhere from 40 acres to, I think the biggest one is like 89 acres or something like that. I don't do it for much. It's like $25. Airbnb's got this thing where it fluctuates itself based on demand. And it's not much, it's very hands-off for me at this point just because I don't focus on it. But when I was trying it, it was a pain just because of the no cell service, honestly.

Seth: Yeah. Interesting. I've talked to one other person, it’s not a huge operation for him, but he's had some success at that, but his properties were smaller. They were within cell phone range. Just kind of a different animal than what you're talking about, but I'm sure there's a way to make that work in an efficient way. It's just kind of finding that right blend of attributes of the property that make sense for it.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. And that's devoting time to a different industry other than just land.

Seth: Yeah. You got to pick your battles.

Matt Peterson: How much do I really want to work?

Seth: Yeah. I totally hear you. For somebody like you who's been in this for quite a while now, I'm sure you probably get into this business with certain assumptions or a certain understanding of how it was supposed to work. Maybe you heard a pitch from somewhere about something about, “Yeah, this is what the land business is like.”

What were some of the big lessons you learned in the first year or really throughout your career so far where it's like, people go into it thinking it's going to be like this, but that's wrong, it's actually like this? Does anything jump out to you when I say that of inappropriate expectations of what it is, this is what you should expect?

Matt Peterson: Yeah. The first year it was hard for me because I was commuting four hours a day and working 12-hour shifts and I got completely drained. And then I just kept telling myself every night I got home, in this land thing I said just accomplish one thing. One thing towards whatever this land flipping thing is I'm trying to do. See where you're at in a year. If it works, great; if it doesn't, quit. And it clearly worked in that year.

That was the hardest thing for me, year one. Expectations that I've seen from a lot of people, they think it's just, “Oh they just buy property, sell it. Buy it, sell it.” They don't understand it's a whole business. I was talking to another land flipper yesterday. One of the guys that is doing massive things that he's starting to be heard of, but not tons yet.

And we both despise doing our books, really despise it and just all accounting in general. A lot of people don't understand that this is a business. Like it's an entire business. What you guys see from the outside looking in is we buy a property, we sell a property, we buy a property, we sell it. But there's everything that goes on with, we'll say a normal business, right? Say a brick-and-mortar business, where we should still have customers, we still have costs. We still have employees. We still have to figure out how we pay taxes and all this stuff. So, I think a lot of people just think real estate is not exactly a real business, if you will.

Seth: Yeah. I get that all the time with most of the businesses I'm involved with. People kind of think it's a joke or it's not real. And it's like, okay, whatever. I don't know what you need to see, but it doesn't matter. I know it's real.

Matt Peterson: And land flipping is so niche. Anyone that hasn't heard of it thinks it's fake and thinks you're just not doing it. I’ll share my numbers with you, but you wouldn't believe them. Then you just think I’m the liar.

Seth: No kidding. Yeah. Doing your books strikes me as one of those things that is certainly important. It’s very important to understand it. That doesn't mean you can be off the hook and just be like, “Ah, I don't have to look at it.” It's really important to get what's going on.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. I still do it all myself. But I do it quarterly now. So, I can cut profit-sharing bonuses and stuff. It's whittled down from doing it probably weekly to doing it once every quarter. And it probably takes me a day to catch everything back up.

Seth: Have you ever looked at hiring somebody for that?

Matt Peterson: I actually interviewed a few bookkeepers and they said, “I can't help you.”

Seth: Oh really? How come?

Matt Peterson: They were not interested and they're like, “Why do you need us?” So, I'm like, “All right. I guess I don't.” It was unique but I appreciated the honesty. Because how do you use yours? I can give you an example of why this one person said that. She would still have to go through everything with me to assign it to tax classifications or whatever she does. And she's like, it'd be just quicker for you to do it anyways.

Seth: Yeah. I can see that. I use QuickBooks and I know every property has its own little number that I signed to it. So, income and expense are kind of tracked based on the same parcel number. And it's actually funny because my wife does my accounting because she's a licensed CPA. I got super lucky and every single month she's like, “Come on in here. We got to talk about all this stuff. We got lots of questions for you.” So, I guess that just sort of makes sense.

Matt Peterson: And then you get into all the terms stuff too. And I got to update all those and if someone's defaulting, I have to reach out to them. I can't have a bookkeeper reach out to them.

Seth: That complicates things a little bit more too.

Matt Peterson: It's good to know how to use QuickBooks because I have QuickBooks and I don't use it. I need to start using it. Can you assign rules to pull straight from your bank accounts, right?

Seth: Yeah.

Matt Peterson: Then you can assign rules. Say everything that comes from Actum is terms deals. And it goes straight into the terms deals classification. I don't know much about it yet. I've bought it and I'm like, “Okay, I need to learn this now.”

Seth: Yeah. I'm definitely starting to speak beyond my understanding, but I think that's what you can do with the online version of QuickBooks and we have the desktop version. And so, we're not even doing that, but I think you're right. You can set it up that way.

Matt Peterson: Okay. I'll make my accountant happy or my CPA happy this year. He keeps telling me, he is like, “Another year of spreadsheets.” I'm like, sorry.

Seth: As long as it's right, I guess that's kind of the bottom line.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. But if QuickBooks can manage it more efficiently, I'm definitely interested. I had this conversation yesterday with that land flipper. So, I'll be doing that soon as well. Always ways to improve, Seth.

Seth: Oh yeah, for sure. You never really get there. It's just about trying to incrementally improve as you move along.

Matt Peterson: Yeah.

Seth: Did I hear right that you fund people's land deals too? I thought I saw something on your website. How much have you done that? Is that a common thing? Or just once in a blue moon, you will fund somebody else's deals?

Matt Peterson: It's not tons. I get a bunch of properties submitted to me that I'm not interested in or they're too small or whatever. But I've got a couple people that I've provided funding to. It's not tons of properties, it's a couple properties and then they make enough to where they do it themselves. So, if I have the cash handy, then I'm happy to fund deals, for sure.

Seth: Is there like a certain split you expect with the people that you work with? Or how do you figure out the terms of all that?

Matt Peterson: Yeah, it depends on the size of the deal, the people. Do I know them? Do I think this is going to sell quick? I think on our website it still says 50-50, but that's open to interpretation based on the deal on the people. So, if the comp shows it's selling in a week for one price and you're going to get for this price, then I'm happy to fund that for a week and get my money back.

Seth: Yeah. Because I know there's a lot of people out there, who that idea sounds appealing to them because maybe they've worked in the land business and they realize this is a lot of work. It'd be a lot easier to just fork over my money to somebody else that I trust. When you look at your experience with that, what are the great things about it and what are the things about it that are pain? It sounds like maybe you have to spend a lot of time looking at deals that aren't going to go anywhere. Maybe that's a time-waster, or I don't know. I don't want to speak for you. What are your thoughts on it?

Matt Peterson: Yeah, that's definitely the worst part. It’s just people trying to make a deal work that they should just pass on. Just go send out more mail and find the next deal. It might have access. It might not. It might be in a flood plain. It might not. I'm like, “Yeah, I'm not going to fund this because I don't think it'll sell very quickly.” But I always tell them to just get it as an option and then try that.

Seth: Yeah. I know for some people, especially if they're newer and they happen to come across what looks like a good deal. For them, a 50-50 split might be given away a lot more money than they need to, but there's a ton they can learn from somebody like you just in terms of the education standpoint and the deal wouldn't happen otherwise. So, I don’t know, it sounds like it could be a good fit depending on the deal, on the person and all this stuff.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. Especially for new people because I share a lot of my stuff with newer people and that I fund deals for.

Seth: Do you want to pursue that in a big way going forward or is it just kind of a side thing?

Matt Peterson: I threw it up on the website just so it'd be there and kind of promote it every now and then, but not really.

Seth: Gotcha.

Matt Peterson: At the end of the day, it's do I want to do that? There are some people that only do that. Or do I just want to send out more mail and then it's only my deal and then more profits for me. It's more work, but if you got the right team in place, like we do now finally then I'd rather take my own deals. I mean, it makes sense, obviously.

Seth: Yeah. It's a weird thing to try to figure out the right balance for that. Because partnering can certainly allow you to do things you'd never be able to do otherwise, but you're giving up control too. It's like how much do you want to give up versus control about yourself? I don't really know the right answer, but I also struggle with figuring out the right balance on that.

Matt Peterson: No, I definitely entertain funding deals, but it's definitely not our main business line. It's more of a shiny object syndrome thing. Like when people started deal funding a lot, like for land, like land flippers doing it. I was like, “Oh, that sounds fun. I should do that too.”

Seth: You're not going to know if it works until you try it. Right?

Matt Peterson: Yes.

Seth: If somebody is listening to this, they're watching this and they see where you're at and they're like, “Man, I really want to get to where Matt is. I envy his position in life.” What would you tell them? Or somebody who's maybe thinking about toying around with the land business, but they don't know if it's legit. They don't know if they can do it. Do any thoughts come to mind in terms of what you would say to them?

Matt Peterson: I think the quickest and best way to do it is to find whatever program it is that's proven successful. And don't just find one online, but find people. Say find someone on Facebook that's taking that program. Say like your program, for example. I haven't personally taken it, but I've heard a lot of good things. So, take that program and just do that and just follow the steps. Don't deviate from it. Don't do what I did and pick a random county in the middle of nowhere to just mail. I got very lucky on that one.

But follow the steps in a proven program. Once it proves successful to you, then deviate from that and make your own thing up. But I've taught a few friends how to do this over the years and the ones that are successful, listen to what I was doing. So, it's working for me. And the ones that weren't, they tried to do their own thing and it didn't work. They didn't understand the business yet. And so, deviating from my business plan, that's proven now was not good for them, we'll say.

Seth: Yeah. That's another interesting thing. Deviations are probably appropriate for everything at some point. Once you have a good handle on it, you know what you're doing, but you don't do it too soon because I don't know. Is there a reason to deviate or not? Do you really know what you're doing?

Matt Peterson: I think once you learn, once you know the land flipping business, then you can make it your own for sure. You'll find these little niche areas where you're just really good at flipping land in that area for whatever reason and other people aren't. I've got many barriers like that now that I get dozens of letters every week from land flippers, just blind offers, range offers, neutral letters, postcards, you name it. And for whatever reason, I can keep mailing those places and I keep getting deals.

Seth: That was actually the first time you ever got on my radar because I got one of your blind offers. Did you know that? Back in 2017, it was New Mexico and I saw Matt Peterson. I was like, I'm going to look this guy up. That was one of the first times. Because prior to that, I hadn't really started getting many offers from other people and I felt that's kind of when it started happening more and more. Anyway, you were one of the first people that I got one from.

Matt Peterson: That was in the early days. That wasn't even a company, that was just a website.

Seth: Yeah. I don't remember exactly any specifics, I just remember your name and looking you up. It's like, okay, yeah. I can see this guy here on Facebook.

Matt Peterson: Fan. Those were the early days.

Seth: Maybe we can do our final three questions here. Sometimes we don't do this if we run out of time, but we got a few minutes here. So, at the end of a lot of our interviews, we'd like to kind of ask some questions that aren't necessarily related to the land business or real estate, but just kind of figure out more about who you are and how you operate.

Matt Peterson: Okay.

Seth: Question number one. What is your biggest fear?

Matt Peterson: Oh. It used to be failing, but…

Seth: A lot of people fear that.

Matt Peterson: I don't think it's failing anymore. Man, I don't know. What is my biggest fear? Now with employees, it's honestly like if my business failed… So, I guess it might still be a sort of failure. If my business were to fail, now they have to go get other jobs and that would suck. It was very hard for me to hire my first employee. It took me a long time to pull that trigger. And after I did, it was a no-brainer, it's been phenomenal. But since she's one of my really good friends too, if my business failed, then I knew that she would've to go find another job and she's got a husband and two kids and I didn't want that to happen. And that haunted me for months, months, and months, and months. But then what I realized was man, this just exponentially improved my business.

And yeah, hiring the first person is scary. Like it really is. So, I didn't know how to do that, but once I got her on board and up and running, it's been phenomenal. So, I think my biggest fear business-wise is failing the company. I don't care if I have to go get another job, but for other people to have to go get new other jobs too, that would hurt. That'd be bad.

Seth: Yeah. It's an interesting thing. Because I have similar stuff where it's just the idea of failure. It feels like this… I don't know, final judgment. Like you are insufficient as a person. That's why this happens because you're no good and you're a loser and all this stuff. But the funny thing is, when you look at work, we can all bounce back from that. There's really nothing that can happen for the most part that would permanently demolish your ability to make an income. You can get another job or do another thing or reinvent yourself. So, I don't know. It's weird that I put so much emphasis on that when it's like, I know it's not the end. If something were to happen, I could get back from that. It would be painful, but it's not the end of the world.

Matt Peterson: Yeah.

Seth: Question number two. What are you most proud of?

Matt Peterson: What am I most proud of? I think proving to myself that I'm able to build something from scratch and then also have that support others as well. It's been a wild journey. I've always done side hustles and been an entrepreneur for a long time, but never full-time. And being able to not only survive doing something I built from scratch, I took no investments. I took no outside funding at all and I never have.

And then also have that provide for other people and other families as well, where they get to work from home. They don't have schedules. I don't check in on them every day. They don't have hours. They know their job. This is what they need to do. And other than that, they're pretty free. And being able to provide for their families in that sense has been really fulfilling, I'd say.

Seth: Yeah, I know what you mean. It really is a beautiful thing. When you think about it, you get to be free and do something you enjoy and make good money at it and you get to spread the joy and the wealth, so to speak to other people who also get to do a good job and not hate their lives. There are so many people out there who hate what they're doing. I've been there, it's a miserable place to be.

Matt Peterson: Oh, I can't stand it.

Seth: Yeah. And to know that you're able to be the source of that kind of good thing for somebody else in the world and enjoy it yourself, that's a huge, huge deal.

Matt Peterson: Yeah. I got lucky in my first hire. In my last corporate job, she was in document control and was on all my projects and doing document control for us. And so, she saw me building this company over the years and said, you can leave, but just take me with you. And so, I finally got to do that and I didn't have to hire somebody completely random or that I don't know. I already know this person and I already know how she works and it's been really good.

Seth: Yeah. That's awesome, man. So, final question. Let's pretend you just got wired a hundred million dollars to your bank account and you're not allowed to stay on your current career path. So, you can't do land anymore. You can't do real estate. You're out. But you can do anything else you want for the rest of your life. What would you do?

Matt Peterson: I can't do land. I can't do real estate. I just really love the hustle, like starting something from nothing. And I would probably help out startups in some form or fashion. Obviously capital, but I don't know what those businesses would be. I've gone to some pitch days and stuff where we'll say Shark Tank since everyone knows what Shark Tank is.
But people are pitching for money to investors basically for startups. And I think those are really fun to go watch. I wouldn't just want to give the money because I want to be involved. I think it's really fun to build companies from scratch. That's probably what I would do because that's a lot of money. So, I'd be able to not only fulfill what I like doing, but to help a lot of other people as well.

Seth: That would be exciting. I haven't heard that answer from anybody else yet, but that's a great answer. That'd be really cool to do that. So, if people want to find out more about you or get in touch with you, you don't have to share anything, but if you want to, is there a website they should go to or a way they could connect with you?

Matt Peterson: Yeah, you can go to our website savvylands.com. And then we're also on every single social media outlet as Savvy Lands USA. It’s our username on every single one.

Seth: Awesome. I'm going to try to link to all of those things in the show notes for this episode. You can find that at retipster.com/131 because this is episode 131. Matt, thanks a lot for talking with me. Actually, I've been trying to get you on this podcast for a while. I'm glad we could finally do this. I can finally learn more about you. So, thanks for coming on.

Matt Peterson: Yeah, I appreciate it. It's been fun. Thanks for having me on.