Luke: I bought it for 127,000 if I remember right and I put it up for sale for like 400,000 and a whole bunch of people showed up to want to do trucking like logistics and so I told all the trucking guys I'm selling it to the city and all the trucking guys got mad and they start out bidding you know they just outbid and outbid and they got up to like 700 grand.

Luke: Like Luke don't sell it to the city we'll pay 700 grand for this thing I just bought it for like the 127 like a couple weeks earlier, right? Like, I love these numbers. This is high traffic retail.

Seth: Hey, everybody, welcome back to the REtipster podcast. This is episode 223. Today, I'm talking with my good friend, Luke Smith.

Seth: Luke is a land investor that many of you may know well. Luke has been making waves in this industry for years, sharing viable insights through his YouTube channel and constantly pushing boundaries on what's possible in the land space.

Seth: Luke and I connected on YouTube way back in 2019. If you want to see that original conversation, you can find it in the show notes at retipster.com/223.

Seth: And since then, he has evolved his approach significantly, branching out from rural vacant land into fully entitled developments and even commercial real estate, specifically quick service restaurant deals.

Seth: And today, Luke is going to update us on his journey. He's going to share his experiences with these new types of deals. Luke always delivers actionable advice. This is going to be great.

Seth: Luke, welcome back. How's it going?

Luke: Thanks, Seth. Thanks for having me.

Seth: Yeah, absolutely.

Luke: No, that's great. I don't know how new it is. Real estate's one of the oldest trades in the world, right? I mean, it's been around forever. It's just applying data.

Luke: I think this business is about applying data to real estate and knowledge and understanding. And our technology keeps evolving. We keep getting new tools.

Luke: I watch lots of your videos and what you do, and you keep presenting awesome tools and things to understand real estate. I think one of the first videos that I really remember watching yours was Agent Pro 24-7.

Seth: Yeah, I knew you were going to say that.

Luke: Yeah, right? I don't know where they are anymore. But at the time, they were a revolutionary tool of studying land and studying data that goes with land.

Luke: You could click on a property and see who the owner of the property is. And Seth made some pretty awesome videos about that. And he shared a code to sign up with him.

Luke: At the time, it was like $30 or $40. It was hardly anything data-wise. It was really cheap. I think they changed it to $99 or something later a month.

Luke: But I signed up for that Seth deal, and I had it for years. And they grandfathered me in at his price for years and years.

Luke: And I used that tool to study real estate and since then the technology has gotten a lot better. There's a lot more tools.

Luke: Seth makes all kinds of videos about other tools that have been coming to market. You get tools that study the road frontage and the slope and who's there and how to get in touch with them in different ways over the phone or texting or mail and all the ways to contact these people and do a deal, right?

Luke: Well I started running into high traffic retail properties somewhere along the way. I was mailing for houses you know house goes here kinds of properties.

Luke: And I didn't understand it at the time, but I wanted better deals. I wanted deals that I could get bigger spreads out of. I could make more money off of.

Luke: I could spend less time and make more money, right? That's, I think, everyone's dream, whether they know it or not.

Luke: So I started going after fancier areas. When you get closer to more people, there's more people to buy your stuff and it's easier to sell it.

Luke: And that migration from the super rural tends to happen over time, I think, with different land traders and dealers. And bigger dollar properties tend to have bigger dollar spreads, right?

Luke: And so as you get close to more people and bigger dollar properties, I started mailing, you know, I mailed all the properties in between and did all kinds of deals, like everything in between, right?

Luke: But I started finding that in more economic neighborhoods, the commercial properties, like high traffic retail properties, those guys would get back to me and they would offer to sell the property to me.

Luke: But where the house goes here property, house goes here type of property, they didn't want to sell to me for the same kinds of prices. And I really scratched my head about that.

Luke: You know, there's these properties are worth something. I don't know what they're worth, but I know they're worth more than I'm getting this deal at because I can see it in statistics like other ones trade for a lot more.

Luke: And how do I figure it out? How do I sell them for this price versus that price? And how do I get that spread?

Luke: And it started coming clear to me that those kinds of high traffic retail prices, properties are not priced on the comps in the area. They're not priced on what the houses are going for and who the highest and best use of that property is and how they could use that.

Luke: And, you know, it gets priced accordingly off of that. And so when you get into fancy dollar neighborhoods, those high traffic retail properties, like a property that a McDonald's would go on.

Luke: It's maybe across the street from McDonald's or something, one acre-ish size thing, the easy flat access. You can see it from the street in all different ways. And just the utilities there, just a commodity kind of high traffic retail property.

Luke: It trades for the same kinds of value that it does on the other side of the country with the same kind of traffic and the same kind of demographics.

Seth: Just to make sure I understand, Luke, when you say a high traffic retail property, are you talking about vacant land where you could put a McDonald's? Or are you talking about like there's an actual McDonald's type building there and that's what you're dealing with?

Luke: Really good question. So coming from the land background, I was thinking vacant land. But over time, I started realizing it doesn't matter if there's a building there.

Luke: It matters about how much traffic and how much business could be done there. You could blow that building up or you could change the color. You could change the shape. You could bulldoze it and start over. It's a piece of land.

Luke: You're valuing that piece of land based off the data and that we can get in today's market like traffic. And I talked to a lot of different land dealers and lots of people call me and ask for advice.

Luke: And they ask for what about this deal and that deal. How'd you do this one and that one and they watch some old YouTube videos about some deal I did and they need help with the one like it that they're working on. I help them you know it's just feels natural to me.

Luke: I help a lot of people that way. In today's markets we have really awesome traffic data and some of it when I started looking at traffic it's like the government stuff of there's a dot here and there.

Luke: Somebody did a traffic study to get a driveway permit or something and they just wanted to make sure it's not too crazy to get rear-ended or you know those kinds of studies and that data gets published but it's like five years old and it's not right in front of the property and it's down the street and around the corner.

Luke: So it's not real, but now we have, we have cell phones, you know, I got my phone sitting right here. You probably have your phone in reach and everyone watching probably is watching on their phone or it's in their pocket or something.

Luke: We travel around with our phones all the time. And those phones track us whether we want it or not. Like we've got Google maps on there, TikTok or all kinds of other software, and they keep track of where we're at. And they sell that data.

Luke: They sell that data to data brokers that use it for all kinds of things. Government entities use it to figure out where police should be when there's crime or fires or things like that.

Luke: And Google uses it to figure out what's popular and what's busy and what's not busy. And they publish this data. They share it with the world.

Luke: You can see Google heat maps of where's busy at different times of the day. And then you can click on a business and see, is this place more busy at this time or that time, nighttime, daytime, weekday, weekend?

Luke: And you can see that on Google heat maps and Google trend maps and Google travel time data. Like you're heading to this place. Is it popular right now? You know.

Luke: If you click on a Chick-fil-A, is it more busy at breakfast or is it more busy at lunch? If you're planning on going at breakfast, maybe you'll go somewhere else because you know, if you look at the data, it's going to be super busy at breakfast.

Luke: And this data is published for free. It's available for free for everybody. And there's other data providers beyond Google that have commercialized the cell phone location data, aggregated it, normalized it.

Luke: And then they sell it for a couple hundred bucks a year per login. And you can go study traffic in front of properties or in front of businesses everywhere in the country.

Luke: You can see down to the hour. Like on a Wednesday at 8 a.m. In front of this piece of land, how many people drove past in the last year?

Luke: And you can see averages. You can see weekday versus weekend. You can see different months. You can see different seasons. You can see the traffic like in the shoulder where it's slower traffic months or the busy traffic months.

Luke: And so this data is available today. It wasn't available 10, 15 years ago. It's gotten really, really commercialized now.

Luke: And I started studying it like the Agent Pro 24-7, like Seth had turned me on to that. I was turned on to this traffic data and I started studying it, studying my deals of what I've made money on and what I haven't.

Luke: And what we found is that wherever McDonald's is, the data is correct. If you look at the data in front of McDonald's, the data is better than Taco Bell.

Luke: And the data in front of Taco Bell is better than Burger King. And the data in front of Burger King is better than Sonic. And Sonic's better than the next one.

Luke: But that's not by market cap, like the size of the business. That's also the traffic in front of their sites.

Luke: So McDonald's is worth five times more than Taco Bell. And Taco Bell's worth three times more than Burger King. Burger King's worth two times more than Sonic.

Luke: And if you look at that, and you compare it to the traffic at these sites. McDonald's has the best locations. They're on the busiest streets with the best stoplights and the best access.

Luke: And those trades trade for the highest price per square foot. And Taco Bell trades for the next one. And Burger King trades for the next one. And so on down the line of who's got the best sites.

Luke: And I was studying this data and I was comparing it to my land deals. And then I started seeing a pattern. And I started making more money.

Luke: I made a few hundred thousand dollars studying this data in my free time when I'm bored. Like driving around or like I'm wondering how much this would go for.

Luke: Like I can go look at the traffic and I can think about who's around and what the demographics of the area are and what's for sale, what's not. And I can kind of see in my head, I bet you that's about this price per square foot.

Luke: And I've done it so much now that I can come really close to knowing what these things trade for because of traffic, because of the data and the understanding of the demand of the tenants.

Luke: I know who rents these, who buys them, who leases them, where they go, what their boxes look like. Like there's a spot on a major intersection.

Luke: If there's a Chick-fil-A brand new fresh building right there with them taking in millions of dollars of revenue and that site trades for 10 million bucks or 12 million bucks, whatever it trades for on the open market with that tenant.

Luke: There's a piece of vacant land across the street that's a major intersection with the same traffic, the same accessibility, the same everything as that one. What do you think that piece of land is worth?

Luke: Well, it's worth at least the same as that one. The building doesn't matter. The building's a commodity. You can tear it down. You can build a different one. It's about the site.

Luke: It's about the land. It's about the traffic. And knowing that like gave me all kinds of insights to like I could probably sell this piece of land for 3 or 4 million bucks vacant.

Luke: I can buy it for 127,000 and I can sell it for 3 or 4 million bucks. And that that's not uncommon. Like I've done that multiple times now.

Luke: And it's about studying data and comparing it to who's going to use it and how much business they're going to do there. Like the highest and best use of the land.

Seth: Yeah, I mean, even just hearing you say that just now, I mean, I'm just connecting a few dots that I honestly probably should have connected a long time ago, but I just wasn't thinking about it.

Seth: But when you think about these big chain stores and restaurants and stuff, I mean, they're spending millions and millions of dollars on market research to figure out where to put these things.

Seth: So like if you can just figure out where they are and get a property that's pretty much comparable to that one or even better than that one, like you're already way ahead of the game compared to most people.

Luke: Correct. And like I got a Chick-fil-A one, right? They were coming to town. I called the project manager. I was like, hey, I got a site. You want to come look at it?

Luke: And he's like, who are you? Like I don't know how you got my number, but we already have a site. Like we've been working on this thing for like five years. We're already under contract.

Luke: We're already building it. Like we don't need your site. And I was like, all right, sounds good. And a few weeks later, this thing opens up. And they park 120 cars in line at lunchtime. You know, it's a massive success.

Luke: And there's a piece of land right across the street. Right? Major intersection. Same traffic. Same accessibility. No other fast food around. Nobody. They're like, the only fast food within miles. It's in the suburbs. There's nothing, but there's all this rooftops, right?

Luke: So I studied the data. I'm like, yeah, this one, the land across the street is probably close to the same value as that one. And I can probably get ahold of that owner. And so I contacted that land owner.

Luke: And he wanted to sell it. And I bought it. I bought it for 127,000 if I remember right. And I put it up for sale for like 400,000. And a whole bunch of people showed up to want to do trucking, like logistics.

Luke: And so I told all the trucking guys, I'm selling it to the city. And all the trucking guys got mad. And they start outbidding, you know, they just outbid and outbid. And they got up to like 700 grand.

Luke: Like Luke, don't sell it to the city. We'll pay 700 grand for this thing I just bought it for like 127 like a couple weeks earlier, right?

Seth: Like I love these numbers.

Luke: This is high traffic retail. Well, and I kept going. I was like, it's probably worth more than 700 grand. And one of them was going to pay 700 grand. And he asked me, Luke, why don't you just sell this to me?

Luke: And I was like, well, dude, it's worth more than 700. He's like, how do you know? I was like, well, look at the traffic. Look at Chick-fil-A right there. And if we can do millions of dollars of revenue.

Luke: You're going to do millions of dollars of revenue with your business there. This thing's worth way more than 700 grand. And he's like, do you have it under contract? I'm like, no, I own it.

Luke: And so he's like, all right, well, I'll pay you a million dollars for it. And then he ended up paying me like 1.15 or something. But I bought it for 127. I sold it like a month later or something for over a million bucks.

Luke: And I didn't know what it was worth when I bought it. I just knew it was in the ballpark. Like I knew traffic data. I knew what was going on. I knew I could do something with it. I didn't know I was going to 10X my money like that.

Seth: Yeah. Do you have like a baseline understanding of like if this kind of traffic count exists, then it should sell for somewhere in this range? Like is there a formula you use for that kind of thing? Or is it more art than science?

Luke: It's a little of both, but I can teach the science. I can teach the formula. I can teach it pretty closely. It's imperfect, but it's close.

Luke: And a big part of what matters is comparable sales. And that comp information is, if you're a commercial broker, you're in it, you know it, you live and breathe it.

Luke: You're in it every day. You know what that property across the street traded for. You know what this property traded for. You know the LoopNet asking price for this one. You know what's under contract over here. You know the whole market because you live in it.

Luke: But if you're like a land investor, you know, maybe you're from a couple states away. You don't know the local knowledge of that market. You don't have that comp data.

Luke: But what if you could call a commercial broker? What if you had a relationship with one? And you could say, hey, what's this piece of land worth? Like give me a ballpark. And they tell you.

Luke: And then if you could build a relationship with multiple commercial brokers. You know, maybe you're doing deals with them. Maybe you're helping them make money.

Luke: Maybe they're selling your properties and you're helping them and they're helping you. And if you get a handful of them and they all have different, maybe I have a trucking guy. Maybe I have a car wash guy. Maybe I have a QSR guy and a gas station guy and a retail broker. You know, different people have different strengths.

Luke: And those guys know what those properties are worth in their market. And if they don't know their market, they can find comps. They can find what traded and what's for sale. And they can find people.

Luke: They can call their buddy and say, hey, I got a land investor, Luke. He's got this site over here. We want to sell it. Do you know anybody that would buy this? And that broker calls another broker who calls a tenant and they can fill that site.

Seth: So how does one just find commercial brokers and develop relationships with them? I mean, most land investors, myself included, like we just don't, like we're not there. That's not our world. Like where do you even start with that?

Luke: Where you probably started with your first deal, right? Just the easiest deal you could do. Like figure out how to do a land deal. Get one done. Figure it out.

Luke: And then you go do another one. And you meet people along the way. You know, and you help. You serve. You teach what you know. You share it. You help other people.

Luke: And people want to help you. I don't know. I think I started with LinkedIn. I see a commercial broker advertising that they just sold this thing or they've got this thing for sale or they lease this thing.

Luke: And it's the property I'm working on or something like it. And I reach out to them. I DM them. Hey, I've got a piece of land. I'd love to learn what it's worth. Like what do you think?

Luke: And most of the time they don't get back to me, but some of the time they do. You know, and if they do, like maybe I can do a deal with them. Maybe I can learn from them. You know, it's just relationships.

Seth: Yeah. I mean, it's relationship building 101, right? It's like what, it's not that complicated. You just go talk to people.

Luke: Yeah. And I've done so many deals now like hundreds of deals over so many years that the people that I've met the brokers, the people they're they remember me and like I've made them money and people like to make money.

Luke: And if I can make them money, they want to make me money. And it's awesome. So I start to get inbound stuff all the time of like people calling me. I've got this land deal. Luke, can you help? And I've started a school community to train a lot of this stuff.

Luke: I'm in there all the time. I've got, you know, 250, 300 members in there. Lots and lots of people asking for help. And I'm helping them work through deals. And I try to be transparent about it.

Luke: And the brokers watch the YouTube videos or they hear about the community and they're joining the community and they're like, wow, this Luke guy's a real dude. Like he does deals. He helps people. He knows things. I think I'll call him.

Luke: You know, and I get inbound deal flow from brokers now and it just ripples and compounds. So the more I help and the more I teach and the more I train the more people that want to help me and it's it's a beautiful thing.

Seth: Yeah. Now I'm kind of curious, like what percentage of deals are you buying with like terms or like seller financing versus like all cash? Because I got to imagine like some of these owners, if it's vacant land, maybe there's a higher likelihood that terms would work.

Seth: But I don't know. I'm curious if like how often that comes up. Is it usually a cash deal?

Luke: The vast, vast majority, like 95 plus percent is all cash. Sometimes I can get terms. Sometimes if it's estate stuff, if it's been in a family for a long time, if it's stuff they don't want or don't care about or it's too expensive to them or.

Luke: You know there's lots of reasons people might sell with terms, but most of the time when it's high dollar properties, they're business people. They're investors themselves. They understand value.

Luke: They would rather have the cash or they would rather 1031 it somewhere else. So they want the cash to do that. And these are big dollar deals. You know, a lot of these are like seven figure type properties or multiple seven figures.

Luke: And so if you're going to buy a property for $3 million, you can't buy it for 10 grand down, 10 grand a month. They want cash. You know, you've got to come up with cash. You've got to close it. You've got to buy it. You've got to sell it.

Seth: Yeah. So like, I mean, I got to imagine that takes a pretty big audience of cash buyers or maybe like you're getting private money or hard money or transactional funding. Like where is the cash actually coming from for you?

Luke: Yeah. I partnered with some of these that I can't afford by myself. And the people I partner with bring cash. You know, we do a 50-50 split and they bring all the cash or whatever the partnership deal is.

Luke: And I do all the work, you know, or most of the work or a lot of the work, whatever. Or I've sold the contract. I don't even buy them anymore. I just sell the contract. Like I get it under contract and then I assign it to somebody else for a fee.

Luke: And now I don't have to have any cash in the game. Now I don't have any risk. Now I don't have to buy title insurance and surveys and all that paperwork that comes with owning land.

Luke: I'm just selling the contract for a fee. And that makes it easier for me. It's less risky. And I still collect the same fee at the end. You know, I'm selling the contract for the same profit that I would have bought it and sold it for or pretty close to the same.

Seth: And when you assign it to somebody else, are you assigning it to like another land investor or to like a builder or developer? Who who's that usually going to?

Luke: It depends on the deal. It depends on the property. Like most of the time, I'm assigning it to like a passive investor that wants to own real estate but doesn't want to do the work.

Luke: And they're happy to get a nice piece of real estate. You know, if I can buy a contract, buy a deal for a million bucks and I can sell it for 1.5 or 2, they're happy to buy a $2 million piece of land today and know that it's worth 2 or maybe it's worth more than that already.

Luke: And they're happy to own it. And maybe they're going to develop it. Maybe they're going to sit on it. Maybe they're going to flip it. Maybe they're going to lease it. You know, there's lots of things they could do with the land.

Seth: Got you. I'm also curious, like when you think about the market of like who you're selling to and it's usually like a national chain type person, right? Like Chick-fil-A or whoever.

Seth: Like with those types of companies, I would think that they probably have like massive legal teams and processes and like do you find that the closing process takes way longer than like a normal land deal? Or like what are some of the challenges that come with that kind of buyer?

Luke: Yes, it's complicated. It's a lot more complicated than signing a purchase agreement in an email and closing the next week. Like the land investor would do.

Luke: These guys have their land people, their legal people, their architecture people, their site planning people, their marketing people. They have lots of departments that get involved.

Luke: And if they're going to buy a site or lease a site, they've got to go through all those different processes and everybody's got to sign off on things and it takes forever.

Luke: It's six months. It's a year. It's 18 months. Like it's really slow and they change the deal on you. They come back and they're like, actually we can't do this. We need you to do that. And you've got to be flexible.

Luke: You've got to understand that these things take a long time, but it's worth it. It's worth it to wait. It's worth it to get the deal done. And once you've done a few of them, you start to understand the process.

Luke: You start to understand what they need. You start to understand, oh, they're going to need this survey or they're going to need that environmental study or they're going to need this easement or this road cut permit or whatever.

Luke: And you can anticipate what's coming and you can help speed up the process by providing those things or starting those things. And it does get easier over time.

Seth: And when you get it under contract, like is there a way to structure the contract so that you're protected against them like backing out or changing the terms on you? Or is it just kind of part of the game?

Luke: It's just kind of part of the game. They're going to have contingencies. They're going to have due diligence periods. They're going to have things they've got to get through to know if they even want the site.

Luke: And until they exercise all those contingencies and all those studies, they could pull out. And that's part of the game. And that's okay. You know, you might have it under contract for six months and they pull out.

Luke: And then you go back to the seller and you're like, hey, it didn't work out. But now I know more about your site. Now I know what's going on. Now I know, oh, that's why they pulled out.

Luke: Maybe there's wetlands or maybe there's this or that. And now I can go find a different buyer. Or maybe the seller wants to give me a better price because I've been working on it for six months and I've been trying to help. You know, stuff like that happens all the time.

Seth: Yeah. And it sounds like the brokers are like hugely important to like figuring out where to go next and kind of making sense of all this. Like without a good broker, you're kind of dead in the water. Is that fair?

Luke: You can do it without brokers. I've done lots and lots of deals without brokers, but they make it easier. And once you find good brokers and you work with them and they trust you and you trust them, it's powerful.

Luke: It's a really powerful relationship to have. And I think it's important. And I think to get to the next level beyond where I'm at today, working with more and better brokers is where it's at.

Luke: Like these guys know developers. They know builders. They know guys that build shopping centers. They know guys that own shopping centers. They know grocery store people.

Luke: And if I can bring them a deal, they might bring me a deal. Or they might, you know, say, hey Luke, I've got a client. They've got this shopping center. They need an out parcel over here. Can you go find one?

Luke: And I can go find one. And now we're doing deals together. We're making money together. And it's a win-win. And that's where the real wealth is created, I think, is in those relationships and those partnerships.

Seth: Yeah, it's interesting because like when I think about my audience, a lot of people who listen to this are sort of part-time land investors. You know, they're doing it as a side gig.

Seth: And when I hear you talk about this stuff, it's pretty clear, like you can't do this as a side gig. Like this is a full-time commitment. You're building relationships. You're dealing with complicated stuff. Like you've got to be all in.

Luke: Yeah, for sure. It's, I mean, I don't know how many hours a day I work. It's a lot. It's a lot of time. I'm working all the time.

Luke: And it's fun. I love it. I'm passionate about it. I enjoy it. But yeah, it's definitely not something you can do as a true side gig.

Luke: But I think a lot of people start land as a side gig and then it becomes a full-time gig. And maybe this is where they graduate to if they want to do bigger and better and more exciting things. You know, it's an option.

Seth: Yeah, totally. Now, when you think about like the future, like five years from now, like where do you want to be? Are you trying to like hold on to more of these properties and create passive income? Or are you trying to just like flip bigger and bigger deals? Like what's the vision?

Luke: I think the vision is to keep some of these. To get to a point where I can afford to keep some of these. Like the triple net lease properties where the tenant pays everything.

Luke: You know, they pay the taxes, the insurance, the maintenance, everything. And I just collect rent. That's the dream. That's where I want to be. That's the end goal.

Luke: But to get there, I've got to keep doing deals. I've got to keep making money. I've got to keep building those relationships and those partnerships.

Luke: And eventually I think I'll be able to keep some of them. And that'll be beautiful. That'll be the retirement plan or the legacy plan or whatever you want to call it.

Seth: Yeah. And it sounds like the QSRs, the quick service restaurants, like those are kind of the entry point. But the real goal is like the grocery stores and the shopping centers and the bigger stuff.

Luke: Correct. Yeah. The QSRs are the easiest ones to understand. They're the easiest ones to comp. They're the easiest ones to see what's going on.

Luke: And once you understand those, you can understand the bigger stuff. You can understand the shopping centers. You can understand the grocery stores. You can understand the whole retail space.

Luke: And that's where the bigger money is. That's where the bigger wealth is. That's where the legacy is. You know, owning a Publix or owning a Kroger or owning a whole shopping center.

Luke: That's the dream. And I think the QSRs are the key to getting there. They're the stepping stone. They're the education. They're the relationships. They're the data. All of it.

Seth: Yeah. Now I know you mentioned you have a school community. Is that like your main way of teaching this stuff? And like what's the goal with that? Are you trying to like build a community of people doing similar deals? Or what's the vision there?

Luke: Yeah. So I've got a school community. It's called the Land Investing Mastermind School Community. It's on school.com. It's a platform for building communities.

Luke: And I'm in there teaching. I'm in there helping people. I'm in there answering questions. I'm in there doing live calls. I'm in there sharing deals. I'm in there being transparent about what I'm doing.

Luke: And the goal is to help people. The goal is to teach what I know. The goal is to share the knowledge and the experience and the relationships.

Luke: And also selfishly, the goal is to build a network of people that I can do deals with. People that I can partner with. People that can bring me deals. People that I can help and they can help me.

Luke: You know, it's a community of like-minded people that are all trying to do bigger and better deals. And that's powerful. That's where the real value is, I think.

Seth: Yeah, it's cool. And I think that's a smart way to approach it because like you're not just teaching in a vacuum. You're actually building a network that can help you do more and bigger deals. And everybody wins.

Luke: Exactly. Yeah. And I see it happening. I see people in the community doing deals together. I see people helping each other. I see people bringing deals to each other.

Luke: And it's beautiful. It's what I hoped would happen. And it's happening. And I think it'll only get bigger and better as time goes on.

Luke: You know, as more people join, as more people learn, as more people do deals, as more people build relationships, it'll just compound. And that's exciting.

Seth: Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that's cool about land in general is like once you understand the fundamentals, like there's so many different directions you can go. Like you can go into subdivisions. You can go into retail. You can go into development.

Seth: Like there's just so many options. And I think that's what keeps it interesting and exciting for a lot of people.

Luke: Absolutely. Yeah. And I see people in the land space graduating to all those different things. You know, some people are doing subdivisions. Some people are doing development. Some people are doing retail like me.

Luke: Some people are doing storage. Some people are doing all kinds of different things. And it's all based on the fundamentals of land. It's all based on understanding value and understanding data and understanding the market.

Luke: And once you have that foundation, you can go in any direction you want. And that's the beauty of it.

Seth: Yeah. Well, Luke, I mean, I've got so many more questions, but I know we're kind of getting up on our time here. I'm going to actually head over to your school community and just start posting some of those questions.

Seth: Because there's a lot more I want to understand about this. Because I think whether I ever do precisely what you're doing or use certain elements of it to find other deals in other ways, there's a lot here, I think.

Seth: So I appreciate you coming on and explaining what you've been doing.

Luke: Yeah, for sure. And if you have questions, you know, post them in the community. Or if you have a deal, you know, even the right commercial property, it's like, Luke, what do I do with this thing?

Luke: Is this high traffic retail you're talking about? What should I sell this for? I might be like, I know who uses that one. I might be able to help. So feel free with that too.

Seth: Awesome, man. Well, thanks again, Luke, for coming on the show.

Luke: Thank you. Thanks for having me.

Seth: Yeah. I'll have a link to your YouTube channel and your school community. Maybe I'll find some of the stuff you have out there. But again, retipster.com/223.

Seth: Fascinating stuff. Appreciate you sharing. And we'll talk to y'all next time.