The Truly Passive Real State Strategy of the Wealthy | Patrick Luther

Everybody sees this $3.5 billion in sales, co-founder of National Net Lease, super success story. But where did it all begin?

I'm valeting cars at Postino in the Vig, and I'm just trying to put money together. I end up getting like a 30-unit Arcadia, really screwy condo conversion where the condos were like $150 grand and I sold out the 30 units. So I made like $150,000 when I was 19, 18, 19 at ASU. So I'm like selling these condo conversions, I think I'm so smart. I go and like lease a Range Rover like an asshole, and it didn't get repossessed, but 2008 and '09 occurred, and so all of a sudden my $150,000 goes to like zero.

I see a lot of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, whatever, that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and they're miserable empty shells.

Yep, that's why like mental health is like important to these guys. And I tell them, they're like, well, what do I need to do?

Where do you think the bright spot is in retail. Do you think it is more affordability or do you think it is more like high-end experiences, high-end dining, high-end office, you know, those types of things?

It's a really, really good question.

Welcome back to the Hannah Hammond Show. I am here with Patrick Luther, co-founder of the National Net Lease Group at SRS Commercial Real Estate.

Well done. You nailed it.

Thank you. I try, but now I'm super excited. I know you have been friends with Jeffrey from our team at HQ Capital, and we've done a lot of business together. And you are just a beast in in commercial real estate capital markets and co-founded SRS, which has been around for a long time, their, their national net lease program, and which is what you specialize in. And now you are nationwide serving clients for triple net retail investment, sale leasebacks, pretty much everything retail. And then you've expanded into industrial heavily now too, I believe, as well, right?

We have. Yeah. Industrial is the bulk of the growth right now, interestingly enough. I would have told you 10 years ago when we started the platform. Um, we were pure play retail. Um, and then the first kind of deviation from that was med tail when all the medical users started getting into the urgent care facilities need to go into a more retail-oriented format. Now it's industrial and the, the pivot to the industrial net lease is interesting because, um, a lot of it's driven by the, the retailer saying, hey, we have some, some need between the distribution facility. They need to get closer to the actual stores. Whatever it may be. Yeah. But yeah, it's been a fun run.

So you guys did $3.5 billion in transactions in 2025, which was, what was that, a 20%, 16% or 20% increase from what you did in 2024?

I love data because you can manipulate it to look really good or really bad depending on what you wanted to say. But we were up over 20% from prior year.

Yeah.

So the way, and I don't think, I don't know if this is necessarily unique to SRS, but, you know, most brokers, if you talk to 'em, like they peaked in 2022.

Yep.

And everyone's been trying to kind of crawl back to that number coincidentally, right? What happened in '22, we had 0% rates. And so, you know, I look at things like the way I look at revenue and brokerage revenue is like same store sales, right? Like I could pump the numbers up running a brokerage company saying, hey, we're up 50%, we're up 100%. I won't name names of people who do that, but I could also just go hire 50 more agents, right? I have 75 producers at any given time, so I could double my producer headcount. But what was good to see from a health standpoint was that the individual agents themselves were growing again. Um, and that was kind of the first— or call it 2025, um, was the first time we saw things start to correct, right? It was '22 to '23 to '24. It was kind of a race to the bottom and everyone's production numbers were kind of steadily going down, even if they had great businesses, great clients. It was just kind of a function of rates. But everything's kind of turning right now. So it's, it's exciting.

Yeah. And you guys were up in 2024 from 2023 too. So you guys have been growing. I mean, you've been growing agent count.

We did a little bit. Yeah. We— '25 was the biggest year in our career from a top-line revenue standpoint.

That's crazy. Um, because most people's, it was like their one of their worst.

Yeah, it's, it's— we have people that tend to focus on brokerages, I think, are built with, call it cold callers, or you put bodies in seats. And, um, that works to what end? At some point, um, we try to get our agents to focus on whatever one particular business line might be, right? And the old school way of doing that was, hey, pick a tenant, right? You're the Walgreens guy or you're the 7-Eleven guy or whatever it might be. Um, and that works really, really well until a tenant has negative earnings like a Walgreens and they shut 1,000 stores. And so that broker's built his entire 10-year business across servicing that account. You have to pivot. And the guys that struggle are caught— the men and women that struggle are somehow caught in too much concentration, lack of diversification across the types of clients they serve, the tenants they work on, things like that.

Yeah, I think that's so important, uh, because we see that like in office, right? These brokers have built 30-year careers in office and then they're still trying to hold on. I don't know if you've read the book Who Moved the Cheese, but if the cheese has moved and you keep going back to the same feeding ground for the cheese, you gotta move.

Scary. Yeah, the office thing is— that's literally a story. I talked to agents about. Um, and it's— I do think back on my— I do chuckle. Like, it's— I feel bad for anyone that has a systemic change in their business where they or their family are struggling, right? That's not something to be excited about or to cheer for. But I do laugh. Like, when I was starting in commercial real estate, it was the guys that were making all the money were all the CBRE, JLL, Cushman, big swinging whatever office broker guys. And they were the guys that wouldn't ever give me an internship. So I started in the scrappy net lease retail business. And I'm like, oh, you know, how's that working out for you now? But yeah, office, office is tough and there's not enough creative. I don't care how you hack it, people are going to hack it and figure it out. But I mean, the amount of office guys I talk to, they're like, oh, we bought this office building, we got it for $30 a foot, so we have no basis and we're going to convert it to residential. Call me in 3 or 4 years and tell me how that went. And most of them are saying, yeah, it was, it was tougher than we— it was more challenging than we thought. Yeah, some, hey, we're taking outright losses, others saying, hey, it's rough, it's, it's rough, the buildings don't format right, etc. I mean, I do think office is super exciting from an inflection point of, you know, the people that will figure it out will figure it out. And there's a lot of money to be made there. It's the same as retail. Like 10, 15 years ago when I started, it was like big boxes going away, right? Like it's not going to exist in this format. Amazon's going to kill everything. All the lenders with paper on malls, boxes, et cetera, were trying to divest of the paper. Big box, when we get big box retail vacancies, you know, SRS is a company, the other half of the business besides cap markets is tenant rep. We don't have enough box vacancy now, right? The boxes are full and those users have surprisingly come back. You know, you're taking a big space and you're cutting it up 3 or 4 ways, but It used to be that, oh my gosh, we don't want to get this space back. Now it's kind of the opposite. So I mean, things change. Like you can't always operate with a finite outlook. And if you're doing the same thing forever, you know, it's probably— it's something I've heard you talk about on a lot of your podcasts, like the adaptability. You always have to be looking at the next thing and the next angle to reposition something.

Yeah, well, and it all comes down to supply and demand. Like retail wasn't built because everyone thought retail was dead. And then now we have a lack of supply of retail. And I think you could probably speak to this more, but there's still some trouble or vacancy with some of the B and C class retail, those old grungy shopping centers. But what do you see in there?

They fill. Good question. So they, they're full unless the building is like systemically not functional. We work with Big Lots or worked with Big Lots when the bankruptcy was occurring. And, you know, the solution to all the creditors was, you know, when these landlords are getting these boxes back, what do we, what do we do? Who can we put in there? Right. And SRS represents, depending on the part of the country. And we represent Target, we represent Walmart, we represent, you know, a variety of soft goods users, Five Below, you know, Ross, TJX, Marshalls, Hobby Lobby. Right. So depending on where you were in the country, somebody got us, got in touch with us to figure out a solution. And the biggest inhibiting factor on those boxes is like clear height. And it's to pop the roof up is really, really expensive. Like it's almost worth tearing down at that point. You can put a nice facade on the thing, but keep hitting this. You can put a nice facade on the thing, but it's, it's really expensive to raise roof height. But I would tell you that I don't know of a single big box vacancy or a Big Lots vacancy in the country. I think it's all been backfilled for the most part. So even the B and C stuff, you'll move to a B and C tenant category or a value-oriented user. Thrift or deep discount or whatever it is. So, but, you know, it's the same with like the restaurant space, you know, jumping around a lot. But the restaurant space, when we look at retail, is really, really exciting right now. You look at, you know, oh, okay, what went bankrupt last year and, you know, who's on the verge of it? You know, TGI Fridays went away. Trying to be careful with what I say in terms of who is and isn't bankrupt. Hooters went away, etc. But we were busiest with those changes and addressing the needs with those vacancies. So it's not like, oh gosh, we're nervous. It's some bad sign for retail. All that stuff got filled up and absorbed. Yeah, right. So the Twin Peaks is the latest one. We've got a theme here. We have Hooters, we have Twin Peaks. Nobody wants to eat in that type of environment anymore.

But it was shocking.

Yeah, there's got to be. But somebody is going to figure out that how to freshen up that dining segment, whatever you want to call it. But all that stuff, all that stuff's pretty like we need— the market needs vacancy. Like if we don't have vacancy, construction costs are prohibitive. Retailers can't just go build, you know, you get a typical Olive Garden and this is public, it's in their earnings like Darden's doing super well, LongHorn Olive Garden. But those things are millions of dollars to build. They can't back into the economics. They do excellent sales per unit. I forget what the four-wall is, but better for them to just take an old Hooters or Twin Peaks. They're the beneficiary of these closures. All of a sudden, they've told Wall Street they need to open 50 stores this year. Well, ground-up new construction takes 2 years. Now they can go in, hey, we'll just go buy these 20 Hooters leases and boom, we cut that pipeline in half. We're solved.

Yeah.

So look, is your glass half empty or is it half full, right? And like, you just look for the worst thing we could have is like a stagnant market where nothing's changing, right?

That's the worst. Yeah, I talk about that all the time. Either a falling market or a rising market is great, but we need things transacting. Otherwise the whole, the whole thing doesn't work. Like, that's the whole economy, right? Things need to be moving one way or another, whether they're moving at a lower basis or a higher basis.

Yep. And I think, you know, you look at is stuff the reason why the '22, '23, '24 cycle was challenging among a number of factors is everyone was saying, hey, look, if I just wait another couple months, the asset is going to be cheaper, right? Debt's going to get more expensive. Rates are rising. So this stuff's going to get— why would I buy anything right now? So to your point, right, everyone sits on the sideline and says my buying environment's going to be better. Better and better. I think we've hit an inflection point in the last 6 months. Like, you know, our numbers as a brokerage company prove it. But very specifically, the month of December was our biggest month ever from the standpoint of volume sold, brokerage revenue, etc. So it was almost like everyone said, okay, while the rate cuts have occurred because we had, what, 3 last year, and they're saying, gosh, now what I'm looking at buying is going to get more expensive. So it's the opposite, right? More rate cuts in theory should increase prices, right? Because people can pay more, that's cheaper. I'm having to go through this in my head because I don't actually know it that well.

It's an inverse relationship between pricing and rates. And I was— I just posted something about this a couple of days ago. You can't change your basis. You can't change the price you pay for the property, but your rate adjusts in 3, 5, 7, 10 years, whatever your rate is. But let's call it, you know, a 5 or 10-year term. And And so I would all day long rather take advantage of a better-priced asset in a more distressed, you know, no buyers are out there because rates are high type of environment, knowing that in the future rates are more likely to drop because we're in a high-interest rate environment where historically rates aren't at 2%, historically, right? So I don't understand why investors were thinking, let's go pay massive amounts of prices because these rates are 2% when they know in a few years their rates are going to reset and their asset value is going to plummet. Like, I just don't understand how those numbers computed and how those decisions were made. Like, it doesn't make any sense to me. And then when rates go up and asset prices drop, they're like, oh no, we're going to, we're going to hold off on the sidelines. Or they're just stuck in it and they can't get out and they can't take advantage of it.

I think the answer is because sponsors are incentivized to place money and put capital out. Right. And so that's a tough— I always think about I'm very focused on running a brokerage company, but I always think about, gosh, my buddies that are on the REIT side or in acquisitions, there's always some narrative that, oh, we have guidance out, we have to spend $500 million this year or a billion or $2 billion or whatever the number is. I have a buddy at a Blackstone-based public REIT, a Blackstone-owned platform, and I mean, they have to spend something like $25 $1 billion this year. And I always ask the question of like, would I want that money to go spend from a self-serving standpoint? Yeah, I'd love to be a sponsor and get the fees. And, you know, there's lots of brokerage income to make. But if you have that much capital, your buying discipline at some point goes out the window, right? Like you have to just constantly— you might start with good intentions as a sponsor, but then you have to modify your box to say, oh, you know, We made this work at committee. Yeah, and that's very much like institutional investors versus private are different. But, you know, back to the topic at hand, I think some of the smartest people I know, and you have very smart people on the show, but they saw last year as an inflection point where they were getting ahead of and tying up a lot of property and buying it or putting it under contract because to your point, the market for the last couple years has been pretty soft. And what's the narrative now with my sellers? Oh, rates are coming down. I want a little bit more money. 6 months ago it was, okay, I'm ready to sell. I'm ready to be done with XYZ asset. Now it's, hey, look. So the seller greed is coming back a little bit and their motivation to do something has changed. The smartest guys in the room were all the guys that knew that rate cuts were coming, which it wasn't that ambiguous. We didn't know how many or what, percentages, but you know, the guys that loaded up in like July, August before the first rate cut, they just literally got an artificial price discount while they were in escrow, right? It's like, okay, we're going to postpone our due diligence period after the Fed meeting. The deal underwrites and makes sense for us now. The rate cut happens in the middle of due diligence. Boom, our debt just prices better by 50 basis points or whatever it might be. Those are the smartest guys in the room last summer, right? And you do that with hundreds of millions of dollars in capital, you just boom, repriced everything, right?

And if immediate appreciation at your, your close just because your rates are going down.

Yep.

And then not to mention we had 100% bonus depreciation passed, which that didn't hurt.

The beautiful bill was really big and beautiful for us. Um, no, half of our, half of what we did, and, and HB, your company, helped us with with quite a bit of the debt. You know, December was so busy with car wash sales, car wash and/or gas stations, anything that qualified for bonus.

Yeah, because those have more bonuses. So for the audience that may not know, 100% bonus depreciation is like why every real estate professional loves real estate and every real estate investor loves real estate. It allows you to basically have a big reduction in your taxes that is due. So when you buy a property, if you're a real estate professional, you could buy a property and you can depreciate 100% the year that you put it into service or the year that you buy it. And so let's say you have a $300,000 tax bill. You can use that as a down payment to go buy an asset and then get a $300,000 plus or minus. This is simple math, but a $300,000 tax deduction on your taxes, therefore wiping out around, you know, $150,000 in taxes. Then you get to it and then you're buying a new asset. That asset appreciates, you add value to it and you get to compound your wealth and profits much more quickly. And if you're not a real estate professional, you still get that depreciation against any passive income that that you may have. And so it's the, the American dream, really. And that was going to phase out in 2026 because it had been phasing out over the past handful of years, the past 4 years. But Trump, with the big beautiful bill, reinstated that to 100%. And so everybody's super happy, and everybody was wanting to deploy their capital in December so they can get that 100% bonus depreciation, because otherwise the money would have been gone to taxes anyway. Yeah. So I, I want to keep diving into real estate, but before we do, I wanted to go back to your origin story, right? Everybody sees this $3.5 billion in sales, co-founder of National Net Lease, super success story. Looking good, feeling good. All the things.

I get to talk about myself.

Yeah, yeah, this is great.

Narcissists love to talk about themselves.

Exactly. But you know what? Where did it all begin? I was reading about you and you said you attribute it to your mom. You got the idea of real estate back in high school and you've had some pretty difficult and sleepless nights and have had to have a relentless grit to get to where you're at now. So let's go back into some of those dark times and the challenges and the origin story of what got you here.

Um, thank you for the opportunity to talk about it. Um, I— parents are physician, a doctor and a pharmacist in town, and, and, uh, it really was, um, what piqued my interest, frankly, was a combination of a little bit of jealousy, and I definitely have a little bit of a chip on my shoulder, um, and I by no means grew up wanting for things, right? Dad's not a surgeon or anything like that. It wasn't crazy. I wasn't getting an Escalade to drive in high school and stuff like that. I went to a very good Catholic school, etc., for, you know, my entire career. So education was important, but no one in my family had done any sort of entrepreneurial business ever. It was all lawyers, doctors, accountants, things like that. So education was important, but risk was not something that was I wouldn't say appreciated, but it wasn't something that I learned growing up, like how to tolerate risk, how to be entrepreneurial, things like that. And so, you know, being around Phoenix, this obviously was a very— in the 2000s when I was in high school, I'm 37, you know, real estate was very much segment commercial where everybody was making money. So my high school classmates, like, we're, we're hopping in the Suburban with my family to do ski trips and my friends are like hopping on Dad's jet. And so I'm like, oh, you know, and like my parents, I'm like, why can't you have a jet, Dad? You're just a doctor, right? Stuff like that. And I started researching like where these people make their money and it was just real estate, real estate, real estate, real estate and commercial specifically. So I said, okay, when can I get a license to do this? So I started testing when I was like a junior at Brophy and I was— because you could take the classes, but you couldn't be an agent until you were 18 or something. So I was taking the courses and I finished everything and I was like, okay, the, the day I could test or the first testing month was May and I turned 18 in April or whatever it was. So tested, ended up getting a license and then started kind of just literally asking around town, friends and family, like, who'll take an intern? And that was to my point. I wanted to work at CB, I wanted to work at JLL, right? Those guys had the biggest listings. and none of them would take my call. And so I kind of happened into retail because there was a guy, a friend of our family, one of my mom's pharmaceutical sales rep gals, like, oh, my, my husband is the managing director of Marcus Millichap. He'll take an intern. And I was like disappointed. I was like, well, CB won't return my call. Like, those are really big listings and I want those. And I'm like, I don't want to do these scrappy little retail buildings. Which was like the total wrong attitude and approach, etc. So I kind of reluctantly get my summer internship at Marcus Millichap, which is actually how I met Jeff Harris, Uncle Big Dog. But I was— where is he? So what am I doing at this point? So I'm a freshman at ASU. I am hanging my real estate license, doing residential on the side just to earn commissions and learn how that worked. And then I'm working for them. A guy in town, Joe Campagno, who's now at CBRE. And Joe was very good to me for, for my first summer. And he was, he was paying me— this is, this was minimum wage at the time— he was paying me like $8 an hour. And Joe was doing really well in his mid-20s. He's a developer now, I believe, a pretty successful guy. And, you know, so I'm going to ASU Monday, Wednesday, Friday. I'm going to Marcus Tuesday, Thursday. I'm valeting cars at Postino in the Vig to actually make a living on weekends. And I'm just trying to put money together, you know, kind of one way or the other and figure it out. You know, Marcus wouldn't let me hang there, my license there. They're like, you have to hang it with a residential firm. Like, you're not an adult yet.

Wow.

Get out of college. Yeah. So then I— this is probably a really long-winded story at this point, but so I end up selling. I end up getting like a 30-unit Arcadia, really screwy condo conversion where the condos were like $150 grand and I sold out the 30 units. So I made like $150,000 when I was 19, 18, 19 at ASU. So then I start, you know, thinking I'm really smart. I'm like, I want to quit ASU, like screw this finance degree. I can make more money in real estate. It's like summer of '07, right? So I'm like selling these condo conversions. I think I'm so smart. I go and like lease a Range Rover like an asshole. and it didn't get repossessed. But 2008 and '09 occurred, and so all of a sudden my $150,000 goes to like zero. And I, uh, I hand my Range Rover lease back in and like make a payment with like the last $10,000 I had in my pocket. And it's, um, so I'm 21 at this point. I'm like, okay, well, I gotta go get a job, and there's nothing to do in Phoenix. And I know a little bit about retail. I've been this Marks Millichap intern, so I just I go to, um, I go to ICSC and I just print out my resume. It's like May of '09, so the world is ending. And I just walked up to booths without meetings and one guy called me back and said, um, I'll hire you on my team at Grubb Ellis to do shopping center leasing. I'm like, well, I know how to sell stuff. I don't really want to lease stuff, but like, that's a fundamental part of the process. He's like, here's the one catch, like my portfolio's in Vegas. I'm like, okay, well I don't really want to live in Vegas, but you got to do what you got to do. So then summer of '09, I moved to Vegas. I'm 21. I get out of ASU in 3 years. And, um, you know, that's kind of how I started cutting my teeth. I was the third guy on the shopping center sign. It was the Great Recession. Nobody was calling. So I was just putting like 1,400-foot nail salon leases at like $18 gross for sale. That's a really bad lease rate, if anyone's curious. And then to get— yeah, to get through that. Yeah, to get through that, I kind of went back to my roots on the, on the valet side. And I was a bartender at the Mirage. I was a union barback at the Mirage when I was like 21, 22 for the first 6 months until I figured out how to make my first paycheck. And then I quit my bartending job and I've never looked back since. But so that gets us to like '22. I don't know how much further we're going to go with the story.

So 2022. So you've built a lot in a pretty short period of time since the comeback. I mean, you got started in the bottom of the great financial crisis. The GFC started leasing, which is how I started too. I would just do— I remember doing a deal with Jay Stein and he was like, I've never seen someone work so hard on a 1,200-square-foot crappy retail lease. And I was like, well, you're working on this deal too. You're like the owner of the whole development firm and the whole shopping center. So we were very smart.

I talked to his team today. They called me about a Circle K. I'm probably revealing this. They called me about a Circle K in Florida that they want to buy.

Oh, we'll see. Well, this won't get released for a couple of months, so you'll be fine.

Yeah.

But yeah, you know, that's— it's— you have to put in the work, you have to put in the grind. And people just want to, like you said, go to the big firm, chase the big deals. But you have to pay the price to be successful.

Well, in hindsight, the best thing that happened was not getting the CB or JLL job. And, you know, I think those are wonderful companies with runner programs and things of that nature. If you can get your foot in the door, I think there's some good to that formality. I just learned sort of figuring it out in a more scrappy way and the benefit to that. And I wouldn't— everything that happened to me badly, you can look and you can whine about things that happened to you in your career and how could I have done this better and like cry over spilt milk? Or you can say like, what was the positive in that? And the positive was that I got to see a lot of transaction. I got a lot of reps being a junior really early on, and I didn't have some big bureaucratic company saying, you can't do this, you can't do that. Right. And like in '09, it was— I was the sign call guy and my, my senior brokers, good guys, I won't mention their names, but they were golfing like they were fine. They had made their money. They're like, there's no velocity here. And they were at their California houses in the summer. So I'm like touring space when it's 110, but I was meeting real tenants, right? And I was really doing the work. And I wasn't on some team of like, oh, when you get here, you can then get here and here and here. And I, I really didn't like— I had kind of a rejection of authority mentality. I was like, I want to make money now. And I was like, oh, I made money when I was 19. I'm 21 now and I'm broke, but I got to figure this thing out. And I really like didn't like being restricted. And so all the CB, JLL guys, and I know young guys that go into those programs, it takes them a long time to like start really earning income because— and then long term, their senior has to pass on their book, retire, die, something like that, God forbid.

Right.

But it takes a long time to kind of— there are very few young people below 30 in those companies that are doing really, really well. There's some, right? You can tell they're, they're on their way. But, you know, I encourage young people that I meet, I'm like, get into a company, like, stop worrying about your senior's title. Stop worrying about, oh, the company. Like, some of the best places to learn and train are like the small regionals because you actually get real-world experience. You're not just like the 8th man on some pecking order of a team, right?

Um, and even now, because of AI and the access to data and the access to marketing— like, I was just talking about that with Luke Morris on— before you got here, the co-founder of Crexi. He was saying, just be entrepreneurial. Like, you don't need— we could— everyone could build their own little mini Blackstone. Like, you don't have to go be Blackstone, and you can have a big advantage by being small and being nimble and being in a And that's what we're doing at HB Capital. Like, yeah, we compete with CB and all these massive firms, but we also have our disadvantages are also our greatest advantages that we can actually have a competitive edge, especially in a rapidly changing environment with technology. Like, you got to be pretty nimble and quick to implement these things, and you can't do that so easily if it's a public company with layers and layers and layers and layers of bureaucracy.

It's, it's, it's really— I don't even know, to your point, right, there's a lot there that that you just went through, but, you know, what these— what the kids are doing these days, like the kids.

Yeah.

Like how they're accessing information, right? Like I'll email somebody in the company when we're working for a particular tenant, comps or landlords, things like this, right? The Twin Peaks, when they announced the closure, I'm like, look, I know all these other retailers want to go there. Our clients are developers. They want to see these sites and these vacancies. I don't know what this kid did, one of my junior brokers, but in 15 minutes I had every store, their square footage, the parcel size, the landlord's contact information and phone number. Right? I mean, when I started, that's what I was doing in 2007, '08, '09, is I was like staying up until midnight putting these damn lists together and looking at like whitepages.com for some guy's cell phone number. Right now it's like this.

Just ask ChatGPT.

Yeah, exactly. It's a brave new world.

It is.

But, you know, until ChatGPT figures out how to put the property in escrow, buy it for you, wire the money, etc., etc., I think we're good. But, you know, a lot of the administrative functions are going away, right? So the real estate practitioner has to get better at where's the value going to come from, right? Like, okay, you have all this time in your week now where you don't have to do data entry, right? So get really, really, really good at something else, right?

And that's the relationship. That's the being an advisor, a fiduciary. It's bringing people together because Luke and I were talking about this too, is AI and these tools will allow us to be even more important and better at what we do because all of our time is freed up from the order taker task doing, you know, research, analytics and things like that. And we can spend more time on the actual relationship, the actual communication, the negotiation, the problem solving. And in a world where there's so much fraud, it's going to be so hard to even know it's real or fake. People could create fake buildings online, fake personas online, like fake everything. The relationship is going to become even more important. And we were talking about how we think the brokerage position, that fiduciary, that intermediary is going to become even more important because there's going to be so many opportunities. Like, right, you could tokenize real estate and put it on a marketplace, but how do you know which one you want to invest in? How do you know which jockey to bet on? How do you know who's trustworthy? How do you know who's not taking your money and they don't even actually own any real estate?

Who's going to vet the AI, right? Like it's— we call it QCing, right? Like we use ChatGPT all the time, like most brokers do. And, you know, if they're not, they've window dressed it to their own proprietary AI. It's all the frickin same. But we use, you know, when we're, when we're using it, it's like we always have to quality control it, right? And it's like, to your point, it's a relationship business at the end of the day. And there's a whole lot of noise out there. It's sifting. People ask me like, what are you— what do I actually do? Like, what am I— what are my skills or whatever? And I always say one thing is I'm like, I'm really good at probability assessment, right? And like, that's the biggest thing you get with anyone in any form of the business. Like, these 75 agents, many of them run their own book, but then there's 30 of them that work for me that are constantly pursuing listings, right? And I'm paying for it and supporting them. But I would say, you know, to sell the $3.6 billion, we sold 930 properties, right? We analyzed like 3,300 of them. So we did a BOV for a client on 3,300 of them. If I had enough time to look at those, I could tell you in 2 minutes, like, we shouldn't have spent all this time on this BOV, right? There was 1,000 of them that we didn't have to do. Because I can look at it and assess it very, very quickly. But the whole probability assessment thing is like these young brokers are like, oh, I'm struggling. I have all these proposals. It's like if you operate just looking to fill your coffer with like, oh, I have proposals, if that's your metric, doesn't— you're not going to make any money if 90% of your proposals are unsaleable. Like, I can go get 500 proposals, but is this something I should be spending time on? Right? Like, I have people that call me all the time and they're like, Oh, hey, Patrick, I'm interested in buying a property, right? You get a young person, they're like, oh my God, I want to take that phone call. Why don't you spend time on this person? I'm like, just wait a second. I'm like, let's get them on the phone. And I'm polite about it. They're like, okay, I want an 8 cap with investment grade credit in a top 10 market and I want an 80% LTV loan. And I'm like, well, I want a fucking pony. Like, I don't know. Like, that's not— is that a buyer? Is that a live human being? Like, that will buy something somewhere, sure. But that's a unicorn deal that's not worth spending time on, right? So like the biggest thing in any business is like probability assessment. Like, and I always call it like fake work, fake news. Like when these young— oh, I'm working on all this stuff. I'm like, show me what you're working on. I'm like, okay, 9 out of 10 things you're working on are not deliverable. Like the property, like everyone's a seller at a price, right? So I can go get 10 listings if I just go tell the guy his 3 cap's worth a 5 cap and I want to waste my time on it. So anyway, I got off on a tangent, but no, it's true.

It's such an important skill set because another way to look at it is how Steve Jobs used to explain it. He said signal versus noise, you know, and all of the best leaders, CEOs, producers, business owners, employees, people in general, they have an acute ability to very quickly identify what is signal and what is noise and what are the top 3 things that you have to get done every single day to move the needle in the direction of your true north and what you're trying to accomplish. And if you— because all of us, can be busy. All of us can work 20 hours a day if we, you know, make ourselves busy with things like there's unlimited things to be busy with. And then that's what's the real skill is being able to determine, yes, there's all these opportunities and I have to deal with that too, right? Every day there's all these opportunities. All these people want to talk to you. All these people want to meet with you. All these people want to pick your brain. All these people want to buy a deal, all like all these things. But like, what is the signal? And I only am going to focus on the signal and I have to say no to 99.9% of all the other things. And that's a very difficult skill.

The worst, you know, the one, one of the things I think is interesting when you're talking to like successful people is everybody wants to brag about what they did and like how they made money and the deal that they just absolutely hit a home run on. That's interesting. But what's more interesting is like, where did you screw up? Right? And it takes a certain— you can't just go and ask somebody you don't know that. But when you get to someone real successful and they, you know, they feel like mentoring you or sharing or being a little more forthcoming, and they're not sociopaths. They, uh, you can say like, tell me about your mistakes. Like, that to me is way more intriguing. And I would, to your point, the biggest mistakes I've made are it's not saying no enough to things that I should have said no to from the standpoint of money or time or whatever it is. And it gets back into like your commodity eventually. Like, the older I've gotten, it becomes time. And it's like, I have to, I have to do the highest value activities per hour That doesn't mean myself or as a firm that we won't service the client, because again, we're a client services firm. That is what we do. But does it mean that, hey, look, this assignment is not for Patrick Luther himself? Someone on the team will service this, right? And we can do it. And, you know, you got to frame that properly. You can't be like, oh, I'm not good enough for you, right? It's just, hey, look, someone else has a better expertise in this area or can better serve you, assist you, whatever it is. Like, this whole servant leadership thing is really important.

Um, but anyway, yeah, no, it's, it's so true. And it's difficult, especially because a lot of entrepreneurs are people pleasers and they want to do— they, they're opportunists and they're people pleasers and they want to like take every opportunity. Like, oh, what if I should have said yes to that or this? But there's opportunity cost. Every time, every minute you spend on one opportunity, you also have an opportunity cost of another opportunity that you're missing.

It's hard though coach people because like these young folks, like I do tell them, like when you have nothing going on, the answer is yes.

Yes.

Right. The answer is yes to everything. And I operated in this. It took me until 3, 4 years ago to realize like my answer can't be yes to everything anymore. But that's not— is that the guidance I would give to someone? It depends on where they're at in their career, right? Like I am a people pleaser. Like it's— there's something like deeply insecure in me about like why I can't say no. I want everyone to be happy.

Right?

Like Patrick wants everybody to be happy all the time and I want to do great for everybody and I want to make all the money and I'd sell all the deals. And you get to a point where you can't do that or you'll destroy yourself. And then frankly, the relation— you'll fail the client too. If you take on more and you can't serve, it does more harm than good. So the saying no is like an evolved— Yeah, that's like my version. You know, my V1 was college. V2 is like the transition to SRS. I'm like looking for what's the next chapter. Yeah.

But where do you think your like people pleasing comes from?

A deep desire to be loved.

Like, yeah, like all of us, right?

Something like there's something deeply like wrong there. I mean, I don't know. I go to therapy like as much as I can to talk about it, but like somebody makes a lot of money telling me what's wrong with me.

Yeah.

You know, I think it's at some point you have to have a natural, like, curiosity is one thing, but like a desire to be great, like a pursuit of excellence. And it's truly like, it's innate, right? And it's easy with athletes. It's like, I ran this fast, I want to run faster, right? This very much is how I operate and it drives me. But as you get older, you start to realize like, to what end? And if you're constantly moving your goal line, you're going to be dissatisfied. So it's like I'm on this constant place of like, okay, do I want to keep being a masochist with my work? Or do I want to, you know, at some point you got to like pat yourself on the back and say, you're doing fine. Everything's good. Take a deep breath.

Your work is not in your performance.

Yes.

You are loved.

Yes.

Yeah.

But I'll tell you, I mean, at the end of the day, I'm always like, I'll catch myself spiraling like, shit.

Yeah.

What could I have done better? Right? Like, why didn't I do this? But at the end of the day, it's like I consider it personal accountability, right? Like, I don't, when I screw something up, I'm like, what's the lesson there? Right? How could I have done better? What's the feedback? I'm not like, oh, that guy didn't hire me. I'm whining, right? I'm feeling bad for myself. I don't live and operate that way. But there is a bit of like a be kind to yourself in like work and life. And, you know, if you're constantly like down in the dumps, you know, that shows like your energy, your energy with clients, like your positivity. Things like that. It's, it's very, very important. Like, mental health is like one of the biggest things. We're really going on a tangent now, but like, no, it's true.

That's what I talk about all the time because, yeah, I've done a lot of trauma therapy and just psychological, uh, psychology studying and healing because I had that too. It was always more, more, more, more, more. You hit a goal and then you're immediately— follow right after the high, you're immediately followed by what's next. I have to do this next thing. How do I build more? And I take on more pressure and go do this next thing, and then it's just this never-ending spiral of of misery and it's never enough, right?

It's never enough. And like, I think you've— it seems like you've done a good job kind of reining that in and like, look, I'll have some days where I don't, I don't rein it in myself. But on the opposite end, I generally do think most people don't suffer from this affliction that we suffer from. I think they pretend that they're working hard or they pretend that they're busy and they're not like I would. I do tell people they're like, oh, how did you get here in this period of your time? I'm like, look, I'm not— I always tell folks, I'm not smarter than you. I just have more reps, right? Because I started when I was 18. I just have— most folks, they get out of college, they do something for a year. They don't figure out which way is up in their business until, you know, they might go from a career one to another. I knew exactly what I wanted to do when I was 18. I started doing it when I was 18. So by the time I was 22, I had 4 or 5 years of reps. I like young brokers. They start when they're 22, 23. They're not making money till they're 28. That's the difference. I just started it earlier. Now, you will not get the reps and you won't improve if you don't put yourself out there. And that's what I struggle with when I'm addressing people on my team that'll say, hey, I'm struggling, you know, what can you do to help? And I'm like, look, there's no epiphanies. Like, did you show up to the ICSC? Did you show up to 10 of them? Right? Are you in the— are you putting in the time, the hours, the reps, right? You'll score a lot of points if you take a lot of shots at some point, right? Like, statistically, you look at any sport and activity, there's like lifetime scores that were never phenoms. They were just consistent. And I'm like, I show up. If I'm happy, great. If I'm sad, great. I close a big deal. I don't go fuck off and celebrate for 2 or 3 days. I double down and I go to work again the next day and again. And again and again and again. And part of that, like, that builds your stamina. And it's like, you know, again, more analogies, weightlifting, right? Like you can comfortably squat £100. Your goal is to get to 200. Well, throw on 150 and fail. It's the same with work, right? It's load management. And like, people are like, oh, you're— you will learn to be more efficient and effective If you just— if you do say yes, you load on more pressure, then you can figure out all the other stuff. You can figure out how to be happy and be a good person and all that other stuff. But if you just don't have the stamina and the build— if people come to me and they're like, I'm busy, I have 5 deals, I'm like, you're not going to be able to do 10 deals until you take on 20 and you're running around like a chicken with your head cut off. Like, you will figure out what's important and what's not important.

Yeah. Just to take the chance, take on the pressure.

Yeah.

I mean, that's how you— I like that you said that because it's either— I have that same perspective of I either win or I learn. Like, I don't really believe in failing because I fail. You can't grow unless you fail at things. And so it's not a failure unless you quit. And I know it sounds so cliché, but it's so true. Like, you just keep going. You analyze and don't make the same mistake over and over again. Like, actually Pause, analyze where you messed up, analyze what the lesson is. How do I get better? How do I grow from this? And then you take that experience and that wisdom can't be taken from you. So even if you end up in a crisis or a crash or you lose tons of money or have a bad deal or lose whatever, right, you have that experience and that knowledge to be able to go now do it better, faster and stronger. And most people, they just can't handle the, the pressure. I think a lot of that comes back to also is the push versus pull motivation. You know, a lot of the unworthiness, the lack of I'm not good enough, or I needed people to love me— like, that's the primary desire in every human being. That's how we exist, right? And so if we— a lot of entrepreneurs are people that didn't feel that for some reason as a child from their parents, like they weren't good enough, or they couldn't live up to the expectations, or their dad was never around, or their mom was a narcissist, or whatever, right? And their parents were just doing the best they could. They're not bad people.

That's how I define my family, right?

And I had to have those conversations with my parents. Like, I love you to death. You did the best you could. You did amazing. It doesn't mean that my 5-year-old brain took it that way of you guys are awesome. And like, that's what caused me to create those biases in my own life. But then it served me. It pushed me. It made me relentless. It made me obsessed and made me absolutely committed and have this type of grit to get through anything and just dial in on what I was going to accomplish. But then at some point I woke up and realized the pattern, the probability of, okay, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And I am seeing that any goal I achieve is not followed by the satisfaction that I assumed the goal would bring me. And I don't want to live like this forever because I see a lot of people in their 50s, 60s, 70s, whatever, that are worth hundreds of millions of dollars and they're miserable, empty shells. And that's gonna be me. And so that's where I started to shift into more of that, pull motivation. And that first coach I hired when I was 25, when I became a millionaire and was suicidal, I was like, hey, how do I, you know, fix this? Yeah, me, how do I fix me? And he's like, well, what's your, what's your motivation? What's your intention behind every action that you're doing? And ultimately it was to try to earn love for myself and from other people. And he goes, that's all wrong. Like, as long as your intention is coming from that motivation to try to earn love, you will feel like this for the rest of your life, no matter what you achieve on paper. And he said, your motivation has to come from love. Like, you do this, you serve people, you create, you grow, you lead because you love yourself, not to try to love yourself. And that's where I had to go down that whole journey of like really exploring where that all came from.

That's a lot. Yeah, we could have a whole podcast on that. No, it's very, yeah, that's very, Yes. Yes. Is all I'm going to say.

Yeah.

I don't know if I'm ready to reveal all of this on camera, but yes.

Yeah. This is only like your second podcast, right?

The first one was audio. This is the— no, wait, wait, wait. This is the second one on video. Yeah. I did a short one in Dallas at one point.

But it's so true. And it's, you know, people— I think finally it's becoming more acceptable for like men in particular to talk about their feelings and like what drives them and all these things because it really is a sign of strength, right? The old be tough. Don't bitch and complain. Like, all these things. Yes, be tough and be relentless and all these things, but also be vulnerable and authentic to like, we're human beings, we have emotion. And if we're disconnected from our emotion for our whole lives, like, that doesn't help anybody, it doesn't help ourselves, and it's a waste of our one experience of life that we get, um, in this world. And it— once you are able to push through that and actually love yourself, like, not from a narcissistic, insecure way, but a whole compassionate, empathetic, you're great, like, I love you, I cherish you and who you are, and you don't need it filled from other things around you, then you're able to actually create and take on so much more and build so much more because the motivation is right and because you now have that pull motivation where you're not trying to force every outcome in your life and you're exhausted and you're drained and you're fighting everything and you're in this victim state scarcity, fearful mentality, but now you're like actually infinite potential, infinite abundance, and this infinite energy. And like, that's what I feel now. I'm like, bring it on. Like every day I wake up and I'm just ready for it because it's coming from the right place.

No, I'm a— yeah, you're an abundance versus scarcity person. Like I'm the same, like glass half full, glass half empty, right? Like I— first off, you should also like get paid to talk about all that. So you should charge, like our company would probably pay you to like tell that entire story. Sign me up. It's, you know, that's why like mental health is like important to these guys. Like, and I tell them, they're like, well, what do I need to do? I'm like, look, take a deep breath, get good rest, go to the gym, like get in a routine, like, or spend a couple hours or days whining about like why the deal didn't go your way, etc. Like process it. Let's figure it out. I'll help you with that. Move on. Like the best thing you can do for yourself is like get out of this fricking cycle. And, and go back to work. Like, I'm struggling. My deals fell out. Well, how many do you have? 5. Okay, well, if you had 10, like, at some point it is numbers and it's probability. So like, go get 10 and then you'll be— it'll roll off you when a couple die, which still— my pipeline blows up all the time or it expands and contracts and all that stuff. But it's like I've just got enough of it hedged. I'm like, you know, makes me feel better having 10 deals behind it, right? Like, not like, oh my God, every— the world is ending. Like, the deals are dying. It's like, no, I can't control a buyer doing something crazy and not waiving contingencies and not closing escrow. I can control going up, showing up to work the next day. I can control putting the effort out and getting more listings, right? So I can— it's like we're our owner's worst enemy and like we can fix our own problems. And it's like when most people talk to me about this and the junior brokers, I'm like, you know what you got to do? You're just— it's like, it's right in front of you. Just, just go do it.

Yeah.

And they're so worried about like trying to be right or trying to convince someone to do something. And I'm like, look, you're not, you're not going to— the client is the one making the decision. Like, you don't own the asset. So like, it kind of doesn't matter what you think or how you feel. Like, you can give advice, but at some point, like, follow your instructions and like, don't get worked up. Like, people do crazy stuff. Like, you're going to just drive yourself insane if you don't. Operate like that. Yeah, to some extent.

Well, and energy is so important, and that's what the same coach taught me. He said the outcome can only be as great as the energetic state in which you initiate the action.

Interesting.

So if you take any action from a poor state, your outcome is going to match that. It's going to be poor. But if you take an action from a peak state— like, if I showed up on this podcast, I was like, hey Patrick, I feel like shit, my life sucks, I hate myself— like, are we gonna have a good interview? No, hell no. But I come up pumped up, peak state, flow state, in the zone, connected. We're going to have an amazing conversation and we're going to help a lot of people and all these things. And that's the same in deals. If they show up and they're like, my deal fell out or I'm working so hard or nothing's going well or the market sucks, like all they're going to do is create more.

You're going to ruminate, you're going to perpetuate that cycle. And I agree. And you know what? You might have felt some of those things before this interview or whatever, and you're going to feel better after you're done. Like, right? You show up and do the work. Like, probably feel less like that now if you did, like, show up, right? What scares me with people is like when they experience some form of failure, they run away or hide or you don't hear from them. I'm like, that's the worst thing you can do. I'm like, be with people, talk about it. Some of the biggest learning opportunities I've had is, again, to the point of like failures, tell somebody like, God, you know, the vulnerability, the authenticity thing. You had a guy on the show, Josh Simon. I met Josh when Josh built a building at like age 26. Josh is one of the first people I call when I've had a failure. I need advice. I've had a rough day and I don't know if you wanted this on the podcast, but he'll tell me the same thing. Yeah, buddy, I did too. It's all good. You'll be good. Everything's fine. You're doing it right. Good job, keep it up, right? And that gets back into like, who are your mentors and who do you have as a support structure, things like that. But I would say there's like a common thread of most of these really successful people. It's like they get kicked in the teeth and they wake up and they ask for more.

Mm-hmm. So yeah, that, that narcissistic tendency. So, but I know we don't have a ton of time left, but where do you see the future? I mean, there's obviously so much going on in the economy. We have AI, the immigration of AI, I call it the mass immigration that's coming for a lot of order-taker type admin jobs and eventually blue-collar construction jobs and things like that. And Elon thinks, you know, the prices of everything are going to drop tremendously because we need that. Yeah, right. I know. But he also says we'll be in a world of abundance and everybody will have high income and the cost of goods and services is going to be so low and all these things. But where does that leave commercial real estate over the next, you know, 1, 3, 5, 10 years? Like what? What? I know you don't have a crystal ball and nobody does, but it's fun to talk about. What do you think as far as real estate, commercial real estate as a whole, and also like specifically the retail perspective in this rise of technology and robotics?

Market's really— market is very, very healthy outlook over the next— I never like more than a 12-month outlook because I'm like, I'm like, look, things change. But I always say, look, barring black swan events, like, is there a— I don't think there's a fundamental like obsolescence to retail like 10 years ago would have told you about big box, which is a conversation we started in. All the demand drivers are there. There are enough fresh concepts. I don't care if it's food or apparel or big box, whatever it may be. Like, there is depth if these spaces go dark. So there's— and the companies that do the best job with it are the omnichannel guys. They're selling you the product through multiple means, and the retail is some combination of distribution or a billboard or this or that. The only thing that I think is the real big change in the net organic stuff that's being built and like massive scale is the data centers, the data center stuff. So that's obviously that sits on the top from like the standpoint of like we need more of this and that is going to be built in great supply. Office is on the other end of like, okay, what do we do with this? At the same time, like the best office space is 100% leased. Like we have an office in Newport Beach at Fashion Island. Our rents went from $70 a foot gross to like $90 a foot gross. Like you don't get concessions with Irvine Company. Right? And but what they have done to command that rent is I have everything I need. I have a Whole Foods that I can walk to. I have a Hillstone R&D restaurant that I love. I have a Neiman Marcus if I sell a deal and feel like going shopping, right? Like every— I have a hotel. I have— we have a pseudo Four Seasons Flag next door. So everything's there. So if you really look at like placemaking, it's just that everybody says all office is a disaster. It's like if you're commodity office, yeah, it's probably a disaster. You're just a race to who's the lowest price per foot. Um, but I think in this country, I think things are fundamentally relatively healthy. The biggest thing that concerns me is, um, growing income gaps, like the haves and the have-nots, right? And like, you get to where it's just like with tax load, like 80, 90% of the spend is by 5 to 10% of the population. And the big indicators I look at that that make me nervous about— the only things that make me nervous about the state of the economy are like credit card balances going way up. So you're like, okay, people are paying their bills more slowly. And then you actually look at like used car delinquency rates, because a foreclosure on a house takes months. If you don't make one car payment, your car gets repoed, right? So you look at like, you look at Carvana, CarMax, these guys, you look at their repo rates. So when people start slow paying that, paying that and putting money on credit cards, that shows you, hey, the consumer's under pressure. When we look at tenants and retail, like the discretionary categories, there's a little less spend there. And that's been happening for the last year or so. Like, are people going to go out to, you know, Topgolf as much as they used to? Right. And stuff. There are always— there's a whole value segment of entertainment, but it's like, are people going to take a few less vacations? Are they going to put a little bit more on their credit card? Right. Those things make me nervous. The political divisiveness of the country, which I think is exacerbated by wealth gaps. That kind of thing makes me nervous. Like all the shit happening. We don't have time for a political conversation. That kind of stuff makes me more nervous than anything else.

The K economy and the wealth gaps in that cause.

The K economy. I heard that the other day.

Yeah. Rich Dad, Poor Dad.

Okay.

Robert Kiyosaki. He talks about that a lot. But yeah, and that's the thing is even, and now with AI, it's going to exacerbate it even more because now it's like, all— there's abundant wealth being created, but it's all in the hands of a few people, you know, 5 people. Yeah. And, but, but that has to be— in order for there to be economic growth and GDP growth and all these things, which I think GDP, that whole indicator is going to change because it's not going to be a valid metric. But, um, uh, there has to be buyers, right? And so it has to circulate. But that's where the complexity is, is, well, is it all circulating amongst one small group? And then it has to be redistributed to the, the population so people can survive and we're not Civil War and all these difficult concepts. But as far as like utility of retail and companies that are growing and going bankrupt, because we're seeing a lot of companies go bankrupt and we're seeing a lot of companies have massive growth. Where do you think the bright spot is in retail? Do you think it is more affordability or do you think it is more like high-end experiences, high-end dining, high-end office, high, you know, those types of things?

That's it. It's a— don't have enough time to answer the question. It's a really, really good question. You are seeing pressure on— I mean, this again could change next quarter, but But I think LVMH put out earnings and they finally saw a contraction even on the high end. You're starting to look at, and this is just fun stuff, but like high-end Swiss watch manufacturers are actually lowering prices, right? I think that might have something to do with tariffs, et cetera, et cetera. Back to the whole global thing. I think global supply markets of labor, I don't think we're going to have mass unemployment. The AI stuff scares me with certain jobs getting wiped out. One thing I always like to talk about is the biggest thing that we struggle with as brokers, the biggest thing that developers, the people that build what we lease and sell, are— they struggle with skilled trades and labor, right? So it's not like we don't have jobs in this country and/or consumers. It's the consumers have a skill that's been replaced in some way. We don't have enough people to do, you know, work with their hands, whatever that might be. Again, trades, right? Right. So I look at things like, do we need And this again is a huge macro conversation. Like, do we need more majors in like underwater basket weaving and stuff like that? Or like, do people, should people go to it, learn how to work with iron, steel, whatever it might be like, right? People should learn how to make things and do technical skills. The biggest developer issues aside from like supply chain, it's supply chain of humans and labor as much as it is materials. It's like, I can't get capable subcontractors.

Yeah, but then there's, you know, Elon saying in 3 years robots will do better brain surgery than any surgeon ever could, which means labor is, you know, blue collar is coming next.

I agree.

Yeah, but people still exist. Like, people still want to go to restaurants, people still want to gather and do podcasts and go to conferences and, and go to like Soho House and social clubs. And so that's what I, I think is like that in-person experience-based relationship, like connection. We always are going to have it. We're not all just going to like live in cave in a virtual reality, at least not for the foreseeable future. And that'd be a pretty sad world. But yeah, some people do. But yeah.

No, I think there's— look, it's the Phoenix Open week. We're in Phoenix. We're— it's February 4th, whatever it is, February 3rd today. I can't get a reservation anywhere, right? The same store sales we rep— I mean, it's public. I can say it. But there's a— we're going to Catch restaurant in 2 days. Catch opened their first store in Dallas. It's going to be their most profitable unit ever. And I mean, we're talking about sit-down restaurants now, 10,000 square feet that are doing $25, $30 million in sales.

Yeah, right.

I mean, you look at things like that and you're saying, what's wrong with— there is nothing wrong with the economy, right? But what are you in that— you're either hyper-valued on the other end of the spectrum. Texas Roadhouse is a tenant of ours. They are the top casual dining chain by I think they would do $9 million a store on average now. And that's a $14, $15 steak. They have tremendous growth. It's, it's everyone in the middle, right? You're either providing and everyone says like, oh, we offer the experience where we can charge $50 for a steak. No, you don't. Catch does. You don't. Right. So you're, you're going to struggle, right? You're— yeah, it's $100 now. Everything changes. I think it's the middle. Is what struggles. And it's the same thing with retail. Like, are you clearly one thing or another? And we can't be all things to all people, right?

So yeah, be the best at what you are and forget the rest. And it's just— it's capitalism. You just have to fight for being the best in your niche thing. Like, who is your client? Who is your avatar? And serve them better than anyone else.

I agree.

Well, awesome. Well, we'll end with a rapid fire.

Oh boy.

School of Hard Knocks style.

Oh God.

Okay. How old were you when you became a millionaire?

Uh, I was 24, I think, plus or minus. I actually haven't been asked that one in a while. I'd have to look. The first year I made a million dollars, I was 27, like in my pocket post-tax.

Wow.

But I think cumulatively I was 24, 25.

That's insane. Yeah, I was 25. Uh, what's the greatest advice you've ever heard or received?

Oh boy. Oh, that's a really, really hard one. Comparison is the thief of joy because we're on a whole mental health thing right today. So let's go with that one. There's probably a lot more that I could go on.

Comparison is the thief of joy. I like that. What's the number one thing you attribute to your success?

My pain tolerance.

Yeah.

Stamina for continuing when I don't feel good or I mentally, emotionally, spiritually, whatever it is, just continuing.

Yeah, I think most of the most successful people I've talked to or learned from, they just have a massive ability to handle immense amounts of pain.

Yeah.

What's the most important thing it comes— what's the most important thing when it comes to building and scaling companies? Hmm.

God, I would almost say pain tolerance. I think it's a It's an ability to meet your clients, stakeholders where they're at and find some common ground. Like, I don't want to bastardize it with saying likability, but it's like the ability to relate to wide swaths of people and figure out what's important to them and like be able to have a conversation with them because you can't grow if you can't get people to want to work with you, for you, etc. And people aren't going to work with you and for you if they don't like you. Or they feel like you're full of shit, right?

If you could leave one message to the younger generation, what would it be?

Stop looking at your fucking phone and get out in the world and meet human beings and learn how to talk to adults.

That's literally what Luke said.

Really?

Just on the last interview.

Yeah.

He said stop scrolling.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I scroll a lot too, but like my doom loop at night.

But yeah.

Get out of there.

Who is your hero and why?

My hero is my mother. Yeah, for sure. She's— because she is a hardworking Midwest woman who moved with no money out west to Arizona and met my father, the doctor, who had a red 911 Turbo at the time, by the way. And I'm like, Mom, seriously? Now, it's that the woman, like, the point of stamina. My mom raised 5 kids and You know, everyone handles things differently, but she had a job the entire time. She was a pharmaceutical sales rep. She still works to this day. She's 65. She doesn't have to, right? The woman's just a grinder. But at the same time, she is very devout with her Catholicism, which I appreciate. She's a great mom to all of our kids. My dad's dying of cancer. She takes care of him. The woman's just frickin' indestructible. You know, something's like really fucked up when that woman starts crying because it's like She keeps everybody else locked in, including myself. Yeah.

So that's awesome to have her in your life. But all right, last question. If you could send one text to your 25-year-old self, what would it say? Or for you, it's probably if you could send one text to your 20-year-old self, what would it say?

Good one. Stop caring. Yeah, you'll be fine. And quit giving a shit about what other people think of you.

Wise, famous words of wisdom. So, well, thanks so much for coming on the show.

Thanks, appreciate it.

Dinner at Catch is actually tomorrow night.

Okay, I think I'll ask Uncle Jeff.

Yeah, Thursday, and the Open. So excited.

Appreciate you. Thank you.