This episode examines the exponential impact of hiring talent capable of independent execution, sparked by Srivatsan Srivatsa joining acquisition.com as managing partner. The discussion contrasts building with autonomous operators versus requiring constant oversight, using concrete examples from Serious Land Capital’s current team structure where the CTO and senior engineer deliver without micromanagement, and virtual assistant Melvin proactively drives initiatives using AI tools from Callen’s A2A course.
Key Takeaways:
- “I Got It” Test for Talent Quality The ability to assign tasks and trust completion without routine check-ins multiplies organizational output exponentially.
- AI as Autonomous Teammate Properly programmed AI can replicate the “I got it” dynamic that premium human talent provides, enabling sub-$3M businesses to punch above their weight class.
- Fame ≠ Capability at Scale Billion-dollar company builders like Srivatsa operate under the radar, reinforcing that chasing mainstream notoriety is often a fool’s errand compared to focused execution.
Listen to hear how building trust with autonomous talent—human and AI—creates the leverage needed to escape the $2-3M revenue plateau.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious today. I was just reflecting more on the benefits of having the right talent in place and being able to trust those individuals around you to quickly, grasp tasks. It doesn’t even necessarily need to be that quick, but you know, ideally the quicker the better. and just being able to.
run with it, to kind of grab that entire concept and not needing routine check-in and just knowing that you can trust them to, handle, what that, particular task or project is that was assigned to them. So I’ve been thinking a lot about this since seeing and listening, more about that announcement, with
You know the acquisition com with Sran Srivatsa joining is a managing partner. I’d actually never heard of him. I mean his resume looking at that is you know, just absolutely remarkable You growing a couple billion dollar companies and various exits Really since an early in early age Which also just goes to show like it’s it’s crazy how
you know, that there’s only a handful of individuals in any realm of life, various, you know, financial success or other types of worldly success that can actually, you know, pierce through the mainstream.
Chris Duff (01:26)
just crazy, crazily accomplished individuals who can build billion dollar companies and just fly under the radar. Which is just, again, a reminder where it’s like, you gotta run your own race here and try to achieve whatever you may and more than likely fame and mainstream notoriety is probably not going to.
come your way. And that can oftentimes be a fool’s errand to try to chase that regardless. So that was kind of interesting to note as well. that’s something that, know, Sharan and both Alex and Laila Hormozi were just talking a lot about is just being able to have those individuals on their team. That’s what really catapulted their businesses to
the next level in an exponential fashion is just having people, both in an equal business hierarchy to themselves as well as those under them that can just say, you know, I got it and handle that entire part of the project by themselves. And so you can just multiply.
the amount of results and outputs that you could otherwise are not having the correct talent in place. And so that’s just something I’ve been thinking a lot more about and also feeling grateful because as we’ve been making that final push within Lampricer to get the software out, especially like
You know, again, I’m kind of more visionary. Really don’t have like, understand project management. Um, but, know, actually coding is just, you know, outside of my reach, even using some of the AI tools, um, like that would be a heavy lift. And so just knowing, you know, when I’m speaking to and with my CTO and then the senior engineer that he had brought on, um, who’s, uh, based in India, but has been working, you know, for decades on various, um,
engineering projects, like I can just tell, okay, yeah, these guys, and they’ll just say during it, yep, got it, understood, without additional preamble or like routine checking in or questions. And then upon the actual deliverables, it’s like, okay, yeah, this is exactly what I was looking for. Sure, we have, you know, these daily huddles to, you know, just check in, okay, making sure nobody is blocked here. We’re still moving forward.
But just knowing that I have that trust internally where I don’t need to be micromanaging or routinely checking in, that’s just such a multiplier when it comes to getting things done. Because then it frees me up to focus on, okay, the sales marketing and the distribution for the product. I don’t need to get in the actual guts of the product as much once we’ve already set out the roadmap for what needs to be built.
course, I’m going to be there to test and be there for questions as needed, but it doesn’t routinely have to come up. And similar within the serious land capital business is our core virtual assistant, Melvin, who’s been growing with us for a couple of years now. I think especially with the advent of AI and being in Callen’s course.
of the A2A course has continued to take additional initiative and just being able to run with projects or just come up with his own ideas relative to overall goals of the business and being able to pursue them in his own fashion. And then I can just have more routine trust and like, yeah, some…
some more critical items that come up. Yeah, we might need more back and forth to figure out, what’s our solution? What’s our anticipated SOP for this particular process? But once we get a few things in place, it’s like, okay, I know he’s on top of this. We’ve established a routine here. I can continue to still focus on the BD side, producing content and figuring out, okay, what is this next stage?
of the business going to look like, you know, trying to avoid rush and, you know, escape that, you know, kind of swamp of roughly, you know, two to $3 million revenue businesses where a lot of operators get stuck. And that’s what we’re really trying to push through at the moment. And I think we have a really good game plan for how to do that. I know I’ve spoke a bit about that, on the podcast and it’s a whole nother topic entirely.
but, know, just frees me up to do more of that or additional, okay, what, what else can I work on from the AI side that just helps operations and marketing sales, cetera, to help take us to that next level. and just make us more as well. and that’s something that I think AI even has the potential.
with two is just, you it’s not just humans who can say, yeah, I got it and just run with it. It’s yeah, if you program and prompt AI properly, you can trust it to, you know, effectively be an inhuman route of saying, you know, quote, I got it and trusting it to handle certain processes or, you know, even a certain level of reasoning that can accomplish business tasks as well. So, you know, that
Again, I’m always looking to figure out how can we still use the most automated pathways possible to even avoid bringing in extra human talent for as long as we can, both to help the bottom line and it just forces me to think even more creatively because I’m just an absolute AI first company trying to be a top 1%.
understanding on how to implement AI within business. I just see it as the absolute gold mine to dig into and where so much growth can still happen. So just wanted to kind of share my thoughts on all of that and how I’ve just continued to learn from some of the best operators out there. I had never been exposed to this strong guy and just…
Like hearing him speak just, you he’s a serious guy. You can just tell, you know, I know I’ve talked about that framework. Obviously that company’s named after it, but you can just tell like this guy is super determined, no nonsense. Like, Hey, let’s stay focused on winning here. And, you know, clearly it’s, it’s worked out for him very well. So, um, it’s just inspiring to see and just also a realization. Okay. Yeah. You still have so much more growth to get to. Um,
And, you know, I’m trying to implement all of this again into that AI coach Sage mode that I’m building for myself. Did so much work on that today. Still have more to come. It’s one of the most excited I’ve ever been for a particular project. And I think the returns are just going to be near infinite for it. So I just, I really want to knock out. probably close to halfway done with the first, the first version of it. And then can just iterate from there, but you know.
Gotta stick with it. And I’ll be able to share more results on that here shortly. So thanks for tuning in on today’s episode. Try to figure out, how many other team members do you have that can just say, got it, and you can trust them. Do you need to hire other folks who can do that? Do you need to implement other systems?
In order to achieve that in your business, even look self critically at yourself across the business. Are you somebody who can reliably say, hey, I got this and other people within your organization or even yourself, can you trust yourself to do that? That is a hard question answer sometimes, something I have to ask myself routinely. So just try to keep that in mind and come in with a humble attitude and success will find you.
With that, serious land.capital for any of your funding needs, zero cost review of your land deals at Land Daily Diligence Facebook group and landpricer.ai, the most reliable land pricing software on the market. As I talked about earlier on this podcast, hope you enjoyed this one. Subscribe and share. You might be hearing the storm outside the window at the moment. Take care now. Bye.
