This episode unpacks five critical entrepreneurial blockers identified at a mastermind in Nosara, Costa Rica with roughly 20 entrepreneurs spanning a 30-year age gap. The focus issue cost Chris tens of thousands of dollars (if not hundreds of thousands in opportunity costs) while splitting attention between Land Pricer and Serious Land Capital before backing out of the AI software to focus full-time on the land funding business. The discussion centers on pattern recognition from personal mistakes: lack of focus, shaky confidence, solo operation limits, failure to make market offers, and inability to maintain long-term commitment to a single business.
Key Takeaways:
- Focus is the #1 blocker Splitting attention between multiple businesses or shiny objects will disappoint everyone involved and guarantee you lose tens to hundreds of thousands in opportunity costs.
- Confidence requires external permission Many entrepreneurs (especially female operators navigating household dynamics) need outside voices to believe in them more than they believe in themselves before making bold moves.
- Solopreneurs hit hard walls Running everything yourself caps growth at roughly $1 million in most industries; you need VAs, EAs, and delegation systems to move bigger blocks and think strategically.
- The market is the ultimate mirror Delaying your offer to the market is just self-protection from inevitable rejection, but you can’t build a business without getting feedback and evolving from it.
- Longevity beats strategy Less than half of operators actually want to do their current business for life, but the longer your time horizon, the more reps you get, the longer-term risks you can take, and the more likely you are to win.
Listen to the full episode to hear the raw insights on why most entrepreneurs plateau and how to push past the blockers preventing explosive growth.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious, where at Serious Land Capital, we have successfully funded over $6 million worth of vacant land deals with industry leading 41 % operating margins. So today I wanted to follow up with some more takeaways from that AI mastermind. I was in Nosauro, Costa Rica with Kellan Faulkner and a number of other.
higher level entrepreneurs, not just real estate focused or land focused, kind of grab bag. There’s definitely some other real estate folks there. In my previous podcast, had gone over more of the, know, just kind of endless optimism about how well positioned we are, especially if, you know, you’re from a developed country or the US and so forth, and you know, how there’s infinite opportunity, especially within the real estate game.
developing countries or not. So, that was one piece of the conversation here. The next piece I wanted to dive in a little bit more for the takeaways from the actual day itself, which, very constrained period of time, like we only had a roughly full day together there. So, jam packed roughly 20 or so folks.
And yeah, we definitely went, know, was semi hot seat session, semi presentation, you know, sometimes like these are new events here. been around to so many, like you gotta kind of feel it out for what type of format might be more consistent going forward here. But, you know, these were all folks who we had met through, you know, Callen’s Uncommon Business.
program and so a lot of us were more familiar with each other from an online perspective, just getting in person here. And we could dive into some of the AI tactical takeaways here, of which there are endless, right? But I really wanted to center in more on what, again, I see as
common themes and blockers for continued entrepreneurial and small business development. like, you know, I’ve personally struggled with all of these and still do going forward here. So these serves as reminders for myself, but I think they’re just so common to, you know, pretty much again, any entrepreneurial journey that it just bears worth.
touching on some of these so that you can be more aware and be able to push past blockers or plateaus or what have you that might be preventing the growth that is definitely possible for you and your company’s future. And again, I always have to throw a caveat that appreciate all the transparency and the
level of vulnerability of folks who are at this in-person event, always makes it a lot better for yourself and everybody attending when we can be open books and actually just mention what we’re struggling with and so forth. Because if you just mentioned, yeah, we’re just killing it, everything’s going great, okay, fine, if that is the case, but no one’s going to be jumping up to necessarily help you.
I don’t know a business owner out there that doesn’t have at least one problem that could use some input from somebody else. So that’s always food for thought from that perspective. So with all of that in mind here, some of the common themes that I was seeing, know, one piece, which again, it’s probably the biggest issue that hit me over this past year.
And much of the previous year prior to that, like me, much of 2024 and 2025 is just the focus piece. I’ve remarked a number of times about, you know, back and forth between landpricer, which was our AI land pricing software tool. mean, no surprise from the name balancing that with growing serious land capital. And as I’ve discussed a number of times, you know, I had backed out of the
core day-to-day operating role of land price here to focus full-time on serious land capital. And it was just a game-changing from that perspective. We’re already seeing significant returns just from serious land capital and we can barely keep up with the path to growth that we anticipate within this own business. so many of these other entrepreneurs, are, again, so many folks who want to start their own business
are inherently more attracted to shiny objects and seeing the potential for solving different problems. There’s a reason you wanted to go off and do things on your own or with a smaller set of partners in some capacity. so this focus piece is probably the number one biggest blocker for entrepreneurs not getting to where they need to go. I just see this so often and there was just
You know, many folks at this particular mastermind, you know, different life stages and so forth. I mean, we probably had age gap from the youngest to the oldest of at least 30 years, you know, different career experiences and so forth. But it’s still so common throughout, you know, no matter where you are in your career path. Yeah, the earlier you can catch it, the better. Obviously, you’ll have, you know, hopefully more time. Knock on wood.
but it’s never too late to refocus and double down on what’s actually working and your core constraint to solve for your business. And again, I feel I can comment about this with a significant amount of clarity just because I’ve paid the price for lack of focus, both monetarily, tens of thousands of dollars, if not hundreds of thousands in lost opportunity costs, as well as time lost.
for not staying focused on my actual core business and priority. And so like, it’s so easy now for me to recognize those patterns and see it and try to, you know, urge folks, hey, like, you know, it’s your life, do whatever you want. Of course, there’s no rules in business, but just keep this in mind, like the focus piece, if you’re gonna be trying to run this one particular project or
you know, you’re trying to keep too many parties happy and, know, maybe your spouse isn’t as supportive of what you’re doing. They want more consistent, income coming in that are from these consulting clients that might not be as reliable long-term, but you see a better vision for much more explosive growth within your particular company or really shifting the entire product line, to let go of those current clients. Like, you know, if you try to run.
a pathway forward with both of those in parallel, inevitably you’re going to disappoint everybody involved. So it’s like, how do you actually develop the confidence to choose and stick with that key area that you need to focus on, whether it’s a particular area within one business or just going all in on one particular business when you might have a couple of different ones.
or maybe even a few different ones that you’re trying to throw out there and see which one sticks the most. But more than likely, the one that will stick the most is the one that you focus on entirely. always to keep that in mind and that tangents into that confidence piece. again, I think you can hear in my voice and I practice a lot from just the charisma and…
You know, the inevitability that I had spoke about the other week here, um, that we feel so, you know, we’re, we’re like a heat seeking missile toward our goal as a company here. Um, that gives us a lot of confidence because we are focused because we’ve got, we get the reps in every single day and we know, um, we have the relationships in the capital and everything, um, that we can put in place to continue to have success.
in this industry, regardless of market conditions. as long as we continue to show up and put the work in. but you know, at that mastermind, like I saw, you know, a lot of kind of shaky confidence. And again, you can take some of those scenarios where, you know, different people in your life are wanting different things for you or, know, you haven’t necessarily seen some of the returns on the offers you’re making to the market.
Um, or maybe you’re tinkering too much with a particular service or product before releasing it, um, into the wild, uh, again, all mistakes that, that I’ve personally made and, still are in the midst of making here and there. Um, and the confidence piece was not something that always came easy to me either. And there’s still plenty of like, I think just on a day to day basis, you know, your confidence is going to be shaken in some form or fashion.
But right now, like we’re in a pretty confident state of mind, just given how focused we are. And, you know, as an aside, like it can be thrown into, we have to consider all of the other variables within the equation as well. And within, you know, Kellan’s Uncommon Business, like there are, you know, naturally more female entrepreneurs, know, females like like tends to attract like, right? So, you know, more male.
you know, leaders are, you know, starters of various coaching programs and so forth are probably going to attract more males. and, vice versa. So, you know, there were more female entrepreneurs there and, you know, inherently within the genders, you know, I, and, and I’d like, this is an heresy to say, I mean, you can look within your own, experience and various data and so forth is that, yeah, from a confidence,
perspective and boldness and courage, men tend to be higher in those categories than women. So I’m very careful shaping that phrasing. It’s not always the case, but often that is a particular case, especially when it comes to who’s the primary breadwinner within households and how does your spouse fit in and so forth. So I’m never sure exactly what everybody’s
you know, precise interpersonal relationships are like no one can know, right? You can hardly keep a firm handle on your own if you’re in one. So like, I can only speak from my own experience, but I always throw that caveat out there as an important consideration of like, you know, you have to understand what are the gender roles or what’s the expectation within, you know, somebody’s unique relationship that they have within their, you know, core.
a family set up or their partner and so forth. that gender is not the whole thing, but it is a piece. so having that confidence to just say, hey, we’re scrapping, I’m gonna leave my job or we’re gonna just go all in on this particular pathway. To me, that comes a bit easier now and also for my upbringing environment and so forth. But a lot of other female entrepreneurs that might not necessarily.
be the case. And I saw that more there at this particular mastermind. And so again, I say this with all the respect in the world, but like those are factors that I think have to be considered. And that it can help when somebody, you know, that’s outside of your, you know, or has a financial interest in yourself and so forth, can actually cut through.
and help encourage you to have the belief to be more confident in your own capabilities to reach for more and actually make those decisions that you know are going to lead to the right path. Because again, this was not something that always came easy to There’s plenty of times where I just did not have much confidence in my life or various parts of my life. And other mentors who really, you
believed in me more than I believed in myself. And I’ve talked about this at length as well too, and still continue to serve that role for me and in my own life. So that’s really the point that I wanted to come across here is that sometimes you almost need somebody else’s permission to enable the inherent confidence that you have within yourself. And again, perhaps this is even more important for female operators.
Um, on average. So, uh, that was something else, um, noted there too. Uh, and then another piece here is that there’s still, you know, so many just pure solo operators. Um, yeah, it’s, it’s, you know, possible just grind yourself out to, you know, building a million dollar business. Um, you know, just on your own, just through grit, uh, itself, but really to get larger than that in most industries, like
You need to be able to start delegating and building a team and building systems and processes to put in place so that you can, you know, become more strategic and move bigger and bigger blocks into the right places. so, you know, having the capacity, you know, both from a skillset standpoint, as well as, the monetary capacity to actually hire an exec assistant or VA or what have you, somebody who can offload just a little bit, on your plate and ideally more and more and more.
it is just such a critical, skill here. And, you know, something that I think a lot of people take for granted, but, you know, don’t necessarily, you know, fully understand how common this situation is where you just have these solopreneurs who are just doing everything for, for their business and hit, hit a wall for.
you know, years, potentially decades on end, because they simply are at capacity and don’t have room for their own selves to grow nor can their business since, know, they’re effectively their entire business. so that’s another keynote, as, as well to never lose sight of, then two other pieces here. and, this one also goes back to, know, what I
tangentially mentioned during the focus piece is like, you have to make an offer. You know, also from the confidence piece again here too, is that, you know, the market is the ultimate mirror. It will tell you ruthlessly whether you were onto something or not. And you really, you really can’t hide from it. You know.
I mean, look at within the real estate business. mean, you can underwrite a deal to death and we do that all the time. And sometimes like the market is just, you know, absolutely just punch, you know, land lands, a haymaker across you that you just don’t see coming just blindsided, KO’d, but you know, the market determines what, what a property and what your offer is worth. you know, some folks might have different offers, know, service offerings or
you know, coaching or what have you consulting, opportunities. and you know, everybody has, you know, some inherent, you know, self protection mechanisms built in. And so like the longer you delay, making an offer to the market, the longer you can protect yourself from the inevitable pain that that’s going to happen. Cause you know, pain’s going to happen regardless. you know,
People are going to, some people are going to buy a ton of people. Well, most people are never going to buy. so, you know, rejection is just part of, of the game, especially again, in the, the land space. mean, on the buy and sell side, just we operate with just such a tiny sliver of seller and buyer pools, to even operate with that. yeah, the products that we’re selling tend to be like really large deals here.
But you just have to get through so many nos and so many people who are just rejecting your offer day in and day out But at the end of the day like you can’t make you make your business run Without without making an offer in the first place. So you have to get something out there You’ve got to get the feedback and then you know grow and evolve accordingly You know once once you have your offer out there, so
just figure it out and get in the game. And as I was remarking to somebody at that particular mastermind is that, you know, the offer really is, I wish I had the core phrasing here and I feel like I’m missing the succinctness of the statement as it were. But it’s like, you know, the
Once you figure out the offer, the rest is just logistics. That is really the core of business. Gotta figure out the offer. And again, real estate, it’s more tangible, right? It’s obviously real property. So we know what our offers are, but plenty of other businesses, can be anything you can possibly imagine. But figure that out first, all the rest of it is just the rails that it’s gonna run on.
and the last piece is, you know, so core to my heart and where I feel perhaps our strongest, Stance is well, our, perhaps our, strongest, you know, asset even within our company is just the longevity piece. are you able to just show up day in and day out and continue to work effectively within your business?
And, you know, I, I’ve had the privilege to meet so many high level operators of various levels of success and so forth. you know, many operators are not necessarily deeply in love with their business. And that’s something Hermosia always mentions too. It’s like the biggest risk to the business is the founder falling out of love with it. Like if they’re not, if you’re not going to show up with the enthusiasm to continue to grow and, you know, let’s assume you get your bases covered and you’re starting to make
real money and so forth. Like, are you guys still going to continue to show up and continue to grow? you know, the, the answer is that a lot of folks, that, that roadway ends, a lot sooner, than, than they might expect internally or, you know, what other people might necessarily think of them. Cause if you really ask folks, you know,
Hey, what what is your dream business? Or what are you doing? Like, is this something you want to be doing the rest of your life? I’d say less, less than half the foe far less than half the folks that I speak to. And I’m not always having these conversations. Like you’re like, Yeah, I’m just like dead set. Because again, it’s the focus piece. There’s always a shiny object. And it’s like, and that’s a scary thought, too. It’s like, you know, our life is so short. It’s like, Whoa, am I really going to just cut off all variety and like just work on this one thing?
for the remainder of my life and feel like I’ve actually filled my cup in the right way. like that is a scary thing to consider. And that’s why I think a lot of folks will hedge themselves like, I can do this for a while. And, know, maybe get an exit out of it or just have it passively run on the side. And then I can do this, which again is fine. There’s no rules in, in business here. but I think it’s such an advantage when you can have the longer term horizon again, but the
longer your time horizon, the more likely it is that you’re going to that you’re going to win just because you can operate longer than everybody else and be able to take longer term risks and growth pathways within the particular business and get more reps than everybody else continue to learn. And so there’s really only a handful of folks that like, yeah, we were, you know, that want to be doing this.
know, particular business again, whether it’s in land or whatever you’re in. you know, and within the land space, like I share that 50 year vision of what we’re trying to do with serious land capital. And we’re really only capped at lifespan. we live, know, medicine gets better and AI and so forth, like turn the 50 years into, you know, 60, 70, whatever. Um, I’m really, you know, just being more realistic with, with current human, uh, lifespans here, but that’s, kind of an arbitrary number, um, at the moment. So, um, to me, I just feel like.
There’s just infinite opportunity within this particular space. Um, real estate, can play at the highest levels possible within just business as a whole. Um, so like there, there’s literally infinite opportunity. Like I talked about the previous podcast. Um, and to me, that’s very attractive to do, uh, uh, infinite amounts of, of growth and learning that can happen. Um, but it’s possible. A lot of folks might not necessarily see that potential or like they’ve seen enough where
It just doesn’t scratch the itch that you’re looking for. Or maybe they’re just more comfortable like, Hey, I want to do this for five, 10 years, whatever. And then do something else and something else. but if you choose to do that, there’s a decent chance you’re going to cap, the, the total amount, total amount of return that you can get, from going all in on one particular venture. So, that is just a piece I want to leave you with, is.
What are you thinking about your actual business? Can you go for the rest of your life or is it going to be more temporary? And if it is more temporary, should you just go do something that you’re going to be able to do for the rest of your life sooner rather than later? So with all of that in mind, Serious Land Capital, dot capital to get land funding for your next deal here, 50K minimum purchase price.
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