In this episode, talent evaluation gets reframed through an ecological growth metaphor spanning seedlings to self-propagating forests. The framework categorizes team members by their ceiling: some never escape seedling stage, others max out as houseplants requiring constant care, while rare “future forests” create entire ecosystems that sustain and expand without oversight.
Key Takeaways:
- Seedling failure recognition Some hires never grasp the business despite intensive onboarding attention—recognizing this early prevents wasted cultivation resources on talent that cannot root in your environment.
- Houseplant growth ceiling Mid-tier talent grows within limited containers but cannot expand beyond their immediate scope—they provide value in defined areas but require ongoing environmental management and attention.
- Future forest force multiplication The rarest hires grow into standalone trees that spread seeds, create ecosystems, and build self-sustaining forests—these individuals generate more talent around themselves and require minimal oversight after initial growth.
The ten-year money tree repotting experience crystallized this framework as talent evaluation becomes increasingly critical for scaling beyond current constraints.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to get serious. Today I wanted to go over one of the takeaways from when I was building out Sage mode to finally finish the first iteration. Just been unexpectedly really tied up with items last couple of days. I got to test it more here shortly, but a number of the questions were just relating to how you interact and grow your team. And that’s probably the topic I’ve been reflecting on most.
especially over the last couple months and even more so, it’s just I feel like, you know, even in an AI world, like ultimately more talent is gonna be needed to reach the absolute highest echelons and ability to recruit and retain talent might be the most important skill in business. And, you know, more of the people that I’m following that are just, you know, a hundred steps ahead of me.
or a thousand steps ahead of me in the game, which is just always a reminder of how much more there is to grow. So much of their mentorship and coaching is related to talent nurturing and just general cultivation of it and culture setting. So I’m just…
feeling like I’m lacking a lot in that direction. So I’m just trying to accelerate my learning and growth in that area because I’m just saying, okay, the bigger businesses are really talent machines here. So how do I focus in and grow that accordingly? But still have an AI first mentality and only hire when absolutely necessary in regard to…
You know, not bringing on somebody that could be covered from, AI workflows that I might have just been too lazy or had a deficiency to actually put together in my business. So I try to weigh that a lot more as well. And, know, admittedly more recently, I mean, we, I brought on a CTO within land price or, and he brought on a more senior engineer below them and they kind of run their own shop within the product side.
and, and I come in and, you know, direct as, as needed here. but, know, it’s great to have folks who can just kind of get the concepts. I don’t need to be routinely checking in with them either. so, you know, I’m starting to grow some more talent within the businesses that I’m operating. it’s just, again, I’m feeling like there’s so much other growth here. And so an interesting analogy that kind of came up.
as I was going through these questions for Sage Mode and then also short side story is just I’ve had this household plant, this money tree that’s been with me for at least 10 years. And I just kind of want to see like, you know, will it stay alive if I keep, you know, keep it alive for the rest of my life here. It’s just, you know, we’ve been through a lot of moves together. So I’m just…
interested in kind of continuing to take care of it and notice that it was getting more of an ant infestation recently. And so I was just going to chat, GPT, okay, how do I get rid of this? I got to repot it and all this kind of big hassle. So went through all of that rigmarole to take care of this plant and, you know, it kind of goes through a shock process and then, you know, it’ll reset its roots and then, you know, get back into more of a
you know, homeostasis of kind of mostly taking care of itself outside of, you got to keep it in some sunlight and water every so often, but, you know, it goes from like a high level of care to, you know, lower over time, you know, from like when you first buy it or if you need to do you know, repot anything like that. And so I was thinking, you know, in relation to talent, it’s…
you know, similar to trees to a certain degree. And you have like different types of potential within certain folks. and first, you know, if you’re bringing on somebody, like it could just be, it could be a seedling. got to put a lot of time and attention and figure out how do you onboard this person and, you know, start to let them grow into the culture and business that, that, you’re creating. And some people,
Unfortunately, they might just be stuck as a seedling. never fully grasp it and it just doesn’t work for your business and they’re never able to really grow no matter how much attention you give them. The next level up is you might get a houseplant. I don’t mean to be derogatory or anything like that. It’s just for the sake of an analogy here. I think you can all get that.
You know you get somebody who gets past the seedling stage and you know, they’re able to You know similar to my plant next to me Yeah, doesn’t need that much attention, but you know, it’s relatively limited in growth, right? They’re not able to really expand the roots past a certain Capacity it’s just inherent to their environment. They’re they’re gonna be limited but you know, they’re they’re able to grow as much as they can within their area and
you know, provide whatever value they kind of can within that very particular area. But again, can’t really grow beyond that. Then you might get to, you know, full standalone tree, you know, and I’m thinking more of like, you know, something outdoors where, you know, first you need to really take care of them again, like from the seedling stage and they kind of a sapling and
grow a little bit here, you gotta monitor, you gotta prune the branches as needed to make sure they’re growing properly. But after a certain point, you really never need to take care of them outside of maybe some crazy infestation or something, but they’ll be able to pick up moisture from various rains that might come, even if the rains aren’t that often, they’re resilient.
to stand through various types of weather. They’ll get the sunlight to keep growing as needed. They kind of self-regulate. be able to get, you know, they kind of have their own ecosystem nearby. Maybe they can have, you know, some critters that come live in them and so forth. So they kind of start building a kind of a realm for others around them to grow and
You know, our, self-sustaining, they really don’t need managers to come in and kind of take care of them quite as much. Maybe something crazy goes on and you might need a little bit of oversight here and there just to, you know, guard them against a, and, and, lumberjack or something like that to, to extend that analogy a little bit more, you know, need a little bit of defense. it needs some help here and there, but.
overall they can kind of run their own show. They’ll be okay. Just growing on their own. And then at the last level is a future forest. So this is somebody who can grow up as a full tree and then they are, you know, blossoming and kind of spreading their seeds over time and
eventually kind of growing a full forest around them. Maybe they had, you know, kind of into horticulture a little bit, you know, the various kind of ecosystems even underneath the ground, like the different, um, know, fungi trails and just developing this whole interconnected community of life around them, you know, creating entire habitats for various animal species, other plants, um, other
you know, versions of themselves through their various seeds. then, you know, those other trees and other plants that are growing within their own ecosystem start to spread their seeds as well. And then, you know, you create, they create an entire forest that just sustains itself and keeps growing and growing and growing without need for any type of oversight or really any help. even if you got, you know, some dangers that come along, maybe you got a fire here or there.
Uh, or yeah, even some lumberjacks, like it’s very rare the entire forest is going to be taken down. So they have some ability to defend against, um, very, uh, uh, kind of aggressive maneuvers or, um, you know, crazy weather events for instance. And those are really the most rare type of individuals to find, but those are who you really want to grow your business, um, to the greatest.
degree possible because if you can find future forests, all of sudden you can just seize market share. can grab land grab within it relevant to our industry as much ground as you can cover. And you don’t need to monitor what these folks are doing because they’re growing on their own and they’re creating others who can grow on their own as well. So I thought that was
Uh, maybe that didn’t land with you, but to me, that was a kind of really relevant and helpful metaphor for, um, you know, the types of folks that I’m trying to find is I’m just like constantly thinking about talent acquisition, cultivation, just knowing that I’m just still a total novice in that regard. And I have so much more work to do. Um, but again, I just view it as rather exciting, um, because we’ve
built up a pretty solid business with such a low head count as it is. And so we just have kind of infinite more room to grow as a company, you trying to be a future forest ourself here in order to get to level after level after level. So hopefully this was kind of interesting to you or at least humorous in the least. So.
wanted to share that with you all. And if you’re looking for any funding, we’ve had some really good results recently, both on the Dispo side and now the acquisition side too. It’s starting to really come alive again. So I’m excited for more serious land.capital. Zero cost review of your land deals at land daily diligence Facebook group and landpricer.ai for the most reliable land pricing tool on the market. Subscribe and share everybody. Take care. Bye.
