This episode addresses the operational challenge of managing explosive growth in funding deal flow while maintaining space for strategic work and relationship building. The discussion reveals how successful brand development creates the opposite problem from early-stage struggles, requiring systematic approaches to preserve efficiency without alienating potential partners or appearing to “big time” people in the land community.
Key Takeaways:
- Maker versus manager schedule conflicts force systematic triage With extensive free content available through daily podcasts, detailed FAQs, and public deal reviews in Land Daily Diligence, general exploratory calls no longer scale, requiring deals to be submitted first before scheduling discussions.
- Reputation verification trumps personal sales conversations Asking around land communities about funder performance provides more reliable information than sales pitches from biased business owners, with established relationships with prominent industry figures like Seth Williams and Dave Denniston serving as better references than any self-promotion.
- Mondays default to reactive work as growth accelerates Accepting that the first day of the week will handle communication overflow and deal triage allows the remaining days to focus on proactive deep work advancing the business rather than fighting against natural weekly rhythms.
Listen to the full episode for insights on managing inbound volume while maintaining reputation and why efficiency requirements increase as the business scales.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, Vacant Land Funding Partner. So today, I was just a bit more inspired to talk about
kind of setting up the week and just daily structure for moving the business forward. I think for a lot of us, Mondays tend to end up being a bit more reactive than we would like. Everybody’s just jumping on what just got backed up over the weekend and checking in on various deals to Dispo, more leads coming in. There’s just a lot of
back and forth from a communication side of things. And yeah, maybe it’s just us or myself that struggles more with it. It’s just, yeah, Mondays tend to be less successful when it comes to a proactive, deep work perspective. And I’ve just kind of accepted it to a certain degree and just try to align as many reactive elements as possible so that…
I can work on the business and do some of the more proactive progress, you know, the following days in the week. And, you know, also try to knock out some on weekends more routinely, like this past weekend was fortunately successful and you know, had our two-year-old daughter being watched by my parents. So that helped a lot to clear some.
you know, energy to focus on the business. But, you know, a key thing that we’ve noted too, even as, you know, these Mondays just have to be a little bit more reactive and so forth. Yeah, unfortunately, brand is, you know, built to such a, you know, significant space. We can always have more room to grow, but, you know, we slowed down a bit towards the holidays and reboost everything back up.
heading into the start of the year and now we’re really kind of rolling again, lot of inbound leads, lot of cold calls coming to us. and, you know, ever since probably halfway through last year, I really backed off just having general chats, about our funding business. Initially when we were first starting, yeah, I just get on the phone with, with anybody, even if they weren’t,
gonna be that, that likely in terms of, you know, a solid client and so forth. And was also like a lot of just practice for me verbally to go over sales pitches and so forth on our services and as we were getting rolling. but now that we have so much free content out there, mean, our website is chock full of every possible detail or at least initial details on how to, you know, assess
How we fund deals. All of that’s available. I have a daily podcast now. I have a a week Facebook group where you can see how I review deals. All of that’s zero cost. A number of podcast interviews in the books with other interview hosts within the land side. Also been to a lot of in-person land events as well.
Your reputation and content has kind of grown accordingly from that initial side of things. just as you grow larger business, inevitably you can’t be as high touch with everybody and that efficiencies start having to kind of fill, fill those gaps in order to continue that growth forward. Now always have to balance that is.
And that’s something we learned this last quarter is that we backed off too much from ongoing marketing that it was starting to hurt us. But realizing, okay, where’s the highest leverage opportunities to continue to market and still reach new potential land investors who want to send us deals versus being too out of touch.
that things start drying up and we start losing business accordingly. So I’m always trying to think about that. And honestly, just like random cold calls or people reaching out is so hard to fit in even short ones because it’s the maker versus manager schedule type thing. Even though I’m trying to fit in three, five minute calls here and there, it just,
kind of takes out of the groove. again, sales pitches is down pat so well, like all of this info has been covered in other areas. Like that’s why we have the FAQ and so forth. And I text over bullet points, email over bullet points, and I’ll happily say, you know, Hey, if you send us over a deal, more than happy to chat about it, assuming it passes our initial parameters. And that’s what we do. You know, I reserve all of my call time to only
you know, work on deals in a more reactive format. It’s just kind of the nature of this business. Sometimes, yeah, you got to figure out realtor situation, have some updated info, got to sort something out with title companies, or work through some extra diligence that we were just not suspecting attorney involvement here and there. Like all of that needs some slack within the system to accomplish.
And that’s where I’m more than happy to speak individually with other investors who are looking to work with us. And I know some folks will like, hey, can I chat with you about a deal? I’m always like, it’s just never, from experience, again, I’m not just like speaking out of my ass here. It’s, if you try to describe a deal over the phone, like it’s just not nearly as efficient and effective.
as just sending over the info and ideally as much info as you have and then I can review it separately and come back with much more targeted questions and figure out a plan to go ahead if there is potential to work forward. Otherwise, we’re just kind of wasting both of our time talking about a deal that doesn’t really have legs in the first place, at least potentially not for us.
So that’s just something that we’ve tried to be more efficient with as we continue to grow here. And so, you know, I try to be nice about this, you know, again, provide as much info as possible. And, you know, there are occasionally some folks like, you know, relationship business. I, you know, I’d really like to chat with somebody before I engage in that. That’s where.
You know, me as a kind of people pleasing type personality, like it always hurts a bit there because I can’t, should just, you know, can I just make more time call, but ultimately realizing that the needs of the business are above my own preferences. And for any truly successful business, like you, you can’t be everything to everyone. Inevitably we we’re going to rub some people the wrong way, or it’s just not a direct fit for what.
what they’re looking for. And so I’ve just kind of had to realize this, it’s a minority in, in, uh, you know, the, the overall scheme of things, like we’re obviously continuing to grow and most people have no issue, hey, just sending over a deal, uh, or, know, seeing all the free content and kind of getting to know us more from that side. And honestly that, you know, regardless of kind of the relationship side of the business, I mean, just think about like any other business you might deal on, like you talk to me as kind of the owner, which
inherently will be biased in terms of positive, you know, positive kind of talk salesmanship. Like it’s just natural being a business owner, right? You know, you’re going to show yourself in a positive light. Like, you know, I could just be lying through my teeth, just say, yeah, you’ve done all these types of deals and everything. So that’s how I try to point people towards, hey, like ask about us on the various land communities.
You you won’t see a bad word, at least I’ve never seen a bad word. We patrol those land communities routinely. know, always reputation is massive, massive part of being a funder. We guard that as, you know, an absolute core tenant of our business, treating people fairly. And we have invested millions dollars worth of deals. We’ve paid out millions of profits. No one has come back to us or, you know, claimed a serious land capital and give us fair share. I know other funders have.
Gone the other way and there’s some bad stories out there. Just ask around they’re out there. I have a lot of inside info that I could share in more detail, but that is a story for another time certainly, but I promise you that there are some bad apples in this industry just like any other industry. So, you know, we’re well aware that reputation is pretty much everything and we guard that as much as we can.
so yeah, ask around. We’ve, we’ve worked with tons of other investors. I’m more than happy to provide extensive references upon request. Generally people don’t request them, because it’s, again, kind of already out there. but you know, if, people ever request more than happy to provide and people have, you know, served as references for us in the past or take a look at all those other bigger names. mean, we advertise on, you know,
Seth Williams, our tipster podcast, listen to him speak about us. We’ve spent extensive time together. He has a great reputation in the industry, advertised on Kendall’s OnlyLandFans podcast too, like look at how he speaks about us too, know him personally. Talk to Dave Denniston, talk to Travis King, talk to JT Olmsted, Alicia Jarrett, Ajay, Jaren, like kind of pick any of those.
more well-known names within the industry and kind of check in on their thoughts about how we operate here. And that to me is more important than anything that I could be saying about our business, because it just reduces the inherent bias more. And ultimately, even if they are saying all those positive things about it, like at the end of the day,
You know, being able to deliver on, you know, having capital and moving forward and strategically reviewing deals and successfully bringing back profits. Like that is the bottom line that matters more than anything of which we have an extensive track record, you know, just the other week, 400 K deal was brought to us. We fund it. We funded it within less than a week. I don’t know any other funders who can do that. I know others were asked and they couldn’t perform like.
you know, sometimes capability just speaks louder than any words, whether they’re my own or any, anyone else within the land industry. So, just wanted to kind of lay that out there to where, again, you know, kind of my more people pleasing mentality, like, you know, I’m not trying to big time anybody.
Yeah, I know that that sentiment can be out there and in certain fields and everything. It’s it’s purely just a needs of the business. know, my partners and I, we view this business as its own entity, something that’s bigger than than any of us. And it needs to be fed and nurtured very carefully. And, you know, whatever my personal feelings on how things should be conducted sometimes just gets overridden by the growth we are trying to.
pursue and latch onto. So, again, just to provide a little bit more perspective on how we’re approaching these things, there’s no willy nilly decision making going on here. think very, very carefully about how we come across to people and when I’m going to take a call or not. and that kind of careful selection process, I think has gone hand in hand with
you know, our exponential growth over the past couple of years here. So hopefully that helps. If you’re looking for any funding, seriousland.capital, landpricer.ai for the most simple and accurate way to price land for sure. You’re going to be testing by the end of this week here and land daily diligence Facebook group for any zero cost review of your land deals. Take care.
