This episode examines the growing trend toward smaller, peer-level business gatherings as land investors reassess travel schedules and event ROI. The shift reflects strategic selectivity driven by true cost analysis—not just ticket prices and travel, but the opportunity cost of time away from business operations, with considerations for daily value creation ranging from $100 to $2,000+ per workday depending on business size.
Key Takeaways:
- Calculate Your True Daily Value Factor in your hourly worth (not consulting rates, but actual value created) when evaluating event attendance—a $1,000/day operator loses $350,000 annually in opportunity cost at seven-day work weeks.
- Smaller, Peer-Level Groups Outperform Large Events Self-selected gatherings with operators at similar business stages plus a few ahead or behind create higher-value connections than widely advertised conferences with mixed attendance levels.
- Economic Conditions Drive Selectivity Reduced event attendance signals industry-wide business struggles beneath public-facing optimism, with operators prioritizing core business survival over growth-focused networking during challenging market conditions.
Hear the full discussion on strategic event selection, true cost analysis, and reading industry health signals through attendance patterns.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris Duff over at Serious Land Capital, vacant land funding partner. I’m still reflecting on and going through some of the takeaways from the Mastermind event that I had at San Antonio earlier this week and a lot of content from that and routes that we might potentially grow our business. But I was chatting with a couple of other…
land investors here locally. We’re fortunate enough to play basketball on Sunday mornings and talk a little bit of business for those land investors and then some of the other folks I was chatting with at the Mastermind event.
what seems to be a growing trend, especially as people look to sort out their travel schedules and in-person attendance for various business growth type masterminds or just meetups in general, that the less is more approach and a…
smaller group settings with individuals who are…
oriented towards just being more peers within the industry itself in terms of size of business and how they might run operations. Perhaps some folks who are further ahead, a couple of folks that might be a bit behind. So then there’s a couple of connecting points there, but those seem to be
more of the trend that I’m seeing that might not be as widely advertised, but a bit more self-selected in regard to…
you know, how, folks are, are, you know, just deciding to choose which events to go to because, yeah, as I’ve kind of found out and, you know, chatting with, with some other individuals who routinely go to various live events, I mean, there’s the actual cost that might be associated in terms of, you know, flights and travel arrangements, or even just the cost of the, know, membership for that particular.
event or the ticket, so to speak, but it’s also the cost of your time being there and how much time or how much value do you place on your actual time? Do you have an accurate estimate on what your hourly value could be? Not necessarily something that you might
charge in a consulting arrangement, but how much value are you driving and creating within your own business of real focused work? And that’s only one way to look at it. sticking on that particular point, are you a $1,000 a day individual? Are you a $2,000 a day individual? If you are,
at $1,000 a day over the course of a year. That’s roughly equates to $300, $350,000 of value creation for a particular year just using a kind of work week. Actually, a full seven day work week here.
And then you can just do the math going beyond that number or you know, are you a hundred dollar a day person or 200? What have you like you have to be kind of honest with yourself on in regard to okay? What’s the size of my business and in a daily perspective and looking at our previous? Growth rate and you know split across all the various team members that you might have and
you where you might be the actual leader on the team so you can attribute a greater proportion of value created by your own self. You know, really try to reverse engineer and figure out, when I have a full day to, you know, really work, you know, both within and potentially on the business, what is that true value? And so now I have to, or I’ve tried to start incorporating that into any of these events that I might go.
go to. you know, the sticker price might be, you know, 2000, $3,000, what have you, plus flights, accommodations. But then you have to add in that true daily, daily value of yourself being removed from the actual business. Now you can say, oh, well, you know, it kind of confounds a bit where, you know, maybe you’re driving a whole bunch of
possible future value by attending these events. Of course, that’s always going to be the goal is to take you steps and steps beyond that. But if you don’t actually take real action or you opted into a group or event that ended up not being as valuable as you might have thought, or go to so many that the returns start to diminish.
then you really have to be honest with yourself, okay, how much is this truly costing me beyond just what we’re swiping the credit card for? So that’s just another consideration from a business perspective. Of course, the time perspective for those of us that have spouses or partners, kids, families back home, what value do you place on that?
for various weekends that might be missed or putting extra pressure on your spouse or partner for caring for the kids while you’re away, for instance, even just your residents or pets, what have you. All those are going to be internal costs that have to be considered too that are harder to put a price tag on, of course.
but are nevertheless another way to consider how strongly you need to be reviewing the possible return on investment into going to these various live events. So that to me is the biggest takeaway here. think a lot of people are trying to be more strategic and selective based on all the anecdotal data that
that I’ve seen, both smaller operators as well as larger ones, particularly the higher quality in terms of business and size of operation, trying to be again, less is more. But that’s also relevant to the state of the economy. If things are just booming all over, everybody’s making great money, sure, yeah, sign up.
whatever event doesn’t matter, but to me, think that’s another reading into this. let’s just continue discussion points is, I think a lot of people’s businesses are struggling there, regardless of the public face they might be showing. We’re in a privileged position to be extremely well connected within the land industry.
Yeah, I don’t think it’s the easiest times at the moment. you know, I have inside knowledge to a lot of folks, folks businesses and, you know, you can just kind of look at the, you know, the actual readout here, you know, are people showing up to these live events? Are they doing anything to further their business outside of just, you know, trying to stay alive and, you know, focus on, on their
core business outside of trying to grow by going to potentially some of these live events. so I think that’s another factor that has to be considered for potentially diminished attendance at some of these live events or trying to do things that are a little bit more local or smaller. those are just some thoughts on.
what we’re seeing in the industry nowadays, how we’re thinking about structuring our focus over the coming year and beyond, and how selective we are. again, as far as larger events, where half the seats are already taken up, again, I’m only going to that Dave Denniston on conference in Minneapolis in early August. I know I’ve mentioned…
before, if you wanted to attend, you can go ahead and use my last name, D-U-F-F, all lowercase for $200 off your ticket. Just Google. Google to find the event page there. Beyond that, at SiriusLand.Capital for any deals that you would like to be funded.
Land Daily Diligence Facebook group to have any deals that you would like reviewed, zero cost. And of course, landpricer.ai for the most simple and accurate way to price land. Again, that MVP should be done by Wednesday of next week. Very excited for that. A lot more coming. Take care, everybody.
