In this episode, Serious Land Capital (over $6 million funded, 41% operating margins) continues its march upmarket, narrowing its operator pool to fewer than five elite partners capable of handling high-value, complex deals. The discussion centers on why self-leadership, rigorous preparation, and a default-to-yes mindset are now non-negotiable in a market that no longer rewards mediocrity, including a look at a potential $17 million acquisition that could sell for upwards of $40 million.
Key Takeaways:
- Fewer Operators, Bigger Outcomes A sub-five operator model can power a nine-figure business when each partner brings granular market knowledge, detailed project plans, and proven execution ability.
- Self-Leadership Is the #1 Trait Borrowed from Coach Trevor McGregor’s “Infinite Eight” framework at a Cancun mastermind, self-leadership (doing the deep prep work before engaging partners) is the single quality that separates high performers from time-wasters.
- AI Eliminates the “I Don’t Know How” Excuse Tools like Claude and Quad Coworker mean every operator can pressure-test solutions, run through option sets, and show up to conversations fully prepared, making laziness a choice, not a circumstance.
- Default to Yes, Then Figure Out How Inspired by Srivatsan Srivatsa at acquisition.com, saying yes first shifts thinking from “why not” to “what does it take,” which is exactly how a $17M deal entered the pipeline despite being outside the typical buy box.
Listen to the full episode to hear the detailed breakdown of how elite operator selection and a yes-first mindset are reshaping deal flow in a tightening land market.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious. We’re at Serious Land Capital. have funded over $6 million worth of land deals and have industry leading 41 % operating margins. today I just wanted to go over again, kind of, further details on our progressive March, up market and the complexity.
involved with some of these higher dollar value deals and the creativity necessary. I know I’ve talked about this on the last few podcasts, but it’s just a constant refrain because you can see pretty much anywhere in the real estate market and land is certainly part of that. You got to play at the absolute highest level in order to succeed within this market. And that just
requires such deep attention to details and finding routes to work with only the highest talent available, whether that’s in your own team or certain partners, contractors, et cetera. So what I continue to find even over the last few weeks and this almost changes on
on a week by week basis is, you know, the volume of operators that we need to run a successful business and that I’m even inclined to really work with just continues to decrease. We’re really centering in on a business where, you know, we can work with just
a bare handful of operators. Like I entirely think it’s possible that we can run a multi-figure, even nine-figure business, you know, working with sub five operators in total that are just highly, highly qualified and finding, you know, top quality deals and building kind of those longer term relationships. So.
That has been a core focus of our business. And my own time personally is just being willing to engage on a multi-hour basis or taking longer phone calls and just quicker prioritization for those handful of operators who we really see a lot of promise within and
are just playing at a higher level within the land game. Unfortunately, there’s just so many folks who are just trying to skirt by, do the minimum amount and think they’re gonna make solid money within this industry. And that’s just like, it’s not possible to do anymore. Like it was possible three, four, five years ago during…
you know, kind of those COVID boom timelines, but not anymore. And so there are just a number of folks now who are not doing any of the upfront work or kind of shunt everything to us and be like, hey, figure this out, you know, without presenting a soundly well-thought out plan that, you know, we’re not even bothering responding to anymore. It’s just not worth it.
Um, for, for us, um, you know, I suppose, yeah, we could get lucky and find the right deal with, you know, some of these, uh, you know, admittedly lower quality operators, um, which we have in, the past. Um, but that, that is just not a focus of ours anymore. And, you know, this is a whole nother topic, but I’ll just briefly touch on it. I mean, this is one of the key takeaways from, um, this mastermind I was in in Cancun this previous weekend with,
the one and only coach Trevor McGregor, coach T. And he went over this concept called the infinite eight, which I’ll go over another time, but one of the core, or really the number one within that infinite eight is just the necessity of having self leadership. the infinite eight, roughly, just bare bones here is just like the kind of key eight qualities that
you know, any high performers going to need. And the, the self leadership piece spoke the most to me. and I think pretty much everybody attending, that’s what, you know, a core area that I needed to focus on more, as well as, my fellow friends and colleagues there. And I’ve just, you know, even since hearing that I’ve come to center in on that even more so with really anybody within my life and.
You know, that touches our business in some form or fashion, especially in the age of AI.
Like the value of interpersonal relations and, you know, making sure that we’re just not wasting each other’s time. there’s just no reason for, um, you know, getting stuck in, how do I do such a thing or not really thinking through the solutions in and of itself? Um, because again, you can just utilize AI at a bare minimum for some
you know, shared thought leadership and start figuring out, can I try one, two, three, yeah, list of options. And then, you know, think, okay, well, I’ve tried this one. I’ve tried this one. I’m still stuck here. Like presenting a full, you know, a full picture to anybody that you’re interacting with. And so the interactions can just be much more efficient and targeted. I think is just absolutely critical.
So again, this is a topic I wanna go into in a lot more detail. Another time is just very top of mind, but I’m finding this trait now for the folks who are sending us deals like, okay, they’ve thought through XYZ processes and through an entire alphabet of, yeah, this is why this project specifically is oriented better than others in the area, even if just the raw market data might not.
show that necessarily. Here’s why or our experience in the area is showing why there’s actually more pent up demand and so forth. And just really, really detailed granular thinking like that is that’s what we’re looking for. Those are the type of operators that are the type of operator that we’re trying to be as well too. And just thinking through every single key question that’s going to go into due diligence and
you know, how we need to structure certain deals. because again, that that’s really the only way to perform, at the highest level or frankly, even to survive in a market like this, especially when, know, every team is going to become more efficient and smarter, just through utility of AI. And like I was just using quad coworker earlier today and it’s just, it’s mind blowing how good this is. yeah, it’s a whole nother discussion topic again, as well. like we are living.
in an age of magic. Everybody has a magic wand. I’m stealing this from Neval Ravikant and can basically create anything that they can imagine. this point, so long as you speak the English language, doesn’t even need to be English because AI can understand any spoken language.
Again, there’s effectively no excuse now to not be prepared for solving problems or trying to engage in partnerships or projects with other companies or other human beings and potential partners and so forth. So, like my patients, literally on a day-to-day basis, it’s just diminishing from folks who are unwilling.
to do the work and it’s never unable to do the work, like it’s always unwilling, right? And taking that self leadership to ensure that you’re not wasting anybody’s time and you’re not wasting your own time on something that might not actually have legs and you could have determined that prior. So that’s one piece of this, just like it’s making me a lot more excited.
happy to be centering in more within my zone of genius of really solidifying relationships with core operators who I know are trending in the highest direction possible. And we’re learning so much from them and probably vice versa as well. And it’s just starting to create more of this galaxy brain type set up to borrow one of those memes and being able to bounce off other super high performers.
within the space. the other piece of this too is just, you know, I was learning this from Sharan Srivatsa Alex Hormozi’s, management partner and acquisition.com. And, know, he was just saying that so many of the high performers that he’s met in his life, and, the best entrepreneurs is like, they, they just say like the answer is always yes, effectively. like they’re, they’re not looking for reasons on why things can’t be done.
It’s just saying yes, because that turns it more into a how mindset. people, you you can use the Dan Sullivan, Ben Hardy technique of it’s who, not how. So, but, know, the, the, the base question is, just a how, and does that require a who or, you know, does that require a new system in place? Those are more of the tactics related to the strategy. But ultimately, if you’re just continuing to say yes,
It opens up your mind to figure out, okay, if I said yes to this, how am going to do it? Um, uh, which is, um, I think it’s just so much more empowering and we’re finding that internally as well too. Like we’re getting some of these massive deals, including from a couple of operators who hadn’t initially considered us. Cause you know, it wasn’t, you know, within our more typical buy box, but you know, again, one of these top level operators like, Hey, I think we have a.
potentially $17 million deal that could go for like upwards of 40. And they’re trying to work on figuring how am I going to get the capital to do this? And I’m like, hey, send it over to us. We’ll take a look based on some of the conversations that we’re having here. There’s a realistic chance that we could put something together. And even if I can’t like, you know, we can’t just stroke a $17 million check internally here, but.
I know we can get it in front of the right people where I’m just less concerned from a capital raising side and more from, hey, we understand how to underwrite this. We have the right operators in place here that we’d feel confident raising and structuring this amount of capital if the underlying asset is justified to go after.
Yeah, don’t want to do any false promises, but I also have enough confidence within our team’s abilities within my own abilities to be able to again, figure out something that’s not within our typical buy box, but could be soon enough or potentially earlier than we might expect when we start again, 10Xing our thinking and determining, hey, what does it take?
to make this happen. How am I going to do it? Like if I say yes, how am I going to do this? Is the approach that we’re starting to really embrace here instead of limiting ourselves. Cause we just have gotten to a point within the growth of our business that even in a super difficult market and so forth, like I’ve still never been more excited than I have been about the potential of real estate and land overall, just cause we,
have the reps and we continue to put them in and real estate cycles come and go. So we will figure this out and the right assets will continue to sell regardless of the underlying market conditions. So just wanted to share all of that. Hopefully this is more empowering for you and how you might be considering your own.
uh, you know, processes personally and professionally here. And again, like, do you need to take, um, take more self leadership, uh, accountability? Um, you know, are, are you doing all of the, the highest levels of preparation and the detailed analysis before presenting, you know, anything to your core partners, your team, um, you know, other counterparties, uh,
Or, are you lacking in that direction? I mean, everybody can get better, but, but, you really try to objectively grade yourself there. and then subsequently beyond that, it’s like, okay, are you using AI to the highest degree possible here as well too, like to enhance yourself leadership? you again, really making sure that you’re determining, take here the possible steps that we can go down. We’ve already examined these and just making your
human interactions that much more efficient, that much more targeted, to ensure that nobody’s time is being wasted, including yours. and then the other piece is just again, asking, asking how you can do things when you do say yes, just more, more of a default to yes, response as an entrepreneur, as an entrepreneur, as a business leader, and then just figuring out how to do it. So hopefully you got some key takeaways here. I’m pumped up.
excited for what is to come and hopefully you subscribe and share and get a lot out of this. drop me a note if you found this valuable, serious land dot capital for any of your funding needs in the land industry. Looking forward to next time everybody take care now. Bye.
