This episode launches the daily podcast concept by examining how intentional structure creates competitive advantages, revealed through the counterintuitive discovery that becoming a parent improved professional performance by forcing ruthless time efficiency. Serious Land Capital closed 2024 at $3 million top line revenue with 20% net margins, believing 10x growth requires different asset classes and operational intensity beyond simply doing more of the same traditional land flips.
Key Takeaways:
- Imposed Structure Unlocks Performance Having a two-year-old child forced ruthless schedule efficiency and focus, counterintuitively creating the best professional and personal outcomes by eliminating wasted time and sharpening priorities.
- Daily Content Creates Forcing Function Committing to weekday podcasts boxes in accountability and drives consistent high-value output, leveraging personal tendencies toward dopamine-driven behavior by requiring daily structure and focus.
- Self-Regulation Requires Overcompensation Scoring low on VIA Character Strengths for self-regulation and prudence means building extreme discipline systems to maintain structure, otherwise life quickly falls off the rails despite appearing conscientious externally.
- Share the Full Journey Not Just Wins The podcast commits to documenting real numbers, actual struggles, and operational challenges alongside successes, believing transparent discussions about where businesses truly stand creates the most valuable learning for other operators.
Listen to the full episode for insights on building sustainable content systems, using structure to compensate for personality weaknesses, and the long-term vision for growing Serious Land Capital from $3 million to $100 million-plus revenue.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, thanks for joining for the very first episode of the Get Serious podcast. I’m Chris Duff. You may know me from Serious Land Capital, one of the largest vacant land funding partner companies in the industry or the soon to be released land price or AI software. This podcast
Uh, idea has been in the works for a while. mean, no surprise how many other folks have been starting podcasts here. I really needed to figure out how to make, um, you know, regular content in a sustainable fashion, given, um, how much day to day responsibilities, uh, I’m juggling across, uh, our, our various.
Um, entities within the, within the land industry here. So I really settled on, you know, can I do 10 to 15 minute daily doses, at least weekday, uh, doses of high value ad content, um, for other folks in the land industry or just, you know, entrepreneurship writ large. Um, you know, I’ve, I’ve found that, uh,
When I go to various masterminds or other group events and everybody can kind of get past the facade of maybe wanting to one up or make things look better than they are. Once we can actually dive into the real numbers of where folks are at and where they’re doing well or where they’re struggling, those tend to be the most helpful types of conversations and leveling up.
as a group. So, you know, I have, you know, been establishing a reputation myself, my partners of, you know, sharing a pretty open kimono about, precisely how we operate our business, how we approach deals and so forth. that has built up a solid reputation for us. So, you know, I want to take that a step further, with not necessarily discussing.
pure deal related information and various strategies and tactics, but also what’s going on within our business and how we’re seeking to grow at the moment. And I also think this format will be helpful just given the inundation of podcasts, there’s more seemingly every week here. I’ve been listening to podcasts for years. So
I totally get it where you may wanna listen to another one, but almost feel some level of anxiety about, oh gosh, I’m gonna budget another hour and I’m already listening to these things on 2X for more speed. So I want to kind of reduce that level of anxiety by knowing, okay, yeah, I’m just gonna be giving you some bite-sized chunks on the daily here.
that’ll just make the consumption a bit easier. Who knows where this thing might grow. Occasionally I might engage in some interviews with folks who are relevant to topics that I might be actively discussing and so forth. But I think the general format will be more of this open-common-sharing about various updates within our business, lessons learned, and…
you know, attempted value add for, you know, other, business owners within the industry here. And, know, based on feedback, we’ll see how it might evolve over time. and just, you know, a little bit more of my impetus for starting this podcast is just also realizing,
how to, as we attempt to grow, how do I play to my strengths even further here? And one key thing that I keep coming back to is just, I tend to thrive within a structure. And even when I’m kind of like railing against the walls of that structure, it still tends to put me in a better place here.
you know, to make that more concrete, you know, before having a kid, you know, currently I have a two year old daughter who’s always so concerned, man, this is gonna be such a strain professionally. you know, all the fears that go into that, I think any working parent could relate to. But I actually found it to be the opposite. Once you have that…
forced imposition of a child’s schedule on your own life. It just forces you to be much more ruthlessly efficient in terms of your focus and schedule. you know, counterintuitively, I’ve never been in a better place personally or professionally since becoming a parent. And I attribute a lot of that to having the inbuilt structure that a kid brings to your life. So
I wanted to take that a step further by, okay, if I’m going to have to deliver effectively daily, value add updates via podcasts, you know, distribute that to, to the world here. you know, I’m, I’m going to have to have even more for structure on my life than, there already is. So I’m welcoming that as a personal challenge because I think that it’s only going to help.
you know, my business, accelerate to, the next level here. just knowing where, there are certain factors in my life that I can kind of capitalize on and, you know, realize what can help progress further. I just want to double down on those. And, yeah, there was a recent Huberman lab episode, that.
There was a tool with the VIA character strengths of VIA, pretty famous survey. It doesn’t take that long, all free and myself and my family did that to figure out, what personality traits are you stronger in versus weaker? And my wife and I were very low ranked in the self-regulation and prudence, which was no surprise.
for us when we were taking it, we’re very dopamine driven people. And this might come as a bit of a surprise for people who don’t necessarily know me as well. think, okay, yeah, more diligent, conscientious and so forth. But that’s only because I have to overcompensate so far in that direction to maintain that level of structure and discipline, because otherwise my life falls off the rails pretty quickly.
That’s just sharing a little bit more background on, know, how I’m trying to almost box myself into consistently deliver on producing content and high value ed content and really sharing, you know, what’s working for us versus what’s not. So, you know, if you haven’t taken that survey, I would highly recommend it. You’ll probably get some insights and some laughs between yourself and
and those closest to you. So, you know, just to wrap up this first episode here, again, where we are at as a business, you know, we ended 2024 at roughly 3 million top line in revenue at about 20 % to beat us. So, you know,
We think that we can just do more of the same to get to roughly 10 mil top line. But to get beyond that is going to require looking at different levels of assets within the land and real estate industry and being able to push more than we ever expected. And I just mentioned that to kind of benchmark where we’re at, both to show, okay, for those of us who might not be at a
top line level that we’re at here, here’s some lessons to help kind of accelerate and get there. And then on the flip side, you know, I’m always looking to grow, you know, for those who are ahead of us from a top line and profit perspective, okay, maybe, you know, me sharing where we’re at now, I can kind of glean some tips on how to, you know, pull the future closer to us in a more accelerated manner.
because this is not a lifestyle business for us. My partners and I, we feel blessed that we were given a level of resources and kind of internal grit and capability that not many other teams are able to put together. And we feel…
you know, almost a duty to the industry to, you know, take things as far as possible as we can in order to, um, you know, both create something that, that we’re, uh, uh, proud of in general, as well as, um, you know, being able to provide as much value as possible to, um, you know, anybody who interacts with us, whether they’re clients or other people trying to learn from our business and create their own lives as, as entrepreneurs.
in a difficult market to reliably make money in a sustainable fashion. So we really take that duty seriously. No surprise given the name of our company here. And you can kind of track our progress. Okay, are we actually able to accelerate to these higher numbers? Can we get to 10 million, 100 million?
knows, but that is what our goals are going to be oriented around for these coming, know, three, four plus decades, however long we can, you know, keep, keep the wheels turning here. So just to kind of benchmark where we’re at at the moment and you know, what our goals are as a company and you know, what type of issues we might be going in on a day to day basis.
and so forth here. And so you can kind of track along on your side. Plus, know, from a Schadenfreude perspective too, you you might be able to laugh along if this is a total train wreck or we fail along the way. I promise I’ll share regardless, or maybe you’re able to cheer for us on the sidelines as well for certain wins that we get internally and that you might be able to use for your own business or even your personal life. So.
I’ll go ahead and wrap this one up here. Again, feel free to check us out at Sirius Land Capital if you have a deal that might look good for funding or landpricer.ai for our upcoming software release. looking forward to connecting with more of you and keeping this new project rolling. Okay, everybody, take care. Bye.
