We Pivoted So Hard Even Our Pivot Pivoted

The map looked clean until the market pushed back. We share the real pivot: why we narrowed our focus to one flagship asset, rebuilt our capital strategy from the ground up, and chose strength over shortcuts while the clock kept ticking. Serenity Point becomes the proving ground for an ultra-luxury, cash-flowing asset in a jittery real estate climate—and the lens for every decision we made about investors, leverage, and execution.

You’ll hear how advice from a founder who scaled through private equity sharpened our strategy, pushing us to cut complexity and aim for a single deliverable that could stand up to scrutiny. We break down the shift from retail-first fundraising to a hybrid path that courts institutional validation without abandoning individual investors. That meant assembling an institutional-grade data room in days, engaging smaller funds aligned with our check size, and designing a capital stack that protects covenant headroom. When a lender tried to leverage our deadline with riskier terms, we walked—because overlevering is not a plan, it’s a trap.

On the growth side, we lit up the funnel with a Minneapolis agency running Meta, LinkedIn, and Google campaigns and a slate of webinars that trained and qualified leads nationwide. The response has been energizing: real conversations with investor-savvy partners who value discipline and upside. We also get honest about constraints—like an eight-partner LP cap—and how listening to market feedback shapes future structures without watering down the core thesis. With an extension to late January, the mandate is simple: convert warm interest to signed commitments, finalize terms with specialized real estate counsel, and close Serenity Point with conviction.

If you value transparent execution, resilient capital stacks, and founders who say no to the wrong money, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share with someone who’s navigating their own high-stakes pivot, and leave a review with the toughest question you’d ask a founder raising in this market.

Chapters

• 0:09 When Vision Meets Market Reality
• 0:42 Owning The Pivot And Stakes At Play
• 2:35 Why Narrow Focus Became Non‑Negotiable
• 4:25 Serenity Point As Singular Mission
• 6:17 Institutional Interest And Deal Size
• 8:17 Marketing Engine Goes Nationwide
• 10:32 Demand Signals And LP Constraints
• 12:13 Rethinking Retail Vs Institutional Capital
• 14:02 Building From Strength Without Overlevering
• 16:48 Data Room, Diligence, And Tough Terms
• 19:24 Saying No To Bad Debt And Holding Line
• 21:10 Extension Won, Execution Next
• 23:05 Legal Reinforcements And Risk Protection
• 25:02 Momentum, Grit, And Daily Cadence
• 27:16 Clarity, Loss, And Renewed Purpose
• 29:30 Season Plan And Binary January Outcome
• 31:53 Gratitude To Advisors, Investors, Family
• 34:00 Sign‑Off And Holiday Wishes

Transcript

Vladlen Stark: 0:09

In the life cycle of every higher growth company, there is a moment where the vision on paper meets the reality of the market. It's the moment where you realize that as a founder, you can't just follow a static map. You have to navigate in real time and navigate quickly. I'm Ludlin Stark, and this is the Immigrant Hassle, an unfiltered CEO's playbook on building a business with AI. Welcome back. We've been building in public. We've been very transparent in what we're doing. And today I'm taking you inside of our latest pivot. It's December 23rd. It's the evening. And if you're looking at your calendar and wondering what the hell I've been doing for the last six weeks, well, today you get that answer. Building a business is easy when everything is going to plan. But when things start going sideways, or when you have to pivot on a multi-million dollar race with a whole bunch of project value, investor capital, and brand reputation all on the line, you really have to buckle down and you really have to stay focused. I didn't go quiet because I was resting. I went quiet because this latest strategic pivot required 100% of my bandwidth, and I really needed to focus and give it my all. If you recall the ending of the last episode, this episode was going to be about building the tribe, building our community, and reflecting on the feedback that we've been receiving from our investors. And just like the pivot in the business, I wanted to cheekily call this episode the pivot as well. Because why the hell not? We're pivoting everything anyway. Today we'll be talking about the pivot that we took in terms of our strategy to raise capital, the decision to go absolutely all in at the end of December and bringing on new partners on the marketing side of the things, and also bringing a new partner on the capital rising side of the things, and really a reflection on what the new capital stack looks like, how you have to adjust your strategy to the market conditions and really staying nimble and executing when the opportunity presents itself. If you're building on your own, I think the one key takeaway for you today is that even if your goal remains the same and your vision remains the same, the how is always fluid. And you as a founder or you as that executive, you always have to be ready to adjust the how and not get stuck in your way and capitalize on the opportunities that are presented in front of you. So let's start with the why we decided to make the pivot in a strategic way and what really drove that. And I think part of it really starts with a conversation that I had while I was in Costa Rica and I was recording my last episode. And I had a conversation with a founder who was tremendously successful in Ontario, scaling their company to phenomenal growth through private equity acquisition and then eventually their exit. And the one key message there was that we really needed to focus on a single product, on this single customer type, on this single deliverable, and really hit it out of the park. And that ultimately raised the question: do we have too many irons in the fire? Are we doing something so different in Costa Rica versus Canmore that we have to pick one strategic direction? Are we trying to accomplish way too many things way too early? And do we really need to narrow our focus and focus our resources on a very specific angle that we're pursuing? The moment of reflection really came towards the end of my trip and then the weeks that followed. And I thought that that was the absolutely correct way of approaching things. And we really needed to focus on a singular mission, on a singular deliverable, and that serenity point had to be that thing. It was our market validation in the Canadian market. It was a phenomenal asset that if we delivered that, given all the market uncertainty right now in real estate, all the feedback that we're hearing, that right now is not the best time to be investing in real estate, or uh investors just waiting on the sidelines, either for interest rate decision or for changes in the economic conditions in either Canada or USA or wherever they might be from. So we thought that if we could deliver despite all these headwinds, that would forever cement our legacy, not just in the Rockies, but really as a company that could get it done when nobody else could. And we've already achieved some really amazing milestones. I talked about our debt stack and the deal that we have in the works with the credit union here in Alberta and how phenomenal that opportunity was, given the market conditions and given all the no's that we've seen and heard from all the major financial institutions. So now on the equity side of things, again, we have something to prove and we're working very hard on doing that. And we've pivoted our strategy, which is what this episode is really all about. So with a renewed focus and the renewed energy around focusing on the single asset type, which is serenity point, superior asset with really strong future returns, really strong cash flow, and really focusing on that ultra-luxury segment of the marketplace and focusing on the investor savvy type customers that are seeking investment returns. We narrowed that to a very particular group of individuals and firms. And despite hearing a whole bunch of no's from various private equity funds and real estate trusts, we did end up engaging a partner out east to try and find some more of these funds and private equity firms that we haven't approached in the past and really open up that channel once again because we do feel that there is that institutional interest that is available. And the earlier feedback that we received from funds and trusts in the past was that the deal just wasn't big enough for them. And we've been thinking about different strategies on how to make the deal big enough. And that's something that we'll be talking about in the second season as we try to grow and scale our portfolio and consolidate assets into perhaps a single master feeder fund or some other structure that would be more attractive to these large institutional investors. But for now, we do have some promising leads in a smaller fund space, in the less established type private equity firms as well, that are looking for that smaller check size and are ready to come in into a race like ours. And for us, I think that signals a really strong market validation and something that I would be very proud to present to our potential investors who are individuals and who've entrusted their capital to us early on in a Serenity Point deal and looking to entrust their capital into the future deals. Because if we're able to come in with strong institutional validation of the people who do this sort of thing full-time, who could look at our deal, look at our data room, comb through every single number, every single assumption, and come back with a multi-million dollar check, that certainly gives a lot of confidence to the individual investors that might not have that same level of experience, even if there are tremendously successful individuals, entrepreneurs, or professionals. Um, having that validation from somebody like a private equity firm or real estate fund, I think, is a really phenomenal market validator. And that's something that we've been really strongly focusing on. The other aspect of our focus and really the decision to go all in on what we were doing was hiring of a marketing agency out of Minneapolis that has really stepped up our marketing efforts by running ad campaigns on Meta, on LinkedIn, on Google, helping us stand up webinars that we've been hosting in the last several weeks, several of them. And we've had phenomenal response coast to coast. We've seen tremendous surge in the leads that are coming through both our landing pages and our websites and our various different campaigns. My LinkedIn has been absolutely blowing up. The amount of traffic and the amount of impressions that I'm getting to my page, to the company page, has been absolutely phenomenal. I'm very excited because clearly there is a need and a want in the marketplace. And with a right partner in the marketing seat, we're able to reach these leads coast to coast. We're able to book conversations with individuals who are interested, who have pre-qualified themselves through our questionnaires or through attending our webinars, who are really learning the brand and learning that we're doing something different and something that resonates with them because they understand that the existing models are simply not meeting the demands. The existing models are simply not providing the same level of opportunity that we're able to bring to the marketplace with our LP structure and us bringing investors together to buy a true iconic property like Serenity Point together, where for individual investors, for the most part, unless you're one of the legacy families in this country, it's simply out of reach. So there is a lot of that demand. There's a lot of market validation from individuals. We are yet to find somebody who thinks this is a bad idea. So that is phenomenal. We haven't crossed the finish line by any means, and we still need to close on the leads that we have generated, even though the sentiment and the response and the feedback has been so positive, which is really encouraging. For a while there, there were moments certainly of doubt. There were moments of us thinking, do we have something that the market is ready for? Do we have something that we think will be valuable for our prospective investors? And it's been overwhelmingly yes. The challenge that we've run into, I think, is the size of the raise that we're doing and the fact that we're limiting it to only eight investors in our LP structure. And that goes back to some of the earlier episodes when I discussed why it's eight and the fact that we're limiting the investor base to make sure that there's enough time for personal use to then really maximize the rental revenue outside of that personal use by our owners. But as we have more and more of these conversations of individuals purely looking for investment returns, realizing that in some instances, perhaps that's not a very important factor for some individuals. As I said earlier, you have to listen to the market realities and you have to adjust to what you're seeing and what you're hearing. And that is the superpower of a quick, nimble company that can make these decisions very quickly and make pivots very quickly. So certainly I'm very grateful that we do have this new level of information that's coming to us and also the fact that we are able to move very quickly and change if necessary. One profound thought that I've heard a few times now, but it really resonated with me when I was talking to this manager of a massive fund. They're raising north of $2 billion for a real estate fund across Canada and US. And I think they're perhaps even going outside. They also set out to build something that was driven around community, bringing really strong value to their investors and to those early people who put trust in them as a hedge fund. But what they quickly realized is that at the end of the day, there are so many players in the marketplace who are looking at it from an institutional lens. And for those players, when you're coming in much like us, and you're offering something that is genuinely valuable and genuinely building from the ground up and building around the community, to some big big money funds, it's almost a red flag. And they expect that high fees and high compensation structures are expected if a result is being promised. So it's almost inverse in that I guess the market has proven over the years that to get a high return, you need to pay a high price for management and for the expertise of the people you're investing with. And you really have to signal that to the marketplace and project that confidence to the marketplace to say, yes, it's worth it if you pay me 10% on the equity I'm raising, or it's worth it if you pay me two and a half or three percent on the equity under management versus a 1%. You know, that moment of inflection also led us to think that maybe institutional money is another angle that we need to focus on and really build the foundation of the company and build the coffers of Luxara that would then allow us to come back to our original vision, to come back to that promise of providing access to the individual investors, providing that personal use time and the other perks of being a Luxara owner, but doing it from a position of absolute strength. When we have a really strong pipeline of assets or a really strong pipeline of revenues for management fees coming in, and we're able to take some liberties and make sure that we deliver both on the technology side of things, on the management side of things. We will stay true to our vision, but we might have to take a bit of a detour of how we get there and early on focus on making sure that we deliver that value, that economic return to our institutional investors. And then we can also deliver that much more value to our individuals and our, let's call them retail investors down the road. I don't want to say that we're changing our direction. I don't want to say that we have changed our vision, our mission. All of that remains the same. We're just realizing that in these market conditions, with the timing that we're working with, we can bring some of these institutional partners on and really come from a position of strength and build something really neat in the long run rather than trying to be perfect in delivering exactly what we planned in our business plan months ago, because that might come at a cost that is too high, or we might miss the window of opportunity that we had in front of us. And that's just not something that I'm willing to do. I think we have a tremendous opportunity in front of us. We need to execute on that opportunity, and we'll be able to do some really amazing things down the road. Now, of course, having conversations with institutional partners is not without the challenges. And we certainly ran into that. First and foremost, it was a really good exercise for us to really structure everything that we had already for due diligence and put all of that in a data room that was truly institutional grade. We spun up that data room at a record time, I think from start to finish. We did it in 48 hours, largely because we were already prepared. We already had everything that would traditionally go into a data room. We just hadn't been asked by any of our early interests as individuals to actually deliver a full data room for review, whereas in the institutional partners did want to see that, of course. So excellent exercise. And it really just proved just how much we were thinking about covering all of our bases because I'm pretty sure from the entire list of asks into the data room, we had about 95% of it ready to go in a handful of hours. And there was only a couple of items that we had to request from the developer and from the seller to get us to that 100%. So again, it was a really nice validation that the team working the deal was really thinking about everything, start to finish, and that we were ready for any questions to come our way, both from institutional investors and also from retail, from individuals. The challenges did come through because in the world of private equity and the world of funds, the rigor and the detail of review is, of course, next level. That's something that these folks do professionally for a living, and they know all the questions to ask. And the unfortunate reality, of course, as you're going through a very short sort of deadline, and you're presenting that deadline with full transparency to some of these players, there is inevitably going to be somebody who will see that as an opportunity to squeeze you. And we certainly experience that. Unfortunately, I think, you know, for me, it was a great learning experience, and that's something that, you know, just solidifies me and my conviction that we are doing things right, and we do have a good plan and a good team in place who can execute and make the right decisions, even when an easy out is presented to us. And to elaborate on that a little bit, we had some conversations with a private equity firm out of Ontario. They uh Originally led us to believe that they were going to invest in the equity round, which is what we were looking for. But then as we progressed through a couple of our calls with them, they kept pivoting to a conversation of debt. I think they realized that we were working against the deadline, and they thought that they could perhaps get us from a position of weakness and have us sign on to something that wasn't really favorable for us, for our investors, and really for the future of our brand. We would have been overlevered. The terms wouldn't have been as favorable as the terms we have with the credit union. And we would have to put a lot on the line, not even for a sure deal, because we'd still would need to raise additional equity regardless. They were just willing to offer a higher level of debt than what we're able to get from the credit union, which doesn't really benefit us, no matter how you spin it. The decision to go 50-50 debt on equity or a little bit less than 50 on the debt side wasn't just because we couldn't get more debt. I mean, that was part of the story. Leverage over 50% introduces an unnecessary risk. And meeting the debt service requirements, meeting leverage requirements, and just having enough cash flow to make those debt payments, all of that came into consideration when we finalized the equity stack the way that we did. We realized that we could maybe get a little bit extra debt somewhere else, but we would be risking a lot of our invested capital and a lot of the confidence and a lot of the returns on the asset if we were to go too high on the leverage side. The good thing about leverage is that debt is predictable. You know exactly the payments, you know exactly the timing, and you're in some ways limiting your risk to that. But the inverse is also true. When you have way too much debt, you're now unnecessarily creating more risk because a change in interest rates, a change in market conditions on the occupancy side of things that really drive your cash so far down that you can make a loan payment or you defer a loan payment for a month or two that could create a lot of stress. And if a debt is called, there's very few options for you to get out of that. Right. So we certainly didn't want to be in a situation where we would be anywhere near breaching our debt covenants or missing any loan payments. So there was really strong and good strategy around that debt to equity split. And I'm happy that we're sticking to it. To circle back, of course, we didn't take the deal that was presented to us and we held our ground. I wasn't going to compromise the brand. I wasn't going to compromise the plan for what may have seemed like an easy and quick win because we're in this for the long haul. We're building something that would create an entirely new asset class in the Canadian market. And we have to do that from a position of strength. And we have to do that with conviction and have to stand our ground. We will not be pushed over and we will not pivot from something that we've poured so much time and effort into designing and have validated it through so many different channels, from advisors to lawyers to all the different investors that we've talked to. So I guess the lesson here is challenge yourself, question yourself, but also don't be afraid to stand up for what you believe in and to stand up for something that you believe is right and you believe is the right thing to do in the moment and in the circumstances that are in front of you. We managed to secure an extension to our race until the end of January, which certainly introduces a lot of breathing room given where we were a handful of weeks ago, the momentum that we've built over the past six weeks that we've been aggressively marketing, hosting these webinars, and really having a lot of these conversations with individuals and institutions. So that extension is absolutely critical. I'm not celebrating yet because even though we have all this interest that we've pent up, we are really coming strong on our marketing efforts and keeping the leads warm. I've had hundreds of calls and I've had some really good conversations with individuals. So once we come back from the holidays, I certainly intend to follow through on all those conversations and really start executing on those deals and start signing the agreements and getting that capital flowing and closing the deal at the end of January. We also, as we started getting through those final terms of our deal, we had to bring another law firm into the mix, the law firm that specializes in real estate and specifically commercial real estate. So they're helping us refine our purchase agreement a little bit and making sure that we've covered all of our risks because, again, as I keep saying, you know, this is not just a simple real estate purchase. We're doing this as a limited partnership. There's investor capital at risk, and we want to make sure we protect that. And we also need to make sure that we have terms that are favorable to us in case there's some issues with a purchase or delays in the construction or anything of that sort. So really glad that we're bringing on this other partner and that our friends at Gowling are still strong supporters of our vision and that we're actually referring this new partner to us. Lots of good momentum there, lots of good momentum in the marketing side of things, lots of good momentum on the institutional interest and validation we're hearing from there. So we're rolling into the holidays with all that is really exciting. It's certainly also stressful because we need to still close on those deals. We need to deliver and we need to make sure that there are signatures on the page and cash in the bank at the end of January. But I'm very optimistic. I'm very grateful for all the efforts that everybody's been putting in over the last six weeks. It's been a tremendous sprint. And I am very grateful for the people that I'm surrounded with. And that's really what's motivating me and pushing me to get up in the morning, have a 10 calls before 10 a.m., spend times on webinars, spend times on LinkedIn, talk to my marketing team, and really think about what is next. How are we advertising? How are we getting to our investors? What are we pitching as our value proposition? And really, how do we position our brand and how do we create that following that we're going to need if we're going to really bring this vision across Canada? I send my first real CEO email to all of our prospective investors, and it was hundreds of people, which honestly was kind of a cool feeling to send an email to hundreds of people after only a really handful of weeks of marketing and building the brand and building the interest in the brand. One hell of a year. I reflected in earlier episodes about the profound loss I experienced earlier this year. I won't really dwell on that because I don't want to spoil the mood for the holidays. But really, it was the moment of clarity that I've had a few times in the year. Earlier in the year, the first time I was in Costa Rica grieving, the second time I was in Costa Rica reflecting on everything that happened, the moments of clarity they came through both of those experiences and the profound changes in my life and changes in my professional career, all of those things I think have really led me to this experience, to doing something I'm passionate about, to truly waking up in the morning and being excited about making a phone call or rehearsing for a webinar, reviewing my marketing materials, or talking to the marketing team, it's just been such a different experience and such a powerful experience that I'm tremendously grateful for that. The fact that this podcast has now reached 14 different countries is absolutely incredible. And I do want to make a promise to everyone that we're going to find that right cadence. We're going to continue with this podcast because I think this true unfiltered playbook, this sort of building it from the trenches, messaging, and really building a community around something that is encouraging people to pursue their dreams, to give their idea, their all. I think there's something really powerful here. And I want to continue building this community. I want to continue inspiring people all over the globe. I think we have a really cool message to send. I think we have a phenomenal product that we're working on. And I'm very excited about all of the things that we're going to do with both of those things. So a true, deep, heartfelt thank you to all of you who have listened to the first eight episodes. I hope you tune into this one. Episode 10 is probably not going to come until the end of January. And the reason for that is quite simple. We've decided to keep it at 10 episodes for the season. And I wanted to have that last episode as the lessons learned. The end of January, of course, is that deadline for Serenity Point. And in that episode, we're either going to be standing in that grand living room of Serenity Point, celebrating a huge win and our entry with a huge bang into Canadian marketplace. Or I'll be right back here talking about what it feels like to fail after giving it your absolute everything. No matter which way it goes, I promise you I'll record that episode and I'll tell you what happened and I'll tell you all the truth and nothing but the truth. A special thank you goes out to the Board of Advisors of Luxara that really have been so instrumental in supporting me throughout everything that has been happening in the last several months that we've been really chasing this dream and really trying to bring it to reality. It's an absolutely amazing group of people that I'm so grateful to be surrounded with. And in times of holidays, I also wanted to make sure I reflect on their contributions and their support. And of course, my absolute foundation and my absolute strength is my family, my wife and my kids are everything. And everything I'm doing is for them. They are what's driving all of this. They are my energy, they're my life force. And that's something that I'm incredibly grateful for. And I'm very excited to spend my holidays with them and really see the little faces light up as we put the presents under the Christmas tree and get through the holidays. So to all of you listening, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for your support. If you're an early investor in Luxara, thank you for your confidence. To my advisors, thank you again. To my family, thank you. I love you so much. And to everyone else who's tuning in into this podcast, who is joining our community, whether or not you're intending to ever invest or not, thank you for being part of the story. I am so grateful. I hope you all have an absolutely wonderful holiday season. We celebrate Christmas, so I'll say Merry Christmas to you all. Happy New Year. Make some memories with your loved ones. Spend some time with people that matter. And I wish you an absolutely nothing but the best in 2026 and beyond. I hope you join me on my hustle. I hope you hustle on your own. Let's keep building this community together. Let's build a legacy that we're all proud of. Have a fantastic time. And I'll see you in 2026.