Capital, Land, and People Collide In Still Unsolved Hard Problems
About midway through Derek Thompson's and Ezra Klein's viral manifesto, Abundance, glares a line that calls back repeatedly, like a spell, through example after example of American business and innovation's pent-up, trapped dynamism:
The unsolved problems are typically harder than the solved ones.”
A quote from University of Chicago sociologist James Evans – albeit in a parallel domain – adds another:
Science moves forward one improbability at a time.”
Try swapping "homebuilding" for the word "science," and see how that feels.
About right, right?
That’s where U.S. homebuilding business leaders stand in late 2025. The solved problems — how to finance growth in a boom, how to ignite a tide of elastic demand, how to fill backlogs when buyers outpace supply — are behind us.
The unsolved ones — how to operate profitably when mobility has collapsed, how to make capital flexible when banks and lenders retreat, how to rewire organizations for both resilience and velocity — are harder.
And the only way forward is one improbability at a time: facing problems together, thinking clearly, and acting decisively.
That is why the Focus On Excellence Leadership Summit and Workshop (Oct. 27–29, Four Seasons Denver) is not just another item on your calendar.
It is the listening and lifelong leadership learning room where this industry’s leaders will confront today’s turbulence and tomorrow’s inevitabilities — capital, land, labor, materials, technology, data, and customers. And where they'll roll up their sleeves and work to mould and hammer ideas into operating disciplines that put 2030 and beyond in their sights.
The Weight of Complexity
America’s homebuilding and development environment is stalled not for lack of talent or capital. Instead, it's due to a clash of complexity that, for the most part, solves a host of yesterday's problems well, but hardly at all tomorrow's problems. Every “solution” has stacked new layers of goals and frictions on top of the last. One problem’s fix collides with another problem’s demand.
- Capital is both scarce and abundant — but rarely in the form of greatest use to those who need to put it in place.
- Land is scarce where demand is firm, sticky in price where sellers can wait.
- People are hard to find, harder to keep, and hardest to equip with the skills this market requires.
- Materials and supply chains are more stable than two years ago, but cost volatility has not gone away.
- Technology and data are no longer optional, but turning them from tools into truth requires commitment, money, time, culture, and accountability.
- Customers are hesitant until they’re not, inelastic until lower rates suddenly flip them to urgent.
This is the axis every leader must navigate. And it requires more than optimism, more than capital, more than slogans. It requires clear thinking.
- Clear about what adds value and what only adds friction.
- Clear about what customers will pay for and what they won’t.
- Clear about what people need to succeed and what wastes their time.
Why Denver, Why Now
Focus On Excellence is designed for this exact moment — as a working summit, both grapevine and raw dirt to plant new ideas.
Panels and presentations are deliberately short, high-energy sparks — more like a lightning round than a PowerPoint presentation. They exist to fuel the real work: hands-on, leader-to-leader workshops where participants roll up sleeves, confront blind spots, and test strategies.
Think Shark Tank meets executive roundtable: candid, pressurized, high-stakes, and transformative.
This is the secret sauce: every abstraction pivots into operational practice. Every idea gets translated into something you can take back to your business Monday morning.
Secure your seat now. Register.
Three Blindingly Clear Reasons to Be There
The People in the Room
Our speaker lineup is a supergroup of proven leaders who have already made their organizations fit for the unsolved problems:
- Cristian deRitis, Deputy Chief Economist, Moody’s Analytics
- Jim Francescon, EVP Corporate Operations, Century Communities
- Linda Mamet, EVP & CMO, Tri Pointe Homes
- Stephanie McCarty, CMO, Taylor Morrison
- Tony Avila, CEO, Builder Advisor Group
- David Rice, CEO, New Home Star
- David Sinkey, CEO, Boulder Creek Neighborhoods
- Jeff Handlin, Founder, Oread Capital & Development
- Michael Sinkey, Founder, Boulder Creek Neighborhoods
- Wade Jurney, Co-Founder, National Home Corp.
- Nikki Pechet, Co-Founder & CEO, Homebound
- Brandon Sharp, CIO, Brookfield Residential
- Urmila Menon, CIO, Tri Pointe Homes
- Plus presidents, founders, and strategists who have led growth, transformation, and culture change in the hardest environments.
This is not a parade of titles. It’s a collection of leaders who have won, stumbled, adapted, and continued to move forward.
The Workshops That Do the Work
The agenda is structured as a three-act play:
- Act One: Market Dynamics
Short bursts of insight set the table: where demand is stuck, where capital is cautious, where opportunity is opening. - Act Two: Operational Excellence
Breakout workshops turn those signals into stress tests. Attendees map their own stall speeds, identify structural blind spots, and debate real scenarios with peers. - Act Three: The Leadership Edge
Final sessions drill into culture, accountability, and talent. Leaders leave with a sharper blueprint for 2026–2027 and beyond.
At every step, the format forces clarity. No one hides behind abstractions. Everyone contributes, everyone tests their thinking, and everyone leaves sharper.
The Clarity Advantage
Shane Parrish puts it best: “It’s only after we accept reality that we can attempt to change it.”
Focus On Excellence is about accepting reality in its hardest form — slower sales, thinner margins, cautious lenders, restless customers — and using clear thinking and determined, patient forward motion to position for the rebound.
- Accepting that capital timing is as critical as capital cost.
- Accepting that people and culture are as important as land basis.
- Accepting that customers’ behaviors, not our pro formas, set the rules.
From there, the advantage is positioning. Parrish again:
Results are a function of position. You don’t need to be smarter than others to outperform them if you can out-position them.”
This summit is about positioning your business, your culture, and your leadership to outperform when the next cycle opens up — because it will.
An Indispensable Room
Every indicator suggests rate cuts are coming. Demand will respark, but unevenly. The leaders who will win are those who are already moving — tackling cost structures both above and below the line, clearing inventory, preserving optionality, building teams that run on truth, not silos.
Focus On Excellence is where those leaders will be. Not to predict the turn, but to prepare for it. Not to repeat solved problems, but to confront the unsolved ones.
Two-or-so days. A room full of peers. Hard problems, clear thinking, real solutions. Knowing this crowd, belly laughs, too.
That’s the work. That’s the value. That’s why you need to be in Denver.