In this episode, we often confuse ourselves with product businesses, but land investors are service providers. This episode challenges you to identify what you need to stop funding so you can double down on Acquisition, the only place value is actually created.
Key Takeaways:
- Acquisition is King: Dispo is just pricing mechanics; Acquisition is where 100% of the equity is captured.
- Kill Sacred Cows: Ruthlessly cut expenses (“sacred cows”) that do not directly drive deal flow or acquisition quality.
- Unit Economics: If you don’t know your unit economics down to the dollar, you cannot automate them effectively.
Watch the full episode to learn how to redesign your workflows from the studs up rather than applying band-aids.
(Podcast transcript below)
Welcome to Get Serious. Today I wanted to kind of share a opinion on this latest article from Section AI. For those of you who’ve never read that newsletter, it’s probably the go-to weekly newsletter when it comes to how enterprises are
companies implement AI into their business. I’ve been following these folks for probably a bit over a year here. I probably appreciate them because it’s a similar type of no-nonsense data-driven tone like I try to convey in Serious News, our weekly newsletter. again, I think these guys are just
Absolutely top notch when it comes to calling out BS and what’s working or not with real data behind it. So this one in particular is focused on the three AI strategy investments leaders should make in the following year, 2026, to timestamp where we’re at. so I’m kind of going to
go bullet point through the key points in this article as well as what we’re thinking and what you are probably, it would benefit you to start thinking about here. And if you haven’t started to implement any type of AI, most companies at least are dabbling in it, especially in the land investment space where we sit behind a computer so often. It’s just pretty critical to think about here.
You know, again, I always love like, okay, building the bottom level of the pyramid and subtly going up here where you have to, you know, very carefully answer certain questions and you don’t move to the next step until you can actually answer some of these. So, you know, the, author here at Mundo Ortega who’s a partner who get guest posts on
section, but he’s probably my favorite author just because he’s like the most straightforward, is just to be, before considering any AI investments, because again, it’s so easy to get gas lit or lettuce ray, which basically means the same thing, is to be asking, how does your company actually create value?
And so, you sometimes that’s, that’s actually a more difficult question to, to answer, you know, in the land business, the way most land businesses are structured. you know, we had to kind of think about this, you know, as I was building out our. Or mozy ACQ AI, it’s like, are we a services business or are we a physical products business? when you think real estate, like you kind of think, yeah, we’re obviously physically.
products like what can be more physical than real estate in and of itself. But in reality, land businesses, including ours, as a capital provider, we’re really a service business. The business is oriented around the acquisition of land. There’s a unique
acquisition strategy that is kind of the fuel for allowing this business model to work. The disposition side, while it gets tons of attention, especially in a heavy buyers market in most parts of the country like we are today and probably like the most difficult part of this business and where most people are feeling headwinds here.
that’s not necessarily where you’re creating the value. mean, you can create the value in terms of, you know, are you being more aggressive with selling properties or utilizing techniques that are outside of the norm? But even then,
Like there’s only so much you can do to kind of, you know, force a property down, the throat of the market. Like if your buy price is just flat out wrong, it doesn’t matter. Like it doesn’t matter what you’re creating value you’re creating on the Dispo side. Um, uh, because inherently you screwed up the value on, on the buy. mean, you hear that all the time, but I think until you really boil it down.
and ask yourself, what’s like the true value creation within this business model? Like it’s it’s it’s on the acquisition side. I mean, Dispo, yeah, we’re working with, you know, realtors more often than not. Like realtors are like pretty much purely Dispo oriented when it when it comes to to value. But they can also create it on the acquisition side, find kind of unique properties to
to acquire perhaps on behalf of buyers like us or just, you know, buyers on the market here so they can kind of play both sides. But again, when it comes to, you know, land flippers or minor subdivides, et cetera, like it’s mostly on the buy that we’re actually creating value. Or perhaps, you know, when we’re…
approaching something with a value add or a subdivide opportunity, we already have that in mind at the time we’re even buying it. Like we’re underwriting with that in mind and lining up the anticipated costs so that disposition, although it is oftentimes extremely difficult and the market can punch you in the face routinely, that’s not where our value is created. like with that in mind, we’re not.
actually a physical products business because it’s our service we create for sellers or like in our case for other land investors that creates the value that we’re getting rewarded for. So important stipulation to keep in mind because these are the things that inform how you actually think about your business and what lever to pull. this is something I’d probably
talk about all the time. already seven minutes in and just on the first question of this business. So I need to speed this up a little bit more. Maybe we’ll come back to this a couple of times. It’s such a rich article with a limited word count. So then that second question that you need to be asking is what are we not going to invest in anymore so we can fund the future? This is another really oftentimes difficult question.
to come across and not something you can kind of skip over. Even while you might be listening to me on like 2X speed or something, like you might have some initial ideas. Yeah, what am I not gonna, but it’s worth bearing in mind to really sit down and consider this more carefully because we all know anytime you’re operating a business and most of us are like deep in the day to day, like all the time. mean, there’s very few of us who,
can kind of sit from a top down manner within this, within this business. and, industry in particular, honestly, if you’re not like a, you Hermosy will say this to you, like if you’re not above 10 to 15 million and annual revenue, like you’re, you’re pretty much going to be the talent. You’re, you’re going to be part, part of the day to day here. So like, that’s just the facts. and so it’s, it’s so easy to stick with status quo and like, okay, this is just.
working we can anticipate continuing to invest in this area because it has worked for us historically. We can assume that it’s going to continue to work with us or we’re going to continue to get better at this particular avenue or implementation within the business. And a lot of times that can be correct because change, especially significant change in the business, oftentimes can be, you know,
double-edged blade here where it can hurt you as much as it can help you with the way it can throw teams in disarray and learning curves to be added in or just flat out miscalculations as far as what you expected the change was going to do to your business. And that is actually the opposite. Again, you could really consider business to be a game of endless experimentation given that it is an infinite game and is always evolving.
But especially in the age of AI, when, you know, just business workflows and tasks and skill sets from yourself, your talent are kind of changing and becoming more or less valuable so quickly, sometimes even on a weekly basis that
you really have to just start making quicker and oftentimes more difficult calls on what you’re not going to invest anymore so that that future that you’re orienting towards can both be funded as well as achieved. Ultimately, you can’t do everything here. And if you don’t make some cuts like
it’s pretty much impossible to make meaningful changes within your business because most businesses already operate at capacity or close to capacity on, you know, just a day to day task business or, you know, task allocation. inevitably, like resources have to be reallocated and you have to have a harsh eye on. You know.
certain investments that you might have made in your business, some things that you might have loved, or you kind of feel the…
What’s the paradox of…
you where you’re feeling a…
certain lot, sunk cost fallacy. Come on, come on, Chris. So basic. Like so much, so many of us struggle with that. I struggle with that all the time to where, cause again, mean, even from like a reputation or you think other people are going to like notice, no, they’re pulling back on this. They must be struggling or like, why did they do this? We have this
you know, mistaken, frankly, expectation that other people are paying so close attention to us and, what we’re doing and that, you know, our reputation is going to be forever ruined if we make a key change or, you know, stop pursuing a, a particular, area with, within our business or even within our lives here. And honestly, even if that was the case, like, so what, like you’re
It really only matters what your context on the situation is perceiving or your core teams or your core partners within your business, because you’re going to have the best context possible. And if you’re willing and able to make bets on the future and understand, yeah, we’re going to have to make painful changes, especially in an age and day when so many things are rapidly
rapidly, rapidly changing day after day after day, even Anna, this is we’re recording this like during the holidays, right? Like just take a look at the AI models. Like literally they’ve been leapfrogging each other, you know, Anthropic, Google and OpenAI since early November. And that’s probably going to continue straight over the course of, you know, Christmas, New Year’s, what I like that those teams are just, they are pushing like endless burnout here because
You can tell internally, they, know, the managers and directors C-suite of those businesses are probably just, you know, I’m sure they’re, you know, they’re, humans, right? Like the teams are feeling burnt. just working hard. You know, most, a lot of people are taken off during the holidays and, so forth here, but they’re like, Hey, we have a chance to, you know, potentially create the
greatest breakthrough technologically in human history. Like is that worth sacrificing another holiday or even the next two to three for to become historical legends when it comes to, again, just human history writ large, like to create some AGI or whatever.
Like that is a massive incentive that these companies are trying to push through. And like we’re feeling the results of that externally and also trying to implement the technologies that these companies are just pushing out in such rapid fashion here. So like we have to be aware that, you know, they’re changing so quickly, they’re pushing things out so quickly.
So so do we you know we have more limited resources here, but you know what needs to be cut here No, sacred cows no sacred cows in in business other than you know hopefully your ethics your morals You know that if you ruin your reputation Or or go to jail like that those are the two The two ways to ruin yourself according to the same to lab so like anything short of that
is, is on the table to be sacrificed. So figure out, within your, your business on, like what you’re not going to invest in anymore. I mean, I’ve come out publicly with a number of things here, like, yeah, I had to let go of operating land price or like significant net worth thrown into that potentially I get it back, you know, from land price or itself. Otherwise, like I have to make it up.
within serious land capital, but like my focus is so much better going back to one business even within serious land capital. Do we show up as often for like land daily diligence? If it’s convenient for us, when it comes to reviewing particular deals that are already like batched and ready to go, otherwise, no, like we just, have higher priorities to…
To go after on on a day-to-day basis if we’re anticipating being you know, million dollar company ten million dollar company You know hundred million dollar company You have to start adjusting In in order to hit that so key to To keep in mind here
And so again, like to kind of boil this down, you all have to come back to this article because they use even more key takeaways. We’re already, you know, over 15 minutes in is like, okay, understand your mechanics on how money is made. You as the business owner might not even be able to do that. Your team probably doesn’t know how to do that. Like you should ask every team member, like what, you know, what are you doing on a day-to-day basis that, or how are you contributing value to the company? Like, do they understand what?
their ins and outs are in relation to revenue and profit generation. Where does your leverage live? Like what signals within your business are actually driving decisions? Like if you don’t know your data, you can’t make anything, any decision with real authority. It’s like if you don’t know how to model your company, like you can’t transform it appropriately.
So.
Yeah. And, and, you know, one more point here from like the article, it’s like, you know, there’s kind of an abstract goal, like, you know, certain business leaders might say things like, okay, you know, we do market research by, you know, buying extra pork using Y agency and running these monthly meetings. Like that, that’s what you do on a day to day basis. But, um, you know,
the ultimate goal, like that’s the method, but what’s the goal? Like, why are you doing that? We want to reliably understand the market so we can make the right product decisions. Like that’s, you know, what the underlying strategy is. So same thing with the land business. You could say, yeah, we reach out to sellers via mail and then, you know, offer them a certain price and, you know, some of them accept, some of them don’t. And we try to sell the property like that. That’s a method that you’re doing.
but like what’s that underlying strategy on why you are doing that as well too. So sum it up, rethink which inputs you use because you gotta separate the goal from the process. Like get back to that core idea of your business, the core value generation, which for land businesses is
Like I told you on the acquisition side. So then you can rethink what inputs you actually use, what data actually matters, what doesn’t. You can rethink how does the core work get done. You can decide what AI should do versus what humans should do. And you can stop, you know, wasting time, like just throwing AI on top of a particular process that should have just been redesigned.
entirely or eliminated from your entire workflow. So that last point has been really difficult. went in so many just dead ends over the course of 2025, just trying to like throw AI onto the, and it was just like, okay, didn’t, didn’t go anywhere. So you got to do that across the entire level of your business and an enterprise level. And also, you know, you could apply that process, you know, for specific departments or specific
you know, smallest work units. with that, we’ll end on, on that one. was getting pumped up, fired up during this podcast here. So, I’ll look forward to reporting further on this, article again, too, just cause I think it’s like, it’s so critical. the companies that do this right are the ones that are going to succeed. Like all the other ones, I think are just, they’re going to get demolished, or a slow death over, over time here. So.
Word to the wise, Serious Land, dot Capital for any of your land funding needs. Massive deal, probably going to approve over the holidays here. Never stop when you want to be the best. Keep that in mind. Subscribe and share, everybody. Take care now. Bye.
