Who’s In Charge?

Left Main REI
  • 5.0 (18)
  • Entrepreneurship

Ever wonder who’s behind the desk at the very top? What got them there? Who are they at home with their families? Hosted by Stephanie and Zach Betters—the duo behind multiple companies—this show is for real estate investors and business owners who are tired of the hustle and are ready to scale their companies and themselves as leaders. Stephanie and Zach combine their high-stakes medical backgrounds with growth-driven business strategy to break down the systems, leadership, and behind-the-scenes conversations at home that determine whether —the companies and the marriage behind them — thrives or falls apart. We talk about what it takes to run a successful company and learn about who the leaders are that are in charge of them. We talk about how to execute from idea to scale and all the lessons learned from building teams,systems, wealth, and partnerships. Stop chasing deals and start being a leader. It’s time to find out Who’s In Charge. Presented by Left Main REI Learn more at www.leftmainrei.co

  1. 2d ago

    From One-Man Show to 25-Plus: Bobby Suarez on Becoming a CEO

    Episode Description Bobby Suarez ran his South Florida home-buying business as a one-man show until 2018. Today Sell to Bobby is a team of more than 25 with an executive bench, a second market in Tampa, and a few side ventures on top. In this episode, Bobby sits down with Stephanie and Zach to trace how he got there, and the throughline is a comfort with risk most operators talk themselves out of. Bobby walks through the television bet that rebuilt his company, why he now spends to be omnipresent instead of chasing perfect attribution, and how a mastermind rewired what he thought was possible. Along the way: hiring people better than you, keeping a team aligned on comp, staying a student when the channels change, and the short memory that keeps entrepreneurs moving after a loss. Key Takeaways Do it scared. Bobby said yes to a five-figure monthly TV spend despite the fear, rebranded to something memorable, and closed his first contract on day two. When he's scared he moves fast and figures it out after, because overthinking is usually the more expensive mistake, and you don't need all the answers to start.Brand is a moat built on frequency. Broadcast TV, radio, billboards, direct mail, PPC, even Super Bowl spots and a billboard doctored to look vandalized: the goal is to be impossible to miss. Instead of toggling hard-to-measure channels on and off, Bobby budgets to be everywhere, because sellers only hand their house to a name they trust.Hire people better than you, and align the comp. Bobby focuses on what he's good at (running the company, recruiting, building leaders) and brings in "culture enhancers" people love to work for. Everyone's pay, from executives to entry level, is tied to closed deals, so the whole team rows in the same direction.Buy the cheat codes. Joining Collective Genius showed Bobby what was actually possible and shortcut years of trial and error. As he puts it, the more people you know, the more money you'll make, so get in the rooms and stay a go-giver.Keep a short memory. When the Tampa launch stumbled, Bobby logged it as what not to do next time and kept moving. Learn the lesson, tag it, forget the rest, and stay a student who's willing to pivot rather than clinging to "this is how I've always done it." Left Main is more than just a CRM, it's an end-to-end Real Estate Investment operations solution to run your company as an actual business with sales systems embedded. Want to find out more, book a call today, leftmainrei.co or whosinchargepodcast.com/home

  2. Aug 13

    Well Done Beats Well Said: Building a Culture of Accountability

    Episode Description You can repeat a goal until you're blue in the face, but if nothing happens when the date passes, it never meant anything. In this episode, part two to last week's conversation on meetings, Stephanie and Zach get into accountability: the least glamorous lever in leadership, and one of the most important. It starts, fittingly, with a story about their daughter missing an academic goal by a single point. They dig into how to hold a standard without demoralizing your team, why conservative and realistic goals beat grand ones you'll miss, how to shorten the reward loop so effort actually gets reinforced, and the difference between telling people what to do and telling them why. Honest, tactical, and full of lessons that cross straight over from parenting to payroll. Key Takeaways A standard you don't hold isn't a standard. Don't devalue a goal by negotiating it after the fact, but do build a path that rewards real effort. In business the line is blunt: you can't make payroll on effort alone, so hold it, while watching that the metric you enforce is actually producing the result you want.Set goals people can actually hit, and reward them fast. A conservative goal you crush beats a grand one you miss, and data should set the number, not a gut guess. Shorten the distance between the work and the reward (monthly bonuses, small wins celebrated along the way) so the effort gets reinforced.Make accountability cultural, not personal. Framed as data instead of emotion, the only question is whether you did what you said by when. Praise publicly, coach privately, and remember that what you tolerate speaks louder than any all-hands speech, because how you do one thing is how you do everything.Tell them why, not just what. Stephanie's retelling of a Jocko Willink lesson lands it: a team ordered only to "get to the roof" gets stuck when the roof is blocked, but a team that knows the mission can improvise and still succeed. That's the difference between the concept and the blueprint, and it's why every task should tie to an outcome, made personal to the individual.Keep goals finite so you can see drift early. Know what week of the quarter you're in and what percentage of the target you've hit. That turns a meeting into a place to solve the gap and IDS what's off, instead of just reading the number aloud. Left Main is more than just a CRM, it's an end-to-end Real Estate Investment operations solution to run your company as an actual business with sales systems embedded. Want to find out more, book a call today, leftmainrei.co or whosinchargepodcast.com/home

  3. Aug 6

    10X Your Time by Fixing Your Meetings

    Episode DescriptionMeetings get a bad rap, and there are whole books to prove it. But in this episode, Stephanie and Zach make the case that a meeting you dread is almost always a leadership problem in disguise: poorly set up, poorly run, or one that should never have been on the calendar. Stephanie comes in worn down by weeks of back-to-back calls and real decision fatigue, which turns out to be the perfect place to start.They dig into what actually separates a meeting that drives decisions from one that just drains everyone: leading with purpose, preparing (or canceling), holding people accountable without steamrolling them, and protecting the leader's energy and thinking time as the company scales. Practical, tactical, and honest about their own mistakes along the way. Key Takeaways Give every meeting a purpose, or cancel it. The meetings that burn you out are the ones where you only discuss and never decide. If someone shows up unprepared, the work quietly shifts onto you, and a meeting that is just a status readout could have been an email.Judge it by clarity, direction, and purpose. You should leave more clear than you came, knowing exactly what happens next. Use the IDS habit from Traction (identify, discuss, solve): bring problems to solve, not reports to recite.Hold people accountable without diminishing them. Deciding for people to save time makes them smaller, but staying too reserved to name the problem is just as damaging. Lead with extreme ownership by first asking what they needed from you that they didn't have, and ask more questions before you jump to the answer.You can't outgrow your own leadership. The company will never grow past the level of the CEO's leadership, so hire strategic thinkers instead of task-doers and keep investing in your own development, even when learning doesn't feel immediately productive.Protect the capacity to decide. The bigger the company, the more blank space and thinking time the leader needs, not less. Borrow the fifty-minute hour, remember that a task expands to fill the time you give it, and put your own oxygen mask on first: canceling a meeting you're too fried to run well isn't rude, it's protecting the whole team. Left Main is more than just a CRM, it's an end-to-end Real Estate Investment operations solution to run your company as an actual business with sales systems embedded. Want to find out more, book a call today, leftmainrei.co or whosinchargepodcast.com/home

  4. Jul 30

    The Silent Mistakes Killing Your Business (And How To Avoid Them)

    Episode Description Now that AI has made speed cheap, a website goes up in an afternoon and "We Buy Houses" is on every postcard, moving fast is no longer a differentiator. So what is?In this episode, Stephanie and Zach dig into the two things worth slowing down on to actually pull ahead: building a brand, and understanding the revenue math underneath your pipeline.They get tactical fast. Stephanie and Zach talk through branded versus unbranded marketing and why recognizability and reviews win in a noisy world, then go down the revenue-operations rabbit hole: pipeline coverage, active pipeline, and the simple math that turns a big vision into a goal your team can actually hit. Along the way, why both plays come down to the same discipline of delayed gratification. Key Takeaways If you can't draw a line to revenue, it's entertainment. Brand and marketing conversations are fun, but ground every one of them in the funnel. The question that matters is not what's easiest to measure, it's what's actually effective.Your logo is not your brand. In a world where everyone runs the same cash-offer message, attention is only the surface. Real brand is trust built over time, and it answers a harder question: what do you actually stand for?Recognizability and validation drive inbound. People research you before they ever call, so reviews, a real website, and a consistent presence do the convincing. Most buyers will trust 30,000 reviews at a good rating over three perfect ones.Size your pipeline with real math. Pipeline coverage is one divided by your close rate. Close 20% and want a million dollars in a quarter, and you need five million in active pipeline. Per rep, a million-a-year target at a $15k average deal and a 20% close rate works out to about 83 active opportunities every quarter.Clean the pipeline before you buy more leads. "Active" means alive: pending appointments, hot follow-ups, deals in negotiation, not four-year-old cold leads. Most reps have less real pipeline than their dashboard shows, and often the fix is another person working it, not more volume. Left Main is more than just a CRM, it's an end-to-end Real Estate Investment operations solution to run your company as an actual business with sales systems embedded. Want to find out more, book a call today, leftmainrei.co or whosinchargepodcast.com/home

  5. Jul 23

    The AI Divide: How To Pull Ahead

    Episode DescriptionThere is a new AI tool almost every day, and for anybody who struggles with focus, that is equal parts exciting and terrifying. In this episode, Stephanie and Zach cut through the buzzword noise and get practical about where AI actually earns its place in a real estate business, and where it just becomes an expensive distraction.They dig into the reframe most owners get wrong (AI is labor, not a person you replace), a simple way to sort your tech stack so you know where to plug in, and why the operators learning this now are quietly pulling away from everyone else. Along the way: what stays valuable when the machines get good, and why the highest performers are still the ones having fun. Key Takeaways Ideas without execution is just entertainment. The excitement of a new tool means nothing until you do something with it. Shiny object syndrome is fun, but it's a distraction from the thing your company is actually supposed to do.AI is labor, not a job role. Stop asking who you can replace and start asking where the friction is. Hook a tool up to your CRM, ask where your best opportunities are today, and it makes the operator better instead of replacing them. You do more with the same team.Sort your stack, then start with the funnel. Split your tech into system of record (your center of truth), system of action (where the work happens), and database (the raw data underneath). Then pick one friction point in your funnel, lead to close, that ties directly to revenue. That keeps you grounded instead of chasing the next tool.Speed is the race, and this is the worst it will ever be. The people learning AI now are pulling away, and catching up gets harder every week. As Stephanie put it, winners lose more than losers: you fumble, you iterate, you come out faster and more accurate.Protect the human layer. AI can manage tasks, but it won't lead a team, and the trust between two people is something a three-minute website can't fake. When AI does away with average, relationship, perspective, and leadership become your real differentiators. Left Main is more than just a CRM, it's an end-to-end Real Estate Investment operations solution to run your company as an actual business with sales systems embedded. Want to find out more, book a call today, leftmainrei.co or whosinchargepodcast.com/home

  6. Jul 16

    Building Without Breaking: What Success Really Takes

    Episode DescriptionAnybody can grow a company in a good market. Jesse Burrell built Batch from nothing to forty million dollars in top-line revenue in under three years, then watched the market cut it in half. What he did in between is the part most founders skip, and it's why he walked away with a clean exit instead of a fire sale.Jesse and his wife Erin sit down with Stephanie and Zachary Betters to talk about what it actually takes to survive a downturn, keep a marriage steady through the grind, and build a business worth buying. They get honest about the mistakes that nearly sank Batch, the discipline that saved it (including 20 months when the founders didn't draw a paycheck), and why the money was never the point. Key Takeaways Save hardest when it's going best. Batch went zero to forty million fast, then lost close to ten million in revenue almost overnight when texting regulations changed and rates climbed. As Jesse puts it: when you're doing well, you're not as good as you think you are, and when you're doing bad, you're not as bad as you think either.Build the war chest before the storm. Jesse and his partners saved and invested through the boom instead of inflating their lifestyles, so none of the three had to draw a paycheck for roughly 18 to 20 months while they steadied the company and protected payroll. Runway, not revenue, is what keeps decisions calm.Beat lifestyle creep. The Lambos and the watches on social media tell you nothing about someone's monthly nut. Stack up enough soldiers before you go to war and you make sound decisions instead of decisions out of fear.The story is the asset. When PropStream came to buy, Jesse didn't hide the revenue dip. He walked them through exactly why it happened and mapped the path back. Gut the company for short-term profit and there's nothing left worth buying.Chase purpose, not the payout. Exiting taught Jesse the fulfillment doesn't come from the money, it comes from the impact you make on people. Growth is one thing. Knowing why you're growing is another. Left Main is more than just a CRM, it's an end-to-end Real Estate Investment operations solution to run your company as an actual business with sales systems embedded. Want to find out more, book a call today, leftmainrei.co or whosinchargepodcast.com/home

  7. Jul 9

    How to Survive Success Together

    Episode DescriptionWhat do a captain’s chair during the 2020 lockdown, a go-kart track with no mercy, a coffee maker with exactly one trained button-pusher, and a self-described “Shrek the Human Onion” have in common? They’re all part of this week’s conversation with Jason Medley and Jennifer Lombardi. Jason leads Collective Genius, the mastermind community for real estate investors, and he and Jennifer sit down with Stephanie and Zachary Betters to talk about what it actually takes to lead leaders, build a business that survives a decade and a pandemic, and keep a marriage intact while doing it. They get honest about naming hard seasons out loud, the unglamorous systems behind long-term success, and the daily discipline of leading yourself before you lead anyone else. Key Takeaways Name the season out loud. Before going heads-down for ninety days during COVID, Jason told Jennifer he needed her to cut him some slack. Communication and grace beat quietly stuffing it until the grenade goes off. Drop the work-life-balance myth. While you’re building, balance isn’t coming. Instead, agree on each other’s non-negotiables, the two or three weekly things that keep each partner’s bucket full. Values and vision, then the boring systems. The investors who last run on clear core values, a flag in the ground, operating cadences and scorecards, financial discipline, and the right hires. Making money is one thing; keeping it is another. If you can’t lead you, you can’t lead anybody. Win the morning first so you stay proactive instead of reactive to the world: get up early, pray, move your body, eat clean, then handle the obligations you didn’t choose. Take honest inventory. Look at the fruit. Are the people around you growing and wanting to be near you? Sometimes the harder discipline is striving toward not striving, being okay at ninety-five percent for a season.Left Main is more than just a CRM, it's an end-to-end Real Estate Investment operations solution to run your company as an actual business with sales systems embedded. Want to find out more, book a call today, leftmainrei.co or whosinchargepodcast.com/home

  8. Jul 2

    The Hidden Secret to Sustainable Success

    Episode DescriptionWhat do a hospital hand-sanitizer dispenser, a calendar that runs like a game of Tetris, a canceled Florida vacation, and a recurring meeting block called “daddy doing deals” have in common? They’re all part of this week’s conversation on CEO rhythms. There’s no guest this time — just Stephanie and Zach across the table, the planner and the improviser, working through how successful leaders actually build their days. Stephanie is the prepper who maps out the week every Sunday and has decided, on purpose, that Monday is her favorite day. Zach is the self-described all-over-the-map one who, after eight years of building a company together, finally started asking for a routine he could follow. Together they run two demanding businesses, raise three kids who save their best stories for 11:30 at night, and still guard the small rituals — the morning coffee, the silent few minutes before the day detonates — that keep them steady.The throughline of the entire conversation is rhythm — the daily, weekly, and quarterly cadences that let you perform consistently instead of riding the emotional ups and downs of the work. Stephanie draws on her years in medicine to explain how you reset between high-stakes moments and walk into the next room whole, and why telling yourself the right story before the week starts genuinely changes how it goes. Zach climbs onto his favorite soapbox — that peak performance is impossible without peak rest — and the two of them revisit the early flip that made them cancel a family trip to Florida, a decision they still regret a decade later. The takeaway they keep returning to: you can grind for a season, but a season is not a strategy. If you want to still be in the game in twenty years, you have to build a rhythm you can actually sustain. Key Takeaways Peak performance is a state you build, not a mood you catch. Stephanie’s years in medicine taught her to reset between emotionally brutal moments and walk into the next room whole. That same skill — regulating your state on demand — is what separates consistent leaders from reactive ones. It isn’t a personality trait. It’s a ritual you run on purpose.Tell yourself the right story. Monday is Stephanie’s favorite day for exactly one reason: she has told herself it is, every week, for years. What you say to yourself before you go to bed measurably shapes the day you wake up to. The narrative comes before the routine — get it wrong and no system will save you.Put yourself on the calendar first — and then keep it. Zach treats a well-run calendar like Tetris: deliberate blocks that interlock, not random interruptions falling through the day. The hard part isn’t scheduling the meetings; it’s protecting the non-negotiables — deep work, CEO time, rest — and refusing to surrender them the moment someone needs you. Writing them down and keeping them is what makes you an executive.Teach people how you think, not just what to do. Hand someone a quick answer and you’ve given them a piece of cheese; they’ll come back for cheese every time. Teach them how you arrived at the answer and they can solve the next problem without you. Protecting your rhythm is as much about training your team’s habits as it is about managing your own.Peak rest is part of peak performance. Zach doesn’t want mediocre effort seven days a week — he wants people who show up ready to sprint, which is impossible on the twentieth straight day of work. The grind has its season, but a season is not a strategy. You can do anything for a couple of years; building something that lasts twenty means designing rest into the plan, not apologizing for it.Left Main is more than just a CRM, it's an end-to-end Real Estate Investment operations solution to run your company as an actual business with sales systems embedded. Want to find out more, book a call today, leftmainrei.co or whosinchargepodcast.com/home

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Trailer

5
out of 5
18 Ratings

About

Ever wonder who’s behind the desk at the very top? What got them there? Who are they at home with their families? Hosted by Stephanie and Zach Betters—the duo behind multiple companies—this show is for real estate investors and business owners who are tired of the hustle and are ready to scale their companies and themselves as leaders. Stephanie and Zach combine their high-stakes medical backgrounds with growth-driven business strategy to break down the systems, leadership, and behind-the-scenes conversations at home that determine whether —the companies and the marriage behind them — thrives or falls apart. We talk about what it takes to run a successful company and learn about who the leaders are that are in charge of them. We talk about how to execute from idea to scale and all the lessons learned from building teams,systems, wealth, and partnerships. Stop chasing deals and start being a leader. It’s time to find out Who’s In Charge. Presented by Left Main REI Learn more at www.leftmainrei.co

Information

  • Creator
    Left Main REI
  • Years Active
    2026
  • Episodes
    27
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Who’s In Charge. All rights reserved.
  • Show Website
    Who’s In Charge?

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