Stop Creating Jobs, Start Building Businesses

600 Deals a Year: What 10 Years of Focus Actually Builds

Episode Description Pat Martin didn't start with a grand vision or a business plan. He started with a house in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, a father-in-law who said "you should fix that up," and a wife who was the breadwinner while he figured things out. By 2010 he was in Knoxville, turning live-in flips every two years, stacking equity, and slowly building what would become Pro Source Home Buyers, a three-market operation now closing 70 to 80 transactions a month with 40 W-2 employees. Zach and Stephanie have watched Pat build from the same rooms, the same masterminds, the same early days of being afraid to hire a single person to answer the phone. What makes this conversation worth your time isn't the deal count, it's the decade of hard lessons underneath it. Pat walks through the 2022 unwind in real detail: stepping away from the CEO seat too early, owning inventory without the systems to support it, watching interest rates expose every underwriting assumption he had made. Then the rebuild, getting the right operator in place, installing leaders in every department who own their constraints, and developing a culture where the team itself enforces the standard. Ten years of focus on one thing, in one industry, in three markets, is what six hundred deals a year looks like. And Pat is just getting started. Key Takeaways * Imperfect action is how you get in the game. Pat's first deal probably didn't make money, and he knows it. But it got him on the board, gave him a reference point, and separated him from the hundred people at every local RIA who were still waiting for the perfect opportunity. The gap between people who receive education and people who build something is almost always action, not information. * Stepping out of the CEO seat too early exposes every system you don't have. In 2022, Pat handed off operations, interest rates spiked, and the inventory he had accumulated revealed that the underwriting discipline and operational infrastructure weren't there. The lesson wasn't that stepping back is wrong. It's that you can't delegate your way out of systems that don't exist yet. * Cash is oxygen, equity doesn't pay the bills. When rates moved from three to eight percent, buyers dried up for the product Pat had been acquiring at prices that only worked in the old environment. The number one metric became how much cash was available to draw on flips. Getting assets off the balance sheet, cutting expenses, and not taking down new inventory through early 2023 was what stabilized the company. * One great hire raises the floor for everyone. When a new inside sales rep came in on referral and immediately became the top appointment setter in the company, it didn't just fill a seat. It challenged every other rep to compete. The underperforming team member they had been holding onto would have kept the ceiling low. The right hire made the whole room better. * Focus is a competitive advantage, not a limitation. Pat spent years watching peers spin up second, third, and fourth companies and wondering if he was missing something. The reframe: Open Door buys 20,000 houses a year. New Western does 14,000 to 15,000. The market isn't too small. The ceiling was always in his own thinking, not in the industry. Ten-plus years of staying in one lane, solving one set of problems, and building one team is what 600 deals a year looks like. 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

25 Years In: What Surviving Every Market Looks Like

Episode Description What does it really take to build a real estate empire alongside the person you married your freshman year of college? Marck and Sara Beth De Lautour have been doing exactly that for 25 years, starting with a $5,000 credit card charge for a real estate course, a cat-filled duplex they eventually moved into, and a nursing salary holding the whole thing together. Marck, originally from New Zealand, and Sara, a former ICU and flight nurse, join Stephanie and Zach for a genuinely funny, raw, and insightful double date conversation about the mechanics of building a business when one partner is a visionary and the other is a guardian doing her best to keep everyone grounded. From surviving the 2008 market crash and a hostile business takeover, to a surprise phone call about a Florida home purchase made while on the way to the airport, Marck and Sara lay out what 25 years of pivoting actually looks like in practice. Sara's evolution from skeptic to trusted co-pilot mirrors a journey many couples in real estate will recognize, and her hard-won insight that "the proof is in the pudding" captures something deeper: trust in a business partner who is also your spouse is built through evidence, not promises. This episode is full of both. Key Takeaways * Sell the vision before the fear. Marck's strategy for getting Sara on board with their very first property was showing her the pristine neighbor's unit before walking her into the cat-filled duplex. It sounds simple, but it's a real lesson in change management: when introducing risk to a reluctant partner, lead with the destination, not the current state. * The guardian-visionary dynamic is a feature, not a bug. Sara describes herself as a protector, a devil's advocate, and a stabilizer. Marck credits her "checking mechanism" as the thing that kept him from being too aggressive. Knowing and respecting your partner's predictive index profile, whether at home or in a leadership team, produces better decisions than either profile would alone. * You only lose if you quit. Marck's core philosophy after a hostile business takeover in 2008 wiped out millions in equity at age 30 was simply to rebuild. He frames every market disruption, from auction.com democratizing courthouse step data in 2017 to interest rate spikes in 2022, as a pivot problem, not a failure problem. Resilience here is less a mindset and more a practice of constant adaptation. * Teach financial literacy early and contextually. The De Lautours used Dave Ramsey envelope systems when their kids were young, took them to deposit coins at the bank, and talked openly about the difference between trading time for money and building a business that pays you while you sleep. Their 8-year-old son noticed on his own that his dad's income worked differently than his mom's nursing shifts. That level of financial intuition doesn't happen by accident. * The supply chain advantage protects you. Marck attributes much of their durability through multiple market cycles to the fact that they rehab and build rather than wholesale or assign deals. When you control more of the process, from acquisition to renovation to disposition, you add real value to a community and you have more levers to pull when conditions shift. Specialization on just one end of the transaction leaves you exposed. 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

Undefeated Teams Are the Ones Coaches Worry About

Episode Description What do Ironman triathlons, venture capital, pro track and field coaching, and falling asleep on the stairs have in common? They're all part of one of the most energizing double date conversations the Who's In Charge? podcast has ever had. This week, Stephanie and Zach sit down with KathrynKathryn O'Day, partner at Atlanta Ventures and former employee number nine at Pardot, and her husband Kyle O'Day, a professional track and field coach who has spent his career getting extraordinary performance out of human beings. Kathryn helped build Pardot through two major acquisitions — first to ExactTarget, then to Salesforce — and now spends her days vetting founders and co-building companies from scratch. Kyle spends his days doing what he's always done: getting more out of people than they thought they had. Together, they've figured out how to build two demanding careers, raise a family, and still make it to bed by eight o'clock. The throughline of this entire conversation is endurance — not the triathlon kind, though that's in here too. It's the kind that keeps you in the game for a decade when everyone else burns out and flames out at year two. Kathryn shares what she looks for in founders — including why she actually wants to invest in people whose first company didn't work out — and why core values are the only real scaling mechanism that matters. Kyle drops the most quietly devastating coaching insight of the episode: inspiration is for amateurs, professionals just show up. And Stephanie shares the moment she literally fell asleep on the stairs mid-walk and slid down on her butt — which turned out to be the wake-up call that taught her rest is not the enemy of progress. It is progress. Key Takeaways * Inspiration is for amateurs. Kyle's coaching philosophy applied directly to business: you don't wait to feel motivated. You show up, you work, you rest, you repeat. A decade later you're there. It sounds boring. It's the only thing that actually works. * The undefeated team is the one coaches worry about. Kathryn's insight from the venture world reframes failure entirely — the founders she most wants to back are the ones whose first company didn't work out, because they know what to do when they're behind. If you've never lost, you don't know how to respond when it counts. * 10 passionate, paying, unaffiliated customers. Kathryn's seed stage investment thesis is one of the most practical frameworks in the episode. Passionate means you're solving a real must-have problem. Paying means they value it enough to put real dollars behind it. Unaffiliated means you can transfer belief to a stranger — not just your network. * Core values are the only real scaling mechanism. Not technology. Not strategy. Core values are the operating system of your company — the framework that tells every team member how to make decisions in situations nobody has ever encountered before. If they're not authentic and self-reinforcing, they're just a poster on the wall. * Rest is part of progress. Stephanie's staircase moment is the most visceral illustration of what happens when you treat rest as an obstacle to progress instead of a component of it. You don't get there faster by not stopping. You burn out and stop completely. Rest is not the opposite of work. It is the work. 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

The Rabid Dog Theory of Leadership

Episode Description What if the thing you've been avoiding — conflict — is actually the thing standing between you and the business you're trying to build? In this raw and refreshingly personal solo episode, Stephanie and Zach get into it on the topic of conflict: where it comes from, why most leaders handle it wrong, and what it actually looks like to turn tension into a team superpower. Stephanie grew up in a house where conflict was loud, passionate, and always landed in resolution. Zach grew up watching conflict end relationships for years at a time. Neither of those histories is wrong — but understanding where you land on that spectrum might be the most important leadership move you make this year. This is one of the most practically useful episodes the show has produced. Zach breaks down the "relationship bank" concept and why the busier you get, the more withdrawals you're making without realizing it. Stephanie makes the case that the best leaders lead with strengths, not corrections — and that most people have no idea what they're actually good at until someone tells them. They also get into real examples from this week: a difficult one-on-one after a missed quarterly goal, a team member who couldn't speak up in a leadership meeting, and what Chris Voss taught them about the difference between "you're right" and "that's right." If you've ever swept something under the rug because today felt too fragile for the truth, this one's for you. Key Takeaways * Conflict avoidance is a slow business killer. Avoiding conflict makes today smoother and tomorrow harder. If you can't address tension in your team, you will not build a scaling business — full stop. The rug only hides so much before the lumps become trip hazards. * Know your natural tendency first. Are you conflict avoidant or conflict aggressive? The answer changes everything about how you should approach hard conversations. Zach is avoidant. Stephanie is pro-conflict. Neither is wrong — but both require self-awareness to lead well. * Lead with strengths, not corrections. The biggest leadership misnomer is that your job is to coach up the bad stuff. The highest-leverage move is showing people where they're exceptional — because most people genuinely don't know. Trust gets built in the positive deposits, not the critical withdrawals. * "You're right" is not the same as "that's right." Chris Voss's distinction is one of the sharpest tools in this episode: when someone says "you're right," they're ending the conversation. When they say "that's right," they believe it. If you're hearing "you're right" a lot, you're running consensus theater — not building alignment. * Attack the problem, never the person. The only conflict worth having is the kind aimed at a shared problem. The moment it becomes personal — a deficit, an attack, a humiliation in front of the group — you've lost the thread of resolution and started tearing down trust instead of building 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

Stop Creating Jobs, Start Building Businesses

What does it look like when someone goes from fixing and flipping houses in post-crash Las Vegas to co-founding a $165 million venture-backed real estate technology company — twice? This week, Stephanie and Zach sit down with Josh Stech, co-founder of Sundae, for one of the most framework-rich, intellectually honest conversations the podcast has ever produced. Josh brings the kind of clarity that only comes from building at scale: a 4S decision-making framework that diagnoses why most teams talk past each other, a gut-level philosophy on co-founding versus solo founding, and a warning about AI-driven marketing shifts that every real estate operator needs to hear right now. But underneath all the frameworks is something more personal — a guy who knows himself well enough to admit he needs a co-founder the same way he needs a gym buddy, who invests in the entrepreneurs that spin out of his companies rather than trying to stop them, and who believes the most dangerous thing you can tell yourself is that you don't need anyone else. Josh and Stephanie also go deep on what it means to compete from a place of passion versus a place of strategy, why the customer is the only filter that matters for innovation, and how to lead a team through the AI wave without losing their agency in the process. This one is packed. Key Takeaways * Most people don't build businesses — they create jobs for themselves. Josh's distinction is one of the sharpest in the episode: if your decision-making lens is "can I quickly turn this into active income for me," you're not thinking like a business builder. You're thinking like a self-employed person. The infrastructure, human capital, and discipline required to build at scale is a completely different game. * The 4S Framework: Sense, Seek, Solve, Start. When a team feels like it's talking past itself, it's usually because people are on different S's. Some want to jump straight to solving before anyone has asked why the problem exists. Some get stuck in sensing and never move. Naming which S you're on is one of the fastest ways to get a room aligned. * You can't sustainably beat someone who bleeds for the mission. Josh's take on passion versus strategy is unambiguous: even if you're smarter, better capitalized, and more operationally sophisticated, you cannot maintain a sustainable advantage over someone who actually cares about the problem. Passion is the only moat that compounds. * Solo founders may just be avoiding the hard work of collaboration. This is the most provocative idea in the episode — that some people convince themselves they don't need a co-founder not because they're built for it, but because recruiting collaborators and capital is hard, and it's easier to tell yourself you work better alone. * If you don't feel ahead on AI marketing, you're further behind than you think. Of the six Fs of real estate investing — find it, figure it, fund it, fix it, fill it, flip it — Josh believes the "find it" piece is about to be completely transformed by the shift from search to discovery. Operators who aren't actively ahead of this curve are already falling behind. 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