Ep 13: More Problems, More Revenue, More Happy

What does it actually look like when a company turns the corner — not from a highlight reel moment, but from the slow, unglamorous work of facing what you’ve been avoiding? In this solo episode, Stephanie and Zach pull back the curtain on what’s working right now in both Better Path Homes and Left Main REI. No guests, no polish — just a raw, honest conversation about burnout disguised as boredom, the three hires that changed everything, and why doing 10x turned out to be dramatically easier than trying to double.

Zach opens up about something most CEOs won’t admit: he knew exactly what it would take to grow his sales team — and he simply didn’t want to do it. Stephanie unpacks why that’s more common than anyone talks about, and how the right operations support doesn’t just fix a business problem, it gives a leader their identity back. Along the way they get into AI as a distraction versus a force multiplier, the gold rush mentality that’s pulling entrepreneurs off their core mission, and the Left Main product releases that have been two years in the making. If you’ve ever felt like you were drifting from your own company — or secretly hoping the pain wouldn’t get bad enough to force a change — this episode is going to hit different.

Key Takeaways

• Knowing what to do and wanting to do it are two different problems. Zach’s honest admission — that he knew how to grow the sales team and chose not to — is one of the most underdiagnosed growth killers in entrepreneurship. Pain is the motivator. Don’t wait until it’s catastrophic.
• Operations support isn’t a luxury, it’s the unlock. The shift at Better Path didn’t come from a new strategy. It came from three key hires — a COO, a Revenue Operations lead, and a Sales Operations manager — that gave Zach the room to operate in his zone and show up with energy again. One operations hire is never enough.
• AI is the new logo design rabbit hole. Spending weeks building an AI tool instead of closing deals is the 2026 version of spending weeks on a business card instead of making calls. AI should make you more effective at the one thing you’re already doing — not distract you into building a product you don’t need.
• Completion is the revenue. Zach’s 80% clean room analogy lands hard: in business, an uncompleted task doesn’t pay. Focus isn’t just about choosing the right thing — it’s about committing to it all the way through, not until the next shiny object appears.
• Measure backwards before you spiral forward. Stephanie’s moment of overwhelm — am I doing enough for the podcast, the companies, the kids, the marriage — is universal. The antidote isn’t doing more. It’s stopping to look at what actually got done and giving yourself credit for the distance traveled.

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