Business owner burnout isn't caused by lack of effort. It's caused by lack of perspective.

Right now, athletes in Milan are competing at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Every single one has a team of data-driven coaches who see what the athlete can't see. Meanwhile, you're running a six-figure business completely alone, surrounded by people who love you but can't coach you.

In this episode, we break down:

- The 5 signs you have cheerleaders instead of coaches

- Why family advice is terrible for business growth (even though they mean well)

- The "Symptom vs Reality" diagnostic - what you THINK you need vs what's actually broken

- Real examples from Michigan service businesses leaving $120K+ on the table annually

- How to tell if you need a coach or if you can fix this yourself

If you're working 60+ hours, can't take vacation, and feel like the only person who can do anything valuable in your business - this episode is your wake-up call.

Mentioned in this episode:

- The 2026 Winter Olympics (Milan/Cortina)

- The difference between guides and consultants

- Ryan's 25+ years in ICU nursing and diagnostic thinking

- Case studies: Delta Township contractor, East Lansing service provider, Lansing restoration business

Resources:

- Free Book Interview: mediaaceadvisors.com/contact

- Full blog post with diagnostic table: [BLOG URL]

- Download: Symptom vs Reality Self-Assessment

The Profit Advisor Podcast helps service business owners earning $250K-$5M find hidden profit without spending more on marketing.

Hosted by Ryan Herrst, Certified Profit Advisor | Grand Ledge, Michigan

Ask most business owners what their goal is, and they'll tell you a revenue number. Ask them how excited they are about that goal on a 1-10 scale, and the room goes quiet. They say "Seven, maybe?" or "It's a solid six." Never ten.

I've conducted over 30 book interviews with service business owners across Michigan—from landscaping to professional services, trades to healthcare. The same pattern shows up everywhere: business owners working incredibly hard to hit goals that don't actually excite them.

I call this the 5/10 goal trap. You set a target that sounds responsible, realistic, and safe. But a goal you're only halfway committed to gets halfway effort. You end up working just as hard, feeling twice as frustrated, because deep down you know you're settling.

In this episode, I break down:

- Why "realistic" goals are actually killing your drive

- The difference between business goals (tactics) and business vision (emotional destination)

- The drilling process I use to help business owners find their real 10/10 goal

- Real examples from my research (completely anonymized) of business owners who discovered what they were actually building

- Why hitting your revenue target can feel empty if you don't know the "why" behind it

Here's what I've learned: the business owners who transform their lives don't just set better goals. They find the vision behind the goal. They discover what they're really building and why it matters.

One business owner I talked to hit his $750,000 revenue target after working 70-hour weeks. When I asked how he felt, he said, "It feels like I checked a box. But nothing changed. I'm still exhausted. I'm still missing my kids' stuff. The number didn't matter."

That's what happens when you chase goals without vision. You hit the target and feel empty instead of energized.

This isn't about motivation. This is about knowing where you're actually going so you can build a business that serves your life instead of consuming it.

If you've ever hit a revenue goal and felt empty, or if you're working toward a target that feels more like an obligation than a destination, this episode will help you find your 10/10.

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I'm Ryan Herrst, Certified Profit Advisor and author of "Profit Foundation." I work with service business owners across Michigan to identify hidden profit opportunities and build businesses that serve life instead of consuming it.

Want help finding your 10/10 goal? I'm currently interviewing business owners for the second edition of my book. These aren't sales calls—just strategic conversations where you help me understand your industry, and I help you see what you might not see from inside your business. Schedule your complimentary book interview at mediaaceadvisors.com

📧 ryan@mediaaceadvisors.com

📱 517-955-2154

🌐 mediaaceadvisors.com

#BusinessGoals #Entrepreneurship #SmallBusiness #BusinessVision #ProfitFirst #MichiganBusiness #ServiceBusiness #BusinessCoaching

Last Sunday, brands spent $7 million for 30 seconds of Super Bowl airtime. Meanwhile, service businesses across America are hemorrhaging six figures in profit they can't see. They're making the same mistake: optimizing for reach instead of revenue, frequency instead of profit margins.

The conversation starts with the false belief killing profit margins in 2026. Every business owner says "We need more leads. More customers. More reach." So when told they can find $100,000-plus in hidden profit without spending another dime on marketing, they can't comprehend it. They've been conditioned to believe growth requires advertising spend.But here's the medical metaphor that reframes everything. That's like telling an ICU nurse that a bleeding patient doesn't need stabilization, just more visitors. When you're hemorrhaging profit, you don't need reach. You need precision intervention.

The discussion walks through the exact math. If you're converting 30% of leads and getting 100 monthly, you close 30 deals. Traditional marketing says double your leads to 200 and close 60 deals. Except doubling leads means doubling or tripling marketing spend, especially with 2026's AI-driven ad costs skyrocketing (the same ad costing $2 per click last year now costs $3.50).

Strategic planning offers a different path. Keep the same 100 leads and fix your conversion rate from 30% to 50%. Now you're closing 50 deals from the same 100 leads. Same budget. 67% more revenue. Pure profit margin improvement.

You'll hear the case study of Dr. Jennifer Walsh, a chiropractor working 70 hours weekly, generating $850K in revenue but taking home only $119K. Her conversion was 35%, retention 68%, and she was underpriced by 15%. The conversation breaks down her systematic changes: education scripts (conversion improved to 58%), retention protocols (reached 82%), strategic pricing (margins up 4.2 points). Result: $1.24M revenue, $420K take-home, 45 hours weekly instead of 70.

The discussion tackles the 80/20 rule most coaches won't address honestly. Twenty percent of clients consume 80% of time while generating under 20% of profit. These profit vampires drain resources. Dr. Jennifer fired 7 patients (bottom 15% by profitability), lost $23K revenue, gained 12 hours weekly, used that time for better systems. Net result: plus $390K annual profit.

The conversation explains the 4-step Conversion Formula: Captivate (address urgent problems with precision), Fascinate (show unique solutions with specific numbers), Educate (explain your protocol so they understand differentiation), Close (make next steps irresistible by removing risk). Super Bowl ads nail step one and fail the others. That's marketing strategy, not strategic planning.

You'll also hear about economic uncertainty separating businesses into two categories. The hemorrhaging ones keep chasing expensive leads while profit bleeds out. The strategic ones optimize what they have and capture market share they'll never give back.

If you're working 60-plus hours weekly, if profit margins are below 15% despite revenue growth, if you've been buying more leads hoping something changes, this conversation shows exactly where you're hemorrhaging profit and how to stop it.

Because if nothing changes, nothing changes. The businesses winning in 2026 won't have bigger advertising budgets. They'll have better conversion systems, ICU-level triage skills, and OR-level precision.

This is for service business owners ($250K-$5M revenue) who feel stuck. You're working harder but margins aren't improving. You keep hearing "get more leads" but your gut says something else is broken. Listen to why strategic planning beats marketing strategy and where six figures in hidden profit sits in your business right now.

mediaaceadvisors.com

517-955-2154

You inherited more than a business. You inherited every decision your parents made for 25 years, including the ones that stopped making sense a decade ago. The untouchable employee. The pricing sheet from 2009. The filing system that belongs in a time capsule. Sound familiar?

In this episode, Certified Profit Advisor Ryan Herrst breaks down why family business succession planning has nothing to do with legal paperwork and everything to do with the inherited profit structure nobody gave you permission to change.

What you'll walk away with:

The Loyalty vs. Productivity Matrix for evaluating legacy employees without guilt. A simple formula to calculate exactly what outdated systems are costing you each year. Three word-for-word scripts for having the hard conversation with the founder, the Old Guard, or the 20-year employee who watched you grow up. The "8th Lever" concept that most family business advisors completely miss.

Your parents built this business to provide freedom for the family. If it's become a cage, you're not honoring the legacy. You're fulfilling their biggest fear. This episode gives you the diagnostic framework and the actual words to start changing that.

Ryan Herrst is the author of "Profit Foundation" and founder of Media Ace Advisors. He helps service business owners find hidden profit without spending more on marketing. His healthcare background trained him to diagnose what others miss, and he brings that same systematic approach to business.

Read the full companion blog at mediaaceadvisors.com

You're working 70-hour weeks. Revenue is up. Profit is flat. Sound familiar?

Here's what nobody tells you: The reason you haven't documented your systems isn't because you don't know how. It's because you don't see what it's costing you.

In this episode, I walk you through the exact math showing why missing systems are bleeding $50,000 to $150,000 from your business annually. Not "potential revenue if you got better at marketing." Actual profit leaking out because you're trapped being the answer person instead of the CEO.

You'll discover:

• The "$200,000 Question" that kills business deals (and what it reveals about YOUR business health)
• The Hidden Profit Leak Formula that calculates your exact cost of chaos
• The 5 Non-Negotiable Profit Guards that reclaim 10-20 hours weekly without hiring anyone
• Why most SOPs fail (and the 3 Standard Saboteurs keeping yours broken)
• The 30-Day Implementation Roadmap to go from firefighting to freedom

The transformation isn't "I documented some processes." The transformation is "I'm no longer the business. I'm the CEO who owns an asset that generates profit predictably."

If you're working too hard for too little profit, this episode shows you exactly where your money is leaking and which systems to build first.

Ready to find your hidden $100K? Book your free Pathway to Profit diagnostic at mediaaceadvisors.com/pathway-to-profit

Ryan Herrst is a Certified Profit Advisor helping service businesses earning $250K-$5M discover six-figure profit opportunities without spending more on marketing. Based in Grand Ledge, Michigan.

Most business owners hire coaches who've already "arrived." Seven-figure success stories. The expert who summited the mountain 100 times. The guru with all the answers.

But here's what Ryan Herrst learned watching his father die from smoking: the guide's value isn't that they've personally overcome your exact struggle. It's that they can see what you can't see in yourself.

Ryan's father had severe vascular disease, CHF, emphysema, and diabetes—all connected to two packs a day and nothing but coffee and Mountain Dew. Ryan could SEE the multi-system failure his father couldn't acknowledge. He could SEE that stopping smoking wouldn't immediately reverse decades of damage, but it was the one thing his father could control. He could offer accountability, ask "did you smoke today?" and "can you commit to quitting tomorrow?"

But he couldn't save his father. Because caring isn't carrying.

In this episode, Ryan unpacks why the best guides are systematic diagnosticians, not success story gurus. Why "all because you CAN doesn't mean you SHOULD" applies to choosing who you climb the mountain with. And why the coach who's still in the middle of their own difficult transformation might be exactly who you need—because they're asking the hard questions of themselves that they'll ask of you.

If you're an overwhelmed business owner stuck between $250K and $5M, working 60-70 hours a week for razor-thin margins, and wondering if there's a guide who won't just sell you another marketing tactic—this one's for you.

Key Topics:

• The guide paradox: why personal achievement doesn't equal coaching ability
• Care but don't carry: Andrea's wisdom on healthy coaching boundaries
• Why business problems are life problems in disguise
• The difference between reactive and proactive business owners
• How to find one thing to fix when everything's on fire

Are you truly "customer-focused," or are you just people-pleasing your way into a profit leak?

In this episode, we pull back the curtain on a pattern observed across hundreds of service-based businesses: the "automatic yes" that leads to scope creep, underpricing, and 70-hour work weeks. If you find yourself texting clients at 9 PM or giving discounts before they even ask, you aren't just being "nice"—you’re operating in a "Reward Loop" that is keeping your business stuck.

What we cover in this episode:

• The $150K Leak: The literal math behind how people-pleasing behaviors break your unit economics and stall your growth.

• The 5 Types of Business People Pleasers: From the "Discount Dealer" to the "Bad Client Keeper," identify which pattern is draining your energy.

• The Profitable Boundaries Framework™: A three-part system to help you shift from an overwhelmed technician to a strategic business operator.

• The 24-Hour Rule: One simple tactical shift that eliminates 80% of poor strategic decisions.

Your "no" actually makes your "yes" more valuable. It’s time to stop "collecting liabilities" and start building a business that serves your life instead of consuming it.

Ready to find your hidden profit? If you’re a service business owner ready to stop leaving six figures on the table, I’m currently conducting strategy interviews for the second edition of my book. Schedule your 45-minute Pathway to Profit Diagnostic to analyze your numbers and reclaim your time: https://mediaaceadvisors.com/contact/

If you wake up on the first of the month staring at a zero on your calendar, no matter how good last month was, you're trapped in hunter mode. And you're not alone. Searches for "how to create loyal customers" have spiked 900% because business owners everywhere are realizing the old transactional model is broken.

In this episode, we break down why most service businesses accidentally build a hamster wheel instead of a business, and how the most successful ones are making a fundamental identity shift from "hunter" to "harvester."

You'll discover:

- The three non-negotiable requirements every loyalty-based business has mastered (and why most businesses have never built them in the first place)

- The Habituation System: how getting a customer to buy three times turns them into a habit and why that 20% of Loyalists drives 80% of your profit

- Why caring for customers means challenging them, not accommodating them (with real examples that flip conventional wisdom)

- The 3 R's Framework: Retention, Related Sales, and Referrals, and why a 2% increase in retention has the same financial impact as cutting costs by 10%

- The choice every business owner faces: stay a hunter working harder every year with rising acquisition costs, or become a harvester building predictable revenue through relationships

This isn't about tactics. It's about transformation. If you're tired of the zero-revenue reset and ready to build a business where your past customers become your future revenue, this conversation will show you exactly how the shift happens.

Perfect for service business owners earning $250K-$3M annually who are done chasing and ready to cultivate.