How Gilberto Herrera built Profitable Pro through relationships
Gilberto Herrera, founder of Profitable Pro, helps service-based business owners grow revenue and profits through coaching, an Accelerator and a free monthly workshop. The conversation looks at how relationships brought in early customers, why pricing for speed to value mattered, and how automation can leave more room for human connection.
Be clear about who you serve and the result you deliver, then price for how quickly you can solve the problem. Tools can help with routine work, but real conversations remain central to building customer relationships.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
I was born in Panama City and came to the U.S. as a kid. Growing up wasn’t easy. I got caught up in gangs as a teenager and became a father young. Sales is what turned my life around. I learned it through direct selling, banking and insurance, then built my career at Advanced Media, the largest privately held marketing agency in the nation at the time. After I left, people kept coming to me for help growing their businesses. Then Ricco McAdory asked me to coach him, and that was the start of Profitable Pro. What makes us different is that we sell a transformation, not a service. Our clients are mostly service based businesses, and our job is to help them earn more and work less as fast as possible. It has grown into a movement with an Accelerator, a community and live events.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
My first customers came from relationships. People had seen what I could do in sales and asked for help, starting with Ricco. Today most of our new business comes from Profitable Pro Live, a free monthly workshop I host at the Birmingham Public Library that draws about 46 business owners each month. That, along with my podcast, The Gilberto Herrera Show, and my personal brand, fills our Accelerator with about five new clients a month.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
The decision was to build under my own name instead of hiding behind the company. People connect with people, and every great company has a leader carrying the mission and vision. The mistake was pricing based on what I thought my work was worth instead of how fast I could deliver results. It’s like a dentist with a patient in pain. They’ll pay a premium for a root canal to stop the pain fast. Once I priced on speed to value, my margins got healthier and my clients got better results.
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
AI changed everything for small businesses. Owners expect faster results, and they can do things in an afternoon that used to take a team. We use AI in so many ways, and one of the biggest is letting it do everything we hate doing. It cleans up our inboxes, keeps us on top of our email accounts, and even files the mileage log and sorts receipts and expenses properly, so when tax time comes you’re not behind the eight ball. We use it to edit videos and to make sure we never miss a lead or a client request. That frees us up for what AI can’t replace, which is real human connection. The more automated things get, the more people crave it, so we double down on live events, real conversations and turning contacts into contracts.
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
First, get crystal clear on who you serve and the transformation you deliver, then price it on the value of solving their problem fast. And get in rooms with people, because relationships still close deals. Ignore the shiny objects. You don’t need every new tool, a perfect logo or a big following to start. You need a clear offer and real conversations with people who need it.
Thank you to Gilberto Herrera and the team at Profitable Pro for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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