Jeff Sustersic
Founder & CEO | Turnaround Executive | Entrepreneur | Author
Building businesses around performance, purpose, and people.
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Jeff Sustersic is a Northeast Ohio entrepreneur, turnaround executive, business operator, and author with more than 30 years of experience leading revenue, operations, and people through growth, transition, and underperformance.
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His career has ranged from rebuilding struggling operations and leading high-performing automotive organizations to founding Medina Adventure Company—an outdoor experience company built around a simple belief:
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The people we love deserve more than the time we have left over.
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Today, his work sits at the intersection of business, leadership, entrepreneurship, storytelling, and a larger question:
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What are we building—and what is it costing us to build it?
A Career Built Around Turning Things Around
Jeff's career has rarely been about maintaining what already works.
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It has been about finding where execution has broken down, understanding why, and building the structure, accountability, leadership, and operating discipline necessary to move forward.
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Over more than three decades, he has worked across sales, finance, training, general management, operational leadership, customer experience, technology adoption, business transformation, and entrepreneurship.
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His operating philosophy is straightforward:
Understand the business in front of you before deciding what the business needs.
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Markets are different. Teams are different. Customers are different. Cultures are different.
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The job of a leader is not to force every organization into the same playbook. It is to identify what is preventing people and systems from performing at their best—and then build an operating model that fits the reality of the business.
Founder of Medina Adventure Company | Entrepreneur | Author | Business Leader
Before Medina Adventure Company
Before founding Medina Adventure Company, Jeff spent more than three decades in business leaderships.
His career has included executive leadership, business turnarounds, operations, sales, customer experience, technology adoption, and developing high-performing teams.
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People, Culture & Community
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Jeff's approach to leadership has consistently centered on developing people through clear expectations, direct coaching, accountability, responsibility, and ownership of results.
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At Medina Adventure Company, that philosophy expanded into a flexible employment model for local students and student-athletes.
The goal is larger than filling seasonal positions.
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Young people can learn how to show up when someone is counting on them. How to talk to a customer. How to solve a problem. How to work as part of a team. How to take responsibility when something does not go according to plan. And eventually, how to lead.
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Those lessons tend to last much longer than the job.
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Entrepreneurial & Operating Experience
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Jeff's experience includes:
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Turnaround Strategy
Revenue Growth
Operational Leadership
P&L Management
Margin Improvement
Inventory Optimization
Leadership Development
Accountability Systems
Customer Experience
Digital Transformation
AI-Enabled Business Tools
CRM & Lead Management
Market Validation
Business Formation
Vendor & Partner Development
Pricing Strategy
Logistics & Field Operations
Brand Positioning
Customer Journey Design
Community Engagement
Author
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Business taught him how organizations work. Life taught him how people do.
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Jeff Sustersic is also the author of literary speculative fiction and fantasy mystery novels exploring truth, grief, memory, faith, mercy, consequence, certainty, and the stories human beings tell themselves.
His work includes The Threads of What If, The Witness Cycle, and its companion Mercy Cycle.
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Although the worlds and characters are fictional, many of the questions behind them are not:
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What happens when intelligent people sincerely believe different versions of the truth?
Can good intentions still cause enormous harm?
How much of what we believe about ourselves is actually a story we have learned to repeat?
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And what happens when the evidence forces us to question the story?
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His business career gave Jeff decades of experience watching people make decisions under pressure.
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His writing asks what happens underneath those decisions.
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One Thread Through All of It:
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Business leadership.
Entrepreneurship.
Family.
Faith.
Writing.
Adventure.
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On the surface, they may look like separate chapters.
For Jeff, they increasingly point toward the same conviction:
A life can become very full while the things that matter most quietly move to the edges.
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Success does not automatically create meaning.
Good intentions do not automatically produce good outcomes.
And “someday” is a dangerous place to put the people and things we claim matter most.
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That is why Medina Adventure Company says:
Fight the Drift.
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And:
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Live Stories Worth Telling.
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Not as advertising slogans.
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As reminders.
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Professional Profile
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Public Name: Jeff Sustersic
Professional Name: Jeffrey Sustersic
Location: Northeast Ohio
Current Role: Founder & CEO, Medina Adventure Company
Professional Background: Turnaround Executive, General Management, Revenue & Operational Leadership
Entrepreneurial Focus: Outdoor Hospitality, Recreation, Business Development & Customer Experience
Author: The Threads of What If, The Witness Cycle & The Mercy Cycle
Connect
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Interested in Medina Adventure Company, Jeff's books, business leadership, partnerships, or another reason to connect?
Contact Jeff → 330.661.9600
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