I help organizations identify useful AI opportunities, build the workflows, tools, content systems, and implementation plans around them, and help people adopt those systems with confidence.
What's missing is a path from an idea to something the team actually uses. New tools arrive faster than anyone writes down how to use them. A good instinct doesn't become a workflow someone can run without you standing over their shoulder. Pilots stall in the gap between "this looks promising" and "this is how we work now."
That gap is where I work. I come in with the business problem first, find where AI genuinely helps, build the system, document it, and stay until people are using it.
A practical seven-step method for turning business ideas into implemented, adopted, and measurable outcomes. This isn't a framework for talking about AI. It's the process I run on every engagement, from the first conversation to the numbers that prove something changed. Each step below shows how it played out on a real CRM rebuild.
Start with the business, not the technology: goals, users, current processes, constraints, risks.
On the CRM rebuild, that meant reviewing the sales process before touching anything, to see how accounts, renewals, and follow-up actually worked day to day.
Find the opportunities that are actually useful: repetitive work, information gaps, adoption barriers, quick wins. Not every process needs AI.
The audit surfaced specific, fixable problems, like untouched accounts and untracked renewals, instead of a vague sense that the CRM needed work.
Weigh business value against effort, risk, readiness, and how the result will get measured.
A seven-category health score doubled as the prioritization tool, showing which parts of the system needed fixing first.
Lay out the workflow before building anything: roles, prompts, tools, knowledge sources, approval points, documentation.
The renewal-task structure and the email-to-CRM automation were both designed on paper before either one went live.
Build the working system. Configure the tools, create templates and instructions, test the process, and protect what's already running.
Work started read-only, then moved to activating 101 renewal tasks across 16-plus accounts and standing up the weekly automation, without breaking what the sales team already depended on.
Train the people who'll use it. Document the system, collect feedback, and refine adoption from there.
A handover packet documented the rebuilt system, and I walked roughly 50 sales executives through it live at a Washtenaw Business Association event.
Track usage, time saved, quality, follow-up, visibility, and business outcomes. Launching the system isn't the finish line.
Here it showed up in the score itself, moving from 47/100 ("Critical, Rebuild Needed") to 86/100 ("Healthy, Growth-Ready").
How this stays safe. Every engagement starts read-only, so nothing changes before I understand what I'm looking at. Every stage has a human approval point: nothing gets automated or adopted without the people who'll use it signing off. And I say plainly what a system can and can't do yet, instead of overselling it to call it done.
Every one of these is live right now. Different platforms, different audiences, different revenue models. Ecommerce, CRM, booking, ticketing, lead capture, email, and fulfillment, wired together and running without me standing over them. Five of them launched inside a single 60-day span.
A productized diagnostic practice for small businesses: a free 60-second Digital Score, a $150 Digital Diagnosis covering website health, technical SEO, AI search citations, local listings and keyword rankings, then flat-rate repair work approved before anything is touched.
theaiguyz.comThe CRM health-scoring framework from a real client rebuild, turned into a public offer. A read-only scan of 100% of CRM records produces a graded report card across ten problem areas, from lead routing time to duplicate contacts to compliance sync.
fixmycrmfast.comMy marketing practice, rebuilt around a question most small businesses can't answer: is your business visible to AI search? Same diagnostic spine as the AI Guyz work, packaged for clients who came in through branding and local marketing.
markstilesmarketing.comEleven fillable PDF guides and two bundles sold through an automated storefront: medical history, medications, benefits, power of attorney, digital assets, end-of-life decisions. Purchase, delivery, and support all run without manual handling.
caregivingguides.comThe free-content and audience side of the same ecosystem, built for adult children caring for aging parents. A free Emergency Planning Kit captures the email address; the editorial library answers the questions families ask most and routes readers to the paid guides.
theboomerguide.comA class reunion site that grew into a year-round community platform: Eventbrite ticketing, a moderated memorial, a classmate services directory, a jobs board, an item exchange, and a service-project nomination and voting process. Built as a template other classes could run.
1986sextonbigreds.comA WordPress site built to sell gutter work in mid-Michigan. Service-area pages across a dozen communities, a qualifying estimate-request form, click-to-call, an embedded project gallery, and Google Business Profile integration feeding the local search side.
sunriseseamless.comThe touring group I co-own, running merchandise sales, music distribution across the major streaming and download platforms, a booking inquiry path, a show schedule, and a mailing list. Nearly 4,000 shows behind it.
threemenandatenor.comCustom builds, WordPress, and Squarespace. Stripe, SendOwl, Eventbrite, Calendly, and Systeme.io. I'm not selling one platform I happen to know. I pick what the business actually needs and make the pieces talk to each other.
See the detailed case studiesEach one below states what the situation was, what I actually did, and what can be verified. Where a client is confidential, they're described rather than named, and labeled as such.
A major Sharp authorized dealer in southeastern Michigan
The sales team was working out of a CRM that had quietly stopped functioning as one. Accounts went untouched for months. Renewal dates existed but nobody trusted them. No one could say with confidence which accounts were actually active.
When nobody trusts the CRM it stops being a data problem and becomes a revenue problem. Renewals get missed, follow-up stops, and reps fall back on memory and spreadsheets instead of the system meant to run the business. Every stalled renewal was a real dollar amount at risk.
I built a seven-category, 0–100 CRM health-scoring framework and audited the system read-only, so nothing broke before we understood it. That produced a defensible number instead of an impression. Then I rebuilt the task and renewal structure, added dated activity logging to bring accounts back into view, and built a weekly automation that syncs email activity into the CRM so records stay current without anyone re-entering data.
What happened next. The scoring framework built for this one engagement was strong enough to become its own product. It's now live as Fix My CRM Fast, a public tiered diagnostic offer. That's the pattern I bring to a new engagement: build the thing properly once, then make it repeatable.
The AI Guyz, Fix My CRM Fast, and Mark Stiles Marketing — businesses I own and operate
Small businesses are being told they need AI, and most have no way to find out where they actually stand. Meanwhile a growing share of buying decisions starts inside ChatGPT and AI search results, where most small business websites simply don't appear. The problem was real. What didn't exist was a way to sell the answer without a long consultative sale.
I worked the problem the same way I'd work a client's: what do people actually search for, what do competing offers charge, where does trust break down in the buying process, and what makes a small business owner say yes without a meeting. The answer was a graded diagnostic they could buy outright, with the repair priced separately and approved before any work began.
A three-stage funnel that runs itself. A free 60-second Digital Score with no login or account required. A $150 Digital Diagnosis covering website health, technical SEO, AI search citations, social and local listings, and keyword rankings, delivered as a graded report card with evidence. Then flat-rate repair options, priced publicly, from a $397 listing optimization to a $5,999 large website build. Stripe handles checkout. Intake questionnaires route each order type. Calendly handles the conversations that need one.
Why this belongs in a portfolio. Anyone can describe an implementation. These are live, transacting systems with public pricing that you can inspect right now. I did the market research, wrote the copy, built the sites, wired the payment and intake systems, and I run the fulfillment.
The Boomer Guide and Caregiving Guides
I help care for aging parents. The information problem in caregiving is not a shortage of advice. It's that the specific things you need at 2 a.m. in an emergency room, the medication list, the insurance details, the power of attorney, the doctor's name, live in six different places and none of them are with you.
Two properties with two different jobs. The Boomer Guide holds free editorial content and captures the email address with a free Emergency Planning Kit. Caregiving Guides is the storefront. Readers arrive on the free side with a question, get a real answer, and are routed to a paid guide only when there's a reason to.
Eleven fillable PDF guides, structured so a family can complete them once and use them under pressure: medical history and medications, accounts and benefits, emergency family planning, digital assets and passwords, medical power of attorney, elder care decisions, end-of-life decisions, executors and wills. Two entry bundles and a complete set. Purchase and delivery are automated through SendOwl; the email list runs on Systeme.io.
This category touches medical, legal, and financial decisions, so the work included deciding what the guides would not do. They organize information and prompt the right questions. They don't give medical, legal, or financial advice, and they say so plainly. Getting those boundaries right was as much of the build as the funnel was.
Remote, outcome-based, and sized to the problem. Start small if that's the right way to find out whether this works. Scope and pricing come out of the first conversation, once I understand what you're actually dealing with.
A short, fixed-scope diagnostic. Where AI genuinely helps in your operation, where it doesn't, what you'd need in place first, and what to do in what order. You get a written assessment you own, whether or not we work together after it.
A defined build with a start and an end. A workflow, an automation, a knowledge system, a CRM rebuild, a content operation. Designed, built, documented, and handed over with the people who'll run it trained on it.
Ongoing capacity without a full-time hire. I work inside your team on a recurring basis: prioritizing, building, and keeping implementation moving while your people build their own capability.
The specific work behind the case study above. A read-only audit against a scored framework, a written report, then the rebuild if you want it. Applies to any CRM, not one particular platform.
Content systems, campaign workflows, search and AI-search visibility, and the operational plumbing underneath. Two decades of marketing leadership applied to what AI changes about running it.
Training, documentation, and the change-management side that determines whether any of it sticks. I'm comfortable in front of a room, and I've spent my career explaining complicated things to people who don't want a lecture.
One narrow problem, solved end to end, on a fixed scope and fee. The honest way to find out whether we work well together before either of us commits to more.
Stepping into an implementation program that needs a steady hand: coordinating vendors, people, and timelines, and keeping the work honest about what's actually done.
I didn't come to AI implementation through a computer science background. I got here after twenty years of solving business problems across several very different industries, and after learning early that AI could help me solve those same problems faster and more completely.
From August 2017 to September 2024, I led marketing and events for Orthopaedic Rehab Specialists, a healthcare practice that grew from six clinics to eleven physical therapy locations plus a specialty performance center, twelve locations in all. Two of those clinics opened in late 2020, which meant building the marketing for "we're open, we're clean, we're safe" while the rest of the world was still working out what safe meant. That teaches you to communicate clearly when the people around you are uncertain. It's the same skill an organization needs during AI adoption.
I've also run my own businesses continuously since 2009. The Impression Professionals carried that work for over a decade before I retired it in 2024, the same year Mark Stiles Marketing began. The same pattern showed up elsewhere in my life: I was a performing member, co-owner, and President of Grayling Filler Productions, the original entity behind Three Men and a Tenor, until it dissolved in January 2025 and was immediately succeeded that same month by Three Men and a Tenor, LLC, where I'm still a co-owner. Twice now, in two different parts of my working life, one chapter closed as the next opened and the business never stopped running.
I'm comfortable in front of a room, not just behind a keyboard. I walked a skeptical audience of roughly 50 sales executives through the CRM audit, the score, and the fix at a Washtenaw Business Association event. Earlier, with Grayling Filler Productions, I helped raise $60,000 for a nationally aired Detroit Public Television concert special that won an Emmy for Best Live Shots, and personally raised $30,000 across two overseas tours performing for U.S. troops: 23 shows in Germany in 2004 and 38 more in 2006, including Landstuhl Hospital both times.
I also help care for aging parents and family members. That shapes how I work, not just my schedule. Caregiving is where I learned firsthand that systems need to run without someone hovering over them, and that clear documentation matters more than heroics. It's also why remote, outcome-based work makes sense to me, and it's how I've built every business I've run since 2009.
Whether you're scoping an implementation project, hiring for a fractional or contract role, considering an introduction, or looking for someone to train a team, the first conversation is the same: what's the problem, and is this actually a fit.
I reply personally, usually within one business day.