Two people who'd rather do the work than describe it.
Passionate, eager, and finishing college — helping businesses evolve with a market that changes faster than an owner has time to watch. We turn ideas into revenue, and a rough want into a structure that actually holds. Neither of us built that instinct in a classroom. We built it through what we had to do before there was ever a company to put it into.
How we got here
Taras
Taras left Ukraine at sixteen, on his own. He finished school here and is on track to finish college before he turns twenty-one. He's the developer — the software side of this is his, which is why a client can get something built around their business instead of a template with their logo dropped on it. He is hard to slow down, and he takes it personally that most local businesses are handed far less than they're worth.
Marco
Marco is from the Chicago south suburbs and has never lived anywhere else — he knows the towns we work in because he grew up in them. He is consistent in a way most people are not, and nobody has to motivate him. He won at the Illinois state wrestling competition, which tells you most of what you need to know about how he handles a hard month. He's been making social content and building sites for years, and that side of the work is his.
We're confident in what we can do. What motivates us is the work we hand over, and a customer whose expectations we actually met.
How the business grew
We met at Olivet Nazarene University, a Christian college in Illinois, and were working together long before STMS had a name. We run this as work we answer to God for, which in practice is unglamorous: do right by the client first, get the details right, and don't sell someone something they don't need.
STMS Strategy LLC was formed in Illinois in March 2026. We own it 50/50 — no boss, no staff, every decision made by both of us.
Right now we're building the video calendar and producing the content for Mosaic Minded.
See what we're building →
No office. This is most weeks — driving out, walking in, and asking.
We take pride in these things:
Leaders
We tell you what the problem is instead of waiting to be told. If your search ranking is what's actually holding you back, you'll hear that on the first call — even when it isn't what you asked us to quote, and even when it's the cheaper answer.
Motivated
We prioritize client work as much as our own internal updates. It gets scheduled first and everything else moves around it. That's why a shoot booked for Tuesday happens on Tuesday.
Ready
The system already exists. The CRM on our home page is our own software, running live — you can click it right now. We aren't going to learn how to do this on your account.
Disciplined
A schedule we agree to is a schedule we keep. Follow-ups go out in a busy week the same as a slow one. Consistency is most of the result in this work, and it's the part most people quit on.