John Markadakis · Sarasota, FL

I build brands, websites, and the software behind them.

Consultant and builder for owner-run companies. Positioning and cinematic content, websites that turn a search into a lead, and custom software when the off-the-shelf tool doesn’t fit. One person across all three, so nothing gets lost between vendors.

John Markadakis
Founder
Stellar Media Collective
Built
POROS · Sound CRM · Stellar Gallery
Clients featured in
Architectural Digest · Super Street
Before this
Performance automotive technician
Selected work

Live products and sites I run or built.

Every one of these is in production today. Open them.

Stellar Media Collective homepage: “Look like a million. Run like clockwork.”

Stellar Media Collective

stellarmediacollective.com ↗

Brand presence for premium home and trade businesses in Sarasota, FL.

Founder · Strategy · Film · Web · Software

Sixty-plus films for one builder, a client featured in Architectural Digest, and a site that sells one system: the content, the website, the ads, and the reporting underneath them.

  • Next.js
  • Vercel
  • Neon Postgres
  • Resend
  • Stripe
  • Sentry
▶ Watch a brand film
POROS homepage: “The business platform for media agencies.”

The business platform for media agencies.

Product · Design · Engineering

Born inside Stellar and used daily on real clients. An eight-category brand audit, AI prospecting with a qualify gate, proposals with e-signature, a no-login client portal, a delivery calendar, invoicing, and role-based access. White-label, under your name.

  • Next.js
  • Postgres
  • Anthropic API
  • Stripe
  • Vercel
Sound CRM product page: “Turn cold calls into closed contracts.”

A real-estate acquisitions CRM, built by a wholesaler for wholesalers.

CEO, Sound Properties Group · Product · Engineering

A dialer with a call queue that decides who to dial next, fix-and-flip and Section 8 underwriting on every property, skip tracing, a buyer portal, and calling-hours and do-not-call rules enforced by the software. It runs our own deals every day.

  • Next.js
  • Neon Postgres
  • Drizzle
  • Clerk
  • Twilio
Affinis Motor Sports homepage: “Bespoke performance tuning parts.”

Affinis Motor Sports

affinismotorsports.com ↗

A Houston JDM performance brand, revived.

Founder · Brand · Web · Photography

Magazine-featured builds, a wall of rare Japanese tuning brands, and a photo archive served live from Stellar Gallery’s public API. Parts by private consultation.

  • Next.js
  • Cloudflare R2
  • Vercel
▶ Watch the reel
A speaker on stage, from the Thought Leader Films reel

Thought Leader Films

thoughtleaderfilms.com ↗

Keynote videography and short-form content for professional speakers, nationwide.

Founder · Strategy · Web · Software

A nationwide network of keynote videographers and editors, plus an admin that runs an AI speaker-presence audit and generates proposal portals with signing and a production task board.

  • Next.js
  • Neon Postgres
  • Anthropic API
  • Resend
▶ Watch the reel
Stellar Gallery: a grid of automotive and event photo galleries

Private client-gallery delivery, built to replace Pixieset.

Product · Engineering

Password-gated galleries, favorites and downloads, images on Cloudflare R2, and a public API that other sites embed from so nothing is hosted twice.

  • Next.js
  • Neon Postgres
  • Cloudflare R2

AlsoSound Properties Group(creative real estate, Sarasota)Sunsets and Soundwaves(daytime music events, Siesta Key)Machine & Memory(coming soon: a cars-and-coffee tuning space for Japanese car history and culture, grown out of Affinis)

What I do

Three crafts. One person.

Most companies hire three vendors for this and lose the plot between them. I do all three, and I connect them.

Brand & content

  • Positioning and messaging
  • Brand films, as director of photography
  • Drone and FPV cinematography
  • Commercial and architectural photography
  • Content systems: one shoot into weeks of posts

Websites

  • Design and build in Next.js or Nuxt
  • Local search and SEO structure
  • Conversion: forms, audits, booking
  • Galleries and media delivery
  • Performance, analytics, social previews

Software & systems

  • Custom CRMs and pipelines
  • Client portals, proposals, e-signature
  • AI audits, transcription, prospecting
  • Calling, SMS, and compliance rules
  • Dashboards, reporting, automations
  • Postgres, Vercel, Stripe, Resend, Sentry
Step 1

Find the real problem

I look under the marketing layer: the offer, fulfillment, systems, people. Most growth stalls there, and most owners buy another year of ads before they find it.

Step 2

Make it clear

Then I turn that into something people understand and trust: the story, the film, the site, the message that lands the first time.

Step 3

Build the system

And I leave something that keeps running: the software, the process, the reporting. Not a one-off you rebuild next quarter.

Common problems

What people usually bring me.

Almost every one gets treated as a marketing problem first. It rarely is. Here is what I check instead.

01Leads come in. Growth doesn't.The offer or fulfillment — not marketing.Trace the funnel past the ad spend. Find where trust leaks.
02Every location performs differently.Training & employee experience — the frontline layer.Build systems people actually use. Not another memo.
03Paying vendors. Can't see what they do.No instrumentation.Dashboards you own. Reports that show up without being asked.
04The week disappears into manual work.A missing software layer.Custom tools and AI where the hours actually go.
05“We need more marketing” — again.The layer under marketing.Full diagnostic before another dollar of ad spend.
Not on the list? Those are usually the interesting ones.→ Tell me about it
About

I’ve spent my whole life taking things apart.

I was born in Queens and grew up in North Carolina opening anything with wires in it. That turned into building computers, and then cars. At twenty I moved to Houston and spent years as a performance automotive technician, building and tuning engines, while my own R34-swapped Nissan 240SX earned a feature in Super Street.

Sales taught me that people have wiring too. A camera taught me that perception does. I started filming for a friend’s BMW shop, learned real-estate photography in 2017, and founded Stellar Media Collective in Seattle. I moved it to Sarasota, Florida, where it now serves premium home and trade businesses.

When the software my companies needed didn’t exist, I built it. That is where POROS, Sound CRM, and Stellar Gallery came from. Everything on this page runs on the same habit: open the machine, understand how it connects, build it back better.

Read the full story →
John standing beside a white Audi R8 outside the shopA cylinder head on the bench with its valves laid out in orderA green Lamborghini Gallardo on a lift above a yellow GallardoJohn tuning from a laptop on the fender of a car with its engine bay open
The technician years · Houston, TX
“…someone who shapes brands, and the way his mind thinks strategically is remarkable.
Chris West · Producer, Video Narrative
Free tools

Thinking tools I built. Try one.

Small interactive frameworks for taking a problem apart. Nothing to sign up for.

All tools →
Ikigai Mapper
0 / 4 mapped
Contact

Let’s talk.

Bring the problem that won’t move. The simplest way to start is a diagnostic: one working session, then two weeks of my work, and you get a written teardown of where growth is actually stalling, the evidence, and a 90-day plan, plus a video walkthrough recorded for your team.

Fixed fee, sized to the operationCredited in full toward the buildIf I can’t find the layer, you don’t pay
Start with a diagnostic

Rather use your own email? info@stellarmediacollective.com

JM// est. Queens
John Markadakis
Brand · Websites · Software