An AI agency that tests on its own companies.

What Does Ciao Bella Actually Run?

Ciao Bella Marketing is an AI marketing agency founded in Miami in 2008, with a second team in Mexico City — and a founder who has been building online since 1999. It runs its own companies on the systems it builds, and takes on a small number of outside clients using the identical stack.

Four companies run on it today: RentaPóliza, a rental-guarantee and insurance platform in Mexico; Vive Polanco, a Polanco, Mexico City real estate and lifestyle guide; Art of NOMA, an art gallery and brand; and Josh Stein Realtor, a Miami real estate site. Each one uses the same web build, the same SEO and AI-search approach, and the same lead capture and follow-up automation the agency sells to outside clients.

The services underneath all of it

None of those six is sold in isolation. A lead-gen system without a site that converts, or a site without the search visibility to get found, tend to fail for the same reason — the parts were never built to work together in the first place. The full breakdown of what is included in each is on the capabilities page.

Why We Run Our Own Companies First

Most agencies show a portfolio of work done for someone else. Ciao Bella can show companies it owns, funds and operates — which changes the incentive underneath every recommendation. A system that fails costs the agency directly, on a business it has to keep running tomorrow, not a client it can simply re-bill.

That is the actual meaning behind “an AI agency that tests on its own companies”: before a system reaches an outside client, it has already run, in production, on a business with real customers and real revenue at stake. What gets sold is what survived that test, not what looked good in a proposal.

That is a different relationship to risk than a conventional agency has with its own recommendations, and it is the reason this site is written from operating these systems rather than from pitching them.

How AI Changed the Economics of Building a Company

Running several companies at once used to be uneconomical for a small team. Building each one meant paying developers, designers, writers and SEO specialists in cash, up front, before a single customer arrived — which is why most studios either raise outside money or fund new ventures by selling services on the side.

AI collapsed one specific cost: the labour of building and running the systems themselves. It did not touch the two things that actually determine whether a company works — the judgement about what to build, and the ability to get customers to it once it exists. Those took the team twenty-five years to learn, and they are still entirely human work.

That is the distinction the agency tries to hold onto in practice: automate the repeated, measurable, reversible parts of running a company, and keep the exceptions — the strategy, the pricing, the actual decision — with a person.

Who Runs Ciao Bella? Meet the OGs.

Two people, fifty-plus combined years in digital marketing, and one rule: the systems run on AI, the judgement stays human.

Deal with it.

Josh Stein, Founder

Josh has been building online since 1999 — designing sites, mastering SEO before Google had an algorithm worth naming, and engineering lead-gen systems behind $1B+ in closed real estate sales. He’s the founder behind RentaPóliza, Vive Polanco, and Art of NOMA, with specific expertise in SaaS, PropTech, ClimateTech, and AI. He was featured on BBC World News addressing climate change in Miami during COP26, and on National Geographic’s "Years of Living Dangerously" alongside Jack Black, discussing rising sea water and its effect on waterfront real estate.

Phil Macdonald, CMO

Phil has 25+ years of online marketing experience across the U.S. and Asia-Pacific. He began his career building affiliate websites to rank on page one of Google, and has since run full-spectrum digital marketing campaigns for multinational brands including VW, Audi, Prudential Insurance, and Sunway Properties. He specializes in conversion and strategy — helping businesses perfect their online brand and hit real ROI targets.

What Working With Us Actually Looks Like

Outside clients get the same stack the agency runs its own companies on, built by the same people. That means a site, an SEO and AI-search program, a lead-capture and follow-up system, content, and paid media — assembled to work together rather than sold as separate line items.

The team stays small on purpose. Ciao Bella takes on a small number of outside clients at a time rather than scaling account volume, because the systems still need a person making the judgement calls — the angle, the offer, what to automate and what to leave alone. Some of what that looks like in practice is on the our work page, and what past clients said about it is on success stories.

Ciao Bella also partners with other web designers, agencies, technology companies and brokerages rather than treating every relationship as a client engagement — see partners for how that works.

Is Ciao Bella a Fit for Your Company?

The agency’s own companies sit in real estate, hospitality and lifestyle, and art — and the client roster tends to follow a similar shape: real estate brokerages and developers, yacht and destination marketing, hotels and private clubs, and technology companies in SaaS, PropTech and ClimateTech.

The better test is not the industry but the question underneath it: is there a real product with a market, and is the current marketing failing to capture demand that already exists? Ciao Bella’s systems are strong at that problem and weak at manufacturing distribution that was never there to begin with.

If that sounds like where your company is, the next step is a conversation, not a proposal. If you are building for a career rather than a client, the team is described the same way on careers.