The platforms changed. The responsibility kept moving with them.
Desktop publishing, the web, search, social, AI. Each one turned an advantage into a requirement. Mike founded Digilu in 1999 and ran marketing at Stratus as VP from 2022 to 2026.
- $1B+recovered by Robertson & Associates for fire survivors reached through the platform Mike built
- #1×4Entrepreneur’s Fastest-Growing Franchise, 2023 to 2026, while Mike was VP of Marketing at Stratus
- 3.4→4.7Google rating across the Stratus franchise system, from when Mike started to when he left
In brief
Five platform shifts. One problem, five times.
Customer behavior moves. The old operating assumptions stop working. Somebody has to see it early enough to act.
Mike has worked that problem since desktop publishing. He does not count them as separate careers.
Four shiftsThe same problem, four times.
Desktop publishing
When production moved closer to the marketer.
One of the first changes he worked through was desktop publishing.
Tools that once required specialized production moved into the hands of the people creating the communication.
That pattern would repeat for the rest of his career.
Technology removes an old constraint. Access expands. Expectations change. What used to create an advantage eventually becomes normal.
The web
Publishing stopped belonging to publishers.
Mike founded Digilu in 1999.
The web was changing who could publish, how businesses could be discovered and how quickly a company could put something in front of a customer.
A website itself was an advantage until websites became normal.
Then the advantage moved again.
Search
Being online stopped being enough.
Search changed the problem from publishing to being found.
Businesses learned that having a website did not mean customers would discover it.
Search created a new layer between a company and the market, and that layer kept changing.
Social + reputation
Customers became part of the public record.
Social platforms and review systems changed who controlled reputation.
A company could say one thing about itself while customers created a very different public record.
That made trust measurable in new ways and made reputation an operating issue, not merely a communications issue.
- 1980sDesktop publishing
- 1990sThe web
- 2000sSearch
- 2010sSocial
- NowAI visibility
StratusFour years where all of it came together.
VP of Marketing, Stratus Building Solutions, 2022 through March 2026.
Stratus ranked #1 on Entrepreneur’s Fastest-Growing Franchise list in each of those four years.
The job reached far past campaigns: reputation, franchise recruitment and training, CRM and HubSpot, accountability, social strategy, brand consistency, and the four-year transformation that became StratusClean.
Early in his Stratus tenure, he told a room of franchise owners that AI was going to change everything.
The StratusClean identity launched in April 2026, after his tenure. The rankings came before the new name.
Entrepreneur’s Fastest-Growing Franchise list, number one four years running. Entrepreneur records the fourth as a first in the history of the list. Won as Stratus Building Solutions, where Mike was VP of Marketing; the rename to StratusClean went live in April 2026. Badges are Entrepreneur Media, LLC, used with permission.
AINow the intermediary can answer for the business.
AI creates another change in the relationship between a company and a customer.
Search could decide what appeared.
AI can summarize the company, compare it and recommend an answer before the customer reaches the company’s own website.
That changes the job again.
Mike’s work at Digilu now centers on what AI systems can understand and verify about a business, where they get the story wrong, and what to do about it.