About Mario Polanco

I'm Mario Polanco, an AI consultant and builder based in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and CTO of Skool Skale. I design, build and run custom AI systems for owner-operators, sales and marketing teams, and startups in Los Cabos and the US, in English and Spanish.

Why my background matters

I've worked inside the kinds of businesses AI is supposed to improve, so I approach AI from operations, sales, customers, labor and ROI, not just from what the technology can do.

• Hospitality: Worked up from operations roles to property manager, then general manager of a Palm Springs ranch resort, which I converted into a retreat and wedding venue.
• Sales: Sold Jaguar and Land Rover, sold advertising for Los Cabos publications, including as sales manager at a Los Cabos magazine, and co-founded a national payment-processing sales company.
• Fitness and health: Seven years as a personal trainer, plus work as a physical therapy clinic aide.
• Trades: Started out in electrical work.
• AI and software: Since 2025, building AI systems full-time, as an independent consultant and as CTO of Skool Skale.

CTO, Skool Skale

Skool Skale is a done-for-you agency that builds, launches and grows Skool communities for creators, coaches, educators and businesses.

As CTO since 2026, I own the technical strategy and the systems behind the company: architecture and product decisions; AI agents and workflow automation; internal tools like preSkool; CRM, onboarding, fulfillment and content-production automation; data, integrations, hosting, security and reliability; and choosing the software, models and vendors we use. My job is to make sure the agency can grow without adding manual work every time we add a client.

preSkool

preSkool is the community generator I built for Skool Skale. A creator fills out one intake, and preSkool produces everything needed to launch a Skool community:

• the pre-launch marketing package,
• the curriculum and classroom structure,
• the copy and images for the full community.

Before preSkool, building a community took 4–5 weeks. The build-out now takes about an hour to an hour and a half, and clients get a finished community well inside the two weeks we quote. Skool Skale's five-person team uses it internally, and about 12 communities have been built with it so far.

Built with Next.js, React, Supabase, Vercel serverless functions, and the Claude and OpenAI APIs.

Other things I've built

• Gringo Gazette AI newsroom: AI agents research, write and publish 3–4 articles a day to Instagram and Facebook for an English-language Los Cabos newspaper. It replaced about $2,500 a month in writer costs, and I got the page earning Facebook payouts.
• BCS News Engine: A self-running newsroom I built and operate: research, fact-check, writing and proofing agents publish Baja California Sur news with one-tap human approval over Telegram.
• Hotel commission tracker: A commission-tracking tool for a Los Cabos hotel.
• Manufacturing automation: A PDF-to-Excel data extraction system that replaced hours of manual data entry for a clothing manufacturer.
• Los Cabos Rentals: A full-stack rental application with property listings, search and waitlist management.
• Liquid Lounge: A bilingual landing page with an IV menu and WhatsApp booking for a mobile wellness brand in Los Cabos.
• HomePods México: A ground-up website rebuild for a modular home builder in Los Cabos, with a product catalog and a WhatsApp-connected lead form.
• Employer Savings Hub: A conversion-focused landing page with lead capture wired directly to the client's Meta ad account.

How I work

1. A paid 60-minute strategy session to understand the problem and decide what to build first, with a written plan within 48 hours. The fee is credited toward the build.
2. One fixed quote before you commit.
3. The first system goes live in about two weeks, then gets tuned against real use.
4. A flat monthly fee to run and improve it, month-to-month after the first 30 days. You own everything I build.

Credentials and teaching

• Completed the Johns Hopkins Generative AI program.
• Working toward the Claude Code Architect certification.
• Have led small in-person AI workshops in Cabo and online workshops over Zoom.
• I work in English and Spanish, and so do the systems I build.
• Based in Cabo San Lucas: in person across Cabo San Lucas, San José del Cabo and Todos Santos, and remote across the US.