I’ve spent my career figuring out exactly what makes someone stop, pay attention, and buy, then building the systems, funnels, and AI infrastructure that make it repeatable at scale.
The tools have changed. Direct mail became funnels. Funnels became AI systems. What hasn’t changed is the formula underneath all of it.
Understand the market. Understand the customer. Build the offer. Create demand. Improve conversion. Systematize what works.
Scroll down and you’ll see what that’s actually looked like, some of it conventional, some of it not.
I’m the author of three books (using various pen names), including: Overwhelmed: For The Ones Trying To Run A Business While AI Changes Everything.
The book provides a practical look at what AI is doing to businesses, marketing, differentiation, and the people trying to navigate one of the fastest technological shifts of our lifetime.
Selected Results
$1B+
Submitted High-Ticket Coaching Loan Applications
$100M+
Opening-Weekend Launch in 2025
100K+
Registrations Generated in 60 Days
$700K+
Generated From One Launch in One Week
$1M+
Online Sales in a Single Day
20+
Major Product & Company Launches
27 Years
Marketing & Growth Experience
Patents
Affiliate business model in merchant services
Trademarks
Multiple across various industries
To get direct-response legend Dr. Joe Vitale’s attention, I mailed him a baby shoe wrapped with a burned, aged scroll pointing to a website. That website led to a full sales letter I’d written for him, for one of his products.
It worked. Not only did I become the copywriter behind some of the largest launches in the internet marketing space at that time, he used the sales letter I wrote and his product took off.
The latter ended up being used as a case study by well-known marketers, discussed in many marketing forums, wrote out by hand by others studying copywriting, and breaking ClickBank records at the time. No one ever knew that I was the one who actually wrote it.
I have gone on to use this highly unusual custom lumpy mail marketing method to get my foot in the door into several other opportunities, and created a system that can be used by others to get the attention of decision-makers.
“Rob is a tear-down-the-walls gorilla copywriter with power, punch, and speed like I haven’t seen in decades.
The guy is hungry, smart, fast, and nice, too. I love his work and am constantly impressed by him. I predict we won’t be able to afford him in one year.”
— Dr. Joe Vitale
Author of way too many books to list here, including “The Attractor Factor”
I’m not afraid to get my hands dirty or test wild, unconventional ideas, even if it means stepping offline entirely to see if something works.
To help promote a client, I made this sign and wore it at a very busy intersection in downtown Houston during the morning commute.
I had a dozen friends call every radio and TV station in the city, reading scripts I wrote for them about a guy giving away money on the side of the road.
As sole copywriter and creative strategist for a confidential performance marketing agency.
Wrote across dozens of funnels in a single year for clients spanning B2B and B2C, all running simultaneously. (Webinars, lead forms, free + shipping book funnels, conference tickets, live events, SaaS products, information products, supplements, membership, plus many, many more.)
I worked closely with the creative team and media buyers running five, six, and seven-figure monthly spends across Meta, Google, and YouTube.
I know this may be hard to believe, but every word of it is true.
I had beta access to the first high-quality AI video tools on day one, and I used it to create one of the first videos in a wildly unexpected AI pairing, two pop culture icons nobody had ever put together, months before it became national news.
Mine stayed clean, no profanity, while the copycat wave that followed leaned on shock value to chase the same numbers. I didn’t stop at one video, I built out 200 more, including songs (that some business owners played in their stores), full music videos, while everyone else just copied the format.
It spread across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and Meta, pulling millions of organic views, and eventually became bigger than viral, cited by major national outlets as one of the cases that pushed OpenAI to change its policy on unauthorized celebrity depictions.
My experience doesn’t fit neatly into one traditional marketing box.
I’ve worked as a CMO, co-founder, growth strategist, direct-response copywriter, performance creative strategist, sales leader, launch strategist, marketing systems builder, and AI systems architect.
Across those roles, I’ve worked on:
ReadyStacks
Founder | March 2026
I founded ReadyStacks to build custom AI marketing knowledge, content, and workflow systems for businesses and agencies.
The idea came from a problem I kept seeing with generative AI:
Businesses suddenly had access to extraordinary production capability, but most AI-generated marketing sounded generic, ignored the nuances of the business, lost the brand’s voice, fabricated information, or failed to account for compliance and channel-specific requirements.
I wanted to build something different.
ReadyStacks systems can integrate:
One recent medical-wellness build contains more than 8,500 lines of structured training and instruction designed to produce compliant, on-brand marketing across multiple channels.
I’ve developed structured reference architectures, multi-pass build and audit protocols, source-grounding requirements, and self-auditing quality-control systems designed to reduce unsupported claims, generic AI language, compliance problems, and off-brand output.
Depending on the business, these systems can support:
Organic social • Email • Newsletters • SEO/AEO content • Video scripts • Lead magnets • Reputation content • Paid advertising • Content multiplication • Research and strategy
The goal is not simply to produce more content.
It is to turn business intelligence and marketing judgment into a system AI can consistently follow.
CONFIDENTIAL PERFORMANCE MARKETING AGENCY
AI Content Systems Builder, Creative Strategist & Lead Copywriter | March 2025 – March 2026
I served as the sole copywriter and creative strategist supporting 20+ funnels across 6+ client accounts operating at six- and seven-figure monthly advertising spend.
The volume of ad copy and video scripts produced was significant, but the role went far beyond writing copy.
I developed:
$100M+ Opening-Weekend Launch
I heavily supported a major 2025 launch campaign operating at millions of dollars in paid media leading into launch.
The launch generated more than $100 million in business during its opening weekend.
My work included high-volume development of advertising concepts, hooks, copy, scripts, creative ideas, and supporting marketing assets inside an environment where creative performance was being tested and scaled aggressively.
12+ Funnels for a Major Education Company
I also led strategy, copy, and messaging across 12+ funnels for a leading real-estate investing education company.
That work included:
I worked closely with a multi-person creative and video team to turn concepts into finished assets.
During this period, I also built AI-assisted research, drafting, strategy, creative-management, and quality-control workflows that increased production capacity while maintaining performance standards.
Many of those approaches went on to beat prior winning creative.
I also trained video-team members on AI-assisted production processes and helped develop systems for managing creative production at scale.
SURV FINANCIAL | COACH FINANCING
Co-Founder & Chief Marketing Officer | 2019 – 2024
I co-founded and led marketing for a fintech platform serving coaches, consultants, and course creators.
We started from scratch, I built the website and developed much of the company’s core:
Within the first 36 months the company generated more than $1 billion in submitted loan applications.
We enrolled more than 2,500 paying coaches, consultants, and course creators, generating seven figures in upfront revenue, six figures in monthly recurring revenue, plus additional revenue through funded loans.
I managed approximately $50,000 per month in paid media and directed outsourced media buying.
I also built qualification and conversion systems supporting an internal sales team that reported closing at least 50% of qualified demos month over month.
Additional systems were designed to continue monetizing prospects who did not qualify for or complete the primary sales process.
Beyond acquisition, I was involved in day-to-day marketing operations spanning brand, affiliates, partners, content, customer support, funnel optimization, and external marketing resources.
CONSULTING, LAUNCHES & BUSINESS BUILDING
Independent Marketing Consultant
2003 – 2019 | Concurrent With Other Roles
For more than 15 years, I worked across dozens of consulting engagements involving direct response, positioning, customer acquisition, launches, conversion systems, copywriting, recruiting systems, and business-model development.
That work included 20+ major product and company launches.
Dr. Joe Vitale
I served as copywriter for Dr. Joe Vitale, including the launch of Hypnotic Selling Secrets, which generated more than $700,000 in one week.
I also worked across many other six-figure launches, coaching programs, promotional campaigns, email sequences, and recurring subscription initiatives.
Neurs.com
I was brought in to help launch Neurs.com.
The launch generated more than 100,000 registrations within its first 60 days.
Simplexity → NewEarth
I spent approximately nine months helping lead the multi-million dollar rebrand and relaunch of Simplexity to NewEarth.
The engagement included:
Flash Mobile
I developed pre-launch and distribution marketing for Flash Mobile, an ACN mobile-phone company, supporting launches in Mexico and Colombia.
Younique
I developed a UK pre-launch strategy for Younique that helped a new representative rise into approximately the top 0.01% of a global field of more than 100,000 representatives.
MatchRate PLUS
I co-founded MatchRate PLUS, served as CMO and recruiter, and helped develop and patent a new business model for the merchant-services industry.
The model allowed business owners to participate economically in their own merchant-processing relationships and earn from referred processing accounts.
HVAC
I served as marketing lead and sales contributor for an HVAC company.
I completed specialized HVAC sales training in Colorado and then developed customized sales presentations, marketing materials, and supporting sales infrastructure for the company.
This experience gave me direct exposure to the economics, sales process, customer acquisition challenges, and operating realities of the home-services industry.
B2B Recruiting Systems
I created an online recruiting system for a B2B benefits-software company designed to attract, qualify, filter, and enroll independent sales representatives around the country.
The system helped move candidate qualification upstream so hiring managers spent less time sorting through low-quality applicants.
B2C Recruiting Systems
My experience launching VMdirect in the US and then many other countries provided me the skills to launch direct selling companies. I went on to conduct over a dozen more launches for various start-ups.
SEO Portfolio Business
I built a portfolio of approximately 100 niche SEO websites that generated affiliate and advertising revenue.
The portfolio grew into a six-figure side business before a major Google algorithm change eliminated much of the underlying organic-search traffic.
That experience also gave me an early lesson in platform dependency and how quickly technology can change the economics of an entire business model.
Direct Response & Product Marketing
Across consulting engagements, I wrote hundreds of:
Markets included information products, software, coaching, consulting, supplements, consumer products, home-and-garden products, and countless other categories.
I also built and ran more than a dozen recruiting systems supporting direct-selling company and product launches.
VMDIRECT / HELOWORLD
Marketing Systems Builder | 2003 – 2009
VMdirect was one of the earliest major chapters of my digital-marketing career.
I became deeply involved in figuring out how the internet could be used for customer acquisition and recruiting inside an industry that had traditionally relied heavily on offline prospecting and personal networks.
Around the initial company launch, I generated approximately 30,000 leads in 30 days. That database ultimately grew beyond 50,000 leads.
I also helped generate more than $1 million in online sales during a single-day launch event in 2003.
#1 Recruiter
I ranked as the company’s #1 recruiter for multiple consecutive years among tens of thousands of representatives.
At one point, the online recruiting system I developed was generating approximately 30 new representatives per month personally, with a 50% enrollment rate.
I built repeatable systems around:
I also supported pre-launch and expansion initiatives across:
United States • Canada • United Kingdom • Australia • New Zealand • Mexico
This period was one of my earliest experiences recognizing that a technological shift had changed how an entire industry could acquire customers and build distribution.
EARLY SALES & MARKETING
U.S. Cellular
Sales & Store Management | 2001 – 2003
I opened and managed a cell-phone store in Concord, New Hampshire.
Within its first 30 days, the location set the New Hampshire state record for most new customer activations by a store.
I managed day-to-day sales activity, customer acquisition, and store operations.
Local Marketing Agency
Website Sales & Marketing | 1999 – 2001
My marketing career began during the early commercial-web era.
I sold websites and digital-marketing services to local businesses throughout New Hampshire through outbound calling and in-person prospecting.
At the time, many small businesses still had to be convinced that they even needed a website.
That gave me an early front-row seat to what happens when new technology changes the way businesses acquire customers and compete.
Kirby Vacuum
Direct Sales | 1997 – 1999
My professional career actually started at the least glamorous end of sales: Door-to-door Kirby vacuum sales.
I consistently ranked among top performers and earned multiple incentive trips after reaching the New England top 10 in sales.
It was an early education in prospecting, persuasion, rejection, customer psychology, and closing.
APPLIED AI
From Marketing Systems to AI Systems
I began working deeply with generative AI in May 2023, when OpenAI launched the ChatGPT iPhone app.
I quickly became interested in a question that went beyond prompting: Could decades of marketing judgment be encoded into systems that AI could repeatedly follow?
That led me into increasingly deep work around:
That work ultimately became the foundation for ReadyStacks and many other projects revolving around AI.
I don’t view AI as a replacement for strategy.
I view it as an extraordinary force multiplier when the intelligence underneath the system is strong enough.
A few examples:
I tested a new strategy that enabled me to go from zero to 10,000 followers on TikTok and generated millions of views across multiple videos that went viral.
I also used my AI methodology to develop a system that allowed me to write a book on AI in one day, written in my own words, backed by my own deep research and a presentation I did in front of a group of small business owners.
I have also had music I created using methods I’ve developed with AI featured in multiple magazines, podcasts, played on radio stations, and added to playlists in businesses around the world.
PUBLICATIONS, RECOGNITION & CREDENTIALS
Publications
Author of three books, including:
Overwhelmed: For The Ones Trying To Run A Business While AI Changes Everything
Recognition
Second Place – AIXP Houston AI Pitch Competition, 2026
Sales copy has also been featured in professional copywriting training materials (under other names).
Credentials
ClickUp University – Expert Certificate
Anthropic Claude Partner Network – Approved Partner (ReadyStacks)
Anthropic Academy – Ongoing coursework; certifications in progress
EDUCATION
Green Mountain College
Poultney, Vermont | Coursework, 1999–2000
LOOKING FOR SOMEONE WHO CAN CONNECT STRATEGY, GROWTH, EXECUTION & AI?
My career has never been limited to one marketing discipline because I have a wide variety of interests and enjoy learning, synthesizing information, and spotting trends and opportunities.
I’ve built businesses, launched products, generated demand, created acquisition systems, supported sales organizations, developed performance creative, architected funnels, and built advanced AI marketing systems.
Today, I’m interested in opportunities where that combination can create meaningful leverage.
That may be a senior marketing or growth leadership role, an AI-enabled marketing initiative, a strategic growth project, or a company facing an opportunity that doesn’t fit neatly into an existing job description.
If that sounds relevant to what you’re building, let’s talk.
I’m open to conversations around senior marketing and growth leadership, customer acquisition, performance marketing, applied AI systems, strategic projects, and opportunities where my background can create meaningful business leverage.
If you think there may be a fit, reach out.
“What used to take me an entire weekend now takes minutes. And the quality is better than anything we ever got from a writer. It actually sounds like us.
What blew me away was when I needed a 7-day promotion. It didn’t just write the content for social, email, and our website. It gave me a complete step-by-step game plan. Things I wouldn’t have thought of.
It’s like having a Chief Marketing Officer available 24/7 who deeply understands our business and customers. We’ll never hire another content writer. This saves us thousands a month. And I have my weekends back.
If you do any kind of content marketing, you need this.“
— Stacy E. Founder, Monarch Quantum Wellness
“Rob is a tear-down-the-walls gorilla copywriter with power, punch, and speed like I haven’t seen in decades.
The guy is hungry, smart, fast, and nice, too. I love his work and am constantly impressed by him. I predict we won’t be able to afford him in one year.”
— Dr. Joe Vitale
Author of way too many books to list here, including “The Attractor Factor”
“I worked as the assigned Customer Success Manager for Act-On Software for a company that Rob was launching.
I can’t tell you enough what a great guy he is to get to work with. I would jump at the chance to get to work alongside him again.
There is not a doubt in my mind that whatever project Rob aligns himself with will be a hugely successful venture. Success follows those who strive to make a difference. Rob is one of those individuals.”
— J.P. Niemann
Senior Sales Engineer at Act-On Software, Inc.
“I went through a very rigorous and detailed hiring process after reaching out to my entire network (which is significant in our industry)…
We hired Rob. He is a breeze to work with, his copy gets people engaged and to take action. Ask Rob for my contact info and feel free to call me so I can rave more about him and your specific needs. I consider Rob not only our copywriter, I also consider him a trusted asset in our industry.“
— David Gonzalez
Founder of the world famous ‘Internet Marketing Party’
“If you have not yet had a chance to meet Rob Hawthorne you are missing out! He’s a wealth of knowledge and shares real, actionable strategies to help you grow your business in the ever-changing world of AI!“
— Erin Paumen, Health Insurance Agent