Direct Deals Corp.: building the growth engine.
Feb 2024–Jul 2025, Fort Lauderdale, FL. Brought in to strengthen marketing and creative leadership, the role expanded into building the internal team, CRM, and cross-functional infrastructure behind a multi-brand technology and telecom portfolio.
- Organization
- Direct Deals Corp. — technology and telecommunications businesses generating approximately $1M–$5M annually, expanding across mobile, connectivity, health insurance, hardware, fintech, B2B payments and real estate.
- My Role
- Marketing Director, connecting business strategy, brand, creative, development, acquisition, CRM, customer experience, suppliers, call-center operations and fulfillment.
- Tenure
- February 2024 – July 2025.
- Team recruited & led
- 2 graphic designers, 2 full-stack developers, 1 copywriter, 1 marketing manager — plus distributed call-center and creative resources in Pakistan and Mexico, a European CRM development team, and international product suppliers.
Expansion outpacing infrastructure.
The company's portfolio was expanding faster than its internal marketing infrastructure. Marketing had historically depended heavily on outsourced resources, existing brands needed modernization, cancellations created a need for stronger retention, and new ventures required everything from branding and websites to CRM architecture, lead generation and launch support.
The business was ultimately building toward a broader $5M revenue objective once its expanding portfolio and supporting infrastructure were operational. The challenge became bigger than marketing: how do you accelerate a multi-brand technology portfolio without letting the speed of expansion exceed the organization's ability to execute?
A shared growth engine, not a rebuild per venture.
The framework connected Strategy → Brand → Creative → Web → Customer Journey → CRM → Acquisition → Call Center → Fulfillment → Optimization, so new businesses got scalable foundations instead of a rebuilt operating model every time.
Build internal capability
Reduce excessive dependence on outsourcing by developing a multidisciplinary team capable of executing strategy, creative, digital and development work internally.
Connect marketing to operations
Websites, campaigns, CRM environments, call centers and fulfillment couldn't operate as disconnected systems if acquisition was going to translate into customer value.
Create structure around acceleration
Multiple ventures could move at once, but each needed defined stages, responsibilities, suppliers, dependencies, testing and launch criteria.
Seven ventures, one operating model.
The shared infrastructure supported a portfolio moving through multiple stages of commercialization at once.
Direct Deals + U2 Connect Now
Existing brands and digital experiences were reassessed and modernized to strengthen positioning, clarify service offerings, improve customer journeys and support customer reactivation. U2 Connect Now underwent substantial website and experience improvements aimed at connecting the marketing promise with the environment actually delivering the service.
U2C Mobile
One of the clearest demonstrations of the operating model: Brand → UX → Web → Custom CRM → External Platform Integration → Fulfillment → QA → Beta Testing → Mobile Platform Validation → Launch. I worked closely with the internal full-stack team while coordinating requirements with a European technology partner building the custom CRM ecosystem. Integration and development took roughly five months of structured stages, testing and validation before launching across the Apple and Android ecosystems — well under the longer runway originally envisioned.
Connect Care Insurance
Built the digital and acquisition infrastructure for an ACA-focused health insurance offering: market research, website development, CRM connectivity, call-center integration and lead-generation workflows. We also tested internal acquisition against specialized external teams — outsourcing added expertise and capacity, but didn't eliminate the need for internal oversight.
U2C Mobile Lifeline
Built essentially from the ground up: competitor research, brand development, customer journey design, and a custom website built with the internal full-stack team. Following launch, the platform began producing lead activity while the business navigated the external funding and regulatory conditions tied to government-supported telecom programs.
MOWI Link
Expanded the portfolio into physical connectivity products — indoor and outdoor router hardware built with an international supplier. Marketing participated upstream through product positioning, brand identity, packaging, website development, supplier coordination, production preparation and commercialization planning, alongside parallel IP work.
900 Sunrise
For the developing 900 Sunrise commercial real-estate concept, built a digital presence to communicate the project's vision and progress to investors and stakeholders while the broader development remained in its pre-launch stage.
QuickPay, ShorePay & Velocifi
Explored an emerging B2B financial ecosystem — payment workflows, business-to-supplier transactions, proposals, negotiation capabilities, capital visibility, and wallet/crypto-related concepts. These stayed in early development, so the work concentrated on research, positioning, branding, communications, website planning, technology evaluation and go-to-market exploration rather than a commercial launch. Additional portfolio initiatives remain confidential under NDA.
Organizational capability, not just campaigns.
The most important result wasn't one campaign or one launch — it was building organizational marketing capability: a multidisciplinary internal team, modernized existing brands, and multiple ventures moved from ideas into structured brand, web, CRM, acquisition and commercialization environments.
Direct Deals Corp. was operating businesses generating approximately $1M–$5M annually while building toward that broader $5M objective as the expanded portfolio came online.
Ad spend & lead volume, recalled.
Direct analytics access for this role is no longer available, so these are Luis's own recollected ranges from the ~7-month period when campaign efforts ramped up — shown as ranges on purpose, not rounded into false-precision single numbers.
Total attributed ad spend · ~7 months
Daily investment of roughly $1,000, with total attributed advertising spend across the ramp period landing in this range.
U2 Connect Now · daily lead volume
Internet-service leads, per day, during the active campaign window. (U2C Mobile was not yet active under this role.)
Connect Care Insurance · lead volume
Two different phases, shown on their own timescales rather than forced onto one axis: the steady-state control effort (per month) and the earlier ramp-up window (a one-time total) while the effort was still being built out and hadn't fully launched.
Accelerated growth needs accelerated structure.
Direct Deals demonstrated that a business can develop multiple products and ventures simultaneously — but portfolio expansion creates operational complexity just as fast as it creates opportunity. Every additional venture adds creative requirements, development queues, CRM workflows, campaigns, suppliers, integrations, customer journeys and reporting. A capable team can absorb significant complexity. It cannot absorb infinite complexity.
Build the team. Define ownership. Connect the systems. Set expectations with suppliers. Understand the complete customer journey. Create visibility across dependencies. Then accelerate.
Marketing can propel aggressive business growth — but its greatest value emerges when it helps build the structure that makes that growth sustainable.
Live during the engagement.
Consumer, telecom and insurance-facing sites and platforms built and maintained across the Direct Deals portfolio. Opening any of these leaves this site — each links out to the live, independently-hosted property rather than being embedded here.
U2C Mobile
u2cmobile.com — prepaid/BYOD mobile plans on the T-Mobile network, plus travel eSIMs with unlimited talk, text and data.
Visit site ↗
Connect Care Insurance
connectcareinsurance.com — health insurance guidance and enrollment, from routine wellness coverage to urgent-care needs.
Visit site ↗
U2C Mobile Lifeline
u2cmobilelifeline.com — free/discounted phone and mobile service for eligible households (SNAP, SSI, Medicaid) under the federal Lifeline program.
Visit site ↗
MOWI Link
mowilink.com — premium 5G indoor/outdoor modem hardware brand (the 5G850X and 5G903X lines) for home and business connectivity.
Visit site ↗U2 Connect Now
u2connectnow.com — fiber and LTE home internet with an address-based availability checker, serving both urban and rural coverage areas.
Visit site ↗Go Direct Deals
godirectdeals.com — the B2B telecom parent brand: fiber/network connectivity, SIP conferencing, SD-WAN and hosted voice (VoIP) for businesses.
Visit site ↗900 Sunrise
900sunrise.com — a 5,598 sq ft commercial shell-space property at 900 Sunrise Ln, Fort Lauderdale, marketed for build-out and lease.
Visit site ↗Reference material from the role.
Mockups, hardware spec sheets and campaign materials produced or directed during the engagement.