Writer · Marketing engineer
I’d rather make a move than wait to be told it’s my turn to go.
I’m Deana Rock. I’ve reinvented myself more than once — personally and professionally.
On the personal side, I went from a chaotic household to mimicking what I knew, then to digging deep, doing the hard work, owning my mistakes, and admitting we’re all a work in progress.
Professionally, I went from printing supplies to mobile apps, a personal and business collapse, back to restaurant work, a design studio, then RevRocket, an agentic marketing agency.
The pattern has a name now: agency. I was living it long before we built a company around the word.
Agency
is the capacity to choose and act — to notice a life or a business heading the wrong way, and make moves before anyone gives you permission.
RevRocket is the company.
Agency is the habit underneath it.
About
I grew up moving — Wisconsin, then the Florida coast, several towns before I finished school. I lived in the Bahamas on a boat. I fell in love with the ocean in that shuffle and never really got over the beach.
On my eighteenth birthday I knew I was living a life that wasn’t heading anywhere good. So I did something simple: I called my grandparents and asked for a ticket out. Literally. That’s the earliest version of a habit I’ve repeated ever since. Don’t wait for someone to fix it. Ask for exactly what you need. Then finish what you started.
I can’t tell you how many times I found myself saying “This life isn’t for me.” That’s when I knew it was time for another major pivot.
I’ve never been able to fake status. Palm Beach taught me what I didn’t want — the right car, the right bag, the right watch. Years later, standing on a bluff in San Diego in flip-flops with nobody performing for anybody, I knew I was home. Substance over polish. That’s never changed.
I am direct. Anyone who knows me well knows this. I’d rather have an uncomfortable conversation than a polite, unresolved one. I want to be understood accurately, not just liked — and I extend that same standard to the people in my world.
Curiosity
Those two things bleed into the work whether I plan it or not. I invest in myself personally almost as much as I do professionally — and anyone paying attention knows those two things are not separate rooms.
I was married to a federal agent working on a Master’s in Forensic Science. I read his books. I sat in on classes in medical death investigation, forensic anthropology, and handwriting analysis. I got invited on field trips to the San Diego morgue, the San Diego crime lab, and crime scene photography. I’m an amateur researcher of human behavior. I want to know why we do the things we do.
By the time I was an adult I was completely broken. Over time, and with some help, that changed. The pain subsided. My worth was restored. Curiosity is part of how I stayed.
The work
Some business owners already know they need an answer to this: when someone asks ChatGPT about what they sell, does the business show up? Some aren’t thinking about that at all. I’m at the stage in my career where convincing someone is not my jam — especially for a thing they don’t know they need. My take is they either get it or they don’t.
The pitch we will make is opportunity cost. Customers you never meet because you weren’t findable in the new places people look — because you weren’t seeing around corners, or treating technology as a friend.
I made the leap into the agentic marketing world after a friend told me about a piece of software I should check out. I was in a week-long demo when my husband, Al, kept walking by my office, overheard what I was learning, and said: I want to sell that for you. The rest is history.
Together, we make one hell of a team.
We help businesses show up in search, in maps, and in AI-generated answers. The approach is agentic and automation-assisted — but automation is the engine, not the driver. We still are.
Sote Design was roughly ten years of websites, hosting, campaigns, podcast production, and ads. That craft is the floor everything else stands on — including the break that started it, when a director I met bartending put me in front of a VP who needed a professional. I was ready, because I had never stopped building capacity when nobody was watching.
We don’t push running ads. Most businesses we see still have foundational things wrong — the site, the search, the basics. Ads on top of that is expensive noise. Once you stop paying, the visits drop. Organic search stays. That’s why we build there first.
Pricing is published. We’d rather tell you what the investment is than make you wonder — or ask twice. Vague is not the same as professional.
The reinventions
1995 · printer supplies · HubSpot around 2010
I specialized in the hard-to-source corner of a catalog in 1995. Around 2010 I traded printer ribbons for HubSpot. Same instinct: find the layer that actually moves the business.
Co-founder · mobile apps · digital signage · collapse
We built 30-plus mobile apps and digital signage across two states. Then the company failed. I bartended, managed restaurants, and built Squarespace sites on the side because I needed work now, not eventually.
A decade of craft · then the company built around agency
The résumé version skips what happened between the lines. I kept building when nobody was watching — mentally and professionally. That stretch is when I learned the power of silence, observation, introspection, accountability, and rebuilding for a better future. That became Sote Design. Sote became the foundation for RevRocket — the company Al and I run together.
What I actually believe
If there’s a surface-level answer, I assume there’s a better one underneath it. I’ll dig until I find it. That’s curiosity. It’s also how I handle hard moments: get curious about the why instead of stopping at the reaction.
Jill asked me this. At the time she was a close friend, a confidant, a business owner, an Army National Guard Colonel, and a nurse — someone I highly respected and looked up to. I have been the judgmental jerk. Catching that in real time — and asking the next question instead of writing the script — is a practice, not something I was born with.
The cost that matters is the customer you never meet because you weren’t looking ahead. We work with people who can already feel that. We don’t spend our energy talking someone into a future they don’t want to see.
After the collapse I had to learn to be quiet, watch, take inventory, and own my part. Introspection and accountability aren’t mood words. They’re how you rebuild without lying to yourself.
Questions I actually get
RevRocket is an agentic marketing agency. We make businesses findable where people actually look now — organic search, maps, and AI-generated answers from tools like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google's AI Overviews. The work is automation-assisted, but we still drive it. Deana is the marketing engineer. Al is the business strategist.
Most businesses we meet still have foundational things wrong — the site, the search basics, the local listings. Ads on top of that is expensive noise, and the moment you stop paying, the visits stop. Organic search compounds and stays. We build there first, and treat ads as a next-year conversation.
AEO is making sure your business is the source an AI assistant cites when someone asks a question you should own. It relies on clear, structured, factual content — schema markup, plain answers to real questions, consistent business data across the web — rather than keyword stuffing.
No. Pricing is published and clients stay because the work is worth it, not because they are locked in. We would rather tell you what the investment is than make you ask twice.
I’m Deana Rock — the zesty marketing engineer and co-founder of RevRocket. My husband Al is the business strategist. I’m based in St. Petersburg, Florida, and I’m writing a book called I Would Never Do That. My career runs from printing supplies in 1995, through a tourism-based digital marketing company that collapsed, to a decade of web design at Sote Design, and now RevRocket.
Off the clock
I care for my body the way I care for my mind. I am not satisfied with what you see on the surface. I know I can push a little harder, or dig a little deeper, to figure out why.
I am determined to learn how to DJ because making a whole room move is a real thing. Sociologists call it collective effervescence — the shared charge a crowd feels together on a dance floor. I want to be the person who helps that magic happen.
Home is St. Petersburg.
Also writing
When who you are doesn’t align with who you want to be.
In the moments you’re being a judgmental jerk, you become the one being judged. This is the schism.
Everyone has a version of this sentence loaded and ready. We say it about a friend’s spending habits, a stranger’s parenting style, a neighbor’s unkempt yard.
I’m writing something about that gap. It’s personal. It’s also about all of us.
Stay in touch
If you want to talk about the work — search, a site, or whether RevRocket is even the right next step — use the form. Name, email, what’s going on. That’s enough.