Sharing reputation-management ideas with an audience of business owners.FOUNDER · OPERATOR · AUTHOR
I’m Guillermo. You’ll also see me as William Rivas in my books, interviews and earlier work. My career has taken me from sales floors and stadium operations to co-founding ReviewBoost and building the ventures you see here today.
The settings have changed. The work has kept bringing me back to the same questions: what makes someone trust a business, choose it and come back?
01 / THE DEFINING FOUNDER CHAPTER
From co-founder to a company with reach.
ReviewBoost brought together the things I had been learning about sales, local visibility and the value of a customer’s experience.
Discussing online reputation management on 21st Century Television. The feature had Fox Business distribution and a CNBC paid-programming airdate in 2014.
A different way to help a business stand out.
Local search could help a business get found. Customer feedback helped explain why someone should choose it. That connection became central to ReviewBoost’s work: helping businesses collect, manage and promote their online reputation.
As co-founder, President and head of front-end operations, I worked across customer acquisition, sales leadership, training and product development. Building the company meant developing both the service and the people who delivered it.
100+in-house representatives as the company grew
Behind the growth was an operation.
Sales training, domestic and offshore teams, customer relationships and the systems that connected them. My work extended into CRM development and integrations with Google, Facebook and PayPal.
I stepped away from leadership in September–October 2023. ReviewBoost continued beyond my tenure. The experience of building it continues to shape my work.
2007
Founded and incorporated
2009
Co-founded · Public launch in September
2023
Conclusion of leadership tenure
02 / BEFORE THE COMPANY
Learn the customer. Learn the operation.
ReviewBoost did not start with a blank slate. Earlier roles taught me different parts of running a business, from converting a call to coordinating an experience for thousands of people.
Newgen: business development and work with automotive dealership teams.San Diego Chargers, 2002–2007: corporate liaison and game day operations.
NEWGEN / 2003–2005
The conversation before the sale.
I helped launch an inbound-call conversion service and worked with a portfolio of up to 140 dealerships. The job connected sales conversations with account support, field visits and customer retention.
CHASE / 2005–2007
Performance, with accountability.
At Chase, I led a bilingual lending pilot and ranked first in sales conversion among 347 lending officers. Understanding the customer and explaining the offer had to translate into measurable results.
SAN DIEGO CHARGERS / 2002–2007
One experience. Thousands of details.
Game day brought together sponsors, event staff, city coordination and crowds of more than 50,000. It was a different scale of customer experience, with preparation and follow-through visible in every part of the day.
Those roles taught me how to sell and how to deliver. Building my own company made the connection between the two impossible to ignore.
03 / EXPERIENCE GAVE ME BETTER QUESTIONS
Back to the classroom. Out into the world.
I studied while building. Marketing education helped connect the moving parts; design thinking changed how I approached the problem in the first place.
With my Stanford instructors during the Innovation & Entrepreneurship program, 2014.
STANFORD / 2014
Start with the person.
Innovation & Entrepreneurship brought a lasting focus on design thinking: understand a need, define the problem, make an idea tangible and learn from the response.
That approach shows up in the details of my work today, from the feel of a website to the next step in a sales conversation.
UNIVERSITY OF SAN FRANCISCO / 2012
Make the parts work together.
The Master Certificate in Internet Marketing brought together integrated strategy, search and usability, and interactive marketing and measurement. It gave me a broader way to connect visibility, customer experience and results.
Education credentials & program photographs
University of San Francisco: Master Certificate in Internet Marketing, 2012.Stanford: professional certificate in Innovation & Entrepreneurship, 2014.With classmates at the completion of the Stanford program.On Stanford’s campus during the program.
The University of San Francisco founder interview connected my studies, ReviewBoost and the book that grew from the work.
GOOGLE / YEARS OF HANDS-ON CURIOSITY
Close to the changes.
Office visits, partner events, new products and conversations with the people building them. Technology became more useful when I could bring something back to the businesses I worked with.
At Google’s Mountain View campus, wearing Google Glass in the Android sculpture garden.
VISITING. PARTICIPATING. APPLYING.
My Google history includes office visits, hosting Partners Connect events, AdWords certification in 2014 and Business Marketing Online’s early Google Partner history.
It was another way to keep learning while the platforms around us changed.
Inside the technology & partner archive
Trying Google Glass during a visit to Google.Google Partners Connect: materials for hosting an event.Event materials from the Google Partners archive.A personal welcome during a Google visit.Historical Google Partner recognition associated with the business.Google All-Stars recognition from the company’s leadership era.Meeting Matt Cutts at Google’s Mountain View headquarters.With Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston during the 2014 learning chapter.
2025–2026 / CONTINUING EDUCATION
The learning continues.
Google’s Introduction to AI course, completed through Coursera in July 2025, and continued Google Skills learning sit alongside new work with AI, websites and language.
View recent learning records
Google Introduction to AI, completed July 31, 2025.Google Skills learning profile and achievements, 2026.
04 / TAKING THE CONVERSATION FURTHER
From doing the work to sharing it.
The same questions came up in client conversations, at industry events and in interviews: how does a business earn trust, respond to customers and move forward?
Speaking on a reputation-management panel at the Nightclub & Bar Convention.
A room. A conversation. A wider audience.
I spoke with business owners at trade shows, conventions and speaking engagements around the country. Reputation management could be a sensitive subject. The conversation needed to be practical enough for someone to take back to their business.
CRAIN’S NEW YORK BUSINESS / MARCH 2012
Quoted in the Digital Workplace report, featured on the issue’s front page.
PUBLISHED / INTERNET REPUTATION MANAGEMENT FOR BUSINESSES
The experience became a book.
Writing gave me a way to organize what I had learned and make it useful beyond a meeting or a presentation. The book explored the role customer feedback plays in a business’s reputation and day-to-day operations.
That work continues with Book on Selling, still in development, and Sales With Steps: practical thinking about listening, understanding and helping someone take the next step.
THE WORK TODAY
The experience carries forward. The ideas keep expanding.
Business Marketing Online brings together websites, local visibility and customer trust. Review Advertising takes the customer’s experience into original creative. Sales With Steps returns to the conversation that moves a business forward.
Other projects give different interests room to grow: language and AI with Habla Maya, collectible culture with Action Figure Grading, books, real estate and physical products. The portfolio is where those ideas become visible.
Recent roles first. Each entry includes the responsibilities and results behind the chapter.
Aug 2024–Present Little Elm, Texas
Kokomo Real Estate, Investing, & Consulting
Strategic Real Estate Consultant & Investor
Real estate acquisition, investing and consulting across multiple markets.
Responsibilities & results
Execute real estate acquisitions and consulting operations across Texas, Hawaii, Indiana, Nevada, California and Mexico.
Cultivate and manage vendor networks of contractors, wholesalers, real estate agents and private investors.
Drive lead generation and pipeline development through daily outreach and digital marketing campaigns.
Sep 2007–Oct 2023 Carlsbad, California
Intravas Technologies / ReviewBoost
Co-Founder, President & Head of Front-End Operations
Built an online reputation management business, leading customer acquisition, sales, training and front-end operations.
Responsibilities & results
Founded and incorporated in 2007; co-founded public launch in September 2009. Helped businesses use digital reviews to support visibility and growth.
Bootstrapped the company with 100% year-over-year revenue growth in its formative years. The original profile records $43.6 million in total revenue, zero debt and average annual revenue exceeding $4.2 million.
Scaled from two co-founders to more than 100 in-house representatives. Developed ethical sales training systems for domestic and offshore teams.
Directed front-end product development and proprietary backend software, including CRM and API integrations with Google, Facebook and PayPal. The original profile reports a 70% reduction in labor costs.
Concluded leadership in September–October 2023; the company continued. More than 14,000 clients is an estimated cross-career figure, not a ReviewBoost-only client count.
Nov 2005–Aug 2007 San Diego, California
Chase Manhattan / JPMorgan Chase
Special Finance Officer & Lending Specialist
Lead officer for an inaugural bilingual lending pilot, achieving first place in overall volume.
Responsibilities & results
Ranked first in sales conversion, at 17.4%, among 347 lending officers nationally.
Closed $26.4 million annually as lead officer for the bilingual pilot program.
Selected for Chase’s first Employee Advisory Committee, working with executive leadership on employee development and corporate priorities.
Apr 2003–Nov 2005 San Diego & San Francisco, California
Newgen Results Corporation (TeleTech)
Business Development Specialist
Automotive business development, inbound-call conversion and enterprise account support, including Ford.
Responsibilities & results
Helped launch Sales Channel, an inbound-call conversion service designed to capture sales leads and bring prospective buyers into dealership showrooms.
Served as an on-site account representative for a portfolio of up to 140 automotive dealerships, conducting field visits and optimizing enterprise accounts.
Managed delivery, optimization and retention across 17 enterprise products reaching a consumer market of more than 6.5 million customers monthly.
Aug 2002–Dec 2007 San Diego, California
San Diego Chargers (NFL)
Corporate Liaison & Game Day Operations
Game day operations, corporate sponsorship support and event logistics for crowds of more than 50,000 attendees.
Responsibilities & results
Coordinated game day operations and served as an operational liaison between the organization and the City of San Diego, including tailgating areas and pre- and post-game crowd logistics on municipal property.
Worked with corporate sponsors including Canon, Budweiser and Hewlett-Packard, supported on-field and halftime promotions, and interacted with media, VIPs and athletes at the stadium and practice facilities.
Supervised event staff and promotional teams, including cheerleaders, and coordinated philanthropic participation such as the Boy Scouts of America. Executed organizational directives under the Spanos ownership family.
2001–2003 San Diego, California
Consolidation Assistance Program (CAP)
Student Loan Officer
Inbound student-loan sales and portfolio management in a regulated, commission-based environment.
Responsibilities & results
Ranked second among approximately 30 producing officers for two consecutive years, working with inbound leads from targeted direct-mail campaigns.
Managed thousands of student and parent loan accounts, including Stafford loans, with average balances of approximately $30,000, while navigating changing federal regulations.
Worked 12-hour days, six to seven days a week during peak production. Adapted to corporate transitions and early enterprise network server technologies.
Early career onward California
Early Career & Foundational Sales
Call Center Management & Retail
Early retail and call-center work established the foundation for later sales leadership and business ownership.
Responsibilities & results
Cancun Promotions and Relevant Ads / Local Splash: directed call-center operations in San Diego, including a 40-seat B2B local SEO sales center and floors of up to 60 sales professionals. Relevant Ads / Local Splash belongs to the later career period, from 2008.
Served as the primary floor closer, with call takeovers accounting for an estimated 75%–80% of facility revenue. Managed inbound and outbound conversion, press-one lead campaigns and operations in the absence of executive ownership.
Worked 70+ hour weeks and later transitioned into an owner/operator role.
Rent-A-Center, Account Manager: rent-to-own sales, contract negotiation, account retention and high-margin inventory sales. The original profile records markups of 1,000%+ on some used inventory.
Radio Shack, Sales Associate to Assistant Manager: helped move a location to first among 60 regional stores through early mobile-phone sales. Reported four times the sales of veteran peers and 50% of the store’s revenue.
Entered the workforce at age 13, balancing overlapping jobs including work as a stock boy at Lucky’s, later Albertsons.
Some roles overlapped. The earlier-career group includes later call-center leadership at Relevant Ads / Local Splash from 2008. The estimate of more than 14,000 clients reflects work across my career.
