My name is James Cole. I am a Strategic Growth Advisor.
James has always been fascinated with connecting dynamic, creative people. In his personal life he hosts dinner parties and plans trips for groups of friends.
Professionally, James started his career in Advertising at Y&R in NYC, then ran Content for We Heart It. It was at We Heart It that James realized the power of a small army of young, talented creators shooting together. This led him to found The Hub in 2016. The Hub is a community of 40,000 photographers and videographers who create images and video for the top brands in the country.
In addition to running the Hub (which does thousands of shoots a year for Food & Beverage companies), James Founded Balanced Breakfast in 2020. Balanced Breakfast is a fund/incubator that invests in small but fast-moving F&B startups. Our first investment was Aura Bora – a quickly growing artisan seltzer brand Co-Founded by Paul Voge and Maddie Voge.
Outside of work James advises over one dozen companies as CMO (chief marketing officer). See the Testimonial page for endorsements from these brands. He holds substantial equity positions (1%) in most of them and advises & mentors up-and-coming entrepreneurs. He focuses specifically on CPG e-comm brand (fun…and his professional expertise), mental health, and the environment as those are two areas of focus very near to his heart.
James graduated from Princeton University in 2012. He was invited back to speak to students in the Keller Center (Princeton’s school for Entrepreneurship) and the speech can be viewed HERE. James graduated with a joint degree in Art and Art History.
Mentoring students and first time entrepreneurs.
James loves sharing what he’s learned and helping others for free. Reach out to book some time. Or book a 30 minute slot HERE.
My Expertise as a Marketer:
Full Stack Marketer
I bill myself as a “Full Stack Marketer”. This means I have mastery of the entire marketing funnel from GTM (go-to-market), to FB ads to site optimization. I particularly specialize in e-comm businesses and helping them measurably improve the efficiency of their marketing dollars. I do this through a “bottom-up” approach:
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Most clients (and agencies) start at the top of the funnel. Simply, they run a ton of ads to a ton of people and hope that the ensuing traffic spikes sales. I always say this is like running a bathtub at full blast with the drain open. Water will gather at the bottom for a while, but as soon as you turn off the water (the money runs out) you’ll have no water (customers) left. For this reason I won’t work with clients unless they are willing to build from fundamentals (the bottom of the funnel) first.
Truly starting at the bottom of the funnel means talking to your top 5-10 consumers. Ideally people who have purchased from your site multiple times (depends on the product / industry). I want to understand who they are, what they have in common and why they love you so much. Often their reasons for loving you are not your reasons for loving you and this is an important inflection.
Thereafter we focus on the site. We infuse the messaging from your passionates and remove friction by looking at Google Analytics and heat-mapping software like Hotjar. I wont move up the funnel until we have tremendous efficiency from our traffic (usually above 2% to 3% of top of funnel traffic converting to sales – depending on the industry).
Once the site is optimized we can move up the funnel. This is where we build a more loyal customer base and generate more LTV (life time value) out of existing customers. We do this by developing email marketing and nurture sequencing for first time purchasers in addition to building (more sophisticated) retargeting elsewhere like Facebook ads. Most agencies move through this step quickly. They shouldn’t. LTV is the lifeblood of any e-comm business.
Finally, we get to the top of the funnel. This is the most explosive and will impact absolute sales the most. That said, without the first two steps, ad spend will be inefficient and sales that should have turned to life long customers, won’t. Starting at the top, though tempting, is a mistake and will bankrupt (emotionally and financially) your company.
The top of the funnel is where we run ads once we better understand our consumer and have a performant site (>2% top of funnel). Ads can be run on Amazon, Google, Facebook, or on more traditional channels depending on the client. I am also a master and big proponent of SEO (search engine optimization). SEO is a long game but if you run the process scientifically can be one of the best return-on-investments over a 5 year time horizon.
This process is replicatable and scientific. It’s not magic. That said, it can be taxing, time consuming and emotionally draining. For nearly all my clients I act as a “Founder for Founders”, too. That is, I emotionally support young founders as they go through this (often) incredibly iterative process.
Want to learn more? You can book time for a FREE CONSULTATION / AUDIT here. Or, text me: 609.610.0749.