My name is James Cole.
I help founders find product market fit. And I help everyday people find purpose.
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.
Our findings (sometimes direct quotes) from speaking to your most loyal customers are the building blocks of every single piece of messaging throughout your funnel. Henceforth you are not the editorial voice of your brand, they are.
“That’s one of the great things about music. You can sing a song to 85,000 people and they’ll sing it back for 85,000 different reasons.”
– Dave Grohl
We will typically start in the bottom (post purchase) of your funnel. This means overhauling your email nurture sequences (how you build a long term, value driven relationship with your customers).
From there we move up – both looking at your site to remove friction (increasing conversation and thereby lowering CAC and raising LTV, too, if approached “bottom up” as described) and capturing emails to massage to purchase through remarketing emails.
Last, we get to the top of the funnel. Where most people start. The top of the funnel is more expensive, expansive and explosive. If you’ve moved from bottom up, this is where sales will rip upwards. If you haven’t this is when your investor dollars and team morale will rip downwards.
If we understand WHO to speak to (people like our passionate customers) and WHAT to say to them (what our passionate customers said) we know our TARGETING and MESSAGING. Like Dave Grohl reminds us – it’s cool to write a song, but it’s way cooler to have a stadium sing it back to you for entirely different reasons. In other words: get out of your own way. Full funnel mastery is about listening not speaking.
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 incredibly iterative, instructive and impactful process.
Want to learn more? You can book time for a FREE CONSULTATION / AUDIT here. Or, text me: 609.610.0749.