James Laurain

James Tech Copywriting

Freelance Technical Marketing for some of the best brands in tech.

Freelance Technical Marketer

Aampe

Building the first truly AI-driven approach to CRM Marketing Automation, allowing apps to create personalized, omni-channel customer experiences proven to increase customer engagement and retention.

Head of Growth

Propel, Inc

Growth Advisor

Thought Bakery

Helping some of the biggest brands in B2B pull fresh business from the oven with damn delicious copy and content! 🧁

Content Strategy

Avnet

Wielding the awesome power of over 2,500 engineers, best-in-class design houses, a decade of personal experience and the resources of a near $20B company like Thor's mighty hammer.

Let's build something!

**Achieved rank in the top 50 account managers in the company for 3 quarters running.**

Account Manager (Non-Traditional)

AMA Southwest Michigan

Helping connect fellow Marketers to brilliant ideas from the best thought leaders in the industry - which ultimately saves our customers from having to suffer though the horrible marketing they've almost come to expect. 😐

Director, Membership

YETi CGI

We need to stop making things that suck.

YETi CGI is a team of misfits with a strong background in Game Theory and creating Ambient User Experiences. With extensive cross-industry experience, they focus on and dream up amazing user experiences and then bring them to life – with an incredible, diverse team of experts who can make large amounts of complexity seem completely transparent. 

I get to help YETi talent scout for new technologies, architect hardware platforms, and find places where they can add huge amounts of value…but mostly I learn from the wisdom of each unbelievably talented member of the group.

Field Engineer

Bear VAI Technology

Built great relationships, gained invaluable experience, won multiple awards, and had, what I consider to be, great successes - not by pushing products - but by doing what I love - connecting with people, connecting people to technology, sharing cross-industry best practices and innovations, and pushing technology forward for the sake of mankind.

Field Sales Engineer

Stryker

Working with world-class suppliers (domestic and international) to ensure world class designs and products. 

Strategic Sourcing: Evaluating suppliers and supply chains to ensure the best match and most efficient choice for the production of components, assemblies, and finished products.

Supplier Assessment/Development: Understanding strengths and weaknesses of suppliers and supply chains to ensure proper supplier positioning, selection, and utilization, and spearheading development activities to equip suppliers with the knowledge of industry best practices (pertaining to validation, calibration, safety testing, etc.) needed to improve their processes.

Liaised between Stryker and suppliers for R&D Projects, translating designs, feedback, and requirements to suppliers and facilitating discussions around supplier-proposed Design for Manufacturability, cost reduction, and quality improvements.

Staff Advanced Sourcing Engineer

Ensuring Compliance of Medical Devices under the design control of Stryker Instruments to the applicable, industry-recognized safety standards.

Created a simple excel macro which took several input parameters and, from them, manipulated the related six tables in the IEC 60601-1 Standard to output the correct creepage and clearance values. 

I posted this "tool" on LinkedIn, and, since then, I've been asked for copies by dozens of engineers in several countries (including members of the safety agencies themselves).

Sr. Product Safety/Certifications Engineer

Working closely with Product Design Teams by relating standards to products and creating inventive solutions to ensure end-product compliance to the relevant Medical Industry Standards.

Acting as a liaison between Stryker and CSA, IEC, UL, TUV and other certification bodies to ensure proper application of standards, and, ultimately, end-product safety.

Product Safety/Certifications Engineer

Managing a floor of 60+ assemblers by maintaining and improving fixtures, processes, designs and work instructions with a focus on line balance, process efficiency, and end-product quality. Overseeing and evaluating rework processes from a risk perspective. Supporting the unit through 2 FDA audits.

Electrical/Manufacturing Engineer

Haden

Gallivanting across the countryside from automotive plant to automotive plant in an all-to-stylish hard hat that made even the strongest safety officers quiver in fear.

Technical Service Engineer - Co-op

💬 Learn your users through the messages you send | Featured in Forbes, TechCrunch

Looking for a way to tell your kids how beautiful they are on the inside? 👨‍👨‍👧‍👦

I was, so I wrote a book about it. 😅 

Get your copy here!!! 👇

🦎 MabelTheChameleon.com! 🦎 

---

My dad always told me that the key to success was to surround myself with brilliant people...and I think he was on to something. 😅

All in all, I've had an amazing career filled with incredible opportunities that I never would have even dreamed of or imagined, and it all stemmed from following this simple principle. 

I've done everything from medical device engineering, to growing my B2B Tech copywriting business from $0 to 6-figures in less than a year, to leading the growth engine for an up-and-coming SaaS startup fighting against the status quo of crappy push notifications. 🤺

...and who knows what's around the next turn.


👉 Please connect with me if you'd like to share with me on this journey!


Interests:
👶 Kids/Family
🪕 Banjo
🍞 Sourdough bread baking
🧔 Dad jokes
🤷‍♂️ Random Facts

Conversational Tech Copywriter

You're probably really proud of your tech - No one knows it better than you do.

...which is exactly why you shouldn't be writing your own copy.


Wait...What?!?


Yep. That's right.


See, when you're 'too close' to your tech, you start to develop your own language and assumptions.

Worse yet, you start to get blind to what your customers do and don't know.

It's not unique to you, it's just really hard to read the label of the jar you're in.


As an Engineer with an unhealthy obsession with consumer psychology, I can come alongside your technical team and help translate your features and differentiators into relevant and relatable messaging that speaks to your customers where they are.

Interested? Drop me a DM. 

Rivershark Inc

Keeping the company funded, staffed and serviced.

Senior Vice President of Product Development

Cox Media Group

Gerard McLean joined the NIE Department at the Dayton Daily News in 1998 when newspapers were just considering the transition to digital spaces. In addition to revamping the workflow of the various ediucational products for K-12 including a bi-weekly page targeted to the Ohio Proficiency Test, he was responsible for bringing the department and all its content online, building a community and maintaining outreach with educators and students. His contributions over the 4 1/2 yrs at the DDN included various original editorial on a variety of topics from the environment to pizza, in additional to external and internal marketing that promoted the editorial-focused NIE of the DDN. His signature contribution to the DDN was piloting the fledgling daytondailynews.com through Sept 11, 2001.

- Successful implementation of a materials design and production workflow for a Newspapers In Education department.
- Create graphics and support materials to illustrate and facilitate understanding of original reporting by education specialists
- Write, copyedit and develop curriculum-based reporting for NIE pages

Newspapers in Education

SPAR Group

Develop and support programs that integrated technology and human resources for a field-based IC labor force as well as all general staffing needs for the main office.

VP, HR/Technology

Huffy

Create training programs that increased the efficiency and quality of a field-based, decentralized employee workforce.

Training Manager

Target

Sporting goods, Stock Team Supervisor, Housewares, Mensware/Shoes/Luggage/Boys

Area Specialist

If you're doing it right, somebody is talking about you and your company right now on a social network you probably haven't heard about yet. You need a guide. Hire me.

https://rivershark.com

Go there. Have a look around. Drop us a line. We’ll get stuff done.

What?! You want to know more? 

I like you already as you are not one to be content hanging out on the shore, peering at the ocean. You want to dive in, feel the cold splash of life on your skin as your face cranes toward the warmth of the sun. 

Here’s stuff about me. If I’m the kind of person you think would be fun business, then we really should be talking.

This profile space has been left intentionally blank as I ponder a re-write, re-brand and re-launch from the ground up. I promise it will be pithy, almost truthful and mostly, memorable.

You are invited to be connected to me via the LinkedIn algorithms by following me (I don't know how you do that) or requesting a connection (I DO know how you do that!) Every request will be scrutinized thoroughly for the tracking code IFIWEREARICHMAN and the hashtag #TeamYellowPeanutMM to determine your sanity in wanting this dubious honor. No generic requests will be granted; you must personalize the message .... the selection process will be brutal.

You still want more? Are you kidding right now? What do you think I do all day, poop out words? 

Ok, I do kinda do that... sometimes I can even control which end they come out, though there is no guarantee. No, I will not make a car video or a parody of a client call video. I know, I know, they are all the rage but you probably guessed by now that I roll just a little bit to the left and uphill.

Hey, you asked ... Oh, what's that? You DIDN'T ask? Well, now you know. TMI is my game and I know I have already gone on one sentence longer than you can tolerate. Yet, you kept reading. Who is the crazy one now?

Who stole my Wite-out? Just bring it back, no questions asked.

Hey, if you got this far, condolences... but also here is my original headline before LinkedIn decided that 4 characters was enough for everyone... they are wrong, right? 

Author, Copywriter, Word Slinger, Digital Hobo, Roustabout, Publisher. I also CEO at Rivershark Inc and TourneyCentral in my spare time.

In case you are wondering, the hair in my profile photo is the best it is ever going to look. If you want to know more about my hair, I suggest you buy my book, Monkey with a Loaded Typewriter on Amazon. Just do it... go there now... really, wallet out; I need coffee and a haircut.

taplio

The Battle

James Laurain

Gerard McLean

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