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Cole Vandee

Every single human is powerful beyond measure.

My mission is to help YOU unlock it.

Cole Vandee
What I'm building
Sorin: Focus by Design
My company · Beverage

Sorin

A caffeine-free focus drink with electrolytes. I'm building it to $100M a year, in public, playbook by playbook.

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The Collective by Cole Vandee: 250,000+ students
My community · 250,000+ students

The Collective

Copywriting, marketing, sales, leadership, mindset. 250,000+ students strong, built for founders going to $100M a year or more.

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My story

I never thought I’d end up here.

I’m from a small town on the Mississippi river...

I remember being fired from my first job detailing cars at a shady used car dealership.

I remember sucking at my second job making pizzas and flipping burgers at the local dive bar.

And my third job I was handed because my mom’s company was hiring interns.

That internship was filing papers during the summer for $11 an hour... a publicity stunt.

I finished filing those papers a month early,

Tony was the boss he sat me down and asked me one question that would change my life forever.

“Hey kid, do you want a real job?”

I said “Yes”

He handed me a college textbook on Metallurgy that Friday afternoon,

My job was to study it, and take a test on Monday. If I passed, I had a real job. If I didn’t, I sat around for the next 4 weeks twiddling my thumbs because I finished all my work already.

I passed and I went from filing papers to having 2 direct reports and 3 major projects.

  • Clean up the 3 year backlog
  • Fix the quality control process
  • Hire my replacement (I didn’t realize this was a project until a year later)

I worked from 4am until midnight 7 days a week during the summer. And during the school year I left to attend school from 8am to 11am. I was 16, I had a tab at the bar down the street for my lunches and I was in charge of millions of dollars for this steel foundry.

I learned things you can’t learn in school or from some coaching program:

  • As a leader, you must communicate on the level of the other person
  • If you have a clear end goal, there are unlimited paths to get there
  • You can get an insane amount of work done if you just focus on the most important stuff
  • You don’t need a fancy office... mine was 3 stories up some stairs with a broken AC window unit and a yellow light bulb from the 90’s.

I took everything I learned working there and applied it to my life.

  • Sold over $100m worth of cars before I turned 22
  • Sold over $100m online before I turned 27
  • Sold over $350m from email marketing alone in just a few years
  • Coached more than 250,000 students across the globe

And now? I’m finally getting started.

You’ve never heard of me because ever since Tony asked me that question I got really good at making other people successful. Being the operator inside of other people’s companies.

It’s my turn. Putting myself out there, building something of my own...

My vision is simple: Move humanity forward over the next 1,000 years.
My mission: Fuel 1,000,000 of the greatest minds in the world.

Free playbooks

Start here.

The systems behind the numbers. Free, because the mission is bigger than the margin.

[Playbook]

How I'm Building Sorin to $100M/yr

The real-time build. Positioning, retention, email, unit economics. Documented as it happens.

Manifesto

The Email Manifesto

The exact way to plug email into any business to radically increase retention, reduce CAC, and improve customer experience.

Books

What I've written.

Follow the journey.

I'm building Sorin to $100M a year in public. Get the playbooks, the numbers, and the lessons as they happen.

One list. Everything flows through it.