Expel culture · 2 MIN READ · SCOUT SCHOLES · FEB 27, 2026 · TAGS: Expletives
TL;DR
- Cole Finch is the Senior Web Developer at Expel
- One day you might find him giving tourists sunrise flights over Lake Michigan
- He is not opposed to forehead tattoos (for the right price)
Cole Finch is the Senior Web Developer at Expel whose heart lives in Chicago with his favorite sports teams, while the rest of him resides in Indiana.
From architecture to…[web] architecture
As Cole is coming on his fourth year at Expel, he sat down with us to reminisce on his time here so far. And to do that, we had to start at the beginning. Back in the day, he started going to school to become an architect, and decided it wasn’t as interesting as he dreamt it up to be (no offense to architects, he says). After taking a programming class, he transferred over to studying software—specifically web development–and essentially, the rest was history. (He was spending a lot of spare time using the inspect element on Google—too much, some might say, so he figured he might as well make a career out of it.)
Prior to joining Expel, Cole spent time doing agency work—a common path for many marketers. After doing agency work for a few years, he realized the fast pace of agency work, while great, was preventing him from really diving deep into development technologies, new processes, and experimenting (clients don’t pay for experiments, usually). While interviewing with Expel, he was drawn to our culture.
“It was good energy. Even in the interviews, it never felt bad not knowing everything. I really respected the transparency and honesty. Even now, that’s one of my favorite things at Expel. We have really smart people and they’ll figure it out, and you can take time to do your research—you don’t have to know everything, but you’re given the space to learn it.”
Cole’s time at Expel
After trading the breadth of agency for the depth of in-house marketing, Cole has flourished. He shared that every day here is different. He starts his day by checking for (and putting out) any website fires, and then prefers to spend the first half of his day project planning and meeting deliverables. The second half of the day is usually saved for development deep work, and often requires several more cups of coffee.
When asked what’s different about Expel, Cole said, “The difference between Expel and other companies is the people aspect. Our turnover rates aren’t as high as other averages, and that speaks volumes on how the company performs and delivers for customers. We celebrate anniversaries during company all-hands and it’s normal to see people celebrating five, six, seven years with Expel.”
Fun fact and very important questions
While we cannot confirm or deny if Cole secretly has a twin who helps him get so much done (that’s the running internal joke we have since he’s so efficient as a team of one), at least one of the Coles is interested in being a pilot. “I’ve done the discovery flight, but flying is expensive. It’s always stayed on the backburner as a possibility for me. I live near Lake Michigan, so there’s plenty of opportunity with the local airport nearby.” (Editor’s note: there’s a non-zero chance Cole would use his pilot skills—once attained—to become a Cubs groupie, flying to all their games.)
And for Cole’s very important question, we asked him: for what amount of money would he get a forehead tattoo that he has to keep forever? “Minimum a million.” The natural follow-up question was, okay, a tattoo of what? And while he didn’t fully commit to any million dollar tattoo ideas, the Cubs logo is definitely in the realm of possibilities.
