The Work Behind the Work
About James
James Stokes works with leaders, founders and coaches who are serious about doing real internal work — sharpening their thinking, challenging their patterns, and changing the internal models that drive their behaviour. He’s the founder of CoachingCloud and Coaching Workspace, and the slightly obsessive mind behind LAB233, an innovation lab poking around in practical neuroscience, human behaviour, and the strange ways the brain decides to rewire itself.
James started his first software company in his teens, writing a point-of-sale system that somehow ended up being used by IBM, ICL, Pizza Hut, Thorntons and The Body Shop. Instead of pursuing a “sensible” career, he became fascinated by how humans pattern their behaviour, make decisions, and sometimes sabotage themselves with surprising enthusiasm. This curiosity turned into decades of studying human performance and thinking models, including direct training with Richard Bandler and other leading practitioners.
In 2006, he started building CoachingCloud before “online coaching platform” was even a phrase people recognised. Today, he’s focused on Coaching Workspace — a simpler, more flexible platform designed for coaches who want depth, not dashboards. At the same time, he’s quietly evolving CoachingCloud into a calm, intelligent companion for coaches, mentors, supervisors and their clients — something that helps them see more, think better, and do the work only humans can do.
Through LAB233, James experiments with ideas at the intersection of technology, practical neuroscience and behavioural design — all with one aim: helping people do the one thing nobody else can do for them… think better.
