2404 - Leveraging Podcast Guesting to Grow Founder Influence and Visibility with Wonderfish’s James Colistra

Welcome to The Thoughtful Entrepreneur. If you're committed to growing your business by serving audiences with generosity and real expertise, you're in the right place. This is a daily 15-minute show featuring leaders who believe real impact comes from generosity, not hype, which means as a listener, you're gonna get the good stuff. In fact, we created PodVerified.com to give thoughtful leaders like you free tools to show up better on podcast stages like this one. That includes your free Pod Verified score, free Pod Verified guest training, a free media kit builder, and so much more. It's the first ecosystem of its kind built by podcasters who genuinely want to help guests thrive and grow in podcasting. Visit podverify.com if you'd like to be featured as a future guest. I'm Josh Elledge. Let's get into it. With us right now, James Colistra. James, you are the founder of Wonderfish. You're found on the web at wonderfish.xyz. James, it's great to have you.

I'm really happy to be here, Josh. Thank you.

Well, before we get going about the wonder of Wonderfish, I always love finding out what great leaders do when they are not at work. And I understand this is exciting. You are a hot sauce aficionado. Tell me more.

I am. And I wish I didn't have, uh, I wish I had more time to spend on this because I've been pretty busy with my, with my day job building Wonderfish. But for a while I was actually making my own ketchup and bottling it and selling it actually at farmers markets and convenience stores. But I, I love the world of condiments and spices and hot sauces. And I do have an Instagram. It's called The Secret Sauce Society. Little pun there. But I just— I'm just fascinated by that whole world. I mean, sometimes I'll make my own. I'll buy small batch sauces and I'll put it on everything. My wife hates it because I just fill up the fridge with every hot sauce you can imagine. So.

My goodness. Okay. So, yeah, when you— when you made your own ketchup, like, so what was— what do you— are you buying raw tomatoes? I mean, and then Yeah.

No, I wasn't because, and I, and I looked into that. The, the problem with that, and this is why you find most people in the packaged good industry that are making anything with tomatoes, is it's, it's seasonal and too, there's too many variations of like when you're getting the tomatoes and stuff. So I was using a canned tomato puree.

Yeah.

So when you're making ketchup, you could either do tomato puree or you, you can do tomato paste.

Yeah.

And tomato paste is a little bit more of like the, the fast, you know, sort of workaround to, to get there. And tomato puree is, is, more of a whole ingredient, right? So it's better for you. But I like— I would just use like a particular Italian tomato that was already pureed, and then I would use apple cider vinegar. I would use spices. I would use honey and molasses. So it wasn't organic per se, but it was more of a, like, a wholesome type of natural product. And I had a spicy version, a spicy chipotle. It was called Farmer Jim's. I started out Just on Kickstarter. It was when I back when I worked at The Economist, I was in the marketing department. I started to bring in the ketchup and let people try it, and people actually really liked it, and they digged it. And and then I just went with it. That was that was way back in 2013, and I was doing it for about three years up to the point where yeah, I had little kids at that time, and my wife was like, "How long are you gonna do this for?" And you're not making you know. I was maybe paying for itself, and you know, I would sometimes ask her to. to follow me over to the commercial kitchen. And she was not happy with that. Like, I had the little baby running around the kitchen. I'm just like, she's like, what are you doing with this ketchup business? And finally I did, I did put a, pull a plug on it, but then I missed being in that world. So that's when I launched, this was maybe 2017, 2018. I launched The Secret Society and just started reviewing other people's sauce products.

Oh my goodness. And Do you get— did you say your main account is on Instagram? Is that— no.

Yeah, it's called The Secret Society. I could send you the link, but yeah, that's on Instagram, correct?

Oh my gosh. So I have to— I mean, I have to ask you then. So I would imagine you get a lot of sauces sent to you. If there's— if there's— if you want free sauce, start an Instagram, get— build a following, and you will probably get— don't, don't take James's idea, but for something else. You'll probably get— do you get sauces sent to you then?

I was for a while. I haven't been as active, but there was a time where people were sending me stuff and I was reviewing it and I would go to these different conventions or festivals or whatever. And I knew people. My brother actually went to one and he lives in Pennsylvania. He's like, these people actually knew you because it's a small— it's a small world. He was shocked. He thought I was like some celebrity or something. I'm like, you know, I reached out to a lot of them and I was doing tastings because my goal with it— yeah, my goal was to build a community. And so I started doing tastings at breweries in the local area here in New Jersey, and I was bringing people together and people were sending me the sauces for those tastings because they wanted people to try their sauce. So that was kind of the model where I was getting the sauces for free, charging people a small fee to come to these meetups, but then I would have food and sauce and all that sort of stuff. So it was fun. I need to get back into it, but I've just been busy with, with Wonderfish, as you can imagine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, well, let's talk about Wonderfish.

Tell me what Wonderfish is. So I am in the podcast guesting world similar to you, and I am excited because I come from the media side. I've worked for Forbes for many years. I worked for The Economist, and I saw how podcasts as a medium was growing. And now it's, it's really become almost, almost to the point of mainstream where there's so many people are listening. I think the majority of US Americans are listening to podcasts. Weekly on a weekly basis. But my mission is to help founders, experts optimize the podcast guesting experience, which again, I know you're also in that same world and we're gonna have another conversation about that. But I love helping people find their voice and I'm also essentially a booking agency or booking service. I, I do a done-for-you service that gets you booked. I do all the research, find the shows and prepare you for the shows. And then I also help with creating content because that's one of the beauties about going on a podcast, right? This is a long-form interview, but it could be cut up into different clips and shared across social media. And it lives beyond this conversation also through other digital mediums. And now it's being picked up by AI, which is a whole nother world, which is fascinating too, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Remind me to talk about that, about citations, because that's really important. I really want to get your perspective on this coming from a traditional media world.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, we, you know, I know, you know, you said that, well, everyone listens to podcasts, but I think that there is a particular type of persona that, you know, if we're thinking about someone who's looking at allocating their resources either from a public relations standpoint, I mean, they're just content creation standpoint. They want the citations. They want to be in front of the right people. Um, you know, they could either go all in on Facebook or LinkedIn or Instagram, or, uh, you know, they could really start to target those audiences on podcasts. What do we know about podcast listeners behaviorally and, you know, just again demographically who they are?

Yeah, I think it definitely depends on which show you're talking about, right? Because obviously there's, there's shows that might be more skewed, you younger or more female. And like, it's hard to say because I get this question often, like, who is the podcast listener? And I'm sure your listener is much different than, you know, John's podcast on the street, right? There's so many. There's actually 5— I'm sure you've seen this. I think there's like 500,000 active podcasts from what I've found within the past 30 days, right? And there's like 3 to 4 million total podcasts, I think, that have been registered. Correct me if I'm wrong. I mean, those are the numbers that I found. And, you know, with that amount of podcasts, Mm-hmm. Obviously there's gonna be a huge variation in terms of the demographics. And, but I'd say in general, podcasts do have a younger listener. But if you're looking at business-focused podcasts, which is what I'm on now and which most of my clients are interested in, you know, we're not talking 18-year-olds. This is generally gonna be 24 or even older, 34 plus. Age range. But my expertise, I'm not necessarily studying granularly on demographics and age. What I tend to look at a little bit more is 2 things. So I look at the topical relevance because that does play a huge important— have a huge factor, sorry, in terms of who's going to be drawn to the show. And then I look at the reach and engagement. With the engagement does play into the factor as to looking at like demographically who's engaging with that content. So that's what I do look at. And I look at the social, the social footprint, not only of the guest, but also the— or not only the host, but also the guests that have been on in the past. So I'm studying a lot of those things and helping to analyze that for clients.

How do you help a client get return on investment from their podcast appearances?

I think it really comes down to a couple of things. I mean, it starts from the beginning. So we, I'm, I'm developing my own framework. I actually haven't even really announced this yet, but the way that I think about it, I actually call it the F-word framework. And it doesn't, it doesn't mean what you think it means. So my F-words are frame, feel, fear, and fetch. So go down, the fetch one is obviously like the call to action. So you talk about return on investment. I mean, if you don't have a really clear call to action that you're not driving someone to do something and have something that's incentivizing them to get there, you're not going to find a return. It's going to— I mean, there will be a return. It's not going to be monetary, you know, a monetarily beneficial one. It's going to be more so about the awareness and, you know, top-of-funnel metrics, right? So I think that's extremely important, and that's kind of, again, like the bottom of my framework. But I'm going to start with the top, which is frame. So for me, the most important thing is How are you positioning yourself? And we always have, we start off with a client kickoff call where we really understand what their goals and motivations are, but what is their mission and their purpose? What is the thing that they want people to think of when, you know, when they hear their message and all that great stuff? And helping them to define that is obviously the first thing. And then the second part of that It's kind of connected, but it's it's feel because I feel like emotions and telling stories that are really emotionally driven are what's really going to help move the needle, right? Because if I just come up, if I just start spitting stats about podcasts, like no, like I actually do have stories about clients and stories about my own experiences because I'm doing this myself. I'm finding my own voice, and I can get into some of those stories if you're interested. But and then the last. Sort of F-word is fear, because I feel like people need to understand what are the fears that are holding you back. And typically those are based on false beliefs, right? So for me, I spent so many years at Forbes and I was sort of an intrapreneur and I didn't really see myself as someone who was a founder or an entrepreneur. And it wasn't until I actually got laid off that It kind of pushed me towards this and helped me really redefine my entire identity. And so I always try to help my clients understand, like, what are the sort of internal fears or false beliefs that were holding you back? And then externally, like, what are your customers being held back? Because that's what people really like to dig into and understand.

Yeah. James, you alluded to this before, and I don't think that this can be overstated regarding how people find— and I'm talking specifically to a business owner right now, or an expert, or someone that wants to be known for what they do because they want to make a big impact with audiences.

Mm-hmm.

Citations from podcasts are valuable in, in the AI world in particular. I know this Uh, because I'll just say from my own experience, um, you know, our SEO game for our company is, has always just been meh. It's been okay. Like, we've, we've really never mastered that world. But what I have done is been incredibly consistent with serving audiences on persistent, uh, content like podcasts that have a much longer shelf life than A LinkedIn post, for example. Well, all of that gets indexed in a way. Sorry, I don't mean to take your thunder.

No, no, keep going. This is actually— this is really good.

Let me—

no, I love this.

Let me set down the briefcase. Let me let you take it and finish.

Well, I think— I think, well, first of all, I'm going— first of all, kudos to you, Josh, because you are doing a really— like, you used an important word. It's consistency. The ability for you to do this on a daily basis is like Super impressive. I just don't want to brush over that because it just takes so people don't realize I was on the media side, right? I was at Forbes, and the whole reason I'm on the on the other side, well, I was laid off, which I could get into the whole story. But media world has had some shakeups. But I will say I saw the opportunity, and the reason I'm starting Wonderfish to borrow other people's audiences because I. I know how hard it is to build your own audience, that consistency, the time it takes, the preparation, the— it's very resource heavy, the time, money, all that stuff, right? So I just wanted to comment on that because I think you're doing a great job and the people that you're able to source. I've listened to a bunch of the shows, very high level and purpose-driven. I know you use that word. I think that's great. That's part of what I look for when I'm reaching out to clients. But to your question about Citations. I mean, people don't realize how important this is becoming because when you're going to ChatGPT or you're going to Perplexity or whatever, Claude, now you're ask— people are asking the AI for suggestions on certain things. And so it, the citations you're talking about, those essentially another word is a source or whatever, whatever it's using to fuel or to power its answer. It has re— is relying heavily on third-party sources and going on podcasts is one of them. So you can put whatever you want. On your site. And they are picking that things up off your site as well. They're not overlooking that, but you could do certain things. I, I'm not an expert when it comes to geo. I'm learning a lot more generative engine optimization. I know there's schemas and things you could add to your site to improve, but really what it comes down to is getting noticed or getting picked up by these other platforms. And then you're also putting the backlinks. So the, the show notes is including backlinks, or if you're publishing on YouTube, you're putting links. So this all improves your site authority index or whatever it's called, the ranking for Google and stuff. But yeah, the credibility comes from— the way that I've been thinking about this, Josh, is I love the phrase perception is reality. I think it was coined by Lee Atwater, who is— he was a political strategist in the '80s. And not only is perception reality, but media shapes perception.

Yeah.

And that's something that's been studied for years. I think in the '70s they started to look at something called cultivation theory, which is really a basic hypothesis or theory that increased TV consumption actually shifts an individual's perception. And you might say, like, obviously, right?

So, but repetition bias.

Yeah. And sometimes I feel like they study things that are kind of obvious, but they just want to prove facts or prove prove scientifically that it's the case.

Yes.

But now I think it's actually shifting where cultivation theory is like, we're actually cultivating the AI perception. So it's not, so AI is now like, yeah, uh, AI's the intermediary, right? Between humans. If we're going to AI for basically questions that we have about products or things that we should do on the weekend, whatever it might be, now the goal is actually to shift the perception of AI. Right. So now it's kind of, it's, it's, it's taken it, uh, perception or cultivation theory a step further and we're actually changing and shifting the way AI is perceiving us because that's actually having a major impact on the way humans are perceiving us, if that makes sense. Hmm.

Let's talk about Wonderfish for our friend listening. Who is a really great fit for you? Uh, and generally what are their goals and, and how do you get them there? And you gotta do that in 2 minutes. Yeah.

Yeah. I love this question.

That's what we have for.

I love this question. You can go to wonderfish.xyz. You can take an assessment to see if you are a good fit or what your, what your score is when it comes to visibility and authority and stuff. But I will say, I love working with founders and CEOs because I know that they need to be out there, build their personal brand, and they're expert-led typically, my, my customers. So it doesn't have to be a founder or CEO, anyone that wants to get their expertise out there and create more visibility. But that tends to be either founders, CEOs, coaches, consultants, people that need to get out there really and get their, get their story out there. Storytelling is a huge part of what we do. And that's, that's what I love, helping people define their story, helping people find their voice. That's, that's really what I'm all about and what Wonderfish is all about.

Yeah. Your website, wonderfish.xyz. Click on the Authority Index, I think is a great quiz. You ask some, you ask some really great questions.

Thank you.

That I think are really going to get people to think about, you know, where they might want to be positioning themselves. And, you know, again, I'm just going to underline this again. You know, you may not understand, to our friend listening right now, all of the technical details around schemas and formatting and, you know, you know, formatting correctly for, for for AI, where all of your business will likely come in, in the future. But right now, I am of the opinion the best thing you could do— just, you got to get up from behind your computer screen. Uh, well, it's fine to stay there if you're creating content, but what I'm saying is that you need to be on stages, as many as you can, out there serving audiences, particularly the right audiences, so you can gain that authority through association and just be scene. And the more you do that, the more AI is going to recognize you as a valuable voice, uh, in your space. James Colistra, wonderfish.xyz. Uh, you can also— there's a big orange button that says book a discovery call, and I'm sure, uh, you have great 15-30 minute conversations that, uh, probably help people catch the vision of, of what's possible. But James, it's been a great conversation. Thank you for joining us.

Thank you. Thank you. You're awesome, Josh. Thank you for doing what you do. Appreciate it.

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