James Colistra interview

Foreign.

Hey, everybody. Welcome back to AMA off the Clock. I'm Noah, and today it looks a little different. I'm actually in my room. Today I interviewed James Kalistra, who owns the company Wonderfish, but who is also a marketing genius and has a lot of experience in the marketing field. So I'm very excited for you guys to listen to today's interview. It was filmed virtually, but, yeah, it was a lot of fun to make, and I really hope you guys enjoy. So on to the video.

Hi, James.

You know what? Thanks for. Thanks for having me on the show. This is awesome.

Yeah, I'm very excited to interview you today. So before we get into, like, your career and stuff, I just want to know, like, what really inspired you or what was your interest to become, like, to start being in the business world, in the marketing world? Like, what was your education path? And also, like, were you anything like else? Like, did you want to do anything else before this?

Yeah. I mean, growing up, we all have different things. You know, I wanted to be at one time a lawyer. I want to be an actor. I want to be, you know, a whole bunch of different things. Things. But then it was. I think it was maybe my senior year in high school, I read a book called, hey, Whipple, Squeeze this. And it's. I think it was written by a guy named Luke Sullivan. It's all about copywriting and how to write really good ads. And it was written by an advertising copywriter. And that was the first time I. Because I. I've always considered myself to be creative. I like coming up with ideas and just, like, thinking outside the box, all that sort of stuff. And I was like. And I like writing being, you know, creative writing. And so I originally wanted to just be in advertising, be a copywriter. And then I ended up going to school at. Well, I went to Ithaca College, and then I transferred to Loyola, Maryland. And, you know, it's a small Catholic school in Baltimore. And I ended up majoring in marketing or majored in advertising, minor in marketing. And I. I still was thinking that I wanted to be an advertising copywriter. And I did a couple internships in college. But then I started to realize that if you wanted to be a copywriter, like, it. It's very competitive, obviously, and you have to build a portfolio. And, you know, they actually have portfolio schools, and they have, like, a lot of the bigger schools. I'm sure USF probably has a good pro. Good track if you wanted to be a copywriter. Right. If you're, like, rebuilding your portfolio. But my school didn't really have a lot of that. And. And so they were like, a lot of people I talked to were saying, you kind of. You might have to go to Miami Ad school. You might have to do something after college. And I didn't really want to do that. But then I ended up in some of my internships, I learned about advertising strategy. And a lot of these ad agencies have what they call an account planning department that does the. They do the briefs and they give the briefs to the, to the. Create the writers and the copywriters. And. And I started to really dig into that and I was like, ad strategy is really interesting and really being the voice of the consumer and doing the focus groups and the research and trying to understand what's the consumer behavior and what's driving that action of, you know, leading them to make that purchase. And. And so then I started to really want to do that. So after I graduated college, my first job, I. It's always hard when you're trying to just get. Break into something. And I'm from upstate New York originally, which is not anything like New York City. I mean, it's much. Albany, New York is a much smaller market. So I, I ended up getting a job at. It was. It was like an ad agency, but it was more of like newspaper advertising. And. And it was called Vertis. And we, we did a lot of media campaigns for big retailers like Bass Pro Shops and, and Big Lots. And. And we would do a lot of like, media planning using, like, detailed maps. And it was very analytical, a lot of spreadsheets. And it wasn't like the creative stuff that I wanted to do. And I ultimately ended up going to Miami Ad School and doing what's called a boot camp for account planners and trying to get an advertising strategy. And. And then I was like, all right, I need to. I need to go to New York City. That's like the hotbed of, you know, big, big ad agencies and stuff like that. And so I, I ended up going to. So after the boot camp for account planners and Mommy at school, I applied to a whole bunch of different ad agencies and I was. I think Gray was the one that. I had a couple interviews and I think it was to work on, like, their DirecTV account, if I recall correctly. And. But then I ended up getting a job at the Economist, which is a publisher. So it's a magazine. They call it. They call it a newspaper, but it's really, you know, a physical magazine and website. And I took the job because it was a, you Know, great opportunity. It was my first like big job in the city and everything. And that's kind of how I fell into the media side of things. And that was one of the things I never really explored in college and internships or never thought about. You always think about, all right, I'm going to work for. You're going to go work for a brand or you're going to go work for any ad agency, right? But the media world and it's, it's changed a lot since then but it's gone through a lot of different evolutions. But it was a nice sort of middle ground for me because a lot of the ad agencies you always hear about, you know, they're kind of cutthroat, like really long hours and, and yeah, we had long hours if we had a deadline. We worked with a lot of big brands and we, I was on the integrated marketing team but for the most part we had a good work life balance. It was a great place to work for. For many years I was there for, so I was at the Economist and then I jumped. I, I went to two other small places but I ended up going to Forbes for 10 years. So I was there from 2014 to 2024 and I was on the integrated marketing team. So every, every media publisher has this integrated marketing function which essentially supports the ad sales team. So you have these ads, ad sales, these sellers that are, they're going into, they're talking to big clients. Like we were working with big brands and enterprise tech and auto and luxury. And so they would work either with the, directly with the client, the ad, the, the ad sales rep had that direct relationship. Right. And we were, we were sort of behind the scenes but we would go to meetings sometimes and help with presentations. But our job as an integrated marketing function was to come up with the ideas and the, that's what I loved about it was like the creative side coming up with big ideas and putting them into, onto paper and putting a whole proposal together. And we ultimately like, we were like the quarterback on the team that because there's a lot of cross functional collaboration across the, across Forbes and there's a lot of different platforms across Forbes, whether it was the, the website, the magazine events, thought leadership, research reports and we would basically figure out how to put it all together and package it. And so it was a lot of fun for many years and you know, really enjoyed it and worked my, worked my way up into basically like a leadership position and it just changed so much through the years and ultimately I ended up being laid off there. But there's been several situations like that across media where you have, you know, things are. Things are shifting and changing in technology because, yeah, like, algorithms are changing with Google and then you have AI and it's just like, it changes the whole dynamics and, you know, mod the business models and get a lot of different pressure. And so I ended up, after I left there. So that was early 2020, early last year, 2024. I was applying to a lot of different jobs. And it's just difficult because, like, sometimes you get boxed into. Like I said, you have the media, you have the agency, you have the brands. Sometimes if you, if you spend most of your career in one of those buckets, you can kind of get boxed in. Right. And so I was trying to apply to, like, other media companies because that's where most of my experience is. But the problem is that the media companies aren't necessarily all doing great. And so, you know, then the brands are like, oh, well, how much brand side experience do you have? And like, well, I worked with brands, but I wasn't working at a brand. And so that becomes difficult. And then the same with the agencies. Like, do you have agency experience? So that's why I ended up doing my own thing. And so I now I have an agency called Wonder Fish. And what wonderfish originally was was more. More of a marketing agency. But I can get into kind of the evolution of what I've. What I. Where I've taken it and where I'm looking to take it, if you're interested.

So, yeah, I just had a quick question about, like, so the. Were there any, like, standout projects or campaigns that taught you, like, a big lesson at, like, Forbes or the Economist? Like, like, big things you did that you were, like, very proud of?

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot. I mean, it's hard to pick, like, one of the bigger brands that I remember working on. A lot of that got really. I got really close with it. Just kind of like, enjoyed working on it was the Macallan, which is a scotch. So the McAllen came to us, like, very early on, because when I started at forbes, it was 2014. And we did our first event in under. Our first under 30 summit was in Philadelphia that year. And so I remember the McAllen. They came on as a sponsor and that was a really cool event because you had, like, Palmer Lucky spoke, I think Malala spoke that year. Like, all these big people get up on stage and talk, which you sometimes get to meet them, which was cool. And so The Macallan, like, they always had really cool activations and a number of different ways that we leveraged because they really like to align with that under 30 audience, because it's like you have these successful people that make the list, and then you also have, like, the aspirational people that are, you know, trying to get on and want to be on. And so they basically. And I think that's a really smart strategy for a lot of brands where, you know, you're. I like to use the term, like, borrowing. Borrowing audiences, right? Where, you know, what it really comes down to in marketing for me is all about trust, you know, likability, trust. Because people buy from brands and people buy from other people that they trust and that they like. Right. And so I think the McAllen did a really good job of, like, attaching themselves to our audience, to the, to the Forbes under 30 and that whole crowd and that whole community. And so we did a number of different events and throughout the years, a number of different content programs. And, like, there was. One of them was. I'm trying to remember the name of. We. We had a. We had one that was really tied to, like, sustainability, for example, because that's the other thing that you could do is when you're borrowing, like, another audience, you tie your pillars, your brand pillars to whatever it is like, that other audience is about. And so one of the brand pillars of the McAllen was sustainability. So when they went in and they sponsored under 30, they would, they would narrow in on, like, the, The. The people from the under 30 list that have basically, like, companies or, or brands that have something to do with like, sustainability, helping for climate change, things like that. And so they created a whole bunch of content that focus in on those individuals. So the way that we. That we operated at Forbes, there was basically, there's really three. There's multiple different types of content. You had editorial, and they can go and they could sponsor like, a Forbes editorial piece or they could do custom content. We called that Forbes Brand Voice, which is like, are you familiar with her native advertising? Which, like, it looks and feels like editorial, but it's paid. It's sponsored by a brand. So. So yeah, the McCollum did a lot of. Did a lot of that, as in many of our, as of our advertisers. And then the other, the other kind is. So there was sort of a grayer, which we called Forbes Insights, which that was more about, like, thought leadership. So we would do like, a research report or something like that and would say, like, it would say, presented by, but they had a little bit more control over like putting their quotes from their executives in, into the content and things like that. So, yeah, I think for me, like, I, I've, I've transitioned a little bit away from that, that paid media side and I'm doing more earned media, which is like pr, right. And that's why I talked, that's why I mentioned the whole idea of like borrowing audiences. Because in the, the big difference, to me it all comes down to the same. The, the, the end goal for marketing is all about you're trying to affect someone's decision. You're trying to get them to, you know, to purchase something or to do good, to go to an event or whatever. It's a, it's a decision making process. Right. And there's definitely a science behind it. Like, I've always, I love studying like the neuroscience. Right. Of like the psychology. Right. So interesting because you, I mean, there's definitely like a lot of things that, that we know and there's stuff that we don't know. We definitely know that there's like storytelling circuits in our brain and like story listening circuits. And like, we also know that emotions play such a huge part because every decision that you're, you're making, like your, your emotion, you know, it's emotionally charged or your emotions are. But you, it has to, it has to be. Sorry, it has to be emotions and logic coming together. Right? Yeah. So, yeah, I think that's, that whole thing is fascinating. But the, the world of PR is similar in the sense of like, you're also trying to affect decisions not only of like, perception, but like, if you're trying to get coverage for a brand, you have to convince that journalist or that podcast host, right? To, to make the decision that like, you're worthy of that coverage or you're worthy of that, like, interview or something like that. So it's all kind of intertwined and tied together. Like a lot of the skill sets that I've, I've been, it's just working on my entire career apply to what I'm doing now in earned media. But I've shifted a little bit because a lot of the brands that I've talked to or the clients that I'm working with, I found, seem to have a real need for PR and for earned media. And it's kind of, it's a little bit inaccessible for a lot of brands because a lot of PR agencies charge a lot of money. And so that's kind of where I'm fitting in. Of finding my, finding my niche, if you will.

Can you actually tell us a little bit about like your new, like your new company, Wonderfish, now that we're kind of that topic, like.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So Wonderfish, I mean, essentially it is, it is a PR agency. So a PR agency can do any sort of earned media in terms of getting you articles, getting you interviews, whether that's in TV or on TV and radio and podcasts and getting you digital, you know, press articles and things like that. And so that's at the core, that's, that's what Wonderfish does. But I'm also, I'm doing a little bit of creating a little bit of my own expertise and niche in one particular product that I launched. I actually launched this in July, well, soft launched it in July and really went big with it in August. And it's called the, it's called the podcast power circuit. And so what I do is. So there's a lot of podcasts out there, as you can imagine, right? There's about three and a half million, maybe even more podcasts. Because, you know, there, there aren't a lot of barriers to entry to, to starting your own podcast. You know, it's relatively easy to click publish, but that makes it more of a challenge to kind of like find the right ones and, and to find like the right, not only the high quality ones. And it's not just about quantity, it's about quality, but it's also about where your audience is listening. So, so every, every marketer, right, has, they have their icp, their ideal customer profile. So what I've done is I've identified or I've, I've actually created and I, and I do use, so we do use an AI agent, the proprietary agent that we built that we can take a list of podcasts and we could score them based off how, how well or how engaged their audience is with that icp. And so that's where, because you can go and you can look at a podcast and there's a number of different databases out there that allow you to search, search up podcasts. But there's not a consistent methodology that anyone has because the listener count and you know, the monthly listeners or whatever, it's, I think it's pretty private. The only thing that's public is like the engagement on social and the engagement on Spotify and you know, Apple podcasts, right? So what I do, what, what the, the agent really does, the AI agent really does is it scores it based off engagement levels with the public information, like the social channels and stuff like that. And so that, that's kind of what at the core we do. And, and I have a whole system that books you on the podcast, and once you're booked on the podcast, then, then we actually will prep you, get you ready for the podcast, and then create content from it afterwards. So it's a whole, like, system that basically fuels, like a content engine across social media. But I'm still doing traditional PR as well. But I'm really trying to just have this, like, consistent offering or like a product that's like, scalable and easily sellable in a way, because, like, you have to have something that people can, you know, easily kind of like say, oh, that, that makes a lot of sense versus, like, oh, I can do. If I go to someone, I say, I could. I can do pr. I can do anything. It's like a little bit harder to, like, to convince someone that you can, you know, everyone can do pr. Well, we have this, like, sort of niche product. So that's, that's what I'm doing with that.

Yeah, it sounds really cool. Really cool.

Thank you.

So, like, to pivot from there a little bit. I was just gonna ask why this is more for, like, the advice of, like, college students now, because we're a mark, we're a marketing podcast, but we're also like a college kind of podcast.

Of course.

So what is your bit? Like, what is like some big advice you wish that more students in the marketing or advertising world knew before going into internships or even pay? Like, some advice that you would.

No, I'm glad you asked that question. And I, And I thought about this because, you know, I have been listening, listening to your show and I'm. It's too bad. Zara's the other one, right? She. She's your co host. You guys been doing a really great job. I was hoping to talk to her too, but I'm going to give you advice for both of you guys and for everyone listening.

Oh, she would be so happy to hear. She. She'll listen.

She. Yeah, she was great. By the way, she said she's a pre. She's a pre advertising major. I think she said what is what I was going to ask, like, what does that even mean, pre advertising?

So she, I think, like pre med.

Almost, but it's pre advertising.

She's an advertising major, but she has like, like at USF too. Like, I would be considered like, pre marketing because we haven't hit all of those business level courses yet. Like, we have, like, we've done a lot of them, but we're still, we still have a few more and then we're considered like in the business school or in the advertising school.

Great, great. So my, I'm going to give you a couple of pieces of advice if that's okay. So I know you guys were talking about how you love Instagram. Instagram is, is great. I would say try to get more active, definitely on LinkedIn. And then the other one right now is substack. People don't realize, but that's becoming like a social network. And so especially if you can like really get some traction, you have to think about yourself. And this is something I wish people told me early on is like, even at this age, like, think about yourself as from a personal brand standpoint. Because, you know, I talked, I think I mentioned earlier how like, people buy from people they, that they like and trust. Like, you need to, even at this phase in your career, like, you, you have to start to continue to like, build up your, your profile, your reputation so that you, you're someone that people will grow to and trust. Because like, especially in this age of AI, like, personal brand is really like the only competitive moat that anyone is ever going to have because like AI is eventually going to be able to pretty much do anything, unfortunately. So it's like you have like people trust humans more than AI though, and I think that's hopefully going to stay that. Like, because I mean, even, even AI does make a lot of mistakes and you know, so do humans too. Right. But like, ultimately, like people want to talk to a human. They want to have that connection and, and I think it's always going to be that's that connection and like your reputation is going to be the most important factor. So definitely build up your, your content. You know, creating content on LinkedIn and Substack. Think about like, who, who you really talking to. And it might, that might evolve as, as you know, because right now you're probably, you might be talking to like a lot of your peers or like other marketing majors and things like that. And that's fine because as you evolve, like, you know, you, you graduate and you're still going to continue to be talking to those people and they're going to get, you know, know, you're all going to get marketing jobs and things of that nature. So. But right now your content might shift a little bit. You know, obviously your, your wisdom and the things that you're sort of an expert on, you know, is going to continue to change. Right? But just have like The. The. The other thing with. With content is, like, it's all about consistency because it's not hard to do. Like, if I, like, if I were to say, Noah, go and, like, write an article, like, you could easily do that. The only thing that's hard is to do it, like, on a regular basis, like, continue to, like, get up in the morning when you have a million other things to, you know, you have homework and all that stuff. Right. So just developing, like, a consistent practice and also developing a consistent personal development practice is, like, one of the things I never thought about either. But I just read a book called the Miracle Morning, and he's like, get up early and do these, like, five things, which is, like, these ancient. These ancient practices as far as, like, having some silence, like, meditating, writing. Like, if you have, like, whatever works for you, you have things that you're doing every day to, like, personally develop yourself. Like, that's super important. Right? What else do I want to tell you about? Oh, I. I actually have some advice for. For you guys, for. For you and Zara for, like, the podcast, if that's of interest. Because I think you guys, like, you're doing an awesome job. I think you guys are naturals. Like, you're really good at talking to each other, and you have, like, a good rapport and everything. So I would think about the podcast and, like, try to, like, take it to another level, in a sense, because, like, you guys have an opportunity to, like, leave your mark on this podcast. And I know you talked a little bit about. You talked a little bit about some guests that you want to have on. I would even think bigger because I know you said, like, oh, let's have a professor. Let's have, like. So it seems like you're kind of thinking about the podcast almost as, like, a local show, which is fine. Like, you know, almost like it's like a local radio show, but, like, the. Ben. The. The benefit of podcasting is that it's really global. Like, you can. You can get listeners anywhere, and you could take it anywhere that you want to go. Right? Literally and figuratively. Figuratively. But. So I had some ideas, but, like, one of the things you could think about, like, you have a lot of big personalities on campus, especially, like, the athletes. And so one of the things you could. Is you could have someone come on that's like, a big sports star and have them talk about nil. Like, you're familiar with, like, the whole nil. That's like a becoming, like, a big industry. So you could ask Them, like, what's it like? Like building your own personal brand. Like, do you have an agent? Like, do you do ads? Like that sort of stuff? Like, that could be really cool. And then maybe even start to think about, like, start to think about some of the famous alums that have. Have passed through that have graduated. Like, I think Mark Consuelos, for example, went to USF from.

Wait, he's married Kelly Mark.

Which, by the way, that's. That's one of my claim to fames. I was going to tell you. So it used to be Kelly and Ryan, when it was Ryan Seacrest. And during COVID it was like 2021. I got really into the show because I was like home every day for the first time, and I was like, watching it every morning. And then I was like, DVRing it. And then. And then I applied to be. To do the. The travel trivia where you call in and they actually. A producer called me one day. I was getting my kids ready. It was like 8 in the morning, and I got a call and they're like, do you want to be on the show in an hour? And I was like, sure. And so my wife took the kids to school. And the cool thing, the interesting thing about this, this whole travel trivia thing is the producer, they want you to win. They want to help you out. And she was like, you know, you can Google the answers or whatever. I was like, okay, like, cool. But the other thing you don't realize is, like, you have an hour in between. So she called me at 8. I was gonna go on at 9. And I've been DVRing the show. So I watched the episode from the previous day and like, took notes about stuff that they said, because that's usually what they ask you about is like on yesterday's show, blah, blah, blah. And so that was kind of like my. My little secret. But now I get. I just gave it away. But Kelly. Yeah, it's Kelly and Mark. They're. They're married. And I'm pretty sure he went to. To USF or knew that.

That's actually crazy.

But that's like, you'll be surprised if you reach out to people and like, tell them what you're doing. You'd be surprised how many people like, yeah, it's not going to be, you know, you're not gonna get 100, but you might, you might get like. Especially if they're an alum, you might get like, 1 out of 10 are gonna say yes. And if you're asking some of the bigger names, like, you never know. So, so I would try to like, think big, like shoot for the stars. Like, that's my, that's my biggest advice for you guys. And like, if you get a couple episodes, like go viral, like if you're putting on YouTube or whatever, like that could be really cool. And then that, that can really be something that you could put on your resume of like, look what I did to the show. Like we took the show from, you know, we had blank monthly listeners. Like, we, you know, increased our social profile and thinking about it across. Of like not just, not just the podcast, but think about creating the content across other platforms too. Because what I tell my clients, like basically why I work with them, why, why I love working with them is, is because the, the, the long form content is not just, it's not just about the long form interview. It's about taking that, that long form content and turning into short form, turning into social posts, clip video clips and you know, short form little articles that you can put on LinkedIn and stuff like that. By the way, this is going to.

Yeah, I think we're almost out of time.

Yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna up. I can upgrade right now. Unless, unless you want to just end it in 10 minutes.

But yeah, we can like end it in like five minutes.

Okay. We. Do you have a couple more quick questions?

Yeah, the. Pretty much the last question I have. We actually kind of hit all my questions.

Oh, that's good.

Like you wrap in fire. It was just. Yeah, everything but the. I think you already answered this one too. What's one piece of advice you would leave with students like, who are going into this? I feel like we already kind of covered that. Right.

Yeah, I think, yeah, I talked about that a little bit. I would say focus on like, there's always a question of like, do you want to be, do you want to be in marketing? Do you want to be a generalist? Or do you want to be sort of like an expert in like one specific thing? Right. And I think there's, there's two arguments for both sides. Like I think right now, like, you, you want to learn about everything and figure out what you like best and like get really good at definitely content creation. Because if you're creating content, you could always do that for yourself and build your personal brand and then, you know, you, you don't always have to rely on, you know, you own your own brand and your own content and I think that's, that's super important. But yeah, that's that's my, my main thing. I always look, I always think about marketing as. There's a lot. There's so many different elements and so many different parts of marketing. But they all, like I said, they all are going towards that end goal of affecting people's decisions. And 90, I think there's a B2B marketing rules, like 95 of people at any one time, like aren't in market to buy your product. And that's why content marketing becomes so important because you need to like, engage people when they're not necessarily like in the market or ready to buy whatever it is you have. So if you could get really good at like thinking about how to engage people, how to like tap into their emotions, how to tell stories, I think that's the most, one of the most valuable skills, if not the most valuable skill because like you could obviously talk about a product to your right in the face about like the feet product and features and benefits. But that, and that's great. If someone's ready to buy that particular product, they want to know about it. But at the end of the day, like most people at any one point in time are not thinking about that and you have to just get in their headspace during that other point in time. And so that's why it's like the battle for attention and, you know, storytelling. You have to be engaging. And so that. Yeah, that's kind of what I've been thinking about a lot.

Really good advice. Where, before we go, where can listeners connect with you? Like, what's your plug, your LinkedIn like?

Oh, yeah. So my website's wonderfish XYZ. I did buy wonderfish pr.com and it redirects, but my main domain is wonderfitch XYZ. And then you can find like, I need to, to be honest with you, I. And I think I might hire my daughter, my daughter to do this. She's 13. I need to build up an Instagram. I don't even have an Instagram for Wonder Fish. I'm. I'm only focusing right now on LinkedIn, which there is a. There is a LinkedIn page for wonder Fish and then there's my James Kalisher. You could find me if you want to reach out to me and if, and if also if you want to message me, you know, maybe, maybe you're looking, want an internship next semester or whatever. I'm always open for stuff like that. Go to wonderfish XYZ and there's a contact page. Yeah. Or you could find. Or you could email me. Jay Calistra. It's my first initial last name. C O L I S T R aonderfish. Xyz.

Yeah. That's amazing. The Instagram. I would suggest doing that.

Yeah, I think Instagram is great because you could do the video clips on there.

The reels.

Yeah, yeah. The reels of the podcast appearances. That's what I'm going to start doing, for sure. Yeah.

This is. This is probably going to be a real. At one point.

That's awesome.

But thank you so much for joining us today, James. And I hope you continue to listen to AMA off the clock.

I am. No, you guys are doing great. Keep. Keep going with it. And maybe I could come back on and talk to. Talk. Talk to Zara sometime. Is it Zara or Zara? Zara.

Zara, yeah.

Come back and talk to Zara sometimes. Store. Yeah, like store. That's right. So I think you do big things, though. I'm excited for you guys.

Thank you so much. And thank you so much for the opportunity to sit down with you and talk with you.

Yeah, absolutely. It was really fun. Thanks, Noah.

Yeah, thank you so much. All righty.

I'll talk to you later.