Podcasts Are Power | James Colistra | Full Battery Media

I think people are actually craving more long-form formats of content. And I think that's one of the reasons why podcasts are striving and doing so well. And you see a continuous increase. I think we're up to at least more than 50%, if not more of the population, at least in the US, is consuming podcasts on a regular basis because so much of media is just ultra-processed and curated, cut down and edited and people like these long-form conversations. And the good thing about going on a podcast, like if you're doing what I'm doing now, going and talking to you, is you get this long-form conversation, but then if you do wanna cut it into clips, you could do that and share that across social. That's something that we help people with as well.

Well, welcome everybody back to the Full Battery Media Podcast. I am your host, Sean Trace, and I've got an awesome guest with me today. Would you like to tell people who you are and a little bit about what you do?

Absolutely. And I'm just learning a lot about who I am in recent months. So I think I'll get into that. But who I am right now in 2026 is the founder of Wonderfish. My name is James Colistra, by the way. And Wonderfish really is a podcast booking agency if I wanted to describe it in one phrase or a couple words. But That's essentially what we're doing is we help our clients who are founders, CEOs, expert-led business owners, expert-led businesses get on podcasts. So that's what I'm focusing on now, but that could change. It is kind of evolving a little bit, so.

Well, that's awesome, man.

Yeah, I was just gonna say, I spent my career in media, so I came from the media side of things. I was most recently at Forbes for about 10 years, and prior to that, I bounced around a little bit. I was at The Economist, I was at Robb Report. So I come from the media publication side.

Well, that's the interesting question then. Like how did you go into media and publications? What got you started on down this path?

I honestly, originally I wanted to be in advertising because I really love the creativity side of things and the whole advertising marketing world. And I actually, I remember reading a book, this was way back in high school. I read a book called Hey Whipple, Squeeze This, which was all about ad copywriting. And so that's kind of where I wanted to begin. Majored in advertising, minored in marketing, and then I started to veer off and I learned about this whole world of strategy, like they call it account planning in advertising, right? And I was trying to get into that field. I actually went to this program at Miami Ad School called Bootcamp for Account Planners. That was back in 2010, and I was a handful of years out of college. I was trying to find my way. And I had worked, I'm from upstate New York, so I had worked for a couple of small ad agencies/media buying agencies, but they're small market. Albany, New York was where I was from. And so then I decided that I wanted to work in the big New York City ad industry. And that's where I went full on, just applied for jobs. And it wasn't, it was taking me a little while. I had some good advertising agency interviews, couple of second interviews, but I ended up landing a job, just one that I found on LinkedIn at The Economist. And that was my first job in media. I was a marketing manager. And I learned, I just learned that I really loved that side of things because when I wanted to be on the advertising agency side, what I liked about it was the idea that you're solving problems, you have new clients and coming up with ideas. Just one week it might be one brand, you're working on another brand. And I still had that component of things on the media side, but I felt like this was my experience. The media The media publications have, to me, had a little bit more of like a work-life, better work-life balance for the most part compared to some of like the agency jobs that I really heard about in this industry. So for about close to 20 years I spent doing media, but media has just changed so dramatically. And just in the past 5 years or even the past 2 years, it's changing rapidly. So.

It's wild how fast the entire landscape has changed. A couple years ago, I remember when my daughter was born and someone booked my wife to do— my wife's a famous singer in Vietnam. They booked her to do a TVC, traditional TVC, and they're like, well, this is going to go online. It's going to be— and they filmed it and they had this big crew fly out from Australia and they invested in having All of these lovely shots done. And then years later, that was 10 years ago, you know? And then years later, a couple years later, there was like, all right, well, we're gonna do vlogs. You know, a couple years later it was like, let's do some shorter clips that are gonna live on social. And then, you know, now it's just like these like 90-second reels. And it's like the way that people tell stories is changing. The tools people have to tell stories is changing like dramatically. And one of the things that I noticed with that— Is that, especially now with the introduction of AI, sometimes it can feel forced. Like the stories are, we're trying to have— companies are trying to figure out how to hammer home their message in a time slot that is super short. And people are trying to figure out how to hammer in their branding in a very compressed method. And a lot of people have turned almost to spamming people like this, just like, let's just hammer. I work with a lot of business people and they just like, I need to figure out how I can have 90 reels a month. And I'm just like, or make less and make 'em good. Try to figure out what's gonna actually tell the impactful stories that you're gonna have. And it's interesting because as it changes, the art of storytelling is still the same. It's just the medium is constantly evolving.

Yeah, I say that all the time, actually. The way that I look at storytelling and media is that while the technology is changing extremely rapidly with the advent of AI and all the algorithms are changing, and so Technology moves at a rapid pace, but at the same time, the principles of storytelling and consumer psychology and the way that we make decisions, that's pretty much stayed the same for hundreds of years, right? Which is kind of fascinating to me. I always study what goes behind a decision, even, and most particularly, I've been looking at the B2B decision-making side of things because a lot of people neglect to realize that They think about on the consumer side, there's emotional decision-making that's happening when people, they wanna buy a car, this is really sexy or whatever it might be. But people don't realize that on the B2B side, emotion plays just as huge of a role. And so the emotional side of your brain really has to connect with the logical side. So I think, but to your point about the way that the media has shifted in terms of these quick soundbite, these quick 90-second, 30-second reels, Mm-hmm. I think it's cheapened a lot of the content in a way where I think people are actually craving more long-form formats of content. And I think that's one of the reasons why podcasts are striving and doing so well. And you see a continuous increase. I think we're up to at least more than 50%, if not more, of the population, at least in the US, is consuming podcasts on a regular basis because so much of media is just ultra processed and curated, like cut down and edited. And people like these long-form kinds of conversations. And the good thing about going on a podcast, like if you're doing what I'm doing now, going and talking to you, is you get this long-form conversation, but then if you do wanna cut it into clips, you know, you could do that and share that across social. That's something that we help people with as well.

Yeah, I love it, man, because it's like one of the things too is like, I 100% agree. You know, when I was a kid, I remember that we would drive places and my dad would just consume sports talk radio. You know, it would be on the radio all the time, wherever we went. And yet it was very, one of the things that challenged me about it is that you'd be sitting there listening and maybe you like the Celtics or the Lakers or whatever team is your team. And then 2 seconds later, it's talking about the NHL. And then a couple minutes later, it's talking about this. And the challenge was, is we'd be enjoying listening to one thing, but then another person would come onto the radio station and it's not something that we enjoyed. And so it was this very unfiltered version of consuming information. And one of the beautiful things now is I think with the rise of podcasts, good and bad, but you can really filter the information that you're wanting to work towards. wanting to do these murder mysteries, dude, you can listen to murder mysteries all day. You know, if you wanna listen to some types of sports thing, it's like you can very much do that. And it allows us to have that. And when you're into the Shorts arena, you can sit there and go, hey, here's, you know, I'm going to the Shorts that I like from this group because it's condensed, you know, condensed, powerful, delivered information from that conversation. And so for me, it's like, It has allowed creators the ability to really hone in on their audience, and it's allowed consumers at the same time to also be very clear about what they're consuming.

Yes. And you make a good point about the local radio. I mean, I sometimes, I live in New Jersey and sometimes I do listen to the fan and But the benefit of, that's the local sports radio when I wanna hear what they're, I kind of will tune in to hear what they have to say about the New York Giants, right? Or I'll call in. I actually called in once recently. And so it's just kind of fun because there is a benefit of sort of that local flair to it where you kind of feel like you're listening as a community, but at the same time you lose out. Like where I think you're referring to is—

Yeah.

the trend of sort of like an on-demand format where you can at any point in time, and that's kind of the world that our kids have grown up with, where like any point in time you can go on Spotify, you can go on Apple and you can on demand play exactly what you want when you want it. And it doesn't really matter if like the schedule, some programming director sitting in his office decided like that's what you were gonna listen to at that particular time. And I think that's the way that things have definitely evolved to. But I do think there is some benefit to having Like, I don't know how long it's gonna take for the local radio to go away or if it will go away, because I do think there are certain people that still like that sort of sense of community where everyone's tuning in at one point in time. Same with like a sporting event where everyone, I don't know what they call that, but there's a word for that when everyone is at one time in sync, watching together, listening together. And even podcasts sometimes are doing it. I think with the Jason Kelce podcast, when they had Taylor Swift on, I know that people were able to tune in live and watch it. So sometimes there's a little bit of a mix of both, but for the most part, it's become on demand for sure.

Well, that's awesome. It's interesting too, because I didn't think about that, that communal listening is a powerful thing. Yeah, communal.

That's exactly what I was thinking. Yeah.

And a lot of the, what do you call it? It is early for me, so my brain is only like 30% on. A lot of the podcasts are also then throwing their content up on— a lot of radio stations are throwing their content up on podcasts as well, either additional stuff or things like that.

But a lot of radio shows are becoming podcasts. Yeah, that's true.

Exactly. A lot of creators are starting to look at podcasting as their next move. You see some of these big YouTubers that are like, dude, I need a podcast. Why do you think podcasting is still such a powerful format in the creator economy? Why is this thing still a juggernaut?

Well, there's a couple of factors. I think number one, there's definitely a low— there's become a very low barrier to entry, right? Where if you get a Riverside account, it's not very hard. It's not that expensive to get a decent webcam, decent microphone. So for the most part, anyone can do it. But at the same time, that that presents a challenge because now everyone's doing it. So how do you stand out? And, you know, if there's, right now I think roughly there's about 500,000 active shows that are publishing within the past month or so. And so there's a lot of content out there, right? And so I think the benefit though is the, I look at it this way, when I was, so when I was at Forbes, I saw how valuable it is to build your own audience, 'cause that's what we did. We built our own audience and you have control over that. So I think that is the main benefit. To have control of an audience that you're not on the whim of Facebook or whoever it might be. And obviously you need those partners to help distribute the content and help get eyeballs and listeners and things like that. But the beauty of doing your own thing is you're in control. You can have whoever you want on, you could ask the questions you want, you can frame everything exactly how you— so there's so many benefits. And eventually I think I will create my own show, but the reason I haven't done so yet and the reason I'm focusing right now on what's called podcast guesting is to me, it's actually a quicker way to get from A to B to build. Instead of building an audience from scratch, you're essentially borrowing existing audiences, people that have devoted hours of time or money and built up the audiences themselves, right? So that's what I do. And there's a whole process to it because like I said, because of the fact that there's so many shows, there's, like I said, 500,000, there's actually 3 to 4 million shows that have been created, but most shows don't get past the 3rd episode. I think 90% don't get past the 3rd episode. episode just because of the difficulty of doing anything consistently becomes difficult when life gets in the way and that sort of thing, right?

Yeah.

So what I'm— yeah, what I've been doing is I actually, because we have the ability now with AI and we could code, vibe code, I actually code— I vibe coded a tool that helps with the analysis and the podcast discovery and the selection process. Well, yeah, so that, that's kind of the main benefit is, is helping people to analyze the shows, find the right shows, get on the right shows. And then I basically become a service where I'm a full-service, basically white glove agency that helps with the calendar coordination, get you on the show. And then there's like the preparation for the show and then there's the distribution of it. So there's all along the way, there's elements of helping people with that process. And that's, that's what I've been focusing on.

So that's beautiful, man. You and I are occupying cool opposite ends of the spectrum for podcasting. Like you're helping people get onto shows. And my, my whole thing is like, I found the niche of like where you described few people make it past the 3rd show. That's my whole thing. I am a company that like drags people along that line because there's the tools are there. And I said to people like, well, why just like, why can't I just use Riverside? I'm like, do it.

Yeah.

Are you going to keep it up? Are you going to keep going? And they're like, well, and I said, that's where I'm at. Like, I operate as like a, you know, a, I'm a company that helps people put everything together, get it all going and keep going. Because the reality is, is with podcasting, you're not going to see the results you want to see until episode 20, 30, 50, you know?

Yeah.

And like at that point in time, you've actually created this And even then you might not have the numbers. But one of the things that I talk about with podcasting is podcasting has this weird superpower of networking people. Like you do not have, if you reach out to Joe Johnson, who's the head of the ag board in Texas and go, I want to talk to you for 30 minutes and find out about your— he's going to be like, I don't know who the hell you are. But if you say, hey, Joe Johnson, I've got this podcast and I'd like to have you on and share your story for 30 minutes. Joe Johnson's going to be like, well, I'd love to share my story. People like that. And then suddenly you've created a real human connection. And I'm not even talking using that connection or like, this is not like, well, I'm going to use this guy and network with him. No, you've just created human capital. You have created the ability to create a relationship. I had a post the other day, I had a thing that I'll, you'll like this. I had a, I've been doing a lot of podcasts. I have 5 podcasts. I'm a bit insane like that. But right. I was talking to this one guy and I have this financial podcast where I don't know anything about money, but I created a financial podcast because I wanted to learn about money and educate my daughter. And that was the whole goal. So I started interviewing all these financial planners and money coaches. And then this one guy who's pretty big in the industry came up to me and he said, Sean, I don't know who you are. No idea. But I see you having conversations with people I do know, and those are great conversations. And I want to have a conversation with you as well. And he just recommended a couple new clients for me the other day. And from that conversation, I didn't ask him to, I just said, hey, I want to pick your brain about something. He's like, Totally love it. We chatted and this was after the podcast. And then he said, hey, Sean, I'm sending some people your way to talk. And I was just like, this interconnectedness, this networking is beautiful. And I think that's something that people don't realize is so powerful.

100%. There's a huge network effect. I think podcast hosts like you are the super connectors that are making those referrals, making those connections. And a lot of times people don't realize that. And when I find a show that I want to go on or that I want one of my clients to go on, a lot of times they don't know where to start when they're analyzing the show. They're like, oh, how's it doing on YouTube? There isn't a lot of great metrics or public data out there about each individual show. There's something called Listen Notes, which God knows where that data is coming from because the CEO of Listen Notes doesn't reveal how a show gets a high percentage on there because he doesn't quote unquote, want people to game the system. But without the transparency, it's hard to know if that's actually valuable data. So I think there is a value to it, but I don't know exactly where all that data is coming from. I guess it's based on a number of different public signals such as social mentions or— I don't really know. Apple ratings could be another thing that it looks at. But at the end of the day, what I tell people is look at the host. Look how influential the host is. Like, look how big their following is and what they're doing on social and how people are engaging with their content. And that is probably a much better signal than anything. And then you could also look at the guests that have been on the show. And I do use AI sometimes to help analyze it and look at, oh, look how influential these guests are because you're actually entering that ecosystem, right? If Sean's had, you know, I know actually we were connected through Miriam Katz who went on your show, Sean Trace Show.

Super cool.

Yeah, she's actually someone that I've been really excited about partnering with lately, and now I'm gonna be hopefully excited about partnering with you. So, right, so like she went on your show, I saw that she was on your show, and then I think I commented on it and then you reached out to me. And so it's just kind of this chain of people connecting. But yeah, Miriam, she's the public speaking coach. And so a huge part of my business is potentially going to be shifting to where I can either refer people to someone like her or eventually have maybe even embedded into the offering where like you're going on a pod— or you're starting to do podcasting for the first time or podcast guesting. A lot of these people are nervous or they haven't really done it before. They can improve. Even my own self, there's a lot of work that I can do that I'm starting to do when it comes to speaking. And I am— she is— Miriam is helping me out and I'm doing a workshop with her this week that I'm organizing, but she's leading it in the sense that she's basically teaching people how to be a better speaker and they can use that for podcasts, but you can use it for anything, right? Live events or talking to your kids. It doesn't even matter. Like there's a lot of ways where you can be a better speaker that could help you out. So I'm excited about working with her.

I love that, dude. That's awesome. And she's awesome, by the way. One of the nicest, most genuine people I've ever met. But like, you're right though. This Full Battery Media podcast, And it's for my company, but like, it's not because I wanted to sit there and say, people are like, why are you inviting all these people who might be competitors onto your company's podcast? And I said, because there's, it's not a zero-sum game, man. It's life is not a zero-sum game. You know, it's not I win, you lose. I'm like, if I can show people that there are awesome people out there doing content creation and we can connect these people, and maybe at some point in time those people say, hey, let's work with Sean. Great. That would be wonderful. But at the same time, even if they don't, if we can spread this ecosystem of people that are like doing awesome stuff, it just grows and builds. And one of the things too is like, like with this Full Battery Media podcast, it's a newer one, but I wanted to like, initially my Sean Trey Show was a content creator podcast, but then I shifted and I was like, you know, I want to do more self-helpy type stuff. So I shifted that direction, which is totally okay.

Mm-hmm.

But yeah, I still wanted to be able to talk to people about content because dude, I've been doing content now for 20-some years. And what was interesting was I had this one guest that was a huge reach. She worked for one of the top YouTubers and she was like, hey, I'd love to find out more about your podcast. And then she went and looked. I was like, okay, here's the link to the podcast. I said, it doesn't have a bunch of views. But it doesn't have a bunch of followers. But here's what I've been doing so far. And she looked and she's like, I know all these people. This is a good group of people. I'd like to be part of this group that you're— and just like you said, she's like, I want to be part of this community now. And so she came on and it was a great thing.

And a lot of things— another thing that people don't realize too is with a newer show, just because it doesn't have a lot of views yet, people go back in time. And especially if you're building this catalog of like a Most of this content is evergreen for the most part, where people are gonna want to go back, you know, a year from now, 2 years from now, people are gonna look at all these guests cuz people like to hear people. If you're following someone and, um, say you're applying for a job and you want to go back and see, oh, I'm gonna search the CEO. Oh, they were on this podcast. And then they, they might discover the podcast and then they might just start listening to all the episodes and kind of binging. So there's a lot of different ways that you can consume content. And just because a show is new does, I think people need to think about the bigger picture and that it's a bigger network effect and a bigger broad, basically a broader ecosystem that you're entering, which I think is really cool.

I love that. I love talking about it as a broader ecosystem because that is 100% the way I look at it. You are entering into this beautiful community that you get to be a part of. But I wanted to ask you another question too. Like for someone who already creates content on YouTube, LinkedIn, or TikTok, how should they think about adding a podcast or becoming— guesting on podcasts or going near the podcast ecosystem and just instead of just creating another content channel? Like, because you pointed out maybe you don't have to create your own stuff, but maybe you just start integrating into these systems. How can people really use the power of podcasting? You know, Yeah.

And maybe it's even both. Like, I don't think it necessarily has to be one or the other. You could have your— you could start a show. You can, um, you could even do— one of the things I've started doing is live streaming. And eventually it might turn into podcasting where I'm doing— I've been doing some LinkedIn Lives and that kind of gets you in the practice of, you know, being on camera, being in front of people, being, um, just kind of on, being on, if you will, and being able to— because a lot of this is improvising too, where— and that's what Miriam talks a lot about, right?

Yes.

You know, you don't prepare every single answer or every single, like you didn't tell me what the questions were going in. And I think that's the beauty of this, where you need to be able to just kind of roll with it. So I would say, yeah, try, and there's different services. I know Riverside probably has some sort of livestream option. I've been starting to use StreamYard. That's how I've been streaming on LinkedIn because you can't just go on LinkedIn and hit go live like you can on some of the other platforms. But, um, I would also say. Think about if you're going on other people's shows, it actually is a fuel for your content engine where you're having these long-form conversations. Those can be clipped and they can— one hour-long conversation that could turn into 10 posts, 20 posts, who knows? You know what I mean? So you can let it extend.

100%.

Yeah. And it's not just about that one conversation. I mean, that can have so much life. And one last thing about this that I wanna mention is, yeah, about the podcast guesting. So there's all these benefits. One of them is like, the first one is that connection with the host and the connection with the audience. The second one is the ability to create content and fuel your content engine. Sorry, I need to slow down.

No worries.

But the third thing that I wanted to mention is the SEO, which is now becoming GEO of this whole world, which is generative engine optimization. And when I go on a show or when anyone goes on a show, you will publish that on, it gets published, the show notes get published on Spotify, Apple, and people need to remember that that becomes almost like getting an article published where you get the backlinks. So if you're putting my link from my website, like that becomes like a backlink. But not only that, AI is picking that up now. So now it's in the form of citations where someone goes to ChatGPT and they might search my name or who's James Colistra, what's Wonderfish. AI is looking at third-party credibility as a really heavy, they're putting a heavy weight in terms of putting that up front and affecting the answers. And I think about it this way because I love the phrase perception is reality. And Lee Atwater was the guy, I had to remember his name. I wrote it down here. Lee Atwater is a political strategist in the '70s. And the reason I love that phrase is because so much of the way people think about you and your brand and your company is based off perception. And it might not necessarily be true or false, or it just, that's just the perception that they have, right? And you could be the best entrepreneur in the world, But if you don't have good communication skills and if you're not out in front of people and you're not doing content and all this good stuff, no one's gonna know about you. So you have to be affecting people through media and forms of media like this is that media is actually shaping people's perception, right?

Yeah.

And taking a step further now in this age of AI, media, Or AI is actually the intermediary between media and humans. So AI is actually being shaped by the media now. So AI is going, crawling or however AI works, whatever it's called, crawling, I guess, like the web.

Mm-hmm.

It's actually being impacted by how you're being portrayed in the media. And so that's why I think it's making a huge comeback, PR in general, because of that. So it's pretty cool.

I love it. And like one of the things that I think about is if you're a business person and, you know, you're able to sit there and get out there and start creating the stories around yourself, you get to create the narrative, you get to be part of shaping the narrative. And that's not something that was always that way. You know, it used to be, you know, they would talk about you and you'd be like, oh God, the news stories came out about me today, Jimmy, and I don't know what to do about it, you know? And now you get to sit there and go, oh no, there's a bad news story. Well, let's go hit the podcast circuit. And I mean, nowhere could you see it. And I don't talk politics on things, but you could see this in the last election, like where—

Mm-hmm.

The last election. And some candidates were just like, what was it? Trump went on to the Joe Rogan podcast and Kamala was not willing to. And not just that, the podcast she did go on was heavily edited. And for me, people go, oh, how much do you edit it? I'm like, I keep— I keep it pretty raw, man. If someone's dog walks in the scene, sometimes I'll just be like, dude, let's keep the dog. Who doesn't love a dog, man? And so my point being is like the social power of podcasts is really huge right now and you can't downplay that.

Yeah, I mean, there's a reason why Trump and every major tech CEO is going on podcasts and they see how important it is. I think it came out that Barron, his son, was actually the one who was telling him which ones to go on. You need to go on these, because he knows how many of his friends are listening, and it has a huge impact. It has a major impact on the way people perceive you. But I think the beauty of it, if you're a founder, you're starting your own personal brand and trying to build your own personal brand, is you have the ability to shape your narrative, like you said.

Yes.

And I, for a long time, I wasn't doing anything, because I was internal. I was at Forbes, I had this big brand behind me. I didn't need to go out there and shape my own narrative or message, or I wasn't going on podcasts. But now I don't really have a choice. I'm a very small company and the way that people perceive you and getting people to like you through content and increasing your trust is everything. But I was actually scared for a while when, so I was actually, quick story, I was actually laid off from Forbes in January of 2024. And for the longest time, well, at first it shook me because I was there for 10 years and I really built my identity in that role. And—

Yeah.

I knew towards the end of my time there, I saw how much media was changing and I started to think about maybe I wanna go do something else or find it. I was even thinking about moving internally within the company. I was talking to some different executives, but I didn't make any moves and ended up getting laid off, which kind of stung because I really loved the brand. I loved the company. I loved the people I worked for. But the hardest thing I didn't realize, I didn't want to, I didn't want to tell my kids because, you know, I felt like I was kind of gonna let them down. And I, you know, you're a dad, you know how important it is that you want them to be proud of you and what you do and everything, right?

Yeah.

And so like 2, yeah, like 2 days, I waited like 2 days and finally I told my, my daughter was 8 years old at the time. And I'm like, you know, I told them what happened and she was like, I'll never forget. She goes, she looks at me and she goes, Daddy, why did they get rid of you? You're the best. And I'm like, like it just tore at me. I'm like, you know, I tried to explain to her like, it's just part of, it's part of business. This is the way, you know, I know, I know, honey, I'm going to find some. But from that, from that moment, I, kind of had this realization that, you know, I wasn't going to let my identity be shaped by some other corporation. And in the back of my head, like I was still applying for jobs for a while, but in the back of my head, I was like, I wanna build my own thing and I wanna do something that makes myself proud and makes my kids proud.

Fuck yeah.

And that was kind of a big turning point for me, but it also helped me realize that I was, So I ended up working with someone else from that was also laid off from Forbes. So she, her name's Nicole Ramirez and she's pretty big on LinkedIn. She has like 30,000 followers now or more. And I reached out to her because she was laid off a little bit after me. So I was laid off in January. I think she was laid off in July of 2024, but I was, we connected and Because we didn't really work closely when we were together at Forbes, but we kind of had something in common now. We were both laid off. And so I told her what I was doing with my podcast booking agency, and then I ended up representing her for a while and got her on some podcasts. And then I noticed that when she was going on these shows, she was actually telling her story about being laid off. And then it made me realize that I was actually holding back. I was afraid that if I went, like, I didn't even post about it on LinkedIn, and I was afraid that if I did that, like my image was going to be tarnished and people were going to think of me lesser or whatever. And I kind of came to this conclusion or this realization, and it was thankfully because of Nicole that she inspired me that she was telling her story. And I realized that this was a big part of my story and I needed to get out there. So I've started to tell that like I did to you, like tell the story a little bit. I shared it on LinkedIn and I think it's helped me build more connection. I think if you could show a little bit of vulnerability and show who you are and that you're, everyone goes through struggles and identity shifts and I'm essentially finding my voice. But now, and Miriam actually helped me realize this too, she's a great coach. She was like, you are helping other people.

She's awesome.

Yeah, you're helping other people find your voice because you didn't have a choice. Now you have to do that. And that's the beauty of What you're doing is you're using podcast guesting to help people get their voice and get their message out. But at the same time, there's like this parallel because I'm doing it for myself. So it was kind of interesting.

It's power, man. It's this power point that you are, you are finding a space to empower yourself because, you know, I, I tried to get a career in acting. I tried to get a career in media. I tried all these things and the gatekeeping was huge. The gatekeeping was so damn real and everyone just, yeah, you don't have this, you don't have that. And finally I was like, I want to be able to tell the stories I want to tell. Screw you guys and your thoughts about what deserves to be out there. I'm going to put out there what I like. And I did. And I just kept hammering. And it was really hard in the beginning because people were like, well, do I— is this guy good enough? Should I, you know, come on his channel? But then— I just kept going at it and I found that there were really cool people that wanted to have conversations. And one of the places that was the most interesting was with my wine podcast, 'cause God knows I have another one.

Yeah.

And, but you know what was wild is like the wine industry needed voices and I started creating wine podcasts because I grew up in the Napa Valley. My family wasn't winemakers, but I lived up there. They worked at a college in the Napa Valley. And one of the things I found is that no one was telling these stories. No one was doing this. No one was talking to winemakers. And suddenly I'm sitting here talking to winemakers that I never would have a chance to go and just walk into that winery and go. And my wife and I are flying back to Napa in 2 weeks, and I've got 12 tasting invites to the behind-the-scenes walkthrough, go sample from, taste from the barrels type stuff. And I'm just like, dude, how does that happen? I don't have any clout in this industry, But people go, you're telling great stories and you're talking to great people.

Yeah, that's awesome. I actually have a passion. Yeah, I have a passion for, for, I like wine, but I have a huge passion for hot sauce. And for a while I was making my own. Yeah, I was making my own spicy ketchup. It was called Farmer Jim's. I was selling in little farmers markets and stores around here. And the only reason I don't do it anymore is because I loved the, I had the passion for making it, but When it came to scaling it, I was gonna have to pay someone else to produce it at scale. And it just kind of took out the whole fun part of it for me. And I was, I was also working full-time and, you know, I didn't want to be distracted, but I ended up missing that being in that world. So I launched a couple years back, it's called The Secret Society, which is like an Instagram where I just review other hot sauces. I should, I should turn that into a podcast. But dude, I think I'm going to talk to you after we're done here.

You need to do a podcast about hot sauce, man, and title it that because I think that that's such a great podcast idea. And I think it's so much fun and it's so authentic because it's something that you enjoy doing. And like, as long as you enjoy doing it and talking about it, that's what I tell people. So I got one client that works and he wants to like build his clientele, you know? And I was like, well, just make an authentic podcast where you're talking to interesting people. Do I need to be selling there?

No.

No. And what about, do I need to sell my business? No. You're creating this network that then has— there's one of the best books on social media I ever read. It was back in the day. It was like 10, 15 years ago I read that book, but it's called Trust Agents. And the whole point was that what you are doing is building trust. You are building trust with your network, with the people that you're going to be coming to. And then eventually, once you have that trust, Then you have to be careful what you do with it, but you have the opportunity to open doors, be like, hey, you know what, guys? You know, my team, like I started, and I'm not going to talk about my podcast here, but I'm going to talk about content creation that I did early on. I got into content creation early, man. Like when YouTube was just a baby and I'm sitting there going, let's make videos, you know?

Yeah. That's great.

And I did it for this hair salon and dude, How I was a graduate student in acupuncture and Chinese medicine while also trying to be an actor while also living in LA. And I was like, I'm a martial artist. Weird stories I have, but I have a black belt in jiu-jitsu. And when I was getting my black belt in jiu-jitsu, Japanese-style jiu-jitsu, which is similar to judo, my teacher taught us all massage. So I knew massage. So I started working at this spa as a side hustle. Really roundabout shit, man. But when I was there, I was getting into like social media. It was coming up and I was like, I had a knack for this because I knew how to tell, tell stories. I knew how to make basic videos. And I was like, at that time I was like, well, let's learn iMovie, learn iMovie. Then I learned Premiere and then all that. And this is old school Premiere. That shit was hard. Um, you know, and so I was making these videos at this hair salon and she bought me a cheap little flip cam that was like this square box that had a little tiny camera here and it had a USB thing that flipped out and I could copy videos off that.

Mm-hmm.

No DSLR even. It was just this little thing. But I started making these videos and editing them together, poor lighting and all this. But what was wild is that this hair salon, we were getting people flying in from Ohio, from Arkansas who said, I want to have Nellie do my hair. I want to have Jimmy do my hair, because they were watching our videos and they were like, I love watching these. And they were basic, but people were tuning in.

Yeah.

And what happened was, You had this community that was being built that you can't even see. You don't even realize, but they're there and they're growing and they're consuming you. And now with my podcast, there are people that sit there and go, I went to this one event and someone came up to me like, hey, hey, hey, I know you. And I was like, what are you talking about, man? Like, you're Sean Trace. You got that Growing Money podcast. And I was like, dude, you watch my stuff? I didn't know you were watching. That's awesome. Someone randomly came up to me and knew my podcast. That's rad.

That is cool. But you're absolutely right. There is something to be said about building trust. And I think there's probably a science behind it where the more time you spend with someone, obviously the percentage of the chance of trusting them is gonna go up. I mean, it could go the opposite way if they say something you don't like, but for the most part, if you're being authentic and you're being, you know, you're a likable person, I'm a fairly likable person, I think. And if you put yourself out there, People are gonna spend more time with you and they're going to be much more likely to wanna either do business with you or partner with you or whatever it might be. But you also made me think of something when you were talking about, you mentioned the word gatekeeping because—

Yes.

I think this world in the olden days, right, of network media and the way that you used to have to be a journalist, this idea that if you didn't go to journalism school and you're, When I was at Forbes, so I started at Forbes in 2014. I was right on the cusp. I think they had launched something in 2010 called the contributor model. And that was kind of revolutionary for Forbes and driving within the industry where they, a lot of companies do this now where you don't have to be a staff writer for Forbes to publish content or publish articles. And then they ended up opening up to brands. They called it Brand Voice. But the idea is that everyone could join the conversation. Right. And just because you're not a trained journalist, obviously there's going to be some— when it comes to writing articles, there might be some decrease in the quality of the content and the quality of the writing. But for the most part, what Forbes was doing was finding these topic experts that whether it's accounting or finance or whatever it might be, marketing, these are people that are in the trenches that have a lot of ideas or have a lot of thoughts and observations, why not give them a voice? And I think podcasts is another element of that, another opportunity for people to get out there, get their message, get their ideas across. And you don't have to necessarily have gone to Northwestern School of Journalism or whatever it might be to do that. So, you know, that's the beauty of it.

Why couldn't— like, and this is my thing, you love hot sauce, right? Are you a chef? No. Are you, you know, from a certain part of the world that, you know, like, are you— no, like, you know, are you like born in that hot sauce capital of the world? And dude, I now I want to look up what the hot sauce capital of the world is because that's a cool question, you know. Is it somewhere in Mexico? Is it El Paso?

You know, I was gonna say like, I don't know, Austin, Texas, like somewhere in Texas. Yeah.

Right. So, but like, you don't have to be, you can sit out there and start doing great podcast to be like, all right, today. And like every episode you've got some new random hot sauce that you're trying and you're sitting there and, you know, it's borderline ASMR. It's a little bit socially awkward, but that's what's cool is like, you're like, dude, I'm going to— I got a burrito and I'm going to put this here. And you're like, goddamn. And, you know, and you set up, you know, it's got— I would rate this as a James scale 3. It's got 3 Jameses and you got 3 of your little face popping up on the bottom, you know? And it's like, you know, and you're just like— That's cool.

You do little graphics.

So you're like, ah, your, you know, head's on fire.

Like you do 3 episodes. I should, yeah, you're making me, the gears are going cuz I'm thinking of maybe the people that are coming on. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe the people that are coming on are like executives. They're executives, but then they're, they're sharing their favorite sauce. Like they're, they're business leaders or whatever it is, but they're sharing like their favorite hot sauce. See, I, I like that.

That's, that's what, like, what was, was it Hot Ones or the one, the website where they have celebrities come on and ch— Hot Ones, like try the hot sauce. But like, you could be doing that with a whole different demographic. And then like, suddenly you sit there and you're like, I'm just gonna play around with this. But after a year, like, or 2, dude, you're the hot sauce guy. And like, but you don't have to just be the hot sauce guy. One of the things that's cool now is like, well, Sean, you need to niche down. You're doing money and wine and content. And they're like, you should pick one. I said, why? Because all of them build my network. And like, that's true. That's one of the things I think that like some, one of my clients was like, I'm a person. I'm like, I'm a financial advisor. I should do a financial advisor podcast. And I said, why? Like it, you don't need to. You're simply building a network, talking about things you like. And then maybe those people end up becoming your clients. Like you're just building network and you're talking about what you love because that's way more authentic.

Yeah. I went on a show, it's called Marketing Agency Power Hour. The guy, his name is Cal, I think it's Cal Wilder. He is smart because he's a CPA and he has a company, I think it's called SmartBooks, where he does your books and does bookkeeping and stuff. But he interviews marketing people because he realizes that's a huge opportunity. Like a lot of his customers are marketing agency owners. So that's who he's interviewing. And a lot of people are using this as a way to build their businesses. And I think it's a really smart way to go about it. But I want to comment too, because I was listening to one of your shows and I heard you mention that your daughter, you do the YouTube show with your daughter, which I was super jealous that you do that because that was one of my biggest regrets. I never did a show or anything with my kids. And maybe it's not too late. They're 10 and 13. Maybe I will. But my wife was always against this idea of putting the kids like doing a channel or whatever. But I think it's so smart because number one, they're being creative and they're developing a muscle that can be used through the rest of their life. And I see them consuming content all the time. I'm like, I wish they were creating more content. Like sometimes they do their dances and whatever, but I think the idea of kids creating content is so smart. And Impressive that you, that you're building that with your daughter. I commend you for that.

One of the things too is like, it's a process she's growing into. Like, and now we've added in like the podcasting element where she's interviewing these people and the algorithm is punishing us for that shift. I don't care. I don't care because what this is about for me, dude, my daughter's had the chance to talk to Like a NASA scientist, all of these cool people. And like, if the algorithm is like, well, you are doing something different than before, you know what? So we do. And so my daughter gets to learn, you know, and she's learning and she's creating the slides now. And I said, she, she was doing a project for school and she's like, I love making slides. I said, now you're going to take over making slides for Ailani's Little World and make them fun. Well, what can, can I do it this way?

Yeah.

Do whatever you want. This is your project. This is you learning. And so as she gets older, I keep giving her more responsibility and she learns about having a job. She learns about like the ownership is there. And I mean, it's beautiful for that because you get to again shape the narrative, man. And that's, that's huge. Like my daughter's like, Dad, I really— because we live in Vietnam right now. She's like, I really want to go to college in America. Like the experience looks so cool. She said, I don't know how I can do that. I said, You keep this up, you keep Ailani's little world up, and you can get a scholarship to a big school. And I said, because they're going to see you as that smart girl who's got her YouTube channel, who does science and STEM videos. There's going to be a lot of schools that would want you to go there. That's huge, yeah. And so like, that's huge, man. You don't know. And like, and like, and even if not that, even if she doesn't get a scholarship, when you're going to apply to some school that you want to go to, who cares what the school is, but let's say you're applying and you need a reference. Well, remember that guy that you had on that was that like super scientist? Well, he works at this school. He can write you a recommendation about how smart Ailani is, you know?

Exactly.

And right there, like I'm creating this network for my kids too, man. Like podcasting, there's a great book from Eric Barker called Barking Up the Wrong Tree. Dude, if you haven't read it, James, go find it. It is phenomenal. It talks about success and he analyzes from a scientific basis what really creates success for people right now. One of the cool parts is he talks about supernetworkers and he talks about the power of supernetworkers. And he starts talking about how supernetworkers have— and when he thinks, one of the things he says is he's like, he also talks about luck in the same chapter. Do you know luck is real? Like luck actually is true. People who think they're lucky are more successful, but he starts breaking it down. The reason is, is because they take more opportunities. They take more chances because they think that luck— I'm going to get lucky. Yeah, I'm lucky. So I'm going to be lucky. So I'm going to interview 500 people. Do you know what it looks like for me to get people on my podcast? My workflow is every single day. I go through and I try it for each of my podcasts. I try to add about 50 to 60 people. And then of those, I'll get about 10 of them that will add me on LinkedIn. Of those 10, I'll get 2 people that will come on. But you know what? Those 2 people are awesome, real authentic relationships. And if they said yes, they're 2 people I want to know. They are 2 people.

Right.

And then of the people I get on my podcast, maybe 1 in 30 will be someone that I go like, dude, when we're done with this, James, I'm going to sit there and be like, James, we got to talk. We got, we got to stay in touch because like, dude, you, you're, you're, you're, you're doing cool stuff. And like that hot sauce podcast, man, dude, I want to help you have that, man. Like, and like, it's like, because it's so fucking cool. Hot sauce podcast.

Yeah. We're on, we're on, we're on the same wavelength. I feel like there's so much energy when it comes to these types of conversations and different, you know, you could feel the energy, but When you said, I was gonna mention the luck. When you said you can increase your luck, it made me think of, there's a podcast host named Justin Abrams. And I've actually gotten, I think, 2 of my clients on his show. It's called Strictly From Nowhere. He's a software owner or owner of an agency that builds software.

Okay.

And he likes the phrase, I don't know if he came up with this phrase, but he said he's gonna try to trademark it. It's increase your surface area for luck because That's what you're doing with, whether you're going on shows, whether you're hosting your shows, whether you're going to networking events, you're increasing your surface area for luck because like you said, the more chances you put yourself out there, the more chances you're gonna have to be lucky. And you're kind of creating a larger sample size for these opportunities. I think that's huge.

100%. You know, when, remember when you were a kid and you'd go near a pond and you'd drop a rock in the pond?

Yeah.

And what, what happened to the ripples? You'd see these ripples, right? You know, one small rock, you get tiny little ripples, one big rock, you get big ripples, but what happens? The ripples stop. The ripples stop after time. But what happens if you can get you and your friends and you start telling them, hey, can you throw this rock too? You know, and they throw a rock. Oh, it's rippling over there now. I didn't ripple over there before. I never, I never, I, my rocks never got into that part of the pond. Oh, hey, a rock just dropped over there. Now that's rippling over there. And when you get in a podcast, you're having all of these people and they're dropping rocks everywhere. And suddenly that whole pond is looking back going, what is shaking the surface? And they're all looking straight back at you. And they're like, that's shaking the surface. What is that thing that's causing all of this disturbance? And I'm not going to say that you're going to start a podcast and become successful, but I am going to say you start a podcast. You will start making more ripples in that pond. And when you make more ripples in that pond, the sky's the limit. You know, you are going to be creating relationships that help you grow because living in Asia, one of the things that I learned, it's very different culturally, but there is a core understanding that you do not succeed on your own. It is, you know, we have this do-it-myself approach in the West. But that's not how success works. That's not how life works. Life is a journey of relationships. And at the core of anything is, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Dude, that is so true. Obviously you do have to know something. You do have to have somewhat, but it is who you know. And if you can build out that network, man, it becomes a superpower.

So exactly. Yeah. And to end on that, the superpower is so true because being a human, our only competitive moat or advantage against AI is the ability to make connections, like to have lived experiences and to make human connections. Right. So AI can do pretty much anything, but I know for a fact, as of now, it can't do that. So that's our competitive advantage for sure. Yeah.

I want to ask you one last question. Where can people go to find out more about you and what you do at Wonderfish?

Great question. So you can go to my website, wonderfish.xyz. When you get there, there's a number of things I will ask you to check out because I put an assessment tool on there. It's called the Authority Index. So you get your score, you can, and it's a really great way to see where you stand when it comes to how much trust you've built and how much authority you've built. So you'll get a score and it'll tell you where you need to work work on things. So check that out. You can click book a meeting, you can fill out, there's a contact form or whatever if you wanted to actually reach out to me. But I think the authority index is pretty cool if you want to check that out, wonderfish.xyz. And I'm on LinkedIn, James Colistra on LinkedIn. That's probably my social media platform of choice, though I'm trying to build up my Substack. I just It just takes time and I haven't— I've been putting more energy in LinkedIn, but Substack is kind of cool too.