Your Brand Isn’t Working (Here’s Why) - James Colistra - Marketing Agency Power Hour - Episode # 043

This is the Marketing Agency Power Hour, and I'm your host, Cal Wilder. Each week we'll power through discussions on business challenges, success stories, and game-changing strategies. This show is sponsored by SmartBooks, provider of bookkeeping and accounting for marketing agencies.

Let's get started.

So I'm really excited to be speaking to today's guest. He's a podcast powerhouse, a media insider, a campaign creator, and an AI mastermind. He's led marketing strategy for events like the Forbes Under 30 Summit. He founded an AI-enabled podcast booking agency and is one of the sharpest minds in the modern podcast guesting and media strategy space. He's the founder and principal of Wonderfish, where he's the creator of the podcast Power Circuit. James Colistra, welcome to the show.

Thank you, Cal. It's really great to be here.

So what, what's the single most powerful strategy for success in your firm these days?

Sure. So Wonderfish operates in the, in the broad PR and marketing space. But what I think has allowed Wonderfish to be successful is really niching down as you mentioned, into the podcast space and focusing right now on systemizing the podcast guesting experience. And we do that in a number of different ways using AI and technology, but there's also really heavy human element and storytelling element focus. So what I think that allows us to do is, as I mentioned, systemizing this entire guest podcast guesting experience so that our clients, founders, CEOs, people that have stories and expertise and want to build trust at scale, it allows them to essentially show up ready to go and do the interviews and everything. All the work is kind of taken off their plate because obviously founders and CEOs are busy. So I think that's what's allowed Wonderfish to find some early success. And I say early because we're relatively new to the podcast world within the past 6 months. That's when we started to niche down into this podcast space.

Great. Yeah, I work with our production company on the podcast hosting side of things, which sounds maybe a little bit similar. They make it so easy for me. So shout out to Casey and his team at Ringmaster. But you're primarily focused on the guest side of things, right?

Sure. Yes. And at the same time, I mean, there's been plenty of hosts who have thanked me and even mentioned to my clients, oh, it's really great having Wunderfish and James. Because as much as we make it easier for the guest and prepare them, I mean, that's ultimately making it better for everyone, not only the guests and not only the guests in the audience, but also the hosts themselves who has someone that's showing up that's right fit and also is prepared and ready to go, as I mentioned, for the show. So.

Cool. So tell me more about how do you, what's like, what's the special sauce that you employ when you represent people who wanna get on podcasts?

Well, we always start at the same spot, which is, you know, any kickoff call that I conduct gets to the core and the essence of the client's story and messaging goals. And we create as much clarity as we can, not only for themselves for when they're going on the show, but for myself and my team so we could identify the right shows. Prior to even getting there, we do also kind of, I would say, pride ourselves in identifying the right clients because that's a huge part of it, right? You want to have people that have good stories to tell, that have some level of expertise. So it's not necessarily for anyone, although everyone, you know, people like to say everyone has a story, which is very true. But at the same time, we want to make sure that we're identifying individuals that Do have something to say, whether it's something contrarian or they could add value to whatever that particular show might be. So we always start out with finding out exactly what their story is because that's, I mean, a lot of people have come on your show. I listened to a couple of past episodes and they talked about how critical storytelling really is. And there's a science behind that. There's Number of reasons why. I mean, for ages we use stories to make sense of obviously the world around us and to, I mean, I think there's like a sort of wired component of our brain that is ready to listen to a story and is ready to hear. They wanna know what's gonna happen next. And so that when we start talking to our clients, we just, it's kind of like a mining session, sort of like a content mining session or whatever. And once we identify like what that story or message is, we always lead with that emotional trigger in the hook of the pitch that we're doing on their behalf. So that's really the, I think you asked for the secret sauce. I mean, I kind of just gave that away, but it's, there's not any, it's not rocket science. It's really just leading with a strong emotional hook and then finding the right shows. And that's the other secret sauce, which involves— the AI and, uh, there's, there's kind of a combination of using AI because there's 500,000 active podcasts right now from the research that I've done, uh, within the past. When I say active podcasts, I mean within the past 30 days.

500,000, you said?

500,000, yeah. I mean, there's about 3 to 4 million total podcasts in the world as far as podcasts that were, were started. The problem is I think 90% of podcasts don't get past like the 3rd episode. So there's a lot of stats around that because it's just very difficult to do a podcast. I mean, you know, from experience, it takes a lot of work, it takes a lot of time, and it takes a long time to build momentum, right? And so I always talk to people about, they'll come to me and they'll say, well, I'm not really sure, I'm thinking of starting my own podcast. And I'm always like not against starting a podcast. I think it's smart to build your own audience, but we're all about existing audiences. And so that, but the challenge really is, is identifying the right shows because the fact that there's 500,000 shows, it takes certain level of time and, you know, research and you gotta do a lot of, you know, whether it's reading descriptions and looking at all the data that's involved and there's kind of a data play there, right? And so I started out initially when I was focusing on podcasts using it off the shelf sort of SaaS platforms. There's a number of them out there, right? And it was working fine, but one of my core pillars or parts, one of the things that I always like to pride Wonderfish in, it's core to our philosophy, is just being constantly, I call it continuous improvement. I mean, I didn't invent that term, but constantly trying to get better in every little area. Like if you can get 1% better at the research element or 1% better at the storytelling element. And I said to myself, all right, some of these tools that I'm using are fine, but I wanted to go a step further. And so that's when I started, I did find someone that focused on AI basically using N8N, which is you create workflows and you create, You create agent, AI agents really. And so I built one of those with this individual and it was working fine. But again, I wanted it to be better and there was things about it I didn't love. And so then I took the, the JSON file, like, and I'm not a coder or anything, and this is the beauty nowadays with this vibe coding stuff. And I went to another tool, uh, called VO, which is made by Vercel. And we, uh, we kind of And I did a lot of it, this myself, but I recreated it. And so I have this new, it has more of a sleeker interface that you can use to identify the shows and you input, it does have a data API with all, like all these podcasts in the world. And then it scores them based off how well it aligns with a particular client's goals, whether it's the topical relevance, those are the two sides of the coin. It's topical, like alignment, and then the other side is reach and engagement.

It's interesting, right? You may have, and I think it's, I'm curious, like the people that you represent, what their goals are in terms of why they want to get on podcasts, right? Because I think for some people that maybe I want to record some episodes that position me as a subject matter expert and I don't care so much about direct sales that result from it. I just wanna have some credibility. And then other people are like, I wanna get in front of an audience that wants to buy my stuff, whatever that stuff is, right?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you've probably heard the rule, I, I'm, I don't remember exactly who came up with this, uh, but it's the 95/5 rule where it's like 95% of your buyers aren't ready to buy at any given point in time, like whatever it is that you sell. Um, so only 5% or some, some, some will say it's even less than that, 3% are like, They're ready to buy like whatever it is that you have, right? Um, so I think the beauty of a podcast is it does allow you to kill 2 birds where if you're trying to do the top of funnel awareness, thought leadership, you know, build trust, it's a really good way to do that, especially because in this age of AI, we're competing with AI right now, right? As far as there's so much content that is created by AI. Human conversations, the ability to do this and to, to have a one-on-one conversation and to get up, get out there and speak and be yourself. That is a huge competitive advantage. And that allows people to eventually sell, right? The bottom of the funnel component. But at the same time, if you're, what you're looking to do right away is get out there and sell something, whether it's A digital product, a book. You know, I have clients that are launching books or just launched books. It's a great way to promote that. A podcast is another way to do that as well. As long as you have a really clear call to action, you can move people down the funnel and send them to a site and all that good stuff. So it's kind of a combination where it's not one or the other. It allows you to do a lot of different things. And so But to answer your question, like as far as what exactly their goals are, I mean, it definitely varies, but for the most part, most of the clients that I talk to, they want more visibility, they wanna build trust, they want to be an established expert in their field. So expertise is another word that comes up and influence. I mean, influence is another word that comes up and everyone has a different definition for what influence really means, but to me it's basically the ability to change the way people think, feel, and act. So act is really the bottom of the funnel part, right? But the think and feel parts, those are kind of a little bit more wishy-washy, a little bit more like upper funnel thought leadership. So that's how I, that's how I look at it.

Okay.

Cool.

And so, You mentioned when we were speaking the other week that one of the other keys in your business is mastering the art of cold outreach and communication, right?

Exactly.

So can you share a little information about that? Yeah.

And cold outreach, I mean, it kind of gets a bad rap because, I mean, there's so much of that out there where you have people are inundated with emails in their inbox and LinkedIn and nobody wants to be pitch slapped, right? And so that's, I think there's a, there's an art and a science to it. And I've, I've found a really good way to do cold outreach. And as I mentioned, it's to me what's worked well. Like a lot of people say, oh, you need to personalize. And a lot of people are trying to, to use AI to do the personalization. By personalization, I mean, you know, you could reach out to a podcast host and say like, oh, I heard so-and-so on this last episode and I think my client or whatever their name is really speaks to the similar themes or whatever. And so I think people have, some people have found success doing it that way. But I also, sometimes I feel like that can feel forced and people can start to read right through it and like, oh, this is an AI. Did they actually listen to the episode? 'Cause at the end of the day, like how many, if you have how many shows you're pitching per day, you're really gonna have time to go and like listen to every episode and be personalized and all that sort of stuff. So. Yeah. I like to be true and honest and not, you know, make stuff up and pretend that I, that my client was listening to an episode or whatever. So what I like to do is, like I said, lead with a really strong hook. We do personalize some components. Obviously we're personalizing the first name, the name of the show, things of that nature. And then sometimes we'll get in there and change certain things as far as making it more relevant to whatever the particular theme is of that show. But for the most part, We're leading with, people can call it like a template, but that also gets a bad rap. But, you know, it's sort of like a cookie cutter pitch or whatever, but it's not cookie cutter because it's really, like I said, emotionally led. It leads with a really strong hook and it's something that will make that individual stand out and also will get the host, the reader to wanna continue to read the The next sentence. That's the, the art of, of any copywriting is to get someone to want to read the next sentence, right? And so, and it's also to increase the perceived value of the individual that you're writing about. And so that's, that's what it really comes down to, what it's all about. But we, we do use, um, right now we use SmartLead for if we're doing any sort of email sequences. And I do have some off-the-shelf pod— PodMatch is an example of like an off-the-shelf, um, SaaS model tool. Um, that allows you to, to send cold outreach to podcast hosts. And that is one that I have had success with, and I'm not afraid to say it. Like, I combine it with my own tool, you know what I mean? So I, I'll use some Podmatch because there are hosts sometimes that'll say, actually, I, I'd rather you, I'd prefer you use this. Can you reach me, reach out to me on Podmatch? And I'm testing other, other tools as well. Matchmaker is another one.

So, you know, it's interesting that you are embracing AI, yet at the same time, everybody thinks AI is a threat to their business, right? So part of me thinks. There's no substitute for genuine one-on-one human interaction and discussion, and it's going to be a long time before AI can replace that. But at the same time, you could in theory probably record purely AI-driven podcast episodes without any humans and publish them if you really wanted to, right? But it's interesting. So I'm curious how you view AI as, you know, a tool versus a threat.

And there are companies, I'm blanking on the name of one, but there's a couple of companies that are trying to do that. And I've checked into it. I've listened to like what they're recording. And I honestly don't see it as a threat, at least right now, because of what I was saying before is I think humans, the number one advantage that we have as humans against AI In general is we have lived experiences. And now AI can go and pretend that, but I think people read through it. And I think even if an AI sounded just as good as a human, if someone found out or knew that it was an AI in the back of their head, I feel like they're not gonna wanna listen to it. They want to connect and relate to humans. And also I think it still isn't perfect yet where it still sounds I think you could still tell the difference. I mean, that's my point of view, but so that's kind of where I'm coming from. I think that right now, I, and I don't know when, if this will change or when it will change, I feel like humans have the advantage and that is our competitive advantage right now is the ability to tell stories, the ability to have lived experiences, things that were really impactful in our lives. And I'll give you an example of a story that I told that really resonated with people. And I started telling it on podcasts and I guess I'm gonna tell it right now because, um, so I spent about a decade working at Forbes and Forbes was a really great place to work. It was, we felt like a family. It was tight, sort of tight-knit, you know, we had 400 employees, but everyone kind of knew everyone. And I was very lucky because I was, I was able to have a seat at the table with very senior people. You know, I sat across the table from Steve Forbes when we were launching his podcast and we talked about strategies or how we're going to basically target who, who, who we wanted to, to pitch this to and, you know, to monetize it. Or, 'cause I was on the revenue side, right? But we worked really closely with the with the editorial side. And I also worked really closely with Randall Lane, Chief Content Officer. You mentioned in the beginning of the show, I helped launch Under 30 Summit and we did a lot of really cool things together with the marketing revenue side and the editorial side. And I mean, even there was this one moment a few years back when Steve Forbes was turning 70 and his daughter asked my wife, Or asked me to ask my wife if she could bake a cake for his birthday, 'cause she bakes these like beautiful cakes she was just doing as a hobby. So I have all these amazing memories and my kids were able to come to Forbes all the time and like they loved it 'cause there, there was free snacks and, um, you know, they just thought it was cool. Like they got to go in the studio and like pretend that they're recording and, you know, things like that. Um, so anyway, long story short, I, you know, I was there for almost a decade. And so much of my identity was tied to Forbes, and I never really thought about it that way. But in retrospect, I think it was a little bit dangerous because the the rug kind of got pulled up from under me in January 2024 because there was a layoff, and I was affected by this layoff. And you know, I remember talking to my kids about it, and my eight-year-old daughter was like. I was telling her all about it and she was like, why would they get rid of you? You're the best. And I was like, that like kind of hit hard. I was like, oh my God. Like, I feel like I let her down a little bit. And, you know, I was like, yeah, you're right. But, you know, just, it's business. Just tried to move on and try to do what I could, but it was really hard for a while. And, um, you know, ultimately I did, I did start Wonderfish and that allowed me to realize that What my mission really was all about was similar to what I was doing at Forbes. And what Forbes does is they give experts and people that have the ability or the desire to change the world a platform. And that was, that's become my passion. And, and it didn't matter that I wasn't at Forbes anymore, right? I was able to do it now to do it. You know, I have a different logo behind me, Wonderfish, and thank you to my wife for making me my sign. But, um, The logo doesn't necessarily matter. The brand doesn't necessarily matter. It's really about the mission and the core of really what you want to do, right? And so that was my story. And I actually was afraid to tell that for the longest time. And I've started working with this woman by the name of Nicole Ramirez. She's pretty big on LinkedIn. She's got like 30,000+ followers because she writes really real content. You know, this very humorous. And she was also laid off from Forbes and I started getting her on some podcasts and she started to tell that story and it kind of inspired me because I was keeping it to myself. I was afraid really that it was gonna make me look bad. I was gonna be, you know, have this negative stigma. You know, nobody wants to kind of be looking, you don't wanna look like, you know, you were thrown away or whatever. And And I started to like change my viewpoint. I was like, look, I'm not, I wasn't the only one. Like it's part of business. There's all these dynamics, AI and everything's changing. Like I was on the creativity side. You don't necessarily need as many people when you have AI fueling and speeding up this, uh, the, I guess, time it takes to come up with ideas. So I ended up telling my story and all these people came to me after and they were emailing me or Mostly LinkedIn messaging, like that really resonated. Like, thank you for sharing that. And so that's kind of my message to people is like, don't be afraid to tell your story, especially if it's something really vulnerable, because that's what's gonna connect to people the most. People love the vulnerability. They love, um, anytime you're, you know, just sharing a personal experience and that's what Kind of back to your question, like, that's what we have as humans that AI doesn't have. So.

Yeah, that vulnerability aspect is key. And I look back in my own career and, you know, I was lucky enough when you started a business with a— I started a business with a couple partners in my early mid-20s and we ended up selling it to a Fortune 500 company and it was a nice ride and some After the deal, we had a couple, 2 or 3 people I'm thinking of, they were let go for one reason or another by the new owner, and they went off and they started their own businesses and were wildly successful and a lot more successful than they would've been if they kept working at the bottom, the mid-level of this big Fortune 500 company. And so they probably hated it at the time, But in hindsight, they'd probably say it's one of the best things that ever happened to them.

Yeah. And at the time I remember, you know, I was getting all these text messages, even like the CEO at the time, his name's Mike Federle. He texted me like the sweetest thing. He was just like, he kind of said exactly what you just said that, you know, I've gone through this before and it ended up being like, you know, best thing and worked out for the better. And like, at the time it was like hard to believe that because you're like, oh, you're kind of like, woe is me. But I mean, I think he's right. And then I did start to see it as a positive and as it, you know, now I had this new chance or this new clean slate because before I was probably just gonna keep working at Forbes, even though to a certain extent, you know, my growth was not paused, but I was just doing a lot of the same thing for a really long time, you know, being there for a decade. And so I think the ability to grow is much higher. There's a lot, there's a lot of risk involved, but I also started to see the risk of getting back into the workforce as even higher, especially with the amount of layoffs and things like that. So I was just like, you know what, I'm gonna do it.

I love the sign, by the way. I love the colors. Those are the, uh, SparkNotes colors.

Thank you. Yeah. And that's actually made, uh, out of real wood. My wife ordered on Etsy and she surprised me, which is really cool.

Yeah, you mentioned your wife has been an integral part of getting Wonderfish off the ground, right?

Yeah, she's always been very supportive. And I think that, um, you know, every story has, you know, you hear like the hero's journey, not, not that, that I'm a hero by any means, but there's always like a guide or mentor. And not that she's my mentor or guide, but she's someone that has been there for for a tremendous amount of support. I also have a business coach, Diego Barrera, who's helped me with a lot of the different processes along the way. So I think it's always important to have people in your corner that can back you up. And she was the one, my wife was the one who basically just told me like, build the business because I was going back and forth, still applying for jobs for the longest time. And Once I had her, you know, she, it was like, I think a text message she sent me. Once I had her buy-in, I was like, okay, I'm gonna do this. And then also she got me the sign and I was like, okay, now I feel like I really have your support. And now I, now I gotta go and I gotta do this. Now I gotta go sell. And so, um, yeah, I mean, it's, it's tremendously lucky, um, just to have a good support system behind me.

You know, you've been talking some about what you do for clients and how you help position them for success. I'm curious, what, you know, what are your goals with WonderFist? What are you trying to— what are your dreams for your own business over the next few years?

Sure, as I mentioned, my main mission and passion is giving individuals who have stories, or not just stories, but they have their own dreams, their own desires to influence people, change the world, to give them a platform. And so my vision is not necessarily just to focus on podcasts. I feel like right now that's what I'm optimizing. As I mentioned, that's, you know, systemizing the podcast guesting experience. But eventually I am thinking about expanding once I have the podcast whole thing mastered. I feel like there's other opportunities and a lot of people, a lot of my clients already are starting to ask about, Events. I mean, when I was at Forbes, we did a ton of really, really influential events, putting people on stages. Um, when, and that could be virtual as well, right? So I'm thinking about events, thinking about some, some clients have already asked about corporate speaking gigs. And then, I mean, there's other things beyond speaking that do a lot of the same thing as far as building trust and thought leadership. One of 'em is like, for example, writing books. So, you know, I'm not a, an author by any means, but I could have a whole, a whole suite of options where I bring people who are experts at writing books and like get you on a fast track to do that. So I haven't decided exactly what all the different platforms or elements are, but my point is I'm not necessarily gonna be tied to podcasts. As far as like, that's what I'm thinking about. Who knows? I may at some point change my mind and say, you know what, podcasts are where it's at. I'm just gonna stick to this. But I'm just thinking about broadly growing and going beyond. But really right now I'm kind of zeroed in and narrowed in on the whole podcast guesting experience.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, I could see the benefit of kind of a one-stop shop if you're trying to build a personal brand while you Write a book, podcast, do some speaking gigs, maybe host an event. Yeah.

And I'm gonna start doing a lot more, um, speaking coaching where I bring in experts to help me with that. And the more and more I do that or have workshops, I feel like that the better it's gonna make me and maybe give me more ability to help coach my clients and get better at, uh, just getting out there and speaking because I, I've already started to, to discuss that with a couple of, uh, professional speaking coaches. And, and I just, I haven't tied up all the loose ends, but it's something that I've been thinking about is, is maybe it's either a combination of, you know, some paid workshops, some, some free workshops. Um, so it could potentially be a revenue stream or it could just be a way to bolster my, my clients, make them better speakers, which helps everyone in the long run.

So I assume a lot of your clients are either executives or, or business owners?

Correct. I would say, so my ICP tends to be founders and CEOs. You know, smaller companies between, it could be anywhere between a few employees, but it tends to be, you know, 10 to 50 for the most part. But eventually I'm, I'm, I'm starting to talk to some individuals at larger companies, but I'm just kind of starting somewhere, starting with like a smaller CEO founder. And then also I'm talking to a lot of just like coaches and consultants and working with a lot of coaches and consultants. I have one woman who's a health and fitness, health and wellness coach. I have an individual who is sort of like project management type of individual, works with, works on the construction side. And then I have, I have a guy who has a coaching company called Boss Up, but he has like 85 coaches working underneath him. He just launched a book. His name's Scott Abbott. So tech is another big area or big category for me. So I have a client, Mitchell Jones. He has a company called Lava that it's like an AI startup that basically is, I guess, a payment platform that helps AI startups with the whole payment, having a payment solution. And so technology, another individual has a company called Workmate who is, it's like a, an AI scheduling assistant, which is pretty cool. And I'm actually playing around with that as one of the tools that I'm testing. You know, you copy your scheduling assistant as like they're an executive assistant. So yeah, technology coaching. And I'm signing a whole bunch more. I just signed like 2 more clients last week. So that's pretty much the core though. And I think Eventually I could expand, but I just try to keep it focused right now.

And so you're in this niche where you're the guru of the podcasting at the moment, right? And these folks probably have other marketing agencies that handle digital media, social media, advertising, whatever. So do you tend to partner with other marketing agencies or?

Yeah, I do. I do partner with, or I've talked to some and it's kind of been, an area that I, it's a little bit untapped and that's a big reason why I wanted to come on here because I know a big part of your audience obviously is, is marketing agency owners. So I think there's a lot of opportunity, whether, you know, there's some, whether it's like a referral agreement or referral partnership type of thing, or if a marketing agency owner wants to go on podcasts themselves, I'm happy to work with them. Or if it's something where I'm just basically like, getting their clients on these podcasts and they're using me as like a vendor. I think there's a lot of different ways we can go about it, but that's something I've started to explore and I've had some really good conversations, but haven't actually enacted any like real work or agreements that has really come from that. But I'm excited to do something like that for sure.

Cool. So what, uh, what's a challenge you're facing or something you recently had to overcome?

Yeah, I had one, one, my, the biggest challenge that happened to me. So in the beginning of launching this, as I mentioned, I do a lot of cold outbound. And so I was using Instantly, which is a, you know, cold out instantly, instantly.ai. It's a cold outbound email platform. And I did something where you set up your, so when, when you're emailing anyone as part of like a cold outbound program, you don't want to use your own email because you could hurt the domain reputation if it's like, um, you know, I'm not spamming people, but you never know, like someone could say, oh, this is annoying. I'm going to like mark this as spam or whatever. You just got to be careful you're not, um, harming your potential, your actual business email. And so you, what you do is you create however many, you know, create like 8 different domains or like variations of your, your domain. So, you know, wonderfishpr.com, wonderfishlabs, like whatever it is. And Instantly has a, has a way that they, it's called done-for-you emails where you basically just, uh, tell them the domains, you, you buy it through them and they set it all up for you instead of like going directly to Google or Microsoft Outlook and setting up the domain, the email domains yourself. And someone I was talking to was like, yeah, I did that. It worked great for me. So I went and did it and it was working for a while. I was sending some campaigns for my clients. And then one day I get this like email from Insulin and it was like, oh, there was like an automated sweep where Google went and like took down emails. It's like, they're like, it wasn't anything that you did wrong. And, but they didn't really tell me why. And I did a little bit more research and I came to find out that when you buy these done-for-you emails, they're basically buying from— and don't quote me on this, I'm not like the email expert, but like they buy from some sort of like reseller system where you basically get tied into like a pool of other individuals. And if they do something wrong with their email, your email could get taken down. And I don't know, I just kind of got annoyed by the whole situation and I just said, okay, you know what? Like they gave me my money back and I ended up just, I wanted to test SmartLead. That's why I moved over to SmartLead. And I think that it was a lesson for me and I ended up just buying from then on. I only buy emails myself and I go directly to Google to buy them. And for me, that was a lesson of like, you know, don't cut corners if you don't have to. And what I always try to do is like, Do as much research as I can. Do you know? Do it the right way, even if it takes a little bit more time. You know, unless it's like a significant investment, don't cut a corner. And it actually reminds me of my time. I I don't think I mentioned this to you when we talked last time. We talked a little bit about our love for barbecue, but and I love hot sauce too. But I actually at one point in time I launched my own. Spicy ketchup company. It was called Farmer Jim's Ketchup. And I was making this, I was renting out a commercial kitchen and I had this whole recipe and then I was trying to scale it. And then I started talking to this company that was basically like a, they call it like a co-packer who like, they'll produce it for you. And they were doing a prototype and they were like, oh, it's much more expensive to use apple cider vinegar. You should use white. And I, and I was use— and I started to use it and then it ended up being like a disaster. Like it didn't taste like my product and I feel— felt like I wasted a whole bunch of time. Moral of the story is like, it reminded, just reminded me of being in that situation where you're always trying to figure out what's the best way to produce this product, right? So whether it's a product or service in a way that is going to obviously deliver on the promise of what, you know, you're selling it as, um, that's cost-effective. But at the same time, if you're cutting a corner and it's something that you like, you don't feel good about, it's like, you know, deep down inside, like, oh, I should be doing it this way. Like, I should be using the apple cider vinegar. And I like, that was a, a regret I'd had at the, at the time. And so that's one of the things that's kind of sticking with me of like, when you're in business, um, you know, do the hard work. Do the research, do it the right way. You know, it's okay to make mistakes, but also find a— this is another important thing that I learned is like, find a way to minimize your exposure to risk. And so for example, if I was doing everything with Instantly and then I made that mistake, you know, I would be in a really, you know, all my clients were tied to that, those email infrastructures that got deleted. You know, there's a, there goes my business. You know, it's gonna take me weeks to build up the emails, right? And so that's something that I've been doing lately is like minimizing my exposure to risk across all the different parts of my business. And so email infrastructure is one of them. I have, now I have Smartly, but I have other ways that I, that, you know, I use Podmatch. I'm using, um, I'm not, I said I'm testing Matchmaker. Um, I, and I have, You know, other LinkedIn, I have other ways that I'm reaching out to these podcast hosts. It's not just one way.

Yeah, that makes sense. It's funny how you mentioned, it reminded me of just trying to figure out what you need to be really good at and what you're okay being bad at. So with like your barbecue recipe, the apple cider vinegar seemed like a core part of the recipe. And if you replaced it, You'd be— it would be bad, right? But maybe there are other parts of life where you can substitute a cheaper ingredient, no big deal, nobody cares. But if it's part of your core product and it's part of what makes you really good, then you may have to spend that extra 5%, 10%, 20% because it's part of what makes you great. And then there are other areas where you might be okay, yeah, I'm not very good at this, I'm going to cheap out, but my customers don't really care.

Exactly. And I think that's where you kind of learn and, you know, takes time, right, to figure out like what are the components, like what, what is like the core of like what people like about you and don't ever cop out there. I think that makes a whole lot of sense.

So I need to ask you a couple of questions about bookkeeping and finance since that's my day job. So I'm curious how you go about managing the books for your firm and, you know, what kind of metrics and reports you like to get to stay on top.

Well, I mean, you, you just mentioned like knowing what you're good at. I know for a fact that finance is one thing that I'm not good at. Like there's a couple of things I'm not good at, but I know for a fact that I'm not good at finance. Um, and so I, you know, I just started using QuickBooks. Um, but I'm very, very behind and like limited in like all of the financial aspects of my business. So, um, I definitely want to have another conversation with you about that. But yeah, I don't know. that I have anything that I could share that's really like of value there because I'm just really far behind. But that's on my, it's been on my to-do list for a while. I have a, I do have an advisor that I use through, I don't know if you're familiar with Score, and he like, he's like a former banker and he's been telling me for a while, like, you need to have income statement and you need to know like your financial projections. Uh, we just had a call last week and that was one of the things that came up and I'm like, yeah, I know. I'm just like doing a million things and like right now I'm, I'm behind on that.

So, um, I'm trying to sell some new business to keep the lights on.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's, it's kind of chicken or the egg, but like now, now the business is really finally picking up where, you know, I need to, I need to get on that. So, uh, yeah, for a while I was struggling and just like, you know, when I started out, I was really only just doing a lot of like testimonial. Testimonial clients when I was just focusing on podcasts, 'cause I was trying to learn the business, trying to learn the industry. And it is such a tight-knit sort of community in podcast, in the podcast space. I mean, you have a number of different people on, you know, within the ecosystem, you know, you have, I don't know if you're familiar with Listen Notes, but that's one sort of metric. I mean, in a way they're, they're kind of like the Nielsen of podcasts where they have like data on the percentages of every podcast in the global ranking. But there's also a lot of like confusion and I think it's almost kind of like gatekeeping where like no one really knows how many downloads everything has. So you kind of just, you're kind of just at a whim, at the whim of what the public data and signals tell you. So I use a combination of different signals. Listen Notes is one of them. Social engagement is another one.

Yeah, I know exactly what you're talking about because I was just having a conversation with my podcast producer last week about this, this Power Hour podcast series, and they're like, yeah, you got like thousands of views on YouTube. I'm like, I can't believe thousands of people watched the episode. What does that really mean? Did they like view the beginning? Did they go a minute into it? Did they see the image but didn't have to click play? Like, how do you measure it? I don't know.

Yeah, and the other thing is like a lot of people don't I've heard mixed signals where people will say that, 'cause you know how the download has become the sort of pseudo metric of like how well your podcast is doing, but not everyone's downloading podcasts. And then someone said to me, well, actually a viewer stream is technically downloaded. And then someone else said, no, that's not true. So I'm still trying to figure out a lot of that stuff out. But what I, what I tell people is, you know, my clients is don't really, I don't rely on one signal, one particular signal. So. YouTube is one of them, but there's plenty of podcasts that are doing extremely well within the podcast, but then there's not a lot of people listening on or watching on YouTube. So that's why it's always a combination. It's never just like leaning heavily into just YouTube or leaning heavily into just what the Listen Notes ranking percentage is. So yeah, analytics are, I think, a huge part of my business. But the financial analytics, that's where I'm behind and, uh, we need to have another conversation. So, um, yeah, I'm definitely a little bit behind on that. A lot behind.

So I gotta ask you about baseball. I've seen your background, you've got several baseballs. You're a big baseball fan or?

Yeah, I'm, I'm a pretty big baseball fan. I, I just collect like, you know, some of those I got from games and things like that. Um, technically a Yankee fan, but I'm not like, Diehard, someone that watches every game. I'm more of a Giants fan and been to like a number of different practices and games and stuff for the Giants. I'm gonna go to Yankee games 'cause I'm not too far. I'm in New Jersey. But are you a big baseball fan?

No, baseball is one sport I really don't, I'm not really into.

Yeah, sometimes I just have it in the background. It's, you know, something to have on and, And it's not till the fall that I really get into it. But yeah, football is more my sport for sure.

So you're running your own business these days, and I know you had a good run as a W-2 manager at other companies. I'm curious, I know you got laid off and then you were trying to find the right opportunity and eventually put up your own shingle and are running Wonderfish now. Um, I'm curious, have you ever thought when you were, you know, little James, if you thought you'd be running your own business one day?

That's pretty funny. So, um, my dad ran a business. I mean, he was an insurance agent. Um, but I, I wasn't necessarily like, I wouldn't say like wasn't entrepreneurial. Like it just, it wasn't besides my, my ketchup business. I, I didn't ever really think that I was going to, you know, be an entrepreneur. And it's weird because, you know, I was working at Forbes and prior to that I was also at The Economist and I was always around these like really successful, I guess, founders, if you want to use that term, and entrepreneurs, right? And I always kind of saw myself as an, you know, an outsider really. And I was just a kid. I mean, I grew up in upstate New York, Grew up on a farm. You know, we, we didn't own the farm. My, my, we had like 5 acres of land and we, there was a farmer that used some of the land for like, um, cow corn or whatever. It's like, this is rural upstate New York. Like our closest neighbor was probably like a mile away, but we had a great childhood. I ran around with my brother. I had 2 brothers shooting BB guns. You know, sometimes we were shooting 'em at each other. Like that's a whole nother story. And, uh, you know, just like being crazy kids riding our bikes, playing basketball in the barn, playing, building hay forts. And so when I grew up and came to New York City, came to the big city, you know, I kind of, uh, I always just felt like, I felt like I, not that I didn't belong, like I, you know, I know, I always knew that I was really creative and like, you know, maybe, maybe my intelligence is like, Kind of, I, I, I'm not, I'm not an idiot, but I felt like I was sort of like average intelligence. I'm not like a, you know, Harvard grad or like some of these people that I was hanging out with were just like the, the, the crème of the crème. And so I was always in awe being at Forbes and like meeting, and I, I didn't take a lot of pictures with a lot of these people too, because you didn't wanna like feel like you're that, that guy of like, you know, the fanboy or whatever. The one picture that I do have that my, I'm pro— I'm happy to say that I have it 'cause my kids are impressed. Is Logan Paul. We were at, uh, one of the Under 30 summits in Boston at like the State House in Boston. I have a, I have a selfie with me and Logan Paul. Uh, but we were meeting, I was meeting like Howard Schultz walked in the office to record Steve Forbes podcast. Just like a number of different, like we had, um, John Oates from Hall and Oates like performed for our company. It was just like really cool to be there. Oh, um, there's another, um, what's his name? Uh, David Blaine, uh, came in and did like a whole like magician show, like just crazy stuff, right? But I always felt like, okay, there, that's them. That's not me. Like, I'm not part, I'm not a founder. I'm not ever gonna be this big successful founder. And so it wasn't until I had that identity shift, like when I left Forbes that I started to see myself that way and was like, 'cause to me it was always kind of just like a side hustle of something like doing this ketchup thing. While I'm working at Forbes, like it wasn't something that I put a lot of time commitment or focus on. So it wasn't until I had that mental shift and mindset shift where I was like, okay, I can do this. This could be a big part. This could be me. And I, this, I could build something and do this as a career. You know, that was sort of a later in life thing. As a kid, I always just thought about, I did wanna work in advertising cuz I was creative, but part of that I thought about being an actor, being a lawyer, like all these different things. So. It was kind of all over the place. Cool.

Is there anything you've, uh, feel like you've learned the hard way over the last couple years of running your own show that you would do differently?

I would. So I, I'm, as I mentioned, I'm a very creative person. I've had to build the skill of being process-oriented, and I had to do that at Forbes because once I moved into a management role, There's so many, you know, we worked off RFPs that were coming in from all these big brands and it was our job as managers to make sure that these RFPs were being answered and there, there was like a process in place. And so I learned working from working there and even some of my earlier jobs that you have to have a good process in place. And so like at Forbes, we use Smartsheet, which is like a project management system, and we had to have, you know, SOPs and everything, steps of like, once this hap— once this comes in, this is who, who handles it. This is the, they put it on this spreadsheet, which syncs with this. And you know, you have to have all these backend processes. And I think I knew that I had to do that with Warner Fish, but I was a little bit slow to have like really good processes. And I'm not, now I'm finally getting the processes locked in where I'm working with a HubSpot automation partner and they're automating a lot of the backend things. But I wish I did that a little bit sooner.

Yeah.

Um, because I feel like I could have scaled much quicker if I had these processes, you know, automated quicker and everything like just running. But I was, I was so focused on like the sales side, the marketing side, you know, you're, you're wearing a million different hats, right? But, um, I would say that, that process orientation needs to be one of the number one besides, I mean, People always say sales is the most important, 'cause if you don't have sales coming in, you're not gonna, you know, you're gonna die as a business. But in the beginning, that's not even the most important to me because I feel like you can, you know, obviously you might need to have a little bit of savings or runway or whatever, but you can just even just have testimonial clients to just to test out your system and put them through the wringer of like, see, making sure everything works and everything is optimized. And so that to me is like the number one pri— has to be the number one priority, especially today where, you know, resources are always gonna be thin. Like it's, labor's expensive. You can't go off and just hire hundreds of people, you know, especially really good labor. But, um, I think right away you want to optimize those processes and automations, uh, off the bat.

Yeah, I know what you're saying. Like, sales are key. If you don't sell anything, you don't eat. But at the same time, you need those initial sales to be successful, to build a referenceable customer base and prove that what you're doing is valuable, right? So it's— you have to kind of do both.

Yep, for sure. That combination is— that combination is key. But one of my other tenets is just like, I think I mentioned continuous improvement, but it's just like never accepting mediocrity because that was one of the things I felt that I, I guess noticed in the corporate world for a long time is like there's a lot of people, I'm not gonna name any name— names or anything. There's just people in general, just in the corporate world that just sort of seem to just accept, you know, the status quo. Like that's just the way we've always done it. Or this is just, yeah, this is, this, this is fine. Right. It's like. It's not optimal, right? But like at the end of the day, like we're getting paid, the job is getting done. And I think when you have your own business, that mindset definitely shifts where it's like, like I said in the beginning, if I could do this 1% better, I'm, I'm gonna do it. I'm always trying to improve, do things better. Don't accept, don't, don't just like say this is just the best that it's gonna get. Like I'm continuously and constantly improving every, every different area of my business. And the next Area Cal is going to be the finances. So.

All right. Well, we'll talk about that more. Yeah, it's interesting though, you mentioned that because I have limited experience. I worked for about 18 months or so for Staples after they acquired my IT services business. And Staples is, in my opinion, the best managed of the office supply businesses. And a lot of their competitors went bankrupt and Staples is still doing fine. And But I will say though, it became all about hitting your budget for the year, not about maximizing opportunity and taking advantage of opportunities. It's all about, here's what we committed to do this year. Let's make sure we deliver what we said we were going to do. We don't have to do more than that, but we can't do less than that. And so it was a different mindset, and I respect that mindset. You know, you're a public company, you got investors, you can't take too many risks that people are not expecting you to take. It's a big deal if you come up way shorter of your annual goals. But at the same time, you know, I'm used to a little smaller, nimbler environments where it's all about what's the opportunity and how do we capitalize on that opportunity.

Exactly. And being, being customer-focused, because sometimes that gets lost when you're just trying to like please your boss or please the shareholders or whoever it is that you're presenting to. You know, at the town hall or what, you know, whatever it might be. So I think that, that, um, when you're a founder, you're much closer to the customer too. Like, you know, the manager is at a big corporate, uh, you know, Staples, as you use that as an example. I mean, how often are they like on the floor talking to like the customers and actually seeing like the ex— what the experience is, right? There's kind of sometimes a disconnect. Um, and not all the time, but it depends on the, on the executive or the leader or whatever. But I think the fact that like I'm in the weeds, I'm working with customers, and I think one of the things I did from the beginning is really wait to hire help because I want to do everything in the beginning myself. So, you know, when a, when a, uh, podcast opportunity comes up, you know, I know how to create a report. that reviews all the information, looks at all the past guests and hosts or whatever, and so that I can develop the right system and the right process for that. And I know what it takes to do it, how much time it takes and how much AI to use, how much human part to use. And so I think that's key as well.

Cool. So I gotta ask you about barbecue since that's near and dear to my heart. I know we're Gonna wrap up here in a few minutes, but, uh, what, what, what do you like to grill lately?

I've just been, I've been keeping it simple. I'm just doing a lot of like chicken, like, you know, my Traeger. I just noticed, cuz I used to have the Acorn Kamado. Well, I still have it out there. It's kind of, it was, it's kind of like a poor man's, uh, Big Green Egg. It's not, it's not ceramic, it's like steel or whatever. It still does a really good job. And, um, I said one day that I wanted to get the, the Traeger. Just my brother had one and, you know, people make fun of it sometimes. It's like the Easy-Bake Oven of barbecue. But, you know, when you're busy and you don't have time to sit out there and tend to the fire and all, it's just, just set it wherever you want. So yeah, I mean, I, I've been doing a lot of, like, I didn't used to love just doing like chicken thigh, like bone-on chicken thighs, but what I do is I take the skin off myself, but keep the bone in and then put the seasoning on and I put it on the Traeger for, you know, a couple hours, like 2 to 3 hours, like 225 and then 250. And it's just like really good chicken. And my kid loves that. I put some like Cajun seasoning on it. But this summer I wanna, I wanna start to perfect the brisket. 'Cause like, that's one thing I haven't really gotten good at. I'm sure you do a lot of that, right?

Yeah, I've done a number of briskets. Everybody says briskets are hard and in some ways they're hard, But in some ways they're like anything. If you just keep it 225 to 250 for some number of hours, eventually it softens up and tastes awesome. But there are some, you know, there's some intricacies with the brisket though, to try to keep it, try to keep it moist and not dry it out. And yeah, so there's, it takes some work.

And what's your go— what's your go-to smoker right now?

My favorite. I own, I guess you'd say, 4 smokers and grills, but I got 1 traditional propane grill and then I have a propane smoker, which is nice. We have to, you know, it's big capacity. So if I'm doing a bunch of pork shoulders or something, I can fit it all in there, no problem. Or a bunch of ribs, no problem. But you have to manage the temperature over the course of the day. Then I have my set-it-and-forget-it electric smoker. So if I need to leave, leave home and go do something for a few hours, I can just put it in the electric and it's going to be fine. And then I've got my favorite, which takes the most work, and, but it's the Santa Maria grill, which it's got a crank or wheel where you can raise and lower the grill surface over regular wood, wood smoke. So you have your logs in there, they're cooking, and you can raise and lower the heat surface, you know, Between like 1 and 3 feet. So I really love that. It takes work. It's very easy to overcook things, but it's a lot of fun, just especially in summertime. You just kind of sit out there, listen to some podcasts, watch a game, tend to the meat on the grill. It's fun.

Exactly. That's what I love about it. That's really cool. I think you need to come out with a barbecue podcast next.

I did one of my first episodes of my other podcast, Empowering Healthy Business, was with a barbecue pitmaster in summer of what, 2023, 2024 maybe? He was a medalist at, I can't even remember the name, but one of the big national barbecue competitions. So that was fun to talk to him.

Wow. That's awesome. I love that.

But hey, James, I really appreciate the time and you sharing your story and some of the vulnerability. And I think for everybody listening, as you can tell, running kind of a podcast production and booking business like James does, it's a specialty. So if you've got clients that want to be on podcasts and you need somebody to manage it, reach out to James because he's an expert at it. And I know a lot of agencies don't necessarily have that expertise in-house. So James, what's the best way for people to get in touch with you?

Yeah, so my website is wonderfish.xyz. I do have an assessment on there, which I'd love people to do, which I'm actually gonna be updating it to, to make it right now. It's, it's, it's a way to assess how, I guess, good you are at the world of podcast guesting. But, um, I think I'm gonna broaden a little bit to just make it more about how you, how good at building trust you are. It's sort of like an assessment tool for that. Um, but for now it's like focused on podcast guesting. So wonderfish.xyz is my website. And I'm also, my biggest social platform is probably, is definitely LinkedIn. I'm on X, but not really using it. I'm starting to get on Substack. So if you wanna follow me on there or whatever, subscribe, I guess. I'm starting to like Substack a lot. I love the user interface of the blogging component compared to LinkedIn. I just think it's much easier to use.

Like you can embed If you wanna publish real content, like of any length and duration and have like real discussion, thoughtful discussion, not just like 50 characters here or there, I love Substack.

Yeah, they have a podcast. I mean, I'm not a podcast host, but I think if you're a podcast host, you can publish them on there too now, I'm pretty sure. And, you know, they also have a notes component, which is kind of like their version of Twitter. And then also, um, I think what I love about it is like you can embed video really easily into like the, the post or the blog post itself. So if you're like, if you post a, uh, or if you, whenever you do an episode, you could post an article about it on there and you can embed the video. It's like, could be really cool. And then it's another way to get SEO and, you know, get eyeballs out there. So, but yeah, Substack, LinkedIn, James Colistra, C-O-L-I-S-T-R-A. T-R-A. I'm the only James Colistra in the world. That, that I can say with confidence. 'Cause, uh, there's a lot of Italians, but with my name, but there's no James as yet. So.

Awesome. Well, everybody listening, if you've enjoyed this episode, uh, please tell your peers about it. Let's spread the word here, support each other. Um, thanks again, James. Really appreciate your time and insights.

Yeah, keep doing this podcast. It's a really good, really good podcast. You're doing amazing work. I've loved all the guests that you've had. I've listened to a bunch of them. So my pleasure to be on the show. Great.

Well, this has been another exciting episode of the Marketing Agency Power Hour. We'll see you all next time. Another episode in the books. Thank you so much for tuning in. For show notes and more, please visit marketingagencypowerhour.com. This show is sponsored by SmartBooks, providing marketing agencies with bookkeeping, accounting, and finance support. With SmartBooks, you gain the clarity and confidence to make your agency a success. Until next time.