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00:00:00
00:00:01
Alison Seibert
51 Plays5 days ago
Thanks for listening to our episode with Alison Seibert.
To keep up with or connect with Alison:
✨The James Collective Website: https://www.thejamescollective.com/
✨The James Collective Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thejamescollective/
✨The James Collective LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-james-collective/
✨The James Collective Substack: https://thejamescollective.substack.com/
✨Alison’s LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alisonseibert/
To stay in touch with Meredith and Medbury:
Follow Meredith on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/meredith-farley/
Follow Medbury on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/medbury_agency/
Subscribe to the Medbury newsletter: https://meredithfarley.substack.com/
Email Meredith: Meredith@MedburyAgency.com
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Transcript
Introduction and Background
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, Allison. Thank you so much for doing this. I'm really happy to have you on. for folks who don't know you, can you say a little bit about who you are and what you do? i am Allison Seibert. I'm the founder of the James Collective. And the James Collective is a PR and integrated communications agency. that captures the power of attention for leading lifestyle brands in the consumer packaged goods, food and beverage, wine and spirits and travel industries. That's very cool.
00:00:30
Speaker
Can you talk to me about your career journey up until then? So actually before my career journey, it's interesting, my grandfather, who I named the James Collective after, used to always say that I was one of the few people in our family who always knew what I wanted to do when I grew up, which actually is a fallacy. I really had no idea what I wanted to do, but what I did know was that I wanted to own my own business. So I always kind of had that vision when I was growing up, and then My father actually also worked in the movie theater industry. He spent about 25 years working for AMC theaters. I had no interest in going into that, but what I really was exposed to was the power of storytelling. So i went to college, graduated from college. I knew that i wanted to work in New York. I knew that I wanted to work in something that was marketing related. And I knew that I wanted to work in an industry that was exciting for
Founding the James Collective
00:01:27
Speaker
me. So I graduated from college. I moved to New York and I got my first job at a PR agency that weirdly was specialized in wine and travel. And I didn't have a lot of knowledge about wine. i had lived and traveled abroad quite a bit.
00:01:43
Speaker
And so I went and worked at this agency for a few years, but knowing that I always wanted to start my own company, after a few years working at an agency, I quit my job. And I quit my job in the middle of what is now known as the Great Recession and moved to Paris, and I started my MBA. And I did an international MBA, and when i graduated, it was still the recession. The only people that were really hiring regularly were agencies, agencies and so I ended up back in the agency world In New York, despite basically going to school for business and getting an MBA. But what that taught me, which I really felt like at the time was a differentiator, was a deep understanding of my clients' businesses and of what they...
00:02:30
Speaker
were going through their pain points, strategically how my work could fit in with what they were doing with their goals, with their dreams and all that. And so I worked my way up at that agency and became the head of their food and beverage department after working across a lot of different types of industries and realizing that people that want to feed you are certainly my people. And this was in early twenty ten s when How we were consuming information as a society and certainly consuming information as consumers was really starting to shift. And we were not hearing about things all the time just from our friends or just from traditional media, but we were learning about things and trusting people who were maybe tastemakers at the time, who had a blog, brands that were activating on the street.
00:03:17
Speaker
So for me, I saw the writing on the wall that the old way of doing public relations was valuable to know, but maybe not the only way to do it. So I started the James Collective in 2015 with the intention of building a PR and integrated communications agency that was highly specialized in a few pretty complex
Growth and Services of the Agency
00:03:38
Speaker
industries. So Fast forward to today we are bi-coastal business. We have a small office in New York, which is where started of the business. And then we have a small office in the Bay Area, which is really the heart, in my opinion, of what's next in America, food and beverage.
00:03:52
Speaker
For most of our clients, we still do PR and now affiliate relations. We do influencer and tastemaker relations as well, because we know that people are not now just finding information through traditional media sources, but also through social and the people that we trust online. We do quite a lot of work with setting up our clients with strategic partnerships and collaborations with other like-minded brands to help reach their audiences. That's where I am today. So that was about 11 years ago that I started TJC. When you say tastemaker relations as opposed to just influencer, can you say a little bit more about that? I haven't heard that terminology before, but I guess I have a suspicion about what you mean. I think that the word influencer, first and foremost, sometimes can be a little bit of a dirty word and not always with good reason, first of all, but
00:04:38
Speaker
What we find, we are largely working with consumer packaged goods that are distributed at grocery or with wine and spirits or with products that have a really strong pull in restaurants. And so the folks who sometimes are able to be ambassadors for a brand or share information with their diners or with their followers or whatnot, maybe are not the people who are the most...
00:05:04
Speaker
well followed online, but are certainly tastemakers in their own right and have a really strong, sometimes niche, but really strong audience and also have a lot of their own expertise and skill set in what they're speaking about. We use the word influencer and tastemaker nowadays somewhat interchangeably, but that is really what we're talking about. It's not always just somebody on social, but it could be somebody on social and also somebody who's a wine buyer or someone who is an incredible journalist that also has a great sub stack, et cetera.
00:05:33
Speaker
That makes sense and it super interesting. I got to talk to two female founders in the beverage space for this podcast. It's such an interesting space where like brand matters so much, quality matters so much, story matters so much. I can see it being a really fun space to be in from a PR and comms perspective. What like really drew you to it? What got you hooked?
Allison's Passion for Food and Beverage
00:05:56
Speaker
What really drew me to it and to working with kind of the food and beverage industry in general was I felt strongly that it was something that could bring people around the table to share.
00:06:09
Speaker
i found that even just with the people that I was working with, I'll be honest, unless you celebrate a consolation, you're not going to make as much money as you do, let's say working in tech. But everyone who works in it is so passionate about what they do. Everyone wants to feed you. Everyone wants to share things with you. i actually just had a meeting with a...
00:06:26
Speaker
founder this morning who's launching a T brand and he came from the tech world and he was just saying how he couldn't believe how supportive people who in theory were competitors were in this industry. So from my perspective, I was really drawn to The fact that it is really an industry that's based on building culture, building community and connection. And then also the obvious just kind of lifestyle aspects of it. You're almost always traveling to beautiful places. You get to share delicious things and create a world that I think is more meaningful because it's both beautiful, delicious, and it also connects people.
A Day in the Life of Allison Seibert
00:07:01
Speaker
Interesting. So what's an average day in your life like now? And I know that's always an annoying question to everyone. So I was like, there is no average day. Right. I think when you're founder of a company and also when you're in kind of the agency setting, there's probably no normal day. But because I work by postal lease, I work between both the East and the West Coast time zones.
00:07:20
Speaker
I'm usually up pretty early on my email first thing, unfortunately. checking in on my team, checking in on my clients, making sure there isn't a fire that needs to be put out, which sometimes there is.
00:07:31
Speaker
And then from there, once I really start my workday, unfortunately, it can be anything from a lot of strategy and planning meetings with clients to meeting with potential clients New business prospects, founders, planning events, working with different potential partner brands, writing. Of course, I still do quite a bit of writing and designing, reaching out to folks who could help share the stories of the brands that we work with, journalists, influencers, et cetera. And really just for me nowadays, it is also a lot of the operations of running the business. So making sure that the payroll is good and all those unsexy things that are very important to the team. Yeah, totally.
00:08:10
Speaker
What about your evenings? What are your evenings like usually? It depends on where I am. So I split my time between nowadays Sonoma in California and New York. When I am in Sonoma, my husband is in the wine industry and he has a small brand called Gale Wines amongst a couple of other businesses. So We're very lucky that we both love to cook. So we are almost always cooking up some meal. When we are in California, and there's a ton of hosting and entertaining.
00:08:36
Speaker
Most of our friends either are restaurant owners or in the wine industry as well in some sort of a capacity. And so gather a lot to share. meals, break bread, share bottles of wine, etc. And then when I'm on the East Coast, it might be just walking my dog in Prospect Park or definitely going up check out a lot of new restaurants and see friends in town. What kind of dog do you have?
00:09:01
Speaker
I have a black dog. We always joke she's a reluctant vineyard dog. What makes her reluctant? know. She's a little lazy. She doesn't want to hike around everywhere, but she's the best. My aunt had a black lab who I loved, but like every summer would just run through our screen door and rip it. It's a very lab thing to do. One of her other lab friends, every time that he runs into our house, we make sure that we open up the screen door as soon as he gets in. You are the best and so sweet.
00:09:28
Speaker
You really are steeped in the world that your clients are in. Extremely. Where do you think folks sometimes go wrong when it comes to pr or comms in your space?
PR Insights and Strategies
00:09:40
Speaker
I think it depends on what stage of business you're in, first of all. But i speaking to a lot of founders or earlier stage founders, women in the industry, i think that a lot of people lose sight on the fact that your first impression is still incredibly important.
00:09:57
Speaker
And even though we are absolutely in the information age, the attention economy and whatnot, really understanding who you are what what you're doing and why you're doing it early on and sharing that in a way that's authentic to you and your brand or your business or whatever it is, is vital, first of all. And I see a lot of brands who are constantly shifting how they're saying things, who they're speaking to where they're saying it.
00:10:23
Speaker
And your first impression, I think, is really important. Now, of course, we learn things as we build businesses. i mean, I've owned my business now for 11 years. It definitely looks wildly different than it did in year one.
00:10:34
Speaker
But I think there are a lot of values and ways that I operated that are consistent with what I set out to do in year one. So I think your first impression and consistency in how you're talking about yourself and where you're talking about yourself is important and sometimes something that I see people lose sight of. And then the second thing, my team has heard me say this a million times over, but I love the concept that Seth Godin popularized of your smallest viable audience. And I think a lot of times, and this is not just in...
00:11:09
Speaker
my industry, but in a lot of different spaces, we try to be too many things to too many different people. And especially now in this day and age, you don't need a ton of sales to make a successful business. You don't need a ton of clients to have a profitable agency.
00:11:27
Speaker
So thinking about making sure that you're serving your community and you're giving them what they need and you're connecting with them and you're taking care of them, whether it's through the quality of the product or whatnot that you're offering them, I think that can make for a really successful brand. And once you have your quote unquote smallest viable audience bought in and you know who they are, that makes decisions in business.
00:11:52
Speaker
a lot easier going forward, especially when it comes to public relations and marketing. Yeah. I think that's so thoughtful. I love Seth Godin too. think he's great. Yeah. I feel like people are talking about him forever, but it wasn't until last year that I read a couple of his books and i was like, I should have read these like a decade ago. Yeah. I'm curious about how the business feels to you, like as a founder now versus your first year or 18 months. What is your emotional relationship with it and its highs and lows like?
00:12:21
Speaker
now versus then?
Entrepreneurial Challenges and Advice
00:12:22
Speaker
Two things i really remember from the early days that other business owners and founders said to me, which now in retrospect, I know are true. And I tell other founders this number one is the first two years are frankly going to be hell and not because they're actually going to be hell, but because you're trying so many different things. You're working so hard. You're failing. Sometimes there's so many highs and lows that the first two years are very different. I think then Once you're able to get through that and you kind of create systems and you know who your clients are, who your audience is or your buyer, et cetera. So 11 years in versus the first one or two years in, I think we're certainly able to be more stable and ride those waves more.
00:13:07
Speaker
The second thing that I still know is true is a friend of mine told me this story in the early days of starting my business about her dad was an entrepreneur in tech.
00:13:18
Speaker
and ran into a really big tech mogul in the parking lot in some grocery store in Palo Alto. and this tech mogul said to her dad, once he started his first business, so how does it feel to not know? And it's such a good reminder that I think whether you're in year one or year 10 or year 100, there's a lot that you know now that you didn't know before, but there's still so many things that that you don't necessarily know. And as a founder or as a leader, I think that's a really valuable thing to remember because you have to get comfortable with uncertainty.
00:13:53
Speaker
And now at year 11, can feel much more comfortable and, okay, if we have a client that's not working out and we have to resign them you If we got through a global pandemic, like we learned so much from that. And so I think that there's a lot of value when you're a founder in feeling comfortable with that discomfort, but knowing that you are ultimately of your own volition. Yeah. I love how you framed that and phrased it all.
00:14:18
Speaker
Is there any advice you'd go back and give your younger self and or any specific advice you'd give to a woman in her first year of running an agency? I think that the biggest thing I would have done differently if I were to go back was And this is going to sound terrible, but I was not super calculated in the beginning. Like when I was working for somebody else, I was out there and I was well-networked and i was going out to events and meeting people, but I wasn't thinking really long-term about...
00:14:50
Speaker
how those relationships could mean so much later. And I don't just mean obviously from a monetary perspective, but our whole business is relationships. And so I think that making sure that you're nurturing your relationships, whether you're early in your career or just starting your business is really important.
00:15:07
Speaker
And then I think especially as women, one thing that we are really bad at generally doing is asking for help. asking for help is really important. And it doesn't have to mean that you're actually asking somebody for help, but it might be like, hey, I know you know this person. I'm really interested in meeting with them. Would you mind making an introduction? Or, hey, I'm on my own. I don't have an employee yet. I need another brain in the room.
00:15:32
Speaker
Would you mind reading my positioning and tell me what you think or things like that? So i think asking for help, especially early on, is really important and couples really nicely with nurturing your relationships. Totally. It makes me think of the book.
00:15:46
Speaker
I think it's called The Likeability Trap. Have you heard of it? Oh, yes. It's really good. i'm going to put it on my list. I'm blanking on the author's name. But she talks a lot about how women are like both rewarded for being really helpful and then penalized when you're not helpful.
00:16:05
Speaker
But like the rewards have a real ceiling and it's like, well, you can get to middle management or something by being really helpful and then it kind of Right. But what you're saying is really resonating with me. i also think myself for sure, but I think a lot of women, we feel so bad asking for help, but I think what you're saying makes so much sense and is so important. I think you're getting get a good point that you might be asking somebody for help. They may not hear it as help. Yeah, that's true.
00:16:29
Speaker
People really want to support others for the most part. I know we know people who don't. And we oftentimes just naturally help people more inherently than maybe we realize. I don't think it needs to be a tit for tat. But especially when you're starting out, certainly not sending the like, hey, can I pick your brain for a copy email? But definitely making sure that you're learning as much as you can from other people, because in general, they want to be helpful. It makes us feel good. Yeah, you're totally right.
00:16:59
Speaker
I want to give you the chance to talk a little bit about the service you all are offering.
The James Collective's Success Factors
00:17:05
Speaker
What do you think you do so well that you've been so successful? And why do you think your clients love you?
00:17:11
Speaker
So there are three real reasons why i started the business. And I think that they are the reasons why we've been able to maintain so many of our clients for so much longer than the agency average. I mean, one of my clients has been with me recently.
00:17:26
Speaker
Almost since I started the business. We've been together for about 10 and a half years, which is wild in the agency world. But first and foremost, I think that the most important thing is, and I drive this home with my team as well, is we really strive to be external extensions.
00:17:45
Speaker
of the internal teams that we're working with. So at the James Collective, I never want to be thought of just as like the agency. Okay, go give that to the agency. We still have scopes of work, of course, but really understanding their businesses, understanding their challenges, knowing things that maybe are not even normally in our purview because it helps us build trust with the client, make recommendations, build strategies, et cetera. us First and foremost, I will say just the human piece of really being part of the team of the clients that we work with is one. The second is we have a real depth of knowledge and in his industries that are actually rather complex. And that was always my intention in starting the business. For example, CPG food. Sounds pretty easy. it Sounds like something you could just sell online. It is.
00:18:32
Speaker
But as soon as you start going into distribution networks and then grocery, things like that, it actually gets incredibly complicated. And so for us, working certainly with wine and spirits, I mean, every state has different laws. I was just talking to a client this morning about Tide House rules and what you can put on social because of Tide House rules, which only affects alcohol.
00:18:52
Speaker
So we have a depth of understanding in these relatively complex industries and also a real passion and depth in them as well, which I think makes our work better and makes our work with clients really seamless. And then last but not least, I think it's hard nowadays, especially with slim marketing teams, not giant budgets, all of that work.
00:19:16
Speaker
work with many different teams, all of whom have just singular skill sets. So for us, the fact that we are able to go and pitch a journalist one day and then build an affiliate strategy the next day and then work with an amazing tastemaker, influencer to host a trip or a dinner that then can create content, all of that under one roof, I think it's an added value on top of the other two things I mentioned.
Handling Client Relationships
00:19:44
Speaker
Yeah. I hear you on the embedded in like the client's organizations and not wanting to be just like a vendor or an execution partner. How do you think about
00:19:55
Speaker
scope creep when it comes to that. Because I feel like we default to like, yeah, we'd love to join that. We do a lot at MedBerry with our clients to be part of the team and advise. And every now and then when I look at the hours, I'm like, we might need to pull it back a little bit here for these guys. Right. Scope creep is real. I don't think anybody that works in any sort of consulting or freelancer agency capacity can say that they are always so perfectly on scope.
00:20:18
Speaker
But the way that we think about it is, first of all, we work with most of our clients on retainer for a year or more. So that actually can make it a little easier, to be totally honest with you, because it's not like somebody who's building a website and then is asked to do social media and they're like, I don't want to tell this person no, but this is so clearly out of scope. For us, our scopes are a little bit broader.
00:20:41
Speaker
And i think for anybody who is thinking about starting an agency or going out on their own or whatnot, I think menuing things out as well is really helpful and doing so at the beginning. Because for us, we'll have our set retainer, which includes the majority of what we do every day or the majority of the things that we would recommend for their specific business to do. But then if somebody wants us to come in build an event, that is definitely going to take us a lot more time and be in additional scope. or build out an affiliate program. Right now, we're actually starting to dig in a little bit to GEO strategy and how our work can inform how our clients show up on ai So those are all things that we will menu out in addition to our misst standard retainer. Yeah, no, it makes sense.
00:21:26
Speaker
I think too, I don't know if you feel this way, but sometimes it's like intention. It's like we did something a big extra this morning for a client that was like very proactive on our part. We're just like, we really want to. And sometimes there's an element of like, what's the relationship like? And what's the energy behind it a little bit, I think too.
00:21:42
Speaker
I think that first of all, we're all human. I think a scope is really important, but is not always going to be the exact goal. recipe that we're always working with.
00:21:53
Speaker
But I think that a lot of times also for us, I know sometimes we'll add on things or we'll test things with certain clients who've been with us for a long time because we feel like it would be valuable to them. And then it's valuable to us because we're doing better work or we're delivering on the results that we promised when we're able to help each other grow. Yeah, 100%.
00:22:13
Speaker
For folks who are really interested in the work you're doing, where can we direct them?
Connecting with the James Collective
00:22:17
Speaker
And we could put your LinkedIn in the show notes. Put your website in the show notes. Is there anything else we should put in there?
00:22:24
Speaker
So our LinkedIn at the James Collective and Instagram, we are mainly on stories these days intentionally on Instagram. Our website, www.thejamescollective.com. And then i am in about a week going to be launching also a sub stack, which I will reannouncing on our social. That is largely about what we just spoke about, looking behind the pantries is maybe of some of our other favorite founders and giving people essentially our founders one easy thing a week to do for their marketing and PR success. That sounds great. Very cool. Alison, thank you so much. I love talking with you. i admire the work you're doing. Yes, thanks for having me on. and I appreciate it.