Welcome to the Virtual Antics Podcast, where we help entrepreneurs streamline their business to six figures and beyond. These short, sweet and info-packed episodes will inspire, educate and leave you feeling motivated to take one more step forward in your business. So put down your never-ending to-do list, because in this podcast, we are interviewing the best of the best in the entrepreneurial world as they spill their secrets to success. This podcast is sponsored by Nadora, the all-in-one software for entrepreneurs to grow their business, with unlimited landing pages, automations, emails and text campaigns, and so much more. I'm your host, natalie Guzman. Now let's get into it. Hey, jason, I'm so excited to have you on the show. How are you doing today?
Speaker 2I'm absolutely delighted to be here, natalie. Thank you so much, and I'm so excited to have you on the show. How are you doing today? I'm absolutely delighted to be here, natalie. Thank you so much, and I'm doing very well.
Speaker 1Yeah, I'm so excited so you can tell us a little about yourself and how you got started with what you do.
Speaker 2I'm Jason Barnard, the entrepreneur and CEO of CadiQ. Cadiq is a digital marketing agency that empowers dynamic business leaders to become what they want to be online and be represented the way they want online, especially by machines like google, chat, gpt, as we were just discussing before the show, and I got into this because that google didn't understand me 10 years ago. Yeah, it understood me for what I used to do, which was a voiceover artist for a cartoon, and I set about changing how it perceived me and therefore the way it also represents me, and that started the whole career and started CaliCube. 10 years later, here, I am expert.
Speaker 1That is awesome. Yeah, I know, just before the show we were kind of talking about it. I recently put my name into ChatGPT and I said who is Natalie Guzman? And they're like Natalie Guzman is a marketing specialist and virtual assistant agency owner. I was like, yes, that is so cool. So that's basically you know, you get you help entrepreneurs basically be found on the digital space, whether that's Google or ChatGPT. Like have it understand them. Is that correct?
Speaker 2Yeah Well, we start with the idea if the machines can understand you, they can represent you to your audience when your audience is searching your name in the way you want. So let's start with get that understanding so they can represent you the way you want. The next step up is build their belief in your credibility as a solution. You want them to understand that you're the best solution in your niche and after that that's credibility. And the third level is deliverability, omnipresence, visibility Make sure they have the material from you to ensure that they can introduce you to the conversations they're having with their users. And if you look at it that way, users are having conversations with ChatGPT and Google and Bing now, and that makes them the biggest, most important influencers you can think of, because they're having billions of niche conversations with users who trust them and are asking for their advice every single day. And that's the Catechute process understandability, credibility, deliverability and podcast guest appearances that you were mentioning is a great way to get that nailed down.
Speaker 1Oh, 100%. We deal with websites and landing pages and SEO within our business and one of the things that we've noticed is that you know the more that you're on podcasts and you're reutilizing that content you're putting on your YouTube, then you're on someone else's YouTube and then you're putting it. We even turn, like podcasts, into blog posts and everything and it just helps with, you know, brand identity and you know showing that your authority figure in your market and we have seen amazing things. I know I've gotten a lot of clients just by being guests on other people's podcasts or having people on my podcast and it's put us in a really cool position where we're, you know, an expert in our field. So I definitely love podcast guesting. I would say like blog writing as well. Even guest blog writing is another cool way.
Speaker 2No, absolutely brilliant. Yeah, 100%. And there's one really important thing that I think people need to bear in mind before they start, or even if they've just started, is more isn't necessarily better. More consistent and clear and well packaged for these machines to understand is better. So if you've done 100 podcast episodes, which you did last year, and you changed your brand narrative or brand messaging frequently throughout the year, the machines are going to be even more confused than they were before. So you're actually creating a bigger problem than you had. So if you're consistent and clear, the machines are going to be even more confused than they were before. So you're actually creating a bigger problem than you had. So if you're consistent and clear, the machines will understand. At that point you can scale it out, but always stay relevant. Make sure you're staying in a relevant niche, because the machines are obsessed by categorizing you.
Speaker 1Yeah, and I know I've had a lot of clients come to me and they're like I'm guesting on other people's podcasts and I'm only I'm always saying the same stuff over and over again, like should I be changing it up? Should I be saying something different? So in your you know, opinion, it's that you shouldn't. It should be the same message, because that's only going to help, and that's what I found too. I always talk around the same things, my same story. I have a lot of stories I could share, but I always share the main ones that led me to the exact path that I am now and that has made me extremely searchable. And so, yeah, I would definitely recommend to people that are podcasting it sounds like you would as well that keep your message. You know the same. It doesn't matter how many times you repeat it. That's just one more place that people can find you on.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it's really tempting to think. Well, I've heard this 150,000 times. I think I might say something completely different today. What I found is getting on different types of podcasts changes the angle, and I like that. I enjoy that. It makes me think on my feet but the fundamental message is always the same. Who am I? Jason Barnard, founder CEO of CaliCube. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a digital marketing expert with specialization in entity SEO, and I can help business leaders take control of their personal brand online and from there we can discuss lots of different things and that's delightful, but the baseline is always the same 100 and that's where I feel like niching is so important, you know when, especially in the virtual assistant world.
Speaker 1So when you start as a virtual assistant, everyone's like niche down, niche down. I did not, and I think I made it 10 times harder for myself because if you did, you're you're attacking a certain type of person, like their persona. Right, that goes into. And when you're attacking that persona and you're like you're just basically talking to them, that type of person, you're going to be able to attract a lot more people and a lot quicker than if you're trying to get everyone.
Speaker 2Yeah, and it's a huge problem. And when I fell into that trap as well is managing a personal brand is something that everybody needs? Therefore, I immediately thought, well, is managing a personal brand is something that everybody needs? Therefore, I immediately thought, well, I can appeal to everybody. And when you try to appeal to everybody, you actually appeal to nobody. And it took me as well a long time to actually it's not figure it out, because I intellectually understood, but I couldn't do it, because it's so tempting to say, oh, I don't want to miss that opportunity or that opportunity, because it's so tempting to say, oh, I don't want to miss that opportunity or that opportunity.
Speaker 2And now that we've done it, business is going much, much better. We've doubled revenue in the last year, using our own CaliQ process for the company and for myself, because we're being much more intentional about who we're targeting and who we can help. And that's the other point is, now we've identified who we can truly help. It's CEOs and founders of corporations with revenues of $5 million or more who care about their personal brand, controlling it and using it to drive business for their company. That's our core area, and now that we've defined that, it's very easy for me to reach out to them and say we can help you and we can bring value, and working with CaliCube is an investment for you. It will grow your personal brand, give you control, get you in front of the right people.
Speaker 2And I don't want to forget about all the other people who are artists, ceos and founders of companies with less than 5 million revenue musicians, entertainers, bloggers. You can go to calicubecom no-transcript. So we actually have a whole DIY system at Catecube where we just go and do it. It's brilliant. It's really simple Understandability, credibility, deliverability. We're not hiding anything, because we were saying this before. Self-determination in a world of singularity, where machines are more intelligent than human beings, is something we're all going to have to worry about, and this is the solution.
Speaker 1A hundred percent. Yeah, if we start now, it's only going to give us success in the long run. What advice would you have? You know you said you went from voice actor into this whole personal brand expert persona. So what would you? What advice would you give someone that is kind of changing directions? Because I know I get this a lot from entrepreneurs?
Oh yeah, Well, we had a really interesting client last year, Jonathan Kronstadt, who's the president of Kajabi Kajabi big company. He grew it from several million to several billion, from what I understand, and he's still the president of Kajabi. But he said to us I want people to start the conversation with me, not talking about Kajabi, I want them to start talking to me about business leadership, business advice, investor. I want to become an investor. How can I pivot my career away from Kajabi without leaving Kajabi? And what we then did is developed a strategy for him where we got him to stand where the audience he wants to address are looking, and we helped him to emphasize his communication about himself and his personal brand away from Kajabi and towards these the, the, the investor, business leadership niche.
Speaker 2And a year later he has a brilliant knowledge panel on Google. That's the thing on the right that says who you are, the knowledge box and the information box. He says I look fancy. Number one. Number two is he says people start conversations with me about investment and business advisory services and then they talk about Kajabi. And when you search on Google or you ask about him on chat, GPT, they both say Jonathan Cronstead is an entrepreneur, a business leader and president of Kajabi. So what we've managed to do is get them to turn it around from being primarily about Kajabi to being primarily about investors and business leadership and thirdly about Kajabi. So it's changing the focus.
Speaker 1That is absolutely brilliant, yeah, and I really love that. You know, you just kind of walked us through the steps of it, especially with someone that had such a strong brand, Because I know pretty much every if you're in business, you know Kajabi, and so that is amazing that just within a year too, because a lot of times you know, you know, as entrepreneurs, we value time and we do everything on a timeline, and so that is really good to know that someone that strong of a brand took a year.
Speaker 1So maybe if they didn't have a stronger brand, do you think it would take a less amount of time?
Speaker 2The machines take a certain amount of time to digest, so it's incompressible. Lower than six months. But yes, you potentially do.