Jason Barnard: Brand Representation in AI for Founders, CEOs, and Entrepreneurs

Full Episode Page: Jason Barnard: Brand Representation in AI for Founders, CEOs, and Entrepreneurs

Jason Barnard is an award-winning entrepreneur, author, innovator, and CEO and founder at Kalicube.

Host Nick Berry explains how brand representation in AI impacts digital due diligence, trust, and deal flow. Jason covers entity strategy, why inconsistent facts hurt referrals, and how digital brand intelligence trains Google and AI on your narrative. Learn to build an entity home, disambiguate namesakes, and turn offline credibility into algorithmic trust. He also shares Kalicube’s data-driven prioritization to focus on what drives impact.

You'll hear
-How brand representation in AI shapes trust before the first call
-Why digital brand intelligence changes Google and AI due diligence
-How inconsistent AI search representation kills deal flow
-How precision brand intelligence builds authority in Google and AI

Watch on Youtube

Links
-Jason Barnard: Personal Website
-Kalicube: Premium Digital Branding Consultancy
-Jason on LinkedIn
-Jason on YouTube

Chapters
00:00 Brand Representation in AI and Due Diligence
02:11 The Cost of Inaction in AI Search Representation
04:16 Personal Brand Authority in Google and AI
06:56 Teaching AI Your Brand Narrative
09:38 Precision Brand Intelligence Explained
21:52 Proactive vs Reactive Brand Credibility
25:46 Claiming Your Digital Brand Real Estate
28:30 Building Niche Authority for AI Trust
33:23 Consistency and Algorithmic Brand Trust
36:16 Turning Offline Credibility into AI Signals

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Transcript

Transcript for: Jason Barnard: Brand Representation in AI for Founders, CEOs, and Entrepreneurs 

00:00 Brand Representation in AI and Due Diligence

02:11 The Cost of Inaction in AI Search Representation

04:16 Personal Brand Authority in Google and AI

06:56 Teaching AI Your Brand Narrative

09:38 Precision Brand Intelligence Explained

21:52 Proactive vs Reactive Brand Credibility

25:46 Claiming Your Digital Brand Real Estate

28:30 Building Niche Authority for AI Trust

33:23 Consistency and Algorithmic Brand Trust

36:16 Turning Offline Credibility into AI Signals

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (00:00)

Google search result for your name is your digital business card. Today with AI, because people are doing due diligence, because it's a conversation, because these machines will answer verbosely about you.

as a brand, personal or corporate, you owe it to yourself to control that rabbit hole because your client, your prospect is digging down and they will find all this stuff about you that maybe you don't want to be found or the information that makes you look not authoritative.

And that whole idea of saying, well, AI represents me, okay. My question to you is, does it represent you to the height of your true value, your true authority, your true credibility?

Nick Berry (00:43)

Search engines and AI are now the first layer of everyone's due diligence. Before a call, a meeting, or a deal, people are asking Google or ChatGPT who you are, whether or not you can be trusted. And if any of those systems get your story wrong, you're going to lose opportunities without ever even knowing they existed. Jason Bernard helps business leaders fix that exact problem. He's the CEO and founder of KaliCube.

where he works with CEOs, founders, and investors to control how Google and AI understands, trusts, and recommends when high-stakes decisions are being made. So today, Jason and I unpack how brand representation in AI really works and why inaction is quietly costing business owners credibility, deal flow, and revenue. Expect to learn how AI is influencing your prospects when they're making their high-stakes decisions. What AI search actually shows your prospects?

what Google and chat GPT say about you when you're not in the room, why great referrals die quietly before that first conversation, how inconsistent online information is costing you trust and deal flow, what you can do to make AI confirm instead of question your reputation, the best ways to stop losing opportunities you never even knew existed. each one is an important topic that matters to all entrepreneurs. Enjoy this interview with Jason Bernard.

Nick Berry (02:04)

state of AI in the world right now, particularly with

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (02:07)

Yeah.

Nick Berry (02:09)

are we fully appreciating what's happening here or are we just going to get steamrolled?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (02:14)

entrepreneurs. It's the opportunity cost of inaction.

Nick Berry (02:15)

Mm-hmm.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (02:18)

The cost of inaction is huge That's a really good starting point.

Nick Berry (02:21)

Yeah,

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (02:23)

So the cost of inaction in terms of how you're represented by Google and AI, with just Google, it was an important problem to some, but not to everybody. Now, as an entrepreneur, would argue it's going to be important to everybody because the stakes just got shit tons higher.

Nick Berry (02:38)

They don't realize that, they? I mean, I say they, Me too, right? I think the people who follow someone like yourself closely, it's probably registering, but There seems like there's the masses out there who are still just kind of like…

Don't even know it's coming.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (02:52)

Yep.

Nick Berry (02:53)

And it's here.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (02:54)

you've done the knowledge panel course and you've gone into all the geeky stuff of how to, and the Brand SERPs book, all the geeky stuff about how to manage brands in Google and now AI. But the pragmatic side of it something that I don't address enough and that's what I'd like to address today. What the problem is, what the cost is in action today for your personal brand and your corporate brand.

Nick Berry (03:01)

I Yeah.

you are on the leading edge someone that I, and I think a lot of entrepreneurs look to, to help bring us along to let us know how much do we need to be paying attention to this and where do we need to be focused? And it's going really fast. so, yeah, that thing that's been on my mind is the

How much are we sleeping on this

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (03:40)

I think people are really missing the point here. I talk to people and come in and say, right, well, I work on improving brand presence, visibility, representation in Google and AI, ChatGPT. And people immediately start talking about, so how do you use ChatGPT for that? I no, don't use ChatGPT. I change the way ChatGPT represents you.

how often it's going to talk about you, how often Google AI mode will talk about you. And that's a real eye-opener for them. The second eye-opener is they say, you know, I asked Chuck GPT about me or about my brand, and it says really nice things. And I say, are you logged in? They say, yes. And I say, well, in that case, it's just repeating back to you what you've already told it. But that's private within your own little

Chachi PT assistant, if somebody else asks Chachi PT or Google AI mode or perplexity or copilot about you, it will answer something completely different because the results, the output from these machines is incredibly highly personalized. And in the days of good old Google two years ago, when we just had to worry about Google, it wasn't personalized to that extent.

So if you ask, if I ask Google about me, it would say the same thing to me as it does to you.

with chat GPT, Google AI mode, perplexity, copilot, Microsoft copilot, everybody gets a very personalized answer. And that personalized answer is based on what they've been talking to the machine about and what the machine already knows. So you need to control what the machine knows about you so that when it talks to somebody else in that little microcosmic

assistant world, it says what you want it to say. You're not leaving it to chance. And that brand representation is something that people don't realize. And I'm talking about this particularly because people think they're safe, but they're not.

Nick Berry (05:38)

And that's kind of what got you started going down this path a few years ago, right? You had something happen to you with your identity and this was before AI, but that's exactly what can happen here.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (05:50)

Yeah, there are a couple of problems there. Number one is that I had a career as a voiceover artist for a cartoon blue dog. And so when people searched for me, when I was pivoting my career to become an entrepreneur and digital marketer, my prospects would Google my name and it would say Jason Barnard is voiceover artist for a cartoon blue dog. And that lost me hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars in deals. That simple due diligence

when people Googled my name 10 years ago lost me hundreds of thousands of dollars.

So what I did was go in and think, OK, with my knowledge about SEO, how do I change Google's perspective so that it says Jason Barnard is a credible authoritative digital marketer and entrepreneur and put the blue dog to the back seat? And I spent a few months figuring it out. And so now if you search my name, it talks about digital marketing. It talks about authority in digital brand intelligence. It doesn't talk much about the blue dog anymore.

That was a relatively small problem because we were looking just at a business card. So I used to say, Google search result for your name is your digital business card. Today with AI, because people are doing due diligence, because it's a conversation, because these machines will answer verbosely about you. If somebody asks about me, it will write five or 600 words and it will suggest follow up questions. So then people get into…

the situation where if you start asking about somebody or you start asking about a company, the AI will drag you down a rabbit hole of due diligence. And as a brand, personal or corporate, you owe it to yourself to control that rabbit hole because your client, your prospect is digging down and they will find all this stuff about you that maybe you don't want to be found or the information that makes you look not authoritative.

And that whole idea of saying, well, AI represents me, okay. My question to you is, does it represent you to the height of your true value, your true authority, your true credibility? And the answer is always no. For example, you ask it, Jason Barnard, what qualifications does he have? It will say he has a degree from Liverpool John Moores University. He has a Davie Award for Ed Tech.

Nick Berry (07:54)

Yeah.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (08:05)

development. He has a Search Metrics Black Belt certification. He was voted Top SEO 2024 by Search Engine Land.

Those are credibility signals. But if I don't actively educate AI and Google about those qualifications, those credibility signals, it won't be able to say it because it doesn't know it. Or if it does think it knows it, it's not confident enough. And that's what people don't talk about, is that confidence to say it. And what I find now is people come to sales calls with me.

saying, I know what you do, I know you're the guy because AI keeps telling me that you're the guy, how much does it cost, how long does it take?

And there are a couple of things. Number one is the sales calls are very easy, and I close them very easily. But number two is how many calls would I have missed if it hadn't been so positive when people were asking chat GPT or Googling? You miss, and I think this is the thing that entrepreneurs miss and I'll end on this, you miss a huge number of opportunities.

simply because somebody who's recommended you verbally to somebody else, that somebody else then asks ChatGPT. ChatGPT isn't convinced so the person never calls you. So all the hard work, sorry. Yeah.

Nick Berry (09:22)

Or it's not 100 % aligned.

Yeah, if it's not 100 % consistent, mean, it doesn't even have to be negative. If it's not aligned, like if the blue, the dog background comes up, that's not a negative, right? This is not a crisis that you're trying to bury. But what that prospect is looking for is affirmation, something,

I need to know that what I was told is what the rest of the world sees here. And if it's not, they don't show up saying, Jason, you're the man, how much?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (09:51)

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah, exactly. the thing about it as well is I think we don't realize that we use Google and ChatGPT because we trust them. So your prospect is going to ask ChatGPT or Google, and whatever Google and ChatGPT say is the truth for them. I don't use Google because I don't trust it. I choose to use Google or I choose to use ChatGPT because I believe what it tells me. It becomes a recommendation engine and you

want ChatGPT and Google to be your recommendation engine. You want them to recommend you. I would go so far as say you want them to advocate for you. We talk a lot about clients who become advocates. Make ChatGPT and Google your advocates. It's brilliant and it works absolutely.

Nick Berry (10:37)

Yeah. That's so that's what I heard you describing when you said, if you go into a GBT and you ask it about Jason Bernard, it's going to tell you this and this and this. And, and you described what I would call like that's a curated, it says what you want it to say because you've learned how to, I'm going to say feed, right? We're teaching the machines. ⁓ and I'll let you explain it.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (10:55)

Well, you can say teach,

you can say feed, you can say manipulate.

Nick Berry (11:00)

Yeah. That's the strategy now, It's like taking what we used to try to do with SEO and now We're trying give it the information that we want it to have or that it needs to tell people what we want it to tell them.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (11:15)

Right, and I'm sorry, one thing that's just occurred to me is it's actually easier now than it was in the days of Google three or four years ago. Yeah, because we were talking about teaching. We're teaching a child who wants to understand, and the child is very logical. So if you give the child a truthful, logical, corroborated, consistent story, it will repeat it.

Nick Berry (11:22)

Really?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (11:36)

If you can be consistent with your brand narrative over time and over space, i.e. across the entire internet and over the period of a year, the child will say what you want it to say. And with Google, that wasn't actually as easy as it is today. We've got 25 billion data points, which is written up on the wall behind me, that allow us to see into how these machines, not how they function, but what output we will get with a given input.

So whereas with Google search, we were trying to figure out how it worked, and we were trying to game the machine, we're no longer trying to game the machines, we're trying to teach them as children or feed them as animals.

Nick Berry (12:13)

Okay, so what's your process for doing that? Like how do I, as an entrepreneur, start to do that with Chaggpt?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (12:20)

Right. Well, it's deceptively simple in that all of these machines are looking for what we call the entity home, what Google call the point of reconciliation, what you could call the canonical source of truth. And that's your website talking about you. And that seems counterintuitive. The machines are looking for your version of the story, basically.

So you need to create your version of the story on your own website. Then you need to convince the machines that that is a relevant, honest, helpful version of your brand narrative. And you do that by making sure that whatever you're saying on what we call the entity home website, your own website, is repeated all around the web across your entire digital footprint. So your digital ecosystem is incredibly consistent.

and it needs to remain consistent over a period of time, which is a year. And that's nice, because for search it takes a few weeks, for the Knowledge Graph it takes three months, for the entire system to digest your brand narrative and to repeat it the way you want is about a year. So, Entity Home website gives your version of the truth and your narrative, your justification of why you're a credible solution for the subset of their users who are your audience.

Repeat that same narrative across your entire digital footprint, link from the entity home to the corroboration, from the corroboration back to the entity home. The machine goes round and round like this, backwards and forwards, into what we call the infinite loop of self-corroboration. After a while, it says, okay, like a child, I've heard that story so many times from so many trusted sources. That's true, I will say it. And that's when…

If you use ChatGPT or Google AI mode, you get the same result as if Nick Berry uses it or John Smith on the other side of the world uses it. That's when you get your consistent brand narrative across the entire AI landscape. And that's where you stop losing clients. That's where you stop missing those calls that you should get. That's where that due diligence rabbit hole for yourself or your company is a safe place.

in terms of your ability to convert the prospects who are digging into your background, who are doing that due diligence in the AI, in ChatGPT, in Google, in Perplexity

Nick Berry (14:35)

Yeah. so a super simple example of what that might look like. Jason Bernard, your description on your website and everywhere on the internet is CEO and founder of Kalicube. when we produce this episode, that's what will go on the episode page on my site. That's what will go on all the podcast platforms.

that's what Jason is talking about in the consistency of the description. And it's also that's an ultra clear statement. that's Jason is this, right? It's making a very clear assertion and you're consistent with that everywhere.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (15:07)

Yeah, so Jason Barnard is an award-winning entrepreneur, innovator, author, and keynote speaker. That's a great sentence. I say that across the internet. Jason Barnard is the world authority in digital brand intelligence. Jason Barnard and his company, Kalicube work on precision brand engineering for their clients. Jason Barnard is the CEO in Kalicube. All of those are statements that placed me as an authority and a credible figure.

for serving entrepreneurs who want to look after their personal brand in Google and AI. And I place all of them across the internet in a very consistent manner. And because the machines see it, they will repeat it. So that is the very simple sounding solution to getting these machines to toe the line and repeat your brand narrative the way you want. And…

What I love about this is it's such a simple truth, such a simple system, such a simple framework. Anybody can theoretically do it. The problem you have as an entrepreneur is you don't have the time, you don't have the space, headspace to deal with it. You don't have 25 billion data points. You don't have a proprietary tech layer that will make sure that all of this remains consistent once we've defined it, remains consistent over time and over space for that full year.

What generally happens is people start, they do a couple of weeks, they do about half of it, they give up, everything's in a mess, they haven't actually improved anything or moved a needle. A year later, everything is even a bigger mess and the machines really don't understand. So if you're going to do it, do it properly. And if you're going to do it, don't do it and then leave it and expect it to be a set it and forget it. You have to maintain it over time.

And remember, other people are talking about you. You need to keep a track on that. And you need to make sure that when, for example, I'm on a podcast, that what you're saying about me corresponds to what I need to be said about me to keep that message consistent. And the more you're out there, the more people will write about you over which you have no control. At which point you need to make sure that your version is so consistent that even when somebody else's representation of you is a little bit messy,

It's okay. The machines don't get confused. And that's a huge challenge. And that's what the 25 billion data points, the tech layer, and the 100 years of experience for my team come into play.

Nick Berry (17:17)

Mm-hmm.

the machines are taking in the information that you're producing about yourself. Then there are going to be other people who are producing information about you that are going to be taken into consideration. And then, there are also other people who had the same name or depending on your brand that, so then it, then it starts to really get dicey.

I guess.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (17:44)

Yes, well, other people with the same name is a huge problem for AI because there are so many people with the same name and even people, even one individual person can have multiple facets. for example, I'm saying I'm an entrepreneur, I'm an innovator, an author, and a keynote speaker. That could theoretically be four different people called Jason Barnard How do I make sure the machines understand that's the same person?

How do I make sure that understands that I'm not the ice hockey player, that I'm not the professor from San Francisco Golden Gate University? That's really, really, really important. And it's a really big problem for the machines, which is why we talk about precision brand engineering. We need to be incredibly precise because we have, let's say 10,000 people with the name Jason Barnard. We need to be precise with the machines.

with that engineering of my brand identity so that it understands clearly that I'm not the ice hockey player, but I am the entrepreneur who's very successful, the innovator who changed ed tech and is now changing digital marketing for the better, the author who's been a best seller on Amazon and the keynote speaker who's spoken all around the world.

Those four personas are the same person and all four personas bring credibility to my persona. I need to make sure that all that credibility is in one neat little ball so that these machines become my advocate.

Nick Berry (19:07)

so you also, you help clients engineer that brand identity, right?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (19:11)

So if somebody comes to us and says, this is my brand narrative, please make the machines repeat exactly what my branding specialist has told me to say. We will make the machines say, we will force them to say exactly what you've just spent $30,000 to get, which is your favorite photo, your tagline.

your who's my best client, what do I offer them and why should they sign with me and why should they trust me. You've defined all of that with your brand identity with a specialist. You come to us and we will translate that into the machines. We will force feed the machines and get them to say exactly what you've paid $30,000 to create. And that $30,000 will suddenly be amplified to billions of people.

by AI and Google. So it increases the value of that investment. If you know what you're saying and you haven't invested 30,000, let's say, you can come to us and we will take what your brand narrative is with or without the professional help that you might need to create your personal brand and get the machine set. And I'll give you an example is Jonathan Cronstedt, who is president of Kajabi, came to us and he said, well, I want to pivot.

I'm known as the president of Kajabi, but I want to be known as an investor and business advisor. We did that for him. Now AI says, Jonathan Cronstedt is an investor and a business advisor. and by the way, he was president of Kajabi. Before coming to see us, it just talked about Kajabi all the time.

And the next problem when you talked about people sharing names is we have a client called Scott Duffy and there are 10,000 Scott Duffys in the world and one of them happens to have a million students on Udemy and he's famous as a tech teacher.

How do you make our Scott Duffy dominate when somebody's searching Scott Duffy, when the other Scott Duffy is actually more famous? That's a really neat trick to play off.

Nick Berry (21:02)

Or how do you, yeah, there's a Nick Berry, the retired British actor that like, he's much more well known and has been for a long time than I am.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (21:11)

Yeah.

Yeah. And so if somebody says Nick Berry and they're thinking about you, how do we get the machines to prefer you to the other Nick Berry? That's a huge piece of work that we can do. Another point we can do is we have a lot of people coming to us with online reputation issues. So it's not something terribly bad, but something from the news that they don't particularly like from the past. And it just keeps coming back.

And when people Google them or ask Chachipiti about them, that piece of news dominates their persona and their narrative. How can they get that to become a minor part of their story or even not part of their story at all? That's where we specialize, online reputation management, changing the perspective of the machine, not drowning the content, not drowning the story, changing the perspective of the machine to not focus on it anymore.

And leading on from that, another point is what we call namesake on my reputation. So if I have somebody with the same name as me who happens to be a criminal and Google or AI confused me with that person, and all of a sudden I'm being talked about as though I'm the criminal, that's a huge problem. And that's a huge problem people haven't even begun to think about.

And that confusion, that algorithmic confusion brings namesake online reputation management, which we specialize in as well. How do we disambiguate you from the other person so that the machines don't talk about you as though you're that person?

Nick Berry (22:36)

Yeah. So what, what's I'm picking up kind of to bring this back to the very beginning of our conversation. Like what everybody needs to be aware of is that the machine is establishing what your reputation is for you right now. Like if you don't do anything, it's happening. So you can try to be proactive from this point forward, or I suppose not, but, but it's

happening. You've just listed off the things, the risks that are associated with it.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (23:03)

Well, I like the word proactive, is that the other choice is reactive and being reactive is much more painful and much more costly. If you're reactive, you're going to be suffering already. The problem is already right in front of you and it's costing you millions of dollars. So it's going to be much more painful. And if you're reacting to solve a problem of confusion in the algorithm's mind,

Nick Berry (23:13)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (23:28)

it's much more difficult and takes much more time than to sort the problem out proactively. So my advice to people is, and this is just my personal perspective, be reactive because it's going to cost you less today, it's going to be quicker, and it's not going to cost you millions of dollars. And if the problem never comes up, that's a win, because it will come up for all of us at some point, that algorithmic confusion.

Nick Berry (23:34)

Mm-hmm.

You mean be proactive, right? Did you say proactive? Okay, Okay. ⁓

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (23:54)

Gotta be proactive.

I got

a bit confused as well. think I said the wrong word. But that point about proactivity is, for me, fundamentally important because whether it happens today, whether it happens in a year's time, whether it happens in two years' time, algorithmic confusion about you is going to cost you money as an entrepreneur at some point. The question is when and how much. My advice, sort it out now and it will never cost you money.

Nick Berry (24:00)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right. Yeah. mean, and you are, people are being, are using chat GPT or AI to search for you. Like it's happening, right? There's, you probably have statistics

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (24:34)

Well, mean, ask yourself if somebody says to you, I know this guy, Jason Barnard, he's absolutely brilliant at optimizing for Google and AI. What do you do? You go to Google and ask, or I know Nick Berry, he's brilliant at digital marketing. I'm going to go and Google Nick Berry. I'll find the actor. And then I'll think, OK, Nick Berry, digital marketing.

And at that point, what Google or ChatGPT says about you will either confirm what I've said, it will be, yeah, yeah, not really, or maybe even contradict what I've said. And the only of those three cases where you've actually won that recommendation, which was a human recommendation to start with, is when it actually confirms what that human being said. Nick Berry is a great digital marketer. If it just says, yeah,

You've lost it. That's $100,000 down the drain.

Nick Berry (25:22)

Yep. Yep.

And the bigger your deals are, the more dependent you are on trust, the more congruent the results that it produces have to be with what you were told by that first person, that recommendation.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (25:35)

Yeah.

And of course, all of this goes for corporate brands, it goes for personal brands, it goes for product brands.

So as an entrepreneur running a business, you owe it to yourself for your company, for your product and for yourself because they're all going to make a

Nick Berry (25:50)

So you said, you use the phrase, yo, to yourself. So this is the thing that a few years ago, when I started reading some of your information and kind of what clicked with me about the knowledge panels is, or the knowledge graph in particular, it's like, there is a piece of digital real estate out there, literally with your name on it. Literally.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (26:09)

Hmm.

Nick Berry (26:10)

brand SERP I'm sure that there are people or situations where that just is probably not going to produce anything for them or not be of any value. But if you've built any equity in your name, if you've accomplished anything, then that piece of digital real estate with your name on it that is there for you to claim, it has some value.

you don't want to just let it sit there and like, what does it into the vapor?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (26:36)

that's kind of, as you said, Google are building knowledge panels whether you like it or not. ChatGPT is trying to understand you and will talk about you whether you like it or not. You really owe it to yourself, and I would add to your employees, to deal with that now. Another thing is you mentioned the Knowledge Graph. And I generally explain the Knowledge Graph as an encyclopedia, a massive machine readable insight.

like Wikipedia, but tens of thousands of times bigger. So Wikipedia has six million people and companies and articles in it. The Knowledge Graph has 54 billion. But for people, the Knowledge Graph and that Knowledge Panel is the who's who the machines use. So Google Chat GPT Perplexity Microsoft Copilot have a who's who that they look into.

to figure out who's important and what they need to say about them. If you're not in the who's who, which is the knowledge graph, if you don't have the knowledge panel that represents your entry in the who's who, you're nobody.

Nick Berry (27:32)

what warrants, notability, what qualified?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (27:33)

yeah, well…

Yeah,

that's a great Anybody can be in the who's who, literally. And what's glorious about it is whatever authority signals, credibility signals you have, you can leverage them to become somebody who's worthy of being in this who's who. Because the people

Anybody who is on the same level as you who isn't making any effort is going to be missed by the machines and won't be put in the who's who. If you make some effort, you will demonstrate to them that you are a credible, authoritative figure in your niche because the who's who is incredibly niche. So let's say Richard Branson is in anybody's who's who of entrepreneurship. Jason Barnard isn't.

But Jason Barnard looks as impressive as Richard Branson in the context of digital marketing with Google and AI. Because I've made sure that the machines understand that Richard Branson might be incredibly famous and worthy of a place in anybody's who's who. I'm worthy of a place in the who's who of digital marketing working with Google, ChatGPT and other AI, to the extent that Richard Branson is valuable or helpful to a who's who.

Generally speaking, does that make sense? So anybody can have their place as long as they can prove authority within a niche. And that niche can be tiny.

Nick Berry (28:43)

It does.

So I'm assuming you probably would for Nick Berry to show up for the audience as searching for me rather than the British actor, it's going to come down to that niche. I've got to do more to establish myself as being that level of credibility in that niche. And then the machines are more likely to produce me as a result.

rather than the retired actor.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (29:15)

Yeah, and if you think back to what I was saying earlier on about the machines being trained on your own input. So the more I talk to ChatGPT, the more it knows who I am. So my version of ChatGPT is very personalized compared to yours or John Smith on the other side of the world. If you've educated the machine, Nick Berry, about who you are, and you've disambiguated yourself from the British actor, anybody who's in the digital marketing space

who types in the name Nick Berry, who talks about Nick Berry, will get you and not the actor. Because in your niche, for people who are using the machine within the context of your industry, you're going to be prioritized over the actor. So that's incredibly important. The more we move into the AI world, the more things become personalized, and the more your niche authority is going to be important. So trying to compete with the other Nick Berry is a pointless exercise on the global scale.

However, differentiating yourself, setting yourself up in a niche and dominating that niche makes sense. And if you can dominate it for your name, then you can start to build out and begin to dominate that niche in a more global sense. So it's a lot of siloed niches. Pick your niche, double down, dominate it from the bottom up. And we work at Kalicube from the bottom of the funnel upwards. So we say,

Dominate your name first. Any branded term, you need to be dominating that. Then move up to the middle of the funnel where it's consideration. Who's the best digital marketer in New York? You can dominate that if you've dominated your name. Then you can dominate the top of the funnel, all of the awareness stuff. What should I do about digital marketing? Jason Barnard from Kalicube says that digital marketing starts from the bottom of the funnel upwards, for example.

I get cited at the top of the funnel, but I didn't start there, which is the mistake a lot of people make. Start with your brand, do that consideration phase, best specialist in X in Y location, then you're going to hit the top of the funnel.

Nick Berry (31:11)

And so it could be niches or something geographical.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (31:14)

Great point, yes. So you're looking at your name, brand name, company, sorry, company name, personal name, your industry, your location. Those are the three things that you need to focus on, you need to identify, and you need to double down and dominate from the bottom of the funnel upwards.

Nick Berry (31:31)

Okay.

Alright.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (31:32)

So one thing we get with clients a lot of the time is they come in and say, well, I want to be world famous. Great. OK. So what we will do is start with your brand in your niche. Let's identify the niche. So often we struggle to identify the small niche. We start with a small niche, and then we build out to a slightly larger niche in a specific location. So it's going to be the best digital marketer for food, pet supplies.

in New York. That's an incredibly niche geographical industry with your name. And then we spread out from pet food supplies to pet supplies to whatever else you do with pets. And from New York to New York State to America to Northern America to the American continent and then across to Europe. So we can expand outwards but trying to dominate from the the get-go is a mistake. as we

The same with the funnel from the bottom upwards. It's that kind of from a small niche upwards. It's my name, my niche location, my niche industry, and then spread out.

Nick Berry (32:35)

It makes sense. go where you can be a bigger fish in a smaller pond, get your foot in the door and then expand upward from there.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (32:42)

Yeah, and it's a neat strategy that works really well. I one of the things that I managed to do was I live in France. And so I started off with my career in trying to become world famous in digital marketing with Google and AI in France. So it's a smaller pond. I made my mark in France. Then I could say in the UK, look, I've done all these conferences. I've been on all these podcasts, all these webinars, written these articles.

the UK opened itself up to me. Then from there, I could say to the American market, look at that, I spoke at Brighton SEO, I was working with Trustpilot. They say, okay, brilliant. And then I get over there and I start going to SMX and PubCon. And I got invited to Microsoft to do interviews with the heads of department there, the program managers. So as you can see, I didn't start with trying to talk to program managers at Microsoft.

big hitting geeky people. I started with France and I started with a small conference in a small town and then built up. It takes patience and it takes a lot of courage and a lot of staying power, I would say.

Nick Berry (33:34)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah. then, yeah, the thing that I think is really interesting is doing all of these things on the surface, it could look like one particular outcome that you're aiming for strategically. And you are, but at the same time, it's getting in front of those audiences, right? But at the same time, you now know how to execute that plan and educate the machines.

it almost has to be done in parallel with all of your marketing moving forward. Otherwise, your online presence has a shelf life of you're gone tomorrow.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (34:13)

No,

Yeah, no, and it's a great point is a lot of people going on podcasts, writing books, who just kind of throw it out there and hope. If you're not intentional about how you place it online, how it's all joined together so that the machines understand, you're missing a huge opportunity of once again, Google Chat TV, Pablexi becoming advocates for you. So.

Nick Berry (34:25)

Mm-hmm.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (34:40)

Let's say you do a podcast episode. If you don't optimize it for Google chat, GPT, perplexity, you're missing out on at least half of the value. I'm on this podcast. Let's say 300 people watch it. Brilliant. Wonderful. That's 300 people who've seen this conversation and understand now what I do, what I can offer. If I can get Google chat, GPT, perplexity, whatever, to start reiterating that message to their audience, which is billions of people.

All of a sudden that 300 becomes 300,000.

worth making the effort, in my opinion.

Nick Berry (35:11)

And then, that's compounding. And then over time for the other instances of you having done that same thing and doing it well you're increasing the shelf life of each of these instances

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (35:22)

And there's another beautiful trick. I say trick, strategy, let's say. That, for example, I go to a conference or I go to entrepreneur organization. I'm part of an entrepreneur's organization. So I went to their deal exchange in Los Angeles. So I then take pictures, take the selfies that we all do, and I record.

I record a message for one of my team members saying, I was at this event, I met that person, that person, that person. We talked about this. I saw this talk. I did that. I hung out with this person and talked to the people at the stand from Disney, let's say. She then writes an article about it with the photos, including the Disney stand and the people I met, and publishes it online.

That then brings me authority and credibility online that the machines can see and digest and understand and repeat that makes me a better candidate to be recommended by them, advocated by them with something that they could not have otherwise seen. And out there, if you're watching this, how many times have you done things offline that never really made it online or didn't make the impact online that they could?

Nick Berry (36:19)

Mm-hmm.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (36:27)

It's not because it's not online that you can't make it available, digestible and useful to Google Chat GPT Perplexity.

Nick Berry (36:35)

Yeah. Okay. you're so something like the example you just gave, it's you've, you've made it available online and it also the machines can reconcile that with everything else that you say about yourself, the topics you talk about and even other people who may be at the event who might also say, you post a picture with Jason Bernard and say, you know, I was with Jason Bernard and we talked about this thing, right?

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (36:59)

Exactly. that's really, really important because that information, their information, let's say three people post on social media about meeting me. That doesn't mean anything. Three drops in a huge ocean. If I publish an article that says, talked to all of these people, met Disney, met important person number one, important person number two, met Richard Branson, whoever it might be, and I put it on a

an article and I link to each of the social posts where somebody confirms it, the machines go through, they say, right, yeah, OK, he did meet that person, that person, that person. Therefore, I can believe him when he says he met Richard Branson.

So that tiny three drops in the ocean would not make any difference to anything in isolation. If I can bring that all together in an article, point to those three tiny pieces, tiny drops of information, I get corroboration and the machines will believe me. So I'm leveraging huge value out of very little material.

Nick Berry (37:57)

Yeah. know for someone who's not familiar with your approach and the things that you talk about, I get where it could sound like it's a lot, but you make it pretty simple. That's where the clarity, be clear with what you're saying, be consistent with what you're saying and make sure to get it out there. what it is.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (38:15)

keep it up over time.

So it's be clear, be consistent, push it out there and keep it out there over time. You'll win the game. And that's the key. And that's what we do at Kalicube is the 25 billion data points, the TAC that we built is purely to make the most of the little you have or make even more of the a lot you have.

Nick Berry (38:22)

Mm-hmm.

Hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (38:37)

and keep it consistent over time because the machines need that duration of time to fully digest, fully understand, fully believe, feel confident and go from not knowing who you are to recommending you to advocating for you. Who wouldn't want that?

Nick Berry (38:54)

Yeah. for, for anyone who's, who's building a brand, mean, so Jason has some really good resources that he gives away and we'll, I'll include the link to those things. And I've been through them. I've used some of them. It's good. At the end of the day, you need to go be the brand.

Jason's the guy when it comes to taking that brand to where it needs to be.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (39:15)

And we give all of this away for free. So if you go to Kalicube.com/guides slash guides, K-A-L-I-C-U-B-E dot com slash guides, you can get the process for free. So you can download it and you can get your team to work on it. That's fine. But as you said, you're not going to become an expert in this overnight. Your team aren't going to be able to do this perfectly overnight. And you've got better things to do, like run your business and be the brand.

And if you want to run your business, be the brand, make money, and not waste time figuring it out for yourself, come to us. But if you want to figure it out for yourself, the guides are there for free.

Nick Berry (39:49)

Yeah. And I mean, the resources are good. Like I can vouch for him. I've read his book, took a course of Jason's a few years ago. Jason, I appreciate it, man. Thank you very much for the know, I love your information. So helpful. It's also a lot of fun to just kind of keep up with you. You're, on the leading edge with this stuff. So I know every time I get something from you, it's like, all right, what's he figured out now? What's he trying now?

And everything, yeah, there's always an angle. You're experimenting or testing and that's what we need.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (40:18)

Well, I'll leave you with one thing, which is the experimentation and testing is I've just finalized the system in Kalicube to leverage these 25 billion data points to identify the exact pages online that make most difference to the machine's understanding and belief in your personal brand or your corporate brand. I run it through the machine. If you've got 10,000 pages that talk about you, I can, or my machine rather, not me, my machine.

can prioritize them from best to worst, and you just go through them one by one from top to bottom. And you know that the ones at the top are the ones that the machines pay most attention to, and that will move the needle the furthest. And you know that that famous 80-20 rule, 20-80 rule, is from 20 % down your list, you can start to not worry about it quite so much. So that first 20 % is absolutely must do. And from there on in, it's nice to have.

You don't waste time on content, on pages, on resources that don't move the needle. That's a huge, huge win.

Nick Berry (41:22)

so from the beginning of this conversation to this point, what you have has landed with me is that we've gone from, can guess on our own, we can wing it on our own all the way to, you you've got the process mapped out. Like you kind of know here, here's how this is done and here's where you need to do it. So that's a far cry from the guesswork that we might be left with otherwise.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (41:43)

That's a great way to put it. And thank you for ending the episode so neatly. Beautiful.

Nick Berry (41:48)

Yeah, my pleasure. Thank you for being here.

Jason Barnard (Kalicube) (41:50)

Thank you.