EP580 – Jason Barnard on Taking Control of Your Personal Brand

In this episode of Chasing the Insights, I talk to brand expert Jason Barnard.

Jason talks to us about taking control of your Personal Brand.

Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) is an entrepreneur and CEO of Kalicube. Jason specialises in Online Brand Management and his superhero skill is his ability to influence and reshape Google’s focus on an individual or a company.

This isn’t just optimization; it’s a strategic manipulation of digital perceptions. He’s been working on Google since the year it was incorporated, and he has been successfully manipulating Google from day one.

Literally. How many people do you personally know who can say that!

Achieving Digital Success with The Brand SERP Guy Jason Barnard

[00:00:04] Vince Warnock: Welcome to Chasing the Insights, the podcast designed for you, the marketer, the entrepreneur, the small business owner. I’m your host, Vince Warnock. And in each episode, we talk to the biggest and brightest brains of marketing, extracting every ounce of insight to give you that unfair advantage as you grow your business. Hello, beautiful people. Welcome to another episode of Chasing the Insights. How are you all doing? I’m Vince Warnock. Thank you so much for taking time. Oh my goodness.

[00:00:30] Vince Warnock: Out of your very busy day to join me here as I get to talk to seriously some of the smartest people in the industry. And you’re going to know exactly what I mean very shortly because I’m about to introduce you to Jason Barnard. But before I do that, very quickly, I don’t want you to miss a single episode of the show. So whatever platform, whatever app, whatever tool, basically, however you’re listening to this right now, if you haven’t already, reach out and give that subscribe or follow button a push. That way you’re notified every single time there’s a new episode. Anyway, my friends, you are in for a treat. I’m here to introduce you to Jason Barnard. He is known as The Brand SERP Guy and you’ll know what that means very shortly.

[00:01:04] Vince Warnock: He’s an entrepreneur. He’s also the CEO of Kalicube and he specializes in online brand management. And get this, his superhero skill is the ability to influence and reshape Google’s focus on an individual company. Who doesn’t want that? This isn’t just optimization, by the way, but it’s strategic manipulation of digital perceptions. This goes absolutely next level. He’s been working on Google since the year it was incorporated and successfully manipulating it from day one. And literally one of the smartest people I know out there. Jason, thank you so much for joining us, man. It’s such an honor having you on the show.

[00:01:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Absolutely brilliant. Vincent, that was a delightful introduction.

Taking Control of Your Personal Brand

[00:01:41] Vince Warnock: Oh, there you go. I ain’t a delight, actually. I’m just kind of aiming to be your hype man, following you around, even reintroducing you as you go into rooms. Awesome. As I said, I’m so looking forward to this episode and I’m looking forward for it for two reasons. One, because we’re going to get geeky, and I love being geeky. Talking about taking control of your personal brand and growing it in three steps. Super simple.

[00:02:04] Vince Warnock: But also because you and I get to hang out together, which is always smart. I mean, every time I hang out with you always come away feeling brighter, feeling like I know a lot more. And I love being the dumbest guy in the room. So this is going to be a good episode. Anyway, Jason, before we kind of dive into that topic, give us your backstory, man. Like, tell us how you got to where you are now and why you’re so passionate about what you do.

[00:02:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, that’s a really interesting question, because one of the reasons that I learned to manage a personal brand on Google is because my life story is quite complicated, quite rich, from music to cartoons to voiceovers to script writing to songwriting, and now to Digital Marketing and entrepreneurship. And when you’ve got all of those different facets, getting Google to understand which one is the important one today that it needs to focus on when it is representing me to its audience, to its users is hugely important and very, very, very difficult. And my life is quite rich. But I think everybody’s life is rich. We all have a job history, we all have hobbies. We all have a personal life. How do you ensure that Google and indeed these other machines, like ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing, Perplexity, focus on the right thing so that when people are talking to these machines about us, they get the right message from these machines? Because at the end of the day, ChatGPT, Google, Bing, Google Gemini, and Perplexity, it’s a conversation between a machine and a human being. And we want that machine to represent us the way we decide and not the way they decide.

[00:03:48] Vince Warnock: Yeah, it’s. Honestly, this is so important to me. I love this. I mean, like, you and I are both very similar. We’re both multivariate entrepreneurs. We have very different aspects to our life and to our business and all this kind of stuff as well. So that gets confusing for human beings. Talking to basically bots and talking to AI systems that are trying to understand, like a human being can be very, very difficult as well. So I just think this is so important. Yeah,

[00:04:14] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, I think we need to remember that the machines are simply an interface between us and other human beings. And the aim here is to get them to match us to the right people on the other side and to represent us the way that we choose. And as you say, if you’ve got multifacetedness like you and I do, but everybody does, how do you get the machine to present the focus on exactly the right thing? And for me, right now, that’s being an entrepreneur. It used to be a blue dog, a voiceover artist, and before that it was a musician. How do you do that? And that’s what we specialize in at Kalicube.

Defining Your Personal Brand

[00:04:52] Vince Warnock: I love that. Oh, man. Cool. Well, thank you for sharing that. We’re going to dive now into this concept of taking control of your personal brand and growing it in three steps. But before we dive into a bit more of the specifics and things, I want to make sure everybody’s on the same page, because when we say the words personal brand, everyone’s going to have their own interpretation to that. But when you’re talking about personal brand, Jason, like, give us your definition.

[00:05:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I don’t actually have a definition of personal brand other than that it is what you want people to understand you to be, how you want to present yourself to the rest of the world. So when you meet somebody in a room or on a Zoom meeting, you have the power to say, this is who I am. And you have the power to listen to what somebody says back and adapt slightly what you’re saying to fit better into the conversation. And as soon as you put a machine between you and the other human being, you have that huge barrier of, how do I get the machine to replicate what I would have said?

Vince Warnock [00:05:51]: Yeah, I was going to say, that’s hard enough when you’re dealing with just a human. I still remember my flatmate and I always going to parties, and we were the complete opposite personality types, right? So I was the outgoing, extroverted, kind of work the room, and I’d be like, yeah. He was the introverted, like, highly introverted, but super interesting guy, where people go up and they would hang on as every word because, you know, every word he thought about was thought about, you know? Whereas I just spit stuff out of my mouth. So I was in the party, these parties always trying to get people to see me like him because I was jealous of the fact that he was so interesting. And we sat down one time, we were having a couple of drinks, just him and I, and we’re talking about that. And I admitted it, and I said, look, you know, when I go in that room, I want people to see me as interesting as you are. And he goes, you got to be kidding me. I said, what? He goes, I want people to see me as lively as you. We were both trying to be each other.

[00:06:42] Vince Warnock: We had to learn to accept who we were and how people perceive us as based on that. So I love that.

[00:06:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, isn’t that the foundation of everything? It’s understand who you are and how you want to be represented. The first conversation we have with clients is, what is your message? How do you want to be perceived by the world? Then we can set about making sure that across your entire digital footprint, your entire digital ecosystem, you are presenting yourself clearly and consistently in that way. And then the machines will pick up on it and be able to present you the way you want it. But if you can’t make that decision right at the start, you’re lost.

Preparing for a Future with Smart Machines

[00:07:20] Vince Warnock: Yeah, and that’s super important for when the machines take over, and they’re our overlords, and we want them to treat us in a certain way.

[00:07:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, I mean, we talk about singularity, which is the day the machines get smarter than we are. And I talk about singularity and self determination.

[00:07:37] Vince Warnock: Yeah.

[00:07:38] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right now, the machines are simplistic and they learn by repetition of what we say. And as long as we’re clear with them, they will repeat like a parrot exactly what we want them to. Once they get smart, what do we do? And the answer is, we get smart. Sorry, go ahead.

[00:07:56] Vince Warnock: I was going to say, and we’re very, very close to that. And we were talking about the whole concept of AGI, artificial general intelligence, which is weird. Like you said, it’s that singularity concept of getting as smart, if not smarter than humans. And I would argue, being on the inside of a lot of these things, that it’s actually been achieved three times already. There are two major companies that won’t admit that they have achieved AGI because that scares the public. But the systems aren’t available to the public yet. They’re the ones that they’re working on behind the scenes. But then there is Claude by Anthropic, and some are now arguing that that’s actually achieved AGI.

[00:08:35] Vince Warnock: But the reason we think that is because of thing called the needle in the haystack test, which is a test where you go, hey, AI is just like a normal human being. And if you put a whole pile of information in there, it’s really good at remembering the beginning and the end. Really kind of vague on the middle. But for some of us, it’s not just the middle bit we’re vague on, but anyway, so you embed little bits of information, little needles in the haystack in that middle bit, and you query the AI to see how well it retains it. And when they did the test, in fact, all of us did the test on Claude. And this needle in the haystack test, by the way, is only being developed in the last two or three months. But we did this needle in the haystack test on there, and it came back and it said again, first of all, it did really, really well. It found all the needles.

Get Your Brand Right for AI Recognition

[00:09:19] Vince Warnock: It was no problem at all. It seemed to recall everything there, but then it turned around and queried us and said, by any chance, are you testing me at the moment? Because it seems like you’re doing a needle in the haystack test, and we’re like, a, how the hell does it know about that? And b, it’s self aware. So it’s getting pretty scary out there, but in a good way.

[00:09:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, 100%. And it is scary. And yet the solution is really, really simple.

[00:09:44] Vince Warnock: Yeah.

[00:09:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And the solution has always been the same. So what we’re doing at Kalicube, the Kalicube Process for managing your personal brand or your corporate brand online, is universal and timeless. It worked yesterday, it works today, and it works in the future. It worked for me ten years ago. It’s still working for me today. And I’ve already demonstrated that these machines are still swallowing what I’m saying. And it’s based on right now creating that foundational understanding, which is the first phase of our three step process. Make sure these machines understand the basic facts about you and that they’re confident in those facts.

[00:10:25] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If you can get to that stage, they know who you are, what you do, and who you offer your services to, or who your audience is. That means that they understand who you are and they’ve categorized you. And the categorization is a cohort. If you get into exactly the right cohort and you become the perfect representation of that cohort, then they can start to extrapolate information about you that you didn’t know.

[00:10:49] Vince Warnock: Yeah.

[00:10:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So if that’s what singularity is going to be about, it’s going to be the machine understands which group you belong to, and it can be very, very niche, and then it can understand additional information based on that cohort, and that’s scary. But if you can nail down the basic understanding and the absolute perfect representation of your cohort, the machine will probably get it right. And if you’re not in the right cohort, or if you’re not the perfect representation of that cohort, or if it hasn’t understood the basic facts, you have a huge problem.

Master How Humans and Machines Understand Your Brand

[00:11:25] Vince Warnock: Yeah, that’s super interesting. I love the way you naturally segued into the first of those three steps. Nicely done. I love talking to pros. Look, this is a very important point. So that first step is that understandability. So. And you talked about there, you know, like, this is super important, which it is, and getting in that right cohort, but how do we do that? Like, how do we actually get these systems? Whether it’s Google bots or AI to actually understand us properly.

[00:11:52] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, actually it’s the same technique that you were using for search engines. So what was working yesterday for the very simplistic Google that was counting words and counting links still works today for the smarter machines and will still work tomorrow for the singularity machines that are smarter than us. And it actually also works for human audience, which is super interesting because if you’re clear and consistent about your personal brand message and the facts about you personally, you’re going to educate your audience. They’re going to understand who you are. They’re going to be confident they’ve understood who you are. The machines will understand who you are, be confident they’ve understood who you are and who you can serve. And the audience coming back to that, the human audience will say, well, actually, I’m exactly the kind of person this person that I’m faced with can serve. That understandability is both human and machines, because those machines are simply trying to replicate human understanding and human behavior. So you need to nail both of them. And that is clear, consistent corroboration across first, second and third party sources. First being my own website, second being websites I can semi control, third being independent, trusted third party sources that I do not control.

Simplifying Personal Branding with the Kalicube Process

[00:13:07] Vince Warnock: This is so good, man. I love this. I still remember, Jason, early days of being an entrepreneur. One of the worst things you can ever hear, right? I built my website, I had my messaging, had everything out there, and this person came to me and I said, oh yeah, check out my website, all this. And they came back and I was like, yep, something along the lines of, do you think we can work together? The person looked at me and they said, look, I had a look at your website. I still have no idea what the hell you do. Like, wow, for a marketing guy, that’s death. I was like, no, I want to hide under the table right now. Yeah.

[00:13:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, what I find interesting there is that we’ve struggled because we have been unable to nail this down to something very simple. And the three phase process, understandability, credibility, deliverability is so simple and we can now explain it, we can explain it to everybody and it fits universally into different people’s perspectives and different people’s approach to life and personal branding. And it’s taken me ten years to get here, so it’s not a simple process. And I have developed the approach, and more importantly, my explanation of the approach, because the approach I’ve had for literally 26 years, I just didn’t realize it. I’ve established it in my own mind for ten years, but I’ve only learned to explain it to everybody else for the last three months.

Establishing Trust and Confidence in Your Brand Messaging

[00:14:30] Vince Warnock: Oh, wow. Yeah. Okay. So it is a long process. And that makes sense too, because you are learning and developing and articulating. That’s why I love writing books. Because when you’re writing a book, you’re forced to articulate your thinking in a way that people can understand. And you have to go back and reread it and reread it and make sure it makes sense. So it’s a really good way to try and define your messaging, which is awesome. Cool. Well, let’s dive into the second of those three steps then, which is?

[00:14:59] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Credibility. So once both your audience and these machines have understood who you are and really, really, I want to push home the point. Confidence in understanding is super important because understanding is relatively easy. Repetition, you’re going to get a child to understand. Google is a child is something we say a lot. You can get it to understand by repetition.

[00:15:22] Vince Warnock: You can say, a lot of us, people are like child as well, or at least childlike.

[00:15:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. Build that confidence in the understanding and you’ve got a really solid base and a solid base that you won’t lose. So if we look at Google’s understanding is 20% of the things it thinks it understands today, it will have decided it hasn’t understood in a year’s time. So it drops 20% of the facts that it finds every year. So that understanding is actually not stable unless there’s confidence built on top of it. Once it’s understood who you are and it’s confident, it can start to try to judge. Are you a credible solution? Google calls it expertise, experience, authoritativeness and trustworthiness. At Kalicube, we’ve added notability and transparency. So we call it NEEATT credibility.

[00:16:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google call it EEAT. And the point here is Google wants to judge your credibility, your trustworthiness as a solution for its users, because it is looking for the most recommendable solution. So it’s understood who you are. Now it wants to know, can I recommend you over and above the competition? So you need to communicate that credibility to the machine. And interestingly, in order to do that, you need to communicate that credibility to your audience. So everywhere that you are standing where your audience is looking, which is the point of business and point of marketing, stand where your audience is looking. Make sure you’re communicating, I am the most credible solution of all these people, all these companies that you’re seeing, standing where you’re looking.

[00:17:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I need to throw out that credibility. And the simple thing is to say, well, I’ve got 25, 28 years in Digital Marketing. I’ve got a degree in Economics and Statistical Analysis. I’ve written for Search Engine Land, I’ve written a book, I write for Forbes. I have 15,000 clients who are all super happy with the work we’ve done and I’ve got testimonials and reviews that show that. That’s my credibility. I need to communicate that to my audience and then I need to make sure that Google and the other machines can digest and understand that and apply that credibility that I have demonstrated to the understanding of me as a person. Then you become the reference, the recommendable solution within the peer group, within the cohort that you belong.

Gaining Credibility with Your Audience and Google

[00:17:57] Vince Warnock: That’s so good. I love the fact you’ve just basically disseminated all of how Google works into a simple concept, which is it has to understand who you are. So basically it’s acting like a human, it needs to go. When it comes across you, it goes, okay, who the hell is Jason Barnard? I need to actually look at who he is. And when it understands who you are, then it goes, okay, now I need to know how, you know, how basically, how much should I pay attention to what you say? So just like a normal human being, when we go to a conference and we see someone on stage, same principle, who the hell is this person? And then while we’re listening to them, should I be paying attention to this? Is this credible? Is this somebody who’s an expert?

[00:18:33] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Am I wasting my time?

[00:18:34] Vince Warnock: Exactly, exactly. So I mean, you kind of gave some examples there of, you know, for your own business, how you build credibility and things, which is your experience, testimonials, accreditations, all these kind of things. What about for newer entrepreneurs, anyone who’s relatively new or building a new brand, essentially something that’s different from what they’ve done in the past. How do they establish that credibility early on?

[00:19:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, I mean, if you have qualifications, I have a degree in Economics and Statistical Analysis. That makes sense. So I would push on that. If I had a degree in Sociology, I wouldn’t focus on that. So it’s a question of focus. Find the things to focus on and you will immediately see if I start focusing on it naturally for my audience because I know it will resonate with my audience. It’s almost certainly going to resonate with Google. And all you need to do is make sure that Google can understand, which is great copywriting, clear copywriting, and disseminating that information on multiple sources. Once again, first, second and third parties, websites, those I control, those I semi controlled and those I don’t control.

[00:19:40] Vince Warnock: Nice.

[00:19:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Then you can start thinking, well where are the places that I need to be accepted and appreciated? Who are my peers in my new space who need to appreciate me for me to be understood, to be accepted and credible and then you cozy up to them.

[00:19:58] Vince Warnock: Yeah. Get wine and dine them.

[00:20:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, wine and dine them and get the opportunities to write. For example for me, I write for Search Engine Journal. I write for Search Engine Land. That gives me credibility in the SEO space but then I want to be a personal brand expert for CEOs and founders. So I write for Forbes, I write for Entrepreneur. And that mixes the two together and I then become the Google SEO marketing expert for CEOs and founders. It brings them together. So you just got to be smart and intelligent and if you think about it, what I’m doing is getting my audience, the CEOs and founders, to see me on Forbes, wonder whether I’m an expert in what I’m talking about, which is Google, go and Search Engine Land. Say yes, he is, we’re good.

[00:20:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Google does the same thing but Google does it super fast and at scale.

Why Being Seen Everywhere Matters

[00:20:47] Vince Warnock: Wow, I love this approach, man. This is so, it’s weirdly, it’s one of these things where it’s actually quite complicated but it’s also incredibly simple. So when you hear this youre like, well this is so logical, yet most of us don’t focus on it the way that you’re focusing on it. I love it.

[00:21:04] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well one of the things that I’ve seen in life is if it’s really simple, when I explain it, it’s universal and it makes sense and if I say to you this is how it works and you say oh, that’s really obvious, yeah, it’s obvious now I’ve told you.

 [00:21:18] Vince Warnock: Yeah, of course.

[00:21:18] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that is a sign that it’s universal and that it works for everybody and that I’ve found the foundational, fundamental solution.

[00:21:25] Vince Warnock: Yeah. Oh, man. This is awesome. All right, let’s dive into the third step then, which is deliverability. So talk us through what that is and why it’s so important.

[00:21:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah, deliverability is also omnipresence. So it’s do you have the content to deliver? So if we start with the audience once again is when the audience is looking at me because I’m standing where they’re looking and I’ve demonstrated that they should be listening to me as you said earlier on, which is a brilliant point. Do I have the content that solves their problem or do I have the content that indicates and proves to them that I solved their problem? And can I invite them down the funnel to come to my website to converse with me or to convert indeed, on my website? We talk more and more about touch points. It used to be three, then it was seven, then it was 15, now it’s 20, maybe it’s 30. Who knows? The point is, when somebody’s researching something in order to find the solution to their problem, they’re looking around in multiple places. So somebody might see me on LinkedIn. They say, yeah, he’s credible. I’ve listened to that. Then they go on YouTube, they see me again.

[00:22:37] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I demonstrate my credibility. They see the same or a similar offer. Then they think, well, I’m not sure I’m going to search on Google or I’ll ask ChatGPT. If they ask ChatGPT, who is the world expert in Knowledge Panels? It will say Jason Barnard. And they say, okay, this guy is obviously the person for this because everywhere I look I see him. That is omnipresent deliverability. I have the right content in the right places that mean that I get those 30, 40, 50, 60, it doesn’t matter touch points. And that is when you absolutely nail your market, you’re unavoidable.

[00:23:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I get sales calls today, where people come to me and they say, I know what you do. I know what you want. What I want. Sorry. I know you’re the guy because I see that red shirt, I see your name and I see Kalicube absolutely everywhere when I’m researching this. Now, all I need to do in order to sign is understand how long will it take? How much does it cost? Those are ten-minute sales calls for $20,000 deals.

Building Your Presence Everywhere

[00:23:47] Vince Warnock: When I was talking before about the worst thing you can hear as a marketer is the whole, I don’t even know what you do. I’ve got no idea what you do. One of the best things I ever heard was the opposite of that, but it was very long. In fact, not that long ago, where a good friend of ours came over and walked in and said, oh, hey, that’s, oh my goodness, I see you everywhere. I’m like, yes, so now, you know, things have switched around from I have no idea what you do to suddenly, oh, wow, you’re everywhere. Makes a big difference.

[00:24:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And it’s a really interesting point because i’ve had some sales calls where people come on board and say, convince me. Those are bad sales calls. They’re really difficult. But if somebody comes on and says, I know what you do, I’ve seen you everywhere. Let’s just talk about what the modalities of our relationship is going to be. You’ve absolutely won it. If we come back to a really important point is some people want the omnipresence before they’ve done phases one and two. You cannot build solid omnipresence that’s reliable across your audience, across the digital ecosystem and across these machines, Google, ChatGPT, Bing, Perplexity and Claude, if you don’t have that foundational understanding that’s solid and confident and accurate. And you don’t have everybody’s belief in your credibility, if you’ve got those, then the omnipresence and the deliverability makes total sense and will drive huge amounts of business.

[00:25:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): We talked a lot about machines. What I realized the other day is I’ve been doing Digital Marketing for 26 years now. I always thought I was a super Google expert. And then I realized throughout my entire career, there’s been one number that has never changed. 80% of my business doesn’t come from search, Google, ChatGPT, Microsoft Bing. That is huge. It’s the 80-20 split that are 20%. They’re not the majority.

How Consistent Visibility Builds Trust and Converts Leads

[00:25:44] Vince Warnock: So you’re 80% if it doesn’t come from Google and Bing or all these, it’s all through basically word of mouth, all through referrals, all through people coming direct to you because they see you everywhere. I love that.

[00:25:54] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Exactly. And it makes total sense when you think about it, because I’m trying to reach the human audience and I’m reaching the human audience by standing where they’re looking. And all Google and Bing and Perplexity and Claude are doing is replicating what they’re seeing online and they’re saying, well, this guy is everywhere. He’s appreciated. So we’re going to use him as an example and we’re going to recommend him. And that at the end of the day is still only 20%.

[00:26:16] Vince Warnock: Yeah, I love this. I always used to use an example of a networking thing that happened to me, Jason, but I had to, once I started to understand what you’re talking about there, about the omnipresence aspect, I realized I had to shift my narrative on it because, and basically I was in a networking event. You go in a breakout room with one other person, you get five minutes with them. I didn’t want to be at this networking event. I was only there because the organizer was a friend of mine and said, hey, I’d love you there. You’ve got quite a known brand. I’d really like your name in there, et cetera. And I said, yeah, sure, sure.

[00:26:48] Vince Warnock: So I turned up at this thing, but I was peopled out. I was just exhausted. I didn’t want to be chatting with people. So we go into this breakout room with this woman and I thought, you know what, I’m going to take control of this because I don’t really feel like talking. So I just said to her, look, we’ve got five minutes, that’s not much time. You tell me who it is you serve, how you help them, and what is the breakthrough that you get them and what you’re looking for in a networking event like this. So she dove into this and she was telling me all of a sudden about some of the challenges she had and all this kind of thing and she was like yeah, yeah, I’m here to generate leads, but you know, I’m finding it hard to generate leads. And I was like oh, tell me more about how you’re doing it.

[00:27:23] Vince Warnock: And I just asked her these questions so she’s doing all the talking and then we got to the end and she realized theres less than a minute left and she goes oh my goodness, I’ve talked all the time. I’m so sorry, what is it that you do? And I got to do that mic drop moment of basically going basically just this. I help people like you to generate those leads. And she was like, oh my God. And we converted that sale in that last under 1 minute. She basically said look, we dont have much time. How much does it cost to work with you? I told her, she goes sign me up, send me the details. And I always thought that was really good networking.

[00:27:53] Vince Warnock: But then I realized afterwards I had to come to the terms of the fact that the only reason that call worked was exactly what you talk about, which is omnipresence. It’s the fact that I already had a reputation in that audience. She had attended like four or five of my masterclasses before she had read one of my books before. All of these things were worked different ways that she already knew about me, so that credibility and trust was already built. So if I’m trying to tell people, hey, you can convert people in five minutes on a networking call, that’s absolute bollocks if they don’t have that foundational omnipresence. This is so important.

[00:28:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, that brings me to another point that I’ve never really thought about before. I used to be in a punk folk band.

Vince Warnock [00:28:33]: Yeah.

[00:28:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I played double bass. It’s sitting over there in the corner. When I was young. Yeah, double bass is cool. I was a singer and double bass player.

[00:28:41] Vince Warnock: Yeah.

[00:28:42] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And we would play on stage, 2 hours come off stage and people would talk to me as though they knew me really well. And now when I go to conferences, people come up to me and say, oh, it’s lovely to see you. I love what… Sorry, it’s lovely to see you. Let me tell you all about this thing we were talking about on Twitter, and I’ve got no idea who they were. And it turns out they said, oh, of course you don’t know who I am because my profile picture is my dog. Even with your photo, I probably won’t remember.

[00:29:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that is the point, is that omnipresence means that people come into a meeting feeling that they know you and they trust you. And it makes that sale, it makes that relationship so much easier for you. And once again, you come to the understandability, credibility and deliverability for a human being. If they understand who you are, what you offer, they understand that you’re a credible solution, that you’re trustworthy, and they’ve seen you multiple times and heard you multiple times, and they feel like they know you. The sale is a minute, as you said.

Creating Real Relationships Through Perceived Familiarity in Personal Branding

[00:29:46] Vince Warnock: I love that man. This is so important. It’s like, honestly, there’s so many different layers to this. I love the way you’ve kind of described it there, but it’s that pseudo social relationship that they’re building with you, and we all have those. I mean, my first major pseudosocial relationship was Princess Leia, back when I was seven, because I was in love with her. She was my first girlfriend. She didn’t even exist. But we’ve all got it.

[00:30:07] Vince Warnock: We’ve got musicians. We’ve got influencers. We’ve got actors. We’ve got people that we feel like they know us because we see them everywhere and we feel like we’ve got this relationship with them. And if we go down the pub and have a pint with them, we’ll get on really, really well. But in reality, they’ve got no idea who we are. But that’s actually quite an important relationship as well.

[00:30:27] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I’ll give you a little story around that, which I enjoy, is I was on a podcast once and they said, who is the one person in the world you would love to interview?

[00:30:38] Vince Warnock: Yeah.

[00:30:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And my answer was Brian Setzer, who’s the guitarist from the Stray Cats.

[00:30:44] Vince Warnock: Yeah.

[00:30:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because he’s a huge hero of mine. I absolutely love what he’s done. He wrote some amazing music. He’s such a great guitarist. He sings like he breathes and he’s a showman. And then they said, what questions would you ask him? And the answer is, I have no idea, because I love him. I think he’s wonderful. I respect him and he’s a huge hero for me. But I know for a fact that if I talk to him, we would have nothing to say to each other.

[00:31:12] Vince Warnock: I was going to say it could be worse. I got to meet someone I was working on radio. We used to work out of our version of Comic Con back in New Zealand. It’s called Armageddon. And we got live from there. So all the announcers were like, well, who are we going to send to go live from there? Obviously, we’re going to send a giant nerd, the geek. So I went down there and they’re like, oh, yeah, you’re going to interview Peter Mayhew, who, for those that know Star wars, is Chewbacca.

[00:31:34] Vince Warnock: And I’m like psyching myself up. I’m so excited, man. I’m like, this is going to be amazing. And I got to meet him, but I didn’t realize I was looking out at the door thinking that’s where he’s going to come from. But he came from behind me and he goes, he said hello. And I turned around, I looked up because he’s like seven foot something, looked up and I’m like, oh, my goodness. And he goes, oh, you must be Vince. And I just burst into tears and said the only, like, so embarrassing, this is live on air, by the way.

[00:32:00] Vince Warnock: I burst into tears and the only sentence out of my mouth was, I love you. I had no idea what I was going to ask him at that point. All I knew is I just made a fool of myself and I went back to the studio the next day and there were all these little cutouts of Chewbacca everywhere with a little speech bubble next to it going I love you. So I got mocked, but one of your highest ratings ever anyway.

[00:32:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): No, well, I mean, an interesting point there is that that is what personal branding and business is all about, but not that extreme. You don’t want to take it to that level. So it is that I know you and I’m excited to meet you and I respect you and I’m going to listen to you. I have that belief in your trust and credibility. I understand who you are. I’ve seen you so much, I feel like I know you. But obviously we don’t want people saying I love you and breaking down in tears.

Establish Authority and Deliver Value

[00:32:52] Vince Warnock: Well, you never know. Maybe it’ll make the sales easier. Awesome. Hey, Jason, we are at the point of the show where I do need to ask you the same question I ask all my guests. So what are your three practical tips you advise every entrepreneur do right now?

[00:33:07] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Number one, create your own website. You only need two pages. The homepage. The about page. You explain on the home page who you are, why you’re credible to your audience, and you bring them into the funnel, you bring them into your world. The about page you explain to the machines and to any geeky human beings or incredibly curious human beings exactly who you are, what your life story is, why you’re important, why you’re credible. And you point to all of the different resources that confirm the facts about what you’re saying. You link out to those, your social media profiles, your Forbes profile, your YouTube profile, different articles about you, different articles written by you.

[00:33:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And you link back from those to your website. So the human being will click on the links, go and see, see that you’re a credible solution. See the same information, come back and the machine does the same thing. But the machine does it super fast. It goes from your website out to these resources, sees first, second and third party corroboration about you, comes straight back, goes out to the next one, comes back, goes out to the next one, sees the same thing, comes back and you get an infinite loop of self corroboration. You can establish the facts and you can establish that website as the source of facts that Google and your audience trust for information about you from you. At that point, point number two, develop your credibility. Make sure that you’re emphasizing the reasons that people should trust you, the reasons people should think that you’re an authoritative source, that you’re an influential human being within your sphere, and stay super focused, super relevant. Make sure that you’re not building trust in places that you’re not relevant.

[00:34:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Build them in the places that you are relevant. Once again, point out to them, explain them on your about page. Point to them, point back so that Google and your audience go into this once again loop of corroboration and see you as they surf around the web within your sphere. And then the third thing is to start creating that content that demonstrates that you have that solution for them and you place it on all of these different platforms where you’ve already developed your understandability, your credibility. Then you add the deliverability with the great content that actually delivers the solution to the user. Then you’ve nailed it, because your human audience just keep coming across you. They see you everywhere online. They understand that you’re trustworthy, they come down the funnel, they engage with you. Google watches this.

[00:35:36] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s constantly looking over your shoulder, and it will then replicate in its search results. Perplexity, the same thing. ChatGPT do the same thing. It will replicate what it’s seeing online. So you need to walk the walk in those three stages. Understandability, credibility, deliverability omnipresence. And you’ve won the game 80-20 in favor of not Google.

[00:36:00] Vince Warnock: I was going to say, there you go, everyone’s just won the game, now we’re done. I love it.

[00:36:04] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s a huge amount of work.

Connect with Jason Barnard: Insights on Personal Branding and Entrepreneurial Growth

[00:36:06] Vince Warnock: Yeah, yeah, exactly. But that is solid advice and I love that those three tips could have been podcast episodes on their own. They could be books on their own. Like there’s so much gold in what you just shared there. I love that. Now I’m going to leave links to everywhere. You can connect with Jason in the show notes for this episode, so you’ll know what to do. Go to chasingtheinsights.com. Look for Jason’s smiling face, pause for a moment and just realize how attractive all of us bald people actually are. You’re going to click on all those links. There’s going to be a bunch of hyperlinks there where you can connect with them on social, we can connect with them at Kalicube. And there’s also going to be a link to his book there. The Fundamentals of Brand SERPs for Business. Highly recommend every single one of you. Get a copy of that. In fact, I’ll go a step further.

[00:36:46] Vince Warnock: Don’t just buy a copy of that, buy a copy. Leave a review. Like honestly, we never asked that enough. But go and leave a review on Amazon, wherever you bought it, Barnes and Noble, etcetera. But Jason, thank you so much for joining us, my man. Seriously, absolute privilege having you on the show.

[00:37:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Thank you, Vince, it was an amazing interview and you really brought out the best in me. I think I was clearer than I generally am and I thank you for that.

[00:37:09] Vince Warnock: Oh, you flatter me, but it’s all you. So there you go, everyone. Like I said, go to the show notes for this episode. Click on all those links. Seriously, you’re not going to regret it. Jason is one of the smart ones. He’s one of the good ones. He’s just a decent human being.

[00:37:21] Vince Warnock: So go and get more Jason in your life. Simple as that. Plus, if you haven’t already, reach out and give that subscribe or follow button to push. That way you’re notified every time there’s a new episode. Anyway, my friends, I know you’re all dying to go and get a copy of that book and you’re dying to connect with Jason everywhere, as you should, and you need to do that. But before you do, I want you to pause for a moment. I want you to hear something. In fact, I don’t just want you to hear this, I think you need to hear it right now.

[00:37:43] Vince Warnock: Now it’s going to make you uncomfortable. It’s going to make you go, oh, but Vince, I don’t feel that way. Oh, but Vince, you don’t know my backstory. Oh, you don’t know the mistakes. I don’t care about any of that. I’m telling you now, I’m going to say this to you because I know you need to hear it and I know that it’s truth. That is the fact that you, my friend, are worthy. You are worthy of success, you’re worthy of health, you are worthy of love, you are worthy of being fulfilled.

[00:38:07] Vince Warnock: You’re worthy of so many different things. And I know that goes against the grain of a lot of what we teach ourselves or what we’ve learned through our life, but I’m telling you now, it is truth. So you need to stand tall. In fact, I know for a fact, because you’re an entrepreneur, you know that. You know, whatever service, whatever offering, whatever product that you’re building, you know the world needs that, right? That’s why we do what we do, right? Ask any entrepreneur, they’ll say, I know that the world needs what I’m doing. And it does, definitely. But I’m going to tell you something else. It doesn’t just need what you’re doing, it needs more of you in it, my friend.

[00:38:38] Vince Warnock: So on behalf of both Jason and myself, we wish you all of the health, all of the wealth, all the happiness, the success and the love that you so rightfully, and I do mean rightfully, deserve. Now this is Chasing the Insights. I’m Vince Warnock. You are an absolute legend and I’ll see you in the next episode.