The Three To Twelve Month Rule in Personal Branding with CEO Jason Barnard
In this episode, I was lucky enough to interview Jason Barnard, CEO of Kalicube.
Jason recounts his beginnings in the music industry, where he started a record label after failing to secure a deal for his band. This led him to his first customer, a record company, which he gained through relationship building. He further explains the challenges he faced with his second company, a children’s entertainment platform, which ultimately succeeded due to a significant audience demand, evidenced by five million monthly visitors to their website. This success attracted the attention of major telecoms like Orange in France, illustrating the importance of having a compelling audience proposition.
Transitioning to Kalicube, Jason describes his current focus on helping individuals control their online personal brand. He emphasizes the necessity of having a personal website to establish credibility and authority in the digital space, as well as the timeline for seeing results from such efforts, ranging from three to twelve months. Jason asserts that the goal of dominating one’s niche is about becoming the go-to name associated with a specific topic. Through their platform, Kalicube utilizes extensive data points to guide clients on effectively building their personal brands and engaging their target audiences.
Get inspired by Jason Barnard’s journey from musician to digital strategist and learn how to redefine your brand in this episode of The First Customer!
Exploring First Customers with Jason Barnard
[00:00:00] Jay Aigner: This episode is sponsored by JDAQA Software Testing, your scalable solution for manual, automated, security and performance testing. Check us out at jdaqa.com and with that, let’s get on with the show. This is The First Customer, hosted by Jay Aigner. Hi, everyone. Welcome to The First Customer podcast. Today, I am lucky enough to be joined by Jason Barnard. He is the CEO of Kalicube with a K. He is currently in France.
[00:00:37] Jay Aigner: We had a fun, beautiful political conversation before the podcast because we don’t talk about politics on The First Customer. Jason, how are you, my friend?
[00:00:47] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I’m doing very well, thank you very much, Jay. And I’m delighted to be talking about my first customers three times over.
How Childhood Shapes Entrepreneurial Interest
[00:00:53] Jay Aigner: Yes, your three first customers. I love when people have more than one. And let’s get to each of those. But tell me first, where did you grow up and did that have an impact on you being an entrepreneur?
[00:01:05] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Wow, that’s a great question. Yes, I grew up in the North of England in the countryside, isolated in a tiny village. I didn’t have any friends and I was left very much to figure out my own life as a child. And that has made me a dynamic, decisive, enthusiastic entrepreneur. I make things happen.
Jason Barnard’s Journey to Starting a Record Label and Securing His First Customer
[00:01:30] Jay Aigner: Beautiful. I make things happen. I love that. So tell me about the first of the three companies and what was it and how did you get your first customer?
[00:01:40] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): My first company was because I joined a music group playing punk folk double bass. We wanted to get a record deal. We couldn’t get a record deal. Nobody wanted us. So we or I created a record company to release the record, record the record, release it. And the first customer was the record company I convinced to take on board our album when we had already done all the hard work and it was all about relationship building. Nothing else mattered. The person who signed us was pretty much a friend.
[00:02:21] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So it’s make a friend, make a deal, first customer.
[00:02:26] Jay Aigner: It’s just that easy. It’s just that easy.
[00:02:31] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yeah. I’d like to think I’m charming.
[00:02:34] Jay Aigner: You are charming. You’ve been charming since I’ve met you and I’ve known you for 21 minutes and I’m already charmed. I’m going to fly over to France and hang out and we’ll have a baguette and some beer. I don’t know.
[00:02:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Please come over.
From Skepticism to Success with Cartoon Characters and Major Clients
[00:02:45] Jay Aigner: But yes, I will. All right. So what was the second company and your first company or first customer there?
[00:02:50] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The second company was more difficult because nobody believed we had cartoon characters for children. I was convinced that they were going to be successful. And I had to build the success in order to get people to talk to me. And the person who signed with us, the first customer, Orange in France, which is the equivalent of, oh, I’m trying to think of an American telecoms company. Help me.
[00:03:21] Jay Aigner: How about Viacom?
[00:03:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yep, Viacom, the equivalent of Viacom, signed with us not because they liked me, but because they saw there was a huge business opportunity because I had something they wanted and I had the audience they wanted to reach. They were askers. I was offering them something they needed and it worked that way. So the first was a friend, the second was somebody who needed me.
Children’s Entertainment from Niche to Demand
[00:03:51] Jay Aigner: How did you convince them or show them or pitch to them? Like, what was the process to show them that you had something that they wanted? How did you get in front of them to begin with?
[00:04:00] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I demonstrated that we had 5 million children under 10 years old visiting our website every month. And they said, that’s very niche. That’s a huge number. We want that. Simple as that.
[00:04:16] Jay Aigner: And what was the business? What was the business there?
[00:04:20] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Children’s entertainment. Initially online and then as a TV series with ITB International and TG in France. So what it came down to was once we could prove the attractiveness of our product, which was entertainment for children, everybody wanted a piece of the pie.
[00:04:43] Jay Aigner: And was it. Were you writing these shows? Did you hire people to write these shows in this content? Like, what was the what, where the content come from?
[00:04:51] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Oh, that’s a either a great or a terrible question, depending on how you look at it. I wrote the shows. I was the characters of the shows. I wrote the songs. I did the production. I built the website. I did everything. So it was pure determination to make it work. Once I made it work, everybody wanted a piece of the pie. I ended up in a situation where I was in great demand, whereas the first one was all about friendship.
Building Thought Leadership with Kalicube by Mastering AI and Google Algorithms
[00:05:21] Jay Aigner: All right, so we’ve got friendship, demand generation. And that probably brings us to Kalicube, which first of all, tell everybody what Kalicube is and how you got it started.
[00:05:34] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Kalicube will help you become the reference in your industry as a thought leader. So you move from being one of many to the one. And I got into that by making myself the reference in my industry for what I was doing, which is managing AI, Google and Big Tech algorithms, understanding of who I am and therefore how they represent me. So what we can do is ensure that machines, AI, Big Tech: Google, Bing, ChatGPT represent you the way you want to be represented. So it’s controlling the machines. That’s huge. So my first customer.
How to Shift Google’s Perception
[00:06:22] Jay Aigner: Yeah, let’s hear it. I want to hear the first customer.
[00:06:24] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, the first customer who truly believed in what we were doing is somebody who said, I want to pivot my career. Google understands me as CEO of company ABC. I want Google and my audience to perceive me as a business advisor. So we pivoted the machine’s understanding of that person. And to do that, we had to change the way the person was representing themselves to their own audience. So, in fact, the machines are simply replicating what your human audience are doing.
The Power of Understandability, Credibility, and Deliverability in Online Branding
[00:07:05] Jay Aigner: Is it a service or is it a platform? Is it a combination of both? Like how? I mean, I’m sure some of this is like, you know, black box magic as part of what you do, but can you tell us how it happens? How do you do it? Is it. Are you going through Google and changing search results, or is there a platform that’s pushing content? What is this machine?
[00:07:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): It’s a great question. It’s two things. Number one is it’s a process. Understandability, credibility, deliverability. If you can build understanding with your audience and with machines, you can demonstrate your credibility to the audience and the machines, and you can provide the solution that suits the audience, that the machines can believe in and deliver, you’ve won the game. Understandability, credibility, and deliverability. We share all of that information for free online. Kalicube.com K A L I C U B E.com and you do it yourself.
[00:08:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): But if you want to do it effectively, efficiently and faster, we have 2 billion data points from Google that allow us to tell you exactly what to do, in what order, and where to focus at any one time. Whatever your industry, whatever your pivot, whatever your desire to control your own personal brand might be. So the services we offer are actually simply saving your head space, making it more efficient, making it more effective, and making it faster. But you can do it for free.
How Different Businesses Align Through Personal Brand Evolution
[00:08:48] Jay Aigner: What’s the common thread here? These are such separate businesses from a glance, right? You have a record label, you have another platform, you have a children’s platform. And then you have this persona modification system, which I’ll call it, just for brevity’s sake. What’s the commonality here? How did you get to where you are now?
[00:09:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The persona modification system. I love it. Nobody has ever said that to me, but you’ve actually answered your own question. If you look at my life, I was a musician, I was a CEO of a music company. Then I was a blue dog, a songwriter, a scriptwriter. CEO of a children’s entertainment company. Then I managed to switch the world’s perception of me from musician to children’s entertainer, to digital marketer to entrepreneur and somebody who can help you control your personal brand. And I have controlled my own personal brand online throughout the entire process.
[00:10:03] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): So, in fact, my current job is simply an extension of how I’ve managed my own personal brand over the last 30 years.
Focusing on Personal Brands for Business Success
[00:10:14] Jay Aigner: Well, that’s a nice, neat little package. I like how that’s wrapped together. Who is your customer today versus what it was when you started with Kalicube?
[00:10:28] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): When I started Kalicube, No. In fact, it’s not at all. When I started with Kalicube, I was hugely ambitious. I thought, I can manage a corporation brand online, no problem. We can. It absolutely is something we can do. But what I now realize is the CEO or founder of a company has a personal brand that drives their business and drives their career. They are the people we can serve the best because they have skin in the game.
[00:11:01] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): They want this to work and they really care. So anybody who’s investing in their personal brand is the perfect client for Kalicube. If you want to make your brand bigger, better, more focused, get the right people talking to you about the right topics for your business and your career, we’re the company for you. Whereas with a corporation, it’s much more political, it’s much more complicated, it’s much more difficult, it’s slower. So my initial idea was corporations. My current focus is CEOs and founders, because dealing with a personal brand is exactly where we excel.
The Importance of a Personal Website
[00:11:45] Jay Aigner: Right, well, I’m going to turn the magnifying glass back to you then. How do you control your personal brand? How do you see your personal brand? How do you affect it from a day-to-day basis? What are you doing? Are you putting out content? Are you going to, you know, talks? Are you. I mean, obviously you’re doing fantastic podcasts. If you pick the greatest ones to go on. I can see that. What do you do to control your own personal brand? I asked that question to a lot of people and I don’t think I could ask it to a better person. How do you do it?
[00:12:15] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): The focus and the key is my own personal website. And that’s where most people fail. If you don’t have a personal website, you have a) nowhere for the machines, Google, the AI algorithms, from ChatGPT to Bing to Perplexity to Google’s Gemini. You have nowhere for them to refer to for information about you from you, because then what they do is take the information from you about you and corroborate and see the corroboration and see if everybody else agrees. Then you become the truth teller about yourself and you can feed them anything you want. But secondarily, if you don’t have a personal website, you have no destination for your audience. That’s the big loss. So you need a website for yourself.
[00:13:08] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): A) to educate the machines so that they perceive you the way you want to be perceived and represent you the way you want to be represented. And B) give a destination for the audience that you’re reaching out to. And I see so many business leaders pushing out their personal brand but giving no destination.
Why Relying on LinkedIn Isn’t Enough for Your Personal Brand
[00:13:31] Jay Aigner: Well, I think a lot of people’s first thought is, well, they just go to my LinkedIn instead. And why is that not the right answer?
[00:13:39] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Because you don’t own LinkedIn, LinkedIn owns you. So you have a level of control. They can delete your account, they can redirect it somewhere else. Somebody can say something nasty about you. You have no control. Your own website, you have total control. And I think we all agree as a business leader with our personal brand, we want control. Your personal website gives you control.
[00:14:02] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If you don’t have that, I wouldn’t even start.
[00:14:08] Jay Aigner: Well, you’re making me realize I should probably dust off jayaigner.com that I think I did own at some point. So maybe, maybe after this conversation, I’ll go spin that back up.
[00:14:19] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, we actually just had a huge name in the SEO industry, people who do search engine optimization, who are interested in Google, who turned around to me and said, can you help me because I’m struggling. And the answer to him was, you need to restart your own website that you closed down 10 years ago. And he found that very surprising. But the point is, that’s your only hope of control. That’s your only hope of self determination in the world of AI that’s about to take over. So if you want these machines to understand you the way you want to be understood and represent you the way you want to be represented to the subset of their users, who your audience, start with your own website. If you don’t do that, you’ve lost the game. Right off the bat.
How Long Until You See Results from Building Your Personal Brand Online?
[00:15:09] Jay Aigner: I’m going to ask you a potentially dumb question. Okay, let’s say I go spin up my website, I listen to Jason and I say, okay, I don’t have my own personal brand website. I go out and hire somebody or I spend my own time and I spin it up and it’s all about me and I do all this stuff, how long does it take to feed in the machine? What is the output like, what is the actual effect it has to do something like that. Is it immediate, is it six months, is it five years? When do you see any sort of full cycle comeback of like, oh, the thing that I just went and created actually had some results?
[00:15:45] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Right. Well, number one, your KPI is the Google search result for your name and the answer ChatGPT gives you for who is Jason Barnard? Who is Jay Aigner? Those are your KPI. The timeline is minimum three months, maximum with us, 12 months. But because humans are multifaceted and these machines are very simplistic, if you get it wrong and you misinform the machines, that one year can turn into five years. So my advice is to be very intentional, very decisive, very clear and communicate to the machines through your own personal website, your entity home, which is what we call it. Today, you can expect some results in three months, you can expect dominant results in 12 months, where you become the dominant person within your industry and the dominant person with your own name. But if you get it wrong, you’re going to be pushing things back two, three years because machines have super good memories. When you mess it up, they remember.
Standing Out in a Competitive Market
[00:17:03] Jay Aigner: And when you say dominant in your industry, let’s just use, I don’t know, say me for example, I’m a QA automation expert to some degree. That’s all I do is QA and QA agency work. What would that look like for me to dominate that industry? Like, I mean there’s obviously the accentures of the world and you know, Googles of the world that have all sorts of giant awareness around who their quality control experts are. How do I compete with that? And what does like dominating it mean when you kind of put it in the context that you did?
[00:17:43] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Dominating is being the person that people think about when they think about your topic. And I’ll give you a good example. Right before this interview I had a meeting, a sales call with somebody who said, I was talking to my digital marketing advisor who said the person you need to talk to is Jason. And he said to me, this is going to be the easiest sales call you have ever had. So that’s being dominant. It’s that everybody immediately thinks that’s the person. Jason Barnard is the person for personal branding online, for Knowledge Panels on Google, for dominating the AI algorithms. And the KPI is always going to be, what does Google and ChatGPT say about you? And that dominance is if they think you’re more important than other people with your own name, you’re dominating your own name.
[00:18:46] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): If you associate your name with the topic. Jason Barnard, Digital Marketing. Jason Barnard, Entrepreneur and I come out top. I’m dominating my niche with my name. So I would use Google and ChatGPT as KPI. But at the end of the day, all they’re doing is reflecting human behavior. So I actually have to walk the walk. And what we do at Kalicube with the 2 billion data points is ensure that we understand exactly where we need to focus. So for you, we would analyze you, we would analyze the cohort, the peer group that you belong to, and we would see where are the key points that Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Microsoft see as important for you.
[00:19:41] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And that gives us the places you need to be standing where your audience is looking. If you’re standing where your audience is looking, you’re already winning the game.
Jason Barnard Shares His Musical Dream
[00:19:53] Jay Aigner: You make it sound pretty attractive, my friend. I feel like I could talk to you all day. We’re up against it. But I do have one more question for you. Non-business related, non-personal brand related. If you could do anything on earth and you knew you wouldn’t fail, what would it be?
[00:20:16] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): I would figure out a way to play double bass and sing in front of 200,000 people in a stadium.
[00:20:30] Jay Aigner: You are not the first person to, well, not double bass, but you’re not the first person to. Rockstar is up there on the list of, like, number of answers. You know, I think there’s a very visceral thing about that that a lot of people enjoy. So love that answer.
[00:20:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Well, the thing is, I’ve already done it. I played on a festival with Bob Dylan, so we were bottom of the bill. He was top of the bill, but we still had the same audience. So it wasn’t 200,000 people. It was 5,000 people. We played the gig. I’ve done that, and that’s given me a taste. And, you know, that’s definitely something I want to do again.
[00:21:10] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): And I would love to do bigger.
Jason Barnard’s Insights and How to Connect
[00:21:13] Jay Aigner: I love it. All right, well, this may be the most enlightening episode we’ve ever had. I love everything you’ve had to say. I love the sincerity that you bring to it and your experience with it. So I hope people perked up and heard some of the things you said, because a lot of it’s very applicable. If people want to find you. I think I know the answer to this question since we just talked about it, but people want to find you, Jason, how do they do that?
[00:21:44] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): They search on Google Jason Barnard. J A S O N B A R N A R D or ask ChatGPT, who is Jason Barnard? How can I get in contact with him? And they will give you the answer that I wanted. I’m the one in control.
[00:22:01] Jay Aigner: What a beautiful way to end this episode. They will tell you the answer that you wanted. I love it very much. Jason, you are a fantastic guy. I hope I get to go to France and meet you in person.
[00:22:13] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant. Come.
[00:22:14] Jay Aigner: This is very fun episode. I hope people check you out. Kalicube. That’s K A L I C U B E.com. Is that right?
[00:22:23] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Yep.
[00:22:24] Jay Aigner: All right. Well, I hope people check you out. Jason, you are fantastic. Thank you so much for your time today. I want to have you back on. I feel like we could talk for hours. Let’s stay in touch, my friend. And thank you so much for the time.
[00:22:35] Jay Aigner: All right.
[00:22:35] The Brand SERP Guy (Jason Barnard): Brilliant. Thank you so much, Jay.
[00:22:38] Jay Aigner: Thanks, Jason.
