REACH with Brunson Smith
How To Look Famous On Google (Even If You're Not)
What if there was a perfect roadmap to know exactly how which pieces of content would actually get you seen? See, all the big names you've heard of just tried everything and, well, it worked. What if you knew which things would move the needle and which wouldn't? Well, you would no longer need a full time content team to publish on every channel known to man. Jason Barnard shows us why this is now a possibility. Tune in and learn how to hack Google to make you seem famous, even if you aren't.
Thank you for your support!
What if there was a perfect roadmap to know exactly how which pieces of content would actually get you seen? See, all the big names you've heard of just tried everything and, well, it worked. What if you knew which things would move the needle and which wouldn't? Well, you would no longer need a full time content team to publish on every channel known to man. Jason Barnard shows us why this is now a possibility. Tune in and learn how to hack Google to make you seem famous, even if you aren't.
Thank you for your support!
I got to interview Jason Barnard, The guy that gets Google's algorithms better than almost anyone knows exactly what Google wants. I was introduced to him because everyone said, if you really want to know how Google operates, this is literally like possibly the best guy in the world for this. So fascinating conversation about how podcasters specifically can use this. He runs a software called KaliCube. So here's how KaliCube works. It pretty much has two steps. Number one. You need to be able to take what you already have out there on Google and ignore all the fluff and all the irrelevant pieces and focus on just things that you want to be famous for. For example, if I used to play You know, basketball back in high school, and then I later went on to be a motorcycle racer, and then I have a traveling blog, but I want to be famous as a marketer or a podcaster. That's step one of what he does, is that he helps people kind of take all the stuff that's not really relevant. You can, I understand he still feeds it in in certain ways, but primarily we just ignore the noise. And focus on here's what you want to be famous for. And then the second step of what he does, and this is really crazy is that he takes your peers. So for example, let's say that I want to be the next Gary Vaynerchuk, right? Well, Gary Vee has so much content and what he's really done is that there was a giant maze for how to be famous. And Gary Vee just explored every possible path. He just covered all the territory at once. And what, what KaliCube is doing is it's showing people the exact roadmap Here's how you navigate this maze. So you don't make any wrong turns and you just get exactly where you want to be. So every single turn along the way is precise. And what they do is they give you a list of different things. Okay. So number one, do this. Number two, do this. And specifically saying things like, Hey, make a Facebook post. Number two, get an article published on this website. And what's cool is this isn't even just about Google. It also redirects back towards your audience and tells them. Essentially, what he can do is find out what your audience is looking for as well. So you can package something so that your audience loves it. You know exactly what they're hungry for, and you also know exactly what Google's hungry for. And you're kind of feeding them, spoon feeding them exactly what it needs in order to make you become the top guy up on Google. So, very fascinating episode. He talks about the strategy along the way. He talks about kind of his path to becoming, you know, understanding all this information. Super excited for you all to listen to this. Let's dive in. All right, crew. Welcome back to another episode on Reach. I am so excited to introduce Jason to you all. What, what is the nickname we came up with for you, Jason? Was it, was it the Google goat? Is that what we decided? Okay,
Jason Barnard:actually didn't know what goat meant. Until somebody said, Alex Sanfilippo said it. I thought he's insulting me. Turns out it's greatest of all time. So
Brunson Smith:exactly.
Jason Barnard:very, very flattering. Thank you, Alex.
Brunson Smith:Yes, yes, exactly. So yeah, the, the, the Google goat. So in, in short. I think that we could say a probably pretty punchy statement is that Jason has a very specific set of skills that allow people to be famous on Google. Cause he could kind of essentially just kind of hack their algorithm. Right. I mean, it's, it's a pretty, pretty cool process. So I
Jason Barnard:over 25 years. I started. SEO in the year that Google started. So I started with Google. I've grown up with Google. Google haven't particularly noticed that I've been there, but I've been, as you say, hacking, manipulating Google for 25 years with great success. And my special skill today is particularly amplifying personal brand and company brands and podcast brands for that matter, above and beyond their true status. Making you look more famous than you actually are.
Brunson Smith:love that. I love that. And that's when we chatted actually at this podcasting conference, I said, this is not only super cool, but kind of one of those hidden gems that I think that one of these days, Jason will be too busy to meet with all of us, but I think that's where things are going. Yes, it's amazing to have a really cool list. It's amazing to have a big podcast following, but there is an entire world behind these search engines, and being able to tap into that is critical. So before you got into KaliCube and Google give us kind of the, what was kind of the lead up to this? KaliCube. Do you have a background in IT? Do you have a background in any of these, any of these skill sets?
Jason Barnard:Well, no, like many people, I think, or many people, a lot of people I have met in the industry who are really good at manipulating, beating the Google game, however you want to call it, come from a musical background. Which is initially quite surprising. Number one is because musicians generally don't make a very good living, and it's really easy for a musician to say, well, can see that in SEO there's a living to be made. And the similarities between music and SEO, which is it takes structure. There are rules to music and you have the notes and there are beats and there are keys. And so there are lots of rules that you need to follow, but you will only be truly great if you're creative. And that approach really makes sense. There's a guy called Marty Vayntro, who's a musician like me. And we had a huge long conversation at a conference once about what the parallels are between musicianship and SEOs. And we found quite a lot. And if you want to listen to that Branded Search and Beyond, which is my podcast. Marty Weintraub, have a look for that episode. And it's brilliant. He's such a delightful guy. We were sitting on the floor in the corridor at PubCon in Las Vegas, which sounds really cool now I say it.
Brunson Smith:That's awesome. And so that was kind of this, this initial spark of like, okay. You had the creativity, you had the background. Now, remind me. I remember you saying something about even a cartoon series. Was that right?
Jason Barnard:it started. Yeah, and 100 percent is my wife and I created cartoon characters. I made a music album and we couldn't get it published.
Brunson Smith:Mm hmm.
Jason Barnard:And because I'm very determined, I decided that I would create a website using Flash, Macromedia Flash at the time, then Adobe Flash, and now it doesn't exist anymore. But it was an animation tool. So I learnt to do animation online, streaming over, at the time, 14K modems, so it was very, very slow internet connections, with these two cartoon characters singing songs and creating games for them. And it was a lot of fun. We launched in the same year as Google. And at the time, search engine optimization was about creating one page for each keyword variant and for each search engine. And because there were 15 or 16 decent search engines, you would be creating hundreds of thousands of pages. And that was a huge problem. So what I then did is say, I will focus just on Google. So I backed. On Google, when it was one of the smallest search engines to become one of the biggest, and my back turned out to be either very lucky or very smart and perceptive, depending on how you want to look at it.
Brunson Smith:So this wasn't just, you didn't just take a dart and throw it at a board and say, Oh, Google. I mean, there was a lot of research, a lot of prediction. You were, you were watching the signs and you said, Okay, the writing's on the wall for Google. Were you pretty confident that it was Google?
Jason Barnard:yeah, well, I would like to say it was a lot of research, but it actually wasn't as I start because to explain a little bit. The website was in the day when AOL was huge and
Brunson Smith:Hmm. Mm
Jason Barnard:huge and. We had a website. We were trying to attract people to this kid's website. We got lots of press. We got awards. We got schools recommending us. But what we realized very quickly is the search engines would be the place where we would get the most traffic, but not in the short term, because right at the beginning, the search engines weren't the best way to get people to your website. Recommendations on school websites and PR and getting awards and lots of people had little, their own little sites. That would then say, I recommend this, this, this, this, and this. And it was very much personal recommendations. So it was social media before social media. And search engines were good, but they weren't the huge behemoth that they are today. And as I said, there were 16 of them. And it was very clear from the beginning that Google was smarter. And that we had an advantage on Google because everybody was recommending us naturally. So we got all the links that Google was looking for, and the search, the other search engines weren't looking for links, they were just looking for keywords in pages. So Google brought together keywords and links, which we now think is obvious. But at the time of Google, it was new. And from my perspective, I looked at it and thought, I have a huge advantage on Google. Google is obviously better than the others. I'm taking the bet.
Brunson Smith:Hmm. That's, yeah, I think you're right. Either very lucky, but I'd maybe say not luck on that one. That seems like that was a very well educated, Or at least, at least good intuition or something. I mean, that, that was a, yeah, I mean, they've been the clear winner.
Jason Barnard:Intelligence is being intellectually capable of understanding or explaining something. So that will be what you would get when you do a degree or a doctorate. But smart intelligence is using that intelligence in a day to day, helpful, useful, valuable, powerful manner. So it's taking that intelligence and applying it to the real world and making something happen. So smart intelligence is one of the key concepts we have KaliCube. We've got 20 people on the team, and one thing that everybody has to have is smart intelligence. That's how you survive at KaliCube. Oh,
Brunson Smith:I remember we had that conversation.
Jason Barnard:we, no, we have a meeting every week with the whole team, and one of the people, everyone shares their highlight of the week, and somebody who's been in the, on the, on the team for six months now, Marielle, said, my highlight of the week is I survived another week at KaliCube. And she didn't mean it in a bad way. She meant it's such an exciting ride, building this whole industry that nobody else has ever done before and getting from one end of the week, Monday to the other end, Friday and still being here and still working and still things, seeing things working out is a huge achievement in and of itself.
Brunson Smith:That's amazing. And it really is. I mean, I just don't know anyone that's quite taking this approach. We have SEO. For those that are listening, how would you describe the difference between what KaliCube is doing and your standard SEO approach?
Jason Barnard:I like that question. That's a great question because people meet me and immediately think that I'm going to get them to the top of Google. For something like Best Podcasts.
Brunson Smith:Mm hmm.
Jason Barnard:And that my aim will be to create a page that talks about best podcasts and puts them at the top. But that's not what we do, that's what SEOs try to do. And increasingly, that's something that's no longer possible. Not by simply creating a webpage that addresses that specific question, isolation. What we do, Is take a brand, a podcast in this case, a podcast name, the marketing for that podcast, which would be the episodes themselves and also the social media activity, any articles about them, the website itself. And we package all of that both for the audience and also for Google. So we're looking at branding, marketing and SEO in that order. SEO is simply the packaging of branding and marketing you're doing anyway. You package that branding and the marketing for Google, and that's the secret to SEO today. And wonderfully, delightfully, it's actually the secret to building any kind of business or podcast audience, is that you focus on the branding and the marketing for your audience, being where your audience is looking, showing them that you have the right solution, and inviting them in. And if you can then package that for Google and demonstrate to Google that you have the right answer for the audience when they're looking for it and that you serve that audience in the way that they need to be served to answer the question they have or solve the problem they have, Google will reward you because it will see that you're satisfying the subset of its users who are your audience. It's as simple as that.
Brunson Smith:Interesting. So all the SEO is doing is that they're doing some of the right stuff, they're just missing, you know, their one piece of the puzzle. And that one piece is not sufficient to really succeed anymore.
Jason Barnard:Yeah, and the one piece of the puzzle they're missing is this actually should be for the people who you're trying to serve and if you focus on that, you're building a great business or a great brand with great marketing materials and Google then becomes the bonus. Which is, I think, where the podcasting world is coming from and that's why the podcasting world is probably more receptive to what I'm saying
Brunson Smith:Right.
Jason Barnard:well, my principal aim is not Google. I already have all these podcasting platforms. I already have my social media. I have people listening to my podcast. Google, nice to have, not necessary. I agree with them.
Brunson Smith:Yeah.
Jason Barnard:build your audience elsewhere, but then you can pack it package for Google, it becomes the bonus. And it's a nice to have that you then get naturally, and you don't need to do any extra work or effort beyond packaging.
Brunson Smith:So, why would people not just go to Google experts to learn about how to hack this Google system? Why do they have, like, What makes you unique in that space?
Jason Barnard:I think the answer to that question is exactly what you said is the Google SEO experts are missing the huge piece, which is real people.
Brunson Smith:Yeah.
Jason Barnard:They will tend to focus on the machine not think about the people who are the ultimate audience and that Google is simply trying to match the audience to the supplier. The. The person with the problem to the person with the solution or the company with the solution. And that Google is simply an interface between them.
Brunson Smith:Mm hmm.
Jason Barnard:less. It's two people coming together with a problem and a solution. With Google being the interface that we're asking simply to recommend us as the best solution. So if you focus on the person on the other side, and what you're giving to them, and then think how do I convince this machine to recommend me as the best solution over and above my competition, and Then you solve the SEO problem and the business problem or the audience building problem. Yeah,
Brunson Smith:fascinating. This is such a different approach to SEO or the SEO space generally.
Jason Barnard:and, and it's, it's all a bit philosophical and I think kind of, that's where I often fall down is everyone saying that it sounds brilliant, but what do I do?
Brunson Smith:Mm
Jason Barnard:And that's where the crux comes is I don't always leave people with an incredibly simple list of things that they can do. And I can do that now much more easily since talking to people like yourself at the PodFest.
Brunson Smith:Mm hmm.
Jason Barnard:that I was talking about something that was very philosophical, very important, with an original approach that allows anybody to do this.
Brunson Smith:Yeah.
Jason Barnard:actually tell people this is what you do.
Brunson Smith:Yeah. Well, and I'd like to actually kind of dive in and take a case study and say, okay, you're a podcaster with. I don't know. You've been doing it for a year or so, you've got a lot of content out. Before we dive into that whole scenario, I actually want to ask, I want to maybe put a little plug in here. And you can correct me if I have this, this wrong. Wasn't there someone at Google who is pretty in the know, maybe even helped write some of those algorithms that said that you knew more about Google algorithms than he did? Is, is that, am I mis, am I misquoting that?
Jason Barnard:It's a slight misquote, but yes, it was. For Google, all of this is just algorithms. Outside of Google, I'm the person who knows the most about how to actually educate these algorithms, because that's what I do. Is that the algorithms are trying to learn about you, about your services, about your audience, and about your credibility. And what I can do is feed these algorithms with the information they need so that they learn about who you are, what you do, which audience you serve. And then, why you're the most credible solution for the subset of its users, who are your audience. And there's a huge difference between building an algorithm that has an aim of doing something, and being able to control how that algorithm then understands what's going on in the world, which is what I do. So what he was simply saying is, we build algorithms with an aim. Jason's coming from the aim, the other way, and getting the algorithm to dance to it, his own tune. And so it's a it's not I know more than they do. It's that I have a completely different approach
Brunson Smith:yeah,
Jason Barnard:because I can't affect the algorithm. I can do. I can't affect the way the algorithm is built or how it works. What I can do is influence influence what it sees. And how it digests it, that allows me then to influence very heavily how it understands and how it represents us.
Brunson Smith:It's fascinating. And so, and and my understanding was that you really are considered, at least by this guy's perspective, you were the best. I mean, you were the name that apparently he came up with and it was like, yeah, if you were to know how to educate the algorithms, there's really one guy There's really one guy. And that's why, and that's why, that's why Alex, when he talked, when he spoke to me about you, he said, yeah, he is the Google goat. Like. I mean, even Google says that he's the goat when it comes to understanding how to educate the algorithms on how to make you. And that's really what was fascinating to me was this concept of, we can take someone who is not famous, but has some content and make them look like they're the top of their particular, not maybe not always the number one in their field, but we can make them jump, not just one or two steps, but quite a few steps up that social ladder. And seemed like they were very successful when it comes to how Google will present them to the world. And that was really fascinating to me.
Jason Barnard:Yeah, I think actually there are multiple aspects to this. I mean, the first one is how does your audience perceive you? The
Brunson Smith:Mm hmm.
Jason Barnard:does Google perceive you? And the third is how does Google represent you? And if you start with the audience, if you have an incredibly clear, consistent message across every place that they interact with you, on your website, on social media, on your podcast, On other people's podcasts, in PR, in the media, when you write an article. Then you are going to engage that audience or those people in a way that makes sense to them and makes sense to you and brings you closer together if you're a relevant solution for them. Then Google's perception of you is the way that we then take that first part, package it for Google, so Google's perception of you Is then that you are one of the best in
Brunson Smith:Mm hmm.
Jason Barnard:is that if somebody else next to you is, has exactly the same quality content, let's say better content with perhaps more audience and more PR, but they're not organizing it in a way that makes sense. Number one, the audience won't be impacted as heavily and as completely as in my case, number two, Google won't see it in the same way. So what you actually effectively do. By reorganizing your entire digital ecosystem, your branding and your marketing that you're presenting to the audience is amplifying what you have, both in the minds of your audience and in the mind of Google. And when you amplify what you have in the mind of Google, what it represents you as when somebody searches your podcast name or your name on Google will be significantly more sexy, let's say. So if you search my name, Jason Barnard, J A S E O N B A R N A R D. You will see lovely cards at the top with my age, my partner's name the social media, some photos, and a description then that I created Buwan Kuala, my birth date, my, who my mother is. And then some famous people from the marketing industry underneath, people also search for Rand Fishkin, let's say. de Valk, who created one of the great WordPress plugins. The fact there is not that I'm famous or so famous that Google would represent me in a, in a way that's just as rich, information rich and sexy as somebody like Johnny Depp.
Brunson Smith:Mm hmm.
Jason Barnard:not famous like Johnny Depp, but Google understands so much about me that it's willing to show all of this information as though I was famous as Johnny Depp. So it's that trick that you can play on Google when somebody's searching your name. But the truth is To get Google to play that trick, I had to convince Google that I was serving my audience and I'm serving my audience in an incredibly focused manner and making sure that Google understands it every step of the way. So my personal brand is very well represented both to my audience and to Google. And to give an idea of how that works with KaliCube, my company and myself, when people come for a sales talk with me, They say every time I research knowledge panels, educating Google, amplifying personal brand, building a future proof digital marketing strategy, I see that red shirt and I see your name and I see KaliCube absolutely everywhere. And they don't mean just on Google, they mean on LinkedIn, they mean on Facebook, they mean on Twitter, they mean Search Engine Land, they mean on Forbes. com, and then they double check on Google, which is an interesting point that I'd never thought of. They say, I looked you up on Google at the end, just to double check that Google agrees. that is key. We trust Google. We use Google because we trust Google.
Brunson Smith:Right.
Jason Barnard:will research you on Google, and your topic on Google, to double check that Google agrees with what we've seen on the rest of the web. And of course, if you've organized everything on the rest of the web, Google will definitely agree. So you're creating your own truth. from a set of facts, but the truth is amplified.
Brunson Smith:It's just so interesting. And if any of you are listening at home right now go ahead and search his name like he spelt it out. And Just see what Google pops up. And that's during our conversation. That's what I found very fascinating is that I pulled up your name and it was like, Holy smokes, you look like a celebrity, right? Like it was a very similar, it was just like that. It's like, it looked like Johnny Depp or anything else where yes, we were, I wasn't, I wasn't seeing 15 movies you've been in, but Google showed me this fancy, you know, card system and, and it made it look like, yeah, I mean, it just, they just gave me a ton of information based on a single name. And I'm like, oh, there's, I'm sure there's other Jason Barnards out there. Right. But. there's only one that's relevant to Google.'cause I mean, that's all that I saw,
Jason Barnard:Right. No, 100%. And I haven't been in 15 movies. I've done one TV series that was also a website. That's all I need to look as famous as Johnny Depp. I don't need an entire career. I just need one TV series. But I also would need just one book. Or I would need 15 guest appearances on podcasts. That would do it. You don't need a great deal to build a huge personal brand on Google in the sense, sorry, you don't need a huge number of appearances or fame or, you know, big events for Google to represent you in a way that makes you look like you've done a lot more than you have. And the mistake I see a lot of people making is immediately saying, I want to build my personal brand and coming in and saying, I need more PR. And they go more, more, more, more, more, more. And you're saying, no, no, no. You need to start with organize what you've got and then build the right additional PR, which is another thing that we do really well is figure out where you need to stand to be standing where your audience is looking. And I failed to say this earlier on. Google tells us what we need to know. We're not making it up. We're not saying, Oh, I think it might be Facebook. Oh, I think it might be Forbes. com. For me, as an entrepreneur, we take what we call entity equivalence, which is who do you want to emulate? Who are your peers, the people on the step above you? So I would take entrepreneurs on the step above me at KaliCube and I would put them into the KaliCube Pro system, which is a SAS platform that I built, and it would just spit out the places that I need to push Facebook, YouTube, Get onto Forbes. com, get onto Entrepreneur Magazine, get myself listed on theorg. com. Crunch base. And a lot of people think, well, all of this is really obvious. And you say, yeah, you can probably guess most of it. You'll probably guess 60 percent of it. But there's 40 percent you won't guess. But the other point is you're always guessing. And we're not. We're asking Google, out of these 70 people, what are the commonalities? terms of press, in terms of social media, in terms of websites, in terms of presence online. And it will tell us the commonalities, and we say, well this is what you need to focus on. By order of priority, based on the data that Google is showing us, is the best representation of this peer group. So you can actually start with what you've got, build that out, make yourself look better than you already are, one step up let's say. Then you can look at the people who are on that one step up, Focus on what they're doing, what's common, the commonality between them based on data. Get those press mentions, those places, focus on those social media platforms, and move yourself up another step. Then you can do that again, and again, and again, and you move step by step to the top of the ladder and become the authority, the credible source, the trusted source within your industry.
Brunson Smith:Interesting. So in as, as an example, right? So if I'm a podcaster who specializes in entrepreneurship and marketing, and you know, what you're probably gonna look at is someone like, let's just say, you know, to throw a name out there, Gary Vaynerchuk, right? Who is a huge name in that space, and go, okay. How do I make people look more like Gary Vaynerchuk? What, you know, and then you're, you're gonna actually have a list that says, okay, first get a tick talk maybe, you know, or make sure you get an article published here, get this or get that. And then just start moving down a list that'll help you appear. Even if you're not nearly as famous as Gary V, but appear as though you were on when it comes to Google's research of you. Cause you can just feed it exactly what it wants to eat.
Jason Barnard:Yeah, that's it. Google exactly what it wants to eat. And what it wants to eat is actually what the audience is looking for anyway. So you're serving both. Once again, the audience and Google are getting exactly what they need. And you're getting in the front of the right people at the right places without even thinking about Google or the Google search results. You're just asking Google, where do I need to stand to be standing where my audience is looking when they have the problem that I can solve?
Brunson Smith:Yeah. Mm
Jason Barnard:tell you. And you gave the example of Gary V. If you just look at him, then you'll be templating Gary Vee. And what works for Gary Vee doesn't work for Neil Patel, doesn't work for Joost de Valk, doesn't work for Cindy Crum, doesn't work for Andrea Volpini, all of these different people who are entrepreneurs in the marketing space.
Brunson Smith:hmm.
Jason Barnard:What we do is take 70 of these people, and ask Google for all 70, and then my algorithm, what I call, templates it, but it actually just analyzes the whole thing, it says what are the common features of all of these people. Where are most of them standing? So it might not be tick tock. Even if it works for Gary Vee, it doesn't work for the group of people that Gary Vee belongs to. Might be LinkedIn, might be Facebook, we don't know.
Brunson Smith:Which, which would be hilarious to find out just as an example, it'd be hilarious to find out that Gary Vee, maybe it's like he spends 80 percent of his time on Tik TOK only to find out that's not what Google's hungry for, nor his audience. Instead, he needs to be publishing some obscure article in yeah. org. com, you know, or, or the entrepreneur magazine. It's like, Oh, that's what his audience and Google's hungry for is this little tiny thing right here. So we have misapplied energy constantly. And I think that's what the big, that's why I believe a lot of podcasters don't bother with anything to do with their Google presence is it just feels overwhelming. And just generally producing content feels so overwhelming because, okay, do I, they publish on LinkedIn? Okay. I've already got a podcast, but okay, we've got LinkedIn, YouTube. I mean, the list is endless and it feels so overwhelming and exhausting on top of the fact you have to repackage everything for each platform because Yes, you can copy and paste, but Tik Tok does not like reels and reels don't like Tik Tok, for example. And so you have to go in like, okay, well, which one matters more? I don't really know. And you're, you're just guessing. And that's what was so fascinating about our conversation was like, oh, we can just remove some of that guesswork and know what Google's hungry for and say, oh yeah, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And all of a sudden you just exploded up the charts. Not because you have omnipresence everywhere, but because you have very specific data that's being put in place. And it's exactly what Google's looking for. So that's just super fascinating.
Jason Barnard:well, one question all our clients ask when they come is which social media platform should I be focusing on? And. They come in and say, I've got six social media platforms. So we'll include, include YouTube in that TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram. And you say, well, you don't need to focus on all five. You don't have the resources. Let's, let's cut it down to three. Which are the three most important for this particular peer group or this particular market segment? Just focus on those because they're the ones that will move the needle. And the interesting point about, let's say, Gary V working on TikTok. He's pushing. I mean, I don't know exactly what he's doing, but if he's pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing on TikTok, he says, Well, this is working for me, so that's fine. As you rightly say, there might be a way to remove some of the resources from that and put it into Facebook
Brunson Smith:Right.
Jason Barnard:And get more traction from Facebook because that was the missing piece from his overall puzzle within his market segment. And I'll give you an example for myself, is I put a lot of effort into YouTube and it works really well for me. And then one day I realized that I needed an academic article. The academic article doesn't seem valuable from a business perspective to my eyes at first sight. And I think, well I can't spend three days figuring out this academic article, because I've got all the YouTube videos I need to make. But once I realized that the data showed me I needed that piece in my puzzle, I took the three days out and I created the academic article. I got it published. I've now gone into Google Scholar. Google loves me more. And I can cite that as a reason for people to believe in my authority. Because I'm academically accepted as well as being commercially marketing accepted. And it's been a huge part of my overall puzzle. Another example is a book. Took me six months to write the book, took me a lot of time. I knew that a book was missing, a missing piece from my overall marketing and personal branding puzzle, made the book, and it hasn't made me money from selling the book, it's made me money from placing me as an authority, so that when people come to me they say, well you've wrote, written this book, you must be the guy.
Brunson Smith:Yeah. Well, and this goes back to some of the basics of marketing. I mean, one of the first lessons I ever learned as a marketer was it's not about having a million dollar idea. It's about having a million dollar marketing plan. In other words, the issue is that off people build a product without knowing if they can even sell it. I've done this myself and I'll go build an amazing product, just like writing a book, right. Only to find out that maybe that's not what you should have done in the first place. Maybe it was Tik TOK. Maybe it was Facebook. And knowing first that you can quote unquote sell the product or publish something that's going to actually move the needle is pretty valuable when it comes to where you apply your time and energy. Cause that's pretty finite. And I can tell you, you know, and you probably talked to entrepreneurs all day and I do as well that are going, it's just, it's a lot. It's overwhelming. I've got 27 different places to publish and write a book and make a TV show. And it's like, okay, Do I even know that any of these are going to move the needle? Well, I'm hoping, and I'm just, I'm just shotgunning everywhere, hoping that one of these BBs is going to hit. And so, yeah, I do. I mean, it's just, I think that's spot on. It's knowing the product beforehand that needs to be published before you go even, even make it.
Jason Barnard:yeah a hundred percent. And, and the idea of we have limited resources, limited time, limited money. Make sure that you're not pushing and pushing and pushing and pushing on something that isn't bringing the massive incremental value that you think. I mean, I studied economics back in the day. The law of diminishing returns is something that has always stuck with me. Is that you always kick off with something and it will give you immense returns at the start. And how fast that law of diminishing returns hits in is vastly important to how you then handle what you're doing. Thank you. So if you keep focusing on one thing, each iteration of it, each additional step that you do, will bring less value. How much less value is the thing you need to focus on? And at what point does that drop in value of the next step,
Brunson Smith:Right.
Jason Barnard:not come up to what you would get if you then put that effort into a new project, or a new idea, or a new marketing plan? So when I was focusing on YouTube, I got to the point where each additional video Didn't bring as much value as sitting down and writing a book or writing an academic article would bring me. And I wouldn't have known which to focus on first or indeed which to focus on without the peer group analysis that we did at KaliCube. Which is one of the services we offer.
Brunson Smith:It's awesome. It looks like we're about time. So quick wrap up, wrap up here. You didn't pay me to come to talk about this. I just truly believe I'm always trying to offer value to my audience and say, Hey, listen, if I find an amazing resource, I want you guys to know Jason and I are going to be working together in the future. And I wanted to bring on the show just so everyone can know about this, because I think that this is the kind of stuff that again, we're in such a rapidly expanding world. The law of diminishing return is more real than it ever has been. Information is going to be, I think, doubling in 24 hours in the next, you know, whatever, 10 years or something. It's like, if we are not really specifically applying our efforts and energy in the right places, we get outmoded by things that are, including AI. And so I, yeah, just a very relevant thing. If people are trying to connect with you and trying to see if, okay, this is the right place. I have two questions for this and we'll wrap up. Number one, where do they need to be on their journey? Could they have just started a podcast? Can they be a veteran? So maybe tell us where they need to be on the journey and then number two, how they can find you and connect to see if this is the right fit.
Jason Barnard:Right, yeah, that's a really, the first one is a really good question in the sense that nobody ever asks me that and I've never really thought about it. But if you're a beginner. Or you're just signing out on your journey, we're not going to be a good solution. You need to create assets. You need something there for us to be helpful and useful, and for it to be worth you paying us to help you with this. So you can start off on your own, build it up. Use the free resources on KaliCube. com. K A L I C U B E dot com. We give everything away for free. So you just have to read the stuff, take the time to read it, and it's all valuable, it's all helpful. And you can start off on your own. Once you've got assets and once you've got a certain level of notoriety, of notability, famousness, and you have a presence out there, then we can come in and clean it up, join all the dots, make it all neat and tidy, make sure everything is incredibly clear, consistent, and relevant to your audience, and then we can start building up from there. But if you're already a big hitter, a big player, come to us now, because clients hate to hear this. Your digital ecosystem is a mess. However clear and consistent you think you've been, you haven't. You have a team working on it. You've worked on it yourself. Human beings ourselves are not consistent. Teams of human beings are even less consistent. what we can do is bring it all together, make it all consistent. Join all the dots. And as I said, joining the dots makes sense to your audience all the way down the funnel, all the way across your digital ecosystem. So you're speaking the same. Language to them across every touch point. And that makes sense to human beings. We like consistency from people. Makes sense to Google. Google will see that you're doing this. It will see. It will understand. It will see that you're serving your audience. And it will then represent you in the way you want when people search your name. But more than that, Google is now moving from being a search engine to an answer engine to an assistive engine where it's helping people to understand what they're looking for. You don't need to know what you're looking for. Google will help you figure it out. And at that point, if Google understands who you are, who you serve and what you offer them, then it can match you by recommending you proactively to the people using Google. And that is going to be the key to the future. So that's a little teaser for what's coming next. But right now you want Google to push you and your brand when people already know it. So your traditional, if I may, marketing strategies. off Google are going to play hugely into that. People will then search your name, then you're going to look great to them. And when you look great to them, it means that you're already doing a great job and it's a wonderful virtuous circle. And now I'll tell you where you can find me is you search for me on Google, J A S O N B A R N A R D, or my company, KaliCube, K A L I C U B E, and you'll find us and you can decide how you want to engage with us. Do you just want to chat on LinkedIn? Do you want to follow us on Twitter? Do you want to come to our website and use the free resources? Do you want to contact us, book a meeting with me, learn about my life as a cartoon blue dog? It's up to you. I'm giving the people searching my name or my company name the options of how they want to engage with me by telling them to search me on Google. And I get a really, really lovely bonus from this. Every time somebody searches my name or KaliCube's name on Google, Google gives us one small little brownie point more because Google sees that we're popular,
Brunson Smith:Yeah.
Jason Barnard:sees that we're famous. So building branded search, IE, the number of people who search for your name, you or your company or your podcast. As you build that up, you build Google's understanding and appreciation of how important you are. The more important you are to Google or in Google's eyes. The more it will promote you, the more it will recommend you, the bigger presence you'll get on Google. It's a really neat, simple hack. Get as many searches on your name as you possibly can.
Brunson Smith:That's awesome. Jason, thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing that wisdom. Folks, like you just said, very easy to find him. And every time you search, search him, that's just a little bonus for KaliCube. So thanks for coming on the show.
Jason Barnard:Thanks a lot, Brunson. That was brilliant.