2 – Jason Barnard – How a Billion-Pageview Dream Survived Digital Marketing Disasters
Today, in episode two, we have an exceptional guest, Jason Barnard, also known as the Brand SERPs Guy and easily recognizable in his signature red shirt.
I’m your host, Jim Banks, and together we’ll dive into the intricacies of written processes, the crucial balance of freedom and support in teams, and the evolution of Google’s role in personal and business branding.
In this episode, Jason shares his journey from musician to digital marketing maestro, highlighting the billion page views milestone his strategies helped achieve.
We’ll also discuss the backbone of successful businesses - systems, processes, and templates - and why remaining flexible within their structure is key.
Jason discusses the power of machine learning to automate and streamline within his company, Kalicube, and the overall shift from being a hands-on SEO expert to leading a dynamic team that’s steering his company forward.
He emphasizes Google’s fickle nature and the need for businesses to avoid over-reliance on the search engine by diversifying their traffic sources.
We also take a personal turn, where Jason reveals how overcoming school challenges led to aspirations of reuniting with former bandmates, and how he and I reflect on the importance of school reunions for reconnecting with our past.
Get ready for a candid conversation about the importance of carving out individual brand identities, the transformation from individual contributor to CEO, and the empowerment that comes from having a strong, supportive team behind you.
Listen here: 2 – Jason Barnard – How a Billion-Pageview Dream Survived Digital Marketing Disasters
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Published by Bad Decisions With Jim Banks. January 3, 2024. Host: Jim Banks. Guest: Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO at Kalicube®.
Exploring the Life and Career of Jason Barnard on Bad Decisions
[00:00:00] Narrator: Today’s guest on bad decisions with Jim Banks has an extremely varied background, from being a musician in a punk folk group to being a blue dog, a yellow Kwala, a writer, a podcaster. There’s not much he hasn’t done. He is best known in the SEO community as the Brand SERPs guy, and famously, he is known for always wearing a red shirt. We get into the story behind the red shirt and a lot more in today’s episode. So let’s meet your guest today, Jason Barnard, the Brand SERPs guy who is talking to Jim Banks on today’s episode of Bad Decisions with Jim Banks.
[00:00:33] Jim Banks: Bad decisions with Jim Banks. I’m your host, Jim Banks, and I’m delighted to have on the show today, Jason Barnard, who is the CEO of an agency called Kalicube, and they’re based in France, I believe, is that right, Jason?
[00:00:48] Jason Barnard: Yeah, exactly. Thank you for having me on the show, Jim. We’re based in France. The company is french, but the core team is all in the Philippines, so it’s a french company only by legal status. The actual core and heart and soul of the team is Filipino.
The Story Behind Jason Barnard’s Signature Red Shirt
[00:01:02] Jim Banks: Excellent. So we’ve met at conferences in the past. You meet people that you know are really smart in the industry. You see them at events. You can never get close to them because they’re always surrounded by people that want to pick their brains. So getting Jason on the podcast today is my opportunity to talk a little bit about stuff. The one thing I’ve noticed, Jason, is there something about why you’re always wearing a red shirt? Because I’ve always seen you and you’ve always been wearing a red shirt. What’s the story behind that?
[00:01:23] Jason Barnard: It’s called personal branding, and it’s been a huge effort for me. I started in 2015 with the red shirt. At my very first conference, I wore the red shirt. And I have never been on a conference, on a podcast, in any public professional situation without the red shirt. So if you ever see me without the red shirt, it means it’s a personal friend conversation.
[00:01:46] Jim Banks: There we go. Good. That’s good to know, because, again, I mean, obviously, Steve Jobs has done it, Mark Zuckerberg’s done it. So you’re in very illustrious company. I think in our industry, there’s two people that I’m aware of. I think Mikkel deMib’s fence. He always used to wear a suit that was like a really bright color. And I think Christophe Semper always wears the same kind of color suit as well. So again, personal branding, I’m absolutely all about that.
[00:02:10] Jason Barnard: I think what people don’t realize is quite how hard it is how much effort it takes, because literally two minutes ago I was wearing a blue t shirt and I had to change just before coming on screen. And I think to compare me to Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg, I would like to point out that my reason is lots better than theirs, whatever theirs might be. I’ll bet you my reason is better. It’s because I was playing in a gig, playing the double bass, wearing a red shirt that belonged to somebody else, and he had lent me the red shirt because it belonged to Manu chao. And he said to me, can you give me the red shirt back at the next gig? And I said, yes, I can throw it from the stage and you can catch it, and then you will have caught the red shirt from two of your favorite musicians in the whole world. So halfway through the show, I took the red shirt and I threw it in the crowd. Manu Chao’s shirt. I’m incredibly happy and pleased to have worn it for half a show. He caught it and he was happy as a lark. And I looked at the video afterwards and in the first half of the show with the red shirt, I looked really cool. And in the second half with the blue t-shirt, I didn’t.
[00:03:14] Jim Banks: Right.
[00:03:14] Jason Barnard: And I thought, that’s the secret. Stand on stage with a red shirt, you’re going to look cool whether it’s music or in conferences.
The Power of Adaptation in Business and Branding
[00:03:22] Jim Banks: Yeah, I mean, it’s funny, I know that obviously the topic of the podcast is bad decisions. I used to sell insurance for a living. I did that for twelve years when I first started doing it, to separate myself, my own presence on people’s doorsteps, from those of the competitors. I used to wear a bow tie, right. And for probably three or four years, I used to wear a bow tie. And I became known as Jim Banks, the guy with the bow tie. Right. And eventually it got to the point where I was so well known that I didn’t need to wear the bow tie anymore.
[00:03:51] Jim Banks: But for me it was like it’s quite a change to go from wearing something kind all the time to not wearing it. And again, I mean, I’m talking probably in the late 80s, early 90s, so long before, I think, the evolution of some of the personal branding stuff that’s more prevalent today. Jason, like I said, I’m obviously delighted to have you here. Tell us a little bit about how you got into the industry itself because I know you’ve been doing this a bit like me, 20 odd years. It’s quite an interesting situation. I haven’t deliberately planned to bring on people that have been around for that length of time, but it’s just, that’s the way the kind of guest lists have evolved. But tell me a little bit about how you got into the industry.
[00:04:30] Jason Barnard: Well, I’ve been in the industry for 25 years now and started in 1998. And in fact the reason I got into the industry in the first place was indirect for the first ten years and then a bad decision at the time. I got into the industry ten years later and pushed myself into the heart of the Digital Marketing SEO industry. Initially I was a musician, then I became a music publisher. And the groups that we were signing to EMI and Warner Chapel as artists were being really difficult about their artistic choices. And we were claiming that EMI had invested a million at the time francs in your career. We need to make this a success and once you’ve made it a success, you can do what you want to do. They were saying, no, we have to do what we want to do right from the start because otherwise we’re not true to ourselves, which is fine, but if you’ve accepted a million francs from EMI, there’s somewhere along the lines you’ve already accepted the compromise, so you might as well go all in.
[00:05:31] Jason Barnard: And after a while I just realized that I needed to do something that I had control over. So we created with my ex wife, a blue dog and a yellow koala. Nobody wanted it for the music industry, nobody wanted it for the publishing industry. So we created a website using Macromedia flash at the time and launched ourselves into the World Wide Web and luckily focused on Google as a source of traffic. And Google grew with us from 1998 to 2008. We ended up with a billion page views in 2008.
[00:06:01] Jim Banks: Wow, that’s impressive.
[00:06:02] Jason Barnard: It’s cool. And thanks to Google.
Understanding Google’s Role in Your Business Success
[00:06:04] Jim Banks: Yeah. But I’m sure you’re like most people, Google didn’t owe you a living, right? I’ve seen so many businesses that kind of complain about Google kicked me out, Google did this. It’s like, Google don’t owe you anything. So for me it’s always been an interesting paradigm between what people have an expectation of what Google’s kind of role is in the success of their business versus what Google decides that they want to do. And the one thing I’ve known working with Google myself for the same sort of length of time is the one thing guarantee with Google is they’re going to change and it’s not always going to be change that we’re going to accept and want, but we have to just adopt that. That’s the way it’s their rules and you have to abide by them.
[00:06:49] Jason Barnard: Yeah. And that’s a huge mistake that a lot of people make, is think that Google owes them something, that Google has to play your game and it doesn’t. Google is the search engine people use because they trust Google. It’s Google’s users and they’re not your users until Google sends them to you. And if you’re going to play the Google game, you play it Google’s way or you don’t play at all. And relying 100% on Google is a complete fool’s errand. And in fact, we were doing content for kids. So we had a lot of traffic from Google, but we also had a lot from schools, play groups, I can’t remember where else, oh, sites for kids would send our audience our way.
[00:07:29] Jason Barnard: So I think 5 million visits a month, a million came from Google and 4 million came from elsewhere. So I said we grew with Google and Google was a great way to grow, but it wasn’t the only way. And in fact, now I think about it, it wasn’t even the majority.
Navigating Google’s Role in Trust and Brand Search Dynamics
[00:07:43] Jim Banks: Yeah. I mean, I always think that Google’s role is to help promote the most authoritative and trustworthy sites in a particular space at a given point in time. And that can change, right? I mean, it’s not always going to be, you hear about situations where they’re talking about sites that do wrong and they’re going to kick them out. And I think, again, the reality of it is that if somebody’s looking for the BBC or the Washington Post or the New York Times, right, even if they’ve done something really bad, I don’t think Google are necessarily going to go, we’re going to kick the BBC out because people are going to Google looking for the BBC and if they can’t find the BBC, they’re going to go somewhere else because somewhere else will have the BBC. And I think for me it’s very much a case of they need to work within the boundaries of what the algorithm does, but at the same I think, you know, just accept the fact know, again, Google have control over things and they have their own rules of what they’re trying to achieve. So tell me a little bit more about, because you mentioned there that you’ve been a publisher. Again, I look at it from the point of view. You were a punk rock musician and then you wrote kind of kids books.
[00:08:55] Jim Banks: How did that translate into your life?
[00:08:59] Jason Barnard: Yeah, well, what was cool, I was a punk folk musician and we used to sit in the van and we were so bored because we would spend 10 hours a day in a van driving from one place to another to play a gig. And we would just have these really inane conversations. And one of them was, what is your worst nightmare audience? And everybody would say, group of kids, four to eight years old. And I was trying to keep quiet because I was going, I think that would actually be quite good fun. But obviously, as a punk folk musician, you’re not allowed to say that out loud. So as soon as the group split up and the next career needed to be created, I thought of music publishing, didn’t work out, went to kids entertainment, and I loved it, every minute of it. It was a huge amount of fun. And when you were talking about people searching on Google, looking for the BBC, what I now also realize is of those million from Google, a huge amount were Branded Searches, searching for up to ten, which was the name of the company, or Boowa and Kwala, which was the name of the characters. So even though we were ranking for a lot of terms like kids games, a lot of the traffic came from branding. And branding was probably the most important driver of that online set of games that we created around Boowa and Kwala on uptoten.com.
How Google Shapes the Way People See Your Brand
[00:10:17] Jim Banks: One of your strategy lines is you’re the Brand SERPs guy. So tell me a little bit about that. Tell me a little bit about why brands should be concerned about how they are portrayed in the SERPs.
[00:10:29] Jason Barnard: Yeah, great way of asking the question is the people searching for Jason Barnard are bottom of funnel. They know who I am, they know what I do. I need to convince them. They search my name. What comes up on Google is hugely important to how they then perceive me, because we use Google, because we trust it. So what Google shows us about the people or the companies we’re searching for affects immensely how we then perceive that person or that company. And in my case, after the Blue Dog career, I was a cartoon blue dog in a tv series online called Boowa. And if you search Jason Barnard, it said right at the top on Google, Jason Barnard is a cartoon blue dog.
[00:11:09] Jason Barnard: And when I was trying to sell my services as a digital marketer, that didn’t make sense. And so my approach there was to say, well, how can I change Google’s perception of me so that it will present me in the way that I want to my audience when they’re searching my name on Google as the last step before converting. And the answer is, educate Google like it was a child. It’s our responsibility to educate Google about ourselves so that Google can then represent us because it understands who we are, what we do, which audience we serve, and why we’re credible.
Why Confusing Yourself With Your Company Can Hurt Your Business
[00:11:46] Jim Banks: Yeah, I mean, it’s interesting. So one of the challenges you always have, I always remember, I mean, you know him quite well, Dixon Jones. He always used to be, he wanted to own his own brand. I think somebody else registered dixonjones.com, so he ended up having to register DixonJones Co. UK. And he was obsessed with trying to make sure whenever people searched for his name that he kind of, like, came top for everything. And again, I’ve been sort of, I guess, blighted a little bit. So my name, Jim Banks.
[00:12:14] Jim Banks: There are several other Jim Banksters in the world that are probably, I guess, more famous than me. I mean, I was very early into all platforms. So I’m Jim Banks on Twitter, Jim Banks on LinkedIn, Jim Banks on Facebook, Jim Banks on everything. That kind of came out. I’m like, first in, but now there’s a congressman called Jim Banks. And we’ve had a bit of banter backwards and forwards on Twitter because, or x, as it’s now called, we’ve had a bit of banter backwards and forwards because I get all of his hate tweets, all the people that hate his policies, his beliefs and everything, I get all of them. So I’m getting bombarded. And you might say, well, all publicity is good publicity.
[00:12:49] Jim Banks: But honestly, some of the things that I get, I’m like, wow, this is horrible. Some of these, the things that people are saying to anyone, I mean, regardless of whether it’s aimed at me indirectly in the wrong way. And there’s also, I think there’s another good thing called Jim Banks, who sells surfboards. Right. So for me, again, you’re in a kind of noisy space sometimes with your name and everything, and sometimes it’s that much more difficult and challenging to try and make sure that you do that. And also, I think it’s also one of the things I found is that when people are, if you like, the person behind the brand. So my agency is called Spades Media, but really, I mean, it’s ubiquitous with me. Right.
[00:13:30] Jim Banks: Everyone associates the brand with me. And in some respects, the brand and the person are one of the same thing. And I think it’s also difficult if your intention is to grow your business to sell it, then selling it as me, the person is much more difficult than selling it as me the brand. Right. It’s easy to sort of sell the brand and away from it, but if it’s me, the person, people aren’t going to buy the brand. Even if the business and the models and the metrics all look good, they’re not necessarily going to be interested in buying you the brand because obviously they can’t keep the brand because at some point in time you’re going to walk from it.
[00:14:09] Jason Barnard: And that’s a big mistake. The thing, as we’re talking about big mistakes, is confusing yourself with your company. It’s not the same thing. It’s two different entities. And even if your company has the same name as you, for example, Jim Banks LLC or Jim Banks Limited, you have to differentiate between them in your mind and to your audience and to Google, because otherwise there’s immense confusion for everybody. And that huge mistake of getting into your mind that you are actually the same thing as the company that you’re representing is a huge, huge mistake with Kalicube. It’s something I did at the start of Kalicube to try to make sure that I didn’t feel that Kalicube equals Jason Barnard. And we’ve managed that thanks to the team in the Philippines. We are now on the team page, Kalicube. It’s not just Jason. And I think that’s hugely important.
Transitioning from Doing It All to Delegating and Leading
[00:15:03] Jim Banks: Yeah. Okay. In terms again, what sort of a typical day to day look like for you in terms of what sort of things are you working on on a regular basis?
[00:15:14] Jason Barnard: Oh, and how many mistakes do I make every day? The answer is a lot. It’s actually changed an awful lot in the last year or two. Is that up until 2021? No, 2020. It was just Jason. And then I started taking on teams, starting with Katrina, Joan, Mary Ann, Allyssa, Maria, all came on board. And that was when it started to transform from just Jason to Kalicube as a real company with a real personality and a real personality that’s actually made up of all the constituent parts, all the different people in the company. And that was a huge change for me because it moved me from being the person who did everything to a person who delegates and gives responsibility and authority to the people who are actually running all the different parts of Kalicube. And so in the last six months, literally, I’ve moved from being an SEO stroke digital marketer to CEO of a company full of digital marketers.
[00:16:16] Jason Barnard: And that’s a huge difference and it’s a lot more fun. So my typical day is a lot of thinking, a lot of trying to figure out how we can move forwards, how we can organize the company to push where Kalicube is, where we’re placed, where we’re standing. So our audience is looking where we’re standing and ensure that Kalicube is run as a company rather than just this kind of personal project that it was for many years of me doing fun stuff with Google’s Knowledge Graph. And so my day to day is actually a lot easier now than it used to be, which is delightful. Thank you to the team. If they’re listening.
[00:16:53] Jim Banks: There we go again. For me, you’re absolutely right. I think so many people are so deep in the weeds that they haven’t had the opportunity to pick their head up and look ahead. And even though on paper they say I’m the CEO of the business, the reality of it is that they’re a practitioner day to day. Again, I think sometimes there’s the perception and then there’s the reality. Right. I think a lot of people think that if you’re the CEO, you need to act in a different way. In some regards. You do. You’re absolutely right.
[00:17:27] Jim Banks: You need to be working on the business, not in the business. So you need to be looking ahead. I always say my job is to look ahead, clear as much as the path as I can to make it so much easier for when the work is coming through that there’s no kind of stumbling blocks in the way. There’s nothing that’s going to prevent us being able to do what we need to do. And I always say, even though we work with clients, I’m actually working on behalf of my clients’ clients, I want to make sure that they have a great experience. Right.
[00:17:55] Jim Banks: Because then that makes my life so much easier overall. Right. So for me, it’s a case of, again, looking at, although we specialize in buying paid media, again, there’s no such thing. I mean, I always say paid search is not like a magic wand, right. If you’ve got a bad product, poor customer service, poor delivery, you’re going to have no end of problems and challenges to deal with. Right. So as much as anything, I think businesses need to focus on all aspects of their business and not just the things that maybe they think they like doing, because it’s cool and sexy and everything else. You’ve got to focus on everything. Right. Because, again, I’ve worked with businesses that were spending six, seven, $800,000 a month on Facebook ads, and then they send me a message and say, Facebook have shut my head account down because I’ve got really bad customer service. Can we set up another account and start again? I’m like, no, it just doesn’t work that way because you’ve had poor customer service issues that haven’t been addressed. And that’s something that is going to kind of know, tarnish your reputation as a brand forever. I mean, it’s just something that you should have been addressing at the point in time that somebody came up with a problem. You should have been addressing that problem at that time.
[00:19:06] Jason Barnard: And obviously it goes way beyond Facebook and paid ads. Your entire reputation is at risk. And once that’s broken, it’s not repairable. It’s very difficult to repair. We get a lot of clients who come to us with that kind of problem. We need to repair their reputation. A lot of it is let’s start serving the customer properly and make sure they’re happy. But if we come back a step bad decision was me trying to do everybody’s job.
[00:19:28] Jason Barnard: And now what I realize is my job as a CEO. I would slightly disagree with you that my job as CEO is to support the team so that they can do their job properly. And it’s not my business how they do the job. My business is to make sure that everybody, as a team lead, is comfortable, has the means that they need the budget, they need the tools that they need, and the people they need to fulfill their particular part of the business. We call them Kalicube babies. Everybody has a Kalicube baby wherever they are in the company. And the Kalicube baby is an aspect of the company that they are responsible for 100%, and they need to nurture. And my job is to give them the environment to allow them to nurture and grow their Kalicube baby.
The Power of Support in Staying on Track
00:20:17] Jim Banks: Obviously, I think obviously, you’ve gone through the transition from working solo to working with a much bigger team. So I guess your motivations are different now than maybe they were when you were working on your own. But how do you kind of stay motivated and focused on the kind of job at hand? Because, again, it’s very easy to get sucked into things that just present themselves. Just because they present themselves. It’s very easy to do that at the expense of other things that you probably should be doing just because the new thing has presented itself. So how do you kind of stay motivated and focused on the job at hand?
[00:20:50] Jason Barnard: Well, I’m learning all the time in the sense that I do get distracted. I go down rabbit holes that are completely pointless and don’t actually bring any value to the company just because I think it’s interesting. But what I’m really fortunate to have is a group of people working for Kalicube with me who keep me on track, and they have a thing it’s called talking Jason down from a cliff. When I go off on one of these kind of adventures and then there’s a meeting and you can feel people on the team, Leanne and Sara in particular, talking me down from this really idiotic idea I’ve just had about digging into, I don’t know, really focusing on Facebook, for example, saying, no, that’s not the focus. We need to bring it back to how we solve Digital Marketing and how we use Google’s data to solve Digital Marketing for our clients. And as soon as I lose that focus, people talk me down from a cliff. So I’ve got a hugely wonderful support group in the team.
Empowering Teams With Process and Flexibility
[00:21:48] Jim Banks: That’s good you have that. I mean, I always remember what I used to send, they were called in the business, they were known as shittograms. So, like, I would see mistakes being made and I would find myself at midnight, 01:00 in the morning, sending really sort of horrible hate-y kind of emails to people who’ve made mistakes. Right. And really, I mean, what I should have been doing was putting in place a framework to ensure people know the boundaries of what the decision making process is and how to make that decision, rather than telling them off for making a kind of bad decision when I never gave them any instructions on how to do the task. And they just did it to the best of their capabilities. Right. So for me, that was a huge learning lesson to go through right now.
[00:22:32] Jim Banks: I need to have really incredibly well documented processes. Everything has a kind of SOP and everything is written down. Because again, I remember one of my clients said to me, Jim, do you have everything written down? And I was like, no, it’s all up in my head. And they said, well, if you’d have got hit by a bus yesterday, what would happen to your business? And I’m like, well, it would be completely screwed. Whereas now we’ve gone through the process of making sure everything’s written down, everything has a process. So that’s not to say the process that’s written down can’t change, because again, I think the beauty of working with smart, entrepreneurial people, sometimes they’ll come to you and say, Jim, this is the process for this particular task. But I think if we did it this way, that would be a much better way of doing it. Right, because it’ll evolve.
[00:23:16] Jim Banks: Right. I mean, that’s what I think. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about why. But for me, one of the things I think with AI is that AI is taking away all the boring, repetitive things. You can use AI to get that done, and you know that it’s going to be done properly because you can find the process of what needs to be done, and then you’re just there to check to make sure that the output is what you want it to be.
[00:23:40] Jason Barnard: Which is, which is really interesting because it segues really nicely into what we’re doing with the Kalicube Pro™ team, which is Allyssa’s team. That’s her Kalicube baby. And Kalicube Pro is the database I’ve built of a billion data points from Google to figure out how to solve Digital Marketing for our clients. And then we’ve got an interface and a platform that provides the data to agencies so that they can solve Digital Marketing for their clients. And Allyssa has now taken over that particular part of the business. And the first thing we discussed was, how many clients can you deal with at one time with the current team? And she said 30. So we said, okay, that’s 30. What happens if we hit 60 and the whole thing falls apart? So next year is now focused on using machine learning to solve all of the little problems that she’s currently having to do with her team manually and by the end of 2024, implementing all of that into the platform so that we can double the number of clients we’ve got, but also provide an interface and a platform for agencies so that they can integrate this into their process with very little manual labor.
[00:24:46] Jason Barnard: And so as a CEO, my position is now, how can I give Allyssa the team she needs, the resources she needs, and the freedom she needs, and the freedom to make a mistake, the freedom to get it wrong, and then come back and say, right, okay, we’ve got this wrong, how do we solve it? How do we move forward? And I think that’s really important is if I don’t give my team permission, sounds a bit wrong, but permission to make a mistake, then nothing’s going to move forwards. You have to make mistakes to move forwards. And if you make a mistake, the rule is I make a mistake, I figure out how to solve it, I implement the solution, and everything’s back on track.
Building Better Teams Through Clear Processes and Evolving SOPs
[00:25:27] Jim Banks: Yeah, and I’ve always said I’d rather if we have a process that’s written down, if people have followed the process and the process is what is wrong, then I’ll back people 100%. But if they’ve just gone off and done their own thing and made mistakes because they’ve taken a sort of poetic license with a particular task to be done, again, we used to outsource. This is long before the implementation of AI and some of the capabilities that it has, we were outsourcing some of our work to places like India and the Philippines and so on. And people just saw that as an abdication of responsibility. It’s like, well, no, it’s not an abdication of responsibility. We’re just getting support and help, right, from people that can support us in a way to enable us to get the work done, but in a way that’s more effective. But they were trying to outsource the elements of creativity to people who, by their nature, are not necessarily as creative as the people that had been employed to do the job in the first place. So for me, it was trying to get that sort of balance.
[00:26:30] Jim Banks: For me, it’s very much like if there’s a process written down, people have followed the process and we make a mistake, it costs us money. That’s on us. We need to change the process. We do that, we implement it, and it works moving forward. But if people haven’t followed the process, then again, that’s probably more of a, why didn’t you follow the process? What can we do about that? So again, I always find the management of people, it’s something that people are good at, not good at. And I think a lot of people try and do it when they probably ought not to. They probably better serve to be consultants, freelancing or whatever else. But again, they have this ambition of wanting to grow their business, but they don’t necessarily have the right tools to do the job, and don’t have the right skills to take it to the next level. Right.
[00:27:21] Jason Barnard: Leading people and managing a team is hugely challenging, hugely difficult. And if you’re not constantly questioning your own way of doing it, you’re not really going to move forwards. And one of the things that I found to mean the Philippines team, as I said, is the heart and the soul of Kalicube. So it’s not outsourcing to the Philippines. The Philippines is the team. And we have a whole system whereby people create SOP’s for their particular Kalicube baby, and then they hand that SOP to somebody else and move on to another job. And that person is then charged with implementing the SOP, as you said, but also improving it, saying, what can I do to make this better? So everybody is encouraged to always improve the SOP for their particular Kalicube baby. And it isn’t because somebody created that SOP that it’s necessarily the best way of doing it. And if you can improve it, you’re always invited to do so.
[00:28:10] Jim Banks: Yeah. And I think I always find that that’s probably one of the things I think prospective clients appreciate the most, is the written down stuff that you can say, well, this is the process for this. This is the process for this. It shows that it’s not just something that we’ve thrown together. I think that one of the challenges of operating in the online world that we operate in is that the barrier to entry of somebody setting up a digital agency is incredibly low. Right. I mean, probably for $100 you could set up a brand, a website, email, post, and you’ve got a business. Right.
[00:28:47] Jim Banks: And I think, unfortunately, again, I’ve been sort of championing for us to make sure that the clients that are outsourcing work to agencies are getting the work done in the best way they can. Right. And again, that’s probably a case of we need to then make sure all agencies have a good sort of set of procedures that they can work with. Right. So again, I think people like yourself who obviously are building a tool that will enable agencies to be able to provide good work for their clients is fantastic. And I love the fact that that’s something that you’re doing within your business.
[00:29:19] Jason Barnard: Yeah. And you’re talking about having an SOP and a system that makes sense and is actually proven. And what we’ve done is at Kalicube there are 15 people in marketing and only four people in production. And a lot of people tell me that’s the wrong way around, but I don’t think it is. We’re implementing, we’ve got literally 30 marketing strategies on the go at the current moment and we’re writing SOP’s for each and every one. We then vanilla the SOP and we add it to the Kalicube Pro offer as a product. So in fact, people doing marketing are simply figuring out how to do these things, making the SOP vanilla, which then becomes part of our product. So I say 15 people in marketing, it’s actually 15 people in marketing and product creation.
[00:30:02] Jason Barnard: So the agencies using the Kalicube Pro platform and our clients benefit from the experience that we’ve had implementing these strategies ourselves.
[00:30:11] Jim Banks: Yeah, I think, again, it sounds very unsexy, but when you talk about systems, processes, templates, it sounds boring. But I think the reality of it is that the backbone of every successful business is that they have a really good sort of system, process template for getting stuff done. And I think when you look at it, if you think about Digital Marketing as a whole, there is so much repetition of work that needs to be done. You don’t just do something today and then that’s it. Forgotten. There’s something that is constantly being done over and over again. Whether it’s a daily thing, weekly thing, monthly thing, quarterly thing, half yearly, yearly, biannual, however frequent it is, there is still a process that you need to go through to make sure that you’re delivering the results that you need to do.
[00:30:11] Jason Barnard: And the bad decision there is getting stuck in a process because it’s like that. And saying to somebody, we’re doing it like that because it’s always been done like that. Staying open minded, being able to take a step back from your Kalicube baby in our case, and say, well, it’s been done like that for the last two years, but things have changed. Now we can change our SOP and remain flexible. I was talking to Ann, who does the vanilla SOPs, and she’s saying, well, once I’ve finished the SOPs, what do I do? The answer to that question is you keep updating them as we update the way that we’re working, and you keep in contact with the team members to make sure that your vanilla SOPs are all up to date with what’s actually happening on the ground as people like Joan and Mary Ann and the rest of the team are improving their own SOPs so that we’re constantly, constantly keeping ourselves up to date and making sure our clients and the agencies that use Kalicube Pro are getting the best possible up to date SOP. That makes sense today as opposed to that made sense yesterday.
Educating Google While Understanding Your Audience
[00:31:59] Jim Banks: So one of the things I’m always talking to is friends of mine who, again, have a lot of friends in search who’ve written books, and I know that obviously you’ve written a book as well yourself. And have you written one or two?
[00:32:13] Jason Barnard: I’ve written one and I’m in the process of writing another. And a guy called Mike Ulmer is helping me and he’s sulking because we finished the book in June and I haven’t published it, and I didn’t publish it because Google is a child, how to make it love you. And there are three chapters in the middle which were all about traditional SEO, and with SGE, it’s changed. And so I’m rewriting the middle three chapters to account for what’s happening now. And obviously, in order to release that book, I need to have a proper grip on what SGE is, and that’s not going to happen until early next year. And what I love about the book is it’s all about how we educate Google the child about ourselves so that it represents us in the way that we want to our audience, but also use it to understand our own Digital Marketing strategy, where it’s going wrong, and understand our audience. So both teaching and learning from Google the child at the same time. Philosophically very interesting and pretty difficult to fit into three chapters.
[00:33:16] Jim Banks: But the thing is, the reality of it is if you think about know, Google is a means, as you rightly know, you started at the same time that they started. I mean, they kicked off when Larry and Sergey were working in somebody’s game. They’ve become the business that they are today.
[00:33:32] Jason Barnard: Yeah, they grew a bit more than we did. So obviously they’re multi billion, hundreds of billions of dollars and we’re definitely not.
From Missed Opportunities to Meaningful Impact
[00:33:41] Jim Banks: Yeah, I always talk about the whole bad decisions. I go, my bad decisions were I didn’t think of Google, I didn’t think of YouTube, I didn’t think of Facebook, I didn’t think of TikTok. There’s so many businesses that are hugely successful. Again, I’m not bitter about it in any way at all. I think, you know, it’s just one of those things. We’ve all had a part to play in the ecosystem, right? And the ecosystem will be around long after we’re not here. Right. I mean, of that I’ve got absolutely no doubt. I just want to try and make sure that I’ve got a kind of concrete footprint in some way.
[00:34:14] Jim Banks: To say I was part of that journey in the very early stages and it’s evolved. I still don’t think we’re even close to where the end results will be. And it will be constantly evolving, whether it’s on the paid search side, the organic search side, email marketing will change and obviously it will. Tracking is changing a lot. So again, like analytics, that’s all changing dramatically at the moment. And again, I think some of it is just how people can hold it all together and make the decisions that need to be made to ensure that businesses can grow and evolve in the way that they need to.
[00:34:47] Jason Barnard: Yeah, no, 100%. One thing for me is I think I’m seen a lot as an SEO, but in fact I’m actually a creative musician and children’s entertainer by trade, an economist by qualification, an SEO by a big chunk of my life because I was trying to make money to pay off a lot of debts. Now I’m a digital marketer, I’m an SEO, a CEO, excuse me, I’m getting confused now. I’m a digital marketer first and foremost, and a CEO. And I think I’m now seguing into CEO and I’m really enjoying it because I’ve now got a position where my job is simply to manage a company with different departments, different people, and enable them to actually do the proper work. And somewhere along the line I suddenly feel very, very lazy and I feel I’m not really contributing enough.
Drawing Clarity from Vision and Mission
[00:35:42] Jim Banks: Again, I would not feel that way because again, I think your brain will never stop. I think a lot of people talk about things like the four hour work week and stuff like that. Again, if you’re the CEO of a business, it’s like 100 and 68 hours a week. It never stops. Never stop thinking about stuff. I’m quite curious, Jason, again, I used to be a big reader of motivational books, and one of the books I really, really enjoyed immensely was the seven habits of highly effective people by Stephen Covey. And one of the things I really loved was one of the habits that he had was to begin with the end in mind. So I always say, when people set up a business, I always say to people, what’s the end game? Right? Because people need to be working towards something. Again, something doesn’t always necessarily need to be, they’re working towards an exit, right? It doesn’t need to be that they’re selling the business. It could be because they want to grow it. They want to grow it to 50 people, 100 people, whatever the thing is. Do you have an idea in your mind as to what the end game or the goal for Kalicube is?
[00:36:53] Jason Barnard: Well, I’ve actually been thinking about this, strangely enough, in what I would consider to be days off, where I just sit looking out the window thinking about things that you’re saying is actual, real work. Why am I here doing this particular job? Why does Kalicube exist? And the answer is that I can’t stand to see people overwhelmed and scared of the digital landscape. And I want to create a universal solution so that anybody can manage their digital presence without fear, without worry, and with confidence. And that kind of is the mission statement, which sounds a bit pretentious, but it truly is why I’m here. So for me, the end goal is to manage your own digital presence, whether it’s marketing, reputation management, presentation, or reaching out to an audience, make that as worry free and least scary possible. And if you treat Google like a child, you treat all of these machines like children, then it gives a certain level of control and confidence, I think. So if we can do that, then I’m happy. And the way that we’re now doing it is building the team with different skill sets so they can do it.
[00:38:07] Jason Barnard: And the other thing you were saying about reading a book. I actually read a book. I was in hospital a few weeks ago, and I read Draw to Win, and it’s brilliant. And it basically says, anybody can draw. And if you can draw, you can tell your story and you can tell it in six stages. And I now am obsessed by drawing everything. And I’m not an artist by any stretch of anybody’s imagination, but it’s true, when you sit down and try and draw things in six stages, and it’s what or who, where, when, how much, how and why. And if you try and draw that without writing any words, you’ll end up with an incredibly clear view of what it is you’re trying to do, whatever it is. And so I’ve got a whole book full of these silly drawings that make sense to me and will be turned into the business plan and the products that we’re selling over the next few years. I don’t know where I’m going with that, but my sudden obsession is with drawing, even though I’m really bad at drawing.
[00:39:07] Jim Bank: You mentioned that. I always remember I did really badly at school, and I think I’ve made up for it in my work environment because I just did so badly at school. But I remember one of the poems I did remember at school was the Rudyard Kipling poem that starts, I keep six honest men. They taught me all I knew. Their names were what and when and where and how and why and who. Right? And for me, those open ended questions are everything that you do should really start with an open ended question of, what do we do here? When does that happen? Why does that happen? And for me, that tiny little poem really stuck in my brain, right? Not much of my schooling stuck in my brain, but that particular thing did.
[00:39:50] Jason Barnard: It’s strange, the things that stick in your brain 30 years after you’ve finished school. How delightful.
Looking Back on School Days With Gratitude and Regret
[00:39:56] Jim Banks: It’s funny, I went to a school reunion just a couple of weeks ago in Cardiff, because all of the school teachers I used to go to school with, they’ve all retired and are now living in the south Wales area. And I always remember I go to these school unions, and I went to school in Hong Kong, and I go to these school unions. And the first thing I do when I see the teachers is I always apologize for being such a prat when I was at school. And they always say, you have nothing to apologize for because you were just a child. You were kind of like, showing what you were capable of in life and everything else. Right. And for me, again, it’s great to have the opportunity to even do that, to have the opportunity to go and apologize and to thank them for what they did and everything else. So again, I don’t know if you’ve ever been to a school reunion, but anyone listening to the podcast, if you get the opportunity to go to a school reunion, I absolutely sort of say you have to go.
[00:40:49] Jim Banks: It’s just so for me, again, so cathartic to be able to go and reconnect with people that you knew at school. But again, some of my teachers are probably getting to the point where they’re probably late 70s, early 80s, so they’re not going to be around forever. So now’s a good time to do that.
[00:41:04] Jason Barnard: I mean, my memory of school was the teachers telling me, make the most of these years because your school days are the best days of your life. To which my answer was, if this is as good as it gets, I’m stopping right now. And my life after school has been 100 million times better than it was at school. No offense to any teachers of mine who are watching, but it was pretty rubbish and you didn’t help.
[00:41:26] Jim Banks: There we go. So safe to say if there’s a Jason Barnard school reunion, you might not be doing the same thing that I was doing.
[00:41:34] Jason Barnard: No, well, the other thing is, at the end of school last year when you’re 18, we had the big school event and it was the kids did a show about the teachers, basically teasing and making fun of the teachers. And the teachers did one about the kids, and the teachers were so nasty and cruel about me. I don’t want to see them again.
[00:41:56] Jim Banks: So, we were sitting, we went to a chinese restaurant in Cardiff and we were at tables of ten and at the end of the meal they brought up the bill and somebody said to me, Jim, can you work out how much everyone needs to pay? And I was sitting with one of my old math teachers. I’m like, he’s the bloody math teacher. He can work out. Obviously, I was very good at maths, right? But it was one of those things. I made a bit of a joke of it and now obviously everyone saw the funny side of it.
[00:42:24] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. Well, yeah. School reunions aside, I would love to see some of the people I was in a band with and I would love to see people I worked with on the Boowa and Kwala cartoons and I actually met somebody we worked with from that. And it was a lovely, lovely reunion because the guy was working so much on these characters that we’d created with love and care, and he really cared about them. And that was a hugely, hugely uplifting and delightful experience to talk to somebody who worked on it without knowing us. And he said, I really, really cared for those characters you created. It’s very touching.
How to Reach Jason Barnard and Help Grow the Show
[00:42:58] Jim Banks: So, Jason, I absolutely loved the conversation. I’m really glad I’ve cleared up. Why the red shirt? That’s fantastic. I think you’ve covered some fantastic stuff in the course of the conversation here. If people did want to reach out to you for whatever reason, whether it’s to kind of like hire your agency or learn a little bit more about sort of personal branding, what sort of platform would you say the best way for them to get in touch with you would be?
[00:43:23] Jason Barnard: Well, the answer is, it’s for them to choose, not me. And if you search my name, Jason Barnard, J-A-S-O-N B-A-R-N-A-R-D, or Kalicube. K-A-L-I-C-U-B-E, the Brand SERP, the result for that name, my name or the company name shows you a list of the places you can engage with us and you get to choose. So you can choose Twitter, LinkedIn, our website, Kalicube Tuesdays, or the podcast site, and it’s truly up to the audience. That’s what I like about the Google search result for somebody’s name is that it should be a representation of the multiple ways that your audience can engage with you so that they can choose how they feel comfortable, engaging.
[00:44:04] Jim Banks: Brilliant. And obviously for anyone watching or listening to this podcast, we do have show notes, and in the show notes will be all of the ways that Jason mentioned how you can reach out to him and choose the one that kind of suits you best. Jason, thank you so much for being a guest on today’s show and hopefully at some point in time again, I obviously know why you wear the red shirt, but hopefully I’ll get the opportunity to come and grab you, buy a drink, and catch up with you a bit more in real life. So talk to you some time soon.
[00:44:34] Jason Barnard: Yes. Brilliant. Thank you so much, Jim. And I look forward to drinking one day wearing the red shirt, or indeed not if it’s a non professional friendly chat meetup.
[00:44:45] Narrator: If you’re still listening, thanks for staying to the end of this episode. Your support as a listener inspires me to want to make better episodes for you. Right now, though, I was hoping you could do me a favor. You see, when I look at the stats of podcast listeners, a lot of listeners don’t subscribe to the podcast or leave a review. So as a result, I’m a little in the dark on whether listeners love the podcast or load it, depending on which platform you use to listen to podcasts. Can you leave me a review of my podcast and five stars if you loved it? And also make sure that you follow the podcast on whichever platform you use to listen to your podcast on. And lastly, tell your friends about the show. I really do appreciate it.
