42 – From Voiceover to Visionary: Rewriting Your Digital Identity with Kalicube’s Jason Barnard

Published by: Free To Lead. Host: Will Steel Guest: Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO of Kalicube. June 03, 2025

Listen here: 42 – From Voiceover to Visionary: Rewriting Your Digital Identity with Kalicube®’s Jason Barnard

In this episode of Free To Lead: Journeys of Leaders Driven by Passion, Inspired by Purpose, Will Steel interviews the CEO and Founder of Kalicube, Jason Barnard. Jason discusses the importance of managing digital footprints and personal branding for entrepreneurs.

He emphasizes the need for a personal website as a central hub of information to ensure accurate online representation. Jason shares insights on educating AI and search engines about one’s professional identity and reflects on his career challenges, highlighting the importance of adaptability and resilience in entrepreneurship.

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Introducing Jason Barnard on the Free To Lead Podcast

[00:00:00] Will Steel: Welcome to the Free To Lead Podcast, Journeys of Leaders Driven by Passion, Inspired by Purpose. My name is Will Steel. I’m the host of the show. I’m a transformational business and leadership coach. I say transform the business owner. You transform the business. So if you wanna be the. Fullest version of yourself in the world.

Decisive, taking clear action, moving forward, producing the kind of results, and having the kind of impact you really want to have in your business, in your life, and in the world. Then stay tuned The. People on this show that we interview are handpicked. They’ve got pearls of wisdom. They’re gonna share their breakdowns, breakthroughs, their challenges, what they’ve dealt with, how they’ve grown, and how they’ve become free to lead.

If you’d like to be a guest on the show, I’d love to hear from you and I’ll be telling you how you can get in contact in about 20 minutes time. Right now let’s dive into today’s episode.

Welcome to today’s episode of Free To Lead, Journeys of Leaders, Driven by Passion, Inspired by Purpose. My name’s Will Steel, and today I have with me, Jason Barnard. He’s an entrepreneur, author, a keynote speaker, and award-winning innovator. He’s a CEO and founder of Kalicube® and Premium Digital Branding Consultancy in France and in United States, and he specializes in Personal Brand Intelligence, giving business leaders control over how decision makers perceive them on Google and AI.

And he is a bestselling author of the Fundamentals of Brand SERP for Business and is a world authority on Digital Brand Intelligence and an entrepreneur who’s founded and scaled multiple successful companies in entertainment, music, and technology. So, without further ado, Jason, welcome to Free To Lead.

[00:02:09] Jason Barnard: What a brilliant introduction Will. Thank you so much. 

Educating Search and AI to Accurately Represent Entrepreneurs Online

[00:02:12] Will Steel: Wow. You’re welcome. You’re welcome. Can you just say a bit more about what it is that you do so people can tune in and get a sense of it? 

[00:02:22] Jason Barnard: I’m super passionate about managing, optimizing digital footprints for entrepreneurs and indeed their companies, but particularly for the entrepreneur.

[00:02:32] Will Steel: Yeah. 

[00:02:33] Jason Barnard: So that Google Search, AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Siri, Alexa, DeepSeek even, show them the way they deserve, and that’s key. We as entrepreneurs have successes. You just mentioned I’ve got three successful businesses. How on earth does Google AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing Copilot, know about that? The answer is I educate them.

So what I do is educate the machines so that they understand my true glory. Represent me in the way I deserve, with an amazing result. 

Why Your Personal Brand Now Lives in the Minds of Google and AI

[00:03:24] Will Steel: Yes. Great. I had a brand expert on fairly recently, Richard, and he said to me, where does your brand live? Where does your brand live?

And the long question was, it lives in the mind of your customers. If your brand isn’t there, how they perceive you. It’s everything. So you know, you can say what you say, but if however they hear it and however they perceive it isn’t the way you want it to be, then that’s your brand is not communicating.

[00:03:57] Jason Barnard: And today, do we communicate directly with these people? No, we don’t. We communicate through the lens of Google, ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, Siri, Alexa. And obviously what we communicate directly, but if you look at that, you say as an individual, I go around the web and I see Will Steel or Jason Barnard in different places, and it’s all fragmented in my brain.

What are the, what do I then do? I go to Google, I go to ChatGPT, I go to Perplexity. I say, tell me about Will Steel. Yeah. What they tell me at that point is going to fix in my mind what I think about you. It lives in your mind. To get in your mind, I need to get in Google’s mind. ChatGPT’s mind, DeepSeek’s mind, Alexa’s mind, Siri’s mind. The AI is now the definer of your personal brand. 

[00:04:49] Will Steel: Yeah, people don’t go to the extent to check it out, see if it’s accurate or not really. When they’re just doing a quick search. I wanna read about you. 

[00:04:55] Jason Barnard: And there’s a really simple shock point here. Even if it understands you, it will confuse you with people of the same name.

So it will always get it wrong. Unless you take control, which is what we do at Kalicube®. It’s what we do at Kalicube® and the AI and Google and Bing, Microsoft are looking for the truthful source of information by you about you. Google calls it the point of reconciliation. I call it the Entity Home.

The algorithm is looking for your version of the facts. So you need a personal website that you set up and you feed the algorithms with your version of the facts, your version of how glorious you are, your version of the incredible achievements you have, your Authority, your Credibility, your Trustworthiness.

Of course they’re not stupid enough to just say, will says he’s a wonderful guy who’s worked with all the different companies. They go and corroborate, they check the information around the web. 

[00:06:06] Will Steel: Yeah, 

[00:06:06] Jason Barnard: So what we do at Kalicube® is build what we call your AI optimized website ecosystem. Whereby your website becomes the hub of information and everything is corroborated around the web, and the machines will then follow your brand narrative that you have defined.

[00:06:27] Will Steel: Great. It takes SEO to a whole other level, right? 

[00:06:34] Jason Barnard: Yeah. And the nice thing here is that it’s not SEO, it’s not geeky. If you walk the walk and you have the AI optimized brand website ecosystem in place. What you have is a simple website that the machines can understand that the machines trust and you have a very consistent and accurate and positive digital ecosystem around you that the website SERPs as the hub to reference.

That’s when you’ve nailed it. 

How Jason Barnard Pivoted From Cartoon Voice Actor to Digital Brand Authority

[00:07:04] Will Steel: Very good. How did you get into this then, Jason? Yeah. How did you end up where you are now? 

[00:07:10] Jason Barnard: Great question. Love that question. Because I created Kalicube® and I created the Kalicube Pro™ system to solve a problem I had myself. So Kalicube Pro™ is a database of 3 billion data points that I’ve collected from Google and AI over the last 10 years.

It’s also a tech platform that takes the content that you have on your own website and packages it. In a way that the machines can easily digest and understand. So it’s data plus tech, plus the knowledge in my brain that I put into the algorithms of Kalicube® that can take your digital footprint and hold it like this for the machine so they understand why did I build that?

Because I pivoted my career 15 years ago. I run a company that created a cartoon series with ITV International, it was on Playhouse Disney, but I was the voiceover artist for five of the characters. And what happened was that rather than looking at me as an entrepreneur, Google was focused on me as a voiceover artist.

Yeah. So if you search my name on Google at the time, 15 years ago, it would say, Jason Barnard does the voice for a cartoon blue dog. I was pivoting into the entrepreneurial space and I needed Google to say, Jason Barnard is a respected entrepreneur and the world authority in digital branding. So I created number one.

I figured out how to manipulate Google’s results, how could I change its perspective so that it presented me the way I wanted? Then I built a machine, Kalicube Pro™ to automate the process as much as we possibly can. 

Turning Setbacks Into Stepping Stones: Lessons From Jason Barnard’s Entrepreneurial Journey

[00:09:08] Will Steel: This may not be true, but if you were a background, not background, voiceover artist, how did you become so into IT if you like. 

[00:09:17] Jason Barnard: Because the characters that I was the voiceover artist for originated on the web.

Back in 1998, so I started off with a web project that became a TV project, an Edutainment project. So I learned the geeky stuff before I learned the TV stuff. 

[00:09:38] Will Steel: And then you swung back into it. It’s very good. Great. And what do you think, what have not, do you think, what have been some of your biggest challenges or failures that you could share?

You really learned something. ‘Cause I know for myself and a lot of my guests, I asked this question, what’s one of your biggest failures? And what was the lesson? What did you get from it? Because life as a way of teaching you, and it’s usually painful and those are usually the best lessons. 

[00:10:03] Jason Barnard: I think the failures have led to the successes in that the failures have made me think, what’s wrong with my approach.

Initially I was a musician, then I was in cartoons working with ITV International Playhouse Disney, now with Kalicube® and each of those three companies, each of those three careers involved getting it wrong to start with. Yeah, pitching to the wrong people, something they didn’t want, didn’t need, and then figuring out over time how to pivot what I was doing to actually appeal to the needs and the wants of the people I was trying to address. It’s multiple small failures that never became huge failures because I always adapted. 

[00:10:59] Will Steel: Very good. 

[00:11:00] Jason Barnard: I think that we call that agility, don’t we? 

[00:11:03] Will Steel: Yes, you would. It’s, yes, it’s a failure, but it only means you haven’t worked out yet how to make it be successful.

Try this doesn’t work for kids trying something, it doesn’t work. Oh, well try this. No, try this. They don’t beat themselves up or give up. And I think most of the entrepreneurs that are long-term successful have all gone through stuff like that. So I’m just thinking for people listening to this podcast, maybe they’re just starting out or maybe they’re like got to a place.

Where it’s failed and it can get disheartening. 

[00:11:38] Jason Barnard: Yeah. My experience has been, rather than failure, it’s been a setback. Because in the three companies, none of them have failed. They’re all profitable. They all have been profitable in total for 66 years. And each time the failure has just been a setback.

That’s then set us on a new route that has ended up being profitable. 

[00:12:01] Will Steel: Wonderful. 

[00:12:02] Jason Barnard: And it’s really hard for me. Yeah. And I think for everybody to say, I did all of this. It didn’t work out. It was a setback. I have to now put it behind me and ignore the fact that it costs me money. It costs me time. It was a lot of effort.

Yes, because now I’m on the right path or the better path and not dwelling on the fact that setback failure has cost me money, time and energy is key. To keep going and turning a business that you believe in into a profitable business over time? 

Jason Barnard on Scaling The Kalicube Process™ to Shape How AI and Search Represent Brands

[00:12:40] Will Steel: Yes. Where do you see yourself in 12 months time? If we had a magic wand, we could wave a magic wand.

Realistic magic wand, right? If all goes the way you want it to go and it all goes to plan, or even slightly better than just goes to plan, where would you want everything to be in 12 months time? Your business, your life? 

[00:13:00] Jason Barnard: Expect to be in exactly the same place I am now in 12 months time, but bigger.

We’re serving entrepreneurs. We’re helping them with their personal brand. We’re optimizing for search. We’re optimizing for Google, we’re optimizing for AI. We’re making sure that their brand narrative is true to their own feeling, their own desire, their own point of view on their brand narrative when represented by these machines that, as you said earlier on, are the window and the influencer that people listen to.

They are the single biggest influence on how people now perceive us. And if we can get there next year with the same process, which has worked for 10 years now and will work for 10 years in the future for every single platform, be it Google, be it ChatGPT, Copilot, Siri, Alexa, if we can have exactly the same process, exactly the same tech, exactly the same data, but working for two times more people.

I’m winning all the way. I’m happy. 

How Kalicube® Helps Leaders Frame and Amplify Their Authentic Brand Narrative in Search and AI

[00:14:15] Will Steel: Yes. So somebody listening to this saying, that sounds interesting. So how do you work with somebody? Do they already have to have it all figured out what they want people to think about them? Or do you have a kind of a probing process, if you like, or a working process to create, like I said, where the branding guide creates what it is you want people to know about you. I don’t wanna say believe about you, because if it’s not true, then I wouldn’t be interested in talking about that. What’s authentic representation. If I’m a CEO and I’m coming along to you I might not even be able to articulate it myself. So do you have a process? You go through, you work with people?

[00:14:56] Jason Barnard: Yeah. We won’t create your personal brand. You need to have that. You need to know what you want to say. And we can ensure that the machines will replicate it. So come to us when you know what you want to say, right? And we will make sure that is replicated and amplified by Search and AI, by Google, by ChatGPT, by DeepSeek, by Perplexity, and so on and so forth.

And what happens with our clients is they come to us and they say, here are my photos. Here’s what I want to communicate. Here are my achievements, here are my awards, here’s my education. We can help them to reframe a lot of that to serve their current goal, but they have to have a current goal. They have to have a current brand narrative that they want to amplify and have replicated by these machines.

And what we found, the more we work with clients, we build their website, we build it out page by page, and we make sure that every single page is serving their current brand narrative. And I’ll give you an example for my company up to 10. I was focusing too much on the cartoon characters and my role as a voiceover actor even now.

And then I looked at it with my team and we said, actually, how can we reframe this? And it was Jason Barnard was CEO of UpToTen from 2000 to 2011, thanks to him, UpToTen signed deals with Playhouse Disney, with ITV International, with Orange Telecommunications and became a global edutainment company that was competing with PBS and the BBC.

And there’s a huge difference between the framing of Jason Barnard as the voice over actor for a blue dog, and Jason Barnard led UpToTen as the CEO to work with Playhouse Disney, ITV International, Radio Canada competing with the BBC competing with the PBS, but it’s just framing. 

[00:17:05] Will Steel: Sure. 

[00:17:05] Jason Barnard: So we help with framing, but we have to have the clear brand narrative that we want to communicate and then we can frame.

Why Your Personal Brand Must Be Visible and Accurate in Google and AI Before Clients Choose You

[00:17:13] Will Steel: Great. Very good. Very good. Alright, good. Good. I don’t see any more questions I have about what it is that you do. It sounds pretty straightforward. How would people reach out to you? How would they get in touch? Say, Hey Jason, I want to show up. Great on all these search engines, et cetera. How would they find out about you?

[00:17:33] Jason Barnard: First thing is, oh, sorry, Google me or ask ChatGPT, and that’s the proof. If you want to know, can we do this for you? Search Jason Barnard on Google or ask ChatGPT, who is Jason Barnard or even do due diligence on Jason Barnard. And it will spit out an incredibly accurate, incredibly verbose varied answer.

Yes, that’s what you want because your bottom of funnel partners, your bottom of funnel customers are googling your name. Because people do business with people. You as a CEO, founder or entrepreneur are like it or not to some extent, the face of your business. You need that personal brand representation in search, in Google and in AI.

Why Reputation Management Requires Ongoing Oversight to Protect Your Brand in Search and AI

[00:18:23] Will Steel: Brilliant. And just a question did come up. So let’s say somebody does this with you. They come along, they do whatever package you do, right? And they set themselves up. Do you ongoingly update it or does it update itself, or how does that work? 

[00:18:40] Jason Barnard: We have an ongoing service. We can do a one-off service, we can sort it out, and then we leave it to you.

We’ll teach you to fish. But we find that clients tend to stay with us because we manage the website and we make sure that as they move forward in their career and as they create more content and as they get themselves out there more with more authoritative signals, the credibility signals, we can leverage that and make sure that every cent and every hour they invest in their personal brand is amplified to the maximum in search and AI. And the other thing, number one, is your digital footprint changes. What you’re doing changes. You need to keep up with that. The algorithms change. You need to make sure that you don’t get caught out by the next big thing.

Three years ago it was ChatGPT, last week it was DeepSeek, tomorrow who knows? We will always keep up with that. And the other thing we, coming right back to the beginning of the conversation is a lot of people share your name. What happens if somebody who shares your name does something stupid?

The machines get mixed up, and I’ll give you a good example of that is at one point 12 years ago when I started this whole thing, it said, Jason Barnard is a cartoon blue dog, voiceover artist. Halfway down the page it said Jason Barnard was arrested in the UK for driving down the motor at hundred 50 miles an hour.

How does anybody know? That’s not me. Exactly. It wasn’t me. I was in France. Yes, I needed to get rid of that reputation problem. That wasn’t my reputation problem. It was the reputation of somebody who shared my name. 

[00:20:23] Will Steel: Yeah. 

[00:20:23] Jason Barnard: So the new cycles around your name, even though it’s not you, are hugely dangerous.

You need to keep a grip on it. You need to make sure you act when that happens. 

[00:20:33] Will Steel: Yeah, that’s very interesting. I worked with a company that initially got some bad press. This is a long time ago, and it just kept resurfacing every now and again of sin and then resurfacing. It’s one piece of bad comment or feedback or something.

It’s funny how that’s the stuff that comes up to the top that keeps floating up to the top. It seemed to be then, I don’t know right now, that’s five years ago since I was there. 

[00:20:57] Jason Barnard: No, it’s the same, and so this is the case of when something. Bad about you as a person or a corporation. And you’re right, it will keep resurfacing and people tend to think I’ve solved the problem today.

I’ve got rid of it. It’s got off page one on Google. But Google AI overviews, ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, Perplexity are summarizing the results and they will dig down to page three or four. We used to say in SEO, the best place to bury at dead body is page two of Google. But because the machines are summarizing the results using their larger language models, it’s no longer buried.

You have to keep a grip on it, and you have to push it right out of the results, and you have to maintain it out of the results because as you say, over time it will keep resurfacing. You can never let go. 

[00:21:49] Will Steel: Yeah. No, I’m not talking for myself. The company I work for definitely has inaccurate press articles, for example, or accusations that later got revoked, rebooted, or whatever.

But somehow they miss out that part. They just put the original article and that’s what floats to the top. So I was just, yeah, it’s ongoing. It’s gotta be ongoing. That’s the nature of what we’re looking. 

[00:22:16] Jason Barnard: I think we like to believe as human beings that there’s a simple solution to the problem and that the solution is forever.

Unfortunately the solution, because these algorithms are so complex, the solution is relatively complex and you need the data. You need the tech, and you need the knowledge to be able to find that solution and implement that solution. But more than anything, it isn’t permanent. It needs to be maintained.

You need to keep a grip, never let go. Your reputation defines you.

Demonstrating How The Kalicube Process™ Works Across Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, and AI Assistants

[00:22:50] Will Steel: Great. On that note, Jason, I think we’ll call it a day there. Google, Jason Barnard.. Look him up on ChatGPT, Perplexity or whatever search engine you look, and that will start to give you a sense of what his whole thing is about because his, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

He’s the thing itself, which is cool. 

[00:23:11] Jason Barnard: Exactly. And that’s the thing is you said Triton, any AI engine. It works on every single one because our process works for all of these engines. Be it Google, be it Perplexity, be it ChatGPT, Copilot, Siri, Alexa, a friend of mine, just one last story, put on a pair of glasses using Metas AI.

Yes, and he asked it about Jason Barnard.. Scrolling in front of him was a brilliant description of how wonderful I am, what a great entrepreneur I am, and that I’m a world leader in Digital Brand Intelligence™. Just like I wanted. 

[00:23:49] Will Steel: Great. Excellent. Alright, Jason, it’d be great to have you on.

Free to Lead. Thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge and getting us all up to date with that whole world of digital branding. Pleasure. 

[00:24:01] Jason Barnard: Thank you so much. Will.

[00:24:08] Will Steel: Will Steel here. Thanks so much for listening to the Free To Lead Podcast, Journeys of Leaders, Driven by Passion, Inspired by Purpose. If you’re a successful leader and you are driven by passion and you’re inspired by your purpose, and you’d love to be a guest on the show, we’d love to have you. Just visit podcast.willsteel.com.

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