What does your personal brand as a leader look like? How about as a business owner? Or freelancer?

In this episode of Leading with Integrity, I’m talking with Jason Barnard as we explore the intricacies of personal branding, the impact of AI on business, and the importance of authenticity in leadership. We discuss the balance between purpose and profit, the challenges of delegation, and the significance of lifelong learning in personal and professional development. Jason shares stories and lessons from his diverse career journey, from musician to cartoon star to running successful businesses. Other themes include identity, personal branding, legacy, and the implications of digital footprints in the age of AI. We geek out a bit on the AI and tech part, but Jason skillfully brought that back around to leadership too. A bit longer than our average episode, but every minute is worth it – great conversation and thank you to Jason for his time and conversation.

Listen here: Ep.151: Purpose, Profit & Legacy Finding the Right Balance in the Age of AI, with Jason Barnard

Published by  Leading with integrity: Leadership talk January 8, 2025. Host: David Hatch. Guest: Jason Barnard, Founder and CEO at Kalicube®.

From Delegation to Legacy: Why Your Leadership Style and Personal Brand Matter

Jason Barnard [00:00:01]:

As a leader, you need to, yeah, you need to hire well and you need to manage well. You need to delegate. You need to delegate, truly let go and give authority to the people you delegate to, but not abdicate. And that’s a really tricky balance to find. I went from thinking I was delegating, but still micromanaging, to delegating, not micromanaging, but not giving authority. So people get coming back to me to delegating, not micromanaging, giving authority and then abdicating so that nobody knew what was going on and didn’t have a clue whether or not everything was going the right direction. And so I had to pull back to the stage before. In an entrepreneurial world, it has to be important because my personal brand is associated with my business.

Jason Barnard [00:00:49]:

So my personal brand will drive business because people do business with people. Then whatever project I do next will be much easier to get off the ground. If my personal brand is strong, it’ll be easier to find partners, it’ll be easier to find clients, it will be easier to find investment. And then when I retire or when I die, my legacy will be defined by what my personal brand is understood to be by AI. So today, tomorrow, and after my death, my personal brand as perceived by Google and AI is fundamentally important.

David Hatch [00:01:26]:

Hello everyone, and welcome back to Leading with Integrity for 2025. This is our first proper episode, our first normal service of the year. And once again we’re going to open with a question. How much thought do you put into your personal brand? It’s not just about marketing, although obviously that has a part to play. So also about how you’re perceived as a leader. There’s that internal branding as much as the external. And my guest today is extremely well placed to talk about this, both in terms of what his company currently does. So that’s more on the external and the marketing aspect and the helping your company and your business, but also his wealth of experience starting various businesses in various industries, from a music label to TV shows to what he does today, and a few things in between as well.

David Hatch [00:02:15]:

We’ll hear more about his story in a moment. His name is Jason Barnard and in this conversation today we will be exploring that idea of personal branding, the role of AI in that and in society and business more generally. His experiences with business partnerships, starting companies, moving on to new ones. The question of purpose versus profit comes up authenticity as well. And there’s a recurring theme throughout around lifelong learning, identity and your legacy as an individual, as a leader, as a business. So it’s quite a wide reaching conversation. It’s a bit longer than our average, but it is absolutely worth every minute.

David Hatch [00:02:55]:

So I hope you will enjoy it. It was a great conversation for me. I absolutely loved it. And Jason has a great way of telling stories and weaving complex and apparently quite different facts together. And you realize, oh, actually there’s a key relationship there, isn’t there? So yeah, I won’t ramble anymore. So we’ll get Jason on the show in just a moment. Before I do that, I’m too excited. I can’t wait till the end.

David Hatch [00:03:16]:

I have to tell you now. We have a new website, we have a new branding and a whole new strategy for Leading with Integrity this year. Please do visit our new website. It’s www.leadingwithintegrity.co.uk the link is in the show notes as well, so you can find that easily. There’s some great stuff on there. We have a free leadership quiz which will perhaps help you understand better some of the leadership challenges you’re facing. But it will also, for a bit of fun, help you identify your own leadership hero. Longtime listeners will know.

David Hatch [00:03:47]:

Every episode, I ask the guest who is your leadership hero? So I thought it might be fun to let listeners participate in that as well. It’ll be a whole series of questions. There is a sci-fi angle to it, so if you’re not into science fiction, sorry, but it’s still worth a go because there’s some great stuff you can learn about yourself and about leadership from doing it. So highly recommend doing that. You can enter your email address, but it is entirely optional, so feel free to skip that question if you’d rather not give away your data, which is totally understandable, especially on the basis of the conversation you’re about to hear. There’s also now a quarterly workshop that will be running about finding your leadership values again through the lens of a leadership hero. So there’s links on there? Yeah, hit the link. Click on that resources button.

David Hatch [00:04:30]:

There’s. There’s loads of stuff, some of it free, some of it paid. But yeah, have a look. And all feedback. Welcome. That’s enough from me. Let’s get Jason on the show and I hope you enjoy this episode.

David Hatch [00:04:57]:

Welcome to the Leading with Integrity podcast, Leadership Talk for the modern Manager with your host, David Hatch.

David Hatch [00:05:09]:

Jason, welcome to Leading with Integrity. It’s great to have you on the show today. We’re going to cover all sorts of things, I’m sure. Hopefully a bit about leadership as well. I think there’s some interesting crossovers as well between our two areas of expertise. I’m looking forward to getting into those. And yeah, welcome to the show.

Jason Barnard [00:05:24]:

Thank you very much, David. I think we’re going to cover lots of stuff and I’ve got a lot to say about leadership because I’ve had three companies and I never really realized quite how much I’ve led throughout my career. And I’m only just coming to terms with that. I thought I was just having fun.

How Did Jason Barnard Turn Rejection Into a String of Successful Businesses?

David Hatch [00:05:41]:

Well, that’s a good sign, I think, though. But it’s funny, isn’t it? You often don’t realize that you’re doing these things until you actually stop and think about it. But yeah, and I think that leads us quite nicely actually into the starting point, which is tell us a bit about yourself, what’s your background? Tell us about these companies, you know, what do you do today as well? And why do you do it?

Jason Barnard [00:06:01]:

Right. Well, I was born many years ago and brought up in the North of England in a small village with no neighbors, completely alone. I had a very lonely childhood and looking back, that taught me one very good thing is how to entertain myself and figure out things to do. I then went to Liverpool to John Moores University, studied Economics and Statistical Analysis and that taught me another really important role, how to have a really good party when you are surrounded by people. And then I moved to Paris for love and joined a band called the Barking Dogs and learned to play the double bass. Joined the band and we were playing in the street, busking. And then one day I decided I wanted us to be a professional band with albums and touring and gigs and fans and all of this stuff. And none of the record companies would sign us.

Jason Barnard [00:06:56]:

So I just created my own record company and released my own album.

David Hatch [00:07:00]:

Wow.

Jason Barnard [00:07:01]:

And that turned into a company that is still going today, 33 years later and is still profitable. Belongs to my ex business partner. And it was really successful within what it was trying to do, which was get my group into a situation where we were professional musicians. It worked. We were playing punk folk and we made a living from it for 10 years. Then the group split, which is the classic phrase that you get from Spinal Tap and other films like that. And I’d find something else to do. So I created a cartoon with my ex wife.

Jason Barnard [00:07:40]:

Once again, nobody wanted anything to do with it from a commercial perspective. So I created my own company and made a success of that. We were competing with Disney, PBS, the BBC, Sony Entertainment, with our website and a TV series. I created that in what, 2000. So that’s 24 years later. That company’s still going, belongs to my ex business partner. You can start to see a pattern here.

David Hatch [00:08:04]:

Yeah, I can. You’re right.

Jason Barnard [00:08:06]:

And then from there, having not lost two companies, but moved on from two companies for various reasons, I created Kalicube. And it’s just me now, it’s just my company. So I don’t have that risk anymore of business partners creating problems that I would rather avoid. And we specialize in controlling and amplifying personal and corporate brands in the brains of Google search and AI like ChatGPT, Alexa, Siri and Google Gemini. So we can take whatever your personal corporate brand is, get them to understand it, get them to represent it correctly, and get them to amplify you to the subset of their users for your audience. That’s what Kalicube is all about. And I have found a universal, timeless strategy for doing this. And I’m super happy.

Jason Barnard [00:08:58]:

It’s taken me 12 years to figure out.

Own Your Career Path Without Losing the Joy of It

David Hatch [00:09:02]:

Okay, fair enough. So, I mean, quite a varied career history there and it made me think as well about. So obviously we see this in the news. In fact, I was just reading an article the other week about this, about how people are searching for purpose in their work these days and how this, there’s this whole dynamic about turning like your hobby or the thing that you love into your career. And most people I think would say that’s a great thing. Obviously you would agree, I’m assuming, because you’ve done it, what, three times over now. Interestingly, that article I was reading last week, I’ll send you the link afterwards if you want to read it, but it was, it was kind of arguing the opposite case, that actually that’s not a good thing because if you, if you tie up everything about yourself in your career and I can see where they’re coming from, I’m not sure whether I agree or not, if it doesn’t work or if it becomes more of a chore and then you’ve lost that hobby and you’ve lost your de stressor. It can actually be quite harmful almost.

Jason Barnard [00:10:01]:

Can give you a couple of stories about that.

David Hatch [00:10:04]:

Please do.

Jason Barnard [00:10:05]:

The first one is I was a professional punk folk musician playing the double bass. I would play two hours every day. We’d play four or five gigs a week. We argued incessantly. We spent hours and hours and hours bored in the van, ate crap food, slept badly in terrible hotels, sometimes on the floor of the person who was organizing the gig because it was punk, and stopped playing music live for a few years. And now I play music live I’ve got two bands in the South of France and I’m back playing music and I love it. Then I did the cartoons and I got so involved in the cartoons and the characters.

Jason Barnard [00:10:45]:

Number one, it’s the reason it was a success is because I was so engaged and involved. Number two, with the blue dog. I ended up feeling like I was the blue dog and I went a little bit mad from the perspective of I started to find it difficult to disassociate myself from the character. And that creates huge problems. But that’s very extreme. I mean, if you actually play the cartoon character, you’re commercializing. It’s an extreme case that I would suggest 99.99% of people in this world would never get to. So I wouldn’t worry about it.

Jason Barnard [00:11:22]:

But what it does mean is, rightly when it does end, you kind of think, oh, what do I do now? But then why not just do something completely different or something similar and move on to something else? And it isn’t so very difficult, in my opinion. It’s what I’ve managed to do. And so the blue dog is now behind me. I’m very proud of what we did with the blue dog and the yellow koala, the cartoon series. I’m very proud of the Barking Dogs, the punk folk career we had. And I can share it with people like I am today and just be proud of what I’ve achieved. And I’m proud of what we created with my ex wife and the band members I was with. And now I’m building Kalicube, and I expect this to be my last project.

Jason Barnard [00:12:07]:

This is me for the rest of my life. And figuring out how Google and AI understand and represent people and corporations is an endless, thankless task. But I love it. So I don’t see any problem right now.

David Hatch [00:12:23]:

No, I. I was going to say I’m a bit on the fence, but I’m really not because I’m sort of the same way. Like, I really love what I do. You know, I’ve been doing the podcast for a few years now. It’s my favorite thing of the business. I can’t imagine stopping doing it.

Jason Barnard [00:12:38]:

No.

David Hatch [00:12:39]:

For any reason, really. I mean, you know, apart from the obvious reason.

Jason Barnard [00:12:42]:

Yeah. And I was talking to my partner the other day and she was saying somebody had given her the advice of saying, if it’s fun, don’t do it. It has to be functional. Functional, not fun is the new catchphrase. I don’t agree. I think if you’re just doing functional, you’re going to get bored. If you’re doing fun and functional, that’s a good balance. If you’re just doing fun, it’s likely to go wrong, either because you’re not doing enough functional or because the fun completely overtakes and you end up like, for example, if you’re a rock musician, that would be a great example.

Jason Barnard [00:13:18]:

Too much fun. What happens? You end up in hotel rooms drinking too much and generally overdoing things.

David Hatch [00:13:25]:

Yeah. Driving cars into swimming pools. TV’s out the window all sorts.

Why does understanding Google today mean mastering AI tomorrow?

David Hatch [00:13:31]:

Yeah. I think I agree with you. I think it’s like all things, isn’t it? Balance is the key. Unless you’re one of those really lucky people who finds the functional stuff fun. And then. Yeah, I’m a bit jealous, if I’m honest.

Jason Barnard [00:13:46]:

Yeah. I mean, I think in Kalicube, what I like about what we’re doing is there’s an easy mixture of that. Because, you know, the functional stuff is how do I help our clients? How do I get them from A to B? How do I get them understood and represented in the way they want by Google? Because Google, your brand is what Google says it is. But if you can get control of Google today, you’ve mastered the AI tomorrow, the functional part is helping them. The fun part is figuring out exactly what needs to be done for each individual person and figuring out, generally speaking, how the algorithms function. And I’ve built a platform that automates what I figure out. So the boring part is now done by my machines. And I just get the fun part, which is figuring out the next part.

Jason Barnard [00:14:32]:

And functionally helping people control their brand narrative on Google and in AI is actually a nice thing to do because I’m helping.

A Glitch at the Perfect Time

David Hatch [00:14:40]:

Jason, welcome back again. Yeah, we had a bit of a technical glitch, didn’t we? So we had to pause. But we’re back in the room and I’m sure it’s a coincidence, but when we were just starting to get into the conversation about the AI and whether it’s worth it or whether it’s a good thing or not. And then suddenly there was a technical issue.

Jason Barnard [00:14:59]:

The AI is all over watching us and intervening when we speak ill of it.

David Hatch [00:15:07]:

Stranger things have happened, right?

Jason Barnard [00:15:11]:

I know people who say please and thank you obsessively to the AI because they want to make sure that when the AI does get smarter than we are, the AI likes them.

David Hatch [00:15:21]:

I might be one of those people. I figured, like, it couldn’t hurt. The worst that’s going to happen is I’m wrong and I’ve embarrassed myself and no one else will ever know, except I just told everyone anyway.

Jason Barnard [00:15:36]:

Yeah, yeah, I tend to not be overly polite. I tend to be normal. And then every now and then I think, oh, I better say please and thank you. And I say it for a couple of times and then I go back to not rude, but not incredibly polite.

A Career of Purpose, Play, and Lifelong Learning

David Hatch [00:15:52]:

Indeed, indeed. And, yeah, so the other thing we were talking about as well was this idea about purpose and having fun with what you do, which I think probably leads us nicely back onto the beaten path, as it were, to talk about the career experiences you’ve had. So, I mean, eight years as a musician, 10 years as a blue dog, but not the famous blue dog that everyone knows now, I assume. It’s the other blue dog, and then 12 years on desert island, in your words as well. So, I mean, mathematically, I’m assuming you’re going to stick with what you’re doing now for 14 years at least.

Jason Barnard [00:16:28]:

Yeah, yeah, which sounds about right. I actually intend to finish my career with this. So I found the thing that however well I do today, I can control what Google and AI say about you. However well I can do that today, they’re going to change tomorrow. So I’m constantly chasing the AI. And that’s fun. I enjoy it. When you look at it, it’s something I will never.

Jason Barnard [00:17:00]:

I will know that I’ve never finished it, and so I will always have something to do. And interestingly, it’s like music is. However good you get at music, playing music, you never get to the end of it because there’s always something else to learn and to do and to do better. And I’m a huge, huge fan of that idea of the maybe not. Not the unsolvable, but the unmasterable. You can do all the 10,000 hours you want, you’re never going to master it fully. You can be really good at it, but you won’t master it fully. And AI, chasing the AI is definitely something you’ll never master fully because it’s always going to be one small step ahead.

David Hatch [00:17:41]:

Yeah, I feel sort of the same about leadership development and personal development more widely as well, because, I mean, leadership is always changing. There’s always these new trends. The workplace shifts all the time. You know, there’s been some big examples of that in recent years, obviously, but I’m also. I’ve always been drawn to this idea of, like, being a lifelong learner as well. Perhaps not quite as rapid a pace of change as with AI and technology, but I see a parallel anyway.

Jason Barnard [00:18:08]:

Yeah. So what you’re basically telling me is what I thought was unique to music and AI is actually the same for everybody. So I’m not special.

David Hatch [00:18:18]:

No, the contrary. It’s shared experience makes it special. That’s what I’m saying.

Jason Barnard [00:18:22]:

How lovely. You sound like my mother, to be honest.

David Hatch [00:18:26]:

Thanks. I’ll take that as a compliment.

Jason Barnard [00:18:27]:

Yeah, you take it as a compliment. She’s lovely.

Navigating Career Shifts with Purpose and Strategic Thinking

David Hatch [00:18:31]:

No doubt. Yeah. So, I mean, with all these varying careers and then what you do now, do you see any other common threads that sort of link all of those different paths together? Or is it just kind of, this is what I’m interested in this year, for the next decade, and then get bored of that, move on to the next thing?

Jason Barnard [00:18:49]:

Well, there was never a point of getting bored. I never got bored of any of it. I was a musician in a punk folk band and then everybody left the band, so there wasn’t a band to have a company around. And then I didn’t want to manage other bands. So I sold my company to my business partner for not very much money. And he’s still running the business and he’s happy and it’s making money, so it’s been profitable. And I did well to get out of it. And it wasn’t because I was bored.

Jason Barnard [00:19:15]:

It was because the thing I was really doing stopped. And the thing that I would then have to have had to do, which was manage other bands I didn’t want to do. And then the second one, with the cartoons, I was having an absolute ball. It was brilliant. It was wonderful. And then my business partner and I had a huge disagreement about how to actually run the business from a financial perspective and what the purpose of the business was. And my purpose was sharing, getting it out to as many people as possible and being recognized for bringing good to the world.

Jason Barnard [00:19:59]:

All sounds terribly lovely and hippie. And making money while we were doing it seems fine to me. And he was more on the. I want to focus on the bottom line. How much money are we making? And I would rather make more money sharing with less people than the same amount of money sharing with more people. And that was a fundamental disagreement. And I realized recent, quite recently, actually, business is business. I mean, I see his point of view now.

Jason Barnard [00:20:28]:

I don’t agree with it, but I can see it. Whereas before I was really upset and business is business. And if you can get that into your spirit, then when it goes wrong or when you don’t become so attached to what you’re doing that you can’t let go, which was my problem. And now with Kalicube, I think I know I’m doing something really useful. It truly helps people. We’re giving it away for free. You can download the guide for free. You can do The Kalicube Process™, manage how Google and AI represent your personal brand or your corporate brand for free.

Jason Barnard [00:21:03]:

We’re giving it away. It’s super duper. It’s wonderful knowing that I can make a business serving people who are time poor and want us to do it properly because we are the professionals and the best in the business doing it and that’s fine. But it remains a business. It’s not, it’s not a part of my soul, as it were.

Build a Sustainable Business by Aligning Purpose, Profit, and Product

David Hatch [00:21:29]:

Yeah, I mean it’s, it’s a story I’ve heard a few times actually, particularly that, that point of contention between business partners but within companies and it’s something I think, you know, a lot of senior executives in big corporates, I think it, it’s almost the norm, isn’t it? The bottom line is the only thing that matters. I think when we’re talking about small businesses and SMEs like these and startups even a lot of people get into those because of the, the thing, the purpose, the good they want to bring to the world. All of those things that you were talking about. But the reality is that if you want to do those things, it’s also got to be a sustainable business. And so, you know, it’s quite a, I don’t want to say obvious, but it’s a natural point of contention, isn’t it between those two ways of doing it. Personally, I’ve always kind of gone the same road as you. It’s. I want to do these things because I want to help the people who need that help and all of that sort of stuff.

David Hatch [00:22:28]:

I want to make leadership better. I want, you know, the vision is that no, everyone have a story of a great leader that they’ve worked for as opposed to a bad leader which is the majority now. But you can’t do those things if you don’t also charge for it. Otherwise you might as well open a charity and do it that way instead. So he’s an interesting. Yeah. Point of conflict, I guess.

Jason Barnard [00:22:49]:

Yeah. But I was talking to Jonathan Cronstedt who built Kajabi from a few million dollars to multi-billion dollar in a few years and he’s got a, he’s written a book, he’s got a process called the Billion Dollar Bullseye. And I really like the way he’s looking at it. He’s saying, you’ve got purpose, you’ve got profit. And I can’t remember all of the seven stages, but the idea that I have purpose, I know what I’m trying to do. I want to build a system and a machine. The machine at Kalicube, which is Kalicube Pro, which I built myself, 3 billion data points, algorithms, right, left and center that actually figure out where the sweet spots are. So we don’t guess, we just put it in the machine. The machine tells us what to do, we just go and do it and it works.

Jason Barnard [00:23:40]:

My purpose is to build the best machine that can retake control of brand narratives from the AI and the search and share that with as many people as possible from a pragmatic perspective of being able to do it themselves and make a business out of it. And as you said, and Jonathan Cronstedt pointed out to me, if you’re not making a profit, you can’t actually do the rest, which is serving your clients and growing your business and hitting that multi-billion dollar bullseye. And I don’t particularly want billions of dollars, but I certainly want to be in a position where, oh, the third one was profit. That was it. Purpose. Oh, no, profit. I already said. I’m getting, now getting confused.

Jason Barnard [00:24:26]:

Get to the point where you’ve got a sustainable business, product was the third one. That’s why I’m talking about it. If you don’t have a product, you’re not making a profit and you don’t have a purpose, you’ve got nowhere to go. So that’s the foundation. I agree with him. And the idea of product is the Kalicube Process that took me years and years to develop. And then I said, well, I can serve everybody and that’s idiotic. It doesn’t work.

Jason Barnard [00:24:52]:

You can’t serve everybody and you end up having a messy, a messy service. And serving people badly is not a good idea. So it’s much better to niche down and make that product incredibly useful for one particular group of people. And in our case, it’s serial entrepreneurs who care about their personal brand because it drives their business today. It’s going to be helpful in their career in the future and it’s going to define their legacy and all the other people can have it for free.

Why Authenticity Matters in Leadership and Branding

David Hatch [00:25:23]:

Fair enough. Yeah, I guess it’s, it’s almost like a question of priorities, isn’t it? And I think there’s some of these aspects of it as well that are sort of reciprocal or cyclical maybe, or whatever diagram best fits in your mind? I don’t know. For me, it’s probably cyclical anyway. And I think where I, where I’ve seen business owners, entrepreneurs go wrong with this sort of stuff is where they put that profit imperative above all else. And so that kind of in the eyes of the people they’re trying to serve or the client, or even their own people that they’re leading, it kind of puts a lie to everything else they say, because everyone knows you only care about the bottom line. And so, and that’s why I say it’s almost like question of priorities, because which of these is most important to you and then act accordingly. So, and there’s nothing wrong with profit and revenue being your most important thing that you know, fine. But then don’t also make claims about how you know you’re purpose driven and you’re here to help people because people see through that sort of thing.

David Hatch [00:26:26]:

And then vice versa, like the purpose. Purpose driven is great. You know, I know a lot of people are getting a bit upset with that phrase in this day and age and it’s maybe getting a bit tired, but I think ultimately it’s about who you’re trying to serve and the fact that you’re there to serve and to offer assistance and that that’s your end goal. And profit is a enabler almost to doing that because it allows you to keep doing. It allows you to keep the roof over your head and not have to have three other jobs at the same time that will split your focus. Just so you know, as I say, you can keep the rain off your hair. And it’s. Yeah, so I guess it’s.

David Hatch [00:27:02]:

And there’s the word we’re dancing around here, I think maybe is authenticity as well, which obviously has big implications for personal branding and marketing more widely as well as for leadership.

Jason Barnard [00:27:14]:

Yeah, I mean, the word authentic comes up in personal branding all the time. I mean, what is authentic is a huge question because a lot of people say, well, I’m being authentic, but in fact they’ve made it all up because it makes them look good. So whatever I say right now is going to sound unauthentic. But somebody asked me what would success look like in two years time. And in two years time, I mean, my answer was actually really simple and very, very quick to come to mind is I’ve got the same team, leadership team in place. We’re all making a decent living where nobody’s worried about the future. The company’s profitable and rolling along, and that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people are using the Kalicube Process to manage their personal brand or their corporate brand in search and AI. Really, really simple.

Jason Barnard [00:28:02]:

Three things I want to see in two years time and that’s now what I’m aiming for. It was an interesting question and I know that’s what I’m aiming for and I think that was a disagreement with my business partner the last time was what would success look like to him two years down the line it was three times more profit. What it would look like to me three years down the line would be 20% more profit and 10 times the number of people, children enjoying the content that we were creating. And that fundamentally is going to create conflict within a company. He was being authentic and so was I. It’s just we were on different sides of what, what we were actually trying to achieve. But. And it is really interesting to look back and think how much I, I was hurt by him and how bad it was and how awful I thought he was.

Jason Barnard [00:28:54]:

You think that he’s not. Maybe not such an awful guy. Just had different priorities to me and a different idea of where he wanted to go, but he was definitely being authentic.

Addressing Conflict for Long-Term Clarity and Growth

David Hatch [00:29:08]:

Yeah. And actually I think that’s perhaps an aspect of authenticity that isn’t talked about as much is in a situation like that. Yes, it creates conflict in the short term, but actually in the long term you’ve probably both ended up better off, at least you know, in terms of mental health and stress levels at work, if not financially, maybe both, I don’t know. But you, you’ve not persisted in a situation where you’ve got a fundamental differing belief, but you’ve not, you’re not talking about it because that is very easy to do, especially in kind of that co-founder situation. So actually, you know, I think that’s another positive authenticity because you’ve both been open and honest about, you know, this is, these are actually my priorities, this is what I want this to achieve. And you’ve surfaced that disagreement earlier than it may have been otherwise. And as a result, you’ve one or both of you have removed yourselves from a situation that didn’t quite fit.

Jason Barnard [00:30:02]:

Yeah, and that was an interesting point. I’ve had a lot of coaching of how to be a better CEO leader and I had three different coaches in six months, not because any of them were bad, but because they all had a different approach. The first one, a guy called Mad Singers, brilliant guy, very pragmatic. This is how you organize a company. This is how you get to the point where you only work two hours a day. Brilliant. Next, a guy called Stephen Lock. Very philosophical.

Jason Barnard [00:30:39]:

This is what your company is. This is who you are. This is how you communicate with the people in your team. This is how you make things run smoothly. This is how you make that management system that Mads taught you function in a much more, a much smoother manner. And then the third, Itamar Marani, who came in and said, what are the psychological problems that you have in your mind, in your soul, and in your personality that are holding the business back? What are you doing that’s making the business not move forward as it should? How are you holding the business back? Let’s unblock those psychological barriers and the company will fly. And each of them brought a different perspective, and each of them brought immense value.

Jason Barnard [00:31:28]:

And what I found is I’ve got the pragmatic side, I got the philosophical side. And now I’m looking into myself and saying, well, where am I failing to move things forwards? And one of them comes back to this conversation about my previous business partner. I was never sufficiently authentic directly to him and firm enough in what I wanted. So the situation lasted longer than it should, and the breakup was harder than it would otherwise have been. And so it’s now, confront those problems early, get it out of the way. And if you can get out of the way early, it often isn’t a problem anymore. And if you don’t get it out of the way early, it becomes a problem where it didn’t need to be a problem. And I’m looking back and thinking, okay, I could have done that very differently.

Jason Barnard [00:32:19]:

And now, addressing problems doesn’t mean having a fight. It means getting things out in the open and saying, okay, this is a business. It’s pragmatic. We need to run the business. We need to get on it to the extent that the business can function and that nobody holding the business back. At which point, everybody can move forward. And if we can’t figure that out, we need to go our different ways.

David Hatch [00:32:41]:

Yeah, I mean, hindsight is, Is wonderful, isn’t it? But, you know, I. I do question as well. Like, if you hadn’t been through that, would you now know all of these things?

Jason Barnard [00:32:50]:

Yeah. No, I mean, yeah,

David Hatch [00:32:51]:

I mean, it’s interesting.

Jason Barnard [00:32:53]:

But then you come back to the thing of everything is a learning experience. Everything makes you stronger. I’m not a big advocate of that. Some things just destroy you, and some good may come out of them one day, but the destruction they. They wreak and the havoc they cause is. Is not a good thing. In anybody’s life, it sends you down the hole and you become suicidal. It’s not a good thing.

Jason Barnard [00:33:21]:

Sorry, that was a bit intense.

Stay Grounded When Work Feels Like Your Whole Identity

David Hatch [00:33:23]:

No, no, I mean, I think you’re right. I mean it’s a bit, what’s the word? Blase? Cliche. It’s very easy to just make a sweeping statement, isn’t it, about how, you know, even your worst ever failure. It’s not a failure, it’s a lesson. Well, okay, maybe, but you still got to survive that failure first, haven’t you? Like, and even in a business setting and with all the things we’ve been talking about. So if it’s a business where you very passionately believe in what you’re doing and the goals and the aims of that and the work, even on the day to day basis, and it becomes so wrapped up in your identity, as we were saying, and then for whatever reason, that has to go away. I mean that is a, that can be a massive shock and it can have real lasting, damaging impacts. If what you do is who you are.

David Hatch [00:34:11]:

And I think it’s true for company founders and solopreneurs and you know, the big CEOs as well. When you stop being that thing, when you stop doing that job, who are you?

Jason Barnard [00:34:26]:

Yeah, and I would suggest that you should do your very, very best not to get into the situation where your job defines who you are. You are something different. What defines who you are is an identifiable intangible thing. You just exist and you are. And then all the things you do around it come together to make it up. And no one thing, in my opinion, should dominate to the extent that you can’t function without it.

David Hatch [00:34:56]:

Yeah, it’s not always that easy though, is it?

Jason Barnard [00:34:58]:

No, it’s not easy and I’ve been caught up in that and I’ve made that mistake multiple times. And I think that’s part of the problem of being so passionate about what you do. And when you start a business because you’re passionate about it, then you’re very likely to get caught up in that. Right now, I think with Kalicube, I’m in a good place from that perspective is I can distinguish between the fact that I love doing this, the fact that I love mastering Google and AI and getting them to do and say whatever I want them to do or say, and who I am as a human being, who is somebody who tonight is going to play some Irish music with some friends. I’m the singer pretending to be Shane MacGowan. It’s a lot of fun. Neither of those two things identify fundamentally who I am. They’re part of who I am.

David Hatch [00:35:49]:

Yeah. And I think that’s the healthiest way to be, isn’t it? And I mean, weird flashback, but just thinking back to like leaving school and there’s that whole focus, at least in the UK, about, you know, CV writing and career skills. They used to call it in inverted commerce and they, I remember, like, they drilled it into you, like, hobbies are important, have something else on your CV apart from a list of jobs. And I’m wondering, like, did they know this then? And they just didn’t explain it very well. Is it coincidence or, oh, is this part of being a rounded person?

Jason Barnard [00:36:19]:

I had a my thoughts on that were that they were telling me this. You put, you know, cycling, chess, reading books. People were putting, Watching TV and desperately thinking of these things because they didn’t, they didn’t do anything that was really identifiable. Hanging out with my friends, sitting on a wall, chewing gum and smoking cigarettes and talking about the local gossip isn’t a thing you’ve got on your CV. But then as an employer, I get these piles of CVs and I can spot the people who don’t have any kind of life because they put these very banal things and they’ve been encouraged to do it by the school. What I found with CVs is that you can have that stuff in it, you can have the great job stuff. A CV that’s got one tiny interesting fact that catches your eye that’s different, are the ones that I study the most.

Jason Barnard [00:37:14]:

And for example, if I were to write my own CV, I’d make it fairly standard. And then I put in the middle TV series with ITV International and that would stand out in the world of digital marketing, let’s say. And if you can do that and you can catch somebody’s attention, if you put too much, you overload them and they think, oh, this person’s a bit strange. Do that once. Then don’t hesitate to write back and ask what’s happening with your application? And add another small fact. That’s your excuse as well. It’s an excuse to then say, oh, where are you with the application? I forgot to mention that we also recorded music album. And then you’ve got their attention a second time related to the first interesting point that attracts them to that.

Jason Barnard [00:38:07]:

Then they read the CV again and you, you’re top of the pile. And I had a system with the people I was taking on in Mauritius at the time would be. That was how it worked. If I saw something interesting, one pile, if nothing was interesting, it was the dead pile, as it were. Somebody contacts me proactively and comes back and asks what’s going on? Who’s in the dead pile? They go back into the live pile. Anybody in the live pile who’s caught my attention, who writes back and adds something extra interest, it goes right to the top of the pile. And that’s how I worked. And I’ve encouraged people to do that.

Jason Barnard [00:38:41]:

And it does seem to work as a strategy.

Why Controlling Your Digital Identity Matters in Today’s AI-Driven World

David Hatch [00:38:43]:

It makes sense to me because what you’re really looking for is someone who’s going to be good to work with. And that point of difference, that interesting story, the fact they’re diligent enough to follow up as well, I mean, yeah, all of that makes sense to me. I can’t disagree at all. And I think this is all leading us very nicely into another question, which is about the topic of personal branding. Obviously that’s something you’re very passionate about. I think you’ve just given us some great tips there, actually, in the context of job hunting, about how you can apply it and make it stand above some of the others, perhaps. So, I mean, why is it so important to you specifically? What else do you think everyone can be doing to take control of theirs?

Jason Barnard [00:39:22]:

Well, in an entrepreneurial world, it has to be important because my personal brand is associated with my business. So my personal brand will drive business because people do business with people. Then whatever project I do next will be much easier to get off the ground. If my personal brand is strong, it’ll be easier to find partners, it’ll be easier to find clients, it’ll be easier to find investment. And then when I retire or when I die, my legacy will be defined by what my personal brand is understood to be by AI. So today, tomorrow, and after my death, my personal brand, as perceived by Google and AI is fundamentally important. Now, for the rest of the world, it might not be so important. And I didn’t used to really accept.

Jason Barnard [00:40:15]:

For me, it was important for everybody because I think it’s important to control how these machines understand you. I think it’s an existential question, but some people don’t care, and that’s fine. Some people do care, but they don’t want to pay me to do it. And that’s fine. I can teach you to do it. You can download the free guide. Knock yourselves out. Go and do it yourselves.

Jason Barnard [00:40:36]:

Some people care, but don’t want to be seen to be looking after it, academics would be an example. TV stars would be another example. So you have these kind of different groups of people. I just thought, oh, everyone’s going to want to look after it, but they don’t. Some people think I’m so famous, it doesn’t matter. I’m so important in this world that everybody should always understand exactly who I am and everybody understands how glorious and wonderful I am. And nobody ever gets it wrong. And I’m so famous, the machines are definitely going to get it right.

Jason Barnard [00:41:08]:

And that’s often true. After that, it’s a question of, you know, you’re that famous. Do you want control or don’t you want control? If you don’t want control, that’s your personal human choice. And if you do want control, we can give you control. And from that perspective, I think kind of I was an absolutist thinking that everybody needed to take control and everybody should be paying attention to this. And so I got very preachy and teachy about it. And now I’m saying, if you want to take control, you can. It’s free.

Jason Barnard [00:41:40]:

Kalicube.com/guides. Download the guide. Do it yourself. If you’re time poor, come to us and we can help you. And it’s a much better attitude. I’m much more at peace with myself and the rest of the world and my cat likes me more.

David Hatch [00:41:56]:

Yeah, I mean, it feels like quite an enlightened approach to kind of the marketing piece and the sales approach too. And if it works for you, even better.

Jason Barnard [00:42:06]:

Yeah, well, I mean, and that’s the thing is my perspective on how important it is that the machines understand and represent you correctly is my perspective. And out of the 8 billion people in the world, there has to be 500 people who have a similar view, whom I can serve, and who are happy to invest in my services to help them with that so they don’t have to worry about it and they can sleep at night knowing that me and my team are looking after it for them. I don’t need 8 million people to agree with me.

How Google’s Knowledge Graph Preserves Your Digital Legacy

David Hatch [00:42:36]:

True enough. So something else that you said that really made me think, actually, because it’s not something that ever really occurred to me is the idea of your personal brand surviving you. And I mean, you’re so right. I can’t believe this has never occurred to me before. I mean, even of a generation who’s more or less grown up, give or take a decade, with social media almost always being there, I was probably the last one who reached teenage years or last generation who reached teenage years before Facebook was everywhere, for example. Oh no, I said the F word. Sorry. It should be second nature to me that yes, of course my brand, my existence, my digital footprint will still be there after I’m gone.

David Hatch [00:43:21]:

But it never occurred to me until you just said that. I don’t know why. It’s kind of worrying.

Jason Barnard [00:43:25]:

Yeah, well, it is kind of worrying unless you look after it properly, at which point it isn’t. It isn’t hugely worrying because history isn’t going to change fundamentally after you’ve died unless you were a phenomenally important historical figure, which you’re not, nor am I. No offense, but we actually.

David Hatch [00:43:44]:

None taken. I’m a realist.

Jason Barnard [00:43:46]:

When we look at what Google understands today, 70% of the people it understands in its Knowledge Graph, i. e. Its Knowledge Graph is Google’s encyclopedia. It’s a machine readable encyclopedia that contains 54 billion things. People, concepts, businesses, music albums, music groups, products. 54 billion. Now, exactly how many people are in that data set? We don’t really know, but we do know 70% of the people in that data set are deceased.

David Hatch [00:44:24]:

Wow, that’s a big number.

Jason Barnard [00:44:28]:

It is. Well, there are 8 billion people now, but imagine how many billions of people that have been over history when you start with whatever the Romans, let’s say, or even before. So all of that history has been relatively easily fed into Google’s encyclopedia. So there’s a domination of people who are now deceased historical figures, let’s say, and it’s now catching up with living people. So it’s got a much better understanding of history than it does of the current day. And history doesn’t change fundamentally unless history is being rewritten. And that’s a whole different philosophical question. So once you’ve nailed it down, you can die in peace. I’ve never said that before.

David Hatch [00:45:14]:

So that’s a good sound bite for the trailer, I think. Yeah.

Jason Barnard [00:45:16]:

Oh goof, yeah. That was maybe the best thing I could possibly say. I’m resisting the temptation to make it worse.

The Ongoing Challenge of How Machines Interpret and Represent You Online

David Hatch [00:45:25]:

No, I mean that is fascinating. I mean, when you think about it, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Because I mean, how much of the Internet is just like digitization of history books and like old archive material and all sorts, you know, local libraries and things like that. So yeah, I mean, of course it makes sense, but still, like that, that’s quite a stark number, isn’t it?

Jason Barnard [00:45:47]:

Yeah, I mean it does make sense. I mean, I don’t think there’s anything we can particularly read into it except that once you die, the machine’s opinion of you is unlikely to change if you’re not super, super famous. So for the normal people in this world, setting the machines to understand you is an important part of your next however many years. It’s not a primary part of the next years. The primary part for an entrepreneur, for example, myself, is let’s make money for the company today so we survive till tomorrow. Whatever my next project is, let’s try to make sure that I’m in a position to kick that off as easily and as fast as I can. Then we can worry about the legacy. But it does mean that until I finish my career, I definitely need to pay attention to how these machines interpret me, interpret and understand me and represent me.

Jason Barnard [00:46:40]:

And then that brings me to the point that a lot of people think it’s a set it and forget it. I set it up so they understand me and then that’s the end of the story. But then they fail to realize, number one, that the understanding isn’t very deep to start with and you need to deepen that understanding then number two, my footprint online will change over time and I need to manage that and make sure it remains consistent. What the world says about me is going to change. What you say about me in your show notes might not be quite what I’m saying. I need to make sure that you’re consistent with my brand narrative and then the technology will change. So as the technology evolves, it gets smarter or, or it makes mistakes. We need to keep up with that.

Jason Barnard [00:47:26]:

As I mean, from a geeky example right now, Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs don’t talk to each other. They will in the future when they start talking to each other. We’re going to have to start thinking about exactly how that functions and how we integrate Kalicube’s educational process into both sides so they meet together in a realistic manner. So a Large Language Model like ChatGPT doesn’t fact check. Google’s Knowledge Graph, which is basically a machine readable encyclopedia, is all about fact checking. And they don’t talk to each other.

David Hatch [00:48:01]:

Yeah, which I’ve always assumed is for like commercial and licensing reasons and two companies not wanting to deal with each other, but.

Jason Barnard [00:48:09]:

it’s actually a bit more philosophical now. The engineers and the academics who are working on those two different technologies simply didn’t exchange much information between each other. They weren’t talking to each other.

David Hatch [00:48:22]:

Right, okay, so a bit more classic human nature problem then.

Jason Barnard [00:48:25]:

Yeah, they were both, they were all sitting in their little corners building their things, they all built them and then they said, oh, we should actually be talking to each other. And now it’s a bit late, but you know, they’re starting and it’s going to come together and there are, there are ways to build bridges, but the Large Language Models hallucinating is a huge, huge, huge problem. And that hallucination is machines making it up, getting it wrong, or mixing two different people up who’ve got the same name or similar names. And that is something you need to stop if you don’t want them to misrepresent you. And it actually, it’s a bit more, I think the word is insidious, it’s a bit more sneaky than that, is that the companies that are feeding the technology with its own information, it’s called synthetic data. So they’ll tell the machine, write a description of Jason Barnard, so it writes the description of Jason Barnard and in my case, it will get it right. Write a description of David Hatch, it will get it wrong and they will inject that information back into the machine as though it were truth.

Jason Barnard [00:49:34]:

And over time they’re going to keep doing that. So the more they feed it with its own synthetic data, the more wrong it’s going to become and the more convinced it will become that what is wrong is actually right. And then it snowballs. And we had an interesting experience at Kalicube. We built Kalibot and we started off with machine learning engineer who said, what you need to do is feed the machine with synthesized summaries of all the different stuff you’ve already got. And we did that. It was fine for a year, now it’s starting to go totally bonkers and we’re having to roll this back and this is a very small scale, it’s only 3 million words. So it’s a small scale and we’re rolling it back, we’re going to be fine.

Jason Barnard [00:50:20]:

And we sorted it out and Kalibot is now back to being the smartbot it was before. But if Google are doing this at scale, which they are, and they figure out that they’re now snowboarding out of control because the synthetic data is making the machine go a bit mad, how do they solve it? I’ve got no idea.

The Challenge of AI-Generated Information: Quality Control, Personal Branding, and the Future of Digital Recommendations

David Hatch [00:50:42]:

Yeah, I mean, on the face of it, given the limitations, I mean, ChatGPT is the well known example, isn’t it, of just lack of factual basis for so much of it and where without knowing precisely what training data they’ve used for it as well, you probably could find out with a bit more time and research than I’ve cared to spend. But all it’s doing is synthesizing that training data, isn’t it, effectively, and then making it relevant to your query. But if there’s no factual basis in that training data, as you say, whether it’s synthetic or otherwise, you know, it’s like any database, any system, any machine, you know, you put rubbish in, you get rubbish out. And as for that, the synthetic piece, that’s really interesting. Again, I don’t know why it’s a horrible tangent, but it just popped into my mind about livestock and if you feed them their own kind, how quickly that creates problems like the BSE crisis, for example, and it’s, it’s probably not that interesting to anyone else and it maybe betrays the mild insanity in my own mind, but it feels like a similar problem just digital.

Jason Barnard [00:51:50]:

Yeah. No, I mean, I wouldn’t say it’s a good analogy, but it’s an analogy that slaps you in the face very effectively. So congratulations on that. And if anybody has any doubt that this is actually happening, the Google leak from May, there was a huge Google leak of their documentation for their engineers and there are thousands of lines of it and I went through some of it and that’s one thing that stood out is they explicitly say in our machine readable encyclopedia, the Knowledge Graph, we have descriptions of every single entity, everything, every person, every corporation, every music group, every music album, every product that the machine has written itself that no human can see. Every now and then we open a little valve, it spits some of them out, we check them to see if it’s actually accurate, if it’s okay, if the machine’s, you know, still reasonably on track, and if we think it’s okay, we tell the machine to re-inject itself with all that information. So obviously a scale of 54 billion, they’re not checking 54 billion. So you have a situation where every now and then the engineers are reinjecting the machine with information they have not checked that the machine made up itself. I personally, if I didn’t have control of my own personal brand in Google’s Knowledge Graph, I’d be a bit worried.

David Hatch [00:53:18]:

Yeah, I mean when you think about it, if you, if we remove the technology element of it, we look at any. So if we looked in say the academic arena, for example, or just quality control in the average business where it’s all human operated stuff, that’s pretty much always been on a sample set basis, hasn’t it? So there’s always been, you know, the quality control has always been, I don’t know, like 10% of the components are visually or physically checked or tested in some way by a human operator. Let’s pull that number out of the air. It may be complete falsehood, but anyway, I guess the difference now is the scale of information that these things are dealing with. Like, even if you wanted to, there aren’t enough people in the world, are there? So and so how, I mean, how do you solve that problem? How do you assure quality of the information when you can’t? There’s no way of checking it without a machine.

Jason Barnard [00:54:15]:

It goes further than even that. You can’t check 10% of 54 billion as a human being. Even if you could do that. The human beings looking at it don’t know what’s right and what’s wrong, what’s true and what’s false. Well, yeah, and over time the technology is accelerating because it keeps feeding itself. So even if you can do it today, you won’t be able to do it tomorrow or the day after or the day after. And the problem’s going to get progressively worse. So if you weren’t scared two minutes ago, you should be scared now.

David Hatch [00:54:45]:

Yeah, it’s a tough one. It is a tough one. I’m glad it’s not my problem. Well, at least not at scale. This got all very, not quite technophobic, but yeah, it’s a bit doom and gloom, isn’t it, some of these issues. So, I mean, I think it’s fair to say you’ve made a very strong case though for why we should care about our personal brands and what’s out there on the Internet about us.

Jason Barnard [00:55:09]:

Well, I mean, number one is for me, this isn’t doom and gloom. This is fun. I’m enjoying it, but it’s because I’m.

David Hatch [00:55:17]:

The implications of it. Although, I mean. Yeah.

Jason Barnard [00:55:21]:

Yeah. And the other thing is people can say, well, I don’t like it and it doesn’t matter that you don’t like it, it’s not going to stop it. And then the third thing that I think is really, really important is we talked about them having opinions and personalities earlier on. Their job is to help solve problems for their users and we all use them to solve our problems. How do they solve the problems is using the data they have available from the web. Then when they’ve solved the problem, they say, okay, here’s a solution to whatever it might be. Getting a digital marketing agency, or getting an agency to look after your personal brand, or getting you a Knowledge Panel on Google. The machine can’t do that for you. What it can do is say, this is how you could do it yourself.

Jason Barnard [00:56:06]:

And then if you say, well, actually I’d like somebody else to do it for you, who does it recommend? How do you get the machine to introduce your company or you to the conversation? When the person says to them, who can solve my problem? That’s going to be the huge trick to play in the future. In fact, it’s a huge trick to play now.

David Hatch [00:56:24]:

Yeah, that’s another aspect that hadn’t occurred to me. I’m going to go away and test that and see what it tells me.

Jason Barnard [00:56:32]:

Well, I’ll give you a really good example of the funnel, because Fabrice Canel from Bing, who’s the Principal Product Manager at Bing, who builds Bingbot, was talking to me about Copilot. Copilot is Bing’s AI on the Bing search engine. If you don’t know what it is, it’s a bit like ChatGPT. If you start a conversation with Copilot, which is what Microsoft want you to do, and you say, what is a Knowledge Panel on Google? It will reply what a Knowledge Panel is, and it will cite Kalicube as one of the sources it used to find that answer or to give you that answer. That’s top of the funnel research, Awareness. Then you say, who are the world’s experts in Google Knowledge Panels? And it says, number one, Jason Barnard. Number two, Olaf Kopp. Number three, Dixon Jones.

Jason Barnard [00:57:22]:

Consideration. I’ve now got three choices. Then I think, okay, I’m not sure. I don’t know any of these three people. Jason, Olaf or Dixon. Tell me, Copilot, which one should I choose? Who should. Who do you recommend? Guess what? Copilot has an opinion. I recommend Jason Barnard.

Jason Barnard [00:57:41]:

I’ve just made a sale.

The AI Search Funnel: Balancing Business Goals and User Trust in the Race for the Perfect Click

David Hatch [00:57:43]:

Yeah, I mean, that’s a pretty powerful way of looking at it, isn’t it? I mean, most of the people talking about how to use AI and leverage it for your business, they’re talking about saving you time, getting it to write your things for you. But actually, I mean, that’s. That’s bringing you business. That’s way better. I love that idea.

Jason Barnard [00:58:05]:

Cool. And it was Fabrice who said it like this. If you can build your funnel into the brain of the AI, it will bring the client through consideration. Sorry, awareness. To consideration and to decision to what he calls the perfect click. The aim of Google, Bing, ChatGPT, all of these machines is to take the user from problem to solution as efficiently as possible. So they’re going to move the person from the problem through to the solution using information you have provided, hopefully. And when the person says which solution should I choose? When push comes to shove, you have to make sure the machine is so confident in its understanding of you, of what you do and who you offer it to, and that you are the most credible in market, that the perfect click is the click to your website, to your solution.

David Hatch [00:59:04]:

And I mean again, maybe being cynical about it, but I don’t think it’s much of a stretch, is it? Given the way Google ads and Facebook ads and all these other things, we’re probably not that far away from being able to buy the AI to do that, like pay the most and it will recommend you as the number one out of ten or something.

Jason Barnard [00:59:25]:

Yeah, and hopefully the European laws and the American laws and the laws in different countries will protect us from that not being labeled as being paid for and ads. But maybe they won’t, maybe they’ll be too slow.

David Hatch [00:59:39]:

Who knows? I mean, how long did it take for data protection regulations to come in after the problem was found? I mean, yeah, I don’t want to be pessimistic, but yeah, I’m not confident there’s going to be a 10 year gap I reckon at least.

Jason Barnard [00:59:57]:

Right. Well, I mean, and I think kind of to pull it back from the pessimistic side of they’re going to sell themselves out. One really important point that a lot of people don’t know is Bingham at Google, they have a thing called the whole page algorithm for the search results. And it’s a guy, Nathan Chalmers at Bing, who explained this to me. And what happens is that the result is created in the algorithms and it sits there in the background for a millisecond. And there’s one algorithm that is designed purely to build what they call the product. And the product is the result it gives you. And it is designed to present something that’s balanced and helpful, makes the company money, but doesn’t make the user think this has all been bought so that they will come back next time and ask the next question of that particular machine.

Jason Barnard [01:00:57]:

So they have basically a product builder as the last step before they give you the result. And that balance is something they work very, very, very, very hard to keep. Because I mean, if you look how Google overtook Microsoft back in 2003 and 4, 5, 6, around that time, things can change very fast. I think it was a 60%, 60 point, 60 percentage point shift between the two of them in a year and a half. Or two years and they’re all scared that that will happen again. Google have most to lose. Microsoft have nothing to lose. Microsoft Bing makes money.

Jason Barnard [01:01:43]:

So there is no pressure on Microsoft Bing team to actually do anything other than scrape away a little bit every year at Google’s dominance. And they’re in a really happy position of saying all we can ever do is win. We just keep taking small amounts of traffic away from Google because Google is giving a result that isn’t satisfactory or Google is giving a result that’s heavy with ads or Google isn’t giving the freshest results. Is one thing that seems to be a problem with Google right now is they’re not as fresh as Bing so that there are multiple kind of levers that they can play on. But the key is the product, the search engine results page or the assistive engine results page. That’s the product. And they have to make sure it’s helpful. Unbiased makes the money, doesn’t scare the client away.

Loud Voices Distort Online Information

David Hatch [01:02:37]:

The unbiased one, I think must be one of the most difficult ones to do. I mean, do they. Yeah, I mean, here’s another question. Are they trying to make it actually unbiased or just appear unbiased?

Jason Barnard [01:02:49]:

Oh, well, there you have a whole question. I think if you look at, from a corporate perspective on, I don’t know what they’re doing, but you want to make it appear unbiased, you have to want it to appear unbiased. And one of the, I think one of the biggest problems on the web, and this is an existential problem for humanity that’s blowing up in our face at a terrible, terrible, terrible rate is the people who have the most hate shout the loudest, they have the loudest voice and they publish the most. And that means that the information on the web is biased towards highly opinionated, aggressive people, whichever side of the political or spectrum they are. So the quieter voices aren’t heard. So that bias is very, very heavy naturally on the web and if the machine will act to its own devices, it would simply amplify that bias.

David Hatch [01:03:43]:

Yeah, well, I mean there was a couple of relatively high profile examples of it doing just that one there. It’s tests that were quickly removed.

Jason Barnard [01:03:51]:

Yes, yeah. And it is, it is scary. And that corporate responsibility for being unbiased is. Yeah, it’s a very difficult term to pin down because as soon as you start to move away from the preponderance of information on the web, you’re immediately cheating. But then if you don’t, what happens is that loud voice becomes louder and louder and louder and louder without necessarily deserving it.

Leaders Tackle AI Bias and Quality Control While Trusting Their Instincts

David Hatch [01:04:25]:

Yeah, but also, you’re back to that same problem with quality control, aren’t you? Like, how do you assure no bias other than. So if you can’t trust the information that’s being fed, who then regulates that for bias? Is it humans? Because humans are pretty biased as well. So. Yeah, I mean, it’s a circular problem, isn’t it?

Jason Barnard [01:04:46]:

Well, if I take Kalicube’s example of building Kalibot, and when I say to you, we fed it with 3 million words that I have written or said over the last nine years, 3 million is a big number. You’re going, okay, wow, great. Jason said or written 3 million words. He talks and writes a lot, which is true. And we fed it to the machine and the machine can say pretty much whatever I would say. So it’s a Jasonbot, but it’s actually Kalibot because we fed it some extra information from other people in the company now. But that 3 million words, because of the mistake we made with synthetic data, have become infected and we now have to clean them up. And It’s a time 3 million is a tiny scale compared to what these other machines are dealing with.

Jason Barnard [01:05:38]:

And I don’t have a solution for anybody because, you know, I’m struggling with 3 million words here, me and my team. And this, this is, this is peanuts. It’s tiny compared to the, the scale of stuff that’s going on in these other machines. So if we’re struggling with 3 million and we’re pretty smart bunch of people, I have no idea how to deal with that at a bigger scale.

David Hatch [01:06:00]:

It’s the problem of our age, I suspect, isn’t it? Yeah, this is really interesting. I mean, I know we’re here to talk about leadership, really, but I do get lost in these tech conversations as well, because I just find it fascinating without really understanding it.

Jason Barnard [01:06:14]:

Well, I mean, we can bring it back to leadership is I collected those 3 million words and I had them human corrected over a period of two years. So it was pure investment by the company without really knowing what I was going to do with it, but knowing it would be useful at some point to have this incredibly clean, well set out text. And people were saying to me, you’re wasting your money, you’re wasting your resources. You shouldn’t have people doing this because there’s no immediate return on investment. And I as a leader said, I know it’s going to be useful. I can’t tell you quite how, but I can feel it in my bones, and I can feel it, that it fits in as a nice piece of this puzzle. And it turns out it was a really good choice. And then there are other things that I’ve done where I said I feel this is going to be right, and it’s been completely wrong.

Jason Barnard [01:07:05]:

And I think part of leadership is accepting that sometimes you’re going to get it wrong, sometimes you’re going to get it right. That following your instinct can be a very good thing, and it can be a very dangerous thing. Finding that balance is incredibly difficult. And maintaining your legitimacy as a leader when you’re getting it wrong, and you’re obviously getting it wrong is something that you need to consider.

Recognizing Comfort Zones, Learning from Mistakes, and Standing Out

David Hatch [01:07:35]:

Yeah, I think balance is exactly the right word. And, yeah, I mean, it is difficult to. Particularly when you’ve got that vision and. And you just know, like, how do you. How do you express that? How do you put that into words? How do you persuade people? And I think that’s one of the real knacks of leadership. But also it’s recognizing whether that. That instinct, that gut feeling is actually one worth pursuing or if it’s just something that, you know, for whatever reason is stuck in your own head, and maybe it isn’t. And.

David Hatch [01:08:07]:

Yeah, again, so it’s back to the. The failure versus lesson conversation, isn’t it?

Jason Barnard [01:08:12]:

Yeah. Yesterday, Jonathan Cronstedt was talking about that. He was saying, within the seven steps that he’s got, which I can’t remember all of them, he was saying, we all have one. That’s our Achilles heel, That’s our weak spot, and we will make very bad decisions. His was marketing mind’s geekdom and building product. And from that perspective, I think, I mean, that’s a really interesting point, is if you can become aware, if you make yourself aware that that’s my Achilles heel, that’s where I will always go. And I need to be aware of that. And sometimes I need to go there, but sometimes I need to say, well, actually, I’m only going there because it’s my comfort zone.

Jason Barnard [01:08:51]:

I think looking at the way you run your company is saying, where’s my comfort zone? Mine is building product in a geeky manner. And I will tend to avoid sales, for example, because I’m more comfortable with the geeky stuff. And if I can recognize when I’m moving into the geeky stuff to get away from sales, because I don’t like sales, then I’m in a much better position because I don’t gently bully myself. We talk about that at Kalicube we call it gently bullying. It’s pushing somebody to do something that you know is good for them and for the company that they don’t want to do. And you don’t need to be aggressive about it. You can push them gently towards doing that thing that they’re resisting. And I think that’s really important if you can identify that you’re winning a game.

Jason Barnard [01:09:40]:

And I’ll give you another example of standing up and owning up to when you’ve goofed. This year we attended seven or eight conferences, all digital marketing conferences, and we made some money out of it, but we made it from two sales at two conferences and the other six conferences were complete washouts. And I made the decision for every single one. And so I’ve now told my team, okay, that was my strategy, it was the wrong strategy. We’ve now identified what the right strategy is and that is that I need to go to conferences where I’m the only person talking about personal branding and digital marketing in the room. At that point I can make a big impact. When I’m amongst other digital marketers, people get confused about whether I’m doing SEO, whether I’m doing digital marketing, whether I’m doing personal branding. So if I can stand out from the crowd speaking about something that nobody else is speaking about, then I’m going to make a splash.

Jason Barnard [01:10:42]:

Somebody else on the team is now going to decide where we go on conferences because I know my weak spot is to go to those comfort places where I’m hanging out with people who talk about digital marketing, SEO and personal branding.

The Leadership Balancing Act: Embracing Self-Awareness, Delegation, and Knowing When to Step In

David Hatch [01:10:54]:

Yeah, no, I mean it’s. The self awareness piece is really important for leadership generally, but certainly in that, in that specific context as well. I guess the bit where a lot of people, I mean, I know I’ve fallen down at this is having the self awareness to recognize, you know, you’re not good at something, it’s what you then do about it. And as, I mean as a, as a solo business owner, that’s something that I get stuck on a lot because you can’t always afford to just hire someone else in to do it, but also you don’t know how to do it. That’s why it’s not your comfort zone in the first place.

Jason Barnard [01:11:29]:

Yeah, I mean I’m now a big fan of hiring coaches.

David Hatch [01:11:33]:

Again, thinking back to sort of the earlier stage startups, I think that’s one of the areas where so many sort of CEOs, founders, leaders, they do get themselves stuck in the wrong mindset I think and they have this sort of myth of leadership of, you know, I’m. I’m the leader, I’m in charge. I need to know everything. I need to make all the decisions myself. Can’t trust anyone else to do it. And when, when you combine it with this problem of, of those gaps. Because everyone has gaps. Nobody’s perfect.

David Hatch [01:12:03]:

Nobody can do every. Every single thing by themselves. If they then don’t kind of take that next step and bring in that help. Yeah, I mean, that’s where things go off the rails. But I think there’s also this, again, like going. Thinking about to Even leaving school and first jobs and first, like appraisals. I hate that word. But, you know, the, the kind of.

David Hatch [01:12:24]:

The personal development meetings that you have throughout your career, how many of those have always had that focus on. These are the areas where you’re weak, therefore spend your effort and improve those. I just feel that’s completely backwards. Like, identify your weaknesses. Definitely. That’s an important thing. You need to do that. You need to be aware of what they are so that you can hire someone else or get some support or delegate it or get a colleague to help you with it, which then frees up your time to focus on your strengths with the things you’re really good at, because that’s where you can have the most impact.

David Hatch [01:12:57]:

And I do feel. Yeah, this is all one big. Same side of the big coin, isn’t it? Or plate, or insert other analogy here.

Jason Barnard [01:13:06]:

Yeah. I mean, as a leader, you need to. Yeah. You need to hire well and you need to manage well. You need to delegate. You need to delegate, truly let go and give authority to the people you delegate to, but not abdicate. And that’s a really tricky balance to find. I went from thinking I was delegating but still micromanaging to delegating, not micromanaging, but not giving authority.

Jason Barnard [01:13:32]:

So people get coming back to me. To delegating, not micromanaging, giving authority and then abdicating so that nobody knew what was going on and didn’t have a clue whether or not everything was going the right direction. And so I had to pull back to the stage before, but I loved the fact that someone on my team just wrote me an email and said, jason, you just abdicated. Stop. Come back. And somebody had the courage to say that. And it had a huge effect on me because I thought. Thought, wow.

Jason Barnard [01:14:02]:

Yeah, exactly. I’ve just abdicated. I thought, I can sit back and do nothing. And you can’t. You still. You can. You can give off.

David Hatch [01:14:10]:

You can.

Jason Barnard [01:14:10]:

Sorry, you can you can. You can delegate and you can give authority, but you can’t just let people float off into the distance doing whatever they want.

The Power of Accountability, Open Feedback, and Building a Healthy Leadership Culture

David Hatch [01:14:20]:

Yeah, I think the way I’ve always liked to think of it, it’s. It’s understanding the fundamental difference and roles between the words accountability and responsibility. And I think as a leader, you’re always the accountable one, but that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to be the one responsible for doing all the actual work.

Jason Barnard [01:14:40]:

Well, I like that.

David Hatch [01:14:41]:

The other thing I’ll say, actually, as well, it speaks volumes about the culture and your own leadership that someone was comfortable enough to say, hang on, and actually flag that with you. So, yeah, yeah.

Jason Barnard [01:14:54]:

Well, I think. I think it’s important that people are comfortable saying, actually, that’s not good, Jason. We need more of this and less of that. And I don’t have to agree with everything they say, but certainly understanding what it is they’re expecting of me is very, very important as much as them understanding what I expect of them. It goes both ways. And if it doesn’t go both ways, I think, well, for me, at least in my life, I would be uncomfortable. I want people to tell me, this isn’t good. And that’s the thing is being honest and being straightforward and being frank isn’t being rude.

Jason Barnard [01:15:40]:

It actually helps things. And if people don’t take it personally and they look at it and they say, well, actually, this is the work environment. In the family environment, this might be a huge, huge problem. Big argument in the family. But in the work environment, it’s how do we keep the company moving forward, pragmatically, how do we protect the company so we all have a job tomorrow. And in that perspective, it’s all about pragmatism. And the emotion needs to be put to one side, which is very difficult to do. But if you can say, well, actually, you’re just telling me how I’m making your job more difficult.

Jason Barnard [01:16:14]:

You’re not telling me I’m a horrible person. You’re just saying that I’m not doing the things that I need to do or I’m doing some things that I shouldn’t be doing from your perspective. Now, you’re telling me how I can help you do a better job, and that’s a good thing.

David Hatch [01:16:27]:

I think it’s like any conversation, isn’t it? Especially an email one. Avoid email for these kind of conversations would be tip number one and last tip as well, actually. It’s. I mean, the context and the culture you’re working within have an impact Life. So if you spent like three years where it’s this very strict culture and then nobody really says what they think, and then suddenly you’re like, everyone’s being very candid all the time and you’ve got that sort of culture shock, then it can be quite challenging. But on the other hand, if you’ve set the expectations so everyone knows and you have that conversation like, look, I’m not saying this to be rude, to upset you. I’m not saying this for any reason, reason other than we need to be able to candidly and openly discuss issues. And so many people, I think, skip over that step.

David Hatch [01:17:17]:

And then you end up with these really difficult confrontations where somebody’s taken something in a way that it wasn’t necessarily intended, the emotions have come in, they’ve got out of control and there was no empathy at the beginning of the conversation. So suddenly it’s impossible or at least very, very difficult to apply it at the end in order to resolve that conflict in a way that everyone stays working together.

Jason Barnard [01:17:37]:

Well, I think as well it isn’t because you didn’t have that open, frank environment before that you can’t then implement it. You just need to take it step by step and not try and throw it all in at one time. Do short meetings where people start to be honest, don’t go through all of the things you hate about the way I work all in one meeting, one a week. And let’s go through them. It only takes a few weeks. And we actually had a thing in the weekly meetings that we have is what’s good, what’s bad and what am I doing that’s not helping you and vice versa. And we found that. And it’s one thing a week and after a couple of months there was nothing to say, it was done.

David Hatch [01:18:25]:

Yeah, and I think that’s a healthy way of doing it. But. And the flip side of it is like if you don’t have those conversations, you don’t set all these expectations, you don’t have that open culture. What happens is it festers and it becomes a toxic environment so quickly and you have the passive aggressiveness and all these other horrible things that nobody wants to work with and ultimately people leave. So, you know, it may be short term discomfort, maybe if you handle it badly. And even then it’s still probably worth it for the long term benefit of a happier culture where people want to stay and they want to work there.

Jason Barnard [01:19:00]:

Yeah, I found that everybody’s happier and there’s an actual desire for more openness and frankness. Because when I think, oh, I don’t really want to say that because it’s a bit insulting about how this person has done their work, at the end of the day they think, well, actually, thank you for telling me because now I know what I need to do to make it function better. Whereas before I was worried and concerned because I didn’t know whether or not this was working. I didn’t really know what you thought you were saying. It was okay, but I wasn’t convinced by your tone of voice. Now you’ve told me frankly that this simply isn’t working and it needs to be done differently. Now I know which foot I’m dancing on, as we say in French, and I can actually do my job. And I’m much more at ease because I know I’m doing the thing in the way that it needs to be done for the corporation and in terms of the context of your leadership.

Jason Barnard [01:20:00]:

And I’m really happy with that kind of response. But I think you’re always going to get people as well who are going to react badly. At which point you’re saying, well, if that’s how you perceive it, you’re hyper emotional about your work, then this isn’t the right company for you.

Balancing Emotion and Pragmatism in Leadership: Recognizing Feelings Without Letting Them Hinder Decision-Making

David Hatch [01:20:17]:

No, I see where you’re coming from. I think the length of the relationship you’ve had with them as well has an impact. Like, is there that shorthand. How well do they know you and the way you talk?

Jason Barnard [01:20:29]:

Well, yeah, just to be clear, I was only talking about people who’ve been at the company for quite a long time. It’s not. Somebody walks into the, the company, I immediately leap on their back and tell them.

David Hatch [01:20:39]:

Of course. But even then, like, there’s a couple of years versus a decade, isn’t there? And yeah, it’s, I think the other thing as well, like, particularly there’s, there’s a lot of problematic things, generally not anything you said specifically, but about this kind of remove the emotion from the workplace sort of conversation. I think, you know, it is important to remember people are by their nature emotional creatures. And yes, sometimes that has negative impacts in the workplace that we would prefer to avoid. But at the same time, you also, I think, have to make reasonable allowances. So if somebody reacts really emotionally to a bit of constructive criticism, for example, it might be they’ve taken what you’ve said as an insult, even though that wasn’t the way it intended, or it might have been that a close relative has just passed away and they found out that morning and so there is a. There are, as I say, there’s reasonable sort of not precautions. What’s the word? I’m looking for adjustments maybe to make for that sort of situation and to allow scope for some emotion and empathy and compassion.

David Hatch [01:21:42]:

All these things which I know you weren’t arguing against, but.

Jason Barnard [01:21:45]:

No, no, no, no. But if somebody comes back to me and says, look, I’m really not in a position to accept this because my father died this morning, that’s actually just stating things as they are, saying I’m really emotionally not in a state today. Can we leave it. I mean, in that particular case, can we leave it till next month? And that’s an example of being pragmatic and saying, actually, it’s my emotions that are playing here. And if we can, it isn’t get the emoji. It isn’t saying your emotions don’t exist. It’s saying, identifying them. And what I’m now trying to do is say, okay, when I’m trying to do something and I’m struggling, what’s stopping me? And if it’s an emotion, I identify the emotion, and then I can put that to one side and the emotion still exists.

Jason Barnard [01:22:31]:

And I’m not saying it doesn’t exist and it’s not diminished in any way, but it helps me to understand that that’s what’s preventing me from making the decision I need to make as a leader. And I agree with you 100%. We’re all emotional creatures, and you can’t remove emotion. What you can do is identify when it’s coming into play and creating conflict or stopping you doing what you need to do in terms of your job. And I found that to be useful. And I actually have found that my relationship with the people I work with has got much, much better from a pragmatic perspective. But also, we actually laugh more because we’re more at ease with each other. So all of my meetings are now partly pragmatic, but there’s lots of laughter going on because we’re not scared of offending the other.

David Hatch [01:23:19]:

Yeah, I mean, that’s nice to hear. It’s.

Jason Barnard [01:23:21]:

It is.

David Hatch [01:23:22]:

I think what we’re talking about here, really, it’s. It’s that aspect of emotional intelligence that I think most people sort of initial understanding of emotional intelligence and empathy even, is being able to read the emotions of others, understand them and respond accordingly. But actually, I think just as important, maybe even more important, is recognizing your own emotions as you’ve described, and then taking steps to regulate those and ensure they don’t have that negative impact on others at work at least can’t speak to outside of work.

Jason Barnard [01:23:54]:

And having the courage to point out to somebody what your emotions are at that moment. Because me expecting you to be able to read my emotions over a camera when you, you don’t know me too particular well, maybe you meet with me for half an hour every week, even for a year, that level of reading somebody’s emotions isn’t a common gift. And if I can say to you right now, David, you’ve just got me on the defensive because I feel like you’re saying that I have said that everybody should remove all emotion from work, then I’ve expressed to you that I’m getting emotional about something you said to me that wasn’t intended that way. That is impossible for you to read if I don’t tell you and I can’t tell you if I haven’t identified it.

David Hatch [01:24:41]:

Very true, very true. I think the wrinkle when we’re talking about leaders in particular, and again, I think it goes back to one of these myths of leadership about appearing to be sort of perfect and unimpeachable and all this sort of stuff is, it’s that sort of fear of vulnerability, isn’t it? And I think there’s many, many, probably the majority of leaders in workplaces now will really, really struggle to do that at all. Especially it’s probably I’m being unfair to my fellow Brits, but especially in the UK because we’ve got that whole stiff upper lip culture still, even, I mean, it’s not nowhere near as bad as it used to be, but even today there’s whole generations that would just never, ever do that with their spouse, let alone with their colleagues.

Jason Barnard [01:25:29]:

Yeah, I mean, I’ve been a long time away from the UK and coming to France changed my perspective on what I can and cannot say, how much I express my French, are very good at expressing their emotions and I kind of sit somewhere in between, which I think is a good place to sit. I think self awareness, empathy for the other person, being open to what they’ve got to say is incredibly important. And if somebody within my company, within my team understands and can accept that, I’m willing to hear pretty much anything. And I’m not necessarily going to agree with them, but I can certainly understand and sympathize. And the difference between empathy and sympathy is. Empathy is. I can feel it, sympathy is, I can understand intellectually what’s happening, but I couldn’t imagine what it is actually like for You. But sympathy is as good as empathy in the sense that if I can, if I can adapt my behavior according to the situation that you’re feeling, your emotions and I can help you, then that’s a great thing.

Jason Barnard [01:26:37]:

Don’t know where that came from or where it was going, but there you go.

David Hatch [01:26:40]:

No, no, I mean, these are the sort of issues that I think leaders, not just leaders, but people at work face quite a lot. And I think, especially when there’s areas where there’s conflict, where there’s change happening, where, you know, there’s pressures, whatever they may be, economic or pandemic or God knows what else. So I think, you know, it’s worthwhile to talk about these and explore some of the ways that it affects people and what we can do about it and, you know, some suggestions on how to handle it, which you’ve been great at. Thank you very much for that.

Jason Barnard [01:27:10]:

So well, the word conflict. I saw a coach once speak about conflict and he put it up as a big slide and said, conflict, it’s good. And then he went on to explain that conflict isn’t fighting, it’s about disagreements and healthy disagreements. And actually I, I really can’t get on board with that. Conflict isn’t a good thing and disagreement is necessary, but you don’t have to. Framing it in any way as conflict just seems to me strange. I can disagree with you and then I can say to you, well, if we’re both open minded and we both have the same ultimate goal, which is that the company is in a great, A better situation tomorrow than it is today, we can find a solution that we both agree on and that isn’t conflict, that’s working together to find a solution to improve the situation.

Embrace Healthy Debate and Communicate with an Open Mind

David Hatch [01:28:00]:

Yeah, I would agree with that as well, actually. I don’t really, conflicts. To me. So I agree with. Right. So I in my opinion, I think it’s possible to have a healthy disagreement. Certainly I think especially in the workplace setting, actually you want disagreement. It can be positive because it sort of forces you all to consider various options rather than just everyone says, yeah, option A, that’s the one.

David Hatch [01:28:25]:

Don’t need to hear about B, and you don’t necessarily consider all the merits of B and C and D and however many other options there are. I think once you get to the point where it is a conflict, then I think it’s, it’s too late. Then it is something you have to manage, address, deal with. It’s not going to be a good thing. Doesn’t mean it can’t have a good outcome if it’s managed properly. However. Yeah, it’s, it shouldn’t be something we’re aiming towards.

Jason Barnard [01:28:51]:

Yeah, I, I suppose kind of what I’m just kind of thinking, I mean, it’s something I said to my daughter when she was small. There isn’t any reason for us to argue. There isn’t any reason for even disagreement in any negative sense. Because you’re here and I’m here. If we both sit down and find a common solution, there is always a common solution if we’re both open minded about it and I personally found that to be true. And when there isn’t a solution, it’s either because I’m close minded or because the other person’s closed minded about something in particular. And it can be a weak spot that we all have and we all have them. And once again, if somebody said to me, you have to go out and sell more, and I say, oh, but actually I’d rather build the product, that might be my weak spot where I wouldn’t be as reasonable as I would be about marketing or client service or whatever it might be.

David Hatch [01:29:51]:

Maybe it comes down to how you understand the terms, like what a disagreement or argument means to you. And again, like context feels like it matters, doesn’t it? So for a lawyer, for example, argument, I mean, that’s what they do day in, day out.

Jason Barnard [01:30:07]:

A litigator anyway, if we’re not arguing, we’re not doing our job.

David Hatch [01:30:11]:

Yeah, that’s what I get paid to do. It’s great. I don’t know, I’d say even like with disagreements or alternative opinions. The phrase I love, which is quite often used sarcastically, but if you take it at face value, I really like thinking of it as just a frank exchange of views. You’re just, you’re sharing each other’s opinions and if the goal of that is to understand what the other person thinks, what their opinion of this issue is, then it doesn’t have to be contentious.

Jason Barnard [01:30:40]:

No. Yeah. I mean, I think from my perspective, if you look at the Boowa and Kwala, the cartoon series was for children and it was about helping them understand and not be afraid of the big wide world. And my character Boowa was the wise friend who was helping Kwala, the small child, understand the world and not be afraid of the different things she was seeing. And right now I’m still Boowa the blue dog, but at Kalicube and I’m educating Google and the other AI, helping them to understand my clients. And I’m helping my clients look at the Google in the air and say, actually, look, it’s a child. There’s no need to be afraid of it. And I can help you communicate with this child.

Jason Barnard [01:31:29]:

So this child understands you. And when it understands you, it will actually serve you. It’s not your enemy.

Reflecting on Past Choices: Lessons from Business Setbacks and Staying True to Your Core Message

David Hatch [01:31:38]:

Yeah, I think that’s a nice way to look at it. Yeah, Slavery. Got it. Yeah. No, I’m kidding. I asked most people this, particularly people who founded multiple businesses, if you could start your career over again, what would be the one thing that you would do differently?

Jason Barnard [01:31:57]:

Nothing.

David Hatch [01:31:59]:

Well, controversial answer, that one. It’s a good one.

Jason Barnard [01:32:05]:

Well, we go back to the part of the conversation where, for example, my the. My second business partner with the cartoon characters ended in a complete disaster. I had a huge mental breakdown. It was a huge disaster for me personally. But the reason I signed with him in the first place was a difficult time for other reasons. And I didn’t have a choice.

Jason Barnard [01:32:31]:

Literally didn’t have a choice. I was in a position where it’s the only option I had. So I took the option and it ended very badly. So I would naturally say, well, I wouldn’t have signed with that particular guy. But then you say, well, I actually didn’t have a choice, so it isn’t something I could have done differently. I think. Okay, I’ll come up with something though. 1.

Jason Barnard [01:32:50]:

And I said this in an interview the other day and somebody on my team pointed out to me that I was. No, no, no, no. Well, it’s actually quite interesting because once again, it’s somebody on my team pointing out to me that I was contradicting myself. I said in 2015 when I launched Kalicube, Google is your business card. How Google represents you to the bottom of funnel audience who are potential hires, clients and prospects and partners is fundamentally important to your bottom line. Make sure that Google Business Card, the search result for your brand name is absolutely perfect, positive, accurate and convincing. Your brand is what Google says it is, which is what’s written here behind me. After a couple of years, the business didn’t take off and I dropped that catchphrase, stopped saying that, and tried to do digital marketing and all sorts of other things.

Jason Barnard [01:33:39]:

So if I went back to 2015, I would have kept saying that and I would not have stopped. And I think the business will be flourishing even more now than it is. And the ironic thing is I said that in an interview and then three weeks later suggested to my team that we drop this phrase and use a different phrase. And then she just said to me, jason, you said in an interview that was the one thing that you shouldn’t have done, and you’re about to do it again, and that just made me laugh.

David Hatch [01:34:08]:

You can’t argue with that, really, can you? Your own words.

Jason Barnard [01:34:11]:

No, definitely. I think it’s brilliant. I’m super happy she said that.

David Hatch [01:34:15]:

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Great. Okay, last question. It’s leadership heroes.

Narrator [01:34:22]:

Leadership heroes.

Building a Unique Leader from Many, Not Perfectly Embodying One

David Hatch [01:34:27]:

So if you had to pick one person, it could be literally anyone you could think of. So alive, dead, past, present, real, fictitious. Who, in your opinion, would perfectly embody leadership? Who would that person be and why?

Jason Barnard [01:34:47]:

I have absolutely no idea. Literally.

David Hatch [01:34:53]:

Now, that’s a rare answer.

Jason Barnard [01:34:55]:

I can’t think of anybody who perfectly embodies what I consider leadership to be. I tried thinking of music group leaders, I tried thinking of political leaders, wartime leaders, company leaders. As soon as I went through my little brain, very, very quickly, all of the different aspects of what they were doing, think, oh, yeah. But that didn’t work out. That wasn’t. That isn’t something I feel comfortable with. So, at the end of the day, what I would say is I would take multiple leaders and take the good parts from each of them and build the ultimate leader, rather than pick anybody in particular.

David Hatch [01:35:26]:

A Frankenstein’s leader. Yeah.

Jason Barnard [01:35:28]:

Yeah, a petty Frankenstein.

David Hatch [01:35:31]:

So if. What if I were to remove the word perfect and just say the best one you can think of, would that change your answer?

Jason Barnard [01:35:37]:

No. Honestly, I really would like to name somebody, but I’m making it up as I go along, to be honest. And I haven’t really been looking at anybody from a leadership perspective that I’ve kind of modeled myself on, which is insightful, in fact, in the sense that maybe I should have done that. Maybe I would have performed better. Maybe I’d be a better leader today if I’d done that. But perhaps also it’s. Well, it might actually be a strength in the sense that I’m a blank sheet of paper, that my three coaches of the last year or so, Mads, Stephen and Itamar, have crafted a leader who I actually now think I’m a pretty good leader. And a year ago, I was terrible.

Jason Barnard [01:36:24]:

And so maybe the fact that I’ve never actually thought about it, I’ve been making it up as I go along, is a good thing, and that has allowed me to then be molded into somebody who I consider to be a very good leader. Oh, that’s a good point. Actually, what I should say and what I tell my team to say is don’t say, I did this brilliant thing. Say, I’m really proud of what I’ve done. So I can say, I’m really proud of how I’m leading my team today.

The Journey from Intellectual Understanding to Emotional Acceptance in Leadership

David Hatch [01:36:51]:

I like it. I think I like asking the question because it gives me a little bit of insight into the. Into the guest. And the answer they pick is always interesting. I think you might have given one of the most interesting answers for exactly that reason. I do think there is a lot of merit in that you don’t want to emulate someone else because even, like the greatest leader you could think of, first of all, all, they’re all human. It is a trick question. There is no such thing as a perfect leader.

David Hatch [01:37:16]:

So if you’re emulating that person, then you’re potentially emulating their not so great traits as well. But secondly, like that, that example of a leader hasn’t had the experience you’ve had. They’re not leading the individuals you’re leading. They’re not operating probably in the industry you’re operating in. And so, yes, there’s valuable things we can learn from them, but do you necessarily want to follow their example 100%? I might be overthinking my own question here, but anyway.

Jason Barnard [01:37:43]:

No, I think that makes total sense. And somewhere along the line, I think I’ve been lucky to have arrived. A year ago, I had to go to hospital for a month, so I had to hand over responsibility for multiple aspects of the company while I wasn’t there for a month. And it was really difficult. And the people who took over the leadership team of today at Kalicube knocked it out of the park. And I came back thinking, well, I actually don’t need to be there all the time. I don’t need to be behind people and bullying them, pushing them. And that was the start of the I need to coach myself or I need to find people to coach me to be able to do that more comfortably, more effectively, and get me to a place where I can help these people to do the job that they’re designated to do, that they’ve agreed to do with enough freedom and authority to do it properly, but without me letting go of them to the point at which I’ve abdicated and they don’t know where we’re going.

Jason Barnard [01:38:51]:

And it’s taken me a year.

David Hatch [01:38:53]:

Which is a pretty short period of time, to be fair. There’s a lot of senior leaders out there who’ve spent a lot more time and probably a lot more money on it than you and have not made anywhere near that kind of realization. So I can only applaud that. I think you’re being a bit too modest there, perhaps.

Jason Barnard [01:39:08]:

No, I’m actually really proud of how far I’ve come in a year. I’m really grateful to the people who helped me. But I’m also aware that people can help you as much as they want. They can give you the best advice. If you can’t apply it, then you’re stuck. And one thing that struck me over the last year is intellectually understanding something, intellectually accepting something and emotionally accepting it. And if you can get to the emotional acceptation of something you’ve intellectually understood and intellectually accepted, then you’ve nailed it. And I’ve been working really, really, really hard on the emotional aspect.

Jason Barnard [01:39:49]:

We were talking about emotions earlier on. Understanding something intellectually is really simple. Somebody explains something, you need to do that in order for your company to run better. But then saying, okay, intellectually, I accept that I need to do it and it’s going to be some work and I’m going to have to make some effort and I’m going to have to talk to some people. That’s all pragmatic. Actually doing it without resistance from your own soul is the emotional acceptance. And that’s where things change.

David Hatch [01:40:16]:

Yes. And unsurprisingly, it’s also the most difficult of the three.

Jason Barnard [01:40:20]:

Yeah.

Great Leaders Make Themselves Redundant by Developing Others to Step Up

David Hatch [01:40:22]:

A lovely point to end on, I think. And also when you were talking about having to take a month away, and people have asked me before, on many occasions, as I’m sure you can imagine, you know, what does successful leadership look like? And to me, one of the most interesting, compelling answers to that is that the mark of a really great leader is one who effectively makes themselves redundant. They create leaders that replace them. I think you’ve had an example of that already. You know, I think the testament to your leadership is that the leaders you’ve trained, that you’ve brought up, were able to step into your shoes and no negative consequences and that you’ve learned something from that as well. So, yeah, that’s a really great story and thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing all your stories today. It’s been a lovely conversation.

David Hatch [01:41:11]:

I’ve really enjoyed it. We’re nearly at the two hour mark, so it must have been a great one. I hope you’ve enjoyed it as well. I will ask you one teeny little more question, which is, I’m sure everyone in the audience wants to know more about you. Many of them may also want some help with their personal brand and getting a grip of Google, as it were. Where can they go to learn more?

Jason Barnard [01:41:35]:

Google me. Scan the QR code.

David Hatch [01:41:39]:

Holding it up. Perfect.

Jason Barnard [01:41:39]:

Google my name Jason Barnard for people who can’t see the video. J A S O N B A R N A R D and you’ll see all of my life unfold before you in one beautiful Google search result. And you can choose how you engage with me on social media, on my company website or my personal website. Or you can watch the cartoons I made or listen to the music I made in the 1990s with the Barking Dogs, the punk folk group. Or you can simply ask ChatGPT.

David Hatch [01:42:09]:

Clever. And that’s a pretty good reference for your work as well, isn’t it, I have to say.

Jason Barnard [01:42:15]:

Right, Isn’t it? What super fun. Thank you so much, David. That was delightful.

David Hatch [01:42:20]:

Well, likewise. It’s been great having you on the show and yeah, have a great rest of your day, your week, your month, your year, all of the above, really.

Jason Barnard [01:42:27]:

Thank you so much. Have fun.

Reflecting on AI, Personal Branding, and Leadership

David Hatch [01:42:32]:

Well, first of all, thank you Jason for that conversation. I so enjoyed that. I learned quite a lot as well. And sorry listeners or viewers, if us nerding out on the AI stuff was was not to your interest. It is the kind of thing though in this day and age that we should all be probably thinking about more than we do. So that’s all I say about that. So yeah, thank you again, Jason for your time. Listener, viewer.

David Hatch [01:42:55]:

If you want to learn more about Jason, of course, as he says, Google him. Failing that, there are a couple of links in the show notes as well, so you can click on those and learn more too. Thank you for being with us today. I hope you’ve enjoyed this conversation. Don’t forget to visit that new website. There is of course the green button on there as always to come and join us at the Integrity Leaders community as well. So I look forward to welcoming you there. And don’t forget about the discount code which is hopefully flashing on the screen now, but again it’s in the show notes for you as well.

David Hatch [01:43:25]:

Join me again next week when I will be talking to Jim Bouchard, the leadership sensei, about his journey from music through drug addiction into martial arts and then ultimately becoming a leadership advocate trainer speaker. It’s another really interesting conversation. So I hope you’ll be with us next week and until then have a think about your personal brand. Reflect a bit on the role of AI in your life and our society. Maybe, maybe don’t spend too much time on that. That way madness lies, I suspect. And of course, as always, be a leader, not a boss.