Today’s guest, Jason Barnard brings an eclectic mix of blue dogs, punk and SEO with this wildly varied and interesting conversation. 

Jason is a man who has chased life experiences and is full of amazing stories including many interesting connections with UK 1980’s pop heroes. We also discuss mental health issues and losing the rights to his beloved identity as a blue dog.

[00:00:00] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Basically, be true to yourself. It’s being true to who you really are. Once again, it sounds like some awful kids’ story from Disney. But having lost my soul and rebuilt it, I know how phenomenally difficult it is to build a soul, in inverted commas, or get a soul back. 

[00:00:20] Paul Harvey: My name is Paul Harvey, and this is Life Passion and Business. We’re about helping you explore, finding your passion for life and the work that you do, but it’s so much more than that. It’s about finding clues to the big life questions. What does it mean to be successful? What is the meaning of life? If you are looking for more, then join me on this journey, where together we will discover through interview tools and tips how to live life full of meaning, passion, and purpose.

A Summary of the Life Journey of Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) as a Musician, Cartoon Blue Dog, and SEO Consultant

[00:01:09] Paul Harvey: Jason Barnard was born in Leeds and was brought up in a tiny, lonely remote village on the Yorkshire Moors. As you’ve just heard, he has a lovely Yorkshire accent. Now, not a lot happens in a small village of 25 people, especially for a punk fan. So, he moved to Liverpool where he was allowed to be who he wanted to be. And he joined a blues band called Stanley the Counting Horse. And in 1987, they played the Cavern Club that of the Beatles fame. And while he was there in Liverpool, he graduated in John Moores University with a BA in economics with a specialisation in statistical analysis.

[00:01:50] Paul Harvey: As you will hear in our chats, Jason is a man that has chased wild life experiences, and he’s full of amazing stories. There were lots of interesting, strange connections to UK 80s pop heroes. At the age of 21, he was finished with Liverpool and got a better offer to play and travel. We need a double bass player. If you can learn to play bass in 30 days, you can join the band. He learned to play the bass in a 2 hour session, and his tutor gave in some valuable wisdom and grit and some great metaphors for living life. Playing double bass started his 10 year career in a folk punk band and drinking beer.

[00:02:32] Paul Harvey: Now, life on the road was travelling to gigs and busking on route to the next gig. They moved around from Paris, Belgium, Amsterdam, Zurich, and Italy making a good living. After 9 plus years, a million kilometers on the road, 600 gigs, 3,000 street appearances, the band just stopped and the party was over. The band fizzled out as they left to find new direction, and Jason was left wondering what next.

After Being in Bands, Jason Barnard Started Writing Music for Children and Created a Website With Cartoons Which Also Became a TV Series 

[00:03:00] Paul Harvey: Jason started writing music for children. And the record industry did not really see his visions. So doing it alone, his wife Veronique created cartoon characters to sing the songs, a blue dog and a yellow koala. It was 1998. And they built a successful online business with Boowa and Kwala before YouTube. And by 2007, they had over 5 million views a month, and it led to a TV series. Did I mention he moved the family from Paris to Mauritius? The blue dog journey lasted 10 years.

[00:03:35] Paul Harvey: And in 2008, it ended in disagreement with his business partner. This followed court cases, frustration, depression, and loss of income. And it was tough on Jason and the family. Jason had lost the business, and he was stuck in Mauritius with nothing. His only option was remote working. In his journey with web development for the blue dog project, he’d learned lots of digital skills. And so, he became a web and SEO consultant.

Even After Dealing With Depression, Jason Barnard Rebuild Himself and Is Now on Top of His SEO Game as The Brand SERP Guy

[00:04:03] Paul Harvey: Our conversation explores Jason’s journey over 30 years in 10 year jumps. He is a wonderful storyteller. And this conversation is very much in two parts. In his words, the first part will be the bonkers mad person, and part two will be the digital marketer. And it’s not a fair description of our conversation. It is a beautiful journey of a man playing the game of life, learning loads of stuff, and reinventing himself along the way.

[00:04:30] Paul Harvey: We learn how he dealt with depression and the tools he used to keep his mental health. We touch on some of the raw nerves, and I so appreciate his willingness to talk about it. The point is losing the blue dog was like having his soul ripped out. And while that part of his life is gone forever, he still has countless memories and heartwarming stories to share.

[00:04:52] Paul Harvey: Today, Jason is at the top of his game in SEO and has a podcast dedicated to the subject. So in addition to his wild and varied lifestyle, he has also created some unique management systems to influence how Google reflects the business. He’s known as The Brand SERP Guy and now becoming known for his work in Knowledge Panels. It’s all technical stuff and not for us mortals. But if you are a digital agency serving clients, Jason is the man to speak to. I hope you enjoy the conversation with Jason Barnard.

Welcoming Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) on the Show and Asking About His Current Situation in Paris

[00:05:26] Paul Harvey: So, today I am with Jason Barnard. Now, I know a few bits about him. I know he was a character in a cartoon, a music cartoon. I also know he’s into SEO, but we’ll get to that bit later because I’m sure there’s all sorts of exciting bits in the middle. Thank you for being here today. Thank you for turning up and saying hi. What’s going on in your end of the world? 

[00:05:45] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Well, thank you for having me, Paul. It’s delightful to be here. I’m delighted to talk about cartoon characters, SEO, and everything in the middle. I’m in Paris. It’s nice and sunny. We’re about to go into lockdown, but life isn’t too bad.

[00:05:58] Paul Harvey: We’ve done it for a year now. We’re all used to these sort of things. And it’ll probably become a way of life, I suspect, over the next few years, in-out-in-out, but who knows?

[00:06:08] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Shaking it all about.

[00:06:09] Paul Harvey: Indeed, indeed. British man living in Paris. 

[00:06:13] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Singing the Hokey Cokey.

Born in Leeds, Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Moved to Liverpool to Study and Started His Life as a Musician

[00:06:15] Paul Harvey: Yes, indeed. We’re obviously of a similar age. So tell me, this is Life Passion and Business. And it all started somewhere for you. And you obviously didn’t start in Paris, but it sounds a bit in your voice. You come from the land here. Whereabouts are you from? What’s the story? 

[00:06:33] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Well, I was born in Leeds, and I was brought up in a tiny village called Denton of 25 people, in fact, High Denton on the Yorkshire Moors, in a tiny, tiny, tiny village surrounded by cows and sheep and farmers and very lonely upbringing. I went to school in a town called Otley, which is big on rugby and big on fights and big on general violence and mutual torture between children. I didn’t much like that, as you can guess.

[00:07:06] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And then I moved to Liverpool, which was amazing, and it was one of these moments in life. I was a punk when I was in Otley. And I went to Liverpool and realised I didn’t need to be a punk. I felt Liverpool was great because I was allowed to be who I wanted to be. I felt Liverpool was very welcoming. They call me the woolly back because I came from sheep country, but it was in a friendly way. I found Liverpool to be welcoming and open armed, and it was really like, all right, mate, you can come be whoever you want. That’s my really crap Liverpool accent.

[00:07:42] Paul Harvey: Well, for my audience, it’s probably quite a good Liverpool accent, so don’t worry.

[00:07:50] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Liverpool is nice. I love Liverpool. I had a few traumas there, as I told you, played in a band, played the Cavern Club, went to the same university as John Lennon.

Jason Barnard’s Band Had an Experience of a Lifetime Playing the Cavern Club, Where Famous Musicians Also Played At

[00:07:59] Paul Harvey: Hang on a minute. You played the Cavern Club. Didn’t that close and reopen, the Cavern Club? Anyone who didn’t realise because we’re men of a certain age, we know the Cavern Club where the Beatles played. So, when were you playing the Cavern Club?

[00:08:13] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): This was 1987.

[00:08:16] Paul Harvey: Because did it reopen or something years later? 

[00:08:18] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. Well, it got knocked down, and then they rebuilt it with some of the same bricks, but they rebuilt it exactly the same. So, you got that standard, maybe not the vibe, but certainly the idea of what it would’ve been like. And to be honest with you, it doesn’t make me a better or more important person, but playing the Cavern Club when you’re an aspiring musician is just, yeah, how many people can say that in the entire world.

[00:08:46] Paul Harvey: Indeed. It’s a badge, isn’t it? It’s a badge where you can say, I played the Cavern Club. It’s like any badge you can have. Very few people can put that on their CV, can they? 

[00:08:57] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. And it’s one of the things, and I think that’s an important part of life is it’s an experience. And a lot of the stuff I’ve got in life or I’ve done in life is just saying, well, why not? It’s something I can do that will change something in my existence. And playing the Cavern Club is good, bad, medium, in the middle, brilliant, and it can be crap.

The Blues Band of Jason Barnard Called Stanley the Counting Horse Has Some Notable Members From Another Band

[00:09:17] Paul Harvey: So, were you the singer, the guitarist, or the bass player? 

[00:09:21] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It was a blues band called Stanley the Counting Horse, named after the Liverpool police horse that could count, which was very silly. Because I had an Irish friend who’s insisted that we call it Stanley the Counting Horse, and we were foolish enough just to agree. And I was the singer. And here is a good story, I was the singer, a guy called Dave from Dewsbury was the guitar player, and the drummer was Ben Gunn from the Sisters of Mercy.

[00:09:49] Paul Harvey: Okay.

[00:09:50] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Who was the guitarist in the Sisters of Mercy, who wrote the riff for the song Alice. He left the Sisters of Mercy, went to Liverpool, and joined a second rate blues band playing the snare drum. And I love him for it.

After His Music Career in Liverpool, Jason Barnard Moved to Paris and Had Another Opportunity to Join a Band

[00:10:02] Paul Harvey: Brilliant. Okay. There you go. Claims the same and all these claims. So, what happened to your music career? Did it take off? 

[00:10:10] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Not in Liverpool. No. In Liverpool, we played seedy bars for pints of beer with people playing pool. It was a real rootsy, playing bars where people didn’t really want you to play. The audience just wasn’t there. Nobody cared.

[00:10:26] Paul Harvey: It’s not fun, I imagine.

[00:10:29] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It teaches you to make your own fun, as it were, like a kid. You say, well, if nobody else is going to care, I might as well have a good time doing it. And that was interesting. But then I moved to Paris and joined a proper band, as it were, playing in the street, busking. It sounds weird saying proper band, but we made a decent living busking in Paris and Berlin and Amsterdam and a lot in Zurich.

The Story of How Jason Barnard Learned to Play the Double Bass and Got Accepted by the Band

[00:10:54] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): I met these guys and they said, you are a nice guy, do you want to join the band? And they were actually very, very, very, very good before I joined. And I said, yeah, I can sing and play a bit of guitar. And they said, we don’t need a singer, all four of us can sing, we’ve got a guitar player, we need a double bass player. I said, oh, I don’t play the double bass. And they said, well, if you learn to play the double bass in 30 days, we’ve got a gig. And if you nail that gig, you’re in the band and you can come with us. 

[00:11:25] Paul Harvey: How can they take you like this? It’s a strange audition for a band. 

[00:11:28] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. Well, my mate lived in a flat with one of them. And he dragged me down to one of their gigs, and I got really, really, really, really drunk. And they said to my mate, your mate, Jason, seemed like a fun guy. He fits in with the band’s outlook, which is to get really drunk and play folk punk music. If he wants to join the band, he can. And it was basically because I got incredibly drunk and they knew I played a bit of music and I’d been in bands before. Great qualifications to be in a band, of course, getting really drunk. 

[00:12:00] Paul Harvey: I guess you were all young. 

[00:12:03] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. I was 21, something like that.

[00:12:05] Paul Harvey: Well, brilliant. Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

Buying an Expensive But Has an Excellent Quality Double Bass and Getting Lessons From a German Double Bass Player

[00:12:08] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, I actually went and bought a double bass, literally. I went in and the guy said, here’s the double bass. I saw one for sale. He said, here’s the double bass, do you want to try it out? I was going, I don’t even know what to do with it. So, I went away without playing the double bass. And interestingly, I’ll quickly leap to the future, it’s the double bass that I still have and it turns out it was a very good one. I was incredibly lucky.

[00:12:32] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And then I went back to Paris and said, all right, guys, I’ve got the double bass, here you go. And they went, oh, right. I think they were quite surprised because it was 500 quids, 500 pounds, 500 euros, whatever it would be, which when you’re 21 years old and just moved to a new city, that’s a lot of money.

[00:12:49] Paul Harvey: Yeah.

[00:12:50] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And they said, okay. And I said, well, I don’t know how to play. And they said, right, what we’ll do is we’re going to get this German double bass player called Franz, and he’ll give you a two hour lesson. And what they did was exchange with him the busking spot in Paris, the best one we called the pitches, for a day. They gave up their turn on the best spot to this guy, and in exchange, he gave me a two hour lesson. And he was tiny. He was 5’4″. And for double bass players, being tiny is a disadvantage, but he was so good.

Learning the Technicalities of Playing the Double Bass by Being the Bridge Between the Drums and the Rest of the Instruments

[00:13:25] Paul Harvey: Because they’re big things, aren’t they, the double bass? Isn’t it heavy?

[00:13:29] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. Charles Mingus, I think it was, said it’s 80% physically dominating the instrument 20% talent, which suits me fine. And this guy was absolutely amazing. And he taught me the slap, the double slap. He taught me how to hold it. He taught me this, which is the finger movement which allows you to play for hours on end without getting tired because it’s so big, and that movement, which you can’t see if you’re not watching on video.

[00:13:56] Paul Harvey: For the benefit of my listeners, that means nothing, but there we go. 

[00:13:59] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And then you sit in the metro and you do this. This is the exercise you have to do to keep yourself on form. As you can see, I can still do it all these years later. And then what was interesting, I like this story because it’s a great lesson in life, I think. He said, right, when you’re playing the double bass, you have to remember what it is you’re doing. You’re keeping the rhythm, making the bridge between the drums and the rest of the instruments. All anybody cares about is that you are in time with both of them or you’re making that bridge. So, you’ll have to hit the bass in time from beginning to end. That’s your main job. You do that, number one.

Ignoring Your Mistakes Because Nobody Will Actually Mind It; You Just Have to Keep the Performance Going

[00:14:38] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Number two, if you play a bum note, you’re going to freak out, and you’re going to think about it, and you’re going to think that was crap, and everyone’s going to hear, and I’m going to look awful, and it’s going to be terrible. You’ve got to forget it immediately. And if you can forget it, the rest of what’s going to come isn’t going to be affected by what happened. So, you have to get rid of that thought so that it doesn’t destroy what comes next.

[00:15:02] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Thirdly, there are two types of people in the audience, musicians and non-musicians. And you go, okay, great. And he said, non-musicians have no idea what you just did, so they don’t know it was a bum note. And musicians, the jazz musicians will think you’ve done something really clever and they won’t dare ask you about it, because they’ll think you’re going to make them look stupid. So, you don’t care what they think because nobody will actually ever confront you with it. And the third thing is always smile, always look like you’re having fun and you’re doing a good job. And that was it, three pieces of advice. And I nailed the first gig. 

[00:15:38] Paul Harvey: Sounds perfect to me. Sounds brilliant.

Not worrying about what other people think is incredibly important.

Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy)

[00:15:42] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It was stunning. And in fact, to be honest with you, actually I was going to say to be honest with you, one piece of advice was a bit more important than the others, but that’s not true. Looking like you know what you’re doing is incredibly important, having a minimum of talent for what you’re doing is incredibly important, and not worrying about what other people think is incredibly important.

[00:16:02] Paul Harvey: It’s a bit like podcasting. We’ve been doing it for three years now and no one has guessed, so it’s fantastic.

[00:16:10] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): There you go.

[00:16:11] Paul Harvey: There you go.

[00:16:11] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): I agree. That’s brilliant.

Travelling and Performing Around Europe, Jason Barnard’s Music Career Lasted for 10 Years

[00:16:15] Paul Harvey: So, did the music career last? 

[00:16:18] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): 10 years maybe. 

[00:16:19] Paul Harvey: Oh, wow. So, you travelled all over the world or just all over Europe?

[00:16:23] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It was really, really just Europe. In fact, it was just Europe. We bought a van, and we toured around playing gigs in bars and festivals and in the street. We basically played in the street when we didn’t have any money and then played bars and gigs, because we thought we were going to be rock stars and play stadiums.

[00:16:40] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): We played Milan on the same day. In fact, we played Milan in this tiny bar, and it was great. We had to play 3 days in the street in order to be able to afford the trip to Milan, to play one evening in a bar that paid us an absolute pittance. And when we turned up to play the bar, there were less people watching us in the bar than had been watching us in the street the last 3 days each night. And it turned out U2 were playing the stadium right next door, so everyone was at the U2 gig. So, you can never tell.

Believing That Their Band Is Going to Be Big and Play Stadiums One Day; Meeting and Playing Alongside Famous Musicians

[00:17:09] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And we travelled a hundred thousand kilometers a year in this van for 8 or 9 years and then another year before when we weren’t actually travelling very much, but that was a lot of mileage to play a lot of gigs. And what I like about it, looking back in retrospect as the older version of me, is that we were completely convinced that we were going to be rock stars and playing stadiums. And looking back, you’re saying, how naive is that? But then if you didn’t believe it, you wouldn’t do it. It’s the only thing that keeps you going.

[00:17:44] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, we played, I think it was 600 gigs, proper gigs and 3-4,000 times in the street over that period of time to make a living. And it was cool. And we played a festival with Bob Dylan. We played with The Pogues, played with the Mano Negra. I played with Captain Sensible. For people who aren’t of our age, he used to be the guitar player of the Damned and then did some pretty silly songs on Top of the Pops for years. We played a gig with him in Germany, I can’t remember what town, in 1993 or 1994. And he had measles, so we couldn’t actually even meet him. Well, we met him. We saw him obviously, but he was hiding in his dressing room and told us not to come in because he had measles.

The Living of It and the Journey Is More Important Than the Destination

[00:18:27] Paul Harvey: Well, yeah, you’ve got those stories. It just goes to prove sometimes the outcome is not important. It’s the journey that matters.

[00:18:34] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): You’re very Japanese. Yeah. I agree a hundred percent. The thing is all of these memories, it is interesting doing these podcasts now. The stories themselves and the path to where I ended up is much more interesting than where I am at any given moment. The living of it, the pathway, the journey is really what’s important. And it’s really difficult to remember when you’re actually on the journey because you’re impatient to get to the destination.

Drinking While Working, Dreaming of Becoming Stars, and Playing With the Best Musicians Are What Kept Jason Barnard Going

[00:19:04] Paul Harvey: Especially when you’re youthful, when you’re young, you want to go now. So, was this a passion? The music must have been a passion for you. Was it the craving, the success of stardom and limousines and champagne and stuff?

[00:19:20] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Actually, playing in the band in the 90s, it was all about the fact that I was allowed to drink loads of beer while I was working. And I thought that was really cool, and that the people who owned the bar would say, you have to drink lots of beer. And being encouraged to drink beer by your employer is pretty cool. And also, I thought we were going to be stars.

[00:19:40] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And another interesting thing is that I ended up playing with three of the best musicians I’ve ever seen and heard. It’s not just that I played with them, but three of the best musicians I’ve seen. The singer sings like he breathes. It gives me goosebumps just saying, wow. The mandolin player used to play this incredible riff behind his head on the mandolin. And he could pick up any instrument and play something decent on it, straight off.

You Can Search for Jason Barnard’s Band, The Barking Dogs, on YouTube

[00:20:08] Paul Harvey: Are there any recordings or YouTubes of this that we could see?

[00:20:11] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. There are four albums. If you go to YouTube and look up The Barking Dogs, the Ace of Spades, we did a version of the Ace of Spades, the Motorhead song. And I’m in the band, but it’s not because of me. 

[00:20:22] Paul Harvey: I’m definitely going to post those links. Those links will definitely be on the podcast because it’s fascinating. Because when you start saying something like that, they got to be listened to. So, I will put those links in.

Because Every Member Was Good at Their Role, the Band Played Incredibly Well and Sounded Really Good

[00:20:32] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. And that’s it is that I think I can say, I think that we really, really rocked it. It’s solid, it’s fast, it’s punky folky, and it isn’t because I’m in it, but I was part of it and I’m very proud to be part of it. But when you listen to the singer and you look at his face, he’s bonkers, deep down he’s bonkers. He just has this thing. The mandolin player, you’re going, how does he do that? I’m standing there playing double bass and keeping time. I’m in time. You can see that I really took Franz’s words to heart, and I’m knocking it out. And then the drummer guy called Marcus Godwyn, absolutely nuts guy and incredibly good, so good. I’m lost for words.

[00:21:19] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And the thing was, all of us were very, very good at the thing we had to do. And all of us, for some reason, it gelled. When I think about that, I think we, I was going to say deserve, but that’s not fair. It would’ve been such a lovely thing to have been successful, because I think it would’ve been positive, not only for us, but for the world. I think everybody sounds good.

When the Band Ended, Jason Barnard Started to Write Songs for Kids and Incorporated It Into a Cartoon in a Website

[00:21:43] Paul Harvey: It would’ve been a different journey. That’s the journey you’re on, the journey of the struggle you were on. And if you had been successful, it would’ve been another journey. There would’ve been another chapter to the conversation, wouldn’t it? That’s how it’d been. So, obviously, it lasted for 10 years. And then you went on to do other things. What happened? Did you make a decision to break apart? What happened? Did you all got serious and started settling down? 

[00:22:07] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): No. What I’m now retroactively, retrospectively a little bit disappointed about is they all left because they thought that it wasn’t going anywhere, which it probably wasn’t. But I ended up standing on my own thinking, where have all the band members go? It’s just me. And we had a joke in the band is what would be the worst possible audience. And we all agreed kids. That would be the worst. And then I ended the band or the band stopped, and I thought, what am I going to do now?

Because Record Companies Turned Him Down, Jason Barnard Recorded the Songs Himself and Made a Cartoon Together With His Wife

[00:22:41] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And I started writing songs. And they all thought, I thought that sounds like something a kid would listen to. So, I started trying to write kids songs. And I was a bit embarrassed, to be honest, because I’ve been saying, oh, I don’t want to play for kids. And it turned out deep down I think I probably did, and I just wanted to agree with everybody else so that we didn’t have a fight. And I wrote these songs and took them around the record companies. And they said, you can’t do kids songs, you’re a folk punk musician, we’re not having that.

[00:23:05] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, I couldn’t get any record company to sign them on, so I recorded them myself in my house and still they didn’t want it. So, my wife drew some characters, cartoon characters that we then turned into a website using Flash in 1998. We launched basically what it was at the time was a CD-ROM online for kids based on children’s songs sung by a blue dog and a yellow koala.

The Website for Kids Was Successful and Eventually They Made a TV Series With the Cartoons

[00:23:36] Paul Harvey: Sounds brilliant. Did it work?

[00:23:39] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. We ended up with 5 million visits a month and a hundred million page views in 2007. 

[00:23:46] Paul Harvey: Wow. Did the local companies come knocking at that point?

[00:23:50] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): By that time, I built a company. We moved to Mauritius to do all of this. And the company did very, very, very well. And we ended up making a TV series with ITV International, so the record companies didn’t matter anymore to me.

Jason Barnard Did His Work Because He Wanted to Have a Positive Contribution to the World and It Made Him Happy

[00:24:05] Paul Harvey: Indeed. Mauritius. That’s another journey. Gosh, this is such a rich conversation with you. Is this being driven by, what’s this being driven by? Because I always come back to passion and purpose at the end of the day. Where’s the driver for you?

[00:24:21] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): To be honest with you, I don’t really know. All of it was I really want to do this and I really think this is going to be good. And I’m confident that I’m doing it with people who will make it really good, and that it’s valuable to the world. And if I do it, it will be a positive contribution to the world and make me happy doing it. And if I get that combination together, I just don’t give up.

The Reasons Jason Barnard and His Family Moved to Mauritius

[00:24:46] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And the other thing, moving to Mauritius, it was in 1998 or 1999. And people were saying, you can do the internet from anywhere. It was the beginning of the internet and people go, wow, you can do it anywhere, but nobody was. And I thought, oh, alright, where should we do it from? And my wife, we were in Paris, she was a little bit ill, and we had a young daughter. And we decided we needed to get out of Paris. And the choice was south of France or the other side of the world. And my personality is punk as I’ve been, since I was living with the cows in the countryside. Yeah. If I shouldn’t do it, I’m definitely going to give it a go.

[00:25:23] Paul Harvey: Mauritius won. Yeah, obviously, yes. Given that choice.

[00:25:26] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It’s exciting.

[00:25:27] Paul Harvey: Yes, absolutely.

[00:25:28] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It’s exciting and different and slightly edgy and a bit dangerous. And it’s something that most people wouldn’t dare try.

Some of the Problems Jason Barnard Encountered While Doing Their Work on Mauritius

[00:25:35] Paul Harvey: One of my other podcast guest actually did something silly to set up some of that. Because when he got to that location, there was no internet. 

[00:25:43] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): We had that problem. We did have internet, but that is actually a problem. You don’t think about it. What is surprising is how many obvious things you don’t think about beforehand. And that was the first one. You turn up, and we had 64K internet, and it cost us 1,000 euros a month. That’s insane. So, we moved to a really tropical island, where everything is supposed to be cheap, to run this website and ended up paying an absolute fortune. Most of the money from the company in the first years went to paying the internet connection to actually be able to put the site online.

Having a Hard Time Finding Employees, Who Are Web Developers and Can Do Technological Stuff, and Ended Up Learning How to Develop Himself 

[00:26:18] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And the other problem is I moved there with this internet site. I was the blue dog, writing the songs, and making the games, and writing the stories with my wife. And I moved to Mauritius. And we were going to employ developers to build the platform, to deliver the content, and run the servers and distribute it all and all that techy stuff. And we turned up in Mauritius, and I advertised for a developer. And the applicants, one of them turned up and said, I know a bit of Excel. That’s not development. That’s not web development. That’s not programming. That’s office work. And what I then realised is I was in trouble, in inverted commas, in the sense that we didn’t have the people available to be able to do this work.

[00:27:03] Paul Harvey: Yep.

[00:27:03] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, a couple of things came out, both of which I found interesting. I found, obviously I’m exaggerating that there was nobody. We did find some people. And they were writing this PHP code, script server code things, and MySQL. And I was looking at the code and I think that can’t be right, that looks really weird. It doesn’t look like it’s sensible at all. And I bought a book from Amazon, had it delivered to Mauritius, and it took 3 weeks to get there or whatever it would be. And I read it over a weekend and then went back into work and sat down with the developer and said, right, here’s the book I’ve read. Here’s the bits I’ve marked out. Here’s what I think we should be doing. Here’s what you are doing. Can we try and make it match a bit more?

[00:27:49] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And over the next few months, actually, it was an interesting experience, because I would read it the weekend then come back in. And we’d sit down with the developer and rework how it was all built. So, I ended up learning how to develop alongside somebody, who I would say had talent for development but just didn’t have the experience. And so, we learned together, and it was absolutely lovely.

If You Do the Developing Stuff Yourself, You Can Adapt to the Technology Along the Way

[00:28:10] Paul Harvey: But you’re not alone on this, because one of my other podcast guest, the grass guy, he ended up developing a lawn mower app. It’s a bit like Uber for lawn care in the States.

[00:28:22] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Oh, right. Okay.

[00:28:24] Paul Harvey: And so, the Uber drivers are the grass cutters. But it took him 10 years to develop and release the app, because they employed people and it was crap. And eventually, it ended up with the team of them, him and his partners sit down and make it themselves in the day, because, they couldn’t get anyone to make it properly for them. And that was in the US. 

[00:28:44] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Good point. I think there is that whole thing. I was talking to somebody about it earlier on, is that when you’re developing that kind of thing, you say, well, this is what I want to do, but you don’t know what the restrictions are in terms of technology. You don’t know what the opportunities are in the technology. And you’re guessing. And if you do it yourself, you can adapt along the way.

When You’re Working Through a Developer, It’s Difficult to See What’s Really Happening in the Code 

[00:29:04] Paul Harvey: I think that’s the thing about creators have, isn’t it? I think when you’ve got a real clear sense of what you want, what you’re trying to achieve, trying to communicate that and getting a techy person to take that idea and make it yours, it’s really difficult. Because, yeah, it works out, but that’s not how I want it to work. That’s how it works. They don’t see that connection. My wife is similar. She’s the creative thing around websites and systems. And she gets so frustrated with software that won’t do what she wants it to do. So, I know exactly what you mean by that. 

[00:29:38] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. A hundred percent. And the other thing is that what you thought would be the right way to do, it turns out not to be the right way to do it, and you need to change course. And it’s not a major change of course. It’s just adapting to the reality that actually appears as you go through the process. And when you’re working through a developer, that’s very difficult to do because you don’t see what’s happening in the deep dark holes of the code itself.

Jason Barnard on Making It Work Even If They Are in a Still Developing Country and on Following His Deadlines

[00:30:04] Paul Harvey: So, look, you got this working by the sounds of it and obviously, you rose to the challenges of living in what is essentially a third world country on some level, I guess, and made it work.

[00:30:18] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. A kind of third world country, but not really. It’s part of Africa, so it’s an African nation, but it’s dominated by the Indian community that the English colonialism brought in from India. We are a French community from the French colonial times.

[00:30:37] Paul Harvey: But it’s like a country which is aspirational, but just doesn’t quite have the infrastructure that you’re expecting, that you’re used to. And you made it work by the sounds of it.

Managing to Release Content Every Month to Avoid Disappointing Children and Learning a Good Lesson About Reliability and Consistency 

[00:30:46] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. A hundred percent. We managed it. And it was a struggle at times. I remember when the server crashed. And the other thing is we were dealing with children. And children don’t understand that the site is down or the developers got flu, so he can’t actually build the content for this. Because we would update with new games, songs, and stories on the first day of every month.

[00:31:13] Paul Harvey: Right.

[00:31:13] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And I was at the end of the production line because I was doing all the putting the games in place and putting them online. So, every last day of the month, I would spend all night just updating and making sure it was all in place for the kids when they woke up in the morning, as it were.

[00:31:28] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And that was a really good lesson in reliability, being reliable, being consistent. Because if I missed one, we would get literally hundreds of emails from parents, very frustrated because their kids were frustrated. And as parents, it’s very difficult to explain to your child that something they expected or had been promised did not turn up. And they blame their parents. They don’t blame me. And so, through both sympathy for the parents and their situation also, because we didn’t want to receive a hundred emails in a day, you got it done. And that was interesting.

Jason Barnard’s Cartoon Series Lasted 10 Years Before He Became an SEO Consultant

[00:32:07] Paul Harvey: Yeah. So, how long did that last? How long were you a cartoon character?

[00:32:12] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): 10 years.

[00:32:13] Paul Harvey: Okay. Another 10 years. This is becoming a theme.

[00:32:19] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It is actually. Because in the next 10 years, I was an SEO consultant. And I’ve now moved into a slightly different field. So, it does seem to be cycles of 10 years.

What Happened With Jason Barnard’s Cartoon Website After Experiencing Success?  

[00:32:30] Paul Harvey: Fair enough. So, what happened then? Obviously, you’re now back in Paris. Did you leave Mauritius for a reason? What brought you back to your country? 

[00:32:40] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. A bit like the band, everybody left. Well, actually, my business partner, I made the mistake as a creative kind of person, who’s very naive and I was a blue dog. I actually went a little bit mad, I think, because I got so into being the blue dog that me and the blue dog became the same thing. And I honestly think I went a little bit loopy. And he took advantage of that, in my opinion, and took the company, basically, and pushed me out. At which point, I had to find another career.

[00:33:16] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, the site is still going. The cartoon still exists. And he’s just making a hash of making anything decent out of it. It’s quite depressing to see how we had, as I said, 5 million visits, a hundred million page views a month in 2007. I don’t know how many there are now, but the site is falling apart. It’s desperately depressing.

Comparing How Jason Barnard’s Business Partner Took Their Business for Himself on Football Terms 

[00:33:40] Paul Harvey: Yeah. You hear that, a few things like that. I think in Dyson’s early work, his early wheelbarrow and bits and pieces. He was stitched up by someone on that one. 

[00:33:53] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. It’s that thing. I try to explain it to my business partner in these terms, but he didn’t understand. Maybe because he doesn’t come from the north of England. It was that thing of the little posh kid who couldn’t play football, who owned the football and wanted to make up the rules and wanted to be the centre forward. And then when you said you are not going to be the centre forward because we’ve got a really good centre forward, you can play left in field or whatever it might be. They go on a real strut and said, if I can’t be centre forward in school or the goals, I’m taking my ball and going home. And it’s that kind of sulky thing.

[00:34:29] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And then he takes the ball and goes home, and he sits on his own with his football and go, well, now what am I going to do? And that’s the point is they don’t know what to do with what they’ve got, but they want it anyway. And they’re willing to take it away from everybody else out of whatever motivation they have. And you just say, you end up sitting in the corner on your own with your football, ruining everybody else’s pleasure because you want to be the centre forward. 

[00:34:55] Paul Harvey: Well, I guess that’s the point in it. Everyone’s on a journey and that’s their journey. 

[00:34:59] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Good point. I was just getting quite upset about that. But yes, after 15 years, I’ve just realised that I could just say, go on your journey with your football, sitting in your house all alone.

Trying to Find Remote Work and Pitching to Clients in the UK, Which Turned Into an SEO Career Later On

[00:35:11] Paul Harvey: That’s all you can do. If they don’t want to play with you, that’s just. So, obviously, you had to go and find a new job because you lost your blue dog. So, what happened next? 

[00:35:24] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Well, I was stuck in Mauritius basically, abandoned in Mauritius, as it were, as a blue dog. And I had to find a way to make a living. And basically, I just pitched for work in the UK, remotely, in order to make the money to be able to move back. And my pitch said, I built a website for kids, 5 million visits a month, a million visits from Google a month. If I can do that for a kids site, think what I can do for your company. And turned it into an SEO career, which lasted for about 10 years, I suppose.

[00:35:59] Paul Harvey: What sort of date was that?

[00:36:02] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Well, between 2000 and late 2008. Yeah. Late 2008, I started and then took me 3 years to make the money to uproot and come back to Paris with the family. And it’s quite difficult restarting. That’s an interesting point as well. I hadn’t really thought about it. Starting from, well, restarting rather as a remote worker in 2007-2008 was actually pretty difficult, because people expected to actually meet you. And pitching to people and working with them long term without being able to meet them at that time was really quite difficult, it was a difficult trick to play.

The Difficult Stage in Jason Barnard’s Life: Trying to Rebuild a Career Whilst Pulling Himself Out of Depression

[00:36:48] Paul Harvey: I’m impressed that you did it at your fact and also that you, because being pushed out like that and having your toys taken away like that in a way. And well, it’s not just your toys, it’s your livelihood. And it’s not just your livelihood, it’s your family’s livelihood. That must have been a real blow. That must have been really, really hard. 

[00:37:10] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. I don’t tell that story very often. Obviously, I know what depression is. I know what clinical depression is. I’ve been there. That was probably one of the reasons it took so long. I got dragged through the courts through countless court cases that cost me an absolute fortune. It wasn’t just trying to rebuild a career. It was trying to rebuild a career whilst pulling myself out of depression and also paying heavy court bills. Because part of the strategy, I believe, was if we can bankrupt him, we can get it all.

[00:37:53] Paul Harvey: Yeah. 

[00:37:55] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): At the time, I took it, well, the other thing is I took it very personally.

[00:38:01] Paul Harvey: Well, I’m not surprised, and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t take it personally. Because at the end of the day, when people go for you like that, there’s obviously a personal aspect to it. 

[00:38:12] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): But yeah, I agree. I have the right to. I’m not rubbish for having done that, but it isn’t helpful in terms of getting out of the situation.

Jason Barnard’s Period of Thinking of What He’s Going to Do Next Lasted for a Year

[00:38:21] Paul Harvey: No, it’s not helpful, but it’s also very hard. No one goes to that without suffering, taking the blows, do they? 

[00:38:33] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): No. A hundred percent. I think all of these kind of stories, it is really a story about starting, building, getting somewhere. It all falls apart very quickly. The band splitting up was literally like a few weeks. And then starting to rebuild something else. And one of the interesting things is, as it’s just finished, you think, what am I going to do now? And that’s this big empty moment, which is probably the worst of all of them. You go, I don’t know what I want to do.

[00:39:07] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, you start doing something and you realise you’re not that motivated. You can’t get yourself to do it. And that period of thinking what’s going to be next, I’m going to generalise here, usually lasts about a year for me. And that’s a really difficult period because it feels like I’m not going anywhere. And I think that’s maybe part of the motivation that you were talking about earlier is I’m motivated if I’m going somewhere.

What Are the Things That Helped Jason Barnard Pull Himself Out of His Dark Situation? 

[00:39:32] Paul Harvey: What tools did you use to pull yourself out of it? Because this is big stuff for people I have met. 

[00:39:43] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): A lot of determination, a lot of getting up in the morning and thinking, well, I’m not going to let it beat me. It sounds a bit, I don’t know, Americany, self motivationally thingy. You go up in the morning and you think I really, really, really, really can’t face this. And you just say, I have to face it because, and that’s the other thing, I have a wife and child. My wife was obviously capable of working, but we were in Mauritius. And Mauritius, as you said, it’s an aspiring third world country. Getting a job in Mauritius that pays any decent money is very difficult. So, obviously, that remote work comes into play.

[00:40:23] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, it was a question of saying, well, I need to get up. I need to make this work because I need to fend for or I need to provide for myself and for my family. I need to also get myself back on track, because I can’t spend my days moping around, looking miserable, and trying to figure out what it is I’m going to do.

[00:40:47] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And what was another hard hit was that we then created two more cartoon characters. And our business partner created a trademark in the US of something we had created and then said to the Mauritian court, this is my copyright, they have to stop. So, he actually started trying to create, what he was doing created a situation where it was very difficult for me to restart something creative because of that danger. And Mauritius, great though as a country, I wouldn’t, no, I don’t want to go anywhere near the court system there.

When You Can Finally Stop Talking About Your Dark Situation, You Will Stop Poisoning and Pull Out Yourself From It 

[00:41:33] Paul Harvey: No. A lot of them have. Yeah. I can hear you. You are very amazing that you’re not more bitter than you actually could be.

[00:41:41] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Oh, I was.

[00:41:42] Paul Harvey: Because, yes, I can imagine. But the thing about bitterness and anger and these sort of stuff, because the trouble with it is it’s like, how is it phrased, it’s like drinking poison yourself and hating someone else for it. It’s more toxic to you than it is to the person you’re hating. 

[00:42:05] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Well, that’s a very interesting point, because one thing that I used to do is I read a lot of Confucius. There isn’t a lot of Confucius to read. You just have to re-read the same book over and over again. The fundamental basics of Confucius are pretty simple, but I find it very useful to read it. And one of the things Confucius says is don’t go, well, I’m paraphrasing obviously because he wouldn’t have said it quite like this, don’t go on and on and on about it to everybody you meet because a) it pants off people, but b) every time you tell it again, you’re bringing it all to the surface. And you are vomiting this entire story and it’s poisoning you, which is what made me think of that, again. And as soon as you can manage to stop talking about it all the time, you will stop poisoning yourself and you’ll start to be able to pull out. I’m paraphrasing in a very, very blase manner.

[00:42:55] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And I found that because when you’re in that kind of situation, when you’re really, really, really in a bad place in your brain, you want to talk about it incessantly because it’s the only thing you can think about. You become so self-obsessed that the only thing that should interest anyone in the entire universe is my story of my miserable, miserable situation, and they should listen to me moan about it for hours. And people will. And then after a while, they get bored and they move away. And you stop seeing them so much and you wonder why. And you realise that not only do they get bored of it, but you are getting bored of your own stupid story. And forcing yourself to stop talking about it is possibly the best advice I gave myself. And once I stopped talking about it, it doesn’t disappear straight away, but it certainly gets better.

Other Situations That Are Similar to Jason Barnard’s Condition and Techniques on How to Get Over It 

[00:43:51] Paul Harvey: It’s fascinating how these conditions are so similar. At the end of the day, the gates have changed a lot on the inside. Only we can choose when we are ready to move forward or change in anything. And what you just mentioned to me about people getting bored, it’s the same around grief. So when someone dies, and this is horrendous, I know, but someone dies and you talk about it to your friends and family.

[00:44:20] Paul Harvey: So, my father did this. My father spoke about my mom dying for months and months and months and months and months. Now, it was okay for the first month. It was okay for the second month. But after the second month, we’d all moved on, but he hadn’t. And he couldn’t move on. And so, what he would do is try and find people that would support him in that conversation, so he could keep talking about it. So, yeah, I know there are techniques and means of getting over this. And you sound like you found, Confucius was yours, but there’s always a process for this.

Some People and Ideas That Helped Jason Barnard in Facing His Negative Thoughts

[00:44:54] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. Well, actually, it was an interesting situation in Mauritius because we lived in a small village on the seaside. And there was a little supermarket, and literally three times, people came over to me and said, Jason, I’ve heard that you’ve got a several number of problems. Could we have a chat? And I would end up talking to people and they say, how did you get out of this situation? How did you deal with that? It was actually really interesting because the tips and tricks I found turned out to help other people.

[00:45:25] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And one of them that I found spectacularly helpful was that people who have, for example, agoraphobia and other fear based problems, very, very, very, very difficult to deal with. I’ve been there, not for an extensive period, but I actually talked to my GP, who turned out to be an incredibly smart, very, very kind guy who helped enormously. And basically, he explained to me why it happened, then he explained to me how you can start to stop it happening. And I found that understanding of the physical reasons behind it helped me to deal with the functional question.

[00:46:12] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, basically, what happens is you have a negative thought or a fearful thought. You think, oh, that scared me. You get a shot of adrenaline that lasts 20 seconds. If within that 20 seconds you have another fearful thought, there will be another shot of adrenaline. If within that 20 seconds you’ve got another, and so on. And what happens is it piles up and piles up and piles up. And your body can get rid of the adrenaline in 20 seconds. But if it gets another shot before it gets rid of the first lot, it’s accumulating. And what then happens is you get this accumulation of adrenaline that makes you feel increasingly fearful. So, it worsens the fear problem.

Fainting From the Fear Actually Helps in Shutting Your Body Down and Saving Your Life

[00:46:50] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And at one point, your whole body is just freaking out. And when you faint, and this is what he said, it, you think you’re going to die. But actually what it is, it’s your brain is switching off your body because otherwise you will die. So, your brain just goes, I’m overriding this entire lot, and it closes your body down. You faint, and it saves your life. So if you look at that faint moment of saving your life and not as death, which people who have panic attacks, I’m obviously generalising, but there is a tendency for that. It’s actually saving your life and not the opposite.

[00:47:33] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And so, a) you can get rid of that ultimate fear, which is the fainting moment, and b) you can say my short term aim is to keep calm for 20 seconds. And that goal, if you can manage to do it once, you know you can do it twice. And if you can do it twice, you can and so on and so forth. And it doesn’t work every time, and you’ve got to accept. And that’s the other thing is two steps forward, one step back. That kind of process is really important.

Understanding the Process Allowed Jason Barnard to Control Things and Deal With It

[00:48:00] Paul Harvey: It’s about building stronger connections into the positive and weakening the power and the bond of those negative connections. And I really, really understand, really resonate with some of that stuff. So, I had this thing.

[00:48:15] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Just that one thing about the 20 seconds, just to finish that is really for me, and this is just for me, so I can’t actually say this will work for anybody else or everybody else. But for me, it was understanding the process allowed me to give myself a simple goal that got me through to the point where I could say, I know I can control it, I know I can deal with it. I just have to get through that 20 seconds. And then things are going to be manageable. So, I just wanted to finish saying that because I don’t want to end it like that. So, off you go, your turn.

Paul Harvey’s Similar Experience of Going Down the Spiral and What He Did to Climb Out of It

[00:48:47] Paul Harvey: I didn’t mean to interrupt you. I know from this perspective that I’m not in anywhere near some of the situations you have, but I’ve had my low moments or my low days. And I started to recognise that it was a spiral, and I was going down. And I recognise if I started the day in the wrong way, by the end of the day, I could be under the time or the desk. And so once I realised that, I can catch myself on the spiral. Okay, I’ve got to reverse that trend. I’ve got to start climbing out of the spiral now and stop going down the hole. So, that’s how I have something similar.

[00:49:27] Paul Harvey: And it can happen, for me, it used to be like having a bad conversation with someone or a client or having a difficult conversation with a client or someone and it didn’t go well. And it would send me into the voice. And so, that’s where I’d end up, and I have to go. So, what I have is I have some positive things around here or I have some feedback that someone’s given me that makes me feel good, so I go and read it. No. What was just said to me is bollocks, and that’s the truth. It’s more about them than me.

Managing to Break Out of the Dark Situation for a Millisecond Is a Start to Eventually Get Out of It

[00:50:00] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. A hundred percent. And that whole thing you are talking about cyclical thoughts. That’s obviously something that a lot of people have. I certainly have it. You start thinking and analysing and going through this thought process and going through a spiral. Your analysis is to go down into this spiral. Mine is that it’s a spiral that’s going out of control.

[00:50:21] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And what I found is if I could manage to break it for a millisecond, the spiral stops and it would start again. But every time I broke it, it would break for slightly longer. And after a while, you end up being able to break it for 2 seconds, 3 seconds, 4 seconds. After a while, you can break it for a few minutes. It takes time. But the first time you managed to break it for that millisecond, you say that was pretty pointless, because it’s just gone off again. But that first millisecond is going to build to a second and a third, a similar idea to what I was saying before. To the point at which, obviously I think we never really truly get rid of these bonkers problems we have.

The Journey of How Jason Barnard Went Back to Paris, Met Potential Clients, and Realised the Importance of Brand SERPs 

[00:50:59] Paul Harvey: We’re a part of our history. And you can’t wipe the slate and start again, can you? We’re people of a certain age. And we bear the battle scars of what’s gone before. So, yeah, it’s fascinating. So, all right. You got back to Paris. You managed to do it back to Paris. Where has the journey taken you since then? 

[00:51:25] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Well, when I got back to Paris, things got a little bit, well, got easier in the sense that I could actually go and meet people as clients. And I built up a client base in France. And I now specialise in what I call Brand SERPs, the search result for an exact match brand name, what comes up when somebody searches your brand name or your personal name, and Knowledge Panels, which is a long story, which we won’t get into. And as far as I know, I’m the only person who specialises in this. And it’s phenomenally important for all businesses and people. What Google shows your audience when they search your brand name needs to be positive, accurate, and convincing.

[00:52:03] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And how I got into that is actually quite fun in the sense that I go back to Paris, and then I would go into these meetings with my potential clients, my prospects. I would talk to them and say, oh, I’m going to do your digital marketing. And they would say, great, wonderful, we’re with you, Jason. I’m quite convincing when I put my mind to it, I suppose. And then I’d walk out of the room, and 50% would sign and 50% wouldn’t. And I thought 50%, that’s pretty rubbish, given how enthusiastic they were.

Jason Barnard’s Clients Googled His Name and Saw His Work as a Cartoon Blue Dog and He Realised He Has to Influence His Google Search Results

[00:52:39] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And one of the clients who did sign, I said to them, we were talking about, I can’t remember quite what it was. And they said, oh, you know what we did? As soon as you walked out of the room, we googled your name and what came up was a blue dog. It was a blue dog, and we thought that’s quite fun. And then I thought, actually, if they weren’t that kind of fun person

[00:53:00] Paul Harvey: Fun oriented, they wouldn’t see it. Yes.

[00:53:01] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. They always say, this guy’s a blue dog. He’s a cartoon person and a musician. He’s not looking after our digital strategy. And that’s why they didn’t sign. So then I thought, what do I need to do? I need to influence the results on that search result to demote the blue dog to a small portion. It’s part of my story, so it needs to be there. And it’s fun and it’s interesting. And it sets me a little bit apart from the other digital marketing experts, I think.

[00:53:29] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And so, I just went around, went about making sure that that result reflects me as a digital marketer today and my credibility and authority and expertise within the digital marketing field, which it does. If you search my name, Jason Barnard, you will see Search Engine Land, Search Engine Journal, Semrush, Twitter boxes, Knowledge Panel, WordLift, all these.

The Cartoon Blue Dog Is Still Part of Jason Barnard’s Brand SERP; It’s Just Not Prominent to Give Way to His Digital Marketing Image 

[00:53:50] Paul Harvey: And the blue dog is now on page two. 

[00:53:53] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): No. That’s the point is you get the blue dog in the Knowledge Panel. So, it’s on the right hand side saying Jason Barnard was a blue dog. So, it’s still there. It’s just not prominent. 

[00:54:03] Paul Harvey: I’m going to park this bit because I’m interested in this bit. I’m going to park that. And I need to be careful because I will get geeked out on this because I’m a marketer too, so I need to be ready. I’m going to park it. So, let’s get to some of my questions, and we’re going to get back to all of that in a moment. This is going to be a long podcast. This is definitely going to be split into two because there’s no way I can learn everything that we talked about in a normal podcast, which is fine. I’m really enjoying myself. 

[00:54:27] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): You’re going to have the first half is the bonkers mad person, and the second is going to be the digital marketer.

How Does Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Measure Success: If He’s Enjoying It and Making Enough to Pay the Bills 

[00:54:34] Paul Harvey: Ah, I don’t know. We’ll work it out. So look, let’s go back into, obviously you’ve had the whole journey. So, what was success for you? How do you measure success?

[00:54:48] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): If I’m enjoying it. 

[00:54:49] Paul Harvey: Is that it? Yeah, I guess if I’m with you.

[00:54:53] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And making enough money to pay the bills, obviously. So, success is making enough money to pay the bills and to provide for my family. My daughter is now doing or about to do a PhD. I’ve been able to support her in her education. I think, for me, that’s very important. She hasn’t got big student debts. We managed to get her to the PhD level without any debt at all, which I’m very, very pleased about.

[00:55:22] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Because I think it’s important from my perspective that my daughter, my family, the people who rely on me or the people, that’s not the way to say it, the people around me, the people, who I feel responsibility towards, can rely on me and are supported by me in the way that I think is correct. And my daughter, obviously she’s going to do a PhD, then she’s going to fly off and make her own living. And that’s wonderful. And I want her to have that.

[00:55:51] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): So, obviously incredibly important, but the second is that I’m actually enjoying what I’m doing. When I get up in the morning, and maybe that does come back to the whole period in Mauritius, is I know what it’s like to wake up in the morning and really not be able to face the day. I want to wake up in the morning and I want to think, I’m looking forward to this.

The Best Things and Worst Things About Playing Music and Touring

[00:56:10] Paul Harvey: That’s a good perspective, actually. That’s a fantastic perspective. 

[00:56:13] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): But that’s what I was doing before. It was just that one period that I was thinking I can’t face it. Waking up and saying, I’m going to go and play the double bass in a bar in Britain, playing punk folk music, drinking beer, what’s not to look forward to?

[00:56:26] Paul Harvey: Indeed. Absolutely. Perhaps not at 9 in the morning, maybe later in the day, but there we go. 

[00:56:32] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. Good point. The worst thing about the touring was we would wake up at six o’clock in the morning, having gone to bed at three o’clock in the morning, to drive 9 hours to go to the next place, to do a sound check, to get ready for the gig. It was a pretty tough physical cycle.

[00:56:51] Paul Harvey: Yeah. It was not a lot of sleep, I imagine.

[00:56:53] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Pity me, please. 

[00:56:54] Paul Harvey: Absolutely. Yes. It goes to my heart.

[00:56:56] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): I was 22. So when you’re 22, you think that’s okay.

What Does Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) See as His Contribution to the World? 

[00:57:00] Paul Harvey: Oh, dear. So, what do you see as your contribution? 

[00:57:05] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Well, I think there are 4 Barking Dogs records. I think they’re positive in the sense that people still buy them and people still write to me occasionally saying, oh, I’ve got your album and I love it. During that period of playing gigs, we made people happy. We made a really good party atmosphere. They got drunk. They had fun. They listened to good music. And I think we contributed to people’s musical awakening as teens and early 20s. I went to the garage in a town in the south of France and a guy went, oh, you’re Jason Barnard, I’ve got all your albums. I went on a plane. The stewardess looked at me really weirdly, and I thought, oh, she’s going to throw me off the plane. And she came up to me and said, you’re Jason Barnard, I used to come and see you in a concert.

[00:57:59] Paul Harvey: Oh, wow. That must feel really good. 

[00:58:02] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It doesn’t happen often, but it is. It makes you feel like you’ve contributed something to other people’s lives without necessarily knowing them. And then the blue dog and yellow koala thing, when you’ve got 5 million visits a month, I would estimate probably 50 million children have seen the blue dog and yellow koala. And my wife and I have affected their lives positively.

Some of the Stories Where Boowa and Kwala Had Impacted Lives of Children

[00:58:28] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): A grandma once wrote to us and said, I’d like to thank you because I babysit a lot for my grandchildren. They never said please and thank you. And since watching your cartoons, they say please and thank you all the time. And it was only then that I realised that we’d written please and thank you into the script. We didn’t actually write it in the script. I say it so naturally that Boowa the blue dog says please and thank you. And I hadn’t realised it all the time. And another one was a mother wrote to us and said, my son is autistic. He’s 22. He can’t focus on anything except your cartoon. Thank you, because you give him and me some peace. 

[00:59:07] Paul Harvey: Yeah. When you get those, you know you’ve done a good job, don’t you? Those are the things that make you feel good. 

[00:59:16] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And whatever happened in the end, we’ve got two music albums. They’re available online. There’s a TV series available online that you can watch. There are kids now watching the TV series because I’ve been talking about it on podcasts like this. So, it’s an awakening or communicating with a different generation of children.

More Stories Where People Recognised Jason Barnard’s Voice as Boowa’s Voice

[00:59:36] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): But then I also did a video on YouTube. Sorry, I’m laughing because it’s really. I did a video that was talking about the five P’s of content marketing and rubbish SEO advice as always from we, digital marketers, who think we know it all. And I did this video and then 6 months later, I found a comment underneath that said, I’ll bet you don’t know this, but you sound just like Boowa the blue dog. To which I replied, I do know it because I am Boowa the blue dog. And that was really funny.

[01:00:11] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And then I visited somebody’s house. The wife of a best friend had her niece around for dinner. And I pitched up at her house, walked in the door and said, hello everybody, it’s me. And the niece just looked at me. Her entire face just dropped. And I said, what’s wrong? Because I’d never met her. And she said, but you are Boowa. And it was this complete, you see it on their face, and it’s just this stunned moment. And you think, wow, she had been watching Boowa and Kwala as a child and she’s now 22. And she was just stunned to have this.

Realising That You Had Affected People’s Lives Can Be Encouraging, Pleasing, and Flattering

[01:00:55] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And if you think back to your childhood memories of the programs, how would you feel if you met or you suddenly heard the voice of one of your favourite characters, completely out of context, completely unexpectedly. I look at all the, Roobarb and Custard or Barbapapa or whatever it might be, all the magic roundabout. These are all things from our years.

[01:01:21] Paul Harvey: They are. Absolutely. Yeah.

[01:01:22] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): 30 years later, you still remember and it’s deeply ingrained in your being. So, I find that encouraging and pleasing and flattering, of course. I would be a liar if I didn’t think it was flattering.

[01:01:37] Paul Harvey: I have to admit it doesn’t happen very often, but it has happened, where I’ve been somewhere and someone says to me, oh, you’ve got a podcast, haven’t you? I’ve heard it. And they recognise me. And you go, yeah. It makes you stand a bit taller for a moment. Yeah, haven’t I? 

[01:01:52] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And that is the point. Not only do you have a podcast, but people actually listen to it, people pay attention, which means that you are contributing to the world in a positive and public manner, which is hats off to you for that. I think that’s great.

What Was Jason Barnard’s Situation When the Pandemic Suddenly Happened and What Did He Do?

[01:02:09] Paul Harvey: Thank you. Well, hats off to you for everything you’ve done. I’m really enjoying this conversation. So, look, what is the one question I haven’t asked you that I should have done? 

[01:02:19] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): What did I do just before the show? Well, in fact, what happened is it’s going a little bit mad, the whole COVID thing has. I was a digital nomad travelling around the world. I’d just gone right around the world from Paris to Australia to Seattle and back to Paris again. And that was when lockdown happened. So, I was flying. I was not literally flying obviously, but I was on a roll of being a digital nomad. I’m living in hotels, going to conferences, and generally being a bit, how can we say it, irresponsible-ish at 52 years old. And then lockdown happened. And my daughter who has a flat in Paris kindly let me sleep behind the sofa. And I’ve been sleeping behind the sofa over for a year.

[01:03:07] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And I was talking about it to somebody else the other day. And it occurred to me that I’m so optimistic and naive that I just kept thinking, it’s going to start again. So, I just didn’t bother finding a new flat or anything. And every couple of weeks, I’d think, no, it’s not. And then I’d build it back up again. So, I would keep planning to move or to travel a couple of weeks ahead. And I spent a year or probably most of the year in fact or 9 months in denial.

When Yoast Asked for Jason Barnard’s Services, He Built a SaaS Platform Called Kalicube Pro to Help Him With His Work

[01:03:33] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And then Joost de Valk from Yoast plugin fame wanted to work with me on their Knowledge Graph and Panel on the aspect of Google understanding, which is what I do with the Knowledge Panels. And I’d been working ad hoc for clients for years on this, basically travelling around the world, doing ad hoc work, helping clients with their Brand SERPs and their Knowledge Panels in Google. And then when I started working with the Joost, I just thought, actually, he’s really intelligent. He really knows what he’s talking about. I have to up my game. I have to be up to the mark because I’m working with somebody for whom I have enormous respect.

[01:04:19] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And so, I started digging around because one thing is I delivered some work and he said, oh, but what about this and what about that? And I thought, oh, that wasn’t up to the map, was it? So, I then built a machine to start helping me do it so that I could do better work. And then I realised that, in fact, it’s now becoming a SaaS platform called Kalicube Pro that helps you with your Brand SERP. The SERP is search engine results page, what appears when somebody googles your brand name, but also the Knowledge Panel, what Google puts on the right hand side on desktop, where it’s showing what it thinks is fact about you.

[01:04:52] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And obviously, when Google is showing fact, people believe it. So if it’s incorrect, it’s really dangerous for you. You need to start controlling what Google has understood about you, because we’re in a world now where Google understands the world a little bit like a human being, obviously not as well. The problem as well is Google’s got a brilliant memory. So if it gets it wrong today…

If Google Understands Who You Are, It Can Push to You Information That You Are Looking for Without Even Asking for It

[01:05:11] Paul Harvey: I heard someone said that whenever you do a search, that search, when you push the button on a search, there’s something like 70,000 different data points have been worked at that moment in time.

[01:05:23] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Wow. Okay. That sounds very, it probably might be. Yeah. Wow.

[01:05:28] Paul Harvey: Because they got access to everything you’ve ever done, so they can see what you’ve just done. You’ve clicked that thing. And so, I guess in my case, I do a lot of runnings, and I’m now looking for a running watch. And you can just imagine like, oh yeah, he’s been running, so he’s a serious contender for a running watch. I can see that I’m going to start seeing running watch adverts for the rest of the year now. 

[01:05:52] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Right. Of course, the important thing then is if it’s understood who offers the running watch that might potentially be a match for you, with things like Google Discover, they can start pushing that towards you without you even having to ask for it.

[01:06:05] Paul Harvey: Yeah. And they know I’m a serious contender because I’m a runner, because they’ve got all my data that I’ve been running for the last 2 or 3 years.

What Can Kalicube Offer and What Are Some of the Improvements Jason Barnard Is Still Doing With the Platform?

[01:06:10] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): No. A hundred percent. So from a human personal point of view, I think we’re all starting to get used to that idea. But then you look at it from the point of view of a marketer and you say, if Google can understand what it is I have to offer, it makes it possible for it to match it to the person who’s looking for it. And until it’s understood that, it cannot do that match or make that match. So, this understanding is phenomenally important. That’s what Kalicube is all about.

[01:06:33] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And to come back to my little story, I started then developing this Kalicube SaaS platform, which is aimed at helping people, because I needed to up my game for Yoast. And I’ve just spent the last week, I’m about to launch it as beta. And I’m getting 3 requests a day for people who want to be on the beta program. And I haven’t done any advertising because I think it’s interesting and it’s important. And people are starting to realise it’s important.

Jason Barnard Is Still Trying to Improve Kalicube’s Database to Serve His Clients Properly and to Help With Google’s Problem With Multifacetedness

[01:06:59] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): But the problem, of course, is that I’ve built the platform myself. So, now I have to lie in the bed that I made. And I’m managing the database. And I’ve just actually spent this afternoon or yesterday and this afternoon making the database faster. Because if I get all these people on the platform, the database isn’t good enough. It’s all going to fall apart, and I’m going to look a complete fool.

[01:07:25] Paul Harvey: Oh, well, the life of a techie. 

[01:07:27] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And that’s it. It’s a techie who’s creative and was a blue dog and a punk folk musician. So, that kind of categorisation is something as well. It’s something that human beings have problems with. Google has an incredible problem with multifacetedness. The fact that you are a podcaster and a marketer, that’s quite difficult for Google to understand. That’s quite difficult for a lot of people to understand. So once you get that multifacetedness, we’re moving into a territory that’s going to get phenomenally interesting, because it’s so difficult for a machine to understand a machine being binary. Multifacetedness is obviously a problem. Sorry, go ahead.

Google’s Current Use of Brute Force and Its Future With Artificial Intelligence 

[01:08:08] Paul Harvey: Google is not intelligent. It literally is doing it by number crunching, isn’t it? It literally is doing it by sheer brute force connections. It doesn’t have the capacity to see connections as we do. 

[01:08:23] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): No. They’re trying to work towards it with artificial intelligence, but, yeah, that brute force idea still is very much the dominant part.

[01:08:31] Paul Harvey: Yeah. I’m becoming to realise that artificial intelligence will never happen. It’ll never happen in its own right. It’ll always have the human structure behind it. 

[01:08:42] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. And I think we have to hope it stays like that. Because if it doesn’t have the human structure behind it and it does…

[01:08:48] Paul Harvey: We’ve all seen the films. We all know where that leads.

[01:08:54] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Brilliant. Absolutely wonderful.

Jason Barnard’s Current Trials With Music With a Mixing Guy From Ireland and a Guitarist With a Lot of Soul

[01:08:56] Paul Harvey: Oh, dear. So look, this is your bit. You’ve alluded to what you do. What are you looking to do? What do you want for people to come to you? Who do you want to talk to? How do people get in touch with you? Can you start a record deal?

[01:09:15] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): I actually started making a record with a guy in Manchester. We’re trying to do it where he records in his house. He sends me the file. I record it. Then we send it off to the mixing guy in Ireland, trying to make a record, a remote record, which would be cool. So, we’ve started. We’re in the process of doing it. And it might or might not become a reality.

[01:09:35] Paul Harvey: If it does, I will definitely want to do a short cast on that one, if you get it off the ground. 

[01:09:41] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): He’s a brilliant guitarist. He’s a really nice guy. He plays finger picking guitar incredibly well. And he’s a lovely, lovely chap. And I said to him, oh, I’d like to work, maybe make a record with you. He said, you should talk to my brother, he’s much better than I am. And he showed me a video of his brother, who is a phenomenally good guitarist. But the brother plays incredibly clean, really, really correct perfect music, whereas my mate, Nick, plays finger picking, a bit ad hoc, a bit off, but he’s got soul. And I think that’s, for me, I’d like to add on soul. Nick’s got soul. He’s not maybe as good as his brother technically, but he’s got boatloads of soul that his brother doesn’t have.

[01:10:25] Paul Harvey: That’s what makes it sound.

Jason Barnard on Believing That We All Have a Soul and Being Happy That He Successfully Rebuilt His 

[01:10:27] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. And I think through what you were saying, what motivates me and what makes me get up in the morning. And I’m a believer that I’m not religious in any way, manner, or form, but we have something in us that makes us tick, that represents our innermost being. It’s a soul. Let’s call it a soul. It’s not a thing. That’s where all my motivation, all my desire, everything I do comes from that hippy soul of I don’t know. And the thing about the Mauritius period is I felt that somebody had ripped out my soul, and I didn’t have one. And I had to rebuild it.

[01:11:19] Paul Harvey: Yeah. Absolutely.

[01:11:20] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): And I think that’s a lovely, lovely, lovely. It was difficult, but I feel so happy that I got my soul back. This sounds like some awful kid story, but I got my soul back and I’m really happy about it. So if you do want to reach out to me, Twitter, LinkedIn, search my name, Jason Barnard, on Google. If you want to work with Kalicube Pro platform, it’s all about making your Brand SERP, what appears when somebody searches your brand name, better, positive, accurate, and convincing.

Who Are the Clients That Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) Can Provide His Services For?

[01:11:52] Paul Harvey: What kind of companies are you looking for?

[01:11:56] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): We’ve got some clients, but I’m looking to work with agencies who want to upsell this or sell this on to their clients. Because what I realise is it’s actually, although very simple as a concept, working on it is actually, it’s quite a difficult thing to get your head around. And so when I’ve tried to explain it to clients directly, it’s a lot of time and it’s very time consuming and difficult and they don’t really get it.

[01:12:21] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): But when you talk to a digital marketer or marketer, and you talk about Google entities, getting Google to understand, leveraging those results, the results you like, pushing them up above the results you don’t like on your Brand SERP, trying to get the video boxes, the Twitter boxes, all of that makes sense to a marketer. And they can see that all of that plays into an overall, global, intelligent, digital marketing strategy, and that everything you’re doing for your Brand SERP is going to serve the rest of your digital strategy if you do it well. And a digital marketer will see that, and a client directly often won’t. So, I would much rather give that message to an agency and let them go on and build that into, bake it into their overall strategy for their clients.

Whether the Plan Will Work Out or Not, It’s All Part of the Journey 

[01:13:04] Paul Harvey: Yeah. It sounds like a good plan. 

[01:13:07] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): It’s a good plan. Will it work out? That’s the question. 

[01:13:11] Paul Harvey: It’s all part of the journey. And if it don’t work, something else will come in that does work. That’s how it happens. 

[01:13:18] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Thank you very much. That’s perfect. It’s all part of the journey. I’m going to have that on my brain for the next few days. 

[01:13:25] Paul Harvey: Yeah. That’s it really. It’s all part of the journey. So, all those links for you. Anymore links I need to put on this? I’ve got your links. They will all be on the site and on the show notes. You can find everything there. But if you want to google Jason Barnard, you will clearly find him. Because if you can’t, he ain’t doing his job right. 

[01:13:43] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Oh, dear. That has put me on the spot.

The Meaning of Life for Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Keep Your Soul and Be True to Yourself

[01:13:49] Paul Harvey: So, the final question I ask everybody, which is the big question, is what’s the meaning of life for you? 

[01:13:57] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Keep your soul. Basically, be true to yourself. It’s being true to who you really are. Once again, it sounds like some awful kid’s story from Disney. But having lost my soul and rebuilt it, I know how phenomenally difficult it is to build a soul, in inverted commas, or get a soul back. And the panic I felt when I thought I’d lost it is something I can’t describe. So, keep it, don’t lose it, hang onto it, because it is your life’s blood.

It’s an Interesting Experience for Jason Barnard to Share the Things He Don’t Usually Share

[01:14:32] Paul Harvey: Yeah. Well, very clearly in the way you lived your life, your soul was very much part of you, and it was what you brought out. Because the music, the creativity, everything you’ve done was about that, was about expressing that in the world. And I can understand the journey you went through when it was taken away from you. So, thank you so much for sharing that story with us. It has been such a pleasure to talk to you. I’ve really, really enjoyed our conversation. 

[01:15:01] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Oh, I’m glad you have. I enjoyed it too. It was great. I shared some things I don’t usually share, so that’s always an interesting experience I have.

[01:15:07] Paul Harvey: Thank you so much for being so candid with us. 

[01:15:10] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Yeah. Well, when I have chokey moments, when my little tears are coming out of my little eyes, it means I’m telling something that’s very dear to my heart.

[01:15:19] Paul Harvey: Very precious. Well, thank you for sharing those moments with us. And Jason Barnard, all the best and thank you. Speak soon.

[01:15:28] Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy): Thank you very much, Paul. That was delightful.

Where Can You Catch Up With Jason Barnard (The Brand SERP Guy) and With This Podcast? 

[01:15:32] Paul Harvey: And that was Life Passion and Business with Paul Harvey and my guest, Jason Barnard. If you’d like to catch up with Jason, you can find him at jasonbarnard.com. You can find all his stuff there, his music, his podcast, his history, and yeah, it’s a lovely website, so do check that one out. You can also find him on Twitter, LinkedIn, and on Facebook. And those links are available at the website lifepassionandbusiness.com. And while you’re there, check out the resources tab and pick up the five questions worksheet.

[01:16:08] Paul Harvey: Just a quick reminder to check out the short cast. They drop every single Sunday. This last weekend was about contribution. Short casts are 5 to 10 minutes of me exploring something that I thought about this week or a tool or something that I’ve discovered well worth checking out. And that’s it for this week. So if you are enjoying this podcast, if you’re enjoying any podcast, you do make sure you support your content creators with likes, shares, and better still comments, because comments and reviews are the lifeblood of our industry. And that’s it from me. And thank you so much for your time and attention. I’ll catch you next time. All the best.

Listen here: Jason Barnard : Blue Dogs, Punk & SEO

Listen on Google Podcasts: Jason Barnard : Blue Dogs, Punk & SEO

Published by Life, Passion & Business May 26, 2021. Host: Paul Harvey. Guest: Jason Barnard, founder and CEO at Kalicube.

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