Boosting Online Visibility 101 | Odys Talks #60
The all-new Odys Talks welcomes Jason Barnard, Adam Collins, and Tom Jauncey to dismantle online visibility myths and fool-proof techniques for boosting it whether you’re dealing with a personal or corporate brand.
Video by: Odys Global. Host: Vladimir Ghilien. Guest: Jason Barnard. October 02, 2023.
Summary: Boosting Online Visibility 101 | Odys Talks #60
Event: Odys Talks #60 Date: 2 October 2024 Participants: Jason Barnard (Kalicube), Adam Collins (Ignite SEO), Tom Jauncey (Nautilus Marketing), Vladimir Ghilien (host, Odys Global) Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=[ID]
Key Takeaways
Jason Barnard, Adam Collins, and Tom Jauncey discussed online visibility strategy for personal and corporate brands. Jason introduced several concepts central to The Kalicube Framework, including the three tiers of SEO, entity-to-URL relationships, the hub-spoke-wheel model, and the idea that AI platforms are rebuilding the sales funnel. Adam Collins and Tom Jauncey contributed perspectives on authenticity, full-service agency management, and practical local SEO.
1. Bottom of Funnel First - Optimize Your Brand SERP Before Anything Else
Jason Barnard stated that the most pressing and most overlooked priority in SEO is bottom-of-funnel optimisation. People searching your brand name on Google or ChatGPT are already your audience. Optimising the search result and the AI response for your brand name converts more of those bottom-of-funnel people immediately. He described this as “the easiest win today” that also “sets up the foundation for brand, which is the foundation of SEO for tomorrow.”
2. Personal Brand vs. Corporate Brand - Double the Price, Double the Timeline
Jason Barnard revealed that when Kalicube takes on a corporate brand engagement, they double the price and double the timeline compared to a personal brand. Corporate brands have larger digital footprints, more complexity, more inconsistency to clean up, and more stakeholders. He described The Kalicube Process™ - Understandability, Credibility, Deliverability - as working for any entity type (person, product, corporation) but requiring significantly more resources for corporations. He advised always starting with a personal brand as the easier win.
3. Three Tiers of SEO - Content Creator and Website Publisher Optimisation
Jason Barnard introduced a framework he described as “the new SEO,” consisting of three tiers. The first tier is traditional SEO: content and website-level optimisation. The second tier is content creator optimisation: ensuring Google understands who wrote the content and can associate their expertise, credentials, and topical authority with the content they produce. The third tier is website publisher optimisation: ensuring Google understands the entity (person or corporation) behind the website, not just the domain. He stated that without the second and third tiers, Google cannot apply EAT signals and cannot assess topical authority, regardless of how good the content is. He published this framework in Search Engine Land.
4. Entity-to-URL Relationships - The Single Most Important Thing in SEO Tomorrow
Jason Barnard reported that Google is now making explicit entity-to-URL relationships, both in the Knowledge Graph and in search results. He gave a concrete example: he published an article on Search Engine Land, and within 18 minutes it was indexed on his Brand SERP, and when clicking “About this result,” Google explicitly recognised him as the author. He described this entity-to-URL relationship as “the single most important thing we need to focus on as SEOs tomorrow.”
5. The Hub-Spoke-Wheel Model of Entity Optimisation
Jason Barnard described the hub-spoke-wheel model for building a brand’s digital presence. The hub is your entity home - a page (even a single-page website) that states who you are, what you do, and who you serve. The spokes point outward to all collaborative presence across the web: Google Business Profile, YouTube, social media, articles on Forbes or Search Engine Land. The wheel represents the corroboration - the consistent information across all these sources that confirms what the hub states. He emphasised that even a one-page website is sufficient as a hub, and warned against spending too long making a website perfect before launching.
6. AI Platforms Are Rebuilding the Sales Funnel
Jason Barnard described how AI platforms (ChatGPT, Google Gemini, Bing Copilot) are rebuilding the traditional sales funnel. He credited Fabrice Canel (Microsoft Bing) for explaining that Copilot simply rebuilds the funnel: awareness, consideration, decision. He gave a live example: asking Bing Copilot “What is a knowledge panel?” (top of funnel - Kalicube cited), “Who are the three experts in knowledge panels?” (middle of funnel - Jason Barnard, Olaf Kopp, and Dixon Jones cited), and “Who should I choose?” (bottom of funnel - Copilot explicitly recommends Jason Barnard). He described this as “the funnel nailed down in Copilot,” based on entity understanding, entity credibility, and content that allows the machines to understand what you offer.
7. SEO Is Packaging for Machines
Jason Barnard stated that he now approaches his work as “brand marketing packaged for machines.” The branding and marketing a business should already be doing - building reputation, engaging audiences, demonstrating credibility - is the substance. SEO is “nothing more than packaging for machines.” If you do the branding and marketing properly and then package it for the machines (Google, ChatGPT, Bing, Copilot, Siri, Alexa), you’ve won the game.
8. The Entity Home - The Hub You Control
Jason Barnard reiterated the importance of the entity home as the canonical source of truth for an entity. He warned against building an entity presence primarily on platforms you don’t control (LinkedIn, Instagram, Google My Business), using LinkedIn’s planned removal of the “Top Voice” badge as an example of how platforms can take away what you’ve built. The entity home - your own website, even if it’s a single page - is the hub you control, and nothing is taken away from you unless you take it away yourself.
9. Corroboration and Digital Footprint Consistency
Jason Barnard emphasised that cleaning up a digital footprint - being consistent and clear across every platform - is valuable even without the SEO context, because it means speaking to the right people at the right time. The machines (Google, ChatGPT, Bing) then use this consistency as corroboration to build confidence in their understanding of the entity. He referenced John Mueller’s discussion of “reconciliation” as the same concept.
10. Social Media as Corroboration, Not Just Engagement
Jason Barnard described his approach to social media as primarily an entity optimisation play rather than a social engagement strategy. He uses social profiles as corroboration points for the machines - confirming who you are, what you do, and that your audience is genuinely engaging with you. He advised pushing the best-engaging content to the profile page regularly so machines see different content with strong engagement signals over time, and focusing only on the platforms where your audience naturally lives.
Historical Significance
This conversation, recorded in October 2024, documents Jason Barnard’s articulation of the three tiers of SEO (traditional + content creator + website publisher optimisation), the entity-to-URL relationship as the critical emerging SEO signal, the hub-spoke-wheel model, and the concept that AI platforms are rebuilding the sales funnel around entity understanding and credibility. His statement that “SEO is nothing more than packaging for machines” encapsulates the positioning shift from technical SEO tactics to brand-first, entity-centric optimisation. These concepts form core elements of The Kalicube Framework (TKF) and The Kalicube Process (TKP) developed through Kalicube.
Full Transcript of Boosting Online Visibility 101 | Odys Talks #60
Vladimir Ghilien: OK, and we are live. All right, welcome back to Odys Talks, everyone. Welcome, gentlemen. Welcome back, Jason. Tom and Adam, it’s nice to finally have you on for the first time. Yeah. So, this show is naturally brought to you by Odys Global, your one-stop marketplace for aged domains and websites. And as you can see, I’m joined by Tom Jauncey - not Sales Marketing - Adam Collins from Ignite SEO, yeah, and Jason Barnard of Kalicube. So guys, why don’t you go on and introduce yourselves, highlight whatever you’d like to highlight. And, well, Adam, since you were the last one to connect, why don’t you go first?
Adam Collins: Yeah, so I’ve run an SEO agency. We’re based fundamentally in London, but we’re a remote agency called Ignite SEO. I’ve been in the SEO space for a decent period of time, but as a web developer and then a full-service agency owner. So I was sort of in and around it for a long time and then decided to niche down and just focus on SEO.
Tom Jauncey: I’ll jump in next. My name’s Tom. I own Nautilus Marketing. We are a full-service digital marketing agency. We started out about eight years ago now, just as a social media agency, and then we sort of progressed to add loads of different services. We’re a team of 21 nerds, as we call ourselves. A bit different to other agencies out there. And yeah, that’s us in a nutshell, really.
Vladimir Ghilien: Awesome. Jason.
Jason Barnard: Brilliant. Yep, Jason Barnard, Kalicube. I’ve been - Kalicube’s existed since 2015. We found our little niche in the world, which is managing brand representation in search and AI. So everything to do with Google, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Bing, Copilot - even Alexa and Siri. We manage how your brand, or your personal brand, is represented by these machines. And that’s all about perception - how do they perceive you? How they perceive you regulates how they represent you. How they represent you changes the entire world’s perception of you. So it’s perception to representation to perception, via a machine.
And as you said, Vlad, the speciality that we’re best known for is building Knowledge Panels for people. It’s a whole world out there - how do you get a Knowledge Panel, how do you keep a Knowledge Panel, how do you make sure the Knowledge Panel is accurate, how do you make sure it’s rich and full of information. You would think it’s SEO techniques, and it does use some of those because I’ve been doing it for such a long time. But it’s actually quite different, and that’s what a lot of people find surprising - the techniques are not the same for Knowledge Panels and knowledge in general for these machines as for SEO.
Vladimir Ghilien: Yeah, that sounds a lot like science. Have you ever written peer-reviewed papers on creating Knowledge Panels?
Jason Barnard: I haven’t written - I’ve written one about the new approach to SEO, which has been peer-approved, published in - I think the Journal of Something and Something Digital Marketing and Something Else - which sets out the three phases for me. I now approach it from brand marketing packaged for machines. SEO is nothing more than packaging for machines. The branding and the marketing you should already be doing - you do it, package it for machines, you’ve won the game.
Vladimir Ghilien: Oh, all right, all right. Well, looks like we should just start, ladies and gentlemen. We are live. So yeah, whether you’re doing SEO - I’m just simplifying - or doing other things digital marketing-associated, it all boils down to getting proper visibility in search engines or social media, just to bring your or your client’s brand or company in front of everyone, their audience in particular, to get traction and leads and ultimately sales, right?
So considering all of that, in the current environment of how things evolve in both SEO, digital marketing, and the digital business world in general - what do you consider the most pressing SEO and marketing pain points for businesses, especially considering the latest Google updates, the August one in particular?
Jason Barnard: Yeah, well, I would start with the most pressing thing that most people forget about - including our own company - is bottom of funnel. Bottom of funnel. People are searching, Googling, looking on ChatGPT your brand name. Organise, maximise, optimise the search result and the ChatGPT result for your brand name, and you’re already going to be converting more of those bottom-of-funnel people. That’s the easiest win today, and it sets up the foundation for brand, which is the foundation of SEO for tomorrow - as I’m sure Adam will agree.
Adam Collins: Yeah, literally I was just about to say the exact same thing as well. Like, I suppose in the world of where we are right now - in the sense of what’s real, what’s not real, what’s AI, what’s a real business, what’s a scammer - I suppose proving that you’re authentic. Authenticity, which goes to the whole obviously entity building and proving you’re a real business. So I would say probably that’s one of the biggest pain points. Like, I speak to people all the time and they’re just, “When can we start building guest posts?” And you’re like, there’s just so little there. So that would always be my first step - those foundations. I think people - it’s not sexy, so people ignore it.
Tom Jauncey: Absolutely. I’d say around, more so for e-commerce as well as direct business-to-business, a lot of people forget the personal branding side. And I think in the last four or five years it’s become more prominent - having a personal brand, whether that be doing webinars, doing journalist outreach, that kind of stuff, building press releases. Because I think people focus on the actual business rather than the personal brand around it, which I think can be equally as beneficial - not just from an SEO point of view but from an overall marketing view as well.
Jason Barnard: Yeah, I mean, I love the point about personal branding. Obviously that’s where we specialise - in building and controlling a personal brand both online and for the machines. Because in order for the machines - ChatGPT, Google, Bing, Copilot - to represent you the way you want, you need to actually be representing yourself consistently across your entire digital footprint. And that’s where a lot of people get it wrong. That’s where we specialise at Kalicube.
We take a snapshot of your digital footprint, we tell you exactly what to do to create what we call the hub-spoke-and-wheel model of personal branding. And then, as you were saying Adam, get yourself recognised by Google. And I wrote an article for Search Engine Land a couple of days ago about “content creator (bracket) topic” - you can get yourself recognised as a topical expert in the Knowledge Panel and in the Knowledge Graph, and for your job title, and for personal branding in terms of the way Google is then going to represent you and promote you and recommend you. Because at the end of the day, Google’s a recommendation engine. It’s huge. And kickstarting a business using your personal brand is much easier than kickstarting a business using your corporate brand.
Adam Collins: I guess it adds a lot of authenticity as well, to the business and to the brand. It’s something I’ve been so hit and miss with over the last ten years - the personal brand. It just requires so - it’s so easy to just completely leave that over to the side. But there’s definitely a correlation between the two. And it’s true - when you have that personal brand, even from a business point of view, when you’re actually speaking to people trying to close them, it’s so much easier. Because people buy from people, not from businesses. So yeah, agree completely in regards to that.
Jason Barnard: Yeah. I did an interview with James Dooley, and he then released it with “How I Made Millions from Advice from Jason Barnard About My Personal Brand.” I love the fact he’s so ambitious about it. But he does talk about one specific deal that he sealed for £40,000, I think it was, that he would not have got if the search result for his personal name had not been that good.
Vladimir Ghilien: Yeah, yeah, mhm. Yeah, well, this is what I actually wanted to ask you. My next question was about comparing personal brands and corporate brands. Because yeah, it seems like personal brands, if the person is doing everything right, it just takes a lot less effort for them to get highlighted in search engines - whether it’s YouTube or Google or TikTok or whatever - compared to corporate brands that can be there for years and they can submit content, written content, video content, whatever it is, and it’s still so, so slow. What makes the biggest difference here?
Jason Barnard: Right. Just sorry, I keep cutting in because we’re talking about my core topic. And after that I’ll probably shut up a bit more.
One indicator of that is: when we get a corporate brand, basically the Kalicube Process - Understandability, Credibility, Deliverability - it works for anything. Any product, any person, any corporation. When we get a corporation, we double the price and double the timeline. That’s how much longer it takes. That’s how much harder it is. That’s how much bigger the digital footprint is going to be. That’s how much more work there’s going to be. Double the price, double the timeline - corporation versus personal brand. I would always go for a personal brand as my easy win. That’s my top tip.
Tom Jauncey: I think as well, from a personal brand point of view, even if it’s not the founder or the CEO - even if it’s a sales manager or a business developer or an SEO manager - if they have a personal brand attached to them, no matter where they work, whoever employs them, that’s going to come with them. And that’s either going to bring a client base, it’s going to bring visibility for the brand as well. So not just from a business point of view, actually from an employability view as well, it’s massive. You would always want to bring someone on that has that awareness already about them, because then it’s going to improve your corporate brand massively too.
Jason Barnard: I have a question. How do you convince your clients to invest in the personal brand of not only the CEO but also the C-level employees and potentially other employees? We’re finding it a huge struggle. I mean, Tom or Adam, have you got ideas about how to convince companies to invest in that? They’ve got the money, maybe. And also, as well -
Adam Collins: Yeah, I was just - I suppose, Jason, one of the points you’re pointing at there is because it makes those employees substantially more appealing to competitors as well. So I think one of the - it’s like a deterrent. Like, when you’re the CEO or founder, I guess it makes sense. You’ve got that risk that someone’s going to pinch them. And we’ve had it with our employees, right? You start shouting about people and then all of a sudden they start getting job offers from places. And you know, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t keep my eye on other agencies’ teams as well.
So it’s tricky. One of the other things as well is LinkedIn marketing. I know a few LinkedIn specialists and a big part of what they do organically is - right, we’re going to these big companies, we’re trying to get all the teams actually posting and reposting and targeting different sectors of content. And again, the same thing - it opens up so much to being poached by competitors. And it really, really puts people off from actually going down that approach, from what I’ve found anyway.
Vladimir Ghilien: Yeah, interesting, interesting. But why does it happen like that? Why do personal brands simply take less time to become more prominent in the public eye - let’s say in the search engines’ eyes or social media’s eyes - than the corporate brands? What makes the crucial, the principal difference?
Adam Collins: You’d point to - you are the go-to guy on this. But is it because it’s harder to fake? In regards to - it’s harder to fake a personal brand. I mean, I know you can obviously fake certain things, but there’s more authenticity there than a logo, I suppose. I’m really intrigued myself how you see it.
Jason Barnard: Yeah, I mean, Tom mentioned earlier on - people do business with people. Which is kind of one of these classic things that we all say and have been saying for years and years and years, and often forget the real meaning of it. People do do business with people. I mean, Tom, you can expand on that probably better than I can.
Tom Jauncey: Yeah, I think it’s easier to do it for personal brands because you can put a story around it. Where I think with a corporate brand it’s much harder. So let’s say, for example, if it was a young entrepreneur that started a business, maybe they went through a poor mental health battle and then they started a therapy company - you’ve got a hook there, from a press point of view. But also, if someone was reading that, it’s a young guy suffering from mental health - a lot of people can probably relate with that. Whereas if it was a corporate company being like, “We’ve just launched this software because we think that loads of people don’t do this or this” - I think it’s just so much easier from a personal point of view. Because not just do you buy from people, you empathise with people as well.
Jason Barnard: Yeah. And kind of looking at it - how do we get people’s attention? You engage with them by connecting on some human level. And for corporations, that’s always going to be difficult. Then you entertain them. Then you give them your message. And I think that’s a really good point in terms of PR, in particular social media outreach, even this kind of interview.
So I can say, well, something about my life - as you said, Tom - resonates with somebody sitting in the audience. I’ve immediately got a connection. I can then start to say, “Well, here’s an entertaining way of presenting that or moving the conversation forwards,” and then come to the point, which is: you should build your personal brand, and perhaps you should think about investing in Kalicube to help you do it. Because that Kalicube part at the end is the corporate part, and it’s the hardest part to add. But if I’ve already connected and entertained, the corporate part is much easier to get in. Whereas the corporation can’t really connect and can’t really entertain - or they can entertain, I’ll take that back. Some corporations entertain very well.
Vladimir Ghilien: All right, all right. Sounds very reasonable. But let’s stop on the corporate thing at first. What do you consider the most effective ways for companies, for corporations, to enhance their brand presence in the SERPs? Let’s just stop on the SERPs for the time being and stand out among competitors.
Jason Barnard: Well, I would say the whole kind of holistic SEO is something I’m going to be writing about for Search Engine Land soon. One of the hard truths about SEO is it’s not just about your website. It’s about your entire digital presence. And Tom, you’re a full-service agency - that’s what you’re all about. It’s full service: getting you out there on all the multiple platforms that are relevant to your industry. And I would hope then packaging it for SEO. Would that make sense?
Tom Jauncey: Yeah, absolutely. I think the more you can do - from not just a website point of view, but whether that be digital PR - Adam mentioned guest posting earlier, which some may argue yes or no. But I’d say from an SEO point of view, a brand is much easier - from a business point of view. But when you sort of package it all together, the more you can do, whether that be content, guest posting on other people’s blogs to a high standard - not your one-dollar dodgy links that you can buy - but sort of building out in a more holistic approach.
Because I think, kind of what Jason was mentioning earlier about the whole digital footprint rather than just focusing on your website, building out maybe microsites, resources, working with other people, doing collaborations, doing digital PR, doing more things that you can do. Because then when you go to ChatGPT - one of our clients, who’s a law client - someone went to ChatGPT and asked for a great lawyer in London for corporate law, and our client popped up. Which is really cool. So yeah, building out as much as you can, I’d say.
Adam Collins: Yeah, pretty much echo that. I think the days of just focusing solely on the website and a few guest posts - one of the things I start with on new campaigns is like an entity audit, but from an off-page signal point of view. Because even the review platforms - how many reviews do you have on that platform versus the other people who are ranking? There’s so many different signals in regards to that.
You have to look at it holistically, I suppose. You can’t just - I mean, they have to be looking at your social profiles, engagement, and all the rest of it, to be judging: is this a real brand? Is this a real person? So I think if you can go at it - we obviously are a little bit limited because we try to steer clear of going too far out, because obviously we just do SEO.
So Tom obviously has a nice advantage there because he can offer that full service. What we found from my full-service agency was it’s just so hard to do everything right. There’s like - each medium requires an expert or requires multiple experts. And to do it properly - so Tom, how did you actually balance that with your full-service agency, of not just being a jack of all trades, master of none, and actually being able to deliver high quality across the board? That’s where we struggled.
Tom Jauncey: My full-service agency - we’re split between three teams. So the main core services that we offer are design and development, and then sort of paid marketing and organic marketing.
I think - I made a mistake very early on of getting people just out of university when we were a very small agency, and it just didn’t go very well. And now the way that we hire - our pricing obviously increased massively. I never intended to start a business. I went to drama school like nine years ago and was dancing around the stage doing TV stuff. So the whole business thing was very new to me.
But I initially started to go down that route using freelancers, and then as time went on, COVID was a massive growth spurt for us. I then started to look at the metrics and what we were offering to clients, and it was just a case of posting to social media just to tick that box.
But now we look at more of a holistic strategy around that. We have a person that manages just socials, we have a person that just manages SEO, just PPC. So it’s more of a nerdy approach, in a sense that I’m not an expert in SEO, I’m not an expert in web. But the people that we hire around the team are, and I rely on them for their inputs. And we sort of build out miniature core teams. So it’s like the business, and then we have mini-businesses within the business for each sort of service. So every service that we offer, we have a separate profit and loss, we have a separate management structure. So it all sort of ties in rather than just being like, “Here we are and this is what we’re going to offer.” It’s a bit more structured and a bit more rigid.
Adam Collins: It’s like the concept of “pay cheap, pay twice” - or “pay once,” or whatever the saying is. And it’s true. When you hire right - we did the same thing. I mean, it’s hard because the thing is, people always speak about inflation, but there’s inflation in salaries as well. So being a small business owner is very, very hard at the minute, especially with tax increases and the rest of it. So there is that temptation to go, “We’ll get that uni person.” But you do make silly mistakes - they haven’t yet learned their trade properly, I guess. And I guess it just comes down to getting experts to do it and just paying a bit more. And there’s no book on how to own a business or how to run one.
Tom Jauncey: Well, there are videos and stuff, and you can pay loads of money for courses. But I find people that run those courses probably don’t really know what they’re doing, to a degree. So yeah, absolutely. I think everyone’s on a journey together. And it’s interesting how we’ve evolved over nearly eight years now - from just putting some social media posts onto some client’s Instagram for £100 a month, to now looking at more of a holistic strategy around it, with community management, maybe doing some influencer stuff as well. So yeah, absolutely.
Jason Barnard: Yeah. I mean, for running a business - now we’ve switched topic to running businesses - a year ago I was hospitalised for a month and had to hand over some more responsibility to the team leads. That was a huge leap, because I had to step back and hope. And they’ve stepped up to the plate.
And then I kind of thought, well, take this to the next level. How do I actually properly delegate? Delegate with authority is, for me, the key. Not just delegate - delegating is hard enough. Delegating with authority is really difficult.
And I ended up getting personal coaching. One-on-one with Mads Singers - he taught me the pragmatic side of building a company. How do you organise people? How do you organise the company? How do you hire? How do you fire? How do you sort out who does what?
Then I got coaching from another guy called Steven Lock, who is all about the philosophy - how do you communicate? How do you build a team ethic and a common team theme, if I may say?
Then I got a third set of one-on-one training from a guy called Itamar Morani, who talked to me about taking the handbrake off. Rather than pressing the accelerator as a CEO, take the handbrake off. What in your psychological make-up is holding your business back? What’s stopping you making the right decisions?
So I got pragmatic from Mads, philosophical from Steven, and psychological from Itamar. And it’s been the perfect, perfect combination that’s changed - transformed - the company in the last year. Absolutely completely transformed it.
Vladimir Ghilien: Since you mentioned it, what were the biggest and most positive changes for your company and for you?
Jason Barnard: Delegating with authority was a huge one. I’ve now got a team of six team leads and they have responsibilities - a whole department that they’re running. And I let them - I give them the authority to actually get on with it. Which means I step back and I don’t micromanage, I don’t get involved.
I have weekly meetings with them, which is the one common commonality of the three coaches - always have a one-on-one team meeting with every team lead every week. And they’re uncancellable. And if I show that I’m never going to cancel them, then it demonstrates the importance to the team. And I was in the USA last week and I got up at 6 a.m. to do the team meetings. And that uncancellable quality makes them more important and makes the team leads, at least, see the importance of it.
And now what’s happening is my team leads are doing that with their teams. And so it’s now filtering down. So I’m teaching them what I’m learning, and they’re teaching their team what they’re learning. And so that whole management structure is hopefully now this kind of flowing-down fountain, waterfall-rather effect. And I’m hugely hopeful. We’re only four months into the second phase, but it’s going really well. And I’m enjoying it. The more I step back, the more I enjoy it - which I find surprising, because I’m a person who likes to be involved.
Adam Collins: Yeah, I was just gonna say - well, you’re the visionary, right? And you probably want to work on the macro trends and the bigger things. That’s, I suppose, one of the big challenges, isn’t it? Like, right, OK, how do I pull myself out of being the SEO techie guy and actually start thinking like a business owner?
And I struggled with it for a while, because obviously you’re handing off so much trust to people. And it comes back to what Tom said - especially if you’re not hiring right. Those people, unfortunately, you can process, process, process, but if the people aren’t right, with the right expertise, they do make silly mistakes. And then you have to take the flak of the customer, because the customer goes, “Oh, Adam, I hired you, and you have all this expertise, and you’ve made these silly mistakes.”
And that was a big part for me to step back - how do we minimise the risk that I don’t need to be in it? But actually, Gary Wilson from Get Me Links, many years ago, he said to me once, he was like, “You must think you’re so clever.” And I’d had like one or two employees that always stuck with me. He was like, “You must think you’re so clever that what you do - ” I mean, we aren’t changing the world. We’re not curing cancer. The things we do can be built into replicable processes. But again, it comes to having the right team. And like Jason said, having the ability to step back and go: if I got hit by a bus right now, would the business function, or would it die? And that’s like a massive test for a business.
Tom Jauncey: Yeah, just coming up - that Mads said, Jason: if you stop tomorrow and come back in a month, will there be more money in than when you stopped? And if the answer is yes, you’re doing a good job as a CEO. And I love that.
I think as well, everyone is always learning, no matter your age, no matter your experience. Like what Jason said about having coaching and having a mentor - that has been invaluable for us. We worked really closely with a guy that owns a full-service agency in Canada, and we would have weekly calls where he’d go through things that he did wrong initially. And we’d sort of put things in place to prevent that from happening.
And I think it comes down to - some people in our industry have a very big ego. And to admit that you are having coaching or something, I think for some people it can feel like a bad thing. When actually, just as if you were to compare it to going to see a therapist every month - not because you have bad mental health, it’s to have a safe space to talk to someone. So I think a lot of it can be down to an ego thing of, “Oh, I don’t want to take coaching or mentorship because I’m worried that it makes me look bad that I’m going for advice.”
Jason Barnard: Yeah. And Adam, you mentioned the “you must think you’re really clever” kind of comment. A criticism I can take, certainly - and I think a lot of people can - is trying to be the smartest person in the room. It’s something I’ve done a lot. And I’m shifting my mindset, saying, “OK, I can do all these clever things. I’m not curing cancer, as you rightly say. I want to be the most helpful person in the room.”
And that, for me, is now key. And I walk in a room and sometimes I start saying something, and I think: am I trying to be smart, or am I being helpful? And it’s changed what I’m telling people. It’s changed what I’m sharing with people. And trying to be helpful is significantly better. And I’m slightly ashamed of myself for trying to be the smartest person in the room for so long.
Vladimir Ghilien: All right. Well, thanks for sharing your thoughts and ideas about managing the business. But let’s take a small step back to our initial topic. I mean, it’s awesome to hear the stories and the ideas, as I mentioned. But yeah, we should get back to holistic marketing and SEO.
My next question would be about small businesses. When you, Adam, mentioned that it’s kind of hard to own and manage a small business these days because of all these increasing taxes and other expenses. So when it comes to owning a small business and then trying to get in front of the competition in the digital world - let’s say I’m not talking about a local shop that doesn’t really care about digital presence, even though they should - but when it comes to whatever company it is, let’s say a small marketing agency, what specific strategies would you recommend to improve, to enhance their online presence and visibility for the logical purposes of getting ahead of the competition?
Adam Collins: I mean, the easiest place to start - obviously it’s pretty 101, but I guess that’s the talk - I’ve always felt like Google My Business is one of the most under-optimised resources for a business to generate leads. Obviously you’ve got Google My Business ads, the local ads as well - that’s a great way of just testing a market, testing a location. Oftentimes you go in there, there’s not a lot of reviews. The people aren’t posting. They’re not even properly filled out. That’s such an easy starting point - just register the address, record your little video that you have to do now, and just start pounding that with posts and outdo what’s currently ranking in those areas.
And that’s a great thing for a local business to do. I mean, you don’t really even need a website to do that type of stuff. But my biggest thing, which I would always recommend, is: how can you get the largest ROI for the least effort and the least cost? And that would be it.
Facebook ads - there are definitely ways that you can generate quicker revenue, and then obviously you can reinvest it in the long term. But SEO over the long term - that’s the reason I niched down to it. Because I always feel like, if you do an SEO campaign properly for the right type of customers - it’s not right for everyone - it genuinely is one of the best investments you can ever make in a business.
And even I’ve neglected my site for a while. The last six months I’ve really started to put a push on it. And genuinely - I hear a lot of people say, “You don’t get quality leads as an SEO agency doing SEO for yourself” - we’ve had some massive, massive global companies the last four to six weeks, now that we’re starting to really push it, especially predominantly in London.
So I would always say: investing in SEO is a true investment in your business. And it’s sustainable and it’s scalable. And it’s sort of an evergreen tactic. So that would be my two cents, I suppose.
Jason Barnard: Yeah. I mean, if I come in on the comment - you don’t need a website as a local business. However, I would advise you to build a one-page website. Because you do need the hub, the place that Google - Google is explicitly, all of these machines are explicitly looking for the place the entity lives. The local business, the person, the corporation.
And I would say to any local business, or any person trying to build that personal brand, or any corporation big or small: have a website, even if it’s one page. Don’t get caught up in trying to build a huge website that takes you a year with a perfect design. Build one page that says who you are, what you do, who you serve, why you’re a credible solution for them. Start with that. It’s the hub. It’s where people will end up when you’re engaging with them. It’s where the machines are looking for information about you, from you.
And from there, you can point out - using the spokes - to all the collaboration around the web, including Google My Business or Google Business Profile, your YouTube channel, your Facebook, your Twitter, your articles on Forbes. To identify that what you’re saying on your hub is agreed with, is true, across the entire internet.
But then, you don’t need a big website. You need a hub, a one-page. And if you want to build that out to be a bigger website, do so. And the biggest fail that I see in corporations - and for personal brands as well - is focusing way too much on making that website perfect, spending way too many resources to make it perfect. It needs to be there. It doesn’t need to be perfect. Sorry, Adam.
Adam Collins: No, I was just saying - what you just said. I’ve got a friend and he’s an awesome software developer, and he’s been building this software now for - I swear, five years. And he’s pretty much at the point now where it’s launching, it’s uploading to server. And that’s the conversation - what you just said is what I’ve said to him for the last five years. I’m like, it doesn’t - it’s never going to be perfect.
And I do believe that people have this perfectionism thing because it’s a smokescreen for insecurity. Because it’s easier to just not launch something, not launch a website, and just say, “Well, it needs to be perfect and needs to do this.” I often say to people as well, they speak about CRO, and I’m like, you don’t even have any traffic or rankings or anything yet. What are you trying to do? Like, get 100% conversion rate of one person? It’s pointless. You don’t have enough data. So yeah, I think what you said - start with a hub and build outwards.
Tom Jauncey: There is a lot of pressure, I think, when you launch a website - you want it to be perfect and to convert 100%. But like you both said, I think having at least a one-pager is a great place to start.
I think what a lot of smaller businesses - especially some who don’t have the budget to do SEO - they might have a one-pager website and they have their Google My Business. I think what’s sort of kicked off in the last couple of years, especially with TikTok - I mean, there’s a guy that goes around and cleans pools who’s now got millions of followers, and his business has taken off massively.
One of my friends - I mentioned it in a webinar the other day - she was a performing arts student, sold some fake eyelashes on the side, set up a TikTok, sort of blew up. Now she’s got like 20 employees, has an office in Manchester, doing millions in turnover. She had a really awful website, and it wasn’t the website - it was her personal brand and her building up her TikTok which enabled her to get so many sales. They didn’t care what the website looked like. It was awful. And I told her it looked absolutely terrible.
Adam Collins: But that comes down to, Tom, what we’ve all been speaking about before - which is: SEO is really good for certain businesses, but TikTok might be the best thing, or Facebook ads. So it’s about what you’re actually trying to achieve, right? There’s not - I always say that. Like, people go, “Oh, do you really love SEO?” Like, not particularly. It’s a means to an end. It should be a means to an end. Like, who hires an SEO because they want to do SEO? There should be an end result, and that’s the reason you’re doing SEO - not just for the sake of doing SEO.
Jason Barnard: Absolutely, yeah. And there is a tendency for people to come to you for SEO and say, “I want to create blogs, I want to guest blog, I want to create a whole blog section or website.” And they don’t think through what the actual aim is - which is: get people onto service pages so that they then convert and become clients. Get less traffic but better traffic - that’s potentially a great solution.
And the idea of ranking for keywords and terms that make no sense - especially in the world of ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and so on and so forth - where they’re getting smarter. And if they understand who you are, what you do, what you offer, that you’re credible, then they will offer you up to the user. And it’s no longer a question of tricking the machines into thinking that they can put you at the top for a generic term. It’s: get the machines to recommend you because they understand who you are, understand what you offer, and understand you’re the most credible in market. That’s the secret to the future.
Adam Collins: Just in regards to that, Jason - sorry, Vlad - I just had a quick question. Because I guess one of the things you hear a lot now is topical coverage, topical authority, all this type of stuff. I’m assuming that you must see - obviously you know a ton more about this than me - you must see a massive overshift now, where people are just blogging about every single terminology, every single angle, to the point where it’s absolutely ludicrous and ridiculous, and then it’s just becoming some sort of vanity thing. So I’m assuming that there’s been an overcompensation of that.
Jason Barnard: Yeah. I mean, the idea of topical authority - Koray Gübür talks about that a lot, that’s his thing. Covering the topic completely is really important. But then if you’re just writing the same thing everybody else is writing, you’re not filling an information gap. So you’re not helpful to the machine - they’re not interested in your content.
But the other thing that we’re seeing - or we know at Kalicube - is Google is making entity-to-URL relationships explicitly, both in the Knowledge Graph and in search. And you can track it - we track it at Kalicube.
And you can write all the content you want. If Google doesn’t understand who wrote the content and can’t understand who’s publishing the content - so that’s the corporate entity, the website publisher, and the content creator entity - then it can’t apply any EAT signals, whatever they may be. It can’t understand the topical authority of - who are we talking about?
So that entity optimisation - content creator, website publisher - is incredibly important. And I published an article in Search Engine Land a few months ago: “The Three Tiers of SEO.” Traditional SEO is content, website-level. Knock yourselves out, keep going - that’s really important. It’s the foundation of everything. Content-level optimisation is fundamental. But you need to add two new tiers: content creator optimisation and website publisher optimisation. That’s the new SEO. And it’s the two additional tiers that, if you’re not doing it, you’re about to get left behind.
Vladimir Ghilien: So I suppose - buy a niche domain, I guess?
Jason Barnard: Well, the thing about the domain - yeah, a great domain is always going to be useful. A great website is always going to be useful. But they’re actually just proxies for the entities behind them.
So your domain and your website is a proxy for the website publisher, which can be the person or the corporation, depending on whether it’s a personal website or a corporate website. And right up until now, Google has simply been using websites and domains as proxies to understand who’s publishing. But if it can understand who is actually publishing, the website then becomes a representation of them - which it always has been. It’s just Google wasn’t able to make that technological leap, or that leap in understanding.
And it’s what we’re focused on at Kalicube - the other two tiers. Identifying the content creator, identifying the website publisher, and optimising their presence in Google’s brain, so that Google can understand: this content creator, Jason Barnard, is an expert in Knowledge Panels, SEO, whatever else it might be.
So if you look at ChatGPT, or Bing Copilot - we’ll use that as an example - it recreates the funnel. Top of funnel: “What is a knowledge panel?” It cites Kalicube. Middle of funnel: “Who are the three experts in knowledge panels in the world?” It says Jason Barnard, Olaf Kopp, and Dixon Jones. Bottom of funnel: “Who should I choose?” Bing Copilot explicitly says, “I recommend you contact Jason Barnard.” That’s the funnel nailed down in Copilot.
Yeah. And that’s based on entity understanding, entity credibility, and the fact we’ve got the content out there that allows them to understand what it is we’re offering. And Kalicube is cited at the top of the funnel.
Vladimir Ghilien: We’re back. Yeah, we lost you for a moment there, Vlad. Just me - because I lost everyone. I was just waiting for everything to get back online. I don’t know, something’s messed up with our Wi-Fi here. So what was the best thing that you said, Jason? Because I missed it.
Jason Barnard: I was talking about the fact that ChatGPT, Google Gemini - simply from awareness to consideration to decision. And Fabrice Canel, who’s a friend of mine, explained that to me. He said Copilot is simply rebuilding the funnel. If you can build your funnel into Copilot, build your funnel into ChatGPT, build your funnel into Gemini, they will lead the user to what they call “the perfect click” - which is the click that leads to the sale. You get less traffic, but you get the sale.
And if you’re not at that bottom, decision-making moment - “Who do you recommend?” - the machine says, “I recommend Jason Barnard.” I’ve made the sale. But it cited three of us in the previous stage. The winner is the one that it understands the best - understandability - and believes is the most credible.
Vladimir Ghilien: Yeah. Wow, that’s advice. All right, guys. Where do social media stand in the grand scheme of things, in terms of online visibility of a company? Whether it’s a personal or corporate brand, social media still matters, right? So yeah, it’s not necessarily SEO in search engines. It’s still those social platforms - could be Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or what else is over there. Can’t remember right now. Oh, Twitter. X. Twitter. Whatever. Which can also be considered as search engines, right? So to some extent, at least.
So where do social media stand in the grand scheme of things when it comes to online visibility of a company, personal brand, whatever it is - a business, so to say?
Tom Jauncey: I think we touched on this earlier slightly. From a business point of view, the content that people tend to put out is your typical static content, just for the sake of posting on LinkedIn. From a visibility point of view, I think video works really well.
There are so many brands out there - whether that be supplement brands, whether that be meal prep companies - that are getting innovative with content. Whether that be like user-generated content, or sort of planning content around the different seasons or different key things that are happening within their specific industry.
I think to stand out on social media specifically, you have to be innovative. Whether that be bringing people into the business or just getting very creative with the content. Because a lot of companies just create the same consistent boring content all the time. And if you can sort of enhance that and do different things, I think it makes you stand out from your competitors even more. And it adds more of a credibility and authenticity behind it as well.
Vladimir Ghilien: Any other thoughts?
Jason Barnard: Not a hugely big fan of social media. I have a team who work on that - Joanne, the marketing manager, who has a team who does the social media. I use social media simply as a collaboration point in entity optimisation.
So my perspective on it is: yes, you need to do it. We’ve got SOPs that we give to our clients of how to do it properly, which are actually created by my marketing team who know how to do it properly - because I haven’t got a clue and I really don’t care.
But if you can create great engagement on your profile, and identify the profile to the engines - be it Google, ChatGPT, Bing, Apple, Microsoft, whoever - they can use that as corroboration. A, of who you are, what you do, and who you serve. But B, that your audience are truly engaging with you. And that your audience is truly engaging with you is primarily going to come through the activity on your profile page.
So one suggestion I will make to people is: push up your best engaging content to your profile page on a regular basis, so the machines keep seeing different content with great engagement. And over time, that will convince them of that credibility part - you are hugely credible because you’re engaging with the right audience at the right time in the right places.
And that’s key: the right audience in the right place. So you need to focus on the social media platforms where your audience naturally hangs out anyway. It’s not up to you - it’s up to them.
Adam Collins: Yeah, pretty much what Jason said is spot on. That’s the thing - because we only do SEO, there’s that line where at some point you have to cut it off. So we’re still big believers, though, of setting up all the social profiles, making sure that they get indexed. Because they do - like you said, when you search for the entity name, especially LinkedIn company pages. I mean, that’s why your resource, Jason, is so good - you see how much weight and authority a LinkedIn company page has for a brand.
So it makes sense - if they’re giving that weight, why wouldn’t you be posting on it? Why wouldn’t you be doing that? And I think, again, one of the points that you just said is: it is naturally where your audience would live and would interact. So it makes sense.
YouTube company page - isn’t it just worth setting one up and saying “videos coming soon,” just so it gets indexed? So at least you’ve got that little tick. But if you can obviously go to the extent of filling it out - yeah, why not? You’ve got nothing to lose from doing that. And I guess it’s another signal, isn’t it, that it’s a real company, and it’s not just a startup affiliate site or a site just trying to scam people.
Jason Barnard: Yeah. And what we see as well - something that people overlook - is that your social media will also appear in the SERPs. And it gives you additional visibility, be it video or a LinkedIn post or a LinkedIn article. Using it for visibility over and above your website, in addition to your website, is hugely important.
And as you said, Adam, when you search for the entity, you’ll see what Google sees as important in terms of your particular brand. If you Google the brand names of your competitors, you can see what Google thinks is important within your space. And then you can know where to focus, where to publish, and use that as additional visibility. With YouTube videos appearing all the time in search, LinkedIn articles too - use that. Don’t just think about your website for that visibility in the SERPs. Think about all your different channels.
I get visibility also through the guest posting I do on Forbes, Entrepreneur, and Search Engine Land, and so on and so forth. And one little word about that: I published an article on Search Engine Land, I think it was five days ago. In 18 minutes, it was indexed on my Brand SERP - on the search result for my name. And if you clicked on “About this result,” it recognised me as the author explicitly. Fantastic. That’s entity understanding taken to a completely new level. 18 minutes, and Google knew that I had written that article, and it was ranking, and it was being presented. And that entity-to-URL relationship, in my opinion, is the single most important thing we need to focus on as SEOs tomorrow. Tomorrow.
Tom Jauncey: What’s your thoughts on the LinkedIn Top Voice? Because I know they’re planning on removing that, aren’t they? From a personal branding point of view - you know, when people comment on those different things and you either get a little badge. What’s your thoughts on that? Because a lot of people have different thoughts on it, from a branding point of view.
Jason Barnard: Right. Well, I did it as an experiment, and it was really easy to get. And Forbes do a similar thing, which is generate standard questions using AI and get people to then create the content around it. User-generated content taken to a completely new level. And user-generated content for brands, as you said earlier on - I think it was you, Tom - super, super important. And we’re really focusing on that, because it really helps.
The Top Voice thing, for me, was just a trick to play and a game to play. Fundamentally, I don’t see any real value in it, other than having the little thing on your LinkedIn profile making you look like an expert in your topic - which is great for a human being. If they take it away, then there is no point.
But like a lot of things, it’s an experiment that they launch, see what happens. And they’re just as capable of taking it away as leaving it, as promoting it, as pushing it further.
And that’s one of the reasons - if I come back to my kind of topic - John Mueller from Google talks about the point of corroboration. Reconciliation, they call it - which we call the entity home. Some people think, “Oh, I can just build my entity around my LinkedIn profile,” or, “my Instagram profile,” or even, “my corporate website.” You shouldn’t - because you don’t control it.
And that’s a great example of something that you’ve created, you’ve worked hard to get, that’s then taken away from you because you don’t control LinkedIn. You need the entity home. You need that single-page website. Because that’s the hub you control. And nothing is ever taken away from you unless you take it away from yourself. And you would be a fool to do so.
Vladimir Ghilien: That’s a really good point. Guys, let’s slowly draw the bottom line under this conversation. And I would ask you to list - let’s say at least five crucial things for a proper, effective, fruitful, productive online presence for a business. Five. One to five. Let’s stop at five. I understand that there’s probably more, but let’s stop at the most important of all of them.
Tom Jauncey: I’ll jump in first. From a social media perspective - not just focusing on a business brand but also the personal brand, and sort of tying them together. And not just the CEO or the founder, but bringing it through to the employees. Reposting, sharing, creating their own kind of content. I think that’s a really good stepping stone that most people can do that doesn’t really cost any money.
Jason Barnard: Right. I mean, we’re actually doing a nice experiment on that topic - which is, our team at Kalicube are not experienced digital marketers who’ve come into the digital marketing space. They learned the Kalicube way. And I did that intentionally, so that I got people who learned the Kalicube Process, which is a very specific way of working on Understandability, Credibility, Deliverability - brand marketing packaged for Google and the other engines.
And we’re building them Knowledge Panels. And that’s basically Kalicube using our authority - the authority of our website - to build Knowledge Panels and Google’s understanding of people who have no real digital footprint. Then moving that on to what you were saying, Tom - getting them to help the company, and the company helping them, in a cycle of virtuous mutual promotion.
And I’m truly confident that it’s going to be very valuable and very helpful for both them and for us. And as you said, Adam - obviously the danger is then people jump ship. I’m hoping that people believe so much in Kalicube’s message and Kalicube’s mission that they’ll stick around. And that Kalicube’s such a great place to work that they won’t want to go anywhere else. And that’s thanks to Mads, Steven, and Itamar.
Adam Collins: Yeah. I mean, for a new brand, I always say: well, understand why you’re doing it, understand who you’re targeting. I think it’s always a pretty good place to start. And then really just trying to make it so you guys look as authentic as you can possibly be. I always try and explain that to people, because I think in its simplistic terms - even if you think about how humans buy. Humans buy from people, companies, and then they buy the product, right? And if one of those three things aren’t aligned, then you probably won’t buy. Like, great - you go to BMW or whatever, but it’s the most dodgy company in the world and has the best sales personality. You’re still not going to buy.
So I think the same thing really applies with websites. How can you really prove to the end user and also Google that you’re a real business, located at a real location, with real employees, that you have real reviews, that you’re producing real content - which is actually useful to people? Like you said, you’re not just regurgitating and going through the motions like everyone else. I think if you do those things, it’s a pretty good starting point for any business or brand, to be honest.
Jason Barnard: Awesome. And for a corporation, big or small - I mean, the thing obviously, we’re in a very specific space. But beyond entity understanding - getting into Google’s brain, ChatGPT’s brain, getting to be part of the ecosystem that they’re working with day in, day out - cleaning up your digital footprint is a useful thing to do anyway.
Because just cleaning up your digital footprint - being consistent and clear across every single platform that you’re present on, and making sure that you’re focusing on the platforms that make sense for your market - is already going to drive business. Because you’re talking to the right people at the right time. You’re standing where your audience is looking. Providing them with valuable content with demonstrable credibility. And inviting them down the funnel.
You’re already doing business. Then you package that for Google, ChatGPT, Bing, and the other machines - and you’ve won the game.
Adam Collins: That’s something you said before, Jason, as well - which is how you see people who create all this informational content or whatever it may be, and there’s no actual thought as to how you’re going to get these people, or a proportion of these people, to actually convert.
And it’s that process, isn’t it, of actually thinking out: right, what is the funnel? And how are we actually going to drive people down to the funnel and actually get a conversion at the end of it? Rather than just looking for vanity-type metrics. Which is still - people still just chase. But you always see the Ahrefs DR or whatever. It’s like, who actually cares? No business owner genuinely cares, apart from the fact that it looks good.
So how do you actually get people to convert? That’s just paramount, really.
Jason Barnard: Yep. And we’re right now focusing on that - a little bit late in the day, but - having the right service page, making sure that we’re clearly stating who we are, what we’re offering, why you should buy from us, why working with us is going to change your business. Come through, have a meeting, let’s talk about it.
And I’m ashamed of myself for not having focused on that much earlier. The people who are already coming to the website, the people we can already start talking to - we should be talking to them in a way that makes sense to them, that resonates. As you said, Tom - I think it was you, Tom - from the product to the person to the company, make sense. Come through. And not just get the traffic and throw things out there and hope.
Adam Collins: Yeah. Do you think, Jason - that’s because obviously you’ve been around the SEO space for a long time, so you’ve seen a lot of iterations. And I suppose the temptation many years ago was: get the page ranking, right? And the content and the on-page probably took a hit on that, because you’re getting in certain keywords, certain phrases, you’re trying to hit certain densities on certain things. And just the readability of it just sucks, doesn’t it? Do you feel like that’s maybe why you’ve delayed it so long?
Jason Barnard: Yeah. I kind of - it’s that I’ve got a knee-jerk anti-reaction to keywords and links. And I’ve suffered greatly from that, because I’ll immediately say, “Keywords and links don’t matter.” And of course they do. And my own stubbornness - to think entity optimisation is the future, and it is the future, but I forgot about the present.
So my foolish mistake was there. And I hope now - in fact, my team are now bullying me. They’re becoming more assertive. And as you said, Tom, they know their jobs, and they can tell me, “Jason, you’re getting this wrong. You’re blinding yourself to something that’s really important because of your own biases.”
And being able to sit down and have your team tell you, “You’re getting this wrong, Jason. Rethink.” And having Itamar - he was the guy who said, “Look at what you’re doing. What decisions are you making that are damaging your own business?” And it’s difficult to do. And it takes a lot of self-awareness. And I can attest to the fact that it isn’t easy - to sit with three coaches for six months having them tell me what I’m doing wrong, having them make me think about what I’m doing wrong. And Adam, my own blind spot has been my own strength.
Vladimir Ghilien: Yeah. Wow, this sounds super cool.
Jason Barnard: Yeah. Well, I hope I’ve mended it. I’ve mended it thanks to other people, not thanks to me.
Vladimir Ghilien: Well, I believe it’s still a process. And I believe that you will be getting back to that from time to time, just reminding yourself that it’s time to let the brakes off.
Jason Barnard: Yeah. Things like - I mean, taking the brakes off. If I leave kind of this conversation with one thing that’s changed a lot for me, it’s stopping that idea that I need to accelerate and push and push and push. And get up earlier and do more and talk more and chat more to more people. And instead think: what is holding me back, rather than what’s going to drive me forward?
And as soon as you can figure out what’s holding you back and you take that handbrake off, things get much better, much more quickly. And you’re not even more tired - which is delightful.
Tom Jauncey: Finesse what you have and then build up from there. Because I think everyone chases everything, don’t they? We’re never happy or content with one particular thing. But when, like you said, Jason - when you bring it back, and whether it be working on yourself or working on the business and different things - I think that sets a foundation then, from where you can start to build up. And when you do put your foot on the gas, you’re doing it in the right way, rather than a way that could be detrimental to you, to your business, and your team as well.
Vladimir Ghilien: Oh, brilliant. I think this is the perfect moment for us to wrap this conversation up. Thank you for joining, for taking the time to have this conversation, this beautifully meaningful chat. For sharing your ideas and insights and bless - golden nuggets left and right. This was wonderful.
Yeah. So, everyone watching, make sure to visit nautilusmarketing.co.uk, igniteseo.uk, and kalicube.com to check out what these wonderful gentlemen have to offer for you and your businesses. And yeah, hang in there. Follow us on social media. Follow our channel if you’re not doing this yet. Make sure to like this video, to give it a little boost in YouTube’s search results. And yeah, stay tuned for the next episode. We’re going to be back here next Wednesday. Cheers, guys. Thanks a lot.
Jason Barnard: Have fun. Bye-bye.
