The Algorithm Whisperer: Training AI to Sell for You, Not Your Competitors with Jason Barnard

0:02John Lee Dumas:Who's ready to rock today, Fire Nation? JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire, brought to you by High Level, the all-in-one sales and marketing platform. Today we'll be breaking down the algorithm whisperer, how to train AI to sell for you, not your competitors. And to drop these value bombs, I brought Jason Barnard in the EO Fire Studios. Jason is the world authority on trading Google and now AI to sell for brands. Dominating search algorithms since 1998. He built CaliCube, now tracking over 73 million brands worldwide. And today we talk about misrepresentation to mission, digital brand intelligence, the CaliCube process, and oh, so much more.

0:38John Lee Dumas:And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Jason and our sponsors. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing, automation, calendar booking, payments, and course hosting all on one platform, plus award-winning 24-7 support. Get a 30-day free trial and my full bonus stack that includes a 50-minute private call with me and much more at highlevelfire.com, highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, 50 days will fly right on by. The only question is, will you have something to show for it? I created a free YouTube series called 50 Days to Something, a step-by-step path to build a real product, service, or offer in just 50 focused days.

1:21John Lee Dumas:Start today for free at eofire.com slash YouTube. Jason, say what's up to Fire Nation and share something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with. I think a lot of people underestimate the amount of proof of how great they are is already out there. That you don't need to create huge amounts of proof of authority that you're already wonderful. It's just that not everybody sees your perspective on that. They don't understand or they don't see what's in your mind, what you've done in your life. And what you need to do is bring that out, express it to people, but also to AI assistive engines like Google and ChatGPT, which is my specialist topic.

2:11John Lee Dumas:In Fire Nation, we'll be talking today about training AI to sell for you, not your competitors. So I want to talk, Jason, about going from misrepresentation to mission. How did your personal experience with algorithmic misrepresentation lead to the creation of CaliCube? Well, my previous career was a voiceover artist as a cartoon blue dog. My character was called Boo-Wah, and I was really proud of it. But I was also the entrepreneur who created the company that created the cartoon that the cartoon Blue Dog was the star of. I was in Paris in France and I made the best pitch I've ever made to a client.

2:58The deal was worth$100 ,000. 2012, best pitch of my life. And I got a rejection email within 20 minutes. And I didn't understand why. I was on my way to the train station and the email said, we don't trust you. And it wasn't they didn't think I was good at my job. It's that they didn't trust me because the boss had Googled my name and my brand SERP, which is the search engine results for your brand name or your personal brand name. My Google business card said, Jason Barnard's a cartoon blue dog. And the CEO had said, well, we're not going to interest our digital marketing strategy of millions of dollars to a cartoon blue dog.

3:44And then I realized that Google had taken my career as a cartoon blue dog and made such a big deal of it that all of a sudden I was only authoritative in cartoons. So I looked at that and I thought, what can I do to change Google's perspective of me so that when people Google my name, it says exactly what I want. And that is what became CaliCube because CaliCube ensures that Google and now ChatGPT perplexity and the other AI say exactly what I want about me, about my company and about my clients.

4:22John Lee Dumas:See, I love how you took that personal experience and now you've turned it into this booming business that's, you know, all about digital brand intelligence. So let's talk about that. What is digital brand intelligence? And why is ignoring it becoming literally the most expensive mistake a company can make in this AI era? Yeah, digital brand intelligence is all about knowing what AI systems say about you when you're not in the room. Jeff Bezos famously said, your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room. I say your brand, personal brand, corporate brand or product brand is what AI, Google and ChatGPT say about you when you're not in the room.

5:08In today's AI era, your reputation depends on these AI engines, understanding who you are and representing you the way you want. And what I've seen over the last years is people, number one, don't really think about it. We all Google people or us chat GPT. We do our due diligence on the digital platforms, but we don't imagine that other people do the same thing. And they do, of course they do for your company or for you personally. And what those AI engines say about you is fundamentally important to everything in your business. I won't do business with somebody if I haven't asked chat GPT or Google or perplexity for confirmation that what I think about them, what they've told me about themselves is actually true.

6:03And people use ChatGPT and Google and perplexity because they trust them. These are recommendation engines. You want them to recommend you. You don't want them saying something contradictory to what you've expressed. And we had a client, it was a really interesting comment that he made. He was saying, I want to be able to sit in first class in the plane, chatting to the person next to me. And I can just have a nice conversation because I know that when that person gets off the plane, they will Google my name or they will ask ChatGPT and ChatGPT and Google will boast on my behalf. That was a beautiful way of saying that is what we need.

6:45We need those engines to close the deals for us because people are asking them, should I trust this person? Should I trust this company before they actually sign?

6:56John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, are you having the wheel spin right now about the conversations that AI is having, and by the way, could be and should be having? And that's why I want to talk about the CaliCube process, because you've actually built a system for training Google, for training ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, Siri, and even Alexa, to recommend your clients instead of their competitors. I mean, this is brilliant. How does that process actually work when it comes down to the core? Right, which is a lovely question. And I'm glad you mentioned Alexa and Siri, because we focus on Google and chat GPT and maybe perplexity.

7:34But all of the big tech are building these engines that are essentially recommendation engines. As human beings, we rely on them more and more to recommend solutions to our problems. And with the agential era coming where the agents will make decisions for us, we're going to rely on them to actually make that decision and move our lives forwards. And as companies, as businesses, as individuals, we need to get those machines on our side. So if you think about know, like, and trust, we all know that you need people to know, like, and trust you. But machines know, like, and trust you. If they know, like, and trust you, they will sell on your behalf.

8:18They will represent you the way you want. They will convince your audience to know, like and trust you. Because today, more and more, we're all as human beings looking at the world through the lens of Google Chat, GPT, Siri, Alexa, Meta, Perplexity, Chat, GPT. And as brands, we need to make sure that that lens is in our favour when our audience are looking at these machines for reassurance or for the solution to that problem. We want those machines to advocate for us. And to advocate for us, those machines need, much like human beings, to know, like, and trust us. And the CaliQ process is the system by which you can get these machines to know, like, and trust.

9:07So you need to get them to understand who you are, what you do and who you serve. Then you need to get them to believe that you're good at what you do, that you're the best in the market. And then they will recommend you to the right people at the right time when they're searching for a solution to that problem. And there's a guy called Professor Dawes in America, in America, sorry, Australia, who was talking about the 95.5. When you meet somebody or you meet your ideal audience, 5 % are in market at the time you talk to them 95 % are not in market and so marketing is all about trying to be top of human mind for the 95 % when they move in market and you think about that you're saying well I spend so many dollars and so much time trying to be top of human mind by remarketing by emails by sending letters by all of the marketing that we do for the 95 who weren't in market when i talked to them the first time but if the machines know like and trust you they will do that work for you because everybody is going to research just before they purchase as they move in market they will do some last minute research and if you are top of algorithmic mind the algorithms chat gpt google Google perplexity, Alexis, Siri, are going to close the deal for you.

10:37So the problem that Professor Dawes identified is solved if you can make sure that you've mastered those algorithms so they understand you, they believe you to be the most credible, and they're willing to recommend and even advocate for you.

10:53John Lee Dumas:I mean, Fire Nation, isn't that the world that you want to live in, that you have these amazing 190 IQ plus AI making decisions for you. I mean, yes, this is exactly the world that we want to live in. So we're going to be talking about these million dollar decisions. We're going to be talking about seven AI employees selling 24 seven and oh so much more when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Fire Nation, if you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. That is why High Level is Entrepreneur on Fire's featured partner. High Level gives you a website builder and hosting, funnels and landing pages, email marketing, appointment scheduling, payment processing, course and membership hosting, and so much more.

11:35John Lee Dumas:Everything you need to succeed all under one roof. No duct tape, no juggling five platforms, just one clean system for your business. And their award-winning 24-7 support has your back when you need it most. When you sign up at highlevelfire.com, you also get my exclusive bonus stack, a 30-day free trial, a private 15-minute call with me, JLD, access to my weekly live office hours, a digital copy of my book, The Common Path to Uncommon Success, my 50 Days to Something Execution Roadmap, and more. Visit highlevelfire.com and start building your something today. Fire Nation, if you've ever thought, I know I'm capable of more, but you're not sure where to start, I've created something for you.

12:20John Lee Dumas:It's called 50 days to something, not 50 days of perfection, not 50 days to overnight millions, just 50 focused days to build something that matters. Maybe a product, a service, a course, a coaching offer, something real and something that will generate real revenue. 50 days to something is my passion project. Each video is short, it's tactical, it's designed for you to take one meaningful step forward each day. Picture this, in just 50 days, you will have built an asset. And the best part, it's completely free and it's on my YouTube channel right now. If you are ready to create something that matters, visit eofire.com slash YouTube.

12:58John Lee Dumas:That's eofire.com slash YouTube and start your 50-day journey today. 50 days will pass in the blink of an eye. The question is, will you have something to show for it? Jason, we're back and I want to talk about the million dollar decisions before hello. So, I mean, we've gotten into some of this already, but let's go specific about how Google and AI systems are making million dollar decisions about brands before a single human conversation even begins. I had the example earlier on where I lost a hundred thousand dollar deal after a conversation with a human being. And in fact, over three or four years, I think I probably lost a million dollars in deals because Google thought I was a blue dog and because it was saying he's a great voice actor, but then why would you trust him for digital marketing?

13:51And that's a huge loss and a huge opportunity cost for me from effort that I was making actually talking to people. But today what happens is I don't even need to go out finding my ideal customers because Google and ChatGPT and Perplexity bring them to me. And we get the people coming in onto sales calls or people signing up with CaliCube for our personal brand services come to us saying, I kept asking the different AI or I asked my AI assistant and your name kept coming up. It kept saying Jason Barnard. It kept saying CaliCube. And I'll give you a really, really fun example. I'm going to be speaking at a Google conference.

14:35So I'm going to be a keynote speaker for Google. How did they find me? The boss said to the person organizing the conference, I found a list of five people who I think will be really good as a keynote speaker. Then that person asked Gemini. They asked Google's smart AI. and they said Gemini just kept saying Jason Barnard's the guy Jason Barnard's the guy Jason Barnard's the guy and so they asked me that's how I got the job I don't even know these people so when you get it right those million dollar decisions are brought right to your door it's not just the people who are checking up on you before you purchase before they convert it's people you've never even thought about who are your ICP, who you would have no way of reaching.

15:29Because these machines have trillions of niche conversations every day with billions of people who trust them, they can bring your ICP right to your door. Super convinced that you're the person or you're the company who's going to solve that problem.

15:46John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, again, this is the kind of business that we can run in today's world if we're stepping and going forward with the right process, which kind of leads me, Jason, to talk about seven AI employees that are literally selling 24-7. I mean, there's something that's pretty great about AI employees. They don't sleep. They don't take coffee breaks, okay? And you actually say, Jason, that seven AI employees, they're already selling to our prospects, but literally around the clock. So who the heck are they and how do we train them to sell for us instead of against us which is a great question and the other thing is you don't pay them they're free oh beautiful so you have google chachi pt perplexity claude co-pilot siri alexa and in fact there are lots more there's deep seek there are all these uh in france you've got mistral i'm in france so i kind of like the french thing mistral is another one they are having these trillions of niche conversations with billions of people every day.

16:46And people are using Google AI, ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Copilot, Siri Alexa to solve the problem. So we only use AI to solve a problem. We're asking the AI, I have a problem, can you give me the solution? Either directly or send me to the person or the company who could solve this problem for me. And I trust you to give me the right answer. So when the AI can't solve the problem directly, it will recommend what it thinks is the best solution. And you obviously want that to be you. But if it can't solve the problem itself, it has a choice of you and all of your competitors. Why would it sell for you and not for your competitors?

17:30And right now what's happening is, of course, they're all selling for your competitors because you haven't spent the time to train them. So this is why I'm talking about the seven AI employees. They are salespeople. They're sales reps for you or for your competition. And if you train them, they'll sell for you. And if you don't train them, they'll sell for the competition. It's really simple. And the idea that you are powerless and that they just make their mind up and that you can't control this is absolutely not true. You have more control than you think. They don't know enough about you in order to be able to advocate for you, in order to be able to recommend for you.

18:19So what you need to do is demonstrate to them, educate them, train them, so they understand who you are, what you do, and who you serve. And most importantly, that you are much better than the competition as the solution to the problem. And this is going to get either worse or better, depending on whether or not you've trained them. Because with agentic AI, where the AI makes the decision, the level of trust they need in you and what you've taught them and how you've trained them is going to become increasingly important. Right now, they're saying to your ideal client, their user, here is the best solution.

19:00and the user chooses and they say, brilliant, okay, I'll go with that. Jason Barnard, he's the best solution. Off we go. Have him as a keynote speaker. In the future, the engine is going to actually make the decision for the human, at which point the level of trust that that machine has in you is going to be the be-all and end-all. And if you've trained it to understand that you're a better solution than your competitor, it will always recommend you, number one, or do the deal for you to a person who's allowing the AI to make that decision.

19:34John Lee Dumas:And this just leads to the next logical step, which is when AI actually buys for your prospect. And AI assistants, they're soon to be making purchasing decisions on behalf of our specific prospects that we have. I mean, I even think right now, like one of my processes that I do when I want to buy something on Amazon is I just say, hey, ChatGPT, like what's the top three things on Amazon for this specific problem that I have? What are the top three solutions on Amazon? And give me the link and I'll give me the link and I'll go check out the three things and I'll choose one of them. But guess what?

20:07John Lee Dumas:When I start to trust AI better and when AI just naturally starts to get better because it's getting so much better every single second of every single day, what I'm going to be doing maybe in weeks, maybe a month, who knows how long, but I'm going to say, hey, chat or hey, Claude, I need this. Go find the best solution for me on Amazon and buy it for me and have it shipped to me as soon as possible. And it'll be done. I'm not even going to make a decision. I'm going to let chat make the decision because I'm going to trust chat or Claude or just let's just say AI. I want to trust AI to make the best decision for me.

20:41John Lee Dumas:So why is that shift coming so fast? And how can businesses prevent AI from sending customers straight to their competition, Jason? Which is a brilliant question from the best. I can I kind of jumped ahead. And I've had a problem recently as I'm writing a series of articles for Search Engine Land, which is a bit of a geeky publication in the SEO industry. And Microsoft contacted me and said, please stop talking about agents because we're not really there yet. But I think Microsoft are underestimating where things have got to, because in February, Google launched the Universal Commerce Protocol.

21:19OpenAI partnered with Stripe. Visa released their trusted agent protocol. Mastercard deployed agent play. Coinbase and Cloudflare got involved. And that was just in February 2026. So you've got six major corporations who cover pretty much everybody on the planet implementing agentic AI purchases online. And within weeks,$50 million of business had been done by agents with no human intervention. So it's not going to be tomorrow that this is going to be widespread, but it started already. So getting ready for that today is fundamentally important. We have a window of opportunity and it's closing very fast.

22:05And as you said, AI is advancing so fast. It's closing faster than we can possibly imagine because nothing has ever moved this fast in human history. So let's say you've got a year. You have a year to get yourself in place so that the assistants of today and the agents of tomorrow trust you. No lie can trust you and recommend you and advocate for you over and above the competition.

22:31John Lee Dumas:Jason, if Fire Nation wants to learn more about the CaliQ method, they want to connect with you, learn from you, what is your call to action for our listeners today? This is perfect timing, my friend, because today I did some vibe coding, used some AI to build an AI audit. So if you go to calicube.com, K-A-L-I-C-U-B-E.com slash AI hyphen audit, you will get an audit of how AI perceives you, how it represents you, and how much money the fact that you haven't trained these sales reps for selling for you, how much is that costing you? And that tool will tell you exactly how much. And I was running it through its paces this afternoon on multiple brands, brands that we've worked with and brands that we haven't worked with.

23:28The results are stunning, really informative. It gives you tips and tricks of things to do next. And just to boast a little bit, our clients always came out incredibly well.

23:41John Lee Dumas:Fire Nation, you're the average. of the five people you spend the most time with. And you've been hanging out with JB and JLD today. So keep up that heat. And for links to everything we talked about, visit eofire.com, type Jason in the search bar. The show notes page will pop right up. And also calicube.com slash free-ai-audit. I'm actually on the page right now. I'm looking at Jason's smiling face. I'm going to be taking this free audit later, Jason. So I'm looking forward to that, my friend. Brilliant. Well, Jason, thank you for sharing your truth, your knowledge, your value with Fire Nation today.

24:17John Lee Dumas:For that, we salute you and we'll catch you on the flip side. Thank you very much. Hey, Fire Nation, a huge thank you to our sponsors and Jason for sponsoring today's episode. And Fire Nation, are you an entrepreneur on fire who's looking to share your amazing message with the world? If yes, we are now accepting applications for EO Fire. To learn more about becoming a guest, visit EOfire.com slash guest and I'll catch you there or on the flip side. If you are building a real business, you need real infrastructure. High Level gives you website hosting, funnels, email marketing, automation, calendar booking, payments, and course hosting all on one platform, plus award-winning 24-7 support.

24:53John Lee Dumas:Get a 30-day free trial and my full bonus stack that includes a 15-minute private call with me and much more at highlevelfire.com. Highlevelfire.com. Fire Nation, 50 days will fly right on by. The only question is, will you have something to show for it? I created a free YouTube series called 50 Days to Something, a step-by-step path to build a real product, service, or offer in just 50 focused days. Start today for free at eofire.com slash YouTube.