Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Spotify | RSS | More
Scott Duffy talks with Jason Barnard about the importance of personal and corporate branding.
Scott Duffy is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and Founder of AI Mavericks. Previously, he founded Smart Charter, which was acquired by Richard Branson’s Virgin Group and has been recognized as a “Top 10 Speaker” by Entrepreneur.com.
Scott shares game-changing insights on controlling your digital narrative and dominating search results. He highlights his challenges of managing an accurate digital identity when changing careers and dealing with Google’s unpredictable algorithm changes. Scott also emphasizes his collaboration with Kalicube to restore his online presence showcasing the importance of expert assistance in managing digital profiles.
Learn why Google visibility is 10 times more valuable than your website, and how to leverage AI-driven platforms to establish credibility. Discover how Scott rebuilt his online presence from scratch after losing control of his digital footprint, and why a strategic Knowledge Panel is crucial for entrepreneurs. Whether you’re pivoting careers or building authority, this episode reveals proven strategies for making your personal brand work harder for your business success.
What you’ll learn from Scott Duffy
- 00:00 Scott Duffy and Jason Barnard
- 01:44 How Important Is It That You Have Control Over Your Online Narrative?
- 02:05 What Is the First Thing Potential Clients Usually Do When They Meet Someone New?
- 02:24 Why Does What Appears in Google Search Results So Important?
- 03:39 How Does Kalicube Help Google Create Accurate Summaries About a Person or a Business?
- 05:24 What Online Information About Scott Duffy Has Jason Barnard Helped Organize?
- 07:38 Why Is It Important to Focus on Building Your Personal Brand?
- 08:13 Why Do You Need to Build a Strong Foundation on Google?
- 08:57 What Common Mistakes Do People Make in Terms of Their Personal Brand?
- 10:41 What Mistake Did Scott Duffy Make When an Agency Called Him, Suggesting He Needed a Wikipedia Panel?
- 15:00 Where Should You Begin if You Want to Build Your Brand and Credibility Quickly?
- 15:15 Why Should You Choose Jason and Kalicube to Help Build Your Google Knowledge Panel?
- 17:02 How Can You Stand Out From the Crowd and Become the First in the Search Result?
- 19:30 What Challenges Did Scott Duffy Face When Pivoting Between Different Projects?
- 20:52 What Has Scott Duffy Done to Make Google and AI Focus On What’s Important About Him?
- 27:05 Why Is It Important to Package Yourself and Provide Google With Clear, Accurate Information of You?
This episode was recorded live on video November 19th 2024
Links to pieces of content relevant to this topic:
Scott Duffy
Transcript from The Importance of Personal and Corporate Branding – Fastlane Founders with Scott Duffy
[00:00:00] Jason Barnard: Hi, everybody and welcome to another episode of Fastlane Founders and Legacy. I’m here with Scott Duffy. You get the intro song, Scott. A quick hello and we’re good to go. Welcome to the show, Scott Duffy.
[00:00:46] Scott Duffy: I love it. I love it. You know, that’s the thing is you never really get a welcome song on a podcast. Right. This is really unique. I like this.
[00:00:55] Jason Barnard: Brilliant. Well, it was my past career and I still sing and I’ve got a jazz club opposite. I’ll be playing there in a few weeks time. So I’m cheating with the voice. But what I liked about it is I don’t need to record an intro and I can do it live and it’s fun and people like it and you liked it and I’m very happy you liked it. But today we’re talking about personal branding and corporate branding and the importance, particularly as an entrepreneur, of your personal brand. And one thing I just wanted to show before we start is that we work with you.
[00:01:28] Scott Duffy: Yes.
[00:01:29] Jason Barnard: And we built that Knowledge Panel for you. We’ve built it out. That looks incredibly impressive with the books. And then I asked ChatGPT about your career and ChatGPT writes a huge long essay about you and it’s all correct. So how important is that?
[00:01:44] Scott Duffy: Well, I think today if you’re a business person, I think it’s everything, you know, especially if you’re an entrepreneur or you want to be a leader in your space, you know, it’s all about the message and the story that you’re out there telling the market and really controlling, having control of that narrative. And you know, it’s interesting because I think when you meet somebody new, whether you’re making a new friend or it’s a business prospect or it’s somebody that, for example, you’re out there raising capital and you’re meeting with a new investor, what’s the first thing they’re going to do? They’re going to Google your name. And I think that what comes up is so important. I personally think that what comes up in that Google result is 10 times more important than anything you could ever have on your website. Because what that’s going to do is it’s going to establish third-party credibility for you. And the narrative that they see is the first thing that they’re going to believe. And the more that you can control and the more you can occupy that page and control the narrative, I think the more trust they’re going to have in you, which is going to lead to, you know, more likely lead to the decision that you’re looking for, whatever it is. Now, some people may say that.
Some people may say that. Well, they don’t Google you. I go to Instagram or I go to social media. The truth of the matter is this. The truth of the matter is most people today, I’m going to say 99 out of 100 at least, are going to Google first. They don’t have your social media handle. They don’t really know who you are.
They want to know what does the Internet say about you?
[00:03:20] Jason Barnard: Yeah.
[00:03:20] Scott Duffy: And that’s why this is so important.
[00:03:23] Jason Barnard: So Google’s a kind of summary of the Internet.
[00:03:26] Scott Duffy: Well, so Google is a summary of the Internet, but the question is, you know, where are they getting the information for that summary? Where are they coming up with this? And I think that what is really awesome about what you do and what Kalicube does is you tell Google exactly what data to create their summary from. In fact, you teach them how to organize the data in a certain way. Again, that enables you to tell the world the story that you want them to know or you want them to believe about you as a person or as a business. And, you know, personal branding and personal marketing is so important. I was just Talking to a CEO yesterday of a company, big company, Fortune 500 company, and we were talking about his personal brand. And what I find really interesting is that it used to be that the CEO of a big, say, Fortune 500 company, Fortune 5000 company, all of the branding while they were in that role was done for the company. But now more and more CEOs are realizing that I may move around. Like, it’s not just about, for example, AT&T or T Mobile or Nabisco, like, whatever it is, it’s about me and my personal brand.
So in parallel, what these leaders are doing today is they’re not just building their company brand, but on the side, they’re building their own personal brand that’s going to be portable and that they can take with them for the rest of their life.
[00:04:57] Jason Barnard: Right. Yeah. And the interesting point there is that they’re doing all the work to build it, but the machines don’t understand what they’re doing. So the machines can’t represent them the way they want.
[00:05:07] Scott Duffy: Well, that’s exactly what happens. And then they come out with a book or they change their social media, or they have, you know, a hundred different profiles online for different things. And so Google does not really know what to pull from. And I think that one of the things that’s really, that has been great, Jason, that you’ve done with me is, you know, connecting, you know, my name, connecting Scott Duffy to the books that I’ve written, the articles I did, to all these things that I’ve done so that it all kind of can come together in the way it comes together, you know, or one of the ways it comes together is when somebody types in my name and I’ll do a search for my name. Well, not just see the pictures and the profile, but they’ll see, I think you call them pills. But if you want to drill down, you can drill down into an overview or books or TV shows or whatever it is, and you can get even more information. And I know all of that takes time, but unless you have the right foundation set, which is one of the things that you do, none of that is really possible.
[00:06:16] Jason Barnard: Yeah, 100%. And from that perspective, we come onto your personal brand. To what extent is your personal brand driven your business ventures? I mean, one thing I learned about you very quickly is you sold a business to Richard Branson, who said you’d reinvented one aspect of the aviation industry. That’s huge.
[00:06:35] Scott Duffy: Yeah. Well, I think that, you know, you know, from a personal branding standpoint, you know, it’s interesting. So if you go back a hundred years, the average man in the United States lived to be 53 years old. Right. I’m 54. That freaks me out.
[00:06:52] Jason Barnard: Lucky you. Yeah, you made it.
[00:06:56] Scott Duffy: Maybe back then, being good at one thing was good enough. But today that’s not the world is. Today we’re going to have many careers, several things that we do all of those, this kind of stuff. Over time the world has changed and as a result, locking ourselves or our branding around one thing or around one company is really limiting. It’s kind of like, I think of it in terms of athletes. An athlete will go and they’ll play for a big team, right? And all their branding is around them with the big team, and then they’re no longer with a big team or they’re out of the sport. And so what is their brand? What do we want to know about them? Right? Like what is it that they want to sell them for? So I think that when it comes to a personal brand, it is more important than any time in history that no matter who we are and what it is that we’re doing, we are building, we’re building our own brand and we’re building our own narrative, and we’re having control of that narrative. And we’re putting it in front of the most eyeballs that we possibly can.
We’re putting it, we’re telling that narrative at the place like in the moment of time where people are going to find out more about us. And that’s Google today. You know, maybe one day in 20 years it’s different, but today that’s Google. Now more and more people are starting to search a person’s name, right, or brand using AI tools. And what’s really brilliant is the foundation that you set on Google, if you do it right, gets picked up by these AI tools. And so if there’s 25,000 people that have my name, I’m the person that shows up first, right.
But it doesn’t happen by happen chance. It happens because of a really super well thought out strategy that’s being worked every single day. Right. And it’s been tested by you and by your team. And so just, I just think it’s so important.
[00:08:57] Jason Barnard: Right. I mean, and I think a lot of people kind of think, well, I can’t do anything about this. I just leave it to luck and see what the machine comes up with.
[00:09:04] Scott Duffy: Yeah.
[00:09:04] Jason Barnard: And that’s basically abdicating all responsibility. It’s always seemed to me contradictory to say I’m going to make all this effort my personal brand, but I’m not actually going to try to control how the AI and Google understand it and represent me. And you’ve taken a completely different path, which is I want to control and I want to dominate. And one thing I noticed is ChatGPT now talks about Tim Robbins and Richard Branson in your career.
[00:09:31] Scott Duffy: Yeah.
[00:09:32] Jason Barnard: And it really is making you look like a business superstar. And you are a business superstar.
[00:09:38] Scott Duffy: Yeah.
[00:09:40] Jason Barnard: But being associated with big, big, big, big names like that is a huge benefit.
[00:09:45] Scott Duffy: Well, I think something that’s really important to understand is kind of how we first met. So when we first met, I had owned my domain, scottduffy.com for, you know, since like 96, 95, 96. I owned it forever. And the same person worked on my website the entire time. And they were an expert at SEO and they were an expert. And so when you would Google me, I would, I was the entire first page and the second page, I controlled all of this real estate now at that time. This is pre Google Knowledge Panel. So this is when Wikipedia was the thing that was on the side of the page.
And the challenge with Wikipedia was it’s like, how do you get a Wikipedia? It doesn’t matter what you tell Google, it’s a separate company and you have to go through these editors and these other things like that. And I made a mistake. And the mistake I made was I had an agency call me one day and say, hey, you control all of this real estate and this and that. You should have a Wikipedia Panel. And they said, we are experts at creating that and we are editors for Wikipedia and that’s why we’re calling you. So I pay them some money. I thought everything I was doing was just what everyone does.
And it turns out that they were banned editors from Wikipedia. So I was banned for life for trying to like game with the system, which I wasn’t even trying to do. It was a crazy thing. But I still controlled all the real estate on the page, right? All the results. So the guy. So I wanted to make. I had a new book coming out and I wanted to make a change to my website. And my guy had built a huge clientele over time.
A lot of people I referred to him. And as a result, he wasn’t able to jump on my project. So I brought somebody else in. And long story short, when they transferred the site, they didn’t take any of the SEO or links. Like they just completely blew it. So my new site goes up and I don’t regularly Google my name, but about nine months later I went and I googled my name and I was gone. I was absolutely nowhere. You couldn’t find me.
And I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t know what happened. So I reached out to a friend of mine, they said, what do I do? And this time Google Knowledge Panels were becoming a little bit more prevalent. And my friend said to me, he said, Rand Fishkin, who I’ve interviewed. Rand Fishkin from SEO MOZ said, Jason is the number one guy in the world with a Google Knowledge Panel and helping you to figure this out. That’s how we originally connected. So I want to share with the listeners, like I had a big problem, like I could not be found. And it turns out there’s another person with my same name that is an expert at SEO. He teaches SEO and so he taken over all that real estate.
He also has over 500,000 people that have watched his online courses. So I’m starting from zero. I can’t be found. And pretty much like I’m like, I’m fucked. And I felt like there is nothing I could do. I felt totally out of control. I felt like there’s nothing I can do about this. I felt like this problem is so much bigger than me.
And I called you and you’re like, yeah, get this every day. And you basically said, here’s what we’re going to do. And you told me we were going to have to start over. And you said, it’s going to take X period of time. This stuff doesn’t happen overnight when you’re starting from scratch like I was. And it took us probably six to nine months, and I had taken everything back over. And it was absolutely incredible. I would not have been able to do that without your help.
And I think that the one thing that I want to communicate to people, listening, is if you’re like I literally was in a situation where it was like, there’s no way that anyone’s ever going to see me. There’s no way I’m going to be able to get that back.
[00:14:12] Jason Barnard: Yeah.
[00:14:13] Scott Duffy: But you know what? Jason, Kalicube have figured out what the strategy is and they’ve tested it over. He’s constantly testing and testing and retesting new things because Google’s algorithm changes. And by the way, that’s another thing I want to share. Google will throw up a new algorithm. Nobody knows when. It’s just there’s a new algorithm and it breaks things. It breaks things. And Google is trying to relearn and refigure things out.
And every time that would happen, and to this day, Jason or his team calls me, they reach out to me and they say, Google just released a new algorithm. Things may look a little bit wonky right now. We’re on it. We got it. And they always figure it out and it comes back. So if you want to really build your brand and you really want to build credibility and you really want to build trust, in a heartbeat, the place to start is with a Google Knowledge Panel.
[00:15:14] Jason Barnard: Right.
[00:15:15] Scott Duffy: And if you’re going to do that, the person you want to build that with you is Jason and Kalicue. Because they know the space better than anybody on the planet. And for all of you that are thinking one step ahead, well, what about AI? This is how you start to train the models to tell your narrative and come up first.
[00:15:36] Jason Barnard: Right. Which brings us onto kind of that topic, because people are freaking out about AI. We don’t understand it. We don’t know where it’s going. You’re in the AI world. You use AI to drive business and to help businesses improve their workflows and drive more business. We manage the AI, the representation in AI. I’ve just been looking at Google Learn, which is Huge.
It’s a game changer. So if you haven’t seen that yet, go and take a look at Google Learn. It’s super interesting. It’s the next big phase that’s coming. But in terms of AI, without that knowledge that you talked about, the Knowledge Panel, you have no hope. So you need to start with Google Search.
[00:16:14] Scott Duffy: I don’t know what you would do. Like, it’s really amazing. And what’s really cool is. So my company, AI Mavericks, we’re the number one education and training company for businesses in the United States when it comes to all things like how do you implement AI into your company? So this is really important to me. And what’s extremely important to me is that when somebody searches my name using AI because I’m in the AI space, that I show up and I’m relevant. And that in that it’s not my biggest. He’s not even competitor.
The biggest. The other person with my name, right, that has all this expertise, I don’t want him to be the person that shows up. And the thing is, in order for that to happen, you know, there’s X number of billion people on the planet, there’s thousands of people likely on the planet that have your exact name. Right. Whether you found them or not, just talk to any credit card company and they’ll tell you the same. And so how do you stand out? How do you become first? Well, there’s a process, like there’s a formula. And what Jason and Kalicube are doing is they’re helping you to execute that formula. Now and I will say this, in my experience, takes work on my end too, right.
So I’m going to be given a roadmap. But I also have to commit to doing certain things in order to do my part right in making all of this work. 90% of the work is done, if not 95, by Kalicube and the team. They have a great we’ll do it for you model. But there are certain things like I have about 100 online profiles. And just think about it for you. You may have a Facebook, an Instagram, a WhatsApp, you may have these different social media accounts, you may have a Slack account, you may have a whatever account. You start adding up all your accounts, the number gets really big, really fast.
Well, if you have a different picture associated with each one, so you’ve got your name, but a different picture and you have a different bio, that’s 100 different people to Google. So there is a process of really organizing and managing your persona and the way you communicate to the world about yourself visually through photographs, through bios and things like that. That was the hard work that I had to do. But, and I didn’t even have to find the places like Jason and his team said, hey, by the way, here’s all the places that you have profiles. We just need you to match these up. And so there is some work. If you really want to jump on it, you do on your end, but you do it once, and then if you make a change down the road, you do it again.
It’s not like it’s a little bit of time up front, but after that, there’s not a whole lot you have to do.
[00:19:08] Jason Barnard: Right. And that was a question about pivoting, because over the time we’ve known you, you’ve pivoted multiple times with different projects. And that’s a real struggle because as you said, there’s such a big digital footprint and you’ve made such an effort on the personal brand, and it’s out there, and you’re out there. When you pivot, how much of a challenge was that for you?
[00:19:31] Scott Duffy: Well, I had to go back and I had to update like 100 profiles, right. I just chose another picture. So, I updated pictures. There were, you know, it was really, it was some work up front. It really was. But the majority of the work came from you guys. Because you guys, you guys gave me like the playbook and you said, here’s what we need you to do. And then you kind of just took it, took it from there, you know, as a business owner, if you’re an entrepreneur, you may have, you know, Google business pages up.
You may have been reporting stuff to Dun and Bradstreet. Like you, you may not think any of this matters. But Google sees everything, right? So if you’re doing something new and you’re not doing something old, that’s something that you have to contemplate, and that’s something that you have to work around when you are building a Google Knowledge Panel.
[00:20:38] Jason Barnard: Which is a great point, because all the old stuff still exists and you can’t delete it. What you have to do is make Google and the AI focus on what’s new or what’s important to you. And you’re doing that with AI Mavericks. From what I understand, AI Mavericks is really taking off.
[00:20:52] Scott Duffy: Yeah, exactly. So I went from Scott Duffy, who was an entrepreneur and really a keynote speaker. So I do a lot of business strategy training. I’ve been doing that for years. I’ve been an entrepreneur for years. Now I’m this AI guy. So now Google is starting to see Scott Duffy AI guy, and they’re like, oh, that’s another Scott Duffy. Who’s that? And so what we have to do is we have to create the connections that enable Google to go, this person is that person.
It’s kind of like if you have a website and you’re talking to Google, you might, you have all your different social media handles and you’re doing the same as on the back end. It’s a very similar type of thing you know. You need Google to understand that this Scott Duffy is the same as that Scott Duffy. And then you have to feed information to it in a way that makes this new version of what you want to share with the world be the version that comes up.
[00:21:56] Jason Barnard: Right. And in fact, that is a really kind of interesting way of putting it, is by ensuring that Google understands all of these different activities and branding efforts are by the same person, it can bring it all together and you end up with this kind of result. Well, it understands that you’ve written those three books. It understands that all of these people are you. Understands that you hang out with Richard Branson and ChatGPT by extension and Google Gemini and Google Learn About are all able to represent you the way you want. And my guess is that when you take that from company to company as an entrepreneur or as a CEO. It’s a huge benefit.
[00:22:39] Scott Duffy: Well, it is. And if you’re an entrepreneur that is starting a company and you’re looking for capital, right. If you’re growing a company, this is a way to start, to build a relationship and to build some trust and some confidence before you ever sit down with a person that you’re going to call on. Right? Because the odds are you’ve scheduled it before an investor is, has scheduled a meeting with you. They Googled you, they googled you. Now, and here’s the other thing you may say, well, I mean, my name is the same as this famous actor or actress. There again, there’s nothing I can do. There’s always something that you can do if you know what the right strategy is.
And so that is, that’s the type of thing that again, that Jason can help you with as well. I think that it can just feel like Google is like out there on its own. Like we’re on our own islands and we are totally powerless and out of control in terms of how we’re presented and portrayed. And what I want to get across today is that is not the case. If you know what the right strategy is, which by the way is more than a full time job just understanding all of the changes constantly happening, happening with the way that Google is analyzing and organizing information. But so if you are working with somebody, if you’re working with Jason, who does that and understands that, then you’re in a position to really take control of your own destiny online.
[00:24:21] Jason Barnard: Taking control of your destiny online. I love that. But one thing we were talking about just before the show is I mentioned that another of our clients had the wrong photo showing up on Google. Huge. And he pointed it out to us saying, that isn’t me, he looks like me, but he’s not me. And we said, which photo do you want?
[00:24:40] Scott Duffy: Yeah.
[00:24:41] Jason Barnard: And two and a half weeks later he had the photo he wanted. And you’ve just said to me that Google’s picked up on a photo of you that’s quite old. And the point is, you say to us, I want a different photo. We can do that for you. As you said, a question of understanding the intricacies of Google’s thinking.
[00:24:57] Scott Duffy: Google makes mistakes. So in the time that we’ve worked together, so there have been times where I’ll have the page and it’ll be my picture and I’ll have really great end. But here’s what happens is, is they’ve got a different Scott Duffy’s bio under my picture, right? Or there’s a, or they throw a different Scott Duffy’s books into my books. And these things have all happened. And so what I’ve done is I’ve just, I mean really just emailed you. All right. I haven’t even had to email you. I’ve just emailed the amazing people on your team.
I’ll just shoot an email and a little screenshot and usually the response I get back is, dude, old news. We’re already on this, right? And it gets fixed. Now again, Google does not. You know, Google moves like a snail. Google moves very slow. So some of these changes are not going to happen overnight, right? They’re going to happen over sometimes a three month period, it could take a six month period, it could take, you know, when you’re just getting started, depending on where you are, it could take a year. But that is time so well spent in terms of training thing because it will benefit you for the rest of your life, for the rest of your career. So sometimes I make it even though I know the right things are being done.
When Google’s made these mistakes, I’ll get frustrated. Why isn’t it changing? Why isn’t it changing? It just has to do its own thing. There’s billions and billions and billions of pages out there and I’m just like one dude. Right?
[00:26:45] Jason Barnard: Is a really good point. Google is slow, but it’s controllable. And that I think is the key secret here. And if you can control it, you can make it look, you look like a huge, huge success. And as we were talking earlier on, people keep telling me you must be really rich. I ask them why they think that and they say, because I Google your name and you look like you’re super.
[00:27:05] Scott Duffy: Google wants to tell your story. Like they, it wants to tell when somebody is saying, who is this person? They want to tell you who that person is. Right. And they want to tell you who that person is today. And so this isn’t about like, this isn’t about doing something that’s not right or about manipulation. It’s not about that. It’s about actually packaging yourself and saying, Google, here’s who I am, here’s who I am. Please tell the right story.
And Google, I believe on the other end is going, thanks for making it easy for me. I’m going to double check with all the third party sources and references and make sure. But thanks for telling me who you are. You’ve like, I’m no longer confused. And so when somebody asks who you are, your name is, or your company is, or whatever, now I know what to tell them. I’m able to tell them in a way that generates a result for the person doing the search that is the most valuable for that person. So if I’m doing the search I want to get, Google wants to give me the most valuable result to me. So I keep searching, coming back to that site and searching and not going to a competitor. And so if Google has all this information organized for it and we’re just saying, hey, here it is and here’s all the links and here’s all the stuff that makes connections and this guy is that guy and all that stuff and we make it easy for Google. I believe the machine, if it could talk, we’re great, would be grateful and be like, dude, thanks, I got it.
[00:28:45] Jason Barnard: Yep. So you and I both now see Google as a semi human being. I see it as a child that I’m teaching who’s grateful for the fact that I’m teaching it and helping it. And you’re seeing it as an adult who just wants to get it right, present you to your audience in a way that makes sense to them. And that’s key. Thank you so much, Scott. That was absolutely brilliant. I loved it.
You wanted to say one more thing?
[00:29:13] Scott Duffy: I just thank you for everything. Thanks for you and your team and all your hard work.
[00:29:17] Jason Barnard: Well, thank you very much. You get the outro song as well. A quick goodbye to end the show. Thank you, Scott.
The event is 100% free:
Organized by Kalicube.
