James Dooley Interviews ODYS Mentor Kasra Dash | SEO Mentors

James Dooley: Hi so today I'm joined with Kasra Dash one of the mentors at OYS so I'm going to jump straight into it Kasra how has mentorship changed or helped you in your personal career.

Kasra Dash: Helped me loads um even prior to like the OYS mentorship I've obviously had guys like yourself I've got guys like Gary Craig um even like for example Ky Rof all of you guys have helped me tremendously when it comes to like personal growth and not even in just in terms of SEO just like for example you yourself you've helped me loads when it comes to business um Ky's helped me loads when it comes to on page SEO um so yeah I think it's definitely helped with my personal growth and not only that is when you do get a mentor they've kind of went through all the pain and stuff like that so they can essentially fast track you if that makes sense.

James Dooley: Yeah yeah for sure so when did you first realise the importance of having a mentor.

Kasra Dash: Probably about two years after meeting you like I didn't really know what a mentor was um until like people started mentioning I was like alright okay yeah that that does make sense you've kind of been my mentor um very early on and then I've kind of then just latched on to people that I feel are either good at SEO or good at business or good at like for example e commerce certain tasks like that even Facebook ads like Rick's another really good one to speak to um so yeah it wasn't early on I think only within like the past maybe three or four years really I've kind of got to know like what a mentor is and I've actually been kind of doing it subconsciously.

James Dooley: Yeah so obviously you travel now the world going to some of the highest level masterminds for search engine optimisation and the algorithms are changing all the time with AI being integrated and stuff like that so what lessons have you learned from mentors that you think that you couldn't have learned without having a specific mentor to help you out.

Kasra Dash: So I think one of the biggest things that I've learned from you is the importance of outsourcing that that's one thing because very early on even prior to prior to me meeting you I tried to set up like a web design agency and I thought that I had to be the person getting the leads the person closing the leads and the person actually building out the website and also the person delivering the website so it's like four or five tasks that you're doing all by yourself and then you were like you're just being a silly fool why do you not outsource the selling part why do you not hire somebody to do the Facebook ads part why do you not just deliver the product for example so that's one thing that I've learned um another thing as well that I've learned not just from yourself but from all mentors is innovating so right now obviously it's kind of been like the industrial era now it's kind of like the AI era um so if you are afraid that AI is going to take over your job it's probably because you're not innovating enough um so I think that that's another big thing in the recent years.

James Dooley: That's a great one because the next question rolls on to what role does mentorship play in innovation and creativity in a business environment so obviously now with artificial intelligence being here I think this is one of the biggest reasons why Alex Drew Ays wanted to set up the mentorship program because there were so many mentees that needed training and they didn't know where to turn to to have a good business advisor or someone who could kind of sit down and show them through the processes but these mentors obviously they're battle hardened they've gone through the trenches they know what works and what doesn't but with regards to innovation now where things are developing every single day why do you think that mentors are very important now with regards to AI and innovation.

Kasra Dash: So one of the main reasons why I think mentors and even networking in general is important is you kind of get out of your comfort zone so like a lot of people they'll be in their own head and they'll be doing certain tasks in a certain way whether it's potentially using AI or potentially even just doing it manually and as soon as you have that conversation with that potential mentor or potentially just have that chat at that networking event you won't know any better if that makes sense you're kind of just stuck to your own ways whereas when you speak to a mentor they might look at your process and be like hold on a minute you're doing this every day and it's taking you three hours a day why do you not just use these ten prompts with this AI model and it'll save you two and a half hours.

James Dooley: What was crazy when I got quite a lot of feedback on the OYS mentorship platform from a lot of people that have booked in on calls and what was surprising was the amount of people that said it wasn't them being sat there and listening to one of the OYS mentors that gave them a specific knowledge bomb it was more problem solving or what problems they were going to go into so if they are starting to scale a team they could be okay what middle management system have you put in place and stuff like that but can you speak a little bit more about a mentorship program how it helps not just about now moving away from innovation and knowledge bombs as what some people call it to now just being why a mentorship program is good just for problem solving or trying to find issues that they could end up running into so what's your thoughts on the mentorship program for something like that decision making and problem solving.

Kasra Dash: Like what I said before and I've heard some of your calls like we've either been in the same room or potentially you've told me about certain calls the one benefit that you have whether it's you speak to any of the OYS mentors whether it's James myself anyone we've done it before so if for example you're having a team problem within building out your SEO team maybe you're trying to do a lot of the SEO in house you don't know what certain you don't know what certain KPIs to be looking at so we are able to say like right okay if you're looking to hire an SEO agency these are some of the KPIs you should be looking at these are potentially some of the things you should be looking at prior to even hiring the SEO agency like have they got any case studies are they doing this how many links are they building per month how much are you spending how many articles are they uploading so very quickly we're able to do it like I remember yourself you were talking about maybe like 15 years now when you first did hire an SEO agency you probably burned through about four or five and every single one of them were just dangling the carrot and like yeah yeah yeah next month we're going to do this and they just never done anything but now you're a lot more battle hardened to say right if you're going to go hire an SEO agency maybe you don't want to do the SEO yourself okay these are a list of things that you should be looking at and without that knowledge and without that expertise of you actually going through that struggle you wouldn't be able to help people now.

James Dooley: Yeah for sure and then the hardest thing was people used to always say but how do you choose the right business mentor or SEO mentor and stuff like that so obviously OYS now have put together the mentorship program and what I quite like of what they've done is they've gone and got people that are very very successful financially they've got people that have built out teams that have got 150 200 staff plus but then they've also got the smaller type of business mentors that might just be specifically brilliant at let's say just Facebook ads or just PPC or just organic social media so the question is how do you choose the right mentor for what someone who's watching this might specifically need.

Kasra Dash: I think the first step that I would take is go to OYS like the mentorship page and take a look at everybody's video bios see which one kind of aligns with the issues so for example if you feel like you've maximised your SEO and you potentially want to dabble into more Facebook ads and maybe even set up some retargeting campaigns try and get like a higher lifetime value of a client and stuff maybe Facebook ads is the right strategy I can already tell you that for example in that instance probably nobody else on the OYS mentorship board is better than Richo at Facebook ads um if say for example you want somebody that's really advanced when it comes to building out a team and building out a successful business setting up certain offers it's probably somebody like yourself I would be speaking to if there's somebody that you want to speak to in terms of scaling out a successful SEO campaign and building out a monster website it's probably somebody like myself um I know that I think Stephen Kanto's on as well so if you wanted link building as well he's probably another one that you can go to um is Mads part of it.

James Dooley: Mads is on yeah.

Kasra Dash: So if you want to scale out a team I think it's out of focus a little bit there we go back in focus so yeah if you want to scale out a team probably Mads is another good one to go to so there's all of these different people that you can speak to and one thing as well that's important I've said the pros and cons of each but if somebody came in and spoke to you you'd still be able to speak to them about link building you'd still be able to speak to them about topical authority so I think probably create a list of like five or six different pain points that you actually have on your website or within your business and then see which one of the mentors probably aligns with that.

James Dooley: What advice would you give someone first seeking their mentor so it's the first time someone comes across they're watching this video and they're going you know what I'm building out successfully I'm maybe got a few websites going a couple of members of staff and now they're starting to realise that everyone that's been mega successful that they look up to all talk about getting a good business advisor or getting a few different business mentors but these haven't yet had that business mentorship calls where someone might be able to look at something of what they're doing so for anyone that has not yet seeked and hired a mentor and got a 30 minute or hour chat what would you tell them to do what advice would you give them like instead of P so I always say don't procrastinate just go and do it it could be the best 30 minutes that you've ever spent with someone if you're choosing the right business mentor then from that then that could just quickly be literally one or two things one little bit of advice that I might be able to give where they might be going on a slightly different path and the path should be this way and they're going that way.

Kasra Dash: I think as a first mentorship call a mentor would probably be looking to literally rip apart your business and it's not it's not like in a nasty way but it's just picking the holes and seeing like well James have you thought about this have you thought about that why aren't you doing this potentially like you were telling me about a mentorship call that you recently had and the guy was ranking very well and he wanted more enquiries and then you basically told him well why aren't you ranking positions 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 why aren't you dominating the entire first page because you know you have the knowledge but you're just you're just focusing on one website why don't you go and build out nine other websites.

James Dooley: Also it was absolutely within this one call he was obsessed by impressions and traffic and not by conversion so there were some keywords that he hadn't gone after alright it was lower in search volume but there was a lot more the higher converting keywords plus the conversion rate optimisation of the site needed work on it so sometimes they just obsessed with impressions and traffic where obviously it might have been conversion optimisation that was needed so what are the common misconceptions about mentorship that you've encountered.

Kasra Dash: I wouldn't say that these have been on the actual call but I can see this being an issue prior to the call where people think that it's just going to be a glorified sales pitch or a glorified call in reality sometimes I'll have calls and they might not be ready for like two or three things I'm actually going to tell them I'm going to say to them like hey actually go and fix this within your website or go and fix this within your business and then in another two or three months time have another mentorship call because prior to fixing that there's not really much point of you going and buying links or doing more topical authority you need to go and fix these technical SEO issues um I know that you've had certain things like that as well where people have thought that it's going to be like a sales pitch and in reality it's actually not.

James Dooley: Yeah I mean a lot of the time they come to you saying okay I want to have this call it's about backlinks and you go five minutes into the call and you're like you're not ready for backlinks yeah like you need to sort out your technical issues your internal linking and you've still not got enough articles for you to gain that topical authority before you can even start looking at the off page and the backlinks and stuff like that so yeah for sure I think that's a great answer that you said um if you go back in time and you could tell your 16 year old self about mentorship what would you be telling yourself.

Kasra Dash: Probably get it sooner rather than later I think you probably met you and I was 21 um if I could have went back and said right I'm going to have a mentor since the age of 16 I would have done um mainly because it just fast tracks all of your success and not only that as well as somebody that is a mentor watching this if you have a mentor you also learn quite a lot as well.

James Dooley: Yeah people some people talk about the costs involved in a mentorship call they go just seems really expensive to book a call with someone with a mentor like is it not better to go and get like a training course or something like no in my opinion I feel like people need to not be booking let's say a mentorship call if they don't know much about SEO yet and right at the very start at that point it might mean that they need to be getting certain training and development so it might mean go get like the Affiliate Lab or IMG courses or a specific training course to understand the core fundamentals of SEO or Facebook ads or PPC these mentorship programs are just going to skyrocket from there but it's crazy because the people first starting out the costs of a mentorship program is expensive but then the people that then are advanced say the mentorship calls is the best return on investment they can ever do so what's your thoughts on the costs involved in a mentorship call.

Kasra Dash: I don't want to sound too salesy but it will probably be the best decision that you'll make out of everybody's reviews from mentorship calls everybody said it's great um and the sole purpose is the reason why it is too expensive some people would say it's too cheap um but the reason why you might think that it's too expensive is because you might be on the start of your entrepreneurial journey or on your SEO journey but just think of how much knowledge that you would get within that 30 minute or 1 hour call like you would be able to fast track your SEO campaign or even if it's like a brand new business that you're setting up by at least 6 to 12 months just within that 1 hour call um so again it depends on where you are with your journey if you're starting out then yes it can be definitely a little bit more expensive but if for example you've got an army um you've already got an office dedicated team that $1,000 or that $500 depending on who you're doing that call with could be the best money that you've ever spent.

James Dooley: Yeah for sure so I'll lead on to that now with regards to yourself you're on the OYS platform how can someone go and book a call a mentorship call with you Kasra Dash.

Kasra Dash: Go to OYS.Global um I think it's is it forward slash mentors um there isn't just me there's obviously yourself um like what I said before just write down a list of things that you're actually worried about or potentially pain points that you have within your SEO campaign or within your business and then pick the best OYS mentor.

James Dooley: Yeah I think that's very important what you said there prior to booking the call the mentorship call through the OYS platform they should have a list of all the questions the pain points that they have the things that they want to get out of that call because if you have only booked in a 30 minute call it's not a long time so you need to try and make certain that you're organised and you're ready and you're jumping from one question to the next to get the most out of Kasra on that call so is anything just to round up now with regards to telling anyone here who's watching it that they should be doing with regards to booking yourself as a mentorship call why should they now obviously you've helped a lot of sites on disavows site recovery scaling out an SEO team um you've done iGaming you've done crypto you've done Finance you yourself an all round kind of SEO guy but not only for building new but actually recovering as well what would you tell someone now watching this to why they should book Kasra Dash for an OYS mentorship call you got 10 seconds to promote yourself.

Kasra Dash: I'll tell you why you shouldn't book me if you don't want a successful SEO campaign don't book me.

James Dooley: Good answer so we hope you like the video about Kasra Dash one of the OYS mentors and head on over to OYS.Global mentors and you'll see Kasra Dash there as one of the SEO mentors OYS