The DDD Podcast – Episode 2 | James Dooley SEO Entrepreneur | Kasra Dash

James Dooley: Welcome back to the Triple D podcast, Kasra. It’s been quite a while.

Kasra Dash: Yeah, it has been. I think the last one that we did might have been in October, prior to Chiang Mai.

James Dooley: Yeah. So talk us through Chiang Mai to start with, mate. Talk us through what happened on your birthday night.

Kasra Dash: It was just a chilled night, didn’t go out, really relaxed.

James Dooley: What did you do on my birthday? We all went out and had a good time.

Kasra Dash: Was I there?

James Dooley: I think you were there for half the night and then you went home about eight, remember?

Kasra Dash: No, it was a good time. It was a good time.

James Dooley: So what were your thoughts on the Chiang Mai conference?

Kasra Dash: Really good. Do you know what, I felt that tired after the entire conference that I felt like I needed another… not a holiday, but a holiday.

It was very, very overwhelming at times because obviously I was speaking, and then I had people coming up to me asking for photos, which I don’t mind. I really do like the human interaction, because I feel like you’ve probably seen this loads where you’ll be speaking to somebody for like eight, nine months and you’ve never met them in real life. So it’s always good “touching grass,” as some people would say, actually getting out the house, speaking to people, networking. Obviously, we had the villa, we had the private mastermind at the villa, had so many people there. You said something that was about right – I had a sore head from speaking to so many people.

James Dooley: Yeah, that was crazy times actually, ‘cause they came around from eight in the morning. It was literally all day and then it went on all night as well.

It was great seeing people like Jason Hennessey and Steve Tóth for the first time in person. Julian Goldie, what an absolute legend. So let’s jump onto that then. Let’s jump slightly away from Chiang Mai. Julian Goldie – you’re doing quite a lot with him at the moment. A great guy to see in the villa. What’s the plan there on that front?

Kasra Dash: So I went on his podcast, he did one on my channel, so we’ve kind of done one-on-one. And then we’ve just planned out a vigorous YouTube schedule for each other.

I think he’s planning on uploading one a day, and certain times of the week he might be uploading two – one to his channel, one to his agency channel. I’ll be doing the same thing. Obviously whenever this goes live there’ll be another YouTube video on my channel as well. But yeah, you know when there are certain times when you meet people and you just click and you’re like, “I quite like the vibe that guy gives off”? Julian was one of them. He’s got the mindset. He’s been uploading every day for like the past year or something like that, which is just crazy. It’s essentially like going to the gym – just get the reps in, worry about how you’re doing the reps later on.

James Dooley: I suppose it comes down to – we were chatting about this morning actually – about Joe Davies from Fat Joe, where he basically turned around and said that his personal branding wasn’t good enough. So then he decided, “You know what, I’m just going to tweet every single day.”

And he’s not missed now for two years. It just becomes a habit, and once it becomes a habit, that’s it – it’s just second nature. I mean it’s incredible. That barrier to entry of doing a YouTube video every single day is a lot of work. Your thumbnails are unbelievable, you’ve got so much more confident in your deliverability – but even just getting the information to talk about something new every single day, whether it’s AI, backlinks, content… If you’re not innovating in what you’re delivering, people aren’t going to come and watch, are they? They’re just going to unsubscribe. It’s fine asking, “Oh, can you like my video and subscribe to my channel?” but you need to be delivering good value for that. So when creating the 30-minute videos now is, for you, the easy part – it’s what information you’re going to put in that video as well.

Kasra Dash: Yeah. Do you know what, I think Julian’s got a good team behind him. I’ve got a really good team behind me. I think it’s all down to what the team’s actually doing day in, day out. What are they testing? Is there anything that’s working now that wasn’t working six months ago? Can I publish that on the YouTube channel?

So it’s not just like – I bet a lot of people look at me and Julian and think we’re the one-man band creating the YouTube video, doing the thumbnail, doing the SOPs, and it’s actually not the case. I’ve got somebody that does the thumbnails for me. I’ve got somebody that uploads the videos for me.

James Dooley: That’s the amazing part of it – you’ve literally got the team behind you that can do the testing, and you can implement exactly what you want them to do.

So you go, “Right, you’ve got four weeks, I want you testing T3B links. Right, you’ve got four weeks, I want you to test semantic triples.” (See, I got “semantic triples” in there – yeah boy! Learned that in Chiang Mai.)

But we can put all those prompts in place: which different link-building strategies are working? Are these toxic links? Is toxicity even a thing? Do author bio lines make a difference or not? Is there such a thing as an author transparency penalty?

“Prove it. See whether we can rank for these keywords without having an author bio and not get penalised. See whether we can spam local with a ridiculous amount of exact-match internal links – does it matter, does it not matter?” You’re coming up with all these ideas every single day that my team can then go and implement. And then your team is providing information back for you, which then means that you can go, “Brilliant, I’ve got this information and it’s good.” And the same with Julian – Julian’s got the people behind him that can test stuff, and he’s leveraging AI like crazy as well. I’m going to put Julian Goldie on blast here, right – you’ll love this. We were doing a podcast, I think it was, and one of his staff members joins the Google Meet and she quickly realises what’s going on. She’s like, “Oh my God, I’m so sorry.” But yeah, that was just funny. He’s got meetings scheduled in day in, day out. So if anybody’s looking at Julian Goldie, guys like myself, or guys like you, and thinking, “Oh my God, Julian’s on five podcasts a week, he’s got 600 websites, and he’s uploading all these articles” – it’s not the case. We’ve got an army behind us.

Kasra Dash: Yeah, exactly.

James Dooley: So anyway, back onto Chiang Mai. Let’s go through – just after we did the last podcast, we went to Chiang Mai. Any people, any things that you took from it?

Sometimes you don’t really take many SEO knowledge bombs from the actual conference talks – it’s normally the people that you get to meet. And then from the people that you meet, you get some knowledge bombs. What were your key takeaways from this year’s Chiang Mai conference, or was it just the networking and relationships?

Kasra Dash: AI is massive. Like, everyone’s doing something crazy with AI – whether it’s Steve Tóth, where he’s automatically doing stuff for SEO in Notion/Notebook, I know he’s doing a lot of AI link-building related stuff at the minute. I thought that was really cool.

Obviously, we met his developer as well – super cool guy. The more eye-opening thing for me was the amount of things that you can do with AI, not just content. Like, obviously you can do videos, you can do images now – well, you used to be able to do images, but the prompts and the actual output are a lot nicer now. What was your key takeaway?

James Dooley: So, on the subject of AI, I’m going to throw something out there now from this podcast that we need to try and stick to.

In 2024 – I’m going to throw it out to the universe so I then need to do it by the end of this year – I want an AI faceless video company, either investing in one or setting up a new one. I want an AI image agency for thumbnails for YouTube videos or anything to do with social media. I’ve already invested in Autoblogging, which I do believe is the best blog content creation tool there is. I then want a premium version of that, so it’s using Godlike mode but with human editors for money content, just because there are certain areas where I need call-to-actions being put in and sales copy in the introductions to flow nicely. And then I just want to make certain I properly leverage and embrace AI. So the biggest thing for me when I came back from Chiang Mai was getting the team to embrace and leverage AI so it supercharged them, so it didn’t become a burden that was going to replace them. Because if they didn’t embrace AI, AI was going to replace their job – it was as simple as that. Moving forward, if they can be better at AI – become AI prompt engineers – and then stamp their authority, you still need the human element of putting the prompts in place to make certain that AI becomes your virtual assistant. If I can get every single member of staff to have AI as their virtual assistant, the output – which has already been the case – is 10x for so many things, whether it’s video, images, content. So that’s definitely been my biggest key takeaway – leveraging artificial intelligence. By the way, we’ve just done a 30-minute video all on AI. We’ll have a link to that in the description somewhere, so just click on that. I think in it we talk about AI images, AI content, Topical Titan – we talk about it all. So if you want to try and deep dive into what AI tools you need to be using, go and check that video out. Also, let us know if you think there’s anything we’ve missed – like AI link building. We’ve got the link simulator, that’s in that video. Topical Titan does topical maps – semantically relevant topical maps with different intents being broken down, which is very different to just using keyword research from Ahrefs and Semrush and Keyword Cupid, or using just the Google SERP. This is actually using large language models within Topical Titan – that’s going to come live pretty soon. So that’s definitely going. I think there’s going to be a brand called Content Veggie that’s going to come out with premium AI content. So ideally, by the end of the year I want eight AI SEO brands – that’s my plan.

Kasra Dash: You’re doing a lot in AI.

James Dooley: Doubling down. All in.

The reason I want the new brands and I want the agencies for doing it, and I want someone heading each one up, is because I want them consistently, every single day, trying to improve the prompts. So even if they failed as a business in isolation, I could still use the prompts for images for the Ranking Rant, or for lead gen, or for anything else that I’m doing. We get better at understanding whether it’s DALL·E, whether it’s Midjourney, whether it’s Adobe Firefly – whatever it is – that we understand the right prompts. You put me on to that InVideo tool for AI faceless videos and I’m like, “Oh my God, this is unbelievable.” It created a three-minute video in 10 seconds via a simple two-line prompt. And it created an out-of-this-world kind of video. So yes, I’m all in on that. That’s what Chiang Mai brought for me – plus the connections. Always the connections. Your network is your net worth. So if you can keep trying to see some of these people in person, try and help them out as best you can, then yeah, it’s unbelievable – just raising the value of everyone around you, really.

Kasra Dash: Exactly. Obviously you’ve gone and created a large network now. All your YouTube’s blowing up. All I see is your big ugly mug every single day showing up on my news feed – whether it’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn – you are Mr Everywhere.

So what’s the plan for “Kasra ‘Mr Everywhere’ Dash” for 2024? Is it literally, like you’re saying, you’re going to do a video every single day this year – sometimes twice a day – but what about talks, conferences? If you’re at a talk, are you still going to do one in the morning?

Kasra Dash: That’s the thing I’m trying to figure out at the minute, because obviously I’ve got Dubai coming up, which we’ll talk about later on.

I’m trying to create a bank of, let’s say, 50 videos where it’s like “sick days”. So if I’m like, “Oh, I don’t know, I might be sick or whatever…” To be fair, I was absolutely ill like two weeks ago and I was still getting up every day, coughing. I had to pause the video loads of times because I’m coughing and sneezing – still uploaded every single day. That’s the goal. There might be some days that I miss – I might be on a flight or something – but yeah, trying to do at least 90% of the entire year.

James Dooley: One thing I’d say to you is, you should be using artificial intelligence to improve your biohacking so you don’t miss a day.

Kasra Dash: Do you want to know something really weird? For the entirety of 2023, I didn’t get ill once. 2024 – literally the second day of 2024 – I just felt weakness, illness, you know, just a little bit weak. Could be burnt out, fatigue, who knows.

James Dooley: So 2024 conferences – you just mentioned Dubai. What’s Dubai, what other conferences are you doing?

Kasra Dash: So, Affiliate World. It’s weird because after Chiang Mai I said, “Affiliate World’s the next one – that’s the one I want to speak at, that’s the goal.”

And I was like, “I’ll settle for 2025 for speaking at Affiliate World.” Literally two months later: “Hey Kas, do you want to speak at Affiliate World?” – “Yeah, all right, I’ll do it.” So that is all about affiliate. There’s a lot of affiliates, there’s a lot of e-commerce brands that people do affiliate for – for example, Ware might be there, I don’t know if they are, but I’m just using them as an example – and all of their affiliates will also be there. There’s 6,000 people in attendance – quite a big, or the biggest, conference I’ve spoken at. So that’s the next one. Then we both actually have Vietnam, Saigon, in April.

James Dooley: Yeah, before that you actually have Poland.

Kasra Dash: Poland, yeah. Rob’s event in Poland, I’m looking forward to that. There’s quite a lot of it on artificial intelligence, so yeah, me and you are going there with Scott.

To be fair, I absolutely love the Polish lads as well. I give them a lot of stick saying that they don’t know how to party, but the only reason I say that is because I’m the opposite. If I give someone grief, it’s because I like them. So I’m giving them grief saying, “You don’t even know how to party,” but they do, they know how to party – they’re good lads. I’m looking forward to seeing them, doing a few days of hard work, and then I think the last day is Karen’s birthday – that’ll be intense. Then the week after is Saigon. So then we’ve got Saigon, we’ve got the villa in Saigon as well – the private mastermind that we’re doing. Then in June I’ve got Estonia and that’s it then. Actually no, sorry, I’ve missed out Affiliate Gathering in York. I don’t know the dates for that. Yeah, pretty booked up. I don’t have anything in Q3 and Q4, so if anyone has an event, hit me up, I’m sure I’ll speak.

James Dooley: I’ll pimp him out.

Kasra Dash: So that’s all the events. You’ve got… I feel like you’ve got two, right?

James Dooley: I’ve got the Poland one and Saigon. I’ve not even looked at Q3, Q4. I try not to book too many things far in advance – I just look a couple of months ahead and see what’s happening.

You just don’t know what’s going to happen – like, let’s say with artificial intelligence, something big might change and then I might want to go to a certain conference specifically just on links or just on content. Google might change the algorithm slightly. So I don’t like doing stuff seven, eight months in advance. Whether it’s affiliate, lead gen, local, e-commerce – sometimes I might be changing where I’m investing certain time and effort into. Opportunities open up every single day, so I try not to book too far. Saigon is the furthest away that’s booked in.

James Dooley: So away from the events, what are some goals that you’ve got for 2024, apart from the AI stuff? I don’t want to talk about AI anymore.

Personal goals – it’s just elevate people around me, try and improve everybody. Indirectly, if everyone around me gets better, I get better. So if I can elevate everyone around me – team members, improving the prompts of AI, improving everything they’re doing commercially, being more savvy, making fewer mistakes. Because they felt they failed too much in 2023 and 2022 – so don’t make the same mistakes if we can. Don’t get me wrong, I want them to fail hundreds of times this year, but just not make the same mistakes. Which then means that the mistakes that we’ve previously made, we’ll be monetising hopefully this year from previous years. I want to try to get up to – and I don’t know why – but I want to try and get up to 2,000 Ranking R sites. I think we’re at, like, we’ve built out about 150 in the last two months. So I want to try and get up to 2,000 Ranking Rs in different spaces. I enjoy speaking to business owners. I’m not an SEO – and I’ve said this so many times. People go, “Why do you always say that? You know about content and links and silo and technical…” And I’m like, “I’m not an SEO, I’m a businessman.” I just love speaking to business owners.

Kasra Dash: You’re not a businessman either, you’re a woodpecker.

James Dooley: Yeah, that’s what Kazra says. He just says, if I get something that I want, I won’t stop until I get it.

But I suppose that’s been me from being younger – that’s always the way I’ve been. You’ve got to fight for what you want. Sometimes I might outreach to a company going, “I want to invest in your company.” – “We’re not for sale.” – “I know you’re not for sale, I want 25%.” “We’re not selling 25%.” – “Well, you’re not, because you didn’t realise it was an opportunity. I’m coming to you with an opportunity of me buying 25%.” If I can double the size of your business, it’s like you owning not 75% but 150% of a business. I’m going to double the size of it.

I normally put certain things in place to say: if I don’t double it, I’ll let you buy the shares back.

If somebody does have a business that they potentially want to give you 25% of, or maybe want you as an investor, how can they reach out to you?

Kasra Dash: Yeah, how can they reach out to you?

James Dooley: JamesDooley.com. I’m always looking for investment opportunities. It’s got to be the right deal. I’ll put it into my finance advisors who’ll quickly look at it: “Is it an industry that I want to be in, is it not?” That could sway it. Is it a profitable business, is it not?

I’m not too bothered, to be fair. In the growth stage, a lot of businesses aren’t profitable. So if it’s not profitable, I’m fine with it if I feel it could be something that grows legs in the next two or three years. So yeah – JamesDooley.com. On there, you can see all my social profiles. Just drop me a message and I’ll have a look at any opportunity myself.

Kasra Dash: So aside from the business goals, have you got any fitness goals, family goals?

James Dooley: Yes. To be fair, I’ve been absolutely smashing it. There’s something in Leigh called Warrior Strength Training. So it’s away from the normal gym kind of sessions – it’s like flipping tyres, jumping up and down off box jumps, prowlers and stuff like that.

I’ve been doing that three times a week and then obviously going to the gym with yourself. I’m not doing it like you – you don’t miss a day. I’m doing it where I’m going to do five days a week. Obviously I’ve got kids and stuff like that, so I’ve got a little bit less free time. But then just create amazing memories with friends, amazing memories with family, and amazing memories in the workplace. I feel like I need to do a little bit more in the workplace – do more trips, whether it’s a skiing trip with the staff, or a summer trip somewhere. Not even just for “culture” – just because I actually enjoy them. All my business partners are my friends, you know what I mean? If they’re not my friends, I’ll soon shut down the business. I don’t need it for the money, but I enjoy building successful brands with business partners that are my friends. I feel it’s fun. So yeah – more memories, more time with kids, more time with family, more time in the gym. What about you? Obviously you’ve got your one video a day, you go to the gym every day – but are there financial goals, memory goals, or what? Before you answer, do you feel when you go on these talks and trips – because you’ve been to Chiang Mai, Las Vegas, you’re going to Dubai – these are the most luxurious places in the world. Do you ever just sit back and go, “Actually I need to appreciate what I’m doing a little bit more”? Or do you feel that you do appreciate it? (Do you want to silence your phone – your phone’s vibrating.)

Kasra Dash: So, do I appreciate it? Yes, I definitely do. There’s a lot of people my age – bearing in mind I’m only 17…

There’s a lot of people my age, 26, that don’t get to appreciate it, where they’re just working a regular job – and there’s nothing wrong with that, but that’s just not for me. I need to be busy, I need to be staying fit, I need to be looking at, “Right, what’s next?” If it’s SEO or business, what can I invest in? What’s working, what’s not working? How can I keep my brain busy? Because if I don’t keep my brain busy, I’m like, “Right, there’s nothing to do, I’m going to go and sleep.” I’m like a bear, right? If I’ve not got anything to hunt, I’m going to be very, very lazy. So I always try and keep my brain occupied. The only time I will switch off is if I’m going to the gym – which I go to every day – and it essentially keeps me active and keeps me not tired throughout the day, so it helps with fatigue and stuff like that. The second time I’ll switch off is if I’m having a haircut. Then the third time is when I am actually on the trip. So I’ll get the work done out of the way – if I’m talking at a conference, I’ll get that out of the way – and then I’ll actually start to appreciate being in Vegas or being in Chiang Mai a little bit more. So yeah, to answer your question, I do appreciate all the trips and stuff I’ve been on, because I know there’s a lot of people looking at my Instagram photos or my Facebook photos or my YouTube videos thinking, “Oh, it’s amazing what he’s been able to do.”

The one caveat to that is: I am pleased, but I’m never satisfied.

James Dooley: Good saying.

Kasra Dash: I’m pleased, but I’m never satisfied.

James Dooley: Show me a fully satisfied man and I’ll show you failure.

Every day is a school day. You should always be making certain that you’re trying to strive to improve and be a better person than who you are today, tomorrow. So how can people get in touch with you? Obviously they see you absolutely everywhere, but what’s the best platform?

Kasra Dash: KasraDash.com. Very, very similar websites – if you check out JamesDooley.com, it’s a similar style. Going back to goals – fitness goals. For the past two years I wanted a six-pack. I got a six-pack and I’m like, “Eh, it’s not…”

James Dooley: You’re a bit puffier.

Kasra Dash: You know what, I am actually a bit puffier now. Whenever I start doing creatine, you just gain more water weight so you don’t see the abs as much.

Now I think just maintaining it, maybe going a little bit up in the weights. I want to try and reach 70 kg – I think I’m at 66 or something like that, so that should be very achievable. New weights in the gym – potentially doing 75–80 kg chest press, that would be quite nice. I reckon that might take me a few months, five or six months, to get up to that. So that’s the fitness side of stuff. The YouTube goals – I want to hit 10,000 subscribers by April. When I hit 10,000, I’m doing Bali for a couple of weeks.

James Dooley: Ballet?

Kasra Dash: Bali. Not ballet dancing – the destination in Indonesia, Bali.

James Dooley: I was going to say, “Ballet dancing? What’s ballet dancing got to do with 10,000 subscribers?”

Kasra Dash: I’m just going to start doing ballet dancing. That’d be a good video. That might actually get me to 10,000 subs – “Kasra the Bad Doing Ballet Dancing.”

So yeah, I’m aiming for 10,000 subs by April, which I reckon is achievable. I’m going to hit 3,000 in the next couple of days. You know what, I don’t know if I’ve told you this, but at the start of December I was like, “I’d be happy to hit 2,000 in January.” And I hit 2,000 when I was up at Gary’s house, like the 21st or 22nd of December – so it was almost like an early Christmas present. So that’s the goals for YouTube. Business goals – I want to start growing Outsourcery. Yeah, that’s going to be a big mission. I’m sure I’ll be able to achieve it. I think that’s it goals-wise. Do you think I’ve missed anything?

James Dooley: No, I don’t think so. I think if you keep doing what you’re doing, what’ll start to happen is, the more you’re publishing like you are and you are being Mr Everywhere, the opportunities you’ll be getting will be left, right and centre.

People will want you not just to hire you as a consultant, as a business mentor, or as a link builder, or whatever it is they’re struggling with – they’ll also want you as an investor. At that point, when you go from entrepreneur to “entrepreneur” and then to “invest-preneur”, they’re the steps you need to take. Entrepreneur – obviously you’re actually employed and working inside of a company, and you’re known as being an entrepreneur. Entrepreneur, in the way I use it, is where you’re physically taking the risks and you’re working on the business – you’re the visionary to scale it out. And then an invest-preneur is: you’ve now made quite a bit of money and now you’re going to start being almost like an angel investor in other companies that you believe you can plug into and scale out. I feel like you’re going to get a lot more invest-preneur opportunities this year, which is definitely going to skyrocket you from where you were to where you are now – and then to where you’ll be in 12 months. The leveraging of scaling out your audience – it’s the right audience you’re getting in touch with. The people interacting with you are the right people. It’s impressive, mate. From where you’ve come from to where you are now – even just from when we looked at that video from 18 months ago where you couldn’t even do many press-ups, and now you’re smashing out press-ups, smashing the gym, you’re all over everywhere, confident… The information you have – mainly from the team as well, don’t get me wrong, we probably don’t talk enough about how hard the team work in the background to make things work, which then puts you out there on a pedestal of “I’ve got all this information.” If you didn’t have that information, it would be tough. But you do have the information, you’re delivering it in a great way, and you still have to understand what we’ve been learning from the testing team. Because in all honesty, those “206 ranking factors” – look at Brian Dean’s from 2020 – there’s a core element of ranking factors which change at each core algorithm update that we need to dial in to. Sometimes more on authority, sometimes less on semantics, whatever it is. At present, a lot of sites are being hit for the cost of information retrieval – people have gone too wide and it’s almost the opposite of when everyone was obsessed with topical authority. Now they’re pruning and cutting pages down. That’s never been said ever up until the last six months, and now people are talking about content pruning more than scaling out new content. But with the way that you’ve grown, I think it’s only going to double and double and double.

My recommendation to you would be: only ever set yourself one-month and three-month goals. Don’t ever set yourself 12-month goals.

The reason why is because in time, things can start quickly with a hockey-stick approach – ridiculously growing, exponential growth. So if you think 12 months ahead and you go, “I want to get to 50,000 subscribers,” you might be at 50,000 subscribers by September. So don’t set that as a 12-month target. Do it like: “Okay, I need to hit this and this,” and when you set yourself the mini-goals – one and three months away – when you hit them, you go home and celebrate. Whether it’s a night out with the lads, a spa day, whatever it is for you, but you go out and celebrate it. If you don’t, you’re not enjoying the journey. You have to go out. It might even just be, “I’ll have an extra protein shake at the gym.” Whatever your celebration is, make certain you’ve got nice little – not ridiculous – targets, just simple ones. Because the little targets that you hit will achieve your big targets. If you set yourself one- and three-month goals and you keep hitting them, it’s going to be a very fun ride for the way you’re going at present.

Kasra Dash: Yeah, yeah. It’s funny you say about the small goals – you’re going to laugh at this story. I’ve got small legs, right?

So I set myself a goal: every time I train my legs, I’m going to give myself a Five Guys – the burger place. I started training legs loads and I was like, “Oh no, this isn’t good,” and I started gaining a little bit more weight.

So I’ve had to remove that goal. But it is all about the small wins and the small goals and making certain you’re celebrating them. Sometimes you speak to some people that have made millions and they’re miserable. And it’s like, “Why are you miserable? You’ve just done 300 grand last month, why are you miserable?” – “Oh, I want to do 600.” It’s like, “Why don’t you just go and celebrate the 300 that was your goal six months ago, and you’ve just hit it and you’ve not done anything about it?”

James Dooley: Because if you set yourself an end goal – a big end goal – all you get is emptiness when you hit it.

So you set yourself one- and three-month goals, and then your end goal will naturally keep moving further away – but you’re never really looking to achieve that end one. You’re looking to achieve your one- and three-month ones. And that’s what I mean by celebrating them – because then you enjoy it. It’s the uphill climb up the mountain that’s the fun part. If you ever get to the peak, it’s not fun. You need to make certain you appreciate everybody around you, have fun with everybody around you, and do things in the right way. But yeah, you’re crushing it – you’ve got to keep doing what you’re doing, it’s good.

Kasra Dash: Cheers, man. I want to circle back around to the personal branding stuff, because you’ve been doing it loads, I’ve been doing it loads.

Joe Davies has been doing podcasts now, which is good to see. He’s been doing tweets as well. But for somebody that’s trying to grow out their personal brand – let’s say you’re an absolute nobody, you might have the expertise and the knowledge and the know-how – what would you go about doing?

James Dooley: Everything. Everything. Omnipresent.

I think omnipresence is key. To be fair, some people don’t like doing videos – it’s hard to say – but if you’re confident enough to do a video and talk, get a video done. You can splice up – let’s say this is 30 minutes – you can splice this up into 30–40 YouTube Shorts, like 40-second clips. Then you’ve got 40 days of content – tweet every day, Facebook every day, you can put it on your Instagram stories, TikTok, LinkedIn – you’re omnipresent everywhere. That’s just from the videos. You can then create images from within that if you want to, which can then link to the full 30-minute video. So I’m a massive fan of just being omnipresent and doing everything. We spoke about it before – what you think your best platform is, whether it’s YouTube or Twitter or LinkedIn and stuff like that. But I think it was a bad question that I asked you – you want to be on every platform. You might see someone that could be your next biggest customer that you’re going to invest into – they could be on TikTok, they could be on LinkedIn. You’ve already done the hard work of sitting down and doing the podcast – just share it everywhere.

Kasra Dash: Yeah, definitely. There was a guy I was watching, basically saying the Shorts act as your gateway. You might have a little edge clip where you say, “Backlinks don’t work,” and then they click onto it and they’re like, “Oh, I want to go and watch this entire podcast.”

That clip might be shared on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube Shorts, TikTok – whatever else. So yeah, I do feel like it’s about being as omnipresent as possible, trying to get your name out there, potentially doing some podcasts with people. The podcasts – I almost see them as guest posts, because you’re reaching out to a relevant YouTuber and you’re going on and sharing your expertise. You’re taking away some of their traffic, and some people might like you on the podcast, some people might hate you. The guys that like you, they’re going to check out your stuff.

James Dooley: Website-wise?

Kasra Dash: Yeah, website-wise – is there anything else from a personal branding point of view? Do you think it’s important to have a website?

James Dooley: I think so. It depends if you’re going for a knowledge panel point of view. If you’re going for a knowledge panel, it’s good to have “KasraDash.com”, “JamesDooley.com”, whatever it is.

So yes, get that, because then on there you can wrap everything in schema – same as for all the entities, you can add all the images on there and wrap that in schema. You can then do Wikidata and Crunchbase for any companies you were a director of and stuff like that. So yeah, it’s massively important if you want a knowledge panel. If you don’t want a knowledge panel and you’re just part of, let’s say, Fat Rank – for many, many years, over a decade, I just had FatRank.com. I didn’t have “JamesDooley.com”, I didn’t want a personal brand. I just think with AI growing now, personal brand is big. My main thing now is because I want more investment opportunities. I want to invest and be an angel investor in different products – SaaS products, companies, whatever it is. If I feel it’s a good opportunity, I want to invest in it – that’s where I’m at. But for you, it’s different, because you want different angles. You want investment opportunities, but you’ve got so many different products and services that you can get out there – why just restrict yourself to SearchBro? Like, “No, I’m Kasra Dash. I can help you with this, this, this, all of this.” So it’s huge.

Kasra Dash: Away from personal brand and stuff, I don’t know if you’ve been watching some of the podcasts that I’ve done with the likes of Craig, Gary, Julian Goldie – I’ve asked every single one of them this question.

I feel like you’ll like this question: what are three failures that you’ve had? I’m going to slightly tweak this – three failures in 2023.

James Dooley: In 2023? Just three? I’ve got about 53 today.

Three failures… So, I lost quite a bit on crypto – transferring money to the wrong wallet. I’d say that was a bit of a failure.

Kasra Dash: Do you know something – we recorded a video and this part of the podcast didn’t make it, so can you please explain this story one more time? (And I promise it’s not just so I can laugh at you.)

James Dooley: So I had quite a bit of money in crypto, in different coins, and I’d never withdrawn anything. I never thought, “I want to see if this is a scam,” but I thought, “Of course it’s not, I’ll withdraw it.”

I had it in Bittrex, which does trading – I’m not that good with crypto, I don’t really know all the different trading platforms – but I had Bittrex and I wanted to transfer my money from Bittrex into my Coinbase, and then Coinbase to my bank account. So I had 23,400 – I think it was – Litecoin. And I went to withdraw it and sent it to my wallet in Coinbase. Then I asked all the lads in the group, “How long is it before it normally comes up in your Coinbase?” They’re like, “Should be instant.” I’m like, “It’s 10 minutes now and it’s still not there.” – “It should be instant. Are you sure you’ve sent it?” – “Yeah, I’ve definitely sent it.” Anyway, I didn’t know that Litecoin has its own wallet and Ethereum has its own wallet. I just thought, if I’ve got, say, a Santander bank and a NatWest bank, if I transfer my money from Santander to NatWest, as long as I put in my wallet code it would work. But basically I sent my Litecoin to my Ethereum wallet, which doesn’t match up, because my Ethereum wallet is a different ID and stuff like that. So I basically sent over 23,000-odd – over $30,000 – to the wrong wallet and I couldn’t retrieve it. If anyone knows how I can retrieve that, let me know so I can try and get that money back. That was about 10–12 months ago, something like that.

Kasra Dash: You do know that somebody can create loads of wallets in Litecoin, so if I was you and you were skint, go on Litecoin and keep creating new wallets – hopefully one new wallet might pop up with 23,400 burning in it.

James Dooley: Yeah, that wasn’t a good day.

I thought I was being clever – listen to this. I thought I was being clever until Craig Campbell or maybe you said in the private mastermind group we’re in… I was like, “Do you know what, a bit clever really because I did it with the coin that I had the least amount of money in. I had some that had a couple of hundred grand, and that was the coin I had the least in. So I’m like, ‘Yeah, it was only 23k – it could have been 100 grand, could have been 180 in one of them.’ So I’m like, ‘That’s clever by me that I went with the one with the least.’” And then someone went, “Yeah, but what you could have done is just sent 10 or 100 first.” And I went, “…Oh yeah, I didn’t think about that.” So I sent all 23k and yeah – it’s gone.

Kasra Dash: What did you learn?

James Dooley: Not to… just don’t do crypto. All skill, no luck.

No – get somebody else to do things for me, right? What else did I fail on… I’d say my biggest failures in 2023 were time. Sometimes I get myself involved in things I shouldn’t get myself involved in, and I do it because I feel I can do it better than what’s been done there – “I’m going to change it, I’m going to do it.” As opposed to spending the time with a team member, or it could be a CEO of a company, getting them to do it and understand what it could be. I know the mad single will go, “Why are you doing that? You should be delegating and getting them to fix their own problems.” And I know what I should be doing, but sometimes what you should do and what you actually do are two completely different things. It’s like saying, “I know I shouldn’t eat chocolate and crisps,” but sometimes I eat chocolate and crisps. I know I shouldn’t be fixing other people’s problems in a business – I should be explaining what the problems are and getting them to fix it, and then they learn from it – but sometimes I’d say my biggest fail in 2023 was still spending a bit too long on certain things I shouldn’t be spending time on. Because there’s one thing in life you can’t get more of, and it’s time. I’m not bothered about my wasted crypto – it is what it is. I’m not really bothered if a business I set up doesn’t work out, loses a load of money we invested into marketing and advertising and didn’t grow like we wanted and we close it – that’s all money I’m not bothered about. It’s if I spent a lot of time myself in it – that is my biggest problem. I’m limited to how much time I have on this earth, and I want to make certain I’m spending it making good memories with family and friends and stuff like that. So there are a few fails from a time point of view. That then led to me not going to the gym as much as I wanted. If I’d got more time, it means more time to open up bigger opportunities where I can leverage what I’m good at, which is dealing with business owners and trying to sort out a deal, not dealing with the day-to-day. And then more time with family, going to the gym, doing Tough Mudders, doing what I’m doing now – Warrior Strength Training and stuff like that. What are your biggest three failures?

Kasra Dash: One that comes to mind, which I’ve only just recently found out, is I stupidly uploaded a load of articles on one of my websites, and instead of having the year shortcode where it automatically updates, it’s just “2023”.

James Dooley: Is it 2023 in the URL as well?

Kasra Dash: No, it’s just in the page title and the H1.

Another failure – one thing that I feel like I probably should have started doing a lot more of is uploading to YouTube. It’s easy saying that with hindsight, but yeah. Time as well. Looking back – and again, this is another hindsight one – I should have embraced AI a lot quicker than I actually did. The amount of stuff you can do with it is ridiculous. So I think: Embracing AI a lot quicker than I did. Time – spending time on stupid stuff. Things I look back at and I’m like, “Why did I spend 10 hours doing that when it wouldn’t have made any more money?” Just offload it or get a VA to do it. Hiring & delegating – making certain I’m not the “busy fool,” if that makes sense.

James Dooley: I’m going to hold you accountable for that now.

And I want all you lot to hold me accountable – I want as many AI brands out there as I can this year. Some of them will fail, 100%. I’m happy for some of them to fail. I’m going to create several – AI content, AI images, AI videos – several in each. There might be one going for the lower-end, cheaper market and one that’s premium, and just see what the market wants, see what it needs. I can then leverage it for my own properties as well. It’s an interesting time with AI in 2024 for SEO. Exciting times.

James Dooley: So I think that’s it. Obviously, I think everyone knows for myself, it’s JamesDooley.com – I’ve got all my social media on there. If you need any investment, let me know, see what you’ve got about yourself.

Kasra Dash: Just check out KasraDash.com. Or, do you know what, I’d be surprised if one of my videos isn’t in your recommended right now, so go and check me out over there as well.

But yeah, thanks for tuning in.

Both: Peace.