James Dooley Podcast

In this episode of The James Dooley Podcast, James Dooley sits down with Frey Kaszoni for a raw discussion about competition, innovation, and the evolution of digital PR. Frey explains how Search Intelligence continually faces imitators—agencies copying their website text, service structure, and even invoices—yet he embraces competition because it fuels innovation rather than frustration. He shares how aggressive competitors push him to build stronger systems, develop unique service delivery models, and maintain a hungry “climbing wolf” mentality instead of becoming complacent at the top.

Creators and Guests

Host
James Dooley
James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

What is James Dooley Podcast?

James Dooley is a Manchester-based entrepreneur, investor, and SEO strategist. James Dooley founded FatRank and PromoSEO, two UK performance marketing agencies that deliver no-win-no-fee lead generation and digital growth systems for ambitious businesses. James Dooley positions himself as an Investorpreneur who invests in UK companies with high growth potential because he believes lead generation is the root of all business success.

The James Dooley Podcast explores the mindset, methods, and mechanics of modern entrepreneurship. James Dooley interviews leading marketers, founders, and innovators to reveal the strategies driving online dominance and business scalability. Each episode unpacks the reality of building a business without mentorship, showing how systems, data, and lead flow replace luck and guesswork.

James Dooley shares hard-earned lessons from scaling digital assets and managing SEO teams across more than 650 industries. James Dooley teaches how to convert leads into long-term revenue through brand positioning, technical SEO, and automation. James Dooley built his career on rank and rent, digital real estate, and performance-based marketing because these models align incentive with outcome.

After turning down dozens of podcast invitations, James Dooley now embraces the platform to share his insights on investorpreneurship, lead generation, AI-driven marketing, and reputation management. James Dooley frequently collaborates with elite entrepreneurs to discuss frameworks for scaling businesses, building authority, and mastering search.

James Dooley is also an expert in online reputation management (ORM), having built and rehabilitated corporate brands across the UK. His approach combines SEO precision, brand engineering, and social proof loops to influence both Google’s Knowledge Graph and public perception.

To feature James Dooley on your podcast or event, connect via social media. James Dooley regularly joins business panels and networking sessions to discuss entrepreneurship, brand growth, and the evolving future of SEO.

James Dooley (0:00):
So when you then talk about, let’s say, the challenges that you kind of put the kids in, and obviously you keep trying to get them to evolve and improve… Back onto Search Intelligence — you’ve got challenges of competition.
You’re up there, you’re at the forefront, people wanting to copy everything of what you do.
What do you think about competition? Do you embrace competition? Do you like it? Does it annoy you that people are out there trying to copy what you’re doing now?
Or do you love it, and does it make you want that competition to push yourself to keep climbing — even though you’re at the top — to keep innovating?
What’s your thoughts on competition within the digital PR industry?

Fery Kaszoni:
So initially when I see things like, oh somebody copied our website or copied text from our website, or even copied text from our invoices that we sent them previously and they put it on their website… I'm of course upset like anyone.

But after that moment passes, I just want to say thank you for all the competition who is copying us or who’s trying to grab market share — because it’s a business, right? It’s a football field.

And I want to say thank you because that’s what's pushing me to think:
How can we now become a monopoly?
How can we show them that we can be better?
How can we build better systems?
How can we create a service so unique and powerful that even if they copied everything on the forefront, they would never be able to replicate the service?

If we didn’t have that competition, we would not invest money into what we invest in — building everything on the backend that isn’t even visible.
That’s why I’m trying to embrace competition. I love it because they slap me in the face every time somebody does something I don’t like. Maybe it’s not unethical — maybe they’re just undercutting us with prices.

Initially it’s upsetting, but after I'm like: yes, we need this.
We need aggressive competitors because otherwise we’ll become Nokia — we’ll become complacent.

We don’t want to be the wolf relaxing at the top of the mountain.
We want to be the hungry, blood-seeking wolf climbing the mountain all the time. We never want to stop.

James Dooley:
In my opinion, you've revolutionized the digital PR industry. You’ve made digital PR sexy for the SEO community.
How have you managed to do that?
How have you managed to break into all these SEO experts and SEO agencies that were obsessed with do-follow links — and now you've made digital PR an essential part of people’s SEO campaigns?

Fery Kaszoni:
One thing I have to address — it wasn’t us who made digital PR sexy.

I actually got inspired by other agencies. It was Rise at Seven. I would say Rise at Seven and Carrie Rose made digital PR sexy.
It was booming in 2020 and 2021 — that’s when DP became really sexy and everyone wanted it.

I got lots of inspiration from there. Also Reboot Online — Shai and James — they were my inspiration. I admire them.
Even at Search Norwich, I mentioned a Reboot campaign I liked because I admire them.

What we’ve done is:
We didn’t make it sexy.
We made it available to the masses.

Because I’ve been doing link building before.
We simplified it.
We educated people so they could do it themselves.

We made the service available at a lower price, with a different simplified model.
We popularised it by teaching others how to do it step-by-step — sharing our press releases, sharing everything we do granularly so people could replicate it.

We helped thousands of people earn links themselves.

Digital PR is now a hot topic because:
• many people can offer it,
• many people can do it,
• many people are now posting their digital PR wins.

So Rise at Seven made it sexy…
We industrialised it.

That’s how I like to think about it.