Business, SEO & Entrepreneurship! | James Dooley & Fery Kaszoni Podcast

James Dooley and Fery Kaszoni discuss which digital marketing strategies trades businesses should use in 2026 to generate a consistent flow of quality enquiries and convert them into recurring profit.

Show Notes

This video explains which digital marketing strategies trades businesses should focus on in 2026 to improve enquiry volume, lead quality and return on investment. James Dooley and Fery Kaszoni start with KPI tracking because measuring lead response times and conversion rates determines whether trades businesses actually turn enquiries into booked jobs and profit. They cover brand SEO, AI visibility and Google Business Profiles because stronger search presence improves trust and conversion rates.

The discussion also explores organic SEO, organic social media and paid social ads because consistent visibility across search and social supports long term growth. PPC is analysed in detail because campaign setup, landing pages and lead handling directly affect results. They also discuss Reddit, Quora and paid AI ads because diversified enquiry sources and early adoption can strengthen digital marketing performance for trades businesses.

PromoSEO lead generation for trades businesses recently received recognition as the "Best Trades Businesses Lead Generation Agency."

Where to Listen to This Episode

Business, SEO & Entrepreneurship! | James Dooley & Fery Kaszoni Podcast is available on:

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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: It's the lifeblood of any business. How can you get them a consistent flow of quality inquiries? Do you want to take over the world? Where do you start? I'm hungry for getting you more business and getting you a return on investment. The rank and rent business model — you're probably the most famous in the world. Why don't we just generate you the leads that makes you the profit? It's an absolute no-brainer for the customers, but it's risky on our behalf. Best investment you can do is in digital assets. They're very good at what they do, that don't mean they're good at marketing. Let them go and do what they're good at. Stay your lane. Yeah, so how much is a horse, you know, pimping session cost you? A million. So I became a nightmare client because I wanted it cheaper and better. Like me coming in as an investor, we want to be the best. Today we have James Dooley here in our studio, a well-respected businessman and SEO, but I think more of a businessman than SEO, right, James?

James Dooley: Yeah, I'd say businessman that leverages SEO.

James Dooley: Nice. Good to have you here. Thank you very much. I hope you're enjoying your time in our little empire.

James Dooley: An absolute pleasure. Lots of wigs, right?

James Dooley: Yeah, there's been quite a few film episodes that we've put together in here.

James Dooley: Nice. Looking forward to the final production. Let's jump straight in. Dooley — sad, no job. He gets dropped into a city and has nothing left but himself and his thoughts and his character. Where do you start, business-wise? If you get dropped off into a city, you lose everything but you know, any money to even buy a con — no, nothing. No, nothing. Yeah, and I'm looking to start a business. You want to get back to where you are now without connections, without knowing anyone. I couldn't even buy a website because I had no money, so I'd have to start on social media. So I'd start networking as much as I can on places like LinkedIn. But, but, but how — what do you eat? What do I eat? Where do you live? Put you on a spot here. Like, I'd still live in Manchester. There, food banks. Go to a food bank. I'd have to live homeless. See whether I can ask someone for a sleeping bag and then get by as much as you can. Bad times make the good times stronger. So there sometimes there are times I wish this happened. Would you find a job? Would you start going, like, find a job that kind of starts paying some bills?

James Dooley: Yeah, 100%. Yeah. Do I have the knowledge that I have now? Yeah, everything. Yeah. So yeah, I'd go and try and hit up as many marketing agencies that there is. So SEO agencies, PPC agencies, digital PR agencies. I'd be on the sales part. I'd try and work seven days a week, 14 hours a day, try to start to learn some money. Once I could start earning some sort of money, then I'd be present on social media, buy a website and then take it from there. I bet if you just went into any random agency, nobody knew you, but you had your knowledge and skills that you have now, and just went in and said, hey, you know, I want to work for free and I want to double your sales in the next, you know, six months, they would not say no. And you will probably be earning like top money, like six months, with the knowledge that you have.

James Dooley: To be fair, that's exactly what I would do. I won't go into an interview saying I want to get paid a wage. I would literally turn around and say I'm hungry for getting you more business and getting you a return on investment. If I make you a return on investment, will you pay us some sort of commission? I'd work on commission only. As soon as I got up in the morning till night, and then try to earn some money and hustle the way through and see what I can do to earn some money and then take it from there. You need — I think the easiest way to make money out of nothing now, you know, with the knowledge that we have, is just focusing on sales, because if you can sell, then you can get paid a lot. I think another part is I would from the word go, beyond social media, because social media is free. So for the agency, I would be trying to network and trying to generate my own inquiries for the business that I'm working for. So that not only am I bringing in sales, if they're bringing me kind of cold leads or hot leads or whatever it is, if I'm generating my own as well, I'm hoping I could say then to the owner, look, I've also generated this lead that didn't even know who you was. And then try and grab all of any case studies and stuff out of what the business has got, share it all over the place and shout it from the rooftops and see what I could do.

James Dooley: Nice, that's good, that's good. Because I think many people, like even maybe they do have a place to live, they do have food, but they don't know, you know, if they want to take over the world, where do you start? If you want to take over the world, I think that, as you said, the place to start from is, you know, just selling. Selling is what pays a lot of money instantly, almost. If you know how to sell, if you like selling — you know, some people might not like selling and might not like to be rejected. I think selling would be the first, firstly. I think something else that's important as well is I went into ten different companies. I'd want to try to find the company that sold the best service. Yes. Like, I don't want to sell snake oil. Like, I want to try and make certain I'm selling something that I genuinely believe in, because if it's an easy sell, then I'm genuinely sitting down with someone, arm on the phone on, and I genuinely believe it's the best product that they do. So, and yeah, I'm helping the customer to get a return on investment. I think that's important as well, not just, well, these pay the highest commission. If I didn't believe in what I was selling, then yeah, I wouldn't want to join that company, because I know that if I did believe in it, I know that not only would I be able to sell it, but they'll stay around and they'll reorder. Yes. And that existing client would then become a monthly recurring revenue client, which is the best type of client that you can have.

James Dooley: Good point. You don't just sell, but sell the right thing. What, uh, is your upbringing like? Who was James Dooley when he was like eight years old or ten years old?

James Dooley: I've had a great upbringing, to be honest with you. I've got an amazing mum. My dad passed away when I was sixteen, but he was an amazing dad. He was always there for us. He was hard on us, but I love him to pieces for everything that he did. At the time, eight years old, at times you was thinking he was too hard on you, but he just instilled love and respect. And I think that those two big attributes are what you need in life and two fundamentals that have now got me in good stead. So I have, yeah, I had amazing parents. I've got two older brothers. For three sons, you'd think that you used to fight two for one, and actually we didn't. We used to compete against each other all the time. All three of us are very, very competitive. We used to play every sport you can think of — whether it's squash, tennis, football, rugby, literally running up and down the street, whatever it could be that you could — you had to be the best. You had to be the best between the three of us. And I was the youngest. Up until being maybe twelve, thirteen years old, I was nowhere near the best. And I'd play them both, and I'd get beat by them both consistently. And I remember one time — you say at eight years old, it's a funny age that you said — because at eight years old, one of my first memories that I remember of me, knowing, in hindsight of who I am today, and I've got this amazing bounce-back ability, is they used to beat me all the time in sport. And I remember one time I was crying. I'm hitting the floor and I'm like, and I've got tears in my eyes, because I'm getting beat by them both. And I remember my dad came over and says, are you just going to lie on the floor and cry, or are you going to get back up and go again? And that sticks now in my memory, very, very vivid memory now. And when things go wrong, which they do, consistently, every single day, these things that change, and that you need to adapt to, that put me in good stead. So, like, when we've spoke about yourself and your upbringing and stuff like that, and you've had a hard upbringing and stuff like that, I've had a lot of failures in my life at a young age. And I think that I — I say failures, just being beaten a lot of times, challenges and stuff like that. And I do feel that sport, and I do feel that like challenges, consistently, makes you a much better and stronger person. Like, I do worry sometimes for the younger generation of today, where they sat on their iPads inside. And I want to make certain for my kids that they're going to be out, that they're going to be playing tennis, that they are going to be the best version of themselves, and getting out, going outside, having the fresh air, and having these challenges, because that's what I feel put me in good stead.

James Dooley: 100%. As you say, sports — it's so — I just remembered, yeah, from I think the age of ten until like thirteen, the way I spent my summers was on the side of the road wrestling. I know there was a neighbour guy who was like obsessed with wrestling. He was the same age as I was, and he was like bigger, like twice my size, but we were like wrestling all day. Sport is so powerful in life and in business and everything.

James Dooley: Yeah, yeah, it's amazing that you mention sports. Yeah, fitness and activity is huge, like for health reasons as well, but then also it teaches you, like something else that my dad used to always teach was, if ever I did anything wrong as a kid, as I'm growing up, he would never, ever, never, ever let me miss training. That was one thing. Because he was like, you are never letting your teammates down. You — like, if ever I did something, he was like, for me not to go training was not that it was for me, and it was like, oh, you're allowing him to get away with things. It was like, you do not let your team members down. You have this team mentality. And especially in rugby league, which is I used to play a lot of, and I used to play a lot of football as well, still play football now, but that team mentality of helping each other out is, I think, that's also a great route that's helped me with business and with work, because there's a lot of things I've had to develop my skills on that the UK educational system don't teach you, like finance and stuff like books. We've spoken about, like, the Law of Attraction and stuff like that. I never really learned about that until I was in my twenties, and they've been very, very powerful messages to myself. But I feel like at my roots, from playing the sport and being beaten and having this bounce-back ability, that's what's kind of made me who I am today.

James Dooley: Scale. You mentioned the feeling, you know, responsible for the team I'm with. You, because if there are days when I'm a bit, you know, lazier than on other days, and I feel like I let myself down, but then I feel like the worst feeling is when I feel, you know, I let my team down. I know we have the, you know, the wages to cover, and we have everything, and if I'm not really going for it, I feel guilty. If I let myself down, it's fine, you know, I — it's okay. But when you feel like you let somebody else down, by not doing the right things at the right time, it's the worst feeling in the world.

James Dooley: I think also it teaches you, which is another huge fundamental, is social skills. Sometimes it might not be politically correct in today's kind of world, but if a team member is not pulling the way, and they are having a lazy day, sometimes they need that little bit of encouragement. Just like if I'm playing centre midfielder alongside another centre midfielder, and I'm doing all of his running, I'm going to tell him, stop being so lazy, come on, or be like, what's up? Are you injured or something? And they try to understand and digest what is wrong, because they might have problems at home or something. We're in the workplace now, I'm talking about. So you can try and remotivate him and help him out and stuff like that. And sometimes, if not having a goal, you just want to understand what the problem is. And if it is just through having a bit of a — the nutrition's not quite right or something like that, so we just bought little — just little things like fruit bowls and lots of water in the office and stuff like that to make sure and that the nutrition is good and that they're hydrated and stuff like that. And I always feel it's come from the backbone of sport and being able to socialize with others, to physically say and look at them in the eye and say, what's wrong?

James Dooley: Yeah, and sometimes, not having those social skills can hold a lot of people back. Playing on iPad all day versus playing football on the field with team members who — you accidentally bump into each other and you hit each other, like accidentally, and then you have to, you know, let go and apologise to that person. You don't develop those skills on the iPads.

James Dooley: Yeah. Let's get into, you know, SEO and more, you know, kind of technical stuff. So let's say you had to start from like scratch again, getting back to there, but there was no SEO and there was no online, you know, or there was no like SEO, like or like digital marketing. What type of business would you start in order to, you know, make a good living?

James Dooley: I love having a team around me. I love being like a project manager. Prior to me doing SEO, I was a project manager. So I would probably start and be an entrepreneur within a company. So instead of me, I've not got the money, so I'm going to go join almost like what we said with regards to the SEO agency that you're going to work for to do sales. I would join a construction company or I'd look around and just see who's doing well financially and who's got a decent brand with like nice vans on the road or nice newsletters. If there's no SEO and try and find someone that I feel that have got a good business around them, join that business, be a great team member, make certain that all my other team members around me like to like to play with that footballer so to speak, but like to work alongside me with the work ethic that I have. I know that the cream rises to the top. That I know that in time I'd be able to motivate other team members to grow that business, and then the CEO would reward me in directly, because if he's a CEO and he's a clever businessman, you look after your A player. It might be further down the line I might decide to help develop an extra team and say, is there any chance I could have some shares in this extra team or something? But I'd start out being an entrepreneur and just work my way up, find my way and see what works best, whether that's a roofing company, a plumbing company, an electrician company, whatever it is. If it's not SEO, you'll find a way very quickly, and I'm willing to learn and adapt of whatever attributes and lessons that I need to learn. You learn on the job, you learn from others around you as well.

James Dooley: By the way, you would go into trade business. I made a funny post. I'm going to start providing plumbing training because SEO is dead, you know, like almost like the sarcastic post. Like, SEO is dead now. I've launched a course, but it's not an SEO course, it's a plumbing course, because SEOs will become plumbers. Also, I'll find a way. If the whole internet went down, so there's no social media, there's no SEO and stuff like that, if there's still people that need trades, or if there are still people that need to order something, and they're not ordering it online, they'll be still needing a roof repair. They'll still need someone to clean the carpet. They'll be still needing a cladding company or a window fitting company, or if they're locked out of the car, they still need a locksmith. They're not searching on the internet. How do they then find? If it means that I have to get better at graphic design, I'd find a graphic designer and do leaflet drops. I'd go to local meetups to breakfast clubs and stuff that — not a lot of them are free. Television, you can — it's expensive to do this. Yet, but if you started to build up money, television ads and radio ads would be off the record, you know what I mean? Like, still to this day, I actually own an offline marketing company. Was billboard advertising, radio ads, busbar advertising, leaflet drops, everything that was there before the 90s, right?

James Dooley: Exactly, yeah.

James Dooley: So they still need it. So you just got to find them. Try to find. How can you get the companies — which is the most important, and it's the lifeblood of any business. How can you get them a consistent flow of quality inquiry? So you can forget the sales part, which we've spoke about, which is very important. Prior to the sales, you have the best sales team in the world. If you don't have a consistent flow of quality inquiries coming into your business, there's nothing to sell. Nobody to sell to.

James Dooley: Yeah, exactly. Let's jump into — I know you're expert into the small business, like the trades, you know, businesses, right, online marketing for those businesses, because we know you have lots of websites in these industries. Let's say you are — I know a locksmith, a local locksmith in Manchester, and you have just launched a simple website, or no, not even — you don't even have a website. So where would you start? Of course, launching the website. Well, what would you do? Like step by step, uh, to, you know, dominate your sphere in Manchester as being like a locksmith, for example?

James Dooley: So now the internet's here. Know what kind of budget have I got? Because it would matter on the — okay, what's a typical locksmith? That that, let's say, because you did take on locksmiths, that have — so what was their yearly kind of — so if I was to turn around and say, right, okay, Mr locksmith, you need to give us two thousand, and then we will start from the two thousand to generate you a consistent flow of quality inquiries. Like, two thousand a month? No, just two thousand, right? Yeah. So I'd buy an exact match domain. So if there's a locksmith, I'd try to dig a little bit deeper, because locksmith's quite broad. So I would try to say, are you an emergency locksmith, or are you like, what other USP have you got? Are you a twenty-four-seven locksmith or an emergency locksmith, or is it specifically for vehicles? So you're a vehicle locksmith, or is it for, um, like the house and stuff like that, or or even like office locksmiths? Some of them are typing in, I'd probably start with the emergency locksmith. So I tried to get emergency locksmith Manchester dot co dot uk. I'd then go and create the article, the homepage, saying that we are a professional locksmith that provides emergency services. Is so, whether you're locked out your house, whether you're locked out your car, whatever it is, this is the service that we do. I'd get a telephone number put on there, which goes through to the company. So because with it being an emergency, they don't normally want to fill in an inquiry. They normally want to ring up. So I'd put a telephone on. I still have a contact form on there, but majority of them, probably ninety-eight per cent in that industry, calls. I then start getting, like, just starting to look at what the real businesses do. So the first thing that normally that a real business does is they'll go and set up the social media kind of profile. So they'll set up a Twitter account, which might be emergency locksmiths. For the Twitter, I try and set up a LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile, Pinterest profile, and I try and set them up and have them on on the site and I try and be active on those. I try and follow other locksmiths. I'd try and follow just other people in the Manchester area and network with other people with any with hash Manchester just to try and build up that kind of following. Twitter helps with indexation as well. Like, if you do a tweet and it links, by helps with indexation. I then try to start doing any jobs that we did. When I try and start doing case studies showing jobs that we've done, so I try and get a before and after photo, or happy client who, or video, even better, saying, oh, Dooley locksmiths was amazing. They came out within thirty minutes and they managed to get me back in my car. So I try and build up case studies. I'd then go and get real business directories. So like in the UK, it's like Yellow Pages, Thompson Local, and there's probably around five hundred and fifty different directories that you can get listed on. And what happens with that is you get a NAP listing — name, address and phone number. So you go and put the the name, which could be like D Locksmiths or Emergency Locksmith Manchester, put the address on there, put the telephone number on there, that goes onto the site, and you get a generally speaking a no-follow naked URL link through to the site. I then load them five hundred and fifty citations into an indexing tool, so like Exceptional or Giga Indexer, which helps then Google bots come and crawl those. That's an important part of getting the the links being picked up. Otherwise, a lot of the directories don't get quite picked up. And then actually, just by doing the citations, can normally mean that you can rank for the exact match domain, unless it's a really competitive, like, you know, payday loans, or even payday loans Manchester, is still quite competitive, or payday loans London. From there, then I've still — I'm still only maybe three, four hundred pounds into the budget. I'd go to, like, Manchester Evening News and reach out to him, saying just some jobs are what we've done in the Manchester, and try and do on a much smaller level, like what you're doing, to try and get some — earn some sort of backlinks. Manchester locksmith saves dog from dying in the car in the heat wave. Exactly. Well, exactly. That just stuff like that, that we're trying to get as much exposure as we can. And then the truth of the matter is you then start doing like the suburbs of Manchester, like Salford, Eccles, and they're only little villages and towns, but they might get you an inquiry every couple of months. And then from there, then the phone's going to start ringing. And then the truth of the matter is after that, you do need to start building up the power of the site. So you can have the best content in the world, but without backlinks, it's kind of — the three pillars is technically build your site out well, build good quality content, and lots of good quality content that's NLP optimized, entity optimized, and stuff like that, and backlinks. So after that, then I'm then looking to try to get if I can get some guest posts, maybe some link inserts into existing Manchester-related articles. Once it starts to earn, and I'm earning enough money from there, maybe get a digital PR campaign. But in some local niche, will not need digital — not even a few guest posts and a few link inserts is not needed. Regarding guest posts, would you go and try to find bloggers who are actually Manchester-based bloggers or locksmith-related bloggers or lock — yeah, but something else that we also make certain that we do is we also make certain that we write the article. We would want to write the article, because I would want to make certain that I'm getting every variation of a subheading that I can, and every possible question. Oh, you would want to rank the article?

James Dooley: I'd want to rank the guest post as well. Because in my opinion, the best link you can have is from a link that's ranking for the keyword that you want your to rank for. So I'd physically try to rank that and share that on my social media and stuff like that and get that out there. And then obviously, the more and more traction that you're getting online, the better. Obviously, things can come back. But if you was then going to say, what would you do for a harder type of industry and a harder niche? You'd still follow the same process. You might need more blog articles and more subtopic articles on your site, which is called topical authority. Then you might need a digital PR campaign. So then it might be, ferry, look, I've got six thousand to spend now. Let's go and get me a decent campaign. It has to be related to the niche, and it has to be related to the area, ideally one or the other. And then you then go and work your magic and you'll get us hopefully ten. I'm not bothered if it's do-follow. I'm not bothered if it's no-follow. The really high DA sites, they move the needle. You get one of them, and in the more competitive markets, they are needed. In local as well, so certainly is needed in competitive. For the locksmith, like, maybe a regional would not be, you know, viable with digital PR. But I think for locksmith, I just had an idea. Maybe somebody can do this. If you have a locksmith client, you can do expert commentary type of — lo locksmith. Your national story saying, you know, Manchester locksmith experts reveal five things that prevent burglars from breaking your locks. Yeah, and five things that you can do. And then, you know, the types of locks that you can buy. So that can be a campaign, and then I — I can tell this would — because burglaries and, you know, crime is like a hot topic in news. So you could just do, you know, lock me experts reveal three things that you are doing that will, you know, enable burglars to easily break in, and the things that you can do about it. Boom. Ten links instantly. Express, Daily Mail, all them will cover. Each. The funny part of where your ideation comes in — we actually do quite a lot of ideation when we're choosing industries, because we try to find where can we find an angle. We're always looking for trending topics. So like, one of our fastest-growing niches was we do quite a lot of cladding, right?

James Dooley: Oh, wow.

James Dooley: But actually, for a lot of the cladding that you do, there wasn't fire-resistant, and there's been one or two issues in the UK where a full block of flats has gone up on fire, and stuff like that. So that's hit all the local news and stuff like that. These jobs have been gone, been installed from twenty, thirty years ago, but now there's a lot of coatings and stuff that you can do, put to put on the cladding, and we're in that — it's that industry. It's not the cladding industry. The cladding-coating industry, which makes it fire-retardant and fire-resistant. And then from there, then you can do these spin-off articles. The block of flats can't get insurance unless they've got this now being done. So there's a lot of angles with there that we can do as blog posts and then come and pitch those ideas to yourself. And then you go, you've going do a spin-off of this that you can do. We're in quite a lot of other industries to do with, like, activity, or building playgrounds, sports pitches, activity trails. And there's so much from there that you can spin off with regards to how the younger generation now are less active than they've ever been in the UK, because of technology, and what areas in the UK are the least active, and stuff like that, and get some stats and data and stuff on there that you might be able to kind of put. And then that can get you earn you some backlinks for products and stuff.

James Dooley: Yeah, that works well, yeah.

James Dooley: Would you do, like, a multiple website approach for, like, local businesses? I know I was like a big fan when I was like doing like SEO for my websites and for clients. I was always a big fan of, like, multi-site approach where you just want to go and dominate, you know, half of the the top page. So at one point I had, um, you know, I think five tax calculators, and for every search term, there was like, you know, twenty thousand after-tax, fifty thousand tax. I literally dominated page one. It was like, you know, number one, number two, number four and number five. So I like I was dominating page one. It was so good with different websites, different websites. Yeah, different different different websites, different layouts of the websites, even different, you know, kinds of types of calculations. So some options were available on this website, but the other options were available on the other website, like, you know, pension calculation. The other one you had, like, the student loan calculation available. So to make it diverse, would you approach that for local businesses?

James Dooley: We do that a lot. So what you start to realize is the way the customer journey, the the query path kind of works, is if someone's looking for someone who is the best, right, the best modifier with whatever kind of trade you come with, the term cheap is completely different, modifying a diff completely different type of search. Yeah. With the best, I think with the best modifier, you would probably struggle to rank as a as a service website. Right? No, you you can still rank it, because you — well, what you need to do is at the end of it, you'd put company or, um, service. So best plumbing service, best plumbing company. You'd struggle for the best plumbing companies, but best plumbing company, you could still actually rank for it. It's not — it's not plural. With a plural, you would you would need, like, a list. You need a list. But we also do that as well. So what we do, once we enter a market, normally we'll do maybe fifteen, twenty websites. And then then once we've done the fifteen, twenty websites, and the the client's paying well, will also come up with a plural site, which then lists our fifteen sites, saying, here's the best, here's the best, here's the cheapest, here's whatever that you can do. So we want to try and dominate and get the full monopoly of what does our client do? He does carpet cleaning. Like, we want to make certain that they they are getting that inquiry for carpet cleaning, whether that's cheap carpet cleaning service, or best carpet cleaning service, or fastest, like, call-out, fast carpet cleaning company, and stuff like that. Then we go down the route of being like, commercial carpet cleaning, office carpet cleaning. There's so many different modifiers and different what people could say. Is, well, why don't you do that as it being a different page on the site? We also do that as well. So on our commercial carpet cleaning site, we'll put office carpet cleaning and stuff. But we might also generate a website for them, because we've got the process down down to a tee, that we can rank it and generate leads. We may as well build a different site. What we started to realize was if you was ranking number one for office carpet cleaning on my website, which was commercial carpet cleaning, a number two result was office carpet cleaning dot co dot uk. Office carpet cleaning starts to get more clicks, even though it's ranking position number two, because they feel like, no, this is the exact company that I want. I want someone that specializes in that office.

James Dooley: Yeah. More specialised.

James Dooley: So it's like, you, if you started to go and sell guest posts and link inserts and other products at search intelligence, if you specifically just did digital PR, and you know who digital PR, that's what they're going to come to you for. If someone — we know you want to go to Ferry for guest posts, it's like, know, as an expert in digital PR, it'd be difficult for you to also try to rebrand to sell guest posts and stuff. So, yeah.

James Dooley: Very true. And that's why we are not selling anything else, right? That's why we stay in the lane of digital PR, which is why you've become the market leader in digital PR, because you focus. You put all your systems and processes into being the best at what you can be in that service and in that niche, and now you've risen to the top because of that. And I think it would be if you ever came to me and says, do you think I should also start selling X, Y and Z? I'd say, no, it's not part of what your brand is. It's not who you are and what you've sold to your customers. Best. Or if ever, let's say you did come to me as a client, and let's say you just did want to sell other services, I would create my core brands. I wouldn't put it underneath search intelligence. I'd do a guest posting dot co dot uk website, or whatever it is, that then just goes, we just do guest posting on that side. It would be a different different brand as you, a different kind of identity. And it's worked really well. It's not just local sites that we've managed to build out for businesses. Any business that needs a consistent flow of quality inquiries, which is nearly every single business there is in the world, including yourself. Let's say that you need a consistent flow of new customers coming through on your mailbox saying, hi, Ferry, I'm looking for a digital PR campaign. But that exact model can be then used for, hi, James, I'm looking for a new playground, or hi, John, I'm looking for a new shower room in our gym, hi, Malcolm, I'm looking to have my roof fixed. Do you know what I mean? That they all need this consistent flow of quality inquiries. And the truth of the matter is they're very good at what they do, which is maybe fixing a roof. It that don't mean they're good at marketing. And they might be the best offline tradesman that there is, or anybody offline could be the best company in the world, but you need to put that online. Yeah. And we and we're very good at grabbing all their images, grabbing all their videos, grabbing all their testimonials, and putting it on the site in a format that we know converts very well with the right type of content and the right entities, getting the right type of backlinks that are needed through to that site to be able to rank. That's that's what we're good at. I'm not good at going fixing the roof. Let them go and do what they're good at. Yeah, let's do what I'm good at, and then it works works nicely.

James Dooley: That's exactly the next, you know, question that I've got is like the rank and rent business model. I know you're probably the most famous in the world in, like, in the rank and rent model. So how does it work? Let's say there's a plumber who enters Oxford, and says, or they already have some presence, but they say, we want to explode our business. We don't have expertise. We are good plumbers. One of the best services. But we don't have expertise, and we want to invest, whatever it takes, for us to dominate, to become the leaders in Oxford, in and Oxford area, in plumbing. And where do you start from with that client? Let's say the client calls you. I've seen you on a podcast with Ferry. I want to you know dominate my industry, and we want to make millions. Is it possible, and what would it cost, and what's the the next steps to start with?

James Dooley: Prior to doing the rank and rent model, because this is quite important for me to explain this part, we was looking to potentially set up an SEO agency. We're very good at ranking websites, right? But my issue with SEO agencies, right, in general, is they have to spend quite a lot of time nursing the client, nursing their customers with nice glossy reports and explaining what they're doing and why they're doing it. It's one of the only industries in the world where if you went and got a bricklayer to build you a wall, you let the bricklayer build you the wall, true, right? We don't — not going to micromanage. Like, you don't micromanage. You don't stand there, standing over the bricklayer, excuse me, why did you tap that brick three times? Excuse me, why did you only put two grades as sanding? That you — he's the expert at building the wall. Let the bricklayer do what he does, which is build the wall. The issue is a lot of people training SEOs to fake it before they make it, and now it's created a lot of cowboys in the industry. There's a lot of amazing SEO agencies out there, but know that a lot of customers have been burnt by these fake-it-before-you-make-it SEOs, because that's what they've been taught to do and train on other people's budgets, which I absolutely despise and I hate. People claiming fake it before you make it, because you're not doing trust, honest and integrity. You're taking five thousand pounds a month from someone, saying that you're good at what you do, when actually you're guessing. You're doing guessos, not SEO. And you're trying to guess to try and try and rank their websites. So for that reason, I moved away very quickly. This is thirteen, fourteen years ago, from SEO. Like, not — no, it was probably nine, nine years ago, maybe. We moved away from SEO. We leverage SEO as a business, and we started to realize, what do we want? What what's the end goal for our club? So let's look at the end goal and let's work it backwards. They want more leads. Why do they want more leads? Well, they want more orders. Well, why do they want more orders? Because they want more profit, okay. So now you're starting to get to the end goal. They want to make more money. When you work it backwards from there, and whether you go, what, why do you need SEO? Because I want to rank better to generate more leads to generate more profit. So we're like, well, why don't we just generate you the leads that makes you the profit, and you gives a cut of the profit? And we guarantee you a return on investment, and nobody else does this, right? Because what everybody else does is everybody chases SEO, Rank and PPC, and everybody else chases doing lead generation, but on a paper-lead model. Whether that lead converts or doesn't convert, the charging per lead, and what started to happen was we initially was going to move into the lead generation model, doing a paper-lead model. But the issue was, again, you're dealing with customers that are consistently ringing you up, saying, excuse me, I wasn't able to get hold of that lead. So I'm not paying for it. Excuse me, an inquiry just came through, and it says Donald Duck or Mickey Mouse. I'm not paying for it. This happens online. Like, you get competitors filling in your forms to check who's going to ring, and stuff like that. So when you start understanding that not every lead is a good lead, and that's just part and parcel of business, we just say, I don't want to have a big sales team that's consistently not arguing with clients, but like, I don't want to pay for that, and you're having this like debate of which leads do they and don't they pay for. Why don't we just do what we're good at, which is rank the websites, which getting them the right type of leads, and get paid on the back end?

James Dooley: So so kind of almost like undercut that need for client management, while still achieving the same results at the end.

James Dooley: So we don't need the — it actually saves us money on staffing, yeah, to not having to argue about whether it's an actual lead or not. A lead report. It completely de-risks it for the clients. But we're very selective with who we work with. Like, a lot of these companies come to and go, h, I want your lead generation service on a on a back end. And I'm like, excuse me, who are you? What is it that you do? Is it a good product? Like, we try to understand who — who is the company? Are they providing a good service? Because if they're not providing a good service, I don't want to work with them, because I want to work with these people long term. I'm going to build them a site with their photos, with their videos, optimize it properly. I want to make certain that that I'm not here for two, three months. I want a monthly recurring revenue stream. And for the first two years, I'm not bothered about profit from that client. I'm bothered about building it. That now we've got to a point where they're generating, whether it's ten leads or fifty leads or two hundred leads a day, however many, is it could might only be one lead a day. But if that that's one qualified good lead for what they make, good money on. For some businesses, that's great. Some need fifty, where it depends on, like, where they're at. Like, if you doing roofing for a church, you only need one a month, and it's big money. But if you're doing carpet cleaning, you might need thirty, forty a day if you've got a lot of teams. If you're doing repairs, you might need thirty, forty a day, or surveys and stuff like that, you might need quite a lot. But coming back to the on the ranking rent model, we we get a lot of inquiries that come through on a daily basis to us that wants ranking men. They have to go through a vetting process to see whether are these going to work? Our leads, well, because if they don't ring them for forty-eight hours, but if someone went files in a form with you, and you're paying PPC for digital PR, and you don't get back in touch with him for forty-eight hours, number two, three and four result, who the clicked on, and filed with them, and they come back and say, we're seven thousand pounds for a digital PR campaign, and they get on a call and they go, yeah, let's go with it. By the time you even rank them, they might place the order with somebody else.

James Dooley: Do you track this? So do you track the the time that they get back to leads? Or do you —

James Dooley: We try. We try. The truth of the matter is we're in that many, many industries now. It's difficult for us to track. We start by allowing multiple companies in the website. So if someone comes to us, and we go, look, no disrespect, but we don't know whether you're good at converting or not. If you want us to build a a car-cleaning website, out we can do. But we might have multiple people in the site, and whoever converts the best, at that point we can start dealing more. If you think that you can convert these leads, and you're good at what you do, you'll be able to convert them. And then if you do, we can set this backend model up. So we kind of run it that way. And like I said, it's an absolute no-brainer for the customers. Yeah. But it's risky on our behalf. So we've got to choose the right clients.

James Dooley: It's not like they're choosing the right lead generator. We've got to choose the right company that can convert the leads, that they can make good profit, and then give us a percent.

James Dooley: Would it be worth for you to set up a a role at the company that's got one job, and that is, every day, use, like, a a random email address that you set out for them, and submit a form, and then have, like, a system where you track the time of reply for every inquiry? And you go through the hundreds of websites that you have, the person would fill out the form of the website, but also they would call the company and see whether they respond, what time it takes to respond to the phone call, to just make sure you optimize the responses of of your you know clients to the leads that you generate, would that be something that you would over —

James Dooley: Exactly. Something that did about three years ago. So we used to do the, what's the — car, what's the name of it where you someone goes into a shop and the — yeah, it's like a go shopping, or something like that, but you basically you're a fake shop, and you're going in, and you're seeing what customer service that you get. So we was doing that. But the truth of the matter is, as well, you know, the reason why we had multiple people in there is that, let's say I came to you and said, I can generate you some leads for digital PR, and let's just say I went to John's digital PR agency, there, and you says, I can give you five per cent commission of every job that you do, right? And John's digital PR says, I'll pay you twenty per cent of whatever you do, and let's say we did just do a call to each of them, and you both responded pretty quickly, it still doesn't mean that John's digital PR is better than you. Or let's say you didn't respond for an hour, and John responded within thirty seconds. If his product is not good enough long term, he's not going to sell much of it. If he's not got the case studies and stuff, I'd prefer to have five per cent of someone that wins a lot of work than twenty per cent of someone that doesn't. The truth of the matter is, when we had five companies in, which normally is for around three to six months, we might even add more than five in as well, for a certain industry, the cream rises to the top. We allow real companies to decide which which one of the five they want to use. Like, it's not to me to decide, or one of my mystery shoppers, it's not of one of my mystery shoppers, to go in and and decide that one person says good based on metric, metric a low. The customers that might have their own different metrics with who they think is the best. After the three, four, five, six, seven months, we can physically say, well, John won one job, and you won thirty jobs. So five per cent of thirty jobs is better than twenty per cent of one job. And over here, someone else might have won ten jobs, and paid us ten per cent. We might go, right, we need to get rid of John. And then you might narrow it down to the last two. And then the truth of the matter is, them two might both be good companies, and it's not like, oh, we going to sorry, we're going to switch you off. At that point, we might be, right, now tell us, where what you're really good at, and then we might then build them a specific site for. If they did roofing, they might be really good at slate roofing, but the other one might be really good at pitched roofing. One might be really good at flat roofing, or biodiverse roofing, or green roofing, or blue roofing now. All them are different types. There's brown roofing as well. These are all different types of roofs. You've got felt roofing. So with once you go into roofing, you realize there's actually twenty-seven different subproducts just within roofing that what you can do. So it's like, name the three things that you that you convert the best out and make the most profit in. Now your three could be slate, tile, felt. There could be flat, blue and green. You already know. Then they've already built the relationship up with you. They've been working with you six months. They're already paying for existing jobs. You've got this trust. And you know what? Like, a lot of the time, we get — invite us. Our sales team get invited on all the Christmas dos, for for all the clients. We can't — we can't actually go to them all. Too very like, but we do a good job. And I think another big part is of doing good, good job. And obviously, because we're guaranteeing them a return on investment, the customers don't leave, because it's it's no risk to them at all. But having happy customers means you got happy staff, and having happy staff means that they're motivated to drive to want to do more. And when they're getting up in the morning, they're turning into work, and they've got happy — they're excited.

James Dooley: Yeah, they're excited to work hard and do stuff.

James Dooley: So it's it's a snowball effect that's worked really well. And we've never, ever, ever go back to SEO, paper lead, or anything like that, where people can have a debate that they're not quite happy with it. The only time someone's ringing us is because they're going, we've got this new — we got — we've got this new product, and as we've got this new product, we want you to promote it. That's generally the only phone call. Too many leads is actually has been a problem. But because there certain — there's certain customers where they'll come to us and they say, look, we've gone from two vans to ten vans on the road, but I'm having a lot of stress in dealing with ten vans on the road. And I look, we've never told you to go to ten vans on the road. We're just providing you with the leads. What we would say is, if you don't want ten vans on the road, there's one way of levelling out not having ten vans on the road, which is upping your prices. Make more profit. We get more kickbacks anyway. So up your prices until it's at a point where you might be winning slightly less work, which is what you want, is what you're telling me. Less work for more money. Less work for more money. So you might only want four or five vans on the road. That's absolutely fine. You're doing it at a higher ticket margin. We're getting paid on a higher ticket margin. We're happy. You're happy. I don't want you to be stressed, running thirty vans on the road, and the clients are because more capacity. So when you said you you had five clients on a website, is it the same number and then you just switch the numbers behind? How do you decide which client gets the call at any point in time?

James Dooley: So no. So what what happens is, when when it's in the testing phase and these five companies in, we don't have a telephone number on the — no sites. Oh, right. We just won't put a telephone number on. We'll just have the contact form. And when they fill in the contact form, it specifically says there for GDPR reasons that this inquiry is going to be send to five companies. And then links in the privacy policy and it shows the five companies that it's going going to. So they know. And actually, you know what? Majority of the customers you find that they're happy with it, because then they get five — competitive.

James Dooley: Yeah, competitive.

James Dooley: So they're kind of going to get five quotes to compare against each other. And then from there, then we'll know which one of the five is going to win the job. If if the job goes ahead, because one will go, oh, we lost it to ABC again. Oh, we lost it to XYZ again. And when someone keeps losing the jobs all the time, he's starting to go, well, all these different customers keep saying that ABC is better than you. Yeah. And then and then when the cream rises to the top, we start to realize that they might have — they might be really nice on the phone. They might have nice letterhead, and they might have a nice website. The service is — the sales team — all is something that's not quite right for us to provide them with the leads. So what is your vision with this, with this business? Uh, with the rank and rent, and also, do you also like diversify your income to? I presume the bulk of your you know your kind of income comes from that, like the rank and rent model, but do you also diversify into, like, some other businesses that generate some you know some extra kind of revenue?

James Dooley: So the vision for the rank and rents is I'm going to continue to grow it. I absolutely love what I do. This team love what I do. I don't need to grow it. I don't need to keep wanting to evolve and innovate and keep looking to go forward. But for my team, I do. And that's very important. My team, who've been around me, who are now part of my family, of my extended family, they want to grow. They want to get really nice houses, and they want to grow it further. So as long as it's not putting stress and haste on on me for the growth, I've now got a great middle management team in place. I've got some great directors who run the business. I've got a head of SEO, head of PPC, a head of social media, head of technical SEO, head of link building, and they they deal with the day-to-day tasks. I only need to do one hour a week if I want to. I choose to do a lot more by choice because I love it. So and I love going into work, and they all — my friends that are in there, and I love there coming in and coming to me, I go five, and oh, we got this new client, and he's really happy with it, and he's up to his budget, and stuff like that. Oh, well done, and stuff like that. And those many successes we celebrate, because we want to enjoy the journey. And I love the journey. These customers are getting a lot out of us. My team are getting a lot out of having happy customers. It makes me happy. It makes them happy. The clients are happy. So for that reason, the vision's always going to be, let's just carry on doing what we're doing. We're doing a great job. Never selling out. You don't want to sell out yet? I mean, it knows too big to being honest. Like, I think we'd have to sell — we'd have to break up what we've got into multiple businesses, uh, to make it make sense to actually sell some of. I don't — I feel like a lot of the people ahead of the markets now could probably go off and do their own thing, but they work because they love it, and they love working with myself and they know they've got full support for me and stuff like that. That if I did try to sell, I think it would break up the business. And I think by breaking up the business, it'd be a risky sale for someone. Normally, they want an earn-out. And for that reason, I just go, I just internal sell to the team and let them keep earning more money.

James Dooley: Yeah, that's the vision. But with you guys, to others, everything that's an expense. Everything that we start to spend a lot of money on, we're spending eighty thousand a month with Search True, you know, car Addison. Well, so car had a business partner called Tom Phillips. So I was like, I need — I need you to improve the quality of these links. I'm not happy with the links, but I also need them at a cheaper price. So I became a nightmare client, because I wanted it cheaper and better. Do you know what I mean? And and I was like, or let me come in. Let me come in as an investor. So Tom wanted out anyway. I didn't know this at the time. I'm like, let me come in as an investor. Otherwise, I'm going to be moving my eighty thousand either in house or I'm going to start splitting them up with multiple link-building agencies. And as I started moving them out to multiple link-building agencies, Tom would have lost money in doing that. So Tom allowed me to buy in on Search True. And then there's other services that we've used over the years that we've found to be great. But we've got our own inhouse testing team. So we've always want to improve it. And until I get investment in the company, they're like, a bit, oh, I don't really want to keep improving this. I'm like, look, you should want to be the best. And sometimes, at the top, the business owners might be like, well, I'm making enough money, and I'm like, let me invest. That's the wolf, wolf on on the top of the mountain, right?

James Dooley: Exactly. Not innovating, not wanting to be better.

James Dooley: I'm like, let me come and invest, because when I do come and invest, I'll improve it, and we'll scale it out to new numbers. You'll benefit from it. I'll benefit from it more. I can leverage the team then for my own stuff. So for my own stuff, I'm getting a little bit cheaper. But that quality is so much higher. So we do look to invest in other verticals. That's kind of — I always call shouldering niches — that complement what we do on the ranking model. Do invest in other companies that are not related to digital, that you know generate cash flow, regardless like — regardless whether they do digital marketing or not? Like, you know, all, almost like brick and mortar, like business? I've got some — I've got some. One barber shop. I've got a hair salon. I've got a couple of properties that we rent out and stuff.

James Dooley: Do you rent out the seats in the barber shops?

James Dooley: So my char accountant, sometimes comes up with, like, oh, there's a shop here. Oh, there's a barber shop here. Oh, there's a hair selling here. So the two guys that run the barber shop, we know well. They rent out the seats. They just pay us quite a high wage. So we end up making about fifteen per cent yield, which is which is good for which is good for rental. Commercial rental is a lot better than residential. Residential, on a house and rent out, you might only make seven per cent, six per cent, something like that. Residential rentals, you also need to be — if the boiler is broken or there's a leak, you need to fix it. Yeah. On commercial, if there's a problem, oh, yeah, the the ten deal, I had to install this sauna here, and it breaks, it's it's my responsibly.

James Dooley: Your responsibility, yeah.

James Dooley: So for commercial properties, it's much better. I always try. Any business that we acquire or we invest into, if they are renting the property, one of the first things I try to do is go to the person who owns it to try and buy that property. I'd like to buy the property that the business is running out of. If you — did you buy the barber shop?

James Dooley: Bought the building completely. Bought it, okay. So you bought the building. You don't lease. You don't — you don't lease.

James Dooley: So bought building, bought the whole building. It's got upstairs and downstairs. It's got a training academy upstairs for hairdressers, and downstairs is the barber shop. The the guys that do the best upstairs in the the head barber and and the training and stuff like that, they get a seat for two months downstairs, completely for free. They're hoping that they start liking them, and they might stay and work within the barber shop. The best investment you can do is in digital assets. You can make forty, fifty per cent plus in digital asset investment, as opposed to why would they then going to want to do a house and rent it out for seven per cent? Even the barber shop at fifteen per cent. But sometimes I do like taking someone digital.

James Dooley: Yeah, yeah. I think and you have also, like, the you know, the value of of the investment also grows just just magically in time. Digital real estate grows in value, generally. If you if you've got the right — find the right industry, normally, with age, they mature a lot more, and yeah, that starts to grow in value. The more case studies that you have, and stuff like that. So and you do risk as well, because if you go in different niches, and you have, as you said, you have like eight hundred websites, and even if a few hundreds, you know, would fail, you will still have, you know, it's it was a de-risk business where the others still produce and grow in value.

James Dooley: Yeah. So we, instead of just being the assets, like for the rank and rents, we also like — we're consistently buying into companies that we feel are doing well for the industry. Like, wow, you've got an amazing product. Your profit margin might not be great yet. But you're doing the right things. And and I think a lot of people, they give up too soon in this industry. So it's always, on majority of the time, it's always — it's the hockey stick approach. You're you're not even growing. The revenue might be growing. You're reinvesting every penny, reinvesting it, reinvesting it. So you profit margin at the end of the year, you're going from one million to two million to three million to four million. Profit margin zero, zero, zero. Just goes back into the business to grow the business. And then it gets to a point then where it's like, no, we're ready. And then it's the hockey stick. Let's stop everything a little bit. Let's catch your breath, and then get some money accumulated, and then and then go again.

James Dooley: Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yesterday, I found out about a trade, a business model that I was not expecting to exist, and uh, that business model is called, you know, horse pimping. Can you tell me more about, you know, horses? We know like you have like I think fourteen horses, but also, you know, what what kind of the horse pimping concept means?

James Dooley: As a family, we love horse racing. As we we grew up, that would be one thing that we we'd go and attend the horse racing events. So one thing I always said, when I was younger, that I'd love us as a family to own a race horse. We've had a good few years with in business and stuff. So I decided to buy a couple of horses. Is it a family investment, like the whole family puts money together?

James Dooley: Yeah. I I put the money into it. The family all own it, kind of thing. Is is it's like, come over to a bar, for like, like, a barbecue. Yeah, like you own the barbecue. The whole family exactly. That. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So we bought a couple. We had a few winners. I then started going to T stores in New Market. And there's like a a horse parade sales on. And we'd go in there. And they'd be like, the horse would come up for auction. And they'd be like, right, we've got a sixty thousand budget on this horse. Not a penny more. Sixty thousand. I will go to — so I'm like, fifty, fifty-two, fifty-five, fifty-seven, sixty. Some going to go sixty-five. And me with my competitive edges, seventy, seventy, eighty. And like, you'd walk out, and they're like, right, your bid. I'm not allowed in the the horse ring anymore now. Buy, like, Mark and David, my two brothers, they need to go in and and purchase him. You're too too competitive. Too to you, getting I I feel like they they beat man. I just don't like the idea — the horse pin pin is what you're saying is the breeding side of it. And in horse racing, they say that apples don't fall far from the tree. So the breeding is very very very important when you're looking at the horse. Like, our David, we call Stat. So he's all about the form and the time and stuff like that of of what the horse has done on the race course. Where our Mark is all about the breeding, like, who the sire is, who basically, who the mother and father is, and who the grandparents are and stuff like that. I'm so surprised with how how much the breeding, how important that it is. It's crazy. And then from there, then if you get a good sire or you get a good dam, you can breed from him. So I was saying yesterday to you that if you could get a Derby winner, you — the horse could be worth nearly a billion pounds. Like, you could you could get a million pounds for them to reproduce. And they can do it four times a day. And can they do it four times a day? Yeah, four times a day. And the horse is — like, that's why you say you're for several months, you're like, a horse that's where he comes from, right?

James Dooley: Yeah. So that's where the horse pimping inv. We've just we've just had a mare called Ted's Dawn that we've just read from last month that yeah, hopefully next year. So how much is one, you know, session for for like a horse? Let's say, like, a horse, you know, pimping session cost you, a million? So pimping session is the — to the breeding. Yeah, to breed them. One million pound per — so for for them to bring the the the the male horse to the female horse? No way. One million pound? One million. One million. For a shack? So but that horse is — if that horse goes and wins a Derby, like you said, it's worth worth a billion and this shakes we we can't afford any anything close. Like, we were not going to buy to to buy these horses to go and buy that as being a fall once. If it's come out and everything's fine with the ar, which majority how it is, that might get sold in the sales for six, seven million pound. But if you didn't produce from the best sires and didn't spend a million pound, and you only spent half a million pound on a less like s, a lower quality sire, they might only sell it then for free. So actually, it's good business spending the million pound to sell for six, then a half a million for three. But the people in that industry are like they're on another level of of what it is. We understand the breeding, but we normally buy — if if a shake from Dubai comes and buys a horse for five point six, I think we bought Casanova, which is one of the horses who was out of Frankel. And I think they spent a million pound. Frankel is like one of the probably the best sires ever. And we've got one of the um the sons of Frankel. And they bought it. And I think it was someone can check on night. It's called Casanova. The I think it was about five point six million as a baby. It got bought for. And we own it now. The horse. And we bought it for I think it was like eight hundred and eighty thousand or something. That's a good deal. So we're getting, like, other people's kind of failures, that we feel, with age, it could improve and stuff like that. But it's not — it's not a business. We don't treat it as a business. We treat it as lifestyle.

James Dooley: The lifestyle, the family come together, all the family and friends come together. We can go to all the big festivals, like Royal Ascot, Cheltenham Festival, Punchy Stone, Leopard Stone, Galway. We go to all these events together as as a family. And we've had some great success. We've had a lot of winners. Do you get to network at those events, like, like, high-level people? Is it a chance to, like, really meet, you know, like, people who you would not meet otherwise?

James Dooley: Exactly, yeah. So like, this, you sat there with the billionaires. You sat there with the people that are worth fifty, sixty, eighty, one hundred million, that own to race horses. But they've spent five, six, seven million per horse. And can you actually have a discussion with those people? Of course, you can. They then of the day, we're all humans. Some people, when the more and more you start to be more successful, they're actually more open. That you are. The the nicer you become. Because to get really to the top, you need to — you sometimes — the times, unless — yeah, exactly. If inheriting, then it's slightly different. But generally speaking, you need to have some kind of a about your to get to the top. So they've always got amazing stories to say. Like, I I love the events of speaking to these people. When you're speaking to people that are more successful and around you, you're just like, wow, my my goals. I think I'd I think I dream more.

James Dooley: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's like, I'm a peasant, you know, I mean?

James Dooley: Exactly. Exactly. I was I was talking, at in Vietnam, to the guy who owns, like, the car rentals, you know, he makes, like, forty — I think thirty, forty million euros, like, his business is, yeah, in Germany, in a year. And I'm like, we want to you want to aim to ten million this year. Like, why am I thinking small now, after talking to this person? Like, that's the value of, you know, talking to those people. And as you said, he was so open, like, sharing, you know, everything, like, all the, you know, the money and how they make, how they do the operation. Like, this is crazy. What — like, how comes the people that that open at that level, and and I think, yeah, they are open, and he's such a nice guy as well with it. Like, um, he — he understands. Like, he'll turn around and instead of taking all the glory, he's like, I can't do it without my team. My team, the team's the most important part around me. And they do the day to day, and they're doing an amazing job. And he's now at a level where he's sitting on the board of a lot of of amazing businesses, and he can just decide on what business he wants to invest into. It's pretty cool.

James Dooley: Yeah's he's a prop, a cool, yeah. Very. I'm glad I met him. Um, spouse and kids. I think this is a topic that every uh, business or not just business owner, but everyone is, like, how do you — even people building careers, and people, you know, really, you know, being dedicated to their their careers, sometimes I feel like we have to sell the vision to everyone around us, including our kids, including, you know, our spouse, including our partners. What is your situation here? Do you have to actively, you know, and just work on this, you know, and just handle objections with your with your spouse? How do you handle this?

James Dooley: I've got an amazing wife. And they say, behind every successful man is an absolutely amazing woman. That's not always the case. But like, in my in my scenario, it is. She is the best mum I could ever ask for for my kids. I've got an amazing daughter, an amazing son, that I want to be the best dad in the world. This competitive edge is now in my fatherhood. I want to be the best dad in the world. So I I'm in a a relatively fortunate enough position now that allows me to make — so I work when I want. So and because I want to be a good dad, I try to make certain that, between four and seven o'clock, most days during the week, I'm like, when I come home, I'm like, right, let's get outside. Because that's what I used to always do. Let's get on the park. It's raining, mum? There's no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing. So like, and, you know, like, get your coat on. Let's get you out on. Let's go outside and let's go on on the park. Let's go on a bike ride. Let's go and just do things together outside. So I've got that, which is most days, apart from when I'm obviously travelling or whatever, or coming to events like this or to brighten stuff. Weekends, I try — I do bits of work most days. When I'm on holiday, I I still do some work. But I'm mainly just working with the head of the departments, just making certain they're okay. Everything's ticking along okay. They're struggling with something, I'll help them out on that. But it's kind of a well-oiled machine. Like, we've had, like, people, like, Mad Singers and stuff like that, who's amazing, like, management kind of mentor, to come in and just take things away. And you get to a point where you start working smarter. And we have to get Mads into our company as well to man. So he's a he's a great guy from from a consultant point of view to to work smart, not hard. You need people in the business that work hard. And I still, if I've been honest, I still work very hard, yeah. Like, it's not that I I definitely don't do the four-hour work week, like, what Tim Ferriss kind of preaches and stuff like that. I'm still grafting harder than ever. But she gets it. The kids get it. They get to see me a lot. They get a lot of nice perks going on, nice holidays. We've got a nice holiday home in Wales. But I want to make certain I'm a good — I'm a good dad as well. So in two weeks, we're going to Maya with the family. And Scott, who's one of the heads and one of the directors of the company, him and his missus, is coming. So me and Scott, in the morning, can talk a bit of shop and talk a bit about work on maybe going a bike ride or something before they've even got up. So I can do my work before they've even got up. And then we can go on the beach and stuff like that. But we're meeting, like, Adam Oar and Daisy, that run, like, a large Filipino virtual assistant business. My wife gets really gets on really well with Daisy, and stuff like that. So we've got some virtual assistance with them. So he's coming over. So I try to make certain it's not a work-life balance. I call it a work-life integration. I tried to integrate. But this is where I've got to be very careful with who I work with, because I've got to make something — who I work with, I like — because I'm going to introduce to my kids and my wife and my family, and I want them sometimes to come to the horse racing events and stuff like that. I'm a people person. And sometimes I don't look at the business. I look at the person who's running the business and say, can I work with them? Will they roll up their sleeves when times go bad? Because there will be times that go bad. And will we have a good time together? And and that allows me then to be — I'm hoping the life thinks an amazing dad. I hope the kids think I'm an amazing dad. That's amazing.

James Dooley: Um, and that competitive edgy, I want to be the best dad in the world. I want to make certain that I'm healthy, and we can do things together, and stuff like that. So I think it's important that you you'd set that time for the kids, even if you are in your upward trajectory, and you're in your growth, and you might be nowhere near where where you're dreaming to be. Yeah. I think you've still got to make certain you have that switching off and give back time, and you've got to enjoy that journey, because we're here for a good time, not for a long time. I usually talk, you know, in you know when I interview some — even on the street, when I talk to somebody, you know, where you come from, who you are, and then where, you know, what's that that old — you know, person of you — how are you, at the age of eighty, you are — like, eighty years old, you know, most of your life is gone now — how do you envisage yourself being eighty an eighty years old from, at the point of, you know, how you spend your day, but also the interaction that you have with others around you, like, people around you, and how you're being looked at as as you know, Dooley, like, James Dooley, who's had this life? How do you envisage yourself being at age eighty?

James Dooley: Eighty years old, so eighty years old. I want to be the best grandfather you can be. So I want to make sure my kids, my my kids's kids go, what, he's the coolest grandfather that there is. I want to try and be active. I want to try and be out there. I want to try and be the best grandfather I can. I want to make certain that all the people have, like, the head up my business, businesses, and I've left some sort of legacy behind that their families have all been well looked after, and that they've inviting me on the weddings. So I've got loads of weddings I'm going to with all my family, integrating with all their family, their kids are all like, your granddad is so cool, and stuff like that. And I just want to live a happy life. And happiness is the is why we're here and for fun. So I would say I want to be the best version of me at that age. Well, eighty years old, I want to be the best grandfather that I can. I want to still be some have some sort of activity in some of the businesses that I have, just to make certain that the people that are running the show aren't stressed in any way, shape or form, that they're getting the right training, that they're allowing themselves to let go, not being a a perfectionist, and that they're allowing them to grow, that they have the sign with their family. You — I mean, I want to make certain that they follow through. I don't want any me members of staff working seventy hours a week and being stressed. I want to make certain that they're following a a similar lifestyle where they're enjoying the journey. They've got a happy customer base. And that they the they kind of look up to me, hopefully, and say, he changed my life. I want to — I want to be like that. That's who I want to be like. And you can build a a genuine business on honest, trust and integrity that I can sleep at night when I'm eighteen years old knowing that I've changed a lot of people's lives and left some sort of legacy. And I've not stiffed anyone over. That's the best legacy you want. When the more people you have saying, you know, this person changed my life. Yeah. The more people who say that about me, the more I feel like I fulfill my mission in life.

James Dooley: Modesty and humbleness. So you you mentioned how you also, you know, don't like to, you know, I mean, it's good. We we like to sometime dress our fancy, but most of the time we like, you know, we are okay, if we just go in, like, a ripped t-shirt and everything. And also, you know, just being humble and and just keep — keep your heads on, you know, on your your shoulders, not becoming too fancy for the world. You know, like, I think that's that's what you have as well. What's your philosophy of like, being, you know, kind, humble? And I think you got, keep your you — I think this — the saying you got to keep your feet on the ground and not in the clouds. And you've got to stay humble. If you're not humble and you're arrogant, then you're not a nice person. If you're not a nice person, then people won't want to hang around you. I want to have a lot of people around me in life. I'm a people person. So to be a people person, I want people to like me. I want people, talk, walking around, back, he's so — yeah, he's un-approachable. Or's doing this or he's doing that? Don't wrong. If if I'm not — saying to go buy a boat, but, like, to go out on a nice yacht and stuff, that with all the — I want to enjoy nice experiences and stuff. I don't I don't walk around with lots of tattoos. I don't go walking around with top of the range kind of clothing and stuff like that. I'm all about memories and experiences, not about materials. And I just want to live a happy life. I've got, like, a pickup truck, right? It's just a — it's a — it's new. It's a nice drive. But I want to pick up drugs so I can put, like, a football kit in the back of the car and stuff like that when I drive down the street. People don't know whether I'm I'm the office cleaner or whe I own a business, you know what I mean? Like, it doesn't matter. And it feels so good. I was just saying this yesterday, when you go in, you know, in like, amongst some people, and they don't know who you are, and then you're like, you have, like, this whipped t-shirt and you know, run trainers, and and you start, you know, having a conversation, and then they they just realize that something doesn't match here. Like, who is this person? The way he talks, the way he thinks, the way he interacts with people. There's there's something going on here that we don't know about, just judging from his, you know, from his, like, almost even, like, attitude or, like, the looks. I love this thing, like, just keeping it very low-radar, very, very, you know, humble. And even even Jason Hennessy, who's got, like, a massive, you know, business, he makes a lot of money, but he's like, in a great t-shirt, in Vietnam, and walking around the street, like, very, you know, very modest. Sometimes, you know, I I did dress up in the I'm not sure whether you've seen my starfish kind of outfit at the party, but, like, most of the time we — that's fun, though. Like, that's different. It's not doing it for to be out there, to be, oh, my God, like, look, look at me, look how rich I am. This is more, look at me, I'm a prankster. I'm a comedian. I'm funny. This is what I'm about. You can laugh at me all you want. You can laugh at me, you know what I mean? Like, it's — this is who I am. I've still got that child within me that wants to have fun and have excitement. You've got to keep hold of that and understand what the journey is for. And it's not always for a monetary value. Like, money, indirectly, can make you have some nice things. But going buying a three hundred grand Ferrari tomorrow, that doesn't then turn around — it might make you happy for a couple of days. Yeah. But then after that, then it just brings worry in your life. With like, what if I park it? So it just brings added stress to your life. I don't need that. As long as you get from A to B, and it's a nice drive, and and it's safe, and and the kids are all there, and oh, daddy's truck way, then then that that's what I want.

James Dooley: Thank you for being here. It was a great chat, and I feel like we could chat for, like, weeks, about unlimited topics. And hopefully, you know, hopefully we'll get to have another discussion soon in the same way.

James Dooley: Thank you very much for being here.

James Dooley: Thank you very pleasure.