James Dooley Talks With Dan Grant on His Growth From SEO Apprentice to Director

In this episode of the James Dooley Podcast, host James Dooley sits down with long-time SEO operator Dan Grant to unpack what it really takes to build and scale sustainable SEO-driven businesses. From managing massive content portfolios to running efficient backlink campaigns, they explore how to combine technical SEO, content strategy, and human-first team structure to dominate in competitive niches. Whether you’re scratching out your first site or managing hundreds, this conversation delivers real-world insight, actionable tactics, and the kind of mindset that separates hobbyists from pro operators.

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: So Dan, you've progressed from apprenticeship now to director. So what drew you into a digital marketing apprenticeship?

Dan Grant: I think originally, probably apprenticeship-wise, I was looking for something that could kind of get me into employment straight away. I was toying with the idea of university, but with it being digital marketing I wanted to get something where I could get that experience early. So I had a little think on it and kind of thought, what would be the right path for me, and found the apprenticeship scheme to be handy.

Obviously it's important that the provider of the actual apprenticeship does support you in that role as well, and I figured that would be the right move for this particular industry as well. I tend to think that if you do that in digital marketing as opposed to university, you get that kind of experience a little bit earlier really.

James Dooley: So a lot of hands-on work while you're learning, obviously throughout the job there’s a lot of hands-on work as well.

Dan Grant: Exactly, yeah. And I think you can take that into your role as you progress. I think that the first three years of obviously working here were really important for me to start kind of considering what I’d actually do in my role.

I think if I’d spent that time at uni, I might have got a kind of broader understanding of what digital marketing was, but couldn’t really apply that to a company’s ethos, because each company has their own philosophy of things they want to think of and how to implement. For me, staying at this company throughout the first three years was probably a lot more valuable than it would have been to do university and then kind of join, if that makes sense. So yeah, that was kind of the main reasons for that.

James Dooley: So how have you found the journey from an apprenticeship to director?

Dan Grant: I’ve really enjoyed it. It’s obviously not come without its challenges, as any kind of journey or any career does. You know, there’s been times where it’s been a little bit difficult in terms of developing with the company, maybe personally or as the company’s developed. But over time, as I’ve kind of stayed here and learned the trade, and obviously the company’s developed, it’s all been really, really great.

I think in that time there’s been a kind of learning lesson for me of understanding maybe not to get too obsessed with failure, and think about failure as kind of a learning curve and actually how to develop from that. And I think with that mentality and applying that to what we’re doing now, we’ve seen a lot more success as a company—not just individually, but I think as a team we’ve all kind of found that that’s been important for us.

So overall I think it’s been good for me to understand that there’s going to be moments that are difficult and there’s going to be moments that are better, and kind of not take them too seriously either side—just continue to develop, continue to work hard, and as you’re doing that the whole company helps to improve as well.

James Dooley: I think the mentality of “you either win or you learn” is probably the best way into it. With regards to digital marketing, it changes every single day, so what might work today might not work tomorrow. So sometimes the failures aren’t failures; it’s just the algorithm’s changed as well. So I think the mentality within the office of knowing that—I think that’s what makes it good for the whole team to be walking towards “every single day is a school day,” so it works well.

Dan Grant: Yeah, absolutely.

James Dooley: So Dan, how important do you think your employer has been in your own personal development?

Dan Grant: Yeah, I think that’s massive. I think especially with any kind of apprenticeship, but particularly with digital marketing, I think having an employer that’s willing to train their employees and actually help them to develop within the company is really great.

I was fortunate enough to come into a growing company—so a company that’s actually looking to improve and grow as I was looking to do the same thing. So the marriage was kind of there at the start, and as the company started to understand more about digital marketing, I did as well. So I felt like I could implement certain things and the company was teaching me certain things.

Obviously from a managerial point of view it’s important to have a manager that actually really cared. I think there’s a lot of times where people start apprenticeships and they have managers that are kind of selfish, or doing it for their own reasons and not really thinking about either the long-term growth of the company, but probably more importantly the long-term growth of the actual person in the role.

So I think both those things for me were really imperative and really important for anyone looking for an apprenticeship, really—to make sure that there’s a good marriage between you and what the company actually want as well.

James Dooley: I think the important part of that as well is that as you’re evolving, you’re evolving the processes and the systems as well. So it’s good from an employer’s point of view to have someone who’s evolving and developing every single day, because SOPs are an evolving SOP. Every single day, like I said, as the algorithms start to change, you need to develop the SOP so your training and developing, the systems are always training and developing as well. So I think it works from both sides.

Dan Grant: I think that’s a great kind of relationship with how it does. Plus, me even to this day—I still see myself as an apprentice in the trade because things are changing all the time. So I think it’s great that the mentality is there from: one, the team are always looking to train each other up, but also then the people who are starting out are looking to train, but also the managers are looking to train as well.

James Dooley: Yeah.

Dan Grant: I think it’s that willingness to learn and willingness to change systems and not be too kind of emotionally invested in the things that may go wrong or may not have worked as you wanted them to. I think there’ve been certain times in my role particularly where there’s been certain things I’ve done where I’ve really been too emotionally involved in it, and looking back you’d prefer to be like, “Right, that’s not worked, I’ve tried it, I’ve done my best, what can I do to maybe implement something that will work better?” And then obviously the more you have that mentality, the more things tend to work anyway. So I think yeah, across the whole board, across the team, that’s definitely something that’s good.

James Dooley: So Dan, what have you enjoyed about the journey to being a director?

Dan Grant: I think the thing honestly that I’ve enjoyed the most is just being able to kind of create a professional and personal relationship with the people that I work with. I’m lucky enough to be in a team where everyone strives for the same goal and whilst it’s professional, everyone always gets on and is there to support each other, which is really nice.

I think being in a team like that is important not just from a work perspective but kind of an atmosphere perspective. I think that’s something you’ve kind of instilled and trickled down to everyone, which is a really great thing to be able to do as a boss. And that’s something that I’ve kind of been motivated by and wanted to do more of as part of the team as well.

I think the more we can all come to that goal of being collectively together is a really good thing for any business. So I’d say honestly over the eight years or so I’ve been here, that’s definitely been the main thing for me. And then obviously seeing the improvements that we’ve all made together as a team is really rewarding for myself.

James Dooley: I think what I like most about what you said then is you kept mentioning “team, team, team,” and it is a team effort. If people try and do what we’ve done on their own, there’s no chance. There’s that many moving parts that you need to have as a team environment that can take it on to the next level. Because as people are testing within the algorithms and giving people updates of what they need to be doing, the people that are at the front line doing the work won’t have the latest checks in place of what we need to do.

Plus obviously there’s so many moving parts—someone might be good at writing content, might not be good at analytically doing backlinks and stuff like that. So I love the fact that you keep saying it’s a team effort because it is actually always a team effort.

James Dooley: So, spoke about what you’ve enjoyed—what have you actually found the most difficult on your journey to becoming a director?

Dan Grant: I’d say probably the most difficult thing I’ve found in certain periods of my career—it’s definitely been something kind of across the whole lifespan—is certain moments where I’ve probably been overly emotional about certain things that have happened. Where I’ve maybe not been able to balance off how I felt about certain things that haven’t gone right, whether that’s in the business or even sometimes personally.

I think there’ve been moments in my life where I’ve had times where I’ve had to kind of look at myself in the mirror and say, “Look, if things are happening that maybe haven’t quite worked out or have worked out well, either way I need to kind of not be in that extreme and sit somewhere in the middle and try and be a bit more objective.” So, not regrets, but definitely things that I did find more difficult in my younger years and through learning and through experience I’ve realised that any kind of business, anything you’re doing—whether you’re trying to strive to be better or improve the company or whatever it might be—you need to be able to kind of take things on the chin a little bit and be like, “I’ve tried it, it’s not quite worked out.”

It’s obviously similar to what I alluded to earlier, but more so kind of maybe being a little bit less emotional in certain moments and being a bit more objective about certain things.

James Dooley: Yeah, I mean, on that is when you are creating SOPs, for example, when you go and create an in-depth SOP—we’ve worked so long and then we pretty much scrap it—and you’re like, “That’s took me months and months to make that SOP,” and it’s like, “It doesn’t work any longer,” and you’ve become emotionally attached to that, and it’s hard to let go at times. And sometimes you have to let go as it’s moving.

So I can understand some of the frustrations that me and you have spoke about over the years. And sometimes you’re like, “No, it works.” I’m like, “It did…” and that’s where the testing team comes in and says, “Look, we’ve got to call it.” And it is difficult at times.

Dan Grant: Yeah, definitely, yeah. But I think even with that, being able to see that something hasn’t worked out as you would have wanted to and be like, “Okay”—almost like you said—almost detach yourself from it to an extent and be like, “How can I build a better version of what I’ve already been trying to do?” That’s the approach that will get you to where your original goal was anyway. You can very easily lose the goal if you get too focused.

James Dooley: Yeah, it’s like, I mean, a poker player—knowing when to hold ’em, when to fold ’em. There’s times where you might have a good hand that you’re playing, but if it’s not the right hand and you’re seeing someone’s got better, you need to know when to fold. But it’s important to say, “This is not working,” and then to move on from it.

James Dooley: So from being an apprenticeship, how has your role changed to now being a director?

Dan Grant: It’s changed a lot. Obviously from an apprenticeship standpoint, when any apprentice is starting in a company, you’re learning the ethos and the philosophy of the company and what they’re actually doing as a company, and the way they operate in certain segments—whether in our case it’s digital marketing, in another case it might be finance, whatever it might be. You’re kind of picking up the training as you would do at uni really, learning a new topic and getting it in depth.

I’d say once you come out of the apprenticeship, at least for me, you should really have a good understanding of what the company is and what they do, as long as they train you well. So that’s when you’re finding your feet. I think for me personally I had a lot of experience doing off-page stuff and like we just spoke about in the last question, there were certain things that weren’t quite working out, and as the company was developing and building, there were elements of things that were happening that weren’t quite working the way we wanted it to.

Then as that developed, my role changed, the company changed, and it all kind of came into play. So I think with that, being any apprentice, if you’re looking to stay at a company for a while, you have to realise there are going to be periods of time where things are a little bit more difficult than others, especially as a company is growing. And when you’re working to develop that, you kind of land in your own role.

Now obviously I do a lot more content-based stuff, I do help with promotional videos, progressive optimisation, and also training and managing staff in that pocket as well. So that’s been the development that I’ve found really—once I’ve found my comfort zone in many ways, something that I know I’m really good at that helps the company, it’s kind of, “How can I implement that and help other people to understand it at the same level?” And obviously everyone wins then as part of that.

James Dooley: So what would your advice be to someone looking at apprenticeships now or looking maybe to go to university—what advice would you give that person?

Dan Grant: I think first and foremost it’s obviously choosing the right industry—that’s the case for anyone really who’s looking through an apprenticeship, and it’s the same for uni as well. If you’re looking to do uni or be an apprentice, you really want to make sure you’re doing the right thing for you and making sure that that’s what you want to do in the first place.

But almost as important as that is making sure your employer kind of cares about you and wants you to succeed and wants you to grow within the company. I think there has to be a long-term goal of what your role could be, even if you don’t know exactly what it would be at the time. I think your employer, if they have that long-term goal with you and they want you to improve like that, that’s the kind of person you want to work for, that’s the kind of company you want to work for—someone that really cares.

And then understanding that you have to put in the same level of effort yourself. It can’t be a one-way street where the company’s giving you everything and you’re not even attempting to push it forward. If you have that kind of love and care from a company you need to show it back and show you’re ambitious and try your best to learn and be willing to fail. It’s definitely a two-way street in that sense.

James Dooley: So on the question of, let’s say for digital marketing as an example— is there a reason why you would probably go in the apprenticeship in digital marketing and university?

Dan Grant: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s one of those roles, and there’s probably not many that are like this, but it’s one of those roles where it’s so much better to just get on the job and start learning it—and particularly at certain companies because everyone does it differently. There’s certain companies that will be more PPC-focused, for example, some that are more kind of just purely SEO-focused and organic ranking, and they all do it in different ways. There are all sorts of different techniques that other people are doing that you’re learning from.

We know here we work with so many different people who help us to come up with different ideas and vice versa. So I think it’s one of those where it’s so much better to be within the experts in the industry learning it on the job as opposed to learning probably an outdated version that uni are pushing of a generalized version of digital marketing. I don’t think that really can then be that applicable when you go to another company, in my opinion. So I think probably much better, yeah.

James Dooley: And I completely agree. If someone wrote the university course today and it’s the most recent, up-to-date course that there is—which it won’t be, but let’s say it was—by the time you’ve completed in three years’ time, it’s three years out of date as a minimum. And that’s if it’s absolutely up to date, whereas the majority of your courses or the majority of online stuff that you learn is years out of date already. You could be learning something seven, eight years out of date.

So in digital apprenticeships I genuinely feel, like you said, you learn on the job. Every single week we’re adapting SOPs. So how can you learn something two, three years ago at university and think that it still applies in today’s market?

Dan Grant: Yeah, I mean look at our company three years ago—what the practices they were doing, they might have worked then. But as the whole thing evolves, you have to move with the times and yeah, like you said, they’re probably teaching the same course really, with slight adaptations each year. So what more can you pick up from that as opposed to actually being on the job and learning it? So yeah, as a digital marketing apprentice I think it’s definitely the way to go.

James Dooley: Dan, how important has working within a team been for your growth, would you say?

Dan Grant: For me personally, massive. I think the thing with the team connotation is it can be quite generalized. I think you have to work in the right team—that’s the most important part as opposed to just “a team.” I think working in a team where everyone’s coming together, there’s not any egos, everyone wants to help each other out on their own projects and their own things—that’s the kind of team that we work in here and the one that I’d want to work in anyway.

Sometimes working in a team can be detrimental. I think if you work in a team where there is that, and there’s conflict and that kind of thing, and a conflict of interest even, then it can really affect the whole way that the company develops. So I think for me personally it’s been amazing, but I think for anyone else that’s working in a team, it’s understanding that almost team growth is just as important, sometimes more important, than personal growth.

I think as a team grows, everyone finds their own pockets and is willing to teach each other different things, and yeah, for me it’s been massive in that sense. But obviously, like I said, it’s being in the correct team for you that’s important.

James Dooley: Yeah, I definitely agree. I think the whole team mentality is making certain right from the bottom all the way to the top—if there is that kind of mentality, or you almost flatten it as being, we’re all in it together, we’re all mucking in together, we’re all trying to help each other out. Because people have personal problems that sometimes they bring into the work, and sometimes you need to help them out to get through that, which then involves the whole business and stuff like that. So the whole mindset of teamwork is “teamwork makes the dream work,” as they say. So it’s, yeah, it’s very important.

James Dooley: So along the journey, what new challenges now are you bringing to the table with regards to the directorship?

Dan Grant: I think probably now my biggest challenge, or at least something that’s newer to me, is making sure that the systems and processes that I actually am implementing are as clear as possible for other staff. Obviously as we’re expanding as a company and bringing in new staff, it’s really important that their systems are clearer than mine, for example—not saying mine weren’t clear, but if you can keep improving that along the way and then they teach people in a clearer way, then everything just grows in that manner.

I think having new staff that have joined with us being exposed to brand new things and quite a heavy topic really of digital marketing—there’s a lot that we’re doing—it’s important that that’s simplified as much as possible and that the systems are very step-by-step so they can work through everything, it’s all really clear, and that there’s no real gaps in what we’re doing and everything’s watertight, really.

That’s probably the biggest thing for me in terms of a challenge, because I think a lot of the stuff I’m doing personally is building to get to that level, and then once you’re actually putting that out to other staff it’s making sure that you’re happy enough with how clear the processes are for them to implement.

James Dooley: Yeah, definitely. I mean it’s the whole E-Myth Revisited type of model of being system-dependent instead of people-dependent. So it probably is the most important part of the business. You almost make it franchisable: as you’re building one site and you’re going to the next site, you’ve got those systems in place. You’re knowing from buying the domain, to hosting the domain, to the building of the site; or if it’s an existing site, doing the technical side of things, doing the content briefs, doing the content, the internal linking, the backlinks—everything all around that, the images, the videos, social media. Every single part of it, we’ve got a system in place to know how to make it the best it can be in the lowest amount of time as well, because time obviously costs money for the business. So yeah, the systems are the most important part. So it’s struggles for everyone in making certain we’re refining those systems as much as we can.

James Dooley: Is there anything you wish you could tell your former self during your career?

Dan Grant: I don’t think I’d take anything back in the sense that I think all the growth was there for a reason and I’m really happy—not to sound too cliché—but, you know, I’m happy with how things have gone and everything. But in terms of what I would probably do to tell myself something that would probably improve my growth and stuff, it would probably be to not ride the highs and lows too high.

So if something does work, not think I’m on top of the world with it; if something doesn’t, not think, “I’ve wasted all this time, I’m useless,” etc., and understand that process more. I think that being quite an emotional person, it was being able to balance that out and almost make myself more objective and still be in touch with my emotions in work anyway in terms of the work that I’m doing and what kind of impact that does have.

So I think that’s probably it really—making sure that if I was younger I’d probably say to myself, “Look, this has happened, it’s not quite worked out,” or “This has happened, it has worked out, but let’s move on to the next thing. Let’s move on to the next thing that’s going to improve things,” and not sit and dwell on things so much.

James Dooley: I think also in digital marketing is that if you did try and tell your former self something five years ago, what you might have done five years ago worked at that present time. So what you tell them now might not have worked back then anyway. So in digital marketing it’s—sometimes in other industries it’s easy for you to turn around and say, “I wish I’d told myself X, Y, Z, and I’d known that earlier,” where in digital marketing it’s hard because it does evolve, it does change, and it’s probably a daft question to ask in the digital marketing industry.

Because like I said, you need to always be able to evolve, and I think that’s where we probably should put an end to the interview because the whole ethos and mentality of “every day is a school day” and always looking to look forward and improve on what we’re doing, we always need to keep that mentality even today. So even though you are a director now, if you start with the mindset of, “I’m in the trenches looking to learn,” and all the rest of the staff are in the trenches looking to learn day in, day out, that’s where we’re always going to continue to be ahead of the game.

Dan Grant: Yeah, completely agree. It’s being able to bounce back, because that’s why we’re at the position we’re at right now and why we still have a lot of room to improve as well. It’s never finished, is it? We always have to keep going and keep improving, and yeah, that’s the way to do it.

James Dooley: Yeah, cool. Sweet, guys.

Dan Grant: Yeah, decent. Yeah, back to it.

James Dooley: Cheers.