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

Kasra Dash: Helped me loads. Even prior to the Odys mentorship, I had guys like yourself, I’ve got guys like Gary, Craig, even for example Kyle Roof. All of you guys have helped me tremendously when it comes to personal growth, and not even just in terms of SEO. For example, you yourself have helped me loads when it comes to business. Kyle has helped me loads when it comes to on page SEO. So it has definitely helped with my personal growth. Not only that, when you do get a mentor, they have already gone through all the pain and the hard bits. So they can essentially fast track you.

James Dooley: So when did you first realise the importance of having a mentor?

Kasra Dash: Probably about two years after meeting you. I did not really know what a mentor was until people started mentioning it and I thought, all right, okay, that makes sense, you have kind of been my mentor. Then I have just latched on to people that I feel are either good at SEO, good at business, good at e-commerce, or good at certain tasks like Facebook ads. Rick is another really good one to speak to. So it was not early on. I think only within the past three or four years I have understood what a mentor is, and realised I had actually been doing it subconsciously.

James Dooley: So obviously you now travel the world going to some of the highest level masterminds for search engine optimisation. The algorithms are changing all the time, with AI being integrated and stuff like that. What lessons have you learned from mentors that you think you could not have learned without having a specific mentor to help you out?

Kasra Dash: I think one of the biggest things that I have learned from you is the importance of outsourcing. That is one thing. Very early on, even prior to meeting you, I tried to set up a web design agency. I thought that I had to be the person getting the leads, the person closing the leads, the person building out the website, and the person delivering the website. So that is four or five tasks you are doing by yourself. You were like, you are just being silly. Why do you not outsource the selling part? Why do you not hire somebody to do the Facebook ads part? Why do you not just deliver the product, for example? So that is one thing I have learned. Another thing that I have learned, not just from yourself but from all mentors, is innovating. Right now we have gone from the industrial era to the AI era. If you are afraid that AI is going to take over your job, it is probably because you are not innovating enough. That has been another big thing in recent years.

James Dooley: That is a great one because the next question rolls on to what role mentorship plays in innovation and creativity in a business environment. Now with artificial intelligence, I think this is one of the biggest reasons why Alex Drew wanted to set up the mentorship program. There were so many mentees who needed training and did not know where to turn to have a good business advisor or someone who could sit down and show them the processes. These mentors are battle hardened. They have gone through the trenches and know what works and what does not. With regards to innovation, where things are developing every single day, why do you think mentors are very important now with AI and innovation?

Kasra Dash: One of the main reasons why I think mentors, and even networking in general, are important is that you get out of your comfort zone. A lot of people are stuck in their own head and they do certain tasks in a certain way, whether it is using AI in a limited way or even doing everything manually. If you have not had that conversation with a mentor or that chat at a networking event, you will not know any better. You are stuck in your own ways. When you speak to a mentor, they might look at your process and say, hold on a minute, you are doing this every day and it is taking you three hours a day. Why do you not just use these ten prompts with this AI model and save two and a half hours?

James Dooley: What was crazy when I got feedback on the Odys mentorship platform from a lot of people who booked calls was that it was not them sitting there listening to one of the Odys mentors giving one specific knowledge bomb. It was more problem solving and spotting problems they were going to run into. If they were starting to scale a team, it could be questions like, what middle management system have you put in place? Can you speak a little bit more about how a mentorship program helps, not just with innovation and knowledge bombs, but with problem solving and trying to find issues they could end up running into? What are your thoughts on the mentorship program for decision making and problem solving?

Kasra Dash: Like I said before, I have heard some of your calls. We have either been in the same room or you have told me about certain calls. The one big benefit you have, if you speak to any of the Odys mentors, whether it is James, myself or anyone else, is that we have done it before. If, for example, you are having a team problem while building out your SEO team, maybe you are trying to do all the SEO in house and you do not know what KPIs to look at, we are able to say, right, if you are looking to hire an SEO agency, these are some of the KPIs you should be looking at. These are some of the things you should be checking before hiring the SEO agency. Have they got any case studies? Are they doing this? How many links are they building per month? How much are you spending? How many articles are they uploading? Very quickly we are able to do that. I remember you talking about maybe 15 years ago, when you first hired an SEO agency, you probably burned through four or five and every single one dangled the carrot, saying, yeah, yeah, next month we are going to do this, and they never did anything. Now you are a lot more battle hardened, and can say, if you are going to hire an SEO agency because you do not want to do the SEO yourself, these are the things you should be looking at. Without that knowledge and without that expertise of you going through that struggle, you would not be able to help people now.

James Dooley: For sure. The hardest thing was people used to always say, how do you choose the right business mentor or SEO mentor? Odys now have put together the mentorship program. What I like is they have got people who are very successful financially, people who have built out teams of 150 or 200 staff, and then also smaller type business mentors who might just be specifically brilliant at Facebook ads, or just PPC, or just organic social media. The question is, how do you choose the right mentor for what someone watching this might need?

Kasra Dash: The first step I would take is go to Odys, the mentorship page, and look at everybody’s video bios. See which one aligns with your issues. For example, if you feel like you have maximised your SEO and want to dabble in Facebook ads and maybe set up some retargeting campaigns to get a higher lifetime value of a client, then maybe Facebook ads is the right strategy. I can already tell you that in that instance, probably nobody else on the Odys mentorship board is better than Richo at Facebook ads. If you want somebody that is really advanced at building out a team and building a successful business, setting up certain offers and structures, it is probably somebody like yourself I would be speaking to. If you want to speak to someone about scaling a successful SEO campaign and building out a monster website, it is probably someone like myself. I know Stephen Kang is on there as well, so if you wanted link building, he is another one. Mads is on too, so if you want to scale out a team, he is another good one. There are all these different people you can speak to. One important thing, and I have said the pros and cons of each, is that if somebody came in and spoke to you, you would still speak to them about link building and topical authority. So I think you should create a list of five or six different pain points that you actually have on your website or within your business, then see which mentor aligns with that.

James Dooley: What advice would you give someone who is first seeking their mentor? So it is the first time someone comes across this, they are watching this video thinking, you know what, I am building out successfully, I maybe have a few websites and a couple of members of staff, and now I am starting to realise that everyone who has been mega successful talks about getting a good business advisor or getting a few different business mentors. They have not yet had that mentorship call where someone can look at what they are doing. For anyone who has not yet hired a mentor and got a 30 minute or hour chat, what would you tell them to do? What advice would you give them? I always say, do not procrastinate, just go and do it. It could be the best 30 minutes you have ever spent with someone. If you choose the right business mentor, there could be one or two bits of advice that change your path. What do you think?

Kasra Dash: I think as a first mentorship call, a mentor will probably be looking to rip apart your business, but not in a nasty way. It is just picking holes and seeing, for example, James, have you thought about this? Have you thought about that? Why are you not doing this? You were telling me about a mentorship call you recently had where the guy was ranking very well and wanted more inquiries. You told him, well, you are ranking positions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, why are you not dominating the whole first page? You know you have the knowledge but you are focusing on one website. Why not build out nine other websites? That sort of thing.

James Dooley: Also with that one call, he was obsessed with impressions and traffic, not conversions. There were keywords he had not gone after. They were lower search volume but more high converting. Plus the conversion rate optimisation of the site needed work. Sometimes people are just obsessed with impressions and traffic where it might actually be CRO that is needed. So what are the common misconceptions about mentorship that you have encountered?

Kasra Dash: I would not say these have been on the calls, but I can see this being an issue before the call, where people think it is just going to be a glorified sales pitch. In reality, sometimes I will have calls where people are not ready for two or three of the things I am actually going to tell them. I might say, go and fix this within your website or business, and then in two or three months’ time have another mentorship call. Prior to fixing that, there is no point buying links or doing more topical authority. You need to fix these technical SEO issues. I know you have had similar experiences, where people thought it would be a sales pitch and in reality it is not.

James Dooley: A lot of the time they come saying, I want to have this call about backlinks. You go five minutes into the call and you are like, you are not ready for backlinks. You need to sort out your technical issues, your internal linking, and you have not got enough articles to gain topical authority before looking at off page and backlinks. So yeah, that is a great answer. If you could go back in time and tell your 16 year old self about mentorship, what would you tell yourself?

Kasra Dash: Probably get it sooner rather than later. I think I met you when I was 21. If I could have gone back and had a mentor from 16, I would have done. Mainly because it just fast tracks your success. Not only that, as somebody who is a mentor, you also learn quite a lot as well.

James Dooley: People sometimes talk about the costs involved in a mentorship call. They say it seems really expensive to book a call with a mentor. Is it not better to go and get a training course or something? In my opinion, people should not be booking a mentorship call if they do not know much about SEO yet and are right at the very start. At that point they need training and development. That might mean going to get the Affiliate Lab or IMG courses or a specific training course to understand the core fundamentals of SEO or Facebook ads or PPC. Then the mentorship programs are going to skyrocket from there. It is crazy because for people just starting out, the cost of a mentorship program is expensive. Then the people who are advanced say the mentorship calls are the best return on investment they can ever get. What are your thoughts on the costs involved in a mentorship call?

Kasra Dash: I do not want to sound too salesy, but it will probably be the best decision you will make. From everybody’s reviews from mentorship calls, everyone has said it is great. The sole reason why it might feel too expensive is because you are at the start of your entrepreneurial journey or SEO journey. Just think how much knowledge you would get within that 30 minute or 1 hour call. You would be able to fast track your SEO campaign or your new business by at least 6 to 12 months from that one hour call. So it depends where you are in your journey. If you are starting out, it can definitely feel more expensive. If, for example, you have already got an army, an office and a dedicated team, that $1,000 or $500, depending on who you are doing the call with, could be the best money you have ever spent.

James Dooley: For sure. I will lead on from that now. You are on the Odys platform. How can someone go and book a mentorship call with you, Kasra Dash, at Odys?

Kasra Dash: Go to odys.global. I think it is under mentors. It is not just me. There is obviously yourself. Like I said before, write down a list of things that you are worried about or pain points you have within your SEO campaign or business, then pick the best Odys mentor.

James Dooley: I think that is very important, what you said there. Prior to booking the mentorship call through the Odys platform, they should have a list of all the questions, the pain points, and what they want to get out of that call. If you have only booked a 30 minute call, it is not a long time. You need to be organised and ready, jumping from one question to the next to get the most out of Kasra on that call. So just to round up now, for anyone watching this, why should they book you for a mentorship call? Obviously you have helped a lot of sites on disavows, site recovery, scaling out an SEO team. You have done iGaming, crypto, finance. You are an all round SEO guy, not only for building new but also recovering. What would you tell someone now watching this about why they should book Kasra Dash for an Odys mentorship call? You have got ten seconds to promote yourself.

Kasra Dash: I will tell you why you should not book me. If you do not want a successful SEO campaign, do not book me.

James Dooley: Good answer. We hope you like the video about Kasra Dash, one of the Odys mentors. Head over to odys.global/mentors and you will see Kasra there as one of the SEO mentors at Odys.