Life Lessons from Kasra Dash

1. Work somewhere public facing

Everyone should do a stint somewhere public facing, like a bar. You meet interesting characters and, for lack of a better word, assholes. Both build character. Life does not run in straight lines, and the difficult people keep turning up: in person, as keyboard warriors, as YouTube trolls.

2. Move to another city young

After university I moved from Scotland to Northampton for a job, knowing literally no one. Leaving the city that holds your mates and your family forces you to become more outgoing.

3. Step out of your comfort zone

My first web design client, at eighteen or nineteen, wanted an e-commerce store. I had only ever built brochure sites. I convinced him anyway: six months of work, no AI to lean on in 2018, and about £5,000 at the end. Good money back then, especially for me.

4. Find a mentor

At nineteen or twenty I found James Dooley. He had already done what I was trying to do, knew the outcomes, and fast-tracked my path. If university is not for you, find a mentor. A good one is worth its weight in gold.

5. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with

People say they want more, then keep company that pulls them down rather than drags them up. I was lucky: I picked five successful people, and they pushed me up a level. Friends doing six million a year when you do two know the downfalls, and you can always ask. It works beyond money too: surround yourself with fitness people and they push you in the gym.

6. Ask the stupid questions

I have sat in masterminds all over the world, and half the value is asking the questions you think are too basic. Sometimes you just need to hear how somebody else handles a simple task to know you are on the right track.

7. Hard work beats talent, until the talented person works hard

They say it takes ten thousand focused hours, about five years, to get properly good at something. I have done SEO since 2018, it is 2026, and I am still learning. I know more than the average SEO, and none of it happened overnight.

8. Never compare your first chapter to somebody else's seventeenth

Comparison is the thief of joy. In my early masterminds everyone seemed to earn more than me, but they were six or eight years in; I was comparing my first year to their seventh. These days I compare me to me.

9. Speed wins in business

Deliver the same product faster and you win, even at the same price or dearer. Gary Wilson at Get Me Links proved it to me: rivals took two months per batch, his SOPs delivered in under four weeks, and faster repeat orders meant more money.

10. Use Parkinson's Law

Work expands to fill the time you give it. The week before The Masterminders I clear more work than in a normal month, because the deadline is real and nothing about it moves. Everything that needed five hours suddenly takes one. Set yourself shorter time limits and work fast.

The same task, given five hours and given one.

11. Watch for the anecdotal fallacy

Online debates run on one personal story against the numbers. You see it in SEO constantly: someone insists disavows do not work because their own site never recovered, while thousands of sites have recovered with the right tools. I try to weigh the numbers over any single story, including my own.

12. Progress is not linear

I opened my Chiang Mai SEO 2023 talk with this exact slide. Affiliate SEOs can drop from £25k to £2k a month after an update, having banked twelve months of good earnings on the way. My own version: my first venture was a Facebook ads agency with a good friend, we reached £20k a month, then the iOS update gutted lead generation and the clients left. I started again.

13. Learn then earn

Everyone is selling a course or a Skool group right now, and very few of them did the learning first. My own community, The New Search, works because it sits on about ten years of doing; four years earlier it would have flopped. Learn, then rip the L off and earn.

14. Your first business teaches you how to run a business

In my first business I had no idea about sales, hiring, SOPs or marketing. You learn all of that on the job before you even get to the deliverable itself. Most first businesses fail, and that is fine.

15. Learn to fail

People do not start because they are scared of looking an idiot on social media. If you never post it or start it, you have already failed. SpaceX blew up rocket after rocket in its early years, and in June 2026 it went public in the biggest IPO in history at a valuation of around two trillion dollars. Stop being a bitch.