Biohacking Health and Wealth: Greg Cassar's Blueprint

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The Million-Dollar Upsell and Unexpected Reward
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Greg Cassar: My customer came to me, they wanted this technology solution with sand storage area networks. And I could have given 'em what they wanted, but I explained to them, Hey, it's not really going to last you very long. So I did this like $1 million upsell. My company, said to me, you know, you're a rising star of the company.

We're gonna reward you. They got everyone around, like everyone's around the coffee machine and all this kind of stuff, and I'm thinking it's gonna be a car, it's gonna be a pay rise, whatever. And they gave me a $200 gift voucher to like a department store sort of thing. And it was like really like kicking in the guts at the time. 'cause I'd made them a million dollars, extra. But I think sometimes, life happens for you not to you.

Interview with Greg Casser: Marketing Mastermind
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Allan Dib: Alright welcome Greg Casser. Mate. It's so great to have you on. We haven't caught up in quite a long time and I'm really excited to chat with you. It's always a treat. uh, for those who dunno much about you, you are the CEO of multiple companies.

You are an incredible marketer. I don't think it's an exaggeration to call you one of the best marketers on the planet. You're an investor, you're a [00:01:00] philanthropist, you are a business coach. how am I doing it? Have I, About right or have I missed something? Have I got something wrong?

Greg Cassar: no, that's pretty, that's pretty accurate. Also really sort of specialize in lifestyle by design. Got really good at investing and do a lot of, you know, like biohacking, you and I talk about, positive health and all that kind of stuff. So doing a lot of those things. It's interesting, like now I guess I'm like one of those overnight successes, but I started online in 2003, so like I'm an overnight success.

That got kicked in the face a heap of times and just kept getting back up and keeping going forward, which I think was really the key resilience. And then just keep reinventing myself multiple times over and over again,

just with a determination to never quit.

Allan Dib: I love that and we'll get into your story. Like I've known you for quite a long time. We were together back in the sort of early marketing scene in Australia with Mel Emery and some of these others. But really the thing that I think of when it comes to you is like, you are someone who's won the [00:02:00] game.

And I don't mean just won the game of business. Like you, you've certainly done really well with business and with investing, but you've kind of won the lifestyle game, right? you know, you've got a strong family, you've got an amazing lifestyle. You look freaking younger every time.

I see you you're doing really well financially. And you know, I know a lot of successful people who've done really well in business, but their life is a shambles. They're on their second marriage. Their kids hate them. And so I don't think that's winning. So talk a bit about your mindset around, I.

How you've kind of structured your lifestyle, how you've got to where you are and how you've prevented yourself from just being so unbAllanced like a lot of people are.

Greg Cassar: Yeah. Gotcha.

Lifestyle by Design: Balancing Success and Happiness
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Greg Cassar: I guess I was always chasing freedom, so back when I was working in it, I started off in it and then I worked my way up to be an enterprise architect. I was designing computer networks for banks and insurance companies and all this kind of stuff, and I kind of learned the lesson of one is the worst number in business, the hard way.

My customer came to me, they wanted this technology solution with [00:03:00] sand storage area networks. And I could have given 'em what they wanted, but I explained to them, Hey, it's not really going to last you very long. So I did this like $1 million upsell. My company, they said to me, you know, you're a rising star of the company.

We're gonna reward you. They got everyone around, like everyone's around the coffee machine and all this kind of stuff, and I'm thinking it's gonna be a car, it's gonna be a pay rise, whatever. And they gave me a $200 gift voucher to like a department store sort of thing. And I was like, really like kicking in the guts at the time.

'cause I'd made them a million dollars, extra. But I think sometimes, life happens for you not to you. Do you know what I mean? And so at that point I decided I was never gonna be dependent on just one income stream again, or I was never gonna work for the man again.

Even when I was in it, I started learning marketing and I started getting good at that. I was a continual student I've done school, I've done university.

That's me done. Whereas I, like, I look at, that's the first quarter of the game. Do So just being that continual student. And you spoke about mindset, so I've just been like always focused on improving [00:04:00] that millionaire mindset. I think it's never completely done. You just, what I like to be is directionally correct.

And I've also spent a lot of time focusing on emotional intelligence because one of the things I learned from Tony Robbins is that the quality of your life is the quality of where you live emotionally. So I try to be very smooth like this. I meet people in life that are just crazy, like they're really happy, but then it's a disaster and that's not a path to success sort of thing.

So, yeah, that's what I've done on the mind set and emotions. And then from a lifestyle, by design point of view. I really thought about like, where do I want to live? And so I, surf I wouldn't say I'm the world's best surfer, but I love it. in Australia, on the East coast, there's a place called Byron Bay, which is one of the nicest places in the country.

And I, decided, Hey let's move there. And then you put it out into the universe and then sort of scramble and make it happen. and like that whole, lifestyle by design, one of the things that I do is I think about my year and think about like, Hey, what are amazing things that I can inject into the year?

So like, for example, later in the year, we're going like rafting down a river in Tasmania, [00:05:00] which is a state of Australia for a week with a group of guys for a mate's 50th, that kind of stuff. So I try to inject big things like that. But then from a lifestyle by design, just on the average week, on the average day, I'm making sure, like I work with some American guys.

So I'll have meetings first thing, and then after that I'll go surf straight away. And it doesn't matter how busy I'm, I'll just go surf and then I'll come back to work, do a bit more. And then often at lunchtime, I'll go walk the dogs on the beach, that kind of thing, do a bit more work.

So I try to work in these. Like chunks and little sprint cycles, but make sure that the business is there to facilitate my lifestyle. Not that whole, the scramble, which I think you would've seen, you approached a lot of people with where their business is ruining their lifestyle. Do you know what I mean?

Sort of thing. So that's kind of how I look at it.

Allan Dib: Totally. I think it was Tony Robbins. I can't remember, might have been someone else, but he asked the question is. What are you optimizing for? What's the thing? And that's such, such an important question that I think to myself all the time, like whenever I've got a new goal or [00:06:00] whatever, what am I optimizing for?

Sometimes you're optimizing, okay, we've just gotta maximize revenue and profit. Sometimes it's we've gotta maximize like an opportunity or whatever. But when I think about my life I'm optimizing for quality of life, and I'm, I've got a very similar mindset to you where, if you texted me at two o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon and said, Hey Allan I'm in town.

Let's catch a let's grab a coffee or let's go play pickleball. Let's do whatever. Uh, In all likelihood I say, yeah, sure, I'll be there. So, and I wanted to be that time billionaire where like. My schedule has got mostly open times in it, and where I've got very few commitments where I have to be there at a certain time or whatever else.

And so that's something that I've tried to optimize for. And I think we've got a similar kind of mindset with that, where there are non-negotiables. Like I put fun, I put workouts, I put time in with family in my calendar. They're like an appointment with a client. I wouldn't just say to a client, Hey, I don't feel like showing up today, so, I won't show up.

So, that's the approach I've taken.

How have you [00:07:00] stopped from kind of, because like once you achieve a level of success, there's always another level of success above and another, and the next revenue level above, and then the next profit level, and then the next business acquisition and all of that.

How have you prevented yourself from kind of going up that ladder and that treadmill?

Greg Cassar: that's a great question. I look at the opportunity cost of things. So, have you ever heard me talk about coolness factor? I mean, I could describe that. So I talk about, I learned this from an American guy where coolness factor equals income divided by stress. So it's like a formula, right?

So I look at the coolness factor of a business. So Allan comes to me with a business opportunity and it's gonna make us a great amount of money but it looks very stressful. My stress is gonna go up. So that's gonna have a low coolness factor. Or if the income's not very good, like it's not, it doesn't like it's gonna make as much money, then that's kind of a low coolness factor.

So one thing I do is I look at kind of everything with that, like coolness factor I 80, 20, everything. So like, what's the 20% of things that are, can even give us 80% results. [00:08:00] I've lost the whole perfectionist, type when I first started passing things off, I had that mindset of, hey, they're not gonna do it as good as me, and all that kind of thing.

Whereas now I'm much, much better at, hey, even if it's not quite the same, just out outsourcing it. And I've been very good at what I building, what I call like the self-managing team. So, one of my business partners, Marco we're like in a boat in Mexico and Cancun.

And he goes, to me, you're the only guy I know who runs like three or four companies and he doesn't do anything. I think I said, I think that's a compliment. He goes,

Allan Dib: That is a He goes, what, how are you doing that, sort of thing. So, I've just got, yeah, build a whole sort of like, framework about how I get people around me to do stuff without me having to do everything.

Greg Cassar: And it's kind of got like built. Checks and bAllances in. Because if you look at someone like Richard Branson, the amount of companies and stuff that he's running, he can't be involved in all that. So there's that concept of leave a general behind if you've got a, like a business unit, or it could be a company or whatever, like who's the [00:09:00] general that you're gonna put there?

And then the key word is ownership. They're gonna take ownership and they're gonna steer it, like as their own baby. And you and I are both entrepreneurs, so like we've done the risky thing of starting your own thing, but a lot of people want to get ahead. They, and they want that incentive, but they might not necessarily have everything that it takes to make the cake rise of starting it themselves.

So often we'll do the intrapreneur model. So, like saying, Hey Allan, you take over this, you run this business unit. I want you to own it. Treat it as your own. Maybe it's sales, whatever. And then we're gonna give you a percentage of the action on that piece. And so then you're taking employees and they become that ownership mentality.

So that's been a big part of like freeing up my life. And then also the way that I run like meetings and teams. So I've got multiple teams and every team has a team leader. And then ultimately there's a number two I did at the Army is like a saying number two on the gun.

Greg Cassar: So like if the machine gunner falls over, someone else can pick up and run with it. So [00:10:00] every team has like a number one and a number two, and then meet with every team and at the start of the week, and we all agree, hey, this is where we're going this week. This is what we're gonna do. And then anytime that I assign people work in order to make sure that it gets done, what I'll do is I'll always set a follow up meeting.

Like, that's awesome. Hey, this is a great plan for the week. Let's catch up later in the week and see how you're going. Does Thursday at 11 work? Yep. Cool. Let's lock it in right now. And then what happens is everyone sprints. You can see their workload, like I said, in monday.com or whatever, all this stuff that happens just prior to, no one wants to turn up to meet me without having done their homework.

Remember, it's like as a school kid, you didn't want to turn up without your homework done. So, yeah, so we do it that way. And even the way I pass over tasks. So like if I can see someone's like, they're not quite sure about it, I'll ask them, Hey, would you mind just playing that back to me so I know that you've got it?

And that kind of thing. And then I also use languaging like, are you right to take this, run this and own it [00:11:00] or do you need me to do it? And also that like, that languaging, like none of my leaders want the, boss to no, no, I can't handle this. I need you to do it. Do you know what I mean?

Sort of thing. And then I taught him how to project manage. I use monday.com often 'cause it's just like visual project management, red, it's not working yellow, it's in progress. Green, it's done. That kind of thing. So I kind of like systemized. Getting a whole bunch of stuff done without me doing much, and that's been a big part of like running a few different business units or companies.

Yeah, without being bogged down all the time.

Allan Dib: I love that. So I found the people aspects so important, finding people who can really own a task. in my team. I've got a CEO who runs my company. She's very capable. Does an amazing job. A lot of times people feel like, Hey you must have got a unicorn. So how do you find these people who do have an owner's mindset?

And then also I'd love to know a bit more if you wouldn't mind. Like how do you said you give them some equity, some [00:12:00] ownership.

How does that work? Is that just like shadow equity? Is that equity in the actual company? Is that profit share? Like how are you structuring it and how do you get someone to kind of not see that just as a, Hey, that's part of my salary as a bonus.

That's actually something that's worth really working for and striving for.

Greg Cassar: Yeah, so there's a couple pieces to that. The first is like, how do we find other people? The thing that's worked the best for us over time is their network. So our existing people team say, Hey, we're looking for someone else in this marketing role, or where we're looking for another developer or whatever.

Who do you guys and girls know and remember they're gonna help us carry this weight. So you don't wanna bring in anyone who's a dummy. You don't wanna bring in anyone who's not going to, if they say they're gonna do it, they gotta do it, or let us know. That kind of thing.

So that's kind of the way that we've grown the best. Like, and it doesn't always work that does hit its ceilings, but that's kind of how we've always found the best people through their network. And they, people wanna work with other people that they respect and they like and stuff. So that's kind of really worked well.

So often we don't do like [00:13:00] equity as far as the, shares on the cap table. 'cause it gets complicated with all, vesting schedules and all that kind of stuff. Although one time we had done an employee pool, which was like 1% of the company and the longer you were in and all that kind of stuff.

But, part of what I do is I'm a coach as well. I've prescribed this exact same medicine to like 30 different companies and the medicine always worked. And that was like figuring out. Like what is the actual result that you want the company to get? And then who are the key people? And then how can you incentivize them that if that result happens, that they win?

I'll give you an example. Like, so some yoga teacher trainers, I was coaching them. We helped 'em, do their ad words and their Yeah. Sales process and all that kind of stuff, and they were capturing a lot of the leads. But what was falling over was when the leads were coming in, they weren't just getting, knocked over on the phone, people signed up, that kind of stuff.

So then say for example, the course is worth two grand. If someone does a yoga teacher training, then the people that who are [00:14:00] doing the phone now, okay, for everyone you knock over, you're gonna get another, say a hundred, 150, 200, that kind of thing. So then if you are that employee, say you're on 70 grand a year or whatever, but now all of a sudden you realize, hang on, if I knock over two or three of these a day, I've just gone from 70 K to 110, and they're treating it that ownership.

So I always tie in an incentive based on what the action, the result that I really want is,

Allan Dib: so that's pretty straightforward in a sales role. But like, for example, in supporting roles, like, let's say the developer in that yoga studio, how would you incentivize

Greg Cassar: yeah, I see what you're saying. It's not directly related to growing the company, but what it can be related to is customer satisfaction and how smoothly the ship's running. So, often we'll do like what's called a monthly introspective. So we get to the end of the month and say your customer service lead.

So. Month one, we get to the end of month one. So we're starting month two. And we, you and I would meet and then say, Hey, when we look at the tickets, when we look at the customers, were [00:15:00] happy. Everything got answered really quick. The team's happy. Yes, I'm happy to pay you your performance bonus.

A I think that's awesome. But then we get to the second month and it was like, hang on, like really? It was a disaster. There was so many customers unhappy. You know, I would love to, but I really can't pay you your bonus this month. Or I can do 50%, that kind of thing. So I just tie it in again with what's the outcome that we want?

And it can be more sales, but it can be that whole customer satisfaction or just the ship moving smoothly. Sometimes it's like, did I have to get involved? You know what I mean? Did I have to jump in and fix things? Or did it just, yeah, did it just run? And they all wanna step up and run it without me being involved, which is awesome.

Allan Dib: Yeah I mean, I wanna double click on something , that you said was other people that they know. So those loose connections. So someone, Hey, I've got a cousin who's looking for an analytics job, or I've got someone who's done some marketing but wanting to learn more. So, I found it getting those loose connections into the business.

And also people have a lot of [00:16:00] accountability if they hire the person, they're kind of almost on the hook to make sure that person is actually good and doesn't fail and all of that sort of stuff. So I found that really powerful, that hiring that one person who hires 10 other people because hiring is a very labor intensive process and takes time to vet and check references and all of that sort of

Greg Cassar: expensive if you get it wrong as well. That's why I also love trials at the start, like, yeah, and where I can contractors rather than employees, but. Like, Hey, let's do a three month trial, should all be fine. But if you find that we are not a mid match for you or we find not a match for you, then we'll just, part ways and we'll help you on your journey.

But yeah, really getting rid of them quickly because I find that whether a people are a project person or a process person. So there's two different types of employees I've found. So a project person is like, they're happy to go do this thing, build that thing, and then they want to pass it on to someone else who's like a process person who's happy to come along and tick the box.

Yes. And repeat the same thing over [00:17:00] and over again. Sometimes I look at companies and I just realized, hey, you've got a project person doing a process role, or you've got a process person doing a project role and then just shift, moving the deck a little bit can make a massive difference.

So I think a lot of people don't necessarily think about each of your team members. Is that a project person or is it a process person? One guy in my team is brilliant, like as far as building stuff. But then if you ask him to then look at, hey, make sure this gets done every day. He'll do that for a little bit, but then his mind's moved on.

You know what I mean? It's not the way he works, , he's brilliant, but it's just the ripe, the square peg in a round hole, sort of thing. So that's the way I look at it.

Allan Dib: Yeah, that's a really important insight. I think it kind of gels with Gino Wickman talks about in traction, like there's the integrator and the visionary and, the point being is having the right person in the right seat is critical because a lot of people talk about A players B players, but I found it's very highly contextual.

Someone might be an, A player in this company, but come here and be a B player, or they might be an, A player in this type of [00:18:00] work, but player or a C player in other type of work. So it doesn't always translate.

A lot of your wealth and a lot of your success has come from being an investor and owning businesses rather than being an entrepreneur or self-employed. So we were talking a little bit earlier about, the Robert Kiyosaki cashflow quadrant.

He calls this, and it's been a while, but I think it's, there's e for employee, S for self-employed, then there's B for business owner and I investor, I don't know if I've got that right. But you really operate in the b and i space for the most part. Now, don't you like talk about that transition and how that's affected the results that you get and how that's been responsible for some of the wealth that you've generated.

Greg Cassar: Kawasaki cashflow quadrant, like I think, to know what not to do. I was really guilty of that. So I knew that I should be investing, but for a major part of my career I was. Just trying to get my business sales, marketing black belt, you know what I mean? There's no official black belt, but you get to a high enough level of skill that you attract things [00:19:00] around you.

So, but now I look at it as far as a dual black belt. So I want to be a business sales, marketing black belt, but I also want to be an investing black belt. And I think if you can get one plus one, they kind of equals three. In that case, with the Kiyosaki's Cashflow Quadrant, you can get rich a whole bunch of different ways.

You can be an employee and work your way up the ranks and you can get rich. It's slow and it doesn't have much leverage. You can be self-employed. Say for example, you're a plumber and you've got a couple of, guys in the van, You're getting some leverage with labor and that, but it's not amazing, but it's good, but it's got limitations.

Be business owner. You've got proper systems in place, like what you and I are talking about, where we've got, we might have software, we might have code, we might have money as well as yeah, just people doing stuff for us. So there's leverage in that. And then there's investing, which is really like getting leverage from money working for you.

If you look at nearly every billionaire in the world, they're the same model, which is what you just alluded to before. They're B plus i. So you can get Rich as an e plus I employee who's [00:20:00] an investor. You can get rich as an self-employed and who's also an investor. And you can get rich as a business owner and who's an investor, and that's really the strongest Yeah.

Formula. So nearly every billionaire in the world is a, is what I call a b plus. I, so I did a whole bunch of different investing over time. I was into, yeah, I was into shares for a little bit. I was into property for a little bit, but I wasn't like really kind of amazing at any of those. so my specialty really has been crypto.

So back in 2017 I I really got it. So I really understood Bitcoin and I've always been an internet architect, Allan. I've always been able to figure out things before most people. So like I knew podcasting was gonna be big, blogging was gonna be big. That's just examples, that kind of thing.

Before they were mainstream and then, but with Bitcoin I figured out, hey, this got this like scarcity, there's only ever gonna be the 21 million supply as more and more people want it. The price is gonna go up. And then it does this halving, which is written in the code every four years. They halve the supply and all that [00:21:00] kind of stuff.

And so it's actually the greatest, example of supply and demand that I'd ever seen. And so I went pretty hard at it back in 2017. And then at the time, a lot of people laughed at me and I was trying to help other people, Hey, I can really see this is where this is going.

A lot of people laughed at me. And so I just sort of went underground a little bit with it. Okay. People not open to it, they don't want to learn it, that kind of stuff. But then over time I was able to string together multiple cycles. And then, do you understand, I know you were, but a lot of people may not understand.

Bull cycles is where it's going up and, it's really like, an upward trending. It's a popular happy market. And then there's bear cycles where it's like, really, like down and people are saying this thing's dead and get out and all that kind of stuff. What most people do is they time those exactly wrong.

So they're jumping on as it's going up near the top. and I've made this mistake as well, I'd love to say that I never did. But what I do now is I'm fully countercyclical. So what I'm doing is when everyone else is crying, I'm [00:22:00] buying, when the market is at the bottom, I do what's called dollar cost averaging.

So you never know exactly the bottom of the market. So you, but you can tell it, and I can tell you how I know that as well. But so I'm just like buying when I think it's roughly the bottom and then I'm selling when I think it's roughly the top. And then most people can't handle their emotions and can't, like what I call zoom out and string together multiple of these cycles.

Because if you can say you've got 10 grand to invest, if you go through one crypto cycle, which is four years, you can turn like a 10 grand in 100. For example, like a 10 x in a crypto cycle is not unusual. But if you think about shares, it's got completely different. You might get 10% a year in that versus like a 10 x in this cycle.

But then if you can go from 10 grand to a hundred thousand in the next cycle, you may go from a hundred thousand to like 500,000 or a hundred thousand to a million sort of thing. And then if you can do another cycle again, you may go from a million to five mil or a million to 10. So the more of these cycles that you can string together the, yeah, [00:23:00] basically the crazier the math gets.

And so I actually found that while I started off and I was doing well from business in later in life, I've actually built more wealth that I've kept and, more net worth if we call it that. From the eye, from the, yeah, from the investing side. But so I'd encourage people ideally to learn as much on the investing side as you do on the business sales marketing side.

Allan Dib: And is crypto the main thing that you invest in, or do you invest in businesses or what else?

Greg Cassar: No, I'm not investing in businesses at this stage, but I may down the track. What my goal is to build wealth in investing and then like park it into property. So from, we're talking about lifestyle before. My lifestyle goal that I'm working towards is I'm going to buy a farm sort of late next year.

'cause I know the crypto market will top out in 2025, say roughly mid to late 2025. So in 2025 I'll be exiting each month and turning that into cash. I'll park some of that in property. So I'm gonna buy a farm. I grew up [00:24:00] riding motorbikes and like horses and all this kind of stuff. I've got teenagers and they want to do the same sort of lifestyle as dad.

So we'll do that and then it'll kind of be boring for a while the market's down. And then when I know it's roughly at the bottom, I'll be then buying back in and then kind of repeating, because effectively I've figured out how to win the lottery every four years, which is not a bad skill to have.

Allan Dib: How are you winning the lottery every four years, and how are you picking those up, up and down cycles?

Greg Cassar: Yeah. Yeah. It depends how ninja you want to go. But so the, I can tell you the key to getting rich with crypto, it all comes down to one thing. You gotta understand the Bitcoin four year cycle. And then, so this is the cycle that it's repeated three times, and it's in the fourth one now, and it does this halving event, which is what's gonna happen now next month, where it halves the supply of new Bitcoin coming out.

So at the moment the network creates 900 new Bitcoin a day, and in as of April for the next four years, it'll create 450. And so what happens is at this cycle, at this part of the cycle, it then basically goes [00:25:00] crazy because if you think about it, say for example, if you take petrol, so fuel, what's gonna happen if there's still massive demand for it, but they halve the supply of new petrol, right?

The price goes up. So it's like alien level smart, how smart the whole thing is that builds this demand into it all the time. There's a lot more to it than that. But what I do know from what I did was I studied the last three cycles and I mapped them out, okay from that halving, when was the top, and then from that halving when was the bottom.

And then I mapped out like those three exact cycles. And if you do that, then it kind of shows you that hey, they've actually nearly all been exactly the same. So the halving is gonna happen in April, and what we do know is then the top will be roughly one year and three months out after that. So you're looking at July mid 20, 25.

And then from that halving, we also know that the bottom of the cycle will be roughly two years and six months out for that. So it's like, late, the late the following year. So once you know this, and it's repeated the exact same thing three times, like within a [00:26:00] month or two sort of thing. Once you know that, then remember how I was talking about being countercyclical.

So just remove all emotion from it. Everyone says it's dead, doesn't matter. You've got your game plan, you've got your strategy, you know what you're doing. You're buying at that bottom. And then when it gets up near the top, you know the timing again, you're getting out your dollar cost, averaging out, across the top.

And then you just repeat the cycle and then it is ridiculous like skill. Once you, it's kind of like cheating. Once you know how to do it, you kind of know the answers to the test. And yeah, you can win the lottery every four years. It's amazing. It's fun. That's how I bought my Porsche, so the,

Allan Dib: Nice.

Greg Cassar: I just bought my dream car, was my lifestyle design ever since I was 13.

I wanted a Porsche nine 11. I loved them. The old like eighties style bug and that kind of thing. And then I got a, yeah I bought a Carrera Air, so it's sporty one. And yeah, it's been amazing. I'm still like a kid at Christmas, like when I take it out.

Passionate Investments and Wealth Building
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Allan Dib: Look my takeaway from this, I mean, aside from, some people believe in Bitcoin and crypto, some people don't or whatever, but it's finding an [00:27:00] investment that you are clearly passionate about, learning about it, and figuring out what are the cycles?

What are the trends? When do I get in, when do I get out? And, some investments are just super boring. You just buy them and hold them, which is totally fine as well. So, some people might be in the s and p 500 or whatever, right? So, but my takeaway is really to take money off the farm and build your wealth off the farm because there's a lot of risk in business.

Some can sue you, something could go wrong some change in trend or cycle or whatever. And having that pot of gold that's growing relatively passively and something that, something about I think that's incredibly important.

So. Day to day.

Business Coaching and Mastermind Groups
---

Allan Dib: Your main gig at the moment I believe, if I'm not mistaken, is the collective where you are coaching different business owners. Is that right? So you are, you're doing business coaching there and who are you working with? Who are you helping?

Greg Cassar: Yep. So I've really got three main ways that I'm making money. So the biggest now by far would be the investing. But it wasn't always. The second biggest would be a [00:28:00] series of travel companies that are in the US and Canada that I'm a part owner in. So I manage like marketing teams and dev teams And then the third biggest one, the one you spoke about before Collective Mastermind, we took something that we learned in the US from this Maverick Business Adventures. I think it's, it was Yanick is it Yanick Silver? Yeah. And I saw that what they were doing, they were going off. into the desert riding June buggies and, all these kinds of crazy adventures.

And then so I, I learned from that. So we run a mastermind in Australia four times a year called the Collective Mastermind. The idea is that the collective intelligence of the group is greater than any one individual. And so you just as you put more smart people in, kind of compounds and we then do like really fun things.

Like, we just did a yacht day, we've got a jet ski day coming up, we've got a ski trip coming up, all that kind of stuff. But, Russell Brunson says, watch the magician's hands. So like, why do I do that for kind of two reasons. The first one's a little bit cheeky. We were talking before about injecting fun stuff into your life.

So [00:29:00] one of the things that I do is like, Hey, what's cool things we want to do? we wanted to go to CAIRs and we wanted to raft the Tully River. So then we announced to the Mastermind, Hey, good news, we're all, we're going to Cairns and we are rafting the Tully River, and then we're going out on the Barrier Reef.

And so that was like what we did. And so that was a business expense, you know what I mean? And so we did that, four times. And yeah, so that's kind of like how I've done that. But the other part of the watch the Magician's hands is with a mastermind group.

If they go on an activity together and say there's some adrenaline, there's some whatever, they bond together. So that stick the stickiness of the group is really high, where no one wants to leave because do you want to leave just before your group of entrepreneurial friends goes on the ski trip or just before they go on the jet ski day, or, like later in the year we've got these quad bikes we're doing, riding the dunes on an island and stuff like that.

They don't wanna leave before they get to do those things , with their friends. So

Allan Dib: And so they, quarterly events. Do you have like, regular group or individual coaching or how does all that work? I.

Greg Cassar: Yeah. So I'll do like a webinar as [00:30:00] well, between masterminds and then I'll do a weekly group call. And then I'll also have, people can book into my diary if they want to talk about Yeah. Business, marketing, anything, mindset, emotion, health or, they're investing. a lot of the people in the group came to me for marketing, but they're actually making more money out of investing now.

So it's kind of interesting, but that, that flow on effect.

Allan Dib: That's cool. I mean, you would've seen the inside of a lot of businesses as have I, what are the biggest trends that you see in terms of mistakes that people make where people kind of get stuck? So often I will have entrepreneurs come to me, say, Hey, being in this business, we used to be in the growth phase.

We've hit this ceiling. We just can't break through. We're plateaued.

What have been the sort of patterns that you've seen in terms of what's stopping business owners and entrepreneurs from really breaking through?

Greg Cassar: Yeah, often it's the, like the founder or the owner , they hit a ceiling. I think sometimes it gets called the ceiling of complexity of , how much can they handle? There's a famous [00:31:00] saying that your income will very rarely exceed your level of personal development.

So like we were talking before about how to manage teams and how to get stuff done. So if they, if the entrepreneur can't get to that point where they've got. Leaving those generals behind, training those generals, getting the generals to execute on all this stuff, then it's all gonna be like a pyramid.

Everything, all paths lead to roam in your Rome, which makes business not fun. And as you get bigger, it just gets worse and worse sort of thing, which is a very common trap. And then the other one I see is just like if they don't have product market fit, or if they don't have like psychology and math, so does the market want it?

And then can you deliver it profitably and then keep and keep scaling? Often like with traffic costs rising, sometimes things that used to work didn't. So like I, an example is in like one of our travel companies, we used to be highly profitable and then all of a sudden we're like, hang on a second, what's going on?

There's not really as much month left at the end of the [00:32:00] month. Do you know what I mean? Sort of thing. So then. What we had to do was, I know we spoke before about like sometimes life happens for you, not to you. So what we figured out we needed to do was now just, hey, we, what we're doing is great, but we don't have enough follow up in place.

So what are other things that we can offer them? For example, cart abandoners. What can we do? Or existing customers, is there anything else that we can sell them? That what I call the profit triad. How do we get more customers? How do we get them spending more? And then how do we get them coming back again?

So like trying to get all fo all projects to focus on, are they one of those, are they one of those things? And that's kind of, yeah, like the, been them, the keys to getting past those, ceilings of complexity so that the, it's tapping out.

Allan Dib: Yeah. I often say that, almost everything is kind of downstream from generating lead flow from your marketing because if most businesses are demand constrained, not supply constrained. So I mean, every business, no matter how big there's a constraint [00:33:00] somewhere, there's either a constraint in the sales team, in the marketing team, in the delivery, in the customer service or whatever.

And I think part of a leader's job is identifying what are the constraints of our business and really being laser focused on those constraints.

What are the sort of most common constraints you're seeing are people, is it lead flow? Is it being profitable with their lead flow? Like, like you said, cost of traffic can rise and cost of clicks and all of that sort of stuff.

So what have been your, the biggest constraints that you've seen that stop businesses kind of like from growing?

Greg Cassar: I love the way that you, I hadn't really talked about that, what you just said, that every business has a constraint of some kind. 'cause then figuring that out and then narrowing in on it is they're really smart. So that was a good takeaway for me. Thank you. I look at it as a chain of conversion.

So like what's the traffic sources that are working? Then what's like, for example, the hook that we're using, the lead magnet, that kind of stuff, landing page, then opt-in rate. Then all that flows through. So we kind of look at businesses as chains of conversion. Often we'll [00:34:00] use like a Miro board or whatever, and then draw them out and then use visual dashboards.

So what are things we can now do to, for example, in the last week we drew up this like on a Miro board. It's like, okay traffic, what are things we can do to improve our traffic? Then cart abandoners, what are things we can do to improve our cart, abandonments, and then customers, what are things we can do to improve that?

And then just like, Hey, red, if it's not started yet, yellow, if it's a work in progress and green if it's done. And then use visual dashboards to just if, hey, if we improve those four things on our traffic, if we improve those four things on our cart abandons,

then over time, just things get better and better. But often people, like, they don't dunno what they don't know. So I'm lucky in that I'm a growth hacker. So a growth hacker's, just an individual who's very good at scaling companies. So like you, when you look at a company, you're looking at it after looking at 300 businesses or whatever, you're looking at it with a completely different lens where often people are so, in it, and this is their own, they've only done one, two, or three companies.

They don't really have that [00:35:00] broad spectrum of knowledge to draw on. So that's where I think like working with someone like you or me as far as like a coach can see that things that they can't see and that really like, cata, catapults 'em. 'cause like, it's not uncommon for people.

The average person in our group, if they've done a 12 months, they're generally either double or triple, like as far as business goes. But that's largely just because. Having a growth hacker, like, look over your business. that'll, make it grow. But changing their mindset, changing their emotions, all that kind of stuff.

And then the mastermind of people lifting each other up, wanting to see each other succeed, helping joint ventures, all that kind of stuff, which I think you are better at than, yeah, than me. Yeah. That's kind of way I think about it

Allan Dib: Totally. I think one of the things that people are surprised by, and it's been a criticism that I've received, it's like, Hey the your advice is obvious, right? And I'm like you.

know

Greg Cassar: with a better hindsight maybe, but

Allan Dib: It's funny, I look at some of the reviews of the one page marketing plan and they're like, there's nothing [00:36:00] new here. And a hundred percent agree. I mean, I didn't invent marketing. I didn't invent direct response marketing. But really when we look at a lot of businesses they're not doing the obvious stuff, so, I recently read a little mini short story called Obvious Adam, where it's a fictional story, but it talks about an advertising executive who just got ahead and he kind of crushed it just by doing obvious stuff. So he, there's a store not selling very well. He, so he goes visit and notices, okay, the street frontage isn't exactly facing the right street or whatever.

That's why we are getting walked by traffic and. All of that sort of stuff. So, but nine times outta 10 when you're working with a business coach like you or I, it's the obvious things that you are not doing. A lot of people are looking for this bright, shiny object, a special tool that's going to, solve all of my problems.

The special person's gonna solve all of my problems, but nine times outta 10, it's just doing the basic stuff. It's the email marketing, it's showing up with your content regularly. It's just doing the daily, weekly, monthly processes and those are the ways [00:37:00] that you really learn to crush. It's very rarely the insane, crazy idea that no one has ever thought of.

Greg Cassar: So The fundamentals done well. Hey.

Allan Dib: That's it. That's it. Let's switch gears for a bit. Walk me through a typical day, like, because I feel like a lot of people, their success story sort of goes like this. I was broke, I struggled for a long time, and boom, now I'm super successful made a lot of money, and there's not a lot of discussion around what it takes to get there.

And in my experience, the key is how you design your day, right? Because the day is the basic unit of the week, and then the week basic unit of the month and the month informs your year and how that goes.

So what does a typical day look like for you? How much do you work?

How much do you set aside for other stuff? And yeah, I'd love to hear that.

Greg Cassar: generally I start the day early because for the first two hours of the day, no one wants me, no one needs me, any of that kind of stuff. So I'll do a lot of learning in that time. So whether it's just on YouTube [00:38:00] or reading or listening or that kind of stuff. I work with Americans, so I normally don't have meetings in the mornings.

I normally just have meetings with the afternoons, but my travel partners are Americans, so I will have to have like one or one and a half hours of meetings in the morning. And then after that, say about like seven in the morning, my time in Australia, no one needs me at all. So then. I'll go surfing just about every day.

Grab some breakfast. I'll often eat, eat later because I'm doing sort of a little bit of intermittent fasting, so having dinner earlier and then often go back to work. Yeah, do two hours or something like that. Then often at lunchtime I'm out and about.

So just before we do this call, I walk the dogs on the beach, that kind of thing. May do some weights. I'll do that a couple of times a week, or I've got some entrepreneurial guys where we'll schedule it in the diary and we'll ride e-bikes electric mountain bikes, off in the wilderness and stuff.

So schedule that in the diary and make those things happen. Then in the afternoon, like another two or three hours, often I'll consult in the afternoon, like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, I'll have a Calendly, and then [00:39:00] Thursday, Friday, I'll leave those free. And then do something with the misses and kids in the, in the evening.

And yeah, I'm not really great working late at night. I'm definitely, much better off early, but just constantly injecting fun , into it. And, but like, I'm at that point now, but there is seasons to it. Like I would love to say, Hey, I just smashed it outta the park. But at times, it was stressful that, that journey and I had to reinvent myself or something wasn't working or had to add on another income stream, that kind of stuff.

So like, while I've got a pretty amazing lifestyle now, there was definitely seasons when, yeah, I want to do all those things, but hey, you know what, no one's gonna do it for you. No one's gonna save you. You really gotta knuckle down and you've gotta learn this and you've gotta implement this and test and measure.

And, Mallory used say that the real way to be a marketing expert is just to ask the audience. So just put it out there. So Frank Kern says, just if you need to make more money, just make more offers to the market, add more value to the market. So just kind of keep, yeah, keep doing those things.

But [00:40:00] yeah, life's pretty fun now, so no complaints.

Allan Dib: That's awesome. I think that's so important to kind of vary your day, inject a lot of fun into it, and then, really, from what I've seen and like you said, it's very accurate. You have seasons. Like, for example, I spent a year just really knuckling down, spent a lot of time on editing, spending a lot of time in writing and all of that sort of stuff.

But generally, my day to day, I might work four or five solid hours in terms of work. But then I've got time to exercise. I've got time with family, I've got time to go for walks. I've got time for all of that. And in fact, I find that a lot of my best ideas, that's the most productive time.

Like when I look at what are the ideas that generated massive. Leverage for me and big revenue and big wealth. It's not the time that I was glued to the computer and going through emails and handling issues. It's when I had an idea about something that, that I was doing when I was reading or when I was working out or when I was walking through the forest or whatever, [00:41:00] and I find people don't have enough of those blank sort of white space times.

They're always plugged into something, listening to an audio book at double speed or whatever, or got meetings on or whatever they're scheduling every part of their day. But I found those times are the times that have been the most valuable for me, like literally in terms of finance and revenue and all of that, as well as just from a peace of mind and a peace point of view.

Greg Cassar: Yeah, love that. Just time to stop and think. I also schedule in like thinking weekends, so it might be ideally I do it every quarter, but sometimes I'll only be two or three times a year where I'll just go to like a hotel or a cabin or something like that by the beach and take my surfboard, take my e-bike, and then just stop and think.

And I have nothing that I have to do for two or three days and generally always come away, like from something like that. Or going to business events where there's other high level marketers, so you and I could be having a coffee or whatever. And then you [00:42:00] say one little throwaway line and then that's like, oh, hang on a second.

So that. That iron sharpens iron. I love hanging out with other smart marketers, other smart business people as well, for that to just constantly, yeah, it lifts you up, but you get new ideas and new inspiration. Something that's working in one different industry that you can then app apply to what you're doing.

So.

Allan Dib: It makes all the difference.

Biohacking Health and Lifestyle for Entrepreneurs
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Allan Dib: The other thing I'd like to finish off with is what are you doing from a health perspective? Because I used to feel like, hey, health and business are two different things, right? So there's your health, there's great if you wanna get buff or whatever, and then there is your business life.

I used to think of them as two different things, but you know, a few years ago I sort of had my midlife crisis. I was overweight. I wasn't doing very well in terms of health wise. I wasn't, I was eating a lot of crap, wasn't exercising and, I was still doing okay business wise, but I. It was just a struggle.

It felt like pushing uphill all the time. The output was pretty mediocre and all of that. And [00:43:00] now I find just health is just drives everything. If you've had the right sleep, the right nutrition, the right movement in your life, it just makes a huge difference. And like I said in the beginning, you look younger, every time I see you, you must be doing something.

Cool. Are you on like a Brian Johnson biohacking thing or like what are you doing?

Greg Cassar: I do some biohacking, but first of all, I think you're a hundred percent right and your story is similar to mine. Like I was not always in shape. I grew up in a traditional Maltese family. And so the things that I learned when I was young, I didn't even know that I wasn't eating well.

Like, here have this, here, have this, you know what I mean? Like all these different things like that just really, weren't good for me. And then what happened was my mindset changed as far as like, hey, I'm no longer gonna be that guy as far as part of success. Am I really like ultra successful if I'm overweight, dragging myself around, can't keep up with my kids, that kind of thing.

So then I really look at it as [00:44:00] the body, as a vehicle. And I've gotta get it in as pristine a condition, as I can. And so I look at this as kind of like multiple different pillars, like from a nutrition point of view. I definitely change the way that I eat. So if you think about the supermarket, I'm not spending much time on those middle aisles of do you know all these processed junk?

It is more kind of like more what your grandmother or your grandfather would eat more fresh stuff. So I'm largely plant-based, so vegetables, fruits, that kind of stuff with protein, so meat, et cetera. So , eating that way, cutting out on like a lot of the snacking, like if I want a snack, I just I might have like nuts at my desk or something like that rather than, eating a whole bunch of rubbish.

So it's kind of changed that way. I built exercise into what I'm doing. So like I surf every day. I've got the E-bike and then I'm also doing weights a couple of times a week and I go to the gym, just from a time point of view. I've just got dumbbells and a little bench and , that's all that I do.

And that was enough to help me get muscly but changing the mindset was the main thing. I think what I call it is like being [00:45:00] directionally correct. So I'm moving in the right direction. Say for example, I'm on the road, like today I've gotta travel for a couple of hours.

I'll probably have a burger on the road. Is that good for me? No. But like if it gets me, if it gets me there, then that's fine. As long as I'm directionally correct. Most of the time it doesn't really matter if I'm 10% of the time I'm eating rubbish or whatever. So that's the way I look at it. Otherwise, you'll see people, hey, I did this diet and then I did that diet and that diet.

It's a lifestyle, not a diet, and then. I learned a lot about as well hormones. So, for males as we get older. So I, like, I'm nearly 50 and, testosterone drops off, as you get older. So I've really learned that there's a massive correlation between your testosterone levels, both for females and for males actually, and how well you feel.

So if you go to a normal doctor, they'll give you, and you do the full bloods, they'll say, oh, your testosterone's normal for your age, but normal for your age, basically just means that, hey you are transitioning into becoming an old man. But what, as you get older, what you actually want to do is [00:46:00] run higher T levels, higher testosterone levels.

And you can do this in natural ways. So there's a supplement called Toga Ali. And by means I'm not a doctor, so don't take anything I say as medical advice. I'm just sharing what I do. And then people please make your own choices. But, I take a supplement called Toga Ali, which is a gin sing derivative.

And what it does is it naturally increases your testosterone levels. I also take a supplement that I get from the doctor called DHEA. The DHEA is a precursor to testosterone. It helps your body to produce more testosterone because you don't really want to be getting into TRT testosterone replacement therapy.

'cause then your body stops producing it. Like, unless you have a real problem. And that may still be a good option later on in life. But so testosterone's been , a big thing for me. And that's helped me like as far as muscle mass be lean. You just feel better when you've got good testosterone.

And then one of the things that I teach and that I do as well is like, I don't just hope and pray. I've got a really good proactive health doctor, and she understands [00:47:00] biohacking as well. And I do bloods regularly. And so I get feedback and then I know, because if you think about it, like all your levels, sometimes you see people who've just like really got no energy and they don't know it's because their irons down all them because of whatever.

So if you can get all those levels up, so I don't just guess I really, like work off blood screens and stuff. And then I do other supplementation as well. So to change the way that my cells age, I found that you don't really have to age at the same rate as everyone else.

So the main big one that I take is NMN, so Nelli N for Mary Nelli, it's got a long scientific name. I learned about that from David a Sinclair who's the leader, on Harvard Medical School in the anti-aging division. And it basically like, it just changes the way your cells age. Like we got an old dog, he's a border colleague, he's 13 years of age.

He's on the NMN when he's not on the NMN. His hair is like, an old, is like a wire brush and it's gray. And then when he is on the NMN, you can literally see it run down his spine. He, his hair will go black [00:48:00] again, and then all the rest of his hair will go black again. Then it will go soft. And if he's not on it, like Jules and I went away and the kids were looking after the dog for a week and a half.

And I got back and he was going gray. And I said, you guys didn't give him his medication. And then they didn't deny it. They said, you didn't know, we didn't have it. Like, no, it was in the fridge, they just didn't find it and they didn't think it was important. But in a week and a half with the dog, he'd started to age again.

So this kind, like, it's really visual with a dog. If you've got an old dog, like NN is amazing. And then there's another thing I take, which is called resveratrol, which is like the best bits of red wine. And it's kind of like an antioxidant. It just protects you from your Western diet.

There's a whole bunch more things that I do, but that's kind of like a lot of the. Yeah, a lot of the 80, 80 20 and it's really is life changing. I find you can be living, with 10 or 20% more energy than yeah. Than the average folk as your age.

Allan Dib: I totally agree. Yeah, I mean, I've done a lot of the same things. I haven't gone down NMN or resveratrol, but I, I do fast every day. So my first meal is usually about 2:00 PM each [00:49:00] day. So I eat in a pretty short window. I lift weights as well. I ended up having to go on TRT because my levels were just way too low.

I did try Tonga Ali and I did try another one for gja something or other I can't. And it did actually raise my levels a little bit, but I was still just way, way too low. So I had to go to the TRT route. But yeah, it's a lot of the same kind of things, and it really is an engine that just drives.

The business forward as well, because like if you are feeling good, that reflects in your work and your energy and everything else that you do, and it makes a huge difference. And of course makes life a lot better. Like if you are waking up outta bed in pain and like can't get going and all of that sort of thing.

It's a disaster. Yeah. And then being really focused on protein intake. So like you, I'm pretty similar plant-based diet, but once I started prioritizing protein, I was never hungry. Like I said, I don't eat for 18 hours of the day and I'm never hungry just because I'm hitting my protein levels.

I read a book, I can't remember what it's called, [00:50:00] but it was basic. The upshot was your body will keep craving food until it hits the protein level that you get. And so yeah, most, most processed food and stuff like that, they've got very little protein, very little fiber, and they're the two things that'll make you feel full.

So if you eat stuff with a lot of fiber, which is plant-based stuff, and if you eat protein, you'll never feel hungry. And though that stuff doesn't have to be super high calorie either. But so yeah, that's some of the stuff I've done. And, it's basic stuff, but like, again, similar to what we said earlier, like, people look for kind of crazy answers to things, but a lot of times the answers are pretty simple.

A lot of times it's just doing the obvious stuff.

Greg Cassar: and if you don't do this, you kind of know what's gonna happen over time. You're gonna become an old man or old woman, and the traditional medical system is basically setting you up to fail. Like they pharmaceutical companies, they make money out of us getting old and fat and like that's their cash cows sort of thing.

So you've got this health span and you've got your lifespan and ideally you want to, the [00:51:00] health span's like how long you're healthy and good for you want to keep that. Kind of in a way try and lock in the age that you're at so that you're not, and the younger, you start this stuff, like if you're in your thirties, you're winning the game.

If you can start doing some of these things earlier then, but it's never too late. Forties, fifties, sixties, they used to tell like, grandma, you just sit there and like put a blank blanket on her and that kind of stuff. But that was the worst thing you can do for her. Like now they got grandmas with little dumbbells and that kind of stuff.

Because the more muscle you have and the stronger you are, the better that Yeah, the better that you're gonna age.

Allan Dib: the other mindset shift I had was like, I used to feel like, Hey, it's my doctor's responsibility to make sure I'm healthy or whatever, right? And the mindset shift of, no, this is my responsibility and I've gotta be on top of it all. And just really understanding how the medical system works, just because.

The doctors are designed to be reactive, unfortunately, and that's the sy It's not because doctors are bad or evil or whatever. That's the system. That's the education that they've [00:52:00] gone through. And that's just what it is right now. So if you want to be proactive, that's gotta be up to you.

Even when you hire a biohacker or someone else, you're still gotta be driving that whole process. And similar to you, I do bloods pretty often to figure out how am I going, what are my levels, and all of those sorts of things. But that mindset shift of hang on your health is your responsibility. It's not your doctor's responsibility or your naturopath or whoever you're seeing.

That was a big shift to me as well, because no one's coming to the rescue. They'll give you pills or whatever, but that starts you down a spiral that you really don't wanna go.

Greg Cassar: Love that no one's coming to the rescue yet. So if you're waiting for the night in shining armor to ride up on his horse and save you maybe waiting there a while.

Allan Dib: You're gonna be in for a rude shock. Yeah. And. And I, yeah, like, like lead flows kind of like almost everything is downstream from lead flow into business or everything in life is downstream from how your health, how you're feeling, how you are getting up, how you're showing up for your family, for your [00:53:00] business, for your team, for everything.

Makes a huge difference.

Greg Cassar: absolutely. We're so in sync in so many ways, which is actually probably the evolution of the entrepreneur because you are similar to me. Like we were real focused on like business, but we let our health go and then over time we realize, hey, we've gotta get our health. And that really helps business and helps life and it's a very common

Allan Dib: Yeah we have had a similar journey and we both started in tech and then we got into marketing. And so we have had a pretty similar journey. So it's cool to connect with you. We've gotta connect a lot more often.

Greg, thanks so much. You've been a wealth of wisdom in many different areas, and I find that with some of the smartest people that I connect with is they know a lot about a lot, and you certainly fit that bill.

Where can people find you? How can people connect with you? What's the best way?

Greg Cassar: Yeah, so collective.com.Au is best website for me. And yeah that's kind of it. I do Facebook Messenger, stuff like that. [00:54:00] So

Allan Dib: Perfect. All right. We'll have all those details in the show notes. Thanks so much all right, Greg. Talk to you soon.

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