How Spirituality and Business Intersect - Daniel Mangena

In today’s episode, I chat with Daniel Mangena, entrepreneur, author and executive producer based in Los Cabos, Mexico.

After receiving a late diagnosis of Asperger’s and experiencing what can only be described as life-shattering trauma at just 20, Daniel spent the next seven years struggling to keep these revelations and events from spilling into every area of his life. As a result of his struggles, Daniel built a simple, four-step system called the Beyond Intention Paradigm.

Through his own struggles, Daniel found a path to lasting joy and purpose, and he wants nothing more than to share the tools that he feels saved his life. He’s written multiple books and his “Do it With Dan” podcast series, published articles and worldwide workshops, have thousands around the globe.

Together we explored the balance between spirituality and business, discussing how other professionals can find this balance. How Daniel’s unique journey informed his perspective. And how he’s helped others overcome heir own challenges.

This was a deviation from our usual format. Much more personal, and I think, ultimately, more relatable. Beyond that, it was a really engaging discussion, and I hope you enjoy our conversation, as much as I did recording it.

Daniel Mangena

Early in his career, Daniel noticed a recurring theme that held people back in life; thinking they didn't have enough money to do what they really wanted to do. 

Daniel's life experiences taught him this was actually the easiest thing to resolve. His mission became helping people figure this out so they could get on with the business of creating their dream lives.

His hard-earned lessons came at the price of amassing great wealth at a very young age and losing it all twice. Yet these hardships became the experiences that would eventually take his life to an even higher level of abundance.

Now, Daniel teaches others the information he learned and used to finally achieve sustainable wealth and a truly fulfilling, happy life. He has discovered there is a better and almost effortless way to live a rich life in every sense-not just financially.

Daniel's unique philosophies and processes have completely transformed thousands of clients' financial lives while instilling the belief in them that money is an energy that we can all align to.

Daniel is also a successful entrepreneur, podcast host, international speaker, and teaches several large group wealth and life mastery workshops every year.

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Matt Burns is an award-winning executive, social entrepreneur and speaker. He believes in the power of community, simplicity & technology.

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Transcript

Daniel: You can go and individually try and impact every single one of those 20 relationships or situations.

Daniel: But if you change you, the substance.

Daniel: Of every single one of those equations changes because you as the common thread in all of them changes. So the most logical place to actually elicit change in your life is with you. Even if you want to still hold on to victimhood, blame and responsibility shifting logically, the most smart place to start with is you. And that became common denominator theory, and accepting that became step one of Beyond Intention, which is accept I am at the center of everything that happens in my life.

Matt: Constraints drive innovation. Hey, everyone, it's Matt. Here for another episode of Thinking Inside the Box, a show where we discuss the innovative ways organizations and their leaders overcome, um, complex issues at work. If you're interested in checking out our other content, you can find us at our shiny new website, insidetheboxpodcast.com and on all of your favorite podcast platforms by searching Thinking Inside the Box. And if you enjoy the work we're doing here, consider leaving us a five star rating, a comment and subscribing. It ensures you get updated whenever we release new content and really helps amplify our message. In today's episode, I chat with Daniel Magena, entrepreneur, author and executive producer based in Los Cabos, Mexico. After receiving a late diagnosis of asperger's and experiencing what can only be described as life shattering trauma at age 20, daniel spent the next seven years struggling to keep these revelations and events from spilling into every part of his life. And as a result of his struggles, he ended up building a simple four step system called the Beyond Intention Paradigm. Through his own struggles, Daniel found a path to lasting joy and purpose, and he wants nothing more than to share the tools that he feels saved his life. He's written multiple books and his Do It with Dan podcast series. Published articles and worldwide workshops have helped thousands around the globe. Together, we explored the balance between spirituality and business, discussing how other professionals can find the same balance, and how his unique journey informed his perspective and ultimately helped others overcome their own challenges. This was a deviation from our usual format, much more personal and I think ultimately more relatable. Beyond that, it was another really engaging conversation, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did recording it. And now I bring you Daniel Mangenna.

Matt: I was just saying I love doing podcasts with fellow podcasters because I get to have a vacation day. Thank you so much for joining me and giving me an hour of my time back in my schedule.

Matt: It's good to see you.

Daniel: Uh, thanks for having me, Matt. Really excited to be here and have this conversation.

Matt: Yeah, we're going to have a cool chat. I read through your bio and your background and experiences, and it's like, I have to meet this guy. Even if it isn't a podcast, I have to have a conversation with Daniel. But for those who didn't get a chance to read your bio before this conversation, maybe a bit about your background, your experiences, and what's led you to today.

Daniel: Sure. I love to describe my life as a trilogy. I'm in book three at the moment, and book three started on the 13 February 2018 when I had a very transcendental experience during a price surprise meditation that tailed the dovetail end of sort.

Daniel: Of a I want to say a.

Daniel: Seven or eight year old journey that I didn't believe I was going to be on. That kind of began around March 2008, when, having lost everything for the second time at 23 years old, I fell.

Daniel: Into a very, very dark place and.

Daniel: Went into not even suicidal thoughts, but like ideation, as in, let's sit down and map out how to do this. And thankfully, I overanalyzed my way out of it because all of the options that available to me at the time didn't make any sense.

Daniel: And I felt like such a loser.

Daniel: At the time that if I made an attempt, I was going to fail. And I didn't want to be such a loser. This is how I felt, honestly. No disrespect to anyone who's going through a similar journey, but I felt like such a loser that if I went for it, I would fail. And I didn't want to fail at, uh, that on top of everything else.

Daniel: So book one was kind of leading up into that.

Daniel: Book two was going through this journey of trying to delusion myself in order to have a successful suicide, but accidentally kind of stumbling into very deliberate way to live my life. And book three has been about sharing that journey with others. And that's kind of what I'm about empowering people to live an abundant, joyful, purpose driven life on their own terms. That regardless of the dark space that we find ourselves in, we find a way to access our power to choose where we go next.

Matt: Can we poke a little bit of that?

Daniel: Because there's a lot there. Poke away.

Matt: So 23, life's just beginning.

Daniel: Mhm.

Matt: What's going on in your life at that point in time where you're asking.

Matt: Yourself, I don't want to do this anymore.

Daniel: So I was diagnosed with Asperger's when.

Daniel: I was 27 years old.

Daniel: I didn't know that by the time.

Daniel: This had happened I've been described as.

Daniel: A precocious young man. I took myself to make computers at 13, registered my first company on the London Company's House when I was like 16 years old. I made my first million by 19. I'd lost that by 20, made it again by 22, and lost it again by 23. But the thing was that I was reading books like Think and Grow Rich and Psychocybernetics and Joe Carbo's Lazy Weight to Riches, stuart Goldsmith's The Midas Method I was studying and applying these materials as a teenager, quite focused on this idea of being mega wealthy. But unfortunately I didn't have life experience.

Daniel: And I was a bit of an arrogant little twat.

Daniel: And so what had happened was I hadn't been nudged and beat up enough by life to know that I didn't know everything. And I had had this snowball of success that gave a young man whose brains wired a little bit differently the illusion that he did know everything. And so I went and had this identity that got built around the guy that believed he knew everything. So when the first time came, when everything was gone, I wasn't shaken by it because I still had this delusional idea that there was nothing to learn from this because I know everything, I'm.

Daniel: Just going to go and do it again. But the second time I didn't kind of have that ledge to stand on. I was left with the loss of.

Daniel: Identity tied to knowing it all smashed to pieces because clearly I didn't. And also the humans that I had around me pretty much were exclusively there on the basis of transactional exchanges of what they did for me and what I did for them. And a lot of it was sick of fancy. A lot of it was people that were there literally because they were paid in some way, shape or form to be around. And I understood it wasn't. I didn't go into that blindly. I knew it to be the case. But not understanding myself and the way.

Daniel: I was wired, I thought that was.

Daniel: All I could get at that time. And so my entire network's gone, my entire identity is gone, and all I've.

Daniel: Got is me and the crushed pieces.

Daniel: Of this delusion that I knew everything and not even in an excitable high energy, in a very calm way, it's.

Daniel: Like, oh, I guess there's nothing left.

Daniel: For me to contribute. And actually I'd probably be less of a pain if I wasn't here. And that's when I went off and said, well, let me see what that looks like.

Daniel: And that's how that happened.

Matt: Well, and I can realize, I can appreciate the frustration of believing that you're going to have impact, whether it's selfish or otherwise, that you're going to have this degree of impact. And you talked about mega wealth and obviously you achieved a lot of success.

Matt: Early in your life.

Matt: I can appreciate the disillusionment around the vision you have for yourself and having that be unrealized. I'm curious. The second time around, the doubts start to creep into your brain. Maybe I don't have this figured out. Maybe I'm destined for boom bust. Boom bust, boom bust. Was that part of the thinking process?

Daniel: So I would say it wasn't a front of mind. But as I've looked back over the years and I've done a lot of introspection around it, I write about it and so on and so forth. There was a loss of momentum, but.

Daniel: I had enough wins because I'd been.

Daniel: Able to stack things back up.

Daniel: Again, I had enough wins to kind.

Daniel: Of keep the illusion going, even though there was sufficient evidence for there to.

Daniel: Me to say, dude, maybe you don't.

Daniel: Have this figured out. Maybe you need some help. Maybe you need some support. Maybe you need some advice. Maybe you need some guidance and direction.

Daniel: But again, I had the arrogance of.

Daniel: Youth that unfortunately, it was met with a lot of success without all of the roadblocks. And so that's a really dangerous, quite.

Daniel: Toxic cocktail to have. I didn't know myself.

Daniel: And it's really funny. I look at, like, my nephew. My nephew is about to start university this year. He's 18 years old. At his age, I was plotting world domination, right? And I'm speaking to him, but it was his 18th birthday on the weekend. He's like, oh, yeah, uncle. Just me and my boys, we just got, like, a little got an apartment, and we just hung out. And he's going to uni. And he's like, yeah, I'm excited about the uni.

Daniel: I was like, wow, I really was off base.

Daniel: I wasn't looking for girls and drinking. Like, I didn't even lose my virginity till I was 20. I was just so focused on just this thing of, I need to be successful.

Daniel: I need to be successful.

Daniel: But unfortunately, I didn't have those hits that gave me sufficient because a lot of people that get stopped in their tracks, they get stopped in their tracks because something happens, right? Like slap in the face. Pause. I didn't have those big slaps. And, um, because the movement that I had had was so significant, the slaps that did come, I didn't pay the attention to. And because those slaps were coming against the backdrop of me thinking I knew everything and, oh, everything's going to work.

Daniel: Out, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right?

Daniel: Again, really dangerous. Really dangerous mix.

Matt: So 23 disillusioned. Second crash comes. You mentioned 27. You get a diagnosis for Asperger's. What were the four year lives like in between that? So you're obviously going through this, putting the pieces back together again, assessing whether or not this makes sense. And are you limping along to 27, or are you building momentum to 27 to arrive the diagnosis?

Daniel: I didn't know that I was building momentum until I found out later.

Daniel: And it was probably another, uh, two.

Daniel: Or three years after that before I really sat back and realized what had happened. And this was actually the topic of the Ted Talk that they refused to publish, which is another story. And we're actually go into the background.

Daniel: Behind all of this because I went off.

Daniel: And this is the thing I really need everyone to understand.

Daniel: I didn't spend the next four years doing what I'm about to describe, trying to make my life better.

Daniel: I wasn't, like, working on myself to find the connection to my purpose and my higher self and to realign with my ancestors. That's not what I was doing.

Daniel: I was literally like, dude, I can imagine this didn't actually happen, but I.

Daniel: Can imagine if this was in a movie, seeing me looking in the mirror.

Daniel: Like, dude, we're not going to fudge up this suicide.

Daniel: We're not going to fudge it up. We need to work out where we've gone wrong and then going off to find out where we've gone wrong. It was literally an investigation into because.

Daniel: I knew because there'd been some modicum of success, it just hadn't stayed there.

Daniel: Was some merit to what had happened before, but there were missing pieces. And so I became obsessed with studying all of the material I'd studied before. The stories of people had accomplished great things. I learned to transliterate Hebrew and Arabic so I could study ancient text. I went deep into studying about consciousness, the brain, neuroscience, behavioral patterns, social dynamics, so that I could reverse engineer. But not again. It wasn't so that I could be.

Daniel: Successful in anything other than pulling off my suicide. And I've been at, uh, the hospital.

Daniel: When someone had taken an overdose. They'd been pumped. We're all standing around the hospital bed. Oh, my God, are you okay? I didn't want to be that guy. I've seen people with cut marks on the wrist. The idea of having cut marks on my wrist forever to show me that I failed again didn't excite me. Someone having to cut me down.

Daniel: I didn't want to be the inconvenience.

Daniel: Having to cut me down from hanging myself. And that also didn't look like a.

Daniel: Very pleasant way to go anyway.

Daniel: If I had access to a gun, I wouldn't be here now, because that was the only sure fire way that.

Daniel: I could think of.

Daniel: Very unlikely I couldn't mess it up. And so I went off to do that. And so the next four years, I was doing nothing but reading books, listening to tapes, and obsessed with dissecting, almost to some degree, how consciousness, the universe.

Daniel: And reality operates so that I can.

Daniel: Not mess up my suicide. But you can't spend a couple of.

Daniel: Years with one quality of input and not have outputs that match that.

Daniel: And this is a big cornerstone to what I teach now. When your environment is so deeply weighted in the direction of a particular supporting a particular course of outcome, it's really physically impossible for you to have anything different. Your emotions are going to match it. Your mindset is going to match it. Your unconscious habits are going to match it, even if that's not where you want it to be. And that's why a lot of people.

Daniel: End up in the same relationships, the.

Daniel: Same financial situation, in the same health state, because their environment and everything that they are taking in all the time is supporting those disempowering states versus the empowering. And so when I wake up and it was long after, like I said, long after the diagnosis, before I was like, oh, my goodness.

Daniel: It was actually around about the twelveTH.

Daniel: Of March, 13 March 2015. I just got back from a trip.

Daniel: Me and my cousin had gone away to Thailand.

Daniel: It was my first lads trip. At a lads trip. Boy had a lads trip. I'd have been away for two weeks. I'd taken one phone call.

Daniel: My business was doing well, got back.

Daniel: I've got a lovely home, I've got a tailor, I'm traveling, I'm having fun, I'm working out. My body's in a good shape. I've got great relationships with my family.

Daniel: I'm like, whoa, I haven't thought about suicide. And that's when I actually started to.

Daniel: Go back and actually start to look at the notes that I'd been making from my studies and putting together what that looked like. That eventually became the beyond intention paradigm. But that journey was literally de. Losing myself so I can pull off something dark, but ended up somewhere completely different.

Matt: It's a beautiful story and it speaks to the power of intention, even if it is by happenstance. Maybe talk to us a bit about the diagnosis. How did you arrive at a doctor's office or even in front of a medical practitioner, for somebody who had a clear goal? Medical intervention was not on the roadmap between 23 and 27. How did you end up in the doctor's office to begin with? Was it somebody in your community saying, hey, Daniel, like, I'm worried about you should see a doctor. Is it you're sitting next to somebody on the tube?

Matt: How does that work?

Daniel: That in itself is like the craziest, quote unquote manifested outcome.

Daniel: Because what happened was I had, up.

Daniel: Until that point, had really bad insomnia.

Daniel: Uh, as long as I can remember.

Daniel: I remember being at secondary school or high school and having bouts of it where for a few days I won't be able to sleep or whatever. And I'd accepted it as normal because I had ways of dealing with it. I'd have chamomile tea, over the counter.

Daniel: Sleeping medications, different, uh, breathing techniques.

Daniel: I would make sure that the lights were out a certain time before sleep and so on and so forth. But I was going through a particular trying time where it's been about two weeks before I'd had a full night's.

Daniel: Sleep and I was really, really crippled. And so for the first time ever.

Daniel: I went and made a doctor's appointment so I can get some prescription sleeping medication because I couldn't think of anything.

Daniel: Else that was going to break the cycle. So I go, Doctor, prescribes me something.

Daniel: Called Zopiclone, which in the UK is about the strongest sleeping medication that you can prescribe. He's only allowed to give me three because they've got addictive qualities there's. A few celebrities have been in trouble for addiction to it. And he, you know, Mr. Mangela, you.

Daniel: Can have up to two.

Daniel: One will knock you out one and a half if you're still a know, you're not quite there, but you can't take any more than two. So this should give you a few.

Daniel: Days of sleep, and you'll be reset. I had two and was wide awake.

Daniel: I go back to the doctors like.

Daniel: Hey, doc, took medicine. Two of them wide awake, still not slept.

Daniel: And he's like, then I can't give you anything more. I have to refer you to a therapist, because obviously there's something going on that you need to talk to someone about. It just so happens that the doctor that he referred to me, and I will forever be grateful for. Dr. Helen McEwen happened to be just on rotation. She was the one that was on rotation to get the referral that day, specializing working with adults with autism through cognitive behavioral therapy. And so when I walk into her office and she gets into it with me, she immediately starts to pick up the clues. And it's so funny, because up until then in my life, nobody had picked it up. Since then, everybody's like, hey, are you on the spectrum? But before then, it just wasn't something that came up, and it didn't take her very long to identify that I was suffering from really bad anxiety. My nervous system was deregulated, general anxiety, and definitely social anxiety stemming, uh, from.

Daniel: The fact that I'm neurodivergent that been.

Daniel: Operating forcefully in a neurotypical world, uh, my entire life. And my nervous system was just a bit sharp. And so she was able to give me some cognitive behavioral therapy to learn to deal with that, but more importantly, teach me what my superpowers were around.

Daniel: The Asperger's so that I could lean.

Daniel: Into those and also be very clear on where I needed to be supported. So rather than my nervous system going.

Daniel: Off, I could just ask for the help that I need.

Daniel: And to this day, it's been one of the most amazing things that has ever happened to me, because now I.

Daniel: Know where I need help.

Daniel: I can lean again into those superpowers. It's helped me to be more effective in the world, more impactful, and also just to not really beat myself up over challenges that I do have and also have better relationships with people, because.

Daniel: I can, hey, I have this challenge.

Daniel: Or I have that challenge, and just have really clearer communication with folks.

Matt: Well, it's a huge dose of validation.

Matt: Pardon the pun, but just having a sense of to your point, getting the access to the knowledge, which is at a grasp. I'm assuming that throughout the course of your life, you probably felt like you didn't fit for whatever reason. And it sounds like earlier in your life, ego played a role in that. You felt, I'm excelling, and people are not. Maybe I'm smarter than they are. Maybe I'm more motivated than they are. Maybe I'm just better than they are. You talked about superpowers. I'm curious, how does that show up for you? Like when I talk about superpowers, what are uh, daniel's?

Daniel: Superpowers.

Matt: Hey, everyone, it's Matt here. I hope you're enjoying today's conversation. And before we continue, I want to update you on my latest creative project, this Week at Work. Every Friday at 07:00 a.m Pacific Standard Time. That's 10:00 a.m. Eastern and 03:00. P.m GMT. My good friend Chris Rainey of HR Leaders and I discuss the latest trending topics on the minds of executives globally, from organizational culture to technology and the future of work. We cover it all, and we invite some of our favorite colleagues to join us, from Dave Ulrich to Whitney Johnson, and executives from iconic brands such as NASA, Krispy Kreme, and WebMD.

Daniel: What can I say?

Matt: We like to keep things interesting. And if you've been following us for a while, you'll no doubt recognize the fun partnership chris and I have developed over years. Podcasting together. We're not afraid to be real, share our own challenges, and ask the tough questions.

Daniel: Joining?

Matt: Well, that part's easy. Follow me on LinkedIn, click the bell icon on the top right of my profile, and you'll get notified when we go live. And now back to our discussion.

Daniel: Well, one of the most clear ones.

Daniel: For me and one of the ones.

Daniel: That shows up mostly is, if anything's.

Daniel: Systemized, give it to me and I'll learn it. So I've always excelled, for example, at structured martial arts.

Daniel: Always. Always.

Daniel: Because they're systemized.

Daniel: Um, you give me anything, if there's.

Daniel: A step by step process, I'll pick it up.

Daniel: The shadow side to that is, if.

Daniel: There are a lack of steps, I have a meltdown and panic attacks and I don't know what to do and I completely freeze up. But if something's systemized, I'm, um, great with sequences, so if you give me like a sequence of numbers, I can learn it. I've got near and this showed up. I did music a lot when I was younger. I've always had near pitch perfect voice, and that's because anything that I hear I can generally replicate because my memory is really good with it. So there's really cool things like that.

Daniel: Um, but the most important thing for me, I think, has been learning things systemized, because then I've applied that to develop other superpowers as well.

Daniel: So my social anxiety, well, I just went and looked for modalities that existed and structures that existed around social dynamics to give me the framework to be able to relax and have real connections with people and also understand when I don't have a real connection with someone. So I can be polite without the anxiety and let it walk away. But then when there is a connection, rather than me having, oh, there's a connection, I don't know what to do with it. I can create a safe space to actually hold that connection with people and have real, meaningful relationships rather than these weird ego driven. And I believe that the ego for me was just me trying to hide, find the fact that I didn't feel safe and I didn't know how to be seen. And so the ego comes up to, oh yeah, I'm better than you. No, I just don't know who I am. And so it comes up with the shadow side. So those are definitely some of the superpowers that I've had that have allowed.

Daniel: Me to have other superpowers and have.

Daniel: A much more fulfilling life as a result.

Matt: Well, that ego becomes an affirming social dissociation tool, right? It becomes this method m of distancing yourself and preserving your own sense of self in a world that is really complicated and confusing and obviously not having Asperger's. But I can appreciate how that would feel. Just always feeling a little half step out of sync with certain conversations, certain people, certain interactions, but then thriving in others and not being able to make sense of those two things must have been a really confusing space. You referenced this earlier, and I want to dig into a bit deeper the beyond intention paradigm. Let me talk a bit about what that is, what that means for you, and how it manifests itself in everyday life.

Daniel: Sure thing. So, on the journey of me trying to understand what had gone wrong, a lot of material started to emerge, uh, around that time, around what now people are calling manifestation. Back then, it was more about conscious reality creation and just being more in dominion of what you're creating in your life. Books like The Power of now came out, then The Secret came out around that time, and people are waking up to a lot of this material.

Daniel: But one of the things that my.

Daniel: Little autistic brain really needed is frameworks and structure.

Daniel: So The Power of Now I found.

Daniel: To be a very powerful book.

Daniel: And yet when Elkhartole is just like.

Daniel: Just be in the present moment, I'm.

Daniel: Like, I need the steps for that, right?

Daniel: But it's finding a way to create those steps that doesn't have you locked back in the mind and out of the present moment. And so I started playing with, okay, what framework can I use to do that? And it started to emerge and other things started to overlay.

Daniel: And then I went back to a.

Daniel: Thought that really happened at that point of decision that I really wanted to.

Daniel: Go for the suicide. And that was that, uh, nobody else could do this. Nobody, like nobody else could support me.

Daniel: To this final end of suicide. I had to rely on me.

Daniel: And there was a little thought there.

Daniel: That didn't really fully emerge until back.

Daniel: Further down the road in 2015, when.

Daniel: I really started to formalize these thoughts into what has become the bookstep and.

Daniel: Beyond Intention and that's all of us.

Daniel: Have that same truth present in everything in our life.

Daniel: There is no one else that's there.

Daniel: For everything going on in your life.

Daniel: Now, even if we want to apportion.

Daniel: Some blame or some responsibility here and.

Daniel: There, logically, if we think about if there are 20 situations in your life that you are related to, you can.

Daniel: Go and individually try and impact every single one of those 20 relationships or situations.

Daniel: But if you change you, the substance.

Daniel: Of every single one of those equations changes because you as the common thread in all of them changes. So the most logical place to actually elicit change in your life is with you. Even if you want to still hold on to victimhood, blame and responsibility, shifting logically, the most smart place to start with is you. And that became common denominator theory, and accepting that became step one of Beyond Intention, which is accept. I am at the center of everything.

Daniel: That happens in my life.

Daniel: Ultimately, everything that shows up for me physically is a result of something I have done or haven't done. Whether, pardon me, I've chosen to do so consciously or unconsciously is another conversation. But ultimately, everything that shows up in my life is a result of a choice that's made at some level of.

Daniel: Consciousness that I've unfolded. Is that always pleasant? No. If someone's been abused, do we want.

Daniel: To start saying you're to blame? We're not talking about blame, but we're saying even in the aftermath of such a situation, how we respond to it still we're at the center of it. Someone can't come and do your healing for you. Someone can't come and make the choices for you. They can support you in it. But ultimately it's going to come down to what we do. And that became the foundation of Beyond Intention. We then moved on to being present in the present moment, which we can only do we're fully responsible. Connecting to an empowered outcome through gratitude.

Daniel: Which is step three.

Daniel: And then step four is my favorite.

Daniel: Step, which is understanding that we're not.

Daniel: Going to be switched on all the time. Nobody's going to get it right every day. None of your favorite gurus have live a perfect life. They've all got something that they're dealing with. None of your favorite gurus have a perfect day every day. All of them have got something going on. Whether it's a shadow that's dealing with them, whether it's an ego problem, whether it's a jug addiction, whether they're having challenges with their parenting, all of us have something. And if we just give ourselves grace with the things that we are dealing.

Daniel: With, we're going to be much more powerful and effective in getting to deal with it.

Daniel: But we can't do that if we're beating ourselves up, we're blaming ourselves or holding ourselves to impossible standards of perfection that nobody's ever going to attain. No. The world's.

Matt: Hard enough as it is.

Daniel: Yeah, exactly.

Matt: Having yourself, if it's you against the world and you're also with the world and you're all against you, it's a really tough spot to be in. And at the same time, I think we all can appreciate that feeling. I mean, let's be frank, the last three plus years has been tough for people from all walks of life, from all socioeconomic backgrounds and situations. Yes, some clearly more than others. But I can't think of a time when my collective community and I'm very blessed. Like, I have lots of friends who are very conscious that are into self development, mindfulness meditation, psychedelics, and everything in between. And it's been a tough go for everybody as they've tried to reconcile how they want to show up in a world that at first was very socially isolating. So those of my friends who were extroverts really struggled during the early parts of the Pandemic, whereas folks like me, who are more introverted, thriving, like loving the introversion of being locked in my apartment. Um, but then as things started to return back to some degree of normal and there was this latency around social connection, people struggled in trying to reconnect, or may have recalibrated what was important to them in their lives, whether it's the things that they spend their time doing or the people that they surround themselves with. And all the things you're talking about occurred in a very tight time frame and was done through external constraints in a lot of cases, which prompted a lot of people to really ask some more difficult questions. And I'm not sure if it's easier to do that collectively, as we all did over three years, and many people made those decisions and questions, or if it's more difficult for someone like yourself to do it out of sync with the broader population. Because obviously, going into the Pandemic, you had a I'll call it more developed toolkit for transformation personally than other individuals who didn't. But I'd be curious, what was your experience in the three years of the Pandemic? Did you feel better prepared going into that situation? I mean, we couldn't predict it was going to be three years, but when things started to go sideways and you started to realize, okay, this is not a weekend where I have to stay inside my house because smog is bad, did you feel more prepared for that? Did you feel apprehension that you may have been seeing some regression? What was your headspace at, ah, going into that period of time?

Matt: In 2020?

Daniel: I was actually one of the people that happened to be in a jurisdiction.

Daniel: That wasn't as restrictive.

Daniel: So I've been in Mexico since 2018 and the particular state that I've been based in of in Mexico, we were locked down for about six weeks, and then after that, it wasn't too bad, actually. Not wide open. I mean, there were restrictions on the numbers of people. We had face masks and social distancing.

Daniel: In, like, grocery stores and stuff like that. But restaurants were open, hotels were open.

Daniel: I could still go and get spa day.

Daniel: It was a bit more tricky. So when people really share some of.

Daniel: The horror stories that people have had during pandemic, I mean, the suicide rates were more people died of I think more teenagers died of suicide in the US. Than actually died of COVID-19 or something crazy like that. The numbers are wild, and I'm not statistician, I'm just quoting, but wasn't really that bad for me at all. I didn't travel internationally, which was a little bit challenging because I'm used to sort of moving around a little bit. But Mexico is a big country.

Daniel: My family and I, we went to.

Daniel: Different parts of Mexico and enjoyed trips.

Daniel: I have a COVID baby.

Daniel: My son's two and a half now, so he was conceived at the front.

Daniel: End of COVID So it was interesting.

Daniel: Having me be in one physical place rather than my normal bit of traveling and whatnot, but, uh, my business did better than ever. We grew very well over those couple of years.

Daniel: A lot of time with family members.

Daniel: Of my family were able to come and visit me from the UK and other parts of the world because Mexico was receiving people without restrictions and so on and so forth. So I didn't really have a very COVID experience. I actually had bit of an inconvenience.

Daniel: Here and there, but not really all that bad at all.

Daniel: Some might say you manifested that because of where you were at. I would say that I'm grateful for.

Daniel: It, and had I been in a.

Daniel: More challenging situation, I feel confident that I would have had tools to at least do okay.

Daniel: Obviously, you can't predict what you'll be.

Daniel: Like in a situation when it's there.

Daniel: And present for you, but I think.

Daniel: I've been in enough dark spaces with the work that I've done to know.

Daniel: That, um, I would have done okay.

Daniel: With the tools that I have.

Matt: Let's poke a bit at Mexico.

Daniel: Yeah.

Matt: So I did my MBA partly in Mexico, so I have a familiarity. Mexico City beautiful. For those who haven't visited beautiful city like, so underrated, amazing. Yes. The kidnappings are not as frequent.

Daniel: We've got over the madness of the 90s. We've got over the madness of the 90s. You're not going to get kidnapped.

Matt: But there is in Chicago, and there is in London, and there is in other places.

Daniel: Right, exactly.

Matt: There are sketchy places and architecturally and the culturally and culinarily like, oh, I ate soap with the tortilla for about six weeks straight. Just amazing. That aside, having done my MBA split between four countries canada, the United States, Mexico, and Brazil, I got a chance to see the Americas in a really cool context. And among many of the, uh, observations I had about those four countries, mexico, to me, is probably the country with and I mean this with the most.

Matt: Positive comments, had the least amount of structure.

Daniel: Yeah.

Matt: For someone like yourself who says that you naturally gravitate towards systems and structure, I'm really curious why you ended up in Mexico and not Germany or Austria or Japan or countries that are much more systems oriented in their thinking. How did you end up in Mexico?

Daniel: I went for three days and didn't leave the Los Cabos, so I went.

Daniel: For three days back in the, uh, third Q, three of 2018. Went for three days. Had my first ten K month kick in that week. I was happy every day. There were various little synchronicities.

Daniel: I'd just done this, like a third.

Daniel: Of a number of readings and different psychic things where tigers kept coming up. I'm staying at my friend's house. They forgot a tiger skin that they were keeping for someone on the balcony outside the room that I had.

Daniel: I get the gooseies. Yeah.

Daniel: Was just like, well, uh, at the time I was a digital nomad. It's like well, I can be anywhere. Why am I not going to be where I'm happy all the time? And so I would go and travel and do what I had to do. And then I lived out of a hotel there for about a year and a half. And then I got a place and stopped pretending that I don't live there. And then five years later, here we are.

Daniel: Let's talk a bit about the podcast.

Matt: You're now based in Mexico. Yes, you've got the program, you've got the book, but you've also got the podcast. Talk a bit about the origin story for Know. What was the inspiration behind it, what are the guest profiles? Look, you know, what are you achieving with it?

Daniel: So, initially, the podcast came from a conversation. I'd have a friend of mine, Jad.

Daniel: And IA, we've been obsessed with books.

Daniel: This is back in 2016. We're both book nerds, and for many years, I've read a minimum of about 40 books a year, sometimes more. Now with audiobooks and stuff, I'm sometimes consuming a couple of books at a time because when I'm driving, I can.

Daniel: Be listening, and so on and so forth.

Daniel: And so we started discussing and have these really great conversations about books that we're reading and started to just record them for posterity. And I was like, this is before podcasts were really popular, and it's like, we should do a podcast. I was like, yeah, uh, he's like, well, you should do a podcast and have me on your podcast. And so, uh, I got all the branding and everything done for this. Do it with Dan podcast on the back of that. And then he ended up moving back to Toronto because the girl that he.

Daniel: Was with before War, that he'd come back, she was pregnant, and she let him get back.

Daniel: He went back to Toronto to be.

Daniel: With lady and stuff.

Daniel: And so I kind of just parked it. Fast forward now to 2017 when the noise to come and share this material started getting louder and louder. And I tried to do a deal with the universe. I'm like, hey, so I'm going to do some speaking and do a book, but then that's going to be it. And one of the things I realized was that nobody's going to give me a stage.

Daniel: I need to show that I've got.

Daniel: Something worth speaking about. And so the podcast became the platform first to showcase my speaking, and then I started doing my own events. And then with the books, I published my own books to the point where.

Daniel: Now we've got a deal with a proper publisher.

Daniel: But yeah, the podcast was initially me just having a platform to show that I've got something worth saying and then ended up having really conversations with people. And the earlier podcast episodes were really me sharing some of my journey, sharing some of my work, but me just having cool conversations with cool people for the last, I want to say two or three years, it's really just been cool conversations with cool people that's kept me quite full. But now recently, we're just taking a pause for summer. But recently I've started showing clips from workshops that I've done and stuff like that on there as well to share the work. But it's just been interesting conversations of interesting people that are empowering us to drop our stories about abundant and intentional.

Daniel: Living, inspiring us and motivating us with their stories, and really just giving us.

Daniel: Guidance and tips and strategies that we can use to live more abundant, joyful, purpose driven life. And that's what the podcast has been. It's been a really fun experience.

Matt: I'm so glad you said that. Not monetization lead with that. I had somebody on the show recently, that's what they led with. And I was like, uh, that seems like the wrong intentions to bring to a conversational vehicle like a podcast. And as somebody who has a similar story to yourself, my intention was always to use it as a vehicle to connect with people and have cool conversations in long format and to share a bit of myself, but also to learn more about other people. And it's one of the reasons why I'm very intentional about having diversity on the podcast. Like, I set a goal every year with my team to say, how many countries of origin can we have guests from so we can learn more about different parts of the world, or how can we learn about different professional backgrounds and experiences? So we've had neuroscientists and poets and theater actors and comedians and HR professionals and everything in between because selfishly, I like having cool chats with cool people.

Daniel: This has been another one. Thank you so much for your time. What's next for you, Daniel?

Matt: Like, what's next on your horizon. Things are going well in Mexico. The book's out podcast is Know what's next for you.

Daniel: I moved into filmmaking last year, and so I was working with in the.

Daniel: Sphere of a guy called Nick Nanton who's won, like, 30 Emmy Awards for documentaries. He's like an amazing filmmaker. I was able to invest in his studio, um, and sort of get behind the scenes on the production of things. And we started filming my first documentary last year. We finished filming that.

Daniel: We're doing the score and editing that now. We've signed a distribution deal with Amazon.

Daniel: So yeah, that's called manifest nation. I've interviewed a tenured neuroscientist, a medical biochemist, and Dr. Keith is one of the scientists who developed the MRI machine. And from a scientific perspective, we've interrogated the whole concept of manifestation.

Daniel: That's been a lot of fun.

Daniel: So, yeah, that's it, really.

Daniel: For me.

Daniel: I put a pause on doing events at the moment. Not really launching anything in terms of new things. Really want to consolidate with the rerelease.

Daniel: Of the book and the movie, have some space, and then see what 2024 holds.

Daniel: That's kind of where I'm at right now.

Matt: Where can folks find you if they.

Matt: Want to get a hold of you?

Daniel: Dreamwithdan.com. Easiest place to find me.

Matt: Love it.

Daniel: Dan, great chat.

Matt: Uh, great conversation. Thank you so much for your time and sharing a bit about yourself with us.

Daniel: Thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.

Matt: BentoHR is a digital transformation consultancy working at the intersection of strategy, technology, and people operations. We partner with organizations, private equity and venture capital firms to accelerate value creation and identify the organization's highest leverage initiatives. And this can take place in many forms, from strategic planning and alignment to technology procurement, implementation, and integration, along with organizational design, process reengineering, and change management. With our our proven track record of working with complex high growth organizations, we provide a Ah lens that goes beyond the balance sheet, increasing enterprise readiness, resilience, and value. For more information, check us out@bentohr.com.