How To Talk To Other Humans With Daniel Mangena

 

Talking to people can be really difficult for some people. Most people have to resort to small talk just to get the conversation going. Others just aren’t comfortable because they can get asked questions they don’t want to answer. Talking is hard and that’s okay. You just have to find what language works for you and create boundaries around that. Join Whitney Lauritsen as she talks to Daniel Mangena about communication and how people can get more clarity in their life. Daniel is a successful entrepreneur, best-selling author, and podcast host of Do it with Dan and Beyond Success. Learn more about how you can be more direct with your goals and that there is more than one way to do things. Understand the true meaning of abundance today!

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How To Talk To Other Humans With Daniel Mangena

I was saying to my guest, Daniel, before we started the show that the conversation we had in the past leading up to this moment is probably the most unique out of any guest I’ve had because I felt an instant connection, ease, and vibe that I don’t know if I’ve ever experienced with a guest I haven’t met before. You and I are essentially strangers. I started to feel curious about why that was.

I asked Daniel, just to jump right into it, knowing that you have Asperger’s. I naturally just started to wonder, does that account for it? Is the way your brain works when it comes to communication common for people on the spectrum who do not want any small talk? Do you think that’s why it’s so easy to just jump right in and skip over all of the awkwardness and the, “How are you?” type of conversation?

What do you think is the purpose of small talk, in your opinion?

Even the phrase small talk makes me uncomfortable. I detest it deeply. When I started researching autism, I’m like, “Wait a second.” This is starting to make sense because I can’t stand it. I don’t even understand the purpose, to be honest. I would do anything to avoid that surface-level chat. If I had to pick a purpose, I would say it’s to make people feel more comfortable or so that people don’t have to get uncomfortable. What do you think?

I personally feel that the purpose of small talk for a lot of people is filling the gap. It’s not the thing to do. Why don’t you just get to the point? There are social niceties that are constructed and they have a purpose in their construction. It’s like, “How are you?” You don’t really care how the person’s doing. You don’t care what’s going on with their kids. You want to know the thing, but we follow these social constructs in order to, “What’s going on with the kids? Have you sent my check yet?” like you wouldn’t know if they’ve sent the check. We could get into it.

Most people in my life know I’m not going to be disingenuous. If I ask you about your kids, I care about your kids. If I don’t care about the kids, I’m going to send a text, “Have you sent the check yet?” Ultimately, there’s a discomfort with having things be what they are. It’s like you just want to ask the question, but we’ve got all these social constructs, like, “I cannot just ask the question. I must go and ask about the grandchildren or whoever.” That’s my thought.

This is me, too. If I don’t feel like I have to meet any social construct, I will ask people questions that often make them uncomfortable, but that’s my natural tendency. I don’t want to warm up to it. I don’t want to have any like BS. I just want to get answers and get to know them. Some people are uncomfortable and they’ll even call me out like, “How dare you ask me something like that?” I’m thinking, “Why is it that we’re not allowed to ask those kinds of questions?”

There’s an inability to hold a boundary or to know what you’re uncomfortable with or to say, “Thanks for asking that question. I don’t feel comfortable answering it. Can we move on to the next one?” I’m not going to be like, “You asked me how many sexual partners I had in my life live with a podcast.” If you don’t want to answer the question, don’t answer the question. If it’s irrelevant, be irrelevant. Maybe it could be cheeky. Who knows where this is going to go? There are a lot of discomforts, fluff, and frills. Let’s get to the thing. Two humans are having a conversation. We don’t know where it’s going to go, but we know that something cause is going to come out of it.

If you don't want to answer a question just say, 'Thanks for asking, I don't really feel comfortable answering it. Can we move on?' Click To Tweet

I’m glad that you said that about boundaries because that’s exactly how I feel, too. I was hanging out with some people that I grew up with and asking some questions as I normally do. One of my friends was like, “I don’t think that you should be asking people that.” I thought, “How about instead, you say that that’s your boundary, but it’s not about putting a judgment on the question. I will respect the boundary if you set it, but to judge the question itself doesn’t make sense to me.” That goes back to when you and I were talking before the show. You were sharing some things you learned about social dynamics. Can you tell me more about that?

I’m going to give you a bit of backdrop. That’s going to add a bit more context probably. When I was diagnosed at 27, one of the things I remembered was something that my guitarist had shown me 6 or 7 years before something like that. He was a nerdy geek that learned how to talk to girls and pick up hot girls because he learned about this thing called being a pickup artist.

I looked at the stuff before, but it didn’t really vibe with me, and then it hit me. There’s a step-by-step process of how to open up a conversation with a human and to take it either to intimacy or in the pickup artist world, they tell you that the reason why a lot of guys get friend-zoned is that they built too much comfort in a particular state. They don’t build enough sexual tension.

I said, “If I build too much comfort and don’t deliberately don’t engage a sexual tension, I can create a series of friend-zone situations.” I ended up making a lot of friends with girls because I understood how to comfortably open up a conversation, develop connections, and build non-sexually charged intimacy at a deep level over time.

That took me into understanding a bit where all of that kind of came from and then started learning about social dynamics or what a guy called Dr. Eric Berne, who wrote a very good book called Games People Play because most people are running out these social construct programs and they’re doing it unconsciously. You can almost predict certain ways that people are going to go in certain situations because they’re going to be following, generally speaking, one of several maps.

When you understand those maps, then for me, the anxiety that was wrecking my life around social constructs and interaction completely disappeared because, all of a sudden, I’m no longer going blind. It’s like, “This is a social situation. This person is probably going to go this way. That person is probably going to go that way,” then I can use my ability to talk to women and I can have like an anchor in the situation.

If I’m in a group of 50 people, I can do this and do that. Over time, what happened was that as I got deeper into my spiritual practice, then I developed the ability to build heart-based connections. The anxiety was gone because I understood the constructs. That could engage my brain, then it could fill with these heart-based energy connections with people and play in that space.

That’s been helpful for you as a podcaster. You and I also talked before like neither one of us want to have super planned out formulaic conversations, but you’re describing it as more of a structure versus formula. It’s not formulaic, but it’s a structure that can lead you towards the connection that you’re looking to have. Do you find that that’s helped you in professional settings like a podcast?

 

I had a CEO of quite a big corporation. He’s coming to my podcast. Her team was like, “We’d like to have the questions about all of the things.” I’m like, “There are no questions. We’re having an organic conversation. We are going to speak about her, her work, and her book. That’s what’s going to happen. It’s going to be amazing.” Some people get anxious about that. Some people try to send me when I’m a guest, “This is what I’m going to ask you.” I’m like, “Don’t tell me. Let’s be present and have a conversation. That will be good.”

Do you feel like what I was wondering towards the beginning of this is the difference between neurodivergence and neuro-typical people, or do you feel like that’s just a difference in terms of unique communication styles or knowledge about communication? Why do you think it is that some people operate that way versus the way that you and I prefer?

It’s the need for control for many people. It’s like, “I need to control the situation, the dynamics of it, or what’s happening. I need to have all of the information in order to be okay.” That shows up in both neurodivergence and neuro-typical people. For me, before all of this, I would have needed to have that information in order to try and gather some form of safety, but now that I understand myself, I don’t want that. I want to be in a free flow.

We’re on a show. That’s the structure. I don’t need to know anything more than that. You’re a human. I’m human. We both speak the same language. If you ask me a question I can’t answer, I say I can’t answer it. If you ask me a question that I don’t want to answer, I’ll say, “I don’t want to answer that question.” For the most part, I do my best to be an open book, be in flow, and have the intention of being a service to the people who are going to tune in to that episode.

I love the way that you think about these things. I’m curious to go back to when you got diagnosed, you said it was at 27. What was the journey like to get there? What was life before diagnosis? What led you to get evaluated?

It was a complete active divine providence. I got diagnosed. I’ve been suffering from severe dental anxiety and severe social anxiety. I have had bad bouts of insomnia my entire life. I was in the throes of one. I went to see the doctor because all of my normal over-the-counter remedies weren’t working. It had been a couple of weeks and I hadn’t had a proper night’s sleep.

The doctor says, “I’m going to give you Zopiclone,” which in the UK is one of the strongest sleeping medications that they can prescribe. He said, “I’m going to give you three tablets because that’s as many as I can give you. You can’t take any more than two. One will be fine. If not, take another half and you’ll be fine.” I took two and we’re still wide awake. I go back to the doctor. He says, “You need to talk to someone then because there’s clearly something that was going on.”

He referred me to a therapist. It so happened that that therapist was a cognitive behavioral therapist that specialized in working with adults with autism. She recognized that something was up. It’s funny because since then, I’ve dated people who work with neurodivergent people. I’ve had friends who’ve had family members and stuff.

Don't try and force harmony. If it's forced, it's not really harmony. Click To Tweet

Now there are many clues that were there the whole time that if you know, then you know. It so happened that Dr. Helen McEwan, who I love forever, saw and was like, “There are some clues here. Let’s dive a bit deeper.” She didn’t tell me what she was looking for. She was just giving me different tests and asking me different questions. After about a month, she had me take an assessment and I scored high.

What were some of the clues? What were some of the major standout things, looking back that make it seem so clear?

For example, even in terms of how I speak. I could speak to someone and I can tell if they might be on the spectrum by how they communicate. The way the sentences are structured, the way that they move in and out of breaks in conversation, and the way that cuts in and out of the conversation are structured. Even silly little things like stemming because our nervous systems are quite highly strong.

Most of the time, you’ll find that maybe you shake your leg or maybe you tap or something because the nervous system is trying to regulate. There are little things like that. Even behavioral patterns in terms of how certain OCD traits will cross over into other parts of life as well. It’s like a cross-spectrum and to see even how somebody thinks. Sometimes you can look at how somebody thinks and approaches different discussions and problems. You can see they may have some traits going on.

I’m especially curious about the thinking side of it because I’ve taken some assessments so far. I want to get a bigger evaluation through a professional, but there are a lot of qualities, some of what you listed that I’ve experienced, but it’s the thinking that feels like the biggest clue for me that something’s different, whether it’s autism or some other form of neurodivergence, I don’t know. People of my whole life just pointed out how I think differently. What are some different ways of thinking that you identify neurodivergent people and yourself?

Personally, I need things to be structured. If there’s no structure, I’m lost, but something is structured. I become like the wizard. If you give me anything systemized, I can learn it. If there’s no system or structure in how something is applied, I can’t do it at all. I’ll give you an example. My son’s mom likes to do everything at the last minute. Probably one of the reasons why we’re not together anymore. He is like, “Everything’s going to be okay.” That’s not good for my nervous system.

One of my best friends, Jade. She looks at my schedule, which gives her anxiety. For me having those books where I have my free form within those books, but I’ve got those books. I’m already mapping out my 2023 because we work in 1s and 0s, almost a mentor thing. There’s always a reason why something is being done. We don’t generally, “I’m just going to do this thing.” There’s a reason why we do the thing without reasons to be done. Generally speaking, you can see that there’s more of intentionality that’s demanded of how we approach things and that intentionality doesn’t necessarily have to be life-changing intentionality, but generally, there’s intentionality.

I’m sitting over here, nodding my head to everything you just said, because it’s interesting from a different standpoint. It’s acknowledging the things that helped me thrive and looking back at the situations in which I haven’t thrived. It’s often because of disorganized systems. Now it seems like most things are disorganized and that will give me some anxiety.

 

I start to try to create systems out of like everything I do, blocking, and all of that you’re describing. I want to circle back to what you said about when other people see those systems. It seems to give them anxiety. It’s almost like they have the opposite view. How do you manage that when somebody else says, “That’s too much for me.” How do you find harmony with somebody who thinks completely differently than you?

I don’t try to force harmonies. If it’s forced, it’s not harmony. If harmony doesn’t exist, it doesn’t exist. See you next lifetime. Maybe next time we reincarnate, we’ll be best friends. At this one, I’ll honor you to the point where I’m dishonoring myself and I’d invite you to do the same. If you can’t honor me without dishonoring yourself, then what are we doing here?

Some people might, “That’s cold, Daniel. You’re a cold-hearted man.” I’m saving everybody the heartbreak of us down the road. It’s like when people want to be your best friend immediately, without knowing anything about you. At some point, you’re going to have to make the decision as to whether you like me or not, then either you’re going to continue being a fake best friend or you’re not going to be my friend anymore. Why don’t we just take our time to get to know each other before you come to my mother’s house for dinner or whatever? These are basic principles.

I love that point about honoring yourself though, and not forcing things because I’ve gone through my life up. This is part of where the neurodivergent research has been interesting for me. It seems like suddenly I’m looking through a lens that I’ve never looked through before, or maybe not a lens, but realizing that you don’t have to force things into a way that doesn’t fit you was the big a-ha.

I’ve gone through it. I’ve been doing personal development work since I was about sixteen. I was reading Think and Grow Rich and Psycho-Cybernetics at 16 or 17 years old. There are a lot of contexts that I have around how people sometimes approach stuff based on those years of reading and learning. So many people are like, “I have to do it this way. I need to have these friends. I need to have these social constructs. I need to have this and that.” You don’t need to have that. If you could let go of these “I need to have” narratives and stories, then maybe you’ll be a bit freer to explore what life might look like without all of these toxins that people are giving themselves.

I’ve also been interested in personal development for a large part of my life, yet learning about it almost made me feel more trapped because a lot of personal development feels pretty rigid. Do you see it that way, too, this idea of you have to do it this way to get that result?

That’s informed the way that I do my work when I’m sharing, what I do around abundance, and consciously creating my own reality. One of the key components of the work I teach is something called money DNA. It completely rejects this idea that there is a singular way to do things instead. What we do is empower people to understand their unique way to create a unique way to find flow, and understand how these components of how they operate as a human come together to lead to the result of success or whatever outcome they’re seeking to achieve.

I reject that. I don’t believe in the cookie-cutter approach. I think it is poppycock. If anyone just checks the numbers on it, you’ll see that it’s probably two people who aren’t going to create the same way. They’re not going to have success the same way. They’re not going to make their business work the same way. It’s nonsense.

Once you understand how one thing is created, you can create anything. Click To Tweet

Tell me more about how you guide people towards figuring out what’s going to work for them.

I don’t care about money. I’m here to talk about my soul. I wanted to understand something. Once you understand how one thing is created, you can create anything because, at the end of the day, there’s not a different playbook for creating different things. Everything is created the same way. We just happen to have this distorted lens through which we’re seeing these different things created and then get the illusion that, “These different things are created in different ways.” How we find flow around money is exactly how we find flow as an individual. Money gives us a measurable way to track that. Call it creation DNA or abundance DNA, but we’ve got five pillars.

One is the vehicle. How do you, as an individual, find flow vehicle-wise? What’s going to work for you? Are you a person who wants one friend or multiple friends? Are you a person that thrives in a monogamous relationship or in more non-traditional relationship types? Who knows? Are you a person that likes aerobic exercise or anaerobic exercise? It’s all going to be different for each and every person.

Funny story on that. I was working with an online coach for my fitness. I stumbled into the ketogenic diet a little while before. I was feeling good on this keto diet. I start working on this. He’s like, “Keto is rubbish. You need carbs. You’re going to die.” Having eaten carbs upon 20 pounds, it took me a year and a half to get off, went and got my DNA checked and it turned out I am perfectly opted to optimize for the ketogenic diet. My body doesn’t like processing sugars and carbs. It prefers to process fats. Who knew? I did after doing the test.

Number two is the role. Each of us has got skills and particular attributes that we can apply to do different tasks. When we understand what those skills are, we can adapt to our role. Some of us are leaders, followers, ideas people, and operational people. When we have that, we can have flow. Each of us has a different languaging that our unconscious mind is going to hear in order to create an internal coherence. Some people thrive on verbal. Their love language is going to be words of affirmation. Some people need to see things in order for the unconscious mind to accept it.

We use love languages to map this particular piece. I’m an act of service. I need to see movement through time and space, then we’ve got decisions. We all process information in our energy field differently. Some people are running around making gut decisions, thinking that’s the way to do it when your body and soul communicate at a slower pace. In making gut decisions, you’re probably going to have an egoic conclusion.

The fifth pillar is action and transformation. Every single one of us has a different way to elicit action from ourselves. Some people need to be held accountable. If they’re held accountable, it’s going to be a torment. Some people need to be in the community. Some people work better by themselves. When you understand that, you can find your own unique flow.

First of all, the keto comment is interesting because I have done Keto off and on for the past years. A number of people were critical of that and making all these judgments around it, but I felt so much better doing that. At this point in my life, I don’t feel that I can do it in quite the rigid way that I used to, maybe because of my food texture and flavor for me. I have a lot of sensory particularities. Sometimes the keto food doesn’t feel good for me to consume, and some of the textures and flavors of some of the alternatives when you go onto more processed keto foods.

 

The amount of criticism that people gave me for experimenting with Keto is frustrating. I developed some insecurities around it, but I suspect that my body thrives on it because I don’t like sugary foods, except occasionally. For the sugary foods, I can also enjoy Stevia, monk fruit, or some of the other non-carby sugary foods, but I’m not drawn to fruits. I would so much rather eat avocado, coconut, and higher-fat nuts and stuff. That excites me, but fruit, I’m like, “No. Is this a clue, too?” I’m curious what tests did you do that helped you identify that about your body?

It’s IDLife, where they do a DNA test and they tell you what you’ve got any propensities for based on your genetics, the exercise that will be good for you, and also different foods are good for your body or not so good for your body. It’s things that you might have a natural, allergy allergic reaction to. It all came up in it. It’s like $120 for the test. Results come back in about ten days.

That ties into what you touched upon. I want to get some more clarity on this. Maybe for certain people following your gut is not the right answer. Did I understand that right? Tell me more about that.

The model that we use for that is Human Design. In Human Design, there are different ways that you process. You’ve got different authorities in Human Design and we process data through the body in different ways. This is leaving the mind out there and looking at how the body processes data. You’ve got sacred types like me, where the truth shows up in our body instantly at the moment.

You’ve got solar plexus types that need time for their energy field to settle into the truth of a question. The solar plexus should sleep on it, walk away, and come back to it. For me, if I walk away, my brain is going to kick in. Whereas the solar plexus-based person, if they answer immediately, the brain that’s going to be responding versus their body, giving them the truth.

I’ve heard of Human Design, but I’m not extremely familiar with it.

It’s a rabbit hole. Be careful. To all the readers, be careful. It’s a very deep, dark rabbit hole that you could maybe not come out of. For the work that we do, we just use the type of strategy and the authority for the top line. We are working with people a little bit deeper, then we’ll look at defined, undefined centers and other things, too. When we’re doing the top line in order to get a result, you need those three pieces of information. You don’t need to get lost in the rabbit hole of Human Design.

I enjoy rabbit holes. They’re not always the best use of my time, but I hyper-focusing. It is satisfying for me. If I can just sit down and obsess over something for hours, it scratches some itch in my brain.

If you're designing the life that you love then love it. Click To Tweet

I’ve lost some nights to research before, “It’s 5:00 in the morning. Where did the time go? I don’t care because I am happy.”

When you use the term Asperger’s for yourself, from my understanding, that’s no longer a term used professionally, is that true? Why or why not use that word versus autism or ASD?

They change their minds every five seconds. There’s always a new phrase or a word or something new politically. I learned Asperger’s. I’m going to use that until somebody is being offended by it that I care about.

Maybe it is different in the UK. You’re based in a few different areas, but given that you spend so much time internationally, which is something else I want to touch upon if you’re interested in this is how the medical systems are different. Did you get diagnosed in the UK and have you spent time in the US and seen different treatments or philosophies on divergence?

There are a lot of ideas, some call them conspiracies, about the way that things work with the medical field or the US or whatever, but it’s big business. I watched something that said that big pharma was the construct of John D. Rockefeller. I don’t know about all of that, but I do know that America, as a general principle, is more profit-driven. It isn’t necessarily bad unless when it’s profit at the expense of humans and their life, and we have seen that happen a little bit in the US. He says a little bit because he doesn’t want to get sued. There’s more of a propensity to what can we give you drugs for in the US, take a pill, than in other parts of the world that I spend time in.

It’s fascinating and it feels complicated as an American to try to get to the root of this because there are also a lot of things that are hard to do because they’re so expensive, like access to good quality. Medical care is generally dependent on how much money you can spend or what insurance you have. There are all of these factors. Is that something in the UK? It doesn’t sound like it is.

We have the National Health Service. For the most part of my adult life, I’ve invested in private health care. That’s something that I’ve made the choice to do personally, as long as I could afford to do so. The ordinary person can get all of the help that they need through the National Health Service in the UK. The taxes and national insurance contributions do go to taking care of that.

It’s not something that you end up finding that like, “Do you need a heart transplant? Sorry. You haven’t got the right insurance. You’re dying now.” That hasn’t happened in the UK. Are there waiting lists? Yes. Does it mean that you’re not going to get the same as somebody who’s paying for a private hospital or whatever? Of course, you’re not going to get the same, but you’re not going to get left in the street to die because you don’t have health insurance.

If you're designing the life that you love then love it. Click To Tweet

In the States, it feels confusing at times, and it’s frustrating to hear about the way things operate in other countries. Speaking of other countries, it sounds like you travel a lot. Where are you now? Where are you going to next?

By the time this comes out, I’ll have finished traveling. I’m heading out to the Middle East. I’ve got some business out there. I’m headed out to the Middle East via Europe. It is quite a long trip from here. I hang out with some friends in Spain first, then I’m going to head out to the Middle East, for a little bit then I’m co-facilitating a retreat in Santa Greece, then I head back to Mexico and spend some time with my boy.

What is it like for you to travel around a lot? What’s your experience, especially with your work, but also on a personal level, given communication styles? Do you notice different types of treatment in different countries? Do you find yourself drawn to certain cultures and areas of the world that feel more in alignment with yourself?

I tend to go to places that I enjoy being in. I don’t tend to go to places that I don’t like to go to. It’s like, “That’s going to be a virtual event.” The whole thing for me is if you’re designing the life that you love, then love it. You are making your own job. Why are you going to make your job that you don’t like? The places that I go to and that I enjoy going back to.

I tend to have social networks there. I tend to get along with the local culture or at least be able to, create my own subculture within it that doesn’t impede my quality of life. I do my best to respect the local culture and language as much as possible. I am based primarily in Mexico. I do my Duolingo every day. I speak as much Spanish as I can or whatever. I don’t go around like, “I’m English. Are you going to speak English? Do you know what I mean?” That’s how I do my international job.

I love Duolingo and I started speaking studying Spanish. It feels so simultaneously empowering, but respectful when you can study and understand the culture and language and try to meet people where they’re at. I’m curious, why did you pick Greece for a retreat? What is this retreat comprised of?

Thankfully, I didn’t pick it. Someone else was running the retreat and asked me to come and hang out and bring some abundant stuff to the thing. We’ve done some virtual stuff before. She and I are good friends. I was in Italy with her and her husband. She’s like, “I’m doing the thing in Greece. Do you want to come and play with it?” I’m like, “Yes. Let’s do the things.” I’m going to come and do the thing as well. I’m going to be bringing my work around the alchemy of abundance to the event. There’s going to be a smaller event with about 15 or 16 people we’ve got registered. We’re going to go and hang out and dive in.

I would love a little taste of what you’re going to teach there because when you’re talking about all this travel, a lot of people feel that finances or abundance is a barrier to travel. What is it that you’re teaching, but perhaps in addition, or before you get to that, maybe you can share, how did you get to a place in your life where you’re financially able to do so much travel or you set that structure up for yourself to make that happen frequently?

Clarity is one of the most undervalued blocks that people experience on the road to any goal. Click To Tweet

I’m blessed. My personal development business is a multi-seven-figure business. It’s a successful business, which I’m grateful for. We get to touch a lot of lives. I’ve got other entrepreneurial stuff that I got over to real estate and stuff like that. Financially, I don’t have to worry about anything. That also puts me in a different position when doing something like personal development, where your people are coming to you with their issues and coming to with their life. I never have to sell anything to anyone. I genuinely, “Do you not want to buy anything? Okay. Do you want some free stuff? There you go.”

I’m not, “Buy my stuff.” I don’t care if you buy it. My life’s not going to change. You won’t change either, but my life’s not going to change if you don’t buy my stuff. It puts me in a different position in terms of making offers and being in value-based positions with people like this thing in Greece. I’m going to make some money on it, but maybe it’s going to cover my flight to get there. I want to go do the thing. I’ve never been to Greece before. I get to go play with cool people and share my work. I’m going to go and do the thing.

Out of the places I’ve been, Greece is a place I can’t wait to go back to because it has a feeling to it that I haven’t felt in many places that I’ve traveled. That’s an amazing place to do a workshop like that. Going back to it, tell me more about what this workshop is. What are you teaching? Do you get there as a teacher and feel where people are at? Do you have something in mind for what you’re going to be covering or what is it typically like?

If I’m running the workshop, it’s different. Because I’m coming in and being slotted in where I’m needed over the course of this event, it’s a bit different. I’m going to be following the lead of what Hailey wants for her attendees and supporting them with that. Ultimately, it’s going to come down to speaking about my build intention paradigm, my flow funnel, my alchemic process, maybe some money DNA, but ultimately just how can people be in a conscious relationship with what they’re creating in their life. That’s generally what it’s about and how to do that from a place of flow, fun, purpose, and meaning. That’s what I’m going to be getting into. It’s going to come down to the program that she’s delivering, then I’m going to be slotting in my bits alongside that.

When you’re teaching an abundance workshop, what is a common challenge, block, or obstacle, and what is it like for people after they go through a workshop like this, the before and after of where they’re at, and where can you take them through this knowledge? How do you see them transform?

It comes down to my experience. What have they gone into it for? The imperative nature of intentionality gets lost on some people. Often people just don’t get how big a role your goal and intention play in what you’re going to get as a result. If I go into something, “I’d like to be more abundant.” Do you even know what abundance means to you? How can you expect there to be a cognitive connection between an outcome and what you’re going to be receiving in the workshop, the program, or the course?

I find one of the first things that people have is a lack of direction. I don’t mean like, “I’d like to go generally in this direction.” I mean, where is it that you want to go? What is it that you want to do? What do you want to get as a result? If you don’t have those points, then I find people struggle to get something definitive from it. That’s when it’s like, “The program didn’t deliver much for me. I’m not sure I got anything out of it.” What did you come into it to get?

How can you have a conscious relationship to what you’re pulling from the content in order to meet that objective and the outcome? You can’t. You’re not going to get anything from it. When it comes to me doing stuff with people and my actual time and energy are going to be involved, you can’t go on my website and book to coach, it’s not possible. In terms of my one-on-one time, that doesn’t happen unless you’re in our community, and you’ve demonstrated that you’re ready and clear on what you want.

Business is business, but business needs to be done from a place of integrity. Click To Tweet

People pay $25,000 to spend a weekend working with me. You can’t even make that application without clarity on what you want and without someone from my team validating that’s what you want. I’m not going to take your money unless we know what we’re working on. That’s one of the most undervalued blocks that people experience and they write any goal.

By that you mean, clarity is one of the most undervalued. I would agree because it seems like a lot of people struggle with clarity. How does somebody get to more clarity? For example, with you, it sounds like there’s a community that they can be part of. Through that, they’re developing more clarity and then they get to a place where they know what they want. That’s when you can help them.

We’ve got different models that we take people through. We’ve got something called the ideal life blueprint that we take people through, where they can come to a lot of long-term workshops or they can grab some content from us. They can sit down and calculate what it is that they want. Unless you’ve got that, there’s going to be a glass ceiling on what you can come and do.

I don’t think it’s right that people take people’s money without even knowing how they’re going to be able to help them or if they’re even the person to help them. Sometimes people have clarity. That clarity leads me to understand, “I’m not your person. My content isn’t your content. My team is not your team, but here’s what you’re going to be looking for with the person, or here’s a suggestion for someone for you to talk to who may be your person.”

That’s refreshing to know because I have felt so fed up with the number of people online who just feel like they can help anybody and everybody is a fit for them. Their way is going to get everybody the same results. This cookie-cutter mentality is incredibly damaging. It’s disappointing that it has become such a big part of personal development because it gets people farther away from clarity.

Business is business, and there’s a business aspect to it. Business can be done from a place of integrity. If I were a mechanic, I wouldn’t run around taking people’s money fixing a car that’s not broken or that I don’t have the means to fix like, “I don’t know how to fix this car.” Yet, we’re not understanding that people are infinitely more unique than cars and more delicate in their composition. People running around banging on pipes, hoping that that’s going to work, is causing a lot of damage and it is sad. It is a business at the end of the day, but it can be a business that’s running on integrity.

Speaking of integrity and pathways to figure out what’s best for you, you have your podcast. I would love to know more about this community. What exactly is that like? How is that set up? If somebody wants to join after reading this conversation, can anybody just join it or is there another way to get in?

Run over to Facebook and join the Dream with Dan Facebook group. I do a live masterclass there most Tuesdays. Sometimes, I don’t have the space for it, but at least 3 out of 4 Tuesdays, you’ll see me on there doing a little masterclass. We’ve got prompts for people to build conversation and build connections around the concept of abundance. We have guests come in there and staff.

It's better for people to say, where have you been than why have you come again? Click To Tweet

We cross over things like my podcast. We’ll discuss things there. We’ll be doing stuff like challenges and whatnot. We’ll run those through the group as well. It’s about empowering people to live a more abundant, joyful purpose-driven life and giving them the resources to do that, giving them the inspiration, the motivation, the how-tos, and a community of people who are on the same road as well.

Community is incredibly powerful. I would imagine that it’s not just the power of your knowledge, wisdom, and structure, but usually, in those types of communities, you’re meeting incredible people who you can connect with, align with, learn from, and feel accountable. Is that only on Facebook? Is that the main platform for the community?

With my paid programs, we’ve got an app. The Micro 2 Millions is an app for the community to connect on the app. We did play with Mighty Networks and we’re building a community for the fund, the work that we do around financial freedom. Mighty Networks is an app, which doesn’t require Facebook. In terms of keeping it real and me giving free stuff, there’s a free platform for free stuff. At some point, maybe we’ll build something a bit more comprehensive, but at the moment, for that freeness, especially people that don’t know me, having something that they can, with very little stress, login, go, check and connect with is what we’ve got available.

It’s amazing. All these different platforms and all of that can become so overwhelming. It’s keeping it as simple as possible. I’m right there with you. I enjoy this, especially with other podcasters, because that is a perfect opportunity for me and for the reader to go listen to your podcast where they can immediately get more of you.

I think Ninon de l’Enclos is quoted as saying, “It’s better for people to say, ‘Where have you been?’ than ‘Why have you come again?’”

I’m curious about your podcast. Do you have a favorite episode off the top of your head or a topic? If someone wants to go somewhere and start listening quickly, what’s one that comes to mind for you, if any? Should they just start at the beginning and binge it all?

Obviously, binge, but check out some of the Q&A episodes, especially in year one, because I’ve been running the podcast since 2018. In some of the earlier Q&A episodes, I used to hang out with my friend, Em Hollis. She’d go and find questions for me online and ask them of me randomly. I’m answering these questions off the table for one hour. We’ve got about 14 or 15 of those episodes. It’s fascinating to know how I respond to stuff. They could see your Twitter apparently.

I also love the term, “Off the dome.” That’s good. We don’t use that much in the States, so I feel like I want to start using that more often. I am sadly going to wrap this up so that I can let you go on to the next part of your day and enjoy your time in Mexico with your family and everything else that’s coming forward for you. As the day comes to an end, thank you so much for being here and for being so raw, authentic, and just yourself. It’s been incredibly refreshing. The flow that I’ve experienced with you has been truly delightful. Thank you for making this lovely. We’ll wrap up here. Bye for now.

 

Important Links

• Daniel Mangena
• Games People Play
• Think and Grow Rich
• Psycho-Cybernetics
• IDLife
• Human Design
• Duolingo
• Dream With Dan – Facebook
• Mighty Networks

 

About Daniel Mangena

Daniel Mangena is a successful entrepreneur, best-selling author, podcast host of Do it with Dan and Beyond Success, a life & business transformation coach, and an international public speaker who is known for programs and content that take clients and students to next level living. He has helped thousands of people across the globe achieve wealth mastery and truly abundant lives.

Featured on CNN, CBS, FOX, the Jack Canfield show, and in Forbes and Entrepreneur magazines, Daniel’s mission is to spread his teachings worldwide with the intention to “spearhead an evolutionary uplift in universal consciousness by awakening people to the importance of their unique role and enabling them to manifest their dream life”.

 

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