72. Daniel Mangena Goes With The Flow

This week, I speak to Daniel Mangena, author, entrepreneur and motivational speaker.

Daniel describes his early relationship with money as a mixed one. His parents were Zimbabwe immigrants and they initially lived a comfortable lifestyle. However, through various business foibles, Daniel saw his family’s financial situation shifted from abundance to scarcity over the course of his upbringing.

Undergoing many highs and lows in his own business ventures, Daniel found himself exploring the path of mindset and manifestation when it comes to living a fulfilled life and crafting your own path.

Wishing to help others do the same, he has made it his mission to help people find an alignment with their dream life of abundance, joy and purpose.

You can check out more of Daniel and his work here.

Episode Transcript

0:05
Hello, and welcome to the real money stories podcast. I'm Jason Butler. And I invite you to join me as I have intimate money conversations with people from all walks of life. Whether you're just starting out on your money journey, or well down the track, there's bound to be something you can learn from these stories about taking more control of your money, so you worry less, and enjoy life more.

Real Money stories is sponsored by Vanguard, bringing value to 30 million investors worldwide. Visit Vanguard investor.co.uk for more details. And remember, the value of investments can go down, as well as up and you may get back less than you invest in.

Hello, thanks for joining me on another edition of real money stories. This week, I've got a really good interview with an interesting chap called Daniel magenta, very interesting backstory. And I think you're gonna get some interesting insights from that. This week, by the time you hear the podcast, it will be the budget in the UK, that's that's the time when the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the chap who controls the purse strings stands up and makes decisions and announcements about tax and spending and all that sort of stuff. And obviously, with the pandemic, we've got a big hole to fill. So there's a lot of conjecture about whether there's going to be tax raising measures, and what changes might be to benefits and spending. But I don't think there's going to be massive tax changes, there may be some trailed. And there may be some small changes around the edge on profits and capital gains, etc. But I think the charts they'll be signifying, basically, the direction of travel, and I think it's almost certain that we're gonna have tax rises, or some description, probably on profits and property and stuff like that. So quite, quite an uncertain time for many people. But here's the thing, you've got to keep focusing on moving forward, regardless of tax, you can't control that. You can't control stock markets, you can't control the economy, all you can do is control your actions, your thoughts, and your decisions. So before we get into the interview with Daniel, I thought I'd just share with you basically, some recent questions I've had on a recent financial wellbeing event. As you know, I do financial wellbeing events, most weeks for a range of employers. And the highlight is always the questions at the end live questions. I never know what I'm going to get. And so here's a few that came from last week's financial wellbeing event last week, but this is just just a few from one. And this is a an accounting firm, a big accounting firm. And these were just a handful of the questions that came in. So I'll tell you the question, and then I'll just give you the answer. as broadly as I gave it to the individuals, because I'm hoping that by answering these questions and sharing them with you on the pod, that they can help you or people you know, so one question here was, can you expand more on renting rather than buying? Now this is an interesting question renting versus buying, because we've got this psychological and cultural idea that renting is always wasting money. And buying is always the smart thing to do. And there's no question that, in the long run, it's always better to be buying your house that you live in than renting one. But there are times when you shouldn't be buying. So and where renting makes much more sense. So my view is that, where you need a lot of flexibility, or you're not in the position to be able to afford to buy, so you haven't got yourself organized with enough money behind you. If you still got debt, so you haven't expanded your income enough, then renting actually can make sense. And this also happens when you have changes in your life. Like say you got divorced, or there's been a death in the family, it's okay to take a breath, and let yourself adjust to the new reality of where you're in. So so my view is, it's always better to, to rent them by when you're not fully ready to buy. You've had a major change in your life that requires you to think about things, or you could use the money that you would otherwise sink into a property to build a business. And that's not often spoken about. Sometimes it can be better to just just rent a property and use capital that you would have otherwise used as your downpayment to build a business. And then you can buy as many houses as you want if you get that right. So I've got a blog on my website, Jason hyphen, butler.com. That explains more of that in more detail, buying versus renting. So have a look at that.

This is Oh, this is a similar question. This one was what would be your suggestions on saving for first time homebuyers in the UK? Well, again, if you want to buy a home and you're in the right position, and you and it's really something that matters to you and you you don't want to use the money to build a business and you haven't got non mortgage debt hanging around you. There my thoughts would be To build up a good chunky deposit, I know it's difficult and it's not easy. And I will be focusing all my energies on building that deposit and building the habits and behaviors that you need to be able to handle a mortgage on a home. But I would be, I would be thinking very carefully about being in the perfect position and being really ready to buy. So that means I'd have a mortgage agreement, in principle, I'd be looking at my credit score, I'd be looking at building savings or looking to get rid of stuff that I don't need, I'd be looking to raise my income, even if I have to do a part time job. And I'd be really super focused on building as much deposit as I can for my home purchase. And there are a number of government schemes Help to Buy Help to Buy equity loans, etc. that can help. But I'll be very careful about using those. And if you do use them, I would be basically making it my job over a course of a year even if I'm ready to buy to be making lots of cheeky bids. So most brand new homes that are purchased under Help to Buy type schemes are normally well overpriced to what they would be compared to a secondhand home that doesn't qualify. So the estimates are that those homes are overpriced by about 15 to 20%, I'd be looking to make bids of 20%, at least 20% below asking price at least. And I'd be looking to be making a bid probably every other week for a home. So So my advice would be get yourself in the position where you're super ready to buy, raise your income, drop your costs, build your savings, be super intentional, prove your credit score, make sure we got mortgage offer in principle, and then turn it almost into a part time job of finding a home that you could buy, putting cheeky bids in and waiting for someone to buy, you're looking for someone to be a really motivated seller. But it may be actually better for you to buy a secondhand home. That's not you know used home that's not under Help to Buy schemes. And again, trying to find a motivated seller, perhaps an estate where someone's died and someone wants to sell and get them hands on the money. So you're looking to find super motivated sellers. This other question was this one is regarding the emergency fund, would you invest this or keep it in a savings account? Well, I teach people that your emergency fund is for all those things that you can't anticipate that are probably going to happen at some stage, the boiler breaks down, not normal maintenance, but the boiler breaks down. Your car doesn't just need a service, it needs a complete new set of brake pads and discs and could be several 100 pounds. It's those calamities that you can't anticipate that come along and can throw you off course. So in that case, I would suggest that you keep it in cash. Yes, you won't get the upside if stock markets grow and or dividends come in, but you won't get the downside and you won't be hit by like we had in March 2020. When the stock market fell, I think it was maybe 40%. And if you need to get your hands on money, when the stock market has fallen that level and you can't wait for it to come back, then you're making a temporary loss in terms of markets have fallen to a permanent loss. So yeah, keep it in cash. And you're not really worried about what the interest rate is. It's just insurance against things going wrong. Now the question here, the 15%, gross income hang on no the 15% gross savings towards retirement, you said this shouldn't include any employer's contribution? Could you explain more? Yeah, so the idea here is that you just get used to is one of the money milestones putting 15% of your gross household income away for long term, whether that's through a pension scheme, or lifetime is or some other investment or buy to let property whatever it is. And the idea is you just get used to doing that, or that is just non non negotiable. That's a key thing, once you've got yourself an emergency fund, and you've got yourself out of any non mortgage debt. And the reason why we don't include the employer contribution in it is really simple, because you may have career breaks, when you're not working and earning, you might go self employed, in which case there is no employer contribution, you might find that you're working for an employer that

doesn't pay, you know, just pays the minimum. And you might find that the rules change in the future employers don't have to pay I mean, it could be a moratorium. So that's the reason why we don't recommend you include any employer contribution, see that as the icing on the cake. But the 15% can include tax relief that you get from the government all the time you get it because that's a year by year thing. And if the if the tax relief changes, then obviously you can tweak that. So in that case, 15% gross really is at least 12%. net if you're a basic rate taxpayer spent 9% if you're a high rate taxpayer. So that's there. And then the final one here was would you recommend debt consolidation loans? Well, if you have no mortgage debt, my advice is always to use the snowball method, which is where you line the debts up smallest to largest you put as much as you can into the smallest debt repayment and the minimum on everything else. Because what you're looking to do is get a sense of momentum, progress and build your confidence now I'm I'm open to the idea of you replacing larger non mortgage debt, which is very high interest rates that you're going to take a while to get to. Okay, I'm open to doing that, if it means that you can put more against the smaller debts and get rid of them and reduce the interest on that loan, but you're not really achieving anything other than potentially reducing the interest on it. And as long as you use the savings in the interest rate to Kane and get rid of the smaller, not those smaller debts out, then I'm open to that, but don't don't kid yourself and extend the debt and have lower repayments. So there we go there some money questions. If you've got a money question for me, you can send that to me via Jason hyphen butler.com. For the inquiries thing, you can direct message me on Twitter, or Instagram at JB the wealth men. Always happy to answer your questions, and I'll answer your question on the next podcast. Good. Okay, let's meet on let's get on to this week's interview with a very interesting chap, Daniel, magenta. Hello, and thanks for joining me on another edition of real money stories. I'm your host, Jason Butler. And this week, I've got someone who's in Mexico. And his name is Daniel Mangena. Hello, Daniel.

11:11
Hey, how you doing? Thanks for having with the show.

11:13
That's right now you probably noticed that Daniels got sounds like a London accent. So Daniel, just tell us where where you're in Mexico.

11:23
And while you're there. I live in Cabo, Mexico, basically paradise, I get to Macau and land into the water from my house every day. And suffice to say I got sick and tired of 40 in a day, and I live somewhere now. It only rains 12 days a year here. So really pretty nice. Yeah.

11:40
So you're on that you're on the on the ocean now on the coast sailing?

11:43
Yeah. Good. Good.

11:45
All right. Well, before we get into backstory, do you want to just tell us what you actually do. Now for most of your time, and what brings you joy? Sure. Well, I'm

11:55
brought joy by supporting people expanding the life that they live. I've been in personal development, the esoteric the mystical, the spiritual consciousness, for about 20 years, I started my journey quite young. And over that time, I've had some wins or losses with myself. But over the last particularly 10 or 11 years, I've been crafting together something I called the beyond intention paradigm. And that's a boss, that model that's really helped me to do a lot more with getting real world results with a lot of these tools. But over the last few years, as things have been popularized, since the secret came out, I've noticed that there's been a lot of people trying to use this stuff, and not really getting much by way of results. And I've made it my mission to show people that they can get results from this stuff, and teaching actually blogs, podcasts, speaking workshops, and so on.

12:49
Absolutely. So it sounds to me like you're very much in abundance and a growth mindset person, and we'll come back to that in a bit. Good. But take us back to, to the early days. And so, you know, this is all about this show, we're trying to break the taboo, we're talking about money, we're trying to share ups and downs and wisdoms and learnings and I'm learning. So, um, what's your earliest memory of money?

13:11
I mean, so I hadn't written mixed upbringing with money. My dad was successful, very early, my parents actually came over as immigrants not as economic immigrants of educated immigrants from Zimbabwe in the 70s. So that actually did very well in in property, and then lost everything over a period of about 15 years. So by the time my, my oldest sister who's eight years older than me, was getting into sixth form. That's when things started to go a bit downhill. So I came initially for quite an abundant experience. And then it kind of tail off. Now we're not talking to silver spoon, but you know, he had a few, few rental properties, had decent job, educated. And then it kind of went more into a bit of a lack and scarcity around I would say, at the time, I was maybe 12 or 13. And so that was my that was my background, parents very, very good questions, and there was a lot of money's, evil, and so on and so forth. So there was a lot of mixed ideas and ideologies that were fed to me. There was anything there wasn't anything about things coming in. It was all very much hard work hard work, hard work hard work. Very much black sheep in the family talking about this manifestation stuff, and but crafting my own path over the last. Over the last five years more publicly, I would say crafting my own path. I've made it last a couple of fortunes over my time. But this past few years has been very enlightening for me because it's very different. You being able to do something yourself and repeat it for yourself versus seeing something repeated in the lives of others, then you know that you've got something real and that Really actually helped me to live a more mundane life myself, which I found isn't so much about the money, but the quality of life, money just being the medium through which you can choose what their quality of life is. So let's

15:10
just stay there at moment because I'm fascinated as you know about the role of money in people's lives, and whether they give it power or not. And I've got a new book coming out next year called the money miracle, and I explore this a lot. This whole thing about people are putting off their happiness to this day when they have enough, or they're suddenly be financially free. Which, which I think is a misnomer. But let's go back to so that period, so you would have been about eight or nine when the decline was becoming clear, right. And as an individual, I mean, you know, you were at school, you were probably at the tail end of primary school. Did that how did that impact on you that kind of big, that changing of the guard, the Teutonic plank movement of your parents sort of situation going from quite comfortable, if not palatial, to, slightly more strengthened and tricky.

16:02
Generally, for anything, it's only when I look back, I actually have a conscious awareness of it. Because as you know, is about that time that we're really starting to get a bit more deductively aware of what's going on around us. So we did move house. But the house we moved to was a slightly bigger house, I think, looking back, we moved a couple of times in a short period of time. But I think when I really started to notice because I was used to go into with dad to some of these rental properties, and then we weren't going to do any more. I can remember conversations with my oldest siblings happening, my sister having to move from private sixth form, going to a public sixth form in the middle of her education. And there was some disdain there was like some, some some stuff going around that. But it didn't really make sense until later. What was actually going on here.

16:54
And I'm just trying to interesting. Do you were you aware at the time? And do you now know, what was the cause of your father's mishap with money or the changing situation? Was it a lot? Was it an external thing? Was it his own situation? Or was it a mixture of all those things,

17:11
I mean, based on mine, the way that I look at reality now, and the model that's been allow me to have repeat results, I think he just wasn't able to hold the vibration of it. He came from dirt, poor backwaters of the countryside in Zimbabwe, he built himself up from nothing, probably go as high as he could go where he was, came here to come and expand his education, and build himself up from nothing here again. But if we're not able to hold something, it will always whether it's by bad luck, or whether it's by circumstance, or whether it's by choice, we're not going to be able to hold it. And so when I look and I've had as I've grown older, I've had more real, authentic conversations with my dad, we've been able to speak more about that time. And, and the more and more I see, yeah, he just wasn't able to undo. And that's it.

18:04
And is that where you think that you talk about the vibration? Being able to cope with the what I call the perhaps the equilibrium is a good word. Yeah. The harmony of abundance and money wanting to hang out with you. Do you think Yeah, do you think that that was behind some possibly self sabotaging behaviors not just to be dead, but which is often behind self sabotaging behaviors of people who want to have some success, and then lose it when that success I mean, I'm talking about financial and material success, and then somehow they are they they sabotage themselves self. So I

18:35
agree with you 100%. Jason, I mean, at the end of the day, when we look at the flow, one flow funnel model that I teach, which looks at the different aspects of ourselves that present in our human experience, we have our physical experience, we know our mental thought, belief experience, we've got our emotional energetic vibration and experience, each of which has its own backbone, physically, we've got a spine, mentally we have our belief systems structure for that, energetic measurably, you've got your your chakra systems where you hold and move energy through. If we look at even in the court of law, you can have a crime of passion, our emotional state can affect our thought processes. And we have mind over matter, our belief system literally limit what we're able to do physically. So if we have a contraction, or a limitation in that emotional energetic vibrational field, if follows on to our mental and experience, and it follows on to our mental experience, then follows on to our physical experience. And when we look at our belief systems, and when we look at the way that we've stopped making choices, based on the unconscious mind that we're sitting in most of the time, of course, if somebody has a limitation or they've got a contract in their, their emotional state, it's going to create limiting beliefs and we're going to act unconsciously on the back of that. I personally, don't believe The idea of sabotage a strange thing, I think that we'll never find anything. Because the unconscious mind is like a Terminator. It's literally the Arnold Schwarzenegger Terminator, always perfectly executing what it's been given to do. The challenge is that we're not consciously choosing what that end goal is. And so we're perfectly executing what we call failure, the opposite of what we consciously desire, because it's built into Yeah, that's

20:23
right. The mind is a success driven machine and you put stuff in instructions and it comes out with results, you know, I get it. So let's just let's just think now about your team. Now, the teenage years are often very difficult for people because you're developing your sense of identity you're craving connection, not just with you know, you're finding out about sexuality. And you're you're trying to sort of gradually get agency a know what you're starting to express yourself opinions control. How did that how did you evolve your thinking very much the backdrop that was that was your dad was going through a tricky times? How did that manifest itself in that different you know, that evolution of a teenager hood of of the whole thing of living in London, brands, media peers? How did you have a part time job? What did you do? How did you exercise the degree of control and evolution,

21:17
I had a couple of things going on that I didn't know at the time. But I'm I was late diagnosed with Asperger's. So I didn't really have much of a social experience. I understand that now, because I didn't have the natural world social experience. So my social network really was immediate family members. And my, my sister felt sorry for me, my sister was closer to me, she let me hang out with her friends. I then had some wine for social circles, through family members, religious community, mom's friends, kids that kind of had to put up with me, I didn't really have like a, I've got to my friends, Jamie and Nathan, we've been friends now for 20 years, because I could get job working in a cinema, I didn't actually need a job. I taught myself to make computers when I was 13. And I used to put them in the loop as you go from UK to the loop. So advertise, advertise a configuration computer. And then I will go and get the pieces make the computer. And so the computer make like 50 to 100 quid on those. And I found a company called Neo tech that did unbranded laptops. And so I would advertise their laptop configurations and put a little bit of money on it. And they could do effectively drop shipping. But you could, but I'd have to take I'd have to pay them. They deliver directly and send me that and how old were you when you were doing this? Daniel,

22:40
how would you normally we'll see your first business search your economic activity, or adding value for money was at 13. or younger than that actually,

22:49
I had to talk shop at school, we had a we had a project was supposed to be for one year 19, I think, where we had to do a walk an economics project at school and I set up a truck shop, I got my dad to open up the cash and carry account, we bestway cash and carry. And I got business partners from my fellow students, they helped me basically put most of the money to buy the stock. And I'd run the run the truck shop at lunch at lunchtime and great time, I got permission from the teacher. So that went on for about two or three years. I had the computer thing going on.

23:27
So you could create money you're you're generating money from essentially nothing right? And bringing in investors. So this is an amazingly abundant story before you you found that all the other things you do and how did that what did you do with the money were you spending it accumulating it saving it what

23:45
I had an aptitude for to do with money, I really don't know what happened with it. And this is one of the things that's been in my adult life part and part of my my journey with money developing a conscious relationship with money because I didn't even I wasn't consciously aware of the fact that I was creating wealth. It was kind of just happening. So I did everything for myself. I bought my own trainers for school I wanted if I wanted like my Patrick Cox shoes, I got those for myself and I could get the bus to school instead of needing to walk and I could get the train if I wanted to go and see my friends this evening to go to get the bus. So we're not talking king's ransom. But you know my parents gave us quite a modest pocket money. Like I said my parents didn't believe in handouts I believed in hard work. And so we got exactly what we needed to get by not because of a title artist, but that's just how you do it for yourself. So I was almost accidentally ninja trained to develop that level of independence

24:48
it's a lovely story though. I just wonder if so here's the thing, the money almost was to by default, you were doing stuff just because that gave you a sense of control and something sort of Yeah, yeah. The money tool and and the undiagnosed diagnosed Asperger's for those of us and I include myself in that who don't really understand it, we think we understand some of the spectrum of autism. But how does it manifest itself in a teenager? Because that's a that's a difficult time anyone in someone's life. So what does that mean? You just find it difficult to understand people connect with people emotional intelligence, what does it? How does it look and feel?

25:22
So for me, personally, I've been really blessed. So it was really funny, because I kind of skated through life with nobody kind of realizing that I was on the spectrum. People either just thought I was really annoying, or just would live with my foot in my mouth. Because I had pretty cool skills. So my, my upside my brucey, bonuses from the Asperger's was such that people kind of just put up with it. So my memory is amazing. I've got Pitch Perfect voice, I can repeat the sound exactly. So I can do accents. I can sing very well, give me anything system wise, no, learn how to do it, just give me if something's got step by step method, I'll be able to learn it. And that's why I'm good at a lot of things. Because I just go in and find step by step on how I can go and do it. But in terms of social intelligence, zero, I had to go and learn. I went actually, and then social dynamics. Now there's more resources, but at the time, I just studied the pickup artists world. So I studied the work of the mystery method, and Neil Strauss and Michael D'Angelo and David data on how to deal with women. Because that gave me a baseline to work from, to then go ahead and deal with humans in general. To this day, most of my friends are women, because I have a more natural aptitude for dealing with women, because I've practiced those models more consistently. So for me, generally, it was I had no social dynamics, zero.

26:46
You learn the skills by your finding a framework that makes sense to you. And then you develop the nuances and the understanding and the anger and stuff, okay. But it's

26:54
a very, very deliberately, social interaction, to me a very deliberate and very conscious experiences. Anytime I start to go unconscious, you start to see the Asperger's pop out.

27:03
I say, there's a lot of energy involved in how I understand. No, I understand so. So for you structure, being deliberate and being intentional. And being aware is clearly key to everything you do, right. Yes, yes, understand. So, as I say, I love the story of the computers. And I love the story of touch. You know, it's just wonderful. I had a guest on last week who did something called white jeans, or V jeans or something. And he used to sell them outside the outside his church, and he said, the pastor wasn't too pleased. But he said, he said, at least I wasn't getting into trouble. I was I was delivering a service. He said to the local community, I'm making money from it. So I thought, that's great. And if you're adding value, there's nothing I say, okay. Just want to before we move away from the teenage years, there are some people who grew up in very religious families, there is sometimes some How can put it less helpful. teaching the Bible, for instance, and many, many religious texts do teach good principles about money. But there's also how can I put some less helpful stuff that people sometimes causes friction or baggage or problems. So you mentioned that your parents and perhaps the wider family may have had some money is evil, or bad, or whatever was any aspects of that hanging around as you were going in the latter part of your teenage years that you had to sort of unshackled from, I would definitely say

28:21
that it's the work that I continue to stay on top of, because, you know, if there's something that you're around that much over a long period of time, the roots are going to be very deep. So it's an ongoing work for me to stay on top of that, to stay on top of those insidious little things, a voice in your head sort of thing. Yeah, yeah. And also the just being consciously aware of where I find myself moving towards. I mean, I had a, I had a transaction for because I reopened my consulting company early this year. And an all kind of popped up out of the blue and offered me a job helping him fund an oil deal. And I found myself freaking out about where I'm going to put the money. And I just noticed myself, so called My God, if you're freaking out about, we're gonna put the money, how is that going to be able to come together? You're not that man is not gonna want to hang out with you. And of course, it dragged on and it kind of ended up dying in there. But you know, he's back home, you know, when I've got another deal to bring it. But it's interesting, because I was very aware at the time of what was going on inside of me, because it's not I didn't have an account to put the money in. But I started freaking out. Oh, my God, what am I going to protest revising that sort of thing? Yeah, exactly. So when you sit there and any of the listeners as well, if you start looking at when things have gone wrong for you around money, take a look at how you were feeling go back in your mind's eye to what thoughts are running through your head. What are you feeling at the point of inception of that experience coming into your reality? What was how did you how did you welcome it? And if you imagine if that if the money was a person coming to your house, and you're like, Hi may not Really, really to have you? If you do you

30:02
really want to come in? Do you really? Yeah, you don't really do you don't really want to come in.

30:09
And so that I would say, like, it pops up now. And then a lot of the time I stay on top of it. And I practice something called pushing your edge, but not your buttons. So I stay on top of it. I don't beat myself up around this. Okay, cool. I'm aware of that next time, that one shouldn't catch me again. But if it does, it should be a less, you know, less unconscious effect. And we just keep pushing in and seeing where we go from there.

30:36
Okay. And as I said, there's two ways of thinking about scripts that you learn as a child, you can either keep bury, you can keep digging them up, and keep in mind be aware of where they're coming from. But sometimes you just have buried this stuff and forget about it move on. You know, sometimes it just depends. Everyone's different. So, alright, so tell us about sort of late teens early 20s. Did you go to uni? Did you start one of these another business or what did you do?

31:01
I actually was I don't know if you remember the great scandal that happened when they first split a levels? Yes.

31:06
Yes. Yes, I

31:07
was that year. I, I had so I got into keep a College, Oxford to study politics, philosophy and economics. And

31:15
really, yeah, am I going to keyboard? No, I'm not saying you don't look intelligent. But I mean, so that's a big order to get in there. And it's the job right?

31:24
I work really hard. I did my a level economics in a year. So I did. So when they did the summer resets, I did the first round of exams, as I basically taught myself as I even got full marks on my macro economics paper, you know, knocked out the park. And then somehow, they said that for my a two, I got C's, DS and E's in my exams. I've never had a scene in exam in my life, obviously lost my place at Oxford. On top of the grades going down, they only sent out two of my a level grades to the universities, they didn't send out all my grades. So anyway, so I, at the time, we didn't know what had gone wrong. I just thought that I just cocked up everything I was, I was in I was in tears. Mum and Dad, I said to him, Look, no, I want to retake my exams and then reapply to go to Oxford the next year. Because if you've got if you've been accepted, and you lose your place back there, but you retake your exams and you get your results, you can sometimes have a better chance of going back with the results in

32:24
shows you're determined, right? And it shows that

32:28
mom and dad said no. You have to go through clearings after a week of arguing. And anyone who's got African parents and you don't argue you resist a little bit. Basically just realize that's what's gonna happen. Right? I went through clearing ended up the only redbrick uni that did combined economics that had a space left that I could get into by the time cleaning happened was Whoa. So I went to home. And the protest basically had zero intention of really doing anything. So I was there. I wasn't really going to any of my classes or anything. I was just very, very bitter, very, very bitter. And then of course, a few months later find out that it was the great scandal thing came out and BBC and but they said that you could get your papers regraded. But of course, I was in how you had to take your papers, you had to take your results to your sixth form college or your college the next morning by certain time. Even if I take the fastest train from Canada, I wasn't gonna be able to make it. So I caught my doubts like that. I knew I didn't mess up, you know, like, I just need to take my exams and the data like, Look, look, you lost your place, just accept it and move on, get on with it and sort of hung up the phone on me. Yeah, I didn't talk to him for I think 18 months. I was very, very sorry about that. And that made me really, really, really, really, really, really bitter. Yeah, I was already studying sort of personal development and mindset and dipping into the esoteric by them. I kind of been in that one for a couple of years. I'd been learning how to trade. And I basically just started trading from my dorm room instead of going

34:10
straight trading. What trading

34:12
like trading the footsie. 140

34:16
margin trading. Yeah, yeah.

34:19
And I ended up then starting a business with my friend's brother, buying and selling electronics. So we'd go there was a company called Jim discounts. You can buy wholesale electrical loads from them discounts. You basically buy a parcel, it's a potluck, you don't know what's gonna be in there and you break up the parcel you sell it off, you can sell it, sell it on eBay, and so on and so forth. So then that happened, we did that. Then I found a company that did auction cars, and we were doing that with all the staff have built up a successful business, however, accidentally broke the law in how we funded the business because it If I come to you, Jason and say, here's a contract that you're investing in my business, and I'm going to give you money back on that, that's against the law. If I come to you and say, Hey, Jason, if you invest in my business, if you lend my business money, that's within the law. So we ended up losing the company, everything went completely depends, which was, which was very sad. But I built up, I built up another business consultant business,

35:29
before we moved on, Daniel, sorry. So that business went wonky. Had you been drawing profits out? Had you built some personal wealth? Or did you not even address that? It just kept going great.

35:38
Everything, everything got seized, because the company was operating illegally. So because it basically when you when you take investments from from people without a license, the FCA basically marks you as an unlicensed investment business.

35:51
Yeah. So and So criminal activity.

35:54
Everything got seized on that, just

35:56
to get you started again, Ctrl, Alt Delete, right. Okay.

35:59
Control, delete started again. Interestingly, because people like, Okay, this guy might know what he's doing that really didn't go too well. But he might know what he's doing. By this time. I'm still only 20 years old, by the way, because I need to be aware of how I took a gap here that basically lasted 18 years.

36:17
Yeah, yeah, I'm with you on that one.

36:22
My mom still thinks I'm no, rush it. I did. I did do my second year with Open University. And I will finish I've actually set goals for myself to finish the last interview, because I realized actually, quick Safeway, abandoned as I call it, the reason why I hadn't finished is because I was actually scared of failing. So I've committed to just go for it, regardless of what happens. So I've actually set some time aside to do

36:46
now, interesting thing about failing, though, down before we move on, is that one of the ways to to get over this fear of failure, which is so so endemic, in lots of people, particularly younger people, is if we look at failing at something, or rather, finding a way that something doesn't work, or miss stepping, or an obstacle, if we just accept that it's just part and parcel of learning a new skill or growing or, or going beyond comfort zones, then we can actually embrace it rather than see ourselves as the failure. It's the thing we're learning that we've not quite mastered. And that's a different ballgame. Isn't it? A very different ballgame if we can recast it. And that's something is really important that I talk about in the money miracle. So carry on. So the second business what what happened there that

37:30
I that will did really well. I was doing consulting, then I was doing my big ticket consulting job. That's when I really sort of started the consulting work, and found that people would pay me just to pick my brain. So I got paid just to think for people, which was really

37:46
bad because most people can't think right.

37:49
Really easy. Probably my business, I don't know how to do all you can just do that. They give you money. So we did really well with that and then bought into mortgage and real estate business. That was 2007.

38:07
All right. This is going

38:11
to lead to that. Now I did have a little bit of a stockpile but ended up in business again with someone a little bit unscrupulous. So he ran off with a bit over there at the property crash took a bit over there. Yeah. A bit was lost in the fact that nobody was walking. You said he was such a grabber that Yeah. That time took me out days. And that time I was the first time I was still gung ho, you know, I've got this, I'm gonna do it. The second time was I thought, I thought

38:42
it must have hit your confidence, right?

38:44
Everything. And that's when I actually, no one is ever happy talking about me sort of my dalliance with the suicide train, that's when it came in. Because it's like, have I been lying to myself this entire time? Because before then, before, before, beyond intention, I was practicing a model called vision, purpose, faith, gratitude, which is basically the combination of what I've learned up until that time, a lot of principles from Psycho Cybernetics, the science of getting rich, don't call buzz word, goals with a fellow broom. And there's one was technically working. But what I realized is that it worked. But it always ends up when it works up to a point and then ends spectacularly.

39:25
Everything, it's not so good at picking you up when you're in pieces. That's the problem is, and that often happens for people for no fault of your own. Oh, my last Financial Times article was called I think, what else? Can you hold on to the wealth that you create? And that's a different skill to create in it. And one of the things is really just thinking about how you react to both problems. And, but more importantly, how you also react to successes and upsides. So in other words, do you think he's going to keep keep control over keep Can you either think that the terrible times are going to continue forever, and you're completely a terrible person, or when it's all going great, nothing can go wrong. You are the source of all the answers. And you can do no wrong. Right? So those two extremes and that's what I've asked people, right? And I only know because because one has happened to me a few times, but not in Wipeout territory. But also, I've interviewed so many people. So I hear these stories and success leaves clues. And so there's failure. So So how did you pick yourself up? You said that you started with the with the S word. And the thoughts there? How did did you get some professional help? Or was there a friend or what?

40:32
It was accidental? To do this Jason is a friend of mine complete actually verbalized it perfectly. It's that the description even though I accidentally overanalyze myself out of suicide.

40:45
Cool thing about

40:46
being in the UK is obviously we don't have guns, right? If I was in the US, it might been a bit a different situation. Oh, yeah. But there was no gun. I had this thing in my mind of seeing people with slip marks on their wrist, which means that that's not, that's not guaranteed, that might go wrong. I had this this horrible, gut wrenching feeling of someone finding me swinging, cutting me down, or, you know, trying to take pills. I was like that just

41:16
so you weren't worried about the actual, should I kill myself? No, it was the occasion. I've either not been successful or the impact on other people. Now that sounds to me, like someone who is actually quite high functioning. And he's actually quite empathetic, and it's got quite high emotional intelligence

41:31
no Jason the thing, the only thing I cared about was failing. I didn't want to get seen to failure,something else. I wasn't

41:37
saved your life, right, that saved your life.

41:40
My life, it saved my life, the fact that I was terrified of the idea of failure at something else. Yeah. And failing. Second, looking at

41:48
business. Thank goodness, you had those thoughts. So okay, you came right off the bottom of the of the ocean as it were, metaphorically speaking, then what happened?

41:57
Then I realized that the only way I'm going to successfully commit suicide is if I work out how to successfully commit suicide. And I became determined to work out what was going wrong with my model, so that I could apply it to successfully commit suicide. Really, right. That's what happened, okay. And in that journey, I actually realized something, there was a thought it was very, it was a very famous thought at first, but it became a lot louder. And that's that I am responsible for this. And the thought on the back was, and you're responsible for everything else as well. And that's when step one of building tension starts to take life, which is called the nominated theory. Regardless of what we say about, you know, people that will be in our life, most of the time and things that have been, there's only one aspect that's present in every single experience in a life. And that's us. We are the common denominator. So therefore, regardless of how much responsibility one we set, one thing is certain, logically, if I want to have the widest reaching effect of change, actually change me. If I change that aspect, every other equation changes. If I've got 20 relationships, I can go and try and change or 20 or I can change me if I change me, here we are, the relationship must change to some

43:08
degree. Well, who was it? Who said, Who was it? Who said, I'm sorry to interrupt, but who was it who said, Be the change, you want to be the change that you want? Or something like that is the same

43:17
thing in the world? Yeah. And that's what happened. And then from there, I started building on that this whole idea of acceptance kind of evolved. Then I read the power of now and the idea of the present moment to life for me, but then I read Eckhart Tolle as well. I said, this is great, but what the hell do you do with it? How do you get it now? So I became obsessed with understanding what keeps us out there now. And that's when step two attention came to mind. And then I came into this idea of looking at time as being in the now. And the idea of gratitude being something that can happen beforehand. And in fact, if I'm grateful for something now, it's a way of me triggering the mental response of accepting its present awareness as an available possibility for me. And then the idea of the feedback loop from Psycho Cybernetics. Yeah, and the fact that the guiding missile doesn't go directly point to point it's always course correcting. And so listen, step four, thinking and feeling with awareness and being present enough to course correct. And over time, that took shape. Then around five years ago, I came upon the work of Dr. Joe dispenza. I went to one of his events in Berlin, and I've still got the notes from that event. I was like, Oh my God, this guy's actually got the science to back. What I've been saying. I understand why this gratitude thing happens because before I did gratitude afterwards, for me, that's one of the biggest game changers moving gratitude to what happens before the event shows up. And and the model evolved, the forceps and beyond intention developed into seven levels of each one. I started to share my work a bit more with people. And then eventually after 12 years and five drafts, put the book out

45:00
overnight success in five years. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So so that book was that book called

45:04
stepping beyond intention.

45:06
And that sets out the framework that you've gradually sort of evolved over the last 10 years. Yeah. So that's interesting. So essentially, over the last sort of 10 years or so, you've been on this kind of gradual evolution of rebuilding yourself, rebuilding your wealth, rebuilding your faith in life. And where are you now? Why Why did you go to what what made you end up in Mexico? You know, of all places. I mean, I'm sure it's a it's really lovely. But I mean, it's a long way away, right? I'm aware it was you.

45:39
Yeah. So basically, I had to buy consulting work kind of grew from strength to strength, I rebranded it around 2011. And then I took on partners A few years ago, 2014, I took on partners, they actually, there are some, not only the well aspects of this, but they basically stole the company from me, and I ended up having to start from scratch. But the awkward, the awkward, the interesting thing about the timing of that happening was that more and more people were saying that we're finding out a bit more about am I building tension stuff? Is it kind of organically sort of word of mouth around my circles of people started saying, hey, you should be you should be talking about this. This is really good stuff. Hey, have you thought about doing that? And the book still was this evolution that I get it ready, and then it wasn't ready and soft story? And because I want it to be empowering?

46:34
Yeah, you want it to be perfect, I

46:36
wanted it to be

happening was that I made a decision. I said, Okay, you know, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna, I'm gonna I'm going to, I'm going to see about doing more sharing this work with people, I'm just going to make sure I have enough money to do it. And so that's when I started to do a different kind of different aspect of the esoteric work, and more manifestation than just reality creation, but more than manifestation as a bit. And then we ended up happening was, I started to get amazing opportunities come in. And at one point, I basically had about seven and a half million dollars in commission, but ready to be paid on stuff that I've manifested over the course of about three months. And then I went off to a meditation retreat. And then once I was at that meditation retreat, every single one of those opportunities just died in explicably. One of them was a Hong Kong oil company. And they lost their foreign exchange license, even though one of the board members was like, a politician in China is doing weird stuff. Anyway, fast forward a couple of months, I realized what happened. When I was saying that I'm only going to step in and do this work. If I've got the money to do it, which was meaning that I was saying, I don't trust that God, the universe source is going to back me up and support me and provide for me if I go and do it. And in that moment, I made a decision. I said, You know what, I'm going to trust it. I'm going to go for it. So I stopped taking new work. And I started to wind things down. And then it was the 13th of February 2018. I was in another retreat, and I had this really deep and profound meditation experience, where I actually saw my life flash before my eyes, and it was what my life would look like if I just did it now. I didn't wait. I didn't wind it down. I just I just trusted and just went for it. And I was thrilled with such elation and joy that I just said, You know what, I'm gonna do it. I shut down the website, close everything off. I had some savings. And I packed up I was in the middle of buying my house in the UK. I've been Hitchin cancelled. And I literally put stuff in storage, put some stuff at my my brother's garriage packed a suitcase and I went and started traveling the world teaching my work. And I was happy hobo for some time. Over the course of that I was invited to come down to Cabo to look at some places to potentially share my work came for three days, three days turned into 10 because I was in love with the place moved into a hotel and ended up basically, the hotel staff were amazing. They let me leave my stuff in storage when I wasn't there without paying for it. So it became a very comfortable living situation. I lived across the road from the beach. Some of them are better.

49:29
Sound sounds great.

49:32
Yeah, I did that. I lived in the hotel for for just over a year and then

49:37
a hotel.

49:39
Row. Yeah, I mean, I was traveling everywhere, you know, the workshops and blah, blah, blah. But I moved into my permanent place about just just just under a year ago.

49:51
So you've you've gone on a bit of an interesting journey there and you're clearly into self improvement and stuff and you've had your challenges and you've made money and lost money and also Success. So what would you How would you encapsulate? Because I know you mentioned manifestation and manifestation of money is an interesting one is a bit woowoo for some people, but this idea of being ready to receive money that money wants to hang out with people who, who, really, who are comfortable to receive it, right?

50:16
Yeah, yeah.

50:17
So Well, yeah.

So um, so what would you How would you sum up your learnings about the hunter role of money and wealth and financial aspects of people's lives and spending as well, that you've learned, you know, as we, as we draw to a close today, so how would you, how would you sum up your your wisdom to date,

50:36
money is just a tool that gives us more choice. And it's not even really the money that we should be obsessed with. It's having the ability to create a reality that we want to live in, knowing that most of the time, money is probably going to be the easiest way to do that. Because there are collective agreements around the idea of money being an easy medium of exchange. So I don't think about the money anymore. I think about the quality of life that I want to live, and invariably the money to do that shows up all the opportunities to do that show up.

51:07
So would you say then, just to summarize that, that defining the life that you want, and also possibly the life that you don't want, you know, being clear, we're genuine, and trusting, within reason that good things will happen. If you put your first foot forward and do your best, your best work, your best effort move forward in the right direction, and don't give yourself excuses as to why you can't or you've got to wait or something else is going to happen is that essentially what you're saying, for me,

51:34
let's go back to what I said about those aspects of ourselves that make up our being, you know, we've got the mental we've got the emotion got the physical, anything that all three of those aspects are lined up to happens. Yeah. And there's an analogy that I'm actually gonna be using on my deal with Dan Daly today. It's that when we go to the beach, we know the waters gonna be there. Yeah. We don't go to the US. Is there going to be? My God? It might be sand, it might be pebble, but there's that ocean still there? Yeah. Yeah, focus on getting to the beach and know that the water is going to be there. Yeah. If you set the intention, and I speak about intention setting in a lot and give people tools on how to do that. But we speak about the intention in terms of how am I want to feel as I'm experiencing life in that place, then all reality will shape around providing the necessary elements to create that emotional state that feeling space. Yeah, the water will be there at that beach. Instead of thinking about the money, so much, think about the quality of life that you want to be in and focusing on your being mentally, emotionally and physically moving towards that, and the water will be there.

52:49
Yeah, absolutely trust into it. But Daniel, it's a very interesting aspect. How can people find out more about your work and connect with you, just give us a review on Instagram and you know, YouTube,

53:00
I'm dreamer CEO on Instagram, that's probably the social media platform I'm most active on, although I'm getting a bit more tweeting again these days. But my website dream with dan.com is the best place to get hold of me. You can hear all the books are on there. And everything's on there. When Curtis eventually comes out. This will be available for them to find on my website, too. I'll put a link to it.

53:21
Yeah, fantastic. Well, Dan, look very, very interesting. appreciate you spending the time with us today. I'm gonna look we're interested on your Instagram page to see if there's any pictures of this, this terrible beach that you live next to

53:37
see, yeah.

53:40
But here's the thing. It's not about us living being envious of the life you've got or you've been envious of anyone else. What you're really saying is you're living the life with intention that you want for this time in your life. And all you want is everyone else to live the life that they want for this time in their life. And that's what you're looking for rice,

53:57
you agree with these red gums you agree with these read? That article you mentioned before is any way you can send me a link to that article. Yeah,

54:04
we'll send you a link to it. Yeah, on ft.com. And it was in the printed version as well. In fact, it's been pushed by several people on social media who never read the ft. Suddenly, suddenly my because I've been writing for the FT for five years. And I've I've read about the emotional, behavioral and psychological aspects of money. And the funny thing was, it's got so much traction on social media. And you know, it's not like I asked anyone but someone did a six minute video montage explaining how much they loved it and telling everyone about the article. So here's the interesting thing that I took from that was that don't be obsessed about the platform of how people communicate. I think the key thing is are people managing to share with you insights, wisdoms and ideas like you are today with us that you can take something from and make your own and I think there's there's several things you said there that I love that I think I'm going to take from this. So that then lovely to speak to You sure will keep in touch in the long run. And good luck with good luck with a life in Mexico.

55:05
Thank you. So I'll do my best.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai