Why Being Intentional is Important For Entrepreneurs by Daniel Mangena

Welcome to the Marketing Growth Podcast. I’m Shane Barker, your host for the show today. Internationally, motivational speaker, coach and writer Daniel Mangena is back with us on today’s episode. We’ll discuss how entrepreneurs can become more intentional about their choices and how they can lead to more success.

And what have you learned through that happening twice? Right? Because it happened once is crazy, and happening twice is kind of an anomaly in situations, especially at that young age. What did you do to bounce back from that? What have you learned from those lessons?

That means you’re at the average. This is what we do. This is my life. I knew it. I could have bet money on that or wait.

I feel like yes, Asperger’s for the win.

That is crazy. So you’re saying, “I’m trying to get a little more confidence so I can kill myself.” So just give it a few months. I can build it up, and then we’ll have the plan, because obviously there are a few things I can’t do. Maybe there will be a new way to do suicide. I don’t mean to joke around about suicide, but the cool part is that, in your mind, that’s how you were planning it out. It’s just crazy when you hear that in the back story, because it’s like, man, you just didn’t have—you were saying, “I want to kill myself.” But I’m looking at this thing and nothing plays out perfectly the way I need it to.

Well, I’ll be honest with him—glad you didn’t, because that really sucks. You wouldn’t be on the podcast today. A Russian wife that is potentially could hurt you at a certain point. I don’t want to go heavy into that right now because I don’t think that’s the reason for the podcast.

Yeah, but I will tell you, it’s funny that we have a lot in common. My wife is Italian and she’s a nurse, and she does remind me that she could probably—she watches all the shows, the CSI stuff and all that—and she’s reminded me two or three times. I gotta say this publicly so that if we end up missing—separately—they’ll have this podcast. They’ll be like, Well, here goes some of the clues. We’ll end up on another podcast where they’re like, This is what happened to Daniel and Shane, and this was the podcast when they talked about their wives, and then our wives are probably raising husbands, getting attention. This is it, wives? Yeah, she has reminded me multiple times that she could get rid of me. Nobody would know.

So there we go. I want to put down a record. I feel better. I feel a lot better myself. I feel forever, man. I’ll see you wherever we end up.

But I want to talk about your story. Your backstory is pretty incredible—it’s just not a normal history of what you’ve done, especially in a short amount of time. And I want to talk about—you talk about getting intentional. I know that’s one of your main things: being intentional about the things you do and getting intentional with your business. I kind of want to talk about that a little bit. This is about the entrepreneurial mindset—how do you focus on becoming more intentional? Because to me, intentional is where you go, “Oh, you need to become more intentional.” But I think people go, “Okay, I kind of get that.” But what does that mean to be more intentional? So I’m an entrepreneur. How do I get more intentional? How do I get more focused on that?

I love that. I love that it’s kind of freaky that you think that the 70% of the 97%. I will tell you, have you done Ayahuasca?

I did Ayahuasca in Florida—no, actually, it was on Earth Day this year—and it was kind of a crazy experience. When you said ayahuasca, I thought it was interesting—not a lot of people have done Ayahuasca. Let the world know, it was interesting. I’ll tell you, it was interesting. There were some people that did, what was it? Kim Kimbo, Kimber, Canva, who did it the day before, and they had all the marks and all that kind of stuff. It was kind of interesting stuff. Mine. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, sure, yeah. Here they are. That’s interesting. I could spend a whole podcast on that because that was quite the interesting experience.

But good old Mother Ayahuasca—she was definitely town chains and some interesting things that he didn’t even think about. I think that ties into that when you talk about, let’s say, two to seven—that you’re kind of saying things happen with your family or other experiences that lead into what you are. But the thing is, that’s the road you will take unless you reprogram it. Unless you go in and say, “Hey, I understand there’s some stuff that maybe I don’t understand or things that happen, but I want to intentionally drive the ship. I’m tired of being in the passenger seat; I want to be in the driver’s seat.” And how to become more intentional about that. So I love that.

How do you, then—how does that happen? When you talk about what is that roadmap to becoming more intentional? Is that meditation in the morning? Is that what you do? Is it when you start to think these thoughts about your business or things like that? You go, “Hey, let me come back and be mindful and think about a different way of reformatting that.” What is it like? Give me a little history here.

At this point, I’m going to take a quick moment to talk to our listeners. If you want to grow your business and boost your revenue, you can reach out to me for one-on-one business consulting services. You can visit my website at shanebarker.com for more information on the different types of services we offer.

And now, back to our conversation with Daniel.

Yeah, I mean, that’s heavy. Because it is, there are so many pieces of that puzzle that have to come together for it to work. And it sounds like you guys have created that program because of, once again, having successes and failures and saying, “Why did I fail that situation? Great, I had these two click, but I didn’t have that third one clicked.” Or on this one, I had this—understanding that full picture of saying, “Hey, are you ready to do the work?” And that’s really what it always comes down to. It’s the same thing with Ayahuasca or anything I’ve done in the past: are you ready to do the work? It’s not just a one-time thing; it’s like, are you putting in the work, right? And that’s that. Think integration—exactly, where it’s like, we have to talk about what you see, where you are, and why you’re limiting your beliefs with this or that, or maybe somebody said something to you when you were five that you don’t remember, and that’s why you don’t think you deserve this. Or your parents were always saying something—who knows, right? But I think understanding that, better evaluating it, and figuring out how you can break through is something you guys have put together. And I love that a lot. In fact, I think it’s valuable in the sense that a lot of people don’t know what stops them most of the time. It’s like, these values you have—maybe you don’t even know you have them—and those are the things stopping you from going to that next level. And so I think that’s interesting.

My Ayahuasca story is interesting to me because the way I got into it is I had a friend of mine through the internet, which is a whole nother conversation. Sounds super moving—like a friend from the internet. Yeah, exactly—the interweb. I met him on the interweb; we went out there, and he was like, “Hey, you know this?” He said, “Yeah, I tried it a long time ago—it changed my life.” And I was like, “Wow, I have a good life, but I’m looking to try something different. Let’s do it.” We went out to Florida. I met with my little group out there and told everybody that I was there because a buddy of mine, Andrew, said this changed his life. And he just—he’s never been the same, just this, that, and the other. Some of Andrew’s friends in that group came up to me afterwards and said, “Hey, you know, Andrew’s never done Ayahuasca before. This is his first time.” And I literally talked to him—not kidding. And I was like, “No, no. What did you say?” He said it changed his life. So I went up and said, “Hey, man, when is this? How many times have you done Ayahuasca?” He said, “Oh, this is my first time.” I said, “What do you mean? Your first time? You told me that it changed your life.” And he goes, “No, that was another. That was what it was. I’m not gonna tell you what it was because it might not be legal in some countries, but yeah.” So he goes, “Oh, yeah, that’s what changed my life.” And I’m like, “No, that’s not what you told me. I literally know that’s what you told me.” And I told my wife, “Oh, I’m gonna go figure this out.” Not that I felt my life was bad—I thought, why not open up my mind a little? I was raised by hippies in California, so I was like, “Let’s go open up some minds and figure this stuff out.” Then I had to go to my group the next day and say, “Hey, just so you know, I fully lied to you guys. Andrew never tried it—he hasn’t done it—but he pulled me in.” And here I am. I have no idea how Mother Ayahuasca told me to come here, but whatever the deal is, I had to be lied to to make it happen. Here we are.

Anyways, it was kind of a funny little story. Shout out to Andrew—if you hear this, you pulled me in, my friend, even though you lied to me. You really lied, and I’ve got that recorded, so I do have evidence of it. But anyways, it’s all documented.

Thank you, Daniel. It’s been an insightful conversation. We’ll continue the conversation about intentionality and mindfulness on the next episode. For now, it’s time to wrap up this episode. Stay tuned to the Marketing Growth Podcast for another interesting conversation with Daniel.