Daniel Wagner on Midlife Mastery: Helping Midlifers Turn Trials into Triumphs

Ever find yourself questioning the purpose and direction of your life as you navigate your midlife? Enter Daniel, a successful entrepreneur turned Midlife Mastery mission champion, who weathered through formidable personal and professional trials - a court case, divorce, and burnout - before redefining his life's mission. Listen in as he shares an inspiring journey of resilience and reinvention, and how he transformed his midlife crisis into a power-packed opportunity for change. This isn't a tale of redundancy or retirement, but a call to relevance and regeneration as we use our wisdom, experience, and skillsets to create a fulfilling second half of life.

As the discussion deepens, we explore the power of supportive communities in facilitating midlife transitions. Imagine a safe space where you're free to express, be vulnerable, and undergo the inner transformations necessary for a lasting change. We touch upon the potency of online resources and hybrid coaching programs, and excitingly hint at our future plans of launching a podcast and an online support program. Towards the end, the concept of Midlife Mastery takes center stage. Here, we explore practical ways to maximize this phase of life, discussing how to reflect, make changes and create a thriving future. This episode is overflowing with wisdom nuggets, insights, and inspiring stories for anyone journeying through midlife and beyond. It's time to master your midlife!

Chapters

• 0:32 Midlife Mastery
• 14:44 Creating a Supportive Midlife Community
• 27:21 Making the Most of Midlife

Transcript

Laura Winton: [00:00:00] Daniel, I don't know where we start, but you and I have worked together for so long now. maybe we should just have a chat about, what sort of things you've been doing and what's brought you to this place. And then we can talk about things in a bit more detail maybe.

Daniel Wagner:  Okay, good. All right. I'm glad we didn't prepare for this. So yeah, I know you for about 15 years and when we met in the, I think 2008. Around that time, I was an up and coming into the market and the UK speaking from stage, showing people the dream of making money online, having time and money freedom, and I literally lived that life and I worked very hard to build this business up to help thousands of people around the world. I'm virtually Austrian, but I lived in the UK for almost 30 years. let me just switch off zoom because it's. Boom, that's making a lot of noise in the background. are we still there? Yeah, okay, cool. Yeah, And what I discovered in those years is that, there was so many things that if people knew could make their life better [00:01:00] and I'm obsessed with the idea of making things better in my own life, improving processes, but also on the way to always how can I optimize my life, my income, my lifestyle.

And very early on in life, I realized I don't want to buy into the default way of doing things. the 40, 40, 40 plan work for 40 years, 40 hours a week to retire on 40 percent of the income you couldn't get by while you were working full time. early on, I'm like, no, I need to become an entrepreneur.

And that has, of course, it's ups and downs. I built the business to almost $10 million turnover by 2016. But in 2017, it all went horribly wrong. I wasn't prepared for a court case, a divorce, a burnout. and this is not about trying to be dramatic, because I feel happy that it all happened today. It wasn't happy when it happened.

But, I am, I literally went back to you and enrolled you back into my latest venture because for about four years, I've been working underground consulting with a couple of [00:02:00] companies, all of them in the. personal development space in the healing and awakening space. And, I just have an appetite for a new venture and that's what we're here to talk about today.

Laura Winton: Yeah, absolutely. yeah, I think, should we dive straight into it? What kind of, what's the next step? What sort of thing are we going to be working on? 

Daniel Wagner: Yeah, if I had a little drum, a little snare drum, so the drum roll is, Laura and I, have decided to commit ourselves to a mission called Midlife Mastery and Midlife Mastery is in essence. the mission to help people look at midlife in a totally new way, look at it as an amazing opportunity to use the wisdom and experience and skills that you acquired through your life and use it intentionally for the rest of the next chapter. In the societies, the societal narrative [00:03:00] of midlife is it's a crisis.

And from there on, it goes downhill till you end up in the old people's home and life's over, right? At 60, you're going to get kicked out. You're going to be made redundant, which is a horrible word. Redundancy means you're superfluous. You're not needed anymore. And I would love to move people's... I would like to shift their mindset from redundance to relevance from retiring to regeneration to the idea of saying, whoa, hold a minute.

Maybe this wake up call, maybe this shock, this upheaval, the empty Nesta syndrome or the parents needing your help or passing away or your kids moving out or your company collapsing or your job not fulfilling you or maybe all of this together, like in my case, or maybe even a health crisis. what does life tell us and what is this an opportunity for? it's something most people have heard before, but in the ancient Chinese symbolism, and I don't even know if that's true, but I've been telling the [00:04:00] story forever. supposedly the word crisis is also the same symbol as opportunity. So in that life, for me, the truth that in every crisis lies an opportunity. but this opportunity is. to look deep. It is an opportunity to listen to your body, listen to your, subtle signs, everything around you, and then make a conscious decision. What's the rest of your life going to be about? Don't tell the victim story. you can, but it's boring and nobody's interested for more than a second.

What can you give? What can you contribute? there is a really interesting statistic, which blew me away that I think. 60 percent around a very high number of millennials and younger would love to have mentorship from somebody more experienced, the so called wisdom mentor, but only 1 percent are in mentorship.

So it means to me that people like me, like you, like us who had life experience and it says something. We're still here. It doesn't say [00:05:00] everything, but it says something that this wisdom, this lived experience. can be passed on and it is still relevant and necessary I think these days we feel sometimes with ai and all these, oh my god.

How can we compete? We don't even understand Computing we didn't grow up with it. So these young my boss is 20 years old. I am 50. I'm gonna get made redundant That's a terrible way to live. What if you could create meaning and relevance and purpose and maybe make the second part of your life, the remaining years, the best years ever?

Why don't we shift that approach? that in a very large nutshell, it was...

Laura Winton: No, absolutely. And I, I think it's, I think it's quite relevant, for now. I think it resonates with a lot of people, I think a lot of the things that you're talking about, are relevant to people, of our age. And, especially with, recent world events.[00:06:00]

Everybody has been through, we've all been through the pandemic together. I think that's forced a lot of people to look at their lives differently. And this really is continuing that, like giving people an actual opportunity to say, what do I really want? And how can 

Daniel Wagner: I get that? You're totally right.

I think the pandemic, much. Much loved, much hated, but what it definitely shows, the statistics show us that a lot of people didn't want to go back to life they had before. Before that, we didn't even question it. We thought this is how life was. And now we have an opportunity to say, wait a minute, this working at home stuff. I'm not saying it's all roses and it's all great. if you work. both parties work from home and you get your kids in homeschooling. It's not the ideal scenario, but most people are like warming to the idea. I don't have to travel to the office. I don't have to wear my security badge and, put a tie around my neck and sit in a cubicle.

I could potentially do something different. And then, I've been making money online since 2005. It's almost my 20th anniversary making money. In my sleep. And it doesn't mean I [00:07:00] didn't have to do the groundwork, but once you understand leveraged income, semi passive income, I don't really believe the full passive idea because I never experienced it, but we can do more than sell our time for money, right?

As a course creator, I made millions from putting my knowledge, my IP into a course and offering it to people who then bought it and it was highly leveraged income. You don't have to become a celebrity to sell, Days of your time in a photo shoot or, document your life, in, on, on daytime TV. that's a rare thing and I wouldn't want that, but all of us could package our experience, our knowledge and. Help others, if this is, if this midlife mastery idea to create a shift, how we think about midlife and how society thinks about midlife and what's available to us and what's a contribution to society, to family, in both directions, right? I feel this could be highly inspiring and I would [00:08:00] love to provide the tools and. Some of the, knowledge, I guess that the knowledge pool to make this real for people to not just, this is not about we can motivate people to think better. We can also give them the tools. There are business models that anyone could just start alongside their existing craft and maybe fall in love with that and shift totally over to a new lifestyle of geographical freedom, time freedom and money freedom.

Laura Winton: Yeah, absolutely. And I think, a lot of what you're saying makes sense. I think it's difficult also to feel that, whatever it is that that knowledge has value sometimes as well. I think people are very quick to say, what, why am I paying extra for this?

What is it that it is? But I think when you sit down and really pick it apart, I'd certainly know I've worked with clients or started work with clients who are, saying, why is it this much? Why is it this way? Why is it that very focused on cost? But actually when you say to people, because I've been doing, because this is my skills, [00:09:00] this is my knowledge.

I've been doing this for years and it has value and I will demonstrate that value to you. Like I'm not. I'm not going to say you have to give it to me for nothing, but, I think once people understand that they, I think often skills and knowledge like that, you feel like, everyone knows this, I've worked in this industry for 20 years.

Surely everyone knows this. And you think, no, 

Daniel Wagner: it's this unconscious competence, right? Only because you doing it, you have an assumption. Like when I started making money online or moved to Germany and I'm realizing they live. They are 10 years behind the normal mindset is still a cash economy with going to work and sitting in an office and anything else is exotic to, to say the least, but let's come back to the idea of is your knowledge worth something we are living in the knowledge economy.

Many people will have heard that term before, but I want to be crystal clear that unless you package it the right way and offer it in a right way to the right people, it is pretty much worthless, right? [00:10:00] If you're sitting on some life wisdom nuggets, but you're not communicating them, then it's worthless.

If you are communicating it. And you allowing people to use the wisdom and have life experience, life change, life transformation, it becomes very valuable. until a few years ago, until I had my burnout and had this depression, I didn't look at therapy as something I needed. I thought, Hey, I'm okay. I've been a happy go lucky. Let's just push through. It's gonna be alright. but now I'm paying highly skilled professionals to help me with mindset. And sometimes they just reflect back what I said. And it means something when they say it back to me. And I'm like, Oh my God. And I'm happy to pay hundreds of thousands at a time.

I've just taken a mentor that I pay a lot of money. And it's worth it for me. his experience, his wisdom, his breakthroughs, his... Whatever he's overcome, I think what's important, all of [00:11:00] us, especially once you come to midlife and you're still here, you will have solved problems, overcome challenges. Healed from certain conditions, maybe eradicated some of your childhood trauma, or you're in the middle of facing that.

That means you have come out the other end of something. You might have gone through a divorce. You might have been through the grief of your parents passing or your children leaving. Whatever, you don't get through life unscathed. So whatever you have managed to accomplish and still be positive, and I think it's important.

Look at all the people who have not yet been through what you've been through. It's valuable what you've experienced. There's maybe a tip or two, or there's maybe a strategy that is unconscious that you are now using that could help hundreds, thousands, and because of the internet, millions of people could have access to this and you don't have to do any more than do what I do now.

I try to share a value. interview here in [00:12:00] this, what should become our podcast called Midlife Mastery. 

Laura Winton: No, absolutely. and I think going back to what you were saying earlier about, young, younger people, a younger generation who really craving that kind of mentorship. And I know people that I've spoken to have said that's something that comes out a lot in this kind of remote slash office hybrid is that people of our age are very happy to stay at home. we have nice, comfortable homes. We've worked hard for them and we have space to go and sit and be somewhere quiet to do some work. potentially not during the lockdown, as you pointed out, but now when things are more normal, we have that space. But for younger people who are starting out, it's also the things that are offered that community in the office and that mentorship is what they're looking for.

But I think also we're learning that doesn't have to be delivered. In any particular way that doesn't have to be delivered in a physical space or an office or, on a certain, it can be online. It can also be remote that you can reach out to people [00:13:00] wherever they are to help them with whatever problems they're facing right now.

Daniel Wagner: Totally. As a matter of fact, I believe the hybrid that you spoke about having an online intervention or coaching program, one to one or group is a great way of delivering value because people are more reluctant to travel these days, since COVID I'm thinking twice about going to an event or flying around the world.

Why? It's a hassle, right? So with technology like zoom that we all spend a good part of our day in, I believe, or most of us, why not? It doesn't replace the high touch of meeting person in person, but it's a great component. And any program I'm designing these days, and we're talking about designing a group coaching program for midlifers who are looking to make the most of the times to come, that will be delivered in a group format on zoom.

Or in a community like school, you and I build a successful community for therapists at the moment and we learned [00:14:00] so much, how to deliver value and people loving it. They're from Australia to America. We got all time zones covered, and people can participate and get value from in literally the comfort of their homes.

Laura Winton: Yeah, absolutely. I suppose the other thing that I think that we've been learning a lot with the community that we've built is just that I think there's a real appetite as well that people want to be in a community that they want to be sharing that journey with other people. I think there's a lot of power in that. and I think it's also A trusted, we want to build a community that's a trusted place to bring questions, to bring queries that we're supporting, obviously, as you say, you and I are delivering value to that group, but there's a lot of support within that group as well, which I think people find incredibly useful.

Daniel Wagner: I think you touched on some really important parts. I'm glad you brought it up. in those years, and most people are listening to this will have not met me or don't know me, but I have worked as a mentor coach trainer.[00:15:00] as you want to call it, working from stage and in masterminds and in groups for many years.

But since the COVID years, even before in 2018, 19, I started some facilitation training to facilitate, group environments. and I learned a lot about group dynamics and I learned about what is necessary for people to. Feel safe and even open up and be vulnerable because there's no point coming in community where everybody wearing their mask and pretending life's great because we can't work on any real issues if people are hiding their issues I mean it will be obvious that everyone's hiding them.

But if nobody's willing to open then we can't do the surgery necessary, the little interventions necessary to create shifts and often just to create a safe environment, is enough for people for the nervous system to relax, the sad reality, or let's not put an adjective to it.

The reality for most people without judgment is that most days we're [00:16:00] living in a protective way because the world seems to Aggress us and we're protecting our way of being Our inner world because if we share openly how we feel at work that might not go down very well, right? We might pack our little bags and off we go if we tell others openly how we feel about this relationship Without any context or agreement.

This will go wrong. Our society is not trained To be open with each other and vulnerable. But what I found in these mastermind groups, in these coaching groups, with a good facilitator, the magic can really happen. If you were saying, somebody shares what, what is really going on, and you see all the me too's, all the hands going up, said, Oh yeah, me too.

We suddenly normalize our experience because our inner worlds of, Oh my God, I'm not good enough. I'm not gonna, I don't know how to do this. I look like a fool. Nobody likes that. Humiliation is not an emotion. We want to spend a lot of time in, right? So especially if it's public or mass, that's one of [00:17:00] the things to avoid at all costs.

We've been trained to avoid that, but if you are in a safe space and somebody opens up in that, that's where real massive insight for transformation can happen in a split second. And once your nervous system, your body learns. This new experience you walk away with a new blueprint that you will keep forever You're now moving into the world with a very different Sense of being of who you actually are.

So yes community facilitate in the right way Not just cramming people in a room, that's not community, it's a crowd, that's different, right? But community, with a sense of joint vision, purpose, with a set of code of conduct, we call it code of conduct, just a bunch of rules, so we get on. that helps people to feel safe and to know. why we actually come together. 

Laura Winton: Yeah, absolutely. so I suppose we've been talking about lots of the different elements of, what it is we're thinking [00:18:00] about, what we want to do. do we want to share a little bit of like how it might work? how it might start to work or.

Daniel Wagner: I love to. So the idea is to literally this should be episode zero of the podcast called Midlife Mastery. And. It will be for people coming back as a reference point of, Laura and Daniel talked about this on the 12th of October in 2023. And we want to raise awareness for the different issues around midlife, the societal narrative, the misconceptions, and also start seeding the massive opportunity and hopefully that some of the people listening will get curious.

And then our simple plan is to open a community. on, on a wonderful platform like school. And this is the one we chose to use, but it doesn't matter what it's called. Open a community, online where people can join us and we get a sense of what it is they're looking for and we want to support them do it through it. Ultimately by 2024, which is coming around [00:19:00] very soon, we want to offer a support program where we give people the tools, the training, the community, the coaching, all the support they need to live a better second half of their lives. wherever you, and by the way, midlife. could start as early as your early thirties, forties, fifties, even early sixties.

People are living longer. Clearly, is where your midlife, is starting to manifest. And I'd love to get together hundreds and thousands of people from around the world who inspire each other to, to not let the narrative And the ageist, the ageism that is going on clearly, in a world where we feel displaced.

I would love to create a new belonging and a new self worth conversation around, what Chip Conley calls the modern elder. I love the idea. If we were a tribal society and we survive a certain age, we will naturally be regarded as a source of [00:20:00] advice and wisdom. And we will be Asked for our opinion based on what we've experienced in our more secluded, separated society, we have to be active to create that same sense, but I'm a hundred percent convinced that what I've been through is value to people out there and that every single one who wants to consciously look.

What they have experienced overcome that they can bring that as a form of value as a coach as a mentor or as a course creator or just simply as a. A more loving self evaluation of who we are. We are so hard on ourselves. We have such high expectations, right? Midlife is also the moment where for the first time you realize you might not be prime minister at 42, right?

Or you might not play in the NFL. You might not achieve some of these goals you had in your teenage. the dreams, [00:21:00] which are slowly fading away and you come into terms with the reality of the sandwich life. Where your parents need your help, your kids need your help, you have a challenging relationship and you have just yourself and your work, right?

And that's for many men, and I'm sure there's a version of that for women, where you're stuck. For women, it's the double role of motherhood and still having to earn and run the household just by the way. And this is not old model. Yeah, men seem to help a little bit more, but the reality is still that they're pretty clumsy in those attempts.

Yeah. And women carry a triple responsibility. And then suddenly the kids are gone. How are you going to deal with that? we talk about artificial intelligence. What about emotional, not just intelligence, but what about transitional intelligence? How did we learn to navigate transitions? Nowhere.

Are there tools, are there mindsets, are there strategies we can use to be better at transition management? [00:22:00] Absolutely. In midlife, that would be a valuable skill set to bring on board. And that's part of what we want to share with people. 

Laura Winton: Excellent. I think it's been really good to chat through it. unless there's anything else that you feel like we haven't covered, I feel like we've touched on most of the things that. We've talked about and that we're wanting to create and put out in the world. I don't know. 

Daniel Wagner: Do you have any final thoughts? the beginning.

Now my marketing brain suddenly, talking and says, Hey, you should have spoken to who is this for? And what's the pain they're in. And, if you're still listening, or maybe we cut this out and put it right in the front, but, I, I know from my own experience, what it feels like. To suddenly have a loss of purpose in your life.

When my company collapsed and my life was pretty much taken away, the life that I identified with, I felt purposeless and directionless. And I know that this is, [00:23:00] that comes with a midlife crisis often, that we don't really know what to do next. We don't want to do what we used to do. We're also afraid of changing because we have no guarantee of success. and that is a pain that people keep inside. If you were to share that in a community of grownups or growing ups, you would recognize you're not alone in this. But that pain, if hidden, will fester, and it will mean that you start to live a smaller life, you're going to shut down, you're going to not experience the joy you used to, and you become fearful and small.

And old age in the past was very much signified by people becoming narrow, grumpy, small. Avoiding any form of challenging or triggering because they just couldn't handle it. A lifetime of accumulated trauma means that you just don't want to deal with stuff anymore, right? Now, the new age approach, and [00:24:00] I don't mean new age in a hippie way, is that you start resolving some of your childhood issues.

That means you stay open, remain open, and you become a lifelong learner or a long life learner. You recognize I'm 57 now. I'm recognizing.

On a good day, I might have 30 years ahead of me, 40, 50, who knows what life extension technology comes. I can't now say, in a few years, I'm retired. I'm going to collect my state pension. I'm just going to dim the light bulbs. So we're going to keep a low overhead and keep the temperature nice, put on a woolly jumper and it's going to be okay. No, what about the opposite? What if this is the time to really step up and shine and contribute and do what you actually. possibly were meant to do here and haven't yet had time to do it. yeah, I don't know if that was a conclusion, but I think for today, let's leave it at this.

Hopefully more of these conversations. you and I want to invite more people into this conversation. of course, we're also learners ourselves, [00:25:00] so we're selfishly or I selfishly want to gain insight and wisdom from others who work before me, who are already down that line. And then ultimately, I want to create a community that I want to facilitate and guide, towards living the best years ahead. with that simple attitude and say, look, the best is yet to come. And midlife is a great opportunity to reflect. what do you want to do differently? what do you want to do actually with the time remaining?

That's it. Thank you. Speak soon.