Show Notes
Lawrence Mitchell is a health coach who runs his own business, bringing wellness programs to stressful corporate offices in the UK. In this interview, he discusses how he came to the wellness industry, built up his business, and how to de-stress a corporate exec. Lawrence explains his philosophy around health and wellness, and offers advice to folks starting a new business.
Interview Highlights
[2:40] Lawrence talks about the creation of his business. He wanted to help people take action on their health while they’re still at their corporate jobs, not after they leave.
[4:25] Lawrence speaks to the pressure inside corporate environments. Employees work very hard to make companies more successful, which stresses the body and mind.
[5:35] Lawrence had some health issues twenty years ago, while he was working at a corporate job. He kept bad habits (smoking, drinking), which were catching up with him. Chest pains and a desire to change his ways brought him to the wellness industry.
[7:38] Lawrence talks about his training as a health coach. He works at three places right now: Raw Energy (his own business); a variety of corporate wellbeing programs; and as a global CMO for a publishing company.
[9:28] Lawrence explains what he does inside a corporate wellbeing program, how he supports employees, how much time is involved. He averages ten hours a day, but takes weekends off.
[11:02] At the publishing company, Lawrence created the Living Well program, to support the physical wellbeing, mental resilience, and overall health of the staff. He started this work in 2014.
[13:06] Lawrence works four days at his main company, and one day a week at other companies.
[13:46] Lawrence’ philosophy is to help people build their own support systems. This encompasses talking with other people, having a healthy diet, exercise, meditation, and time off.
[15:20] Lawrence talks about his one-on-one coaching of higher-level executives. He focuses on balancing energy, using a variety of tools. He helps people build resilience to stress.
[17:18] Lawrence explains how he grew his consulting business. His website and email channel are central, and public speaking is also important. He’s written a few wellness books too.
[18:35] Most of Lawrence’s speaking engagements have been in London, at a number of venues—boxing conferences, dinners, women’s network meetings, conferences—and he’s organized his own meetings.
[19:44] Lawrence says he’s not a natural public speaker, but had to build his confidence there. The passion he feels for the material chases away the fear.
[20:44] Ten years ago, Lawrence took on a job where he had to speak to 100 people, which terrified him but he pushed through it.
[22:01] Lawrence talks about training as an actor to get over the fear of speaking in public.
[23:20] Lawrence explains where he’d like to take his career. He’s built a virtual team (developer, marketer, operations coordinator) to grow the business, but has bigger plans and strategies. He’s building training plans. A few months ago he travelled to India and reflected on his next step. And, he’s decided to leave the corporate role at the end of the year and move to Australia.
[27:15] When his business was new, it required a lot of work to get off the ground. Now that it’s established, it takes fewer resources to maintain. Lawrence has a tendency to work too hard, and also lose focus.
[28:27] High quality vitamins and nutrition are the foundation of Lawrence’s own health plan. Running is the other main piece, and he recently began meditating.
[31:08] Lawrence’s business advice for others is make sure you speak to customers. You’re in the business to solve problems, whatever they may be. You’ll start to see patterns in customer relationships. Also, get some advice and help in the beginning of your journey.
Bio – Lawrence Mitchell, Corporate Health Coach – UK
Lawrence Mitchell is Chief Marketing Officer and Corporate Wellbeing Programme Creator at RBI, and founder of GetRaw Energy.co: https://getrawenergy.co.
A large part of his career has been focused on driving positive change and transformation in corporate environments, creating significant customer and corporate value in a wide range of consumer and b2b sectors.
He believes passionately that successful businesses should continually develop a culture of customer focus and employee well-being throughout the organisation in order to boost creativity, loyalty and growth.
A passion for personal fitness and nutrition led Lawrence to train to be a wellbeing coach in 2013, and start his own platform https://getrawenergy.co. There he has developed ‘The Energy Boost Programme’ a lifestyle management system to help people with demanding schedules create positive lifestyle changes.
On the back of his training as a health coach, in 2014, Lawrence created ‘RBI Living Well’, a corporate wellbeing philosophy and programme for 3k employees around the world. The programme piloted in the UK and has now been extended to APAC and America, enabling employees around the world to access interventions to help them improve their physical and mental resilience and performance.
Lawrence is the author of three books: Success without Stress, A Better Life and Sugar: Sickly or Sweet.
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