“Laurence is one of the people I value most in my professional life.”
“The way I frame my working life and the decisions I make within it has changed entirely.”
“Laurence is a magician because he intervenes in physical suffering without physical intervention”
I have spent most of my life studying the path for staying in flow. Raised in the pressured hot house of an elite education, I succeeded by elevating thinking over feeling and cleverness over intuition. Like many young professionals I had big dreams but was cut off from the true sources of energy and confidence that I needed to get there.
After a left turn from McKinsey and Private Equity into stand up comedy I found myself on steep learning curve - forced to step out of my comfort zone and reconnect with my feelings and the responses of others. It was as if my intuition, wrapped carefully for years in layers of protection, was being gradually exposed and opened to the light. Things came to a head when a long-held dream failed and I found myself in burnout and collapse, unable to work any longer from the old well springs of motivation. It was time for a new me to be born.
In the course of this rediscovery I found that I was able to help others walk the same path - to connect with their confidence, accept their value and expand creatively into flow. I also found that I could help teams of leaders to grow in the same way - the building blocks were exactly the same, the learnings identical.
As I mastered this new way of being I learned how to structure my working life for maximum flow - using spaces of non-doing to give me the insight and energy necessary to take action. Along the way I authored three books, wrote and performed my own one-man show, and interviewed some of the most inspiring spiritual and business leaders in the world - while consulting to global organisations on their leadership, brand and purpose.
My motivation today is to return optimism, energy and accomplishment to leaders and teams in entrepreneurial organisations - especially those advising, serving or consulting to other businesses. These people are intelligent, curious, driven - and often disconnected.
I’ve been where they have, and I understand it.
For details of the path I’ve walked on this winding journey, here are some of the places I’ve been:
I served as a consultant at McKinsey & Co, an investor at Advent International, a dot-com founder (b2build.com), a brand strategist (WPP, Figtree) and a comedian - although I was never very good at one liners. I have an MA in History from Cambridge University and an MBA from INSEAD. I am a practitioner of systemic constellations and I regularly practice the spiritual exercise known as the Subud latihan.
My published books include The Optimist (2009, Canongate) and The Lazy Guru’s Guide to Life (2016, Orion)
