Craig Lewis

SeidrLab

Co-Founder

The Craig Lewis LLC

Founder

Mimpi Ventures

Providing deal flow & M&A services for UK & US based Private Equity, familiy offices and private investors.

Marketing and creative agency specialising in Pinterest marketing for high end e-commerce brands.

Founder of Pin and Grow

Unlocking hidden revenue for B2B Founders with Outbound Marketing | Follow me for daily posts on business growth & personal growth | Founder, Elite Outbound

Host of The Being In Business Podcast

EDLEY.NET

Neuroleadership Coach

Ed Ley

Performance Coach

Fit for Business

Helping busy business people to create optimum physical and mental performance

Author

Copenhagen bootcamp 

Owner 

Absolute Health Personal Training

Personal Training, Nutrition, Sports Massage

Owner

Absolute health

Online Personal training is for people who can't or don't want to get to the gym who still want the expertise, accountability and support.

Online Personal trainer

Absolute health and fitness ltd

Absolute health is a 3800sqft gym with a large cardio room, fixed resistance, Bristol biggest free weights and functional training rooms, stretching area, healthcare clinic, shower and changing facilities and car parking. Situated in Temple Quay Business Park in the heart of Bristol.

James Ross Healthcare

Personal Trainer

Systematically taking CEO’s from predicting burnout to leading businesses and lives they love @ EDLEY.NET | Performance Coaching, Executive Coaching

I work with CEOs and founders who are successful on paper but privately overwhelmed, detached at home, and exhausted by the pace they’ve created.

Through my work at EDLEY.NET, I help them rebuild the internal and external systems of self-leadership so their business no longer depends on pressure, force, or depletion to grow.

The outcome is exact:
Calm focus.
Restored energy.
Clear thinking.
Better relationships.
A business that runs without them.
Fewer hours.
More meaning.

My approach combines neuroscience, psychology, and high-performance coaching to rewire how leaders create, use, and recover energy — mentally, emotionally, and physically. It is practical, evidence based, and deeply human.

For over 20 years, I have specialised in the business of behaviour change, helping leaders expand capacity, restore purpose, and create organisations that grow without chaos. My clients include CEOs, founders, and executive teams across multiple industries and countries.

I have spoken at TEDx Bristol and TEDx Frederiksberg on behavioural change and leadership psychology, and more than 80 leaders have publicly shared how this work has helped them perform better, lead better, and live better.

Because when a leader’s energy becomes clear and steady, everything they lead follows.

The most overlooked skill of high performing CEOs? 

Nervous system leadership.

A CEO is more than a strategist, a visionary, or a decision maker.

They’re a relationship master.
Or at least, they should be.

There’s a quote I often share with clients:

“The best thing for a human is another human’s nervous system. The worst thing for a human is another human’s nervous system.”  Lisa Feldman Barrett (neuroscientist)

Just think about your most important relationship.

Say it’s your partner.

When there’s tension or unresolved conflict, it’s hard to relax.

Why?

Because your nervous system is alert to theirs.

And in that state:

• The body can’t relax, repair or recover.

• The brain can’t consolidate memory.

•The mind struggles with decision-making, focus, creativity.

The whole system operates in threat mode.

Now zoom out:

As a CEO, you are one of the most important relationships in the lives of the people you lead.

Your nervous system, the way you show up, speak, react, make decisions, heavily influences theirs.

So when your team is struggling with:

• Prioritisation
• Focus
• Stress
• Performance
• Decision making

The first place to check is not the process or the plan.

It’s your relationship with them.

Culture starts with how you lead yourself and how you relate to others, and you cannot fake it.

The myth is that leadership is about telling people what to do.

The reality:

Leadership is about relationships and relationships are about creating a nervous system environment that makes people feel
safe, accepted, respected and cared for.

This isn’t about softly-softly woo-woo stuff.

It’s about USING neuroscience to give the BRAIN exactly what it most wants and needs.

Do that and the body follows.

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As a CEO you’re either asset or liability 

It’s funny, humility, a trait most desire in a leader is often the trait that causes a CEO to not get personal support. 

I see it with getting coaching support as well as getting an EA and it seems to stem from this way of thinking. 

The reality is that a CEOs job is to keep the business in high performance mode. 

And that is done first by keeping themselves in high performance mode. 

You are a human-being of course but “CEO” is a role you are playing that has responsibilities to the business. 

Optimising personal performance is one of them. 

Why? 

A CEO has to make the most important decisions, the most difficult decisions, keep the business values aligned and on track with the mission. Has to consistently demonstrate how to behave and how to treat people. 

These things are hard WITH energy, peace, confidence, clarity, and focus. 

They are close to impossible without them. 

An investment in the CEO is an investment into the success of the company. 

What do you think?

Leadership is about what happens when you’re NOT there.

Management is about what happens when you ARE.

But you don’t get the big seat and earn the big money to be a manager, you get it because you make things happen, NOT stand over it while it happens.

One of the most common reasons CEOs become burnout bottlenecks is the challenge of expanding their brand of thinking.

“If I’m not there, X doesn’t happen.”

So you get pulled into every decision.

Join every meeting.

Have everything run by you.

New hires arrive and quickly learn that’s how things work around here.

You become the conductor stuck telling everyone what to play, and how to play it.

Naturally, your plate overflows.

So you start sacrificing.

First to go is social life. 

Then it’s your most important relationships shifted into maintenance mode.

Then your health.

When sales are good, it feels worth it. 

You’re on top of the world, proof your strategy works.

But that success only strengthens your attachment to a system built on your over-functioning.

When sales dip, suddenly, the cracks are visible everywhere.

And the thought that keeps you here?

“I don’t have people who think the way I do.”

But the reality?

Your brand isn’t inviting that kind of thinking forward.

Your culture is waiting for permission.

Your people are waiting for leadership.

And your business?

It’s waiting for you to stop being essential to its every move.

How much longer are you going to remain the smartest guy in the room… and keep paying the price for it?

Nobody changes until they get tired of their own bullshit.

Pausing and looking under the hood takes a lot of courage.

I remember win after win in my business.

Then there’s the applause.

“Wow, what you’ve built is incredible.”

“Tell me how you did it so I can do it.”

“I love what you’re doing, can I come and work for you?”

Invitations to talk.
Respect in everyone’s voice.
More opportunities than you can count.
Newspapers. Magazines. TV. Speaking invites.

It’s intoxicating.
The business expanding.
It’s easy to put your attention on those things.

Sure, I’ve got a shorter fuse, but I’m right. 

They just need to see the world like I do.

Ok, my stress levels are so high that I can’t relax, but this is living! 

I’m not walking too fast… you’re walking too slow.

I don’t see my wife and daughter that much right now, but that’s how it is. 

Big things require big sacrifices.

Yes, my team aren’t that happy, but that’s because they don’t get it. 

If they knew how it is, they’d get with the program.

Nobody changes without first doubting the path they’re on.

That’s the kind version.

Truth is, nobody changes until they get tired of their own bullshit.

All the excuses.

All the justifications for what’s clearly not working.

And it’s hard when there’s so much shiny stuff to focus on.

You gain the world… for the price of your soul.

At the time, the filter feels like your friend.
The numbing of emotions feels like support, like fuel to get you through.

I thought looking under the hood would slow me down. Or worse, stop me entirely.

When I finally did it, it sped me up.
Not just a little bit either.

I was carrying years of unintegrated knowledge like rocks in a backpack.

Past failures were slowing me down, sending me the long way round.

Insecurities and fears holding me back from the easier way.

False beliefs about what it takes to “make it”…

Like: if it isn’t hard work, you’re on the wrong path.

But with each new piece of clarity, I moved closer to the life I actually wanted.

I worked less.
Produced more value.
Built a life I loved, and became more valuable to everyone else in the process.

What I learned became three simple steps:

Reveal — uncover the beliefs that are guiding your feelings, thoughts and actions.

Revise — break them down, challenge them, and reimagine the ones taking you away from what matters.

Ritualise — act out the new beliefs, teach your brain the new map, create the habits that make it real.

But none of that happens without courage.

So ask yourself honestly:

Do you truly believe that your current way of leading will EVER allow you to create a life you love?

And if not…

What are you prepared to do about it?

When it comes to leadership challenges

You are either:

a. Doing something you know works (to a degree you are not happy with)

b. Doing something you know does not work

c. Or trying something new

Frustration and resentment tend to kick in when you reach the end of what you know.

Why? Because it is your own incompetence (at least with this person) reflected back to you.

The end of the line.

If you want it not to be, then you have to try something new.

When you do, your best bet is always to come from human values.

What would fairness do now?
What would honesty do now?
What would empathy do now?

Where most go wrong:

How do I get them to do what I want?
How do I get them to see what I think they need to see?

The first invites their potential forward.
The second invites their fear.

I know I’ve been caught here, what about you?

The Leadership Trap That Keeps You Stuck

The temptation to play amateur psychologist.

To diagnose their behaviour.

To reduce them to cause and effect.

“Something happened to them in childhood.”

“They had this or that type of relationship with their mother or father.”

“They’re a [insert nationality, gender, age group], so…”

It’s all a con.

Even if there is truth in the story, it’s still a con.

It gives you the illusion of clarity.

But it’s just a rabbit hole.

An assumption.

Followed by another assumption.

Followed by another.

All leading to a declaration.

A false assumption leading to a false statement of who they are.

And once you’ve declared it, you stop seeing them clearly.

It took me years to realise this.

And I still fall for it.

Because it’s safe.

It protects your self-image.

It lets you reduce a person to a label, a type, a fixed character.

It helps you avoid changing how you show up.

It lets you keep your current view of the world intact.

Sometimes it even makes you feel clever.

But it does not make you a better leader.

In fact, it’s the exact thing that keeps you stuck.

Circling the same relationship problems.

Triggered by the same type of person.

Still playing out the same patterns.

All the while, missing the opportunity to see yourself in the interaction.

And missing the opportunity to grow.

A better question is:

Who am I going to be in relationship to others?

That’s your job.

Not to figure them out.

But to decide how you want to show up, and to show up that way.

Most CEOs waste their greatest asset.

Great CEOs are good at thinking.

Sometimes that means seeing what nobody else can and setting course for it.

Sometimes that means seeing the second order effects of actions today, allowing them to mitigate risk or take advantage of opportunities.

Sometimes that means holding such clarity around the big picture that they can navigate through chaos or help others do the same.

Sometimes it is making the right decision when the popular choice is the opposite.

Whatever version it is, it is a CEO’s greatest asset alongside leadership.

But leadership is downstream from self leadership.

If leadership is clarity of communication, then self leadership is clarity of thinking.

So what is required for clarity of thinking?

Time to think.

Clear and calm mental energy.

Too often this asset gets sacrificed for busy work.

Being in the details.

Propping up individual performance.

Getting stuck in admin.

The open door policy.

And slowly the one thing that makes them great becomes the one thing they use the least.

Thinking becomes reactive.

Strategy becomes firefighting.

Clarity becomes noise.

The question every CEO should be asking is simple:

What structures do I need in place so that my greatest asset is protected, renewed, and given the space to do its job?

Because a CEO who can think clearly is never far from the solution.

A CEO who cannot is never far from burnout.

The advantage of seeming disadvantage

There is a magic in restriction and we get the story all wrong.

We tend to say, they did all this in spite of that.

The more I work with it though, the more it looks like they did all this because of that.

That is not totally fair. 

They still required considerable skill, perseverance and resilience.

That is an important aside but it is not my point.

The seeming disadvantage can be and often is extreme.

I have clients who have built extraordinary things off the back of insomnia. Others with Dyslexia, ADHD, Autism, chronic pain, only five hours a week available, kids with extreme care needs.

I have seen them achieve things that plenty of equally intelligent and determined people failed to achieve.

The restriction became a filter for thinking.

It force an unavoidable question: 

Given the genuine restrictions of my current life circumstances, how will I approach this thing?

Then maybe there was also the added benefit of the odds being against them.

They wanted to prove it was possible, rather than fall into the alternative narrative of victimhood.

Despite this, we resist any restriction, even those we know serve us.

I do not have time to be the parent I want to be, to sleep, to eat well, to exercise.

I will end up behind all of those not doing those things.

The irony is, you will not be beaten by the person with fewer restrictions than you.

You will be beaten by those with more.

We believe restrictions limit us, but really they create clarity, direction, focus and strategy.

It is a clarity that is available to all of us.

Each time we define who we are, refine who we are not and align our behaviour to that, we cut away what we could be and become who we are.

The person without restriction is stuck chasing a future outcome that will define them, which is another way of saying lost.

The person with restriction has in part decided that they are the person who shows up anyway.

We too easily buy into bullshit stories of how it should be done. 

What we miss is that the story teller is merely sharing who they are. What they believe. 

They are sharing a self definition not a map. 

Their advice isn’t a service to you, it’s a service to themselves. 

So start telling your story, start defining who you are, what you believe, then act that out on the world with convincing.

“Two strangers picked apart my business, and exposed everything I was avoiding.”

Looking back, it was probably one of the most uncomfortable days of my life.

There’s a particular discomfort that comes with awareness. You never expect it.

Sometimes I’ll ask a client to record what they do. If it’s about health, I’ll ask them to photograph everything they eat. If it’s about business, I’ll ask them to track how much money they bring in each day.

Sounds simple enough, right?

But most people don’t make it a full week.

Why? Shame. Guilt. Embarrassment.

What will they think?
What will I think?
What will others think?

About what they’re doing.
About why it’s even necessary.
About how “bad,” “wrong,” or “not good enough” they must be.

At least part of them believes they’re building a portfolio of evidence. Proof that they’re beyond hope. Useless. That they should just give up.

I used to see this phase as purely data gathering. A neutral starting point.

Then came one of the most uncomfortable days of my life. It was 2017. Two guys from London were running through my business numbers, trying to understand the operation with a view to buying it.

They dug into everything. What did this mean? Why was there a dip there? What caused that gap?

Reality is incredibly uncomfortable when the story you’ve been telling yourself doesn’t match it. And if things aren’t working or could be better, that story usually doesn’t match.

Suddenly, you’re face to face with the real forces at play. Your diet. Your business. Your relationship with money. How you spend your time.

People use the word “disillusioned” like it’s a bad thing. But what it really means is that you were living with an illusion, and now you’re not.

And in that moment, everything starts to make sense.

Your health.
Your wealth.
Your burnout.
Your phone habits.
Your relationship with your partner, your kids.

You’ve stepped out of the Matrix. And if you stay awake to reality, actual reality, the opportunities are endless.

Your demons start to lose their power. The screaming stops. And in that silence, progress becomes very simple.

Simple, obvious, and surprisingly easy.

Because you start to see that your only real opposition was your own internal resistance. The beliefs your brain was trying to uphold about who you are.

And when those parts of you finally die off, life gets simple.
Your brain stops working overtime trying to make the world fit a false narrative.

PS Don’t take my word for it. If you’re up for a challenge, document something you do every day for 30 days. Feel the discomfort. And then see what starts to improve.

PPS If you do it, let me know how it goes.

Who cares about switching off?

I mean that question literally.

For me the answer is simple.

People who are fearing burnout.
People who are overwhelmed.

“If I could just stop thinking I would have some peace.”

That’s the belief.

Then thought becomes the enemy.

Thought becomes wired to negative emotion.
You become even more alert to it.
It becomes a negative spiral of thought, feeling, thought, feeling.

You start to feel like you’ll never be free unless you get time and physical distance between you and your current reality.

Burnout is a prediction.

Part of the same spiral.

But the initial thought is unskilful.

Switching off as a goal is impossible without sleep or drugs.

Presence is the real goal.

And presence is created in a number of ways:

• Designing a life you want to be present for something fun and fulfilling.

• Creating systems to close open thought loops rather than resisting them.

• Creating processes for the things that repeatedly weigh on your mind.

Presence isn’t the absence of thought. It’s the absence of threat.

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The Battle

Craig Lewis

Ed Ley

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ed Ley's LinkedIn Performance

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