Hey Friends,
It’s been a crazy couple of months, but I’m glad to be back sharing my personal learnings with you.
As I’ve been flying around the world meeting some incredible entrepreneurs, a surprising topic has kept repeating itself: integrity & alignment.
The most impressive founders I’ve met are rarely chasing status or money, they’re looking for something deeper, something more fulfilling that has integrity and meaning – something aligned.
Finding this inner alignment starts with you and living with integrity is hard work, but the impact spreads everywhere.
This month’s newsletter is full of ideas, learnings and takeaways for how to build alignment in both yourself and your relationships and how to maintain it with integrity once you’ve found it.
But before we start, I have some huge book-news I’m excited to share:
Life on Your Terms is now available to buy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Blackwell’s!
A huge thank you to everyone who has supported the launch so far – more on that later.
But for now, let’s get into the crazy details of the past month!
I hope you enjoy,
Lewis
On this month’s agenda:
– External results mirror your inner world
– How inner alignment creates trust
– Trust is the catalyst to growth
– Celebrating growth together
New here? You must have joined one of our recent events – Welcome!
Find our upcoming events listed here.
External Results Mirror Your Inner World
Let’s talk about the subject line that made you open this email.
$11m of revenue – it’s pretty impressive, isn’t it!
These were the 2025 earnings of one of the members at our latest residency in Sicily; a founder named Mickey who built an online brand selling compact, stylish treadmills.
Whilst big revenue figures are impressive, I’m starting to see that both personal and business growth are stronger when they’re built on honesty, vulnerability, and follow a purposeful mission.
When the founder themself has inner alignment and lives with integrity, this extends throughout their company into the daily actions and communications of their team.
Honest, secure leaders like Mickey create honest and secure teams. And when a team feels psychologically safe, they are free to pursue the mission in the most effective ways possible.
Mickey is just one of the 17 entrepreneurs I had the pleasure of hosting in the past month, and I could see this pattern repeating everywhere. Secure leaders create secure teams.
Insecure teams waste so much time on appearances – looking busy and chasing power and status that they completely neglect the mission.
Whereas secure teams work together, take more risks and innovate quickly. Their external results mirror the inner world of their leader.
However, if a leader has gaps in their personal alignment or integrity, these gaps will also be mirrored within their teams, and the results can be catastrophic.
If they’re not clear on the mission they’re following, their team will drift. And if they don’t hold themselves together with integrity, they allow contradictions to seep into their company’s operations.
Colleagues can turn into competitors, blame and ego becomes more important than progress, and all accountability is lost. The founder’s blind spots are mirrored in the company’s results.
If you’d like to check for your own blind spots, I’ve designed an inner alignment quiz that helps identify and correct these gaps.
At the end, you’ll be given some free resources based on the outcome of your report, and it only takes about 5 minutes to complete.
How Inner Alignment Creates Trust
One of the most important parts of running an Art of Mondays residency is creating this psychological alignment within a group.
In fact, it’s so important that the first 3 days are dedicated to creating psychological safety and strengthening the connections throughout the group.
So how do we do it?
We create a shared set of values and ask all of our members to embody them from the start.
We intentionally design spaces and activities that prioritise play, vulnerability and trust-building before anyone gets a chance to talk about their business. Egos are left at the door and we prioritise acceptance and connection.
We also create a variety of challenges for our members so that all of the different personality types are gently nudged out of their comfort zone. And once people get uncomfortable, they naturally look to the rest of the group for support.
This gives everyone the chance to both offer support and reach for it, and a deep level of trust forms throughout the group.
Whilst it may look like fun and games on the surface, we’re nurturing an environment where people can truly begin to relax and be their true authentic selves.
And when you’re surrounded by a team of A-players that you can deeply trust, this is where the magic happens.
Unfortunately, this is where most workplaces fall short. Poor leaders will announce company values and claim safety amongst teams, but unless those values are truly embodied and demonstrated by everyone, that safety is nothing but a thin veil of corporate bullsh*t.
You might recognise this in your own workplace. If so, here’s what you can do about it.
Firstly, have everyone buy back into the shared values (if you have them!). Discuss their origins with the team and why each one exists. Ask them to contribute and stay open to challenge.
Then, ensure you are embodying the values; truly living by them on a microscopic level. Practise what you preach. Show, don’t tell.
Finally, open up the floor for contributions and accept them fully when they are given. This could be as simple as going round the room with a 1-word check-in, or if you really want to build trust, you can ask everyone to publicly share a recent failure.
When you meet everyone without judgment, you’ll demonstrate that everyone is accepted and you’ll reestablish the psychological safety needed to bring back integrity and alignment.
Trust Is The Catalyst To Growth
Growth comes from doing something you haven’t done before and experiencing different results.
It happens when we step into the unknown, acting in the face of uncertainty.
But to do so comes with a huge amount of risk. Risks of failure, rejection, or embarrassment can all prevent us from stepping into the unknown.
Yet when our inner world is aligned, and we trust our own integrity, these risks disappear.
We no longer shame ourselves for external results, and we accept all outcomes by understanding that failure is necessary to keep living by our values.
This idea extends to our teams, too. When we can expect our team to respond with nothing but encouragement and reassurance, when we trust they won’t shame or abandon us, we gain the courage to step into the unknown.
With the right trusting group around you, you’re able to move through your fears instead of hiding them. With the right support, you can overcome what’s holding you back.
As a leader, the deep level of trust you’ve earned by aligning the group’s values will now pay dividends in both personal and business growth.
And this is exactly what I see with the most successful entrepreneurs on our retreats. They have a deep level of self-trust which extends throughout their team.
They aren’t control freaks, living in scarcity and treating their employees like pawns on a chessboard.
They’re self-assured leaders who empower and inspire their team to pursue the mission. They nurture both themselves and their teammates so that the rising tide can raise all the ships.
If the thought of nurturing your self-trust and becoming a self-assured leader is something that excites you, the waitlist for our next retreat is below. I’d love to see your name on it!
Celebrating Growth Together
I deeply believe that encouraging growth is the ultimate goal of our lives.
Whether it’s encouraging your own growth or the growth of others (or both!), it’s our natural purpose – our highest calling in life.
This is why I centred Life on Your Terms around the Growth Flywheel: a 4-step framework to continuously encourage growth to yourself and others throughout each of your daily actions.
And this month, we finally got to celebrate its launch to the public!
We had an incredible evening together, joined by the amazing artwork of Helenya Apostolou to create an immersive experience like no other.
It was a pleasure to see everyone who joined us and my heart was full from all of the encouraging messages I received on the day!
The book is a start point for anyone who wants to escape from the groups that hold you back.
It acts as a guide so you can intentionally redesign your current lifestyle to prioritise alignment over achievement, and places integrity at the core of everything you do.
If you haven’t grabbed one already, I’d love for you to join the 200+ readers who already have a copy in their hands!
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