IAM1150- CEO Provides Access to Mental Health and Fitness Resources

Corey Lewis is the CEO and Founder of 1AND1 LIFE, a Black-owned mental health and wellness performance platform that curates and customizes content, tools, and products to inform, guide, and empower its community. Due to the lack of mental health and fitness resources provided for African Americans, specifically African American men, Corey saw the need to address this issue by simplifying the options, creating accessible information, and disrupting the wellness landscape as a whole. In turn, a majority of the content curated by Corey and the 1AND1 LIFE Team is powered by the discussion of what mental health and wellness mean to the Black Community and how, together, we can break the stigma.

Additionally, Corey shares a passion for performance and fitness. With his determination and drive, he found himself playing football in the Big Ten Conference at The University of Illinois. He was also given the opportunity to participate in the Academic All Big-Ten for three years and won the Big Ten Distinguished Scholar Award. Shortly after, Corey played a short stint as a professional football player and persevered through four ACL surgeries and seven knee surgeries. Corey is now a certified personal trainer and motivational speaker who helps others reach their fitness goals through fitness activity, nutrition plans, and mental health resources.

If you’d like to learn more about Corey and his accomplishments, please check out Forbes, Black Excellence, and Thrive Global.

• CEO Hack: My morning routine
• CEO Nugget: Entrepreneurship life is hard and there's much to be learned. Hire a CFO and get everything structured together in the back office
• CEO Defined: Rallying the troops, streamlining processes and operations as well as understanding the people who work with you

Website: http://1and1life.com/

Instagram: @bigc1and1

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Transcription

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00:21 – Intro

Are you ready to hear business stories and learn effective ways to build relationships, generate sales, and level up your business from awesome CEOs, entrepreneurs, and founders without listening to a long, long, long interview? If so, you've come to the right place. Gresh values your time and is ready to share with you the valuable info you're in search of. This is the I AM CEO podcast.

00:51 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very special guest on the show today. I have Corey Lewis from 1 in 1 Life. Corey, it's great to have you on the show.

00:59 – Corey L Lewis

It's a pleasure to be here. You know, I've been tuning into you guys' stuff for a long time, and always great. And just happy to be one of the guests and happy to be on and excited to talk all things, entrepreneur and just everything that's out there in the business world.

01:17 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I'm super excited to have you on as well too. You have loads of great information. During our introductory call, we had a great conversation as a teaser for the upcoming podcast. Before we begin, I'd like to share more about Corey. Corey is the CEO and founder of 1AND1 Life, a Black-owned mental health and wellness performance platform. This platform curates and customizes content, tools, and products to inform, guide, and empower its community.

Due to the lack of mental health and fitness resources provided for African Americans, specifically for African American men, Corey saw the need to address this issue by simplifying the options, creating accessibility information, and disrupting the wellness landscape as a whole. In turn, a majority of the content curated by Corey and the One-on-One Life team is powered by the discussion of what mental health and wellness mean to the Black community and how together we can break the stigma.

Additionally, Corey shares a passion for performance and fitness and with his determination and drive, he found himself playing football in the Big 10 Conference at the University of Illinois. He participated in the academic All-Big 10 for 3 years and received the Big 10 Distinguished Scholar Award. Shortly after that, Corey had a brief career as a professional football player and endured 7 knee surgeries due to injuries.

Corey is now a certified personal trainer and motivational speaker who helps others reach their fitness goals through fitness activity, nutrition plans, and mental health resources. And if you'd like to learn more about Corey and all his accomplishments, you can check out resources such as Forbes, Black Excellence, Thrive Global, and now the I AM CEO podcast. Corey, great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:57 – Corey L Lewis

I am so ready. I'm looking forward to it.

02:59 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So I know I touched a little bit upon what I like to call your CEO story, but I wanted to rewind that clock. I hear a little bit more about how you got started with all the awesome things you're working on.

03:10 – Corey L Lewis

You know, for me with with what I'm doing, really, it just really all happened. Somebody who really dealt with, you know, my own mental health issues growing up and really having to find me and find my mental performance coach to be who I am today and just be in a lot better place today. I really found myself enjoying helping other people become better versions of themselves. You know, at a smaller scale when I became a certified personal trainer, shortly after my football career was over, you know, after all my injuries and things like that. And then it just got to a point where I wanted to do it at a bigger scale.

I wanted to reach, be able to reach more people. And obviously, you can only do so much, you know, trading hours for dollars and, and without building a true platform. So I set out with my business partner and co-founder of the company. He's a marketing person, a marketing genius, and we just work to take my passion for the fitness, health, and wellness space, and the mental performance space.

How can we get to work on building this platform to help people really become 1% better each day? And does it happen every day? No, you know, there are, there will be bad days. That's life. But how can we continue to provide solutions? Whether it's content, programs, resources, or anything else, how can we help people become 1% better every day and create a curated experience for them?

That's something we set out to do, you know, as with all things, it was, it was, you know, it started on a smaller scale, and we just continue to grow it over time over the years. You know now some that started in 2017 has really come into its own you know we've built a great community we've done some amazing things we have some amazing partnerships you know We have an awesome mental health podcast and we are truly excited about where we're headed. Got a long way to go. Got a lot more lives to touch in a positive way and I'm looking forward to doing that.

05:15 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, absolutely. I appreciate you so much and sharing that. And so I know we touched a little bit upon the different ways that you do that you mentioned you know creating the content and of course doing the physical fitness aspects, could you take us through a little bit more on those different ways that you serve your clients and how you support them and help them to be better?

05:32 – Corey L Lewis

Yeah, 100%. So we have a really affordable option that's a program that we created that has an app experience to where it provides customized mental health nutrition and fitness programs for every individual, you know, for what can usually cost hundreds of dollars, you know, for each sector of what we offer, you know, we're able to offer it for under 48 bucks a month, you know, at a really high level about the really high team, a lot of content to kind of do that at scale to be able to create it at such an affordable price.

The program is called “1 in 1.” It's named that way because it's all about you. The program is tailored and customized specifically for you, and everything we do in that program revolves around you. And it's not a one-size-fits-all approach. It's catered to you and your goals, catered to you in the way you eat, catered to, you know, there's a pretty in-depth assessment that you fill out in order to get access to it after you sign up and all that good stuff.

So we have, and we provide tons of mental toughness content mental strength content, and emotional wellbeing content in that program for people. And we continue to find ways to update that stuff so people continue to digest that content or go back to that content whenever they feel like it is. It's all on their dashboard, easily accessible in the palm of their hand. To further develop this for our users, we have another program that requires additional investment but provides personalized support.

We conduct weekly group and individual calls, which many people have participated in and found very successful so far. You know, and it's a great option because we really get to build that community, you know, build those programs, a pretty similar approach to what they get with the, you know, with our affordable option. But with this one, there is a more hands-on approach from all the coaches involved. You know, we have our registered dietitian, mobility specialist, and mental health coach all participating in our body, mind, plate program. This program aims to help people enhance themselves and reach their mental and physical goals over a 4-month.

08:08 – Gresham Harkless

Would you consider that to be what I like to call your secret sauce, the thing you feel kind of such a part of makes it unique. Is it important to understand the principles but also meet people where they are?

08:24 – Corey L Lewis

Yeah, 100%. And that's why, like, instead of trying to be this person or this company that has, like, one person who claims they could do it all. I have built a team of highly experienced individuals in various fields, which greatly enhances our ability to help people improve. So that's from a nutrition aspect, like, yeah, I may know what I'm doing. I may have a little like precision nutrition certification, but I by no means am a, you know, certified registered dietician or nutritionist at a high level.

People who have gone to school for years to attain those credentials. So I went and hired a person there, went to hire some mental health performance experts, psychologists, etc. To help their mobility specialists. I emphasized the physical aspect, as well as the motivational aspect and other relatable things. It's important to be a leader while aligning with and collaborating with experienced and credentialed individuals who can help people in different areas of wellness.

09:40 – Gresham Harkless

I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I wanted to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be an app, a book, or a habit that you have. What's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

09:51 – Corey L Lewis

For me, it's my routine in the morning. So regardless of what time, whatever my first meeting or coaching call, whatever that may be, first thing in the morning, I'm up 90 minutes to 2 hours before it. You know, hypothetically speaking, if my first meeting is at 8 am or my first session, with a client coaching call, I'm up at 6:30. During that time, I like to meditate and read. And then I. So, between meditation and reading, I make my bed. And then, I go get a workout in obviously shower and be ready for the day.

10:34 – Gresham Harkless

I love all of those hacks. And so I want to ask you now for what I call CEO nugget. You might've already touched on this, but this is kind of a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something if you were to hop into a time machine, would you tell your younger business self?

10:47 – Corey L Lewis

First and foremost, I would say, hey, the entrepreneur life is fun. It's great to go build your own business. But, you know, it's going to be hard. There's going to be a lot you need to learn. I would have hired a much better CFO early, where in the beginning I was doing a lot of the financials and things like that, but looking back on it and getting everything in order, I would have much, a CFO is a very important hire just in terms of getting your company where it needs to be from the back office perspective, getting those financials structured properly and, you know, helping with financial forecasting and budgeting and all that stuff that really goes into business.

11:32 – Gresham Harkless

Truly appreciate that. And I wanted to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. We are hoping to have different “CEOs” on this show. So Corey, what does being a CEO mean to you?

11:44 – Corey L Lewis

CEO to me means rallying the troops, streamlining processes and operational things, you know, understanding and being able to understand the people who work with you and for you, their emotional intelligence and well-being, and being able to tap into that.

12:06 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely huge. So Corey, I truly appreciate that definition and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional that you can let our readers and listeners know. And of course, how best they can get ahold of you, find out about the community and all the awesome things that you and your team are building.

12:22 – Corey L Lewis

For sure. For me, one of the most important things is to control what you can control, as well as, as an entrepreneur, as a CEO, whatever it may be, and get comfortable being uncomfortable because that's entrepreneur life. And those things are very important, important things to think about when venturing into entrepreneurship. You will face adversity, adversity will, you may be able to know when it's coming and you may get an email and it may happen at the drop of a dot. However, understanding those things And just knowing that those things are part of the entrepreneur's life and part of running a business.

Don't let those things knock you off your path, you know, and knock you down. There are tons of resources out there to help you overcome those things, and there are tons of resources to utilize within your business. A lot of affordable resources as more and more people come out with new things to help businesses move along and be more efficient. So continue to look into those things. And lastly, don't focus on too many things. Become good at one thing. Build your teams and systems around that and then move on to the next, especially in a startup mode.

I've run into that issue where I wanted to do a hundred different things under one company under one umbrella, but never really got good at one, and I just ended up running myself into the ground. And you never really end up taking more steps back than you do forward, you know, as it pertains to really getting into that vision and driving that company forward. So, you know, focus on that. And then last, sorry, this is last but not least, mental health is important. You should come first. It's okay to put yourself first and put your well-being before things. Really focus on having that work-life balance.

Spend time with your loved ones, spend time with your significant others, and spend time with people who are important to you in your life. Take that time because those moments are just as important as the moments and hours that you put into your work and into building your company. You know, I promise you that you don't want to look up and, you know, a few years from now with great success and realize that you missed a lot of moments and that you could have gotten here without sacrificing a lot of those important moments that could have helped you feel better and be better.

Your physical and mental well-being is very important. Don't sacrifice those things along this tough journey of entrepreneurship. And the grind is tough, and it is, but make sure you make time for yourself. Self-care is important. Those things are important to me, and you know, I'm Corey Lewis, CEO and co-founder of 1AND1 LIFE. Very passionate about mental performance you can find all of our content at one and one life.com.

In regards to our customized coaching program with customized nutrition and fitness and emotional well-being program, is called one in one U, which you can find at oneinoneu.com. You know, if you're interested or would like to learn more, please reach out to our team for additional information. So thank you so much for having me. Big fan of this podcast and what you guys are doing and trying to accomplish. And thank you for being here today and I hope you all have a great rest of your week.

16:10 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Corey. We'll have the links and information in the show notes. Appreciate all the awesomeness that you provided today, all the awesomeness that you're doing in the world. And I appreciate you again for, you know, being on the show. So have a great rest of the day.

16:22 – Outro