We had the absolute privilege of sitting down with Mark Bryant, the Founder, and creator of The Energise Academy. We had an intriguing conversation with him about success, positive habits, strengths & weaknesses and general insight into what it means to be a business owner.

Mark started his first business during his time at university.  In 2015, he was the CEO of a company operating in the domestic energy efficiency market turning over £15 million. In many ways, his life was sorted. He had the car, a wonderful wife, two gorgeous children and a loving family. On the inside, however, it wasn’t all that good.

In June 2015 Mark’s world stopped.  He was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukaemia. He endured one of the most toxic cancer treatments in the world and had a full intensity stem cell transplant. Six months later, he had a major relapse and his prognosis was only 6 months.

His new focus has been complete recovery. Two and a half years later he has now launched The Energise Academy. His goal is to share all the amazing things he has learned along his road to recovery to help you to your healthier and happier life.

Mark started working with our Virtual Assistants in the last year to help bring his vision to life along with assisting him with his other business interests.

What do you think made you become an entrepreneur?

What made me become an entrepreneur was the opportunity to create a financially secure life for myself and my family.  I have an inquisitive mindset and love working out how things work especially organisations and businesses. I have since had to learn a lot about health and help myself recover from what is considered a terminal illness. I am now using my entrepreneurial skills to help others benefit from my journey.

What do you think are your core strengths?

I am able to spot potential opportunities and solutions that others can’t. I have a good strategic mind and am able to turn a vision into reality.

How do you overcome any of your weaknesses?

My weakness has always been taking on too much. I now have a mantra that I keep myself in check ‘Slow down and achieve more’.  When I say achieve more, I mean achieve more health, life, love, and success. For each person, this will differ.

Other than deciding to work for yourself, what was the single most important decision you made that contributed to your success?

Committing to continued personal development, growth, and improvement in all areas of life. Personally and professionally.

Having launched my first company whilst at university, I didn’t start any kind of continued education until I was about 30. As soon as I did, things started to change quickly. I have been on all of Tony Robbin’s programmes. I’ve also been on many other leadership, management and health-related training programmes and seminars. I am an avid researcher and read a lot as well.

What habits helped make you successful?

My new habits relate very much to all my lifestyle choices. I have created powerful daily rituals that I share through The Energise Academy. This ensures that my main focus is health, family, and fitness. Work and finances fit around that.

I effectively had to learn a whole new set of daily rituals to keep on track with my upgraded lifestyle choices. Success isn’t built on top of what we do some of the time, it is built on what we do most of the time.

What were some of the biggest lessons that have impacted the way that you work?

The biggest lesson in life so far was being diagnosed with cancer. It was a serious wake-up call.  I believe that the cause of my cancer had a lot to do with the stress I had in my life.

I have now had to re-engineer my life from the very basics of what I put into my mouth, how I exercise and how much time I spend working.  My coach gave me one of the best insights which impacted on my work life.

‘Not everything gets done, so focus on what is most important.’

This one piece of advice has helped me implement my mantra of ‘slowing down and achieving more’

What are your non-work habits that help you with your work-life balance?

Setting clear outcomes and boundaries is essential to ensuring that I maintain a healthy work-life balance.

Some of my rituals include sticking to a living raw vegan diet, daily Transcendental Meditation practice, exercise, family time, fun time and then work fits in and around that.

How did you get your idea or concept for the business?

When I was diagnosed with cancer I researched so much to find anything that may be able to support me on my healing journey. I dove down so many rabbit holes it was confusing.

I decided that something had to be done to make it simple for people to get healthy and stay healthy.  I’ve done the research, so if someone is ready to take responsibility for their own health, we are here to support them at The Energise Academy.

We will soon be launching not just online education training and support, but more targeted help and one to one coaching as well. I want to improve and enrich the quality of people’s lives

What is unique about your business?

Most people I speak to have no idea about living foods. This is a powerful category of food I didn’t even know about until after I was diagnosed with cancer.

I want to show people how they can grow 30 – 50% of all their food requirements in the comfort of their home in the kitchen without having to have a green finger in sight.

What are your responsibilities as the business owner?

My responsibility as the business owner is to stay healthy, lead by example and ensure that strategically we can support as many people as possible through the products and services we offer.

If you had one piece of advice to someone just starting out, what would it be?

My advice would be to find a good mentor. Someone that has already trodden the path or at least a similar one to you before. Reach out and ask for help and guidance, you will be surprised at how much advice people will give you to ensure you don’t make the same mistakes they did.