Get Off The Bench Podcast

Laurent is a French national who left France at 23, spent 20 years in South-East Asia, before relocating to Finland in the summer of 2019. His professional background is in market research and advertising, where 

he ran 7-figure businesses across 3 countries. 

Throughout the years, and as a result of his own burnout, Laurent has developed a passion for coaching, mentoring, advising and training people. He is particularly focused on helping entrepreneurs get unstuck and recognising that often they are the bottle-neck getting in the way of success.

Socials:

Website: https://www.laurentnotin.com/

LinkedIn: Laurent Notin

Youtube: Laurent Notin

Insta: Laurent Notin @laurentnotin

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Mick Harrington grew up amongst the picturesque farming communities of East Gippsland, Victoria where he has established himself as a successful small business owner and decorated musician.

Having worked in a variety of roles in the  agricultural, retail, journalism and native timber industries, Mick is passionate about regional and remote Australia including the need for communities to access quality healthcare and affordable housing, alongside gainful employment and quality training.

While life has certainly changed for Mick in recent times,  after gaining the admiration of the nation on TV show "The Voice", Mick is usually more comfortable working in hi-vis and boots than he is stepping on stage to perform for his fans.

A passionate voice for his rural community, Mick is strong believer in the need for improved rural and regional infrastructure and he strongly supports primary industries within Victoria.

Mick is regularly seen popping up at many community events offering his help to raise much needed funds and loves the passion for community that rural people express. He is also a volunteer and long time committee member at Lindenow South football netball club.

When he isn't on-stage or operating his business, Mick loves to watch his beloved Geelong Cats and spend time playing at the park with his daughters Bella, Katie and Niamh or exploring his local countryside.

Socials:

FB: Mick Harrington Music

Insta: Mick Harrington @mickharringtonmusic

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Michael Bartura has well over 30 years of experience in a variety of fields including education, international aid, manufacturing, training & development, business development and innovation. Over the years, he  in as many as a dozen countries in Asia, Australia, North America, and Europe.

Michael has worked as a director, manager, business developer and consultant with organisations such as The Halo Trust and the IMC Group. He has spent 12 years as a therapist and 17 years as a facilitator, trainer and a coach. He has a master’s degree in management and taught classes on Leadership, Self-Awareness and Emotional Intelligence for the School of Life and now the Small Giants Academy. 

In Australia, he founded Happy Habits Coaching using principles of Servant leadership and Positive Neuroplasticity - a mindfulness-based approach to increase our self-awareness of the brain’s tendency for negative biases and better deal with anxiety and fear. Together with his daughter, he established the Gatherer’s Leadership project to work with the next generation on models of leadership, entrepreneurship and advocacy for social goodwill. 

He is committed to helping his clients better understand how their minds are limiting their growth and happiness, and how mental patterns that served us well in the Savannah are not well suited to modern times and get in the way of a life worth living. He listens deeply and asks questions with a mix of curiosity, empathy, and honesty.

Michael lives in the forest just outside Melbourne and is constantly amazed by how easily his children see through his pretensions. He is addicted to quotes from people much smarter and linguistically more adept than himself, and finds shopping for anything other than office equipment boring and tedious.

Socials:

Website: www.lifecoachingmelbourne.com.au

Website: www.happyhabits.com.au

LinkedIn: Michael Bartura 

FB: Michael Bartura

Insta: Michael Bartura @positiveneuroplasticity

Mentions:

Small Giants Academy

Lisa Miller (book) ‘The Awakened Brain’

Martin Seligman

Dr Rick Hanson

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Dr. Jen Pratt is a pediatric physician that is caring for children in the very same hospital where she was treated. Her story has come full circle, back to where her life was transformed. Dr. Pratt is now able to help improve the lives of other children battling critical illnesses with the gift of a wish referral and personally share in the transformation that comes with her patients’ wish experiences.

She attended medical school at Midwestern University in Chicago, IL and completed her pediatric residency training at the University of Minnesota. Her areas of interest include teaching medical students and residents, quality improvement work, and caring for medically complex children. Outside of the hospital, Jen enjoys golfing and exploring the outdoors with her family.

Make-A-Wish creates life-changing wishes for children with critical illnesses. Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, Make-A-Wish is the world’s leading children’s wish-granting organization, operating in every community in the United States and in nearly 50 countries worldwide. Together with generous donors, supporters, staff and more than 24,000 volunteers across the U.S., Make-A-Wish delivers hope and joy to children and their families when they need it most. 

Make-A-Wish aims to bring the power of wishing to every child with a critical illness because wish experiences can help improve emotional and physical health.  Since 1980, Make-A-Wish has granted more than 520,000 wishes worldwide; more than 350,000 wishes in the U.S. and its territories alone.

Socials:

Website: www.wish.org 

Twitter - @MakeAWish

Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/makeawish

Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/makeawishamerica/

YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/c/makeawish

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Mike Fox | Multi award-winning Filmmaker, Director, Producer, Writer, Designer, Creative Professional, Actor, Voiceover, CEO & Entrepreneur.

Featured on front page newspapers, Mike Fox's ultimate goal is impacting lives to empower, inspire and encourage and give direction in some way. Along the journey, are many curvy and cool paths from comedy, to suspense and scary, to sci-fi, to emotional, to pure cinematic. 

His professional work is known across the U.S. including receiving numerous accolades and awards, featured on multiple media outlets on television, publications and print. As well, Mike has been named Top Pioneer & Entrepreneur by K.I.S.H. Magazine, won numerous awards from the prestigious Delaware Press Association (DPA), Local Business Person of the year by Alignable two years in a row, and continues to speak and teach filmmaking, directing, creative design and business to educational outlets.

With an accumulative of over twenty plus years of Creative experience, from design, video production, audio production, filmmaking marketing, social media, photography and videography and much more, his momentum to make an impact only grows stronger. Alignable’s 2021 and 2022 Businessperson of the Year.

He’s also been an Official Film Festival Judge as well as currently being an actor, voiceover professional, CEO of Design business Splash Designworks, and produces Ambient EDM music as Dubblestep & Trillex. Now, with his feature film on Amazon Prime, Tubi TV, and IMDB TV (Freevie), he and his beautiful family continue their focus on producing filmmaking content through a newly formed business, Crystal Fox Films.

“Life isn’t about finding yourself, life is about creating yourself.” -George Bernard Shaw

Socials:

Website: Splash Designworks https://splashdw.com

Website: Crystal Fox Films https://crystalfoxfilms.com 

LinkedIn: Mike Fox

Facebook: Splash Design Works

Instagram for Splash: @splashdesignworks

Instagram for Mike Fox

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Former Metropolitan Police Officer, Danni Brooke AKA Undercover Mother is highly regarded as an investigation and intelligence expert across The Globe. Having worked on some of the most dangerous and high-profile cases, Danni has seen herself face to face with crimes involving guns, drugs and prostitution rings.

'My life was full of danger every day and I couldn’t tell my friends or family what I did for a living. My mum didn’t even know! There were definitely times I was in too deep but somehow I always got away with it.

I was living a double life and it felt normal.'

For over a decade Danni Brooke was one of the most effective female undercover cops in the UK, one of a very small number of women in the Met’s elite unit. She was so successful at taking down criminals she was seconded to forces around the country.

Whether she was infiltrating organised crime gangs or disrupting drug supply lines, Danni played the innocent Essex girl, fooling even the most suspicious villains, using her quick wits to keep her out of trouble. She loved the job but the pressures of her work, and trying to balance the long hours with being a mother, were to take a toll on her personal life.

In her honest, warm and gripping memoir, Danni also reveals why she left the police, how she found a new career (and love) on C4’s Hunted – and why the thrill of covert work still pulls her into private investigations.

Today Danni Brooke enjoys the quiet life with her two children at her home in Spain, where she also runs a cybersecurity company with partner and fellow TV hunter Ben Owen. She likes experimenting with Italian recipes, baking and watching true crime documentaries on Netflix. It is a world away from the high-risk life she lived for ten years as a covert police officer. Then she spent her days on the streets and her nights in dingy clubs and crack dens, helping to gather evidence to put hundreds of dangerous criminals behind bars. 

Since leaving the force in 2013 she has built up a successful career as an investigator on C4’s Hunted, now in its 10th series. She has also participated in the ‘Celebrity Hunted’ programmes, appeared on ITV’s This Morning, taken part in the C5 series Troll Hunters and is due to star in a new C4 gameshow hosted by Ellie Taylor launching this Spring. Danni has also filmed a pilot with a Hollywood production company. 

As one of the only female undercover cops operating at a senior level Danni has a unique insight into the workings of this specialist unit. And though her extraordinary bravery and quick-thinking earned her commendations, today she takes a more critical view of her police work.

‘My view on drugs has completely changed over the years,’ she says. ‘Though I’m proud of what I did, taking out some really nasty characters, I can see that drugs problem isn’t going to be solved unless there is some serious thinking at a governmental level.

Socials:

LinkedIn: Danni Brooke

Insta: DGB @dannigbrooke

Twitter @DanniGBrooke

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Mat Bowtell is the founder and CEO of Free 3D Hands, an Australian charity who designs and 3D prints hands and assistive devices. The hands are provided for free, to children and adults all around the world and they even pay the postage! Mat freely shares his designs under an open-source licence so others can make and repair their own devices and to encourage further innovation. 

Mat's goal is to significantly bring down the cost of assistive technology to help those who currently cannot access or afford it.

Located on Phillip Island, the small team have provided hundreds of devices all around the world. Their designs are also being made by volunteers in Italy, Thailand, France, South Africa, Egypt, USA, Poland and others.

They are currently developing a low cost, multi-grip bionic arm and are making exciting progress with the latest prototype. Their goal is to make the equivalent of a $60,000 bionic arm...for under $60 in parts!

To learn more about Free 3D Hands or to make a donation, head to their website at http://www.free3dhands.org

Socials:

Website: https://free3dhands.org/

FB: Free 3D Hands

Insta: Free 3D Hands @free3dhands

Mentions:

Thingiverse

Enable

Love Your Sister

The Project

Jon Faine

RACV Solar

AMP Foundation

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Ben Tunks is a Youth Worker and Musician, and founder of the Little Village Project (LVP). 

After working in the community service sector for many years, Ben made a change to the Department of Education & Training in 2017. There he came to see school staff as the real workers at the coal face of Youth Work, particularly when it came to children who have experienced trauma and those who live in out-of-home care.  

Ben soon found himself in a Student Wellbeing role in a Primary School in Traralgon (Victoria, Australia), and in 2020 founded the LVP to support the work that his school were doing with some of the vulnerable children and families within the local community. 

Since then, the LVP has spent over $22,000 on 150 interventions for 36 students/families. This includes therapeutic support such as counselling, psychology and speech pathology, funding for assessments, and providing some material needs for education such as clothing, shoes and glasses.

Socials:

Website: kindredspirits.org.au/tlvp 

FB: Little Village Project https://www.facebook.com/thelittlevillageau

Mentions:

Latrobe Valley Bus Lines

Gippsland Regional Executive Forum 

Gippsland Emergency Relief Fund

A Better Life For Foster Kids

Heather Baird podcast interview

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Kristi Maggio is dedicated to creating access to equal education and employment opportunities worldwide. For over 20 years, she watched many children fail and feel inadequate merely because they didn’t fit into the traditional way of learning. As a result, she chose to take action and founded a school that gives students the tools to create success in their life no matter who they are or where they come from. She is also the author of the book “Follows and Likes Is This All That I’m Worth”, and her latest release “Young Changemakers”.

After starting Maggio Multicultural Academy and Foundation, Kristi’s mission became clear, to impact the lives of 1 billion youth in the next 10 years by providing an educational program based on entrepreneurship and applied learning. She has often said and heard, “I wish I knew then what I know now!” So, why does the world continue educating young people in a passive way? Why is there a lack of access to education and employment in many countries? It has become Kristi’s obsession, to make a new ecosystem that stops generational poverty, by providing youth the skills they need to be competitive in this world, and upon graduation have the opportunity to either, receive employment, start their own business, or go on to higher education. For the first time ever, people can study and work from anywhere as long as they have a computer and a signal. 

Kristi does not do hard work; she does “heart work,” because nothing is ever hard when it comes from the heart. 

Maggio Multicultural Academy is a bilingual school in the Dominican Republic founded in 2016. Starting small with only 7 students, she bootstrapped the business and did mostly everything herself to grow, from accounting, curriculum, teacher training and marketing. To expand her vision, she needed to build credibility and transparency, so she started a radio show, a podcast, authored a book and started a 501c3 in the US and the Dominican Republic.

Socials:

Website: https://kristimaggio.com/

LinkedIn: Kristi Maggio

Follows and Likes Is This All That I'm Worth? (Book)

Young Change-Makers (Book)

Maggio Multicultural Academy (Bilingual Hybrid School)

Maggio Multicultural Foundation 

The Secret To Success… Isn’t So Secret (Podcast)

Social Media and Podcast Links

Mentions:

Evan Carmichael - Your One Word

Jonte Hall (Harlem Globetrotter)

Herb Lang (Harlem Globetrotter)

Dave Thomas (Wendy’s founder)

CISCO

Cloud Python

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Jordan Wylie is an international bestselling author, award winning adventurer and one of the stars of Channel 4’s BAFTA-nominated shows Hunted and Celebrity Hunted. He is also currently the United Kingdom’s national ambassador for the Army Cadet Force.

Jordan grew up on one of the largest council estates in the country in Blackpool, Lancashire. After a few brushes with the law at an early age, some harsh lessons learnt and having left school with no qualifications, Jordan talk the life-changing decision to join the British Army at 16 years old and has never looked back since.

Jordan has an exemplary military service record which saw him dedicate 10 years to Queen and country. He saw operational service in Northern Ireland and Iraq where he specialised in military intelligence, close reconnaissance and armoured warfare. Jordan spent much of his spare time as a soldier playing football and studying, he left the military proudly having represented the British Army as a player and coach and having obtained a foundation degree, Bachelors degree and Masters degree in the field of Security and Risk Management.

On leaving the Army, Jordan entered the world of Maritime Security, making headlines after armed Somali pirates boarded a ship that he was tasked with protecting. As the onboard security team leader, Jordan found himself in charge and forced to make critical decisions for the safety of his crew. It was this period of his life and unique experiences that led Jordan to write “Citadel: The True Story of One Man’s War Against the Pirates of Somalia”, which became a Sunday Times bestseller (general paperbacks) on publication.

Jordan has had a thirst for adventure and the great outdoors since he was a young boy but after having a mental breakdown in late 2015 with a diagnosis of severe depression and chronic anxiety, he has since dedicated himself to using the power of purpose and the spirit of adventure to have a positive impact in the world and the lives of others, especially the next generation.

Jordan is respected as a multi-discipline adventurer around the world and has set and broken several official world records whilst raising over one million pounds in the process for charitable and good causes including delivering a school from concept to completion and opening on the Horn of Africa.

Jordan is a proud patron, trustee, ambassador and volunteer of several charities. He is also the author of 4 books, two of which have been bestsellers in both the UK and US. Jordan is a regular commentator on Sky News and an accomplished keynote conference speaker.

Jordan lives by his own mantra of “Be The Difference That Makes A Difference”…

Socials:

Website: https://www.jordanwylie.org/

LinkedIn: Jordan Wylie

Insta: JORDAN WYLIE @mrjordanwylie

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