In this episode Host Helen Lee interviews Mia Kyricos, a globally respected thought leader in the business of wellness and brand strategy with 20+ years of experience cultivating wellness, hospitality, healthy lifestyle and travel brands across 100+ countries. As President and Founder of Kyricos & Associates LLC, a strategic advisory and referral firm, and as the world’s first Chief Love Officer, Mia enables senior leaders to activate Ecosystems of Wellbeing™, advancing both brand and business objectives.
Named a Global Leading Woman in Wellness and Cornell University’s Alumna of the Year, Mia has helped to define the global wellness economy, and transform what it means to be well at both work and in life. A celebrated speaker, her work and expertise has also been featured in The New York Times, LA Times, Skift, Smart Money, Hotel Business, Travel Weekly, Real Simple, Market Watch & more. She holds a Master of Management in Hospitality Administration (MMH) from Cornell University, and a BA in International Relations from Wheaton College in Massachusetts.
Helen and Mia talk about love in the context of business operations, the impact of global trauma, love over fear and ego, persuading the world to accept love as a practical business strategy and much more for its survival and thriving, how it can benefit our business systems and general wellbeing, and how people like Mia are part of a worldwide change in how we see ourselves and the resulting systems we adopt.
You can watch Mia's presentation at the Global Wellness Summit in 2020 on "Love as A Business Strategy" here: https://youtu.be/XclSRbd_XPM
Helen will be organising Masterclasses with some of her podcast guests, possibly with follow-on courses as well. She hopes to do so with Mia and will conduct some of her own too. Stay tuned and enjoy Part 1 of this conversation with Mia! Part 2 will be out next Monday.
"Life is Love itself. Invincible Love is the very essence of Life itself. It is the very essence of who we ALL are. And the most practical and wisest thing to focus on is to be Love itself. Anything else is like chasing our own shadows, which is what humanity has been doing for centuries. Time for true transformation. Now." ~ Helen Lee, 2017
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- In exercising one of Mia's wellness practices at the beginning of the pandemic, which is to learn something new which gave her hope, she looked into institutionalising love as a business practice, "the greatest form of positivity that there is". She had already studied this for quite some time including its impact on how companies perform and their bottom line. She could prove to herself first that love does pay.
- There is no better time in history than now, "when the world has really been shaken to its core in many ways" to implement love as a business practice, to take it "from the bedroom into the boardroom", as Mia puts it. Adopting a new strategy with which to run our world is part of the transformation triggered by recent and current global events.
- The business world is awkward and reluctant to speak about love and spirituality, and yet these aspects of life are the very essence of our humanity, of the souls or spiritual beings that we are. Mia is part of a new wave that gets business talking and accepting love as part of humanity and our lives that needs to be incorporated into its operations and fully optimised.
- What makes love a strong business strategy is that it is the intersection of your personal life and your professional life. You can apply it as a strategy in both areas of your life and it will have equal positive effects. You can see problems, solutions and opportunities differently to how you did before and the integration of both life strategies into one application of love allows clearer vision and focus of energy.
- Mia accentuates the different aspects of thought that love encourages in crisis and stress situations. As a leader, sometimes stressed, irritable and anxious, taking pause and approaching a problem with love leading will likely result in clearer communication, thinking and resolution.
- Mia works on legitimising the case for love in business by pointing to actual real life implementations that have been successful. Business leaders need to be communicated with on their own level, the advantages of wellness needs to be quantified for them to understand and accept the reality.
- The changes that the world needs as we move forward and learn about ourselves and the nature of our beings will be facilitated by leaders and way showers such as Helen, Mia and other podcast guests and change makers that Helen invites on "Transform and Thrive" and will also invite to conduct Masterclasses and follow-on courses for listeners, followers and clients, as we cast off the old broken systems and habits and adopt new ones embracing empathy, kindness and love as our driving motives.
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You will be able to find various examples of Helen's approach to coaching people on loving and honouring themselves greatly, by checking out transformandthrive.club And if you like, you can sign up right away and join her powerful monthly live Zoom sessions where she personally coaches you and facilitates shifts for you on this subject and any that you are focusing on and need help with right now in order to transform and thrive. And watch out for the Masterclasses to come, conducted by herself and select podcast guests and change makers.
BEST MOMENTS
‘I think that one of the things I heard you say about yourself is that you are an evangelist of making love as a business strategy and I just love the sound of that which is why I’m excited about you being here with me today.’ – Helen
‘Love would regularly come up as one of my leadership strengths. But it's not something I could regularly talk about as something I’m good at, like being good at communications or otherwise.’ – Mia
'We not only have a Soul, we are Soul and the essence of Soul is Love. We're not even tapping into a fraction of who we are and I think it's such a waste.' – Helen
‘It actually does impact how we perform in the workplace in such significant ways that we are only beginning to understand. Leaders and many of them today still, typically for large publicly traded companies, for example, they lead from a place of fear and that’s where ego lives. And love is where acceptance lives.’ – Mia
‘I think we need different leaders. I actually think we need leaders who are empathic and highly sensitive, right? Because they understand the subtle energies and work with them. I think we can co-create a totally different world.’ – Helen
‘I think a lot of times if you think about it we set company goals that are unrealistic, with the understanding that, ok, we are probably not gonna hit that goal but we’ll get close to it. That’s how I look at the difference between love and care and empathy. Love is the hardest goal to go achieve for many people. So, why don't you set the bar high and if you get to care or empathy or compassion or gratitude, you're pretty close.’ – Mia
'People are now willing to open their eyes and ears to almost anything that can help change the unhappy and negative ties in the world.' – Mia
'It's not about a mushy sentimental love at all. It cannot be. Love is a hell of a lot stronger than that and it is a lot more practical than that.' – Helen
`We need more people, certainly from stereotypically hard nosed industry like finance, to speak to the softer side of business of which love is the star of the show.’ – Mia
'The evidence is there. It's just that people are fearful and coming from mind rather than heart. And if you come from mind, it is inevitably fear-based, ego-based and we have choices. We have a choice to come from that or to come from heart.' – Helen
'We need people to know that love is the most sensible and practical thing to inculcate in all areas of our lives including our business and corporate world, and that it actually pays us, rewards us, monetarily and in so many intangible and very, very crucial ways as well.' – Helen
ABOUT THE GUEST MIA KYRICOS
Most recently, Mia was SVP & Global Head of Wellbeing at Hyatt, setting a new industry standard as a leader and curator of the company's global wellbeing strategy, spanning commercial health and wellness-related products, services, events and partnerships as well as colleague wellbeing for ~ 130,000 associates worldwide. Prior to Hyatt, she was Chief Brand Officer of Spafinder Wellness, Inc., where she led the company's brand evolution, positioning Spafinder as an authority for wellness trends, providers and resources.
Mia also served as Vice President of EXOS where she oversaw the workplace wellness division operating on the campuses of companies such as Google and Intel. Prior to EXOS, she was Director of Global Spa Brands at Starwood Hotels & Resorts where she led the creation of 6 international spa brands and managed the Starwood Spa Collection - a consortium of 60 wellness travel destinations across 26 countries.
Mia has served the boards of the Global Wellness Summit, and University of California Irvine, and sits on the Advisory Boards of Cornell University, Wellness for Cancer, and the Global Wellness Institute (GWI), a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational foundation she helped found.
ABOUT THE HOST HELEN LEE
Founder & Principal Coach of Lee Heiss Coaching, Helen Lee coached thousands of clients worldwide and multinationals in Asia-Pacific in the last three decades. She created a powerful ontological coaching methodology that ignites the true greatness or invincibility in people. Thoroughly tested and honed over 20 years, this methodology consistently and rapidly produces desired results.
Helen was also a journalist who later ran her own communications consultancies in Australia and Asia.The Business Times listed her in its “Who’s Who of Women Shaping Singapore” while The Straits Times named her “The Leader Prodder” in a feature on Singapore’s top coaches.
VALUABLE RESOURCES
To become a member of the Transform and Thrive Club and benefit from monthly powerful live sessions on Zoom video calls and multimedia coaching, check out and sign up here:
www.transformandthrive.club
CONTACT METHOD
www.leeheiss.com
www.facebook.com/leeheiss
www.facebook.com/transformingpeopleworldwide
www.instagram.com/helenleeheiss
[email protected]
