Life, Values & Legacy: Our Chat with Lauren Zavlunov of Orlando

Lauren Zavlunov shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Lauren, a huge thanks to you for investing the time to share your wisdom with those who are seeking it. We think it’s so important for us to share stories with our neighbors, friends and community because knowledge multiples when we share with each other. Let’s jump in: What do you think others are secretly struggling with—but never say?
I love this question because it is my world, it’s what I live inside every day.
A lot of really brilliant, high-performing people won’t admit how lonely it gets. When you’ve reached a certain level, you see so much, you move fast, you’ve done a lot and not many people can keep up with that kind of pace. It’s this strange thing where you can be surrounded by people, even adored publicly, and still feel like no one really sees you fully.
There’s also this quiet grief that comes with outgrowing your environment over and over again. You start realizing that every new level of growth asks you to let go of something or someone. Even the idea you had of yourself. And that can get complex, because it’s not about failure or loss, it’s about evolution.
I don’t think most people talk about that part being present and very normal. There can be an emotional cost of constantly expanding. It’s not burnout, and it’s not sadness. It’s more like the ache of being built for a frequency that not everyone can meet yet.
That’s an element of my work- navigating these spaces so that they don’t put a cap on their evolution, their business and legacy, all while addressing the very human experience that happens when you shift quickly.

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
I work with high-performing men, founders, investors, and creatives who’ve built extraordinary lives but can’t seem to switch off. They’re powerful, brilliant, and deeply driven to build legacies, but often operating under an invisible tension between success and self-sacrifice.
My work is about recalibrating that tension and helping them access a level of power that doesn’t cost them their peace, creativity, or satisfaction. When that shift happens, things start to move fast, the kind of “illogical” results that can’t be explained by strategy alone. Deals close effortlessly, creative breakthroughs appear out of nowhere, and their presence starts to command rooms differently, not because they’re doing more, but because they’ve shifted who they’re bein at their core.
I sit at the intersection of ambition and energetics, where business meets deep self-mastery. As an advisor, I’m part oracle and part no-B.S. strategist. I see what others miss, the energetic precision point that unlocks disproportionate results.
What makes my work unique is the way it merges energy, intuition, strategy, and art in traditionally intellectually driven spaces.. I call it The Black Diamond Experience, a bespoke mentorship that opens pathways to power and fulfillment at hyperspeed. It’s not about fixing or optimizing in the traditional sense; it’s about revealing the frequency of someone who already has everything, but wants to feel it, live it, and lead from it fully.
It is deeply personal, multi-sensory, and precise to the individual. Right now, I’m working privately with a select few men and developing new immersive projects that explore what happens when power, creativity, and consciousness truly merge.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. Who saw you clearly before you could see yourself?
My mentors, without question. I was settling in my business for a long time, not because I didn’t have vision, but because my work never fit the mold. It was fluid, nuanced, hard to categorize and I thought that meant something was wrong with me.
At the time, they saw what I couldn’t. They showed me that my work was elite, that it could sit in the same rooms as billionaires and legacy builders not because of how it looked, but because of the level of consciousness and genuine care it operated at. At the time, that idea felt almost absurd. I couldn’t yet hold that mirror.
That experience cracked something open in me. It showed me how much of my power I had been outsourcing to validation, to proximity, to people I put on pedestals. I realized I had been diluting my work to make it more palatable, when in truth, its intensity was the gift.
It is pretty wild that this evolution led me to be sitting across from some of the most influential incredible people, bringing my unique flavor of intensity and speaking deeply and frankly. That’s been the most liberating shift, moving from trying to be understood to simply being fully expressed and able to help my clients create illogical results from it.

When did you stop hiding your pain and start using it as power?
Honestly, it happened when I stopped thinking being an outlier meant something was wrong with me. For a long time, like many of my clients, I felt the loneliness and grief of being on the fringe- of seeing too much, feeling deeply, moving through life in a multidimensional way that didn’t fit the usual templates. I thought I had to tone it down, make it more understandable, more acceptable.

But eventually I realized I just wasn’t in the right rooms. The people I was meant to connect with were the ones who also saw beyond frameworks, who wanted to create at a completely different scale.

There was a time that my personal crisis became the point of alchemy. My daughter’s illness and recovery cracked everything open for me. That period stripped away all illusion, even spirituality. While most people were diving deeper into frameworks, I was releasing them and it took me a long time to stop judging that and honor that part of the journey.

But once I did, everything shifted. I stopped diluting myself and outsourcing my truth. The wound can always be turned into fuel. It wasn’t something to mask, it was a signal that I was built differently and I could embody that.

Next, maybe we can discuss some of your foundational philosophies and views? What’s a belief or project you’re committed to, no matter how long it takes?
I’m deeply committed to advising the men who hold immense power but are quietly exhausted by the self-sacrifice that comes with it. The ones who’ve built everything they thought they wanted, yet still feel a gap because there’s no real space for the multidimensional parts of who they are.
These are men who are artists at their core, even if they’re CEOs or investors. They want to move through life and business in a way that expresses all of them: the intellect, the emotion, the creator, the leader without having to fracture themselves. They want to lead with presence, power, and depth to create lasting legacies that ripple through their families, companies, and the world.
I noticed there was a real gap for successful men who wanted to work with their core energy. So much of what’s out there either pushes them into over-intellectualizing and sanitizing the deeper work, or it goes the other direction, softening them, bypassing the true edge of power. Neither path honors who they really are.
My Black Diamond work is about creating a new space entirely. One where men can access their full frequency of power without losing themselves in the process. I’ll be doing this work in some form for as long as I’m alive because it’s not just about performance or optimization, it’s about liberation.

Okay, so let’s keep going with one more question that means a lot to us: What do you think people will most misunderstand about your legacy?
My work isn’t about making men more emotional or seeking healing and alignment; it’s about restoring their unfiltered command. The kind of power that comes when a man stops performing strength and actually inhabits it. It’s the feeling of commanding your destiny, while also holding the paradox at the heart of every spiritual teaching, that ultimately, we are not in control at all. It’s an intersection of ambition and humility, of command and surrender, applied to business and legacy. Business becomes a lens, a reflection of who you are and how you operate. When we upgrade that operating system to include our raw genius, we create the kind of impact that feels deeply connected to ourselves and the world. Leading from this place is, in my view, the new era of visionary leadership…..a shift that will redefine culture, influence, and legacy.

Some will call what I do mentorship. Others will call it art, strategy, or energy work. And it’s none of those things and maybe all of them! It lives in the space where power, expression, and creation meet, bespoke to the individual in front of me and their needs.

My legacy won’t fit in a box because it was never meant to. It’s a remembrance of what happens when a human stops splitting off parts of themselves and decides to lead from wholeness.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.recodewithlauren.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/recodewithlauren/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-zavlunov/