Midlife High Performance: Health, Strength & Self-Worth with Lauren Ramsey | HFYH #136

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:00)
Why does it take a health coach to tell people what they know already?

**Lauren Ramsey** (0:04)
If a person is not committed to it, they aren't going to be successful.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (0:08)
The one thing that will change your life is believing that you are worth. Hi, I'm Dr. Vonda Wright, and this is HOT For Your Health. Join us for conversations on the bleeding edge of science, health and culture, as we bring you tech innovators, thought leaders and the movers and shakers who are transforming science fiction into your new health reality.
Hi, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of HOT For Your Health, where every week, I talk to change makers, innovators, and really interesting people interested in health and your life. So this week, I have an amazing guest. Not only is she a tech maven, she has been a CEO for one of the biggest sports empires, a frenetic guy, I won't name him. And for a long time, has been a personal trainer and health coach. And now has joined the VMD Global Media. Did you know that was the name of my company? VMD Global Media team to really bring us to the world. So I'm so happy today to have Lauren Ramsey in studio. We are, just for those of you around this area, we are in the Lake Nona Media Studio in the Guidewell Building. And when I came to Lake Nona, this was the only building. We are continuing to be surrounded by cows, but this is the only building. But you are new to our ecosystem.

**Lauren Ramsey** (1:41)
Yes.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:41)
So welcome.

**Lauren Ramsey** (1:42)
Thank you.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:43)
So just so our crowd gets to know you, what's your story? Where do you come from?

**Lauren Ramsey** (1:49)
Yeah.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (1:49)
And what drives you?

**Lauren Ramsey** (1:50)
What drives me? Okay. So I'm originally from Delaware, and I grew up there, a small little beach town. I am the daughter of a single parent, and I had a very simple growing up. I went to college when I was very young. I went when I was 16 years old, off to college. I wanted to be a dancer.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (2:10)
Did you skip some grades or something?

**Lauren Ramsey** (2:12)
I did. I also have a late birthday. So my birthday is in December, so I feel like some of the rules didn't apply as they do today about when they place children in school. But I did skip a grade or so, and I went to college to be a dance major. And I soon learned that that was a very expensive major for someone who's paying for college by themselves. And it may or may not pan out.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (2:34)
It may or may not pan out.

**Lauren Ramsey** (2:35)
And you start to kind of do like, hey, I'm paying $900 for a ballet class. Okay, hold on. Maybe this is not the right way. And so I found that in order to support myself in college, I worked all the time and I found that I really liked it. And I liked it more actually than going to college. Working, you're learning on the job. When you're sitting in a classroom, you're absorbing information. And I found that I struggled in that model. But like going out into the world and working was really, it really taught me a lot of things. And so I left college and with the intent of always going back and I have from time to time, taking up a variety of classes and stuff. But somewhere in my early youth, I learned that I was quite good at things oriented around computers, whether it was programming languages or understanding how you would build a computer, how you would assemble it. And oddly, it turned into a passion of mine. And when I realized I was good at it, I thought, well, if I'm going to do this for a living, I want to do it for the best company in the world.

**Dr. Vonda Wright** (3:39)
So wait, you're like Bill Gates.

**Lauren Ramsey** (3:44)
I don't know if I'm like Bill Gates. I mean, he's very, very high intelligence. But I did say, you know, if I'm going to go work in this field, I want to work for that company. I want to work for that person. And I had a very wonderful career there that spanned almost two decades. And I had the privilege of working for him, for working for Steve Ballmer, and also working for Satya Nadella. Three very different and distinct CEOs with three very different cultural shifts in the company. And honestly, I tell everybody, I grew up there, and I was very privileged to have worked there during that time frame. And I learned so much, and I had the privilege of working with highly intelligent developers. And then as I morphed my career to go into more sales and business operations, and partner management, and things like that, I found myself someone who didn't have a college education, working side by side with folks who had gotten big degrees from Harvard and MIT. And I'm kind of a sponge, and I just sort of really absorbed that. And I also really appreciated it. And I did not take any of my time there for granted. I learned everything that I could. And then there became a time where I just felt like everything that I felt I could learn or wanted to do in this company, I felt like it had come to an end. And it felt like, okay, now it's time for me to kind of take that out into the world. I've been trained very well. I felt like every single day I was getting an MBA, and I felt like I was ready to go out into the world. And so I left Microsoft, I retired.