Meet Niko Lorentzatos | Coach and Mentor

We had the good fortune of connecting with Niko Lorentzatos and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Niko, we’d love to hear about a book that’s had an impact on you.
Halftime by Bob Buford. It is a book that inspires people to identify God’s calling in their lives and to live it out. For Bob, that meant thinking about life through the lens of significance rather than just success. I read the book in my early 40s and then it came up again as I was leaving my corporate career and wondering what was next. Halftime helped me identity my mission in my life: to help leaders move from where they are to where God wants them to be.

Halftime does a great job of inspiring people like me who were closing a chapter in life and wondering what was next. But, I think it also applies more broadly to anyone who feels a “gap” in their life. The “gap” is that feeling that we might be called to do something more or different than what we are doing. It might be a new job but it might not. It could be about identifying the things in life that are priceless and then organizing life around those things intentionally. It is about intentionality.

Can you give our readers an introduction to your business? Maybe you can share a bit about what you do and what sets you apart from others?
I spent most of my adult life in corporate America. First, as a lawyer in private practice, then as an in house lawyer in a few different oil and gas companies. I spent the last decade-plus of my career as an executive with Oasis Petroleum, which is now Chord Energy. I left that position in 2022 when Oasis went through a merger and spent some time intentionally thinking through what was next. That is when I went through the Halftime Fellows program. The concept of becoming a coach came up early and often, and I resisted it for a long time. For some reason, I had the view that becoming a coach would mean turning into a salesperson, which I was not interested in. I later came to realize that I feel strongly about living out my mission—helping leaders move from where they are to where God wants them to be—and the best way to do that it is let people know what I am up to. If what I do sounds interesting, I know they will follow up. I don’t put any pressure on selling anyone on this but I do want people to know what I do so they can follow up if they think I can help them. When I look back on my time as a lawyer, then parts of my day I enjoyed the most were the one on one conversations with people to help them think through some issue, I have always gravitated to these conversations, and I later learned this is a lot of what coaching is.

If you had a friend visiting you, what are some of the local spots you’d want to take them around to?
For me having someone visit Houston would be centered around food. I would have to show them several varieties of Houston BBQ, Tex Mex (of course), and Greek food.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
Halftime, the book, and the coaches and programs at the Halftime Institute changed my life. My personal coach, Bob Karcher, really helped me figure out this season in my life.

Website: https://Www.halftime.org

Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/niko-lorentzatos