I was invited for tea with the Psychopath Life Coach from Netflix who is accused of running a $25M cult - he assured me his dark past is behind him, but of course a psychopath would say that...

When a psychopath with a history of violence, drug addiction and copious prison sentences offers you a cup of tea, you inevitably think twice.

Lewis Raymond Taylor, 33, is the Psychopath Life Coach. Eight years ago he was convicted for the 11th time after punching a man so hard the victim had a mini-stroke and a bleed on his brain. 

Less than a decade later, Lewis is the CEO of $25million life coaching business The Coaching Masters and became an overnight celebrity following the release of a Netflix documentary about his life.

Even so, standing in the lift of his fancy Canary Wharf apartment block, I remembered what Lewis told the show: 'I always go too far. I'm always stamping on people's heads. I will always kick a man when he's down.'

His own mother called the former cocaine-sniffing thug 'relentless' and a 'manipulator'. 

Others have questioned whether he really is someone who's turned his life around and is a determined entrepreneur, or whether he's a cunning cult leader wearing the 'deadliest disguise' who is not to be trusted. 

I gulped. The lift was well above 150ft now. I hoped I wouldn't end the day being dangled from a balcony by a raging maniac. 

When I met Lewis, I was relieved. He was a little flashy with a Rolex, a slick haircut, veneers and the fact his £4,000-a-month rented flat had views in one direction of The Shard and the London Eye and in the other of the Thames and the Surrey countryside.

But he didn't seem threatening. He made me a cup of tea with a milk alternative (there was no other option) and introduced me to his American wife Dayana, 28, and their ten-week-old son Ocean.

We chatted and I inspected his bookshelf - there were stacks of self-help and motivational books and one about reclaiming your vagina and finding sexual pleasure.

I wanted to find out who the real Lewis was, whether he was still a violent thug and if he was actually, as some have claimed, in the business of conning vulnerable people out of thousands.

When I mentioned that the Netflix documentary showed footage of himself as a young man snorting a humongous line of cocaine in a prison cell, Lewis smiled. 

'I had to throw myself under the bus to get some attention,' he told me.

'The media and Netflix like gory, horrible stuff.

'I can't lie and say I didn't have an influence in the documentary. I wanted to spark a conversation.'

Sitting beneath a painting of Buddha, he seemed to be a mix between a charming salesman and a zen hippie, albeit one who less than a decade ago was getting blackout drunk and beating people up.

He said: 'A lot of it was blacked out. I was in a haze. I've changed so much now that it feels a little bit like I'm telling someone else's story . Of course it's real, it's documented. 

'I've got very light memories of doing those things but no flashbacks.'

These days, he's much more into mindfulness.

He said: 'If we can all get into the mindset of sharing what we have with other people, the world would be a much better place.

'Adversity can be turned into an asset.'

Some have called his business of training other life coaches a cult. 

Former customer Louize Clarke told Netflix: 'He is exploiting the vulnerable. He is unstable. If you have an opinion that doesn't sit with what Lewis believes, you're exiled, you're chucked out of the group.

'It's control. It's making sure Lewis comes across as a godly figure. Lewis and The Coaching Masters is a cult.'

Others have latched on cult-like elements of his business, such as many members getting matching tattoos of The Coaching Masters' logo.

Lewis himself has tattoos almost everywhere. He admitted: 'I'm full body-covered except my hands, penis and face.'

Yet while he acknowledged the tattoos might make people wonder about whether Th Coaching Masters is a cult, Lewis was adamant his business only has good intentions.

He said: 'I have no interest in people's perception of what words mean. We are not a cult. There's no brainwashing.

'The only cult-like thing is the tattoos. [Customers] want something to signify it. 

'We have an ethos. There are people that aren't the right fit [who] we would remove from the community.

'There's nothing about preying on vulnerable people. We have a very good pricing model - £8 per month. 

'It's a choice that they have made. We are by no means targeting [vulnerable] people. 

'People resonate with my personal experience, usually people with significant trauma.

'I wouldn't say they are vulnerable and I wouldn't say I am exploiting them.

'I think it's down to people's perception of what vulnerability is.'

However, he then seemed to accept that some of his customers might be vulnerable.

He said: 'I was once vulnerable. Who am I to deny people of help?

'Exploiting them means taking something away from them. Some of those people - their lives have been changed from it.

'We are helping people make money.' 

Lewis's business is all about training other life coaches to succeed, to grow their business and make more money. 

The Coaching Masters and the assets it holds are valued at $25million. The company has made $10million in around seven years, most of which has been reinvested in the business.

Lewis said he doesn't own a house or a car and doesn't splurge his money like some of his critics might imagine he would.

He said: 'I pay myself a modest amount - a six-figure salary.

'I could be cash-rich. This is an okay apartment. I have a Rolex but I don't have millions of dollars in the bank.'

Lewis said there was still potential for growth.

He said: 'I think we are in the coaching gold rush. We are just in the start of it.

'I'm scratching the surface with the coaching industry.

'People need more guidance, more premium content.' 

Live courses can cost around £5,000 each, which is where the money is made. 

'I would like a nice house in London, Bali, Miami and Dubai,' he added. '[We] settled down for [our] baby.'

Polite throughout our conversation, there was little to suggest Lewis was not so long ago a drug-addicted yob with a penchant for violence.

His cat did flinch when Lewis picked it up, but even so, the 33-year-old was obviously not the man he used to be. 

It became clear during our conversation that Lewis had found love, had a child and realised there was another way to get people's attention than punching them in the face.

It also became clear that this new Lewis would do and say anything to succeed.

As well as playing up for the cameras, another reason Lewis thinks the documentary about his life has done so well is because it brushes on the fact he is neurodivergent, meaning his brain works differently to most other people's.

As a bipolar psychopath, that is certainly the case. 

He said it was 'very poignant to talk about neurodiversity' at the moment.

Some viewers of the Netflix show branded it an hour and a half advert for Lewis's business and the 33-year-old admitted he has already received business opportunities off the back of it. 

Similarly, when I asked him what he did outside of work, Lewis wasn't so keen to talk and preferred chatting about the business.

However, he admitted he liked 'eating out' and 'travelling'. 'I don't have much of a social life. I go to the gym. If I was in Bali I might go to the jungle for the weekend.'

His wife tapped their baby. 'Spending time with the baby,' he added.

As Lewis admitted, he has always craved attention. He said it was down to his father, Raymond Taylor, who would beat and berate him.

Lewis said: 'He would always used to put me down, call me a buffoon, tell me I would never amount to anything, tell me I was stupid.

'He died before I had an opportunity to change my life around. 

'Part of me thinks some of the hate that I'm getting at the moment, maybe he would be one of them.

'I hang onto the fact that hopefully he would be proud of me.'

As a young man, Lewis would film himself drinking and boasting about his exploits as well as giving advice on camera to 'document his life' and receive 'people's attention, people's reaction'.

He said: 'I was an attention seeker. Due to [my] personality I'm drawn to significance.

'There's a potential to go back [to violence]. I need to be aware of that fact.

'There's always a possibility of something going wrong.

'But it's understanding myself. Before I was so oblivious. Now I have the luxury of hindsight.

'With choice comes power.'

With an anti-establishment mindset, he said he wanted to change people's lives and make it better for people like himself who have experienced trauma.

As a child he was sexually abused and his history of violence has left scars on his family. 

At first he told me he spoke to his mother 'every now and then', before quietly admitting it was really every 'six months'.

Lewis said he was 'no conspiracy theorist' but doesn't follow politics as there was 'a narrative that's played' and avoids mainstream media. He prefers to find news on social media. 

He said: 'What you consume is what you become. If you absorb negative information you can't help but feel that way.

'I decide what I want to do with my life.' 

He also believes the education system is 'broken' and that the prison system needs reform.

He said: 'I went to The Mount Prison yesterday. There's a lot more work I want to do.

'I'm making a new education platform. I'm creating an alternate platform. I want a blended learning platform for children and adults.'

His education business Alternalearn will offer a curriculum with lessons include how to model a business and lessons on personal development, yoga and breathwork.

Like a cheery but predictable motivational speaker, Lewis told me he thought the meaning of life was 'to reach your full potential'.

He said: 'There will always be people who are jealous. People who think they couldn't do it, so I couldn't do it. People who are trying to steal the limelight.

'What we offer people is an opportunity to invest in something. It's a brilliant opportunity.

'We are really trying to do a good thing here.'

Next on Lewis's agenda for success is branching into acting and moving to Miami, where his wife is from.

Just because he is a rich psychopath doesn't make him a bad person, he told me.

He said 'one per cent of the population [were] psychopaths' and that he hated the idea 'that if you make money you are somehow evil'.

He told me what he valued most was 'freedom', although he admitted as a father of a ten-week-old baby, that would necessarily be more constricted than it used to be. 

Lewis was smiley, charismatic and kind. He is no longer a drug addict or a violent thug, his business is successful and many of his customers have been left happy.

By his own admission he is an attention seeker but at the end of the day, all he seems to want is to make money and succeed.

I left feeling that he wasn't a con man but a hardworking and slightly cheeky salesman...  or was I simply just another person who's been drawn in by his charm?