We recently connected with Paul Watson and have shared our conversation below.
Paul, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?
In 2010, soon after graduating from grad school and after a series of mis-diagnoses, I found out that I had late-stage cancer. Looking back, it was likely a 75% I don’t make it, 25% I do. When your oncologist comes into your hospital room and breathes a sigh of relief that you’re not dead, you know it’s bad. So, not dying taught me resilience.
Around that time, I came up with a saying that I’m sure others have said before me: “When life punches you in the face, spit the blood out and keep smiling.”
After years of unpacking the mental, emotional, and physical trauma of late-stage cancer, I found a lasting resilience.
The road to recovery was long, but by the time I started my business in 2021, I had a mental and emotional fortitude that I would not have had otherwise. This resilience has allowed me to fail time and time again, but each time I “spit the blood out and keep smiling.” I keep trying until I find what works.
Appreciate the insights and wisdom. Before we dig deeper and ask you about the skills that matter and more, maybe you can tell our readers about yourself?
Paul is the founder of Ten Fifteen Communications and a StoryBrand Certified Guide. He writes digital marketing content for organizations (or helps them figure out what to say through his consulting services). This enables his clients to reach more prospects and grow their businesses.
His working geniuses are Tenacity and Enablement. This just means that he ensures stuff gets done before deadlines.
He’s also married to a woman who, admittedly, is smarter than him, and he has two young sons who are not smarter than him (yet).
You can learn more about him at www.1015comms.com.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
Perseverance
Optimism
Integrity
You have to be optimistic that you will figure stuff out. The journey may not lead where you thought it would, but you must continue to persevere while maintaining a realistic optimism. And you must do so with integrity. Your network (i.e., relationships) are the most important asset you have in business, so treat everyone with honesty. A single moral failing could follow you the rest of your career.
What has been your biggest area of growth or improvement in the past 12 months?
I built my client base. But I did it by meeting with folks at least 2 to 3 times most weeks. Most of the time my networking was one-on-one. Other times, it was in groups.
Regarding networking, the best advice I can give is treat people like potential friends, not potential clients. Focus on the relationship, not the sale. Keep asking good questions. Be genuinely interested in them as a person, and I think good questions to ask will come. When talking about yourself, I suggest keeping it short and succinct. I’ve found the one-liner works great on paper but sounds awkward in-person.
If you’re at a networking event, talk to someone long enough to know if they are someone worth meeting with one-on-one (and then try to get that meeting either on-the-spot or later through email/LinkedIn). But the people you meet with don’t need to be prospects (from my experience)–they just need to be people you’d want to get to know. Because if they aren’t prospects, they may know someone who is.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://www.1015comms.com
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauljwatson/
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