Meet Paul Hardersen

Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Paul Hardersen. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Paul, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
I had a friend once make a comment about me several years ago that made me pause for a second. He said, “You have a high tolerance for pain.” Wow. Quite the comment, right? I sat back for a bit and thought about that comment. Here’s what I’ve deduced from this introspection.

From a personal perspective, that comment can be both good and bad. It’s good when you struggle through a difficult or challenging situation and succeed. That was the case when I was in college – I was perpetually poor, I had to work multiple jobs, and the road to graduation was never an easy ride.

On the other hand, there is the danger that you can put yourself into a situation where you put up with too much negativity that you really should not be accepting in any way — let alone putting up with it for a long time. This was also an experience I’ve had with a few people. I now know that I occasionally had put myself around people who were not supportive, not genuine, and actually quite destructive to my personal well-being. Once I realized this was happening, I put an end to that.

These personal experiences have informed the business experiences that I’ve had and continue to have — and those experiences have been incredibly helpful. How have they been helpful, you ask?

First, I focus on finding partners — both people and businesses — who are genuine and have a real interest and desire to work together. There are many out there that do not have a real interest in business partnerships, but only an interest in making money for themselves. Call them lurkers, call them scammers, call them self-interested, but being able to separate professional business people who have integrity — from pretenders who probably have not a single ounce of integrity — is a truly useful ability.

Second, being able to manage the many parts of a business is a singularly important skill for an entrepreneur. Being able to deal with those times when you have to manage everything yourself helps you appreciate those times when you can finally hand off some of the work to the team you have built.

Finally, I think developing resilience is probably something that is rarely a natural-born gift, but something more of a skill that develops from experience. People who rarely have to struggle in life are likely less prone to be able to handle difficulties if they do arise someday. It also requires people to be more thoughtful, too, and to understand what is going on around them.

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

My life is my business and my business is my life — and I never thought I would have said that many years ago. Starting and developing my business, Seadog Travels, is truly a labor of love. It’s not simply a travel company or a travel agency, but it is the first step of what I hope will be a company that inspires people to explore the oceans, protect the oceans, and make the preservation of our planet a priority.

Even though the company is young, I’ve had the good fortune to develop some wonderful relationships with people both in Arizona and as distant as islands in the Caribbean. It just reminds me again and again that when people have a common goal and have a real desire to work together, incredible results can come from that.

As Seadog Travels finishes up its second full year, I’m excited about what the coming years will bring. We have a social media following that’s now close to 80,000 people spread across the different Facebook travel groups that we manage. Our revenue growth is steadily climbing and we have made some truly valuable partnerships in the last year. We’re also planning our goals for the coming year and we look forward to bringing the vision and mission of Seadog Travels to people who both value quality travel experiences and also want to do their part to keep our oceans and planet healthy.

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?

The three skills that have been most helpful to me include: 1) having the ability to understand human behavior and being able to recognize the behaviors of the people around me, 2) having the ability to dispassionately analyze a situation and plan based on that information, 3) having an unbounded – but realistic — optimism about the future that will help you make your way in good times and bad.

People need to recognize that no matter how grim the present may be, there is no reason to assume that your life will not improve. Having imagination — being able to both imagine your future and take steps to make that a reality — will go a long way in getting you where you want to go.

How can folks who want to work with you connect?

Yes, we are actively searching for businesses and travel partners that will help us to mutually grow, thrive, and succeed together.

First, we are searching for companies and organizations that would like to develop a long-term relationship to provide them with travel agency services. This will be a win-win situation for everyone involved as we would be helping our partners to achieve their missions while also helping Seadog Travels to achieve its revenue and service goals.

Second, Seadog Travels is focusing on group travel — whether it be families, groups of friends, organizations, non-profits, or businesses. Also, this group travel focus has very much a tropical island, coastal, and ocean theme to it — and that fits into our focus on the ocean and being an ocean-themed travel company. Our initial tour offerings are to the Florida Keys, the U.S. Virgin islands, Puerto Rico, The Bahamas, and Saint Lucia, but this will expand in the coming years.

We also can help groups up to about 200 people — and this includes destination weddings as well as tours.

The scope of our business includes the entire United States, Canada, and the Caribbean. Our clients range from Tucson to New York to Barbados and we see ourselves more as a national company rather than a local operation.

If you’d like to work with Seadog Travels, please send us an email to travel@seadogtravels.com, call us at 520.451.4597, contact us via WhatsApp at 520.820.8662, or visit our website at https://seadogtravels.com.

Contact Info:

Image Credits
Photos by Paul Hardersen and Sarah Nolan.

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