Episode 165. Quit Story: Lessons from Prison and How to Take Ownership of Your Life & Career (JP Watkins)

JP and I crossed paths on the internet around late 2018. He was one of my first “beta coaching clients” back then, and I always enjoyed my conversations with JP.

We lost touch over the years and reconnected in early 2024.

During our catch up, I got to hear JP’s story in more detail. And honestly, I was at loss for words.

JP’s story is filled with character and resilience, and I am beyond grateful to have him as our guest on Episode 165 of The Thought Leader Club Podcast to share exactly that.Episode 165 of The Thought Leader Club Podcast (featuring JP) is now available on iTunes, Spotify, and YouTube.

In This Episode:

What led JP to do the current work he does today with ESL (English as a Second Language) folks
The real sh*t that JP navigated from his younger days that shaped who he’s become
Being accountable for your actions
What JP did differently from other inmates in prison
Confidence versus skill when it comes to public speaking
How JP supports his non-English speaking clients to become confident in speaking English
JP thoughts on the current landscape and the need for more human connection
Favorite foods, music and living in a different country

What led JP to do the current work he does today with ESL (English as a Second Language) folks

Cheryl:

All righty. Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another episode of the Thought Leader Club podcast. Today we are doing another quick story interview and this time we have Mr. J.P. Watkins.

J.P. and I met actually back in 2019, quite a while back, and we connected by channels on the Internet. I can’t quite remember exactly how we connected, but we connected back then.

And J.P. was actually one of the first people I worked with as part of my beta program for my coaching. J.P. has been an O.G. in my world, and I cannot be any more grateful that we continue to have a connection and we still continue to keep in touch, years later.

But for today, I really wanted to have J.P. onto the show to talk about his story.

I want him to share about his journey and what he currently does, because let me tell you, J.P. has such a character and he has a wealth of experience and a wealth of just so many nuggets of wisdom. That’s why I really wanted him to be on the show.

But before we dive in, let me just give a quick background of what the Quit Stories series is all about.

My goal with the Quit Story series is to really talk to really cool people from all over the world, all walks of life, all of whom have a Quit Story. And quitting can look different for everyone. It could mean leaving a career path. It could look like leading a relationship that wasn’t working out, quitting a lifestyle that wasn’t right for them, and so on and so forth.

But the common thread among the Quit Stories that you’ll hear on the show is that it all involves defining your own version of success and being who you’re really choosing, who you want to be instead of who you’re supposed to be.

Choosing courage over fear in times of uncertainty and difficulty, and also making decisions based on your own values and choosing what matters most to you.

That is the essence of these interviews that we are having on this show. That is my little spiel.

Without further ado, I’m going to pass over to JP.

JP Could you please introduce yourself and tell us a bit more about who you are and what you do?

JP:

All right. Hello. Hello, everyone. Well, first, I want to thank you so much for having me on your podcast.

I’m very honored for this opportunity. And so, yes, I’m like, you said, I’ve come from a background with a wealth of experience. Most of my experience has been wounded in human services.

So I’m currently a global leadership development coach. And so to tell you about my Quit Story, which I have quite a few, but let’s go with COVID around the time we touched base.

I was in a group. I can’t think of the name of it now. She had the same last name.

Cheryl:

Vanessa Lau. That’s how we connect. We connected through Vanessa Lau! That’s right!

JP:

That’s how we connected. Right. And so then things were ticking up, and I was getting ready to go to China to teach English as a second language in China.

But then we got smacked with COVID. And that kind of really took me into a tailspin because I started working and I work with Human Services, so I work with adults with disabilities. Vulnerable populations. And so in the role that I was in because so many people were affected by COVID. A lot of moms, they couldn’t come to work.

And I was in management, so I was literally working sometimes 100, 120 hours a week. I mean, I was living at work. I had to bring clothes. And it just got to where some of my clients start passing away and some of them coworkers start passing away.

And at the end of the day, I really, really love helping. Right. So I kind of got the addiction, addiction of doing good deeds. When I was younger, I made a lot of bad decisions, right? And so part of my way of giving back to do good deeds.

My grandma used to say seeds are deeds. So plant good seeds by doing good deeds, right? But I had to have that conversation with myself. So, okay, JP, you’re doing the good thing.

You’re helping people, you’re helping vulnerable people. But are you ever going to be able to do the things that you want to do, doing this? Are you ever going to be able to be a solopreneur? That term wasn’t around back then. The digital nomad was the big thing. Are you ever going to be a digital nomads, be the world, experience it?

And the answer was a resounding no, because this type of work gives you great psychological income, but it doesn’t pay well monetarily and then it’s very time intensive. Yes, I was considered an essential worker. Just between losing so many people in my fifties and I just got to a point where, like, if not now, when? When is going to be the perfect time? What? When you’re sixty? When you’re on oxygen? When?

Then I just started taking those chances. That’s when I started getting into teaching English online and I started to kind of find my niche. I was able to really start doing these mock interviews and teaching people these interview techniques. Because I’ve worked over a hundred jobs, I’ve had a lot of experience doing interviews and stuff like that.

And I talk about my peppered past, I won’t unpack it here. That’s something maybe for another podcast because it’s pretty intense. But with my peppered past, I had to really learn how to sell myself.

I was really good at giving people this advice, giving them feedback, especially with ESL (English as a Second Language), so they can upgrade their phrases. I would call it repackaging. Because they would kind of struggle. Like, “I think this is what you’re saying.” and they’re like “Yeah, yeah, that’s what I’m trying to say.”

And then also some of them experienced a lot of self doubt. That’s how I transitioned into the coaching sector, like competence coaching and business leadership. I started developing my own curriculum to where even on these other platforms I have my own leadership development. We’re doing our own analysis, we’re doing crisis management, we’re doing global strategy, talking about all these different things.

The real sh*t that JP navigated from his younger days that shaped who he’s become

Cheryl:

Yeah. You know, I love how you gave us a really great look into what you do now and what happened in the recent years since Covid.

You also mentioned your peppered past, and you’ve mentioned that maybe you won’t go into it too much today, but if you’re open to it, I think it will definitely add some context.

JP:

Oh sure!

Cheryl:

Because you mentioned that you’re from the Human Services and how your grandmother used to say seeds are deeds.

But you know what I really think if you’re open to it I would love to hear a little bit more about your younger days because I think it really showcases the connection from before to present day JP And why you do what you do.

So if you’re open to it, I would love to hear a little bit more.

JP:

Sure. Let me take you back to childhood.

My mother was a single mother, had seven of us, and we were pretty poor. And even though sometimes she worked, it was difficult. When we went to school, you definitely really noticed. When you’re in the neighborhood, everybody’s poor, it’s nothing.

But when you go to school, you notice they got the Star Wars, they got the Incredible Hulk book bag. We had paper bags, right? You started to notice that you don’t have what everybody else has.

So one of the things that got teased was I have a lisp and I still have it, it’s just I’ve learned how to navigate around it. So words that end with S, FH, I can kind of have a Daffy Duck-ness sometimes when I speak.

I would act out in school in part because of escapism, because home life was pretty harsh at times, being poor, being hungry, different types of abuse.

When I was in class and I had this lisp, I didn’t want to have it hard at home and hard at school, right? I remember we would have to read out loud. We read and then I would look at them words, and if I see words like “difference”, or “precedence”, stuff that’s gonna trip me up, I would just act up and get kicked out of class.

Eventually I had a reputation of being, didn’t take school seriously, horseplaying. Eventually I would get in trouble. I got kicked out of public schools. They told me, hey, you are a menace to society.

Let’s fast forward a bit. Eventually I end up in the streets. I end up selling drugs. I did that, probably for nearly ten years. By this time, I’m living the fast life making fast money. I had four children by two different women. And then all of a sudden, here I am, I have babies, no education, and I’m just like, lost. How am I going to do this?

I actually read a book and it was the first book that I ever read from front to back, and I just identified with it. The author was so graphic and gritty, but he captured that pain that I felt unlike any other human being had ever captured. This made me want to read. I thought, you know what, I think I could write, but I didn’t want to write a book, right?

I actually started off, I said, I want to write a book called Ocean Tyrants. But then I was confronted with my ignorance.

I said, okay, I’m gonna write this book. It’s going to be about Blackbeard. He’s going to be a pirate and he’s going to be of African descent. He’s going to fall in love with the princess of this powerful king, maybe from Spain or England.

And they are gonna have this illicit love affair. The king’s going to commission his death. I had this great storyline. The king commissions his death for deflowering his daughter and he burns his eye out, cuts his leg off right and left him to die. So this guy had so much tenacity. He was of great stature. He wreaked vengeance on the king by robbing, you know, this was back in the 1600s.

I think that’d be neat because I would always see pirates. All the pirates were always displayed as Eurocentric white. You have never seen African pirates. But we knew they had to be African pirates. So I was going to actually make Blackbeard be African.

I thought that would be a neat twist because the bad boys back then weren’t dope boys, they were pirates. I kind of infused that.

But all of a sudden I was like, Well, how long were they on the boats? Were women on the boats? And if women were on the boats, what did they do? How did they take care of themselves? How did they store food when they had their cycle? What did they do?

I was confronted. I think you can’t write anything else. You don’t know anything else. You have to write street stuff. You don’t know nothing else. My ignorance, I was confronted with my ignorance about how little I knew about life other than inner city intrigue, I knew about gutter life. That’s all I knew about.

I started reading to learn about boats. I started reading about the Middle Passage. After I read about that, I read about slavery, of course, our ancestors getting shipped over. It was shocking, the horror.

You had women that self suffocate, they would fold their arms down like this and self suffocate rather than go into slavery. What I seen when I started writing about that is like, you’re over here. You represent the strongest and the best of the people to survive that passage. That Atlantic slave passage. And you’re over here selling poison to people who look like you, this is what you’re doing.

So I got on the road of retribution. I started writing and I wrote. I self-published about a dozen books. And I’ve changed different names. It’s called the Do The Doctrine, the Menace Memoirs. A lot of it’s largely based on some of my experience, my gift for imagination.

But my goal of writing was to write so that we can humanize each other rather than demonize each other. To try to understand, like, why would a woman sell her body? I got a story called Blondie. And Blondie is about a young girl that was molested by her uncle. She was illiterate, but she was beautiful. Her beauty was both a curse and a blessing.

I kind of tell that story like why women do this. So try to help people understand that sometimes people are making the best decision with what they know out of the current circumstances.

I did that for a while, but then I started aging out of the content. Eventually I started doing Human Service work. I’ve always felt like I had this call of significance on my life. But the challenge was my surroundings. A lot of times people say, you lost it, you think of all these big dreams, but it’ll never be real, you know? And that’s when I started coming up with personal governance.

Being accountable for your actions

JP:

Personal governance, I remember it was like the World Series or something. I was in a bar, a sports bar, and the team lost, and they all were so disappointed. They were defeated because their team lost. And I get it, you’re a fan.

So many people in the world, this is where they live their life. A spectator. They have no agency. So if your team wins. Yeah! Yeah! But if your team loses, that’s wow, you’re not empowering yourself..

Personal governance is where the four pillars of personal governance are faith, attitude, action and accountability.

Well, you gotta have faith that you can change, your circumstances can improve. For me, I believe in Jesus Christ. I feel like you got to believe in something, something bigger than yourself, right?

And your attitude, you have 100%, 1,000,000% control of your attitude. If you feel like this is never going to change, guess what? Your attitude is going to reinforce that.

And then you got to take action. You have a great attitude on the world, the best attitude on the planet. But if you don’t take no action, nothing’s going to change.

Then the accountability piece, it’s probably one of the most difficult and most important because sometimes, like I mentioned myself, I’ve done it before.

You start off with all this enthusiasm, you’re taking all this action. You’re doing too much too fast, and you burn out and you crash. But now, you got to be accountable. Hey, I did too much. I did it too fast. So now review that and look back. Okay. Unpack your actions and your mindset and then go forward.

Also I left out a part. So when I started selling drugs, eventually I got caught.

I was going to go to the military. I had my daughter two days before Christmas. It was really icy and I slipped down the steps. She was in a carriage, I held her up like this, and it was along the steps, my back hit all these steps.

I got to where I could barely even walk. When I took the health lab test and everything. I was a half, not 1%, I was a half a body, a half a percent overweight because I’m far outside of the height. I’m just way bigger, my bone structure. I was a half a percent overweight.

I was supposed to go tweak it, lose some weight and then come back. And I didn’t want to go to the hospital because when I went there to take the test, a guy, he had an injury on his back and they said, oh no, you got a back injury. We were going back, everybody was asking, did you get accepted?

Two people didn’t get accepted into the medical and they both had back issues. I didn’t want to have a medical record of having a back injury, so I didn’t go.

But also how I eventually started selling drugs because I couldn’t work, I couldn’t. So I started selling. Before you know it, tyranny of the moment, I started making really good money, started making thousands of dollars a day.

Why do I want to go to the army and be barked at and blah, blah, blah? I started living a very precarious, very fast life. I even got to a point where at one point I even thought about going to the Army, like, well, I’m probably going to die on the streets, I’m probably going to be dead before I’m 25.

So at least if I go to the Army, I can leave my kids some benefits. So, so much happened. Buteventually I got caught. I thought I was slick. I still sold drugs the whole time I was on probation. When I got caught, I told them I used drugs. I was like oh, I’m an addict, I use drugs.

But I didn’t use drugs, I only sold drugs. What happened was me thinking, I’m super smart. I was going to get off my probation officer. He’s like, you are the best. You come on time. You don’t have dirty urine. You got a job.

But the truth of the matter is, I didn’t have a job. A lot of my drug clients were business owners so they would write me a check. They would write me a pay stub. So it looked like I had. I thought I was so smart. So my short run of selling drugs messed up my long run.

Eventually I was supposed to get off probation. I had probation, like the next month, I had 30 days.

This is an oddity and this is how life goes around. I had picked up a friend and I went to drop her off. She left her purse like a bag in a thing. It actually had clumps of drugs in there. But it was in my car. So the irony of that, I actually end up going to prison for that because I was on paper and I had 30 days to get off. Even though that wasn’t mine, I ended up… But at the end of the day, I knew that I was engaged in that activity.

I wasn’t innocent, it was just that, what they caught. I ended up leaving and on the run, I got out, I made bail and at that time I wasn’t ready to be accountable. Me and my kids, or at least me and three of my kids because I got children by two women. My daughter, my oldest daughter, was by one lady, then the other three are from another young lady.

I went down to Houston and then that’s where I got to kind of reconnect, went to another state, and it wasn’t digitized like it is now. I was able to work and I worked. But it was the first time I had worked maybe nine or ten years, like an actual job.

It just felt good. That’s when I was working with people with disabilities.

I’d never forget two situations.

One where the lady said she didn’t want a man, right? She said, I don’t want a man. I was the only person willing to go there and it was in a bad neighborhood. Nobody wanted to go.

When I came, she was stuck. Her mom was old, like maybe 80, trying to get her. She was stuck between the tub and the toilet. I came in at that. I know you don’t like men, but can I least help you get up? And she said yeah you can only help me get up this time. I don’t want no man touching me!

And thought, you know, got her up. And after that she didn’t want to work with nobody else. So I knew that I had a gift with people. Because this would happen time and time again, with people that just, No! I don’t want no black people! And after they work with me, they would be like, I only want you.

That happened. Eventually me and my kids mom, we had our final break, we kind of break up, make up, and I own that.I was doing whatever, a lot of doing too much.

Then I decided to turn myself in.

What JP did differently from other inmates in prison

JP:

But when I turned myself in, I had a different mindset than most inmates.

I said, I’m not going to serve one day at a time, I’m going to make time serve me. That was a profound difference.

When I was in there with people, people are almost bragging, yeah, I’ve been here! We call it numbers. When you go to prison, they don’t call you by your name. They call you by your number, maybe like four, two, two, three, six, seven.

You’ll remember that probably for the rest of your life. But I don’t know how it is when you have 11 numbers, but I know for one, you’ll remember it.

After that, and when I went there, I said, what can I do in there that I can’t do out here? When you’re out here, you got to work on paying rent, you got to pay your bills, you got to take care.

Well, in there, I ain’t got to work. I get to work on me. When everybody else watch TV, they wanted to build their muscles, I wrote. That’s when I start writing a lot of those books that you hear about. That’s why I probably wrote about six or seven books while I was in there. And I wrote them with pen and paper.

I also read. I read, you know, I tried to read like three books a week. I just read constantly and wrote. That’s where some of my phraseology comes from. That helped build my vocabulary, my gift of expression.

I know I kind of jumped around, but I hope I kind of answer that.

That’s the peppered past right there.

Cheryl:

First of all, thank you so much for being so open about sharing your life.

I’m not going to lie, I’m a tinge emotional right now. I can feel myself wanting to tear up. Since I first met you virtually in 2019, just how you mentioned that you have this wave of people. People could feel your sincerity.

I’ve felt that from you since the first time we connected online in 2019. Till this day, I still feel like even as I’m listening to you speak right now, I feel the sincerity and heart behind what you say.

What I’m so touched by is, life was not easy for you at all. I may not be able to fully understand because I haven’t gone through a lot of the things you’ve gone through. But what really touched me is the values you mention when it comes to personal governance. For example, faith, accountability, attitude.

It’s just so incredible to see how despite some bad decisions you might have made and some things that happened to you, maybe they weren’t necessarily within your control. Despite all that you’ve gone through, you still came out of this as an even better version of yourself, if that makes sense.

I’m just so touched honestly, I’m so inspired by you.

JP:

Aww thank you. Thank you.

Cheryl:

I’m so inspired, and I hope the audience can definitely glean the nuggets that may be relevant or at least recognize that, as JP was sharing, bad decisions were made, yes. Things might have happened to you that were out of their control, circumstances. Yes.

But you can still choose who you become at the end of this.

I am so mind blown and just amazed.

I’m feeling a little emotional right now. I’m like, so grateful we’re having this conversation. So again, thank you JP for sharing that.

Now, maybe where I would like to transition the conversation is, you shared about how you started reading, how you started developing a way with words, right?

It was through your time in prison and you started reading more.

Confidence versus skill when it comes to public speaking

Cheryl:

Because one thing I know that part of your work now is you help people with their confidence and their speaking. When we were catching up recently, you mentioned confidence versus skill.

Could you tell us a bit more about when it comes to speaking, when it comes to showing up and having a presence, confidence versus skill.

Confidence versus the skill of public speaking?

What are your thoughts there? I would love to hear it.

JP:

Sure. As I mentioned before, like a lot of times, a lot of my students, particularly from China, sometimes South Korea. and those two countries in particular, they want to speak like a native speaker. They didn’t have the concept of like, when I’m talking to them, I’m like, it’s not your English. You communicate clearly. I’m like, it’s your confidence.

Sometimes you will get people where their confidence is up here, but their ability, it’s not very good. But they will talk and talk. You almost got to say, hold on, hold on, let me get in here. Right?

And then where the other, the skill is up here, the confidence is down here.

What happens with that, when you have low confidence, it’s a self-feeding cycle. Because you’re at these team meetings, you’ve got really good ideas. But you feel like, I have bad English. So you don’t say it.

Now, when they say any suggestions, anybody? You don’t say it. You have it! But you don’t speak up.

Because of your self-doubt, your lack of confidence, that was an opportunity for somebody to say, oh Cheryl, that’s a great idea! When you do more, you get to build that confidence up. Each small win gives you more confidence.

Like oh! I didn’t think it was that good, but okay!

So you do more. You build by doing.

For instance, a lot of people want to be perfect. Well, everything needs to be perfect first. Well, guess what happens? Nothing. Because we’re never going to be perfect.

One of the key things that I really focus on is progress. More mistakes, more progress.

If you don’t make mistakes, that’s fine. You’ll never lose, you’ll never win.

When I hear people say, I’m not a people person. People listen, so what? So you’re not a people person? How does that work? Because okay, so you don’t have people around to hurt you. But guess what? It’s a coin. You don’t have people around to help you.

For some time, I always say, look at the coin. If you don’t look at one side, then look at the other side.

For instance, like with social media, how many times, and I guess at some point in time we all do, we look, man, this person got such a great life. She’s so beautiful. Oh, he’s so whatever. But okay, we look at that.

Okay, but flip that coin over. But you don’t look at the person in a wheelchair or you don’t look at the person that’s a triple amputee with no arm, with no legs. You don’t look at the person that’s got 85% of their body burnt out, burnt up.

See, we’ll look at the one side and be envious and be jealous and be doubtful.

“Wow, I don’t speak that well.” Well, if somebody that don’t speak at all, they’re doing sign language. You speak better than the person that doesn’t speak at all. Right?

It’s a power of perspective. That’s the key thing that I do with the people. By having that warmth, people trust me so they’ll be willing to take more chances. That’s good!

All right. What did you want me to know? If you want me to know that. Well, you know what I don’t want to do this lesson, I want to do that lesson. Okay! You may not have said it as clearly. But you got your point across right? Just clear communication.

And the other thing I try to really emphasize, who wants to be a carbon copy of somebody else, you’re you nobody can be a better you than you. There’s nobody on the planet. I don’t care who it is. That can be a better Cheryl than Cheryl. Nobody. I don’t care if it’s Elon Musk. I don’t care if it’s Mark Zuckerberg. I don’t care how rich they are. Nobody!

Nobody can out do you at being you. And once you embrace that, you’re like, you know what, okay sometimes I mispronounce words. It happens. But guess what? That’s uniquely me. That’s how you know I’m talking and not some AI.

That’s how you know they’re being dubbed. Did he say that? Did he pronounce that quite right? But did you understand what I was saying? Yes. Okay.

So the goal is to, yeah, be your best, do your best, but don’t let it paralyze you. And that’s the difference. Confidence is like, I think I can and I’m wanting to. And when I do it, if people like it or love it, I’m good with that. For the people that love my opinion, kudos. Well, the people that disagree, kudos.

That’s the difference. Whereas before, people like, well, I’m worried about, are they going to laugh at me or they’re going to disagree? That’s okay. That’s part of growing. That’s an opportunity for you to share your insights and for us to move closer. Because working with people is not easy, but it’s necessary. So something we got to do.

You might as well decide, are you going to do it with more confidence and maybe more eloquence? Or are you just going to avoid it and suffer in silence and just beat yourself up a thousand times on your way home?

“I did not say that. I had such a good idea. Why didn’t I…”

And so, yeah.

Cheryl:

I love that.

How JP supports his non-English speaking clients to become confident in speaking English

Cheryl:

And you know what? Just to really make this super concrete, could you share some client examples where because you supported them with the confidence piece, they were able to do some pretty cool things?

JP:

Yeah. Yeah. I had a, I didn’t know it the first time, she said, “Wow, I see that you do these interviews and you really can help us do that. I’m just really nervous.”

She was a Ph.D. candidate.

I said, okay, well, first of all, I just want you to calm down. It’s okay to be nervous. And now we’re going to go through these questions. Then I go to these questions.

I typically ask three basic questions, and then I upgrade their rephrases.

I said, tell me about yourself. It’s a simple question, but it’s hard, right?

And then one of the other ones is what are your strengths and your weaknesses? We love talking about our strengths. Most of us hate talking about our weaknesses.

Then I will give you some examples of, especially with ESL, she will be like, well, our weaknesses, perfectionism. I want to be perfect.

I say, okay well let’s unpack that. Why do you want to be perfect?

And then it’s like, well, I want to be successful.

Is every successful person you know, perfect? Can you name one person that’s perfect and successful? No.

Okay. So now that kind of gives you some groundwork. Nobody’s perfect. Just because people are famous, don’t mean they’re brilliant, but it’s a lot of brilliant people that aren’t famous.

So we got to kind of redefine the stand, right?

I went through some drills, I gave her some feedback, and she’s like, okay.

She had two interviews. One of them was that day. And then the next one was like, for the next week. She’s like, I really appreciate it. Well, she emailed me later that day like, well, sorry I won’t be needing you next week because I got accepted today.

That was really good. That was one.

Another one was a guy from Indonesia. He had a really, really had a really thick accent and he was really shy. The thing is, I said, well, look, you do have a thick accent, but we can’t improve it if I can’t hear it, so I need you to talk more.

So we started talking. To his credit, he would come three or four times a week and we’d talk. I just want you to focus on talking, because when you’re thinking about, “How do I say this?”, you’re not thinking about what you’re saying, you’re thinking about how you’re saying it.

Just think about what you’re saying. And if I can understand it, then we’ll keep working our way through it. Well, he had to take its eye staff. He had to take another test, too. But then I didn’t hear from him for a while because I knew he was talking about going to study in the UK. And so I followed up. I said, Hey, I just wanted to reach out, I haven’t heard from you. Just wanted to make sure everything is okay.

He’s like oh yeah, I’ve just been so busy. I got accepted, but thank you so much.

Just imagine.

It’s been quite a few different stories like that. I’ve just really seen people believe in themselves. And so I’ve did that quite a few times with some success.

In most of those cases it wasn’t the ability, it was the confidence. The leadership component came into the fact that most of these people need to learn it to get in school or learn it because they already work.

They either worked at Boeing or they worked at some type of international organization where they had to interact with international colleagues who spoke English.

And they would be like, this is the hardest thing. Then I would be talking to them, and I’m like, I understand you clearly.

Are you afraid to talk? Do you have a hard time? They’re like, no, I just don’t want people to think, you know, I’m the manager, my subordinates speak English better than me.

Then what I thought was to develop in those leadership development courses about dealing with difficult employees or dealing with unethical situations, because now we can talk about work related situations. Underperforming member. So how do we address that? And even then, because of the language, some of my students in China will say I had to punish the employee.

I’m like, umm, we want to be culturally sensitive. And some people may consider the punishment a little harsh. We’re going to have a performance conversation and maybe we’ll talk about some disciplinary actions or PLC, a plan of correction. Just trying to upgrade how we interact with other professionals in that cultural sensitivity.

That’s where I can also, because I’m from the U.S., I can kind of talk about the landscape of those unspoken rules, too.

I don’t know if I told you before, I’m from Ohio and if you’re at Subway and it’s kind of crowded. There’s one person sitting at the table, you may just sit at the other side and go like, hey, hey, how are you doing? You sit, you eat your sandwich and they’re forgiving. Okay. If it’s crowded, whatever.

Whereas in Montana, space, it’s a lot bigger, probably about three times bigger than Ohio. It has about a 10th of the population. So if you are sitting there, and well, you’re like I don’t want to sit at the table by myself, I’m going sit by this person.

You go sit there and the other person will think, why are you here? I don’t know you! What are you doing?

Because it’s different, it’s a cultural thing. Even though it’s in the U.S., it’s different. Cultures are different in Montana than Ohio, different in Ohio than New York. What’s the same thing? It’s different in China than the U.S.

And also being able to give them the CIA skills, conflict resolution, the interpersonal skills and assertiveness. That’s the transformation that I aim to make. Help you resolve conflict effectively, help them to really sharpen or deepen their intangible assets and also be more assertive.

A lot of times the easiest way to be more assertive, contrary to belief, is questions. You don’t always have to say, no, I don’t want to do that.

If I’m starting something, you can say, excuse me, Cheryl, it’s okay if we start with that side over there? Thank you. A lot of times that’ll work. We don’t have to cut people off most of the time.

Every once in a while you’ll get a real stickler. But that’s the exception. That’s not the rule.

Cheryl:

You know, one thing that really jumps out at me is also you were talking about cultural sensitivity.

One thing that I associate with you is how easy it is to connect with you. My gut tells me that you’re someone who is able to connect really well with people from all backgrounds or many backgrounds, from many walks of life, many cultures.

I think one thing we forgot to let the audience know… So you mentioned you’re from Ohio, but where are you now? As of right now, where are you?

JP:

Yeah, in the Philippines. Yes, Yes. Yeah.

Cheryl:

I see you as someone who’s so open, easy to connect with, someone who is respectful, open to learning more about others.

When we connect, you ask me questions about myself too. And I always appreciate that about you. I just really, really love that part about you.

Just how respectful and how open minded you are about others and where they come from.

JP:

Thank you so much. I really, really appreciate that.

JP thoughts on the current landscape and the need for more human connection

Cheryl:

JP, as we start to near the end of our conversation for today, one thing I really, really want to ask you and I wasn’t expecting to ask you this at all, but do you ever think about who you’ve become, how far you’ve come?

As we were talking, I was like, wow, I got to hear about your early, your very humble beginnings, your peppered past, as you would call it. And to see that you’re now helping people from around the world and seeing what a profound impact you’ve had on humans from all over the world and me also.

You have profoundly impacted me also. Do you ever think about that?

JP:

Wow. Something. I do think about, especially if we get a little more age under our belt, we start to think about our legacy. How will people remember us? What impact, what did we leave behind?

Another theme that kind of shaped me into really wanting to encourage global leaders. That’s part of your legacy, helping people to be creative, helping people be confident, helping people to make the world just a little bit better.

So I do think about that sometimes. I was watching a guy, he’s kind of a LinkedIn expert and he was saying that LinkedIn is odd because like 60% of the people that consume your content, never engage.

And I thought that was very interesting.

Sometimes we may not feel validated because people don’t talk about it. Like hey, your content touched me. Sometimes we don’t hear that. It’s a good feeling to know that you made a difference, you’re making an impact.

Sometimes you don’t hear that, so you don’t know. But that silent 60%, I’m sure it’s not just LinkedIn. It even taps into that whole confidence thing. People are like, well, what do I say? Wow, Cheryl, she’s so confident, she’s so elegant. What do I say? Do I just hit “Like”? It’s easier to do nothing because nothing doesn’t elicit a reaction.

I think about the impact and I hope that I get to make a larger impact on more people. Because I think the new global leadership will be solopreneurship. I think that is the new model.

You’re still going to have some really big companies like Google and stuff like that. But as the landscape changes, because we have to make that human connection, more people are going to want to connect.

They’re going to miss that human connection as we automate more and more. The leadership coming from us, person to person, each one, reach one. So each leader is developing another leader. I do think about it.

I hope that I can continue to make a bigger splash.

Cheryl:

Amazing, amazing.

Favorite foods, music and living in a different country

Cheryl:

How I like to wrap up these interviews is usually, I’ll just rapid fire a few completely random fun questions that I have not prepared, not thought about, but they’re just for fun.

JP:

Okay, sounds good.

Cheryl:

So question number one, what is your favorite food?

JP:

I’m a foodie. I love soul food. I really like greens, macaroni and cheese. I’m actually a pretty good cook. I love my dressing. So my home cooked dressing. I would say soul food is my favorite.

Cheryl:

Awesome. What music do you listen to?

JP:

Well, I listen to what I call retro soul.

That’s old music. Like in the seventies, the old days, “You are my sunshine” stuff like that. I used to want to be a singer. Like The Temptations and some of the eighties, of course, Whitney Houston, Aretha Franklin. That’s the stuff when I listen. I don’t listen to music as much. And of course, gospel, I love traditional gospel, you know, Rance Allen, Shirley Caesar.

Probably a bit older than a lot of artists, I’ve never heard of these people. But I like some hip hop, older hip hop. When I was younger, I kind of aged out a lot of it just because of the content. But I did really like a lot of that in the nineties. Juvenile, DMX, The Hot Boys. That’s what I used to really listen to all the time. But now more retro soul.

Cheryl:

Okay, one more question is how would you compare your current life in the Philippines versus what it’s like in the U.S.? Ah it’s a much gentler, slower culture. And so let me give you an example.

Like for instance, in the U.S., a lot of our dogs are a lot bigger. But a lot of the stray dogs here, they’re pretty small. But what I notice is even in the U.S., even a tiny little Chihuahua is still aggressive. Here, some dogs, they’ll come bark. But a lot of dogs, they don’t chase you.

They don’t bark at you. Even down to the dog.

And the people, it’s a lot of traffic. And it’s growing pretty fast. They’re building a lot. But a lot of the main streets don’t even have traffic lights.

But you would think, in the U.S., oh my God, people are blowing the horn when the lights turn green in, like a .002 second, and you ain’t on gas. They blowing horn. Come on, come on.

Here, you hear that occasional toot toot, speed up or whatever. It’s just so amazingly different.

Of course, weather wise, it’s different. It’s always warm here. Not outright just blazing hot.

but the culture is different. The food is really good. Even the street food very tasty. It’s just so different. It’s a slower, calmer pace.

They look at me because of my complexion. I kind of got that Filipino complexion, but I look different. So I get that look sometimes like hmmm because, I just look different, you know? But people are, for the most part, very, very friendly. And it’s just a slower, kinder, kinder culture.

Not that Americans are mean. We just tend to be sort of more in a rush. Hey, hey, get, get going. People speed around you and maybe blow the horn or something.

I see it, but it’s just so much less here. It’s just much more gentler.

Of course, now you get your challenges. I talked about certain things, like certain conveniences you don’t have. I can just pay this on my phone, I can just swipe this. That’s not a big common thing. If you go to the mall and the bigger malls near Manila, yeah, it’s going to be very westernized and have a lot of amenities.

But if you’re in a smaller place like this, it’s a lot of mom and pops. You see that one of the main ways that people sustain themselves on the day to day, is they have their own little store.

They have a lot of local currency. That’s probably one of the big differences. You can’t really function like you want to without having cash.

A lot of our society, we can just Apple Pay, Google pay. Not day to day here. So that’s one of the differences. It’s still not developed in all of the other areas.

That’s one of the differences.

You see a lot more of those electric trikes. They’re really quiet and they go pretty slow. Huge motorcycle culture. A lot of the trike, that’s one of the things that I found very interesting. People riding those trikes. But it’s probably, I don’t know, maybe a hundred of those to every car.

So that culture’s different. What else is different?

Because the US is so different depending on where you are in the U.S. So yeah, those are the big differences.

It’s the people. Just the surroundings, of course, are so beautiful here. Like in the morning. my goodness. This is so, so beautiful. The sunrise, sunset.

Even the animals, I see these big, beautiful black cows. I can’t think of a word that they call them locally, but like a bull. They’re so beautiful, but they’re so peaceful. They can be sitting. You know what I mean? And that they’re just this five, six hundred pound creature. And it’s just sitting there, chewing on grass. It’s just totally different.

Cheryl:

Yeah. So good!

Okay, well thank you for sharing some of the observations you have about the two places because our audience is quite global. Some people may have never been to either of those countries, U.S. or Philippines.

So thank you for sharing that.

Okay. JP, final question as we wrap up, how can people work with you and where can they find you on the Internet?

JP:

Yes, they can find me on LinkedIn on my page.

and they can also hit me on WeChat @WatkinsGlobo. That’s my WeChat ID. Global is already taken. So I just spelt it a little bit differently. It’s WatkinsGlobo.

Primarily on LinkedIn and I’m also on Twitter X. I can be found at WatkinsGlobo.

Those are my primary places.

Cheryl:

Awesome. All the links will be no show notes below. So people scroll down, you’ll find all the links to contact JP there and definitely hit him up if you want to work together.

JP, thank you. Thank you for your time, for your openness to share a wealth of knowledge and experience and for gracing us with your presence in the past hour.

I really appreciate you for being here.

And to everyone listening in. Thank you so much for being here as well. I’ll see you all in the next one.

Bye, everyone.

About JP

Hello I’m JP. I grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. I grew up with a single mom who raised 7 children. Childhood was challenging and I was kicked out of public schools because of my poor reputation and eventually graduated to selling drugs. By the time I was 25 years old, I had 4 children by two different women. Eventually, I got convicted of selling drugs and served a short stint in the penal system.

After I got out I was determined not to return. I volunteered as a way of “showing” rather than telling me I had changed my life around. Overtime, I earned my GED, BA, and Masters Degree. Yet, my peppered past limited my opportunities to teach at the college level even though I graduated magna cum laude with 3.8 GPA. By the grace of God I was able to maintain good grades while often working 2 jobs, sometimes 2 full-time jobs.

I was born and raised in the USA, but I currently live in the Philippines. Currently, I help diffident emerging leaders communicate with confidence and eloquence to their international colleagues. I hold a master’s degree in History from The University of Akron as well as a TOEIC and multiple TEFL certifications.

I am a leadership coach, ESL teacher, self-published author of a series, public speaker, and educator with several years of experience in hiring, interpersonal skill training, confidence coaching, and supervising staff as well as teaching various topics: US History, Business Etiquette & Leadership (tactful performance conversations and conflict management scenarios), interview preparation (via mock interviews), cultural nuances about the historical social issues in USA, professional development, and personal governance.