POST TRAUMATIC - GROWTH With Martin Watts

Hello, it's Howard Brown. It's the Shining Brightly

Show. And we are shining so brightly today. I have an

amazing guest with an amazing story. Lots of lessons learned.

Oh my God, these are teachable moments. Martin, welcome to the

show. How are you? I am doing amazing, Howard, how are you

today? I'm great. I just I'm so glad we just met. But I'm so

happy to have met you. And I want to tell people a little bit

more about you. So let me let me kind of read a part of your bio

here. So Martin Watts is a seasoned entrepreneur and

business growth expert with over 30 years of experience in

building and scaling successful companies across various

industries. He's the founder and CEO of rocket men business

accelerator, we're going to learn a little bit about that.

This is a coaching firm that helps businesses identify and

align with three areas, culture, goal alignment, and consistent

branding with an emphasis on the customer experience really

important stuff. Martin is passionate about sharing his

insights and learnings with his peers and a wider community.

He's an insightful storyteller, and speaker. And he adds

practical tools to add to your toolbox for creative problem

solving, decisively helping people answer those hard

questions. Also being empathetic, real life

applications. Martin's vision is to empower business leaders and

entrepreneurs to grow sustain their ventures, while creating

positive impact in the teams and in society. And that's what this

show is all about. You're also a bold, patented inventor, and

you've redefined what Corporate Social Responsibility looks

like. And you bridge the gap between management and a

sustainable company looks like and feels like really cool.

Martin, You're impressive already. But tell us something

that we may not know about yet, you want to share

Sometying that is a lot of people don't know about

me, as I mentioned, an accomplished artist. And so I

paint I draw, I use clay to express myself. In fact, it's

pretty healing for me, it My passion is really helping

trauma. I don't call the victim I call you know, thrivers

they're not survivors, but I happen to be one of them. And so

it's very healing to me and always has been. So it's like

it's a it's a love for mine. It's a very passion, love for

mine and and the healing arts people don't know something

about the healing it towered is that the right brain is all

logic and language, linear thinking and thinking in words.

So if you go to talk therapy, people will use the, the, that

side of your brain and then the other side of the brain is

creation and then holistic thinking. So it lacks the

images, the sensations and the emotions associated with trauma

and grief. So that's, that's something I just love to do. And

it helps me It empowers me. And, and I like to be part of those

kinds of programmes.

I love that because in my book, and in my,

my speeches, I talk about finding your happy place, and

you found your happy place, mine happens to be the basketball

court. But I love that because, you know, talking about is one

thing, but actually experiential, putting your hands

into the clay, it's great. Thank you for sharing that. It's

really amazing. I'd like to just start with share a little bit of

background where you've come from what you've been through a

little bit. And let's dig in there first.

Well, I was born in Chicago, actually. And I

won't go through all that, you know, like when I was born, but

I was born in a good Chicago Catholic family. I was number

nine of 10. And so that's kind of my background, and I ended up

ended up in Wisconsin and I and I just remember going to school

and doing my thing. And then I guess I've always been an

entrepreneur and I kind of laugh at people. I always ask people,

so when When did you become an entrepreneur? You know, and they

said, Well, when I went to college, everything I said,

Well, no, no look farther back. It was kind of funny, I actually

look back and I said when I was in third grade, the bussers at

the school, couldn't go to the couldn't go to the candy store

because I was a walker. So I would start collecting their

money and buying candy coming back and I'd make a little

little candies on the side, you know, you know, all of us

entrepreneurs have a some sort of, you know, story like that.

But so I went I went to high I only went to high school I was

accepted at one of the top art schools in, in, in the States,

and I was just messed up in my head so I didn't really go to

it. So when I was 23 years old, I started my first business. I

actually was a freelance technical illustrator. So what I

did was I taught myself how to technically illustrate you know,

like things that would come apart, you know, like in

manuals. And so that was my first business. And I've had

five businesses. I've had an ad agency and my latest one was a

manufacturing facility down in just near Nashville.

I want to I want to tell you that I love the

candy story, because most people okay they, a lot of people

started lemonade stands. That was their first entrepreneurial

experience a lot of people lemonade stands. And because I

have a chapter on Babson College in my book, and it's the number

one school for entrepreneurship in the world, those are the

stories that shape you, right? The buying, selling the exchange

of money, learning to put it in your piggy bank. And we took it

one step further with our daughter, because she actually

had two piggy banks, we call them sadaqa boxes in Judaism,

and one was actually for her that she could buy candy, or gum

or doll, or whatever she wanted, or soccer cleats when she got

older, or the other one was for charity. And it's a beautiful

lesson to teach that the other one was going to someone else in

need. So I shared that with you a little bit along with your

candy story as well. So you started some businesses, but

it's not always easy. You went through some tough times. So

tell us a little bit about the tough times and what you learned

from that?

Yeah, well, entrepreneurship is full of

tough times, right? Or at least challenges. You know, I stopped,

I stopped calling them problems after my fourth company. I said,

I don't have any more problems. What I have now is challenges.

And so I decided to take that version of it. And, you know,

it's interesting that, you know, many entrepreneurs at many

different levels, they start a business, and how are, they do

something that they love, let's say it's providing lemonade,

right? They love providing lemonade, and also, there's more

demand for the lemonade. And pretty soon you, you have now

you have finances, and now you're gonna get a CPA involved.

And now you got HR issues, because you're growing, and you

end up with all these different, you know, challenges that are in

your life and things that you've never even thought of. And, you

know, that's where impostor syndrome comes from, you know,

people people talking about impostor syndrome, but it really

is about like, Oh, my God, I get this huge company, or the

electrician who started his own company, that's a great example.

And in five years later, he says, Well, I can make more

money, you know, working on my own, and five years later, he's

got, you know, vans, he's got employees, and he doesn't know

what to do, right? So I ended up with that same kind of scenario,

I wasn't really expecting to have 25 employees or 40,000

square foot facility. But the thing that's in me, you know,

like that really drove me is I have this I have a model and my

model is never yield, I just will not yield, I'm gonna figure

it out. Because if I don't know what, there's somebody out there

that knows what to do, you know. So that's those have been some

of the biggest challenges. You know, like, I started a

manufacturing business without any money. And pretty soon I was

supplying the world with portable hot water, hand washing

stations. And then I didn't go to school for engineering, you

know, like, that's the beautiful thing about entrepreneurs, you

figure it out as you go sometime. And pretty soon I'm,

I'm in engineering a product that is plumbing and electricity

and NSF certification, and, you know, you deal with them as they

come up, right? And I remember NSF certification changed the

whole product, they said, Well, you got to change this, and do

this and do that. And I'm like, I have no idea how to do it. And

you sit down and figure it out. And I think that's been, you

know, when people look at the problems of it, I think that's,

those are challenging issues, I would say the most challenging

issue I had were people, you know, under, you know, I can

deal with things and gadgets and widgets and design stuff and put

stuff on paper. But dealing with people as a whole a whole nother

area for me.

And that takes that takes just time and

experience, I will tell you, a very important class that I took

at Babson was called organisational behaviour, right?

How to put the organisation and when you're growing like that,

you realise that sales needs to talk to marketing, marketing,

may actually have to talk to the engineering engineering may

actually have to talk to finance, everyone might have to

talk to HR. And when you're building teams, okay, and you're

the head coach, or the CEO, or the executive director, you

know, that the people stuff not all people agree, not all people

get along, and that team chemistry is vital to the

success, you know, if you're going to score touchdowns or

build revenue, and that, that that is actually both something

that is learned and can be can be really refined. But it also

is sometimes it's in you from selling candy, you know, at

school, you know, early on as well. So, absolutely, I agree

with you 100% The people process and hiring the right people and

getting them to work in a cohesive teamwork type manner.

Challenging for every company I've ever worked at.

Yeah, and I wasn't I'd never did really blue collar

before I was doing the ad agencies and different things.

And so blue collar mentality was a completely new mentality. And

I think people overlook people and they don't really stand in

the shoes of them. So when I had people come in and was like, I

was dealing with people that were abused, you know, they'd

worked at facilities and they were getting talked down to and

yelled at having cups thrown at them. And it was an interesting

challenge to get them to trust you in to believe in you. And I

remember Number I was thinking, Boy, I gotta create a better

culture for this. And in it, I didn't know anything about it. I

just don't when the universe speaks to me, I tried to listen.

And somebody handed me a book from Tony Shea, the gentleman

that started examples, and he has a great culture. And I

remember he just came up to me says, I just believe you need

this. And I was like, I do. And I started studying and

understanding. And so yeah, I think people is, people are the

big challenge there. You know, I think, if I can see one more

thing, Howard on this is that, you know, I learned as a leader,

that, you know, if you grow a beard, they'll grow beard, you

know, like, if you if you're able to grow a beard, or, you

know, the way you wear your hair, and people emulate other

people. So you have to be careful what you're putting out.

And one thing I learned as a CEO, the number one thing, I'll

tell you the number one thing I learned, number one thing, and

was this number one, the CEOs role, we know is the set the

vision of the company. The other thing,

I agree, but that's leadership, leadership

and

leadership, right? We said vision, right? But we

can't stop there. Because we have to communicate that vision

to all ranks. And I think that's where people lose, if they're

going to tell the the core group of people, this is what we're

going to do, but they never tell everybody what the vision of the

company is. And then number two, I've I found out that the number

two role of the CEO is speak to the heart of the people to speak

to their hearts, find out where they sit, spend time with them

and understand that your people don't they're they're not

cattle. We're talking about people. And then the third thing

is to have nine noes to one yes. In the nine nosed one yes, is

that once your vision is set in your navigation is set, people

come up with all kinds of great ideas. But if they don't match

what that Northstar is, and that question I always ask is, what

do I want to look like on December 31? And when I asked

that question and answer that question, and we set the course

for that, people come up with great ideas. And we try, it

seems like like we we discount that a little bit? Because it

doesn't line up. But the truth of it is nine noes to one yes is

that literally people come up with new ideas. And instead of

discounting it, we put it in into a parking lot. And I've

learned that and then we revisit that. And I found that people

get empowered by that. Because it is a matter of telling people

that you listen to them. It's a matter of listening to them.

Yeah, I love that. And by listening, you are

empowering them. Great advice. Great advice. Now, take me into

your background on personal trauma a little bit there. I

want to I want to I want to go into that because life is not an

easy road to navigate sometimes and for you for sure, as well.

So take me into that.

You know, it's interesting, I wonder I was I

was reading something in Einstein had a profound question

that we needed to ask ourselves, he said, is the universe

friendly to you? And it made me really think there's some things

that just go into your soul. And that question made me really

think. And if you asked me at the age of four, that answer

would be a lot different today. Because some of the trauma that

I went through is that when I was four years old, I remember

in Chicago, I was playing with my little sister, again, I was

not number nine to 10. I was four years old. And I don't know

my father was working on a window, but she decided to climb

onto the ledge of the window. And I was right there. So I

grabbed her. I mean, four years old, I grabbed her and I pull

her in best I can as I'm pulling her in, my father came around

the corner. And when he came around the corner, he saw that

he grabbed her put her to safety. He took me push, you

know, held me out the window. Howard, by one foot 15 feet

about the concrete.

So he thought that you were pushing your little

your sister,

he that I was doing that. So to teach me a

lesson on how to be better caring for my sister, he hung me

out the window. And, you know, like, that's the home I grew up

in. And I remember when I was five years old, one year later,

actually, I woke up to the sound of crying and was told that my

father had died. He was he was he was shot. He suffered a

gunshot while on a business trip in St. Louis. So then I had no

father at that time. My mother never remarried. And it just it

was just a very problematic home. You know, and I and I

tried to use you know, I tried to be classy about things. I

don't like putting laundry out there. But I can only tell you

what happened to me. You don't want it you know, I remember

when I was 11 years old, my mom My mom came in the kitchen with

a gun to her head saying she was going to kill herself. And I'm

thankful she didn't because I wouldn't know how to process

that. And, you know, it was very the abuse was very violent. It

was very chronic. It was you know, physical, it was mental a

sexual it was all, all the abuse was wrapped up into that house.

And so when I hit like 15 I gotta tell you something, this

never healed in Me, says, Okay, I'm sick of this. I'm not doing

this anymore. And I remember when I was 15, I went in the

basement, my house and I grabbed a desk, and I put it in my

closet, I finally had my own room, you know, you have a lot

of kids, I found my own room, put it in the closet, put a

little lamp, I had like a little extension cord without a cable

that came out of the closet, and I plugged it in so I can have a

light. And I started working on my art. And I started just

honing my art in. And because it was healing to me, I didn't

realise this, but it was really healing to me. And I actually

So it's unfortunate. I call the those

became one of the top art students of that high school.

struggles, and the walking in darkness. As I walked in

And I was recognised for it. Like I said, I got to I got

accepted into one of the top art schools from it, but it really

helped me get over it. And so the the other things I did to

darkness, lots of little journeys, and some big journeys,

get over it when I was 18 years old, I started volunteering is

what I did. And oh, by the way, I love some of the things that

when I get to stage four diagnosis that you know, 26

you're doing for colon cancer, I love all the screening things

that you're doing. Because it helps you get over the things

years apart, and you've walked in some darkness, that's a harsh

that you suffer through when you can do a positive, something

positive. And a negative situation, it really shifts the

mind. It really does. And I remember when I was I was 18.

way to grow up. You pack it away, and then you actually you

And I started I went to a gentleman programme, and I

worked at a woman centre. And I started working with kids just

to show him that, you know, guys can be cool people too. And so

know what we're really telling to me, you created a little safe

it really helped me, you know, it was interesting how I shifted

all that and went through that.

Mm hmm. So when I was I think when I was 19 years

space for yourself with that desk in your closet and that

lamp. And that became kind of your hide away. And then you

old, I you know, I was raised Catholic, and I only knew like

Lutheran Catholic. I didn't know there was like a whole slew of

religions out there. So I sought out like Catholic Social

know, as a teen, you're going up and you got all this experience.

Services. And I said, I got to talk to somebody about this.

It's really bothering me. You know, I hated my family. I

really didn't like what was going on. I was a struggling as

a human being. And I remember, you know, I started talking to

You talk about you said you you pack it away, but then you

this priest, I think it was blind. And I was talking to him

and tell him like, yeah, my mother did this. And I did this.

And I'll see you next week, you know, and then Olson before

sessions, and he says, he says, we're done. I said, very good. I

unpack it.

feel good about this. Like, I'll see you next week. He says, no,

no. He said, we're done. He says sessions are over. He said,

You're healed. You're all good. And I thought to myself, No, I'm

broken, man. I'm my hearts broken. My emotions are broken.

Like I was aware of this. I knew that there was something wrong

up here. And I said, and then he said, he said, You're hunky

dory. And you're all hunky dory. And I says, I don't know what

the hell, hunky is hunky dory is that I'm not hunky nor Dory. I

am not. I have not solved this. And it was interesting. I walked

out of there, Howard and I packed all of that away. I put

it in a closet, I refused even acknowledge it. And I went on is

sort of my first business when I was 23. And I had a family and

I've gotten married, had a family. I have seven beautiful

children. They're all adults now. And I started businesses I,

you know, went on. And then 55 I'm 61 now and when I was 55

years old, I decided to unpack it, and to deal with it. And I

find myself a really good therapist. And it was

interesting, though, after a year and a half going through

this and in by the way, she didn't tell me anything. I said

everything, you know, like this didn't come like people say,

Well, somebody puts up in your head. This stuff was real, you

know, I begin to unpack and I said, Oh my God, this happened.

I literally could smell the carpet. I could see things that

moves. It was horrible to relive some of this. But it was

interesting. After a year and a half Howard, I asked her this

question. I said I have to know on a scale of one to 10, 10

being the worst. And like just being a baby about this, you

know, like I was worried like everybody says they're abused

and everybody says they have trauma. She says Martin, she

says On a scale of one to 10. She said you're a 15. She goes,

I have dealt with people, my, my whole adult life. As a

psychologist, I have rarely met anybody like you that is

successful after going through the things that you've been

describing. And it was very interesting that I was able to

work through it and process it. And then I realised that, you

know, like, all the suffering I had, and PTSD, because that's

all characterised by flashbacks, nightmares, anxiety, disturbing

thoughts. I've had some of that, but I never really had any a lot

of that. And I did some study and I found that I had PT G,

post traumatic growth, instead of it wasn't destroying me, it

was actually making me stronger.

I love that you turn PTSD into post traumatic

growth. And, boy, you kept that in you for a long time before

you know, from little child all the way up to age 55 years old,

it's absolutely incredible. So I want to talk about some growth,

because you now have an are building some amazing content,

called the rocket man telling me what you're doing now. Because

you certainly are now taking everything that makes you Martin

and be able to then share and to share with entrepreneurs and

small businesses and businesses in general and to make them

better and I love that. So you're helping others and I

always say lift yourself up first. So they'll go lift up

others you are walking, talking model of that. So tell us about

Rocket Man.

Well, I appreciate the compliments. And and thank

you for understanding where I'm at. You know, it's was something

new that I've been working on. And you know, after my I sold my

last business, I created this manufacturing business, I had it

for 17 years. I could keep it by my partner or whatever. I

literally created everything I founded it, I did all the

engineering. And again, I just did it. And and in after all

that I decided to sell. And somebody asked me I really

believe in a like a one word barometer. I love asking people,

you know, what's your one word? Bromberg. How do you feel right

now? So a friend of mine said, Marty, after selling, he said,

What's your one word barometer. And I said accomplish. It came

right out of me accomplished. But it wasn't probably the

accomplishes, most people would think it was actually

accomplished, I felt I had accomplished everything I needed

to do our, for that company, I completed my duty there. So

actually, when I walked away, got paid, walked away, I never

even looked at their website. Again, I created all of that

site. I never even looked at it again. Because I believe that

there's something new and better for me to go forward with. And

that became Rocket Man. And what I did was I took a year off to

decompress and heal and rediscover myself, you know, and

you get lost raising seven children and having businesses.

I mean, I don't even know who the heck I was after a while.

And so I spent the last six months developing Rocket Man,

it's a coaching content, as you had mentioned, to help

businesses scale, you know, when I say foundationally, and what

is what's his also his now turning into his now I'm

creating a talk and a workshop, helping people in teams discover

and define their sustainable success. So it's basically a

speaking element to the rocket man. And this programme is

called The Power of Sustainable success. Knowing my background

that trauma, people don't realise that 73% of all adults

have suffered some sort of trauma outward in their lives,

up to 38% of all children have suffered some sort of violent or

sexual attacks or abuse. Look at entrepreneurs, entrepreneurs,

according to an entrepreneur named Travis Luthor, I don't

know if you know him, but he stated 75% of high performing

entrepreneurs, has suffered some sort of early trauma in their

lives. And here's the caveat to that few have addressed it. So

they were like me, they're just going on. And like I said, I

never felt really successful. Like I did all this great stuff.

And yet, I couldn't define or, you know, like success, because

you're always into the next challenge, right? You're always

working on the next challenge. So many people, and successful

people just don't believe that they're successful. And usually,

it's because somebody told them not to. You're not successful,

so they just believe that arc or typically, they're using the

wrong comparables. You know, according to like a recent

Gallup poll, when people judge their success, the Gallup poll

was a personal success score and a perceived social success

score. So the personal success score was a high 68% win. they'd

created their own comparables, then perceived society's success

score was a measly 31%. So really, in my talk in my

workshop, I share my story, I mean, because I think it's

important to share with me the fact that 73% of people that

have been suffered through some sort of trauma. I mean, I got

seven out of 10 people in any room, I can relate to. And so in

my workshop, I share my story. And I let them know that they're

already successful. But let's find ways that we can build this

success story for themselves. And so the workshop really is

about bringing ideas and bringing really practical

solutions to building their success stories.

Yeah, I'm excited for you, I know that you're

going to be speaking country wide for the organisation, it's

really an important message to tell people used to just cover

it up, just like you said, pack it away. I actually on the other

hand, I've been very, very vocal about you know, cancer

screening, I don't want anyone to get it walk side by side with

patients and caregivers and treatment. And then obviously

memorialising those that the cancer burden was too great. So

you know, we walked very parallel paths. Were very, very

aligned. For those that are just listening, I want Martin hold up

your your forearm for a second. And this is a guy that actually

means never yield because he's got a tattooed on his forearm in

bold block print. And that's a daily reminder to never, never

yield. And I love that. Thank you for sharing. These are,

these are deep stories about you personal about you've had great

success, you've got kids that you're proud of. And you've just

got more work to do. And I'd love to hearing from you, I'm

gonna ask you to put on your sunglasses, because you got some

cool shades, take off your other glasses now. And this is the

part of the show we call the shining brightly spotlight, I

want to shine that spotlight so brightly on you. I want you to

first just say how you'd like people to reach out to you. And

then I want you to share a little bit of inspiration, a

quarter story, and then I'll kick it back to me and I'll

close out the show.

Well, I'd love to reach reach out on LinkedIn, I

think you could post that for everybody. But if you can find

me Martin watts on LinkedIn, it's a great way to get a hold

of me. If even if you just want to talk. You know, I'm all in.

I'm all in. I'm all in. And, but I'd love to speak to groups. And

I'd love to be able to be able to empower other people to think

differently, inspire them. Excellent, excellent. So give me

give me a little inspiration here to close out the show. Very

good. I'll say I'll stick my favourite quote out there. My

favourite quote out there is on the Day of Victory. No one is

tired. Never lose hope. Always find a way to dig through it.

Because it's always better on the other side.

Wow. Powerful. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

So I, again, just a great show. I will definitely include your

LinkedIn and help people reach out to you and, and be able to

support each other. I just thank you again for sharing so deeply

today about what you've been through how you've overcome and

then how you're helping others as well. So this has been the

shining, brightly podcast show, you can reach me at shining

bright me.com. And obviously information about the book is

also on Amazon, of course. I actually can help make your

events shine as a speaker facilitator and to help there as

well. And then this podcast is on there. And as well. Very

important to me are my advocacy things that I do for Babson

College and entrepreneurship, that whole cancer world and of

course, interfaith getting to know those who are not like you

and actually welcome in into your tent, just like Abraham and

Sarah did. So I appreciate that. I also want to give a shout out

right now to some folks that always helped me publishing

house, front edge publishing, read the spirit.com that I blog

in. And also the podcast group that I'm with is called the

Amplify You network. They're amazing. They make me look great

every Wednesday, so it's awesome. And so just remember to

shine, shine brightly, a little bit each day for yourself. And

then for others go lift them up in your neighbourhoods and your

communities and yes, the world we become a better place. Martin

watts. Thank you. I really appreciate you.

Thank you, Howard.