Today we’d like to introduce you to Tyelur Watkins.
Hi Tyelur, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
I didn’t have any exciting plans for the future as a kid. I assumed college would be in the picture because that’s what my family had pursued. In my early teens, I got heavily involved into drugs & alcohol which I later admitted myself as an alcoholic and a drug addict by the age of 17 when I got completely sober. In getting sober, I was simply glad to be alive. Here in sobriety, I met lifelong friends, mended family relations, and was experiencing life to the fullest.
While working “regular” jobs, I attempted to make a career out of music by the age of 21, which was fun but not fulfilling. After that adventure, I became interested in videography. With my childhood experience of filming skateboarding, I realized I had a dormant passion for storytelling through a lens. Now I wanted to take that skill and help businesses grow.
The mere idea of a business in mid-2019 became my full-time career by early 2021.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
The biggest struggle before I could attempt to be successful in any part of my life was overcoming alcoholism and drug addiction. By the age of 17, I had burned down plenty of everything, including my health, and was ready to do what it takes to make a change. Once sober, it was smooth until I felt a desire to do more with my life financially.
At first, the biggest struggle was time. I was working for my employer, working part-time with Ride Share services, and trying to figure out business while living alone at my apartment with my dog. I was working A LOT for what wasn’t a lot of pay yet.
After a lot of hard work, I had a foundation built, but something happened that no one would have expected. On Fathers Day 2020, I drowned in a pool practicing a certain breathing technique. This put a stop in everything. I landed myself intubated in a coma at the ER and after two days, the doctors were prepping my parents for the final goodbye given the results of many tests. Until miraculously, on the third day there were signs of brain activity. Here hope was restored and a week later, I’d be walking out of the hospital onto further rehabilitation. No one had seen anything like it.
Six weeks from the accident, I’d be working again. But now, it was part-time with my employer and part-time for my business. I knew I didn’t want to die without giving this business my all. Very quickly, with the help of my team, we became incredibly busy and there wasn’t any room for me to operate both my part-time “just in case” job and my increasingly successful business, and I was off. Full-time ASP Branding.
As you know, we’re big fans of ASP Branding. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
ASP Branding is an internal and external branding company. We refer to what’s commonly called “marketing” as “external branding”. Here we listen to a company’s goals and audit an entire brand to create a strategy that will ultimately fuel success for a business. Companies come to us because they want to grow and need someone to help them. It’s a huge task to take an entire brand into your hands and implement a plan of action, and our entire team is ready at any moment to see if we’re a good fit.
I’m mainly proud of this company because we get to help other businesses be successful. It is an incredible experience to become a partner with a company who has invested so much financially, emotionally, physically, and mentally. For me personally, I want to be a witness to everyone’s success, and now I get to play a role in it.
I’m most proud of my team. All of us at ASP Branding are extremely hard working. Aside from our capability to execute the tasks at hand, we are some bad ass human beings that bring more than just results to the table. We create an environment that makes our clients feel extremely welcomed as if they’re a part of the ASP family (which they are).
Are there any important lessons you’ve learned that you can share with us?
The most important lesson I’ve learned along my journey is to make sure everything is getting the attention it deserves. Friends, family, home-life, yourself, your partner, your animals, etc. I’ve watched relationships get stale because I was “busy working”. I’ve seen my emotional, mental, and spiritual life deteriorate because “I had to work”. True fulfillment doesn’t occur when I press record on my camera. True fulfillment comes where after the hard work is completed, I’m making sure the rest of my life is successful too.
Contact Info:
- Email: tyelur.watkins@atomicsouls.com
- Website: www.aspbranding.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/aspbranding/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/atomicsoulsproductions
Image Credits
ASP Branding Joshua Seth Photography
