Michelle Watson

I started my career in sales, seven summers selling door-to-door with Southwestern Advantage, and it still shapes how I see all communication and problem-solving today. But what I loved most in those years was recruiting, developing, and leading my own teams. That love is what pulled me into professional recruiting, first the agency-side, then corporate, with Deloitte and HSBC.

I was endlessly curious about the candidates in front of me, but the part I wrestled with was the role itself: by the time someone reached my desk, my job was to judge whether they were the right fit. Inside, I just wanted to pause and help them; work on how they were communicating their worth, and figure out together whether the opportunity was even right for them.

At UBC’s Sauder School of Business, I finally got to do exactly that. I moved from sitting across the desk from people to sitting beside them as a coach, helping students understand their worth, build the skills to communicate their purpose, land the job, and launch their careers. Coming to Southwestern Consulting was the natural next step.

So much of what I draw on comes from the fundamentals I learned selling books with Southwestern Advantage. Cold-calling more than 21,000 doors over those summers, you learn quickly how to read body language and adjust your communication style to something a person can actually hear and relate to. But you also learn to really listen, not just to the words, but to the message behind the story, and to ask the questions that get beneath the surface.

Two decades of recruiting and interviewing refined those instincts even further; thousands of conversations spent figuring out who someone is, what really drives them, and where they’ll thrive. That’s the work I do with clients now: helping them understand the beliefs and thoughts driving their habits, so the change actually lasts, instead of temporary motivation they have to drum up all over again a week or a month later.

In my Southwestern Advantage years I ranked among the top 100 sellers every summer, as both a rookie and a seasoned rep, and was the top recruiter as both a student and a full-timer. But the recognition that’s meant the most to me is the Inspirational Award from the Commerce Undergraduate Society at UBC’s Sauder School of Business. It came from the students themselves, and it spoke to my dedication to them inside and outside the classroom… exactly the kind of impact I care about.

Today, coaching with Southwestern Consulting, I’ve earned top client-retention recognition year after year, which tells me clients don’t just start the work with me: they stay and see it through.

Great coaching isn’t about handing someone answers — it’s about giving them the clarity, agency, and self-trust to find their own, long after the call ends. My job is to help a client see what they can’t see about themselves, sort the real issue from the noise, and leave every conversation with one concrete next step they own.

What I hear most from clients is that they stop waiting to feel “ready” and start acting; they get better at the hard conversations they used to avoid, and they trust their own judgment in the moments that used to stall them. The results I’m proudest of aren’t only closed deals or promotions: they’re the ones where a client can finally do the thing without me in the room!

My unique edge starts with real experience; I’m a practitioner of the principles, not merely a theorist. From my earliest days in sales through 20 years of coaching professionals across industries, I’ve done the work I ask my clients to do, so nothing I teach comes from a textbook.

But what really sets me apart is what I’m willing to say. Two beliefs sit at the core of how I coach. The first is Elie Wiesel’s “the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s indifference.” I care too much about my clients to simply be nice, I care enough to hold them accountable.

The second is Brené Brown’s “To be clear is to be kind;” vague, softened feedback isn’t kindness, it’s confusion. So I go straight for the real issue: I’ll gently push past the surface problem to the pattern underneath, name what a client didn’t come in ready to say, and get clear on the expectation and the next step. Clients don’t always expect that directness, but it’s usually the moment something shifts, and it’s what they thank me for later. Then I teach them to lead and sell with that same clarity and care.

When I look back, the thread running through my entire career is a genuine curiosity about people: what makes them tick, what lights them up, what holds them back, and why we so often can’t make ourselves do the thing we already know we should. Coaching is where that curiosity finally had a home. What energizes me most is seeing the potential in someone before they can see it themselves.

I’ve had leaders in my own life who carried bigger goals for me than I held for myself, who believed I was capable of more than I thought, and it changed the course of what I went on to do. I’m a coach, and I’ve also had (and still have) excellent coaches of my own. Those conversations are what deepened my self-awareness and grew my emotional intelligence… a constant reminder of how much a single conversation can shift. Coaching is how I pay that forward: helping people expand past their own beliefs and reach further than they thought they could.