You know how sometimes, a moment that seems insignificant changes your life? This happened to me nearly 20 years ago in the lobby of the dance studio where my then 4-year-old son was taking a tap class. He was one of only two boys in a class of about 10 or 12 dancers, but he had chosen dance over karate because his best friend at the time, a friend’s daughter who was the same age, was in dance.
Turned out, she wasn’t in his class. But he chose to continue anyway, so there we were every week, at dance class. Their teacher, Ms. Nannette, had a no-peeking policy. She said it distracted the kids too much and she didn’t want to budge on the rule. That meant that parents weren’t allowed to watch the class except for once a month on parent day, so we were relegated to the lobby to wait, alternating between making uncomfortable small talk and awkward silence.
I was the second-youngest mom there – and it was a common occurrence in my life since I was 22 when I had him. It always felt awkward when I was with my “fellow” moms.
But this time, I wasn’t THE youngest. In fact, the youngest mom was named Melina, and she was there with her daughter Logen, who I think was nearly four at the time. On the plus side, while a lot of the moms didn’t seem interested in having a conversation, Melina and I quickly fell into a comfortable chat and found that not only did we get along well, but we had some things in common – one of which, apparently, was a shared penchant for breaking rules when it came to not being allowed to watch our babies dance.
I’ll make no excuses for it! Truth is that this was my first child and I was DYING just wondering how cute he looked tapping around in those little shoes we paid too much for. So, we did what any free-spirited mom would do. Despite the glares and unsupportive grunts of the other moms, we snuck over to the door and peeked through the cracks until we got yelled at by Ms. Nannette. Every week. And then we’d laugh like children while all the other moms gave us the evil eye.
I still laugh when I think about it today.
From the first day I met Melina, I instantly felt a connection with her and it was real. We are still best friends, all these years later. And, in the past couple of years, we’ve become more than just friends – now, we are also professionally connected.
See, for the past almost two years, she’s been my business manager. And she is the perfect match to my puzzle piece. I guess I kind of understood this when we were JUST friends. But now that we’re working together, there is a whole new level of understanding.
See, I’m think-outside-the-box, pay-it-forward-thinking, Bullet-Journal-not-calendar (non-linear thinking) kind of person. I’m an introverted extrovert who is as creative as she is disorganized.
This kind of personality is truly what accounts for both my biggest areas strength and my biggest areas of weakness. Strength because it allows me to be completely open to new ideas, and because it allows me to create and formulate stuff that really means something, stuff that really touches people and helps them to understand something that makes their life better. And because it lets me personally help people, through video and coaching, not to mention the other content I create. I mean, how could you go wrong?
Well, what could go wrong is that no single person is capable of being EVERYTHING. So, if I was going to succeed, I’d need help. And it would have to be someone who would be able to put up with my erratic scatterbrained ass without getting mad at me, and someone who wasn’t trying to BE me.
But finding the right person to help me build my business proved to be harder than I imagined it would be. After several failed attempts, I’ve learned that the people I hire must also be able to focus on their own areas of genius. Otherwise, they fail.
For example, one assistant I hired was super-smart and creative, but he was terrible at his job. And that was what he considered it – a JOB. Turns out that his personality type was very similar to mine in some ways, and he actually failed at his assistant duties. As, if I’m being honest, would I – because the person who would be my assistant would need to be like the companion puzzle piece to my own. They would need to have the opposite areas of genius to my own.
When I imagined what kind of person would be perfect for the job, I thought of my best friend first – knowing how organized and on top of stuff she could be and how good she was at managing people (and especially that she THRIVES in these areas because she LOVES that stuff) – well, that made me wish she would consider taking the job. As different as we are, we also have a soul-connection that is almost otherworldly. And what we have in common makes it all work somehow.
But I never thought she’d take the job, so I didn’t ask. Then one day as I was complaining to her about not being able to find the right person to be my assistant, she offered up her services. Needless to say, I jumped on that deal so fast my head spun a little!
Since I already trusted her completely and knew she would always be on my side, I was able to give her a much bigger role in my business than those who had come before her, and today she is officially the BlissFireMedia, LLC business manager, and she also runs several different initiatives personally – and oversees ALL initiatives in the company. This, for me, means I’m living the dream! Creating, developing and building up ideas into projects and then pulling in team members to carry on with it while I oversee from a high level and then focus on whatever the next idea is in my flow.
All of this, of course, is sort of a side-gig to my primary focus of helping narcissistic abuse survivors. It is where my creativity overflow goes and I love it, almost as much as I love Melina for being the peanut butter to my jelly, in both business and life.
Bottom line? Melina’s area of genius is perfectly complementary to mine. She is good at all that stuff I don’t love doing, which not surprisingly is also stuff I feel like is “work” – you know, things that make me feel bogged down and creatively stifled. This gives me more time to imagine, dream, create and more time to do more of what I’m meant to be doing.
