Opportunities are like sunrises. If you wait too long, you miss them.
William Arthur Ward
It’s officially Fall now! For us Fall means apple picking, soccer, a lot of baking, and our favorite cool mornings beginning with coffee outside on the porch. I don’t know about you, but changing seasons gives a fresh new perspective and start on things. Something to look forward to and new possibilities on the horizon. It’s also a bit of the calm before the busyness of holidays.
2020 has been a roller coaster of a year. On one hand we’re navigating our way through a once in a lifetime (at least we all certainly hope) pandemic. On the other hand we have the opportunity to step into new roles as owner of TreasureHunt, and we couldn’t be more excited of what is to come!
The Entrepreneurial spirit runs deep in our family history, especially when focusing on small businesses. In fact, when we were first married we ran a small business together out of our apartment. We’ve always made a good team and enjoy working together. Now we both work for small businesses and have been integral in strategically growing them. Michael’s dad, 3 of his uncles, and his aunt and grandmother were all small business owners. It’s a legacy we’re very proud of and hope to continue with our kids.
A Little About Us
Q: What are you looking forward to with the future of TreasureHunt?
Mike: Allowing the TreatureHunt community to have a more convenient place to connect. I’m excited about some new features we’ll be adding to facilitate this!
Melissa: I’m personally looking forward to seeing TreasureHunt continue to reach people, and am excited to be able to grow that reach using a new format that will be easier for people to share and update!
Q: Tell us something you’ve learned this year?
Mike: Leadership is a responsibility. If you look at leadership from the rewards based perspective, you become a leader more interested in control, notoriety, or monetary success. Whereas, if you understand it as a responsibility, you feel the weight of having a clear vision and the accountability of leading people towards a worthy goal.
Melissa: I’ve always been a very structured, scheduled, check-list type of person. This year we had a lot of milestones that didn’t look very typical because of the pandemic, but I’ve been learning to be much more flexible! It’s been in this season where we were required to slow down, that I’ve really taken the time to be present. As a family, we’ve put a lot of focus in our health as well-looking for progress not perfection. We want to be good stewards of what we’ve been given.
Q: What was your first job, and what did you learn from it?
Mike: When I was twelve, I was working with my dad in a warehouse. He had me removing the circuit boards from old registers from a big box home improvement store. It taught me the value of what it takes to make money and also the value of optimizing a workflow.
Melissa: I was a professional gift wrapper for ORVIS, a retail company that specializes in Mail-Order apparel and fishing gear. The biggest item I’ve ever wrapped was a canoe! It involved a lot of boxes and tons of paper and ribbon. To this day, I still enjoy wrapping our families Christmas gifts. One of my takeaways from this job was the value of efficiency and working fast. We had all of the packing, wrapping, and mailers at each workstation so it was just me listening to the radio trying to get as much done before the next shift came in.
Thank you for taking the time to get to know us a little better, and we look forward to getting to know you as we serve the TreasureHunt community!