How I Live...A Brain For Business: Why My Dyslexia's A Bonus!

Throughout school, gemma adams admits she felt ‘dumb’ while unknowingly battling dyslexia. Now, the 34-year-old has turned it into a growing business, vizlink

- Leena Tailor

VizLink was basically born as a way for me and my husband Terry to not kill each other! When we started working together on the farm, it was hard because Terry’s a born-and-bred farmer, who talks in farm lingo, and I was a townie, trying to be a good farmer.

We also had completely different communication styles, so I started developing whiteboards, checklists, maps and signs to improve our communication and workflow.

I never imagined turning it into a business. My parents own canvas manufacturing and party hire companies, and growing up, I saw how much stress that involved, so I never wanted to go into a commercial business.

I was more of a creative kid. I struggled through reading and writing at school. I felt dumb the whole time. But I excelled in creative subjects and got a degree in computer graphics. There were tricks I developed over the years, like if I had to write someone’s name, I would hand them the pen. Or at uni, I’d skip the class where we had to read out loud.

Around 21, I was working as a computer graphic designer in New Plymouth, when we had a client come in, sit down next to me and start frantically typing away. It was one of my biggest freak-outs, just feeling like crap and thinking, ‘If I could just sort this reading and writing thing, it would be amazing.’