Tag Archives: entrepreneurship

What can you learn from dyslexic entrepreneurs?


Why are there disproportionately more dyslexic entrepreneurs than in the rest of society? Society: 5-20%. Entrepreneurs: 35%

I don’t know.

I have dyslexia. My younger brother has dyslexia. He is six years younger than me. we are as different as two people can be. I am a risk taker, he isn’t. I am an entrepreneur. He isn’t. I read a lot, he doesn’t. I am a loner, he is a family man.

I have always seen the world differently… and was called amoral, stupid, fearless, weird, and people, including my mother looked at me with puzzlement on their faces… like WTF?

So one reason could be is that dyslexics don’t fit in and they don’t want to.

Fitting in, being accepted makes one want to be like everyone else, trying to lower oneself to the level of what others find acceptable… which is to be even less than them.

Students of mine who want to fit in, play below their level of capacities… and it is not conducive to taking risks, becoming a leader, doing something big…

The dyslexic brain is different in unpredictable ways, they see the world differently.

One of the differences I see is that I see inaccurately. The difference can be seeing a different letter, a different number, a different color… and in life that is a big handicap.

So I have developed the habit of self-correction without self-recrimination on one hand, and looking twice before I leap on the other.

But maybe even more important: I develop steps that are tentative… so the seeing errors are discovered early before they become fatal.

I consider everything an experiment, to test out the steps, and I look keenly at the consequences of the actions, that non-dyslexics don’t do.

You can see just from these few attitudinal differences that a standard-brained person would never really consider.

not wanting to fit in
not wanting to please others
knowing that one sees inaccurately therefore
—not give significance to missteps
—self-correction without self-recrimination
—looking WHILE stepping
—looking deeper BEFORE stepping… like in chess
—considering life, business, and experiment, every step, instead of being cocksure
—considering every advice, every teaching, every suggestion as ‘taking it under advisement’, meaning not swallow, believe, etc. but test, thing about, consider, i.e. do work, testing thinking debating it…

Standard brain people have the opposite of these, and the opposite of these can be deadly.
Are these attitudes and behaviors limited to dyslexic people? Not at all. Also not all dyslexics develop these habits, or we would live in a world ruled by dyslexics…

I have a client who is dyslexic but behaves exactly like a non-dyslexic, wants to be liked, wants agreement, isn’t willing to look… so no. Not every dyslexic will rise to the top of the heap.

But instead every person needs do develop these habit if they want to go far in life.
Become discerning.
Back some 34 years ago when I first did
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