Guest Blog: Just why are there so many dyslexic entrepreneurs?

The following is a guest blog from freelance journalist, copywriter, PR and media communications professional Jasmine Comer. 

Just why are there so many dyslexic entrepreneurs? And what we can all learn from their way of thinking in Dyslexia Awareness Week (1-7 October)

What do Cath Kidston, Jo Malone and Anita Roddick all have in common?  They’re all hugely successful business women I hear you say. Well yes, that’s true. But they have something else that binds them - they’re all dyslexic.

Yet despite this they’ve managed to single handedly build multi-million-pound businesses. Struggling to read and write has not held these women back. Nor Steve Jobs or Alan Sugar.

So just why are so many entrepreneurs dyslexic? What gives them the edge in business over the rest of us?  Statistics show that around 20% of UK business self-starters are dyslexic, compared to 10% of the general public.  And astonishingly 40 % of self-made millionaires identify themselves as dyslexic, which is massively disproportionate. Maybe working for yourself is preferable to trying to fit into someone else’s business?

What they possess that non-dyslexics don’t is what UK charity Made by Dyslexia terms Dyslexic Thinking – dyslexic minds tend to think multi-dimensionally, so, using all their senses. If nurtured they can have higher than normal intelligence and extraordinary creative abilities. They’re naturally curious problem solvers who think creatively outside the box.  This makes dyslexic entrepreneurs exceptional at identifying solutions to problems, and in creating new ways to tackle challenges. Great skills in business, eh?

Jo Malone made a fortune from honing one skill in particular to compensate for inability to read and write.  “I’m a woman who’s dyslexic, can’t tell my left from my right. I can’t fill out a form on my own, and when I go into a bank, I have to ask someone to help me. But I use my sense of smell like my eyes and hands. It's something that happens naturally to me, so I would look at what you're wearing, and who you are, and I would be translating it back into smell’.

 So Jo took her “million dollar nose” and made a fortune creating a multi-million dollar fragrance empire. Creative, resourceful, resilient, dyslexic.

Similarly Agatha Christie (yes, the best-selling novelist of all time, surpassed only by Shakespeare and the Bible was dyslexic) developed her imagination due to the isolation she felt living with her disability. She was described as the “slow” one by her family, but it was this rich imagination that set her apart and ultimately sealed her place in literary history. 

Jo Malone

Kate Griggs, from Made by Dyslexia, firmly believes the onset of the merging of robotics and virtual reality, dubbed the Fourth Industrial Revolution, will call for precisely the type of intelligence dyslexic people have in abundance: creativity, imagining, exploring, connecting and reasoning.

The British intelligence service now recognises their ability to analyse complex information in a "dispassionate, logical and analytical” way.  That’s why GCHQ recruits a higher than average number of dyslexic employees to decipher facts from patterns to combat terrorism.

There is talk of lessons in entrepreneurship for dyslexic school children in the US. “They’re hard wired for it”, says the wonderfully named dyslexic business woman Tiffany Sunday.

So far from being a “disability”, being dyslexic is actually a gift. Dyslexics have the skills for the future and the cards, it seems, are stacked in their favour. Or are they?

The success that Jo, Cath and Anita achieved is all the more remarkable when you consider that when they were at school there was much less support for dyslexia (if it was even diagnosed in the first place!) and much more stigma. They were pigeon holed for their disability as well as their sex. But I guess that’s where the resilience comes back in! Challenging those stereotypes and succeeding against the odds in a predominantly male arena.

Surely today it’s different though? Well, education funding has been slashed and SEN departments are cutting down. So, if a child’s condition is picked up at all, teachers are faced with limited funds with which to support them.

Not surprisingly UK dyslexic charities are calling for a change in the education system.  Made by Dyslexia believes that rather than taking brilliant dyslexic minds and squashing them into an education system that doesn't fit, all children would benefit from being taught the skills of creativity, visualisation, problem solving and innovation.

Toddlers have these qualities in abundance but by the time they start secondary school much of it has gone by the wayside. Rote learning, excessive testing and league tables have removed much creativity from the curriculum. And the Government’s commitment to making GCSE exams tougher must be a concern to every parent of a dyslexic child.  Who then will lead the Fourth Industrial Revolution?

We’re going to need thinking outside the box more than ever in the 21^st Century.  The world is crying out for people to look at it in a new way.  We should be harnessing the potential of dyslexic abilities, tapping into their brilliant minds, not focusing on their disabilities and erecting barriers.

In Dyslexia Awareness Week (1^st to 7^th October) we’d do well to remember the words of another notable dyslexic, Albert Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world, stimulating progress, giving birth to evolution.”

This blog was written by Guest Blogger, Jasmine Comer. Find her Linked In here: www.linkedin.com/in/jasmine-comer-copywritingliverpool   

And be sure to follow Jasmine on Twitter! 

Management Consultant Pamela Ball Explores the Over 50's Journey From Redundancy to Entrepreneurship

Pamela Ball

Management Consultant and member of The Women's Organisation's Business Club Pamela Ball has started to blog her business journey, using her own experiences to shine a light on the ever increasing breed of over 50's opting for entrepreneurship following redundancy. 

Pam's blog series " The Reluctant Entrepreneur The Over 50 Professional Redundancy, Redefinition and Enterprise" will explore: 

1.       Who are we?                   The new breed of workers  
2.       How did we get here?  The changing face of employment
3.       What next?                        Entrepreneur or employee  

Pam told us "This is the beginning of a blog series exploring the silent majority of the new generation of  over 50 professionals. No longer sure of a job for life, coping with a new world where made redundant at the point when we normally would think retirement, or simply the loss of a role due to the expiration of a traditional business model. This is the generation facing unplanned redundancy, retirement creeping further and further away.....and the task of discovering what this new generation of workforce may look like. Join me as I share my journey and learning  : about  redundancy,  about  discovering who we now are at this stage of life, and about what the new breed  of  entrepreneur may look like."

In her first post of the series Pam confesses "I never planned on being in my late fifties, redundant , without a clear plan of what next as I faced the fact I wasn’t 5- 6 years from retirement ,but more likely at least 10 -15 years away.  I was faced with a complex web of re-defining , not just what my next career move would be , but how the period of time originally earmarked for retirement was now definitively changing."

At The Women's Organisation we have noticed a growing trend of over 50's contacting us for advice and guidance around self-employment, in the main due to circumstances very similar to Pam.  It is great when people share their experiences as we can learn from one another, and also realise that we are not alone.

Click here to read the full first article in Pam's series. We will update you are Pam's journey continues and look forward to reading her insights.

 

The Women's Organisation Host Enterprise Educators for Erasmus + ACE Project Focus Group

Last week, here at The Women’s Organisation HQ, 54 St James Street, we held a Focus Group to talk about Lifestyle Entrepreneurship as part of the ACE Erasmus + Project, what it means to us, and how we have gone about working with this type of Entrepreneur and how we can think of new and innovative ways in the future to do so.

So you might be thinking, what is a Lifestyle Entrepreneur? Here is what we found out from one of our Focus Group participants, Carole Buckman, Business Gateway Manager at Liverpool Hope University…

‘A lifestyle entrepreneur tends to be based on the person’s hobbies, passion and skills; they may just like to make things to sell and may not be too concerned or knowledgeable about the finer points of business.’

Our Focus Group was made up of 10 individual from across the enterprise sector in Merseyside and these will go towards helping focus the project’s aims and outcomes!

And as with Focus Groups, we all got our thinking hats on, used big pieces of flip-chart paper and scribbled all of our ideas down! Here’s a few photos from our Focus Group, and keep your ears and eyes peeled for more updates as our Erasmus Plus ACE Project progresses!

For more information about the ACE project, please visit our website.