My Competitive Weapon In Business | Yahoo Finance

Dyslexia, however, to me, is a competitive weapon. You have to take this like a superpower that's unconstrained and focus it. You have to use it as a tool. It's the out-of-the-box thinkers that make companies competitive—the crazy ones, the dyslexic ones.

Talk to us about how old you were when you learned that you were dyslexic and what was it like for you and your family when you got that diagnosis. Well, dyslexia gets misdiagnosed all the time, but the way it manifests itself with a young child is when they start to fall behind in reading and math testing. That's the first time it usually shows up in a concerning way because it's not a small delta; it's a large one.

I think I was about seven years old when it became a real concern to my mother, who was wondering why I was falling behind in school, and her teachers were saying, "Look, he's just not focused; he's not concentrating." But that wasn't really the only issue. Dyslexia was starting to manifest itself, and for most families, even today, that's where it starts. They can excel in other aspects of school, but in reading and math scores, there is definitely a big delta that starts.

So, you're about seven years old. How did you—did you go to a doctor, or how did you know that you had this condition? Well, obviously, the angst my parents felt was, you know, palpable. They were really concerned, and, you know, they were wondering what was the learning disability. I went through a battery of tests—I mean, just everything. But that's what parents do; they try and solve, and they go to different specialists, etc. But what could it be?

I was extremely fortunate—at that time, maybe serendipitous luck—but I was living in Montreal, Canada, and there was an experimental program at the University of McGill. With Marjorie Golick and Sam Rabinowicz, who have become legends in the work around dyslexia, their research is everywhere. But I was in that first cohort of students.

It was really tough because what they tried to teach is they said, "Look, we know what this is; this is dyslexia. That's what it is," and it manifests itself in each of these students. I think at the time there were 12 of us in the program, and it's different for all of them. For example, one of the things that happened to me—I’d be walking down the street and all of a sudden the universe would shift 90 degrees, and I was lost; I didn't know where I was.

Oh, you get, I mean, it was many years ago, Kevin, but you still get real emotional about it. You know, Henry Winkler, the actor, has talked about how it caused a lot of friction in his house. There were lots of fights because his parents thought he was being lazy, and they just didn't understand why he couldn't focus.

Yeah, that is a problem, but the solution to this is to have, you know, dyslexia is not like other learning disabilities; it's completely its own issue. And the reason you know that is there are very, very high-functioning people that are very dyslexic. You know, the founder of JetBlue is dyslexic, many others have dealt with it, and the whole point is that at the end of the day, it's the way it was taught to me.

The way I got over it was Samuel Binovitz used to say to me—the professor—that he’d sit me down, say, "Look, you're the only person in your class that can read a book upside down in the mirror. You have superpowers; no one else can do that." I can still do that. I can still do that today. You have to take this like a superpower that's unconstrained and focus it. You have to use it as a tool.

And I thought, "Wait a minute, I have a superpower; that's incredible! How can I use it?" And that's really what started working. All of a sudden, I blew through in reading, and I started scoring in the top quartile because I felt that, you know, if I had to read the book upside down in the mirror, I'd read the book upside down in the mirror, you know, because no one else could do it.

And I said to Sam, "Listen, am I going to have to read in a mirror for the rest of my life?" He said, "No, no, no. Your brain is! It's advancing; it's figuring things out." And of course, he was right; I'm a ferocious reader now. I mean, I read everything, but I can still do it upside down in a mirror. That's an added feat; it's not a bug; it's a feature. That's the way I started to think about dyslexia.

And I also excelled in math. I'm a balance sheet guy; I'm a financier, you know. That's what I do now because of Sam and Marjorie Golick. My message to parents that have dyslexic children is you've got to work with them to, at that age, to make them understand they're gifted; that's what they have. They have a power, and if they can understand that as a gift.

What is it about your personal experience that still makes you emotional after all this time? Well, it was very difficult for my mother; it really was. She was very worried about me. I can imagine being a mom myself. You know, you'll go to the nth degree and the ends of the earth for your kid.

Let me—I got to get some Kleenex, I just got to wipe my eyes—give me one second, give me one sec. The challenge is parents don't know the outcome. They don't know if, you know, what the future holds. They're not sure what's going to happen, and that puts a lot of pressure on, you know, relationships and families, particularly if one sibling has it and the other doesn't.

Because then you have a situation where one's excelling right away, and the other is falling behind. It just puts a horrible pressure on any family, but again, I say to people that this is a unique learning disability. It's one of the only learning disabilities that can give incredible functionality as the outcome of solving it.

Now, I want to talk a little bit about dyslexia in the workplace. I think there are lots of misconceptions that employers have about dyslexic people, and I'm just wondering in your personal experience when you were starting out, did you let potential employers know about your dyslexia? How did you deal with it?

No, that is not a requirement, and I don't think you lead with that because what they want are functional employees. My attitude about people that have dyslexia is they are super functional in many areas; they are very, very functional, and so they should be measured by that.

I don't like the idea that you should put that on your resume or even discuss it if you've dealt with it and you can read, and your math scores are above average again, or even average. Life is not just about math and reading; it's actually cognitive skills that matter in the workplace.

Kevin, what, if anything, do you think companies should be doing—maybe your own companies do—to support people with dyslexia or other neurodiverse conditions like ADHD like autism? I think as a society we deserve to support people, you know, that are unfortunate with those disabilities.

And there's always, in a large corporation, even a small, in a place, for people that, you know, there's a job that can be created that makes them feel important and gives them self-confidence. Dyslexia, however, to me, is a competitive weapon. I would hire lots of dyslexics because I know they can excel in certain things in a remarkable way above the average.

And so I would argue to employers that, you know, this is not a concern; this is an opportunity. And I feel that way about many learning disabilities. People that have learning disabilities are often very, very motivated to perform for their own self-confidence reasons and to prove their worth.

And not every employee does that. There are lots of lazy people out there, and you will not find that in people that have learning disabilities. They want to be functioning human beings and provide, um, productivity, and they've—they're myopically focused on it because that's what gives them their own identity.

And that's the thing that many employers have figured out. I mean, we're enlightened now; we weren't in the 60s and the 70s. You know, we pushed those people out of the workplace because we thought it would be a competitive disadvantage. That's not the case today.

Where you often see companies really support this is in technology because it's the out-of-the-box thinkers that make companies competitive—the crazy ones, the dyslexic ones. You know, Kevin, it is—it's clear that you've gained an awful lot from what you call your superpower. But as you reflect back, is there anything you feel you lost with your diagnosis?

I didn't get to go to soccer games because I was constantly in the clinic. As soon as school was over, I would go there for hours because the program was experimental. It was on the campus of McGill. I didn't have a normal upbringing from that point of view, and I missed out on, you know, various extracurricular activities until I was able to get to the place where I could, you know, maintain my scoring in math and reading.

You got to remember something. You know, one of the reasons I went into educational software—my first liquidity event was the sales of a learning company. I was fascinated by what I went through, and I, you know, I kind of dedicated that career to math and reading scores because we became the largest company on earth that tested math and reading scores.

We started these tests in software when the price of the computer dropped below a thousand dollars with products like Rita Rabbit, Carmen Sandiego, and, you know, Math Rabbit and all of those titles. Oregon Trail, you know, that was me working on trying to solve this for parents so they could do remedial work at home just like I did in the clinic.

Those software titles really focused on what matters in the school system that we've developed. You have to advance through the grade schools with math and reading scores; there is no other way to do it. You can't game the system.

When you think about the resources people give to other health issues, conditions, it seems like mental health and conditions like dyslexia sort of go by the wayside. Dyslexia is not one that gets financed a lot by giving, and for me, I'd like to see that change because it's one of those disabilities that, if well financed, and, you know, if we can provide therapy for it, the outcomes can be remarkable.

It's one of those disabilities you can actually fix and excel with, and I think that's a very, very good investment. And I would add also that, you know, um, one of the reasons I'm an investor in a company like MindMed, you know, that is experimenting with psychedelic drugs is from my experience when I was young—not necessarily for dyslexia—but for all of the issues that plague people.

40 percent of Americans are affected in one way or another by mental illness, and so, you know, dyslexia is part of that continuum. But we need to open our vision in terms of how we treat this. And obviously, there's some really interesting anecdotal data about anxiety, opioid addiction, and other afflictions in mental health that can be resolved using things like microdosing LSD and psilocybin that were viewed as scheduled narcotics and bad things.

In the 60s, we were looking at them as medicine; they're back in the fray in clinical trials now with the FDA. So I'm encouraged to see that we're expanding the tool chest of maybe ways to help people with mental illness. It's not specific to dyslexia, but that whole continuum is so important to America.

And I'd say when you start thinking, lastly, about giving towards mental illness think of dyslexia, because a dollar invested there can have a remarkable return down the road. I think all of us with this dyslexia have proven that. If you liked that video, where did you see my next one? Don't forget to click right over here and subscribe.