Why Dyslexia Might Just Be a SUPERPOWER | Kevin O'Leary

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Well, when I was growing up, I was born from immigrants: an Irish and Lebanese father, Lily's mother. By the time I hit seven, it was clear I had some really big problems in math and reading. Going back to the education, I had a really bad case of dyslexia, and so in those days, dyslexic, you know, outcomes were bad because you would really fall behind in school, and they didn't really understand how it worked.

Luckily, I was very fortunate. My mother was desperate; she was trying to find a solution for this because I was falling behind really quickly in those critical years in early school. She found this woman named Marjorie Garlic, who had an experimental program with Sam Rabinowitz and Marjorie Gulliver. Researchers, they're published all around the world now. But they basically thought they could take dyslexic children, maybe 12 or 18, after school and put them into an experimental program where they try and convince the kids that dyslexia is actually a superpower that other people don't have.

So that your confidence really advances. And that's what they ended up doing with me. They said, "Look, do you know anybody else in your class that can read a book upside down in a mirror?" No, you're the only guy that can do it! That's power. They wish they could do it; they can't. And so that started giving me the confidence because dyslexia doesn't really mean you can't learn; it just makes the incumbent tools in schools useless to you. I mean, nobody gives you a book upside down in a mirror; you have to learn how to deal with what dyslexia does.

And once I had that solved, it was a very interesting acceleration that occurred. You find in business today all kinds of founders of companies like the guy that founded JetBlue, a really bad case of dyslexia. I think it helps you think outside of the box. I've always thought business is half creativity that comes from the chaos of the arts and half the discipline of science. Business is binary; you either make money or lose it.

I think great CEOs and great entrepreneurs combine the chaos of art with the discipline of science, and I believe that to be the case. I look for that in the people I invest in now. I think that dyslexic, you know, chaos for me was a pivotal point, a catalyst that I could build my direction off.

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