Dyslexia 2.0: The Gift of Innovation & Entrepreneurial Mind | Tiffany Sunday | TEDxTurtleCreekWomen

whoo are we having a great day today sun is shining good lunch awesome speakers and we're here at Turtle Creek women TEDx it's great to be here again my name is Tiffany Sunday and I am an entrepreneur and author I'm also dyslexic I say that without shame I say that without feeling bad because I have learned through the years that I am proud and I am honored to be dyslexic and to be in an amazing community with people like Einstein Thomas Edison Steve Jobs Steven Spielberg and many others but it wasn't always that way when I was a kid it was different but let me tell you a story I'm also the parent of a teenage son how many have teenagers at home are they wearing their earbuds all the time I told my son you were connected to the board he's got his earbuds in and so I'm very creative in the mornings I wake up I'm like yes all these ideas they're everywhere they're flowing if you've had four cups of coffee you really have ideas in the morning and my son's going not now not real I'm not now moment so a couple weeks ago we were sitting in the car at his school we were like it's sitting in traffic and I'm like waiting for the light he's over there trying to look cool as some of his peers walk across and I'm looking across at his school and I'm thinking hmm it's like an epiphany it's like a light bulb it's like the lights here it's like it's like it's in Li came so clear I turn to him while he's in his moment and I said you get this the best training the feet to fire the best thing did a dyslexic student the founding foundation for entrepreneurship is in that public school system right there's at school he looks at me goes we're not taking the entrepreneurship is not about that and I said let me tell you why I think that's the reason he's not now because when I was in fourth grade I could not spell not even a simple word cat cuz I phonetically hear no sounds still doing on here today so please do not ask me to spell the word captain so as I'm sitting there in class in third and fourth grade my brains gone hmm something's up here these kids are doing things we're not the kids are reading and spelling but you know what something's not right my brain goes houston we have a problem I know I didn't need a teacher to tell me something was profoundly different with my brain my brain knew and I said okay we're cool because dyslexic brains are wired like an entrepreneur they're wired for entrepreneurship they're wired like a startup and says okay fine we'll pivot let's start pivoting let's start adapting let's think outside the box I didn't even see the box the box I don't know where the box went because we weren't even in the box it said okay we're gonna figure this out so I started doing creative work around solutions to figure out how to read and then my brain goes you know that spelling thing while I was sitting in resource room they taught me knitting while the boys were learning phonetics because I couldn't do phonetics so you know what my brain did is it fine we'll memorize everything that way we'll have it all every word that I ever write down spell or type is memorized in a unique system that I came up with memorized so my brain is just grabbing everything and if we need it later we have it but no one told me that these workarounds me pivoting adjusting feet too far trying to figure out everyday how to climb Mount Everest would be absolutely invaluable priceless and investors would pay for that skill when I was an adult watching my startups I look back and go wow this is really cool we need to be telling students this we need to be sharing this information because I got that fell fast model down I should have written that Lean Startup book because I was failing so fast in school when I made a hundred I told the teacher did you create the test right but you get that just like you know your brain is wired for entrepreneurship and innovation you can just feel it in your body but since I was a kid I had big dreams really big dreams I wasn't gonna do a small dream let's do a big dream then I'd tell my parents I want to be a journalist I want to be an international journalist you know I can't do that you have dyslexia can't do that why not something else I want to be an entrepreneur I can do that I know my brains got this oh no I can't do that either well maybe do this no you can't do that it's like I heard so many can't dudes can't do scant dues so by the time I become an entrepreneur and feels it oh that's not gonna work I'm like yeah I've been hearing that a while so it just kind of fades away in fact I heard someone tell me this week you can't do that I'm like really I'm doing it now the problem is we're camped out over here and they cannot do before Eddie heard from speakers already earlier today talking about getting past the can't deuce put in their dyslexia Reena we're still over here on the weaknesses and they can't do trust me I know my weaknesses I know them well and as an adult I outsource them the benefit of being an adult so we need to move the momentum over to the can dues to the opportunities and there are three groups actually it's a husband-and-wife team and two individuals that have started this movement the first is the husband-and-wife team they're out on the west coast they're doctors they're very well known in this arena that are dyslexia there are medical doctors done some amazing work their names are doctor Eden hope I said that right phonetically and so they've been working with kids and students for a long time on dyslexia and helping them become better readers they're doing some amazing work well back in 2012 a little boy came up to him and said you know I can imagine the little boy come to me sick now doctor Eden's you tell me every day what I can't do did I see any prize little hands on his hips 'as you tell me what I can't do I think drives them he says can you tell me what I can do he knew in here that he could do something dyslexic snow from the moment we can call that we're wired differently and that's not bad it is the gift of innovation in entrepreneurship he was very persistent he says well are you and they did they created the dyslexic advantage and the dyslexic advantages showcases the brilliance of dyslexia the gift of dyslexia and they bring together the positive stories so they have started that momentum they have handed the baton off to us to move it over on the Kin deuce and so they now promote it they even wrote a book and it showcased all the cool entrepreneurial innovative things that dyslexics can do it wasn't about the weaknesses is about what we can do second person is dr. Julie Logan she's a professor at Cass School of Business in London and she said hmm coming from a family of entrepreneurs they're also dyslexic wonder if there's this correlation here and she started doing some research and she had a funny thing is there's only been one research report done on adult dyslexics but there are bazillions and you know you bit my stack this tall for kids and she was young go to an in-depth research on business owners so back in 2009 she surveyed business owners in the United States but she didn't differentiate the dyslexia yet and then in the UK but what she found was amazing from her research 35% of the business owners that responded said they were dyslexic that's the ones that said that they were but not only did she find when they said that they were dyslexic here's the cool part from those dyslexic business owners they accelerated their companies faster had multiple companies had faster nimble teams were very good at delegation had excellent excellent leadership skills were good on their feet person that comes to mind that best represents this would be Richard Branson you may have heard of him he has a couple of companies and it's amazing what she was finding in this research the other person who has taken the baton to move us over to the can dues is mr. Thomas G Wes like the Eaton's he has dedicated his entire life to showcasing the brilliance and the gifts of dyslexia and he too found that dyslexic entrepreneurs and inventors actually had a higher net worth accelerated their companies and were very very successful at entrepreneurship it's like we're hardwired for it it's like I started my first company when I was 12 our first business and now I have a teen son who's dyslexic and he already has a business it's like we're told to dislike that brain is wired for it and he to ask you know why are we so camped out over here on the weakness of this like you know we're over here he's is almost to the irritant of the education into other groups it's like oh we just want to be over here he says we should be over here talking about the brilliance what is great about dyslexia and he even wonders in his book he says you know why are we not teaching entrepreneurship to dyslexic kids it's common no brainer if you have a high correlation there why not show them what they can do instead of focusing on what they can't do makes sense to me so here's my challenge doesn't cost a lot of money doesn't require a government program don't need to pass anything through Congress it all requires maybe just an hour two of your time I also ask that the schools keep an open mind as well but entrepreneurs reach and speak to the dyslexic students and say you know the adversity that you're dealing with every day you know the fact that you're coming back from failure every day that you feel like a little ping-pong ball this has value yeah it's not a little bit of an enormous value because startups have to have resiliency or they won't make it you think a Steve Jobs in his garage if he said oak missing your work we're done we still have been stuck with those foot plans you think about that Thomas Edison didn't say he had a thousand failed starts can you imagine if he had stopped at 887 we would be speaking here with stick up bulbs and a flashlight he didn't give up can we need to show the students this is the possibilities these are the opportunities this is what you can do it doesn't take a lot it just takes the entrepreneurs that are in this room reaching out to the school in your neighborhood giving them a little bit of your time and going in and showing these students what is possible the second thing is create entrepreneurship grips within the big entrepreneurship umbrella here in Dallas it's like on every corner just like next to Starbucks there's an incubator there's an accelerator there's like something in Dallas you have the Entrepreneurship Center they're everywhere but when I went online and searched all over the world looking for a dyslexic entrepreneurship group program there was one dyslexics make up 10% of the population and now that group 35 percent of us are business owners and as a meetup group in the UK so my challenge is we should have a meetup group for dyslexic entrepreneurs in every city in every country because here's what I feel and know inside I get goosebumps or you can call it gooseflesh if you're from the Northeast I think are the possibilities because Einstein said at best we are limited by our imagination so I think about that student with dyslexia that will be the next inventor if he's given the opportunity to pursue his dreams his passion and his goal he could hold the answer to solve some major problems he could who knows what there could be I also think about the adult Dyslexic that maybe it invent or something that could solve or find a cure for one of the diseases I can't I think about all the possibilities is it son limitless it's dyslexia we are geared for this so my goal and my challenge is to be over here in the weaknesses that we take the baton from dr. Julie Logan from mr. West the dyslexic advantage and help promote and move the momentum over here to where we are focusing on the candies thank you

Channel: TEDx Talks

Views: 43,569

Rating: 4.884726 out of 5

Keywords: TEDxTalks, English, United States, Business, Entrepreneurship

Id: kAGyHpggMQY

Length: 14min 21sec (861 seconds)

Published: Fri Jun 12 2015