5.4 We don’t accept the status quo

The fourth reason why dyslexics make great entrepreneurs is we are passionate questioners who don't accept the status quo. The Dyslexic Thinking skill of Exploring. Dyslexics are curious and questioning, building businesses that are fuelled by our passion and curiosity. We love to find ways to disrupt and challenge the status quo. And when it comes to customer experience we are motivated to go the extra mile. Soho House is a perfect example of this. They transformed the traditional, stuffy, old-fashioned members club model by creating a global network of super cool, comfortable, creative clubs that everyone wanted to hang out in. With cool décor, amazing locations and facilities, and great service and a ‘no tie’ policy, they still have a waiting list for every club around the world. As Nick Jones, Founder and CEO of Soho House, explains.

Soho House, when I opened the first one, I didn't know if it would survive the first year so it was no grand plan to have them around the country or around the world. I strongly believe that you’ve got to get your four Ps in the right order. And I think dyslexia helps this. I think you've got to be passionate. That's the first P. You’ve got to have great people, that’s the second P. And you got to have a great product. And if you have those three then you get great profit. So you’ve got to concentrate not on the profit but on all the other things and then the profit will follow

Questioning existing business models to ask 'Why?' or 'Why not?' drives innovation. Virgin Atlantic were the first airline to offer passengers in-flight entertainment. The idea came from an observation that there's nothing worse than looking at the back of someone's chair for eight hours. So they thought why not fit a TV in the back of every seat on every Virgin Atlantic plane? It was an instant hit with customers. The status quo was disrupted and their competitors soon followed suit. Now every long haul flight has seatback entertainment.

This ability to challenge the status quo, do things differently and pursue them doggedly with passion is a valuable Dyslexic Thinking skillset linked to the Dyslexic Thinking skill of Exploring. Our passion motivates us and our teams to go further and deliver the best service or product for our customer. Let’s hear from Daniel Singer again as he explains how passion drives his business.

I like to see the space between all the noise. So there was this huge renaissance happening in cocktails, people were moving towards fresh ingredients, fresh juices behind the bar, everything was premiumising. But olives were in these big gallons, they were oily, they were salty, the brine would turn rancid before anybody went through them. There was really no love in the category. So I thought, what would it be like to go on a journey and explore? I’m super curious.

Another Dyslexic Thinking skill.

Yes, hundreds of varieties of olives. I could have stopped at 5 or 10 varieties. There are 700 varieties of olives on the planet. I spent two years looking at 230 varieties of olives. And then naturally cure everything. So while everyone's using chemicals to cure all the fruit, we naturally cure everything so it takes months instead of days. And I believe that people can feel that in what they taste. When a little olive might sit in the bottom of a drink, it contributes in some way to the feeling that that bar or that bartender's trying to create. So we should be part of that story. We should contribute in a positive way.

But it's very clear that your business is really built on passion. We often say that the dyslexics find one thing that they love to do and are brilliant at, and when they do, they're unstoppable. Is that is that how you would describe yourself?

I just put love into absolutely everything that I do. I want to be kind to people, that's part of being empathetic, it’s part of being a dyslexic thinker. You see what people need and you want to provide that for them.

Many dyslexics use their passion to become social entrepreneurs, righting wrongs and using their entrepreneurial skills to create positive change in the world. It's the reason social entrepreneur, Josh Turner, started his sock business, Stand4 Socks. Josh explains how his passion is helping him to create impact in the world.

With friends over a beer I came out with this quote of 'Imagine if socks could change the world'. And it was always an off the cuff, joke comment. And 5 or 6 beers later it became a lot better idea. But it was this idea that everyone buys socks and socks are typically dull, a poorly made afterthought, and if we could give every single pair of socks a social purpose or make better quality socks, is it a crazy idea to think socks could change the world? Let's take a product that most of us wear every single day add a touch of social impact and I would say the rest is history, but that's where Stand4 Socks started back in 2014. And we've evolved a little bit over the years, but yes, this idea that let's make the best pair of socks in the world and support good causes around the world.

And I think what's really fascinating about that is that you just didn't make a pair of socks to give away, you actually really thought about the homeless people and the vulnerable people who needed the socks. What did they actually need? Because you made them thicker, didn't you?

The homeless thing came around about a year and a half after launching. We'd been supporting all the United Nations’ Global Goals and having all these great social impacts around the world, but were ignoring a cause on our doorstep, literally. And it was one Christmas, we’d one design that basically completely flopped and I think I was just fed up with the business and fed up with this tough Christmas period that we’d had, and I was like, 'Let's just get rid of these socks and do some good'.

And we took them to a local homeless shelter and the reaction was just like the penny dropping. It was like the third or fourth shelter, I went and dropped 100 pairs of socks at each, and they were saying, 'Do you know that socks are the most requested items we get? No one ever donates socks. They’re a wear-through item. You wear them until you get holes in them and then you throw them away.' But if you’re homeless on the street walking more than the average person, probably up to ten miles a day, and you don't have the benefit of nice clean socks every day, that leads to a number of very serious foot health issues and trench foot, which most of us in our day to day take for granted.

And that's when the penny drops, and we were like, 'We need to donate socks.' These socks were made for consumer market and very fashionable and designer colours and bright stuff, but let's challenge what is possible for the needs of homeless people. We just kept pushing it. It was like, hardwearing colours, don’t want holes in the toes because they need to be worn more often, and you need to support the arch. And we basically started to look at how hiking socks are the best hardwearing socks, so let’s start with that and then go back to our factory and go, 'Right, we want to make this, but also for homeless people' and that's when naturally antibacterial material started to come into it.

Yes, I’ll still say today, they are the greatest socks ever made for homeless people in the world. Probably the most innovative sock we've ever created. It was just challenging that norm and thinking of the problem and trying to solve it to the best of our ability. And we still evolve it today with changing needs.

Using his passion to create change in the world and doing things differently is exactly what Tom Vernon, the Founder of football academy Right to Dream, is all about too.

Tom, Right to Dream is an incredible organisation. Can we start by you telling us a little bit more about it, explaining what it does and the real social purpose behind it, because it is truly inspiring.

We've come a long way from where we started, I’m sure we’ll get into it, but today Right to Dream is a fully residential, fully educational, 100% scholarship, football academic academy. And we have academies in Ghana, in Egypt, we're just building in San Diego now, and in Denmark as well, where we have a slightly hybrid model in Denmark.

We built a model for football and academic development that is quite different to how the normal football industry operates. And so we have a lot of core tenants that are different to how the rest of the industry works. So every child that comes into our academy gets a five year scholarship to be in the academy. We strategically admit, we like to say, kids who we believe can play in the Champions League one day, or kids who we believe can study in the Ivy League one day.

And so across Ghana, Ivory Coast, Egypt, now America, Mexico and Scandinavia, we scout for kids who have tremendous football ability and great academic ability. Boys and girls. And they come residentially into our academies. And then we build and structure the right pathway for every one of our kids.So the football industry is often criticised for the commoditisation of children, and once you're not good enough then you're out and the next one’s in. And we took a very different approach which was to treat every child as if they were our own and make decisions for the long term for every child.

One of the things that's transpired from that is that in elite football we are one of the most successful in the world now at producing world class players, both men and women, and have had over 100 professional footballers come through our academies. The last World Cup saw 7 or 8 of our players playing at the World Cup. And so, yes, it's been been a long journey where we've made some key decisions and choices to move away from standard industry norms in how football is operated, to create something that, as you kindly said, we think is quite special.

What an amazing difference Tom is making using his passion and Dyslexic Thinking. Here are three key takeaways from this section. One, dyslexic entrepreneurs get their three Ps in the right order. Passion. People. Product. Then profit will follow. Two, our curiosity makes us question the status quo and ask 'Why?' or 'Why not?'. And this drives innovation. And three, we love disrupting industries to deliver a better service or product for the customer or to right a wrong as a social entrepreneur.