Empowerment Issue January 2018 | Page 35

MADELEAD offense because your inbox is your defense and if you’re so busy trying to just answer emails instead of initiating something, then you’re never going to get to offense, so those are just a couple of the tricks I learned from creating this book and from my past. dyslexia, I find the same correla- tion with a lot of them. MADE: What were some similar- ities in the traits or habits you saw in the people you talked to in Rise And Grind? DJ: I share often with people about my dyslexia and the fact that 20 percent of the world has it and it’s just a different way to absorb information. It’s made me who I am. They say about 45 percent of entrepreneurs are dyslexic. I think out of the eleven Sharks, eight of us are dyslex- ic. Some of the ways it gave me what I think is a competi- tive advantage is when I would read something, I would read it several times because I knew I wasn’t absorbing the information the right way the first time. Also, when I would read something, I would always second guess if I absorbed the information so if I could try to do it, I would. I remem- ber reading a book on building things and I tried to build a bicycle and I didn’t go to a store and buy these specific parts and I went out and found junk parts and put it all together. In high school when we had the opportunity to work the co-op program. I didn’t want to have to worry so much about reading and social studies, so I got into a program where I would work one week, get credit for it and go to school the alternative week. If I were a good student, I would have been in school all week, I wouldn’t be working as a messenger and being around so many great entrepreneurs. So a lot of these things have made me who I am due to dyslexia. DJ: I studied so many people in this book and I was trying to find the similarities. In the book, I asked what they did the first 90 minutes of their day, their last 90 minutes of the day, what did they did when they were 20 and now that they’re maybe 40-45, and don’t do anymore. A lot of the traits that I find that people are setting very smalls goals for themselves they can celebrate in unison. Also, they work really early in the morning and concen- trate on their health more than anything else. They also set aside very specific times to be with their families. Earlier in their career they realize that if they never set aside a time and schedule it, they ac- tually would never get to it. They spend a lot of time thinking about offense and what to do to get ahead of everyone else and not be a “me too” person. They fail often and they make sure they’re logging their failures so they can see historically what paths they’ve gone down and didn’t work and what paths did work. Those are just a couple of things but I find that no matter if the subject was an athlete, singer or someone who was a businessperson or a mom working with her kids who have MADE: Speaking of dyslexia, you’re very open and transpar- ent about your experience with dyslexia. How has having it and overcoming it given you a com- petitive advantage? made-magazine.com | 35