Dyslexia is a disorder that affects the ability to read and interpret letter and words. Dyslexia does not affect intelligence. Dyslexia makes it difficult for children in schools everywhere, and hides their true abilities. Richard Branson was no different. Richard Branson had to recite lines of words in front of the other children at school. A common practice in English schools. For Branson this was terribly embarrassing. Imagine what it would have been like, seeing the words as one thing, they are actually something else, and getting your lines wrong in front of everyone. Repeatedly.

Reciting lines was not the only challenge at school Branson faced. He has stated that he could not understand his school work, not because he was not intelligent, but because he had problems reading it. He also faced IQ tests. He did not score well on these tests. The IQ test is supposedly a test that measures intelligence. However, because of the way an IQ test is formatted a person suffering from Dyslexia will have trouble scoring well on it. Many questions on an IQ test are discerning patterns, something a Dyslexic person has difficulty doing in a very short time.

Richard Branson left school at 15 years old. Because of his Dyslexia school could not hold his interest. Having brilliant ideas and seeing where there were needs in the market? He was much more suited to that. Despite his Dyslexia, he started a student news publication at 17. This publication was marketed to different schools, but the students would be the focus, not the schools themselves. Branson got the genius idea to sell advertising. Major companies bought advertising space in this student publication, and with some help from his mother the newspaper was launched.

Branson had a gift for seeing holes in the market and the ambition to fill them. He was a person who would never be held back by anything. Fighting through his challenges in school seemed to have given him the ability to either move an obstacle out of his way or simply go around it. He saw a need for records students could afford, and he started a small mail order delivery system. The response was even larger than he could have imagined. He got so many orders he needed a physical store to handle everything. The store was a tiny little shop called Virgin Records. The first months rent was not even paid before the store was opened. Branson was good enough at business to know traffic would bring customers.

Virgin did not just stop at records. It has spread out to new business ventures and ideas that even Branson did not anticipate. He simply saw a need in the market and worked to fill it. He listened to ideas from people. Branson never wanted to embarrass anyone, perhaps because he remembered what it was like to not be able to recite lines in school. Branson has become one of the most easy to talk to billionaires in the world. Branson is a kind, caring, and ambitious person. This is all because while dyslexia held him back in one area, he was able to find other areas where he could do well.

Branson never let his dyslexia keep him from reaching his dreams. If anything, his dyslexia gave him even more ambition than his peers. Dyslexia gave Branson the ability to work early on. It let him know what it was like to struggle at a young age. It also has taught him to be open and accepting of people. He is known to keep contact with all of his employees. They call him with their issues and concerns. Branson did not let his Dyslexia defeat him and he encourages others to use their problem to propel them forward. Each issue can have lessons and strengths inside of it. Branson is famous because he found the strengths inside of dyslexia.

“So I’m Billy Bob Thornton and I’m a dyslexic,” his interview begins. Thornton is talking to Harvey Hubbell V in a YouTube excerpt from the comedy documentary “Dislecksia: the movie.” “When I was growing up, they just thought I was slow. Teachers thought I was lazy.” Thornton adds, except for plays, “I never wanted to be anything that school taught me.… I was only in drama because there were girls in there.” Statistically, one in seven Americans has some degree of dyslexia. Like many dyslexics, Thornton discovered his diagnosis as an adult. Thornton’s family and teachers didn’t understand.

Thornton lives, and learns, both on and “off the page.” His acting debut came in grade school “in a little town in Arkansas” in the ’60s. His part consisted of one word. “Hark.” He said, “Harp.” Today, he learns lines by hearing dialog read to him, over and over. “Reading is painful,” Thornton admits. He developed his original concept of Swing Blade for live theater, with an opening monolog of “eight or nine minutes” worked out and memorized without ever writing a word. “Once I learn… I’ll never forget it.”

Billy Bob Thornton is no fan of five classic subjects taught in a strict and formal way. A frustrated algebra teacher confronted him, asking, “Well what if you want to be a building engineer?” Thornton replied, “Ma’am, I promise ya with all my heart and soul, I’m never gonna wanta be a building engineer.” He and his teachers were never on the same page. “It’s like you live on some different plane or something… You don’t even deal with things the way most people do.”

An Academy Award winner with his star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame, he is equally proud to have been selected in 2002 for what he calls the Lab School of Washington’s ‘Hall of Fame for the Learning Disabled.’ “I’m in that,” he says. “Seriously. Plaques on the wall, the whole deal.” Others honored that year were John Sandner of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, Olympic gold medalist Jim Shea, and Dr. Dan Carson, Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins. “So it wasn’t, you know, like me and a couple of serial killers.”

Before Billy Bob Thornton’s induction, the Lab School showed him around their internationally renowned campus. Thornton totally approved. “Kids in history class all dressed up, one like Shakespeare, one like Da Vinci. Not just some guy’s name on a page… Hey, there’s a novel idea—make school interesting…. Why not do this every minute?” He loves the idea of “free artistic schools” allowing students to learn “in a direction of interest.” Thornton is passionate about education for the challenged. “Anything you’ve got that prevents you from learning in the conventional sense” can turn out with a little creative learning not to be disability after all. “I can do all of those things,” says Billy Bob Thornton now.