Wedding Business Solutions

Paul Daniels Jr - Dyslexia is a Superpower!

• Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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Paul Daniels Jr - Dyslexia is a Superpower!

Have you ever thought about how differently wired minds can bring unique, valuable perspectives to your business? What if you could predict potential issues before they even arise, simply by seeing what others miss? In this episode, Paul Daniels joins me to uncover the hidden superpowers of dyslexia and neurodiversity, revealing how these traits can benefit your business in unexpected ways. Are you ready to rethink how you approach hiring and appreciating diverse thought processes?

Listen to this new 30-minute episode for insights on leveraging neurodiversity in the workplace and transforming so-called challenges into business assets.

About Paul: 

Paul is an international speaker, 3X board advisor, international bestselling author, and Founder of Peripheral Thinkers™. He helps leaders find and apply new perspectives to build innovative businesses that last. Paul’s influence spans over four decades, 31 industries, 27 countries, and $21

billion in new revenue.

Website: www.pauldanielsjr.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pauldanielsjr

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pauldanielsjr


If you have any questions about anything in this, or any of my podcasts, or have a suggestion for a topic or guest, please reach out directly to me at Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or visit my website Podcast.AlanBerg.com 

Please be sure to subscribe to this podcast and leave a review (thanks, it really does make a difference). If you want to get notifications of new episodes and upcoming workshops and webinars, you can sign up at www.ConnectWithAlanBerg.com  

View the full transcript on Alan’s site: https://alanberg.com/blog/



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I'm Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you'd like to suggest other topics for "The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast" please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com. Look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

Listen to this and all episodes on Apple Podcast, YouTube or your favorite app/site:

©2025 Wedding Business Solutions LLC & AlanBerg.com

Dyslexia is a superpower. Listen to this and see where I'm going. Hi, it's Alan Berg. Welcome back to another episode of the Wedding Business Solutions podcast. I am so happy to have a brand new friend on, Paul Daniels, to talk about something that we were talking about offline. And I said, we need to start recording this. Paul, welcome. How you doing?

I'm doing great. Thank you so much for the invitation. I'm loving the conversation. Can't wait to see where this goes next.

And it looks like we have twins here. We got twins going on. There you go. So. So, Paul, you were introduced to me by a mutual friend, Dano, and we just started talking about what you do, and you dropped this phrase about how dyslexia is a superpower. And I'm like, hang on a second. And we were talking about how so many of the entertainers that I know have adhd and that is their superpower. So first of all, tell everybody who you are and how we came to this conversation.

Yeah. Again, thanks for inviting me. Thanks for doing this, Paul Daniels. And you know, I didn't know I was dyslexic until I was 40. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 40. And up to that point I had been told that I was lazy, stupid, dumb, a daydreamer during school, even in college, post grad, all of that stuff, corporate world, it was, you're an outsider. You don't think like us, you don't act like us. And I'm saying, yeah, but the billions of dollars that I've made for you doesn't.

Doesn't count. Yeah, you're on the board. You know, we know you're an executive. Long story short, as I got a diagnosis, the diagnosis helped me with a language I started to understand. Oh, that's why I think the way I think fast forward and the research that's taken me the last two plus decades in has found that there are in between 12 and 19 super skills that have been clearly identified that dyslexics, neurodiverse people have that are in great demand, but there aren't enough of us to fill the need to fill the demand. And so that's how peripheral thinking, my business and, and the peripheral thinking skills model came to be.

So give everybody a definition. How would you define to someone what dyslexia is?

Well, dyslexia, as I've mentioned, is a learning difference. There are many different forms of dyslexia, most common that you might have heard of. We flip letters around or we'll miss a letter. My particular form of dyslexia, I will take a word from somewhere else on the page and move it up into a sentence. So my mind is seeing that. One of the reasons that happens medically is dyslexics have a broader peripheral vision. So we actually see more of the periphery and in clearer definition than neurotypical people. So we're seeing more, which is another one of the super skills.

We see things that other people miss. What we see what patterns and that's one of the things that dyslexics. The challenge is change is the oral communication of the letters, the sounds of the letters. So we see a letter, but maybe it doesn't. That P doesn't look like a P every time it might be flipped upside down. And so therefore it makes it difficult to make the P P sound.

Got it. So what are some of things where this super skill actually helps you?

Yeah, as I've mentioned, we see more than most people see. We see things that most miss. So I will see what's happening and I can predict what will happen just because I've seen different, different situations like this before. And I can combine multiple situations, the outcomes from those situations, and predict in the next 60 seconds, we're going to need a new tablecloth. That person is absolutely going to drop their knife because it is close to the edge. The, the DJ does not notice that the cord is not quite connected and there's going to be someone that trips over that sounds gone.

Right.

So we can predict some of those things at the same time. We can think in a head and say, let's take that thing down, make sure that everything's pushed into the middle of the table. We all know that the, the wedding never stops, starts on time. Therefore, what will we do in those eight minutes that typically takes? How will we keep the, the audience, the people there engaged and entertained and so on? So very forward thinking and also reactive, but not in a way that's just off the cuff. These are all proven things that we've seen and done and we know it will work and therefore we take action on it.

So what's misunderstood is again, people said you were dumb, you were slow, you were, you know, you were whatever. You're just seeing the world differently.

Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah.

But now you also said something, how NASA actively recruits neurodivergent people, but specifically dyslexic people.

Yeah, exactly right. So about 10 to 15% of the population is dyslexic. 20 to 30% is just 20 to 30% of entrepreneurs are dyslexic. Nearly 40% of self made millionaires are dyslexic. So there's something to this. And, and NASA, as I'd mentioned, actively recruits people with dyslexia. About 50% of NASA is dyslexic. So we're not talking about, you know, these kids that got stuck in the back of the room that are stupid.

Right. Air quotes, if you're listening.

Right. We, we're Right, sorry, yeah. If you're listening in airports, we're talking about some really intelligent people. In fact, some have called dyslexia the MIT disease. Massachusetts Institute of Technology. They've called the MIT disease because the number of students that go to MIT that have dyslexia. Wow. We're not idiots.

In fact, it's just the opposite. What it, what we are is we are not well positioned to fit in a very narrow structured curriculum and 1, 2, 3, 4, linear thinking. I can't do 1, 2, 3, 4 linear thinking because I've already got alphabets and other languages combined into that. I'm doing algebra four for language. Right. So.

Right.

It's. Once you get over the fact that, that it. People have this stigma about it and you tap into it. I wouldn't have this any other way. Life is awesome. I see so much stuff. It's, it's Technicolor, it's full blown, all on, all the time. And I, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Love it.

So it's, it's a limitation of our education system which has to feed everybody who's in the room. I have two sons. I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. They are very different people. My older son is the CFO of a company that powers the back end of crypto. Very left brain.

Yep. My, my younger son, graphic designer, professional woodworker, artist, photographer. Very different brain. And from a young age you could tell that they didn't see the world the same way. And to this point, and now I have a grandson. So my younger son, the, the very visual person, he's got a son who seems to be very much like him. He's seeing that. So what, what are some of these other super skills? So again, neurodivergent people, that's a very wide term. Define that for people who might not know what neurodivergent means.

So neurodivergent. Neurodiversity. Neurodivergent means that, you know the difference between divergent and diversity. Diversity is just Doing it a little differently.

Okay.

You comb your beard differently than I do. We're diverse in that way.

Okay.

Glasses are different than mine. Diverse. Divergent is. You and I both have the same. We both have glasses, but I put mine in my back pocket and I never wear them. Okay. That's divergent because it's being used completely differently.

Right. Okay.

So neurodivergent means that you're divert. You have diverged away from a. A normal path or a path that is commonly used.

Okay.

In order to achieve a different, better, more unusual outcome.

Okay.

So neurodivergence, you know, we can say you're on the spectrum from autism to. I'm trying to think of what Elon Musk has. I think it's Tourette's and Asperger's. Asperger's, all of those are sort of on the spectrum. Neurodivergent is just the way the brain. Neuro has diverged into working differently. The neuropathways in my brain are connected in more ways than most. So I'm using left brain, right brain all of the time, and I'm pulling content and context all of the time from every memory I've ever had.

I can go back to 4 years old and I can think of a memory there and a principle and apply it to the board meeting I'm going to this afternoon.

Wow. Wow. See, my, my wife and I, very different. She remembers childhood and things like that. I have very limited memory of childhood. And it was a good childhood. It was a happy home. It wasn't.

Yeah. And I just don't, I don't remember teachers. I. Like maybe one teacher or something like that. I remember a couple little things. You know, the more significant that I know that our brain tends to focus on negative things and things like that, but she'll talk about things she did as a little girl. I'm like, I got nothing here. But it's just, it's different.

It's not right or wrong because then I, I pull things out and she's like, how do you know that? And I was like, I did it in a crossword puzzle. That word came up. Or it came up on Jeopardy. Three years ago or something like that.

Right, right.

Yeah. It just. Yeah. So. So for the people that listening here, if you are yourself a different thinker, again, I think it's. To me, one of the reasons being self employed, if you have a brain that thinks differently, is you don't have to deal with other people judging you about the way you are. You don't have that boss, right. Who didn't understand you, who didn't understand the way you thought and things like that.

So when you said that so many self made millionaires and things like that, it kind of makes sense to me because I've been self employed for a long time and I've also been a boss and had bosses.

Right.

I remember the boss when I said so why do we do it this way? And he's like, just do it. And like that doesn't work.

It doesn't work.

I need to know how it works. I was the kid who took my toys apart because I wanted to know how they work. I didn't always put them back together, but I took the right, the curious brain. Right. It's just different. It's not wrong. So for the people that are listening, that are hiring people, what are some of the things you would look for to say? That this person who thinks differently than I do. Because we should be hiring people who think differently than we do.

Yes, yes, yes.

That this would be a good type of a thinker for a certain type of a skill. Again, a lot of people are creative in our industry, right? So they're.

Yes.

Photographers, they're DJs, they're entertainers, they're caterers, they're florists and all. Invitations, whatever. What are we looking for to hire these really superpower people?

Yeah, the. I'm not as familiar with your industry as, as I am with others. However, when we think of, of hiring and we talk about like dei, right. Diversity, equity, inclusion. Right. It's typically around ethnicity, around gender, around a number of things, but rarely is it around the way someone thinks. So as, as I consult with my corporate clients on their organization, I first start with the executive team. Typically they're not neurodiverse or neurodivergent, they're neurotypical.

And just teaching them one skill, interpreting skill is a very easy one, about four minute exercise and people get it. Once we start to dig into that, then they start to communicate with the organization a little bit differently and the hands start to come up like, oh hey, you know what? I'm starting to pick up what you're putting down. Do you happen to be divert. Neuro, excuse me, dyslexic. The CEOs like, no. Are you? Well, yes, I am, but I've never told anybody because I don't want to have that stigma. Oh, there's no stigma. I'm so glad you mentioned that.

Because we want, we want to draw from your knowledge and your skill set. So I'd like to, you know, offer up these different projects for you to participate in so that we can expand the diversity of thought within this group. So when you're looking at organization people that you want to hire, some of the things you might do is just ask the same question of all the candidates and see how creative or how unique they are in their response. And then, and then ask, how did you come up with that answer? Walk me through it. Now they may be uncomfortable because if you asked me how I came up with a couple of things, I'm only going to get about four steps into the 50 steps that my brain took in two seconds. And your eyes are going to roll in the back of your head, right? But if you're listening to this and you're serious about having these superpower super skilled people on your team, keep going, keep asking. Well, I remember to Kleenex box and then I had this magazine article I was reading and the funniest thing happened on the way to this interview today. And my sister, you know, when she was 10, it was just keep going, keep listening and at one point the light bulb will come on for you and you'll say, oh my gosh, how did you, how do you do that? Well, I can't help but do it.

That's just the way I think.

Right.

Okay. Now you have someone. The key is can you manage with that and understand that you may not know how they get to it. Just know that what they get to is going to be unique and proven, not pie in the sky, proven applicable to the, the challenge that's ahead of them. Did that answer the question?

It did. So there's a great book called why work sucks and it was, it was written by two people that worked for the corporate office of Best Buy and they were tasked with finding out why there was so much voluntary turnover in the corporate office. And they came up with something called R O W E A results only work environment. Right. And I had the fortune of being vice president of sales of the not largest winning website in the world. And it's easy with sales to measure someone because you ain't your sales or you didn't make your sales. It's harder in the other skills and the soft skills and things. Right.

But ultimately because I had the fortune of working with this 50, 60 person sales team plus customer service, whatever. And they all worked from home at the time. So we weren't sitting there looking over their shoulder. We would micromanage anybody anyway because I didn't want anybody to do that to me. But I didn't care what hours you put in. I cared what results you got. And I think if more people would look at it, that I don't own your time. I own your results because I hired you because I need you to provide results.

Now, that's not to say that you don't need. Of course, you need to be at that wedding from this time to this time, and you need to do that. But the prep that goes with that and the other things that go with that and how you get to that is. Is really what we. We need. It's what I teach in terms of sales is don't sell products and services. Nobody wants those. They want the results of you providing the products and services.

So I think if you're listening in terms of hiring, if somebody can get to the result you want or better, sometimes, or better, does it matter how they got there as long as it's replicable? Meaning they can do it again. They can do it again. They can do it again. Right. And I do this with. With my assistant, Anya. I don't know if you're listening to this, but I did this with her. I needed this project done.

We do a lot of secret shopping, Paul.

Oh, yeah.

And somebody paid us to do secret shopping of them, of some of their competitors. And I wanted to do a report card to show him how they did. I also shopped him, so he didn't know that. But you want a real benchmark, right? This is how you did, right? And I said, a report card. Now I picture a report card, and you and I might think of a report card similarly, right? Just because of the frost in our beards, as digital immigrants, we would think of a report card as a piece of paper, maybe with graph lines on it, you know, whatever. And instead of saying, anya, I need you to do that, I said, I need a report card to show the results of this. You want to take a stab at it? And she said, yeah. I said, good.

And she came back with an infographic.

Like, oh, yeah, right on. Right on.

My mind. Just doesn't think infographic and report card. But because I said, I need this result. And now anytime we need a report card, I say, make another one. Just make. Don't show me how you did it. I don't want to know. I just want the result of that.

Right.

100. And that's. That's where we as. As business leaders, whether you're a leader of one or many, it's important that we take in input from external Sources, including those. Okay, here's the secret. The industries that have nothing to do with your business.

Yeah.

Nothing to do with it. Okay, so wedding event planning. What does an automotive manufacturer have in common with your business? Probably nothing. Well, that's not true. But peripheral thing. He says it's got a lot in common.

Here's an example. So what does a. What does a bakery in Bulgaria have in common with a steel mill in Spain?

An oven.

Yeah. Okay, you found one. What does a movie theater in Malaysia have in common with a distribution center in Denver?

Right.

Okay. So.

Right.

Conventional wisdom is saying probably not much. Here's one. What does a flu in China have in common with unemployment around the world? Well, up until 2020, answer was still nothing.

Right.

Now we get it. Right? So there are connections everywhere. Your ability to make those connections turns your events into incredible experiences because you're taking proven processes and solutions, approaches, ideas, theories, whatever from other industries and simply modifying them to use in unique ways in your industry. That's where innovation comes. And you can do it again and again and again and again.

And people who think differently bring that to the table. So I love that you talked about dei, because we. We do think about it with those very limited lens. You know, am I showing different ethnic people in my photos? Is the language inclusive of everybody? Whatever. Right. But am I also allowing for that? Do I have people at the table who think differently? And am I allowing them that thought? I've told this story before. My son, when he graduated College, worked for JPMorgan Chase on Park Avenue. And just like every college student before him, they sat him in a chair, told him what to do, and he did it.

And he had to run this report that every quarter would go up to Jamie Dimon, the CEO. And it. And every quarter, it took three weeks. Three weeks to run the report. And how many kids sat in that chair and ran that report for years? Right, right. And my son, one day is like, why does it take three weeks? Right. So that's the first thought.

Yeah.

The second thought is, do I have another idea? So he did. He runs it. He goes to his boss and says, I think I have another way. She could have said, do it the way we told you. She didn't. She said, show me. He showed her. They ran it in parallel.

Gotta come up with the same results. And instead of three weeks, they do it his way. Now, in six hours, there you go. Right, right. Take it. But it takes a few things. One is, did you have the idea? Are you like, that's wrong. Something's not right with this.

The second is, do you want to solve the problem? Right. The third is, do you want to speak up? Right, Right. Are you in an environment where you can speak up? Right. And it goes to that. Like I said, I was in a job where they said, you know, don't ask me why we do it this way, just do it this way. And I said, I'm gonna find another job.

Yeah, right. So you said, I. I will. I will do it my way by leaving. Because I. I can't just. I can't blindly follow. So your son's example is perfect because he's.

He's doing it dutifully perfect.

Right.

But then says, what? Why do we do this? That curiosity isn't to make his life easier. It might have been initially, but it was. Why? You follow that train long enough, you get down to some cores, you go, oh, the y was from 1950, when we were running this on. On pieces of paper and booking, you know, these larger. Right now. What. Why aren't we using AI or whatever? Well, nobody ever asked. Okay, great.

So then let's dig into it. Having that kind of curiosity. When I hire people and have, you know, throughout my career, I say, you've got about six months of clean eyes before you get indoctrinated into the company. So I want you to ask why. On everything, you have my permission to say that you think what we're doing is crazy. Absolutely. Tell me why, keep asking why, and come up with other ways that you've done it in the past that we should maybe consider. And I love hiring people from outside the industry.

I don't want an industry expert because I need to stay innovative. I'm. I need my business to continue to innovate day after day after day. And to do that, I need fresh blood, fresh eyes, fresh insights with experiences that I don't have.

The only thing I do say, and I gave this advice to my assistant because she just graduated college, recently said, you have to do it their way first. Yeah. You can't. You can't say you have a better way if you haven't tried their way. And that's an important thing because you know, how do you know it's better? You don't know it's better. You just know it's different now. Different is not bad. Different is not good.

Different is different. If we come up with the same result in shorter time, like my son, great. If we come up with a better result because we did it in a different way. But walk in our shoes, a little bit, but. But I'm with you on that. I love. Ask me why, because if I can't explain why, that's a problem. There was an old story.

There's a soldier in a field guarding a bench right? On this army base. Have you heard this one?

No, no stories. So go on.

Soldier is standing there guarding the bench, and then he gets replaced. You know, he gets relieved by another soldier, whatever. So an officer comes by and he says, so. So, you know, why are you guarding the bench? He said, well, I was told to. By so and so. Okay, who was hired? So then they go to and say, well, why is he guarding the bench? He said, well, I was told to by, you know, I used to do that. And they go back, and they go back and they finally find this retired general. And they said, you know, you have this soldier guarding the bench.

He goes, oh, is the paint still wet?

Brilliant. Brilliant, right?

Like 50 years later, is the. Is the paint still wet? There you go. So when we don't question, you know.

Some of the best military leaders that I know that and was around military my whole life, some of the best leaders are the ones that allow their subordinates to. To pull them aside, say, sir, respectfully, may I speak?

Yeah, speak.

I see this and this. Now, I don't see everything you see, sir, but I see this. 

Right.

Is this a potential issue for us? Is there. Is this a different possible way for us to achieve our objective? They have that meeting in minds. If the answer is still, we're going to take the hill the way that I said, then they take it. But they give them the chance to articulate things that they see.

Right, Right. And I think it was Colin Powell who said, If I get 60 or 70% of the information, I can make a decision. I don't need 100% of the information. But you can't be everywhere. You can't see everything. I also did a podcast about how people don't necessarily play nice sometimes at the events because there's this thing called the timeline. Right. When do things happen?

Yes.

And who owns it? Right. So did the wedding planner make it? Did the DJ make it? And then people don't respect that. And instead of saying, okay, why are we off the timeline? Let me find out what happened. Well, the photographer was taking some more pictures because there were more family members than they realized. Or this happened over here. Okay, let's work together instead of. Let's. Let's go and fight on that.

So. Right. Speaking of being respectful, I want to Be respectful of your time. So tell us, how do people find out more about you? I'm going to put it in the show notes anyway. But how do people find out more about you? You said you have a book or books. I know you have a book coming out.

I have a. I have a book coming out. I was a contributing author to a bestseller, international bestseller, called Peak Performance. Mindset Tools for Entrepreneurs. You can find that. Amazon. Help yourself. Don't.

I have a title for my upcoming book, but I can't share it yet because the public said. Told publisher said you can't. So I, I'm following that rule. I asked why. The answer was a good one. I respect it.

But website. Yeah, your website. How about your website?

Exactly. Paul Daniels Jr.com pauldaniels Jr.com you can also find me on LinkedIn with the same thing. Paul Daniels Jr.com or you can Google Peripheral Thinking. Peripheral thinking. And I should be the top one or pretty close to the top because I made up the phrase and I own it. So I should, I should be there. But if not, then go to the other ones. Tell me about it and I'll, I'll find whoever's using my, my registered trademark and we'll have a different discussion.

Well, fantastic. I'm so glad. Thank you, Dano. I don't know if you're listening to this, but thank you, Dano, for introducing us. Thank you for talking to my audience about I. The discussion was too good to just leave it between you and I when we started on this.

Al is a. It's a pleasure. I so enjoyed this. I will now be a longtime listener now that we've had this conversation, because I see it's a lot more than, you know, just one industry. You talk about a lot of great things and you have some really good questions.

Thanks. All right, take care, everybody.

Cheers.

I’m Alan Berg. Thanks for listening. If you have any questions about this or if you’d like to suggest other topics for “The Wedding Business Solutions Podcast” please let me know. My email is Alan@WeddingBusinessSolutions.com or you can  text, use the short form on this page, or call +1.732.422.6362, international 001 732 422 6362. I look forward to seeing you on the next episode. Thanks.

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Alan Berg, CSP, Global Speaking Fellow

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