Founder of furniture firm has dyslexia

From Fortune Small Business on CNN, a piece by Terri Bowersock. Her Arizona-based company, Terri’s Consign & Design Furnishings, is the largest U.S. resale furniture retailer, with 16 stores and $36 million in annual sales.

Bowersock says she is upfront about her dyslexia and runs her business on her own terms. She does presentations by drawing illustrations in crayon and pencil, and communicates with employees verbally rather than by email.

I also carry a tape recorder with me always. Writing notes takes me too long, so often I’ll just have people speak into the recorder, or I’ll speak into it myself so that I can check my “notes” later. Recorders are also built into my phone.

… People ask if I attribute my success to overcoming dyslexia. I tell them that I haven’t, and never will, overcome dyslexia. Yes, I run a national company, but I’m still using a Franklin Talking Dictionary to try to spell fifth-grade vocabulary words.

At least I’ve shown my grade school teachers that it’s not that I wasn’t trying hard enough.

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 5th, 2008 at 5:01 am and is filed under News_2_Use, business, dyslexia, first-person, personal stories, success stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Email This Post