About

About me

Hi, I’m Joshua. I’m dyslexic, properly dyslexic, and I’ve been my own boss for the last 20 years.

I’ve been self-employed the whole time, running several small businesses at once. To me, that’s a bigger achievement than any grade I could have got in school.

Every line in this shop comes from my own life. Here’s the story.

Life as a very dyslexic human

1. Age 6

   Diagnosis: purple sunglasses

   I was homeschooled by my mum until I was about 10. At 6 I was diagnosed as dyslexic, mostly on the reading side: the letters would sort of jump around the page.

   So I went to see a specialist, who decided the right remedy was a pair of purple sunglasses to stop the words jumping. Where he got that idea, or the data behind it, is still beyond me. Anyway, life went on, and whenever I studied, I wore purple sunglasses.

2. Age 8 to 10

   Learning to read, the hard way

   I struggled to read until I was 8. My mum, who was homeschooling me, drilled it into me until it stuck. By the time I was 9 or 10, I had the reading age of a 13-year-old. That was one of my first lessons in persistence.

3. Age 10 to 16

   School, with the “special kids”

   At 10 I was sent to school, where I was probably singled out for wearing purple sunglasses in class. I was so dyslexic that none of my spelling mistakes counted in my homework. While the other kids got to go on break, I sat in a classroom with the other “special kids,” in my purple sunglasses, using a weird computer programme that was meant to teach us stuff.

   For my GCSEs (the national exams for 15-year-olds in England) I had a scribe sit next to me, and I just dictated my essays and answers. Even with all that on my side, I never got much better than a B, and honestly averaged low Cs. For most of my life that made me believe I was a bit of an idiot.

4. Age 11 · A pivotal moment

   The day I met Richard Branson

   When I was 11, my parents booked my sister and me on a flight to America to visit our grandparents. Then it turned out I wasn’t old enough to fly. It was one of the first flights Virgin ever flew, and Richard Branson happened to be on the plane.

   Richard moved us up to first class and had an air hostess sit with us for part of the flight, so we could jump through a few creative loopholes and get my sister and me to America.

5. Mid-teens

   Asked to leave

   I was eventually asked to leave that school, partly for failing grades and partly because I could never find it in me to stay out of trouble. I was already a bit of an entrepreneur, so selling things as a young teenager made sense to me.

   I moved to a different school for my A-levels, and thankfully by then I was old enough to stop wearing the purple sunglasses.

6. Age 20

   America, surf and one more try at school

   My grades weren’t good enough for a decent college, so I tried the entrepreneur life, which is rather hard as a young man. At 20 I moved myself and my dyslexia to America and gave school another shot. I got into UC Santa Cruz, which I accepted partly because of the surf.

   It went about as well as before. I was a British-educated kid in an American university, and most of what they taught I’d already learned in my GCSEs and A-levels. Boredom and business ideas crept in.

7. After that

   Dropping out and building my own stuff

   I found out that in my town I could make a good living as a gardener. So I dropped out, grew indoors and started my first real business. Later I started a company making trimming scissors (that’s them in the photo).

8. Later · A pivotal moment

   Mushrooms and Michael Pollan

   Years later, I had an experience with a particularly creative type of mushroom and tried to read a book: Michael Pollan’s How to Change Your Mind. The way the words were grouped on the page, I really started to understand why I’d always struggled with reading.

9. 20 years later

   The dyslexic advantage

   Twenty years on, I’m still self-employed and still running my own businesses. Only lately have I learned to appreciate what dyslexia has given me, especially the way I solve problems. A lot of that is thanks to a book a friend told me about, The Dyslexic Advantage.

   Now I see myself as far smarter than other people in many ways, and simply wired differently in others. That’s my dyslexic advantage.

A few more of me

Why I made this shop

A friend gave me an awesome T-shirt that said “I put the sexy in dyslexia.” I loved it. So I went looking to see what other dyslexia shirts were out there.

Honestly, most of them were lame. A lot were rude and vulgar, and nearly all of them made fun of dyslexic people instead of standing up for us. They clearly weren’t written by anyone who’s dyslexic, or who grew up thinking they were stupid, only to find out they’re actually really smart, just differently.

Proud to think differently

I wanted shirts that bring dyslexic people together and make us proud of the way our brains work. Not shirts that make us the punchline.

So I started writing my own. Every shirt and hoodie here is a line I came up with myself, from stuff that has actually happened to me. The joke is never on us. It’s a wink between people who get it. If you’ve been there, wear it loud.

Why “dislexic”?

Because that’s how a lot of us would spell it. The name is spelled wrong on purpose. Probably.