Entrepreneurs and business leaders with ADHD are among the most creative and resourceful. Here, five top executives share how they transformed a deficit into an asset to their careers.
A student with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), three with learning disabilities, and one with both conditions seemed to be heading nowhere — fast. A teacher hurled an eraser at one of them, and asked, “Time passes, will you?” Another graduated at the bottom of his high school class and was strongly advised by his principal to go into carpet laying. The third was labeled lazy by her teachers because she had trouble memorizing basic math facts. The fourth was a whiz with numbers but found reading a book was a difficult task. The last was always falling behind in his schoolwork and concluded that he was stupid. “How am I going to be successful in anything if I can’t read and write? he wondered.
You might say that these nowhere kids turned their lives around. They are now all successful entrepreneurs with ADHD, in order, Alan Meckler, chairman and CEO of Jupitermedia (now MediaBistro); Paul Orfalea, founder of the copying empire, Kinko’s; Diane Swonk, a world-renowned economist; Charles Schwab, a pioneer in the discount brokerage business; and David Neeleman, founder and CEO of JetBlue Airways...FULL ARTICLE
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