Backing Yourself & Breaking barriers: Dyslexia, Entrepreneurship & Self Belief with Founder Jamie Wace
Jamie Wace Interview
Jamie: [00:00:00] I think you just need to back yourself ultimately. Like you need to have that self love and self conviction. And there are ways that, like, it's easier said than done. Like, that was a journey that I had to go through, which took a long time and is still ongoing.
And I think that it's, it's hard to get that because I think a lot of people rely on external stimulus to get some of that, , kind of self belief and that kind of thing. And if you've had a few times, a few things that have happened that haven't panned out, it's easy to kind of like get in a bit of a doom spiral about it.
But ultimately, Nobody's going to back you, back you more than you back yourself.
Arthur: Jamie, welcome to the Collective Institute of Ideas. It's a bit of a mouthful, the podcast name, but hopefully a good one. It's such a privilege to have you on what, what we want to do is inspire people, , spark curiosity and cultivate ideas. Tell us a bit about yourself.
Jamie: Yeah, thank you for having me on, , a bit about myself. I'm Jamie. I am the CEO [00:01:00] and co founder of a company called Talamo. Talamo's mission is to democratize access to the identification of special educational needs, which is things like dyslexia, ADHD, autism. And we have created a dyslexia test that we currently sell to schools and to parents.
In terms of how We've kind of got here. , I'm dyslexic myself. I think school, particularly the, like early schooling was a bit of a challenge for me. I was bottom sets for everything. I hated school until I got my diagnosis of dyslexia, whether or not that's a retrospective emotion or not. But for me, I mean, whether or not the diagnosis, the impact of the diagnosis is a kind of positive retrospective emotion or not, regardless, it was a very pivotal moment for me that it was the, it was the point in which I took charge of my learning.
It was the point at which my. academic outcomes improved drastically. And, and so that, that was where my life [00:02:00] changed. And so that point, , was then sort of something that I lodged in my head and then went through a career in technology and policy. And then at some point realized actually, you know what, there's an interesting space in dyslexia testing.
Primarily because it's very expensive to get a formal assessment done. We wanted to create a company that made it a lot more accessible. Essentially so more people could discover what I discovered.
Arthur: So fascinating. So Jamie and I have known each other for a while. , it's truly inspiring, you know, the passion you have for this space.
It's such an interesting topic. I mean, because Jamie, what does the average dyslexia test cost someone in the UK, normally?
Jamie: So it's a bit of a range, depends on where you look in the country, but generally it's between 400 and 700 pounds. There's also quite normally quite a few months waitlist as well, and, and normally a local authority or a school wouldn't pay for this.
So it's most typically a parent would have to fork out the money for, for the assessment.
Arthur: I mean, [00:03:00] that is an astonishing amount of money. Just thinking about, the UK government is, desperate to, improve productivity in the UK and make things look, and make things be fantastic for people, but this is such a low hanging fruit, that you're, you're doing.
, how many schools is, your software in now?
Jamie: We have only launched schools in September, so we are relatively new and we've been doing the project for two and a half years, but we've most of that's been been testing out the product, but we're currently in 100 schools and that's from very little marketing.
So we're thinking that. This, year, we're really kind of focused on getting into more schools. Our target for this year is 500 schools.
Arthur: You must have moments in the day , where you're pinching yourself. I can't believe my vision's happening, the product works, what's it like?
Jamie: I think it's easy to become slightly jaded as an entrepreneur because the thing with technology is that it's never really done. So I you have to remind yourself to kind of celebrate the wins when they come in, because there's always something that you want [00:04:00] to be doing more of.
For instance, we're making new tests. We want to make our current tests even better. We want to make various different improvements. And so I guess. What I mean by that is it doesn't feel like we're at any kind of finish line. And so it's good that we're kind of at the place we are now, but I'm kind of very focused on, on what's coming next.
Arthur: Guys, , it's truly astonishing. And, and we'll dive into a bit of the challenges and like what you're most enjoying. What's been the most moving moment of really highlighting for you, what the impact. is that you're having on people. Perhaps there's been a parent or even someone who's used your screening, , and said something quite moving to you.
Jamie: I think one easy thing is that schools seem to be taking the results seriously. I mean, obviously that's what we expect, but, but they, they do seem to be taking it seriously. We've had four children be accepted into specialist schools as a result of taking the screening test. And so that's such a big change for for them in a positive way.
And so we know that that's [00:05:00] that's making a positive impact. We also had a school recently test the entire school. And so our mission is to make testing more accessible and the fact that they decided to test the entire school showed us that, like, that's exactly what we want to happen. Like, the worst thing for us is that kind of little Jimmy has got dyslexia, he's mastered it well at school, his parents maybe culturally don't know about dyslexia or they don't think it's important and so they don't get the support they need.
If you do this from a kind of universal school perspective, then Nobody would get left behind. Nobody would fall through the cracks because anybody who meets the profile would rise to the top. So those, those things were very, like, I think the fact that people wanted to screen everybody, that was, that was great for us.
And I think. Another, point that we thought was, was pretty cool is actually not related to the day to day running of the business was that we had a pro bono mentorship scheme where we matched, a lot of, about 10, diagnosed dyslexic children between the ages of 14 and 15, [00:06:00] and we matched them with, dyslexic entrepreneurs and we received some really good feedback for that.
And it was really positive. I'm a big, yeah. fan of mentorship. I think that it can be really impactful. And so, um, that was also like a nice, a nice moment.
Arthur: Got really moving stuff., I mean, there's a few, a few moving parts, uh, what you're doing, you've got, there's, there's clearly the need, economically, , it's an enormous market, , and really is scalable.
You've somehow managed to create a scalable version of this. Could this be a, , a solution that's translated into different languages that could be everywhere in the world?
Jamie: Conceptually, definitely English is first, but I think you could look at Spanish, you could look at Arabic.
, I think that we have a lot of penetration to go just in English speaking markets before we would get onto using other languages, but yeah, that's definitely. That's definitely one of the areas that we could focus on later. I think though that America would be our next logical market. , and [00:07:00] also we're looking at launching new tests.
So it's a question of, , do you go deep on dyslexia? And you kind of go like you're, you're trying to. Go into new markets, new languages, just on dyslexia, or do you go wide and look for a wider cognitive profile, more tests and things like that? And I think our hypothesis is that it's better to be going wider because ultimately dyslexia is just one, one slice of what a person's cognitive profile could be.
And so we would rather just unlock more parts of that profile because a teacher is not going to look at somebody and think. look at their class and think who is dyslexic, they're going to think who needs help, who needs extra support. That could be for dyslexia, but it could also be for ADHD, it could be for autism, it could be for a working memory problem, or somebody who struggles with spelling, or somebody who's got a visual problem.
We want to become a place where you can go for all types of special educational needs and not just [00:08:00] dyslexia. That would be more of our focus rather than going to different languages, certainly in the, medium term.
Arthur: That sounds like quite a technical challenge on getting the product right for that.
Jamie: Yeah, it's funny because Dyslexia is, I mean, the way that you test for Dyslexia is you're using a lot of cognitive assessments, multitude of different things, reading, spelling. memory, processing speed, phonological awareness, and then kind of some baseline tests. But when you're looking at something like ADHD, it completely changes because it's a lot more about attention, divided and sustained attention, a lot more executive functioning.
Autism, again, very different because so much of an autism diagnosis is about observation. , obviously if you're doing an automated screening test, you don't have , the benefit of having an observer. So there are different challenges to solve and it's not just a kind of linear, we've done dyslexia, so we need to do this.
It's almost like kind of starting from the beginning and thinking, okay, how should these things be tested for? But I think that the, the [00:09:00] goal is a good one because those other conditions also face other. problems in the sense that there are only so many educational psychologists or assessors in the country and in the world, meaning that there's just, there would just be no way that everybody could be assessed.
So there needs to be some universal screening that we can rely on. Maybe you'd feel that it wouldn't be as accurate as if you had a person, and perhaps that's still true at the moment, but it could cost. Over 10 times cheaper, probably more, maybe even 20 or 30 times cheaper. And that means that everybody can then access it.
And then what you said before about it being a scalable solution, that's absolutely right. But it needs to be in order for it to be rolled out more broadly. And it's really important for children and anybody to have a more, a more concrete understanding of what their cognitive profile might be. Because with greater understanding comes greater decision making that produces better outcomes.
Arthur: Um, [00:10:00] to you, what are the big, what are the big secret weapons that, dyslexic people often have?
Jamie: So, I think just as a kind of a point here that I want to make about the sex series that there's a lot of talk in the industry about things like kind of regarding superpowers and special strengths and things like that and I personally anecdotally do think a lot of this stuff is true. However, it's important to note that.
There isn't as much research that's been done on the positives of dyslexia in the sense that you can point to an XYZ article and say, here's, here's where it's come from. So we do need to rely more on anecdotal, self reported evidence. That doesn't mean it doesn't exist, but it's, it's just worth underscoring that.
But in terms of like, what dyslexia is, as per sort of the definitions, there's recently been a new definition. Primarily, it's It's a difficulty with your reading, spelling, decoding, a lot of the time you see processing speed difficulties, a lot of the time you see working memory difficulties, a lot of the time [00:11:00] you see phonological processing difficulties.
And so I think that when you're looking at it in school, it is primarily orthographic spelling, reading, decoding as what people point towards. So just a caveat, that's what the main kind of industry diagnostic criteria would say. However, for myself, I think that a lot of dyslexic people are very good lateral thinkers.
I think a lot of dyslexic people are very good visually. Um, I think that something that's interesting for a research topic would be, I would love to know more about the people who have a, good, like, very good visual skills and very good lateral thinking and communication skills and compare that with those who've got poor processing speed and phonological and reading and spelling issues.
I think that'll be a really interesting research piece because it could be that you're coping in some way for a lack of some of those more executive functions with some more kind of creative functions. [00:12:00]And one kind of example might be, and again this is completely theoretical and there's no evidence to suggest this, but say you had a working memory problem and as a result of having a working memory problem you have less information to draw upon in a particular circumstance in order to make a judgment on something.
And so I think it stands to reason that if you have a working memory challenge, you might build a coping mechanism of becoming, of building your intuition skills. So for instance, you don't have as much information as somebody else would, but you are better and more efficient at using that information to come to a conclusion or come to a decision or a judgment about something.
Maybe because you're kind of, it's almost like how a blind person has a more acute sense of hearing because of their disability. So that's, that's some of the things I could think could be the case, but as I say, not proven, theoretical, not scientific at the moment.
Arthur: Interesting. And there [00:13:00] are some huge, advocates or supporters of awareness in the space, like Rich Branson and many well known people who had dyslexia.
Tom Cruise, , is alleged to have dyslexia, Keira Knightley, Pablo, Pablo, , Picasso, Steven Spielberg, many entrepreneurs, seems to be quite a few architects, also , a lot of well known leaders. , do you think it helps you?
Jamie: I think it's difficult to say because I don't have perspective the other way.
So I don't know what it's like to not have it. I don't know if I would say it either helps me or hinders me in the sense, but I think that it, I have strengths and challenges just like everybody else, but perhaps because of a neurodivergence, they're more, again, they're more acute. So my dyslexia is mainly organization, spelling, and working memory.
And my working memory in particular is the thing that I think is the most easy to point to as something that's really annoying. Like, I'm always losing stuff, forgetting things. I've got a terrible sense of [00:14:00] direction, things like that. But I do think that my communication and natural thinking skills are good.
I think that what I feel like I'm good at is If I see something in one place, I'm good at kind of retrofitting that kind of almost taking a cast of a particular scenario and then putting it into another one. And I feel like I can do that quite quickly. Whether or not that is a kind of part of my dyslexia or not, it's difficult to say.
But I would, if it's like what helps me, I would say that if I had to take a bad networking memory, And in return I got good lateral thinking skills. That would be like a good exchange for me I'd be like i'd be happy with that
Arthur: super interesting and being on this entrepreneurial journey. What's it teaching you?
, about yourself and about life in general at the minute?
Jamie: That's a great question. I think that one thing that in my career, in my life in general, I used to be quite paralyzed by uncertainty. And I think that that's actually [00:15:00] a big anxiety inducer. Like, I don't know what's going to happen in the next month, two months, three months, especially when you've got financial uncertainty.
I don't know if this product is going to work. I don't know if it's going to be accurate. I don't know if people are going to pay for it. all of that kind of thing. And certainly in the last, in the, in the sort of first 18 months, a lot of that stuff was like, very front of mind. And I think repeated exposure to uncertainty makes you more resilient to the kind of concept of uncertainty.
And so we now have More investment. We now have the stakes are higher than they were in the beginning, but I feel a lot more relaxed about it, partly because we've kind of come a bit further on down the, down the, down the journey. We've got a little bit more of a validated product, but also just, I think, sort of philosophically, I'm a bit more open and a bit more comfortable with feeling uncomfortable.
I think that the thing with entrepreneurship is that. When you work for a company, you have a natural ceiling that is going to [00:16:00] basically prevent you from feeling the lowest lows, but also probably preventing you from feeling the highest of highs. Whereas it's a bit more raw, you're basically living your life with full agency in your private life as you are in your professional life.
And I think that. While that can be quite destabilizing and it can be quite all encompassing, i. e. your weekends, your evenings are focused on nothing else than just thinking about it, even if you're not actually working, you're just thinking about it. I also think that it would be hard to come out of that and go back into a regular job because I think the agency and the independence is quite intoxicating.
Arthur: Really interesting. We've got the blessings of the beginning of the new year. What does Jamie want more for this year? Is it, something perhaps you want to treat yourself a bit differently in some way or structure your week differently?
Jamie: Yeah, I mean, again, good question.
It's funny, I actually have had quite a few thoughts about this in the beginning of this year. I'm a big proponent of therapy. It's something [00:17:00] that I did like a couple of years ago. I thought it was really beneficial. However, I think the caveat to that and something I'm realizing more recently is that I think there's a bit of a culture in, in a sense to try and be easy on yourself and live comfortably in a way that feels very kind of sustainable.
And it's like, and a lot of the time, In those sessions, I think it's important to be like, give yourself a break, that kind of thing. Because , you shouldn't, you shouldn't be, and I think that there's a lot of value in that. But I think the place that I'm at now is that actually, I kind of want to be a bit harder on myself.
I want to kind of drive myself to being kind of imposing. I want to raise the bar and raise the standards. And I think that there's sometimes, like, from kind of some of that kind of therapeutic stuff in the past, there would be a kind of, , I think a sort of a message that says, Hey, you know, take it easy.
Don't worry so much about it. But I think that for me, that's what I want to do this year is actually raise the bar and actually make myself a bit more [00:18:00] uncomfortable and say, I want to set these goals, which are more ambitious, both kind of personally, both professionally, I mean, one example is that like my partner and I, we set.
goals at the beginning of each year and from last year, I made the goals kind of like achievable and I did hit most of them. The one goal that I didn't hit was any of my kind of like fitness targets and I was kind of, there's a, there's a part of me which is like, Hey, you know, you hit quite a few of them and that's okay.
But actually I'm like, no, I don't, I don't want to be in that situation next year. I want to be uncomfortable for this year. And so I feel like by the end of next year, I wasn't comfortable and I was really going for it. And I kind of want to see where that nets out at the end of it. I feel like I've kind of got to that point now where I feel comfortable enough that I can bring in a bit more of that chaos.
Arthur: Super interesting. I love that. You're, you're really clearly really inspired and, really in a, in a place where you can focus and, also give helpful advice to other people , who aren't in that position at the minute. If you, [00:19:00] met someone who , , not very confident in the minute, with not much direction, perhaps quite young.
What would be your, if you, you could think of four pointers for them, what, what would it be?
Jamie: Yeah, good question. That was certainly me, like, a few years back, and I actually can say now that I'm not in that position anymore, but I definitely, definitely was, um, feeling anxious about things, having a lot of imposter syndrome, self doubt, and I'm certainly not at the end of the journey by any means still, probably just at the end of the beginning.
But I do think kind of at least like mentally feeling a much more kind of grounded place. I think what I would say is that I think you just need to back yourself ultimately. Like you need to have that self love and self conviction. And there are ways that, like, it's easier said than done. Like, that was a journey that I had to go through, which took a long time and is still ongoing.
And I think that it's, it's hard to get that because I think a lot of people rely on [00:20:00] external stimulus to get some of that, , kind of self belief and that kind of thing. And if you've had a few times, a few things that have happened that haven't panned out, it's easy to kind of like get in a bit of a doom spiral about it.
But ultimately, Nobody's going to back you, back you more than you back yourself. And so the first kind of point is like really like addressing that kind of self esteem. If there is a self esteem issue, really addressing that head on. And so whether or not that's going to therapy, addressing some kind of like deeper issues, whether or not that's just kind of going through sort of, I mean, I think the sort of neural, like, neuro linguistic programming, where you're literally just repeating mantras about yourself, it sounds crazy, but it actually does work.
And I think, particularly as young men, I think that something that's quite fashionable is to kind of take shots at young men. And actually, I think that young men are going through quite a tough time at the moment. And I think that a lot of people feel quite kind of alienated about their position in society.
And I think people are, especially young men, I think in this day and age, I think sometimes if you're empathetic and [00:21:00] you're trying to do the right thing, you allow people to take your. Empowerment away from you like you allow people to take your power away from you. And so you need to take ownership of that and actually think, you know what?
I am a worthy person. I am enough. I'm going to like, I need to. And that's that's the basis that I think you need to start from. And then I think everything else comes off off the bat of that. I think if that's if you're not feeling like that, I think like begin feeling like that. And I think the ways to kind of do that is that when you have a win, like if you feel like you've got your bit down your luck and you've had, you've had a few snakes and you haven't had enough ladders, when you get a ladder, celebrate that, celebrate that win intensely and then do it again.
And keep on going until you feel like you're kind of getting back on your feet. I would then say as well is be disciplined. Discipline is a great, if you, if you don't feel like you have a direction. in, in life. I think discipline is a great proxy and the direction will be born out of the discipline, I believe.
And so I think it's like focusing on those kind of two [00:22:00] things, like self love, but also like become more disciplined. I think when I'm my most miserable and burnt out is when my discipline falls off the cliff. And so, and then the best way to get back on track is by getting up early, going to the gym, kind of getting out the house, all of that type of stuff.
And then I, this might be slightly controversial, but. I would say at some point when you feel like you've got enough kind of confidence and you've got enough self belief is then do you set yourself goals that are ambitious and just like just just put put kind of put that out there and then like kind of systematically every few months take a look at those goals see how far far off you are if they feel unachievable.
refine them back down again and just make them more achievable as you go through and then ultimately hold yourself to account. And, and then I would be very, if you managed to do all of those things, which are not easy to do, um, I think you would probably just naturally find some more direction in life after that.
But that's just my two [00:23:00] cents. That's what's worked for me. It's what is my, it's like still definitely an ongoing journey.
Arthur: So interesting, and I'm sure I speak to anyone listening to this. Just really grateful for you sharing that. It's very personal, , the kind of, insight into, into all things.
Overcoming, , you know, finding strength. And, , a lot of learnings there. , and clearly you're, you know, There's been so many ups and downs, for you to get to this point. One thing I think is quite interesting, which you've touched on, is just the concept of mentorship. , society at the minute, many people living in urban environments, but yet they're isolated.
We somehow are lacking these like support structures. Sometimes you get it, through sport or whatever. If you're lucky with, with getting on with colleagues at work or, , maybe you've got to support a family, but I think a really question, interesting question for us both is how can we, how, how can that be a scalable?
, system where people can access mentorship in a natural way. And, and, and, [00:24:00] and sometimes it's in a really subtle way. Just checking on people who might be having a tough time, seeing if they want to grab a coffee or whatever. , and, almost like a cultural kind of small, it's, it's a small things.
But also for you as a business, if you end up going into the mentorship area, I mean, what an exciting thing for you to, to, to, to build out.
Jamie: Yeah. I mean, I think for us, we're probably not looking to do it commercially. I think I'm a big proponent of mentorship, but like, I think lots of companies do make it work from a commercial proposition, but I think that I would just rather have it as being like an additional thing.
I think mentorship is very important. I think that it's very particular. I think you could kind of in, you could probably kiss a few frogs until you find the person that is right for you in the same way that it's like a therapist, like it's a deeply personal thing. And also, I don't think you necessarily know ahead of time what you're going to get out of it.
And I think when I've had [00:25:00] I've been, I've been a mentor and I've had times where the mentorship has worked out and I've had times where the mentorship hasn't worked out. Maybe, like, sometimes you can give the person, the young person most of the time, an insight that they really listen to and it's really right for the moment that they're in, in their life.
I mean, for one example is that when I was, this wasn't strictly speaking a mentorship, but when I was younger, I would, I felt like a little bit about what I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I had a friend who said you could do a master's at Oxford. For me as a dyslexic person who really struggled at school, I kind of got my way out of it.
In the end, it didn't feel like it was an achievable thing. And I didn't go to Oxford. But I did go to LSE and it definitely broadened my horizons when I just heard that tidbit of information. And so I think that there is definitely a couple of examples where I've been a mentor and I feel like I've been able to give that perspective to say, you could do this, or you could do X, like, why are you doing these administrative roles [00:26:00] when you're.
Neurodivergent and you're so good at communicating, have you ever considered this? But a lot of the time, your interpretation as a mentor might be incorrect, or they're not at that point in their life where they want to hear that, or it's just, it's just not hitting them, you're not, you're not hitting each other at the right, at the right time, or you might not be the right people for each other.
So I think it's nuanced, I think it's, it's not like a one size fits all. However I think that mentors like the point I think is so good about mentorship is that it's about perspective. It's a bit. It's a perspective shift from somebody else. And perhaps this person is 510 years ahead on their journey.
And they can just reflect back and it's almost like they're speaking to a younger version of themselves and be like You shouldn't make this mistake because i've done it and all of this kind of thing But that person needs to who's receiving the advice needs to be in a position where they're ready to listen But also respect this person enough to appreciate that coming from them feel comfortable enough, so [00:27:00] I think my probably my policy on it would be If you're a young person try and look for that mentor, but just don't expect The first person you speak to, to have kind of all the answers.
Arthur: I think that's so interesting. And, you know, I'm quietly thinking about, you know, what are like a potential scalable mentorship platform, the challenge, some of the challenges it could come across, but so often with these things, when you think of a problem and a solution, there are so many nuances to what makes a solution be a solution.
And as you say, you know, the fear at the time in your life, um, . So we're going to finish off, , shortly, but we're going to first do some quick fire questions. So, , let's see how we get on. One unusual thing that gives you pleasure.
Jamie: God, unusual thing that gives me pleasure.
I'm quite a boring type of person. I like, I was just looking around my flat and was looking at, uh, these proper Vaganda posters that I've got. On the wall, like kind of Chinese and Soviet propaganda posters, and I think that kind of an unusual thing that gives me pleasure is probably like [00:28:00] kind of little historical quirks and knickknacks, probably a bit of a sado that in that regard that I quite like that type of thing.
Arthur: The best answer. Mantra you wanna, you wanna
Jamie: leave with? Mantra I want to lead with. I like Jeff Bezos one, Step by Step, Relentlessly. I think that's quite a nice one.
Arthur: A favourite book, film, or artist?
Jamie: Book. Favourite book. I really liked the Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin biography. I just think Benjamin Franklin's such a cool guy and Walter Isaacson brings him to life in a kind of 21st century way.
So I thought that was pretty cool. I'll film anything by Stanley Kubrick, I think, Full Metal Jacket, Space Odyssey, I think Eyes Wide Shut. Yeah, absolute genius. Recommend him to anyone.
Arthur: What, what do you think you could [00:29:00] do more of that will give you inner peace?
Jamie: I think that fundamentally, as I get older, what I realize is that life is actually much more simple than we make it out.
And so I think that ultimately the things that I want to be doing is foster good relationships, keep a good routine, work on doing something that I really enjoy. Hopefully, most things are born out of that, and so I think that actually what's going to give me more peace is focusing more on the simple stuff, but doing them well, and having proper focus on all of those things rather than being like, I mean, yeah, I think decluttering life
Arthur: in general.
Well, Jamie, it's been such a privilege to have you on. You've been very generous with, with what you shared with the thought that you've gone in, in every answer. And it's clear that there's huge momentum in, in your business, but not only momentum, but demand for it. , I mean, the struggles that people, young people can, can face from not understanding that they're dyslexic, are huge, if anyone's listening and they can help get your product in, in more schools, um, [00:30:00] you know, interested.
To get involved , it's something that we, you know, needs to be scaled for people. Thank you so much for, for your time.
Jamie: Well, that's cool. Thank you. Thank you very much for, for having me. You've been a great host and I wish you success with
Arthur: the podcast.
