Jim Rokos on dyslexia, design and why thinking differently is a competitive advantage

0:01The Entrepreneurs Hosts:In April, Monocle hosts The Entrepreneurs Live in Shanghai, a one-day conference bringing together founders, investors and innovators shaping businesses across China and the wider region. Join us there and visit monocle.com slash conference for more.

0:38The Entrepreneurs Hosts:Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. On today's programme, we're shining a light on out-of-the-box thinking. Some of the world's great artists and many brilliant business leaders are dyslexic, But society often misunderstands dyslexia, seeing the condition as a limitation rather than arguably a unique way of thinking and seeing the world. It becomes additionally unhelpful when certain figures, like one Donald Trump, suggest that people with dyslexia can't make good figureheads, as he recently claimed about California Governor Gavin Newsom.

1:20The Entrepreneurs Hosts:Today, then, on the show, we're exploring how thinking differently can fuel creativity and innovation, and why what some call a challenge can actually be a superpower. This is The Entrepreneurs, with me, Tom Edwards.

1:43The Entrepreneurs Hosts:You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Jim Rocos is an award-winning designer and artist who began his career as a model maker in the film and television industry before earning a Master's Degree in Industrial Design at Central St Martins. In 2012, Jim opened his South Kensington studio, producing sculptural, playful, handmade pieces like decanters, candle holders and flower vases. As the studio's range of products has grown, so has its recognition and its success. Alongside his creative work, Jim is passionate about changing perceptions of dyslexia. Ten years ago, he curated the exhibition Dyslexic Design, inspired by a radio call-in that highlighted the often negative portrayal of the condition and instead aiming to showcase the achievements of dyslexic designers and artists.

2:32The Entrepreneurs Hosts:Jim recently visited Midori House to talk about his practice. He began by telling me about his experiences navigating school as a dyslexic student. As a kid at school, it was really tough. I'm dyslexic, so school was obviously really difficult, and you're constantly being told everything you've done isn't up to scratch. At the age of 30, I went back and I did a master's in industrial design at St. Martin's. It was so good. It's like suddenly I kind of found what I wanted to do, something I was naturally good at. It was like a school for inventors. It was really fun. Now tell me, it's interesting, you mentioned your dyslexia, and I know you've curated some exhibitions, and actually it's a bit of a, not a mission, but you're really interested in changing perceptions about what that means and how prescriptive people are, which is such a depressing and tedious narrative.

3:24The Entrepreneurs Hosts:How do you go about changing people's perceptions? And I guess actually just by your practice, you're doing it right. But tell me about why it's so important to broaden that conversation and challenge some of these tired old stereotypes. Yeah, it was after Christmas, I'd just been to see my cousins in Yorkshire and I was driving back to London and I'd finished listening to all the music I could and I tuned into a UK national radio station and there was a phone-in about dyslexia. I was expecting really nice stories about it but everyone was phoning in with complaints about it and saying it had ruined their lives or their kids' lives and how difficult life was.

4:04The Entrepreneurs Hosts:And obviously all these things are true but for me I think I can do the work I can do because of my dyslexia not in spite of it. It can often come with useful traits like lateral thinking, visual thinking, problem solving all of which I use for my work so I was really upset by this phoning so I thought well what can I do to help other people understand that it can be good to have dyslexia so I wrote to a journalist and I said, look, here's some examples of some designers and artists who are dyslexic and they do very original work. And he explained, well, it's great, but it's not really newsworthy.

4:42The Entrepreneurs Hosts:Nothing's really happened here. So I'm like, right, I'm going to put on an exhibition and make something happen. It's the thing I'm most proud of in my life that I've worked on. I think more so than my own work, just because it really did change the perception of dyslexia. And a lot of people wrote and said how much it meant to them. Well, yeah, and it can be one of those things. That can be the spark for someone's creativity, which is an amazing, imagine a kid, maybe, as you said, who's wrestling with those contradictions that they get confounded with in education. And it can be the moment that changes everything.

5:15The Entrepreneurs Hosts:Tell me then about the development of your brand. How long did that take? And do you think that was always the sort of inevitable end game of that next step, if you like? I don't know if it was always inevitable, but it wasn't straight away. So after graduating, I did try and get a job. I applied to some studios, two of which were very promising, but in the end, they didn't take me. Yeah, one was Thomas Heatherwick, the architect, who obviously I'm a massive fan of. And I entered this design competition that was in the south of France, the design parade. Part of the prize was to go to Philip Stark.

5:53The Entrepreneurs Hosts:And well, he invited us to, they said it was a collaboration. And I got there and he said, well, do you want to work here? And I was a bit confused. And I said, well, I need to talk to my girlfriend at the time about this. And it wasn't really what he was expecting. So he didn't offer me a job, which, you know, it was a shame. It would have been wonderful. So, yeah, so I was job hunting and sending out the applications. And then I would enter competitions or do exhibitions. I did a very, very nice internship with Michael Anastasiades, which in retrospect was quite influential. I got an internship in India at a stainless steel company called Ardenox and they do like domestic things like jugs and plates and cups everything from stainless steel and the idea was to they said just design something that we can produce and I had to look around the factory and it was very interesting just to see how incredibly stretchy everything was made from a flat sheet of stainless steel and you know I see it as quite solid but it's very stretchy and they can stretch it into these amazing shapes and work it.

6:57The Entrepreneurs Hosts:And I wanted to show evidence of this stretchiness in the final object. So I designed this fruit bowl. The original sheet is circular and they punch it in stages into shape. And I wanted to put these holes in the sheet before it's punched into shape so that we could see how they distorted and stretched. And that would be the outer wall of a double-walled bowl so the inner wall could hold the contents. and I was really happy with it. It was a really nice piece. But they explained it's too much work in it to be commercial for the amount of money they can sell it for. I said, well, can I keep my design then?

7:33The Entrepreneurs Hosts:They're like, yeah, you can have it. I'm like, that's great. I went to the buyer at the Conran shop and I said, I've got this bowl and I'd developed it a bit by this point, a bit further than on the internship. And I said, you know, will you sell my bowl? He said, well, possibly, but you need a few more things. when we set up an account with a vendor i'm like okay i'm a vendor now you need a collection it's not just one object i'm like that's easy i'll just do a few more things i didn't realize just how difficult it is to set up a brand but in my ignorance i had a go well that's the other superpower we always hear on this program people say like naivety people say if i'd known i never ever ever would have started and what and really and that was the origin story Yes.

8:20The Entrepreneurs Hosts:So this bowl, the three holes that I had in the outer wall, originally they were symmetrical, but by making them different sizes and at different positions, you could then sit this bowl at different angles. And I thought, well, what else can I do? So it's a consistent line. What else can be at different angles? and this friend told me, well, a wine decanter is a very commercial object. So I'm like, right, I'm doing a wine decanter at three different angles and it made this nice story that as you drink, you can lean it over more and more and it's as though the decanter is getting drunk with us as we drink.

8:59The Entrepreneurs Hosts:But I made an error. I drew it on this architect on Band of Brothers. She very kindly gifted to me a drawing board, you know, the parallel motion. this is what I worked on and I got the volume wrong of this decanter and it didn't look that big on the drawing board and then when it came back from the glass blower it was massive and I thought oh it's a monster this is a terrible idea and I kind of for some reason left it and it wasn't till I did a trade show 100 % design that I was going to exhibit the bowl at my intern at the time Alma she told me look you can't just go on this show with one thing you've got to have something else what about your decanter I'm like no not the decanter it's terribly ugly she's like you know you have to I'm like okay so I did what my intern told me and put the decanter and everyone went crazy about this blinking decanter ignored the bowl that I was trying to launch and I thought well okay I better sort out the decanter then so I did a started doing some drawings on the computer you could tell the volume better and refined it made it smaller and then it yeah it became the most popular object actually is there a single or a singular product or one expression that is the embodiment of the values you have that commitment to creativity this idea of valuing the unexpected is there is there one i don't know is it a piece or is it a moment in the process where you can say this is what I have been striving for.

10:33The Entrepreneurs Hosts:They all hang together they all fulfill what they're supposed to be doing the playful and sculptural and surprising. For me the moment in the design is it's the sort of breakthrough moment when you solve this problem. It's kind of like a relay race one object leads to the other so the bowl led to the decanter and then I explained the decanter to someone at a trade show I said you know it leans over as we drink and they're like what it leans over on its own I'm like no no no you've got to pick it up and reposition it but I thought maybe I can do a container that as the liquid does reduce it does leave over autonomously and I was trying to work out the shape that would do this you know it's a difficult problem to make this shape and I don't know if it's going to be possible and I used to play with this wooden darning sock mushroom my mum had when I was a kid and so I'd play around with the balance and I was thinking yeah this shape you know if it was hollow and filled with water as and I'd sort of do these experiments in my head and it was quite silly really I was kind of lying in bed imagining the shape and like what if it had that much water and that much water and it was a year I was thinking about this and I should have just tested it out and I went down to the glass maker in London and they'd built this sample of it you know I didn't even take it home I'm like can I test it out if you it was going to be a flower vase because I already had a wine decanter you know they didn't have flowers there in the glass blowers and so I took a pencil put it in put the water in and filled it and it was stable and then tipped them out and it was less upright and empty it lent over completely so it worked you know this is a really happy moment that you've cracked this mechanical problem because you don't always know it's going to work that was jim rocos the founder of rocos and you can find out more by heading to rocos.com

12:41The Entrepreneurs Hosts:You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Joe Woodward is the co-founder of Vizzy, a new kind of work platform that overhauls the CV for a generation that's frankly outgrown the one-page resume. Bringing together the best parts of a portfolio, personality and proof of skills, Vizzy helps people showcase who they really are while helping businesses hire the cream of the crop. The idea was sparked during the pandemic after Joe lost his role working in Mumbai with the Rajasthan Royals cricket team and found himself back in the UK somewhat frustrated by the limits of his own CV. After a brainstorming flip chart session with his sister Jess and her husband Chris, the three eventual co-founders made a breakthrough.

13:25The Entrepreneurs Hosts:Today, Vizzy's being used by hundreds of thousands of people across more than 100 countries and adopted by brands like Burberry, Louis Vuitton and Disney to discover talent in a completely new way. Joe popped by Midori House to discuss the challenges of hiring in the age of AI, building with family, and why the future of recruitment might be a lot more human. He also told us how and why his sister and co-founder's dyslexia was a singular advantage in the building of Vizi, and why the platform better serves all of its community as a result. I began by asking Joe whether not coming from an HR background was actually an advantage.

14:05Jim Rokos:We'd all obviously been candidates. I was at that time, if you like. We'd been on that side of the fence. And so I think that was lovely in so much as the origins of Vizy was very talent first and people first. We weren't, I suppose, hindered by the known practices of recruiters and talent acquisition teams. And fortunately now working with so many amazing talent acquisition teams, we've been able to learn from them and they've been able to help shape the products for what they need but definitely those origins of okay how can we just really help people express themselves and showcase what they can do in a new way but i think it was also very quickly recognizing that we knew teams and from our own experiences hiring teams the businesses wanted to identify skilled people diverse teams and culturally rich teams so we're also just really trying to prioritize that

14:52The Entrepreneurs Hosts:as well talk to me a little bit then about the mechanics of doing it because often these things As you said, it's just the way it's always been done. But I guess for a lot of recruiters, the system, as flawed as it was, was working to a degree. So what were the sort of mechanical things? If someone, say, using the Visi platform from the candidate side, at what point are they going to go, whoa, okay, this is different? And what are those key differences?

15:16Jim Rokos:Anyone can make a Visi profile. One of our users described it as it's like my CV had a baby with Pinterest, which is a lovely kind of picture to paint. And really what we wanted to try and harness is really kind of use all these lovely multimedia tools so that people could really tell a story. Initially, the layout of the profile was actually inspired by magazine layouts and Monocle was a wonderful reference. In there, we have the ability to showcase your work, your qualifications and skills like a CV, but really bring that to life and prove what you have done with video, web links and so on. We also have a psychometric assessment built into the profile.

15:52Jim Rokos:So with a quick assessment, you can actually discover your skills, your strengths, your working style, personality. And then we have a sort of collection of lovely prompts and questions, things like a trend to watch or work. I wish I had done a brand. I admire the greatest city in the world is things like that that create a really great framework within which people can add substance. But knowing that it is in the right context, that businesses can draw great insights out of it. so really it's about allowing people to showcase their work like never before and with real pride but also demonstrate their ideas their industry knowledge their opinions and and ambitions which again from the other side of the fence businesses can then really get a great picture of who this

16:36The Entrepreneurs Hosts:person is and it's interesting i probably did you a disservice when i said this wasn't your area because in a way it's about bringing some of that marketeers rigor thoughtfulness and the sell and i'm doing those air quotes doesn't really work for radio but that is interesting isn't it um now i You did mention at the top, obviously, your sister was a co-founder. I think another brother is in the mix as well. Don't they say, Joe, never work with, well, it's sort of, you know, family, children and animals. But there's so many family businesses actually on this show. But I do always ask those founders.

17:04The Entrepreneurs Hosts:I mean, it looks like it's working pretty well. Any trepidation? Have there been things where that's made it more difficult? Actually, does that funny kind of family shorthand make internal comms easier? Tell me a little bit about that.

17:15Jim Rokos:We're very close. We always have been. And like I say, with an idea like this, they would always be the first people I would go to to kick it around with. And, you know, I think it was just a very natural thing, to be totally honest. As we then kind of looked at it, I suppose, a bit more after the fact, because at first it was just this great excitement that we had this thing that we wanted to build together. And then as we then started to rethink, OK, what roles should each of us take in the business? We kind of more naturally realized, actually, our skill sets are really nicely aligned. And I think it's, as I'm sure any entrepreneur and anyone kind of leading any business, it's tough.

17:46Jim Rokos:it's hard and you go through some pretty tough moments and also some just wonderful moments so I can't really imagine doing it with anyone else and we also now have our kind of wider team we're 10 here in the UK and and sort of wider teams around the world they themselves as well I think have just come in and just thrown so much into Vizzy and such incredible kind of commitment alongside the four of us family members so it's created a really lovely dynamic I think and whatever happens we're so close we're all good I'll take your word for it they're not here maybe

18:13The Entrepreneurs Hosts:they might have tried and did this great i'm sure they wouldn't and now you mentioned your work with iconic brands before and listen there's some iconic brands who have adopted busy work with you your first client even burberry amazing story talk to me about those moments that's the validation i guess as well as obviously looking after the sort of the consumer side and the candidate side when you strike a relationship like that and get to work that must have been

18:36Jim Rokos:an incredible moment it really was and and we launched busy just with the profile our kind of beta version of the profile where anyone could make a Vizzy. Throw it on Instagram with a sort of the CV is dead, stand out from the crowd with Vizzy. And the response was awesome. It was amazing and actually quite emotional where people were sort of making their Vizzy, landing dream jobs, but saying that for the first time they feel like they've taken control of their narrative, that they feel seen for the first time. So that was huge for us. And it was that was great. But we kind of was like, how do we really build a business around this?

19:07Jim Rokos:And so, you know, the answer to that was businesses should be asking their candidates to submit Visi profiles and to see their talent in this more meaningful way. We had a friend at Burberry and she pulled together three or four members of their hiring team. And to be honest, the first pitch was a nightmare. It was it was it was a shock. I just didn't I didn't know what I was pitching at this point. It was it was very. But fortunately, Burberry put the pieces together, if you like, and Burberry saw the potential. And after a couple of more meetings, they agreed that everyone applying to their internship that year would be submitting Visi profiles.

19:40Jim Rokos:And so the belief that they showed in us was just awesome. There was a bit of a catch because we had been presenting features that weren't yet developed. We're very transparent about it, but it created a race to get them over the line. And I'll never forget those candidates, Visi profiles rolling in. And I think that was the moment we knew Visi was different, but now we knew it worked.

19:58The Entrepreneurs Hosts:Well, and it's funny, and there's obviously quite a lot of your, I guess, the stars on the client list that jump out to me, given Monocle's lens are also there's LV and Tiffany and so forth. Do you think it's because if the experience for the user on both sides is enhanced, that obviously is going to appeal to brands who are sitting in a premium sector, right? Totally.

20:16Jim Rokos:And I think these businesses and any progressive business, yes, you want to get to the skills and you want to see proof of these skills. but also you want great people that have a point of view and are curious and have ideas and are ambitious and I think the problem with CVs at the moment businesses are just overwhelmed by CVs and this kind of one-click apply and now 70 % of them are written by AI and things and so the insights are just too shallow and not proven so by kind of making it this more human more authentic process the candidates love it because they're given the freedom to really express themselves and the businesses are able to say look we're using Visi because we want to learn more about you and when they're given that opportunity they just really go for it and in doing so the businesses then get all these incredible insights to really really understand more about the person and their skill set earlier in the process and differentiate the great talent from the good because they obviously get lots of great people applying but it's about and particularly in their competitive landscape it's a real bun fight to get the best talent and that's what we're able to do right at the

21:22The Entrepreneurs Hosts:beginning of the process just it's interesting i guess the elephant in the room and it's funny because you know 2020 it's six years ago now over half decade you probably can hardly believe but if you think about the acceleration in ai's capacity potential just in that period obviously the pace of change not even year to year month to month week to week is so fast what does that mean for you because i guess on the good side it's a real enabler it's a great tool it can help to facilitate lots of these processes that are built into what Visi does. But you've flagged it there, right? There's this sort of tyranny of the AI in shittification of so many of these other processes.

21:54The Entrepreneurs Hosts:How and why are you and your team confident, Joe, that actually you can navigate through this? And if anything, you're only going to get stronger as AI becomes more potent.

22:02Jim Rokos:It's a great question. And in many respects, it's kind of the question for the industry at large as well. And I think you sum it up really nicely. AI can't make a Visi profile. It is far more authentic and real sort of expression of the person. And I think it's also where businesses are able to ask more searching questions and draw more interesting points out of the individual, the person. It's an interesting one at large because businesses also want to hire for those AI skills. They want to identify people that have these great and are going to be able to adapt to these technologies. but I think fundamentally this idea that you can have a CV written in one minute and it will automatically apply to a thousand jobs that's so problematic and it it can seem very convenient for talent but it's actually it's really not helping them because and it's not helping the businesses because they're just getting further overwhelmed with the semi-homogeneous kind of applications.

22:53Jim Rokos:Business is about people and I think that's more relevant now than ever so how do we really get to this person get these insights that yes the businesses can still understand organize screen fairly and efficiently but we got to really make it the effort to get to that and i think that's where visi does a great job in prioritizing the quality applications over the quantity well

23:15The Entrepreneurs Hosts:it's funny as you said obviously you got to checkbox the hard skills but the soft skills are just so critical people are coming to work and again now increasingly they are going to work in offices and settings and you want to have those soft skills and it's interesting to me that again that busy is also prioritized looking after people who maybe the traditional cv machine didn't look after whether that's because they couldn't see it well enough or they had dyslexia and they might be prone to making mistakes that might preclude them from a job that actually they'd be well suited for this is another sort of positive progressive part of the busy story tell us a bit about that

23:50Jim Rokos:It really is. And I think it's Jess, my sister, she's dyslexic, is our co-founder. And it's something which from that very outset, she saw as a huge opportunity for Vizzy. I think hiring is, you know, a lot of hiring practices is quite intimidating. And particularly if you're having to write big paragraphs and all this kind of stuff. And I think one of the best things about Visi is it allows people to play to their strengths, whether that's how they answer a question by video or by audio or the visual materials that they can bring in to support their answer. So from a technical standpoint, we have lovely software that can change the platform in an instance to suit different accessibility needs.

24:30Jim Rokos:and again the tone of the whole kind of hiring campaign when a business says we want to learn more about you and we have people just proactively on their visi talking about the challenges of being dyslexic or how they've adapted around learning that they have adhd and things like this and these are just amazing things of where businesses can just really understand the person more but really then when they come into the building play to their strengths to a whole different level as well and i think again just when you look at people through a very narrow cv lens you're just going to still be prioritizing the same kind of people when you widen that lens or kind of broaden the spectrum of how you see talent and potential people just stand out and shine who otherwise you were missing before and i think that's what our hiring teams then get really excited about when they know they've brought someone into the business that their competitors aren't seeing but who they know is going to be an absolute superstar you put that beautifully and i

25:21The Entrepreneurs Hosts:think that's a really impressive and important facet well done to you and the guys let's talk about you say look scale ambition obviously the sort of the b2b full service model went live only in 23 so it's still pretty pretty young but there's some amazing numbers not just your kind of users in 60 odd languages well over 100 markets just give us a couple of the stats again it must give you a bit of a buzz to reel them off but just give us a sense of where this has gone and maybe

25:47Jim Rokos:then hint at where it might go next yeah we i think we have users across maybe 130 countries now and that was pretty straight off the bat. So we knew that, as you said, we had to bring in... Can you name them all right now? Alphabetically or chronologically. And that's why we wanted to bring the languages in. And then equally, Burberry was an amazing platform to launch from. We now work with Tiffany & Co out of New York. VML, one of the great WPP agencies across... We did a campaign with them across 12 markets in Europe and the Middle East. Louis Vuitton, we work across Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea.