January 10th 2026 marks 10 years of being an independent dyslexia business and I can’t quite believe it. If I’m honest, I have surprised myself in these last 10 years and I’m not really sure how I got here. This path has been and continues to be far from straight forward or easy. It for sure has not followed the easiest path or been polished to within a inch of its life. At times it has felt unprofessional.
What it has been and still is though, is REAL. A living breathing representation of the passion and determination I have for improving outcomes and making a difference for people with dyslexia. Not in a perfect, box-ticking, system-approved how people think it should be done way, but in a human way, that is honest and actually reflects how dyslexic minds work. (My husband will tell you!) I don’t always have a plan. I’m a bit chaotic. I am impulsively and messy at times. And for so long, I thought that was something I needed to fix.
But over the years, through my work, my parenting of dyslexics, and listening to thousands of other dyslexic people and families I’ve realised something important, that every dyslexic and non-dyslexic needs to hear. Messiness and chaos is not a flaw. It’s creative thinking and where the brilliance and truth lie. The quicker you accept that the quicker you will find it and the easier life with become.
My very first company was called Another Way Round, and that name and the approach still means everything to me. That is how I have always navigated life and work. I look for the workaround, the way that is right for me, that gets me where I need to go, just often differently to the apparent logical path everyone else sees. Dyslexic people do this instinctively. For a while I lost my way with this, trying to comply and keep up with everyone else, worrying my way was less than and this led to burn out.
Recently I realised I was never supposed to work in a school or for someone. I am here to show others that when allowed to embrace their dyslexia and work with their brain rather than against it, dyslexics more than CAN! Over the past 10 years, my work has grown, but the core has stayed the same. Whether it’s been supporting families, working with schools, building online courses and programmes, mentoring or running conferences, the question I always come back to is:
What do people actually need right now? A phrase I have used a lot in recent training is this, we can’t change the system so we have to think differently and look at what we CAN do.
More recently I have moved into supporting more adults, unintentionally, but its where social media seems to take me, however with my background in education and teaching and parent of dyslexics, I feel strongly we have to get dyslexia out of a corridor and back into the classroom. That’s where we can make the difference for future generations of dyslexics. I know how much pressure schools and teachers are under. I know budgets are stretched or even non-existent at times. I know expectations keep rising and the breadth of need keeps growing. I also know that most educators don’t have the power to change the system. But we can’t ignore that dyslexia exists and needs identifying and supporting and we need to look at what we can change and how we work around it.
That belief has shaped everything I do especially the conferences I have planned which are becoming a big part of my work going forward. When we ran the Dyslexic Life conferences on the Isle of Wight, something special happened. As we sat around tables. In circles. We talked. We shared practice. We listened to each other. These conferences were based on collaboration and connection and making a difference together.
As I plan my first off island conference and it does all feel very overwhelming… I remind myself of how far I have come but also why and how I started this whole thing 10 years ago. I am finding ways to scale them that don’t use huge platforms, keeping costs as low as possible and that still have a human element.
Building relationships and human connection matters to me. If I’m going to do continue to do this work, and stay true to my mission and passion to help people with dyslexia, it has to feel right in my gut. I have to be able to sit in the room myself and know that this space reflects my values and the values of the dyslexic community I have created.
Ten years in, I’m more certain than ever that thinking differently isn’t a risk. It’s a necessity. It’s how we improve outcomes. It’s how we protect confidence. It’s how we help children and the adults around them go from surviving dyslexia to thriving with it.
As I head into the next chapter, I’m deeply grateful for so much. The families who’ve trusted me. For the schools who’ve been brave enough to try something different. For the professionals who’ve said, “I thought it was just me.” I am
continuing to assess and write books and support dyslexics, explore creating and building more online courses and 1 to 1 mentoring and take DLWJR the Think Differently conference on tour, beyond my little island, I’m holding steadfast the same belief I started with…
There is always another way round and this helped me find Dyslexic Life With Jo Rees…
To an outsider it might look messy, it might not make sense to everyone, but when we embrace the way we think we are true to ourselves and that is when we can achieve not just brilliant things, but extraordinary things.
Here’s to ten years of doing things differently… and to everything still to come. There is much more to be done…