Another Example about How Strategies Can Help You Become Successful: The Story of Marc Jordan

One of the best gifts that dyslexia gives people is that it gives people the ability to find new and unique strategies to get things done. This is how Marc Jordan has become successful as a songwriter. Although he is probably not a household name to most of us, you have probably caught yourself singing along to one of his songs at some time or another. Marc Jordan has written for some of the most incredible artists of our time including: Diana Ross, Bette Midler, Cher, Chicago and Rod Stewart but he had several challenges on his way to becoming the successful songwriter he is today. In an interview with The Toronto Star, Marc explained how he struggled with reading in school and was told by a councilor that he had the intelligence “of a spider monkey”. That feeling of being stupid stayed with him until he reached high school when he took a different set of tests that looked at conceptual learning and revealed that he was in fact smart. He also struggled with reading in terms of his piano playing-he struggled to read the musical notes but he developed strategies to memorize his teachers’ movements and he found he could recreate the music. With these strategies, Jordan was able to become an incredibly successful piano player and songwriter.

Question:

1.How can you use the strategies that you have developed to become successful?