Kevin O'Leary on dyslexia, financial chops, why he isn't really mean – CNBC

This story is part of the Behind the Desk series, where CNBC Make It gets personal with successful business executives to find out everything from how they got to where they are to what makes them get out of bed in the morning to their daily routinesThere’s a lot you might not know about Kevin O’Leary.Maybe you didn’t know the star investor on ABC’s “Shark Tank” grew up dyslexic. Or, maybe you didn’t know he got his financial chops from his Lebanese mother, whom he says “kept a secret [bank] account from both of her husbands, her whole life.”You might think he’s mean, based largely on his television persona. O’Leary disputes that assertion. “People call me mean. I don’t think I’m mean,” O’Leary, 67, tells CNBC Make It.Instead, O’Leary says, he’s simply following advice he received as a teenager from his late mother Georgette: Never tell a lie, and you’ll never have to remember what you said. “In other words, I tell it the way I see it,” he says.O’Leary credits that honesty, even when it hurts, to his success — dating back to his first entrepreneurial endeavor, a company called Softkey Software that he launched from his Toronto basement…
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