Blake Baumann Life Coach-Spectrum Perspectives

Welcome to Spectrum Perspectives. Real Talk with parents, professionals, and autism advocates with your host, Cindy Gellermini.

Hi, everyone. This is Cindy with another episode of Spectrum Perspectives. And today we have Blake Bowman with us. Hi, Blake. Welcome to the show.

Hi, Cindy. How are you?

I'm very good. I'm happy to have you here. So you are a coach, and you work with people that are neurodivergent on the spectrum, and I want to get to that. But let's back up a little bit. Let's talk about you a little bit first before we talk about the work that you do. Give me a little bit of your backstory, if you can, and tell me how you got to the point of doing what you do now.

Absolutely. So I'm. I'm a probably more typical story these days, but I would probably say I was unique in the past is I found out, actually that I had autism, and at the time I was diagnosed, it was Asperger's. And the way I found out is my wife kept on saying, hey, our son, the eldest one, there's just something different, and we need to have him checked out. As far as he's just. His behaviors and mannerisms are a little bit different. Well, he was my mini me. And so for a long time, I said, no, there's nothing unique different about him. And finally we had a discussion. So I took him, and sure enough, he had Asperger's. And. And then that's when I found out as well. And it kind of, you know, you get these flood of thoughts of everything from your childhood that rushes forward that explains so much once you understand truly what Asperger's was at the time now called autism. And it explained my childhood very deeply. Cindy.

And how old was your son at the time?

He was 15. So he was actually pretty old in a sense. And, you know.

And how long ago was this? Because they stopped using that Asperger's terms. I'm just.

They did. They did. So this was 10 years ago. And I know at that time, they had just transitioned. Transition to using level one autism. And, you know, for my family, the way we handled it is we. We don't necessarily believe in labels, but we understand that there's a uniqueness to us and that we need to make sure that if there's any challenges or any areas that need to be managed, that we have tools and ways to help. At that time, I didn't understand what autism even was. So for a while, and I'm almost a little bit embarrassed to admit this, I actually Denied it. My wife wanted to do a 504 at the school. I said, no, you know, the world's not going to treat him different, we're not going to treat him different. And I was that dad. And, and because I looked at autism as probably what most people view level 3 autism to be like. And I just said, you know, high functioning, we're not going to do anything. And, and once I really dug in and started looking and better understanding know, I saw that he had needs that needed to be met and helped on and, and worked on. And you asked kind of why I got into this is I looked up the stats, Cindy, and they just, they scared me. You know, one of the stats was that they're going to be 46% more likely to be bullied in school and then nine times more likely to commit suicide, seven times more likely to be dependent on drugs. When you're looking at career stats, 85% of the current people with autism don't have full time work and 40% are they're going to make 40% less money than somebody who's neurotypical. And I just told myself, and I told my wife, I said, this isn't going to be our son. This isn't going to be our family at all. And so I started doing a lot of research into the autism elements. I started looking at other factors because soon after he got diagnosed, my youngest son got diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia. And then shortly after that my daughter got diagnosed with ADHD and autism. And then our fourth daughter, we never had her diagnosed, but she's probably on the spectrum as well. And, and so that shifted my, my entire career focus.

It went, yeah, there's no denying it anymore now.

No, there wasn't. And, and what was unique is I didn't know what I was doing at the time. But everything I put together for my son and my kids was what I did to help myself when I was in my 20s and we had a plan, it was very structured and we followed it and he was able to launch into life and become independent and be self sufficient. And other parents started seeing the difference and they said, hey, can you talk to our child because he's in the same boat as your son. And so I started working with them and they started having very similar results.

And so I just, these other parents.

So when my, my son got diagnosed, my wife started just sharing and all of a sudden we started having families all around us that said, hey, our son's on the spectrum too. I never knew it's almost.

They were in school with your son.

They were, they were, they were in school.

Did they know that their kids were on the spectrum?

They did, but they had IPS and some other things, had some classes together and, and so that's how we got to know them. And then several of them lived around us. And so once we had like a family neighborhood party and, and that got out, you know, and they started seeing the differences with my son, they started asking for help and so I started helping them and it just kind of took off and it was almost like a natural pathway into coaching. And so then I went down and did a lot of studying from a coaching perspective and just reading a ton of books, going to a lot of seminars, listening to a lot of podcasts, just doing what I think a person who really wants to understand and how to help. And the big thing I saw was once your kids get to a certain age, there's no more help. And there was a gap. And that's where I, I kind of try to fit in that gap now, but at that time I just said, you know, I got to help him now because if he's going to have any kind of failures or if he's gonna have any setbacks, I want to do it while I'm still in his life and can take kind of some control. And then that way when he gets out on his own, he's going to be more self sufficient. And then it kind of just had a natural flow to our other kids.

Right. So can I ask, what were you doing for a living before this? Like, like what, what were you doing for yourself that you said you were helping yourself in your 20s, that you applied to them?

So in my 20s, I was really struggling just to get pretty personal. Here is. I was in a bad relationship, I had no self confidence and she kind of picked me out. And so I was in a relationship where I was getting verbally, mentally and physically abused. And yeah, and I'm a big guy too. I'm like six three and so. But I had no confidence and I didn't understand how to communicate in a real way. It was kind of the first real person that showed interest into me. And so I got myself in a bad position and luckily she left the relationship, which was great because that was probably the best gift that I could have gotten is that. And, and that set me on a journey to really figure out. I felt kind of like I was a foreigner in a, in a foreign land trying to talk to. And I finally had, I guess it Just came on me that, hey, is it everybody else's job to learn how to speak to me or is it my job to learn how to speak to them? And so once I went on this journey, started reading books on ton of communication skills was the big thing, and learned how to communicate better, all of a sudden my life started changing and I started learning what I needed to learn to kind of free myself. And at that time I was a, I was a cashier at a golf course and my special interest was in golf. And so I loved golf at that time and ended up becoming a golf pro and then ultimately got into golf sales. And then ultimately once I got out of that, I got into technology and I figured out what my strengths and gifts were. And that was the kind of the eye opening experience too is I read a book and it was called soar with your strengths, manage your weaknesses. And one of the first things that walked you through is how to find out what your strengths are. And, and so I started asking people around me what they thought my strengths were. And I started doing the strengths inventory and learned that I have this pattern recognition and so I can look at people, I can look at processes, and I can figure out what's not working and what should be working. And so I started using that and I got into technology and all of a sudden I started getting promoted unbeknownst, not really wanting to, but work myself up to when my son, when we found out he was on the spectrum. I was an executive vice president of a small technology company.

Wow.

Pretty good. And the thing was, is, it was interesting is I was also the bridge. Our HR people had problems talking to our technology people. And so I would come in and.

I was, they're probably all on the spectrum.

That's, that's looking back. Yes.

Right.

And so it was funny because they would say these things and I would say, oh, this is what they mean, or no, this is how you need to talk to them. And I was kind of that communication bridge. And they said, hey, would you like to take over the technology team and this team over here? And I said, sure, if all I do is talk to them, let me do that.

Sure.

And. And I, I naturally had a passion for helping people and so coaching people through my career, my jobs, coaching people with golf, and then ultimately figuring out that the, the niche of young adults is where I really wanted to help. Because I see my kids, I mean they're 19 to 25 right now. So my youngest is 19, I have a 22 year old, a 23 year old and a 25 year old.

Right.

And whenever I see somebody else's kids, I see my kids in them. I kind of see myself in them. And a lot of times when, when parents come to me, they've lost a little bit of hope. And I don't want them to lose the hope because I truly believe inside each one, every one of our kids is this genius that's just waiting to be unleashed. And if we can help them unleash it, they can do extraordinary things and live an incredible life. And so that's kind of why I got into coaching.

Yeah. Yeah. I find that I've just had this conversation with somebody else recently. It's the kids that are the high level autism, the adhd. You know, my son, he was level three, he was severe. He went to a school for autistic kids. There's no way he would have been able to, to function in a public school. It's the other kids that are in public school that I see are the ones that are struggling, you know, because they're trying to fit into this neurotypical world. And it's. And the teachers are not trained in special ed and they just see these hyper kids that won't sit still and won't pay attention or whatever. And the teach, the teachers don't like them, they get frustrated, you know, you know, what do we do? Those kids. And I've always wondered if they should be in a different school. Like, and I said this long before I knew anything, people have different learning styles. Right. Like, I'm a very visual learner. I'm visual and hands on. Right. I'm not an auditory learner. And I always thought it, wouldn't it be great if we could divide schools up so that kids that have the different learning styles could be with other kids that learn the way they do and then the teacher can teach them in the way that they learn the best instead of trying to put everybody in this same mold. And then I wondered maybe would it be, wouldn't it be great if all the ADHD kids could be in a different school where they could learn in a different way? But, but I know everybody's really big on inclusion as well, so I don't know if that's the answer. I'm just, I'm so, I'm curious what, what you think about that.

Well, I will tell you, the first part of that I absolutely agree with is I'm a kinesthetic and I'm a person needs to touch things. I need to also see it But I need to be able to write things down. And if I'm in a classroom having to type on a computer or anything, elect, I'm not retaining that information. And so if classes could be divided by, you know, the different learning styles and you have a teacher that specializes in that learning style, I just think your kids will go so much further because you're helping them tap into their strengths and they're going to retain the information. As far as like different schools, I, I, you know, I, I can't tell you whether it would be better for ADHD to go to this school or autism to go to this school. I have just in my family, my son is a voracious reader. He could take a Harry Potter book and read it in a matter of like six or seven hours where most people take a couple of weeks to read a book. My daughter is incredible at math and she can do calculus, physics, pre Cal, whatever it comes, my son can't. And so completely different, even though they're autistic. So, you know, from that perspective, I.

Guess in my mind I'm sort of thinking about when you go to college, you go off and you pick a major and now you get to have classes that interest you, you know, and things that you and, and you follow what you're good at. And I guess I'm just thinking, why can't we do that by the time they get to high school age, you know, let them start finding out what their strengths are and moving them in that direction. You know, you're the ones that's great at math. Great. Put them in a bunch of math classes. I stink at math. Why are you making me take math?

You know, I'm here in the Texas, the central Texas area and that's actually what the high schools have started doing.

Okay.

So I was working with a 15 year old young man the other day and he said, hey Blake, they have me on this, this humanities track with history and English and I really want to be on the business track. And so we worked with how do you approach your counselor and how do you talk to the counselor and why you're trying to switch. And he was able to do that and he said he's excited about it because he'll actually start getting college credits for business classes when he goes off to college.

And yeah, perfect.

Your idea is out there. It just may not be everywhere yet.

Right. So tell me a little bit about now how you work with, how you work with people. You do you work with young adults or all ages kids.

So I, I Still work with all ages because I believe that everybody needs help. My youngest client is 12. My oldest client is 6, 70, I think he's 74, 75. And but really my, my sweet spot or where I get the most enjoyment is going to be the, the 18 to about 30 year olds, you know, those that are the young adults where they had the structure, had it in.

School and then school ends, school ends and then we're sitting home playing video games all day.

That's exactly right. They're playing video games. And parents are kind of lost a little bit on, you know, how do we get our kids from video games to working and things of that nature. And I think that is because for me that's the spot that can make the biggest impact for their future. And so that's why I target that age group is kind of my fulfillment and the joy that I love working is right there in that sweet spot.

So what do you do? So let's say, okay, I come to you and I say, look, my kid's 20 years old, he graduated two years ago. All he does is sit in the basement and play video games all day. Help me. Where do you start?

Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's actually. That sounds like my typical client. So I do things very uniquely than other coaches. And I think it's just because of my own personal experience with myself and my, my kiddos is I look at and I call it this, the framework. And so what the framework is for me is as you go in and you have to learn how they process information because each person processes information differently. And the first thing I look for is kind of this intrinsic motivation. So why do they like playing video games? What are the video games? What kind of needs are they meeting for that young person's life? Because that's going to give us some clues to how to get leverage and move them to other things that, you know, for us work or other responsibilities that they need to be able to master. So I look at that, then I look at their beliefs. What types of beliefs do they have about themselves? What type of beliefs do they have about them being independent? What types of belief do they have about working? And so we really look at that. Then I look at their rules. So most of my clients are very rules driven people. And so they have rules for success. They have rules how to interact with people. And I give a silly example. So as parents, we typically tell our kids when they're younger, hey, don't talk to strangers. It's pretty common, right? And so what happens is sometimes our kids who are neurodivergent, what happens is that becomes a fixed rule.

It's very literal.

Very literal. Right. And what happens if they never talk to anybody? They're not going to have any friends. And so there's rules that they have that they form to protect themselves, especially during school. And they've kept these rules. And a lot of times these are the rules that are holding them back from, from being able to move forward. The other thing I look at is I kind of look at, you know, the stories they tell themselves, but also their learning style. Cindy, that's, you know, you hit the nail on the head there. That's incredibly important. Look at, it's called a medic program. But just simply, how do they view life? You know, are they looking for similarities? Are they looking at differences first? And so once I have all of that information, then all of a sudden the number one thing that I see holding these kids back is confidence and self esteem.

So I was gonna say, yeah, that's when you said, how do they feel? What's their belief system about themselves? I can tell you, I already know it's probably very low. Yeah.

Yes, it typically is just because of their experiences or how they interpret their experiences. And that's a big thing because we have this filter that we filter our life through. And what I, what I do with my clients is I'll say, hey, some of them have, some of them haven't. Have you ever changed the, the laundry before? Washer, dryer and change lint filter. And this lint filter, if you don't change it, you know, it gets all messy and it could cause a fire. So you can get burnout. And that's how I kind of say you're, you're, you can get burnout. But the other thing is, if it's not clean, then what it really means is lint is like letting in negative thoughts is kind of an acronym I use. And so they're letting in all this negativity. Well, that becomes their experience. And then, you know, experience begets experience. And that's all they're going to be seeing in their life is just all these negative events. Well, when that happens, it's just a compounding problem. Why do the kids not want to come out of the room? Because they're safe in the room. Right? No negative things happen to them while they're in their room. Why do they jump on video games? Well, we have these needs that need to be met. And there's typically, I, I kind of focus on six of them. And the first need is the need for like, security. It's the need to feel safe, it's the need to feel secure, kind of to know what's going on in advance. The second need is the need for variety. So things changing, some surprises. The third need is the need of being significant, being important and being recognized. The fourth need is connection, so feeling like you belong. Fifth need is growth, so continuing to learn and expand. And the last needs contribution, so giving. And what happens is when anything meets like three or more of these needs, it becomes a habit or addictive. So if you get a person on video game, what do video games give our kids? Well, one, a lot of times they're playing online with people, Right? Right. So it gives them connection that they usually don't have in their personal life because they don't have in person friends. And number two is it could give them. In my case, I. A lot of clients are very good at video games. So it gives them significance, it gives them recognition. And then the third thing is it gives them certainty when they log on. They know what to anticipate. But video games are so, you know, there's so much in these games these days that the fourth thing it gives them is it gives them variety. Right. So now it's meeting four of these needs already. And, and if they're a game that they're having to improve, it meets a fifth need of growth. And if it's a team game where they can contribute, it meets all six needs. So you're going to have a hard time getting that young adult or teen off a video game if it's meeting those needs, unless you find something that can meet those needs as well, where you can kind of balance it out. And so a lot of times that's what I'm having to figure out in those situations is how can we take and tap and leverage these things to move them to direct it in a different way.

So give me an example. Like what's something that you could do to, to fill that need? But one thing that was coming to mind though is relationships, because I know that they have a need for friends. And I'll also hear that they, a girl wants a boyfriend, you know, so.

That'S, that's pretty common.

It's got to be really difficult. Yeah.

And, and so what I challenge them, especially on the relationship side, is what is that relationship bringing you? So, you know, whenever anybody's experiencing pain. So if you think about pain is, you know, if you, you're hurting and or you're lacking for something, there's really three choices. You have, you have choice number one, which is just to blame. You can blame your circumstances. A lot of my clients will blame their autism. They can blame others, they can blame themselves. And I talk to him, I said, is that something that will help you get a solution? No, it's not. It's going to make you more of a victim. And so that's. We gotta, we gotta get out of the blame game. So the second thing is you can change your life conditions so you can find a girlfriend or you can find a boyfriend, or you can change something that you don't like, or the third is changing how you think about things, how you perceive things. So why, what does a boyfriend or a girlfriend bring to you? A lot of times, for them, it's more of a relationship that's a consistent relationship. And so if you can find a way for them to get a consistent relationship, you know, sometimes I can talk to them about, hey, if you are going to work, you're going to have a core set of people that you will be engaging with all the time that will give you that connection that you're looking for. It's not really the relationship of a boyfriend, girlfriend. It's more of a connection that you're looking for. And so when we can dig in and start changing their perspectives, then all of a sudden you change their focus and where they're, where they're driving their energy and, and that's ways to help them break loose a little bit.

Yeah, it's true. I never thought of that. Because if you do in, in a girl's mind, if you have a boyfriend, he's somebody that you get to see every day consistently. You can talk to all the time and spend all your time with, and it's that one person that's always there as opposed to friends that you might see here and there. That makes a lot of sense.

And it's different for everybody. And that's where you have to dive in and see really what they're after with what they're wanting. Because there's usually a layer underneath that they're trying to meet. And that's where that those human needs of connection come in. A lot of times it could be that, hey, I had one person tell me, well, if I had a girlfriend, she would be able to tell me what a great person I am.

Oh, boy.

So he was looking for significance, he was looking for recognition.

Yeah.

And so talked about, you know, who do you have to become to start getting Recognition and significance. And so we started changing some of his behavior patterns so that he could stand out at work. And all of a sudden he started getting accolades. And he told me, I don't want a girlfriend anymore because it met the need. And that's the funny part because our kids, they get one tracked really quickly, but they don't even understand what that one track truly is right now.

One thing that I've seen seems to be a big problem in the community is depression and suicide. I'm sure you must deal with that.

I do, I do. Honestly, that's probably the reason we're doing the podcast is usually I'm a person that doesn't really get out there. I'm more of a referral based coach. That's how you find me, as you, as you get referred. I don't do a lot of advertising or get on a lot of podcasts. I'm a very private person. And part of my process when I work with or going to work with somebody is, you know, I'll meet with the parents. Typically first we make sure that, hey, I meet all their. What they're looking for. I make sure that they sound like their young adult is who I can work with. And then we set up a second meeting to meet with the young adult. Well, in this case, this was a few months ago, I had a parent that I met with. Everything went really well. She mentioned that her son was in a pretty dark spot. And so this was on a Friday morning. We were supposed to meet on a Tuesday and the young adult didn't show. And all that's not. It happens, but it's rare, but it happens. So I reached out to the parent, but the parent never responded. And that's really. That never happens. And it was referral based. And so I reached out to the person, referred them. They said, blake, you didn't hear? And I said, here, what? Well, you met with mom that morning and her son had actually committed suicide that Thursday night. She didn't know yet. And that broke that, that broke my heart because I do work with a lot of kids that have been suicidal and I take them through a path where we, we figure out what's happening in their life that's causing all this pain. And I go back to that framework I kind of laid out at the beginning because a lot of times they have roles that won't let them win. So for example, if they want to feel successful, they have to wait for somebody to tell them that they're successful. Well, if you're always waiting on somebody, you're becoming codependent. If there's not anybody there to tell you you're successful, then you're going to feel quite the opposite. They have beliefs that they're no good. They may have had situations where they were bullied or, you know, taken advantage of and things of that nature. And then they start forming these stories and just start stacking and stacking and stacking. And so what I typically go in and do is I do kind of the exact layout and I find out, you know, what's really holding them back. And I had a case where the young man's name was Josh, and Josh was sexually molested by a family member. His parents were divorced. He was having a hard time with a relationship. He tried committing suicide several times before I started working with him. He was self harming. And we went in and we started looking at Josh's everything. And he had a rule that all people are evil. He had a rule that he has to protect himself at all times. He had a belief that he was worthless. And if you have this type of belief system and these rules, what are your choices? Right? He's always in pain. He did not want to look at the future because nothing he saw was pain. So we went in and one of the things I was able to do is I was able to get his mom to take him to a volunteer activity where he actually got put on the front line. So with the volunteers, we actually, the mom had talked to all the volunteers in advance, letting them know, hey, we're bringing this young man out and he thinks all people are evil. So they put him on the front lines where he got to meet so many incredible people. And it was for a homeless community where they fed them, they showered them, they washed their clothes, they brought out chiropractors to work on, you know, people to cut hair, stores that gave. And this young man was kind of the leader of everything. He was the frontline person. He got to see so many incredible people. And he told me, he said, blake, I didn't realize that there was actually really good people out there. And I'm really good because I was able to help. And all of a sudden we had enough leverage to shift them a little bit. So we changed some of his beliefs. And then there's a coaching style that I use which is it's a 1%, I call it 1% philosophy, but it's a micro action philosophy. And so the best way I describe it, Cindy, is if you can improve yourself by 1% a day for 365 days, you know, how much would you improve yourself by? And most parents will say, and kids will say 365% and they would take it. But what happens is you're improving upon the improvement from the day before, upon the improvement. So it compounds. So you're really improving. About 3,778% is the, it's a massive improvement. And so when I start working with these young adults, we want to focus on micro actions so we can start creating success. We also, we tie success to the action, not the outcome. And so with Josh, he had no friends, he was in and out of facilities and you know, he had those. So we switched it, we created a plan where he lived in an apartment complex where all his action was, is he just had to go sit by the pool for 30 minutes a day. He did that. He won. We worked on his social skills, so there's some independent skills that I believe every kid needs to work on. But we worked on his social skills and then we also said, hey, you're going to continue to volunteer and we're going to focus on trying to find victories throughout the day. At least three a day. Within two weeks he made two friends. Three weeks later he got himself a part time job. This was a couple years ago. I've checked on him. He's never self harmed, he's never gone back and now he has a girlfriend. And it's because we were able to get in there and completely eradicate that whole belief system and old framework that he had and switch it to where he could see himself having an incredible future. He could see himself doing things and he started recognizing and, and when his belief system changed, his relationships with his dad and his mom changed. And wow.

Yeah. So you're not just pushing him out there and just saying, hey, go get a job. You're working on the whole mindset, which is huge.

Correct. Because you can think of it as an identity. If they don't have an identity, let's take the job factor. Because a lot of people hire me to help their kids, you know, get ready and find a job. And all of that is what I always tell them is we're going to work on the identity first. Because if you put them in a job and they fail in that job, a lot of times they're going to feel worse. They're going to feel worse. And what happens is many times I kind of think of a, like a thermostat. You know, if your thermostat set to 75, but you get to 80, it's going to come on and cool you down. So if you get a young adult in a job that they don't believe they're capable of, even if they are, but they don't believe it, they're going to self sabotage by either not showing up to work or doing something at work or not doing a good job. And that is something that it's crucially important to get them where they can see that they're capable of doing all these things before you push them in. And I'm a big believer in the vocational rehabilitation programs across the board. The thing that I hope parents will take into caution is making sure that their son or daughter or young adult or teenager has the mindset that they're ready to work and not just pushing them in, because if they're not ready, it's gonna. It's gonna have the reverse effect.

Sure, sure. Could be worse. You. I want to go backward a little bit. In the. In the very beginning, you said that you were diagnosed as an adult. And I think that there's a lot of people out there, a lot of adults that also, you know, missed that window and weren't diagnosed and are dealing with things now, even all the things that you're mentioning, you know, dealing with issues socially and with jobs and all that kind of thing. And they don't really know what the problem is. And it's very possible that they're on the spectrum and they don't know, how were you diagnosed? Who did you go see?

So I went and saw a neuropsych, a neuropsychologist who we took our son to. And, you know, he had done my son. And then I went in and. And I took some of the same tests that we had taken online at the time to say, hell, where my son was, I was actually more extreme. So we went in and he did his assessments. A ton of questions. And the thing that as adults that's really hard to get diagnosed is we've had to learn to adjust. Right. If he would have diagnosed me as a kid, it would have been night and day because I was labeled that unique, that odd that some people would refer to me as weird. I was the kid that you came up to my house. I had a box on my head sitting in the front yard. And my parents loved it because we had a stop sign in our front yard. So every car got to see me. And my mom would come home and she'd say, blake, what are you doing? And I said, mom, I'm doing an experiment. I'm trying to listen to the vibrations of the moon, or I was building a UF detector, or I. You know, I was really into building things and. And experimenting and learning as a young kid.

Yeah, I would say, you're just very creative with.

Yeah, parents and. But then, you know, I would play that time. It was like Atari was kind of our thing. It was in all these Xboxes and everything. But my dad would talk about how frustrated, and I would never quit, but I would cry and just have these emotional outbursts, but I would not quit. And he would say, why don't you just put it? I said, no. And I was just so fixated. And so all the signs were there. I didn't start talking until I was almost four and a half and. But at that time, nobody knew. Right. My mom was an educator, so I had a very structured life, which was great. You know, I contribute most of where I am today because my mom and I know the important roles that mothers play in their child's lives. She would help me when I would get in trouble in school, because I was really literal. So there'd be times where I'm supposed to be in, like, two or three places at one time for sports, and they would ask me, where are you supposed to be? And I would tell this class when really I was supposed to be somewhere else, but in my mind, that's where I was supposed to be. And they would. I would get in trouble for making these types of comments because they teachers thought I was being kind of smart. And it wasn't. It's just that was how black and white I was. When somebody said, hey, you're gonna bend over backwards, I was thinking, all right, let me start bending right now, because of the literalness that I had.

Right.

And as an adult, you know, you start getting corrected a little bit by just the people you're around, by, you know, the environment you're in. I was very blessed again, with my mom being an educator. And then I was lucky to have just some incredible bosses. I mean, truly, Cindy, God bless me in this capacity, and I know other people hadn't had this type, but every boss that I ever had before I became a boss was very understanding of where my strengths were and where my deficits were. And they would come in and they would show me how to manage my deficits so that I could be an even better leader ultimately, when it was said and done. And I know as adults that right now, the struggles out there, you know, I don't understand the why behind, you know, all the problems. I'M having. And I would tell them that if you start, I go back to this book and it was a pivotal book for me. Soar with your strengths. Manage your weaknesses. Start focusing on your strengths first. Because once you know how to do your strengths, it will give you kind of a pattern to how to handle your weaknesses as well.

So tell me, how do you, how do you work with your clients? Do you work virtually or in person or both?

I, I do both. 90. I'd say 95% of my clients are virtual. I coach people from the east coast to the west coast. I have clients or I've had clients in other countries as well. And I do occasionally coach people in person. So I try to partner. There's a couple of ABA centers here in Austin that I try to partner with because they've been very, they're very ahead of their time on how they're working with their clientele, especially the older ones, and trying to take and help that population. So I felt called to help them and. But 95% of it's online. I've done one on ones and I've recently launched group coaching, which is a combination of digital courses along with a group coaching addition which I found is really strong for the young adults because all of a sudden they're getting around their own people and the same struggles that they're having. They understand now they're not alone. And a lot of times they're able to make friends because the last time I ran an event we had like seven artists who, you know, they bonded over their different styles of art. Of course we had the video gamers, but then we had two paleontology people that just fascinated by dinosaur bones and fossils and things of that nature. And it was just great to see people able to bond. And the DND gamers as well.

Yeah, that's great because I'm on all these autism pages and I see the mom saying so many times my kid just wants a. Wants friends, you know, that's. And, and it just seems to be so difficult because once you're not in school anymore.

Yep.

You know, how are you going to meet other people your age?

It definitely gets a little more challenging. For sure.

Yeah, that's terrific. I think there should be some type of an online club that they can, you know, meet regularly. How often do you meet? Well, like once. Once a week, once a month. Like how does that work?

When we're doing the program, we meet twice a week. And so it's an eight week program that we go. But my hopes and this has happened is that they stay connected and they continue on past me. I know that there's several online programs. I don't recall their names right off the bat, but that. Do, you know, once a month or a couple of times a month.

Meetups where kids meetups where they all come together on.

Virtually. Yeah, virtually. Discord's a big thing with young adults as well. If you're familiar with Discord, it's more of a. Like a messaging system where they can log in and type. It's like Facebook messenger in a sense, but it's. It's just that you can put videos. You can actually do kind of a zoom style as well. But a lot of my young adults, that's where they live is on Discord.

Oh, interesting. So you usually do group coaching. It's not one on one or you do.

I, I do both. What I majority is one on one, but what I try to do is once a quarter do group coaching for eight.

Okay.

And bring. A lot of times social skills is a big element of trying to help individuals. So one on ones, I usually bring one person with one person that's working on it. But the group coaching element is when you want to talk one on three or one on four, it really makes a big difference.

Sure.

And then just having that community of support. So when we're going over victories and everybody's kind of cheering for each other, if somebody didn't have a victory, the others are actually helping them figure out that they did. And, and it's just. It's a beautiful thing, Cindy. It's. It really is.

Yeah, it sounds like it. Yeah. And very much needed. Yes, very much needed. And I think you're probably saving lives and might not even realize it, but you are, which is wonderful thing.

Well, thank you for saying that. I mean, that is. That is one of my, my missions. I know the one. If, if somebody's in a dark spot, it's always one on one. But if, if they're in a spot where they're light and, and, and we can get where other people's energy will even take them further, that's where the group thing really comes into handy. And in the group thing, it's more of the independent skills. So I, I've kind of just in my mind, I've narrowed down to five areas that I really like focusing on with clients that want their, you know, they want to become self sufficient, they want to become independent. Number one is still confidence that that area goes across the board. Two, social skills. So learning how to Meet people, where to meet people and how to intertwine with them. Number three is executive functioning skills. So you know, time management's a big thing. Problem solving, organization, task initiation, flexibility, those things are important. Then you've got your career skills, that's important. And then we have key life skills like basic money management, self care, or how to household management. Those things are incredibly important as well.

Yeah, I was going to ask about the self care. Yeah. Because that's, I've heard people mention that too.

Self care is not just hygiene. Yeah, it's just not hygiene because I know a lot of people think it's hygiene. No, it's, it's mental self care, physical self care. Those things are incredibly important because think about a lot of times our kids go into burnout because they're not taking care of their mental self care. And so we, we talk about the spoon theory in the past. I kind of relate it to like a cell phone battery is when our cell phone battery gets depleted and we're still going, it's eventually going to fry out the phone. And so that's how our brains are. So we have to learn how to balance self care and recognize the signs. Because a lot of the kids that I work with, you know, they want friends, they want people to connect with so bad that they're willing to sacrifice themselves to try to make those connections. And a lot of times they're overextending themselves.

This is great. This is great. I think it's so needed what you do. That's why I, I, I saw you on Facebook and I'm like, oh, I have to get him on the show. We have to talk about this because I just think that what you do is very necessary. I started my YouTube channel because over 21, you know, everything falls off a cliff and, and the kids are all struggling no matter where they are on the spectrum. You know, everybody's different, but I think they need a little help, they need a little coaching, which is what you do, which is great. So how can they get in touch with you?

So the, the best way to get in touch with me is going to be just go into my website and I'm going to spell that one out. It's, it's kind of a unique play of words. It's www.a s p as in Paul I e-r.com so aspie-r.com so aspie dash r and the reason I created that name was because when I was diagnosed with Asperger's and so we referred to ourselves as Aspie and in your family. My family, for sure, yeah. So when you add the R, that makes it aspire and so means help the ass higher. And so that's the reason. It's kind of a little bit of a play on words, but that's the easiest way. My contact information is on there, and they can reach out to me on Facebook as well. And as my Aspire business page, I do tips and. And, you know, share important information on there as well, so they can find me that way, too.

Okay, wonderful. All right. Blake, Will, it's a pleasure having you. Thank you for being on the show today.

Oh, Cindy, thank you. And thank you for everything you do. I mean, your. Your story is an incredible one, and it's much needed, and you've been an incredible advocate. You're everywhere, and. And that's what the world absolutely needs, is they need more inclusivity and understanding, and you're. You're kind of that light that's doing it. So thank you.

Yes. I'm trying to do what I can.

Absolutely. That's all we can do, right?

Yeah, absolutely. All right, well, thank you.

All right, bye.

That's it for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed listening and it helped you gain a new perspective. To learn more about our children's book series, Robbie's World and his Spectrum of Adventures, or to learn more about what we do at Robbie's World foundation, simply visit our website at Robbie's World Book.

Thank you for joining us today. Be sure to join us again on our next episode of Spectrum Perspectives.