When Learning is Trauma: Michael Stickler, Lois Letchford, and Lisa McCarty

Hello, welcome to When Learning Is Trauma, and today we welcome Mike Stickler as he is a highly gifted bestselling author, producer, ex-felon philanthropist, horseman, and internationally sought-after conference speaker. His bestselling book is Clive Bundy: American Terrorist Patriot, quickly made the bestsellers list. Revealing the truth of what is extensively and publicly known as the Bunkerville Standoff. Mike's most recent book, Life Without Reservation, is widely acclaimed in the Christian community circles. And he lives in Lake Tahoe at the foothills of the Sierra Nevada range and has 2 grown sons, a daughter-in-law, and 3 grandchildren. And we welcome Mike with us today. As he grew up, With dyslexia, living with dyslexia, and welcome Lisa. So Mike, would you like to tell the story that connected you and I?

So in, in the '60s, I grew up on an island off the coast of California, a little island called Catalina, and I was going to the the elementary school there. It's administered by the Long Beach School District, still is, was then as well. And I never really had much desire to read, oddly. I'm a, you know, now I'm an author, a 4-time bestselling author. I love to write. I love to do so much, but I struggled, you know, in those formative years. I'm talking about 5th grade, 4th and 5th grade, really, really struggled with it. And I remember really clearly my, my 4th grade teacher asking me to stand and read as she did with, you know, all the other students. And I stood up and, and I was reading out loud, and she just looked at me and said, shut up, you can't— no, I'm sorry, not shut up, sit down, you cannot read. And it just, it just devastated my, my head. And, and what's interesting is, you know, I go, I travel around the world and speak speak today, and often I read from the work I have in front of me, and I hear that voice even today as a 61-year-old man. As I go to begin to read, I hear, you can't read. And well, what it turned out is, is I was dyslexic. I didn't know that. Nobody knew that. And finally, they sent me to the special education program. Which, by the way, also, you know, kind of brings shame to you because they shuffle you off to this extra class where, you know, where the dumb kids go to get the extra work. You know, when everybody else is doing recess, I'm in there, you know, getting the extra, the extra work done. And in time, I was diagnosed with dyslexia and they helped. And in essence, all in all, I feel like I grew out of most of it. I mean, still to this day, I don't know if this is because, you know, I'm having a senior moment or not, but sometimes, sometimes I can't read a word or I can't spell a word that I generally can. You know, like I just, I'll look at a word 3 or 4 times and I'm convinced it's spelled right and spell check's not telling me it's spelled incorrectly, but I'm not sure it's spelled right. So So, you know, I'll ask somebody else in the room to spell it for me. And all of that really helped me. I actually avoided English. I avoided all of those things through elementary school, middle school, high school. I avoided all of that. And even in college, I took the required courses, you know, everything from humanitarian Humanities, excuse me, humanities and history and things like that. But I tried to, I tried to avoid anything that would involve writing or producing content.

Yeah.

But if you put me up verbally, I was, I was more than happy to do that. And over time, you know, my chief form of communication, even though I am a writer, my chief form of communication is verbal.

Yeah.

I prefer to talk with people than I do to write.

I'm with you on that. Mike, you know, I think you said it then, even as a 61-year-old, you hear that voice, you can't do it. I mean, that's the power that teachers have, isn't it?

It's amazing. You know, I often, because I'm a Christian guy, a lot of the stuff that I will share comes from the Bible. I know the Bible quite well. I read passages, especially the passages I'm going to share, and, and I will get 4 verses in before fighting that little argument in my head. I'll get 4 verses in before I'll just kind of get into the groove and, and read very fluently. And again, that's not stage fright. Some people said, well, you have stage fright.

No, no.

You don't know me. I— if a dog brought me a stick, I could do a 20-minute speech on faithfulness. Okay, I just— I'm real good at that. But yeah, it's just amazing. And I didn't really realize that, you know, how troublesome— I don't want to call it handicap, but how troublesome it was for me almost my whole life.

Yeah.

I also reflect on it, was she, you know, you and I've talked about this, what, well, you know, it was the '60s and I don't know that they understood dyslexia and, you know, um, all of that. So I have lots of, I have lots of forgiveness and grace for all of those things, you know.

Yeah.

I don't, I don't think a lot about her. I, in fact, ironically, she's still alive. She Everybody, you know, she taught and graduated and finished her career at that same school all those years ago. But, um, you know, so no animus or hard feelings about it, but it's a challenge to realize. And I don't think people really recognize themselves how that plays, that message plays.

Yeah, and replays.

Yes.

And replays. Yeah.

I think you hit it on the head when you said, uh, the word shame. And, you know, that's why we do this series, because those experiences are traumatic. And then take a kid who has to go into this every day, and it's still happening, Mike. My son, who's— he'll be 17 in a couple days. His friend in the— I think they were in the 4th grade. She said in front of the whole class to this other boy that he was the dumbest student student she'd ever had in front of everybody. And, you know, at the time, this particular teacher was dealing with a lot personally. So the parents had decided not to, you know, say anything because we felt like she was— they felt like she was having a hard time herself. But looking back, they should have really addressed that. You know, these kids are bright kids, and to hear something like that is devastating. So you're talking about the 1960s, and this is going on decade after decade after decade. And my own son actually was— they were doing popcorn reading. I don't know if you know what that is, where you're reading out loud and then one student will pick another student and then that student will read out loud. So they would pick my son because he would— he wasn't good at reading out loud. He would add words that weren't there. He'd skip words that were there. And everybody would start snickering and laughing. And later that day, my son said, Mom, I wish that those— the people that were laughing had been boys. So I could turn around and deck them. He didn't want to hit the girls, but he— it was traumatizing, and it's still going on.

Yeah, I don't know what— I don't know what to say to that. I, um, as my kids grew up, I— they never really experienced those things. They never had a disability like dyslexia, and they had their own desires in education, whether they wanted to be educated or not, but I do know that for me, the challenge really— well, I really— my message is not really the challenge. My message is, look it, I'm an accomplished author. I run a publishing firm. I, you know, I have figured out ways to compensate because, quite frankly, that experience Made me, in part, not totally, made me a lazy speller, lazy at grammar. You know, my, my, the professionals that I surround myself with who are editors and whatnot, they laugh at me and they're like, you just sprinkle commas wherever you think they ought to go. And I do, okay? And I don't mind. In fact, I could care less, but couldn't care less. But, um, they do. What's that?

But they do.

Yes, they do. And the good news is they get paid to fix it. So, but, but, um, it's, uh, it really kind of, uh, plays into all of that deficit, you know, um, of not embracing my education, or at least that area. I, I compensated. I exceeded at science. my SAT scores were in the top 5 percentile of the nation in science, but I don't even think I made it in 1% in English writing, literature, and that kind of thing.

Yeah.

And yet I do have a big desire to read. That was something that was learned over as an adult. I don't find myself challenged by the complication of the reading. So in other words, It could be 10th grade level, it could be, you know, professor level, and I'm fine with all of that. I could read, I'll read anything, but I do notice that that played into, it did very much play into my younger years avoiding English and sentence structure and all of that because she told me I couldn't read.

How did you go to be a best-selling author?

So what I discovered about myself is because my chief form of communication is verbal, I became a pretty good, a pretty great storyteller.

Yeah.

So when I took the stage, I could take people through a, a story, an illustration, and people would feel it and people would understand it. People could visualize themselves or me being in the situation or whatever that was going on. And, and, um, and so I just took that storytelling to writing. Now, now the fear for me comes back to what we were talking about. Um, I don't type very fast. I never thought— I was never taught to type.

Yeah.

So I type, I type at about 30 words a minute even now. Um, and that's with 2 fingers on each hand. I don't even try to use the others. And, and I type pretty, you know, I do pretty well with it. And I found that because I type slower, it actually allows me to digest my thoughts slower, and it allows me to actually think through the storyline.

Yeah.

Because I'm not going that fast.

Yeah.

And it also causes my sentences to be You know, short and not very— sometimes not very descriptive. But, but I say that to say what I realized about being a writer is it's a team sport.

Yeah.

Speaking from the stage is not a team sport.

Yeah.

But writing a book is a team sport. You need an executive editor, a line item editor, a proofreader, a cold reader. You need a You need a development editor. There's all these people who bring the specialty to the book.

Yeah.

That I don't bring. So when I realized my role is the storyteller.

Yeah.

Right.

Yeah.

Their role is to help me tell the story in a more articulate way.

Yeah.

And, and you're right, Lois, you would laugh if, if my college friends were here. They would all laugh and go, Mike is a best-selling author. Who would have thought? Yeah, you know, um, nobody. I mean, I've actually had people say that to me, um, who would have thought that he would ever go and write? Yeah, but I find it, um, really enjoyable. One other thing I'd share is that if you met me on an airplane and you asked me what I did, I would tell you I'm an author.

Yeah.

I wouldn't tell you I'm a book publisher. I wouldn't tell you I, you know, I, that's first and foremost the way I see myself. And being a writer, being an author, will, I will be that, you know, as long as God gives me strength in my fingers to do that.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh, that's, yeah, that's fascinating that you identify as an author now. So that's, that's super.

I feel like there's a lot of authors who are dyslexic, but the problem comes back to people don't understand what dyslexia is. And then the kids in school are still getting called dumb, stupid, and lazy, are still being put into special education, and the teachers aren't understanding why they struggle with certain skills. And that's a problem because, again, these kids are bright kids. They do have a story to tell, but the way they're being asked to do it in a traditional school setting is difficult. So, you know, we— that's why one of the reasons that we're doing this whole thing is just for people to understand.

Thank you.

What exactly is dyslexia? It's not seeing things backwards, it's not reading backwards. There's a whole bunch of different strengths and weaknesses that come along with this. And again, you were talking about the 1960s, it is the 2000s and we are still dealing with—

2020.

Yeah, like we're still dealing with this misunderstanding of the whole thing.

And Mike, and then you said when you went off to Excuse me, special education, and I think that's a problem. Talk more about that.

Well, so in fairness to that, special education was really more of a tutoring setting in that school. Why? Because that school was a very small school. I lived on an island that had 2,000 residents, and the whole school had 280 from kindergarten to 12th grade, had 280 kids. OK, so in one sense, because it was part of the larger school district of the mainland, Long Beach School District, they had more resources than just any old little school. And so I am feel— I do feel blessed that I had somebody that would sit with me and tutor and spend time. What was also— I do feel blessed about is that This woman was very patient, and I don't remember her name now, but she would sit there with just 2 or 3 of us, and we would go to a separate classroom, and she would work through with our reading and giving, giving us exercises and those kinds of things. But the stigma of special education in the school with the other students, the teachers would, you know, kind of announce it, you know, you have to go to special education now. And all of those things, you know, and then I remember very distinctly sitting there and recess is going on right outside and I'm like, I have to sit here.

Yeah.

You know, why am I being punished? I don't understand, you know, and I would look at it and say, I can read this, you know, I can read this, but I was going through the steps that she was asking me to do because that's what I needed to do and I was a, you know, a compliant kid. Yeah, if I wasn't a compliant kid, that might have been something different, but yeah, later I became less compliant, but that's another story.

But I want to get into that a little bit, if you don't mind.

Please, Lisa, please.

Well, the good, the good tidbits, anything. Yeah, what happened after 4th grade then?

Well, so As far as educationally, not much. I went on, you know, um, finished 6th grade there, and then my parents moved to the mainland. So in, uh, in 7th grade, I started a regular middle school. I— there was, there was no special education program. I did okay. I, I always have said I've, I've, uh, I've always been a solid C student.

I see.

Even in my My undergraduate work and whatnot, I've always been— I just, I just never really applied myself very hard until my senior year in high school. And then I applied myself pretty diligently because I wanted to get into college. So I went from Cs to my senior year to now I make it, you know, I had A, all As my senior year because I wanted to get into school. Then once I got back into college, same thing. But what What I really, I distinctly remember all the way through high school and college is avoiding English, avoiding anything that, that, um, I, I just found it, um, unuseful, a risk, boring, all of those things. So I just avoided them. And yet I was a reader. I would read, but I didn't as far as the classwork and that kind of thing. I can remember in college looking at the, at the class roster and picking anything but those. I think I took, I think I took freshman English in my, in my junior year of college, you know, just because I kept avoiding it, and I was more interested in the science, yeah, in sciences.

Yeah, and you do what you find easier to do and more enjoyable, don't you?

Right. Oh, here's another thing is that, um, I studied agriculture in college, and so they had an agriculture math class that was a requirement for an agriculture degree. So that agriculture math class was word problems. If you have a 1,000-acre field and your insecticides per gallon covers this, how much insecticide do you need over, you know, You know, etc., etc. And I know I'm not doing a good job, but my challenge with those is I didn't like to read the problems. Just give me the math problem.

Yeah, yeah.

You know, I struggled with understanding the reading of the problem. I really did. I really struggled understanding what they were trying to ask me. And sometimes I overcomplicated it.

Yeah.

And sometimes not, but I really struggled with that class, but you could put me in an algebra class and I was fine. Yeah, and I don't— I didn't particularly like algebra either, but I could— it was easier for me to understand.

The comprehension or the teaching of comprehension is interesting because it's not something that is really well taught. You know, people and teachers expect if a child reads the sentence, therefore they They comprehend it fully. And that's a fallacy that we really have to, you know, overcome and really dig into because we don't teach comprehension. We teach strategies and we teach other things, but we don't teach comprehension. And you and I had the same problem. I could read words, I couldn't comprehend.

Yeah.

You know?

Yeah, especially the math problems, they were hard.

I actually use math problems now with young students who struggle with comprehension because every word counts. And you read, you need to create a picture and you need to create, you know, comprehension of every word in the sentence. What does it mean? Why is it there? So yeah, anyway, that's important. Lisa.

I was just thinking like reading is so so complicated. And for the dyslexic students, it seems not to be as much of an automatic skill. And when you're talking about the comprehension, my son, for example, tends to see words or experience words very visually. So if you say table, he can visualize a table, and that's more automatic than just having the word table register. So if you said put that on the table, that would be fine. But if you said something like, we'll have to table that for now, we'll get back to it later. If he's reading that, now that's just—

Everything.

Because it's not an automatic process for him. So again, it's a misunderstanding. What is dyslexia? You know, a lot of dyslexics can read, but many of them have been through the same experience that Mike was talking about of feeling shamed or having somebody tell them they're not very good at that. And so as an adult, having to still, still deal with that Yeah. Is significant. And that's what I tend to then see in, in my field, that the adults are still dealing with these— I keep using the word shame, and sometimes that's a little bit too harsh, but oftentimes it's not. You know, to feel that as an adult and have people still misunderstand what dyslexia is, where your challenges are, and that you're not dumb, stupid, or lazy is is something we have to do better at, you know, getting the information out there. Yeah.

I think some of the things that helped me a lot as I grew older— well, first off, I can see that, you know, taking the stage and beginning to speak or to read and having that little voice in the back of your head saying, you know, you can't do this. Could be very overwhelming for some. I think back at my, my, my deceased wife. She, she was very smart and could read, but boy, she, she abhors— she had stage fright. She just couldn't stand being in front of, in front of people. So if you were kind of given to her kind of personality, I don't even see people, let alone trying, pushing through it. Where I would just push through it. I would just buckle down and push through it, and, and, uh, and then pretty soon I'd— and when I say seconds, I would be right into the role of it, of what I was doing, what I was saying. But I can see people just being afraid to never even getting started, or, you know, I can't do this, so, or it's too hard, or, um, it's too much of a challenge, or I don't know what's wrong with me, or all of that.

Um, Yeah.

And then, and then I, I, you've got, you ladies are making me think about a couple things that have really helped me. Uh, first, uh, because I studied a lot of science, uh, I studied animal science, so it was a lot of physiology and biology and, uh, chemistry and all of those things. So all of those words, almost all of them, are rooted in Latin.

Yeah.

And so learning the Latin root of the words helped me quickly move through them, okay, because I, I remember my, uh, my, my first zoology— well, actually my first 2 was zoology. Imagine this teacher, he, he was from China and he, he spoke with a very thick Chinese accent speaking Latin words to a bunch of American kids, you know, and I remember sitting there listening to him going I have no idea what he's saying at all, you know. You know, he's a very smart man, and I took 2 years with him, so it was helpful. But I remember thinking that, and so you'd have to break that down. The other thing that helped me a lot was, um, I'm a, I'm a Christian guy, and I was in those days too. And so reading my Bible helped me a lot. There was great storytelling in there, and then And then knowing that you could, if you come across a word, you know, 'cause some of them are old Hebrew or Aramaic, sometimes Latin, if you come across a word you don't know the root of, you could just, you just can blow by it. You can just move past it without needing to understand it.

Yeah.

And that helped me a lot because that helped me understand stories. And the Bible was written at 12th grade. Mostly, some of them are not, but it's written at roughly a 12th grade level. So if you're in 10th grade or if you're in 9th grade, um, and nowadays people don't even read at 10th grade anymore, so it challenges you to really get there. And yet I still don't do memorization and I still like it. I, I work at it, but I don't— I'm not very good at it.

Yeah.

Yeah, I don't know if that has to do with my being dyslexic or I'm just lazy, but I don't like it.

It's, it's actually easier to remember a thought and, and an idea than the actual sentence. Learning the actual words and the word order is, is really quite challenging, and it takes more effort.

Yeah, so yeah, and the Bible is very challenging in that way because it's, it, it's, uh, it's thoughts, you know, Greek thought is backwards to English thought, so you know where we come to a conclusion, they begin with the conclusion and then unwind it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, so that's all challenging too.

Completely different than the way we think.

Yeah, and it's been translated.

Yes, so So it's, uh, it's fun, and I find it all useful. And I don't, you know, at this point in my life, I'm, uh, I— my message to anybody that's listening is just to realize, you know, you can have a really super productive life. And, and, um, and even in the area that you don't think so, go and, you know, embrace what, what God's given you or hasn't given you, and, and, um, and be an overcomer.

That's fantastic. That is fantastic. Be an overcomer and embrace it. Because I mean, that's the challenge, isn't it? When you've been faced with shame and being put down, how you have to navigate that new route and create yourself from the damage that's been done.

And shame says to the person, you are what you are and you cannot change. And I completely reject that.

Yes.

I completely reject it. If you told me, you know, when people, uh, you know, I used to be overweight. When people told me, you know, you're gonna always be overweight, I could— thanks, thanks for telling me that, because now I accept the challenge. I completely reject that. You're not gonna tell me that. If you— I mean, there's some things that are, you know, obviously immutable. You're getting older, You know, those kinds of things. But shame is trying to keep you cornered, keep you in a box, keep you in a pigeonhole, and I just refuse to be that person, you know. And so when someone says you are what you are and you cannot change, I just say, yeah, well, you don't know me.

What an inspiration to say that. You know, even for me, now I face different challenges in my life. So it's really good to hear that again.

You know, it's funny, another person said to me, because I've been an entrepreneur most of my life, and one of the things about entrepreneurs is that you believe that— I genuinely believe I can do anything whether I want to. And what do I mean by that? Invest the time, the energy, the education, I could be a brain surgeon, but do I want to at this point in my life? Do I want to spend all that time trying to learn how to do it? And by the time I do, you know, you're talking about 15 years down the road to be a brain surgeon. Quite honestly, my body may not work so well to run the scalpel in your brain.

Okay.

So you gotta just kind of, you know, be a realist, but believing, you know, If I set out to do that at 30, I probably could have, but at this point, no. And so don't let people corner you. Don't let whatever, you know, everybody has some dysfunction of some sort, you know.

Yeah.

Or one of the things I like to tell in the Christian world, I say, you can't find a functional family in the Old Testament. There isn't one, not one.

Yeah.

So what are you going to do about it? How are you going to get past it? What do you, you know, how are you going to be different in it? And that's, that would, that's my encouragement to people who are struggling with dyslexia. Even if they're, you know, their father, their mother, whoever told them they were dumb or lazy or whatever, don't, don't accept it.

Yeah, keep moving.

As a kid, did you have a family that was pretty supportive then with your learning challenges?

Yeah, I was, I was, I was very fortunate to have a very loving family, intact family, My mom and dad stayed married for 42 years until my mom passed away. We loved each other. We had our squabbles. As adults, us siblings don't all, you know, spend a lot of time together. And it was supportive. My mom, ironically, studied English in college. She was very careful to discuss with us and have us use words that were much in expanse to common English. She had us do that a lot, and, and so it was very supportive in that sense. But was it supportive like, did she sit down or did they— my dad sit down and do homework with me and stuff like that? No.

Yeah.

No, and I watch, I watch my, my son. Granted, my son is the high school teacher, but he sits down, he and his wife sit down and do Help their kids do their homework, make sure it's on track. They put a lot more effort in than even I did, let alone what my parents did.

Yeah.

And, yeah, and it's, it's very, it's very impressive to watch.

Yeah.

Also, my youngest son asked me one time, what do you think the difference is? Because he— my youngest son doesn't have children, so he asked me, because I said to him, I said, I think you guys are both better men than I was. you were my age. And I also think he's— my oldest son is a better father than I was. And he goes, well, why? Why do you think, you know, my brother's a better father than you? And I said, well, I don't mean that shamefully. I mean it— there's 2 reasons. One, I was a real young dad, so I still figured out how to be a man, okay, at 20, when I had my first child at 20. But then secondly, uh, My son went to college and got an education in education, and so he has a little, you know, much more of a leg up in understanding things.

But Mike, the world has changed too, and the role of parents has changed over the past 30 or 40 years, because I would say I didn't have the knowledge I needed with my children, you know, and that, and that access now to information and help parents is really, you know, huge now.

Yeah, unfortunately many of them are not, you know, taking advantage. It's the same thing with, you know, in my industry, in the book publishing industry. Here's something to think about. 29-year-olds and below are— they can read, but they're functionally illiterate because they don't read. And you watch book sales, book sales will go like this, and you get to the age group of 29, it goes straight down. All right, I mean, it's like they just go off a cliff. And yes, you can meet, you can meet young people who are reading, you know, I run into them all the time, but they're not making up the majority of the people. out there. So I've been doing a little research into this, and, and I've discovered that, um, they changed the textbooks right when they were in their formative years.

Right.

And they changed the textbooks to read— instead of reading block text like we're all used to reading a block of text, you open up a reading book, a 6 by 9 reading book, and you see a block of text, right? They have callouts and graphs and arrows and pointers, and it looks more like a brochure than what I would write a 60,000-word book. They will have 14,000 words in it.

Yeah.

And so, so the attention span's gotten shorter. The quantity of what people will read has gotten shorter. It's quite a bit different.

And now with YouTube and Twitter, we've got, we only want sound bites. And if it's longer than 2 minutes or it takes me 2 minutes, you know, I'm not interested. I've only got 2 minutes to get your attention.

And so as a book publisher, I'm in the world of going, okay, well, we can't ignore this because it's not going to be long that we're not going to be in business because people aren't buying books. And most book publishers are kind of just like hoping they'll grow out of it, but we're trying to figure out how do I— how do we address that, that age group and keep them interested in reading, and that's a challenge.

I think over the years there's been some change in the way reading's being taught, and that's been a disaster for some people, so hopefully we'll start to see that change as they're learning more about how people do learn how to read. That's the hope, that hopefully that they can be better at it and then want to do it, because if you're not good at reading, let's be honest, it's a chore.

Yeah.

So, you know, but they're not lazy. It's, it's just that it's not as much of an automatic process and it's exhausting. You ask any— well, obviously, you know, dyslexia will will be on a continuum, so you might be mildly affected by this or profoundly. And if you ask anybody that really has a difficult time reading, they'll tell you it's exhausting. Yes, because it's not an automatic process. So, you know, instead of shaming people and saying, well, you should read more so that you could read more, I mean, we gotta, we gotta figure out a better way to, yeah, to teach them.

We have a question from Chris.

Go ahead.

And it says, uh, what would you say What was your biggest challenge growing up with dyslexia?

Yeah, I was just about to bring this up, and it still can be challenging today. Reading much slower than the people around me. So the biggest challenge was, is I would read slower. Like, you walk up to a sign at a park and you— and your dad says, What's— let's— oh, let's stop and see what this sign says. Okay, because you're at this park, maybe it's a historical park. Okay, so there's a, there's a sign there with 2 paragraphs worth of text on it, maybe, maybe 150 words. Okay, everybody else read it and walked away and you're still reading it. Now you're at this moment, do I walk away with them? Oh, do you actually want to find out what the Sign said. Yeah, yeah, you know, and believe it or not, that still happens today. I, I mentioned my wife's passed away and I'm, I'm dating this, uh, woman that is a lawyer, okay, she's an attorney, and that, that gal reads—

At 600 words a minute.

Right, what, just much faster than I do. And it's funny, we— I'm using the sign illustration because we were recently in Mexico in Tulum, and we were reading a sign that was in English, and she's like, she's gone, and I'm still reading it. And yet I'm to a place in life I don't care. Yes, you know, but when I was a kid, it mattered.

Yeah. When did you get— when did you get to that point that you could— that it didn't matter, that you, you didn't have your self-esteem attacked every time you had to make that decision? Do I walk away or do I—

That's an excellent question. I, I probably would say I would probably say in, um, right in those ends of— end of high school and the beginning of college, right? You know, you ladies mature and you become a lot more self-confident than us guys do. And I, I wasn't until that place where I was confident enough in myself that I just didn't care what peer pressure was and, you know, what people thought and whatnot. I, you know, I was making decisions on my own. Now, obviously that comes with different people, but I would say that was where I was.

Yeah, but it still sounds like it, it does affect you to some degree if every time you go to read you, you have that little piece that says, that revisits, you know, back in the 1960s. But I find it fascinating that you, you have gotten, gotten over that part enough to just to dig in and do it.

So, so I look— I count it like this. I think of it like this. If, if you're a, um, a skydiver, okay, and you do it all the time and you're practiced and experienced and trained, you don't sit at the edge of the plane and go, should I jump? Should I jump? You just jump. You just go. Okay, and the rest of us sit on the edge of the plane going, oh, I don't know why, because we have a perceived risk. Okay, and yes, granted, there's a risk, but the professional skydiver person, they, they do it all the time so that they've, they've calculated the risk and pushed past it. And in a very micro way, that's what hap— that's what's happening at a sign. I'm standing there reading a sign and I have this, this thought in the back of my head, even if it's in the subconscious, that says, should I finish this reading this sign because I want to know what's there, or leave and not know what it said because everybody else did? There's a perception of risk.

Yeah.

When I stand up in front of the public, even if it's subconscious, there is a perception of risk. That I will somehow read the word wrong, read it incorrectly, um, whatnot. And I, I, I'll— I have to push through it, just like the guy on the edge of the, of the plane. And that's not— I recognize it's not, um, consistently that way with other people, but it is that way for me.

Yeah.

You know, and, and, and the way I just justify it is I look at other areas of my life and Yeah, I can do this. Where it makes other people hesitant, I just— it's not, it doesn't make it hesitant for me. So it just happens to be my past informing my present.

It's a fascinating way to look at it because I've not thought about things like that. But you're right, it is a risk. And what's the risk? And will I take that risk is what we say, isn't it?

Yes. And it can be a brief second. A millisecond. It can be brief, but it's there.

Yeah.

And you first just have to recognize it's there and not let it freeze you up.

I think it's important too that, um, you have something that you know that you are very good at, that you excel at. Um, and I always bring up, uh, with my own family, my husband found out that he was dyslexic at the age of 50. He's a successful builder. That's how his mind works the best, visualizing building. And in his job role, he has to read a lot of emails. And until he found out the name of why he struggled, every time he had to read an email and reread it and reread it, that little voice inside him was saying, see, you're not so smart. So you, you know, like it was— this is, I think, where that trauma comes into play.

I see.

Once he realized, I'm not dumb.

Yeah.

Right.

I'm dyslexic, then the anxiety seemed to lessen. And now he still has to reread the email, but he doesn't beat himself up because he knows he's good at this, this other, you know, strength that he has. And I think that seems to be a protective factor to some degree. You know, some people don't really know what they're good at, and some of these kids are still trying to find out what it is. So, you know, what do you say to that person who's still trying to find out what they're great at while they're dealing with this relative weakness?

So one of the things I, I really believe— this, this comes into leadership of businesses that I've learned. Um, my, my employees over the years have always wanted me to give them this exhaustive job description of what they do, what they're supposed to do. Some of them want not just an exhaustive job description, but they also want a manual that goes along with that job description to explain to them what they want to do. And my, my view is this: I want, I want to figure out what your strengths are and then allow you to operate in your strengths rather than your weaknesses. So if I hand you a manual and I say to you, gosh, you know, this is what you have to do in this job, you will be scrambling trying to please me doing things you're not strong— you have weaknesses in, and you're not going to do them well.

Yeah.

And we as human beings always go to what we like to do and try to avoid the things we don't like to do.

Yeah.

We all do. It doesn't matter what it is.

Yeah.

And so what I prefer to do is to meet someone, no matter where they are, what age they are, what background they have, what education they have, and, and then I watch them for 6 months to a year trying to figure out, well, if I send you this email and I give you this direction, what part of it do you follow and which part of it you don't? Which do you excel at? Which do you return back work product faster? Or which do I have to drag work product out of you. Okay. And then I let them operate in that. So as an example, I had a woman, a young woman who was a very strong writer, but her— that was her chief communication skill. But she, she didn't do well talking.

Yeah.

And so when it had emotional risk to it, she did— she really didn't want to talk about it because there was emotional risk and there was challenge and there was all this to it. And I watched her struggle trying to tell me what— what she's sitting in my office across the desk from me, and I was watching her going, trying to search for words and come up with it and say— and I said, I said to her, would it be easier if you just wrote to me and told me what you— how you feel about this? And you could just see her physically go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I want— I'd rather do that. And I got like 3,000 words on this On how she was feeling on this particular subject. I don't remember what it was about, but she later told me, you know, that was, that was so comforting that you would allow me to do that in the, in the way that I feel best, the most comfortable, the most, the greatest strength. I say that on the other hand, we need to challenge one another to grow a little bit more out of our comfort zone, but we're all that way.

Yeah.

So I'm not an educator. I don't do what you guys do. I have no idea if this is the right idea, but if my son or my daughter had dyslexia and, and I saw them struggling, I would ask them to verbally tell me stories.

Yeah.

I would, I would say to them, you know, I know you, I know you have this writing assignment, why don't you do it, why don't you tell the story to me verbally first?

Yeah.

Because I know that's where their strength is as opposed to writing right now. And then, and then come back to the writing later.

That's me.

I mean, I don't know if that's right or not, but if I was a dad, that's how I would respond to it.

And then I would, I would say, let me write it down and then have the child and you can read it back together.

Right. I didn't know that, but okay, that's where you come in and help. Yeah, but, but let people operate in their strengths, especially when there's risk involved. That could be emotionally, that could be career, that could be acceptance. I have a woman who works for me right now. I won't say her name because she works for me right now, but she's a very good writer, but she's not an American citizen. She came from another country. She's legal in the country, just to be clear, but she— American English isn't first. Okay, and so she struggles with— she's surrounded by all these very gifted writers and editors. Okay, so when I say, please write this and send it to me, where it might take me 10 minutes, it'll take her a week because she's got risk in it in her mind.

Yes.

That it'll be judged, it'll be viewed differently, it'll be Whatever, and she does fine with it. She's actually just fine. Okay, but there's risk involved, so she'd rather tell me what she thinks than produce this kind of work product.

Yeah.

That's just—

it's interesting that you say that because a lot of our school system really diminishes the risk-taking. You know, with the standardized tests, everything has to be— you have to be proficient, and it really does a number on people, especially people who are— let's use the term neurodivergent— and thinking and doing things in a different way. It's— they don't fit well in that mold. So maybe we're— maybe we're heading there. Maybe, maybe our education system really needs to change. I mean, we know it. needs to change, but maybe this is— we're finally going to get there.

Yeah, there's no— I'm speaking to you as a leader of businesses now, not really— and really how to work with people, how I've learned to work with people and try to help them be successful in their job. And what the last thing I want as a leader is somebody trying to make me happy. What I actually find more productive and worth spending the money on, meaning compensating for them for the work, is them flourishing in what, what they do well.

Yeah, yeah.

And schools are a business. You think they would have that model. Yeah, no.

So the only people that mess that up are bureaucrats, and the bureaucrats are the ones that are running the schools, so Bureaucrats, they're not interested at all in proficient things or efficient things.

So can't even talk about that. You know, our time has disappeared and now our time is up, and I think we answered Chris's question, what advice do you have for children and parents with dyslexia going through school and university? And you said it, build on their strengths. Tell their stories and keep pushing through it. Don't be defined by it. I like that. And I have to thank my son Isaac and his buddy Chris for their tremendous support for the show, because without them, the show would not go on. They do all my technical work. Now, Michael, where can people find you?

Well, so the easiest place to find me is at leadershipbooks.com. I have some personal pages too where I write and speak on leadership and communication. Believe it or not, my primary purpose for speaking is communication. And I use— this is kind of interesting you bring it up, but my experience as a horseman, I, I, you know, one of the things a good horseman will teach you is he'll take you out into a herd of horses. And make you sit there until you figure out how to communicate with one another. And horses have a— horses have a language. You have to figure out what it is. And so, and then you take that, and I've learned to use that skill in the business setting or in any kind of human interaction setting. And the root of it is Make the wrong thing difficult and the right thing easy. Make the wrong thing difficult. So everything from emails, I train a company to— what do you want them to do? Do you want to go back and forth with 5 emails to have an appointment, or would you like them just to make an appointment?

Okay.

Do you want them to click on this button, or do you want them to message you? Make the wrong thing easy— or difficult, the right thing easy. How do you, how do you help your staff through HR problems and stuff, you know? And I don't mean discipline, and I don't mean carrot and stick. You know, when you're talking to a 1,400-pound horse, if you go physical, they will always win. Okay, if you go forceful, they will always win.

Yeah.

Because they're always bigger and stronger than you. So what do you do?

Yeah.

And so that's what I like to do. And you can, you can find that information at MikeStickler.com.

That's fantastic.

If you want to know about book publishing, go to LeadershipBooks.com.

That is fantastic. Thank you. And Lisa, where can listeners find you?

Mostly on Facebook, YouTube on Monday afternoons, and LinkedIn when I get on there.

Very good. And smash the like and subscribe buttons. And hit the bell for notifications for uploads to the channel and share the channel with friends and family and with all with dyslexia who can benefit from hearing our stories and books and poems and to know that dyslexic people are not alone and the channel can grow. Find me on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn and YouTube and at loislatchford.com. I'm the author of Reversed: A Memoir and I've got the audiobook. Now, this is the last one we're doing in this series because I fly to California on Wednesday and Australia the following week. And I'm there for about 2 months visiting our middle son who's moving. So we will be back at some stage, but I don't know when.

Mm-hmm.

Because I, I have been in a lot of pain this, this year and it's taken its toll on me. So I thank Lisa for all your support. And Mike, thank you for joining us today. I just appreciate all that you have given. You know, you've got a phenomenal story and there's a lot to learn from it. And you have a lot of advice.

Nice to meet you.

Nice to meet you too. I'll look for you on LinkedIn.

Ah, perfect. Thank you. Yes, we need to be buddies on LinkedIn. So thank you, and we will be back at some stage.

Recording in progress. Bye!