September 3, 2024 • 56 mins
This episode of Understanding the Science of You explores the importance of understanding differences, fostering empathy, and embracing individuality to promote unity and support. Graham speaks with Tom Parsons, who shares his family's experiences raising Dane, a child with autism, and how it has transformed their perspectives.
Key themes include:
- The challenges of communication and mutual understanding, especially between parents and children with different needs/abilities.
- The value of suspending judgment and trying to see the world through another's eyes to build compassion.
- How embracing unique talents and non-conformity can lead to personal and professional success.
- The role of empathy in strengthening relationships, improving business outcomes, and creating a more inclusive society.
The discussion emphasizes the need to move beyond blind certainty and instead celebrate the richness that comes from diverse experiences and perspectives. The podcast aims to inspire listeners to cultivate greater understanding and support for those who may think or live differently.
About Tom Parsons
When Tom and his wife Alica started a family, they had an ideal in mind. Having their 4th child Dane diagnosed with Autism began a redesign of what ideal looks like. As it turns out, something else was way better. All 4 of their kids became successful artists in diverse ways, from animation to dessert design and websites to cartoon characters. Tom supports their launches by doing marketing consulting but during his off hours, he’s an employee of his kids’ companies.
Tom’s Professional Page: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adprofessortom/
Dane’s YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@LuckyKidDaneStudiosDaneParsons
Juli’s Dessert Website: https://madampastry.com/
Jill’s Ad Agency Website: https://mediahighground.com/
ABOUT THE PODCAST Welcome to Understanding the Science of You, a podcast founded by Graham Skidmore and EnGen. It's purpose is to help you discover untapped aspects of yourself and alternative paths to personal freedom and empowerment outside of conventional systems.
We want listeners to accept responsibility for creating change in the areas they desire. Creating change is done through personal contribution, not creating controversy.
We hope listeners will be inspired to create change within their lives after listening to our podcast because they will feel:
... Someone is fighting for them ... Cared for ... Heard ... Understood ... Hopeful ... Valued ... Appreciated ... Loved by the Universe
By living an authentic and healthy life of joy, kindness and compassion to demonstrate what's possible, our listeners will provide inspiration for others to challenge their limiting beliefs to start the movement.
To learn more about the podcast, visit scienceofyoupodcast.com.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to another episode of Understanding the Science of You.
I'm your host, Graham Skidmore, the self-proclaimed breaker of mold and builder of bridges.
And I probably haven't mentioned that kind of self-proclaimed explanation too many times,
but I really wanted to mention it going into this conversation because up until
this point in time, a lot of the conversations have really focused more around,
(00:23):
I'll call it, spirituality and metaphysical or psychism.
Right as opposed to a more traditional lens
right and so if we're you know and so if if
we're talking about building bridges well we're here to talk then we're
here to help everybody understand everybody and if i
also haven't mentioned it now is also a great time for me to to to make the
(00:44):
proclamation i guess that i absolutely am against forcing conformity and will
upon people all right I absolutely believe that the way to peace and unification
is through the understanding.
Appreciating, valuing, and learning from the differences of individuality.
(01:04):
And that ain't easy. I'm not saying it's easy, but that's where peace and unification comes from.
And so everything that I'm talking about with the podcast,
right, is all about help, is hopefully helping people to see things from a different
perspective, to be able to gain that appreciation for differences,
you know, and also for the purpose of saying what the difference is going.
(01:27):
Oh, I see how I remember how I had to work through that.
So now I can understand what they're going through. right once you can see
yourself in somebody else's shoes boy is it a lot easier to
go from being judgmental to being compassionate
right and when you and when one is judgmental there's
not a whole lot of help you typically be in give it well it's a one one is compassionate
you've got a very different society right where people understand the need to
(01:52):
support each other because the world is full of plenty of wonderful intelligent
people some just happen to get a break at a different time than others or a
different type of break. Right.
And so anyway, and so joining us today is Tom Parsons and Tom,
you know, really in his family embodies a lot of what, of what I talked about
it, you know, and believe in. And I think that they've just,
(02:13):
they're just awesome people.
And so I started talking to Tom back probably two years ago now,
you know, gung-ho and ideas and anybody who's tried to start businesses otherwise
knows probably his experience that boy, there are a lot of false starts.
And so anyway, so it's taken me a little bit of time Now to circle back with
Tom, you know, you're here on the podcast.
And so Tom, tooth at one, thank you so much for joining us and being willing
(02:37):
to, you know, to be vulnerable and to talk about you and your family,
because as we were talking about before this, when you look around,
look, there's a lot of angry people. There's a lot of people trying to look for answers.
Right. And I think that generally speaking, even though people might be angry, they're not.
I don't think people want to be, right? I think people want to figure out how
to get along. And you have a lot of great perspectives, right?
(02:58):
From living in kind of two different realities, right?
One may call it a typical world or a diverse world or a traditional world versus
a metaphysical and the ability to kind of straddle and speak to both.
And so I'm really excited to have this conversation today. So let me stop now and say, now, please,
you know, what are you comfortable sharing with our listeners about yourself
(03:21):
and your family to kind of make yourself relatable and help people to see themselves
inside of you to help with their understanding?
Sure. Well, first of all, Graham, thanks for having me on.
It's an honor and privilege to get to talk about my family anyway,
let alone to somebody I've done work with in the past.
But I'm Tom Parsons, oldest of seven children.
(03:43):
I grew up in Michigan. I actually right around where you are, but I'm in Texas now.
My wife and I have been married for 27 years.
We have four grown children. They're all in their young twenties.
We started pretty early, got married straight out of school,
about a month out of college. Didn't know what we were doing.
(04:05):
Then we had almost an instant family and things Things had to change.
In context of this conversation, our youngest, who's named Dane,
Dane was diagnosed with autism at three and a half years old.
And that changed forever the dynamics of our family because all the kids were
(04:28):
three and a half years total apart.
We had a son, twin daughters, and then Dane.
They all don't know life without each other. But when Dane was diagnosed,
he was nonverbal at the time.
Really, a lot of terrible problems that come with children who don't understand
what's going on and compounded by parents who don't understand what's going on.
(04:50):
And it started a journey for us as a family that...
Definitely altered the course of our lives but that's
in context in the nutshell uh who i
am and sort of a little bit of the background of
the players involved in my life you know what speaking of not speaking of not
understanding you you hit on a lot of really important points in there and i
(05:14):
and so let's you're comfortable with you know understanding your like you said
you know know, right, Dan's perspective,
let me, not to ask you to speak for all parents, by any means,
right, but there is a real challenge and a real fear involved for all parties,
right, where they can't understand each other, and they don't understand the
(05:35):
world that they're living in, right, unless somebody has gone through that,
they, I don't think people, there is a certain level of anxiety.
Like, that only, that can only be understood by walking through those shoes.
Right. So, but one thing I want to ask you to see is what speaking to understood, right.
There's a lot of, of, of the children, right. Probably more than the parents
(05:57):
that might be listening. Right.
And so what's a word of encouragement that you could give to them that could
help them to maybe understand their parents' perspective.
Right. Cause like, Hey, like you said, just because the parents have only been
parents, as long as the kids have been kids, right. So they're learning as they go too.
And they didn't live in the way that their kids are to live in life,
right? So they're trying to figure out how to do it.
And so what's a compassionate message that you could give to help the kids,
(06:20):
you know, give some grace to their parents and maybe help to break some of that
ice and understand each other a little bit. Yeah.
Wow. That's a, that's such a deep question. And I don't even know if I'm equipped to answer it.
I know what I would have wanted my kid to say to me when he was three and a
half. Let's go start anywhere, man.
Yeah. You can talk, but I guess it would have been, I know you're,
(06:43):
you don't understand what's going on either, but just, you know.
Keep being willing to sacrifice your life for mine in a way,
I guess, is probably what I would have expected to have him say to me or wanted
him to say to me because that's honestly what was in my heart.
And I guess if a child who maybe has some disabilities or learning disorders
(07:12):
can at least step outside of themselves enough.
That's a tall order for some, to be able to see the world from a parent's perspective
just as much as you want the world to see what you see from your perspective.
Perspective, that kind of changes how we come to anything.
(07:33):
And that truly has nothing to do with special needs or neurodivergence or anything.
This is a people problem that can be solved in that way.
We generally have a misunderstanding about not just how other people think,
but even from the basis, the worldview that they come from.
(07:53):
There's this little didactic story about two guys in the Alaskan wilderness
who are one night, you know, in a bar, tavern or whatever, arguing over the existence of God.
And one is an atheist and one is religious. And they're kind of arguing,
they're a couple of beers in and they're arguing significantly.
(08:14):
And the atheist says to the religious guy, hey, it's not like I haven't delved
into the existence of whether or God is here.
I mean, just last month, I was out in the wilderness and the temperature dropped
and it started snowing and I got disoriented and I couldn't find my way back to camp.
And so I prayed to God, it would be really cool if you could help me out here.
(08:38):
And of course, the religious guy's like stunned. Like, well,
the fact that you're sitting here a month later absolutely proves that God exists.
But then he was like, oh, no, man, it was just two Eskimos found me and helped me get back to camp.
But the humor of it is that both have an unusual perspective about what's happening
(09:00):
or what happened to them.
But it's all based on a certain view of the world.
And if any kid could encourage their parent,
it is give enough space in your head to consider that there is another way of
viewing things that you can't see right now.
(09:22):
And I promise you, we're thinking about it when our kid has a meltdown in the
middle of a crowded grocery store because we skipped one of the aisles that
we were supposed to be going up and down.
And their methodology in their brain says, we skipped an aisle.
We have to go back down that one. And you're like, no, I don't need anything
on that aisle. And they completely melt down.
(09:44):
You want everyone else in the room to understand my child has autism.
He has to step on every brick. He has to be on every aisle. He has to have certain things a certain way.
Parents want that from other people. And our first default mechanism is to observe
the world through our own eyes only and not know what that is.
(10:04):
So if a kid, if a young person or even an adult who has family members who need
to be able to understand this, they've got to ask them to see the world through someone else's eyes.
And it may not necessarily be that child. I learned how to see other people
in a different way because of Dane's.
(10:27):
Autism, because I saw how he was being treated in various scenarios.
I saw how we as a family were being treated in other scenarios,
and I knew that people had gotten it all wrong.
Well, I wonder if there's any places that I get it wrong,
because I have assumed that person who cut me off is just a jerk on the road,
(10:47):
but maybe perhaps they're headed to the hospital with a way bigger need than I have.
You can do this in hundreds of scenarios in your daily life,
and that ability to step outside of yourself and see the world from someone else's perspective,
I think is a key component to adding depth to people and might actually help
(11:10):
if the child is needing to have that conversation with their parents,
this is what they got to ask for.
I mean, as somebody who's not special in any way and no special needs,
I'm not a savant of any kind.
I don't have that ability to literally know exactly how he feels.
(11:30):
But it goes a long way to sit and listen to what he thinks or what anyone thinks
as a means of understanding.
The empathy, I think, is the main key word that is required.
Required so so no so for
all my so for my medical physical friends and just i got
to do the plugs here on both empathy right many reasons
(11:53):
you know one of the reasons of living and learning you know is fostering empathy
and empathy being the underpinning of much of what is needed to expand one's
consciousness and that was just a great example of that but the other thing
you just talked about too was how many dimensions of reality coexist at the
same time right like Sometimes I think that gets like, oh, all these dimensions.
No, look, to your point, everything you just described was somebody else's dimension
(12:16):
of reality all existing.
And look, you may not think that that's special, but I think that what I'm trying
to foster is more of that, right?
It's helping them because when you can understand, like you said,
right, you can simmer down, right? As opposed to, no. No.
(12:37):
And God knows we need the world to simmer down much more than we need to heat up right now.
And, you know, I got to tell you, I had me crying a moment ago because,
you know, speaking of empathy and being able to place myself in other's shoes
is something that I've spent a lot of time on over the last few years.
And as you're talking, I'm placing myself in the shoes of a six or seven-year-old child.
(13:00):
And I'm thinking to myself, wow, what a responsibility to be on a little,
on a child to have to send it, to say.
They acknowledge that there's a misunderstanding and to ask for help and patience and compassion,
right and i'm not saying i'm not saying yeah
that's exactly right right but like someone someone's got to break the
(13:23):
chain right so whether that be that comes from the child or whether it comes from the
adult either way it's got to break the chain right and i
think and thankfully based on what my belief in consciousness and
what people are is okay not everybody's consciousness is involved
of all of all the different places and so you know
sometimes what what what is thought of as maybe a
challenged individual is just a misunderstood evolved individual right
(13:43):
that's i won't get into you know that too much right now
because that'll that'll take us down down our you know
a rabbit hole but what i would do want to focus on
is is oh also is that other way of seeing things then too right is then both
people being able to say hey what when we just did that what was your talk to
me explain to me what you saw explain to me what your Your perspective was another
(14:06):
person explaining to me what you, and it's quite fascinating, right?
It's like the people that could see an accident and they, they both saw the
shared reality was the accident, but the dimension of the reality based on what
each person saw and how it happened, you know, all of a sudden varies differently. And so.
If we can put down, there you go. I know you don't want to get down too far
(14:29):
in a rabbit hole, but to, to put a bow on this part of the conversation,
if people can learn how to.
Put down their absolute certainty that everything that they're observing through
their lens is their right,
that they are right, just long enough to let another way of thinking come into
(14:51):
their brain, there's some good news in there.
Number one, they are not going to melt down and explode.
You can hold two different ideas in your brain without it melting.
Thing number two it doesn't necessarily dismantle your basis or worldview it doesn't change.
(15:13):
Necessarily your opinion now it can which is why we let something else in to
consider it but i don't know how many times i've become more sure of something because i allowed a
differing opinion to come in and analyze it and make it butt up against what
(15:34):
I think to see if what I think or believe or know is strong enough to withstand it.
And then I guess a third option would be you can now better,
and this is for everyone, you can now better understand how to speak to people
who are different from you because you can mirror their language.
(15:55):
You can learn where they're coming from.
And that's the basis for excellent verbal communication is the ability to hear
the way someone thinks and respond to them in a way that they understand and
never have to lose what you believe or what you know by doing so.
It doesn't deplete you in any way. So there's a lot of benefits to this dismantling
(16:20):
of blind certainty that, you know, I think that would help political and racial divides,
all of society's ills, because we live in a very individualistic society where.
Truth is relative to the person.
That sounds really cool until somebody does something that offends another person
(16:45):
or hurts another person.
And all of a sudden, well, there may not be truth is what I decided is,
you know, because that doesn't benefit me when you do that to me.
You know, like it may benefit you. All of a sudden we start talking about my
truth and things like that.
And it gets into a dicey scenario. we have to be willing to step outside of
ourselves and see the world from that other perspective,
(17:07):
so i'm so glad that you go ahead no i'm saying so like hold up because that was so well said,
i think about it a lot and having dean forces that on me on the regular so let's
talk about that for a second here so you or let's pivot to that so you you mentioned
before look man i thought I was a pretty good person,
(17:28):
you know, but then once, you know, but then like Dane took me to another level of that.
Right. And so let's, and that's a very interesting in contrast to what we just
talked about, which is I spent a lot of my time going, I mean,
how do I, how do we understand each other to, wow, not only do we understand
each other, but you helped elevate me.
Walk me through that and how that worked. How it worked with Dane?
(17:53):
Yeah. Yeah. How that transitioned. Well, first of all, when he got put into
his first special needs program in kindergarten, he was still nonverbal.
And that made it quite easy for bad actors to take advantage of him.
And so he had school aides and teachers who were pretty abusive,
(18:18):
whether that's emotional to him or physical to others.
It was a bad deal.
And that, that, that took us even further into, into darkness.
But in our family, we, and you and I, I think I've talked about this before.
We sort of saw the world in a, in a grace way, but it wasn't,
(18:41):
it's not until your, your muscles get put to the test that you find out how strong you are.
And, and then you find out, man, I need to be in the gym a whole lot more than I am.
And I mean that proverbially too, figurative speaking, not just from my own
body as my years continue to remind me that I'm not what I once was.
(19:03):
But the compassion we felt towards him was...
Was fine, but it's so much more different when you get into the fabric of a
person's life and try to understand where they're at and what they're going
(19:24):
through that changes things.
So, for instance, taking it
away from autism for a second, where I think everybody would understand.
We see people panhandling. We see people come into a shelter and maybe they have to shower.
They don't have any food. They don't have a place to live.
And what are our knee-jerk, blind-certain reactions?
(19:45):
You've got people on one end of the spectrum who are like, well,
these people made their own mistakes and they're getting what they deserved.
And then there's other people who have actual compassion, but they kind of see
themselves as condescending to this person to help them.
And the reality is that both of those types of schemes are wrong.
If not for grace to ourselves, we're in the same position as many other people.
(20:09):
And I think we lose sight of that when we are so blindly certain that I do this
thing and people pay me money and I buy a house and I have a car and all these things.
And then your life explodes because of a thousand things that have nothing to do with that person.
I mean, you talk to millionaires and billionaires, a lot of them will say,
I kind of had some luck and they're not wrong.
(20:29):
They worked hard, but a lot of conditions had to be right.
And so when you realize that, That one bad turn,
a physical disablement from a car accident, or a parent who left and didn't,
if not for that, what would have happened to you?
(20:50):
What opportunities have you not had to think about getting that you got because
of the scenario you were in?
And so it changes things when you realize that you and that person have souls and you're equals.
It's just that on the outside, it looks different. And then it,
so for Dane, taking it back to how we helped ourselves through this is that
(21:15):
it, at least by the hardship of him and,
and walking him through getting recovering,
shall we say from, from this diagnosis.
It was easier for us to get out of the default setting that I'm referring to
of certain how we think things are the way they are when we saw other people
(21:37):
misinterpreting information.
And so by having that muscle in our brain be stretched,
it made us stronger and more compassionate and more empathetic and giving people
a chance to get out of their own way if they're the problem or asking questions
(21:58):
instead of making statements and demands at people.
And you just see the checkout lady at the grocery store differently.
Differently you see the a co-worker
differently but you also see the
indigent and and and the displaced and people who've just
not having advantages in the world differently and again it's not condescending
(22:21):
it is i could be in that scenario too and i in other ways with dane i have been
in that scenario let me tell you it's not fun when he was young walking out of a amusement park.
Because we're not going to get to enjoy any of this because he's overloaded
with people. There's too much going on.
(22:42):
Or we can't go to the kids' basketball game with him because a room full of
people in a gymnasium is too many lights, too many people.
So all the alterations that we had to make and in private where people just
didn't know made us think, I wonder if those people are dealing with the thing
(23:02):
that I'm dealing with in just a different variety.
And it changes the way you talk.
The tone I took with people just softened. It didn't mean I wasn't aggressive in my work or business.
It didn't mean I wasn't headstrong about helping the kids be the best versions
of themselves they could.
It just meant I did it with a little bit more of a.
(23:25):
Peace and understanding about the struggle that they had to achieve with me
or to meet the demands of the realities of our lives. And that changed it.
I know that you've talked about Dane's challenges and struggles,
and there's no doubt that, having not been a parent in that
(23:49):
respect right i can't even imagine you know the the challenge
is involved the but i
can it's funny you talked about trauma earlier not in and and i can tell myself
but i i some of my greatest trauma was regarding misunderstanding they were
being misunderstood i mean it doesn't sound like oh what do you mean trauma
(24:10):
misunderstanding let me back up that must for a second and say.
What's the value in like what do you
think about what that does to somebody's psyche to say there's no
anytime i speak it backfires on
me it makes my life worse but everybody is forcing me to try and speak to say
something and so i'm never allowed to be left in peace i'm constantly forced
(24:32):
to do things that blow up in my face to make my life more difficult right like
what a horrible That is not an enjoyable quality of life, people, right?
And so the compassion of allowing yourself to see things from somebody else's
perspective. Now I remember where I wanted to go with that was.
So now let's talk about how that escalated to.
(24:54):
Oh, I also want to acknowledge that personally from a perspective of stepping
into a person's energy and understanding somebody's contribution to a collective
consciousness as opposed to strictly on the physical plane, right?
I've always felt like Dane was just a very beautiful, special person.
I think since day one, I have always been drawn to the beauty of him.
(25:19):
I don't know how else to describe it. There is just an authentic and genuine
kindness and a love that I just appreciate about any time I've ever been looking at him.
I just seem to come to him to work. But let me grandstand for a second,
just to follow you up, your listeners.
(25:40):
That in and of itself defines exactly what I'm talking about when I say step
out of certainty and into what is the value that this person offers the world.
You saw that he was genuine and authentic.
And of course, you know about his art and his ability to animate.
(26:03):
And he's really, really talented.
Everybody in the world has a nuance like that.
And for you to be able to do that is articulating exactly what I am suggesting that everyone does.
But I would say, sometimes, as in your case, it takes getting...
(26:24):
You know, worked over at the gym of your mind and your heart and your life.
I know you've had it where that causes you to be willing to suspend disbelief
for a minute and learn to see someone else from a different perspective.
And all of a sudden, the beauty of it all starts coming out.
It's kind of like that scene in National Treasure, Nick Cage,
(26:46):
when he stole the Declaration of Independence.
Have you seen that one? where the crescendo, the highest point of the movie,
they go underground and they finally find this treasure,
but he lights a torch and it lights the entire room and there's layer after
layer after layer of goods and gold and treasures and historical artifacts all
(27:07):
just sitting in this giant room.
And the light keeps going further and further in depth and you start seeing
how much is actually there.
I think that is a good metaphor for what happens when you immediately light
something in someone's life to see what's going on,
and all of a sudden you understand and learn, man, this kid is truly authentic.
(27:33):
He's smart and talented and all these things. I wish, you know,
I'm trying to see in beautiful, rich pictures the way that he does, right? Right.
So before I get it, so, I mean, just to that point, like I can,
I can go down a whole, we'll go down there to actually do the main, just a second.
But before that, let's talk about, I want, I want to, I want the listeners to understand how,
(27:55):
You created, I don't know, I guess you took your family and said,
hey, this is how we're all going to kind of work together and make ourselves a functional unit.
I think almost everybody, is everybody self-employed?
No, they're all artists, but they're not all self-employed.
One, self-employment is a side hustle now. And Dane's older brother,
(28:16):
who you've met as his creative director, does that also as a side hustle too,
but he is not owning his own company now.
No, so let's talk about that. So like we just talked about Dane and how the
world would perceive him.
However, we're going to fast forward this and do right after all this awesome
parenting, right? All this awesome understanding.
(28:38):
Now this transforms into Dane being a award-receiving artist.
I don't want to steal that. You say it properly so that he gets the credit he deserves.
Sure. Okay. So obviously the story, Dean's story didn't end with him getting
emotionally and mentally abused in a school at a previous city.
(29:01):
Along the way, teachers who have done like you're talking about and what I'm
suggesting have just slowed down,
descended into particulars with him have realized all of this and they've conspired
to assist him because that genuine authenticity shines through his talent is usable.
(29:25):
And so I think we were up to five different educators in his life have all changed the course of their,
their life's work because of like a kindergarten or first grade teacher went
back to the school, got a master's to become a special education teacher.
And I think she's become an administrator of a school now because what she did
(29:47):
in the special needs sector of her work was insanely good.
Another one skipped third grade after having third grade for a number of years
to teach fifth grade so she could get Dane again.
There's been one quitter job to be his private instructor for a year while we
were in a state of transition as a family.
(30:07):
There have been a lot of people who have changed the course of their work.
Well, one of them, as Dane entered high school, was the audiovisual teacher
at his local high school.
And immediately, he connected with Dane, showed Dane some of the software that
Dane had not seen before.
(30:28):
And of course, as soon as he saw it, figured it out because he's like that very tenacious.
And boom, he was off to the races. His freshman year, he was absolutely sure
he was going to win a state championship.
In animation but as it
turns out he wasn't yet good at storytelling even though
he was really good at animation and because he's
(30:50):
not very good in his ability to
communicate explanations of things so the concept was cool it was like it was
called the ink pirates and the lost colors about a family a royal family who
split off and because there was a death of the family and it's almost like a
kind of a game of thrones succession that you never know in any of those
(31:10):
type of things but a couple of the family peeled
away out of the world of colors and they went into the world
of black and white and they were like the one was named anchor because he was
black ink and well anyways years later he comes with the rest of them who came
with him and tries to storm the castle and all the colors and all this stuff
it was really kind of a fascinating thing but the dialogue was absolutely terrible
(31:33):
so as each year progressed he got better and better at animation,
but he also got better and better at storytelling.
And his senior year, he wrote a story that actually was not as good a story.
But it was, he told it so much better that he just, I mean, it was a unanimous
decision that the judges couldn't get enough of it.
(31:55):
They were, they loved, they came up to us as a family. You're like,
you know, I got to meet this kid. He's so special.
It was this, uh, a video was called a story of mace.
Mace is this kid who grows up in a black and white world and he has blonde hair.
And when he wears clothes, they're called, they have color in them.
And there's all these things that people don't like him.
(32:18):
And he gets a job painting sidewalks and he's told everything's going to be
gray. Just paint everything gray.
And he starts, you know, not doing that. And so they fire him.
And one day he just gets out his colors and starts coloring a sidewalk and kids
are bullying him and all that stuff.
And then miraculously there's this change and all of a sudden the world starts
(32:40):
turning into color. and it's this beautiful, embrace the differences in each
other and stuff like that. And you're like, oh, I get it now.
And it has a really good one-two punch there.
Such a good story, but people just resonate with people.
And so he won a state championship with it and immediately started recruiting
(33:01):
work before he even graduated from high school. And he had a provisional diploma.
I mean, he never took any of the state standardized testing. He was exempt.
Algebraic equations. No, thank you. Why would I choose multiple choice?
Which by the way, as you can probably figure out, my wife has worked so diligently with him.
(33:23):
He is very verbal, still has all the literal, no figures of speech,
doesn't understand anything.
Some of the t-shirts he's had made, we've just had them made because they're so funny.
There's these two palm trees with their palm fronds all draped down and there's
a sun beating down on them and they're sweating.
And the eyes and the coconuts are eyes and stuff like that. And the,
(33:44):
and the caption is sweaty palms with a question mark.
Like he doesn't see that the same way we would say sweaty palms and know what that means.
You know, he heard, he heard one of the, my daughter's boyfriends who was from Arkansas.
He's not part of our family scenario anymore, but he used to say dad gum.
Like that's what some of they say in the South dad gum it like,
(34:06):
and so when Dane heard dad gum,
he just thought of an old man who stepped in gum and got mad about it.
And so we drew, he drew a picture of that and put out a t-shirt.
Someone said, I make a mean sandwich. And so he had a picture of a sandwich where the,
like a mean face on it like where do
you come up with this stuff because he sees the world so literally we
(34:28):
just play with it let it let him let him now
dance with that and i think that has helped when people are trying to convey
a message that his actual ability to be super literal and then also be good
as an artist sort of helps him see how to tell the story in a
(34:48):
in a different way and so it's it's actually it's actually worked out pretty
well for him so i want to take what you just talked about and challenge the
concept of a standardized intelligence and standardized and actually what is
understood as emotional intelligence right because.
I would are because for dane to be able
(35:11):
to on to be able to put into visuals what
you just described drive takes a i
would say what i would say you know the challenge is
that his understanding is so much more rich than what others
are that he can't actually dunk i said
some dumb it down to put it into words to help others explain right
like that's like like he's like look man i did that been
(35:33):
there done that the you know that words thing that doesn't
get the point across where the pictures do right like this is where i'm at
now and and and so i
guess the simple a simple question would be
to say is the world so is the
world or would the world have been better off
or had dane learned how to conform and take tests and go into the system or
(36:00):
is the world better off for dane being dane and not fitting into the system
and then therefore having the impact that he had I don't know that you just
talked. I mean, I'll be, I'll be honest.
I really want my doctors and accountants to have taken and passed some tests.
All right. There are certain people in my life that I, I don't want them to
(36:26):
have just been an explorer as a, as a methodology of learning.
But there is a large swath of society that does not learn, whether they're neurodivergent,
special needs, cognitive disabilities,
autism spectrum, all types, that do not...
(36:50):
Benefit from the homogenized way that learning is done.
And so in many ways, we have taken this to heart.
All four of our kids have had a version of classical model school,
homeschool, public school, private, in-home from an outside teacher.
We've done all sorts of methods that were the right fit for the time on how they grew.
(37:16):
Now, if you've got parents listening who want to do that, That word of caution, start saving.
It's not cheap. It's not easy. It's hard work, but it's worth it because my
kids have gotten a well-rounded education because I took that tack that says,
I'm going to teach them how they learn.
(37:37):
I'm not going to teach them how I test.
And I don't know how you solve that for society when you've got schools where
there's 200, 500, 1,000 kids in a graduating class?
How do you break that down into the small pieces?
I don't know that I have the answer for society on that.
(37:58):
I just know that if I draw a circle around what I'm responsible for.
Then I make sure that everything that happens inside that circle is maximized
for the benefit of them to society to do that with their circle next and then their circle next.
And maybe those great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren or nieces and
(38:22):
nephews and great-nieces and nephews will never know who I was or what I did in the world.
But if they are actually doing the thing that we're trying to draw a circle
around your family and take care of that first,
you know, have it in order before you go try to solve these,
I at least can be softer with the world system.
(38:43):
System and well of course you know
there's a lot of parents who don't care a lot of bureaucrats
who don't understand and of course they're
going to get it wrong but i'm not going to sit here and pound
them for getting it wrong when i don't have the solution solved for them as
a backup you know what i mean i've been in yeah that's me i got that i don't
(39:05):
like it when people complain to me and don't have at least three solutions and
which one of those that you think would be best like tell me You know,
I'm not here with all the ideas.
I'm here to tell you what the wrong ones are, maybe. But are you're here to tell me what's wrong?
So because I can't see it. But as far as regular life, though,
I don't know that I can do that with our our government system or our society worldview as a whole.
(39:27):
All I can make sure is if I get it right and it resonates to Graham Skidmore and his audience.
Then maybe they'll want to emulate that and they can do it in their own circle,
how their children learn or how their family dynamics work because everybody's
just a little bit different.
And so even though there might be some hard truths, there's a lot of gray area
(39:50):
to work around in how you get that done.
I don't follow, you know, we talk about nonconformity and this is a part of
me comes out. I'm not that guy.
I'm going to do what the right thing is to do, even if it's not the popular thing to do.
Nate, look, you just described a lot of my circle, right? I've taken on that
(40:11):
responsibility, right?
Because you're part of creating the sub-societies that cater to the different,
because not to create segregation, but for the sake of creating,
I'm going to lack of a better description, a control group to demonstrate how
it's misunderstood, right? Right.
And the only way that you can truly do that is if you allow something to operate
inside of its own integrity and authenticity.
Right. And then you can worry about different integration. But right now,
(40:34):
to your point, when you put different and try to integrate different,
it's not appreciated. It's abused and oppressed.
Right. And that just ain't cool. Right. So there's so that's so believe me,
I'm going to be beaten on that drum. Don't don't don't worry.
You know, but the other thing that but I do want to talk to you, Megan.
This is something that talking about changing, you know, how do we get that change?
(40:55):
I would kind of carve out into two sections what you described as what I refer
to as, I'm going to call it a universal intelligence, which is the ability to
have a defined purpose, outcome,
problem solving, individual thought.
That's not turning on a device. Turning on a device is not a demonstration of intelligence. Okay.
(41:19):
So what I just described is a universal demonstration of intelligence and being
able how to, as a consciousness, learn how to operate and navigate.
Inside of that, to your point, now, but when it does come to having a subject matter expertise,
then yes, that obviously there's a certain level of responsibility for some
to ensure a certain level of competency when it comes to certain subject matter
(41:43):
expertises, especially those that have the effect of hurting others like surgeons,
pilots, you know, things like that.
You know, you want them to demonstrate competency. So I definitely want to,
you know, I think that's an important distinction there that I just want to
say to people because yeah, I, I, I, while I'm all about the uniform aspects of intelligence,
I do also like you want to know that people are capable of being safe behind
(42:06):
the wheel of a 2000 or 3000 death machine before they're given one.
That's right. Yes. I went with the simple stuff like accountants, but yes,
my pilots and truck drivers I share the road with, and everybody,
you're going to need to pass some tests, but to your point, there's a level of nuance required.
(42:28):
For the rest of the world to be able to learn and do things in a respected, respectable way.
And so learning how to do different things. And this is where,
you know, kind of wrapping up,
I want to give you a chance to grandstand because this is what I went to.
My experience in business has also been that if everybody comes through the
(42:51):
system being taught the same thing to do in the same way, then everyone's going
to get the same things, right?
And so Tom hasn't talked about himself. He's going to here in a second in his career.
But what I will preface this with is the old, to get what we've never had,
we must do what we've never done, or keep doing what you're doing,
keep getting what you're getting.
And I think that if Tom takes a different perspective to life and is then able
(43:14):
to better understand different audiences in life,
then I would say that it's just logical that that also translates into being
able to understand different audiences and how to communicate and engage them in business as well.
So, Tom, so now I know we've been talking about this, but the least I can do
is to, you know, hopefully have some, you know, give you a chance to talk about
(43:36):
your business as well, since you were kind enough to share about yourself and
your family to help others.
You know, hopefully there's some listeners that could also benefit from your
professional services.
So help explain, yeah, what is it that you do or you and or your family,
right? And who would be your type of ideal client and who should get touched?
Sure. Okay. So I should make a disclaimer. I do have a corporate job.
(43:59):
I am a sales trainer. I'm a marketing trainer.
I do white gloves, strategic planning for large clients in the company I work for.
And I do managerial support on various initiatives. It is a wear a lot of hats kind of job.
But if somebody were to call you out of the blue and give
(44:19):
you work you'd yeah i would definitely be oh
good deal okay i just want to make
sure that i'm not painting a picture when someone finds
me on linkedin and that doesn't match what he said okay because i have a different
i have a different world there altogether yeah i don't want to get in trouble
with your employer for right now it is my it is my bread and butter it helps
(44:41):
keep the various responsibilities i have being met but.
So we'll start with Dane because he's the main focus of this conversation in my family necessarily.
But Dane has a studio called LKD Studios.
It stands for Lucky Kid Dane. At some point, he started referring to himself that way and it stuck.
(45:02):
So LKD Studios is his brand. And he does character designs and animations,
everything from explainer videos to characters on the side of a van if a plumber
wants a character built.
He and his brother work on those types of things together. But there's a lot
(45:22):
of things in the world that need to be done from an animation perspective.
Perspective, I'm thinking of one where the occupational therapist wanted him
to make a video helping people,
children understand when they go see a speech therapist or an occupational therapist
not to be scared, what is this going to do for me, but from a kid's perspective.
(45:44):
And he did that. That was a really cool project for him.
He's done a bunch of those kinds of things, but they're all sort of
you know as they come he's got a linkedin page
you can follow lkd studios it's that point look
my glasses that i wear are you know i don't wear
these things quote-unquote shaded because i'm trying to be cool i do them because
you know there's a you know i was diagnosed called erlin syndrome which is you
(46:07):
know affects the brain's ability to take in light and all these other things
and so but because it and i can tell you it's a it's way more common especially
people people that are either neurodivergent or think of themselves as a warrior differently,
you know, and sometimes he gets confused with dyslexia and other things.
And Dane was able to put together a video that helped people to be like, oh, that's what that is.
Oh, I could totally relate to that. So just to your point, he really does a
(46:32):
tremendous job of being able to put the audience into the shoes of,
I guess, the recipient or the customer, for lack of a better way to say it,
right? And get them to relate.
And yeah, he does an awesome job. Yeah. So that's, I help him with that because
obviously working with clients is not going to be his easiest way to communicate.
I fill in the gap for him when he has projects and we've done projects together.
(46:58):
One of his sisters, who is also in a corporate job now, has a side hustle called MadamPastry.com.
She is a dessert artist, professional baker, and has arguably the best French
macarons I've ever tasted in my life.
Every time I go someplace, if I see macarons, I try them in other cities and
(47:21):
I'm like, not good enough.
She's just so good at it. she's kind of like the
walter white breaking bad of dessert because she's tinkering
and trying to make it absolutely perfect and she can taste
the differences in things and be like oh this needs a little bit more nutmeg
or if they would have waited like five more minutes to whip this so this would
have been a little bit better consistency and it's like she just knows stuff
(47:43):
it's the coolest thing but i do not help her with that business unless you consider
eating the scraps and profit,
then I help in a great way.
But her twin sister, Jill, is the one in which my personal side hustle is housed.
And Jill started a full-service advertising agency called Media High Ground, mediahighground.com.
(48:09):
People can look at that and see what she does, but it's soup to nuts.
Everything from media buying and planning, strategy, social media,
website, SEO, pay-per-click and how all of those fit together under one strategy.
She was paying attention for years and I would take her to events that I was
either speaking at, lectures I was giving, or networking forums that I was involved in.
(48:35):
And she observed for a long time about my business.
And she decided at the end of her senior year of college, she wanted to hang a shingle.
And I'm like, all right, well, I'll give you my Rolodex. And she's like,
yeah, I know those those people I'll call myself.
So when she got in touch with a few people, they connect her to some others
and immediately she started getting work.
She's a graphic designer also, which is the art side for her. And I am not.
(48:59):
So she can actually either do everything or has affiliate partners that I got
her in touch with that can run everything else.
And so that is a huge deal for us because she's got that factor,
the it factor and clients love it.
She gets some results. adults growing their businesses is
the name of the game and she does it and so there's that
(49:21):
then our oldest i would say he's
the biggest unsung hero in our family because he's quiet mild-mannered happy
to be in the shadows if he doesn't get observed in a room full of people he's
very comfortable with not being observed but he is one of those ones who provided us a rope.
(49:43):
With Dane, when we really were at our wits end, he just always seemed to be even keel.
And it was a good litmus test on what is possible because he was in a shared room with this kid.
And he had to deal with the fact that Dane was unruly or frustrated and all these things.
And Thomas was just so even-tempered, never higher than anybody else,
(50:08):
never lower than anybody else either. And he shouldered that burden.
And so he's got a quiet life, works for a screen printer and doing some design,
but also is his brother's creative director.
Because sometimes I, as a sales guy, I'm trying to tell Dane,
no, the client wants it like this.
And I don't know how to translate that. And Thomas is like, I got it.
I'll take care of it. And boom, things get done.
(50:30):
He's just that glue to the family.
And he's a very good accoutrement to an imbalance of our ecosystem.
Because when you have this many wild individualistic characters,
he's one of those people who kind of holds everyone together in a very understated
way that is very special to this family.
(50:51):
So we enjoy him. But he's not as gregarious and he doesn't have all of the flashy
ways of doing things like his siblings.
So he definitely sort of, I mean, there are people in our town and we're known
in our city who are like, wait, you have an older son? Like they don't even know.
And, you know, and he's okay with it. He's okay with it.
(51:12):
He likes his vibe and we're kind of fans of it too. So that's,
that's the business models that we're involved in and how art plays into it
and what our family dynamic is like.
And I, I'm, you know, I consider myself very rich person, even if I'm not necessarily
in the world's terms wealthy. healthy.
(51:32):
I just, I mean, I have an experience that I know other people would like in that comparison.
I, I try to keep it at the, at the back burner, but sometimes it's forced out
because the kids are in spotlights that, that, uh.
People want to know things about them. So I try to embrace it the best I can
without, you know, getting over our skis, as they say, too far, you know.
(51:57):
You know, I keep talking forever. And I know we've already gone a little bit
longer than what we slated.
So I really appreciate you, you know, having the time to go around.
And it's the last bit, especially, like all of this whole conversation has been great.
I'm not even going to add anything because, look, I think the way,
what you just said about again
(52:18):
i'm going to call it dismantling the blind
certainty of what wealth is if that's
appropriate or not right and is you know is leads to
the for those of you that can't see it this is
a happy man and for those of you who can't i'm telling you
the energy is not the just it's legit it's real he's
not just putting on the happy face and talking right like this is
(52:40):
a person who understands the quality of life regardless of stuff that's happening
to them and so and that comes from the perspective in which he you know chooses
to operate with it it's such a beautiful beautiful thing and frankly selfishly
i needed a bit of that myself today and so i appreciate you you know you providing
that and living for the listeners don't worry
all of the all of the uh contact information we're going to you know put up
(53:04):
with the video and the link so people can click through and so tom i just i
can't thank you enough for sharing the different perspectives and the words
of wisdom. And he had a wonderful way of just saying things.
And so I hope that, you know, our goal is always just to have somebody listen
at the end and be like, oh, that makes sense to me.
Oh, I feel to feel more comfortable or better about themselves by the time we're
(53:25):
done talking. If we did that, then that's a win, right?
And so I hope that somebody listening, a bunch of people listening,
had that experience. Hope everybody had an awesome week and take care until next time.
Welcome to another episode of Understanding the Science of You.
I'm your host, Graham Skidmore, the self-proclaimed breaker of mold and builder of bridges.
And I probably haven't mentioned that kind of self-proclaimed explanation too many times,
but I really wanted to mention it going into this conversation because up until
this point in time, a lot of the conversations have really focused more around,
(00:23):
I'll call it, spirituality and metaphysical or psychism.
Right as opposed to a more traditional lens
right and so if we're you know and so if if
we're talking about building bridges well we're here to talk then we're
here to help everybody understand everybody and if i
also haven't mentioned it now is also a great time for me to to to make the
(00:44):
proclamation i guess that i absolutely am against forcing conformity and will
upon people all right I absolutely believe that the way to peace and unification
is through the understanding.
Appreciating, valuing, and learning from the differences of individuality.
(01:04):
And that ain't easy. I'm not saying it's easy, but that's where peace and unification comes from.
And so everything that I'm talking about with the podcast,
right, is all about help, is hopefully helping people to see things from a different
perspective, to be able to gain that appreciation for differences,
you know, and also for the purpose of saying what the difference is going.
(01:27):
Oh, I see how I remember how I had to work through that.
So now I can understand what they're going through. right once you can see
yourself in somebody else's shoes boy is it a lot easier to
go from being judgmental to being compassionate
right and when you and when one is judgmental there's
not a whole lot of help you typically be in give it well it's a one one is compassionate
you've got a very different society right where people understand the need to
(01:52):
support each other because the world is full of plenty of wonderful intelligent
people some just happen to get a break at a different time than others or a
different type of break. Right.
And so anyway, and so joining us today is Tom Parsons and Tom,
you know, really in his family embodies a lot of what, of what I talked about
it, you know, and believe in. And I think that they've just,
(02:13):
they're just awesome people.
And so I started talking to Tom back probably two years ago now,
you know, gung-ho and ideas and anybody who's tried to start businesses otherwise
knows probably his experience that boy, there are a lot of false starts.
And so anyway, so it's taken me a little bit of time Now to circle back with
Tom, you know, you're here on the podcast.
And so Tom, tooth at one, thank you so much for joining us and being willing
(02:37):
to, you know, to be vulnerable and to talk about you and your family,
because as we were talking about before this, when you look around,
look, there's a lot of angry people. There's a lot of people trying to look for answers.
Right. And I think that generally speaking, even though people might be angry, they're not.
I don't think people want to be, right? I think people want to figure out how
to get along. And you have a lot of great perspectives, right?
(02:58):
From living in kind of two different realities, right?
One may call it a typical world or a diverse world or a traditional world versus
a metaphysical and the ability to kind of straddle and speak to both.
And so I'm really excited to have this conversation today. So let me stop now and say, now, please,
you know, what are you comfortable sharing with our listeners about yourself
(03:21):
and your family to kind of make yourself relatable and help people to see themselves
inside of you to help with their understanding?
Sure. Well, first of all, Graham, thanks for having me on.
It's an honor and privilege to get to talk about my family anyway,
let alone to somebody I've done work with in the past.
But I'm Tom Parsons, oldest of seven children.
(03:43):
I grew up in Michigan. I actually right around where you are, but I'm in Texas now.
My wife and I have been married for 27 years.
We have four grown children. They're all in their young twenties.
We started pretty early, got married straight out of school,
about a month out of college. Didn't know what we were doing.
(04:05):
Then we had almost an instant family and things Things had to change.
In context of this conversation, our youngest, who's named Dane,
Dane was diagnosed with autism at three and a half years old.
And that changed forever the dynamics of our family because all the kids were
(04:28):
three and a half years total apart.
We had a son, twin daughters, and then Dane.
They all don't know life without each other. But when Dane was diagnosed,
he was nonverbal at the time.
Really, a lot of terrible problems that come with children who don't understand
what's going on and compounded by parents who don't understand what's going on.
(04:50):
And it started a journey for us as a family that...
Definitely altered the course of our lives but that's
in context in the nutshell uh who i
am and sort of a little bit of the background of
the players involved in my life you know what speaking of not speaking of not
understanding you you hit on a lot of really important points in there and i
(05:14):
and so let's you're comfortable with you know understanding your like you said
you know know, right, Dan's perspective,
let me, not to ask you to speak for all parents, by any means,
right, but there is a real challenge and a real fear involved for all parties,
right, where they can't understand each other, and they don't understand the
(05:35):
world that they're living in, right, unless somebody has gone through that,
they, I don't think people, there is a certain level of anxiety.
Like, that only, that can only be understood by walking through those shoes.
Right. So, but one thing I want to ask you to see is what speaking to understood, right.
There's a lot of, of, of the children, right. Probably more than the parents
(05:57):
that might be listening. Right.
And so what's a word of encouragement that you could give to them that could
help them to maybe understand their parents' perspective.
Right. Cause like, Hey, like you said, just because the parents have only been
parents, as long as the kids have been kids, right. So they're learning as they go too.
And they didn't live in the way that their kids are to live in life,
right? So they're trying to figure out how to do it.
And so what's a compassionate message that you could give to help the kids,
(06:20):
you know, give some grace to their parents and maybe help to break some of that
ice and understand each other a little bit. Yeah.
Wow. That's a, that's such a deep question. And I don't even know if I'm equipped to answer it.
I know what I would have wanted my kid to say to me when he was three and a
half. Let's go start anywhere, man.
Yeah. You can talk, but I guess it would have been, I know you're,
(06:43):
you don't understand what's going on either, but just, you know.
Keep being willing to sacrifice your life for mine in a way,
I guess, is probably what I would have expected to have him say to me or wanted
him to say to me because that's honestly what was in my heart.
And I guess if a child who maybe has some disabilities or learning disorders
(07:12):
can at least step outside of themselves enough.
That's a tall order for some, to be able to see the world from a parent's perspective
just as much as you want the world to see what you see from your perspective.
Perspective, that kind of changes how we come to anything.
(07:33):
And that truly has nothing to do with special needs or neurodivergence or anything.
This is a people problem that can be solved in that way.
We generally have a misunderstanding about not just how other people think,
but even from the basis, the worldview that they come from.
(07:53):
There's this little didactic story about two guys in the Alaskan wilderness
who are one night, you know, in a bar, tavern or whatever, arguing over the existence of God.
And one is an atheist and one is religious. And they're kind of arguing,
they're a couple of beers in and they're arguing significantly.
(08:14):
And the atheist says to the religious guy, hey, it's not like I haven't delved
into the existence of whether or God is here.
I mean, just last month, I was out in the wilderness and the temperature dropped
and it started snowing and I got disoriented and I couldn't find my way back to camp.
And so I prayed to God, it would be really cool if you could help me out here.
(08:38):
And of course, the religious guy's like stunned. Like, well,
the fact that you're sitting here a month later absolutely proves that God exists.
But then he was like, oh, no, man, it was just two Eskimos found me and helped me get back to camp.
But the humor of it is that both have an unusual perspective about what's happening
(09:00):
or what happened to them.
But it's all based on a certain view of the world.
And if any kid could encourage their parent,
it is give enough space in your head to consider that there is another way of
viewing things that you can't see right now.
(09:22):
And I promise you, we're thinking about it when our kid has a meltdown in the
middle of a crowded grocery store because we skipped one of the aisles that
we were supposed to be going up and down.
And their methodology in their brain says, we skipped an aisle.
We have to go back down that one. And you're like, no, I don't need anything
on that aisle. And they completely melt down.
(09:44):
You want everyone else in the room to understand my child has autism.
He has to step on every brick. He has to be on every aisle. He has to have certain things a certain way.
Parents want that from other people. And our first default mechanism is to observe
the world through our own eyes only and not know what that is.
(10:04):
So if a kid, if a young person or even an adult who has family members who need
to be able to understand this, they've got to ask them to see the world through someone else's eyes.
And it may not necessarily be that child. I learned how to see other people
in a different way because of Dane's.
(10:27):
Autism, because I saw how he was being treated in various scenarios.
I saw how we as a family were being treated in other scenarios,
and I knew that people had gotten it all wrong.
Well, I wonder if there's any places that I get it wrong,
because I have assumed that person who cut me off is just a jerk on the road,
(10:47):
but maybe perhaps they're headed to the hospital with a way bigger need than I have.
You can do this in hundreds of scenarios in your daily life,
and that ability to step outside of yourself and see the world from someone else's perspective,
I think is a key component to adding depth to people and might actually help
(11:10):
if the child is needing to have that conversation with their parents,
this is what they got to ask for.
I mean, as somebody who's not special in any way and no special needs,
I'm not a savant of any kind.
I don't have that ability to literally know exactly how he feels.
(11:30):
But it goes a long way to sit and listen to what he thinks or what anyone thinks
as a means of understanding.
The empathy, I think, is the main key word that is required.
Required so so no so for
all my so for my medical physical friends and just i got
to do the plugs here on both empathy right many reasons
(11:53):
you know one of the reasons of living and learning you know is fostering empathy
and empathy being the underpinning of much of what is needed to expand one's
consciousness and that was just a great example of that but the other thing
you just talked about too was how many dimensions of reality coexist at the
same time right like Sometimes I think that gets like, oh, all these dimensions.
No, look, to your point, everything you just described was somebody else's dimension
(12:16):
of reality all existing.
And look, you may not think that that's special, but I think that what I'm trying
to foster is more of that, right?
It's helping them because when you can understand, like you said,
right, you can simmer down, right? As opposed to, no. No.
(12:37):
And God knows we need the world to simmer down much more than we need to heat up right now.
And, you know, I got to tell you, I had me crying a moment ago because,
you know, speaking of empathy and being able to place myself in other's shoes
is something that I've spent a lot of time on over the last few years.
And as you're talking, I'm placing myself in the shoes of a six or seven-year-old child.
(13:00):
And I'm thinking to myself, wow, what a responsibility to be on a little,
on a child to have to send it, to say.
They acknowledge that there's a misunderstanding and to ask for help and patience and compassion,
right and i'm not saying i'm not saying yeah
that's exactly right right but like someone someone's got to break the
(13:23):
chain right so whether that be that comes from the child or whether it comes from the
adult either way it's got to break the chain right and i
think and thankfully based on what my belief in consciousness and
what people are is okay not everybody's consciousness is involved
of all of all the different places and so you know
sometimes what what what is thought of as maybe a
challenged individual is just a misunderstood evolved individual right
(13:43):
that's i won't get into you know that too much right now
because that'll that'll take us down down our you know
a rabbit hole but what i would do want to focus on
is is oh also is that other way of seeing things then too right is then both
people being able to say hey what when we just did that what was your talk to
me explain to me what you saw explain to me what your Your perspective was another
(14:06):
person explaining to me what you, and it's quite fascinating, right?
It's like the people that could see an accident and they, they both saw the
shared reality was the accident, but the dimension of the reality based on what
each person saw and how it happened, you know, all of a sudden varies differently. And so.
If we can put down, there you go. I know you don't want to get down too far
(14:29):
in a rabbit hole, but to, to put a bow on this part of the conversation,
if people can learn how to.
Put down their absolute certainty that everything that they're observing through
their lens is their right,
that they are right, just long enough to let another way of thinking come into
(14:51):
their brain, there's some good news in there.
Number one, they are not going to melt down and explode.
You can hold two different ideas in your brain without it melting.
Thing number two it doesn't necessarily dismantle your basis or worldview it doesn't change.
(15:13):
Necessarily your opinion now it can which is why we let something else in to
consider it but i don't know how many times i've become more sure of something because i allowed a
differing opinion to come in and analyze it and make it butt up against what
(15:34):
I think to see if what I think or believe or know is strong enough to withstand it.
And then I guess a third option would be you can now better,
and this is for everyone, you can now better understand how to speak to people
who are different from you because you can mirror their language.
(15:55):
You can learn where they're coming from.
And that's the basis for excellent verbal communication is the ability to hear
the way someone thinks and respond to them in a way that they understand and
never have to lose what you believe or what you know by doing so.
It doesn't deplete you in any way. So there's a lot of benefits to this dismantling
(16:20):
of blind certainty that, you know, I think that would help political and racial divides,
all of society's ills, because we live in a very individualistic society where.
Truth is relative to the person.
That sounds really cool until somebody does something that offends another person
(16:45):
or hurts another person.
And all of a sudden, well, there may not be truth is what I decided is,
you know, because that doesn't benefit me when you do that to me.
You know, like it may benefit you. All of a sudden we start talking about my
truth and things like that.
And it gets into a dicey scenario. we have to be willing to step outside of
ourselves and see the world from that other perspective,
(17:07):
so i'm so glad that you go ahead no i'm saying so like hold up because that was so well said,
i think about it a lot and having dean forces that on me on the regular so let's
talk about that for a second here so you or let's pivot to that so you you mentioned
before look man i thought I was a pretty good person,
(17:28):
you know, but then once, you know, but then like Dane took me to another level of that.
Right. And so let's, and that's a very interesting in contrast to what we just
talked about, which is I spent a lot of my time going, I mean,
how do I, how do we understand each other to, wow, not only do we understand
each other, but you helped elevate me.
Walk me through that and how that worked. How it worked with Dane?
(17:53):
Yeah. Yeah. How that transitioned. Well, first of all, when he got put into
his first special needs program in kindergarten, he was still nonverbal.
And that made it quite easy for bad actors to take advantage of him.
And so he had school aides and teachers who were pretty abusive,
(18:18):
whether that's emotional to him or physical to others.
It was a bad deal.
And that, that, that took us even further into, into darkness.
But in our family, we, and you and I, I think I've talked about this before.
We sort of saw the world in a, in a grace way, but it wasn't,
(18:41):
it's not until your, your muscles get put to the test that you find out how strong you are.
And, and then you find out, man, I need to be in the gym a whole lot more than I am.
And I mean that proverbially too, figurative speaking, not just from my own
body as my years continue to remind me that I'm not what I once was.
(19:03):
But the compassion we felt towards him was...
Was fine, but it's so much more different when you get into the fabric of a
person's life and try to understand where they're at and what they're going
(19:24):
through that changes things.
So, for instance, taking it
away from autism for a second, where I think everybody would understand.
We see people panhandling. We see people come into a shelter and maybe they have to shower.
They don't have any food. They don't have a place to live.
And what are our knee-jerk, blind-certain reactions?
(19:45):
You've got people on one end of the spectrum who are like, well,
these people made their own mistakes and they're getting what they deserved.
And then there's other people who have actual compassion, but they kind of see
themselves as condescending to this person to help them.
And the reality is that both of those types of schemes are wrong.
If not for grace to ourselves, we're in the same position as many other people.
(20:09):
And I think we lose sight of that when we are so blindly certain that I do this
thing and people pay me money and I buy a house and I have a car and all these things.
And then your life explodes because of a thousand things that have nothing to do with that person.
I mean, you talk to millionaires and billionaires, a lot of them will say,
I kind of had some luck and they're not wrong.
(20:29):
They worked hard, but a lot of conditions had to be right.
And so when you realize that, That one bad turn,
a physical disablement from a car accident, or a parent who left and didn't,
if not for that, what would have happened to you?
(20:50):
What opportunities have you not had to think about getting that you got because
of the scenario you were in?
And so it changes things when you realize that you and that person have souls and you're equals.
It's just that on the outside, it looks different. And then it,
so for Dane, taking it back to how we helped ourselves through this is that
(21:15):
it, at least by the hardship of him and,
and walking him through getting recovering,
shall we say from, from this diagnosis.
It was easier for us to get out of the default setting that I'm referring to
of certain how we think things are the way they are when we saw other people
(21:37):
misinterpreting information.
And so by having that muscle in our brain be stretched,
it made us stronger and more compassionate and more empathetic and giving people
a chance to get out of their own way if they're the problem or asking questions
(21:58):
instead of making statements and demands at people.
And you just see the checkout lady at the grocery store differently.
Differently you see the a co-worker
differently but you also see the
indigent and and and the displaced and people who've just
not having advantages in the world differently and again it's not condescending
(22:21):
it is i could be in that scenario too and i in other ways with dane i have been
in that scenario let me tell you it's not fun when he was young walking out of a amusement park.
Because we're not going to get to enjoy any of this because he's overloaded
with people. There's too much going on.
(22:42):
Or we can't go to the kids' basketball game with him because a room full of
people in a gymnasium is too many lights, too many people.
So all the alterations that we had to make and in private where people just
didn't know made us think, I wonder if those people are dealing with the thing
(23:02):
that I'm dealing with in just a different variety.
And it changes the way you talk.
The tone I took with people just softened. It didn't mean I wasn't aggressive in my work or business.
It didn't mean I wasn't headstrong about helping the kids be the best versions
of themselves they could.
It just meant I did it with a little bit more of a.
(23:25):
Peace and understanding about the struggle that they had to achieve with me
or to meet the demands of the realities of our lives. And that changed it.
I know that you've talked about Dane's challenges and struggles,
and there's no doubt that, having not been a parent in that
(23:49):
respect right i can't even imagine you know the the challenge
is involved the but i
can it's funny you talked about trauma earlier not in and and i can tell myself
but i i some of my greatest trauma was regarding misunderstanding they were
being misunderstood i mean it doesn't sound like oh what do you mean trauma
(24:10):
misunderstanding let me back up that must for a second and say.
What's the value in like what do you
think about what that does to somebody's psyche to say there's no
anytime i speak it backfires on
me it makes my life worse but everybody is forcing me to try and speak to say
something and so i'm never allowed to be left in peace i'm constantly forced
(24:32):
to do things that blow up in my face to make my life more difficult right like
what a horrible That is not an enjoyable quality of life, people, right?
And so the compassion of allowing yourself to see things from somebody else's
perspective. Now I remember where I wanted to go with that was.
So now let's talk about how that escalated to.
(24:54):
Oh, I also want to acknowledge that personally from a perspective of stepping
into a person's energy and understanding somebody's contribution to a collective
consciousness as opposed to strictly on the physical plane, right?
I've always felt like Dane was just a very beautiful, special person.
I think since day one, I have always been drawn to the beauty of him.
(25:19):
I don't know how else to describe it. There is just an authentic and genuine
kindness and a love that I just appreciate about any time I've ever been looking at him.
I just seem to come to him to work. But let me grandstand for a second,
just to follow you up, your listeners.
(25:40):
That in and of itself defines exactly what I'm talking about when I say step
out of certainty and into what is the value that this person offers the world.
You saw that he was genuine and authentic.
And of course, you know about his art and his ability to animate.
(26:03):
And he's really, really talented.
Everybody in the world has a nuance like that.
And for you to be able to do that is articulating exactly what I am suggesting that everyone does.
But I would say, sometimes, as in your case, it takes getting...
(26:24):
You know, worked over at the gym of your mind and your heart and your life.
I know you've had it where that causes you to be willing to suspend disbelief
for a minute and learn to see someone else from a different perspective.
And all of a sudden, the beauty of it all starts coming out.
It's kind of like that scene in National Treasure, Nick Cage,
(26:46):
when he stole the Declaration of Independence.
Have you seen that one? where the crescendo, the highest point of the movie,
they go underground and they finally find this treasure,
but he lights a torch and it lights the entire room and there's layer after
layer after layer of goods and gold and treasures and historical artifacts all
(27:07):
just sitting in this giant room.
And the light keeps going further and further in depth and you start seeing
how much is actually there.
I think that is a good metaphor for what happens when you immediately light
something in someone's life to see what's going on,
and all of a sudden you understand and learn, man, this kid is truly authentic.
(27:33):
He's smart and talented and all these things. I wish, you know,
I'm trying to see in beautiful, rich pictures the way that he does, right? Right.
So before I get it, so, I mean, just to that point, like I can,
I can go down a whole, we'll go down there to actually do the main, just a second.
But before that, let's talk about, I want, I want to, I want the listeners to understand how,
(27:55):
You created, I don't know, I guess you took your family and said,
hey, this is how we're all going to kind of work together and make ourselves a functional unit.
I think almost everybody, is everybody self-employed?
No, they're all artists, but they're not all self-employed.
One, self-employment is a side hustle now. And Dane's older brother,
(28:16):
who you've met as his creative director, does that also as a side hustle too,
but he is not owning his own company now.
No, so let's talk about that. So like we just talked about Dane and how the
world would perceive him.
However, we're going to fast forward this and do right after all this awesome
parenting, right? All this awesome understanding.
(28:38):
Now this transforms into Dane being a award-receiving artist.
I don't want to steal that. You say it properly so that he gets the credit he deserves.
Sure. Okay. So obviously the story, Dean's story didn't end with him getting
emotionally and mentally abused in a school at a previous city.
(29:01):
Along the way, teachers who have done like you're talking about and what I'm
suggesting have just slowed down,
descended into particulars with him have realized all of this and they've conspired
to assist him because that genuine authenticity shines through his talent is usable.
(29:25):
And so I think we were up to five different educators in his life have all changed the course of their,
their life's work because of like a kindergarten or first grade teacher went
back to the school, got a master's to become a special education teacher.
And I think she's become an administrator of a school now because what she did
(29:47):
in the special needs sector of her work was insanely good.
Another one skipped third grade after having third grade for a number of years
to teach fifth grade so she could get Dane again.
There's been one quitter job to be his private instructor for a year while we
were in a state of transition as a family.
(30:07):
There have been a lot of people who have changed the course of their work.
Well, one of them, as Dane entered high school, was the audiovisual teacher
at his local high school.
And immediately, he connected with Dane, showed Dane some of the software that
Dane had not seen before.
(30:28):
And of course, as soon as he saw it, figured it out because he's like that very tenacious.
And boom, he was off to the races. His freshman year, he was absolutely sure
he was going to win a state championship.
In animation but as it
turns out he wasn't yet good at storytelling even though
he was really good at animation and because he's
(30:50):
not very good in his ability to
communicate explanations of things so the concept was cool it was like it was
called the ink pirates and the lost colors about a family a royal family who
split off and because there was a death of the family and it's almost like a
kind of a game of thrones succession that you never know in any of those
(31:10):
type of things but a couple of the family peeled
away out of the world of colors and they went into the world
of black and white and they were like the one was named anchor because he was
black ink and well anyways years later he comes with the rest of them who came
with him and tries to storm the castle and all the colors and all this stuff
it was really kind of a fascinating thing but the dialogue was absolutely terrible
(31:33):
so as each year progressed he got better and better at animation,
but he also got better and better at storytelling.
And his senior year, he wrote a story that actually was not as good a story.
But it was, he told it so much better that he just, I mean, it was a unanimous
decision that the judges couldn't get enough of it.
(31:55):
They were, they loved, they came up to us as a family. You're like,
you know, I got to meet this kid. He's so special.
It was this, uh, a video was called a story of mace.
Mace is this kid who grows up in a black and white world and he has blonde hair.
And when he wears clothes, they're called, they have color in them.
And there's all these things that people don't like him.
(32:18):
And he gets a job painting sidewalks and he's told everything's going to be
gray. Just paint everything gray.
And he starts, you know, not doing that. And so they fire him.
And one day he just gets out his colors and starts coloring a sidewalk and kids
are bullying him and all that stuff.
And then miraculously there's this change and all of a sudden the world starts
(32:40):
turning into color. and it's this beautiful, embrace the differences in each
other and stuff like that. And you're like, oh, I get it now.
And it has a really good one-two punch there.
Such a good story, but people just resonate with people.
And so he won a state championship with it and immediately started recruiting
(33:01):
work before he even graduated from high school. And he had a provisional diploma.
I mean, he never took any of the state standardized testing. He was exempt.
Algebraic equations. No, thank you. Why would I choose multiple choice?
Which by the way, as you can probably figure out, my wife has worked so diligently with him.
(33:23):
He is very verbal, still has all the literal, no figures of speech,
doesn't understand anything.
Some of the t-shirts he's had made, we've just had them made because they're so funny.
There's these two palm trees with their palm fronds all draped down and there's
a sun beating down on them and they're sweating.
And the eyes and the coconuts are eyes and stuff like that. And the,
(33:44):
and the caption is sweaty palms with a question mark.
Like he doesn't see that the same way we would say sweaty palms and know what that means.
You know, he heard, he heard one of the, my daughter's boyfriends who was from Arkansas.
He's not part of our family scenario anymore, but he used to say dad gum.
Like that's what some of they say in the South dad gum it like,
(34:06):
and so when Dane heard dad gum,
he just thought of an old man who stepped in gum and got mad about it.
And so we drew, he drew a picture of that and put out a t-shirt.
Someone said, I make a mean sandwich. And so he had a picture of a sandwich where the,
like a mean face on it like where do
you come up with this stuff because he sees the world so literally we
(34:28):
just play with it let it let him let him now
dance with that and i think that has helped when people are trying to convey
a message that his actual ability to be super literal and then also be good
as an artist sort of helps him see how to tell the story in a
(34:48):
in a different way and so it's it's actually it's actually worked out pretty
well for him so i want to take what you just talked about and challenge the
concept of a standardized intelligence and standardized and actually what is
understood as emotional intelligence right because.
I would are because for dane to be able
(35:11):
to on to be able to put into visuals what
you just described drive takes a i
would say what i would say you know the challenge is
that his understanding is so much more rich than what others
are that he can't actually dunk i said
some dumb it down to put it into words to help others explain right
like that's like like he's like look man i did that been
(35:33):
there done that the you know that words thing that doesn't
get the point across where the pictures do right like this is where i'm at
now and and and so i
guess the simple a simple question would be
to say is the world so is the
world or would the world have been better off
or had dane learned how to conform and take tests and go into the system or
(36:00):
is the world better off for dane being dane and not fitting into the system
and then therefore having the impact that he had I don't know that you just
talked. I mean, I'll be, I'll be honest.
I really want my doctors and accountants to have taken and passed some tests.
All right. There are certain people in my life that I, I don't want them to
(36:26):
have just been an explorer as a, as a methodology of learning.
But there is a large swath of society that does not learn, whether they're neurodivergent,
special needs, cognitive disabilities,
autism spectrum, all types, that do not...
(36:50):
Benefit from the homogenized way that learning is done.
And so in many ways, we have taken this to heart.
All four of our kids have had a version of classical model school,
homeschool, public school, private, in-home from an outside teacher.
We've done all sorts of methods that were the right fit for the time on how they grew.
(37:16):
Now, if you've got parents listening who want to do that, That word of caution, start saving.
It's not cheap. It's not easy. It's hard work, but it's worth it because my
kids have gotten a well-rounded education because I took that tack that says,
I'm going to teach them how they learn.
(37:37):
I'm not going to teach them how I test.
And I don't know how you solve that for society when you've got schools where
there's 200, 500, 1,000 kids in a graduating class?
How do you break that down into the small pieces?
I don't know that I have the answer for society on that.
(37:58):
I just know that if I draw a circle around what I'm responsible for.
Then I make sure that everything that happens inside that circle is maximized
for the benefit of them to society to do that with their circle next and then their circle next.
And maybe those great-grandchildren, great-great-grandchildren or nieces and
(38:22):
nephews and great-nieces and nephews will never know who I was or what I did in the world.
But if they are actually doing the thing that we're trying to draw a circle
around your family and take care of that first,
you know, have it in order before you go try to solve these,
I at least can be softer with the world system.
(38:43):
System and well of course you know
there's a lot of parents who don't care a lot of bureaucrats
who don't understand and of course they're
going to get it wrong but i'm not going to sit here and pound
them for getting it wrong when i don't have the solution solved for them as
a backup you know what i mean i've been in yeah that's me i got that i don't
(39:05):
like it when people complain to me and don't have at least three solutions and
which one of those that you think would be best like tell me You know,
I'm not here with all the ideas.
I'm here to tell you what the wrong ones are, maybe. But are you're here to tell me what's wrong?
So because I can't see it. But as far as regular life, though,
I don't know that I can do that with our our government system or our society worldview as a whole.
(39:27):
All I can make sure is if I get it right and it resonates to Graham Skidmore and his audience.
Then maybe they'll want to emulate that and they can do it in their own circle,
how their children learn or how their family dynamics work because everybody's
just a little bit different.
And so even though there might be some hard truths, there's a lot of gray area
(39:50):
to work around in how you get that done.
I don't follow, you know, we talk about nonconformity and this is a part of
me comes out. I'm not that guy.
I'm going to do what the right thing is to do, even if it's not the popular thing to do.
Nate, look, you just described a lot of my circle, right? I've taken on that
(40:11):
responsibility, right?
Because you're part of creating the sub-societies that cater to the different,
because not to create segregation, but for the sake of creating,
I'm going to lack of a better description, a control group to demonstrate how
it's misunderstood, right? Right.
And the only way that you can truly do that is if you allow something to operate
inside of its own integrity and authenticity.
Right. And then you can worry about different integration. But right now,
(40:34):
to your point, when you put different and try to integrate different,
it's not appreciated. It's abused and oppressed.
Right. And that just ain't cool. Right. So there's so that's so believe me,
I'm going to be beaten on that drum. Don't don't don't worry.
You know, but the other thing that but I do want to talk to you, Megan.
This is something that talking about changing, you know, how do we get that change?
(40:55):
I would kind of carve out into two sections what you described as what I refer
to as, I'm going to call it a universal intelligence, which is the ability to
have a defined purpose, outcome,
problem solving, individual thought.
That's not turning on a device. Turning on a device is not a demonstration of intelligence. Okay.
(41:19):
So what I just described is a universal demonstration of intelligence and being
able how to, as a consciousness, learn how to operate and navigate.
Inside of that, to your point, now, but when it does come to having a subject matter expertise,
then yes, that obviously there's a certain level of responsibility for some
to ensure a certain level of competency when it comes to certain subject matter
(41:43):
expertises, especially those that have the effect of hurting others like surgeons,
pilots, you know, things like that.
You know, you want them to demonstrate competency. So I definitely want to,
you know, I think that's an important distinction there that I just want to
say to people because yeah, I, I, I, while I'm all about the uniform aspects of intelligence,
I do also like you want to know that people are capable of being safe behind
(42:06):
the wheel of a 2000 or 3000 death machine before they're given one.
That's right. Yes. I went with the simple stuff like accountants, but yes,
my pilots and truck drivers I share the road with, and everybody,
you're going to need to pass some tests, but to your point, there's a level of nuance required.
(42:28):
For the rest of the world to be able to learn and do things in a respected, respectable way.
And so learning how to do different things. And this is where,
you know, kind of wrapping up,
I want to give you a chance to grandstand because this is what I went to.
My experience in business has also been that if everybody comes through the
(42:51):
system being taught the same thing to do in the same way, then everyone's going
to get the same things, right?
And so Tom hasn't talked about himself. He's going to here in a second in his career.
But what I will preface this with is the old, to get what we've never had,
we must do what we've never done, or keep doing what you're doing,
keep getting what you're getting.
And I think that if Tom takes a different perspective to life and is then able
(43:14):
to better understand different audiences in life,
then I would say that it's just logical that that also translates into being
able to understand different audiences and how to communicate and engage them in business as well.
So, Tom, so now I know we've been talking about this, but the least I can do
is to, you know, hopefully have some, you know, give you a chance to talk about
(43:36):
your business as well, since you were kind enough to share about yourself and
your family to help others.
You know, hopefully there's some listeners that could also benefit from your
professional services.
So help explain, yeah, what is it that you do or you and or your family,
right? And who would be your type of ideal client and who should get touched?
Sure. Okay. So I should make a disclaimer. I do have a corporate job.
(43:59):
I am a sales trainer. I'm a marketing trainer.
I do white gloves, strategic planning for large clients in the company I work for.
And I do managerial support on various initiatives. It is a wear a lot of hats kind of job.
But if somebody were to call you out of the blue and give
(44:19):
you work you'd yeah i would definitely be oh
good deal okay i just want to make
sure that i'm not painting a picture when someone finds
me on linkedin and that doesn't match what he said okay because i have a different
i have a different world there altogether yeah i don't want to get in trouble
with your employer for right now it is my it is my bread and butter it helps
(44:41):
keep the various responsibilities i have being met but.
So we'll start with Dane because he's the main focus of this conversation in my family necessarily.
But Dane has a studio called LKD Studios.
It stands for Lucky Kid Dane. At some point, he started referring to himself that way and it stuck.
(45:02):
So LKD Studios is his brand. And he does character designs and animations,
everything from explainer videos to characters on the side of a van if a plumber
wants a character built.
He and his brother work on those types of things together. But there's a lot
(45:22):
of things in the world that need to be done from an animation perspective.
Perspective, I'm thinking of one where the occupational therapist wanted him
to make a video helping people,
children understand when they go see a speech therapist or an occupational therapist
not to be scared, what is this going to do for me, but from a kid's perspective.
(45:44):
And he did that. That was a really cool project for him.
He's done a bunch of those kinds of things, but they're all sort of
you know as they come he's got a linkedin page
you can follow lkd studios it's that point look
my glasses that i wear are you know i don't wear
these things quote-unquote shaded because i'm trying to be cool i do them because
you know there's a you know i was diagnosed called erlin syndrome which is you
(46:07):
know affects the brain's ability to take in light and all these other things
and so but because it and i can tell you it's a it's way more common especially
people people that are either neurodivergent or think of themselves as a warrior differently,
you know, and sometimes he gets confused with dyslexia and other things.
And Dane was able to put together a video that helped people to be like, oh, that's what that is.
Oh, I could totally relate to that. So just to your point, he really does a
(46:32):
tremendous job of being able to put the audience into the shoes of,
I guess, the recipient or the customer, for lack of a better way to say it,
right? And get them to relate.
And yeah, he does an awesome job. Yeah. So that's, I help him with that because
obviously working with clients is not going to be his easiest way to communicate.
I fill in the gap for him when he has projects and we've done projects together.
(46:58):
One of his sisters, who is also in a corporate job now, has a side hustle called MadamPastry.com.
She is a dessert artist, professional baker, and has arguably the best French
macarons I've ever tasted in my life.
Every time I go someplace, if I see macarons, I try them in other cities and
(47:21):
I'm like, not good enough.
She's just so good at it. she's kind of like the
walter white breaking bad of dessert because she's tinkering
and trying to make it absolutely perfect and she can taste
the differences in things and be like oh this needs a little bit more nutmeg
or if they would have waited like five more minutes to whip this so this would
have been a little bit better consistency and it's like she just knows stuff
(47:43):
it's the coolest thing but i do not help her with that business unless you consider
eating the scraps and profit,
then I help in a great way.
But her twin sister, Jill, is the one in which my personal side hustle is housed.
And Jill started a full-service advertising agency called Media High Ground, mediahighground.com.
(48:09):
People can look at that and see what she does, but it's soup to nuts.
Everything from media buying and planning, strategy, social media,
website, SEO, pay-per-click and how all of those fit together under one strategy.
She was paying attention for years and I would take her to events that I was
either speaking at, lectures I was giving, or networking forums that I was involved in.
(48:35):
And she observed for a long time about my business.
And she decided at the end of her senior year of college, she wanted to hang a shingle.
And I'm like, all right, well, I'll give you my Rolodex. And she's like,
yeah, I know those those people I'll call myself.
So when she got in touch with a few people, they connect her to some others
and immediately she started getting work.
She's a graphic designer also, which is the art side for her. And I am not.
(48:59):
So she can actually either do everything or has affiliate partners that I got
her in touch with that can run everything else.
And so that is a huge deal for us because she's got that factor,
the it factor and clients love it.
She gets some results. adults growing their businesses is
the name of the game and she does it and so there's that
(49:21):
then our oldest i would say he's
the biggest unsung hero in our family because he's quiet mild-mannered happy
to be in the shadows if he doesn't get observed in a room full of people he's
very comfortable with not being observed but he is one of those ones who provided us a rope.
(49:43):
With Dane, when we really were at our wits end, he just always seemed to be even keel.
And it was a good litmus test on what is possible because he was in a shared room with this kid.
And he had to deal with the fact that Dane was unruly or frustrated and all these things.
And Thomas was just so even-tempered, never higher than anybody else,
(50:08):
never lower than anybody else either. And he shouldered that burden.
And so he's got a quiet life, works for a screen printer and doing some design,
but also is his brother's creative director.
Because sometimes I, as a sales guy, I'm trying to tell Dane,
no, the client wants it like this.
And I don't know how to translate that. And Thomas is like, I got it.
I'll take care of it. And boom, things get done.
(50:30):
He's just that glue to the family.
And he's a very good accoutrement to an imbalance of our ecosystem.
Because when you have this many wild individualistic characters,
he's one of those people who kind of holds everyone together in a very understated
way that is very special to this family.
(50:51):
So we enjoy him. But he's not as gregarious and he doesn't have all of the flashy
ways of doing things like his siblings.
So he definitely sort of, I mean, there are people in our town and we're known
in our city who are like, wait, you have an older son? Like they don't even know.
And, you know, and he's okay with it. He's okay with it.
(51:12):
He likes his vibe and we're kind of fans of it too. So that's,
that's the business models that we're involved in and how art plays into it
and what our family dynamic is like.
And I, I'm, you know, I consider myself very rich person, even if I'm not necessarily
in the world's terms wealthy. healthy.
(51:32):
I just, I mean, I have an experience that I know other people would like in that comparison.
I, I try to keep it at the, at the back burner, but sometimes it's forced out
because the kids are in spotlights that, that, uh.
People want to know things about them. So I try to embrace it the best I can
without, you know, getting over our skis, as they say, too far, you know.
(51:57):
You know, I keep talking forever. And I know we've already gone a little bit
longer than what we slated.
So I really appreciate you, you know, having the time to go around.
And it's the last bit, especially, like all of this whole conversation has been great.
I'm not even going to add anything because, look, I think the way,
what you just said about again
(52:18):
i'm going to call it dismantling the blind
certainty of what wealth is if that's
appropriate or not right and is you know is leads to
the for those of you that can't see it this is
a happy man and for those of you who can't i'm telling you
the energy is not the just it's legit it's real he's
not just putting on the happy face and talking right like this is
(52:40):
a person who understands the quality of life regardless of stuff that's happening
to them and so and that comes from the perspective in which he you know chooses
to operate with it it's such a beautiful beautiful thing and frankly selfishly
i needed a bit of that myself today and so i appreciate you you know you providing
that and living for the listeners don't worry
all of the all of the uh contact information we're going to you know put up
(53:04):
with the video and the link so people can click through and so tom i just i
can't thank you enough for sharing the different perspectives and the words
of wisdom. And he had a wonderful way of just saying things.
And so I hope that, you know, our goal is always just to have somebody listen
at the end and be like, oh, that makes sense to me.
Oh, I feel to feel more comfortable or better about themselves by the time we're
(53:25):
done talking. If we did that, then that's a win, right?
And so I hope that somebody listening, a bunch of people listening,
had that experience. Hope everybody had an awesome week and take care until next time.
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
24/7 News: The Latest
The latest news in 4 minutes updated every hour, every day.
Therapy Gecko
An unlicensed lizard psychologist travels the universe talking to strangers about absolutely nothing. TO CALL THE GECKO: follow me on https://www.twitch.tv/lyleforever to get a notification for when I am taking calls. I am usually live Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays but lately a lot of other times too. I am a gecko.