Jeremy and Ilana Hamburgh

Original Air Date: June 30, 2024

Jeremy & Ilana Hamburgh offer a very special  service to people with autism or those who are neuro-diverse:  My Best Social Life coaches  how to make connections, friends and even dates.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
Welcome to Sunstein Sessions on iHeartRadio,conversations about issues that matter. Here's your
host, three time Gracie Award winner, Shelley Sunstein. I want to introduce
you to people who are actually fromNew York but now they're living in California.
But they formed a wonderful program,Social Life three sixty program Jeremy and

(00:23):
Alana Hamburg. They are friendship anddating coaches who teach strategies and skills to
autistic and neurodivergent adults to not onlyfind love, but to find community and
to find friends. And so welcome, Oh my god, so good to

(00:44):
be here, So great to behere. Thanks having You're welcome. Tell
us how this all came about.So it started in New York City.
I started a young professionals group forpeople mostly on the Upper West Side of
Manhattan dinners and one hundred and fiftytwo hundred people would come and they just

(01:04):
weren't connecting with each other. Andafter a while, a couple of my
friends said, what are you doingthat we're not doing because you walk in
to a room by yourself and youwalk out with people. And my honest
answer was, I have no cluenot a clue. So I spent about

(01:25):
three years reading everything I could aboutthe science of what makes people connect with
each other, and then I tookit to the JCC Manhattan and I said,
hey, can I do a workshopand they said fine, as long
as we don't have to pay youfor it. I was like, great,
let's do that, and it wasreally really popular. I was invited
back again and again. But whatI didn't realize was that the JCC had

(01:49):
three special needs organizations under its roof, and so a lot of the people
coming to my workshop about sort ofthe science of connection were autistic or nerd
vergent, and pretty soon their organizationstarted hiring me, and I ended up
spending three years at the Adaptations programat the Sober Center at the JCC,
and I've never never looked back.Explaining for those who don't understand what just

(02:15):
to describe what neurodivergent means. Neurodivergentis just an umbrella term for the idea
that people have brains that are wireddifferently. And the fact of the matter
is we all have brains that arewired differently, but some people have brains
that just make it more challenging tosocialize in the neurotypical world, and some

(02:38):
of those people have a label thatone would call autism, right, And
so Alana and I firmly believe thatevery person deserves community, every person deserves
friendship, every person deserves love,and the way that some people are taught
how to achieve that just doesn't workfor them. So our program is all

(03:00):
about finding a different, better wayto teach those skills and those strategies.
And we do that by decoding thesocial world into Formula's diagrams, processes,
checklists, because it's just easier toabsorb that if your brain is wired differently.
Sometimes. Alana, were you marriedto Jeremy when all this started?

(03:23):
I mean, yeah, it wasnot so. Jeremy got started this way
before I came along as a specialed teacher. I was clearly intrigued when
Jeremy told me what he did whenwe first met, which was in twenty
twenty. So he actually invited meto at the time, his client's weekly

(03:44):
community call where he got together withall of the clients. They celebrate their
successes from the week and it's justa really uplifting community. So I came,
and I fell in love. Inever left, And so he get
rid of me, so he endedup marrying me and hiring me as the
director of education for the Social Lifethree sixty program. Wait a minute,

(04:05):
how did you two meet? Wasit that? No, it wasn't a
wedding. We met at a wedding. I was going through a divorce and
Alana had broken up with her boyfriendthe day before. And the fact of
the matter is we didn't even talk. At the wedding. I was the
best man, and as I liketo say it, every woman in the
place came up to me except her. But Alana's friend said, are you

(04:30):
single? And I said not rightnow, but you know I'm going to
be. And she said, reachout to me when you are. And
you know, this woman had asister living in Los Angeles. I figured
she had all these women in LA. So you know, when when I
was I would be divorced, Iwould have a I would have to pick
a literal Los Angeles and instead,you know, when when it was clear

(04:53):
that that my marriage was not goingto not going to succeed, I reached
out her and she said, oh, I'd like it to be. And
I said, the girl who livesthree thousand miles away and say, actually,
in the backseat of my car,I drove him to the city,
but we didn't say two words toeach other. Yeah, from that,
but did you know, did youboth know that you were attracted to each

(05:14):
other, that there was something therein the car or at the wedding or
no, not at all. No, no, I did not have that
on my mind. I had afriend in the car with me who was
dominating the conversation. So we've literallysaid nothing to each other. I love
these stories. I just you know, I love hearing you know, love
stories. But let's get back toSocial Life three hundred and sixty program.

(05:41):
I know the concept, but howis this applied? How does this all
like when someone first comes to theprogram? What happens? Actually, when
someone first comes to the program,something happens that never happens anywhere else.
It's so cool. The very firstthing we do with a new client who
joins the program is we introduce themto our online chat group of clients and

(06:04):
graduates. So within minutes, theirphone is blowing up. They're getting pings.
Welcome to the community. You're inthe right place. This is magic.
Your life is going to transform.So they immediately feel this level of
abundance and inclusion that they've never feltbefore. Sorry. Good, Yeah,

(06:25):
So that's how they start, right, They start with our other clients being
like you belong here, and fora lot of our clients, it's a
feeling that they never had before.So they, as Alana said, they
start from a place of emotional abundance. And then every day over the course
of the program, we drip thema little piece of the skill in the
strategy, which they can watch anytimethey want, wherever they want, as

(06:47):
many times as they want. It'san online module, and so we teach
them these skills and strategies for findingcommunity, making friends, even starting to
date with these online modules that thenthey can ask us about and we can
coach them privately on whether it's byemail, whether it's in this weekly community
call that brought Alana into the program, or our clients can email us anytime,

(07:12):
seven days a week, and we'repretty darn good about getting back to
them fast. In fact, Alana, I mean tell them. On our
wedding night, Jarmy managed to puthis phone down during the ceremony and reception,
but as soon as we got backto the hotel, I was still
in my wedding dress, and Jeremywas messaging with clients as I struggled to
open all those tiny little buttons.Oh man, Well, that is,

(07:34):
you know, being connected to thecommunity and really being so involved. So
I am talking to Jeremy and AlanaHamburg. They are former New Yorkers.
They now live in California, andthey formed a program, Social Life three
hundred and sixty program, and soit's basically about people who are autistic or

(08:01):
neuro divergent finding friendship, finding dates, finding community. I want some specific
examples though, of these little youknow, if you're giving a suggestion to
them how to find community, howto find friends, what would those suggestions

(08:24):
be. Give give a few examples. So actually, one of the things
that I think most people get wrongwhen they teach these skills is, you
know, and I did it too. I'm completely guilty of this. Go
into all these events, meet asmany people as you can, you know,
spark as many conversations as you can, get phone numbers, and just

(08:46):
do something with it. And it'sjust kind of like a wham bam approach
to socializing and the you know whata lot. And I realized when we
moved three thousand miles from home.Is that's not how we did it right.
We found communities and we slowly becamepart of it, and then we

(09:07):
developed friendships within it. So wefound a synagogue here in California, and
we very slowly kind of became partof that fabric and made friends within it.
I found a music a music communityin Laguna Beach, a love music
community, and I slowly became partof that and found friendships within it.
Same thing with hiking, and that'sa very different paradigm. It's a very

(09:31):
different way of thinking than what's taughtmost of the time. Right. So
a lot of these young adults theygo into these you know, one time
social events, and they have allthis pressure on themselves because they feel like,
okay, like I mustered up thecourage to go to this event,
and now if I don't like talkto people and I don't get a phone
number and a date out of it, I'm a failure and it paralyzes us.

(09:52):
So we teach our clients that it'sokay to go into uh, you
know, into a community and justbe there and observe and see what's going
on, and then come back againand do the same thing and take that
pressure off of yourself to talk toso many people so fast. So the
focus is really on finding communities thatmeet on a very regular basis so that

(10:16):
they can go week after week afterweek instead of those single one off events,
so that they'll see the same peopleover and over and over again and
slowly integrate into the community. Ifpeople listening are interested, I mean,
I'm assuming that this is all acrossthe country or is the world okay?
So how would they get in touchwith the program. So we offer a

(10:39):
free training on our website, myBest Social life dot com and at the
end of the free training, ifa family wants to set up a ninety
minute consultation with our team, it'sno cost. We're happy to do it.
Or people can just reach out tous directly. My email address is
Jeremy at my Best Social Life dotsand we are happy to hear from people.

(11:03):
And we always say that if we'renot the right answer for somebody,
we have a wonderful Rolodex. Andyes I'm dating myself by saying rolodex,
but we have a wonderful Rolodex.I still have one. Yeah, it's
because it has so many memories init because I think I started it when
I came to New York City somany years ago, and I just kept

(11:24):
adding to it. I never youknow, I never detracted from it.
I never took it just grew andgrew, And it's sort of like a
history of my radio career in NewYork minus the last several years when I
stopped doing that. You know,that's amazing. But you know, listening
to you, I'm thinking that theway this all started, Jeremy, that

(11:48):
your program is applicable to anyone.I mean, everyone has a bit of
a problem, especially if you're newto a can unity or you're an introvert.
It's really hard to make friends.Absolutely. We always say we teach
human skills, and we break downthose human skills in a way that the

(12:11):
nerdive virgin brain can understand. Butwe when we moved to California from New
York, we use exactly the samestrategy that we teach our clients because that's
how we found to be the bestway to make friends and find our community
and build our social life here.And we even have yeah, go ahead,

(12:31):
we even have parents that come tous because we give the same strategy
to the parents of our clients,and they say that it's changed their life
or it's changed their marriage, becausethey're really just being taught these skills in
a very explicit, concrete way.Tell me some of the success stories you

(12:52):
found. I mean, I hada client in New York City who really
like had to scrape together the moneyto work with me. His dad had
passed away, his mom wasn't ingreat health, and he just worked so
so hard, and he went onthis journey with me, and there were

(13:13):
there were there were some ups,and there were a lot of downs,
but he kept on picking himself backup. And one day I got an
invitation to his wedding. Wow,not only did I get invitation to his
wedding, he asked me to bein his wedding. And so amid this
incredibly religious Jewish wedding where you knowthe seven blessings the under the kupa under

(13:35):
the mariital canopy. Six of themwere given by I think black hatted,
you know, rabbis. One ofthem was given by me. I gave
a blessing to the bride and groomunder the marital canopy, and I looked
out at all these people, andyou know, I had this thought because
I was a lawyer at the time. I was a lawyer for fourteen years.
I said, I don't want tolook back on my life and think

(13:56):
about all the trials I've won andthe motions I've written. I want to
look back on my life and thinkabout all the relationships I'm responsible for and
the weddings I'm responsible for. Andthat was that was a real seminal moment
for me. That's when I reallystarted looking for, you know, the
opportunity to leave the practice of lawand do this full time. Uh and

(14:18):
uh. And that client messages meevery every couple of weeks. I got
many to his birthday party a coupleof months ago. Yeah, wonderful again,
so we're pretty much out of time. How do people reach you?
Again? My Best Social Life dotCom is our website, and we welcome
people to reach out directly, youknow, to me. My My personal

(14:39):
email is Jeremy j E R EM Y at my Best Social life dot
com. And uh, we're happyto We're happy to respond to people.
And as I said before, wehave an amazing rolodex of practitioners and professionals.
So if we're not the answer toyou know, to a family's issue.
We're more than happy to to askour network and see if we can

(15:01):
get you to the right place.You've been listening to Sunstein sessions on iHeartRadio,
a production of New York's classic rockQ one O four point three