The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Richard Schreiber Director, RAS Consulting Services, LLC

Episode Date: March 26, 2022

Richard Schreiber Director, RAS Consulting Services, LLC Nycautismcommunity.org Nycautismexpo2022.co Facebook.com/groups/NYCAustimComGroup

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain now here's your host chris voss hi this is voss here from the chris voss show.com the chris voss show.com hey we're coming to you with a great podcast we certainly appreciate you guys tuning in go see all the videos we have over there on the youtube channel. It's free

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which is not working. Anyway, guys, we try. We try. So we're excited to as well, which is not working. Anyway, guys, we try. We try. So we're excited to announce my new book is coming out. It's called Beacons of Leadership, Inspiring Lessons of Success in Business and Innovation. It's going to be coming out on October 5th, 2021. And I'm really excited for you to get a chance to read this book. It's filled with a multitude of my insightful stories, lessons, my life, and experiences in leadership and character. I give you some of the secrets from my CEO Entrepreneur Toolbox that I use to scale my business success, innovate, and build

a multitude of companies. I've been a CEO for, what is it, like 33, 35 years now. We talk about leadership, the importance of leadership, how to become a great leader, and how anyone can become a great leader as well. We're ordered the book where refined books are sold. So anyway, guys, I have Richard Schreiber on the show. He is with us today to talk to us about some of the things he's doing. He's a friend of our gentleman who's been on the show twice of ours, Jude Morrow, and he's a good friend of ours. And he's written two or three great books on author. Welcome to the show, Richard. How are you? I am great, Chris. Great to be here, and thank you for inviting me. I'm really happy to be here.

Thank you for coming. We highly recommended you, and you guys are working on some projects and stuff. As we get this launched, tell us your dot-coms where people can find you guys in the interwebs. Sure. The group that I'm proud of is called the New York City Autism Community Group. You can find us on Facebook, York City Autism Community Group. You can find us on Facebook, NYC Autism Community Group. Our website is www.nyccommunity.org. And we also have an upcoming expo that you can find at nycautispo2022.com. There you go. So let's start off now.

Since we mentioned the Expo, what's the Expo that you guys are launching? And then we're going to get into your origin story and stuff. Sure. Well, the Expo we're launching is going to be the largest and probably the first in-person autism tech innovation and careers Expo in New York City, my backyard and my hometown. It's going to be on May 7th. It'll be at an amazing facility, actually my daughter's high school, Art and Design High School on East 56th Street in Midtown Manhattan.

Just an amazing school, incredible tech and talent hotbed from a high school perspective. So Jude and I have been working on this for the last couple of months, and it's really coming to fruition. And we're so excited about it and so excited to tell you a little bit more about it. Awesome. What sort of companies are going to be welcome there? And is there a way to apply if you want to come showcase your stuff? And then how can people order tickets? Absolutely. We still have some exhibitor slots left as well as sponsorship opportunities, all of which can be found on our website.

You know, we're looking to attract, Chris, really a lot of kind of a mixture of companies and sponsors and exhibitors. You know, we're about tech and innovation. So what we found is that in the mainstream of autism services, a lot of what's being done in the space of technology and innovation doesn't really reach the masses. So that was really the nexus behind why I decided to throw this expo. And with, you know, Jude's incredible support, is we want to bring to the people of New York City some autistic services that are kind of on the cutting edge to really help them in ways that they may not be aware of. that have mobile apps, that have other software applications, do things with virtual reality that help kids on the spectrum who might be nonverbal to actually learn how to speak or to read or to cycle through something like a job interview, which, as we know, scares the bejesus

out of most of us, but in particular, someone on the autism spectrum. So yeah, it's tech innovation, but there's also a career component to it because 80% of autistic adults with a college degree, unfortunately, are unemployed. Yeah, Chris, that's because the marketplace isn't really set up well to really enculturate them and to employ them with the extent that they really truly deserve. There are companies out there, and we have one of our keynote speakers is from IBM. They have perhaps the most forward-thinking neurodiversity hiring and enculturation program. There are others out there like SAP, Microsoft, Google, who we are talking to as well, that have diversity hiring programs. But it doesn't really do enough.

And those are the kinds of conversations that we want to have, either through panel discussions or through some of our speakers at our conference. That's awesome. Jude's been on the show twice. I should plug his book, Loving Your Place on the Spectrum. And why does daddy can't see that very well? Why does daddy so sad? So sad, yeah. And so if you've seen, if you've watched the show, watch his interviews if you would. But definitely,

you know, we need to have one, you know, more inclusivity is good. But plus, autistic people, you know, can be incredibly, are or can be, really intelligent people, and sometimes smarter than the rest of us. I mean, most of the savants are autistic, if I understand correctly.

Yes, if you go back and, of course, think about Einstein is probably the most famous. That comes to mind. He had Asperger's, which is what my daughter had. And that's on what's often called the highly functional, although today we prefer a person with autism who requires less support. But you're very right. And it's interesting. I've come across one particular vendor we've invited to our show that's using big data and analytics to sort of identify what types of jobs are best suited for the skill set of someone on the autism spectrum.

Now, you're probably aware, Chris, in most cases, there's kind of a stereotype that because they're math savants, stereotype, that they're more predicated as suited for computer coding. But their skill set is much more open and broad-based than that. So we're hoping to shine a light on, you know, hey, companies and organizations out there, there are a myriad of other jobs that people with autism can fill quite ably and perhaps even better than those of us who are neurotypical. In fact, it just occurred to me that

if 80% of them are unemployed, I mean, so many companies right now are just fighting for employees and trying to hire people. It just seems insane to me that that vein is being tapped. I know we've had a lot of different people that respect their doctors and different scientists that have been on the show. They've written lots of books and stuff. We've had a whole plethora of them and i know that one of the i i if i recall rightly let's put it that way i don't know this for a fact i'm not a scientist but my understanding is the the thing about one thing that's really cool with autistic people is their ability to focus on something is and just see it in minute detail or see it outside of a box or just their focus can be really hyper focused at times

where they can understand something where I can look at something and you know my brain glazes over and go you know I don't know if that's true but you know I think maybe it depends on where you're on the spectrum but there's all sorts of different talents that can be tapped there so I think this is great for a tech thing because you know tech jobs are huge and and you know there's there's all sorts of different contributions that everyone can make. For certain. And you're right, Chris. People that are highly functioning on the autism spectrum, and my daughter is certainly indicative of that,

are blessed with some pretty amazing skills when it comes to concentration and being able to see things that you and I might not see either at the same speed or even at all. For example, they make great employees reading x-rays or MRIs because they immediately see things on a level of detail and clarity that might be missed by someone who's neurotypical. Yeah. And so there's a lot that they have to offer. And, geez, employers that are struggling right now to find good people. I mean, what an untapped resource that they need to tap into.

And, yeah. Yep. Part of the challenge, though, with that, Chris, is, you know, autistic people do have certain characteristics and certain mannerisms that don't always lend itself to a job scenario. Which is why a company like IBM has chosen to go one step further than just having a neurotypical hiring program. enter, enculturate, and teach their other employees the importance of accepting someone who has autism as just another person, another diversity. And I know – I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I was going to say, and if they have certain mannerisms or tics or maybe even talk under their breath,

which might be something that – an attribute they might have that is perfectly okay. It's just another way. It's just another way of us expressing ourselves as humans. And I know my friends that are autistic and it depends, but, but sometimes they have their communication is different, how they take in information and how they, and how, you know, like you, sometimes you can't come at them with certain things or at a certain speed or way of communication. And so, you know, everyone in the office has to understand how frustrating that can be for them.

And sometimes, you know, sometimes too much of everything is too much. And, you know, and so I think more companies just need to have that sort of, what's the word, enculturation? Yeah, that's kind of a general term that's used oftentimes like in a merger and acquisition where there's the acquirer and the new company and there's totally different cultures. And to avoid cultural clash, usually the larger entity will kind of welcome and embrace the new organization in by not trying to overwhelm them with the new culture, but try to figure out ways to find a middle ground. So that's what we're talking about in terms of that process with people with autism. And you're right you know using my again my daughter as an example it may take her a little bit longer to process something but once she's got it she's got it she's locked onto it but you

also can't tell her like three things to do consecutively you need to do it one at a time because she won't necessarily retain always number two and number three while she's focusing on number one yeah so the other again these little nuances that with proper training and proper visibility other employees and and bosses and whatnot can really understand learn to understand that and it's you know just i always use the analogy chris that if you're a baseball manager, you have 24 players. You don't manage them all the same way. Of course not. And the really successful baseball managers are the ones who get into the psychology and building the rapport on a deep level with each individual player.

And, again, that's how they're successful. Why don't we do that in the workplace? No kidding. No kidding. No kidding. Especially in a workplace where people are struggling to hire anybody, for that matter. I mean, I'm not saying anybody when it comes to autistic people. I'm just saying companies are desperate to hire people. I go to some places here in town, and on the the door they're offering like a couple hundred bucks.

They're like, do you have a friend that would like to work here? We'll pay you. It's like insane how desperate one is. And, you know, like I say, I know a lot of the people in the autism spectrum are really brilliant. And their specific things that they can do are amazing. And they're much better usually than, you know, some of us lame brains who are running around going, I don't know what's going on.

I mean, you know, like your daughter, you mentioned, if you tell her three things, you know, you've got to give her one at a time. If you tell me three things, I just don't care, which is pretty much how the employment, I've got to tell you, some of these people in the job market nowadays, the level of things, they just don't give a damn about anything, especially some of these new generations. I know I sound like that guy who's got off my lawn. I sound like Clint Eastwood or something in one of those movies. But no, I mean, there's a lot of dispassionate let's workers in this newer generation.

Billionaires! Excuse me, millennials. Sorry, I had a cough there. I just lost the millennials crowd, all two of them. They're busy uploading Instagram stories, I'm sure. So I'm just being mean, folks. Those are just jokes, but they're true. Anyway, so you want to hire employees that care and have a passion,

and then they're going to work hard, and they're going to focus hard. that's that's usually my biggest problem is you can't get people to focus on anything i mean i go to my gym and everyone just stands around looks at their phone and you're just like does anybody work here at all so there's that yeah and that that's so true and again not to generalize but a lot of employees who have autism, they become great employees because they're very loyal. They're very determined. And they like what they do. And even though it might be repetitive for some or whatever it is that they do, they take a tremendous amount of pride in it and do it well. And they oftentimes become your best employees.

So a lot of the people that are going to be attending the show, are those going to be autistic people looking for work? And then the boost will be companies that want to hire them, or maybe it's going to feature autistic led companies that maybe have apps or how is that going to work? It's really a combination of all those. We plan to have corporations there that have diversity or neurodiversity hiring programs who can actually sit and interview and kids can, the young adults can check it out themselves. They'll be able to, as I said earlier, have some virtual reality experiences. There's a huge direction and shift in that direction,

rather, in the e-learning space. So there's a lot of content that's coming out that really assists people on the autism spectrum, helping them, again, to read, verbalize, or go through kind of some role-playing situations that help them to do many things, like how to talk to a policeman, how to apply for a job interview, apply for a job, rather, how to actually experience kind of a mock job interview so they can begin to do those kinds of things. Let me ask you a dumb question that just occurred to me that a lot of recruiters work to hire for companies now.

Are recruiters good at inclusification or inclusivity where they're good at recognizing the strengths of autistic people and hiring them? I don't know. If I had to guess, I would say not as good as they need to be, only because a number of our exhibitors are also organizations that consult for companies and corporations on how they need to implement a diversity hiring program, as well as go to that next step in terms of thinking about, all right, you've hired a neurodiverse or autistic person. You know, don't just check the box and that satisfies, you know, your name in the, embrace, and work alongside of adults that have autism. So there are companies out there that are taking this on that we will have at our expo. And, you know, we expect to have some panel discussions between people like that and then the employers. So hopefully there'll be some discourse and some discussions

that will resonate with some of these employers to get them to expand their diversity hiring programs to be more well-rounded. And that's one of the reasons why we're so blessed to have one of the key speakers from IBM's Neurodiversity Program who will be keynoting along with Jude Morrow at our, at our expo. That'll be awesome.

Jeez. So good. Her name is Nat Lukowski and we're so, so blessed and pleased to have her with us. That'll be awesome. Well, this is, this is going to be a great show to have on and,

and bring more exposure. You know, I have a lot of friends that are on the spectrum. I have friends that have autistic children. Tell us a little bit about more exposure. You know, I have a lot of friends that are on the spectrum. I have friends that have autistic children. Tell us a little bit about how you, you know, your daughter is autistic. And tell us a little bit about that journey and origin story, if you would. Sure.

Well, I think if I go back to the very beginning, Chris, I'm a technologist by trade. In my past, I have built and implemented custom software systems for some of the largest investment banks in the world. The Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley's, Barclays, whatever, did really well with that. And then along came my daughter, who was born through an IVF. So she's a miracle to begin with. And then about six years in, seven years in, we'd already known that she was a little bit different but couldn't really put our finger on it and you know 15 years ago autism wasn't in our normal vernacular so we didn't really think twice about it until around six or seven her first grade teacher said you need to get her evaluated you know she's becoming disruptive

in class and we did and then ultimately she was diagnosed, if that's the term. I know most people don't like that term these days, with Asperger's, which at that time was sort of a highly functional or now what they say a person with Asperger's is someone who requires minimal support. So, you know, like most parents, we kind of went through the traditional means first. We had her on Adderall, which is a drug that typically treats ADHD. Then we enrolled her in ABA services, but that kind of left a really lacking taste in our mouths. So my wife and I decided to, you know, we really need to look for other solutions and look for more holistic and organic solutions. So my wife, to her credit, became an expert in essential oils. We put our daughter on a concoction of essential oils,

took her off Adderall. And Chris, the result was just, we used the term transformation probably too much, but this was exactly that. She just blossomed like a bouquet of flowers because the Adderall had left her stupefied in school. And, in fact, when she graduated from elementary school, her last day there, she was crying it off by herself. And she told me, Daddy, for six years, nobody wanted to be my friend. And it didn't surprise me. You know, the Adderall had just reduced her to kind of a syncopathic status. And on top of that, you know, not picking up on the verbal cues and the body language and things that are attributed to a person with autism, it was a difficult time for her. And that really kind of was a wake-up call for me,

because as you can imagine, that hit me like a knife in the gut. And that's what led me down this path of trying different things. We tried a bunch of different things with our daughter, including a program called Brain Balance, which used music and activities and physical exercise and all kinds of interesting kinds of exercises to help her rebuild some of the left brain, right brain syntactical disconnections, which are more common with people on the autism spectrum. And then fast forward, you know, years later, I ended up joining this experiential sales, marketing, and personal development group

called Unblinded. And once a month, I put on these programs on Zoom where I invite entrepreneurs to meet and convene and talk about each other, what they do. We have a little role play. And then I started doing them around autism advocacy and discovered some amazing people out there doing some amazingly innovative and incredible things with technology that most families with children or young adults on the autism spectrum weren't really aware of. And it was through that process and then ultimately meeting Jude,

which was really the, as the French say, the pièce de résistance. And we formed a partnership and that became the Expo. And now we're here to bring technology, innovation, and careers to the people in my hometown, New York City, and then continue this path to bring it to introduce it to other markets. One of our major sponsors is a company called Golmanda, which is an NWBA business owned by a brilliant woman. And she's one of our key sponsors. And it looks like we'll be helping her with a similar expo in Austin, Texas in October. That's awesome. We're looking to bring this to different markets in the US and maybe the world.

And in between, we have a virtual component to our expo also that we'll use to drive content in between our major expos just to keep kind of the continuity going. That's going to be great. I'm going to love this. So give us the dot coms and places where people can find out more about this and come to the expo or sign up to be a vendor there. Sure. So you can find us on Eventbrite. Just look for NYC Autism Tech Innovation and Career Expo on Eventbrite. Our website is nycautismexpo2022.com.

And our website is nycautismgroup.com. There you go. There you go. Well, it's been wonderful to have you on the show and find out more about everything you guys are doing and how you're doing it. Thank you very much for coming on. We really appreciate it, Richard.

Thank you, Chris. Thank you for being such a good host and really feel your heart in, in really appreciating the mission that we have. It's such an important one. And thank you for what you do in bringing these important causes to light on your program. So thanks again.

Thank you very much, sir. Thank you very much. Also go to goodreads.com, Fortress Chris Voss for my audience. Thanks for tuning in. Go to youtube.com, Fortress Chris Voss, all the groups on Facebook,

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Thank you.