The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 461: Danny Combs—TACT, The Future of Workforce

Episode Date: December 2, 2025

Mike sits down with Danny Combs, founder of TACT (Teaching the Autism Community Trades), a program that teaches people with autism skilled trades ranging from welding to woodworking to IT. With equal parts heart and hard data, Danny walks Mike through how TACT is helping fill critical labor shortages while giving thousands of gifted, detail-driven students a path to meaningful, good-paying work. It's a conversation about talent, potential, and the untapped workforce hiding in plain sight. Danny's book can be found here. Learn more about Stand Together at StandTogether.org 

Hey guys, it's me, Mike Roe. This is the way I heard it. My guest today is my old friend Danny Combs, who is currently living in Colorado and changing the world from the bottom up. That is true. He is doing it himself. He's not waiting for the government to write him a big check or whatever. He's got an organization that he created and he is getting stuff did. The organization is called TACT. T-A-C-T. It stands for teaching the autistic community trades. In fact, the title of this episode is tacked, the future of workforce. Because I think it very well might be, not to bog you down with too much exposition,

but I'm friends with an organization called Stand Together. We've been working together for years. They support MicroWorks, full disclosure. And every now and then, they will call me and say, hey, we've got another bottom-up solution that we think you're going to love. That's what they look for.

people like Danny Combs. Well, in this case, I called Stan because I met Danny on an episode of returning the favor about five years ago, I guess. It was the first episode we did after the lockdowns, so it was a remote episode of this show. And the reason I was so interested in doing this is because Danny has built a trade school of sorts, inspired by his son. Dylan, who was diagnosed with autism when he was two. And what Danny learned from working with his son was that the autistic community, not to pain with too broad a brush, but has a powerful, undeniable facility for trade work. And I'm talking about welding. I'm talking about electric. I'm talking about all the traditional trades. So when I first met him, he, he was a lot of the traditional trade. So when I first

met him, he had this modest little shop and he was teaching autistic people trades and getting them hired. Yeah. And getting them in a position where they continue to be hired for a long period of time. Like you hire an autistic person, you've got an employee for a very long time. You do. And it's so interesting because that community as a cohort is 90% unemployed. Yes. And what Danny has done over the last five years or so, is radically expand tact into a huge structure in Denver. He's taken a job in the state legislature representing the disabled. And lots of people have come through tact. And lots of people are now working in their chosen field

who have been diagnosed with some level of autism or ADHD. or we'll talk about all the different acronyms now that comprise the ever-growing spectrum. But the point is, graduates from TACT have an 84% stick rate in a world of 90% unemployment. At a time when the skills gap is desperately wide and it has to be closed, which is why I'm wondering if this might be the future of workforce. It's a huge community. It's a bottom-up solution. My buddies that stand together have doubled down.

They're now supporting Danny. And when I told him I wanted to talk to him, they said, oh, we'll bring him to you. Everybody loves him. You will too, because he's making a difference. Danny Combs right after this. I love stories like this. Seven years ago, a guy named Ben Still. was a musician. He had zero interest in running a food company, but he was annoyed that so much

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Hey-ho! Daniel, where to begin? You come bearing gifts. Yes, sir. I like the shirt. It looks good on. I got a tacked hat. I got a tacked shirt.

Very Paul Bunyan-ish. Very Coloridian, I suppose. You have to have flannel, yeah. Yeah, you have to. And did my eyes deceive me, or have you written a book? I did write a book. I did. supporting neurodivergent and autistic people for their transition into adulthood,

blueprints for education, training, and employment by Danny Combs. I can't believe you didn't invite me to write the forward. I probably should have. And I went with a short title, too, as you can tell. You know what? Well, a topic like this, you know, it's funny. I just talked at length to Gavin DeBecker, who our listeners will have no doubt gotten an earful from.

And his book, at first, I was going to congratulate. him for a super short title. Bring it up, Chuck, if you have it. The book's called Forbidden Facts, but then the subtitle comes in, and then the subtitle you learn what the book is actually about. And I learned this from my own publisher years ago. They're like, titles, you know, people agonize over them, but really, it's the subtitle that, where you'll find the truth. It's fair. Did you got it, Chuck? It's coming. So is Christmas. I hear that. Tick-Tac. You know, we were just talking about earlier today how you hadn't been, you know, threatening to fire me recently. Yeah, about that.

And yeah, it's good to know that you're on top of it now. Is talking actually slowing you down as you look for this thing? Oh, there it is. Government deceit and suppression about brain damage from childhood vaccines. And then he goes even further and just simply starts putting a passage from the book. on the cover. He's like, I'm not even waiting for people to turn it over to see what's on the other side or crack it open to see what's inside. I've written a book and I've put the whole thing on the cover essentially. This is awesome. Is this your first book? It's my first book. Yes. It's kind of

exciting. Work of a lifetime. It's based on a lot of experience. Yeah, very much so. So hopefully it helps others do what we're doing. We need more people doing it. You, I'm sure I will explain this in the preamble after you leave, but I've known of you for a long time. I met you virtually during the lockdowns in returning the favor's first attempt to return a favor long distance. Right. Met you in person earlier this year, and I've invited you out here now, A, because I like you, and B, because I just, I feel as though this whole topic has just exploded, you know. It just keeps getting bigger and more relevant to more people. Yeah.

And I figured, you know, I could talk to you as a husband and the father of an autistic kid. And we can get into all that stuff. But first and foremost, thanks for making the trip. I know you're busy with your fancy new business card. Well, thank you. I was so excited when you called. So you've always been really great, Mike. So thank you very much.

I appreciate it. Ask around. People do like me. Same. What are you doing? now in the state capital? Yeah, so I am the director of the Colorado Disability Opportunity Office, and the idea is Colorado actually became the first state to have a policy advisor on disability. It's wild to think in 2025 states aren't really doing that. You have a policy advisor on education,

transportation, the environment, housing, not on disability. How is that possible? No one does it. When you think it's a demographic that all of us might join at some point in our lives, as we get older, as our hearing goes, as our vision goes, as our body starts to break. As we start looking at what the infrastructure looks for our society, as people age, no one's thinking about that far in the head. And so Colorado is. And so I was telling Chuck, I was driving Becky to the airport.

We're taking our daughter. She was doing a hockey tournament. And all of a sudden, the caller ID, it says Jared Polis. And I thought it was just going to be like an aid or some kind of spam or something. And it was really him. And he offered me the job. Is that the governor?

the governor of Colorado. And when the governor calls you and says, I'd like you to take this position, how do you say no? But it's also so flattering. I mean, without what we've done at tact and showcase what's possible

when you give people the opportunity to be successful and have their talent and skills recognized, I don't think that would have come about. So, I mean, it's been a pretty amazing catalyst. Well, it's, I say a lot in my weird little world

that I feel like the headlines have caught up to microworks. Yeah. And made the whole indefinitely, relevant in ways that I hadn't imagined, frankly. You feel the same? 100%. Like when tax started 13 years ago, or so 10 years ago,

my son was diagnosed over 13 years ago. People, A, didn't know what autism was. You were given a book, when I say a book, I mean, like a three-ring binder with some flyers in it. And they said, your child's autistic, good luck. And that's after you wait for years. I mean, when you look at the waiting list for what people are looking at, And then when we started tacked, you know, if you've been there, it's a trade school, it's a trade program.

We were turned down for insurance 13 times when people would look at the work that we're doing and say, wait, you want to put, you know, a table saw in the hands of an autistic kid or a welding torch or underneath a hydraulic lift for automobiles. Like they looked at us like we were just out of our minds. My friend Chad Hauser said the same thing who started Cafe Momentum. And he's working with kids who, you know, are coming out of the juvenile justice system. Yeah. And he's given him knives and fire. Yeah. And saying, this is how the kitchen works in a busy restaurant.

And same trouble. Like right out of the gate, every investor, every actuarial, every HR type. They're just like, no, no, a thousand times, have you lost your mind? Why did you ignore them? I don't know why people ignored them. I don't know why. No, no. Why did you ignore the people who said you can't do this?

Oh, that's a great question. Because I believe in my son. I believe in our community, like all that's possible. When somebody looks at you and they tell you, you know, at the time, I mean, it seems like it's shifting a little bit, thankfully. That's one of the things I'm excited about is now people are at least talking about autism. It was like the elephant in the room for so long. So now people are at least bringing it up.

When somebody tells you something about your son that you don't agree with or a family member, you roll up your sleeves and you dig in, and that's what I did. Well, it feels different in so many ways from so many other. diagnoses because it's so historically shrouded in mystery. Like what is autism? What is neurodivergency? How does the scale work? What is ADHD? When did that become an acronym? And when did that find its way onto this ever-changing sliding scale of ambiguous infirmary? I mean, to your point, I co-founded the Colorado Neurodiversity Chamber of Commerce in 2022. And at the time, tacked won a DEI award.

And I'm sitting around a room with a bunch of business leaders. And they're all for-profit doing great work. And they would talk about the various chambers, the black chamber, the women's chamber, the Hispanic chamber, etc. And then they got to me and they were like, autism and neurodiversity. I've never even heard that word. What does that mean? And that was in 2022.

And so when you look at the time, it was one in 36 kids that are autistic. when you start looking at PTSD, ADHD, OCD, Audi, autistic, all those kind of things that fall in the neurodivergent category, the fact that people didn't know what it was just three years ago. I mean, for the first two years, that was the biggest question we got is what is neurodiversity? And then once you start talking to people and explaining it to them, they're like, oh, that's like my cousin, that's like my aunt, that's like my neighbor.

They start asking questions more. Is it too big of an umbrella? now to have a meaningful coverage. In other words, this is a really inelegant comparison, but LGT, LGT, LGTB, LGBQ, da, da, da, the plus. And pretty soon it's like, you know what? I don't quite know what the group is. Right.

And in a way, I kind of feel like something, some odd corollary exists here. The same thing, I mean, you're 100% right. And even within the autism spectrum, I mean, autism is such a broad, spectrum, right, where you have 40% of autistic individuals use alternative forms of communication. When I had a cousin named Jimmy, he used a chalkboard. Now we use iPads. And that's how he communicated. Then you have other autistic individuals that have 160 IQs and can do, you know,

crazy math in their head, but might be socially awkward at that point. And so it's such a spectrum that even among that group, people will get lost in trying to compare themselves, feel like they're part of a community. And in the neurodivergent community, by all. large too when you hear that most time people think of ADHD and autism they don't recognize the other and when you look at like our military for example in PTSD most neurodiversity experts would be like man that's 100% neurodivergent but they don't understand still how PTSD interacts and what that's actually doing mentally and cognitively on individuals I have so many questions that I want to ask you but I think be smart and maybe useful for people parents in particular just to hear a little bit about

the first two years of Dylan's life when this diagnosis happened. Yeah. And really just how do you, I know you said they basically handed us a book and said good luck. Pretty much. Yeah. And so how much of that has changed with the increasing advent of more and more and more. But going back to when it happened, I'm sure it's in the book. Yeah, no, it definitely is in the book. And it hasn't unfortunately changed very much. We know a lot more, but the waiting list still for people to actually get their child diagnosed or themselves diagnosed, at least like a hospital, like a children's hospital. It's still a multi-year waiting list. Years. Years. You're waiting years. And when you think of children and they're formative, you know, two to four, four to six, a lot happens developmentally

in that time period. And people are waiting and they're stuck and their kids aren't getting the resources that they need. Now, if you can afford it and you can go to private pay and spend thousands upon thousands of dollars, you can go to some private organizations and businesses and probably get a diagnosis at that point and some answers. But not everybody can do that. What do you do once you get the diagnosis? How does that change the practical reality of your life? I mean, that's the whole thing. They hand you that packet. And then there's, you know, a ton of resources that are for younger kids. But I think the real cliff and I think the work that I like to like fit my work into is what we call the cliff. What happens is kids go to school. Unfortunately,

in schools, they might get, you know, ABA or some kind of autism therapy or intervention. What's ABA? Applied behavior analysis, which is like a really big, a whole other topic within the autism community. And you'll definitely want to talk to others about that too, because that's an interesting topic. But that, you know, those supports exist through school. And then after that, that's the cliff. And so parents and those individuals find themselves, okay, I just graduated high school, what do I do? And when schools are supposed to actually provide pathways for kids, college, military, trade school, when it comes to autism, they don't. They're in the back of the room. And that's part of the reason that's this largest unemployed

demographic. 90%. Yeah. And when you look at that, now it's 1 in 31 kids. And they only take that from 8-year-olds, by the way. So if it's somebody diagnosed at 14 at 16, it doesn't count towards that 1 in 31. And so the real numbers, as things have changed and we start understanding more about it, I would imagine it's much, much higher than what people are actually talking about. Higher or lower, you mean like 1 in 20? Oh, in California, it's like 1 in 14. So the CDC, they only took it from a handful of states too. And so they take just a couple of states of just 8-year-olds,

and they paint this broad brush across the whole country and say, okay, this is going to fit for everywhere. And when you look at the East Coast and the West Coast, New Jersey has the highest, and California is probably second highest. And then the other states, they kind of fall somewhere in between. But they don't actually look everywhere. And so no one actually really knows. And when you start actually going to looking at some of these studies that they do for eight-year-olds,

it's very difficult to gauge the actual real number. But what we do know is schools have the highest number of IEPs, individual education plans or 504 plans than they've ever had. And the teachers don't know what to do. And when you talk to college professors, they don't know what to do. When the work that I've got to do in the military, they don't know what to do. So you have this whole demographic of people that are coming up. And the traditional model just doesn't fit anymore.

Because it's a painting with a very broad brush. Well, are you sick of it yet? Are you sick of AI hogging up all the headlines and sucking up all the bandwidth? You find yourself wishing we lived in a simpler time. Do you miss the rotary phone? Well, get over it. The genie is out of the bottle. The poop is out of the goose, I'm afraid.

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That's netsuite. com. Netsweet. Mike. It's a one-size-fits-all approach. That's exactly what it is. reading right in arithmetic. Yep.

And Dylan is not one size. Well, he's his size. Yeah, exactly. Hard stop. Yeah. That's, I mean, he is who he is. And I think, you know, it's amazing how your kids, you end up finding what you're supposed to do in your life.

And I think without Dylan and without my family upbringing, I mean, without the things that my parents taught me, the things that my dad taught that my grandfather and great-grandfather taught, it's amazing how it all kind of came together perfectly to do the work that I'm doing now. You know, I hadn't really thought. about that when we last spoke, but when I think about, you were in the Air Force. Yeah, I'm a reservist. Yeah, and you play music. Yeah, I did that too.

You won a Grammy. Did that too, yeah. Yeah, you can't hold a job. Don't tell Becky that. That's actually something she's been teasing me about is she says, I jump around a lot, but yeah. Well, please tell her hello, and I kind of wish you were here as well, because every time I talk to her, it seems pretty clear that what you guys have built, and really, everything you've done. I mean, she's a, she's a rod of steel. Oh, it's the partnership. I mean,

she is, she's the North Star, for sure. She's pretty amazing. How did she take, going back 13 years, the first night you guys went to bed knowing that your kid had been diagnosed this way? Well, Becky and I are actually a blended family. So her son, Trevor, so my stepson's autistic as well. When he was diagnosed, she found out, and she can tell you the story, he's in a different. part of the spectrum than Dylan. She said that she was with him at two walking up the stairs and saying the letters of the alphabet walking up the stairs. And he would repeat the letters back at two. He was already speaking the letters of the alphabet walking up the stairs. And then they were walking back down the stairs and he did it backwards at two. I can't do that now. Like if you were

that cop that pulled me over and said, touch your nose and say the alphabet backwards, I can't. I couldn't do that. He was doing that at two. And so she started wondering like, that's odd. Like he's super smart like I didn't see that coming but both her and um lost with Dylan you know Dylan was about six six and a half before he could say hello dad I love you he's very tall my ex-wife she's very tall her family's very tall and he would be in a public park and he would mainly hang out by himself he wasn't very social but because he was so tall kids would come up to talk to him and he would try and he didn't know he couldn't get it out yeah and they would be confused at that point as like what is what is he trying to say like what's at what's

actually happening. Oh yeah, there he is. Good looking boy. And now, I mean, you know, it's really interesting because when I look at Dylan and how things have changed, I love telling this story because it's so important with everything that's going on in the world right now. When Dylan was diagnosed, he went through all these different therapies from ABA to speech, occupational, fine motor, gross motor, everything and anything you can think of. And I always get goosebumps when I tell the story. But I started doing research into autism, its background. before starting tact and got a lot into diet and started going to the doctors and saying, I'm reading all these different things about the stuff that we're putting in our body,

about diet and about its effect. And they were like, oh, this is pseudoscience. There's nothing with it. It's complete trash. Don't go down this. But a lot of it had to do with gluten, for example. And so just cut gluten out and just said, we'll just try it with Dylan. Let's just see what happens.

And a month later, the speech therapist pulled my ex-wife and I into a room. And they say, we have to get goosebumps every time I tell the story. They're like, we have to ask you, like, something's changed and we can't explain it. We've been tracking his language. And they've got this pretty little graph. And they're like, this is where his language is right now. In the last month, his speech is more than doubled. And we have no idea why.

What have you changed? Because clearly you changed something that we can't explain. And the only variable that would change was taking gluten out. And now even to this day, like if we're out and he accidentally eats a hamburger bun, his speech instantly declines. And yet when you tell that story, I can hear people right now going, well, you know, correlation doesn't equal causation. Yeah.

And we're going to have to do some tests. Right. Then we're going to have to do some more tests. And I just imagine it must be so frustrating. I know dealing with the fallout of my interview with Gavin. Right. And the fallout that will surely follow my interview with DelPy. Big Tree.

Yeah, you're going to hear some comments. Yeah. But here are the comments that I get. And look, I'm a science guy. I want very much for our institutions to regain the public trust. But I don't think that can happen if we simply trust them. They've broken some trust. And I feel like the world we're in and tell me if you are in this place.

but like, oh, that's been debunked. No, no, no, no. That study's been conducted. That part of science has been settled. And so what did the doctor say when you said, look, we cut out the gluten and his speech doubled? Therefore, like, was there an immediate conclusion? Was there a, like trumpets in the distance or something? No, they were just like, okay, that's great.

Keep going with that. I mean, and that's it. There was no, like, give me examples. How did you do that? When did you start it? I mean, again, like I went to them first and said, I'm reading about this online. What do you think? Now there's more out there that people are talking about it.

And I think I give you a lot of credit. I think it's great that you're actually talking to people varying opinions and different experiences and different research because we need more than that. And then, you know, that stuff that science is beyond me, that that's not my gig. But like now working with individuals that are there where they're at and trying to find pathways for their future. That's where I like to work. Well, that's, I mean, that's why I think you're in such an important role. Not just in the state now. Yeah.

That's a macro thing. You're also in the micro category where you get to every day, you know, get the kind of feedback in your own never-ending quest for correlation, causation, you know, something. Yeah. You know, your quest for understanding what you can do to help your kid. That's never ending. And so, you know, what do you say to parents? Do you get into this in the book? And how often do you have conversations with parents who are desperate for some kind of lifeline,

some sort of, you know, credible source of no bullshit truth? That one we really don't get into with parents very much. What we do get into parents is they come to us and their kids could be 30, 40 years old. They've never heard what their kid is. good at. They've never heard things that what a future looks like for their child. And when you think of the fact that a lot of these young men and women are living at home with their parents, the parents are worried about what their kid's future is going to look like. And they're at that point sometimes where they're just like, I don't know what to do. I've tried all of these different things. There's no

really option. Because what's happened is we've ended up taking autistic individuals and we've put them into groups of like, okay, you can go work at a restaurant, you can go work at a coffee house, you can go work at a gas station. If that's what somebody wants to do, man, God bless them, I hope that they find fulfillment and it's awesome. But for whatever reason,

it's never really come up where all of a sudden people are like, okay, why don't we give them an education? Why don't we give them training? Why don't we give them the opportunity to actually go do this fulfilling job something that they find interesting? And the fact that tax has been doing it 10 years,

no one else has done it yet, and we get a lot of people that talk about it. And I mean, so Becky and I, we're starting another one in Nashville, that we're calling Buildable Academy, and we're going to be doing that because we figure, I mean, in the book, I tell people essentially how to do it.

No one's still no one's doing it. And the number keeps growing and growing, and so it feels like it's bigger than us. And so, like, we need to actually grow it and actually do it ourselves, what it feels like right now. How are you going to do it? The hair's going to keep getting grayer,

that is for sure. But, like, I think there's enough parents and individuals that are hungry for it. And I think when you seek countless, success. I mean, the amazing thing that has always been part of the cool part about tact is it's never been about charity or pity. It's always been around the return on investment and the value proposition of our kids. When businesses look at them and you've met some of those businesses and they're so happy with the graduates that they end up hiring more, I think it's opening those

doors and showcasing what can be happen. Yeah, you know, in that last episode we did, I remember it was a white tech? Wayfield. Wayfield. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Not just the kids that had gone through tact who were working over there, but the, what do you call the sort of the go-betweens, the people who are... Like the general managers and the, with our employment specialists and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah.

They're so dedicated. And, you know, I don't think people get that level of dedication or commitment until or unless they see the evidence day in and day out. That's what's really on display in intact. And there as well. which is why that's why we wanted to come out in person and do it, because I think maybe the thing you're trying to accomplish will get a lot easier to do as more people physically see

the results that you're getting. You have to show them. We have, and that's, we've always struggled because when people walk in or they see it for the first time, they realize like, oh, this is real. This isn't like kids building birdhouses in the back room, you know, with balsallwood. Like this is a real deal.

Like they're actually really doing it. And I don't know why that that image exists in people's mind. But for whatever reason, as we talk about it, still there is that assumption that it's somehow less than. And I think that's where parents get concerned for them they think about their kids and for the future is people hear the word autism and they still think less than for whatever reason. They still think it's a deficit logic, right?

And recognizing are there real struggles? Absolutely. Yes. Like to say that there's not, I think would be a lie. We have employment specials that are helping, right? Like we're looking at what that looks like to overcome some of those things. But there's also the way that we've gone around training and teaching kids for a long time, I can't really say it's working.

When you look at all the things that are like coming about for anybody in school at this day and age, is it really leading to like real futures for kids? And like are they actually getting education that's causing them to think and create and explore and be innovative? I don't know if that's the case anymore. And I think that, you know, the way, like, the whole inspiration for Tactamine, like the way my grandfather, since we were just talking about aerospace stuff, my grandfather helped design the lunar module.

There's actually a plaque because that actually really happened, by the way. It wasn't just in a desert in New Mexico or something. You know, like all the people that actually helped with that. Sorry, that's been debunk. Yeah, exactly. That's nice. We know. Yeah, that's right.

That's true. When I think of that, you know, my grandfather didn't have a college degree. he helped put Neil Armstrong on the moon. But today, it's like, oh, you want to work in an aerospace program? You have to have a PhD. You have to have a master's degree. You have to do all of these different things. And I can't tell you how many Air Force guys I know

that have done cool stuff in space and they go to work for it as a contractor afterwards. I'm like, oh, you don't have a degree. And it's like, I literally just did the same job sitting next to somebody at a console that you're working with but because I don't have that degree, I don't get to do this and they don't. It's a terrible thing, you know, because you can't.

It's so easy to go too far in either direction with credentialing. Yeah. I remember, I think it was John Stewart was interviewing a guy who had recently come back from Afghanistan. He was just, he was trying to get hired as a nurse. Yeah. Because he was a medic. Right. And, you know, he's going in interviews and they're asking about his experience.

And, you know, his last experience was keeping a guy alive with one hand by staunching a horrible wound while killing two. combatants with the other hand and his service revolver. Right. And then going back, saving that life and saving another life with just the most blood-soaked kind of triage and stress that you can imagine. Yeah. You didn't have the right credential. No job for you.

Right. And, you know, somewhere in the insanity of that is the insanity of the cookie-cutter broad-based attempt to teach everybody the same way. So if there's a question in here, I suppose it is, what is it about the trades that seems to make a different level of sense to so many of the kids you've encountered? Well, people are still raving, raving, I tell you, about my mother's performance in the latest Pure Talk commercial. And if you haven't seen it, I encourage you to give it a look on my Facebook page and read it. the comments, they're hysterical. In this commercial, you'll not only see Peggy Roe

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slash row. You can switch in as little as 10 minutes at puretalk.com slash row. Pure talk. Yeah, I've wondered about that quite a bit. The thing that seems like at this point, it's kind of changed over the years I think about it more, is that it's not broken down, that it's everything at once. So like when you're building a project and you're doing a carpentry project. You're doing math. You're having to work together as a team. You're lifting heavy stuff working out. You're doing all these different things at once. I think for a lot of kids, especially neurodivergent kids, most education now is just one thing at a time. You sit in a class and you just do math. You sit in a class and you just do science. You sit in a class and you just do gym.

The trades, that's the way my grandfather, our parents, that's where they were raised. You did it all at once. and you didn't learn math by doing the same problem over and over in a textbook. You did it because you had a real problem to solve, and you got to see a tangible result at the end of that. And then you got to walk away with that and say, I'm like, look what I did. If I solved this math problem, that's what it actually produces. If you can figure out X on a piece of paper, that's great.

What does that mean? Yeah, I don't know. And A plus or B minus? Yeah. That's not. It's so arbitrary at that point. And I think that's where I think our kids feel successful is they get to see it. And I think a lot of times, Like when I think of Dylan, you know, teaching him to ride a bike, that was hard.

Like, I would love to tell you, like, I was just like, all right. And like, no cussing or extra whiskey was being drunk. Like, that was not true. But, like, actually, like, seeing him be successful with the things that he's passionate about. And he sees it too. And I think it's a win for our kids where they finally get to recognize something that they can do and achieve. And they can be really good at it and have a great future with it, too. I mean, it's providing an opportunity.

When you start looking at the money that these kids end up making when they graduate, one of the hardest things that tact has always been staffing it. When we do the Buildable in Nashville, one of the things that's going to be hard is staffing it because you can make a lot more money working in the trades than you can do, you know, as you're teaching it. Of course. Yeah. Well, I mean, I imagine there's a pretty interesting gene pool to fish in if you're

looking at retired shop teachers or. That's exactly what we do. Yeah. Right. 100%. Yeah. because they get tired or even, you know, people that have been working out in the field for years and years, they're like, I'm done with this. Like getting out, you know, working at a meal at six in the morning or four in the morning, like different factories.

It's hard on your body. They're like, I'm just going to go to a classroom and teach some kids. It's got air conditioning, heat. Yeah. It's controlled. We'll go from there. Yeah. And it's, look, I mean, teachers have gotten such a bad rap in the last 20 years or so.

and in some cases for good reason, but a great teacher, properly motivated, you know, in the right environment in front of the right group of kids, that's such a time-honored, magical thing. And for somebody who's now in their early 50s, late 50s, whatever, walking around with all this institutional knowledge,

all of this hands-on experience, who has never thought of teaching before, boy, I think it's, the opportunity of a lifetime. You know, I'm imagining just with the, I don't think you're going to get shop class back in high school. I think you're going to, it's the poop and the goose. Yeah. But you can build a shop class in the back of a Home Depot trailer or 18 wheeler that's not being used and you could outfit it with the people I'm thinking of. And you can drive it to a parking a lot at Walmart. And you can go on the air locally and you can say, guess what? There's a shop.

class over here in the back of a Home Depot truck in a Walmart all weekend long. Right. The tools will be there. Yeah, they're going to be waivers. Yes, it's going to be, you know, I mean, it's not necessarily the whatever the prevailing definition is of a safe space, but it's a place to learn. Oh, it's 100%. And it shows kids that these things aren't scary. I think that's it. They've been taught that like these tools are scary, that they're going to hurt you, that it's dangerous. Is it dangerous? It can be if you're not being safe. but like it's we can set it up to be successful absolutely 100% and they get to explore and discover and see how cool it is to make things and like actually find enjoyment in that and I think that's a real opportunity

you said that there's a certain appeal to doing multiple things at the same time yeah like a generalist versus a specialist right I totally agree with that in fact I think I think we've entered in like to the age of specialities in a way and people are so siloed in what they do that they're just equal and oppositely ignorant in like all these other categories. That's a shame. But there's this other thing too,

and I think it has to do with feedback. And the fact that when you're working in the trades, more or less, you really don't need to be told how you're doing. You see it. It's either going to work or it's not, yeah. And you know it in real time. Yeah. Is there some different kind of synapse that gets fired in the brain of an autistic person around the whole notion of feedback?

That's a great question. That's okay. Yeah, I don't know about that. But I know when I see kids come in and actually get to work with their hands for the first time, they light up in a way that's almost tangible. Like you can see it like in every fiber of their being. Yeah. And when you hear people say that autistic people are. not visibly emotional or, you know, they don't have that reprosity of emotion. You definitely

see it when they're actually achieving and like seeing something like that they're good at and feeling successful at it. Like it is, I mean, tangible at that point. It's pretty amazing. Well, I'll tell you what I saw that I don't see in typical classrooms. I saw enthusiasm. It's such a great word, by the way. Yeah. I don't know the etymology of it. But just, the like the mix of wonder and curiosity combined with tangible results. I'm thinking of the young the girl I met there who was making that thing. Laura or Lauren. Lauren. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Was that thing she was making? It was a, I don't know. It was like some little device that they would spin and things would go up and now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She was just jumping out of her skin to explain

what this was. And initially I thought, well, you know, she's excited. The cameras are here and everything else. It's not that. No, she didn't care that the cameras were there all. She was excited to see you and show you what she was doing. 100%. Yeah.

And then the more I wandered around, the more I saw that. Scoops? Is he still around? Scoops is now working. Yes. Scoops is a great kid. Yes. They called you Dale.

Or something like that. You call me Dale. This kid asked for my autograph. And I said, sure. I signed my name. He's like, I'm sorry. I'm looking at this. Is your name Dale?

All right. So do you know who Dr. Temple Grandin is? Have you heard of her? Of course. Yeah. So she's a pretty amazing individual. And she was one of the reasons I started attacked where. Maybe explain a little bit about, I mean, her cattle, right?

Yeah. Yeah. She designed the machine that turns cows into hamburgers. And she's an amazing. amazing that she's a professor. She was just actually her portrait was just put in the Smithsonian. And I'm fortunate enough to call her a friend where I had the idea of tact, was doing music at the time, and said, hey, I've got this idea, I'm looking everywhere. No one is doing this. I can't figure out why no one is doing this. You're talking to Dr. Graham. Yeah, yeah. I went to like one of her speeches.

Oh, okay. And so I went to one of her speeches. And you went to the speech because Dylan had just been diagnosed? Exactly. Yep. So now you're out there now trying to figure out what, what am I dealing with? And like Dylan, you know, three, three and a half, I let my kid play with scissors. And he would cut things at a cardboard and he would make these, you know, cool suits. He thought he was Iron Man or Wolverine. He'd make all these different things. He'd put together Legos just by looking at pictures of the box. He couldn't yet say, Dad, I love you, or hello, dad.

And, but he was doing these. And I didn't know if it was just the family background on the trades, the things my dad taught me that, you know, the way we grew up or with his autism. But I knew that he was successful at it. And I would go to all these therapists and all they ever told me was something that was wrong. They would say, your kid's walking on his toes. He's not making eye contact. He is sensory. He needs to work on this and work on that.

It was always something to work on. And never anything of like, hey, he's good at this. Like, why don't you explore that? Never happened. More deficit analysis. Yes, more again. And so had this idea and went to Temple and said, hey, I've got this idea. I can't find anything like it.

Is there anything out there like that? She's like, there's not, you need to stop and go do it. And so that was the catalyst that was finally like, okay. And for whatever reason, the moment in life, I was like, great. We had good lawyers in New York that help us put together. We started the 501C3 and here it is now. Do you remember the name of the doc about? I remember it was that Van, oh, the doctor that diagnosed Dylan or the?

No, no, the documentary that introduced the world to Temple Grandin. I know she had a new documentary that just, that CSU just did. That's been very successful. And there's the HBO movie that did about her too, but I don't remember the other documentary. See what you can find, Chuck. It's worth recommending because as I recall it, it felt like that was such a giant mainstream like, hey, hey, America. Yeah. This is happening over here. This is what it looks like. And get a load of this woman who found a way to contribute mightily. And the thing that she lived about tact when she came, she was watching what the students were doing. And she

noticed that they didn't just buy things, they made things. And I think that's something that's lost. Like the little holders on the end of the welding tables, our students welded those up. And it's just bent metal, but our kids made those. The thing that's for the lockdown, God forbid something terrible happens, our students made those. And it was like that creativity that they did. She's like, so your kids are making stuff to make their workplace better. Most programs, they look on Amazon or they go to Home Depot. And those are great places to go get stuff, but where did that creativity go? When you think of like, yeah, okay, that's the new one that just came out. Yeah, that's the most recent. Which is fantastic, yeah. And so. And open door.

Right? That's the latest one. The first one I'm looking for that one that really put, something to do with like, it wasn't just turning cows in a hamburger. Yeah. There's more to. Yeah, there. Yeah. But it's like, you know, the whole shoot system. And the pressure and the sensory that comes from that. Absolutely. Yes. Yes. Well, the HBO movie was a big part of that.

But I don't remember the name of the documentary. So, Chuck, I hope you do find what it is. A story of the mind. Okay. Does that be it? Maybe. Speciesism? I don't know.

She ended up when she came to TACT and I showed her book and it was really cool because we text now and like she'll like see me on different things and or if like on local radio or podcast or something. And she'll call me and be like, hey, Danny, I heard you. Great job. And she just is very encouraging in that. And so when I wrote that book, she actually, she was touring tact and she handed it to me and said,

can you sign this for me? And it was such like an amazing experience to have this person that's very influential actually come to you and be like, oh my gosh. And it's interesting to how we keep in touch. I was actually out here in California at Stanford presenting. And she had called me because she was at a stadium, some basketball stadium, the elevators weren't working.

And she was like, Danny, you need to start teaching people to fix elevators. And she just called me out of the blue. because she was checking and no one was fixing elevators. Yeah. And it was like, well, I'm really looking forward to seeing you speak tomorrow. And she's like, I don't know what you're talking about. And I was like, you're the keynote at Stanford tomorrow. Where are you at?

Like her voice was all of a sudden freaked out and they worked it out and it was great. But thank God she called, right? And so anyway, it's just neat to have that relationship with her now. And just to like support each other through because, I mean, when you start a nonprofit, that does this. I'm sorry. I can't let that go by. I just need to understand. The great and legendary Temple Grandin at this point in her life calls you out of the blue to tell you that you need to essentially unleash your autistic army into the elevator repair

business. And you then remind her how much you're looking forward to seeing her at Stanford. And she has no idea. No idea. She's supposed to be there less than 24 hours. It ended up being a virtual thing. and Temple being Temple. She didn't have a presentation together, so she ended up pulling up pictures on her cell phone, and there was a rocket explosion that had just taken place or something,

so she would pull up, and she's like, I reverse engineered it. This is the grommet on the spacecraft that caused it to blow up if they would have had autistic people. This never would have happened. And she's like holding up this to a Zoom camera and to this giant auditorium of people at Stanford,

and it was just amazing. I mean, it was just so perfect. Do do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Dumb. Is it weird to love people but despise human resources? If so, well, color me weird. It's not to say I don't respect the millions of people who work in HR departments and companies all over the country.

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ZipRecruiter.com slash row. ZipRecruiter.com slash row. Okay. Well, let's keep going with that then. I mean, like the idea of, uh, are you? telling me one hour or just... No, no, I'm saying it's... I just wanted to get your attention to tell you. It's called the woman who thinks like a cow.

That's it. Oh, yeah, that's it. The woman... I don't have a picture or anything. I just, you know, I have a title. Yeah. So imagine a woman and imagine a cow. And then imagine a woman who thinks like the cow.

Who thinks like one. Yes. I think... Why would a cow want to get slaughtered? Why would a cow want to be turned into... Well, that's what she noticed. Is she noticed, like, from her perspective, she could relate to the cow and see the anxiety that was taking

place. And so her perspective reframed the process to actually cause the cow to be calm and like willing to actually go in by itself. And then it changed the quality of the meat at that point too. Like dramatically. Dramatically. Yeah. Everything about the traditional slaughterhouse is seemingly intentionally designed to trigger maximal amounts of terror. Fear. Right. Yeah. And And so you are literally seeing the thing that you're being led to and you're watching your friends go in. And she just completely upended all of that. And she tells you the same thing. When you talk to her, it was her ability that actually ended up giving her so many opportunities when she was able to solve a problem and then demonstrate that.

All the thankfully people and the businesses were able to look at it and be like, she's right. And I think that's the neat thing that we see all the time attacked with the tact. graduates as they go to these jobs and they're able to solve problems. And you hear of businesses all the time, not even just not even able to like find people, but find people that are willing to be creative. And you think about the way that we go about hiring. It's the same way all the time. Like we have a resume. We sit across. We make pretty high contact. We talk about chit-chat. And we read off the resume. And if they like your personality, then they're probably going to hire you. So much is a beauty contest. Yeah, very much. But at the end of the day, you want somebody that

knows how it has the skills to actually do that job. And I think that's something that our kids do really well and our young adults is they're developing those skills. It's not to say they know it all and they still need to learn, but they're setting up that repetition to be successful. And I think to your point earlier about shop class coming back, it'll never happen because what happens now is we just give kids iPads and say, watch this YouTube video on how to rebuild an engine. That's not the same thing. That's not teaching. No, it's not teaching at all. No one knows how to do it just because they watched a YouTube video on it, like that actual experience of actually getting your hands dirty and doing it. That's what teaches you to do it.

Yeah. And, you know, it's one thing to, you know, teach somebody in this traditional way that we're talking about or hire somebody based on the fact that they mastered a bunch of skills. Like, like anybody can master skills over time with the right instruction, I think. But not everybody can instinctively look for. for the side door, right? Like look for a different way to do a thing. As, as Grandin said, you know, oh, no, it's the grommet there.

It's like, no, no, it's an o-ring. So like this combination of detail-oriented thinking. And, well, why would I go that way? Everybody goes that way. And if you're looking to solve a problem, you know, maybe you just don't keep going in the same direction to do it. And then that gets back to these personality traits that I've always been interested in.

It's not just Briggs-Meyer, but all of these tests that measure things like disagreeability, which is hugely important if you're going to try and, you know, sell an alternative way to do a thing. Because all that resistance, all that pressure to, no, no, that's been debunked. We don't do it that way with the cows. Right. No, we do it this like, no, so many, I don't want to generalize, but it seems like so many people who are dealing with this are don't suffer from the need to conform or the desire to please in the same way.

I think that's, you hit the nail on, and I think that's where the great disconnect. A friend of mine named Tim, he calls it the agreeability factor, where autistic and neurodivergent people, they'll call BS, like, straight to your face. Like, if it's not working, like, they will just tell you. Is your name, Dale? Exactly.

Because I'm looking at this. Yeah. You said you were might, but this doesn't look like much. And, you know, some employers don't like that. And, like, at what point did we get to that where, like, everybody has to, like, agree on everything all the time? Like, we have to be able to, like, look at it and be like, are they right?

Like, and be reflective in that notion. And, you know, one of the stories I love to tell is, one of our graduates got a job working at Coors because they pay like 38 bucks an hour to brew beer at Coors and watch it come down the factory line there in Golden right outside of Denver. A kid got a job working there at the factory.

On day one, she noticed something that wasn't being done right. And she went to the supervisors at Core and said, you're brewing beer wrong. And like, could you imagine going to Coors and being like, no, no, no, there's a better way to do it. But they had the mindset they looked at it and they're like, oh my gosh, she's actually right.

And that's what I mean where then they called Becky and they, they're like, we need more. Like, where does this come from? Like, we need more people like that. Where there is that mindset of some that are like, we want to grow. We want to do it differently.

We want to learn and do better. I mean, they make more money that way. But some just want, you know, the same old, same old. So just to come back to the most practical matter here that I know that TACT is focused on, 90% of this community is unemployed. Yeah. What percentage of your students slash? graduates are employed today.

It's went up to 83.4, so it went up just one point a little bit higher. But I think I'd like to point out it's not just employed, it's advanced, it's sustained employment, it's been promoted to management. And I'd like that to qualify that that's a difference because what happens a lot, especially now, you know, working in the state, for example, and I see we measure things in short term, right? We'll measure things 30 days, 60 days, 90 days. how long is somebody working two years from now from certain schools?

They can't tell you that. But TAC kids are staying and they're sticking and they're growing and they're actually advancing. They're moving up to middle management or higher management. They're getting to do other jobs and explore different options in the companies. I think that's a skill and a thing that businesses have been missing for a long time. And I think if we're going to actually start changing the paradigm, like in Colorado right now, there's more people over 60 than under 18.

If we want this machine to keep working, we have to get people employed. Like, we just have to. Like, we don't have enough young people in the workforce to actually sustain it. But when you have a giant group of people that are totally capable and have all these amazing talents and ability, and you're not even giving them the education or training to try, because that's what happens most of the time. And that's not a Colorado thing. That's everywhere. And I think that's why what we're going to attack, what we're going to try to do with the buildable stuff,

what I'm trying to do in the book, is to start showing. people and teaching them how to do this and letting them have the ability to take what we've learned because we've learned a lot in this process with things that don't work, things that do work and help them kind of start on the 50-yard line when we were on the zero-yard line. How big do you reckon this community is the best guess? Or is it a guess? Does anybody actually know? Well, no one actually knows. The way I like to think about it, if you think about this, The average, when you look at what the government spends on different services, right, Medicaid, different therapies that families are doing, it averages between $60,000 and $80,000 a year on services. If you are able to take that money and say, okay, I'm going to funnel it towards education and training for autistic and neurodivergent folks and get them working, you're generating hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars of taxable income that all of a sudden goes back into the system that gets more doing.

for whatever reason we've chosen to like keep folks living at homes. Thank God we got rid of institutions, but there's even movement to get folks back into institutions where they don't get that education or training to actually try and see if that's something that they want to do. And the fact that like kids, when we have attacked, you know, other trade programs, they may have, you know, onesie, twosies, or Susan, they don't know that are autistic, but I can't tell you, man, we have called and said, you know, we've got a child that's autistic.

We can't have them in a program. and we don't want to do, so we're going to send them to you. And the fact that that's happening all over, they're not even getting the opportunity to see what they're going to be creative and explore for their career. What did it cost? A lot. Like the facility you have right now.

Yeah. What did that take? And the reason I'm asking, and apologies if it's confidential or whatever, but I would love for other states, A, to replicate your position in their legislatures. and B, honestly, just do the math. If you've got an 84% placement rate from graduates of tact, and there's a 90% unemployment rate in the cohort of the community, it's the elephant in the room.

It just agitates me because it's just math. It's just about, and to that point, that's why the job I'm in now, we ended up creating an entirely new public school designation called a specialized day school in Colorado. It took three years because they weren't. wanted what they called day treatment centers or child care centers for autistic kids.

And we would argue like, this isn't a daycare. This isn't a child care. Like we're creating opportunities for young adults and older adults that are over that cliff of 21. And thankfully the state went about it. And that's where like I saw that that could be possible. The building attacked was $2.2 million. The renovation was a million and a half.

And most of that was donated by companies like Wayfield that you saw that people that, you know, the different Toyota, Subaru, Mitsubishi, foundations that came in, I'm like MicroWorks, that actually helped us make that possible. And then to replicate it, that's what we're going to be doing with the buildable model now, is taking it and packaging it and saying, here's the curriculum, here's how you set up the classroom. Here's how you set up the sequencing of what that looks like, too, because the same kind of thing that's happened is we have textbooks and we say, okay, when I was fortunate enough to go to college,

which is great. Did that help me? Maybe. I'm happy I did. But they'd give you a book, and they'd call it. I had a teacher, he called it Chapter 7 learning. They give you a book. You start on page one.

By the end of Friday, you're at the end of the chapter. You take a test. Forget it, move on. Chapter 2 the next week. Nobody learns that way anymore. But still in trade schools, that's what's happening. Here's a book. We're going to do these projects.

We've also set it up where it's competency-based first timetable-based. If we can have a kid come in and actually demonstrate all of the skills necessary to work, why does he need to be there for four years and eight semesters? It makes no sense to do. that. And every educator I've ever spoken to, you're like, hey, why is college four years? Why is high school four years? I don't know. Nobody knows. But we've done that. We know that we had summers off because we used to be farmers, but kids aren't doing that. They're not helping their parents, like farm crops anymore. But we've just gone all in on this model, but we're trying to reframe that and at least

start the conversation around it and say, like, look at the quality of the candidates we're producing of this talent pool that you've disregarded and not even acknowledged. And like, looked at this word of autism or this word of neurodiversity as lesser than and recognize, hey, there's opportunity here. And if you want to make money, these kids think outside the box. You'll make more money if you get people thinking outside the box. It's just so extraordinarily ironic to think that not only could what you're doing be transformational within the community you're primarily concerned with, but the methods and the methodologies could actually lead the way to reimagining mainstream.

education. And this is, like, I'm seeing this now. Oh, where was I? Well, I was in Oklahoma in a trade school a couple of years ago. We were filming in the trade, the classic trade section. And during lunch, I wandered into another wing. It was the nursing wing. And I started talking to some of the nurses there, as one would do. And I said, well, how long's the curriculum? Is it a two-year plan? Right. And they were like, no one knows. I'm like, what do you mean?

No one knows. Well, there are people who take two years. There's some people who take 18 months. There are some people who take a year. Yeah. And we just graduated three people in seven months. So you're done when you're done. Yeah.

It's not a time thing. Exactly. And like, but that is heretical. That's heretical in the mainstream. My own brother, my own brother, that average student went to college, didn't really, majored in this and that, and decided too late that he wanted to be an engineer, seemingly too late. Engineering is one of those few disciplines.

I don't know if it's still true today, but he just checked out the books from the library, big, thick books. Yeah. And he read them all in like a week and then sat for the boards. He's been an engineer for 25 years. Right. So this credentialing, this one-size-fits-all, it's all got to stop. Workshop for Warriors, we just visited down in San Diego.

They're doing what you're doing only for service people who are struggling to find meaningful work down in New Orleans. Uncommon construction. Same kind of ways. They're all coming, they're all important because they're trying to close the skills gap, but they're all doing it with groups and cohorts that are unexpected, and that's what I think is going to get us out of this thing, ultimately. Since you brought up that earlier kind of talking about, like, you know, what we're doing with the neurodivergent community and autistic kids could go everywhere.

Have you heard of the notion of universal design? Have you ever heard that phrase before? U.D. Yeah. No. Oh, okay. Other D, thank you, not other ones. But, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Independent universal design would be your IUD. And so it's the idea, like, if we start creating an environment where everybody can be successful, and, you know, a lot of things for people with disabilities that are created, we all use. Like if you're using ramps on a sidewalk, that was for people that use wheelchairs. But now moms and parents can use it on a stroller or people can use it with a cyclist. It wasn't designed for that. It was designed for people with wheelchairs. But now if you go somewhere and they don't have.

a ramp on the sidewalk, you're like, where's the curb cut? Like, what's taking place? Why hasn't happened? If you use a toothbrush that actually vibrates, that was set up for somebody with mobility issues to actually brush their teeth. Now dentists are like, this is the way you got to go. She only sensible way. Yeah, 100%. If you're using... Do you have one? Oh, yeah. Yeah. I got one too. Do do do do do do do do do do. Dumb. My guest today, Tom Olbenis, is an American giant. And I'll tell you why. Tom understands on a fundamental level that the business of mining is a non-negotiable prerequisite of our civilization and our economic independence, just like the business of making things. American Giant knows this, which is why they committed themselves 16 years ago to make all their excellent clothing

right here in this country. It wasn't easy, but they did it. They sourced locally grown cotton, and they built factories in towns across the nation where they could hire hardworking locals who cared about making a quality product. And then they went about the business of gently reminding people that when you buy a piece of clothing from American giant, you're not just buying a high-quality sweatshirt or t-shirt or another pair of jeans. You're investing in a local supply chain. You're supporting communities from the Carolinas to California. And you're getting a piece of clothing that won't just survive,

the wash, you're getting a garment that'll get better with age. Check out their high quality staples, hoodies, teas, denim, built to be worn year after year at American-giant.com slash mike. It's quality you can feel and a true American success story that you can be proud to support. Use code Mike. Get 20% off your order at American-giant.com slash Mike. American giant American made American giant American made How long did it take you to stop brushing? I still do it.

Becky every night, like she just grabs my arm because it's like I'm still still to this day still doing it. She's like, stop, you have to let the toothbrush do the worst. I'm like, that doesn't make sense. And like wait for like the little change in rhythm. No, that's not going to happen. That's been debunked, Daniel.

That's not how we brush teeth anymore. That's how I brush my teeth. It's actually a really interesting metaphor for everything we're talking about. Because when the tool outpaces your ability to learn how to use it or adapt to it, then you wind up with this weird tension between technology and tactics, right? And so maybe that's what's happening in education too. Maybe we're just constantly waiting for something to catch up. And man, if you start thinking about the autistic community as a uniquely gifted group,

and if you start thinking about the rest of us as the people who have to figure out how to leverage the gift, well, then you have a puzzle. Like, then you have a riddle that's worth solving. Well, I think to kind of even bring it all the way full circle, I mean, to your point earlier, we have to start asking, like, why are we doing it this way? Is it working? Or should we like look at it and say the way that we've been told to do it this whole time isn't necessarily the best way to do it, that we can get better results if we reframe it and start asking questions? And I think that's the very nature of science and it's the very nature of growth is to be reflective and say, can I do this better?

And I think that's what we're trying to showcase is that there's just a different way to look at it that's working. What do you think about? I've heard people say, listen, these rates, these dramatic. dramatically increasing rates of autism. Is it really autism becoming more prevalent, or is the diagnosis simply becoming more universal? Are we paying more attention and therefore finding more of what we are looking for? Yeah.

Right? Somehow evaluating on a different metric, grading on a different curve. What do you say to that? I think it's yes and. I think, you know, when you look at autism, we used to use when I was a kid, we used the word Asperger's. You don't hear anybody use Asperger's anymore

because Dr. Asperger was the Nazi that was studying autistic kids as like the superpower that could support their effort when we're like, okay, we're not going to use that phrase anymore. So it's been around for a long time. That being said, it could it be that they're diagnosing more? Yes, we also used to use the R word all the time and put kids in institutions.

I mean, you used to think about the time that, you know, now when we think about like profound autism, for example, those kids would probably be put in institutions at this point. Profound meaning, totally non-verbal, correct, taking care of themselves in a bathroom.

Correct. Might have some more mobility issues, a variety of different things, yes. Right. But when you think, again, 40% of

autistic individuals needed alternative forms of communication, that's a big number. And so a lot of times people will say, I don't remember that when I was a kid.

Well, they were put in an institution somewhere and kept out. Now we're not doing that. Now we're saying, okay, they get to come into the home. They get to be integrated

with the community, which is great. But at the same time, too, caregivers age out because a lot of times it's parents. And so again, we have to find ways of making true integration with everybody. The other things, I don't really know. That would be a good conversation for Dell. He's way more researched than that. Okay. Well, what about a playbook then for parents or for all of us? I mean, the gluten thing is scary in the sense that you just stumbled

across it. Yeah. And it had such a profound effect on your boy. What are the other gluten out there and what do you think a sensible diet could be and how do you recommend if you recommend any kind of, you know, experimentation with diet? I think, yeah, it's a great question too. Becky would have all kinds of, she's the one you should be talking to about this. All right, get out. Yeah, exactly. I'm on it.

Yeah. But I think bigger than that, it's asking questions and being able to talk to each other about and ask these questions. What scares me, you know, I'm so glad that. people are talking about autism now in a way that they never have. I think it's finally, people are acknowledging it, they're recognizing it, they're talking about it. I don't like how people attack each other, how they're just instantly discounting each other. I think there's little bits of truth and everything everybody is sharing. And I think, just think that it's, to

put one group of people over here and say, no, you're just completely wrong, we're not going to listen to you, we're going to attack you, we're going to discount you. That's not a healthy way to look at it. And that would be something I would not recommend. I think we actually need to actually keep asking questions and wondering, where are we at? Why is it here? What can we do? Recognizing that people that are artistic, it's not a bad thing, that this is not some bad word. That means that they're less than or different or anything like that. Because I think what's happening still is that what's happening when I'm hearing, at least seen in the community, is people will hear things on the news and then they attack mothers, they attack fathers,

and they attack the individual. I think once we start attacking people for that, that's a really dangerous and unscientific way to go about it. Well, it's difficult to fix a thing and attack a thing at the same time, you know. But I think, I mean, so much of it is fear-based. Oh, 100%. Right. I mean, it's just uncertainty. You don't, you gosh, you just. I mean, when Dylan was diagnosed, you know, I was so mad at the doctors. I yell, I screamed. I literally made the one nurse cry. For a brief time, I was like proud of myself for like standing up for my son and making them cry. I ran a red light, got a ticket, got a picture of myself getting a ticket because I was so upset. Now I look back at myself and I'm like, dang it, like, what was I thinking?

Like, I can't imagine my life without my son being who he is in the way that he is and finding purpose and creating, you know, tact and writing a book and all the work with the autism community and now doing the buildable stuff and all the different stuff that I get to do with the state. I can't imagine changing that. And so I think it's healthy to look back and say, okay, are there things like, do different is there something wrong is there truth to the different things that people are saying and being well and being vulnerable to talk to each other about it and I'm scared that some folks don't do that and I think you to your point they're just being attacked and um that's a hard place to be for

sure why were you angry at the doctor I thought like I think a lot of parents when you hear that your kids autistic at least at first you know there's that deficit mindset that we're talking about I I thought, selfish thoughts, like, you know, is that the end of the Combs line? Am I going to have to take care of my son for the rest of my life? Am I going to be a grandparent? I mean, like, selfish thoughts, but very honest, like, thoughts, like wondering what that looked like. And as I mentioned really, it's expensive all of these therapies. You know, like ABA therapy costs more on Medicaid, for example, in Colorado than all other ER visits combined. Like, we are dumping tons of money into these therapies, but we're not putting money.

into training, into education, into opportunity for people. And for some reason, people are just going along with that and saying, yep, this works. And I don't understand that. I don't understand why people aren't saying, you know, they hear things about their kids or they hear things about themselves. And they just go along with it. And they're not getting that opportunity to have those programs that recognize the things that they can do and the opportunity that they could contribute to the world. It really is something, man.

I see it in myself sometimes. It's not a flattering thing, but it's not enough to know what to do. It's normal not to know what to do, and then it's normal to learn what you can do. And then we enter into this weird world where you don't do it anyway. Yeah. And it applies to so many things, like working out, eating less sugar. You know, it trickles all the way down to big decisions that could have giant impacts. And I think it's the same thing that makes people so frustrated with politics and policy.

It's like, why does a nurse need a two-year certification plan? It makes me so angry that that guy, that medic, couldn't get hired, you know. But at the same time, when I'm lying on the cold, steel table and the anesthesia is working its way through my body. Yeah. You know, before my kidneys replaced, it's nice to look over on the wall and see a certificate there that the doctor graduated at the top of his class from some Ivy League. Right.

That's still in me too. Yep. And so all these things, the desire to take the road less traveled and the comfort that comes from knowing that who's ever advising you has all the necessary. initials behind their name. Where do you find peace? Where do you find certainty? What do you tell people about vaccines for crying out loud?

It's just maddening. Yeah, I think at the end of the day, for me at least, when I look at my son, when I look at my stepson, I look at it in the sense of recognizing that there is still a lot of answers that I don't have at this point. But I also feel like I'm doing everything. my point and I don't want to be that complacent person. Like it would have been much easier for me to keep doing music and take the money from that and throw it at various therapies. That would have been easily the path that would have been the path of least resistance. Because you could have kept

being the guy you were. Right. And simply reallocated the fruits of your labors to deal with this Right. And just put it to the side, pretend it's not there, keep doing your thing. And I think that's where a lot of people are. I think, you know, actually stopping doing that and actually being where I am now, I wouldn't change it for the world. But at the same token, you know, the stuff that Becky and I have done has come at great sacrifice. I mean, I can't tell you how much money, at least the first couple years intact, was our own money that we threw into that. I mean, more money than I will really like to think outside and actually say, like, a lot of money went into it. The fact that, like, all the tools were taught with my dad's tools, my grandfather's tools,

with my tools, like, we put everything into that. You know, in the long run, are we going to be sitting as pretty as, you know, parents that kept going that safe route? Probably not. But, like, could the world actually have a conversation and start looking at what our kids are doing and have a bigger impact than that financial impact? I hope so. Danny.

spoiler alert the world is not aching and grieving for lack of another singer-songwriter I'm not a singer that would have you go running Chuck and I were talking about that because you guys sing well together but if you had me

like Jesus man what is going on there about the sister well I mean you know you love to play the guitar yeah right yeah well you know what but for you play it on your own time yeah you know maybe you sell some records, maybe you don't. Right.

You did win a Grammy. Yeah, I actually designed the music program they used to teach music in Nashville. Yeah. So I ended up having that heart for education. I mean, kind of was like telling you the full circle. I took the knowledge my dad taught me, like as he was a home builder in teaching, taking with the music. And it's just kind of wild how that experience all comes together.

Well, look, I think, I mean, the place to start to land the plane, though, is exactly what you just said. It's whether you knew it or not, you were confronted with a true. choice to double down on the guy that you are and keep doing the things you've been doing or to go down this totally other path. And I can promise you what the country needs are people who will hit the reset button and put the guitar down for a minute and say, oh, I know. I'm going to build a trade school and I'm going to tailor it to the autistic community

and I'm going to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that doing so will lead to happy careers and happy people. And so you've done it. And so now the question is, I know you're going to do something similar in Nashville. Yeah, with Buildable Academy is what we're calling it. But why not tact? The nonprofit model is incredibly difficult to replicate

and actually keep that branding alive, like actually taking tact and taking that. and putting it there, that's hard to control. It seems like when we do it this way, you can't franchise a nonprofit. We want to make it that, like, give people the insight that we have learned and help them actually use it.

And if we learn stuff from that, too, awesome. Do you worry sometimes about, you know, the nonprofit world, at least in my experience in it? It's so, first of all, it's like running a business, only harder. Oh, it's... tremendously difficult. It's every single challenge a small business owner would have with a whole other set of layers on top of people don't understand that.

They definitely do not understand that, yes. But the idea that when you fundraise, like how much money goes to the program, how much money goes to promoting the idea, how much money goes to staff and overhead. And that to me is the great, not the great torture, but I think about it a lot because people love to evaluate charities. And at a glance, you know, the numbers don't always tell the whole story. 100%. And especially when you look at, you know, some donors are like,

we don't want our money going towards salaries or we want it going towards the program and the kids. And that's awesome. But I can't have the program for the kids without paying the teachers and having a space to do it. and you just you get in this circular conversation where people don't see that and so then trying to raise enough to balance that and then justify that and then finding teachers that are willing to work for less because it's a nonprofit and like just accepting that it creates so many unnecessary obstacles people are so funny man the idea and i understand it i've done it myself you know i i want my money to do this yeah well you know what the coin needs a head it needs a tail It needs a side. Did you ever read Uncharitable?

Oh, I have it. Somebody just gave it to me. It's been sitting on my shelf. You need to read that 100% where he talks about how they were doing cancer support and they went all in and they hired great staff and they paid them all a lot of money and they made record amounts of money.

And then donors are like, what are you doing? You're paying all these people, all this money. This needs to go towards the research. And so they got fired like almost everybody and then the money went down and the less money came in and they had less money to give away. And if you want people to do great work, you need great people and you need great opportunities

for those people and that means paying them well. And so, yeah. Well, here's my drama. Not that anybody cares, but. So, MicroWorks is awarded, I think, 3,200 scholarships. And congratulations. That's pretty amazing. Thanks.

Say $18 million. Okay. Now, if somebody came and said, here's a $20 million donation, and I wanted to go all for scholarships, I'd probably take it, you know, because why wouldn't I? Yeah. But I would also say to them, look, that's going to allow me to do another 3 or 4,000 scholarships, and that's great. Now it's a total of 8,000, 9,000 people we've helped. Good for us.

We'll have a parade. Right. What I need to do is tell the country the story of 20 or 30 of our rock stars who have crushed it. I need to make a compelling case for them, and I need to buy media. I need earned media, paid media, I need billboards, I need everything. And if I do that right, I'm going to reach guidance counselors and parents and millions of people. and the number of people who then come and apply for scholarships is going to go through the roof, and then I can start.

So it's like, I'm convinced the best thing I can do is tell the success stories of the people we've already assisted rather than spend all of the money assisting more people directly. That's hard to articulate, even for me. And I've been doing it 17 years. Yeah. I only share this because I bet you've entered into the same space. You can spend all the money that you raise on the next location, or you can do it on, maybe on better salaries for people.

You can do all those things. Or you can get out there in the world. I don't know who is listening to this. Maybe Governor Abbott is listening. Maybe some of it. We don't know. But the real gold medal in this whole thing, is attacked in every state.

I think that's what we need 100%. I mean, to your point, like trying to get the media, one of this came to mind, and maybe it's a little off topic, but the Air Force had set it up, which was really pretty cool to like, I was a News Nation, first live interview on News Nation, my military blues looking sharp, and the reporter chose,

since I did space stuff, to talk about aliens the whole time and asked me if I'd ever heard and was covering up for the government, space aliens. And it's just like, oh gosh, like, here is this opportunity that, you know, thankfully the Air Force afforded to, like, on military time

to kind of show, like, how working with service members that are autistic or have children that are autistic or neurodivergent and showcase tact and all those things, and that entire airtime about space aliens. And so, like... News Nation. Yeah, yeah. Was it a great...

Yes, it was great, but, like, I think too still needing that. I mean, what you're doing today is a big part of helping us get that out there. So thank you, because we need more of that. We need more people to, like, actually pick up the phone and actually start asking questions and saying, how are you doing this? Like, we want to, like, help get this out there. Has the military sniffed around? Oh, the Air Force has been great.

Yes, very, very much so. My picture hung at the Pentagon for two years, which was pretty amazing in talking about that. So, like, that part, the Air Force has been great. We need more of that. I mean, there was an initiative I was part of for a few years called the Nerdiverse Air Force. There's an article about Stripes about it. We got about 6,000 service members in. that have autism and ADHD, which I'm really proud of.

So, like, they've actually been pretty great. Now, that's changing with some of the things. Like, I have a beard. I'm a reservist. I'm going to start shaving that beard. But, like, some other things are changing, too. But I'm just going to say, I'm going to guess that 99% of the people listening right now had no idea that there were 6,000 neurodivergent people in the Air Force alone.

Oh, there's way more than that. I think that's, like, a great elephant in the room. And it's like, when you start looking. Looking at the fact, too, and prior to working in that, that's considered a disqualifying factor. And so, too, when you look at the military and they start saying, you know, hey, we want you to come into the service, but you have ADHD or you're autistic or OCD or, you know, something. They'll just say, nope, that doesn't count. You're out. And so when you look at the fact, only 1% of us have, you know, raised her hand and sworn in, there's a whole bunch more that want to, but there's still that limiting factor at that point.

And so when you are you doing that, when you're talking about like cybersecurity analysts, when you're talking about space operators, I mean mechanics, when you actually are in there and you're talking to folks, especially in the space force, oh yeah, all day long. So the bottom line is, yeah, you know, the first kid I met in this last trip, Enoch? Yeah, Enoch, yeah, yeah. I mean, that guy is all about space. Oh, 100% right? Yeah.

All about it. Yeah. companies are absolutely desperate to fill these roles with people who want to work, who have drive, who have work ethic, and who have the skills. Your organization, TACT, has an 84% placement rate and a cohort that is 90% unemployed. That feels like the headline. If nothing else, we will lean into that and keep shaking the tree and see what falls out. Thank you again for all your support. You've been awesome. So always good to see, my friends. All you're doing is changing the world. Thanks for the hat. Thanks for the shirt.

Yeah. Thanks for the book. If you'd have gotten it to me a day earlier, I would have read the daggone thing, but I'll read it tonight. All right. Sounds good. Let me know what you think. I sure will. Where can people go? What should people do? Who want to help? Yeah. So I think, you know, going to Tax website, buildwithtax.org, definitely check it out. Buildables, buildablemacademy.com. The books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, anything like that that people want to check. out. So that'd be a good place to start. Supporting neurodivergent and autistic people for their transition into adulthood. I'm just going to go ahead and say it's more relevant today than it's ever been in the history of time. Thanks, Mike. Thanks for writing.

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