April 22, 2025
Breaking Autism Stereotypes with Sam Mitchell
Sam Mitchell shares his journey of being diagnosed with autism at age four and transforming his experiences into a platform for advocacy through podcasting and motivational speaking. Sam turned his pain into purpose by giving back and helping others.
• Diagnosed with classic autism symptoms including repetitive behaviors, restricted interests, and sensory sensitivities
• Found understanding at age six through a book that explained his autism, helping him make sense of social exclusion
• Struggled with peer relationships throughout school, experiencing exclusion rather than direct bullying
• Made breakthrough at sixteen when he stopped people-pleasing and found acceptance among fellow "outcasts"
• Turned his special interest in professional wrestling into podcast opportunities, interviewing wrestling stars
• Created "Autism Rocks and Rolls" podcast to amplify autistic voices and experiences
• Developed into a motivational speaker speaking on big stages.
You can connect with Sam through his website at AutismRocksAndRolls.com where there's a contact information page.
00:02 - Introducing Sam Mitchell
02:59 - Early Diagnosis and Childhood Challenges
06:59 - Finding Friends as an Outcast
10:07 - From Wrestling Fan to Podcast Host
14:42 - Motivational Speaking and Advocacy
21:38 - Fighting Autism Stereotypes
25:26 - Closing Thoughts and Contact Information
WEBVTT
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Hello everyone and welcome to today's episode of On the Spectrum with Sonia podcast, where we discuss autism spectrum, mental health challenges and anybody who's overcome any adversity.
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That will leave our audience feeling inspired, hopeful, connected and filled with love and support, especially in a world that tries to disconnect us on a daily.
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As many of you may know by now, april is International Autism Awareness and Acceptance Month, and what many people don't think about is what it is like to be diagnosed on the autism spectrum, what it's like to have a kid, perhaps, who may be on the autism spectrum, because a lot of people, when they're young and carefree, right Like they don't.
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They're not thinking about oh, you know, do I have to be?
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You know, am I different from everyone else?
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Or, you know, if I have a family, will my kid be different from everyone else?
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Everybody has their own expectations of life and what it needs to look like, but just imagine being a child and you know feeling different, having parents be concerned about you because they noticed something was different about you that was different from other peers of that kid's age.
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Today, to discuss experiences of being on the autism spectrum, we have Sam Mitchell, who was diagnosed at age four.
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He has a podcast, autism Rocks and Rolls, and he's worked with nonprofit organizations to help give back to families of kids on the autism spectrum.
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He has used his diagnosis also as a way to become a motivational speaker for many, many different audiences.
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He's spoken in front of business leaders.
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He's spoken in front of various different audiences to engage in different perspectives.
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He's also had very prominent people on his own podcast because of just how inspiring Sam is.
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So please, without further ado, sam, please, thank you.
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Thank you so much for being here today and welcome to the show.
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Well, thank you for having me.
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It's good to be here, Bob.
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Love this, all right.
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So, sam, tell us a little bit now.
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You said you had been diagnosed when you were four.
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Well, sam, tell us a little bit now.
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You said you had been diagnosed when you were four.
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Why don't you give us a little bit of a perspective of what was going on at four years old that led your parents to get?
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That led us, your parents, to be like OK, let's go get him evaluated, let's see what's going on here.
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As far as I know, just showing the classic textbook symptoms.
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I had repetitive behaviors.
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I did restricted interest and was mainly professional wrestling and I wouldn't stop talking about it for the life of me.
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But those were some of the behaviors I showed.
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I think also too, I would have meltdowns if something was too loud at the time span.
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Now loud noises don't bother me as much as they once upon a time did so what kind of loud would do you remember like standing out to you?
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that would be really bothersome.
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Thunder.
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I think thunder and lightning was one of them.
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Right, those are loud Sure, and so thunder lightning.
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What else do you remember?
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That's all I can remember.
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Okay, so you got diagnosed at four.
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You said your parents took you to a school psychologist, correct?
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Well, I think the parents.
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Well, my mother taught at the same school I did and also had suspicious I was on the autism spectrum.
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So what they did, from what I understand, is they got a school psychologist to diagnose me.
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The school psychologist did test on me, put me, observed me in the classroom, and unfortunately I cannot remember those tests, what they were.
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And when did you start realizing then that you were on the spectrum?
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Because at four I can only imagine that must have been a difficult age to really kind of understand.
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Wait a minute, I'm on the autism spectrum.
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So when did it kind of hit for you that, okay, I'm on the autism spectrum?
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And how did it make you feel when you finally understood what it meant to be on the spectrum?
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Because it was at six years old and I pretty much understood it through a book.
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I was read a book called Understanding Sam, and that was when my life made much more sense, because I knew why I was getting excluded.
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I knew why no one else was talking about professional wrestling.
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I think there was a legit reason why I was getting excluded.
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I knew why no one else was talking about professional wrestling.
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I think there was a legit reason why I'm doing this.
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I'm not trying to use autism as an excuse.
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It's just that there's part of autism, part of autism, parts of autism that is going to happen.
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We're going to have meltdowns some days as a young child and then we're going to have restriction inches.
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That's how our brain is wired.
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We can't help that.
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And what was it like for you then when you finally understood that you're on the spectrum?
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You read this book, you know.
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Then you started making sense of everything in your life book, you know.
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Then you started making sense of everything in your life.
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How do you feel like it impacted you then when you went and were around your peers when you were in school.
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It pretty much affected me because I didn't like school when it came to the students because of how I would interact.
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It just didn't make sense to them.
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I wasn't bullied, I was at points.
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I was mainly excluded and sadly you can't send a kid to the office for exclusion because they didn't know how to take me.
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How did people used to react to you when you would go and talk to them or try to be around them Like how did people respond?
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Did anybody ever kind of give you any blowback, any kind of like get away from us kind of thing?
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it was get away from us mainly.
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I got big eyes once, I think it was in eighth grade.
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The same year my mother was a teacher.
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I said something that I thought fit.
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I didn't see this, but as I turned my back she looked at her friend and she gave her big eyes, like the bug eyes, like what the heck was that all about?
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Hmm, so were you able to make any friends in school growing up?
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Not growing up.
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When I grew up, let's put it that way At the age of 16 16 I decided that I was going to stop people pleasing if you didn't like me.
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The door was right there.
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Okay, and that worked out so well because at 16 years old, I finally made some friends.
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That wasn't the friend I had since kindergarten how did you get into then?
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now, like you're the motivational speaking and um starting your podcast, you know how did you take what you have and you know, use it to give back the way I give back is I try to help other people who have been in my shoes because I don't want anyone to go through what I went through.
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It can be really torturous on the brain what is the one thing?
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you're afraid of people going through that?
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You went through that.
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You really just want to protect people from at all costs, if you can they want to socialize, but just don't know how to.
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Or they are trying to make friends but they see, oh, it's going down the pothole and that's one of the biggest challenges of being on the autism spectrum is somebody who's on the spectrum herself.
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I get it in that.
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You know it is very difficult to make friends when you're on the autism spectrum, and it's very difficult to keep friends too, and it's hard to be around people a lot of times too for long periods of time.
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You know it really is.
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It is really hard to deal with people.
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It can be exhausting because it's an overlap of how to deal with these social cues that people do and people don't understand.
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that is so exhausting all day, right, being in crowds that can also get overwhelming, even though, don't get me wrong, I'll still do things socially.
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Like you know, I'll go to conferences, we'll go to concerts every now and again, right, you do those things Right.
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I run races.
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I'm very much a big runner, so I run races, but like it's different to you know, but it's.
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It's different, I guess, when you have an activity versus like just social, when you're just kind of forced to be, you know, on on cue in some ways, right, and you don't have like a script or anything in front of you, and just when you're around people for periods, long, long, long periods of time, it's like, okay, well, what do you talk about after a while?
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Right, Right, yeah.
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After a while it's like oh, this is so social awkwardness, it's so uncomfortable.
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I don't know what else to do other than just leave and be disrespectful, which is something I don't want to do.
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I mean, as odd as it is, it is disrespectful to just be like bye-bye and walk out.
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Did you ever feel drained when you were in school?
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Because you were around people all day.
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Oh yeah, probably I would say, senior year, when I was about to graduate, is when.
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That's why, after I would eat lunch, I would literally sit in a what would you say, what was it called?
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Kind of by a wall toward the bathroom.
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Wasn't in the bathroom, trust me, the bathroom smelled there, but it was toward the bathroom and I would literally sit there and be on my phone to get away from people and so the friends that you ended up making when you were 16, how did you, how are you able to kind of crack that code from having, from not being able to socialize well when you were younger to then younger than 16, to then turning 16 and being able to make some friends?
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Well, I came to the conclusion that if this change didn't work, I would have said okay, and I probably would have been mad at a lot of people, but I would still have people on my back because I still had two people at the time span versus zero.
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And I met some people where they've had zero.
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They don't know what it's like to have a friend.
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Well, I'll be the guy to show them that.
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So how did you make friends then?
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How were you able to connect to those two people and what worked for you?
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What really worked for me was I think there's a lot of people out there who are not on the spectrum but are just outcasts to the world.
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I fit in with the outcasts and the world more than the poster boys for success, because they don't judge, they didn't care if your social skills sucked they didn't care if your social skills sucked.
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So when you, just when you were talking about outcasts, what particularly are you like?
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Describing what traits like, what are things that made them outcasts?
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well, I hate to use this term, but there's no other way to describe it emos people who are just different from the high school jock to use this term, but there's no other way to describe it emos people who are just different from the high school jock and you felt like those people were a lot more compassionate to you because they could understand that correct.
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You know what you went through.
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You know that is one thing.
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I was an outcast.
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That's why, like my book called it's called dropped in a maze my life on the spectrum from outcast to outstanding.
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I was one of those outcast people with no friends.
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So it's very interesting we're having this conversation, because I was one of those who didn't know what it was like to have a friend growing up, really so until unless it was like family friends.
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You know what I mean, like parent involvement or something you know, but you know what I mean right, I was lucky to have that in the family and then, luckily, I was having to make it, but that was before the judgment started.
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Because, let's be honest, when you're in kindergarten you don't care, you're happy about the world and you're just like oh person, friends.
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But then when you get older you start seeing these social cues.
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So I'm lucky to make to a made one before the people identities started to get revealed what grade were you in when you noticed more identities started to get revealed?
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Sophomore year.
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That was when I made friends.
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That's when I saw people.
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Actually, there are some out there who don't mind being around you.
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Mm-hmm.
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So what was it like for you then, when you finally were able to make friends?
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How did that feel for you to be able to crack that code a little bit?
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um, it felt pretty good.
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It felt pretty good that people understood what I was worth of, and it also felt good to understand what other people are worth of.
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And I finally found a group which, when at five years old, it was unimaginable and did your interest in wrestling still remain or did it kind of start to change over?
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oh, it still is.
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I'm still interested in it.
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I'm'm going to try to watch WrestleMania next weekend, but I got a friend who's interested in wrestling.
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That's half the time is our conversations.
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Have you ever taken a class before in like grappling and mixed MMA?
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Have you ever done any of those?
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No, it's not really wrestling.
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Wrestling it's more of the professional wrestling.
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Yeah, I tried once with our school, but the wrestling team faded out.
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I think it came to the conclusion we couldn't afford it.
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Oh, okay, gotcha, and did you have a favorite wrestler?
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Still have a favorite wrestler.
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I got to meet him, mick Foley.
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I had the privilege of meeting him I think I was on another wrestling podcast and they helped me make a boyhood dream come true.
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But I met several others.
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I've had Jake the Snake on the show, I've had Kane on the show, I've had Buff Bagwell on the show, I've had Victoria on the show, I've had Al Snow on the show and I've also had RVD on the show.
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Oh, wow.
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So you had a whole lot of people from there on your show.
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Yep, I have.
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That's so great.
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How did you?
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come across that opportunity to meet them.
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Well, it depends on what you're talking about.
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Half of them was so.
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Al Snow there's different stories.
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In particular, al Snow was literally through a wrestling event in Bloomington.
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There was a local wrestling event.
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He was going to be a guest.
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Rvd was just a simple Facebook messenger.
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Kane was literally asking his scheduling people.
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I had to do a little bit of phone calls on that one, but then ones that, like Buff, bagwell and Victoria, I will go to a wrestling convention called the Squared Circle Expo.
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They're going to be actually in town in a couple of weeks.
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So wrestling convention, and what I've done is I literally asked those two to be on the show and they agreed.
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Oh, that's awesome.
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Good for you.
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So tell us a little bit more about your show.
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You have a podcast Autism podcast, autism roles.
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When did that start?
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Um, what motivated you to start that?
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well, it started after I joined my high school's media clone.
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I fell, loved it so much in 2016 no, I'm sorry, 2018 that's why I started to go to some of our school's podcasts called thundercast.
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But then I loved it so much I started deciding not wait till college to expand my media skills and start my own podcast.
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And that was when Autism, rocks and Rolls was born.
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But it grew really quickly because 20 turned to 40, 40 turned to 100, 100 turned to 200.
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A couple of people who helped me out decided to enhance my um, enhance my thank you, enhance my podcast by having a non-profit, having a board doing events and any answers.
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Where I'm from, I also do motivational speaking services, but that was through Oklahoma.
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That was my first big speaking gig and then everything else was through the nonprofit.
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Okay, and so you fell in love with podcasting.
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When your high school had their podcast and you fell in love with that idea.
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You made one into your own.
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You have people help you along the way to build it up.
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Um, do you uh, do any live uh shows for your podcast?
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well, not until recently I had I started.
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I started this new series called the autism rocks worlds podcast hijack series.
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That's where guests come on the show.
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They literally hijack the show by telling their story and what having autism means to them or what services they offer.
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Okay, it was an idea, because I realized I needed more content.
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That and that's where the idea came from okay and um, so it sounds like you really did something, remarkable, though you know it's like you really used your voice to give back through your podcasting.
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Now I kind of want to ask too, what about the motivational speaking?
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How did you get more into doing that?
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Because you've spoken in front of impressive audiences such as, like, business leaders, such as all sorts of different, various kinds of people from all various kinds of backgrounds.
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So I want to know, like, how did you get into that?
00:19:11.082 --> 00:19:11.845
You repeat the question.
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My headphones died on me and it switched on technology.
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Oh, ok, no, no worries.
00:19:17.772 --> 00:19:23.326
I wanted to know, like, how did you like switched into, get into motivational speaking?
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How did you switch and get into motivational speaking?
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Because you've spoken in front of very impressive audiences and all the diverse audiences, you've spoken in front of leaders before.
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I wanted to know how did you get into that aspect?
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The way I got into that aspect was I literally got invited to the speaking game and I saw there was success down the path.
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So I was like, oh okay, there's actually some hope in here and so how do you enjoy it though being, you know, public speaking?
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How are you enjoying you know being on speaking?
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How are you enjoying you know being on stages, speaking on stages?
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I enjoy it pretty good.
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I think there's no nervousness.
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I just get a little nervous with the time because I'm afraid I'm not going to get all my information in.
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But it's something I signed up for.
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Not much I can really do about it.
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What topics do you tend to discuss when you are speaking?
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Well, I tend to speak on autism.
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Sometimes it depends on what the conference is.
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One time I spoke about my story, because that's what they wanted.
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One was about podcasting and what it means to me.
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One was about technology and how it can help those with autism.
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I have my own views on it, but I had to focus on the positive side.
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One was a work conference on why you should hire people with autism.
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Actually, not one, a couple of those were.
00:20:51.972 --> 00:20:54.381
But then I've also done vendors for shows.
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I was a vendor once upon a time for a resource fair up in Huntingburg, indiana.
00:21:02.221 --> 00:21:04.951
Okay, that sounds really, I mean.
00:21:04.951 --> 00:21:06.036
So that's very impressive.
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It seems like you really are.
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You've used you know, your diagnosis of being on the spectrum to really give back, to get to give a voice to others, to speak for others who may not be able to speak up at at the time.
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You know there are things that you are doing.
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That's you know.
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You're putting remarkable work into the world and I want to just say thank you for all you are doing for those in the community and thank you for promoting the awareness and for spreading your knowledge and for advocating for inclusion.
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Not a problem.
00:21:40.786 --> 00:21:46.330
I appreciate it for inclusion, not a problem I appreciate it.
00:21:48.339 --> 00:21:51.369
What is one piece of inspiration you want to leave the audience with today?
00:21:53.861 --> 00:21:56.750
Well, I think it's not just a piece of information, it's a merge of wisdom.
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If the world could be nice and not act so stupid, I think we'd get along so much better.
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