Ep. #46 - Understanding Dyslexia: Insights for the Oilfield Workforce - Russell Van Brocklen

In this episode of The Crude Cast, Travis sits down with Russell Van Brocklen to break down dyslexia in a way that actually matters on the job—especially in high-risk, procedure-driven work like oil and gas. Russell explains the brain science behind dyslexia, why many dyslexic thinkers become hyper-specialists, and how that can translate into exceptional performance in technical roles.

They dig into hiring and training: why “What’s your specialty?” might be one of the best interview questions you can ask, how to train neurodiverse employees without “big picture first” confusion, and why starting ultra-specific can prevent misunderstandings that lead to incidents. Russell also lays out a practical method using short written steps and AI to confirm understanding—then having a supervisor approve it—so safety-critical tasks don’t get lost in translation.

If you lead people, write SOPs, train new hires, or care about safety culture, this conversation will change how you think about learning differences—and how to unlock talent the right way.

🔗 Learn more about Russell’s work: https://dyslexiaclasses.com/

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Transcript

Travis McCaughey:
We've got Russell Van Brocklin here. Welcome to the crude cast. Today we're gonna talk about dyslexia interested to talk to you today, Russell.

Russell:
Thanks for having me.

Travis McCaughey:
So what is dyslexia?

Russell:
Well, when you're talking about dyslexia, you need to go right to the science. This is the top book in my field. It's called Overcoming Dyslexia from Yale University by Dr. Sally Shaywitz. Second edition, I'm going to turn to page 78, figure 23. These two brains are dyslexia and nondyslectic. Do you see how the back part of your brain has all this massive neural activity and mine has next to none in the back of the brain?

Russell:
Now do you see how the front part of the brain, is about two and a half times overactive?

Russell:
Okay, that's dyslexia. So now I'm going to really simplify advanced neuroscience to the point of making neuroscientists and dyslexia go crazy. But we can draw what's generally happening is the back part of the brain is generally your kindergarten through, I would say, most of college. The front part of your brain is really what I like to call grad school or higher order thinking in any particular field.

Russell:
Okay. The front part of the brain deals with two areas, word analysis, followed by articulation. All right. But to really sum it up when we're looking at your industry, okay. And what your listeners are dealing with. The first thing you need to know when you're hiring somebody that is dyslectic, attention deficit disorder, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, because the conditions are very similar in how

Russell:
the employees react is very similar. The first thing that you need to know about us is that as a general rule, we are academic and industry specialists. Very, very hyper specialized. We only care about a very narrow area. To give you an example, have you ever watched a movie called Fast and the Furious?

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
Do remember the original one? Paul Walker is literally in with his, this is after he brings a car from the junkyard, they're redesigning it on the computer and the kid's showing him what it could look like. He said, how come you're not at MIT? I mean, you're amazing. And the kid said, I can do this really good. I can't do the other stuff. So to translate that to our educational system.

Russell:
Kindergarten through the first two years of college, they want us to become well-rounded education-wise. But once we get into the real world, all we care, all everybody cares about is your specialty. In your field, that's all they care about. You're really good in this area. You don't care what the kid did if he could understand Shakespeare. You don't care if he was, if they're a good artist. Okay? You want to know what they can do and do it safely.

Russell:
in your field, okay, which is absolutely a paramount. So what you want to do when you're interviewing a person who's ADD, ADHD, or dyslectic is ask them, what's your specialty? What are you into? And if it's not really directly related to what you're doing on the job, I would say it's probably better off not hiring them. This is not discrimination.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
People like me absolutely should be doing things in our speciality because we are so really, really good at it. Let me give you an example. I'm a New York State Senate-funded dyslexia researcher. It took me years to get that going through the education department, the SUNY Research Foundation, the whole thing. I was asked, once it was proven that I have a sixth grade reading and writing ability when I was in college.

Russell:
and then I could jump it up to the grad level and then back down again. I was asked to connect my research to this book, Strategies for Struggling Writers. Dr. Collins is a million and a hour federally funded program for struggling writers. I said, I'm gonna take your material from mild dyslexia to severe dyslexia. People said it was going to take weeks. It took me less than two weeks to get his approval. He put A plus excellent.

Russell:
What happened? One class period a day for 180 days the school year, kids were highly motivated, highly intelligent juniors and seniors with middle school writing skills. Their special ed teacher took less than four hours to train and result, they ended up scoring average range of entering graduate school students. Okay, all went on to college, all graduated GPAs of 2.5 to 3.6, cost New York State less than 900 bucks a kid. Okay, now.

Russell:
I did that because this was my specialty. This is what I was really, really good at. So to be fair, if you're hiring a dyslexic ADD ADHD kid, ask them, what's your specialty? What are you really good at? What do you care about? And if it's inside your field, by all means, hire them and then find out what it is. So let me just ask you, what are the three most complicated

Russell:
skill sets needed in your field that your podcasters are interested in.

Travis McCaughey:
three most complicated.

Russell:
You're out in the field doing, actually doing the work. We'll just say the more complicated one, or just give me the most complicated one you can think of.

Russell:
forget the office. I'm talking out in the field.

Travis McCaughey:
It would be like following a piece of paperwork, knowing where all the pipes go, and reading P &IDs, know, maps basically

Russell:
Right. Now, if you were to carefully interview dyslectic attention deficit disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder people and make no qualms about it, this is doing them a service or a disservice. If you find that in that area or other areas in just what you guys do that are mission critical and you find that's what they're really interested in, you will find that they will know more about it.

Russell:
anybody of that age group or probably people twice their age, that they're really into it and that they will be the best possible employee in that area. Probably you'll have is sending them home because they're so interested. And they do exist, this, and I try to tell employers is ethically, and this is gonna just seem completely off the wall.

Russell:
You don't want to place an ADD, ADHD, or dyslexic person in a role unless it's really in their speciality, their area of extreme interest and ability. It's doing you a disservice, it's doing them a disservice. They find a position where they're a match and they will just be absolutely your most brilliant employee.

Travis McCaughey:
What kind of symptoms or like if they're not in the right role, what do you often see?

Russell:
The most motivated and the most intelligent among us, will see them, pardon my French, half-assing it, is the best you're going to get. They will mellow through. I see it all the time. Parents push dyslectics to go on things that they're not meant to do, and they get medical degrees, law degrees, doctoral degrees, and they're not good at it, and they...

Russell:
test it and it's just miserable. All right. So what you again, we're very easy to see if we should be in a position. What's your speciality and they will tell you everything about it. Okay. And if you know that this isn't it for them, you can say, well, I know somebody who this you might be more of a fit for this company and you give them a call and they will be very happy for a brilliant referral. Okay. That's really is about this next thing you need to understand about us.

Russell:
is don't ever try to give us instructions from the general to the specific. You can't do that. From an academic standpoint, it's like asking a dyslectic high school kid, what effect did Martin Luther King's I Have a Dream speech have on the American Civil Rights Movement? Grabbing fog, there's nothing there. Because if you ask a dyslectic, in your speciality, do you have ideas?

Russell:
flying around your head at light speed but with little to no organization, they're going to say yes. So again, this is so important. In your speciality, do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed but with little to no organization? They're going to say yes. And you see how we fix this is we force the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. So again, we force the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable output. So in academia, we would say,

Russell:
What effect, I'm sorry, what compelled Martin Luther King to want to give his famous speech? You go to his biography, you find out, you write it out. That answer will produce another question. You answer it, write it out. That forces the brain to organize itself by using writing as a measurable outlet. So when you're talking about your field, all right, go very specific. What issue, what's the big problem we're dealing with here?

Russell:
What is something ultra specific? Now, how do we handle that? Start very specifically and ask, how do we handle this starting at a specific point, then going general towards the solution. If you do it that way and go step by step and have the dyslectic write out each step. Now, I would highly recommend that, because we're in the real world now, time counts. Have the dyslectic use ChatGPT.

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Russell:
or whatever other AI thing you want. Make sure that they have it in writing and have their supervisor approve it. You cannot even contemplate having a misunderstanding, which happens all the time with neurodiverse people and your former general education students. Happens all the time. I would use ChatGPT starting with a specific point.

Russell:
and have the student write it out to make sure they think, okay, this is what it is, show it to the supervisor. I recommend nothing more than five paragraphs, preferably one to three, because supervisors are busy.

Travis McCaughey:
So are we taking, we're saying that someone has asked this person a question, let's say they're providing the answer, but we're taking their answer and putting it into an AI. Is that what you're saying?

Russell:
Well, let's say for example, what you want to do starting off with, I'm assuming you have a brand new neurodiverse employee, dyslexia, ADD, ADHD. They need to learn the job. Okay. What typically happens is, know, you go in, you know how you start off with a big picture, then you get down to details. Exact, our brains, I'm again, am showing.

Russell:
the page in overcoming dyslexia. See how our brains are completely different. Okay, from a practical standpoint, you don't want to do that with a neurodiverse person. Okay, not unless you want a catastrophic accident. I'm just saying our brains are different. Okay, so how you do that, all right, is remember where I said word analysis followed by articulation? When you want...

Russell:
the dyslectic or neurodiverse person to do something. Best thing I can find is narrow down what you're trying to have them accomplish into one word, a universal thing. Okay, so let's take an example of this. Let's say we're out, we're in the field, okay? We're actually doing the field manual work. What's the...

Travis McCaughey:
biggest problem you have to train a new person in.

Travis McCaughey:
It would probably be keeping themselves safe. Like if you're opening a valve or closing a valve, what are the repercussions downstream? If there's pressure on one side and you open the valve, where is that pressure going? It's going through the valve to something downstream.

Russell:
Okay.

Russell:
So we need to have the veil open or closed appropriately. OK. Best thing to do when you go into a neurodiverse person is say, this needs to be opened properly. It needs to be closed properly. Describe that in one word. And I would literally have them go off for about 30 seconds with ChatGPT on an iPad and say, opening a veil.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
tell them what the task is, reduce that to a one word universal theme. And then have ChatGPT come up with maybe five or 10 synonyms with custom definitions and have them pick a word. And that word is going to represent that task you're trying to show them. But now because they picked that word, that definition, it now sticks with them much better. And then instead of saying,

Russell:
For everybody's safety, we need general, going to the specific, we need to make sure these are open and closed, okay, correctly. The specific. It's like us grabbing fog. We can't do it effectively. So by having it, taking that concept and reducing it to a one word universal theme where the dyslexic picks it out, picks out the definition and say, okay, this is what this means. All right, now explain to me.

Russell:
why this has to be open correctly and closed correctly going outwards towards the general. How would you say that?

Travis McCaughey:
I would say this valve has to be opened correctly because of the effects to the downstream equipment. Or this has to be closed correctly because the equipment downstream can't handle the pressure.

Russell:
Right. Now do you see how you're used to describing this in the exact opposite way? Do you see how weird that feels?

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
Now that's how the dyslectic or the neurodiverse feels all the time. And you're thinking what word could they come up with with opening it correctly and then closing it correctly? All right. That's not for you to worry about. You have chat GPT take care of that. They pick one of the five or 10 synonyms. You confirm that that word and definition are accurate or send the kid back for another 30 seconds or a minute and let them do it again while you do something else.

Russell:
So a lot of time when you're dealing with the neurodiverse, this training may seem like it takes longer, and it does. However, when you go ahead and show the neurodiverse how to do this, I can tell you what's going to happen. They're gonna remember this. Like, I mean, remember it, period. Okay, so I have had, not in your field, but in other...

Russell:
technical manual fields, like plumbing for example. There was a company that had a kid going through the union apprenticeship, then he was going to go into a certain company. He's still there. He said, that kid has never forgotten the safety lesson, ever. He's actually reminded us five years later after we'd given it, exactly using the process I just gave you. All right? And this does tend to get annoying

Russell:
to the team members where the dyslectic after they're trained will say, actually, you're not doing that correctly. They nitpick the safety like crazy. their buddies that they're working with sometimes get real annoyed over this. I'll tell you who doesn't get annoyed. It's the safety officer. Okay? Because in your field, you screw up.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
Minimum you could be doing millions or tens of millions in damage let alone any loss of life or injuries. You like I'll give you an example. After Exxon Mobil, the Valdez that mess they had. Would you believe they end ever since that happened? They end a meeting with a safety thing. Everybody has to keep coming up every manager something new about safety.

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Russell:
And it has to be original. Drives people crazy. Tell you what, they haven't happened is that hasn't happened again. They stopped a lot of that stuff because of that culture. Why? Despite all the damage and everything else from the company's perspective, it costs them billions. And they don't want to go through that again.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, I can see where it would also, you you talk about plumbing where there is a lot of.

Travis McCaughey:
Well, regulations are kind of tips and tricks type stuff that you're required to know as a journeyman plumber to know how to plumb correctly. It could probably save a lot of people headache in doing the job correctly.

Russell:
Right, but the thing you're going to run into if you train a neurodiverse person this way, 10 years down the line, any little thing that they were trained to do that somebody does just because it's not important, some little thing, they'll call them out on it. Kind of like view it as an analogy. Imagine you're in basic training and the kernel of the regiment is coming through.

Russell:
and they're going after any little speck of dust over any little thing, okay? And that's what they're like all the time because that's how you train them, this specifically. And when you're talking about, and this is what I tell former Gen Ed normal people that are in fields like yours, you can not screw up ever. Okay, look at Boeing. They had a plane door fly out of the damn plane.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
What happened? That was a company of engineers and they made a healthy profit margin and they were doing great, but the engineers ran that company. Then some financial screwballs got a hold of it, moved the company to Chicago, maxed out the profits, and then doors fly off. So now the federal government has come in and this is a national asset. This is one of the major exports of this country.

Travis McCaughey:
Sure.

Russell:
If you choose to work in your industry, you cannot screw up ever. the reason why I'm harping on this so much

Russell:
is you train a dyslexic this way, they will remember this stuff literally forever and they will call it out every time it's not being met.

Travis McCaughey:
So would you say they're more focused on the technical side or they're more creative or it's just a spectrum?

Travis McCaughey:
how does that work with people with dyslexia?

Russell:
No, you want to put a dyslectic and neurodiverse people in a box. It's to your benefit and their benefit. You have to put them in the right box. Let me give you an example. Have you ever heard of this thing called shark tank? There are six sharks on there. Dyslexia at most is 10 % of the population. All right. What percentage of how many of the six sharks are dyslectic do you think?

Travis McCaughey:
Oh, probably none of them. don't know.

Russell:
Three of them, Barbara, Damian, and Mr. Wonderful.

Travis McCaughey:
really? Okay.

Travis McCaughey:
interesting.

Russell:
Okay, now, why is that? When you're talking to a dyslectic, I teach these kids all the time. I have to teach them in their speciality if I'm going to get any work out of them, then they work like crazy. All right? It is anything and everything. So you could work with a dyslectic and they could say they are interested in the creative aspect. You don't want to put those people in the field.

Russell:
not good for both of you. Okay. And a lot of people are saying, well, you're costing them a job. No, you're not. People that I've trained to work with neurodiverse people, I said, you're a business owner. You're a manager. You're a supervisor. You're a responsible adult. You know other people in other places. You find one where the specialities don't match what you're doing, send them to somebody who does. They will love a

Russell:
first grade referral. I especially hear it when they're hiring new kids. You know, these Zoomers are running around. Here's the problem. This is the enemy. They're on their phone all the freaking time. I am not joking about this. I heard about on the oil well, one of those fracking things, an important job, the kids supposed to be paying attention. They're on the damn phone. Guess who was fired that second?

Travis McCaughey:
huh.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
and by somebody without the authority to fire them. Got back up to the first line supervisor, they're like, good, you ever see that. Fire them on the spot. Because that could have killed people. All right, it was some pressure gauge thing they're supposed to be keeping an eye on or, you Yeah, you have to be focused. It is so important that you're not actually doing that for long periods of time. They switched it off quite a bit.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, the frac pressure or something, yeah.

Russell:
It was so critical. you're doing, and if that person was really interested in frack, because I've taught kids who wanted to go out literally on the field and frack. Well, they report back that they're very accepted because they're just so focused. They would actually sit there for hours watching it. Other people get bored after 30 minutes or whatever the numbers are. And they're doing extraordinarily well. The other kids who were in the more creative aspect.

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Russell:
Well, I tell them to go get their education in that area and go in and solve a problem for a company as part of the job interview process. Literally go in there with a solution that matters to them. They get hired. Okay? So in today's specialized economy, it's not that hard to refer these kids to where they should be. Remember, you want to put them in a box.

Russell:
It's just the right box and then it's better for everybody.

Travis McCaughey:
So what I'm hearing is that you keep saying it's their specialty, it's what they're interested in. you have to, they have to know themselves or the people around them have to see what they're interested in, whether that's like in the arts or in sciences and push them or they have to know themselves and go into those specialties.

Russell:
it's much more specific than that. I just had a kid who I'm working with. I'm just going to call him John to protect his identity. The kid's 14 years old. He's reading and writing at the early elementary school level, but he's interested in a kid. I'm not joking. His favorite thing, his favorite video. He said, this is designed for kids my age. It was about turning paint.

Travis McCaughey:
Okay.

Russell:
into some taste color or something like that. I mean, it was just really, I could barely get a hold of the science. And then I threw it into Chad GPT 5 Pro and I said, what grade level is this? And it came back college. This is what a college chemistry made. And he's 14. Okay. So it's really, so what I did with him is I created a 2000 word

Travis McCaughey:
you're seeing.

Travis McCaughey:
You

Russell:
example for 10th grade. All right. And I said, make it as if he was a college sophomore. And I put the grade level year ahead where he's supposed to be. And I said, we're going to be on this, you 2000 words until you can read every word fluently, which is nowhere near. Okay. But that's his favorite thing. And I said, well, you give me another video, I'll do that again. And that's how I custom created how we're going to, how we, how we overcome things.

Russell:
So when he's going out looking for a job, it's going to be something probably in the chemical industry in this very, very specific area. All right. And that's the box you want to put him in and then he will work brilliantly. You step that out and put him in, I don't know, working at McDonald's. This is not going to go well.

Travis McCaughey:
Right. Yeah, that in itself is pretty interesting. It's getting them very, like you said, if I've learned anything today, getting them, understanding what their specialty is and what they're interested in and then turn them loose. So what...

Russell:
Right, but you can't just turn them loose. You got to start very specifically, then go the exact opposite of how you're used to explaining things. Okay. Get that word and now, and then ask them to articulate it. Okay. Cause that's how our brains are designed. Here's just one more important point. Let's say you find a kid who really likes looking at staring at that fracking thing. Okay. Let's just say that's their speciality.

Travis McCaughey:
Sure.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
What they're going to do after they really mastered that in the field, and I don't know how long that takes, six months, a couple of years, whatever the number is, when they master that, they're going to start to tell you how to do this job a hell of a lot better. Okay. No college. And they will start telling you how to do this better. And you will find some of those ideas should be implemented. Now, just out of curiosity, if you're looking at a way of improving the efficiency of a fracking

Russell:
of that fracking tool by 5%. What's that worth?

Travis McCaughey:
Man, it could be $100,000, $200,000, and if you do that multiple times throughout the year, you could save yourself, you know, million potentially.

Russell:
and other people willing to pay for that? That kid will be spewing out ideas like that like crazy. Alright? How do you ethically handle that? Because I've been asked to advise on that situation. I said, you keep half, give the kid half, you go and license it.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, for sure.

Russell:
And you'll find the kid will generally think that that's fair. But you take care of the lawyers up front. And over time, you'll be making a lot of, and they'll just keep throwing those ideas at you. Maybe you'll use one in 10, but you will be shocked at the amount of ideas thrown your way.

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, because that's what they're focused on. Yeah, that makes sense.

Russell:
Well, I did mine in less than two weeks once I was ready.

Russell:
Okay, I'm talking introduce to the professor. Here's the book come back with a write-up People said that takes years. They've never heard of anything like that

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Russell:
And the New York State Senate, they were very clear because at the time it was Republicans. When you deal with Republicans in education, it's really simple. They want their public schools to come to them and say, I want this and you're better, faster, cheaper. Okay. You do that, they'll fund you all day long. They love that. Do you have any idea how hard it is to get the school district on your side?

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, that's the same thing. That could take years as well. Yeah.

Russell:
that did take years. I got 15 grand from a university-wide competition and I had to work with these kids outside. And then those kids, these are the ones that they think are their best and brightest, because they are. They would go back and say, yeah, this is amazing. And then that took years. Democrats, they're different. They want to start off with a bill, work from the high end, then go down.

Russell:
Alright, just depending on who you're going to.

Travis McCaughey:
So, yeah, we've talked about kind of...

Travis McCaughey:
someone that we already are aware that they have dyslexia. How would we as a parent or an employer identify those? mean, some of the stuff that you've already talked about sounds pretty interesting as far as keying into somebody's personality, but how would...

Travis McCaughey:
a parent or an employer kind of, you know, find out if this person, maybe someone doesn't know that they have dyslexia. So how would you approach it from that side?

Russell:
There are two distinct things. When you're an employer, before you do anything we're talking about, you have to check with human resources. You don't want to even think about stepping past the law. Here's the question you ask. You sit them down, and if this is approved by human resources only, if you're a business, you ask the person, what is your speciality?

Russell:
school not you know I mean what is it that you're really good at that you love doing okay find out what that is when I'm dealing with kids they'll say it's a Saturday morning you can do anything you want anywhere in the world what would that be okay they'll tell you and then when you ask in that speciality do you have ideas flying around your head at light speed key question but with little to no organization they say yes

Russell:
Does that legally mean they're dyslexic ADD or ADHD? No. But what it means is when people have done that and then they've gone and got their $5,000 neuropsych, it was almost always tack on accurate. Okay?

Travis McCaughey:
Is this something that your people are getting kind of screened at a hospital or a university or outpatient or how does that kind of work?

Russell:
If you're in kindergarten, you contact Yale and you just Google Yale dyslexia, they can tell you in a test in kindergarten within a matter of minutes that a teacher can administer if you're dyslectic or not. Once you're past fourth grade, you're looking at a neuropsych. And in New York state, they recently passed a law, insurance companies have to pay up to $5,000 for it.

Russell:
insurance companies don't want to pay $5,000 for it. So if you're in New York and you think your child's dyslectic, the law says they have to pay. Here's the real world. Take your child, go to your child teachers, have them write up if they think that they're dyslectic or ADD or ADHD. Just have them something up that's relatively brief but thorough. Then make an appointment to go and see a pediatrician.

Travis McCaughey:
Mm.

Russell:
not a resident, an attending. The resident can deal with it, but the attending has to come in and sign off. And then have them examine your child with the notes. Now, if an attending pediatrician thinks that there are signs of dyslexia, you need that formally in writing. Then you take that to the insurance company. It's really hard to get past an MD.

Russell:
The MD isn't saying, know this kid is dyslectic. What they're saying is they think this kid has show signs of dyslexia. That's enough to trigger the $5,000. And if it's over 5,000 for a neuropsych, the rest is to be borne by the family, but outside of the immediate New York City area, you should be able to get it done for that price.

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Travis McCaughey:
Okay, so you got a little bit of legwork to do to kind of go through all those. How long does that normally, I mean you said in kindergarten kind of five minute test, what would you think your timeline like as an adult with the other evaluation is?

Russell:
yeah, this is... yeah and...

Russell:
it's the reason it's $5,000 is it's two days of testing. You're talking 16 hours of a PhD plus a lot more training and then they got to examine the results and write it up. mean, you're literally hiring them for the week. Or most of the week.

Travis McCaughey:
okay. wow.

Travis McCaughey:
Right. Sure.

Russell:
In Manhattan, it's 8,000 bucks.

Travis McCaughey:
Sure.

Russell:
Yeah, and parents when I would say, they said, do you need the information? I said, it's nice, but it's not really needed. Would you rather put that money towards solving the problem? And I have had parents that have come back to me and said, to give you an example, I've literally done this for less than the cost of the evaluation. Like I'm doing a book now and it's about and her is her son homeschools her kids.

Travis McCaughey:
Last December 27th, 2024, right around there, she paid 700 bucks to have the state test her children. Her son, scored just at the beginning of third grade reading and writing ability. If he was in a public school special ed program, he was supposed to increase the rest of the school year by 1.86 points. That didn't happen. He increased by 20 points to a little bit above

Travis McCaughey:
above average of reading and writing at the end of the school year. She did that in an hour and a half a week. A week. I worked with her for half an hour a week. That happened for the rest of the school year. Okay, that's it. All right, she was 11 times more successful in that time period than what the school expected. Not double, not triple, times. Why is that important? Because when her son that summer,

Russell:
His friends came to him and said, Reed, we want you in public school to be with us socially. If that was January, they wouldn't put him in special ed. Nobody would know what to do with him. He'd be away from his friends. Now he's in sixth grade with his friends doing just fine because his mother accomplished what every parent dreams of, bringing him to grade level. And she did it in less than six months. That's how powerful this stuff is.

Travis McCaughey:
Sure.

Travis McCaughey:
Is this available across the country or how do people kind of get in contact with you and get in contact, you know, get these resources?

Russell:
Well, it's because what just, you know, what happened is post pandemic, everybody has taken the material and put it online. Okay. It's just a lot easier for parents to access it that way. And then for those of us who created things, then we just address points when there's an issue. So we, so if you go to dyslexia classes.com, again, it's dyslexia classes, portal.com. And there's a button there that says download free report. says.

Russell:
The three reasons your child's having trouble in school due to dyslexia and essential head incapacity. Fill out a few questions. set up a half a time for me to work with you and your child. I can ask them questions that we kind of discussed today in those general areas. And then they find out I'm like them. This is how I came over the issues. They're like, I'm like, is this how you want to overcome them? Yeah, in my specialty exactly. Then I work with the parents. They teach their kids. And we have a...

Russell:
weekly webinar where we discuss how to answer their questions as they come up. And because this is mainly self-directed online, we price things, but like colleges, we give scholarships based on financial need. All right? And I will tell you the most successful families I've worked with are lower middle class. Those are the biggest success stories I've ever had. People ask me, like, what's your biggest success story? I said, I

Travis McCaughey:
Okay, yeah.

Travis McCaughey:
Hmm.

Russell:
have never seen this before. I will never, ever see this again. Her name was She was 10 years old in the end of fifth grade reading at the second grade level. And she was interested in Theodore Roosevelt. This is her book, The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt. Oh, 900 pages. 10th grade to first year college level. I...

Russell:
said she wanted to learn to read first. I do writing first, reading second. I said, okay, I modified my process a little bit. I said, you will not do this. Lo and behold, she's locked herself in a room two to three hours a night, seven days a week, most of the days on it in the summertime. She turned 11 over the summer. Six months after we started, I get a call from her mom.

Travis McCaughey:
you

Russell:
She's in silent reading with her big book. know, other kids reading Harry Potter, Twilight or whatever, they come over. What's this? They took her book. They couldn't get past the first paragraph. You could open the book, I'm just randomly opening it, pointing to that word, and she would tell you the dictionary definition of that word. Literally. Anything in the entire book. Essentially what the school said was, we thought your daughter had severe dyslexia.

Travis McCaughey:
day.

Russell:
She's now reading essentially at the 10th grade level. She's the best reader in her grade by years. What is going on? Her mom calls me confused. And I said, I worked with her for 15 minutes a week, because that's what her parents could afford me an hour a month. And I said, what do you think she's been doing in her bedroom, hours a night, all for these past six months? And she's like, how's her reading? I said, well.

Travis McCaughey:
You

Russell:
College professors think this is first year college level. Teachers think it's between 10th to 12th grade. Somewhere in there is what the experts think. is she done? I said no. I finished with her when she was finished in 8th grade. She was ready to go to college before she started high school. She's in college now, doing extraordinarily well. People don't even know she's dyslexic.

Travis McCaughey:
You

Russell:
Last I heard from her, she said she's doing her first big girl job. And what she was interested in was going into agriculture, because she's in a very agrarian area, and doing the really sophisticated intellectual work to produce better yields on farms. Very technical. And from what I heard back, people were absolutely astonished at how great this kid is.

Travis McCaughey:
wow.

Travis McCaughey:
Is this? Do you also work with adults? And what does that look like? Similar?

Russell:
And I'm like, I could have told you that when she was 13.

Russell:
Yes, Adults generally, just because they don't have the time to go through everything the way that I build things up with the kids. So what I have done is I've adopted my original program to what your speciality is. So what I do, if you're familiar with artificial intelligence, a chat GPT has this thing called a deep research agent. In about a half hour of compute,

Travis McCaughey:
Mm-hmm.

Russell:
it can create about six GRE level questions. But honestly, it's how they're styled. So essentially how that does is it gives you an argument that appears to make sense, but is really extremely stupid. And then it gives you three reasons that are supposed to support it. This doesn't work. And what you're supposed to do is to say, this reason, this makes absolutely no sense. There's

Russell:
how can you discuss a certain way in the body paragraphs? Why does the evidence not support the stupid opinion? And then in the end you say, how do we fix this? All right, that's the purpose on the jury, but I make it for your speciality.

Travis McCaughey:
okay.

Russell:
Okay? So, but when you're done, I'm not saying that you're writing and reading skills are at the entry graduate level. We're at it wherever we put it and generally it's the advanced high school to somewhere in college and we can program the artificial intelligence to get, you know, we can go grade year and grade month. That's how specific I get to it. And it's just a lot of repetition.

Travis McCaughey:
wow.

Travis McCaughey:
How long are you normally working with people?

Russell:
If I'm doing the GRE program specifically, okay, we're generally done in about five or six months.

Russell:
Well, just so you know what the comparison is, Landmark College is where adults go. And they need you for years.

Russell:
and it's house money. Literally, it used to be the most expensive college in the country, now it's close to it. And they don't have much money for scholarships.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, substantial if you're on a budget or something, is, yeah. Yeah.

Russell:
It doesn't work. So how I do things, my original program is not something that we normally teach. We do it a few times a year. So what I do is the whole point of what I'm trying to do is I'm just going to give you a very typical thing. It's generally a guy. He's married. His wife tends to have gone to college or he knows somebody who's very close to him who's gone to college. And I say, here's how we create the G, here's how you create them.

Russell:
Like I create a customized template thing for chat GPT. They create them and they go through them and they'll get in contact with me every couple of weeks when they have a question. It's very simple. We've taken it from the need from the very best special ed teacher to somebody that's, know, when they're running into like some of them are having such problems that can't even write basic sentences. So I say, okay, here's a part from our original course that deals with writing basic sentences. And they take that part.

Russell:
They'll take the part of what I teach the kids for what they need, but what is different about my material is the older you are, the quicker you pick it up. So a grown adult will pick this up far more rapidly than a high school kid, which is the exact opposite of the traditional approach, which is the older you are, the longer it takes.

Travis McCaughey:
And are these people, would they go through this and then maybe five, 10 years down the line, it's something, or maybe it's something they can continually come back to as they need it.

Russell:
No, no, once you're done, you're done. Reid is at grade level. He will stay at grade level. He's on an accelerating path to go way above grade level. He's now working on a process that'll bring his writing skills up to the high school senior level. When I'm dealing with the kids, I do fourth, fifth grade essay bodies. Then it's high school, junior, senior level.

Travis McCaughey:
I gotcha.

Russell:
And that's seven steps. That's it.

Travis McCaughey:
When you talked about that one word, like association earlier, is there, yeah, is there...

Russell:
Universal fame, yes.

Travis McCaughey:
Would there be other things that people use besides words? know, you think of these different memory techniques. Would do any of those apply? like what would things have you seen, I guess, not work? You know, like words versus colors. Okay, right.

Russell:
about everything else. I read in colors, okay? I have never been able to explain to anybody how I do it. I start explaining by step five or six, and I developed this when I was eight. They're just completely confused. Okay, and I'm talking about like the world-leading psychologists. They don't even want to bother trying to understand it. What I just described, people say,

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
Well, can we try something different? like, just don't. I've tried every way of making this not work. Like Tom Edison, who was dyslectic, said, I didn't fail to make a light bulb. I just found 4,000 ways not to do it. OK, I have done the research. I have hit my head against the wall. This is what works best.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, and I think that's important. I always like that perspective because I would assume people have a tendency to say, like, I don't know if I want to try that. I don't know if I'm going to try this thing over here. So we give people a flavor of, no, we've tried these five things. Those are probably what you commonly are going to try, and they don't work. follow the...

Russell:
Well, I'll just tell you what did, this homeschooling mom, she spent an hour and a half with her son a week, and in school they spent a lot more time on reading and writing. She was 11x as successful as what the very well documented, statistically proven increase was supposed to be. She never had, she doesn't have a college degree.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
She's been to college, but she doesn't have a formal bachelor's degree. And it's certainly nothing in education. And then she was 11X as successful. Now, if you want to use the other ways, by all means, here's the thing about my industry. It is so big. Take every movie ticket sold in the United States, every dollar associated with the NFL, every dollar associated with the NBA, and then add

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
Billions and that's the size of my industry So if you're not interested in how I'm telling you how to overcome this By all means go and try anything you would like if you're not interested what I do I would contact the Orton Academy of practitioners and educators or any of the private dyslexic schools in the Northeast that use an Orton-Gillingham approach and go to them it works takes four to five give you an example the

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
The Windward School in the Upper East Side of Manhattan has a published 98 % success rate. They will take a child in fourth grade and when they send them back to their private school, to their normal school, they are absolutely 100 % as best prepared as humanly possible. It is one of the best private schools on the planet. It's also four teachers to one, five teachers to one.

Russell:
$75,000 a year for four to five years. Or you can do what Kimberly did. And her example, and this is not a promise to everybody, I'm just giving you example of what this one mom did so you can compare it to what you're doing. Her child increased from a year and a half behind to grade level in just under six months.

Travis McCaughey:
Hmm.

Russell:
Okay.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, that's pretty astonishing.

Travis McCaughey:
when so you have you'll have schools and stuff set up on your software is that correct or is

Russell:
no, it's not software. We just show them how to do the process. Okay. I go in for the people say, you ever taught this to public school teachers for the past 10 years? Yeah. I, I've been, I've been teaching this every year besides one year because of COVID at the, at the, everyone reading conference in Manhattan. This is where the New York state's public New York city special ed teachers go and the surrounding areas for their mandatory.

Travis McCaughey:
Okay.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, right. That's what I'm thinking. Yeah.

Russell:
continuing education requirements. All right, I've taught this to the New Jersey Association of Learning Consultants. They contacted me because there's a writing problem due to the pandemic. So I taught their entire organization. And their job is to diagnose, dyslexia, and recommend programs in public schools. I show them how to take kids who couldn't write C-SPOT 1 through a basic five paragraph essay in two hours. Yeah, my competition can do that in a matter of months.

Travis McCaughey:
day.

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Russell:
I'm not joking. That's literally how long they take.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah. Do you see this as something that HR people should look at? Or what would your kind of thought going from like the school side to the business side?

Russell:
Yeah, and that's where what I do is very controversial because what I'm telling them is you want to put these kids in a box. Okay. And it takes more. And one thing I've been getting is what about, you're literally discriminating from people by literally saying, you can't work here because you have a disability. And what I'm trying to say is you're an HR. You know people everywhere or why are you here?

Travis McCaughey:
Okay. Yeah.

Travis McCaughey:
Sounds like something HR people could at least be aware of if they're not trying to put the people in the box. At least they can have resources to guide them to, know, out of their own volition.

Russell:
Right. Yeah. And I'm just, yeah. Yeah. And what I'm saying is not, you know, it's not like I'm up on, you know, the top of the mountain ordering people to do this. OK, what I tell them is you got to run this through you. This is my interpretation of the best thing for the kid. You got to run this through your lawyers, through whatever legal means of it is. And if what I'm telling you contradicts with any of that in the least way, ignore it.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah.

Russell:
But, you know, what I'm trying to say is, off the record, if you can place this kid by somebody in your network, where their specialties line up,

Russell:
beyond any legal thing, the moral thing to do is you place that kid where they belong. And I can just tell you what happens. They may start off at the same place that they would have with your company, celery wise. couple of years, three years, five years, they become seniors.

Russell:
And then they're making so much more money because it's what they're really good at. I have taught these kids, when I go through, I teach them the craft of research, which is based from the University of Chicago, came out in 95 because PhD students didn't know how to write dissertations. Context, get them on the same page. That's for nine and 10. Problem, that's for 11 to 16 year olds. And the solution, coming up with something completely original. That's 17.

Travis McCaughey:
Mm.

Russell:
You know how to do the craft of research. You can function very well with any AI model, even if you know nothing about it. You talk to it, you type with it until you figure out those three things. And then you can guide it, you can manage it. I show you how to prompt engineer your brain. Now those kids become seniors very quickly. And they're making multiple times more than what they would make at your company because they're in their speciality. And they're creating so much more value.

Travis McCaughey:
Hmm.

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Russell:
I basically tell them when I do solution, I have them purchase ChetGPT Pro and it is 200 bucks a month because I'm asked, are you valuable enough? Do you know how to use these tools fully to solve problems for the companies you're going to be working with? You go in there and show them how you can use this to solve becoming 5X as productive. And I'm not joking. You go in there with solutions. Imagine coming in to an interview to work for you and they say,

Russell:
I understand you're having X problem and here's how you solve it. And you didn't know how to solve it.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, you have their intense area of focus to match with the with an AI model.

Russell:
Well, had a pre-pandemic, I had an employer call me. said, one of your former students came in and we had this persistent little problem that was, it's worth 5,000 bucks. It was a little annoyance that we'd been dealing with for years. It wasn't worth our time to solve because we had much bigger ones. Now it's been solved by your former student. And yeah, I had over a hundred people I interviewed. That's who I hired.

Russell:
And I said, yeah, they're just getting started. I heard back from that employer a year later, let's just say they solved more important problems and they were given a percentage of the value. And the kid is, well, they're worth quite a bit.

Travis McCaughey:
you

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah. You talked about these people, once you teach them something, they're going to be very, they're going to let you know about it. What kind of, just on your view and what you know and everything, what impact is the social side? then like kind of what resources would you kind of point people to? Not that that's part entirely of-

Travis McCaughey:
of course, our discussion today, but I can just see, at least for me, that was rolling around in my head. was like, okay, so now how do we kind of look at the social side of this behavior and everything? Or is that something you're keyed into?

Russell:
What you'll find, dyslectics will run the gamut of, a lot of people don't understand is if you're dealing with, and I'm not trying to disparage autism, I just know my second cousin's autistic, all right? But generally when you're autistic, if it's one of the more severe forms, you understand that there's fundamentally something different. And then it's on your side to figure how can we accommodate this like with my second cousin.

Travis McCaughey:
Mm-hmm.

Russell:
We have to make sure the family dog is not around them. have to literally send it to a different location. Okay. But when you're dyslectic, I've had kids who've gone through college, employment, nobody knows. Okay. So it, it runs the gamut. What I will tell you is they, a lot of them don't want you to know they're dyslectic. Some are open to it. Again, that runs the gamut. So you would handle this generally.

Travis McCaughey:
Okay.

Russell:
in some, you know, just how you treat anybody else appropriately. What I will tell you is for boys, they tend to grow up in elementary school very bullied because of this. All right. And how would you deal with them if there's after effects? The way you would deal with any kid who was bullied in the after effects. Girls tend to internalize it and keep it quiet. That's why they're under diagnosed quite a bit. The boys raise a ruckus and they get, it's like the squeaky wheel getting the grease.

Travis McCaughey:
Gotcha.

Russell:
Girls tend to just internalize it and not want to raise a fuss. So you'd handle it that way. Just like you would anybody else that have gone through those issues later on. There's nothing I can find that's dyslexia specific. Now there are other people that will tell you there is, it's just that's beyond my expertise.

Travis McCaughey:
Okay.

Travis McCaughey:
Okay, yeah, there's something that came to mind so figured would ask about it. Yeah

Russell:
it was a good question.

Travis McCaughey:
Man, this has been pretty eye-opening. I'm going to go to your website. And I got kids, it's probably not something that applies to me, but something that can obviously be taken out into our school. So I plan on going to the website and passing it along for sure. Is there anything else you wanted to share today?

Russell:
No, go to dyslexia. If any of this raises any questions, just go to dyslexiaclasses.com. Well, then ask dyslexiaclasses.com and just hit the download free report, answer a few questions and set up an appointment to speak with me for half an hour. It's no charge and we'll see if this means something for your kids. I have done it a lot of times where I'd ask those kids questions. They say, no, that's not me. I said, oh, okay, parents, don't have to worry about it.

Travis McCaughey:
Right.

Russell:
And they're just like, this is not them. said, you can go and spend five grand or two grand or whatever you're going to spend and it'll come back essentially the same thing. I mean, this is not a legal diagnosis. It's just correct the vast majority of the time. And sometimes the kids were like, I think you might be autistic and they went and got them tested. they're autistic. They're just Mensa. They're geniuses. That's how that's what covered. I said, okay.

Russell:
I can address some of this, but here's where you're going to want to go to address the other parts of it.

Travis McCaughey:
Yeah, sounds like a great jumping off point, if anything.

Russell:
Yeah, it's a good start. I send people off to different places all the time.

Travis McCaughey:
Cool, well it was really informative talking to you and I, man, I wish you all the best and I appreciate you coming on and providing us some insight.

Russell:
Thanks for having me. It was great talking to you.