Summer Re-Run: EXPERT: Empowering neurodiverse relationships with Jeremy and Ilana Hamburgh

Hello Brave Friends! Welcome to today's expert episode, #234, with Jeremy and Ilana Hamburgh the creators of Social Life 360. These are conversations with experts in fields relevant to caregiving parents. 

In this conversation, Susanna Peace Lovell interviews Jeremy and Ilana Hamburgh, a couple dedicated to supporting neurodivergent individuals in building friendships and relationships through their program, Social Life 360. They share their backgrounds, the inception of their program, and the importance of community and support in navigating social skills. The discussion also touches on the challenges faced by neurodivergent individuals, the impact of media representation, and the success stories that inspire their work. Ultimately, they emphasize the importance of connection and the dreams they have for their clients' futures.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_03 0:05

Hello, brave friends. We are taking a short summer pause, but we've handpicked some favorite episodes from past seasons for you to enjoy while we recharge and prepare for what's ahead. We'll be back on September 1st, 2026 with season 11 of the Brave Together podcast, bringing you new stories, trusted experts, and practical resources to support your parenting journey. If these episodes have helped you, we'd love for you to share them with other parents, especially the ones that made you feel seen, comforted, or gave you helpful insight into the path of altered parenting. If you have questions, story ideas, or requests for future episodes, follow the links in our show notes. Wishing you all a very wonderful summer. And remember, Bravies, as always, we see you and we love you.

SPEAKER_00 1:37

Making, you know, sure that people on the spectrum and who are neurodivergent, I don't want it to be novel that they make friends and find community and date and fall in love.

SPEAKER_03 1:50

Hello, dearest Bravies. It's me, Susanna Peace Lavelle, fellow Brave Mom, author, coach, and one of the dedicated co-hosts for the Brave Together podcast. I'm so happy to be here with you all today for this particular expert episode number 234. I get to talk to the founders of Social Life 360, Jeremy and Ilana Hamburg. They're not only an amazing couple dedicated to supporting neurodivergent individuals and building friendships and relationships through their social skills programs, but they also are just beautiful human beings. They share their backgrounds, how their program works, how they came together as a couple, and also lots of success stories and inspiration for those who might be skeptical. But ultimately, they emphasize the importance of connection and the dreams they have for their clients' futures. A quick reminder here to join our free community at WeArBravetogether.org to support our growth by rating and reviewing this podcast and sharing episodes that inspire you. And of course, always check out our full episodes weekly on the We Are Brave Together YouTube channel. And now please enjoy my conversation with the lovely and inspirational power couple, Jeremy and Ilana Hamburg. So hi everyone. Hi, brave friends. Hi, beautiful bravies who are listening to this episode. I'm really excited for you all to meet Jeremy and Ilana Hamburg. They are a married couple. They have a really rich history with our community. And I'm so excited for you to get to learn more about them individually, their offerings in our space, as well as, you know, I selfishly have always been so interested in your work because of me having a 19-year-old daughter who is really starting to ask a lot of questions with regard to building her own community, friendships that are actual friendships, as opposed to people just supporting her and helping her, which she's realizing now there's a little bit of a difference. And, you know, dating, you know, she's starting to ask a lot of questions about dating. And I'm just sort of going with the flow. So I need your support as well as we're entering sort of this new phase of adulthood in a sense. So would just love to start off with you both introducing yourselves. And I always think it would be amazing for our audience to learn how you both met and how you came together to create this beautiful platform for us.

SPEAKER_00 4:41

Oh, that's a lot of things. Okay. How about you start with who you are?

SPEAKER_01 4:44

Okay. So I'm Alana. It's a pleasure to be here. And my background is actually as a special ed teacher. I worked in New York City in the public school system for 16 years. So that's where I got my start. And I've been working in the Social Life 360 program and with my best social life for the past three-ish years.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

I think that's about right.

SPEAKER_01 5:04

Yeah. So I'll let Jarmy share a little bit about who he is. My my background is pretty straightforward. And then we'll share a little bit about how we met and how I got into this.

SPEAKER_00 5:14

Yeah, my background is actually in law. I was a criminal prosecutor for seven years, and I was a litigator for JP Morgan Chase Bank for seven years. Uh, but I've been doing this work in the autism and neurodivergent community for 15 years. It all started back in New York City when I started a young professionals organization. We would have 100, 200 people come to our events. And, you know, they were really sort of designed for the Jewish community. But what we found was that people were coming to these events and they really just weren't connecting with each other. So people started coming up to me and saying, you know, what can I do differently? What can I do so that I walk in alone like you do and I walk out with people like you do? And my honest answer was, I really have no idea. You know, I'm like, well, you gotta teach me. And I said, I can't train you to be me, nor do I want to. And they said, Well, you got to figure something out. So I embarked on this sort of three-year journey to learn everything that I could about the science of why people connect with each other. And then I sort of synthesized that with the skills that I was learning as a young prosecutor. And I brought it to uh the JCC in New York City and I said, Hey, can I run an event uh for people who, you know, are just kind of socially awkward? And they're like, Well, do we have to pay you for it? And I said, I guess maybe not the first time. So they agreed, and it was so successful. I think I was invited back to do that workshop a half dozen times. But what I didn't realize was that a lot of the people who were coming to my program were neurodivergent. And that wasn't even really a term back then. We're talking 15 years ago, right? We're talking about 2010 or something like that. No one was talking about neurodivergents back then, but they were neurodivergent because there were three special needs organizations under the roof of the JCC. Uh, and and folks were coming to my workshops. And pretty soon what ended up happening was those organizations at the JCC started inviting me to do their workshops directly for them. And then ultimately I spent uh over three years as the in-house friendship and dating coach for the adaptations program at the Silver Center for Differing Abilities. And it was there that I realized that I have a skill for breaking down social situations and social strategies into formulas and diagrams and schematics and step-by-step instructions. And I thought to myself, you know what? I'm gonna use these skills, this gift that I have, to try to change the outcome that neurodiverse adults have when they're looking for friendship and dating. Because back then there was not much that was moving the needle for them. So I've been doing this now 15 years. My dating program at adaptations actually inspired an award-winning film, Keep the Change, which won an award at the Tribeca Film Festival, keeping in mind that this was before Love on the Spectrum and shows like that. So seeing autistic people fall in love was very, very novel. And you know, I decided I'm making a career out of making, you know, sure that people on the spectrum and who are neurodivergent, I don't want it to be novel that they make friends and fight community and date and fall in love. So this is my career now. I've been doing this since 2010. I have tons of friendships and relationships and even some marriages under my belt. I got to be in one of my clients' weddings, which was amazing. And it was really a blessing three years ago when I met Alana at uh at a wedding, and um, we started dating soon after that, and uh, and I invited her to join Social Life 360 as our director of education, and she has been that for three years now.

SPEAKER_03 8:52

Fantastic. I I love the story of of how you met at the wedding. You were sharing it with me another on another call, and the connection is palpable between you two, both as you know, husband and wife, of course, but also as partners. And I'm wondering and curious, Alana, when you decided or were studying, you know, special education and education, what really was the driver for you in terms of saying, you know what, this is the field that I want to commit to so much so that you were what 15, 10, 15 years in as a special education teacher?

SPEAKER_01 9:29

16 in the New York City public school system and then, you know, whatever related experience I had before then. Right. But I got started at the very young age of 12, actually.

SPEAKER_03 9:40

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 9:41

Yeah. I decided when all my friends were going to camp, I was going to run a backyard camp for two and three year olds. And I had a group of like 10 kids or so. I was running it with a friend, you know, now as a mother. I'm not really sure why all these parents entrusted their little ones with a 12-year-old because that seems insane, but I guess times were different. And there was one little boy, very sweet, cute boy, in the group, but he he would run away, you know, we we had to have somebody on him all the time. You know, something was different. And I didn't know what that difference was, but we kept him in the in the program the whole summer and really bonded with this child, even though it was challenging, especially as a 12-year-old with limited experience, obviously, because I was still a child myself. And then he went to the local Y preschool that September and was very quickly um told that he couldn't be there. And we found out that he was later diagnosed with autism. So I knew from a very early age that there was something special about this population and something that drew me in. And um I don't think I knew at that moment that my career path was going to be in the special needs world, but it was something that just was such a natural part of who I was and my connection to the special needs population. And it's what I believe I was put on this planet to do, and very grateful to be to have that experience in the school system and now be able to apply that with our community and our clients.

SPEAKER_03 11:17

Well, I am very grateful for your work, both of you, obviously. Now we can start talking about the work that you're doing currently. I know that you have the social life 360, sort of the system, the program. I love Jeremy, how you talked about, you know, the formulas and the, you know, the like really breaking things down systematically, how this can be effective in terms of communicating. And so I would love to hear more about this particular program and who it's available for, who who sort of your target member would be, like an ideal client for this program. Tell us a little more.

SPEAKER_00 11:53

Yeah, so we designed the program based on everything that people came to us and said they didn't like about social skills training and social skills classes that are out there in the world. You know, people said, I don't like showing up to a classroom for 90 minutes and being talked at. So we don't have a classroom. What we decided to do was break down all of the skills that we teach into a series of fairly short, very digestible modules that we give to our clients over the course of 16 weeks. Because what's really amazing about that is they get to watch the videos whenever they want, as many times as they want. It's speech over text with lots of formulas and diagrams and visuals and videos, so that, first of all, who doesn't like videos? And they can absorb these lessons on how the world works in a way that is much more congruent with the way that their brain works. And so we do these modules over the course of 16 weeks. And then we have a Wednesday night group coaching session, which is called the community call. You were invited to that. You got to see it in action, you got to introduce yourself to the community. I also do private coaching with my clients one-on-one every few weeks. Some of the parents join as well, which is great. And what's really cool is that our clients get unlimited access to us for coaching by email while they're in the program. And I can tell you that while Alana loves talking about how I was coaching our clients on our wedding night while she was trying to get out of her dress. I also have a picture of her coaching our client while she was on the gurney delivering our daughter.

SPEAKER_02 13:31

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SPEAKER_00 15:27

You know, the thing about socializing and building friendships and dating is a lot of times you have questions that need to be answered relatively quickly, and we're there for that. I work a seven-day week, which is probably why you can see some of the gray hairs on the side of my head. But I love it because I know that what I do really does make the difference for our clients. And that's what Social Life 360 is. It's the only thing that we do. And, you know, we're very proud that we give our clients the strategies and the skills that they need in a way that they want it. And we give them a community of people, not just all across California, but all across the United States and in four foreign countries, so that almost wherever they go in the country, they can actually meet up with another person from Social Life 360, which is fantastic. And they do. And they do, and we get the pictures.

SPEAKER_01 16:16

Yeah. To show up in a place where you're new and to have basically an extended family there is the coolest thing.

SPEAKER_03 16:24

Yeah, it's like that immediate comfort of like, okay, so you're, yeah, you're part of this, and I'm part of this. So do individuals sort of have to buy into the program in order to have the most quote unquote success, whatever, however, we want to measure that. And the reason why I'm asking is that I have, as I mentioned before, I have I work with adult clients who are neurodivergent and other disabilities. And sometimes it's not their idea to work with me. Do you understand? So it's like their parents are saying, you need this. And it's, you know, I, you know, I work, I meet the individual where they are and we bond and we form a relationship and we work on the things that are important to them and it ends up being just fine. I'm wondering if there are parents out there who are like, you know, my kid just wants to be on video games all day, but he needs friends or she needs friends. She's, you know, I don't want to be taking care of them forever. I want to make sure that they can go out into the world and create a relationship, possibly a family. What is the process like for people finding you? And how do you respond to situations like that?

SPEAKER_00 17:32

A lot of parents. Okay. Mostly moms, but a lot of parents who reach out to us with exactly that. My kid plays video games all day long, you know, watches YouTube videos all day long, doesn't seem to want to have friendships, doesn't seem to want to do anything. Like, what can you do? And what's really, really interesting, what I found over the years, is that for every 10 young adults who are like that, one of them really truly doesn't want to have any social life whatsoever. Nine of them are very lonely and they want to connect with other humans, but they don't see a pathway from getting where they are now to where they want to be. And everything they've tried in the past has ended up in failure. And who can blame them for not wanting to go out there again with no strategy and just failing again? I can't blame them. So what we do is we have two amazing coaches on our staff, Cecile and Chantel, and all they do is they meet with prospective families, and we call it a strategy session. It's a 90-minute call, no charge. It's for most families, it is both parents and the young adult. And they spend 90 minutes really diving deep into what the young adult's friendship dream is, relationship dream, community dream. They talk about where the sticking points have been, what the challenges have been. And then if it feels like a really good conversation, Cecile or Shintal talks about social life 360 and how it can help, and the family can make a decision about whether they want to be part of it or not. And what's really, really awesome is for like for those nine out of 10 young adults who really do want a connection, but they just don't see the path forward. That conversation actually gets them excited because they see that there is a direct line from where they are now to where they want to go. And, you know, a lot of these families have done their due diligence. They've looked into us, they've watched our free training, they've read our website, they've read all the articles about us, et cetera, et cetera, right? They know that there's a realistic path forward. And that excites them. But we'll I'll also be honest, there are every once in a while we get a young adult on the call who the parents want it a lot, and you know, they don't want it at all. And it that's just not the right time to work with us because it's not a no often.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

It's a not yet. Everything is about timing.

SPEAKER_00 19:49

So say more about that, because that's absolutely right.

SPEAKER_01 19:51

Yeah. Sometimes there you come to a certain point in your life, you may have just graduated and you had that built-in community and and friendships or peer group in school. So you don't realize what you're missing. And then a couple years goes by, you're still in the same place, all those people have moved on, and now you're like, oh, something is missing. So maybe that's the time. And then you'll be ready. Everything is about timing in life.

SPEAKER_00 20:17

So true.

SPEAKER_01 20:18

Yes.

SPEAKER_03 20:19

Thank you for that. I appreciate that. And I know that sometimes, you know, as I've witnessed with my 19-year-old, as things shift and change with regard to what she views as friends or who she views as friends and how she looks at friendship. Definitely, and what she, you know, I love what did you call it, Jeremy? You said their friendship dream. Is that what you said?

SPEAKER_00 20:40

What is your in the strategy? That's just what came out of my mouth. Yeah, it's a friendship dream. But what's the dream? What's the dream?

SPEAKER_03 20:46

What's your wish for a friend? Right. And so Arizona now is like, well, you know, I just want to be with girls who are, you know, neuro, well, she won't say neurotypical, but just like, you know, mommy, I just want to be with girls who are like girly like me. And what she's saying is she is wanting friends who are not necessarily like her in terms of, you know, her neurodivergence, her autism, and so forth. But what's so interesting is that when, you know, we're researching sort of like gap year programs after high school, different programs. She definitely wants to go to college. She's just not ready in terms of independent living skills and all of that. And we went to this tour actually recently, and there were other girls on the tour who guess what were also, you know, on the spectrum or, you know, neurodiverse in some way. And Arizona was just like, oh, mommy, look at how nice. Like, we can talk about the same things. And I'm like, I know.

SPEAKER_00 21:40

Like, what tour were you on? I want to hear it.

SPEAKER_03 21:42

Yes, it's phenomenal. So it's this program at UCLA called the UCLA Pathway Program. And it's a gap year program for, you know, young adults 18 to 26 who are ready to sort of practice their independent living skills, maybe live, you know, residential. There's a commuter program, but really the bulk of their program is a res residential program. And so it's a certification program where you take classes on nutrition, health, sex education, and you're out in the community. You have supports in the community, and you're living in there are apartments off campus, but they're, you know, populated by all of the other UCLA Bruins. And you have access to the campus as if you were a Bruin. You have your Bruin ID, but it's run through the extension program at UCLA. And I cannot, I think there are a lot of other gap year programs at other universities as well. I'm I'm just starting this process of doing the research, but I was like, wow, they can audit any UCLA class they want to. So if they're interested in, you know, marine biology, like Arizona is, she can go audit a class and work with the professors there. And there's a staff apartment also. So there's someone who's there overnight every night to assist with any, you know, calls or concerns or questions that the students have. And speaking of which, you know, I wanted to get back to your program. Is there hand holding for every single because it sounds like it's self-paced, maybe, or are we doing it all together?

SPEAKER_00 23:15

Or so we recommend to our clients what they should work on each week. So we've sort of come up with a pacing so that you can get through all 40 or so modules that cover the variety of skills in the 16 weeks. The beautiful thing is, you know, we know that people work at different paces. So even after someone graduates a 16-week program and decides to graduate instead of doing some sort of extension with us, they still have access to the trainings for as long as the trainings exist. And they're part of our worldwide chat community and they're part of our local community as well, for as long as those exist. So it's not like other programs where when you're done, you're done. Once you're part of the social life 360 family, you're always part of the social life 360 family. And you can either do more in that family or do less, depending on where you're at at that moment. Just like just like in a regular family.

unknown 24:10

Right.

SPEAKER_03 24:11

Yes, exactly. Uh I'm gonna take a little break, but I'll be back. But people do that.

SPEAKER_00 24:15

People absolutely do that. We have I've had clients who will graduate from the program. They'll be doing, you know, they'll be where they're at. And then, you know, stuff happens in life. They'll come back two years later and they're like, hey, there are some things I need to work on with you. And we'll just say, okay, let's I don't say welcome back. They never left. I just say it's time to level up. Let's go.

SPEAKER_02 24:36

We are so excited to thank PCSI.org for sponsoring in full the San Diego Retreat this month. PCSI is a nationwide mission-driven nonprofit that creates meaningful employment opportunities for people with disabilities and veterans while delivering exceptional services to both the public and private sectors. Through their workforce development programs, including vocational rehabilitation services, community employment, and careers at PCSI, they empower individuals to achieve independence, personal growth, and long-term success. By combining sustainable business innovation with a values-based approach, they strengthen communities, challenge the status quo, and deliver outstanding results in every partnership. PCSI enhances the lives of people with disabilities through employment, advocacy, partnerships, and innovation. We are brave together. Thanks you.

SPEAKER_03 25:45

So then what are your thoughts since you mentioned this earlier in terms of Keep the Change? That uh what year did that come out?

SPEAKER_00 25:55

Ooh, I'd have to look that up.

SPEAKER_03 25:58

But certainly, but certainly before, like you mentioned, these shows like Love on the Spectrum and other sort of platforms that are giving us a view, uh, a peek into the lives of, you know, folks who are neurodivergent. What do you feel about shows like that?

SPEAKER_00 26:19

It's very funny. You know, Alana and I are now watching the most recent season of Love on the Spectrum. And what's fascinating is Keeno Cleary, the creator of Love on the Spectrum, actually joined one of our Wednesday night community calls, much like you did, along with a casting director. And they've interviewed a few dozen of our clients. And what's super fascinating is that, you know, unsurprisingly, none of our clients have made the cut for the TV show because Love on the Spectrum is super entertaining, but they cast people who are entertaining in some way. And Alana and I have like very mixed feelings about Love on the Spectrum. I I I think it's a I think it's cute, I think it's very entertaining. And I also think that like there are some people on that show who are probably not ready for relationships, at least in the way that that maybe their parents conceive of them, or that the audience conceives of what a relationship looks like. So I'm glad it's out there. I'll I'll even I'll tell you, like when I started doing this work in 2010, and I said, Oh, I'm a I'm a dating coach for people with autism, like their their heads would pop off their shoulders, their minds would explode, right? What on earth are you talking about? Now people ask me, what do you do? And I say, you know, I'm a friendship and dating coach for people on the spectrum and who are neurodiverse.

SPEAKER_01 27:40

And then the number number one question is, have you seen the show Love on the Spectrum?

SPEAKER_00 27:44

So it gives people a frame of reference for the idea that autistic adults can date, and that's been really, really helpful. And by the way, a lot of our clients love the show because it validates their experience, and that's really important. What's reality programming? What can I tell you? It's good, you know, reality programming, it you take the ups with the downs.

SPEAKER_03 28:05

Yeah, well, no, and like you said, I mean, if it's it's not entertaining, if someone is not interesting, then no one's gonna tune in, right? So I I feel similarly to you both. I do find it to be entertaining. I I haven't watched it regularly, but I have watched some episodes and Arizona has watched some some episodes, and I think it's wonderful. I just I don't know how I would feel about you know my daughter being on a show like that, for example. But I had a thought though, as you were talking about this, because I was like, why wouldn't they want to hire you? Why wouldn't the show want to hire you guys?

SPEAKER_00 28:42

It's funny when you when you look back to the old media packet that Love on the Spectrum used to distribute, and I don't know if they do or they don't, right? There was at least one or two articles in the Atlantic magazine that sort of explained the reason for existence for this show. And I was always bummed that they cut me out of the articles. I was in those articles, but I wasn't there. And so, you know, they first they started in Australia, and I'm not in Australia, and they have Dr. Laugeson from Piers UCLA, you know, who's the absolute like heavyweight in this field. So I totally get that. And now their their coach is um someone who's neurodivergent, and I and I appreciate why that's the direction that they want to go. And if they ever want to give us a call and have us consult or have us be on the show, I would do it in a heartbeat. But they know what they want to do with their TV show, and um, and that's it.

SPEAKER_03 29:38

Well, the good news it's uh is that it sounds like you both know exactly what you want to do, which is the social life 360. What do you think? I, you know, if you are able to share any stories of some of the marriages or the relationships without using names or details or specifics, if there's anything that you can share with our listeners, because I honestly listening to you both, I'm feeling very optimistic, you know. I feel very hopeful. You know, my daughters often mentioned, you know, I want to get married and have kids. And I was like, okay, you know what I mean? And I, you know, I I'm not saying that it's not possible. Like I as she gets older and older, I find it to be like, okay, this is like this could be likely. But I I I'm just curious about some of the stories that you might feel comfortable sharing with our audience that would also instill a little little hope.

SPEAKER_00 30:37

I mean, I had a client who's on our website. This is not a secret. He asked to be on our website, and he came to me right around the age of 40, and he'd never so much as held a girl's hand. And he had this vision of being married, and he, you know, and what the word he said is it's a pipe dream, but he was willing to work for it. And he really had to scrape together the money. And but to his credit, every time we got together, he showed up fully prepared, open heart. And what was amazing was, you know, I got a I got a call from him at at some point down the road, and and he was like, I'm getting married, and I want you to be in my wedding. And so he asked me to give him and his bride a blessing under the marital canopy during the wedding ceremony under the the chuppa. There are seven blessings that are given under the marital canopy. And what was wild is that the other six were these like very, very, very religious, like super duper orthodox rabbis. And then like me. And I got up and I in front of this group and I look out at all these people, you know, in Queens, New York on this, I think it was a Sunday evening, who are at this wedding, and I'm thinking to myself, like, this doesn't happen if not for the work that I did with him. And this many years later, he still reaches out to me every week or every two weeks or every holiday and just asks how I'm doing and and says you to birthday. He invites me, he invited me to his 50th birthday party and asked me to give a speech there. That wedding doesn't happen without the work that we did. And he know and he and he says that to me all the time. And that was really the moment when I realized I cannot look back on my life as a lawyer and think about how many trials I did. I need to look back on my life and think about how many relationships I'm responsible for. And that's what really catalyzed this from being a part-time thing that I did to not just my full-time job, but my full-time job with my wife and our two colleagues that we have. We've built an ecosystem. We've built a support system.

SPEAKER_03 32:55

Yes. Yes. So when you talked about this individual, you know, really having to scrape together the money to pay for your coaching, I'm assuming that I'm not sure the social life 360 was available back then to him, right?

SPEAKER_00 33:09

You were just coaching him one-to-one or the kernels of social life 360 were there.

SPEAKER_03 33:14

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 33:14

Right? It's a lot of the same strategies and it's it's the same me. Um yeah, things, things evolve all the time. And we actually spent how long years. I spent two and a half years revamping the entire program, and we relaunched it a few months ago. And what was really beautiful was every single module in the program was presented to our clients on a Wednesday community call, like the one that you attended, and we got their feedback before we finalized the program. So it really was a collaborative effort between us and our clients about what they wanted and what works best for them. It was a long, long labor of love, but that's the that's the evolution because in every facet of life today, what worked five years ago is not necessarily what works now. You have to evolve and and and we do too.

SPEAKER_03 34:07

Right. I'm curious, like, how do clients pay for the program? Are you vendored with regional centers? Do you take self-determination program funding?

SPEAKER_00 34:18

Yeah, we love self-determination here in California. Uh, in fact, we're gonna be going to a self-determination fair this weekend. Self-determination STP is one of the best things to happen to Social Life 360 because it has allowed us to bring in a really diverse group of people that ordinarily wouldn't be able to work with us. But 90% of our clients are private pay, and 90% of those clients have their parents pay for it. And it's a big part of the reason why when Cecile and Chantal do these strategy sessions with the family, that it's really important that the parents be there, not just because we want their perspective, which we do, but also because there's nothing more disappointing than seeing a path forward. But because the people who are there to invest in you weren't part of the conversation, they say no.

SPEAKER_03 35:07

Yeah, got it.

SPEAKER_00 35:08

We don't want to do that to people.

SPEAKER_03 35:09

Right. No, I love this transparency. You know, I'm a huge fan of self-determination. We're on year three now, and it's it has really opened so many doors that were not available to my daughter specifically. I have one last question, and then I'm just gonna ask you what your wish is. What is your not friendship wish or friendship dream, but rather what is your social life 360 dream? But on your community call, I saw a sea of very intentional and interested individuals. It seems like everyone decided to be on that call because they decided to be on that call. And I could feel that energy. And I, you know, I some people had their cameras off, fair, but a lot of people had their cameras on. And that's sort of a rarity these days, especially if you don't have to have them on. So I love that. I really appreciated your facilitation and your ability to sort of stay on, you know, stay with the schedule and the timing and then moving forward and giving people their space and respecting people's words. I really felt that to be so supportive. And, you know, I think your program would be really, really, really supportive and helpful for Arizona. I don't know if she's ready yet because she still has one year of high school and her, she is a busy bee. So after her senior year of high school, perhaps, I mean, maybe it's maybe I do schedule a call with um a strategy session and and we see. But I'm curious though, as a girl on the spectrum, it just seems, and it could be also that a lot of times this is true, females on the spectrum are often not diagnosed until later in life. So when I was on the community call, I think I saw some female-looking names, but I didn't I didn't hear from any females on that particular call. And so I'm wondering how do you account for that in the community if everyone is looking for a female partner, for example? I'm just curious how that works for the community. Yeah, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 37:12

So, you know, because our program is neurodivergent and it's a lot of people who are on the spectrum or or undiagnosed on the spectrum, our population reflects that community, which is very, very heavily male. And when you look at the particularly the female autistic community, as you said, a lot of them get diagnosed later in life, but also a lot of them do a much better job at masking, and they do a lot better job of going out into the social world. So naturally, we do tend to get more men than women. What's really interesting though on the community calls is because we do have women in the program. Some of them are just are busy on Wednesday nights because they're out doing stuff.

SPEAKER_03 37:54

God Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:57

And they'll be, and some of them are a little bit more active in our chat groups because that, you know, they can be sort of in that whenever they want to. But of the women that we do have, there's a very high prevalence of social anxiety among them. And so we oftentimes will have women who, at the especially at the beginning of their social life 360 journey, will either want to be off camera or they'll be on camera and they don't want to speak. But what's super fascinating is that we had, you know, we had a young lady who at the beginning of the program like wouldn't wouldn't be on camera, wouldn't speak, then she was on camera.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

And then she would write out something to celebrate.

SPEAKER_00 38:35

Uh-huh. Then she would write out something to celebrate and she would just read it. And then she took off. Then she became the Queen B bar program and planned an entire outing in New York City without our help that families from four different states ended up coming to.

SPEAKER_01 38:52

Myself included. I was still living in New York to join this amazing get-together of like 20 people from all across the tri-state area. It was so much fun. And she planned this whole thing. It was so incredible.

SPEAKER_00 39:11

After not even wanting to be on camera the first time she did a community call.

SPEAKER_03 39:15

So I just had an aha moment. I have to share it with you really quickly, um, because then I want to get to your dream. Is that, you know, Arizona is anything. Like if you had to describe her, you would never say she's shy. Never, right? She's very outspoken. She's a strong advocate for herself. But when something is new or she's meeting someone new, it's always when she's meeting somebody new, or even if it's a new helper for her, a new assistant, personal assistant, or a new BII, or someone who's a support person, she will be, you know, in person, not on camera, because it's usually always meeting someone in person. She is always like kind of like this, you know what I mean? And kind of like, but I'm shy. Sorry, sorry, I'm shy, I'm shy. And I'm like, you're not shy. You know what I mean? But now I have framework for that, that behavior, which is it's the social anxiety piece, you know? And here I am telling her, okay, but you're not shy, right? Without fully understanding that she has to have these little steps. And then yes, you're correct. She takes off. Do you know what I mean? It's like she catapults, right? Wow.

SPEAKER_00 40:26

Okay, that is a story from two days ago.

unknown 40:29

Okay.

SPEAKER_03 40:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 40:30

I was doing a coaching call with a young lady and her mom, roughly Arizona's age. And this young lady not only does not want to be on camera for the community calls, but actually dials in so that there's no chance of it happening. And so I was doing a coaching call with the family two days ago, and the mom said that something really interesting happened. We we had a client who's a guy who was in our chat group and he was having a really bad day. And really, sort of, no matter what anybody said, he just couldn't turn it around. And this young lady who was in Social Life 360 reached out to him, and the mom told me that she spent the entire day supporting him and talking with him and getting to know him. And so this young lady who doesn't want to be on camera for the community call and who, to my knowledge, hasn't spoken up yet during a community call, spent a whole day being the support system for one of our other clients who's having a rough day, and they both came out with a huge win from it. So people participate in our ecosystem in their own ways. And the beauty of having an ecosystem like we have is you get to be part of it in the way that is most meaningful for you. And the more comfortable you get, the more you evolve within our community.

SPEAKER_03 41:50

Wow, this is a great day. I have a completely new perspective on my daughter that um is going to be very additive for her because you know, here I am, you're not shy. Stop it. Anyhow. So now I want to get to your dream. So, what do you both see as the social life 360 dream for for you all running social three life 360, but also for you too as a family with your with your daughter and you know, just moving forward and growing and you know, your visions, what do you what do you see?

SPEAKER_01 42:27

To me, the dream is very simple. You know, we get emails from clients weekly, uh you know, every so often. I've been dating my girlfriend for six months, I made a new friend, I joined a new tribe. And to me, that's the dream. I want more of those emails and more of those emails, you know, just touching people's lives, changing people's lives, and getting to experience that, getting to experience that and celebrating those wins with them. That's all we can ask for. Like that's why we do what we do. And that means everything. That's why we're here.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

And we did uh an event in Philadelphia. We flew to Philly uh a few weeks ago, and uh, yeah, we ran an event right across the street from the Liberty Bell. And uh I didn't know that one of my clients was gonna join us. We had uh three or four clients who came to the event, but one of them wasn't signed up and he walked through the door with his girlfriend. And that means the world to us. Not only does he have a girlfriend, which he worked very hard for, yeah, but he brought her to meet us and to support us and the work that we do. And I want more of those moments, and I want more weddings, and I want more people in tribes and more people saying, I have the friend that I've always wanted to have.

SPEAKER_03 43:46

Beautiful. It's available, right? It's what's available, right? And just knowing that it is available. And I appreciate your transparency also. Is sometimes it's really, really hard work, but the it sounds like you know, the intention. The energy is there, but most importantly, the platform is there, right? You've created that. So thank you for taking the time out of your seven-day workday to meet with me. And one last thing. So, how can where can people find more information about you?

SPEAKER_00 44:20

So our website is mybestsociallife.com. We keep the website very, very simple. It has a little bit about us and our team. It has uh stories from our clients, and most importantly, it has links to the free trainings. One for neurodivergent and autistic adults, one for family members. It's about a 30-minute training. It's free, it's really inspiring, and it gives you an opportunity to schedule a strategy session with us. And that's the 90-minute conversation where we can dive deep and get to know you and figure out is working with us going to be the best option for you.

SPEAKER_03 44:56

Okay, so great. So initially, step one, watching the free training, right?

SPEAKER_00 45:00

It really helps.

SPEAKER_03 45:01

Yeah, I would I would consider that to be the most informative way to jump into a strategy session call.

SPEAKER_00 45:08

Yeah, and a lot of and a lot of reaches out to every family who schedules a call with us and encourages everyone on the call to watch it before they get together.

SPEAKER_03 45:17

Great. Okay. I love that there's a separate training. Well, the family, Arizona could join me for that, and then she could join the one for herself, right? Or yeah, the language of the interactive at family prices. Okay, good to know. Maybe that will be our movie night with popcorn. So um, okay, well, thank you both for being on. I um I really appreciate it. I I know this is going to be a long-term connection and relationship. I still need to get down to Orange County for some freshly baked cookies. Um, please. Anything and yes, I do not have any allergies. So go for it. And we look forward to continuing this conversation as the world continues to change. So thank you both.

SPEAKER_00 46:02

Thanks for having us.

SPEAKER_03 46:03

Thank you. Thank you.

SPEAKER_02 46:10

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