Entrepreneurship and Autism: How One Family Is Breaking the Mold
Good Life Project
Jonathan Fields / Acast
4.5 • 3.4K Ratings
🗓️ 28 July 2015
⏱️ 57 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
By the time people living with autism hit their mid-20s, they often "age out" of all the services and support available to them. Many, in fact, 80-90% end up unemployed, often for life according to this week's guest, Tom D'Eri.
Tom wasn't about to let that happen to his little brother, Andrew, who'd been diagnosed with autism at the age of three. Obsessed with entrepreneurship as a kid, and following in his dad's footsteps, Tom and his dad decided to create an entrepreneurial venture designed to both employ and provide community for those living with autism. They also wanted to show the local community and corporations that people living with autism can be wonderful contributors to a workforce.
The perfect vehicle, amazingly enough, was a car wash that came to be called Rising Tide Car Wash. What happened with that business, it's astonishing success, how it changed not only his brother, but also the lives of so many others, including him and his family, that's the conversation in this week's episode of Good Life Project.
Along the way, we also talk about Tom's dramatic change at age 11 from an overweight, non-athletic kid to the captain of nearly every major team and what triggered to metamorphosis. And we explore how autism affected the entire family, including Tom's dad's decision to stay true to his entrepreneurial calling, even in the face of six-figure therapy and medical bills.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | When we have consumers and clients leaving us crying, you know, so excited that this exists |
| 0:10.6 | and, you know, willing to tell all their friends, what car wash has that? |
| 0:16.6 | Whether it's a change in the sensitivity to diagnosis or whether there's actually |
| 0:21.3 | something happening in our culture or society or genetics, the rate of diagnosis of autism |
| 0:28.4 | has absolutely skyrocketed in the last generation or two. |
| 0:33.4 | To learn into a lot of people, today's guest, Tom Diary, had a little brother who was |
| 0:37.8 | diagnosed with autism when he was three. |
| 0:39.9 | Now, Tom and his brother are actually like grown adults right now out in the workforce. |
| 0:45.5 | And that's actually pretty unusual to say that they're both out in the workforce because |
| 0:49.2 | what Tom shared with me is that once people with autism, you know, what he called age |
| 0:54.7 | out of the system, whether it's education, all sorts of services at a certain age, generally, |
| 0:59.1 | you know, early 20s and late teens even, all these resources and programs to support no |
| 1:03.6 | longer to become available and to kind of left on your own. |
| 1:07.1 | And something like 90% of people living with autism end up unemployed. |
| 1:12.2 | So he wanted to change that and at the same time create some sort of vehicle to let the |
| 1:17.2 | community know that autism is a condition, but the people living with autism, the real people |
| 1:23.6 | with real feelings and amazing abilities and to contribute to the world. |
| 1:28.5 | So he and his dad actually tried to figure out an interesting business to start to create |
| 1:34.0 | these things. |
| 1:35.4 | They ended up building both a venture that serves the community. |
| 1:40.9 | And one of their first actual businesses is a car wash. |
| 1:43.7 | They realized that that actually fit extraordinarily well with the skills and abilities that somebody |
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