Just 15% of Americans approve of the job Congress is doing. But why is it broken and how do we fix it? Those are just two of the questions I asked Justin Amash, the former five-term congressman from Michigan who's currently exploring a Senate right. Elected as part of the Tea Party wave in 2010, Amash helped create the House Freedom Caucus but became an increasingly lonely principal voice for limiting the size, scope and spending of the federal government. After voting to impeach Donald Trump in 2019, he resigned from the GOP, became an independent and joined the Libertarian Party in 2020, making him the only libertarian to ever serve in Congress. We talked about the 2024 presidential race and the country's political and cultural polarization that seems to be growing with every passing day. We also talked about how his parents' experiences as a Christian refugee from Palestine and an immigrant from Syria inform his views on foreign policy, entrepreneurship and American exceptionalism. This Q&A took place on the final day of Liberty Con, the annual event for Students for Liberty that was held recently in Washington, D.C. Here is the reason interview with Justin Amash. Thank you everybody for coming out and even coming out for Justin Amash. Let's give it up to him one more time, please. So the topic of this talk, and we're going to veer away from that, but let's start with why is Congress broken and how do we fix that? Let's give you a couple of minutes on that. We could take up the whole 30 minutes talking about that if we wanted to. We don't know exactly how Congress got to where it is, but today it is highly centralized where a few people at the top control everything. And that has a lot of negative consequences for our country. Among them is that the President has an unbelievable amount of power because the President now only has to negotiate with really a few people. You have to negotiate with the Speaker of the House, you have to negotiate with the Senate Majority Leader and maybe some of the Minority Leaders. But it's really a small subset of people that you have to negotiate with. And when that happens, it gives the President so much leverage. So when we talk about things like going to war without authorization, well, as long as the Speaker of the House isn't going to hold the President accountable and the Senate Majority Leader is not going to, the President is just going to do what he wants to do. And when it comes to spending, as long as the President only has to negotiate with a couple of people, the President is going to do whatever the President wants to do. So it's super easy in the system for the President to essentially bully Congress and dictate the outcomes. But there's a deeper problem with all of this, which is representative government is supposed to be a discovery process. You elect people to represent you, you send them to Washington, and then the outcomes are supposed to be discovered by these representatives through discussions and debates and the introduction of legislation and amendments. And you're supposed to have lots of votes where you freely, you know, where the votes freely reflect your will representing the people back home. But instead, in Congress today, a few leaders are deciding what the final product is and then they're even not bringing it to the floor until they know they have the votes. So there's no actual discovery process. And Nancy Pelosi used to brag about this, like she wouldn't bring a bill to the floor unless she knew it was going to pass, which is the opposite of how Congress should work. So what are, briefly, what are some of the ways to kind of decentralize power within Congress? You know, when you were in Congress, you founded the Freedom Caucus, which was supposed to be kind of a redoubt of people who believed in, you know, limited government and libertarian and conservative principles, and actually even some liberal principles, but decentralizing authority, you got kicked out of the Freedom Caucus, right? Well, I resigned from it. Well, you were asked to leave, right? It was like the police sirens were coming in. It's like, you know what? I'm going to go, right? But even places like that that were explicitly designed to act as a countervailing force to this unified Congress. So how can that happen? What can you do, or what can somebody do to make that happen? Well, it does take people with strong will. I think that when we go to vote for our elected officials, when you go to vote for a representative, when you go to vote for a senator, you have to know that that person is willing to stand up to the leadership team. And if that person's not willing to break from the leadership team on a consistent basis, and this doesn't mean they have to, you know, be mean or anything like that. Although that's nice. That's an option, right? That's an option. But they just have to be independent enough where you know they're willing to break from their leadership team. And if they're not willing to do that, it doesn't matter how much they agree with you on the issues, don't vote for them. Because that person's going to sell out. There's no chance they're going to stand up for you when it counts. So I think you need to have people who have a strong will, who are going to go there and actually represent you and are willing to stand up to the leaders. If you are interested in Amash's commentary on contemporary issues, go to his sub-stack. It's Justin Amash. And the tagline is a former congressman spills on Congress and makes the practical case for the principles of liberty. So it's on sub-stack. It's a great read. And particularly on issues you mentioned, kind of war and things like that and the war powers resolution, it's great stuff. But can you tell us quickly how did you discover libertarian ideas? And then you got elected in 2010 which was a wave election. It was part of the Tea Party reaction to eight years of Bush and more problems during the financial crisis and the reaction of government to that. Where did you first encounter the ideas of liberty and how did that motivate you to get into Congress? Well, the ideas of liberty are something that have been with me since I was a child. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where they came from. I think they came from my parents' immigrant experience coming to the United States. My dad came here as a refugee and... A refugee from? From Palestine. So he was born in Palestine in 1940 and when the state of Israel was created in it was a refugee. So my mom is a Syrian immigrant. So when my parents came here they weren't wealthy. My dad was a very poor refugee. He was so poor that the Palestinians made fun of him. So that's really poor. And when he came here he didn't have much but he felt he had opportunity. He had a chance to start a new life. A chance to make it even though he came from a different background from a lot of people. Even though his English wasn't great compared to a lot of people. So he came here and he worked hard and he built a business and when we were young he used to tell us that America is the greatest place on earth where someone can come here like he did and start a new life and have the chance to be successful. And it doesn't matter what your background is it doesn't matter what obstacles you face you have a chance here and you don't have that chance in so many places around the world. So for me I think that's where that spirit of liberty came from. It was from my dad's experience especially my mom as well coming here as a young immigrant. And so I was always a little bit I guess anti-authoritarian as a child. I rebelled against teachers at times. I didn't like arbitrary authority let's put it that way. When someone just would make up a rule like this is the rule I just say so tell me why. Have you rethought that as a parent? No I mean I let my kids think very freely and as long as they follow the rules. I don't I don't mind when they are a little bit rebellious. I think it doesn't hurt for kids to have some independence. I encourage them to challenge their teachers even when they think the teacher's wrong about something. I think that it's a good thing for people to go out there and not just accept everything as it is. That kind of independence. You have famously as a congressman explained all of your votes on Facebook which is a rare concession by authority to say this is why I did what I did. And actually a lot of the people in leadership and in congress didn't like that I was doing that because I was giving people at home the power to challenge them. Instead of just being told now I was revealing what was going on. You grew up in Michigan. You went to University of Michigan as an undergrad for law school. Was it there that you started coming across names like Hayek and Mises and Friedman, Rand Rothbard or whoever? Not really, no. My background is in economics. My degree is in economics. And thank you. People love economics out there. Has anybody here ever been part of economics? Alright. Anyone from economics here? Well speaks slower. So and I did well in economics at Michigan but we sure didn't study Austrian economics. We didn't study Hayek. I think he might have been mentioned in one class. Very briefly he was mentioned. There was like one day where he was mentioned. But I'd say that what happened is as I went through my economics degree and then I got a law degree at Michigan as well I started to realize that I had a lot of differences from other people who were otherwise aligned with me. I was a Republican. I was aligned with them on a lot of things but there were a number of issues where we didn't align. Some of the foreign policy issues but certainly a lot of civil liberties issues and I started to wonder what am I? What's going on here? I just thought of myself as a Republican and I would read the platform and hear what they're saying. They believe in limited government and economic freedom and individual liberty but when push came to shove on a lot of issues they didn't believe those things. They'd say they believed those things but they didn't. So I've told this story before I just typed some of my views into a Google search and up popped Hayek's Wikipedia page. So literally it was like the top thing on Google. So I clicked on that and started reading about them and I was already in my mid-20s at this time. And I was like this is what I believe. And do you think that full view of individual liberty not just in the economic sphere but in everything else that's informed by your parents experience and also they're running a business but it is interesting because you would have been coming of age during a time when the Republicans were ascendant but they were kind of the war party and we were told after 9-11 that you should not speak freely. That was kind of a problem. Yeah, sure. And throughout my life I've believed freedom of speech freedom of thought, freedom of expression these are critical values. Maybe they're the essence of everything that makes this country work. You know the idea that we come from a lot of places there's an incredible amount of diversity in the United States. I think diversity is always treated or often treated like a bad word these days. But it's a blessing to our country that we have people who come from so many backgrounds and actually the principle of liberty is about utilizing that diversity. You know it's in centrally planned systems where diversity is not utilized where someone at the top dictates to everyone else and doesn't take advantage of any of the diversity. They say, no a few of us at the top, we know everything it doesn't matter all of your backgrounds all of your skills, all of your talents that doesn't matter. What matters is we've got a few people in a room somewhere and they're going to decide everything and they know best because they're experts. So you came into office in 2011 and it seemed like there was a real libertarian insurgency within the Republican party but more nationally and of course people were tired of continued centralization government secrecy famously a lot of Bush's activities and particularly war spending early on was done in supplemental and emergency preparations not really open to full discussion and what not all of this stuff coming out of the Patriot Act somebody like I was going to say Darth Vader I meant Dick Cheney kind of saying we were in control but then Obama also promised the most transparent administration ever and plainly did not deliver on that. But that energy pushing back on centralization and government power and government secrecy seems to you know that helped bring you and other people like you to Congress seems to have dissipated do you agree with that and if so what took that away? Yeah I agree with that when I was running for office both for State House in 2009 when I was running for that office and when I got to Congress in 2011 there was a lot of energy behind a sort of a limited government libertarianish republicanism and I felt like libertarianism was really rising there was a chance for libertarian ideals to get a lot of traction and a lot of people who used to be I guess more like bush conservatives were coming around to the libertarian way. So I felt really good about where things were heading and for the first I'd say three or four years that I was in Congress I felt like we continued to move in the right direction I mean the creation of the Freedom Caucus was kind of a dream of bringing people together to challenge the leadership. They weren't all libertarians or anything like that I mean there were a few who were libertarian leaning but the idea that a group of Republican members it wasn't determined that it was going to be only Republicans but it ended up being Republicans who got together and said hey we're going to challenge the status quo we're going to challenge the establishment that was a kind of a dream that it had come together and then when Donald Trump came on the scene I think a lot of that just fell apart because he's such a strong personality and character and had so much of hold over a lot of the public especially on the Republican side that it was very hard for my colleagues to be willing to challenge him What do you think the essence there's been a lot of discussion this weekend about the threat of things like national conservatism or Trump's populism on the right woke progressivism on the left maybe we'll get to that in a second but what's the essential appeal of Trump is it his actual, is it his personality is that he said he could win and he ended up doing that at least once is it a cult of personality is it the idea he's in charge what's the core of his his appeal to you? I think he's definitely a unique character he has a certain charisma that is probably unmatched in politics I mean I don't think I've ever seen someone who campaigns as effectively as he does it doesn't mean you have to agree with all of the ethics of what he does or any of that or the substance but I think that... to keep it in Michigan he's a rockser he's an Iggy Pop you may not like what he's doing on the stage but you can't take your eyes off it that's right he holds court when he's out there people pay attention and he really understands the essence of campaigning and how to effectively go after opponents now again I'm not saying that all of these things are necessarily ethical or that other people should do the same things but he really understands how to lead a populist movement and how important do you think in his appeal is a politics of resentment that somehow he is going to get back what was taken from you the whole Make America Great again there's a whole idea there of someone is destroying your life and I'm going to get it back for you and that's a very powerful thing to a lot of people for a lot of people out there it is more important to get back at others than necessarily to have some kind of vision of how this is all going to work going forward it's not appealing to me because I understand we live in one country we have people of all sorts of backgrounds and if you're going to persuade people you have to be able to live with them and work with them regardless of your differences it doesn't mean that you can't be upset be angry about what some other people are doing or saying but there has to be an effort to live together here as one country we have too much in common in this country what Michigan was a massive swing state when he won election you voted to impeach Donald Trump what went into that calculation and what was the reaction like to that because that's a profiling courage well I don't think that's like you know I don't think that's my most courageous vote not even by a long shot naming the post office after your father or I didn't name any post offices after my father to be clear so I think that the courageous votes are the ones where everyone is against you and I don't mean just like you know one party it's one thing to vote for impeachment and like half the country loves what you did and half the country doesn't like what you did that's in my mind not that challenging or difficult it's when you take a vote and you know that 99% of the public is going to misconstrue this misunderstand it be against it the vote is going to be something like you know 433 to 1 in the house or something like that those are the tough votes and there are plenty of those votes out there where you're taking a principled stand and you're doing it to protect people's rights but it's not the typical narrative is there an example in your legislative record that you would put forth for that well I mean one of the ones I've talked about before is they tried to pass some anti-lynching legislation at the federal level and we're everyone's against lynching obviously but the legislation itself was bad and would actually harm a lot of people including harming a lot of black Americans so like there was this idea that this legislation was good was just parodied by a lot of people in the media they didn't read the legislation and in fact I complained about it and it mysteriously did not pass both houses that congress after I pointed out all the problems with it it did pass the House of Representatives did not pass both houses and get signed by the president and mysteriously the next congress they reintroduced it and rewrote it in a way that took into consideration all of my complaints and they tried to pass it off like they were just reintroducing the same legislation and I pointed out hey they actually you know they actually saw that there was a problem here and then tried to pretend like oh you know those kind of votes are tough because when you take the vote everyone thinks you're wrong everyone and you have to go home and you have to explain it and those are the ones that are tricky back to the impeachment point look I'd impeach every president let's be let's be clear now I'm not the kind of person who's going to impeach the legislation you know over every thing that a president does wrong when you introduce legislation to impeach a president you have to have some backing for it it can't just be you know one person saying let's impeach for example I would definitely impeach President Biden over these unconstitutional wars 100% but the idea of impeaching impeachment legislation suggests there's other people who will join you otherwise it's just an exercise in futility you know you introduce it it doesn't go anywhere it just sits there we're going to impeach people there has to be some public backing which is why I try to make the case all the time for these impeachable offenses why some legislation should be brought forth to you on that kind of stuff but yeah I think that every president should be impeached every recent president at least if Trump populism national conservatism and a politics of resentment is sucking up a lot of energy on the right how do you feel about or like how do we deal with the rise of identity politics and a kind of woke progressivism on the left where is that coming from and what is the best way to combat that I think a lot of it is just repackaged socialist ideas collectivist ideas the idea of equity for example is really like a perversion of the idea of equality in most respects when people say equity they mean the opposite of equality it means you're going to have the government or some central authority decide what the outcome should be how much each person should have rather than some system of equality before the law where the government is not some kind of arbiter of who deserves what and when you think about it there is no way for the government to do this there's no way for the government to properly assess all of our lives this is in many ways the point of diversity is like we all so different and there's no way that a central authority can decide how to manage all that so for many of the people on the woke left who say they care about diversity they don't care about diversity if they're talking about equity these things are in conflict with each other the idea that you're going to decide that someone is more deserving than another based on some superficial characteristics as an example I've talked about this and I've talked about this earlier in this conversation my dad came here with nothing as a poor refugee yet in a lot of cases he might be classified as just a white American even though he came here as an extremely poor Palestinian refugee New York Times for example, classifies me as white they might classify someone else who's Middle Eastern as a person of color so I think a lot of this is just someone is making decisions at the top saying well we think this person is more like this or that and we're going to decide they're more deserving but they don't know our backgrounds they don't know anything about us they don't know who deserves this or who deserves that and no central authority could figure that out so the best thing we can do is have a system of equality before the law where the law treats everyone the same it doesn't give an advantage to any person over another person and it may not be fair in some sense to some people some people may say well that's not fair you know instead of having a dad who's a Palestinian refugee their dad was a Silicon Valley billionaire some person might have a dad who was a professor another person might have a dad who worked at a fast food restaurant you don't know what the differences are the government can't figure all of this out and say who is more deserving than someone else so I really think that the the woke left when they push this idea of equity they're really pushing against diversity they're saying we're gonna decide a few people at the top are gonna decide who's valuable and who's not valuable and they're not gonna actually take into consideration any of our differences because no central authority could take it into consideration you are a libertarian not an anarchist you believe there is a role for government but it should be obviously much more limited you're also I could write a whole book about that we would love to read that book you are also an Orthodox Christian could you talk a little bit about how in a world of limited government a libertarian world government wouldn't be doing everything for everybody but organizations and institutions like the church or other types of intervening countervailing mediating institutions would help to fill the gaps that are left by government yeah I mean for sure that's the place for these organizations is to help in society not to have government deciding it again when you have some central authority deciding it you are really limiting the opportunities for the public you're limiting the opportunities for assisting people you're deciding that a few people are going to make all the decisions rather than having a lot of organizations and a lot of individuals making decisions when you centralize it all there are a lot of people who are going to be missed a lot of people who are going to be ignored when you let the marketplace work this out when you let private organizations work this out there's a lot more opportunity for people who need help to get help and I think that's really important we're running out of time but I want to ask to go back to this question of there was a libertarian wave I like to call it a libertarian moment which I think we're still living in but we don't understand rhetoric aside there's been a pause what are the best ways to kind of get libertarian ideas and sensibilities in front of young people to really energize the coming you're a millennial the world is getting young again and how do we make sure that these people are hearing and understanding and maybe being persuaded by libertarian ideas well for one thing we have to meet them where they are I spend a lot of time for example asking my kids which social media kids use these days exclusively pornhub in my experience there are a lot of places that the adults aren't so we might be on facebook my generation your generation other people are on x or twitter and there are other people on tiktok and so you have to meet them where they are and if they're not on x and it's still weird calling it x if they're not on x and you are well they're not hearing your message so that's an issue that we need to work on I'm probably reaching primarily gen x and millennial people on x and I'm probably not reaching gen z people as well so I think we need to work on getting them in those places and also I think people who have libertarian instincts people who are who want to present libertarianism go speak to students at schools I used to do this as a member of congress I used that opportunity as much as I could when schools would invite me I'd say yes I'd be happy to come to the school to speak to the students and take all their questions and be open about being a libertarian tell them frankly that your philosophy is libertarianism and talk to them about it I think it's great a lot of teachers end up surprised they walk away saying I've had many teachers walk up to me and say like whisper to me I think I'm a libertarian too after having the conversation because they have stereotypes about what it might mean to be a libertarian and you have the opportunity to change their mind final question I have seen a lot of chatter I have actually helped publish a lot of chatter that you may be running for the US senate from the mediocre state of Michigan do you have an announcement that you would like to make so as a part of the national championship winning state of Michigan this year yeah I am exploring a run for senate the the FEC requires me to state that I am not a candidate for senate but I am exploring a run for senate and if you are interested in checking it out go to exploratory.justinamash.com and I am giving it serious thought I think that there is an opportunity for libertarians this year and there is an opportunity to win a republican senate seat this year so I am looking at the republican primary and I think this is probably the best shot libertarians have had in a long time in the state of Michigan thank you very much justinamash thanks thanks thanks everyone


All right. Hi. Welcome everybody. Welcome to Brain Club. There's a couple people I don't know yet. So welcome. I'm Mel Hauser. I use she they pronounce and I am executive director at all brains belong.  I'm just green and get us oriented. There we go.  This is an education space that we created in January of 2022. I believe it's been so long, you know, for the, for the broader ABB community for purposes of educating the community about neurodiversity. You know, this, this, what that just, sometimes it helps as by way of a shared community agreement just to name what this is not and why. So we have lots of different programs here. We do have medical programs and we do have pure support programs, but this is not one of those programs. This is an education space. And why is because some of, so some of you have those other kinds of relationships with us, but many of you don't. And we want to make sure that that if folks are in a space of processing individual situations or individual trauma, it can be a thing that if you start processing that and don't get to finish and you don't have support afterwards, that actually can be harmful, which is why we really delineate Brain Club as an education space. All forms of participation are okay here. You can have your video on or off. Many of you have figured that out already. And even if it's on, we don't expect anything of you. You certainly don't need to sit still or look at the camera or anything, you know, feel free to fidget and stem and eat and take breaks and all the things and everybody's welcome here. And all formats of communication are okay. You can unmute and use mouth words you can type in the chat. And you know, given the size, size of brain club to kind of depending, you know, I sometimes I can read everything from the chat sometimes I can just keep up with selections, but we often have a robust chat box going throughout. And in addition to affirming all aspects of identity, particularly as the size of brain club has grown. We think it's really important to protect the group's collective access needs with very specific communication ground rules. So how we respect and protect group access needs is with respectful language, particularly because a lot of folks are participating with video off there may be little ears listening nearby so just be aware of that in terms of the language that you're choosing and the topics that you're discussing. And we want to give space for all participants to participate. Observation is a completely valid form of participation. And if you would like to participate, you know, directly, we want to make sure that you have space to do that. So if, you know, when we get to the point of group discussion after our panel, just, just, you know, if you've shared if you shared out loud, make them just just be aware of given space for other participants to have a chance. All right. Well, last bit of access closed captioning. It is enabled just have to toggle it on if you'd like to use it. So depending on your version of zoom and look for either the lab transcript closed captioning icon. And if you don't see that book for the more dot dot dot and choose show subtitles, get you do the same thing that choose hide some title to turn it off. And mention the chat before that's the chat box window. And that's how you can find it. So we are continuing our June 2023 theme of neurodivergent health. We started to discuss healthcare experiences last week. And we're going to do a recap for those who missed it. So recap the status quo of neurodivergent health is not good, not good at all. And we talked about how there are extensive barriers to healthcare access for neurodivergent folks flustering in these three buckets, the environment or healthcare interactions, issues with the provider. Patients perceive that provide providers have insufficient knowledge and skills and unhelpful attitudes to provide care. These are the study of autistic adults in primary care and barriers within the system and the defaults of the healthcare system. We also talked about how healthcare providers unfortunately still in 2023 don't get a lot of training in autism, ADHD, dysfraxia, dyscalculia, dyslexia. And we talked about how in the example of autistic adults when primary care clinicians are only trained in stereotypes, not surprisingly, folks go unnoticed and this gap between someone's experience and having a narrative to explain it gets wider and wider as time goes by. We also talked about how medical providers don't get training in the particular physical health experiences of autistic and ADHD. That there is a cluster of neuroimmune conditions that involves the entire body. And so in a world where unfortunately healthcare is often so fragmented into body parts, often not zoomed out enough. It's like Google Maps when you're so zoomed in, you don't know what continent you're on. And many people have this pattern of neuroimmune conditions that goes unrecognized often. And it goes unrecognized often for decades. Lizzie, can you pop in the chat the link to our Instagram post on the all the things project and maybe also the link to our website, the specific all the things website with the video and stuff. Okay. Just for folks who want background background. Because the idea is that this is contributing to a non-autistic healthcare needs. Last part of recap is we talked about the double empathy problem where it's not that and by the way that that term coined by Dr. Damian Milton an autistic social scientist in the UK who found in research studies that miscommunication happens when there is a mismatch between autistic and non-autistic people. But it's not that there's one set of normal communication skills and then everyone else. It's that it's when there's a mismatch between worldview and communication style is break down. So we tried to bridge the double empathy problem between patients and healthcare providers last week. So, so we had a, it was, it was our medical providers here at Albrightons Belong, myself, Sierra Millard, Dr. Dave Borzella, and we had a discussion about what our training was like and how we were able to make our own journey of unlearning. So, so if you missed that last week, we can, well, we can, we can link to that in the, in the chat also. Because today it's time for part two. Part two is patient stories, the patient experience of being a neurodivergent person accessing healthcare. So before we, we play our pre-recorded video, which it will run about 25 minutes and we'll have the chat going while the video plays. And then we'll have plenty of time for discussion. So just wanted to first off thank our community panelists. These are five members of our community advisory board, Sarah Knudson, Matthew Lafleur, Amy Noyes, Linda Riddle, and Zeph. Thank you all so much.  So, so with that, David, take it away. When you think about your experiences trying to access healthcare, what comes to mind? It's very hard to access health, healthcare. I think it's hard in general. I think our system is broken for pretty much everyone, but the amount of additional layers that come when you have, you know, in a way, any type of disability just, it makes it truly a monumental problem. When you think about your experience trying to access healthcare, what comes to mind? This is going to be kind of a bummer of a conversation, so here's a content warning because I don't have a whole lot of really great healthcare experiences. I have medical PTSD. So when I think of the healthcare experiences that I've had, a lot of them have been very challenging, particularly from communications perspectives, trying to make myself understood to the doctor and being understood. What comes to mind is a doctor or physician or the nurse, you know, willing to understand that this individual is different than all the others, and how can he or she adapt to that individual needs? But with me it's more about, you know, will this doctor, nurse, physician accept me for who I am, not what I am? Obviously I've been autistic my whole life, but I didn't know I was autistic, so I never knew what the challenge was. I think about myself even as like a little child and someone had to put attention on me or had to touch me in any way. I think I had a real fear response that I'm just starting to really start recognizing, and I didn't always feel like I was asked permission, and that I realized in retrospect is huge. So I kind of didn't access healthcare or access that very, very minimally. Even in emergency rooms, like not being able to tolerate the environment and being, you know, potentially written down as an uncooperative patient because I had to leave before they were done with their stuff because I just couldn't tolerate it. What are some challenges that you faced in accessing healthcare? The challenges that are faced accessing healthcare is accessibility formats, documentations that they give you new patients or existing patients, you know, forms that you had to fill out per meeting or pre-form meetings when you get there for your doctor appointment that day, which, as you know, is not accessible. It was very anxiety producing for me. The thing I think is like what I've recognized even in like a basic wellness exam, there wasn't a connection. I didn't have a connection to my body and I didn't have a connection to understanding why the question was being asked. So if I went to a wellness exam and they're like, tell me about your teeth. And I would just be like, I don't know, I don't know how. And I, because I'd be so anxious, I don't think I had access like to my fully functioning, like speaking. I just wouldn't know what to say. Nobody believes you. And then there are different levels of that in, you know, well, you look at it wrong or you couldn't possibly know yourself because you're this subgroup or that subgroup. And then there are the ones where, well, they, everybody looks fine. So it has to be fine. And I found out a lot as a parent that I would know something was wrong, but my kids didn't look disabled. They looked cute and perfect and just the right amount of chubby. But no, no, I'm just one of those moms. Yes. The difficulty health care system for me was the physicians of trying to understand my complexity of my learning knowledge and how I learn and how can they adapt to my learning. For me, it's more about, you know, not only speaking to them on that same level, which is very, very tricky, but also complexity of the healthcare system in itself because they're running on the medical terminology of the healthcare college insight. And when they use those or explain those two patients, sometimes patients like myself with disabilities cannot get it because it's, you know, it's like you're teaching a seminar at a university, but you're doing it with a patient. Well, she has staring spells. Well, she can walk a straight line and touch her nose. So there couldn't possibly be any neurological difficulties.  You start to wonder, where is the problem? I have spent a lot of time not getting a lot of things. Part of it was, well, maybe this is just something I'm not, maybe I am wrong. You know, maybe there's this big cosmic thing that 95% of the populace gets and I don't get because I'm me and I don't get it and I didn't know why I didn't get it then, but I just knew I didn't get it. But no, it wasn't me this time. A lot of different symptoms show up in the different systems of the body that were fundamentally neurologically related. On COVID, you know, and other, you know, medical issues like asthma. It's, you know, it's very common, but there's also things that shouldn't ever be ignored in a medical profession field because those could complicate, you know, the lifespan of an autistic adult or a child. Even though I talked with them about the other symptoms of the autism, my symptoms were brushed off as PTSD. And I can just feel when I walk in, I don't know if it's a safe space for me. And I know, I don't know that it's like a safe space for me, like being neurodivergent, but I also don't know if it's a safe space because of the way that I'm going to be treated and disregarded in terms of like, just go lose weight. I'm terrified to go.  And so like if I go get my blood pressure checked or something like that, there's this like quality of, oh, I can't believe that you have normal blood pressure. Like just like the things that people are saying to me, you know, I just recently had a routine mammogram and like what was said to me during that appointment was incredibly inappropriate. When I came to Vermont and, you know, I moved here. So you had to get a new medical home, this old country doctor. Iceman otherwise took a look at me, weighed me and signed me up for like the entire list of every health test you could possibly have. And I'm like, I don't really want to pay for all these, but okay. And then I was like, no, we don't need to do the cholesterol. At least I know that one is fine because I'd had it done recently and I inherited low cholesterol from my dad. And he wouldn't believe me. So we ran the test.  And I said, well, should we worry because it's gone up six points in a year that's the most it's ever gone up. And he told me to be quiet. And I was like, okay. I couldn't really voice anything back for me because we're trained not to do that. So how is your menstrual cycle? And I was like, fine, great. Well, when was your last cycle or whatever? And it was like, I have no idea. And I immediately like was yelled at. And what they said to me was it's my, I think of, and I started crying. And they said to me that it's my job. Like I always think it's a good sign when people are crying because it's my job to make sure. I have to yell at people to make sure that they're taking care of their health. Going through that time period was super frustrating. Trying to like get attention and go into like all these different specialists and not getting a whole lot of answers. So many of these experiences are me advocating for what I need. It took me five years to get a diagnosis for my autism. My healthcare provider said, well, we can't say you're autistic. Or like, you know, like my chiropractic care was like, no, there's just no way. Like just like not asking me, not curious at all. Like not saying why, what makes you think that you're autistic or how could we find you an autistic specialist to figure out or. To give you some idea how powerful it was. Number one, learning that I was with learning that I was autistic was like a kaleidoscope coming into focus for my entire life that made everything make sense. And I was also diabetic at the time. My blood sugars literally dropped 20 points overnight and stayed down with a self diagnosis of autism. I find that hypocrisy bothers me a great deal in general. And, you know, we're supposedly, you know, a society where we're supposed to take care of ourselves and be informed and make decisions and be self actualized and everything. And even if you're all those things, and in many ways, if you are those things, healthcare isn't designed to work for you.  This over here affects me. Nobody quite knows what to do with you. Doctors I don't think are really taught how to work with patients who don't fit the expectations of, you know, what the profile is. They're trained to make decisions in a very specific way. They need to in order to be really good with their time. Because nobody else lives in your body but you, right? You think after a certain amount of time you would become an expert in it. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of how I look at mine. Yeah. Thanks. Knowing that just because somebody shows up in front of you and may appear normalish enough, but there needs to be given some amount of space or grace to allow for the fact that maybe this person has other things going on that you don't know about. I try very hard to communicate, but then when I get frustrated I become very blunt. And the new doctor I have at least can deal with that. But a lot of people in healthcare are still sort of trained in that, you know, I am in charge and you are here at my whim sort of thing and, you know, we must be respectful. There's so many different layers of those nuances that I'm like, no, I had to wait 45 minutes for you. I could never go back. So in that one moment and I like I went to therapy and like we had, we're starting to get all these strategies of how do I go back?  And I had exhaust pretty much exhausted mainstream healthcare options or at least the mainstream healthcare options. I was willing to try. And I heard this. I was sitting with this friend. I was sitting with this friend. I was sitting with this friend. I'm a doctor in Montpelier who was out as autistic and starting a medical practice. What do you wish healthcare providers knew about neurodiversity and neurodivergence? It's really like, I want them to know about ABB. I want them to know what Mel has figured out. I want them to know. This connection. Between all of the things. I was waking up because I wasn't breathing because I needed to sleep study. I was waking up because I have dysautonomia because my autonomic nervous system doesn't work correctly. Everyone was putting this on me that like my thoughts were causing these panic attacks. Like I don't know who has panic attack. I wasn't having a thought in the middle of the night. And the way in which Mel has reframed. That it's my fault that I'm not doing something correctly that I am broken, which is I feel like what the healthcare would say, like you're not doing enough. And what I hear Mel saying is no, the medical system isn't doing enough for you. And so that's what I would love to say is that if the medical care system didn't blame people who have. Difference. That instead was curious about that. And we have made some not enough. But some progress over the last 40 years. Learning. To accept people a little bit to give people a little bit more grace, a little bit more space to be themselves. When we can tell. They need it.  And then you don't. People get cranky. And if the cranky people. Are the people that we're relying on to give us the referral. To actually listen. To think about what we're saying and try and put the pieces together. And I think it's just that we aren't knowledge about, because nobody can know all of this stuff. And if they're just grumpy. Because we don't fit what they think. No. For me. I see that, you know, process of the healthcare industry. Is starting to come around and understand neurodivergent. Neurodivergent individuals. And neurodiversity. And neurodiversity around my experience. Like. Asking me, do I understand where the question is coming from? Providing a space that I can feel. Comfortable in and safe in. Helping me make connections back to myself. Not making presumptions about my body, but asking me if like that makes sense. I can't imagine being yelled at. I can't imagine like. Not being cared for. I think the whole first wellness visit that I had with Sierra. I think I bawled the entire like, I just remember. Like my sure being all wet because. I was just couldn't believe the care that I was getting. And I couldn't believe the access. And I didn't even know what I needed. I had zero idea. I had zero idea. I had zero idea. I had zero idea. I had zero idea. I had zero access. And I didn't even know what I needed. I had zero idea and. And the, that was all these different options. And. So it's just so radically different for me. The idea that we can. Just say. This is my access need. to actually look at this problem? What is the actual problem with access? What is the actual problem with communication? What is the actual problem with coverage?  I think that's what we need. What I want providers to do across Vermont statewide is to understand the individual needs. If we can understand your needs, we need to be respected in the same way. And for me, it's more about having that work individual participant relationship. Basically, you want the doctor to get to know you better, vice versa, the patient should get to know the doctor better. What helps move things along quicker and make the process more easy for both parties, the doctor, the nurse, and the physician at large. Plus, the individual patient would fail at ease of coming back to those services. So I did the intake, which invited me and then that invited me to share among other things what I care about and also offered to have a provider spend time discussing things I cared about, which really impressed me. And among other things like the possibility of how do you structure an appointment in a way that it's comfortable to you and you feel comfortable. And I thought, things I never thought about as even possibilities of sitting in a doctor's chair with a comfortable blanket or pillows or something like that. And so it was just nice that people thought about things like that. And then I was sitting, when I was sitting in the waiting room for my first appointment, there was this really short book written for kids. And it basically told my life story of losing it. And I remember reading it waiting for my first appointment. So sort of losing it and having these public meltdowns that I was so ashamed of. And it explained those things in terms of the flight, the fight flight response, which I was totally on board with already. So and then there was also something on the wall in the office about polyvagal theory, which I was also totally on board with already and thought that I was impressed that that ABB knew about and was thinking about. And so at that point, I thought, wow, it looks like these people speak my language. And what I want to see forward is, you know, that sense of belonging within the health care field industry, but also understand everybody's access needs is different. We're all different. We're not the same. And for me, it's for about trying to connect that universal connection between each industry or each systems and try to make it a collaborative system where it's cost effective and more efficient, because everybody wins that way if it's more collective than having these barriers or what we call silos that are preventing us from providing those services in the first place. And then and then this is like a sincere attempt a really sincere attempt, the most serious attempt I've ever seen in a medical practice to meet people where they are at to serve everybody well and to leave nobody behind. It's, you know, it's an incredible effort to make groups and meetings and medical care accessible and and interpersonally practically financially. There's the and I love that the practice is really developed in consultation with patients and like we're in these advisory groups and and and invited to join them and and and and and and that and that what happens in the practice after that is informed how the practice develops is informed and driven by what we say in those meetings and basically informed and driven by patient needs. I just didn't know that I would make it and so when I say like I know I'll live a longer life, it's not only do I live a longer life because I have the health care but now I have community and making friends, I feel understood, I feel like all of the all of the things that seem so isolated in the issues with my health are now understood with very simple medications you know like you know it's like it's just changed my relationship to being able to get up in the morning like like limited my limbic response so that I actually can be here right now speaking to you. All of these things that ABB are providing for me and then it's like the other patients are just I learned so much. This is just like so amazing to me there are these amazing group medical visits where Mel and Sierra offer this cutting-edge information and but they and they also allow lots of time for questions and in-depth discussion around areas that the areas that concern us and there's and beyond that you know and and and there's more because there's also an opportunity to meet others in the community who are going through the same or similar things um which then gives you know us the opportunity to learn from each other's experiences and to really value and feel valued by each other and feel a lot less alone and a lot more hopeful. That was awesome. I really just want to begin with just expressing my really profound gratitude to Amy, Linda, Sarah, Jeff and Matthew for sharing for sharing so much of your stories and including the painfulness of so many of your stories because you're not alone. I mean as we as as we watched here the so many people chiming into the chat sharing their versions of traumatic memories of of interactions and I think that what I'm also seeing is that at least those who have shared so far today is that right now we have the lens of like well that interaction is unhelpful that interaction is like not a thing that ought to happen um but like in the in the moment that is not that doesn't it's not always that clear um and I think that um one of the things that that that we hear a lot is when people have these interactions and they it's normalized right it's normalized and if we think back to the conversations of last week around how these things come to be normalized and the the system right because it's it's a story of individual interactions but the context is the system it's the system that is thwarting the individuals and needs to I mean I'd like I'd like to assume unintentional harm what's standing out for folks today about this conversation it almost seems like the believability you know the the doctors realizing that what this patient is really describing is they're really experiencing I'm almost wondering could that be a function of them being burnt out myself because I've run into doctors are burnt out yeah yeah I mean it's it's it's it's like we like we talked about last week right so if you have the system that is if you as a healthcare provider have the system dysregulating you thwarting you left and right and placing toxic expectations um and toxic works in working conditions um it it's a recipe it's a recipe for not having full access to your cortex and the downstream consequences that is that patients are are dismissed invalidated traumatized I forget who it was that said um that they were an expert in their own body and how could they somebody not understand that but it that really resonated with me a lot and um it makes sense that like if you live in your body every day I it's hard to understand why a doctor wouldn't like understand that Linda said it okay thanks yeah and I and I think that intellectually probably probably most do understand that I think that it's the interactions it's the interactions within the context of a dysfunctional system that interfere with that expertise of lived experience being appropriately elevated um and there's you know a lot of um there's a lot of what we call the like the hidden curriculum in medical education where um health training trainees are they're provided a narrative that becomes like part of the culture around like oh well there's a patient with the list there's the patient printed out the thing from WebMD um and like that it's it's it's um it's again got back to the double empathy problem because I think that no healthcare provider wants to be invalidating or dismissing I think it's I think it's unintentional I think it's it's like the the intersection of trauma dysregulation and culture often really quite unhealthy culture Sierra or Gabe is there anything you want to say about that it's okay if not go ahead yeah I think um I think that um medical training is very much trained in um systems and algorithms and looking for the specific picture that you read in textbooks um and as we know people's bodies don't follow textbooks and they don't read textbooks um and so if you don't fit that traditional picture of what providers have learned and been tested over and over again about then um it can be really hard for providers to be able to see that given their training given kind of how they're how we are um how how we're trained and the the basis on so much of medical care I think is also algorithm based and providers sometimes have a really hard time kind of strain off of that um understandably want to be safe for our patients I actually found connected to that that reminds me of something that Zef said in their comments about um acknowledging that doctors are trained in some of these juristics these decision-making heuristics that's not the word that Zef used but the idea of like for efficiency there are these like rules that allow things to be like eliminated because they're less likely and they're they're based on neuro normative presentations there's like a really important piece of physiology missing I can say I can only speak for my own self um I had this um this injury last year that I was like legitimately worried like like more worried than I think you know that I had been in in recent time about what I what I thought I did um and I actually thought about like I thought about seeking health care and I tried to avoid it because it's you know like we all describe anyway um when I finally saw health care and I described what I was experiencing my the response was very much like yeah well you're a young healthy person I'm not I might be a young person but I have all the things and my blood vessels and my connective tissue are different than the average 40 year old connective tissue um and I it's just it's not part of training but so these juristics these you know and and you know Steve's mentioning algorithms as a crutch it's it's it's it's it's um in addition to that it's like you know the the in a world where any one symptom might be attributable to like a gazillion things there needs to be a way of clinical decision making that makes things feel more or less likely um otherwise it would it really would be chaos um but those juristics that are taught and practiced um are incomplete just because someone is young doesn't mean that there are things that are you know eliminated or just because and now in a you know in in a world where we have so many people who have had COVID who now have um you know that this has a trigger for stepwise progression of their neuroimmune conditions we have we have young people with very very complex neuroimmune conditions that um tradition teaching would say would not be what would be expected um I'm going to I'm I'm also going to I'm going to I'm going to pull up um WCAX came to all brains belong and talked about the covered the like the health inequity for autistic adults and this this this what I just said was was was what I talked about there which is that like you know neurodivergent people present in ways that are not what a medical provider might be expecting and so it's again this you know you you you have this expectation you look for it when something I think like Sierra said when something doesn't match not just what you learned about from the textbook but what you think you've seen and rehearsed and overworked even for you know very long careers I think I like the example that I know you have used before Mal of like pain presentation and a lot of times I know um when I worked in healthcare there was a lot of like oh somebody reports 10 out of 10 vain but they have a but really clinically they look like they're in less pain or they have a positive cell phone sign where they're using their phone and not acknowledging that some people especially people with chronic pain use things as regulation mechanisms and might be on their phone as a form of regulating their pain um and also might not show pain the same as somebody who doesn't have chronic pain um and that that assumption that it's all everybody's going to present exactly the same way and then you can rely on that to make decisions um yeah one to tame pain scales are I was just going to add add to that and add to what what mel had said before um and I like how you frame it as conflicting access needs I mean like and then and then throw someone who you know was not trained or taught to really think about speaking for a medical provider think about how um like dysregulating stress can be and how that can change how you interact socially and professionally and if you're like mel was saying you're thwarted by like the system that requires you to like be a certain way and see a certain number of patients every 15 minutes and then you get yourself into a situation where something is unfamiliar I mean just think of it in that context something that's unfamiliar to any anyone is kind of like scary and threatening and we don't that's not part of medical training I mean we get a little bit we get we get a little bit of you know coaching on bedside manner right like how to how to like really make connections with patients and and how to present in like a you know a comforting and caring way but like I would argue that's even like less than we focus on nutrition it's it's it's like a concept like hey you know obviously you need to you need to know how to be like comforting and caring and how to present that way to people um but now we're just going to have you work 80 hours a week and do overnight call and do all of these things and you don't know that you're dysregulated that whole time and um yeah and then it just becomes the norm that's the other thing it's like the the the culturally accepted norm that that providers are are overworked and burnt out and um and our healthcare system puts us in this position and it's like just how it is you know um I think that's the that's probably like the biggest thing is like we just keep working in a broken system I think attempts to try to change it are there but I don't know exactly you know big big bigger bigger systems have have to make bigger change which requires lots of moving parts and I think that's part of the problem too and and you know I I think that changing systems um is is complicated that's why I'm not really very interested in changing systems we do parallel play we we we do the thing that we think our patients need and we are you know we try to be co-creating an experience and there's definitely trade-offs um definitely trade-offs um but it's the changing changing a system is is daunting Christina asks do other countries do better with limiting hours um to um you know I I um there's a there's a a group of physicians um belonging organization called autistic doctors international and um this is this is everywhere this is this systemic dysfunction is everywhere and it's um um it's it's a huge problem um David says so many practices are being bought up by big systems right yeah so so again when we think about dysregulation if you have an access need for autonomy or you had autonomy or agency to make adaptations to meet your own access needs even if you don't have that language or that framework for understanding that's what you're doing and then it's taken from you and um that's really hard um and I think that you know in outside of healthcare I think many people have had the experience of you don't know what something is what role something is contributing in your life until it's gone and you're like oh I guess that thing was doing something that that thing or that practice or that habit or that you know that accommodation or like whatever it was and you're like oh I didn't know I needed that because most people don't grow up talking about their needs um it's like the um I often quote my patient who said I don't know what my needs are I just know they're not met Steve's commenting I like the parallel plane metaphor not change the system but create a parallel system right yeah it's um have an access need for for self-efficacy and um the the idea of that it's actually not in a small in a small little microcosm um you can actually do the things you're trying to do for people with people but large systems large systems have so many more barriers and so many more opportunities for forwarding access needs well and it also I mean I think it um it also depends I mean what what seems to happen with large systems is that oftentimes large systems the the the the primary focus of the large system is how do we keep the large system going which is a different question than how do we continue to how do we respond to the the evolving needs of the population we're serving in the moment and so if the large systems were asking that question then then maybe they would be evolving in a different way but I think but but so much of the time the large systems are like how do we not how do we continue to be a large system and grow our system and that's and when that's your question it's not that that and that's your top priority you you know however you meet patient needs is secondary and or however you meet your service population needs is secondary to be to be coming in sustaining your large system and and I think that's a real difference that um and often with the value of small systems as they start out with like they're but they're free to start out with we are we're addressing this issue this is our concern and what and how and and we want to and we're studying the concern and we want to respond be responsive to the concern thank you sarah and I think two things come to mind based on what you just said so one is I mean isn't that the case with with all systems of power um that powers perpetuated the person the system the entity that has more power stays in power without doing some the hard work of of shifting that um and then the second thing that I might I might add is that like it is it is um like the looming threat of like recreating something that doesn't work is is is is also real um and so you know shifting from you know and I think I I think here at Albright's belong you know the conversation starting to be had around well how are we really ensuring that we are having the impact that we are serving the people in a way that they would define as successful not how we would define as successful and that's that takes some intentionality to it but like that's that's what has to be done otherwise um you know like I uh I have I have a mentor so I've got a business career who you know is trying to teach me about like the history of like evolution of businesses and the different phases things go from like I don't want that for that um I had a big pda response to my history lesson um uh so so you know it's just that um David saying yeah systems exist to perpetuate themselves and grow right there's very little to be done about that parallel systems yeah yeah thank you David and uh Kat says after one visit I got five separate bills right so you know it's it's some that a big system is complex in that way and um I think that what could be done a lot better is transparency right so if so some of these like you know these stories of like oh I got you know these five bills from these five different components and so if how on earth would anyone have a framework for understanding that when that's not what you do that's not your world and so transparency ahead of time of this is what you can expect and it might look and sound ridiculous but this is what it is and then you can decide you can have important consent about whether you want to interact with that um I think that's another really important component um of of shifting away of it's a component that drives dysfunction when you don't have transparency and it's not because and and that's a systems problem I don't think that's an individual healthcare provider problem so when we think about you know on social media um I I often see there's you know uh there's a lot of narrative around around financial incentives you know well you know this healthcare provider did this to me because you know it puts more money in their pocket that's narrative is probably not true in 2023 most of the time um uh most most healthcare systems are hospital owned system owned system dictated most healthcare providers who work for those systems are salaried um so but but that narrative persists and in fact the system works an individual healthcare provider from even knowing how much something costs they don't tell you and I remember as a resident like a trainee being like how much does it cost to order this lab test and my supervisor would be like we don't know like don't like how do you find out and they're like I don't know and I remember like how hard it was to try to find that out and turns out the amount that a test a particular like a particular lab test not just labs but like a particular you know each of the line items the things that gets checked have their own cost and so um the individual like price tag of an individual lab test differs depending on what your insurance situation is um it's just a nightmare so there are systemic barriers even to transparency and transparency of course is the way out of chaos uh Steve says um systems in the best sense compel people to change their behavior there's a lot of resistance to that kind of system a big difference in a system a system versus the system yeah yeah yeah and I think that um one of the things that that Dr. Warzella included in her panel comments last week was just talking about um the system often stigmatizes even people who within it who dissent and that is that's a common theme as well and I don't think that's unique to healthcare I think that like you know the problem child the you know the the the the instigator the you know um the agitator you know that role who questions and demands better um and points out dysfunction that person is often pathologized and thwarted and often ousted when conflicting access needs situations arise um and so just understanding that as a as a framework I think explains a lot of interpersonal and like institutional conflict because it's common speaking of which um next week uh we will be oh Sarare and saying dissent being pathologized yeah so that's that that's that that this is this is what goes on and this is you know when we think about the poor healthcare outcomes for neurodivergent people barriers to healthcare access is is one inadequate knowledge from within the healthcare system of the needs of neurodivergent people that's another but what about everyday life all of the thwarting that goes on that contributes to an autonomic nervous system that is dysregulated drives people into neurodivergent burnout etc which is the topic for next week's brain club we're going to be joined by Annie bro who is a human rights attorney from australia um and disability advocate and we are going to be discussing um she and I are going to be uh uh uh presenting on autistic burnout and employment and the relationship of burnout employment related aspects to burnout and the impact on health so I look forward to seeing you then thanks for coming and thank you again so much to our panelists bye everybody


I am Dr James Peters from the University of New South Wales, St Vincent's Hospital, Sydney. It is an honour to be announced as a recipient of a 2023 Brain Foundation Research Grant. This grant will be used to evaluate the outcomes of the newly approved, staged, bilateral MRI-guided focused ultrasound treatment, a minimally invasive neurosurgical procedure for patients with medically refractory tremor. This research will involve ongoing collaborative work with our partners at the Computational Research Unit at the Brain and Mind Centre. I would like to thank the Brain Foundation and the generous donors for the support of this research.


Aloha, and welcome to Small Adventures in Small Business, a collaborative effort by the SBA Small Business Administration, VBOT Veterans Business Outreach Center of the Pacific, SBDC Small Business Development Center of Hawaii, and MCBL, the Patsy Teeming Center for Business and Leadership. All great partners. I'm Terri Funakoshi, and I'm your host today. And I'm so excited to have Julie Arakaki with us today. So Julie, I'm going to have to read your title. It's so long. She's such a great entrepreneur, owner of Hawaii Wedding Style magazine, the best Hawaii wedding and founder of Wedding Week Hawaii. So Julie, tell us about your background. So I'm actually a journalism major with a speech minor from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. And immediately after school, I started working for a photographer, where I picked up the photography trade. I had moments, memories, photography for about 10 years, where I was professional wedding photographer and portrait photographer. And then in 2006, we were given the opportunity to purchase Hawaii Bride and Groom magazine at that time, and from the original founder, Bridget Adams. And so at that point, my brother-in-law, who's also a graphic artist or designer, asked if we wanted to purchase this publication. And I said, hey, yeah, no problem, because I was an advertiser with that magazine for my wedding photography, and knew that it was a really good resource as far as advertising. I had a lot of success from that, so I thought it would really be a good opportunity for us to do so. 2006, no, I'm sorry, 2006, we purchased a publication and pretty much learned as we went along. Wow. That's great. But tell me about you too, Julie. I know you have a beautiful family, and it's kind of a family business, you just said, right? Right. So my brother-in-law is my business partner. My husband, Keith Aragaki, you know, he's not in the business, but he does give me moral support, and he'll give me advice every so often. And then we have our two children, Arian Aragaki and Aston Michael Aragaki. They're actually 25 and 28, so they're not babies, but they're still our babies. Oh, great. I've known you for a few years, so I know that Julie has a wonderful supportive family. So it's hard to be a woman entrepreneur and everything, so family support is important. Yes. It's just being the fact that you're the mother, and you're having to make sure that the house is running properly, and then also being able to run the business. It is a little bit challenging, but you have a good support team. It just makes things a whole lot easier. Right. Right. So tell us a little bit about the magazine. So the magazine, when we took it over in 2006, we actually gave it a little bit of a makeover. What we do is all of the content in our publication are Hawaii weddings. We don't feature anything outside of the islands. And for us, it's really, really important for us to promote our industry in Hawaii. I don't know if you know, or a lot of people know, but the wedding industry worldwide is about $220 billion. So basically, out of that $220 billion, our islands or our state will be fighting for every piece that they can get. And so what we need to do is we need to make it easier and for people to understand what it is that our incredible wedding specialists can do here in the islands. So we highlight real weddings that have taken place throughout the state. We want to showcase the talented wedding professionals that we have in our state. And to really elevate our industry by showcasing what Hawaii has to offer and that we can compete with Los Angeles and New York, because we have the talent here. We have beautiful weather and amazing beaches. And yeah, so I mean, it's just everything is perfect for a destination here, wedding here in Hawaii. I know. And I was looking through the magazine. I noticed, like you said, it's all about Hawaii, and there's so many Hawaii vendors in there. I mean, the wedding industry supports a lot of small businesses.  So I mean, yeah, Tos, how many vendors are actually comprised of this wedding in Hawaii? The wedding industry here in Hawaii, I mean, we have hundreds of businesses.  So in each of those categories, you have a lot of vendors to choose from. So it is a big industry. But a lot of people also don't realize the fact that our industry really plays a huge role in the tourism economy here in our audience. Because we'll use the Japanese weddings, for example. So for every couple that comes to Hawaii to get married from Japan, they on average bring in 12 and a half bodies to our state. And so that's affecting our hotel accommodations. It's affecting the shopping, the dining, the activities. So it does play a huge role in the tourism economy here in our islands. Great. And I know that you are talking about, because you've been in the business so long, it kind of spurred into another business, you know, the, can you tell us about that? Yeah. So I think for me, whenever I do something, I have to be passionate about it. I always tell myself, if I'm not passionate about something that I'm currently doing in 10 years, I don't think it's right for me to do it just because it wouldn't be fair for the people that we're servicing. And then it also wouldn't be fair to me. But we found that there was a need. So we created the best Hawaii wedding. What that is, it's a company that actually markets and manages smaller venues. So as a smaller venue who maybe like has an owner that has like one property, he really doesn't have the resources or maybe even the manpower to market and then manage the weddings that take place on property. So that's where our company, the best Hawaii wedding comes in, where we actually do all of the marketing with our platforms, as well as manage weddings on those properties. And so what we do is we utilize the advertisers that we have in our magazine to be able to, I guess, provide services for those weddings. So we try to kind of loop everything together and connect everything that way. But yeah, I mean, we want to make it easy for people to find a venue if they're planning a destination wedding or even someone here locally. But to find the venue and being able to make sure that they're confident that they'll be able to show up and they'll have this wedding that they've always dreamed of because, you know, most of the times it's a once in a lifetime event. So great. So you have business to consumer. The magazine is to consumers, business to business. You help the wedding, the venues, you help the businesses find the venues. So what kind of venues are there in Hawaii that you're working with or featuring? OK, so for the Hawaii Wedding Style magazine, what we do is we actually help all of our advertisers. So it could be hotels. It could be individual properties. It could be companies that are coordination companies that maybe have a venue that they work off of. But we also do have, I think, eight properties that we have for the best Hawaii wedding. And so it ranges anywhere from a chapel, chapel locations, private homes. We also just picked up the Vitamia. So I think we have a photo of that. So the Vitamia is a very historic boat. I think it's been around since the 1800s. Louis Vuitton rode on that boat. Elizabeth Taylor would actually rent the boat out while she was on vacation. So it does have a huge history of people that have been on it. But it was just actually recently certified with the Coast Guard to accommodate a larger party. So now we're able to do a 38 people wedding party on that boat. What we do is we take it out, dock it in front of Diamond Head, and then perform the ceremony there. And then they can also have their small cocktail party or a little reception in there. So romantic. Yeah, no, it is really romantic. And if you did it on a Friday night in front of the Hilton, you'll get the Hilton fireworks. So yeah, so we try to do things that are innovative, that things I guess you wouldn't really think of as far as wedding locations. But we want to try to provide that for somebody that wants something a little different. Oh, that's great. So we have the magazine. We have the venues and helping the advertisers. And then you have another portion, right? Yeah, so we just came up. Two years ago we launched Wedding Week Hawaii. And Wedding Week Hawaii basically is a project that I thought we needed or our state needed to really bring our industry together. Like I always believe in, yeah, that's a photo of our team. I always believe that it's really important for people to work together. A lot of times people view others as competitors. And yes, they are. But I feel like if everyone can work together, there really is a lot of business. And you can't do all of the weddings. Your company can't do all of the weddings. So it really helps to kind of get together and form a unity. And so Wedding Week was created two years ago. And what I wanted was I wanted to really bring our industry together. I wanted it to be easy for wedding planners, wedding coordinators for destination weddings. And anyone wanting to plan a wedding easier. Because working with the coordination side the best Hawaii weddings, we were actually able to listen to and learn what brides or wedding planners struggle with when planning a wedding, a destination wedding here in the heavens. And so what we wanted to do is we wanted to make it so easy that it would be a no-brainer for them to come here. So that's what we did is we reached out to our fellow wedding specialists. And you'd be surprised. There were a lot of people that stepped up and really felt that it was a need. And basically it's a love project. So everyone volunteers their time. We all unify. It's a week long of events that we do throughout the state, actually. So we have participation on Oahu. We had participation last year from Maui and then the big islands. So eventually we want it to be really statewide and really bring our state together as far as highlighting Hawaii as the premier wedding destination. Wow, that's a great big project. So I know it's a week long. So can you tell me some of the lessons learned? How did you guys debrief? What's going forward? Yeah, so what we've done is I think we've made huge progress in two years. And we're all really proud of that. We've started working with the Hawaii Tourism Association and the individual, so Oahu Visitors Bureau, Kauai Visitors Bureau, Maui Visitors Bureau. And we're working with them to see what it is that we can do to make it more beneficial to everybody. And so one of it being that because we're trying to bring in wedding planners and travel partners from all over the world, we want to kind of now consider doing it on a low season.  So people, it's more affordable for people to come to wedding week. And so for 2019, we're actually going to be moving it from February to October. And so I don't know if you know, but I think engagement season starts in November like about Thanksgiving. Oh, I didn't know that. OK, so there is kind of like an engagement season. But it's around Thanksgiving and it ends on Valentine's Day. And so immediately after that is kind of when everybody starts ramping up for wedding planning, right? So what we wanted to do is we wanted to give the travel partners out there the opportunity to know what we have to offer as a state and to be able to get them ready to help all of these people wanting to plan a destination wedding, the resources for them to do so. Wow, that's great. I'm learning a lot. So we're going to take a quick break one minute. And when we come back, we're going to learn more about the wedding industry with Julie Aragaki. Thank you. I'm Dave Stevens, host of the Cyber Underground. This is where we discuss everything that relates to computers that just kind of scare you out of your mind. So come join us every week here on thinktecawai.com, 1 PM on Friday afternoons. And then you can go see all our episodes on YouTube. Just look up the Cyber Underground on YouTube. All our shows will show up. And please follow us. We're always giving you current, relevant information to protect you. Keepin' you safe. Aloha. I am Howard Wigg. I am the proud host of Cold Green Force, Thinktecawai. I appear every other Monday at 3. And I have really, really exciting guests on the exciting topic of energy efficiency. Hope to see you there. Welcome back. We're with Julie Aragaki. I'm just going to call you the queen of weddings already, because I'm learning so much today. So Julie, for the business side, people watching wanting to get into the wedding business or they're already in the business and they want to move forward, can you give us some tips, suggestions on what they should do, how they should take those challenges? So I really believe, again, working together. So coming up, it's good to work with a variety of people. But find people that you trust and that you work well together. Because when you think about it, it's not just one person helping somebody at their wedding.  So if you find that there's people that you work with, because in everything, you always have people that you can work with.  So I encourage people to get out there, maybe join some of the professional wedding associations. Every island has a chapter. There is Oahu Wedding Association. There's Maui Wedding Association. There is the Hawaii Island Wedding Association and the Kauai Professional Wedding Association. So each island has a chapter. It's a good way to network that way. And I noticed that a lot of people are doing like little pop-up events. So they're doing little mini wedding weeks, I guess. So I think Kahala Hotel is having one in, I think, September, October. But it's a showcase. And what they do is they open up their property and they have all these wedding specialists come and showcase what they have to offer. And again, it's like their little unit that I think they feel comfortable working with. And that's kind of what they do to really help showcase what that property can do. So a lot of people are doing that. But I really believe it's just getting together with other professionals in the industry to see what's out there, see what you can do, see, do innovative things to elevate our industry. Volunteer for Wedding Week, it's really, really good. The positive comments that we've had from Wedding Week is the fact that if it wasn't for Wedding Week, they would have never worked with this other vendor. But because you have to work together to execute a week-long worth of events, it takes a lot of people to do that. So we depend on a lot of people. And I think friendships have been made and business relationships have been made. I think the special thing for our islands is because we all have that aloha spirit. You're born and raised here, and that's how it is. And to help one another out, I think, is really, really important. And on the Hawaii ride side, if you want to join our, we call it our Hawaii Wedding South Family, we'll be more than happy to help you and showcase your work. We do a lot of collaboration. So when we put our editorial layout together in the magazine, we actually reach out to our current advertising pool, and we ask them to collaborate. And so a lot of times, they're working with people that they normally wouldn't have collaborated with before. And so that's my whole thing is, I feel like I was put on this planet to bring people together. I feel like I'm a roller-deck, so the wedding queen connector. I'm just putting people together that need help. I think this person would be a great fit here. And so I feel like that's what my role is, and that's what I was put on this planet to do, to connect people. And I know you also, for the business side, for business help, what would you recommend if they need help with their business, or legal matters, or anything like that? Well, I mean, it's not a plug or anything. So I really believe that the Patsy Mac Business Center is a really good resource, especially for women entrepreneurs. I mean, I don't know if that's true, but I feel like you have to balance your family, and then you're trying to run this business. It's hard, and I think having the support, even knowing that you just have this support somewhere, that you can kind of call on them any time that you have a question, or you need legal advice, you can always just pick up the phone or email and just reach out to someone at the center. And they'll give you helpful advice. And sometimes if you have to consult with your attorney, it just kind of adds up. So by having your resource, I feel like it really supports the business women entrepreneurs. And I think just having that relationship and just knowing that the friendship and the support is really, really important for anyone that is trying to maintain a small business or starting up a small business. So in the wedding industry, is it mostly women, or do you know what the breakdown is? I don't know what the percentage is, but I want to say probably more majority women than men, but we do have some. We have Jezz with Jezz Events. He's a male wedding coordinator. So we have a lot of men in the industry and your videographers and your photographers. But I want to say it's a little bit more skewed to the female. Because I remember saying a lot of women entrepreneurs feel needs. So I think we know what we want for the wedding, so we've got to make sure it's there. And that's how a lot of coordinators get started. They plan their own wedding and they said, OK, well, that was fun. And they don't want it to end. So they become wedding coordinators so they can be at a wedding every week. And that's a good thing about weddings.   And at the end of the day, it's a really happy occasion. And it's so awesome to be able to be a part of that 365 days of a year. So should I ask you how many weddings have you been involved in? Well, I guess if you added up all the businesses, I really can't tell you. No, I think you're not so happy all the time. I think that the photography part of it, I was able to directly interact. Because I think coordinators and photographers spend the most time with the wedding couple. And just having that relationship and being able to interact and seeing the happiness and joy of making a difference means so much to me. Well, I know you have a really good eye because I've seen all the work you've done, and it's tremendous. Thank you. I know everyone who's worked with you is only good things. Aw, thanks. So on that, I want to know, how do we get involved? I know you said you need volunteers for wedding week. What does that look like? Can anybody volunteer? Yeah, I mean, we actually have help from the UH Business School, the Marketing Association. And then we also are going to be working with the Tim School, so Travel and Industry Management School. But we want volunteers. I mean, we need models. We need people that are helping us plan these events. We need just somebody just looking over volunteers. I mean, really, the more help that we can get, the bigger that we can grow wedding week, and hopefully generate more income for our wedding industry, but also to help with our tourism economy as well. Well, that's really great. Can we give them a website where they can get in touch, or any contact information? Yeah, so my personal email address is julie at hawaiibride.com. They can always go to hawaiibride.com, which is our magazine website. We have the best hawaiiwedding.com, which is our marketing and venue management company. And then we also have weddingweekawaii.com, which is my wedding week. Awesome. Well, thank you so much, Julia. It was a pleasure having you here today. Thank you. And so please stay tuned for Adventures in Small Business every Thursday at 11 o'clock. I'm Terri, and thank you for joining us.