BONUS EPISODE: Mike Ghesser: A Father's Mission to Transform the World for Neurodiverse Individuals

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by
Tony Mantor, Broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some will make you cry. Real life
people who will inspire and show that you are not
alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World?
Today we have the pleasure of hosting Mike Guesser, co
founder of clean Logic. Driven by his daughter Rosie's neurodiverse experience,
Clean Logic has developed a commitment providing inclusive opportunities for
individuals with disabilities. His story is captivating and I'm delighted
to have him on the show. Thanks for coming on.
Sure what started your journey of helping autistic people and
special needs?
Sure?
Interesting story. So I have three daughters. My oldest Rosemary,
she's eleven years old. When she was born, at about
three months old, we discovered that she was disabled. She
is physically disabled and intellectually disabled and neurodiverse. And me,
being a first time parent at the time, I had
no idea what that meant. My wife was very quick
to recognize miss milestones or things like that. She had
an indication and I was just like, oh, you know,
I didn't know anything, but she started to point it
out and I said, okay, well, whatever'll be fine. The
older she got, the more we kind of started to
see things, the more I realized that, okay, well, there
are some differences. There was an incident that happened when
she was three months old. I was at work one
day and my wife called me frantically. I answered the
phone and she's like, Rosie's having Her name is Rosie.
She's Rosie's having a seizure. And I'm like, well, call
nine one one.
So I called nine one one so I'll be home soon.
When I got home, she was getting into an ambulance
on the way to the hospital. Fortunately we lived close
to the hospital. We lived in Los Angeles at the time,
in West Hollywood. There was a hospital called Cedar sign
A not too far away.
When I got.
Home, she was being put into the ambulance and fire
department was there and they're.
Like, follow us to the hospital.
But when we got there and they ran a bunch
of tests, it wasn't a seizure, fortunately, it was a
rare neurological disorder. What was interesting about that experience for
us we were there for a few days, is there
was a doctor, a very well known child neurologist that
we finally got to see. Our name is doctor Naparko.
She came into our room and examined our daughter and
she said something that I'll never forget that really kind
of shaped who I am, what I do, why I
do the things that I do today. And she said
she looked at my wife and she said, listen, she goes,
you're not going.
To be a soccer mom. You're going to be a
therapy mom. And she did it in.
She was matter of fact, and it was it was
rough to hear at the time, but she was right.
She was one hundred percent right.
That's tough to hear, for sure. So once you heard
that from the doctor, what was your next steps?
Immediately after we got out of the hospital, we started
looking at therapies for my daughter, and we got her
physical therapy and occupational therapy, and we put her in
an early intervention program. A little while later at UCLA Hospital.
It was there that I started to see Rosie make
a lot of progress. And I was there that I
started to see her around her peers. There were a
lot of other children there with all disabilities. There were
children on the spectrum, there were down syndrome children, children
with other physical disabilities, mobility issues, you name it. That's
where I started to see they were still able to
do the same things that typical children were doing. They
were just doing them a little bit differently. They would,
you know, they would have equipment accessibility. You know, my daughter,
part of her condition is she was she's a low
muscle tone, and so she had difficulty sitting and then standing,
and they had like a standard that she would use
to help her strengthen her muscles, all sorts of things
like that.
With all that happening, how was it affecting you? What
was your thought process moving forward?
I started to think about her future.
Right, Like, I knew that she was going to be disabled,
and even though she was still young, I didn't know
what that looked like. But I started thinking about seeing,
like the early intervention, but what does kindergarten look like?
And what does elementary school look like? In middle school
and high school? And ultimately what's after that? Right, where
when they graduate high school?
Where do they go?
I run a company and I'm very like entrepreneurial and
a planner, So I started to look into the future
for my daughter, but specifically, like where did people with
disabilities go afterwards? And there's a lot of programs, there's
a lot of things that they have, but I wasn't
able to find something that I felt from a parent's perspective,
that was right for my daughter. And granted, she's at
the time too three years old. Today she's eleven and
she's not even close to being out in the workforce
or anything. But I immediately went into like planning. Several
years later, we moved from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. That's
where we started to put together essentially what I thought
was there a company, my company, Clean Logic, that was
an accessible and inclusive environment for people with all different
kinds of disabilities, intellectual, physical, people on the spectrum, things
like that.
And that's kind of how my.
Daughter created the inspiration in me, my purpose to do
what I do today.
That's a great story. Now you mentioned school. Was she
in private school, public school? How did you set that
up so that she was able to integrate with other kids?
So not to be in isolation because of her situation.
Good question.
So our daughter's always been in public schools. The Early
Intervention program at UCLA in Los Angeles. I don't remember
exactly how we got there, but it was we got
a reference and it was I want to say, a
program through insurance or through.
The school, through UCLA the college.
And then after that we sent her to a public
school in our neighborhood. We lived in Studio City at
the time, amazing school Dixie Canyon Elementary, and they had
a I think it it's called the PALS program Preschool
for All Learners. It was public and it was very
well run. After she was going to go into kindergarten,
that's when we moved out to Philadelphia.
That's interesting. Was there a specific reason why you moved
to Philadelphia.
The reasons we moved out here we actually live in
the suburbs. We wanted to move to a suburb called
Trade Different East Town, that school district, because they had
an amazing program for Rosian for her needs. We put
her a in the public school in Trae Different East Town.
That program is even more amazing than the one that
we were in Los Angeles. My expectation is she'll continue
to go to public schools in Trae different in our
school district. They just have a very incredible focus on integration.
She's in a life skills program teaching her life skills
but also putting her into the classrooms with typical children.
She's a very good mix. She gets the therapies that
she needs, she.
Learns her life skills, and then she participates in classes
with all the other children.
That's a great thing for sure. How is it working
for your daughter? When schools integrate autistic people, people with
mental health disabilities, anything like that, it really is confusing
for some of the kids and even for some of
the teachers because they don't understand it. But the kids
definitely don't understand sometimes, and that can create some issues
within the classroom. So how is that working out for
her with how you've handled it so far?
Yeah, so it actually worked out incredibly well. And I
think this has a lot to do with the program
that they have at this school. It's not just about
putting a child with pect needs in a class with
neurotypical or able body children. They educate them, They tell them,
you know who the student is and what their disability
is and they teach them about disabilities early on, so
it's not like.
You know, it's they normalize it as much as possible.
My daughter has a one on one that's with her
all the time to help with that transition. I mean,
it's she's obviously different than everybody else is, but she's
not treated differently. I think that's one of the things
that I think successful programs do well is it's something
that's always part of the educational process, not just for
the student with disabilities, but for every single student. And
accessibility is huge within those schools, and I think it's
about not making it a special thing and making treating
every child just as they're the same, you know what
I mean.
Absolutely, I think that's just a great way to look
at things. Unfortunately, we don't live in a society that
accepts that the way it should. Yeah, but it's something
that definitely needs to be taught, for sure. I agree
the school system actually is the perfect place if they
work together show these kids that anyone with disabilities are
exactly the same, they just handle things a little bit differently.
They could create that bridge for future change.
It does, it does, I completely agree, and I think
a lot of schools that are successful with this program
do well as they show that everybody has something to offer,
everybody has a voice, regardless of whether you're disabled or not.
Everybody has something to teach another person. I think that's
that the foundation for it.
Absolutely. It sounds like to this point everything has worked
out pretty well for her so far. When we have
programs out there, we lay it out, we try and
make it as comfortable, easy as possible with a good transition.
But real life says there's going to be bumps in
the road. What have you come across with bumps in
the road that you didn't expect and then when they
came up, what was your resolution to them so that
the people listening can hopefully gain from some of the
things that you went through.
Sure.
Yeah, the biggest thing that kind of was an eye
opener for me is the world itself is not was
not built for people with disabilities.
You know, everywhere everywhere.
I go, I realize the obstacles that someone with the
disability faces.
And while there's so.
Many you know, amazing pieces of accessibility that are brought up,
you know, all over the place, there's it's still it's
still difficult it's still different. For example, going to the beach, right,
typical people can just go to the beach and walk
to where you want to go, sit down on the sand.
But my daughter has mobility issues, and for a long
time it was very difficult to be able to get
her to where she needed to go on the beach.
And I never realized what that was like until I'm
having to get to the beach things like that. But
there's a wheelchair, for example, that's meant to be put
on sand that helps bring her to where she needs
to go, but it's something extra. Going out to dinner,
there's ramps that allow you to move up, you know,
walk up to where you need to go. But sometimes
when you're walking through a restaurant, the space between the
tables just does not accommodate. So there's so many things
that you do on a regular basis that without a
disability don't even realize and take for granted, like you
can just go where we want. But once you're in
that scenario, it's just very difficult. I can't unsee things, do.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, completely, you just said it. We take things for
granted here in the US and in places around the world.
We go about our lives not thinking about anything. Unfortunately,
we don't think about it until it affects us. Then
when it affects us, we are more compassionate and more understanding.
But unfortunately it takes that to happen to us before
we start taking action. Then when it does affect us,
the world becomes very scary. We don't know what to do,
what do next, how things go, the process, It can
be very scary. What would you tell a parent this
just finding out that their life is going to change.
They have a child that's just been diagnosed, and it
doesn't matter what the diagnosis is. It could be autism,
it could be mental health, it could be bipolar, it
could be down syndrome, MS, anything anything like that is
very scary. The parent has to collect themselves, get their
heads together, know what to do, and it's a tough road.
What would you give them for advice so that they
could kind of map out what to do that best
helps them and helps their child.
Yeah, you're never prepared for this.
It's not Nobody goes and says I feel like having
a special.
Needs child, you know what I mean?
But when it happens, like when you find out about it.
It's kind of like an adjustment period, but I got
to tell you, it's the biggest blessing you'll ever get
in your entire life. It took me a minute to
accept this or realize how true it was, but God
gives special babies to special parents. That might not be
comforting to some people depending on the severity of this
disability of their child, But for me, it was a
realization and kind of opened my eyes up to seeing internally,
like inside me, what I'm capable of doing as a father,
and the amount of love and patience and understanding that
I never knew that I had to be able to
give my child the best life possible and to have
a kind of love that you don't know that could
even create. The other thing that it helped me realize
was what an opportunity a parent of a special needs
child has to change the world. Right you're dealing with something,
or you're exposed to something, or you're now part of
this world that not everybody is.
You will see the world differently. You will experience life differently.
You will see other families, other children, very very differently,
and not in a bad way.
You see the world through a very different.
Lens, and it's an amazing lens to see the world through.
But it gives you a superpower to go and advocate
for your child and take care of your child.
And by doing that, you're changing the world.
You're bringing awareness to things that the majority of the
world doesn't see or experience. No one's going to argue
with making the world a better place for kids for adults, right,
and like little things, accessibility things, they're so important and
it just needs more voices. It's going to make everybody's
life better. You've been given a gift in a way,
do you know what I mean?
Absolutely, that's a great point. Now she's eleven, right, Yeah,
what do you see for her in the next five years.
She's going to be going through her teen years, which
is tough for even neurotypical people. So what do you
see for her through her teen years and then past
that once she gets out of high school? What's on
the horizon for her?
So she's incredibly smart and incredibly aware. The way I
describe Rosie is she understands everything. Her input is incredible.
She has difficulty with her output, whether that's speaking or
whether that's walking or things like that. But there's so
many types of accessibility options out there that help her
become independent and successful, right, And so I think for her,
as she goes through school, she's learning how to use
more and more of these tools. For example, technology is
amazing what it can do. She uses an AAC device
to speak, and as she gets older and works with
the amazing team like her ability to communicate, whether it's
through her AAC device or not, is mind blowing to me,
and I see her continuing to get better through practice
her social skills, Like this kid is incredibly funny. She's
a comedian, loving and sarcastic. For a kid that can't talk,
it's amazing how much how well she's able to communicate.
But she's going to go through school and continue to
make friends and impact people.
And you know she'll advanced like every other child advances,
but in her own way, you know what I mean?
Yeah, absolutely.
The further along she goes in school, the more opportunities
are going to open up to her. I'd love to
see her develop more of her interests. She loves technology
and she loves electronics, which is interesting to me. It's fascinating,
and who knows what she'll end up doing with it.
But every other eleven year old twelve year old continues
to advance in school and pursue their interests. The education
process where we live is pretty phenomenal. I haven't really
looked yet at what colleges have for her, but if
she wants to and she expresses interest in that, we're
certainly going to do that. If she wants to work somewhere,
you know, I talk about how I created the accessibility
within my business so one day she could work there.
I don't know if she's ever going to want to
work at my company. It's we have an interesting father
daughter relationship, and I'm not so sure how that would
work at the company. But whatever that kid wants to do,
I'm going to support her and encourage her and give
her all the tools that she needs to be independent
and successful.
However that looks, yeah, that's good. Now you mentioned your business.
You started this business with the sole purpose of creating
an environment for those with special needs that need help
and need work. Can you expand on that a little?
Sure it actually evolved into that today. Quick backstory.
My company is called Clean Logic, and I'm a business
partner and his name is Isaac Shapiro. When I met him,
he was my first exposure into the world of disabilities,
and his mother is blind. When we first started working together,
we created a nonprofit. What we wanted to do was
take profits from our business and donate them to the
nonprofit from Clean Logic and donate them to the nonprofit
called Inspiration Foundation, and give adaptive technology awards to blind
and visually impaired people who wanted to get back into
the workplace. So we did that for a while, and
I was always thinking in the back of my mind,
why aren't we creating jobs. This is before I was married,
this is before Rosemary was born, But I was always thinking, like,
why don't we just create jobs.
At the time, our business.
Was small and we were struggling, and we weren't in
the position. We didn't even have employees at the time.
It was just him and I. But this was always
lingering in the back of my mind. And then I
met my wife. We had Rosemary until she was a
couple of years old that I started to think what
that looked like. That's when I started a plan. We
just weren't in a position to really do anything then,
and this is, you know, twenty eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen,
and in twenty nineteen is when we moved from Los
Angeles to the suburbs of Philadelphia and we opened up
our own facility. Rather than than outsourcing a lot of
our work, we took it in house. And for me,
that was the time that I knew that I could
control how we built this program, and I had a
great team. Our business had grown significantly, and I had
a great team that supported our vision. We were finally
able to I want to say it was the end
of twenty twenty one where we started working with Overbrook
School of the Blind. They had a work experience program
for some of their students and they came in a
couple hours a week to get real life experience working
in a company. When I saw the fact that we
could do this, not just in theory, but in practice,
that's when it kind of like the doors blew open,
and what else can we do? And what else can
we do? And how can we create more jobs? And
what type of an impact is this doing? And originally
we had gift sets and things that we, you know,
wanted to put together for promotions like little jobs, but
then we started teaching skills, training, skills like our company,
Clean Logic makes skincare tools like exfoliating towels and gloves
and sponges and things like that, and we wanted to
essentially not only create jobs for people with disabilities, but
bring jobs back to the United States. Some of our
products are made out of fabric, and so we started
to do value added like manufacturing here, so where things
were getting sewn at another factory, we would do the
selling here at our facility.
And so we said, well, let's see if they can sew.
All the students were blind or visually impaired, and we said,
can you guys sew? And they're like, well, let's give
it a shot, and they did and they were great
at it. We then looked at okay, well what else
can we do? And so there was what we realized
is there's nothing they couldn't do.
We just needed to give them the opportunity.
So it became one process and another process, and another
process and another process, and then we started opening it up.
To seeing more what we could do.
And we started working with OvR, the Office of Vocational
Rehabilitation in Pennsylvania, and they introduced us to job seekers
and I sit on the board of an organization called
Neurodiversity Employment Network, and that's about connecting neurodiverse job seekers
to employers. Since I'm an employer, it was easy for
me to say, Okay, well let's create a job.
Let's give it a shot.
And there's really no playbook, there's no right way to
do it. Everybody's different and every job is different. But
I think what made it easy for me was that
here's my daughter, and I understand what her disability is,
and I understand what accessibility means and how it's helped
her become.
More independent and successful.
And I looked at accessibility as an opportunity, so I
brought it into the business. We would just try things
and if it worked, great, let's try more. And if
it didn't, we look at why didn't it work, what
can we do differently, or how can we fix this
process to make it a little bit easier. And someone
who's blind needs something different than someone who's on the
spectrum or someone.
Who has a physical disability.
The only way you're going to know is to try,
give the opportunity and then ask questions. That's the approach
that we took, and that's how we evolved with clean
Logic to do what we do today.
And today we have.
Thirty people with all different types of disabilities, sewing, assembling,
using being machine operators. They're working in our office, they're
processing orders. It's not just manufacturing, it's inside our office too. Like,
there are so many jobs that anybody can do anything,
and that's the approach that we take.
That's awesome. There are so many people that need help.
I mean, if you look at just autistic people, seventy
to ninety percent are either unemployed or underemployed. Correct, So
what you're doing is open the doors for so many people,
and that's just a great thing for everybody.
Yeah, and you know Clean Logic itself my business. Yes,
I want to grow it and I want it to
be a successful business, and I want to create meaningful
employment for people with disabilities and also people that don't
have a disability. By doing this over the years, what
it's kind of instilled in me is I want to
show for profit businesses that you can hire people with
disabilities and it's actually going to be a bigger benefit
than you think, and it's not as scary as you think.
So basically, what we're doing in Clean Logic is we're
creating a model that I just want to share with people.
It's not a secret, it's not something that I just
want to like. This is how we do it, and you
can't see it. I want all for profit businesses to
see what we're doing and say, it's not difficult, it's
not scary.
Do you know what I mean?
Because I think that that's how you can make significant
and meaningful change in the world, and that's what we're
out to do.
Yes, and it's very inspiring. People like you hopefully will
show others that this can be done and if you
can do it. It's the all saying I can do it,
if you can do it. So let's hope that TST
catches on in a very big way. Well that said,
I really appreciate you coming on. It's been great.
I appreciate it. I appreciate what you're doing.
I hope you get as big as Joe Rogan because
I think this is information and this is awareness that
I think is so important.
I look at what we're doing as changing the world. Right.
I have such a big view.
And I'm not able to do it by myself, but
people like you and other people that are in this
space it's a little bit more and more. At some
point we're gonna make a big impact.
Yes, I truly believe so. And again, thanks for coming on.
It's been great. Thanks for taking the time out of
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