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[2025 Audit] Neurodiversity Isn’t a Superpower (Until You Do This)
“Neurodiversity is a superpower.”
That’s the popular narrative. But during Ray’s 2025 audit, he realized something different: neurodiversity only becomes a superpower when you design the right environment around it.
After his son was diagnosed with dyslexia and ADHD, Ray went through months of testing alongside him and discovered something about himself — Level 1 Autism and ADHD. Suddenly, decades of patterns made sense.
The breakthrough came from a simple idea: “Peaks and Valleys.”
Neurodiversity often creates extreme strengths and extreme weaknesses at the same time. The real leverage happens when you build systems and teams that cover your valleys and amplify your peaks.
In this episode, Ray explains why the brain itself isn’t the superpower — the environment you design around it is.
If you’ve ever wondered why some parts of business feel effortless while others feel impossible, this episode will change how you think about strengths, teams, and leadership.
What You’ll Learn in This Episode:
- Why neurodiversity isn’t automatically a “superpower” — and what actually makes it one
- How Ray discovered Level 1 Autism and ADHD while navigating his son’s diagnosis
- Why environment design determines whether differences become advantages or limitations
- The “Peaks and Valleys” framework for understanding extreme strengths and weaknesses
- How building teams with inverse strengths creates the “1 + 1 = 3” effect
Resources Mentioned
David Rendall — The Freak Factor: Your Weakness Is Your Power
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YouTube | LinkedIn | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
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This episode is part of the 2025 Audit series — lessons learned, relearned, and unlearned.
This podcast is where Ray thinks through hard decisions — especially when the usual playbooks stop working.
If that way of thinking is useful, that’s what continues here.
New to the show? Start with the “Start Here” playlist:
https://player.captivate.fm/collection/a7577a6f-15da-4521-b214-35e4e47f320b
Transcript
And in the process I, I discovered I have level one autism, like what they, they used to call Asperger's or high functioning autism.
Speaker A:And I finally understood what ADHD actually is instead of dismissing it like I, like I have for, for most of my life because that part of it, of my own learning wasn't necessarily new.
Speaker A:But I dis up to this point.
Speaker A:And so I just want to break down here real quick.
Speaker A:You know, one thing I actually do break topics like this down in, in more detail with some frameworks in a weekly email if you're interested in, in, in grabbing that or subscribing, it's@raiseemail.com.
Speaker A:here's what bothers me.
Speaker A:Every time like a neurodiversity comes up, you know, people tend to jump to like the superpower narrative.
Speaker A:Like oh, it's a, you know, that's, you're, you have autism.
Speaker A:It's a superpower.
Speaker A:You have you know, dyslexia.
Speaker A:It can be a superpower.
Speaker A:And you know, know, look, you know Richard Branson, he's, he's dyslexic.
Speaker A:You can't even read his financials.
Speaker A:He's a billionaire.
Speaker A:Look at you know, Elon Musk, like has, has autism.
Speaker A:It's a superpower.
Speaker A:And, and I get it.
Speaker A:Like we want inspiring examples that narrative and like the, the messaging around that skips the most important part.
Speaker A:It is not a superpower by default becomes one when you design the right environment to leverage it.
Speaker A: u know, like I mentioned like: Speaker A:For, for the whole household, right?
Speaker A:We learned youngest has dyslexia, ADHD and adhd.
Speaker A:You know, we went through months of testing to get the dyslexia diagnosed and it was, you know, went way beyond like a reading assessments.
Speaker A:It was like, you know, attention span Physical mobility, all sorts of stuff.
Speaker A:Actually very, very cool tests.
Speaker A:And as we're going through that, you know, and through that whole process and learning what was being tested and why are they testing this and what's the impact of that?
Speaker A:Like, I discovered something about myself and it was the, that I had level one autism.
Speaker A:And like I said, I already knew I had adhd, but I, but I, I really dismissed it most of my life.
Speaker A:Like, oh, everybody's, you know, everybody's got adhd.
Speaker A:Like, it's everybody, you know, attention spans and technology and whatever.
Speaker A:Looking at it through like the lens of my son, I had more empathy, I was more open minded to the impact of it than I was with myself.
Speaker A:I guess I'm, I'm less forgiving with myself.
Speaker A:And so as I'm learning about ADHD with, with him, I actually learned what ADHD really is and how it impacts me.
Speaker A:Autism, it, it influences how I read people, how I interact in social situations, how I process information.
Speaker A:Like my, my natural wiring around systems, around patterns like direct impact from, from autism.
Speaker A:And you know, as I, as I'm learning about that, like suddenly it clicks like, oh, like this is why certain like social environments just drain the absolute out of me, right?
Speaker A:Like makes, makes complete sense once I understood it adhd, you know, as I learned about that, I'm like, oh, okay, like this, that's contributes to, you know, my creativity.
Speaker A:It contributes to my willingness and like almost obsession with like constant innovation.
Speaker A:I'm naturally wired to get my dopamine shot from starting things, but not necessarily from finishing them.
Speaker A:And those, those types of patterns create all sorts of issues in your life and in your business if you don't actually understand them.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker A:And when I took the time to genuinely understand this, it really changed my entire perspective and it really, it put into context why solopreneurship was so hard for me.
Speaker A:Like, understanding, hey, you're really good at these things.
Speaker A:And Ray, you're just really not good at these things.
Speaker A:I just like average, like you're just not good at all.
Speaker A:Well below average on these things.
Speaker A:And when you're in the solopreneur world, like, you know, like everything is you and you're trying to do most of it yourself with no team to balance you.
Speaker A:Like, yeah, that has a huge impact.
Speaker A:So a lot of this also in my mind, like explained why my marriage works so well or as well as it does.
Speaker A:Like the different diversities, the different strengths, the different weaknesses, how in the right environment these things can be superpowers.
Speaker A:And in the Wrong environment, they can be massive limitations.
Speaker A:And you know, here's, here's the thing.
Speaker A:Like you can take the same person, same brain, and in one scenario they look like a genius.
Speaker A:In another scenario, completely different environment, they look like a fucking idiot.
Speaker A:And like, they haven't necessarily changed the environment and the expectations around them have.
Speaker A:And so much of this has to do with designing the right environment.
Speaker A:One where you can actually, you can create a system where one plus one equals three.
Speaker A:And that's where, that's where we see the outliers, the Elon's, the Richard Branson's, the like.
Speaker A:When we associate them with their, their form of neurodiversity and we say, look at them, it's a superpower.
Speaker A:It's because they've designed an environment that allows them to leverage the strengths that are associated with their version of neurodiversity.
Speaker A:Because every one of those, those weaknesses that we have comes like an extreme weakness comes with an extreme strength.
Speaker A:And the, the extremes are where there's like neurodiversity operates like.
Speaker A:And that's the really important piece for, for me, that's the thing that made this click.
Speaker A:And so here's how I would frame it.
Speaker A:Take a piece of paper and draw a straight line across it horizontally, right?
Speaker A:That line represents the statistical average of, let's just say like characteristics that matter, right?
Speaker A:Let's just say like creativity, discipline, iq, attention span, whatever, right?
Speaker A:And keep in mind, like words matter here.
Speaker A:That's not, I'm not saying normal, I'm saying it's, that's, that's the statistical average, right?
Speaker A:That's what that line represents of all of those things.
Speaker A:Now take that same sheet of paper and instead of a straight line, draw something with a bunch of peaks and valleys, right?
Speaker A:Like really high points on, on one extreme, really low points on the other extreme, making their way across the paper.
Speaker A:That's what neurodiversity looks like.
Speaker A:And at each peak there's an extreme strength, and in each valley there's an extreme weakness.
Speaker A:And so how do you turn those weaknesses into strengths?
Speaker A:Well, this is the big aha.
Speaker A:This is the big lesson for me is you build a team and you create an environment that turns it into a superpower by finding people who have close to the inverse of you on the peaks and the valleys, right?
Speaker A:So if I've got peaks and valleys and I look at, I look at the areas where I've got the valleys, I've got extreme weaknesses and like I'm, I'm just not good in those areas, I find somebody whose peak is where my valley is, right?
Speaker A:They excel in what I suck at.
Speaker A:And we put.
Speaker A:You put us together now you have two people with extreme strengths in different areas, and that's how you get one plus one equals three.
Speaker A:Because I get to stay in my lane.
Speaker A:I get to like, to stay in the areas where I truly excel, like, far more than statistical average, right?
Speaker A:And I have somebody else who does the same in the areas where I perform really low.
Speaker A:And the best example for me is.
Speaker A:Is.
Speaker A:Is our marriage.
Speaker A:Anyone who knows my wife and I know, like, we have a ton of overlap, things that we have a lot in common, things that we love doing together, of course.
Speaker A:But in terms of personalities, we are wildly different.
Speaker A:If you.
Speaker A:If you took our peaks and valleys, you'd go, oh, that makes complete sense.
Speaker A:The things Ray is absolutely terrible at, Sam's phenomenal at, and vice versa.
Speaker A:And this is a.
Speaker A:Like, it's a.
Speaker A:It's a new understanding.
Speaker A:It's a new appreciation for me of.
Speaker A:Of neurodiversity and how to get the most out of myself.
Speaker A:And it's.
Speaker A:It's helped me come to grips with, like, the limitations that I have.
Speaker A:And, like, it's helped me understand why no matter how much I work, I put into certain areas, right, I. I make very incremental progress.
Speaker A:And for years, this frustrated the.
Speaker A:Out of me.
Speaker A:I'd be like, man, like, I'm.
Speaker A:I'm trying so hard in some of these areas, and I just do not make much progress.
Speaker A:But it's also.
Speaker A:It also frames why other areas that are really difficult for a lot of people are really easy for me, right?
Speaker A:Like, complex things, like, right where other people, like, dude, that's really hard.
Speaker A:Like, no, it's easy.
Speaker A:Something else, like, fuck, that's really hard for me.
Speaker A:And people look at me like, what are you talking about?
Speaker A:It's simple, right?
Speaker A:So now I recognize that it's.
Speaker A:It's helped me be a better leader at work.
Speaker A:Like, recognizing where I can be a distraction to my team, where I can actually be an impediment to their performance by injecting new ideas, whatever.
Speaker A:So, like, you know, staying out of the way is something that I'm doing a better job of now.
Speaker A:It's helped me hire better people.
Speaker A:It's helped me deploy my team better.
Speaker A:And more than anything, it's helped me understand how to turn my strengths into real superpowers and how to truly offset my weaknesses.
Speaker A:And there's a.
Speaker A:There's a friend of mine, Dave Randall, is a public speaker, he's an author.
Speaker A:He's got a PhD.
Speaker A:Very interesting guy, very smart.
Speaker A:He's got a video that talks about how every weakness comes with an extreme strength and he does a phenomenal job of breaking this down.
Speaker A:It's about a 30 minute video and I, throughout this, this past year, I've shared it with countless people and I, I get a ton of really positive feedback on it and I'm going to drop that link in the description.
Speaker A:Like I, I highly recommend if this is a topic that you want to explore a little bit further, or if this resonates or tracks with you, um, and you want a slightly different or more expanded perspective on it, I would recommend taking having a listen to that.
Speaker A: hing I'm going to leverage in: Speaker A:And I'm very like, I'm grateful and I'm, I'm fortunate to have identified some of these things with my son really early and to know how to help him like turn, you know, turn his diversities, his neurodiversities into, into superpowers.
Speaker A:So I hope this helps you do the same.
Speaker A:Adios.
