Tim Blonsky on Deaf ADHD Leadership and ASL AI

About ND OutLoud

Danielle: Hello there. I’m Danielle Ralston, the founder and head coach here at ND OutLoud. ND OutLoud is a team of neurodivergent coaches. We are neurodivergent, every single one of us: TBI, PTSD, ADHD, autism, bipolar disorder, all of the things. We have a passion for supporting others like us, so you don’t have to struggle like we did. This session is going to give you actionable tips. I want you to walk away with something actionable for whatever is overwhelming, frustrating, or just plain annoying you right now, or, if you’re the parent or spouse of someone neurodivergent, something to help them as well.

Meet Tim Blonsky: Danielle’s brother, business leader, Bills fan

Jamie: Hi there, everybody. Thank you for joining us. This is the ND OutLoud podcast and vidcast series. I know you’re used to seeing Danielle Ralston on here. She is the OG and founder of ND OutLoud, but today we’re doing it a little bit differently. I’m Jamie Demo, and I work alongside the team on the corporate consulting end of things. With me today is somebody who is very important to Danielle, and important to all of Bills Mafia for good reason. Tim Blonsky is Danielle’s brother, the director of business engagement at ND OutLoud, and also the co-CEO of DeepSign AI out of Boise, Idaho. Tim, I’m so glad we could do this. We’ve talked about it for a while, and here it is.

Tim: Yeah, you know, I think the timing is right, because we just started training camp in Rochester, New York, our shared hometown. We definitely have a lot to talk about with the Buffalo Bills, plus everything else we’re doing in our professional endeavors. I’m excited to have this conversation, and I think we’ll probably have more like this soon.

Jamie: Yes. And Tim and I pledged we were not going to make this entire vidcast about the Buffalo Bills. You’re probably going to end up hearing some of it anyway. That’s how Bills Mafia rolls. Anyway, Tim, you’re doing some exciting things, and there may be people in my network who haven’t met you before. The first thing I want to touch on: you consider yourself to be profoundly deaf. What does that mean?

Growing up profoundly deaf in Rochester, with ASL as a first language

Tim: That’s a great question, thank you for asking. So yes, I was born deaf. I grew up in Rochester, New York, which, if anyone knows anything about Rochester, has a very prevalent deaf community. When my parents found out I was deaf, at 11 months old, they had access to all of the proper services a deaf child could have. There are so many people throughout the United States and the world who, when they find out a child is deaf, are told by a medical professional not to teach them ASL. “Don’t do that, that’s not a language, you need to teach them to talk and speak.” My parents were not told that. So I had access to what is really considered the best of both worlds. ASL was my first language, but I also had speech therapy, and the best of the best in hearing aids and technology, or at least what was the best in the early ’80s.

I was able to learn to speak fairly well, and I’m able to do things like talk on the phone with certain people, not everyone. So I’m hard of hearing in the sense that, for a good portion of my life, I’ve been in between the deaf and hearing worlds. I’ve really immersed myself in the deaf world within the last three or four years, and I’ve really enjoyed that. But yes, I am profoundly deaf. I have just one hearing aid, and I’m completely deaf in the other ear. I depend on reading lips, and the closed captions I have here in this Zoom right now are also helpful. I feel lucky and privileged to be able to be in both worlds and wear both of those hats.

Jamie: And on top of being deaf, you also identify as having ADHD as well, correct?

A hike, a friend, and the term “body doubling”: Tim’s late ADHD realization

Tim: Yeah, that was actually a fairly recent realization. My sister, who runs ND OutLoud, has a very interesting journey figuring that out herself, and she’s spoken to that many times. But for me, I was always told growing up, “Oh, Tim, you’re fine. You’re different than everyone else.” And that was almost a burden rather than a positive, because it let me brush everything aside for many years.

It was kind of funny. I was on a hike with a friend who herself has ADHD, and she said, “I’m actually going over to a friend’s house after the hike to do some body doubling, because she’s packing for a trip and just needs a little help by having someone there.” And I said, “What’s body doubling? I’ve never heard the term before.” She started explaining it, and the lightbulb went off in my head. Because in my previous jobs, when someone was in the cubicle right next to me, not involved in anything I was doing, just there, I was far more productive in my work. That’s when the wheels started turning, and I started talking to my sister about this more. So that’s where I’m at, and that all happened within the last couple of years.

Jamie: That’s really interesting, that you found your way into it by simply saying, “I work best when I see other people working.” As a person with ADHD myself, I have always felt that way. I can’t work unless I see other people working. It drives my wife nuts. She has a separate office space in our house, and I will grab my computer, go down, and sit on the couch next to her and start working. She’s like, “What are you doing? You’re distracting me.” I’m like, “I need this.” I know a lot of people out there can relate. But your combination of ADHD and deafness together, and now working with people who are ADHD, puts you in a very unique position, correct?

Deaf, ADHD, and underemployed: why ND OutLoud is building for the deaf community

Tim: Yeah. That’s kind of how things started with me and Danielle. We’ve had a unique sibling relationship where we’ll be in touch, and then we’ll go several months or years where we’re not as much in touch, for various reasons. We have a very interesting upbringing, family drama, mental health, all of that, no judgment in any of those realms, but we had a complicated childhood.

The lightbulb went off in my head again several months after I figured out that I also have ADHD. I started thinking: there are so many deaf people in the United States and throughout the world who are generally in a low socioeconomic position. So many deaf people don’t work, or work very limited jobs, and they resign themselves to, “I’m deaf, so that’s why I can’t be as successful as a hearing person.” Which is simply not the case. There are so many incredibly talented deaf people in my world and throughout the whole world.

So I started thinking: how many deaf people also have ADHD, and are not where they could be in life, because they attribute it to “I’m deaf, that’s why I can’t focus, that’s why I have a hard time staying on task”? All the things that are actually more related to the ADHD piece rather than the deaf piece. And then you add language deprivation to that, which so many deaf people suffer from. Those are all factors where we started saying, hey, maybe we can be an outlet. That’s what we’re working toward.

Jamie: Wow. And how is that landing with the deaf community?

Tim: It’s interesting, there are a lot of deaf content developers who are also just starting to talk about this piece of it. So we’re starting to collaborate with some of them to get the word out about what ND OutLoud is doing. Because if you’re talking about deaf people who are generally in a lower socioeconomic standing, they can’t afford life coaching at $900 a session, and I’ve seen prices like that out there. What ND OutLoud is doing is more like a subscription approach to life coaching, body doubling, group coaching, and peer-to-peer support. We’re still in the very beginning stages, but we have a lot of hope that we’re going to get a lot of deaf people onto the platform. The deaf community is very small, so once several people buy into this, we could reach the whole American deaf community within a very short period of time.

Jamie: I do want to touch on the corporate consulting side I work on, which we refer to as ND Visionary Partners. What we’re doing on that side is going into businesses and other organizations to help them become more understanding and accommodating of people who are neurodiverse, and to make the environment more productive. Especially in large organizations, it becomes a huge competitive advantage if you can keep great minds in your organization, just by doing a couple of small things that make it easier for people with, say, autism or dyslexia or deafness to stay there.

Now, something we’ve talked about that I think is incredibly exciting: you don’t let any moss grow under your feet. You’re probably one of the busier people out there. You are co-CEO of a company called DeepSign, and this is some very exciting stuff. You’ve been in that role for a number of months now, promoted into it for good reason. Please tell people what DeepSign is and where it’s headed.

DeepSign AI: translating full ASL through a single camera

Tim: Thank you for asking. There are a lot of exciting hats that I wear, and I know Danielle won’t be offended by me saying this is the most exciting one. I’m the co-CEO of DeepSign AI, and we are a sign language recognition company through AI. What we’re able to do, and we legitimately are able to do this, we just hit an internal deadline a few weeks ago for a program that allows for full translation of the whole language of ASL. We’re in the process of internal testing and talking to some potential collaborators. Some of that is proprietary, but what we’re able to do is this: you can sign into a single camera, thousands of words, and have that converted into spoken English.

You can imagine, American Sign Language is a 3D language. It’s multi-dimensional. Even a slight movement of a hand, or how you move your head, or your body language, can completely change the sign itself. So it is an incredibly complicated problem we’re trying to solve. We have a team of engineers in Europe and an American founder here, all either deaf or fluent in ASL, people who are really passionate about this and have dedicated their whole lives to developing this technology. I am incredibly honored to lead that effort.

We’ve seen others use this kind of tech for captioning social media videos, which is kind of fun. But imagine being able to sign ASL and have it converted to English captions in a video. Or being able to go into a restaurant, order food in ASL, and have that understood without writing back and forth. For deaf people who also have language deprivation, a menu on a kiosk is not the most conducive thing. This is going to increase accessibility across the board. Going to the pharmacy to pick up your prescription, being able to just say, “Hello, my name is Tim, my birthday is this,” and boom, done. And it goes well beyond that. The use cases are innumerable. We have come up with more use cases than we have the bandwidth to apply the tech to.

We’re in the beginning stages, and we have been very quiet, deliberately. We don’t want to make claims we can’t keep. And we don’t want to be a typical tech company that comes out with a big announcement, “Hey, we have this really cool thing, give us money,” and then when you do a deep dive into the tech, they haven’t really developed anything, they just need the money first. We took the approach of self-funding ourselves until we got to a place where we have something we can actually sell. If an investor wants to knock on our door, we may listen, we may not. It depends on whether it’s the right investor. We’re very particular about making sure this is technology developed for deaf people first, period. The tech itself is something the whole world will eventually want, for various reasons, but that’s not where we’re going first. We want to develop it for deaf people and by deaf people.

I’m really, really excited about it. In subsequent conversations I could show the actual tech. It’s mind-blowing, and I say that from a place of bias, but we’ve had tears sometimes internally when we see what we’ve developed. The goosebumps of, wow, we have something that can change the world, and it’s not a misnomer. It’s an actual thing.

How a deaf ADHD adult leads a company: authenticity and accountability

Jamie: I think there are lessons to be learned here from a number of perspectives. But one thing I’d like to ask you about, because this is in fact a podcast for people who are neurodivergent: you are a co-CEO. You’ve been able to get there despite the difficulty that comes with having an ADHD brain and difficulty communicating. Tell me what allowed you to ascend to the position you’re in and overcome the challenges ADHD presents.

Tim: Number one, especially for me, and I think this is applicable to anyone: just being authentic with yourself. Accepting who you are, being in a place of understanding who you are. Sometimes that can be a hard thing, because you may not like what you see within yourself, but you have to be honest with yourself about it. Full acceptance of who you are as a person. External authenticity starts with internal authenticity. That’s number one, and that happened over the last couple of years, with me realizing, oh, I do also have ADHD. Owning that piece of me, and owning mistakes I’ve made in the past.

Two: ADHD is a spectrum, that’s not the medical way of saying it, but there are various forms and levels of it. My girlfriend, my life partner, also has ADHD, which adds an interesting element to everything. She herself will say she has a more extreme form of ADHD than I do. I’m not medicated, she is. There are things I know as a result of being honest with myself: if I want to stay on task, there are certain things I can do for a certain period of time that work well, but at some point I’m going to have to switch to another way to keep myself on task. It’s not one single approach to making sure I’m at all my appointments and completing all my tasks.

And then, self-accountability and the accountability of my team. One of the key things that’s wonderful about ND OutLoud is that I leverage my role in it to help me stay on task with everything else I’m doing, which is really what ND OutLoud is about: having accountability. A place where I can tell the team, “Hey, I’m really having a hard time today. Can you help me with these three things I need to get done? Can you follow up with me a few hours from now to make sure I completed these tasks? Because I really want to make sure I do.” And now we’re having honest conversations back and forth. I’m not annoyed that Shay or Tara or Jamie is reaching out a few hours later to say, “Hey Tim, did you do that thing?” We’re all honest with each other.

So there’s no one way to address all the challenges that come with ADHD, plus the deafness piece of it. But I think I’m in the right place at the right time, with all the different resources available to me, to make this all happen.

Jamie’s story: diagnosed in 1984, and decades of the wrong expectations

Jamie: When you touched on the self-awareness part, that really spoke to me, because I had a huge lack of that through the majority of my adult life. I was diagnosed with ADHD in third grade, which for me was 1984, and then I was put on Ritalin. I was like an ADHD pioneer. I didn’t have the same understanding from people, or the type of support. I was living through the era when everybody was telling me it didn’t really exist, that I just didn’t want to do better, didn’t want to pay attention in school. And I really internalized that and tried to make myself just like everyone else. I would say, “Well, I should be able to do this, and I should be here in life, and I should be there.” And by shoulding all over myself, as I heard somebody say, I put myself in a terrible position as an adult.

I went off my meds in college because I couldn’t metabolize them the right way. And I was looking at all the other people my age and what they were accomplishing, getting more and more upset with myself because I wasn’t where they were. But deep down, I knew I didn’t have what it took to be where they were at that time. And I think, generally, the men in my family, our frontal lobes don’t fully develop until our mid-30s. You hope that’s done by 30, but I think I was about 35 before I knew which end was up.

It wasn’t until I started embracing it, about three years ago, and got re-medicated, that I started saying, “Okay, I now admit my brain does work differently than other people’s.” By having the wrong expectations of myself, I was dealing with far more mental health battles than I probably needed to. I almost forced myself in that direction. With greater self-awareness, my advice would be: if you’re 28 years old and you see your friends doing better professionally than you are, don’t sit there and tell yourself, “I’m failing.” Say, “My brain is different than theirs. I just haven’t figured out how to maximize the value my brain gives.” And it takes time. Our society isn’t set up for people with ADHD. But more than that, when you tap into support the way you did, Tim, it goes a lot faster. I just discovered ND OutLoud about nine months ago, and I could have been much farther ahead had I been tapping into the support around me and had the awareness sooner. I realize I’m bloviating a little bit here, but I’m really glad you touched on that, because I think it can help a lot of people with understanding where they’re at and putting their expectations in the right direction.

Tim: Yeah, absolutely. 100 percent.

Rochester, seen with new eyes (and the garbage plate explained)

Tim: So let’s shift gears a little. We’re from Rochester, New York. Interesting town. I went back to Rochester for the first time in a few years, because of the pandemic and moving to Boise, last October, which is the perfect time to go. And something completely surprised me. I went with my older daughter and my partner, so I was seeing Rochester through their eyes. In the past, I would just go to my sister’s house, have dinner, then go home, because I was living in Connecticut at the time. Actually showing them all the different sites, the High Falls downtown, the Genesee Brewery, Lake Ontario, down to the Southern Tier where I grew up… Rochester is cool now. That really surprised me. I don’t know if you have the same viewpoint.

Jamie: I’ve been going back very regularly. I haven’t lived in Rochester full-time since the first half of 2000. But I kept the same view I had growing up: oh, this is a sleepy town, nothing happens here, it’s really boring. And to a degree, geography makes that feel true. For anybody watching or listening: Rochester is in the western part of New York, about a six and a half hour drive from New York City, between Buffalo and Syracuse, on the lake, in the snow belt. It is extremely gray. I believe they have more overcast days per year than even Seattle, though not as much rain. For me, the seasonal-affective thing was always kicking in.

But I have recently been going through the same internal renaissance you have. I brought somebody up there for the first time last year for a Buffalo Bills game, and she fell in love with the town. My family lives in Fairport, a suburb on the east side that has really taken off as the nightlife epicenter of the area, and is right now among the most in-demand real estate in the country, according to Forbes. The Erie Canal goes right through it, this old-timey village built because of the canal, with buildings from the 1800s. It has extreme charm. When I go back now, I cannot believe how the town has grown up around me. And, by the way, that friend got her first garbage plate, which we split. My first garbage plate in probably 15 years. I remembered why I don’t eat them as a middle-aged man. However, it was beautiful. Tim, you want to explain what a garbage plate is?

Tim: It’s a Rochester phenomenon. Various comedians and foodies on YouTube and the Food Network have covered it. It originally came out of a restaurant called Nick Tahou’s in downtown Rochester, and now pretty much every restaurant in the area has their version. Basically, it’s the food you want after a night of drinking: pretty much every food group on one plate. Usually home fries on the first layer. I go with cold macaroni salad on the second layer. Then white hots, it has to be white hots in my opinion. Meat hot sauce is the next layer, then raw onions, and I do just mustard on top. So it’s 3,000 calories on a plate, with a side of bread. Absolutely delicious. I had one last October, and my girlfriend, who’s gluten-free and couldn’t have it, just looked at it like, “What is that?” I make them myself now. I get the hot dogs shipped out here, paid 90 bucks for the shipping, and that lasts me about seven or eight months. I’m actually out, so if any podcast listener wants to donate to the hot dog fund, I’m totally okay with that.

Jamie: So there are a couple of Rochester phenomena you just mentioned that people are going to say “what?” about. Number one is the white hot dog. Zweigle’s does a white hot, and I believe, don’t quote me, they’re entirely pork, no dye, spiced slightly differently than the red hots, so they have a slightly different flavor specific to Rochester. Everybody says that sounds disgusting, but they’re amazing on the grill. The other thing is the meat-based hot sauce, with ground beef in it, and in addition to being spicy there’s some brown sugar to offset the spice and deepen the flavor. I encourage anybody watching to look up a recipe. I do my garbage plates differently: cheeseburgers on top with the hot sauce and diced onions, macaroni salad and home fries next to each other. And this is such a cultural phenomenon that the Rochester Red Wings, the AAA affiliate of the Washington Nationals, have an alternate “Plates” jersey, with an illustration of the garbage plate on the hat and jerseys for select games each year.

Tim: Yeah. I know it doesn’t look good, but it tastes good. It really does.

Bills Mafia: fandom, charity, and hopes for the season

Jamie: It is the ultimate late-night food. Anyway, anything else on your mind, Tim?

Tim: Yep. Buffalo Bills. I’m wearing my Stevie Johnson jersey. He was my favorite player during the dark ages. There were so many years of playoff drought that the drought could have gotten a driver’s license. We lived through some dark ages, and living in New England at the time, I was questioned often: “Why are you a Bills fan?” That always used to annoy me, but I would wear the jersey proud. Because Bills Mafia is not just about the team. It’s a culture. It’s embedded in you, almost like something’s in the water. Even when they were bad, we would still sell out the stadium, and Bills fans would travel to other stadiums and take them over. I’m really proud to be part of Bills Mafia, because it’s not just supporting the team, it’s also a fan base that has helped so many people. We’re a fan base that actually makes a difference.

Jamie: There’s a gentleman named Del Reed who actually owns the term Bills Mafia, almost accidentally. He owns a t-shirt company and often leads the charge for raising funds, including monthly specialized t-shirts to raise money for children with cancer. Bills Mafia is renowned for raising money for causes. If something bad happens to a player on another team, they start donating to that player’s charity, and through the years they have raised hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars for charitable causes connected to other fan bases. It’s a community that comes together to help people, despite also being some of the craziest people in the parking lots before games, crashing through tables, doing shots out of bowling balls. Strange yet entertaining hijinks. Great tradition.

Now, I went to my first game in 1984, the first of their two consecutive 2-and-14 seasons. In my first game they went up against the Denver Broncos and Hall of Famer John Elway, who put up 35 points by halftime, and they didn’t even play Elway in the second half. The Bills lost 35 to 7, and that cemented my fandom right then and there. How could I get into a team that bad? Well, it became worth it for a few years. Through that mistake of geography, you can’t give up your fandom, right?

Tim: No, you can’t. I’ve been dared before: “Try to not be a fan of the Bills.” I just can’t.

Jamie: And through the drought, it was very funny, I would go to opposing stadiums, and people would talk smack: “Hey, the Bills suck.” I’d be like, “I know.”

Tim: Yeah. So what do you think? Do you have some hope?

Jamie: I do. They’re probably one of the three best teams in the AFC. We’ll see how that shakes out. A lot of it will come down to how healthy the team is, and whether the new additions assimilate well. I don’t know that they’re significantly better than last year, when they made the conference championship game, but I don’t think they’re any worse. You always have a chance when you have a good organization, which they have. When you have Josh Allen, you’re always going to be in it. I can’t say they’re definitely on their way to the Super Bowl, but their floor is higher than last year, because they seem to have more depth at key positions. They’ll be relying on a number of new players, so health and assimilation matter. I imagine they get at least to the second round of the playoffs. They may get to the Super Bowl. No prediction beyond that.

Tim: I think one of the bigger positives actually came out of what looked like a mistake in free agency. They signed two defensive players, a linebacker and a defensive tackle, and found out basically the next day that both were suspended over some type of substance, one for six weeks, one for four. They’re both going to be really good players, I think. And here’s the thing: they can’t get hurt in those first weeks, so they’ll come in healthy toward the middle of the season, right when injuries inevitably hit, and be fresh for the games that really matter, the Chiefs game, the Eagles game, Cincinnati, the harder games toward the end of the season. I think the receivers they added, plus Coleman in his second year, will be good. I have high hopes for the tight end we drafted in the first round a couple of years ago.

Jamie: He had an off year last year. I have hopes he gets back to his potential this year.

Tim: Our running game is great. We probably have one of the top offensive lines in the NFL. Defense is the key, that’s the thing that always kills us at the end of the playoffs, and I think we have a better defense this year than in previous years. So I have high hopes. I don’t want to predict anything, because it never turns out the way I want it to.

Jamie: You know what’s really funny? Compare now to ten years ago. Ten years ago we would be looking at the pundits’ power rankings, the Bills would be listed 28th, and we would be arguing they should really be 21st. Now I have to ask: as long as the Bills make the playoffs, do you even care about the regular season?

Tim: I do, from a playoff seeding standpoint. I want an AFC Championship game in Buffalo where it’s minus five degrees. I want that more than anything, and I would pay whatever I need to pay to be there. But at the same time, I see people in our fan base saying “they could have been 13 and 3 rather than 12 and 4,” and I’m like, we’re in the playoffs. This is something that wouldn’t have happened six or seven years ago, and now we’re in the playoffs regularly, every single year. That’s amazing. Although I do think, as a fan base, we’re at the point where we need a Super Bowl. We need to be there.

Jamie: We need it. And by the way, I have been doing a Buffalo Bills podcast for six years. I’m giving it up this year.

Tim: Oh, really? Small world. I was one of the first people signed up for those articles back in the day, on the mailing list and everything.

Jamie: Bunch of good folks over there. Anyway, Tim, anything else before we wrap up?

Tim: No, I think we’re good. I really enjoyed this conversation and I look forward to more.

Jamie: This was great. We’ve got to do it again. And thank you to everybody who joined us. ND OutLoud: if you need support, get on there. It’s what it’s built for, and trust both of us, it really works. Good luck with your ventures, Tim. And if anybody’s looking to invest, get a hold of him.

Tim: Yep. Absolutely.

Jamie: So long.