Build What No One Has | JustALittleITGuy

Build What No One Has | JustALittleITGuy

Just A Little IT Guy has been doing IT since he was 12, wiring up his church rectory before most of us had email. Professionally he has spent over 25 years in the field, and today he runs a team of six engineers as the technical lead for the company he has been with for more than 15 years. He goes by JL online, posts under JustALittleITGuy on TikTok, and is one of the funniest people James has come across on the platform. This is a loose, no-structure conversation between two neurodivergent guys just talking about what it actually looks like to build a career, lead a team, and live a life when your brain runs the way ours run. No outline, no script, just an hour of the real thing. JL was diagnosed with ADHD last year, in his 40s, and is coming into alignment with the autism side too. He talks about leading engineers when you can't delegate to save your life, why he assumes every engineer who asks "why" is neurodivergent because it's just easier that way, and the team chat he named T-cubed for the three guys on the spectrum. He gets into the gear-switching problem that sent him back under the guy who used to report to him, with zero ego about it, because he knows exactly where he thrives. We hear about the first book he ever finished cover to cover (last year), how visual patterns in text eat his attention alive, and how he reads a rat's nest of network cables instantly but can't get through three pages without starting over. And yes, the time he stopped his own heart on a breaker panel, reasoned his way back into rhythm, and finished the job that night. This one runs on pattern recognition applied to absolutely everything: 7-Eleven's network, Uber routes timed to the last flight landing, falling asleep in under a minute. From friction to flow. A quick note: this episode includes some firsthand stories involving electrical work, long-haul driving, and pushing well past the point most people would stop. They make for great conversation, but they are not how-to guides. Don't try any of it at home. Enjoy the show. A Few Lines Worth Lifting "Build what no one has at a price that no one is motivated to compete with." "If you can't explain it, you don't know it. And if you can't explain it to a client, you really don't know it." "You learn the fastest when you piss somebody off." "I will not look at that and start to sweat. I'll look at that and know exactly where to start." "I have an opportunity to have this experience that no one else is gonna have, and I hyper-focus on that part and I'm stuffing it into my brain library." Topics in This Episode Connecting on TikTok, and the three-hour first attempt that became this re-record Getting into IT at 12, wiring the church rectory off AOL dial-up The college professor who told him his gift was understanding what trips other people up Leading six engineers when you can't take your hands off anything The delegation problem, and the math of "I could do it in a half hour" Designing systems in Codex so the whole team can move at his pace The 90-to-100 problem: why the last 10% of any project is the hardest jump Late diagnosis in your 40s, and permission to use the "weird things" that work Music with no words on repeat as a focus tool T-cubed: the team chat for the neurodivergent guys on the team Why he assumes every engineer who asks "why" is neurodivergent Giving recognition before correction, and learning that the hard way Stepping back under his former report, with no ego, because that's where he thrives The first book he ever read cover to cover, and reading as a visual pattern trap Reading a rat's nest of cables instantly: same wiring, different expression The 7-Eleven NOC, and cutting nine people across three shifts down to four The Australian mentor with zero tolerance, and how that became a partnership "If you can't explain it, you don't know it": guess-and-check versus real understanding Ticket metrics, W-I-H-Y (while I have you), and building a system that rewards the work Adjusting to medication, and the day the light switch flipped Pattern recognition applied to everything: Waze as a game, the time to beat The Uber Cowboy era, party lights, and timing the last flight on FlightAware Survival mode after the house fire, and doing 100% of the electrical himself Stopping his own heart on the breaker panel and finishing the job anyway The risk-taking wiring, and where James draws the line on the road Training himself to fall asleep in under a minute The whiteboard close: build what no one has About Just A Little IT Guy Just A Little IT Guy, known online as JL or JALITG, has worked in IT professionally for over 25 years and has been doing it himself for 37, starting at age 12 wiring up his church. He is the technical lead for the company he has been with for more than 15 years, where he runs a team of six engineers. He was diagnosed with ADHD in the past year and identifies with level one autism. He posts about neurodivergence, IT, and life under the handle JustALittleITGuy. Find Just A Little IT Guy TikTok: @JustALittleITGuy About the host James Hickey is the founder of PathWays Collective and host of The Sight Side. He is an AuDHD systems architect, Licensed Peer Recovery Supporter, and author of Cyberspace Psychosis and the Virtual Reality Blues. He was identified as autistic and ADHD in his forties, after decades of being labeled unfocused, underperforming, or not living up to his potential. Website: https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side [https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side] LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2 [http://www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2]

Systems Brain, Creative Eye | Dara Broadous

Dara Broadous is an ADHD creative generalist whose work spans fashion, bridal, graphic design, brand work, and art direction. She designs plus-size pants and jackets at Lane Bryant, freelances on bridal gowns, did the art direction for an intimate music experience called June's Room, and is launching her own podcast, Speaking in Draft, in June 2026. This is a conversation about what it actually looks like to build a creative career when your brain works the way ours work. Dara talks about how she figured out she had ADHD through TikTok, what changed after diagnosis, and what it means to be a Black woman finding the language for her own wiring in her 20s when the system around her was never set up to spot it. She walks through the full arc of her design career, what corporate fashion is actually made of (a lot more emails than people think), and how she's learned to lead with the creative and build systems underneath it so the boring parts stop crushing the work that lights her up. We get into the maximizer's curse, the urge to tinker with something that's already done, and how she uses intent as the gate that tells her when to put the pencils down. James shares his own version of that struggle. We also talk about masking at work, how being upfront in interviews about how she actually operates has been a strength rather than a liability, and what she'd say to a younger neurodivergent creative wondering if there's a place for them in this kind of work. Welcome to the island. We have cookies. A FEW LINES WORTH LIFTING > "I'm a person who highly, highly, highly values work-life balance, 'cause I can get burned out very quickly." > "Starting is often the hardest. So if I already know that about my brain, I'm going to make sure that the barrier to entry is as small as it can possibly be, because that is something that is a kindness to myself." > "People are much more receptive to, 'hey, here's a thing I see that might cause us a lot of extra work in the future. We could do this thing now that would prevent that happening.'" > "If we're going to ask people to spend their hard-earned money, let's give them something that is actually worth that." > "I think honestly the most interesting people have the most unexpected, crazy life path." TOPICS IN THIS EPISODE * Meeting at the Generalist World event and the unique skill stack exercise * Figuring out ADHD through TikTok, and what late identification looks like for Black women * The hyperfocus and the burnout that lives right next to it * Hobby graveyards (the two-week shelf life version and the six-month version) * The full design arc: bridal, Abercrombie & Fitch / Gilly Hicks, Lane Bryant, freelance bridal, art direction * Seeing your own design in the wild on a solo trip to Amsterdam * Designing plus-size with the customer at the center instead of the edge * Pockets * Innovation, disruption, and finding your people inside a corporate team * The neurodivergent-versus-allistic split: results-coded thinkers versus method-coded thinkers * Intent as the test for when a piece of work is actually done * The maximizer's curse and giving yourself permission to fail * Masking at work, and what it looks like to interview as your actual self * Just be direct: what Dara wishes managers and colleagues understood * For the younger neurodivergent creative still figuring out where they fit ABOUT DARA BROADOUS Dara Broadous is a fashion designer and multidisciplinary creative whose work spans fashion, bridal, graphic design, brand work, and art direction. She currently designs in the pants and jackets category at Lane Bryant, designing plus-size apparel for real bodies in a market the industry has historically underserved. Earlier in her career she designed intimates for Gilly Hicks at Abercrombie & Fitch, and she has continued to take on freelance bridal work, including hand-beaded wedding gowns for individual clients. She recently served as art direction lead for June's Room, an intimate music experience founded by Mercedes. Dara identifies as an ADHD creative generalist and is launching her own podcast, Speaking in Draft, in June 2026. FIND DARA * Website: darathedesigner.com [https://darathedesigner.com] * Instagram: @becoming.dara [https://instagram.com/becoming.dara] * LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/darabroadous [https://www.linkedin.com/in/darabroadous/] * Her podcast: Speaking in Draft (launching June 2026), @speakingindraft.co [https://instagram.com/speakingindraft.co] ABOUT THE HOST James Hickey is the founder of PathWays Collective and host of The Sight Side. He is an AuDHD systems architect, Licensed Peer Recovery Supporter, and author of Cyberspace Psychosis and the Virtual Reality Blues. He was identified as autistic and ADHD in his forties, after decades of being labeled unfocused, underperforming, or not living up to his potential. Website: https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side [https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side] LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2 [http://www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2]

Road to Revolution | James Adams

The Sight Side continues with James Adams, founder and CEO of Revolution Trucking, a certified Disability-Owned Business Enterprise he built in 2019 after more than three decades in supply chain, logistics, and transportation. Revolution runs three connected companies, Revolution Trucking on the asset side, Revolution Transport in brokerage, and Revolution Supply Chain as the digital booking interface, and it operates in the mission-critical, no-fail space, the high-value, high-risk freight most carriers will not touch. James and Jim connected as fellow Ohio-based DOBEs, and this episode is the conversation that came out of that. This one runs from the operational to the personal and back. Jim traces the path that got him here, mechanical engineering, product development for a Fortune 500, supply chain consulting, building a private-equity-backed fleet to roughly 1,800 assets before it sold to ArcBest, then global logistics across about 90 countries, and finally getting the band back together to start Revolution in 2019. He talks about why he wanted to live in a no-fail environment, why he named the company Revolution to change how the industry operates, and the philosophy underneath all of it: that drivers are partners, not numbers, and that removing the mundane is how you keep good people from burning out. James and Jim get into what neurodivergence actually looks like inside logistics, not as a thing to accommodate but as a thing that wins. Jim describes a regulated-fleet manager he did not know had ADHD who started running circles around the company's data analyst and is now its leading quantitative mind, a driver whose consistently top safety scores turned out to be a different way of processing risk rather than just good training, and team members with dyslexia on both the sales and driving side and what changed once they felt safe enough to disclose. The conversation turns toward AI and bottom-up processing, predictive risk management on the road, and an honest, often blunt read on what the DOBE certification actually does, what it does not, and why the value is in the human introductions and almost never in the portal. Jim is direct, candid, and generous with the stories, and that comes through. Some moments worth flagging: The fleet manager who "does not come across as a very analytical guy" and became the most quantitatively powerful person in the company The ADHD driver with the top safety scores, and the moment the team realized it was not the training, it was that "his mind thinks differently" "I even hate the word employees. They're partners." "No one is going to burn out at our company." The pilot analogy: 99% boredom, 1% terror, and you do not know when the 1% is coming "Tell me your last onboarding of a DOBE service provider," the question that stops procurement teams cold The 1-in-20 conversion rate, and "we don't want to dress up and play house" The network math from Revolution's own first shipment forward: 50% preexisting relationships, 45% referrals, 5% cold Why the value of certification is in the warm introduction, never in the set-it-and-forget-it portal About James Adams: James Adams is the founder and CEO of Revolution Trucking, which he started in 2019 after more than thirty years in supply chain, logistics, and transportation. Revolution operates three connected companies, Revolution Trucking, Revolution Transport, and Revolution Supply Chain, specializing in mission-critical, high-value, no-fail freight, and is a certified Disability-Owned Business Enterprise. Jim's DOBE status traces to a period of kidney failure that led him to the certification when he founded the company. Find Jim: Revolution Trucking — https://www.revolutiontrucking.com [https://www.revolutiontrucking.com] About the host: James Hickey is the founder of PathWays Collective and host of The Sight Side. He is an AuDHD systems architect, Licensed Peer Recovery Supporter, and author of Cyberspace Psychosis and the Virtual Reality Blues. He was identified as autistic and ADHD in his forties, after decades of being labeled unfocused, underperforming, or not living up to his potential. Website — https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side [https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side] LinkedIn — www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2 [http://www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2]

The Best-Kept Secret in Disability Inclusion

The Sight Side continues with Cami Turcotte, Senior Director of Supplier Inclusion at Disability:IN, the global business network advancing disability inclusion across the workplace, supply chain, and marketplace. Cami oversees the DOBE certification program, the Disability-Owned Business Enterprise certification, and the entire network of certified businesses behind it. James met Cami after his consulting firm, PathWays Collective, earned DOBE certification and became part of the network, and this episode picks up a conversation the two of them have been having across several one-on-ones since. This one runs from the personal to the structural and back. Cami traces almost fifteen years with the organization, from a pilot program with ten or fifteen certified businesses to what she calls the behemoth it has become in 2026. She talks about the shift in how she sees the world since she started this work, from an uncle in a wheelchair who was just her uncle, to noticing every gap, every missing button, every place the world was built for some people and not others. She and James get into what a DOBE actually is, what the certification does and does not do, and why she still calls Disability:IN the best-kept secret. James and Cami get into the invisible disability question, the off-stage moments that trip up neurodivergent professionals while the technical work comes easy, the difference between leading with your accommodations and leading with what you are great at, and why that same principle applies whether you are in a job interview or pitching your business to a Fortune 500. The conversation turns toward the numbers coming for every workplace, the contract cycles disabled business owners have to learn to read, AI as a leveling tool, and an honest read on whether inclusion and accessibility are actually heading the right direction. Cami is frank, transparent, and warm about it, her words, and James's, and that comes through. Some moments worth flagging: * The 2040 stat: 40% of professionals projected to identify as neurodivergent, and 53% of Gen Z already do * Why "the sky is purple" is how Cami describes the people who will not see what is in front of them * The certification is a tool in your toolkit, not a guarantee of business * Why you lead with what you are great at, not your list of accommodations * The square peg problem, and why there are five or six ways to document a disability * "We don't need medical records, and we don't want them" * Reading the contract cycle, and why the hard question is the valuable one * Why you probably need to start your application today if you want to be certified before Dallas About Cami Turcotte: Cami Turcotte is the Senior Director of Supplier Inclusion at Disability:IN, where she has worked since 2012 and has led the supplier inclusion program since 2024. She works with disability-owned business enterprises and corporate partners alike, connecting both sides of the network and helping certified business owners leverage the resources, relationships, and seat at the table that certification provides. Find Cami: * Disability:IN — https://disabilityin.org [https://disabilityin.org] * Email — Cami@disabilityin.org [Cami@disabilityin.org] * DOBE certification — https://disabilityin.org/what-we-do/supplier-diversity/get-certified [https://disabilityin.org/what-we-do/supplier-diversity/get-certified] * Disability:IN Global Conference & Expo, July 27-30, 2026, Dallas — https://disabilityin.org/conference [https://disabilityin.org/conference] About the host: James Hickey is the founder of PathWays Collective and host of The Sight Side. He is an AuDHD systems architect, Licensed Peer Recovery Supporter, and author of Cyberspace Psychosis and the Virtual Reality Blues. He was identified as autistic and ADHD in his forties, after decades of being labeled unfocused, underperforming, or not living up to his potential. * Website — https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side [https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side] * LinkedIn — www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2 [http://www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2]

Neurodiversity in the Classroom | Theresa Falk

Season two of The Sight Side opens with Theresa Falk, a Honolulu-based author, educator, and 31-year veteran of the classroom. Theresa currently teaches 8th grade English and women's literature at 'Iolani School, where she advocates for gender equity and neurodiversity. James met her at the Slowdown Summit in Columbus, Ohio, where she was a speaker, and this episode is a continuation of the conversation that started there. This is a wide-ranging one. Theresa traces how neurodivergence has emerged across three decades of teaching, from a time when the vocabulary did not exist in education to the present moment where her students self-organize around it. She talks about the two branches of how she came to this work, professionally through the kids in front of her and personally through her own neurodivergent son. She talks about Kainoa, a former student who asked her to help him build a club for neurodivergent kids, and about what it cost him to write a perfect email. James and Theresa get into the buzzword problem ("everybody's ADHD these days"), the difference between a state and a condition, the cost of being undiagnosed for four decades, and why kids who were told audio books "do not count as reading" end up doing better in public schools than private ones. The conversation turns toward AI, the credential collapse, what Gen Z is going to have to build because the institutions handed them holes instead of bridges, and Theresa's direct call-out to her own generation: we hold the power right now, and we cannot walk away from this work. Theresa is a writer, a poet, a performer, a teacher, and someone whose career is in education, but whose life path is in healing. That comes through. Some moments worth flagging: * Why the moment a vocabulary word enters a school is the moment a student becomes visible * The Einstein and Spielberg Club, where 20 kids showed up to the first meeting * "I teach a child, not a subject" * The take-a-lap story, and why five sweaty middle school boys gave the best presentation of the day * What it actually costs a neurodivergent student to do what everybody else does * Why "what's wrong with you" is the wrong question * Theresa's call-out to Gen X and the Boomers About Theresa Falk: Theresa Falk is a Honolulu-based author, educator, and creative who has spent more than three decades guiding students to discover the power of their own stories. Her work centers on voice, identity, and connection, both in the classroom and on the page. She currently teaches 8th grade English and women's literature at 'Iolani School, where she is an advocate for gender equity and neurodiversity. Find Theresa: * Substack: Rewriting the Lead — https://theresafalk.substack.com/ [https://theresafalk.substack.com/] * LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresa-falk-a27534368/ [https://www.linkedin.com/in/theresa-falk-a27534368/] About the host: James Hickey is the founder of PathWays Collective and host of The Sight Side. He is an AuDHD systems architect, Licensed Peer Recovery Supporter, and author of Cyberspace Psychosis and the Virtual Reality Blues. He was identified as autistic and ADHD in his forties, after decades of being labeled unfocused, underperforming, or not living up to his potential. * Website — https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side [https://pathwayscollective.net/the-sight-side] * LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2 [www.linkedin.com/in/james-hickey-9b8ab43a2] Audio note: Some technical issues during recording resulted in James's audio being quieter than Theresa's. Transcript available on the website if it helps you follow along. New episode Thursday: James gets into Cyberspace Psychosis and the Virtual Reality Blues: what the book is, what it argues, and why he wrote it.