- Hey guys, welcome back to the DrCliffAuD vlog.
This is vlog number 58.
And if you have not yet subscribed to this channel
and turned on notifications so you get notified
every time that I release a new video,
then today is the day to do it.
And the reason that today is that day
that you need to subscribe and turn on notifications
is because next week I am actually going to be doing
the walkthrough reveal of my new clinic.
I'm gonna take you through it,
every single room explained kind of
how we designed everything,
and why everything is the way that it is.
And I really think that you're gonna enjoy
that video next week and you really don't wanna miss it.
So, go ahead and subscribe right now,
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Okay, now that we got that out of the way,
I'm actually not going to be talking about the clinic today.
I'm going to be talking about a new venture
that I started with three friends of mine
who are all inside in some way shape or form,
inside of the hearing industry, okay.
And the project that we've been working on
for the last six months or so.
And one of the reasons that I kind of took a little bit
of a hiatus from creating so many videos
at the end of last year in the beginning of this year,
is because we were putting a lot of work
into this particular business venture that we're doing.
And I'm gonna announce it right now.
The name of the company that we've been working on
is called the HearingUp.com.
And we kind of didn't really know
what we were going to do when we first started this.
We knew that we had a website
that we wanted to develop for consumers
and we weren't sure which direction we were gonna take it.
And the whole purpose of that website,
after a lot of kind of thinking about it,
talking about it, with each other,
is that we wanted to be able to better communicate
with individuals who are searching for hearing aids online.
So currently when you run online hearing aid searches,
a couple of different things happen.
You either go to a cheap amplifier company
and you end up buying products that are just pieces of junk
and you get taken advantage of
because then when you want to return them for a refund
magically they won't accept your phone calls anymore
and whatever, right?
And you have to dispute the charge
or you have to get legal involved in all of that.
So that's a big mess.
The second thing is,
is that you'll go to these companies online
that are selling name brand hearing aids,
and this is what we call the gray market.
So what a lot of people don't realize is that
when you buy hearing aids online,
even if they are name-brand hearing aids,
you have no idea if those hearing aids are stolen,
you have no idea if those hearing aids still have warranty.
In fact, when a lot of hearing aid manufacturers identify
that you purchase name-brand hearing aids online,
they void the warranty on you.
In fact, just a couple of weeks ago,
I had a person come in who had bought hearing aids online
and they were international hearing aids,
and you can't take those hearing aids
and send them to a United States company
of that same company and get them taken care of, okay.
So there's just a lot of things that people don't realize
when you're buying name-brand hearing aids online.
On top of that,
it is impossible to have best practices followed
when you purchase devices online like that.
I know that they say, Oh, send us your audiogram
and we'll upload your programming into the devices.
I can tell you that I have never seen a hearing aid,
programmed well, that comes right out of the box
just with your audiogram entered into it.
And hopefully you've been watching
some of my other videos of my 400 plus videos
that I've created over the last four years.
But you just cannot get a customized hearing aid
when you purely purchase it directly online.
So that's the second type of thing that you'll get
in an online search for hearing aids.
The other one, is you end up getting these
private label hearing aids
that you don't know what the technology level is.
They say, Oh, you know you get
these are the same great hearing is that you get
and they are all defeatured hearing aids.
You don't get any in-office care.
They try to say, Oh, we'll set up an appointment
with our specialists online.
But you might get some benefit out of those devices,
but at the end of the day there's no way to guarantee
that you're actually getting hearing aids
that are programmed correctly for your hearing loss.
So you ended up still spending a decent amount of money
for hearing aids that may or may not even work for you.
So that's the other type that you get online.
Then you get these essentially,
I don't even know what to call them,
they're kind of like referral services
or middlemen third-party networks,
however you wanna call them.
But they're basically companies to where
they send you to a local hearing care provider
to get discount hearing aids.
And you have no clue who the local hearing care provider is.
You don't have any clue if they follow best practices,
you don't even know if they're
even relatively good at what they do
'cause you don't even know who you're going to
until you've already committed to buying, right?
So it's just really a crazy crazy setup
out there right now online.
So we wanted to develop a website
that gets you in touch with a local hearing care provider
who follows best practices, all right.
Who follows best practices,
who has a reputation to uphold in their local community,
who is a doctor of audiology at least to start,
and who only work with the best hearing aids
that are out there.
And the whole thing here is that
we just want a reputable site
that recommends you go to reputable audiologists
who are dispensing hearing aids, okay.
And we put a lot of thought,
we didn't really know where we were gonna go with this.
But I had the stipulation right out of the gate
that if I was gonna do this,
if I was gonna partner with them on a venture like this,
the only way that I would be involved
is that if best practices were really at the core
of what we were trying to do.
We want people to be able to get
access to good hearing technology.
We want them to be able to buy hearing aids online
to a degree, but we really want them to be able to go
to a local hearing care professional
that they can know and trust
are going to do the right thing
to maximize their hearing performance.
If my name was going to be attached to it,
I wanna make sure that things are being done the right way.
There are individuals in my profession
who have preached best practices for years
and then they go and they kick that all to the wayside
and go start advising companies
that don't follow best practices.
And it's kind of like I look up to these people,
these people teaching in my profession,
and I'm like they talked about best practices
this whole time and then they just like,
Oh, well, it's time to I don't know, cash out, sell out,
whatever the case may be,
and then they go and they start advising
these different companies that don't follow best practices.
And that is something that I'm just not willing
to put my reputation on the line for that.
My reputation is too important for me,
your performance with hearing aids is too important
for me to sign my name to something like that.
The other side of it is, is that I can understand
the rationale of well not everybody can afford
to go in and see a local hearing care professional,
and that's great.
But the promises of a lot of these companies online is
you get the same level of performance
without going to see your hearing care professional,
and we just know that that's flat out not true.
So if you're willing to sacrifice performance
in order to save money, I'm totally cool with that.
I've been cool with that
since the day I started my YouTube Channel,
but I can't attach my name to anything
that doesn't just promote the proper way
of receiving hearing care
so you can optimize your performance, all right.
So that being said, this particular website
we are going to launch initially,
of course a website when you launch it,
it's global, right?
I mean, anyone can search for the website anywhere
and be able to find it but we're only launching it
locally in Arizona first, all right.
And my clinic is going to be really the only clinic.
And the reason we're doing it that way is
because we're kind of testing like
what things do we need to do
in order to make this website proper
in the sense of functioning within
the legalities of each state
that if a provider's in a state
it has to be legal for that particular state.
I know the state laws inside of Arizona really well.
So it just makes sense for us to initially launch it here,
test it out a little bit
and kind of find out where the kinks are at,
find out what makes sense what doesn't make sense,
and then expand it out from there.
And really we're hoping to partner
with a lot of great doctors of audiology
right out of the gates to be able to get individuals
who are searching for hearing aids online
in front of the appropriate individual
who can really truly help them,
who will follow best practices who have a reputation
that they can't hide behind the facade of a website
like a lot of these companies that are out there online.
So, we'll see what happens.
What I want you guys to do is just check out the website,
go to the website, see what you think,
scroll through it, click on the different links.
Let me know what you like, let me know what you don't like,
be brutally honest, I'm okay with it.
We need to learn and get better.
This is just the first iteration,
I'm sure that it will kind of evolve as time goes on
but I'm really excited about it, to be honest with you.
I think that between myself and the other partners
that I'm not gonna reveal yet that are a part of this,
we're really coming at this
with the right intentions, right?
The right intentions to make sure that you get
the highest quality hearing treatment humanly possible.
And you already know that I have the Dr. Cliff Network
which is now the Best Practice Pro Network.
And this is gonna be something
just to kind of elevate that as well.
I have a feeling that a lot of those providers
are going to end up being providers
that are on HearingUp that you'll have access to,
but the more that we can make information available online
the better it's gonna be for consumers
at the end of the day.
So if we can help use this website to kind of
promote that message of best practice care
and high quality local care,
then we will have done our jobs.
But I'm really excited to see where this thing goes.
But that's one of the big projects
that I've been working on with my friends,
is what I would call them, my business partners,
up to this point.
And I'm really excited about to see how it goes.
So make sure you go to HearingUp.com,
give it a look through,
keep me posted, let me know what you think,
give me some advice on what you would do
to the website as well, all right.
So, I have definitely overtalked my welcome here
in this particular vlog.
Still really excited for next week though.
So, if you make sure that you catch any vlog,
that I have done, make sure that it is the vlog next week.
The amount of time that went into designing the new clinic
and building the new clinic is absolutely insane.
The amount of money that went into it is also insane.
I don't necessarily feel good about that
but I'll may have to just work
for a long time to pay that off.
But at the end of the day, I think it'll be worth it.
So I'll get into more of the financial impact
of the new clinic in a couple of videos
from now I'm sure.
But as of right now, I hope you guys liked this vlog.
Make sure again, that you've subscribed,
that you hit that like button,
and that you have the notifications turned on
because next week is gonna be a good one.
Take care, and I'll see you soon.
(upbeat music)