- Hey guys, welcome back
to the Dr. Cliff AUD vlog.
This is vlog number 72,
and today is a really big and important day for me.
I even put my suit jacket on,
because there is something that I want to share
with you guys.
And it's right here.
And if you have been following along on Instagram,
you know that I have something special
that I wanted to share for you guys today,
or share with you guys today,
and I'm gonna go ahead and open it up right now.
But this right here is actually my Silver Play Button
for hitting 100,000 subscribers.
So I'm gonna break that out,
and they actually sent a really nice letter here.
And I hope I don't get emotional when I read this,
but you know, there's a lot of stuff.
I mean, so, I don't know.
I mean, I'm almost, what am I?
I'm almost 39 years old. I turn 39 in June.
And I've done a lot of different things in my life.
You know, going back, you know, to high school,
I never really applied myself to much of anything
when I was in high school.
I mean, I worked and that was great.
And I prided myself on being a hard worker,
and being a good employee and stuff like that.
I didn't really apply myself too much
in school at that point in time.
And then when I graduated from high school,
I went to community college
'cause I really just did not know
what I wanted to do for a career.
And some of this stuff I've shared with you guys before,
but when I finally decided
to go into the military,
that was kind of like that first time
where I actually started applying myself and, you know,
becoming a Marine was something
that was really pivotal in my life.
I mean, it has shaped a lot of the way that I am right now.
And I'm really grateful for that.
When I was in the Marine Corps, I also,
I won awards in the Marine Corps.
I won medals.
I was meritoriously promoted to Corporal that first time.
I ended up getting out as a Sergeant.
I went to and graduated from Marine Corps
Scout Sniper school.
I mean all really, really good idea accomplishments.
I mean, things that I'm proud of.
And, you know, when I got out of the military,
I kind of went back into a rut
of like I still didn't know what I wanted to do.
And eventually I ended up going back to school,
and I graduated with like a 3.98 GPA from undergrad,
which I was, of course, really, really proud of.
And then, you know, and to be honest with you, I mean,
it took me longer than normal to get through college.
And so that was really, I mean,
getting my undergraduate degree
was something that was really special to me
and something that I really worked hard for.
I mean, if you ask my wife,
I spent a lot of time in tutoring, particularly in math,
which was not my greatest subject.
College algebra, in fact.
And I just, I had to spend a lot of time
working with that stuff.
It's just not something that came natural to me.
So I was really proud of getting my diploma for undergrad.
And in grad school, I mean, I went to grad school
extremely unprepared for audiology.
I mean, my undergrad was in exercise science and, you know,
going for audiology, there's a little bit
that translates there from, you know,
understanding anatomy and stuff like that.
But at the end of the day, I had to spend so much extra time
and work extra hard to basically graduate
from that program that I went to
at the University of Illinois.
And I won an award, a clinical award as a student,
which I'm really, really proud of as well.
And, you know, starting my own clinic
was something that was important to me.
But, you know, I spent a lot of the stuff,
that I've done that I've been successful at
was at the expense of other people.
Meaning, when I went to the military
it was the expense of my family, right?
And you know, you go and you deploy into combat
and it's rough on them, you know,
just like it's rough on you.
You know, and then when I got out,
went to school and went to grad school,
and had basically my wife, Ashley,
supporting us through grad school.
Around the same time that I started
the clinic is when I started the YouTube channel.
And so, you know, I don't want this to kind of be a thing
about how I'm talking about all of my accomplishments,
but the point that I'm trying to make
is that this, hitting this, you know,
100,000 subscriber milestone that YouTube
deems to be worthy of giving, basically,
a plaque for is something that,
there's a lot of sacrifice that went into.
And not just sacrifice on my behalf
and how I spend basically my whole weekend, you know,
scripting and researching for and filming videos,
and editing videos.
But it's something that takes away from family time as well.
Something that takes away from Ashley.
And so in a lot of ways,
I feel like this Silver Play Button is something
that I'm really, really proud of and really thankful for
to be quite honest with you,
because this wouldn't have happened
without the support of, you know,
family in my life and particularly Ashley, for this.
But all that being said, I do want to read
the letter that they sent.
It's a really nice letter and it says,
"Do you remember your first subscriber, your hundredth,
or your thousandth subscriber?
Chances are you do?
And we know that you'll definitely remember
your one hundred thousandth subscriber.
Your fans may have found you while searching YouTube,
learned about you through a friend,
or maybe you showed up as a recommended video.
No matter how they came to your channel,
fans stayed and their numbers increased
because of your unique voice
and the excitement of being part of the growing community
that you established."
Okay, calm down.
"We are thrilled to see the development of your community,
and are proud to honor your impressive milestone
for reaching 100,000 subscribers
with the Silver Creator Award; congratulations.
We know that you have many more stories to share
with your community, and we know that your fans
can't wait for you to engage and amaze them even more
with your commitment and creativity.
So keep creating. Keep building.
We can't wait to see what you'll do next.
And we're here to support you along the way.
And who knows?
When you reach your millionth subscriber,
we may just write to you and ask,
do you remember your one hundred thousandth subscriber?
Yours sincerely, Susan Wojcicki".
I don't remember how to say her name.
I knew it at one point, but that's the CEO of YouTube.
So, I wanna show you this here.
It's really slick looking.
Now, I get it.
There's a lot of channels out there
that are way bigger than mine, but you know,
this is just a really small niche channel.
I mean, the only thing I really talk about is hearing loss.
And yeah, there are, you know,
tens or hundreds of millions of individuals
who have hearing loss
and who I'm trying to create content for to help out.
And at the end of the day,
the vast majority of the people who watch the information
on my channel will never be my patients.
I mean, that's not really my goal.
I mean, some people do find me through the channel,
but at the end of the day, I started the channel
to help educate individuals about hearing loss worldwide.
And, regardless of whether or not that actually
was beneficial for me, it was,
and I believe is, massively beneficial
for a lot of people who have hearing loss.
So, here is the plaque. Really cool.
The play button is kind of like a mirror in there.
And it says,
"Presented to Dr. Cliff AUD for passing 100,000 subscribers"
and has, of course, the YouTube logo there at the bottom.
So, this is something that has, you know,
taken a lot of time and effort and work going into it.
And arguably of all the accomplishments
that I've been fortunate enough to accomplish
in my life at this point, this is probably
the one that was, honestly, the hardest to get,
and had the most work go into it,
and had the least amount of, I don't know,
recognition along the way with it.
And so I'm just really,
I'm really proud of this, to be honest with you.
And I wanna put it someplace nice.
And I also wanna thank you guys,
because if it wasn't for you guys, you know,
subscribing to the channel and watching my videos,
even the the bad videos, even these ramble-y vlog videos,
I wouldn't be as successful with creating content
as I am right now.
And I just wanna keep going to be honest with you.
This motivates me to keep going.
And, you know, even though I hit this milestone,
I think it was like in October of 2020,
and now we're at like 135 or 140,000 subscribers
at this point.
I know that the channel's just gonna keep growing
from here on going forward.
I think it's gonna take quite some time
for me to hit a million subscribers,
but that quite honestly
is the next goal, the next long-term goal.
'Cause my next short-term goal is really just, you know,
getting another video cranked out
that has high quality information
for anyone who has hearing loss
and cares to hear my opinion about how to best treat it.
So, guys, again, thank you.
This is something
that could not have been achieved without you.
And it could not have been achieved without Ashley,
without my parents, family, friends, coworkers, colleagues.
Just all the support's been great.
And I just wanna say that I appreciate it
and I appreciate you.
So that is really it for today's vlog, guys.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Of course, go ahead and give me that thumbs up
if you felt like this video was worthy.
Hit that subscribe button.
It takes me one step closer to getting to a Gold Play Button
that they will send to me if I hit a million subscribers.
So, again, guys, I appreciate it.
Take care and I'll see you next week.
(upbeat music)