- Hey, guys.
Welcome back to the DrCliffAuD vlog.
This is vlog number 102,
and this is New Year's Day 2022.
Thank you so much for joining me on the vlog today.
As you can see, I'm in a little bit different location.
Ashley and I decided to go up to Flagstaff for the weekend
to celebrate the new year.
And it's cold up here and it is snowing.
It's been snowing on and off the entire time
that we've been here for the past,
basically two days at this point.
If you have not yet seen my other New Year's video
that I posted at midnight,
you can go and check that out.
I will link that video down in the description.
That video is really talking about
some of the major changes that happened
in the hearing aid world
over the course of 2021
and how it's going to impact things going forward
in 2022.
But for today's vlog,
I really want to be talking about
what things were like for me over the course of 2021,
both in the clinic and for the YouTube channel.
But before I get into all of that,
if you could do me a huge favor and click the like button,
it really helps out the channel
and it'll help me get 2022 started off in the right way.
So going back to the beginning of 2021,
really started the new year really optimistic,
but literally like the third day in January of 2021,
I ended up getting COVID.
Of course, Ashley ended up getting COVID as well.
And this happened right around the same time
that we were moving into the new clinic.
Now, if you guys have been following
the vlog for a while now,
you know that the vlog started off with me
going through the whole purchasing process,
building out process,
and then actually opening up the clinic in Phoenix.
And if you haven't seen those vlogs yet,
go back and check them out
because they are really, really cool,
at least in my opinion,
of course, I'm biased on that.
But 2021 was a really a great year.
I mean, starting off in the new clinic,
it was a great change of pace,
great change of scenery for us.
It expanded our space,
our treatment space and all of that.
And it was just really fun to kind of go into an environment
that you designed yourself
and it's set up in exactly the way that we really want it.
And so that's really, really been cool.
The other thing that happened really early in 2021
is that we hired our first audiology assistant.
You know, as we've been getting busier and busier,
you know, I've had my clinic since 2017,
and with the help of the YouTube channel, of course,
we have a ton of patients who want to come in and be seen,
not just by me, but the other audiologists
that I have working with us as well.
And you know, whether it's locally
or whether they travel in from out of town.
And so in order for me to maintain the same level of care
that I wanted to give,
or that I want to give to my patients
and still be able to see new patients,
I had to kind of get the help of someone else
to kind of come in and help me with the tasks
that I don't necessarily need to be doing with my patients.
So I can spend more on patient care
and doing things that are more critical
from an audiology standpoint.
So having an audiology assistant
has been an absolutely phenomenal addition.
I wish we would have done it a lot sooner,
but better late than never.
So we've been functioning with an audiology assistant
for a good chunk of this year.
And I want to continue to essentially do that
over the course of 2022 as well.
One thing that you guys may also have noticed in 2021
is that I got hit by a car on my bicycle.
It totally wrecked my bicycle.
Good news is, I got a new bicycle.
There was no like legal stuff
that happened with any of that,
no insurance stuff that happened with that.
It was determined that I was at fault
because I didn't yield for this vehicle
who cut in front of me when I was in the bike lane.
So it is what it is.
I didn't sustain any major injuries.
I still have a few little wrist issues with my left wrist,
but nothing too serious.
Nonetheless, I'm just happy that I was okay.
I'm happy that I had an audiology assistant
when I went through that
because they were able to help me do a lot of things
that I was not able to do for about two weeks
because of my wrist,
but everything else healed up just fine
and moved past it, got a new bicycle out of it.
So really happy about that.
But then we also brought in an extern this year.
So if you're unaware of how it works
with getting your audiology degree,
essentially you go through four years of undergraduate
and then you go through four years of a graduate degree
in audiology.
And you go through the first three years
going through clinical rotations
and taking your coursework and all of that.
And then the last year is really you going in
and working for a clinic full time
as a graduate extern is what they call it.
And so we've had an extern since I think May of 2021
and it's really helped out the clinic.
You know, it's basically like almost having
another audiologist on staff
to be able to help with a lot of things.
Of course, a big component of it is
us training this individual to be able to do
their job as an audiologist.
So when they graduate, they can hit the ground running.
And so that's been really beneficial.
I know that we're not going to have an extern for 2022.
We didn't get, in my opinion,
the candidate that we wanted inside of the clinic.
And as you guys know,
we have a really, really high standard.
And so essentially no one met that standard
and it is what it is.
So we're going to try to function through 2022
without an audiology extern.
Another thing that we did over the course of 2021
is that we added a business consultant.
Now this has been one of the best decisions in my opinion,
that we made over the course of 2021.
And we've talked about it in a vlog previously,
but I know that there was some of you out there
who thought that that was like the worst spending of money
that we could have possibly done.
And that business consultants are not worth anything.
But I can tell you that having a business consultant
inside of the clinic has really improved the way
that we function as a clinic and as a team.
It has improved the culture of our clinic.
It has improved the patient experience in my opinion.
Just having a set of outside eyes
come in and be able to kind of point out things
and give suggestions on things that we could do better
as a team inside of the clinic
has been extremely beneficial.
It hasn't affected anything from a treatment perspective,
but from everything from the front of the house
to really some interaction with patients,
even on the provider side has been improved
because we had someone come in and kind of help us
with the growth that we've had.
I mean, 2021 was an extremely big year for us
in terms of how much the clinic grew.
And we had to make sure that we had everyone
on the same page in order to treat our patients
the best way possible.
So adding a business consultant was huge,
which leads into this, you know, over the course of 2021,
we had our biggest year ever.
I mean, we over doubled the amount,
the size of the business basically.
And it's been growing like absolute crazy
over the course of this year.
And the best part about that is,
is that we treated a lot of individuals who had hearing loss
and we treated them in my opinion,
the best way they could possibly be treated,
by following best practices,
but not only that in order to optimize treatment outcomes,
but we also really doubled down
on this person-centered care approach to treatment.
You know, our patients come in
and it's really a collaborative experience
when someone goes through treatment,
and they participate in their own treatment.
In fact, that's a requirement inside of our clinic.
It's not a, you come in, you just get your hearing tested.
Oh yeah, you need hearing aids.
Here's your hearing aids,
you know, come back in six months
so we can clean them for you.
That's like, that's not how it works,
at least inside of our clinic.
It is a very, like I said,
collaborative experience where patients
have to actively participate in their treatment,
because if we're going to optimize things,
we need to make sure that we understand
an individual's wants, needs and values,
and that we need to know what they're going through,
essentially for us to be able to administer treatment
in the right way.
And then they have to again,
be an active participant in this treatment
because treatment doesn't end
when you get fit with hearing aids,
it continues on until basically forever.
And that's something that we really want
our patients to understand.
And we think it's in their best interest
to make sure that we practice in a person-centered care way.
And so that is probably one of the reasons why
clinic growth has happened the way it has as well.
The other thing, now, switching over a little bit
to the YouTube channel,
I think we posted about 150 plus new videos
over the course of 2021,
which is just crazy thinking there's only 365 days in a year
and 150 of those days,
we essentially posted some video content.
So that also has probably led to the growth
of the clinic as well.
You know, people see the videos,
they want to come in and get treated at our clinic
because they know the level of care
that they're going to receive inside of our clinic.
But the most rewarding thing about that
is that there's a lot of individuals who learn information
from the YouTube channel that don't even ever come in
to see us in the clinic.
And I'm totally okay with that.
And I'm happy for that.
In fact, that was the original intent for the channel.
It wasn't to build up the practice.
It was to get individuals in the right treatment
to learn more about their own hearing loss
so they could be advocates for themselves.
And, you know, the growth of the Best Practice Pro Network,
which is a network of hearing care professionals
who also adhere to a high level standard of care,
following best practices,
that has grown as well over the course of 2021.
And I'm extremely proud of that
because there was no better email that I get
than someone saying,
"Hey, I went to one of the providers
"inside of your Best Practice Pro Network
"and I got the best care that I've ever received
"since I've had hearing loss."
And so that is a very rewarding thing for me.
Now, in terms of, you know,
we've treated a lot of hearing losses
and I would be remissed if I didn't say that
my mother is one of our patients.
My mother lives in Illinois.
Fortunately, I was able to have her come out
to Phoenix this year and treat her hearing loss.
You know, she watches pretty much every single one
of these videos and leaves at least one
or multiple comments on every single video.
And if you haven't seen her comments
down in the comment section,
that means you're not going into the comment section at all.
So if you want to see what my mom thinks
about her hearing aids,
you'd probably be able to figure out
which hearing aids she has
based on looking at her comments in the comment section.
And mom, I love you.
I know you're watching this vlog,
I'm sure you're going to leave some more comments
down in the comment section of this video as well.
So as we end 2021 and work into 2022,
you know, I'm really expecting this next year
to be an even better year
than what we had over the course of 2021.
And you know, one of the things that we're doing
is we're going to be bringing in another audiologist
to the team.
You know, with the growth that we've had,
if we grow anything close to what we grew in 2021,
over the course of 2022,
then we're going to have to have more help
inside of the clinic.
Otherwise, you know, the quality of care is going to suffer
and the amount of patients that we can treat
is going to go down.
So we need to bring someone in to help,
you know, kind of grow on what we've already established
and to make sure that we're adhering
to best practice standards
and to make sure that we're continuing to provide
really high-level patient care inside of the clinic.
So I'm super excited to be bringing in another audiologist
here early in 2022.
Another thing I'm looking forward to in 2022
is being able to collaborate,
to kind of grow awareness of everything
that I've been talking about on my channel so far.
As you guys know,
I'm a really big advocate for best practices,
person-centered care, like I've talked already
about in this video.
But I need help to kind of grow what I've already started.
And so I'm working on developing some partnerships
and some collaborations inside of the profession
to help grow and expand upon what I'm doing already.
And so hopefully you guys will see that
over the course of 2022.
I'm expecting 2022 to be a fantastic year.
Of course, I'm always an optimist,
but nonetheless, I really think that 2022
is going to be fantastic.
Hopefully not just for me, but for you guys as well.
So that's kind of where I'll leave today's video guys.
That's what I've been up to over the course of 2021.
Now you have an idea of what I want to do
over the course of 2022.
I hope you guys had a fantastic New Year's
and I hope you get 2022 started off the right way.
That being said, guys, I'll see you next week.
(upbeat music)