Hello and welcome back for another episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast!
For this week’s episode, I had the pleasure of speaking with Nichole Kingham, Au.D. & Joe Furness, Owners and Co-founders of Audiology Academy.
In this episode, the three of us discuss:
– What Audiology Academy is and the backstory of how Nichole and Joe built the business and platform
– The first phase of the business and the initial learning module around Audiology Assistants
– The critical need for support roles within the hearing health setting, and the types of day-to-day tasks that can be delegated to support roles
– Phase two of Audiology Academy becoming a platform for other Audiologists and hearing professionals to layer their expert training modules on
– The types of courses available within Audiology Academy today and what’s coming down the pike soon
One of the big themes of Future Ear has been to share great ideas and expertise in an effort to learn from one another. So, it should be no surprise that I’m a big fan of what Joe and Nichole are building with Audiology Academy and thoroughly enjoyed this conversation with them!
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dave Kemp
Okay everybody and welcome to another episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast. Very excited for today’s chat with Dr. Nichole Kingham and Joe Furness. Why don’t we start with some introductions. So ladies, first, Nichole, tell us a little bit about who you are and what you do.
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
Sure. So my name is Nichole Kingham. I am an audiologist. I own a private practice. We have two clinics in Washington State. And I became an audiologist 25 years ago, working with a private practice. And I love to say that I was the first audiologist to hire an audiology assistant in Washington State. Not sure that that’s actually true, just because audiology assistants have been around for years, right? If we didn’t call them audiology assistants, we call them our front desk person, where they were doing our audiology assisting, along with all the other great things that front desk does. But what was going on at the time was I was a young mom, with three small children and working full time and in a private practice trying to grow. And I actually asked our director if we could hire another audiologists. And it seems to mirror a little bit of what’s going on now. Right now. It’s actually I think, compounded. But we had a hard time finding a good audiologist, number one, but then the expense of having another audiologist join our staff. And he said, No, we’re not hiring another audiologists, you’re gonna have to figure out how to do it. And I said, Well, what about someone who could come in and do all the back, the back lab work, all the important detail information that my degree is not required for, but necessary work to get the job done? What if we hire somebody to do that? And instead of having another audiologists, and he said, Great, do that? So we hired someone, but then we were like, what do we do with them? We how do we teach them everything we know? So I am very much a processes and procedures type of person. So I created a training for that person. And then people started getting wind of that in Washington and asking for us to teach them how to do it. And can we have your stuff that you use for training? And so I was I created a book, it was what Joe 190 pages something like Mr. Nicolas plan. thing. And that’s a little expensive to print. So what we were doing, that’s what we were doing. And then Joe sort of said, I think we can do this better. And that’s what Joe does. Joe looks at processes and says, Let’s streamline this and do it better and reach more people. So we put audiology assistant training online in 2016. Yep. Yes. And, and it’s just gone from there. Then as that went along, I actually had experts start talking to us about Alright, so you have this topic, expertise. And you took it and put it on a on an online platform. It’s reaching more people. That’s amazing. I am an expert as well. Can you help me do it? So we created audiology Academy as a platform for experts to reach other entrepreneurs, other audiologists, other business managers in audiology, to help them have access to an expert to teach them how to do something different in their practice, that they might might not have the experience for a one to expand their practice with. So not only do we do audiology, assistant training, but we do front desk training. We do billing training, with Kim Cavett, we do Dr. Jill case arm has training. We have all sorts of experts that are really focused on their one expertise area but with their help us as entrepreneur, entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial, audiologists get access to their brains. So it’s been a great fun time and expanding and that really has been of passion and a joy for me that’s you know, I love being an audiologist. But this other side of things and working with my husband has been also just a fun little extra. And now he knows
Joe Furness
More than he’d like to about audiology. That’s, that’s a true statement. I know way more than I ever desired to.
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
There was it was an interesting thing happened not too long ago, an audiologist asked me a question, and he jumped in and answer that. I was just like,
Joe Furness
that’s right. Yeah, osmosis. It’s it’s, it’s an amazing thing.
Dave Kemp
Yeah. That’s awesome. Well, thank you for that overview. I mean, yeah, to your point. This really kind of hits on a lot of the topics that we’ve been discussing on the podcast lately. The last few episodes have been around entrepreneurism in audiology. You to fit the bill for that like to a tee. And then also, like you mentioned, you know, there was a conversation I had with Shadi, who’s with staffing proxy, which is like a staffing company that specifically for the hearing health industry. And in that conversation, we talked a lot about kind of the labor shortage, particularly around audiologists, you know, you hear a lot of people talking about how difficult it is to hire an AED today. And that makes sense. There’s just not that many of them. And so it, I think, really begs the question of, you know, how does audiology make itself like, relevant and sustainable into the future, if there’s not a whole lot of audiologists, and I think that this whole approach of having extenders and having like, you know, support level staff that can do more and more tasks that the audiologist can then delegate to, and I think that you really hit on, you know, kind of the crux of that, though, which is like, you were your first customer, you know, you had to like learn this firsthand. And through trial and error. And you know, you’ve learned a lot and gained all that wisdom that you’re now repackaging and offering that to other people. And I think that that’s kind of at the root of what’s the big opportunity here is like, How does everybody kind of get in tune with best practices about not just an audiology assistant, but like you said, how do you maximize your front office staff? How do you make sure that you’re doing the billing, like, as efficiently as possible, so that you’re getting as much money as you can from a reimbursement standpoint, so I think it like is a very logical business that you’ve created. I think it’s really cool. So, you know, how did this first kind of begin, though, when, like, going back to the way that you described it, Nichole with, you know, you hire this person and you like, Alright, where do I even begin? So in like, the earliest infancy of audiology Academy, can you kind of just paint a picture of what that period was like?
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
Well, for me, I just, it really came down to I was working too hard. I was missing out on my kids. I was missing out, I missed my youngest daughter’s first steps. I I didn’t see her form her first words, that I’ll actually was with my family, which is good, right. But I recognized that I was missing out on those really important firsts. And so I wanted to create space and bandwidth for myself and the things that are important to me outside of Audiology. And so it became a, you know, it came out of need, which is, you know, right where we are right now with the industry, too, right? We can’t, we can’t just focus on hearing aids, we need to be able to spread out, we need to look at the other things that are professional Laos, and be the full professional that we are we we are we can be tinnitus specialists and APD specialists, and balance specialists and hearing specialists. And so I had to create something. Because of the type of personality I am, I’m not just gonna be like, Hey, come here, follow me, and I’ll teach you and I really wanted a roadmap. So I created the roadmap. And that’s really what I think audiologists are looking for they know they need an audiologist, right? That’s how do you do it? Exactly. They know they need a new front desk person. How do you train them? Well, we know we got to put tinnitus in our into our clinic, how do you do it? So it’s, uh, you know, our, we have a great training group, audiology online that really talks about the what, of Audiology. And our goal is to delve a little bit deeper into that. And Joe, I love how you talk about that. But yeah, why don’t you talk about a little bit about that?
Joe Furness
Well, first, I’m gonna do my introduction. Hi, I’m Joe Furness. We just kind of glossed over that. That’s okay. So it’s all by title. I jumped into this about 10 years ago trying to help Nichole with trying to reach more people with what are x It just worked with the bandwidth of the number of people trying to get access to what she had. And so and that’s really the starting point was just put it in a place where it allowed people to get access to it quicker, faster and easier. And that was because we were running out of time with me, even though she had the assistant and there and stuff, we now had a larger family and things just started going crazy. But what she was a little alluding to earlier is one of the things that we put on on our, our title, our tagline for Audiology Academy is inform, instruct and implement, you can go to a lot of different locations and, and be informed you go into conferences and you get you get the instructions, if you will, of why you should do something. But now you need the instructions on how to do it. And you don’t necessarily find those at the conferences that on other sites and things like that, you really have to go to the expert, the coaching the the the counselors or whoever that you have the in the experts person that’s going to inspire you to help you go from A to Z. And how to do it the best way without making so many mistakes. I mean, we can all go out there. But you know, the phrase, you know, why reinvent the wheel. So go to those experts. And that’s what we tried to do now is his audiology Academy wanted to create a platform where those experts can go and put their information on there and allow other clinics get access to that because, you know, one on one says you don’t have the bandwidth. But when you have multiple online training course, it creates that bandwidth. So that’s what I think is really cool about it. But it’s really audiology Academy is that how, how are you going to do this in, in your clinic. And so we’re always reaching out to more experts trying to find, find those, those real experts that are out there trying to create this platform for them. And we have more and more coming on every year. And it’s pretty exciting. Yeah. I just think that like, as Nichole was kind of like laying out, you know, balance APD tinnitus.
Dave Kemp
In she said something you know about how like, it’s not as if this is all news to people that like they should be thinking about diversifying into these areas or incorporating them, I think that it’s pretty well known that there’s, you know, you’re just gonna make yourself I think you’re gonna protect yourself a little bit, I think by diversifying your services, but it’s a question of how do you actually like, go on that Monday morning and begin to go through the process of bringing those into the fold? And it’s, you know, so it’s, like you said, getting into the house. And I think it’s really neat that you’ve got the platform that can enabled all of these different pillars of things that you know, of education, more or less. So like, when did that phase of this begin? Because it sounds like it started with the audiology assistants. But
Joe Furness
you know, what was that part like when you started to realize this can be more than just a singular training module platform for Audiology assistants. And it can actually be something that’s like, conducive to all kinds of education. I remember that conversation very clearly with Nichole. When we, we had to, we started off with a different platform. And we were on that for about about three years, two and a half, three years. And I was I had to find a new platform that was that was just gonna work better for the end user. And so I found this great platform, and it had this a lot of these great tools in there. And it was just like, we just have these three courses. This is a lot of great stuff. And then we was taught we were talking to somebody and I can’t remember exactly who it was. But it it dawned on me is like why don’t we just put their course on our platform to I mean, let’s just do that. Let’s just do it. And so we started have this conversation with another group. And anyway, the first person that we signed up was Dr. Cliff, he got his course on there. It was a you know, it leads into his his spin setup, platform, if you will, to get found by the people that love Dr. Cliff on YouTube and stuff like that. It’s a great idea. vetted audiologists, and but anyway, it’s it started there and it started with a conversation with somebody other people, and at first it was a little rocky, I don’t think people quite understood what we were trying to do. And we weren’t trying to invade anybody’s space. So coaching platforms or trying to, you know, invade into practice development groups or anything like that we are independent these are, these are experts coming to us to put their expertise on there. And that’s what I think is attractive about it is, it doesn’t matter if you’re with this practice group, or this practice group or whatever, that you can actually use the material on there. And it’s, it’s useful, and it’s going to help you better your clinic and yourself and your employees. So it started back in 2019, is when we started that, that change that transition. And the biggest hurdle that we took was was that Oh, I your your more than audiology assistant training? Yes. Yes, we are. We’re a lot more now. So that was the biggest hurdles. You know, we’ve been, we were pegged for just audiologists training. And it’s, it’s, we’re growing out of that. And there’s been a pretty good, great exposure. That’s wrong.
Dave Kemp
Yeah, that’s really cool. So when you you know, this thing was starting to come off the ground, you know, even before 2019? It sounds like you started the first iteration of this in 2016. So when did you start to feel that this thing was picking up momentum? And that like, wow, there’s actually something really to this, like, does anything stand out in your mind of those early days, some of the first interactions that you had with other audiologists, and, you know, starting to feel like that you were onto something with this. It was basically just the the sheer volume just started. And I know there’s there’s some other great
Joe Furness
platforms out there for training for Audiology assistants. We think they’re great. We have nothing against them. We encourage them if you can get training for your audiology assistant, wonderful. But all sudden, we noticed that we were picking up more speed. And that was because how our platform in the course was specifically was designed and we got great feedback on it. And it just started growing word of mouth was the best, the best thing for us was, it just started exploded last year. I don’t, I don’t know exactly what happened. But we grew so fast. In the number of courses and and the number of students and everything, everything just exploded. And it was an this year is starting off really strong as well. I feel like a lot of this is like comes from firsthand experience in terms of what you’re learning and then wanting to share.
Dave Kemp
So Nichole, like based on your experiences, and we’re just sticking with the audiology assistant track. When you were learning and having your own audiology assistant, in your practice? What were some of the things that you identified that you could delegate that maybe previously you hadn’t considered? And as time has gone on, I’m sure that this has kind of crystallized in your mind of, you know, how, again, how do you maximize the efficiency of the audiologist when you start to bring in support rolls like this? Right?
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
And, and so I’m going to be very blunt, it really came down to the bridge to the very first conversation in my head was one of the things I don’t want to do. Yeah, have to be done, but I don’t want to do so there was that? And then the other part is just, it’s about patient care. What are you doing to improve your patient care if you as the audiologists are constantly patient to patient to patient, and you’re seeing patients for two hours at a time? How many patients you’re actually helping and the patients that need you while you’re with another patient? How, how much are you helping them. I mean, you can only be in one place at one time. So it was about making sure our patients felt cared for was making sure that they could get the care that they wanted in the timeframe that they wanted. And so we had to shorten the time that the audiologist was with the patient. For instance, our hearing test hearing aid evaluations are two hours and we do a demo with our hearing aid evaluations. Once the demo is complete, we’ve done realer measures, we fit the instruments, they are not going to walk out the door with an instrument that they don’t know how to use. So an audiology assistant is going to help with that. Their instrumentation is Bluetooth ready. I’m don’t have time to teach them how to put it onto their phone, get it connected how to use the app, but it would be a disservice to them to let them walk out with a product that they don’t know how to use. That’s where the audiology assistant comes in. During the fitting process, we go through that whole thing again. So the, our practices a little bit different, we do demos, pretty much anyone who walks in with a hearing loss or working out with hearing aids. Once they have finished the demo, and they’re purchasing, instead of spending time to review all those necessary pieces of information, they’ll see me for any final fine tuning. But then the audiology assistant does the paperwork, setting them up for dusty Justin’s five keys, making sure that they understand their services that they’re going to get for the rest of the warranty period, that sort of thing that tells them we care about them, that we want them to stay involved and connected with our clinic, and that they know that this other person is there for them. So if I’m not available, this audiology assistant will be. So that is that customer care is number one. The other things are, you know, in the back back lab, so sending out our repairs, checking to make sure the repairs are gonna get in on time, there’s nothing like having an animal pick up on the schedule and going, Oh, the animals are not here yet. That’s not good customer care. So having someone that is watching out for those little details is really important. Audiology assistant does all of those things. So I tell patients or natal audiologists it really is about what things are necessary important for patient care, but not doesn’t require my degree.
Dave Kemp
So then, when you’ve started to expand into these other offerings, are these other training modules? How has that gone with? In terms of you know, like, are you getting feedback from your members of we’re taking this course like, do you get credentialed in any way? How does the actual process work? If you go up, you join audiology Academy? Like what does that look like in terms of the certification process, if you will?
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
Well, for Audiology, assisting, there is no certification, there is a certificate of completion, whether it’s with our course or with another course. So the Certificate of Completion is the most you’ll get from any course. Most states don’t require any sort of certification, there are some states that that do have certification, right, Joe? That’s great. So really, it’s just, they get a certificate at the end of the training, whether it’s the 10 unit course, or the 15 unit course. And the goal is, we want them to feel like they’ve accomplished something. And then it’s also a resume builder, right. So if they do end up leaving, they can take that certificate with them, so that they can tell a future employer that I’ve done this excellent training. That doesn’t mean that that’s, you know, should be your goal. But for this for in terms of audiology, assisting, this is something that you are, you should feel comfortable at the end of the training, that you know, what your job is and how to do it well, and that you can move forward with that in the future.
Dave Kemp
Do you find that most audiology assistants? Are they hired as an audiology assistant? Or do most people hire front office staff and sort of graduate them into that?
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
I think it goes both ways. There are definitely clinics that I know of that hire from within. So their goal is to put somebody on staff first and then move them into a position. The like I said, at the very beginning, a lot of people had audiology assistants before they just didn’t call them that they call them their front desk. So a lot of times you hire someone as a front desk person, and then you figure out oh, they’re actually really good with patient care. They really enjoy sitting with a patient and helping, that’s a perfect person to ask if they’d like to move forward and, and increase their skills. For my clinic in particular, where we’re working with a very savvy patient. We live in a very industrial heavy or tech heavy area. In the in my little area. There’s Boeing and Amazon and SpaceX. A lot of big companies that Microsoft as well. That little har der that Seattle every day, there’s so much tech, the the engineer mind, right. So we really do need an Costco professional. Yeah. So we’re looking for someone with some probably higher than high school level degree when they’re entering. But that’s not the case for a lot of clinics. They really just need a high school level degree and be willing to be trained.
Joe Furness
Depending on the state. I’ll put that asterics in there.
Dave Kemp
Yeah, because the data require more. Yeah. What? How I was gonna ask about that. So what what is the, you don’t need to get like granular like, well Maryland’s like this, but what by and large? How does that work? Or some just like, it’s totally a free for all and others are really strict? Or what’s that whole landscape look like?
Joe Furness
Yeah, some of them are free, you know, free for all. So that’s a good word. But there, you have to be cautious in those areas. And there’s a lot of people that will speak to that. And then there’s some states that are very stringent on the requirements, and just even the education level, and it eliminates so many great people, I don’t want necessarily those states to reduce their educational level, but just maybe make it a little bit easier. Because it’s really hard for those states to find, or to hire an audiology assistant, they have this great staff person, they’ve been on there for five years, and they can’t move forward because they don’t have a degree. And it’s just like, that’s unfortunate. But, you know, maybe they should go and try to get a degree. But that’s not a quick turnaround thing. So but the states that have nothing like for example, Washington State, the, there’s some great guidelines, triple Ada, and even Asha, have come through and said, Hey, this is these are the requirements that, you know, you should these are areas you should not cross, because they basically get into, into a gray area. So avoid the gray areas. And so, yeah, it’s each state’s a little bit different should always check your laws.
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
And we have a link on our website for every state. So if you want to get a quick look at what the state requirements are, it’s an easy way to get there.
Joe Furness
Yeah. And I tried to keep that thing up to date as much as possible. Each, some states move so quickly and change things. And it’s, it changes, but it doesn’t change drastically. But it does change, for example, like California was a big change at once California changed their their laws. We just had this huge influx of requests for training students from California. It was pretty wild.
Dave Kemp
You said that It’s growing like crazy right now, which is awesome. Congrats. Are you noticing any particular like course that is being heavily downloaded? Or? Or people are going through right now? Like, is there something in particular that people are really gravitating toward? Or is it all over the place?
Joe Furness
It’s visit, our primary is our analogy, assistant training. It’s that one is like the it’s the lion’s share of the percentage of courses. So the front desk training is becoming very popular. The building one is picking up great speed there. There’s a couple other that I’m surprised aren’t aren’t moving a little faster. One of the things that we are not so great at is marketing. What that’s not our thing. And so when we talk to our experts, yeah, we’re the platform. So when we talk to the experts, we say, hey, you know, we’ll do a couple posts here or there. And you’ll see, we’re not the greatest at this. That’s not what we do. Oh, that’s because our team, our team, it’s it’s me and Joe, for the most part, right? And I’m not a marketing person. You’re an IT guy. Yeah, yeah. And Nichole’s running two practices.
Dave Kemp
And AAA board and a board, you know, I go can you were Weren’t you the emcee at Jill’s women of Wonder conference this year? You got a lot on your plate.
Joe Furness
Yeah, so marketing is just what we don’t do. And that might help the the, the experts that are on there a little bit better. It’s if we try to find a way to make that a little bit easier for them on, but I’d love it if some of them do a great job of marketing themselves. And have them work with manufacturers and yeah, courses are offered to the manufacturer points. And that sort of is interesting, makes it a little tougher for them. But I think, you know, but then that’s one of the reasons why it’s on this platform is to help them but that’s there’s a couple of other but like, for example one I don’t know why it’s not going running off the shelf is the unbundling the tinnitus, the abd AR billing, I mean those things There’s there’s so many great things on their courses from experts that teach you how to put this in your clinic. I mean, and it’s, it’s an investment, but at the same time, one of the things that we talk about is that we don’t want to say, hey, we need to grow our our hearing aid deliveries by X percent, show growth. It’s it’s services, what can we do, right? provide more services, and more billing and those areas, and you’re like, hey, so if I, as we all know, some services, you should probably create another LCC or she’s been LLC and put it in the business. Because you’re gonna build the patient directly if you’re, you know, and so a lot of these quarterbacks and how do you do that? Right? And what’s so neat about that, and they explain this in his courses, so All right, yeah, it’s, I don’t, I think I’m doing a disservice to our expert by that, you know, doing more of these types of things. But
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
there, there’s amazing courses. And what I found interesting is the courses that people are taking are, like the that are more like motivational forces, like,
Joe Furness
talk about some of those, Joe? Like, how to avoid negativity. That’s, I don’t know why it’s that it’s maybe it’s because it’s free, we have a lot of free courses on there as well. But, like, just empowerment of courses, like how to just basically find your, your passion, that’s a good one. That’s, there’s a lot of excitement around that, how to find your passion.
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
And it’s, I don’t know why, but it seems to be quite popular. And then there’s one called audiology one on one, which is sort of a, you, you just lost your front desk person who have to hire somebody right away. They know nothing about audiology, like get get, it’s like the bootcamp. It’s, like, get them some information, right. I love you on that. Yeah. And that one came from because
Joe Furness
that was a necessity. These who hire a front desk person that’s got 1015 20 years of experience sheets, fabulous, she great interaction, but she knows nothing about the industry zero. And so when you start using terminology, issues, they just stare at you like, and on top of that, they really don’t really understand that there’s so many different medical fields that that are all touching into this one profession. And there’s one field and you’ve got to know the difference between them and the terminology that goes with it. So we created that to try to help somebody. It worked well. And And anyways, there’s there’s all those weird things that kind of happened. Yeah. Yeah, I’m excited about the course that’s coming up that is about how to do an audiogram. Oh, yeah, that one’s that’s, it’s right there. I will release. I mean, what is the motivation for each new course that you develop usually firsthand, like, shoot, I have this scenario in my practice, and I bet there’s other people that would have the same thing. Well, this one specifically is, is another expert. And having been working with them for a couple of years now. They have a fantastic simulator, online, and they have been working with us and our assistance, because, you know, we teach them how to do screenings and things like that. And he just, he just likes the platform, and he thinks it’s doing some great stuff. And he noticed that he wants to create diesen. And the first one is just a, you know, does your audiologist know how to, to, you know, do an audiogram and are not just on the ologists instrument specialist, instead of another audiologist, do you want to make sure that your hearing instrument specialist is actually doing an appropriate audiogram billing for it or not, that your your hearing assessment specialist should know how to do a full audiogram. So you can use that training to make sure that they are well well trained in that. Yeah, and it’s also and how it’s designed. It’s also it starts off slow enough that if you’re going to school to be an audiologist or whatever, that it actually helps you with your training and how to it starts you off on the right foot to do it. Right. Right and So it starts off, I think like CliffsNotes for audiometry. Yeah, yeah. And a practice a patient or practice patient that you don’t have to go and grab your, your sister or your cousin to go in and and practice on those. Those people, if this, these are patients, these are digital patients, and they react in the appropriate ways. And you need to figure out how to do it correctly. And so I think it’s a it’s a fabulous tool, and
Dave Kemp
I can’t wait for that one come out. I’m super excited about that. Yeah, just this whole thing is, it’s really exciting. Because I think it just again, it gets to the heart of its, you know, in when you’re actually thinking about the execution of how do you how do you roll out a standardized, you know, learning module more or less, and like, I think it’s really neat that you’ve built the infrastructure to just kind of like, plug and play almost any kind of learning module in there. And going back to, you know, kind of like, well, we don’t do a whole lot of marketing, I think it’s on the expert to say that I have this course that’s available through audiology Academy. And so you know, I think that that the onus is almost more on the people that have developed the module. And I think that’s neat that like this infrastructure even exists, because in the past, without something like this, it would have all just been so fragmented. And so then you’re really at the whims of, you know, have you been exposed to this particular person’s really good course under this, so to consolidate it all onto one platform makes a ton of sense. So you know, Right Place Right Time, it sounds like you really did develop a, a very much needed, kind of, like, infrastructure level platform. So what does the remainder of this year look like for you to with audiology Academy? I know that Nikola you, your your practice is booming, it seems. But you know, for this side of your, your world? What does this year look like? And what are some of the things you’re looking forward to? Without getting into any of the secrets?
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
I’m actually really excited because we’re rolling out a new look and feel to the website. So I’m just trying to make it more accessible and just easier to find information and that sort of thing. So that’s coming out very shortly, that should be rolling. Now we say that, I mean, I started the project back in October,
Joe Furness
and our September, and with everything going on, we opened up a clinic. And that’s up on you or anything? No, no, right. That was a gentle I was out there. Great. Yes. Yes, whatever they’d be doing for the next month. So it really is, we’ve got somebody, a developer that’s really doing a fantastic job of trying to get this to navigate a lot easier. share more information, do a bit more marketing on there to so that you get when you’re working with up go for one specific type of product, or course that you get exposure to the other ones that are potentially kind of aligned to what you’re currently taking, you know, all that kind of stuff. That’s that’s, that’s some water coding stuff in the background that I don’t do. But it really, you know, if you look at it right now, and I’ll apologize to anyone that I find might insult them, but I wanted to stuff it looks like a 12 year old design some of these cards that was made it Yeah, so I want the design out of graphics design, or anything like that. But I just like it itself that you know, because we start getting courses and experts and paying night and I needed a format that I can show Plug, plug, plug, plug, plug, plug, plug, plug plug. And so I did everything I could to really make it a lot easy for me. And, and Nikolas is like oh, no, no, no, no, no. No. The ad. Oh, come on. 80s were a great decade.
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
But yeah, some work like what eight?
Dave Kemp
I was born in 89. So
Joe Furness
I am an ad Smith. Yeah, I can say that. No, there you go. But yeah, we’re, that’s what’s coming down. We got a couple of more courses. We had one just pop on there. I’ve done a lot of marketing with it. We’ve got some more business management type courses, hopefully that soon as I can get on an agreement site. She’s got a great course. I’m expecting big things with this one in the industry. It’s she’s she’s gonna she’s gonna be a disrupter, for sure. SMD fantastic. And then we have the one that we spoke about. We’ve got a couple of more in the pipeline. But you know, all wars, we’re starting to build out this really round and exciting. recourses toolbox. Yeah, the toolbox is ginormous right now. It’s just getting bigger and bigger. That’s what we’re excited about. And I think that’s where it’s not necessarily about the growth. It’s about the penetration, the more people we can to help them. The more people that the the experts get the help as well. I mean, that’s that’s the we, we’re just one piece of it. And it’s really about the whole team, all the experts and our partners, we we’ve partnered with some, some groups, so that they can offer discounts to the members, because it’s really important. There’s training that they don’t provide that they know that we can we are platform, how’s that? So it’s really, it’s really growing. So it’s, you know, in fun, it’s five? Yes, that’s the important thing, it is seems like it
Dave Kemp
is so as we kind of come to the close here, I guess I’d be curious, like, clearly you’re making an impact? Is there anything in particular, you don’t have to name names or anything? But are there any stories or anything like that, that stand out in your mind of feel good moments of just like what you’ve been building and putting all this hard work toward that you’re like, feeling like there’s a payoff, because you’re hearing from people that, hey, I took your course. And this is like really helped transform my practice in one way or another? Are you getting those kinds of testimonials or anything like that?
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
I hear from audiologists all the time that it tends to be the ones that are skeptical about do I really need an audiology assistant. And then when they take the leap to do it, and find out how much time that they save, that they give back to themselves. That those are the fun stories. I have one audiologist friend who said, I didn’t think I would ever get out of the office before five ever again. Yeah, and it’s a little things right, being able to just be like, Hmm, I’m done for the day, I’m gonna go out have a glass of wine. Yeah, instead of having a workday every day. Those are the little things I love to hear. Because it’s exactly where I was at, that I did not have personal time, it really was about building the business. And the building the businesses is important, but we’ll work on your business, not in your business, have somebody else who can who can help you so that you can live the life you want to live.
Joe Furness
Now, I’ll have to say that it’s been, I’m gonna give a shout out to our audiology assistant who is actually going to school for to be a dispenser, really proud of him really excited for him. And for so I want to say from from a business owner side of things. Having that person at the clinic has just been amazing, yet it’s allowed the other the other audiologist or to have the audiologist to be able to see more patients do more things. If I could be my own testimony, I I don’t know why everybody’s not doing this already. If you’re if you’re even if it’s your front desk person, that’s great. Move on to an audiologist buy a new front desk person, audiology assistant. The growth that you have, the time that you will get is just amazing. But yeah, to answer your question we get at well, we go to the conferences. We used to have a booth and stuff like that we stopped doing that, because it’s just really going around and talking with people. And when you talk them, the stories are amazing. So yeah, oh, I loved it. And then we do get testimonials for our courses, and things like that. Some of them are out there. But yet the face to face ones I think are the most amazing. Yeah, that you see the joy in their, in their eyes. And so cool. I just thought of this, as you were saying that. Is there a course or plans for a course for an audiology assistant to take to help graduate into becoming a hearing instrument specialist.
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
Did I just did I just jumped the gun. Now, you’re not the first one to to ask that. I think that it makes perfect sense that that’s where this goes. There again, are other training programs for hearing instrument specialists. But how do you do it? Well inside an audiology clinic because it’s speaking to your point earlier that we have to figure out how to do things differently. We’re coming up against a bottleneck where we will not have enough staff. Yes, it’s not finding audiologists for the life of us. And so we have to figure out how are we going to stay viable? And I think hearing, hiring hearing instrument specialists, training them to work inside your culture
Dave Kemp
is the is the next logical step. So is there anything in the works for that? No, it is something that is on the top of mind for sure. So is the with regard to the actual audiology assistant training, though? Is that something that, you know, seems like it’s targeted toward the audiologist or the practice owner? And then it’s kind of disseminated down? Is that correct? Like they have their assistant or aspiring assistant go through this program? Or is it more about kind of like, here are the things to consider if you’re going to have an assistant?
Nichole Kingham, Au.D.
I know it’s kind of subtle, but is it actually designed for the the aspiring assistant themself? So we very clearly say that audiology assistants are not meant to be autonomous. This is not something that you are going to train yourself and walk into a practice and say, I am a trained audiology assistant. Right. This is meant to be underneath the guidance of an audiologist. Gotcha. Okay. So the audiology assistant training comes with a supervisor manual. And the supervisor guide is meant to tell the supervisor, these are the things your student is learning learning today. And make sure that you shore that up. So you’re going to focus on asking questions about this topic this week, or you make sure that you do an actual hands on training for this topic, during this week, because they’re learning this information. So again, it’s meant to take the thinking off of the audiologist and make it easy. And the training has to be done by the audiologist, audiology assistant. But it’s under the supervision of an audiologist makes total sense. It could be done by a practice manager to I suppose, but really, my goal was, as an audiologist, I want oversight, for sure that support role, because there’s a lot of culture also has to be trained, right? I mean, you can send
Joe Furness
you can send your assistant off to another place to train them to do specific things, tasks and things like that, that might be wonderful. But when they come back, that might not be the the exact way that your culture or the processes that you do, or, or even allow them to do. There’s so many, there’s so many variables that we believe that the training should happen in the course with with the in the clinic that they’re going to be supporting and helping grow. It’s nice to send them off. And it’s nice to happen. Go and read stuff and watch videos and practice games to remember information. But you need that. Reinforcement, mentorship, yeah, mentorship in the clinic, that’s hard to find outsourcing it. But it’s it’s doable. I mean, don’t get me wrong there. I think there’s a group that’s trying to do that I feel hard, just go for it. I mean, more assistance that we can get in the industry, that’s gonna be super awesome. But I think, you know, the clinics need to take a little bit ownership of that is their employee, that is their culture, that is their practices. And at the end of the day, when you say that your license is that risk, it is at risk if you if you if you don’t know what that if you don’t know what that person is doing and exactly how to do so. But, you know, I don’t know why I got on that tangent. But no, it makes
Dave Kemp
it makes sense, though, I was interested. I mean, that that’s actually good to know that like how that’s administered. And it makes sense that this was designed by audiologists so that, you know, obviously you feel strongly that there should be oversight. And I think that probably is a really strong endorsement that a lot of people can rally behind a lot of audiologists, because I think that probably is one of the biggest fears is like, you know, is there going to be any part of Audiology? Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Okay. Well, I appreciate you, too. coming on, ask question. Will you be at AAA? You said you’re going to be part of the program. Right. It’s in Seattle’s? Yeah, so we can’t It’s not like we can’t go. Right. It’s in your backyard? Yeah. Just like it was in my backyard last year in St. Louis. So, Joe, will you be wearing the kilt?
Joe Furness
Yeah, it’s, that’s yes. The short answer, or at least one of the dabbler eggs and stuff like that.
Dave Kemp
That’s like my heritage. And so I love it. You always stick out my mind because like I was always like the first few times I’ve met You probably didn’t even remember your name, but I was like, oh, that’s the guy that always first kill. Yeah, yeah, it’s very exotic.
Joe Furness
You know, and I’ve grown accustomed to the the Gox. There’s like, all this. What is that guy to? Right? You’re wearing a slacks. I’m wearing a kilt. What way to stand out?
Dave Kemp That’s awesome. Well, I can’t wait to see you too there. Thanks again for coming on the show today. And thanks for everybody who tuned in here to the end. We’ll chat with you next time. Cheers.
