Hello and welcome back for another episode of the Future Ear Radio podcast!
For this week’s chat, I sat down with Craig Kasper, Au.D., Owner and Managing Director at NYHD | Institute of Hearing & Balance, for a wide-ranging interview about the past, present and future of Audiology.
During our chat, we touched on:
– His backstory and how he got into Audiology, gaining a business background as a consultant, and then returning to Audiology to start a private practice
– Craig’s process of acquiring business acumen and expertise and then leveraging those skills in a private practice
– The importance of actively building relationships with all types of allied medical professionals and being the expert in all things Audiology (not just hearing aids)
– Takeaways from the 2024 American Academy of Audiology conference
– Dr. Kasper’s longtime specialization with tinnitus patients and his initial experience with bimodal neuromodulation tinnitus treatments
– Ways the market might adapt to a growing demand for hearing care services with a flat or diminishing supply of Audiologists
– Mentorship in Audiology – bridging the generational gap and imparting wisdom from one generation to the next
-Thanks for Reading-
Dave
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Dave Kemp
All right, everybody, and welcome to another episode of the future ear radio podcast. Very excited to be joined today by Dr. Craig Casper, Craig, thanks for coming on how you doing today?
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
It is great to see you, I really appreciate the opportunity to talk. You know, these are these are always enlightening conversations that you’re having with people in the field. So I’m honored to be a part of the whole thing.
Dave Kemp
Awesome. Well, thank you for coming on today. Well, let’s get right into it wanted to, you know, kind of hear your story, how you got into this whole profession. You’re doing a lot of really interesting things up in New York. And I want to like, give you a chance to sort of segue your your story into what you’re doing now. So just go back to the start and share how you got into this whole field. It’s
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
funny, after a while you think your own story is so boring. Why do I have to keep telling my story because nobody really cares. But I appreciate the opportunity to kind of talk a little bit about that, because I think it is important, kind of to understand where somebody where they started from and why they ended up doing what they do for a living because there’s usually some ties, right? So I started out when I was a kid, I was really interested in music, I played bass in a punk band as a kid. And, you know, thought, for years that I was going to take the music path. And in parallel to that my dad who was in the education system in New York City was was very heavily involved in the science side of things. So I remember his way back, maybe even like second or third grade, he brought back this old telescope, not microscope for me. And I remember him pricking his finger and putting his blood on the slide. So I can actually look at, you know, the the blood the cells. And ever since that point I was fascinated with, with science. And in particular, it kind of rolled into like neuroscience in such a weird way. I don’t know where that came from as a kid. But I was really interested in the nervous system in the brain. Very early on. But fast forward, I ended up going to college and I was a communication major thought that I was going to end up doing something in TV or radio at that point. All of my friends were going to work at that, at that time, MTV was still making, putting music videos on. So a lot of my friends were interning during, during the summer with MTV, and they got production jobs and all that. And I actually fell into a an introduction to audiology course in my major. And I had this wonderful professor who was a speech pathologist, but he was the only person on campus teaching speech and audiology as to the undergrads. And the first thing that I realized when I sat in that class, for the first day of use, I had absolutely no idea what I was walking into, was that it combined all of my interests that combined acoustics and the brain and anatomy and physiology. And he was talking about sound and it was just it was fascinating. And it was it was the first time that I sat in a college class where I actually had a very, very high level of interest in the content. Prior to that I was pretty close to failing out, I think at some point. In any case, that kind of sparked this amazing interest and desire to learn. And I ended up at the University of Buffalo, lucky to have fallen into the kind of the the mentorship and under the the, just the brilliance of people like Jack hats and Richard Salvy and Don Henderson was up there, I actually ran into one of my clinical professors at AAA this year, Nancy STECHER, who’s who, so excited to see her because she was such an important part from my early clinical days at Buffalo as well. And I think that’s an important concept that I’d love to talk about is this concept of mentorship, right? How important that is, especially for the future of the profession. But those were people that made such an Derek Sanders was up there and the king of counseling, so it was really kind of a formidable period of time for me because I was able to see audiology from a very different perspective, because I was being taught not only by clinicians and outside the box thinkers, like Jack cats, but you know, we had auditory neuroscientists who were doing incredible work, looking at the brains of people who can control tinnitus, for instance. And, again, that just we’re talking about the mid 90s at that point. So it was really, really incredible period of time. So so it combined my my love of music and sound and anatomy and physiology and everything, and it was really a wonderful accident. What do you think about it? Yeah, it was really pretty cool accident. And I do hear those stories, actually, time and time again, from my colleagues where they nobody goes into audiology. At least not a lot of people do go into go into audiology thinking that they’re going to be audiologist, right?
Dave Kemp
It’s not like you’re a kid and you’re like, you know, unless you have some exposure to it. But yeah, it’s it seems to be a recurring theme that people fall into it more or less. Yeah,
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
exactly. It’s it’s it And maybe it’s becoming more and more of that kind of career choice because people are understanding. When I first first started my career I was I was working at Columbia Presbyterian. That’s where I did my clinical fellowship, and again, had wonderful mentors there as well. And it, it was, every time somebody would say to me, what do you do for a living? They’d say, You’re a cardiologist. Like no totally different part of the body. Yeah. But, and I don’t know if that was a hearing joke, either, to be honest with you, but I hated those. But But again, the importance of mentorship and having, you know, people who helped me look outside of the box, at the profession, and how we can contribute to what we’re doing for our patients, but equally as important what we’re doing for the next generation of clinicians that are coming up in the boards of kind of passing the torch, right. So yeah, so So my, my clinical work there was was really interesting. And I ended up starting a Ph. D program, which a CUNY has there for about two years. And then I realized pretty quickly, I didn’t want to do research for the rest of my life. So I switched gears, went back for the AUD and completed that. And again, wonderful people in that program, too. I just think you have these people in your life that you can pick out and you can remember exactly how they contributed to your thought process. And I really hope that I’m doing the same thing for the for the people who work with me as students and also in my practice. But I think what’s really interesting, there was a turn that that I took in my in my professional career, because I was I knew that there was a gap on the business side of my knowledge base. And for me, maybe some students get a little bit of better, a little better business education now going through their AUD programs. But I realized at that point, and this was at the kind of the first.com, boom, at that point, I saw a lot of people making a ton of money in the.com days. And everybody was talking about venture capital and startups and all these different things, which was very, very exciting to me, because I was always a builder. I was I was someone who was an entrepreneur, and who wanted to build things. And I realized I needed a business education. So I ended up leaving Audiology for about three years to focus on how I can get that business background. And I was very lucky again to fall in with a PhD psychologist who left private practice many, many years before. And he ended up opening a consulting firm working with startup biotech and medical device companies. So long story short, I ended up gaining an amazing real world experience in how to build companies, teams, I understood venture capital and in the investment process, building a business from scratch. And then 911 happened. Wow, okay. Yeah, so once 911 happened, a lot of a lot of investment money dried up clearly. And there’s a lot of uncertainty in the world. My wife and I were about to have our first child around that period of time. So it and I knew I was going back to audiology at some point, that just accelerated my process going back into the audiology world. And again, kind of worked in in, in enlarge, TNT practice. I ran their business for a period of time, and then about 16 years ago, started my own practice. So
Dave Kemp
okay, so today, let’s, let’s pull up there and focus in on some of these things that you said, you know, so the, I find that to be really interesting that you went and you kind of, like, sought out the business side of things. I mean, that’s obviously no secret that that might be it’s just a really valuable skill set that is, you know, removed or not attached to the, the pursuit of audiology, I guess, you know, to get your degree, and then you’re sort of if you wanted to go in and, and that was such a common route for people to go is the private practice route, you were sort of there was like, you know, implication there that you knew how to run a business, how to start a business, how to manage a p&l, like, all that different stuff. So I find that to be so interesting that getting that kind of experience early on, what were some of the things that you found were really apparent right away that you didn’t realize in and were really tangible things that you were able to kind of take with you.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
I think the whole experience, it was massively humbling. Because coming out of healthcare, we’re so focused on, you know, anatomy and physiology and the care portion and empathy and all the different things that we do so well as clinicians. What I realized right away is I had absolutely no idea what a p&l was. I had absolutely no idea what made a business tick. Literally, like I had no concept whatsoever. My family was not in business. My I didn’t have someone to lean on at that point. and even the folks who were in private practice that I was, you know, spend time clinically with, it’s not as if they sat down with me and started to discuss the business aspects of what it takes to run a private practice. And to be honest with you, I think a lot of them probably weren’t sure themselves. Yeah, they were just kind of flying by the seat of their pants. So it really opened my eyes up to the importance of understanding spreadsheets, you know, and the importance of how to, and not to overdo it necessarily, but, but data is important, it really is critical and understanding KPIs and objectives and understanding that how to work backwards in time and to set goals to meet those objectives. Holding myself responsible to someone else, because at the end of the day, I had to be accountable to our clients and to my boss to be able to explain certain things from a business perspective that I was seeing, or that I was learning about, and that might contribute to the overall picture of their success or failure. In some cases. Understanding that business is not as easy as we think it is, you know, everybody thinks they’re just gonna hang their shingle, and then the next thing, you know, they’re gonna get a flood of patients through the door. But what I understood also from that period of time was, I had to market myself as a part of a consulting firm, so people understood who I was as a professional, and how I might be able to contribute to them, I had to go out, I had to shake hands, I had to knock on doors, I had to introduce myself and prove my worth to those people in order for them to say, Hey, I might feel comfortable actually working with you. And then ultimately, building those relationships, which fast forward to a private practice. The most important element of my private practice is my physician relationships. It’s not just it’s not marketing in the newspaper, we’re sending direct mailers. For years, we have focused heavily on our relationships with our physicians, and developing those relationships. So that was a major thing that I got from there as well.
Dave Kemp
Yeah, cuz I was gonna say, you had said, you know, you had known that you were gonna go back into audiology. And so I was curious, like, when you’re more or less like accruing this skill set? And all of this business acumen, I mean, were you kind of like thinking through your mind, like, wow, like, Okay, this is gonna be, this has given me a lot of ideas now, to what a private practice would look like, what kind of unlocks I’ve found, you know, now in terms of like, what you can use this new skill set for, I guess, I mean, because again, I think that’s where I’m going with this whole thing is like, I think it’s just such an important skill set. And so then it’s like a matter of like, how do you foster it? And then what are, you know, I think it’s important to tell the story of like, what the advantages are. So maybe, either of those, I mean, I know you fell into this, but that I find to be this unanswered question that if I were talking to a young person, I would say, you got to somehow kind of like foster this, but I don’t have the answer as to how you can like explicitly do that systematically, you know, something like that. Yeah,
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
I wish I can say that I had the foresight at the time. But for me, it was more about it was more about collecting data points, it was more about at the time being the best that I can possibly be in that position, but understanding and kind of, at that point, recognizing kind of the lay of the land of leadership, and hard skills and soft skills, right. And understanding that if I wanted to contribute in a bigger way, I had to actually step my game up. Because if I kind of just floated around with the status quo, I would meld into the sea of everybody else. So I was always really looking very much for differentiation, differentiating factors, how I could differentiate myself from from the rest of the people that were out there. And I think that’s a very important skill set skill that I took forward into audio to the private practice also to make a unique private practice. What I would say is like talking to younger clinicians, and younger, even students, that’s like, read as much as you possibly can about as much as you possibly can. And it’s the thing that I really focused on heavily during that period of time and even a little bit before that was not just reading audiology related things because I got my but my best ideas outside of the audiology world. I got my best ideas, reading about emerging technology, emerging science, sports businesses, consulting firms, just everything because there’s always something that you can pull, whether it’s a business model, potentially a logo idea, you know, how to communicate with others. It’s there’s so many ways I pulled so I think it’s just important not to pigeonhole ourselves as audiologists make yourself a leader, a professional, a marketer, a finance person, you know, broaden that skill set. The other way that I thought about it to be perfectly honest with you was, at some point I was like, Well, what happens if audiology is not really the path, right? Maybe there’s something else. And we have a lot of potential directions, we can go in our field, we can go many, you know, manufacture around, we can go research we can go. So how do I make myself more valuable in any one of those paths at some point, so it’s for me, and I’m also an I’ll just kind of finish on this point is that I’ve always prided myself on a high level of self discipline, and a high level of focus on building skill set, and holding myself accountable for everything that I do. And I think that you just build these skills over time. And you’re like, Oh, I’m capable of much more than just x. Right?
Dave Kemp
I really liked that whole notion of like, you know, yes, of course, you’re an audiologist. But I think that’s kind of the gist of it is that you, you’re a business person to you know, you’re a leader, you’re a really important part of your community. You know, so I think I love to the whole bit about building the physician relationships. I mean, that’s been a big theme on this is like, you know, yes, of course, traditional marketing and digital marketing important. But I think that those like, interpersonal skills are so big. And those can be fostered in a wide variety of different ways. I always say like, just get out of your comfort zone, do things that just push you whether it’s like public speaking, or making that introduction, that you might previously, it felt a little too awkward to do like talking to the speaker and saying, I really liked your presentation, like, I love all those different things, because it’s really just you’re kind of like pushing the ball down the hill, and then like it compounds on itself. So I want to talk about your private practice. And, you know, kind of like this whole mentality that you had going into it of, I want to find ways to differentiate. So I love hearing about what the market was like in these different periods of time. So if you could maybe share, like, you know, how, at the onset, what were your strategies? What were you doing to kind of differentiate? And then how has that evolved into today?
That’s a big question.
Dave Kemp
It’s a huge question. So I’ll start the timer.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
Ya know, a lot has changed since I’ve started practicing. And I think that a lot has not changed also. It’s kind of everything old is new again. So yeah, yeah. So look, hearing aids always played a significant role in our practice, like a lot of other private practices. But I never wanted to just be a hearing aid dispensary. Because I saw, and I don’t think I’m a brilliant mind or anything like that. But I saw the potential for if we were just kind of a one trick pony, how that could be a significant disadvantage, potentially, in the future if the industry changed, right. So I was looking at things early on where, look, when I started practicing managed care was like, the, like the the entry point of managed care for physicians, where that changed the whole game for them. And you saw these physicians, all of a sudden had to see 30 patients in a day to to collect the same amount of income that they did before prior to that. And then look, we all know what’s happening from a managed care perspective in our world. And that’s, that’s history just repeating itself now. So that’s such a good
Dave Kemp
point. And I want to let you continue going, I just want to make this one really quick point, which is, I find this really interesting about audiology, I’ve always thought a bit kind of like a tidal wave of like innovation and change and stuff like that. And we are at like the tail end of all of these trends. And so if you actually look around at these, like adjacent medical professionals, so much of what we are, like, challenged with as an industry has already happened in these other industries that we probably just need to be looking at those way more closely to say, oh, okay, this is how they solved it.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
You’re 100%? Correct. And it’s just the history is, is, is destined to repeat itself, if we don’t look at history. See, I agree with you. And like, again, I’m not a brilliant mind in this and I’m not a historian necessarily. I just look at bigger trends, because I think that it’s important as a business person, and as someone in a profession that’s hoping the profession continues for many decades, and, and so we can help as many people as possible for as many years as we can. There are significant challenges that we face. And I think we’re all very much aware of that. But but back then I was very much aware of the fact that I did not want to just be beholden to the technology piece of the equation. So when I was at Columbia, I started a center for hearing conservation because coming out of you know, Richard Sally’s lab up in Buffalo, he’s big noise induced hearing loss guy with Don Henderson. And because of my music background, I started seeing musicians at that time doing in ear monitors and hearing protection and we were even doing real ear measures to measure out to prove that the hearing protection was actually doing what you’re supposed to do. So I was renting studio time to on the weekends to see bait see musicians. So it’s like start and that was now 9697 At that period of time so pretty early to the game in the in your monitor world. Driving down to see companies like Garwood in Pennsylvania doesn’t even exist anymore. But you have people like Mike Sant Tucci out there, who clearly continues to do amazing work from just being a spokesperson for noise and prevention of noise induced hearing loss, et cetera. Marshall Chaisson was a great influence on me too. But but that was something that really kind of moved through my professional career because I saw that as an interesting creative way to market myself, worked with music cares early on, and other music organizations, and just trying to get people to know who we were outside of the traditional referral pattern. And to this day, we still see a fair amount of musicians, it’s not the thing that I focus on 100%. Now anymore, but but but doing that, and then kind of fast forwarding to the private practice, the hearing aids served as the as the core because look, you need income. And that’s for most private practices. That’s the core income generator. But then we started to introduce neuro diagnostics and being able to market ourselves to physicians in a very different way. And now we have a pretty significant vestibular practice as well, which drives a lot of attention to the practice and tinnitus, as well, which everybody was talking about tinnitus at AAA this year, which was kind of cool.
Yeah, no kidding.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
But yeah, I think that, you know, trying to figure out unique ways to differentiate has always been the path path for me. Sometimes I failed. Sometimes I’ve succeeded. But that’s the beauty of running a business is that you actually kind of walk these paths, and you have to kind of on the fly, figure out what works and move and kind of hate the word pivot. But really, pivot is the word. Yeah.
Dave Kemp
Well, I was gonna say, like, you know, so with these physician relationships, did you have a really deliberate message that you would sort of communicate like, it seems as if you, you knew exactly what your role was for them? And how you could be a value for them? What was that? Like? I mean, you know, so you said you were doing neuro diagnostics and stuff like that, you must have identified a pain point for them that you could help to solve?
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
That’s exactly right. So it was it was always looking at how we can be of value to somebody else versus how they can be a value to us. So the typical hearing aid practice marketing strategy is, hey, I’m the audiologist down the street. And we’d like to help all of your patients who have hearing loss period. Right, versus when I would walk into a physician’s office. Hey, my name is Dr. Cat, they always thought I was a drug rep for some reason, because you dress the part when you walk into if you want to introduce yourself, in any case, I would say hey, are you trying to assess me? That’s right. I’m actually trying to help you help your patients better. And that’s really was part of the message, said Dr. Casper just wants you to introduce myself private practice down the street. Just wanted to let you know that we offer the following services. So if you happen to have any patients that you’re stuck with, with dizziness with tinnitus, and we know that those are pain points for a lot of physicians. I never once talked about hearing aids. Yeah, I never once talked about hearing aids, because I knew that they heard that message four or five times already that month from somebody else’s a competitor in the in the region, I didn’t want to do that. And a lot of hearing aids salesperson, it’s its service and its care that we were selling to these physicians and to their patients. Lo and behold, you start developing relationships, and then ultimately, the hearing aid part comes in the back end of it, it’s just part of the comprehensive care that you offer to your to their patients. But trust is what we tried to get first. And to fix those pain points for them. As you said, the pain points more often than not as I have Dizzy people. I don’t know what to do. People ringing ringing in the ears, I tell them there’s nothing to do. I’m just gonna send them to you.
Dave Kemp
Right? Yeah, cuz I feel like that’s, it’s just really interesting that, like you said, kind of like, we’re back to the future. These are we’re betting in the spots before. And so this is kind of the same message that I think is being universally accepted, right, at least among the audiologists is that in a market that is just like increasingly crowded, how do you stand apart? And I think that it’s, these are the kinds of things that you should be focusing on is like, developing those relationships and making it so that you’re known as the member of this, like broader medical community of like, this is your role. And it’s, I think, what’s really cool and I feel like we can talk about maybe what some of these new roles are, because you said you know, things that have been relevant for a long time. still exists today, tinnitus, dizziness, but what I find really interesting is like now maybe Tinnitus Treatment, not just dying, diagnosing it and doing counseling. Also, I think the role that the audiologist could have with concussions, you know, in that whole, I guess subfield of all of these things from neurology, audiology, I mean, so anyway, I find this to be pretty interesting how the concept remains the same, how do you be a value to your allied medical professional community? But the it’s it What changes is sort of like what those different roles are, in some sense.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
Yeah, no doubt. And I think that the one thing that hasn’t changed is the value of the relationship, right is is how do we just develop a whether or not in like, there’s, there’s physicians that refer one patient to us as physicians that refer 20 patients to US a month. But what we focus on is, how do we just continue to foster that relationship with them. And what it’s resulted in is when we take a look at our say, Our gross income for our practice, 50% of the money generated in the practice is from a physician referral in our power in our office. So that’s kind of a very important element here to understand that if you have a private practice, that’s kind of like you’re not sure where to go with this, just start going out and shaking hands. It’s wonder old school. Yeah,
Dave Kemp
well, you know, kind of just sticking on that theme. Again, if I’m putting myself in somebody’s shoes, you know, there’s obviously a lot of like, change in life, you know, you don’t know where you’ll be necessarily when you’re young, five years from now, or something like that. But I think that, you know, maybe something that could be universally applied is just this concept of whether it’s, you know, your colleagues. So going to a conference per se, shaking hands that way, or trying to find opportunities in whichever community you’re currently in. To shake hands. I mean, what are some of those different events or meetups that would be an appropriate setting for you to try to engage some of these people and introduce yourself, if nothing more, than to just kind of like hone that skill set, because it’s one of those things that will follow you throughout your entire life is building those, those relationships. And so I feel like it again, it’s like, these things kind of seem a little trivial, you should go and shake hands. But it’s like, that’s, that’s so important to recognize that for a practice like yours that’s been well entrenched. Now for a while 50% of your business is coming from these referrals. And I think that’s just a testament of like, how you build a business? Is it’s a day to day, you know, mentality.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
Yeah, I think that the simplest thing, I’m sorry, I just for some reason, something popped through on my phone, I just jumped up on my computer. So I apologize. I think the simplest thing is, you know, if you if you write a really nice report, with your name and your name on it, and you really care about introducing yourself to that physician, the easiest thing to do is just hand deliver that report. And say, I just want to introduce myself face to face. Thank you so much for sending this patient over love that. There’s that’s the easiest low hanging fruit is your your report, your report is a marketing tool. And if they see your reports enough, and they actually, oh, wow, this is interesting. This person is not just thinking about what I thought they were thinking about, which is selling a patient on a hearing aid, which is what most physicians think, right? Let’s just be honest here. Yeah. And they’re, they’re actually concerned or they’re, they’re interested in a collaborative relationship and care for this patient, I’m probably going to refer to that person more often than the person down the street who’s just trying to sell them. Right. So I think that that’s the easiest thing to do. But yeah, going to even events that have nothing to do with audiology. Yeah, you know, I think that just meeting people, because you never know where your next referral source is going to come from. So I always I always prided myself on just going to, like interesting events, like, there were interesting kind of community events for like medical startups, right? No, that’s a great one. Anything, just just introduce yourself at these events, or even simple as having a conversation with somebody new at a family event, or you know, a wedding, like you never know, just it’s talking to people. That’s, it’s it’s such an old school way of doing business, but that’s the way business should be done. That’s how
Dave Kemp
trust how it all works. I mean, right trust and the relationships, I mean, people have options of where they could send their patients to in this instance. And so I just think that that’s such a, it’s a good mentality of like, if you if the ultimate principle that you’re operating off of his I just surely want to be a value to this person. That’s such a, you never have to feel as if like you’re, you know, like saddling them with If your time or something like that, or you’re bogging them down in any way, I mean, they’re gonna see it as this is great, I can get this off my, off my plate. And now I feel that this is a trusted person that I can pass this to. And I’m with you that I think that I mean, that is a skill set that anybody could ultimately Foster. But a lot of it is just like, reps repetition, like you just kind of like do it. And so if you get in that mentality of like, maybe like, at the, at the wedding, like you said, like, just make that a, you know, a goal of like, maybe I should just go talk to one person tonight that like, I typically wouldn’t do it for nothing else that it might just be, might be an interesting person to talk to what slim chance that there’s somebody that I could be doing business with, but it’s a rep, it’s a way that I can like, Okay, I just think that is kind of an underrated aspect of like in our hyper digital world, and everybody is so like, glued to their phone that it’s one of those things, that’s a timeless thing that I don’t think will ever go away. I think that there’s just a ton of value in building those relationships.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
I’ll give you a quick example. And this is something you talked about getting reps in. So when I was working in that consulting firm, years ago, I was working with people who were older, clearly and who were much more established in their careers. I was at an event, there was a CEO of this startup that I wanted to introduce myself to and figure out how I can get into his world. Long story short, we ended up having a conversation. I bartended my way through undergrad and grad school at a at a restaurant that happened to be not too far from where his his his company was located. Nice. Okay, New York. So we were talking and somehow we got on the the conversation about the restaurant and a specific sandwich at the restaurant. That was his favorite. But that in my database right? Then, so that that event had maybe happened on a Wednesday or Thursday, the following Monday, at lunch, I’m hand delivering that sandwich to his office, with my card stapled, went to the front desk that I just like to leave this for he was a MD PhD, is it for Dr. So and so I said, just let him know that I hope he enjoys his lunch, left it there. I start to walk back to my car. And he comes running out with the bag in hand screaming at me. He’s like, What is this right? I said it’s your lunch. He goes get inside. And we had we ended up having a half hour conversation as he’s eating his favorite sandwich. And he introduced introduced me to the most the appropriate people in his company that would help us do business with them. So again, thinking outside of the box, not doing the normal type of thing. I was nervous as hell doing that. But it resulted in one, you know, there’s a thing that Joe Rogan says which I’ve been saying a lot lately, the hardest thing that you can deal with is the hardest thing you’ve ever dealt with. So it’s a matter of just again, doing as you said, reps, and increasing your tolerance for discomfort. Yeah, and then ultimately, you just keep building on that. And you get better and better. Over time,
Dave Kemp
I had this college professor that said something that has always resonated with me, which is like, your current comfort zone is as is like the size of it. And then as you expand as you do things that are outside of it, you just like kind of expand that. And then I mean, for me, like I used to kind of get anxiety when I’d go in, do public speaking. And that’s a total thing where it’s just like you get the reps. And now it’s something that I don’t ever really bad night. I mean, because I feel like my comfort zone has expanded to where that’s now part of my comfort zone. And so I think there’s a lot to that of like, in your instance, there, you now you would know that no one’s really above somebody that you could approach, you know, if I can get this guy to give me his time, then why can I go and ask for time with this person, because I know that what I’m ultimately bringing to the table will be a value for these people. So I just I would continue to say that I think like, you can get so far ahead as a young person by doing these small things. And these have been things that have been talked about on the podcast, but like really specific examples would be like the next time you go to whatever kind of conference you’re at, stick around at the end and go in, just introduce yourself to the speaker, and say, I really enjoyed your talk, here’s my business card or here is like, I’d like to send you an email so I can continue the conversation. Because you’re probably like in the like one to 5% of people that would do that. And so you’ve now set yourself apart. And all it takes is for you to just have like the willpower I guess to just be like, Alright, I gotta suck it up. This is going to be uncomfortable, but I’m just going to do it. Because like that’s what’s going to set me apart people recognize like, oh, you that took a lot of courage for you to come up and say something to me or you just set yourself apart that way I think that it’s the easiest, not the easiest thing, but it’s the simplest thing ever.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
Yeah, and I would definitely agree with that. I think that also, the way that I look at, I occasionally have kind of younger clinicians coming up to me, especially when people are looking for fourth year experiences, or they’re just kind of out in the world, and they’ve read something or heard something that I’ve contributed to, one introduce themselves. The most basic thing is eye contact, and shaking somebody’s hand and showing some level of mutual respect, right. And at the end of the day, I will remember that person, because everybody’s so glued to the concept of I’ve got to post a picture because I met this thing, and like, we have to separate ourselves from that element and get back to the human element of things, because that’s where the magic actually happens. People don’t trust screens. Yeah, there’s an element of that. And, and, you know, there’s, there’s an educational element, there’s no doubt, I don’t want to discount the that part of it, but, but when you’re developing relationships with people you want to do business with, it has to be face to face, there’s that’s the way that I feel. And, you know, until things change, where we can kind of create AI versions of ourselves that are realistic enough, which maybe that’s happening really soon. Yes. Using the various sounds from my voice right now to create something that I didn’t say. Right, right. Deep, deep fakes. There you go. Now, I do think that the personal element is critical, because we’re in we’re in healthcare, you know, it’s a, it’s the relationship that matters, for
Dave Kemp
sure. I mean, and then you can flip that to it’s not all just like interpersonal professional relationships, but it’s patient relationships, too. So let’s talk a little bit about I’m, I think that you’ve always kind of been on the forefront of some really interesting, like, kind of trends and the latest and the greatest of what I think the full scope of audiology can be. So talk a little bit please about, you know, what you saw this year at AAA, what’s going on in your world, in your practice that’s getting you excited about this evolution of Audiology?
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
Yeah, this year, AAA was, was interesting, because I have perspective. For many years. I would love to say that the attendance was off the charts. And there were, you know, tons of people and you couldn’t get a hotel room this year. It was very, very well done. Now, I think that AAA as an offering to us as professionals was very, very well done. I would agree. I think that the courses, although there’s some repetitive elements to some of the courses, I think that the ones that we said I attended and what I what I saw that were available, were were super relevant to the time. I the ones that I attended, speakers were outstanding. And just, I liked the fact that we we always have a kind of a research base to what we talk about in a lot of these sessions as well, which I think is critical. I was a little if I’m being perfectly honest, I think the the floor is kind of anorexic in terms of businesses that are represented there. And again, I’m using perspective from from years where this was just a madhouse, but the industry has changed in so many ways. From from, you know, what has been allowed at AAA. Right. And and I think that that clearly impacts it as well. But overall, I had I was only I was in and out I had to present and I attended a bunch of sessions saw a lot of people hadn’t seen had not seen in years, which was really kind of cool to catch up. But overall, I thought it was really good. I thought that I know, I know. Bree, very well, who is the conference chair this year. And she she always brings so much energy and kind of light to to whatever she does. So it was kind of cool to see her vision in reality. So yeah, no, I thought it was very well done. I just I’m disappointed. I would say in terms of the amount of people that were there, I really would have hoped that we would have seen a larger contingency of our peers there. But yeah, it was very well done overall. It’s
Dave Kemp
yeah, it’s it’s one of those things that I don’t know what the, like specific reason for that is, and if it will ever, it seems like it’s a shell of itself in terms of what it used to be, I think, like you said, the ethics laws that were passed, obviously, in the mid 2000s. Played it played a pretty big impact on you know, diminishing the headcount. But then, you know, I don’t know if it was like a post pandemic thing. But like, in the fact that a lot of people can get their CPUs, but it is kind of like a little bit of a bummer that you know, it seems as if there’s like probably 40 to 50% of the profession is completely not there and hasn’t been there for a while, I guess is how I would put it and I don’t know if that means that there go into, I don’t really know like what is sponge sponging up those people and for wherever they congregate at. But I think that overall, it does seem like the focus of I felt like I mean, I was on the tradeshow floor for most of it. And I think there’s for me, like, there’s a ton of value of just being able to be in one place where you can see so many people at once like that, in my mind, there’s a tremendous amount of ROI. And I think that’s not just as a vendor, I think that I heard that from a lot of audiologists, too, is like, there’s, it’s hard to even put that, like $1 amount to that value, because you know, you obviously have to take off work for that period of time. So there’s a cost there, it’s kind of expensive, but at the same time being able to like, be with the same people, or your like minded, you know, colleagues, and have this forum for you all, to just kind of like be in this setting that, you know, it’s just work, and it’s just audiology and you’re able to be kind of immersed in it. I think there’s like a tremendous amount of value there. And if you couple that with a really good program, where it gives you a lot of fodder for discussion. That is I think, like, awesome, and I hope that it continues on into the future, I am a little bit worried about the, the state of the exhibit hall. But you know, I think that overall, I, I think there’s value in going to these things and getting together. I wish that it was better attended. But I think that it’s something that there is still like, you know, I think some pretty tangible, good reasons for you to go.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
I would agree, I think that there’s there is tremendous value in just getting the profession together once a year. But you did, you did detail some things that are very real, you know, it’s, there’s, there’s a certain level of kind of fraction, the fraction element of this where, you know, you have some of the buying groups that have their annual meetings, and they’re very business centric, you have the other associations that have their meetings that are very valuable to so people, especially in private practice, and even people who are working for other people in settings, like hospitals, etc, have to be very conscious of the time that they can take away from, you know, their professional work the day to day. But that said, I actually had I always find value in these because of you have everybody, as you said in one place, and the amount of conversations that I have in those two and a half or so days that I’m physically there, I couldn’t have in two and a half months because it’s much more productive. And are you talking about things that I’m excited about? One of the big things that was a very hot topic, I think for a lot of people this year was is tinnitus. Tinnitus is really kind of an emerging thing in our field as, as, as something that everybody is really kind of got their mind on nowadays. So you know, in our practice, we we’ve been an I’ve been communicating with for a long time with the folks at neuro mod. And this is not an advertisement for them necessarily. But I think it’s an important element of practice, where once they had their official launch, about a year or so ago, we were one of the first 14 practices in the country. And we’ve got a ton of experience around it, and helping to kind of build next generation tinnitus providers, as well. It’s kind of cool to see because people are getting interested in tinnitus now, like people are getting interested in vestibular, which I think is really, really cool. But being able to sit down with, you know, my colleagues from across the country and compare notes and kind of see how they’re doing with patients and listening to like gal Whitelaw, and Emily had a great presentation. And, you know, even the manufacturers had had great opportunities to discuss what their technology is all about, because most people don’t know what what their technologies do necessarily. And
Dave Kemp
I asked a quick question on on this whole thing, because you said that even in your earliest part of your career, one of the things that got you excited about you know, like neuroscience was some of the, I think maybe you mentioned like potential applications of how this could be, you know, some of these different ways that you know, like neuro therapies could be applied for tinnitus. So were you well aware of like the potential of the whole bimodal neuro modulation technique. So like when this started to kind of come to market or you saw the first early iterations of linear was this kind of like, oh, wow, this this thing that I had known about from like the frontiers of science was now materializing or how did that I guess, like register for you when you first started learn about it.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
I came I came into the brain element of this in a very analog way. I fell into learning and being interested in mindfulness based techniques when I was in grad school because of stress and anxiety and trying to figure out ways to manage that. So that kind of sent me down the rabbit hole of people like Jon Kabat Zinn’s work, who ultimately he was the UMass, clinical psychologist, research psychologist that really kind of bridge the worlds between mindfulness based strategies and science and actually trying to show that there was real science behind it for certain disorders, which resulted in things like the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Program that he designed. Then learning about like Richard Davidson’s work at the University of Wisconsin, where he would look at the brains of monks who can actually control certain parts of their brain and the changes that occur in their brain when they’re meditating. That’s crazy. So So that led me down that whole neuroscience path of okay, what’s going on in the brain. And then at that time, and it sounds really crazy to think about it now. But brain plasticity was still questionable for adults. Right. And now we know that our brains are plastic throughout our entire lives, essentially. But at that time, it was still kind of a questionable thing that people were talking about. But understanding that how mindfulness actually creates plastic changes led me down to the path of oh, this is really interesting. How do I apply this to my work as a clinician, and then also tinnitus actually wrote an article for Tripoli’s journal I don’t even know like 99, maybe this
Dave Kemp
will go to the archive? Yeah,
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
I’m not exactly sure. You can probably search it online, you’ll probably find it but in any case, but it got me to the point where I was like, Okay, this, this whole brain plasticity thing is really, really interesting to me. And the reality is that it just, it’s a blanket across everything we do as clinicians, everything is brain plasticity. You know, you’re not hearing your brain is going to make plastic changes. If you get them to hear better, they’re going to make plastic changes, you know, if you have a peripheral vestibular disorder, rehab is going to help them make plastic changes in their system or everything.
Dave Kemp
The the book that really helped me to understand all this was David Eagleman is live wired book. So that one was like, That’s really interesting. I bet there’s a lot of audiologists that understand this, but that for me was such a revelation of like, oh, okay, so your brain literally will rewire itself to compensate for certain things. So if you’re, that that’s why like, you know, people say that they, if you don’t have a certain sense, if you’re blind, you’re deaf, the other senses are heightened. I mean, isn’t that quite literally your brain has rewired itself to overcompensate for those other areas and those deficiencies?
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
Well, you’re just utilizing those systems more heavily. So as a result, that part of your brain is going to get more developed I was doing just to kind of tie in the the music part of this I was really interested in music in the brain early on to, and there were studies that would just fascinate the heck out of me where they were, they were talking about the thickness of the art of the the brain that’s responsible for sound and people who have perfect pitch or absolute pitch. There were physical differences in their brain matter basis. So so that was just all that stuff was very early on in my career, where I guess I was kind of tying in like this interests with brain science. And then again, my my exposure to like savvies lab and then kind of doing some work with him. And then musician work and it all kind of just flowed, but the tinnitus part of it. Once I started to really kind of dive into like Jastrow, Bas work, and TRT early on, I was like, Oh, this all makes sense. It doesn’t. I don’t think it all makes sense. It’s starting to make sense. It’s starting to make some sense to me, because I think that there’s a lot of question marks. It’s so humbling actually working with with patients who have tended to speak as you realize you absolutely know, nothing half the time. But yet, you know, so much, right. So yeah, so the that just kind of all these things started to tie together. Now, do I do I did I have this foresight about bimodal stimulation? No, absolutely not. But what I what I did see is I was I was very aware of technologies emerging, I was very much aware of kind of, you know, you know, the stuff that was coming out of Stanford and stuff coming out of Michigan, and, you know, this work that was coming out of, you know, University of Minnesota and Ireland, the linear device. And I did reach out to the scientists early on, I said, just want to learn, just tell me what you’re doing. And that led to us being part of their kind of initial provider pool, because that was over. That was like five years ago at this point four or five years ago.
Dave Kemp
It’s really cool. I mean, I just think that, again, it’s like, when you think about this profession, for 30 years, the focus from the revenue generation standpoint has largely been around hearing aids because like that’s a treatment that’s, you know, something that’s extremely beneficial for so many different people. But yet, you have this other like adjacent thing that you can diagnose it, you can provide counseling, you can mask it, but there weren’t really efficient treatments. And that’s like 15% of the US population, right? Isn’t it something really large, the amount of people that have tinnitus. So it’s like, oh my gosh, what an unlock this is for the profession. And again, it’s not it’s not a it’s not to say like, Oh, like that just, you know, completely re changes everything. It’s just I think it’s interesting that as it’s just a representation of like, the technology, and that as time goes on, the full scope, I think can be more realized or or pursued, because of some of these unlocks.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
Yeah, I think the challenge that we face though, is if you go back in time for all of us to our graduate studies, that unless you have somebody who is deep in that world, you don’t get the exposure, right. So if you’re down at NOVA, and you’re working with Tish Gaffney, you’re gonna get great vestibular experience, right? shaddock dish. Yeah. And like, if like, back in the day, when I was at Buffalo, I had Jack hats there. And I had a wonderful exposure to cap. And Angela, lux, Alexander has taken that to a whole other level, look at the the impact that she’s making, not only from a patient perspective, but from a profession perspective, like doing incredible things to change the mindset of clinicians, but unless you, yeah, look, all these people really deserve this credit, because they’re doing great things to actually not have these young minds just focus on the one path. Right, right. And hopefully, we can do the same thing from a tinnitus perspective. But the reality of the game is that I do not believe that ever, I shouldn’t be doing cochlear implants, I should not be doing cap. Now, even though I have an understanding, I am not an expert in those things. And not everybody should be doing tinnitus. And that’s a thing that I have a little bit of kind of a sore spot on now. I think that if everybody wants to do tinnitus, they should. But they need to educate themselves deeply. Because this is not as simple as just putting a mask or on or as simple as putting on a hearing aid that has a quote unquote, tinnitus program for their patient. It’s much deeper than that. And the psychology is much deeper than that. And it can be very serious at times, actually, and we’ve seen this, unfortunately, occasionally, where you have patients who are just not mentally in the right place. And it’s not about just getting their tinnitus resolved, you know, so it is, again, that multidisciplinary collaborative approach that we talked about previously, where those relationships really matter, psychologist, psychiatrist, cardiologist, endocrinologist, etc, etc. But what I would say is that I think everybody should be involved in interested in tinnitus, but just go about it the right way. Right? Yeah.
Dave Kemp
Well, that’s I find this really interesting, is this point on sub specialties and your focus more or less? And I’d be really curious to kind of get understand from you like, is this something that you have to be facilitating in person largely? Or do you foresee this being something where, you know, the model maybe eventually looks like a network full of sub specialists for different sub specialties, that, you know, obviously, the biggest challenge with that would be the proximity to the patient, unless you can somehow do this remotely online, something like that, to some effect? You know, maybe that in person element, like for a lot of this stuff has to remain, but is there a level of maybe triaging or something like that? I mean, have you thought much about what this looks like as it as you describe there, you know, for you personally, it doesn’t make a lot of sense to focus outside of the the the one main subspecialty, or the kind of the handful that, you know, that you’re uniquely really, really good at, and this is most beneficial for you. This is where your focus should be. So where do you foresee like, how do you triage the cochlear implant people that come in those candidates? Is that a local referral? Or do you I mean, you know, I’m going with this it’s just kind of trying to understand like the how you as a professional if you really didn’t want to become like, let’s say just a specialist on the main focus is tinnitus. And so that’s kind of the role you’re going to play. Is this something that extends beyond just your local community?
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
I think developing relationships is key with that, inside of audiology and outside of audiology, I can give you an example. So even though our primary kind of headquarters offices in midtown Manhattan and we do everything there from diagnostics, and vestibular and hearing aids, etc. We have now as of today, we just opened our fourth tinnitus specific satellite office around New York City. We don’t do anything except for tinnitus care for patients. Now, the beautiful thing is that we’ve actually embedded ourselves within other private audiology offices. So we’ve created a synergistic collaborative relationship with another audiology private audiology practice where they benefit significantly from us being there and we benefit significant Only from being there. So it’s like, it’s it’s an it’s not a competitive element, we’re just providing one very specific
Dave Kemp
scene Amanat you’re you’re basically managing a business within a business, and you’re providing that almost as like a franchise, if you will. I guess it’s not a franchise because you own it. But it’s, it’s still, I just find this interesting, because I’m thinking from the perspective of like, you’re on the forefront of this, like, you’re obviously like, well ahead of the curve. And I think that, it would be interesting, if this is kind of the blue, the blueprint of what the future looks like, where you as a, like, the private practice of the future might actually be, you know, it could be a single provider, but it’s contracting in doing things where you’re obviously not going to be able to be five places at once. But can you develop the sort of like what that retail, I guess, offering looks like, and in more or less manage that as a business and then, so what you have is you kind of have like this network of, of professionals that are working in tandem, where I might have a private practice here in St. Louis, and I have partnered with you or I’ve partnered with someone like you to be the tinnitus, you know, sort of shop inside of my shop. Sure,
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
yeah. And look, this is not necessarily unique, because other people are doing it in different parts of our field. Also, if you take a look at like what Richard ganz has done with AIB, and his business model is odo labs and neuro labs, and he’s basically getting people inside of e and t offices, neurologists, offices, etc. Just because people can’t do everything, we can’t be an expert in everything. And I think that, you know, having the ability to and for us, it was it was kind of low hanging fruit really, in many ways, because we just had patients coming from these different areas. And we’re like, okay, how do we get closer to them? Right? And how do we provide better access? Now, part of what I would say is having a pure kind of telehealth model for something like tinnitus? I’m not I’m not 100% convinced on that just yet. Yeah. One because the diagnostics really do matter. They really matter, you know, getting high frequency audiometry, looking at distortion, product, otoacoustic emissions, getting your hands on patient, especially for that initial consultation, I think is critical, because there’s a lot of nonverbal stuff that you can get from patients that you don’t get through a screen. And that’s where the psychology piece of the tinnitus, tinnitus consultation comes in. But I do think that there’s room for a hybrid model. And that’s something that we’ve done very effectively, where, you know, follow ups can be done through telehealth, et cetera, the major follow up should happen face to face, at least in my opinion, when patients are encountering difficulties, but it should be I think hybrid is important, because as you said, access, it can be limited, especially in certain regions. So unfortunately, there’s a lot more tinnitus patients than there are providers right now. Right.
Dave Kemp
And that’s where I was going with this. It’s like, you know, again, the, the equation very much seems to be moving in the direction of a very small supply and a very large demand. I mean, that’s kind of where I was going with it. 15% of the US population has some level of tinnitus, and then you combine that with the pervasiveness of hearing loss. And we’re talking about a workforce of audiologists, that’s what 15,000 If we’re being generous? How do you possibly see the hundreds of millions of people that have some demand for your services? And that’s where I think it’s going to have to get really interesting and creative as to how do you like really amplify the role of the professional to, to basically, I think, oversee the things and extend themselves beyond just a single location. And I don’t know what that’s going to look like, because I think that you have so much vertical integration that’s happening in this industry right now. And the just the old notion of what a private practice was, like, even 10 years ago, I think, is fundamentally changed. There’s a lot of reasons why I think it’s really a, it’s a risky endeavor that wasn’t nearly as risky, as it used to be, you know, are you going to take on the level of capital investment that it requires to buy a location, and you look at some of the external factors right now, like high interest rates, stuff like that. So a lot of these things seem to point to mobility, or the ability to like take yourself and multiply yourself into these other areas that you can at least be providing like expertise to your fellow medical professionals and I don’t really know how this will will shake out. But the math sort of points to that that like a ton of demand, not a lot of supply, and the supply that does exist is not a doctor Oral level degree that’s really appropriate and capable of facilitating some of the more like, you know, medical related things here that as you well know, like the tinnitus world is debilitating for these people, it’s not something you just casually take on and say, Oh, I see tinnitus patients like, although although most people do at the heart,
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
yeah, although a lot of people do, I think you pointed out something really, really important there that there’s a critical shift that has occurred in the business side of things that has coming from the the, I’m not calling up the manufacturers per se, but it’s coming down from the corporate side of the equation, where you’re right, how do you potentially scale the services that are required, when you have so much downward pressure on the profession and the professionals that it doesn’t make sense from a financial perspective to do that, right? Because that’s what’s happening right now is you’re you got third parties crashing down, you got manufacturers, you got OTC questionable, which I don’t know if that’s really changed the industry that much to be honest with you at this point. But at some point, you know, Apple is gonna come out with some really cool, somebody’s gonna come out with something great. And that’s going to provide more downward pressure. So it’s like, it’s like, the, the commodity is taken over for the service element of it, in the most part, and if people really want great service, they’re gonna be paying those premiums, and there will be a percentage of the population that will do that. Right. And but it, then it becomes a question of the haves and the have nots, right, right. It’s such an imbalanced system. And then you have all of these people that are just not getting great quality care, they’re just getting average care if they’re lucky.
Dave Kemp
Totally. So it’s a shame monetization, of hearing healthcare, I think that’s happening. And that’s a really good point. Because I think you’re totally right, that there will be like that. I think that notion will always exist where somebody says, I need to go, and I want to, like pursue this model, right. And I think that you have options today, like, you know, you could go to Costco, you could go online, or maybe you want to like, make sure that you’re getting the best possible care. So that’s when you’re going to turn toward I think, you know, the local audiologists that has a sterling reputation, that you got referred to by another one of their patients, or maybe from your doctor or something like that. But I just I think that, you know, it’s just going to become challenging to from the haves and the have nots standpoint, like you will have this exists, but it might be something that that is a premium, and that it’s going to be a luxury kind of good, if you will, whereas, you know, you’re then let left with some of the options that and I’m not implying that, you know, something like a Costco, they have bad standards or anything like that, in fact, they actually have some really good best practices. But I just find that to be a little bit concerning is that, you know, where do you seek quality care? That’s affordable? And I guess that’s like a much larger conversation about healthcare in general.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
But yeah, it’s not just about audiology at this point. And what you’re seeing is it was at Walmart that pulled all their
Dave Kemp
Yes, recently, did their health health care centers everything? Yeah,
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
that tells you something right there. Right, that tells you that you have one of the largest companies on the planet that thought that they could just come in and completely disrupt the maybe Disrupt is not the right word in this particular case, because, but but they think that they can come in and change the healthcare, face of healthcare, but then they realize how difficult it really is and how much it doesn’t really pay. Right?
Dave Kemp
It’s just not worth it. Yeah, it’s just not worth the cost. And that’s right, in the operational load.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
Yeah. What’s the return on investment for all of this energy and time and space? Right? Because space is at a premium, when you have a place like a Walmart or Costco every inch is accounted for in those spaces. They know how much every inch has to generate every day, you know? So yeah, I think it’s really interesting, because, but I do, I do think there’s a positive element in that. Because if the big companies can’t figure it out, there’s always going to be the younger, more nimble, entrepreneurial, smart, as we’ve been talking about people who will develop those models that will work and wish that we do see that in our field, though, we really do. I just think that that the education has to start earlier on the business side to get these young students to think about private practices a real option. But not only just okay, it’s an option, but how do you actually do it? Right, who are the people that you should be surrounding yourself with that are in the field that can help you and have already kind of started to forge that path where you don’t have to recreate everything, you could just kind of expand on that and take it to the next level? Let’s
Dave Kemp
let’s close with this. Because I think at the at one point you said you wanted to talk a little bit about mentorship and I know we’ve been talking to But throughout this, but that to me, right there is like the epitome of where I hope things go, which is I want the I want there to be a sense of paying it forward, you know, and like I personally feel that I try to do as much as I can to like, impart whatever I’m learning into young people and say like, you know, I really think these are worth considering. But for you, as somebody that you’ve obviously been working in this space for a while, and you have a lot of thoughts, you’ve had a chance to probably, you know, take on a lot of external work with young people. I mean, what, how do you think that we as an industry could do a better job? Or what would be some ways to like better foster that sense of mentorship? Because I’ve always found that to be a little bit like I have a head scratcher that it’s such an important thing in a young person’s life, yet, there’s not a formal mechanism of providing that you actually have to kind of seek it out yourself. So in light of that, like maybe what are some ways that you think people can try to seek out a mentor or even be a mentee to someone?
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
It’s a huge question. Also, I think there’s a lot, there’s a lot of people in our industry who are incredible, and what they’ve done and what they’ve contributed to the field, that serve as amazing mentors already. But there’s only so many of them to go around. Right? I do think that it’s probably, unfortunately, it’s on the shoulders of the the young person to actually seek out like I did earlier on, seek out those people that can help kind of help them carve that path for themselves.
Dave Kemp
I do think that that could be something as simple as asking your favorite professor at your college or, you know, that is just to say, hey, look, I want to I want to round out my skill set in private practice. Can you help connect me not necessarily to go work for that person, but to begin a dialogue where I can ask questions and not feel like I’m putting that person like, you know, in a position where they’re like, obligated to answer that they actually want to engage with me? Yeah,
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
I think that yes, I think that that’s, that’s a an interesting step. But what I would say is that if if you have questions for somebody in your profession, and there’s any standoffishness element, that’s not the right mentor for you anyway. Totally, I agree with you, the Pay It Forward thing, because I had a lot of professionals who were the people in the field who I looked up to that I sought out to volunteer in their private practice, when I was in college just to do anything, as I asked, I’ll put the folders away, I don’t care just want to be in the presence and listen. But they took the time, the energy to invest in me. And people still do that for me nowadays. And I think it’s our obligation as professionals to do the same thing for next generation. So there are a lot of great people in our field that will if you just have to ask, you literally just have to ask right. And some people don’t have time and look, their time is limited, it’s very precious. But if you come with a very direct, okay, this is what I’m hoping to achieve. This is how I’m going to hold myself accountable. So you’re not wasting your time. These that’s the lat the worst thing we want is for someone to waste somebody else’s time, right? I think anybody would, would entertain that conversation. And if they can’t help, they’ll find you, someone who in their circle who can help. And that’s how you develop relationships,
Dave Kemp
I’ve found that 99% of the people I’ve ever encountered that would be in that, like mentor position, are always so generous with their time and are willing to like, there’s, I think, a broad sense of that of like, you know, I really should be imparting what I’ve learned on to this next generation, and helping them to navigate this because I, you know, I think everybody wants there to be some continuity, you know, in helping the profession like, like last long into the future.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
But there has to be a view on the history of it, too, which is lost on us right now. Yeah. Because there’s plenty of audio young audiologists, where I’ll say, oh, did you read X, Y Z’s book, and this was like a person who created AAA, one of the founding people of AAA, like, Who’s that? Right, that’s sad. That’s really sad. But that said, I think that there’s a lot of great well meaning super intelligent people in our field that would be very much willing to serve as a resource at minimum. Absolutely. Yeah.
Dave Kemp
Well, this has been great. Craig, I’ve I think we’ve gone a little longer than an hour here. So I wanted to be cognizant of your time. But I really enjoyed this conversation. I found this to be highly relevant and just a an interesting approach on from the start, you know, you’ve had this very unique mindset. And there’s a lot to learn there, I think about things that, you know, aren’t these abstract concepts, it’s actually quite simple concepts. And I, you know, I think there’s a lot to a lot, you know, what you said about, you know, using those interpersonal relationships, building the network, understanding what your value is to the network. And really, I think doubling down on what you’re really good at, and maybe making that the primary focus, because then a lot of the other things fall into place behind it. That, you know, are they, you don’t have to necessarily lead with it. Because people will just sort of make those associations in time. And understand that, oh, you’re not just the tinnitus guy, like Greg can do it all. He’s the person that I refer to, for anything that’s related to this part of the anatomy. So I think there’s a lot of really interesting stuff there.
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
I appreciate that. Yeah, I know, you summarized it better than I could have ever. So. But no, this has been great. I really appreciate the opportunity just to share some thoughts. And those thoughts are my own. And I don’t I don’t, I don’t say that they’re all 100%. Correct. But the this is, this is my thoughts on stuff. But I’m, I’m always evolving and learning to which is the cool thing about our world, is that if you’re smart enough, you actually keep your eyes and ears open. And sometimes you kind of morph your views over time. Oftentimes you do. Totally. That’s why it’s so but I appreciate the time. Thank you. Absolutely. If
Dave Kemp
anybody wanted to connect with you, what’s the best way to do that?
Craig Kasper, Au.D.
Best way to do that would be I say LinkedIn probably is the best way to connect with me. Yeah. You could find me on LinkedIn with my ugly mug right there. But yeah, that’s probably the best way because that I emails I’m so bad with it’s so ridiculous. Yeah, emails that we get. But I can mention LinkedIn. LinkedIn is definitely the way to go.
Dave Kemp
Okay, cool. Well, awesome. Thank you so much, Craig. Thanks for everybody who tuned in here to the end. We will chat with you next time. Cheers.
