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All right. So, Ben Thompson, are you okay with being recorded on a podcast?
Speaker 2:I am. I am here.
Speaker 1:There goes that liability. This is. I Took a Hike. I'm your host, darren Mass, founder of Business Therapy Group and Parktime Wilderness Philosopher. Here we step out of the boardrooms and home offices and into the great outdoors where the hustle of entrepreneurship meets the rustle of nature. In this episode, we crush an epic mountain ascent on Breakneck Ridge with the CEO of Treble Health and YouTube sensation, ben Thompson. Our topics include embracing the present moment, overcoming challenges, the experience of tinnitus, pursuing passions, effective marketing strategies and crafting genuine, achievable goals, and so much more. This episode is brimming with purpose and definitely worth exploring when I took a hike with Ben Thompson. This episode is sponsored by DeFi Supplements. Are you feeling stuck in a rut? Do you need more energy for the trail, stuck behind the screen all day and lacking focus? Well, you need to recalibrate, my friend, and get your energy back for the summit. Calibrate is a premium brain health supplement doctor formulated to help with energy, focus, mood and longevity. Visit defiyourmindcom and use code HIK for 20% off and you will defy your expectations. And I will say this hike. When I asked you if you want to take an easy stroll, an adventurous walk, a professional walking, or do you want to go on an extreme. You were all about the extreme.
Speaker 2:I chose the adventure. When there's an option in life, choose the more adventurous path.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it looks like we are doing that on breakneck ridge. We're going straight up. Your heart rate is going to be racing, we will be sweating and this will be fun. I'm here Very cool, so who are you?
Speaker 2:My name is Ben Hi Ben and, in addition to being a follower of the I Took a Hike podcast, I am an entrepreneur. I am an outdoor enthusiast and I run a telehealth company that spawned from my professional dedication and work as a doctor of audiology and audiologist. So my story, generally speaking, is one who was a health specialist who decided to try something different in a desire and an aspiration for freedom and having my own schedule and being able to essentially run my own business. So I started with a YouTube channel making video content and eventually was able to work as an entrepreneur and be a solo entrepreneur having my own business, and then over the last two years, that has really evolved into creating a telehealth brand and serving individuals who have tinnitus ringing in the ears and here and today I live in Brooklyn and I run this telehealth company with my brother and we are really proud of the impact we're making. So that's a little bit about me. You are a doctor, I am a doctor, a clinical specialist for hearing loss and tinnitus, called audiologist.
Speaker 1:So this is a subject that is really near and dear to me. Tell me more, because I have light tinnitus, not bad. I was a drummer, okay, and as you can imagine, some days I chose not to wear earplugs Most don't. And I love heavy metal, and every once in a while I do get that ringing, so I'd like to hear more about it from an expert.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Yeah, a mild ringing in the ears. Maybe it can fluctuate with a bad night's sleep or stress or loud noise exposure Very common, millions of people experience it and, generally speaking, it's not something to be worried about. It's something that we can manage and not be so affected by. So for folks wondering how can they protect their hearing, I think a big part of it is, yeah, using earplugs when you're around really loud noises. But overall, with good habits, good health, mental health, tinnitus can be managed quite well, and another line of work that we do is with hearing loss. I think a lot of folks have someone in their family who may be asking for repetitions or needing some help with hearing and hearing loss.
Speaker 1:Okay, that's a big part. Yeah, what is the maximum sound that we can perceive?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think for those listening, just knowing that chainsaws, construction equipment, things like that can cause hearing damage. So, for example, my dad was pretty naive to this and used a chainsaw without earmuffs and damaged some of his hearing and has partial hearing loss from it. And yeah, I think that's the message that perhaps the one message that the listeners could benefit from in terms of protecting their hearing health Is your dad your client? Nope, he's not. He might be one of those stubborn 65, 70 year old men who says I know I have some hearing loss, but I don't really feel like I need to get help with hearing aids or anything like that. I can hear just fine.
Speaker 1:So what is it like around the Thanksgiving table?
Speaker 2:It's my Thanksgiving table Generally fine. Yeah, generally fine, I mean we you know we have. So we have two audiologists and one speech therapist in our family, so communication pretty clear around the table.
Speaker 1:All right, so talk to me about the how three of your father's children got into speech and audiology.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so my mom is a speech therapist and it's actually my brother and I who are audiologists and those two fields are interrelated, so she had shared with us at some point as we were getting older. We're looking at a beautiful view of the Hudson River, correct? Yes, yeah, it's amazing Hudson River Valley. Pretty expensive views here. Beautiful winter day as well.
Speaker 1:I love this.
Speaker 2:My brother and I being audiologists and going to school, developing in our careers, everyone would always ask us are you guys going to open a practice together? And I was living in San Francisco at the time, he was living in New York City and we would always say we don't really see that being possible because we live on different coasts, but we're not opposed to the idea. And then, around 2020, right in the beginning of the decade, I had realized I wasn't finding fulfillment in my day job, which was working at a hospital, and one of the beautiful things about working as a health professional is that the job is intrinsically service related and in my own experience I've learned that serving others is one of the highest value things you can do, and especially serving a vulnerable population. Right, so, just helping people and I think a lot of doctors and many entrepreneurs enter their path because they want to help people that's right. Now. Just before COVID, I had finally gotten myself to the mental state of saying my clinical job that I was working at the hospital. It wasn't fulfilling, it wasn't creative enough, it wasn't exciting, just felt like I had sort of reached the status quo and things were cruising and I thought is this the rest of my life?
Speaker 1:So you hit that moment that so many of us, including myself, reach where you're like, depressed about the fact you went to school for so many years, and you're like so this is what it's about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I reached that point and following guidance from people who cared about me and loved me and had their best intention, and reaching this place of this can't be what I'm here to do, and there's some confusion that was coming up, and one of my favorite musicians has a line that I really resonate with. He says confusion clouds the heart, but it also points the way. So the process of being confused and grappling with this, not knowing and where should I go, what should I do I learned that that's just part of the process. We have to embrace it because it actually points us towards where we are called to be, and listening and being attuned and essentially following that path, which, which is more aligned. So in my case, that meant starting a YouTube channel to eventually offer telehealth services to patients individually, as opposed to working in a hospital in the more status quo doctor health professional role.
Speaker 1:Hey, listener, thanks for hiking along with us. Discover more episodes at hightokahikecom, or to recommend an adventurous guest, apply to bea sponsor or to simply drop us a line. So I want to talk to you about so many topics, one of them, obviously, starting your business and running a business and what that's like. Yeah, to get deeper your hikes around the world because you were obviously very into this one, definitely. And you were certainly not afraid. Not afraid, you might even be a little bit of a sadist on this one.
Speaker 2:Well, this is a pretty straight up rock scramble, but I love it. And I would love to talk about all those things, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I also want to talk about, you know, hearing and what we can do to help it. Fix it for sure, prevent the elderly loss of it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think yeah for the listeners. Definitely, speaking about my circumstance, my path of becoming an entrepreneur was not planned out from the beginning. I want to share a story that was really important in my journey, which was a few months into 2020. I'd prepared myself mentally over the last, over the previous year, that I was going to take the risk of putting myself out there on the internet in an effort to essentially create an audience that would lead to being able to offer services to people via telehealth. So it's like zoom type counseling type services, health coaching, that kind of thing. And I remember being very scared and having hesitation to putting myself out there, the fear of judgment of the professional community, of you know, at the time I was a few years out of school, so I had these automatic negative thoughts of you're not skilled enough to be an expert in this field. Why would someone pay you to work with them for their tinnitus? You're in your mid 20s, you're in your late 20s, like there are people who are 50, who've been doing this for 30 years they could go to. Why would they go to you? Yeah, who are you to be the?
Speaker 1:authority.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So some sense of imposter thinking or just self doubt, and then also the sense of potential judgment from others, and our human psychology is programmed to want to belong to the tribe, and anything that can make us feel at risk of being excluded is a threat and will often put us in a state of fear, freeze or perhaps not pursuing the thing that we wanted. Yeah, yeah, there was about a year of contemplation and in the sales and marketing world, we know that the stages are awareness, consideration and action. So I was aware that I had options of how to start my own business. For a few years, I was in San Francisco. I was meeting people who were in the technology scene. I had made a lot of great friends who traveled the world, who started companies, and I was very inspired by the people who I'd met just different ways of living, different ways of life. And then, in my own field, I saw some examples of people who had a successful online course or who offered this telehealth service. Perhaps they were in a different country and they had a YouTube channel, and there were other YouTubers in the health field and I just saw okay, there's something potentially here. I don't know how it's gonna work out for me, but I'm interested in this. And then I was really considering, and in that contemplation stage of I'm ready to do this, how am I gonna do it, what should I do, what should be my approach, and then finally I said, well, I need to buy some camera equipment. I chose YouTube because there were other people in my profession one man in England and one woman in Australia who had grown a YouTube audience and I thought, well, I know just as much as them, if not more, because I had completed a residency at a major hospital in San Francisco, had very specific training in this niche. So I've been very niche down, very focused on this specific health condition and for someone listening who says, oh, I'm not a health professional, I think that we're basically saying that any niche you focus on that you have specific skills in, if you can create awareness of your services, then people will potentially reach out or buy from you. It's marketing, so essentially got this camera equipment and I took a video marketing course. And about two weeks into this course, there was a specific moment. I was living in Berkeley, california, in a neighborhood you know. This was like early spring time, first month of COVID, march 2020. And I didn't have a car at the time. I was living in a very shitty apartment, for lack of a better word, and my roommates at the time were they were like vegans and like animal rights specialists and they had four hens that were literally partly in our house and partly next door to my window, and I just, in those circumstances, didn't have a car, was like sort of like stranded in this very strict COVID area, and I just obsessed over YouTube and learning video marketing for a number of months.
Speaker 1:Well, it's the right platform. Right Go where the largest search engine in the world will tag you right. It's the smartest platform.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah and yeah, youtube and Google search, both being search engine platforms. And to get us back to that specific moment, I took this video course and in the course they explained that you can make videos, you can post them online, you can be consistent and, if you have enough skill and if the right people watch them, you can also create an email list, create and market your services and actually make money and potentially quit your normal job and be your own boss. And I got on my bike and I went around the neighborhood and I was biking. There's this long bike friendly road in Berkeley with these big trees sort of canopying over the top of the road, beautiful flowers around, and I was biking down this road and I felt tears well up in my eyes because for the first time in the last three years, I had hope that I wasn't just stuck working in this white walled hospital with a schedule and not much creativity and not much upward mobility in this work setting as a clinical doctor, but instead there was potentially this other path, this more adventurous path that could potentially lead to freedom in my life, and I told myself if this takes five years, that's fine, I'm gonna commit to this. I don't know how long this is gonna take, but I'm committed to make this work and that was a, and I haven't looked back since.
Speaker 1:I love it. So we're gonna talk about the feeling of being an entrepreneur, getting yourself to take the leap, because that's the hardest one. It goes against everything that you were taught when you were raised as a kid. You were told probably, yeah, be a doctor, good income, good salary, good compensation, safe.
Speaker 2:Low stress job.
Speaker 1:I don't know if some doctors would agree with that one, but you bucked the trend and you decided to be an entrepreneur, and that takes courage, and that's the basis of everything we do here. Courage Speaking of which we have another. What about 200 feet, 300 feet of uphill after you? Let's get started. I'll let you lead the way this time. All right, how old are you? I'm 30 years old. 30 years old, all right?
Speaker 2:so you are young, I'm young, yep.
Speaker 1:And you are definitely very well educated and you definitely have that courage, which I love.
Speaker 2:There's a lot of negative automatic thoughts, negative self-talk, limiting beliefs that, in my opinion, make it really hard to put oneself out there. Of course, and creating content is probably one of the most recently talked about ways to make an impact. Start a business Because it's free. You don't have to pay to experiment.
Speaker 1:You don't, and you're gonna make mistakes along the way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that's okay. Yeah, so for those who have time maybe not money, but for those who have time getting into entrepreneurship early, making a lot of mistakes is a very good thing, and it's uncomfortable the entire way through.
Speaker 1:Well, sometimes the things that make us the most uncomfortable have the best reward at the end. Yes, right, that's how you grow.
Speaker 2:There's a saying that goes the cave we fear to enter is the one that holds our treasure.
Speaker 1:Wow, or the bear. I have gone in a cave before and there was a bear. Something was snoring, at least. But yeah, that's very apropos. Yeah for sure, press yourself All right Almost there. It's very rare to have a guess that's willing to go on an adventure. Yeah, and obviously you produce right, you do marketing, you do videos and content, and sometimes it becomes more about the content than the shot, than it does about the experience. And that's what happens with everything, and I am very thankful and happy that you wanted to do this.
Speaker 2:Man I'm down. My original thought was that deep, immersive weekend experiences would also be a really sweet community building thing where, say, there was 10 entrepreneurs and we did a backpacking trip and there were group exercises and connection things. That's where my mind goes to in terms of this overlap, oh you should. You should. Entrepreneurship with outdoor adventure, Because it's so healing. It's so healing and this is what we need for people who are stressed and trying to solve problems all day is to activate the body and clearly accomplish their goals, Like there's no doubt that we hiked the mountain. Sometimes an entrepreneurship is like did I succeed or not? I can't tell how well I did.
Speaker 1:Well, sometimes when you hit your ultimate goal as an entrepreneur and you fail to reset, it doesn't feel like a win. Yeah Right, so yeah. One thing you should always take note of is you're a younger entrepreneur. You're not young, but you're a younger entrepreneur. It's a newer business. Just enjoy the whole journey, much like this hike. Enjoy the fact that we're on a hike.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's the journey, not the destination, that's right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that cliche is so used, but it's used for purpose. Everyone feels that way. Man, look at this view, look at that train down there. This is wild, it's a big one.
Speaker 2:So this Look how long it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, 200 cars probably, wow. So this is what got me into hiking.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is my first experience. Yeah, this rock, this rock, yeah, this little hill got you into hiking. This has me really stoked because when I was in college this is actually a story probably worth telling when I was in college, my first I would call it deep endeavor was more community building. That tends to be how I orient just more community building, and sometimes just purely for fun and pleasure, enjoy other times for business. Ok, so a friend and I we were in Charleston, south Carolina. We wanted to go hiking in Asheville on the weekends. We didn't have a car, so we posted these flyers around campus and started to organize these camping trips and eventually we set up a proper club, an organization in the school, and it became one of the most popular clubs on campus and it was an outdoor adventure club.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:And we had like hundreds of members and we were doing all sorts of day trips and weekend excursions and backpacking trips and it created an amazing sense of community that we're really centered around health, wellness and nature and made some of my best friends from there. And that was one of my first real experiences in larger group organization. I love that and that certainly carried over so you have?
Speaker 1:what age were you? How old?
Speaker 2:This was college.
Speaker 1:So you have taken this experience and you have made it universal. You've always had this altruism value, haven't you? You just wanted to help others.
Speaker 2:Wanting to help others, wanting to make an impact, wanting to bring people together, wanting to create positive experiences. Yeah, love it. All right, onward, upward, onwards and upwards.
Speaker 1:What's the most valuable piece of business advice someone ever gave you?
Speaker 2:My first thought when I hear that, which was reinforced last night when I was at a startup entrepreneur talk in Brooklyn, was that if you continue to grow your business and you make sure you don't die, which essentially means run out of money- Well, lots of business people run out of money.
Speaker 1:They just capital raise again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so whether that means you are bootstrapped and you're being nimble and you don't run out of money because you don't spend more than you make or your revenue dips tremendously, if you don't run out of money or if you don't react quickly enough, you might run out of money, but if you can maintain a business and grow it over many years, then you'll probably reach your goal. Whatever that is and I think that's a very simple way to look at it of, I can optimize all these things, I can try to grow and have all these growth targets, but if I run out of money, none of it matters.
Speaker 1:Well, that's where you have to use ingenuity. I think we need to go this way. That way yeah Is that we fall off the cliff Says easy, hard. Oh, we're going up the hard way. So you built an audience of 100,000 plus on YouTube.
Speaker 2:Yeah, in 3 and 1 half years, 100,000.
Speaker 1:I would call that healthy 13 million views.
Speaker 2:How did you do it? How do we do it? Continuous experimentation and consistency. A big part of it tactically. I like the tactical tips. When I listen to podcasts, I always appreciate the balance of the emotional perspective, what's needed to succeed? What's the purpose? You're doing this, getting the right mindset, but also the tactics. So hiring my first video editor was a great decision and it showed me the power of delegation, investing in the business. It was the first time I took a big risk of investing in someone else in the team that it wasn't guaranteed that this investment would return and would bring in customers or anything like that. But you took a risk, took a risk and I was mediocre to bad at video editing and it drained my energy. The saying of do an audit of your time and the things that you're not competent in or that really drain your energy, try to delegate them to someone who's Better than you. That's right. Hopefully a lot better than you, or at least someone that you can afford, who's good enough. In my case, it was someone who was good enough, yeah.
Speaker 1:So better than good enough, right? This is your face, this is your brand. Yes, and it really came down to what you could afford.
Speaker 2:Exactly, ok, exactly, it was what I could afford, completely bootstrapped at this time, and I spoke with one of my buddies who runs a startup and he was saying that he'd found the best off-shore talent in Philippines and Ukraine. So he connected me to a site where I could post my job and I hired a half-time video editor from the Philippines and she has worked for me for now almost three years and she's amazing and it was cost-effective and her skill level was good, it was solid, and that freed up my time to actually make more videos.
Speaker 1:You nailed it, you nailed it you do the jobs you want to do, that you're great at, and you outsource or hire for the others. Now, when you're at zero revenue, that's probably some of the toughest pill your largest tough pill to swallow, because you're spending money on the fact that you're not making money.
Speaker 2:But if you're unwilling to invest in yourself and you're unwilling to invest in your company, then you're willing to lose it all Well, the thing is that if people had a confidence of a certain threshold, they would absolutely invest the money they have Absolutely. It's that most people think yeah, I can spend $5,000 a year on a video editor, but how do I know that I'm going to make money from it, Meaning, how do I know that I'm good enough so that my message will actually connect with the potential customers? How do I know that they'll buy my thing? So how do you know you don't?
Speaker 1:That right, there is the answer you don't. You don't. You had the courage to do it in the first place.
Speaker 2:You have to have enough confidence, which is based on research. If you're the first person ever doing this, well, that's risky. It might not work for you or anyone. If there's other people in similar markets or even in your same market, and they've already proven that some people will buy this product or this service and this marketing strategy works for them, then that's usually all signs go that if you've got skills, you should put yourself out there and commit to it. So that's how I approach it and that worked really well for me in taking that same principle of delegation building a team, bringing people on to do the roles that were necessary but that were taking up a lot of my time, and just continuously doing that, every few months trying to reassess and see where I'm spending time, that another person could do the role better than me.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. You hire for the right person in the right seat. Right, Every one of your employees should be better at their job than you are, and if not, well then maybe we move them to another seat or, unfortunately, move them out.
Speaker 2:And an important point that was brought up earlier most of the listeners will have self-funded bootstrapped companies. Yes, I would disagree with you, because in that situation you're likely to have someone who's worse than you, let's say, in sales. If you hire someone to help with sales, it's like you're going to be the most incentivized to sell your product of anyone. Most to gain, most to lose.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, the CEO or the founder should always be the best at the sales aspect. But go on.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So perhaps you just can't afford someone quite yet who is better than you. Or perhaps it's a customer service person and you say, well, I would answer the phones a lot better, but I can only afford $20 an hour right now, and in that sense I would say that's totally fine and necessary for you to grow and prove the concept. But that's the catch-22 of being a bootstrapped, self-funded startup is that if you don't have resources to invest properly, that you can wait a year for them to pay back, then you might be in this sort of in-between a rock and a hard place, Like we are right now.
Speaker 1:We lost a trail a little bit Rock hard place. This episode is proudly brought to you by Brand Built, a dynamic social media networking community designed to elevate your success, feeling stuck in a brand loop. Your brand matters more than ever before and falling behind is not an option. Join our dynamic community for expert social media guidance, valuable lessons, education, weekly spotlights, monthly speakers and a robust brand building network. Explore more at mybrandbuiltcom and join me in the chat for a thriving journey to success. I'm going to challenge that last thing you said. Please go ahead. The CEO, founder, business owner. There is a difference between all three. Ceos have the responsibility of the shareholders private companies, the shareholders or the equity holders, including the CEO. Business owner owns a business Doesn't mean they're great at managing it. And the founder founded a business, he's the entrepreneur, doesn't mean that he's the manager. You can transition in and out of all three from time to time. The CEO or that business owner doesn't have to be the best person for sales. They happen to be the one that has the most to gain, most to lose. But there have been many introverted CEOs out there that are just petrified of selling. Definitely they're not good at cold calling and hunting. They're OK at farming because they have the most to gain, most to lose yeah Right, I'm with you. And they're good at closing because, again, they are the most influential in the organization. But if I hire a salesperson, I hope you're better at your job than I would be. That's hopefully your passion. You're not hired if you don't demonstrate the passion. That's hopefully where you have spent your 10,000 hours being great at mastering your craft, whereas as a CEO I wouldn't say I was the world's best sales person, but I had the most to gain and lose and I wore my heart on my sleeve and I explained that.
Speaker 2:But every salesperson had to be better than me, and a sales hire is an interesting one because you can have it very performance-based, where the base salary can, for a self-funded entrepreneur, not drain all the money out of your house, and that actually can work really well as a strategic hire, for sure in the early stages, when you don't have that much money in the bank. Who do you believe your first strategic hire should be? What role? As always, it depends on the business, but I'm split between something that helps you acquire more customers, so maybe that's content marketing, maybe that's someone who's writing on LinkedIn a LinkedIn ghostwriter that you can meet with them consistently and create content. I actually learned that tip from one of the guests here on the pod of meeting consistently with a copywriter and sharing stories, giving them material, and then in the interim between meetings, they create LinkedIn posts and then posting those. That's right, so I would say that will be a great hire. And then I was split between that and a virtual assistant, someone who can improve your efficiency during your days with managing emails, drafting template responses, scheduling and deleting junk emails that come in, and an important lesson you shouldn't be petrified in making that first hire, and I know a lot of first time business owners that don't have that experience yet.
Speaker 1:I know that really does hinder them and cripple them, I know it weighs heavily on them.
Speaker 2:You mean, you want me to spend money?
Speaker 1:I'm trying to make money. That's again why I will constantly say money is not the goal. If you're focused on money, you're not making wise and intelligent intellectual decisions. You can't grow a business if you're unwilling to hire and spend some of your investment Just won't happen. Now again, outliers, of course, but the majority of businesses out there. You need to hire people, so the next question is where do you find them? And if we're hiring the cheapest person to get the job done, focusing on money, only remember how much of your time is it going to take to re-edit. Go back and forth, have those challenging conversations of disappointment versus just hiring a professional to get it done right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and for those who are growing their business perhaps they have a few employees or contractors we need to re-evaluate. I'm here, you say this, and I'm thinking of my team and how there's some pieces of our team right now where I go. You know, we're sort of just carrying on what we had 18 months ago and we haven't necessarily reassessed from a fresh perspective and asked hmm, have we outgrown some components of our business, of our workflows, of our team? Yeah, those are tough conversations, those are hard to make those decisions on, but really valuable when we do.
Speaker 1:So that's a really important point too. I love this. This is when we get into the meat of the show and the conversation right. There are so many business owners out there that have had multi-decade old businesses and they've been doing things the old way forever and they're wondering why are they going backwards? Why is their job getting harder? Why did they really dislike coming into the office every day? I was speaking with an entrepreneur the other day. We're a business owner, 40-year-old business, and their largest client is underwater revenue and profit-wise. They're spending more money on the account and it's worth keeping. So my immediate response was OK, fix our fire. You either raise your rates, cut your costs or both. That's the best. You have that tough conversation with your client. We haven't raised rates in 15 years. Unfortunately, because of the current economic landscape, we must do so. We hope you stay with us or you see that client go, because the amount of time it takes to manage a client that's underwater, it's just not worth it. And use that extra time to go find new clients. Go source again.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Can you share your experience with managing a team to live up to their?
Speaker 1:highest potential Starts and ends with you. It's the culture that you set that you create. Do you have an open culture by design or by default? Do you nurture the people that work for, mainly with, you? If your employees see their success in you, then they will be more successful themselves. Do you have people in charge of leading, managing and accountability? Then you have to look at your processes. Do you have quarterly reviews at a very minimum? Do you spend at least an hour with each employee once a quarter to review their performance against goals that you set? Yeah, so in terms of goals.
Speaker 2:Do you find that creating goals is a collaborative process between the employee and you? Or is it you saying, hey, I know where the ship needs to go, I know we need to hit this goal? You propose it to your employee and say here's what I'm thinking in terms of a goal. What are your thoughts on this? How would you approach actually creating the goal? So there's buy-in and it doesn't just feel like a top-down order, but ultimately this is what we need to be profitable, grow the business and everyone's on the same page. How do you think about that?
Speaker 1:It's both based on the lifespan of the company. In the beginning, the business owner has to set the goals. You're the investor. You have to set the goals. You have to say this is what we need in order to succeed. Once you start adding on other roles, like financial roles, then it's a sit-down. Where do we need to be to be profitable, when do we want our margins to be, et cetera. When you grow up a little further and you've had great successful wins, you then hire someone who's in charge of strategic accounts or account management or sales. Then it's a collaborative approach. Where do we need to be to set our goals? Now, if you look at the organizational structure in a corporate mentality, a corporation has a board. The board sets the goals and the priorities to protect shareholder value, to protect and grow shareholder value. So the goals come from the board. The CEO then disseminates that, comes up with the plan, sometimes with the board, and then delegates throughout the organization.
Speaker 2:I think that line of thinking can be so valuable for small teams and early stage entrepreneurs to say, I don't have a board, I'm the CEO, but basically I'm not a CEO yet, I'm just a founder, a small team. How can I create some form of that board type?
Speaker 1:direction. Do it right. Create a board. I think everybody should create a personal board.
Speaker 2:At what point in the business, and is it like an equity piece? Is it just a friendly relationship? Is it just a personal mentor.
Speaker 1:It depends. Everybody should have a personal mentor, somebody that they align with, who has been there and done what they want to accomplish, had seen more successes than they have. Someone who really, truly wants to see you or the individual succeed. Take them under their wing. I have several people I mentor. I enjoy seeing their success. Then there's the paid board, where you pay them on a quarterly basis or per meeting, and then there's the equity boards, or a combination of any and all.
Speaker 2:OK, how does you get connected with the folks that you are their mentor and it's not necessarily a paid relationship, because I think that would be really interesting for me and all listeners to hear of. Do research, go on LinkedIn, find similar companies that have succeeded but aren't your direct competitor. Reach out to them, show up, meet them tactically. How do you recommend someone find that mentor?
Speaker 1:So, when it comes to you finding a personal board or a business board. Observe and ask. The biggest fear people have is asking questions, feeling embarrassed and getting rejected. Well, that's why it's a fear. I love rejection. Rejection is fuel. Rejection goes in the vengeance bank to prove people wrong, to succeed again. Rejection is very strong and you can use that for power. But you have to ask. Chances are you already know the mentor in your life. Maybe it's your uncle who's owned a company and been there done that. Hey, uncle Jimmy, would you mind mentoring me for a little bit? And then it's just a conversation. It can be as simple as that, or it can just be unstated A phone call every once in a while. Hey, Uncle Jimmy, I know that you've run some businesses. When do you think I should make my first hire For me? I reached out to my uncle. I said hey, I've got this great idea. I want to start a business. And he's the one who said well, if you don't do it by the time you turn 30, you're going to regret it. What's the worst that happens? You move home with your parents and you have to get to find another job. Well, to me, all he had to say is you move home with your parents. Sorry, mom and dad, and that was enough motivation to succeed.
Speaker 2:But when it comes to After I started my business, I told you that I wanted to be a digital nomad and travel right. The first place I went was to go live with my parents at their house for six months and just obsess over building my business. Good, Because I didn't feel like it was secure enough to actually go and have fun. It felt so vulnerable and I needed to really be on the farm, sow the seeds, take care of the soil. I couldn't go on a trip and have some storm come and ruin everything and have to start from zero and then go back to working in the job. I didn't like that much. Well, that was your fear right.
Speaker 1:there is to have to go back and work in the job you didn't like. Fear is a motivating factor. Fear is the biggest motivating factor. It's what keeps us away from bears, from being eaten by the wolves, by failing. Sometimes it holds us back because we get too consumed by it. But you hit a good point there. You hunkered down, so to speak. You went to live with your parents. You cut your cost basis Hermit mode. I call it Hermit mode. I love it.
Speaker 2:You, I was single, no kids, no partner.
Speaker 1:Same. When I started, I had a dog. Worst case, my parents would have to live with me and a dog. That wasn't going to happen. You did what it took and whatever it took, and as a business owner, founder and entrepreneur, you have to be prepared for doing whatever it takes to suffer. In a way, you're the one who has the most to gain and the most to lose, which means if you're not doing well, you're still hiring that employee to help so you could focus on what you do best, what you want to do. They're getting paid more than you. My first employee we paid, I want to say, $48,000 a year. She was the person answering the phones. Were you making money at the time, oh, no, no this was investment dollars Outside investor dollars. Yeah, we did a small capital raise, got it, and that was enough. I knew that would last for the 12 to 18 month minimum to have a nice little landing pad Fuel in the tank, so to speak. We hired this individual so I didn't have to sit in the office and pick up phones all the time and do everything that needed to be done for an office manager's role and I could be out selling. I didn't receive my first paycheck for two and a half years, so this individual made a lot more than I did, but I just believed in it. That's what you need to do and what everyone else that starts a business needs to be prepared for.
Speaker 2:It's a big game of delayed gratification.
Speaker 1:Well, every dollar saved and put back in the business can be worth 10-fold in the future. That's a great perspective. Again, the goal isn't money. Money has a finality. The goal is everything else that you want to be, whether it's ego and you just want to be this awesome CEO that's famous, or you want to be a YouTuber and the next Mr Beast. The money will follow. All right, guys, let's just check where we are on the trail. Are we staying on white? I think so. We're going on.
Speaker 2:I think we're white to yellow, if I remember.
Speaker 1:Well, it could intersect. Nope, we're going up red.
Speaker 2:Red.
Speaker 1:Yeah, if we go on white, we are doing another 12 miles. If I had a guess no, maybe not, because we can stop here I zoomed back in, so that's probably another four to six miles that we can go on white. I know you want to. I do have other meetings for the day. I don't stop. I wish we could, but I tend to utilize it every hour of the day.
Speaker 2:Go to t-shirt mode here.
Speaker 1:I'm suffering through it. Luckily, this jacket, I have it's fleece lined, but it's not fleece in the back. Yeah, so it works out nice Two hours in two miles.
Speaker 2:All right, slow pace, one mile per hour. Oh, I mean we covered a lot of elevation With scrambly, a lot of elevation gain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I'm proud of you, my friend. This was awesome. This is pretty apropos for your business success as well as the show Right, it's upward. Yeah, it's constantly upward lately.
Speaker 2:I love it. I'm really grateful to be here.
Speaker 1:Yeah, grateful that you reached out, and that right there proves your success. You essentially reached out to me. You took the ask. You weren't afraid of it.
Speaker 2:I was sitting on my couch, it was 10pm at night and I had listened to a number of the pod episodes and I thought you know what? I'm in New York? Let's do this. You did it, we just readjust here. I'm excited. I'm excited to see how this evolves. As I've said, there's a lot of adventures in the world and medium of recording content is pretty fascinating to me. It's like the adventure channel meets business podcast.
Speaker 1:It's a good way to describe it. Readjust my mic Test test, test, test test test. Okay, all right, then we're back. Yeah, you're a teacher. I'm a little jealous. Unfortunately, I'm strapped into all of this, so to take it all off, all right, do a test Count backwards from 10.
Speaker 2:Ben oh, 10, 9, 8, 7, 5.
Speaker 1:Okay, you're good. 10, 9. All right, test Okay. Now we have some great content today, yeah.
Speaker 2:Great Congolese.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Hopefully some of the stuff in the beginning stays in.
Speaker 2:but that's the warm-up round and we warmed up Is your editor English as the first language.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, his name is Rio. He lives in New Mexico, nice. First person I've ever met in New Mexico. He's an awesome dude and he's fantastic at his job. That's great. He's also my partner in this.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he's really a complex episode.
Speaker 1:This is beyond complex.
Speaker 2:He's going to have to listen very tentatively to every minute.
Speaker 1:As he has said to me before, and the only person that would counter that point is my wife. Yeah, he has to listen to me more than anyone else.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, but he can speed you up. It's not so bad. I love him for that. He can put you on two X speeds, sometimes four.
Speaker 1:All right, we are finally on our descent not as treacherous, but man, this was killer.
Speaker 2:This was epic, amazing Full circle for you. This is the first time you've been back.
Speaker 1:No, this is the first time that I've been back to breakneck. It's an hour and a half drive, little over actually. It's also not a hike. I think many guests can do this. Required technical skill. Hand placement was very important on a couple of those ascents, foot placement et cetera. Yeah, nice little walk in the woods. Well, right now it is. So when I first started out maybe second or third hike I used to hike with poles because it's easier on the back, but I fixed my back with all this hiking Wow, amazing. So I don't use poles anymore. And plus the click lack. That's great, it's not good for audio. Yeah, let's just note here, because we've got a lot of ice. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So what's next for Ben? Well, I'm running a telehealth company with my brother right now. Him and I are the founders, owners, operators. How?
Speaker 1:old is the company.
Speaker 2:The company is two years old. Okay, the first year and a half was me making a YouTube channel and then, about a year and a half in, I started to try to monetize it and create a telehealth brand, hire other audiologists to do the service component. So it wasn't just me and we built out a team patient care coordinators, sort of like the front desk at a clinic. But ours is a virtual clinic, so we have our clinic right now is about the size of three virtual clinics. Excuse me, our virtual clinic is about the size of three in-person normal health specialist clinics. So that helps put it into frame of reference here. And our current run rate in terms of how the business is performing, which is the gross revenue this month times 12, is just over $2 million.
Speaker 1:So we've grown it from zero to a respectable amount in two years and I will say that is extremely respectable, especially since the majority of businesses right and the actual statistic on this, I think it's 95% do not make a million in revenue at all. They do not cross that boundary, and that's okay. Convenience stores, restaurants, very small micro businesses even they don't cross that Right 80% or 80 something percent, don't know the exact statistic now, but last time I looked, 80% of startups don't make it to the first year. Of those 20%, the majority, the vast majority, don't make it to the fifth year and the majority in the 90%ile range do not see a million in revenue, if ever. So congratulations, that is a fantastic number. So let me ask you this complex question.
Speaker 2:We're grateful, we're proud and we have the team right now who's pushing this forward. He has definitely a group effort and we're very focused on serving our community, serving our customers, serving the patients that work with us or even those who get our free information, and we're in it to build a brand for 20 years plus. We don't have any intention as of now to sell the business and we're making strategic investments in the long term. So, content marketing, seo, youtube, building a brand, other things that are coming in the future that I don't want to talk about right now. All those are. That's where we're at and yeah, I mean it sounds crazy, but there were some tailwinds supporting us. Some of entrepreneurship is choosing the right market, having the right timing. Operators can have a lot of leeway and grace if they're in the right market and they start their business at the right time. So we're. Telehealth started near the beginning of COVID in the pandemic. That certainly was a big boon in terms of online healthcare Companies like Hymns and Hers, which is a major VC, funded direct to consumer health brand telehealth component. I think they saw significant revenue increases because of the pandemic people going online and then, generally speaking, the baby boomer generation is really at the largest generation of adults right now and they're growing into their 60s and 70s and folks tend to develop hearing loss and tonight is ringing in the ears around that age. So all those factors are really supporting us, their wins in our sale, as we're working hard every day, every week and trying to optimize the business. Love it.
Speaker 1:So do I have your permission to mentor you a bit, please? Yeah, you had mentioned you're about two million in revenue, right, phenomenal number. But then you followed it with we don't have any plans on selling. Strike that from your conversation. No reason to, because one I can tell you right now. Selling a two million dollar business with this economy, you're going to walk away with a whole bunch of upset moments and depression when you realize how quickly that money disappears to your third partner, uncle Sam. And also, that's too little. Again, the goal isn't money, but you're not selling a business and you don't want to sell a business. You want to grow a business. Yeah, exactly, don't even think about it. So what I did there is called care frontation. Get your permission to give you some criticism. You gave me the authority, which means you've opened up and are willing to listen to it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, completely consent to any feedback you have. And yeah, we have. It's a good management tool. We have no intention of selling. So what comes to your mind when you hear that from a young entrepreneur? That the notion is that I'm going to grow a business and sell it, even when I just said I have no intention of selling it. Yes, because even the possibility of selling it is in my mind, because anyone listening to this show that is investment minded.
Speaker 1:They're going to hear a business that started and grew inside of three years, already crossed two million in revenue, has over a hundred thousand subscribers on YouTube telemedicine, boomer generation servicing a strong need. They're going to hear that as possible acquisition target or early investor and your challenge in taking money too early is you give up too much equity, correct.
Speaker 2:So it just. I heard a great tip on this from another pod. Actually, one of the co-founders of Netflix has a great pod and he shared this, which I resonate. Is it Mark Randolph? Yes, correct.
Speaker 1:So I come back to this. By the way, Mark, if you are listening, I am still waiting for your dates to go hike.
Speaker 2:He's an outdoors guy, so I think that could happen, I know.
Speaker 1:He's an outdoors guy on the West Coast and I might be going out to the West Coast in the next few months Amazing, I'm a big, well-known guest which I'm going to be doing. A few of them.
Speaker 2:Amazing Stream together. Yes, so he shared. There's two times that make a lot of sense to raise money with investors. One is when it's just an idea and nothing else, so that you can use the money to fund the first few years of the business and really prove out if the idea actually works or not. The second is when you have a proven acquisition channel that you put a dollar in you get X amount back, and that makes a lot of sense. Otherwise, at least the way that we're operating it otherwise, just grind, stay focused, have slow, steady, sustainable growth over time. What are your thoughts?
Speaker 1:on that. It depends. Yeah, right, I'd be amiss if I gave you true advice on that, because it really depends on your feeling, your stamina, your energy. True, a lot of people will prefer the slow and steady, because slow and steady is consistent and reliable. Slow and steady brings in the bacon. Right, you keep that paycheck. What you'll see happen often is when you have success in a business, the business owner will throttle back a little bit to de-risk the risk that they already took. Yeah, if that makes sense.
Speaker 2:To protect their earnings. They currently have their assets. Yeah Right.
Speaker 1:I saw it happening with myself. I get it. It happens, and that's when the intersection of lifestyle purpose and value come to a head. If you like the position you're in, then you don't want to risk that and lose that. But if you're in a fast gross company and your whole goal is to raise as much capital as possible, than do so. It's a very different mentality right there. So it really depends on the person and the situation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Well, yeah, it's always in the mind, whether it's in our subconscious deeply stored, or we want to do it next year of okay, we're creating a lot of value. There are options in life, but I don't want to get too ahead of myself and you are young. Yeah, you know what your option is Super young Again.
Speaker 1:Remove the money aspect. Yeah, your options and your opportunity are just freaking. Enjoy what you're doing. Yeah, enjoy it. Yeah, go kind of where the wind takes you, as long as it's within your plan. Yeah, be willing to pivot if things aren't working out. Be willing to challenge your own ideas and yourselves. Be willing to challenge your brother and we're going to talk about the complexities of working with a business partner. That's our brother in a moment.
Speaker 2:Yes, Be willing to challenge everything.
Speaker 1:By the way, I noticed you have the same technique as I do when traversing a descent Use zigzag, Zigzag yeah, yep, for those who've hiked in the Rockies or the Seagrass, you're going to crash into each other.
Speaker 2:They have the trails, that zigzag, and they're designed for horses, for horses to travel up the mountain. But generally speaking, in the East Coast, in the Appalachians and the Northeast, the trails are more just straight because they're older, and someone told me that once and I thought wow, that is Generally true and it's much easier to hike zig-zags.
Speaker 1:It is because you're straightening it out. You're leveling it just a little bit, running down the middle mountain. It might be faster, but if you fall you're going to roll Not good on these rocks. So let me ask you a question around YouTube, has it generated revenue for you? Or is it simply a marketing initiative with a cost? Or is it just neutral?
Speaker 2:For the first few years. It was essentially how we acquired an audience, which led to awareness, consideration, and then, whether they joined our email list or went on our website and signed up for a consultation, that's how we acquired customers. Our niche is very education-focused, meaning that people with Tinnitus sometimes go to their local doctor and they don't know what to do with them. They're told hey, there's not much you can do, there's not a surgery or medication I have for you, so just try to learn to live with it.
Speaker 1:We'll hear that off. With what you have tonight to deal with it, we'll go into an education around it in a second, but yes, please continue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so there's many businesses that have education as a core function. For example, asleep is a business that I've studied a little bit. They have this mattress and their marketing team, over time, realized the best way to acquire customers is not to sell the features of the mattress. It's to educate people on the benefits of good sleep 100% correct Education.
Speaker 1:People want to be educated. They'll be tuned in if they're learning. They don't want to be sold to Different world.
Speaker 2:we live in. Yeah, and that makes a lot of sense and we can take those learnings and apply them to certain businesses. Now I would say that doesn't apply to I'm buying toilet paper. It's like, usually speaking, I just want the cheapest toilet paper. That's good enough. There's, of course, a premium market.
Speaker 1:I'd like it to differ on that assessment.
Speaker 2:And is part of it. If you have a product that's more expensive where you want to educate on why it's more expensive and maybe that impacts the listeners. But overall, youtube is a great platform for education. That's a lot of what we do. It builds trust, it builds the brand and from there, someone who can learn about what we do and the treatment options we have with our company, then they would take the action to go off of the YouTube platform, join our email list or take our quiz. Funnel survey. Funnel recommended free consultation. Sign up for a consultation with a doctor on our team and then potentially sign up to work in our program, which is more of a white glove experience. It's a combination of remote programming of medical devices, hearing aids, for tinnitus Remote programming wow. As well as one-on-one coaching and counseling over Zoom. So it's the comprehensive package, but that's essentially how YouTube works. Now, in the last year or so, we did turn on YouTube ad revenue, so we get some amount of money just from YouTube showing their ads on our videos, which is incredible when you compare that to Facebook ads. Many companies acquire customers through Facebook ads. They pay Facebook to acquire customers. Youtube is paying me and I'm acquiring customers.
Speaker 1:Isn't that crazy.
Speaker 2:It's insane.
Speaker 1:Your effort is being rewarded, versus you being treated like just another customer in the sales process for a machine.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think YouTube is being generous. I'll say that.
Speaker 1:Well, that's also why YouTube, though, is a Good brand. I want to say it is much more well-regarded because of the community aspect that it takes you work hard you make money, you generate revenue. As with the other platforms, you work hard. It costs you more money, so you're double investing in essence. So I want to correct you on one thing when you do accumulate wealth, your mentality around the cheapest toilet paper that works will change. I will say you never want to put yourself in a shitty situation. The one advantage of having some wealth you buy the good stuff, Leave it at that. You also I'm a pretty frugal guy.
Speaker 2:So who knows? But I'm with you, which is fine.
Speaker 1:I'm with it that frugality never changes and it should never change. And since you brought that up, I will pivot to this part because it's really important and I have faced it myself. Yale School of Management did a study on after-exit entrepreneurs entrepreneurs that had successful exits and their mental condition and what to do and what not to do, and it unequivocally was able to prove when you win the lottery we all know that the lottery winners suffer there's a tragedy of some sort. We know this. It's because why? Because their lifestyle had changed. They went from nothing, or presumably nothing in most cases, to all of a sudden being wealthy and they go crazy. That's what happens to a lot of entrepreneurs that don't plan an after-exit strategy. What the Yale study was able to show is do nothing out of the ordinary. If you were frugal before, be frugal after. Don't change who you are fundamentally as a person. Don't go out and buy the Ferrari right away. Wait a year. Don't buy the new house. Don't build the new house. Don't buy the boat, don't buy the plane, because that's not who you are fundamentally. The reason why Warren Buffett is able to be Warren Buffett is because, fundamentally, he has not changed Still the person. That, for someone as wealthy as him, lives humbly and teaches that and preaches that.
Speaker 2:I believe that anyone listening to this pod is someone who has an open mind. Of course, I would hope so. Nature teaches us lessons about death, rebirth, change, resiliency, hiking, adventure. I like to think that those listening have a more nuanced perspective on what success looks like.
Speaker 1:I would hope so, but not always. We all have our own stereotypes running around in our mind. People just sometimes don't even think about these questions that we've. Now I want to pivot again. You talk about telehealth, telemedicine. I love that business because that is our world today. I had started business therapy group and it's telemedicine for your business.
Speaker 2:For that purpose Exactly.
Speaker 1:I resonate deeply with you and I'm happy you were finding success in this. People need help, but they don't want to travel an hour. You nailed it, man. Keep it up. Let's talk about your brother now. Love it, three pivots, love it All. Right, you have decided to partner up with your brother, exactly Older or younger. He's six years older. Six years older.
Speaker 2:What's his role? He focuses on the operations and the finance. My focus is on marketing and content. You're the visionary. He's the integrator. Natural, we both share the strategy piece of it which we enjoy. The great thing about working with your family member is there's no guilt in having long conversations deep into the night and calling each other at any hour. You're never worried of oh, am I annoying him? You're way past that.
Speaker 1:Have there ever been any strong disagreements?
Speaker 2:Nothing that couldn't be figured out in a few days, but there were perhaps some different strategic viewpoints of we should do this, no, we should do this. We should spend money on this no, we're not ready to spend money on this. Generally speaking, both of us are pretty risk tolerant and I think a lot of decisions can come down to whether you're risk averse or risk tolerant.
Speaker 1:Who has the final say, the decision making?
Speaker 2:It's definitely split and if anyone vetoed a decision, it wouldn't go through. Part of the situation of essentially being equal owners in the business is that there is no 51-49. I actually can make all the decisions, given that we're family and that, ultimately, we care for each other's happiness and we love each other, that we vow to never put the business or making money in front of each other and our relationship.
Speaker 1:What you have is great. It is special. You have two brothers that are aligned with a vision. You have a visionary in you. You have an integrator in your brother, naturally set, but I can see it in you. The challenge you're going to face, especially as 50-50 equity is it won't always be success, roses and wins. There will be times where you will need somebody to have that extra point. For the same reason, you have a contract. Remind you of what you agreed upon during the good times. I would highly recommend you sit down with your brother, maybe like a prenup, maybe like you would in any relationship, discuss what happens when we are in a dissenting disagreement, because doing nothing is not the answer. You will miss opportunity.
Speaker 2:I hear you, and having some form of a mediator is certainly a system that has been proven. I hear you. I hear you that there are many folks who have had an aspiration that we are family, everything is going to work out and then sometimes it doesn't. We are both signing up to work together. We can't predict the future, but we can only control the decisions we make leading up to yes. They are likely, I imagine in partnerships. At some stage one person decides I'm kind of set, I might just chill a bit with my family and work half time and kind of take the foot off the gas a little bit.
Speaker 1:That happens more than you know.
Speaker 2:And the other person says what are you doing? You are missing this opportunity.
Speaker 1:So I recognize that with one of my partners he was ready to call a quits. Just dealing with employees can be tough after a while. Right, a silly long standing employee is the needs and the wants. Changed the power dynamic changes and I saw in one of my partners he was on his body language. He just didn't want to deal with certain situations. I tried to fix it, couldn't fix it and that's when I knew I got to make big moves because this isn't going to work for the long run. If all parties are not pulling their weight and being the best that they can be, then it tears it apart. Hey listener, thanks for hiking along with us. Discover more episodes at hightoka-hikecom. Or to recommend an adventurous guest, apply to be a sponsor, or to simply drop us a line.
Speaker 2:We probably have another mile to go. It's a ball, to my mind, don't it be interesting? Tim Ferriss did a good one of this where he's like I interview amazing guests, but you guys have asked me to learn about me, so I'm just going to record a podcast where it's just me talking and I'm going to ask me the kinds of questions I ask my guests, and that'd be interesting.
Speaker 1:So that is slated If we get a lot of snow. I do want to do a snow showing episode where I will have an episode of me asking me. But yeah, it's a little awkward. I do this because I really enjoy it. There's zero revenue from this. Maybe one day, who knows? But I do this because I thoroughly love conversations with strangers and getting to know you. I don't know a thing about you. I maybe know your name. I look at your background real quick. I give a quick exchange, an email, where I ask you the four standard questions that I ask everyone, and that is what drives me and it drives me as well that people love it. It's a good audience, for sure. It's fantastic. Well, if I was Daisy Joplin, I would drink out of this fast moving stream.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So let me pivot to the question I always ask Do you consider yourself successful?
Speaker 2:Ben Thompson. I consider myself very successful because just over three years ago my biggest dream was to make $3,000 a month as a minimum so I could leave my day job at the hospital and have enough confidence to keep working on a business, have a lifestyle where I could work remotely, I could be with friends or family, I could make my own schedule, I could go hiking, I could go surfing, I could spend extra time with my family. And I have that now and I'm grateful for that and I want to maintain that. But over time I realize that as much as I can serve myself, that reaches the point of completeness in some sense. And now it's about serving others, and in my line of work I chose to be a healthcare provider. It's inherently service based, it's giving, it's trying to help people, and the population that we're helping are to some degree, vulnerable and underserved people with tinnitus who are told by other doctors there's not much they can do. People with hearing loss who are trying to communicate with their friends and family and just get back to living life. So that's now. Our purpose is to serve them while maintaining the lifestyle that keeps me invigorated.
Speaker 1:All right. So you had mentioned the money aspect. Your success was wrapped around if I could make $3,000 a month, and when you made $3,000 a month, you realize that's not enough. Your real goal was framed in I want to do enough to be able to afford the lifestyle that I really want Exactly Right. Now see the difference. Exactly the monetary value has no bearing on that. Yeah, because I can tell you you could live off of $2,000. You can live off of $5,000. You can live off of $50,000. Yeah, it doesn't matter, you want the lifestyle. That's the real goal of the purpose. So I find you to be altruistic in that sense of helping others in an underserved medical arena. I will tell you my old tenais every once in a while. I get the ring and then it goes away. So I wear your plugs at concerts now. Very good, yes.
Speaker 2:You get a golden sticker from your audiologist here.
Speaker 1:Yes, golden stickers.
Speaker 2:Love it. Is it a star? You know it All right, like the old school stars.
Speaker 1:Yeah, my mother was a elementary school teacher, so I used to rock those sheets all the time. Amazing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I really understand positive reinforcement elementary school teachers.
Speaker 1:Let's just say that you make us kids sometimes Love you mom. But with that being said so, if someone does have tenaitis or mild tenaitis, what's the best advice you can give them?
Speaker 2:if you had like just one piece of advice, it's to understand that the tenaitis is coming from the auditory brain and it has some connection between the ear, as well as the central nervous system, and the emotional brain. So anxiety, insomnia, stress can actually make it louder. Hyper focusing on trying to solve the issue and turn it off can make it louder. So being aware of that feedback loop and taking care of your health, your sleep, your ears, getting a hearing test, checking if there's any medical issue going on, that would be my recommendation for how to start.
Speaker 1:I think it's really apropos that the train was blaring the horn as you were saying that, absolutely, oh, that's perfect. So, ben, as we come to the conclusion of our trail and our hike, I want to thank you. But before we end, what is your definition of success?
Speaker 2:It comes down to happiness and serving others, that is beautiful.
Speaker 1:I love that. Happiness is number one on the list. If you are not happy, you are miserable. If you are miserable, you feel it physically, mentally and emotionally and you won't earn whatever you want to earn. Be happy first. Be healthy second. Put in your third whatever is most important, as your third. Amen to that. So, Ben Thompson, I want to thank you for hiking along with me today on this 10 out of 10, most challenging, most epic hike, Breakneck Ridge in New York. This was a game changer and you not only kept up, you paced.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much. Absolutely, darren, and big love to you, brother. And if anyone wants to reach out to chat about YouTube marketing, tinnitus, tinnitus, treble, health, anything, I'm on LinkedIn, so let's build community and feel free to reach out.
Speaker 1:Next time when I took a hike, we are filled with energy, ascending alongside a vibrant, successful leader and achiever, with Rob Basso.