Redefining Hearing Aids feat. Brandon Sawalich

Brandon Sawalich, President and CEO of Starkey, joins us to share his incredible journey both on the professional front and in his personal life. The conversation brings to light the pride he feels for his son William's progress in the NASCAR Xfinity Series—a journey fueled by discipline and dedication. Brandon also opens up about the profound impact of Starkey's founder, Bill Austin, whose mentorship continues to guide him in leading the company while preserving Bill's remarkable legacy.

Moving beyond personal stories, we explore Starkey's transformation into a forward-thinking tech company. Brandon details how groundbreaking innovations like Edge AI—featuring AI and sensors—are redefining hearing aid technology. With advancements such as accelerometers for fall detection and vestibular diagnostics for fall prevention, the importance of educating audiologists and hearing professionals becomes paramount. Despite some initial skepticism, these pioneering features bring hope for significantly improved patient outcomes, emphasizing the potential of technology to enhance lives.

We tackle the evolving landscape of the hearing aid industry, focusing on the rise of over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aids. Brandon reflects on how OTC products have reshaped public perception and awareness. He candidly discusses the critical role of professional service, fitting, and maintenance in achieving optimal hearing outcomes, while cautioning against misleading marketing tactics. This engaging discussion highlights how innovation, mentorship, and patient care remain central to navigating the challenges and opportunities within the hearing industry.

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Chapters

• 0:19 Conversations With Starkey CEO Brandon Sawalich
• 3:48 Advancements in Hearing Aid Technology
• 15:54 Hearing Industry Trends and Challenges
• 24:38 Gratitude for Time Spent

Transcript

Blaise M. Delfino, M.S. - HIS:

You're tuned into the Hearing Matters podcast, the show that discusses hearing technology, best practices, and a global epidemic, hearing loss. Before we kick this episode off, a special thank you to our partners. Sycle, built for the entire hearing care practice. Redux, the best dryer hands down. CaptionCall by Sorensen, life is calling. Care Credit, here today to help more people hear tomorrow. Fader Plugs, the world's first custom adjustable earplug. Welcome back to another episode of the Hearing Matters podcast. I'm founder and host, Blaise Delfino. And as a friendly reminder, this podcast is separate from my work at Starkey.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Good afternoon. This is Dr. Douglas Beck with the Hearing Matters podcast. And today I'm here with my friend, Sawalich, president and CEO of Starkey. And Brandon, welcome aboard. Glad to have you here today.

Brandon Sawalich:

Well, thank you, Doug. I'm glad to be here and I always enjoy our conversations.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Thank you, thank you. Listen, I want to start with something very important. I just want to say a word and you tell me what comes to mind if I say NASCAR Xfinity series.

Brandon Sawalich:

Oh, oh, my son, of course. Yes. William.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah. I met William up in Minneapolis. He's doing an incredible job. It's just incredible.

Brandon Sawalich:

He is. He's forging his own path. I saw when I was coaching little league since he was four or five, I coached him for eight years and focused in just his emotional intelligence. And he's a sponge.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

And he's winning, which is shocking because he is a very young guy.

Brandon Sawalich:

He's got his first Xfinity race this Saturday in Miami at Homestead.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

And he's like 12 years old, right?

Brandon Sawalich:

In my head that's what I see, but yeah, no, he's 18 now and Toyota has him on a very strict workout program where I guess maybe he didn't get that discipline for me, but he's doing all he can and he's committed.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

That's great. I was very impressed with him. Very smart, very dedicated young man. Listen, I want to talk a little bit about your views on life and reality and certainly Starkey. And when I think about Starkey, I met Bill Austin about 40 years ago when I first got into this profession. And Bill was unique. He was the founder, he's the owner, and he's a legend in our profession. And so the first thing I want to say is what's that like to walk in his footsteps 'cause everybody knows him.

Brandon Sawalich:

Yeah, those are big footsteps. And the one thing that I've known him about as long as you have, but I've been at Starkey for now 30 years and I've heard many stories and Bill will be the first one to tell you, you learn from your mistakes and failures and you do the best you can. And the stories that I would hear just like we all did when we were kids, pick the grandparent and okay, I've heard this one, I've heard this one. It all makes sense. I mean, it all came together for me over the years because for him, he'll be the first one to tell me, do what you think is best. Don't do it like you think I would. If you need information or anything, you know where to find me.

He's really allowed me to set the company on a direction and I'm fortunate where I know where to find him. I know where he is right now. He's with a patient not far from my office here and just to pick his brain and we just talk about things. And he's that mentor that you could still have around and he's going strong and doing well.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

He is. I saw him a few weeks ago in Minneapolis and I really enjoyed my time with him. Anyway, listen, so when I was up there for Starkey day, you mentioned that you don't really think of Starkey as a hearing aid company. I'll leave that to you. How do you view it now?

Brandon Sawalich:

Well, when I started 30 years ago, there were 76 hearing aid manufacturers I think is was what the number was because one of my first jobs was in all make repair, sorting out all the brands, makes, models from everybody, right?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Sure.

Brandon Sawalich:

Over time, as we know, technology, digital, everything started evolving. When I started, you were buying your K amp or your circuits, various circuits elsewhere.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Right? Zeta noise blocker.

Brandon Sawalich:

Exactly. And eight, nine years ago, I knew that we had to change. And we're a technology company that starts from design and development. And then yes, we have to manufacture and all the things that come with being a hearing technology company, and that's who we are today. We've invested in that. That's the big change of Starkey. Behind the scenes I've seen it now the industry is seeing it by the products we're coming out with.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah, I think it's fair to call it a technology company. And that gets me right into the issue of sensors. And you guys were the first to integrate sensors into hearing aid technologies. And I'm wondering, two things. Did you get push back on that and where's that going?

Brandon Sawalich:

Back in, it was 2017 and our industry, you make incremental improvements, right?

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Right.

Brandon Sawalich:

In the nineties, a new faceplate or battery door or some type of circuit then got in digital. 10 years ago or so you're talking about wireless connectivity and accessories and sound improvements. I got tired of the incremental thinking in my mind. Small thing is let's think big, what can we do to redefine the hearing aid? And a lot of that too came from Bill's vision that he's had for many years. He and I talking about it.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah, sure.

Brandon Sawalich:

We're going to go for it. We got to think big, this incremental stuff where you come out with improvements but you change the name or different color, different look and whatever. We were the first with AI and integrating the sensors into the product with Livio. You have to start somewhere.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

The first sensors that you guys used, you were counting steps, I believe, and that was available in Apple's technology and a few others using basic accelerometers that were on the chip. But then you took that the next step and you used those same accelerometers to determine who was falling, physically falling over. Tell me about that.

Brandon Sawalich:

Well, look, our demographic, we know what happens with people with hearing loss, their balance. And if we can save one life through our technology and a sensors from fall detection where it alerts three family members, the hearing aids detected a fall and we wanted to start there. Then from that, what's next? Because we push it as far as we can that technology allows.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

And Brandon, if I can just interrupt. The way that worked, that was Livio, right?

Brandon Sawalich:

That was Livio in 2018.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

In 2018, what would happen is if the accelerometer suddenly had an activity that indicated a fall, the hearing aid had been wired up ahead of time that it would send out alerts to three different text messages. The loved one, the family would get an alert that mom has fallen, dad has fallen, somebody has fallen, and then they could act in response to that.

Brandon Sawalich:

Yes, yep. They could call and check in or drive a check-in and make sure everybody's okay.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

And now you've taken it to the point where you're actually doing vestibular diagnostics with even more sensitive sensors and gathering more diagnostic information. Can you tell me about that?

Brandon Sawalich:

We're looking at now fall prevention. We've got the back end covered. Now let's look up front where how stable is the patient with their balance, walking, their gait.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah.

Brandon Sawalich:

It starts monitoring, of course, within the hearing aid is somebody a high risk for falls. And will inform the family member because we all know, as I said, somebody falls, depending on the severity, it could be a quick downhill in what they're capable of doing. People ask me all the time, why do that? It's not going to be widely used. Why not? I mean, if you're talking about, like I said, whether it's one person or a hundred, I mean, if we can do it and it doesn't sacrifice what we're doing with the overall hearing aid sound quality, we're going to do it.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Tell me, have you heard from any of the hearing care professionals, this is the chatter that I heard a few years ago. Oh, what are we doing in fall prevention? What are we doing with fall detection? That's not audiology, that's not hearing instrument dispensing. Did you get any of that? Did people push back?

Brandon Sawalich:

It was more of a, tell me more. How do I talk about it? Because we redefined the hearing aid with Livio and we've been doing so ever since. And when you redefine something, especially in our industry, you have to educate on what's new and it's not for everybody. And that's the one thing we learned. We were excited with Livio. It was so many new features that we would just talk about all of them and you'd overwhelm people [inaudible 00:09:05] heard or seen before we learned from that because it's not a Swiss army knife. You got to pick what feature or what does the patient need. And so it's really educating the audiologist and the hearing healthcare professional on what's available in our products and then them choosing based on the patient's lifestyle.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

In the new Edge AI product, which I happen to wear, I'm not wearing it at the moment 'cause I have my headset on for this video. Somebody asked, did Starkey ask me to do an endorsement of Edge AI? And you'll see this is on our website. And I said, no, nobody asked me to do that. I wanted to try the Edge AI. I went up to Minneapolis for Starkey day and I was blown away. I was so impressed not because my hearing loss is so significant, I have a mild asymmetric high frequency loss, but because the clarity.

Brandon Sawalich:

Yes.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

And so my signal-to-noise ratio, people with normal thresholds have an SNR 50, signal-to-noise ratio to get 50% of the words correct, about one, two or three per mead KILION. Mine is six. And so I need things clearer. I need background noise decreased and I need the primary speech signal increased so I have a better signal-to-noise ratio. I immediately noticed that when I was walking around the factory.

Brandon Sawalich:

I saw your video. I didn't know you were fit, quite frankly. And you're right, my approach is I don't want to pay for endorsements and obviously-

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Well, you didn't pay me.

Brandon Sawalich:

We didn't. And I want our products to speak for themselves with the patient.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

As an audiologist, the message I want to get to other hearing care professionals and to the public who will very likely seek parts if not all of this video. There's about, we could say 38 to 40 million people in the USA who have hearing loss on an audiogram, that's they do the test, press the button when you hear the beeps, and they're going to come up with hearing loss, about 38 to 40 million out of the 335 million in the USA. But there's another 26 to 28 million who will have normal thresholds, but they need a better signal-to-noise ratio. They have what's called a listening disorder, and it's not very unusual at all. It could be attention deficit disorder, it could be mild cognitive impairment, it could be dyslexia. It could be a lot of things. And what we find is that for many of these people, all we need to do truly is to improve the signal-to-noise ratio.

Now, having said all that, there are certainly many people who have both. As hearing loss increases, so too does difficulty listening. It's not one or the other. Sometimes it's both. It could be one or the other in some situations. The reason I say that is that when I put on Edge AI, I for the first time got a significantly improved signal-to-noise ratio and I was much better able to get by in a football stadium, restaurant dinners, drinks with friends, and it was noticeably than the other eight pairs of hearing aids that I've got on my back shelf here. I won't show you any of the labels, but a significant improvement because it is attacking with veracity signal-to-noise ratios through an advanced deep neural network that operates about a hundred times faster than the one you introduced six or seven years ago.

Brandon Sawalich:

Yes. And I'm the same way with my hearing loss. It's pretty mild in my right ear, high-frequency loss. But what I noticed, and when I first put them on and tried it for the first time, it was crisp. That's the first word that came to my mind. The syllables were crisper. I was talking to Bill and others and I was like, whoa. I mean, we knew what we set out to do, but I was experiencing it myself. And there's a reason too, we call it Edge AI because when we set this out, I want to give people an edge in their everyday life. It's that superpower, I call it. You heard it at Starkey days, hearing is believing where if we can help somebody just hear a little bit better, whether mild or what you were just describing or others that have moderate to profound, it's sound quality.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Tell me about, use the term innovation beyond technology. Tell me how that relates to Starkey and what your thoughts are.

Brandon Sawalich:

We think innovation, it's like leadership. Leadership, innovation, those are heavy words. A lot of meaning. Innovation beyond technology, and at Starkey, I know and believe that to be a good company, it's about service, right? You have the products, we know what goes through there, but we also have to innovate outside of what we're doing with the products through our service and support that we're providing to our customers along with the patient. I mean, there's education. How do we educate and get across effectively, whether it's virtual or in person, which is the Starkey experience that I talk about. But also what are we doing thinking ahead the next 10 years, virtual, digital, customer service, different types of tools and software that can make it easier for our customers who the biggest commodity is time, also for the patient and what are we doing for the patient beyond a YouTube channel or some type of online instruction where we can help them if they need help with our products.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Well, anything else that you can share with us about what's upcoming in 2025? Any new hints?

Brandon Sawalich:

I think you're going to see sound algorithms and different things from us that we're going to keep improving because we have a five-year roadmap.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah.

Brandon Sawalich:

It's my job to look up and out. We have a great team, and that's really what's separating now at Starkey. It's a new era. And I talk about the era of excellence to all the team here at Starkey where everything matters, every job matters, and we're focused and we're focused on what we do well.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

I said that was the last question. I lied. I wanted to get your reflections on OTC because to me, I think that having OTC for the last two years has forced all of us to up our game in many respects. I wonder what your thoughts are.

Brandon Sawalich:

I was, as you know, chairman of HIA for four years or so and DC was and is still my second home, because it's for the industry of educating those in DC on what the hearing industry is, what hearing technology is, what it is, and really getting rid of the stigma that's in their minds about what hearing aid is. And at first, I think it was in 2015, '16 OTC was-

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah. When we started the FDA, the FTC.

Brandon Sawalich:

And it was all wrong. And sure I got defensive and like no, no, no. But then slowly through conversation, but also recognizing, wait a second, this is an opportunity.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah.

Brandon Sawalich:

And I've been getting questions about Apple, right? And it is the same opportunity because it's bringing awareness and quite frankly, a platform that I've personally used for Starkey to educate on, okay, yes, here's an OTC product, here's what it does. Here's what a prescriptive product. Apple's getting announced. Yeah, it's a feature. Great. Apple's helping raise the conversation on hearing loss and what could be done. These aren't negative things. It's not anything that I'm concerned about. I embrace it because it helps with the conversation because you just mentioned 44 million, and what, 10% adoption rate we go through the numbers.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

In, I want to say it was April, perhaps March of '24, there was an ear and hearing publication that came out, the Global Burden of Hearing Loss. And they pointed out in the US, their estimates combined everybody, and they came out with 70 to 72 million. One out of five people in the US with hearing or listening disorders. And what they said that I thought was really convenient and easy is they said, only one out of 10 people who would benefit from hearing aids wears them. Nine out of 10 people do not. And that's an incredible market that is underserved and underutilized. And I think that OTC has brought awareness and I think that's fine, but OTC hearing aids, I think people are shocked when they start looking at the prices. Now, I can't speak for you, you had a lot more knowledge about this than I did going into this, but I was one of the study groups on HIA, Dave Fabry and myself, Harvey Abrams, Brent Edwards.

I know I'm leaving somebody out. Tom Powers. We were all studying and working on this, and we came up with lots of information on OTC, and we were also a little bit reluctant, but the one thing that we thought was an advantage was the price because we were all thinking it was 200, 300, 400 bucks. The good ones now, I mean if you look at Amazon, you're spending 700 to a thousand dollars for one. A pair is 2,000 and people want to do that, I'm okay with it, but I think gee whiz, for $2,000, you can go to almost any audiologist or hearing aid dispenser and get a major manufacturer's prescriptive product with a hearing test with somebody looking in your ear to see if wax is actually your problem with somebody who can program it with a two or three year warranty. OTC is very, very interesting. I don't think, has it impacted the marketplace at all? To my knowledge, no.

Brandon Sawalich:

No, it hasn't at all. And if anything, if I have a frustration, it's the bad actors 'cause I refrain from commenting on the Facebook ads that pop up, a hundred dollars or why pay this? And I'm like, it's a disservice. They're treating it like a commodity, of course. And then what we see and others, and I know this is that somebody buys it and they are incredibly dissatisfied and they go to one of our customers, a professional, and they expect them to fix it. You can't do anything, but you could talk to them then. Okay, here's what you said. They just bought a hundred dollar device from wherever and the products that we've come out with, it's a third of the process.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah.

Brandon Sawalich:

You just mentioned it.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah, yeah.

Brandon Sawalich:

Evaluation, the fitting, the service. How we've bundled pricing and the talking point of, well, it's $6,000. It's misleading. We know what is available, but the good companies by brand who are in other industries, consumer electronics.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah.

Brandon Sawalich:

You and I have been around long enough, we've seen-

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah, they're good.

Brandon Sawalich:

The Panasonic's and the Sony's and everybody come in and out, but the one thing that they don't get until they get in is it's the patient and the service. It's the fitting, it's [inaudible 00:19:42] face than the ear. That's what makes everything work along with the care and the service post fitting.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Exactly. Well, that's what you were talking about, innovation beyond technology. You've got to have really good technology, but it's not standalone. It needs maintenance. It needs to be professionally fit. And it's like having a great car. You can go out and buy a Lamborghini or a Maserati, great car, but it needs a lot of service to keep it great. And I don't want to say hearing aids take a lot of service, but it's not unusual for hearing aid to go back to the factory once a year because receivers do get plugged up with moisture, earwax and stuff happens. But that's all covered if you're buying a prescriptive product.

Brandon Sawalich:

And that's the part of the story that's left out on the articles and such of really, and that's the part of the education in DC and others that I've done, is educating on the entire patient journey, that process.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Yeah. And I think that for the patients who are OTC patients, that's great. I have no issue with that. But what I was asked so often, I think I've told a few folks up at Minneapolis, I have seven or eight pairs of OTC hearing aids that were sent to me, and they were sent honestly no charge. And the manufacturers or the representatives said, "Gee, Doug, if you like this, will you speak about it? Will you write about it?" I said, "Sure." And I didn't write about any of them. I didn't speak about any of them because there's a world of difference. And if I won't wear it, I would have a really hard time advocating that you should wear it. And that's where the rubber meets the road, right? Is how would you treat your mom, your dad? How would you treat your brother, your sister? How would you treat your grandfather, your grandmother?

Brandon Sawalich:

Well you heard it, right? Well, you could go to a pharmacy and you get eyeglasses, and there's 10 components usually in your set of eyeglasses now for over-the-counter. What we have to do, and you said it because you could see, as soon as you see an OTC device, the quality, plastic, everything, there's 310 components in here. 310 that we have to make complex, simple. From a processor to a Bluetooth to lithium-ion batteries to, I mean, go down the list. And it's not as easy as what they think a hearing aid is a commodity where, oh, let alone wax and moisture and protection against the elements. It's not amplifying sound. This is a mini-computer that's thinking for patients.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

I remember this very clearly. It was right after the Starkey day, and you talked about it in terms of a moon launch. And I like that because when you're privately held as Starkey is, you don't have to talk to the board about the chance you want to take. And it's reminiscent of NASA in the sixties, right? When Kennedy said, we're not going to the moon because it's easy, we're going to the moon because it's hard. And within seven or eight years, we went from a very basic NASA to landing on the moon in 1969 with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. Very impressive. And that was the moon launch that I was thinking about when you said that because we're a privately health company, we can do a moonshot. And that's what I thought you were talking about.

Brandon Sawalich:

That's exactly the words I used eight or seven years ago. Chief Technology officer that I hired, Aachen Bomex and one of our principal engineers sat in their office and what we did for feedback in 2006 with Destiny. I said, this industry is about sound. What is the moonshot? I want the best sounding hearing aid in the industry. 3D, 4D, whatever you want to call it. People, they're buying hearing aids because they want to hear better noise. And that was the moonshot, because going back to that incremental improvements, no, what's the wow, right? I want people when they hear it, and that's what we're hearing just in two weeks with Edge AI, that Chris, you see it in their eyes, you know that. When you connect and it works, it's like you hear sounds that you forgot. I would say mission accomplished and more to come.

Dr. Douglas L. Beck:

Brandon, I want to thank you so much for your time. I know it's a busy day. I appreciate you spending a few minutes with us at the Hearing Matters podcast. I look forward to seeing you sometime soon.

Brandon Sawalich:

Thank you, Doug. I appreciate having me on and I enjoy our conversations all the time.