The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Ben Walker Shares Secrets Behind Ditto Transcripts’ Success

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Ben Walker Shares Secrets Behind Ditto Transcripts' Success Dittotranscripts.com About the Guest(s): Ben Walker is the CEO and founder of Ditto Transcripts, a company he established in 2010. With a focus on providing highly accurate and certified transcription services, Ditto Transcripts serves various professional sectors, including law enforcement, legal, medical, and academic research. Ben broke away from his initial medical transcription venture with three partners to expand his focus and cater to a broader client base. Known for elevating transcription standards, Ben credits his entrepreneurial success to his rich family history of business ownership and his dedication to servicing clients with precision and human-centric solutions. Episode Summary: Join Chris Voss in this captivating episode of the Chris Voss Show as he interviews Ben Walker, the entrepreneurial force behind Ditto Transcripts. Since founding his company in 2010, Ben has surged to the forefront of the transcription service industry by prioritizing accuracy, security, and customer service. Listeners will gain insights into Ben's journey of transforming a single-niche medical transcription start-up into a multifaceted enterprise catering to legal, law enforcement, and academic domains. Discover the operational intricacies that distinguish Ditto Transcripts from its AI and other human-transcription competitors around accuracy, compliance, and confidentiality. Ben shares how historical and handwritten documents like World War II letters and archives from the Smithsonian enrich their professional catalog. Learn about the crucial skills Ben has cultivated, such as customer-centered service, that elevate company culture and leadership. For aspiring entrepreneurs, Ben underscores the value of diversifying service offerings and embracing a collaborative team approach to innovation. Key Takeaways: Ben Walker highlights the importance of human-centric transcription services over AI for achieving higher accuracy rates and handling nuanced professional requirements. Transcription accuracy and document confidentiality are paramount, exemplified by Ditto Transcripts’ rigorous security protocols and employee background checks. Diversification in service offerings can protect businesses from market fluctuations, as showcased by Ditto's expansion beyond medical transcription to include legal and academic sectors. Cultivating a supportive company culture encourages team input and innovation, empowering employees to contribute valuable perspectives in business decision-making. Exceptional customer service can establish a company’s reputation and sustain client loyalty, despite industry pressure to automate interactions. Notable Quotes: "You can read four times faster than you can watch a video. So if it's an hour video, you'll read the transcript in 15 minutes." "We work with a lot of different industries… we've worked with authors, we've worked with museums, and research departments." "Our transcriptionists literally sign their name and date it… they know the transcripts will be perfect." "I ask for their opinion first before I give them mine because I don't want to cloud their judgment." "You get what you pay for… we have specialized transcriptionists assigned to specific clients."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Cause you're about to go on a monster education rollercoaster

with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hello, this is Voss here from the Chris Voss Show.com. Oh, beautiful. Ladies and gentlemen, the only things that makes official, welcome to 60 years and 21 episodes of the Chris Faw Show. We've just been bringing you the most smartest people, the most brilliant minds. Of course, I'm just the idiot with the mic, the smart people are the guests.

And so we want you to share the show with your friends, neighbors, relatives, because if you make yourself smarter and then you make the world smarter, well, then maybe we'll all learn to get along. Or you know, or not, if you've seen human nature lately. Anyway guys, go to Goodreese.com for us as Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com for us as Chris Foss, Chris Foss one on the Tik Tokity and Facebook.com for us as Chris Foss. Opinions expressed by guests on the podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the host or the Chris Foss show.

Some guests to the show may be advertising on the podcast, but it is not an endorsement or review of any kind. Today, an amazing young man on the show today. We're going to be sharing his entrepreneurial journey, his business, insights and experience, and maybe some ways he can help all of us do better at our business and delegate more. That's probably important as well as the story. Today we have Ben Walker on the show.

He is the CEO of a company called Ditto Transcripts and he founded Ditto Transcripts in 2010. He's been providing certified, accurate, cost-effective transcription services for professionals in law enforcement, legal, medical, academic research and more. But if he's doing that professionals, is he doing it for unprofessional people like me? We'll find out. Welcome to the show, Ben, how are you? I'm doing well, thanks for having me, Chris. Thanks, Ben, thanks for coming.

Why do you hate people who aren't unprofessional? No, I'm just kidding. Give us your.coms where it can be able to find you on the interwebs. They can find us at ditto transcripts dot com and I'm on LinkedIn pretty actively at Benjamin K Walker. And so you help people be better professionals at transcribing and getting getting things done. Tell us a 30,000 overview of your business and what goes inside of it. We started, like you said, originally back in 2010 as a medical transcription services company.

Really? Yeah. And we were losing medical clients due to some technological changes in the healthcare industry. Doctors now point and click and they don't dictate as much as they used to. So we were, like I said, losing clients. And at the same time, we were getting random phone calls from law enforcement agencies in a few law firms locally here in Denver, asking us to help them transcribe. And we would turn them away because we didn't have people that could transcribe multi-person audio. Doctors dictate single person narratives when they used to dictate.

Those attorneys are always using that Latin and stuff. I'm just kidding. Yes, they do. And then imagine like some of the attorneys we work with in patent law and they're using words and phrases, scientific words and phrases that sound made up, like the inside of a cell phone, the metals that are in there, they sound fake. Yeah.

Super fragilistic, expelliadocious, stuff like that. Yes. Yeah. And they expect us to spell that correctly. Yeah. How can we get super fragilistic, expel a docious. You got the S wrong in there. Yeah. Yeah, that happens. But I mean, so do humans, right? And so you've, you've really expanded this business to where it features now a lot of

industries, medical transcription, legal transcription, law enforcement, transcription, He's medical transcription, legal transcription, law enforcement transcription, uh, business transcription, academic trans trans transcription, general transcription. But, uh, have you been able to describe anything Ozzy Osbourne says when he speaks? You'd be surprised by how good our people are because that's really good. Software right there. What are people that do that? Good. We actually use people.

Oh really? All right. Yes. Well, that probably works better because we use an AI system to do the show notes. And man, if you have a irregular name that isn't Bob Smith, man, that thing will muck up the name like in some of the other data like crazy. It's still not as good as humans. And the clientele that we work with, they require 99% or more accuracy because the data they're pulling from these transcripts is extremely valuable, either in the law enforcement, the legal, and think, like you said, academic research.

They can't have bad data, because then their research is bad, and their conclusions are bad, and then they'll get in trouble. So that's why they come to us, because they know the transcripts will be perfect. Mm-hmm, there's an important accuracy. So how did you launch this business?

What got you into this? And was this your first company started? Yeah, it's a little bit of both. So the medical transcription business I went into with three business partners and they're friends of my parents and they were in healthcare already. So we kind of had a built-in warm lead source from their connections in the healthcare industry and When we started losing clients I suggested we offer other kinds of transcription to help diversify But we had some really large medical clients that they were happy with. And I wasn't really happy kind of sitting on that and not doing anything else.

Yeah. Oh, I broke off and started what would be considered like a sister company and started offering legal law enforcement academic and off I went. And so do you, when you're doing like legal transcription, are you doing like maybe the transcription for, uh, you know, court cases where, uh, they, you know, you want, you want to know what the back and forth went in the court case or like, uh, what's the other thing, depositions and things like that. Is that a lot of what the legal transcripts should you do for attorneys? Yes, exactly.

Court hearings and depositions. Once in a while, they'll send us law enforcement related interviews. If it's defense oriented trial of some kind. A lot of the civil stuff is deposition related and the court reporter that they had sitting in can't get it done on time or is too busy to get it done at all. So they'll send it to us and we get it done, frankly, faster and cheaper than a court reporter. I remember back in the day before a lot of this technology was around this technology. We had our brick and mortar companies and once we get successful, you get sued and the people see

you and you sue them and people are stealing from you. You got to sue them. It's a fun thing. Partners. Partners. Everyone shakes you down for money. And I remember, uh, we did a court case with, uh, we were doing a court case and, uh, my attorney, we, we'd seen the whole initial pretrial up to the injunctive process where, uh, the judge does the injunction and the judge had done the injunction on, on two employees we'd hired that had non-compete agreements. And we didn't know they had non-compete agreements. But we, you know, we got the injunction, but he wanted to go back and watch all the videos

and charge me basically another $10,000 to watch what he watched the first time. I'm like, no, you're not. No, you're not. And it was like 150 bucks too, to get the videos from the court. And I said, you know, if you, if you didn't pay attention to what was in there, but you know, this would have been maybe a better thing for him to do was to pay you guys to, you know, get a transcription of those things so we could review it. I don't know. It's still be probably paying him for an hour or something. So yeah, your service probably would better. I can tell you a fun fact in regard to that, that you can read four times faster than you

can watch a video. So if it's an hour video, you'll, you can read the transcript in 15 minutes. Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the next time I got an attorney, it pulls that all pull that on them. So what makes your service different? And then separate us from, talk about the people that maybe are competing with you,

that use people like yourself, and what makes you guys better than like, there's a lot of this new AI transcription services coming online, what makes you guys better and what's your lane that you guys really innovate on? Well, what makes us better is our accuracy when compared to say an AI version of the transcript, because we've done testing on it and it's, you know, between 50 and 60% accurate.

And I know people say that's low and that I'm being overly, you know, obnoxious about that. It's not though, when you consider the formatting involved. So a lot of courthouses or law enforcement agencies have special requirements on formatting, like names being indented, there being space around on the header and footer and on the sides and one and a half spaces between speakers,

you know, things like that, the AI will not get right. And we're 99% accurate, like I mentioned earlier, we also certify the transcript. So our transcription is literally sign their name and date it when they transcribed it. And they can be called to testify if there's an issue with something that's transcribed in the transcripts. They can say, I transcribed this, this is what I heard. And go on on the stand. Wow. All right.

Note to self, never get pulled over by a police department that uses your guys' transcription service. Cause I'll be like on there being like, I didn't do it. I, I didn't do it. Hey. And they'll be like, no, he, he said he didn't do it, but he did it. A few other things that differentiated us is that we're us based and all of our transcriptionists have to pass a criminal background check conducted by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. So we all get fingerprinted.

Yeah. And many of our competitors don't come close to that for security. Well, you guys have a lot of security issues because imagine a court case, of course, maybe, uh, you know, it may be sealed and there may be certain aspects of it that can't be released to the public, uh, without the judge's approval. Uh and there may be certain aspects of it that can't be released to the public, uh, without the judge's approval. Uh, there's the HEPA law. Is it the HEPA laws? I think in medical, right? Yeah. So you've got to protect HEPA. Yeah. I'm not hip on the HEPA or HEPA on the HEPA. So, so, uh, you know, that has to be protected, uh, clients

data clients information and stuff. No one wants to find out that you've got, I don't know, I don't have a joke for it. Anyway, so you service all these businesses. What's kind of interesting to me is you kind of did something that I actually went through with a business partner very early on, one of our first successful companies. We started at my business partner had an in with a medical testing lab and he'd worked there. He's like, the curry company that we're using, it sucks, they smoke. So when they come in, they smell like an ashtray. It's just people just hate utilizing them. They're bad attitudes,

bad service. They don't care. They're the biggest in the town. I said, well, let's compete with them if you think that your company will give us a contract. And so we went into that narrow medical field. And one of the problems was, is it was, it was a lot of work and it, you had to be on 24 hours a day because you're picking up, you know, emergency stuff from hospital, taking it to the lab. Cause they got a guy on the table bleeding out. They're trying to figure out what's wrong.

And, and so, well, it was kind of cool. It was a great way to get that foundation started the business. I said, we need to try and find other more profit centers. You can't, if you rely on one, you mentioned your partners at the other company were saying, hey, do we have these big clients? One of the problems is if you have, I call, it's good, I call it the 80 20 rule, if you have 20% of your clients, which bring in 80% of your business, if you don't have enough clients or enough new developing clients to replace them, when those people leave, they can, your, your company can come to an end. And a lot of times, you know, we've had people, uh, that, are business brokers that buy and sell businesses and they're like, yeah, when you see a balance sheet where they have one big client or, you know, just a couple or two clients leave or one of them leaves, the company's broke.

Right. And so I think it was good that you diversified. And what was funny is I had the same kind of conversation. I talk with my partner and I go, I want to send out this mailer. I'm that old to advertise our new company. Uh, and I'm going to hit five different targets of what we know in the, in the career business are the industries that we target. And he goes, that's, it'll never work. It's not going to hit five different targets of what we know in the, in the career business are the industries that we target. And he goes, that's, it'll never work.

It's not going to be whatever. Sure enough, we discovered that mortgage companies would pay a premium. We didn't have to work 24 hours a day and being on a one hour call. And we could work like a normal sort of shift process. And it was far, far more profitable. And so you did a really smart thing there, you know, diversifying to other process and it was far, far more profitable. And so you did a really smart thing there, you know, diversifying other industries, making sure that you've got plenty of exposure to a lot of different segments.

So very smart move on your part. And it looks like it has been since you've been running it since 2010. That's 14 years. Good job. Thank you. And, you know, like we talked about earlier before the show actually started, I don't have a resume. So I didn't have a lot of options.

It was either find new clients in different industries or make a resume and go get a job and work for somebody else. How old were you when you started all this then? Would you? Hey, had you been, were you fairly young? Was this your first company you started? Transcript is the first company I started by myself in my early thirties. Oh, good for you.

Yeah, I come from an entrepreneurial family. My parents have started probably 25 companies. Really? So it was kind of normal. That was normal conversation. And yeah, that's who we were around when we were kids were other business owners. So you picked up the DNA and you know, that really helps. I wish more parents would give that optionality to, to children.

And, you know, I didn't even know what an entrepreneur was when I started my first company. I was like, you know, no one talked about it back then. No one was like, Oh yeah, you know, be an entrepreneur. I know it was, no one was seeing that too. And my parent, even my parents were like, go get a job, shut up, get out of the house, you're 18. And, uh, you know, so having that sort of blueprint experience that you had, where

you kind of grew up in that world, you know, my, my hardest part was when I started my companies is no one understood me, no understood what I was trying to do. You know, and you're doing a business over there. What the hell kind of thing you got going on over there? And why don't you just work for the man. And, um, you know, it was hard and it was hard to find people. I mean, back then it was different in the brick and mortar world. It was hard to find people that you could have. In fact, back then, what you had to do is if you wanted business, if I

should hire like some super expensive attorney and, uh, you know, by the, you try and figure out how to pay him. And, uh, that was it. But now, you know, you've, everyone talks about entrepreneurs and you got all these people you can get advice from, you watch videos on YouTube. It's kind of great, but, uh, no, it's great. You had that blueprint. Cause I think that really shapes people and gets them into being more entrepreneurs and I wish more parents would do that. I think that really shapes people and gets them into being more entrepreneurs.

And I wish more parents would do that. Well, I agree with you. I can't say my parents did it on purpose though. Oh, just say it was just a part of dinner conversation, right? Really? What new business was being started, how one of the businesses was doing, oh, this one's being sold, this one didn't work out, my business partner in this other one is not who we thought they were, so we're going to sell it to them and we're going to go off on our own.

All those things, we got to see firsthand, but it wasn't like, okay, guys, we're going to teach you something here. It was, yeah, we sat there and listened. Yeah. And that's, I mean, you just pick up on it. I mean, it's the same blueprint most people get for relationships from childhood and how to behave as human beings. You know, they just experienced the blueprint. They watched their parents, you know, get along or fight. Sometimes they don't have a parent that's part of the blueprint. And so I think it's great that you were exposed to that because what you saw was like when I had ups and downs as a business person, there was no one I could turn to.

Like no one else had experience around me. I had no family support that could be like, here's what you do, Chris, you know, and you being able to see the ups and downs, the internalization of what goes on in the mindset of being an entrepreneur, that's just gold. I think that that might be something that really, I think, would contribute to your success when you say as an entrepreneur. Oh, 100%. I mean, when they're going through resumes, literally while we're eating dinner for the

first employee of a new company and they're talking about should we hire Chris or Ben and Chris has done this and Ben has done this but Chris went to college here and Ben didn't finish college. You know, like they give those types of conversations are happening right in front of us. And we know I'm 12 13 14 years old saying well I think you should. And, you know, I'm 12, 13, 14 years old saying, well, I think you should hire Ben, you know, or I think you should hire Chris. And they're looking at us like, well,

we're not talking to you, we're talking to each other. You know, and you know, they, their business partners, I remember they had issues with a couple of their early business partners. And then later on at other companies, they intentionally went after different kinds of business partners that filled the void that they couldn't do. As opposed to having similar people, they would then go get the CFO guy, and they would go get a CEO guy, and they would go get a CEO guy and they would go get the

attorney and they were all separate and they all didn't they didn't cross over each other. You know what I mean? Whereas before they had too many cooks in the kitchen and it got messy. Yeah. And you just watched and learned and listened soaked it all up and probably a lot of lessons maybe they really didn't connect for you until you got a business. You're like, wait, I know some of the stories behind this, right? Exactly.

Knowing what you're good at and who else to bring to the table is extremely important. Lots of entrepreneurs think I have to do everything or I should do everything and I'm going to work 16, 18 hours a day. And I don't think that that works very well. So now when people work with your service and you've gotten 14 years, man, that's awesome. When people work with your service, what do service, how do they pay? Are there different sort of levels? I see here you can get it kind of on the slow internal mode or you can get it faster or if you need it really done fast because you're pining the eight ball on your

timeline, you can order it. There's several different formats of how you can order scripts. Do you want to give us a little bit of that data? Yeah. So we have three different turnaround time options, one to two business days, three to five and six to 10 business days. And then we segmented into one to two speakers or three plus speakers because when there are three or more people involved, it does take us longer to transcribe.

You have to pay attention to who's speaking, especially if they're speaking over each other. Let's say it's a court hearing and it gets a little heated. You might hear multiple people talking at the same time or a law enforcement interview with two detectives and one suspect and the two detectives are speaking at the same time or the suspect is whispering and you can barely hear them. So that's the reason for the pricing tiers. And in the medical world, it's very different. As we talked about earlier, doctors dictate single person narratives.

So their pricing is done differently than the pricing. Yeah, they're priced by the line and it's been that way for probably 50 years. Whereas the other industries are priced by the minute. So $1.50 a minute and it's an hour long is $90. It'll cost $90 for six to 10 business days. Okay. And, and, and I noticed it's, it has a people centric touch process where you interact with people, you have a rep that's a human being, you know, a lot of

these AI systems, I don't think if you can get ahold of anybody and then if you do, I think it's like one of those Zen desk things where you gotta wait three to five days for an answer. But you guys have that people, person, touch sort of aspect in customer service. Oh yes. We answer every single phone call Monday through Friday between eight and five and we return every email the same day. Wow.

What sort of satanic stuff is this? No, I'm just kidding. Who heard you on the waiting three to five days, Zen desk doll? No, I'm, I love that. I'm a big believer in customer service and customer centric and, and you know, there's nothing more frustrating when you have these companies, these technological BMS that you can't even communicate with them when there's problems and it, it just, it just communicates like we don't give a fuck

like in the my biggest thing that I hate is when I when I do have a problem and I'm trying to reach someone on it and They're like, yeah standard procedure is three to five days and you're just like well, that must be nice to live in that world Yeah, we don't we don't because I don't like it when it happens to me. So I don't do it to other people. Like, we're in the business of getting projects in and out as quickly as we can, because we don't know what's coming next. Yeah. We can't predict if there's going to be, you know, kidnapping rape homicide case come in from one of our law enforcement clients that takes up, you know, three people for two weeks. We don't know when those are going to happen.

So we got to continually be moving forward and getting things in and out as quickly as possible. Yeah. Yeah. Almost have to have search pricing for that. If you jumped the line, that's the faster turnaround time. We charge more. Yeah.

Kind of, you got to charge more and stuff. What, what has been some of the most challenging aspects that maybe have made you grow or maybe just trying to overcome them, you're proud of overcoming them. What's, what's been some challenging aspects of running a business over 14 years? Yeah. running a business over 14 years. Yeah, we do have a lot of competition that exaggerates their accuracy, especially in the AI industry. They're claiming accuracy levels that just are not true.

Yeah, like I say we can skip the show and yeah, I have to proof it all because which is basically makes like why is it my job now again? And and yeah, because the inaccuracies and it's weird like names, they'll fuck up or names of companies or sometimes it just goes on its own frickin, you know, it's just making whatever wants up, I guess. I don't know. When there's silence, it gets really confused and will fill the silence often with stuff that's not related. I do that on dates. You know, it sounds like a great service that people can use. They can get their transcripts, you know, if you want something professionally done. Imagine, do board

rooms need transcription when, you you know they have the board meeting for big companies and stuff like that? I imagine they might, I don't know. If it is part of the professional record or the SEC filings, yes, it will be transcribed. Transcribe those investor calls. Yes. He said how much did he say he's going to this year? And he missed the mark, but we have it on paper. So what are some other features and benefits maybe we haven't talked about that you do for your customers? Well, the thing is that you get what you pay for. And I know that's kind of a overused cliche.

Yes. And we charge more than say the AI companies or some of the marketplace companies where you upload your files and it can be done by anyone in the world, whoever grabs it first. Yeah. Yeah. We don't do that. We have specialized transcriptionists that we assign to specific clients so that they can get down all the names and say, if it's the psychology department at the University of Indiana, they're going to get used to those

researchers and the terminology being used and they'll get faster and more accurate. So we have the same people do it over and over for that reason. So that accuracy is better, timeliness is better, and our transcriptionists make more money because they can transcribe faster. And they, so they know, you know, so they know that one doctor is, I'm not saying any of your clients do this. I'm just making a joke, folks. But, uh, you know, if you've got that one, uh, doctor who's throwing back the bottle before he, uh, does this transcript, they're like, we, we can read us, we can figure out a slurring.

Now. I don't know. I'm sure that never happens because no one would ever do that or fly a plane and drink, so, uh, do you, do you, do any transcription for podcasts? That's a big thing right now. I get all these sort of advertisements for that sort of stuff. We have a few podcast clients, but not as many as you'd think. They tend to use the AI automated transcripts and run with that.

I don't know why, but they do. Yeah, because they're cheap bastards. Ask me how I know. You said it, not me. Well, you know, it's whatever. Anyway, so what are some other things we haven't talked about your business that are important for people to know or how to start or run a business that you found that has really helped you over the years?

You alluded to it a little bit earlier about our customer service and we truly do value that and put that at the forefront. Like I said answering all the calls, all the emails, even the difficult ones because when clients call it's usually because they're not happy for some reason. So we don't want our clients to call us and we tell them that. Yeah we don't want our clients to call us. And we tell them that. Yeah, we don't want to hear from you because if we hear from you, we know you're upset. I used to like that with our courier business, the one that I referenced earlier, and because they used to call us the green invisible courier because we had keys to everyone's office, we had these lock boxes. Our customers wouldn't see us. We solved the problem where they were trying to beat the five o'clock FedEx guys showing

up and they never could get their work done two or three hours later. We solved the problem for them, a pain point for them. Then in the morning, they would be sitting around waiting for the packages to show up, sometimes a couple of hours. With us, the packages would be there. The only time like we would go years, I think there were some clients we didn't talk to for years and they would just pay their bills and we would do the job and they'd be like, we really love you guys. Cause we don't have to call you.

And, uh, we loved it too. But you know, we knew when someone's calling, we're like, somebody screwed up some, we're gonna have to give you this call. But the, the faster you can deal with it, the faster you can communicate your client that you've deal with it, the faster you can communicate to your client that you care about their problems, and that you're going to fix them. You know, the more they, the more, and especially the more they trust you in that regard, the more better relationship you have with them. Because like, oh, we know, we know Ditto,

we know Ben, you know, we can, you know, he'll fix our problems. He fixed the last one we had quickly. It's all good. We don't have to get, we don't have to go amped up about it and go full Karen. Cause I I've been full Karen a few times with people's customer service. You only have to do it once, like you said, and then that comfort level changes dramatically. So if you do make a mistake again in the future, say a year, year and a half later, they're not nearly as upset

and they're more understanding. Yeah. Even though it's our fault. Yeah, like we truly made a mistake. They don't like we'll say, okay, you know, Chris, we're sorry, we turned it in a day late, we're not going to make you pay for it. And they'll say, No, no, no, no, no, we want to pay for it. And I'm like, well, it was late. And they say, that's okay, we still got it. Wow. Yeah, that's the best. That's the best way to have it. And, you know, I, we had clients tell us the same thing, we'd screw something up and they'd be like, you know what, you

guys haven't screwed anything up for like two years. Everybody else is screwing up everything every other day. You know, it's cool. And, you know, but just it's amazing how much is getting on top of stuff right away. And, you know, building that trust, lending the customer know that you give a shit. You know, I mean, all I ever hear when I call like, we'll kick on around cable companies, all I ever hear when I call cable companies is, you know, they're like, we care about your call. Your call wait time is two hours.

He'll keep repeating that we care. And you're just like, go fuck yourself. You know, you're a multi billion dollar company that's sending billions to investors on Wall Street. You can afford to hire five more people, dude, or 20 or 100. You know, I'm sitting on here just to run your stock up, I guess. I don't know. But what have you found in over 14 years of being a CEO, being a leader, what have you

found are some of the things that you use or techniques or skill sets or leadership styles that you use that have really helped you and maybe also in terms of culture, like your company? That's a good question. I ask for their point of view or opinion before I give them mine. What? You listen to your employees? This is novel.

I learned a while ago. I don't know everything. So I learned that the hard way too. Yeah, I asked for their opinion first before I give them mine because I don't want to cloud their judgment. Yes. Cause then they'll just be like, whatever you think boss. And you're like, no, no, no, no, I really want a different opinion. Exactly. Because we all have different perspectives on life and we all were raised differently and went to different schools.

So they might know something I don't know, or they see it from a different point of view and I want to know that because my point of view is very limited and I want theirs. Yeah. And I mean, you're looking for that optionality because I learned a long time ago. I mean, I started out hitting home runs and then all of a sudden I started with some balls and I was like, wait, the miracle magic boys lost all his good ideas. And I just learned that even though my title is CEO, I wasn't the purveyor of

every great idea in the world and that sometimes I'm wrong and when I'm wrong, it's really expensive. And, and, and so does that build in the culture of your environment, your work? I mean, you, you have to probably be in a, in a business like yours that revolves on trust, honesty, accuracy, you know, you, you have to convey that yourself and exemplify that as a leader yourself, right? Oh, a hundred percent, because I can't be

involved with everything. Yeah. I, it were too big for me to know everything that's going on. Yeah. And they have to trust me too. So it's a two way street. Yeah. It were too big for me to know everything that's going on. Yeah. And they have to trust me too. So it's a two way street. No.

No. And, you know, these are some of the big things people have to think about, you know, how they do leadership, how they can do, how they can run organizations and the culture, building culture is a big part of it. So as we round out the show, give people a final pitch out to utilize your services, how they can reach out to you guys to get to know more or follow up for more information. Do you do a, I know some people do like a test period, a trial period. I don't know if you do any of that.

Give us the final pitch out if you would. Yeah, we do a free trial or 25% off your first order. And we get like, like I said earlier, we can be founded ditto transcripts.com and I'm on LinkedIn every day at Benjamin K Walker. Or if you look up Ben Walker, ditto transcripts, you'll find me. We, we work with, like you mentioned earlier,

a lot of different industries. We've worked with authors, we've worked with museums, we've worked with research departments at universities, independent research facilities that do all kinds of research, scientific, political, trying to think of something unique. We've gotten recently handwritten journals from the late 1800s, world war two letters, world war one letters.

Man, you name it, we've done it. And some of it is highly confidential. it, we've done it. And some of it is highly confidential. Others are from museum collections at the Smithsonian or like the Leo Becht Institute, New York. Wow. That is great, man. That is great. And, you know, did you ever, did you ever think when you started this company, you know, 14 issue, 15 years ago, did you ever think that, uh, you'd be here doing this stuff still? And, uh, it would be as expansive as it become. No, I thought I'd be long gone.

You know, it's interesting too. People are willing to pay a premium still for human interaction and experience and for humans to do things. And I think that will probably, I don't know, it's probably always be the case. I mean, AI can't paint my walls. Someone who's good at it and has a cool character when they come over and hang out and paint your walls, you know, that can't be done by an AI. Not yet.

There's still time, I guess. But yeah, I mean, there's always going to be that chance for error. You know, it happens to me all the time. There's something I'll miss in a transcription and then the client calls and they're like, hey, can you fix my name? And I'm like, oh man, I thought we did that. It fooled me. And they're like, yeah, down in the, down buried in all the stuff.

And, and you know, for me, the show notes aren't that long, but for, you know, transcription and medical attorneys, you know, all those sort of things. I mean, there's a lot of data there. And like you said, the formatting too, like legally used and stuff. So, uh, very good, interesting stuff. Thank you for coming to the show. We really appreciate it, man. You're welcome, Chris. And thanks for having me. Thank you. And thanks for us for tuning in. Go to goodreeds.com for just Chris and thanks for having me. Thank you and thanks to Rhys for tuning in. Go to Goodreads.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, LinkedIn.com, Fortress, Chris Foss,

Facebook.com, Fortress, Chris Foss, Chris Foss 1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.