Hi, my name is Mark

Here’s why I started Healthy Hearing Club in Washington State.

I came into the hearing profession by getting a technical degree in ‘Hearing Aid Technology’ at Bates Technical College in Tacoma Washington. At the same time, I was working for a Miracle Ear franchise and worked in a clinic providing supervised hearing aid care while attending school.

Upon completion of the degree in Hearing Aid Technology and passing the State Board exam, I worked with a nationally known consulting firm that provided services to hearing aid and audiology offices across the U.S., running special events in offices to interpret hearing aid test results, demonstrate hearing aids and help those coming in for hearing tests to select the most appropriate hearing aid style and models that fit those individual’s needs. We would often see as many as 60 hearing tests in a one week period.

Consulting work allowed me the opportunity to travel to 25 states, working with various hearing aid brands and work with numbers of different hearing aid specialists and audiologists.

Brands I worked with include { Signia (formerly Siemens), Oticon, Bernafon, Starkey, Sonic, G.N. Resound}

The consulting work allowed me to work with all the major hearing aid brands, as well as learning and sharing specialized techniques with specialists that have worked in the profession for many many years.

After a few years of traveling, I chose to run a hearing aid clinic in my home state of Washington. I ran a Miracle Ear office for nearly 3 years. Running an office gave me time to hone my skills in fitting and tuning hearing aids for each patient on an individual basis.

I left the retail hearing aid office partially because I found it more and more difficult to have customers pay upwards of $8,500 for a set of hearing aids that I know cost the franchise owner under $1,000.

I encountered too many people that would come in the office in tears because they could not afford the hearing aids being offered. I also saw many folks take on 5 years of debt payments to get hearing aids.

Additionally, there was a lot of pressure from the ownership to pressure customers to upgrade perfectly good hearing aids once they were 3 years old to ‘trade in for new’ hearing aids.

That business model is fine and works for those that don’t mind paying the multiple thousands of dollars full retail for hearing aids, however there are ways to get the exact same hearing aids from the exact same manufacturers for less than half the cost of retail offices.

So, I created Healthy Hearing Club.