K. Ray Katz

By most standards I am a senior citizen, but like most “old people” I do not think of myself as being old – just highly experienced. I grew up in Baltimore where most of my family and my two lovely daughters still reside. I have enjoyed over thirty years in the hearing care field as a Dispenser and business owner. I started out as an in-home sales and service consultant before working with an ENT and finally buying a well-established hearing aid sales and audiometer servicing business in Tucson, AZ. That office grew into several offices with three Dispensers and three Audiologists. During those years I wrote articles for a number of different trade publications, gave lectures, and was an officer of several state and national organizations. My hobbies are rebuilding our house – we never get finished with one before starting the next – and writing – although some of my readers have probably wondered if English was my first or second language. Eclectic is a word that describes my varied work history: New York Stage Manager working with artists such as Joan Baez, Isaac Stern, and Robert Frost; Special Agent/Investigator for Military Counter-Intelligence (please – no jokes) in the US, Europe and Asia; and Sales/Distribution Manager for a large East-Coast bakery. My wife and I now make our home in Henderson, NV when not traveling in our motor home.

In Wine Country

We do a lot of RV traveling. This year we decided to spend the summer in the Sonoma area of California. My first observation (see photo) is that you can not die of thirst in this area. There are signs like this at every significant crossroads pointing to local wineries. If the land isn’t vertical, which a lot of it

How Do You Market Your Services?

How do you handle service after the manufacturer’s warranty has expired on instruments that you have sold? Do you follow the old Dispenser model and provide free service until such time as the instrument needs repair? Do you charge for each office visit? Do you offer an in-office service warranty or even an all-inclusive yearly warranty? There any many

Do You Know Your Business – Part 3

Parts 1 and 2 of a questionnaire I wrote in previous blogs were designed to help evaluate how much an owner, or employee, knows about his/her office and the interaction, or lack thereof between management and employees. Even if you did not go to the trouble of writing down answers to all of those questions, just reading them might have

Connecting to Hearing Care

My wife and I went to dinner this evening with her daughter and grandson. Over dessert Brian, who works at Best Buy, started explaining to me how he watches TV shows through the Internet without a cable, land-line telephone, or satellite connection. Virtually everything he does is Internet related. For anyone under fifty this may not seem so extraordinary. For

Do You Know Your Business ? – Part 2

Two weeks ago I gave you a quiz to help you get a feel for how your office (business) is doing. How did you do? I hope it was helpful. Enclosed below is another quiz of a different sort. Almost every professional office has a front office person or persons. I say almost since when I was almost retired I

Have You Ever…?

Several years back, the number is not important, I flew down to Mexico once a month to volunteer with Flying Samaritans. The group serviced a clinic in Bahia Kino, a small fishing town on the Sea of Cortez (Gulf of California). We provided dental, vision, Ob/Gyn, general medical, and audiology services. After doing this for several years I began having

Do You Know Your Business

Every business owner thinks he/she knows exactly how their business is doing. After all, their office is their lifeblood, the reason for their existence. An owner rises in the morning thinking of new ways to increase business and goes to sleep at night reviewing his/her day’s performance. Even so, the question still comes up – Do you really know how

Economy’s Impact on Business

Last week I talked with a manufacturer’s rep. We hadn’t seen each other in a number of years, so it was nice to catch up on the “personal” stuff. Even so, I did get a chance to ask a few business related questions. One of which was – is business increasing, or not? He was emphatic in his evaluation of

Have you heard?

Thank you for joining me as we explore the world of hearing care through my thoughts, and those of many others in the hearing care field. Sometimes serious, sometimes humorous, I hope you will be interested in what we have to say and add your thoughts to this discussion of events, new and old, and new again. Let the

First words

As I sit at my computer looking at a blank screen, hoping for an inspired thought with which to start this new endeavor, I am reminded of the Chinese proverb: A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Knowing what to start writing about, for me, has always been the hardest part of putting pen to paper.