It took only one encounter with someone using hearing aids for the first time to convince John Tiede that they change lives.
Just under 35 years ago, Tiede was in the financial industry when his brother-in-law suggested he join him for a day to learn more about what hearing aids could do for people. John wasn’t interested in changing careers, but he went anyhow to sit in on some consultations and then again a few weeks later for a fitting.
“He was fitting a hearing aid on this woman and her husband and daughter and granddaughter were there,” recalls John. “He puts the hearing aids on her and turns them on and starts to talk to her but she’s saying nothing. Her husband asks her if it’s working and her eyes just well up and she starts crying. She finally says, ‘I haven’t heard your voice in so long, it’s so good to hear you.’ And I thought, oh my goodness, this changes people’s lives and this is what I want to do.” John reeducated and opened his first business two years later.
Now, he and his wife Kathleen have 15 locations of Hear Well Be Well across southern and central Ontario, the newest in Huntsville which just opened this month. They also recently moved to the Huntsville area from London.
“I am the most excited to open up in Huntsville because I feel so connected to this community,” says Kathleen. “This is just such a lovely community of wonderfully kind people. I’m excited that we get to live here and work here.”
Kathleen and John split their time among all of their offices, going wherever they are needed. The Huntsville office will be run by their son Elliot along with client and community representative, Laurie Hartmann.
Elliot Tiede, Hearing Instrument Specialist, and Laurie Hartmann, Client & Community Representative at the new Hear Well Be Well office in Huntsville
They’ve watched the industry change over the decades. “What we have today is nothing that resembles what we had even in the late 1990s,” says John. “Computer technology continues to grow in leaps and bounds and today we have some outstanding things in hearing aids that help people hear in so many different environments that have always been challenging for them.”
He adds that hearing aids each now have dual processors running at nano-second speeds, among the fastest technology in any health device. “It is quite remarkable what we are able to do.”
Kathleen provides some examples. “You can go from a quiet conversation with your grandchild that you would never have heard before, to talking with your spouse making all this noise in the kitchen, to Tim Hortons with your friends and there’s this cacophony of background noise and you hear every single person speaking without making an adjustment, just hearing perfectly everywhere. That’s what’s really revolutionary.”
But more than just helping to restore hearing loss, hearing aids today can also enhance your life. You can use a cell phone to make adjustments to bass and treble levels, you can make background noise less prominent, and with wireless technology you can use your hearing aids as headsets to listen to music from an iPod or your television.
“Background noise is part of life and without it it feels very cold and very sterile,” notes John. “We need to hear it in order to feel part of something other than a conversation, but to what degree does it interfere with our ability to understand what someone is saying when we have a hearing impairment? So having controls that help us make these items more or less aggressive can be a benefit to those who are tech savvy.” They’ll work with a client’s skill level so that they can use their hearing aids within their comfort level.
Their years of experience have taught John and Kathleen that having your hearing tested can be an unnerving experience, mostly because people don’t know what to expect.
“We have a 14-step process and it’s about really understanding the precise information if you do have hearing loss,” says Kathleen, adding that it’s as much about them gathering information as it is about educating their clients about ear and hearing health. “We can understand where they are struggling and all of the sudden they feel so validated and they feel okay that they have this hearing loss. Now they have an answer and they feel more reassured.”
The Hear Well Be Well offices are equipped with speaker systems so that they can simulate different scenarios, like a busy restaurant, where people often have difficulty hearing and help people to understand what hearing aids can do for their quality of life. And then, if a client chooses to purchase hearing aids, a series of appointments will ensure that they adjust easily to the newfound sound that they haven’t been hearing.
It’s a rehabilitative process. It’s not like a pair of glasses. You don’t just put them on. We are stimulating brain tissue that has shrunk due to auditory deprivation. It takes approximately six months to a year for the brain tissue to expand again to its normal size… Even though hearing aids will slow down hearing loss, they don’t prevent it, they don’t stop it from happening.
John Tiede, owner, Hear Well Be Well
Many people are also surprised at how discrete hearing aids are now, and how comfortable they are to wear. Even after a 10 or 15 minute demo in the office, a client will forget they have them in their ears.
“We have everything from invisible hearing aids with a tiny handle that sticks out—it is impossible to see them, they are down so deep—to ones that sit quietly behind the ear that you can match to your hair colour or your skin tone. That’s how discrete they are,” says Kathleen.
The Hear Well Be Well office is at Unit 105, 73 King William Street, across from Huntsville Place Mall
Part of their success has come from the Tiede’s commitment to their values.
There’s a real heart-based approach to our business because that’s who and how we are, and who we attract to our business. People can feel it when they come in because it’s not about a quick appointment, it’s not about selling hearing aids, it’s about helping to transform your life and about helping to bring back the quality of life you have been missing.
Kathleen Tiede, owner, Hear Well Be Well
They also do charity work, both locally and abroad.
In 2008, they established a charity—Project Empower—to help orphaned genocide survivors in Rwanda. They wanted to show their own children that, “in Canada we have a responsibility, with the privilege we have, to care for others,” says Kathleen. “We decided to focus on youth because they were at that pivotal stage: were they going to be productive members of society or not.”
Each time they were in Rwanda, they got to know the medical community and decided to also start taking hearing aids to the country. In 2014, they began the International Gift of Hearing program, running charity drives in Canada to gather used hearing aids and then having those that are still in good shape reconditioned.
“Each time we take down about 200 hearing aids,” says Kathleen. “And because education is so important to him, John goes down with technology to train the doctors and nurses so they start to know how to do this and then we leave it with them so they can become self-sufficient.”
They also began a Canadian Gift of Hearing program in 2013 to help local people who have hearing loss but no financial means to purchase hearing aids. And they do community-based fundraising as well to support efforts like hospital renovations and expansions.
For more information about Hear Well Be Well visit hearwellbewell.ca.
This is a sponsored story
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