Supporting Creativity in Science and Business

Just recently creative ideas are flowing from my thoughts like never before.

I have always been creative and have thought outside of the box but lately, I am having a hard time sleeping because of all the ideas. I have so many ideas I am having a hard time keeping up with them. Perhaps this is normal for someone who has been in an industry for almost 30 years and my focus on ideas is in my career at this point.

Since graduating with a hearing science degree in 1995, I have mostly been a clinician.

I love working with people. For a few years, I was also in a doctoral program. You would like to think that creativity would be accepted into a Ph.D. program, however, it was not, for the most part. Yes, there were some professors that loved my creativity and passion. Others were something other than accepting. I heard words and sentences from these professors like “high-maintenance”, “not like #otherstudent who is a perfect A student” and “that is not how we do it”. So I realized it wasn’t going to work and left the program.

Back to being a clinician and specifically an audiologist worked for me.

It has been a pleasure helping people. The trouble is if you don’t own your own space you have to follow what others want you to do, even if it is unethical, or lacks the most important concept, hence helping people. I soon realized that I continued to face issues with these companies lacking creativity and changing the status quo. I had to do what I was told and not what was best or easiest for the person you are helping. Can you believe a group of doctors told me they didn’t want the tail of the dog (me) to lead the dog (them)? And I was only trying to figure out how to help more people to make hearing care more accessible at that time.

In 2012, I finally started my own clinic helping others in the way that made the most sense.

Only now do I realize how creatively I developed the model and how successful the model worked at that time. As time ticked along and technology progressed, I realized yet again it was time to make another change in the model. If you don’t progress with the progression, you are the provider/owner/helper to the person who wants to help, and you won’t be around anymore. The person who wants hearing help will go to a more progressive concept, or at worst a cheap option. But we all know cheap is expensive. Ask me what I have observed in hearing health care that isn’t helpful to people and is only dangerous. I don’t need to tell you that hearing is really important.

I started another company in 2021 as an online business.

The business is an e-commerce store that has so many products from ear-cleaning type products to hearing products and even tinnitus therapy products. We also have service available, and not just customer service which is to say normal but fee-for-service on people’s more complicated needs that customer service can’t manage. We have forums and videos and blogs.. oh my! Concepts and ideas for people. What do they need, and how to figure it out? Like a little puzzle figuring out what puzzle piece fits best for that person. Who doesn’t love a good puzzle when challenged?

The creativity continues on learning how the product works and some tricks in using the product.

Not all products are plug-and-play like the Airpods that so many people go and buy. These new products for ears and hearing have been engineered with creativity and thought. We need to handle these products with creativity too.

I use my creativity to come up with not only processes and programs, but sharing ideas like this one and some others I want to write on.

Right after I graduated college I wanted to become a writer. I have always been told I have an “awkward” writing style. But how I loved the creativity in stories and in literature. For a good little reader, people tell me I should be better at writing and my spelling should also be better. Is that really true? Perhaps my brain thinks awkwardly and that is why I write the way I do.

In 2023, I got my creative juices flowing. I am working with a small team now and it is going great. I am so thrilled at how many people we are helping. Not just fitting hearing aids and making sales either. Other audiologists should jump on the creative bandwagon. Or jump along with me. I could use the help.

If you are reading this and are a creative thinker you will understand my difficulties and please feel free to share how you have overcome the status quo.

How you have gotten others to come on board with you when you can’t completely afford to hire them yet?

Please support small new start-up businesses because these businesses are progressing and trying to make things better. (Respect that growth, unless they are only trying to make money and something cheap.) I challenge myself every day to drop the “old stale donut” and pick up a newly made “goodie”. Thanks for reading. Kim