We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Richard Pocker a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Richard, appreciate you joining us today. Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

I had a hearing loss from the age of five. The medications that saved my life from a bout of scarlet fever, took my hearing. It was a progressive loss, and I wore hearing aids from the age of seven and suffered a sudden and total collapse of all my residual hearing within a month when I was 30. My hearing loss is so severe it cannot even be tested. You can explode a firecracker behind me, and I won’t flinch.
I had several locations and 25 employees. I could not stop so I ran my business depending 100% on lip-reading. I had to have others make phone calls for me. I withdrew from the retail side of the company. I still had to do several trade shows every year depending on lip-reading.
I managed for 25 more years with this handicap.
It was only after I moved to Florida in 2015 and discovered it was a center for cochlear implants that I found the solution. I went from zero speech comprehension to 85% and recently tested at 100%.
Was the defining moment in my life the sudden plunge into deafness and isolation or the activation day when my cochlear implants were turned on? I still wonder about that.
Since receiving cochlear implants and regaining my hearing, I have been on a mission to help people get out of the isolation of hearing loss. I have mentored or assisted hundreds and hundreds to find a way back into sound. I do it with my podcast website, cochlearimplantbasics.com and my book by the same title (I published in seven languages to be able to reach about half the world’s population and of course holding live support meetings for those suffering from hearing loss.

Richard, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

It was the sudden plunge into total deafness and the eventual solution 35 years later that inspired my mission to help others out of the isolation of deafness and hearing loss.

Do you think you’d choose a different profession or specialty if you were starting now?

If I could go back, I would have moved ahead with cochlear implant surgery sooner. It is water under the bridge. As far as my profession, I was a third-generation art dealer and picture frame company. J.Pocker & Son will be celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2026. (jpocker.com). I knew from a very young age that it was my calling. I did not choose my mission of helping others out of deafness, it was cast upon me. Each successful recipient who gets their world of sound given back to them is a success story for me. You could not ask for a better reward than an email or letter from someone who said my mentorship, or my book gave them the courage to move forward and get cochlear implants.

How do you keep your team’s morale high?

Interestingly enough, when I ran my business, Management by Walking Around was my principle. There were times of economic crisis when it was very tough to keep my employees engaged but I never let anyone go.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://cochlearimplantbasics.com
• Facebook: Richard Pocker
• Linkedin: Richard Pocker
• Youtube: Richard Pocker