Pioneer Press March 1, 1993
Dave Beal

When Robert I. Harris was stacking up wood in the family's lumberyards in Milwaukee, his father hoped that some day he could turn the business over to his son. But the younger Harris dismissed the possibility after noting all the dealing that got done over the telephone. Robert Harris is deaf, and deaf people couldn't use the phones. For him, owning a business was a pipe dream.

Or so it seemed in the mid-1960s. Today Harris, who went on to get a doctorate in clinical psychology, has become one of the country's leading deaf entrepreneurs. He is the sole owner of Harris Communications, which employs 11 workers at its quarters in an Eden Prairie office park. His growing company distributes equipment to a $2 billion-plus market populated by 2 million deaf Americans.

And Harris Communications gets plenty of phone calls — about 10,000 a year from people asking for advice or seeking the equipment, books, tapes and other items it sells coast to coast.

Harris Communications is actually four businesses in one. It distributes two categories of equipment, telecommunications devices for the deaf (TDDs) and assisted-listening devices for the hearing impaired; sells books, videotapes and other items that are important elements of the deaf culture; and helps organizations comply with the new Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).

But running a business is no piece of cake for Robert Harris.

"My number one problem is lack of communication with hearing entrepreneurs," he says. "They want to talk to interpreters, instead of talking to me. It's an ongoing struggle."

Conversing with Harris, via sign language through an interpreter, isn't much different from talking through an interpreter with someone who speaks a foreign language.

Yet for the deaf, talking to a hearing person through an interpreter is often easier said than done. The law requires organizations to provide interpreters for deaf people in public settings, but Harris says enforcing the law is difficult. In some cases, the groups can wiggle out of the obligation by showing that they can't afford to pay an interpreter. Finding good interpreters can be tough, particularly on short notice. And when Harris pays, the price typically runs $66 minimum for two hours.

Harris persists, for one overriding reason.

"I want to offer a role model as a deaf owner," he says.

Carolyn Anderson, who works with parents of deaf children for the St. Paul-based Minnesota Foundation for Better Hearing and Speech, has known Harris for years.

"He's a real-go-getter," she says.

Anderson's son, who is deaf, went to a camp for gifted deaf teens last year near Omaha. Harris was a speaker.

"Those kids were just so thrilled, having this deaf professional there. They interviewed him on videotapes. My son said he was the most popular speaker there. All the teen-agers wanted to be the one to interview Bob for the videotape that they produced, about new technology for deaf people."

New technology — TDDs, signalers, wake-up accessories, television decoders and other equipment that Harris distributes — has improved living conditions for many deaf people. Meanwhile, the computer age has ushered in many display terminal jobs characterized by silence, making new types of work as manageable for deaf people as for those who can hear — once the deaf learn the technology. Laws like the ADA have opened new doors for the deaf.

All of this has lowered the towering barriers a bit for deaf-owned start-ups.

Five years ago, in a magazine article he wrote about deaf-owned businesses, Harris cited an estimate that at least 100 deaf Americans make their living as entrepreneurs. That figure has grown since then.

In the mid-1980s, Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., launched a School of Business Administration for deaf students. Later, deaf business owners in Washington started a Deaf Entrepreneurs Council. They held their first annual convention, with attendees from around the country, a month ago.

Harris, who is 46, is married. His wife is deaf. Their two children, a 9-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son, can hear.

He received his doctorate from New York University, and came to Minnesota in 1976 to work for Ramsey Hospital in St. Paul as a clinical psychologist. That job ended in 1981. "They didn't have enough money to continue my position, so I was laid off," he recalls.

In 1982, he took a similar job at the Hennepin County Medical Center, and began moonlighting as a TDD dealer. US West helped with generous financing.

Harris turned the basement of his Fridley home into his office. After the commotion got to be too much for his wife and their first child, he rented warehouse space.

In 1985, he opened a showroom on Hennepin Avenue, in the Uptown section of Minneapolis. In August 1991, he moved the business to Eden Prairie, and in November that year he dived into his business full time.

He says the intense social networks involving deaf people have been critical to his success.

"People know each other all over the country. It's really a wonderful network. Without it, my business never would have survived."

But crossing over into the networks of the hearing world is another matter.

Harris has viewed bank financing as out of the question.

"I have never asked for a loan from a bank," he says. "The reason is communication. So I learned to save money. I used my savings to invest money in my business."

A while back, the Minneapolis Area Chamber of Commerce invited Harris to become a member. He asked the bottom-line question: Would the chamber provide an interpreter at meetings? The answer was no.

Harris won't give out his company's sales; he says the field is too competitive to let loose of that information. He does say his company has been profitable in all but one year.

"Our company has grown too fast," he says. Harris didn't hire his first full-time worker until 1988. Now he has 10, and is thinking about adding two more soon.

He wants to beef up his ADA consulting operation and distribute more devices for hard-of-hearing persons.

Six of his employees can hear, five cannot.

I think a lot of deaf people have some dreams," says Harris. But there's one dream he never had.

"I never dreamed I'd be in business."