Business As A Second Language

Two deaf brothers, eager to work together, find few barriers in franchising.

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Waylon and Jerrel Mathern are like any small-business owners: They know how important communication skills are. But the brothers have had to work harder than most to get their message across. They were born profoundly deaf, a term that means they’re unable to detect sound at all, and so have spent their lives reaching out to people in a hearing impairment-unfriendly world. In succeeding, they defied the odds: About 50 percent of deaf or hard-of-hearing people in the U.S. are unemployed, and another 20 percent are underemployed.