How Dr. Rottinghaus went from ‘typical’ to ‘spectacular’
By Todd Stumpf photos by robert parish

Dean Rottinghaus, DC, had been in practice for a few years. His practice was going well, but it wasn’t spectacular. Rottinghaus wanted spectacular.

So, after some careful analyzing of his practice, his market, and his expectations for himself, he decided to re-open up and say “Spaaaah!”

He describes his old clinic as being “typical.” The office was dull, gray, run of the mill. It could have been any clinic in Cincinnati. He wanted something to differentiate his practice from the rest.

Tapping into the business-world experience of his wife Melisa, Rottinghaus examined his practice, discovered what was wrong, and came up with a solution that could make it not only “right,” but better than everyone else’s. What has emerged in less than three years is Spaaaah!, a $3.2 million practice on Cincinnati’s north side.

The name pretty well describes what Rottinghaus sought.

“My wife is a progressive thinker,” Rottinghaus says of Melisa, who worked in big business before dedicating herself to the rebirth of the practice. “I always wanted something more than what I had, which was the old chiropractic office. I was seeing a lot of patients, but I wanted to expand to the point where I could bring in more young doctors and train them. We had the concept of opening up a spa. Melisa has always been interested in acupuncture and massage therapy. We considered what our return on investment would be. It was lucrative. It was good.”

A UNIQUE LOOK

In addition to spectacular, Rottinghaus wanted unique. To be unique, he needed to look unique. The old strip mall location with its gray hallways and bland walls had to go. He needed more and a better looking space. In a stroke of good luck, Rottinghaus found such a place just around the corner from his previous office.

The new place is everything the old one wasn’t. It looks and feels modern, with a lot of windows and a key-lime pie exterior, giving it what Rottinghaus calls a Florida feel. The exterior of the building gives patients something to look forward to experiencing. The free-standing office, which sits inside an old barber shop, is also a bit of an eye-grabber for those just doing drive-bys.

“The traditional chiropractic office is either in a strip mall or the long office with gray carpet,” Rottinghaus says. “This is many offices I’ve been in. When we designed this office, we wanted it to be very different. This office has really cool colors. It’s cheery, bright, and patients love it. They love coming in.”

Rottinghaus bought his new place, wanting to invest in ownership rather than waste money on rent. He is free to do as he pleases with his new space, including making all necessary physical changes to the building inside and out.

Creating the clinic he and his wife had in mind, however, would require more than fancy colors and windows, though. The first impression was nice, but wouldn’t be lasting without something inside the building to capture patients’ attention. This was where Melisa and her acumen came in.

As a former investment manager, she had traveled around the country and had stayed at upscale spas on the West Coast.

“The West Coast is always much more progressive than the Midwest,” Rottinghaus says. “She wondered why chiropractors didn’t have clinics that looked like spas. We talked about it and looked into doing a spa.”

That was about three years ago, at the end of a lengthy period of time during which Melisa studied the business, conducted a thorough analysis of the practice, and developed a plan for its future. She looked for ways it could grow physically and financially. She looked for angles to make it more progressive, something patients could rally around.

The concept of the West Coast-style spa was stuck in her mind. She envisioned a practice that incorporated multiple disciplines and holistic medicine under one roof. She saw something that was half-chiropractic office, half pampering spa, where people were clients as much as they were patients.

Rottinghaus knows in hindsight he was very fortunate to have someone on his staff like Melisa. The type of analysis and planning she did would have been very expensive on the open market. Or, without her in the house, he might never have thought about transforming his business at all.

Rottinghaus laments that chiropractors are ill-prepared to open their own practices. “Chiropractors just do not have a business background, most of them,” he says. “I recognized what my weaknesses were. My weaknesses were managing an office or a staff.”

26 MTs AND GROWING

In the first half of 2003, the Rottinghauses decided to go for it. They found their space and made their move. Before the move, Rottinghaus and his staff saw about 200 patients a week. That number has more than doubled in a little more than two years. People got on board quickly. There was a lot to get on board with.

In his old practice, Rottinghaus had two massage therapists. He now has 26. He has an acupuncturist and a medical doctor on site. He is no longer “just” a chiropractor, he is a comfort provider.

“It’s unique in that it’s a spa,” Rottinghaus says of his practice. “We see a lot of patients now for well care instead of acute care. We have a lot of people who come in for the chiro-practic treatment and a lot of others come in just to keep feeling good.”

A key to his expansion has been the building of relationships with local MDs and other practitioners. He learned from them, traded referrals, and built a solid network within the greater Cincinnati medical realm. These relationships have done what Rottinghaus calls bridging gaps with the medical profession, something he believes would not have otherwise been possible.

The result of it all was something Rottinghaus now calls “not someone else’s chiropractic office.” Along with his services, he expanded his hours. The office is open 12 hours a day weekdays, and 10 hours on Saturdays. He added patient education that focuses on their health, not ill health.

He still has some of the traditional chiropractic tenets: 40 percent of the practice is worker’s comp and another 15 percent is personal injury. But these days a big chunk of patients comes in just to get a massage.

Rottinghaus markets the practice by getting it out in the community. His therapists visit businesses and do chair massages for free, while one of the staff DCs answers questions about the practice and profession. He is not a proponent of spending large amounts of dollars on traditional advertising.

Melisa still has a hand in things, but more from afar. She is seldom in the office, but once in a while observes things to see what’s going on and what improvements might be made. “Her distance from the practice of chiropractic gives her a view that I just don’t see,” Rottinghaus says.

One more very unique aspect of his growth has been his practice of hiring those with ambition to get out on their own eventually. Rottinghaus doesn’t merely want his staff to be satisfied with their station, but rather to covet more. He encourages them to be business owners themselves.

Now in his third year as a spa owner/chiropractor hybrid, Rotting-haus marvels not only at the success he enjoys, but that it didn’t happen sooner. Like all successful ventures, it’s difficult not to wonder in hindsight why it wasn’t thought of sooner. Or, in this case, by more people.

“I am surprised more doctors don’t do it,” he says. “But if it weren’t for my wife, I wouldn’t be as business savvy as I am. Chiropractors go out and follow the traditional footprints that they know. They know the traditional chiropractic marketing. That’s traditionally what chiropractors have always been doing.”

SIDEBARS:
Common sense creates success
A brigade of MTs attracts an army of patients
Vital Statistics
Taking Spaaaah! to the people
A ‘thank you’ to patients
Referrals: A two-way process

Todd Stumpf is a freelance writer. He can be contacted at tstumpf22@yahoo.com.