Today we’d like to introduce you to Aaron and Renee Deans.
Aaron and Renee, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
Chiropractic was always going to be in our life path. Aaron was injured in a car accident at an early age and was unable to find adequate relief until someone suggested he try a Chiropractor. The experience he had was “profound” and from there, he knew he wanted to learn to help people in the same manner. While attending Life University in Atlanta, we met and eventually married and then started our family in MA, where I grew up. After first moving back here, we planned to open a brand new practice on the South Shore and the day we were supposed to sign the lease, I read about a Chiropractic office in a small town called Littleton that was about to shut its doors. Somehow, I knew it was the right place for us, even if at that time we couldn’t point to it on a map. We drove out that morning and decided to become the new owners that very afternoon.
While deciding on a new name for the office, Deans Chiropractic just didn’t seem right and after many iterations, we knew we had landed on the right one when we put the word “Family” between Deans and Chiropractic. Family is ultimately what we are about, both at home where we are parents to five young children and at the office where every single person who walks through the door is treated with the same level of care as anyone in our own family would be. Aaron’s passion for this natural and gentle yet extremely effective form of healing and for people in general became the cornerstone of our office from day one and now, twelve years later, it continues to be just those things that keep people walking through the door.
Deciding to start this practice on our own, as twenty-somethings with a young and growing family turned out to be more difficult than we’d imagined as we unwittingly began this major undertaking at the same time the housing market bubble crashed and sent the country into a massive recession. There were many months in the first years that we thought might be our last but we kept going out into the community to get our face and name known, and we never wavered from the thought that no matter what else people had to trim back on, they would still be in pain and still want the highest and most effective form of relief possible. Aaron worked long days at the office and often worked weekends and lunch breaks trying to spread the power of Chiropractic to the many wonderful people that make up the community of Littleton, a place he’d come to love very quickly. We saw some faces come and go in our office but eventually landed on just the right people to comprise our support staff and the addition of a wonderful LMT who shared the same belief in natural healing seemed to help our office turn the corner from sometimes struggling to solidly planted. When in doubt, Aaron always went back to one of his favorite quotes from Thomas Edison and the very words that inspire him daily – “The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.” As he always says, Chiropractic care treats the cause so his patients aren’t stuck in a lifetime of treating the symptoms, and finding the underlying cause is something he is innately skilled at.
In between raising our five children at home, I also manage all of our marketing and outside communications. I have helped to raise awareness of both Chiropractic and our office through our Facebook and Instagram interactions with local people and business. We both share the same belief of giving back to the community that has always supported us from the very beginning. We never let a patient walk out the door for lack of ability to pay for their care and we always try to patronize the other small business in our area, as well. I designed a Community Board for our office where local businesses can put up their own information and these are also the places that we direct our patients to through various giveaways and offers whenever possible. Aaron goes out to various offices during his lunch to offer chair massages and free health screenings – not simply as a way to get new patients, but more as a way to educate others that often the power to heal lies within their own bodies, a message we feel is just as powerful as the very profession that is based upon it.
We often see people come into the office hunched over and unable to move without assistance who after a single adjustment are walking straighter and amazed that much of their pain level has decreased immediately, never mind how much better they are after regular care. We’ve also seen dogs, believe it or not, whose owners were patients that believed so much in Chiropractic and rather than have to put down their beloved, suffering animal decided to try the same method of healing that helped them. These stories are some of our favorite and they often end the same way – with the pain of their dog decreased so much that rather than ending their life, they were able to extend it greatly. This is what we mean when we say ‘Family” is what we are based upon. From parents to newborns, from teenagers to the elderly and all the way down to our four-legged friends, everyone is welcome in our office and everyone is treated the same. This is something we are immensely proud of and something we believe has helped us grow into the thriving practice we enjoy heading today. Chiropractic IS for everybody, and it has been an absolute joy to be the ones able to bring this to the people of the Littleton area and beyond.
Has it been a smooth road?
We have certainly faced our share of blockages and obstacles. We started the practice in November of 2005, a time that unwittingly coincided directly with the housing market crash that sent the entire country into a crippling recession. At first, we saw patient numbers drop rather than climb as everyone struggled to tighten their financial belts. However, we’ve always believed that healthcare is not an option, it is a necessity so if we were to provide the highest and most effective level of care possible, people would continue to walk through the door. Some months this meant cutting back to next to nothing at home, some months we weren’t sure if it would be our last, but the principle that our office was founded upon eventually got us through.
We tried many different approaches of getting out into the community to both get our name known and to raise awareness of the benefits of Chiropractic. We shuffled through various office staff members which sometimes proved to be hit or miss. But slowly, we found just the right people to work by our side who believed in helping people as much as we did, and with both that and the unwavering belief that helping people was always the right thing to do, somehow our office continued to stay afloat.
There have been singular events throughout our twelve years that had the potential to bring everything to a crashing halt -burst pipes during record-setting cold months that destroyed parts of the office, insurance regulations changing and dropping coverage of Chiropractic care – but we’ve always found a way to overcome them by always putting our patients first, no matter what.
Each year can come with its unique set of challenges and we face them head-on, sometimes unsure if we’ll make it past them but always steadfast that if we treat people like family, our doors will never close unless we close them ourselves.
We’d love to hear more about your business.
Deans Family Chiropractic is a chiropractic office in Littleton, Ma, founded by Dr. Aaron Deans in 2005. It has always been a “family practice”, both in that it is run by a husband and wife team and in our approach to caring for all of our patients as if they were one of our own. Aaron is the doctor and obvious face of it, I run the behind-the-scenes communications and marketing side of things. We have been slowly expanding into a true wellness practice, and the first step toward this goal happened with the addition of medically-based massage therapy. I believe we are known for the personalized care people always receive here. The way our patients are treated is not governed by a board or by anyone else’s set of interaction time rules. If someone is unsure or scared or simply in a lot of pain, we don’t assess and move on. Even if it sets the schedule behind, Aaron always spends as much time with each patient as he feels they need, and this is something we think they recognize and appreciate. This is something we think is what keeps people coming back and keeps people recommending us to their friends, family and neighbors.
Starting out at the same time as the recession yet making it through based on sheer tenacity and the belief in Chiropractic healing is something we are incredibly proud of. Yet, this pride isn’t simply based on our success as a practice, it is based even more on knowing that the people of our community came out and discovered us and then believed in us enough to be the ones that kept us open when so many other business we unable to do the same. The foundation of our practice is family, and by always keeping this in focus and never wavering from it, we have built a practice and patient base that we are incredibly proud of today.
Is our city a good place to do what you do?
We could not possibly love Littleton and the surrounding towns any more than we already do. Its residents have supported us from the very start, and that has only continued to grow. Working in a small town is wonderful – you end up knowing so many people by name and truly feel as if they are an extension of our own family. People bring in homemade food and gifts during the holidays, celebrate our successes and help us through our failures. They are as thrilled as your favorite aunt would be when we have a new child, and mourn with us when we lose people that are important to us both personally and professionally. Yes, you could likely get more patients in a city-setting, but there is no way you’d get the same quality and the same feeling of old-time community that we are lucky enough to experience here. Settling in Littleton has been one of the best decisions we’ve ever made, and we can’t imagine everyone wouldn’t feel the same way.
Contact Info:
- Address: 256 Great Road
Littleton, MA 01460 - Phone: 978/486-9531
- Email: thedeansfamily@mac.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deansfamilychiropractic/
- Facebook: search @deansfamilychiropractic
- Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/deans-family-chiropractic-littleton
Image Credit:
Family Photos: Stefanie Palmacci Photography
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