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Dr. Robinson’s approach to running her practice harmonizes with the neighborhood. Antique shops, rather than large chain stores, surround her location, and her clinic sits above a mom-and-pop restaurant. |
Profiles
In Practice Success
Dr.
Nina Robinson: The Neighborhood Chiropractor
By Mark Farmer
After her 1999 graduation in from Life Chiropractic College West, Dr. Nina Robinson began looking for a good practice setting, "a very comfortable place where people wouldn’t feel tense or rushed."
She accomplished her goal, but it didn’t come easily.
With a home nearby and a son enrolled in a local school, she wanted to stay in Niles, an historic district of Fremont, California, in the San Francisco Bay area. After searching for six months after graduation, she was about to give up when she found the ideal spot – sort of.
"I stumbled upon this place, and it was just filthy, absolutely the most disgusting place I’ve ever seen in my life," she recalls.
Her search had brought her to an apartment above a restaurant, a space that had previously been used for breeding dogs.
Robinson, a former mechanical engineer who had worked on NASA’s shuttle project, perhaps saw space differently from others. She also saw a good business deal. The squalor of the location had suppressed the rent in an otherwise pricey area.
With a lot of help from friends and some thrift shopping, she crafted the environment she wanted and named her clinic Back In Line Chiropractic.
"It’s very homey. There’s a fireplace and hardwood floors. It’s just beautiful," she described.
Robinson’s approach to running her practice harmonizes with the neighborhood. Antique shops, rather than large chain stores, surround her location, and her clinic sits above a mom-and-pop restaurant. Across the street stands a building that housed Charlie Chaplin’s film studios in the 1920s.
"I am literally a neighborhood chiropractor," she said. "People come early for their appointments and stay late just to be here."
A parent once asked the doctor if her child, a patient, could come to the office an hour early. Children and adults alike play games and work on jigsaw puzzles in her waiting room. Robinson says that some children even come to the office after school for an adjustment, to do their homework and to wait for their parents to pick them up.
With this kind of approach, and considering existing student loans, it’s not surprising how Robinson furnished her office.
"I started out adjusting on my portable table," she said. "I have garage-sale shelving. I have desks that have been donated to me. I have a big drop table that was donated to me by a woman who was retiring from chiropractic."
Patients even provide the puzzles for her waiting room.
If Robinson makes her patients comfortable, she is no less kind to herself. She has structured her business for maximum enjoyment and minimum hassle. For instance, she charges her patients on a cash basis, rather than billing insurance companies.
"I don’t have any headaches," she said. "I don’t have to worry about whether I’m going to get paid or not. My rates are lower, and people pay it."
Robinson hires an accountant for taxes, but she handles the rest of her administrative work, which takes "about 20 minutes a week."
Indeed, the doctor doesn’t even have a computer at the office. A home unit satisfies her occasional need to write a report or letter.
Robinson keeps her marketing simple, as well. She circulates monthly mailers, presenting information about chiropractic and offering a coupon, within her immediate area. She bought a mailing list from a service, after pointing out on a map which streets she wanted on the list. She also publishes a small Yellow Pages ad.
Using these strategies, she is succeeding in promoting the services that she provides in her "very comfortable place."