Today we’d like to introduce you to Dr. Debra Cirone and Dr. Joseph Clarino.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Dr. Cirone and Dr. Clarino. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
Our Story started before we even met in High School. My (Deb’s) mom and Joe’s dad went to school together in Jersey City, NJ. Joe’s family moved to the Jersey Shore when he was six years old. My family already lived there. When the Clarino’s were looking for a home, they ran into the Cirone’s, who owned the Realty that sold them their first home in Toms River. Our parents ran into each other now and then over the years. Then, one day, I met Joe in the halls of High School North in Toms River. Neither of us remembered meeting each other as kids. I was a junior and a Varsity cheerleader. He was a sophomore and a Varsity football player. It was love at first sight!!! A few weeks after we began dating, I took my new boyfriend to my uncle’s birthday party. He quickly realized, my uncle was his chiropractor.
We continued to date, with a couple of ‘healthy” break-ups through college. As I was finishing undergrad at William Patterson University, in NJ, I reached out to Joe, who was playing football at Towson State University, in Maryland, and told him that I had decided to go to Life University for my Doctorate in Chiropractic. It didn’t take me long to convince him to come along for the ride. He’d always admired my Uncle Dennis, who’d inspired him to become a Chiropractor years before.
The next several years were a challenge. Living together, with my brother, Michael, who was also in Chiropractic school at the time, working to pay the bills, and going through school together was one of the hardest things we had ever done to that point. Most couples didn’t make it through the program together! But we did and we even got engaged before graduating.
We began searching for our future practice location before we even finished school. We looked in NJ, PA, MD, & DE. And while I was working for a chiropractor in Alpharetta, I felt like I could stay. I saw an article in USA Today about the top ten fastest growing counties in America. Four of them were right here in GA. We swore we’d never stay in GA, but here we were, driving around GA, looking to make our roots. My boss and a couple of friends told us to look over in the Sugar Hill area. My boss told me that he nearly opened a practice there a couple of years before. So as we were driving along 400, out of north Forsyth, I noticed the sign for Sugar Hill and told Joe to get off the exit. There wasn’t much there back in 1999! Which made us question ourselves. What in the world were we thinking! As we continued to drive down Hwy 20, we crossed over the Chattahoochee River and I got this overwhelming feeling. I nearly lost my breath. When Joe asked me what was wrong with me, I said, I think we’re going to practice here! He looked at me like I was crazy. I didn’t know where that came from and I couldn’t explain it. We drove a couple more miles, crossed over Suwanee Dam Rd, and as we passed this little ranch on the left, I started frantically telling my husband to pull over….this is it…this is our practice! Now he knew I was crazy. He turned around. There was a For Sale sign in the yard and a guy in the driveway with his two little ones. When I told him that I wanted to buy the house and turn it into a chiropractic office, he said, “That’s weird, I had a guy that was going to do the same thing a couple of years ago. He even changed the zoning. But he backed out last minute.” When I spoke with my boss the next day, he confirmed that it was him! With no money in our pockets, we convinced Dwayne and Melissa, the owners of the house, to owner finance the house and pave a parking lot for us. Against all odds and so many more than financial setbacks, we converted the house into an office, where we lived on the waiting room floor for four months until we built out the basement and lived for the next four years.
We started with nothing and grew to one of the largest chiropractic offices in the country quite quickly. We got very involved in the city politics, and in the early 2000’s, when the gas prices skyrocketed, our city manager didn’t hedge the gas prices prior, and residents of Sugar Hill paid one of the highest prices per therm, in the entire country. An organization to get rid of the city charter was quickly established. And they fought hard to accomplish their goal. We jumped to our feet because we felt this could be an even better city than we had experienced thus far. But if we didn’t have the opportunity to try, we would never know. For months Joe and Ron Johnson, a friend of ours, went from door to door to get a petition signed to save the city. We even convinced our local government to allow us to head up a city festival to get the residents excited for what was to come if we saved our charter. It was a success. We ran the festival for two years and then handed it over to the city, once they had the right department in place to handle this and other events that the city began to host.
We ran Sugar Hill Family Chiropractic and became considered the local health & wellness experts for the area according to city officials and local publications. About ten years into practice, Joe was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease. This diagnoses immediately set us on a path to find the cause and get him back to health without submitting to a life of medications and diminished health. Our research led us to years of training from some of the best functional medicine doctors and organizations in the country. As we brought our knowledge back to the office, we began to notice where some of our patients’ health was falling off the wagon, so to speak. We would tell our patients to ask their MD’s to do specific testing on them. In two years, we didn’t have one, not even one test come back complete. Some of their doctors wouldn’t even test them at all. I finally said to Joe, “There is a reason you got sick and it has nothing to do with you. We need to help these people that have no answers for why they feel the way they do, why they are sick and lead them back to health, rather than falling victim to the pharmaceutical industry.” He completely agreed with me. Within months, we had all of our legals put in place, hired a nurse practitioner and a couple of MD’s to enable us to do the tests necessary to get people well. And thus, our new Wellness practice which included Chiropractic, Physical Medicine and Functional Nutrition, began under the new name of Sugar Hill Spine & Wellness, in a big new building up the street. That is another story of God’s plans being bigger than ours. He led us to that building too!
The results we began to see were and are still astonishing. People who were on all kinds of medication, not only came off of them, in most cases but began to live the life they lost sight of because of their diagnosis. Or for that matter, the lack of a diagnosis. Many of our patients have been told that there is nothing wrong with them when they know darn well that there is. And then it isn’t until they come to us that we find the cause of their dysfunction an get them back to feeling and functioning better than they have in years. We have children who have what is commonly called, vaccine damage. This is a very real thing. And it happens more often than you can imagine. These children have a wide variety of issues. Many of them are not meeting their milestones because they are not integrating their primitive reflexes appropriately. This leaves them unable to talk or walk, look you in the eyes, they sometimes have learning disabilities, allergies, gut, and skin conditions, and the list goes on. You can’t even imagine what it feels like when a mom cries and hugs you because she sees her child functioning like the other children their age. What a blessing this journey has been.
A few years ago we realized that we are challenged by Time! There are only so many hours in a day for us to help people. We didn’t have the desire to make our practice any bigger or even to open more practices. So God brought us someone that needed us as much as we needed him. We both had the deep burning desire to train more doctors to do what we do! This is how you serve more people, in far-off locations, without having to be present in every circumstance. Dr. Joe Esposito, with AlignLIfe, already had a chiropractic franchise, in which he had been pouring into his doctors, giving more knowledge, support, and resources to his franchisee’s, more than we had seen in any other franchise, in any industry that we researched. We did our due diligence and chose to partner up and amplify the effects of our dreams together. Now, along with our Doctor of Naturopathy and Associate Doctor, we train Interns from Life University, as well as Chiropractors across the country. What pure joy it is to see our doctors become more successful in practice and live a greater quality of life by becoming better servants to those in walk into their offices in need of their help.
I know that God brought us together for the greater good of others. We have shared our hearts, our business acumen, and our knowledge of science and philosophy on stages, on TV, and in magazines. The longer we do what we do, the more gratifying it is. My favorite saying by BJ Palmer, the Developer of Chiropractic, is, “You never know how far-reaching, something you say, think or do today, can affect the lives of others tomorrow.” 20 years in practice, we now care for the babies of the babies that grew up in our office so many years ago. We see them in the stores, at local festivals, and in the parks. This place that we moved to as strangers, so many years ago, opened it’s arms to us, welcomed us and allowed us to show our gratitude by serving our community all of these years. We are truly blessed.
As for my husband and I…we are more in love than ever. We have more respect for one another than we ever did before. Our excitement for this mission that we were predestined for, while it comes with a lot of hard work, keeps us excited about what is next. If it serves others well, it may be our first book!!!
Has it been a smooth road?
Growing up together since our teens was only one challenge. We were kids. Figuring out who we really are has been a lifelong journey. As our perspectives on life evolved as individuals, we found ourselves at a crossroads a few time. We weren’t sure we could continue to navigate the waters, not only as a couple but as business partners. The challenges have been very real. We coach other couples in chiropractic because we have come through the hardships. Our scars have made us stronger.
For a long time, Joe thought he wouldn’t be able to fulfill all of his dreams with what we had built in our office. He is extremely creative and can’t sit still. He ran other companies, building furniture, renovating homes, including our offices and our homes, developing townhomes, etc. It took losing almost everything for him to realize, (like Dorothy) “There’s no place like home!) It took many years for him to realize the talent he has for teaching and leading other and how to parle’ that into business. This was a very difficult journey for both of us, which led me to my revelation.
For me, I was content letting him take the spotlight. He has a much stronger personality than I do. So everything that I did was to build him up. One day, after all of the loss, I realized, he is only human, just like me. And if he is going to be great, if we are going to serve more people and live the life that God has intended for us, then I need to step up more. I began to rock the boat, so to speak. Where I would normally allow him to take the liberty of making decisions, even if I knew they might not be good ones, I began to give him my opinion. That was a shock for him and caused waves for us, while we both learned how to properly communicate our thoughts and ideas as a team of leaders, rather than one guy making all of the important decisions. Again, years later, getting through those difficult times, which many couples go through and understandably, fail to successfully navigate, helps us to be better at seeing what others are going through and help them to understand how to make clear expectations and agreements with one another.
So, as you know, we’re impressed with Sugar Hill Spine & Wellness – tell our readers more, for example, what you’re most proud of as a company and what sets you apart from others.
30 years as a couple, 20 years in practice, just shy of a million dollars in education, and years of coaching patients, doctors, and teams, have brought us to the place where we can stand on solid ground and know that the teams that we have built around us have improved the lives of countless others in a multitude of ways.
The parents of the dysfunctional and disruptive children, who were headed for divorce, are not only still together, but are stronger together, because they no longer have to dedicate 100% of their attention to that child. The families of the mom’s who were headed for a nervous breakdown, have their moms back because her health has been restored. The teenager who had no friends and could never go to a sleepover, because he wets the bed, is no longer contemplating suicide because he can control his bladder at night. This is how far-reaching what we do really is.
Let’s touch on your thoughts about our city – what do you like the most and least?
We have been an integral part of the City of Sugar Hill, and the surrounding towns, like Suwanee, Flowery Branch, Cumming, and Buford for 20 years now. We have not only been here for their development but have been a part of it. It is a part of us. Joe was Chairman of the Planning and Zoning Committee before we moved to the Lake Lanier and out of the City Limits. Our amazing Mayor, Steve Edwards and the great people that run this city are bringing Sugar Hill to it’s fullest potential with all of the beautiful parks and our new beautiful downtown. We are proud of our area. These are our peeps.
I see the things that I didn’t like about our city changing with the widening of Hwy 20 and the development that is occurring right now. I would like to see some aspects of the City’s development make improvements in bringing policies up to date and create better timeliness/processes and communication with those who attempt to make improvements to the community. That would create more ease among those of us that want to see proper growth of our town.
Contact Info:
- Address: Sugar Hill Spine & Wellness
5422 Cumming Hwy Suite 101
Sugar Hill, GA 30518 - Website: sugarhillspineandwellness.org
- Phone: 678-482-4400
- Email: officemanager.shsw@gmail.com
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/sugarhillspinandwellness
- Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/SugarHillSpinandWellness
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