Kent S. Greenawalt: The Profession’s Champion
FEATURE PROFILE
A Story of Leadership, Legacy and Love
TAC
WE ALL KNOW THE POWER OF PRAISE, BUT SOMETIMES IT’S THE UNKIND WORD, A JAB TO ONE’S PRIDE, THAT SHAPES A DESTINY. FOR KENT S. GREENAWALT, THAT MOMENT HAPPENED WHEN HE WAS 12 YEARS OLD, SKINNY LEGS DANGLING IN THE COOL BLUE WATER OF THE YMCA POOL OF HIS HOMETOWN IN DUBUQUE, IOWA. SURROUNDED BY HIS PEERS, IT WAS THE FIRST DAY OF SWIM CLASS AND THE TEACHER WAS TAKING ROLL.
“Greenawalt,” she finally called out. Kent raised his hand. “Your dad’s the quack right?”
Young Kent felt his cheeks redden. Everyone was watching. A few stifled giggles.
“No,” Kent replied. “My dad’s the Chiropractor.”
“Right,” the smug instructor repeated, grinning: “The quack.”
Those words stung this devoted son’s heart. Kent’s father, Dr. Monte H. Greenawalt, was his mentor, constant companion and best friend. An only child, Kent had grown up around his dad’s practice. He had watched patients who hobbled in, desperate for relief, who left each visit walking better, smiling brighter, thanks to his father’s strong, experienced hands. As a patient, Kent’s father, too, was transformed by the profession this woman was denigrating—long before he became a Doctor.
Kent was too young and too well-mannered to speak up then. But the woman’s insult, her ignorance, made an impression.
Someday, Kent thought, I’m going to change that.
Fast-forward a few decades and about 900 miles eastward to the growing city of Roanoke, Virginia, where you’ll find Kent Greenawalt today. Still retaining traces of his friendly Midwestern clip, today Kent is the Chairman and CEO of Foot Levelers and the Founder and Chairman of The Foundation for Chiropractic Progress, a savvy business leader and fearless advocate of Chiropractic. Kent’s father, who led Foot Levelers
until 1980, passed away in 2007, but not before the father-son team built the company into a Chiropractic legend. Customers, mostly Chiropractors, number in the tens of thousands and patients who have benefited from its products aie in the millions. A growing body of clinical research (37 studies and counting) arm Doctors with the clinical confidence they need to make patients believers, too. What began as a problem-solving mission—Kent’s dad, a Chiropractor, trying to improve the power and duration of his adjustments—is now the undisputed leader of the custom functional foot orthotics marketplace.
Foot levelers: A Family legacy
The story of Dr. Monte H. Greenawalt, Kent’s father and Foot Levelers’ founder, is well known. In 1942, a tainted batch of vaccinations killed many, leaving Monte, a would-be war
enlistee, paralyzed. Doctor after doctor repeated the bad news: that Monte would live the rest of his life as a paraplegic. A Chiropractor changed that. “They earned him in and he walked out,” his mother later recalled of the day she brought him in. Monte’s path was now clear, and in 1948, he earned his degree from Lincoln Chiropractic College.
As a young Doctor, Dr. Monte began to notice a pattern: patients with foot problems, especially, were returning to him with the same back, joint, knee and hip problems they started with—his adjustments just weren’t holding. Dr. Monte referred these patients to a podiatrist, but their problems persisted. In fact, many got worse. Dr. Monte was concerned, but also puzzled. If a foot device could make his patients’ joint, knee or hip problems worse, he reasoned, could it also potentially make these problems better? He began to experiment with orthotics, and through trial and error, developed a formula based on 16 unique measurements of the foot. Unlike off-the-shelf orthotics or even those made by podiatrists, Dr. Monte’s orthotic was designed to support all three arches of the foot, rather than just one. His patients began to feel better, results improved; his adjustments held longer. As demand for his services grew, in 1952, Foot Levelers, Inc. was bom.
“My first job was to put foam in casting kits and assemble boxes,” Kent recalls of his dad’s garage operation at the time. Eventually Dr. Monte purchased an old daily to accommodate the growing operation, where Kent took on added job duties. “Because I was little, I could climb up into the attic rafters. My second job was to clean out pigeon poop and shoo away the birds,” he laughs.
Growing Up Greenawalt: From Dad's RightHand to Budding Business leader
Always at his dad’s side, Kent was privy to some more exciting endeavors, too. Stalling at age 7, the two would travel to Parker seminars in Dallas, Texas together. There, a wide-eyed Kent listened to and shook hands with some of the biggest names in the profession—Joe Janse, Ernest Napolitano—as well as stars of the day like Ronald Reagan, Zig Ziglar, and Art Linkletter. Young Kent was moved by the stories of hope and transformation offered by Chiropractic, as well as the speakers’ resounding message of positive thinking. “I was so lucky to experience that as a kid. To witness that massive transfer of energy [between speaker and audience]... I did not know then that it would be my life’s work, but it made an impression,” he reflects with a twinkle in his eye.
As the company grew, Kent helped out while exploring his own entrepreneurial ventures. “Business has always been in my DNA,” he says now. “When I was a boy, I made and sold potholders to the ladies in the neighborhood, I mowed lawns, I shoveled snow from the sidewalks, I started a car detailing
business where I’d wash and wax three cars a day”—which is how Kent put himself through college. At the University of Iowa, where Kent double-majored in Marketing and Finance, he started an operation selling stereos out of his dorm room. It wasn’t long before business was booming for “Kent’s Midnight Stereo,” with the towering boxes jamming the dormitory loading docks. Kent soon found himself sitting face-to-face with a top administrator, his academic future hanging in the balance. By the time the meeting ended, Kent earned the administrator’s blessing to continue his studies and business.
After graduating from the university, Kent moved to Kansas City to work for a major department store as a buyer to leam more about business. There, in the cutthroat world of high-end merchandising, he found it. And while many valuable lessons were gleaned, he also saw how not to lead. “I learned that positive is always better than negative—‘you catch more bees with honey’,” says Kent. “Working together always produces better results in the end than individual efforts alone.” In 1979, he returned to the family business, heading up various departments until eventually joining his CEO father’s side as president.
Giving Back to the Profession: Foot levelers' Philanthropy
Over the years, the father-son duo made many important business decisions that helped to forge a corporate culture that is truly unique. Dr. Monte created a speaker’s core in the 70s which Kent later expanded; Foot Levelers funded the seminars in full and donated all the registration fees to state associations (it remains so to this day). “We didn’t want semináis to be about making money,” says Kent. “Over 80% of the over-40 population has a foot problem, and it’s often asymptomatic. We wanted Doctors to start thinking about the feet in their practices.”
Philanthropy, in fact, became ingrained in company culture. Foot Levelers gives significantly each year to support Chiropractic colleges and universities, from funding construction of new buildings to major research projects to individual scholarships. A matching fundraising campaign Kent kicked off in the wake of September 11, 2001 raised over $600,000 for the Red Cross (rivaling gifts from companies lOx the size); again, after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Foot Levelers raised over $500,000 to support relief and rebuilding.
Starting the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress
Kent also started The Foundation for Chiropractic Progress in 2003, a separate not-for-profit foundation which “educates the
public about chiropractic care through POSITIVE PRESS,” according to its website. If you have noticed a momentumgaining shift in media coverage of Chiropractic over the past decade, the Foundation is in large part to thank. Any time a clinical study comes out that speaks to Chiropractic’s benefits, the team makes sure it gets into the right media hands; last year alone, it was responsible for 31 billion positive media impressions about Chiropractic. It also collects and distributes real-life stories of Chiropractic successes, including endorsements from major celebrities, like NFL Hall-of-Famer Jerry Rice. Its board is composed of some of Chiropractic’s most respected figures, including President Emeritus of Life Chiropractic College West, Gerald Clum, D C.; Don Peterson, Publisher of MPA Media (MPA puts out Dynamic Chiropractic magazine and other products), and the World Federation of Chiropractic’s Past President, J. Michael Flynn, D.C., among many others.
Like his father before him, Kent holds a string of honors attesting to his generosity, from the American Chiropractic Association’s Humanitarian of the Year Award to the Lifetime Philanthropy Award from Parker College/Parker Seminars. Also like his father, in recognition of his outstanding service to the Chiropractic profession, he was tapped with fellowships to the American College of Chiropractic and Palmer Academy of Chiropractic. But the executive is less interested in the titles he’s earned than what they represent.
“Dad always said ‘you can’t give without receiving’ and ‘you can’t give yourself into poverty,’” Kent says, recalling how as a child, he sold taffy every year to support the YMCA. Kids who sold over a certain amount won a free week of summer camp. “I sold more than anyone had sold, ever. There were cases of it in the living room at home. So I won more trips to camp than I could ever use, and I went to the people at the YMCA and asked which kids wanted to go but couldn’t afford to? I sent those kids to camp.” Kent remains giving of his time and resources to this day. In addition to starting the Foundation for Chiropractic Progress—to which he is a top donor—Kent serves on the boards of several ai ts and educational institutions in Foot Levelers’ hometown. An avid outdoorsman, he is also a major supporter of a number of service dog organizations.
Foot levelers: High-Tech Pioneer
Kent and his company have been pioneers in other ways. Long fascinated by technology, it should come as no surprise that the industry’s first digital foot scanner came into being under his watch. It was during the 1980s that “we realized that tech was going to rule the world... [We wanted the scanner] because Doctors from all over the world could send us their patients’ info within two minutes—we could get the product quickly to the patient, with accuracy, speed, and great service, which is the same reason we moved from Iowa to Roanoke. It would also reduce our environmental footprint, eliminating the cardboard, foam and paper of the casting kit, and the fuel needed for transporting the patient’s mold from the Doctor’s office to our laboratory. The scanner was a winner. ” The first scanner was introduced to market in the early 90s. Later incarnations include the Associate Platinum Digital Scanner and most recently, the 3D Body View, the fastest, most accurate and simplest to use yet, with versions available in English, Spanish and Japanese (reports of findings aie available in six additional languages). More language versions aie under development.
Company Culture: "The Big 4"
Considering Foot Levelers’ incredible success, Kent isn’t surprised by the rash of would-be competitors and imitators. Foot Levelers has managed to stay a step or two ahead and its Chief Executive Officer intends to keep it that way. It’s not just Foot Levelers’ clinically-supported patented innovations (Kent holds a number of patents), its 63-year long
legacy, or the professional alliances (Foot Levelers works closely with companies like Activator Methods, Lloyd Tables, MultiRadiance and others). There’s certain magic inside these walls that could not easily be replicated. Some Foot Levelers employees have been with the company for over 30 years, relocating from the old Dubuque, Iowa location to the current location in Virginia in 1988. The company attracts the best and the brightest from around the country and encourages a work hard, play hard mantra. (The Sports film Rudy, the true story of Daniel "Rudy" Ruettiger, who through sheer determination conquered obstacle after obstacle to realize his goal of playing football for The University of Notre Dame, is required viewing within the first 90 days of employment, which INC. Magazine covered in 2010 in an article about unusual on-boarding practices). A commitment to fun doesn’t hurt either—theme parties, company lunches and friendly competitions are frequent. A wellnessfocused company, Foot Levelers offers some innovative benefits for employees, like an on-site gym and opportunities to earn wellness credits towards free healthcare, Foot Levelers products, and extra vacation days. Sponsoring area marathons and walks and encouraging their employees to participate also helps keep the workforce healthy and active, while insurance rates stay low. “My dad always taught me the big 4,” says Kent. “That people want to be Wanted, Needed, Recognized, and to Belong.” It’s a principle the remains at the heart of this company’s organization today.
Despite Foot Levelers position as the undisputed leader in its marketplace, Kent’s plans for growth remain ambitious—he projects triple fold growth over the next decade. And while today Chiropractic enjoys greater widespread acceptance than it did 50 years ago, he doesn’t plan to stop fighting for the profession, either. “We’re making huge strides in turning off the negative and turning on the positive,” Kent reflects. “[Chiropractic] is safe, noninvasive, and research-proven to be effective. Right now Chiropractors take care of maybe 8% of the population, why not 16%?” If Kent has anything to do with it, Foot Levelers will be a part of that growth, too. “Nothing has changed from the beginning when my Dad noticed what happened to patients as soon as they got off the table. Chiropractic and Foot Levelers are a great, vital team.”
