Heartwork Podcast
What if the key to a fulfilling life isn't about doing more, but about being more? Welcome to the Heartwork Podcast, where Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray and Dr. Marisa Baumann invite you on a journey of self-discovery and authentic living. Through raw conversations and real-life stories, two chiropractors and business owners discuss how embracing vulnerability and leading with heart can transform every aspect of your life and business. From personal growth to professional success, each episode offers practical insights to help you live with purpose and create meaningful impact. Join us weekly as we navigate the beautiful mess of being human and...
10
Ep. 95: Unreasonable Hospitality for Practice Owners: 10 Lessons to Teach Your Team
<p>Sara and Marisa take ten principles from Unreasonable Hospitality and walk them straight into their own practices, starting with the idea that service is black and white and hospitality is color. The spark is a Dancing with the Stars rabbit hole into the Savannah Bananas, a baseball entertainment company with a ten thousand person waitlist and forty dollar tickets, whose owner refuses to sell because he won't let anyone else dictate the fan experience. That raises a question worth asking of any business, about whether you look at the details because a metric is off or because of the...
Ep. 94: 11 Lessons From 11 Years of Practice Ownership
<p>Dr. Sara is celebrating 11 years with Freedom Chiropractic this October, and she’s sharing the lessons those years taught her, with Dr. Marisa bringing in where each one has shown up in her own practice. It starts with the lesson underneath every other one: a practice can only grow as far as its leader is willing to grow. The lessons follow the arc of ownership, from the early years of doing everything yourself, to building a team and a culture that can breathe without you, to the CEO season of giving your leaders real ownership and letting go. Each se...
Ep. 93: Money and Identity: When Your Bank Account Becomes Your Worth
<p>Sara and Marisa get personal about money, worth, and identity, and about how money can become a measuring stick for who you are. When the drive underneath earning it is to be seen, to be noticed, and to feel worthy, it shapes choices that are not always healthy ones. Their own lives are right there on the table, with a move into a new home and a mortgage that roughly tripled, a season of deliberately running lean, and the moment of asking who they are to talk about money on a podcast at all. Getting brutally honest with your...
Ep. 92: Fixing Versus Healing: Why They Are Not the Same Thing
<p>Trying to fix something is a way of grabbing the reins back, and the reflex to get a symptom gone right now leaves no room for God, for intuition, or for rest. Healing does not work that way. It is ongoing and uncertain, it has peaks and valleys, and it never actually stops. Health is not an illusion, but the belief that we control the outcome of it is. This one stays in the middle of that rather than talking about it from the other side.</p><p>🔥 <b>In This Episode:</b></p>The difference between fixing and hea...
Ep. 91: How to Know If You're Operating From a Healthier Place
<p>Nobody knows what fifty five feels like until they press the pedal, overshoot it, and pull back. That is how you learn to drive, and it is also how you learn to operate as a different version of yourself. This is a theme that has been surfacing with colleagues, friends, and clients lately, and the question underneath it is always the same. Once you can see the pattern you have been running, how do you know whether you are acting from a healthier place or sliding right back into it. The answer running through the whole conversation is that...
Ep. 90: Why Leaders Won't Delegate, With Marcia Erickson
<p>Marcia Erickson is a business and executive coach with ActionCOACH in the Quad Cities, and she spent twenty years in healthcare administration before this. Most of this conversation sits on delegation, and on why so many owners say they want a team that takes ownership and then cannot hand anything over. </p><p>Marcia's first answer is practical. She says leaders rarely describe what success actually looks like in a role, so we default to saying we will know it when we see it, and the team is left guessing. Then Sara and Marisa take it underneath the systems, i...
Ep. 89: What Italy Taught Marisa About Pace, Presence, and Coming Home Different
<p>Marisa took Alex to Italy for ten days and it was his first time in Europe. Rome, Florence, the Amalfi Coast, and almost none of it planned, which she says is the whole reason she actually got to be there. What she keeps coming back to isn't the sites. It's that Alex got to see where her grandparents learned to make pasta and where her mom lived, and after a lifetime of her bringing pieces of that culture into their home in little ways, he finally understood her at a deeper level. Their love went deeper because he saw...
Ep. 88: Quitting, Pivoting, and Trusting Yourself Through Change
<p>Sara made a decision this season that looked, on paper, like going backwards. With one of her associate doctors heading into maternity leave, she chose to put herself back into nearly full time adjusting after almost two years of protected CEO time. It was the right call financially, culturally, and for the energy of her practice. And it still stirred up the old story: I'm not moving forward, I'm not good enough, real CEOs don't do this. In this conversation, Sara and Marisa pull apart where that story actually comes from, and it isn't the decision itself. It's comparison...
Ep. 87: F the Success: When Society's Metrics Stop Working
<p>This episode starts with a hand on someone's back. Marisa walked into an adjusting room, felt something off in a practice member's energy, and asked her twice, are you okay today? The woman broke down. Fresh off a divorce and a morning masterclass about success, she said the thing so many people are circling right now: I've been living my life by society's metrics of success, and I just want to say F the success and take care of myself. What follows is a short, honest conversation about the difference between satisfaction and joy, why the things we do...
Ep. 86: I Felt Like I Was Being Punished: A Conversation About God, Identity, and Surgery
<p>This is not a polished episode. Sara is in the middle of something, not on the other side of it, and she shares it in real time. A health crisis that forced her into the hospital after eighteen years of refusing medical intervention. The badge of honor she had been wearing on purpose, the one she used to say "look at me, look at what I have done." The little girl inside her who had been working overtime to keep her safe. And the conversation with God she had in a hospital bed when she heard herself say "I...
