Custom cowgirl hats, fine line tattoos, cold plunges, and conversations that cracked people wide open. We just got back from Scottsdale for our second Expanders retreat with Stephanie Wigner and we are not the same. This is what happens when you stop competing and start calling each other forward. When the goal isn't to impress but to go deeper. When guards come down, ego gets checked at the door, and nobody's pretending anymore.

This weekend was about expansion in every direction. Quantum friendships that actually make you better. Honest conversations about how hard you're really working and whether it's even the right kind of work. Recognizing when your ego is trying to lead and choosing presence instead. Learning the difference between storytelling and story-selling. And being reminded that the rooms you choose to be in will either lift you up or keep you comfortable. This is our unfiltered download of everything that shook us, stretched us, and reminded us why we do any of this in the first place.

🔥 In This Episode:

• The difference between storytelling and story-selling, and why your content might be missing the part where you actually invite people into transformation
• Callan and Steph's conversation about working 60 to 80 hour weeks for a season, and why that's different than committing to a busy life forever
• Why your brand needs to answer simple questions for people who are struggling, not complicated explanations of what you do
• The ego activation that happens in rooms like this and how to recognize when you're performing instead of just being present
• How to evaluate whether your mentorship groups are actually encouraging growth or just creating competition

If you're in containers, masterminds, or mentorship groups right now, take a minute to ask yourself: are these people making me better or am I just trying to keep up? The rooms you put yourself in matter. And the friendships that come from those rooms can literally change the trajectory of your life and your business.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: theheartworklife@gmail.com

Join our community: The Heart Work Life Facebook Group and download our Free Self Love Challenge PDF

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If you're noticing your team struggling to close care plans, if you're hearing resistance when you raise prices, if there's a heaviness around financial conversations in your practice, this episode is your invitation to go deeper. We're talking about how to create space for your team to examine their money beliefs without shame. How to get them dreaming again about what's actually possible instead of staying stuck in what currently is. And most importantly, how to lead this work from a place of your own vulnerability and honesty, because your team will only go as deep as you're willing to go first.

🔥 In This Episode:

• Why your team won't convert high-value care plans if they don't personally believe they could afford what you're selling, and how that energy shows up in every patient interaction
• The importance of starting with yourself and sharing your own money struggles before expecting your team to open up about theirs
• How to use resentment as your indicator that you've crossed a line in giving, and why that signal matters for both your personal life and your leadership
• The practical exercises we've done with our teams: fake money guns, gratitude journals, scavenger hunts with real cash, and abundance vision boards
• Why you need to understand what triggers discomfort in your team around money before you can actually help them shift their perspective

Money is energy. Abundance is a choice about how you interpret what's in front of you. And leadership is about inviting people into new perspectives without forcing them into change they're not ready for. This work matters because it's not just about your business thriving. It's about helping your team break generational patterns and step into lives they didn't know were possible.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: theheartworklife@gmail.com
• Join our community: The Heart Work Life Facebook Group and download our Free Self Love Challenge PDF

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Dr. Jess Bohlke was diagnosed with ovarian cancer at 20 years old. Doctors told her she had five years to live. That diagnosis became the catalyst for everything she's built since: a thriving chiropractic practice, a family, a life she genuinely loves. But here's what she's learning now, eleven years later: surviving and thriving are not the same thing. And the hustle that got her here won't take her where she actually wants to go.

This conversation goes deep. We're talking about what happens when you build a beautiful life but realize you've been too busy building to actually live in it. Jess has spent the last seven weeks bedridden with a health crisis, and what she's discovered in that stillness is changing everything about how she shows up as a mother, a leader, and a human being. If you've ever felt like you're performing for your worth, if you're great at creating and building but terrible at just being, this episode is for you.

🔥 In This Episode:

• The validation that came with a cancer diagnosis: when your body was telling you something all along and you finally had proof you weren't weak or crazy
• How to strip away the complexity of any health condition and remember that your body was designed to regenerate from the inside out, whether it's a paper cut or stage three cancer
• Why Jess invested in a team bigger than she technically needs, and how that one decision changed everything about her leadership and her life
• The gut check for overgiving: if you're feeling resentment or giving out of fear of losing someone, that's your sign you've crossed a line
• What the audience would be screaming at you if your life were a movie, and why that question might be the most honest mirror you'll ever look into

You can't lead other people until you're leading yourself. And you can't lead from a place of wholeness if you're asking your team, your patients, or your family to fill a void inside you. This conversation is about learning to lead from overflow instead of lack, and about finally giving yourself permission to be present in the life you've been working so hard to build.

Connect with Jess:

• Instagram: @drjessbohlke, @journeychiro.kc
• Website: drjessbohlke.com, journeychirokc.com

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: theheartworklife@gmail.com
• Join our community: The Heart Work Life Facebook Group and download our Free Self Love Challenge PDF

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The word "sales" makes most of us want to run in the opposite direction. We didn't become chiropractors, coaches, or service providers to be salespeople. We did it because we genuinely want to help people transform their lives. But here's the uncomfortable truth we're diving into today: if you can't close the sale, you can't create the transformation. And that's not just bad for business. It's bad for the people who desperately need what you offer.

This episode is about reframing everything you think you know about objections. They're not actually objections. They're invitations. Invitations to establish authority, to tell stories, to help people see the value they can't quite see for themselves yet. When someone says "I can't afford it" or "I need to think about it," they're not necessarily saying no. They're asking you to help them say yes. And if you're not confident enough, eloquent enough, or practiced enough to handle those moments, you're not just losing a sale. You're potentially changing the trajectory of someone's entire life.

🔥 In This Episode:

• How to handle "It's too expensive" without immediately discounting your service or scrambling to justify your worth
• The scale question that changes everything: "On a scale of 1-10, where would you put yourself?" and how it helps you isolate what's really holding them back
• What to do when someone needs to "talk to their spouse," including offering to record yourself so they can share your actual words instead of their overwhelmed version
• Why silence after presenting your offer is your best friend, and how filling that space with nervous energy is sabotaging your sales before people even respond
• Role playing isn't optional: record yourself answering common objections, listen back, and ask yourself "Would I buy from me?"

If you don't show up with passion, fire, and conviction for what you do, that energy will transform someone else's ability to say yes or no. Sales isn't about being salesy. It's about being so grounded in your impact that you can lead people through their own fears and into the life they're asking for.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: support@theheartworklife.com

Join our community: The Heart Work Life Facebook Group and download our Free Self Love Challenge PDF

Support the show

If you've been listening to this podcast, you've heard us talk about Pablo. Our mentor, our coach, the catalyst who nudged us to start this whole thing in the first place. He's the one who saw through the noise when we couldn't see ourselves clearly, who asked the questions that made us uncomfortable in the best way, and who has walked alongside us through our deepest transformations. Today, you finally get to hear from him directly.

This conversation is a gift. Not just because you're hearing Pablo's voice and his story, but because his journey from professional tennis coach to heart work guide is woven with the same pain, false identities, and breakthrough moments that so many of us navigate. He doesn't do surface level work. His work comes from a place of having lived it himself, from bleeding life away from his own heart for years before discovering what it actually means to be real instead of good.

🔥 In This Episode:

• How Pablo's childhood trauma and his name change from Juan Pablo to just Pablo became the false identity he built to survive, and the journey of discovering who he actually was underneath
• The powerful truth that the tennis court (and life) is a mirror, and getting upset is just breaking the mirror because you don't like what you see
• Why gratitude journals and self help books can start conversations but will never dive you into the actual wounding, and what makes Pablo's work different from traditional therapy
• The blueprint concept: we're all given different questions in life, so copying someone else's answers will only destroy your own way because you're using the wrong North Star
• Control, resignation, or active surrender: the three places we live our lives, and why holding life loosely is the only way to stop the exhausting cycle between forcing and preventing

Life is not about being good. Life is about being real. This conversation with Pablo shows you exactly what that means.

Connect with Pablo:

• Website: https://www.tzs.world/
• Instagram: @pabgia and @thezonespace
• Newsletter: Join here
• Books: Holding On Loosely and The Modern Fig Leaf

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: support@theheartworklife.com

Join our community: The Heart Work Life Facebook Group and download our Free Self Love Challenge PDF

Support the show

ONE FULL YEAR. AND WE'RE JUST GETTING STARTED.

What started as a wild idea during a Marco Polo conversation has turned into a full blown movement. Dr. Sara and Dr. Marisa are popping champagne (metaphorically) and celebrating everything this first year has been: the vulnerable conversations, the incredible community that showed up, the first live event that proved people are hungry for this deeper work, and the evolution from nervous first timers to women who flow freely and unapologetically into the realest conversations.

This isn't your typical anniversary recap. This is a celebration of what happens when you stop overthinking, start trusting, and let something organic grow into exactly what it's meant to be. From top downloaded episodes to the behind-the-scenes reality of building something meaningful, this episode is pure gratitude, pure fire, and pure excitement for what's coming next.

🔥 In This Episode:

• The top episodes that absolutely crushed it this year and why "From Hot Mess to Heart Yes" still hits exactly what people need when they first discover the podcast
  
  
  
• The real talk about what it takes to keep showing up: family processing your vulnerable stories, the social media grind, and why their most recent episodes are always their favorites because growth never stops
  
  
  
• How this community has shown up in the most beautiful ways, from patients using episodes as lifelines to listeners sharing feedback that keeps the fire burning
  
  
  
• Why year one was about throwing seeds in a garden to see what grew organically instead of forcing it into a box, and how that freedom created something even better than they imagined
  
  
  
• THE BIG NEWS: Year two is bringing limited in person events, deeper transformational containers, and an invitation for those ready to do the actual work beyond free content
  
  
  

Here we are, one year in and absolutely THRIVING. We've built a community that's hungry for authentic leadership and heart-centered growth, and this is just the beginning. Year two is about to be absolutely electric.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: support@theheartworklife.com
• Join our community: The Heart Work Life Facebook Group and download our Free Self Love Challenge PDF

Support the show

Why do we feel guilty when we rest? What makes us believe that simply existing without producing is somehow taking our life for granted? In this continuation of Marisa's Achilles journey, Dr. Sara asks questions that cut straight to the heart. This isn't about physical healing anymore. It's about what happens when a high achiever is forced to sit still long enough to ask: am I worthy just because I exist, or only because of what I produce?

🔥 In This Episode:

• Why we struggle with the belief that rest without productivity means we're wasting our lives and taking our existence for granted
  
  
• Why the shift from "should I be doing something?" to recognizing shame as the driver changes everything about how you approach rest and productivity
  
  
• How tying your stability to external objects like your business means you'll never actually be stable because businesses flow just like life does
  
  
• The realization that conscious awareness must come before behavior change, and why knowing the dysfunction doesn't mean you've changed the action yet
  
  
• Marisa's raw revelation about stepping into a new era where the question isn't "can she have it all?" but "what does all actually mean when your worth isn't tied to performance?"
  
  

This conversation gets to the heart of what happens when you're forced to evaluate where your safety and stability actually come from. Is it within yourself, or is it only connected to the external things you produce? Are you the center pole holding steady, or are you only stable because of all the scarves tied to everyone else? What a gift to be invited into knowing you are loved, valuable, and worthy regardless of all the things you do.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: support@theheartworklife.com

Join our community: The Heart Work Life Facebook Group and download our Free Self Love Challenge PDF

Support the show

Four downloads. Four distinct moments where Dr. Marisa's intuition screamed "stop doing box jumps or you're going to tear your Achilles." And she kept going anyway. Until the pop. This raw conversation captures Marisa one week post surgery discovering that her emotions aren't mutually exclusive, that rest isn't about being productive during downtime, and that sometimes the universe physically removes your ability to keep doing what you've always done so you have no choice but to finally learn the lesson about letting go that you've been resisting all along.

🔥 In This Episode:

• The four intuitive downloads Marisa ignored before tearing her Achilles and what it teaches us about the cost of not listening to our bodies before they force us to stop
  
  
  
• How to hold space for feeling both grateful for support and pissed off that this happened without drowning in either emotion or reaching for toxic positivity
  
  
  
• The wild timing of being told by her team to let go of control at Heart Work Weekend, then physically losing the ability to mother her team just days later
  
  
  
• Why trying to be productive during rest is actually stealing energy from your healing and the hard lesson of learning that rest means doing nothing
  
  
  
• The difference between shoving emotions under the rug to find silver linings versus truly sitting in the messy middle where conflicting feelings can coexist
  
  
  

This isn't just a story about an injury. It's about what happens when you've been building toward a lesson and refuse to slow down enough to receive it. Sometimes your team tells you. Sometimes your intuition warns you. And sometimes your body makes the decision for you. The real work begins when you finally stop fighting the pause and start listening to what it's trying to teach you.

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast
• Email: support@theheartworklife.com

Join our community: The Heart Work Life Facebook Group and download our Free Self Love Challenge PDF

Support the show