Heartwork Podcast

Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray & Dr. Marisa Baumann
  • 5.0 (20)
  • Entrepreneurship
  • Weekly

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 learn to thrive from the inside out!

  1. 19h ago

    Ep. 95: Unreasonable Hospitality for Practice Owners: 10 Lessons to Teach Your Team

    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 person walking through the door. A team can scan, adjust, and answer the phone perfectly and still leave someone feeling like a number, and everybody inherently wants to be seen. 🔥 In This Episode: How to bring color into the everyday moments of your practice so people stop feeling like a numberWhy presence is a decision you make at the door, and the small things that quietly tell someone they come secondHow to turn "how was your weekend" into a real dialogue that adds depth to someone's experienceWhy taking care of your team first is what allows them to take care of everyone elseHow a mistake, owned out loud in the moment, can be more memorable than a perfect experienceCulture builds on itself, and it only holds when it gets repeated. Three of these principles fit into a fifteen minute Monday huddle, and that was enough to start. Choose the one your team needs most this week and teach it, then watch for the moments in your own day where someone walked in and got service when they needed to be seen. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  2. Oct 20

    Ep. 94: 11 Lessons From 11 Years of Practice Ownership

    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 season asked for more self awareness than the one before it. The deepest growth came from the hardest place to look: an identity so wrapped up in being a high volume chiropractor that the numbers had quietly become a measure of worth. That is the question underneath all 11 lessons: who are you without your business? 🔥 In This Episode: Why your practice hits the same ceiling your own growth hits, and why no new system moves it until you doHow to spot the task you’re still white knuckling and hand it to a team that can carry itWhat to look for when you hire for heart and train the skill, and why your team is the best read on a new hireHow to tell a shiny idea born from scarcity from an aligned one, before your patients start questioning your judgmentThe question that untangles your worth from your stat sheet, and where to start when answering it feels ickyIf the question of who you are without your business makes your stomach drop, don’t rush past it. That discomfort marks the exact place your next season of growth lives, for you and for every person inside your practice. Get curious about why it feels so uncomfortable, build joy into the parts of your life that have nothing to do with numbers, and then find someone safe enough to hear the honest answer. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  3. Oct 6

    Ep. 93: Money and Identity: When Your Bank Account Becomes Your Worth

    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 numbers means your numbers get brutally honest back, and so does how you feel about them. 🔥 In This Episode: Why money turns into a measuring stick for your worth, and how to catch yourself chasing it to be seen or validatedHow a couples money check in turns financial tension into a shared picture, especially when one of you needs a safety number and the other trusts it will always flowWhy honesty about how you feel about money has to come before the budget, the strategy, or the systemHow someone can have millions in the bank and still feel scarce, and why the dollar amount was never what decided itWhy abundance was never meant to be a transaction, and how to recognize the provision already in front of youMoney can buy time, resources, and experiences, and it can absolutely move your life forward. What it cannot do is decide whether you are worthy, and getting free with it can take years of honest work. Sit down with your numbers, alone or with your partner, and get clear on what money means to you and what you have been asking it to prove. Then decide whether it rules your world or helps you build the one you want. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  4. Sep 22

    Ep. 92: Fixing Versus Healing: Why They Are Not the Same Thing

    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. 🔥 In This Episode: The difference between fixing and healing, and what fixing is usually protectingWhy control over your health outcome is an illusion, even when the daily choices still matterWhat "normal range" actually measures, and why a dynamic body was never meant to hold still inside oneWhy the thing showing up in your body now may be older than any change you are making todayWhy being honest about how hard it is opens more than pretending you have peace about itFear and peace can both be there at once, and there is no requirement to feel peace right now if you do not. The question at the end is worth sitting with. If none of it got fixed, would you be okay. Life exists inside of all of it, not outside of it. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  5. Sep 8

    Ep. 91: How to Know If You're Operating From a Healthier Place

    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 you cannot know from the outside of it. You build the gauge by moving. From there it goes into the exits we take and why we take them, what exhaustion is usually pointing back to, and what happens when the fear of doing it wrong turns into doing nothing at all. 🔥 In This Episode: Why seeing the pattern is not the same as knowing how to operate differently, and what actually closes that gapHow to build the trust that you can catch yourself going too fast and slow downThe question worth asking before you take a new exit, and how to tell whether you are being drawn or toldWhat fatigue is often reporting back about a choice you already knew was offWhy the fear of repeating an old pattern keeps people swinging between a hundred percent and zeroShame is what sits underneath most of this. Every should, every replay of why you did it that way, is shame in tidier clothing, and there is nothing shameful about being in process. You get to paint your own lanes, and nobody else gets to paint them for you. Alignment cannot be assessed from the outside of it. Go touch the thing you have been circling, even for fifteen minutes, and let your body tell you what it is. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  6. Aug 25

    Ep. 90: Why Leaders Won't Delegate, With Marcia Erickson

    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.  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, into the beliefs driving the behavior.  Marcia talks about how a belief has no objectivity in it, and how we go collect every piece of evidence we can find to prove it right anyway. She is candid about her own version of that, including the years she could not put her own face on her own marketing. 🔥 In This Episode: What actually blocks delegation, and why it has more to do with what you believe about yourself than what your team can handleWhy "I will know it when I see it" is not a standard, and what it costs your team when nobody says out loud what success looks likeMarcia's test before she hands anything off, and what changes when the question becomes whether you can live with the outcomeWhat real accountability looks like when your people report their own wins and misses instead of you pulling it out of themWhat it took for Marcia, an introvert, to put her own face on her own marketing, and what she still does to get through itMarcia says coaching lands hardest when someone is in transition, because that is when we finally stop and take stock of things. The rest of the time we keep doing the thing. What she wants for people is that they get to be successful on their own terms and actually enjoy what they built. That starts with naming the standard you have never said out loud, and handing off the thing you keep telling yourself only you can do. Connect with Marcia:  Email: marciaerickson@actioncoach.com  Website: https://exceledge.actioncoach.com/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/1Bak8WCSPZ/?mibextid=wwXIfr YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@actioncoachmarciaerickson4220 Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  7. Aug 11

    Ep. 89: What Italy Taught Marisa About Pace, Presence, and Coming Home Different

    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 her in a new light. Then they came home to Iowa and she didn't pick her old pace back up. She stopped prepping six days out at the practice, stopped posting to teach anybody lessons, and started letting a priority be a priority when it's actually a priority, herself included. 🔥 In This Episode: What opens up when you stop trying to accomplish something on a trip and let yourself actually be thereThe difference between capturing a moment on your phone and letting it land in your own eyes, and what you give up when you choose the screenWhy being seen by your partner in the place you come from does something no story about it ever couldWhy Marisa stopped preparing six days out in her practice, and what she means when she says a priority is a priority, and so is sheHow to carry your family's culture forward without it becoming something you shoulder aloneWe look to travel for rest or adventure, and then we come home and talk about the views. What actually stays is what your heart got informed in while you were there. For Marisa and Alex, that was him understanding where she comes from and why she loves what she loves, and then wanting to build it into their life together. He's the one at the grocery store now buying mortadella and Italian sourdough. She isn't passing her family's culture down by herself anymore. Take whatever opened up in you somewhere else and let it change your regular week here. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

  8. Jul 28

    Ep. 88: Quitting, Pivoting, and Trusting Yourself Through Change

    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, the mastermind metric, the version of success built from everyone else's life but your own. 🔥 In This Episode: Why a decision that looks like a step backwards can be the most aligned move for your finances, your culture, and your energy, and how to tell the difference between retreat and stewardshipThe comparison trap that turns aligned decisions into evidence of failure, and why measuring your season against other CEOs will always make you feel behindMarisa's discernment question for every big decision: are you gathering information so your heart can feel it through, or is your ego collecting approvalHow "we're in a season of transition" quietly becomes a crutch that stalls momentum, and the question that stopped Sara mid sentence when she caught herself using itYour relationship with change is contagious: how Sara realized her team hated change because she was the one saying it out loud, and what that fear cost her practiceThe episode ends with a challenge worth taking seriously. Look back at every season of your life, the winters included, and name one beautiful thing that came from each. If you come up empty, that's not a failure. It's a signal to slow down, because you may be moving through your life without actually living in it. And if that's where you are right now, reach out to us. We're in it and we're here for you. Connect with us: Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcastEmail: hello@theheartworklife.comSupport the show

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5
out of 5
20 Ratings

About

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 learn to thrive from the inside out!

Information

  • Creator
    Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray & Dr. Marisa Baumann
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    95
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Heartwork Podcast
  • Show Website
    Heartwork Podcast

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