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

Support the show

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

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

Sometimes the most powerful business strategy is simply showing up as yourself. Fresh from the Living Brave conference in Denver, Dr. Sara and Dr. Marisa share the paradigm-shifting insight that your story isn't just content, it's your competitive advantage. From Oracle card revelations in workout clothes to learning that your greatest shame might be your biggest offer, this quick episode unpacks how to stop comparing yourself to others and start rising to lead your unique message.

🔥 In This Episode:

• Why storytelling is an artistry and your life experiences are the copy you've been searching for
• The shift from asking "what makes me different?" to simply owning what you uniquely offer
• How to be the person others are trying to manifest instead of chasing your ideal client
• The profound reminder that your life can only be as wide as your spiritual depth
• Why putting yourself in uncomfortable, triggering situations is where your greatest growth lives

Stop trying to perfect your message and start sharing your story. The people who need exactly what you have are waiting for you to get out of your own way and rise to lead it.

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

Here we are at episode 52, exactly one year since we launched The Heart Work Podcast!! From that first vulnerable conversation to hosting our first live event, this year has been proof that when you lead with heart, everything accelerates.

This past weekend, practice owners and their teams traded their polished professional facades for something infinitely more powerful. Four months from conception to reality, Dr. Sara and Dr. Marisa's first Heart Work live event became proof of what happens when teams stop performing their way to success and start leading from authentic transformation.

This wasn't your typical business seminar. Friday night under the open sky on a Tennessee farm became the foundation for Saturday's breakthrough work at Freedom Chiropractic. What emerged across both days had participants saying "100 out of 10" and "nothing else like this exists."

🔥 In This Episode:

• The intentional decision to create intimacy over impressive numbers and why the perfect size allowed barriers to dissolve and authentic leadership to emerge
• How Friday night's foundation of individual radical ownership became Saturday's breakthrough in team dynamics, systems work, and business transformation
• The profound shift from asking "how do I get there?" to asking "why do I want that?" and how this one question revolutionizes everything from team buy-in to personal fulfillment
• Real moments of team members apologizing, having difficult conversations, and stepping into ownership because the weekend created space for authenticity over avoidance
• Why the most impactful leadership happens when you stop solving problems for others and start posing questions that invite them into their own genius

What unfolded wasn't just professional development but permission for an entire room of leaders to remember that doing the inner work isn't about performing better, it's about being well as humans, which inevitably transforms everything else. This is what happens when heart work meets business strategy, and why authentic leadership will always outperform polished perfection.

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

Sometimes the universe conspires to put you exactly where you need to be, even when it feels completely out of your comfort zone. What was supposed to be a simple weekend supporting their mentor Stephanie at the Living Brave conference in Denver became something none of them saw coming: a complete rewiring of how they understood surrender, abundance, and the power of showing up as themselves.

Sara found herself buying entirely new outfits to get out of her own way and step fully into a conference that celebrated feminine power without apology. Marisa had breakthrough moments recognizing that the abundance she'd been chasing was already flowing through her life. And in a hotel room with no makeup, wearing pajamas, five women discovered that Oracle cards and raw vulnerability could crack them open in the most beautiful way. This wasn't your typical business conference recap. This was about what happens when you're brave enough to be uncomfortable and trust that your story is being written with more magic than you could have planned.

🔥 In This Episode:

• Why putting yourself in triggering situations is actually the fastest path to discovering who you really are (and Sara's honest take on buying new clothes to feel like she belonged)
  
  
  
• Marisa's mirror moment with limiting beliefs: "You are not a failure if your business fails" and how that revelation changed everything about how she sees abundance
  
  
  
• Why your presence radiates a frequency that people feel before you even speak, and how showing up as yourself is the only strategy that matters
  
  
  
• The beautiful truth about surrender that doesn't mean giving up but removing the obstructions to let life flow through you
  
  
  
• Why life mirrors exactly what you're putting out into the world and how to trust your story instead of chasing someone else's
  
  
  

Stop chasing other people's stories. Your life is already being written with more beauty and magic than you could have predicted. When you show up as your full self, trust the uncomfortable moments, and surrender the need to control every outcome, the universe doesn't just conspire to help you — it creates space for the kind of transformation that makes you unrecognizable to who you were before.

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

Support the show