There is a moment most practice owners know well. A seat opens up, the pressure builds, and every instinct you have screams to fill it fast. What nobody tells you is that the urgency you feel is data, and it is worth sitting with before you act on it. In this episode, Sara and Marisa get into the real, unfiltered conversation about what hiring and firing actually looks like as you grow as a leader. Not the polished version, not the version where you always knew what you were doing. The version that includes holding out for eight months, learning to separate your intuition from your anxiety, and recognizing that sometimes the most strategic thing you can do is pause.

🔥 In This Episode:

• Why putting a warm body in an empty seat is a short-term fix that often creates a longer-term mess, and what to do in the waiting instead
• How Sara's team spent months simplifying systems and refining culture before making their next hire, and why that season made the eventual yes even clearer
• The difference between hiring out of fear and hiring from a place of quiet, grounded certainty, and how to tell the one from the other
• Why your team is the most honest mirror you have as a leader, and what it means when hiring keeps falling apart
• Marisa's honest look at how timelines she had mapped in her head collided with reality, and what she learned about trusting herself through the uncertainty anyway

The leaders who build teams that last are not the ones who always make the fastest decisions. They are the ones who do the inner work between hires, trust what they have built, and stay grounded enough to let the right people find them.

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• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast

Email: support@theheartworklife.com

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You opened yourself up. You shared your heart, bought the coffees, said yes to every request, became the kind of boss people loved. And then one day you found yourself fuming over something small, exhausted by everything, quietly resentful of the culture you built. This episode is for every leader who got so busy taking care of everyone else that they forgot to take care of the business, and themselves. Sara and Marisa dig into a real listener question about where vulnerability ends and over-exposure begins, and what it actually looks like to lead with warmth and a spine at the same time.

🔥 In This Episode:

• Sara gets raw about hiring friends, becoming a mother figure to her team, and the slow build of resentment that forced her to finally have the hard conversations
• Why over-giving does not create loyalty, it creates entitlement, and how to recognize that pattern before it derails your culture
• The 10-minute vulnerability practice Sara uses in leadership meetings that creates real connection without blurring the lines of authority
• Marisa on how team turnover can send you into a spiral of "was I enough" and how that spiral quietly poisons your next round of hiring decisions
• The temperature check every leader needs: are you resting, or are you running on empty and calling it dedication?

You can build a team that feels deeply human and still hold a clear line between friendship and leadership. Those two things were never meant to cancel each other out.

If you are in a season of rebuilding your leadership from the inside out, we want you at HeartWork Leadership Live on March 13 and 14 in Knoxville. This is the room where that work actually happens. Reserve your spot here: https://theheartworklife.myflodesk.com/rfi6abz6yv

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast

Email: support@theheartworklife.com

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We are living in a world that loves a narrative arc. New year, new era, new identity. And while there is something genuinely beautiful about anchoring to something bigger than yourself, what happens when that external anchor starts doing the work your own self-awareness was always meant to do? This episode is an honest, tender, and sometimes hilarious look at the Fire Horse Lunar Year, what it actually means to embody momentum without losing presence, and why chasing a year's promise might be the very thing keeping you from what is already here.

🔥 In This Episode:

• Sara breaks down what horses actually teach us about power: it's not constant movement, it's knowing when to run and when to graze, and that distinction changes everything
• Why attaching your experiences to external identifiers (the year of the snake, the year of the horse) can quietly rob you of the chance to actually understand yourself
• The patient who couldn't wait for 2025 to end, then decided 2026 was already terrible, and what that pattern reveals about where we are placing our power
• Marisa on the real question worth asking: if something was hard, what were you actually being invited to learn, and does a cosmic calendar get to answer that for you?
• How to take what resonates from collective conversations, astrology, tarot, fire horse energy, all of it, without handing over your ownership of your own story

If you are looking for something outside of yourself to finally explain your life, this episode is going to sit with you. The fire horse is not the point. You are.

If this conversation is landing for you, we want you in the room with us. HeartWork Leadership Live is happening March 13 and 14 in Knoxville, and it is exactly this kind of work, getting clear, getting present, and stepping back into your own power. Grab your spot here: https://theheartworklife.myflodesk.com/rfi6abz6yv

Connect with us:

• Instagram: @drsaranelsongray, @dr.marisa.nicole10, @theheartworkpodcast

Email: support@theheartworklife.com

Support the show