How to Escape the Production Hamster Wheel | Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray | Part 1 | S2E15

What happens when a health crisis forces you to step away from your chiropractic practice?

In this episode, Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray shares how surgery and recovery revealed the hidden cost of the production hamster wheel. Together, we discuss chiropractic leadership, delegation, burnout, identity, self-worth, and what it takes to build a practice that can thrive without depending on the owner every day.

In this conversation:

• the production hamster wheel and achievement addiction • building a chiropractic business that runs without you • leadership, delegation, and team development • burnout, rest, and healthy boundaries • identity, self-worth, and personal growth • moving from victimhood to transformation • creating freedom in business and life

Dr. Sara previously joined Beyond Adjustments:

S1 E31: How Heart-Centered Leadership Elevates Your Team (Heartwork Podcast) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-YX47qbGos

S1 E35: From Chronic Illness to Chiropractic CEO | Dr. Sara Nelson Gray’s Powerful Healing Journey https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FinpVB2vPPQ&t=415s

This episode is for chiropractors, clinic owners, rehab professionals, and healthcare leaders looking to build stronger systems, improve leadership, and create a more sustainable practice.

Chapters:

00:00 The Production Hamster Wheel

00:24 Introduction

02:32 Meet Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray

03:53 A Health Crisis Changes Everything

05:04 Building a Chiropractic Practice That Runs Without You

07:06 The Addiction to Achievement

08:08 Why Chiropractors Struggle With Rest

09:20 When Productivity Becomes Your Identity

10:00 Victimhood vs Transformation

13:26 AI Local Boost

15:42 Leadership Growth and Self-Discovery

19:00 Chasing Success vs Finding Purpose

21:19 Outgrowing Old Versions of Yourself

22:36 Boundaries, Family, and Authentic Leadership

25:44 The True Meaning of Freedom

📍 Connect with Dr. Sara Nelson-Gray

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/drsaranelsongray

Freedom Chiropractic:

https://www.freedomchirotn.com

🎙 Listen to The Heartwork Podcast:

https://www.youtube.com/@heartworkpodcast

🎙 Beyond Adjustments Podcast

Presented by Cyber Adjustment

🚀 Brought to you by AI Local Boost

http://AiLocalBoost.com

Helping chiropractors improve visibility in local search and Google Maps through AI-powered optimization.

🎧 Produced by Clear-Cut Podcasting

https://clearcutpodcasting.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

A part of every organization that I'm a part of, this is one of the top things I see all the time is the production hamster wheel. And you feel like you are a piece of crap if you are not doing as much or doing enough in your perception, right? And so it's wild. It's really a it's a hard identity that people can wrap themselves around, especially in the entrepreneur world for sure.

SPEAKER_01 0:22

Welcome back to Beyond Adjustments. I'm your host, Amin Said, and today we are kicking off a three-part conversation. Uh, three parts, yeah. This guest earned herself a trilogy. That's what's up, y'all. I'm just saying. Anyway, Dr. Sarah Nelson Gray is back for her third time on the show, which officially makes her say it with me, family. Good job, good job. She is the owner of Freedom Chiropractic out of Knoxville, Tennessee, uh, with over 10 years in practice. And every single time she sits down with me, we end up going somewhere I didn't plan. Fun times. First episode lays the foundation uh where we're talking about who Dr. Sarah is, like right now. Not the origin story, you know, not the highlight reel. She opened up this thing like by being vulnerable right out of the gate. Sharing a health crisis that happened just weeks before we hit record. And from there, we got into the production hamster wheel. What happens when your identity is tied to results? The moment she decided to stop chasing, what the world said she needed to go after. And the real meaning behind why she named her practice Freedom. That's a cool story too. But good stuff is coming. But real quick, real quick, before we jump in here, shout out to Clear Cut Podcasting, of course. These are the people who make sure this show sounds and looks like I actually know what I'm doing. Because I have no idea. Without them, this three-part series would be sitting in a folder on my desktop called something like Sarah EP Final Real this time version four. I don't know. But they handle all the editing and production, so I could do what I do best, which is show up and ask questions. And if you're looking to start or level up your podcast, go check them out. All right, part one with Dr. Sarah Nelson Gray starts right now. Dr. Sarah, welcome back to Beyond Adjustments. Third time. At this point, you're practically family. So I'm just gonna go ahead and just jump right in. I want to start in the the present, not the past. Uh so let's do this. So for anyone hearing you for the first time, we're we're just gonna skip the origin story this time. Just tell us who Dr. Sarah Nelson Gray is right now, today.

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Wow. Well, welcome. Thank you so much for like having me back as well. I am so honored to be sharing my story and getting to be a part of this show. Um, it's a special show, and what you're doing for this community is remarkable. It's wild because I feel like life just is always such a beautiful evolution, right? And you are constantly learning, understanding yourself more and more. And I feel like I've been in a season of really just knowing who I am as a human, but also as a owner, as a CEO, as a chiropractor, and all of that. And so for those that don't know, I do own a practice here in Knoxville, Tennessee. We've been in practice for 10 years, and I have been like practicing since 2011. And it's been wild. Like, uh, but I actually just to be vulnerable as we get kicked off. I had a little bit of a health crisis about four weeks ago. And I'm a little anal also because I think chiropractors are this way. I think we're a little bit crick ray when it comes to like holistic health. And um, so I have not taken a medication since 2008 and had never had not been to the doctor besides a functional med doc and besides my chiropractor, and had something come up to where I ended up having to go to the hospital, ended up having to go to the ER, ended up having to have surgery, got put out and all this craziness literally this almost four weeks ago. So kind of crazy when your whole like perspective of health, I got pushed up against a lot of my like health beliefs, honestly, just even just the past little bit. And also there was so much beauty that came from it. I got to really get invited to heal back through some trauma that I had from a young, young girl, all that fun stuff. But I will also tell you, I think the coolest part when you ask, like, who is Sarah right now? Like, I also celebrated the crap out of my team. I literally have created a business and created a team where I was not at the office for two weeks. I have only went back kind of part-time last week, and this week is my first time back. And everything literally ran more seamless. They like, we had a beautiful, beautiful, abundant month, even without me there. So it just goes to show like you can be in the midst of all of it and also at the same time have so many things that you're also celebrating. Um you can experience both. There's duality in all of it for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah, a hundred percent. I mean, first of all, um, I hope you're okay. I hope you're, you know, on the road to recovery. I'm sorry you walked through what you walked through, and we'll pray for continued healing uh over that. And so while while you're placing yourself kind of here uh in the present, so we've we've had two conversations before. Uh the first time you came on, it was with heartwork, and then uh you just kind of jumped on on your own. But looking back at those, uh, is there anything that felt um incomplete, something uh maybe you've been sitting on since?

SPEAKER_00 6:01

I don't know if there's necessarily an incompleteness, but I do think that there is a reality that life just continues to move, right? And so the continued evolution of my life is as just not only a CEO and a business owner and as just a human being, a wife, and doing all these things, there is this reality that you still can see like cyclical things come up where God kind of touches on certain facets of your life, says like, hey, I want to go deeper with this healing and I want to go deeper with this perspective that you may have some type of understanding with, but we can go more. And since the last time we recorded, there's been beautiful movement on, like not only just within my business, but I started working with other chiropractors and their leaders in a coaching facet. And while also it can kind of engage a little bit of this shiny object syndrome, it's like you can kind of look at certain things where you're wanting to develop and grow certain aspects of other desires that you feel like God's putting in your life, but also really understanding where those are coming from. And so I think my biggest the evolution that has continued to happen is really understanding my lane and what my potential is and not chasing what other people are doing and not chasing what even the potential, not even it may not even be people, but it may be what the world maybe says that you need to go and you need to constantly push and you constantly need to go for success and produce for success and you need to work harder and grind harder and all those types of things. And the the production hamster wheel, like I'm a I'm a results, my one of my woundings is a results-driven human that has created this production addict inside of me. So I've it's really easy for me just to go and push and do all these things, especially when it comes to business. And that has been something that has really come to the forefront for this season and really understanding what it can look like to just be in my lane. And then also, again, like I literally did absolutely nothing for two weeks to really just enjoy and understand what rest can look like, even as things are still producing and still creating in your world at the same time. And I don't think it's crazy. This is a part of every organization that I'm a part of. This is one of the top things I see all the time is the production hamster wheel. And you feel like you are a piece of crap if you are not doing as much or doing enough in your perception, right? And so it's wild. It's really uh it's a hard identity that people can wrap themselves around, especially in the entrepreneur world for sure.

SPEAKER_01 8:35

I totally, totally get that. A hundred percent. I love the the fact that first of all, you set yourself up for success, but that yeah, that's great. That's wonderful. What I'm actually more interested in what you're saying is more of the evolution of self. We're constantly changing. And I mean, that's my story now. I learned something about myself in the past two weeks that I didn't even realize was a thing. Um, right before we hit record, I I was telling Dr. Sarah these are these are fake smiles for you guys, but but that's the thing, right? Like you learned um and you could either pull yourself down with it or you can evolve, you can you can grow from it. So I I love how you put that. There's there's a story that we tell all the time about our life, who we are, what we've done, what we've walked through. For you, it's it's the chronic illness uh that you went through as a child through the years. But how has, and for those of you who want to know what that is, go back and listen to that episode. But how has your relationship with your own story changed? Like you you've told it publicly, I'm I'm assuming. I mean, obviously you did on the show, but you've told it publicly a a number of times now, possibly. Yeah, a lot. Yeah. It does it feel the same to tell it.

SPEAKER_00 9:58

No. I think when there, I think there's this thing when you go through something. Sometimes it's really hard to share something when you're bleeding, right? And I don't think people always like I I'm sure you've heard of something where somebody is going through something, it almost makes it feel like you're in a victimhood or you're hearing somebody share something from a victimhood versus from transformation. And one of the things is I've shared my story or and also just continued to know myself as I've journeyed through this. Um, when I first started working through the trauma of my story, I think that's also the awareness of like how certain things can influence how you see yourself. I had a range of emotions. I had a lot of anger, I had a lot of grief, I had a lot of sadness in there, I had a lot of resentment for things that potentially happened to me, or not potentially, but that happened to me, that then portrayed a perception of myself. And so when I first started really working through it, it there became this place where I'm like, I don't even know if I can I can share it, but it was almost like a guarded share because it was like there was still so much emotion around the share. And then as you like continue to understand, so like one of my the things that I will encourage anybody to go to is if you're feeling something about something, you got to be honest with yourself in that. Because at the end of the day, if you believe that God truly knows every single thing about you, he put the emotions there, right? So, like he's the only one that can handle those emotions. And so, and if you lie to yourself, then you're ultimately just hiding something from the person that ultimately can handle it. So when I was first starting to share those feelings and like understanding my story there, it was again, there were feelings that I felt like were too super big and too big for myself as a human to handle. And so I had to go there. I had to be honest with myself. And then the the cool part about how things can evolve is that it's more about transformation. So now I feel like I've shared more of my story through the transformation part of it and what the what has now evolved versus just the anger, the resentment. Now I actually have a lot of gratitude and I have a lot of, I can still be mad that something like that happened to me because it's just not fair, right? It doesn't have to be fair and it doesn't have to be okay, and it doesn't have to be a good thing. However, there can now be this place of gratitude and still joy and rest and peace in the midst of that, and also see how this has influenced so much of my story. And it's a story that God is gonna help me bring to the world at the same time, too. And it's something that can also relate to human beings. I don't have to share my story to try to convince them to relate to me, but my story is inevitably going to relate to somebody, right? And so, um, so I think that's been the coolest thing is just understanding it and also just understanding that your story just continues to move, you know, it continues to live and it continues to breathe. Um, and so I think like even just this past like season of life, there's been a lot of reflection on things that I didn't know were there. So as I share my story, I get to share this story from even more of a different lens and a different perspective perspective now because of what I have just been gifted the opportunity to go through, you know. So it's just a beautiful rhythm of change as you get to express that over the course of time.

SPEAKER_01 13:19

I love that. Quick pause here because while we're out here talking about freedom and shedding the things that hold us back, somewhere right now, a practice owner or even a business owner is watching the Google Business Profile collect dust like it's a vintage collectible. And Google just dropped an update that basically says fresh content, real photos, specific posts, recent reviews, that's how you show up now. Whether someone is searching the old way or asking an AI, same rules apply. I kid you not. So all those terms AEO AIO eny mey mini mo, great, and they might be something one day, but right now, literally nothing has changed. So do the work or disappear. It's that simple. Here's the problem you already know you need to be posting, you know you should be adding photos. I like literally drill it into your brain every single time. You gotta be responding to the reviews, you gotta put the actual content out there that talks about your specific business. You just don't have the time. And that's exactly where AI Local Boost comes in. So AI Local Boost handles all of it for you. It writes content specific to your business, not generic stuff, by the way. It turns your five-star reviews into actual posts with a story behind them. It checks in with you every week to grab any updates from your practice, you know, new hours, new services, whatever it is, and turns that into fresh content automatically. It even pulls photos from your reviewers and creates videos for your Google profile and YouTube. Done for you. All of it. Alright, head over to ai localboost.com and let them show you what your profile could actually look like. Uh, they have a free audit tool. It won't hurt. At least you'll see what you look like online. And while you are in the clicking mood, while I have you, go ahead. Go ahead. Hit subscribe. It's free. It takes like two seconds. Uh, we're practically in a relationship at this point. So honestly, it's just the right thing to do. So, like, subscribe, let's go. Alright. I'm done. Back to Dr. Sarah. Have you I'll ask it this way, how, I guess, have you changed um in the last say two to three years? Not not the practice, right? Not not things, whatever, um, external, but not not the practice, not that not the not the mission even. But but you specifically.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

So yeah. That when you actually when I look at my life, I actually look at I'm gonna give you like the past like two years. We'll say two years.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:24

Um the like I was kind of saying, there are things that will pop up. And I think when people go through stuff, like you may find yourself like, I feel like I'm writing a like, I'm doing everything's going really good, right? I feel good about myself. I feel like my identity is pretty solid. And then, like I was mentioning, like, God, I feel like we'll kind of tap on stuff to allow you to be able to be invited to something deeper. And I got, I joined an organization that, regardless of how much healing I have freaking done and how much heartwork that I have done for myself, there are certain things that will activate my ego and that will activate certain parts of me that are that again, I get tapped on to be able to say, hey, let's go a little bit more. And this past two years, this I really like for 2025, I literally said I lived two different lives. Like I feel like I was as two different human beings from 2025. So I guess it's like a past year and a half. And the start of the year, um, I was really kind of chasing this idea of desiring to have more, want more, and really within that experience notoriety and fame with it. One of my woundings, um, because of what I went through, naturally, my well, in in return, it became this place where I wanted to prove to other people that I was really strong. And I wanted to prove to other people that I didn't have to have emotion or and I could basically create this life that people then saw was really pretty and put together and have again worked really beautifully and seen a lot of transformation in that. However, I was a part of something that really activated my ego, the start, the end of 24 into 25. And it really activated this thing where I was like, okay, cool. I need to, if I want to run this way, I need to, again, do more, I need to create more, and I need to do it in this fashion, versus understanding the rhythm around what it actually is for me. I think so many times we can we think that we may have a desire where we do have a desire, but we then try to formulate the outcome of that desire in ways that other people have done it. And that's exactly what I was doing. And then internally, I was finding myself really like very restless. I wasn't sleeping. I wasn't, I was tired, I was constricted. My HR, like if you have an aura ring on your hand, like my HRV was low. Like there was just like a season of life in the middle of like 25. And I remember just like feeling like I was asking a lot of the questions of like, what is it, what is it that I want? What is it that I want with my business? What is it that I want my relationships? And what is it that I want with my life? And I think so many times we can almost get to that point where we're we almost ask like our purpose, our mission, who we are, what is it that we want? And at the end of the day, we don't, we don't know what we want because we don't know who we are. And my husband and I went on a trip to Montana this past summer. And I literally, it was like I, it was like a book stamp, like a timestamp. Everything like switched from that moment. I feel like the rest of 25 was very different. And became, I really started asking God a lot of those questions. Like, for one, what are you showing me? And what is it that you want for my life? And and it really allowed me to see that it's like, hey, I'm my ego was the one that was influencing so much of what I was doing, what I was wanting, what I was chasing. And I was chasing more of the result versus the actual fruit of my life and what could act that could actually look like. And by asking those questions and actually getting to the place of it, by November, I remember like it again, it I think this is also what's crazy. Is so many times when you go through identity stuff, we tend to think like the minute that you think something, your your mind is gonna change and it's all of a sudden gonna be there. Doesn't mean that it can't move really fast, but sometimes it actually takes rhythm and time to actually get to that point. So by the time November of last year came, I was at this point where I was very, very restful and at ease. And I was making the decisions that I was like, okay, I was here. Now I'm like shifting myself back over to this point because now this is actually where I need to be. And from that place, like there was just so much more intention, so much more authenticity, so much more rest, so much more just ease when it came to not only making decisions, but also just trusting myself in that space. And so when you talk about who I was and who I am, I mean, that's that's kind of just the wild journey of all of it. It's like you get to see yourself in certain spaces and you're like, oh wow, that was fun. And what I was looking for, a getting and really receiving from the world. But also, like again, like it's all purposeful. It got me the chance to be able to see where I am and where I'm going now and what I really want and what I where I want to make decisions from. I want to make decisions from a trusting and grounded space and um and knowing that it's for me, not for somebody else.

SPEAKER_01 21:17

How do you how do you navigate? So not just how do you navigate, but what does it feel like when people around you still expect a version of you that you've already moved through?

SPEAKER_00 21:27

It's when you operate from a place that's inauthentic to you, you're gonna find yourself in very moments of time that people are actually gonna tell you it, or you're gonna probably feel restriction from human beings. So, for instance, this year, like I had, I can't even tell you how many tension moments, if I just actually put it to my team, like I was pushing in one way and their response to me, like they're all on, oh, they're all on board. They love me so much, they see me, but they can also feel my energy. They can, they understand where I'm going. And the amount of tension points there was kind of wild. And I on the beautiful side, I'm so forgetting. Proud of them because they actually had some really like honest conversations with me with all the things that were happening. And so there were there, I think that there also can be really beautiful humans in your life that can also see where you're out of alignment that can also really cause influence, but that doesn't always feel good. And that doesn't always like make you feel like you're it's like, well, no, I thought I'm going here. So who are you to actually speak this into my life, type of a thing? And then on the flip side to answer that, when I first started really understanding, especially in my business, when it came to when I started leaning and leading in a place of authenticity, a lot of people, like you're saying, like they saw me in a way and they saw me in aversion. And that not to their fault, because I was basically giving permission to the things that they were doing at the same time, but they didn't like it. And that created a lot of friction. And ultimately, all the team that I had from a very that early age is no longer with me because of it, because I eventually we had to obviously create some boundaries. I'll be vulnerable with this, like my also my family. So I think sometimes the people closest to you can sometimes be the hardest ones to see that. And so my family, we were always a really, really, really, really close unit growing up. And as I got into my adulthood and through the journey of really starting to heal and lining up things that were authentic to me, I realized that I was really compromising so much of myself, even for somebody as close to me as my mom and my dad and my brother. And so when you start making choices for their, they're like, wait, we used to hang out all the time. Why are we not hanging out anymore? You know, like, why are we why are you making these choices when I thought you were going to do this? And I'm I'm so grateful my parents at the end of the day were have been incredibly gracious. However, there was a lot of confusion for a little while. It was challenging to watch on their side, but it wasn't my responsibility to navigate their own emotions or their journey. I just had to know and trust that what I was processing through was healthy for me. And in turn, it was going to ultimately hopefully be healthy for everybody else. And now I can tell you like we have, because of the things that I set up, this was probably like five years ago at this point, set up some really healthy boundaries, not only my business, my business, my relationship. There has been so much beautiful restoration that's happened, not only for my parents and my family. And obviously, my team is freaking rock stars. And so it's just been, it's been really beautiful to see. However, it can be challenging in the moment when you were trying to come from a place where people see you from a space of your woundings and you're making decisions out of places that are not authentic to you.

SPEAKER_01 24:40

Thank you for stretching that out because I had a moment.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

And um I didn't know if we were crying because I was really influencing that your emotion in that moment, or if we were having uh, like you said, a little moment of uh throat stuff happening.

SPEAKER_01 25:00

Yeah, no, it was uh I'm trying. I'm trying, you guys. Um hey, listen, we're we're raw on the show, right? This is this is real stuff, so excuse me.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

We can take a moment too. You can obviously edit that all that out.

SPEAKER_01 25:22

We're good. No, you know what? If we edit it, great. If we're not, listen, this is this is real life. I mean, we're here to be real, we're we're here to connect, and um here we are. But all of what you just said kind of takes me to uh I guess m more the anchor uh of of this segment and kind of the the deeper meaning of it all, right? The deeper meaning of of freedom specifically. And and kind of this is something I don't I don't remember if I asked you this in the past, but it was something I wanted to ask you. Um your your practice. Uh it's called freedom chiropractic, am I right? Yeah and I know what that word meant at the beginning, I'm sure, like or maybe it was deeper than I'm thinking, but ha I have a theory uh that freedom means something different now. Like I could be wrong, but I mean I have the microphone, so but we're gonna we're gonna find out once I pass it over to you. But when you when you first named the practice freedom, what was that word pointing to for you?

SPEAKER_00 26:32

I was actually sitting in a sermon at the time, and there was an illustration that was given based off of like breaking of like bondages and like chains coming off and like and basically experiencing this like the spiritual freedom, but also at the end of the day, like freedom from sickness from hope. And so it really got birthed out of a place of really wanting people to experience what it would like to live free and what would it look like to live free from not only just pain, but things that are just holding them from their true potential and so and keeping them from their true potential. And I think the overall emphasis of what that is has remained. However, I think again, like there's been a lot of like for one of our core values is to live free. It has been literally one of our core values from the very beginning. But one of our other um core values and really just like who we are is to create a safe space for people to experience health and well-being. And because I think also at the end of the day, like if you feel safe, you are able to feel welcome, known, seen. And there is this beautiful thing that in humanity, every human inherently wants to be seen. Every human inherently wants to be loved and to be known at the end of the day. And so to be able to allow that expression to come through, freedom is that even more so. Like freedom is the place to where people can come in and know that they are safe, that they are known, that they're seen, that we love them no matter what they're bringing in with them. And our hope in in that space is that at the end of the day, like they may, whether it be from a conversation, an interaction, an adjustment, that they will walk out more free. And sometimes it's literally like I'm sure other you've had other people on here that talk all the time that it's like it's not always just um one adjustment's gonna one adjustment, yes, can 100% change something, but that may change how they see themselves, how they operate within their emotions, how that they go back to their family and they make decisions about money, you know, because they physically have more awareness in their body, right? And so it's so much more than just like expressing themselves from and expressing freedom in their health. It's allowing their body to actually experience freedom in every facet of their life. And I think that's been more so the evolution. It came from a place of like helping people experience freedom in their health. Now it's like the full expression of what can this actually look like in all areas, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical at the same time.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

And that's a wrap on part one. And if you made it this far and you're not already subscribed, what are you doing? Seriously, just hit subscribe. It's that easy. And then come right back because we're just getting started. In part one, Dr. Sarah set the foundation. We covered who she is today, the health crisis she walked through just weeks before we're recording, the production hamster wheel that so many providers are quietly stuck on, and the real story behind Freedom Chiropractic. Part two is where things get even more honest. We go into the cost of public vulnerability. Mm-hmm. What leadership actually looks like when you're not at your best.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

And the one thing she said, you have to surrender internally to grow your practice. I did not see that answer coming, but I should have. Go catch part two if it's already out. If not, just give it a week, it'll be out. I will be there waiting with more questions and probably at least one more moment. I did not plan for