This week I’m talking with Danielle Angela, a successful chiropractor, podcaster and business coach.

With over 15 years of experience with the ups and downs of running businesses and pivoting multiple times, she helps fellow wellness entrepreneurs build practices that are aligned with their values.

I’m sure you’ve noticed that the topic of alignment and preventing burnout has been coming up a ton lately with my guests, so let’s lean in!

In this episode we talk about:

  • How it’s never the wrong choice to take care of yourself
  • Why the number of patients you’re seeing each week may not be a good measure of the health of your practice or of your health as a practitioner
  • How practicing what you teach your patients can change your practice and your life
  • A reminder that setting boundaries and creating structure in your practice helps prevent burnout so you can enjoy a long career in this medicine
  • What does “making it” mean and how to release the expectations that society and our professions may place on us
  • And much more

Plus, all of my PDA classes, marketing templates and marketing coaching options are 30% off for Black Friday and Cyber Monday!

Use code GRATITUDE30 or GRATEFUL30 at checkout to save 30% on:

(Apologies, in this episode I mentioned both discount codes accidentally… it was supposed to be GRATITUDE30 but I have now set it up so that GRATEFUL30 works as well!)

🎙️ Listen to Episode #65: It’s Never the Wrong Choice to Take Care of Yourself with Danielle Angela

Show Notes:

Thank you to our sponsor:

This episode is sponsored by Jane. Jane is an all-in-one practice management software designed to help you streamline your Acupuncture practice. I use Jane in my practice and I love it! 💙

With helpful features like online booking, electronic charting, insurance billing, and much more, Jane works hard to keep up with your busy practice.  

If you’re interested in learning more, head to jane.app/acupuncture-us.

Don’t forget to use the code ACUSCHOOL1MO at sign-up for a one-month grace period inside Jane. 🕺

Subscribe to the Acupuncture Marketing School podcast on Apple Podcast, Stitcher, or Spotify

 💖 Love the podcast? Help other acupuncturists find the podcast by leaving a review here.

Transcript:

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (00:05):

Welcome to the Acupuncture Marketing School Podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Grasek, and I’m here to help you get visible in your community, take marketing action with confidence and get more patients in your practice and more money in your pocket every week. We both know you’re a talented, passionate acupuncturist and that acupuncture has the power to change lives. So let’s dive right into this episode and talk about how you can reach more patients.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (00:33):

Hi there. Welcome back. This week I’m talking with Danielle Angela, a successful chiropractor, podcaster, and business coach. Through her own experience with the ups and downs of running multiple businesses and pivoting many times, she helps fellow wellness entrepreneurs build practices that are aligned with their values. I’m sure you’ve noticed that the topic of alignment and preventing burnout has been coming up a ton lately with my guests, so let’s lean into it. In this episode, we talk about how it’s never the wrong choice to take care of yourself. Ooh, I just love that. Easier said than done though, right? We also talk about why the number of patients you’re seeing each week may not be the best measure of the health of your practice or of your health as a practitioner. We talk about how practicing what you teach your patients can change your business and your life and a gentle reminder that setting boundaries and creating structure in your practice helps prevent burnout so you can enjoy a long career in this medicine. I hope you enjoy this episode with Danielle. Let’s dive in.

[JANE APP] (01:43):

Today’s episode is sponsored by Jane, an all-in-one practice management software with helpful features to power your acupuncture practice. Jane offers flexible scheduling options that match the way you work. You have the option of offering one-on-one online sessions for initial consults, meeting in person and scheduling staggered appointments to accommodate treating patients across different treatment rooms. Jane has you covered. Keep the relaxation going with a seamless checkout experience using Jane’s PCI compliant payment solution, Jane Payments. You can collect patient credit cards securely through your intake form or at the time of booking with an online booking payment policy. This can also help reduce no-shows in your practice, definitely a win-win. And Jane’s Unlimited SMS and email reminders can be sent automatically before each appointment as an extra layer of no-show prevention. To learn more about how Jane’s helpful features can help you power your acupuncture practice, head to Jane.app/acupuncture-us to book a one-on-one demo with a member of their team. Or if you’re ready to get started, you can use the code [ACUSCHOOL1MO] at the time of sign up to get a one month grace period, apply to your new account. And I’ll put the link and the code in the show notes to make it easy for you.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (03:06):

One last note before we dive into today’s episode, happy Thanksgiving. For those who celebrate, I really hope you get to have a peaceful day spent with people that you enjoy. And of course, black Friday is around the corner, so I am offering 30% off of everything starting right now, that’s 30% off of my email templates, social media graphic templates, marketing coaching sessions, either a single session with me or a series of monthly sessions, 30% off of ethics, PDA credits. So if you need to get your PDA credits out of the way, this is a great opportunity to get them at a discount and much more. So if you need help with your marketing and you want to work through your ideas with me, this is such a great opportunity to do that at a deep discount. I love talking marketing with you, and so I would be thrilled to chat with you and help you get clarity in your marketing and make a plan of action. The discount code for everything is [GRATEFUL30], and again, it applies to all of my PDA classes, marketing templates, and business coaching. The discount code is active right now as I’m releasing this episode on Wednesday, November 22nd, and it expires at midnight on Monday, November 27th. I hope you find something really useful and helpful at a great price.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (04:32):

Hello, Danielle. Thank you so much for being with me today.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (04:38):

Hi, how are you?

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (04:40):

I’m doing well. How are you?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (04:42):

It’s been a good day so far.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (04:44):

Wonderful. I love to hear that. I would love to let you introduce yourself to our listeners, share a little bit about your background and what you do.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (04:52):

Thank you so much for having me and for letting me share the microphone with you. I have been a podcaster myself since 2015, so it’s been, oh my gosh, eight and a half years since I launched my first podcast now. When I launched my podcast, I had no idea where it was going to go. I just had been inspired by listening to a couple of other podcasts. One in particular was two high school anatomy and physiology teachers, and I was like, if these guys can do this, I can do this too. Now that’s not to take anything away from them. They were excellent at what they were doing with their podcast, and they both have amazing careers as high school teachers. They do a lot more outside of the classroom than what you see most teachers doing. But anyway, yeah, I just got inspired by listening to them and launched a podcast, and now here we are, eight and a half years later.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (05:49):

I love it. So you started out as a chiropractor, and I love the story that you share about how you were getting ready to have your second child and sort of felt like the traditional model of being in practice was too overwhelming to continue and you ended up selling your practice.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (06:11):

Yeah, as a chiropractor, I think this is very much the case for acupuncturists from my understanding, probably also for other similar types of modalities, osteopathy, naturopathy. The model that was demonstrated for me as success in practice was you are working, basically like you have a nine to five job, but you’re working more than that usually, and you’re just seeing as many people as possible. There were never conversations about profitability in a business, lifestyle, sustainability, health of the practitioner, health of the business owner. It was always just see as many people as possible and you’re going to do great. So that’s what I set out to do. And actually before chiropractic school, I studied business administration with an emphasis in retail management and marketing.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (07:04):

Cool.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (07:05):

So then I also worked in retail and I had done like a retail management internship and things like that. So I was comfortable working in like a product-based sales environment. I had also worked in settings, like in a gym, I sold gym memberships for quite a long time, so I was used to having to get out there and hustle, if you will, and just go meet people and get as many people through the door as possible. That’s exactly what I did when I started my practice. But yes, as you said, when I was expecting my second child, I just, it was almost instantaneous. Like as soon as I knew I was pregnant, I was like, nope, not doing it like this anymore. I’d actually just had a miscarriage. Oh gosh. It was I think it was July of 2013 when I had the miscarriage, and then I was pregnant again September of 2013, and my next child then was born June of 2014.

(08:06):

So there was a very short window between the time that I miscarried and the time that I conceived again, which may have also, yeah, not all, not may have, it did, it contributed to my mental state and like my anxiety through, especially through the first trimester of that pregnancy. I was just like, I don’t know that I care to do this anymore, this being practice. If this is what it takes for me to be successful in this career, this career is probably just not for me. I hear that from people all the time. I’ve been mentoring in some capacity now, specifically other chiropractors, but all kinds of health and wellness practitioners for 15 years and I hear that so often that people regret the choice of having gone this career path. But the truth is that we’ve just gotten our priorities out of balance.

(09:04):

We didn’t go to acupuncture school or chiropractic school because we didn’t care about our own health, and all we wanted was to get as many people through the door of a business as possible. And yet that’s what we do. Like, that’s how we behave, at least oftentimes because of so many different reasons. But mostly I believe that’s just what’s been modeled for us for a long time. The loudest voices out there on the internet are those that are doing that exact thing. They’re like, “Look at this. I’ve built this amazing thing and it’s so beautiful and I have like this amazing expensive clinic. We’re seeing thousands of patients every week.” But then behind closed doors their kids are not happy, their spouse goes neglected, they’re getting, this is a thing for chiropractors, they’re getting injections in their shoulders every month because of the shoulder pain and the degeneration. Just to keep practicing when that’s not even how they would be advising their own patients to manage that complaint. So we make it not, we, there are definitely models available who that that’s what we’re seeing from them. And behind the scenes that’s not really what’s happening.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (10:26):

I’m always fascinated by this question of, like you said, is it the profession that is not right for a person or is it simply that they are burnt out to the max? Because the structure, like you’re describing is just not a good fit for maybe their personality or their lifestyle, or it perhaps was a good fit for a long time and then something happened in their life that required them to pivot or they need more time at home. It could be having children, it could be taking care of elderly parents, it could be anything, but suddenly they feel really, really squeezed by these nine or 10 hour days trying to fit patients in, staying late. Then you still have to do your paperwork and clean up and they’re like, oh my God, I didn’t know acupuncture would be like this. It’s like, well, is it the acupuncture or is it the impossibility of this thing that we were taught to build?

(11:19):

So it’s really interesting Catch 22 and I’m so glad that more and more people are talking about it now. God bless the internet for allowing conversations like this to happen because I think for decades a lot of acupuncturists and chiropractors were very isolated from each other and just assumed, oh, everybody else looks successful, so they must be happy behind the scenes and everything’s going great, in their personal life when maybe they were also struggling and they could have connected and had some support with this other person. So I’m glad that we have that now, thank goodness.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (11:56):

Yes, very much.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (11:58):

So you eventually did go back into practice, correct, but with a completely different model?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (12:03):

A completely different model, yes. I then had two children at the time, they were five and two, I think, and we were moving from St. Louis, a big city, big for the Midwest out to the country we call it, or I call it and I just, I felt like because we were moving to this small town and it was a brand new place we had never lived before, I wanted to integrate in whatever way I could into this new community. And one way that I could do that was by offering hands-on care. There wasn’t someone else locally who practices the way that I do and so I thought, well then I guess I’ll just do this and see what happens. I think what was amazing was that second experience in practice for me in a brand new community. My business was profitable in less than 90 days. I don’t remember the exact number of days, but it was profitable in less than 90 days.

(13:03):

And people hear that story and they think, “Well, how is that even possible? You must have been working really hard.” I wasn’t, I was working 10, 12, 15 hours a week tops. But I was very clear with myself that that’s all that I was available for. I wasn’t available for being broke. I wasn’t available for working and not getting paid. I wasn’t available for working any more than 15 hours a week in that practice. I also wasn’t available for demonstrating the constant overwhelm and stress that I had felt before for my children now. Like I didn’t want to be that way for them anymore. Not to say that I’m perfectly balanced and never dysregulated because that’s not true. Especially if my 12-year-old, my oldest daughter, if she listened to this, she’d be like, “What are you talking about?” But she wouldn’t remember when she was two and every morning I was rushing her out of bed out the door so that I could get to my office on time. It may not have felt like as stressful to her as it did to me when she was just two years old, but it certainly felt really, really stressful to me. I mean, every day I was like sweating bullets just to get out the drawer on time with such a small child.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (14:23):

And that was with your first practice?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (14:25):

Yes.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (14:27):

Gotcha.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (14:28):

So with this next experience I just, I was really clear with myself about what I was and was not available for. Like what I was willing to do and what I wasn’t willing to do, what I was willing to tolerate and what I wasn’t willing to tolerate. I think that was a huge part in why it worked so easily and so quickly and so well, because I was just like, this is what I’m doing, this is what I’m doing. Yeah, it looked different than how I thought that practice should look before I became a mother specifically. But I, at that time had just arrived at this place where I was like, this is actually really awesome. I get the freedom to show up and see patients, two four-hour shifts and one three-hour shift a week and that’s it. And it was so much more fun.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (15:18):

Do you feel like setting those really firm boundaries helped your patients to show up more reliably and also helped sort of like self-select for the patients who were a great fit for you to begin with?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (15:31):

Absolutely. Yes. Because I wasn’t willing to compromise. I really couldn’t compromise on my office hours. So if someone couldn’t come in the hours that I offered, I just needed to refer them somewhere else. And what I remember was if someone said, well I can only come at 6:00 PM I would be like, I’ll make it work.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (15:53):

Yes. I think that is really fascinating. So would you say that that’s the primary difference between your first and your second practice? Were you taking insurance the first time and not the second time?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (16:05):

Yes.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (16:05):

Gotcha, so it was cash only the second time?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (16:09):

Which also made a very, like, huge difference for me because the administrative aspect of my practice was so much simpler and I didn’t have to wait to get paid. If I saw patients work three-hour shift, I had collected everything that I had, all the services I had performed, I was paid for them. Plus, then outside of my office hours, I wasn’t spending really any time at all on the phone with insurance companies or sending out super bills or following up on unpaid claims. None of that.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (16:44):

I did something similar. I had a practice when I first graduated that I ended up closing and I had taken insurance in that practice. Then when I reopened, I was thinking about the number of hours that I would spend on the phone with the insurance people just arguing with them about things like, everything on this claim form is perfect. Why did you bounce it back to me? The poor person on the phone is just a middleman and they would be like, “I genuinely don’t know. Can you just send it again?” I remember thinking like this, this is how I’m spending my time. Like, yes, of course, I’ll send it to you again. I understand there’s so many benefits to insurance and everybody gets to decide for themself if it really feels worth it, but I knew for me personally that I would feel a much greater sense of freedom just being a cash practice, like you described, not having to go home and then continue working on that paperwork or making time during clinic hours to call the insurance company. Can be really tough because you’re thinking, well, I could be treating patients right now.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (17:59):

Yeah, or working out or —

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (18:02):

Yes, eating lunch

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (18:04):

Yes.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (18:06):

So then you, you’ve been in practice for quite a while, and I know that eventually you pivoted to the mentorship and the online coaching for other wellness providers. How long did you say you’ve been doing that? Was it 15 years?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (18:21):

It’s been 15 years in one capacity or another, obviously, not always online, but when I graduated from chiropractic school, I was actually employed for the first four years of my licensure at the school that I graduated from. Initially I was a resident in the sports and rehab department and then after my residency, which was two years, I was promoted to assistant director of the sports and rehabilitation department. I had my first child during that time, and she was only a few months old when I left that job to start my own practice because I wanted to have more time freedom

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (19:01):

Irony.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (19:02):

Exactly, yes, yes. So when I worked at the university, I was in a mentorship role, not because it was in my official job description, but because it was the expectation that as students were going through their internship experience in the clinic that I worked in. We were also involved in helping them prepare for practice afterward and starting their own business. So I helped hundreds of students during that time choose logos and fonts and brand colors and the name of their practice and I read associate agreements, independent contractor agreements, lease agreements. I knew nothing about any of those things. I just learned from repetition during that time. People would bring me, “Hey, I have this potential job after graduation, here’s the agreement I’ve been offered, what do you think?” Then after reading, I don’t know, 50 or so of those, it got really easy. Because I just dove in and did it and did it so often, like daily, most of the time I learned through repetition and exposure and eventually became very, very knowledgeable in what to expect in an associate contract, what’s acceptable, what is not acceptable.

(20:22):

Those were like the early days of me mentoring other chiropractors and how I’ve been doing this for so long. Then eventually it was roughly 2015, 16, I decided why not actually get paid for all this advice I give to people. Because even after I left the university, I still had people reaching out to me and asking questions. Really, having started a coaching practice essentially and now having done that for seven years as a business, that as a career has had very similar challenges to a hands-on practice that I’ve gotten to learn from and through in very similar ways, but also new and unexpected ways. I found myself earlier this year feeling really burned out. And again, earlier this year I had almost 30 private clients and I was so excited to have so many people in my client load, but I was also …

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (21:27):

And these are coaching clients?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (21:29):

Yes. So I was also looking at my calendar like, but wait, there’s no time for me to go to the gym. There’s no time for me to like actually follow up on questions that they have in between sessions. I was, yeah, I was just feeling like, hmm, yeah, I’m actually needing to take what I’ve been teaching people in regard to hands-on practice to a whole new level now. And actually, before I made any changes in my business, I just took a lot of time off. It was one of the scariest things I’ve ever done because I thought it was irresponsible to not be focused on growing my business, especially because I’m a single mom of three children now. In April I had the sixth best business by revenue collections in my business. By May I was like, okay, yeah, April was great financially, but I am so over this right now that I don’t know if I want to continue.

(22:42):

So I had to take time off. I really had to because what I’ve seen repeatedly over the last 15, almost 20 years now, being in industries like ours, is that we can choose to keep pushing ourselves and pushing ourselves to do what we think we are supposed to do, or we can honor how we are feeling and what we actually know that we need, even if we don’t want to admit that we need it and when we do that, especially if we can do that sooner rather than later, we preserve our longevity. So that’s something that you and I were talking about earlier. Looking at the whole scope of our career, not just what makes money right now, because you have a long time in this career, hopefully. As long as you stay healthy and you live a long life, you have a long time to make money.

(23:40):

And you can make a lot of money very quickly when you’re in alignment. And that’s the place that I found myself. You know, I was like, I could keep pushing myself, but is this what I would tell someone else to do? Or would I tell them to pay attention to how they’re feeling right now so that they can remedy what’s going on now before it becomes worse, if you will, or more significant? When it becomes worse, more significant, however you want to phrase it, that’s when people leave practice. They’re like, I just hate this now. I don’t want to do this anymore. I would rather see us think about the long-term picture than to make decisions for the short term.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (24:21):

I absolutely agree. I think that is something that’s hard to think about when you’re just starting up your practice and there’s so much pressure to yes, build, build, build and all of the shoulds are weighing on you really heavily the shoulds that society puts on you and then the profession expectations that people have. But to be able to keep in mind that the boundaries and the containers that you set up in the beginning are to support you for the life of this portion of the career, whatever it might look like, and that they’re not limitations and that they’re actually going to help you have that longevity that you’re talking about like taking good care of yourself and recognizing your needs and making space for them in the beginning, no matter what practice you’re building, will help you be able to retire from something that you love instead of feeling super burned out and just quitting.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (25:14):

Because as we were saying, like, you think this profession isn’t for you, but everything you’re saying is so, so common. I think there is so much power in simply reminding people that their career can look like whatever they need it to at any point to support their life and their health, their mental health, their physical health, instead of trying to squeeze into this model and denying what we really need, especially the taking a lunch and exercising. I think a lot of people try to pretend, oh, it’s okay, I didn’t need to exercise today. I’ll just stay and do paperwork. It’s like, oh, that’s fine for one day, but not for like six years. So I think it’s amazing that you have shifted so many times based on not just following your passion, but setting up businesses in a way that feels better and more sustainable to you. It also sounds to me like you are really good at building up businesses very quickly, and that is, that’s tough to handle. All of a sudden you are super busy and it happens so fast, it’s hard to manage. So I just, yeah, I really applaud you for taking a break when you know that you need one so that you have the mental space to recalibrate.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (26:34):

Thank you. This break this year certainly has been, well, I think if you went back to my, like my 30-year-old self and talked to to her, she would say something different. But, this one has really felt like it has stretched me in a whole new way. It’s really brought me to the edges of my capacity to trust that I’ll always be provided for, and that my children will always be provided for that. And doing exactly what I encourage all of my clients and students to do is actually going to do what I say that it’s going to do. When I put my own needs first, that everybody else around me will be lifted up as well and that taking care of yourself is never the wrong thing to do.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (27:18):

Oh, that’s so good, so good. I love the phrase, a rising tide lifts all boats and just the idea that when you take care of yourself, it lifts everyone else up as well.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (27:30):

Yes.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (27:31):

So you are still doing one-on-one business coaching, right, so you’ve sort of shifted the way that you’re online coaching has looked? I know that you had some incredibly popular online programs. I think you had a Facebook group with like 5,000 people, and you decided a little while ago that those were not the direction that you wanted to move in. So you wanted to do more one-on-one work and sort of distilled everything down and to what you’re doing now? I’m assuming that the time off that you took is what really allowed you to figure out the path forward that you wanted to take.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (28:05):

Yes, for sure. Over the last seven years, I’ve had two handfuls of different courses and two different membership programs that I’ve offered. I’ve had times in the past where my team was five employees and two contractors. Before my kid’s father and I separated and later divorced, he was a stay-at-home dad, but he would be okay with me saying this, he was playing golf, because it’s just true, he was playing golf three to five times a week, most weeks. We had a nanny who was almost full-time hours, we had long hair, and I just felt like I was building and building and building and I was growing a multiple six-figure business very quickly, but doing it from a face of trying to one, prove that I could do it to myself and to others.

(28:56):

And two, because I had all of these people that I felt responsible for, so even when I felt like, eh, I don’t know that this is really what I want, this is what the business needs, I’m going to do it anyway. While I’m not sure that anyone else can feel or is aware that that’s sort of the energy that I created all of this content from, I know, and that’s a big part, if not the only part, the only reason that I came to the conclusion this year that I’m retiring all of those courses, all of those programs, and just giving myself the opportunity to start with a clean slate with all of the lessons that I’ve learned and energetically cutting the ties, cutting the cords with ways of being that I don’t want to bring forward into the future. Sometimes it’s felt a little crazy.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (29:58):

I just want to emphasize for our audience, like what a killer online business you had. I’m sure they understand, but I think that five employees in an online business is substantial.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (30:10):

It really is. Yeah, it really is. And now, right now for the last, what has it been, four months, I think now, it’s just me, and literally just me. And you know what, it’s been so refreshing. It’s been so yeah, it’s been so wonderful. I was very happy to provide the jobs that I did while I did and I am sure that I will, maybe not a team that’s quite so big, but I’m sure that I will provide jobs again in the future through my business. But it’s been also a lesson for me to see how often we hold on to the notion, for example, that we should have staff because that’s what a professional looks like. I was really, really afraid to reduce my team, but I stair stepped things down and once it was just me doing everything in the business, I actually found that I could automate and delete, eliminate so many tasks that were assigned to team members in the past that were just really busy work. That was a very eye-opening.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (31:24):

I think there is a really strong impression in the acupuncture community that once you have hired someone like a receptionist or another acupuncturist, then you have made it and that becomes an automatic goal that people would really like to achieve.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (31:41):

Right, because what is made it, what is it, what is the definition of that? Objectively, does making it mean that you have a receptionist or does making it mean that you have a healthy work life balance? Does making it mean that you feel fulfilled by your work? Does making it mean you’re making a certain amount of money? Is that amount of money what your business is collecting or what you’re taking home? There’s so many different variables. And again, really most often all we think about, all we’re taught to think about is how many people are you seeing each week? That’s not a good measure of longevity in a career or the happiness or the health of the practitioner.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (32:23):

Well, speaking of what does making it mean, I have one last question for you, and that is, what does success mean to you right now?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (32:32):

Right now success means that I am putting myself first and that everything else is okay. Right now, for me, success is that when I have my children, they’re with me half the time, they’re with their dad, half the time, I’m just with them. I’m really with them. I used to be with them a lot, but what I have come to realize this year, specifically is that while I was with them physically, like in the room, I was often doing other things. I was like working on a sales page or responding to comments on a Facebook post, just little things that I knew that I could do while they were around, but I wasn’t playing card games with them and doing a puzzle and going to the park and actually playing with them on the playground instead of like sitting on the side and being on social media.

(33:24):

So really a success for me now is being very present with my children. I had mentioned to you before we were recording, I, in the past was a personal trainer. I have always been in the gym except for a five-year hiatus. When I conceived my youngest child, who’s now almost six, and until October of 2022, I did not step but in the gym more than three times. I still don’t really know why it was so hard for me to prioritize or like even just go to the gym, but I’ve been back to the gym now for a year and I go consistently four times a week. I just added a fifth day to my schedule starting in January. I was like, I’m doing it. I’m doing exactly what I have been teaching other people to do for all these years now, which is put your needs on your calendar first.

(34:26):

If you want something for yourself, you have to schedule the time for it, and if you don’t, it’s not going to happen. That really was as simple as it sounds, like, that was my biggest reason why five years passed. I’m like, I’ve been sitting at this desk in my office an awful lot, really tight in my hamstrings and my posture’s not looking so good. That’s really it for me. There’s not a specific amount of money I feel like I need to make. It is more so about in the summertime am I tan? Because if I’m tan, that means I’ve been outside a lot and if I’m outside, I’m moving my body and that’s really my success right now.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (35:07):

I love it. Well, thank you so much for being here with me. I really enjoyed this conversation. How can people connect with you if they want to work with you?

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (35:16):

I love connecting with people through social media. So you can find me on Facebook or Instagram. I’m @Dr. Danielle Angela on Instagram. Just send me a message, let me know that you heard me on this podcast and we can chat. I do have a website. It does still have my former programs on it that are not available anymore. I think if you click around enough, you could find a way to get on my calendar.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (35:39):

Yes, I found it.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (35:40):

My website is drdanielleangela.com. I have a podcast as well that has 250 episodes, the Health and Wellness Practitioners podcast. I’m actually launching a new podcast soon called The Present Woman. So it’s really like a more grown up version of my own life experiences. By growing up, I mean like I’m bringing more of the maturity and the wisdom that I’ve gained in the last 43 years into a new format.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (36:12):

Wonderful. Well, we will keep a lookout for it. Thank you again so much.

[DANIELLE ANGELA] (36:16):

Thank you.

[MICHELLE GRASEK] (36:20):

Don’t forget to use the discount code. GRATITUDE30 to save 30% on PDA credits, marketing templates, and marketing coaching through Monday night, November 27th. The link to take a look at my programs and classes is in the show notes. Have a lovely holiday.