Welcome back. Again. I know.
If the last episode was the origin story, this one is the update. And there is a lot to update.
The last few years have been a lot. In the best possible way, and also in some genuinely hard ways. So let me just take you through it, because I think the real story of Well Connected is not just the clinical work. It is everything that had to grow alongside it.
Reps Get Results
The thing I keep coming back to lately is this: reps get results. Repetition, whether it is good or bad, produces the outcome you are moving toward. It is true in studying. It is true in business. It is true in marriage and parenting and friendship. You get what you practice.
When I finished my diplomat program in 2023, I felt like the smartest I had ever been and maybe ever would be. I was wrong about the second part. Ten days ago I was sitting with Dr. Jeffrey Eilef, the leading research scientist in the world on cerebrospinal fluid flow, surrounded by all my diplomat colleagues, and I was remembering things I had not thought about in years and stacking new information on top of them. Neuroplasticity is a real thing. The brain keeps growing if you keep giving it material to work with.
But what has surprised me most about the last three years is how much I have grown outside of the clinical. I have put reps into being a better business owner, a better boss, a better wife, a better mom, a better friend. And the fruit of that is a life I genuinely did not know was possible when I was deep in the hustle of building everything.
The Parking Lot That Changed Everything
Let me tell you about where we started.
When I opened Well Connected in May of 2019, I was being intentionally conservative. I had just left a practice I had been at for 11 years. I did not want to overwhelm myself financially. So I opened in a space that was 1,263 square feet.
Within six weeks we were bursting out of the seams.
Nine months later I expanded across the hall, which put the expansion at February of 2020. And if you know anything about February 2020, you know what was coming. Six weeks after I doubled my overhead and hired more staff, COVID hit.
But here is the thing: because of my role in leadership at the California Chiropractic Association, we were able to get chiropractic deemed essential in the state of California. We stayed open. The first few months were uncertain, but very quickly things started to grow again. By 2023, we had people standing in the hallway because there was nowhere to sit inside.
I knew we needed to move. I also had a lease to honor, because I am not someone who walks away from a commitment. So for 18 months I searched for the right space while we kept growing in a space that was clearly too small. It felt, as I told my team, like eating too much at a buffet and not being able to take your pants down. Uncomfortable and a little urgent.
What finally made the decision for me? The parking lot.
I have a video of the first time I walked through the parking lot at 25909 Pala and I was already sold before I even looked at the interior. People could not find parking at the old office. I was personally handing my car keys to staff members to drive around and hold my spot because I could not find a place to park to come to work. The parking lot was costing me patients and I knew it.
We got the permits, built out the new space, and in February of 2025, Well Connected moved into a clinic that actually fits. I cannot wait for you to see it.
The Award I Did Not See Coming
In 2024, I was voted Upper Cervical Innate Practice of the Year. It is an international award, nominated and voted on by peers, which means the people who are essentially my competition around the world decided to honor what we are building here.
That meant more to me than I expected. Because 2024 was also the year we were at maximum capacity at the old clinic, actively planning the move, training associates, and doing an enormous amount of patient care. To be recognized in the middle of all of that by the broader upper cervical community was a beautiful thing.
At that point I had launched three associates, trained 20 student interns, and had a staff of about 15. We were sponsoring local high schools, working with brain injury patients and veterans, and sending trained doctors out into communities I will never see. That is the vision. That is what the award reflected. Not just the clinical work inside these four walls, but the ripple outward.
What Matters More Than the Awards
I want to be honest about something, because I think it is the most important thing in this episode.
I was addicted to the success of my career. And for a season, my family paid the price for that. I was not home. I was not present. The financial results were there, the awards were there, the practice was thriving. And my husband did not like to see me when I came home because I was rarely there.
Working on my marriage has been the hardest and the most important work of the last few years. We have been through real things together: losing grandparents, financial pressure, my husband's unemployment. We have had to learn each other all over again in some ways. And coming out the other side of that with a marriage that is rock solid and a husband who is genuinely my partner in every sense of the word, that is worth more to me than any award on the wall.
I talked about this with Dr. Barb recently and what I keep landing on is this: my come from has changed. It used to be driven by scarcity, by need, by what I had to keep up. Now it is just joy. I get to serve people. I got to take care of a hundred patients on Tuesday. Not have to. Get to.
That shift took a lot of reps to get to. And it was worth every one of them.
What is Coming
Looking ahead, I am excited about Diana joining the practice as a licensed associate doctor. She has been with us for 18 months as a student intern and chiropractic assistant and she is moments away from her license. Having her in a patient care role means I get to step more fully into the CEO role, which is the direction Well Connected needs to grow.
I also just hired a Radtech who I originally hired 13 years ago at a previous practice. Our paths have come back into alignment, which is the kind of thing I notice and am grateful for. Having her here means we can take more imaging when we need it, clinical decision-making improves, and the whole patient experience gets more seamless.
I want more student interns here. I want more doctors learning the way we practice, which blends the physical, the mental, the emotional, and the spiritual into care of the whole person. That is not an accident. That is the model. And the more doctors who carry it forward, the more lives change that I will never personally meet.
Four years from now I am probably going to need to buy a building.
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Find us at wellconnectedchiro.com or come visit us at 25909 Pala in Mission Viejo.
