Dr. Lena Cheng on Leaving Life as a Physician, Reinventing Through Healthcare Marketing, Co-Founding Best Friend Jack, and Finding Strength in Midlife Through Powerlifting and Dance

How do you pivot from a demanding medical career to founding a healthcare marketing agency, and then discover your true physical power in your fifties?In this episode of No Boxes, Just Verses, I sit down with my friend Dr. Lena Cheng. Lena shares her incredible journey of honoring her internal compass, leaving clinical practice behind, and building a highly successful second career in digital health.We discuss the importance of utilizing executive coaches, the reality of taking steps backward to leap forward, and how she is currently redefining midlife strength through barbell training and epic dance projects.Lena Cheng, a physician turned healthcare marketer, has spent two decades leading brand strategy for healthcare companies. After medical training, she successfully pivoted, co-founding Best Friend Jack, a boutique marketing agency for health-tech companies, focusing on clarity and credibility. In her 50s, she embraced physical transformation through strength training, powerlifting, and dance, finding that movement taught her about presence, resilience, and courage. Her framework—Presence over Performance, Power through Resistance, Courage in Motion—reflects her belief that midlife reinvention is physical and a time of ignition, not decline.Key Takeaways:The Immigrant Work Ethic: Lena opens up about growing up in the Bay Area, learning the value of hard work from her nurse-midwife mother, and realizing later that her early creative hobbies were actually clues to her true identity.The Paris Epiphany: She explains how taking a year to study art and architecture in Paris during her undergrad showed her the expansiveness of the world and proved that other versions of a meaningful life were possible outside the rigid medical track.The Painful Pivot: Lena gets incredibly vulnerable about the physical and mental toll of medical school, the difficult decision to leave clinical practice, and how she used executive coaches to rebuild her identity from scratch.Building the Complete Marketer: She shares the humbling experience of starting over as a beginner in biotech, taking massive pay cuts, and eventually working her way up to head of marketing roles before co-founding her own agency, Best Friend Jack.Courage Through Motion: We discuss her midlife physical transformation, how she fell in love with powerlifting, and why she believes you build courage by simply showing up and putting in the reps.Lena’s story is a beautiful reminder that it is never too late to change your mind, change your career, or change your relationship with your own body. If you are feeling stuck in a box you outgrew years ago, this episode will give you the permission you need to step into your power.Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate, and review the podcast! CONNECT WITH Lena Cheng:LinkedInWebsiteInstagramPlaylistCONNECT WITH SHANNON:FacebookInstagramLinkedIn Shannon | LinkedIn NBJVTheme Song: No Boxes Just Verses by Thane Kreiner (Suno)