Business Athletes: Dasha Angelova

Hello and welcome to Business Athletes everyone 👋 

Each week, we’ll explore the athlete-like habits behind a different business leader and provide you with practical tactics that you can quickly apply in your day-to-day.⚡️

This week in Business Athletes, I chatted to Dasha Angelova, co-founder of Two Chics Media and Talking Pulse. 

Two Chics is a creative agency that’s helped brands rack up over 100 million earned media impressions through a video-first, socials-first approach. Talking Pulse is a healthcare marketing business, helping healthcare businesses and professionals resonate online, build trust, and scale with social-first and video-first strategies.

I first came across Dasha through her TikTok’s. There’s something uniquely inspiring about watching someone take a skill, share it in public, and then become great at it.

She didn’t wait for permission. She built, posted, learned in public, and kept going. Honestly, go check out her content, it’s some of the most refreshingly direct and insightful out there. 

What makes her unique as a founder is the blend between her technical background and real storytelling and communication skill.

Before founding Two Chics Media and Talking Pulse, she was building data pipelines and running complex analytics at one of the world’s biggest banks and later at a cutting-edge HealthTech startup. And that’s where she’s headed now. No working in healthtech, but building in the space…for the space! 

Let’s get into it.⚡️

Pre-Game Preparation

Routines That Drive Freedom

For me, the day doesn’t start in the morning. It starts the night before. 

At some point in the evening, I’ll message myself on WhatsApp with the exact timings for the next day. 

Literally:
→ 5:00am – Wake up
→ 5:15 – Coffee
→ 5:30 – Meditation

It sounds intense, but it’s the only way I get up. If it’s not planned, I won’t follow through. Discipline equals freedom! 

A Day In The Life

Once I’m up, I give myself 15–30 minutes to wake up slowly with coffee. Then I go straight into a 45-minute meditation. It’s long, I know, but the meditation is guided. I start with clearing my mind entirely and getting to a state of ~nothing, meaning I remove all thoughts from the day, of the past, of the future, and just linger in nothing for 20 ish mins.

In the second part of the meditation I focus on my goals, what I’m looking to attract into my life, I visualise, and I feel the feelings of my future.  

After that, I train. Gym for about an hour, and then I start work around 9am. I try to keep my mornings as uninterrupted as possible so that by the time noon hits, the most important things are done. 

9am to 12pm is when I do my best work. After that, the day gets looser. Meetings, follow-ups, the unexpected stuff - that’s for the afternoon.

Finding Flow in Silence

So, for me, finding flow tends to be in complete silence. In the morning, I tend to work in a separate room, with no music (especially if it has any lyrics) and no talking. It’ll be just me, my laptop and my coffee.

I’m not someone who’s really struggled with procrastination. If anything, I get anxious when something’s hanging over me, especially when I don’t know how to do it yet. That anxiety fuels action.

But one thing I started experimenting with has been the app Endel. It’s a kind of ambient soundscape, and it’s quite powerful how they are able to quickly get you in the zone quickly. My sister recommended it, and it’s been surprisingly effective for that early morning trance state.

The Championship

Designing A Business That Fits Our Lives

Ten years from now, I want to be building in healthtech. That’s the vision.

I actually started my career in a healthtech startup, but ended up working with e-comm brands for a while with my first company Two Chics. However, midway through last year, I had a moment of clarity: I knew I wanted to go back to healthtech. But getting there wasn’t straightforward.

So we pivoted. We started taking on healthcare clients. That became Talking Pulse. The thinking is simple: if we become  the best at marketing healthcare first, then after, we can build any product within healthtech and know how to reach our customers. Marketing first, product second.

The Biggest Obstacle Right Now

Right now, the biggest challenge isn’t reputation. It’s alignment. I thought building trust in a niche like healthcare would be the hard part, but actually, we’ve been able to break in. The harder part is figuring out how to build a business that fits the life I want.

Some of our mentors run successful agencies, but they still work 8-hour days at 40. That’s not the vision. So we’re learning to hand off more, to design better systems, and to make decisions now based on the life we want later. Without overextending. Without outsourcing everything and going broke. 

Achieving that balance is the real championship for me.

The Art of Client Management

We’re still small, so we try to do what doesn’t scale. That means in-person meetings when we can. Especially in a space like healthcare, where a lot of our clients are founders in their 40s or 50s. They appreciate the human touch.

Overcommunication is the next key. We give updates at every step, using whatever platform they prefer – Slack, WhatsApp, email. If something slips, we say it right away. Honesty, not perfection, builds trust.

We also try to be radically honest in our offers. We’ll tell a client when something’s not right for them. And ironically, that often makes them want to work with us more. But it’s not a tactic. It’s just clearer for everyone. I used to think honesty like that would hurt sales. It doesn’t. It strengthens them.

Coaching Oneself

Mental High-Performance Comes From Deep Self-Awareness

I also run a lot. Sometimes long distances. On my 23rd birthday, I actually ran a solo marathon. I wasn’t training for one, it was super spontaneous. Now, that seemed like a “high-performance” thing to do (and I guess I managed to finish it!), but after a while I was thinking about it, and it was really about escapism.

I’ve never really been a birthday type of person, so it was an opportunity to escape and just immerse myself in something challenging that didn’t allow me to think about anything else.

But after that introspective exercise, I developed a healthier relationship with running. It gives me space to listen to music, call a friend, or just tune out. It feels productive, and it’s also my mental reset button.

The Business Athlete Mindset

Winning the Day

My therapist once asked me to remember the times I felt the most joy. The most gratitude. What stood out were the small, balanced days.

Days where I:
→ Talked to my family
→ Stuck to my morning routine
→ Finished my work by noon

It’s not about output. It’s about alignment. If I wake up, move my body, meditate, talk to the people I love, and do what I said I’d do, then it’s a good day. So to me, the greatest joy comes from knowing that I’ve met all my responsibilities and promises to the people that matter most around me, and especially, to myself.  

Athlete-Like Discipline That Came From Modelling

I wasn’t a disciplined athlete growing up. I learned it later through modelling, oddly enough. I got a personal trainer to help with performance, and he trained me like an athlete. He was intense and no excuses, no bullshit. 

That changed everything. I hated the idea of showing up to him without having done the work. That accountability built discipline. Once I had that discipline in one part of your life, I came to find that it spilled over into everything else.

The Score Takes Care Of Itself

I really resonate with the term “Business Athlete” because I think the founder mindset is so close to the athlete’s. You’re up against adversity. You fall. You get back up. You keep going. Sometimes without knowing why, except that you have to. Because at the end of the day, whether you’re an Olympian or building a business from scratch, we’re stacking up those private victories.

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