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Sarah Swanberg: To Create a Sustainable Business (and Life) This is What You Need
Description
Burnout doesn’t always look like falling apart. Sometimes it looks like holding everything together, until your body makes it clear you can’t keep going this way.
Cait Donovan is joined by her longtime friend Sarah Swanberg, a doctor of acupuncture and Chinese medicine and co-founder of Indigo Wellness Group. They talk about what burnout really feels like for women moving through major life phases such as fertility, postpartum, perimenopause, and why so many of us miss the signs until we’re deep in it.
Sarah shares how she left a high-pressure career in visual effects and followed a quiet sense of curiosity into acupuncture, eventually building a multi-practitioner wellness practice that supports both patients and providers. What does it take to build something sustainable? How do you know when it’s time to change course, and how do you do it without losing yourself?
This episode digs into the deeper patterns behind burnout, from the pressure to “do it all” to the fear of asking for help. Cait and Sarah offer a grounded, honest look at what it really means to care for yourself, your work, and your future.
Episode Breakdown:
00:00 Introduction
02:00 Sarah’s Career Shift from Visual Effects to Acupuncture
08:00 Spotting Burnout and Rethinking Success
10:00 Letting Go of the Sunk Cost Fallacy
14:00 Burnout, Perimenopause, and the Role of Yin
20:00 Restorative Practices and Sustainable Living
24:00 Building a Collaborative Wellness Practice
34:00 Overcoming Fear and Asking for Help
40:00 Resourcing Yourself for a Resilient Life
Links
Connect with Sarah Swanberg:
https://instagram.com/sarah.theacudoc
https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahwswanberg/
https://sarahswanberg.com/free-download
Connect with Cait:
Cait Donovan is a keynote speaker, author, and host of FRIED: The Burnout Podcast, specializing in burnout, mis/match, and sustainable performance at work. She partners with corporate leaders, teams, and professional associations through keynotes, workshops, and leadership sessions that treat burnout as data, not failure, to help organizations reduce burnout without blame or shame and build healthier, high performing cultures.
To bring Cait to your organization or event, book an inquiry call here: https://bit.ly/bookcait
Learn more about Cait’s speaking work: https://www.caitdonovan.com/speaking
Short on time? Watch this 3-min video: https://bit.ly/caitdreel2025