Sarah Swanberg: To Create a Sustainable Business (and Life) This is What You Need

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://sarahswanberg.com

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

Podcast production and show notes provided by HiveCast.fm