Signs of a Mismatched Career (with Sarah JanTausch)
Release Date: 01/12/2025
Your Midlife 'Crisis' Might Be Burnout (with Jody Brooks)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
A midlife crisis isn't actually a crisis. That's the challenge Jody Brooks puts to anyone who's ever felt lost, restless, or quietly convinced something's wrong with them somewhere around 40 or 50: what looks like burnout, and what people love to write off as a freakout, is more often a calling. His own arrived at lunchtime at the office, buzzing canteen and all, when he found himself sitting in a restroom cubicle, crying so hard he could barely breathe. No brutal meeting that morning. No disaster. Just the quiet moment his body picked to file its formal complaint: burnout wasn't a "rough...
info_outline
How You Can Find Hope After Rock Bottom (Aaron Ryan)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Two in the morning. Sitting on the toilet, clothed, bawling into a pillow, because a broken PC was the last thing standing between him and the self-employed life he wanted so badly he could feel it in his teeth. That's where my guest this week hit rock bottom: not one dramatic collapse, but months of computer problems piling on top of a dream that felt like it was never going to happen. A client shared one quote with him that day, and Aaron Ryan has carried it in his back pocket for almost twenty years since: "The temptation to quit is always greatest just before your greatest success." Aaron...
info_outline
How Your Body's Intuition Can Heal You (Rebecca Russell)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Four years of chronic pain. A fibromyalgia diagnosis. Muscle relaxers, pain pills, migraines, MRI after MRI. And through all of it, my guest this week kept hearing the same quiet voice: something doesn't fit. Rebecca Russell listened to it anyway, tracked down a neurosurgeon, and asked for one test nobody else had run: a discogram. It found the bulging disc that had been the actual problem the whole time, and eighty-five percent of her symptoms disappeared after surgery. Rebecca is a metabolism and lifestyle coach, certified essential oil specialist, and author who's spent more than three...
info_outline
Why Successful Entrepreneurs Set Boundaries (Chris Shurian)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
My guest this week has a word for himself I'd never heard before: "entrepreholic." Over 39 years, Chris Shurian has built, operated, bought, broken, and resurrected companies in remodeling, construction, manufacturing, real estate development, foreign investment, hospitality, restaurants, and retail. He's also survived cancer and finished two Ironmans. And in 2008, when the economy crashed, he was so extended, so "all in, all in, all in," as he puts it, that he spent the next two years meeting with his banker once a week just to survive it. We talk about what it actually felt like to launch...
info_outline
Why Loneliness Hits the Young Hardest (Dr. Anthony Silard)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Picture a hand-written sign taped to a bus stop in Japan: "I'm 87, I don't have a family. Would some family take me?" No one answered. He died a couple of months later. That story, from my guest this week, is the starkest snapshot I've ever heard of what loneliness researcher Dr. Anthony Silard calls a global epidemic, and the twist is who it's hitting hardest: not the oldest of us, but the youngest. Anthony is a professor of Leadership and Organizational Psychology and an internationally recognized authority on relationships, emotional intelligence, and personal transformation, and he's the...
info_outline
Avoiding Failure Guarantees It (with Mark DeCarlo)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Picture a high school track meet: a sixteen-pound shot put thrown the wrong direction, a burst spleen, three weeks in a hospital bed. That's how my guest this week learned, at sixteen or seventeen, that avoiding failure is exactly what guarantees it. Mark DeCarlo woke up after three days unconscious to a doctor telling him ten more minutes and he'd have been dead, and he's spent every day since orienting his choices around one question: will this make me more happy or less happy? Mark is an Emmy award-winning comedian, bestselling author, and in-demand corporate speaker and leadership trainer...
info_outline
Why Young Adults Are More Stuck Than Ever (Joanna Lilley)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Would your young adult be able to survive without you? That's the question my guest Joanna Lilley says every parent should be able to answer, and if your gut response is "no" or "I don't know," she's got thoughts. Joanna is a therapeutic consultant who works exclusively with what she calls "emerging adults," people 18 and up who are unraveling in college or not thriving in adulthood, and after years in the field she's convinced young adults are more stuck than ever: not because they're lazy, but because they're paralyzed by too many options and too little structure. Joanna's practice, Lilley...
info_outline
How to Trust Your Intuition After Trauma (Mandi Pratt)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Picture coming home to a business card tucked into your door jamb. It says "coroner's unit, robbery unit," with a handwritten note: call me please. That's how my guest Mandi Pratt found out, a year after leaving an abusive marriage, that the FBI had been hunting her ex-husband for six to nine months, for a string of bank robberies. If you've ever wondered how to trust your intuition after trauma, when your own mind has been trained to doubt itself, this is the episode that shows you how, from someone whose story was on the news twice. Mandi transformed that plot twist into a framework for...
info_outline
How to Reclaim Your Energy When Burned Out (Dianne Andree)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Picture a school counselor's office with a shoebox of sand tucked under the desk. A parent is on the phone getting heated, and while she listens, my guest slips off one shoe and presses her foot into the sand until she can practically smell the ocean. Thirty seconds later, she's steady again. That trick is one of dozens Dianne Andree uses to reclaim her energy when she's burned out, and she's spent more than 25 years in education and mental health learning how. Dianne is an award-winning international speaker and burnout prevention specialist who stood on the brink of burnout herself as a...
info_outline
How Narcissists Control You (Jackie Miller)
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
Jackie Miller is wandering her own weed-filled backyard in her pajamas and slippers, late afternoon in the middle of summer, hasn't showered, hasn't eaten, and can't quite remember how she got there, worn down by exactly the hidden tactics narcissists use to control you. That's the moment Jackie, a high-conflict divorce coach and post-separation abuse strategist, names as her wake-up call, a year and a half into rebuilding after 16 and a half years married to a man who chipped away at her a little at a time: what she calls "death by a thousand paper cuts." If you've ever wondered why the...
info_outlineEver stood on a chair in your office just to see out the window, and realized the view looked suspiciously like prison bars? That was me, years ago, in a job I could do but loathed. If you keep telling yourself the next promotion, the next raise, the next big win will finally make you happy (spoiler: it moves), you may be staring at the signs of a mismatched career.
My guest Sarah JanTausch knows this road personally. She rose fast in a government career, built her whole life around one value (achievement) and rode it straight into burnout while looking wildly successful from the outside. Now, as founder of SRJ Coaching and Consulting and creator of the Value-Based Career Method, she helps people figure out what they actually value before they leap into the next wrong job.
We compare our "wrong major, wrong job" battle scars and map out how to tell whether you're mismatched or just tired, why a small experiment beats a blind leap of faith, and what you loved before age 10 that's still trying to tell you something.
Watch this episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xjiLN-1WLKo
In this episode
- How to recognize the signs of a mismatched career — the stress, exhaustion, and "I just need a break" feeling that mean something deeper is off
- Why building your whole life around one value (like achievement) leads straight to burnout, even when you look successful from the outside
- A simple values card sort exercise you can use to identify your true top five values
- Why running a small, low-stakes experiment beats a blind leap when you're exploring a new direction
- How healthy boundaries protect you from burning out on work you actually love, not just work you hate
- The "what did you love before age 10" exercise for uncovering clues to your ideal career path
Timestamps
- (00:41) Meet Sarah JanTausch, founder of SRJ Coaching and Consulting and creator of the Value-Based Career Method
- (01:13) Sarah's fast rise in a government career — and believing the next promotion would finally make her happy
- (02:37) Building her whole life around one value, achievement, and how that led to burnout
- (04:59) What a career mismatch actually feels like: stress, exhaustion, and wanting to "run away"
- (07:51) Dana's own mismatch story — standing on a chair to look out a "prison" window during a testing job
- (11:12) The values card sort exercise Sarah uses to help clients find their true top five values
- (14:50) Why running a small experiment beats a blind leap of faith
- (16:28) How boundaries kept Sarah from burning out on a business she loves
- (18:24) Dana's physical therapy detour — and the lesson of watching the clock
- (20:36) Balancing logical facts with gut-level "subjective judgment" when evaluating a job
- (25:35) The real signs it's time for a career change
- (28:20) The "what did you love before age 10" exercise for finding career clues
- (31:15) Where to find Sarah and her free monthly events
About Sarah JanTausch
Sarah JanTausch is the founder of SRJ Coaching and Consulting and creator of the Value-Based Career Method, which helps professionals unlock the hidden job market and ditch burnout by building a career move rooted in core values, ideal work style, and goals. Connect with her at valuesbasedcareers.com, where she hosts free monthly events, or find her on LinkedIn.
Pull quotes
"When we have all these aching feelings, it usually means we're not living out the values that we truly have inside of us." — Sarah JanTausch
"I remember distinctly feeling like I was in prison. Like I was looking through the bars of a prison." — Dana Skaggs
Resources mentioned
- Sarah JanTausch's website — valuesbasedcareers.com (free monthly events on values-based career change)
- A values card sort exercise, which Sarah uses with clients to identify their top five values
- The Pathway Planner assessment from Wiley
- Other assessments Sarah mentioned using over the years: DISC, Myers-Briggs, and StrengthsFinder
Enjoyed this episode?
If this episode hit home, follow Phoenix and Flame so you never miss an episode: all apps in one place, or jump straight to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or YouTube, and leave a review to help other listeners find the show. And if someone in your life needs to hear this today, send them the link; that's how we grow this community together.
Curious where your own boundaries stand? Take my free Work Boundaries Quiz: danaskaggs.com/quiz