Why Your Nervous System Won't Let You Rest
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
First aired September 6, 2026 Dr. Charleanea Arellano has spent over 30 years as a clinical psychologist and leadership coach, but the framework she's best known for now, the Embodied Narrative Framework, didn't come from a textbook. It came from putting away laundry five years ago and noticing her own body bracing for impact, for no reason at all, at age 55, after decades of actually being safe. Dr. Arellano built her career studying how high-achieving women lead while carrying nervous systems shaped by trauma, and by the added weight of managing how their race, sexuality, or gender is...
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Why Business Leaders Need Negotiation Skills
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
First aired August 23, 2026 Annette Mullin spent 24 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, nine of them as a crisis negotiator, eventually leading one of the busiest negotiation teams in the country — averaging over 100 call-outs a year. She worked patrol, sexual assault, internal affairs, and homicide, becoming LVMPD's first female homicide sergeant, before spending her final years as the department's director of employee wellness in the aftermath of the October 1 Mandalay Bay shooting, the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. Now a negotiation instructor and coach...
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Why Comedy Might Be the Best Medicine For Mental Health
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
First aired August 16, 2026 For over a decade, Dave Mowry couldn't get out of bed, couldn't shower, and couldn't walk to his own mailbox without waiting until dark so a neighbor wouldn't catch the look in his eyes. In 1994, a psychotic break sent the successful businessman and family man into a depression so deep it cost him his house, his career, and 14 years he calls his "lost years." He slept in his clothes for months at a time. At parties, he'd stand against the wall and pray no one came over to talk to him. Then, at his wife's urging, he walked into a stand-up comedy class for people...
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Why Imposter Syndrome Keeps Leaders Stuck
Phoenix and Flame Podcast
In this episode, Dana is joined by Kurt Bush, a trauma-informed coach who helps leaders move from imposter syndrome to authentic confidence. Kurt shares his own journey with imposter syndrome, from feeling like a fraud in corporate leadership meetings to realizing his true calling. He explains that to make a change, the pain of staying the same must become greater than the pain of changing, a threshold many of us fear crossing. Kurt introduces the ERT (Encounter + Reflection = Transformation) framework, a practical approach to help you get unstuck. He reveals why the first step to moving...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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_outlineFirst aired August 23, 2026
Annette Mullin spent 24 years with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, nine of them as a crisis negotiator, eventually leading one of the busiest negotiation teams in the country — averaging over 100 call-outs a year. She worked patrol, sexual assault, internal affairs, and homicide, becoming LVMPD's first female homicide sergeant, before spending her final years as the department's director of employee wellness in the aftermath of the October 1 Mandalay Bay shooting, the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.
Now a negotiation instructor and coach at the Black Swan Group, founded by former FBI lead hostage negotiator Chris Voss, Annette translates those high-stakes lessons into practical tools for leaders, teams, and individuals navigating pressure, conflict, and growth.
We talk about the universal need she discovered in every person she ever negotiated with, why the crime itself is almost always a secondary issue, what "tactical empathy" actually looks like in practice, and why most of us were never actually taught how to listen.
Watch this episode
In this episode
- How the O.J. Simpson case and a criminalistics program in LA sparked Annette's path into crime scene investigation, and why she chose Las Vegas over LAPD
- Joining LVMPD's crisis negotiation team, and what made Las Vegas's team one of the busiest in the country
- Becoming LVMPD's first female homicide sergeant, and the advice that helped her navigate a male-dominated field without making it about gender
- Why removing assumptions, and getting curious instead of judgmental, changed how she worked with people in crisis
- The universal need Annette discovered every person in crisis shares, no matter how different the circumstances
- Why the crime itself is almost always a secondary issue, and what's usually driving it underneath
- How Chris Voss's "tactical empathy" model, from Never Split the Difference, turns negotiation into collaboration instead of a tug-of-war
- The five levels of listening Black Swan teaches, and why most of us are trained to listen to respond instead of to understand
Timestamps
- (00:01) Welcome and guest intro: meet retired LVMPD crisis negotiator Annette Mullin
- (02:23) From the East Coast to Las Vegas: the O.J. Simpson case and her path into crime scene investigation
- (04:42) Joining the crisis negotiation team, and Las Vegas's brutal call-out numbers
- (06:36) Retiring after serving as director of employee wellness following the October 1 Mandalay Bay shooting
- (08:15) What drew her to law enforcement as a kid, from Nancy Drew to Quincy, M.E.
- (10:10) Navigating gender in a male-dominated field, and becoming LVMPD's first female homicide sergeant
- (14:00) Removing assumptions: why curiosity beats judgment when someone has "a chip on their shoulder"
- (16:52) The universal need every person in crisis shares, and why that surprised her most
- (20:05) Why the crime is almost always the secondary issue
- (24:28) From hostage negotiation to the boardroom: Chris Voss, Black Swan Group, and tactical empathy
- (28:43) The biggest obstacle to listening, and the five levels of listening Black Swan teaches
- (31:50) The number one struggle business leaders bring to her, and why practicing in "low stakes" moments matters
- (34:12) Where to find Annette, Black Swan Group, and the new book Fight Less, Win More
About Annette Mullin
Annette Mullin is a retired Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department leader with 24 years of law enforcement experience, including nine years as a crisis negotiator and eventual leader of LVMPD's crisis negotiation team, one of the busiest in the country. Over her career she worked patrol, community policing, sexual assault, internal affairs, and homicide, becoming LVMPD's first female homicide sergeant, before serving as the department's director of employee wellness in the aftermath of the October 1 Mandalay Bay shooting.
Now a negotiation instructor and coach at the Black Swan Group, founded by former FBI lead hostage negotiator Chris Voss, Annette teaches the principles behind Never Split the Difference, including tactical empathy, to leaders, teams, and individuals navigating pressure and conflict in business and life.
Learn more at the Black Swan Group, or connect with Annette on LinkedIn.
Favorite quotes
"There is a universal need for every person to be heard, to be seen, and to be understood."
"Not everybody is like you. Removing assumptions was really key, let them show you or tell you."
"If I read a book about working out every week but never lift a weight, I can't expect to see anything different."
Resources mentioned
- Black Swan Group: negotiation training founded by former FBI lead hostage negotiator Chris Voss
- Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss: the book that brings hostage-negotiation principles like tactical empathy into business and everyday life
- Fight Less, Win More: Chris Voss's newest book, adapting those same skills for personal relationships
- Annette Mullin on LinkedIn
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