BizWomen: How my business got started
This article first appeared in BizWomen on 11/13/24.
In Her Own Words: How Cat Coffrin turned her identity crisis into a business idea
Cat Coffrin was work-addicted, hard-driving and sure she was on the right track — until she wasn't.
In 2019, I had a mid-career identity crisis. It was surprising, painful, and it totally changed my life.
I thought that I’d done everything right: I worked my way through college with nine jobs and internships, I studied abroad in South Africa, volunteered regularly, and started in my dream role immediately after graduation.
From there, I climbed up the ranks. I threw myself willingly into my career, earning promotions, traveling the world, working every weekend, and enjoying the perks. I even found time to start a family, juggling kid schedules, travel and commutes with my husband and an array of helpful caregivers.
During this time, work was the backbone of my identity. It was an addictive reward for hard work. Through my job I accessed interesting ideas and places and forged deep friendships. Oftentimes, work was all I wanted to talk about.
So, imagine my surprise when, one day, I crashed straight into a wall.
A year after my second daughter was born, something began to shift in me. I kept hoping the feelings of unease would go away, until one morning I woke up with a pit in my stomach and a visceral realization that something had to change. My life felt so carefully constructed that I had no idea where to begin. What if I pulled the wrong lever? How could I tell?
I was stunned to discover that 15 years of career success had somehow left me with no idea who I was or what I stood for, let alone what I wanted or how to proceed. I once had such a strong sense of my dreams and desires, and yet now I was stranded and unsure, completely and utterly stuck.
After swirling for a while, asking everyone and anyone what to do next, I finally made time and space to tackle the big, existential questions I’d been neglecting for too long. I realized that I had used my busy schedule and my work identity to studiously avoid thinking through my purpose, my identity, and my unique value.
I’m a brand strategist by trade, so I turned to the tools and techniques I typically used to help guide companies through the process of defining their brand identity and applied them to myself. I gathered input from others about my style and my impact, I did extensive journaling and guided introspection, and I turned to therapy for help in the process.
In the beginning, it felt like rehabbing a much-neglected set of muscles. But eventually, answers began to emerge, and I even decided to relocate with my family out of the city and to a new state. From there, changes came faster and with more confidence.
Eventually, I left my employer of more than a decade and launched a consultancy to offer brand strategy for companies and executive women who had faced mid-career identity crises just like me.
Unwittingly, the launch happened in February of 2020, mere weeks before we were all in COVID lockdown. But suddenly I found that the whole world was experiencing an identity crisis of sorts, and suddenly, we were talking about it out in the open in a way we’d never done before.
Captivating Consulting took off, growing quickly during the pandemic and thriving ever since. I’ve now had the chance to help hundreds of incredible, accomplished women rediscover their identity and find the words they need to be themselves again – in work, in life, and in building toward their future.
I have also learned how deep the damage goes when women are told to blend in and stop being themselves throughout the course of their careers. I’m trying to change that norm, so we can all succeed by knowing and by being ourselves — not by changing who we are.
