Episode 18: Reclaiming You: Identity, Branding and Burnout with Cat O'Shaughnessy Coffrin
What Happens When Work Becomes Your Whole Identity—and How to Undo It
Finding Yourself After the Hustle: A New Take on Personal Branding
Summary
In this vulnerable and wide-ranging conversation, personal branding expert Cat Coffrin joins Ellen to unpack what happens when ambitious women hit a wall—and realize they’ve lost themselves in the process. From working in global policy and green building to launching her own consulting firm, Cat’s story mirrors what so many mid-career professionals experience: success on paper, but disconnection underneath. Through honest storytelling, humor, and deep personal reflection, Cat shares how she rebuilt her identity—and how others can too.
You’ll hear why personal branding isn’t just for entrepreneurs or influencers—it’s a reclaiming tool for anyone feeling lost in a job that no longer fits. Ellen and Cat explore the pressures of perfectionism, the emotional toll of caregiving and grief, and the radical act of telling the truth in professional spaces. If you’ve ever thought, “I’m proud of what I’ve built… but I don’t recognize myself anymore,” this episode will speak to your soul.
Here’s a link to Cat’s Fast Company piece, “How To Be More Selfish at Work”
Cat’s website, Captivating Co
Cat’s LinkedIn
Cat’s free resource: “Writing Prompts & Writing Calendar”
Takeaways
Reclaiming your identity starts with reflection, not reinvention. Digging into your early life choices and values can help you understand what really matters to you now.
Your self-worth isn’t the same as your self-confidence. You can look polished and powerful on the outside while silently doubting your worth.
Capitalism makes us equate our time with value. Rest, reflection, and slowness feel wrong—until you realize they’re essential.
Being the emotional regulator for everyone else leads to burnout. Just because you can manage it all doesn’t mean you should.
Your career is a transaction, not a family. Loyalty and hard work don’t guarantee safety, success, or sustainability.
Notable Quotes
“Your next chapter isn’t selfish—it’s survival.”
“We’re taught to be grateful for jobs that are actively draining us.”
“Being invisible isn’t helping you—but it’s what the system counts on.”
“Work is a contract. You work. They pay. That’s the deal.”
“Your self-confidence can thrive while your self-worth is in shambles.”
Chapters
00:00 – Meet Cat Coffrin
03:30 – Honest LinkedIn & Visibility Fears
10:20 – When Your Career Becomes Your Identity
16:00 – Hamilton, Motherhood & Burnout Epiphanies
25:00 – Slowing Down, Grieving & Starting Over
34:00 – Reclaiming, Not Reinventing
45:00 – Perfectionism vs. Self-Worth
53:00 – Challenging Workplace Myths
59:00 – How to Start: Reclamation & Rituals
Keywords: burnout, personal branding, identity at work, women in leadership, professional reinvention, career change, corporate trauma, emotional labor, toxic workplace culture, midlife career crisis, perfectionism at work, workplace grief, executive coaching, work-life balance, reclaiming your career
Transcript
Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:01.243)
Hello everybody, and thank you for listening to another episode of the Hard at Work podcast. I am delighted with my guest today. Her name is Cat O'Shaughnessy Cofrin. She is a personal brand coach and the founder of Captivating Consulting and a kindred spirit. So I'm really excited.
Cat Coffrin (00:28.129)
Absolutely.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:28.921)
to see what kind of trouble we're going to get into, Thank you for being here. And why don't you give us 60 second Wikipedia entry? What do you want people to know about you?
Cat Coffrin (00:39.212)
This is a very dangerous question for someone like me because I exist for context and a lot of information. So I'm going to try and keep it short, but, to go kind of chronologically, I was born in the Seattle area, the daughter of a teacher and a canine cop. it was a theater kid, as you know, cause I know we share that trait growing up. and then when I was 17, I moved to Washington, DC to go to undergrad. studied international development in school, got really interested in traveling in the world.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (00:41.68)
I know.
Cat Coffrin (01:09.046)
I remember in 1999 when I was in high school in Seattle was when the WTO protests happened downtown. And it really kind of piqued my interest. And I felt like I wanted to get out and understand all these contexts and dynamics that were happening in the world that made things like that. People dress up like sea turtles and hold hands around the convention center. So that's what I studied in DC. And then I started my career working on HIV and AIDS policy for USAID, primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, transitioned into the green building space working in emerging markets around the world and then landed on a marketing firm and stayed there for a little bit over a decade to help build it and grow it, built up our DC office. Along the way, I married a Vermonter. I had two kids and eventually we relocated to Vermont in 2019.
And I left my company a little bit after that and started my own consulting business at the very beginning of 2020, February 3rd. No one remembers that year or what happened then, but it was an interesting time to be starting all of this. And now I'm in my sixth year running Captivating Consulting where I help corporate leaders reclaim their identities. And I do strategic consulting for all sorts of companies. and I have two dogs.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:21.935)
You do and they're on your LinkedIn often, which is very fun. My coworker is sleeping at my feet currently. he usually is. I know, it's delightful. I like this coworker. Yeah, he doesn't talk back. So the other thing that you're really known for, and we'll get into it too, but I love your LinkedIn presence. And that's.
Cat Coffrin (02:24.12)
They feature frequently. Yes.
Cat Coffrin (02:29.182)
I love that. That's where they should be. That's perfect. Companions.
Cat Coffrin (02:47.192)
Thanks.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (02:48.089)
That's actually, think how I found you is I think I commented on something on LinkedIn and then a mutual friend was like, my God, you guys know each other? And it was very strange about how our worlds were all colliding. But then I felt like we could be best friends. Tell me a little bit about that because you and I both share some honesty on LinkedIn. And I know that we both experience a lot of women reaching out in our DMs and saying, hey, thanks for being so honest. I can't comment on this publicly, but I really appreciate it. You more than me. So I think it's really important. And when did you start kind of testing the waters on LinkedIn and not being so precious with the posts? Or maybe you've always been that way.
Cat Coffrin (03:29.102)
Gosh, no, I haven't. And I love your use of the word precious because it's a word that I use in my speaking and my coaching so often. And I was just talking to a potential client today and she works in government relations and med tech in DC. And I said, without even really knowing much about you, I'm just, I have a hunch that you're the kind of person who never likes writing on LinkedIn because you feel like you don't have a social media presence or you feel too serious for it, about it, and you don't want to share too much of yourself out in the world. She's like, oh my gosh, 100%. And I think in a lot of these fields, you and I, I think share that we tend to work with people, not only women, but a lot of women, I would imagine, who are 20 to 30 years into their career. And it's like they've worked so hard to become serious, to be seen as serious, and they've honed really serious skill sets and expertise. And they're so conditioned to hold that closely and to put up a bit of a veneer. And there's this mindset that's evolved. Even while we preach all sorts of platitudes about authenticity and bring your whole self to work, we all know that that's like eye roll inducing at this point. I think there's a kernel of a good idea in there that it just gets thrown around and put onto memes and billboards and shoveled around on the internet that it's just completely meaningless. But at the core of it is this idea that we're kind of challenging a long held notion.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (04:39.835)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (04:44.815)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (04:50.69)
that to be taken seriously, we have to always be serious and that we can't share too much of ourselves, our personalities, our silliness, our political views, our trauma, know, experiences that have been hard without being painted as a victim or weak or a murderer or a not serious person.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (04:54.768)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (05:12.421)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (05:15.47)
And obviously there's an art and a science to it. I don't want to downplay that. I think people like you and I who have spent a lot of time on LinkedIn would probably know that there's definitely a balance that you have to walk and it's not necessarily easy to get it right. But what happened for me is I left my firm five and a half years ago and I remember I must, I was on LinkedIn and I had a pretty big network. I probably had like a thousand contacts. I don't know that I'd mastered over the time. I'd been at a disc firm for a decade plus jobs before that.
But I never really used it unless I shared a picture here, there, a company update, the way that a lot of people still do use it or a job update. And I shared that I was leaving my company and I got a big reaction. Those are, those are some of the top performing posts on LinkedIn. Everybody loves the news and the gossip of where are you going? I hate the cliffhanger posts that are like, goodbye to this job. I'll tell you next week where I'm going. Do you notice that?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (05:45.307)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (05:54.681)
Yep, they do.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (06:01.689)
I just read one of those last night and I'm like, why is everybody doing this? I just want to know where you're going. Because the algorithm is maybe not going to feed this back to me, so now I don't know.
Cat Coffrin (06:04.686)
That just tell us, then we're just going to get a note at you. we, I know, I know. I see a move against that. It's so funny what people get worked up about, but anyway, um, so I was posting and then when I started my company, I found it so jarring to discover that after spending an entire career doing writing and writing adjacent and writing related strategic work, on behalf of companies and including the companies I worked at and on behalf of leaders that I really had no ability to write in my own voice. I didn't know what my point of view on marketing strategy, brand strategy, personal branding. didn't really know what my point of view was. So I realized that LinkedIn was a great place to both activate the network, let people know to think of me, you know, that I'm there, that I'm not just this inert profile and also to practice writing articles and just sort of pick a topic and see what I had to say and start to exercise the muscles. So for a long time, I was writing weekly and I would just write these posts. I can't bring myself to go back and look at them. They probably read like, you know, business newslettery tone, you know, cause that's what I knew how to write. And, uh, and then over time I started to write more about personal branding and I started to cultivate more of a network of my clients. I spoke for chief in 2021 and suddenly I had like 2000 new followers who were in chief. so that network started to explode and then they all kind of grow from there, but it still felt a little bit like, when life gives you lemons, make lemonade. Like I didn't say that, but it kind of felt like it was very earnest and, optimistic and encouraging and little nuggets of wisdom. And, it did well, but I didn't grow. Like I grew steadily, very slowly, very frustratingly. And sometime last summer, so years and years into this, right? You'll see all these people that are like, I've been posting for 90 days and now I have 10,000 followers. And I'm like, what?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (07:47.737)
Mm hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (07:56.652)
Right.
Cat Coffrin (07:58.734)
And honestly, the people who grow that fast, usually they're deploying tricks that feel icky and gross. And that's why it gets such a bad rap. but I, what started to happen was I, I, maybe because I got five years out from my departure of my job, but I started to feel, find myself thinking about some of the, the complexities of my departure, which I know is the thing we'll, we'll talk about here. and I started to share things that had happened that I know have happened to other people.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (08:18.778)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (08:25.268)
And that was when I started to get some outreach from people. And by that point, I'd really honed a voice and a style, a sort of a sparse rhythmic way of writing. So I had that going for me. And I was able to kind of tackle these topics in a way where I'm sharing things that are universal experiences for a lot of people. but I'm doing it in a way that there's no self pity. It's more of almost a journalist, like I kind of reporting a thing that happened and then making a point about the fact that we should bring this stuff more out into the light.
And I got a lot of messages from people who said, I would love to comment like you just mentioned, but I'm afraid that my boss will see. And I know many of us who post a lot on LinkedIn get that, have experienced that thing where someone will see something you wrote and they'll text you. And it's like, could you go and write comments? you're not, I'm glad this was helpful to you, but like, I'm not going to get any visibility and no one else will see this if you don't comment on it.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (09:03.823)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (09:22.338)
But that's how afraid people are so viscerally afraid of being visible, which is crazy because being invisible is not helping us. No one's, it's what the major hierarchy wants and like gone are the days. I just wrote a piece for Fast Company about this yesterday that it will run on June 19th and it's called, “how to be selfish at work”. Because so many people in our generation think it's actually distasteful. People who I'm close friends with, who I admire will be like,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (09:32.143)
No, it's what the patriarchy wants though.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (09:44.325)
Ooh, I love that.
Cat Coffrin (09:51.586)
Did you have to share that on LinkedIn? And so I find that as I've started to get into, guess what I, this is a very long-winded way of saying that over time, over the past six to eight months, I started to see that I have the privilege and the power and the platform and the skills and the tools and the opportunity to talk about the things that people don't usually say out loud and that a lot of people don't have that opportunity. And frankly, and you've seen me acknowledge this because I'm white and I'm
Ellen Whitlock Baker (09:53.744)
Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (10:20.856)
fairly well to do. Like I'm not vulnerable in the way that a lot of people are. So I can say things and not have to fear getting written off or generally being interpreted the way that I want to be. People are usually pretty generous in their interpretations with me. And I see that I was a privilege. And so I started to say, I should probably be doing this more. And what happened is it's almost like I inverted it. So instead of coming onto LinkedIn and sitting here only writing tips and tricks, which is still useful. People still like that stuff, but it feels so regurgitated and like sea of sameness over time. And actually sharing more of these kinds of stories that I was actually getting to the root cause of why personal branding work is needed, which is simply the fact that the way our corporate world kind of works today, over the course of time, career success is usually completely entwined with focusing on everyone else except for ourselves.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (10:54.427)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (11:19.648)
And so then suddenly we're shocked that 20 to 30 years into our career, we're really successful. We've achieved things we want to. look around and we're like, I have no idea who I am anymore. And the two happened together, but we just haven't been talking about that. And so our generation and the generation after us is getting really, I live in Vermont. Everybody loves Noah Khan here. And he talks about mental health and he talks about medication and he talks about all of these things that for so long were looked down on. I think the reason he's so popular is his music's great, but.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (11:38.446)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Cat Coffrin (11:47.118)
It's the unapologetic way that he talks about these things. And it's not that dissimilar to what I think some people are doing more and more up in a space like LinkedIn, which is kind of challenging the historic codes and boundaries of what we're allowed to talk to in professional spaces.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (11:58.181)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (12:01.859)
Yeah, I did a podcast, a few podcasts ago on generational conflict in workplaces. And I was just talking to someone today who's in her 40s, you know, probably right around where we are. And I think our generation has a really particularly interesting challenge right now. And I think that for women in particular, the pandemic just kind of broke us in a lot of ways.
And for me and a lot of people that I talked to, that's when I started to awaken to the fact that I had no identity outside of work. Because it was like, had to give everything up to take care of my kindergarten age daughter, which by the way, kindergarten on Zoom is stupid. you know, like, just kind of managed through everything. And then when I, and I was working full time at the time. And then when I finally got back into the office and stuff, I sort of was like,
Cat Coffrin (12:42.286)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:01.339)
I don't know if want to do this anymore. And so I think that lack of identity or that loss of identity is so hard to realize. And you got it quickly, but I think, or maybe it didn't feel quickly, but your brain figured it out in a way that was like, OK, this is why personal branding can help. But I think a lot of people don't even know it yet.
Cat Coffrin (13:26.542)
Well, you're making me think of a million things. First of all, my daughter was in kindergarten during COVID, so I didn't realize that our kids must be graduating from fifth grade in a few weeks. So exciting times, glad. Oh yeah, oh yeah. And I definitely should not legally even be allowed to homeschool children, let alone kindergartners, even if they are related to me, that was not a good time. But what I actually often tell the story, and I feel compelled to tell it to you right now, because I know that we share a love for theater.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:31.434)
nice, twinsies. Correct, yes. Kind of snarky now.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (13:46.619)
No.
Cat Coffrin (13:55.538)
What happened for me was I got so good at denying my instincts and externalizing my validation. And it's funny because we want young women coming into the workplace to ask for validation and to do what they're told. And then we kind of turn around later in their career and we sort of admonish them for needing external validation. It's really fucked up. Are we allowed to swear here on this podcast? Okay. I don't know how we can have this without it.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:27.099)
Yep. Yep.
Yes, we swear on this. I have an explicit warning. I'm like, as long as I'm going to have that E, let's swear.
Cat Coffrin (14:36.174)
Our daughters are not going to be listening to this. right now. Yeah. But what happened for me was it was a physical thing first. And of course, now I'm very, you the body keeps the score. There's a lot of literature out there about the connection between our bodies and our emotions. But it was my body that felt that I was denying myself first. And it happened when I saw Hamilton.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:39.897)
Mine knows all the words.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (14:53.723)
great book.
Cat Coffrin (15:06.678)
It came through the Kennedy Center, the first national tour. And I had just had my second child and I was like getting back to work and it wasn't feeling like it used to work used to be my whole identity very proudly. I loved work after my first daughter, I had a rough maternity leave and I was so eager to get back to work. And I used to congratulate other women and be like, welcome back to work. You made it, you made it through. And they were like, what? And I had a wonderful maternity leave a second time around and I felt like I had made a flip where I was now, I was no longer a professional who had a little baby on the side. I was a mom who had a job. And that was such a fundamental shift. And so I was sort of grappling with that, coming back to work, trying to figure out what felt amiss and why it wasn't really doing it for me anymore. And then I saw Hamilton and I've been listening to the album leading up to there. And I just, I remember this feeling of like, this is what it looks like when someone is at their creative zenith when they are doing what they came here to do, no one on the planet could have made that album or even conceived of that concept. Like my daughter just, she's obsessed with it. We're going to see it New York in a couple of weeks, by the way. And she just found out that Alexander Hamilton was actually not, was actually white. But that's how genius the concept is, right? Anyway, I share that because I remember saying to my husband after that, I was like, I don't feel like I'm living in my full potential.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (16:08.315)
Fun!
Ellen Whitlock Baker (16:17.957)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (16:26.742)
And I think I've gotten away from a lot of urges that I have. And I don't feel equipped to figure out what to do with that. And I started talking more. I'd like go to the dog park on Capitol Hill and I would like find random people I didn't know and be like, do you know what you want to do with the rest of your life? Like, you, are you having an identity? Is everybody having an identity crisis? And I, that's how ill equipped I was. And there was this one day where like everyone, feel like my sister, my best friend out in Seattle, my
Ellen Whitlock Baker (16:32.773)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (16:54.369)
boss, my nanny, I feel like everyone was like, well, then what do you want? And is there any scarier question to an executive? Then what do you want? It's like, well, I don't, I don't know how to answer that question. And then I read a book. I don't know if you've read the book called what to do with an idea. What do you do with an idea? I'm going to send it to you. And it's about this kid. It's beautifully illustrated. He's walking around. There's this idea and it's like, got a visualization. like a balloon and it's following him.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (17:06.149)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (17:12.635)
No, no, write it down.
Cat Coffrin (17:21.71)
And no matter what he does, it doesn't go away. And eventually you kind of like pay attention to the idea that grows and then you have to, you have to lean into it. And I just was like, I need to pay attention to whatever this feeling is that I have. And that was a multi-year process from there. We moved to Vermont, felt like throwing a hand grenade into a perfectly constructed lifestyle that was heavily dependent on nannies and like juggling work schedules, travel schedules, et cetera.
So that changed things. started to question my lifestyle and like what I actually valued and if I was living my values. But when I went out on my own, I was just going to do strategy work. And the experience, like going back to the conversation we had about the way I was using LinkedIn then, realizing that I had a network of people who loved me and admired me and wanted to see me succeed, but had no idea how to hire me or what they would hire me for if I'm on my own. And I'm like, it's the same work I've always done. It's just now me alone. And that wasn't enough for them.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (17:57.305)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (18:17.135)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (18:17.422)
And I realized I had more work to do to explain to people what I stand for, what I'm all about, what kind of work I want to do and what my value is. And so that's when I took a brand strategy frameworks that I have for companies, grappling with same existential questions. And I turned it on myself and I went through that brand strategy process. And so as I launched my business, I offered personal brand work and brand strategy for companies and the personal branding work to your points exploded in 2020 because suddenly everybody.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (18:32.473)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (18:47.214)
was talking about their identity crisis. And ever since then, it's just grown from there. And I think that we are, as much as there's work that I'm sure you and I both would like to see us do in the corporate landscape, we're talking a whole lot more about it now than we were even five years ago.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (18:48.523)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (19:04.675)
Mm-hmm. And I think the power is starting to shift to the individual to decide to work with someone like you or me or take it into their own hands. Because I think we're starting to realize that maybe we are, I think in your post I read this morning, it was about how your work will break your heart. And I really liked that because it will.
Cat Coffrin (19:12.11)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (19:29.614)
You
Ellen Whitlock Baker (19:33.867)
we are sort of designed, especially in the social sector, to think we're a family and all that stuff. And we help people together and everyone's so nice and everybody brought food for the potluck and hooray, right? And in the meantime, you're still having these horrible things happen because the workplace doesn't work for everybody. And I just am seeing people
Cat Coffrin (19:47.312)
Ha ha!
Ellen Whitlock Baker (20:00.995)
or especially women sort of having this empowerment moment of saying, you know what, I actually, I can figure out who I am. And it's that moment of like, I don't know, my God, and work is not gonna help me figure it out. I have to figure it out on my own. And where do I go from there?
Cat Coffrin (20:20.142)
This is so I want to pause on that for a second because so in 2022, and you and I have talked a lot about grief, which is impossible to tackle the things we're talking about without talking about grief. Such a human experience. And in 2022, my mother passed away after a very, long illness. And I had been grieving her near-death experiences for years and years and also feeling a lot of rage towards her because I felt caught in the sudden cycle. So she finally dies. And my kids repeat this, which.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (20:26.617)
Yeah.
I know you're going to come back. It's okay.
Cat Coffrin (20:49.038)
I regret, but like I used to refer to her. I privately, I thought to my husband as a zombie. like, there was no way this body was still living. I could not believe that she was still alive. So by the time she left, was like, she needed to go. There was no quality of life lost at that point. So the grief then work began kind of then, but I remember talking to a therapist and saying, I feel like now it's the time that I want to spend kind of grieving her and I can't feel anything.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (20:59.706)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:06.363)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:18.842)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (21:20.212)
And what she helped me do was kind of slow down for the first time in my entire life. And I spent a lot of time on all the hiking trails around here. When I lived in DC, you couldn't pay me to hike. First of all, the weather is different, but second of all, I mean, yeah, you can get out to Virginia. know, there, there's some like nice little spots, but I just like, couldn't be convinced of the purpose of a long activity with a low calorie burn.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:34.455)
There's no hills there. Where do you hike?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (21:44.771)
Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep. Yep.
Cat Coffrin (21:47.5)
Because I was always in motion. I'm like, don't have time for this, you know? And hiking requires you to commit to it, to make the space for it, to believe in the value of being outside for a long amount of time, and to just enjoy the slowness of it. And suddenly, I would go for these hikes, and I would step on the trail, and immediately be react to stops. All the grief that was in me, couldn't access until I started to slow down and change the way that I was spending my days. And what you just said that made me think of this,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:06.263)
Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (22:11.31)
is like, was like a spring chicken experiencing certain things for the first time in my life. And I would bring them to Megan, my therapist and be like, isn't this crazy? Like, listen to what happens when I go for a hike. So she of course is like, yes. We talked a lot about how I used to find myself saying to people then, I've never worked so little in my life. And a friend of mine had said to me, I'd like to correct that because maybe you've never worked this much in your life.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:32.315)
Mmm.
Cat Coffrin (22:39.488)
And what I started to appreciate then was that our society values an hour spent working over an hour spent any other way. So we beat ourselves up when we start to recognize these behaviors in ourselves and frankly, the damage of years and years and years in a system that does that. And yet we know that that's so backwards, you know, to your point, like we can't define ourselves through our jobs, but we're encouraged to, and frankly, we're rewarded to.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (22:56.325)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (23:07.406)
I have a good friend who's very high up in a corporate job and like she sees this, but she doesn't feel like she's capable of breaking out of this pattern because she's got a child and she's the primary breadwinner and like society does it. And then how's she going to pay for her insanely expensive childcare and the lifestyle that she earned in her career. I, I like, I can't.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:15.355)
Hmm?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:18.896)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:28.795)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (23:33.74)
It would be tone deaf for me to keep calling her and being like, gotta get out. Which of course I still do because I'm her friend and I want to see her, get out of that environment. But, it's that, that idea of an hour spent doing that versus an hour spent walking through the woods, or an hour spent parenting or an hour spent with ourselves, just thinking about ourselves, right. As being high value, we bury ourselves in schedules. Do you remember? I remember before I left my job.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:50.117)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (23:54.841)
But that's scary. Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (24:03.628)
My calendar would literally be for like 11 hours a day, half hour blocks, sometimes triple booked. So when am I supposed to sit with existential questions? Like at night when I'm feeding my kids and getting them to bed and then catching up on work on the couch, you know, doing all the work I didn't do during the day because I was on calls all day. It's so cyclical. You know, we get stuck in this cycle.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:19.099)
exhausted. Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:25.68)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:31.291)
resonate with so much of that. And like, it's really raw for me because I am still going through that first, I guess in a couple weeks, next week will be six months after I left the workplace officially. I don't know. I had no idea how much I had to process emotions that I was not feeling. I couldn't feel, I didn't want to feel. But what's really funny is my epiphany that I was burnt out and needed to leave.
Cat Coffrin (24:36.567)
Yes.
Cat Coffrin (24:42.082)
That's so big. Wow.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (24:58.683)
came during a performance of Beetlejuice the musical. So you, well, it's yes, but it's not sad or anything. It just, think something happened. I did, yeah, yeah. And I, but I love it that both of us as theater kids were like, my epiphany happened during a performance.
Cat Coffrin (25:03.016)
I that. I haven't seen that one. Do you recommend it?
It's not like, yeah. You wrote about this. You wrote about this. Yes.
Cat Coffrin (25:17.514)
It's our inner child talking to both of us being like, remember theater?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:19.675)
Yeah. There's maybe something about the safety of the dark theater, because when you're in a show and you're in tech or I don't know, anyway, the feeling work is so hard. And I also had a wonderful therapist who has helped me through a lot of that. So I will say neither of us are therapists. And I hope everyone can find a therapist as best you can, because it's so surprising how much we don't let ourselves
Cat Coffrin (25:25.262)
Yeah
Ellen Whitlock Baker (25:49.371)
process and feel. And I have learned that that is actually the key to moving out of things that you're stuck in or to changing behavior. First, you notice it. And we don't even do that, especially if our schedule's wall to wall to wall meetings, which we've talked about on this podcast before. Meeting three, you're done. You're not going to be that helpful for the rest of the day. And I look back to all those meetings and all the things I was working on, I was like, my god.
Cat Coffrin (26:11.842)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (26:18.733)
none of that was that important. know, I mean, we were doing cool things, but we didn't have to do it all at once. But part of it was me driving that all at once because I thought I had to succeed that way.
Cat Coffrin (26:23.534)
Well, the end... Yes.
And then we turn around and we say things like, you should set boundaries. And it's like, yeah, but how many times did I watch? I was in a marketing firm, right? So everything's billable hours. So hypothetically, we all had to work. We had to log 50 hours a week. And then you had varying percentages of that that had to be client billable work. So time became so anxiety driven for so many of us. I remember I had a young gal in my DC office who
Ellen Whitlock Baker (26:34.587)
How?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (26:40.091)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (26:54.939)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (26:58.082)
was so conscientious and very like black and white in her thinking. And she was like, I don't have time to go to the bathroom during the day. Cause I'm so afraid I'm not going to get my eight hours of billable work in. And I had to be like, it's okay to include going to the bathroom in one hour that you cause like the clients are paying us to be humans who do work. You know, you're allowed to go to the bathroom, but that's like what we're it's so damaging and it becomes so internalized. And it took me years and years to get past like my association.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:08.056)
man.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:19.055)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Wow.
Cat Coffrin (27:28.43)
of my time and my earning capacity and my value. And that's why I think, you know, because I write about this a lot. One of my favorite topics is that I, about a year and a half in to working for myself. it is, it's like, it takes time. It's not like we flip the switch. So when I think about the first year or so of working for myself, partly because of COVID, but also like, I was just, it was proof of concept. I was like, can I be self-employed?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:32.235)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:43.685)
Mm-mm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (27:55.738)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (27:56.398)
I wasn't like, I'm going to go dream up some big business idea. I am just going to see if I can continue surviving. And then as time goes on, I started to have new, more creative ideas or start to want to experiment more. But in the beginning, you're just kind of like, I remember when I left that job, I left on a Friday and I started my company on a Monday. yes. And everybody in my life was like, enjoy this time. Don't rush too quickly. And I'm like,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (28:15.087)
the following Monday. Nice.
Cat Coffrin (28:24.632)
Fuck you. know, like that reminded me. It's like, do you remember when you're like nine months pregnant and people are like, enjoy this time before the baby comes. It's like, I am not enjoying anything about this time. I'm nervous about the future. I can't sleep. Yeah. I felt like that. I was like, no, nothing about this is a transition and I'm terrified. So I'm going to rush as fast as I can. And then I had like another kind of crash about a year and a half in. And that's when I started to take Mondays off.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (28:25.563)
Ha
Ellen Whitlock Baker (28:35.451)
My ankles are swollen. I have indigestion. Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (28:52.684)
And I realized that I could stack my weeks into four days a week. And for me, having a specific chunk of time, it's like when you go on vacation, you're like, I'll just take one call. But that whole day is ruined because you're thinking about taking the call. For me, taking a whole day off, and it's not like I'm not doing anything. And doing it on Monday, I'm responsible. If I did it on Friday, I'd go out to lunch and have a margarita. Right? But like if I do it on Monday, which I sometimes do.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (29:10.211)
Yeah. Yep.
Cat Coffrin (29:22.222)
Um, but if I do it on a Monday, go for a long hike or I go paddle boarding or I go canoeing or I go do something or I go skiing that like, that requires more hours than I often have in a work day. And then I'm happy to get up at 8 AM the next day and hit the grind and like just pump stuff out. And it's made zero impact on my consulting business because my clients don't care for a meeting on a Monday or a Tuesday. And if like, I really have to, I control the schedule. I can meet on a Monday, but, um, I share that because I think about the boundaries and how many women I watched.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (29:23.172)
And no shame.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (29:45.583)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (29:51.598)
Before me, when I didn't have a family yet, try models that didn't work so they'd be like, OK, maybe I'm going to go down to a 30 hour a week so that I can still get my benefits. But the difference between a 30 hour a week job in a marketing firm and a 50 hour a week job is a significant change in pay, but not much of a difference in how much people expect you to be available. And they could never say no because people would be like, ugh.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (30:16.027)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (30:18.722)
She's so annoying. She's always so protective of her time. Well, it's like, of course, she just took a huge pay cut to work less. And then you feel like a jerk to say no. So it's like, can't, there's a school of thought that a lot of professional development that's meant to help, especially women through like work-life balance and burnout is really missing the mark because it's trying to change the woman.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (30:21.413)
Yeah. She has a baby now. She's not committed. Yeah. Yeah.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (30:41.519)
Yeah, 100%. Yeah. my gosh, I just, just today had a conversation with someone who's an executive. And she was saying in her first year on the job, it was a mess, like lots of leadership transition. She was the only one on her team and had to hire a whole team. she said it was the hardest year of her professional life. And she would call her close friends crying and be like, what is wrong with me? And I was like,
Cat Coffrin (30:43.062)
instead of the system.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (31:09.283)
Isn't that interesting that the first thing you thought was that it was your fault?
Cat Coffrin (31:14.904)
So relatable though.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (31:16.131)
Right? God, I've done it. But like, of course you think it's your fault because you're not doing it. You're not trying hard enough. It's your fault that you can't fix this unfixable problem in a system that is stacked against you. But it's really hard to realize that. And I guess like pivoting for people who are listening, who they're in the nine to five, they have to stay there for all the reasons or they like it.
they might be experiencing some of this identity loss and getting lost and caring for others. You talked about your mom. We talk a lot about the sandwich generation here. My parents are in their 80s. It's starting to become a little bit of that plus a little bit of kid or a lot of kid. So what's your advice or thought for someone who is in a workplace and listening to this right now and being like, ooh, I resonate with this. What do they do?
Cat Coffrin (32:00.024)
Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (32:14.658)
So I just was thinking about this yesterday and I shared it with a few of my friends. I also put a video up about it. And to keep it simple, right? Like one thing I hear from people all the time who are in a transition and they're looking for new job or they're just trying to break free without having to quit their job, but just like make themselves available is that they get fixated on like, well, I've got to update my resume.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (32:23.032)
nice. link to that.
Cat Coffrin (32:44.246)
got to write a cover letter. mean, can you believe we're still doing cover letters? I've got to get out on LinkedIn. they think about all the things they have to do. Then they get overwhelmed. They shut down. They don't do it. They stay stuck. I've seen that so many times. So I tend to fixate and focus more on things that feel more fundamental, the stuff you need to do long before you can even figure out what words to use on your resume. I am a strategist. So that's what I'm more interested in. And so one of my favorite
Ellen Whitlock Baker (32:53.583)
Yep. Yep.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (33:03.897)
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, yep.
Cat Coffrin (33:11.522)
things to do with my clients. And one of the first things that we do is I interview them, but we go through their whole life story and I go back to, it's funny, cause if I say to people, tell me where your story begins and I'm generalizing here, but a lot of times Ben will say, well, I was chief supply chain officer. And it's like, that's where their story begins. And, and women will be like, my grandparents immigrated and met on a boat.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (33:16.763)
Love that.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (33:37.824)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (33:39.06)
I wanna know that stuff because what I wanna know is the context for your arrival because those forces shaped you and they helped create your own early preconceived notions of what you can and can't be and some of the early seeds of like identity, right, and value. But what we do in that interview, so when I'm talking to somebody, the thing is to look backwards and think of this as kind of reclaiming.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (33:56.033)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (34:05.558)
rather than reinventing or inventing something new. That's why I use the word reclaim. Because that's really what it is. Because your career by nature, we start out as these little kids who, if we're lucky, are kind of told and shown that we can do and be whatever we want. And then every time we get into relationships, we take out loans, we have jobs, we take on relationships, have children, whatever.
and we take on more responsibility. And of course it weighs us down and we lose our ability to put ourselves first. So the reclaim is really about kind of going back to that foundation. And some of the best questions then, once I have that grounding of kind of like the forces that shaped you and your worldview early, are the first big decisions we made. Like if you think about where you go to college, it's one of the, if you go to college and where, is one of the first big brand decisions you make. Where do I belong?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (34:50.189)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (34:55.05)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I love that.
Cat Coffrin (34:58.22)
What do I want to be associated with in the future? And I always tell a story about a man that I worked with. He was retiring from Toyota. He'd spent 40 years in Toyota, Canada. He was the son of Greek immigrants and his mom had died when he was young and he didn't get to go to college right out of school. So he ended up working at retail at a Toyota retailer and then became the president of the country of Toyota, Canada, not the country of Canada. You're like, wow, I didn't know this story. Justin Trudeau.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (35:19.428)
Wow.
I was like, not of Canada.
Is he Greek? I did not know that.
Cat Coffrin (35:28.424)
I didn't know that. Yeah. And he was this lovely kind of diminutive man. And I remember asking him once, if you hadn't had to go make money and help raise your younger siblings, what might you have done? And he said, without like in a heartbeat, he goes, that's easy. I would have been a rock musician.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (35:44.187)
Mm.
Cat Coffrin (35:52.078)
And there's few times in my life, my face looked like that, that I've been more surprised by a human. love being surprised by people. get great joy from it. was like, what? And as he talked about why he loved music theory, he really belonged in music and he had played in a band and he kind of had to let all of these things go to go like start to help take care of his family. And he was 17. And then when he described what he loved about his job, he spoke about it in the same way. So we ended up creating his farewell speech.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (35:57.349)
I love that.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (36:03.323)
Mm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (36:18.043)
Uh-huh.
Cat Coffrin (36:21.782)
And we had him open with, in an alternative lifetime, I would have been a rock star. And in some ways, I feel like I still got to be. Let me tell you what I mean by that. And it was so surprising. I wasn't in the room. He actually sent me a CD of his music, and then I realized I didn't have anything to listen to it on.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (36:33.236)
I love that.
Cat Coffrin (36:42.146)
So I can't tell you if he was any good. He was a lovely person. I have to imagine these colleagues who'd worked with him for decades must have been so floored. And you and I both know that there's no greater way to grab an attention of an audience than to surprise them right off the bat or do something that disarms them. Anyway, so the questions would be, tell me where you went to school and why. What did you almost study? Why did you find that interesting?
I always loved talking to scientists because I didn't study science. I'm always interested in what was it like to be the person that wasn't just like, you're good with words, come do words things. And they'll talk about the differences and how they evaluated which field of biology they wanted to specialize in and why they fell in love with being in a lab or not being in a lab and who came along their path that showed them the light of something that they could or couldn't do and made them believe in themselves. And what you start to see as people recount these stories,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (37:23.396)
interesting.
Cat Coffrin (37:37.034)
is their eyes light up because they go, I never really thought about that, but that is exactly the reason I did this thing later. So this simple act, despite of how much I'm describing it, of just spending a little time with those earlier decisions and things you did or did not choose and why, even if that wasn't your choice, things you did or didn't get to do. I have a client who was just sharing, she just left.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (37:45.976)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (37:54.939)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (38:02.368)
a biotech job and she was looking for a new job and she just kind of wants to take her time before she lands in something, make sure it's the right fit, do a little reflection. And she actually had a biology degree from Penn. And then she ended up getting an Irish Literature degree in Ireland and then got her MBA. And of course there's no trace of the Irish Literature degree on her LinkedIn. And I'm like, we pull this through because it's so fascinating. And once you kind of dig into like, how can we help people understand like, what does it mean about you that you spent two years of your life studying literature?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (38:29.101)
Mm-hmm. In Ireland. Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (38:30.67)
In Ireland, like I love the Irish literature, you know, repertoire. And I think it's so interesting how that sandwiched between a business degree and a biology degree, like, what does that tell us? And then I found out that she wanted to be a ballet dancer when she was 10, another one of my favorite questions. But the re, it's not just the fact that she wanted to be a ballet dancer, it's why did she want to? What was intriguing about it to you? And she pauses and she said, you know, I loved the precision.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (38:45.892)
Mm. Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (38:53.797)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (39:00.64)
I loved thinking about what's going on inside of our bodies and knowing yourself well enough to be able to do these things. And then I was like, well, how fascinating, because of course, anyone only studied biology. And you can kind of see these connections. So it's like, when you do that, you start to re-examine and revisit and reclaim and appreciate how you see the world. And that, to me, is time well spent that's so much more foundational than like,
Ellen Whitlock Baker (39:00.955)
Hmm.
Cat Coffrin (39:29.6)
you know, jargony value language that feels like a sea of sameness, you know.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (39:35.387)
That's incredible. And especially looking back now, I love the word reclaim is such a great word for that because there are a lot of big things that have happened in our lives that maybe we felt were our fault or we did something wrong or whatever. But when you look back and you reclaim it and you think about what each thing taught you, it's really interesting. And there's a sort of like, I'm glad I went through that in some ways.
Cat Coffrin (39:42.317)
Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (39:51.086)
Hmm.
Cat Coffrin (40:03.95)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (40:04.891)
because it got me to X, Y, or Z. And I was just thinking, the very first thing we did in coaching school was write our life history. Like we just sat and wrote the whole thing, anything, you know, and it was great. And I was like, I've never done this before. And what do I say? And how detailed do I get? Because of course I wanted to get a gold star and an A on it. And, you know, that was another thing I had to let go of. Yeah. But I talked to my clients about it too. It's like, what?
Cat Coffrin (40:17.74)
love that stuff.
Cat Coffrin (40:25.07)
Taking the validation. Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (40:32.953)
what do you want me to know about how you grew up or your past or whatever? And some of them are like, why were you asking me that? if you're the first daughter, that matters, because you have been conditioned to be a certain way. And so it's a really, that's such a great exercise. Maybe we can figure out a way to put some of those questions in the show notes for everybody so they can give it a try. Yay. Fabulous. I love that. I think that's a great step for everyone to take.
Cat Coffrin (40:52.312)
I have a free resource that I can share with you that's got them all captured. I'd love to make that available.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (41:02.521)
You know, the other question I'll ask, I'm almost out time, which is bananas, but when you think back to that internal drive that we have, so I love the idea of going back and reclaiming your past, but it's hard to get over this ingrained notion that we need to be perfect, especially as women, that we need to do more, that we need to make people get that external validation, make people like us. What are some ways that you have worked through that and or, you know,
Cat Coffrin (41:19.235)
Mm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (41:32.283)
How could we help other women get to a place of like, it's OK if it's not perfect, you know? It's not the end of the world.
Cat Coffrin (41:39.116)
my gosh. That's so funny because this, this perfectionism topic I've been ruminating on quite a while. And one of my favorite questions for even some of my closest girlfriends is to ask them if they consider themselves perfectionists because I don't like I, I've always had. I love a good personality test. I feel like maybe you wrote something about this to do. I feel like there may be not. okay. I don't know desk, but I would love to do it. I bet I'd probably gobble it up.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (41:51.94)
Ellen Whitlock Baker (41:59.451)
I might have. do disc. I, yeah.
I can do it for you.
Cat Coffrin (42:09.396)
I love, I, please. I loved, strength finders. We did that at my company and I was so obsessed with it that I made everybody start every meeting with their top five strengths. were like, my gosh, let it go. But I loved it. I thought it was so interesting. And, one of the things that came out of that was my first strength was, Activator and my second strength was strategy.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (42:19.107)
Ha ha.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (42:30.094)
Hmm.
Cat Coffrin (42:33.792)
My fifth strength was woo, which was like charisma, winning over. Yeah. I feel like you've got like that. Doesn't that surprise me? but like the ordering of them, I, I was really interested in and a ranger was my third, which I love sort of a spatial thinking one that I've always had, which is kind of like, I see it, my daughter, which is sort of magical to see, like making connections between seemingly, you know, unrelated topics and themes. And it's a lot of how you do my analysis. So it was just really fun to kind like have words to give like to things, you know, about yourself.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (42:34.179)
interesting.
Woo's my number one.
Didn't need me either.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (42:55.248)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (43:01.282)
But the fact that Activator came up first really underscored something I had known but never observed closely, which is that I have a real bias towards action. And so my bias towards action always takes over my desire to make things perfect. So I've been walking around for all this time telling myself, well, I'm not a perfectionist. I feel so bad for all those people that are perfectionists. I used to have a boss that would stay.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (43:11.525)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (43:19.556)
Hmm.
Cat Coffrin (43:27.114)
All weekend at our company, I'd come in in the morning and she'd be like there and I'd be like, did you go home last night? She's like, no, I just needed to finish this. She'd sit on things until they were ready. And I would just like turn them in at 80 % done. And then we could analyze that I'm sure all day. But it wasn't until a session I went to not long ago with someone who does leadership development stuff that I got the chance to join. And I can't remember what exactly she said, but it was something about like, I definitely don't delegate. I don't like to work with people.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (43:36.645)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (43:55.99)
I don't like to hand things off to them. I don't have an executive assistant or a virtual assistant. And I would just rather do less and do it all myself. So could we say maybe I have some perfectionist tendencies? Yes. But I just wasn't framing them in that way. And a lot of this comes down to the self-confidence to believe that it is OK.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (44:09.595)
Just a little.
Cat Coffrin (44:22.734)
to say, I don't know this, I can't do this, or I didn't get this perfect, or I didn't get this, I'm afraid I'll get this wrong, or I need this information, I need this help. We don't do that. It goes back to where we started in this conversation, is this perception that we have to be taken seriously, and we have to appear perfect to be valued. And I think the two things that are conflated in here, to get to the question you actually asked me about, what would I say to others who struggle with that, is,
It took me until I was probably 39 before I actually for the first time saw and internalized the difference between self-worth and self-confidence. And a lot of the work I've had, right, I don't know if you've gone down that path, it's fascinating. A lot of the work that I have done in therapy, like as I grieved my dead parents and like, you know, working through a lot of other challenges that I've had, even grieving my old company and going out on my own and all that.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (45:04.654)
Oof.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (45:08.764)
No, but tell me more.
Cat Coffrin (45:22.69)
I've always been pretty confident.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (45:24.783)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (45:27.198)
But I was getting all of the validation externally. And since I wasn't nurturing my internal needs or beliefs, I got to this point where my internal perception never mattered. And that's my self-worth. I didn't think that I was good enough, but other people to me I was. So was pretty confident. I can walk in a room. I know what I'm good at. And because externally, people look at me and be like, you're so confident. I'm like, yes.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (45:32.229)
Hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (45:50.693)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (45:56.948)
that I didn't even realize that the problem I had was with that, like, this sounds so cheesy, but like that relationship with myself. And the number one thing that broke it open for me was that I did the artist's way. Have we talked about this? No, but I can tell you know it.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (46:03.322)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (46:13.571)
No, but I have the library book because I wanted to do it and then it just like got so crazy. But tell me about it because I've heard such good things about it. Yeah, just buy it.
Cat Coffrin (46:20.654)
Buy it, buy it, just buy it first of because you need to mark the hell out of that thing and there's amazing quotes and you're gonna love it. I prescribe this to everybody. Although I feel like Julia Cameron should be giving me kickbacks. I'm like her number one student. Yes, I did it a couple of years ago after I had lost my mom and I started to have this kind creative urge emerging and I was like, I want to write about my parents and how complex my relationships with them were and like.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (46:30.779)
We'll put a link in the show notes for everybody.
Cat Coffrin (46:46.998)
make time to do this kind of thing and I didn't know what I wanted to do. I decided to take a sabbatical, but I did the artist way before my sabbatical. My wonderful therapist had recommended it. And it's a 90 day program and we don't need to get too much into that, but the core foundation is something that I think has become popularized, which is the idea of morning pages. You have to get up a half hour early every day for 90 days straight and you get just like a ruled notebook. My biggest advice is get a small one. I got a really big one and you have to write three pages long hand.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (47:02.319)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (47:17.074)
And the idea is that this is not journaling. This is just coming to the page because we, you're in conversation with yourself and what you're doing is like for the first page there, she, she writes on the book about this idea of the one and a half page kind of like epiphany where the first page and a half, you're just writing gunk.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (47:17.658)
Wow.
Cat Coffrin (47:38.378)
And I did it January 1st through the end of March and I live in Stovermont and my kids are ski racers. So I am up at the crack of dawn every day for like five months straight. And I spent a lot of time. If you talk to me around February, I'm very morose and I have a lot of self pity because like I never sleep in. And so I'd be up in the dark and like my dogs would be sniffing at me and my kids would find me. And I just, I complained a lot. And it's like, why am I doing this? I'm so tired. I'm worried about money. I'm worried about this project. I'm really. And then like a page and a half in all the gunk clears.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (47:40.827)
Hmm.
Cat Coffrin (48:08.458)
And suddenly out of the blue, you'll be like, I wonder if I should do a podcast. New ideas will come out. And when you take the pressure off writing for a reason or for posterity or for someone to see, and it's just about you in conversation with yourself, the act becomes very different and much freer. And you're much more, you're less precious about it. And what I discovered is that my inner voice is really negative.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (48:12.687)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (48:37.691)
Hmm?
Cat Coffrin (48:38.638)
And it deeply challenged my self perception. Cause I think I'm a pretty upbeat, idealistic, fun, funny person. Right. And I'm confident. have a lot of energy and I live to be in a room in front of people. So like, didn't jive with me that my inner voice is actually like berating myself all the time. And it was the first time that I ever realized this is what's so interesting. I got so.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (49:00.345)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (49:07.96)
good at denying my feelings, especially inconvenient ones or unsavory ones, that I shoved them so far down that I didn't even acknowledge them. You said something earlier about acknowledging something and naming it. I couldn't do that because I couldn't hear it. And so it was self-deception. And my relationship with my inner voice was broken.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (49:15.717)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (49:22.351)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (49:29.381)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (49:33.421)
my God, are we the same person? have, yes. yes. And my therapist was like, and what was interesting for me is that I've always considered myself a sensitive person. And I would think if you knew me, you would say that because like I cry really easily at work when I'm upset, which I now realize is my stress response. you know, like it just like, that's how it shows up for me. And you know, I care a lot about people, a lot of empathy, whatever, but I realized
Cat Coffrin (49:34.83)
Really?
Cat Coffrin (49:44.995)
Hmm.
Cat Coffrin (49:53.676)
I have that too.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (50:03.097)
that I didn't wanna feel any feelings. And so I was numbing with all the things you numb with, know, food and crappy TV and scrolling on your phone or whatever. And that's been what has been some of the hardest work this six months is sitting with feelings and just like saying, okay, I feel this way and blah, blah, blah. And there's this great book, I have it right here. And I'm actually gonna interview her on the podcast, but Align Your Mind.
Cat Coffrin (50:20.118)
Hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (50:30.245)
by Brit Frank. She also wrote the Science of Stock. Both are amazing. This one's about like all your shadow selves, which is a lot of what you're talking about of like, the concept is, I'm gonna really make it sound easy and it's not, like, it's that you have to, like the best thing you can do is acknowledge, my, you know, I am thinking badly about myself. That's interesting. And you don't have to judge it. You don't have to, you know, yes, you just,
Cat Coffrin (50:30.326)
Okay, okay.
Okay.
Hmm. Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (50:56.44)
Don't judge it, right? I've had to learn that therapy. Just observe it. Yeah. Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (50:59.289)
Because that's what we're supposed to judge. If you're analytical and you're fixing things all the time, well, yeah, of course you're, and then my whole thing is like, okay, and I need it to go away now because it is uncomfortable. Yeah, and this has been some of the most uncomfortable time for me. And I'm also realizing it's because I'm not getting an external validation in the same way that I did before. And so it's scary as hell, but I have to trust myself. this is, I love what you're saying and I feel like,
Cat Coffrin (51:09.634)
Yeah, I can't have this right now. Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (51:19.283)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (51:28.899)
Everyone should just go to therapy maybe instead of listening to us, it's, I think it's, yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that.
Cat Coffrin (51:33.004)
Hopefully we'll remind them to go to therapy and do the artist's way, but I guarantee you if we were talking to you and I at the peak of whatever it was before like we acknowledged that we were hitting burnout or hitting a wall, I just didn't have the time for that.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (51:42.992)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (51:47.023)
I would say, God, I never journal, I hate that. Who has time for that? Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (51:49.61)
Yeah, well, and this is actually something that I think can talk a lot about getting back to the idea of time and kind challenging this idea that an hour spent working is better than any other hour. If you think about that, my mental productivity is exponentially higher between 8 and 10 a.m. on a weekday, more so like Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, right? My Mondays and Fridays are usually I'm carrying, I'm exhausted from the weekend or excited for the weekend or distracted.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (52:09.167)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (52:19.224)
But those middle of the week days, if you give me an assignment, if I am to work on a thought heavy project between eight and 10, I do my best work and I can knock it out. What I've started to do is I block those hours on my calendar every day. So I block Monday off all together. I block eight to 10 Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and I block Friday. And I also pick my kids up from school a lot. like, I really don't have a whole lot of a...
Ellen Whitlock Baker (52:28.549)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (52:44.398)
have like available flexible work time. do work a lot, but like the way that I preserve my time is really important to me almost ritualistically because that eight to 10 time, I've started to do is if I, I used to always give it to clients and now I use it for me and I go to, I have a spin studio that I love or I go, it's been sunny for like one day. We've had one day of summer in Vermont and I'll go for a walk and, um, and it's the most luxurious.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (52:58.799)
Yep. Yep.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (53:12.965)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (53:13.45)
If I do like a slow walk along the river with my dogs, because it's not for exercise. It's not with a friend. It's not for any purpose other than to just do the walk. And I'm spending time that otherwise really would be productively applied to work. And I'm using it for myself and it changes the entire tone. I don't do it every day. Some days, if I'm anxious, I go to spin and I just like sweat like crazy. And then I get to work or I'll be like, I really am going to use this time to get these two projects done to give myself the gift.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (53:21.007)
Mm-hmm.
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (53:29.221)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (53:42.735)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (53:42.944)
of getting it done. But having the flexibility and being conscientious of how I use and give that time has been another key trick for me to kind of come back and center myself and to kind of repair.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (53:52.281)
Yeah, which we don't do. Yeah, we are told not to. It's bad to center yourself. It's ego, it's selfish. And I'm generalizing, obviously, but there's a lot of societal norms and workplace norms that are like, don't do that. Be humble. And there's a difference between bragging about yourself and really just putting yourself first, which we absolutely can do.
Cat Coffrin (53:57.204)
I know. It feels selfish.
Cat Coffrin (54:20.438)
Yes. I remember a year or two ago, I wrote a post on LinkedIn that was just, I was feeling really ragey and it was called, lies you've been told. And then I use like sort of sardonic emojis probably as like my bullets, but one of them was, you know, it was things like our company is a family and you owe your company loyalty. Like I hate this idea that's emerged.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (54:21.797)
Yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (54:26.747)
You
Ellen Whitlock Baker (54:41.083)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (54:46.766)
I worked at a B Corp, like in the sustainable business kind of space, social impact, it's really easy to kind of tap into that kind of millennial tendency to want to find passion at work. Like this idea of if you love what you do, you'll never work a day in your life and all of these things, this bullshit that we've been fed. And I don't think that the, yeah, it's like, no, you know what? Maybe you could get some satisfaction out of your job. Also, it's great if you enjoy doing work. It's great. Lucky you. You know, I love a lot of the stuff that I do.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (55:02.947)
Yeah, yeah. That's how we give our souls to work.
Cat Coffrin (55:15.758)
But work is work and a company relationship with an employee is a transaction. It's usually a contract. And we prey upon that sense of loyalty that a lot of, especially young women, tend to feed into, which is like, I'm so grateful that my company gives me this job. But it's like, no, you do job in exchange for a salary. But anyway, on that post, I also wrote, oh, humility is a virtue.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (55:28.699)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (55:34.309)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (55:45.422)
And it's such a damaging perception. And, know, I bet you can guess the kinds of people who really took issue with that statement and tried to correct me.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (55:45.723)
Ellen Whitlock Baker (55:55.451)
White men? What?
Cat Coffrin (55:56.238)
Yes, old white men, they're all like, and they like mansplained me about how humility is important. I'm like, I'm not an idiot. I understand the concept of humility. But using in the workplace, we weaponize it against people. And I don't want to always limit this to women because it's truly it's about so many different kinds of communities. But women tend to be very vulnerable and responsive to that because we carry it. It's like this idea that women are, I wrote an essay.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (56:04.635)
hard.
Cat Coffrin (56:23.566)
Earlier this year, where I was remembering when I was in elementary school, I was deathly shy and very quiet. And I had a very sad situation at home. And so my parents were very distracted. I was kind of like abandoned in a way while they were working through their own challenges. And so, and I was a good student. Of course I challenged, I channeled everything into like excelling at school. And so I remember my fourth grade teacher would always sit me next to the troublemakers to kind of like balance them out, right?
Ellen Whitlock Baker (56:46.789)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (56:50.907)
You
Cat Coffrin (56:54.014)
And I likened that to the way that later in our careers, we're supposed to dispense calm. We're supposed to be like feminine leadership is supposed to be high EQ, is supposed to be paying attention to everyone else and perceiving them. And as a mother, a wife, and a working professional, I got to a point where I was like, my gosh, I am emotionally regulating every fucking person in my orbit. No wonder I am so burnt out.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (57:00.507)
Hmm hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (57:11.512)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (57:23.621)
Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (57:24.832)
And like, we don't acknowledge that emotional load. And it feels like me in fourth grade being like, we're going to sit next to the kid. He gets to be loud and crazy and obnoxious. But you have to be quiet because that's who you are and you're going to balance them out. And I feel like we kind of spend the rest of our lives doing that and being rewarded for that. And that goes deep. So teaching women that servant leadership, that's another trope that I hate. That leadership is about giving to others.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (57:36.101)
Mm-hmm.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (57:39.813)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Cat Coffrin (57:53.748)
is just, I think it's a problematic norm that's holding people still.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (57:58.757)
Totally.
Totally, it's a transaction, you know, and it's hard, especially as someone who's spent my whole life in nonprofit public sector, like doing good for others, you know, so you know you're already not gonna get paid as much as other people because you're working on behalf of these vulnerable populations or, you know, trying to make the world better in some way. But like the servant leader concept is really rough because
Cat Coffrin (58:11.95)
Yeah, that's an extra layer. Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (58:23.703)
mission.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (58:32.091)
it's like, yeah, you give it all to other people. It doesn't mean you can't be a wonderful leader, but you don't have to be a, like, the term servant is problematic anyway, but like, you know, but the, it's like this denial, like we weren't, we never are supposed to talk about the fact that work is a transaction, that it's money changing hands, that it's capitalism, like that is what it is. And our workplaces, and you know, everyone thinks you're like,
Cat Coffrin (58:43.022)
Yes
Ellen Whitlock Baker (59:00.619)
raving when you do this, but it's true. Our workplaces are patriarchal because that makes capitalism easier, because that keeps us all in our seats and quiet in a very stereotyped way of talking about the patriarchy. But that was something my therapist said and I was like, my God, capitalism.
Cat Coffrin (59:07.97)
Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (59:19.686)
funny because I remember my old therapist used to kind of go on these little rants about when we talked about the value of an hour and she would go on these like anti-capitalistic rants and I would kind of giggle to myself and be like she's so she's so daring and her hatred of capitalism. Maybe we did. And I but I think it must be hard to do that work and watch corporate execs struggle with the same thing without seeing it so clearly. I never really
Ellen Whitlock Baker (59:30.927)
Maybe we had the same therapist, we got to figure that out.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (59:44.389)
Yeah. Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (59:47.96)
viewed it through that lens until right now. But yeah.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (59:51.321)
my gosh. Okay. Well, Cat, I could talk to you for a million years. I'm going to thank you for all of this and we will link in the show notes all of these wonderful books and resources. Cat's got other stuff that she has on her homepage. Where can people find you?
Cat Coffrin (59:53.58)
I know.
Cat Coffrin (01:00:05.708)
So you can find me on LinkedIn and my LinkedIn handle is thank you. Same to you. People are not following you. I love your content. My handle is Catlyn O, C-A-T-L-I-N-O. And my website is captivatingco.com. And I've got lots of great free resources, materials, articles, stuff like that on there as well.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:00:07.899)
Highly recommend following her.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:00:29.221)
She does. So now it's time for our last question, which is to prove that everyone is a human being and not just their work. So if you were going to give a TED Talk on anything that isn't what your work is about, what would it be on?
Cat Coffrin (01:00:42.739)
so.
I find this a funny question because I tried and failed so many times to think about what I would do with a Ted talk. And I just always find it's so hard to pin down one idea. But if I think about it purely in non-business terms, one thing I'm eerily excellent at is messing up every baking project I undertake. I cannot bake. I cook a lot. I actually posted a picture of a cookie I tried to make for the holidays.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:00:51.547)
Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (01:01:15.328)
on LinkedIn and like the response was, was astronomical because everyone was concerned about me. I'm like this, this piece of cookie that I had produced. Everyone's concerned. Everyone believed that it was probably excrement. That's what it looks like. Fossilized. It was supposed to be a Kringle cookie. And it's like my kids and I laugh because I just like it's, it's, it's uncanny just how bad it is. And so I have to imagine if I tried to play creatively, maybe I could extract some good lessons about like this glaring imperfection that I just.
Despite everybody, I even emailed my friend and I said, give me your most foolproof cookie. I want to make some cookies for the teachers. I really do. I'd like to make them. I can't. It would be, I should be arrested.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:01:55.555)
It's because baking is so much easier than cooking in a lot of ways. It's like you just follow the instructions, but maybe it's because you like to color outside the lines. You're not going to be constrained by a recipe.
Cat Coffrin (01:01:56.248)
Yeah.
Cat Coffrin (01:02:02.19)
I try. I am a rule follower though. I like measuring everything and I'm like so nervous and we're looking, but like, you know what I don't have is that instinct that good bakers have of like when something's done, I always over under bake it. And somehow like I put the right ingredients there, I swear to God. And it just doesn't work. It's a mystery to me. I can't make pancakes either. So maybe the two go hand in hand. I don't know.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:02:19.515)
It's hard, you have to know.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:02:27.867)
Well, you know what? Your talents are better used otherwheres than other places.
Cat Coffrin (01:02:32.206)
I will have to buy cookies for the rest of my life. Woe is me.
Ellen Whitlock Baker (01:02:37.339)
Well, thank you so much, Cat. Thanks everybody for listening. Really appreciate it. And we will see you on the next episode.
Cat Coffrin (01:02:44.322)
Thank you.
Catlin (Cat) O’Shaughnessy Coffrin is a personal brand coach who helps accomplished leaders reclaim their voices and amplify their impact in the world. As founder of Captivating Consulting, Cat advises executives at leading firms across a wide variety of industries and sectors, from healthcare and consulting to finance and agriculture. A writer, podcaster, and frequent speaker, Cat has appeared in national outlets such as Chief, Fast Company, Forbes, Thrive Global, and Business Insider.
