Today we’d like to introduce you to Cat O’shaughnessy Coffrin

Hi Cat O’Shaughnessy, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?

I’m a strategist and a writer. I help women leaders rediscover and reclaim their identities as they move through their careers so they can feel grounded in who they are and be true to themselves as they move forward.

A Seattle native, I grew up professionally in Washington, D.C. I worked my way through undergrad, slinging pizzas and taking on every internship I could find. In my early career I came up in the worlds of global public health and green building, before pivoting into a marketing firm where I had the chance to work with a broad array of clients in healthcare, agriculture, and advocacy.

After 15 years rising the ranks, I left my corporate job in 2019. I was no longer fulfilled by climbing someone else’s ladder. I knew I wanted to work for myself, and I felt like I had the tools, disposition, and experience needed to be successful as an independent consultant.

But it was humbling to realize that after giving myself over for so long to the companies where I worked, not to mention becoming a wife and a mother, I had lost sight of who I was and what I wanted to stand for on my own.

Years of working for other people had left me in a bit of an identity crisis. So, I took the concepts and skillsets I had for developing brand strategies, and turned them on myself.

The process was tough, but it made me feel more confident and connected to what matters most in my life, my work, and how I want to make an impact. I launched Captivating Consulting on February 3, 2020 with the goal of helping companies and leaders navigate who they are and what they want, and it has been an incredible ride ever since.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?

When you work for yourself, everything feels personal. And, also as individuals, we are constantly growing and evolving and changing. One of the greatest challenges in running my own business has been learning to embrace the unknowns and also to trust my instincts. It’s easy to think we need to create and perfect our business offerings or models and then everything will run smoothly – but it’s quite the opposite. I find that once I get something working well, I immediately begin to itch for something new or better. It’s constant iteration. When everything is to set or clear, I feel bored. The nuances, surprises, and challenges make it interesting.

One of the greatest challenges I have faced is the loss of my mother in 2022. I spent a long time in therapy, and found myself craving time to really focus on the grief I was experiencing. I ultimately decided to wind down my business so I could take a sabbatical, which required a great deal of faith that the business would be there when I was ready to come back to it. I took 3 months and created an audio documentary, a podcast in 6 chapters where I explored the pain and loss and how they impact identity. In the end, the project and the time reinvigorated my love for the work that I do, and I was able to come back and build the company up again even stronger than before.

We’ve been impressed with Captivating Consulting, LLC, but for folks who might not be as familiar, what can you share with them about what you do and what sets you apart from others?

I help leaders and companies reinvigorate their sense of identity, strategic direction, and the language they use to describe it. I do this through a combination of consulting, speaking, and 1:1 coaching.

The largest emphasis in my business is on personal branding for leaders who are at an inflection point in their careers. I tend to focus on women especially, because they are told from a very early stage in their lives and careers to be less who they are and to blend in to succeed. As we climb our career (and life) ladders, we give so much of ourselves away to others that we often completely lose our sense of self along the way.

My work is designed to change that by walking through a leader’s life story and capturing everything they’ve learned through their experiences and their careers, and looking for the patterns and themes that emerge. I build a personal brand identity and craft a narrative that weaves all of this together, and then I help clients put this into action in a way that strategically helps them achieve their life and work goals.

Ultimately. I want to help everyone be more themselves, and more importantly, believe in themselves. Because that’s the kind of working world I personally want to operate in.

Are there any books, apps, podcasts or blogs that help you do your best?

I’d be remiss not to share my own podcast project, the audio documentary I mentioned. It’s not a business podcast, but it’s a great expression of what it looks like to really dig into our past and do deep exploration of the factors that make us who we are.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lost-found-audio-documentary/id1702959358

Pricing:

• Personal brand packages start at $5k
• Power hour working session $500

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.captivatingco.com/

Image Credits

National Association of Manufacturing