145. Your Job Title Is Not Your Identity with Katy Culver

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
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**Kendall Berg** (1:26)
It's something that I see all the time when I work with high performers, and I'm sure you do too, that they think, well, I'm the type of person who has no boundaries. I'm the type of person who works super long hours. I'm the type of person who fixes everybody else's issues.
That identity, to your point, you can't cling to if you're trying to step into leadership. Even if you want to stay within the corporate world and you just want to be a leader, you want to be a strategist, you want to lead a large team, you can't cling to that person who does all these things and still be successful, especially not without burning out. So I love this concept of like, I'm the type of person who, because it is, we tell ourselves bad things using that same language all the time. I'm the type of person who has no boundaries, for example.

**Katy Culver** (2:16)
Yeah, you bring up a really good point where the importance of language here. Because a lot of what people will also say is, I'm just an anxious person.
I'm always anxious, or I'm always stressed, or I always do this. I never do that. And we have to be careful not to talk in these extremes. Your words are your wand. What you say about yourself becomes real.

**Kendall Berg** (2:40)
Corporate life is a game, but no one hands you the road book. Here on Secrets of the Career Game, we break down the unspoken norms and behind the scenes dynamics shaping your career day. I'm Kendall Berg, that career coach, and I guide professionals to grow, advance, and live with clarity.
Each week, we explore the tools, habits, and conversations that build confidence, presence, and long-term momentum. Welcome back to today's fabulous episode. We have a returner to the podcast, Katy Culver, who is a wonderful friend of mine and influence in the space. She specializes as an identity expander. So she is a business mentor. She's a speaker, and she's really helping women build their living legacy. So Katy, thank you so much for coming on the pod.

**Katy Culver** (3:28)
Thank you so much, Kendall. This is so fun.

**Kendall Berg** (3:30)
So why don't you give people who do not stock you like I do, a little bit of a background on you had a really successful corporate career. You transitioned out of that into this now, like identity recoding. I'd love for you to get listeners up to speed on who you are and why they should look forward to our chat today.

**Katy Culver** (3:47)
Okay. Amazing. So let's see. I think my story mostly begins back in 2020
Classic COVID. I was like, this is not it anymore. I got to exactly where I wanted to get to in the consulting firm that I worked at. It was like my first job out of college. I thought, okay, great. I'll just work really hard. I'll get promoted and then maybe one day I'll manage people. And like that was the extent of my career vision for a while. And I just kind of hit a point where I was like, is this really all there is? I want, you know, it didn't really feel how I thought it would feel. So I asked myself this really big and important question, which I think everybody should ask themselves, which is, what would I do if I was unafraid to fail?
And I went to a coffee shop every single weekend, and I reflected on my career, and I was kind of reading through this career breakthrough book. And I knew that I wanted to work for myself one day, but I was very, very far from doing that. I was extremely risk averse, extremely scared and unclear on how to, like really not clear on my own value.