So, What Do You Do? Our Identities vs Our Careers
Your job title can make introductions easier, but it can also quietly take over your identity. In this episode, I’m digging into what happens when we tie our self-worth to corporate roles, company logos, and the status that comes with them, then suddenly realize it feels unsettling or empty.
After leaving the corporate world and starting my own solo consulting business as a fractional CMO, I ran straight into a strange reality: without the corporate infrastructure around me, my title didn’t carry the same weight or even make sense to most people. That awkward “So what do you do?” moment became a mirror, forcing a bigger question about professional identity and career reinvention. I also look at how prestige shapes perception, why certain brands spark instant interest, and how easy it is to confuse public recognition with real purpose.
I talk about the identity shock that can hit after layoffs, downsizing, or restructuring, especially for leaders who invested years in one company and wake up without the role that defined them. Finally, I discuss why this isn’t just a late-career issue; younger professionals are questioning whether climbing a corporate ladder is worth it and considering entrepreneurship, independent consulting, and building a business earlier on.
Beyond Expertise is about creating an authentic identity aligned with your values, goals, and the value you want to bring to others. If you’re ready to stop being held hostage by a title and start building a career on your terms, subscribe, share this with a friend who’s in transition, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What would you say you do if you couldn’t use your job title?
Welcome To Beyond Expertise
Eric Dickmann
Welcome to Beyond Expertise, a podcast about identity reinvention for professionals ready to explore who they are beyond their titles and careers. I'm your host, Eric Dickmann. Let's get ready to go beyond expertise welcome to today's show.
How Titles Shape Self Worth
Eric Dickmann
I really wanted to dive into the whole idea of corporate titles today and how much we base our identity on our corporate titles. I got to thinking about this a lot as I moved out of the corporate world and started my own solo consulting business as a fractional CMO. All of a sudden, all of the corporate infrastructure that surrounded me was gone, and I was simply an individual running a consulting business. And when I would go to things like a cocktail party and introduce myself to new people, oftentimes I was asked, "Well, what do you do?" And I would say, "Oh, I'm a fractional CMO." And I can tell you, nine out of 10 times I would get a deer in the headlights kind of look as a response. People simply didn't know what that was. And I thought about it, and oftentimes when they would introduce themselves, I didn't really have a good idea of what they did either. Sure, there are some professions that are somewhat self-explanatory, right? I'm a police officer. I'm a fireman. I'm a doctor. I'm a lawyer. But even within those broad titles that we all have some general familiarity with, there are specialties, right? You're a doctor of what? You're a lawyer practicing what kind of law? What do you do? Are you a paramedic? Are you a, a first responder? Are you in administration? People can have lots of different roles within even what we think about as familiar corporate identities And I think for many people, especially as they progress in their careers, this idea of your identity being so closely tied to the business, to the corporation that you work for, becomes a little unsettling and unfulfilling.
Prestige, Brands, And Social Status
Eric Dickmann
Because what we tend to do is tie our worth to our level of success that we've achieved climbing that corporate ladder, and even to a large degree, the status of the companies that we're working for. Somebody working for a small company that nobody's ever heard of oftentimes feels different about how they introduce themselves than somebody working for a top-tier company that we all know and love. Their identity is tied to the corporate, perception of whatever company they're working for. Think about the startups that are on fire as I record this today, many of the AI startups. And if you said that you had a job at OpenAI or Anthropic, people would genuinely be interested. They'd think that you were in a company that was on fire, that it must be extremely exciting being on the cutting edge of all of this technology What if you had an unglamorous job and you worked doing something in an industrial park on the outside of town that nobody had ever heard of? The same prestige doesn't follow that job because people don't understand what it is that that company does. And so as I looked at my own corporate journey, when I left the corporate world and became an independent consultant, I really had to think long and hard about what my identity was and what I wanted it to be. Being a chief marketing officer for a one-person company no longer carried the weight that it did when I worked for a large company like Oracle And so how then do I redefine who I am as a person, my identity, and my values that I wanna take to any job that I undertake? And while that sounds like it should be a fairly straightforward exercise, to this day I'm still working through the details of what that means. Because after many, many years in the corporate world, so much of what I thought mattered now has to be unwound, and I have to figure out what matters to me today. And as I've talked with so many people on their journeys, many people I find are in a similar moment, where they've worked for many years climbing that corporate ladder, where they've achieved by all external measures a degree of success, yet something inside feels deeply unfulfilled, that their identities are held hostage in a way to their corporate titles.
Layoffs And The Identity Vacuum
Eric Dickmann
And I think this is especially true of people who are suddenly laid off from a job, who have invested years, sometimes decades, with a single company, all of a sudden finding themselves without a job and the identity that went with that job. So now who are they in the marketplace? Who are they as they attempt to sort of reestablish themselves? And sometimes the path for them is to look for a very similar job at another company, and that's tough, right? That's very tough going out into the job market, especially as a senior leader and trying to find that next job. Some take the path of going independent and wanting to build a business of their own, and that's a, a challenge all of its own. How do I take the expertise that I've built and turn it into something that can provide not only for me, but for my family?
Building An Authentic Work Identity
Eric Dickmann
And that's really what this show is about. It's how do we recreate an identity that is more authentic to who we are as human beings, that's better aligned with our own personal values, that's better aligned with our goals and objectives about what we're trying to create in life, the value that we're trying to bring to others through the work that we do. Not the work that our company is doing, not the values of the CEO or the board members that are controlling our firm, but what we want to do as individuals And so the stories on this podcast are focused on that. They're focused on people who have taken the time to reevaluate their own lives and figure out what they wanna do beyond the expertise that they've built as a professional. That doesn't mean necessarily that they're walking away from what they did to do something completely different, but in many cases it means that they're applying their expertise in a different way than they did before, that they're applying that in- expertise independently as opposed to under the guise of corporate overlords who dictate the way you bring your expertise to market. And it's fascinating to hear the stories, and I hope you'll find them interesting to listen to as much as I enjoy interviewing the professionals on this podcast. And I also wanna add one other thing. This is not just for people late in their careers. I think a lot of people late in their careers because of layoffs and downsizing and restructuring and... you pick the name of the term. I think a lot of people are forced into this evaluation at a certain point later in their career. But I talk to a lot of younger people too who are facing this as well, and they look at the corporate environment that exists today and they say, "I don't know that I want to invest the best years of my life climbing a corporate ladder when I'm not exactly sure what's gonna be at the top of that ladder, that maybe I want to start out very early in my career doing something independently. I wanna build my own business. I wanna take control of my own career rather than letting external factors decide what my career is going to be." And so these are their stories too. And what I wanna do is not only share people's stories, but the practical steps that they took to transform their lives and their careers into something meaningful. Whether it's tips and tricks on how to start a business or become a certain kind of person, or whether it's the tools that they're using or the resources that they have available, I wanna share that with others so that people who feel stuck, that don't know what their identity is in this next phase of life, can get a little bit of a head start to say, "Hey, this person has some good ideas on how I can apply this in my own life and move into the next phase of my own personal journey." So I really hope you'll join me for this podcast.
Where To Find Resources
Eric Dickmann
Thank you so much for being a listener of this show, and I hope you'll enjoy the episodes to come Thanks for listening to Beyond Expertise. You can find show notes, resources, and links mentioned during this episode at podcast.ericdickman.com. If this conversation resonated with you, I hope you'll join me again next time as we continue exploring what it means to reinvent ourselves beyond our careers, titles, and expertise.
