Underneath The Title: When High Achievers Start Questioning the Success They Built
You did everything right. Built the career. Earned the title. Hit the number. And somewhere along the way, you stopped recognising the person doing it.
Underneath The Title is a podcast for high-achieving professionals who are starting to ask the questions they've been too busy to ask: Who am I when the role goes away? What was I actually building toward? Is this it?
Host Kevin Simcock spent 25 years leading creative work for some of the world's most recognised brands at Ogilvy. He was furloughed from a global VP role at 50, turned down the replacement offer, and chose to figure out what success actually meant to him. What he found changed everything.
Each episode goes beneath the surface of professional identity to explore what drives the decisions we make, the success we chase, and the fulfilment we keep expecting to arrive. Kevin draws on his own experience, his work with senior leaders and business owners navigating major transitions, and his framework, The Dance, which holds that your professional and personal identity were never meant to be separate.
If you're in the middle of a transition, questioning what comes next, or simply wondering why the success you've built feels quieter than you expected, this show was made for you.
New episodes bi-weekly. Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.
Kevin is also the author of Whose Ladder Is This? and an executive advisor working one-to-one with high-achievers navigating identity and transition.
Purchase Kevin Simcock's Book: Whose Ladder Is This?
Available on Amazon Kindle, paperback and hardcover HERE
Barnes & Noble here
Indigo Books here
Visit kevinsimcock.com for more information
LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-simcock/
Underneath The Title: When High Achievers Start Questioning the Success They Built
Success Doesn't Prepare You For This.
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You built the career. You hit the numbers. And then one day, you woke up and didn't quite recognize yourself anymore.
That feeling has a name. Most people never learn it.
In this episode of Underneath The Title, Kevin Simcock unpacks identity loss, one of the most common and least talked-about experiences among high-achievers who've exited a career, sold a business, or hit a major life transition.
This isn't about motivation or confidence or figuring out your next move. It's about something that runs deeper than any of those things: the story you've been telling yourself about who you are, and what happens when the role that anchored that story disappears.
Kevin explores why identity loss so often gets misread as burnout, restlessness, or a midlife crisis, and why misreading it leads people to rebuild the same thing in a slightly different setting. He walks through the specific ways it shows up, from decision paralysis and comparison spirals to the quiet grief of losing clarity about where you fit.
He also makes the case that identity loss isn't a crisis. It's information. And for the people willing to sit with that discomfort honestly, it's often the beginning of building something that actually fits.
If you've been quietly asking yourself "is this all there is?" this episode was made for you.
Purchase Kevin Simcock's Book: Whose Ladder Is This?
Available on Amazon Kindle, paperback and hardcover HERE
Barnes & Noble here
Indigo Books here
If today’s episode resonated and you’re ready to start asking your own version of that question, you can find Kevin at kevinsimcock.com.
Check out more episodes of Underneath The Title on Youtube
https://youtube.com/@kevinsimcock
Host: Kevin Simcock
LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/kevin-simcock/
