Executive Coach ᐧ Follow me for leadership and career advice | Marketing Exec and Consultant ᐧ Founder @ Solle Solutions

Global Marketing & Growth Leader | Author of Career Break Compass  | Marketing Consultant | Helping Companies & Leaders Grow Sustainably

With 20 years of experience leading marketing and digital transformations, I’ve scaled multi-billion-dollar businesses, driven double-digit revenue growth, and built high-performing teams across Fortune 500, private equity, and high-growth companies.

In addition to my corporate leadership roles, I’m the Founder of Solle Solutions, where I've provided fractional CMO and marketing advisory services to companies seeking sustainable growth. I’m also the author of Career Break Compass, a guide to navigating resilience and intentional career transitions.

Whether partnering with executive teams to accelerate EBITDA growth, or helping individuals and organizations embrace resilience, my work focuses on aligning strategy, technology, and people to achieve sustainable success. Let’s connect if you’re seeking marketing leadership, growth consulting, or insights on building resilient careers and organizations.

Laura Nguyen

Graduate corporate life for entrepreneurial freedom — without jeopardizing your income or family 💚 | Pod: UncageYourself.FM 🎧

Directors. VPs. Executives.
Ready to go Corporate → Founder in ONE Year?

This is the smart path out — without blowing up your life.

We help corporate veterans turn their employer into an investor, compress their job by 50%, and launch a 1-of-1 premium business.

Corporate becomes a short-term asset — not a lifelong trap.

The system is called Corporate Graduation™.
And it works.

You’ve built a strong corporate life. But you’re likely facing 2+ of these:

1) Your time isn’t yours.
2) Work consumes everything.
3) Family & health get leftovers.
4) You’re just going through motions.
5) You know you’re meant for more — but have no idea what.

It’s costing you — emotionally, physically, financially.
You feel stuck. Fading.

That was me.
Divorced. Burnt out.
Later — remarried, rebuilt, and free.

I made my employer my investor.
Cut hours in half.
Launched a business around my genius.
Graduated corporate life — forever.

Now I help others do the same.

Corporate Graduation™ is the system.
165+ have used it to:

✅ Compress their job into 20 hours/week
✅ Exit with runway, not regret
✅ Build a premium service business that reflects who they are
✅ Create leverage through proprietary IP, not more hours

This is how you build your founder future — without burning bridges.

This isn’t about dabbling.
It’s about reclaiming your life.
For your family. Your future self. Those you’re meant to serve.

No “passive income” BS.
Just active transformation — with revenue, clarity, and agency.

Ready to graduate?

👉 DM me “GRADUATE.”

Matt Doan

Corporate life taught me to follow the rules.

Founder life taught me this:

Create. Communicate.

That's it.

One of my coaches drilled this into me: your greatest job as a founder is to create the vision and communicate it relentlessly.

I just spent two days holed up in my studio working on Corporate Graduation marketing.

Exhausted. Back hurts. Mind hurts. Want to cry, need coffee and a giant sandwich.

But this is the work.

Creating a category out of nothing. Designing a future that doesn't exist yet. Building the language that shows people what's possible.

I live and breathe this transformation. I know it saves lives.

People desperately need the ability to move from corporate past to founder future.

And if I don't communicate it clearly, they'll stay stuck.

So every now and then you go dark.
You hole up.
You get messy.

Because messy is where breakthroughs happen.

Marketing isn't a side task for founders.

It's the job.

You create the vision. The transformation. The system.

Then you communicate it. Over and over. Until it implants in their minds.

Not when you feel inspired.

When people need to hear it.

Create. Communicate.

That's what founders do.

---

Access deep-dive Corporate Graduation strategies, stories, and tactics: https://lnkd.in/eDEkDVb2

AI can hand you a map.

But it won't climb your mountain.

You can get endless strategies in seconds now. Frameworks. Templates. Checklists.

But here's the hard truth:
Information isn't transformation.

When you're staring down a life change as big as graduating corporate life, leaving a "safe" paycheck for your own economy, you don't just need answers.

You need remarkable courage to act on them.

And that's where AI stops.

It won't sit with you through the fear.
It won't read the doubt in your eyes.
It won't push you past the moment you want to quit.
It won't connect you to people on the same journey.

Because your wiring is 100% human.

You crave deep, real connection. You need a room with energy. You need to feel seen, heard, and understood by people walking the same path.

That's why inside Corporate Graduation, we use AI as a tool to accelerate you. World-class frameworks, systems, and clarity to help you move faster than ever.

But our real focus? Our specialty?

It's what AI can't touch:

1) Human connection that makes you feel less alone
2) Belief and momentum that pulls you forward
3) Coaching that cuts through your blind spots
4) Community that won't let you play safe

That's the only way to navigate the messy, terrifying, wildly rewarding process of leaving corporate for good and building a life of meaning, money, and freedom.

AI can provide endless routes.

But only you can reach the summit.

Corporate secretly became my secondary environment.

I built my new "primary" in the shadows.

I was still showing up to work. Still delivering. Still getting promoted.

But everything had changed.

I joined a $10K entrepreneurial mastermind. I was the only corporate guy in the room. Everyone else was building businesses, scaling impact, living as founders.

I started messy: 
...Learning copywriting
...Funnel building
...Coaching skills
...How to build a founder-grade business from zero

I immersed myself in books, mentors, and peers who were living the future I was starving for.

And for the first time in my entire life, I felt alive.

Not in school, where everything was pre-programmed and standardized.

Not in corporate, where I was climbing someone else's mountain.

This was different.

I'd never been in an environment that felt authentically designed for me. Where I was being called and activated into a new future. Where I belonged.

Here's what I learned:

1) Environment does the work you can't do alone.

You can't think your way into a new identity. You need to be surrounded by people who already embody it. The right environment pulls you forward faster than willpower, discipline, or strategy ever could.

2) Choosing a new tribe is an act of Decoupling.

When I reprioritized who I spent time with, who I learned from, who I wanted to become like, corporate's grip on me loosened. I wasn't fighting to leave anymore. I was being pulled toward something I actually wanted.

3) No amount of information will activate you like this.

I could've read a thousand books. Taken a hundred courses solo. Studied every framework. But being IN the room with founders? Hearing their struggles, seeing their wins, feeling the energy of people carving their own path? That's what flipped the switch.

---

At any given moment over the last 10 years, I can point to multiple mentors or programs that keep me challenged, activated, pushed, inspired, and growing new skill sets and mindsets.

(This is vital.)

And I can point to that as the single most important factor in my Corporate Graduation.

Environment isn't everything.

It's the only thing.

The Decoupling starts when you choose where you belong next.

---

PS - Choosing a new environment was step one. Learning how to make corporate optional while still employed was step two. 

I break down the full framework in this new training: go.corporategraduation.com

My Double Life in Corporate

Sr. Director at a multi-billion dollar company.
Done with his workday by 10 AM.
Meet Travis.

"Hangin' at a coffee shop.
Done with my workday."

Just a few weeks before, this was his reality:

✘ 12-hour days
✘ Holed up in his office, grinding
✘ Reacting to nonstop pings from global teams

In just days, Travis got his life back.

He faced his stories and fears:

Took a raw look at time and energy.
Did the audit + engineering work.
Took sweeping control of his job.

Now? He's flipping the script:

✓ Employer = investor
✓ Job = short-term asset
✓ Even improving his reputation

This isn't "quiet quitting."
This is being an adult.
Choosing Real Work. Declining Fake Work.

Corporate today is a performative nightmare.

But if you strip it to essentials, and have the guts to defend that line, you win.

Big time.

It helps everything and everyone in your life:

Your happiness.
Your health.
Your family.
Your future.

Travis is just beginning his Corporate Graduation.
But already, the foundation is settling nicely.

First SPACE: reclaiming time, energy, and attention.

Next SELF: forging a bold, "founder" identity. Someone who relishes challenges, faces fears, and pushes through, knowing the payoff is worth it.

Then SYSTEM: with the foundations in place, building a uniquely valuable business that energizes him and creates a new long-term pathway.

From there, corporate becomes optional.

Notice the framework. The sequence.
There's more underneath — it's the flow that matters. 

No rage quitting.
No emotional reactions.
Just calm, decisive moves.

This is how you build a future you haven't even let yourself dream of yet.

And you should've seen Travis when he shared this with our client group — pride, relief, possibility in his eyes.

This is a tipping point for him.

When bold little moves compound.
And suddenly explode into massive change.

---

PS: That's why I built the Corporate Compression™ GPT.

It's the exact audit and re-engineering process my Director, VP, and Executive clients use to smartly compress their workday by 50%+ while maintaining their reputation and building the space needed for their Founder future.

DM me "COMPRESSION" if you want access.

Wanna know the most dangerous word after "I quit"?

It's "consultant."

Your whole career has been defined by labels.

Analyst. Manager. Director. VP. SVP.

Each one felt like progress.
Each one was just a different-sized box.
Then you start thinking about what's next.

And what happens?

You reach for another label.

"I'll be a consultant."
"I'll be a coach."
"I'll go fractional."

You've traded one box for another. Except this one doesn't come with benefits, a team, or a paycheck.

Here's what I've seen over and over:

People leave corporate, call themselves entrepreneurs, and end up trading time for money in a lonelier, less stable version of what they left.

I call this corporate replication.

You repackage everything you know under your own name and wonder why it feels exactly like what you left.

This is not the path I advocate.
The path I advocate is that of a founder.
A founder doesn't sell time for money. Ever.

What you bring to the market is valued by outcomes, not hours.

A founder builds a machine. A system that delivers remarkable outcomes for those who desperately need it.

That machine runs on three things:

1) Vision
A new future that needs to exist. A category you see because your experience gave you eyes others don't have.

2) Voice
You communicate that future with conviction. The window won't stay open forever.

3) Velocity
You move quickly. You attract people before the moment passes.

The real work? Extracting your IP.

You pull out the frameworks living inside your head. The patterns you've been running on for twenty years but never named.

You visualize them. Test them. Trademark them. Speak about them until people associate you with this category.

Right now, my clients are building categories like:

• Career Free Agency
• FinLaw Orchestration
• Motherhood By Design

None of them are billing hourly.

They're building machines.

This is the System pillar of Corporate Graduation.

Space gave you the room.
Self gave you the identity.
System is where you build the machine.

---

Give me your take - how does that land with you?

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The Battle

Laura Nguyen

Matt Doan

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