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

You make great money... and you're suffocating.



I coach Directors, VPs, and Executives through Corporate Graduation®: the transition from Corporate Dependent to Corporate Optional — in one year.



Whether you're still inside corporate or recently out, if you've spent 15-25 years building career capital, you're probably running some version of this:



1) Sunday nights feel heavier than they should.

2) You keep starting things and stopping.

3) Family and health get whatever's left.

4) You're going through the motions and no one can tell.

5) You've been doing the math in your head for months.



That was me.

Divorced. Burnt out. 

Going dark inside a career everyone envied.



So I got to work:



I made my employer my investor.

Compressed the job.

Built a founder-grade business.

Graduated corporate for good.



171+ Directors, VPs, and Executives have done the same.

The methodology: Space → Self → System.



1) SPACE: compresses corporate and clears the conditions.

2) SELF: recodes the identity underneath.

3) SYSTEM: deploys your career capital into a founder-grade business.



Skip a step, and you replicate the cage with a different name on the door.



What we do together:



✅ Compress your corporate role to 20 hours/week

✅ Package your career capital into proprietary IP

✅ Build a founder-grade business around who you are

✅ Install founder identity, not someday — now

✅ Exit with runway, not regret



Ex-BCG. 4x dad.



This is the work I was built for.



START HERE:

go.corporategraduation.com

Matt Doan

1 week of founder growth = 5 years of corporate growth.

Here's what just happened for me:

(Save this)

Last week, New Media Summit in Austin with 500+ builders. This week, a 3-day intensive mastermind with some of the most badass founders around the world.

Back to back. Intense. I'm drained.

→ In corporate, growth is slow. Incremental. Safe.
→ Same room, same conversations, same container.
→ You don't notice it b/c environment never changes.

One week in the right rooms reoriented how I think, build, and move. That compression becomes normal when you design your life around it.

If you're still inside corporate making great money but feeling the pull toward something more, these are the things nobody tells you about the other side.

5 things worth sitting with:

---

1) Your TOP job as a founder is content.

Not sales calls. Not funnels. Content.

Every hour on a great YouTube video, podcast, or Substack essay pays you back for months (or years). Builds trust with people you'll never meet... until they're ready to buy. 

100X ROI. Nothing in corporate compounds like this.


2) Nobody cares about you. Just their transformation.

I walked the booths at the summit. Companies winning had names like selfpublishing.com, The Scalable Company, and GrowLetter. Crystal clear outcomes. Zero "I help X do Y" language.

That's consultant energy. One-man band.

Category design means framing, naming, and claiming your own space. Shine the light on the category, not yourself (see Category Pirates).


3) Sales is hard when marketing is weak.
Marketing is weak when positioning sucks.

Every founder I met who struggled with sales had the same root cause two levels up.

Vague, safe, and generic positioning.

When positioning is sharp, marketing writes itself. When marketing works (which should be 80% of your days), sales becomes enrollment, not a pitch.


4) People don't haggle anymore. They binge and decide.

They want to experience your thinking through long-form content. YouTube, podcast, Substack. Non-negotiables, no matter your business type.

Buying decisions happen before anyone books a call.


5) When you see a window, throw a brick through it.

(Because windows close.)

Go pro. Not "I'll start when I'm ready."

The corporate →  founder shift means someone saw an opening and went all in. They know their audience intimately. They produce at volume. They treat content like a pro athlete treats training.

My positioning with Corporate Graduation® is locked down (legally, even). Category claimed. Now it's building a trust-building marketing machine — YouTube at the core, with podcast and Substack, all feeding one engine.

I'm going pro in marketing.

---

If you're reading this from inside corporate, leaning toward something more, you're not going to figure it out in your current room. Or at your current pace.

Change the room.
Build the machine.
Go pro.

PS - This is the message you needed to hear.

Corporate Graduation® Founder | Directors & VPs → Founder in ONE Year | 173 Graduates | Ex-BCG | go.corporategraduation.com

Dennis Geelen

Business Coach | Keynote Speaker | Author of The Happy Accidents newsletter and The Accidental Solopreneur book

I’ve spent most of my career helping people navigate change.

Sometimes that meant working with leadership teams and organizations.
Sometimes it meant coaching solopreneurs who were building something new after an unexpected turn.
And more recently, it’s meant telling true stories that remind us how unpredictable, strange, and meaningful real life can be.

At the core of everything I do is one idea:
people don’t change because of frameworks alone, they change because of perspective.

What I Do

I’m a speaker, author, and consultant who helps individuals and organizations make sense of uncertainty, transition, and unexpected opportunity.

My work focuses on:
 • Leadership and change
 • Human-centered decision making
 • Serendipity, timing, and “happy accidents”
 • Stories that challenge neat narratives about success and control

I’m currently building The Uncanny, a storytelling project exploring true stories that sound impossible but actually happened.

Who I Work With
 • Event organizers looking for keynote talks that are thoughtful, grounded, and story-driven
 • Organizations and nonprofits navigating change, leadership transitions, or cultural shifts
 • Individuals who want practical clarity through focused, one-hour coaching conversations

(I’m no longer actively promoting large programs or long-term coaching, but I still take on select conversations and workshops when there’s a strong fit.)

What I’ve Created
 • Author of The Zero In Formula and The Accidental Solopreneur
 • Host and creator of story-driven newsletters, podcasts, and short-form video content
 • Speaker on topics including change, leadership, serendipity, and starting before you feel ready

Want to Connect?

If you’re reaching out about:
 • Speaking engagements
 • A focused workshop or session
 • A thoughtful one-on-one coaching conversation

Feel free to DM me.

And if you’re someone who loves true stories that make you pause and say, “That can’t be real”…
you’ll probably enjoy what I’m building next.

Founder

Coaching and mentoring to help you start and scale your one-person business.

"Oh, I was a bit rude to the cashier today but it was because I had a terrible morning and was late for a meeting, I'm not normally like that."

2 days later... 

"I can't believe how rude that person was to the waiter in the restaurant today."

We live in 2 different moral systems.

Speaker | Author | Consultant - Guiding organizations through leadership transitions and complexity

Most leadership training gets this backwards.

We teach people how to manage others…
before they know how to manage themselves.

And then we wonder why teams struggle.

There’re some uncomfortable truths we don’t like to acknowledge when it comes to leadership: 

- If you can’t manage your own reactions,
you can’t manage conflict.

- If you don’t understand your own personality, you’ll misread everyone else’s.

- If you don’t take responsibility for your results, you’ll blame your team.

- If you can’t prioritize your own time,
you’ll create chaos for everyone around you.

Contrary to what we like to think, leadership doesn’t start with strategy. 

It starts with self-awareness.

In my 12-week leadership coaching program through Zero In, the first four weeks are entirely about leading yourself.

It’s the foundation for everything that comes afterwards (where we then focus on leading individuals and then leading teams).

In those first four weeks, we dig into personality, stress triggers,
how others actually experience you,
how you respond under pressure,
and how you prioritize what matters.

Because once you can lead yourself…
leading others becomes exponentially easier.

If you’re serious about becoming the kind of leader people actually want to follow,
start there.

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Some of the most damaging leaders I’ve seen weren’t incompetent.

They were unregulated.

Don’t get me wrong, they were smart,  strategic, and experienced.

But they couldn’t manage themselves.

They couldn’t control their reactions in tense moments.

They took feedback personally.

They blamed circumstances when results slipped.

They said “yes” to everything and then created chaos trying to deliver.

And their teams paid the price.

Leadership isn’t just about vision or communication.

It’s about emotional control.
Self-awareness.
Responsibility.
Discipline with your time and energy.

If you can’t lead your own habits, emotions, and priorities, you end up outsourcing the consequences to everyone around you.

And that’s when trust erodes.

Have you ever worked for a leader who struggled to lead themselves?

What did that look like and how did it affect the team?

Is it your goals?
Is it your habits?
Is it your purpose?

Or is it actually none of those things?

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The Battle

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Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Matt Doan's LinkedIn Performance

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