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

The Legal Profession’s Top Ghostwriter | 25M + views on LinkedIn | Creative Director at CONTENDER | Co-Founder of UNrationed | Author of In the Creative Arena

If you're an attorney, the people you want to talk to—potential clients, referral sources, and talent—are all on this platform. 

And while your traditional marketing channels are intensely competitive, the feeds of the people you want to reach on LinkedIn are ripe for the picking. 

We're still early in the content creation game on this platform, which has more than a billion users worldwide and ~200 million in the United States. 

Very few attorneys or law firms have even made an effort to stand out.

CONTENDER helps attorneys produce LinkedIn content that resonates with the people you want to reach, so they can Know, Like, and Trust you.


ARE YOU READY TO...

- Become a trusted AUTHORITY in your market?
- Grow your audience and dramatically increase your reach on LinkedIn? 
- Build a recognized PERSONAL BRAND?

🟦 GHOSTWRITING SERVICES 
- Our done-for-you LinkedIn content produces results for growing your presence and your firm. 

🟦 LINKED LAWYER BOOTCAMP
- I’ve developed the premier training program for lawyers looking to level up on LinkedIn. 

About Me 

I’m a former lawyer and current serial entrepreneur based in a forest north of Toronto, where I live with my wife and 2 little monsters. 

I’m the author of In The Creative Arena: Why Creativity Is Key To Building Your Future.

I’m also a co-founder of: 
CONTENDER (www.contenderllc.com)
Unrationed (www.unrationed.com)

Anthony Albrecht

There's 1 skill I think every single one us needs to be working on in 2026.

Storytelling. 

Writing is still important. 
So is problem solving. 
And critical thinking. 
And selling. 

But regardless of what stage you're at in your career or what you're trying to accomplish, you need to be able to connect with folks on a human level. 

Stories have been the way we've done that for a very long time. 

And even though the world has changed very quickly, our human wiring really hasn't. 

We still love a good story. 

I've been telling stories for a living for 3 years now. 
And I've still got so much to learn. 

That's why I signed on to compete at Speaker Slam last month. I wanted to try telling stories in a new way. 

So I tried telling a story from a stage. 
With a 5-minute timer rolling.
And an audience. 

This is an excerpt from that story. 

I'm interested in your take. 

Is storytelling an essential skill in 2026? 
Or more a nice-to-have than a must-have? 



----
I'm running my next LinkedIn Foundations Workshop next Friday. 
Storytelling is indeed a topic we'll touch on. 
https://lnkd.in/eKD9dcyn

undefined undefined

“The Yoda of LinkedIn” for Lawyers | Helping you go from invisible to unforgettable out here.

Did you know you can make 6 figures as a LinkedIn ghostwriter? 

What a world. 

Precisely 1 year before I started LinkedIn ghostwriting for a living, this wouldn't have occurred to me as a way to make money. 

Now? 

We're hiring our 4th ghostwriter here at CONTENDER. 

Learn more about the opp here. 
https://lnkd.in/gZivvJDT

Must you be a lawyer to be a Legal ghostwriter here? 
So far, yes. But I'm open to having my mind changed on that. 

Must you already be killing it on LinkedIn? 
No, though showing me that you're trying out here helps. 

Is this a full-time gig? 
Yes, though we're open to starting out part-time to check the fit. 

Can you really make 6 figures here? 
That's an affirmative. 

If you're intrigued, have a look at the job posting. Feel free to DM me with questions. 

Onward.

Tony Albrecht

In 2021, Sawil and I packed up our 2-year-old son, our baby daughter, and everything we could fit in the Subaru—

And we moved to Canada. 

I was leaving:
- my career (decided to move instead of making partner) 
- my family (parents and sisters still live in STL)
- the house we had built 2 years earlier
- my hometown 
- my country. 

We were headed toward:
- a house on 18 acres we’d bought sight unseen 
- an area where we knew nobody 
- a rural lifestyle (very different than the everything-delivered-in-1-day convenience of living in a city) 
- an uncertain professional future (if I wasn’t going to be a law firm partner in the US, what was I going to be?)
- a blank canvas of a future. 

That month we made the move was one of the most stressful of my life. And in retrospect, there are a couple aspects I'd tweak. 

But overall, the move has been another data point backing up the truth of Bradbury’s philosophy—

We must continually be jumping off cliffs and growing wings on the way down. 

We had an idea of the life we wanted to begin building for our children and for ourselves. 

We leapt. 

And 5 years later, we love where we're at. 

Our kids love Great Moose Academy, the forest school they go to. 

Sawil has started a second career as a therapist, complete with a full slate of clients. 

And I've spent the last 3 years building this thing we call CONTENDER. 

It feels like our wings are still coming in. 😬
But we haven’t hit the ground yet. 🤞🏻

I continue to believe that the life we want often waits for us on the other side of a leap that freaks us out. 

Right? ;-)

I know it's a goofy thing to say...
But LinkedIn changed my life. 

I ignored the platform through my 12 years as a practicing attorney. 

It was only after I left the practice in late 2021 that I started paying more attention to the platform. 

Watching what folks like Darren McKee and Robb Gilbear were doing, I realized LinkedIn wasn't what I thought it was...

The most boring social media network on the planet. 
The world's biggest online bulletin board. 
The place to stash my digital resume. 

I started to see LinkedIn as a place to: 
• express myself genuinely 
• meet interesting people 
• create opportunities. 

I didn't have my own business then. That came later. 

What set me on that trajectory was recognizing that I'd learned LinkedIn the wrong way. 

And if I approached this platform differently, I could get different results. 

LinkedIn empowered me to build CONTENDER, a business that employs 6 full-time people. 
We're going to break 7 figures in revenue this year. 
And we're just getting warmed up. 

I told the fuller story of how LinkedIn changed my life (and it's potential to change yours) in the first video on my new YouTube channel. 
https://lnkd.in/gFyRQ6a3

If you'd be willing to subscribe to my channel on how to magnetize your LinkedIn presence, I'm in your debt. 
Bonus points for leaving a comment. ;-) 

Has LinkedIn changed your life (yet)?

There has never been a better time to start posting on LinkedIn than right now. 

If that strikes you as the self-serving talk of a guy who sells LinkedIn stuff, fair enough. 

But I truly believe that. 
Here’s why. 

People love lamenting:
• How reach has dropped. 
• How terrible the algorithm is.
• How hard it is to get engagement. 

They’re almost always saying some version of—

My posts are not getting enough attention. 

That’s understandable. Indeed, organic reach appears down in a ton of circumstances. 

But organic reach is not actually the point. 

Nobody pays the rent with organic reach. 
Nobody buys a truck with likes and comments. 
Nobody covers their kids’ tuition with impressions. 

We all want Linky to shower us with organic reach. 
But reach is not the real goal. 

What we’re really after out here…

Is opportunities. 

New clients. 
The next hire. 
More customers. 
The next job offer.
More awareness that you’re the go-to expert in your domain and market. 

If I offered you 1 million impressions or 1 new client, which are you taking? 

I’m taking the client every time. 

And I don’t actually NEED more impressions to land more clients. 

What I can use is MORE people starting to pay attention to LinkedIn for the fist time. 

The more people who do that, the harder it might be to get organic reach. 

But that’s fine. Because it also means there are more people plugged into the network. 

Each of those people is another source of potential opportunities. 

This is why I’m not worried about the drop in reach. 
It’s corresponding with the LinkedIn network getting stronger. 

And if you’re consistently depositing your energy into this network, you’re building up your social capital here. 

That social capital has never been more valuable than it is today. 
And I’ll bet it all that social capital here will be more valuable a year from now than it is today.

That’s why I’ve never been as bullish on LinkedIn as I am right now. 

How about you? 



------
I've got 12 spots left for my LinkedIn Foundations Workshop next Friday, Feb 27th. 

You can find the info here: 
https://lnkd.in/eKD9dcyn

A new client has seen 128,485 impressions from her first 4 posts. My favorite part about this—

I’ve had very little to do with her fast start. 

Over the last 6 months, I've spent a lot more of my time coaching people on LinkedIn. Both clients and my team. 

And nobody has gotten more of that coaching attention than Jess Sargus. 

When Jess joined us in September, she had never written a post for somebody else. 

Our corest of core values at CONTENDER is—

We are all players. 

Everybody here wants the ball.
Everybody wants to make good things happen when we get the ball. 

And we understand that the key to delivering when we get the ball is to prepare. 

Jess is a consummate player. 

Humble. Capable. Driven. 

In less than 6 months, she has gone from 
• Beginner to 
• Very good at what she does. 

It's been awesome to see. 

And for this client specifically, Jess squared these posts up well by: 
• listening to our client sharing stories and opinions she really cares about; 
• shaping them into aerodynamic posts; and 
• crafting detailed, evocative hooks. 

If you're working on developing your skills out here as a writer, creator, and digital networker—

Focus on getting reps.
The results will take care of themselves. 


---------
10 of the 25 spots still available for my LinkedIn Foundations Workshop this Friday. 

If you're interested in leveling up out here:
https://lnkd.in/eKD9dcyn

taplio

The Battle

Matt Doan

Anthony Albrecht

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

Performance ScoreMatt Doan's LinkedIn Performance

Performance ScoreAnthony Albrecht's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

taplio

The Battle

Matt Doan

Anthony Albrecht

Followers

Posts

Engagements

Likes

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

Performance ScoreAnthony Albrecht's LinkedIn Performance

Ready to grow your LinkedIn presence?

Performance ScoreMatt Doan's LinkedIn Performance