For Directors, VPs, and Executives with 20 years of career capital, and no plan for it.
You've wanted out of corporate for years. There's one reason you haven't moved.
You've been running this in your head, alone. In 75 minutes, we analyze the move against your real situation. You leave decided on Corporate Path or Founder Path. And you mean it.
Save my seatRegistering takes about 20 seconds.
Quick note from Matt on what happens in the room
The middle you're stuck in
Your heart says build.
Your head says stay.
- To build something that's yours
- To own the upside for once
- To put 20 years to work for you
- You can't risk the mortgage
- You'll never earn this again
- Everyone will see you fail
Nothing moves until you see it clearly and decide all the way.
The crux
Knowing ≠ Deciding
You’ve known you wanted out of corporate for years. That’s not the same as having decided.
To decide is to cut off alternatives.
A decision leaves a paper trail.
If you can’t point to it, you haven’t decided yet. That’s why this room exists.
The decision at hand
Two paths.
Pick one on purpose.
Nobody chooses the Corporate Path. You default onto it, and the default holds until something breaks it. The Founder Path has to be chosen on purpose.
And about the cliff: nobody schedules it, but it comes for everyone.
Either you stop wanting it, or they stop wanting you. The reorg, the new boss, the morning you can't make yourself care. It ends either way. The only question is whether you make the decision or it gets made for you.
That's what we analyze and decide together.
Let's define it
A Founder isn't a coach. Or a consultant. Or a fractional exec.
Those all trade time for money. Another version of the job, one more commodity competing on the same generic promises.
A Founder owns an idea and turns it into IP: the asset that works without you. Then product. That's the Founder Path.
Rethinking risk
A new understanding of risk.
You've only ever measured half of it.
The risk of leaving
- The income stops.
- The idea might not work.
- People will have opinions.
- You might have to go back.
The risk of staying
- The income stops anyway, on their schedule.
- Your gold is worth less every year it sits.
- The cliff arrives without a date on it.
- You find out at 58 instead of 48.
Who's in the room
Three people with the same past.
Directors, VPs, and Executives. You don't need a plan. You need to be tired of not knowing.
Still Inside Corporate
Comp is good, nothing is technically wrong, and you've run the same loop in your head for years without moving an inch.
Recently Out
A restructure, a package, or a decision you finally made. The title is gone and the question of what you call yourself now is sitting right there.
Out, and It's Slow
You left 6 or 12 months ago and you've been building. It's slower than anyone told you, and corporate is still the only thing you know how to price.
The common thread: corporate is your entire career history. It's the only environment you've ever built inside, and every instinct you have about risk was installed there.
Why it never gets decided
100 small problems. There's only one big one.
Every piece feels like the whole thing. So you look at the pile, feel the weight of it, and put it back down. Again.
Which future do I want: Corporate Path or Founder Path?
Answer that with clear eyes and every item on the left turns into a task with an owner and a date. Leave it unanswered and they stay a pile, forever.
Why this never resolves on its own
You've built new futures for organizations.
Never your own.
And it doesn't come clear by thinking harder. The pieces stay in your head instead of on a page, and the two loudest voices around you are shouting opposite things.
Reckless when you have a mortgage.
Costs you a decade if it's wrong.
What changes it is 75 minutes with someone who has taken 170+ Directors and VPs all the way through the transition, and an instrument built for this exact decision. You can read about this decision anywhere. You can't make it anywhere.
What happens
75 minutes.
Three moves.
Working session. You'll be building on your own situation for most of it.
Empty your mind
Every piece that's actually in the way, out of your head and onto one page.
Price both paths
Real numbers on both futures. What staying pays, what it quietly costs, and what 20 years is worth outside the building.
Run the Index
You feed your own situation into the Graduation Index™ and see, in writing, exactly where you land.
The instrument you run live
The Graduation Index™
Every assessment out there scores your personality. This one reads your situation. You load your real context into it in the room, and it returns an analysis built on your life, not on a template. It exists nowhere else, and it runs nowhere but here.
One person's read: yours will look different.
What you walk away with
A decision you can defend.
Your Graduation Index™ is the document that carries it. Where you sit between the Corporate Path and the Founder Path, the dimensions behind it, and the specific pieces that would move you. Yours by the end of the session.
Your Graduation Index™
Your position between the two paths, the dimensions behind it, and what would have to change to move you.
Custom to you. Yours by the end of the session.
Before you register
This room does one thing.
It gives you a clear-eyed read on your situation and which path is right for you. Once the path is chosen the specifics start to unfold fast. Until it's chosen, there is no other work worth doing.
You want your 20 years turned into IP you own rather than experience you rent out.
You have a point of view you've never gotten to express inside somebody else's company.
You want to build something that keeps earning when you're not in the room.
You want help landing your next corporate role. Good thing to want, not what we do.
You're shopping a franchise, a boring business, or a real estate portfolio. Those are vehicles, and this sits upstream of the vehicle.
You want a business idea handed to you. The idea comes after the path, not before it.
The ones who stopped wondering
170+ Directors and VPs have made this decision on purpose.
They followed through. Some left. Some stayed, deliberately, with a date on it. Both changed everything.
"I never questioned the default path until I stepped into a room of people who had. That's when I stopped asking for permission and started making moves."
"There are limitations within the corporate construct. And I would prefer to work without limitations."
"After 30 years, I just resigned from corporate life. This gave me the perspective to treat it as a natural graduation."
FAQs
Frequently asked questions.
Why is the focus solely on "Founder" for entrepreneurship?
Because a Founder creates net new value in the world through IP and products. A franchise or a rental portfolio is somebody else's idea running on your capital. Consulting and fractional work are time for money at a smaller scale. Neither one builds something that didn't exist before, and neither one pays money, meaning, and freedom at the same time. That's the only transition we do.
If I land on the Founder Path, do I find out what happens next?
Yes. If the Index lands you on the Founder Path, I'll put the roadmap on screen and walk you through how it runs with real clients: what actually happens in the first 90 days and why almost none of it is the business, what gets produced and in what order, and where it stalls for almost everyone. If the Index lands you on the Corporate Path, you get the same thing pointed the other way, what would have to change, and by when.
What is the ultimate goal of this workshop?
To help you decide cleanly between the Corporate Path and the Founder Path. Getting there relies on two things: understanding what each path actually is, and running a careful analysis of your own situation. We do both in the room, and you leave with the next steps for whichever side you land on. We are not trying to convince you of one path or the other.
Is this 75 minutes of teaching, or 75 minutes of being sold?
A working session. You'll be building on your own situation for most of it. We'll be straight with you about one thing: this exact transformation, Corporate to Founder, is the only thing we do. At the end I'll name what the Corporate Graduation® Program is and who it's for, once, and then we're done. If that part isn't for you, you still leave with your Graduation Index™.
What if the answer is that I should stay?
Good. That's a real result, and for a lot of people in this room it's the right one. Most people should stay in corporate, and knowing that with clear eyes is worth more than another year of wondering about it. Landing on the Corporate Path comes with the specific list of what would have to change to move you, and a date to check it against. Staying on purpose is a completely different life from staying by default.
Do I have to share my results with the room?
No. You work inside your own environment and nothing you put in is shown publicly. It isn't only about numbers either, it's your situation, your household, and what you actually want. All of it stays yours. Stay on mute and off camera the whole time and you still walk out with everything.
Is there a recording?
Yes. It's valuable, and it's worth far less than being there live. The Graduation Index™ runs on your situation in the middle of the session, and that part does not exist in a replay.
I don't have a business idea yet. Am I too early?
The opposite. A blank slate is an advantage in this room. Beginner's mind lets you explore the whole thing honestly instead of defending an idea you're already attached to, and it lets you understand what has to happen first, before any idea comes to life. This sits upstream of the idea.
I already left and it isn't going well. Is this for me?
Yes. Sometimes we have to walk backwards first: where you actually are, what you're thinking, what you believe, what you've already decided, and only then what the roadmap looks like. The Graduation Index™ reads your situation just as honestly as it reads someone still inside corporate.
Who's running it
Matt Doan
I spent 15 years in management consulting, including at BCG, before building Corporate Graduation®.
I made this move myself. Everything in this room is what I had to learn the hard way to actually pull it off, including the parts nobody warns you about.
What started as a program became a movement. More than 170 Directors, VPs, and Executives across tech, consulting, finance, and more have made the move from Corporate to Founder in one year.
I've watched what happens when people leap without looking, and what happens when they stay another 5 years telling themselves it's the responsible thing. Neither one is a plan.
Corporate Path or Founder Path. Decide it in 75 minutes.
Registering takes about 20 seconds.
You've been carrying this for years. Come put it down on paper, in 75 minutes, and leave knowing which path is yours.
See you in the room.
PS - Skimmed to the bottom? Corporate Graduation® is one move: Corporate to Founder in one year. You've never made it because you've been overwhelmed trying to solve 100 small problems first, instead of focusing on the one big thing that solves everything: a clear decision on which path you want, and why.
In this workshop we take 75 minutes to sort the pile, price both paths honestly, take apart what risk actually means for someone with a mortgage and a household, and run your situation through the Graduation Index™ so you leave with a custom analysis and a clear read on which path is yours. It's free, it's live, and the Index only runs in the room. The expensive decision is another year of not knowing and not moving.
Reserve your seat
Tuesday, September 22 • 2:00pm ET • Free
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