The Mindful Creator | I talk about mindset, creativity, & content writing | Building The Mindful Creation Blueprint

I wasn’t supposed to be here.

Five and a half years ago, my life was going the other way...

I was: 

🔹Drinking every day
🔹Running from myself

And one night alcohol took my right eye in a freak accident

That was my wake-up call.

I had two choices: 

1. Keep spiraling downwards (and potentially die) 
2. Rebuild myself

I chose to rebuild.

I got sober. 

Which forced me to face the sides of myself I’d been running from. 

And in the process, I discovered something most people never realize...

Your identity shapes your whole reality. 

Who you believe you are determines what you're capable of creating. 

That lesson became the foundation of everything I do now.

When I started my consulting business...

I was in college studying audio engineering.

Just a normal guy who had to figure it out from scratch.

Since then... 

I built my consulting business to six figures organically on LinkedIn.

And I've watched my clients break through the same walls I had broken through in my own life.

Today, my mission is simple:

To help established leaders and creatives get to $20K/m by doing the inner work combined with the business work.

Because I know what it feels like to lose everything.

And I also know what it takes to build yourself back stronger.

Darion Rae

Delusional self belief...

That's where it all started for me.

Not everyone is going to support you.

Not everyone is going to believe you can do it.

(Some people might secretly want you to fail).

One of the few things you can control though...

Is betting on yourself.

(Huge shoutout to Kelsey Schaefer for having me on Inspired Idiots. If you haven't seen what she's up to... check her out)

Helping you master → yourself, value creation, & productizing your knowledge

If what you're working on doesn't:

🔹Fire you up
🔹Get you obsessed
🔹Excite you when you wake up

You're headed in the wrong direction. 

You can think it's idealistic for me to say it.

You can even disagree...

But I know one thing for certain:

Life is too short to spend your time doing sh*t you don't care about.

--

🔷 If you love self-mastery, value creation, and productizing your knowledge, follow me Darion Rae

I don’t want an easy life.

I want a meaningful one.

Easy now gets harder as you go.

A meaningful life is the exact opposite.

It’s hard now, but gets easier later. 

That’s the trade most people never consciously choose.

If you’re even thinking about this…

You’re already playing a different game than most people.

People who feel unfulfilled usually aren’t lazy…

They’re misaligned.

They never chased excellence in what they’re meant to do.

(Their life’s task)

So they stay stuck going through the motions.

Working on things they don’t enjoy and aren’t passionate about. 

This is why I’m so committed to chasing mastery in what I love. 

And why I believe we all need to be. 

When you remove distractions and commit to one path long enough…

Meaning and fulfillment come naturally. 

Yes, being a polymath is important.

Yes, having multiple skills is important.

But you need to go deep into 1 or 2 things.

Mastery requires it.

--

🔷 I recently ran a workshop teaching my 6-figure content system & strategy.

If you're struggling to write content that feels aligned with you while still attracting your dream clients on LinkedIn...

Catch the free recording here:

https://lnkd.in/eUqPr7vK

I never mastered my early passions as a kid.

I got above average…

Then moved onto the next thing that excited me.

Every time.

Now that I’m older, I see why.

Magic, breakdancing, basketball, rapping…

They were my training wheels.

Looking back at all those passions I was able to see similarities. 

They were all rooted in:

🔹Self-expression
🔹Technical skill
🔹Performance

And best of all they were permissionless. 

They all led me here to creating value online and productizing my knowledge. 

And now I’m chasing mastery for the first time in my life, and it feels damn good. 

So this is my reminder to you…

Yes, go wide in a bunch of things, follow your curiosity and interests.

They’ll help you realize what you need to go deep in.

--

🔷 If you love self-mastery, value creation, and productizing your knowledge, follow me Darion Rae

In the digital age, nothing is more important than mastering:

🔹 Yourself 
🔹 Value creation
🔹 Productizing your knowledge

Yourself because there's never been more distractions.

Value creation because the internet allows everyone to build their own business. 

Productizing your knowledge because to reach as many people as possible... you need scale.

Tactics don't mean sh*t if you don't become the personal capable of getting the outcome you want.

--

🔷 I recently ran a workshop teaching my 6-figure content system & strategy.

If you're struggling to write content that feels aligned with you while still attracting your dream clients on LinkedIn...

Catch the free recording here:

https://lnkd.in/eUqPr7vK

Ever since I was a kid I was chasing mastery without even knowing it.

My first passion was magic. 

I wanted to be a magician so badly after my uncle did some magic tricks for me and my friends at one of my birthday parties. 

I would practice in front of the mirror for hours every single day after school.

Just me working on my slight of hand and all the angles. 

I even pretended my reflection was the person I was performing for. 

Then I found breakdancing when I was 10. 

It opened a whole new perspective for me on self-expression.

It was creative, technical, and performance based (just like magic).

There was always another move to learn, or another way to do a move that I’d never seen anyone else do. 

It kept me hooked. 

Then a couple years later I found my greatest love…

Basketball.

It consumed me.

And when I say consumed me… I mean I was absolutely obsessed. 

I woke up at 5 AM before school to practice.

I slept with my ball.

I trained at lunch between classes, after school…

Pretty much anytime I wasn’t eating or in class,

I was practicing. 

This has been a trend my whole life.

After basketball it was rapping…

Then 3.5 years ago, I found online entrepreneurship and never looked back. 

Here’s why I’m telling you all this…

---

🔷You can read the full post on my blog here: https://lnkd.in/ewa_Aq4m

Last year something felt off in my business.

Which is strange because the year before in 2024 I:

🔹Hit 6 figures
🔹Thought I was building my dream biz
🔹Helped a lot of people get clients on LinkedIn

So I couldn’t quite put my finger on what didn’t feel right…

All I knew was I wasn’t inspired to write content anymore.

I didn’t get fired up to start work in the morning like I did the year before. 

My obsessiveness over my craft pretty much disappeared. 

And my business took the hit. 

After a lot of self reflection and brutal honesty with myself,

I realized what happened...

🔷You can read the full post called 'Most People Never Discover What They're Meant To Do (How to find your heart's task)' here:

https://lnkd.in/eiATk8Km

Abby struggled with her writing business for 3 years before we started working together.

Before we met she:

🔹Had no strategy or repeatable systems
🔹Offered every type of copy you can think of
🔹Only signed a couple one off ‘project’ clients
🔹Didn’t feel like a business owner who ran an actual business
🔹Was ready to give up because she thought maybe it wasn’t for her

Now in less than 10 months she:

🔹Feels like a real business owner
🔹Is working with 6 clients she’s aligned with
🔹Has a specialized offer built for recurring revenue
🔹Has a system and strategy she can wake up and execute on without guessing
🔹LOVES what she does

So if you’re a leader or creative who wants mastery over 3 key areas:

💎 Yourself
💎 Value creation
💎 Productizing your knowledge

I show you exactly how inside my community here → https://lnkd.in/gnn6TGAe

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

I left corporate 4 years ago.

Here’s what actually changed:

1) Mondays have energy again.
I wake up early because I want to. Not out of discipline or obligation, but out of genuine excitement for the week ahead. That feeling was gone for years in corporate. Now it’s normal.

2) The Sunday dread disappeared.
That quiet weight that used to settle in by Sunday afternoon — the sense of re-entering a system that didn’t fit — lifted once I started building something I actually owned.

3) My wife became my partner — in a new way.
Cecilia and I now talk about clients, strategy, and impact together. We’re building something side by side. Corporate never could have offered that, and it’s deepened our marriage in ways I didn’t anticipate.

4) My kids see a different version of me.
They see energy instead of depletion. Engagement instead of exhaustion. They’re watching what it looks like to build something you care about... not just talk about it.

5) My health followed my work.
When work creates energy instead of consuming it, everything else responds. Sleep improved. Stress dropped. At 41, I have more capacity than I did at 35.

6) I’m building skills that compound.
Psychology. Sales. Marketing. Persuasion. Category design. These aren’t corporate skills. They’re human skills. They don’t expire when roles or markets change.

7) I finally understand who I am.
Not my title. Not my employer. Me. The founder path forced me to confront things I could avoid for years in corporate. On the other side was clarity I never found climbing the ladder.

This isn’t about hating corporate.

Corporate gave me my Career Capital:
judgment, pattern recognition, credibility.

But it couldn’t give me ownership.

That required a different structure.

---

For those who've outgrown their container.
Jan 19 → https://lnkd.in/esvq8nuY

I messed up a lot in 2025.

9 mistakes shaping everything in 2026:

It's been four years since I left BCG. Four years building Corporate Graduation™. This year made one thing clear: being a founder isn't a career — it's a complete reconstruction of how you live.

Here's my honest accounting:

IDENTITY MISTAKES

1) Positioning to be the authority instead of being it.
I kept "getting ready." Waiting for permission that was never coming. Authority isn't granted — it's declared. In 2026, I'm done preparing. I AM the authority in my space.

2) Tolerating small stages and obscurity.
I've been playing too small. Nothing remarkable is done alone — I need multiplier partners. Stages that reach millions, not hundreds. I've talked about "going big" but haven't truly lived it. Obscurity isn't noble — it's a bottleneck.


FOCUS & ENERGY MISTAKES

3) Saying yes to too many things.
Scattered focus = scattered results. I know this. I teach this. I still violated it. Every diluted yes was a no to what actually mattered.

4) Being distracted around my family.
My wife and four kids deserve my presence, not just my proximity. Too often I was physically there, mentally elsewhere. Unfinished tasks follow you into the evening. In 2026: fewer priorities, cleaner endings, real presence.


RESOURCE MISTAKES

5) Not asking enough of my team, coaches, mentors.
I invested tens of thousands in people who could help me — but didn't nearly extract the full value. I made too many excuses to myself.

6) Over-investing but under-implementing.
I was a collector of insights instead of an executor. The gap between what I know and what I do became too wide. In 2026, implementation is what matters.

7) Being too ad hoc with AI.
Random prompts. No system. I treated AI like a convenience instead of infrastructure. This year, I'm architecting it into how I think, create, and operate.


LEADERSHIP MISTAKES

8) Not pushing my clients hard enough.
They didn't join the Corporate Graduation™ program for slow and incremental. They came to compress a decade into a year. My job is to install new fire — and make them feel the cost of not showing up powerfully.

9) Not being bold enough in what I said.
I softened hard truths. Hedged when I should have declared. Here's what I held back: The work world is being restructured. AI is here. The old playbook is dead. Corporate is a burning platform. I'm done holding that back.

---

These mistakes cost me time, money, energy, presence.

But they gave me clarity.

My "hard lines" for 2026: 
Stop preparing. Start declaring.
Stop tolerating small. Start building big.
Stop over-investing. Start implementing.
Stop holding back. Start saying what must be said.

Which mistake hits home for you?

---

PS - Corporate → Founder this year? 
matthewdoan.com/2026

Monday, your Career Capital starts compounding.

Or it doesn't.

One-time, special event:
https://lnkd.in/esvq8nuY

Here's what most people miss about workshops like this:

It's not information.
It's decision-making.

You slow down and show up.
You become a captive audience — to yourself.
You stop scrolling. Stop reacting. Stop drifting.

And for the first time in months (maybe years), 
you do the actual work:

1) You stop making excuses for your delay
2) You uncover your Career Capital
3) You decide how to deploy it
4) You see what's possible beyond the role
5) You start forging a path no employer could match

That's not just inspiration.
That's the compound effect, taking hold.

Imagine where you'll be 90 days from now.

Not just "thinking about it."
Not merely "planning to start."

Actually in motion.

Energy returning.
Clarity sharpening.
Your family feels the new you.

This is what Corporate Graduation™ looks like.

Those who've already committed to Monday aren't hoping for answers. They're giving themselves permission to move.

One decision.
One workshop.
A new trajectory.

The Career Capitalist™
Monday, January 19
$50: Live + Recording + Assets

One time only.
See you inside.

https://lnkd.in/esvq8nuY

---

PS - Registrants get the IP Builder GPT, Corporate Graduation Readiness Scorecard, category design tools, case studies, and a private 1:1 Founder Game Plan call. Recording included.

The moment I knew corporate couldn’t hold me.

5 lessons it took too long to learn:

For a long time, I couldn’t name what was wrong.

I was progressing.
Respected.
Trusted.

But every time my thinking stretched a little too far — every time I tried to hold a bigger picture — it was quietly contained.

Not shut down.
Just… redirected.

That’s when the tension started.
Not dramatic.
Just constant.

Here’s what I eventually learned.

---

1) Big thinking can be praised and still be unwelcome.

I’d offer a strategic view and hear, “That sounds good.”

Then came the quiet clause:
“But we’re not taking that outside.”

I wasn’t wrong.
My imagination just didn’t fit the system’s design.

---

2) Being valued doesn’t mean being usable.

I was told my work mattered.

But my judgment had nowhere real to land.

When your best thinking can’t move anything, it doesn’t disappear. It withers.

---

3) Side outlets are signals, not solutions.

Publishing in HBR.
MIT Sloan.
The Atlantic.
Think tanks. External channels.

Those weren’t mistakes. They were proof I was trying to breathe outside the box.

What I didn’t see at the time:
External validation was a symptom, not a cure.

Every byline was evidence of capacity the system couldn’t absorb. I kept finding outlets because the main channel was blocked.

Useful moves.
Never satisfying.

---

4) Breakthroughs aren’t about talent. They’re about ownership of environment.

Everything clicked when I sat in a room full of founders.

They had Career Capital too. Decades of it.

The difference was simple:
They didn’t need permission to create.

They built conditions where judgment could compound.
They said yes to themselves.

---

5) Staying longer has quiet, compounding costs.

The financial ceiling was obvious.

The real toll was energy.
Family.
Self-trust.

Saying yes to work that wasn’t me.
Knowing I could be far more impactful — and accepting I wasn’t.

---

That’s when I stopped asking how to optimize my role.

And started asking a harder question:

Where does my Career Capital actually belong?

That question led me out of corporate.

Four years later, I’m a founder.
Still answering it.
On my own terms.

---

PS - If you’re standing at the edge of that question, don't miss what's unfolding here: https://lnkd.in/eDEkDVb2

If corporate feels a bit "too small" lately, 
you're not imagining it.

That feeling usually shows up when your Career Capital has outgrown the container it's in.

Most people respond the same way.

They start with business logic.
Offer. Niche. Monetization.

Or they quietly reach for passive income.

Passive income won't solve under-leverage.
Only owned Career Capital does.

That's why so many smart exits stall.

The real issue isn't effort.
It's missing conditions.

You can't access, package, and deploy Career Capital into founder leverage if you don't first create:

Space.
Then Self.
Then System.

A recent client — VP in ops — followed this sequence. It changed everything:

1) Compressed his corporate load by ~50%
No drama. No bridges burned. No reputational cost.

2) Reclaimed control of time
Now works 3–4 focused hours/day. Deliberate. Surgical.

3) Restored personal leverage
Energy returned. Health improved. Relationships at home strengthened.

Only then did the founder work begin.

He codified his Career Capital into language, frameworks, and IP.
He clarified category direction.
He ran his first program and delivered real results.

Corporate became optional because leverage was no longer trapped inside the role.

That's real Corporate Graduation.
Not escape. Not dependency.

Leverage.

---

If you want to do this work in the right order, I'm running a live, private, one-time workshop:

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗖𝗮𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗿 𝗖𝗮𝗽𝗶𝘁𝗮𝗹𝗶𝘀𝘁™
Monday, January 19
$50 (Live + Recording + Assets)

Included with registration:

• IP Builder GPT (to structure your Career Capital)
• Corporate Graduation™ Readiness Scorecard
• Category-claiming exercises you can reuse
• Case study pack + common traps guide
• Private 1:1 Founder Game Plan call

See you on the inside:
https://lnkd.in/esvq8nuY

Has work stopped creating energy for you?
This isn’t burnout.
It’s worse.

Most senior pros describe something quieter.

Disinterest. Going through the motions. Sitting in meetings you've sat in a hundred times, solving problems you solved three years ago. Doing "good work" without feeling engaged by any of it.

(After 15 years, this is how I felt about cybersecurity.)

Work used to create energy. It used to sharpen you. Stretch you. Feed the rest of your life.

At some point, that flipped.

Now it drains energy — and nothing meaningful is replacing it.

That state is not neutral.

When work consumes energy instead of creating it, the deficit shows up everywhere. In patience at home. In health. In imagination. In your sense of building toward a future that's actually yours.

What's really happening underneath is simpler (and more damaging) than most people want to admit:

Your Career Capital — years of judgment, experience, pattern recognition, and hard-earned capability — is going undeployed.

Not unused. Undeployed.

You're applying a fraction of what you've built inside a system that can't fully use it. And when Career Capital isn't exercised meaningfully, it doesn't just sit idle.

It decays.

The most dangerous response here is waiting. Waiting for a reorg. Waiting for renewed motivation. Waiting for something external to force clarity.

Energy doesn't come back on its own.

If work no longer creates it, you have a responsibility to create conditions where it can.

That doesn't require a drastic leap. 

But it does require an environment where your thinking actually matters again — and people who understand what you're navigating.

I'm hosting a private workshop next week for people who recognize this moment and want to think clearly about what to do with the Career Capital they've built.

Details: https://lnkd.in/esvq8nuY

The cost of waiting is quiet. 
But it compounds quickly.

I didn’t know how valuable I was until I stepped outside the corporate system.

Not because I lacked confidence inside.

But because the environment couldn’t show me.

That’s why I built The Career Capitalist™:
https://lnkd.in/esvq8nuY

Happening Monday. A live, private workshop designed to surface, package, and deploy your Career Capital into founder leverage.

Inside corporate, your value gets filtered.

Your judgment gets diluted by consensus.
Your instincts get buried in approval chains.
Your best ideas get spent in meetings that go nowhere.

You’re performing.
Contributing.
Delivering.

But not seeing the full picture of what you’ve built.

It took stepping outside for me to realize:

Every story I lived through → raw material
Every pattern I recognized → deployable insight
Every hard-won lesson → Career Capital to be claimed

And it’s why I hear this constantly from clients once the conditions change:

“Corporate feels simple now. Almost optional.”
“I finally feel in control of my days.”
“I didn’t know I had this much to offer.”

That last one makes me so proud.

Because most people don’t lack value.
They lack the conditions to see it clearly.

Corporate systems are too constraining to reveal what you’ve actually accumulated.

You have to put yourself in founder conditions.
Where your thinking is deployed on your terms.

That’s when Career Capital stops being theoretical.

And starts compounding.

---

Details for The Career Capitalist™
Monday, January 19
$50 (Live + Recording)

Included:
• IP Builder GPT
• Corporate Graduation™ Readiness Scorecard
• Category-claiming exercises
• Case study pack + common traps guide
• Private 1:1 Founder Game Plan call

https://lnkd.in/esvq8nuY

This is a one-time, private event for people who are done playing small inside a big system.

Burnout isn't the real problem.

You've reached a structural mismatch.

After years in the arena, you've built something substantial.

Pattern recognition.
Lived experience.
Relationships.
Reputation.
Judgment.
Talent.

Taken together, this is your Career Capital.

It's stacked. It's real. And it's valuable.

The problem is that the system you're in can only use a tiny fraction of it.

Not because you're capped.
Because the environment is.

Corporate systems are designed for efficiency, predictability, and control. They define a role, reward you for staying inside the lines, and call it success.

Over time, that role becomes a box.
And then a box within a box.

No matter how much Career Capital you accumulate, the system can't meaningfully expand to meet it.

Even changing teams.
Even changing companies.
Even "one more promotion."

The system is the system.

So while your Career Capital keeps compounding, its expression gets constrained.

Your best ideas die in approval chains.
You're solving problems you solved three years ago.
Work that energized you now = going through motions.

That's when the tension starts.

Not because you're ungrateful.
Not because you've lost motivation.
And certainly not from a lack of ambition.

But because you've outgrown the container—which will never change enough to hold who you're becoming.

This might be your first quiet signal that something else is required.

Not a better role.
But a different relationship with corporate altogether.

And a deliberate decision about where your Career Capital will compound.

---

PS - I'm writing deeply about Career Capital this month. The first long-form essay drops on Substack this Saturday — it's about the hidden tax you pay by staying put and what happens when you stop tolerating it.

Subscribe: https://lnkd.in/eDEkDVb2

Career Capital doesn’t sit idle.

It either compounds — or quietly decays.

Inside corporate, decay is the default.

Not because you’re underperforming.
Because the system is designed to consume judgment, not multiply it.

Your experience gets spent in meetings.
Your insight gets diluted by consensus.
Your best instincts get buried under endless “alignment.”

Over time, something subtle but costly happens.

You’re still “successful,” but your optionality shrinks.
Your leverage flattens.
The work takes more energy and gives less back.

That’s not burnout.

That’s Career Capital being used up instead of built on.

Here’s the distinction most people never make:

Most professionals let their Career Capital decay inside systems they don’t own.

Founders decide — deliberately — where it compounds.

Not louder.
Not riskier.
More intentional.

They choose where their judgment is deployed — and who benefits from it.

At some point, the question stops being:
“How do I make this role better?”

And becomes:
“Where does my Career Capital actually belong?”

That question changes everything.

---

PS - I’m writing deeply about Career Capital this month. Saturday’s Corporate Graduation essay breaks down the hidden math of staying put — and what most pros never calculate.

https://lnkd.in/eDEkDVb2

It's been four years since I had a paycheck.

And I'm still here.

Years back, my coach asked something I couldn't shake.

"Is your fire greater than your fear?"

No follow-up. No context.
It just sat there, staring at me. UGH.

I hate that I didn't have an answer right away. 
It's been gnawing at me ever since.

Because here's what I've figured out:
Fear wins by default.

When fear's in charge, you optimize for safety. You wait for the right time. You tell yourself one more year for the bonus, the equity, the title. You do everything except make the actual bet.

And I get it. The golden handcuffs are real. That pressure keeps you sharp. But it also keeps you stuck.

Here's the thing nobody says out loud:
You can't build this new life from comfort.

Something has to break.

We need fire. And it has two parts.

1) Outer fire
It's the forced pressure. The last paycheck. The shrinking savings. You move because you have to. It works. But it's blunt and insufficient.

2) Inner fire
This is the chosen pressure. Why you're doing this. Who you're doing it for.

For me, it's my kids absorbing what they see, not what I say. Them seeing me build a business and choose my own path is arguably one of the greatest gifts I can give them. (Struggles included.)

You need both types of fire: 
Outer conditions that activate you.
Inner conditions that sustain you.

I'll admit it. There are dark days. "How come others move faster than me? Why are they thriving, and I'm struggling?"

Those are the days fear wins.
(But it wins less and less as the years go on.)

My job is to live above the line. In fire. 
Not every second. But more days than not.

Sometimes, you have astounding days. When you earn the equivalent of one or two corporate paychecks in a single day. Or you get a handwritten note from a client that says you saved their life. The fire returns.

You don't feel your way into that. You build it. With discipline. With daily work that rekindles the fire.

Those days I felt broken? It wasn't a dwindling bank account. It was forgetting to build the fire. Letting fear win without a fight.

Which one's greater, your fire or your fear?

Mine said fear for a long time. 
It still does some days.

But I keep asking. And more importantly, I keep answering.

Because your life isn't shaped by the question.

It's shaped by which one you feed.

The quiet frustration you feel isn't burnout.

It's trapped leverage.

Your career capital is decaying right now.

Not because you're losing skill.
Because you're not deploying it.

Yesterday I ran The Career Capitalist™ workshop.

Here are the five ideas that hit hardest.


1) Career capital is stored energy.

Years of judgment, pressure, and decision-making accumulate as untapped power. But stored energy doesn't stay neutral. If it isn't released into the right environment, it implodes.

Career capital needs motion, leverage, and somewhere to be used (hint: someone else's system won't do.)


2) Career capital must become a compounding asset.

Your career capital can only compound when converted into something you own. Left unconverted, they get spent linearly through effort.

Ownership is the difference between earning repeatedly and compounding over time.


3) Labels suffocate career capital.

SVP. Director. Consultant. Coach. Speaker.

These are pre-priced containers with fixed ceilings. The market decides what they're worth.

Labels come with limits. Founders build the room.


4) Career capital has a window.

Experience is sharpest when it's recent, relevant, and energized. Delay too long, and it decays.

Not from lack of ability. But from missing your window of opportunity.


5) You must intentionally package and deploy it.

Unpackaged career capital goes to waste. If you don't turn it into assets — frameworks, language, IP, owned systems — it never compounds.

It just leaks out through time, effort, and obligation.

---

This is what I wish I understood five years ago.

Career capital isn't something you simply have.

It's something you either convert and compound.
Or you quietly lose it.

---

PS - If this resonates, doors are open for the February cohort of our Corporate Graduation™ program. DM me "LEVERAGE" for details.

Stability is quietly destroying you.

Every time you choose the "responsible" move,
you trap energy that needs to move.

Nothing looks broken. The title fits. The comp works. 
On paper, everything makes sense.

But underneath? Pressure building.

What you're sitting on isn't burnout. It's stored energy. Years of pattern recognition. Decisions made under fire. Judgment earned through real stakes.

That's Career Capital.
And it's meant to compound.

When it's deployed, it creates leverage.
When it's trapped, it decays.

I've watched this happen to dozens of people. Smart. Capable. People who should feel satisfied. And they can't figure out what's wrong because nothing appears wrong.

Corporate is excellent at helping you build this energy.
It's terrible at knowing what to do once you have it.

So the pressure keeps building. 
Until it does one of three things:

→ Implodes into disengagement
→ Leaks as resentment 
→ Collapses into false stability

None of these are sustainable. 
They're just different forms of decay.

The people who break this pattern make a private decision:

"This energy will convert into something I own.
Because if I don't, it'll tear me apart."

That decision is binary.

Either you believe your current conditions can no longer use what you've built... or you keep waiting for permission that never comes.

Career Capital doesn't wait.
It compounds or it decays.

Which is happening to yours?

I paid for code with beer.
 
It was the only way.
 
I was awful at programming. Truly terrible.
 
But it was a forced part of my business degree. So I sat there in front of my computer, completely lost, feeling dumber than everyone around me.
 
The only solution? A case of beer for a few snippets of code from a friend who actually understood it.
 
That's how I survived.
 
Looking back, there were so few moments in school where I felt in flow. Most of it felt forced. Like I was wearing someone else's clothes.
 
Then I entered the corporate world thinking things would be different.
 
They weren't.
 
I remember sitting in a conference room on a Tuesday afternoon. Two hours into a meeting about optimizing a process that didn't need to exist. I watched my director passionately defend a framework nobody would use. And I realized: at least beer only cost me money. This was costing me my life.
 
That's when I started keeping a different kind of scorecard.
 
90% of what I was doing made me feel dead inside. Compliance for compliance's sake. Presentations to justify presentations. Work that looked impressive on paper but felt hollow in my chest.
 
That became my anti-vision.
 
But there was a 10% that lit me up...

Sketching frameworks on whiteboards and watching executives lean in. Helping burnt-out people realize they weren't broken, just miscast. Translating vision into language that made people feel something.
 
That 10% became my vision.
 
The kid who paid for code with beer grew up into someone who could rally teams and help people see what they were capable of. But I was doing it inside a container that would never let me go all the way.
 
So I built enough career capital to have a choice.
Then I made it.
 
But here's what nobody tells you:
 
You need the 90% to find the 10%. 
Your anti-vision clarifies your vision.
 
Most people experience the contrast and stop there. They know what they don't want. They can name it. They might even complain about it over drinks.
 
But knowing your anti-vision without acting on your actual vision? That's just comfortable misery.
 
The contrast is supposed to move you.

---
 
PS - Ever exchange beer for code? 
Or just me?

You spent 27 years building invaluable career capital.

But you can't access any of it.

Patterns only you can see.
Judgment built under real pressure.
A network that trusts your word.

All vaulted.
Uploaded to company cloud drives.

That's the Undeployed Career Capital Trap.

Your days get eaten by reactive work. Meetings about meetings. Fires that aren't yours. Permission loops that drain your best thinking before it sees daylight.

You've tried to use it outside work.
Consulting. Advising. Scattered posts.
That side project that fizzled into nothing.

But without the right sequence, every attempt leaks into generic traps. Billable hours. Execution without control. Work that looks like progress but builds nothing.

And the window is closing — you know it.

Here's what makes it worse:

AI is coming for the execution layer. The deliverables. The analysis. The "work."

What AI can't touch? Your pattern recognition. Your judgment. Your ability to see what others miss.

But that's exactly what's dying inside the trap.

Career capital either compounds or decays. Wait too long and it's not just missed opportunity. It disappears.

The signal I hear most:
"I know I'm sitting on gold. Why can't I deploy it?"

Because the trap is structural.

Fear keeps your best work locked up.
Reactive days steal your judgment hours.
Wrong sequence kills confidence before you start.

The path out requires creating conditions first. Reclaim your days. Release from the system thoughtfully. Build toward founder ownership.

This isn't an escape problem.
It's a deployment problem.

- - - 

PS - Here's where we're solving the Undeployed Career Capital Trap: https://lnkd.in/eDEkDVb2

Your career capital has a shelf life.

If you don’t claim it, it dies.

Most people assume experience compounds automatically and forever.

That once you’ve earned judgment, pattern recognition, and credibility, it stays available, waiting patiently for whenever you’re “ready.”

That’s not how it works.

Career Capital behaves like any other form of capital.

If it isn’t surfaced, packaged, and deployed while the window is open, it decays.

Corporate environments are very good at using your best thinking. They are terrible at helping you own it.

So the decay is quiet.

Your instincts sharpen, but only inside meetings.
Your judgment matures, but stays behind the logo.
Your leverage increases, but never sees daylight.

Over time, a dangerous gap opens.

You are highly capable.
And increasingly under-deployed.

Directors, VPs, and executives feel this most.

Not because they lack opportunity.
But because they’ve outgrown permissioned contribution and haven’t yet claimed authority.

The people who notice this early make a different move.

They don’t rush.
They don’t panic.
They don’t freelance their way out.

They slow down long enough to extract what they’ve actually earned.

They turn experience into language.
Judgment into frameworks.
Reputation into owned direction.

They understand one simple truth.

Capital that isn’t claimed gets spent by someone else.

That’s why I built The Career Capitalist™.

A one-time, live workshop for Directors, VPs, and execs who know they’re sitting on real leverage and refuse to let it expire unused.

This isn’t about quitting faster.
It’s about learning how to own what you already have before the window closes.

The Career Capitalist™
Private workshop + recording + working tools
Monday, January 19

Secure your spot: https://lnkd.in/esvq8nuY

This experience is built to create motion, not inspiration.

---

If this resonates, trust the signal.

Hidden Career Capital doesn’t unleash itself.
It gets claimed — or it withers.

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