Dale Gibbons's Linkedin Analytics

I was exhausted with feeling trapped in the corporate world. I wanted out. I wanted to make a bigger contribution and experience more freedom. But I had a sweet wife and two young boys to feed and keep safe and was afraid of putting them at risk. The idea of failing, running out of money, and being destitute kept me from taking a chance. But the suffocating control of the corporate world with it's pointless meetings, incompetent managers and political maneuvering was making me miserable. And every time I pulled into the driveway of our tiny bread and butter home with my family packed into our little Toyota Corolla, I felt grateful, but I also felt inadequate. My family deserved better. And I knew I was capable of doing better for them. Then fate forced my hand. In my Fortune 500 job, I was losing to political maneuvering related to territories and quotas, and my boss let me leave before I was fired. I was officially unemployed with no income. My worst fear had come true. I went to work building my consulting business. It was really hard at first, but within a few weeks, I landed my first client, a startup for which I helped create and implement a marketing and sales strategy. The work was fulfilling and impactful, but the real opportunity (I thought) was the business across the hall from where I was working, owned by the same founder. It had all the right things wrong, and after making several suggestions to my client to turn it around, he made me an offer I couldn't refuse. In a few short weeks, I was the majority owner of a business with $700K in annual revenue. To help avoid the quicksand and false starts as I turned it around, I joined a coaching program for business owners and was a member for several years. During that time, I built the business to over $8M in revenue. You might think that most of my income came from that business, but it didn't. I kept my consulting business going, which was more profitable because I had developed a system for winning clients and increasing my income without putting more demands on my time. My tech business had dozens of employees and tremendously high operating expenses, and consulting provided a lot more money and peace of mind for much less headache. So I sold the tech business in 2015 and took a couple years off to help my parents through their final season of life. Today, I help dozens of business owners and coaches around the world. I live on our 111-acre family farm with my wife of 34 years, three dogs, three outdoor cats, and a great internet connection.