How to Escape Corporate & Why Brett Would Bet Everything on the Future of Fractional

Brett Trainor (00:00.046)
seeing the number of solar businesses with seven figures. Folks think they need to build the next Google or Microsoft. Like if I leave corporate, I've got to start a company. I'm like, not anymore.

Brett Trainor (00:25.23)
Well, hey, friends. This is Your Work Friends. We're two HR leaders who have no filter, and we're here to expose all of the stuff that you need to know about work. I'm Mel. I'm Francesca. And with us today is Brett Treanor, who is the founder of The Corporate Escapee. You can find him on LinkedIn.

He has an awesome podcast. He also just launched a Slack community. That's pretty rad. I just joined that community myself. And he's from a fun town called Wheaton who has a annual fair called the Cream of Wheaton, which just made my day last week when I heard this news. So Brett, welcome to the pod. Ah, no, it's great to be here. I'm thrilled that you asked me to come on and looking forward to the discussion. And yes, the Cream of Wheaton.

Never thought of it as a big event here, but it is kind of clever. And they don't serve cream of wheat at cream of wheat, which I feel like is a miss. It's a sponsor miss for sure. Right. And they're using the name for it. Um, yeah, that's so funny. The cocoa wheat still out there. If you grew up in the Chicago land area, there used to be the show called the Bozo show and it was sponsored by cocoa wheat. I remember cocoa wheat. Yeah. We went down memory lane that too long ago with some of those cereals that are.

no longer available, but they should bring them back. I know some people are bringing back those retro brands. Yeah. They went out of business or bankrupt, but the name still means a lot. So I think we're starting to see more of that. I just bought a Captain Crunch crunch berries a couple of weeks ago for the first time in 15 years, scraped the hell out of the top of my mouth, but it was delicious. It was delicious and worth it. I'm more of a peanut butter crunch, but I do like the crunch berries.

Yeah. Remember the old like Count Chocula in France? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Boo Berry. Was Boo Berry a seasonal or was that a was that a ongoing? I think seasonal, right? Boo Berry with the ghosts. Yeah, so good. So good. So funny. Oh, look at on top of that. How do you how do we get this? Yeah. Well, Brett, the corporate escapee. I love your mission, which is to help 10,000 corporate GenX.

Brett Trainor (02:36.45)
Xers escape the nine to five. Tell us more about it. What's the corporate escapee? Yeah, it was funny because I got to that point about four or four and a half years ago after a 30 year career, mostly corporate, a couple of stints out to the entrepreneurial world and back into corporate ended it with a year and a half running management consulting because that's what you should do at the end of a corporate career is go into traditional management consulting. But just realized that I was just done.

Right, it wasn't, I'm like, where is this going? What am I gonna be doing? Right, we don't have pensions, I shouldn't say we, the collective, a lot of us didn't, the right corporate didn't offer pensions, so am I just gonna be fighting this treadmill for the next 10 to 15 years or is there something better? And like I said, four and a half years ago, didn't have a plan, hindsight, I highly encourage folks, if you're leaving, have a plan. Don't have to, but it makes the transition easier.

And then the last year really, there's got to be more of me out there, right? Cause for the first two years, 95% of what I was doing was the fractional work. Did some consulting and the B2B space. I was by myself, really didn't tell anybody that I was doing it. And then slowly gained momentum, caught up with some different folks. And I'm like, yeah, the corporate escape B that's it's more than just work. It's the lifestyle and.

Then I just started playing with it. I decided just to have some fun to get on TikTok and test cause I'm like short attention span, 60 seconds, 90 second. And all of a sudden that took off. No idea why, but what it reaffirmed was that there is a lot of people. I think I've got like 20,000 followers on TikTok and to a person that I talked to, it's like, yeah, I didn't know I was stuck. I didn't know there was other folks, but man, it really resonates with me. So.

I decided to make that my personal mission to say if anybody's out there that wants to get out, there is opportunity, there's a path forward, there's tools, et cetera. So even though it's been around for probably about a year, I would say in the last two to three months, it's really found its footing. I will admit I found you on TikTok. I am a recent corporate escapist and I immediately was like, yes, let's connect on LinkedIn, join your Slack community because...

Brett Trainor (04:53.078)
I think what's really appealing for me to what you're doing is the community that you're building around it is someone who's new to trying it out. I think that community is so important just to help you succeed, right? And lessons learned, sharing. So I really love what you're building over there. Who is this for? Who is this not for? Yeah, good question. I say, I tell everybody that if you got 20 to 30 years of experience and if somebody's paying you to do a job.

you can do it, right? The can and should are two different things. I think who it's not for is if you're really risk adverse, we're not talking super risky ventures, you're not putting your family savings into a new business or something like that, but what corporate does give you, assuming you don't get laid off, is a steady paycheck and they pay some form of your benefits. And so there's a floor in corporate that you always know you're gonna have that paycheck.

But with freelance fractional, what I call the corporate escapee, the ceiling is much higher. The flexibility is much higher, but there, there could be lows, right? You could have a zero month where you're not bringing any revenue in and you have to be comfortable with that and knowing that it's not going to stay that way, but it's not for everybody. The other thing that I've found is important is you have to be accountable to yourself. I really took that for granted as I transitioned from corporate into the, the solo space was I own the.

priorities, I own my schedule, and for the longest time, I found myself just cramming more work into the day, but I really wasn't getting stuff done until I flipped and scheduleized and put some structure into my day. But yeah, if you're not accountable to yourself and you like somebody else's direction, then this may not be for you. Everybody else, I think you want more flexibility, freedom, control, opportunity, then absolutely you can. I've had a...

probably 120 conversations with TikTokers, GenXers that have came in and more for my learning to say, what else can I do or what can we do to support? But what I was finding is the nichiest of niches in corporate, there's still businesses that are looking for that help. When I call them the SME small and mid-sized businesses, startups, non-profits are looking for that type of help. So if you've got experience and somebody's paying to do a job, there's an opportunity to do it.

Brett Trainor (07:16.874)
What do you think is for folks who are successful when they do this? Do they have a specific mindset, skill set that stands out to you? I think open mind, right? Cause one thing in corporate, it just teaches you to go follow the rules, right? Don't rock the boat. Incremental improvements are good. And you just have to have more of an open mind. We use the cliche of Gen X, but you know, it's released back into the wild, right? We grew up without the rules and the restrictions and then 20 to 30 years in the box of

corporate, you have to go back and be okay with experimenting and asking. We talk about can and should and it's will. A lot of people, I can do that. I can go, I do have that experience. I can run this project. I can work for this, but will you do it? It's the people that actually take action are the ones that are successful. I know I've mostly worked with Gen X, but I've had some 20 somethings that are super curious about how do I do this. I said, well, look.

You get your job, you do this. What is the problem that you're solving for this company? There's probably a bunch of smaller companies that have this problem. You can just restructure it. 20 minutes later, he's like, okay, I got this. Thanks. See ya. And so he was going to go take action where I think if we've been around longer, we like to over engineer it. We like to overthink it. And we're trying to look for the perfect plan. I'm guilty. One of my colleagues in management consulting used to tell me, Brett, done is better than perfect. That was a harder thing for me to transition from just go do it. And.

It's okay if this little experiment doesn't work, you try something else and it's gonna be okay. Because at the end of the day, if it doesn't work, you can go back and find your corporate job, right? If it's not for you, but I encourage anybody that's thinking about it, just give it 100% and see if it doesn't work. Don't half-ass it and then if it doesn't work, oh, that wasn't for me. If you're gonna do that, then maybe it's not for you anyway. Right, if this is your new business, you treat it like a business, you can't. Otherwise it's a hobby.

It's just a hobby. There's some things so freeing about going back to thinking about your feralness as a kid, right? Or thinking about the world of opportunity that you get as a child. I remember being in college and thinking, wow, anything's possible. Anything could happen. And I think you get that when you're creating your own space. I'm wondering if you're seeing that in the landscape now. What is the market for folks that want to do freelance fractional? Do you see it's picking up? It's?

Brett Trainor (09:43.346)
growing, it's depleted, what do you think? Yeah, I absolutely think it's picking up because that's one of the concerns I hear from folks, is it's saturated. I'm like, we're the farthest thing from saturated. When you think about the number of small businesses that are out there and the help that they need, I think we're in the early stages of this. And what kind of opened my eyes is I was on a podcast called The Human Cloud and John and Matthew do a lot of work in freelancing at the enterprise, right? I have more focus on the small business

Part of our conversation was me flipping out of him and asking, well, why are you seeing this rise in freelance? And what he told me was, we haven't seen, even three years ago, there wasn't somebody with your experience or expertise that was open to fractional work for small businesses. So small businesses have never had access. You two are a perfect example of that as well. If a small business was looking to hire you,

They couldn't afford you. And so what do they do? They have to hire somebody junior just to take a chance on somebody new or promote somebody with them within not all bad choices, but if you really need help and your orgs growing, this is a perfect solution. It's the rare perfect or win-win, right? Especially with fractional. There's other ways you can slice it, but fractional is the easiest transition. I think. And so what fractional is basically it's a day per week per client.

and most of the time it's focused on strategy work, not a lot of the tactical in the doing stuff because it would be hard to do that one day a week. But what you will be able to do is save that business a third of the cost, right? If they're gonna hire a full-time equivalent for that HR lead, they couldn't afford it. But with you, for a third of the cost they can, now they can start to build a team with a couple of other fractionals that gives them expertise that they couldn't have otherwise had.

And the other last piece that I encourage people to think about the business owner is it minimizes risk. If you make a hire, it's an 18 month mistake if you get it wrong. And if you're hiring a type of role you've never hired before, that's hard. And if you can bring somebody in that's fractional, maybe it's a three months to start, but then it's month to month. And a lot of what the fractionals will do is work with that business to transition out if they're ready for a full time, they can help you find that full time person. So.

Brett Trainor (12:03.03)
I think where the industry or where the overall market's gotta catch up is fractional's still in relatively new term, but when you explain it to the business owner, they're like, yeah, I get it. And we're starting now to actually see, hey, we are actually looking for a fractional CFO for this role. So you won't find it in LinkedIn job postings yet, but it's not like this is just one-sided where it benefits the escapees, because it can charge a premium for what they do, it gives them more flexibility.

the businesses are actually going to benefit from this as well. Yeah, you see a lot of movement and organizations trying to outsource works or work that is not core to their competence because they don't want to be in that business. And this is one of the ways I think that they could do that either through fractional or contract full outsource. It does seem like we're at this wave of this coming, right? Businesses understanding the benefit of not holding on to full-time labor.

because that's so expensive. It's expensive for turnover too, if they don't work out. And also people wanting a different lifestyle work to means different things and still get paid and paid well. Do you feel like in five years, this is gonna just get bigger or do you feel like it's gonna go the other way? My gut is it's gonna get nuts. It's gonna get nuts, I think. Every last dollar I had, it's going in this direction just because a couple of reasons. One, think about it from.

when you were in corporate, what percentage of your week was actually spent on the job that they brought you in to do? 30% and maybe at a high end, so you're paying 60% of overhead from the business perspective. And that's where Fractional is there. They're super intentional about using you only for what you're good at because they don't want you on unnecessary meetings. It just doesn't make sense. So I think just economically, it's going to make sense. And that's why I think that.

the small and mid-size can really take advantage of this because the bigger orgs, they're still trying to figure out sales and marketing alignment. How do we go digital? Things they probably should have figured out 15 years ago, they're still struggling with, so how do they incorporate a more flexible workforce is gonna be hard. I think certain organizations or operating units within bigger companies are starting to figure out how to do it, but for the most part, it's not there. I'll use a couple of analogies that help people see it. The one is,

Brett Trainor (14:24.118)
Think about it as if you're making a major movie, right? Hopefully it's a blockbuster, but you got hair, you got makeup, you got actors, you got film, you got all these different, mostly small entities that come together for 12 to 18 months, build this thing, they go away, and this group may work with each other here, they may work over there. And then the other one that's similar to that, if you remember the movie's Ocean's Eleven, when George Clooney wanted to rob the casino, what did he do?

He needed a make a disguise artist. He needed a bomb guy. He needed X, Y, and Z. All specialists that come together, get paid for what they do, drive towards an outcome, and then go back their separate ways. I just think the Industrial Revolution pushed us into offices. There was value in having people side by side because everybody was doing the same job. You can learn now all that side by side stuff is gonna be automated. And what are you actually learning? We didn't answer Francesca.

Your question, I think it's fundamentally going to change it. And it just depends on how quick. I think we're in the early stages, so it's going to be fascinating to see where this goes. I have something for employees. I've been hearing from a lot of people that they feel they're stuck in organizations. They're at a manager plus level. And they're like, I thought I was being brought in for my expertise, but I'm not being listened to sometimes. And or, to your very good point,

the majority of their day is spent on shit that is absolutely not even relevant to their job. And there's something so beautiful about having an agreement that you're being brought in for your skill set, you're being paid for your skill set and all the other minutiae goes away. So from a business, this makes sense from an employee or from someone that this is their craft. This can be a really beautiful way to work too, because you're actually getting paid for your expertise. Yeah. And you can do it where you want, right? I mean, it's Yeah.

That's where I'm watching these office mandates. I'm like, you gotta be kidding me. You've been in the workforce for 30 years and this is the way I love your viewpoint on this. I just talked about it. Okay. Yeah. Feelings. We agree with you wholeheartedly. You hire adults. These are experts you're hiring to come into your organization, but you don't trust them to get the job done. And that's a larger issue we think.

Brett Trainor (16:38.202)
If you don't trust them, they're not going to work any harder in the office and you can argue they're more inefficient at the office. I grew up in it. So I saw the value at times when having colleagues and working. I just think that those days are gone. They're gone. It's interesting because there's these decision makers that are making really regressive decisions. We're just going to keep going back. We're going to keep going back. And it's like, that ship has sailed.

And I think the people that are willing to think about a new way will win. For as long as we're on this culture is something I've been thinking about from a pure execution standpoint from a company. And I think culture matters for the ownership group, right? This is what the vision, this is the thing we want to create. Man, once you get below a certain level, everybody's just doing it for the paycheck. And you can tell me there's companies that believe in the mission, which I'm a hundred percent sure there are, but I'm saying 80% of the companies.

80% of the workers and they just want to be paid fairly treated with some flexible rate and then they'll do a good job. I don't say culture is overrated because it's not, but don't think the 10,000 employees are all going to buy into your culture. You never going to get that, especially with returned office man and all that other stuff. But if you plug in specialists for a lot of these key roles that just love to do this job, they like you and the company.

you're going to get a lot further than trying to force people into a box again. My own thing on companies right now is they are not everybody, but most of them are misrepresenting themselves in terms of what they're offering from an employee experience perspective, because a lot of organizations are, we're a great place to work. We're a great place to work for mothers. We're a great diversity, equity, inclusion, blah, blah. We have all of these benefits. We care about mental health. We care about all this stuff.

And the actual working experience day to day doesn't match the brand that they've been sold. And so there's this sense of betrayal. There's this sense of like, what the fuck, you know, excuse my French. To me, one of the best relationships you can get into in anything, romantic, friend, parent job is when it's honest and contracts are honest. Yeah, contracts are honest. You know what you're going to get.

Brett Trainor (18:54.126)
I love your point of view on this. I think a lot of employees feel like I thought I was signing up for something completely different than what I've been given. Yeah, the one way street. Yeah, we're hearing that from a lot of folks who independently reach out to us to share. And I agree with you wholeheartedly, Francesca, because culture is the responsibility of the organization, team and individual, but it takes all three of those elements for it to be effective throughout. But if at

each of those levels, you don't have everyone bought into your good point, Brett. There comes a point sometimes when an organization potentially is just too large, where they're not going to be able to manage all of the micro cultures that have now popped up. It's like having a core set of values and making sure that everyone operates within that core set of values and how they work is so critically important. But if

they're not really paying attention to that or have expectations around that or build performance management around those expectations and they're really measuring it, then the culture and the microcultures get out of control and to Francesca's point, yeah, there's a sense of betrayal from people who were sold, hey, this was a great working environment for mothers, but I joined this team and my direct leader won't let me leave early to go watch my kids soccer game. Then that's not a great organization for that mom.

but maybe a mom on another team is getting the opportunity to do that. But it all depends on your direct team. Yeah. What's interesting when I was starting to have these conversations is the relationship between as a corporate escapee or an employee. Employees definitely it's mostly command and control. Some companies do give you some flexibility, but I heard that command and control. I talked to a executive recruiter friend of mine who told me that there was a CEO.

they were hiring a chief people officer and the board was basically dictating who he was gonna hire. I'm like, so he's being micromanaged at the highest level. And this wasn't a family owned company, this was a pretty good sized business. And when I started to think through this, this is why I think fractional can start to even that playing field. So the way I think the old days of freelancer is really transactional. Hey, we're hiring you to do this job, we'll pay you this, we both agree, done, done.

Brett Trainor (21:09.238)
where fractional is more of a partnership, right? I'm part of that organization just on a part-time basis. I've got to be on the same page as the owner, the C-level that's bringing me into that organization. We decide together what's gonna work, right? You can't tell me what to do all the time, because one, that's not why you brought me in, but two, that's not the way our relationship is. So you get like commanding control as an employee, partner as a fractional, transactional as freelance, and there's some service businesses in there that are definitely more transactional.

but at least give the employee a leg up. The other thing I encourage folks to think about, even if you're staying in corporate, think of it as you are still the CEO of your own company, company of one, and your product is your expertise and what this company's paying you to do that job is salary benefits and the requirement of you being on site three days, five days, one day, just everything that's involved. And would you run your business that way if this is the way the customer, maybe you would, and you're willing to trade off because this is what you need.

But for me, forever, I just, all right, this is what you're paying me, this is what I get, right? This is the vacation and all those things and just accepted it versus thinking, if I treated this as this was my company and this is my skill, I probably would have done things differently. Maybe not have had as many options, but too often I think we're just way too reactive and not as intentional.

with it. I think a lot of people think that that's the only way. I grew up thinking, you're going to go to college, you're going to go to grad school, you're going to get a job at Accenture and you're going to keep on da-da-da-da-da-da-da and this is the way. This is the path and it's not the only one. It's the safe thing, it's the right thing, right? My plan was, I was the first one in my family that actually went to college. So business, I had no idea what that was. And so my goal before I started was a game warden in Wisconsin. That sounds awesome.

I had no idea. Then 30 years later, I'm like, what the hell happened? You can still do that, Brett. You can still do that. Yeah, I'm not that far away. You get into that, somebody called it a treadmill and I think it's the perfect thing. Somebody said that salary is the drug that keeps you going. It's that next level. If I just get promoted to that next position, then I'll end up with enough money to do this, but it's never really enough. What's happened this last year is the fear factor against him.

Brett Trainor (23:25.858)
lay you off, what are you going to do? There's nothing out there. And they scare you into staying into a job longer than maybe that you would want to. And times are changing, which is so exciting. There's enough signs that we're moving in the right direction. I think so. I think the sign of how many folks and younger folks who are looking at exploring this space to not just going into corporate, there's a real desire, I think, for people to own their time.

and how they spend it and who they spend it with. And I think that's so beautiful about this type of work too, because you have a bit more autonomy around what you're working on, who you're working with, when after COVID, I will say my personal experience was really reflecting on how do I wanna spend my time? And I tell Francesca this all the time, I went to work where there's a three-legged stool of respect relationships and meaningful work. So in everything I do, that's what I wanna do.

that's appealing to me about your messaging and going out on your own and it seems possible. It's true. An author, Steve Glebeski, Australian guy, wrote Time Rich. He's like, look, you can always earn more money, but you can never earn time back. I'm like, so true. And you think about our corporate careers. We built our lives around those jobs, whatever it was, right? Vacation, school, workouts. You had to get up at 6 a.m. if you wanted to go to the gym. A little more flexibility now, but not.

completely, so our lives really revolved around whatever corporate job that we were doing and not the other way around, which again, we're gonna look back in 50 years and go, what the heck are we thinking? Yeah, right.

Brett Trainor (25:10.798)
you

Brett Trainor (25:22.158)
Can we talk about the money for a second? Because I think this might be one of the things that people get nervous about when they think about this. Do you find in general that the money is like, nut, it's better, it's worse? I think it's better, but you've got the risk. Because when I left, it was all about the money. What had happened to me was as a management consulting firm, I saw what they were billing me out as, and I saw what I was taking home about that billable rate. I'm like, this is crazy. What it did teach me is what my market rate was.

And that's one thing I think we all do is undervalue what we have and what we do. Where it's definitely going and I can speak from the fractional and from the service side, because when I say fractional, it's again, that on average, it's a day per week, probably no more than 10 hours a week, no more than two hours per day, depending on how you spread out per client and the billable range that you can charge is between six and $12,000 per month. And what I see more consistently is between seven and 10.

Now it's a bigger company that you're doing some work for, maybe it's a couple more hours, it's on the higher end. So definitely outliers in either way. This is for sales leaders, marketing leaders, customer success folks, HR, recruiting, anything that needs a leadership or strategy component within those companies, you can transition that to fractional. And this isn't just my experience, you can like Voyage or You, which works with exclusively Fractionals and Fractionally United with.

She's got 6,000 fractionals in there. And they just had a data study that came out that showed wages or the hourly rate amongst different levels of skills and what role in the organization. And it was consistent. If it's more of a less strategic role, you're going to be down in the $150 per hour or $100 per hour. One rule of thumb that I think if people at home want to do the math is whatever your corporate salary is, chop off the three zeros.

and that's what your hourly rate. And if you do the math backwards, which I'm not a fan of the public math, so if you're making $150,000 in corporate, think about it as about $150 per hour, times that by 10 hours per week per client, and it adds up to being able to replace your income with two to three clients and only working two to three days per week. And that's ideal, that's after you get running. If you don't leave corporate, that instantly happens.

Brett Trainor (27:45.878)
but it's definitely more, I wouldn't call it an industry standard yet, but it's definitely becoming accepted. And the other data point I'll share is one of the companies that I was a chief revenue officer for, they were less than 3 million in annual revenue and they were still paying in that range. So it's even a smaller company as well, because they need to invest. Yeah, they do. Right, and so if you do- Yeah, worth it, worth it. Yeah. So that's what I'm saying, when people say it's saturated, I'm like.

Do you know how many companies that are between two, five, 10 million dollars that could use your skill set for 12 to 18 months as they figure it out? The other beauty of this is you can start to think about your expertise as a service. I know we're going to level two now, but I think that's where I encourage folks that if you're a CRM specialist, maybe they're not gonna bring you on as a fractional CRM person.

But what do these small businesses need that you do really well that you could do for $3,000 a month or $5,000 a month, run their entire CRM, do whatever it is. And the other example I'll use from the design side, there's a graphic designer named Brett. This company's design joint, he's been super open about publishing his track record. But last year he did $2 million as a solo company. He does all his own design works. He charges brands, I think between 5K and 7K per month.

I think the rule is you can only do one design at a time. You can't send him six design requests at once. If you do the math backwards of how many customers he needs, he can manage that. He said it got overwhelming at that level, but I'm like, well, if you don't want to do two million, one brings somebody in, which he didn't want to do. Just reduce the number of clients you have. So that's why I said, if the rules don't exist, if you can solve a problem and add value to a customer, there's a way that you can structure that, that it's gonna make sense for you.

the business. I mean, in $2 million a year is that's kind of livable. That's pretty livable. Just a little. Yeah, I love that. Brett, in your recent newsletter, I loved the template that you shared around what problem are you solving for people? What skills are you bringing to solve that problem? We'll link to that to share with folks because I think it's super valuable. I'd love to talk about if you're in corporate today, we hear from a lot of folks in high pressure industries. So thank you.

Brett Trainor (30:08.106)
law firms, the finance world, banking, all of that, who are looking to pivot. For folks who are in these intense industries, they're also highly regulated, so you might not be able to start a side gig because it could be seen as sort of competing priorities with what you're doing. What do you recommend for them to be able to make space to plan for this kind of pivot? Yeah, that's a good question. It's this highly regulated maybe.

a bigger issue, there's still gotta be a way around it. It's still gonna come back to what the problem that you solved, who you solved it for, and even if you solved it for free on the side for a few folks, you can test the idea. Target may be a different industry because that's one thing I've found is unless you're specific in like a healthcare technology or whatever it is that doesn't translate, then...

maybe a little trickier and you may just have to get yourself set up, build some runway and say, all right, I'm going all in, I see the future of this. But short of that, there's no reason why you can't start to have these conversations and do some mini engagements with folks. Everything that we're building to go solo, you can build on the side and then just start to have the conversations one off with people. And then you get a sense of, is this really a need to solve problem? Is this a nice to solve problem?

Hopefully it's really the need to solve that the business has. So I think there's ways around it and that's the number of the folks I'm actually working with. I'm testing a new offering. 60 Days Your First Customer, and it originally had the grandiose plans of, end to end of all the things that you should be thinking about. What I found was all these folks are really smart and don't necessarily need all the pieces, but when you get down into what does the specific offering look like, who is the target customer, cut through all the noise, because

We all like to chase the shiny objects and go too many of them. Let's pick one path. What's the problem? What is it you want to solve and work on and then build the offer into that. Most of the people I'm working with are still in corporate. So it can't be just broadcast to your network that you're open to fractional and contract work, it's not going to work. So we're going to have to be a little more targeted with some of the outreach, but it's absolutely possible. I think that's what we talk ourselves into that nobody's going to want this. Or we have to have a full on marketing plan.

Brett Trainor (32:28.43)
At the end of the day, for us to be successful, and I say most, if you have 10 customers, that you're not gonna be able to serve as 10 customers. So you think about it really, if you're thinking about replacing that income and still working less, two to three customers is all you need. That's not very many, that's super targeted. And through relationships, referability, John Arms talks about all the time, and then just solving that problem. You gotta break the ice with the first one, but then.

It's much more manageable even than it was five years ago when you tried to, you almost did have to have a marketing plan. It's just starting the conversation with folks and offering advice for free to build those relationships. I've also seen this done where folks start to have the conversation with their employer and they've turned that former employer to a client once they've transitioned into freelance. Have you ever seen that happen with any of your? I know people have done it. I wouldn't be comfortable going to my most recent employer.

But if you were like me and worked for three or four or five other companies, maybe there's some folks in the past that know you, the work that you do, and need some additional help to get that going. You can be super targeted with LinkedIn. And I'll give you just an example. When the corporate escapee took off, I didn't want to forget about the work that I was doing with the small business. So these corporate escapee work. So everything you see on my social and LinkedIn now is mostly the escapee stuff. But I did some targeted outreach to.

some clients saying, hey, I've got this full network of escapees now, Mrs. or Mr. Business Owner, are you still stuck in your traditional recruiting ways? Are you only looking at a full-time equivalent? Are you open to ideas around flexible staffing, fractional, those types of things? And I was just sending that out to not direct connections, but second degree connections. I probably got an 80% connection acceptance rate.

Most of them would say, no, that's not my business because I was targeting too small. Then I went up the next level, 10 to 25 employees. And most people accept the connection or say, no, I'm not in that. But a handful are now saying, yeah, I'm interested in learning more. We're just about to that point. Again, I'm not selling anything on those things, but I've got three or four leads that I'm working at. If I was still employed, they'd have no idea that I'm even talking to these companies. I'm not saying backhand, don't do anything illegal, but.

Brett Trainor (34:49.99)
They can't keep you from trying to grow whatever you want to do in your free time and your own time and what you want to do in the future. The point is there's ways you can start to identify customers even if you're LinkedIn says I'm fully employed. Just have to get creative sometimes. Just building relationships is key. Yeah. Like-minded people. That's what I've found with this community. Everybody is super helpful. And maybe it's just people like myself.

But again, everybody realizes we're breaking the mold in corporate where it was every person for themselves. It was the political, eat or be eaten and all that. We're here. Everybody's more than willing to help. And again, back to the community. That's really what I want out of this group is to say, hey, this I came across an opportunity doesn't make sense for me. But I know somebody that was in IT that this would be a good fit for. And we just start referring each other into opportunities. All of our networks are big.

or big enough for us to figure out what we need to have. I've never been more optimistic about a path than if you would ask me this three years ago, I think that you get to work really hard and figure it out, but now we can eliminate some of those blockers, the traditional learning curves. I love your Slack community. I'll keep plugging it because being a new.

corporate escaping myself, joining that Slack community. I think it's been an invaluable experience because everyone's just wanting to help each other, learn from one another, help each other grow. And I think that's the beauty in this is that community piece and you're sort of indirectly creating your own quote unquote corporate culture through that community culture of just helpers, people who are interested in helping organizations and helping each other and it's really nice.

Brett Trainor (36:53.522)
don't talk about this often, but it's hard to get your first client, but how was it having to fire your first client? It's usually mutual. Usually. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. Usually you get a sense in the first three, six months if it's gonna work. And I was working with a client doing some sales, but really what they needed was marketing support, some branding. They had a really good tool, really strong competitive product, but nobody knew them. Less than 3% of the industry knew who they were.

And I basically said, look, take the money that you're paying me and go invest in a marketing and more specifically a product marketer that's really going to help because their entire business was contingent upon if this one product hit the growth targets. You can understand the product from the customer research all the way to how do you position it and move it into the marketplace. Spend your money there because it's going to be much better than me trying to help you figure out how to cold call our way to.

that business and so we agreed to move on just because it didn't provide the right fit. Usually you get a sense that the cultural fit's going to be there, but the way I like to structure my engagement is the first one's a, we don't call it a get to know you, but as we're having a conversation and we're saying, hey, this is what I think my organization needs and I'm saying, I think this is what I can deliver until you actually get involved into the business and know what you have.

It's hard to know. So I always liked the 30 or 60 day, let's validate everything that we thought we knew and then build the roadmap from there. Even if you're fractional, that's really what you're doing is helping them build the strategy and go from there. So I always build it out after that paid assessment period. I hate that term, but I don't know a better way of paid validation, right? There's gonna be value, we'll build the roadmap.

And at that point, we'll know if I'm the right fit for what your business needs. And if not, then we can find somebody else to go in there. Love the concept of a paid assessment time. So everyone gets to test it out and see if you're still in alignment after that. 60 days is really nice actually. There's a few businesses, like one guy that was working on a corp, corporate development and really the work that he needed to do. It's, it's a six month, right? To do the due diligence. So he can't do that one month, a month, but

Brett Trainor (39:10.29)
almost all of them, you absolutely could do a trial one month, two months, three months, just to make sure everybody's happy. And again, it takes the risk out of the business. And it's an easier sell at that point too. It's naturally beneficial. Like, yeah,

Brett Trainor (39:41.934)
of things that you want to avoid when you're getting into this space that you don't need? Yeah, that's a really good point. I see less of the scammy, right? They're there, right? But I think, yeah, we overcomplicate what we're doing and you don't need a hundred tools. The thing that I found that would have been helpful would have been how do I reduce the learning curve? Because everything I did was the first time it was on my own. There was nobody to share what was going on.

And that's kind of the way I've approached that with TikTok and the newsletter. I'll tell you everything I know for free. And then if there's still stuff that you want help with, then fine. And that's the way I approached with other folks as well that said, hey, I really need some help. Like I've got somebody helping me on the community. Never done a community. I've got an escapee that does it for me to help eliminate some of those big potholes that I don't need to hit.

And so I think that's the biggest thing is don't let somebody sell you on. There's no, there is no secret sauce. If you do this one thing, you'll get 10 customers. No, it just doesn't work like that. I think it's the fundamentals, the basics. It's everything you already know, but people will tell you have to do more than what you know, and that's just, just not the case. Talking to somebody the other day and they're like, I don't even know how to get started. I'm here. I know I hate my job. I'm in the muck.

have the talking heads like, this is not my beautiful house. This is not my beautiful life on repeat, right? What are the first two to three things you just need to do? Yeah. If you would have asked me two years ago, I wouldn't have necessarily thought of this, but it's what do you really want, right? Where do you want it? Uh-huh, best question ever. Best question ever. It's hard to answer and mine changes, but I've gotten much more settled into it because...

If you can answer that, is your number one goal just to replace or double your income? Because that's gonna send you down a path of doing X, Y, or Z. But if it's hey, if I can just supplement my income or get 50% of it, but I only wanna work one day or two days, I wanna be able to do it from the beaches of Florida in the winter and on a lake somewhere in the summer, and really think through what is it you want from this next phase, and there's no wrong answer.

Brett Trainor (41:55.03)
But having that answer makes it easier to figure out what are the next steps that you do to drive that business. Because again, if you want to build the design joy with the two million revenue, you're going to have to put a little more work into, I just want to replace my income and work a couple days a week and be able to do whatever else I want on the other five or four or five days. So in the more macro sense, I think some people probably roll in their eyes and say, it's

Trust me, I was that person, but now I always encourage people to go down that path. This is personal, work on it. If you've got a spouse, partner, whatever, be on the same page, because if you're not on the same page, it's gonna make it really difficult, not impossible, but really difficult to go through this. And then from there, I would find that problem, right? I tell people to go through it, skills and experience inventory, and if you've done something for 20 to 30 years, you'll be shocked.

at how many different things you have to do. But from that, then think about what is it you like to do? Because you're at now a point, you get a little bit, you may have to take some jobs or a couple of projects that aren't exactly what you wanna do to get started, but start to think about what that is, who you wanna work with, what type of business, right? Because some of the folks I talk with, they could go into sales, so they could help small business with sales, but they're also really good at software, so they understand.

Are you getting the ROI off your current software? So there's multiple paths. You just get it down on paper and say, all right, here's, Francesca, back to your point, there's three or four main problems that you can probably solve that you've got the expertise and your LinkedIn profile will show you can walk into these small businesses and say, yeah, I've done this type of thing. And then you can start to figure out what does that offering look like? I think too often we go straight from, well, I've got 30 years, I wanna be fractional. Make it happen.

No, just take the steps to go through it. You maybe make it happen. Again, that was part of my learning curve was in consulting, really, man, why did I do this? This isn't even what I like to do. I like the conversations, I like the problem solving, but I don't like project management. I don't like tracking down stakeholders. I don't like recapping meetings, those types of things. So I think it's figuring out what you want, identifying that problem at the.

Brett Trainor (44:16.078)
most accurate or clearest point you can from a business owner standpoint, whoever you're solving it for in the business, and then the type of work that you wanna do, and then you can start to craft options. Again, because those $3,000 to $5,000 a month engagements add up pretty quickly, and if it's in your core expertise, it's probably not gonna take you a lot of time to do it either. I don't like to oversimplify it, but it's not as hard as people make it out to be.

Those are such important questions and things to define. And I'm surprised when I talk to people and they're in these situations and I ask them, what do you want? Like, what is it you really, really want? And they don't know or sometimes they don't want to admit what they really want because it's very far from where they are today. These are really important questions to ask yourself for you to get to a space that you are meant to play in and that it'll be easy to play in as well. Yeah.

I get feedback from folks that said that it took me two days, right? They were longer to go through and actually think through what it was. But when you think about what's next for you, you'll get a lot of options and flexibility. So now's the time. Like I said, I'm planning on living a while and healthy. So what am I going to do for the next 20, 25 years?

Jesse Itzler, he's NetJet's guy, Sarah Blakely's husband. He's built a really successful business, but one of the things that he had equipped not too long ago, he's like, look, I think he's a year younger than me, he's like, so statistically speaking, I've got 23 years left to live, which means I've got 23 summers, and I wanna do as much in those 23 summers as I absolutely can. I'm like, yes, and it's so true. And again, I think.

we get so conditioned that we can't think like that. Like that's not for me, that's only for the rich can do this, like no. That's the whole point of this exercise is you can start to find what does that life look like and then how do you incorporate your business into it. I'll give you one quick example and she was my poster child forever. She and I worked in our last corporate job together. She was training in development, just hard charging corporate. She was moving up the corporate ladder. Then after that, she's like, you know what, I'm done.

Brett Trainor (46:28.822)
and she wanted to start a business, training and development, and her whole mission was, I wanna take the month of August off so I can go climbing. Didn't matter where in the world, so when she set up her training, she worked with companies and basically said, I'm not working in August. So they knew up front that she wasn't available for that. From that point on, she grew her business, she hired some contractors to do some work, she ultimately lived intentionally in her van, the van life, and then.

I think she's been in Australia now for six months running her company, but the whole point of that is she built this, she built her life and then figured out how to work actually fits into it. And I'm like, that's so refreshing. Right, you need to do it. Yeah. Yeah, it's build your life and then figure out how to put the work into it. I think that is the right equation, right? That's the right stack of that story. It should be. Like I said, better late than never for me figuring that out now. The other thing folks think they need to

build the next Google or Microsoft, like if I leave corporate, I've got to start a company. I'm like, not anymore. Solo businesses, seeing the number of solo businesses with seven figures. I mean, if you start to do the math, and we can do that afterward, you can see it's not that difficult with the right, a couple of right freelancers or VAs to help with certain tasks, you can build that. So I'm like, how is it possible that these one person companies are doing one million or two million in revenue, but yet there's three and $5 million companies that have 22 employees?

There's so much opportunity, but it's very exciting to think about. I love that the concept of designing your life and then figuring out how work fits into it, that's how it should be. Cause to your good point, the one thing we can't ever get back is time.

Brett Trainor (48:28.098)
Well, hey, we have something we call a rapid round fun questions. Yes or no. Are you, are you up for a rapid round? Fire away. Okay. Have you ever regretted leaving corporate? No. Have you ever had to turn down a dream project because it didn't align with your freelance goals? Not yet. Did leaving corporate improve your life? A hundred percent.

Is it easier to say no to projects now that you're your own boss? Yes ish. Instinct still wants to take jobs, but my getting better at saying no, if it doesn't align and usually I figure that a little bit earlier in the process than I would have before, but yeah, it's still tempting, right? If they're willing to pay a certain amount of money, it's, do I want to do this? So.

That's a car. That's a car. Yeah. Do you attend more or fewer meetings now than when you were in corporate? You were much fewer. Good answer. Good answer. Good answer. Do you think contracting has made you a better negotiator overall? That's a good question. I would say yes. You go through more negotiations with potential customers. You get much more comfortable.

The first couple are like, oh my God, I can't. You're prepared for three days, right? And whatever they say, you're gonna say yes to, because you don't want to jeopardize the deal. But then as you start to go through a few, you realize it's more of a value-based exchange than it is them walking away, because you wanted a few extra dollars. It's good to hear you got nervous on your first negotiations too. Oh, for sure. That's what they comment.

Common thing. The bigger deal is that you do get nervous because again, especially if it's a project I want, then it tends to get more nervous. The more you really want something, the more you tend to get nervous for. Have you ever worked from an unconventional location? That's a good question. I can't think of what unconventional would mean anymore. I was actually working at home for a few years prior to the pandemic. So I've...

Brett Trainor (50:42.87)
kind of worked where I've been. So I wish I had a more exotic answer for you. Like a tree house in Costa Rica or something. Not a closet. No, I've been on a zoom call with some guy that was cruising down the highway at 65 miles an hour from Detroit to Chicago on his new video. I'm like, dude, it's okay. You can put it down and sound. I don't need to be seeing you scooting down the highway. Please don't get into an accident. Do you?

have your midday naps taking an uptick? No naps. I haven't figured out the naps, but definitely more if I want to shut it down. Nice, nice. Can I give you just one tip that I learned from this? Because when I started it, everything was, I'm like, ah, it's a contract. I can schedule my day however I want. But what I found was it was chaotic. And again, back to that book, Time Rich, it said, hey, if you calendarize and block time,

It changed my life. It really did. So if people are struggling with that, not saying you have to calendar a block, find a system that works for you because you'll be surprised at how much more time you actually do have. Time blocking. I also am a fan of the time block and I love that you're building in walks because that's good. Get some vitamin D. Last question, more of like a superstitious thing. Do you have a favorite coffee mug or something that you're superstitious about for your work days? One say superstitious, but that's funny. I don't know if you can see.

Oh, puppy. Yeah, it was unfortunately she was 18. We lost her last year, but she was my office mate for like five years. And so my oldest daughter got me this cup as a gift. So I keep that as the good luck cup. So not superstitious, but more of a comfort feeling. I love that.

Brett Trainor (52:42.818)
you

Brett Trainor (52:46.216)
you

Brett Trainor (52:53.518)
Before we adjourn, if you were talking to your kid or a best friend who is contemplating this, what would you tell them? Yeah, don't wait, right? If there's a way to take control, the big macro is don't run your life around your job. You may have to in the short term, but figure out a plan to get away from that as soon as possible. Get the skills you need to pay your dues, but always keep in mind that there's another way you just want to be in control.

Easier said than done sometimes, but it comes back to that time factor. And maybe now I'm just more sensitive to it as I'm older, but the earlier you can get that, that it's okay to find alternative paths. My daughter's know by now that corporate, I'm not a big fan of anymore. It served me well. It had its purpose, but I think there's better ways to do that. And just again, take control of your own, figure out a way to build your life and then incorporate work into it.

And the last thing I'll add to that is figure out what you want. You may not know it at 25 to 29. You may not know, but I still have a plan. Even if this plan changes, think about where you go. Because if you're not driving towards something, then it's you're just along for the ride. And there's a lot of good work to do, right? In a huge space like wide open spaces. And people that appreciate that these business owners and business, small businesses appreciate it. They're open to it. There's enough that.

Appreciate what you can do. Appreciate your point of view. Appreciate your thoughts on something. And I've heard from a number of folks that said that's one of the most refreshing things is somebody's actually listening to me. They're out there and they're hungry for your expertise. Time to tap into your main character energy. Oh, I like that, yeah. You're the main character of your story. So build the story you want.

Brett Trainor (55:00.862)
Thanks so much for joining us today. We'll post in the show notes your Slack channel, your podcast, TikTok, and your LinkedIn, just so everyone can go out and be part of your Corporate Escape community. Thank you for joining us today. Yeah, it was absolutely my pleasure.

Brett Trainor (55:34.254)
We'll be back next week with new week, new headlines. Thanks so much for joining us today. Like and subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. You can come over and say hi to us on the TikToks and LinkedIn community. Hit us up at yourworkfriends.com. We're always posting stuff on there. And if you found this episode helpful, share with your work friends. Thanks, friend.