The Great Escape: 60 Days to Your 1st Customer

Brett Trainor (00:01.206)
Welcome back to another episode of the Corporate Escapee podcast. I'm your host Brett Trainer. And in today's solo edition, I want to outline my 60 day plan for you to go from corporate to your first customer. Uh, it's a 10 part, um, strategy or framework, but don't worry. I will go through these in detail. But if you're interested, just drop me a note in the comments, connect with you at LinkedIn or even, uh, email me. I've got a PDF version. That's kind of a checklist.

of these 10 steps. But I think there's still value to go through each of these. So if you're out walking, running, whatever you do, this will give you a good outline at least to frame how you can begin to make that transition from corporate into call it solo business ownership, the independent, the corporate escapee lifestyle. So let's jump right into it. The first step in what I encourage everyone to do is define your life vision.

If you've been in corporate for a couple of decades, three decades, your life has kind of revolved around what that corporate world was, right? Whatever your job was, the nine to five, which I've never found it nine to five, it was more seven, seven thirty to six a lot of the times. But everything else kind of revolved around that work schedule. Now is your chance to really think about not just what you want from a job.

or a career, but also what does your life look like? If you're anything like me, right, hit 50, started to think about, you know, what's next? Am I gonna do this for the next 20 years? Or, you know, what do I want to accomplish, right? What are my revenue goals? Where do I wanna live? What's the type of work I wanna do? Et cetera, et cetera. So this is a really good time. I had never done this in my life, and I wish I would have done it before. I made the transition from corporate and into the escapee world.

But about two years ago, I really sat down and started to find what I want. The good thing is you can always change it, but it'll help you think about the type of work that you wanna do that aligns with what that life vision looks like, right? So if you're 50, if you wanna do something till you're 70 or 80, you're in good shape, you plan on working or doing some kind of work, this is just a really good exercise to help you think through that. So one is define what does that life vision look like, architect the next stage for yourself.

Brett Trainor (02:23.534)
Two is take an inventory of your skills and experience. You think, well, I've been doing this job for a while, I already know what my skills are and experience and I don't have that much. When you really sit down and map out what you've accomplished in your career, the number of companies you've worked for, even if you've worked for the same company, think about all the different jobs you have. Think about the projects that you were on, the work you did, the customers you helped, et cetera, et cetera. You're gonna be amazed at how much work.

you actually accomplished and how broad your skill set actually is, even if you were in the same type of role, different industries, different customers, I think it's just a really, again, a good exercise to build that foundation and then start to highlight where you want to spend that time. Again, part of the beauty of going solo and starting an expertise-based business is you get to decide the clients you want to work with and the type of work that you want to do.

helpful if it aligns with what your skill set is and experience is, not necessary, but definitely helpful. So again, take the time, go through that process, document customers, companies you work for, industries, et cetera, just so you have a full baseline of what you've done. Three is identify the core problem you wanna solve. I think too often when folks exit, they wanna go fractional or if they wanna start a consulting.

You know, they think they can, and you probably could, solve a lot of different problems. The challenge with that is you really, really have hard time cutting through the noise if you can do all things to all people. And I'll give you an example. When networking with folks, somebody tells, you tell them, well, I can do, you know, I'm a HubSpot expert, but I can also do, you know, Salesforce or just General CRM, et cetera, et cetera.

You want them to stick with one thing. So the next time they're having a conversation, they, oh, here HubSpot expert, somebody is struggling. How I know a person that can do that. And I'm just using HubSpot as the example, but pick the one problem that you want to solve for the customer to start with. Again, once you get established, gain momentum, you can start to expand beyond that, but pick and work around what the problem is versus a job title or a function. You can always apply that later. So think about what problem you solve.

Brett Trainor (04:50.658)
really well. The next one is define your ideal customer. Who do you really want to work with? Is it a certain title within a large organization? Is it a vertical? Is it a small business? Is it a CEO? Is it the head of IT? Who is your ideal customer that has that core problem that you want to solve? It's just going to save you time down the road if you can target who you want to go after. Again, because

what you're going to do to find those first customers is going to be around networking and leveraging your network. And so the more specific you can be about the type of customers that you help and the problems you solve for them, it's going to be much easier to find those customers. The fifth step is choose your business model. This could be, do I want to do consulting work, which is usually fixed fee for fixed time.

Right. So I'm going to solve this problem in six weeks, six months and do this project. It could be strategy work, could be fractional. And what fractional is, is you will be a part of that team company, but on a part-time basis. You can be interim where you're full-time in a role for a fixed amount of time. The beauty of going solo and leveraging your expertise is you get to define how that model works and the work you do as long as there's value to the customer.

there's flexibility on how you can define it. I'd also think through, is this a one-to-one relationship? If you're gonna coach, does this need to be in person? Does it need to be on site? Is it virtual? Is it one to many? So again, building off of the problem you solved and the customers you're gonna solve this for, choose the best way to think about delivering that value or how you're gonna solve that problem for those customers.

Number six is craft that first offer. Again, I like to keep it simple. If you've listened to me for a while, you know that the 80-20 rule is really beneficial, right? 20% of the work for 80% of the benefit. And if the more you can simplify things, the easier the messaging, the more momentum you can get. So when you think about that first offer, again, go back to that, the one-one-one model, right? One problem to solve for one customer with one offer.

Brett Trainor (07:11.958)
And again, you want to make sure that you're getting value for the work that you're going to deliver. But in the early stages, it's okay if you want to sign up and do, again, I'm not a huge advocate for doing free work or comp work for folks. But if you do that, make sure you get a testimonial in return and some feedback that you can use to promote or even a reference into another

as part of the contingency of you doing the free work. I usually find charging at least a small amount helps keep both sides engaged within the practice. If you're giving something away for free, they're not gonna be as motivated to work with you or try to help you solve whatever problem that is. So again, I think for the first offer, keep it simple, keep it something that you can sell and...

Again, get the momentum. The key to this is get the momentum. And then once you get your feet established, you can start to expand into some different areas and get creative and larger engagements, et cetera. So once you have that offer, now is the time you want to think through your messaging and positioning. You've got to be able to articulate the problem that you solve. So again, here's my simple framework. Is the problem you solve, who you solve it for.

How you do it uniquely, right? So how are you doing this different than other folks? And where have you done it before? And don't worry if you haven't, if you're just getting started in the solo business, you've been doing it your whole career, right? So if you're thinking about a fractional leader and you've been in the corporate world as the head of sales for a decade and now you're gonna work with a smaller mid-size company, you've had the experience setting up the foundation, running organizations that can easily apply.

back into what these companies need. So don't worry if you don't have the experience as a solo business, you've earned it the last two to three decades. So again, you want to be crystal clear on that messaging when you're in a network through emails, you can have this through phone calls, voices or voice calls, virtual calls, et cetera. So it's crystal clear when somebody hangs up with you, the work you do, the type of work you're looking to do and who they can connect you with to help.

Brett Trainor (09:37.562)
So once you have that now you're up to now what? All right, I've got my offer Messaging and positioning how it's leverage your network if you've been in corporate for a while You're probably connected with a lot of folks and historically you probably work Networking when either you were looking for a job or somebody else was looking for a job But regardless you do have folks in your network that you can connect with

And I think, again, you're not asking anybody for a job. You're just asking for folks who may know somebody that needs this problem solved. And again, be helpful to the folks that you're networking with as well. You can explain, hey, I'm going solo. This is a change. I think you'll be surprised at the number of folks that are open to the fractional or the contract work by just asking.

Brett Trainor (10:32.546)
Starting points are either former employers that you worked for or even your current employer. Now, it can be a little bit tricky if they don't know you're looking to leave or maybe there's an arrangement where you can work part-time for your current company. So I get my point being with leveraging your network. It's a great place to start. You've probably built up a lot of connections. And what I found is 90% of the folks want to help you, right? And so it's a whole lot easier.

to find customers this way, then it is cold outreach and try to introduce yourself and the service you have. So where possible leverage that network. And maybe I'll do a full episode on how to do that and how to craft and how to have those conversations where again, the key is to add value both ways. You don't wanna be just ask, ask. It's what can you give? And by giving is where you tend to get some of that karma back.

So I'm a big believer in karma, so help where you can, and it'll come back around. And then nine is once you start having these conversations with potential customers, iterate off the feedback. You thought you knew what the exact problem was that these folks were having, but it turns out, it's slightly different. So again, I don't think you're gonna have to start over from scratch, but leverage that feedback and go get that first customer. I've heard from countless folks that,

they were shocked when they just changed the conversation. I'll give you an example. This one person was in consulting, but the normal networking conversations were, hey, if you hear of an opening for my kind of background at this consulting firm, X, Y, or Z, he added just, hey, I'm also open to contract work, so if anybody's interested, if you know of anybody, let me know. I've had two different individuals just in the last two weeks reach back out to me and say, hey, they've uncovered a couple of leads.

just by asking and mentioning that they're now open to fractional or in some cases, maybe fractional hasn't caught on as the vocabulary at, you know, contract work with companies. So I think you will be surprised that how many small, mid-size and even startups are hungry for the experience that you have. And a lot of the times it's just asking and letting people know that you're open to that type of work. So

Brett Trainor (12:58.622)
Again, this was a down and dirty 10 part plan. I guess I should say the 10th step is celebrate your new beginning. You will get that first customer signed. Again, it could be a small deal. It could be analysis. It could be straight into a fractional role to help somebody build out whatever they need to do. It doesn't matter. Again, the whole thing is we just want to get traction. And then once you get comfortable,

then you can really start to expand. Because the beauty of this model and what we do is multiple revenue streams. That's when you really start to unblock the value of this is when you can offer different services to different people based on what you want to do and your expertise. We'll do another episode down the line where we talk about how to open up additional revenue streams without straying too far from your core expertise. But.

For now, we'll say, hey, you've landed that first customer. You're starting the work. And then, like I said, you're going to be surprised at how many people are actually open to being able to work with you. So again, down and dirty, 10 steps, 60 days. It could be less if you really put the time and energy into it, a little longer if you're going to do this part time. But there's absolutely no reason with your expertise that you can't land that first customer.

within 60 days. I guess I'll close with this. When you think about your next job or your first customer, when you're hunting for your next job, most often, there's probably 200, 300 other applicants applying for that same job. And the more senior the role, probably the more vetted that process is going to be, where nine times out of 10, when you're looking at fractional or contract work,

there is no other firm. You're not competing against anybody else. You're only competing against that business owner or that CEO saying, no, I'm not gonna do anything. And if you've been in sales, it's the dread to do nothing. Sometimes is the killer of deals, but I would rather, 10 times out of 10, compete against do nothing than 250 other candidates.

Brett Trainor (15:14.53)
who may or may not know somebody within that organization or have a different edge. This case, you're one-on-one with your experience and how you can help this company with one business owner. So your odds are definitely stacked and that's why I always say it's easier to find your first customer than your next job. And hopefully this 10 step process will help you accelerate or at least think through it and give you the confidence to say, all right, maybe I can test this. Because that's the beauty, there is no.

You don't have to think of this as a life altering, do or don't decision. Think of it as an experiment. You can test this thing for a couple months if you're looking for a job. Look for your next customer at the same time and see where that traction gets you. I know a number of folks that were not sold that they wanted to go solo, but they did pick up some fractional work. And in two cases, they are now fully fractional. They found the traction. They found the lifestyle much better.

better suited to what they want at this stage of their life and they're not going back. So the risk is super low. The benefits are really high. So I just highly encourage you to take a look at it. No harm, no foul. If you do it for a couple of months, you don't like it or if you land your first contract, don't like it. You can always go back to corporate. It's not going anywhere in the near future. And like I said at the beginning of the podcast,

I do have a PDF version of this checklist that you can use as you want to start thinking through it or even reach out and connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to have a conversation, get you pointed in the right direction. And again, the more that mission to get 10,000 other GenXers out of corporate, this is just one step of it. So good luck. Let me know if you have any questions and we'll talk to you next week.