There are Riches in the Niches- Jessica Schwartz’s Escapee Journey

Brett Trainor (00:01.288)
Hi, Jesse, welcome to the podcast.

Jessie Schwartz (00:04.252)
Thank you very much for having me.

Brett Trainor (00:06.312)
Yeah, no, it's good to have you. I know we talk all the time. So we figured it's about time that we actually recorded one of these episodes and, and, and shared it with the audience. So a couple of things I want to go through today. One is we'll talk about your business currently. I think it's interesting to go back to your tipping point of your corporate escape, uh, through your journey. And then we'll end with your, some best practices and we can have discussion around things you would, what recommendations you would have.

Jessie Schwartz (00:11.932)
All right.

Brett Trainor (00:33.864)
folks, because I know you've been doing this. You and I, I think, are about the same time out of corporate, too. So it should be interesting. So anyway, with all that being said, why don't you share with the audience a little bit about what you are working on today? What is your business? And then we'll go back and talk.

Jessie Schwartz (00:40.444)
Yeah, that's it.

Jessie Schwartz (00:50.044)
Absolutely. So thanks for having me on the show. I'm the founder of Strategic Packaging Partners, and that is an organization that serves CPG companies and cosmetics companies to maximize their packaging spend. So when you think about packaging, it really impacts every area of the business from marketing and sales to operations, quality and logistics. So we come in and help you guys maximize your packaging so it delivers the most value to your consumers and your bottom line.

Thank you.

I've been doing this, I founded the company in 2019 and have really seen opportunities in a lot of different areas, a lot of different organizations, as well as a lot of people looking for contracting work and kind of to get into this corporate escapee space. And so it was about a year and a half ago now that I grew the organization from just kind of a solopreneur gig thing to an agency that has a further reach and is able to

bring in other experts to create a more dynamic solution for the companies that we serve.

Brett Trainor (01:58.408)
Awesome. I love that story too. And again, you always talk about, we talk riches in the niches, right? Cause when people think, well, well my skillset translate into a solo business, you're the perfect example. Yeah. Who would have thought packaging could be fractional or a solo business, but it absolutely is. Right. I think anything, if you're getting paid to do a job, there's an opportunity to take that solo. So, and I do want to get into kind of the evolution of where, where you, you started, where you see this going, um, kind of where you're at now. So.

Jessie Schwartz (02:03.804)
Yes.

Brett Trainor (02:27.432)
If you don't mind, let's go back to 2019 or when did you start having the thought, I think I can do this on my own. I want to do this on my own. Or were you thrown into it because corporate had other ideas for you?

Jessie Schwartz (02:39.932)
Yeah, so I spent my career at General Mills and it was a great organization, learned a lot. That's why I can do what I am doing now. It was about 2010 or 2012 maybe that corporations in general started doing kind of rounds of layoffs. A variety of reasons, mostly meeting numbers. And I guess like it just kind of sort of hit me after the third layoff that, hey, this is...

Brett Trainor (03:08.264)
you

Jessie Schwartz (03:09.98)
getting difficult to navigate my organization now and kind of it became more difficult for me to see myself at the organization long term and using my skills and abilities there. So.

I left the organization in 2018 and went to a small local CPG company. And ironically enough, after a year, they did some layoffs and I was impacted like first in, first out. Or last in, first out, I think. The last one that joined us is the first one out, which was fine. So then...

Brett Trainor (03:41.032)
Yeah, different rules, different companies, right?

Jessie Schwartz (03:51.1)
My goal was to kind of stay part time. I'd been working part time at General Mills for the last few years of my career. That last job I was as well because I had kids and I just I wanted to spend more time with them. But I also wanted a career. So I decided at that time that I was going to check out working on my own. So like everybody who's successful in this space or leveraging my network and just kind of figuring out, okay, where if I was going to get a gig, how would I do that? And

called around to folks that had been at General Mills previously and that's where I started to get my first, my first gigs and then I also reached out to somebody I knew who was having a baby.

And I said, hey, if you don't have anyone to cover your maternity leave, look me up because I could help. And that's how I got one of my other long standing clients that way too. So creative right out of the gate and leveraging a network right out of the gate was definitely key to being successful.

Brett Trainor (04:54.056)
Yeah, that's awesome. What a clever idea to maternity. I never would have thought of maybe reason why I would have thought of that. But it makes sense. Somebody is going to be out for anywhere between two, six months, I guess, depending on the company. And they're going to need somebody to step in and make it perfect. I don't know how you can find that as you're looking for your first customers. But I mean, it's an interesting, definitely an interesting idea.

Jessie Schwartz (05:12.924)
Yeah.

Brett Trainor (05:16.52)
And at that point when you were talking to the network, were you saying, hey, I can do this or were you bouncing ideas that say, hey, I'm thinking about doing this or would we just position yourself as kind of a contractor fractional? Cause I'm just, everybody's got a kind of a different approach to how they leverage the network. So I'm just curious how those first conversations went.

Jessie Schwartz (05:37.116)
Yeah, my conversation was, hey, I'm a contractor now. Do you have any clients that need help? Here's my experience throughout my career. I'm up for anything. I think you have to be in it's a weird place, right? Where you're kind of feeling like you need the work, but you also want to have fun, but you also want to be curious about what's out there. And so I think it's really important to just there's a huge trust element of this too, like or faith, faith too.

Believing and trusting that things will ultimately work out. And that's weird to say, especially for my brain, it's more of an engineering brain where I like to see all the data and make decisions based on data. This is a, it's a different, different feeling. I think, especially when you're first starting out and you don't have that network yet. But reaching out to people you've known in the past and just letting them know what you're doing is, is key there. And.

Brett Trainor (06:06.376)
Yeah.

Brett Trainor (06:16.456)
Right.

Brett Trainor (06:33.384)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (06:34.524)
and it just ultimately ends up working out.

Brett Trainor (06:38.344)
Yeah, I know. And I think it makes sense because part of it, you don't know what you don't know early on, right? So it's, you know, I mean, part of it is what do I, how much do I charge and what do I do? And I always tell people don't overthink the early ones, right? Cause the first one's not going to be your last one. You're going to learn a lot by going through this, especially if you haven't done anything like this in your past. And then, then you can start to get a little cleaner and tighter and you may even pivot depending on the work that you're doing. So, so I think we.

Jessie Schwartz (06:43.132)
Right. Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (07:00.605)
Yeah.

Brett Trainor (07:07.912)
At least me, I'm guilty of trying to over engineer and get the perfect thing the first time where it may make sense. Just take, get something in the area that you want to do, get the momentum and then figure out how to, to start to tweak that. So, um,

Jessie Schwartz (07:13.5)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (07:23.292)
Yeah, and I think if you can get some subcontracting gigs, that's good if you are working with someone who's fair, can kind of give you an idea of what rates are. Otherwise, you can kind of take a look at what you were being paid and understand that the hourly rate that you had is your hourly rate plus another hourly rate on top of that in benefits.

Brett Trainor (07:37.096)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (07:53.308)
And so you can kind of use that math of doubling your hourly your hourly wage or I mean you can break it down if you're a salaried person but then if you can find a couple people that you trust and and you can ask because it there is this thing in this space in the contracting space where people are kind of hush hush around rates and around how much they're charging and it will take a while for you to kind of get that figured out and so just give yourself some grace that the first few contracts

you might not price them actually like 100 % the way you would in a year from when you started. It's something definitely that you have to navigate and things can change. You can have different rates for different clients too. I don't think I really understood that at first either if you're working with a smaller startup, for example, my industry, then you can, you might have to charge a little bit less because they don't have as much or you have to think about, you have to think about the value you add a little bit differently sometimes.

Brett Trainor (08:51.976)
Right.

Jessie Schwartz (08:52.284)
an impact. So.

Yeah, it's a little bit of a dynamic, more of a dynamic space than maybe originally thought.

Brett Trainor (08:59.304)
Yeah, and it's okay, right? Because I think we think that, well, they're going to talk and everybody's going to share what I charged, right? You're going to have two customers, they're never going to know what you can charge one, one, and the other, they have no idea what they are. And the other good thing, I think what's starting to happen is, at least from the small businesses, they're getting comfortable with, at least we get larger data sets.

Jessie Schwartz (09:14.62)
Yeah. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (09:27.016)
Right. The monthly retainer, even if you do break that to back hourly, you know, that, that seven to 10 to 12, seven K to 12 K. I know it's kind of a broad range, but is acceptable within that, that market. So I think the more complex the work you're doing, the higher the rate you can charge or the bigger the organization. But yeah, the one rule of thumb, I heard somebody, I don't remember if it was Taylor crane or somebody had mentioned that, you know, take your gross salary.

Jessie Schwartz (09:30.236)
and move.

Brett Trainor (09:55.656)
annual salary and chop off the three zeros and that's what you can charge for an hour late. I found that a little white, but I think it's a good starting point. So if you can get that for your first gig, I think you're good. But you know, for the most part, if you've been in corporate for 20 years, let's use that as the benchmark. You know, the 200 is probably a good number to look. You can go down or up if you can push it, but I think that's a good target to shoot for.

Jessie Schwartz (10:01.5)
What do you think? Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (10:07.964)
Yeah.

Brett Trainor (10:25.)
And again, there's nothing. Exactly. And yeah, if this is a role in your, it's more advisory than it is like the full fractional, then it may be a little bit less because you're only doing eight, five to 10 hours per month or maybe more. Again, there's no wrong answer to it, right? It's just, you're going to get more comfortable as you do this a couple of times.

Jessie Schwartz (10:25.148)
It does depend on complexity. Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (10:37.628)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (10:44.412)
Yeah, and you'll also get comfortable with understanding what the market needs in terms of products too, right? So one of the products that we developed.

in the last year or so is an assessment. So their organizations just want, hey, we can't engage right now. We don't really need you guys for a fractional role even, but we just really want to understand, come take a look at our manufacturing and tell us where we could be more efficient. Or sometimes they already know where they can be more efficient, but they need some outside guidance and strategy. Or maybe they need help for six months, and they have a list of projects that we help them identify. And

Brett Trainor (11:21.576)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (11:25.166)
And that's been kind of fun to kind of grow my team in a strategic way where I have experts in different areas of manufacturing so we can offer like this huge value in a very short amount of time. And if you would have asked me a year ago if that would have been like a major...

offering, I don't know that I would have said yes. And so really listening to what the customers are asking for and being creative and curious around like, okay, what could this look like or how should I offer this? And that's another reason why it's helpful to know other people in the space, even if it's not exactly the role that you're doing. So you can ask other fractional people or other working as contractors, like how they would navigate this or that. And I've even

paid some of my subcontractors to do some of the work that they're really good at that would otherwise fall on on my shoulders because there's better at it right so you can kind of plug in resources really fun.

Brett Trainor (12:21.864)
Yeah, the way I look at it, it's kind of like a general contractor and you're building a house or remodeling a house, right? You're kind of in charge, but you know, the plumber is going to be held a lot better than me doing it, so I'm going to go find somebody there and you put the pieces together. It just makes sense from a business model too.

Jessie Schwartz (12:29.468)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (12:35.836)
Absolutely.

Yeah.

And you only have so much decision making power, right? So if there's a task that really drains you and you just get all of your energy zapped, it's a lot better idea for you to get help with that task so that you have more brain energy for making decisions that you're good at making.

Brett Trainor (12:58.856)
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the one thing I want to go back a little bit, you said, because I don't want to gloss over is kind of meeting the customer where they're at and providing the value where they need it. And I think sometimes we get so locked in, like with my journey, started consulting, right? So I always on a fixed fee. Here's what I'm doing. Here's what we did. Then moved into the fractional leadership and said, well, this is the only way we can do this. This is all I'm selling. But then it hit me, you know, better late than never.

that different customers have different needs, but as long as it was around my skill set and what I could deliver, why not, right? It just made sense that I could do these two or three different things and still provide the value. I didn't have to sell really hard to get somebody from an assessment into a full blown consulting engagement. It just, it makes sense. Where I think people get in trouble is when they try to do too many different things in too many different areas, right? And then you start to spread yourself.

Jessie Schwartz (13:31.676)
right.

Jessie Schwartz (13:42.908)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (13:50.268)
right outside of their area. Yes. So there's there's a difference between getting in over your head and employing courage, right? So I think one of the main points that make people successful in this space is that they have a level of curiosity and that they're eager to do things that are new.

Brett Trainor (13:53.192)
Exactly. So.

Jessie Schwartz (14:17.468)
Sometimes there's fractional roles that are just ongoing forever, but I think in this, at least in my industry, a lot of the fractional roles are short term. And so you never are locked into a client forever. And that's kind of a freeing idea, right? So you're gonna try something new and you get to grow in different areas and it never lasts forever. And you're just constantly on this growth path.

I think for some people that's uncomfortable, like they would rather spend several years doing the same thing and learning the same thing on the same business. And then after several years, maybe transition to different business unit or different brand or a different company even. Whereas this is like a faster pace learning. And I say that you get quicker at onboarding and figuring out teams and figuring out the dynamics and things.

Brett Trainor (14:49.768)
Thanks for watching!

Brett Trainor (15:09.672)
All right.

Jessie Schwartz (15:10.076)
which is helpful. There's always that moderately, you're always like moderately uncomfortable, right? You always have to be able to exercise courage in learning new things and like asking questions of your clients. Like if you don't have a resource, like one time I had asked for like,

didn't have a great plant trial form and so I said, hey do you guys have a plant trial template that I could use? Because I want to add the most value and give them information the way they're able to recognize and at the same time like I'm looking also like maybe I want to learn about how they structure things. Definitely not to copy that template and use it as my own but um...

Brett Trainor (15:49.768)
Right.

Jessie Schwartz (15:51.388)
Just making sure that you that people understand they can ask questions and they they can ask for details and kind of fill in the blanks and learn every aspect as you go along. Not just like expected to show up with all the expertise. Like nobody's expecting that right? But I think starting out you think so.

Brett Trainor (16:07.624)
except maybe yourself.

Jessie Schwartz (16:10.012)
Yeah, exactly. Because you think that you're the one that's bringing all, you want to add all the value and you want to just be able to to solve all their problems and be kind of their hero. When in reality, it's not, it doesn't, it doesn't have to be like that. It doesn't have to be that scary.

Brett Trainor (16:26.056)
And I think these businesses are expecting more foundational type of stuff, right? They don't need the level three, you're going to reinvent the wheel and the world. It's just really helped me get the foundation of everything that I'm doing in place. And then you can get to the, if you want, right? I find it more, I like the work to help them build the foundation and the processes. But then if they want to go from, you know, 92 % to 95%, I...

somebody else can do that, right? I'm not, I don't, that's not what I like to do. There's I'm more in the let's get more companies rolling, but, um, I don't want to go too far because somebody in the audience, if not more, we'll say, well, how did she set up a, did she do an LLC before she got started? So if you wouldn't mind just sharing some of what your, um, how you did it, right? When did you set up an LLC? Did you do that after the fact? Uh, would you do it differently?

Jessie Schwartz (16:55.068)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (17:10.716)
Oh yeah.

Brett Trainor (17:20.2)
just some of the tactical stuff you did with the business. I'm making sure I'm asking more people this question now.

Jessie Schwartz (17:22.076)
Absolutely.

That's good. Yeah, no, I set up an LLC right away. And I think one caution there is there's a lot of services that will try to sell you on setting it up for you. So just make sure you go to the .gov site because it's not expensive and it's not difficult to do on your own. So save yourself some headache. You know, getting a good, a decent working laptop. I mean, if you're someone in graphic design, there are different considerations. But for most people, they just need like a decent laptop.

in a decent way to do their work. Another thing, I got legal services, so I just have a subscription and I can have all of my...

contracts and legal documents reviewed because that's like a different language. I think they purposely do that. I think lawyers purposely do that. Not to offend any lawyers out there, but they write it in a way no ordinary human can read it and make sure that they're not getting like set up. So that's been really helpful because you can get yourself in a bind. Like one time I had a client who wanted me to sign like a contract with the perpetuity clause that I could never work with any of their suppliers. I'm like, oh my goodness. I don't know that I would have caught that if my lawyer didn't come back and say, hey look at this clause.

you know and they were unwilling to change it and so I'm like oh man I I feel like that really saved me from a lot of headaches and what else did I do there's different types of insurance so

Brett Trainor (18:48.808)
Yeah, I'm guessing in packaging you may have a different level of requirement because I've only had over the four years I've only had one client that required, you know, business insurance and it wasn't that expensive to pick up but for the most part most don't. So do you just carry it as a policy all the time now or do you use it or use client specific with it?

Jessie Schwartz (18:58.94)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (19:04.892)
true.

Jessie Schwartz (19:11.42)
Yeah, that's a good question. So for manufacturing, I carry general liability for like going into plants and things, and that's really inexpensive. The one that kicks you is the E &O insurance, so errors and omissions. And I'm not giving insurance advice, but you kind of have to weigh what the risk is and what you want to pay for. And then I think some of the types of insurance are a little more tricky to find than others.

Brett Trainor (19:20.392)
Thank you.

Brett Trainor (19:38.984)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (19:39.644)
definitely shop around. Like I just met someone yesterday that also sells you know insurance and I'm like I want to have her look at my policy just to make sure that I'm not overspending for the coverage that I'm getting and make sure the terms are right because you could be paying for insurance but it might not cover you. So that's also

Brett Trainor (20:00.872)
That makes sense. Actually, I need to find somebody to come on the podcast and educate me. Cause that's one thing I say, I'm not giving you legal advice. I'm not giving you tax advice or insurance advice, but other than what's what I do and what I've heard other folks do. So now I think it's a good idea. I mean, again, different industries will require different things, but, um, okay. And then you just shot new shop or you found somebody or you had somebody in your network and, um, okay.

Jessie Schwartz (20:09.244)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (20:16.092)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (20:22.588)
Make sure you have that.

Jessie Schwartz (20:27.9)
I asked him, you had network. Yeah, like, hey, I think I need insurance. What did you use? I feel like referrals are the only way I do things now. It is. Yeah. And then the last, the last thing I'd say is like, have a website, even if it's just like a landing page, but have a website with, with a footer that has contact information, ways people can get ahold of you.

Brett Trainor (20:36.52)
It's the life, right? It makes sense. So, okay, that's good. Oh yeah, go ahead.

Jessie Schwartz (20:56.732)
I personally looked at Wix. That's the one that I have because I feel like it has a lot of good templates where you can look really fancy, but all you have to do is write in some text and upload some photos. And don't spend a ton of money on a website, at least for me and my service industry. I don't sell product. I suppose you got to get a little fancy with product shots and stuff, but.

Brett Trainor (21:03.56)
Thank you.

Jessie Schwartz (21:19.452)
there'll be a lot of people that say, oh, I'll do your website for $2 ,000 or $3 ,000 or $7 ,000. And you just have to weigh the cost and the benefit of that. Do something cheap at first or inexpensive at first that looks nice. And then later on, you can have someone help you. I'm having someone help me rewrite some of the copy of my site. I've edited a couple of times on my own since I kind of redid it about a year ago or a year and a half ago. But now I'm going to have someone come in and just tweak it a little bit, you know, because...

Brett Trainor (21:47.528)
Yeah. Yeah. Now I agree with you. I'm more, it's you make sure your LinkedIn is kind of optimized for what you're doing. And then if you want the website just to validate, so people can come and see it. I find the small business owners don't care as much about the website. Some do, right? They'll want to validate it. So, but a hundred percent agree to go, you know, cost efficient. You don't have to build the next, I don't know. I can't even tell you what the, the Cadillac of.

Jessie Schwartz (21:49.212)
You don't have to see this one.

Jessie Schwartz (22:12.572)
know, it legitimizes you right like having a website people want to see what you're about. So

Brett Trainor (22:17.192)
Yeah. But you're right. It's because I used a company called durable, which they can, I built a website in a weekend. So, um, yeah, there's, there's options and it doesn't have to be super fancy. One page is simpler, the better, I think makes sense. And your website does look really good. So I don't know what you're tweaking, but we'll throw it into the show notes and people can take a look. Even they can see the before and after, um, when you do it. So awesome. All right. So that makes sense. So it sounds like you've kind of evolved the business.

Jessie Schwartz (22:34.172)
Thank you. Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (22:39.612)
There we go.

Brett Trainor (22:46.28)
over time and time isn't that long but and that's kind of the beauty of it you get the flexibility start to figure out what you want to do so when you you started this was it hey I'm just gonna do fractional I'm gonna do our part -time maybe probably wasn't even called fractional then and then when did you start to see a different vision for where this is going is it just something that it started to grow on you if you wouldn't mind just sharing you know kind of how it's evolved.

Jessie Schwartz (23:10.236)
Yeah, I think hindsight is there's kind of two different approaches. There's the the person, the people who want to do fractional work and they just want to do the work. And then there's the crazy entrepreneur type people who are like, I want to build something because I don't necessarily like what I see out there. I want to make something my own and I want to offer.

great experience for a client that I don't see right now. And so I thought that I was somebody who was just going to contract forever because I loved it. I loved learning new things. I love collecting people and working with different people and helping. But then I realized that I wanted to build something and I don't know. Then I slipped into how can I make this an organization that

does two things. So it helps a lot of clients, but then it also helps a lot of people who want to work in the fractional space, because it's really difficult to work on a business and in a business. And so you kind of have to pick one. For me, I always want to have a client, I always, I always want to do some of the work in some capacity, I don't really want to lose my trade. And like I said, I love it. But

it just became evident that I should probably do like I have to felt compelled to do something bigger than just yeah on my own so.

Brett Trainor (24:36.2)
It's awesome.

And that comes back to one of the things I always tell them, think, define what you want, right? When you're in corporate, it's kind of told to you and define what you'll be doing. Here's what the path you have, some options of career and where you want to go and how hard you want to fight to climb the corporate ladder. But here it's like, you know, I'm kind of, you know, my challenge is like, how big can I grow a solo business? I mean, I'll bring in people to help and do that, but that's kind of, I don't necessarily want to build a full organization.

But that's right now, who knows, two years from now that may change. But I mean, it's kind of the beauty of this is we get to decide.

Jessie Schwartz (25:09.34)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (25:15.996)
Yeah, yeah, and I think one thing I didn't realize was such a huge piece is the personal development aspect of it.

It takes so much growth, like personal growth to... I guess it's kind of like weather the storm of developing a company, of developing yourself into somebody who owns a company and is kind of a wholehearted leader and someone who can be present.

to everyone they're talking to at the same time. They can build all these processes at the same time. They can run all the marketing. You know, it's just, there's just so much and.

Brett Trainor (25:56.424)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (25:59.612)
most people don't start a successful business in like a couple of weeks. And so you really have to have a lot of like endurance, right? And just like, yeah, this is what I want to do. And maybe it's not always easy, but nothing's ever easy. And I think sometimes we forget some of the challenges of corporate and why maybe we left. It's really important to keep those in mind. And then for me, it was reading a ton of books. There are so many amazing books out there for personal development and growth and strength and everything that

I'm always reading a book about about either about money mindset or about leadership or growth. I just finished tools of the Titans. There's just tons of great content out there that will fit you wherever you are in terms of the need for developing yourself. You don't have to rely on you know a boss or a manager kind of helping you with like the next little thing you want to do that might be different. So,

Brett Trainor (26:59.208)
Yeah. Control your own growth. Yeah. We both share kind of share that passion for reading. And I love tying a book that you wouldn't think would make sense from a business, but you can always find it right there is, I don't know if we talked about this, but the book courage over confidence and the author was really gearing it towards athletes, even kids that are athletes. And you know, the mind chatter was his phrase. And I love that because we all get in our own heads, right? Can't do this. And I just loved his approach for, um,

Jessie Schwartz (27:22.716)
Oh yeah.

Brett Trainor (27:27.688)
how to deal with it. But if you were to look the book on the shelf, it would have said, it's for athletes. But no, it's every one of us that have gone through this journey. Hell, every day we still have some of that mind chatter. And so I thought it was fascinating of how to, you can't eliminate it, but how do you deal with it and use it to your advantage? And so, yeah, so I think it's, and we may have talked about this too, like when I hit 50, I think I've read more books in the last seven years than I have probably in the last 30 years combined easily, right? And it's just, it's just.

Jessie Schwartz (27:43.068)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (27:55.228)
Yeah. Yeah.

It's so cool. And then to realize that everyone's kind of struggling with the same thing, like the mind chatter, for example, like somebody wrote a book about it, must be pretty popular, right? It must be happening to a lot of people. And I think when you're on your own, sometimes you imagine that you're the only one maybe with a certain struggle or with a certain mindset that you're trying to change. And the reality is you're human. And there are a lot of common things that human brains struggle with. And there's always a way to help yourself manage that. And for me, it was like just there's a book about everything and there's

Brett Trainor (27:57.48)
That's what we do.

Brett Trainor (28:07.656)
Right.

Jessie Schwartz (28:27.246)
There's a really good book about a lot of things, you know, so.

That's one thing that I leverage. And then also, I think you can find some good networking groups. It might take you a while. I know I went through a whole bunch of groups before I found a couple that I feel are value added. That's another great place to make connections with people and really just get out there. So hard. It's so difficult to get out there sometimes. I don't know, maybe it's just me. I think it's a lot of people though. And so if you show up, that's also a really big thing.

Brett Trainor (28:58.12)
half the battle. I say it's hitting record. It's just going, right? Is doing is three quarters of it. So it makes sense. And I know we're running a little tight on time, but I did want to come back and ask you, all right, you've been through this journey now for five years, right? I think I'm closing in on five years as well. What's your advice? Cause I know there's a lot of folks, you know, in corporate, they're burned out, they're done, but I don't know if I can do it.

Jessie Schwartz (29:03.164)
Yeah.

Brett Trainor (29:26.44)
Right, what's your advice to people that are looking for the change and maybe what you would have done differently had you in hindsight?

Jessie Schwartz (29:35.964)
That's a good question. I can't think of anything that I would do differently. If I were someone who was thinking about leaving and you know wasn't asked to leave, you're still the job, right? It's always best to look for a job when you already when you still have a job, that kind of thing. Yeah, build a bridge. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (29:49.704)
Right.

Brett Trainor (29:53.448)
Build the bridge.

Jessie Schwartz (29:57.788)
see if you can reach out to other people that used to be at your organization that may be retired. That's kind of how I found my first connection because a lot of times people go into consulting after they're retired. There are probably more people now than ever that are leaving corporate for contracting or fractional work that are quite a bit before retirement. But anyway, start making those connections and I think your group's a great group and

Brett Trainor (30:21.96)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (30:27.484)
just kind of test the waters a little bit and just kind of understand, give yourself grace that when you launch into something new that it's that it is new and you're not going to be perfect and you're going to make little mistakes but if you do kind of some of those steps that we talked about earlier, especially around legal and even coaching like.

Brett Trainor (30:42.248)
Thank you.

Jessie Schwartz (30:43.516)
get the people on your team that you need. If you feel like there's a gap, there's always a way to fill the need. And it's hard because I want to say like I wish I was a little bit easier on myself. I was pretty hard on myself and I'm kind of a driver and whatever. But that's part of what has made me successful too. But don't forget to do self -care. And like I got really

obsessed with time. Like time is your greatest resource. So I do, I took this course, online course, power planning. It was like from perfectionists getting shit done. It was called. And she goes through this whole...

Brett Trainor (31:26.76)
Okay.

Jessie Schwartz (31:30.172)
program of like how you schedule every minute of your week so that for a couple of reasons, you know when you can rest because you have to schedule a rest in because your brain can't be thinking all the time and then how to schedule things, especially things you don't want to do and just make yourself do them kind of like what you were talking about, right? Show up, right? And

that those have been like really, really helpful for me along the way to be really fastidious about how I spend my time. But overall, I think it's I think I think the path that I took was right for me. So first, understand what it means to do fractional work and how this whole system works. And then decide if you want to maybe grow your own organization, or if you just want to stay where you know, getting gigs. They're both great.

Brett Trainor (32:17.736)
say so. Yeah, one of the things I love to talk to help you just educate yourself, right? You just you don't think you can, it doesn't cost you anything to have conversations, do research, right? I've got a number of free tools. If you don't like mine, go talk to somebody else. There's other people that will share if this makes sense for you. And yeah, also back to your time block. It's funny, I've got 100 % in your corner. I believe that I blocked my calendar and I've gotten pretty good, but I went I over indexed into that for a while.

Jessie Schwartz (32:23.164)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (32:32.38)
right.

Brett Trainor (32:47.24)
where everything was, it was just too much. And now I've paired it back to where I've got blocks to do things versus every 30 minutes was do this. That was just driving. It was giving me more anxiety worried about that. Then now I found a pretty good rhythm with, I know what I want to do in these calm sprints or blocks or whatever you want, but.

Jessie Schwartz (32:47.324)
Yeah.

Jessie Schwartz (33:00.38)
Yes.

Jessie Schwartz (33:05.916)
Yeah, do you like do a couple hours at a time? Do you find yourself like what? Yeah.

Brett Trainor (33:08.776)
Yeah. The morning ones like three hours. And if I don't, if I go get coffee and somewhere in there in between, it's fine. But that's my ultra productive. My six to nine AM is that's I'm almost guaranteed to get a ton of stuff done. And then kind of the 10 to 12 ish I'll do client meetings. I'll do anything little tiger. I try to do the podcast in those, those windows and then anything in the afternoon is more tidy, right? Clean up the email.

follow up, networking calls, those types of things. So in a given day, if I hit what I need to in the morning, then I've had a productive day no matter what happens the rest of the day.

Jessie Schwartz (33:46.14)
You feel really good about the mid -day to afternoon time.

Brett Trainor (33:49.384)
Exactly. So, and then if I do something at night, which I tend to do, but it comes back to, I'm not doing this for somebody else. I'm doing it for me. So I actually need to force myself to stop doing stuff sometimes just because it's easier said, but again, it's, it's a good problem. So, so Jesse, I know we've got a, we had a tight timeframe, so I appreciate you squeezing this in. I think this was fantastic. Um, we'll circle back cause I know you've got some things coming up in the future that I want to touch base and we didn't.

Jessie Schwartz (34:00.828)
I know, I know.

Jessie Schwartz (34:05.82)
Yeah.

Brett Trainor (34:19.08)
get to a few topics I want to talk to you, kind of the future of work and some things that I think we could have a good discussion to. So what's the best place for people to track you down? Of course, we'll add it to the show notes.

Jessie Schwartz (34:23.132)
Yeah. Oh man, yeah, let's do another one.

Jessie Schwartz (34:32.54)
Yeah, it's Jessi Schwartz on LinkedIn and then it's strategicpackagingpartners .com. And on the website, you can find a link to all of my podcast episodes called The Packaging Therapist. We discuss technical packaging topics. It's super nerdy. So listen there and yeah, all my contact information, email, everything is on there. Yeah.

Brett Trainor (34:51.368)
That's the beauty of this. Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you again, Jesse. I really appreciate it. And we'll catch up with you here pretty quick.

Jessie Schwartz (35:00.988)
Fantastic. Thank you for your time today.