Breaking Free: Brett Trainor's Journey from Corporate Life to Entrepreneurial Freedom

In this episode, host Kyle Ariel Knowles sits down with Brett Trainor, a former corporate professional who traded his 30-year corporate career for entrepreneurial freedom. As the founder of the Escapee Collective and host of the Corporate Escapee podcast, Brett shares his journey of helping corporate professionals find their path to independence.

Join us as we dive into Brett's story of leaving the corporate world, his challenges during his transition, and the valuable lessons he learned. Discover how he empowers GenX professionals to break free from the 9-to-5 grind without sacrificing their income and learn actionable strategies for achieving work-life balance.

KEY LEARNINGS

1. The Power of Time Management ⏰
   Brett emphasizes the importance of reclaiming your time after leaving the corporate grind. He shares how he initially struggled with guilt over not being productive every minute of the day. However, he learned to structure his time effectively by creating intentional time blocks for strategic work, meetings, and personal activities. This shift allowed him to embrace his newfound freedom and prioritize what truly matters in life.
2. Mindset Shift: From Employee to Entrepreneur 💡
   One of the most enlightening aspects of our conversation was Brett's perspective on the mindset shift required to succeed as an entrepreneur. He highlights that many corporate professionals underestimate their skills and experience. Brett encourages listeners to recognize that they have the capability to solve problems for small businesses, which can lead to lucrative opportunities. It's about taking action and not letting self-doubt hold you back!
3. Building a Supportive Community 🤝
   Brett's journey led him to create the Corporate Escapee community, where he connects like-minded individuals who are navigating their own paths to independence. He shares how this community has grown to nearly 1,700 members, providing a space for support, collaboration, and shared experiences. The importance of networking and building relationships cannot be overstated, and Brett's story is a testament to the power of community in achieving entrepreneurial success.

If you're feeling stuck in your corporate job or contemplating a career change, this episode is a must-listen! Brett's insights and experiences will inspire you to take that first step toward your own entrepreneurial journey.

In this episode, you'll also learn about:
-The tipping point that led Brett to leave corporate life
-How he detoxed from the corporate mindset and embraced his newfound freedom
-The importance of time management and prioritizing health
-Insights into the corporate escapee community and the opportunities available for those looking to transition
-Tips for finding your first client and building a successful freelance career

Whether you're contemplating leaving your corporate job or simply seeking inspiration, this episode is packed with insights and motivation. 

LINKS

• Follow Brett on LinkedIn
• Follow Brett on TikTok
• Corporate Escapee Podcast
• Corporate Escapee Website
• Follow Kyle on LinkedIn

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to the Podcast and Guest
• 0:00 Easier to Find Your First Client than Find Your Next Job
• 1:08 Brett's Departure from Corporate Life
• 2:44 The Decision to Stay Out of Corporate
• 4:55 The Importance of Time After Leaving Corporate
• 5:24 Detoxing from Corporate Life
• 7:28 Finding Balance and Health
• 10:01 Shifting Focus from Money to Life Balance
• 12:27 The Inefficiency of Corporate Work
• 19:13 The Corporate Escapee Community
• 20:15 Building the Corporate Escapee Community
• 26:13 Initial Promotion Efforts Before TikTok
• 30:02 Monetizing the Corporate Escapee Community
• 35:02 Podcast Structure and Guest Appearances

Transcript

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Welcome to the Maker-Manager Money Podcast, where entrepreneurs learn from each other and inspire future entrepreneurs to just start. My name is Kyle Knowles, and today's guest is Brett Trainor. Brett traded over 30 years of corporate life for entrepreneurial freedom. As the founder of the Escapee Collective, host of the Corporate Escapee podcast, and creator of the Collective Academy, Brett has spent the last five years helping corporate professionals find their path to independence. His mission? To empower 100,000 GenX professionals to break free from the 9-to-5 grind without sacrificing their income. Through actionable strategies and real-world tactics, Brett guides others toward the work-life balance he's achieved himself. Welcome to the show, Brett.

Brett Trainor: Hey, thanks, Kyle. That was well done. I'd still be rambling if I did my own intro, so I appreciate you. Yeah, you definitely got all the highlights.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Awesome. Yeah, I wanted to make sure we covered a lot. There's a lot of stuff in there, though. So I want to just start off by, first of all, just, you know, asking you the question, why did you leave corporate?

Brett Trainor: Well, one, to be honest, they kind of asked me to leave. It was it was mutual, but it was Yeah, I got to that point. So it was 25 years, and I'll give you definitely the abbreviated version of this, 25 years in corporate. And at the end, I was looking for something new outside of corporate. So I did the unconventional thing of going into management consulting, which I don't recommend for many folks at the end of their career. It's definitely better in the early stages. But I had this vision. I wanted to do something that was more project-based. I didn't want to get involved with another single company. And it was, I wasn't basically, tell people what I did. I was working on B2B and digital transformation, like helping legacy companies, pre-SaaS companies, you know, modernize, right? Because they were built before digital was even a thing. So anyway, so big market opportunity. went through the process, I was kind of an army of one. But as you know, as you were earlier in your career, you tend to speak your mind and then just go, okay, I'll move on. This is your company, you're my boss, whatever. I just found it harder and harder to let things go when I knew that it was the wrong thing. And it just got to the point that the tipping point was they wanted me to go manage a small project in San Francisco to check the box in my billable hours, even though I had brought in more revenue from a sales perspective that offset it. And we agreed to disagree. And that kind of sent me on my, uh, my escapee path.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: It was mutual. You, you leave and you didn't want to go back to corporate. You didn't want to look for another job.

Brett Trainor: No, there was, well, I shouldn't say there was no chance. I, I was going to do everything in my power to never go back into corporate America again. And why it was just done. It was no longer adding any value because, you know, one of the biggest things was my wife when I was in consulting. So if you looked at it from the outside, right. Family life, everybody's doing well, good job pays you well, but my wife's like, what the hell is the matter with you? Right. It was just, there's something, it was just off and. I've had time to kind of look back and reflect on it. And I think it was, I was no longer chasing anything, right? In the early days of corporate, you're climbing the ladder, you're looking for that next promotion or more money or whatever it is. And I just got to the point where it just wasn't important anymore. And I'm like, what am I doing? I'm going through the motions and spending 70 or 80% of my day on meetings that are useless or no value to what I'm doing. And I just got to the point where I can't go back and do this. There's got to be more to life. And I guess one lucky thing, I guess that happened when I was in consulting, because they bill you out. So I knew what my market rate was, which I hadn't known before. And part of it was, they were only paying me half of what they were billing me out. And I'm like, I think I could do this on my own. So it gave me a shot of confidence that, all right, I know with my market rate, it was much higher than I thought it would have been if I'd just gone solo. And so I just knew, I mean, life at this point, I'm like, life's too short. I'm just done with corporate. I've got to figure out, you know, and I quite honestly, when I started, my sole mission was to make more money than what I was doing in corporate. As I headed down the path and maybe we can talk about this later is, you know, time became much more important to me because all of a sudden I had a lot of it, right? It knows you go solo it. your entire day is now yours, good, bad, or indifferent that you now have to manage and take control. And once I got a taste and flavor of that, I'm like, I can't, I can't believe I did it for so long, you know, giving somebody else all that time. And now I'm like, so, so those are the two main reasons that I'm like, I'm going to figure out I'm not going back.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Let's talk about time a little bit because when you're in corporate, I mean, every day is just filled with meetings and you're, you know, you're rushing to get the commute, get to the office. How long did it take you after you left corporate to kind of, I guess, detox from that. How many months or weeks or whatever it took you to kind of just calm down and go relax your whole day's yours. Now you can be very strategic and you can decide what you do with your day.

Brett Trainor: Yeah, it's, it's interesting. I didn't really think of it that way, but I think part of it is you feel guilty for some, even though you have no reason to feel guilty, you feel guilty that if you're not productive for two hours, that I'm not making the most of my, my freedom time to, to build this business. I would say it probably a good six months, right? Because then by then I had a couple of clients and it started to fill up my day a little bit. And then I just started to realize, then I started to put the two do together that I all the time is your time. And if you're super intentional about it, then you can, you don't feel as guilty, right? Cause I, I'll share a little story because once I, initially I was overwhelmed with all the time. How do I prioritize my day? What are the priorities? And so I read a couple of books and I over indexed and I structured my day, like down to the half hour, do this, this, this, this, this. And it was good for about two weeks. And I'm like, Man, I can't do this. It's just too much. And so now I use time blocks. And the way I look at my day, I'm a morning person. So like my 6am to 9am is for all my strategic stuff. I do my writing, my social, any strategy work, those types of things. 9 to 11, I'll do more, if there's content, podcasts, meetings, work on, I don't want to call it administrative, it's still more strategic, but it's more, I'd call it more group. And the afternoon is, we get to do podcasts with you and some of these other things. And once I finally got into that rhythm, I found that even if I didn't do anything or my schedule went sideways after, say 1130 in the morning, I still had a full day. And so I started to feel good about the fact that it's okay, I don't have to do if I want to go do something, go play golf for three hours in the afternoon, I'm not going to worry about it. If we want to go visit my granddaughter in the city in the afternoon, I'm not going to worry about it. So you know, kind of a long-winded answer to your question that, you know, I'm still always working to get better with the time, but I stopped feeling guilty once I got that first client.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Well, that, and that makes sense. And what's funny that you say that is because I've gone through a similar phase, the two weeks that you talked about where basically I tried to recreate my corporate life. And then I was just incredibly unhappy because I was, you know, putting too much pressure on myself and blocking too much time. What are some of the other things that you found were just sort of enlightening as you started this entrepreneur journey?

Brett Trainor: I think the other one was getting my health back. Again, I didn't realize how unhealthy I was in corporate, right? But again, it's the same thing. You've got that schedule, you can get a workout in. If you want to do it early before work, I used to do that earlier in my career. I'm just not as motivated to get up at 5 a.m. to hit the gym anymore. And if you wait till the end of the day, I don't know about you, but I'm less likely to do it later in the day. And so again, one of the time blocks that I have is nine o'clock every morning. I'm walking. I literally walk. you know, a mile to the gym workout and walk home. Sometimes I'll run it, but most of the time it's just a while. It's an hour, hour 15 every day. I can never, ever do. Can you imagine that doing that in corporate and say, Hey, I can't take this meeting. I'm going to the gym. And, but guess what? Nobody's pushing back. I get my, my time in again, because part of the other thing that I realized one, like I said, once they shifted away from the thought of just money, money, money, and time became more important than I'm like, all right, I've got all this time. Then I started to think longevity. I think I'm a little older than you. So it's, um, right. I'm 57. So I started this journey probably when it's early fifties, but you know, with medicine and where we're at, and if you can keep yourself healthy, I mean, 90 and healthy and active is I think a realistic goal. So if I'm going to be 60 in three years and I want to be to 90, what are the things I need to do now in order to make sure I can take advantage of that time, right? Because if I'm going to have the free time, I'm not a person, I don't know many that would just sit around and retire and do nothing. I just, I can't imagine that lifestyle. And so I started to figure out how do I start to optimize around, right, the health and wellness, the relationships, right, that you put to the side and spend more time. And so it just, it's funny, if you would have asked me this, Before I started this journey, I would have said, yeah, like I said, it's money, money, money. But now I have a much, much, much deeper appreciation for everything else, right? My life is so much more balanced than it was. Money is still important. You have to pay the bills, right? You're not going to get around that. But once you figure out how to make the money, then all of a sudden you're starting to figure out what else is really important to you. And quite honestly, we get a chance to design the second part of our life. At least that's the way I'm looking at it. And instead of working or running my life around the corporate job, which I did for 20 plus years, 25 years, right? You travel, you take vacations around the job, you try to get your kids sports and coach those things. Now I'm designing kind of what does my life look like? Workouts every day at nine, golf Friday afternoons, right? And then how does work fit into that? And I know I'm sure there's folks out there going, there's no way I can never do that. And honestly, you can because one of the things we touched on earlier was all those unnecessary meetings that once you understand that if I know all you small businesses. They only want to pay you for that productive time. They don't want to pay you for the inefficient or the non-value add. So there was a study, Asana did a study on workforce, and it was really around knowledge workers. But what are corporate today? We're knowledge workers, right? And it showed that 27% of the time was spent on knowledge work. So I think if you think everybody out there in corporate, you think back to your, not too long ago, your corporate job, how much of your day was actually spent or how much of your week was actually spent on the job that you were hired to do? I think if you did 30, it was 30%, you're doing pretty well. Most companies, right? Your fire drills, the meetings, the work of work, everything else is not there. And so basically a corporation is paying you, you know, 75% to be inefficient. I mean, it's their own doing. It's not you that's doing it, but. when you look at these small businesses and fractional is one of the models, maybe we can get into models later, is, you know, they only want to pay for the output and your strategic thought around certain areas. So you don't get invited to unnecessary meetings. You're not involved with, you know, non-value added projects. They just, they can't afford to bring you in for all of that, but they want you for your focus time. And all of a sudden the light bulb will go off and you're like, man, I can work the 30% of the time and make the money that I was making 100% of the time because I cut all that other crap, call it what it is, out of my schedule. Now, it doesn't happen overnight, but there's enough history now that shows that it's not only possible, it's probable if you put the focus on it.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That's incredible statistic too. Cause I was thinking about it. I'm like, that's only a day and a half of work a week that you're actually providing value for a corporation and what you were hired to do.

Brett Trainor: Right. And think about it. And so again, that's why I think the opportunity to small businesses is so huge because three or four years ago, they couldn't have afforded to hire you or I to come in full time. They just, they couldn't afford it. They don't have the money, the revenues to do it. But if they wanted to have you come in, say, five, 10 hours a week to really help them on some strategic initiatives or set things up, all of a sudden there's a business model for that to happen, right? And it works for both ways because we get to do the work that we like to do with cutting the other stuff out. The small businesses can leverage you on a part-time basis. To get all the value out that way. I mean, I 100% believe that this is the model that we're heading to more of an ecosystem of experts versus the hierarchies and full time positions and. Those things, good thing is big corporates going to be stuck in this model for a while. They're not going to be able to figure out how to get out of it, but small businesses are starting to embrace the opportunity of this, like with the expertise of, I work with Gen X and you know, the automation that's starting to present itself digital and AI, and I'm not going to overhype that. But there is an opportunity with smaller businesses to start building scalable organizations with the fraction of the cost in the headcount that these big companies have. And again, a lot of these small businesses that are starting to grow, they have to take chances on people to help think they can lead them to that next level of growth. But if they're hiring someone that's inexperienced, you just hope that that person gets it right. And if you can afford them and they are experienced, how good were they, right? And do they have that where and again, that's what I see with within our community. We've got centuries of experience. We've got folks that have been through the wars with the biggest companies, right? And they've gone through just not the foundational stuff, but all the tactics, the strategies. and everything else. So again, we're starting to see small businesses embrace this because it's a value to them, right? It's a newer model so that people are still getting used to it. And if you're in corporate thinking, well, is there a job board for this? No, not yet, but I like that too. I would prefer that because if anybody's gone through the job search recently, and I hear from our members all the time, right? It could be six, eight, 12 months looking for a new job, especially if you're Gen X or you've been And one or two, are you even going to get the job you want if you go through that process? So, yeah, I just think we're heading for a much better model. It's going to be a win-win for the small businesses. Eventually corporate's going to get there, but, you know, for experienced corporate workers and the small businesses.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah, and one of the things that you've said that I've heard you say in the past is that it's easier to get your first client than it is to get your next job. And talk a little bit about that, because I know as a Gen Xer myself, and having a lot of experience, You know, and, and corporations these days, you know, there's stories of corporations trying to look like they're growing. So they're posting jobs, but they're never going to hire for them, but for investors and other employees there that are doing two jobs and things like that, they post these jobs, but then they can perpetually just put them on hold. But talk about that a little bit, that it's easier to get your first client than it is your next job.

Brett Trainor: Yeah, I know people hear that and they're like, no way. I'm like, but I just mentioned the stats, right? I think for Gen Xers looking for that next job, it's at least six months. You're probably competing against 250 other people unless you had an in an organization. If you don't, then it's even a longer shot to even get to an interview. So if you're looking at a 12 month process to land a new job and you're sending out 250 resumes a month to, or applying to that many jobs, if you took that much effort and put it towards finding your first client. And when I say your first client, it doesn't have to be a full-on consulting client to get started. It doesn't have to be full-on fractional to get started. If we take the approach that we're just out to solve a problem for a small business, no matter what it is, I don't care if you're a CRM specialist, sales, marketing, finance, you're solving a specific problem. And if you start to meet and network with business owners, most of us have pretty good networks, probably not using it for what we've used it in the past, but you know, you're going to find a business or know somebody that knows a business that's having this problem. And all you're doing is solving that problem for the business. Not too dissimilar from what you're doing with applying for a job, right? That company has a problem you're applying to help them fix or solve that problem. They have, you're just doing this smaller businesses. And the way I look at, look, you're solving a problem and there's a fee to solve that problem. You don't have to sell. You don't have to be this super experienced salesman. You don't have to have a huge marketing budget. If you really focus on the problem, and I'll give you one more tip that the small business owners have, there's only three things they're looking for. Make them money, save them money, or save them time. So if you're going through this process and thinking about a problem that you can save for them, make sure you can tie it back to one of those three things, because it's going to be a much easier sale, if you will, as you go through the process. But just having those conversations with businesses that have problems, if you put as much effort as you did into finding a job, into looking for that first customer, you will find it. You just will. You've got way too much experience. And I hear all the time from folks, experienced corporate folks that, you know, got to high levels or have had very successful careers saying, I don't know if I can go solo. I'm like, you got to be kidding me. Right? You navigated the political waters, you've built relationships, you've got promotions, you've done these jobs. You are absolutely qualified to do this. It's just really more of a mindset shift, which shocked me as I was going through. Because when I first started working with escapees, I thought it was like, they need the tools and this is how you're building off. No, it really wasn't. It was one, yes, you have the capability and the ability and the experience to go do this. Now, is everybody going to want to do it? No, but I never want to hear that they can't do it. That's just not factual. I would bet anybody to go through that. If you put in the effort, you're going to find it. It may not be for you, but I've talked to other folks before that said, at least owe it to yourself to see. Because you can do this while you're still working, right? you've structured as mentoring, you're helping, you want to give back to small businesses. And again, if you've been in corporate for a while, you've learned a lot of things. And if you just start posting on LinkedIn, say, hey, 10 things, you know, business owners should be thinking of that I've learned while I've been in corporate, it's not a conflict of interest, you're just starting to share and give back. And then it's just a continuation to have those those conversations. So

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I think that mindset is just like a big hurdle for anyone and has prevented myself and many others from leaving corporate for years and years and staying maybe in jobs that they shouldn't be staying in. Whether it's just their unhappiness, their health, they're not really enjoying what they're doing, Maybe they have a shitty boss, whatever it is. I guess I want to go back to this corporate escapee community that you developed. If I have the timeline correct, you leave corporate, First six months, you're kind of figuring out, wow, I've got all this time. And then you gain more confidence because you land your first client. You have some clients by 12 months out. And then when do you decide that, oh, I want to share what I'm learning since I'm an escapee. When do you decide to develop this corporate escapee community?

Brett Trainor: Yeah, it's actually an interesting story because I think it ties into everything that we're talking about where you try something different, you do something maybe that's outside your comfort zone. So it was about five years ago when I left management consulting and started networking, looking for that first consulting client, found it again through the network. It was somebody I'd worked with a decade ago, but they were having a problem, which led to a second client. Then I kind of realized that that's not what I wanted to do, right? I didn't want to chase virtual stakeholders and manage project plans. They just, it, some people absolutely love to do that still. It just, my heart wasn't there. So I kind of stumbled into fractional leadership and we touched on that before where you're, you're in a leadership position for a small company, but just on a part-time basis, they just need help building it out, putting the structure, the foundation and running it. And so I did that with two different companies and realized, ah, You can certainly see a pattern here. I'm like, I like it, but that's not 100% what I want to do. And I started to stumble on some other ways to kind of monetize my experience, right? I worked with some smaller brands where I introduced them into my network. So basically it was a reseller for them. and made a commission, right? It was a 20% commission for any time I introduced them into a new business that they closed. I'm like, huh, this actually makes money. Then I had a couple of small advisory clients where they didn't really need consulting. They didn't need fractional, but they just needed some guidance on how to set it up. So I think all told, there's about seven different ways that I had kind of monetized that experience. And that's when I had kind of the aha moment. There's got to be more people like me out there. Gen Xers, looking for life. I wouldn't say I had the code, but I kind of cracked the code how to make money a little bit without having to build like an e-commerce or do anything to get rich quick type things that you hear other folks talk about. And so I'm like, you know what? I'm going to start the corporate escapee. There's got to be more. First six months. So this was probably about two years ago. First six months, crickets, right? I had a couple of ad hoc people that I worked with to help them get out of corporate, but nothing. I'm like, well, maybe I was the one. Maybe I was more alone in this than I thought. But then I made a fateful decision just about a year, just over a year ago to goof around on TikTok. And I know some of you out there listening, you're like, TikTok, no way. I'm like, my daughter's thought the same thing. You're like an idiot. What are you doing? And, you know, it started out slow, but it just gave me a platform to rant, like two minutes, ranting about corporate, showing what life is out there. And, you know, it kind of fit my short attention span. But instead of fast forward today, I'm close to 70,000 followers on TikTok. And more importantly, 80% are over the age of 40. So it was my ideal market. I'm not going to go teach a course on how to build a TikTok audience. I think I was right place, right time, right message and got lucky with that. I didn't even have, so I was connecting with all these folks, didn't have a community yet, didn't have any offerings, didn't have any formal coaching, really didn't have anything. So I was offering a free 20-minute mini strategy session to say, hey, is there a life after corporate for you? I would just share my experiences. And to be honest, I had about 300 of those calls. They were only 20 minutes, so it wasn't that time consuming, but it hit me, you know, probably about call 250. I'm like, this is kind of a waste, right? I'm meeting some really cool people in all types of different corporate positions. And so that's when I decided to start just a Slack community to house people to, until we figure out what we want to do together. Cause I know I'm connecting with like-minded people. We had shared goals. And as of I think this past weekend, we were closing in on 1700 members in the community and I would say 98% are Gen Xers. Some are still in corporate, some are out, some are all in going down the escapee path. But again, had that same shared commitment to get out, right? And they may not, some may not, but some are planning, you know, one more corporate run and then they're going to find their way out. But the reason I tell that story is if you would have asked me when I started this, even three years ago, this wasn't even on the radar. Now it's probably 90% of my time with, you know, everything that we're building and what we've got coming off the back end of it. And so if you looked at the end of my corporate career to what I'm doing now, There's not a, you don't see a bridge or direct path to that, right? It's not like, Hey, I'm leaving. I'm going to start this thing. But I think that's where the opportunities are. And, and the value I posted something the other day, just do it right back to where that, that old Nike commercial is. He's going to talk about it. Corporate just breaks you down and pushes you into that box to overanalyze. Don't take chances. Don't rock the boat. And the people that are winning and successful outside of it are just taking action, having that first conversation, not overthinking it. Don't have to have the perfect website. You don't have to have the perfect LinkedIn profile. You don't have to have the perfect content. It really is just getting out there, having that first conversation, learning, You know, what do they really need? What don't they need? And then building a solution. And when I say a solution, it's, Hey, how do you solve this problem for the customer? I got two or three different ways to do it. And guess what? Unlike our time in corporate, if it doesn't work right, or it's, that's okay. You can go find the next customer. You're not going to get fired. It's, you know, I think that's just back to that mindset that there's a big world out there and for good or bad, if you're somebody that's willing to take action. you're going to be successful. I mean, there's just no ifs, ands, or buts about it.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I agree. And so during that time where it was crickets, what were you doing to sort of promote before you got on TikTok? What were some of the other things that you were doing?

Brett Trainor: LinkedIn and I had rebranded the podcast back then to the corporate escapee. So it's still 95% of my revenue was coming through fractional and advisory and those types of work. But so the escapee was more of a passion project, right? Just, I like talking about it. I like sharing how people can get out. So literally before I went on TikTok, I was in the process of rebranding the podcast back to Hardwired for Growth. I was going to go back to where, you know, what I do in my day job, which was helping small businesses grow. And like I said, all of a sudden, one of those posts went viral. I think it's at like 1.2 million views now. And I'm like, all right, well, maybe there is an audience out here. LinkedIn just wasn't putting me in front of those people. And yeah, so that's where I'd say over the last 12 months, it's shifted, right? More towards the escapee and other things like what else is out there now that I want to do. You can start to follow some of your your passion. I still like working with small businesses, so that's always going to be part of what I do. But, you know, even maybe to add on to that is where we find the opportunity is now I'm thinking, all right, we talked about the small businesses in need of expertise and the expertise, GenXers, corporate needing places to work. Now I'm starting a business on the back end that's going to marry the two, right? So, the message to small businesses before you make a hire, before you invest in any technology, just connect with us, work with one of our unbiased mentors to say, is this the right choice? Because if these small businesses make the wrong hire or the wrong technology, the right decision, that can be fatal to the business at that site. So will this work? I think there's a need for this matching, whether or not it goes. We'll find out, but we're going to experiment and find it because I just think there's enough value to test it. And it kind of fits into that thesis I have now of experiment. Give it enough time to see if it'll work. Like I said, if I would have given up on the escapee too early. Um, we wouldn't probably be talking here today, but, uh, the fact that we are in hindsight, I may have cut back a little bit sooner if it wasn't a passion project, I probably would have cut back. So I gave it enough time to run, but because I still had revenue coming in from other areas that I didn't have to, this wasn't an all or nothing. I'm all in on this path and. You know, that's kind of what I recommend to folks is just get some momentum, go with what you know, go with what people are going to pay you to do. And even if that's not what you want to do long term, you can start to build off of it. You know, you can start to, again, pivot, build that where I thought my straight line, you can't see me if you're not on. The video is more of a straight line, straight path, and it was more of a meandering. It went here, here, here, all heading in the same general direction, but just being open to where the opportunities present themselves. But I do tell people be consistent. Like I said, my corporate background was go to market, so I don't stray too far from that in any of the business stuff I'm doing. And again, when I'm working with solo business owners, I have a much broader perspective on it, but yet my sweet spot is still what I know. So when I tell people to do different things, it's not like, you know, start a, I don't know, a floral business and then do consulting for salesforce.com. In the early days, keep it bunched and then you can start to branch out once you get some, I wouldn't say momentum, once you get the confidence that you know you don't have to go back to corporate. Cause I think that's the biggest threshold that you need to cross.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: So what are some of the surprising things that you've learned from the community?

Brett Trainor: that there's more of us out there than I thought. I think I talked about one, the lack of confidence that they can do this. Cause again, I didn't think this was going to be, I thought this was going to be more tactical and technical, but it's definitely been more inspirational, right? Just saying, Hey, there is opportunities out there. Don't overthink this. You do have the skills and the fact is you can always go back to corporate. If this doesn't work, you're not finding the traction or you don't like the the networking piece of it, right? Network, the corporates, it's always going to be there as it is now, right? It may not be ideal, but right. You don't have to pick this path forever. So I think that's the biggest, I would say the other, the other one that really motivated me that I was surprised. were the people that were being successful without the experience. And that's what really frustrated me with Gen X. In the early days, I would talk to anybody, it wasn't just Gen Xers. And the one example, and I'll call him a kid, I think he was 25, 26, three years in corporate, but he was asking me about how to monetize. How do you set up a you know, kind of a program for a small business, right? He wasn't looking at fractional. I said, well, he was in CRM. And I said, well, for a small business, maybe once a month, you set it up where you meet with the owner and marketing to go through the thing. You run all the reports, you clean their data, and it's $3,000. So I literally talked to him for 30 minutes. And he's like, all right, I got it. I heard from him two months later, he had already had three clients. He had zero experience compared to a lot of the other folks that I've worked with. And that's just one example of people that don't have the experience that have built what's successful. And you define what success is in your own mind. But I'm just saying, if you had 30 years of experience, you can absolutely crush it in this space. You just have to go do it. Right. It's easier said than done sometimes cause we get programmed, but there's way too many examples of people with no talent and no experience that are doing well. That should be the, the light bulb moment for, for Gen Xers.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Yeah. And I think it made me think of, you know, how many business owners started a business and didn't even have a college education. Right. And, and I always, I always look at college education as training, you know, the future workforce to work for someone else. And a lot of times you find these founders that either left college or took a few classes and went, no, it's not for me, and started something with very little experience or educational background. And so I can see also that if you worked in corporate for years, That mindset of needing a budget, a title, authority, your boss needs to approve this. It needs to run through the proper channels. You need to manage the optics. All these kinds of cliches could prevent someone from having the mindset to be dumb enough. Like this example that you gave where someone didn't know that much, only had three years of experience. You gave a few pointers and all of a sudden they've got three clients because they just didn't know. They didn't think their lack of experience was a problem.

Brett Trainor: didn't get in their own way, right? They just said, all right, this makes sense. Somebody's going to do it. I might as well be the one that does it. And again, I think that's the other thing that I see is when people cross through the threshold, right? And the timeline I give folks, and I know you're earlier in your journey, but You know, the first six months you're going to find success. Hopefully if you don't, then maybe you're, you're doing something wrong or this just isn't what you want to do, but find that first couple of clients. I would say by the year mark or just after the year mark, your run rate should be hopefully close to what your corporate salary was. I'm not saying that 12 months you'll make what you did your last year in corporate, but what you're billing on a monthly basis over a 12 months should be roughly what you were doing in corporate. If you want to, there's some people that don't want to make the same money. They don't want to work as much. So that's completely your choice. But then what I found is by year two, I knew I wasn't going back, right? I would still have pitfalls. You may pivot, things are going to go sideways, but now I know I can make money. If I have to, there's, I can get back into fractional. I can do consulting. I can go do that. If whatever this, if the corporate escapee goes sideways for whatever reason. And that seems to be pretty consistent with everybody that I've talked to. I'll call them the OGs of the escapees that have been doing it. It is about that the 6, 12, and 2 year mark are kind of the key, give or take, right? Because there's some people that come to the community that absolutely crush it in the first month and a half. you know, maybe six months, they're like, this is easy, but then they, all of a sudden they, they, they don't have the business development. So they have that first initial drop off of, of what they were doing. Like, ah, okay, now I get, I have to go out and, you know, continue to network and, and find these opportunities. So, um, yeah, I think those are the, the, the three milestones to general, right. Like I said, you can go before app, but that seemed to be consistent with everybody, what I talked to.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Okay. That made me think of two things. First of all, so you're not really monetizing corporate escapee. I know you have like a download people can purchase that kind of shows different revenue making opportunities. Is that, you want to talk about that a little bit?

Brett Trainor: We do now, we do actually have some pay. So we do have a paid community and the way I tell it's taken again, as we evolve and learn, you know, multiple stages, I think I've found three stages of the corporate escapee. There's the curious, those are usually the folks I connect with on TikTok, didn't realize that there was a path out. They thought they had to build a real company or do something like an e-commerce or something to start a business. So it's the curious. Then the next phase, I will call them the invested, right? They're either putting time, money or effort or resources into escaping, right? They may still be in corporate, but all of a sudden they're putting the effort and the investment into it. And then the last one I'll call the liberated, right? They figured out how to make money, but they're looking for ways to get better, work less, collaborate more, those types of opportunities. And so the way we've got the community structure now is the vast majority of folks are in the free and the curious, right? So we want to be there. We want to be able to answer questions. We do a monthly education series, kind of the one-on-one of corporate escapees. We'll bring in some different guest speakers, like somebody that knows Fractional really well or runs a Fractional community. They'll give an overview. If you want to pursue Fractional, here's the best practices. Then we do offer a paid community. It's $20 a month, so we're not asking for a ton of money, but that's really for the invested. We do a lot more small group sessions. We do some monthly More hands-on workshops, so that same example with fractional, we've got somebody coming in here in February that's going to work with our smaller groups and basically do a present and then a Q&A and do a workshop with members about their own fractional experience. So we wanted to provide a different level of resource. And then the third, the liberated, they've got their own set. They're really hyper focused on collaboration and networking opportunities. So we've set up some different groups for them. And then we also do have some paid accelerators, right? So if people want to not do a DIY, we've got some folks that we're putting together. So still evolving, but again, at the end of the day, I want to make sure that there's free resources. I'm never going to push a sale on anybody, but have them there if they want it. And it seems to be working just fine this way. So because not everybody's going to be at the same place and they're in corporate, they want out. But if I tell people, if you're in corporate, just build Build your escapee readiness plan, if you will, because if you get laid off and you're starting to go through the job search, what would it hurt you to test this process, right? And we were having conversations with people say, Hey, I'm starting my own thing, right? And this is the type of work. Can you connect with anybody? And what I'm finding more and more is this, the new business is, you know, 90% networking and referrals. Once you get a few folks, then the referrals will start to come in, but it's networking. And I had a, an interesting guest on the podcast, not too long ago, Tom Van Dyke of all things, he was like, 19 years in a church up in Canada. And like, that doesn't sound corporate. He's like, well, we had like 200 employees. So it was a lot of corporate similarities. And then he went in, he heard a seminar on the story brand, right, the Donald Miller program, StoryBrand, how to help brands and small businesses tell their stories. But he is really big on intentional networking. And it was really, I realized I needed to up my networking game and definitely be more intentional with what, but his whole business, again, is built on this. He's got more customers than he knows what to do with. And again, he's only had four years. of experience outside of corporate. But my takeaway from that was, he's like, look, my first couple of customers were Sympathy. He's like, yeah, I like you. I know you. I don't know if you can do this, but yeah, I'll give you a shot, right? He's like, I had no shame in looking for Sympathy clients the first couple out of the box. Because then once you get those, you learn and then you start to apply those lessons. So you don't need a hundred customers for this to work, right? You look in our community, it's between three and 10 and you're making the amount of money that you want to make. You want to go bigger, you want to build a two person company and really go for the million dollar mark. Absolutely, you can do that. But so if you think about it, you really need three or five just to make your money back. You don't need marketing plans. You don't need all these other fancy websites in order to do this. You just need to be really good and get better. It's not even good. Just having the right conversations and getting yourself out there and networking. Right? So it's not as daunting as it seems. So if you break down all the steps, you're like, Hey, I think I could actually do this. But if you put them all together, it sounds super scary. So.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That makes sense. So do you let's talk about the corporate escapee podcast, then are these you have guests on who tell their story of escaping corporate? Is that?

Brett Trainor: Yeah, vast majority of column use cases, if you will. But the beauty of it is I like to have the dual type of guests, somebody that can share their escapee story, but then also add some value. Like Tom was really good about adding his networking and how that was successful and how we can learn from him. Laney was on not too long ago talking about LinkedIn, right? How we can lose LinkedIn to our advantage. So it's a combination. I would say it's more tactics of how you can actually get better at your escapee business with kind of the use cases. Because that's the other thing I'm trying to just show what's possible, right? Because we've had people obviously from the church to marketing to sales, logistics, you name it. And there's really not a position in corporate that couldn't translate into the small business world.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I want to move to just some personal questions real quick, and then I have a lightning round of questions for you, Brett. So first of all, I would like to ask you what TV, movie, book, or character basically, do you most relate to?

Brett Trainor: I'll tie it back to… Shawshank Redemption, right? Because the more I get into the corporate escapee, the more the parallels between that movie and the folks, right? And if you've seen the Shawshank Redemption, right? So Andy Dufresne was, he shouldn't have been in corporate. He knew there was life outside of corporate. In his case, it was prison. So what'd he do? He had a plan. He got out and then he executed that plan when he was out so he didn't have to go back to corporate. He had Brooks, the poor librarian that had been there forever in corporate forever, never believed that he can make it on the outside. Unfortunately, he didn't. And then he had Red, his buddy that was very skeptical. He's like, I don't know. I've only known corporate going to prison. But Andy led him with a, you know, kind of the map and the roadmap and, you know, said, Hey, I'll help you once you get out here. He broke free. never went back. So right now I'd say that there's a lot of parallels to what we're doing. The more we can be, you know, the Andy Dufresne's to get the people out of corporate. It's, it sounds silly, but man, it's, I don't think I've met anybody that's gone back to corporate that that's come out, nor do they want to go back. Right. I think it was Laney who said, cause I'll ask all the guests on the podcast. He's like, would you ever go back? And her exact quote was, Brett, I'd rather be homeless than go back to corporate. So I'm like, all right, I'm, I wouldn't put it that harsh, but I'm a hundred percent agreement with you. So.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That's strong language too. Yeah. It's interesting that you use Shawshank Redemption. You do resemble Tim Robbins character in the frame a little bit.

Brett Trainor: Hopefully I can have that impact on at least one person and, you know, get them out and find that freedom.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That's yeah. Yeah. It sounds like you've, you've impacted more than one for sure already. So.

Brett Trainor: Trying, like I said, the a hundred thousand goal is we started with 10, but I think we've touched at least 10,000 whether they've all made it and stayed out. I don't know, but there's a lot more people out there. And again, everybody, the interesting, the other interesting thing that I've really taken away was how much better my life is without the negative people, right? In corporate, I've worked for some companies that we, all your teammates and coworkers were awesome. Maybe not all of them, but for the majority, it was good. Most of the time, you're not choosing those coworkers and you got to put up with a lot of crap. And till you get out and realize you don't have to have any of those negative people in your life anywhere. It's unbelievable. I never realized how important that was to me until after, until you take all that negativity out of there. And so that's one of the joys. And I'm sure there's some negative people in the community somewhere, but they're not usually welcome and really haven't come across. And maybe that's just why this message resonates with the folks that we have in there. They tend to see the positive. They see a better future. They want to do something else. Yeah, I know. I didn't really answer your question there. I didn't want the negativity aspect as an unforeseen benefit coming out of it.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: For sure. And you're definitely not choosing management, your management team when you're in corporate. So yeah, no, I love, I love this discussion. So I guess one of the things that you've also said is that working with small and medium businesses, they're a lot more helpful.

Brett Trainor: Yeah. So, so two things I'll say in that the small businesses for sure. It's such a refreshing change to have somebody that actually wants to listen to you and they care what you have to say. When you think about in corporate, you're just kind of towing the line. And again, we have moments where we push back and have discussions, but for the most part, it's, it's following the, the line. But within the community, you would think in corporate, it was every person for themselves, right? There's one promotion, you got multiple people going for it. Everybody was really looking out for themselves for the vast majority. If you wanted to get ahead, you had to. But in the corporate escapee world, collaboration is such a big piece of this. And the story I tell people, and you can actually go back and listen to, I think it was Debbie and Ashley were on the podcast. And If you look at their backgrounds, their resumes, both were in marketing in industry. Both were in marketing at big consulting firms, CMO type. But if you look at the resume, they look the exact same. And so you think they'd be competing for positions against each other. The fact is they had a shared client or contact that became a client. And this shared contact said, you know, you two should really work together on these types of things. Never met each other. They met each other once. Now they work together on opportunity. So the way they're working, if they're chasing a bigger opportunity, they work together on it. And then they still do their own solo businesses, their own advisory. And the good thing is if one's busy or if it's not quite what they want to do, they have somebody they can flip that business to. So it's a super collaborative process where if you would have told two people, you know, directors of marketing to work together. Good luck, right? It just doesn't work. So yeah, it's been surprising. And I know people think incorporators probably shaking their head. They're thinking, no way. I'm like telling you when you only need five to 10 clients, and there's 33.6 million small businesses, and that doesn't include the nonprofits and the startups that also need some variation of this help. There's more work out there than right. All of us could have our fair share and then still share it with another a hundred people. And there'd still be work for everybody to do this. So, um, yeah, it's, it's a change for sure.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I love it. I love, uh, talking about this with you, Brad, I wish we could go longer with the podcast, but, uh, I've just got this lightning round of questions for you starting off with what's your favorite candy bar.

Brett Trainor: Candy. I've kind of given up sugar, believe it or not, but I would say peanut butter cups. If I was going to pick one, peanut butter cups, or I'm sorry, I'm going to give you a second one, Sour Patch Kids.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Great choices. Favorite music artists.

Brett Trainor: If I had to pick one, I've actually used this one in the past on the podcast. I haven't done it. I got to bring it back because if you look, if you can only listen to one, it'd probably be Springsteen just because of the, the depth, but REM or green day would be a one a or one B and one C. If I, if I could take that trio, it'd probably be some combination of those three.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Favorite cereal.

Brett Trainor: You're going to see a theme, but I like a peanut butter crunch Mac or PC. Oh, uh, Mac for sure. It was PC for the first 25 years, but now it's, it's Mac. Google or Microsoft? Google. Microsoft Teams sucked. I hated that when I was consulting. I know it's probably gotten better, but I'm sorry if Teams is out there listening, but, uh, Google is just, it's just too easy.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Dogs or cats?

Brett Trainor: Dogs. Nothing against cats, but always been the dog person though.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: Bantam or Les Miserables?

Brett Trainor: I just haven't seen either one of them. So I would go a Hamilton or six.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: All right. I love the answer. I love the honesty. My last question for you, Brett, what's the worst thing about being an entrepreneur and what's the best thing?

Brett Trainor: Well, the best thing I'll start with there. It's just the freedom, freedom and control. And you can use those interchangeably, but you control everything. And I think the worst thing. And I'm going to tell you, it's more of a, it was a personal thing that we're, we're much better off now. And this may be a good way to close. You can always tell me later, but, um, with my wife and I, right in corporate, she didn't necessarily know what they did. Right. She knew, but she knew I was bringing home a paycheck every two weeks and we had benefits that we never, ever had to worry. But when I left corporate trying to explain to her what I did, still didn't really resonate. But she now knew that I didn't have a paycheck coming in every two weeks. And I completely underappreciated the pressure and the stress that that put her under. which in turn put it back on me because I cannot believe she's not trusting me or understanding where, but she, it was just the unknown of it that she had known this paycheck for 25 years. All of a sudden it's not there. And she has to have a complete confidence in me that it was going, which she'll now she'll say she did, but I'm guessing back then had her doubts. But one of the best things that I ever did, and this was about a year ago was her and I have a quarterly business review and it may sound a little bit silly, But literally, we just had it last weekend, a Sunday morning over coffee. And I go through the last three months of the business and say, hey, here's what we did. Here's the big things that are happening. Here's what I'm seeing for Q1. Then we talk about personally, what do we want? We're probably going to have two weddings coming up in the next two years that we need to be aware of and some other things. So it just puts us on the same page going towards what we have. Now, it doesn't completely eliminate her anxiety. from it, but it just, it brought her into the business and understands where we are, where we're going and just gives her a whole different comfort level. So I kind of started that with the negative. That was the hardest thing is the, in my case, my wife, but partner, whoever your family. But there's ways I think we can kind of mitigate that and make it more of a positive than a negative. But to me, that was the biggest challenge was getting the, I wouldn't say support, but the belief, I guess, from my wife. Okay.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: That's a great suggestion to have a quarterly business review. I think that would really help everyone's partner kind of understand what you're working on if you're a solopreneur or an entrepreneur. Bring them into the business a little bit so they have a bird's eye view at least into what's going on. Because they are an important part of your team. The most important part of your team.

Brett Trainor: Huge. And quite honestly, I wish I would have done this when I was in corporate. I think it would have helped us because a lot of the times you're just going through life, taking care of things as they come. And there's some big things that you may talk about, but we were never really intentional about, you know, what do we want? Now we're talking about where do we want to live, right? Are we going to stay here? What do we want to do? Conversations that maybe we had one off or we had to have it when I was in corporate. Now it's just part of what we're doing. And so, Like I said, it fundamentally changed the way we work together, which has been a huge benefit because if you got to work against the forces at home, as well as the forces of the business, it just, it just makes, you can still do it, but it's just that much harder.

Kyle Ariel Knowles: I agree. I totally agree. Well, thanks so much, Brett, for being part of Maker Manager Money, the podcast, and just sharing your expertise of being a corporate escapee, inspiring others to at least consider escaping corporate. I think there's a lot of opportunity for people. And I don't even think it's for corporate folks. I mean, there's a lot of uncertainty even Uh, government workers, federal workers, state workers. Uh, there's a lot of uncertainty going on right now. And so, uh, I hope that people will listen to your podcast and go check out your stuff to, to kind of get inspired, to think about escaping their corporate or job and doing something solo. So thank you so much for being generous with your time.

Brett Trainor: No, I appreciate it. I always enjoy our conversations. So I appreciate you having me on your podcast. And like I said, if anybody just wants to chat, I'm happy to connect with me on LinkedIn. I'm happy to answer any questions. It's like I said, I think it's important. And you know, what is that Matthew McConaughey line, you know, get busy living or you get busy dying. And maybe that was from Shoshank. I should probably get that quote right. But I mean, because at the end of the day, that's what we're trying to do is live the life and just how do we live our best life? It's like one, figuring out the financial piece of it. But it's just really hard to live that life when you're putting in 40 to 50, 60 hours a week in corporate for somebody else. So anyway, I'll leave it. I'll leave it on that one. But I really appreciate you having me on.