A 4-Step Process to Make Money from Your Corporate Experience: Cliff Notes Episode

Brett Trainor (: 00:01

Okay, welcome to the first Cliff Node episode here of the Escapee Podcast. And today we're probably going to talk about the most important thing you can do in order to escape corporate, which is monetize your corporate experience, right? You have to be able to make money to replace that corporate salary. Even if it's not all of it, you do have to make money. You have to pay the bills. And to be honest with you, when I left corporate, my number one goal was to not only replace my corporate income, but make a lot more money.

Since then money is still very important. You have to pay the bills, but I'm searching for more time more balance as I've gotten out of this But the first thing is you do have to figure out how to monetize your corporate experience And so by the end of this short episode, I do want you to have a clear understanding of how you can take those first steps To start making money from you know, what you've been doing for 20 to 30 years You paid your dues you've earned it. So

Like I said, I've told people before that if someone's paying you to do a job, you have a skill that small businesses need and will pay for. The problem with most folks have been corporate, one you've never had to sell, right, as to your services, even though a lot of the skills are going to be very similar to what you did in corporate, trying to find those jobs, get ahead in those jobs, the skills are usually quite a bit of the same. Maybe we'll do a future episode where

We talk about sales skills, but this one is you just got to figure out what are you going to offer first. And so like I said, in the next 10 minutes or so, I want to walk you through four steps, a four step process to think through how to start outlining what you're going to sell and then get ready to actually have conversations to talk to people about what you're offering. So the first step is start with the problem that you're going to solve. Too many people think you got to go with, hey, here's my futures and benefits or solutions. I want to be fractional.

No, start with the problem. Business owners need to know that you can solve one of the problems they have. And if you break it down simply, there's really only three things they really need help with. One is you make money, save money, or save them time. You could also probably throw in risk mitigation. Those are the four things. So whatever your service, I don't care if you're CRM, data, finance, sales, marketing, customer success.

Brett Trainor (: 02:25

whatever it is, you need to be able to tie it back to one of those four things that the business owner is going to care about. So it's really, you know, think through your corporate experience over the course of your career. You've probably done a lot of different things where you solved a lot of different problems. Think about the ones that you really like solving, what you're good at and what you can get excited about helping small businesses solve these, right? Because right now they do struggle with this, mostly foundational stuff. So it's not going to have to be super deep.

but they do need those helps. So think about what the problems are you solve. I'll use an example of what I did when I left to kind of help you think through this, but that's the first one, start with the problem. The action step for this first step is write down three to five things that you did in corporate, the problems that you solved and just keep a kind of a running list, right? So what I did is I helped the sales teams, businesses generate revenue through three different

levers, acquisition, retention, expansion. And I'll get into how my differentiator came out that a little bit later. But now that's the problem that I was solving is helping small businesses grow by leveraging those three channels. right, step number two is match those skills to a different business model. The beauty of going solo is you don't have to follow any rules. You don't have to have the wrappers. It just doesn't have to be corporate light. Start with the problem that you're solving.

and you have different ways that you can solve it for the small business owner, nonprofit, startup, et cetera. But I do think it's important to think about the different business models because you may have a meeting with the business, you found out they've got a problem, and there's going to probably be multiple ways that you can help them. And I'm going to share five of the core ways to monetize, or these are the five most common business model. First one is fractional leadership, and really what this is.

is part-time leadership or full-time leadership on a part-time basis. And these small businesses need help across the board. Some people will tell you that it has to be a C-suite. It doesn't. Anywhere they need leadership, you can be a fractional leader. And we'll do maybe a different episode on how to break down and think about fractional, but think about it as you're providing leadership role on a part-time basis. It's usually about eight hours per week.

Brett Trainor (: 04:49

for a client, but you own, whether it's setting up a CRM, the sales function, marketing, whatever it is, if the company needs some help leading, or not even leading, and building it out a lot of the times, it's perfect for a fractional. Two is consulting, right? This is more of a fixed fee, fixed time type of approach. You may need to help them launch a technology, you may need to help them set up reporting, you may hire a salesperson for them, whatever it may be. It's usually a

Next, set a fixed time, fixed fee. Coaching advisory, you may not spend as much time on a monthly basis with the owner. They may just need some help either with themselves, some mentoring or coaching through how to do or tackle a problem. Or they may want to come in, have you come in and help one of their junior people on their team or work with one of their sales team. So that's three. Four is freelance project base. This is more transactional. Hey, I've got a problem. You can come in and fix it. You move on.

The last one is teaching and training. It's kind of similar to coaching and advisory, but you provide a little bit different type of a skill set. So those top five. So think about where, again, you want to spend your time solving those problems and there's different ways to do it. Over the course of, you know, the five years that I've escaped corporate, I've done every one of these. And it really was just a trial and error until I figured out what I really wanted to do when I first left.

corporate, did solo consulting. Did that for about a year, realized I really don't like chasing down virtual stakeholders and managing project plans anymore. So I kind of stumbled into fractional leadership, did that for a number of companies and then started picking up some advisory, launched the corporate escape B, did some coaching. I think at last count, I did, I've monetized nine different ways, some more successful than others.

Fact is there's an opportunity. You've got the skills, businesses need it, and there's different ways to kind of think about how to charge for those services. So the action step of this one is pick one business model that fits your experience and just think through how this may work with a small business owner. All right. So step three is define your messaging and positioning. used to talk about, think about what your offer is. But until you talk to that business owner, you may not know how to match that perfectly.

Brett Trainor (: 07:12

So I think what's more important is to start to think through, right, that problem you're solving. And I'm going to give you a simple framework to think through this, right? But you do need to communicate this clearly, unlike what I just did there. so think about this from a high level. What is the problem that you solve? So this is the pain point that the small business owner has. Who do you solve it for? Pick an ideal customer, right? It could be a vertical. I mean, if you've got financial services or healthcare experience, right, that may...

credentialize you a little bit more in that space. But again, most of your skills will transfer across the board. But I think it does help to get started. You may want to work with only small companies. You may want to work only with nonprofits. So try to think through who would have the biggest problem you could solve or have most problems and focus on that one area to get started. So it's the problem you solve. Who do you solve it for?

How do you solve it? What is your approach to solving this problem? You've been doing it for 30 years. You can do that probably with your eyes closed, blindfolded, and without a lot of ramp up time. So just think about how you would solve that. Again, think through the problem. And then last, where have you done it? This is where some folks get hung up because you haven't had small business customers with success. But guess what these small business owners got the head of myself of love.

the experience. They've seen you've done this for 20 or 30 years. They know you know how to set up and solve these problems. So you're credentialized just by your experience. So don't worry if you don't have customers that'll vouch for you. You have the experience that these business owners are going to be super excited to learn for you. OK, so that's what's the problem. What problem do you solve? How do you solve it? How do you solve it differently?

And then where have you done it? Talk about it kind of in your corporate career. So again, this is just a good exercise. Take those problems you thought about in step one and who you want to solve it for and start to build this out. Okay? You may not think you're ready. You're not ready to have a conversation with somebody in your network. If you're still in corporate, I would make sure you reach out to somebody you trust. And it's basically, you just want to test your messaging.

Brett Trainor (: 09:28

The note to them is, I'm thinking about going out on my own. Or if you're on your own, you say, hey, I've started something on my own. I'm working with small businesses and I help them with this problem. I would love to get your perspective. I would love to get your feedback and just on what I'm willing to offer. You will be shocked at how people, how much people want to help you. When you're looking for a job, people are helpful and courteous and do want to see you land a new job. But when you tell them you're going out on your own,

they will bend over backwards to help you. And even if they're not the right fit, they may know one or two people that may have the challenge that you're looking for. You will be surprised, even if you have a very small network, of how excited they will be for you. Obviously, if you're in corporate, you've to start slow and focus on the folks you can trust. if you can just take the action item of reaching out to three, either former colleagues, somebody in your network, it could be a neighbor.

whatever it is and have this conversation where you talk through, it's okay if it's not perfect, right? They're gonna give you feedback. You're gonna get better at talking about it. And this is really just to break the ice because guess what? 80 % of the folks never get beyond this step. They think about it, they wanna do it, but they just never do it. And if you follow me my social media, you know I talk all the time about just do it. Take that first step, start to stack these small wins and you will get going.

Again, take that action step, send a LinkedIn or an email to three folks, just three, seeing if you can jump on a quick call, 10 or 15 minutes, you're starting your own thing and you would love feedback. It's a perfect start and you're gonna get feedback. They're gonna be honest with you, right? And you want them to be honest. And again, your call to action, the one thing I will mention is do not try to sell on this call. This really is just starting to create the awareness.

help you get comfortable having these conversations and hopefully start to expand your network. Like I said, everybody usually knows one or two people that they can introduce you to. Again, they may not have the problem, but it's going to get that ball rolling, get the conversation going. So, all right, so that's the wrap. Let me just recap the four steps for you in case I spoke too fast. One, identify the problem that you want to solve and that you have solved.

Brett Trainor (: 11:55

Two, match your skills to a business model where you can monetize it, right? Fractional leadership, consulting. But remember, at a high level, you don't have to pre-define what this is. You're going to hear the client's problem. You're going to be able to think through what's the best way for me to solve this. And instead of force-fitting a solution, build a solution around what they're doing. Step number three, define your messaging and positioning. It doesn't have to be overly complicated, but you do have to be clear.

around what you're solving for the prime you're solving for and who you're solving for are really the big ones because when you're networking you want people to be able to say that's the person that did this again when i talk about what i did people when i i'm gonna share just a quick lesson i know we're running a little bit long is when i left management consulting i was focused on b2b and digital transformation for legacy businesses and that's what i was telling people i was looking to do on my own well the problem is

nobody needs that help, right? I wasn't tying it back to any value of helping them save money, make money, et cetera. So when I started to change my positioning around and focus on growth for small business owners, I focused on the one to 10 million in revenue, because I knew if they could get over that hump, they could grow even further. How I solved it is leveraging the three revenue channels, acquisition, retention, expansion.

And where had I done it? I'd done it for 25 years in corporate. ran functional areas in sales, marketing, customer success. And it gave me a unique perspective of how to help small businesses. It's that simple. And when I was meeting with people, they say, that's the guy who can help you figure out your growth strategies, right? So it doesn't matter what it is, but just pick one of those paths as you go through it. And then the last step is get out and have conversations with real people.

Do that and I guarantee you, you will see progress. You'll be more confident. You'll be more comfortable. And that will give you the first step along the way. So, and if you've made it this far, I will tell you, I'm going to put a link into the show notes. I've got a starter kit. If you have not downloaded that yet, this will go into a lot more detail on these steps and it's got a lot more information. This is just one section of that starter kit. So if this was valuable, again, find that link, click on it. You can download it and get started from there.

Brett Trainor (: 14:16

Hope you guys enjoyed this. Hope you got some value from it. So look for quite a few more of these CliffNote editions as I'm going to make these more actionable. We'll still have our longer form interviews where we show use cases, show what's possible. But I'm also going to start mixing in more of these CliffNotes. Thank you for listening. Hope you do subscribe, tell your friends. And I will see you on the next episode. Thanks.