How One TikTok Video Built the Corporate Escapee Movement

Brett Trainor (: 00:00

I think the number one key to success for anybody, especially if you're leaving corporate, is taking action. The number of people that want to do that, but in corporate we were taught to overanalyze, don't rock the boat, stay within the blocks. But out here you can test and if something doesn't work, you move on. This is Breaking Through the Noise, practical strategies from emerging thought leaders who've actually broken through the noise on their terms. I'm your host, Catherine Jelinek. Let's get real.

and let's get into it. Welcome, everyone. I am so excited to get to introduce you to Brett Traynor today. He is the CEO and founder of the escapee collective and host of the Corporate Escapee podcast. It's spent 25 years in corporate America and escaped like six years ago and has a lot to say about it. And we're going to especially talk today about Brett's journey of breaking through the noise on TikTok.

for originally, specifically, Gen X, which all of this is blowing my mind and has been a really fun story to get to hear about. So welcome, Brett. Thank you for being here. Thanks, Catherine. My pleasure. I'm super excited about this one. Yeah. So OK, what was the original spark? Obviously, you left corporate America. And when was it like, I'd like to share this was like this potential for independence with others. I want to share what I know. How did that all start?

It took a couple of years because when I left, the whole journey was, right, was 25 years corporate, then a year and a half in management consulting. So if any of your audience is thinking about doing that later in their career, have them call me first and I'll talk them out of that. But when that time ran out, I'm like, you know what? I can do this on my own. So moved into solo consulting, then moved into fractional leadership when I realized that the consulting thing wasn't for me anymore. It was no passion. It was better than being in corporate, but it wasn't there.

Then kind of started a journey of monetizing my corporate experience. think the last count was 10 different ways and just some ways I never thought would be possible. TikTok being one of them, right? Which we'll get into in a bit, but that was probably just about two years ago. I got to the point, like, man, there's got to be other folks like GenXers like me that are done with corporate, don't want to climb the ladder anymore, don't know what the exit strategy is, but don't want to start a full on business. Right.

Brett Trainor (: 02:27

At that time, freelance was still cheap. You go to Fiverr and you buy something for $10, you can never make enough money. And so I'm like, you know what? I'm going to go see if there's any other Gen Xers, like Will Smith or not, Will Farrell in old school. He's like, we're going streaking, come on. I thought everybody would want to go, we got solo, but it was crickets, literally crickets. And where were you saying that when it was Mostly LinkedIn and I had rebranded my podcast to the Corporate Escapee.

And literally a few friends and family were, you know, humoring me by, by following along. I had rebranded the podcast back to Hardwired for Growth because I was focused on small business. But again, this passion project, I'm like, man, there's gotta be, there wasn't, at least according to LinkedIn, there wasn't an audience for this. And the decision I made, and it was a little bit unrelated was like, you know what, I'm going to goof around TikTok. My youngest daughter was playing around with it.

I'm like, short extension span, right? It fits, it's perfect for me. And I just started posting, right? I had eight followers when that thing started and that truly was just family, but right place, right time. And a lot of what I was talking about was ranting on corporate and layoffs and it's broken and wow, was there a lot of people that kind of felt the same way? Yeah, sounds like you hit that nerve and it resonated.

It did. And there were Gen Xers on TikTok, huh? At that point, I didn't know, right? Because I'm like, don't know how to do analytics on this platform, but it went from eight to six hundred. I'm like, wow, six hundred views on a video. like, that's interesting. Was this your first video ever or was it like after a few? After a few, but they were all starting to get into that range. So obviously TikTok must have like something about it that they got it there. But I'll never forget. We were actually on a family vacation at Disney World.

And all of sudden the first one, and when I say blew up, it had like 10,000 views. Crossed into the thousands, many thousands. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then from there, it just started and I was just posting daily. And as I sharing with you offline, it's literally me two minutes talking. It's unedited, not scripted. And it went from the eight followers. And I think within two or three months, I was up to 10,000 followers.

Brett Trainor (: 04:50

which opened some doors. And then over the course of the next 12 months, got, I think we just crossed 76,000 followers a couple of weeks ago. So. Congratulations. Thank you. And who knew, right? Cause I actually did, I did a guest lecture for an MBA class late last winter and basically said, yeah, you guys would never guess. Yes, I'm a TikTok influencer.

isn't that funny? And they laugh well because they knew what TikTok was. I'm like, And but the thing that again, really surprised me once I started digging into the analytics of it, it showed that 80 % of my audience was over the age of 40. And still at this point, don't know if they're even in corporate, right? Or because of what I originally thought it was somebody that has been in corporate for two years and they were burned out. Not the 25 year veterans that were in there.

But once I started pushing everybody to LinkedIn, then I'm like, okay, these are, yep, mid to upper management type folks with long careers and they're on TikTok. Who knew? So what do mean when you say pushing everyone to LinkedIn? How did you do that? How did you get them to touch base over there? Because I am not a, again, even TikTok, I couldn't tell you how to do 90 % of the things that you're capable of doing. And so, I mean, when this started blowing up, you've got...

like thousands of direct messages and just, I wasn't going to go into that. starts conversations with people, not necessarily good conversation. It's just a whole sub thing that goes in your messages. And so what I just encourage people from day one, I'm like, connect with me on LinkedIn, right? It's a corporate platform. I'm talking about corporate escape B. I can see your background. I always tell people it's easier to message on LinkedIn, even though LinkedIn's messaging platform sucks too.

But it's a little bit easier. And I was able to see if they were truly serious with connecting with me by taking this step to go into my LinkedIn profile and then connecting. And if they were the person you were looking to connect with, which makes sense, yes. Exactly. And so once I start to figure out, like, my god, the one person I talked to is VP level at Google. I'm like, wow. So there's definitely burnout at all levels within corporate. So I knew I was onto something at that point, but had zero.

Brett Trainor (: 07:12

coaching programs, zero, I didn't have anything set up for it because I didn't, know, two weeks or six weeks ago, I thought there was nobody else out there that wanted to do this. And- Wait, this all happened within six weeks? You like went to Disney, the 10,000? Yeah, that happened super quick. And then it just became a slow, steady growth because part of it was I out, you know, I out-funked myself if that's a word.

Because once I got going, I'm like, you know what, maybe I should take some time and script this and take the lighting a little bit more seriously. And no, I didn't. So the views didn't come. I didn't get the same traction. So people obviously didn't care. It wasn't it was the content they were interested. The messaging had nothing to do with the production level. I don't dance. I don't do the music. I don't. You know, I will do a caption and I'll do captions, but that's about the extent of what I do on the videos.

And that makes me feel good because I think that a lot of what scares me about that is feeling just, yeah, it just feels like a lot of bells and whistles, you know, something. you said you had more opportunities open up after crossing 10,000 followers. Can you share what specifically that means? Yeah. So within TikTok, and it may have changed once you get to 10,000 followers, then that opens up the Creator Fund.

And what they do is basically pay people that are creating content that people are following. And who knew when I got that first distribution from TikTok that said, Hey, here's, think my top check or chest check that dates me the top monthly payment, think was $1,400. Awesome. Yeah. Speaking like your truth unscripted. Yeah. In two minute bites.

two to three minutes and then again, the purists will tell you, you should do 30 seconds or 90. There's probably some formula that says, here's what you should be doing. That just didn't work for me because now I mean, I did get sucked into that. I don't know if it's the dopamine or the thrill of where it was going, because you only get paid for videos that are a minute or longer. So I made sure every one of my videos was at least a minute. The truth is I can't get them under a minute even if I want it to.

Brett Trainor (: 09:38

Right. You and I were talking about podcasts out the air and I can't keep them under 40 minutes. So there's no way I'm keeping a video under a minute, but yeah. So it just opened up a world. And I mean, just, you know, it's one of those tipping points, right? Because literally I would have stayed doing what I was doing in the solopreneur path, kept doing and enjoying what I was doing, but all of sudden this...

whatever reason it aligned and said, yep, maybe this is the path for you with the corporate escapee because I wouldn't have set up a business around it. I wouldn't have done all these other things without the traffic. I think that really the one confirming moment or confirmation was, like I said, I had no coaching program, no community for people to join. And I offered folks that were following me on TikTok, a free 20 minute mini strategy session.

Right. If you're in corporate or you're laid off and you think maybe or maybe not, this is for you. Yeah. I'll give you 20 minutes. I had 300 people sign up for that in less than two days, 48 hours. Oh my gosh. That's so cool. Cool. But I'm like, whoa. Crap. Right. That's a lot of time. But I did stay from... mean that response that like you connect again and connect again with the, you you resonated with people. That's cool that you got that response.

It validated it, right? That, yep, this is real. There's people that feeling the same way. And after, again, about 100 of the calls, it sounds like a lot, but 20 minutes actually goes by pretty quick. And so it wasn't like a six month thing that I had to deal with. I realized that I'm like, what am I doing? Because I'm having a great conversation. It's like, if you and I connect and had the 20 minutes, man, maybe somewhere we can work together.

en that thing peaked at about: 2000

Brett Trainor (: 11:54

who are just curious, like, I don't know if I wanna do this. I don't wanna sign up for things. And so I'm like, I don't know why. Well, because I put all the time and effort into the free community and started some other programs and those types of things. so, yeah, like I said, who knew? It was more than one video on TikTok, but a couple of videos on TikTok actually built this business, at least the foundation of this business, which is insane. That's incredible.

I have so many questions off of that. One is these videos that actually wore the few that blew, was there anything that those had in common? I mean, some of them I was outside in the wind. I'm going to pull them up right now. mean, even with content, doesn't have to be like, well, maybe it is the raw background. People just love it. I think it was just the unfiltered. I became the anti-corporate.

know, corporate's broken. mean, my all time most viewed video, I think is 1.2 million views. I just did a short post when Dell had those layoffs. And again, I'm more tuned into what's going on with corporate, even though I'm out, which is the funny thing. Dell basically told all their employees they're ineligible for promotions and raises if they don't go back to the office, right? The forest returned office mandate.

And the employees basically said, screw you, we're not going back. Don't promote me. Don't give me a raise. And I just did a TikTok that said, Hey, the employees spoke, right? Good for, good for Dell. And boom, that just hit across the board. so things that are in contact with like a current event as well.

Interesting. it doesn't like my Starbucks one when, you know, he's forcing return to office, but yet he's taking the company jet from Malibu up to the office when he needs to get to the core. I mean, it's just the hypocrisy of all of this thing. And then I kind of went down the path of profits over people, which again, that gets people on both sides engaged because people say, well, it's always been profits over people. I'm like 100 % right. Yes, corporate has been, but now they don't even pretend to care anymore.

Brett Trainor (: 14:03

And though I know a little off topic, but just why I think it's relevant is CEOs, layoffs were last ditch effort. Earlier in my career, if you laid somebody off or you laid people off, you broke the trust of the organization. People were skittish. It was going be hard to get things done. Now layoffs are a quarterly strategy. Even when your finances are strong, they're just letting people go. So that whole world is broken up and there's still the apologists out there that's saying,

Right. And again, I don't fault CEOs for doing any of this. Right. If I was a shareholder, I'd want that money's to my only warning is to everybody that's still in corporate that thinks there's any bit of loyalty or you have a future there. You don't write it. You just don't. So anyway, you can see these are kind of what my videos are as I get on the box and get mad and we go. So I wouldn't call it mad. But I just appreciate you're just talking straight. It's from your point of view, your lived experience and then you're hearing and it's resonating. So it's

I don't know. And touching into how things are shifting, it is interesting and I think, yeah, off topic from our conversation, but AI, people, how things are valued, what is a commodity, things are shifting under our feet. And so it's interesting to kind of watch all that intersection. circle back to talking about you breaking through, when you talked to those 300 people.

From there, did you then get a sense of what you wanted to build like packages and paid things and like what could happen? Did you start to hear comment that no, no. When did that start coming? It's it's started and I thought I had it figured out, but I didn't have it figured out. And because what I initially did, I think I did all the smart things, but you people who convert folks from tick tock or probably if you got anybody in your audience wants to help me, please call. But I started with

coaching programs because I figured that's gonna help me learn. What do people really need, right? My assumption was that folks needed the strategies and the tactics, right? The how to, how do I craft an offer? How do I do these things? But what I found was 80 % of it was the mental of believing that yes, I can do this, that it makes sense for me, right? I have the skills.

Brett Trainor (: 16:21

And the sad thing is a lot of folks that have been corporate for 20 plus years were even doubting their corporate abilities. And anyway, that's been in corporate and navigated for 20 plus years. You know what you're doing, right? You just don't survive in that world without doing that. So I found myself turning more and more into that. I don't say the motivational, but the how do you get started? The mindset shift that has to change that it's corporate to solo.

It's like this far, it's not 10 miles that it seems like. And so I didn't have a lot of those programs. And quite honestly, even because we've had the paid group now nine months, maybe 10 months, and I'm still learning what, the value is going to come from. And, you know, back to the, to the breakthrough, I've kind of figured out there's three kind of three stages of the folks that I'm talking to. One is the curious, the tick tock, right?

Yeah, I hate my job. I'm scrolling TikTok during the day, but I don't know if I'll ever take action, but definitely curious. I think the motivated group is the next one. They're out, they bought in, they like, I wanna go solo, I wanna do this. They consume everything and anything that you put out there. And then the third group was the deliberated, we call them. They've been out for a couple of years, can always improve, looking to do better, but for the most part, they've got it figured out.

And I was a one size fits all for everybody and it just didn't work because where everybody was in their journey. So I had to figure out what do I need to build for the people still in corporate, right? So we've got a starter kit that's free. Now they can do it. The free Slack groups back, the podcasts, so they can start to take their time, educate themselves when you're ready to go, and then start to put a lot more resources into the folks that raise their hand and they're going in. Cause if I figure if we can help them get out quickly, we'll keep them out.

Because at the end of the day, that's my mission is to get a million people out of corporate into solo careers, owning their lives, all that type of good stuff. And then on the back end, we'll figure out how we can add some programs for the folks that have been doing it for a while. Because there's a lot of value. They've got those life lessons that they've learned through this process. So still working on that piece, but really started now in the last six to eight weeks, figured out how to provide the services for those two groups. This is exceptional.

Brett Trainor (: 18:45

And the fact that this has happened so quickly, I mean, you're both obviously touching into what is needed now, but then being so responsive, so quick on your feet, like just jumping in and trying things. And I so appreciate how open you are, you know, even on this podcast saying, hey, if somebody else knows what they're doing, please call me. And I think this is probably a piece of why things have gone so well.

You know, you're just so relatable and speaking from the heart as yourself, which is incredible. And it's inspiring because we need those examples of how people got out there to connect with who we wanted to connect with as ourselves without conforming into some other widget in order to get there, you know? Yeah. So really do appreciate that. So give us the skinny on how to connect with you, how to find you. And if you've, you know, touched a nerve with anyone listening, you know, learning more and getting in touch with your collective.

Yeah, I mean, LinkedIn is still the best place for a trainer and you can Google and search the corporate escapee. And I actually do come up hopefully on most of those tick tock. There are some counterfeits and copycats, which is flattering and kind of maddening at the same time. But yeah, I think definitely LinkedIn, right? I'll respond to messages. If anybody wants to connect, they're curious, happy to do it. Yeah. And if anybody is looking to get out again, I'm still willing to have.

conversations with folks as well. So that's the best platform for sure. Cool. And any last wisdom that you would share with those of us who are like tinkering, hopeful thought leaders emerging, considering, you know, and skittish about some of these maybe platforms that feel younger. I I call myself a social media grandma. So like, what would you say to those of us who kind of fall more into that camp or maybe haven't touched TikTok yet, especially?

just feel a little. Yeah, I'll start with the I'll go backwards. So the tick tock one, I highly encourage people to get out there because what I'm finding is their algorithm is actually really good. And I may have shared when we first met that, you know, I like to play golf, love to play golf, don't have a ton of time with everything that's going on right now. But one of the challenges I was having was in my backswing, right? The takeaway, something was just off. And so I was looking for videos that had that I didn't even have to look.

Brett Trainor (: 21:06

All of sudden TikTok's presenting me with golf instructor videos that was highly focused on the takeaways. So if somebody's out there, if you're talking like you with skinny books and some of these other things, right, that if people are searching, they're going to find you. And yes, it's nice to have the 76,000, but honestly, if I could get just get the 500 of those true escapees that want to work with me is perfect. So I think TikTok's a platform.

And like I said, the followers, 40 or 80 % of them are over the age of 40. So depending on who you're trying to connect with, they're probably on TikTok. And into the more macro, again, I think the number one key to success for anybody, especially if you're leaving corporate, is taking action. The number of people that want to do that, but in corporate, we were taught to overanalyze. Don't rock the boat, right? Stay within the blocks.

Right. Just do your job, essentially. But out here you can test and if something doesn't work, right, you move on. And honestly, I almost pulled the plug on the corporate estate too soon because of I didn't give it enough time. But I mean, that's that's definitely the one thing I've learned. And looking at folks that either I don't care if you're 23 or 65, if you're willing to have that first conversation, your chances of success probably doubled compared to.

by just doing it. even if you don't have the experience or the skill, it helps. But I see people all the time that are rewarded just for doing right that so if you can combine skill with doing, you're going to hit a home run. But there's so many people with skill that that don't have that first conversation or they have a couple or they just hope sit back and wait for it. Yeah, it's true. So I love that you almost struck out with

using LinkedIn and kind of got frustrated, started planning pivots. But then, you know, with a few Hail Mary attempts, something different occurred, which is really cool. I mean, it's just interesting and a good lesson learned for me and I think for others to just keep trying other platforms, other mediums, and seeing which one is kind of our place. I mean, it's awesome to hear about TikTok and how friendly it can be for those of us who aren't, you know, 23. But it's also cool to like the example of trying and just

Brett Trainor (: 23:26

keep on playing with different places. maybe just one last piece. The other thing that I've learned, coming from B2B, a lot of that is we talk about the brand, nobody buys from brands. It's the person to person piece of this. So even if you're going on TikTok, the number of people, even with their solo businesses, they're going out on TikTok as their brand or small business. I'm like, you're not going to get anybody unless you're just that rare exception of a brand that's got

really good personality on social. People want to hear from you, right? They want to hear the ups, the downs, the good, the bad. And that just, it just works. I've seen the people that they get the traction, they get the connections when they're not trying to, I don't say force it, but have a point of view, be yourself. And, know, again, the traditional, so say, I say screw the algorithm, do what you like to do. Because if you don't, if you're doing something you don't,

like or it doesn't work for you, you're not gonna do it very long. And that's what I found with LinkedIn. Because again, LinkedIn will tell you, post three times, batch your content. I like to get up in the morning and I'm like, what am I gonna talk about today? And then I write and then do my TikToks. It works for me and it's been working. Because I think if I went to a structured, I would stop doing it or I wouldn't do it as well. I don't know. So if you got LinkedIn purists out there too, they're probably

shaking their head right now saying no don't do that but but I found if you stick with it and you do what works for you eventually it'll it'll pay off. Yeah well and I love how fast it paid off for you so that's inspiring. It's it's remarkable to hear the story thank you so much Brett for telling us and giving us so much of the nitty-gritty details of like how and when and how many people and when you started thinking about different things it's that really helps when it comes to

considering things, you know, really hearing some of those deeper details behind the scenes. Everyone, thank you so much for tuning in. You've heard about how you can find Brett Trainer, especially on LinkedIn or the Corporate Escapee website and tune in next time. Thanks. Thank you for listening to Breaking Through the Noise. You can follow us on YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Brett Trainor (: 25:49

and drop a comment on topics you want to hear about in future episodes. We'd love to hear that. Thanks again for tuning in. Till next time.