The Salary Gap Illusion: Why Going Solo Isn’t as Risky as You Think

Brett Trainor (: 00:01

Welcome back to another edition of the Corporate Escapee Podcast. And this is a Cliff Notes version. It's been a while since I've done a solo episode, but I thought it was about time. And today I want to talk about the newsletter I wrote over the weekend for LinkedIn called the Salary Gap Illusion. If you read that, I'm going to go into a little bit more detail and talk through the specifics of this. And if you didn't catch the newsletter, go find it on LinkedIn. But you won't have to after listening to this episode of the podcast.

So what is the salary gap illusion and why is it not as risky as it feels? know, interestingly, as I probably had over 500 conversations, now at least that I should have kept count of escapees or potential escapees, just understanding one, you know, where their mindset is, what is the fear or the hesitation of actually going solo? And part of it is definitely the mental hurdle of, can I do this? Right. Is it, am I good enough?

I've been in corporate for long, I don't know how to sell, et cetera, et cetera. I think most folks get through that pretty quick. The bigger gap is when they look at how do I go solo and replace my corporate income, especially if you have a six figure salary, right? There's folks at 100K, 200K, and you think about starting from a dead stop and making $200,000 in a year, it seems like a really, really big gap. And this is what I want to address to you because

Yeah, it's not going to happen overnight. You're not just going to sign one client and instantly replace your corporate income, but it is much more doable and achievable than you may think. And that's why I think a lot of people are sticking in corporate because of that fear of not being able to generate that income. So that's what we're going to talk about today. I'm going to kind of show you the path and then give you kind of five steps to get started because

that I'll say the best time to start was two years ago, the next best time is today. So hopefully coming off this episode, this will give you enough of a framework and maybe some motivation and inspiration to get started. So again, I think part of the illusion and the fear is the handcuffs. Even if you don't have handcuffs, the salary can act as such, right? Until it actually goes away.

Brett Trainor (: 02:23

I think most Gen Xers are not under the illusion that corporate is safe, that it is risky, that they're one quarter away, one week away from a layoff and having a really hard time finding another job. Just, I it's the world we live in, the ageism, the AI, everything. Business is not appreciating the experience anymore. think, again, I think most Gen Xers realize that that is a problem.

but it's just overcoming that mental hurdle of replacing that income. So I think the best analogy I can give you to get started with this is people view that step from corporate to solo as a tightrope between two skyscrapers, right? And if you make a misstep or you wobble, it's a long way to the ground and it's disaster. The fact is the tightrope is really only about 16 inches off the ground.

Right, because you could do this, you may find you don't like it, and you can always go back into corporate. That's assuming they'll take you. But just because you try or test the solo path doesn't mean you have to stay there. It's not like, you know, looking for a job, you find the job, you quit in two days. It's the other way. You can build this any way you want. That's a good transition into the three paths that I see. So all right, so you've got to the point that, all right, how do I start

placing my corporate income. Part of it is you have to really decide what do you want? What do you want in this next stage? Do you need to replace your income? What do need to live? And if you're do this the next five, 10, 15, 20 years, I plan on working until I can't work anymore. Again, I want to do my pace, my time, and what I want to work on, but a full retirement is definitely not in my card. I think there's three paths that I see folks.

approach when they're escaping corporate and this is what they want. And keep in mind that just because you pick one path doesn't mean you can't switch. And I'll share that I've actually switched a couple of times over my five year journey. First one is to go big, right? You want to not only replace your corporate income, you want to exceed it and I think a reasonable target if you want to be this super aggressive.

Brett Trainor (: 04:41

is gonna go, know, a million dollar solo business. We're seeing more and more examples of this, anything from design services to, you know, solo consulting. It's a little harder with solo consulting because of the time for money path, but it's absolutely doable, especially if you work with some other contractors and that'll be a different episode. But go big as you really want it to go and it's gonna take you hours. I'm gonna tell you right now, it's gonna take you more than 40 hours to get started.

to build this. I'll come back to this in a second. the second one is give me time, right? I want to replace my corporate income, but I want to do this in fewer hours. And I think we've seen this and I don't think I know we have between the folks in the escapee collective as well as in the fractional space as well. On average, it's taken folks about 25 hours to replace their corporate income. Now you're still doing work on the other hours. But because of

the premiums you can charge and the fewer hours, I think a reasonable number is 20 to 25 hours, call it 28, to be on the safe side, but you can absolutely replace your corporate income in less than 30 hours, let's call it. Then the last one is the lifestyle first, meaning, yeah, you're not done, you may not need a ton of money, but you want to make some money, and you're really more focused on your...

time, optimizing for wellness, breathing room, but it's keeping you engaged, it's keeping you doing things. I would say the vast majority of folks are in the give me time bucket, right? I want to replace my corporate income, but I want to work fewer hours, I want to be in control, et cetera. And I can share from my journey where I started was, number one was Go Big. I wanted to not only replace my corporate income, I wanted to exceed it. And for the first couple of years,

I was heading towards that million dollar path, right? But then I realized that, you know what? I really enjoy this free time and do I really need to make all that money? I don't know who was proving it to myself or to others or what it was, but I kind of settled back in. I like the freedom, I like the flexibility. I like the lifestyle of replacing the corporate income and then some, but not...

Brett Trainor (: 07:06

you know, not having to work 40 plus hours per week in order to get there. Now, I'll tell you with the escapee community and some of the things I'm building here, I'm super energized by this. So I'm putting a ton of hours back into it. And I want to see how big we can make this, this go, but who knows in a couple of years, maybe I rethink this and scale it back down. My only point is there's multiple paths and you don't have to stay on the same path. It's where that little crawl.

walk, run, type in their approach and then settle in where you want to settle in. But just think through that there's three really different paths that you can go. The next part of this is my maybe one biggest regret is I didn't start this while I was still in corporate because you starting from a standstill you can absolutely do it and there's something to be said for a sense of urgency when you no longer have that corporate paycheck but

I just think it's an easier path if you learn, right, to have the conversations you learn, what about your offerings, you learn what you do while you're still in corporate. Now, the downside of that is you don't have a ton of extra time, you can't experiment and you have to be much, much more targeted with who you're going after and the conversations you're having because you can't just broadcast on LinkedIn, I started my own thing, looking for connections, blah, blah, blah. You have to

Go people you trust and know and share the idea of what you're thinking and go smaller to start with, right? You can't go fractional if you're still in corporate just because there's too many hours and it'd be hard, you know, it'd be probably a conflict of interest to do it. But from a mentorship, advisory, coaching, you absolutely can structure those deals to start working with small businesses. And the benefit of this is

Again, you start to work out, you start getting comfortable having these conversations because that's the biggest hurdle. One of them is just getting comfortable in networking again. And I'll do a whole other series or a video podcast episode on the networking piece. You can check out, I think we've done a couple recent podcasting, we talked networking, Tom and Don specifically. anyway, so here's five steps.

Brett Trainor (: 09:30

that you can take to build this bridge, to start, to close that gap, the income gap, right? First one is to find the problem you have. If you've been listening to me or following me on any of my other videos or social channels, you'll hear me talk about defining the problem first. This is where you start. It's not a feature benefit. It's not a job title. It's hey, here's the problem I solved. Here's the problem I'm solving in corporate and here's what I want to solve for small businesses or nonprofits or maybe mid-market, right?

Technically, you could go back into corporate as a contractor, but I'm anti-corporate, but I'm not stopping anybody else from doing it. Two, identify who needs that help. You don't need an LLC to start this process. You identify the business owners that are probably struggling with the problem you solve the most, and that's who you want to have conversations with. Three, build your story. It's not a resume. It's about the value that you can provide.

these battles on the biggest stages with the biggest companies. Now you want to give back. You want to help some of these smaller companies leverage what you've learned and you'll kind of pay it forward. It's a great story to tell. It keeps the conflict of interest away because you're just starting to give back. By the way, you can do this for free or you can charge a small fee for it. I recommend a small fee just because you get a comfortable.

you know, basically solving problems and getting paid to solve those problems, even on a small scale. Number four is to get started, start having real conversations. And if you're still in corporate, the way I like to do this is look back at your network. Folks that may be no longer with the company, you've been with the same company for two decades. There's a lot of folks that you knew and probably were friendly with, liked, that have left and gone on to do other things. Guess what those folks you haven't connected with?

may have neighbors that have started a business. the beauty of this is you can really just start connecting with the folks that you had liked and just rekindle those conversations. Find out what they're up to. See if there's anything you can help them with and let them know, hey, you're thinking about going on your own. And if you know anybody, people are super excited to help you when they find out you want to start your own thing. And the last piece of advice I'd have on this is to stack those small wins.

Brett Trainor (: 11:51

Right. If you get the first good conversation, that's a win. Yeah. I have another good conversation. Find two more contacts and pretty soon you've got the momentum. And the other thing I really encourage you to do is enjoy this journey. Don't stress yourself out. You don't have to have perfect conversations because the one thing that I found is unlike corporate where you are constantly being judged, you have to have that your, your corporate mask on.

You can't make mistakes, you to do everything the right way. Here, if you make a mistake, nobody cares, nobody's judging you. If it's one customer, you do something else for the next customer, you learn from it. And again, you're not going to make any catastrophic mistakes. It's just a matter of having fun with it and start to have those conversations.

Brett Trainor (: 00:02

Alright, like I I encourage you to have fun with this process, learn from it. Again, can rediscover the curiosity that you had earlier in your career. I mean, that's one thing I lost the last decade was learning and curiosity, which is, it's come back to me here, definitely in last five years. It's switch that mindset. And I've shared this, this belief or this little mini framework that I think is super helpful called BAM, right? Belief, action, momentum.

We don't have to make it super complicated because this isn't hard. I shouldn't say this isn't complicated. It's going to take hard work, but the first one is belief. You have to have a belief in your system, the belief that you can earn money, the belief that you can capture it because you absolutely can because there's folks out there with a fraction of your experience and expertise that have built six figure businesses. So with your two decades of experience, you could actually absolutely do this. A for action.

take the first step, have that first conversation. So many people just think about it, overthink, overanalyze, never have the conversation and never take that step towards the freedom. But the only way you're going to get there is action. can't wait. It's not going to come to you. You have to go get it. But once you get comfortable being uncomfortable and taking action again, you know, that's 80 % of the battle. And then last is momentum. I talked about in last section, just keep building.

off of momentum, good conversations lead to first customers, first customer leads to second customers. Use it, right? Even if it's just, hey, I cleaned up my inbox, it sounds silly, but you need to celebrate those small wins and then just build and stack off of. So anyway, I hope you found this helpful and useful. I've got a couple others, I think, in the series that are gonna make sense. And if you're looking for some help, a couple things you can download.

the free starter kit where I cover a lot of this, a little bit more detail, get some frameworks and worksheets that you can use. And two, if you're really ready and need some help getting started, I would highly encourage you to join the escapee collective, right? It's only $20 per month. That's for life. If you join here before June, I think June 2nd is the date that we're cutting over raising prices. But there's three paths when they're in.

Brett Trainor (: 02:22

kind of created work groups to align with where folks are in their journey. The first one is for escapees still in corporate, right? You've got some unique challenges. We addressed a lot of those today, but you'll be with other peers that are still in corporate building towards their first customers as well. I think it'll help you accelerate your learning curve. The second group we've got is called the builders group, right? These are folks that are maybe still in corporate.

Most have just exited and they're looking for their first customer or maybe their next customer. So we talked about how to network, building the offer, building your talk track, right? What is your content strategy look like? Anything to build out, you know, kind of the foundation for your solo business. And then the last one where we want everybody to get to is the growers, right? These are folks that have been out for a while, have some customers, but you know, they want to make them

more money, a few hours. Really what they're looking for is referral partners and collaborators, right? Somebody they can work with on projects. So like said, we've got work groups for everybody, no matter where you are on your journey. I highly encourage you to check it out. You can find the link in the show notes. yeah, I think that's it for this episode. As usual, you know where to email me, come find me, DM me on LinkedIn.

Happy to answer any questions and as usual, if you're still in corporate, good luck.