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Your First Revenue Stream Outside Corporate (with Lee Ann Pepper)
We’re launching a new recurring segment with Lee Ann Pepper focused on real-world revenue ideas for corporate escapees.
If you’ve ever asked yourself, “How would I actually make money if I left corporate?” this episode is for you.
Lee Ann and I break down practical, low-risk ways GenXers can start monetizing today—without swinging for six-figure fences or waiting years to replace a corporate paycheck.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
- How User-Generated Content (UGC) works and why it’s perfect for GenXers who don’t want to be influencers.
- The new inventory-free e-commerce model that lets you launch products without warehouses or Amazon risk.
- Why the Connector Model (introductions + network leverage) is a hidden path to retainer + commission income.
- How to get paid for hiring advisory—helping SMBs make better hires using your experience.
- Why small, repeatable service retainers often add up faster than chasing one big consulting deal.
- The mindset shift from swinging for home runs to stacking singles for steady cash flow.
Enjoy and let us know what you think!
Transcript
Hey Leanne, welcome back to the Corporate Escapee podcast. Good, good, good. It's good to have you. And thank you for being a good sport on testing this new, it's not even a new format. mean, you and I have been talking offline quite a bit about ideas and things that GenXers can do. And I'm like, why don't we just record it? know, cause we get a lot of feedback that people are curious about ideas and, know, cause I talk a lot about,
Lee Ann (:Hey, Brad, how are you?
Lee Ann (:Yeah.
Brett Trainor (:quickest path is just monetizing your corporate experience. And I still believe that, but I think the deeper I get, the more I realize there's some smaller opportunities. anyway, so maybe just to refresh the audience's memory, just a little bit about who you are, a podcaster, software sales, Gen Xer, however, I don't want to spoil it for you.
Lee Ann (:all of the above. Originally from Michigan, moved down to Florida in 08, 09. So I'm used to navigating like a financial strife situation where layoffs occur. And I sort of feel like we're in that same mode where whether it's, you know, not so much the housing market, but just corporate America is quitting on us. And so we're dealing with that same kind of impact all over again, it's very familiar. And why I want to have this conversation.
is I think you and I, when we first met a year ago, and I'm thinking about the space and how much it has changed already, we all felt it had to be a parallel, like to replace that whole life cycle that we had in corporate America. And I was doing that because I just felt like some of my background of being in Salesforce or enterprise product sales was where I should be. And when that wasn't happening, it was like, I felt like the pivot had to be equal to.
Brett Trainor (:Great.
Lee Ann (:And through our conversations and why I think this is going to be a chance for people to listen in is I have discovered as you have, there are multiple paths to make your income. And it's very wise because of the fact that you never know what's going to happen in the next five years in this space, whether it's AI or all of that. So to be able to pivot and see where you can grow your bank account
with side hustles just to start, that's probably a term we shouldn't really use anymore, but just business opportunities, other revenue streams is so powerful. And then I thought, I know I'm rambling here, but I just want to encourage people. I thought about when we had this discussion a year ago, how to exit corporate America, the speed to getting up on these new revenue streams has increased. So I knew a lot of these things a year ago, you you just see, and we'll talk about some of them.
Brett Trainor (:revenue streams.
Brett Trainor (:Sorry.
Lee Ann (:I knew and explored it, but it's a $600 class here or a $1,200 class there. Now it has streamlined through the power of AI and just automating things. You can learn these things at a faster pace and do like your own pilot and see if it's going to work for you faster than you would have even a couple of years ago. So that's why I'm excited to talk about this and just share with your audience that.
it's very easy to dabble and see what happens and get out without a high risk.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah, I mean, think that you're right. It's a hundred percent experimentation. And I did the same thing, but probably four years ahead of you. So five plus years out. And I tell folks the not a mistake. Cause I was learning. didn't know any better, but when I left, I was, I was looking for solo consulting gigs and I was looking at, you know, six figures because that's what you do. You want the big deals. And then once I realized consulting wasn't for me anymore, I just didn't like the, you know, the virtual.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Brett Trainor (:stakeholders and project plans stumbled into fractional leadership. But again, what I was looking for was something that would be a six figure deal, right? How do I get a chief revenue office, fractional chief revenue that'll get to six figures over X number of months. And what it finally dawned on me after the next phase was then I did like eight different things that monetize from coaching, a little bit of advisory, different types of business development that I'm like, man, there's a much quicker path.
tunity or problem to solve or: Lee Ann (:Yes.
Brett Trainor (:to success. So and when you and I were talking offline and said, you know, let's, let's make this an episode or two and just give some ideas for folks that are sitting in corporate or thinking, again, because if you're in corporate, there's no way you're going to get a fractional gig. Right? Is there's too much time commitment, but there's other ways to do it. So I've got some ideas, but where, do you want to start? Well, you know, let's say you brought up UCG, I was going to bring that up. let's, let's
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm. Right.
Brett Trainor (:talk about that because I've got some stats to kind of support some of this as well.
Lee Ann (:Yes. And stances are important because like I said, I dabbled in that subject a couple of years ago. I was too afraid to pull the trigger. I followed my...
Brett Trainor (:But maybe tell people what we should probably tell people what it is first.
Lee Ann (:okay. I was, that's true. I was thinking you had Megan on who's somebody that I followed. So it's okay. All right. So, and we're friends, so Brett can just tell me how to guide this conversation and be quiet. So it is a faceless, typically a faceless opportunity. So, so many people who have been on social media think, my gosh, I'm not going to build content. I don't want to be in front of the camera.
Brett Trainor (:I would, but they may not have listened to that episode.
Lee Ann (:I don't know how to do any of that. I'm not a marketing person per se. And what we've discovered through UGC is that you can create content without you physically being in front of the camera for a product and a, what do I want say, sponsor or the...
Brett Trainor (:Yeah, kind of what brands are looking for.
Lee Ann (:The brands, yeah. A brand will say, yes, I really like the way that you are talking about hair products, like NutriFull. It was really big in the beginning, which was hair growth product. And so I'm only saying that because a lot of people have seen something very similar to that online all the time.
Brett Trainor (:You aren't directing that towards me. Appreciate that.
Lee Ann (:Obviously not. Or you'd be a great before and after. Are you kidding me? They'd pay you a fortune. And so, they're going to take you showing the bottle, then taking it in a pill form with a glass of water or whatever it is. And you yourself don't have to be in it. So that is the niche that has become a huge gap with our age.
So there are brands that want to have sponsors from people in our age group for the products that we would bring together, NutriFull, Health and Wellness, whatever the product would be. And they don't have the people in our age bracket to partner with. So it's really an enormous space that we have the ability to be in without having to be an expert and feeling like you have to have a marketing degree or a bunch of
Brett Trainor (:You name it.
Lee Ann (:technology behind.
Brett Trainor (:or even followers, right? Because they just want the content they can use for their social media or whatever and host a different thing. again, I thought...
Lee Ann (:or followers. That's the big thing.
Lee Ann (:It's user generated content. That's what, or yeah.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah, no, that's right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so Megan, if she's listening to this maximum, she's like, man, you guys could have done that quicker, but, we're older, we're, Gen X we're figuring out, and that's why you have a coaching business working with us to do this. But what really peaked it, because again, I've, I've had some success on Tik TOK that you don't need the followers and just getting comfortable with the camera, but where
Lee Ann (:It's right.
Brett Trainor (:It really opened my eyes is after Megan was on the podcast that became the by far number one episode that I've had, which, is crazy because we've had a lot of talented and crazy interesting people. But what it told me is there's folks that are interested in how do I make money? Right? I want to replace my corporate income. I don't want to become a social media, tick tock or influencer, but
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brett Trainor (:You know, creating a couple of these videos and the brands will pay what 150, 300. You can make up to four figures if for not a ton of work, right. And it's so that's why I thought, I don't know. Did you ever go down the path of actually submitting? I just started reaching out to a couple of brands. Um,
Lee Ann (:Right.
Lee Ann (:I haven't yet because I have three others that I'm positioning. Yeah. And so I'm afraid yet to take that on, but I know that I definitely will. I mean, and again, it's one of those where you can follow someone for a long, time. And then it's like, well, why didn't I ever pull the trigger? So not only is that Megan's course, and there's a lot of people that have courses out there, but Megan specifically really markets to our age group. So she has the compassionate understanding of how to, to guide us through.
Brett Trainor (:working on.
Brett Trainor (:Right.
Lee Ann (:being a startup in that space and make money. So she's excellent at working with us, GenXers.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah.
And the beauty of it is you can do it while you're still in corporate. So all of our corporate folks still out there, there's no conflict of interest. It's yeah. So something absolutely to, to take a look at again, I'm, looking to see if I can't pair it with my followers, right? To find a brand that would be interested in me just creating content, but then also promoting content that seems to be a different animal. So I think I'm going to follow Megan's path, just, just to test it, right? I want to No idea.
Lee Ann (:Yes. Yeah. Yep.
Lee Ann (:But you don't know where to lead. I will say, you know, everyone talks about being an influencer in the TikTok shop and all of that. I did get the opportunity to be a seller or somebody that, you know, has a TikTok shop where I can make money. That I found more work. Number one, I think that for me, it didn't fit with people following me on TikTok because I wasn't an influencer. It was just me.
So now all of a sudden I get to put that orange cart in my content and people, you you can't overdo it because that's not why they're there. Some people made a TikTok account and they only did it for clothes and they had a niche and it's perfect for that. But for me to disturb what I'm doing all the time to have to throw in a product so that I could maybe make $50 or $40, it didn't feel right for me personally. Did you get...
Brett Trainor (:Right, right. No, I think that makes sense.
Lee Ann (:Did you get the ability to put the little shopping cart in?
Brett Trainor (:I have, but I haven't done it. Right. So I've been like 18 months now I've got these followers, but yet I can get shame on me because I'm sure the TikTok folks out there and like, you're an idiot, man. You've got this following and you're not monetizing it at all. mean, TikTok pays me based on the video, but it's not, there's a much bigger opportunity that I haven't cashed in on yet. So at some point we'll, come back to that if I go down to a couple of these monetization strategies, but,
Lee Ann (:Yeah.
Lee Ann (:I know.
Yeah.
Brett Trainor (:Alright, so you see G's one what's what's something else that you that's caught your eye?
Lee Ann (:So what I was exploring is one that I was originally looking into and it was rather complex when I was going to begin, which was drop shipping, right? And I do have somebody here locally that does it. They have a warehouse and they do the drop shipping. And so I learned the complexities behind it, that yes, there's good money, but
Brett Trainor (:interesting. Okay.
Lee Ann (:You have to worry about Amazon shutting your store down. And there's just a lot of variables to the physical drop shipping and you have to own the product. There is now a new wave. And this is where I talk about minimal risk of doing e-commerce. So you can create your own website and Alibaba and all of these types of sites that have the less expensive products.
Brett Trainor (:Okay.
Lee Ann (:You can partner and see what product line you want to order from them. Um, and when I say order, I really mean you're, sponsoring their product. So you go on Alibaba and I will use my, my age group again, and I will do a weight loss product and I will do a hair shampoo thickener or whatever it is. I will do, um, some makeup, some, you know, age defying type of moisturizer.
And I will have those three products on my website and I will position my website as being a place to order these products. And I'm branding myself on Pepper's products. And that does require a little social media to promote your website, but that is something that's appealing to me because now I have a niche. I'm not putting a shopping cart down below all the time and someone else is shipping the product.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah.
Lee Ann (:So if your wife goes onto my website because she's interested in the skincare line that I carry, she just orders it from there and it's fulfilled from the other side. I have no product. I have no product. So the risk is minimal. You can start up with the website cost. You should order a couple of sample products from the supplier that you're working with. Make sure that your face doesn't go turn on fire.
Brett Trainor (:you don't have to do anything in that sense. I love that.
Lee Ann (:But they are used to working with, it's been a website that's been around forever. So they're used to working with US affiliates to sponsor and push out their products. To me, again, I would like to revisit this. That is a very low risk proposition to where I'm not beholden to Amazon shutting down my store. I'm not carrying product and shipping things out. God bless everybody that does do it. But that is something that I can see.
making three to five grand early on without much effort. Hold that thought. But that is where, and I've been on several different, you know, nightly calls and free program seminars to talk to people that are doing it. And the more I dive into it and the more I've even plugged and played in a chat GPT, like how much is really required to start.
Brett Trainor (:Great.
Lee Ann (:It just keeps reconfirming that I can do this at a very, very low risk, low cost profile. So I'm excited to start that.
Brett Trainor (:And you're looking again, the beauty is you don't have to the other thing I've accepted. don't have to build the next, you know, Google or Amazon, right? You just make enough money to fund what you want to do. And it makes sense. By the way, there's somebody in the collective that's in corporate right now that did launch an e-commerce shop and he's focused more on outdoors. Something his passion was outdoor equipment. So I can't give his name because he's still in corporate.
Lee Ann (:I was just going to say golf equipment or anything like that.
Brett Trainor (:But I mean, it's, you know, great minds think alike. I should, I'll pair you guys up so you can, you can chat. No, I like that. So this, this, I'm going to give you one that's more tied back to some of the corporate, but with a new, new twist and like some business development. And what we think of traditionally is, bring me in as your sales rep, right? You'll pay me a monthly salary and you know, commission for, for deals.
Lee Ann (:Yeah, I would love that. Yeah. Yeah.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Brett Trainor (:The newer model that I'm seeing, and I did something a little bit more that was similar to this, but I didn't take it to this level is a little bit of a retainer because I think the brand should have some skin in the game with, what we're doing, commission, right? So if you do close new deals, you get a percentage of the revenue. But what this guy's doing is also being kind of a, promoter, if you will. So he's introducing him into his network or this brand into his network.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Brett Trainor (:So leveraging something he already has right if he's connecting him with podcasts that he knows and so it's not just what I would I would have thought of was the traditional sales Right. This is more of making connections leveraging your network and then with some upside into it So any of us even without sales backgrounds if we've been in corporate for a long time have some pretty deep networks that it could be interesting you find the right brand that you align with and make a deal for
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Brett Trainor (:So and again, maybe it's only a couple thousand a month as the retainer, but then you've got some upside if these connections do close and grow. again, it doesn't take very much to get to 10K on a monthly basis. So it's a little bit different at Twith.
Lee Ann (:I'm going to agree with you. I'm going to agree with you and even expand that a little further because once you do a couple of those and you talk about it, you know, on LinkedIn and like some of the successes you've had in connecting people, will, your inbox will be full with people saying, Hey, I also try to market to larger or small to medium sized businesses. I'd love to connect. I've had much more success in networking within LinkedIn.
by just taking away my work history and just saying, I'm growth hunted, I'm there to do your sales pipeline. People have been coming to me to say, I can place you to company. So that's number one. So it's amazing how, I don't know what the algorithm is, but they'll follow you on LinkedIn and hook up. There is a guy here in Tampa, they call him like Mr. Tampa, who's just been here for a very long time. He's been in a lot of networking groups and to your point, Brett.
A lot of businesses are coming to Tampa. We're a tax-free state. They want to get established quickly and have the right connections. And so he's really deep in it. He knows the lawyers. knows Jeff Finick of the...
Brett Trainor (:I think you hit mute, Leanne.
Brett Trainor (:Still here waiting for Lee Ann to come back.
Brett Trainor (:There we go. I'll chop that part out, but you were mid Tampa sentence. What'd you do?
Lee Ann (:So he's highly connected and can you hear me okay? So he does for a $10,000 retainer, six to 10,000, depending on how deep and how many connections people want, he will line up introductions. He will get you face-to-face meetings. It's like a PR firm almost, right? I'm coming into Tampa. I wanna start my business down here. It's tax-free. I want a little office space in downtown Tampa, but I wanna speed to market my network.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah, you're good.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah.
Lee Ann (:And when you're an executive, there's a lot of CEOs coming here and doing that. They don't have time to mess around. And you can only go to so many dinner parties or try to work through your connections in just your world. And this guy is so highly connected, city officials, he helps with permits. There's value if you're someone that's a long-term resident in the city that you reside. Don't underestimate all of those connections that you have.
and you could charge your services for seeing, networking with a CEO.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah, I love that. mean, it's good, right? We don't have to be awesome. We need to charge 10K. But leverage that. Maybe it's not in Tampa, but maybe it's in the industry you're in or a company you've been with. Anything that people want access to that you can... Yeah, and don't be afraid to charge for it because that's the other thing. Again, you don't want your entire network, anything just to be, right? know, quid pro quo or whatever that is, right? But...
Lee Ann (:Correct. Anything.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Lee Ann (:Right, right.
Brett Trainor (:in the sense that there is opportunities there if you want to just make a small revenue stream out of it for select opportunities. And I think just piggybacking off that a little bit where there's an opportunity and I've seen it firsthand, but I haven't pitched it yet, but maybe I should is when these small businesses are looking to hire, right? In your case in sales, exact or in my case, go to market, head of sales, whatever it is, they don't know what they're looking for.
Lee Ann (:Yep.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Brett Trainor (:Right? There's a world and it's not too distant where I think it could happen today. You're just a advisor or consultant helping them find that right position. Right? Because it's the wrong hire in these small businesses is, is, be catastrophic and it's an 18 month problem. So you saying, look, I've been in, I don't care what fine, if you're CFO, you know, it doesn't matter CRM.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Brett Trainor (:If somebody's looking to hire that and you can help them go through the process of that, maybe even introduce them to the right, you know, potential hire for it. You know, there's a fee that could be had. It's almost like a modern day recruiting firm, but it's more good. But when recruiters are hiring for companies, unless that company is dead specific about who they're hiring, they're just finding the resources and doing the legwork. You actually know the knowledge of what that position takes.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Brett Trainor (:And the type of person that's going to be successful in that role. So again, it doesn't have to be super fancy. You don't have to put a title on it, but it's, it's wherever you can add value into these orgs. And, you know, like I said, on a macro picture, I think I'm definitely down with double digits where I figured out how to monetize different things. Not all of them that have been great, right? A lot of effort for not a lot of return and others. So, again,
Lee Ann (:No, right? Right.
Brett Trainor (:Go ahead, Leon, sorry.
Lee Ann (:But no, that's okay, because I think that's the fear right there is people are going to say, this didn't work for six months, and I got to go back to corporate. No, this is just a learning process. have to just, you know, we're not all meant to be together when you're looking at a fractional work or a consultative job. so be as picky as you are with them that they are with you. You have to decide, is it worth my time? Am I putting in too much time?
Because I will tell you, that's a very slippery slope when you take our age group with the corporate mentality we have, where you actually end up doing a lot more than what you really should. And so that can be something I've learned definitely to balance my time. Like my hours are here, I finished this, I'm done. I don't need to boil the ocean for this person. This is what they needed and I'm out. I've delivered it and I've got to step out of.
Brett Trainor (:right.
Lee Ann (:being part of their corporate culture, you know, because it's easy to do.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah, it is. But again, I think you're right. Be specific on the value you're adding, where you're going to add it, get in, get out. Because I think at end of the day, if we can find repeatable value ads, that the business and part of where I've been my journey recently is, what's that least, I've got a better or a better description of this, but the least common denominator of value you can add, right? One, a couple of folks in our, in the collective is are doing their digital marketers.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Lee Ann (:Yeah.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brett Trainor (:an agency work and they will set up the Google profile for businesses or like a hundred bucks or a couple hundred bucks. Every business that needs to be found needs to have that done. Right. So to me, that's a no brainer. Now I'm not in marketing. That wouldn't lead to bigger opportunities for me. But what is that for what you do? Right. And where I really think, again, ties back to this multiple revenue streams is
Lee Ann (:Right.
Brett Trainor (:People call it product tie services or, you know, expertise as a service. Now, what can you do for a small business for $500 a month or a thousand dollars a month that solves a real problem for them that it's repeatable for you. They can budget. It takes the risk completely out of it. So I think one of the things at least I was super guilty of is trying to swing. And I talked about earlier in this episode, swinging for the fences, right? I want the big deal every time, but man, if I would have just started
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Lee Ann (:Yeah.
Brett Trainor (:bopping out those singles pretty soon the bases are loaded you hit the home run and you've got yourself a you know you don't have to go find new clients right so yeah the analogy I'll use with folks is you get you know five two thousand dollar a month retainers for small businesses where you're maybe working two hours a month because you know what this is you know how good you can pound this out right that's ten hours a month for ten thousand dollars right
Lee Ann (:Right.
Lee Ann (:And you're not on a bunch of Monday morning calls that you don't want to be on that. Yeah. Well, I'm going to, I'm going to question you, Brett. Have you, moved forward with your idea of the, plug and play resources? Cause I haven't thought about that as well. You know, you're, you're with your collective or with people, know, we don't have to get into it, but I.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah.
Exactly. Exactly.
Yeah.
Brett Trainor (:Plug and play in.
Yes, it's there and every no no opportunity I wholeheartedly believe this is where the future is going is you don't need
Lee Ann (:That's what I was going to say. Yeah. Because if you're, if you're engaging, the other thing I was going to say is just, just the connectivity with resources. You're engaging for a small, portion of SEO or whatever it is. And suddenly, through conversation, they don't have HR or whatever their needs now are for their next step, a payroll process or POS, whatever it is. You and I know people who have been laid off that fit the criteria of
every part of a business. So all of a sudden it's, hey, I do know Roger and he's a great accountant, or I do know this person. So it's amazing too, the value add you can bring when it doesn't involve you for their next step of their project internally, but to provide that referral resource, now your credibility has gone up, you feel good about getting a job for somebody else, that's another short term and they get to get kind of get a feel for what it's like. It's just a pay it forward.
repeatable process that's very, very cool for our pool of people that are out of work.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah, in good karma, right? I'm a huge believer in that. And I do believe that when we start referring each other in, it's just going to multiply because you will come across opportunities. And it was interesting in our meeting we had last week within the collective, we were talking about because people are starting to work together and find opportunities to together. And one of the questions that comes up is, hey, I've got to know Brett.
Lee Ann (:Yeah.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Brett Trainor (:Right. Personally, but I've never worked with Brett. So how confident can I be pushing Brett into, you know, bring Brett into an opportunity? I'm like, well, again, even if you're introducing somebody in for new job, the way I, I talk to people and explain it is if I know like Leanne, you and I've never actually worked together in the same company side by side doing it. I know you as a person. So I will 100 % stand behind you as the person what your, your values are.
the work that you want to do. And very specifically, if you're going into a business, ask them about the skill set that you need to make sure that it's an alignment. I've like I said, so I would always pitch a person first and the skill because again, if you've been you've been doing this for 25 years, I have a high degree of confidence, you know what you're doing, right? And if we're marrying that with smaller businesses that need more foundational stuff, I'm 100 % convinced
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Lee Ann (:Right.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah.
Lee Ann (:Yes, right.
Brett Trainor (:that if I give you the right person, right, the good people that are going to come in and looking out for you, that's going to, it's going to pay off. I, again, I was a little surprised by the question, but when I thought about it, it's not, it's, it's about relationships and, and yeah.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Lee Ann (:We preach about it all the time, you know, and now we're in a position where it's really important and let's utilize the skill sets and the people that we know to keep things going in a fractional world where you're not going to have these org charts that, you know, exist. mean, I have, you know, Salesforce just laid off a bunch of people for AI.
Brett Trainor (:Yep.
Lee Ann (:my nephew's fiance, they laid off their whole HR in legal. I don't know what legal AI is gonna look like, but, know, so it's happening and whether it's gonna fail or not, it's just that these companies are gonna be so low with headcount and wisdom and previous work experience that there's gonna be gaps.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah.
Brett Trainor (:It's going to be a huge gap. I mean, maybe we can close on this, part of it, but because I think big corporate is imploding. And if you follow my TikTok, you already know my take on this, but I think with AI, right. And the bigger thing I was talking to somebody today who's building a new, he's 78 launching his next business kind of doing the model we just talked about with the introductions and network.
Lee Ann (:Yeah.
Brett Trainor (:And he's leading, he's leading with trust, right? That's where these corporations are failing. I'm like, look, you go through a layoff, you've lost the employees trust. You do three layoffs in a year, forget about it. That's where these small and mid-sized companies, right? These big companies will lose, they've lost trust. They're not going to be able to automate because of the silos and the way they're structured. It's, they're going to implode. So the small and mid-sized companies have the opportunity and where Gen Xers, I believe are well positioned is
Lee Ann (:yeah.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Brett Trainor (:The other line I've drawn, line in the sand is, look, if you're under, if you have 10 million or less in annual revenue, you don't need full-time employees, right? You just don't. And, but people need to hear it and remind, because the fact is you're paying 70 % overhead for, and again, you want command and control, then you're going to be overstaffed by the time you get there. And the other argument I've heard from business owners is,
Lee Ann (:I know. We keep saying that. I know. I know.
huh.
Brett Trainor (:Well, they won't care as if they're not a full-time employee, they won't care. I'm like, I'm telling you right now, full-time employees don't care as much as you do about your business because you're the owner. But I guarantee you hire somebody like me or Leanne to come in and help you lead one of those functions. We care because guess what? This is our business. If we don't deliver, we don't get the next client. And yeah.
Lee Ann (:Okay.
Lee Ann (:Right. Right. Right. That's the risk. It's on us to be able to deliver. And it provides a greater level of communication I have found. How many times did I talk to my manager, but maybe on a Monday and then, you know, you have your whole week and you go back to Monday where they're bitching about no sales. You're kind of left to yourself during the week. This is a lot of communication.
Brett Trainor (:100%.
Lee Ann (:and revising messaging and being much more intentional in moving the pipeline than when I look back in corporate America, we ever did. We could put something up in Salesforce for six months. We don't care. We're still getting paid. That wasn't the truth. That wasn't really what was happening. This is much more deliberate and intentional. And that's what I think businesses are missing out
Brett Trainor (:Right.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah, and why we're telling you this as corporate Gen Xers, this is where the opportunities with these small businesses, it's going to be open. Think about it. Again, you folks listen to know me know you and we could go pick up a CMO, right? All of us pay us, you know, 30k for some fractional thing versus 110. You'd have to pay some junior person to do one job.
Lee Ann (:Yes.
Lee Ann (:Yeah.
Brett Trainor (:I'd load up on Gen Xers that have two decades of experience to drive my business forward versus one full time hire that I'm going to have to train. Right. It's just the math and the risk. So part of why we're sharing this with you is this is where the opportunity is. And again, just be creative, test it. is, there's nobody judging you except you. Right. So
Lee Ann (:Yeah, right.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Lee Ann (:Mm-mm. Right! Be kind to yourself.
Brett Trainor (:And I've got comfortable. Yeah, I'm comfortable now. That was a dumb idea, but at least I not got, got some feedback and I'm not going to go down that path anymore, but there's really no wrong answers. When you start to test these things and what you charge for them, you'll see. And if it's repeatable and maybe only need to work 20 hours a week to fund the lifestyle that you want. And the beauty is most people either just sit here and listen and never take action.
Lee Ann (:Yeah, yeah.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Brett Trainor (:Because even the people who realize where the opportunity is still have a hard time taking action. So take action, test, experiment, yeah, 100%.
Lee Ann (:And these ideas are risk free to some degree, right? I mean, they're not replacing your corporate job. These are small, quick wins that you can do with low risk. Try it. Just try it.
Brett Trainor (:Yeah. And by the way, we're going to make this a regular segment. we'll keep bringing you back on. You'll be my small, my, I don't know what we'll call it the segment yet. It will come up with the name, but, the ideation, right? The, uh, the escapee ideation, uh, session that we'll do on it. Cause I just think there's so many things I come across people. come across folks that are doing some different things and you and I may try somebody in the audience may run out and try this. And if we get feedback, please.
Lee Ann (:Mm-hmm.
Brett Trainor (:please let us know or cut us in on it if you find something interesting. Anyway, all right, so I promised to be, we're gonna keep this one to 35 minutes.
Lee Ann (:I might.
Lee Ann (:Thanks, Brett. This was fun. And it's inspiring me to like want to keep researching out there. So I love it.
Brett Trainor (:And testing, if you test something, let me know. if you make money, if anybody out there tested something interesting and made some money off it, let me know. We'll share it with other folks. Because the beauty is there's enough for everybody out there. It's not like you have to hide whatever you figured out because there's more than enough opportunity for everybody. So awesome. All right. Well, thanks, Leanne. We'll catch up with you in not too distant future.
Lee Ann (:Right. Right.
Lee Ann (:Sounds great. Thanks, Brett. Bye.
