Brett Trainor Unplugged

The Setup

Six-plus years ago, when corporate quit on Brett, the goal was simple: make more money than corporate was paying him. That was it. Money, money, money.

It took two years to realize money was never the real prize. What he was actually chasing was control. Freedom. The ability to design a life where work fit into it, instead of 25 years of life fitting around the job.

Most of us spend a lot of time thinking about the escape — the transition, the layoff, the leap. Not enough time thinking about what life actually looks like on the other side. And here's the thing: you can't build a future you can't picture. Most of us have never been given permission to picture one.

That's what this episode is for.

What You'll Get In This Episode

A definition of a Life First Future, the contrast with the corporate-first life most of us have been living, and a four-step exercise to help you actually see your own. Grab a notebook before you press play — you're going to use it.

Key Concepts

The shift Brett didn't expect. It wasn't more money that changed everything after corporate. It was realizing he was getting more done by noon working for himself than he used to get done in full days inside the system. Strip out the unnecessary meetings, the fire drills, the commute, the reorgs — and the time you've been giving away comes back.

Corporate-time vs. Life-time. Corporate trained us to think in fiscal years and 2-to-4-year promotion cycles. The Life First Future requires thinking in 5-, 15-, and 30-year horizons. That's not a small reframe. It's the entire game.

Why "energy" beats "purpose" or "passion." Most people get stuck looking for the One Thing that lights them up. Brett spent six years monetizing his corporate experience eight different ways before landing on The Corporate Escapee. The signal that kept him moving wasn't passion — it was energy. Each move gave him more energy than the last. That's the real compass.

You're not designing a fantasy. You're using 25 years of evidence. This isn't a 25-year-old's exercise. We have something better than time — we have data. We've lived enough to know what energizes us, what drains us, and what corporate actually delivers (and doesn't).

The 4-Step Ideal Life Framework

Step 1 — Map Four Milestones Today. 5 years. 15 years. 30 years. For each, answer four questions: Where am I living? Who am I with? What am I working on (if anything)? How do I feel each morning? This is a living document — Brett's been doing it for years and it still evolves.

Step 2 — Find Your North Star Look across the four milestones for what stays the same. The patterns are your non-negotiables. Don't get hung up on finding your "passion" — chase the things that give you energy, and follow them as they evolve.

Step 3 — Connect Today to Tomorrow Every decision becomes a filter: does this move me toward my North Star or away from it? (Brett goes deeper on this in Episode 2.)

Step 4 — Write Your Vision Statement One guiding sentence. Revisit quarterly. Brett does this with his wife as a quarterly business review — a session that fundamentally changed how he runs the post-corporate life.

Brett's Real-World Life First Schedule (mentioned in the episode):

The Bottom Line

A Life First Future is one where your time, energy, and decisions are organized around the life you actually want — and your work fits into that, not the other way around. Define it first. Build toward it second. Episode 2 covers the how.

If this episode hit, the best way to help is to subscribe wherever you listen — Apple, Spotify, Overcast, Pocket Casts — and share it with one who needs to hear it.

Get Busy Living

This one is personal. Brett flies solo to deliver the one thing he wishes someone had told him when he was still inside corporate grinding it out and telling himself it was the responsible thing to do.

You already have permission.

Permission to want something different. Permission to design a life where work fits into it instead of the other way around. Permission to stop waiting for corporate to decide your future and start building one on your own terms.

Nobody is coming to give it to you. So Brett does.

What You'll Learn

1️⃣ Why corporate conditions you to ask for permission for everything — and how that conditioning follows you home long after you leave

2️⃣ The hidden cost of corporate that goes way beyond the paycheck — time, energy, identity, and control

3️⃣ What living life on your own terms actually looks like in practice — the real daily routine not the highlight reel

4️⃣ Why the chaos of going solo is temporary and what comes after it

5️⃣ How Brett went from scheduling every 30 minutes — which was worse than corporate — to finding his actual rhythm

6️⃣ Why the gym at 8am every morning is possible when you own your calendar and impossible when corporate owns it

7️⃣ Why you don't have to wait for corporate to kick you out to start designing something different

8️⃣ The only thing actually standing between you and the life you want

Key Quotes

"Life is too damn short to follow somebody else's plan." — Brett Trainor

"I'd rather be homeless than go back to corporate." — Laine, Escapee Collective Member

"The only thing stopping you is you. And it doesn't have to be a perfect plan. Done is better than perfect." — Brett Trainor

"Give yourself permission to want something more. Because nobody else is going to give it to you." — Brett Trainor

Your Permission Slip

You have permission to want more than what you have right now.

You have permission to design a life where work supports you instead of consuming you.

You have permission to find out what's actually possible when you stop waiting for corporate to decide your future.

Connect With Brett

Ready to stop waiting and start building? The Escapee Collective is the community for ex-corporates taking control of their future and getting busy living.

Most people leave corporate and immediately chase the familiar paths — consulting, coaching, fractional work. Those are valid. But they take time, runway, and a warm network. In this episode Brett breaks down three unexpected ways GenXers are generating real income right now, using skills they already have, without needing a big audience or startup capital.

The backdrop is an AI world that most people are reading completely wrong. AI didn't shrink the opportunity for skilled humans — it exploded it. Because now there's an entire population of people who are aware of their problems, have access to the information, and will still pay someone else to just handle it.

WHAT YOU'LL LEARN

✅ Why AI makes YOUR corporate skills more valuable, not less

✅ The "skill flip" model — how to charge for what you already know

✅ What UGC is, why GenX is uniquely positioned for it, and how to start

✅ How to turn what you know into paying clients without building a course empire

✅ Why your first dollar outside corporate changes everything

THE 3 PATHS

01 — The skill flip

Tomi Mikula spent 10 years on the dealer side of car sales. He now runs Delivrd — charging consumers $1,000 flat to negotiate car deals on their behalf. 300 customers a month. $300K in monthly revenue. His customers could use AI to do what he does. They pay him anyway. Because the problem was never information — it was execution, accountability, and not wanting to deal with it. That's the model. Find a high-stress transaction, one side has information the other side doesn't, and charge to be the expert in the room. HR disputes, salary negotiation, medical billing, contractor bids — it's everywhere.

02 — UGC (User Generated Content)

Brands are paying real people — not influencers — to record short videos about products they actually use. No following required. Platforms like Billo and JoinBrands connect brands with creators, paying $150–$500 per video. GenX is ideal for this: authentic, credible, and speaks to a demographic most brands can't reach. Brett just signed two deals in one week for just under $1,000 combined. You don't need an audience. You need a phone, a face, and something real to say.

03 — Teaching what you know

Not a course empire — just solving one specific problem for one specific person who's standing exactly where you were. The AI translation angle is huge right now: small business owners know they're falling behind and will pay someone who speaks both business AND AI to help them catch up. And you don't need to be far ahead — you just need to be far enough ahead. The people in Brett's community who are winning fastest are teaching hyper-specific things to people one or two steps behind them on the journey.

MEMORABLE QUOTE

"The problem was never information. It's about execution, accountability, and people just not wanting to deal with it. Your 20 to 30 years of corporate experience puts you right in the middle of that opportunity."

Kristen Hamborg is six weeks out of a 25-year corporate interior design career — and she's never looked back. In this episode Kristen shares how burnout, a pandemic pivot, and a coaching certification she pursued on the side slowly shifted everything. Unlike most escapees who get pushed out Kristen made the decision herself — and she'll tell you exactly what it took to get there.

This one is for anyone still in corporate feeling the slow fade of work that used to light them up.

What You'll Learn

🎯 How Kristen recognized the burnout before it broke her — and what finally pushed her to act

🎯 Why she pursued a coaching certification during the pandemic and what it unlocked

🎯 How every single client she has landed came through referrals — no ads, no cold outreach

🎯 The identity shift that happens when you leave a career that defined you for 25 years

🎯 Why creativity isn't just art — and how corporate professionals are more creative than they think

🎯 What it actually feels like in the first six weeks — the excitement, the fear, and the glass case of emotions

🎯 Why you don't have to do this alone — and why the right community changes everything

🎯 How Kristen is already thinking big with her first virtual retreat just months into her solo journey

Key Quotes

"If your gut is telling you something is off — it is off. Don't sit in it alone." — Kristen Hamborg

"We all have this fear of not enoughness. But you have to get there and trust that you can do it." — Kristen Hamborg

"Comfortable isn't always good. Getting outside your comfort zone is where the growth happens." — Kristen Hamborg

About Kristen Hamborg

Kristen Hamborg is a coach and feng shui practitioner helping women navigate major life and career transitions. After 25 years in corporate interior design she made the leap to build something of her own — six weeks in and already building toward her first virtual retreat.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kristenhamborg/

📧 [email protected]

Connect With Brett

If Kristen's story resonated and you're ready to stop watching from the sidelines — The Escapee Collective is the community built for corporate professionals who are done waiting and ready to build something of their own.

👉 Join us at theescapeecollective.com

Get Busy Living.

Danielle Burken escaped corporate in September 2023 — but her journey started six years before that. In this episode Danielle shares how she went from a full-time agency job with two kids under two, to building a six-figure solopreneur business in under 90 days by doing one thing most corporate professionals never do: listening to what people were already asking her for and charging for it.

She also breaks down human design — what it is, why it works, and how she uses it to help entrepreneurs build businesses that are aligned with how they naturally operate. If you've ever felt like you're forcing something that should feel easier, this episode is for you.

What You'll Learn

🎯 Why Danielle tried to escape corporate for six years before it finally clicked

🎯 The exact moment she realized she was sitting on a business nobody told her to build

🎯 How she landed her first clients using a local networking group — no social media, no ads, no cold outreach

🎯 Why overthinking your offer is the #1 thing keeping corporate escapees stuck

🎯 What human design actually is and why it's not as woo as it sounds

🎯 How she built her business during Tuesday nights at Panera while her husband handled bedtime

🎯 Why confidence comes from doing — not from waiting until you feel ready

🎯 The push that finally got her to put in her notice — and why timing matters less than decision

Key Quotes

"I trusted so deeply that I was going to be caught. And I was." — Danielle Burken

"Business gets to be easy and fun. We just weren't taught that in corporate." — Danielle Burken

"Anybody exiting corporate has the skills to do it. They're overqualified. They just need to go have the conversation." — Brett Trainor

About Danielle Burken

Danielle Burken is a human design-based business coach and marketing strategist who helps solopreneurs build sustainable businesses in alignment with how they're naturally wired to operate. She escaped corporate in September 2023 and built a six-figure business in her first year.

🌐 Website: https://www.danielleburken.com/ 

📱 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/danielleburken_/ 

Connect With Brett

Ready to stop watching from the sidelines and make your move? The Escapee Collective is the community built for corporate professionals who are done with corporate and ready to build something of their own.

👉 Join the conversation at theescapeecollective.com

Corporate is using AI to eliminate jobs. Escapees get to use it to multiply themselves. In this solo episode Brett pulls back the curtain on exactly how he runs his entire business with AI — the tools, the use cases, and the honest truth about what it can and can’t do.

He also covers the single biggest opportunity most escapees are missing right now — helping small and midsize businesses actually leverage AI. Not programming. Not building agents. Bringing the business judgment that 20+ years of corporate experience gives you and marrying it with the right tools. That’s the superpower. And right now, the market is wide open.

What You’ll Learn

• How Brett uses AI daily — content editing, research, strategy, operations and more

• Why AI is a content editor not a content creator — and why that distinction matters

• The SMB opportunity — 88% of small business owners know they need AI, only 14% are doing something about it

• Why the real value is pairing business judgment with AI — not programming

• The EAD framework — Eliminate, Automate, Delegate

• Brett’s current AI stack and exactly what each tool is used for

• Why he switched from ChatGPT to Claude — and what that decision taught him about auditing your tools

Key Timestamps

• 00:00 — Intro: Corporate is using AI against you. Here’s how to flip it.

• 01:00 — How Brett uses AI in his own business every day

• 02:00 — AI as content editor not content creator — keeping your voice

• 03:30 — Podcast production: from a full day to under an hour

• 05:00 — AI as strategy and thought partner

• 07:00 — The SMB opportunity — the 74% gap nobody is filling

• 09:00 — Flex staffing + AI — why small businesses don’t need full-time hires

• 11:00 — The EAD framework: Eliminate, Automate, Delegate

• 14:00 — Brett’s AI stack: Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, Canva, Riverside

• 16:30 — Close: The one-person army is here. Are you using it?

Brett’s AI Stack

• Claude — Primary thinking partner, content editor, strategy, writing, business frameworks

• Perplexity — Deep research, stats validation, sourced intel

• Gemini — Currently testing; Google ecosystem integration

• Riverside.fm — Podcast recording, editing, transcription, show notes

• Canva — AI-assisted graphics and visuals

• Durable — AI website builder (used for Small Business Hotline landing page)

Enjoyed This Episode?

If you’re using AI in an interesting way as a solopreneur or escapee Brett would love to hear from you — and potentially have you on the podcast. Drop him a note at [email protected].

Please share this episode with someone who needs to hear it — and subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. The old school way still works.

The 4 Real Paths to Replace Your Corporate Income

Most corporate escapees think they only have two options: find another job or figure out how to start a business from scratch. But there are actually four legitimate paths to replacing your corporate income — and one of them is seriously underrated.

In this solo episode, Brett breaks down all four paths and then goes deep on the one he doesn't talk about nearly enough: franchising.

If you've been thinking about leaving corporate but the blank page feels too risky, this episode is for you.

The 4 Paths:

🔹 Path 1 — Go Solo: Consulting, fractional, advisory, coaching, content. Monetize what you already know. Lowest barrier to entry, no investment required, and you can start while still in corporate. Brett's lane — and the focus of most of this podcast.

🔹 Path 2 — Start a Business: Build something from scratch. A passion, an idea, an agency. Full ownership but requires capital, time, and infrastructure. Often the natural evolution of going solo.

🔹 Path 3 — Buy a Business: Acquire an existing operation with revenue already in place. Faster path to cash flow but requires serious due diligence, capital, and comfort with complexity.

🔹 Path 4 — Buy a Franchise: Get into a proven system with a built-in playbook, training, support, and brand. A business in a box — and the focus of today's episode.

Why Franchising Makes Sense for Corporate Escapees:

Most people picture Subway or McDonald's. That's not the conversation. There are thousands of franchise concepts across senior care, home services, B2B services, fitness, wellness, and more — and many of them map directly to the skills you built in corporate.

What you're actually buying is a proven playbook: operating systems, customer acquisition, marketing support, training, and a network of franchisees who've already solved the problems you'll face.

Brett covers:

Connect with Brett & The Corporate Escapee:

🌐 TheEscapeeCollective.com

If this episode opened your eyes to a path you hadn't seriously considered — share it with someone still sitting in a corporate job wondering what their options are. That's exactly who this is for.

And if you've made it this far — please subscribe. It helps more escapees find the show.

Live Life First. 🐬✌️

750 layoffs a day. No, that's not a typo — and it's not slowing down.

Brett sits down with Steve Jaffe, marketing veteran and author of The Layoff Journey: From Dismissal to Discovery, to talk about what most career books completely skip: the emotional and psychological toll of losing a job — and why processing that first is the key to what comes next.

Steve was laid off four times over a 30-year career. His first layoff took him years to recover from. His last one in 2023? Water off a duck's back. The difference? He finally understood what he was actually experiencing: grief.

This one is for anyone who's been laid off, is worried about being laid off, or is watching colleagues get cut and wondering when it's their turn.

In this episode:

About Steve Jaffe

Steve spent 30 years in marketing and advertising — from West Coast ad agencies to in-house brand roles, including work on the iconic What Happens in Vegas Stays in Vegas campaign. After being laid off four times, he channeled those 10,000 hours of experience into his book, The Layoff Journey: From Dismissal to Discovery — a practical, grief-informed guide to navigating job loss without losing yourself in the process.

Resources mentioned:

Connect with Brett & The Corporate Escapee:

1. 🌐 TheEscapeeCollective.com

If this episode resonated, share it with someone who's currently in the middle of a layoff — or someone who should probably start building their Plan B now.

There's a Lit song that's been stuck in my head for weeks: "My Own Worst Enemy." And it's the perfect metaphor for my entire solo journey.

I've blocked myself at every stage—consulting, fractional leadership, and now with The Escapee Collective. Not intentionally, but by doing what corporate trained me to do: overanalyze, overstructure, and wait for perfection before taking action.

In this episode, I walk you through the three times I made the same mistake—and what I'm doing differently now.

If you're overthinking, over-structuring, or waiting for the "perfect" website, pitch deck, or system before you start—this one's for you.

In This Episode:

Key Takeaway:

Action beats planning. Momentum beats perfection. Get early wins first—THEN build the structure around what's working.

Fractional work is exploding — and it’s still confusing for a lot of corporate escapees. In this Featured Speaker session inside the Escapee Collective, John Arms breaks down Fractional 101 in plain English: what fractional really is, who it’s for, how to get clients (spoiler: it’s not campaigns), and what you can realistically charge.

If you’re still in corporate, recently laid off, or already freelancing and want more stability, this is the clearest “how it works” primer you’ll hear.

What you’ll learn

• The “W2 → 1099 bridge” and why more people are getting pushed across it

• Why fractional is mostly a referral-based business (and what to do with that)

• The mindset shift: conversations, not campaigns

• John’s simple relationship model: the “10-person circle” (fractionals, independents, super-connectors)

• What companies actually care about (hint: pain, not the definition of fractional)

• Typical pricing and why fractional often lands in the $8K–$10K/month retainer range

• Why fractional is proactive leadership, not “wait to be told what to do”

• The “project first” entry strategy — and why it usually turns into ongoing leadership

• How to reconnect with old contacts without being weird or salesy

• The core principle: get involved with other people’s success

Notable moments / lines you’ll remember

• “You’ll work for the people you get referred to.”

• “Referrals come from conversations, not campaigns.”

• “Fractional is leadership — solve it and keep it solved.”

• “Most barriers are fear and assumptions… it’s hard work, but it’s not complicated.”

Resources mentioned

• The Go-Giver (Bob Burg)

• The NCG Factor (Larry Kaufman — Network, Connect, Give)