The Corporate Escapee: Helping Gen X Ditch the 9-5, with Brett Trainor
A podcast can be used to advance many different business goals. For example, Brett Trainor is using his podcast, The Corporate Escapee, to build a community of Gen-X professionals who want to ditch their 9-5. Listen, read or watch Brett share his journey and experience running a show that has published over 250 episodes:
The Corporate Escapee: Helping Gen X Ditch the 9-5
In 2019, Brett Trainor wanted to write a book. His editor suggested he start a podcast so that when the book was done, he’d have a built-in audience. After a few hundred episodes, his show is going strong. “Four and a half years later,” Brett recounts, “the podcast is [at] 250 episodes and the book is still in draft form.”
Brett’s show has gone through a few different evolutions and iterations. Once called Hardwired for Growth, in 2023, Brett re-named his podcast The Corporate Escapee. “My solo business has gone through some consulting, then fractional leadership, and then some different ways to monetize,” said Brett. “And the podcast has always pivoted with me.”
The rebrand went along with a mission to help 10,000 GenXers escape the 9-5 grind. “I know there's more people out there like me that have spent two, three decades in corporate and they're looking to get out and they don't know how to do it,” said Brett.
However, Brett needed to find a way for people outside his network to discover his show…
Building a Community of Gen X Professionals
One trait of successful podcasters is the ability to create a community of listeners. This was exactly what Brett Trainor was able to do through an unlikely channel…
TikTok → LinkedIn → Slack
It’s easy to associate TikTok with Millennials and Gen Z, but Brett Trainor (@the_corporate_escapee) was able to attract more than 36,000 followers on the social media platform. “I thought it would be the 20-somethings,” said Brett about the average age of his TikTok following. “But when I look at [the analytics], 80 percent of my audience is between the ages of 35 and 64-plus. So it’s the upper end of millennials all the way to the boomers.”
After building a following quickly on the social media platform, Brett was inundated with requests for his offer of a free 20-minute strategy session to understand how their corporate skills would translate to entrepreneurialism. “I started offering those 20-minute sessions, I think in the first six weeks I had almost 300 calls with folks and then it dawned on me. I'm like, what am I going to do with all these people? I'm having great conversations.”
From there, Brett connected with these folks on LinkedIn and launched a free Slack community called The Escapee Collective where these corporate “escapees” can chat, network, and exchange ideas. Within this community, Brett hosts Brunch & Learn sessions, workshops, and gives his community members a platform to introduce themselves and interact with other “escapees.”
Community-Driven Feedback
“I started a small mastermind group,” said Brett, referring to a premium offering within his community. “It's allowed me to have hour-long, small group sessions with these escapees to get super deep into, ‘What are they thinking? What are the challenges?’ which then can feed back into the loop of the podcast.”
Brett isn’t directly soliciting topic ideas for the podcast, but his community gives him signals that help him deliver more value to his listeners. “I can hear from the questions, I can see from challenges, frustrations, those types of things where it can add the most value back.”
From Hardwired For Growth → Corporate Escapee
Podcasts evolve over time. For Brett Trainor, the biggest change in his podcast was his target audience.
“Hardwired for Growth was helping business owners—whether they're funded or unfunded—get from that zero to 10 million,” said Brett. “I was finding venture capital people to talk about what their businesses do to grow; subject matter experts, people that actually had built those types of business. I had somebody from Shark Tank on the podcast.”
While Brett had a good job in management consulting, there was something missing in his life that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. “There's no way I'm going to be in corporate for the next 25 years or whatever, and I don't plan to retire,” said Brett. “And so it kind of hit me; tie this back with Gen X. What our childhoods were like, what our post-corporate careers could be like.”
“We joke that [Gen X] were the latch key kids, right? We had freedom, we grew up before technology, but our entire business career was in tech,” Brett recounted. “As a kid, you were unsupervised, you went out, you did have to be home before dark. And the rule was: don't get hurt or don't hurt anybody.”
“But a lot of the stuff you had to figure out yourself, you go into this corporate career and you get put in a box year over year. You're rewarded for not rocking the boat and not making mistakes. And so what do you do? It’s just status quo, right? That's just not the way we were raised.”
After a little more than a year running the show as the Corporate Escapee, Brett is focused on delivering value to his audience. “Now, I'm focused on the escapees,” said Brett. “So I'm sharing use-cases or different ‘escape journeys’ with folks..I'll still sprinkle in something that I'm really interested in that may not be exactly in line with the show, but it gives you an [introduction] to people that normally wouldn't talk to you otherwise.”
Value Per Minute: Focus on Delivering For Your Listeners
There are no rules in podcasting, but there are many different governing principles of holding your listeners’ attention. One of which is delivering value to your listeners every minute—whether that’s the kind of guests you select or how your episode is structured.
“I had a producer that helped me in the past. She's worked on some big shows. One of the best things I did was I hired her for a bit,” said Brett. “And she said, ‘you’ve got to be adding value every minute of the podcast.’ I'm like, you're right. Because I thought back to some of the episodes, we go three or four minutes where we're just talking about stuff, but there's not a whole lot of value.”
Brett took this advice to heart. In fact, he insourced podcast production to focus on delivering as much value as possible. With the help of technology like transcript-based editing tools, Brett was able to create an efficient podcast editing workflow.
Many podcasters learn this lesson the hard way. Sure, witty banter and softball questions to warm up a guest have their place, but focusing on value-per-minute can be a useful North Star for business podcasters.
Take the Next Step in Your Podcasting Journey
Just like Brett, you can launch and grow a successful business podcast. There is a blue ocean of opportunity for professional services firms to use this format to accelerate their networks, humanize their brand, and create endless content. Here are a few resources to help you take the next step:
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