Michelle Warner took the “escapee avoidance” route — she planned to do the traditional MBA-to-consulting path… then graduated straight into the Great Recession (the day Lehman fell). That curveball pushed her into entrepreneurship early: a founder-for-hire role turning a multi-billion-dollar foundation asset into a business, followed by a mission-driven tech startup, and eventually her current work helping small business owners design the next iteration of their business.

This is a tactical episode about what actually works when you’re leaving corporate: why you should “throw spaghetti at the wall” early, how to stop doing random coffee chats, and how to use relationship marketing and audience borrowing to land clients faster — without turning into a sales robot.

What you’ll learn

• Why “sequence over strategy” matters more than the perfect plan

• The hidden risk of being too strict and narrow early on (and why it creates regret later)

• How Michelle built her business through relationship marketing, not content churn

• “Audience borrowing” as the fastest way to build trust and pipeline

• How to approach connector conversations vs. client conversations

• Why your early goal is simple: learn how to make money and stack wins

• A practical way to think about packaging: repeatable frameworks, flexible middle

Key moments / highlights

• Graduating into chaos: the day Lehman fell and what it changed

• Founder-for-hire: getting a salary while living the startup founder life

• Affordable internet in inner cities — and what customers actually did with it

• “Fractional CEO” before fractional was trendy

• The rule: don’t build with blinders on for too long

• The shift from “networking for jobs” to networking as a long-term business asset

• The line that matters: say something that people can’t “unsee” after the call

Michelle’s core concepts (worth stealing)

• Sequence over strategy: the order of moves beats the elegance of the plan

• Throw spaghetti first: test offers, clients, and problems before you commit

• Connection avatar: define who’s worth meeting so networking doesn’t waste your life

• Trust transfer: get introduced through people/places your audience already trusts

• Audience borrowing: build relationships with people who “own the room” your clients are in

Best quote energy

• “Learn all the rules so you can go break them.”

• “It’s more important the order you do things than how good you are at it.”

• “I’m totally unemployable.” (Escapee anthem)

Connect with Michelle

• Website: themichellewarner.com

• Podcast: Sequence Over Strategy (short, practical episodes; curated playlists on her site)

Connect with Brett / The Escapee ecosystem

• If corporate is broken and you’re looking at an exit strategy, this is your sign.

• Join the community: TheEscapeeCollective.com

Hi, Michelle. Welcome to the Corporate Escapee Podcast.

thank you so much for having me.

We, think we were talking offline. think we may have set a record for this one because we met back in April of last year and mostly on my end, trying to get you, get scheduled. did a real thing, but anyway, this, sets a record from the time we originally set a time to the time we're recording. So it's going to be epic.

no time like the present. think our first one was was 90 degrees outside and today I think it's minus 13. So hey, we'll take it.

Yes, exactly right. So no better time to be on a podcast and talking about how do we solve business problems? So anyway, so, so welcome. I'm super excited to have you here. I haven't been looking, I have been looking forward to this conversation and I know you work with small businesses, but I know you've also coached entrepreneurs and what intrigued me while you there, you've had a lot of success, but networking is something you're passionate about. So I definitely want to get in, but let's start with your journey. Cause I always ask people what their escapee journey.

Exactly.

it is.

And you had what I would call the escapee avoidance journey. Right. So maybe take us back because you were in education, went to business school planning on.

I was, I was, I was in higher education, in the state of Illinois and I started to realize that there was more that I was interested in doing. And so I was accepted to get an MBA at the university of Chicago and that was going to be my opportunity. I always said, I want to learn all the rules so I can go break them eventually. And I thought I'm going to go get the best education that I absolutely can. So I can know what all these people do and then I can go again, take their lessons and create something different. However,

There you go.

I was planning on following the traditional MBA journey for a few years to get rid of the loans and all that thing. So I had a consulting career lined up, unfortunately graduated straight into the great recession. remember the day it was actually the day that our process of interviewing for jobs started was the day Lehman fell. And I can just very clearly remember my friend, Peter and I looking at each other and thinking, this isn't going to go the way that we had planned.

Yeah.

No.

And so my journey into entrepreneurship was accelerated. I ended up graduating into a really interesting setup where I was a founder for Hire. A group of foundations had a multi-billion dollar asset that they needed to make a business out of and they hired me to be a founder and to create a business out of that. So I had a I was like a salaried founder in my first experience, but it was very much a tech startup situation. I lived that tech startup.

founder life for five or six years and then exited that and started the business that I have now. And it's been, you know, 10, 15 years now.

That's awesome.

So OG, but working in the space that, you know, almost all of our audiences is looking to get into which, which is awesome. And for our younger listeners, that financial crisis was, the recession was oh nine, oh 10 in that area when the financial markets absolutely crashed. that was probably the last, I don't know, COVID kind of changed some things, but up until then everybody working in the job force after that had no idea what a down market looked like. So

Yep.

Yep.

Yeah, they hadn't hit one of those, right? We had, I lived through the one in the 2000s and the 2009 and then yeah, that's true. we have a lot of, we're losing the ancient Texas, they might say, where folks haven't been through that. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. We'll keep people up to date on that. anyway, all right. So you exited the tech space and the startup space. What was your original idea? What were you looking to do? Or what did you do?

Hmm.

What I did was my tech startup put affordable internet into the homes of folks in inner cities in the US who did not have access to the internet. We hear lot about that problem in rural areas. What we don't realize is that in a lot of our inner cities, companies aren't willing to put internet and there's a real crisis. So we put, that's what we did. We put affordable internet into their homes and at the time, again, this is a little bit of ancient history now, at the time the hypothesis was,

This was when Target, Walmart, companies like that were moving their hiring online. So you couldn't go into a store and apply. So part of our hypothesis was that all the single moms who were struggling to find work could now be online at home and would have more access to the job market. They didn't have to figure out a way to get to the library and use computers and all that. What we found instead, this does, I promise, relate to what I'm doing today, but what we found instead was that

Yeah.

They also couldn't leave the home to go do those jobs because they were just kids. So they were starting businesses. They were becoming virtual assistants. were becoming, they were just figuring out how to make money online in those early days. And I would go in and I would visit our customers and see what they were doing. And I saw this happening and I sat there and I looked back and at that point I had done a lot of business development on the South side of Chicago. I just worked with a ton of small businesses at that point.

And I had this very traditional business background. And I thought I had so much admiration for all these folks who had just the courage to go do what they had to do and had no knowledge of how to run a business. And I thought I could make that easier for whatever reason I can close my eyes. And I understand what a business model should look like. I can see what's broken in it. I can understand that. So I saw this opportunity to go help people who in my eyes.

Right.

had so much more courage than me because I had the traditional training and I kind of knew what I was doing. And yet all these folks who had no idea what they were doing were making it work. And I thought if I can make that path easier, how interesting is that? And so that's where the original inspiration out of this came. It's obviously evolved a lot in, you know, the 10 plus years since but but that's how it started.

Yeah, that's awesome. And again, we get back to purpose driven and right trying to help. think it's, it's funny because I think now with the escapee collective, that's almost exactly where we're in because people in corporate are afraid to take those steps or make it there and not just figure it out. A lot of us that left ended up having to figure it out because there was no roadmap. You definitely figured it out without a roadmap. And, there is ways to help reduce or demystify that, that transition. So.

Yeah, I think it's, it makes a ton of sense. I didn't realize that the parallels were there. so what did you say? All right, I'm just going to set up a coaching business or what was the what was your original model? How did you think about that?

Absolutely.

That was the original model. And I'm not gonna lie, I was pretty burned out from that startup experience. I was traveling 99 % of the time. So it was really, I had to jump situation, I had to get out of that. And I exited and found someone to take over and the company is still killing it 10 years later, which is amazing. But I was just at a point in my health where there wasn't going to be a side hustle, right? I had to make the break. And so

Yeah.

That's exactly what happened was I just, quit. found someone to take over, exited the company and started looking around and talking to family and friends. I had this vague idea of what I could do, but then picked up ill-defined consulting gigs and just a little bit of bridge money, right? So that I could further explore and further start getting up and running. And what actually ended up happening and really starting my business was through that process of talking to people.

Yeah.

building in the background, fixing everything before it crashed of these kind of overnight sensations. And so that gave me a little bit of stability, know, two, three clients fractional. I knew it wasn't what I wanted to do permanently, but for about 18 months, that was a lot. That was some stability for me while I figured out, you know, the marketing message and how I wanted to present myself and, you know, spending some time as that like secret weapon that they just

Okay, yeah.

passed in the back rooms amongst their friends, that really worked for me for a minute.

Right. Yeah. And I like that because I think part of a lot of the people I've talked to probably had a thousand conversations with, with escapees at all different stages. And I think that's what it is. Cause we have one idea when we leave, right? Like for me, was consulting, then it was fractional leadership, and then it just blossomed into a whole bunch of other things. And it seems to be the kind of the universal experience is

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Um, like you started with fractional before fractional was even a thing. So you would be the OG of fractional back in 1415, but it does open your eye. And that's what I tell people, figure out the path of least resistance, go make some money, build that runway, and then figure out where the opportunities lie. And cause the other thing, and I'd love your perspective on this is it's hard work, but it's not rocket science, right? There's, there's a hundred, maybe a thousand different ways you can, you can make money.

Yeah. Yup. Yup.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Thanks

Yeah.

And I think we just get, the longer you're in corporate, the more you're beat into the box of, right. It's, really hard. Entrepreneurs have to be like, you know, Zuckerberg or Musk and like, that's just the farthest thing from that case. So again, I just want to reiterate. So people are thinking like, all right, not traditional, the traditional escapee is find something, make some money, and then start to figure out and think through what, what you want to do. So.

Yeah, absolutely. There's something that I talk about now in my business called sequence over strategy. And I say like, it's more important the order in which you do things than how good you are actually are at it. And it's funny because that's very much a message for entrepreneurs who have a little bit of advanced businesses, they know what they're doing. But I will get some people who are very new in the process who resonate with that message and want to know exactly what should I do in what order.

And I point them to the five stages of small business growth from Harvard and I have an adapted version of it. And I tell them your first step is throwing spaghetti against the wall because you don't know what you're going to do. And the biggest mistakes that I see, because again, sometimes I get turnaround projects. The biggest mistakes I see are people who build with blinders on for too long. And then they hate their clients. They hate what they're doing. Like they don't allow themselves to learn some of those early lessons where you are just throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what you enjoy.

And if you've been in corporate, there's two skills. There was what value are you bringing to the marketplace? And also just learning how to make money. That is a separate skill of whatever you're an expert at. And I find like if you spend that first year throwing spaghetti against the wall, those are the businesses that by the time you get to me five years in or 10 years in and you're trying to figure out your next growth path, there's so much more stable than the ones who were really strict early on. The ones who were really strict early on are regretting a lot of choices.

Yeah.

and we're almost having to do turnaround projects, rather than looking at it from a place of abundance of, I have this thing that's working, so what's next? That's what we get if you throw spaghetti against the wall early on. If you don't do that and you're really strict with yourself, two, three years in, you come to me in a panic and you hate everything, but a lot's on the line, like it's not good. So please, yeah, throw spaghetti against the wall for a little while, get comfortable making money in weird ways and.

makes sense.

You're too far down the path. Yeah.

you know, saying yes to things and not exactly knowing what it is, you'll figure it out. And yeah.

Yeah. I like because again, similar line. I tell people all the time, I look kind of like yours a little more articulate, but you focus on a problem that you're solving and it could be multiple problems. But if you do that, you're going to get people will pay you to solve problems, right? If it's a need to solve versus a nice to solve. And that just opens up things. And if you use a skill set that you already have, like you said, you've been taught your value. wrote that value, you know, created in corporate to apply that. It's the easiest path. It may not what you want to

Yep. Yep.

Mm-hmm.

what you want to do long term, but it'll get you going and then open up. And again, I see a lot of analysis paralysis of folks. I need the perfect pitch, the perfect pitch deck. I'm like, just go have conversations.

Yeah.

Yep, yep, just go have conversations and honestly see who you who will give you money in the general direction that you think you're interested in early on. And again, I you know, I come in peace from like seeing over and over these businesses 510 15 years in those are always the more stable ones if that's how it started. Yeah.

That makes sense. how all right, so you moved from fractional and then what was the what was the next evolution? Was it coaching? Or did you get into this the business process? Or where where did the business go?

It's been different versions of really business strategy, where, I call myself a business designer and strategist and that comes from the innovation markets. And that's because of my background is that I don't work as a coach. I also don't really work as a consultant. I really work from a place of figuring out what's next and designing what's next. And I grab from my very traditional MBA background and also very, you know, wing it entrepreneurial background, because that's what you need to come.

This strategy, okay.

combine when you're figuring out what is next. And so when I left the fractional world, it really was bringing that offer a little bit more to the forefront and being a consultant and a strategist, but with a productized offer. And it's expanded a little bit from there.

Yeah. I love that. And we, we probably needed to meet when I was just starting because I went down the traditional boom, boom. But, but I, but I think that's right with, love the product type service, right? Cause I know I left money on the table by only going after the big consulting deals and only after fractional deals. And I think, and I also liked the angle that you took and I would have done it. Well, I didn't know what I didn't know at the time, right? I was in consulting. once solo consulting went fractional.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

But I like the strategy piece and I tell folks that have been in corporate for a long time. There's a lot of value that you've picked up or an experiences that makes sense that you don't have to be the doer. Now I tell you, you always have to get your hands dirty with small businesses, but that's the part they need is less consulting, less sometimes the leadership, but they really need that, that strategy behind it. So.

Yeah.

Yep.

Yeah, to me, it's a really nice middle ground because I'm not in that traditional consultant role of going away and delivering a deck. It's a little bit more collaborative, but still my engagements are, you know, they're three months long, they're not long coaching or they're not long fractional deals. And what we're doing is we're designing the next iteration of your business, then giving you the to do's that we, you know, might

team up with your project manager, whomever, to make sure they actually happen. But here's the priority list, here's everything that has to happen. And it's usually, you know, we're aiming for a 24 to 36 month runway to get you to your next, you know, the next kind of plateau in your business or when you're going to be ready for the next iteration. So, you know, we're looking at what's the next growth stage and designing for that in about three to four months and then handing it to you and saying, you know, go for it.

Go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, go. If you need to check in, I'm not going to disappear on you, but it's not an ongoing coaching situation. We're creating a plan collaboratively. I'm very passionate about helping business owners understand what decisions are baked into their business, because that's another thing I find is people are confused as to how they've gotten somewhere. So if they want to change something, they don't know how to reverse a decision or change different pieces of their model. So that's part of my collaborative processes.

Yeah.

I always tell them, don't care what model we land at, that's your choice, but I'm always going to be rising the decisions for you and helping you choose between those based on your values and what you want so that you know what's baked into the direction we're going. So that if you need to reverse it sometime, you can, or so you just understand the decisions you've made rather than accidentally land somewhere.

Yeah, no, I love that. And again, it's such a, there's so many small businesses that need this, this type of help. And so, so I'm curious, because I get this asked a lot, I'm sure you too. So when you started, how did you find those, those first clients? Cause I know one of your super or superpowers is networking, but, but I think there's kind of a three pieces. If you wouldn't mind unpacking for us is one, how did you get connected with your, your ideal customers to how did you

Yeah.

Yeah.

What's kind of your discovery session slash pitch do you and then three, what is it? What does an engagement look like? if you don't mind, cause I think these, these are the questions that inquiry minds want to know.

Yeah.

Yeah, fair enough, fair enough. And this is a little bit of an evolution for me. this, I use something that I call relationship marketing. And within there, there's intentional networking. And here's how that evolved. When I had my startup, I had had a background in very traditional, what I would call traffic marketing, huge email lists, know, 250k email lists, very direct marketing, e commerce style stuff. My startup was not that my startup required individual relationships.

I hate networking. I'm an introvert. But at Chicago, I had gone through actual network science courses, I didn't realize this was a thing. So I understood the science behind how networks interact and how they're set up weak ties, strong ties, if people have heard of that. And so I understood how to make those relationships. And one of the ways I understood that was nobody was going to sign up my customers were not going to sign up for my email list. They were small, they were nonprofits, they were school districts.

Yeah, okay.

No one's signing up for mass email. But they also wouldn't give me the time of day because they didn't trust me. I was at the time living in Denver. I'm trying to get into Philadelphia schools. I these are very insular places that do not trust someone from Denver. So what I learned from network science and what I thought through was I was fortunate at the time that I could book any keynote I wanted in my area. Like I just we had some media behind us, but we had no sales. This is like a typical startup problem.

All right.

So I started trading all those keynotes and I said, would you give me a panel instead? And when I got the panel, then I reached out to all these people who I needed to meet and I offered them a spot on a panel. And now all of a sudden they have all the time in the world for me, because I'm saying, please come to this prominent conference and share your story. We're not all that fortunate. You know, that was a really privileged thing, but you can do this in your business. Like, and that's how I started my business was I call this audience borrowing.

interesting.

Right.

and thinking through where is your audience already located? And how can you build a relationship with the owner of that audience? And then how can you insert yourself where they already are? or how can you use assets you have to build a relationship with these people? So Brett, like you have a podcast, if you were my client, and you were struggling to meet your clients, I would say, who's who do they already trust? And please go invite that person to be a guest on your podcast.

Because that's the easiest way to meet that person. You're going to build a relationship and then you're going to ask that person, hey, you know, can I come guest teach? Can I come give a workshop? Can I, you know, insert a million different things that you could do to that for that person's audience? And that's what I work with my clients with. And that's what I call relationship marketing is thinking through how can we essentially, and this is how I built my business. Like again, where are my customers? How can I build relationships with the people who own those spaces?

Yeah.

And then how can I add value into those spaces? And then how can we build on that for years? know, some of the people that I did this with in 2015 were still collaborating and it's just built over time. So you also get the benefit of, you know, of multiplication basically, you know, over the years, you just keep building it. And so I'm really passionate about that for service-based businesses instead of like getting on a content wheel or something like thinking through.

next.

Yeah.

where are these win-win wins where we can all collaborate? So I did that. Yeah. Yeah. So I did that in very small ways to get started. I looked for a couple of communities where my people were gathered. And at the time, you know, I just joined those communities. I thought of it like a local business. I'm a local business. I would pay money to the Chamber of Commerce. So if I'm going to be this kind of business, where are my customers? I'm going to pay a monthly membership so I can go.

Yeah, just get the momentum, right? You just Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

hang out with them and become a trusted person. Yeah, yeah. And I think sometimes online, like we feel like that's a weird thing. But if you translate your business to 1950, you want to join the chamber, right? You want to join like you? Yeah, you would have done those things. So that's how I got started. And then I really worked very intentionally on building these relationships with, you know, with people who quote unquote, own my audience, so that we could have win wins. And it you know, it goes both ways, in terms of helping them as well. Yeah.

Hang out where they are, yeah.

Yeah.

That's so good. And I'm also a huge believer. mean, the corporate escapees started taking off when I was about to test. Oh, I'm going to do this now as a test anyway, but I love the local markets, right? Even, you know, I can look outside, there's probably, you know, 200 businesses are in that two to 10 million range in my neighborhood that I could say, Hey, I'm starting something solo. I'm just looking to connect with other business owners and I'm just curious. I've got some ideas where I think people are having problems. just.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And they're going to connect with you. They're going to have that conversation. And I sometimes, think to your point, you got me thinking, but we got to do this macro global, go get them. Your business is probably in your backyard. If you, if you just take that, cause you've got an instant in, right? You're both in, in my case, Wheaton or Naperville or in that area. So, no, I love that approach.

Yep. Yep.

Yep.

Yeah, just thinking through, know, taking those two seconds before you just take any networking call or go to anything, just think through, hey, why would this be a win-win? I I call it like having a connection avatar. The same way you have like a client persona, you have a connection persona of what does that person look like who would be worthwhile to connect with. And if you think through that for two seconds, now you know where to direct your attention.

Yeah.

Because so many people are burned out of like endless coffee chats or endless zoom chats that go nowhere. But those go nowhere if you haven't actually thought through whether you can help each other. Yeah. And so when you when you think about it a little bit more strategically, there's yeah, there's opportunity everywhere and it's relatively easy to find and to be comfortable with. Because again, if you give me two seconds of thought before you do it, then you have a reason to naturally connect. And so the conversations aren't awkward.

Right. Yeah.

Yeah. Intentionality. You mentioned that before and I love that. think that it's so true. And I'd love to get your perspective on this too, because one of the things that I find with escapees, the only thing we used to network for is jobs and only usually when we needed it. For the most part, that's a blanket statement. And what I found when I started networking was it seems obvious now, but at the time it didn't, right? There's connectors, people that know you're, or not know what you're talking about, that own, and then there's actually decision makers.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

And the default for, many newbies, especially, and even some experienced folks is, I'm to get on the call and just pitch, right? Here's my solution versus that. So I would love your expert opinion on those two calls, right? The, the connector that knows your audience. And then when you actually get on the phone with the business owners and it's a super broad question, I know that, but do you have some best practices or recommendations of how people should approach this? Okay.

Mm-hmm.

I have all the thoughts about this. Yeah. Yeah. No, I appreciate that. I mean, when you're on the phone with the connector, again, I want you to have thought through before you get on the call. What is the win-win not just for you, but what is the value you're bringing to that person? And why should they offer up their audience, whether that's a one-to-one introduction or an invitation to their podcast or whatever, right? Think through what's the value what's missing.

I thought so, but I'll caveat it a little bit.

in that that you could offer up so you're not just saying put me in front of your audience. I'll give you a very quick example. I teach networking. There are a lot of people with business building courses who don't want to touch the networking part. It's a big pain to teach, etc. But they know their students will get better results and therefore they will look better if they understand some of this intentional networking. And so if I were to pitch them and the value that I do provide is I explain that to them. like, hey, like,

I have a lot, I white label this information into a lot of courses if I think it would help your people. And so when you're thinking through what is the value that makes them look better, the connector, then you're going to get further because you're not just asking for something you have carefully thought through what I would call a because statement, right? And then if you get on the phone with a potential client or if you get in front of an audience, now you're thinking through how do you say something to them that is

Yeah.

pre pitch, right? We want to say something that has some impact that shows them that you understand their problem. I call this like positively haunting people, where you want to say something that, that's gonna give them a moment of, crap, you know, and it's just gonna hit them in the gut. Whereas then if they go back and start repeating that behavior, they're going to think of you. So a lot of times I will do that, I will talk to service based businesses and I'll

You know, I mentioned this relationship or traffic marketing things of I were to get on the phone with and I do get on the phone with some large B2B people and I will say like, Hey, I think you guys are traffic marketing and you should be relationship marketing. Let me show you what that looks like. And they will, because I've done my homework, they will generally be like, boy. Like we've been really screwing up. That makes sense. And then they're interested in a conversation. So that's how I try to handle it is not be in pitch mode. It's the last thing that I want to be in.

Yeah.

I want to be in value add and what I call like kind of having an impact that they're not going to be able to unsee or on here after you go away.

Yeah, I like that. And you probably, there's a way you can tell what they were doing before. So you've already got an indication that that would make sense. Now I wouldn't have a clue of what, I mean, I understand what you're saying, but that wouldn't be my end because I'd be looking at, I'll give you an example of how I think about it. Cause when I was still doing the consulting and the coaching and wasn't as clear as you, which I can, we needed to speak a few years ago, but

Exactly. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know, I look at a business owner and ask them, do they have, cause I'll say there's really only three revenue levers for a business acquisition, retention, expansion. And do you have a strategy around all three? And the answer is almost always no, or they didn't even know there were three. I said, well, you're probably leaving money on the table just to start the conversation. Or if they say, yeah, we've got boom, boom, boom. Then they're probably not going to be the person for me. So I think you're just reinforcing what you said that find that in right. Something that you know about that you understand.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

that's going to be important to them, right? If it's just, if it's not that big of a deal to their business, you're going to, you're going to struggle. have to work twice as hard to get that. Right. So find something that they really need to solve versus a nice to solve.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, and I would even argue like I like that messaging that you're sharing. I would have just backed you up one step and said, who is likely to already be talking to people who are interested in this so that you're not going in blind and meeting that person, right? I call this a trust transfer too. if all of those people, all those small, whoever, you know, that that person is who's thinking about that, it sounds like small business owners. What podcasts are they listening to or who do they trust in town?

Yeah, okay.

And how can you go meet that person and say, I would like to give a workshop to your people because those people already trust whoever you're talking to. And so if you show up, let's just call the chamber, cause it's an easy example. You show up the chamber and the chamber says, my God, I cannot believe how lucky we are to have Brett tonight. He knows what he's talking about. When we talked to him, he always knows exactly, you know, the stumbling blocks you all are ahead of. And then you stand in front of 10 people and deliver this message.

Yeah.

they're going to go back to their business and realize they're going to be like, crap, we only have three ways and we're not really thinking through which one we're going to optimize. So it's the exact same message. You just get a ton more of the benefit of the doubt. What I call like you've done more work, you've had more impact when you meet them versus if you just meet them cold and you have to have this conversation, they're like, who is this guy? Why do I care? You know, there's no trust transfer. There's no, and so as you can have that kind of intermediary to

Yeah, I like that.

tell them to trust you and then it's the exact same message, it goes so much further and your life is so much easier. Because you go from cold to warm just by virtue of having a trusted intermediary.

Yeah, that's awesome.

Yeah, it's so true. Yeah. You just can save me a step too, because one of the, just launched a challenge on TikTok where I put my money where my mouth is. said, look, I'm going to go sign a customer that I've never met before a service that I've never sold before. Just, just to show people that you can make money in six weeks. And I'm going to do it in an area that's not my core. So it's not the AR &E. It's going to be around kind of staffing and AI.

Yep.

Okay. Yeah. A hundred. Yeah.

Yeah.

enough where I know enough to be dangerous, but I know there's a real problem there. I'm going to, I'm going

Nice.

like the stuff you'd be doing on day one. I love that idea. Yeah.

So again, because again, I'm trying to get people path of least resistance. If you're still in corporate, if you can find a package or program that you can help a business with while you're still in corporate, it's not a conflict of interest just to gain that confidence, right? Cause we, you've probably see it with businesses, even if they're a little bit larger, they start stacking a few wins. They're like, ding, ding, ding. I can do this versus the, the grind to get to that next one. And it just. Right.

Yep.

100 % and it's those dual paths that you need as an entrepreneur like you're they're learning that they can make money and that is separate. It's just a separate skill and it's a huge confidence builder. Yeah, yeah, I love that idea. You're all good.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So the last piece I promised to buggy on this is, is packages, right? So I had Pia Silva on the podcast not too long ago and she had an, an aha moment 10 years ago. So she's been doing this for a while that she was selling. I'm going to get some of the specifics around, but like $30,000 six month packages and they worked their butts off and it took this long, but yet she could sell a $10,000 engagement that she can do in two days over a weekend. She's like, what am I doing?

Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

I need to be selling more of these to be able to hit my number than the bigger one. And she developed a process where she had kind of an intro. It was kind of a paid upfront to get the work diagnostic or roadmap or something, but then it fed right into what her package was. It was custom for each business, but it was they knew, like I'm assuming you're the exact same way. You know what the businesses are going to need. just is going look. So is that what you've kind of.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Yep.

what you're doing today from a best practice or how do you kind of approach that?

Yeah, I'm a little bit different in that. And it's probably the size of the businesses that we work with. I knew P in another life. I haven't spoken with her in a few years. I don't know exactly what she's doing. But my business is that that kind of diagnostic stage that first stage, it's actually part of my marketing. But I find that then they just buy very, very quickly, you know, if I'm meeting them in the way we described, and then we have like a diagnostic consulting, you know, discovery call, whatever you want to call it.

Yeah.

they're, you know, it's like 90 % conversion. And so that's how I have it. And then they do go into like a, you know, the three, three or four month project straight away. But yeah, that's what works for me.

program project. Okay. And you've got that probably well defined now of what that three month engagement looks like. Yeah, okay.

Absolutely, yeah. I call it framework forward. There are different pieces that different businesses may need, but again, every time we're looking for the next iteration, it's just like maybe some people need a little heavier on product mix, some people need it a little heavier on segmentation, but I just pull from an a la carte menu that they never see. So they might go through it a little bit of a different order.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But everybody's first three weeks are exactly the same. The last three weeks are exactly the same. And then we kind of pull curriculum in the middle as needed.

That's awesome. Yeah. And I think too, maybe the lesson for the audience out there too is you're going to do this a few times and you're going to learn. It's not like if this is your first engagement, you know exactly what you're going to get it wrong. You're going to under price.

yeah.

No, 100 % 100 % it's got to be custom and you got to just that's part of the learning curve. And then it's just paying attention to that and starting to see the patterns and then starting to put something together. Because again, when we talking about throwing spaghetti against the walls, I have people come in who have been told like, it has to be productized. So they won't sell anything until it's perfect. And then by the way, that perfection goes out the door the second it interacts with your customer. So why why waste the time just

Yeah.

Right.

When you have that confidence that you can solve the problem, allow yourself to make it up the first few times. Yeah, it's going to not be as efficient, but the long run, it's going to be way more efficient because you will get to that productized thing way faster than if you try to start with something productized and then realize it's wrong.

Yeah, or force the fractional. What I've is learning. So meet the customer where they're at, get the deal and then work it out. Yeah, one of the things I've been pushing a little bit more, I get testing more than pushing, is people that think they've been in corporate, well, they have been in corporate. I encourage them to think of their employees, they're one and only customer. You are a business of one, your only customer is your employer. Are they a good customer? Probably not. They probably pay you well.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

But all the other stuff, do you have to go to the office every day? All these other things. So start to think, I'm like, you already doing this. And then the other piece that I try to help demystify that is if you're going for a job interview, it's almost like a discovery call for sales. meeting with a business owner on your own, listening for their problems. Like, can I, am I the person that can help them do this? How would I do this?

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Same with you're on a job interview. You're listening to your future boss say, Hey, what are the challenges in this organization? What is this role going to actually have to do? And you think to yourself, is this a job I want in Connecticut? So I tell people you've already got the skillsets to do all this. It's just reframing it a little bit. So I haven't figured out the secret sauce on the messaging of that yet, but I'm working through it to say it's not as scary as you think.

100%.

Yep.

Yep.

I was gonna say I wish the messaging could be trust me, let's just wing it for a minute because that's the reality of it. But I also have not figured out the messaging because it's not what people want. Yeah.

So we'll keep working on that together. But no, but I think you're right. It is. It's not complicated. You got to put hard work. There's, there's no doubt you got to put effort into it, but it's not rocket science and it's, it's people solving problems, especially when in the smaller businesses, a lot of that stuff is foundational and they need the strategy piece before they even get into the weeds of some of these other things. And there's some folks that love to get into the weeds and they're doers. There's a business model for that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

There's the coaches, right? That can sit on the side and work through it. And then there's the folks that can deliver executable strategy versus it. So, um, no, this has been awesome. So I'm glad we, we, uh, made this happen. I appreciate your, your patience with this because I think we can have some more conversations because I think you're a great, not just only a resource, but your story, you know, it resonates in.

Yep. Yep.

I we made it happen.

Yeah.

Again, demystifying. haven't come up with a better word for that than that yet, but it's right.

I think that's what the word is because I think as many of us can tell stories, like we were saying, there's maybe not marketing messaging that lands perfectly for this, but the more of us who can tell our messaging, the more normalized it is that it's gonna be okay if it's not perfect right away. Like, let's just figure it out and then it can get a little bit more perfect over time. That's what the journey looks like.

Yeah.

Yeah, I'm going to beg with you offline to come do a workshop in our community too, because I think a lot of your lessons would go over very well within our collective.

I am always game. I'm always game. Thank you. Thank you for having me. This was fun. Yeah.

We'll make it happen offline and we're folks that want to connect with you. What's the best way for them to track you down?

Yeah, my website is the michellewarner.com but honestly, the better place like I have a podcast sequence over strategy, I consider it a reference library for my clients. It's not guest based, it probably should be I break all my rules when I say that but it's, it's really designed to, to be little 20 minute episodes that talk about all this stuff. So networking, relationship marketing, business design, and you can check that out everywhere. It's sequence over strategy. And if you actually go to my website, the michellewarner.com slash podcast.

there we have curated a playlist there. So if you wanna check out, if you just wanna listen to relationship marketing, you just wanna listen to business design, you'll find playlists there.

I saw that I got to figure out how to do that with mine. I'd have to actually go back and tag it and say, what the hell did we talk about?

Yeah, exactly. That's a little bit of a challenge. But speaking of, there's also a playlist of my favorite interviews. So as soon as this one goes live, we'll make sure to to add it to that one.

Awesome. Yeah. It'll be two days max. We'll have it back out to you. So Michelle, what was great to great to see you again. I appreciate you spending some time with us. I think, I mean, I've already got, you know, page of my notes. So I know it was, it's going to be valuable for the audience if I'm getting notes off of it. So appreciate it and we'll have to get you back on. think we can, we can do, you know, some segments because again, you're, you're ahead of where everybody is. But again, why reinvent the wheel if you've already got a solution, right?

I love it. I love it.

Oh, my pleasure. I like it.

I feel very passionate about letting people know it's gonna be okay and helping. So as much as I can do that, would love to. laugh and I always say I'm totally unemployable. So for anybody else out there who's unemployable, I want you to know that there are other options. Yeah, yeah.

Exactly. Join the club, right? It's life changing. I always joke that it was on a point break when Keanu Reeves wants to learn how to surf and that little kid in the surf shop, he's like, swear to God, change your life. like, couldn't say it any better than you can't until you experience it, you don't know it, but it's worth the journey. So all right, Michelle, thank you so much for your time and we'll be in touch with you soon.

Yep. 100%. 100%. Yeah.

I love it. We'll talk soon.