Corporate isn’t stabilizing—and that matters if your income still depends on it.

In this solo episode, Brett breaks down three trends shaping the Escapee economy in 2026:

1. a corporate metric that’s quietly driving layoffs,
2. the rapid expansion of revenue streams outside corporate,
3. and why small businesses are moving away from full-time hires in favor of fractional and specialist talent.

If you’re still in corporate, this episode helps you see what’s coming.

If you’ve already escaped, it explains why demand for your experience is only growing.

This episode is for you if:

1. You’re questioning whether corporate is still a safe long-term bet
2. You want practical ways to monetize your experience outside a job
3. You’re curious how small businesses are really hiring and growing now

The 3 trends covered in this episode

Trend #1: The metric driving modern layoffs — Revenue Per Employee (RPE)

Why boards and executives are fixated on RPE, how it incentivizes headcount reduction, and why even “healthy” companies continue cutting roles.

Trend #2: The explosion of revenue streams for escapees

Fractional leadership, consulting, advisory, UGC, content creation, mentoring, and more—why monetizing what you already know is the fastest, lowest-friction path to income.

Trend #3: The small business go-to-market model is changing

Why businesses are ditching traditional silos, hiring specialists instead of full-time staff, and how this shift creates long-term opportunity for experienced operators.

Key takeaways

• Corporate risk is structural, not cyclical

• Escapees have more income options than they think

• Small businesses want outcomes, not headcount

• Your experience is often more valuable outside corporate than inside it

If this episode helped you rethink corporate risk or life after it, connect with Brett on LinkedIn or email him at bt@bretttrainor.com. And if there’s a topic you want covered in a future solo episode, let him know.

Welcome back to the Corporate Escapee Podcast. I'm your host Brett Trainer. And today I am going solo. If you've been following the podcast, I told you at the beginning of the year that I would be sprinkling in a few more of these solo episodes to kind of focus on actionable either strategies, tactics, or tips. And today I want to focus on three trends that are going to impact the escapee world here in 2026. One of them is corporate related.

One of this is revenue related and one of them is business model related. All are tied back into, what is your future going to look like? Right. If you're holding on to hope that corporate is going to turn the corner, stabilize, provide you a steady income for, I don't know, two, five, 10, 20 years. I don't see that coming, but we'll talk about that a bit. two,

I want to focus on the opportunity for folks that have experience coming out of corporate, whether that's, and I've talked about two years or four decades, there is an opportunity to monetize your experience. I think the quickest path is leveraging your experience that you've already earned, whether that's from work, corporate, or something you've done personally, maybe fitness, wellness, something along those areas.

But there's literally unlimited number of revenue opportunities for you to pursue outside of corporate. We'll get into some of that. And then also the, the small business, I go to market model is changing and changing rapidly and why that's a huge advantage for folks that are escaping corporate. So let's get into it. The first one I want to talk about is, the changing corporate, right? And if you follow me on Tik TOK, you absolutely know where I stand on, you know, corporate as a whole with the profits.

over people playbook that these CEOs and boards are adopting. And yes, from long time corporate folks, I understand that it's always been like this, but they've taken it to a new level, especially on short term. There's no long term investments. There's no investments in people anymore. And the one number or the one acronym I want you to watch out for this season, if you will, this corporate season is RPE, revenue per employee. It's been around forever.

But I think this is like a drug. These C suites and shareholders and boards are fixated on right now because the, that, that drives the bottom line profitability and why revenue and per employee is important is you now have some benchmarks. Nvidia is out there, a manufacturing company, but their revenue per employee, just to put this, I'm going to give you some context for this revenue per employee for Nvidia is over $5 million per employee.

I think they had roughly $176 million or billion dollars in revenue, almost roughly the same size as Meta. And guess what Meta's revenue per employee is? It's under two or just around 2.1 or 2.2 million. That may have changed here if they've updated their earnings for the last quarter. But the bottom line is I guarantee you those Meta shareholders are like, why can't we get to the revenue per employee? Why are we so inefficient with our employees? And why I think this is a big

deal is you can grow the revenue per employee two ways. Keep crushing revenue opportunities or take out expense, take out the number of employees. So if you grow slightly, but able to take out 10 % of your headcount, your revenue per employee just got a hell of a lot better. And again, this is a super simple metric, but I think you're going to see more and more of this as we go. if you're within your own company,

Take a look, take a look at the benchmark from where you're at compared to some of your peers. And if it's out of whack, they're going to, they're going to take employees out. So the bottom line is a lot of crap going on in corporate. None of it's good unless you're in the C-suite and getting paid on quarterly bonuses. this is just one, I think one of the biggest factors we're going to see that's going to keep driving these layoffs, right? Either the forced layoffs like mass layoffs.

Or, you know, more people forced back into the office and hoping you quit Phantom pips all their games that they're going to play. I try to drive those head counts down, but I just don't see it stopping. Right. We got the peak of the mass layoffs last year, even when performance was good for a lot of companies, they still want, they took a haircut on employees because they want to improve the bottom line or get a head start in the next quarter. So, so I think RPE is going to drive it. Number two, again, let's flip the switch to where there is an opportunity for you.

And that's the number of revenue streams that are available for you to create. Um, when I left corporate six years ago, I really wasn't aware of what I could do. So, well, right. knew there was fractional consent. didn't know a fractional. I'll get to fractional a minute. I knew I could go do some solo or contract consulting, right. Working with some companies, uh, freelance was more back in that day, like Fiverr and some cheap discounted marketing tools, right. That you could.

You could hire out. So I didn't realize there was a massive market or a growing market at that point for solo, right? Solopreneurs that had very specific skill sets that the companies would employ. Some folks that have been out of corporate for 10 years knew this. They found their path, but it wasn't talked about a lot. So I think just

thinking through some of the revenue streams. Again, I think monetizing your corporate experience is the easiest way because there are small businesses that need your help. If somebody is paying you to do a job, there's a small business, a nonprofit or a startup that needs help doing what you do. It's just going to be much more foundational, high level than maybe what you're doing in your bigger company where you're getting really into the weeds. They need more, like I said, foundational type of help.

So just a few of the revenue streams. And again, I try to get as many people on the podcast as possible to talk about how they did it. My still most popular episode is when I had Megan on talking about user generated content, UGC. And if you're more experienced, I think she works exclusively with GenX and Boomers, generating content for big brands. They want content from folks like you and I.

that they can use across their platforms and their socials because it's much more impactful for them to have somebody like us talking about their product than it is for them to create a fancy and expensive budget. And the pay is pretty good, right? It's again, Megan's got an unbelievable business growing this and she teaches people how to do it. So I think this is a really quick path to start to generate some revenue and you can absolutely do it while you're still in corporate. Again, we have to get over a fear of speaking for myself.

of getting on the camera and talking about a product and make it feel natural. again, they want real people making real content. So if you had even thought about UGC, add that to your list of something you can get started today. I also think content creation, there's opportunities. I had no idea when I started goofing around on TikTok, you know, ended up with what? 78,000 followers on TikTok. I didn't know TikTok paid that they pay you for your content. You have to get, think over 10,000.

users and again, you're not going to get rich from it, but there's different ways to start to monetize the things that you're doing. Some of the bigger ones from an escapee perspective is fractional. That's where you become a part-time leader within a smaller organizations. either can't afford to hire you full-time or don't want to hire you full-time. And this is the best way to be able to leverage your knowledge to bring you in and help. Usually when I talk about fractional.

It's eight to 10 hours per week and you can help two or three companies. Most people, if they're dedicated themselves to fractional have two or three clients. And it's not necessarily just one day a week you work and you can spread it out, but the hours average out to about eight, eight to 10 hours per week is what a normal fractional gig. And don't think you have to be running, right? A marketing organization, a sales organization, finance organization right now.

The way I look at it is these small businesses that need leadership and development of this function will bring you on. So maybe they're implementing a CRM or need to implement a CRM. You can come in and become their fractional CRM specialist that helps them set this up, launch it, run it, and then help them manage it on a part-time basis. They don't need somebody full-time in order to do this. my trend number three, we'll get into some of these models and why I think this is changing.

consulting again, it's standard, right? These companies need you to come in on a fixed fee basis, meaning you're going to charge a flat fee for a certain amount of time. And usually it's about a specific objective or outcome or a project that you're working on, but it can be extended. you've got advisory, you've got mentoring, you can be a paid mentor if you're teaching somebody. So.

Again, I think I could do an entire episode just going through the 20 plus revenue streams that I'm aware of now, not to mention, right? I've had folks on like Alex from Franzy. think franchising is a perfectly good path or very interesting path for folks to go right. Kind of a business in the box. You can align the franchise that aligns with your interest. They give you the support to help you get it up and running.

And now you have to make an investment in it. You're just not going to generate cash on the side, depending on where you're at, you know, I think it's a reasonable, plus you've got even on a bigger opportunities to go buy a business. You've got boomers that are exiting out of family businesses that the family doesn't want to buy or run that there's opportunities. So I think one of the things that corporate really, really did a number on us was put us in our box and tell us not to think.

and be open-minded to the opportunities are out there. And I think it took me, and I don't think, I know it took me two years to finally get to the point where I started to see revenue opportunities in just about everything. Initially, I was only looking for, give me the big six figure consulting engagements. That's all I was basically hunting for and looking for and trying to find. And then I moved into fractional leadership and what I was really trying to find was those bigger, longer engagements.

I left a lot of money on the table because the fact was, and still is for many companies, they've got a problem that needs to be solved. They just may not be ready to make that, that bigger investment yet. Even if it's not full time, there's certain things that you can do on a monthly basis, to help them move their business forward. That generates you good at profitable income while still one in case you're still in corporate and two, if you're out, you can start stacking these smaller wins. doesn't take you as long to sell. It's not a big headache or

a burden on these small businesses. again, I think just going in with an open mind and realizing you can absolutely do this to sell because sales isn't about some fancy technique or I think those days are gone, right? These car sales, when I joke with people that sales has finally caught up to me because I'm more that that sells on value.

And more importantly, I've just always considered myself to be more of a problem solver, right? I can solve this problem. can help you solve this problem, Mr. And Mrs. Business owner. And this is what it costs to solve it. We've got a couple of different ways. So don't go into these engagements with the pre-determined offer that says, Hey, it costs X, Y, and Z. You can get there over time if you want. But initially just listening to hear what the problem is thinking, can my background, can I solve this for the customer?

The odds are probably yes. And guess what? The first time you do it, you're probably going to not charge enough, but it'll help you gain the confidence. So anyway, just the unlimited number of revenue streams. The one caution that I would have is don't chase too many shiny objects because you end up down a path where you're not focused on anything. I'd pick one path to get started, be opportunistic with the other one, but don't be afraid to experiment and change. I tell people all the time that I've over now it's been almost six years.

I figured out how to monetize my experience almost 11, not almost, it has been 11 different ways. So the opportunities are there. You just have to be comfortable asking for it. And it's just, that's not the way corporate raised us. Right? So the less time you've been in corporate, the easier transition you're probably going to have. But once you break that mental hurdle, it's, just opens up the world and you're going to start to see these opportunities and you're going to realize you can absolutely do this. So.

Like I said, I can do this. Other people can do this. So, all right. So that's number two. That's the explosion of revenue streams. And three is the small business go to market business model. It's changing. Some business owners a little quicker than others to adopt it. But I think this is important because it's going to create the opportunities for experienced folks. And again, that could be two years to 40 years where these businesses are going to need this.

And there's still many business owners that believe they need to follow the old siloed approach to the organization. Sales, marketing, customer success, onboarding, account management, all those types of things. Those usually tend to be a little larger company. We used to refer these as the handshake organizations because every time you as a buyer, we're going through the process.

You were handed off and it was a handshake to the next group. Right. So it could have been an SDR or marketing SDR to a sales SDR, to a demo, to a sales rep, to an onboarding specialist. And it just, it just didn't make sense. Organizations were not aligning around the way people buy, right. The way buyers buy and the way customers like to use products. And so I think there's two things I want you to, take away from this. One is people are building.

$2 million a year solo businesses with no employees. Think about that. 2 million, no employees doing it yourself. And it's becoming much more frequent. I think you can actually build a $10 million a year business without employees. And you do this by using specialists when you need them. And this is going to become more common, especially as small businesses grow. They don't need to make an investment in full-time employees in order to drive their businesses. And the analogy I'll give you

is similar to building a house, right? If you're building a house, are you hiring a full-time plumber? Are you hiring a full-time electrician? Are you hiring a full-time roofer? No, you bring them on when you need those tasks done. And some you may need longer than others, right? If you're framing an entire house or building a foundation, you're going to have to spend some, some money. Maybe that's like a fractional type of worker, but others, may have to come in and set your branding strategy for a small business. Maybe that's a

a two week, six week project where you come to help the organization get their branding right. And it's really starting to plug in these specialists like you. That's, mean, that's what we paid our dues to do, which it just, again, it just makes sense as you grow. Now, if you build a big business, like you build a big house, maybe you need to keep some people on full time to run it. But I'm absolutely convinced. I go most of my time on social, I talk about the

the escapee and helping folks like you get out, but from a small business standpoint, if you shouldn't be hiring employees until you get to 10 million in revenue. If you got a retail location, you may have to have some folks, et cetera. but in general, this model is changing. So think about that as, as these companies grow their businesses, they need folks like you. They don't need the full-time employees. the example I'll use, was a podcast episode. can go check out. was the CEO of lettuce.co.

And at the time of recording, they had 41 staff within the company, fast growing. None of them were brought in as a full-time employee. were either fractional, contract, freelance. They didn't label it. They just knew they needed help and it didn't need to be full-time because these employees, which they're not employees, these folks wanted to do other things besides just working with lettuce. And I think the genius of the CEO.

is he realized the density of talent that he could get for per dollar was so much higher going with this model, right? If so think of, I'm to give you an example. So if you're going to hire a junior level person, even in marketing, you know, call it hundred K plus then expense or benefits, maybe it's 125,000. You could literally hire three fractional folks, maybe one marketing, maybe one sales, maybe one finance.

for 30 K a piece to drive your business a hell of a lot farther than that entry level person is going to. So I just, we're starting to see the shift. The business model is absolutely going to change. These small and mid-sized companies can grow rapidly by leveraging talent like you. And the reason I share this as a trend is it's just going to create more and more opportunities. And if you're out there thinking, man, maybe I've got a couple of local businesses I could talk to.

share them with this trend, say, why are you hiring full-time employees? You don't need them until you get to a certain level. Really define what you need and what is the problem you're trying to solve and start to plug people into these different roles as you need them. So as you get bigger, obviously you can start to supplement and add those full-time in. But again, this model is here, it's not changing.

The last piece of advice I would give you on the business model is to keep it or the go to market model for these small businesses is keep it simple. If you are working with a small business, point out two things. There's the, the buyer and I think of take a step back. There's two things I focus on. One is buyer enablement. How quickly me, if I was working for a company, I would want to ask them how quickly can I get your buyers through their buying process? Not my sales process.

Not the way I do business, but how quickly can I get buyers through the way they want to buy to pull the trigger? If you restructure your company around, how do you connect with your ideal customers? Where are they at? And then once I'm connected with them, how do I move them through their buying process as quickly as possible? It's not going to look like the traditional model. You'd have too many people, too many handoffs, making customers jump through hoops to try to figure out just to get pricing. Right? So that's the first half buyer enablement. The other one I want you to think about is customer enablement.

So if somebody buys from you, how quickly can you help that customer get the value from that business's product or service? The quicker they start to get value, the happier they're going to be, the more likely they're going to tell other folks, maybe they're more opt to buy more of whatever you're selling them. We really overcomplicate everything, small businesses especially.

by trying to match what big corporate does with all these different silos and functions and these things. And if you really just took a step back and asked the customer what they need and how do they buy, it would fundamentally change the way they go to market. And we're starting to see this. We are going to start to see this because they don't have to make the investments or they don't have the money to make the investments. They're going to be able to do it. Big corporates not going to be able to get out of their way. They've got too many operating budgets in silos, people hogging or protecting, sorry, their

what their budgets are, not letting them go. That's why we're gonna see the chaos we talked about in trend one. So anyway, that's the third trend. So just to recap, the first one is at corporate level, revenue per employee is gonna be a driver. again, the higher, the lower your company's revenue per employee is, the more likely you're gonna see layoffs. Two, the explosion of revenue streams. It's only capped by your creativity.

Again, I think the quickest path is to monetize what you already know, less friction, you can get up and running quickly, but it's wide open. And then the third one is the small business go-to-market model is changing, which supports and helps escapees as we move out into that world. So anyway, those are the three I want you to pay attention to. Drop me a note on LinkedIn if you found this episode helpful, or if you listen to it on Spotify, I think you can leave comments out there now.

and or send me an email bt at brettrainer.com and let me know if there's other topics that you want to cover but regardless thank you for listening and we'll catch up with you on the next episode.