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."

Let me ask you something. If I told you there was a guy who spent 10 years working the finance desk at car dealerships, learning the tricks, the scripts, the manipulation tactics that dealers use to squeeze every dollar out of buyers and then left, flipped that whole thing around and started a business where he's charging consumers, folks like you and I, $1,000 to go negotiate on your behalf for new cars. I think he does it for new car sales and maybe leases. I'm guessing definitely.

you buying for sure. And today you'd be curious of how that business doing. He's got 300 customers a month that he's negotiating in their behalf for. So you can do the math 300 times a thousand, that's $300,000 a month, a solo business. I think he may have some folks working with him now, but that started out just leveraging what he knew in that corporate role and turned it around and is helping other people with that same thing.

Now you're probably thinking, well, what does that have to do with me? And again, I want to tell you in this episode, that's what I want to get into is how to make money quick in unexpected ways, right? As you're exiting corporate in this case, a lot of these cases, you can use this while you're still in corporate trying to figure out. Let me do the intro here. Welcome back to the Corporate Escapee Podcast. I'm your host, Brett.

And if you're new here, this is where we talk about what it actually looks like to stop trading your life for a paycheck or building your life around a corporate job and start building something that's yours. And today is a solo episode and I want to talk about money, specifically, you know, kind of making it fast and making it in some unexpected ways. When most people leave corporate, like in my case, got pushed out.

You start looking for the familiar place. That's absolutely what I did. I started consulting, then I did some fractional leadership, did some coaching, and then from fractional work, all the, what I would call traditional, even though we're still in the early days of solo, those could be the traditional paths, doing what you did in corporate and leveraging that with small businesses. And I teach those paths that they work, they make sense, but there may be a path, again, I'm always looking for the path of least resistance.

that you can make some money even while you're still in corporate, doing some things that maybe you hadn't thought of. again, I think like fractional and the solo consulting, especially when you're, if you take my path where I was looking for those bigger deals, those six figure deals, takes a little bit of time. I think there's a quicker path, right? I always say if you can make some money in that first six weeks and just get comfortable making money outside of corporate,

just opens up all kinds of different paths. And I can speak from experience. Last count, I'm probably up to 12 different ways now that I've monetized corporate experience. Actually, I should reframe that. There's probably 12 different ways I've made money and probably eight or nine of them leverage my corporate experience. I'm starting to branch out beyond that just because there's so much opportunity. And again, you can leverage your skill sets.

Again, everything I'm gonna talk about today doesn't require any new skills. It's leveraging what you already have. Maybe when I'm talking a little bit about AI, there's some opportunity from a technical standpoint, but not much because I talk about the relationship, the human to human side of this. And I think that's where the real opportunity. But before I get into those, I wanna talk about the moment again, Warren right now, because I think...

Most people are getting this completely backwards. A lot of the popular and the narrative out there is that AI is going to replace skilled workers. That's the things you spent 20 years learning inside a corporation. Some like worth less because, you know, a chat agent or an AI agent now can do it. And I want to push back on that. And I push back on it kind of hard because I don't think AI is going to shrink the opportunity. I think it's going to expand it.

And here's why. AI raised awareness of problems people didn't even know they had, gave us access to information that they never had before. And it creates an enormous population of people who know exactly what they need and will absolutely pay for someone else to do it. Think about that story up top. Tom, think his last name is McCoola. His customers could have used AI to research the dealer invoice pricing, finance markups, create a script to negotiate, all those types of things.

All the information is there, it's accessible, but yet still 300 people a month pay him a thousand bucks just to handle it. There's all kinds of these types of opportunities out there, personal and within the small business community. Cause again, I don't think the problem is an information one. I think it's about execution and accountability and people just not wanting to deal with it. And again, your 20, 30 years of corporate experience puts you in the right in the middle of it. So.

All right, so let's get into what I promised with the title, which is, you know, three ways, three surprising ways you can make money outside of corporate. kind of talked about the traditional past consulting, coaching, fractional, speaking. Those are all definitely relevant and something you can pursue. And I'm looking at something you may not have thought of. And the first one is that service. I kind of gave it away with Tommy's story.

Right. Charging a fee to help people get an outcome that they want or they don't want to do. And again, it's a high margin. He may spend what an hour if that, cause he knows all the tricks. He knows all the dealers. Hell, he probably even calls the dealers there and you know who he is now. So he doesn't even have to do any negotiations. He's going to get them the best deal just because, the reputation. I think there's a bunch of opportunity along these lines that,

Hell, if I was still in corporate, I would pay somebody to do my expense reports, even though AI could do it. And actually when I was in corporate, did pay somebody, one of the admins to help me with that because I just did not like to do it, even though you could automate and do all those things. But I think there's a bunch of these things like HR disputes, salary negotiation, you medical billing, contractor bids, procurement, you name it. Anywhere that someone, there's a task that needs to be done, that the information's there.

people still don't want to do it. It creates an opportunity. And the beauty is you don't have to create, as I tell folks all the time, the next Google or Facebook. This is really about landing enough customers to hit the revenue mark that you need in order to, you know, build, as I like to say, instead of building your life around work, now you're building work into your life. So if you want to build, you know, 300 K a month business, you know, no, no problem with that. shouldn't say no problem with that, but

Kudos to you, but if maybe you only need one or two customers, you want to generate three grand a month to fuel a lifestyle of sorts. But anyway, look for those types of services, because they're out there. And I'll start to share more and more of these things as I come across them, because I find them super interesting. I had a full post on Tommy's business on LinkedIn not too long ago. So all right, that's one. Number two is one, probably have the GenXer.

boomer, maybe a millennial you have not heard of, but it's called UGC, which is user-generated content. And listeners of the podcast probably know I had Megan on maybe six months ago. She's due for another visit and basically gave us the one-on-one version of it. And what UGC is, it's user-generated content and brands are paying folks like you and I to record videos talking about their products that we enjoy.

why this is such an interesting opportunity is because the brands would rather have people, their customers tell their stories versus the brand sharing the stories. And they're paying anywhere from 150 to $500 per video and it's all kinds of brands. And again, you don't have to have followers with this, which is the best part. They just, again, will negotiate.

A video or two videos that then they can share on their social channels their websites Talking about real users using their prompt. I always recommend, you know Connecting with brands that you actually use and are happy to promote. mean I'll give you an example I've got two I've signed two deals just in the last week, you know That's going to be just under a thousand dollars for for two videos If you throw in some of the product it's over that now again I like to stand behind the products I have but I know a lot of people will

you know, do you do UGC again, if they're going to get paid for it again, I think it's easier when you can talk authentically about the product service and that you you enjoy it, but don't fall asleep. Like I said, you don't need users in a network to take advantage of this, but do some homework on it. Check out that app that episode I had with with Megan again, UGC. Check it out again. They're looking for real people to record real videos. All right. So that's number two.

And number three is around kind of teaching what you know. And originally when I left, was thinking about teaching what you know, is that just like coaching or doing workshops, those types of things? It absolutely could be. But what's really been interesting is the folks that have left. So I look at our community, the collective, and I think we've got what, 160 people in there now?

And one of the biggest things that surprised me watching folks is journey from when they escape to what they're doing today. Almost all of them started with a, do I monetize what I was doing in corporate? Right? How do I work with SMB owners to basically teach them, right? More foundational type of work, which is still important. But I'm finding a lot of folks are actually doing the actual teaching of smaller groups. It could be.

junior level people still in corporate. One of our more successful, I mean, you define success how you want, is a career coach. And right, it's funny, he's a corporate escapee, but he works with senior corporates that are looking for their next job. They wanna stay in corporate, that's the path they want. They will pay him to help them find that job. That's almost like what Tommy's doing. That's kind of a blend, but he's using his experience, right? How to position yourself.

And there's just a lot of examples where people are following behind. We had somebody in the collective that was in the wellness space and her plan was to head out that way and work with businesses to create wellness programs with inside of it. But what she found was that her personal, she was a single mother by choice, found a lot of folks.

really connecting with her and resonating with her story and asking for her guidance and how they can follow that same path. Because I talk all the time that corporate is not designed for a lot of people. I'd argue almost nobody, right? Unless you're getting an education coming out of the corporate path, but it's a whole different episode. But again, you only need a few people for this to work. And I think the other thing that folks...

don't realize is they connect with you if you're just ahead of them on their journey, right? I look at it, right? If you haven't worked out in 10 years, are you gonna hire an Olympic athlete to help you train? Probably not. You're gonna wanna find maybe somebody like me that in the six years after leaving corporate, got myself back in shape. I probably am some of the best shape I've been in in the last 30 years.

but it took a little bit of time and people can relate. I mean, that's what people want is they want to be able to relate to you. They want to see that outcome and that you can link, you can find it. I I look at maybe you've got some skills around LinkedIn. UGC is in an area we just talked about. You can do the video and you can actually teach people how to do this. So I think there's a really a big opportunity. Again, you may not be able to make a million dollars with some of these paths, but you can find some revenue pretty quick.

doing things you already know. That's what this keeps coming back to. Another area that maybe I would, I'm gonna do a different episode on, but also there's a big opportunity with local businesses, right? And if you followed me for a while, I talk a lot about the network, right? 90 % are referrals in your network, which is 100 % true. But I think there's a really big opportunity with local businesses.

And I'm going to test that with some of the, my new offering with, within AI and using the small business hotline, but again, maybe I'll do a full episode on that just to help you think through, you know, again, use what I'm doing and you can learn from my, you know, my mistakes and some of the things that are working. But, um, I think local is a really viable opportunity because if you connect with, you know, local business owners in your, just reach out to them and say, Hey, you know, my name's Brett.

Yeah, I've been in corporate for 25 years. I'm actually starting my own thing and I'm just looking to connect with some other local business owners that've got more experience. You're not selling them anything out of the box. You just want to connect and start to build relationships with some other local business owners. And if your product or service is actually something you can sell, once you connect with them, you can get their feedback, get their advice and say, is this a product or service that would make sense that you would be interested in or more importantly,

other small business owners. And so even though, right, referrals and network is important, you've got a built-in connection. You've already got something in common because you're both business owners in your local area. Now, if you're in rural somewhere where there's only a handful of businesses, maybe won't work. But again, I think you can talk about, you know, the county that you're in or, you know, the state, if you want to go that far.

But think about local, there's absolutely an opportunity to do this. So anyway, I wanted with this hyper quick episode to give you three things to think about from a revenue standpoint that maybe you didn't think about that are in reach. And if you think about this, most of them are not a conflict of interest with what you're doing in your day job. If you've been laid off and you're looking for your next corporate gig, then absolutely dig into this, go test it out.

Drop me a note on LinkedIn if you've had some success or if you've got a different service that you've been working on that you want to share with everybody. Again, drop me a note, bt at bretttrainer.com or connect with me on LinkedIn and just DM me that you're working on something interesting. I would absolutely love to hear from you. again, feedback's always welcome. I appreciate you listening. And if you haven't followed, please do so. Again, the podcast will

work still with the old rules, followers and subscribers still make an impact in helping me get in front of other folks. So thanks for listening and we'll catch up with you soon.