Every newsletter, we study and share how experienced solopreneurs design their operations, manage growth, and use systems to stay focused and scale profitable businesses.
Each edition brings tools, frameworks, and examples you can apply to your own business from financial planning to automation checklists to workflow maps.
It is your field guide to running a one-person company, one edition at a time.
When you leave corporate life, you don’t just trade meetings for freedom. You also lose the invisible systems that kept your work running. Suddenly, you’re your own IT, HR, and finance team.
For many solopreneurs, the hardest part isn’t just finding clients. It’s building structure that keeps your freedom from collapsing into the very grind you escaped.
In this first edition of The Wedge, we’re featuring Brett Trainor, who spent 25 years in corporate sales, marketing, and customer success before stepping out on his own. Over the past six years, he has evolved from solo consultant to fractional growth leader to founder of The Corporate Escapee, a platform that helps Gen X professionals leave corporate life and stay out. Today, his community reaches more than 76,000 solopreneurs across TikTok, online forums, and paid programs.
When Brett Trainor quit his corporate job and decided to go solo, his initial months were a blur of 60-hour weeks, disorganized calendars, and constant context switching. “The first client was running me,” he admitted.
Every task felt urgent; nothing felt strategic.
“Eighty to ninety percent of your corporate schedule is done for you,” Brett said. "When you go solo, you own everything: the good, the bad, and the ugly," he said.
The more he tried to do, the less progress he made. Saying yes to everything left him with no time to think, and no system to sustain growth.
That’s when Brett decided to stop reacting and start engineering his days with intention. He stepped back, audited his time, tools, and priorities, and began creating the frameworks that turned his chaos into clarity. Let’s see how he did it.
A solopreneur’s business transformation mantra: Reflect, Align and Connect:
When Brett’s days felt like an endless string of tasks, the breakthrough came from reflection.
“Corporate quit on me, and it was the best thing that ever happened,” he admitted. “But I didn’t have a plan.”
Structured reflection turned thinking into a feedback loop. It became the foundation for better time management, sharper priorities, and sustainable growth.
Some questions he advises solos to start asking:
“In corporate, everything revolves around job titles,” Brett said. “Small business owners don’t care about that. They want to know what problem you’re solving.”
For Brett, reflection became both vision and review, a structured habit for strategic thinking. Every few weeks, he’d set or refine quarterly goals, identify three-month KPIs, and take stock of what was working (and what wasn’t).
That process led to small but pivotal insights:
These small reflection audits became the bridge to execution and growth.
Research backs this up:
A Harvard Business School study by Giada Di Stefano, Francesca Gino, Gary Pisano, and Bradley Staats “Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Aids Performance” found that deliberate reflection transforms experience into learning, improving performance over time.
Further studies echo the same truth: reflection fuels better decision-making, focus, and resilience (Reflection: The Pause That Brings Peace and Productivity by Joseph L. Badaracco and Dina Gerdeman for the Harvard Business Review).
Once Brett got clarity on his goals, he stopped working on autopilot and built systems to get the most out of his time.
“Initially, I was doing everything (billing, emails, marketing) and it wasn't sustainable,” he said.
The turning point came when he reframed alignment as two disciplines: managing energy and prioritizing what truly drives results.
“I thought I was a night owl,” he said. “Turns out, my best work happens before sunrise.”
He tracked his focus patterns and built his day around energy, not hours.
His routine:
Research confirms it: Tony Schwartz & Catherine McCarthy (HBR) found that managing energy expands capacity. Cal Newport’s Deep Work showed that protecting long focus blocks is one of the biggest predictors of productivity.
Prioritization: Focus on What Actually Moves the Needle
Once Brett had control of his rhythm, he focused on systems thinking by cutting what didn’t compound and simplifying everything else.
He leaned on two guiding ideas:
What changed:
“Done and consistent beats perfect and delayed,” Brett said.
Studies on productivity show the same pattern: focusing on fewer, high-impact priorities correlates with faster business growth and lower burnout. McKinsey found that organizations that invest in strategic prioritization deliver 40 percent more value.
If reflection and alignment kept Brett grounded, connection kept him growing.
“Networking, networking, networking,” he said. “That’s the lifeblood. Ninety percent of your business will come from referrals or relationships.”
When solopreneurs get busy, business development is often the first thing to slip. Then one project ends and there is nothing lined up. The fix is to make connection part of your operating system, running quietly beneath your day-to-day work.
Studies show that entrepreneurs who cultivate consistent, high-quality relationships, rather than broad, one-off outreach, are more likely to uncover new opportunities and build resilient businesses.
Brett’s rhythm now:
Brett’s approach works because it is not transactional. It is consistent, genuine, and long-term, the kind of connection that builds both community and pipeline. His referral engine runs quietly in the background, authentic, rhythmic, and compounding.
Before systems: 60-hour weeks, scattered tools, endless client calls, and reactive chaos.
After: 25–30 focused hours per week, consistent clients, and a thriving business.
The Corporate Escapee Today
“Once I started designing how I worked,” Brett said, “I stopped feeling guilty about not being busy.”
Solopreneurship means rebuilding structure on your own terms. Freedom comes not from doing more, but from creating systems that make your work and life flow smoothly.
Feeling inspired to bring more structure into your solo life?
Download our SoloOps Framework and turn overload into freedom.