Entrepreneur Lessons Learned From The British Baking Show.
Be Brilliant In Your Business Podcast, Episode 85
This is the final episode of 2020. Most of us are looking forward to a new year and finally saying goodbye to 2020. I am really excited about this episode. Since it is the final episode of the year, we are going to be looking back a little bit.
I am going to share 3 lessons from this year: a lesson that I learned, a lesson that I re-learned, and a lesson that I unlearned this year. The best part is that I will be sharing these lessons using the British Baking Show.
In This Episode:
[02:05] Linsi is going to share three lessons and use the British Baking Show as her example. There are all sorts of parallels with the bakers and entrepreneurs.
[03:17] Space, downtown, cultivation, and purposeful action are really important elements to having fun.
[04:58] Lesson One: playing big vs. playing small. Playing big isn’t about doing big things. It is the level at which you are following your heart. It is willing to go all-in for what you want.
[06:03] There are several things that stop us from playing big. The risk that we are afraid of is not the situation, it is a feeling. We are afraid of the feeling of being humiliated, disappointed, or overwhelmed.
[06:57] Playing big isn’t about taking this huge risk. It is about being willing to follow something that you are passionate about knowing that there is a possibility that you are going to experience risky emotions.
[09:01] Playing big is showing up in your business time and time again and knowing that it is worth it because we are following something that we are passionate about.
[10:31] Showing up every day is no small feat. It is a challenge for us to continually overcome the small challenges in our lives. Celebrate in your life where you are playing big!
[12:19] Linsi shares about the British Baking Show and how it compares to entrepreneurship.
[14:14] On the show once the bakers receive their challenge they take action so they don’t become overwhelmed which is the same with entrepreneurs. As soon as they are taking action, their confidence starts to rise.
[15:48] As time goes on the bakers start to make reactive decisions at the moment because doubt creeps in. As entrepreneurs, we also make reactionary decisions when driven by doubt.
[17:46] Playing big is about choosing your desires over your fears.
[18:08] You can play a bigger game by practicing the thought, “I am willing to feel disappointed because it means I am trying something new.” The fear is only present because you are doing something that matters.
[18:40] Lesson 2: Every level feels like starting over.
[20:24] There is no such thing as backward. We only go forward.
[21:44] Starting and running your own business is like adopting a puppy. It requires continuing care, affection, and attention for as long as it is alive.
[24:06] Any time you feel yourself back at what feels like a starting point, it’s because you’ve entered a new level and it’s time to redefine the future of your business again.
[25:47] When you have the feeling that you are starting over, just recognize that you are at a new level and it’s time to make forward decisions and keep moving forward.
[26:01] Lesson 3: Stop overthinking! Overthinking gets in the way of our dreams time and time again.
[27:12] As entrepreneurs we have to self impose our deadlines and we have to learn how to honor our own deadlines so that we can overcome our tendency to overthink.
[27:43] The antidote to overthinking is action. The simplest thing that you can do if you catch yourself is to take one small but immediate action to disrupt the pattern.
[29:56] The British Baking show is a good example of community over competition. This is such a great part about small businesses too.
[31:18] Take a holiday break. Plan for it, give yourself the time and space you need to rejuvenate and restore your energy and get excited about all the great things you are going to do next week.
As entrepreneurs, we are never really done. We are always moving to another level.
Stop overthinking and keep moving forward.
Connect with Linsi:
Transcript
You are listening to Be Brilliant in your Business, the podcast for busy business owners to take charge of your time and energy to create meaning and momentum in your life. I'm your host, Linsi Brownson, certified coach and seasoned entrepreneur, and I know what it takes to run a thriving small business that works for your life. Join me for an honest look into the minds of small business owners as I share with you stories, coaching and solutions to the biggest problems that keep people from realizing their dreams.
Before we dive into today's episode, I want to welcome new listeners. I'm so glad you're here. And I look forward to being part of your brilliant business. Be sure to hit the subscribe button because we've got new episodes for you each week.
Are you ready? Let's go. Hey, Mavericks. Welcome to the show. This is the final episode of 2020. And if you are following along in real time, I think you're probably cheering with me. Looking forward to a new year and saying goodbye to 2020. If you're listening to this in the future, congratulations, you made it. You survived. We all survived. We're all doing good. So we are looking forward to meeting our future selves someday who look back on this and go, huh, that happened. Anyway, I am excited about this episode, because since it is the final one of the year, it's a little bit of a review, we're looking back a little bit.
I'm going to share three lessons from this year, a lesson that I learned a lesson that I really learned and a lesson that I learned this year. And I think these will all be really useful for you. And then we're going to do it kind of with a twist because I'm going to use the British Baking Show, as my example here. So I've been watching the British Baking Show on Netflix, I promise there are no spoilers in this episode. And to my surprise, I've been really enjoying it. And not to my surprise, there are all sorts of parallels in what I'm observing in the Baker's and in the show itself and and the challenges of it to entrepreneurship, and the experience that we have as entrepreneurs, and what it takes for us to be successful.
And so I kept having these little moments as I was enjoying the show, I was like, Oh, that's a perfect example. So I'm going to share with you a lesson learned relearned and unlearned for me this year, but I'm also going to give it to you with this example of the British Baking Show. So I think this is gonna be a really fun episode.
So if you've been following along on Instagram, I've been talking a lot about fun and joy, and creating space and taking time off, and downtime. And it's not just because it's the end of the year. And because I know a couple of episodes ago, when I was talking about doing the business audit, I said that sun was something that came up for me as something that I want to continue to work on creating more of in my life, and no surprise, space, downtime, cultivation, purposeful action over buisiness. All of those things that I've been talking about all year long, are really important elements to having fun, and maintaining fun, and staying in love with our business. So it all really ties together very nicely. And I can't wait to share with you.
So let's dive in. So the first lesson is one that I learned this year. And truth be told, I just came to this lesson or I just sort of summarize this as a lesson. Recently, as I've been doing a lot of my reflection looking backward auditing my business working on my game plan for 2021. So I love being in this space. I'm doing it for myself, I'm doing it with my clients, this is just such a good time of year I have so much fun because I love having this like big picture view of our lives and this big picture view of our businesses and just stepping outside of whatever it is that we think is currently happening in our lives and saying like, Oh no, there's more to the story here. There's this whole lifeline of our business to look at. And I'm going off on a tangent here. Anyway, I've been doing a lot of this work recently. And something just emerged to me as a lesson that was like, Oh, yes, I need to share this for sure. Can you ready for it? That was a really big build up. Okay.
The lesson is playing big versus playing small. And what it occurred to me is that I've been thinking about playing big, the wrong way. Because playing big isn't about doing big things. It's the level at which you're following your heart, it's being willing to go all in for what you want. Which doesn't mean that you're taking constant action, that you're only focused on achievement, and that you are working yourself to the ground to achieve something monumental, right? Playing big isn't being on the British baking show. It's being willing to feel negative emotions, in order to live a life where you do something that you really want to do.
So the risks that we are so afraid of in our lives, the things that stop us from playing big, we often think of as things like, let's say, going on the British Baking Show, and getting cut, right or being they always say like, I'm not going to be the first one to go, right. That's the idea of that stops so many people in their tracks, because they're so afraid that something might happen, that would be a failure. But the truth of the matter is what we're afraid of the risk that we are afraid of is not a situation, it's a feeling, we're afraid of the feeling of being humiliated, or we're afraid of the feeling of being disappointed, or we're afraid of the feeling of even being overwhelmed. And those feelings seem so intense and so risky to us that they stop us from doing things that really matter to us the things that really light us up that we really want.
So, playing big isn't about taking this huge risk and getting on the British baking show. It's about being willing to follow something that you're passionate about, knowing that there's a possibility and even a probability that you're going to experience some pretty intense negative emotions, risky emotions, like disappointment, overwhelm, and humiliation, deciding that it's worth it. Because on the other side of that is an experience that so few other people are ever going to have, like, think about it. If you were on the British baking show, there's only eight seasons, right, and I think they start with 12 people. So that's less than 100 people. And let's imagine that this show continues on for another five years, right? Like that's less than a few hundred people in the entire world who will ever have an experience like that. And it's that it's knowing that your willingness to do something that lights you up something that really excites you, and have the experience of being one of only a few hundred people maybe ever to do something that matters. It doesn't matter what the outcome is, you always get to walk away, knowing that you did something for you.
And the same thing is true for entrepreneurs. Think about how many people in the world want to start a business and don't think about how many people in the world, start a business and quit. The fact that you are here right now and listening to this means that you are an anomaly. You are someone who was brave enough and willing to play big you were willing to feel negative emotions in order to see what was on the other side of that in order to see what was possible for you. And this is what it looks like really, to play big. It's to show up time and time again, right to meet every challenge, head on and decide that no matter what comes out of it no matter what's on the other side of it, it's worth going through it because we are following something that we're passionate about because we're doing something that matters to us. And there's no downside to that ever. Yes, there may be negative emotion. Yes, there may be disappointment. But there's still no downside because the only true downside is the opposite. It's playing small. It's letting our fears get in the way and stop us from doing something that we want to do, because we have a whole list of reasons not to do it. And I have always believed that this is true. And I think I talked about it that way but I hadn't really articulated that.
I still was thinking about grand gestures, I was thinking about next level goals. I was thinking about, you know, what's the best and coolest thing that I could do in my lifetime or in my business, right. And I think that that's amazing. I love looking forward. And I love thinking really big. But I don't want to do it in a way that makes the daily actions feel small, because they're not. They're not small. Because showing up every day is no small feat, as you know, because you are experiencing it yourself, right. It's a challenge for us to continually overcome the small obstacles in our life.
So I want to celebrate where in my life and I want you to celebrate where in your life, you are really playing big because what you're doing is you're continually committing and recommitting to just listening to yourself to following things that excite you that interest you to, like I said a few episodes ago to recommitting to making sure that you're always having fun, no matter what coming back to your purpose, and basing your decisions, basing your strategies on what feels right to you in the moment. And moving forward rather than what you think you should do or what you think you did wrong that you need to clean up and fix. Right. Like none of that stuff helps you all of that is based in playing small. And playing big is really about coming back to this. It's worth it simply because I want to simply because I want to try simply because I want the experience simply because I want to be a person who follows my own heart and follows my own path. And that's what I'm committed to. in this lifetime.
I watched the Baker's on this show, I was just in total awe of every person on this show. Because in every episode, every person experienced the entirety of entrepreneurship. Every episode, you can see the lifetime of entrepreneurship play out in every single person. So interesting. So I enjoyed watching their patterns play out every challenge that they would get, especially in the technical challenge. So if you're not watching the show, or if you haven't watched the show, there's three challenges. And the second one is called the technical, where they don't have any idea what the challenge is going to be. So they basically tell them, like, here's the thing that you're going to make, you have two and a half hours go. And then there's a very basic instruction list or, you know, recipe to follow. But for many of them, they have never made it before there are certain elements like the go cut to the to judges, and Prue and Paul, and they're like whoever picked the challenge says, Okay, so here's where they're going to mess it up. Here's what they already know what the challenge for each Baker is going to be, here's what's going to be really hard for them. Here's what they think it's going to be like, here's how it's actually going to be it's like this whole little side conversation they get to have, while the bakers are in there trying to figure out what the heck, the next step is going to be so fascinating.
But enjoyed watching this from the perspective of like, you see the entrepreneurship play out, because they start with hearing the challenge. And everybody's kind of nervous, right, having no idea what's coming. And then they hear the challenges and they do one of two things. Each person either gets totally overwhelmed, or they get super excited. And it's based on knowledge at this point. If they're like, Oh, I can handle that, if that's their thought, you're like, Cool, let's do this. If they're like what the heck is even happening right now, then they feel instantly overwhelmed. And then the guy says, Okay, ready, set, Bake Off to the show. And then they jump into action. Right. So they all hunker down, get super focused, they start getting organized, they get started, they're taking action, so they don't go into overthinking, which is what most of us as entrepreneurs do, because we don't have these deadlines.
We don't we have the luxury of overthinking they don't have that luxury. So they get super focused. And then they get into action. And what happens so fascinating, is that soon as they're an action, their confidence starts to rise. And so they always will come over the camera crew will come over and they'll talk to one of the bakers and be like, Okay, what are you doing right now and the baker will talk to them and they'll say, Okay, so here's the trick to getting chickpeas to act like marang so we're making egg free marang we're using chickpeas instead. So here's the consistency and they talk you through it like they've done it before. Most of them have not as we find out later, but they get these certainly get into their bodies get into action and they start feeling really confident. And then as time goes by, and the clock is counting down, things are taking longer than expected, they start getting kind of urgent, right? They feel that rush, they're starting to panic a little bit. This is when the doubt creeps in. So, in many cases, it's such a mental game, right? In many cases, the Baker's decide at that moment, as the doubt sets in to change course. So they're like, Well, I was gonna do it this way. Now, I gotta cut all that crap out. And I'm just gonna focus on this thing. So they make some decisions. Or they're like, I've got to scrap all of that, and I don't even care anymore about decorating it, I just have to get the thing baked in the middle, right?
So they feel they start making reactive decisions in the moment, because they're feeling that doubt that confidence is not driving them anymore. Now they're being driven by doubt. Now, that's not always a terrible thing. But it's interesting to notice that that is the exact moment in the process, when they start to change course. Think about this as an entrepreneur, how is that true for you? Where are you making decisions in your business, reactionary instant decisions, to change something to move outside of the bigger plan that you set for yourself, because you're being driven by doubt, instead of being driven by confidence, super interesting. And then as the challenge continues, they all have to finish right? Or they don't have to, they want to finish. And so then they switch into determination mode. And then they decide it's kind of hands off, like, I'm going to do the best that I can, I am ready for whatever happens.
The whole goal here is just to have as much done as possible by the time the buzzer goes off. And so they get really determined, they decide to stop overthinking again, right to not let the doubt get in the way and stop them, they're just gonna finish the challenge. And then the buzzer goes off. Everybody, like throws their hands up in the air, and they're like, Okay, that's it, I did it, whatever is going to be is going to be and then they move into being ready to hear feedback. And so this whole process, like I said, it's all of entrepreneurship in a matter of an hour and a half to five hours depending on the challenge. Watch this show if you haven't watched it. And even if you have watched this show, in this frame of mind, because you will see how this works for each person, you'll see who has their mental game under control, and who is just like, entirely driven by self doubt and fear of failure. It's so fascinating. I love this.
So the first takeaway is that playing big is about choosing your desires over your fears. And we can all play a bigger game by coming back to our center by remembering what it is that we want. And recognizing that our fears are just emotions that we don't want to feel. But we totally can. We can feel any emotion and keep going. So you can play a bigger game by practicing the thought, I'm willing to feel disappointed, because it means that I'm trying something new. Or I'm willing to feel humiliation because it means that I'm really putting myself out in the world in a meaningful way. Right, whatever that thought is for you. Whatever you're afraid of. Remember that that fear is only present because you're doing something that matters, and be willing to feel it and do it anyway. Because that is how you play a bigger game.
Lesson two, this is the lesson that I really learned this year, which is that every level feels like starting over. feels like you're brand new every time. This lesson never ceases to amaze me, I relearned this over and over and over again, Guess how often I relearn it. Every time I start a new level. I was coaching someone on this the other day, and we were doing their year in review. And at first they were kind of disappointed. And the reason was that they said I feel like I'm going backward. And I was like What do you mean, you're going backward? You're like, Well, last year, I did all this work to dial in my niche to figure out who my customer really was and to come up with an offer that they would like and a way that I wanted to market to them and I had this strategy that I did, and all of these things that I had figured out and I get into this year and a lot of it worked and I got really close to my goal but I'm back at the same place like I'm asking these exact same questions now I don't know if my niche is right anymore. And I don't know what I want to offer them and I don't know how I want to market to them. If the way that I have been marketing to them. It's like not working and All these questions that I thought I'd figured out, and so I just am going backwards. And I was kind of laughing because I've done the same thing, if not the same thought, because I'm doing the same thing. I'm really looking at my nation, my marketing and all those things, too.
But the difference is that I know, there's no such thing as backward. That's impossible, right? If there was such thing as backward, we would all be like running backward. As soon as we hit like, 50. That'd be like, oh, okay, that's enough. I want to go backward, let's be kids again, right. And we'd all be trying to reel back the years. That's not how life works, there is no such thing as backward, we only go forward, it's impossible to take back moments of our life, they happened, they're in the past, they're done. So when we think about our business in this very linear way, where it's like, forward, backward, two steps forward, one step back, I hear this all the time from clients, too. We get stuck in this thinking that once we do something it's supposed to be done.
But we forget that our business is a living entity. It's like a pet. It's something that you sign on for, to take care of, for the rest of its life. Your job isn't to buy the puppy, it's to buy the puppy, and then feed the puppy and then walk the puppy and then clean up after the puppy and then play with the puppy and then have the puppy in the bed with you and sleep with the puppy and cuddle the puppy. Right? That is your job. That's what you're really signing on for with the business is the continued care and affection and attention for as long as it's alive. And so every morning, when the puppy wakes up and the puppy wants breakfast, and then it wants to go for a walk, right? You never look at it and think you're going backward, you just recognize this is the next things, the next step in order to keep this puppy alive and healthy and happy. And all of those things, right.
So your new day is the next level of your business. If you are really looking at your niche, you're really looking at your marketing, you're really looking at your strategies, and asking really big important questions like is this still What I want is this the direction that I want to be going in? Is this still working in the for the next level that I want to take my business to, that's never going backward. That is of course going forward. And like I said, with the last lesson, the fact that you are in this place asking these questions, and redoing things that you've done in the past, is the sign that you are at a new level. And so the reason I say this is the lesson I really learned this year, and I relearn it every year, is because my tendency is to kind of want to double down on the decisions that I made in the past. Because as I've talked about in recent episodes, I also talked about this in last year's urine review episode, that one was called, give it a year. And I'm sorry, I'm jumping around a little bit. But I believe that for our big goals and the big directions that we want to go that we should give ourselves a lengthy period of time. So it's a year or we give ourselves a predefined period of time to stick with the decisions that we make and stick with the directions that we choose to go in. Because that gives you the focus to play things all the way through to the end. But once we get to that pre decided time, then we come back to start, we come back to the place where we throw everything up in the air and go Okay, what is next. And this is really important, whether you're doing it right now for your business, or whatever the next level is for you.
Anytime you're finding yourself back at what feels like a starting point. It's because you entered a new level. It's because you're in a place where it's important to ask those questions, again, to redefine what the future of your life looks like what the future of your business looks like. It is going to feel like you're starting over because you are but you're not starting at zero. You're just starting at the starting point of a new level. Now the correlation of this lesson with the British Baking Show is a pretty straightforward one. Every episode they have three challenges. And whatever they did in the last challenge, however they approached it, whatever the outcome was, whatever the feedback was, none of it matters, right? It doesn't matter if they killed it and they got amazing feedback they did so good.
They start the next challenge at the starting point and they have to be able To quickly get out of the past focused mindset on what just happened and get into this present, like, okay, here's where I am, this is where I want to go, these are the goals that I have this is the timeframe that I have, and to really be super focused on what is next, what matters, and they're never wasting their time or energy thinking that they're going backward, or they're starting over. I guess they will say, I have seen them be interviewed. And they're like, well, I really messed up the last challenge. So this one's super important. So I guess they have some past focus, but they're not operating from that frame of mind, right? This to have those thoughts is totally human.
So you are going to have that experience and is going to feel like starting over. But the lesson here is to recognize it's just because that happened, and now you're at a new level. So it's time to make forward decisions and to keep moving forward. Which brings us ever so smoothly to lesson three. This is the lesson that I have unlearned this year, and I'm still on learning it. It's not done, but we're never done right? We're always just moving to a new level of it.
Which is stop overthinking. overthinking, gets in the way of our dreams, time and time and time again. Because we all want to know the answers. We all want to prevent our failures or our disappointments or God forbid, we're so afraid of wasting our time or going backward. So we want to make sure that we do everything 100% right, that we're really efficient about it. But overthinking is never useful. It always just slows you down. It always contributes to doubt it contributes to our fears and perpetuates more overthinking. Right, so we're trying to think our way out of a thought problem. It's kind of a mess. In the Baker's on the British Baking Show have the benefit of very specific and clear deadlines, right? They don't have the opportunity to overthink for long, because they have to keep going.
As entrepreneurs, we have to self impose our deadlines. And we have to learn how to honor our own deadlines so that we can overcome our tendencies to overthink. And many of us don't have the skill of knowing how to set and achieve a goal meaning setting a deadline and actually following the steps needed to get to that deadline. So we've got to unlearn overthinking. So the antidote to overthinking is action, the simplest thing that you can do when you catch yourself, and now you've got to be able to catch yourself and recognize that you are overthinking. But as soon as you do that, my recommendation is to take one small but immediate action, because you've got to disrupt the pattern. It's just like any other behavioral pattern, whether it's with food or checking Instagram, the very first step to unlearning a behavior is to recognize the pattern when you're in it and to disrupt the pattern. And once you start to do that, and you start training your brain to stop instead of take the next action automatically, then you can be more intentional with the behavior that you want to implement instead. And you can start to swap those out and learn a new behavior and on learn the old behavior. But disrupting the pattern is the very first thing.
So one small but immediate action. And of course, it's great if the action that you take is in line with the goal that you have or if it's giving you some forward momentum, rather than the overthinking that you're doing. But anything that you do to disrupt the pattern as long as you're not responding and your same default patterning, it's going to be useful for you. It's the antidote to overthinking is just to take any action at all because it starts to show your brain that it's just a learned pattern that you have control over changing.
And that is lesson number three. Stop overthinking this is the lesson that I unlearned in 2020 and will continue to unlearn probably every year for the rest of my life. And that is totally okay. All right, you guys. I hope that you have enjoyed and gotten some insight from these three lessons from 2020. And from the British baking show. If you haven't watched that show, I really recommend it. It's actually quite inspiring and delightful. And it's easy to watch. It's fun to watch. It's fun to root for people. It's fun to celebrate their accomplishments.
This is another thing I wanted to point out on the show is that such a good example of community over competition because it is a competition. Show, right? They're all competing, there's only one winner, there's only one spot. But nobody ever acts like it's cutthroat and the way that other reality shows do. everybody cares about each other, everybody's genuinely concerned, when someone's upset, they're very excited. They're very proud of each other. It's such a beautiful community of people. And I think maybe more than anything else that represents Small Business and Entrepreneurship. at its best. I think that's something that's so beautiful, that I love about small business is that we really put our hearts into what we do. And therefore it matters to us to love each other, over fighting with each other matters to us to win by helping everybody win by contributing value. And using that value, to benefit the world and to make money. I just love it so much. I am so happy to be here with you guys.
Thank you for spending a year with me. Thank you for spending 2020 with me, thank you for putting your heart and soul into your business. And for continuing to show up for yourself continuing to play big. I wish you the happiest of holidays, I hope you guys will do like I'm doing and take a holiday break and plan for it and give yourself the time and space that you need to rejuvenate and restore your energy and to get excited and inspired about all the great things that you're going to do next year. I love you guys. If you missed me over the next few weeks, if you are listening to this in real time, make sure that you connect with me on Instagram at Linsi Brownson.
Go check out the Be Brilliant listener page that is linsibrownson.com/brilliantlistener. I will double check that brilliant listener. That is where you can submit a question to me, you can ask me anything I'm doing coaching q&a is there. I'm also happy to answer any questions about the podcast or about my work. It's a great way to connect with me. So go over there to the brilliant listener page on my website. And yeah, I will see you in 2021. Enjoy your holidays.
Hey, I know that running a small business can feel complicated. So let me help you uncomplicate it. I teach people how to harness their creative brainpower to take clear and focused action to accomplish their goals without burning out. I offer a free one hour consultation where we uncover what is really getting in your way right now. And I'll show you step by step how to create an aligned business that you will love to build. In this conversation. I'm going to give you the foundation to work confidently every single day. And it's going to be super simple. I want you to have the time, energy and freedom for everything that you want in life. And I want you to start having it right now. To find a time that works for you visit linsibrownson.com