Avoiding the perfection-procrastination-paralysis loop with Mandy Bronsil

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So today we have this, Mandy Bronzil, the founder of the Bee Inspired Community, a membership-based

business that helps entrepreneurs and aspiring business owners to break isolation and think

more clearly through connection and shared insights.

Masterminds, co-working, upskill, workshops, and networking experiences.

Mandy brings people together to leverage collective intelligence, open conversations,

and move forward with practical ideas that can actually be tested in their business.

Now, Mandy's journey from running her own business solo to building a purpose-driven community

demonstrates what can happen when one person chooses courage over perfection

and creates space for others to open up to.

And we're navigating growth, profitability, and the challenge of letting go of control

as she partners with other people within the business.

She's redefining what sustainable entrepreneurship can look like for founders

who want both freedom and impact.

Mandy, welcome to the show.

Thank you very much Mark, I'm happy to be here.

Well, thank you so much for joining us.

So, to kick us off, can you expand a touch more on where you are today with your business

and who is it that you loved work with?

Absolutely, where am I today with my business?

I'm a few years down the line of creating this community that brings entrepreneurs and professionals

together and really our goal is breaking business isolation.

I came across this phenomenon whereby everyone that I was speaking to, fellow entrepreneurs

were asking the same questions, bumping into the same obstacles and that really gave me

the energy and the motivation to think, right, we've got to be smarter about this.

Let's help each other more, let's think together and let's make the journey less frustrating

and a lot more fun like it should be.

Says every entrepreneur ever, yes, however, we also suck at this.

We try to do things on our own, try and work it out, head down, which I think it comes

in a good place, but it's fundamentally flawed.

So, tell me more about what your clients within this community, what, what did not, what

you know they need, what do they think they want, what are they looking for?

Often they're looking to stop spinning and I say stop spinning and I'm making quotation

marks with my hands because that's literally what they say.

Recently we had our Christmas breakfast, which is a really fun event, but during it I asked

what is the top thing that this is helping you with and that you need?

And that was what came out collectively, stop spinning was the main thing and when you

are running your own business, whether you're setting it up or whether you've been running

it for years, you only have yourself and your own intelligence.

And there is often rarely anyone to challenge you and so you get stuck in a rap wheel and

we don't know how to do everything.

So that's really what I mean by breaking the business isolation just to have someone

say right, actually you've already got the answer, just do that and move on.

You mentioned something earlier, choosing courage over perfection, I don't know what you

said, you said it really well and it's really that.

I want to say, okay, do you know what, you already have the answer, stop overthinking it,

just do it.

Okay, there's two core concepts you just mentioned there.

So when we define stop spinning because I think we need to refine this and define this.

So it's number one to have someone to like hold on, are you sure?

Is that external challenging?

Because some people are, you can go after Pluto, you can go in a wrong direction without

realizing, all there's the never-ending seeking.

I know this, I was in this trait for years that seeking something, something external, something

else to help me when really to quote most mindset entrepreneurs, the truth is within.

And I say that sarcastically, but I also say that because it's so true and it took me

a lifetime to realize this.

So can you expand a bit more on those two angles, which is to be challenged to stop and

also maybe understand what you actually have, what you should be doing.

Right, so the stop spinning, there is a loop that I think absolutely everyone knows whatever

field you're in, but I'm working with entrepreneurs and business owners and so I'll stick to that.

It's the perfection, procrastination, paralysis loop.

We want to do things well.

Most of us are pretty serious professionals.

We know what we do, we have a good expertise and so we want to do things well.

We're in the seek of perfection, which of course doesn't exist.

So while we're looking for perfection, we're holding off doing the thing because we're

sort of trying to find the right way to do it.

And this, so this obviously turns into procrastination, very well known phenomenon by everything

at entrepreneur, I think, and no idea what you've been absolutely never that eventually

turns into paralysis, where you've lost confidence.

You don't even know what you're doing anymore.

You don't know why you started on this loop in the first place and you probably lost motivation

as well.

Yes.

So it's really the stop spinning is this friendly group of people that are going to say get

going, stop asking that same question or look at it this way instead and just that will

help you move forward.

So I would say that that's the first part.

The second one that you mentioned remind me it was the truth is within.

It's true.

It's such a cliche.

And I think this is really about having again the courage to dare to do things your way.

And not necessarily the right way.

I have read a book and it says I need to do XYZ, but in this postcast, they had to say

it had to be done.

If it doesn't resonate with you, don't do it that way.

It's never going to work for you.

There's all these magic bullet formulas out there, but we tried to implement them and then

we get frustrated.

It doesn't work.

And then we think we did it wrong.

It just wasn't for us.

I wanted to add to that because all these, we can talk about marketing and business.

Everything works.

Yes.

What's right for you?

Right.

So I think that's a lovely said that the courage do things your way.

That's, I think, let's break this down because I think this is really hard within in the

coaching community because coaching should be about helping someone come to their conclusion

to ask to guide them.

Coaching is not, here's what you need to do this my way.

Coaching is, I mean, you can have frameworks around it, but it's bringing out what's

right for them.

That's the very essence of coaching.

However, so much coaching this day and age is, here's what you need to do, do this.

Forget your intuition, forget the signposts, forget the feelings, just do that because it

works.

Yeah.

So I love you brought in.

So maybe, maybe talk about that intuition, trusting yourself.

Yeah.

So I, I don't know if this resonates with you, but often I compare intuition to there's

like a shy person at the back of the classroom that has the answer to the question that the

teacher's asking, but doesn't believe it's right.

And so they never really say it.

And then the teacher finally gives the answer because no one else got it and you're like,

I knew it all along.

That's your intuition.

And I feel like so many people have sort of this little thought or this dream or something

they want to do, but they put it away because logic doesn't give the space.

We reason it away.

It's not profitable.

It doesn't make sense, I can't, whatever.

And then years down the line, they find themselves, I should have done it.

I knew it all along.

That's intuition.

And I think that it would be naive to say, you know, hear that little voice and just go

with it.

We're not comfortable doing that.

It's not for nothing that we're pushing it away all the time.

But you can hear it and think about it and let it in and explore it.

So I think we need to learn to hear it, hear that little whisper from the back of the classroom

and just allow it to be explored without pressure and make that link between our logic and

our intuition without immediately disconnecting from it.

And again, the signpost for me and you might be different.

The way my intuition talks to me is maybe different from you.

So we need to listen to these signposts internally.

You can also say that the nods and winks from the universe, which is like, I truly believe

we have guides that are like, they think it's super funny.

I'm going to drop this and I'm going to let this happen because it's a validation.

It's a signpost.

It knows that there's playfulness with what happens.

Yes.

One thing I want to bring up is there's producer's training of thought.

There was a contradiction that you said, not intentionally, but with intuition and no

perfectionism.

So that I knew this all along.

Yes.

So you know it now because you saw the results of the actions.

So sometimes you have to take the wrong actions to realize, oh, that's not an Elon Musk.

Love more hate him.

Build around the explosions.

So he sends a rocket up, that blew up.

Cool.

Let's not do that again.

What went wrong?

Embracing failure.

Embracing.

I tried this.

Didn't work.

And it's like, ah, I felt the fluffy, fluffy butterflies in my stomach.

I felt the weight on my shoulder.

I knew I just didn't have the confidence or I didn't know that that meant this.

So we're just building up our internal guidance system.

Maybe that's a good way of saying it.

Yeah.

And we don't know what we don't know.

So we have that little idea at the beginning, but you have to have the courage again to follow

it and to give it a bit of breathing space to find out how can it live?

How can it grow?

So tell me about your community.

What happens within the community with having a like-minded entrepreneurs to be able to

come together, to be able to not have that isolation, to be able to challenge or celebrate

or encourage what's this like?

I need to have a signpost made that says, leave your ego at the door because I spend

my life saying this.

We often feel like we have to live up to a certain image, which is normal in society.

We do have to have a certain way of being.

But within our community, it's like we drop that and we just all become human and we just

all become people facing similar struggles.

So nobody really feels silly when they say, okay, well, my profitability margins are

off.

I thought it would work.

It's not, we're two years later and there is clearly a problem.

Everyone's been through that, you know, and so people feel safe to say that and other

people will respond saying, I recognize that.

Here's what I did.

Try this.

So it's really a group of people that are daring to be vulnerable, daring to say what

they see to each other because everyone knows that it's coming from a good place and

also just really encouraging each other to try, to move, to take a step.

So I think that's really the beauty of this group that we've created.

I'm getting a good essence to this community now because you talk about courage and now

you've said the word at least three times, dare, beautiful to dare to be vulnerable as

a beautiful dance of words there, to dare to be vulnerable, to dare to encourage, to

dare to be open is that does take courage.

It does.

It really does and it sounds so simple, but it's really not.

It's simple.

It's just not easy.

It sounds simple.

It, well, yeah, it's simple, but not easy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

I can ask the stupid question.

Why isn't it easy?

If it's the simplest thing to do.

I feel like there's a lot of pressure on people, on society, just to perform.

And yeah, like to do things right.

And it's, you know, it's almost as if we should be able to do things right immediately.

But you cannot get good at something without trying and failing first.

Yeah.

Talk about that pressure because I feel that.

The pressure as an entrepreneur to not only impact the world and help other people but

bring in revenue and supply for your family to have something that you enjoy, have something

that you're proud about, that's people see you.

The pride with your coaches you're working with, your clients you're working with, your

team members, the word pressure, I was like that.

And so one of the things that we do a lot when somebody is just starting up, that's

terrible, right?

You don't have any clients yet and you've got to go and sell to a client and ask money

for it, but for something you've never done before.

So this gets people into a huge tail spin of pressure.

But we're always saying just do a pilot, communicate a launch price, ask for feedback, ask for

testimonials, be open, that this is the first time that you're doing it within this context.

But you're not just anyone, you're doing this because of your experience that you've had

in the past few years.

So we really work a lot like that and say like just communicate it, be open with it.

And on top of it, your first times will be really

happy.

But you know, like, oh, cool, I get to be your first client.

I mean, I don't know about you, but I love being someone's first client because it's

so great.

They're doing something and yeah, that's that's your mindset shift.

So to be someone's first, there's a time and a place where I would love to be in a

beta membership.

It's like, oh, I get that for remove a couple of zeros exactly and get even more support

fantastic.

Because other times where I'm like, no, no, right now I need the experts at the top of

their game, I think that's okay to hold those both as true.

It doesn't discount.

So I remember when we first did a beta and one coach selling us do a beta.

Other one said, nope, don't do that.

You devalue it.

Do this.

I think the place in the middle when you named it communicates to be honest.

As long as you communicate and be honest, you could launch a program without it being

a beta.

But with the confidence on who might do this, let me tell you the ways.

Here's why.

It doesn't matter if you haven't done it before.

Don't lie and say you have testimonies when you don't, but there's no reason why you

can't go straight out of the gate.

Big confidence.

Other times to do the beta, to have a collective group that I'm going to be asking feedback

throughout, that's the discount for doing this.

Honestly, in communication, that is the basis of business.

You've nailed it.

Yeah, it's exactly that.

And the decision on do a beta or not.

There is never a right or wrong.

There is never a right or wrong.

It's just what's right for you.

What sits well with you?

What do you feel confident saying?

Do that.

I don't overthink it, because I would over-logify this.

What's the right thing?

As if you enjoy the human design.

I'm a projector.

A splenic projector.

My intuition comes thick and comes fast.

If I sit with it, it'll go.

So that intuition, I need to listen to it.

So I'm needed to practice listening to it.

So I love that.

Look, Mandy, make this real for us, because I mean, you're not only teaching and guiding

and creating this amazing community, but you're an entrepreneur.

So you're living and breathing it at the same time.

What's it like for you to be healthy with this and being a human entrepreneur?

You're experiencing it at the same time.

What's that like?

Yeah.

I've been an entrepreneur for a few years before I launched this community.

And that was really helpful to have that experience and just to have gone through all of the

cycles that I see a lot of people starting with.

But at the same time, I learn all the time.

And this has been like an unexpected bonus, because of the discussions that we're having

in the mastermind groups, because of the up-skilling workshops that we're having.

Because I'm in these all of the time, my business skills have increased hugely.

Which was, you know, you're just chipping away.

And I mean, usually when you want to do a course, so you want to learn something new,

you have to take time for it.

But for me, it's really just been, as I'm going, I'm picking all of these things up.

And so that was a really unexpected added bonus for me as an entrepreneur setting up this

business.

Yeah.

Well, business is not linear.

I mean, look at our journey with, I had a design agency back in the UK for a decade,

then launched on for gay, self-personal mindset coaching specifically for entrepreneurs.

Because I saw, I was given people amazing websites, designs, marketing strategies, and entrepreneurs

were messing it up.

Why?

The human side.

So I shifted to solving the human side, understanding that.

And now, because we've used podcasting so well to grow our business, to be able to reach

more people, to be able to make an impact, we now teach podcasting, as well as mindset.

So it's not linear, but you can see these journeys where it's like, ah, let's tweak

that.

Let's go this way.

Listen to your intuition.

Listen to the marketplace.

So you've had a very similar kind of, you go in this direction, oh, let's tweak that.

Oh, let's look at that.

What was it like?

Follow the fun.

I do improv.

And that is our motto.

Follow the fun.

And that's how I do business.

I think it's so important to enjoy what you're doing, and to follow where your energy takes

you.

Yeah.

Can you say that again for me?

Because I need that to line up.

Yeah.

Great.

Yes.

Kate would be dying right now, that she lives her life with play, fun.

I can get super serious sometimes.

I can be more strategic.

So.

Yeah.

Oh, I think that's a really big part of the

communication that we have within our community as well is we have a lot of fun.

Mm hmm.

Yeah.

So what's, what, what was that moment like for you where you realize, hold on, there's

a whole gap in the markets, someone who's a solve this, I'm going to step up.

What was that moment like for you of realization and then action?

I think sometimes you have a realization and you need to just go with it before you

can talk yourself out of it.

Yeah.

That's exactly what happened with building this community because if we knew how much was

attached to it, how much work, how big the project that we actually had that we're

taking on is we probably wouldn't do it.

And so for me, it was really that way.

It was sort of like, I think that there is a niche here.

I think I can do something about it.

I think we need to leverage collective intelligence more.

And so I, I threw actually one social media post who wants to be part of a focus group

because I want to see is there a market for this and within two weeks, I had a pretty

big focus group of like 10 people like, and, and these were of course potential clients

as well to first join the membership.

And so I heard what they want, what do they not want, what's important.

And then from there, I just went, right, let's do a test month.

I'll see, can I actually manage this and, you know, is what I have in my head, does

it translate into reality?

And so I think that was at the focus group in May, I had the first trial month in June,

and then we launched post summer with the mastermind memberships with the first group.

So I really just acted before I could think too much because I do fall prey to this loop

if I'm not careful.

And I know myself, if I don't do it now, I've got, I'm going to talk myself out of it.

And sometimes you feel when you've got to follow something, it feels like it just clicks

into place.

So for me, that vision of the community felt like that.

Okay.

Everyone, if you're curious, rewind a minute.

That is your framework, focus group, test run, full program, most people miss.

That was mine.

Yeah.

I think that's a great framework.

Again, everything's different, but as a, I like, I love things in trees.

It simplifies everything.

Yeah.

Yeah, they work well.

But what you said there about the focus group, that's missing and so many people launch

a beta.

They spend so long creating a program.

I'm a big supporter of you have a program within you.

You know, you can serve it.

Do the first one live.

You don't waste time creating something that's not going to be relevant.

So your focus group asked people, what do they want?

What don't they want?

How do they want it?

Then you create the trial run, then you do the full, then it comes from there.

Fantastic framework for your realization.

So you luckily, and you can unpack this for me, you luckily got the proof, the validation

externally, before your mind started saying, hold on, less than I do it.

Yeah.

So you had the realization, you took action before that kicked in and then you got proof,

which solidified it.

If you would not have got proof, that voice would have been loud, loud, loud.

How important is, how important is that external validation?

I mean, at the end of the day, when you're creating a product or a service, you've got

to be feeding a need.

If I wouldn't have got the external validation, it means that I haven't got the right thing.

And so what am I going to sell?

Something that no one wants and who wants to do that?

So I probably would have either dropped the idea altogether or I would have gone back

to the drawing board and see, okay, how do I tweak this?

Depending on how motivated I was to make it work.

And in this case, that was very motivated.

So I probably would have gone back and tweaked it and reframed it and just gone back to

another focus group.

Okay, so that shows the external validation is different from needing that pride and that

support when mindset coach would say, you're an anything external, everything's within.

You should be proud without seeking pride.

But this is the contradiction that I think when you open up the full dialogue, you do

need, you'll feed your need for someone else, therefore you do need validation to feed

them like this program is the best in the world.

Yeah, let's let the market talk, right?

Yeah, exactly, exactly.

And often the difference between success and not taking off is just a few tweaks.

It's often very frustratingly simple.

It's not necessarily the idea but the execution.

So yeah.

So I mean, where's all this going for you, personally?

What do you like super duper excited about?

Have you got like a big plan that sets out or is it like, no, it's, it's got room to

breathe because of you know that there's going to be, there's going to be journeys, situations

along the way.

What's it like for you?

The whole community has taken on a life of its own.

And I think from the beginning, I've always had this, this feeling that this is, if it's

not serving a purpose, I have other things to do.

And so I've really always been careful to make sure are the things that we're doing relevant

are they adding value?

You can ever please everyone, but you need to make sure that are we going in a direction

that's sustainable for me and for them.

For example, just to give you a very simple example at the beginning when we started the

mastermind meetings, we had one meeting a month.

And then my margins were not high enough.

And also it was quite frequent.

And then I heard, so I shared this with the people, I said, this is like, I need to rethink

the model because it's just not really working for me as it is.

I want everyone to be able to be a member if they want to be, but I need to rethink my

own things.

And they said, well, actually once a month is a lot for us.

Why don't you just do once every week is a lot for us?

Why don't you just do twice a month?

Great.

So by sharing what I was stuck on, they gave me a solution that worked better for them

as well, whereas it's a bit scary to say, I got my margins a bit wrong, but I just launched

into it.

So spontaneously, but yeah, I had to revisit things.

And by being open to them and saying, guys, this is what I'm dealing with, they gave me

a solution that I, I mean, it's simple, but I wouldn't have come up with it.

I would have found all kinds of other complicated things probably, but I wouldn't have found

that very simple solution.

And that changed everything.

Give more or not less.

So Mandy, you've just number one gone first, showed authenticity by your exhibiting and

doing exactly what you're teaching.

And secondly, a great principle here, Alex Amozis said this all the time, you can solve

just about any problem in your business by talking to your clients.

Revolutionary, right?

However, it's scary sometimes.

It's scary.

Yeah, because you have to admit, you don't know how to handle it best.

You have options, but you don't know what's best.

Yes.

Yeah.

Absolutely.

Well, I wish you all the best as you continue to grow and grow as communities, serve

more people and continue to lead with authenticity.

So Mandy, thank you so much.

Thank you, Mark.

You're welcome.

And look, for those people who want to know more about you and your community, how do they find you?

How do they reach out?

The simplest thing is to go onto the website.

So I'm based in Switzerland and I have a Swiss website.

So it's www.b-inspired.ch.

I have all the information on the community there.

So we have a lot of local events.

We also have online mastermind group.

So we can sort of cater to both areas.

I'm always happy to connect with people on LinkedIn.

I think LinkedIn is a really great networking tool as well.

And a way to keep up with each other and stay informed of market trends.

So yeah, I would say visit the website or connect with me on LinkedIn.

Fantastic.

So everyone, if you're curious or think this sounds amazing, go and check it out.

Start the conversation.

Say, Mark, send you.

And have some, we say, have some fun.

Follow the fun.

Follow the fun.

Hashtag.

Follow the fun.

Love that.

Oh, man, they look thanks again.

This has been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you very much, Mark.

It's been great to talk.

Oh, you're welcome.