Burn The Map: Holograms, Flat Squirrels, & Why You Really Need Cake on Tuesday w/ Elizabeth Bieniek

In This Episode:
We sit down with Elizabeth Bieniek: accidental innovator, corporate plane-repairer at 30,000 feet, and author of Cake on Tuesday, a book for people who like their business advice with more real talk and less corporate fluff. Elizabeth walks us through her unpredictable path—from getting an MBA at Babson and tumbling into the tech world, to launching a stealth startup inside Cisco, and then finally distilling years of chaos into 25 lessons for unlocking corporate innovation. Why Cake on Tuesday? Because frankly, what’s the point of slogging through strategy sessions if you’re not enjoying the ride (and the cake)?

What We Cover:

How to build a “startup inside the mothership” when corporate just wants you to stop asking why
Why communication—not just coding—makes or breaks innovation
The hard (but hilarious) truth about decision-making, feedback, and why you shouldn’t listen to every single “mentor”
Stories from the trenches: flying the plane while building it, collecting callouses (not just LinkedIn endorsements), and why you need to laugh, especially when everything’s on fire
How Elizabeth’s book, Cake on Tuesday, became a survival guide for intrapreneurs, founders, and anyone allergic to syrupy corporate motivational posters

Guest Bio:
Elizabeth Bieniek, author of Cake on Tuesday and host of the Cake on Tuesday podcast, is the kind of leader who asks “why”—loudly, persistently, and (let’s be honest) a bit annoyingly—for the good of slapping sense into business as usual. A veteran of making new things happen inside giant corporations, she’s passionate about helping real doers cut through the noise and actually get things done. Find her at CakeOnTuesday.com

Enjoy! This show was brought to you by Wrench.ai.

Follow Dan:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danbaird/
X: https://x.com/mrdanbaird

Follow Elizabeth:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elizabethbieniek/

Cake On Tuesday LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cake-on-tuesday/

Follow the Pod:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@burnthemappodcast
Twitter/X: https://x.com/BurnTheMapPod
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/burnthemappodcast/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@burnthemappodcast
BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/burnthemappodcast.bsky.social

Selected Links From This Episode:

People and Organizations Mentioned in This Episode:

Elizabeth Bieniek
Dan Baird
Cisco, WebEx Hologram
Cake on Tuesday
Wrench.ai

Show Notes & Timestamps:

(00:17) How an ex-holography expert became the go-to for founders who don’t want to crash their planes (or their projects)
(03:29) Sneaking into Cisco as an English major: No, you don’t have to write code to shake up big tech
(07:18) Building startups inside the belly of the beast—less “special projects,” more “just fix it already”
(10:41) Writing post-mortems (the good kind, not the HR kind): How Cake on Tuesday became a book for people who’d rather laugh than cry
(14:53) Why innovation is 90% persuasion and 10% trying not to strangle a “waffler”
(18:49) The chapter everyone quotes: Don’t Be a Flat Squirrel (you know who you are)
(22:16) Reframing disagreement: Be disagreeable, just not a jerk
(24:29) How to spot—and work with—actual doers (Hint: They’re busy, but they’ll still answer your call)
(35:21) Staying sane: mantra walls, daily stoicism, and refusing to take yourself too seriously

Burn The Map: Holograms, Flat Squirrels, & Why You Really Need Cake on Tuesday w/ Elizabeth Bieniek

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