285: Go from Vision to Reality

Sundae reflects on key professional decisions which helped get her to this ninth business anniversary. Specifically, Sundae shares tips for how she manifested her endgame and took her goals (again and again) from vision to reality. Sundae also divulges more about the transitions happening behind the scenes and provides details about the celebratory upcoming series: Summer Moves, Summer Grooves.

The post 285: Go from Vision to Reality appeared first on Sundae Schneider-Bean, LLC..

This scene is a staple in countless crime movies: Detectives in an office get collaborating over a complicated, weblike vision board of clues (which they add to as the case unfolds). They stare at this thing for months, even years, until finally, they have this eureka moment, “see it,” and solve the puzzle.

That’s because when you write something down and put it in front of your nose, it materializes an abstract concept. The process transitions intangible ideas and moves them from the thought realm into the real world, greasing your abilities to then piece everything together.

Side note: I’ve also noticed another thing seasoned detectives do well: TRUST THEIR INSTINCTS. Why? Because many times they’ll look back in hindsight and realize they followed their gut and made a great move.

I’m celebrating my ninth business anniversary! Entrepreneurship was harder than I thought it would be, but also better than I expected. And this week, I’ll look back on key professional decisions I made along the way that helped get me to this proud moment.

Specifically, I’ll share tips for how I manifested my endgame and took my goals (again and again) from vision to reality. Additionally, I’ll give you a succulent sneak peek into what’s happening behind the curtain as I undergo multiple transitions while taking sundaebean.com into its 10th year.

I’ll also reveal more details about our highly-anticipated upcoming series, Summer Moves, Summer Grooves. In it, I’ll replay nine pivotal podcasts over nine weeks, each one honoring a different year I’ve been in business.

So come celebrate with me!

What You’ll Learn in this Episode:

Gratitude for forced learning
From multicultural to intercultural
Embedding internal transformation in your endgame
Importance of setting a predetermined timeframe
Your vision = your life, your values, your context

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Hello, It is 4:00 am in New York, 10:00 am in Johannesburg, and 1:00 pm in Bangkok. Welcome to IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean. I am an intercultural strategist, transformation facilitator, and solution-oriented coach, and I am on a mission to help you adapt & succeed through ANY life transition.

 

If you know me, you know I love birthdays! I am BIG on celebrating because to be honest, if you don’t celebrate, no one was gonna do it for you. And by the time this episode goes live, I will have blown out 9 candles in honor of my business birthday! 

 

June 19, 2013, I walked away from a signing ceremony for my business with a dream in my heart. And as I speak to you right now, I am honestly humbled to think of what I’ve been able to experience and build since then. If I’m really honest with you, it was a lot harder than I thought. I ain’t gonna lie. Really. But it was also better than I thought. In other anniversary episodes, I’ve shared my learnings and we’ll make sure that we’ve included some of those in the show notes for you. 

 

But today, I want to share how I celebrate by walking you through a process and I hope that it will help you as you work toward your goal, the dream in your heart. And I’m gonna be really transparent, I’m going to share with you what I used to do and what I’ve started doing that really makes an impact. And man, before we dive in, I just want to say when you hold that goal in your heart or that dream in your heart, keep in there the fact that if you do the work, if you stay committed, if you stay creative, you too can be celebrating in 9 years. You too can be celebrating in 3 years, right? Sometimes when we have a dream in our heart, it feels safer to hold that dream there than actually try to make it happen. You got to put some skin in the game. And I just want to encourage you to take whatever you have in the ideal realm and get ready to bring it into the real world because if I can do it, you can do it.

 

So let me dive in, I want to share with you a little bit, sort of in honor of these 9 years. Can’t believe that when this goes live, I’ll be 9 years and a day, stepping into my 10th year. I think back to what got me started in my business, I started with The Endgame. And the endgame is what I also teach my coaches in the coalition to get clear on what is it that you want to be saying. What’s your endgame? And so this doesn’t feel overwhelming or does it feel like it has to be forever? Just pick a time frame. 

 

So when I started my business, my endgame was about 12 to 18 months out. I think I wrote the endgame, oh, I don’t know, March 2012, and I knew by March 2013 we would be already in Burkina Faso or I think we were going to be just on our way there, closing up Switzerland, moving there and then six months later, I would be into my time in Burkina Faso. So I picked like 12 to 18 months endgame. So what’s your time frame? What does a time frame that you’re looking at that’s meaningful for you? And for me, my endgame was to leave my corporate position well, get my website set up with my services clearly communicating who I was and have one of those cool opt-ins like a freebie that people could get to join my newsletter. 

 

That was my endgame. I wanted to have my legal ducks in a row and have some sort of brand identity, right? That seems simple, but to be honest, I did a lot of deep work to figure some of that out. And that was my endgame and once I reach that, I had to write a new endgame, and then a new endgame, and then a new endgame. And at one point, you start to think, “Do I need to change the endgame?” Instead of it just being bigger. “Do I need to shift direction?”  

 

So one of the places that I think makes sense to start is actually the end. I got really clear 10 years ago actually before I started my business officially what my endgame was, but my endgame was focused on a period of time in the future. I didn’t say like, “When I retired.” It was more like, “Hey, when I have a business I feel proud of, that I would define as successful.” So, when you’re looking at a big goal, a dream, something you want to create, whether it is for your business, or it could be for family, it could be something for, I don’t know, your personal development, your spiritual development, a relationship, whatever that is. What is the thing that you could say, “Hey, if I get there, that’s exactly where I want to be.”? So that’s your endgame. 

 

And for my business, I had to pick a time frame. So let’s say in the next three to five years, pick a time frame in the next three to five years, I want to be saying that. And then I had to fill in the blanks: “How do I want to be feeling? What do I want to experience? Who do I want to be serving? What do I want to be doing?” 

 

I mentioned this, a little bit in our last episode about the importance of vision. And that vision has to come from you, not from the outside, you know that about me when I talk about ambition, ambitious has to be defined outside of external scope and scale, and defined by you because it’s you that has to make it happen. It is your life. It is your values. Your context. 

 

Especially in business. A lot of people get wrapped up around this idea of six figures. I have clients who are like, “I don’t want a six figure business. I just want to make a couple grand every month so I can live a beach life.” Right? It really has to be defined by you. So:

 

What’s your endgame? 
Pick the time frame, for me it was three to five years.
And then answer it. What do you want to be saying that you’ve done? How do you feel? Who are you serving? And what have you experienced? And then write it out.

 

That strategy, naming your endgame has served me for years. But here’s the thing, my endgames were just getting more expansive. They were getting more international. The revenue was going higher. I was serving more people. I was also making contributions to communities that were underserved. So my endgame was like a balloon that was small and kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger. 

 

But at one point, I was like, “Hmm. Do I need to just keep adding air to this balloon or do I need to do something different.” And here’s what I want to share with you that I’ve learned. Oftentimes when we do the endgame exercise, and I’m not the only one who talks about the endgame, there are other people out there that talk about it. It is contextual. What I mean by that is it’s outside of your context of your current lived experience. So now I’m a big fan of the endgame still, but I encourage you to go a little deeper. To get a little truer to yourself. A little closer to your lived experience. And what I believe helps you do that is ATT: Where are you at? Your Ambitious Transformation in Transition. And if you do that first, it will impact the quality of your endgame. 

 

So I’m going to walk you through ATT and give you a little bit of insight on my ATT and how that impacts my endgame. As an example for you to think about; How does it impact yours? Okay, so all I have is basically chicken scratches here on a piece of paper that I’m going to read to you when I did this process for myself. And this is a process that’s like an operating system that I constantly have going on in the back of my brain and it helps me, like a GPS, it helps me recalculate so that I can keep working towards what’s important to me, but not lose sight of what is.

 

Okay. So if I’m in ATT, where am I at? Before I revisit this endgame, here’s what that looks like for me. So if you know my work, you know ambitious transformation in transition, I always have you start from the end, start with what is IN TRANSIT? Transition first, because this is the water we’re swimming in. It is the context that is pushing and pulling on us that impacts everything. So:

 

Name T. Where are you IN TRANSIT? And for me, when I look at that, there is this global transition we’re going through; I’ve used the word “Weltschmerz” I don’t know how many times in the last few months. Weltschmerz is the pain of the world that you feel when we look at the mass shootings that happened in Texas and Buffalo. The war in Ukraine, it is hard to not feel weltschmerz right now. It obviously has a toll on our energy and our hearts. It puts everything we do into perspective and helps us reevaluate, “Where do I want my money to go? What causes do I want to speak up about?” Do you see how when we’re focusing on the bigger picture, it does impact our core values and where our priorities are. 

 

So for me, I’ve been thinking about all of those topics, and they have been weighing on my heart. Other places that we’re IN TRANSIT, my family is literally in transit from South Africa to the US on the way to Switzerland for a new phase of our lives. Not only is that geographical transition happening, my husband is transitioning into a new job. One of my sons is transitioning from middle school to high school, if you want to call it that in German, transitions into a new school system, a new language context. I myself will be transitioning into a new language context. So those are things that are IN TRANSIT. Something also family-related, we’re going from being renters to homeowners and that means we’ve been renovating at a distance. There’s a level of responsibility that comes with that and the level of joy in stability that it brings, right? So all of those things when I look at IN TRANSIT, all of those are happening at the same time. 

 

Have I mentioned that I’m in my mid-40s and my body is changing? Have I mentioned that my parents are in their 70s and my relationship with them is changing in terms of how many precious decades I have left with them? I have nephews that are growing, all of those things are in flux. So for you if you want to get to an endgame, go out wide and look at; Where is your life IN TRANSIT? 

 

And then it helps us with the next phase:

Transformation. Remember with the work that I do, there are three types of transformation; Internal Transformation, External Transformation, and Performance Led. And it’s really important to just pause. Pause and listen. “Where am I feeling an internal transformation? Where am I feeling an external transformation? And where is there something performance led?” Pause and listen, because maybe there are quiet whispers that are important to pay attention to that should be in your endgame. 

 

So, when I went through this exercise, I was surprised because if you know me, you would probably guess that transformation is high on the performance lead category. But actually, this time, not. There is an internal transformation going on that I can’t ignore and I’m pretty sure it’s connected to the last few years of COVID. But there is a calling I am feeling inside. Like many, I miss face-to-face. I miss face-to-face trainings. I miss being in an office with other people and sitting across from them and having a meeting, probably because of the nine years of having a location independent business. I miss traveling for work exploring new places, not just for vacation, but with an objective that has to be met. I miss peers, people who introduce new ideas to me I wasn’t seeking but I’m grateful that I gained. And I missed, this is something what I’ve discovered, I missed forced learning. 

 

Let me explain. I studied Spanish at University, I studied communcation and rhetoric, I had no plans to learn German, Swiss German or French, but it was forced on me because of how my life context changed. I am so grateful that I learned that. There are skills I’ve learned along the way that had nothing to do with my choice, but were forced upon me to learn, and I’m so grateful. And those are the things that I’m feeling. I’m feeling this internal plug, as an interculturalist, I talked about intercultural competence development and maintenance and transitions that other people are going through. But because we’ve been relatively sheltered in South Africa because of the security situation, because of our life context, I’m hungry to dive into a new context. So I need to honor that. Those internal transformations need to be embedded in my endgame. I didn’t choose those. I didn’t, like, “select the box.” They were from the inside and I’m listening. 

 

External transformation, you could say, is our move. That our destination was chosen. We did have some say in it, but there was some external and now we are adapting to a new context. Who are we going to be in that place 9 years down the road after 9 years of experience? We’ll find out. 

 

And I’m also noticing in this time of transformation is something really interesting in my business. Years ago, I started out as sort of a solopreneur, I wanted to make a one-to-one impact, deep in people’s lives. And then I started listening to something else in my business around 2017, 2018, I wanted to make a greater impact, and that’s why I created a program, a digital program that could reach thousands, to make a bigger impact. And I realized that if I was the only one who could facilitate that, my impact is limited and that’s why I started the coalition, expanding my impact. I’m feeling the tug again about impact. I’m going to share more about that as things develop, but I’m feeling it. I’m feeling the impact of helping organizations go from multicultural to intercultural. I’m feeling the tug to have multigenerational organizations go to intergenerational organizations. I’m feeling the impact to help leaders make an impact in their organization. 

 

These are not things I chose. These are things that are evolving that are coming, right? And they have to go in my endgame. 

 

Now we went through transit, we go to transformation. Most people are thinking, “Sundae. You’re crazy. You’ve got so much going on. Is this possible? You really want to increase impact? You want to add complexity?” My answer is, “Yes.” 

 

This is my definition of ambition. This is outside of external scope and scale. This is not the first time that I’ve done things that are, let’s say unexpected, and people didn’t understand. And in hindsight realize, wow, that was a really great move, right? I have done this before. I trust that inside of me. And it’s the same thing with my clients. I have clients who are working full-time. They have children. They have a relationship. They have binational families. They have outside committee responsibilities, and they come to me and say, “Hey, I also want to write a book.” Other people would say, “You’re crazy. That’s too ambitious.” But the question isn’t that. It’s about, how do we make it happen? What kind of support needs to be in place? Where do you need to invest? How do you need to take care of yourself? How can you do things differently to make that happen? 

 

That is Ambitious Transformation in Transition. Other people might have a wildly ambitious goal to just slow way down and do nothing. That would be even more ambitious goal for some people than taking on a leadership responsibility, for example. So, do you see where I’m getting here? When you go through ATT and you listen closely, it impacts your endgame. When we just do the endgame outside of our context, outside of our life transitions, outside of the inner transformation, external and performance led transformations we’re feeling, outside of our own definition of ambition, it’s just like a cognitive left brain exercise. Disconnected from all of the other rich nuances in your life. When you first look at where you’re ATT, it makes it much richer. 

 

So I feel truly blessed when I have reached an endgame and I’m ready to write a new one. And at this point in my life, I’m so grateful that I am looking at where I’m at, and taking the richness of those answers and integrating it into what is next. I do look forward to this next phase. I do look forward to sharing next with you as it develops, as it unfolds. I’m not overwhelmed because I trust the process.  So, my invitation to you is to kind of get curious: 

What is the time frame that you want to write an endgame for? 
And then identify, in terms of that time frame, what is it that you want to be feeling saying doing and experiencing? 

 

And if you want it to be really rich, look through ATT for you and then infuse those answers into your endgame. Thank you for experimenting with that. I can’t wait to hear what your results are. Please reach out to me in an email or in social media. And let me know what you took away. What you discovered about yourself. How it informed your endgame. I want to hear from you. I will share more with you as we go on. 

 

And to keep the celebration going not just for my 9 years in business but for you, we’re going to do a special series called Summer Moves, Summer Grooves, and we will be having each week for the 9 years I’ve been in business, 9 weeks, 9 podcasts that we will spotlight that actually represent the easiest way you can make a big move in your own life. I, together with my team and my clients have hand-picked the 9 most impactful podcasts that we’ve noticed over the recent years that help my clients move forward on their endgame, in coming to terms with where they are ATT and working on their Ambitious Transformation in Transition. So, really excited for you, check it out on Instagram, on Facebook, to be part of Summer Moves, Summer Grooves. 

 

I am going to be busy in the background really enjoying this vision that I have for the summer and making my summer moves to work toward the endgame, the new version of the endgame based on ATT. I’ll be back with fresh content after our summer moves series, and an update to you on how my moves went and announce a new format, and give you a sneak peek at some of the amazing guests that I’ve got lined up. I cannot wait!  So stay tuned for the upcoming series. Check it out on all the social media channels, Summer Moves, Summer Grooves. Let’s make the next 9 weeks unforgettable, in your own Ambitious Transformation in Transition. 

 

You’ve been listening to IN TRANSIT with Sundae Bean. Thank you for listening. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Jillian Michaels: “Transformation isn’t a future event. It’s a present-day activity.” 

 

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The post 285: Go from Vision to Reality appeared first on Sundae Schneider-Bean, LLC..