196: Not The Entrepreneurial Type

Hello. It is 8:00 am in New York, 2:00 pm in Johannesburg, and 7:00 pm in Bangkok. Welcome to the Expat Happy Hour. This is Sundae Schneider-Bean from www.sundaebean.com. I am a solution-orientated coach and intercultural strategist for individuals and organizations. I am on a mission to help you adapt and succeed when living abroad and get you through any life transition.

 

Steven Furtick says the reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind the scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel. Think about that, how many times have you compared yourself to someone that you see is successful and you look at the, excuse me, shit show going on in your own life. And then you feel like crap. That’s a problem. You’re looking at their highlight reel and not behind their scenes.

 

Right? And that is why the next six weeks on Expat Happy Hour is going to be all about behind the scenes. I can’t tell you how many times when I work with someone that they’re surprised to discover what really goes on behind the scenes for something to be successful. Right? It’s like this mirage that people have, that if someone is doing well.

 

We assume it’s easy or you know it’s going smoothly but they have no idea. That image of the duck that’s paddling like crazy under the water and smooth on top comes to mind. So let’s kick off today with a little behind the scenes quiz. Okay, here we go. This is going to be a little bit wonky for me because it’s gonna be about me and then I always feel a little bit vulnerable when I share stuff, but that’s what I’m gonna do today behind the scenes. 

 

For those of you who have been following Expat Happy Hour for four years or been in my group Expats on Purpose for two years. You might have some idea about me and how I work and what goes on. And if you’re a client of mine, you’ve been by my side for a year, maybe two or even three years. Some of you are new to my community and might just have a first impression. So I’m curious, I want you to take this quiz and tell me how you score. All right, true or false.

 

Number one. She’s an entrepreneur type. Okay, true or false. Do you see me as an entrepreneur type true or false?

 

All right, if you answered true, you’re wrong. No, I’m not an entrepreneur type. In fact, you know when I was working in Switzerland, the head of Intercultural Management, my husband always said, “Sundae, you should start your own business. It’ll make way more sense for all the work that you put in for the return that you’ll get.” And I said, “No, I’m not the entrepreneur type.” I really like having someone to call if there are problems with IT.

 

I’d like to have a legal team, I like to have a sales and marketing team, I like to do my thing but not be the one who has to drive everything. I am not an entrepreneur type. Have I learned to draw on who I am to express the things that need to happen to become a successful entrepreneur? Yes, but I am really not the entrepreneur type. I have become entrepreneurial by necessity.

 

When I gave up everything that I started and created and developed in Switzerland to move to Burkina Faso, I had to draw on whatever I had as resources to make it work. Okay back to our quiz.

 

Number two. It’s natural for her to put herself out there. So true or false. It’s natural for Sundae to put herself out there. Honestly, have you ever thought that when you see how I show up on social media or listen to Expat Happy Hour? Have you ever thought “it’s natural for her?” True or false? You’re going to know where this quiz is going right? No, it wasn’t natural for me to put myself out there. Not at all.

 

Doing a podcast, I had to work with a media coach and she had to help me learn how to do that and had to get over my own shit. Sorry, I’m going to be swearing apparently in this one a lot today. Honestly, I had to get used to putting myself out there. I had to break down my own, I’m thinking of it in German – Hemmungen, inhibitions to put myself out there. No, it’s not natural, but have I built the skills? Has it become more practice? Have I established now a level of comfort with putting myself out there? Yes, but it wasn’t natural. 

 

In fact, I’ve talked about it in another podcast, I always get frustrated when, I don’t know, get defensive maybe, when people say, “oh my God Sundae, you’re such a natural.” And I’m like, “yeah, I spent a decade learning how to do that and probably a hundred thousand dollars.” Like there’s nothing natural about that. Natural is like what you do already, but behind that, of course, there might be natural personality characteristics, or tendencies, etc. that people have. But when you invest in expertise and know-how, and then you couple that with practice, then it becomes a strength. So don’t conflate natural with a strength, because strength comes from hard work.

 

Okay, number three. She’s always made good money in her business. So is that true or false? Have I, as I’ve run my company my coaching business have I always made good money in my business true or false? This one, you’re probably right, false. Who makes good money from the beginning of their business? It took me a while to have revenue that I could predict and I’ll tell you my first year of business, I’ll never forget, I got the statement back on my end of year accounting. And I’d worked so hard all year, you know, really excited that I had clients and had finally started coaching after having left my corporate position, you know finding out how to put up a website, doing a blog, etc. I wasn’t very good at keeping track of my numbers as I went, so I was kind of excited to see what the numbers look like at the end of the year. My accountant gave me the numbers back, and I had like this pit in my stomach.

 

And I looked at the numbers and it was, you know, I’d earned 36 thousand dollars that year, but I had spent $35,000. And I’m like, “oh my gosh, my first year and all I know I made was a thousand dollars profit. Are you kidding me?” And I was on the ground. I just left a corporate salary and that’s what I got at the end of the year and I went to my husband with my P&L statement and like look at this, you know, $36,000 end of the year, and I spent $35,000 and he goes, “congratulations, you made a profit in your business in your first year.”

 

He studied business obviously, he had other information and expectations around what it takes to run a successful business and he was celebrating the fact that I had made, although small, profit that year instead of being you know, $20,000 in debt. So no like most small businesses, I didn’t start out by making good money. It went like that for a while until finally, something clicked and I was able to make a big shift in my business. So number three, she’s always making money in her business, the answer is false, that’s not true.

 

And that’s important for me to share because when I talked to members of Expat Coach Coalition, and I tell them that, it’s like an awakening going, “Oh, she struggled in the first years of her business too right?” That’s why I share that with you. 

 

Okay, number four. She’s always just herself. So true or false. I’m always just myself. So Sundae’s always just herself. What do you think? Is that true or false?

 

Now here, this was a hard one for me to just cut the line for you, but I’m going to say false. I feel like in my journey, I’ve always shown what felt safe. I’ve always shown what felt professional because professional felt safe for me, as an academic, as a coach, as an Interculturalist. I felt I was the part of me that I showed was the part that felt safe and that was usually through credentials or an expertise. But what that has meant is that I have not shared lots of other sides of myself. 

 

And for those of you who know me the best, you know, there’s lots of sides of me and most of them involve lots of laughter and I can get really serious. I can take things too seriously, I can go to really deep soulful places and I can be a total silly goose. So have I always been myself in my business? Absolutely not. I think that my journey has been showing what’s safe.

 

And then as I felt comfortable allowing myself to show more, so it hasn’t always been easy, it hasn’t always been natural as we said, it’s been an unraveling and testing what feels okay.

 

Okay number five, last question on the quiz. She doesn’t let anything get in her way. True or false.? She doesn’t let anything get in her way. What do you think? Doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo-doo that’s like the Jeopardy theme song for anybody who wants to know it might be like a miss cultural reference and it’s probably off but okay times up. 

 

She doesn’t let anything get in her way. So this one you’re going to get points whether you say true or false. Okay, so no matter what you answered, I’m going to give you a point. True and false. She doesn’t let anything get in her way. I have to say, absolutely. I let things get in my way. I let myself get my own way but not for long. So true, I do let things get in my way, but not for long and that’s where my coaching comes in for myself. That’s where my outside coaches come in, where I hire people that call me on my crap and that’s where my closest people come in right where they can say, “Hey Sundae, you can do better,” or “that’s not you” or “something’s off.” What’s going on? 

 

So here, give yourself a point either one, but the real answer is in the short-term, yes. I let things get in my way. I let myself get in my way, but I don’t stay there that long and I reach out for support whether it’s my own coaching methodologies or from outside coaches or from people in my closest circle so that I won’t stay stuck long.

 

All right. So if you calculated your points of the quiz, I hope that what you see at the end is clear, that what we often see isn’t always the whole story and that’s the whole point of why I wanted to do behind the scenes today. Because here’s the problem that I actually see. If you have ambitions to become an athlete or to become an entrepreneur or to become a coach or to start your own business or whatever it is, if you have those ambitions and then you look at someone who’s already doing it, and then you say to yourself, “Well, I’m not that, I can’t do this, I can’t do that.” And you look at all the ways all the gaps between where you are and where they are, and you suddenly are telling yourself a story that you can’t do it.

 

And that’s not true. Right? That is why I think it’s so important to look behind the scenes today. That is why I want to pull down the facade because when you have a look behind the scenes you have a much clearer picture of what it takes to create that thing in your life that you’re craving. Whether it is a balanced healthy life or attached parenting or close relationships or a successful business. Whatever those things are, once you can pull the facade down and look behind, you have a much fuller picture. 

 

We are living in a world of Instagram filters, where we barely have access to reality. In fact, you know, we’re not only curating what we show, then we’re filtering it, and that is not reality. So that is why I’ve chosen to do behind the scenes and we’re going to focus on that for the next six weeks and here’s why.

 

Because I really believe that if you’re living abroad, that you should go beyond just adapting, but also recognizing your need to have your own thing. If you are familiar with my Expats on Purpose Manifesto, you know that I say “no” to standing on the sidelines of your life and I say “yes” to you owning it, that you deserve to take a leading role in your own life. You deserve to understand the hard realities behind what you see with those people out there that you think are successful are going through, right? So that when you’re in that place and you’re struggling you realize that you’re not doing something wrong.

 

I say “no” to relinquishing your dreams and say “yes” to creating your dream life. And as we say where I was born in North Dakota, “come hell or high water” what has it got to take to get you there. I say “no” to you surrendering your plans and say “yes” to you marking the direction of your own path. So part of that is for me to be transparent about my direction so you can see it is definitely not a straight line and help you understand that others’ journeys have not been straight lines either. 

 

So when you’re going through the ups and downs, you know just to hold on tight because holding on tight is part of that journey. So what this is really about is an invitation to you to think about who are you hungry to become? Who are you hungry to become? Are you craving to become someone who has their own thing? Are you craving to become someone who’s financially independent?

 

Do you want to become an entrepreneur who gets paid to do what they love? Do you want to become someone who’s fit and runs as a matter of course? Do you want to become that annoying smoothie drinker who drinks yucky smoothies with spinach and avocado and detox powder every morning not because it tastes good, but because she’s saying “yes” to her health and saying “yes” to her future?

 

Who would you love to become if you knew that you could figure it out along the way, who would that be? That’s today’s invitation. To drop the facades, to allow yourself to dream about who you would like to become and trust that those that you think are already there, have had their own messy behind the scenes story. In fact, I would venture to say people who are standing in a place saying, “it was super easy to get here” are either not going to stay there long or lying to you because as we know anything worth having takes hard work. 

 

It’s like parenting. I don’t know anybody who’s a parent and says it’s easy. I don’t know anybody who’s learned a language and said, “It just came so naturally for me.” An adult who had to put in the work to learn a language in adulthood or anyone who has a long-term relationship that said, “Yeah, it just works, we don’t have to work at it.” I don’t think so.

 

Because we are complex and we grow and life is unpredictable and that’s why we’re going to be going behind the scenes, and that’s why I have started by sharing some of the behind the scenes with you today. So we’ve got a lot going on over here at SundaeBean.com, I have been showing behind the scenes from my graduates of Year of Transformation. They have come on in Expats on Purpose and shared their expertise and shared a little bit behind the scenes on what it took for them to be successful. You might have seen in recent episodes of Expat Happy Hour where Marie came on and gave the behind the scenes view on how her journey was to go from, you know, crying your eyes out to feeling really happy with where she was.

 

And Stephanie came on the week later sharing her journey where she had to realize she couldn’t do this alone. Transformed into a successful podcaster. So check those out. I’ll put them in the show notes for you. That’s some behind the scenes on the year of transformation. I want you to know that when you see all of these amazing people that have come forward and shared their expertise and behind the scenes of Year of Transformation, they weren’t the people at the beginning that were like, “I’m not entrepreneurial, so I’m going to do…” They were the ones going, “I just want to do my thing.”

 

And at the end of their journey and all of the thousands of small adjustments they became that person. It wasn’t automatic. It was thanks to all the work they did behind the scenes. So if you miss those episodes check it out. It’s really inspiring. They do tell the raw story of what it takes to create your thing. And if you are thinking about Year of Transformation or you’ve applied and we haven’t connected yet do reach out because at the time of recording there were still a few spots left. 

 

So I would love to have a conversation with you about Year of Transformation, but I’m just getting started. I’ve got so much ahead. Let me tell you a little bit about what’s coming up in this six-part series. So this week we talked about some of my behind the scenes truths on my own journey. I want to sort of pull the facade back and what we’re going to look at in the next few weeks. Really stay tuned because this is relevant for someone who is living abroad and wants their own thing. 

 

If you are a coach and you want to be working with expats or you are someone who is kind of hungry for a service-based business and would love to work with people abroad but really don’t know how to be successful, this is totally for you. Or maybe you’re someone who wants to have your own career next to your partner’s career and you’re wondering about the realities of dual-career couples. So stay tuned, I’m going to have a very special guest coming up talking about dual-career couples and giving some insight on what it takes to make it work and what organizations have to do to support you in that journey. 

 

We’re also going to talk about some of the realities of creating your own thing whether it’s a business or something artistic. How do you get started? How do you create consistency? How do you actually use your voice so people will pay attention and be authentic to you and then how do you make money honey? Those are some of the things we’re going to be talking about. Again, I’m going to share behind the scenes what it has taken for me to create a successful business over the last seven years, and give you some of the secrets that I actually share with my Expat Coach Coalition.

 

Those who are facilitators of Adapt & Succeed or certified coaches who also work with expats abroad, you know, they’ve been able to get some of these secrets along the way and I’m going to share with you some of them in the following episodes. And I’m really excited, we’re getting close to the 200th episode. So stay tuned for that because I will be giving you know, a pull behind the curtain to tell you how I get some of my ideas and what it takes to actually get there and much more!

 

So stay tuned, I’m really excited to support you in the coming weeks, trying to really keep it fresh here at Expat Happy Hour and help you get through these wonky times. This is not a time for you to say “no” to you. This is not a time for you to pause and just wait and see when everything settles. This is prime time for you to get clear on your purpose and to add more meaning in your life and if what you’re craving is more financial independence or more stability or security. Oh my gosh, this is the perfect time to do that.

 

So I am excited. I want you to be in touch and let me know what you would like to hear more about when it comes to being behind the scenes of my work and my business, I’ll make sure that I can include that in this six-week series or answer you directly in Expats on Purpose. It has been so much fun sharing this journey with you along the way and I am by your side to make sure that you do not say “no” to you.

 

All right. So join me. This is just the beginning of a behind the scenes series, be on the lookout, especially in the show notes. I’m going to be delivering a multi-part workshop called Expat Coach Secrets. You’re going to hear not just from me. But also some other experts in global mobility also recent graduates from Expat Coach Coalition and they’re going to share some behind the scenes know-how with you based on their area of expertise. 

 

And I’m going to be hopping in two power sessions, an interactive workshop where I’m going to give you some secrets about the art of coaching, actually teach you some of my own tools that I do especially with expats. And give you some straight talk on the science of the business side for coaching so that you can stop holding yourself back in your business when you are working in this globally mobile context.

 

So join us as we drop the facade and dig in behind the scenes at Expat Happy Hour. You have been listening to Expat Happy Hour with Sundae Schneider Bean. Thank you for listening. I’m going to leave you with the words from two-time Olympic silver medalist Allyson Felix.

 

“Everyone sees the glory moments, but they don’t see what happens behind the scenes.”