Sean Goode said something to me that stopped the conversation cold.
We were talking about how I got started — a college party, a digital camera my mom bought me, DJ Kun Love seeing me and saying “you want to do pictures?” And Sean looked at me and said:
“You’ve never been a photographer. You’ve been a storyteller your entire life. Photography is a medium in which you chose to tell stories for a period of time.”
I sat with that for a minute. And then I realized he was right.
Intention Before Practice
Sean is the founder of Movement Makers — a coaching, consulting, and speaking practice built around one central belief: that the most powerful work any of us can do begins on the inside.
He came to this work through hip-hop, through poetry, through organizational leadership at Choose 180, through years of holding space for people who needed to be witnessed as complete before they could move forward. And he arrived at a distinction that I think is one of the most important things I’ve heard in five episodes of Elite Insights:
There’s a difference between your practice and your intention. Your practice is what you do. Your intention is why you were put here.
Most people build their identity around the practice. Carlos the photographer. Sean the MC. The Executive Director. The Program Manager. But when the practice changes — and it always changes — the people who are anchored to their intention keep moving. The people who are anchored to their practice get lost.
Speed versus velocity, I told him. You can go fast. But velocity is speed plus direction. Without intention, you’re just moving fast to nowhere.
Alignment Feels Difficult But Not Laborious
One of the most practical things Sean shared — and I’ve been thinking about it ever since — is how to know whether you’re in alignment with your purpose.
He said: if the opportunities you’re looking for always seem to be around you, you’re probably aligned. If it’s hard, but not laborious, you’re probably aligned. If you’re perpetually curious and not constantly critical of yourself and others, you’re probably aligned.
The converse is equally true. If everything feels scarce — if the work feels like fighting through concrete — if you’re critical all the time — you’re probably out of alignment. And that’s okay. It just means there’s a place to stand that would put you in closer proximity to your source.
I think about this in the context of EC’s work constantly. The organizations we serve that are most effective aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets or the most staff. They’re the ones where the people doing the work are aligned with the mission they’re serving. When that alignment exists, the work compounds. When it doesn’t, even the best strategy leaks.
Interdependence vs. Codependence
Sean made a distinction that I want every leader who reads this to sit with.
Codependence says: I need you to be okay for me to be okay.
Interdependence says: I’m going to be good, and because I’m going to be good, we’re going to be better together.
He described the difference between a thriving ecosystem and a parasitic one. An old-growth forest — moss, ferns, cedar, all of it — thrives because everything is as it was intended to be. Nothing is taking more than it needs. Everything is contributing to the whole.
That’s the model for community. That’s the model for partnerships. That’s the model for what EC tries to build in every engagement.
We don’t want to be the most important thing in a client’s ecosystem. We want to be the thing that helps the whole ecosystem thrive. When we’re doing our job right, the organization we serve is stronger without us than they were before we arrived.
The And
Sean built Movement Makers around one simple but radical idea: you can do work that matters AND live a life that matters. You can pour into community AND be poured into. You can build something significant AND not be exhausted and burnt out all the time.
He calls it living in the and.
I think about how many mission-driven leaders I’ve met who have sacrificed the second half of that sentence for the first. Who pour everything into the work and run themselves dry in the process. Who build organizations that outlast them but don’t outlast their health, their relationships, their joy.
The and isn’t a luxury. It’s a design principle. And it’s one EC tries to build into every engagement — because an organization that is burning out its people can’t sustain its mission, no matter how good the strategy is.
The Invitation
Sean left me with one thing that I keep coming back to. He said that when you get a chance to taste, touch, and experience that aligned part of your being — the part that’s always been there, the part that knows its intention — you’ll never want to let it go. And once you have access to it, nothing can stop you from continuing to become all that you’ve always been.
That’s what EC is trying to help organizations find. Not a better event. Not a cleaner communications strategy. The aligned version of themselves — the one where the work compounds because the people doing it know exactly who they are and why they’re here.
The Impact Snapshot™ is the first step in that process. Fifteen minutes. It shows you exactly where your organization’s storytelling strategy is aligned — and where it’s leaking.
The and is available to you. Let’s find it together.
Carlos Imani is the Executive Producer and Principal of The Elite Collective, Seattle’s leading Impact Architecture™ firm. He hosts Elite Insights, a podcast about community, craft, and the architecture of meaningful work.
