September is a time for renewed focus. A time of year when organizations round up their teams to set intentions and goals to take them to the end of the year. School is back, vacations are over, and most of us are beginning the process of gearing up for the fall routines both in work and life.
This summer, one of our favourite summer recommendations was a new book by Canadian entrepreneur success and now author Julie Ellis. Her book “Big Gorgeous Goals” is an inspirational compilation of stories and lessons that encourages women with a call to action to lift themselves and each other up.
As leadership and administrators strive to better their goals and work in post-pandemic economic conditions, discovering and embracing new goals is so important!
Julie Ellis has a long history of proving her aspired goals can get her far. She has earned her status as an executive coach to corporate executives and scaling entrepreneurs from her own success story and experience. After years of working in the corporate world, she became renowned for staging and co-founding an award-winning company. Mabel’s Labels established a creative solution for parents everywhere to customize their children’s belongings with iron-on labels and is one of Canada’s greatest small-business success stories.
Now, as a professionally certified coach, Julie works with bold leaders and their teams to unlock the capacity to plan, execute and accelerate success. We spoke with Julie to get her views on how business settings can move forward in today’s world to build and grow their organizational success moving forward. She offers these three tips:
- Think bigger
Julie recommends getting away from the box-checking in goal setting and setting your sights on imagining something bigger! Although mechanisms for measuring performance are necessary steps, many teams get stuck there and don’t step back to look as an outsider at the audacious, big, incredible goals. There is this big expansive blue sky to behold and dream about where to go. Changing the thinking from “ this is what I have to do” to “imagine what we could do” will take organizations from creating safe goals to the ones that are so big, “they block out the sun, scare you and seem beyond your grasp.” (pg 3)
- Make time and space for goal setting
So often, organizations get so busy working within the business we forget to plan our time and energy into working ON the business. Goal setting is often thrown onto the back burner unless time and attention are allocated to conduct it. Julie indicates that leaders often slide right into execution mode and miss the “white space” opportunities.
Successful businesses make time beyond the to-do lists to make space for brainstorming and nourishing those goals. The most effective way to do this with your team is to get away from desks and find a space in nature or a fun, creative space to imagine new things and take time to form ideas and dreams.
- Get started
It may be fun to think big, imagine huge and find goal-setting time and space. However, after the imagining begins, fear often gets in the way. Looking at those big scary ideas may feel like you have a mountain to climb, and seems unattainable and hard, causing a lack of progress.
In the fall especially, lists and tasks lingering from the slower days of summer keep us in a busy but unprogressive state. Continually reminding ourselves and our teams to always be putting one foot in front of the other while keeping our eyes on the prize (or the mountain) is intentional action.
The role of the leader in achieving great goals is to enable teams to buy into and embrace the goals in practical ways. But how do we practically accomplish our dreams? Julie recommends the following:
- Schedule time together annually to do the big dreaming and then make time for executing them with checkpoints on a quarterly basis.
- Celebrate the word NO. Saying no to things that fill us up with feeling “busy” is the most practical advice to empower yourself to have.
For more practical tips on how to discover and embrace your big goals in your business or life, Big Gorgeous Goals by Julie Ellis is available on Amazon, Indigo and Walmart. Grab your copy, and let’s get the big goal setting started.
Julie Ellis is an author, keynote speaker and leadership coach to corporate leaders and scaling entrepreneurs. Julie provides her unique experience and expertise to her coaching clients, gained through 25 years of working first in the corporate world and then as a leading Canadian entrepreneur. She is a co-founder of award-winning Mabel’s Labels, one of Canada’s greatest small business success stories.
Julie’s book, Big Gorgeous Goals, is written for women entrepreneurs who want to step out of the small box they find themselves in and set world domination in their sights. In discussion with over a dozen women entrepreneurs, Julie explores their stories of why and how they have achieved great things in their lives and careers, and pairs that knowledge with her own stories of how she built, grew, and sold her business to a giant in her industry.
Find her online www.julieellisandco.com
Contributing writer Kim Hussey is the creative energy behind The Write View, Cambridge, Ontario.
You can find her enjoying nature or writing from her heart. Go to kimhussey.com to read ways The Write View supports your writing needs.
