122 - Why We All Need To Think BIG

Did You Know  0:02  
Did you know that you need to clear some whitespace in your schedule to work on a big, gorgeous goal? The busyness of life won't allow you to work on these kinds of goals unless you make space to think about them, dream them up and do the necessary work. 

Intro  0:17  
Hello, action taker. Welcome to Live Blissed Out. A podcast where I have inspirational and informational conversations with business owners and subject matter experts to help you get the scoop on a variety of topics. Tired of hesitating or making decisions without having the big picture? Wanna be in the know? Then this is the place to go. I'm your host Marisa Huston. Helping you achieve bliss through awareness and action. So let's get to it. In this episode, Julie Ellis shares why setting a big gorgeous goal will free you from the box checking goals that are holding you back. Julie is an executive coach to corporate leaders and scaling entrepreneurs. She 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's a co founder of award winning Mabels Labels, one of Canada's greatest small business success stories. Julie's forthcoming book "Big Gorgeous Goals" is written for women entrepreneurs who want to step out of the small box that 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. A sought after speaker and trainer, Julie has developed keynotes and workshops for private companies, corporations and associations with titles such as "Ignite, Scale and Exit," "Success Secrets of Wonder Women" and "Why We All Need To Think Big." To learn more, visit www.julieellisandco.com. Fill out the Take Action form to receive a free printable goal setting sheet. 

Disclaimer  1:59  
The information opinions and recommendations presented in this podcast are for general information only and any reliance on the information provided this podcast is done at your own risk. This podcast should not be considered professional advice. 

Marisa Huston  2:11  
Julie, welcome to the show. 

JulieEllis  2:13  
Thank you so much, Marisa. I'm so excited to be here with you today to talk about big gorgeous goals.

Marisa Huston  2:19  
I am excited too and I just love the conversation we're gonna have because it kind of contradicts a lot of what we hear people telling us about goals. I would appreciate it if you could tell our listeners what we're going to be covering today. 

JulieEllis  2:34  
I was somebody who owned a business that I founded with some other moms called Mabels Labels, and we made personalized name labels for kids. And we were really, really fortunate. We grew that business to about 40 employees and we were approached by Avery labels in 2015, to sell the business. And we did. And I quickly found myself out in the world. And when I had worked at Mabels Labels, we had lots of sayings on the walls of our offices. And my favorite, favorite one was one that said "World domination is a full time job." It became like my mantra. We were doing things that people scoff that told us weren't possible, we weren't going to be successful, all of those kinds of things. And we really just ignored them and set big goals and got on a path towards achieving them. And when I suddenly found myself out in the world, I didn't know what to do with myself. And I found my world getting smaller and smaller and smaller. And I was a little bit stuck on the couch. I didn't know how to get off of it and get back to that world domination kind of thinking that has served me so well. And I started telling that story in a workshop that I was delivering. And I was a little bit stunned by how it resonated with people. And I had not told the story. I was afraid to tell the story. And one day it kind of organically came out in a workshop. And the people in the workshop were like, I totally know what you're talking about. And I was so shocked at how do you go from a place where you set these great big goals that are crazy big and you end up in a small place where you're not sure you've got the confidence again. I knew I have this path to getting back to setting these big, gorgeous goals making that magic happen. And you realize that no one achieves those goals accidentally. It's a little bit like an iceberg. Marisa. You see the people achieving big, gorgeous goals. But that's the 10% of the iceberg that's above the water. They have a system, they have ways they're going to go about doing it, they have people who are going to be there sounding boards help them and all kinds of things in that 90% that you just never see.

Marisa Huston  4:42  
Yeah. And here's the thing is that I think that a lot of us too...When we're running a business, we forget that we're not alone. We think that we have to tackle everything on our own and as a result because we're not getting the support that we need, we don't tend to think bigger. We think really small and we're being actually encouraged to at least do something, start somewhere. Which is great, because everything starts somewhere. You know that saying where they say, how do you eat an elephant? Yeah we all know that, we've all heard that. But at the same time, if we prevent ourselves from going big, if we stifle ourselves to the point that we say, this is enough, then we're shortchanging ourselves or not really going after what we really want because there's this gap. The critical piece here is, how do we get from taking that first step to reaching these bigger goals that are more macro from a perspective of somebody that is just grateful to at least do something in the first place? 

JulieEllis  5:43  
Yes, one of the women that I interviewed for my book that's going to come out later this year in June, Kelsey that I interviewed talked about how you get comfortable in the echo chamber of execution. And it is that you make a list, you chunk it down, and it serves a great purpose. But you can put your head down and get lost in the busyness and get lost in the list and the task making and the checking off of boxes. And those things, they just don't lead you to big gorgeous goals. They don't. What if you set a goal that you reach for the stars, and you land on the moon? What happens then? The moon is so much farther than we're going to get checking off all those boxes. And I think that there's something to that, because it's so important to create some white space in your brain, in your life, away from your relentless email and your relentless calendar and all the busyness we value in our society and find that blue sky expansive, like how am I going to do this kind of thinking? 

Marisa Huston  6:47  
Exactly. It's that catch 22 thing, Julie. I think that it makes us feel good to check off boxes, because we can go back to it and say, look, I have this on my calendar, and I achieved it. Wow, I'm doing great! But is that really getting you to where you need to go in terms of the big picture of your overall objective for your business? And most of the time, that's not the case. These are tasks that obviously need to happen, but they're not really things that are going to make your business get to where you want it to go. What happens is you just add more to your plate and then you almost feel like a where am I going like I feel like I'm spinning my wheels, even though I'm doing all these things.

JulieEllis  7:24  
It is that, the baggage of busyness. And we do we just fill ourselves, we fill our calendars we fill our inboxes we fill our to do lists with things that aren't going to move the needle. And do they matter? Some of them do. Some of them are important and boring and that box has to get checked. There's no question, I realized that we all face that. And I think we're conditioned to it. You know, our boss is going to give us a performance review, and that review is based on the goals that check those boxes. Your report card, as a kid, you check the boxes. I mean, we have a lot of things in our lives that have conditioned us to perform to the box check. But I think that if you can't get away from that, and really look at how you imagine the goal, how you put it out to the universe, how you manifest it and work on it. And yes, as you work on it, some of those things might involve box checking. But it's going up to the big expansiveness before you come back down to the list making and the steps.

Marisa Huston  8:19  
Do you think to that part of it is we feel like if we're doing it, then we feel like we're accomplishing something important when the reality is we need to start thinking about delegating, or creating automation, or doing things that are going to make the mundane processes that we have to do for our businesses, we need to simplify so that you're not having to deal with them yourself. Or you can get to the point where all of those things are basically getting handled on the back end so that then you can focus on the important things and the goals and objectives that you have for your business. 

JulieEllis  8:52  
Absolutely. Nobody teaches you how to delegate. And how many times in my career, did I ask someone on my team to do something and when it came back, I was like, Oh, that's not actually what I wanted. And often, that problem was mine. The way I handed out the work, and what I expected was not clear. And so I had to learn how to delegate effectively, and how to be sure I would get back the product of work that we needed and wanted for the business.

Marisa Huston  9:18  
I'm so glad you mentioned that. That is such a huge thing. I hear people telling me, I'm not delegating, because they can't do it like I can do it. I do it best. I'm the only one that can achieve this thing the way I want to do it. And it takes so much time to train people. And then they don't listen to me. You know, and it goes on and on. When the reality is it's not them, it's you. You need to make sure that you have a system in place to delegate so that the person receiving the instructions understands and can support you in the way that you need to be supported. 

JulieEllis  9:47  
Yes, exactly. And you also have to decide whether it matters whether they do it the way you do it. And if it does, then you need to give the right kind of instructions to get what you need. 

Marisa Huston  9:58  
It's funny you say that Julie because I actually saw somebody post something the other day that was really great. The message was essentially, if you're going to hire a smart person, why would you want to tell that smart person how to do their job? The whole point of hiring a smart person so that they can make your business better and if you're going to dictate your ways, then you're never really going to get to experience something completely different, and maybe even better. So you kind of have to be open minded and let go of the reins a little bit, right? 

JulieEllis  10:26  
Absolutely. I'm not where when you can let go of those reins with the bumpers up on the bowling alley for a while, and then slowly put the bumpers down and people go from the crawl, walk, run kind of an idea, right? And the same comes with helping your team make effective decisions and what the process is for decision making. So that I can't be the sole decision maker. Because that's a bottleneck. So what decisions should the team be making or recommending and how do you get them there? All of those things, I think are like ingredients to that high performing team. Getting all of those things kind of together, that allows you to delegate, to shift work off your plate to give you the space to do the big thinking, 

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Marisa Huston  11:49  
Julie, here's what I'm thinking, as you're saying that. How do you know when big is too big? There's so many levels when we say a big goal. Your perspective of big could be something different from mine. How do I know when it's achievable or when it's something that is so out there that it's something I'm never going to be able to reach? How do I find that balance? 

JulieEllis  12:09  
It's interesting, I think everybody has a different idea of what big is and what scares me when I think of a big goal compared to what scares you and anybody else on this planet will likely be different. I subscribe to the idea that no goal is too big. The bigger it is, though, the reality is you're going to have to kind of chunk it down, right? Maybe the one big umbrella goal has like five or six different goals underneath it and you're going to tackle those, figure out what the pecking order of them is and that you need to work on them, like what's most important, what order do they have to be in? Once you put them in order, then you start working on things. And that can cascade down to the in order to get there I need to do this. And so some of it then becomes incremental and a little bit like box checking. But I think that what you have to be careful of is that you take the step back and look at the big picture every so often. So you've set that big, scary goal, you're kind of breaking it down and starting to work on some steps for it. But make sure that you don't get too head down looking at the cracks on the sidewalk and not looking up at the sky. Because then you will fall off the path. 

Marisa Huston  13:18  
So basically looking at a macro, big picture, an overall goal that you want to achieve, and then breaking it down from there and creating, for example, timeline steps, things that are going to be necessary to get you where you need to go. And then when you have a visual of how that's all going to work, then you can start tackling it. It is still some sort of a checklist because you're going to have to address these things but you're looking at it from a macro level rather than saying, oh, today, I'm just going to check these little boxes and then I'll worry about tomorrow. You're beginning with the end in mind, essentially.

JulieEllis  13:48  
Yes. That's a really great way of putting it. I think it's also about adjusting your expectation of what the outcome has to look like, to some degree. Like, do we ever truly end up exactly where we think we will? For the good for the bad for the amazing, we don't. And so, to me, goals are like that too. Their living and breathing things. So as you grow and progress, and as you move towards the goal, you may reframe the goal, the goal posts might shift, you might decide that's actually not even where you want to head anymore and do something different. You might reach the goal and find out that you were wrong and it didn't work out the way you thought it would. So you learned a ton from it and you pick up and you move on and set another goal and do it again. And all of that is normal. 

Marisa Huston  14:39  
Yeah. And I think we forget that we compare ourselves to other people and don't really compare apples to apples, so to speak. And so what happens is you see other people succeeding and you're thinking, Oh, it's just a straight line. I'm just going to go from A to Z follow the steps and everything is going to work out. And the reality is for all of us, and there are no exceptions to this, it's never a straight line. You think you're going from here to here and then you realize you got to take a detour and that's completely normal and it's actually part of the growing process. 

JulieEllis  15:05  
Absolutely. I think that's why the iceberg really resonates with me and I use it as an illustration. Because it's that piece of what you see and what's really happening. You see such a small part when you think somebody accomplishes something gigantic and amazing. And you don't see the pivots, the changes, the oh my gosh I don't think we're gonna get there, well, maybe we can get here instead. You don't see all of those things that happen underneath. 

Marisa Huston  15:33  
Yeah. Or you think they had it so much easier? For whatever reason, you think, Oh, it's just me. Every time I try something, it's always drama. There's always stuff going on. How come everybody else has it all figured out? That's what you end up asking yourself every time thinking you're doing something wrong when the reality is, they went through the same challenges. 

JulieEllis  15:51  
Absolutely true. I completely agree with you. 

Marisa Huston  15:54  
Could you share with us some sort of visual that helps our listeners get a perspective of okay, I'm going for it. It's 2022. I want to have big goals, now. I really don't want to mess around anymore with these checkboxes. I want to get some really good stuff done. What does that look like? 

JulieEllis  16:09  
I think that as an exercise, one of the first steps is to clear some space on your calendar, however you do that. Are you a morning person work better at night? Want to walk in nature during the day? What is it that will get you kind of thinking? My friend Bill always used to tell me call me up. He's my accountant. And he would call me up and say, Well, Julie, I was thinking about this when I walked the dog this morning. So he did all his best thinking when he walked the dog. And so figure out where you have the thinking things flowing. And think about what is the big goal that you have put to the side, because it feels too big or too audacious for you to tackle. And think and reflect on that. And then get out a piece of paper and write down the goal. actually write it down, put it out to the universe, write it down. And then think about why have you been stuck and how could you begin the process of moving this forward? What are three small steps you could take with this goal? To see and test it out and do some experimentation with it. And I think it is about experimentation and not being afraid to fail. What are the three steps? Create a timeline for them, and then make a date with yourself to check in and see how they're going? I'm going to do these three things and a month from now I'm going to take another hour and sit down with some whitespace in my calendar and figure out what's going well, and what's holding me back. Why didn't I work on that? And what's next for me? And what do I really want? 

Marisa Huston  17:35  
It sounds to me like part of the process is a lot of reflection. Like you have to sit back, take a look at where you are and where you want to go. Because I think we live these robotic lives in a sense. We're so used to routine, we just do the things we're familiar with and then we forget to really take a step back and say, Hey, I was here last week. and I want to head over here and so what have I done? And was it right? Do I want to tweak some things? Because you kind of have to look at it and analyze it in order to continue to progress. 

JulieEllis  18:05  
Absolutely true. Yeah. And it is it's having that space, you need space. 

Marisa Huston  18:10  
And I don't think we give ourselves enough time to do that. We're just in that routine feeling like, Okay, if there is that space, I'm not productive, right? I'm not using enough time because I gotta keep busy. I gotta keep doing stuff. But sometimes busy is just busy. It doesn't really get us the results that we're looking for. 

JulieEllis  18:24  
Absolutely. I think, yeah, we're just so accustomed to a certain pace, that there's a big guilt that comes with taking that hour to do the thinking that's needed. 

Marisa Huston  18:36  
It's like meditation for your business. And to your point, Julie, I love what you just suggested, I think you should just make that part of your plan. You should say, Okay, I'm blocking out, I don't know, two hours in a week and that two hours is going to be solely on reflection and not feel guilty about it but realize that it is a part of the process, so that you can learn and grow and like you said, not be afraid to make those mistakes, because you're gonna have to do those things in order to learn and improve. 

JulieEllis  19:02  
I think that's definitely true. And it's a process. It's a, try it, it works, great. It doesn't work, pick yourself up and dust yourself off and try it again a different way. It's a journey, not a destination is really what I would say. 

Marisa Huston  19:15  
I think it's important to sum it up by saying that mistakes are going to take place regardless of what you do. But when you have a professional or outside eyes on what you're doing, it just helps make it go faster and make less mistakes, so that you're not making these monumental moves that could potentially be disastrous. Which is why I think a lot of people shy away from these big goals is because they're fearful. They're afraid of the consequences if they do something terrible. The goal for all businesses is really to get to where you want to go with the least amount of mistakes. But the reality is, mistakes aren't unavoidable. It's just the magnitude of them can be a little bit more controlled when you're dealing with a professional that's been there, done that, could probably help you navigate through that better or even help you avoid some of those mistakes all together. 

JulieEllis  20:02  
Definitely. And there's so many paths to that. There's hiring an executive coach, there is going down the path of finding mentors or paid advisors. I have a group of women I call my Privy Council, and they are the women who are my sounding board. So what are your sounding boards? And how are you testing out your ideas? And when do you know, it's enough, and you need to stop and just spring into action? There's that fine tension between getting input and acting. And you can get input and input and go around and around and around and never get anywhere. So there is a tension there. But I think that nobody can be in their own head alone on these things. You've got to put them out to the world and figure out, what does that look like? To me, that's some sort of trusted sounding boards. Occasionally, I put them out to the world on LinkedIn to see what will happen. There are different ways of tackling things, right? And so from very private to very public. 

Marisa Huston  20:59  
There's so many options. And I think if we circle back to a lot of business professionals, many of them just don't do that because they feel like, I've got to do this on my own. I've got these great ideas, I'm going to implement them and you forget that there are so many people that can help you do the things that you've been wanting to do and that you're not alone. It's hard to see that, Julie, when you're in the weeds. When you're running your business, especially if you're a solopreneur, for example, you feel like the weight is on your shoulder and you don't know who to talk to, and you feel like nobody gets you. 

JulieEllis  21:28  
I absolutely agree with that. And it's so so important to build a trusted network that you can lean on. Because you are not alone. I think entrepreneurship is an incredibly lonely journey. As you are a solopreneur and even as you go from being a solopreneur, to building a company and a team, you can't share a lot of the pressures that come with that with your team. You feel an immense responsibility to look like a leader all of the time. Finding those sounding boards and those trusted advisors and mentors and coaches who volunteer with you, who you pay, who are a mix of those things. I think it's so important. 

Marisa Huston  22:07  
Yeah. And I'm glad you reminded us of that today. Julie. There are options out there, you just need to decide like what is going to work best for your needs. And that's why I'm so glad we had this conversation today. Because I think that this will get people thinking, what are some things I could do differently to help me get to where I want to go? How do people get ahold of you, Julie and learn more about what you offer? 

JulieEllis  22:28  
People can find me by visiting my website at www.julieellisandco.com. And they can reach me there by filling out the Take Action form. I would love to hear from people. You can also find me on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/julie-ellis. 

Marisa Huston  22:43  
Julie, I am so grateful that you took the time today to go over these things. Everybody's giving it a lot of thought and trying to pivot in whatever direction they need to go. 

JulieEllis  22:56  
Definitely. And remember it will be uncomfortable. One of the things I like to say is, "You need to get comfortable with being uncomfortable." That's okay. It is uncomfortable to do something that scares you. You are not alone in that. Everybody feels it. 

Marisa Huston  23:10  
And it's necessary, right?

JulieEllis  23:12  
 It's totally necessary for us to grow. 

Marisa Huston  23:14  
There is pain for growth, but it's a good kind of pain. Because when you finally get to where you want to go, it's so worth it. Thank you for being here.

JulieEllis  23:22  
Thank you very much. I've enjoyed it. 

Marisa Huston  23:24  
Me too. 

Outro  23:25  
That's a wrap for this episode of Live Blissed Out. Thanks for listening, and thanks to Julie Ellis for joining us on the show. If you have a question or comment for a future episode, all you have to do is go to www.speakpipe.com/lbovm or click the link in the show notes to leave a brief audio message. If you find value in our show, please visit www.liveblissedout.com to reach out subscribe and share on social media. This show is made possible through listeners like you. Thank you. So long for now and remember to keep moving forward!