Setting Your Goals
Setting the Guideposts
Goal Setting is:
Identification of Values
Creating a Vision
Establishing a Mission
By translating Values,
Vision and Mission into
GOALS
Do yourself a F A V O R
when writing goals
Family and/or Business oriented
Aimed at a specific measurable
action
Value centered reflecting
Personal, family, and business values
Ordered by priority
What is needed
What is required
What brings the greatest reward
Realistic and achievable
Setting the Guideposts
Major Areas of Disagreement
Business Goals
Personal Goals
Acceptable levels of risk
Definition of success
Setting the Guideposts
Areas of Key Importance
Adequate communication
 Adequate records
 Adequate planning
 Adequate profit potential
 Manageable debt
Setting the
Guideposts
The resources available to
your farm business have a
direct effect upon the
identification and
development of realistic
goals and objectives.
Setting the
Guideposts
Resource Inventory
Three major parts:
 Personal resource inventory
 Physical resource inventory
Fiscal resource inventory
Setting the Guideposts
Set goals for the
 Individual
 Family
 Business
Setting the
Guideposts
Goals
 Should be written
 Should be specific
 Should be measurable
 Should have a timetable
Setting the Guideposts
Written Goals
 Allow everyone involved
to work from the same
list
 Provide a memorandum
of understanding
 Provide a written record
for review
Setting the Guideposts
Setting Priorities
Which goals:
 are most important to you?
 are most important to your
family?
 are most important to your
business?
Conclusion:
• Educators, business consultants,
professional advisors or other
producers can show you how to set
goals, tell you why goals are
important, tell why goals need to be
prioritized and tell you why family
and business goals must be mutually
agreed upon, HOWEVER...
• NO ONE can tell you what goals are
right for you, your family, or your
business.
• When you set your goals you set
your direction for your future, your
family’s future and your business’s
future.
Presented by:
John R. Baker
Attorney at Law
jrbaker@iastate.edu
1-800-447-1985
Beginning Farmer Center
www.extension.iastate.e
du/bfc/
877.BFC.1999