Creating SMART Goals for your success.

Welcome to "Coffee in the Barn," where your hosts Morgan and Casey blend the worlds of agribusiness and motherhood over a cup of coffee. In this podcast, we delve into the challenges and triumphs of balancing professional life in agriculture with the joys and responsibilities of being moms. Each episode is a mix of insightful interviews with industry experts, discussions on the latest trends in agribusiness, and relatable stories from our own experiences.

This week, join us as we dive into the art of goal setting and share our personal 'words of the year'. We'll explore how these concepts can empower us both in our careers and family lives.

Casey kicks off the episode with her quirky coffee mug, "Getting Piggy With It," a gift symbolizing her love for swine nutrition and a nod to her fun-loving nature. Morgan contrasts with her simple yet cherished black Yeti and gray mug, highlighting the diverse preferences that make our discussions so vibrant.

We take you through a journey of personal anecdotes, from Casey's international coffee mug collection, reminiscing about travels and the importance of little things that keep connections alive, to Morgan's practical approach to coffee drinking.

As working moms in the demanding field of agribusiness, we understand the struggle of balancing career aspirations with family commitments. We discuss the unique challenges of travel, the emotional moments of parting and reuniting with our children, and the need for being intentional with family time.

The conversation then shifts to the core of our episode – goal setting. We break down the concept of SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) and share our personal goals, revealing our strategies for maintaining mental health, fostering family bonds, and advancing our careers. 

Morgan, with her word of the year 'Purposeful', emphasizes the significance of living in the moment and making every action count. Casey, choosing 'Transcend', focuses on surpassing boundaries and thriving in her multifaceted roles as a mother, entrepreneur, and animal nutrition expert.

We also discuss the importance of aligning personal goals with professional ones, underscoring the need for everyone, no matter their role, to contribute to the company's success. Our dialogue highlights the value of accountability, seeking mentorship, and the flexibility to adapt goals as life evolves.

Join us in this heartwarming and enlightening episode, and take away an action item to map out your own goals. Let "Coffee in the Barn" be your companion in navigating the dynamic world of agriculture, motherhood, and personal growth. Grab your favorite mug, pour yourself a cup, and enjoy this journey with us!

Transcript

Morgan - Introduction
 0:00:00
 From boardroom meetings to bedtime stories, Coffee in the Barn explores the delicate dance of balancing the demands of our professional lives with the joys and responsibilities of being moms. Join us each week as we discuss the latest trends in agribusiness, share insightful interviews with industry experts, and sprinkle in some heartfelt anecdotes about the humorous and heartwarming moments that come with being a working mom in agriculture. Welcome to this week's episode of Coffee in the Barn with Morgan and Casey. This week, we're gonna be discussing goal setting, what our word of the year is, and yep, that's it. 

Casey 

Yeah, Morgan, well, welcome. I'm gonna make this a weekly habit. What coffee cup am I toting today? And I had to get this because it was a gift for my friend Glenetta. It says, getting piggy with it. So we're getting piggy with it. 

Morgan

You must have a very extensive coffee cup collection because I only have my black Yeti and a gray coffee mug. 

Casey

Funny that you say that. So from a travel mug perspective, I have just exhausted my three top favorites. Okay. But for my coffee mug segment, just like general coffee mugs, I used to when I traveled before I had Arthur, I would buy my husband a coffee mug from places I went to like, I went to Florida for like a conference. And so I brought him a Disney cup. And then I went to London and I got him a London cup in Madrid. So, yeah, I've had to sort through my coffee mugs, but that was a thing I used to do with my husband. Yeah, so I do have coffee mugs from around the world and different fun places I have been.

Morgan
 0:01:56
 I'm boring. I just drink my coffee and then that's it. 

Casey

Well, I thought coffee mugs were more inspirational than shot glasses. Because I don't know when the last time the shot glasses have come out of the cabinet. I think they're buried and starting to fossilize. 

Morgan

That's interesting because I feel like when I go travel places, that's what I buy is a shot glass. Or just for like the aesthetic of just having it sitting on the on the counter or on the That is so like 80s of you because isn't that what our parents did and I remember and still do that. 

Casey

Yeah, I guess some people have magnets and some people have different trinkets but that was something I knew my husband would use, right? Because to be quite honest with you, I was never a coffee drinker until I married him and lived with him more. And I blame him for getting me started on the habit. I still love a good cup of tea. So but in my world today and being a mom, it is the coffee. And to me, there's multiple benefits, health benefits, beyond the caffeine. 

Morgan

Yeah, I, uh, I would say that was a conflict of interest. My coffee drinking. I don't drink that much. I just have maybe like two cups a day, but you know, the mugs are, the cups are generous. And when I was pregnant with Emma, my husband was like, you're drinking way too much coffee. What if when you have her, like after you have her and you're breastfeeding if it's gonna like affect her sleep and right now it's not bothering anything I said if the time comes where my caffeine and coffee intake is impeding her sleep or affecting her in any negative way we'll deal with it when we get there. He was all about well you should start tapering off how much coffee you're drinking like four weeks before you deliver so and I was like well in hindsight she was two weeks overdue. So, and I did not start rationing my coffee.  Everyone was fine.  I didn't, I didn't have to stop drinking coffee. 

Casey

See, stop drinking coffee is easy for me. I can do that. But what I have found that I like,  and so I need to get an assortment of teas, I think, in my office, is I like something hot. I don't know what it is about that hot from my throat to just having, especially in winter, having something hot. 

Morgan

And then it's like sitting in front of a warm fire.

Casey

 It's just comforting. So to me it's that comfort piece and not the fact that I'm drinking caffeine because I know I can live without the caffeine component. 

Morgan

Yeah I just like caffeine. But yes, I can relate. So that leads us into how we're structuring. 

Morgan

Did you just start the timer?

Casey

 No, I just ended the timer. So it leads into...

Morgan
 0:04:59
 We're all learning. Casey's been podcasting for a couple years here and there. I'm very new at this. We've learned that we really get off on tangents and stories. So we're going to try to keep things a little bit more streamlined and structured. And so we've implemented starting a timer so that we know where we're at throughout our podcasting journey with you all today. Moving forward, we're going to, our structure is going to look a little different. The first five minutes of the topic, what we're talking about today. Today we're talking about goal setting and our intentions for the year and our word of the year. And then the end we're going to leave you guys with an action item. Yeah, I was going to say the word of the year was the action item of last week's episode. So we really want you to, and even short videos, tagging hashtag coffee in the barn would be awesome. And so we could start growing this following and hearing from you that you're getting value out of this.

Casey

0:06:18
 Because as I said, my goal and my mission in life is to take you from surviving to thriving. And so I really have had some great feedback just over one episode. And this is our third episode. So I'm really excited that my mission is starting to come to fruition. Morgan, what's the word of the year? 

Morgan

Well, I've kind of been tossing back and forth between the two, but the definition of them both kind of align. And my word of the year is purposeful. I came to that because I want to make sure that every, every extra thing I'm doing outside of my family life and work has a purpose and aligns with the priorities I have set and that every outside interaction I have with friends and family and colleagues is intentional. I wanna make sure that I'm living in that moment and purposely being present with those individuals that I'm with. And, yeah, that's my word of the year. 

Casey

Well, since it was a curveball for me, and I was reading that book, and the two words that stuck out to me that I mentioned last week, not yesterday, gosh, I need to drink more coffee, but was invincible and transcend. And I really thought through this, right? Everything I have, and I'll go into my goal here in a minute. But I think transcend is what I need to transcend into that person living that mission. So create, you know, creativity, helping people go from surviving to thriving. And so that is what I'm going to use in everything I do is transcend that boundary. it to the next level? Can I be fully, like you said, purposeful? Can I fully be engaged in what I'm doing and happy and all that, right? And living that mission, being grateful for it, and not seeing like, oh, I know, I have another goal, you know, I want to lose 20 pounds. get there, hopefully, but we'll get into SMART goals. But I think Transcend fits it more into what I need to do, because all my goals I have some lofty business goals and compared to Morgan, my personal goal of running a 5K is nothing compared to a 50K. So I think she said that should be easy. Hey, everyone can do it. Everybody can do it. Everyone can do it. You just have to break it up into tiny steps. Exactly. I walk to the front door, then the mailbox, then the stop sign. Just a starting point.

Morgan
 0:10:10
 Not where you've been, it's where you're going.

Casey
 0:10:11
 It was too bad, you guys missed it. She was on mute when she first reacted.

Morgan
 0:10:13
 I had to just catch my breath there a minute.

Casey
 0:10:24
 Yeah.
 Now that's a tangent. I got a timer, by the way, for 20 minutes of the meat of the podcast.

Morgan
 0:10:31
 So, okay, all right.

Morgan
 0:10:33
 That's the words of the year. Now we're getting into our SMART goals. SMART goals stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relatable, or relevant, and time bound. So we're going to break down one of our goals that we have, see how those five attributes fit into our goal. Casey, you want to take it?

Casey
 0:10:56
 Yeah.

Casey
 0:10:57
 So, and here's also I need to mention to all of you, because relevance is one of the big components of this, your goals are allowed to change depending on what is relevant for you at that time. So I did in December come up with some goals and I noticed really these were habits or pieces of a bigger goal for me, a bigger purpose. And I just want you to make sure you get into that and we'll talk more about it through this series of this month in the different segments of making it achievable and relevant. So you have to check in on your goals frequently. And my coach recommends once a week to check in to see if they're still relevant and we're achieving where we're going or do they need to be tweaked of those smaller components of those goals. But the bigger goal is to maintain a positive and healthy mindset for me. My mental health, as I mentioned, I've always struggled with, and it impacted my business last year. So that is kind of the main overarching goal. Specific, I have to stay healthy mentally to be functioning and successful in my family life. They need that for me. And then my business life. So my customers need that for me. And if we look at my mission, I want to take people from surviving to thriving. So that is inventing new innovations in the animal nutrition and health space or other areas that help in production and, you know, be able to produce more food with less, but also in my creation where I'm inspiring people to help. So that's specific, right? How am I going to measure that? I'm going to start with a check-in journal, and then maybe some short reasons why I feel that way today, right, or something that happened. So versus writing a full page in my journal, I think I can actually do that on a daily basis. Achievable. Well, yeah, it's going to be achievable, because I was looking through some of my goals and some of the habits I've already started to implement. And it's just building on that. So I really do feel like that's an achievable goal. If I keep it at the forefront of my mind all the time. And relevant, as I just mentioned that I'm going through my list, but I already mentioned that my family, my business needs me. So that was me breaking down my smart goal You Morgan? 

Morgan

So with my current job, I travel I would say probably 30 or 40 percent Depending on the time of year. I would say when the kids are less than two years old They're not as emotional, I would say, at least my kids haven't been, like when I leave and come back. And now that Emma's three, she's a lot more cognizant of when I'm gone. Sometimes there is the time where I leave and I think I left one morning before she had gotten up, maybe five minutes before she had gotten up, and I was, I don't know, a mile down the road. And Garrett called me and was like, Emma wants you to say goodbye. So of course I had to turn around, come back home. She was standing at the stairs, just wanting a hug and a kiss, and that's all she wanted. She just wanted me to say goodbye to her. And so of course I did that. And it's finding little moments like that, and especially when I come home from traveling, I love just hearing the footsteps of them running down the stairs or the hallway yelling, mom, because they're so excited to see me. But kind of with that. When I am home, I want to make sure that the time I'm spending with them is very intentional. So that's my specific goal, is that I'm intentional with the time I'm spending with my family. And I'm going to measure that by, I still, I try to do this, but when I grew up, well, as I know, growing up, my mom loved to plan fourth family fun days. And she still does that. So I'm trying to implement that once a month, I'm going to try to plan just a fourth family fun day with us to do something. It doesn't have to be big, could just be watching a movie or whatnot, but just intentional fourth family fun. And then specifically with my daughter, since my son usually sleeps, goes to bed before her or sleeps in later, I have a goal of 20 to 30 minutes a couple days a week just her night time. Or she gets to go run errands with me or just one-on-one time with her. And one of the best ways that I've learned to implement that is when I tuck her in at night, I say, when you wake me up in the morning, say, Mom, let's play. And so that gets you both in the mindset that, yeah, I have to be intentional with this time. Yes. So every morning now she wakes up and she says, Mom, let's play. And that kind of just brings a smile on my face and helps me kind of wake up in a good mood. And I'm not very good at taking pictures, as every mom is, you're the one that's always behind the camera. During those one-on-one times or forced family fun events, I'm gonna be more intentional about taking pictures of all of us doing whatever we're doing so that I can look back and see like what we've done throughout the year, because I think we get caught up in the day to day and some moms just don't make a habit to take the picture. So I'm gonna try and take the picture. Some moms make a habit of taking lots of pictures. Yes, now there's my mom. Most of the people in town when we're out and about say, oh I saw your daughter on this, I saw your daughter doing this, and I was like yep probably from my mother-in-law's Facebook page because my mother-in-law is very good at taking lots of pictures. And so that's how everyone keeps updated on our family is because of my mother-in-law. But that's another topic for another time. But yeah, so that's my goal for 2024. And I will be able to look back every month and every week and see how I'm achieving those things by the pictures that I've taken and the things I have on my calendar. 

Casey

Yes and if you did listen to the last episode she has three calendars posted with everything. 

Morgan

They all say the same thing though. 

Casey

Now I know I have tons of calendars in my digital space. But I think that's good. I want to bring this back to agribusiness a little bit and And most of us and most of my friends, depending on when the fiscal year is, and the majority of companies, it's January. They have set their goals in December. Usually they start working on budgets. I've heard a lot of companies even now finalizing budgets here in February now. a company I'm working with, which I found interesting because I had to come up with my budget and my goals in November last year, right, for research and stuff when I was with companies. And I think, um, you know, from a business standpoint, I think one of the biggest pieces I've learned in working in corporate America now is the value of looking into where you were and where you started, like your photos. 

Morgan

That is going to show you, like, I didn't spend enough time. Well, no, that's a lie. I have all these photos that said that we did, right, that I lived intentional. And you can go back to say, well, I had 30 photos in January, but I only had 10 in February. That should make you click and reflect, am I spending enough time or did I just fall out of the habit of not taking the photos? 

Casey

Yeah, and I think going back to the ag business space, a lot of people that are within our industry, January through March is an extremely busy time of year with all the different trade shows going on. Just being mindful of yes I know I'm gonna be gone for more of the weeks and more than normal I'm gonna be gone for three or four weeks in a row. Okay what do I need to do while I'm home during that time to make it work make make sure that I'm home. And I was just thinking, you know, career wise, agribusiness, either you lead a company or you work in a company. Do you understand your goals for the year? Do you know where you fit into those goals? Obviously, we talked about personal goals. I have business goals and I have. Personal goals and for me, my business goals is personal almost because it is my company, but we all need to earn a paycheck. I really loved my bonuses because we all hit our sales targets and things. Those were like nice gifts at the, you know, the first part of the year from helping buy a vacation or paying something off faster. But where do you fit in your company's goals? In every company is different. You can have some personal goals. You can have corporate goals. But you can say, well, I'm just working in customer service or I just work on research. Sales doesn't matter to me. And I would say that is incorrect. We all are components of that. And so I look at it. If it's revenue is one of the goals that my company has, what am I doing to positively promote my company? Positively promote myself, which then positively promotes my company, right? On social media. So is your social media aligned with your personal goals and your company's goals? Because if we're on there complaining about we hate work or we don't like this or we're not happy and I'm using that on social media or just in networking. That sets that mindset up that my company is not going to achieve the goals. It's that and we're going to get into this in my mind later. is part of your revenue goals as a company, look at your expenses, right? Could I have saved $10 on a hotel room or a flight or something? And be, like you said, be intentional. I think that goes into what we'll get into later on in the series, but I just wanted to point out that understand where you fit into your company's goals and your personal goals and make sure that they don't conflict. Yeah, and I think you make a really good point on the business side of things, but also finding somebody that can help hold you accountable. So like for you, you have a business coach that can help you on the business side of things. We're both married on the personal front. We can ask our husbands to be our accountability partners or our best friends. I think it's also important though that to see where you fit in within your company, ask your manager. Ask somebody for a yearly review or a quarterly review. I think it's really important to write down your goals so that you can see them, whether that's on a sticky note on your computer or a Word document that you reference every now and then, but having your goals written down and talking with your manager or upper management to see where you fit in that success for that company. Yeah, and if your company doesn't formally give you personal goals to help you with your career or your position, find a colleague, find a mentor in your company to be that accountability partner and set some achievable goals to talk. And, you know, I think Morgan, you know, some of the things I asked for her as her mentor, and she wanted to work on technical have this podcast, but I said, can you plan to maybe present at an international conference so you could have that different exposure? And so I think you're getting the opportunity, hopefully, to do that in Canada this year. But I, yeah, so I asked her to put that into her plan with her supervisor to say, hey, this is what I'm working on with my mentor and make that a possibility because that's just going to push you further, right, in that goal that you have of becoming a better technical presenter, for instance. 

Morgan

I think individuals that are trying to better themselves, when you ask somebody for help to do that. Everyone is more than willing to help. Personally, I've had probably five or six people within my company that I've said, this is something I'm working on, this is something I want to try and do, and there's been nothing about positive feedback and opportunities. Like, for example, my technical presentation skills. I have had many people helping me refine those skills and next week I'll be at a meeting and we'll see how those go as I put those action items into implementation. Kind of how we talked about last week, surrounding yourself with individuals to help you achieve your goals. And I think it's important to also make a point that your goals can change. Your goals don't have to be set in stone. For example, before I had kids I could go out and go for a four-hour run. Today if I had a long run with two kids I would have to stop midway, breastfeed my son, change some diapers, whatever, oh I'm getting off topic. I know and I was just warning you that beep was my alarm to say okay the meat of our presentation. Are we done already? Well that was the meat of it, right? 20 minutes.

 Oh, holy cow.

1
 0:26:28
 Okay, let me just end with your goals can change, and I've learned that as long as you're giving 110% and the best you can at that moment in time with the resources you have available, that's success. 

Casey

I meant to add that last week, but here we are. No, I love it and the action item. So obviously, I have a goal of getting this goal book done. And I hope to have it out as a e-book for you next week because it goes into what I'm going to give you as an action item and Morgan can give you a different one. But I'm curious if you can map out one of your goals this year of what that is and break it down like I did in the specific measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound. And really think about those because I just came up with this and you know I said, oh 2024, that's time bound. But really I should want to, if I'm measuring my success through the happy faces, I need to see more happy faces in February than I did in January, in March. So to me, that's time bound, right? Every month I'd like to see that climb. And then if I start seeing a plateau, I need to be asking me why I'm seeing a plateau, because maybe I am plateauing at 90% and it's okay to have 10% bad days.

Morgan
 0:27:57
 You know what I mean.

Morgan
 0:27:58
 But you have to find your baseline and then adjust accordingly. Yeah, and so that's kind of where I think your action item is, have you mapped out your goal and stop calling it resolutions, everyone, and break it down because this next one we're going to go through habits, mindset in all these segments of How you can really make things achievable if that's I think that's the biggest thing is is this really achievable? I didn't put a 50k on my 50th birthday on my bucket list Hey, that's plenty of time. I never thought I was going to run a 50. I mean, part of me thought I could, part of me was like, you're crazy, but it's the tiny steps that you take to get to your end goal. I didn't wake up one day and decide to swim two and a half miles, bike 112 miles, and then run 26.2 miles. No, I trained for 12 to 9 months to get there. Exactly. So I think this is a good point to end the goals. We followed our outline, we did a little bit of weaving, but not as bad as we did. Nope, we're getting better. We're getting better. So everyone, have a blessed week. I hope you enjoyed having your Monday morning coffee with us So everyone, have a blessed week. I hope you enjoyed having your Monday morning coffee with us or whatever day you're listening to us. And we will see you next week.