Episode 196 - The Power of Aligning Your Family to a Clear, Common Goal, with FOA Coaches Elle Webb & Kerrie Smith

If a plan only lives in your head, no one else can help you make it happen. 

That's the line that sits at the heart of this conversation. Because so often on a family farm, there isn't one plan. There are two, or three, or four, each one living quietly inside a different family member's head, each one slightly different, and none of them written down anywhere everyone can see. 

In this episode, I'm joined by two of our senior FOA coaches, Elle Webb and Kerrie Smith. Both started, in their own words, at a zero out of ten when it came to having a clear, documented, common plan for their farm businesses. Both now run their businesses off a simple two-page, Clarity Action Plan that keeps the whole family and team pointed at the same goal. 

We explore: 

• What life actually looks like without a shared plan: reactive decisions, disorganisation, and family members quietly filling the information gap with their own version of the story 
  
• Why a BHAG (a big, hairy, audacious goal) needs to stretch 30, 50, even 80 years out, and how to break that down into 10-year, 3-year, and 1-year goals without getting stuck on the how 
  
• What a Brick List is (anything left undone, sitting in your head and weighing you down) and why simply writing it down and prioritising it is one of the fastest ways to free up headspace and get moving again 
  
• When and how to bring your employed team into the annual, quarterly, and weekly planning rhythm, and why that alignment is what turns individual effort into real momentum 
  
• What it means to have a coach as your "unreasonable friend," asking the questions you can't ask yourself or your own family, and why that discomfort is so often where the growth happens 

It took Elle around 35 to 40 versions of her plan over three years before it finally clicked. And what came through clearly for both of them is that the ten-year goal was never just about a bigger business. It was about a business that could fund real holidays, hand genuine ownership to their kids, and give the whole family the freedom to build the life they actually wanted, not just the one the farm demanded of them.

If you'd like a copy of our Clarity Action Plan template or the five questions every strategic plan needs to answer, email us at support@farmownersacademy.com and we'll send it straight through.

Elle and Kerrie, thank you both for your honesty about where you started and for the wisdom and care you bring to our members every single day. You make an extraordinary team. 

Till next time,

Jeremy Hutchings & the Farm Owners Academy Team 
 
P.S. Grab a pen, work through the five questions above as a family, and see what changes. And if you'd like help putting this into a plan you'll actually use, book a free coaching call here.