Donald Deibler has made explicit a personal rule that has long guided his approach to business and life: no goal counts unless it is written down first. The Hegins, Pennsylvania, business owner sets yearly goals every January 1 and monthly goals at the start of each month, keeping both lists visible rather than tucked away in a forgotten notebook. "I like to set yearly goals every January 1st and monthly goals at the beginning of every month," Deibler said. "I keep these in the back of my mind daily." The policy is simple on its face. The discipline is in the follow-through.
Deibler's rationale for formalizing the practice now stems from the demands of running multiple operations. He manages All Stars Ice Cream and Cafe Bakery and supports his wife's ownership of Dead Horse Beer and Burritos. With two sets of goals running at once, sometimes overlapping, a written target provides a fixed reference point when daily schedules become unpredictable. "By taking everything one task at a time," is how Deibler describes handling moments of doubt. The same approach applies to goals: a big yearly target gets broken into monthly pieces so it never feels like one overwhelming task. He measures success in plain terms. "By accomplishing your goals and exceeding past that," is his definition. There is no external scorecard involved; he checks his own list against his own results.
The monthly goal is not a smaller copy of the yearly one but a specific step toward it. On January 1, the year's goal gets written down in full. On the first of each month, a smaller, specific goal gets added underneath it. Daily, both stay visible enough to shape decisions, not just sit on a page. Deibler says the habit of setting new goals is also how he keeps growing once an old goal is met. "By setting new goals," is his answer when asked what continued growth looks like. Nothing about the policy assumes an endpoint. One goal closes and another opens.
The standard is not limited to one business. Deibler credits his family, including his parents and siblings, for shaping how he approaches this kind of structure. Growing up with five siblings in Donaldson, Pennsylvania, meant learning early how to divide attention across more than one priority without losing track of any of them. Outside the businesses, the same habit shows up in how he treats commitments to the community. Deibler has stayed involved with local youth sports donations and volunteer coaching, work that also runs on a calendar rather than good intentions alone.
Deibler is direct about what makes the policy work rather than fail. "Hard work and a positive attitude," he said, are the qualities he considers most important. Neither shows up on a to-do list, but both determine whether the list gets finished. He also measures the whole approach by a standard that is not borrowed from anyone else. "By my own standards," is how Deibler describes gauging his own success, whether that is a monthly goal for the bakery or a longer-term plan for the burrito business.
The written-goal habit is not a marketing device. It is the same operating rhythm Deibler has used across both businesses for years now, made explicit for anyone who asks how he keeps two food and beverage operations moving in the same direction without losing sight of either one. For Deibler, the implication is clear: a goal that is not written down is not a goal at all, and the act of writing it down is the first step toward making it real. That principle, applied month after month, has become the quiet engine behind his business and community commitments.
