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If you’re like me, you LOVE setting goals (and achieving them).
I set new years resolutions almost every year in both my personal life and my business (if you want a great goal planner for all aspects of life, I use the Cultivate What Matters Power Sheets – this will be my 3rd year using them. Men, be warned: they are a little girly in design. But the content is good for everyone!)
This year, many of my goals involve C&S Music – I am setting several business new years resolutions for 2026. As I am going through the process of thinking through and setting my goals for next year with my Power Sheets, I realized that if I had sat down to set some business new years resolutions even 3 years ago, I wouldn’t have had a clue where to start. So I’m writing this post to help people like me, who want some guidance or just some New Year’s resolution ideas for their private music teacher business!
- What makes a good New Year's Resolution?
- Private Music Teacher Business New Year's resolution ideas
- My New Year's Resolutions for C&S Music in 2026:
What makes a good New Year’s Resolution?
Most New Year’s resolutions are abandoned within the first month of the new year.
(Gee, thanks, Alyssa! Helpful!)
Hear me out: most goals are abandoned by the end of January because they are the wrong kinds of goals. They’re either too vague, open-ended, or big; or the “why” behind them isn’t strong enough to keep you moving when the going gets tough.
In my personal life, I like to use what are called SMART goals. You may have heard about SMART goals – if not, here’s a quick recap: SMART goals are…
- Specific
- Measurable
- Achievable
- Relevant
- Time-bound
New year’s resolutions are by nature time-bound – they are goals to reach by the end of the year. The other 4, however, are where we get tripped up.
A common business new year’s resolution is to “Make more money.”
While this is a good idea for a business resolution, there is no way to measure when you’ve met your goal. You could quit when you make an extra dollar, or feel unfulfilled that you added $50 to your monthly salary.
Using the SMART goals method, you could change that resolution to something like “I want to sign 6 more students by the end of the year.”
A realistic and specific goal that you can actually check off your list when you’ve achieved it!
Breaking your goals down
No matter how big you dream, your resolution needs to be broken down into bite-size pieces, and each of those pieces should be specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Creating mini-goals that help lead to your bigger goals will not only give you more landmarks to celebrate, but it will make your bigger resolution seem that much more attainable!
Sidenote: that’s why I like the Cultivate What Matters Goal Planner so much – it helps you figure out goals that are meaningful for you and helps you break them down into more achievable pieces.
Private Music Teacher Business New Year’s resolution ideas
As I was thinking through some solid music teacher resolutions, I realized that my own fell into 3 categories: learning for my music business, growing my music business, and changing some aspect of my business. I’ll list my own resolutions for C&S Music at the end of this post, but I also came up with some other ideas that would be great SMART goals for any musician or private music teacher in 2026.
Keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list – get creative with your own goals!
Learning-centered New Year’s Resolutions for your business
Learn a New Skill
We as music teachers should always be learning. Learning new teaching techniques, furthering our musical knowledge, learning a new instrument. Now more than ever, it is becoming increasingly valuable for private music teachers to have business or internet presence knowledge.
There are so many different directions you could go with this one – just make sure it is a skill that is relevant to your business.
Find a podcast that teaches you something about your business – and listen for the year
With the rise of podcasts (and the internet in general), there is no lack of free information out there – both good and bad. However, there are some really wonderful resources out there that you can use to even discern the next step for your business.
My personal favorite business podcast is The SPI Podcast with Pat Flynn. Not all episodes are relevant to my business, but I listen to the ones that are during my commute time, getting ready for the day, or when I’m doing the dishes.
Read x number of books relevant to private music teacher business
I like reading books for a lot of reasons, but especially because the vetting process is much more rigorous than information found elsewhere. There are so many books out there that deal with entrepreneurship that you could easily pick a book for each month of the year.
And here’s the thing – they don’t even have to be books on teaching private music lessons to benefit your business! Any book centered on entrepreneurship, general business, or even self-improvement could count towards your goal – this is a resolution that might require a surprising amount of narrowing down before it is specific enough to guide your book choices.
So pick a number, pick out your books, and start reading!
Pro-tip: this is a good one in which to create mini-goals – like reading 1 book every 2 months. That way, you don’t get backlogged and overwhelmed!
Pro-tip #2: if you aren’t much of a reader, but still want to learn from books, audiobooks are a great alternative! You can even use audible for a free trial and see if you like it. If you use this link, you’ll get 2 audiobook credits for free along with access to their huge library of audiobooks.
Some good ones to put on your list (all on amazon):
Growth-centered New Year’s Resolutions for your business
Hit a certain salary per month
Many small business owners that I know have some form of this goal – hitting a certain salary allows them to have a number before they quit their “day job,” outsource some aspect of their business (admin help, anyone?), or hire another employee.
Basically, this new year’s resolution is one that is easily measurable, achievable in several different ways, and can be an easy stepping stone or bench mark for bigger goals that have to do with scaling your business.
Enroll x new students
Such a great way to meet a new salary goal!
One of the benefits of regular lessons is the relative regularity of your monthly paycheck. That means that a new student will (mostly) guarantee a certain amount of money each month (implementing a Student Contract does help a lot with stabilizing your paycheck).
Thanks to the nature of the business, 1 new student equals a set amount of time and money each month – a very measurable goal!
Build (or grow) your online presence
Thanks to 2020, a lot of us private music teachers already had to adapt to an online-friendly business, but many of us have gone back to hybrid lessons or fully in-person.
Just because we have some more freedom again doesn’t mean that online options or avenues aren’t still valuable. Even if just for marketing, having an online presence is extremely helpful in this day and age.
Depending on what direction you want to go, you could have a specific goal of a certain number of followers on social media, creating a music teacher website, or migrating your payments to all online, or even learning how to do one of those things.
Change-centered new Year’s Resolutions for your business
Implement a student contract
If you don’t have a student contract yet, listen up.
I finally set one up last year, and I am SO happy I did. I could list the reasons here, but it would get too long. Visit this post to read all the ways my student contract saved my sanity.
I use Squareup for C&S music, and they have a super easy contract builder that made it simple to set up and implement my contract. I cannot recommend this goal enough!
Raise prices
As scary as it is, private music teachers should be raising rates on a regular basis.
There are lots of ways to do this – you could implement a raise on new sign ups, you could raise prices for all existing families, you could create a new type of class that would prompt a higher rate… there are so many ways to implement it!
While it can be a little intimidating, it’s a necessary part of owning a business. If you want some ideas, check out this post on how and why to raise your studio rates from “Grow your Music Studio.”
Pivot your business
I feel like a little bit of a broken record here, but in the age of the internet, there are so many different avenues you can take a private music teacher business.
This blog was a step in that direction for C&S Music – helping other teachers with their business was never in my plans, but with some extra time at home, I decided to take the leap – and I’m glad I did!
Like I said at the beginning, this is far from an exhaustive list – it is just a couple of ideas I had while brainstorming my own private music teacher business New Year’s resolutions. If you have any other ideas to add to the list, leave a comment!
And, as promised, here are my own resolutions for C&S Music:
My New Year’s Resolutions for C&S Music in 2026:
Expand my Online School
If you don’t know, C&S has a music school component! In fact, C&S Music started with local, in person music lessons in 2018. When I had my daughter in 2023, I moved C&S exclusively online. I’ve been blogging, creating digital resources for musicians and music teachers, and building out my online offerings at C&S Music School.
In 2026, I plan on recording new courses in a few different fields! Some strictly musical courses, and some to help musicians build their online presence with confidence.
Expand my Digital Resources Selection
I can’t tell you how many requests I’ve gotten for curriculum and other things to help make musicians and teachers lives easier, so I decided that this is the year! I’m working on templates, curriculum, and supplemental resources to help you all (my readers) save time and focus on what really matters!
I’m sharing my own resolutions for C&S music because I am firmly convinced that I can’t do it alone, and that my story will help others! If you want to come on this journey with me, subscribe to my email list (you’ll also get a bunch of free resources that I love) – I’ll be sending out progress reports and we can learn and grow together!