How To Set A Goal To Change Your Lifestyle By Teaching Music 

If you're a musician stuck in a day job, teaching music lessons can transform your life. It did for me.

In this article we'll create your business goal. Here are the steps we'll take:
Step 1. Set a timeframe.

Step 2. Decide what number to use to measure success.

Step 3. Envision a bold, achievable outcome.

Step 4. Schedule time to work on achieving your goal.

You need a goal

You have a dream. Like I was, you’re on a quest to transform your lifestyle. You want more time to spend as you wish, recording music or playing with your kids. You want to get more satisfaction and pride from your job. You know that you can do it, and you won’t give up. You’re going to keep working towards your dream no matter how long it takes. So how can you do such a big thing?

Break it down. Start working on a short-term goal. ​

A goal is a strategic play, like a chess move. You might fail at several goals before you learn what you need to achieve your dream. You will need to be successful at several goals building upon each other to get to your dream lifestyle.

Keep your dream separate from your short-term goals, even though they work together. A goal can fail, but that doesn’t mean your dream has failed. And if you design your goals well, they will help you achieve your dream.

Set a timeframe

An easy way to get started is to give your goal an end date. This isn’t a deadline for you to either become an entrepreneur or not. It’s not a deadline to become a music teacher or not. It’s a deadline for your short-term goal to get you closer to your dream lifestyle. It’s like the timer in chess, limiting how long you take to make your next move.

The deadline will help motivate you to work. To change your lifestyle you have to work at a fast pace. You’re aiming for a total transformation of your professional career and your home life. You’re trying to get out of your nine to five job. It takes a lot of work to build a business that does that. If you spread the work out too much, it will delay or slow down your lifestyle change. This goal should be a sprint-style effort with a deadline of a year or less.

When you first start a business, it can be a hectic and emotional time. The deadline helps to remind you that you have time. The timeframe will help you assess your situation and make changes as you go. If your goal needs adjustments, the deadline will keep you from delaying them. 

Running out of time is an important signal. It either means that the goal was too demanding or that your strategies need to improve. Either of these insights is helpful.

❑ Take Action: Choose a specific date up to one year from now as your project end date. Put the deadline on your calendar. You’ve started a journey to transform your life!

Decide what number to measure

If you are successful as you work towards your goal, there will be several signs proving it. You will be making more money. Your customer list will be growing. You’ll have customer retention from month to month. You’ll be collecting positive customer testimonials and reviews. Your customers will refer you to other customers. We can call these performance indicators. You do not need to track them all. You only need one good one. This is your key performance indicator (KPI) and it's what you’ll track with your goal.

Your key performance indicator is the most important part of your goal. Having a quantifiable indicator gives you solid data to analyze. You will be able to see in plain numbers whether you're doing a good job. 

Choose an indicator that is relevant to your lifestyle dream. This ensures you’re working in the right direction. For example, if your priority is to have more free time you might choose to track the ratio of work hours to income. Then your goal will be to improve that. All your work will focus on improving something that matters to you.

What does your dream lifestyle look like? How much closer to that dream can you get in one year? Imagine if you took on a one-year project to get you closer to your dream lifestyle. If you had success from it what kind of measurable changes would happen? Would you be making a new income? Would you be working fewer hours per week? Would you have a list of happy customers evangelizing your work?

❑ Take Action: Choose an indicator of progress to track as your KPI for the project. It has to be quantifiable, meaning you can track it with a number. It should relate to your lifestyle dream. Here are some common KPI examples: 

• total revenue 
• monthly recurring revenue 
• positive online reviews 
• enrollment levels 
• average customer retention time

Envision a bold, achievable outcome for your goal

Now you know what you are going to measure. And you know how much time you have to get validating results. So now, what is the amount that you need to hit in that timeframe to consider your goal a success? To answer that, you need to look at your ability and choose a speed of output to attempt. How much of your targeted outcome, or KPI, can you generate in one year or less?

Take the example of the ratio of work hours to income as a KPI. The goal for that might be to hit a certain baseline monthly income for no less than $50 per hour. Or $75, or $100. So where should you set your mark?

Your goal should be bold and optimistic. Audacity is helpful for creating goals. If you aim for too high a result, you might not be able to achieve your goal by the deadline. But if you attempt too little you’ll be wasting your time. It’s better to make progress toward an unachievable goal than an underachieving one.

The boldness of your goal is what will make it transformative for your lifestyle. You can evolve by taking it slow. But to transform you need to sprint.

Think about your ability to work on the goal over the next year. How much will you do if you work hard? If you make a massive effort now in the right direction, it will pay off later. The hard work will have been worth it when you are able to spend your time freely. 
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❑ Take Action: Choose an amount of time that you can commit per week to this work. Run a rough calculation of how much time that is per month and per year. Then, be optimistic and estimate how much KPI progress you can generate by the deadline.

Write your goal down

This goal is a huge step in your lifestyle transformation. Write it down and keep it in a place where you can refer to it.

It’s important to actually write the goal down. Writing it out will help solidify the goal in your mind. Documenting your goal helps you to keep track of your progress. It makes a great reminder when you are in need of motivation to keep working. It also might be the first of several goals that you complete or fail on your journey. Keeping a journal of those might be useful for your future projects.

When I quit my job and set out to build my own clientele, I wrote my goal. It was, “Within one year I will have ten students enrolled in weekly lessons.” In retrospect, it wasn’t ambitious enough. I reached the goal early and then rewrote the goal for twenty students. Those two first goals guided me through a successful startup. They changed my life.

❑ Take Action: Write your goal as a statement of purpose. Include the deadline, the key performance indicator, and the number you are going to reach. For example, “By May 1st I will make $2k in monthly recurring revenue from music lessons.”

Schedule time to work on achieving your goal

Now you’ve got your goal. You’ve chosen which direction you want to take, how far you want to go, and how long you have to get there. Now you need to do consistent, systematic work to be successful. The first step to doing that is to mark off your work hours on your calendar.

Your new goal demands that you do a lot in a short amount of time. Your schedule is the answer. By blocking off the time in advance, you’ll be able to prevent other things from getting in the way. You are an entrepreneur now. That is a respectable undertaking, and most people would agree it deserves your time. You might not be ready to quit your job yet, but you should be able to rearrange your schedule. 

When I decided to quit my job I still had six months left in my teaching contract so I had to wait. I began working towards my new goal while still teaching full time. I was so motivated and eager to get started that I rearranged my entire day. I got up at 3 am every day so I could work a few hours on my business before I went to school. I would hang out with my family after work, and go to bed around 7 pm every evening. That was an exciting time. It was my way of going all in on quitting my job even though I couldn’t resign quite yet. It also ensured that my most productive hours of the day went towards my new business. By the time I resigned, I had already set up a lot of important business processes.

❑ Take Action: Block the time off on your calendar on a repeating daily or weekly basis. Set alarms or reminders on your phone.

Once you’ve completed these commitments to yourself, it’s time to get to work. You have a new job now, and it is going to pay off more than you can imagine when you break free of the nine to five. 

In the next article I'll show you how to use keywords to get customers: How To Use Keywords To Start Your Home Business As A Music Teacher.