In this episode, Jared Judge kicks off the new year with enthusiasm and a fresh perspective. He shares his personal resolution to hit the gym consistently and discusses the importance of setting and resuming beneficial habits. Jared also teases an exciting upcoming interview with Joe Dennison, the electric violinist from the band Kansas, promising to delve into his musical journey and gather valuable insights for fellow gigging musicians. Additionally, Jared highlights the growth of BookLive, particularly its new features that simplify and enhance the process of securing gigs. He introduces a unique AI-powered tool within BookLive that personalizes email outreach, making it easier for musicians to connect with potential clients. Jared also talks about his own recent gig bookings and looks forward to attending the American String Teachers Association conference in Louisville, Kentucky. This episode is a blend of personal goals, professional updates, and anticipation for the opportunities that the new year brings.

"Why are holiday parties still booking? Well, the truth is some companies are still booking their holiday parties until January and February."

- BookLive: Everything you need to start marketing and booking your act online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)​
- Your First Gig: Everything you need to book your first high-paying gig.
- Fulltime Music Masterclass: The Secret To an Unlimited Stream of High-Paying Private Event Gigs …Without Spending a Fortune on Online Advertising or Having Any Connections!
- Fulltime Music Academy (Gig Vault): 24,665 High-End Venues + Event Planners: Use this directory to book your highest-paid gig to-date.

What's up, gigging pros? Happy New Year! It's Jared Judge. Welcome to a new episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast.

All right. I am so excited. It's the new year.

A fresh start for everybody. I am out in the freezing cold, it's 23 degrees, and I'm walking back from the gym because one of my New Year's resolutions was to go to the gym consistently four times a week because I'd definitely fallen off the gym wagon last year.

Kind of let things get to me, let the gym habit slide.

And New Year's a great opportunity to start new things, resume old things that you knew were good for you, but you stopped for one reason or another.

And I'm also excited because we got a couple cool things I want to share that in one of our upcoming episodes, I will be interviewing the electric violinist of the band Kansas.

Some of you may have heard of Kansas, dust in the wind, anybody? And I'm going to sit down with Joe Dennison, electric violinist in Kansas, and ask him about his journey as a musician and what advice he has for the rest of us gigging musicians.

So I'll be doing that interview later today. Episode should be coming out a week or so after this one is published. I'll of course, keep you all posted as that happens.

Another thing I'm excited about is that the amount of people, amount of musicians using BookLive is growing.

And not just like signing up for the free trial and doing nothing with it, but like actually signing up for it, exploring the features, opening the gig vault in it, finding their next gig, and using the new features that we launched at the end of the year, which one of them that I'm super excited about is a way to kind of automatically follow up with gig opportunities.

And I snuck in a little bonus feature because as you all know, that when you send out emails, sometimes it's hard to know what to write.

And so I included some templates in the gig vault which are getting a lot of use. But the little sneaky bonus feature that I included is there is a button that can let you personalize the email automatically using Chat GPT.

So you press the button and it sends the template over the Chat GPT along with all the information that you've already entered into BookLive, like your name, where you're from, your bio, and then it will personalize these templates specific to the individual.

So you don't really need to edit any of the text yourself. You can just send it, which is pretty cool. I think we're one of the first music marketing platforms that actually leverages the power of AI, which the whole goal is to make it easier for you to get your next gig.

So 2024 is here. I mentioned last podcast that I am hosting a 30 day challenge for the month of January. I have not published that I'm hosting that yet.

So that is going to be my goal for today. We're going to start it a little bit late. I talked to my Fulltime Music Academy students about it, and the goal for the 30 days is for each of you and myself to really start to reach out to the event planners and venues that have our ideal gigs.

Make them aware of us so that when they have a client or an event that they need music that we're appropriate for, we're the first one that comes to mind.

I always mention this, and I actually am listening to a book right now called the ten X rule by Grant Cardone. And in it, he keeps repeating the phrase over and over again.

The biggest problem you face is obscurity, meaning people don't know that you exist. You could be the best musician in the world, but if nobody knows you exist, you have no chance of getting booked for any gig, whether it's high paying, low paying, no paying.

If you're not doing the work to make people aware that you exist, then that's the fate you will be destined to.

And I hope you guys enjoyed my voice, you know, Grant cardone, interesting guy, definitely got some lovers and some haters. I'm in the middle of the spectrum there because I think he's got a lot of good stuff to say.

But I think for my taste, he is a bit on the aggressive side, but nevertheless, I think he's got amazing stuff to say, and if you implement it, you will have massive success.

So that's what's going on in my world. I am on the cusp. Well, I just booked another holiday party, which I know you're thinking like, hey, it's the new year.

Why are holiday parties still booking? Well, the truth is some companies are still booking their holiday parties until January and February.

So I booked one in Milwaukee for the jazz group that I run called Dream City Jazz. It's an extension of my string quartet in Milwaukee, Dream City Strings.

And we booked a holiday party that's happening January 11, which is great. $3,200 gig. Awesome.

I am on the cusp of signing a contract to play a nonprofit gala up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is surprisingly only an hour and a half drive away from me here in Denver.

Didn't realize Wyoming was this close, so that is exciting. That contract should be signed in the next couple of days and they're putting me up in a hotel.

It's a lodge in Cheyenne, so that should be cool. Then in a couple weeks I've got another gig. This time it's for the Pueblo tourism board.

Pueblo is a town, I think it's about 2 hours southwest of Denver. The one thing I made a mistake on this one is I did not request lodging. So I'm going to have to reach out and get some lodging.

Hopefully the person who booked me the chamber of commerce, will put me up for a night. I don't need anything. Great.

You could put me up in a motel six, but I just have to ask. And if not, well, I'll find myself a motel six. Or just make the drive.

I just don't really want to drive 2 hours each way in one day. Seems like a long drive. Oh, and another exciting update is that I will be going down to Louisville, Kentucky, which I think we've got some BookLive users in Louisville that I'll have to try to meet up with.

We're going down March 20 for the American String Teachers association conference, which I went to last year when it was in Orlando. This year I'm going again.

This time I'm actually helping out Tracy Silverman, another electric violinist, in helping him launch his Strumbowing Groove Academy.

So he's got a booth in the exhibit hall of this convention center, and I'll be working his booth, which I'm excited because last time I did that too, it turned into some crazy jam sessions.

A lot of string players came to the booth and were jamming out to everything from Marvin gay to daft punk, even some fiddle tunes.

And then a lot of people bought his course on how to chop and groove on strings, and I helped facilitate that, which is super fun.

So if you're in Louisville, Kentucky, March 20, let me know. I'd love to meet you. Say hi.

And yeah. So 2024 is looking to be a good year. Actually, no, it's going to be a great year.

I'm setting my intention this way, and now that the clock has actually turned over, I get to work towards those intentions.

Although let's be real, I've been working towards those intentions as of like, even last year I started working towards this.

I'm curious, are there any musicians that you look up to that you would love to hear and interview on The Gigging Musician Podcast?

My upcoming one with Joe Dennison is awesome and Kansas is a huge band, but some of you might not even listen to Kansas.

I'm curious who you listen to and who would you love to hear from about their gigging journey and what got them to where they are? So drop me a line, send me an email.

It's jared@booklive.com. And let me know and I'll try to get them as a guest on this podcast, which would be pretty awesome.

Cool. So I'm going to head inside. My fingers are freezing off.

It's still 23 degrees out. But I'm excited for today. I'm going to interview Joe Dennison in about two and a half hours, maybe 3 hours, and then I'm going to work my leads of venues and event planners inside of BookLive.

So if you have not gotten your free 14-day trial of BookLive, just go to BookLive.com and you will be able to sign up for that. So you could start working towards your next gig, which now is the time.

January really is the time to make this happen. So get your free trial at BookLive.com. And thanks for tuning into another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast.

Remember, "Your music will not market itself!".