In this episode, Jared Judge shares his recent experience with a venue tour at the Wings over the Rockies, an air and space museum in Denver. He explains the importance of venue tours as part of the Gig Vault strategy for securing high-end gigs without relying solely on platforms like Gig Salad and Wedding Wire. Jared details how being on a venue's preferred vendor list can lead to recommendations for hosting various events. He also delves into how he successfully utilized a virtual assistant to arrange and follow up on the venue tour, highlighting the efficiency and ease of this approach. The episode offers insights into the systematic process of engaging with venues, from initial contact to nurturing the relationship for future gigs. Jared's experience and tips provide valuable lessons for musicians looking to expand their reach and secure more lucrative opportunities.

"The only work that I did was enrolling them in the correct sequence, going to their venue in person, having a good conversation, communicating with the Dream Team, letting them know how it went, and asking for a specific thank you follow-up, and then enrolling them in the partnership nurturing sequence."

- BookLive: Everything you need to start marketing and booking your act online (without having to hire or rely on a tech team!)​
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- 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? It's Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of the Gigging Musician podcast. I am stuck in Denver Traffic, and I figured this would be a great time to record a little episode, especially because I am just on my way home from a venue tour.

If you don't know what a venue tour is, it is part of the whole Gig vault strategy that in order to get the high end gig gigs, and you don't want to give all of your money to gig salad and wedding wire, then get on the preferred vendor list of those venues that host all the high end events.

And if you're on the preferred vendor list, they will recommend you to the clients who are hiring them to host their gala or their corporate event or their wedding. And the way to get on those preferred vendor list is by visiting the venue and meeting and shaking hands with the person who's in charge of that venue.

And so I just did that for a really amazing venue here in the Denver area called Wings over the Rockies, which is an air and space museum.

It's literally an old, like, an airplane hangar where they have probably at least 100 different airplanes, like actual airplanes, ranging from, like, fighter jets to old prop planes to even replicas of an X wing from Star wars, which is amazing.

And truth be told, I actually played a nonprofit gala at this venue back in October of last year, but I'd never met with the venue manager, and I figured, well, they still probably don't know who I exist, even though who I am, even though I played there.

So let me go shake hands and kiss some babies and show them, hey, I'm a real human, and I deserve to be on your preferred vendor list.

So I actually wanted to make this as a follow up to the podcast that I released last time, which was all about using a virtual assistant in a very creative way to make all this stuff happen, because I want to detail out how I used a virtual assistant to get me this venue tour and how I'm going to continue using it to make sure that I get actual gigs from this venue tour.

But first off, I want to let you know that the venue tour went well.

I got on their preferred vendor list, and I also got invited to showcase myself at their open house. They said it was, like, February 27 or something like that. It's a Tuesday.

And so success there, and here's how I used a virtual assistant to get me this venue tour. All right, so step one was this venue was actually in my gig vault in BookLive, and the gig vault inside of Know BookLive is that software platform that we created. And the gig vault has all of the potential partners in your area already listed.

Like, we've already done the work of finding who they might be and put them for the entire United States. So I just looked up and added this venue from the list to my own personal pipeline inside of the gig vault. It's like, yeah, I want tour this place.

And then the next thing that I did was I decided to enroll them in the venue tour sales cadence. See, I'm chaining together a couple concepts that we've talked about on this podcast.

The concept of a sales cadence is a systematic approach to when you send emails, when you phone call people, when you follow them on Instagram and send them a message or comment on their posts, and in book live, the kick vault lets you enroll people in specific sales cadences.

And there is a sales cadence that I created and shared with everybody called a venue tour sales cadence. The first step there is actually to send them an email. So all I did, though, was I clicked a button and chose leave.

Venue tour sales cadence. The next step, this is where the virtual assistant comes in, is similar to Jan, who I mentioned in our previous podcast episode, is I have the virtual assistants log in every day and message me, hey, what should I work on today? If you don't let me know a higher priority task, I will work on your gig vault. And so the virtual assistants logged in the very next day after I enrolled them in the venue tour sales cadence.

And they saw that, hey, you've got an outstanding task to email the venue, the wings over the Rockies Air and space museum. Here's the template to do it. So without me even actually asking them to do it, they just saw the tasks needed to be done.

And this is actually the same one that Jan is using. It's Charo. So Charo logged into book live for me, looked at my gig vault, saw that I have an upcoming task email wings over the Rockies.

And the template is pre baked into the sales game, so she didn't have to figure out what to take. So she emailed them, and she has access to my email account, and she has access to my Google calendar, so she knows exactly when I'm available. And so she sent the template, which says, hey, I'd love to come and tour your venue, blah, blah, blah.

Here are a couple of dates and times. And so, based on that, Charo sent the email. And then we got a response from Emily, the venue manager of Wings over the Rockies, said, hey, how does Thursday, January 18 at 430 sound to you? Actually, I didn't even respond to her because Charo also monitors my inbox and she saw that Emily had responded.

And so Charo drafted an email response that, hey, this sounds great, I can't wait to meet you. And then Charo put the venue tour on my calendar, including the address. So I just clicked it to google Maps.

And then the nice thing that Charles also did for me was she put in a travel buffer before and after because, well, I'm stuck in Denver traffic.

Obviously we need to plan for travel. So if you noticed by now, the only thing that I had to do to get this venue tour was by identifying this as an opportunity in my gig vault and then enrolling them in the venue tour cadence.

And then Charo took care of the rest. So that is how I got the venue tour. And then I showed up with my instrument, I brought my electric violin and my bose s one pro and played one song for Emily.

And it was a good conversation. She really enjoyed my music. And then I asked about, hey, do you guys have, like, how do you recommend musicians to your clients? And she said, oh, we have a list.

And I was like, well, what was it look like to get on that list? She's like, oh, yeah. She actually said to me, we don't really have any musicians on that list yet. And she said, you could be the first.

That would be awesome. So I got on the list and then she mentioned, oh, I've got an open house for our venue. Are you interested in play? And I said, yes.

And she said, send me a follow up email with some more information about your act and pricing, and then I'll send you more info about the upcoming open house. So had that conversation. Here is the next part.

Here is how I'm going to make sure that this relationship turns into at least one gig, but hopefully many. In the car, before I even started driving, I opened up the messaging app that I use to communicate with the Dream team, which is slack. And then I messaged Charo saying, hey, just got done with the venue tour.

It went really well. Can you send a follow up thank you email to Emily thanking her for the venue tour? Attach my pdf of my one pager that I put together for all my partners, and then thank her for offering to let me attend the open house. Let me know any additional information.

So Charo was going to draft that email, most likely use Chat GPT to do that. And then the next thing that I did, even while I was still in the car, was I unenrolled Emily from the venue tour cadence and then I enrolled her in the partnership follow up cadence.

Now, I know I'm getting super technical, hopefully I haven't lost you by now, but there is a special cadence or partners that have confirmed that you are now on their preferred vendor list to remind them that you exist, which consists of adding them to an email newsletter, which I do have an email newsletter for my partners, and then it has a couple extra tasks which is to follow them on Instagram and then like and comment on a couple posts once every week.

And it loops back and repeats that task pretty much indefinitely. But I'm not the one to do that. I'm not going to be doing that.

That sounds like too much work for me and I'm a musician and I don't like doing work. So luckily, because I enrolled them in that partnership follow up sequence, Charo is going to be doing that work for me. And it's amazing because I'm pretty much done with all the work to make sure that this relationship turns into a gig.

So the only work that I did was enrolling them in the correct sequence, going to their venue in person, having a good conversation, communicating with the Dream team, letting them know how it went, and asking for a specific thank you follow up, and then enrolling them in the partnership nurturing sequence. After that, it's all done, which is amazing. So I hope you guys got some good info out of that.

I have one little bonus tip for you. Which part of these nurturing sequences? The goal is to really show these people that you are a member of the events industry, that you're on their team.

You take an interest in what they do, and a big part of that to me is engaging with them on social media, and the way to do that is by liking and commenting on their posts.

And a quick tip, if you don't know how to make comments on people's posts is you can take a screenshot of their most recent post on Instagram and then if you have Chat GPT pro, you can upload that screenshot and say ask Chat GPT what would be an appropriate comment for this post and it will actually just generate a comment for you.

So that is actually how I have the Dream team doing all of these social media engagements. So hope you enjoyed that bonus tip and that is all I got for you today.

If you're interested in opening your gig vault, getting on some preferred vendor lists, go to openthegigvault.com. You'll get a free trial of BookLive which has almost all of this baked in. And if you're interested in and seeing how, like, a virtual assistant could do a lot of this work for you, reach out to me, send me a message.

Email me, jared@booklive.com. And I'd love to have a conversation with you to see how I could maybe help you have this happen for yourself. All right, that's all I got for you today.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "Your music will not market itself!".

Bye, everybody.