In this episode, Jared shares his recent experiences and successes with venue tours, highlighting the power of personal connections and live performances in securing gigs. He delves into his strategy of using the gig vault inside the BookLive platform to identify and engage with potential venue partners in the Denver area. Jared's journey includes a mix of corporate and wedding venue tours, spontaneous performances at a wedding dress shop, and the strategic use of business cards and social media to enhance visibility. He emphasizes the importance of being proactive in the music business, showcasing the effectiveness of building partnerships with venues and event planners. Jared's story is a testament to the value of showing up, playing live, and embedding oneself as a necessity in the events industry. His approach not only leads to immediate gig opportunities but also fosters long-term relationships that promise continued success.

"The power of music cannot be undersold, cannot be understated. I really feel like you have to show them what you do."

- 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? It's Jared Judge. Welcome to another episode of the Gigging Musician Podcast. I am on my way to a little venue event at the Lionsgate Event center, which is a wedding corporate gig venue, and it is actually the same venue that I did the married at first sight taping at.

That's that reality TV show about weddings where I got to play for a nationally televised wedding. Turned out it was the wedding that the first ever in the 17 seasons of this show where the bride left the groom at the altar. Anyway, that's not what I'm hoping to chat about today.

It's just kind of a little recap of what's been going on lately. I've been doing a crap ton of venue tours, and actually, so I've been using I eat my own dog food. The tool that has been helping me get all these wedding and corporate gigs has been the gig vault inside of the BookLive platform, which I selfishly coded this platform to work really well for me.

And it just so happens that it works really well for others, too. And I love that it works for others, too, because I'm of this abundance mindset. But basically what it's been making me do is it's been helping me focus on nearby venues and finding all of the ones in this Denver area, specifically by my suburb of Arvada.

And then I just enroll them in a venue tour, Cadence in BookLive, which basically know I want to reach out to these people. I want to follow up with them until they give me the result that I want. But turns out that result that I want is I want a partnership.

I want a collaboration where they start recommending me to their clients. Many of you guys know this already, but I don't know. I feel like sometimes you have to hear something for the 50th time for it to click of how valuable this is and why you want to start doing this now.

So I've been doing a bunch of these venue tours using the gig vault inside of BookLive, and they've been going amazingly well. In fact, today's was at a venue called the church Ranch Event Center. I asked the guy, what is it, like, 80, 90% weddings here? He's like, no, close to like 70%.

The other 30 is like, corporate events. It's like, awesome. So I arrived at the venue, and at these venues, I always play my instrument.

There's no better way to show them what you can do than by actually playing for them. And it depends on the venue. We had a good discussion in our Fulltime Music Academy coaching yesterday.

Because there are some venues that are operated by people who are super friendly, warm, inviting, and they just love what they do so much that if you're trying to help them accomplish their job, they're going to treat you like royalty. And then on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, there are some venues that it's operated by somebody who's, like an employee for a corporation who doesn't necessarily have the same love and attention to detail as the owner of the venues do. So they just want to get the job done.

I keep trying to think of the analogy. They just want to be the person who turns the key to open the venue at the beginning of the day and then turns the key to lock it at the end of the day and everything else kind of whatever. This tour was somewhere in the middle where they weren't necessarily immediately like, oh, my gosh, I'm so excited to have an electric violinist at my venue.

They were just like, oh, yeah, here's the space. You could take a look around and play if you want. Let me know if you have any questions, which I'm totally cool with.

I can handle all the situations. So I took it as it comes. I didn't try to force myself on this person and pitch them as to why I'm the greatest thing for their weddings and corporate events and sliced bread.

No, I read the room, and then I said, okay, great, thank you so much. I'll go and play a couple of tunes and hear how the venue sounds. So then I set up in a corner, and then I played.

I played about four songs, all of them from memory by this point, because I've been playing these same four songs at every venue tour. But by the time I finished up the fourth song, the guy came back over, he's like, that was really great. I could tell his attitude shifted.

His body language towards me was more like amicable, as opposed to, just get in, do your stuff, and get out. And, yeah, he actually asked me, do you have business cards that I could hand out to future clients? And I always bring a nice big old stack of business cards and gave it to him. So I guess the lesson for that is that the power of music cannot be undersold, cannot be understated.

I really feel like you have to show them what you do. And I know for some of you, if you play a large instrument, it's really hard to do that, like, drum set. That's really impossible to do that.

So you kind of have to use videos, which is why I suggest bringing a phone or an iPad and connecting that to a Bluetooth speaker, because the phone speaker just won't quite cut it. But, yeah, when I played, his whole attitude shifted, which was just amazing. And that was the reason why I think this venue tour was a success.

They've all been successes, which is amazing. I think I'm up to. In the gig vault, it keeps track of how many partners you've officially partnered with.

And once they start to indicate, like, yes, I'll recommend you to our clients, even if they don't have a preferred vendor list on their website, if they still ask you like, hey, would it be okay if I referred you to our clients? Do you have any business cards? I count that as an active partnership, and the gig vault keeps track of your active partnerships. And I'm at 21 active partnerships so far. It's actually cool.

I added a feature to Booklab where you could see, you've got active partners. You've got partners that you're working on, which I call those engaged leads. And then you have people who you haven't even reached out to, which I just call leads.

So that's like, the three stages that they could be. They could either be a lead, they could be engaged, or they could be an active partner. And it tells you the percentage of all of your potential partners that are in each stage.

And so I have about 140 leads, venues, and event planners in the Denver area that I have not reached out to yet. I think I have 40 something engaged leads, ones that I'm working on. And then I have a total of 21 active partners as of today, which I was doing.

The math on this, I've made over. Well, I can't make an income claim. I can't guarantee you'll have these same results.

But I've made well over five figures so far just by pursuing these partnerships. And that is just with under 20 partners. Like, I didn't have all 20 of these last year, and I still made over 40 grand, which is pretty amazing.

That's just to show the power of these partnerships. You don't need that many if you have a high enough quality. Now, that being said, I do kind of go for quantity over quality, but the fact that I'm using these sales cadences and they have a really nice follow up process after I partner with them, which actually, it's built right into BookLive as well.

It's called the partner nurturing sequence. It means that the quality is there. It's high quality relationships without me putting in a bunch of effort in them.

So I don't know. That's kind of what I'm up to. I'm actually on the way to that expo I mentioned, and that was as a result of me going through this process, too.

Even though, yes, I had played for the television show married at first sight here and I did play a wedding already, I still went through a similar process where I reached out to them after I'd played both of those gigs and said, hey, I'm looking to partner. Can I come in, take a tour? Can I play for your wedding expo? I had to pursue it. So I think, yeah, that's what I've been working on and it's been so much fun.

And I did want to share a musical win, which is I mentioned that I play four tunes at these venue tours and they're all by memory, which is great. I don't usually play memorized, but it does always tend to go better memorized. And I got to say, playing my instrument has become so much more effortless.

It's easier. I'm spending less physical energy doing it just because I'm getting so many reps in so much practice time, so much paid practice time because I'm playing a lot of gigs and also all of these venue tours, it's just like another opportunity to play. So I don't know.

I'm having a great time. I hope you guys are too. And if you want some help with this, please just reach out to me or just go to openthegigvault.com

so that you could start this process too. Like I said it before, sometimes it takes 50 times for it to sink in. And I know I've got listeners out here who have heard many episodes where I talk about this concept, but you still haven't taken action on it yet, and now is your time.

It is February. This year is already well underway. We're already over 20% of the way through, I believe.

No, maybe like 17%. But still, it's getting close. And if you haven't taken this kind of action, you're just waiting for things to happen.

You think that your music will market itself. I got news for you. It's not going to happen for you unless you make it happen.

So take some action and get your free trial of BookLive, which comes with the Gig Vault at openthegigvault.com. And just start adding prospects to your gig vault. Start sending them the venue, tour sales, cadence, and just start going and visiting these venues and showing them what you got.

I promise you, you'll have much more results than you ever thought possible. And is it going to work immediately? Maybe not. It might take some time, but good things come to those who wait.

And if you're investing the energy and the time into your music career, it will pay off. All right, so that's all I got for you guys today. Have a great rest of your day.

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