In this episode, Jared shares his recent experiences and successes in the Denver music scene, emphasizing the importance of networking, venue tours, and the unexpected power of recommendations. He recounts a venue tour that turned into an unexpected performance opportunity, and how being tagged in social media posts by past clients has led to new gig inquiries. Jared also discusses the distinction between the music scene and the events scene in Denver, highlighting how his focus on building relationships within the events industry has led to significant growth in his music career. Furthermore, he touches on the strategic use of his website as a marketing tool to attract more gigs and offers insights into how musicians can leverage their online presence for career advancement.

"It means so much more when somebody else says something nice about you than when you say it about yourself. Because now I have to believe you. I don't really know you. I don't trust you. This is the first time I'm hearing about you. But if somebody else says it, all of a sudden the trust factor is completely like, the barriers is gone."

- 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.

It is Saturday, March 15, something like that, St. Patrick's Day weekend, and I'm on my way to a corporate gig that I booked off of gig Salad. It's actually at the department store Neiman Marcus in the Cherry Creek mall in Denver.

And it's actually like a little bit of a launch party for a new fragrance, which is totally a different industry than I'm familiar with because last time I wore cologne was in middle school, and it was like Curve brand, which I think you got in American or aeroposel or one of those places, those teenage style stores in the mall. And so, yeah, I'm in my 30s now. Haven't worn cologne in a long time.

But nevertheless, I am excited to play this gig. It's 2 hours, little launch party for it. Going to be about 50 guests.

And they said some of the guests are like, VIP buyers of this fragrance, which I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I will find out. So that's exciting. But I wanted to actually make this podcast a bit about an update to the Denver project.

As you all know, I moved to Denver about a year and a half ago now. And I updated you on the very beginning of moving here since nobody knew me. Completely unfamiliar with the like, I was not a thing in the Denver music scene.

And to be honest, I'm still not a thing in the Denver music scene, but I am a thing in the Denver events scene. There's a big difference between the two. And one of the big things that I wanted to share with you that's like a big symptom of all of this work that I've been doing.

Because if you've been following my journey, you know that I try to tour every single venue in the Denver area, and the point is not to actually see the building or the grounds. The point is to meet the people who are in a position to recommend me to their clients and create a memory in their brain of, hey, this person plays amazing music. He actually brought his instrument to my venue and played for me and my staff members and, oh, hey, this corporate event, they need some live music.

And this person would be perfect. The music he played for us would be perfect. And so I want to do an update on that.

I've done that probably about 30 or so venues now. And something really cool happened this past weekend, or, well, it is the weekend now, but like this past week, many of you know, I play a lot of wedding gigs. And I believe that wedding gigs are like the gateway drug to other types of gigs.

If you get in with the wedding scene, then corporate events host their events at wedding venues, private parties host their events at wedding venues. And so weddings are the Gateway drug. And I'm a part of a lot of wedding Facebook groups in the Denver area.

That is also part of my strategy is finding the Facebook groups for all the brides and grooms looking for their services or looking for wedding vendors like, hey, who has a recommendation for a mountain venue? We're looking for one. And so these Facebook groups are there, and they're full of a lot know brides. And then people who have also gotten married, who have used these Facebook groups, they stay in the groups to make recommendations, I believe they feel know status, they're trusted.

And so that's why they stay in these groups. It's a really fun community. Plus, people just love weddings.

There's a lot of, I don't know, I watch married at first sight, actually. I don't watch married at first sight. I watch love is blind and weddings are fun.

I love love. And so anyway, I'm in these Facebook groups, and in the past week, there have been maybe three different people making new posts asking, do you know any live entertainment for my wedding? And some of them even specifically called out violins. And what was interesting is there is a violinist who I actually chatted with.

She went through one of our challenges, I think it was the corporate gig challenge, and she got a free trial of BookLive and did not stick with it. And I see her in these Facebook groups all the time, and she is commenting on these kinds of posts saying, like, check me out, go to my website. And that's great.

I support that. I fully support that. And I really don't feel like I'm competing with her.

But the kicker is I haven't really been responding to these posts, which I should be doing. But what's even more powerful is that this past week on each of those posts, at least three past brides or other industry people have actually tagged me in comments on those. And so they have recommended me.

Like on one post, three people said, you need to check out jared judge. You got to check him out. And they put a link to my website, or they tag me directly.

And to me, I'm incredibly humbled that these people are just tagging me. And that is so much more powerful than me commenting on these posts myself. Right.

Think about the power of a recommendation. If any of you have ever seen the movie parasite, it was a korean movie. It won like a lot of awards.

I think it came out a couple of years ago. And it's such a strange premise. Spoiler.

I'm going to give some spoilers to you guys, but maybe not, I don't know, maybe some of you haven't watched it, so no spoilers. But basically the whole premise of this movie parasite is that there is a rich guy, and he has hired a lot of personal services in his house, like housekeeper and chauffeur and all this other things. And so this guy was hired, the main character was hired by the rich man, I believe, to be his personal chauffeur.

And he did a really good job as a chauffeur, and he didn't cross any lines or anything like that. And so the rich guy started to trust him. And then when his housekeeper, in fact, well, I don't want to give you too many spoilers, but basically his housekeeper was let go of their position.

And so the rich guy asked the chauffeur, do you have any recommendations? And so because he trusted the chauffeur, the chauffeur made a recommendation of somebody in his own family, and the guy hired them on the spot. And that is the power of a recommendation, because it's one thing to pitch yourself, right? A lot of people pitch themselves, and that's great. You have to pitch yourself to get started.

But having other people make a recommendation instantly is so much more built in trust than pitching yourself. It means so much more when somebody else says something nice about you than when you say it about yourself. Because now I have to believe you.

And I don't really know you. I don't trust you. This is the first time I'm hearing about you.

But if somebody else says it, all of a sudden the trust factor is completely like, the barriers is gone. It's somebody else saying nice things. I'm not incentivizing these people to refer me.

I'm not paying them, I'm not giving them gift cards or anything like that. But they're doing it out of the goodness of their heart because they believe that a recommendation for me is going to improve the life of this other person. And so on a couple of different Facebook posts, at least three people have tagged me.

And I just think that's so incredible and that is a symptom of all of this hard work that I'm putting in now. Like, I've dug my foundation, built my foundation, that I'm going to continue. There are over 200, 300 different potential partners here in the Denver area.

I've only visited 30 or so of them, so I am literally still just getting started and I could see if I continue on this path, it's going to be pure dominance, which that's not really my goal. I love playing gigs, but I don't want to play too many of them. So I think my goal is to be so in demand that I'm going to keep raising my prices so that I don't have to play a ton of gigs but get paid quite well for it.

So that's that. Just a quick update on the Denver project. I am five minutes away from my gig now.

I brought my Bose s one pro. It's in the department store. 50 guests shouldn't need anything more powerful than the Bose s one pro.

I brought a backup, a nice PA system just in case, but I really don't think I will need it. And I play 2 hours of modern music and I'm excited. I added Billie Eilish's bad guy to my repertoire.

I had played it a long time ago, but I had never put the backing track on my iPad and I don't bring my computer to gigs anymore to run my backing tracks. So this morning I added the backing track of Billie Eilish's bad guy to my iPad. And so that is going to make an appearance on today's playlist.

All right, that's all I got for you guys today. By the way. One of my key parts of my strategy for booking these gigs and just showcasing that I am legitimate is by having an amazing website that not only looks good, but actually has a lot of marketing strategy built in.

It collects email addresses. It lets people give me their email address before they're even ready to get a quote. And if you're interested in talking about having a website done for you, go to ww dot performingsites.com.

And me and my wife, we build these websites for musicians. We love doing it. And the musicians we build them for, love them.

So go to www.performingsites.com. You'll fill out a quick little form to get a demo of the sites, and I'll walk you through it personally so you can see how this might work for you. No obligation to buy one, but if you're curious at all, that would be the way to do it.

All right, thanks for tuning into another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, “Your music will not market itself.” Bye, everybody.