In this episode, Jared Judge recaps his recent gigs, including a bucket list performance at the Denver Nuggets' Ball Arena, a high-end wedding at Grant Humphreys Mansion, and a private party at the St. Julian Hotel and Spa. Jared dives into the importance of building relationships to secure high-end gigs, sharing personal anecdotes and strategies that have worked for him. He also announces a unique opportunity for one musician to work with him one-on-one to transform their promotional material and mindset for attracting high-end gigs.

"If you build one relationship and get on that person's preferred vendor list and they give you a link to your website on their website, you no longer have to put in time to build that relationship from scratch. It'll pay you gigs in dividends in the future."

- 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.
- Breaking Into High-end Gigs Masterclass: How I Went From Broke Musician to Thriving By Breaking Into These Largely Unknown High-Paying Gigs

What's up, renegade musicians? This is Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast where we focus on helping you get high-end gigs so that you get paid more, feel more satisfied, deal with less drama, deal with fewer sticky bar floors, and just have a heck of a lot more fun doing music. All right, I've got a recap.

It's been a couple, couple days since I've done a podcast, but I. The main reason is because I've just been so busy playing lots of gigs. I think the last gig I talked about was a bar mitzvah that I played, and that was about a week and a half ago at this point.

And then I mentioned that I was going to do an episode on a dramatic thing that happened, and I started recording that and I was just like, I don't feel like this saga is over yet, so let's hold off on it. I do think the saga is over now, and I'd be comfortable talking about it, but I think I have to do a quick gig recap just because a lot has happened since the that saga. So here's what has been happening.

Thursday, this past week, I had a bucket list item checked off, which was, I got to finally play at ball arena, which is where the Denver Nuggets basketball team played. You know, they. They're the ones who won the championship last year, not this year.

Looks like it might be Celtics. We'll see. I'm not a betting man, but if I were, maybe I'd put my money on Celtics.

And so I got to play at their stadium for a corporate event, which is awesome. I love corporate events. Do you guys love corporate events, too? If you ever played one? If you have nothing, basically a company hires you for one of their events and there's no stress, no drama.

Super easy pay is usually very high. And this particular gig was an internal marketing event for the Nuggets, like private events team. So what they did was they invited a lot of corporations to come check out their space, and they basically threw a party, you know, open bar.

They had a chef doing all the catering and everything just to give their corporate clients a really good time and plant the seeds of hiring ball arena to use as the venue for their next corporate event.

And so they hired me as the entertainment. That was a very interesting thing that actually, they booked me a week prior to the event actually happening, which doesn't usually happen.

Usually I get like months of notice, but this one was like literally seven days before. And I got an email and the email said, it was legit. Like, I actually was skeptical at first because it looked too good to be true.

It was from someone at ballarena.com. and their email signature had the ball arena logo. And if you're not sure what ball is, Ball is actually the Mason Jar company.

They're huge here in Denver, and they are the title sponsor of the Denver Nuggets Stadium, which also is where the hockey team, the Colorado Avalanche played, who won the Stanley cup last year. I guess this is a winning, a winning city here in Denver. And so Ballerina is huge.

The email said that I was recommended by a friend, that one of the friends of the organizer recommended me. So once again, this whole recommendation thing is just absolutely huge and killing it for me here in Denver.

And I'm just so grateful because I haven't really had to spend much on advertising my services, just the time to put into the relationships.

And I was kind of thinking about this. Like, not many musicians are willing to accept the challenge of going all in on building these relationships.

Like, I presented this idea to a lot of people, and I've shown them my results, which, of course, you know, I can't say that my results are typical because I'm, I guess I'm kind of the guy who really focused on creating a method to building the relationships in the private event scene.

But I'm also not perfect at executing my own strategy. Like, I get kind of lazy about it, but the results have been absolutely phenomenal. And so I presented this to literally, like, hundreds, thousands of musicians at this point, but only a few of them accept the challenge and actually go all in on it.

In fact, you know, there are so many different, like, gurus out there teaching different things. There's one going on right now that it's for musicians to help them book 100 gigs and says, though, wow, that's loud. Okay, so the focus on getting 100 gigs and any type of gigs will do for this particular challenge.

High end, low end. And, you know, I've been attending it, and the first day is all about just, like, kind of building up, like, writing your bio. And so the method to, I mean, maybe we haven't gotten to the method yet, but the method to getting gigs is just writing a better bio.

I don't know. It doesn't sound like it'll work, but we'll see. I have an open mind about it.

But the interesting thing is I've seen a couple people in this workshop who have gone through my workshops. So it's like, you've seen the results that I have and that others who go all in on this relationship strategy have, and then you don't really do anything about it. You just go seek the next thing.

So I'm like, when you see that proof is in front of you, do you deny the existence of that proof? Or maybe. I don't know, maybe it is like, it does take a lot of work. Maybe it's the fact that it does seem like it takes a lot of work.

And yes, it does take work, but if you had to put in a lot of work on the front so that you can just sit back and let recurring high end gigs come for years, possibly decades to come, is it worth putting in a little bit of work? I mean, that's kind of like, you know, in a job, if you have a job, you're, you're putting. You're investing your time into that job. And mostly in jobs, it's not just like a one and done situation.

You put in work every single day, every single weekday, Monday through Friday, 09:00 to 05:00, and so you're investing a lot of work into something that isn't very high leverage, meaning that, you know, for every hour of time you put in, you get a certain dollar amount back, and so you're going to be putting in that work until you retire.

Whereas, like, with these building relationships, if you build one relationship and get on that person's preferred vendor list and they give you a link to your website on their website, you no longer, like, have to put in time to build that relationship from scratch. Right? It'll pay you gigs in dividends in the future, and you don't have to put in more work for it.

Now, I will say it does work even better if you are willing to maintain that relationship. You know, put in an hour every year or so, just like catching up, hey, let's grab coffee. It's been a while.

It'll work even better because then they'll be reminded that you exist. But in general, like, the amount of work that you have to do for all these different gurus is pretty much the same. Like, you're going to be putting up upfront work anyway with all of them.

I guess the key difference is the results on the back end. And so with my method, you know, I promise the high end gigs, the corporate events, the weddings, nonprofit galas, high end private parties, etcetera.

And the results also are ongoing, meaning that you don't have to put in too much maintenance work and the system will still crank out these gigs for you, whereas with other methods you know, this particular workshop, like I said before, any gig will do.

So if you want 100 bar gigs at each pay $100, then, yeah, that might be a good fit for you. But, you know, we renegade musicians don't really want to work that hard to make what's a hundred times 100? Is that $10,000? Yeah, 100 times 100 is $10,000. So 100 gigs at $100 apiece? $10,000.

I work like a quarter as much to make ten times as much. And so, I don't know, I feel like there's a big difference. And so we just kind of have to think about that and choose where.

Where do you want to put your priorities? So anyway, that was the ball arena gig. Bucket list item checked off. It was really cool.

I did a live stream from it in my business, tips for gigging musicians, Facebook group, and it was cool. It was in the Michelob Ultra Mountain House, which is like a restaurant that is in the arena itself. And it had a very rustic feel to it.

It kind of felt like we were in a hunting lodge. There was a lot of taxidermy. There's a picture of me next to a big bear and, or, no, it was a buffalo.

There was a grizzly bear there and a bunch of other cool things. Yeah, I played a super fun playlist plugged into their house pa system. The chef was there, and I got to eat some really good food afterwards.

The chef, actually, while I was done setting up, he was coaching all of the different, like, sous chefs on how to plate the prime rib and everything. Then when he was done, he came over to me and said, hey, musician, do you like ice cream? And I said, yes, I love ice cream. And he said, come taste my ice cream.

This is homemade ice cream. And he said, you know, I made. We made four flavors here.

I want to get some good pictures of it before the event starts. And so I'm going to make a couple plates. They're going to melt.

I'll just throw them out anyway. You want to try it? And I said, absolutely. So we got to try four different flavors of homemade ice cream, which was good.

I will admit, though, I think I prefer sweeter flavors. And the chef isn't gonna listen to this podcast, and if you are, you know, this is nothing against you. I just prefer sweeter ice cream flavors.

But they were still very good. I guess I don't have that sophisticated of a palate. Right.

I just like playing high end gigs, but I don't really have high end taste as far as ice cream. Is concerned. So that was really cool.

Gig went well. They actually extended me by an extra hour. And so, you know, I think you're doing a good job when they ask you to stay longer.

I've never actually been asked to stay longer at a corporate event before, so I'm proud of that. And, yes, they did pay me extra for that hour. That's built into my contract.

All right, and then let's see what happened later for that gig. Let me just pull up my calendar, because, like I said, a lot has happened since. Since then.

Okay, so that was Thursday. And then, let's see, Saturday. Oh, yeah, Saturday.

That was a high end wedding at Grant Humphreys Mansion in downtown Denver. And that was a fun one. That actually was.

I've mentioned on this podcast previously that, like, my wife and I have come to an agreement that I gig two weekends in a month and then I'm off two weekends in a month. And that's just, you know, we want to maintain our relationship on the weekends. And so that's what we did.

She was out of town this week, and I didn't realize that she was going to be out of town this week. So I booked a gig this weekend, and then I subbed it out to another musician here in Denver who also plays electric violin. And then my wife was like, oh, I'm going out of town.

Like, oh, crap, I could have played that gig. And so what I did was I called the client and the musician. I told the client, hey, I'd love to offer you an upgrade of two musicians for the price of one.

Because the main reason that I wanted to do this was I just don't have that much marketing material that shows musicians other than me. And so I wanted to go and capture some photos and videos, and that's exactly what I did at this wedding. And then it was a wedding ceremony and a cocktail hour, which if you're like, hey, I don't want to play at weddings.

They sound too stressful and complicated. No, they're not. Ceremonies have some intricacies with the timing that you do have to pay attention to.

Cocktail hour is basically like a bargain. You're literally playing. Right.

Bye. Typically an open bar. So if you can play bar gig, you can play a cocktail hour at a wedding.

And the only ways that you need to treat it differently is that when you're booking it is that you do need to protect yourself with a contract that stipulates that you get paid before you even show up. And then maybe you want to have a planning meeting with them just to kind of go over playlist. But ultimately, you typically dictate your playlist, and you just have to set those expectations up front.

So if you think that weddings are too hard, the reason is you're making it too hard. Just, you know, protect yourself, and that's it. All right.

That's what renegade musicians do anyway. Okay. And then.

So yesterday was Monday. I did a bit of busking this weekend as well, which was awesome. I actually made a man in his seventies break down in tears while I was playing, which was so powerful.

He handed me a note that told me, you're the best I've heard, except from my brother, who plays fiddle. And it's so kind of him. So sweet.

And then Monday, yesterday, I played a private party. It wasn't even a corporate. It was kind of like this reunion of a bunch of people.

They were alumni of some organization. I'm not actually sure what organization it was, but it was at the St. Julian Spa hotel and spa in Boulder, Colorado, which is just 30 minutes north of Denver.

And that was awesome. Again, it was super easy. I worked for the corporate event planner, and, yeah, they were very easy to work with, kind of.

They were a little bit disorganized in some aspects, and, you know, they were great to work with. But, like, the, you know, I. For every single one of my gigs, I require a deposit and then final balance to be paid in front ahead of the gig.

And they were asking some questions about this, and they understand this was their first time working with me, so there was some trust to be built up, and I was willing to bend my rules simply because I knew the value of building that relationship outweighed being a stickler for that.

That might have prevented me from getting this gig and then building the relationship for the future. So that was interesting.

And, you know, you do have to navigate certain things as they come up, and that's how I navigated that situation.

And it worked out well because afterwards, you know, the event planner thanked me for working with her on this specific thing, and she invited me to, like, stay, have a meal with her. And it was her and I sitting at the table while this group of 36 alumni were sitting at their own tables elsewhere.

It was really nice, like having dinner with an event planner. Most musicians, we don't do that. It's like, you know, we're just the hired help, and we leave once we're done.

This was so kind and so nice to just, like, have dinner as friends and get to know each other. Now the hilarious part, and I hope you guys find this hilarious, too, is that I almost choked on my first bite of prime rib. It was awful.

I I guess I just didn't chew enough. I don't know. I've been on this planet 34 years, and you'd think I'd know how to chew my food by now.

So I started to swallow. I couldn't swallow it. I was like, oh, crap.

And then I tried to make it easier to swallow by dumping water down my throat. That actually made it worse, because I all of a sudden started drowning, and so I was, like, coughing, and it was a mess. Luckily, it only lasted a couple seconds, and the prime rib came out, and I was fine.

Nobody needed to call an ambulance or do the Heimlich or anything, but it was super embarrassing. And so, I don't know. Hopefully it endeared me to her a little more.

She's like, don't worry. I have three kids. I've seen it all.

And I was like, okay. So I owned it. And I said to her, well, you did say you wanted to get to know me better.

There you go. So, yeah, that was interesting. It was fun.

We had a good conversation, and, yeah, she definitely someone I will work with in the future, and I'm very, very happy I made that connection. And, yeah, so that is yesterday's gig. So three big gigs.

I've got another gig today. Tonight, I'm actually playing for the nice meeting National Association for Catering and Events, and that's going to be good. I'll kind of do a gig recap of that.

Well, but we've been going on for. For a long. This is actually one of my longest podcast episodes, so I'm gonna wrap it up very soon.

I did want to say it is, like, June 11 now. What is it? Yeah, it is June 11, and I usually do a lot of, like, challenges to help musicians break into these high end gigs, like the corporate gig challenge, wedding gig challenge, and I'm planning on starting those back up again.

But in June, I'm doing a bit of traveling that actually prevents me from having dedicated time at the right time of day to do a multi day challenge workshop, helping people get into these gigs with real tactics to help me break into the higher end gigs.

So I'm going to try something different. And this is actually only available for one musician, one person. I'm gonna do a one on one challenge with one person where over five days, you and I work together to hone your act for high end geeks.

Whichever geek type you want, you get to pick it has to be high end, though, so it's not gonna be bars or festivals. And, you know, there's gonna be a little bit of an application for this one spot because I want to make sure that you're the right fit and that your act will work.

But, you know, while I can't guarantee that you'll get a high end gig immediately, I can guarantee that you'll have an overhaul of your promotional material and your mindset.

That just makes it easier for you to attract these high end gigs. And if you want to work with me one on one, the cost is free. All I would ask is a donation to a music related charity.

It could be as small as, like, $10. I just want to give back to the community. So if you're interested, like I said before, there's only one spot for this.

We're going to work together five days in a row, 1 hour at a time. And by the end of those five days, you will see a huge transformation in the way that you, your act attracts high end gigs, the gig type of your choice.

So if you're interested in that spot, you have to reach out to me and just shoot me an email or DM me on Instagram and say, hey, I'm interested in the one on one challenge.

You can even call it the tiny challenge, because it's not going to be massive. Like, usually you get hundreds of people registered for these. This is only one.

It's tiny. So just DM me or shoot me an email Jared@Booklive.com

like, hey, I'm interested in that spot. Is it still available? And I will let you know if it is. And if it is, I'll ask you a couple questions, or check out your.

Your profile and your videos just to see is this gonna work for you. And if you get that spot, then we'll hit the ground running and it'll be awesome. So, yeah, hopefully that interests some of you.

Let me know. And that's all I got for you guys today, so have a great rest of your day. I will get you a gig recap, and I promise you, one day, I will talk about that dramatic incident.

I think it's concluded, and I just haven't had time to. To dive deep into it. So you have to stay tuned to the next episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast.

Well, thanks for tuning into this episode, and remember, “Your music will not market itself!”. Bye, everybody.