In this episode, Jared emphasizes the importance of keeping an open mind in the music industry. He shares stories and strategies on how staying receptive to new ideas and opinions can lead to unexpected and profitable opportunities. Jared discusses the value of filtering out what doesn't align with your beliefs while embracing nuggets of wisdom that can transform your career. He also recounts recent networking experiences and highlights the significance of trust and verification in professional relationships.

"It's a sign of maturity to listen to someone with a completely different perspective, filter out the things that don't align with your beliefs, and extract the gold nuggets that can radically change your life."

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- 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? Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast, where we do things differently than the majority of the music industry, because we see how the lies perpetuated by the music industry about building a fan base, followers streams, even building your social media following, don't actually amount to financial success and happiness and wellness just leads you to chase vanity metrics.

And so we at the renegade musicians, we do things very differently because we pursue actual monetary opportunities that give us opportunities for our music to actually grow and for us to be compensated well for that. And so I wanted to chat today about keeping an open mind, because I think that's something that I do very well.

That wasn't always the case, and definitely took some, like, years of training my mind to stay open, even if they were opinions that I disagreed with.

And the reason why I think that's so valuable is because you never know what gold nuggets of information you're going to pick up from somebody who maybe shares opinions in the course of delivering this value that you just find wildly absurd. That could never work.

Or I find that even offensive. Yet if they share one gold nugget that could radically change the course of your future, then, you know, isn't it worth it to pay attention to their opinions, even, you know, even if you have to filter out the things that are just radically against your belief system?

And I think, you know, that, yeah, I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I'm just kind of sharing this because, you know, I recently received a message from a musician who was talking about somebody else, like another coach or mentor that they were working with who did something or said something to them that they just completely disagreed with, and it completely shut them down.

They could no longer take this person seriously, despite the fact that this person had an amazing resume, tons of successful case studies, and literally had the power to transform their lives with their.

Their proven method. But because this coach did one thing, and it wasn't even that they did something, it was just that they said something that this person disagreed with. All of a sudden, everything else that they did was.

Was invalid and was no longer worth considering. You know, for example, I'm going to give another example, and I'm not going to bring politics in, into this. I'll just share it from a very, very neutral perspective.

But I went to a marketing conference in 2021, I believe, or, yeah, I think it was September of 2020, actually. You know, right as things were starting to reopen for Covid and everything, and this marketing conference was headlined by Tony Robbins and I. So Tony Robbins, you know, he's a motivational speaker.

He really has literally millions of case studies, people whose lives he's changed, people who have, you know, come, come away from depressive episodes where they were being suicidal because he has helped turn their lives around, shifted their perspective. He also has a lot of successful business case studies.

And that's why he was brought to this marketing conference was because he has helped people grow their business to insane levels.

And so, you know, we're coming hot off the tail of COVID Things are starting to open up. And this conference happens, and immediately. So this is an event where there are like 3000 attendees, and immediately, like, the first words out of his mouth were like, tearing masks to shreds of and, you know, ripping the government a new one for the way that they handled Covid.

And, you know, at this point, I'm not speaking about opinions either way, but there were a lot of people in that room who just left the room. They didn't want to hear any of the motivational stuff that Tony had to say, even if they needed that motivational stuff, right. It was because the first words out of his mouth completely, you know, were opinions that they, they completely disagreed with.

And, you know, whether or not I disagree with that, it's up to you to decide. But I'm in the room. I'm staying in the room because I need that information.

So I think you have to be able to filter out things that you disagree with. I think it's. It's kind of a sign of maturity to be able to listen to somebody, even if they have a completely different perspective than you, and hear them out, but be able to say, okay, these ideas do not mesh with my belief system.

I'm going to, you know, file those in a different folder, and then I'm going to pay attention and listen for the gold nuggets, the ones that do align with my belief system and how do I plug those in to my life and my situation?

And so I think you have to be able to do that is just, you know, open up your mind to new concepts and realize, like, you don't have to take everything that one person says.

Like, you know, we don't want to be copycats of anybody. We want to be our own unique personalities and individuals, but we do want to keep our minds open to those who have different beliefs and opinions because you never know what one idea how that can just radically change your life.

And, you know, if it's something that you're unsure about. Where does this fall into my belief system? It's worth testing. It's worth thinking about and not just dismissing.

Oh, that could never work. I think that's one of the biggest issues that we musicians face, is skepticism. Right? Because it's true.

We have been burned a lot. In fact, a lot of our very existence is difficult because the majority of people tend not to value musicians in the way that we know that they should. And so I feel like a lot of musicians come into this career very jaded from the get go, just feeling like, oh, I've been scammed.

I've got this beautiful art, but nobody wants to pay me any money for it, and I get that. And that can cause closed mindedness, and that is very dangerous. That is the way to stay jaded and broke and unhappy, because, like, if you feel like everybody's against you, well, that.

Imagine how that belief that everybody's against me, how is that manifesting in your day to day life? How are you going to treat others if you believe that everybody's out to get you? You're gonna always be on the defensive, always looking for a reason. This person is going to harm me in some way. So I better not open up my heart to them in my life and let them in.

And so that's going to cause a very unhappy life, unhappy situation. And so we have to keep an open mind. And, you know, I always, you know, you shouldn't necessarily trust somebody blindly.

Right? That's another dangerous way to just get scammed completely. I always say trust, but verify. And I'll give you, like, a concrete example.

There are a lot of musicians who don't believe the stuff that I'm saying. And, you know, they just instantly dismiss it because, hey, if you're not talking about being a better artist through pure artistry, that's not possibly going to help advance your music career. But what they don't do is they don't go and check out my social media, my website, and see, hey, this guy's actually playing these high end gigs that he's talking about.

And so they. They don't, they don't trust and they don't verify. So I suggest trust, but verify, like, believe somebody when they say something, but then verify it after the fact.

And so that's kind of my approach to things. And so, you know, even if you disagree with somebody at the get go, listen to them. Maybe they got something interesting to say that could actually change your life.

All right, so that's all I got for you guys today. Thanks for listening. Oh, and the dog is now listening.

I think the dog wants to be a part of the podcast. I don't know that dog's name. If anyone wants to give it a name, let me know.

There are actually two of them at this house. I don't usually go this way on my podcast walks, but decided to today. All right, let's see what's going on.

Just from a logistics standpoint. Yesterday, Wednesday. Today is Friday, by the way.

Wednesday I went to a networking event. I podcasted right before it. And so that networking event went great.

From there I met the owner of another networking group called the Emerge Event Collective here in Colorado. And that is a luxury based event networking group. And I've not been a part of that.

I've heard about it and the, the owner of that group was there. So I chatted with them and they said, hey, you should come to, we have a networking event on Thursday that you should come to. It's over.

Zoom. Little speed dating networking thing. So I went to that and it was awesome.

They, there were maybe about like twelve people there. So we got some very individual Facetime with these people. And I met a couple wedding planners and one of them, her name is Heather, she's awesome, she's got quite a personality.

And we were talking about what kind of music she likes and she told me she is into EDM, which I've never heard of EDM as obviously electronic dance music. Yi DM is country style electronic dance music. It's like, oh, I had no idea that was actually a genre.

So I'll check that out. I'm not really into country, but I keeping an open mind, that's the theme of this podcast. And so that was, that was fun.

And we made plans to meet up and I offered to sponsor any of her like showcases or upcoming events because that's the strategy of this is just build your network, give more than you take, and then it will come back to you in multiple folds. So yeah, that was cool. And then this weekend is my brother in law's bachelor party.

So we're going up to Breckenridge to do that. And then yeah, next Tuesday I actually have a gig playing for a community, doing like a little two hour concert for them. So I gotta prepare that on Monday.

Should be fun. Alright, that's all I got for you guys today. Keep your minds open.

Trust, but verify. Don't dismiss the entire person because they share certain ideas, opinions, beliefs that you completely disagree with. And yeah, have a good time.

That's all. I got for you guys today. By the way, if you want, get your free trial of the BookLive software where you can find event planners to connect with and then manage the operations of your gigging act in a much better way than just spreadsheets or the notes app on your phone.

Or even worse, only keeping it as an email thread. That's no way to keep organized. So get your free trial at BookLive.com and remember, "Your music will not market itself!". Bye everybody.