In this episode, Jared dives into the mindset shifts and business strategies that separate high-earning musicians from those stuck in the $100-a-night gig cycle. He discusses the importance of treating music as a business and why being coachable, adaptable, and open to guidance is essential for long-term success. Jared also shares how his proven method helps musicians book premium gigs and avoid common pitfalls that keep most performers at a standstill. If you’re ready to make meaningful progress, this episode is for you!

"The reality of the music business is that it’s exactly that—a business. If you want to grow, you have to put in the work, adopt a business mindset, and adapt your approach to reach the clients who will pay what you're worth."

- 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? It's Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast where we help you play gigs that actually make real money Instead of just $100-a-man, like the bar gigs that most musicians play do.

I was talking with a musician once. He actually started to join my program and then stopped because he realized that it was going to be a lot of work. And he actually emailed me saying, I'm actually happy playing bar gigs.

And sure, I get that, like, you might be happy playing bar gigs, but are you actually happy with everything that comes along with that? Right. There was a reason why this person started to join my program, which was because if you join a program, typically it's to solve a problem. People purchase services to solve a problem.

Like if somebody's booking you for their private event, they're solving a problem. The problem is their guests are going to be bored out of their mind and uncomfortable unless there's some form of entertainment. That's one of the problems that it solves.

And so this person who was joining my program must have had some sort of problem that they identified that caused them to join the program.

And that problem may be that the gigs that he was playing weren't paying him adequately, or perhaps he didn't have any gigs and he was just like seeing all of his friends and people in Coverband Central playing all these gigs and he wanted some gigs. But the reality of the music business is that it is a business.

It is the music business. It's not just the music funhouse. It is super fun.

But there is work to be done. And some people don't like the problem is not great enough for them to actually put the work in. In fact, I'd say that's probably the case for most musicians is that, you know, they like the idea of having a career as a musician, but it's not enough to just like the idea of it.

Right? You won't really take any action or make any changes if you don't feel strongly enough about the fact that you need to change. And I think that that's the case. Like, this person probably saw, hey, let me just buy Jared's course.

And perhaps just buying it will make something happen, which of course that's not the case. I'm very clear that this is work, right? You will be finding, like, first you'll be making adjustments to your website because most musicians websites do not adequately address the of private event clients.

So if a corporation is looking at your website, most likely they're Gonna say, nah, this is just another bar band or nah, this musician isn't what we're looking for.

So it starts with making adjustments to the website and it's making the correct adjustments. Like you know, people try to freewheel it and then they make these adjustments that actually make the problem worse.

But yeah, there's work in the website and then after that you're going to be finding and reaching out to corporate event plan and wedding planners and people who host these kinds of events in their venues.

And then, you know, we've done most of the hard work of like finding these for you. We've built a database of over 40,000 contacts across the entire US it actually auto updates and I call it, it self heals. So if somebody gets fired or the place goes out of business, our system actually recognizes that and then makes a correction.

It actually triggers our team to go and do a little bit of research and find the correct you contact for that venue or event planner. But then there is work in reaching out to them, right?

You got to let people know that you exist, otherwise they have no idea that you exist and they can't possibly hire you. However, I see a lot of musicians making the mistake of thinking, oh, let me just send the same email template I've been sending to all the bar owners.

And you pitch yourself so heavily and the second you do that, you instantly turn off anybody getting that email. That's another huge mistake is like if you pitch yourself well, you're going straight to spam or you're getting deleted instantly. And so I even had one member, one person join my program and they didn't send the email templates that were included.

And I asked them to send me a copy of what they had been sending. And I looked at it and like within the first sentence it was just cringe. Don't pitch yourself like that.

Oh, you're shooting yourself in the foot. No wonder they don't want to reply to you. No wonder that they're just deleting you because, well, you're, you're making it easy for them to delete you.

And so yeah, obviously I've got a lot of strong feelings about this right now and I just, I have these feelings because I want to help musicians. I want to help people like me make a living playing music. But there are just so many ways that we musicians shoot ourselves in the foot, sabotage ourselves, even if we have the very best intentions.

But it's like, because you know, some people aren't coachable or they don't realize like this is going to be work because it's the music business that they just aren't cut out for it. And I'm going to say that they aren't cut out for it unless you change your attitude, change your tune, and actively be coachable.

That's kind of another aspect of it is you have to be willing to take other people's advice, right? If you just keep trying the same thing because you believe that your way is the only way.

Yet in the past couple years, how much money has your way made you? And yet if somebody comes along and shares, hey, in the past couple years I've made over $75,000 as a soloist for these private event performances. Maybe they have a thing or two that they know about how to book high end private event gigs. And sure, no, they're not playing every single day of the week because that's not the goal.

The goal is not to play every single day of the week. The goal is to play few gigs that pay a lot so that you're not away on the road every day of the week. You're not schlepping hundreds of pounds a gear every day of the week and you're not playing for 100 bucks in a tip jar.

That's just not necessary. Doesn't sound fun to me. So, yeah, being coachable is a huge aspect to this.

Being willing to take advice, being willing to try new things, being willing to recognize that what you've been doing isn't working and has not been working. So be willing to take other people's advice. So, yeah, I think there's a lot of reasons why musicians tend to sabotage themselves and shoot themselves in the foot.

And those are just a couple of the reasons. But it's very easy to correct that. It's just easy to like, listen to the advice, try the things that are being prescribed to you.

Don't just guess, don't wing it. Like winging it can sometimes work, but it's a gamble, right? You shouldn't have to gamble if the path has been laid out before you. I'm thinking there.

Right now I'm coaching some of my favorite clients. I think I've done a lot better job of attracting my ideal musicians that I'd like to work with. And what makes them ideal is that they come into this, sure.

Being good musicians. Like, I like to work with good musicians. But on the business end, they're coachable.

They are treating this as if this is their first time doing this and that they don't believe that they know everything. There is about this, right? They don't bring in those bad habits that they've been using for, you know, bar and restaurant gigs or festival gigs. They don't just instantly send emails that pitch themselves way, like, you know, way too hard that turn people off.

And they're willing to try the things that I suggest. They're willing to try my templates and they don't really change those templates other than just swapping out the names. And as a result, the high end venue owners are inviting them into their venues, which is really cool to see.

I love when that happens. And they get really excited about it too. But then they get nervous like, what do I do with these? I'm like, relax, you'll be fine.

Just follow the program, it'll be great. So, yeah, I've been wanting to make this for a while just because I guess I do get frustrated when I try to share what I consider actually be my life's work, which is this methodology. And the tools that I know work because they work on me and they work on many of my clients.

And I get frustrated when people try to modify it because they think they know better, which it's totally fine if what you know better works. But then don't come to me and say, hey, your method doesn't work. It's like, oh, show me the email template that you wrote.

And then it's not my email template, it's just a piece of crap. So obviously I have strong opinions about this, so I hope that this offends some people because if it offends you, then maybe that means you're one of the guilty ones. But that's okay.

I know that my method probably won't work for you and I'm okay with that. I wish it would work for everybody. But you have to have a willingness to adapt to what you've been doing.

And that to me is where the rubber meets the road. That's when people start to have success, is when they can adapt what they're currently doing to the situations right in front of them. And they're following good advice, right? They're not just winging it.

And the adaptability portion is key and the coachability portion is key. So if you're coachable, then I'd love to give you a free trial of BookLive. BookLive is my methodology that contains email templates that you should not modify.

Do not pitch yourself too hard. You will literally screw yourself out of tons of gigs by doing that. So these email templates work.

They get you in the door and then once you're in the door then you start getting referred these high end gigs. And sure it does take work and it does take time. That's just the reality of growing any business, you know, ask any business owner, hey, was it easy starting your business? 99.9%

of them will say no. It took me a lot more work and a lot more time than I ever expected. And if you're the kind of person who's resilient enough to work through that, then you'll have success.

And that's all there is to it. All right, I am close to my gig at the Slate Hotel so I'm going to hop off here. I hope this was motivating for some people.

I hope other people it caused you to think a little bit about your current situation. And when you're ready, grab your free 30 day trial of BookLive. Just go to BookLive.com

and sign right up. All right, thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "Your music will not market itself!".

Bye.