In this episode, Jared shares his experience of playing a strategic free gig at a linen company’s open house and explains how it led to valuable connections with high-end event planners, venue owners, and catering companies. Discover the art of leveraging sponsorship gigs as marketing opportunities, the importance of building authentic relationships with industry professionals, and when it’s okay to play for free to grow your music business. Packed with actionable insights, this episode is a game-changer for musicians aiming to book premium gigs.

"It's really important to think about it as a business. We are running musical businesses here and businesses have to spend money on marketing. Like I can't think of one business that has at least businesses that are still operational that haven't spent any money on marketing, whether that's Google Ads or, you know, a paid profile on Yelp."

- 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 I'll help you book some high end gigs so that you can have fun doing what you love to do and get fairly compensated for it.

Alright, so I know we've been doing a lot of interviews lately and I appreciate all the musicians who have responded to my call to be interviewed.

And by the way, that invitation is still open. So if you are a musician and you'd like to be interviewed on this podcast, share your experience as a musician and just kind of get a little bit more exposure, which I hate that word, but I think being on a podcast is pretty cool. Then just email me jared@booklive.com

and we'll set up a really low pressure zoom interview where it's really just a conversation and I'll ask about your background and you can listen to other interviews that I've done to see how they go.

All right, I am on my way back from a gig. It is Tuesday, December 2nd, I think, and I'm on my way back from a gig that I sponsored, which is kind of an interesting opportunity just to kind of share with you that not all sponsorship type gigs that lead to high end gigs are with the networking groups like NACE and MPI and those kinds of things.

Right? I've talked about those networking groups a lot in the past on this podcast and they're amazing because that's where all the corporate event planners hang out, the wedding planners hang out, the people who own the venues where all the high end private parties and holiday party gigs happen.

And that's where the networking like that's one of the big values of the networking groups is you get to meet those really cool people.

And then I like to sponsor those meetings by performing at them for free without expectation of payment so that those high end planners and venue owners hear me and add me to their preferred vendor list and then I build and maintain those relationships.

However, today's gig was actually for a private company and I played it for free. And you're probably like, what the heck, Jared? Why would you play a company party for free? Because this company is BBJ La Tavola Linen Company. Now you're like, what the heck is a linen company? If you play high end gigs, weddings, corporate events, etc.

And you look at all the tables that people are sitting at, you will notice that all of the tablecloths match typically or they're of the same color palette. Sometimes they are flat like regular linens. That look like those cloth napkins you get at fancy restaurants.

Other times they're sparkly and sequined and flashy. And where do those come from? You know, most venue, most venues do not have linens. I mean they might have white standard linen.

But what if you don't want that? What if you want something a little nicer? Then you would go to a company like BBJ Tavola Linens and you would go to their showroom which is like, like a storefront.

You'd schedule an appointment and then you'd go shopping because on the walls of this storeroom they have on hangers samples of all the different material that you could use in your linens.

And then they also have a couple tables that are set really nicely as examples of what you could do with their product.

And so these, this company has a couple local reps. This is a nationwide company by the way. There's probably one in the nearest major city to you, BBJ Latavola Linen.

And so there's a Denver, I don't know what you'd call it like a Denver franchise or constituency here. And they, I've met the people who are the owners of that or who are the managers of that because I don't think they own the local territory. And they are members of some of these networking groups too.

And why would they be a part of the networking group? Because it leads to more opportunities for them to sell their linens.

And so they sponsor lots of these networking groups too. However, they were opening up their Denver storefront today, their Denver showroom, which was in kind of in downtown Denver, a little bit further south than downtown.

And it, it was an open house event and I received an invitation to it because I chatted with this person at the NACE meeting a couple weeks ago and she's like, oh, we're doing our open house.

And I said hey, do you want me to sponsor it?

And I'm so glad I did because there were in attendance probably like a hundred or so private event planners, a lot them wedding planners who this company BBJ has networked with and built partnerships with and they are the go to linen providers for all of these wedding planners.

But they were also members of destination management companies.

Like there's one of my friends, Sarah, she runs Operation Altitude, which is a destination management company here in Denver.

And I've become friends with her and she is the one who hired me recently to play the governor gig that I played a couple, couple like weeks ago. Sorry, I got distracted because I saw an Accident on the road.

I hope they're okay. All right, so getting back to this, there was destination management companies, there were wedding planners, there were owners of venues. It was basically like a networking organization all having a party.

They were all dressed really nicely. There was free food sponsored by Biscuits and Berries Catering company or Footers Catering Company.

And that's another one that I've sponsored a gig for and played some, some gigs for there cupcakes and other amazing desserts by a bakery called the Makery, whose owner is the president of our NACE chapter here.

And there was a bar provided. I don't know who provided the bar. Plus there was already a dj.

So this is kind of the interesting part because when I mentioned to the representative, bbj, that I'd love to sponsor, she said, oh, we already have Scotty DJing.

And I said, oh, chat with Scotty and see if he's okay with it. I can jam on top of what he does, like what he spins on the DJ deck.

And so I called Scotty and made sure it was okay. And he's totally like, anytime you want, let's just jam. And because Scotty was sponsoring this event too.

And so I'm so glad I did this because all of those high end event planners saw me play. I got lots of compliments, I got lots of requests for cards. One of the event planners, her name is Wendy, I had met her through NACE a while ago.

She teaches hospitality at one of the local universities. So she's basically teaching the next generation of event planners. And she came up to me while I was taking a break and said, hey, I've got an opportunity.

We're doing a little fundraiser for our hospitality department on April 14, and if you're interested, I'd love to hire you to play. So I already got possibly one gig out of that. Also, I chatted with a group of wedding planners.

There were three that were part of the same company because some wedding planning companies have more than one staff, like more than one people on staff.

So there were three of them at this one. So I met with them, chatted with two of them a bit and one of them for a bit longer because she's actually got her undergrad in classical voice, so she is a musician too.

And we kind of jammed on that. And then the older one, who's actually the mother of the one I was chatting with, she said, oh, we've got a couple couples where I think this would be a perfect fit for them. Do you have any cards? So I passed out a card and then she took a video of me playing and sent it to one of her couples.

So like this the kind of stuff why I sponsor these events, you know, even if you feel like you're spending a lot of time. I was thinking about this because we did our group coaching for Fulltime Music Academy earlier today and we were talking about like, when is it okay to play for free?

And the answer really was the only time it's okay to play for free is if you would spend the money that you could earn on this gig as a marketing expense for getting gigs. Right.

So the idea there is like when you show up to a gig and you sponsor it, you're essentially spending your own money, like your time and a little wear and tear on your equipment and car and body to play this gig. You're also turning down other opportunities, like I could have hung out with my wife.

And so it's important to kind of think about that because you're spending this money by via your time.

And it's important to know like, this is something I would have spent money on as a marketing expense for my gigging act anyway. And the benefit here is I didn't have to spend any money for this marketing opportunity. So, you know, it's.

It's really important to think about it as a business. We are running musical businesses here and businesses have to spend money on marketing.

Like I can't think of one business that has at least businesses that are still operational that haven't spent any money on marketing, whether that's Google Ads or, you know, a paid profile on Yelp.com

or something like that, or taking out an ad in a magazine or paid for a spot in the Yellow Pages, if the yellow pages are still a thing. I think they are. So we have to treat it like a business.

And then these marketing opportunities are basically like free, like these sponsorships. It's basically like a free marketing opportunity that I'm more than happy to show up to and perform because I love performing.

And then another like thing I was thinking about, which I think is important to understand when you're building these partnerships and getting on preferred vendor lists, is that you will be more effective with these partnerships if you essentially try to become friends with these people.

Right. I mentioned that my friend Sarah, she runs the Destination management company and I truly see her as a friend. Scotty, the DJ who I played with, he is a friend now.

The photographer, I forgot to mention there was a photographer there. His name is Joe. I did a podcast interview with him on the Denver Nace podcast because I'm also the host of that.

He's a friend. We're gonna go skiing sometime this winter like we chatted about it tonight. So think about that and I think you'll be more effective as a gigging musician if you're going for the high end gigs.

So that is all I got for you today. I just arrived at my destination. By the way, if you are interested in getting some personal help on booking some high end gigs, I have opened up some free strategy sessions where I can help you one on one come up with a game plan for your music and how you can start to book some high end gigs.

And you can get your free strategy session by going to fulltimemusicacademy.com that's all one word. Fulltime.

There's no dash in between full and time. Fulltimemusicacademy.com call so check that out. Book a free time with me and I will see you there.

​So thanks for tuning into another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "Your music will not market itself!". Bye everybody.