In this episode, Jared reflects on two high-end gigs—one at a Wyoming governor’s gala and another at the luxurious Broadmoor Hotel—and the lessons they offer for musicians looking to break into elite events. From the power of repeat bookings and sound engineering tips to nurturing relationships with destination management companies (DMCs), Jared shares actionable insights to help you elevate your gigging game in 2025.

"If you do a good job, people will hire you again—so do a good job, be professional, and nurture those relationships."

- 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. It is Tuesday, January 28, 2025, and I'm on my way home from a gig up in Cheyenne, Wyoming, which is about an hour and a half drive north of where I live in Denver.

And this gig that I just came from, I live streamed it in our Business Tips for Gigging Musicians Facebook group. I live streamed the intro. I did a little walkthrough of the gig.

I didn't actually live stream the performance, but actually some people did get that on their phone cameras. I'm going to ask them for that. And this gig was for the annual gala for the Wyoming Governor's Hospitality and Industry Gala and Awards, which I played this gala last year as well, which I was honored to be asked back.

That's a big thing. Like, if you do a good job, people will hire you again. So do a good job at your gigs, be professional and so forth.

And so this gala was super cool because during the day, and I think I did a podcast about this last year too, during the day they had a, like, high school cooking competition, a culinary competition where they had, you know, different high school chefs compete in different categories like bread baking and cake baking and then best overall meal or whatever.

I didn't, I didn't stay for all the awards, but it was super cool because in addition to just being a gala and a fundraiser, it was also this competition and they gave out over $2 million worth of scholarships to these high schoolers, which was really cool. And it was, you know, obviously culinary arts is an art form.

And so I really appreciated seeing them supporting young artists in this way and supporting their, their dreams and visions of going to culinary school and becoming chefs in their own right. And so, yeah, this gig is great. Yeah, I've played at the Little America Resort.

This is where I played. It was the Little America Resort up in Cheyenne, Wyoming. It's a small little resort.

There aren't that many resort, like, features to it, which I'm kind of confused as to why it's called a resort, but maybe I don't know the definition of a resort. You know, it's a hotel. I think they, yeah, they have a pool and then they have a big conference center, but that's really it.

There's like, not much else there. And the pool is tiny. It's closed for the winter and.

But yeah, it's, it's a cool space. The conference center is, is pretty big. The ballroom that I was in Seated about a thousand today.

And I worked with a sound engineer and this sound engineer is awesome. His name is George and he is a native of Cheyenne. And I checked out his website.

He also owns a ski and bike repair shop in cheyenne and also DJs for weddings in addition to doing live sound engineering for these large scale events. And so I've worked with him. This was probably my fourth time.

And it's really cool, like working consistently with a sound engineer because you just make each other's lives easier and it's fun to hang out and jam and I don't know, he was getting really into it when we did our sound check. He was like, oh man, that, that rocks. Like you should just bump up the music because it's all high schoolers and play more of that dance music.

I was like, you got it. So we were riffing off each other. It's a lot of fun.

And yeah, the sound setup was great. I had a nice wedge monitor on the front of the stage. If you're not familiar with what a wedge monitor is, it's basically a speaker that is set up in front of the musicians with the speaker pointing up at your ears when you're playing so that you could hear yourself.

And you actually can mix differently for the monitors than what the audience hears. So this is important because, you know, if you're playing an instrument that you know in the audience, you might want it to blend with the backing track or the rest of the band a bit more. Like for me, for the electric violin, I prefer that I like to be heard but also blend into the, the soundtrack so that it's not quite.

You're not quite sure is this a recording or is it live? But then when I'm performing I want to hear myself and so I don't want it to blend in my monitor. And so that's the beauty of having your own monitors and a sound engineer that can handle this is you can have a separate mix for your monitors versus what the, the audience hears. The audience speakers are called front of house.

And when you get to large scale concert productions, you know, there's actually a separate sound engineer for the front of house speakers and then there's a monitor engineer who handles the monitor mix. And usually the monitor engineer is on stage with you off, off to the side in the wings of the stage, whereas the front of house engineer is actually behind the audience so they can hear what the mix sounds like out there. So that's just a little bit of, you know, sound engineering experience.

Anyway, tomorrow I Have another gig that's an hour and a half south of Denver. So I'm really covering some ground here in the state. And this is a gig at the Broadmoor Hotel, a very upscale resort.

I guess it's. It is a resort. You should check out their website because it's very expensive.

Like I don't know how much a night is, but I'm sure It's at least 500 a night. And they have security to get on the property and they host very exquisite, like, luxury events, weddings, corporate events, retreats, galas, things like that. I've never played a gig at the Broadmoor yet, and so I'm really excited to do it.

And the even cooler part is this is a gig that a destination management company, a dmc, has booked me for. And it is an event that this DMC is actually hosting for the staff at the Broadmoor. It's an appreciation party for their partnership.

Like this destination management company works with the Broadmoor so much that they have a relationship and now they want to throw them a thank you party for their business and their continued partnership, which is a lesson to us as musicians.

Like these partnerships are so valuable to destination management companies that they'll throw a whole party for them and spend tens of thousands of dollars on this party, at least a thousand of which goes to the musician. And that's like, what can we be doing that shows that we value our relationships with event planners and venues.

So anyway, it's really cool that they hired me and initially I had quoted them a pretty decent fee and then they explained to me that it was more of an internal event. So I said, like, I'm open to negotiating. I'd rather use this as an opportunity to build a relationship with you rather than, you know, charge my full fee.

And so I gave them a discount. And so that's one way that I'm doing what they're doing for, you know, venues like the Broadmoor. It's just by recognizing this.

And in fact, last week in our Fulltime Music Academy, we actually hosted a destination management company, representative Sarah Larison, who came and chatted with our members about what is a DMC and how do you work with DMCs.

And so a bunch of our members got to ask really great questions about, you know, what are DMCs looking for? If we were to email a DMC cold, what would you want to see in that email? What are some red flags or things that would get you blacklisted from working with them? Should you have a banner with your logo and name behind you. Spoiler alert.

She said no. Which I kind of expected. But it was good that, that we asked that question explicitly.

And so DMCs are awesome. And that's what tomorrow's gig is. So it's another hour and a half each way.

That one's down in Colorado Springs. And so it's kind of nice to drive and just listen to audiobooks. I'm listening currently to Zig, Zig Ziglar.

He's a sales professional. Actually he was. I think he's dead now.

But really well known sales professional and trainer and he wrote a book called the Secrets to Closing the Sale. And so I think that book is actually free on Audible and I highly recommend it. It's about 12 hours long.

If you speed it up to 2x it's only 6 hours. But I promise you, like as a musician who is always in a position of selling, you know, we have to sell our performances, we have to sell people on our visions for how music should go. This book was or is.

I'm not done with it. It's incredibly valuable and really gives a broad understanding and context as to what sales is and why it's not a negative or icky thing like sales really is to help other people. And so this book gives some.

Puts it into words much more eloquently than I can and so highly worth listening to. I can't recommend it enough. So get on it.

All right, I'm just about home, so thank you guys for accompanying me. On my drive home. I did stop at the BUC EE's in Colorado because that's on the way.

It's about halfway between Denver and Cheyenne, Wyoming. And so I got some snacks, took a selfie with the beaver statue that they have outside of this giant gas station. If you're not familiar with a Buc EE's is, you should look it up.

B u c ees. It's a giant gas station. They probably have like a hundred pumps and then they're like big thing is we have world famously clean bathrooms and they're gigantic.

And then they have snacks. They've branded everything with their beaver logo on it. So I got a bunch of snacks, took a selfie with the beaver statue and then headed home.

So thanks for accompanying me on my drive. I hope you guys got some good stuff out of this. By the way, if you want some some help, you know, coming up with your game plan to book and play these higher end gigs.

For example, the one that I just played or the one that I'm playing tomorrow. I'd love to lend a helping hand. That's what it's all about here is I want, I just want to help you.

So grab your free strategy session by going to fulltimemusicacademy.com/call and then I will help you come up with a game plan so that you can book and play these high end gigs you yourself. All right.

Thanks for tuning into another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "Your music will not market itself!". Take care everybody.

Bye.