In this episode, Jared unveils the exact step-by-step strategy behind his newly launched High-End Gigs Launchpad course. Whether you're new to the private events industry or looking to upgrade your current approach, Jared walks you through the entire process—from crafting your sizzle reel and building a high-converting website, to networking with venues and closing high-paying gigs using video sales letters and strategic consultations. This is the roadmap musicians need to thrive in the high-end event world.

"People want to be helped to get the things that they want—and your performance is something they want."

- 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's been a while, been very busy.

Took a week and a half trip to Europe and then immediately after I had a conference down in Atlanta. It was the American String Teachers association conference that I was exhibiting at a booth with my good friend and business partner, Tracy Silvergood. Anyway, I am back in the Denver area for a while and I'm on my way to a gig at the Colorado Convention Center.

It is actually for the MIC conference, which stands for Meeting Industry Council of Colorado. And so I was booked by a booking agent who booked me to play a happy hour. Today was like the first day of this big old conference and then afterwards they're having a little reception.

So I'm playing for an hour and a half at this reception. That should be fun. Excited.

And you may be surprised to hear that I'm working with booking agents. And you know, I really don't have anything against booking agents. It's just if you can do the work that they do, then you don't really need them.

However, I will say it is kind of nice to just be told where to show up and play and then get paid. That is a perk. I will also say though that these gigs that I've been playing for them are not as well paying as the gigs I book myself.

So there is that aspect of it too. All right, so I recently relaunched the version of we have a course inside of Fulltime Music Academy. We've always had a course.

Ever since I first launched this program. There was a step by step course and the newest version was just launched this week. It's called High End Gigs Launchpad.

And in my opinion, it is the best version of this course and the best course I've ever recorded and put out there. It's a step by step, 31 lessons to get your act launched and then booking these high end gigs. And there are a bunch of phases to it and I'll kind of walk you through those phases because this is the general strategy.

If somebody came to me and said, hey, I'm a new musician, new to the private events industry, I want to book weddings, corporate events, or some of these higher end gigs. What do I do? The first thing that I would have them do is is create a sizzle reel. Sizzle reel, you know, three to seven clips of you performing different songs, different settings, and then edit those together and you've got yourself a three minute sizzle reel.

This is the kind of video I have on my homepage extremestrings.com after you've got your sizzle reel, the second thing I would suggest is to create what I call a performing site, which is a website, but it's specifically designed to actually get you booked for these high end gigs. The language, the text on the pages, Sorry, accidentally hit pause because I'm looking at directions to the gig.

The text on the pages are talking about these high end gigs that you could play and why you're such a good fit for them. It's got videos, it's got testimonials, reviews from people who've heard you play. And it's a great marketing asset to show people why you're especially qualified to play these high end gigs.

Okay, then the third thing that I would suggest is to start driving traffic to your website. And the way I would do that is through a Google my business profile. Set one of those bad boys up and get some reviews there and then list yourself on a couple of those directory websites.

You know the ones I'm talking about. They're great to get started because these directory website companies spend millions of dollars on ads and SEO to get ranked very highly. So they're going to get you leads very quickly.

But the problem is that the leads aren't going to be the best quality. The they are, they're basically price shoppers because they're comparing you to other musicians. So you'll get your first leads but you probably want to move away from that as quickly as possible.

And so the next thing that I suggest in the course, and I'm really not holding anything back here guys, this is literally the step by step plan, is to start to reach out to venues and event planners who host these private event gigs.

You know, the wedding planners, the wedding venues, the wedding, the corporate event planners, the corporate event venues and start to meet with them and you can do this. This is probably one of the hardest things for musicians to grasp is these are real people and they want to meet with you because you'll make their clients experiences much better.

And so you reach out to these corporate event planners and venue owners and you start to have conversations with them, maybe you play your instrument for them and they start to realize you would be a great fit for our events.

Can we start recommending you now? The answer to that question is of course. So then by that point you should start to get leads and not just the price shopping leads, but like the higher quality leads that have been recommended to you.

The next thing I suggest in this course is to actually start to sponsor some of these events in the networking or these networking events in the events industry. Right. There are groups of people who hang out every month and just chat about planning and executing private events.

Find these in your area, reach out to them, Sponsor one by performing, not by giving them money. And then that's how you get a ton of people hearing your music all at once. And again, you should get even more recommendations.

So by that point you've got recommendations. Also, I do suggest reaching out to a destination management company if there's one in your area, because that's another great way for you to get some leads. All right, so you got leads coming in.

That's great. Now the next question people have is like, how do I sell to these leads? And this is a skill that not many musicians have developed. But we've talked about it here on this podcast and we will continue to talk about it.

But selling is a skill. People want to be helped to get the things that they want. And your performance is something that they want.

Especially if they're a lead, they've reached out to you. They really shouldn't be tire kicking or price shopping at this point. And so in order to sell to them, we need a couple more things.

The next thing that I recommend is creating what's called a video sales letter. This is a special video that you put on your website that is hidden. People shouldn't be able to find it easily from the navigation.

But the thing is, this video is so incredibly special because what it does is it talks like you're going to talk directly to the camera, pretending that you're talking to a friend and you're walking through them, how your act operates and why it's the best fit for the type of event that they're planning. Right?

If it's. If you're making a wedding video sales letter, you'll talk about how do you approach weddings, how does somebody work with you? How do you help them walk down the aisle? If it's a corporate event planner, then you talk about things like how you're going to dress, what time you show up, how do you work with sound engineers if there are one, et cetera.

And so this video sales letter is a sales tool. It's also a marketing tool. Like it's both.

But basically it gets them really thirsty for the drink that you're selling. Right? They really want your music because you're probably one of the only musicians who's ever given them a video walkthrough of what it's like to work with and hire a musician. Okay.

And then at the end of that video sales letter, you're going to give them a call to action, which is to book a sales call with you. And you're not going to call it a sales call. You know, you call it a free music consultation or free wedding consultation, depending on what kind of gigs you're trying to book.

But you're going to invite them to hop on a call with you, whether that's on the phone or on Zoom, and then you'll go through a script where the script is designed to get them to book you at the end. Right, that's, there's a little bit of secret sauce to that. And I can't give you the script on this podcast because it's pretty long.

But basically you're asking them questions that are designed to get them to reveal to you why they want to book you. And so now you become their assistant buyer and you help them through the process of securing the date. And so by the end of that call, they should be ready to sign a contract with you and give you some money.

And if they're not there, you know, there's ways to tweak that sales call or tweak your video sales letter. But ultimately, you know, you should have a much higher close rate on these sales calls because you've done a lot of that legwork. And so from there, you know, the rest is just repeating that process.

Right? You've gotten them to a signed contract and we did it in under 10 minutes here in this podcast. Of course there is a lot more to it and the, the key is really in the execution. That's why I'm not afraid to give the strategy away.

Right. Strategy is great, but without execution, it's meaningless. And so if you're interested in working with me one on one, getting access to my sales scripts, getting access to the high end gig song list, things like that, then, you know, feel free to book a call with me.

I'd love to chat with you, see, learn about you as a musician and musical act, learn what your challenges are. We'll discover those together. And then if it's good fit, we'll talk about what it's like to work together in our program.

If you're interested in booking one of those free calls, go to fulltimemusicacademy.com/call and you can book a free time to chat with me. But yeah, I mean, to be real with you, the program is so step by step, all of those things that I mentioned, there are lessons for each of them.

And it's broken down so that, you know, if I mentioned a complex subject, we'll maybe do a couple lessons on it. And each lesson is just one part of that concept. Super easy to execute.

That way you can book and play these high end gigs yourself, which I love doing. I'm on my way to one right now. And yeah, it's super fun to do all this.

It just feels like we're finally figured out the science behind making a living as a musician. Just so cool. All right, that's all I got for y'all today.

It's great to be back podcasting with you. I hope to do this more consistently over the summer, especially as I'm driving to more gigs. Summer is definitely way more gigging season than the winter.

And so we're March. We're on our way to gigging season and and I will see you at our next episode. So thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician podcast.

Remember, "Your music will not market itself!". Bye, everybody.