In this episode, Jared reflects from the top of his favorite mountain in Scottsdale and shares a powerful message for musicians who want to break free from the starving artist mindset. He opens up about his journey from $250 gigs to consistently booking $2,500 high-end performances—and the mindset and skills that made it possible. If you're tired of hustling for low-paying gigs and ready to earn what you're truly worth, this is the wake-up call you’ve been waiting for.

"Being an artist and staying an artist and not expanding our skills will keep us to the income level that people perceive that artists deserve."

- 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 October, October 26, 2025, and I am actually at Scottsdale, Arizona visiting my, my parents.

And if you've been a longtime listener of my podcast, I am on what I call my mountain, which I've done quite a few episode recordings from the top of my mountain.

Basically my mountain, there's like a little miniature mountain, I don't know, probably a couple hundred feet high, not too far from my parents place that I hike to in the mornings.

And it is one of my favorite spots on this planet actually. It's just so peaceful, so serene. Lots of cactuses or cacti and you can see all around the whole like Scottsdale, Phoenix area.

And occasionally I'll see like hot air balloons and it's just really cool to be up here.

And yeah, it's been, it's like a great time to reflect because I don't know about you, but in my business, which my gigging is my business, you know, you go through seasons and there are some seasons where I record a lot of podcast episodes in a row.

There's some seasons where I'm pretty silent here. And I think this has been one of those silent periods because, you know, it's been a very, very interesting time of the year.

Government is still currently shut down. People are, are fighting and I don't know, it's just kind of hard to put yourself out there when, when that, that kind of stuff is happening.

And so I don't know, it's been good to, to reflect on it because I have been incredibly grateful for this year with my gigging.

I just, last week I played a corporate gig that it was two and a half hours and I got paid two and a half thousand dollars, which is incredible. That's a thousand an hour.

That's basically my new hourly rate. And I've been asking it and I've been consistently getting it and I've been, you know, I've gotten stronger at selling my, my musical services, stronger at marketing it and I think just the reception's gotten a lot better too.

My, my videos have been improving. I like, my website has my new video on it and it's been kind of like a quiet rebuilding, not even rebuilding, quiet building year.

Like I, I get stronger in the shadows. I guess that's kind of the motto for 2025, Stronger in the shadows. And I don't know, it's, it's, I'm incredibly grateful for it.

Because when I moved to Colorado a couple years ago, I was charging basically like $500 a gig. And you know, that was more than I was making back in Milwaukee.

Because in Milwaukee I was doing the quartet where we were charging a thousand dollars for a quartet divided four ways, 250 a person.

So I doubled my income per gig, mainly because I switched to a solo act, which that's. I did a whole episode on that. And so, yeah, that 500 per gig that I was like, oh, this is great.

But at the end of the day, that still wasn't quite enough to, to live comfortably off of. Right?

You can't, I mean, you'd have to do still quite a few of those $500 gigs to make a full time income to be able to afford, you know, whatever. Rent, mortgage, groceries.

If you, if I had kids, I think I would have been screwed at that point. And so raising the rates over time has really, really made such a difference.

Like $2,500, that is substantial in the Colorado area. You know, like rent prices are pretty high. Like there are rents here that, that's pretty similar to what people are paying rent.

And so if you do one gig a month at $2,500, you can afford rent with that. But then what happens if you do two gigs a month? What happens if you do four gigs a month?

Actually, if you do the math on that, two gigs a month is $5,000. And if you do four gigs, that's $10,000. And what if you did that every month?

That's 10,000amonth times 12, that's $120,000 a year salary. Which by the way, that is a pretty decent salary for a lot of people.

And so it is worth like doing the math on that and figuring out what do you need to charge to make a decent salary. And then the next question becomes, how do you get there?

And so like, that is something I see a lot of musicians struggle with, is like, we, we aren't natural business people. We don't gravitate towards the business of this. We are artists.

The thing that we love to do involves holding our instrument or singing and being with other people, making art. And that's fine, that's great.

That's how, that's the thing that hooked me in to music. That's why I fell in love with it in the first place.

I'll never forget when I started in orchestra in fourth grade, I was just like in awe of the whole musical experience.

Like for me, my stage was the concert stage at like a Carnegie hall or something like that. And it was like, that was my goal.

But regardless, I think we all kind of have similar desires, similar motives.

But the thing is, like, being an artist and staying an artist and not expanding our skills will keep us to the income level that people perceive that artists deserve.

Like, which people? The starving artist trope is just everywhere. And so if we just stick to our artistry alone, that's the results we get, right? What is the Einstein thing?

Like, try something a million times or the. The definition of insanity is trying the same thing over and over again but expecting different results. And I see so many musicians doing that.

Like, they think, hey, let me just continue tweaking the artistry of what I do. And maybe that is my path to making a substantial income.

And I even tried that at the very beginning. But the thing is, like, if nothing changes, then nothing will change. The artistry is not the key to making a substantial income as a.

As an artist. Which is. Sounds weird to say it that way, but it's true. The thing is, pairing your artistry with solid business skills is what will.

And I'm not saying you need to cover every aspect of business, because now people are starting to, like, you might think, oh, that involves everything like starting an LLC and hiring a lawyer and then learning accounting and learning how to manage people.

And honestly, that's. That's all not necessary. Of course, this is not legal advice, so consult a lawyer or. And an accountant for the legal parts of this.

But there are really only two aspects of business that you really need to. To get good at. To pair with your artistry to make a substantial income.

And one of those things is marketing. That is the putting yourself out there to the right people, not just to everybody. Like social media. Screw social media.

You don't need that because that's not where the right people are. Who are the right people?

They're the ones that are going to be paying me $2,500 a gig, which is most likely a corporate event planner or somebody planning their wedding.

And so those people don't necessarily hang out on social media 24 7. They hang out elsewhere. Then the second skill is sales.

Getting good at selling people, getting good at asking people for their money. And not even just asking people for their money. That's like, really not what sales is.

Sales is just showing somebody else how them parting with their money is going to give them more than what their money is worth.

And so when I'm talking to a couple or a corporate event planner on Zoom or something, we're talking about how their event is just going to be so much more incredible because they had my live music.

And because of that they have this realization that the $2,500 that they're giving to me is going to be returned to them in greater value through my services.

And then it's just a matter of hey, you want to book it? Great, here's the contract and we take a 50% down payment.

So those two skills are really all that's necessary to make a great living as a musician. The rest is just detail work and you can get good at the other stuff after you master those two skills.

Those two skills are like, that's what's going to make your business green. And then the rest of it is just building the plumbing.

So yeah, and then I think in general, like don't just dabble in those things, right? If you dabble, you're not really committed or serious about any of them.

And that's where I say like go through an intensive experience, go all in.

Because you know, say you, you start dabbling something, how many songs have you started to learn but never finished because you dabbled in them?

How many new shiny objects have you chased but never turned any of them into something serious because you never went all in?

How many girlfriends or boyfriends did you start dating but never truly went all in and as a result broken up with? Right.

That's kind of like what I think a lot of musicians relationship with the business is because another shiny object comes up like a new ad for we'll get you on tons of Spotify playlists or we'll show you how to book 100 gigs, fairs and festivals.

And those things don't pay a lot. So if you dabble in that, you're going to get a little bit more of the low end gigs.

So what would happen if you went all in on truly income building type of marketing and sales for your music? How would that change things?

And if the answer is it would change things drastically and you'd start making an income that truly affords the lifestyle that you want to live as a musician, then shouldn't you take some action on that?
Shouldn't you stop listening this podcast and do something about it? I mean, sure, you can listen to this podcast and I'll be honest, I listen to a lot of business podcasts too.

And the consumption of other people's media is really helpful, it's very inspirational. But it can't just stay at consumption.

You have to take that consumption as inspiration and then take action based on that content that you're consuming.

So that's my, my advice for today is that if you truly want something to change, you have to make it change.

Like I was thinking about this the other day, I saw somebody's shirt that was talking about like prayer and yeah, prayer is, prayer is a wonderful thing.

Some people pray that their life should change and then some people pray and make their life change. Right? It's not just gonna happen. You have to do something.

You have to be an active role, active participant in that change. That's all I got for you. By the way, if you wanna learn how to book these high end gigs, go and watch my free masterclass.

It's at fulltimemusicacademy.com there's no dashes in that. FulltimemusicAcademy.com/High-end check it out. And I'd love to help you with this.

So but even if you don't take some action, move your business forward because it is a business and if you're going to be asking people for money, you may as well ask how to actually do it the right way so that you don't feel weird about it and that people don't sense that you're nervous or afraid to do it.

Do it with confidence, do it with no fear. Get out there and, and just have a lot of fun with this. Because that's why we do this.

We don't get into music to be business people and we do it to play amazing gigs and make a living from it.

And this is what I'm really trying to help you guys do. So thanks for tuning into another episode of the Gigging Musician Podcast.

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