In this episode, Jared sits down with Alison Suell of Electria Strings to break down her incredible journey from $100K to over $500K in booked gigs. They dive into the real drivers behind her success—strong relationships with planners, simplifying her offer, building systems, and shifting her mindset around money and growth. Alison shares how niching down, raising prices, and treating music like a true business allowed her to scale without burnout. If you’ve ever wondered what it actually takes to build a high-income music career, this episode pulls back the curtain.

"People are willing to pay for things that they really want—and you’re not overcharging when you’re delivering something they truly value."

- 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

Jared: What's up, gigging musicians? It's Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of the Gigging Musician Podcast. I have a very special episode for you today. This is actually a follow-up to an episode we did a couple years ago, I believe, featuring an amazing, brilliant, talented musician who has been working with BookLive for, for a couple years now.

And we first heard from Alison Suell, who runs Electria Strings. Back when she won her first $100K award, which we give out a beautiful gold record award to anybody who books $100,000 worth of gigs in our platform. And I am happy to welcome Alison back today for a very special occasion commemorating her $500,000 worth of bookings. That is half a million dollars inside of the BookLive platform. So welcome back, Alison. Would you mind just kind of sharing with our listeners who don't know you who you are and what Electria does and where you're based?

Alison: Yeah, thank you for the intro. It was really sweet. So my group is called Electria and we're in Louisville, Kentucky, and we do travel around the state and we do also travel to other states if people want to hire us. And what we are primarily is an electric string trio. So we play electric violin, electric viola, electric cello, uh, with backing tracks.

And, um, that's something I've been kind of picking up seeing the last few years, people doing more electric with tracks for weddings and events. Um, like, I know you do that, Jared, too, and, um, but we're just a trio doing it. So, um, a few years ago I just reduced this down from offering quartet, trio, and duo for acoustic, and I just zeroed it in on just trio because it was easier for me. So we do, we still do acoustic, of course, but we, um, but the kind of the niche thing that we do is the electric.

Jared: Amazing. And what kind of music do you play on your acoustic trio?

Alison: So for acoustic, we can do the classical and we can do the pop still. Um, I always tell couples that for like the ceremony, that it is, if they do want a mix of classical and pop, that it makes sense to do the acoustic because they kind of blend together in style with that classical feel, even though it's pop music.

But we don't mix classical and pop on electric at all because we kind of think it sounds lame. And so go back between like, this one's without track and it doesn't sound as good on electric, you know, the classical music in Martina.

Jared: Sure. So is that the primary genre of electric is pop and all the non-classical styles?

Alison: Exactly. Yeah. Just all contemporary music. We go maybe as far back to '60s in the music, all the way to current music coming out this year. Very cool.

Jared: And I'm hearing a lot of weddings. Is that the primary gig type that you do?

Alison: We do a lot of weddings. We do about, you know, probably a wedding every weekend during the gig seasons. And then, but we do quite a bit of corporate stuff too, like, or birthday parties. We just did a birthday party last week. They booked us one week before the event.

Oh, wow. And so we just got hired to play for opening weekend for Keeneland, which is a racetrack in Lexington. And it's pretty big. And they're having their opening weekend and they hired us to come play in the morning. So we do a lot of stuff like auctions and charity events and galas. Derby events around here too.

Jared: Okay, that's amazing. If you had to like put percentages on it, what would you say is wedding versus corporate versus other?

Alison: Um, probably maybe about 30% corporate, and you know, other would be like the birthday parties, I think. And those are, those are definitely more rare. I would say we only maybe do like one or two of those a year. The rest would be weddings for sure.

Jared: Gotcha. Very cool. Awesome. Well, I'm excited to, to kind of dig into your journey to 500K because I think for many musicians that number is not believable. So first off, can you show us the award for those who are watching the video of this podcast? Would you mind just holding that up?

Alison: Yes, it's really beautiful, gigantic award. I love it.

Jared: Awesome.

Alison: Yes.

Jared: And could you try holding the plate a little closer just so people can see what it says on there? So it says Electria for earning over $500,000 in BookLive. That's amazing. Thank you for sharing that. You commented earlier, that's a lot bigger than the $100K one. Sweet. So let's kind of like walk through the journey of Electria. If you were to summarize 0 to 100K in like a couple sentences, how would you summarize the path from 0 to 100K?

Alison: Um, a lot of networking and just kind of bootstrap marketing essentially, because it was, I mean, because you don't really have a lot of money and you're still figuring things out. You're figuring out questions and processes and what people want and Does your idea actually have traction? And then just meeting people and then making lots of mistakes along the way, figuring out like your setup and handling events. So I would say the 0 to 100 is a huge learning curve. Cool.

Jared: Why do you think some musicians don't get to 100K?

Alison: I think sometimes it has to do with mentality. It's like what you believe is possible. Sometimes I've heard people say things like, oh, people don't want this, or they're not going to pay that much, or, you know, there's no way I can do that. And I'm like, well, I do that every day in my business, and I never thought I couldn't do it.

So sometimes it's just the belief that people don't want something after they can't, and that's just simply not true. You have to have a little bit more of the expansive mindset of like, I can charge more, I could dream bigger, and that people do want it. And, um, and you're not taking something or overcharging for something that people don't want. People are willing to pay for things that they really want. And that took me a while to really wrap my mind around that.

Jared: Yeah, well, that's awesome. Like, why do you think that you had that mindset whereas others didn't? Was there anything that you did getting to that point that like strengthened your belief in yourself?

Alison: Um, well, definitely listen to a lot of books, like a lot of self-development books, a lot of business books. I follow coaches or I've been coached. Um, I look at other businesses and what they're doing. So I'm always, I feel like I'm always learning from other people and seeing what's possible. And sometimes that was a thing that opened me up.

Like when I first heard somebody Like, this is many years ago. I heard about another business and they were doing $100K a year. I was like, what? They're doing $100K with music? And I was like, okay, why can't I do that? So sometimes you just like, this is a perfect example of this podcast is going like, hey, it's possible. You can make more money.

And like, you can, like people, and like, my point is that we're doing just trio. We have acoustic, we have electric, but I don't offer anything else anymore. And so I've niched down even more and people still want us. And so it's not about having even more services or more offerings or, you know, more value, so to speak, it's just being really good at what you're doing.

So, but yeah, I would say it's just kind of being exposed to more and more people and experiences and books and just change, working on your mentality around what you think you can have. And I think Also, sometimes a little naivety goes a long way too. Well, it started to go like, I don't know, like, I want to make some money from gigs.

And then the next thing I know, I'm like, oh, I could actually make more money from gigs. So I don't think I really set out with the intention of like, oh, I could actually make money or like have a successful business. It was really just like, I want to earn a lot of extra income. And then it kind of changed over time.

Jared: Yeah, for sure. Something you pointed out was, was really important because we have heard all the time that like you are the sum of the 5 people that you hang out with the most. And by you immersing yourself in coaching and podcasts and books, like you're essentially hanging out with these people who have achieved great things.

Like, you know, if you listen to Tony Robbins, you're going to get a nice dose of motivation injected into your arm every day. But I think a lot of musicians, like, where, where a lot of us struggle, especially in the beginning, is a lot of the people we're hanging out with are similarly broke musicians to us, right? Because, you know, a lot of musicians, they all struggle. Like, we're not getting paid enough, we don't have enough gigs, and all the other complaints. Like, how did you How did you break free of that? When was the first moment you're like, I need help?

Alison: Of course. So I started my gay business in 2011, was when I was right after college. And that's when I— my friend actually made me a website and got me started. And it really was just because I was asking other people like, hey, you got any digs? And I want to play. And nobody was fucking with me because, you know, I wasn't looking in the right places and I didn't even know where to look. And I think it was just the mentality of breaking free from that broke mindset.

I mean, I think it was just that being exposed to higher, like what you just said, like higher achieving people and seeing what was possible. I don't know exactly when it broke for me, to be honest with you. But it was not right away. And it took me a while to find people 'Cause I remember thinking like, I wish there was like a more community for like, the landscape back then is just way different. And I think musicians have a lot more community now that they have access to. So I don't know, I felt like for many years I was just kind of blind and kind of guessing a little bit. Yeah. What to do.

Jared: Fair enough. I think that's pretty much all of us until we find the thing that clicks.

Alison: Cool.

Jared: So now let's go from your first $100K now to the $500K mark. What if you were to describe that in a couple sentences? What did it take for you to scale up to $500K?

Alison: I would say by that point, I've had a network of planners and venues and places that we work that we've already built a reputation now. So quite a bit of the business is having referrals. You know, half our inbox is just planners messaging us going, hey, are you available for my client? And just being a good, somebody that's good to work with.

I think that's really important too because one of the things that I would get from clients was you're the easiest vendor for us to work with. And I like that because it's really important. So you don't want to, you want to be And, you know, I always find a way. And that's the other thing. It's kind of the attitude of like, okay, yes, we can do that, but it's not an automatic no.

It's like, well, let's see what creative solutions we can come up with or to make your vision come true. So I would say it's just kind of that momentum that builds up and starts to run itself. Like you have more templates. And more processes and you kind of anticipate questions before they're asked by your clients. And so you're kind of answering everything before they even know they have the question.

And you kind of just learn that through the trial and error and figuring out what people need. So then that's where it made it to be a really easy process, but then, but then just systemizing things. So that makes things run a little smoother and then, and then it's just easier to take on more because For a long time, I just didn't really have a cap. So I would just take on pretty much everything I could.

And it got like, there was one weekend where I had like 11 events in one weekend. And I think that was kind of my cap where I was like, I think I'm going to lose it. So, because I was just doing everything by myself at that point. So I was like, this is too much for me as one person to handle, like to be managing. But, um, so I have cut back a little bit on that sense where I am, uh, I kind of limit a little bit more on what I book in one day.

Also at this point now, I also have help. So I have someone who does my booking for me. Um, she handles the sales calls and the emails. And then I have, um, I'm bringing on someone else to help me with, um, the gig management side. So just checking those timelines and sending messages to the group and using BookLive because I love BookLive. I'm like one of your mega fans because the software just made my life so much easier with gig management.

So I would say just kind of like getting to $500,000 is just those systems and those relationships and showing up to bridal shows and being seen and doing events and working with people like, because sometimes there's events that I will negotiate with someone on. It's like, okay, we'll do a little bit of trade. But it helps because we're seen and we develop those relationships. So yeah, I don't know. I'm sure there's more to it, but—

Jared: No, that's awesome.

Alison: I mean things.

Jared: It sounds to me like you've been with your delegating to other people and with setting up systems and using BookLive. Like, it sounds to me like you are trying to free up your time so that you could be more involved in the marketing side of things. Is that a fair summary?

Alison: Yeah, because I worked, you know, it gives me time to work on my website and like I spent a lot of time on my website. I made my, I mean, I designed my own website, but it, you know, allows me time to like add to our music library and, and add more selections for couples and and just more enjoyment.

Because also the other side of it is that the burnout, because if you're doing everything by yourself all the time, you're going to get burned out and you're going to not respond to people as fast as you should and you're going to lose the leads. So, because that's a big, that's a big thing too, is answer people right away and be on top of your, and like your inquiries and your gigs because People, like, they'll move on.

Like, if they don't hear from you, they're really excited when they contact you. Sometimes that's where musicians, you can leave money on the table, is because you're simply just not getting back to people in time in there. And so that can be underrated as far as how valuable and important that is, but it is very important.

And so it kind of allows me to be on top of the business and not get burned out because when I went through those phases where I was just a little like, I'm too tired and I had too much on my plate and I can't get back to everything, I think that those periods can kind of hurt your business or they kind of burn you out and you don't want to do it anymore. So, you know. Totally.

Jared: Yeah, I get that. Trust me, I get that. I do a lot of what you do. You've been saying the word business a lot. And there are a lot of people who listen to this podcast like, it's The Gigging Musician Podcast. I don't want anything to do with business. When did you start treating Electria like a business? And obviously you still do. Why do you treat it like a business as opposed to, I'm just a musician. I don't do any of that stuff.

Alison: Um, I guess I started treating it like a business early on. But the reason why is because, um, because I mean it is a business at the end of the day. Like, you people think that sell, like doing sales is a bad word or something. You're providing something that people really want. So that's the thing that took me a little time to understand, that it's not greedy, it's not self, um, What's the word? Like I'm not—

Jared: Indulgent?

Alison: Yes, yeah. I'm not trying to just like, it's, you know, money grubbing. It's not anything like that. It's like what, like we had a planner last week at the birthday party. She said, we really love hiring you all because you kind of really fit this niche for us. Like you're not the big band, but you're not too little. Like you kind of fit, you're right in that perfect little spot.

That works for like lots of events. And she's like, so we actually fill an important need that people want and they're looking for that. So it's not just, it's about being selfish. I mean, you have to, you have to tell people that you're there. So that's what sales is. Just like, hey, I can do this thing for you and solve your problem. And they're like, thank goodness somebody's solving my problem.

And that's a business. So like, if you just want to gig a little bit and you don't really want to make a whole lot of money and you want to have your day job and you just want to do this for pleasure only, then sure, you'll just be the musician who gigs occasionally and makes a few hundred dollars every now and then. And maybe at the end of the year you made $2,000.

But if you actually want to make more money then it's going to require that dedication, um, that sells the processes, the delegation. Like, you have to charge enough to make it worthwhile to hire people and to pay yourself. And that even if you were not playing the gigs or not even managing certain aspects, that you're still making money at the end of the day.

So, um, you have to account for that and that you can pay people. So, because I know people too that only charge enough to pay everyone equally and maybe make $50 for themselves. Like, that's not even worth it. Like, unless you just want it to be like a side thing. But if you're running a business, you'd have to charge more and keep more for your business.

Because I know some people that felt guilty, or like, actually, back many years ago, I knew some musicians that worked for this other person in my town. And they were like, You know, he's thinking like $275 for himself. And I'm like, no, he's not. He's running a business. Like, he has, he has marketing, he's, he has a liability.

At the end of the day, he's the one responsible for all of you if you don't do your job. But they didn't see it that way, and I always thought that was a wrong mentality to have for good players. And that was before I had a business. But yeah, I think you have to think that way to protect yourself and actually make yourself more money.

Jared: Yeah, that's awesome. Very insightful. I appreciate you sharing all of that. Here's some other things that people think that it takes to grow to a level where you're at. Do you have a massive social media following?

Alison: Um, no. My Instagram is kind of sad. I do have like maybe a couple hundred, but it's really not that much at all.

Jared: Wow, so take that as a lesson, musicians. You do not need a social media following to make $500,000 with music. Um, do you have a booking agent?

Alison: Do you mean like someone outside of my business?

Jared: I guess what I'm saying is like, is there a booking agent LLC that exclusively hires Electria for all of their events and they take a percentage?

Alison: No, I don't.

Jared: So you don't need a booking agent to make $500,000 with music?

Alison: Yeah.

Jared: Do you feel like you got lucky?

Alison: No. No, I worked pretty hard on this business. I put a lot of hours and a lot of time into this. And no, I do feel like there's some luck. I think that there is a little bit of magic involved in anything that, like, there's a little bit of that you can work really hard, but you can't control the whole outcome. I think that there is a little bit of like sometimes just your intention and your desire for it kind of I know it's like where attention goes, or what is it? Where intention goes, what?

Jared: Attention goes, energy flows.

Alison: Yes. Okay. Um, it's, I, it's something like that. Cause anytime I really focus on it and I don't feel like I'm doing anything extra special, somehow it flourishes even more. So it's, I think intention has a lot to do with it, but, um, but just Yeah, put a lot of experimenting, lots of mistakes, and a lot of money into buying equipment and buying marketing and just making our product even better and buying music and offering more in terms of what we're capable of. So yeah, I want to say it was luck.

Jared: Awesome. And then I guess the last one in that series of 4 is, do you feel like there's anything special about you, something that is unachievable by other musicians?

Alison: Um, I wouldn't say unachievable. I would say the only thing about me personally that might be just, you know, my, my attribute would just be that I tend to be that person that is very easy to get along with and and to work with just naturally, and some people are a little bit more rough around the edges and they can be off-putting. And so I think some self-awareness in that respect might be helpful for some people.

If they feel like, oh, I know people usually call me an a-hole, then maybe that could be your clue to go, okay, I need to be a little easier to work with. That might be more pleasant for people. They want to hire me because people like to work with people that they like. And so, but I don't know that that's, that's not unique to me. There's lots of likable people.

Yeah, but I don't really feel like other than that, it's just the mentality to work a lot harder or to expand my mindset. So I think those are things everybody can achieve. I think they put their mind to it. That's awesome.

Jared: Well, thank you for sharing that. I think those 4 things right there are going to help so many musicians because a lot of people think that they need a massive social media following they need a booking agent, they need to be lucky, and they need to be someone superhuman to make this kind of thing happen.

But I think you're living proof that like you don't need all these things. Like you just need to be easygoing. You need to find the right guidance, the right mentors, the right software, and you just need to be willing to put in the work. And you've done that. And I'm so excited for, for your next $500,000. We were talking before the call about what the million-dollar award is going to look like, and I can't share that with you yet.

You'll just have to find out when you achieve it. Um, two, two final questions before we wrap up. You mentioned that BookLive has been instrumental in, in your business. I'm just curious if you could share, like, how is it instrumental, and has anything changed about your relationship with the software as you've scaled up to $500,000?

Alison: Um, I love how easy it has made. It's cut down a lot of work for me, like, because what I would used to do, I did have a one-sheet paper that was attached to the contract, and it had like musicians I was hiring, music selections, like location, kind of had like all the information. And I would print those off, and I had binders of my contracts, and then I would just flip through it every week and go, what's coming up? And then write people's name in pencil who I had asked that was a way to hear back from them.

And then when they would confirm, I would write them in pen, so that was my system of knowing that they confirmed. And so BookLive took all that labor out for me. Now I can view all the information in BookLive that I want. I can see their contracts in there. I can see their payments. I love that you send automatic emails to them to remind them about payments, so I never have to remind people about making their final remaining payment.

I love that. I love that it can go through and request the musicians I want off the list that I want in the order that I want and just cycle through them and I don't have to touch it. Like, that's, that's so— I love that so much because that, you know, my system that I had, which worked, it did work really well, it was just very manual and It's a lot of me texting people details and going, can you do this gig? And waiting to hear back.

Um, so, and the musicians that I have hired and they've gotten on the BookLive, they love it too. Um, and so it did change, like, at first it was a little bit of a learning curve because I had to figure out, okay, what in my process am I doing that BookLive does a little differently that I just need to adapt to? It's just different. It's not bad. It's just different. Um, and usually better.

So, um, and you're always changing the software and updating it and making it even better. So, um, I just— yeah, I feel like— I don't really feel like anything has changed from 100 to 500 as far as BookLive, because the software is just really straightforward. Like, it's also the same process the whole time that it's been, and, um, it just makes my whole booking process really easy. So, uh, and gig management process. So I love it.

Jared: Awesome. I love hearing that. Awesome. And then the, the last question I have for you is, it's kind of very open-ended, but what advice would you have for musicians that we haven't covered yet? Um, you can say for anyone who's either just getting started out or people who are at the $100K level that want to get to the $500K level. What pieces of advice would you give them that we haven't already covered?

Alison: Um, I would say don't be afraid to like, um, niche down, and don't be afraid to like make mistakes and, and, um, and go bigger even. Like, because every time I would do a price increase, I was always a little scared, like, what if I'm gonna lose my business? And every year that I did a price increase I, uh, never lost any business.

Now, I did a bigger price increase last year because I purposely wanted to cut down on the number of gigs I was booking because I also have a music school. So I'm working on running my music school and I want to focus on that more. So I purposely cut out some business. But I mean, it took me a long time.

It took me, what, 15 years to get to a point where I did a price increase on purpose that cut out business. So don't be afraid of raising your prices and imagining what's possible and what you want. But yeah, I don't know. You do such a good job of like covering so many bases. I don't know if I have anything uniquely special to add, to be honest. Just the attitude. Of, you know, experimenting and knowing that you can.

Jared: Yeah, well, I appreciate this. It was so incredibly helpful, and I just really enjoy working with you. Your attitude of being easy to work with doesn't just come across to the events that you work on. It also comes across to me and my team, and we're very grateful to work with you too. If somebody listening to this wants to find out more about you and Electria, where should they go to do that?

Alison: Um, we can go to my Instagram. You can add to our very small followers list. We're @electriastrings. And then we also do have Facebook as well, Electria Strings. And then our website is electriastings.com.

Jared: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being a guest on this. Can't wait to send you your million-dollar award, so let's get on that. For sure. And to our— oh, sorry, go ahead.

Alison: Oh, I said thanks for having me.

Jared: Of course, my pleasure. To our listeners, thank you for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. I hope that you were inspired by what Alison had to share and go out there, take some action on your own, be easy to work with, do the work, find some mentors, and you too could be holding a $500K award just like Alison was. So thanks for tuning in, and remember, “Your music will not market itself!”.

Bye everybody!