Getting My First Gig in a New City

Hey, what's up gigging pros. It's Jared. Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. I am so excited to be back and sharing with you a new chapter of my gigging life. And you're gonna be really excited for this. Because I am going to be sharing the blueprint of how to start a group from scratch in a new city. And why would I be sharing this? And, more importantly, why has there been such a delay between last episode and this one? It's because I just finalized the fact that I'm moving. I'm moving from my hometown of Milwaukee, to Denver. So any Denver musicians here hit me up? I'd love to connect with you hit the ground running when I move. But more importantly, how does this affect my my groups, so many of you know, I actually run three musical groups here in Milwaukee. One is Dream City Strings, which is a traditional String Quartet that plays modern covers, like Guns and Roses and Journey, that kind of thing. In addition to the classics, like Bach and Beethoven. I also run Dream City Jazz, which is a Jazz Trio, piano, drums, bass, with an optional trumpet or saxophone. And then recently, I launched Extreme Strings, which is an electric violin with backing tracks act. And all three of those acts have actually been pretty well embedded in the Milwaukee community. We do you know, several 100 gigs every single year, in the corporate events, world, wedding, private events, that kind of thing. And so, my move brings to question well, what's going to happen to those groups? And how am I going to deal with starting in a new city? Well, to answer those questions, when I started my acts, those three acts in Milwaukee, I designed them in such a way where I didn't necessarily have to be involved. I do all the business, I do have some help. But I do all the bookings. And I've systemized it so that I actually don't need to be the one performing at each of these gigs. And if you're in Fulltime Music Academy, that's actually module eight is about how to create your group in such a way that that happens. But so basically, I don't need to be performing, which means I am going to continue those three groups in Milwaukee, and still book gigs in Milwaukee. I have a ton of musicians in Milwaukee who rely on the work that I provide for them to supplement their income, pay their rent, buy things that they need to buy. So that's why I'm going to maintain those groups in Milwaukee. And how am I going to do that, even if I'm not there? Well, as many of you in the gigging musician, podcast community know that growing and building a group is mostly about marketing, you just have to do marketing efforts. And you can find previous episodes that kind of talk about that. And you can either do that with your time and effort. Or you can also pay advertisers to get the word out about your group, and then handle when somebody comes your way just handled the sale. So I'm going to continue that marketing effort. And still network with people in Milwaukee, most of that's done virtually anyway. And then still pay for the advertisements to get the word out there, and then handle all the sales virtually, which is what I already do anyway. So I actually anticipate that Milwaukee will actually grow in terms of the number of gigs my groups get, because I'm going to have a little bit more time, because I don't have any gigs to play. So that is how I'm handling the city I'm leaving. So if you're one of my musicians, rest assured that there are still plenty of gigs to come in the future years. And now the question turns to Denver. You might be wondering, well, why are you moving? Why are you leaving such a city where you've built your routes and, and all that jazz? And the answer is kind of complicated, but more in a nutshell, I just need to change. You know, my wife and I we wanted to move. She grew up in the Milwaukee area. And now it's time for her to experience a new city. And, you know, for me, Wisconsin's winters are just too long. So I'm looking for somewhere with shorter winters, more interesting terrain like mountains. In fact, we just visited Denver last week to find our house, and then went on a nice long hike in Breckenridge, which is beautiful, but it's 9000 feet in the air. And so my lungs were struggling to breathe in that altitude. So it's time for a change. And we signed a lease on a house. And now I have certainty about when I'm moving down. So I'll be moving down early September, and I have no gigs in my future dumpster getting from scratch. So the question is, how do I get my first gig? Well, if you've read Fulltime, if you've read Gigging Secrets, or you're part of my Full time Music Academy, you know that I have an exact framework to do that a step by step plan that I am going to follow. I'm going to be my own guinea pig, because I use that plan when I was starting my Milwaukee groups, and I'm going to use it again, with all of the shortcuts that I've now learned to start up the groups in Denver. So, if you haven't gotten your copy of Gigging Secrets yet, go to GiggingSecrets.com, I'll ship you out a copy. Or if you're interested in joining me in Fulltime Music Academy, go to FulltimeMusicAcademy.com. Watch that masterclass. And then we'll chat afterwards, see if it's a good fit for you. But in a nutshell, the basic plan I'm going to follow is to start marketing my group before I actually start building the group. Now, for many of you musicians, that might be a scary concept, it might even anger some of you. And that's okay. I just know that that's the shortcut for me to get my first gig. So how am I going to do that? Well, I'm not starting from scratch, because I've played a lot in Milwaukee. And so I have footage of me performing, I'm going to use that footage. And use a similar website. In fact, I'm debating whether or not I'm going to use the same website for Dream City Strings that I already have. And just start to market in Denver, take out the Milwaukee specific languaging and just start driving some traffic to the website from the Denver area. And a while ago, I did a podcast episode on doing Facebook Ads, I will try some Facebook Ads. I'll also try some Google Ads, and just start getting some people interested in our group. Then, in Fulltime Music Academy, one of the things that I teach is building up a street team, a street team of partners. And these are partners in the events industry, not necessarily in the music industry, but in the events industry, you know, corporate events, private parties, weddings, and just finding out who those people are. And then partnering with them, so that when one of their clients books, whatever their services for a gig. And then that person asks for a recommendation, do you know any musicians, I want to be the first person out of their mouth. So that involves creating partnerships with these people in Denver. So we'd have enough of these partnerships, I'm pretty sure I'll start to get inquiries for my services in Denver. And then after that, it's a simple matter of meeting with these enquiries prospective clients over zoom, going through my sales process, which I do have a sales process to sell gigs, especially those that are in 1000s of dollars. And then close the deal with BookLive, which generates a contract collects payment via credit card. So if I start that process, which I'm planning on doing that, before I actually move to Denver, starting partnering, I should have a gig pretty quickly. And then after I booked the gig, that's when I start to find musicians who can help me and play in my group. I already have kind of some friends and one of our Fulltime Music Academy students is actually in Denver. So I'm going to ask to kind of leverage his network. And we'll, we'll find some musicians who can play the gig. And then I've got experience music directing my group before so should be pretty easy to just get a group that can play and then we show up to the gig, play and then get paid. So that's my plan. And it was pretty quick. And I know it had some topics that might be a little controversial to some musicians. But as you know, we hear on the Gigging Musician Podcast, and in Fulltime Music Academy, treat what we do as a business. And we get to play our music, we get paid very well for it. But we take a lot of shortcuts that get us there faster. So if any of that interests you at all, I would urge you to watch the Fulltime Music Masterclass. Go to FulltimeMusicAcademy.com Enter your email address, watch the video and if you're interested in learning more, schedule a call with me afterwards. So thanks so much for listening. I'll keep you guys posted on my move to Denver. And when I get that first gig, you'll be the first to know. So thanks so much. Remember, You are just one gig away!