The Denver Project 1st Update

What's up gigging pros. It's Jared and I've got something special for you today. Many of you know that I just recently moved to Denver, which means I am starting my gigging journey, essentially from scratch. I keep my groups going in Milwaukee, but I'm launching my Denver acts, one at a time from scratch, no connections, nothing. So I wanted to share with you a recording from a recent live session I did in the private Facebook group for Fulltime Music Academy, which if you don't know, Fulltime Music Academy is my coaching program where I coach other musicians on how to break into the private events industry, and make a full time living with their music. So I wanted to share with you a live session I just did giving my full time musicians an update on the Denver project. So let's listen in "What's up full time musicians. It's Jared here. I wanted to go live and share with you my current progress on getting my first gig in Denver, and what am I doing to launch in Denver? Because well, one, I want to really document my journey and see what am I doing, and making sure that it matches the full time music method, which is the most efficient way to get these high paying gigs. And two, because I thought it'd be great to show you that this stuff really does work. And you can start a new act pretty much from scratch in a new city with nothing, no connections, and still be successful. And I wanted to show you what am I doing along the way, that way? It's not just like at the finish line. And oh, yeah, it was so easy, because it's not easy. It's a lot of work, but it's worth it. So here is what I have done. So far. It's been about four days since I moved here. I spent the first couple of days getting packed, unpacked and settled and everything. And I'll be honest, I'm still not unpacked, they're still boxes and everything. But that's okay, I've been doing some work and made the decision to prioritize my solo act, because I knew that starting a group would take more effort to find more musicians. So I'm focusing on myself first. And then eventually I will add on the group. And so I chose to focus on Extreme Strings electric violin. Now I have booked that X in Milwaukee before but I chose here's the first action task that I did to make Extreme Strings work in Denver was okay, we're still live. Here we are. So I removed all references to Milwaukee from the Extreme Strings website. And I left it ambiguous as to where we're located bookings in Milwaukee. So all right, I apologize for all the network interruptions. I don't think anyone's watching live anyway. And I'll go back and edit this video for posterity. Alright, so the website is now location ambiguous, which means it could work in any city, theoretically, but I want to focus on Denver. So the next thing I did was I have been running Google ads for Dream City Strings. And so what I did was I cloned the campaign that I was running for Dream City Strings, which was getting leads I was getting leads for about 20 or $30 per lead, which was pretty good. And I cloned it, and named the new campaign, Extreme Strings Denver. And then I chose the location in Denver in Google ads. And then I tweaked the copy of the ads instead of to say for string quartet, I changed it to say for, you know, solo violin and electric violin. So that started to get some traffic to the website. I already had my Calendly set up so that people could book a call and my email auto responder, so they get instant quotes when they submit the form. And already with running Google ads to the Extreme Strings website, we got a sales call, which I am having my first sales call tonight. And I will let you know how that sales call goes. Whether or not we booked my first wedding in the Denver area. So that wedding would be for June of next year. So people do plan ahead for their private events. So that's exciting that I got a lead and not just any lead but a hot lead that is willing to get on a sales call with me. Of course, as you know, I call my sales calls, free music consultations, because I will help them understand what it's like to hire music and how to have the event of their dreams. And then the next thing that I've done is I started to reach out to venues. Yesterday I had my virtual assistant, which if you're not familiar with what virtual assistants are, check out module eight. So I had my virtual assistant who's a real human. Take my partnership tracking spreadsheet, which is the same tread spreadsheet that you get when you join Fulltime Music Academy and he put in our address and sorted the venue's by location so that I'm going after the nearest venues first And I had him reach out to five of them. I had them use the email template that I give you all. And instead of just leaving the top paragraph, which says something about, you know, we're Wisconsin's Top String Quartet, we've been in business for X years, I switched it to say, I'm a solo electric violinist. And I just moved from Milwaukee, I tell them, like I just moved, I'm new here to the Denver area. But back in Wisconsin, I ran Wisconsin's Top Wedding Music Group, so I let them know that everything else is the same. He picked three times that I was available on my calendar sent them those three options, which is always better than leaving a schedule open ended, give them options. And then he sent out the first five out of those five to have responded so far. So that's 40% response rate, which is awesome. One of them, unfortunately, is exiting the private events business. So they just apologized for that and invited me to come into their Cafe anytime. So unfortunately, that opportunity was lost. The other one that responded is a venue called the Butterfly Pavilion here in Denver. And they responded saying yes, we'd love to have you out for a tour. So they picked the one of the three options that we provided. And then they said yes, and then my virtual assistant sent them a calendar invitation to confirm that tour time and they literally just accepted it while I was doing this live video. So that's one tour down, which at the tour, I'm going to be following the same process, bring my violin and then asked to be on their preferred vendor list. Anticipate that closing because that is a sale, I'm selling them. And we close deals here in Fulltime Music Academy. So that's awesome. My first partner is on its way and my first sale and my first booking is on its way. And then the third thing that I did was I reached out to NACE, National Association of Catering and Event planners, because that has been a consistent source of leads for me back in Milwaukee. What I did was I went on NACE Denver's website and to find that I just opened up Google searched Denver NACE, that's N-A-C-E and found their website briefly went through all the pages on their website, just to get a sense of are they similar to the one in Milwaukee? Which the answer was yes. And then I saw they have an event coming up next Tuesday. And so that was the time where I was like, I need to reach out to them and come to that meeting. So I went on their board of directors page and saw the names of the President and everyone else on their board. And then I decided to go to their directory page and found the name of the president along with their phone number. So it's all publicly available information like this is so easy to do. It's just you have to know the strategy. So I did that. I called her up and left a message because she didn't answer right away. I said, Hey, it's Jared. I am a new. A new musician in the Denver area just moved from Milwaukee. I was I told her about my experience in Milwaukee's chapter of NACE telling her that I'm interested in getting involved in Denver's NACE. And I left it at that asked her to call me back, she called me back this morning. And we had a really good conversation, chatted about upcoming events, and how to really start to join up. And then I asked her if she was interested in having me play for their cocktail hour. That's coming up next week. She said, unfortunately, the venue wouldn't lend itself to that it's more like a pinball arcade bar, which is really cool. I'm super excited to go to that. But they are having a fundraiser in October, where she said that, you know, if you're interested, we'd love to have you. So I said yes, count me in. And so I will be launching and showcasing my services in October. So super cool. And then from that, she also offered several connections. To me in the Denver area, she offered to make some introductions. So there were three event planners and one like booking agent that she said, Oh, I you have to get in touch with these people. And she just sent me that email over about 10 minutes ago. So I'm going to follow up with that. So I've been taking lots of action. And it hasn't been just me doing the heavy lifting, I do have to thank my virtual assistant Reinald for helping out with that. But taking action gets results. So you see I'm about to close my first deal today get my first booking. And then I'm also about to close my first partnership next week. I'm about to play for all of these qualified event venues and planners at the NACE meeting in October plus in next Tuesday's when they're happy hours and I'm going to meet all of them, introduce myself and use that to ask for tours at their venues. So I'm taking massive action, because I know I believe in this method. I believe that it will work for me. And I'm already starting to see the signs of success, you know, success leaves clues. So I'm super excited. And I hope that this shows you that I'm here in the trenches, trenches doing the work with you. And if you do the work, it works. So, thanks for following along on my journey. I'm going to do more of these. Drop me a comment if you saw this and any thoughts and feedback or if you're just motivated and inspired. Even if you're watching the replay. I want to know that you're watching this content and that it's valuable for you. But other than that, Remember you are just one gig away!".