Planting Gig Seeds and Harvesting Crops

What's up gigging pros. It's Jared, welcome to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. I am so sorry that I have not been consistent about recording these podcasts. It's just been crazy here in Denver. Crazy with a lot of things, some of which include gigs. If you guys haven't known, I let my Fulltime Music Academy students know that I booked my first gig in Denver. Pretty much within a week or two of recording the First Denver Project episode, that gig happens to be a wedding in September of 2023. And to be specific about it, I booked it on GigSalad, which gigs out of the directories for booking these private events have been quite fruitful. But also, I mentioned that I joined NACE National Association of Catering and Events. And based on me joining that I've already partnered with a bunch of high end private event venues, and some high end corporate event planners and even a DJ company added me to their roster as a violinist who can play with DJs. So I've been very busy taking a lot of venue tours. And somehow, I'm not sure how this happened. Yes, I am. I just like to bite off more than I can chew. Somehow I got roped in to joining the board of the Denver National Association of Catering I think I mentioned a while ago, I had joined I was the director and Events. of fundraising of Milwaukee's National Association of Catering and Events, which was a super amazing opportunity to connect with all of these private event venues and planners and industry partners. And as a result, I'd embedded myself into the fabric of Milwaukee's private events seen as such my group Dream City Strings, and Dream City Jazz, got a lot of private events. That was part of the strategy. There was a lot more to it. But that was an important part for me to be seen, as, you know, an important figure in that community. And it worked. So I decided to continue that strategy. When I moved to Denver, I joined NACE. And then, because their board was looking for people to join, I got involved very quickly as a committee member for other people's, you know, positions. And then elections happened. It's November 1 Right now, and that is my cat, so many distractions. So I got involved in it is now November, and they needed some candidates for the board. So I am a candidate for their board of directors, which the election takes place a week from the time of this recording. So I'll do another one after that. But I do believe that getting involved in the fabric of your events, community, not just your music community is one of the fastest ways to booking high end private event gigs. There is a strategy, I'm not sure. I wasn't planning on talking about it during this podcast episode. But we're here, why not? Let's do it. And it's the concept of treating your music, like a field of crops, you know, specifically your music career is something that can be nurtured and watered. And when you move to a new city, you know, that's, you're basically moving to a new farm, the new the city is a farm. And I know this sounds kind of weird. This is not the way I normally do these podcast episodes, but bear with me. So the new city is a new farm that you have just recently acquired. And your goal is to get crops, let's say your crop is corn, you want to grow some corn in your your field. So you move to the city, the first thing you cannot do is harvest your crops. Because you haven't done any of the work to get crops in the first place. That's like me going to Denver and saying, hey, I want to book you know, I want to get all of the private event gigs right away, which that is my goal. And I've already started to do that because I've booked some gigs. But through the networking strategy that I like, you can't harvest your crops before you plant them and water them. So instead, I am actually specifically targeting the private, the corporate events market and the nonprofit events market. And with those markets, I am planning on planting my seeds now. So what that means I know on a previous podcast episode back in Milwaukee, I talked about how a nonprofit tried to stiff me. In my mind. My group was at a point there in Milwaukee where I could harvest my crops, like we had done the work we had established ourselves we'd played hundreds of gigs for 1000s of dollars each gig gotten tons of reviews, partnered with tons of venues and event planners. And so we were ready to harvest crops, which meant that I didn't necessarily have to take For every gig that I that came my way, and by the way, I'm not saying that you have to take every gig that comes your way. But here in a new city in Denver, where I've never played a nonprofit event or corporate event, except if you consider that nice gig that I did a couple of weeks ago as a nonprofit gig. I haven't played these gigs before, people don't know me. So I need to plant seeds before I can harvest my crops. And so what I'm doing right now is I'm strategically identifying nonprofit events that have some sort of cocktail hour or fundraising component, where they need entertainment, that I feel that I'm qualified to provide. And so what I'm doing is I'm reaching out to them, offering to sponsor their nonprofit event, in exchange for being there and being able to showcase my services, getting a logo in their program, and on the PowerPoint presentation they give to all their donors, so that I build myself and my reputation up in Denver. So I'm planting my seeds. And I'm not expecting payment. However, I'm open to being offered payment. But I don't really need it, I'm not expecting it at this point, because I simply just want to play gigs in Denver, get the name out there about my act. So I'm going to be doing this for quite some time. Now it's November, I guess I should set a deadline or a, you know, a goal. How many of these events do I want to do before I switch into harvesting crops mode. So let's, let's do it right now, in this podcast, how exciting. This is a live build out of my music career. So let's say I'm going to volunteer for 10 nonprofit events. And once I hit 10, then I'm switching to crop harvesting mode, and starting to actually charge for them. Now, you might think this is totally crazy. And it kind of is, but it's a strategy that I know will work. Because in my Fulltime Music Academy, one of my students recently did this to where they volunteered to play at a fundraising event, it was a Casino Night. And it was a singer she sang with backing tracks, she volunteered to sing at this event with no no expectation of compensation. And she went to this Casino Night, saying for the fundraiser connected with some audience members, and then the organizer of the event came over to her and said, Hey, you sound amazing. Why don't you have a tip jar out. So she put out a tip jar. And between the tip she collected in that jar, and then the organizer actually gave her some money afterwards, she made$600 from the event which she was expecting zero. But more importantly was she collected contact information from the people who attended this event and heard her, which when you're playing for nonprofit fundraising events, these are attended by high end donors. These are attended by corporations that have you know, events coming up. These are also attended by people who are planning their events, like one of the people that Kant came up to her and talked to her was somebody whose daughter was getting married. So they connected them with the daughter, so that she can now sing for their wedding too. So that's how you can treat like even though you're playing for free, you get paid. You just don't necessarily get paid immediately. So I'm probably gonna get a lot of flack for this. I'm totally okay with that. Because here on the gigging musician, podcast, and in my Fulltime Music Academy, we treat our music careers as businesses, where we make strategic moves, that might not always look, that might not always make sense from the outside perspective, especially if you're a musician who's been chasing bargains. And you know, if you play a gig and you don't get paid, you feel stiffed, but if you strategically choose to volunteer to play, because you know that it will pay off multiple, you know, tenfold in the future or more, then I feel like you know, this is a different strategy than just getting stiffed at a gig. So if you enjoyed this at all, I wanted to make a very special announcement that will show you exactly how I am going about the strategy and how to go about strategies where you don't have to volunteer your time where you can get paid what you're worth, but high paying gigs in a fraction of the time that you might think it takes, then I want to invite you to my very new course, Private Events Bootcamp, we just launched it. So Private Events Bootcamp is a course that teaches you exactly how to play private events. It'll show you how to book corporate events. It'll show you to book nonprofit events, weddings, and private parties. All four of those are what I consider private events and there's a different strategy to get each of them and it'll break down on those strategies for you in step by step processes, I show you my screen where I show, you know, here's what email I write, here's how I put my website together and how you could put yours together too. So if you're interested in trying out Private Events Bootcamp, we're running a special, where you can get it for very cheap as part of the Your First Gig Offer that we've put together. So go to YourFirstGig.com. And if that doesn't work, go to FulltimeMusicAcademy.com/your-first-gig. And you will learn more about Private Events Bootcamp and you get a couple of extra bonuses, and then that you can join me and my Fulltime Music Academy students as we build our music careers with high paying gigs, we call them BookLive gigs, because we use the software BookLive, which also comes with Your First Gig, by the way. So go ahead and check that out. And if you have any feedback for this podcast episode, you know, maybe maybe I pissed you off by saying let's play some gigs for free. I want to hear it. You know, if you're mad at me, let me know. But if you also thought it was cool, let me know if you're going to try it. Let me know. So shoot me an email. My email is Jared, J-A-R-E-D,@BookLive.com. Or come check us out we've got our socials on our Facebook page, and our website FulltimeMusicAcademy.com So again, go to FulltimeMusicAcademy.com/your-first-gig And I would love to see you inside Private Events Bootcamp. Thanks again for listening to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "You are just one gig away!".