The Gigging Musician Podcast

I’m Giving Up…

June 02, 2023 Jared Judge
The Gigging Musician Podcast
I’m Giving Up…
Show Notes Transcript

In this episode, Jared dives into a dramatic update regarding his involvement with the National Association for Catering Events (NACE) chapter and the valuable lesson he learned from it. As he shares his journey, he highlights the importance of assessing the activities and commitments that may be draining your time and energy. Jared candidly discusses his decision to resign from his leadership position, realizing that it was taking more than it was giving. He encourages listeners to prioritize their well-being and focus on projects that truly matter, offering permission to let go of endeavors that no longer serve them. With personal anecdotes and insights, Jared reminds gigging pros to avoid burnout and embrace self-care.

Hey, what's up gigging pros, it's Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. And I have a juicy, dramatic update for you all, regarding nice. And I guess don't get your hopes up too much. This is more about my own involvement in a case rather than any drama that actually happened within the chapter. But a while ago, you guys, remember I talked about the value of joining networking organizations within the events industry, because as musicians, we are members of the events industry. And that is our market, our target market where we get our, our money from where we get our gigs from the high paying gigs come from there. And that's why I joined this networking organization called nice National Association for Catering Events. And they have chapters in cities across the country. And I, that was actually the first thing I did when I moved to Denver back in September 2 thing was go on a venue tour. But I joined this marketing organization, or not marketing, networking organization. And then I love it so much that I actually applied and was that audition, but I applied to be in a leadership role for them as their director of marketing and communications. And they had an election in November, and I won the position. So I became the director of marketing and communication. But over the months, I've been trying to, you know, get everything up to speed with it. And I've also been trying to launch my electric violin act in Denver, which is going great. We're getting lots of gigs, public performances, too. But ultimately, I started to feel a little a little stretched thin, a little burnt out a little tired and exhausted of all the time to do and to the point where it was very difficult to manage everything. I felt like my work performance was suffering in a variety of, of ways. Like you know, I'm also the founder of book live the software for gigging musicians to basically run their act. for them. It's like having an assistant for your band. But I've been trying to manage all that and coach my students on marketing their own acts. And it's just been so much I feel like I haven't been doing my best work at anything I've just kind of been struggling to hang on for dear life, which wasn't really fair to me, or fair to the musicians that I work with. Or even fair to my electric violinist, because I could be doing so much more, if I had the time. And hey, I'm gonna pause this, we got a garbage truck right behind me. All right, his gun. So like, you kind of still hear it in the background. So anyway, I made the difficult decision recently, to resign from my position as director of marketing communications for our nice chapter, which was very difficult for me to make, because I really enjoyed the position, I enjoyed the people. And I also enjoyed, you know, some of the opportunities it afforded, like, we got to go on a little trip to Reno, which was awesome. But ultimately, I just couldn't, couldn't keep doing it. And doing the good and good enough job, that I held myself to a standard of like, that's the thing is, there was no no external pressure that caused me to resign. It's just I felt like I couldn't do a good enough job myself to to make it worthwhile. And so, yeah, I let people know, I resigned. And luckily, everybody who has responded to the resignation letter was very supportive. They understood. And you have many of them are business owners themselves. So they get it, they're like, You got to he got to run your own business. And when he got time, you can come come give back again. So it was a relief, like I was, I felt relieved. And I just want to encourage you that if you're feeling burnt out or stretched, thin or exhausted from all of the things that you're doing, because I bet you know, if you're a musician, like we like to do a lot of different things, then I would encourage you to look inward. And think about are there things that you're doing that aren't bringing you the result that you want? Or are there things that are just taking more from you than they're giving to you? And I'm sure there are a lot like there are projects that you're doing with with your music even like, Are there bands that you're playing in that are getting any gigs are the gigs that you are getting? Are they not the quality that you want? Are you doing any, any hobbies that aren't actually giving you energy back? Are you part of networking organizations that are not actually proving beneficial? Or are you in leadership positions that are again, taking more than they're giving and If so, it's okay to give some of those up. In fact, it's, it's wise to give some of those up. Because ultimately, they're taking away a valuable resource, which is your time and your energy to put towards things that truly matter and make a difference to you. And, you know, nice did matter to me, and I'm still a part of it as a membership, who like a regular member, but at the end of the day, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't ready for the opportunity. So you it's okay, if you're not ready for certain opportunities. And by giving up some of them, then you're you're making the time and energy for the opportunities that really do matter for you. Which is okay, like, nobody's gonna shame me for it. And if they are, well, that's on them. You know, not, you can't please everybody, and you really shouldn't try to please everybody. And at the end of the day, you have to do what serves you the best. And this will prevent burnout. This will prevent you giving up on projects that are super important to you right now. And, yeah, one of my mentors, y'all know that I follow the marketing coach, Russell Brunson. He's the co founder of Click Funnels. And he says that one of the first things he does when he gets a new member of his coaching program, is they look at all of the different businesses that they run. Because, you know, business owners are kind of like musicians, they like to do a lot of different things at the same time, they chase shiny objects. And he says, the first thing they do when he gets a new coaching student is to look at all of them. And then they decide which of the babies to kill. And of course, I'm talking metaphorical babies, but like, it can be hard to your projects can feel like babies. But unfortunately, when it comes to business, and end, it is just too business. There's not enough room for all of them to thrive at the same time, especially when you're just getting started out, you kind of have to pick, you have to pick your your army and go all in on that army. Even though there are multiple armies that you could fight with. So kill your babies, not literally, of course. And it's okay, I give you permission, just because I have also received permission. And it'll all work out in the end. And I really am grateful for the nice, like directorship position, I learned a lot. Like I learned so many new things. One of the couple of my responsibilities, like just so you understand why this was a huge time endeavor. And as I was there, email marketer, which email marketing is huge, like if you're not using it for for your act, you are missing out. But I basically had to write emails for the entire membership and the non members to get them to come to our events, which we hosted events about once a month. But we were I was sending emails several times a week for this, which meant I had to write an email several times a week. Plus, we were doing additional activities like there's an awards program coming up that I was also tasked with getting the awards signups like I had to get people to sign up for awards. So I was building funnels, which marketing funnels and how to get people to sign up, built funnels for it, created Facebook ads for it ran the Facebook ads generated leads successfully, plus did additional email marketing for these awards. On top of that, I was also the social media manager. So I was posting to their Instagram at Facebook regularly, about once a week or no, not once a week, about once a day. So that meant like, I would have to comb through years worth of archive photos of past events, find fun ones that people would relate to write captions, and then schedule those into a social media scheduler says basically like the Chief Marketing Officer for this, this networking group, and I was not getting paid for it, which, you know, I volunteered, I knew that signing up. But it was basically another full time job. And the mental burden of that was definitely getting to me. So now that I don't have those responsibilities. I feel very relieved. Alright, so that's all I got for you guys. Don't burn yourself out. It's okay to take a step back from things because you matter and I care about you. And you deserve the same grace that you give others. So thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "You are just one gig away!".