An Unexpected Partnership

Hey, what's up gigging pros! It's Jared Judge, welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. All right, I've been harping on the power of partnerships for probably years at this point. And I did a podcast a couple episodes back about, you know why you should do it. Now, if you haven't partnered with a venue or an event planner, you must hate gigs. So listen to that one. It's super inspirational. I love it. I've created it. But I wanted to share with you a cool partnership story that happened today. In fact, I just got out of my car from it happening, and maybe spark some conversation and inspiration for you, too. So I am sponsoring an event. It's a gala, it's the MPI gala meeting planners International, which is a networking group for corporate event planners talks about the sponsorship sponsorship strategy before. So this should not be new, if it is listened back to a past episode called sponsoring nonprofits. And so I'm sponsoring this event, it's happening in about two weeks, in a couple of days. And as part of this sponsorship, so I'll be performing during the gala today was the walkthrough of the venue, where they went through, like they invited us to physically come to the venue, all of the different entertainers and caterer and all the different parts of this event. And we walked through it went through the timeline from start to finish, and discussed any considerations or concerns or logistics that happened with each of those parts. Now, you might be thinking, it's totally unnecessary. And you're right, it is unnecessary, as but I didn't go to like re basically, it was like a meeting that could have just been in the email. I didn't go for the content of the email. I went for the networking opportunities that could happen from this. So I was thinking a bit more long term, little less about, you know, being pissed off that this could have been an email. And I'm glad that I did. And I would do it again. Because from this meeting, conversations about partnerships did happen. In fact, there is a DJ, who will be providing the end of night entertainment. And this, like we got there, everyone was standing in a circle. And everyone got to do their introductions. So DJ introduce themselves, I had already kind of like stalked them on Facebook, and their website got a sense of what they do. So I knew who they were, but it's glad to hear their introduction again. Then I got to introduce myself, and told them what I do as an electric violinist. And they're like, oh, wow, that's really cool. So clearly, they hadn't really stalked me, and that's okay. Which is why Had this been an email, they wouldn't have known what I do. So that's why one of the reasons why I'm glad I did this, then we did the walkthrough, I got to see exactly where I'm setting up, talk with their sound engineer about, you know, plugging into their system, running my IBM's, in your monitors through their systems so that I could hear when I'm playing. And all these other details, that the end of the walkthrough, got a chance to chat with the DJ. And without me even prompting him, he started to say, oh, yeah, I gotta grab one of your cards, like we're looking to build a list of preferred vendors, we just haven't gotten started yet. And as you all know, the main goal of all these, like, partnerships is to get on preferred vendor lists. Because once you're on that preferred vendor list, then they will start recommending you to their clients. And then you can book gigs through this preferred vendor list, which is amazing, right? It's like free gigs, without really doing any of the work. I mean, you'd have to do some of the work on the front end. But the people that get referred to you are already pre sold on you. This guy is gonna say, Yeah, I worked with Jared from extreme strings electric violinist. He did an amazing job at the MPI Gala. I got to hear him play, you definitely need to book him. And so this conversation was started at this venue walkthrough, where he brought up the idea of preferred membership list. And yes, DJs are perfect partners for live musicians too. Just because like you might think they take gigs from us, doesn't mean we can't collaborate. So that we scheduled a follow up meeting. We're going to chat and you know, I, I love working with DJs especially as a solo instrumentalist because I can literally jam along to the tracks that they play, which turns one gig for just the DJ into two gigs, one gig for them one gig for me. So, I don't know. I hope that story is helpful to hear, just to see the power of partnerships. And the power of not being too good to do things that you might think unnecessary, right? Like, I try to be humble. I'm not the most humble person, but I try. And as far as my music is concerned, I don't think I'm the next, Lindsey Stirling or Tracy Silverman or anything like that, you know, I'm just a decent musician. Pretty good went to music school, but I'm not like, amazing. But by humbling myself, and by thinking, every single opportunity that my music, it's not about me, it's not about my music. It is about my music being in service of others. That is what causes me to go the extra mile to do the extra work to make this a great experience for the event planner of this gala, for all of my clients, for all of my partners. And I think I mentioned this a couple episodes ago, but if I didn't get to hear it again, there's a quote from Zig Ziglar that you can have anything you want in your life, if you just help enough other people get what they want in their lives. And so, you know, while I'm doing this a lot for for my music, like it all comes back to you. So be generous with your time, don't have an ego, and it will all return to you tenfold. And that is my belief. And I'm sticking to it. The proof has been in the pudding. I've got it actually is a very busy week for me in Colorado. Think it's the first week for me where I've got three gigs in one week. I've got a corporate event on Friday. No, I've got a public gig on Friday. That's when I talk to you about stage banter the other episode, I've got a wedding expo on Sunday, that was the free one that I talked about a few episodes ago. And then on Tuesday, I have a corporate gig that I'm playing in the lobby of a hotel. So that's three gigs in the span of like four or five days, which is pretty nuts, considering I haven't even been here in Colorado for a year yet. So I'm staying the course you should to partner with your first venue or event planner or even DJ. And let me help you out with that going grab your free copy of the gig vault. Gig vault is a list of these types of people in your area. It's actually across the whole country. But we've got these people in every area of the US. It's totally free. It comes with a free 30 day trial of Fulltime Music Academy, which has all of the templates for you to send to these people. So you're not figuring out what to type in for the very first time. And then it goes into some of the other details that upgrade you from, you know a musician who's not playing these gigs into one that gets paid very well. And is the go to musician for these high end gigs. So to get your free copy of the gig vault, go to FulltimeMusicAcademy.com/venues And I'll see you on the inside. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember "You are just one gig away!".