Christmas in July!

What's up gigging pros! It's Jared Judge. Welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. All right, so I've got a follow up to the networking event I played just about a month ago. So on May 17, I played a networking event called venue hub, then you have as a company, local, based here in Denver, that basically is created a marketplace for people to find venues for their private event gigs, or not gigs, but private events like birthday parties, corporate events, weddings, etc. So it's a directory, local directory, where, you know, the Hilton can submit a link. And I think they have to pay I'm not entirely sure. And then this, this company, venue, hub will display that link on their website, they will drive traffic to it so that, you know, corporate event planners will come to the website, when they're looking for a venue, find the Hilton and make that connection. So venue hub, they put on these monthly networking events, where you know, anybody who either owns a venue or works at a private event can come in and showcase themselves and just introduce people rub elbows, and all that good stuff that I really preach that we musicians should be doing more of, because this is where the gigs are booked. And so I did that, May 17. And I actually played I sponsored that gig. Because as you knew, I really believe in sponsoring these kinds of opportunities, because those lead to more opportunities. So I sponsored the event with my live music, and then played, which was awesome. Okay, I'm one second here. All right, we're back in just a dog barking. So I played the event, and network with people during the brunch, our handed up business cards, all that jazz, got my logo on their website, got my email address, sent out and scraped good opportunity, at the opportunity itself, chatted with a bunch of people who owned these venues and event planning companies. And very interesting story. One of them owns a venue called antique life, which is a venue in downtown Denver that is centered on a giant ant farm. The owner for claimed he's the owner of the world's largest ant farm. He did not get it verified by Guinness Book of World Records. But it's a cool venue that the guy is very interesting guy. He was wearing kind of a psychedelic themed shirt. And then he was asking me, if I knew how to play space music might have already told the story, I'm not sure. So he asked me if I knew how to play space music, which I didn't exactly know what that meant. I assumed it was like, you know, ambient electronic with long tones and stuff that you would hear in the waiting line for Spaceship Earth the ride at Disney. And I was like, sure I could figure that out. Why not? And then asked him like, why are you asking? And he said that he is planning on hosting a mushroom party. Here in Colorado. They just decriminalized magic mushroom. It's still illegal to buy and sell, I think. But nobody's enforcing if you possess or take. And he said he wanted to host one of these events where everybody takes mushrooms. And he wanted me to give them something to do, which I thought was hilarious. They said I'm in. But that is not the opportunity that I'm talking about where the venue with venue hubs networking event has paid off. So what I am talking about today is June 20. So yesterday, June 19, I got an email from Kyle, who works at a hotel in downtown Denver. And he actually submitted the contact form on my website, sorry about these dogs. I'm gonna pause while we walk around them. I swear these dogs, they just enjoyed barking at people. So Kyle submitted the contact form on my website, which is actually this a lot of people have been submitting the contact form on my website, in addition to filling out the forms and my funnels. So I've kind of changed the strategy of what I teach for websites, which is to include a contact page on your website because people will fill it out. So that's just kind of a side tidbit. That's why I gotta listen to the whole episode for these gold nuggets. Anyway, so Kyle submitted the contact form on my website, saying that his hotel is hosting a Christmas in July event. And I heard you at the venue hub networking event. And we'd love to have you play Are you available? And so I was like awesome this this venue have networking strategy, proving itself over and over that networking and the gig vault strata. He works again and again. So for this one, I was in a rush, my parents are in town they're visiting from Phoenix. That's where my mountain is. And so they are visiting, I don't have a lot of time to do everything that I need to do. I'm still trying to fit in, you know, majority of the work day, while still hanging out with my my parents. As I was like, I need to take a little shortcut. I am going to feed his message to chat GPT and have aI write me a response. I told they I am available for this date, right in response to Kyle, letting him know my rate, and asking if he would like to move forward. So put his message in, put in my prompt, hit Enter. Then chat, GBT crafted this beautiful response, saying yes, I'm available, I have a whole library of holiday tunes for your Christmas in July event. Let me know if you're interested. I gave him my rate and everything. So I sent that within like an hour or two of him submitting my contact form, which was faster than how to not use to chat GPT. And then within 510 minutes of me sending that email, he replied, like yes, that's exactly what I'm looking for. Thank you for replying. So quickly, please send over a contract, I'd like to secure the date. And boom, another gig in the books. So, so many lessons there. First off, I keep saying this again and again. But if you're not networking with non musicians, then you really must hate gigs, because I have gotten the majority of my gigs here in Denver, through networking, like I just moved here, not even a year ago. And because I knew the power of networking, and I am an introvert, yet I had did a lot of it, I'm still doing a lot of it. It's planting these gig seeds. And I'm seeing them blossom very quickly. And what's interesting is back in Wisconsin, I was like the wedding guy played tons of weddings. But here in Colorado, I've actually played zero weddings. So far, I've booked a couple of them, kind of starting in September's when those will start to materialize. But the gigs that I have been playing have really been corporate events and nonprofit events. So this strategy works for those kinds of events to second lesson was, you know, put a contact form on your website, make it easy for people that contact you. And the funnel is great. However, I feel like with these, these corporate event planners like they just want quick and easy. So make it quick and easy for them to reach out to you by including a contact form on your web page. Don't force them to read a long form sales letter, which is your your funnel, give them an alternate way out, which is the contact form. And then third lesson is if you use these AI tools in a very specific way, and you have a very specific request for them, you feed them enough context, which is why I put his whole message in there. They can shortcut you time. Yeah, wouldn't have taken like hours to write a response to his request. But it shaved off, you know, maybe a good 1020 minutes crafting the email response and checking it and everything. Which that adds up to you know, I mentioned this book before, atomic habits. I forget who the author is. Eric Ries notes, Lean Startup, any way you could find it atomic habits. And the author said that the small it's not like the giant habits that will overhaul your life. It's all these small miniature time saving, or efficiency building habits that add up 1% Habits add up to compound in interest, like it's basically compounding interest with how much time you're saving. So those are kind of the three lessons there hope that inspires you to if you haven't gone out and reached out to one person in the events industry. This is your your homework assignment, you have to do it right now. I know I did an episode a couple of weeks ago where I assigned it to you. But for any of our new listeners, or those of you who did not take action, I will warn you not taking action means that nothing will change in your life. So if you're satisfied with exactly where you are, then you don't have to change. But if there's any part of you that's unsatisfied that hears about all these high paying gigs and wants in on them are wants to try something new and different. He fed up with the old beer sticky floor bar scene. You want to get into your little higher end events.You got to take action, it takes one step. One first step you don't have to dive headfirst in, although if you do, you have faster success, but you don't have to if you're, you know nervous along the way, I get that. So your first step is to grab the gig Vault, which is your list of people to reach out to plus gets You're a free 30 day trial of Fulltime Music Academy with the exact email templates to send out to them training on how the conversations go. And why you don't really need to be an extrovert to do this because I am not an extrovert. But I figured out how to use the power of music to make the conversation easier. So go and grab your free copy of the gig vault at FulltimeMusicAcademy.com/venues And I want you to really remember, "Your music will not market itself!".