The Two Ways To Make It As A Musician

Hey, what's up gigging pros! It's Jared Judge welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. This is probably one of the busiest gigging weeks of my life. All of them are corporate events, which is awesome. I love corporate events, they are so easy to do. They always have an amazing sound engineer. And I don't know, it's just so easy to play them, and they pay very well. So let's just kind of recap. I think the last time I chatted with you all, I had played the golf gig. And that was a great gig already talked about that. That was a golf course gig. If you haven't listened to the last episode. Check it out. We'll talk all about that there. Thursday, which was yesterday, today is Friday, June 22, I think is the date. Thursday, was the first of a series of two corporate events for the same conference. I provided the walk on music for before their conference, like before the first day of the conference, and then I'm providing walk on music before the last day of their conference. So both of them, actually, Thursday was like a 12:30pm gig which is mid afternoon, very nice. And then Saturday is an

30am gig. So another early day for me, which is all good. But today, Friday was the Meeting Planners International gala for the Rocky Mountain chapter. I've chatted about Meeting Planners International in the past, it is a networking organization. That is similar to NACE National Association for catering and events. And they have chapters of these in major cities and some smaller cities too. And if you can get involved in these, I highly suggest it because he the majority of people in this networking group are meeting planners. And what I mean by meeting planners, their corporate meeting planners, which translates to people who book musicians for high paying corporate event gigs. So that's why you want to be around these people. And today was their gala for our chapter. So cool. I got asked to play this gig because I had sponsored with my live music, a conference back in March or February, the Meeting Industry Council of Colorado, and I got to play on stage there. And then while I was packing up, the current president of Meeting Planners International Rocky Mountain chapter came up to me, said, Hey, I loved what you did there. I'm doing a gala. Like we're hosting a gala in June. And would you like to play? And I said, Sure. And she's like, Okay, what's your rate? And I said, Actually, let me sponsor And I'm going to chat quickly about what sponsoring an event means for musicians, because some of my students and Fulltime Music Academy thought that meant that I am like, absolutely it. loaded that I can sponsor events by dropping 1000s of dollars on these events as a monetary sponsor. And that's simply not the case, I sponsor with my live music, and that's it. Like I just give my service in exchange for signage, like getting my logo on their signs getting mentioned from the stage and getting put on their website and in the email blasts. So that's what sponsoring an event means. It does not mean you have to drop any money on this, although I did have to pay$18 to park in the the art museum parking garage. So I did have to spend $18. But it is so incredibly worth it to do these things because of the resulting gigs that you get from them. This conference that I played on Thursday and and playing the second part on Saturday, that came from me sponsoring an event. So that already turned into money. I did want to take this episode in a slightly different direction, which I hope doesn't come across as a rant or putting anybody down. But there there was a collaborator for one of these events that I had to play with. And this person is a great person, a great musician, a singer. And I was just having trouble communicating with the singer to schedule a rehearsal. And then on the day of the rehearsal, again, it was difficult to communicate because they were being put up in a hotel. And so we had planned to on a time to rehearse. And then when that times got close I texted just to check in and they did not respond back to me so then I tried calling they didn't answer my phone. And like nothing against this person. They think this is a wonderful person. But if you are a musician who is hired to play like A high stakes corporate event. And I honestly feel this attitude should apply to all levels of music. Unless it's like a jam session or some very low stakes event. But everything should be planned out in advance. You know, except maybe solos and improvisation sections, but like schedule should be planned out in advance. setlist should be planned out and communicated in advance. And then additionally, we were playing with backing tracks. And when we got to the event to do a soundcheck, the backing tracks were not in the hands of the sound engineer. So there was confusion about who was running the backing tracks. And I actually offered to run them. And then this engineer is like, no, let me run them. It's like, okay, just trying to solve problems there. So that was like another little messy piece of the equation. And, you know, as I keep saying nothing against this person, but there is, I feel like there are two ways to make it as a musician. And obviously make it has so many definitions. One of them is the one that like most musicians think of first, which is to become a star, right to be so good at what you do, to develop a fan base of following. And, you know, just basically become a star that people will worship you not in the like, religious way, but they'll buy all of your albums, your merch, you'll go on tour, you'll sell out arenas, and become the next greatest thing. And that's the one that most musicians think of, especially when you get started. And you realize how difficult that is. But it comes with a certain mindset of like, I'm going to focus 100% on the art. And again, there's nothing wrong with that, except when it affects others. Like when you're working with a collaborator, when you're working with sound engineers, right, you have to humble yourself, and work on the other skills of music, which I actually believe is the second way to make it. That's the one that we focus a lot on this podcast on, which is to really get good at the business side of music, which, in my humble opinion, marketing is the most important skill within that larger category of business skills. Because your music won't market itself, right? That's the new tagline of this podcast, and marketing. Like what is marketing, I don't want to go too deep in it. But marketing is everything that you do. When you interact with somebody, you're marketing, when you're communicating over email, working with a sound engineer, you're marketing yourself, you're telling the sound engineer, how you treat your music career, how you treat sound engineers, are you going to be a good collaborator or not. And I believe like this second skill, the soft skills of music business are, honestly, I feel like they're just very important. They're so incredibly important. And they are a shortcut to making it in the music industry. Now, if you're able to combine the first and second way of making it as a musician, by both being excellent, by being great as a musician, being a great artist, but also being lethal with the business side of music, being a great marketer of music, being a fantastic collaborator, and putting those two skills together, then you are deadly. I feel like that is such a winning combination. And it kind of reflects the like the world at large. If you're really good at a skill, it does not matter how good you are. If you fail at the business guy beside if you fail at the soft skills up the career, right, you'll just be really good at something but nobody knows that you exist. And I don't know I use this analogy. In one of our coaching sessions. It's like farting in the wind. Nobody, nobody hears it. Nobody noticed that this. So I don't know if you combine that like the artistry with the business skills like that is so incredibly powerful. And you'll be so respected, so revered. And I don't know. Like I feel like I am really good at the second way of making it as a musician. I'm really good at the business side and the marketing side. And if you like, you know, as an artist, I'd give myself a six or seven out of 10. Right, I'm not up there. But I'm also not bad. I've got good enough rhythm. I have an act like I know how to play my instrument a way that gives people an emotional response, which is great. And recently, I've developed some stage presence, and I'm very happy with it. But because I've got such strong base isn't a skill isn't it, I'm able to get into these, these situations, these corporate event gigs, and have repeat clients like, I had one of the organizer of the event come up to me and say, like, you have just been so fabulous to work with, I'm going to leave you great reviews on all the platforms. And you know, we want to have you back. And I get that all the time. And I played when I played today, I got some applause, which was really nice. And I think that's because of the artistry, like, I combined the artistry with the business skills to get the position where I was, and get the repeat business in the future. So that's kind of my my rant or tangent, and this collaboratives working with great musician, she is awesome. And I'm so excited to work with her again in the future. But I think the the business skills could definitely be developed a little bit and I'm excited to, to work with her on that. And, you know, it's, it's something we all can continuously work on. But there has to be conscious effort. And in one of in gigging secrets, the book that I wrote, one of the secrets is, after you play a gig is to analyze How did everything go, like rate yourself, give yourself some feedback, what went well? Where could I improve. And for some people, it'll, it'll a lot be in the artist category. But I would venture to say, a lot of people, if they really thought about it, a lot of the feedback would be in the business category. So think about that going forward. And hope that's helpful. I hope this didn't didn't come across as negative or putting anyone down, because that was certainly not my intent. But I think it's just something that we all have to continuously think about and work on. So, by the way, you guys know it's coming. If you want access to these high paying gigs, kind of like this MPI gala that I sponsored. It wasn't high paying for me now, but it will lead to many high paying gigs. If you want access to the people who booked these gigs. Then you're gonna want to open up the gig vault. The gig vault is a treasure trove of over 24,665 high end venue and event planner contacts across the United States that all you have to do is open up the gig vault, send them some of the email templates that you get, because when you get the gig vault, you also get a free 30 day trial of Fulltime Music Academy, send them an email, and then the gigs are practically yours. So get your free copy of the gig vault along with your free 30 day trial of Fulltime Music Academy at FulltimeMusicAcademy.com/venues And remember guys, "Your music won't market itself!" Bye!