Have Patience

Hey, what's up gigging pros! It's Jared Judge. Welcome to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. I am on my way back from a wedding gig that was held on a Thursday afternoon at sunrise Amphitheater in Boulder, Colorado. Gorgeous venue. I wouldn't really call it a venue. I mean, it is a venue, but there's no buildings in sight. It is up in the mountains. So once you get to Boulder, there is on the outskirts of it right in the flat iron mountains. There's a road. What is that road, it doesn't really matter. But you take it and you go, I think it's Baseline Road. There it is. You take it, you go up into the mountains, past a park called Chautauqua Park, which is the venue actually just took a tour of yesterday, you take Baseline Road, up 10 more minutes into the mountains into a very winding forest, the area, then you arrive at the top. And then there's this gorgeous stone amphitheater that serves as a wedding menu. It's amazing. You can also do other things too. But one of the rules is you're not allowed to play amplified music. Don't tell anybody but this couple did not follow that rule. So anyway, yeah, you get up there, you overlook the whole valley, you can see boulder you could see, you know, Colorado University at Boulder, which was just gorgeous. And I think that's actually where this couple met. And anyone. That's the whole point of this. I'm not telling you how amazing that gig was. But I did get a lot of compliments patting myself on the back here. You know, we all deserve it from time to time. I reason why I am, you know, doing this podcast today is to reinforce with you guys. The value of patience. You know, this whole gig vault strategy that I share? It's a great strategy. It works. I've seen it over and over again. It works for me, it works for my students. And in fact, one of my students, Paul, he is a guitarist in Washington State. And he joined Fulltime Music Academy a little while ago. And just like many of you, and many of the musicians that I share the strategy with, they're a little bit skeptical of it. They're like, Can this really work? Or how do I do this? What if I get in my head about it? Do I really visit these people on their home turf and play my instrument for them? That's kind of weird. But he did it anyway. And he it took him a while to get started. Right? Like it took him first he wanted to make his website look good, which I totally understand. And then it took him some time to start sending emails to connect with the people on the GIG law list. But he did it anyway. And the issue for him was some of those venues were pretty far away, especially the ones that were replying right away. They were the ones that were over an hour away, which that's frustrating. I totally get it. But he didn't say no. He said, I'm gonna try anyway and see what happens. And so he did it. He took a couple of venue tours. And then just yesterday, he emails me saying, I've done it. I was like, What did you do? He's like, I booked my first gig from a referral from one of those venues I toured in as like, dude, congratulations. So it took him some time, but it did it. And you know, it's gonna take different amounts of time for each person. There's so many different factors that go into this. For some people, you know, it could be as soon as within a week, I've seen that happen. I've seen people implement this strategy. And when they're on this venue tour, they're like, Oh, my God, we actually have a gig this coming weekend that we could use a guitarist for. But for others, it could take weeks. For others, it could take months. And in rare occasions that could take years depending on how fast you move. But speed is the name of the game here. I am currently doing all of these venue tours here in Denver. I will say I don't think I've gotten too many gigs immediately from them. Yet from the venue tour specifically. But the venue tours are only part of the strategy, by the way. Right? I talk about sponsoring networking events and the events, industry sponsoring open houses, and all these other topics like you know, doing blog posts and generating traffic via SEO. But the venue doors I am planting my gig seeds that I know will bear gigantic massive Juicy Fruit down the long run. I'm hungry if you can't tell I want some fruit. So I know that this is going to work because it's worked for me. It's worked for people like Paul, and it's going to work for people like you too. If you take the leap of faith and do it it is a leap of faith because it's uncertainty. You've never done this before. But if you take the leap of faith, knowing that what's the worst gonna happen, you know, and you spend some time you go and meet somebody that you Hey, if you don't follow up with them, you might never have to see them ever again, if you embarrass yourself, but you're not going to embarrass yourself. And then it is going to take a little bit of time. But once it happens is going to happen just like for Paul. And then when you do get those gigs, the key is to knock them out of the park. Right? This is, this is the arena that I think most musicians are comfortable in is playing a darn good gig. And usually, I would have said the other D word, but I don't want to have that explicit reading on my podcast. So do a darn good job. Knock it out of the park, play your heart out. But remember, this isn't like these private event gigs. These are not just gigs for you to show off what you do. Like, yes, you should show off your musicianship, when you should also show off your sensitivity to what's going on like this is somebody else's event you are in service of that event, and sensitivity to the venue meaning don't bash your cases and your cards against the walls and do a great job, be a good human, treat the staff nicely knock it out of the park and every single aspect. And if you do that, that is how you secure your long term partnerships with these people. So Have patience. The seeds that you plant today will bloom. I don't know if they will bloom tomorrow, next month, next year. But plant enough seeds and water them. And then eventually, you know, crops will start to bloom. That's kind of the idea is like it is a numbers game and I say this over and over again. The more seeds you plant, the more likely something will bloom and you'll have some actual plants here. So I'm going to hop off, but thanks for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. By the way, if you want to get that Gig Vault, get your first contact to reach out to go to OpenTheGigVault.com Get it for free. And then I'll see you on the inside. But yeah, thanks for listening to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. Remember, "Your music will not market itself!" Bye everybody.