The Worst Day of My Life

Hey gigging musicians. Today I wanted to tell you about my worst ever day as a musician. And this was a day that really like made me want to quit music and hide and code my room and cry and actually did cry a little bit. It's really embarrassing for me, but I just need to get it out there and share with you because, you know, as gigging musicians, this kind of stuff happens. It's real. I'm real, it happened to me. And I just think it's important to share. So back, back, rewind a couple years, this was before I had been doing a lot of what I'm doing now with book live pro and everything. And I had just started my string quartet. It had been going pretty nicely for a year, I had figured out how do I get more bookings? How do I get clients, you know, I'd set up the whole booking optimized page, the whole gigging funnel, and was driving lots of traffic to it, and was starting to see a lot of bookings from it, which was amazing. And I was super excited to play lots of music. At the time, I was managing everything with spreadsheets and notes on my phone. And the spreadsheets, it was a decent enough system for me, you know, I had a master spreadsheet with all of my gigs on it in chronological order with the name of the client, the contact information, the venue, the date, the time, then I would have who is playing the gig, and their status, if they've confirmed and all that. And so, each time I got a new gig, I would add them to the spreadsheet. And then I would begin the planning process of reaching out to musicians with texting them, saying, hey, Paul, are you available to play first violin on this gig? September? So this one gig that really like, made everything really bad for me, was in the summer of 2017 ish. 2000. Yeah, I guess that sounds about right. In 2017. It was June is when I booked it, and it was for September. And it was a wedding. And I booked it using one of my contracts. I'd emailed them a PDF, got them to sign it, they did a PayPal payment for me. I added it to the spreadsheet. And then I was excited because you know, we were gigging a lot. So fast forward a couple months to September. And it was a really beautiful day was starting to turn fall. And my wife and I, at the time, we were just still dating. We went to an apple orchard. And I think it was called Apple holler farms or something like that. And we decided we were going to go apple picking on this beautiful September Saturday. And yeah, so we're out in the field, we've got those big sticks that you use to pull apples down and, and put them in a bushel. And so you can like pick your own apples, it was so much fun. We were having a great time. Obviously, we It was a great date, cuz she turned into my wife later. But all of a sudden, when I was picking an apple, I got a phone call on my phone. And when I saw the number that it was a wedding planner. I was like, Oh shit. And yes, I do curse on this podcast from time to time. Because, you know, when you get a call from a wedding planner on a Saturday, you know, something went terribly wrong. So I answer it. And she says, Jared, where are you? And I had to clarify like, what's going on? She said, you were booked for this wedding. And it's an hour and a half away from where you're currently picking apples. She didn't say that. But this is these are the thoughts going on in my mind. And I screwed up. Somehow. My spreadsheet failed me. I'm not sure exactly what happened. I might have gotten the date wrong. Or, you know, maybe the spreadsheet didn't save the way I thought it did. And I missed the gig. I didn't even plan the musicians for it. We had a signed contract and everything. But I my spreadsheet failed on me and I it's I accept full responsibility for this. So I'm on the phone with her and I say I am so incredibly sorry. I will race home back to get there but honestly, I'm an hour and a half away at an apple orchard. There's not much I can do right now. I feel terrible. I've let you down. I've let the bride and groom down. I've let their guests down and their family down. I let the venue down. I feel awful. And I really did feel awful. So I called around to all the musicians who were nearby. Nobody was available. I got ahold of the DJ that was at the event and I asked, please, can you help me out here and play music for their wedding ceremony? And I will handle like, you know, I'll take all the backlash for it. Because this is a serious thing missing a gig sucks. I felt so crappy. The DJ said yes, like, I got you. The DJ and I were great friends. Now I really appreciate what what he did for me that and then what he continues to do for me, but I just couldn't believe it. Like, I thought I was really organized with my spreadsheet system. I was making a living playing music and this, not only did it mess up somebody's wedding, which that's something to already feel horrible about. It also, potentially could destroy my reputation with this wedding planner, which it did, it could destroy my reputation with the venue, and anybody else in the music scene there. Because you just simply can't ruin somebody once in a lifetime day. And so immediately, I was like, I can't, I can't be at this apple orchard anymore. It's people are having fun around me. And I'm feeling it's the worst day of my life. So we leave we pay for our apples. And then like on the car ride home, I'm like crying. So eventually, like, you know, after the wedding, I called everybody involved. I called the wedding planner, I called the bride and groom. I called the venue, I apologize to every single person, I paid for the weddings DJ, because I just felt so bad. I was like, I want to pay for a big part of your wedding, I obviously refunded them the money that they paid for my string quartet because like, we didn't provide a service, but I wanted to do something special, which is why I offered to pay for their DJ. And then I offered the wedding planner, like at your next event, I will give you a free String Quartet to prove to you that we show up like this has never happened to me, this never will happen to me again. And I just wanted to make amends for that. So, after I calmed down and was able to get out of my funk, and apologize to everybody that I needed to that is when I decided that it truly never was going to happen again. So I had two choices. One is I could give up playing music. And honestly, that's not an option for me, I've got music in my blood in my bones. And I was not going to give up music simply because I made a clerical error. It was a big error. It was like the worst, worst day of my life. But I wasn't going to give up music. So then the second option I had, which was to create some sort of system for myself that prevented this from ever happening again. And that was when I started. You know, I'm a software developer by hobby. That was when I realized I could automate, not just like the signing of contracts and things, not just like the original scheduling of musicians, I could automate a system that tells me when I have gigs coming up, and have I actually scheduled any musicians for this gig. And if I haven't, it's going to yell at me via phone via email. And then in my string quartet, we use something called Slack, which is like Discord. It's like a messaging app. So I could automate having it yell at me over slack saying, hey, you've got a gig in two months that you haven't actually started scheduling musicians for get on it right now. And then it'll actually start to schedule for me. And so I went on this journey. To do that I started coding. I spent many nights, very late nights coding into the wee hours of the night, just making this automation system happening, and starting to put my gigs into it. And sure enough, like, it starts to remind me like, hey, you've got gigs coming up. You haven't scheduled for scheduled musicians for Do you want to start doing that? And I'm like, heck yes. If I had this, for that wedding in September at the apple orchard, I would have had musicians scheduled and I wouldn't have even had to think about it. We wouldn't have been waiting till after the fact to find out that I made a huge screw up. It would have reminded me before the screw up could have even possibly happened. So I started using that and instantly like we it took a lot of work off of my plate. It also made me less stressed out because I knew that the details were getting getting taken care of. I saw visually in this app which is now that was the precursor For booklife Pro, I saw in this app, all of the gigs that we have coming up, and how many get how many musicians have been scheduled, if none have been scheduled for that gig, and it's coming up, there's like a giant red exclamation point that says, hey, you got to get on this. And so like, I feel like it has taken on this, this amazing role as my like, administrative assistant as the the digital manager for my string quartet. So that like, the crap like missing a gig just isn't even possible to happen anymore. So fast forward a couple years, you know, I've made men's now with that wedding planner, I have made amends and played many gigs at that venue before, and that DJ is one of my best friends now, because he saved the day, I can't, couldn't have done it without him. And my string quartet is back better than ever, you know, we never really stopped playing after that. But I felt like it could have ruined us forever. And now I'm just so confident knowing that it's literally impossible for me to screw up a gig as badly as I did that day, because I've got this automated booklife Pro system doing that for me. So that's why I'm like really on a mission now, to help musicians, not leave things up to chance, not leave things up to memory, to spreadsheet apps, to just human error, I want to remove human error from the such from the equation. So all that musicians have to do is do what they love doing, which is the music part. And for me, that's what this app has done. I've started to help other people like pendra, who runs Viola strings, she is using this now so that she doesn't have to worry about human error. That's how she's able to have string quartets in different cities like Cincinnati, Nashville, Cleveland. I've helped, like cover bands, like the shirts and skins in Minneapolis, who are now relying on the system 100%. And it's really been incredible to watch these musicians who maybe you know, maybe they've screwed up gigs like I have, or maybe they haven't, you know, I'm not perfect. Maybe some of them are. But regardless, now that they're using a system in place that prevents it, they don't have to be perfect. They, they don't have to have all the pressure on their shoulders. Because it's an emotional burden. Like that was the worst day of my life. And I worried, you know, before I had that system in place, I was worrying every weekend, is something going to go wrong. And so just seeing that now, musicians don't have to worry anymore. That has been so incredibly rewarding. And I love doing what I do. And I just think, you know, if everybody used this platform, the we would have more gigs going on, we would have more live music, musicians would be able to make a living off of music, which that's what I'm so passionate about doing is they don't teach us in music school, how to make a living off of your music. And so I just think that this is a great way to do that. So that's why I'm so passionate about it. Anyway, that was a long rant about the worst day of my life. And I hope that that hasn't happened to any of you. I hope it never does happen to any of you. And if I can help you do that, then I would love to so leave a comment make sure you like and subscribe to this podcast. And if you're interested in taking the plunge just seeing what it's like sign up for the free masterclass www.hp book live pro comm slash masterclass. I will show you how to implement something like this in your life so that you never have to worry about missing a gig. And it also does a ton of other cool stuff too. But you got to check it out at the masterclass. So, thanks for listening my rant we'll see you next episode.