What's up gigging musicians. It's Jared and I am so pumped today, because I just launched the Gigging Secrets book. So I've been hinting at this a little while for a couple episodes now. But I have been undergoing a process of writing a book. And I've written this book specifically to help musicians like you, who maybe have never gotten business training in your life, which is just like me to understand, what does it actually take to effectively set up an established gigging act that books and performs enough high paying gigs that you can actually survive off of? Now? Why did I undergo this? I underwent this because, one, you know what, there was nobody teaching me how to do this, in any of the private lessons that I took. I went through two specific music degrees, I got an undergrad degree in music, education, and a master's degree in music performance, orchestra conducting. And neither of those situations actually taught me how to do this, it was always a mystery. And I'd been playing these gigs for other people. And I didn't know the process to make this happen for myself. And so that's a little bit selfishly as I wanted to figure it out. And I spent years figuring it out. But then two, is that I realized that I wasn't the only one who had this problem. You know, when I talked to a lot of my friends, and even the musicians who play for my group, I talked to them about, you know, starting their own group. And a lot of them are just way too intimidated by all the work that goes into it. And just honestly, they don't know how to get started. And as a result, you know, they don't play as many gigs as they want, and the gigs that they do play. Some of them are for exposure, or I heard a case recently that really rubbed me the wrong way was that there's a musician who I, I know personally who has had bandmates play for his original act for quite some time. And he doesn't pay them for any of the times that they play, which music is a valuable service, and you need to be paying your musicians but that's beside the point. So this Gigging Secrets book is my attempt at giving back to the musical community. The lessons that I've learned by going on my own journey, starting my string quartet, that in a non COVID year does about 150 weddings every single year. But weddings pay really well, you do the math, that's enough for people to live off of. So you know, over the next several episodes, I'm going to be giving away some of the secrets inside the Gigging Secrets book. But the first, the first thing I want to share with you about it is that it is really a simple process. It's three steps. And the book covers all of these steps in detail how to accomplish them. But the first step is as a gigging musician, you need to be positioning yourself for high paying gigs. So what does that mean? That means when I started out, I wasn't positioning myself for high paying gigs, I was all over the board, I didn't know exactly what kind of gig I wanted, I was trying a lot of different things, playing for local community orchestras for exposure. And as a result, I was not making money, I was not making an income off of it. So by going through the process of positioning yourself for high paying gigs, that effectively lets you say no, to all of the crappy underpinning gigs that most musicians feel like they have to take and only take the high paying gigs. And the book goes into detail about what that means and what kind of things you need to create in order to make that happen. The second step is, I had to learn how to sell a gig. You know, none of my music career has ever taught me how to sell things. You know, I only learned music theory, music history, how to get good at my instrument, the repertoire for my instrument. And never once was I taught how do I speak to somebody about having live music at their event. And so I went through this journey of learning how to sell by reaching out to the business school at my grad degree, taking some courses, reading a lot of books, and then just a whole heck of a lot of trial and error. just figuring out the process, what do I need to say to somebody to convince them that they need to book me? And how do I convince them that I'm worth a high amount, a high dollar amount, because if you can do that, that's how you book gigs. And then the third step is really a very fun one, but also, one that most musicians don't spend the time doing is marketing yourself as a gigging act. You know, when when many musicians and myself included, we get started. You're like, I want to get as many fans and followers as possible, which is really great. And there's a lot of value to that. The problem is that specific audience aren't necessarily going to be the one ones paying your bills. So how do you find the ones that do pay your bills. And that's what marketing. Your digging act is all about finding the ones that are going to pay your bills getting in front of enough of them. And partnering, partnering with the right types of other organizations who literally can spoon feed you, your high paying gig opportunities. So that's step three, you know, once you position yourself for high paying gigs, and then you've learned how to sell those high paying gigs, and then you've learned how to market yourself to get in front of the right kind of people who have your gig opportunities. That's the gigging secrets. So if you want to know more about that, how specifically you can go and accomplish all three of those steps. You can get your advanced copy of the Gigging Secrets book at giggingsecrets.com. I can't wait for you to try it out. I'd love to get your feedback about it. It is such a new book that I'm planning on, you know, updating it as time goes on and giving everybody who buys those updates. And I would love to know how it works for you. So go ahead and get your copy. It's pretty cheap. It's like 10 bucks. You know, you use that. You book yourself your first $200 gig I mean, you've literally 20 times your investment in yourself just by getting this book and using the content inside of it. So go to giggingsecrets.com, get your copy of gigging secrets, the book, let me know what you think about it. And if you like this episode, and you're excited about it, I would love to hear from you. shoot me a message, Jared epoch lab comm or join our gigging musicians Facebook group, just search for Gigging Musicians will be the one that shows up and looking forward to hearing your thoughts about it. See you on the next Gigging Musician podcast. May all your performances be spectacular!