Hey, what's up gigging pros. It's Jared and welcome back to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. I am on my way back from the first night of a two night gig at December Delights, which is kind of a Christmas Village, here in Denver, that I was invited to play electric violin for. In fact, I wasn't just invited. I made this gig happen, because that's what we do here on The Gigging Musician Podcast is we make gigs happen, we don't just wait for them to happen. So, to recap, if you've not listened to my episode on nonprofit gigs, you know, this was a nonprofit gig, it was run by Four Mile Historic Park, which is a nonprofit in Denver. Super cool Park, I'll do kind of a gig recap on this episode, and share with you how I got this gig and how I've already leveraged this gig. Cuz it's super interesting story. And I'm exhausted, it was so much fun. So to recap the strategy of how I got this gig. So my strategy for nonprofits is first I plant gig seeds. And then I harvest gig crops. And so this was a gig seed that I planted by reaching out to different nonprofits in the Denver area because I am a new musician to the Denver area. And I want to quickly get into the corporate and nonprofit event world, which I'm well on my way to doing. And so I reached out to a bunch of them. I did a little bit of research found some upcoming nonprofit events. And this specific event was one of those things, I found this one on Eventbrite, so Eventbrite is a great source to find nonprofit events that are coming up. And because I don't have a following around here, and nobody knows who I am, because I literally just moved three months ago, I wanted to plant good seeds. And the way I did that was by volunteering my services, I don't recommend volunteering for every gig, because that's not a viable way to make money from your music. But it is a viable way of shortcutting. Your, your, your career, you know, it's a viable way of shortcutting, getting people to know that you exist, and getting people to hear you play, which is a key component of, you know, building a name for yourself in a new city. Plus, there are so many other opportunities when you get to play from one of these events of just maximizing it. So the way one of the ways that I maximize this gig, let me tell you about the gig first. And I'll go into that. So I reached out and said, Hey, I'm a electric violinist here a couple of videos, and actually sent them the video I took from that nonprofit gig. I played a couple episodes ago, and said, if you're interested, I'd love to volunteer my services. And they said, Yes, we would love to have you both weekends of our event, two days each weekend. And I chatted with my wife. And we were like, That's just too much. We want some family time. You know, Christmas is coming up. So let's do one weekend. And sorry, I got back to them saying, hey, one weekend, let's do the first weekend, December 7, and eighth. I think no ninth 10th. Dates are hard. So I said yeah, I could do December 9 10. Does that work for you? And they said, Yes, we would love to have you and we'll promote you on our socials and our website. And we're doing press releases. So we'll put your name on our press releases to already got some exposure from that not just regular exposure, but like private event exposure, which I love. Alright, so we had a meeting to confirm the dates, which I talked about a couple episodes ago, confirm the setup. And then today rolls around. I load in about an hour before the gig starts. And it's an amazing location for a gig, I'm going to post a bunch of these to my social media. So if you're not following me, follow me on Instagram at Jared Judge or follow me on my Extreme Strings TikTok. It's just Extreme Strings. And I'll post some photos and videos that I got tonight. So they put me in the Four Mile House, which I had no idea that this was a thing. But apparently it is the oldest standing house in Denver, possibly even Colorado. I'm not sure about that last fact. And so it was built in the 1850s. And it is literally four miles away from Denver. Really old fashioned house old fashioned decorations like it's all authentic from the time period. And they actually put me behind one of those like red velvet ropes. So I was actually a part of the display was a museum so I was part of that display, playing Christmas music from 4:30 to

30. And so yeah, it gets to the gig I load in setup get introduced to the volunteers that are around me. And then I next thing I do to maximize my gig is I brought my DSLR camera. If you don't have a DSLR use your phone, set it up on a tripod or even a music stand and record everything you know listen back to my episode called record everything because you just never know what kind of footage you're gonna get. And each footage, like each movie you take of yourself is just going to be better and better. And you'll get some amazing things to put on your website and your social media. So I set up my camera and hit record, and then just started playing an hour of Christmas music times four. So I repeated my set four times, it's actually three because they closed this part of the museum that I was in a half hour early, so I didn't play my full fourth set. So yeah, I played, the volunteers there were like, just in awe, because you know, being right next to a live musician, is really cool for non musicians. So that's another thing, by the way, is like, don't take what you do for granted, like you do amazing work by being a live musician. And people appreciate it more than you actually realize. So don't discredit, what you do is, you know, even if you think that you're not great, people still love it, and are just fascinated by it. So I had like a little fan club of these, you know, older ladies who were just kind of geeking out saying, oh, you know, do you remind me of my grandpa? Well, not my grandpa, but you know, he had a violin and he would play, which was really sweet. I appreciate it. My little fan club. And I brought business cards, I brought like a huge stack of them. And I set them out on the tables around me. And then what happened was my my little fan club of volunteers started handing out my business cards for me without me asking, which was kind of cool. And so all these people that would come in, they brought their families and some of them, you know, we're definitely the right age for getting married, which I love playing weddings. And these ladies were just handing my business cards to pretty much every person that walked in the door. So that was super cool. And then at the end of the night, the person who organized the event, who also happens to be a major corporate event planners, she runs like a big corporate event planning company, she came and, like, listened in for a couple of songs and just thanked me for everything that I did, said it sounded awesome. And she's excited for tomorrow, because I'm playing again tomorrow. So this episode is gonna be pretty short, just because I wanted to do a gig recap. But to recap, the ways that I leveraged this gig one was just by being present and like reaching out to these people, they now know that I exist, especially that corporate event plan, that's going to be a key contact for me. Second way was by bringing my camera and recording myself playing, actually got I recorded two sets, because I don't know which take is going to sound better. And then the third way is by bringing my big stack of business cards, and handing them out. And also having my fan club hand those out too. By the way, the fourth way that I leverage this was by last night, my wife who is the lead web designer for Fulltime Music Academy, she and I spent a couple hours together and launched the first draft of the Extreme Strings website. So if you go to ExtremeStrings.com, you'll see a very fresh website. The paint is still not dry, you know, metaphorically speaking. And yeah, we're going to be adding more pages to it right now. We just launched a homepage and a Videos page, along with a way to contact me. So I'll talk more about the structure of that website because that's a whole another concept. But that was the fourth way that we leveraged. This particular gig was by having a website ready for those people who visit the website on the business card that we handed out. So, so much fun playing Christmas tunes. I love Christmas. I love Christmas music. And I know some of you don't and that's totally okay, I do. And there's also a lot of money to be made playing Christmas music so I'm more than happy to do it. Well, thanks for tuning in for a gig recap special episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. I'm super tired, I'm gonna go home and pass out. But I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of The Gigging Musician Podcast. And remember, You are just one gig away!".