Hey musicians, it's Jared Judge. And today I was inspired by James Gross who we interviewed on last week's podcasts. I was particularly inspired by his story of how he gets a lot of his gigs. And you know, if you listen to his interview, which if you haven't, totally go ahead and do that, it was incredible. You heard one of his primary strategies for getting his well paying private event gigs was through reaching out to event planners, both wedding planners and corporate events, planners. And then there was also a, in our gigging musicians Facebook group, I had recently asked the question, what is your most successful channel for getting gigs, and a musician named Marty Mercer replied, saying he who makes the most phone calls wins. And that was just such an incredible response. And it validated what James said, because, you know, James does a lot of phone calls, he calls these event planners and, you know, talks to them, builds a relationship, and eventually gets tons of gigs from these and they're these are not, you know,$100 gigs. These are 3000 8000 gigs, that, you know, they're just amazing gigs to play. And I thought it was just so essential that those, those details don't go missed. Because I know many musicians when when you're just starting out, you have no idea how to get gigs. Even the musicians who have been in this game for a long time, they rely on other people to hand them their gigs. And so it becomes unpredictable, remains just a hobby. And the ones who really know the strategy, the secret agents of the gigging world, they're the ones that are sucking up all the gigs. And it's, you know, if that bothers you that they're doing that, don't be mad at them. If you can't beat them, join up, learn from them, and be inspired by them to take the action and apply it to your own life. So I was inspired by these two responses recently to up my game, because I'm in the Milwaukee area, I do have the top wedding string quartet, we play about 150 gigs every single year. But I think we can do more. And we're coming out of a pandemic, things are really opening up quickly. And I just wanted to put forth some greater effort into the marketing of my own group. Because I've been helping so many musicians with the marketing of their group two, I've got several private students who I teach them how to set up all of their sales, funnels and gigging funnels, get them the gigs, but I totally need to eat my own dog food and do more of it myself. And so what I did, and I'm in the process of doing is, is the five same five steps that I teach some of my own students to do. The first step is to build the list of all of the event planners that you that hold the keys to your ideal gigs. So for me, I'm going on different sites and building the list of who are the event planners in my city that includes names, emails, phone numbers. And then step two is I'm religiously, setting aside time on my calendar to go down those lists, and email them and then call them. He who makes the most calls, phone calls wins. And so I am calling these people I'm introducing myself, asking them, Hey, have you ever heard of my group? And I am shocked to hear how many of them say no, they still haven't heard of me, you know, we played tons of weddings. But in a city like Milwaukee, there's a lot more weddings out there than we we can even imagine. And so just by simply introducing them and asking them, hey, check out my website. And, you know, if you follow any of my other trainings, you know that the website is designed to sell gigs, not just designed to look good and feel good as musicians, but it's designed to sell gigs. And so I send these wedding planners over there, ask them to check us out. And then I make the ask, I always ask for something, you know, let's meet up for coffee. I'd love to get to know you more. Or if the conversation goes really well, you know, ask them for a gig. Are there any weddings you have coming up that you think would really benefit from my type of music? and make the Ask always, always, always make the Ask during a call. Otherwise, you're not leading them down the through your funnel? So after I make the ask, you know, everything's great. The last step of this process is to follow up. Because so many musicians, they get so close to the gig. And maybe you make the ask, and maybe it wasn't the right time, something in either the planter circumstances or just life meant that it wasn't the right time for you to get that gig. But the money is made in the follow up. So yeah, that's what these James and Marty inspired me to just do and my students have inspired me to do and just the amount of conversations I've had where I've gotten introduced my group for the very first time to somebody in my city, who I would have expected would have no About Me, but you know, you can't be everywhere all at once. And this is how you can be. So I'm super excited. The results that I'm seeing are pretty cool and incredible. And I know that the musicians who make the most phone calls win in this game. And so I hope that this inspires you to take some action and go out and get the gigs yourself. Don't be passive, be active, go out and make some make some magic happen for yourself and the musicians you work with. Because ultimately, that's what it's all about is making more music. So if you've enjoyed this episode of The gigging musicians podcast, make sure to subscribe to it like it, share it. And if you're interested in diving deep with me on any of these subjects, I am taking on some more private students. Only a couple that I don't have that many spots left for them. But reach out to me You can email me Jared@BookLive.com, and I'd be happy to chat and see if we're a good fit to work one on one together. Hope to hear from you soon. See on the next episode.