Hey, musicians! Jared Judge here. And I want to share with you some findings that I've been getting. Since I took James Gross's advice from a couple podcasts ago, about just calling the crap out of event planners, wedding planners, and introducing myself. I already mentioned that, you know, one wedding planner called had never heard of my group before, despite us being the top string quartet in Milwaukee. But I want to share a another finding from today. And I'm going to leave names out to protect the innocent. But this was so interesting, and it revealed a lot about the way gigs work the way getting gigs works. And so I call this one planner last week, probably about Wednesday or so, left a message they didn't answer. I've gotten real good at leaving messages that reveal who I am and get them to call me back. But this one, obviously, you know, they're busy, called again, Thursday called again, Friday, no answer. And then finally, today is Monday, I got a call back. And we had a conversation. It was awesome. And so in the course of this conversation, I asked some of my typical questions like, you know, tell me about your events, and how many of your clients typically want some sort of live music. And this wedding planner told me that they work there in Milwaukee, by the way, but this wedding planner, they almost exclusively work with this one band based in Chicago. And so Chicago is an hour and 15 minutes south of Milwaukee, depending on, you know, what part of town you're driving from. And so if they want live music for their reception, this one band in Chicago, their production company, they probably do a couple bands at any given moment, you know, it's a pretty common model, once you get towards the top of the gigging game. And so they work almost exclusively with this one band, which means, you know, they're in Milwaukee, Milwaukee musicians, aren't getting an opportunity to even have access to these events, which is kind of a sad thing. Because, you know, I believe that every city has amazing talent. You know, Chicago, if you're listening to this, and you're in Chicago, I believe you guys are very talented. But there are local musicians in Milwaukee who are just as talented, and very unique. And, you know, their performances have the Milwaukee flavour. So those couples who are getting married here in Milwaukee, and don't even get an opportunity to have Milwaukee talent, I feel are being a little bit deprived of just that opportunity. So that's just one observation. But I dug a little bit deeper. And I found out that the reason why this, this wedding planner works almost exclusively with this one band, was because they develop that relationship very well, which obviously relationship had to start at some point, which I'm glad that I made that phone call, so I could start my own relationship with them. But to this production company just makes it so easy for the wedding planner, so that they actually mentioned, you know, that's one of the key reasons why we work with them, is that it's just so easy to work with them every single time. They understand wedding planning from a wedding planners perspective, they know, you know, the wedding planner can just give this band a few little pieces of direction, but the band takes over the rest, and fills in the gaps and just does an extremely professional and easy job every single time. And so I told this wedding planner, you know, like my group's a string quartet. So, you know, we're, what about for ceremonies, because you mentioned a cover band. And the wedding planner said, this production company, they make it so easy that they actually contract out string players as part of the entire booking. So if you're a bride and groom, and you're looking for musicians, from this wedding planner, you're gonna get the cover band based out of Chicago. And then the cover band is then going to go find two violins, a viola and a cello, and throw them together. For the ceremony, even though they're not really an established group. They're just kind of like an add on package to the cover band. Because it's easy. And so that's just so fascinating. T o me, that really emphasizes the value that as musicians, when we start, who are we appealing to, you know, in everything that we put out there in our, our websites, the text that we put on the website, in our social media posts, who are we appealing to, and most often when musicians start, they're appealing to themselves. They're appealing to other musicians in a similar situation to them. And they don't really think about it from the perspective of where the money is actually coming from. And so this cover band in Chicago has definitely figured it out. Who are they appealing to? It's the wedding planner. And how are they appealing to it by painting a picture of what a beautiful wedding will be enhanced by their music. And also by making the process of working with them. So incredibly easy, that it's harder to bring in local musicians than it is to ship in musicians from over an hour and 15 minutes south of here. And so, yeah, take that for grain of salt. But like, this is happening everywhere. It's the musicians who I hate to say it, but it's the musicians who overcome the musician tendencies to appeal to themselves, and those like them, that really make a living doing this, at least in the private events world. Of course, you know, this is just from the private events, perspective, public events, there's a whole other key component to that, which is audience development. And that's not really the focus of the gigging musicians podcast. But you know, I've been dabbling a little bit, and he can listen to some of my earlier experience experiments on that in the earlier podcast episodes. But Excuse me, but takeaway, the lesson from this, and evaluate, how do you conduct yourself online and your social media? And even in your conversations with people who are trying to book you for a private event? Are you appealing to their needs? Are you making it easy? And I guess the third component to that, which is what I'm trying to do right now, thanks to James, is be persistent. You know, think back to the previous podcast episode. Marty Mercer, shout out to you again. He they who make the most phone calls wins. So be persistent. Get out of your comfort zone, stop appealing to just people like you. And let me know how your how your experiments go. I'd love to hear it. If you liked this podcast, you got some value out of it. Please like, share, subscribe to it. Join our Gigging Musician Facebook group and leave a post there just say hey, I tried out some of the things that you said in the podcast. And either they worked for me which I would love to hear that but I'd also love to hear if it didn't work for you. Because you know, I'm always learning to that, to me is one of the key components of being a gigging musician is always be learning. So cool. That's the end of this podcast episode. I hope to see you on the next gigging musician, podcast.