Episode 26
Follow Your Passions and Book Like a Pro with Jared Judge of BookLive
It’s true that the more we can learn from others in our community the better. Especially from those who are not only willing to share their stories but also help prevent others from making the same mistakes. This show has always been about having those conversations, about having people in our corner to set us up for success and prosperity. We are excited to share Jared Judge’s story and resulting solution, Booklive Pro
0:00:01.7 S1: Welcome to the show that explores the methods and strategies on loan the financial side of your music business with over 40 years combined experience. Here are your host, Chris Webb and Dave take.
0:00:16.0 S2: Welcome to sitwell. We talk about musicians and money from the mountains to the prairies, to the busy season, filled with the unorganized musicians. I'm your host, Chris web, joined by my co-host, sporting, his red white and believe attitude, Dave Taman. I believe in you, Chris Webb, thank you so much for having me back on. Each week, you just call me up again and say, Hey, what do you do in this week? And I say, Chris, absolutely nothing.
0:00:44.2 S1: Day would you like to be on a boat? Called Musica sits Christ.
0:00:49.4 S2: And then it just goes from there. And here, yeah, here I am, I quote today is from Warren Buffet, it takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it, if you think about it like that, you'll do things differently. It's true restaurant business too. We have a lot of great interview episodes lately on this musician's tip chart podcast, and today is no exception, it's true that the more we can learn from others in our community, the better, especially for those who are not only willing to share their stories, but also help prevent others from making the same mistakes, this show has always been about having those conversations, about having people in our corner to set us up for success and prosperity, we are excited to share Jerry judges story and resulting Solution Book live pro right after this. The number one accounting software for small businesses, QuickBooks can make multiple spreadsheets and mental math a thing in the past when it comes to managing your money. You can see it all, you can do it all in QuickBooks with invoicing and QuickBooks, get paid online twice as fast and paper and voicing, connect your bank and credit card accounts and quick book and get cash flow insights at a glance, deeper business insights for smarter decisions.
0:02:01.7 S2: View profit and loss or balance sheet reports and something with a click of a button and simplify all your bookkeeping, go to musicians tar dot com deals to grab your free trial today or 50% of our first three months. Welcome back, everybody. This week's non-profit for musicians is actually recommended to us by Jared judge, he wanted us to talk about imagine me dot org, bringing together Milwaukee, Wisconsin city leaders in the arts business in saviours. Imagine me is guided by a shared agenda that is rooted in the belief that arts and culture have the power to transform wacky, they believe that having their cities, artists in our organizations at leadership tables and regarded as key partners will create a thriving, inclusive... In vibrant city where their friends, neighbors have a healthy and vibrant place to live, work and create... Learn more at Imagine MK dot org. I gotta say that me, Milwaukee pot is my favorite airport to fly and out of, if I have to go back to the Midwest, because it's so small and it's so convenient, you get in and out of there so quick, nothing like... Oh, are 6x30 minutes just to watch your gate it all here.
0:03:16.0 S2: Have you ever booked to a flight Ether and then landed in Maki? Yes, did you ask someone to come in and pick you up... Yeah, we've ended up having to rent a car. Deity Brother Jim almost as on me, but he showed up with the Jimmy John saying which, make sure you rate subscribe to this podcast, leave us to comment and go to our website to sign up for a free weekly newsletter, in it, we will explore more of the week's topics even further and provide you with helpful resources for your music business, you can also check out all the new affiliate links that day has been adding up there with great discounts for all the relevant stuff to help you function well financially in the music business. Thanks, Chris, have been trying very hard to add more links, I recorded some new commercials. Did you like those? Very nice day, thank you. Did you notice that I couldn't even make the commercials about the products alone, I had to put my music behind it... And we still had to make it about me. Just... What's my problem? Well, the only thing that sells better than sex is your music, Dave, I don't even...
0:04:23.8 S2: Don't want to say that. You never know when you might meet a person who gives you that motivation needed that day to keep you going on your goals. We were lucky to find Jared, or at least to have Jared find us, so we could share in the efforts we are just to put forth every day to make our business succeed, and the struggles that we all often face, GERD has a very unique yet relatable story, and it's a great example of how you never know where doing the things you love might lead you, not only did He create a great business to help our music community, but he also demonstrates the power of following all of your passions to find a niche when life brings them all together. Let's dive right in with today's guest, Jorge, we are privileged here today to have Jared judge. Jared is a diverse career in music and technology, having two degrees in music, he has served as an elementary and high school band director and ran a non-profit Opera House as a self-proclaimed technique, he has built many websites and apps when he launched his wedding stream quartet, dream city strings, it immediately became the top giving stream quartet, Miami walk, Wisconsin administrative work piled high, he launched the book Life as a tool to automate much of the work and to help other musicians run profitable live music businesses.
0:05:52.4 S2: He now coaches hundreds of performing groups, I'm making a living off music... Welcome to the musicians tip jar jar, judge. Yeah.
0:06:00.9 S1: You can give yourself a round of applause right there if you have... Well, owes, thank you so much for having me. Well, it was nice to get connected. I believe, Chris, we connected through. Was it? To see you. So I actually found your podcast and I'd listened to some episodes and I was like, These guys know what's going on, I should reach out to them and chat music.
0:06:25.1 S2: That's awesome, that's awesome. And Milwaukee is close to both of our home ground, so we probably know a lot of the same spots too. What were some of your favorites? The genie is... He called The Genie, the black chin. Do you know the name? Again, the bad Utah's it, it's a place that... It's been a couple of years now, but I was just in Milwaukee a couple of months ago, and I saw that it was still there. So that's pretty awesome that that's lasted still going strong, the downtown Milwaukee area, not to get off topic, but the downtown Milwaukee area, I think has really come a long way, it's really stepping up its game, was it the Third Ward and all those cool little spots now.
0:07:07.6 S1: For sure, and the whole entertainment district where the NBA arena is, the monkey books are right now on a hot streak, which my musician friends tend not to understand what's going on in sports, but we love all of the business and the private events that are coming to our town. Because of it.
0:07:26.2 S2: Oh, I'm sure, I'm sure. We got you started in music in the first place.
0:07:30.7 S1: Yeah, so I loved music ever since I was a little kid, I had a grandfather, we called him Pop-Up, and he was my inspiration for everything, I adored him, my brother adored him, the whole family just looked up to him and... He loved music too. I remember some of his CDs that he would have, he would have everything from rock to jazz to opera, and I just got this amazing exposure to music, but the real point where I was like, This is something that I want to do, was probably when I was like five or six years old, and he took me to a concert where there was a solo violin player just playing amazing music, and I had no idea how to talk about it, all that I knew was... After this concert, I was jumping up and down. And as soon as we got home, I ran to the bathroom, grab two popsicle sticks, ran out, but one of the Pops ago sticks on my shoulder and use the other as a violin bow and said, I wanna do this. I wanna play violin. And how did that sound? Just about as well as you'd expect, it sounded better than when I actually started violin, 'cause I've been in elementary music teacher helping kids a little bit older than I was actually start on violin.
0:08:52.7 S1: And the sounds you make when you first start out, they're not good, but if you stick with it, then they become good...
0:09:00.2 S2: So in elementary school, is that when you first started playing
0:09:03.0 S1: Ilene? Fourth grade.
0:09:06.4 S2: And then what was your second instrument because we know now you play quite a few different increments.
0:09:13.0 S1: Yeah, so I had an interesting journey, I played violin all throughout elementary, middle and high school, and then in high school, I became obsessed with the Blue Man Group. I don't know, I just saw them on the Pentium commercials and all the drumming that they did, and I was like, That's so cool, I wanna become a drummer, and of course, my mom was like, Well, you're already a by line, you can't do both. And I was like, Well, I gotta prove her wrong. So I started to take percussion lessons, and I actually auditioned for the Blue Man group when I was in high school. Wow. They weren't accepting high schoolers at the time, but they said, you're drumming is good for somebody who leas been playing for a year, go get a college degree, take some acting classes, and then come back and audition later. I never did, by the way. But it was cool to have that encouragement, So drumming was my second instrument.
0:10:12.3 S2: I know those guys have a lot of pain town, but they never have looked very young to me, so I would say that you still got plenty of time if you wanna make that dream
0:10:19.6 S1: We'll see. They do wear bald caps, but I'm starting to not need one... No, I'm right there with you.
0:10:27.7 S2: Yeah, I'm surprised that they have the ball caps on, I really... Just have to shave their heads. I guess people wanna still have hair styles when they're not acting... Yeah, I guess that's true. When did you know that this was so... You're going to college after high school. And you're like, This is what I wanna pursue.
0:10:45.5 S1: Actually, no, I have always... I've been interested in a lot of different things. And when I was in high school, I also took a lot of extra-curricular classes in addition to music and being in the marching band, I was taking a lot of music... Don't get me wrong, but I also took a web design course in high school, and when I went to college, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I just knew that I wanted to go to a college that had a lot of music going on, and so actually that was a big motivator as to why I went to Penn State was that I wanted to be in their drum line. Penn State is a Big 10 school, big football program, which means they have a good marching band to go along with that. So I went to college not knowing what I wanted to get a degree in, but knowing that I wanted to be in band, and somehow in all of my freshman year I was taking courses and everything, but I was taking band, I was taking percussion lessons. I was in the orchestra, and then at one point, a friend pulled me aside and said, Hey, Jared, you are doing all of these music classes, but you're not majoring in music.
0:11:55.7 S1: Why is that? And I was like, I didn't realize you could actually do that, and you said you have to talk to our teacher, just audition for the studio and get a music ever... You love this enough. And I was like, You're right. And so that's when I took the audition and pursued music as a degree.
0:12:15.1 S2: The transition when you made it from non-music to music, did it feel like it was the perfect fit from the beginning, or did it feel like there was some getting used to about doing music all the time.
0:12:26.7 S1: I think it did take some getting used to practicing, especially in the classical music world, which getting a degree in music tends to be more in the classical or musical theater or CCM-type music, that is... There's a certain mindset that goes along with it, and you get into the whole... I don't know, impostor syndrome thing where I'm never good enough. And for me, I wasn't a natural practice do, my friends were spending five, six hours in the practice room every single day. And for me, I didn't have the patience for that. I liked playing my instrument for sure, but not enough to spend six hours in the practice room every day to do that, so I was still kind of pursuing other things at the same time, but I was good enough to just fly under the radar and eventually get the degree...
0:13:23.1 S2: Well, that's great that that transition, I know that transition to... And I feel the same way that we had this poster in the practice or un... The practice rooms, and at every moment that you're... Every minute that you're not practicing someone else is, and it always felt like such an insult, there's no balance when you approach it like that, and I think that that's one of those risks you take when you decide to make it main...
0:13:48.4 S1: For sure. If you really wanna do it, you really have to be willing to sacrifice a lot of other things to get there.
0:13:57.6 S2: Yeah, and I'd imagine the classical world that's... I did study classical voice, but instrument I always felt was even more intense when they approached you as far as this is a major that you should be going after, did the conversation of profession come up at all?
0:14:14.5 S1: A little bit, but not as much as I think it should have. I asked him, What can I major in? Or what could I do with a degree in music? Just like my parents asked me, What can you do with a degree in music? And I got some vague answers about, well, you could audition to be in a symphony, or you can audition for these spots to be in a military band, which I actually did, but really, the thing that people kept coming back to was like, you can get an education degree, and then you'll have a fall back plan, a music education degree, and that just felt kind of wrong, like if you're gonna be a music educator, you should want to be an educator to not just a musician.
0:14:59.7 S2: Right, and it shouldn't be a back-up plan.
0:15:02.6 S1: Should not be a back-up plan. There's nothing wrong with wanting to be a music teacher. Right, absolutely. And eventually I did want to become one too, so that's why I got that music education degree, and you said you were taking some computer design classes
0:15:16.4 S2: As well, so I think that's where it comes in your bio, it's a self-proclaimed technique. What else were you doing outside that you had different interests in the digital world
0:15:27.8 S1: That actually I started when I was in middle school, when my parents brought home our very first desktop computer, and I was fascinated as soon as they brought home that piece of equipment... My first instinct, much to their dismay, was to take it apart, and so they get home one day after school, and I have pieces of electronic equipment just all over the living room and they... I don't think they yelled at me, but they were definitely a little startled and they said, You'd better be able to put that back together, and I was... And that probably gave me the confidence to keep learning Web Design, and then took some coding classes, and then actually in music, when I was at Penn State, I took a music technology course, which was really fun, I learned all about mixing and recording and all these other cool tools and things you could do on the computer, but I just love being able to tinker around digitally and combine that somehow with music.
0:16:29.2 S2: When was the first time you combined it with music, like after you graduated?
0:16:35.0 S1: Good question. After I graduated, I helped co-found a non-profit opera company, and typically these opera companies, they are started by young X voice majors that want more performing opportunities themselves, but they don't really have the administrative background, nor do they have the access to the instrumental side, which that was my background. So it wasn't like an administrator by birth or anything like that, they just... I wanted to bring an instrumental component to their opera, and I wanted to create this orchestra for them, and somehow I also fell into the administrative role of creating a website for them, figuring out how can we take donations, how could we even sell tickets online? And this kind of opened my mind up to the fact that musicians can actually sell things online to people, and at that same time you're doing that, you're also gigging around Milwaukee... This was actually before I came to Milwaukee. This was when I was in Penn State, I graduated, and then I moved back to New Jersey where I had grown up. And so I wasn't gigging for myself, but I did sub for a wedding group that played, I actually found them on Craigslist and they were looking for another violin is to add to their roster because they had a lot of weddings, so I auditioned for them and then made it into their group and was playing probably a couple of weddings every month, and they all paid pretty good money, so I was like, weddings are viable options for musicians to make a career, if I can make a living...
0:18:18.0 S1: Without having to drive an hour and 15 minutes each way, I'd much rather do that. Yeah, right, and I also believe across the country, for most cases, it's possible to make a living off of private events without having to travel, there's enough enough going on in almost every city, once you reach a certain population size that you don't have to travel that much.
0:18:41.4 S2: Yeah, yeah, and I do think that's true. I think that reflects Denver as well. I do think that we spend a lot of time in the minds, 'cause the resort towns do a lot of events, especially weddings and corporate events and conferences, and those are a pretty drive... I always say when I'm stuck in traffic heading to those, I'm like, you know the traffic could be worse, I could be simply... Is like LA right now. For sure.
0:19:06.5 S1: I've made that drive through veil and everything. It's gorgeous.
0:19:10.7 S2: Yeah, it's a pretty place to be stuck in traffic. Red, when you and I first met, we were talking about book life, and this is a company that you started, and we were trying to see what we can offer to our listeners, and then I asked you how this started and like, Chris, we need to get him on this podcast, because the story is about an entrepreneur who is an awesome musician and created something different not only for himself to make booking easier, but found a way to make it easier for other musicians and started with your friends. So I won't say much more than that, but I would love it. We can go back to that first conversation, and I'm asking you... How did book Live start?
0:19:57.1 S1: Yeah, absolutely. So back you up when I was still in grad school at this point, first off, it's my belief that musicians will be successful if they learn to create their own opportunities. My whole story was, after my undergrad degree at Penn State, I taught in public schools for a while, but I wasn't quite satisfied there, playing hot cross buns on recorder wasn't quite enough for me, so I went to Milwaukee to pursue my Master's in orchestra conducting, hoping that I was gonna make it big as a symphony conductor, as a classical musician, the whole... The name of the game is auditions and who you know. And so that's probably similar to most musicians is we feel like there are gatekeepers in the world who can either give us the green light on our career or continue to make a struggle. And so for me, I felt this very, very much so when I was towards the end of my grad school career, and I was taking an audition to be in the Air Force band, and I actually got to conduct the premier Air Force band in Washington, DC. And it was an amazing experience, some of the top musicians in the world there, and at the end of the audition, the kernel pulls me in new as office and says, You were so close, but this one guy had more experienced than you, so...
0:21:22.3 S1: Come back next year, similar to a Blue Man Group audition earlier, and that was not my first rejection, and I'm sure it was not my last either, but those rejections and just feeling that frustration really led me to wanna finally do something about that and take control over my music or her not have to rely on these other organizations or people saying yes or no to me, and so that's when I created my gigging String Quartet in Milwaukee, dream city, strings with the whole philosophy of like, This is my thing. I'm going to design it how I want, I'm going to set a goal for how much money I wanna make in a year, and then I'm going to figure out How do I... What do I have to do to meet that goal? How many gigs do I have to book to do that, and once I figured out that number, then I realized, Okay, where am I gonna get these gigs from, who do I need to call? Which wedding planners, which wedding venues do I need to network with to get access to their briand grooms who could book me, started making those phone calls, and all of a sudden I had more gigs than I actually knew what to do with, because I was doing the work, if you put in the effort and it's a focused effort with the right strategy, you get the gigs that actually pay you what you need to be paid, and so...
0:22:38.3 S1: That was amazing. I was actually having a career as a musician while I was still in grad school, but the problem for me was I was still in grad school, which meant there wasn't room not to pursue my grad studies and be a career musician, and in fact, I got a lot of push back from my professors because they were like, You're too busy, and I'm like, I'm too busy playing music... Is that such a bad thing? At that point, the thing that really made me hyper-aware of this problem was when I thought it was a very organized person, I was using spreadsheets to manage all my gigs, I had all these notes apps and all of these text message threads and email threads and I thought I was pretty organized about it, but really the most embarrassing moment in my music career happened to me at that point, which was... It was October, I forget the exact year, but I was taking my girlfriend out on a date, it was a Saturday when we typically have gigs on Saturdays, we usually don't have a Saturday free until the weather starts turning super cold. This one, I checked all my spreadsheets, check my calendars, and we did not have a gig, and so I took my girlfriend out to an apple orchard an hour away from Milwaukee, and while I'm picking honey crisp apples, I get a phone call from a wedding planner and I knew I had her number saved in my phone, and when she called, and it was a Saturday, and it was about the time gigs happening, I knew what was up.
0:24:08.5 S1: My heart started to sink. I was like, Oh crap, I did something really bad. Didn't I answer it? She is livid with me, she tells that the wedding starts in 10 minutes. Where are your musicians? The mother of the bride was freaking out, and I was like panic stricken, I froze my grapes. Like, what's up? Is everything okay? I was like, No, everything is not okay. I call every single musician in town, but nobody could get to this venue in 10 minutes, and totally understandable, there's nothing we could do, but ultimately it was my fault, and it was the fact that my spreadsheets and my system wasn't good enough. After the dust settled, the DJ played the ceremony, which thankfully the DJ was able to do that, but the dust settled for me and I was able to recover, I took some time to... I don't know, it was really a blow to my spirit at that point, but once I got over it, I had this epiphany because I do have that background as a technique, I've built apps before, and I had actually seen an app being used to manage a piano competition that essentially was like managing gigs for each piano competitor that was entering this system had the date, the time, the venue, the prize of the competition, which is kinda like gig payment, and it was like sending out these automated reminder saying, Hey, your competition, timeslot is coming up, here's where you're going.
0:25:40.4 S1: And that got my wheels turning, like could there be a software built four gigs that would help me never miss a gig again, and also take some of that work off of my plate so I could actually get my degree in music without pissing off my teachers too. Much. And so that's when I pulled a bunch of all-nighters and wrote the very first version of this app that's now called book Live, and I built it just for my group, and the moment I put the first wedding in, which was like a couple of weeks later, and then I had it, I pressed one button and it sent out all the emails and the text messages to the musicians, that to me was like the hallelujah moment. It worked. And then other musicians started to ask me, Can I try it on my group, and that's when we started to build this up into what it is today, which is we now help over a thousand musicians, and I can't even count the number of gigs that I have been a part of just by helping the band leaders coordinate those gigs, and to me, that's really rewarding.
0:26:46.3 S2: Yeah, it's excellent. That's the other thing, as musicians aren't known for organization, I don't mean to generalize, but they need a little help usually when it comes to keeping things clean and clear and organized and reliable, so that is wonderful that you can just offer such a simple solution to people that otherwise probably wouldn't make that effort on their own, think about how many gigs you've avoided people missing because of this one mistake that you made and inspired yourself to fix the problem, right. It's like you paid it forward that way, right, you didn't just fix the problem for yourself now you've prevented it hundreds of times... For sure, produce market to how many musicians just really love apples and will never have to go through that experience and have a different feeling about a...
0:27:43.2 S1: Absolutely, right. Yeah.
0:27:45.0 S2: So Jared, where do you see book Live going in the future? What are your goals there?
0:27:50.9 S1: Yeah, good question. So I absolutely love helping us issues at all stages of their career, the software tool made sense for me because I was booking a certain number of gigs every single month, if I was only booking one gig a month, it probably wouldn't make sense. I can do that on my own, but when you get into the... Pick your number of getting us every single month, that's when you start to need the help, but what about the musicians who aren't there yet, who want to get there, but I really don't know how... There's a ton of information out there online and offline about how to do this, but I noticed that there was this gap of how do I become a gigging musician who plays these private events that pay well enough for me to set a goal and be able to achieve it. And so I've actually taken my story of how I created my gigging Street quartet, dream city strings, and reverse engineered that process and put it into kind of a course format, so we're about to release a course to help me. Yeah, I'm excited 'cause I've actually tried this out on a couple of other musicians who had no gigging group, they went through this course that I'm creating right now, and there's one lady...
0:29:06.1 S1: Her name is Carly Lewis, she's in Buffalo, New York. She has gone through this process where she had no gigs, now she has a group called Buffalo heart strings, and they have 60 weddings booked for 2021 and 22, which is... That's a good amount of money for a musician... Yeah, that's kind of the direction that we're heading is helping other types of musicians, not just the ones who have already made it...
0:29:29.7 S2: Yeah, when... I love that idea that basically, you kind of created something to help musicians stay organized, stay busy, and then when you found there were some people that were like, How are they doing that you gave them the steps to catch up to the rest and become as busy as they really wanna be too... I also like the idea that if you were a touring band, I had imagined that this probably would be useful too, because sometimes I lost musicians during tours that I just couldn't find, if they just had gotten a text that said, Hey, the sound check is at for that probably would have been useful back then too, it... That's rough. Yeah, so I see that being useful in a lot of different applications, and I definitely like the idea that it takes the responsibility of the leader of the band to have to be the bad guy in certain circumstances that when someone claims they didn't know what time to be there or someone didn't remember the details of the gig, those things that take away those mysteries and take that responsibility off the leader of the band, I think is really helpful for the environment and the relationships of the group.
0:30:38.7 S1: For sure, and I think it helps the groups focus more on the things that they love doing, which is playing the music, hanging out with their friends, or one of the reasons why we join is because we like the people we play with, and so if we can get rid of the things that caused friction in the band. We can do more of the things we love.
0:30:57.8 S2: Absolutely, let's go back to the question about somebody talking to you about a career in music, they want you to get a major in Music, so if you could go back in time and talk to that young musician, what would be the one thing you would say to prepare him for the future, not only as a musician, but obviously as an entrepreneur.
0:31:20.8 S1: I think your question kind of answers itself because that's unfair. That's, you're right. I think most musicians get into music because they love the art of it, the problem is, if you don't focus on How do I make a career out of the art, then that's when dreams die and it becomes a hobby. So if I were to go back in time and kinda shake my younger self and say, Here's what you need to do, I would say, Learn about marketing, not in... You don't need to take a full-on marketing degree or anything, but as musicians, we need to learn how do we package up what we offer into services and get the word out there about those, because that's where the rubber meets the road, that's how we book our gigs as if people know about us and we make it easy for them to book us. Yeah.
0:32:22.5 S2: Well, and it takes fear away, it takes fear away that you're alone in doing this and that you have to figure it all out on your own... Yeah.
0:32:30.4 S1: For sure. 'cause this path has been paved before us, it's just we just... Something about being in music and specifically getting a degree in music doesn't help us bridge the gap between, I don't know what's been done in the past and what we're able to do.
0:32:48.2 S2: Yeah, and I love that you brought up the business end of it as a general... There's a lack of education for musicians and business, and just the basic function, like basic marketing and basic finance, I think that that's starting to become more apparent in universities, not to plug the university that I work at, but now in order to get the singer song at a degree, which on its own is a really amazing degree to even an offer, you now have to take business courses, and so they're really starting to catch that, that people get out of college and they're like, Great, I can play an incredible baton, but I do not know what to do next. So I think that there's a lot of people becoming more aware that they don't really know what to do next, and planning for that during college is sort of the point... Right, yeah.
0:33:39.3 S1: For sure. And I love that your college is now starting to offer that, the two that I went to did not offer that, I hear they're starting to, but it's still like this big mystery, change is always hard, but I think the market is what is telling us that book Live needs to exist.
0:33:56.9 S2: The market is telling us that if musicians wanna make a living doing this and pursuing what they went to college and spent all their money on, they need to know some business and some finance.
0:34:08.7 S1: I think that's gonna be... Comes back to my belief of musicians need to be able to create their own opportunities, we can no longer... Especially after covid, we can no longer rely on the opportunities other people have created for us, and now is the time, the availability of online resources and just the community of people, musicians who now take the business seriously and are willing to teach. Now is the time where I think we're gonna see a big change in the music industry, and I'm definitely excited to be a part of that. So Jared, thank you so much for setting an example to others on how indeed, as we always say at the end of these podcasts, that there is indeed already enough for everyone.
0:34:53.3 S2: And you are showing that by helping our community on these specific ways to get it. Thank you for joining us and sharing your story and giving us and our listeners a chance to hear how it's done, what's the best way if someone wants to reach out to you and ask some questions specifically about your services... What's the best way to reach you?
0:35:10.6 S1: Absolutely, they can reach me at my email address, which is grid at book Live dot com. Thank you so much for having me, it's been a pleasure. Thank you.
0:35:20.8 S2: Dad. That was a great interview, Chris. Mainly say that because I asked most of the questions. I never had to ask so many questions on this podcast, and we video this while we're doing it, when you would ask a question in the middle of it, I was like, I'm not done my questions yet, Chris, you normally get all the questions, but I thought it was great. And this podcast came out of Jared contacting us because we were looking for more deals for musicians and more opportunities for them, and when I had the first call with Jared, he started to tell the story about how book Live came together. And it was just so inspiring. And forget the idea of the FILA program right now, let's get you on this podcast and talk about your life, how you started playing music and how you made opportunities for yourself to make a living in a career out of it, so I'm really glad he was able to join us, I also liked how his story just reminded me that when you look at failure from a certain lens, can always find some of your greatest opportunities being shown, and if he hadn't been willing to humbly accept his mistake, he would have missed perhaps connecting the dots between his abilities with technology and his abilities with music to have created what I did, and I think that that happens to a lot of us where we think we're being victimized at some level of that at least, and if we just turn that lens a little bit and get the right view.
0:37:13.1 S2: We might actually be seeing that we've been given a new opportunity from that... I couldn't agree with you more. I normally blame other people for matale and that was really awesome, it's just easier to not take credit when it comes to your failures and... He's inspiring in that way. And it is joking aside, it is. A nice reminder to see where you can improve and put the onus on yourself to make it better. I feel like these types of websites are going to completely restructure the way that the industry can function, it really is convenient when you get these technologies working for you... Yes, it's true that you have a lot to remember, and I also think that when you first start in this business... I do a lot of stuff in the wedding and event industry, and it's overwhelming, there's a lot to remember, there's a lot to know, and you're intimidated sometimes, and you're trying to remember all your gear and where to be and what songs you have to learn and who else is playing in the gig, and do they know to provide me with a meal that I can eat... It just starts to add up.
0:38:26.7 S2: And things that can simplify like book life really help, another aspect that I took away from our conversation with him and just kind of reminding myself that talking about lenses, sometimes we always are focused on... When it comes to finance, we're always focused on how much of an income we're making it, but another whole conversation that we always need to keep as part of how much we make is how much time we're giving for that money, and how much brain power and how much attention we have to give for certain events, for example, and what a service like his provides you is perhaps that whole old adage that working smarter not harder is better, right. And so you increase the amount of money you make just by reducing the amount of time it takes you, and so there's another way to see this in a different lens of how these tools can actually help make you more money, not necessarily in the bottom line, but in how much time these different events might take you, he was nice enough to give us a free master class for all the musicians that listen to our podcast, and if you go to musicians Tihar dot com deals, you can register for the free master class.
0:39:38.9 S2: He has... And just kind of taking some of those lessons he's learned and put it into a digging secret type of tutorial. So it's free, I might as well check it out. It's pretty awesome, and I watched it yesterday. It's excellent. There is one thing I wanted to comment, if you scroll down on that page, once you get to this free master class, it's like the secret sauce, but then if you scroll down a little, it gives you a secret number one, number two and number three, and it's kicking funnels, go, got a donation and go find your strategy, which I guess you'd have to go take the class to dive in. I know this because I did it, but at first I thought I may have to take the class 'cause he just told me what the secret sauce was, well, that'll be super helpful for everyone, so... Alright, when you get... So sarthe is... Talk back, Chris, I don't have an audience, I just throw these out there and you gotta give me a little something... I mean, I see you smiling, but I think everyone listening is just like, Episode 25, Chris is finally...
0:40:41.1 S2: Just had it up. Will he be here at episode 26? No, all I could think about was the last time I had any secret sauce, it made me sick from McCants, someone says secret, as I tend to say, No, thank you. I stick to the ingredients that I know, that makes sense then, alright, but we got one action step, this action step for this week is defined a way this week to use one of your non-music passions to help a fell... A musician just do it to show support, don't do it for any other reason at this point, but to use other talents to help your fill in musicians. I'll tell you, I saw this action step before we were having this conversation, and if you wanna check out meaner dot com, I made that website, and it was just nice to work with her and get into the creative aspect of how she saw her brand and what she wanted changed and the way I saw it and when she saw it and to make those changes for her, I did it because I thought I can help her monetarily, but I think in the end, I also learned a lot from her as far as Branden was concerned and two, so it wasn't just about giving back, when you do these things, you could show up to learn from that person too, and if you wanna share what experience you have with this or are looking for other people to connect with and you want some help with that, you can reach out to us.
0:42:02.1 S2: The best way to do that is what, Dave, you can go to musicians Tihar dot com or send us an email at musicians tip jar at gmail. And again, if you wanna take advantage of that, the free webinar for book live pro, check out musicians Tihar dot com deals and scroll down or just put in book live pro into the search bar on the right-hand side, and it'll bring the right up for you. And there's always... Thank you for joining us. Remember, there is already enough for everyone, you just need to know how to get it, until next time I'm half a Dave tampon and myself here, please stay safe. Stay healthy and take care of each other. Remember, life is too short to only learn from your own mistakes, this is musician steaming on, this should be considered specific, personal or professional advice, please consult an appropriate legal business or financial professional for vitalis advice. Individual results, not parented and order strategies have been horror too.
0:43:10.3 S1: Those are creating a cousin tabarista.
0:43:23.4 S2: I can use the