How does Booked Solid actually get me gigs? What to tell Otto on day one, with prompts to paste

You are finally in, the app is open, Otto is sitting there waiting for you, and the honest question is "How can booked solid help me get gigs? What should I start telling it?" A lot of people add "Sorry if this is somewhere - I can't find it!" It was not anywhere. That is why this page exists. Below is what to say to Otto on day one, in what order, and the exact prompt to paste when you want real leads on the board.

The honest framing, before anything else

Booked Solid does not go find strangers on the internet and magically book them. Nothing does. What it does is run the follow-up and the pipeline work that actually turns leads into gigs, which is the part most performers drop the moment a busy week hits. So the more it knows about your act and your buyers, the better it gets. If your question is how do I get more gigs, the answer starts with twenty minutes of telling Otto about your business, not with a magic button.

One limit stated up front rather than buried at the bottom: cold outreach to brand new strangers is the one thing this app is deliberately careful about. It researches, it writes personal drafts, and it hands every one of them to you. It will not blast a bought list. If that was what you were hoping for, read Cold outreach in Booked Solid: what's built in (and what isn't) first so you know exactly where the line sits.

What to tell Otto first

If your real question is what do I say to Otto, this is it. Open a chat and talk in plain words, the way you would to a new assistant on day one. There is no form to fill in and no right format. Cover these:

• What you do and who it is for. For example: "I am a family entertainer, mostly kids birthdays and school assemblies, in the Philadelphia area."
• Who your good buyers are. Schools, libraries, corporate, festivals, parents - and which of those you actually want more of.
• Your rates, and your floor. What a normal show costs, and the number you will not go under. Otto will never quote below it.
• How far you travel, and what a normal week looks like for you.
• Anything that has worked before. Past clients, repeat buyers, venues that rebook you.

That is your Brain, and it is what makes every later draft sound like you instead of like a robot. You can see what Otto has learned, and approve or reject what it wants to change, on the Brain tab, which sits under More.

The three-step starter path, in this order

The order matters. Steps 1 and 2 both have to be in before step 3 is any good, because step 3 is only ever as sharp as what Otto knows about you and how much of your conversation history it can see.

1. Tell Otto "grade my business". Type grade my business into the chat, or press the Grade my business button at the bottom of your Today briefing, which drops the same request into your chat box for you to send. The same job also sits on the Plays tab as the Report Card play, which asks you for your market first. Otto researches you first - your website, your reviews, the competitors a buyer would compare you to, your own recent reply drafts - and then grades six things A to F with the evidence quoted: your message, your website, how findable you are, your sales replies, your follow-up quality, and your position against those competitors. Each grade comes with the name of the play in the app that fixes it, and the whole thing is written to report-card.md in your workspace so you can come back to it. This is the fastest way to see where booked work is leaking out of your business.
2. Connect your inbox so Otto can read your conversations and draft replies. The path is Connections (under More) > Mail & calendars > Add an email account. Otto never sends: drafts wait for you. The step by step, including the Google app password part that trips people up, is here: Connect your Gmail with an app password (step by step).
3. Ask Otto to "fill the room". Once the first two are in, ask it to fill the room, or run the Fill the Room play from the Plays tab. Fill the Room finds real buyers who book acts like yours and builds a lead file for each one, so they land on your Gig Desk. The outreach drafts are the next play along: First Contact writes one short message per lead in your voice, and every one of them waits for you to approve it.

One at a time beats a grand plan. If you jump straight to step 3 on day one with an empty Brain and no inbox connected, you get generic leads and generic drafts, and you conclude the app is generic. It is not. It just has nothing of yours to work with yet.

The prompt to paste when you want leads on the board

This is the one support hands to people who ask for their first real batch. Paste it into the chat and fill in your city:

Find 20 country clubs and event planners within 40 miles of [your city] that book magicians for holiday parties and member events. For each one get the business name, a contact person, their email, phone and website. File each one as its own lead folder under leads/ so they show up on my Gig Desk. Then draft a short intro email for each in my voice - do not send anything, I will review the drafts first.

Swap "magicians" for what you actually do, and swap the venue type on every run: schools, libraries, senior communities, wedding planners, corporate offices.

Why each part of that prompt is there

This is worth two minutes, because the wording is doing real work and a vaguer version gives you a worse result.

• A specific venue type plus a radius. This stops Otto guessing what you want. "Find me some leads" makes it invent a definition of a good lead, and it will not be yours.
• "File each one as its own lead folder under leads/". This is what makes them appear on your Gig Desk board. Leave it out and the research still happens, but the leads do not show up where you can work them.
• "draft, do not send". This keeps every outgoing email waiting for your approval. Nothing leaves your computer until you press send.
• One venue type per run. One type per run works much better than a grab bag. Run it five times with five different venue types rather than once with all five in the sentence.

When you cannot find something, ask Otto

You do not have to hunt for your own files. Ask Otto literally "where does X live?" - for example "where do my leads live", "where does my voice profile live", "where do the things waiting on my decision live". The app keeps a real map of your BookingHQ and Otto reads it, so you get the actual path instead of a guess. For "where is that button" questions, press Help me in the top bar instead: that is the help buddy, and it can jump you straight to the right tab.

What to read next

The other question people send with this one is "Can you send any links to guides and tutorials to get me going?" Yes. In the order that helps most:

• The Brain: what's working, and approving Otto's proposed changes - what Otto has learned about you, and how to correct it.
• First run: pick your BookingHQ workspace and get a first win - the guide to start with tonight.
• Plays: every one-tap booking job explained - chase a lead who went quiet, follow up an enquiry, reactivate an old client.
• Get set up recipes: one-tap 'Do it for me' setups
• Cold outreach in Booked Solid: what's built in (and what isn't) - where the line is, so you are not disappointed later.
• The autonomy dial: Show me, Check with me, or Run it - how much Otto does without asking you. Worth setting on purpose rather than discovering by accident.
• Start here: from download to your first booking task, step by step - the whole path from download to first task, if you skipped any of it.

Everything else lives at support.booked.kivimedia.co. There are also live group coaching calls with Ziv three times a week where you can bring your setup questions, with no AI in the room. The current days, times and links are listed near the bottom of the Start here guide above.

If you are still not sure what to say

Open a ticket from this help center, or press Help me in the app's top bar and use its Help center button, and tell us three things: what you perform, who buys it, and the town you work out of. We will write your first two prompts for you, in your words, so you can paste them and see what comes back. This is a normal thing to ask for and nobody here thinks less of you for asking.