So I Found a New Manager

Happy Thanksgiving.
Last weekend I wrote about the bad experience I had with my manager and my decision to fire them. Last evening, I had a meeting with a new management company and would like to share that experience with you.

How I Found Them

Since I just put in the mandatory 30 day notice to cancel my contract with TLCE, I wasn’t in a hurry to search for another manager. The contract isn’t officially over until December 17th, so I had lots of time to research and put a list together. However, some of my actor friends reached out to me after reading my blog post and had some recommendations. Between 3 actor friends, I had a list of 7 agencies. The two on the list that came highly recommended were Tassel Talent Group and Dream Talent Management, so I focused on those.

How These Lists Were Put Together

The lists my friends put together were from 3 places.

• Recommendations from their agents
• Online research
• IMDb Pro research – this one was probably the best way managers were found next to agent recommendations. My friend put together a list of actors who had careers that he wanted. He went to each of their IMDb Pro accounts and found out who they were representation by.

The Meeting

I ended up sending out submissions to 3 of the 7 on my new list. Of those, Dream Talent Management responded and responded within 24 hours. She asked to set up a Zoom meeting for Wednesday and I accepted.

I spent the next few days researching their company and reading anything and everything I could find. I also wrote down a list of questions to ask. Questions that I came up with after my bad experience.

Every talent agent and manager meeting starts the same, with them asking me to tell them about myself. After that, she gave me her pitch. She had a great attitude and showed excitement about representing me. She also told me what her mission was when representing talent and she seemed as motivated about what she could do for me, as I have been when representing myself. They also have been in business for 25 years and had connections.

After her pitch, she asked if I had any questions and I referenced my notes. She had answered almost every question I had during her pitch. I only had two questions left on my list. 1) How often do you communicate with your talent? and 2) Would I know anyone on your roster?

The meeting ended with her wanting to represent me and if I were interested, to send her an official email accepting. I ended up sending the email last night. This morning I got an email from her that reinforced that I made the right decision. She was excited to get started and didn’t want to wait for December 18th, so she asked permission to contact my present management company to work out a deal to allow me to transfer all my accounts from TLCE to Dream. Not only did she do that, but she did it on Thanksgiving Day where most everyone else was on holiday.