Why a Talent Agent isn’t Enough: How to make more money

Your talent agent doesn’t do it all! If you want to make more money and increase your star value you need to make sure you know what people are actually doing for you. It is also good to know what they should be doing and what they shouldn’t be doing.

It is nice to think that one person will do it all.  That one person will manage you, promote you, book you, brand you and network you. The fact is, they won’t.  This is actually a good thing, unless you are unaware of it.  You do not want all your eggs in one basket. You do not want your career and reputation dependent on one persons investment in you.  If you were to fall out of good grace with that person, what happens?  If you have different people handling different aspects of your professional life you will get better quality of work and not feel that if you left one person that your entire career will fall to pieces. So to take advice financial managers….diversify!

You talent agent is the person who will help get you jobs. They will find you gigs and work on getting you work.  Because if you don’t work, they don’t get paid.  A good talent agent will negotiate contracts and will not only work on getting you jobs but will work on getting you bigger and better paying jobs. But they don’t market you. That is your job.

A producer makes the movies.  He promotes the movies.  If you are in his movies, then he is also promoting your movies. But this is not the same as promoting you.  The producer is interested in building your reputation because that will help him sell more movies. But you see how ultimately he is interested in selling movies, not promoting you.  Because if you make a movie with someone else, then they are making money and not him.  So he wants to promote his movies and you want to promote you..and his movies…but mainly you IN his movies.

A marketing or PR manager will market you.  Their interest is in increasing your star value!  They want to improve your reputation. They want to make sure that everyone knows who you are. They will create YOU the brand and household name! They will also help you establish a marketing strategy and will help implement that strategy.  Their entire focus is marketing you.  This will then helps promote your movies which promotes you and helps you get bigger and better jobs.

So ultimately if you want to make more money, get more clients, sell more product and get better jobs, then you need to market yourself and increase your star value.