Sponsored by RockWater

I’m breaking format again this week due to the 4th of July holiday!

Not enough news to belabor, so time to do a bit of navel gazing at the creator management industry.

I’ll start this edition with three main things every creator should look out for before signing with representation. I’ve been doing this on-and-off for 18 years, so these will be gold.

Then I’ll go over 10 of the top talent representation firms and try my best to break down how they’re differentiating themselves from the market.

Let’s get into it.

Creators Beware…

Know before you sign!

First of all, none of this is legal advice.

But if you’re getting legal advice from a newsletter then here’s my #1 tip: don’t do that.

All contracts have different loopholes, pitfalls, gotchas, and snags.

Get a lawyer. Or, if that’s impossible, throw the agreement into ChatGPT and dig deep (that’s bad but better than nothing!)

When creators sign with managers, they absolutely OBSESS over these three points, above all others.

1. What happens if my rep leaves? If you sign a contract with Evil Mega Corp Management because you like your manager Sarah Goodheart, then the company fires Sarah (happens all the time), you may not want to stay with EMCM. It’s important for every creator to know this obvious-but-overlooked fact: every large representation firm has GOOD agents/managers and BAD agents/managers, and that goes for everywhere from the three-letter mega agencies to the boutique firms. If you get stuck with a bad rep because your good rep gets canned when some numbskull at the top thinks AI can do their job better, you need to be able to either leave with your good manager or, at the very least, leave EMCM.

2. “I’ll do my best” isn’t a strategy. Before you sign with an agent/manager, have a working game plan. What will they do for you every month, every week, every day? Do they even know your goals? I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve talked to a creator who tells me they hate their manager, then when I ask, “What are they not going for you that you wish they would?” they don’t have a good answer. Don’t give up 10% or 20% for vibes.

3. How is your rep’s reputation? A rep may manage some of the biggest creators in the space, but they may be known as difficult, annoying, or, at worst, scammers. There are managers and agents whom large brands told me they won’t work with anymore. I repeat: your rep may knock you out of consideration with brands. Don’t just ask existing client referrals. They may just give you the one who they’re dating, actually working hard for, etc. Talk to their past colleagues. LinkedIn is great for that! At the very least: reach out to one of their client’s inboxes with a well-written brand offer from the most professional e-mail you can get and see how long it takes them to respond and how. A little devious? Yes. But the answer may shock you (50% chance they won’t reply at all).

Again…lawyer, lawyer, lawyer. Don’t sign anything without talking to Jonathan Katz or Tyler Chou or Mikey Glazer or Philip Daniels or Tristan Snell or any of the other awesome creator lawyers out there.

But don’t even waste your time if those three aren’t clear.

SPONSORED BY ROCKWATER

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Ten Classes of Creator Rep Firms:

Please note: this isn’t about what these companies actually do. It’s about what they say they do. The quality of execution varies wildly by manager, by talent, and by genre.

And if you’re a creator trying to figure out where to go next, DM me and I’ll have a frank conversation with you.

But here’s where we’re at in no particular order:

1. Fixated: As an equity owner in the company, it’s in my best interest to say, “Fixated does everything perfectly.” But really, Fixated’s main value is in their understanding of content, including front-lines creation like they recently did with FunnyMike’s Streamer Prom. In an industry where so much revenue is made directly from content, this is a huge boon over orgs churning brand deals.

2. Night: The company heavily built by their longtime representation of MrBeast, they’re known as the company with incredible proximity to power. Even now, Kai Cenat’s Mafiathon 2 had a lot of Night/AMP connections (AMP is owned by Night).

3. Underscore: Though the website focuses on a lot of buzzwordy ‘next-generation’ kind of stuff, where I see the power of underscore is in their verticalization. They have experts in very specific areas, and the ones I know are very, very good at it.

4. CAA/UTA/WME/Gersch/ICM: The ‘three-letter agencies’ are bulked together here because it’s hard not to, despite nuances in scale and quality of managers, these are the companies that have proximity to the biggest brands, Hollywood connections, and insane infrastructure. They’re in the ‘build inventory, sell inventory’ business.

5. Grail Talent: Too few people are talking about what’s being built at Grail Talent. It’s an absolutely huge org that represents tons of talent and does a ridiculous amount of deal flow. They have some large talent, but are mostly great at mid-tier deal flow. In the industry we often joke that we’re in the business of ‘stacking nickels’ and they do it better than pretty much anyone.

6. The Creator Society: There is a huge market of creators whose content acts as a catalogue, where each piece is showcasing something to sell. You’ll find these creators on LTK, ShopMy, and Amazon Live. And The Creator Society reps the best of the best.

7. Select Management Group/Digital Brand Architects/Dulcedo Management: The triple header of powerful female lifestyle, beauty, and fashion reps. Both with plenty of successes in building and launching beauty/lifestyle businesses around some of the largest creators.

8. Unruly/Moxie/Creators Inc: Don’t sleep on the OnlyFans-forward agencies. Although most of their revenue is made from these premium paid sites, they also work with some of the largest modern-day social media models, who control culture.

9. Gushcloud International: One of the largest international management companies with over 150 talent managers, they’re the ‘everything store’ of management with incredible infrastructure to do just about everything.

10. Loaded/Click/Ellify/A billion others: Gaming is a huge vertical in the digital world, but the talent, deals, and, frankly, ‘vibe’ is so drastically different, many management companies and agencies sprung up to service this market. And with the incredible rise in live and game streamers, which led to Night’s acquisition of AMP, Kai Cenat’s company, these companies have significantly grown in relevance.

Cue the many comments and e-mails of those I forgot, but, trust me, with literally thousands of digital talent representation organizations, they can’t possibly be covered in one newsletter.

But that’s not the point.

The point is: there are managers for everything. They vary in quality, but, if you are a creator who needs help on the business-side, there’s someone out there for you.

Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this edition, give it a share and if you get someone to sign up, I’ll send you my ‘10 Rep-Friendly Ways to Monetize Today!’ deck!

Until next time, protect yo rep.