Speaker 1: Hi everyone, it's Richard Jefferson again, coming to you with another topic. This week I've been getting a lot of management agreements across my desk and I represent both managers and talents, so I kind of know both sides of it, what to look for and what not to. So I thought I'd give you a few pointers, kind of staying neutral because I don't know which one this will apply to if you're a manager or if you're a talent, but I'll tell you how to make a fair deal or things to think about to make the deal fair and talk about. First thing, you guys have to agree upon scope of service. Most managers, and even the ones that I give to other people, they try to make the scope large. For instance, if you're managing someone, you want to capture all of their entertainment activities, be that music, film, television, but if I'm on the talent side, I'm going to want to make that as narrow as possible because maybe it won't apply to that manager. Maybe that manager doesn't have the expertise to actually do a certain area, whereas they do have expertise. For instance, music, a music manager may have the connections in the music industry, but can they really help you in getting into TV roles or film roles? That's something you have to discuss and somehow you have to make that scope of service provision equal to what the expertise is of the management. That's the first provision that you should really look at. The second one is the term. How long are you going to be tied to this person? Sometimes you may want to have a trial period. I always encourage that when I'm working with talent. Try it out. It's just like a marriage. When you're with a manager, you're very close day in and day out, so you kind of learn whether you like working with this person or not, so why not try them out for six months and see what they can do for you. There's no reason to sign a five-year management agreement if you don't even know this person. Of course, the compromise is somewhere in the middle, so talk that over, but that's another issue that needs to be addressed. Another one that's very important, of course, is what's commissionable activities? That kind of goes with the scope. Should the manager commission off of something that you've already had ongoing? I just dealt with this with an artist that does a lot of concerts. She books her gigs by herself and she's doing very well at it, but now she wants to move into the recorded side and a manager is trying to take her on. Should he commission off of what she's already got going and the tours that she's getting off of her experience? I don't think so, but that's something that you can negotiate and talk over. Maybe the recorded music will help her get more gigs. There are arguments on both sides, so you have to kind of weigh the options and come to some kind of a happy medium. Another thing that I usually encourage on both sides is to have a neutral accountant. That will help you with the money issues because that's really what this all comes down to. Where's the money going? Is the money being accounted properly? Is the manager getting his fair cut? Is the artist getting his or her fair cut? To alleviate all those problems, just hire a neutral accountant or accountant or a bookkeeper and have them divvy up the money. That makes things a lot easier. There are a lot of other things that can come up. For instance, after the term is over with this management agreement, what's the commission? Is it going to stay the same? Probably shouldn't because if you're terminating one manager, you're going to have to hire another one. Do you want to commission both of them? You won't pay 20% to one, 20% to the other, and then you barely have any income coming in. Those are other things that you want to talk about. Of course, I can't cover everything, but that's a brief overview of management agreements.