If you’re running your own solo booking agency, there’s a barrier you eventually hit, you’ll know the feeling.
Your roster is great. You’re booking shows. The relationships are there. But somewhere along the line you’re getting bogged down, and no matter how hard you push, you can’t seem to get past a certain point.
Matt calls this the solo ceiling.
It’s not about talent or effort. It’s about capacity. When you’re the only person in your operation, every hour you spend on payments, contracts, invoicing, chasing promoters, updating your contact database and managing your own admin is an hour you’re not spending on booking shows and developing your artists. Perhaps your artists are feeling this too…
The maths is pretty simple. There are only so many hours in a day. And when a significant chunk of those hours is eaten up by the machinery of running a one-person business, your ceiling is lower than it should be.
Paying for services or other people to do administrative tasks is not cheap, but when they are shared across an agency economies of scale kick in which make a profound difference to the agent’s output.
We’ve seen this play out time and again with agents who’ve joined Midnight Mango. We have agents who have doubled their output of shows after joining us. That’s not because they suddenly got better at their jobs; they were already good. It’s because we took the weight off and provided the tools, knowledge and support to get more shows booked.
At Midnight Mango we handle the artist payments, the artist statements, contract templates in multiple languages and E-sign facility to speed up contract signing. Then we provide the pitching software, the booking software for contracts, invoices and calendars. Then there’s software to collect, collate and count ticket sales, office software, training courses… the list goes on. And on top of that is our deep, deep international network which will warrant an article of its own!
The solo ceiling is real. But it’s not permanent.
If you’re an experienced agent and you’re starting to wonder whether there’s a better way to do this: We’d love to have a conversation.
We’re looking for up to four agents to join our platform this spring as part of our Agent Join campaign. We’re selective about who we work with because our reputation depends on it. But if this resonates, the first step is simple. 👇
Find out more at midnightmango.co.uk/join
