[CONTENT] A17 - Steven Nash - How to Find a Great Manager (Success Summit 2013)

hi i'm aaron marcus and welcome back to the acting and modeling success summit we have a really special guest his name is steven nash and let me uh read to you a little bit from his bio he's a talent manager and producer and he's located in beverly hills and his clients have done everything from international print campaigns uh starring on tv series feature films and actually stephen used to be a an actor still a union member he's a coach he was a director in new york and he was also the former president of the talent managers association and he's also currently developing a comedic feature film called rich kids that you're gonna be hearing a whole lot about in the near future so stephen thank you so much for being a part of the summit thank you i'm very glad to be here you know i've known you for a long time it's it's great to visit again well thank you so what i want to ask you first i mean everybody has heard of agents everybody's heard of managers most people really don't have a clue as to exactly what a manager does so i was hoping you could kind of shed some light on that for us well sure uh when people ask what's the difference between a manager and an agent the joke answer is a manager cares i'm sure that will throw all the agents who are going to be part of this event because everyone cares that's just a joke but um today most actors particularly above a certain level uh have a manager the the high-end agencies by my experience cares about everything but they're focusing uh mostly on pursuing the audition that's just their main focus the manager is concerned about all things including getting auditions getting jobs and is very specifically focusing a good manager anyway on what the actor needs their development artistically the financial goals sometimes spiritual goals problem solving many a time an agent will contact me and just say deal with this i mean they they depend on on managers to provide a lot of value to the team and in the end the manager i see the manager and the actor is partners and um generally the manager relationship is a long-term one and so basically it sounds like the manager is like a great parent somebody who really is looking out for the best interest of that specific person yeah that's true though i'm too young to be apparent to most of my king clients but um it's for me i i feel like i do the old i do the old-fashioned kind of management in which it's it's it's personal talent management it's very close and uh i spoke to speak to my clients almost daily i'm always available i am not what i call a backdoor agent some some managers are just doing what they submitting even though that's not necessarily proper but everyone does it from what i can tell i work with every aspect of my clients i pay attention to every detail i continually speak with them to see what they're thinking and feeling and needing and for our mutual benefit so like for instance let's say uh one of your talent goes out to audition for a feature film it sounds like you would be the person that the actor could sit down with afterwards and say okay so this is what i thought went well uh some things really didn't feel right you know for me about this it seems like that's not necessarily something that they would be doing with their agent necessarily but it sounds like you know for a great manager that would be an appropriate conversation oh you're you're you're right on that one because that is at the top of my job description and uh to be that connected with the uh the the client whether it's an actor model or singer that connected with their career in the moment to moment um i also coach my actors i don't you know i'm an acting coach from long back and i don't i don't charge my clients for anything i just work on commission and i ask my clients to always reach me right after an audition and there's many reasons for that uh certainly um getting a feel for what happened is important just for learning for the future uh how best to focus my client um also sometimes i need to do some sort of aggressive follow-up sometimes i hear from casting or from the agent regarding that audition so i need a point of view so communicating after an audition is very important then on an educational level i always ask my clients if you had it to do over again what would you possibly do because that's i'm always into training and growing um so yes you're right now are you would you consider yourself really more of a unique kind of manager in the sense that you are an actor do you find that that most managers have that kind of skill and that kind of background so that the talent can sit down and talk with them from a technical point of view uh you know what took place i think i'm somewhat unique i mean there's many an actor who's become a manager um i have a deep classical acting directing training from new york i studied for many years with stella adler the late great and um i think that that's something special that perhaps i bring to the to the equation now would it be unusual for you to actually call a casting director and say hey look i just started working with somebody recently i wanted to find out could you give me some feedback i have a lot of tight casting director relationships and these days if there's many casting offices are so intensely busy they're not real enthused to take time to give feedback necessarily like perhaps when you and i were sweet on things acting little calmer days you know way back there back in the 90s right we were chiseling the hieroglyphs in the caves and uh you know you could send smoke signals to find out you know feedback from the audition oh yeah i always i i'm always hungry to get feedback uh when i can get it now sometimes the feedback is because the intern to the assistant to the associate to the casting director looks at the notes and and and says oh we went a different direction which isn't quite news if you didn't get you know the part but um getting feedback uh from castings is is so useful and so i always want it if i can get it but but you're saying it like in today's time unless something horrific takes place you're probably not going to hear much about it well not all i mean sometimes we can get feedback i'm always laughing when i met uh around a group of actors like at a party and i hear them talking about how all the feedback they get on every audition i'm thinking gosh i wish i knew where that was happening um you can you can get feedback and i mean casting directors generally they're artists they're directors and they and and they they their opinion just their subjective point of view is very valuable and they're as helpful as they can within their time time abilities i'm sure now i'm curious when so when you're you want to submit one of your one of your talent to an audition typically you would go through the agent and have the agent actually submit the person to the casting director well agents do submission i do a lot of promotion um i'm often often on a daily basis uh promoting my clients to specific casting offices and so let's say in in the best case scenario and your client books the job who from casting who would they call you first or would they call the agent first the protocol is to have the uh the casting person calls the agent and i'm that's great um sometimes they're calling they're calling me for whatever reason they know me personally um it's complicated and they they want it they know they can reach me very directly i unlike many many managers in new york in la i have i have very few clients so um people who i work with know that they can get to me easily that i can get right on things a lot of the time and um so sometimes they call me directly but i'm but the the normal thing is they call the agent and it processes now okay now i know that it's it's the agent's uh job uh to actually negotiate but i'm assuming that as the manager you can talk to the agent and say you know for instance if it's a tv series you know you say well my client's not going to accept less than 20 000 to you know be on this particular show but then it's up to the agent to actually negotiate that one out officially and under the license of the agent they are the um the head of a negotiation in practice that is uh they still are the point person i get deeply deeply involved because my job description is to is uh to pay meticulous attention to money and terms are often as important or more important than the money and uh i mean there's a lot of terms that are involved actually that's interesting could you just maybe just give us one general kind of term that might you know come up for discussion for a you know a tv series well on the tv series i mean this is a longer discussion uh you know that typically when you're being offered what might be called a screen test meaning a final audition for a series they don't say hey you got the job uh how much you want they say if we can come to terms on money and and money on and and details then we will give you this final audition and they're seeing other people they don't necessarily tell you how many and they all might have different deals than you but you go into that final audition and it's never the final audition by the way final audition be prepared for five more so you go into it and if so you're giving them that gonna on us on a series you're you will be asked needed for the most part to give a seven year option deal to the producers and what this says is they have the right but not the obligation to use you for the pilot under the money in terms negotiated and that money includes the holding deal which is the time in which you can't takes anything that would conflict with that job if you if it did go ahead to series um in say the three months after you shoot it while they see if nbc is going to buy it and put it on the air and then they have the right but not the obligation to use you for the series and at certain terms and the right but not the obligation to use you each uh succeeding year and within the terms and i'm keep this brief and ended but like in the first year how many episodes are you guaranteed you're on a series they're not necessarily saying every single one i had a client starring in a series on fox for uh three years and um he was uh his guarantee was seven episodes out of 13. meaning if they did more they paid him four more but they did less they still paid him for that seven in the end he was in like 12-13 so we can't you know would be giving much more money than the minimum terms of the contract so certainly when a client does a free job a deferred pay job which is all the time these days because of the way sad contracts may have gone and the necessities and importance of building a career uh but still there's terms besides the dates involved i i want to know what the billing is the screen credit uh and that's very very important because actually excuse me will you explain screen credit well when screen credit meaning where's your name appearing um is it appearing at the beginning and if it's appearing at the beginning before the show starts the head credits the main titles is it single card by yourself is it shared card what order is that in and then of course there's the crawl at the end when the name when the names go by and you're in the you're in the crawl always uh i would think but uh main title credit's a whole other thing and if we're doing something with deferred pay then the building the credit better be to our satisfaction because that's maybe all we get in the end besides experience exposure film to use on our reel and so that's why having a manager would be essential because i'm assuming typically that's not something that the agent is all that incredibly concerned about at least not nearly as much as the manager is the agent cares about everything but they're not going to put time into worrying about a minor detail of a non-paying job i don't think so sure so like for instance when you were you were talking about um you know you really have a very select few group of people that that you manage right what would you say is you know an average amount of talent that a you know a smaller management company would actually work with numbers yeah well i mean uh i'm x out of 20 um and i have staff though right now we have we're we're handling 10. and the whole other subject why we we can get into why we handle people or why we don't but um i've seen management companies with in you know into the thousands it's that personal touch and is that personal management i i don't i don't it's something it's something else it's something else by my opinion so so would you say like on the average a a smaller management company might have anywhere between you know 10 20 25 30 people max that they're going to be uh managing well one would one with hope um i'm i don't currently know anybody who has as few clients as i have at the level i'm at but uh and i'm always interested in in new clients but they have to be right on a lot of levels and we can talk about that if you like so we actually oh i'm sorry i didn't mean to interrupt go ahead i was just going to say that um i'm taking a walk in the wild wild side because many managers and agencies uh survive prosper because they play a numbers game and it's not that they don't want to be the highest standards they go they have many and they see who's going to be the money maker for me all my clients have to be in the time i'm patient but they all have to they all have to succeed in a significant way and actually would you share with everybody what the percentage is that managers take uh from their clients bookings okay uh now uh again i work in commission only um and uh the interview interest the commissions uh range from 10 to 20. and it's it's different people different things i think it's pretty common uh specific especially for with developmental actors with no credits and starting out in which you need the um manager to do so many many many things and with a a lesser chance of getting there's never any guarantees but certainly someone comes an actor comes to me and they have a a solid career in place it's going to be different than someone just arriving in l.a and something like that but uh i do 15. yeah and you know that um according to irs uh parameters uh to this moment uh in my life um that's considered a business expense so that's a write-off of your taxes and so you get you're not paying all that money and this is the only profession i can any profession i can think of whereas you could you can where you can bring in executive and executive team your manager and your agent and you don't pay them unless or until money comes in so it's a good deal for the actors i think in that respect you know it's funny because sometimes i've spoken with actors who say you know i'm paying my manager 15 percent uh because they're in the union they're paying their agent a ten percent commission fee i mean i'm spending they're paying 20 to their print agent right but i'm talking about first for sag actors who are getting union acting gigs as you know it's the ten percent they're saying i can't believe i've got to pay 25 you know commission fee before you know any of the taxes were taken out and i guess that's one way to view it and the way that i would view it is hey you're making 75 of a job that you probably never would have gotten if you didn't have representation oh yeah and as my clients get into higher levels it gets very very complex um in terms of what i need to pay attention to and uh you you think trying to break a career in would be the hardest thing and it is at a certain level because what unless you get some momentum going some base credits it's very hard to keep breaking through because we know that a casting director is maybe get for a little part uh may get 10 to 20 000 submissions they're going to see what 20 to 200 people you're not exaggerating with those numbers well maybe it feels like it i mean i've heard i have heard in the thousands um i don't think 10 000 is going crazy at all um but i've heard these kinds of numbers from casting many a time but certainly the manager earns his money working for free until the careers is really happening and then the work increases uh on a more executive and well-paid level uh even even actors who come to me for management and brought bookings that are coming up on you know with them and you know brought me in on them which is necessary but they wanted to do that because they wanted to encourage me and they certainly wanted me to service that um but you know even in that circumstance a good manager is is earning his money up and down uh minor minor minor example uh the client on a series while he was on location they had him throw in one line for a different episode he wasn't in for a little insert that already been he wasn't in the in that episode but they were doing just a one-liner talking on the telephone and his agent his business manager uh nobody caught it but me he was owed another fifty thousand dollars because that constituted an episode and he was paid per episode that client made a big profit on me forget forget the value of my work and the value of the work that i wasn't paid for he made a profit on me just in that one job that's incredible hey steve i'm gonna wind this up because i know we have a number of questions that i definitely want to get to so let me just see what came in oh here we go okay so this is from rodney in atlanta and he wants to know are there many managers outside of the major markets and if so is it necessary for me to have both a manager and an agent almost two questions there in the big city if you can if you could if you're starting out if you can get a good manager which is could be hard then it's i think it's your lucky day because there's somebody who's going to be working for you on spec for free until things happened and um but when you talk about small markets i find that um there's so there's such a small amount of work relative to new york and los angeles that we tend to see a company doing everything they're doing casting they're doing aid they're doing agenting they're doing management and you know sometimes yeah you know in smaller markets it's not as it's not quite the same in terms of what works for building the career you you often find the of the two companies in your town in your medium-sized city that has uh representation um whatever their deal is is what you consider looking if you're in st louis and you're looking for a manager and an agent i i i i've visited there i've never lived there but it doesn't seem like it could be something that you would do okay okay great um actually this is somebody from your hometown if i wanted to get a manager what's the best way to find and introduce myself to them this is from cary in ohio oh ohio yeah uh okay well i think again related to what i just said um but how about if they are moving to a major market they aren't so i would i would do of course each city has its own analysis we might do i would see who are the players in terms of talent representation in that town when i grew up in cleveland there were two or three what i call players today i think there's more like five so as opposed to hundreds and hundreds in new york and l.a but so i would target them and see what their what they're about what their rep is what their what their parameters are but how about if they were going to move to la or new york how would you recommend i'm going to move to la okay um certainly people sometimes say why do you need a manager if you don't have a career to manage well that's true why would a manager want you unless they're into giving services i mean i do lots of you know i do private coaching and career counseling and that's a whole different ball game but for my for me to sign somebody i need to see a whole variety of things which we can talk about or next time but but i just mean as far as if they were going to start searching for a manager in l.a or new york what would be the process in los angeles is to look at the membership list of the talent managers association which was formed in 1954 and is quite dedicated to the highest ethics never charge for services i mean it's a good it's a good very good starting point because there's some good people there who have uh been vetted and been to get in you have to go through a whole process of um on that i think that there's see this is a long answer that's why i'm kind of stumbling here uh it depends on your approach you don't get one in advance it doesn't i mean yes there are people many people who do these big big mega showcases and it's true i have occasionally found someone wonderful and even though they're green as green could be i've gotten on board but certainly you would want to wait till you get to los angeles you do a lot of research not just on managers but you're what you're going to do i would say it looks like a friend i would say come here uh get into classes so your training's starting to happen try to choose some teachers who whose names are meaningful marquee value and start submitting the hell on student films and um anything more you can find and get some basis before you start submitting yourself to managers yeah that's a good that's a great point and when you're just talking about networking there's no better way of just finding out not only for managers but for agents as well is talking to other actors in the class and talking to the instructors and certain names will start popping up it doesn't mean you're ready to to meet with them but at least you'll you'll start knowing who some of the bigger players are i'd like to say that so many times young actors jump to get any sort of manager or agent and they go back to the roommate saying ha ha i have you know my career is happening yours isn't you know subtle but it's a fool's paradise because having an agent having a manager doesn't mean you have a career it means you have you're tied up with somebody so you you have to look at these things very objectively is this a relationship that can really be right for you or is it just something that makes you feel good about it about something happening that's that's a very good point i want to try to squeeze one more quick question in this is from garrett in australia uh karen wants to know uh you know he lives far from la is it possible to potentially audition for a manager online is that something you've ever experienced um i have been auditioned online um with big credits i had met an australian man um in the us and he went back to australia and we communicated that way but why would a manager be interested in somebody in australia unless there was something specifically marketable in hollywood in a real way now um the person's not here the person does this person have a visa does this person have significant credits and training excuse me i'm just kind of assuming that this person was planning on moving to los angeles but wanted to know if they could possibly find a manager prior to going to la you know via skype i don't think i'm sure people do i don't see how it could work i don't see why a manager i mean this is hard and hard thing to say but i don't see why this this manager on skype would go they might say yeah i'll take a meeting but see that's not how it's done i'm sure people do what anything you or i could say from years of experience someone does the opposite and becomes a movie star but and someone wins the lotto too but you know um i think submitting to managers from far away yes and if they want to talk to you on skype or something fine but the the concept of auditioning for them and someone saying oh yes i'll sign you i i don't get it unless they're just collecting lots of people or selling something i don't know so basically it sounds like it would be a good way to introduce themselves and then set up a meeting and then they would come and sit down and talk with the manager and then if they're going to move there then you know you could take it from there yeah that can work i get submissions from all over the world um i actually just met with a a beautiful woman um uh 18 and play younger uh from china and that so anything's possible but you know getting into a good manager can be very hard sure that makes sense steve i know i have to wrap this up i want to thank you so much for being a part of this event for people who want to reach you whether it's to find out more about your movie rich kids or just to find out more about you what is the best way for them to get a hold of you i'm happy to take emails uh let's use info info at nashim.com and i'll spell that n is in november a s h i a m as in mother nationality but please put the subject line very clearly uh that they're contacting from this i get hundreds of emails almost daily so i need a lot of subject lines in there great stephen thank you so much i want to thank you very much it's such a pleasure to chat with you and i'd be happy to visit again sounds great see you later and if anybody has any additional questions i will be sticking around uh after we finish today and i'll try to get through all the questions uh that i can so we're going to take a couple minute break a couple of minutes break and then we'll be right back thank you again stephen thank you