WHAT I WISH I’D KNOWN Sandy Dworniak established the writer and producer management company This Much Talent in 1991. She has gone on to build an impressive roster which includes Jim Abbiss, Liam Howe and 6 Figure Music, amongst many others. Her clients have worked with the likes of Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Lana Del Rey, Stormzy, Massive Attack and Foo Fighters. She recalls some hard lessons learned across her career… What I wish I’d known before I started my career in management is that people aren’t your friends. You have to be mindful of your relationships with clients, especially because things can get very tough. It’s a really weird situation, because you can be like best friends, but if something goes wrong, that best friendship can end forever. That’s what I struggled with in the early part of my career — being so close with people and then being really disappointed and heartbroken by the end of the relationship. I realised this the first time I was sacked by a big client. That happened about six years into my company, so I was still pretty young. The reason I was sacked was because I had an assistant who basically undermined me and he [the client] sacked me out of the blue. I was so invested in this relationship because we’d worked together since he was a young artist and had nothing, and then suddenly he was earning tonnes of money and we were working on really big projects. My assistant left, started a company and took this client, so then I had to go into a legal battle to get paid, basically. That was really ugly and went on for five years. That’s another pitfall of being a manager — people will decide that once they sack you, they never have to pay you ever again, so you have to battle for your right for post-term commission. I didn’t have any contracts in those days either, so that’s another one I wish I’d known. Not every person needs a contract, but in that situation I didn’t have one and they basically denied that I was this person’s manager. So I had to fight and it was absolutely heartbreaking, not just because I was so invested in his talent, but because I saw the trajectory and knew that he was going to be huge. 56
“I find the morality of the industry quite difficult to deal with sometimes.”
It also taught me that lawyers can be really difficult because it’s their job to resolve a situation in someone else’s favour, even if someone else is completely wrong. It’s immoral. I find the morality of the industry quite difficult to deal with sometimes. Ultimately, that experience taught me a lot about how important it is to have clear boundaries, and if you have a deal with someone that isn’t in writing, make sure they fully understand what that deal is, have acknowledged what their deal is, or that there’s someone else in the room who heard you say those things. We resolved it in the end, but it was a horrible, nasty battle that broke my heart and taught me everything about how to be a manager. You have to be mindful that it’s a business at the end of the day, and not get too emotionally attached. As managers, it’s hard not to be emotionally involved in the work we do, because we do a lot of it for free; that means we have to love what we do. But I’ve learned how to hold a piece of myself back, so I’m not invested on every level, like you would be in a friendship. That said, for every client that fucks you over, there are 20 who won’t. I’ve got people who’ve been with me for as long as I’ve had my company and have been incredibly loyal. We grew up together, we learned how to do it together, and they’re still here. Like Jim Abbiss, and Liam [Howe] who I’ve been with for 17 or 18 years, and Barny [Barnicott] for 20 years. Also, as a female in the music industry, there are a lot of sharks. Navigating the shark infested waters is something I wish I was more skilled at when I was younger. Things are changing so much in terms of the perception of women in the industry, and we feel we’re equal now, but when I started, it wasn’t like that. I was one of very few women that did the job that I do, so I had to
