WHY?

I quit my corporate job as an account executive at Xerox to become an agent for a celebrity photographer in LA. This was a foreign concept to my Grandmother who lived in a small town and delighted in telling her friends at church, that her baby worked at Xerox––a totally recognizable company with commercials on TV.

After five years at Xerox, I was bored, and searching for something else to do with my life. I moved from Seattle to LA two years earlier and while I didn’t know what I wanted to do; I knew there was more to life than selling copiers.

What inspired me to change my life was a conversation with a photographer at a Hollywood party. He wowed me with stories of shooting celebrities like Denzel Washington for magazines and ad campaigns for Coca-Cola. I was faking cool, but I was mouth open star struck.

A week later, I left Xerox to do a job I didn’t even know existed seven days earlier. I became an agent.

I learned quickly that the product––an artist––was different, but the process of marketing that artist was exactly the same as what I had been doing at Xerox for 5 years.

Soon, I got phone calls from makeup artists, hair stylists, fashion stylists and photographers who needed my help getting work at record labels, ad agencies, and magazines. They wanted to know if I could do the same for them. Their confidence gave me the courage to take the next step and open The Crystal Agency.

HOW?

While there were certainly some tough times and living in the dressing room of a photo rental studio was one of them, I loved what I was doing and couldn’t think of anything that would be more fun or financially rewarding.

Taking what I learned at Xerox and infusing it into representing artists took my hustle to a whole new level.  Starting with photographers gave me an insider’s knowledge into how to get their attention and taught me how to inspire them to hire artists I represented.

I spent years learning who the real decision-makers were and fine tuned my approach to secure face-to-face meetings which now take place on Facetime or zoom. I learned, “the product is different but the process for capturing the attention of high profile clients is exactly the same.”

I’m so proud of what my artists and I accomplished together for our clients. It seems like a dream, but the dream produced hundreds of jobs with Halle Berry, Alec Baldwin, Tyra Banks, Pink, Denzel Washington, Snoop, Jon Hamm, Kerry Washington, Natalie Zea, Nia Long, and Simon Baker to name a very few.

There were times––when Volkswagen was trying to repossess my car or I was waiting on an overdue check from a client––that I wondered if I would make it. But that experience taught me how to be courageous, lean in and ask for what I want.  This is one of the strategies I’d like to teach you. I also want to help you eliminate the uncertainty of putting yourself out there as a full-time artist.

Would you like to build your career on a solid foundation of the lessons I’ve learned, implemented and fine-tuned?  As an agent, I made sure my artists were safe, protected, prepared and paid. I was there to get them over the finish line waving the blue first place ribbon.

Working with celebrities and on ad campaigns may seem like a fantasy. But I want you to hold onto that dream because I’ve made it happen for thousands of artists and if you’re willing to put in the time, I can help make it happen for you too.