Everybody wants a team, but a team with nothing to manage is just overhead. Before you hire a manager, booker, or publicist, run the operation yourself for a season. Book your own shows, pitch your own press, run your own ads. You’ll learn what the work actually costs in time and money — and you’ll know immediately when someone you hire isn’t doing it.
DIY teaches you the language of every seat at the table. When you’ve negotiated your own venue payout, no manager can snow you about what a “good deal” looks like. When you’ve run your own ad campaigns, you’ll spot a lazy marketing plan in five minutes. The artists who get exploited are almost always the ones who outsourced everything before understanding anything.
Doing it yourself also builds the leverage that makes a team worth having. A manager wants to manage momentum, not manufacture it. Walk in with streaming numbers climbing, shows selling, and a fanbase engaged, and you negotiate from strength — better splits, shorter terms, real accountability. Nobody builds your career harder than you will.
There’s a season for everything. DIY isn’t forever; it’s foundation. Once the workload outgrows your hours and the opportunities outgrow your Rolodex, hire slowly — one role at a time, starting with your biggest bottleneck. Because you did the work first, you’ll hire smart, manage well, and Document everything while you DIY — contacts, payouts, what worked, what flopped. That log becomes your operations manual, and one day you’ll hand it to an assistant or manager who can run the playbook you wrote. Systems you build yourself are systems you truly own.
About the Author – Ruben Burgos: Ruben Burgos brings over 25 years of music expertise and more than 15 years of model guidance to the table. He is the indie major pinnacle to retaining credits for musicians and helping them navigate this wicked industry without the fuckery.