What's more important... the agent or the agency?
Alex is the Managing Director of major UK talent agency InterTalent. He represents his clients alongside overseeing the agency's creative strategy, day-to-day operations & acquisitions.
Welcome to Dealmakers with Alex Segal ✍️, a Substack on the realities of being a talent agent, packed with weekly insights to keep you ahead of the game 🚀.
Having negotiated £40m+ in talent deals 💼 and grown company turnover 5x in 5 years 📈, I am sharing my experiences and knowledge of 17 years representing some of the biggest stars in the UK.
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It’s not often that I talk about specific clients on here, but sometimes a project comes along that not only makes a huge impact but reminds you why you wanted to be an agent in the first place.
The first time I spoke to Pitch Productions about a potential Vinnie Jones documentary for Netflix was in August 2023. It was a great chat, but it seemed unlikely for many reasons. I’ve worked with Vinnie for 13 years and have a great sense of what he likes and doesn’t like.
The project fell apart 10 times. Different reasons every time. Timing. Money. Interest. Creative. You name it. At various points, it was totally dead in the water… then it kept springing back to life. We finally went into production in 2024 and wrapped in early 2025. I remember watching the final cut in an editing suite in Soho over a year ago.
We then had to be patient.
It sat on Netflix's shelf for well over a year. TX dates were shifting all the time. I started to wonder if it would ever see the light of day, until FINALLY we had a date that seemed to stick. 26th May 2026.
Netflix’s PR and marketing machine has gone into overdrive (they’re on another level), and not only do we have an incredible Vinnie Jones doc, but an amazing amount of buzz around it.
Right now, Vinnie’s face is all over the London underground, and I am being sent the poster daily by friends and colleagues. It won’t ever get old. Keep sending if you see it.
This project we started 3 years ago, a phone call from my living room… is now not only on massive billboards all over London, but later this month will be watched by millions of people all over the world.
You have ups and downs, amazing days, bad days and lots of ok days, but it’s all worth it when a project like this really takes off. I have negotiated thousands of deals over a 17-year career, but there are some projects, some deals, that just hit differently and can, in part, define your career for years to come.
I’ve been reflecting on this project a lot and the crazy path it has taken to get to this moment. It’s a massive reminder that game-changing projects rarely happen in a straight line, and if it ever looks over, it just means it’s over for today. Not tomorrow.
It’s taken patience, creativity, focus, perseverance, effort and optimism.
I could talk about so many big projects I have worked on over the years that at some point along the journey, it was officially over. All of that effort for nothing… but somehow we got there in the end.
This is why I love my job. You just never know.
Keep calm. Keep focused. Know what’s important and work out how to get there. I wrote a piece all about the art of dealmaking. You can check it out here.
It leads me onto the topic I’m going to unravel today, which is primarily a conversation about the importance of infrastructure and information.
Agent or Agency? What’s more important?
Let’s go. ↓
This is a conversation that comes up time and time again. It’s also one that seems a bit difficult to openly discuss. The agent v agency debate can often feel like an attack against those who have decided to work differently to yourself, but it’s not intended that way at all. There are no rules in this industry. Some talent love being part of big agencies, others want a much smaller set-up.
There’s no right or wrong; success can happen anywhere, it’s all about personal preference, and quite often it goes in cycles. There are moments where agents and/or talent want one type of setup, then at some point opt for the complete opposite, and then flip-flop throughout their career.
So what is actually more important? Having a great agent or having a great agency?
The truth is that you need BOTH to have the greatest opportunity at success.
Having one without the other will, at some point, bring limitations.
Maybe not on day one, maybe not for most opportunities, but you will hit a ceiling. It’s why in my 17 year career I have only ever worked for 3 of the best agencies in the UK. I believe in myself, I know I’m a great agent, and sure I could do it by myself if I wanted to, from wherever, but without the power of a great company behind me with amazingly talented colleagues, their ideas, their opinions, all of our skillsets combined, all of our relationships that we share, the strength of the infrastructure, the endless amounts of information flowing through the company every day then I would only know what I know.
I wouldn’t know everything that I don’t know.
And that’s a hell of a lot.
That’s a major problem.
You can be a fantastic agent… talented, creative, hard working, a brilliant networker, all the things I preach about all the time… but if it’s just you (or a very small team of people), the amount of knowledge, the opportunities, the relationships, information and everything else can only exist to a certain amount. There are only so many hours in a day. It doesn’t mean boutique talent agencies can’t be successful (many are and I highly respect them), but having worked for Curtis Brown, ARG & InterTalent, I can say from personal experience that a huge amount of the success for their clients comes from the entire team, the company-wide communication, and the insane levels of daily information.
Likewise, if you’re at a fantastic talent agency but you don’t have the right individual championing you every day of the week, who is passionate, excited by your work and brilliant at their job, then you will find yourself failing to capitalise on the incredible infrastructure around you. This can happen. I know a lot of talented performers (actors, presenters, all sorts…) who have found their way to some of the biggest talent agencies in the country, but without an agent who is passionate, talented and hard working, find themselves in that really difficult place of being somewhere that sounds impressive and looks amazing in your bio, but you don’t actually get any work.
I see so many people wasting their careers because they have a great agency but not a great agent… and they struggle to know what to do. They feel stuck. They don’t want to give up the big machine just in case it FINALLY takes off or they look like they’ve failed at an agency where most of the other clients on the books are stars, but they also know if they found the right person at a smaller company, there is a chance it would take off there instead. They find themselves in no man’s land, handcuffed by being at a great agency without the right agent to deliver success. It doesn’t just happen automatically because of where you are.
Many people say that the agent is absolutely more important than the agency they work for (what does it matter who they work for if I believe in them as the best person for my career?), and I totally understand their thought process; there’s some merit to that argument, but I would disagree.
Agents who work for themselves can experience a lot of positives from doing so. Freedom, one. Being their own boss, two. Many more, I’m sure… but what they won’t admit (or maybe even realise) is that they are heavily restricted by only being one person able to be in one place having one conversation at one time.
A huge part of my success at InterTalent is that I have 50 colleagues all taking hundreds of calls, thousands of emails, and dozens of meetings every day, which we share with the entire company all day, every day, in real time. That is an insane level of information, communication and opportunity that you can’t compete with if you don’t have it.
I often re-read Powerhouse, which is the GOAT of all talent agent books (it’s an incredible look into the history of CAA), and this (lightly paraphrased) quote from the actor David Oyelowo always grabs me: ‘I met with Joel, who I really liked. Over the next year, while I was at a different agency, Joel would stay in contact with me and check in on a project I had spoken to him about. I became disgruntled with my current agency and ended up signing with Joel, rather than the agency (CAA), but then I watched the agency facilitate the conversations we had been having over the last year, and it was very eye-opening to me.’
This is the exact moment he realised the agency mattered as much as the agent.
This is the truth:
A great agent is NOT more important than a great agency.
A great agency is also NOT more important than a great agent.
You need a GREAT AGENT who is at a GREAT AGENCY.
Let me break it down with more reasons that reinforce my opinion:
🚨 When things go wrong, you want a team around you that has seen it all before and knows how to handle it. A PR crisis, contract issues, late payments, on-set issues etc. Experience in handling these issues delicately is everything. The ability to see around corners after years of experience is a superpower.
💡 Sometimes the breakthrough for a client comes from somebody who technically isn’t ‘their’ agent. A random idea from another agent in the kitchen over lunch, flipping an offer to another client in the company when someone else has just turned it down, a colleague making an introduction, someone overhearing a conversation in the office… etc.
🔄 If your agent moves on (or pivots their career), a great agency means continuity, an understanding of your backstory and ongoing protection of your career. You may well find an equally brilliant (or better) agent already at the same agency.
🌐 Securing the best partnerships, across many different verticals, genres, countries and the myriad of platforms, requires specialists far beyond what any individual can carry alone. I have spoken about different types of agenting, generalists v specialists (check that one out here if you’re interested), and both are needed for a reason.
📈 The best agents will become even stronger inside great agencies because they are constantly being challenged, learning from and listening to their more experienced colleagues, exposed to different ideas and new ways of thinking, and having (friendly but pressured) competition from the other ambitious people around them. Great environments elevate great people.
💪 An agency with a long-standing track record over many years has immediate (unseen) huge leverage. Buyers know they are dealing with a company that has importance and influence. We can all pretend that ‘big agency bias’ doesn’t exist, something else no one likes to talk about, but it does. It’s real. It’s often subconscious, and it brings a huge advantage. One day, I’ll do a whole piece on it. That automatically changes how seriously conversations are taken on the other end of the phone.
⭐ Being on the same roster with bigger names than yourself immediately elevates your own profile. Credibility is contagious. The company you keep, even if it’s as simple as the list on a website, is extremely important. If you want to be a highly valued person, then you need to be connected to highly valued people. It tells the outside world that a) a great company believes in your future and b) you are taking your career seriously.
⚡ The entertainment industry is moving at a lightning pace. You take a week off for a holiday, and you feel behind when you get back. It’s crazy. Trends change daily. The amount of news every day is insane. A brilliant individual agent can absolutely keep up to a level, but you can’t keep up with everything by yourself.
🏆 It's human nature that sometimes things come to a natural conclusion with your agent, but you love the agency as they’ve supported you for a long time. There might be other talented agents in the building who might have better synergy with that particular client. Fresh eyes and a new voice championing someone (armed with knowledge of what is and isn’t working) can reinvent careers.
The most successful careers in this industry aren't built by accident, and they usually aren't built alone.
It’s a combination of trust, talent, relationships, infrastructure, and relentless daily effort from an individual (or group of individuals) who genuinely cares, operating inside a company that can deliver results.
Your agent is your voice.
Your agency turns up the volume.
Neither is truly enough on its own.
📥 I would love to hear from you. Any ideas, thoughts and feedback via alex@intertalentgroup.com are always most welcome.
Please subscribe if you haven’t already, and share this with your friends.
See you next time.
Alex
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