News

ATC Manager and MMF consultant Jonny Dawson has now moved out to LA after many years working with the MMF on our US manager engagement strategy.

For the last 4 years, Jonny has run annual international manager meetups at SXSW for MMF members as well as annual tours of LA, NYC and Nashville to gather US managers views such as on Dissecting the Digital Dollar.

He is now focusing on building these US networks through regular manager meetups in LA and New York. Jonny will be writing a monthly “letter from America” for MMF members with an overview of these events and other issues of relevance.

Here’s Jonny’s first letter:

Hello everyone.

I have now relocated to LA, and plan to send monthly updates with what is (hopefully!) useful info on various topics. Please do get in touch if you have any US related queries and I will do my best to help in whatever way I can.

One of my goals for moving here was to set up regular manager events – I am delighted that these will kick off in September in LA and will continue for the next year alternating monthly between NYC and LA. If you are travelling here you can keep up to date on the event dates and topics on managermeetups.com and are of course, welcome to attend!

The move itself has been fairly frictionless, thankfully. I moved here on an O1 visa, which although a little expensive and fairly extensive, came through with ease in the end. I would be happy to recommend an Artist manager Visa specialist on this front should anyone wish to do the same.

There is a lot of bureaucracy here – the US is still quite old fashioned in a lot of its back-end processes – for example – I am paying my rent via a cheque (remember those!). I have the basics in place now, Social Security number and US bank account set up. Honestly, it feels like passing the baton over here in that sense between Brit expats, I have been very grateful for the advice I have received on this front and would be happy to do the same should any of you move out here.

The best things so far is the time zone… Its a very early start here – which I like, but by the evening it tends to be much more relaxed. People seem to have dinner out earlier and late afternoon / evening meetings are less frequent than in London from what I have found so far.

I love the light here too – it sounds a little cheesy to say maybe, but I hadn’t really considered that before – light looks different in different places due to the position of the Sun and the climate and here it’s amazing.

Oh, I have also learnt to avoid getting into conversations about traffic… 

That’s it for now! Next time I will update you on the topic discussed at the first event, and our findings from it.

Jonny Dawson
MMF Consultant