— The Methodology, Chapter by Chapter
An operating system for careers that are ready to be moved.
Four deliberate stages. One senior partner at every threshold. No pipelines, no associates, no junior handoffs.
— A note before the chapters
Senior partners don't run rosters. They run careers.
The most common complaint we hear from talent considering a move — after the war stories about unresponsive agents and the offers that never came — is that management firms have stopped behaving like management firms. They've become submissions desks with voicemail.
Big Fish was built on a counter-premise. We are eleven people. Every name on our masthead is a partner or a senior manager with principal-agent lineage at WME, CAA, or UTA. We do not maintain a 200-client pipeline, and we will not accept an introduction we cannot personally steward. When we take a call, a partner takes it. When we open a negotiation, a partner is in the room. The four chapters that follow are not a sales sequence — they are the working rhythm of the firm, in the order they actually happen.
— The four chapters
From the first call to a signed term sheet, in deliberate order.
Each stage is led by a named partner and concludes with a written brief the client keeps. No chapter is shortened, skipped, or delegated to an associate.
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01
— Chapter One
Intro Call
A forty-five minute conversation with a Big Fish partner. No pitch deck. No prepared questions. We listen to the work, the trajectory, and the frustrations with current representation — and we tell you, candidly, whether we are the right firm for what comes next. If we are not, we refer you to a peer we trust.
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02
— Chapter Two
Strategy Session
A two-hour working session, in person at our Sunset Boulevard offices or via secure video, where we map your career against the current market. We bring comparable deal data, recent comparables on projects in your vertical, and a frank assessment of where leverage sits. You leave the room with a written strategy brief you own — not a slide deck we retain.
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03
— Chapter Three
Market Map
With your sign-off, the partner drafts an outreach map: which buyers receive a confidential approach, in what order, on what timeline. No mass submissions. No blind pitches. Every introduction is hand-made by the partner, addressed to a specific named executive, and tied to a specific project or slate. We run the map in waves and report back at each checkpoint.
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04
— Chapter Four
Close
The partner runs the negotiation end-to-end. Term sheet, deal memo, principal terms, and the long-form contract — all reviewed line by line with you, none handed off to legal ops. Our 92% principal-terms acceptance rate within 14 days of an offer is the result of how this chapter is run: the buyer receives a clean, considered term sheet from a principal, not a counter-proposal ping-pong from a queue.
— The methodology, measured
Three numerals that the work has earned.
Principal-terms acceptance
Within 14 days of an offer, across 230+ contracts closed since founding.
Average income lift
Measured across the roster in the first 18 months of representation.
Cumulative project value
Negotiated across the roster of 47 active clients since 2014.
— Credentials a buyer checks first
The rooms we've been in, the lists we've been named to.
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Trade recognition
Named to The Hollywood Reporter's Top 25 Boutique Management Firms — 2022 and 2024.
An independent editorial list, voted on by studio and network executives. The fact that we have been named twice in three years is, for us, the only external signal worth quoting.
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Awards-room proximity
Held seats at the negotiating tables behind 6 Emmy-winning series and 2 Grammy-nominated album cycles for current clients.
We do not claim credit for the work. We claim proximity — the kind that only comes from being in the room when terms are written, not when press releases go out.
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Partner lineage
Eleven senior agents and managers. Four partners promoting from principal-agent lineage at WME, CAA, and UTA. Founded by a former WME VP.
Boutique by design, not by accident. The senior-partner model only works if the senior partners have, themselves, run principal deals at scale.
— The next move
If the four chapters read like the way you want to be represented, the next step is a conversation.
Forty-five minutes. A named partner. No pitch deck, no prepared questions. We will tell you, on the call, whether Big Fish is the right firm for what you are building.
Confidentiality is the default. We do not publish our roster, and we do not announce new signings.