How 3 creatives opened a talent agency for local young emerging artistes

In one line, what do you do and what is your most significant achievement?

From a school project to a full-fledged business, these 3 creatives opened a pathway for local young emerging artistes.

Who are you and what business did you start?

We are a team of three creatives with a shared passion for the performing arts. With a combined experience of over 25 years in the Singapore arts scene, we realised that there was a lack of support for youths in the local performing arts community. Many who aspire to break into the market feel lost and fearful as they lack resources, and do not know where to begin or who to turn to for guidance. As such, dreamALIVE – a talent agency with an aim to shine a spotlight on the future generation of performing artistes in Singapore, was born.

Established in 2021, dreamALIVE specially caters to this “in between” group of young emerging artistes, helping them through the 3 Gs.

Grow Audience with better branding and marketing.

Gain Experience through performance opportunities.

Gain Knowledge through artiste management and guidance.

What's your backstory?

It all started with the Batey Hackathon 2021, which was a two-week long intensive that pushed participants to craft and pitch an innovative idea to a panel of judges. Starting out as a team of five strangers, we were tasked to come up with a business idea related to the theme of ‘Creative Subcultures'. Like any other brainstorming session, we threw in ideas from everywhere in an attempt to find a common interest. Eventually, we discovered that all five members had been performers since a young age. We naturally bonded over this and as we exchanged stories, we came to a consensus on one thing – the lack of support for young emerging artistes is often what causes many to lose the drive to further pursue a career in the arts. At this crossroads in life, many aspiring artistes our age (some even friends of ours) face the uncertainties associated with turning a passion into a career. Moreover, they lack the resources to pull their audience towards them. While established companies focus on marketing their “polished” artistes, we asked the question “Who will care for these emerging artistes?”

dreamALIVE was therefore created as an app/networking platform for local artistes within the community to gain exposure, collaborate, and learn from each other. We designed and developed a prototype of the app in less than two weeks, pitched the idea, and emerged as the Silver winner. The company has since transitioned into a marketing and talent agency for young emerging artistes in Singapore.

What should be the first steps to take to enter your industry?

In order to kickstart your journey in the performing arts industry, identifying your target audience is essential. This is especially crucial when there are so many categories of performers. Do not try to reach every group. Instead, find the market that you are able to contribute most to and focus on making your brand known amongst this group first. Word spreads a lot faster than you can imagine since the performing arts industry is so small. For us, we set out to target youths who are stepping out of their comfort zone to join the performing arts industry. In particular, we chose to start with singers/songwriters and musicians.

It is also important to identify the demand for your services. This is tied to the unique selling point (USP) of your business. So before venturing into the money-making phase, you should always find your USP. What differentiates us from other talent agencies is that we do not just recruit based on your background. We open ourselves to those who may not have much experience but want to build their portfolio.

How did you spend your First 100 Days of launching your business?

The first 100 days after we launched our business was spent on increasing exposure and making a name for ourselves in the performing arts community. As part of our market launch campaign, we planned and hosted our first ever online concert. A total of 10 promising young talents were scouted and featured as performers for our inaugural event. Our representative short film that embodied our company's purpose also premiered during the three-hour long concert. We would say that the biggest takeaway from this is to start off with something big. The adage ‘go big or go home' holds especially true when launching something new.

In the era of social media, we made sure to utilise our platforms to spread the word. We tried our best to post regularly so as to increase brand presence. In fact, we even bought ads on Instagram to boost our post-concert materials. Fortunately, that paid off as we saw an increase in our follower count where people from the community expressed interest in our brand. Thereafter, we started reaching out to prospective artistes and businesses.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain partnerships/customers?

In terms of artistes, it is important to understand their needs and goals before we sign them. Prior to signing them, we would discuss with them their plans for their artistic journey. Monthly check-ins are also conducted with each artiste during their time with us. Additionally, we maintain a person-person relationship with our artistes. When we let our artistes' individuality shine and get to know them as a person, the gap between an agent and customer is bridged. At the end of the day, an artiste-agency relationship is based highly on a person-person relationship. Both parties should have a say in order for both parties to be proud of their work.

In terms of clients, retaining gig partners and regular shows has been a challenge for us and even for industry veterans. Everyone is replaceable especially when your client receives a better offer. Some ways to retain clients would be to provide them an edge with our other skill sets. For example, this could come in the form of complimentary marketing for a collaboration event. Of course, establishing a good rapport with business owners is key to building trust. However, clients often look at the end result to determine if they want to further the partnership. Once they know we can deliver what we promise, they are more inclined to work with us again.

What has taken you from 0 to 100?

While participating in the Batey Challenge 2022, our team caught the attention of one of the judges, Mr Lee Han Shih, founder of Potato Productions. He connected us with River Valley Irregulars (RVI), a sub-company under his.

We worked with them to organise and host last year's Christmas edition of Friday Fries Night, a bi-monthly youth networking event by RVI. The event saw an impressive turnout, the highest since it first started!

During our first live event, our artistes impressed the crowd with their vocals, and put up an amazing performance. It felt surreal to witness our months of hard work pay off. Since then, dreamALIVE has ventured into securing more live performance gigs and our team has been working hard to promote our artistes.

What is one underrated thing in your industry that business owners should start doing/using?

Networking is much more important than you think. Do it as much as you can, and do it wherever you can. The performing arts industry in Singapore is extremely small so everyone knows everyone. Don't be shy to reach out to people because that is often how jobs come – through word-of-mouth from your connections. Networking might seem troublesome at first but it could be something as simple as just staying back a few minutes after an event to greet the speaker/organiser. The personal one-to-one approach is most appreciated when it comes to business relations.

(Here's another because we couldn't leave this out.)

Do not undersell yourself just because you are new! Unfortunately, some businesses who engage less experienced performers would quote way below the market rate. Although these performers come with less experience, the bare minimum is to charge the market rate. Know your worth from the start and do not set a prevalence for other musicians to be underpaid.

What was one failure you had to go through that others in your industry should look out for?

Despite emailing businesses and reaching out to many many businesses and performing arts entities, only a few responded. It did not help that we offered fresh faces who were not as polished as industry veterans who could bring a crowd with them wherever they performed. It is definitely a tough balance when it comes to understanding the industry, coping with the needs of our artistes and managing the expectations of gig providers. As a young talent agency run by the younger people, it certainly takes some guts to navigate through uncharted waters. Aside from proving the “legitimacy” of our company, we find ourselves constantly having to convince clients that our artistes possess the ability to deliver quality performances despite their age. But our role as an agent has been clear from the start – to provide a safe space for our artistes to grow and hone their artistry. Due to their young nature, we assist heavily on the negotiations to make sure that their worth is not undermined.

What platform/tools do you use for your business?

Google Workspace is our main platform where basically everything is done. We use it for internal admin matters and for communication with external clients/partners.

Notion is used for project management to keep track of all our projects. It houses information detailing the requirements and status of past and ongoing projects.

Adobe Creative Cloud, Canva, and Frame.io are used for creative content creation purposes. Social media posts, videos and posters and a lot more are created using these softwares/tools.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

Currently, dreamALIVE houses four artistes and a few partner companies. We have dedicated 2023 to growing our revenue and working with more gig providers. As of now, we are also working on publishing more original content on our social media. In fact, our podcast series hosted by our very own artistes will be released in the coming months. The Pish Posh Podcast, a series exploring the world of performing arts, youths, and pop culture will be available for viewing on YouTube!

The future is always uncertain for any start-up but we hope to expand our influence. We want to gradually grow our pool of artistes and business partners in the next one to two years. But most importantly, we want to hold true to our cause to empower young emerging artistes in Singapore. Ultimately, we believe that passion and dedication to one's cause are the driving forces of a successful business.