What is a mother agent?

A mother agent is a home or “mother” agent who manages a model, developing and placing him or her in the right markets helping them build and maintain a career in modeling. They are generally considered a “model manager" and will manage the model, overseeing the worldwide agencies that represent that model.  In the traditional sense, a mother agency will be a small “mom & pop” operation, generally unknown to the public consisting of 1-2 people. A true mother agent is not a booking agency. Their specialty is scouting, placement, development& management only. However agencies of all size and scale from standard model agencies to major corporate model agencies can also act as “mother agent” to some of their models. In this case, the model agency acts as the personal manager in addition to the booking agent where they place and oversee their models with their agencies worldwide. 

It’s not easy to research mother agents as they have historically been small, under the radar companies known for their reputation within the community of top agencies. There is very limited information out there. Because of this, unfortunately there are many scams or manager that are not qualified that act as professional mother agents. A mother agent or manager never charges a model for their services. The way a mother agent makes money is they receive a commission from the money a model makes from their booking agency. 

For example, your agency and manager take a commission from the jobs you book. They should never charge you fees upfront to manage you. As an example, if they place you with a booking agency and the booking agency books a job of $1000 for you, the booking agency will generally take a commission of 20% out from your fee. The model will take $800 and the booking agency will take $200. The booking agency then pays half of their commission to the mother agency. In this case the booking agency gets $100 and the mother agency gets $100. The model still receives $800.

A model can decide whether to choose their current model booking agency as their mother agent or to choose a designated manager or true mother agent to manage them. In a post pandemic world, many models are seeing less communication and guidance from their model agencies so there has been a movement of more models looking for individual management and the emergence of almost 100% rise in mother agents opening. It is important to distinguish the difference between a mother agent who is learning on the job versus a mother agent who is proven in the industry, has contacts at all the best agencies and understands how to develop you. Especially if the model has to sign a 2-3 year contract. The mission of this site is to help talent know who the proven and legitimate mother agents are. If a mother agent is not on this list, there may be questions or concerns about that company.