King joined the homeworking giant in early 2018 and was, like many, hit hard by Covid. However, she used the pandemic to refocus her business around her two great passions – music and travel.
“During Covid, I just thought; ‘I love music, and travel is what I am great at, and I have so much experience so why don’t I go build my business within the music industry?’ And that’s what I did,’” she told TTG.
King hit the ground running by reacquainting herself with former music industry clients, while also presenting herself – and what she could offer – to record labels and management companies.
“I was honestly overwhelmed with the response,” she said. “These companies really wanted someone who could be an extension of their team and they wanted a more personal service.”
Over the past two years, the Manchester-based agent has turned over more than £1 million a year, booking tours and making sure Brit and Grammy-award winning artists were well set to travel the world.
“I started working with a few different companies and the business just sky-rocketed through word of mouth,” King said. “It’s grown more than I could ever have dreamt of.”
King is now involved in all aspects of the industry, including scouting for music video locations and dealing with artists’ often exacting demands. “They all have very specific requests so we just make sure we’re finding them exactly what they want."
She said working with the music industry posed very challenges compared with catering for the general public, particularly the pace of work and complexity of certain issues.
“One time we had all the instruments go missing when the artist had a show in the evening,” she told TTG. “When things like that happen, you’ve got to be on-hand to help find them and have them delivered to where the artist is going. It’s a very fast-moving industry."
Looking ahead, King’s main objective is to continue scaling her business and build “a travel company that’s well known in the [music] industry". To do so, she has recruited another three Travel Counsellors to assist with day-to-day operations.
“The good thing about Travel Counsellors is that we can scale with our colleagues,” she said, adding that the homeworking giant also provides the backing of a “global company”. “For me, it’s about giving a personal service to the industry," King added.
