Jasmine Collier

Manager & tour manager. Currently working with Joyce Wrice, ESTA., Mack Keane, Kyle Dion, and Aluna. Has worked with Kiana Ledé, D Smoke, and Tiana Major 9. From Chula Vista, CA.

Searching for the dream job

Jasmine Collier graduated from college with a degree in journalism and moved to Japan shortly thereafter. Feeling like nothing was working out for her overseas, she moved back home to San Diego and began thinking about a career path that had long laid dormant in her mind - working in the music industry.

She had no real music experience and had never taken a music course, but she was told that only in-person, real-life experiences would prepare her anyway. So, she called upon an old DJ/producer friend who went by the name of ESTA., who had signed to the Soulection collective, to ask if he needed any help. ESTA. had two managers and an agent, but he still needed an assistant, so Jasmine signed on.

Stepping into a management role

After sharpening her skills with real-time assistant and managerial duties, she felt confident enough to step into a role as a manager. As fate would have it, her childhood friend, Joyce Wrice, was beginning to take music more seriously. To be fair, Joyce wasn’t very interested in having a formal manager and she was extremely protective of the 10+ year relationship she and Jasmine had.

But Jasmine’s mentor, Fam Udeorji, Childish Gambino’s manager, saw it differently. Why not manage your best friend? In his mind, it’s the perfect combination - trust is already baked into the relationship, so motives are pure. Not to mention, they both grew up in Japanese and Black homes in San Diego’s Chula Vista neighborhood with military fathers. Jasmine eventually convinced Joyce to allow her the opportunity to manage her on the grounds that no one knew her better. Fam’s advice proved powerful.

Jasmine considers herself more direct than Joyce, who began her career as rather reserved, in the way that many artists who care deeply about their craft are.

“She kind of tones me down,” Jasmine explains, “and I feel like I kind of push her outside of her comfort zone.”

From the beginning of their professional relationship, they were extremely intentional about creating boundaries between business and personal. Joyce always wanted “brutally honest” feedback from Jasmine about everything music and creative, which can be a tough predicament for a close friend to be in. But, as mature business partners, each individual recognized the need to understand the non-judgemental nature of business decisions.

Financing the dream

Still a relatively broke postgraduate living about 25 miles from Los Angeles, Jasmine needed multiple side hustles to power her long-term vision. Her many gigs included delivering food for Postmates, serving as a production assistant on music video and film sets, and working in restaurants, which she had done throughout high school and college to support herself.

“I remember it being so crazy. I'd fly to New York to the VMAs with the artists I was working with, and then the next morning, I'd be serving coffee in Beverly Hills to Jane Fonda, being like, ‘This is crazy, I was just at the VMAs and now I’m like, in this vest and tie serving coffee.’ It was kind of a mindfuck. I was frustrated because I felt like I was right there. Sometimes people that I would have meetings with [for a client] would come to my restaurant and be dining there. I would be like, I shouldn't be working at this restaurant right now, but it's what I have to do. I needed that income at that time to keep just my life afloat.”

Jasmine spent 2015 until 2019 working to support herself. Still, she built up skill sets that she carried with her long after she started managing it full-time.

Transferable skills

As a server, one has to build a connection with the customer in order to organize and optimize the experience that they are having while they are receiving your service. In the restaurant world, this experience is a meal, but in music, this could be a tour stop, a deal pitch, or a team all-hands.

Time management, organization, and relational management all were skills she picked up side-hustling that behooved her in her work with management clients and on tour.

Juggling artist management and tour management

Jasmine has been juggling building up a tour management company alongside her standard management work for almost her entire career. As a professional with an intimate understanding of the stringent demands of touring on an indie artist budget (all her artists are independent), she is frequently called upon to be a part of rising artists’ first time on the road. Her experiences on the road have since prompted her to want to help more women, particularly those of color, pipeline into the touring business.

When her management clients are working on albums or taking time off, Jasmine picks up the touring business - and, as an important note for all rising managers, this keeps her busy and balanced when her clients need some space from the industry.

Organizing the business ecosystem

In the case of Jasmine’s artists, especially Joyce, factors like a deep and personal desire for creative control make it most wise to opt for an independent ecosystem.

Joyce and Jasmine have partnered with The Orchard, a distribution company backed by Sony that has helpful in-house resources, but Jasmine remains the street team as much as she is the one talking to executives.

“Press boxes, physical albums, merch, stuff, we’re packaging it at my house,” Jasmine says. “We're driving to different artists’ houses to drop it off. I'm driving to Power 106 to drop it off. It's not like we have this whole big machine behind us to do all that stuff. We're really doing it ourselves.”