Inside Talent Management with Linnea Toney and Athena Nash

*This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

In an era where virality is fleeting and the creator economy is more crowded than ever, the role of a talent manager has never been more complex, or more critical. Beyond brand deals and algorithm-chasing, the most effective managers are part strategist, part creative partner, and part truth-teller, helping creators build businesses that can outlast trends.

In our latest edition of Inside Underscore, Linnea Toney, founding partner from the Entertainment department, and Athena Nash, Director of Talent from the Culinary department reflect on their paths into talent management, how their approaches have evolved, and what truly makes creators (and creator-led brands) endure. From the importance of “hunger” and storytelling to having tough conversations and thinking in five-year visions, the two offer a behind-the-scenes look at what it really takes to build sustainable careers in today’s digital landscape.

Linnea Toney, left, Athena Nash, right.

What drew you to talent management?

Athena: The untapped potential. I think that as a talent manager, your ability to grow rests completely on your skill set. And there's no ceiling. The way that you can build [clients] businesses rests solely on your shoulders. And if you're a hustler, if you're somebody that understands the business, that the sky's the limit for you.

And it was also the perfect blend of my skill sets. I started my career in sales and business development, and then I took a job when YouTube was really becoming a thing and production of YouTube channels for celebrities. And what really whet my palate was like, creative direction and figuring out how to grow a social presence.

I loved working with talent, and then I realized that all those skill sets kind of perfectly combined to make me an ideal manager, and that I just needed to find somebody to take a bet on me, to be honest.

Linnea: What kind of talent were you drawn to in the beginning of your career?

Athena: I mean, I started my career in management, in culinary, which is what I'm still doing. But I remember as I was kind of like figuring out who I wanted to work with. My boss at the time called out to me that I always signed personality-forward creators, and that's something that I've stuck with my entire career. 

I think if you look at my roster, you'll see it's right on the nose. Yes, they're foodies, but the thing that hits you first is actually their vibe. Maybe it's their aesthetic or their personality, and they really are the star of the content. The food is the medium that they're using to tell their story, whether it's a comedic story or a more serious one. But they're always the star, not the other way around. And I think that's really unique when you're looking at the culinary space, because a lot of times you see talent that are really in the background. It's more like stand and stir, the old Food Network style things. And if you look at my clients, the food isn't the hero. They're the hero of the video. The food is just what they're using to create their content. If that makes sense.

Linnea: It's funny because that's how I got my start into digital talent was also sort of a food adjacent person, but it was a personality based thing, and it was more about the person than it was the food. I got my start and time management working with Hannah Hart. She was one of the first generation of YouTube stars. She had a show called My Drunk Kitchen on YouTube, 

and it was not about the food. Like the first video she ever made was like grilled cheese without the cheese, [because] she didn't have cheese at home. It was really about like, friendship and puns and she really created a community. That wasn't about the cooking, it was about who she was and the type of audience that really connected with her.

But I kind of came in from a totally different direction, I was in TV and film development before.

Second and then I, got asked to come and help her produce our YouTube channel. And then very quickly, she was like, I think you should be my manager. And I was like, I don't think so, that doesn't sound like fun. And then very quickly I was like, wait, you need a TV show? You need to block shoot these episodes. And so I kind of looked at it from a holistic like film producer side, but ended up managing her and then building my business off of that and running my own company for six years before I came to Underscore.

Athena: Wow, I did not know that. I feel like we have very similar backgrounds, actually. 

Linnea: And it was really fun when I mean, like, I think I don't have that many culinary [creators]

I didn't continue in that way, I think it led me to [work with] more personality and storyteller based creators.

Athena: I mean, this might be a hot take, actually, but I feel like the vertical of the talent matters less than the persona of the talent, because what lasts with people is who you are, not what you're making.

Linnea: Yeah. Athena: Food can get boring, comedy can get boring. Especially if it's the rinse and repeat model where you're just kind of making the same thing over and over and over and over again. That can get stale. But what holds your community with you is the bond that they have with you as an individual, as a creator. So for me, I've always found success in signing personally for a talent because that's what they're about.

How has your approach to managing talent evolved over time?

Athena: I feel like I've just gotten better at executing the bigger vision. There's so many different managers and management styles in the business, and a lot of what we see is people

that focus so intensely on brand deals. But the real win is to be able to look at a talent brand holistically and identify other opportunities for growth, whether it's a podcast or it's, hey, you want to have this kind of product line, and here's why. And I think over time, my ability

to pull those threads, and pull them fast has gotten much, much better. What about you?

Linnea: I think the holistic approach is like a really important piece of it. I also think about sustainability. I think that's even goes into those pieces about like how you diversify your business, but the content game and being a creator is such a rat race, like you are constantly on the wheel trying to create content, trying to keep people engaged. You know, you are really,

you know, struggling for those eyes, even the people who follow you all the time. There's just so much out there now. And so for me, it's really about creating opportunities that allow them to have a little balance in their life, to be able to experience things so they can create new content. And so looking at those opportunities where it's like, this is a long term business versus a. Short term or this is a stepping stone for the next big thing. So really kind of reiterating the things

that you, you know, you're saying here. But just knowing that, you know, every platform

is changing every single day. And so all those little adjustments that, you know, we make as managers to help kind of convey to creators as they're working is incredibly helpful. And staying on top of it and knowing what works or doesn't work for you as a creator, but also like your audience kind of thing. 

Athena: Yeah, I mean, that's a great point. And honestly, if you're not working to diversify your talent business or help them evolve, then I think you're kind of asleep at the wheel as a manager anyway, because that's the larger play that we all have to be making for our clients. You know, the brand deal business comes, it goes, and you can kind of reinvigorate it if you reinvent yourself or if you find a moment to kind of spin the feed in your favor again. But honestly, I think the best managers in the business and it's what you were just talking about, are able to create balance for their creators. They're able to create sustainable business models that have revenue streams coming from different places.

They're able to figure out how to maintain their relevancy, even if it does mean switching directions or potentially like completely rebranding the talent. But if you're not doing that, then you're kind of in the churn and burn game and that's not what we do

here at Underscore, either.

How do you define success for both yourself and your clients?

Athena: I think it's not having difficult conversations with your clients. It's one of the hardest things to do as a manager to show up and say, hey, I got to tell you and you're not going to like it. But it's a critical piece of feedback that needs to happen. And it goes both ways, right? The talent needs to trust that their manager is going to feel confident and comfortable to come to them and say, we've got a problem on our hands, right? Or like, this isn't working for us right now. We've got to make a pivot. And at the same time, the manager has to trust in the relationship with the creator, that they're going to receive that feedback and they're going to implement that feedback. 

Linnea: Right. 

Athena: But I think a lot of junior managers or managers just don't have a super strong backbone and will avoid the challenging conversations. They'll go around them. Maybe the brand business isn’t strong that year, and like instead of having a on the nose

conversation about it and saying, ‘hey, we can all agree that this isn't working,

what do we need to do to change it?’ They avoid it or they kind of skirt around it. And then what was an addressable problem is suddenly no longer an addressable problem, because you missed the critical window of time that you need to solve for whatever problem it is you're facing.

Did you experience that when you were starting out or what do you think about that?

Linnea: I think I think you're right. I mean, I think the difficult conversations are the hardest part of our job, right? Whether it's feedback, you know, from brands or, or the content not hitting, I think that has to do a lot of like evolving with what's going on in the algorithm. And, you know, I saw that a lot even in the early days of YouTubers where, you know, it went from show based, content to vlogging to like daily vlogging. And so what was in one day was not in the next. And it's totally evolved now. But those hard conversations are hard, and some people don't want to hear them, and some people do. And it's a matter of also setting those expectations, you know. And also getting experienced to know, like what the ebbs and flows are like or how they could happen, you know. But I think those hard conversations are definitely one that I think it's a skill you have to continue to evolve because the conversations keep changing about what those are.

Athena: Clients I don't need a yes man, they need a no man. And I think that's a typical misconception about the job, because people think that their job is to enable their clients. But enabling your client doesn't mean saying yes to everything because you're afraid of the talent.

Linnea: Well, it's funny you say tha,t because I used to say in signing meetings I really, truly think that, like, one of the benefits of having a manager or having a team is that they get to say no for you, right? And like, you know, from a position of being talent, you want talent to be able to say yes to people. You want them to say yes to brands, you want them to be in the room and people love them and get excited. You don't want the talent to have to have these really hard conversations, in order to, like, make the business what it needs to be. And so I really always feel like the manager's job is to be analytical and critical, say the notes before they get to the talent and then also to the talent. Be able to say like, no, you shouldn't do it this way, you know? But I also think that that comes with having a good rapport with your clients as well. You know, I think in this business there's a lot of these agencies, that are sort of like just throwing brand deals at them or these opportunities. And it it feels very transactional. And really what this job is, is about building rapport and being able to have these open conversations. So they're not too tough, right? They you feel, a part of the team and that you understand the content and, you know, you want them to succeed. And so the hope is when you have criticism or feedback that it's not taken, as an affront, but it's taken as like, how can we work on this together? And I think that's all on delivery and all of those things. But I think it's really important to kind of build that relationship.

Athena: You know, it totally is. And also, I think one of the reasons why managers struggle with this is if they don't have a bigger vision for the talent brand, because if you know where you're going, then it gets a lot easier to say, well, that doesn't fit the plan, that doesn't fit the model.

If you're somebody that's just kind of operating in this space where you're flinging brand deals out and you haven't really identified what the bigger picture is for your client, like, what is the brand that you're creating and growing? What are the big identifiable opportunities that you're moving towards? If you haven't done that legwork, then all of a sudden it becomes really hard to say, hey, we've got a $65,000 offer with X brand. Should we take it or not? Well, if you can't compare that against the blueprint of what you've put together and figure out whether or not that even makes sense for the direction you're traveling in, then you've got a bigger problem.

How do you define success for both yourself and also for your clients?

Linnea: To me it's really the big picture stuff. It's like we kind of talk about this a little bit but building towards I always kind of call it the Oprah board. What's the vision board?

Athena: Right.

Linnea: You kind of look at where you want your business to be in one year, three years and five years and that's how I kind of really define success is which like, are we being recognized in the marketplace for what we're bringing to the table? Are we hopefully in bettering,

like the world around us and bringing positivity to, to content, you know, and being additive and not negative? Are we hitting those markers and are we able to build a sustainable business long term? 

We're we're working in the creator economy, the window is getting shorter and shorter of how you're going viral if you're even going viral, according to New York Times. But like, you know, a creator career, you know, you have people like Rhett and Link that are, you know, are 20 plus years in the YouTube business, and then you're seeing a lot of this short form content. And the lifespan of creators are coming shorter and shorter and so like my like fundamental success is when I sign people early on and I can find the longevity for them, for their career. [Making] a long term business that they're able to grow and have as a long term plan and not just as an accident.

Athena: Do you use that philosophy when you're evaluating talent to work with?

Linnea: 100%

Athena: So do I. 

Linnea: For me, my biggest thing is like, are they a natural storyteller? That's where content all stems from is like the story of something being told. And so it's beyond just being a personality. I think, you know, the, the like, you know, silliness of having a mission statement or whatever, it's actually pretty great because it's your narrative backbone, you know. 

So I think that that's where I measure success, it's really about finding storytellers who have something to say and that people want to hear and, you know, build a community around it. I think that's such a big piece of this business, which is it's not a one sided relationship of content. Right? We're used to that, like legacy entertainment to a certain extent, where it's like, I can be a super fan, I can be a fan, but the intimacy of creating online is that, like, you know, your audience are people who are like you and and like, want to engage in that way. 

Athena: Yeah, I agree. I actually won't even sign somebody if I don't see the bigger picture for them when I look at their content. I'm like, that's a green flag for me. If I can look at their content

and immediately identify what I see myself helping them build, that's amazing. If I can’t, I usually walk away. And I do think it's because of what you just said. You want to be in the longevity business. You want to be representing people who have the skill set to grow and grow into that longevity. And sure, it's something that you can refine as a manager, but intrinsically and innately, it has to be something that the talent already has inside of them. And then we can work to elevate and grow it.

What's the most underrated quality a successful creator can have?

Athena: For me, I think it's hunger. Like, you have to want it really badly. Because you will, without a doubt, hit a point where something is not working, where you're tired because the content game is never ending, where you have no more ideas, where there are 20 other creators that are outperforming you and you don't want it, it's over. Like that's the time where you have to rise up as a creator and be like, I'm here and I'm here to stay. Whether that means working with your manager on balance or it means completely finding a new curiosity or interest.

I mean, I am going through this with one of my clients right now. He is working to find more things in life that excite him, to fold into his content, because what he was doing before got kind of stale for him, and then that translates to the content.

I think if you don't want it, that's the point where people drop off to me. And anytime I bring on a client, I have to feel that they're as invested in their brand as I'm going to be, if not more. I want to know that when I show up and I give them feedback, they're not just listening to it and saying, yes, they're actually doing it. And I think that at the very base level, the reason why that happens is because they are so hungry for the success.

Linnea: I think that's such a great point about hunger, because it is such a business of hustle.

And you know, the one like little counter to that is that it's also not about the numbers, which I think you kind of intrinsically say what you're talking about [clients being] interested in topics. I think in the last few years we've seen this big conversation around how to rig the system,

how to get the numbers, you know, use that AI to create that thumbnail type of language. And I think it sort of detracts from the quality of content, and the content is king versus like hijacking the numbers and an algorithm. If something has really high numbers, it doesn't necessarily mean it's quality or sustainable in any way. And so I think that hunger of, of like really being at the truth of what content is or how you're evolving or content or how you're engaged and interested is really important. 

Athena: I couldn't agree more. For me it's, it's a losing strategy to be in the view seeking game.

Linnea: Yes. 

Athena: Views and engagement are super important to continue growing a business and actually profiting off of it. But at the end of the day, what's going to drive engagement

and what's going to drive users? Quality.  And I think that to me at least, being hungry for success, that's what I mean.

Are you committed to the quality of your content? Are you committed to the quality of your brand? Are you committed to the quality of your work? And if you are across all of those categories, and it typically leads to positive outcomes.  Some of my clients that are like, oh man, ‘I'm so frustrated I don’t have viral videos.’ And I'm kind of like, you don't really want viral videos because the virality doesn't equal a committed and engaged audience.

A lot of times, a lot of times, viral videos or a creator that goes viral, they amass a lot of attention for a while, and then from one day to the next, it all falls off. Versus a creator that's consistently showing up with quality content, a quality narrative, and a brand that's defined and over time, slowly building an audience and slowly increasing their engagement. Usually they're the ones I feel that have the staying power.

Where do you see creator-led brands going in the next few years?

Linnea: We're in a real moment in entertainment and advertising, [where] all eyes are on digital. I think creator led brands have evolved significantly from the beginning of time where, you know, there was just clicking on links outside brand deals to now where creators are, the visionary of a brand or participating in a brand. Do you have any clients working on anything, and how have you seen a change? Athena: I do, and this is such a big focus for our department. This is an important one, I think, for me, because I have a lot of clients working on larger projects right now, but it's also a key priority for our department.

And what I've seen change over the years that I've been doing this is that people and managers are thinking much bigger about the end game, right? I remember when creator products first started becoming a thing and it was usually something small.

It was usually something DDC. Now what we're doing, especially on my team, is strategizing about how we create something that inevitably ends up at Walmart nationwide, or even more globally speaking, like the opportunities expansion have increased exponentially.

00:31:29:09 - 00:31:33:26

So what used to be a small game of ‘what makes sense for my community they might like and that they might buy’ has now become how do I leverage my engagement, my reach, the brand that I've created, to bring something to life in the real world and scale that so that it becomes hundreds of millions of dollars in growth. And that just wasn't possible when I started in this business. What do you think?

Linnea: I agree. I also think from a creator standpoint, we're seeing more successes

with the product they're making. There's a need in the marketplace. For me, it speaks authentically to who the creator is or how the creator is living and not just about who

their audience is, right?I think because creators are kind of conditioned to be in doing brand deals and working with third party things, like it can kind of start to feel as if it's just one more thing you're promoting. And when you are developing these products and you’re putting your blood, sweat and tears in it, you want the quality there.

And so I think what you're seeing that in a lot of these brands that are coming that are creator led, like [creators saying], I want the best for myself and my audience. And so there's a real space with the brand.

There really is something to be said about going back to quality and just like speaking to who you are. I think it's a really exciting world right now in that space. Alot of innovation will be happening based on what talent and creators are seeing, what their needs are and what and what their audience needs are.

Athena: I totally agree with you. And also, I feel that because the playing field has gotten more level, there's something to be said for flooding the zone and right now the zone is flooded. We see this with culinary creators right now with the cookbook space. It used to be that when you signed a culinary creator, the best thing that you could do for them was go out to market and get them a cookbook deal. But during Covid and this period of time where our foodies became super popular, cookbooks, creator cookbooks became a dime a dozen. And now that's not actually the best or only way to mature a foodies brand.

And we're seeing product emerge as potentially the hero focus or something a little bit more creative, like a very unique podcast. I think the overarching narrative that I'm noticing is that you have to have a really good idea, because there is so much that's going on in this space right now. Truly, every single category has lots of layers and there's lots of people pushing to your point by this, by that. So what is it about your idea and your community that is so good that it can transcend above the noise?