“Plaudits count for very little when you are faced with the problems we have been faced with in the last 18 months,” says Jon Ollier, who’s a key part of the core team that pulled off the biggest tour in history, Ed Sheeran’s “Divide Tour,” which logged $775.6 million from 8.9 million tickets sold for 255 performances from 2017 to 2019.

“Everything I have achieved in the past made me the kind of person that could take positive action in this situation – this I am grateful for,” Ollier continues. “Everything else, let’s talk about that when we are truly out the other side.”

Ollier left CAA, his professional home for almost six years, in October 2020 to launch his own agency, One Fiinix Live.

Being confronted with “a cataclysmic event required a huge and radical response,” he explains. “We are really not trying to be complicated with this, we are offering our clients excellence and focus. We are not weighed down by departments, infrastructure and overhead, we are not beholden to cashflow objectives coming out of the pandemic, we are not firefighting or consolidating, we are working on our clients’ careers – pure and simple.”

The agency’s client list got a diversity boost when Jess Kinn joined as agent in February, bringing Mallrat, Years & Years, Rebecca Garton and more along with her.

Kinn “has been an absolute force of nature,” Ollier says. “Six months into her time here and the roster not only benefits from some big name additions, but also is way more balanced, way more diverse, way more representative of female and LGBTQ artists.”

“Inclusivity is something close to my heart,” he continues. “It is only really in music that I personally found somewhere to belong when I was young, so I think philosophically the live industry should be a breeding ground for improved inclusivity.”

It wasn’t until Kinn came into the company that Ollier realized “the diversity she added really needed to be added. There was nothing deliberate in it but I had to hold my hands up and admit that I, a person who considers myself to be an inclusive person, had missed it. We are only going to improve the situation if we can be honest about it.”

One Fiinix Live also welcomed Sean Denny to the company in a creative development and A&R role, whose experience will help “identify strategies in, and how to better navigate, the digital world.” The team, which at press time was completed by business support manager Emma Davis, has been back at the office since February, where it has been able “to build the pandemic, or at least as much of it as we can reasonably predict, into our business plan, meaning that we have been able to focus on forward momentum, building and planning,” Ollier explains. “Even where the primary business has been limited, the things we have been deep in working on have been those positive actions, which has been really good for our mental health and well-being through difficult times. It is exciting to consider how this situation might develop over time, but for now we are all just really enjoying the journey.”

Ollier describes the year ahead as “rough and tumble. Literally every artist out there is now lined back up at the start line and wants to be working next year, big or small. So, on one hand it is going to be a crowded marketplace, on top of economic shifts, which will make things unpredictable and on the other hand we are by no means out of the woods in terms of the virus itself.”

What will help getting the business back on track is collaboration. It’s one of Ollier’s main takeaways from the past year-and-a-half.

“Collaborate!” he says. “Celebrate your peers, lift each other up, help each other out, find ways to make it mutually beneficial. This sounds airy fairy, and the good will is an upside, but the byproduct is a wider set of resources without crippling overhead.” 

The agency’s eponymous phoenix is something that’s always been very close and relevant to Ollier, whenever he’s faced a turning point in life. In fact, his daughter’s middle name is Phoenix. In 2021, the word symbolizes “faith in the immortality of music” and “hope in the rebirth of the business that we know and love,” Ollier said when the agency launched. Now, almost one year later, he remains confident, fueled by “the support and trust that our clients have shown in us [which] is absolutely fundamental. Without them we are nothing. We will be able to get some good business done, but there will likely be shows that are forced to cancel, some will move, some will struggle commercially and ultimately there will be winners and losers, unfortunately. I think we just have to try to make the most of it, stay ahead of the curve to the extent we possibly can, protect people as much as we can and roll with the punches to a degree.”