Author’s Note:
Overall Management is an LA-based music management company that represents gnash, Imad Royal, Girl Wilde, alexmaax, and Ilan Rubin. Overall is run by founder Rosabelle Eales and began in 2016. This is the 1st part of a 2-part interview I did with Rosabelle over Zoom. I really enjoyed talking to her and learning about her personal and professional journey, from music fan to owning her own business. We covered so many topics that I had to split our conversation into two articles. I hope you enjoy both parts and check out Rosabelle and her incredible clients!
Michaela Steele: Where does the name Overall come from?
Rosabelle Eales: I wish I had a super fun and sassy story, but I don’t. So I’ll tell you the real story. For years I worked under my moniker which was my first and last name combined to Rosabeales which was also my email. And gnash and Imad hated it. They were like have you ever had to spell rosabeales on the phone? Have you had to give that as an email? They hated it. So gnash one day, branding king, was like ‘Overall! Overall Management!’ And then this man drew a logo and was like, “this is the logo and this is the name and this is the brand” and I was like ok, well actually… that’s very good so I’m going to take this note and apply it. And then my logo, one of the creative directors who I work with a lot, Max, who does a lot of the gnash stuff, designed it for me based on gnash’s original design. It takes a team to rebrand your company.
MS: Your company motto is “We are good people, fighting for the good people.” How did you come up with that ethos and how does it work in action?
RE: When I was a kid, into a teen, into a young adult, I used to go to–and then worked at–a circus and performing arts camp in Mendocino, California called Camp Winnarainbow. It’s a hippie camp and this is where I found my passion for social justice, for equality, and for a lot of who I am. So many people from that community go off to change the world in the most amazing, practical ways, and I had always thought I would work more in the social justice side of things. So when I started getting into music I felt very torn because it felt very self-serving. I had lived a life thinking I was going to be serving others and I was all of a sudden, like, 21 and on the Lil Wayne tour poppin’ bottles and it didn’t feel like I was being of service. I was telling a friend of mine, Jasper, from this camp community about how I was feeling and wondering if I should be doing more. Am I really serving people? And he said, “you know Rosabelle, if you’re a good person fighting for the good people in music, you are of service. That is an act of service.” That’s stuck with me for 10 years. In everything that we do we can be doing acts of service and the easiest way to do that is by being a good person. That’s the easiest way to evoke change. I work with good people, I hire good people, I try my best to be a good person.
MS: What does a typical day look like? Is there such a thing as a typical day?
RE: Every single day changes! Today I was talking to a girl who wants to intern for my company in June, so I was trying to think of where we’ll be in June. What’s June going to be like? What is going on? So there isn’t a typical day, but there is a bit of a typical day in Covid. We have an office in Silverlake in LA and we would normally meet three times a week and do our calls and just work in a normal office lifestyle. We’ve gone completely digital and it’s been awesome, we still meet three times a week, we’re in contact all the time, I split my roster between two employees and we go over everything. Honestly I don’t think that after Covid we’re going to go back to doing stuff in person the way we did before. Watching my company flourish while we aren’t able to all be working in the same room has been amazing! Every single day is a new, exciting adventure of emails, calls, negotiations, demos, all that fun stuff.
MS: What are you most proud of in your career so far?
RE: I’ve had some specific managerial moments. Imad Royal produced four of the songs for the Birds of Prey soundtrack including the Doja Cat Boss Bitch record and they did a premiere for everyone involved. Hearing his songs in that movie with his name in the credits at the end, I was like yo, that is insane! That was a big manager moment. Honestly, every tour gnash has ever done, every time I see him on stage and I listen to people sing along, I can feel the energy in the room and feel that community. It makes me so proud to be a part of it. I feel major manager pride when my client Girl Wilde puts out a new song or we listen to demos and to her EP. I feel major manager pride in my client Alex Max and his incredible music and art project and humbled that I got to be the person who helped put it out into the world. To answer your question, I feel proud every single day. There’s not a single day I don’t feel proud ever, and it’s not of myself, but of the incredible talent I represent and the people doing the coolest stuff. Every day I feel proud of my clients and then I feel humbled that I get to be part of bringing this insanely good music into the world.
MS: What do you think is the most important thing you’ve learned about…
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Yourself: RE: I’ve learned that I’ll always figure things out and I have the ability to thrive in chaos. Life isn’t chaotic now but there’s been some chaos and I was able to get through it and figure things out.
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Starting a grassroots company: RE: Everything works out in the way that it’s meant to. The things I’ve stayed up worrying about, or woken up anxious about…they all work out. It all always works out.
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The music industry as a whole: RE: Nobody knows the answers and everybody’s trying to figure it out. There’s no one person in the industry that knows all the answers and knows how everything works. The music industry is full of a bunch of creative people who love music who are just trying to figure it out.
Check out Overall Management on: Twitter, Instagram, their website