How I made my first million : 26 self-made millionaires reveal the secrets to their success

Touch Myself.
By 1995, McManus was ready to move on. 
He took a year off, his first real holiday ever. ‘I 
just wanted to chill out and I could afford to do 
that, but I certainly wasn’t a millionaire yet—
nowhere near it. The Divinyls thing was just part 
of the training,’ he says.
During his long break, he considered his 
options. ‘I had no degrees or schooling. The 
only thing I had was my little black book, so I 
rang some friends and asked them what to do 
next.’ Someone suggested becoming a promoter. 
Crooner Barry Manilow happened to be in need 
of one, so McManus established the International 
Touring Company. ITC became such a success it 
was bought out by Abigroup, which then sacked 
its founder in 2000. ‘I remember thinking, It’s my 

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126 HOW I MADE MY FIRST MILLION
company, how can they do that? And forty- eight 
hours later I’d set up Andrew McManus Presents.’
The next year, McManus came up with the 
idea for Kiss Symphony. That was his break-
through, he says: ‘the highlight of my career, and 
when I made my first million’. Fortunately, he 
was already mates with Kiss. ‘Gene [Simmons] 
and Paul [Stanley] are great businessmen. They 
jumped at the idea of putting the Melbourne 
Symphony Orchestra in Kiss make- up and going 
orchestral. We made the first million that night 
and I was very proud to get 37,000 p eople along 
to one of my shows,’ McManus says.
The promoter, who nominates a white Rolls- 
Royce as the first extravagant thing he bought, 
believes most modern rockers take the Pearl Jam 
approach and run their bands as businesses. Some 
never grow up. All they want is drink and drugs. 
With bands like that, ‘you can’t give them too 
many days off because they’ll go and get on the 
soup, so you might lose them’.
McManus has also seen his share of weird riders 
over the years (the list of demands an act sends out 
in preparation for a tour). ‘Stevie Wonder just loves 
to take the p***. He always asks for purple and 
orange towels, for example. Stevie Nicks wanted 
a certain running machine on a certain floor of 
Crown Casino so she could look out the window 

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A FINE PERFORMANCE 127
while she was running and see the view.’ Of course, 
he was more than willing to accommodate the 
whims of her band 
Fleetwood Mac, who 
provided his com-
pany with its biggest 
ever earn: 
$
14 mill ion 
from fourteen sold- 
out shows. McManus’s other proud record is for 
the biggest take from Sydney’s Acer Arena in one 
night: 
$
3 million, thanks to Luciano Pavarotti.
The financial crisis has knocked the business 
around, slashing older audiences in particular. 
‘They’ve been hit hard with their income and 
their super funds, so they’re not spending,’ he 
says. ‘Youth acts are still going strong because the 
audience is young and living at home so they 
still have spare cash.’
McManus has cut back on costs as much as 
possible and is taking a far more conservative 
approach to his business than he is used to. ‘I 
should probably have battened down the hatches 
more quickly, but I booked New Kids on the 
Block and they failed dismally, even though my 
research suggested they should do well. We took 
a big hit there,’ he says.
‘Now I am being more careful, and more sen-
sitive about the price we charge for tickets. You 
‘
‘
Stevie Wonder just loves 
to take the p***. He always 
asks for purple and orange 
towels, for example.

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128 HOW I MADE MY FIRST MILLION
can put p eople off even the biggest names by 
charging too much.’
McManus says he is now expanding the 
business, focusing heavily on ‘viral’ marketing 
campaigns, which are cheap but enormously 
effective when they work well.
The promoting game is not all hanging out 
with famous p eople and scraping the cream off 
their profits. ‘It’s a very risky business, and there 
are too many promoters at the top level. If you 
won’t pay enough for a particular band, someone 
else will,’ he says. ‘It’s all about the money—no 
loyalties in this business—and you can find your-
self paying too much and losing money. And yes, 
tragically, that’s happened to me.
Bands like Kiss and Fleetwood Mac are dif-
ferent, he says: ‘They have a loyalty, and I know 
what they’re going to need financially. I’m not 
going to say I’m blessed, but I’ve had a very good 
run, and made some very good friendships, and 
it’s from them that the opportunities come.’
Besides cars—he has a Bentley and a brace of 
Benzes to go with the Rolls—McManus’s other 
extravagance is gambling. Just last weekend, he 
won 
$
154,000 on the Geelong/Melbourne Storm 
double. He is, it seems, a man who just can’t lose—
unless he goes drinking with Tommy Lee.