By: William Jones
Jeff Duncan, CEO of Ingenuity Live, didn’t come up through the creator economy; he built his career running companies in software and live events, navigating growth, scale, and disruption from the inside. When the pandemic hit, it wiped out a huge portion of his events business, a 92% drop in revenue, almost overnight.
In the midst of that, a one-off favor to a friend, reality TV personality Harry Jowsey, to help him figure out how to turn sudden visibility into something sustainable, turned into something bigger.
Jowsey introduced Duncan to others, and soon he was advising and managing a growing roster of creators navigating their own momentum. He observed that too many creators were working without a real business framework or structure. When Duncan signed Jowsey, he had fewer than 60,000 Instagram followers. Today, their clients collectively reach more than a quarter of a billion people across platforms.
It was from these beginnings that Ingenuity Live emerged.
Building Infrastructure Behind the Talent
At Ingenuity Live, Duncan’s approach to talent goes well beyond securing deals.
Ingenuity Live operates behind the scenes, handling everything from contract negotiations and financial planning to media strategy, PR, and long-term business development, ultimately helping creators explore product lines, licensing opportunities, and television or film expansion. The firm focuses on full-stack business infrastructure, not just talent management.
“The goal is to free the talent to do what they do best,” says Duncan, “while we build everything around them.”
The current roster of approximately 25 creators reflects talent at the intersection of entertainment and digital influence: a TV personality from “Selling Sunset,” and Tommy Winkler, “The Food Guy,” who turned his large TikTok following into a major media platform. Collectively, Ingenuity Live’s current clients have an audience of more than a quarter billion followers across platforms.
Turning Moments Into Businesses
How does Ingenuity Live turn short-lived moments into lasting gains? One way is collaborative monetization. The team paired a viral influencer from “Selling Sunset” with Winkler for a collaboration that unlocked brand opportunities neither could have secured on their own.
While this is just one case, it reflects Duncan’s broader strategy: seek leverage, not just exposure.
That same thinking shapes how the company plans creator careers. Its internal “3-1-3” system (a three-year vision, one-year roadmap, and 90-day execution cycles) imposes clarity often missing in the industry.
A More Structured Creator Economy
Duncan sees the creator economy as inherently volatile, but instead of trying to simplify it, he builds systems that allow talent to operate within that complexity.
At Ingenuity Live, that means defining partnerships, matching aligned brands and creators, setting expectations, and tracking performance closely.
“The best creators today are running real businesses,” Duncan says. “They’re thinking about revenue streams, brand equity, and audience retention. If you treat them like vendors, you’re missing the point.”
It also means pushing creators to think beyond the next post.
Most conversations at Ingenuity Live focus less on content and more on ownership: What will this business look like in three years? What revenue streams exist beyond brand deals? Where does the audience go if a platform disappears?
Building Businesses, Not Just Hype
Many platforms want to own the creator economy.
Duncan believes that as the creator economy matures, creators need more than exposure. They need real infrastructure, strategy, and guidance to turn attention into enduring businesses.
“The opportunity isn’t going viral,” Duncan says. “It’s building something that lasts when the moment fades.”
In a space driven by short-term attention, Duncan is building something different: a system designed to outlast the moment.
