In 2019, a talent manager in Connecticut watched a 15-year-old dancer perform in front of a phone. Most adults saw a teenager using an app whose name still sounded faintly ridiculous. Barbara Jones saw the collapse of distance between a performer, an audience and a business. She founded Outshine Talent that year, with the D'Amelio family as its sole client. It was a tiny firm attached to an enormous hunch.
The hunch was right, spectacularly and then inconveniently. TikTok became a global culture machine. Charli and Dixie D'Amelio became famous. Every agency acquired a creator strategy. The difficult question changed from Can a TikTok personality have a career? to What remains when the feed moves on?
The useful thing about being early
Jones had spent about 15 years in major-label marketing, including senior roles at Columbia, Warner and Epic. Then came the recession, a layoff and a first reinvention. She noticed mothers building trusted audiences on blogs, started an influencer-marketing agency in 2008 and co-created Blissdom, a conference for women in blogging and social media. The pattern was already there: the technology changes; the scarce asset is a believable relationship with an audience.
Her second reinvention arrived with TikTok. Rather than place creators into campaigns from the brand side, she moved across the table to represent them. Outshine now describes itself as a boutique management firm for social creators, athletes, musicians and creative professionals. By 2026 it operated five practices - social, sports, music, entertainment and a new artists group for creative directors, photographers and stylists.
This breadth could look like the familiar agency instinct to put another sign on another door. At Outshine, the logic is more specific. One client might begin with short videos, add a sponsorship, sell a licensed product, publish a book or develop a show. The divisions are exits from dependence. They give a career somewhere to go when views wobble or brand budgets favor the next size of influencer.
We’re not agents. We’re managers.Barbara Jones, founder and CEO
The manager’s product is empty space
Outshine makes its money on commission. Brand deals still account for the largest share of the firm's revenue. That creates a temptation familiar to every service business: sign more clients, process more transactions, collect more slices. Jones argues for the opposite. Each manager carries a small roster so there is time to imagine what a client could build, not merely respond to the next brief.
Consider Outshine Sports Group. It began in summer 2021 with one college athlete, just as the American market for name, image and likeness rights opened. Five years later, the practice reported more than 20 professional athletes, college athletes and sports creators. Under Aaron Koschitzki, promoted to partner in July 2026, represented clients secured ambassador relationships with brands including Gatorade, Under Armour, Capital One and Dick's Sporting Goods. His roster also launched more than a dozen licensed retail products.
Coach RAC, the Savannah Bananas personality RobertAnthony Cruz, is a useful specimen. Sponsorships are one line of his business, alongside camps, products, a book and speaking. The deliverable is not a post. It is a portfolio. That takes time, and time is precisely what disappears when a manager has too many clients.
Stop trying to solve the feed
The firm's advice on algorithms is almost comically unsophisticated: you will not outwit them, so be consistent and distribute the work. A short video already made for TikTok can live on Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, Snapchat and Facebook, reaching audiences with different habits. A creator dependent on one feed has one point of failure. A creator with several audiences and several ways to earn has options.
Outshine audits clients' accounts and uses an ad-tech partner to study audience demographics, purchase behavior and brand affinities. The point is not data theater. It is to tell a brand that a creator's audience already behaves like its customer, making the internal case for the spend easier. Meanwhile, creators are encouraged to leave what Jones calls breadcrumbs: genuine, sustained engagement with brands they already like, well before a pitch lands.
We’re caring less about growth and more about relationship with the audience.Barbara Jones
This is also where the method has edges. A creator who posts sporadically, cannot articulate where the work should lead or expects a manager to supply the ambition is a poor fit. Jones's line is clean: “I can’t want this more than you do.” Original entertainment is not the automatic next rung either. Some creators do not want to host, act or build a show; others should simply keep doing the thing they do well. Outshine's announced scripted project, Lala IRL, in development with Endemol Shine North America and Disney Channel, is an option for suitable talent, not a compulsory graduation ceremony.
The parts worth stealing
- Publish the same core idea across several platforms instead of giving one algorithm custody of the audience.
- Treat brand deals as variable income; build steadier layers through affiliates, subscriptions, licensing, products or owned IP.
- Measure the relationship, not only the crowd. Repeat viewers and purchasing affinities can matter more than a swollen follower count.
- Leave room on the calendar for invention. Capacity is not wasted if it produces the next business rather than the next transaction.
- Show real affection for a prospective partner before the campaign brief arrives. Breadcrumbs are more convincing than sudden enthusiasm.
What protection looks like
There is a parental streak in Jones's description of management. Young creators can accumulate income before they accumulate the habits required to keep it. Taxes, saving and investing are part of the work. So is saying no when a brand approves a creator's idea and script, then attempts to edit the personality out through three or four rounds of revisions. If a company chose the creator for a recognizable voice, sanding it smooth defeats the purchase.
The culture extends to selection. Outshine publishes values around kindness, integrity, curiosity, initiative and creativity. Jones gives the first one sharper language: a “no-asshole policy.” Character comes first, followed by consistency, creativity and a clear sense of direction. It is amusing as policy and serious as risk management. A small firm that makes long bets cannot afford to spend its scarce attention refereeing preventable drama.
Jones enters influencer marketing through blogs and the Blissdom conference.
Outshine starts with an early conviction about TikTok and one client family.
The sports practice signs its first college athlete as NIL opens.
A fifth division arrives; sports leadership and creative representation expand.
The company's position in the market is now unusual but legible. It is smaller and more personal than the creator desks of giant entertainment agencies, yet broader than a manager who only negotiates sponsorships. Its competitors include UTA, CAA and WME at one end; creator specialists such as Night and Underscore Talent at another; and the creator with a spreadsheet, a lawyer and a stubborn desire to self-manage.
The original Outshine insight was that TikTok creators deserved real management. The updated insight is less fashionable and more useful: reach is rented, but a career can own things. Products. Formats. Relationships. Intellectual property. A business with enough legs that the disappearance of one feed becomes a nuisance instead of an extinction event. Spotting the next platform is clever. Building past it is the job.