Good morning. If you’ve never joined us for Coffee With Creators, this one would be worth the…try. 

This Friday, Try Guys co-founders Zach Kornfeld and Keith Habersberger join us to share what they’ve learned from 12 years on YouTube and why owning your audience matters more than ever in the age of streamer deals.

— Hannah Doyle & Syd Cohen

Today’s lineup:

Last week, Saturday Night Live announced two new cast members for Season 52: comedy creators Grace Reiter and Saidah Belo-Osagie. This marks the second year in a row that all new featured players have creator roots. 

The new strategy could be happening for two reasons:

What you need to know about the new cast →

Grace Reiter: A 2018 TikTok vet (and friend of The Publish Press), Reiter started posting the same year the platform launched in the US. She has since grown an audience of 5.4M followers across platforms over the past eight years with absurd storytimes, character sketches, and a parody of The Hunger Games. She joined American High Digital in 2023 and wrote, directed and starred in Minimum Wage, the media company’s upcoming Netflix show. 

Saidah Belo-Osagie: Belo-Osagie has a relatively modest following of 80K across Instagram and TikTok, but her sketches about NYC gentrification have earned millions of views. She has also appeared in several popular short-form shows like Are You Okay? and Standup Desk. 

Zoom out: With the new additions, almost half of SNL’s cast members will have come up as creators. Between returning creators like Veronika Slowikowska, Jeremy Culhane, Jane Wickline, Ben Marshall, and the new hires, NBC is seemingly betting on creators to bring their fandoms to the program—and sustain the ratings bump from its 50th season.  

After 10 years and nearly 400 videos, photography tutorial channel Mango Street is ending. Husband-wife duo Rachel Gulotta and Daniel Inskeep built the channel to 1M subscribers with more than 60M views through photography tutorials, presets, and creative challenges.

Inskeep spoke candidly with us about what led them to end the channel, and what they’d do differently.

Why they wrapped: Their longtime sponsor, Squarespace, pulled out of their contract before it was set to end at the end of the year—meanwhile, Mango Street’s views and engagement have been on a steady decline.

“For the past couple years we felt like there was a dark cloud over our channel—videos weren’t getting a lot of comments or views,” Inskeep told us. “So videos got stuck at a low view count, and view count is important for advertisers.”

Inskeep also pointed to the channel’s reliance on long-form video. The duo didn’t consistently post short-form Mango Street videos on other platforms, limiting the number of touchpoints it had with its audience. 

“My biggest piece of advice [to creators] is diversify your forms of revenue,” Daniel said. “You never know when it’s going to disappear.”

What’s next: Inskeep and Gulotta will continue posting on their own individual channels and newsletter, while finishing a short film. Despite Mango Street winding down, they still think YouTube is the best place to publish.

“Rachel’s been screenwriting as long as she’s done [Mango Street]. A couple years ago we made a short film and we’re just now finishing up,” Daniel said. “To me, that’d be the ultimate next move. Make something on a higher level.”

Sponsored by Shopify

Shopify just launched connector apps for ChatGPT and Claude, which means you can manage a store, track orders, update products and check analytics, all inside of an AI chat.

If you already have a store, or are thinking about starting one, these connectors mean there’s a new way to check in on your store every day. Now, interactions with your store are prompt-based, in an environment you’re probably already using.

This launch furthers Shopify’s push into AI Commerce. Shopify launched Agentic Storefronts, which surfaces products to consumers across AI platforms. Now, you can build a store, sell and buy from an AI chat, all powered by Shopify. Click here to learn more about using Shopify, wherever you AI.

Every week, Colin and Samir tackle creators’ YouTube challenges with Creator Support, where they run channel audits and answer questions. Last week’s guest was Simeon Rosset, a butler looking to grow beyond his hyper-niche audience.

The problem: Rosset estimates that with just 500K butlers worldwide, his potential audience is limited.

The solution: Repackage his expertise for a broader audience. Colin and Samir argue that Rosset’s potential audience isn’t just other butlers, but anyone interested in luxury lifestyles, and Rosset’s expertise as a butler gives him a distinct POV on a much broader category.

“Somebody who has high taste is giving a perspective on something that is not up to his standards,” Samir said. “There’s contrast happening.”

Zoom out: According to Colin and Samir, every creator needs to ask themselves, “Who is this for?” and, “Why are they watching?” For Rosset, identifying his audience as luxury-curious (not just butlers) can unlock a plethora of new formats and video concepts. 

If you’re a creator with a problem you want to workshop, hit reply and tell us what you’re stuck on. We’ll pick a few to tackle in an upcoming issue.