The biggest creators feel growing pains as they try to build successful standalone companies

A month earlier, MrBeast (which is expanding, recently posting roles for a CMO, a community manager, and a head of viral marketing), fired a video editor accused of insider trading.

As mega creators try to use their success as building blocks for media companies made in their image, these tensions are becoming more common. Three sources who sees this from all sides — a media buyer, a creator-led entertainment studio CEO, and a creator agency founder — stressed that creators who start their own companies should surround themselves with the right professionals to maximize their chances of success.

Individuals aren’t scalable, these sources told Digiday, and a single creator’s success cannot serve as a company’s structure or strategy. That’s why companies like Dude Perfect have expanded into producing IRL events, and why many creators like Logan Paul, KSI, the Nelk Boys, and the D’Amelios started their own successful consumer brands, rather than media companies.

“The risks of building businesses around themselves actually outweigh the benefits unless they have the right team and a clear understanding of their role,” said Jonathan Chanti, co-founder and CEO of Reign Maker Group. “Creators are exceptional at igniting attention, but building and sustaining a company requires a completely different skill set.”

Bloomberg recently detailed some of the alleged messiness going on at Unwell Network, which was started in 2023 by Cooper and her husband, Hollywood producer Matt Kaplan. The company quickly staffed up, hiring dozens, with the goal of funneling Cooper’s massive Gen Z audience (at the time, “Call Her Daddy” was ranked second globally and in the U.S. on Spotify Podcasts) into a variety of Unwell-owned live events, TV series and podcasts. Company representatives did not return a request for comment.

Yet, even strong strategic ambitions can unravel at the point of execution. 

“Being great on camera doesn’t translate to being great at hiring, org design, culture building, or having operational discipline,” said Matt Barash, chief commercial officer at creative ad tech platform Nova.

Cooper has attempted to build out an executive team at Unwell, hiring Joanne Broadford as president as recently as mid-April and expanding to include a veteran staff including: Lagen Nash as evp of revenue (formerly of Misfits Gaming and Fox Networks), Ali Lee as vp of marketing (formerly of Netflix), and Samir Sama, head of ventures and corporate development (formerly of NFL). They joined chief content officer Mina Lefevre, who used to be at Meta, and chief marketing officer T.J. Marchettic, who used to be at Walt Disney Studios. 

Yet Unwell lost at least 20 employees within the last year (a figure Bloomberg based on LinkedIn reporting), including the head of brand marketing, chief growth officer, and head of the network. Cooper has come back into headlines after she and creator Alix Earle began trading barbs on social media over the last few weeks.

“What starts hot often burns out quickly due to overextension, poor capital allocation, and an overreliance on the creator’s personal brand,” said Chanti, speaking broadly about creator-centered companies.

Three original programs launched last year as part of a deal with Sirius XM have all been cancelled, and Bloomberg reports most shows on the network are getting under 100,000 downloads a month, while “Call Her Daddy” has around 13.3 million.

Recently, Cooper said that the company is pivoting toward acquiring existing shows rather than building new ones from the ground up.

How to build a successful creator-centered company

“Acquiring shows is always going to be more expensive than developing them,” said Ian Schafer, co-founder and president of Ensemble, the Issa Rae-backed entertainment studio. “Producing is an increasingly lower margin business where, if you’re out there trying to acquire assets, you’re competing against a lot of other places to do it.”

Shafer, who previously ran Improbable Media, NBA star Giannis Antetokounmpo’s production company, said Ensemble sells itself on performance and scalability — over any name.

“We’re not selling Issa… she’s a creator who’s also arguably one of the greatest curators in Hollywood — we leaned into the curation, not the creation,” Schafer explained.

He used Screen Time, a TikTok microseries recently rolled out by Hoorae, Ensemble’s parent company, as an example. Rae doesn’t write, direct, or star in the series, but Schafer said it has her stamp of approval — within the first 24 hours of the first episode’s April 30 release, Screen Time had 18 million views. Within a few days, it reached 65 million views.

“You’re building a content brand, not a personal brand,” Schafer explained. 

Growing the Beast

Beast Industries, which established in 2021 and now employs 750 people, has had its fair share of growing pains, from the aforementioned legal situation to public accusations of workplace toxicity. The issues were somewhat similar to Unwell’s reported problems, and mirrored the potential problems raised by the experts who spoke with Digiday.

But Donaldson seems to have owned his role in at least some of it — in a recent profile in TIME Magazine and on stage at the TIME 100 event this past April.

“I started this business when I was 11, so obviously, I didn’t know what [company culture] meant back then,” Donaldson said during the TIME 100 summit. “It’s obviously evolved over the lifetime of the company, but, you know, a couple of years ago, especially now we’re at 750 employees, I brought in more experienced people because, you know, shocker, as a person who’s studied YouTube videos and studied content, isn’t, you know, maybe the best to set a culture of a company at this scale.”

A source familiar with the company told Digiday that Jeff Housenbold, the former Shutterfly CEO, helped mature the business when he joined as CEO in September 2025, and that the company considers the time before him (and all its hiccups) as a “pre-Jeff Housenbold era.”

After he joined, Beast Industries hired a new chief human resources officer, instituted mandatory training and listening sessions, established an anonymous reporting system, and put cost-containment measures in place, the source said.

As more creators consider what business model could work best for them (including eyeing stakes in brands versus just sponsorship deals), Chanti said “misalignment” with a team could create “long-term issues.”

“It’s about picking the right opportunity, proving demand, building systems, aligning people, and executing with discipline — oh yeah, and timing and luck,” Chanti said.