Knowledge Creators 🤝 Cool Stuff

The latest content + happenings from the creators we rep here at Smooth

Dynamo hits 100K subs 🎉 | Business Explains the World, the first channel from the team at Dynamo, just crossed 100,000 subscribers only seven months after launch.

Varun Rana takes the mic 🎤 |  Varun has built an audience with a singular blend of tech satire and comedy. And this week, he hit the stage at the Bizz Rizz event in NYC, to perform standup for a room full of founders and investors all there to help strengthen their ~charisma~.

CatGPT’s media tear continues 📺 | Cat’s been everywhere lately—featured on both CNBC and Fox & Friends to talk about about the launch of Physical Phones (her line of bluetooth-enabled landline phones) and healthier tech habits.

Ashley Herd’s debut book 📚 | HR expert (and former exec + lawyer) Ashley Herd just opened pre-orders for The Manager Method, published by Penguin Random House. It’s a clear, practical playbook for managing with empathy and effectiveness.

Brand Campaigns Hot Off the Press 🗞️

Some of the fun partnerships our team’s been working on with creators + brands

Megan Tan x Manychat ✉️ | Through storytelling her day via receipts in her signature cinematic style, Megan highlighted how Manychat’s new feature allows her to do something so important to her: creating more personalized 1-1 relationships with her audience.

Tori Dunlap x The World Gold Council ❣️ | With 600+ comments, Tori’s breakdown of the real value of gold hit home with her audience—many of whom come to her for women-focused financial advice. The video sparked a wave of personal stories from women sharing how gold helped older generations achieve stability, escape financial abuse, or build generational security. 

SonderingEmily x Snapchat 🎮 | Emily brought back one of her favorite discontinued games from the 2000s using Snapchat’s Lens Studio—the free AR creation tool that lets developers build experiences for the camera, web, mobile, and wearables. It was the perfect personal use case for her audience of game devs that made the content fun, nostalgic, and educational.

Thoughts for the Road 🛣️

A little something we’ve been chatting about here at Smooth HQ

This time of year is filled with a lot of things: holiday parties, gift guides, “let’s circle back in the new year”s, and, most excitingly ~next-year planning sessions~.

We’re deep in it internally at Smooth, and we’re answering the same questions we ask our creators every year: What does 2026 look like? What are we aiming for? What needs to evolve?

But this year, our answers for Smooth feel different. Not in the “new strategy deck, new business line, let’s reinvent ourselves” way.

Because once you’ve built something that actually works—whether that’s a creator who’s hit real content-market fit or a company coming off a big growth year—the biggest opportunities aren’t in reinventing the wheel. They’re in tightening it.

It may seem obvious, but it’s tempting to get pulled in other directions. It’s easy (and human) to get swept up in the ego boost that comes with success (“should we expand? add more? chase something new?”). But there’s real value in doubling and tripling down.

Do what you already do extremely well…and then do it better. Cleaner operations. Sharper execution. Stronger leadership. A business run with more intention. Basically: leveling up the engine instead of swapping it out.

It doesn’t mean you’re short of ambition—quite the opposite. The compounding effects of getting these “boring” things right can be enormous and far more scalable than chasing shiny, new opportunities.

That does mean our goals list is way shorter and cuter this year. Honestly we spent less time on it than we have in years past, because the answers were staring us in the face.

So we’re embracing the nudges instead of the pivots. Because right now, those nudges are where the real upside is.

And I share this here because I know so many people in the creator and media world (us included) feel like they should always be doing more— more formats, more platforms, the next trend, the next hype cycle. A quick scroll can make it feel like everyone else is crushing it, doing more or doing something cooler than you, and you’re somehow behind or not thinking big enough.

But sometimes, the most ambitious thing you can do is strengthen what already works. Keep your eyes on your own paper, refine your craft, and let the right things compound.