Nairobi News

Founder of the once-popular YouTube channel, Over 25, Julia ‘Jules’ Gaitho has finally opened up about the reasons behind the channel’s demise.
Featuring content creators Jules, Ivy, Lornzie, and Shikie announced in May 2023, that the channel would be shutting down after seven years of content creation.
The channel had gained 157,000 subscribers and had been previously ranked by YouTube as one of the best-performing channels on the platform when it shut down.
More than a year, Jules who founded the channel which she began by inviting her friends for a content shoot at her house, has finally opened the lid on what exactly transpired leading to the death of the channel.
Jules says the lack of proper communications on her part and the lack of contract obligations by existing members contributed to the fallout as the channel has since grown into a business attracting sponsors and partners.
“When you work with people who are friends there are bound to be conflicts and by that I mean differences of opinions or differences in how to do things. For my part, I wish I knew how to communicate my Nos better. At that time I didn’t have the skill set to resolve conflicts with friends.  I would always push my issues under the carpet to avoid conflicts but those things would end up blowing up later,” Jules opened on a recent YouTube channel interview.
Further lack of proper documentation for all parties was another red flag.
“I wish we got into a contract at the beginning. A contract that stipulated who did what, their specific role, and who the buck stops with. Other things like finances, which clients we should work with, and what we should offer them, always got us into a fight because I would always give too much. If we had a contract stipulating our roles such as this is the Creative Director, Finance, and business development it would have been better, but we didn’t know.” she opened up.
For Julia, mixing friendship and business was their major undoing.
”We knew how to be friends, but we didn’t know how to work together,” Jules added.
When the group announced they were splitting, there were a lot of mixed reactions online with a rumor emerging alleging that the course of the split was necessitated by a love triangle mix that involved certain members of Over 25 and an outsider.
However, Jules, Ivy, Lornize, and Shikie jointly issued a statement dismissing the rumors terming the claims as “unpleasant and fabricated narrative”.