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Jake Paul’s influencer circle begins to crumble as his dad comes aboard

Jake Paul’s influencer circle begins to crumble as his dad comes aboard

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Longtime partners are leaving in droves

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Team 10, the social media incubator of Jake Paul, is in turmoil. Founded as an “influencer squad” for the prominent YouTube star, it’s included both longtime friends like Chance Sutton and his current girlfriend, Erika Costell. Team 10 members collaborate and even all live together with Paul. “I formed it because I wanted to start a crew,” Paul told Forbes in 2017. “If you look at the biggest people on social media right now, it’s the Kardashians. My goal is to form a crew that’s bigger than them collectively.”

Over the last few weeks, however, Team 10 has been losing some of its biggest members as part of what appears to be a larger transition. Chief operations officer Nick Crompton announced his departure on May 4th. Sutton posted that he would leave Team 10 on May 7th; head of engineering Drake Rehfeld announced his departure May 8th. With Jake Paul’s Team 10 Tour taking place this summer, the departure of two of its biggest stars — Crompton and Sutton — doesn’t bode well for already struggling ticket sales. (There’s also been speculation about Kade Speiser’s continued involvement with the group, as his Twitter bio no longer includes mention of Team 10.)

Members of Team 10 have left before, including Jake Paul’s ex Alissa Violet and the Martinez Twins. Unlike these previous members, however, signs point to turbulence caused by someone other than Jake Paul — specifically the influence of his father, Greg, who Paul brought on to help guide the business. On May 7th, YouTuber and DramaAlert creator Keemstar posted a video claiming to have spoken with an inside source. “Jake Paul’s father, known as Greg Paul, has completely taken over Jake Paul and Logan Paul’s businesses and he’s planning to do a merger with the two,” Keemstar says. “And Greg Paul is obsessed with saving money.” He goes on to say that Greg Paul audited both Jake and Logan’s companies for a month before deciding to fire several staffers, and that Nick Crompton quit as a result.

Keemstar also cites issues with Greg Paul’s behavior. “He’s calling people ‘whores’ and ‘cunts’ and, you know, derogatory terms at work,” he says. In Crompton’s statement about his departure, he says that he resigned “due to internal changes being made within our various businesses that I don’t agree with.” On Twitter, he responded to a tweet from Greg Paul about business audits. “People had issue with being verbally abused, watching their coworkers be fired around them and not being kept in the loop,” Crompton said. “Business 101, communication. Every time you publicly post to try and make myself or the team look bad, I will respond.”

(In the wake of Crompton’s departure, Team 10 released its own lengthy statement on the importance of loyalty. “While it is always painful to say goodbye to individuals that have been part of our family, the reality is that Team 10 departures are always the result of a larger team decision and a deliberate plan to return balance and loyalty to our family.”)

In a response posted to his channel, Jake Paul says he sees the departures as positive. “When people leave Team 10, everyone gets super upset about it,” Paul says. “They think it’s all the sudden this automatic rivalry. They think it’s an automatic clashing thing. They look at it as a failure. And to me, I just look at it as everyone’s changing ... We’re all so young on Team 10. We’re all so new to this whole entire thing, so there’s a lot of change that happens.”

Paul says he’s focused on continuing to grow and plan bigger business ventures. “As Team 10 grows, as individuals grow, as I grow, sometimes all of those stars don’t align for some people,” he says. “... Some of the people didn’t necessarily agree with where I wanted to go or where my vision was.”

As business expands, Paul says he’s bringing on older advisors to help guide his career, including his father. He says he was advised to hire someone who “wholeheartedly wanted nothing else but to protect me, who didn’t care about my money, who I could 100 percent trust no matter what.” That role went to his father. “Not to run my businesses and be in charge,” Paul says, “but to simply look over the shoulders of other people who were in my businesses who I’m entrusting to run my business, because I knew my dad would have my best interest at heart.”