| Welcome to Bw Reads, our weekend newsletter featuring one great magazine story from Bloomberg Businessweek. Today Cheryl Wischhover writes about Salish Matter, a YouTube sensation and Sephora success story who's coming soon to a streaming device near you. And she's only 16. You can find the whole story online (free!) here. If you like what you see, tell your friends! Sign up here. It's a bright Sunday morning in Los Angeles, and a small film crew is following Jordan Matter as he darts around the amusement park on the Santa Monica Pier. The 59-year-old, tall and lanky with spiky ginger hair, looks like a mashup of Conan O'Brien and Sting. He's attracted a group of excited kids, but they aren't there for him—they know his presence portends someone better. "Salish!" screams a small girl wearing glasses and an oversize hoodie when she spots Jordan. You can hear her over the clank of the roller coaster. Jordan's 16-year-old daughter, Salish, is then wheeled onto the boardwalk, hiding in a garbage can. She pops out and waves at the kids, who absolutely lose their minds. The adults in the area look bemused. Most don't realize the teen in the trash is a YouTube sensation and newly minted beauty mogul with a brand that regularly sells out at Sephora. They don't know she's just been offered a sweeping Netflix Inc. deal, which will make her a regular on the streamer for at least the next three years. They surely have no clue she's becoming one of Gen Alpha's biggest celebrities—well, maybe the screams tip them off. Jordan and Salish (her older brother suggested the name during a vacation to the Salish Sea in the Pacific Northwest) are both YouTube stars, with more than 34 million subscribers to Jordan's eponymous account, which has been home to their father-daughter adventures since Salish was 10. Her mom, a former veterinarian named Lauren, appears in the videos only occasionally; she says people often incorrectly think Jordan is a single dad. The video they're filming on the pier this December weekend, "Surprising My Best Friend for His Birthday," will garner 17 million views and counting. The Matters' 30-minute semi-scripted episodes recall reality TV, with wacky challenges (like building a water park in the back of a truck) and other general zaniness that keep viewers hooked. Jordan is goofy and hyperactive; Salish, who always has the upper hand, sasses him lovingly. (Lauren, who has a soft-spoken and earnest affect, considers herself a "balance" to Salish and Jordan's "frenetic energy.") To a grown-up the videos read like silly fun at best or harmful exploitation at worst—depending on how you feel about kids on YouTube—but they resonate with their target audience: girls 16 and under, plus their moms and dads. "So many parents come and tell me that I'm a great role model, which makes my day," Salish says, in a lightly raspy voice with the tiniest lisp, at her family's home the night before the shoot. "It's just so sweet I can provide that for kids, but I don't think about how to be one, you know?"  The American Dream mall in New Jersey was prepared for 10,000 people to come to a Sincerely Yours event in September—nearly nine times that number showed up to see Salish. Source: Sincerely Yours The Matters' YouTube channel is ranked 70th overall in the US, beating out Justin Bieber and The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, according to social media analytics platform Social Blade. Salish also has more than 10 million followers combined on her personal Instagram and TikTok accounts, and she occupies the top spot on Famous Birthdays, which is alternately considered the Wikipedia and IMDb of young internet personalities and influential among fans and entertainment types alike. Jordan says that particular metric was useful in convincing Sephora of Salish's reach while pitching executives her beauty brand, Sincerely Yours. (When it comes to famous birthdays, middle-aged Jordan ranks No. 2.) But Salish didn't really break into the consciousness of the over-16 crowd until last fall, after hosting a Sincerely Yours pop-up at the American Dream mall in New Jersey. The venue had prepared for around 10,000 people, but 87,000 showed up to catch a glimpse of her, more than the capacity of MetLife Stadium less than a mile away. The turnout was larger than the crowds for Jonas Brothers and MrBeast events previously held at the mall. State police shut it down for fear of someone getting seriously injured, prompting coverage by People and Forbes. "I wasn't surprised," Mila Hannah, 10, who wasn't there but watched Jordan and Salish's video of the event, says matter-of-factly. The fifth grader is a skin-care enthusiast who lives outside Toronto and has been following the channel for a couple of years. Salish, she says, is "kind of what I want to be when I'm older." Keep reading: How Gen Alpha Stardom Became Big Business (🎁) | 
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