What Do You Think? 🩺
I teased a big announcement, so here goes
Last blog, I teased that something big was coming.
Well, here goes: I'm endlessly excited to announce that we've partnered with Fourthwall to serve as the 2025 Title Sponsor of Creator Mag.
Four years ago, I was twenty-two, and I'd just moved to Chicago after graduating college. During the day, I helped creators and college athletes run their operations. But at night, that's when the magic happened.
I started Creator Mag out of my apartment with a mission to document the creator world—and a personal goal of growing as a writer, journalist, and storyteller. That journey wasn't an easy one. One day, I'd feel an endless amount of confidence in my work. The next day, I'd harbor all sorts of doubts that I could ever make it as a creative.
Yet Fourthwall was one of the first brands to take a chance on me, sponsoring Edition 2 of Creator Mag. Even if (relatively-speaking) that first partnership was a nominal sum, words can’t describe how much their belief in me meant then—and how much it still means, three years later.
I've gotten to know Will, Walker, and the Fourthwall team over many coffee walk-and-talks and games of pickleball, and I have to say that they genuinely care about creative people at every step of the journey. The company’s mission is to help creators launch brands and build sustainable businesses; they currently power the online stores of Marques Brownlee, Philip DeFranco, and New York Magazine (among others).
We'll be launching Creator Mag on Fourthwall ourselves very soon. In the meantime, before we dive into today's interview, here’s a quick explainer on how we approach sponsorships.
I want to be super transparent about something: Creator Mag is an indie publication started (and owned) by our team. On my end, I’m a full-time, independent journalist.
The main way we support this work is through product sales and magazine subscriptions. But another way is by doing sponsorships, or ads. Those will appear in some of our newsletters, videos, and the magazine itself.
We fully vet all sponsors, and only work with companies and products we actually believe in. What’s important to note, though, is that if it’s an ad, you’ll know it’s an ad—and we’ll clearly mark it as such.
Additionally, while sponsors have a say in the messaging of the ad, they do not have editorial oversight over the other stories we’re telling. That’s all us.
Finally, if you click a link in one of our ads and buy a product or service, just know that we may receive an affiliate commission (though not always).
Thanks for reading Creator Mag — our work truly wouldn’t be possible without your support. Now, on to our conversation with Seth Eaton.
— NGL
P.S. Episode One of our new season is out now! You can watch it here.
P.P.S. Last blog, I wrote about remaining grounded in our mission—and how small moments add up in a big way. You can read it here.
Seth Eaton is a creator and sneaker reviewer based in Atlanta, Georgia. There’s a decent chance he’s dissected your favorite pair of kicks—and yes, his closet is getting “kind of outrageous.”
The following conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
Nate Graber-Lipperman: Hey Seth! What was your biggest creative win of 2024?
Seth Eaton: Oh, that is a good question. For me personally, I'm in the sneaker space. It's very crowded. The ceiling is very low as far as your creative endeavors.
But near the end of last year, TikTok actually reached out to me. They wanted to push more high-quality videos and encourage creators to not just, you know, only use their phone.
Whether you only use your phone to film or not doesn’t matter at the end of the day. But stuff like focusing on lighting, maybe a little bit more on the editing side, good sound effects…there's so much more to this than just picking up your phone and filming something quick. They wanted me to make a few videos just explaining that, and it was pretty cool.
Apple reached out too. They invited me to a creator workshop in Atlanta, and I got to meet members of their team and see some new product presentations. So those were definitely two of the highlights for me.
NGL: Quite the two brands there. Not exactly related to sneakers.
SE: As far as sneaker brands go, I got to go to NBA All-Star weekend with Adidas, which was huge as well.
It was a really cool year—definitely one of the best years of my life. Especially as a creative person.
NGL: Outside of creative work, anything else stick out in particular?
SE: Got to take our first trip out of the country, which was awesome. We went to Ireland and Paris, then we went to Barcelona and Madrid later in the year. I’m blessed enough to finally just go on a good vacation after really working my ass off for three years straight, making videos.
It was a long two, three years, to be honest. Me and the girlfriend were like, all right, let's just round it up, get out of here and go just enjoy ourselves for a little bit.
NGL: Did you have a favorite city or country?
SE: I really loved Ireland just because it felt like a completely different world. I want to go back to Paris and just spend a week there diving into the sneaker scene, apparel, culture, food—like, it's so different there. It's gotta be the fashion capital of the world.
NGL: On a different note, what are the biggest learnings you're bringing into 2025?
SE: In 2024, I put so much time and effort into just creating the best shortform reviews possible. I know how to edit them—all of my reviews, I pretty much script from start to finish. Just so I make sure I hit every single talking point that I need to.
This year, I really just want to hit record, unbox a shoe, and go through it all off the top of my head—and definitely focus on making stuff that's more personalized. Whether it's lifestyle, vlogging, here's what we're doing in Atlanta type stuff. Just to build the relationship with my audience a little bit deeper.
NGL: Yeah, off of that, something I’ve stumbled upon through these conversations is how creators are finding that going unscripted—going off the dome a little bit more, almost welcoming viewers into your brain—has really connected with people.
SE: My audience is freaking incredible, dude. That's something I guess I was always nervous about with my reviews, because I feel like when you're doing a review of a product, most people are going to be there for the product—and not for you.
But I did some vlogging last year, and just seeing how my audience didn't only care about the shoes, but what I was actually doing, was very reassuring to me. Anything I do, they sort of get behind—even if it is just a one-off video. They're going to watch, and they're going to comment. I'm going to get DMs about it, which is just too cool to me.
Because when you start creating, obviously, you're a little more self-conscious. You're like, oh, how much of myself should I even really put out there into the world? Yet the more you put your true self out there, the more you're going to get back and just relate to people more.
NGL: One last, selfish question. As a sneakerhead myself, I’m curious—what’s your closet look like these days?
SE: It's a constant wave of being over-flowing and under-flowing, I guess would be the best way to say it.
Like, currently, it's a lot. A lot of free stuff, which is crazy. I never thought that would be the case. There's shoes behind me, shoes over there, and even clothing—I'm really lucky.
It's getting kind of outrageous. But I have some friends that wear the same size as me, so I kind of gift them a stack of five shoes almost every time they come over, just so I have room to fill the closet up again.
Thanks for reading! Shoot us a reply, comment, or DM if anything resonated with you in particular—we respond to them all.