Inspiring Conversations with Wes Elder of Creatorspace

Today we’d like to introduce you to Wes Elder

Wes, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My background is film and entertainment and more specifically, acting. I started off as an actor and still love it. However, I didn’t want to wait for opportunities to be given to me, so I began creating my own.

I did get a theater degree from UNC Wilmington, as well as a Communication Studies bachelor as my “backup”. Funny enough, I wanted to be a dentist beforehand, but I lived in Argentina for 2 years, got into acting there and came back to the USA and began to pursue it.

I made a film called The Matchbreaker with my good friends Caleb and Cory Vetter. It was one of the first movies to star YouTubers and was on Netflix for two years. Now it’s available everywhere. Soon after, we made a lot of commercial work, more short films and most recently shot 2 seasons of a renovation competition show called Gutted.

During that time, we were wanting to find more sponsors for the show and that’s what ultimately led us to make Creatorspace.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Ha, no. It never is when you chart your own path.

The hardest thing we had to deal with was my co-star, Christina Grimmie, passing suddenly during The Matchbreaker. That was incredibly hard and not something 3 kids making their own movie knew how to deal with.

It’s a constant battle having others see the value that you can give to the world. We’ve failed with past tech experiences, we’ve had content not perform well, but ultimately we’ve been pursuing things we have conviction about and hoping something eventually lands.

We think we’re almost there.

Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
I like to call Creatorspace the Airbnb of Brand Deals.

Simply put, it’s a platform where creators and influencers can list all of their sponsorships they have available. It can be as simple as their standard ad rates–TikTok ads, Instagram posts, YouTube, etc.–or it can be specific projects they want sponsors to be a part of. For example, we want to go to Tokyo and are looking for a travel brand! Or we’re starting a racing team and are looking for partners!

It allows businesses of all sizes to find creators of all sizes and sponsor them quickly and easily.

We really think this will help people build campaigns of thousands of micro-creators and partner with them at scale. But it also allows brands to find really unique opportunities and sponsor them. I mean, right now we have someone on the platform starting a dating show, ha. How would a brand find that opportunity normally? It would have to be cold outreach and even then, hoping that person doesn’t get gatekept somewhere.

We want to help creators get more brand deals, but also help them find ideal partners for their passion projects.

What quality or characteristic do you feel is most important to your success?
Persistence. That’s how we’ve defined our career, ha. We’ve talked about it thoroughly actually, of what has kept us going and it’s been persistence.

Just being willing to keep going, even if you fail.

I also think initiative is critical. There’s so many people who lack initiative and if you don’t have that, then you’ll be waiting for someone to tell you what to do.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://creatorspace.co/
• Instagram: https://instagram.com/thewesleyelder