Notes to a Younger Creative #01

I’ve been thinking about the things I wish someone had told me when I was younger and just finding my footing in the creative industry. Although, knowing myself at that age, I’m not entirely sure I would have listened.

There are certain lessons you can explain to someone until you’re blue in the face, but until life presents them with the circumstances that make those lessons necessary, they remain little more than interesting advice.

And perhaps that’s why I’ve decided to start writing these notes. Not because I think I can never have it all figured everything out, but after a decade of doing this, I’ve accumulated enough stories, mistakes, small victories, difficult clients, and occasionally questionable decisions to know that some of what I’ve learned might be useful to someone who’s just beginning.

…

I’ve been thinking about this thing we call “paying your dues”, and how so many young creatives understandably want to skip that part of the journey, because who really wants to spend years making mistakes when there are people on the internet making success look like something you can achieve in six months?…ツ

But I think there’s something we don’t talk about enough, which is that some of the most important things you’ll ever learn about your craft, your business, and yourself will come from experiences you would never have willingly signed up for.

Whenever I sit with people who have been in the creative industry for ten, fifteen, twenty years, there’s this almost unspoken understanding between us, because eventually somebody brings up that one project they ridiculously undercharged for, or the client they practically worked for free, and suddenly everybody has a story.

We laugh about it now, but I promise you, some of those experiences were not funny when we were living through them.

I remember how much of ourselves we used to pour into the work, how we would overdeliver because we wanted to prove that we were good enough, say yes to things we didn’t have the capacity for, and bend ourselves into all sorts of shapes because disappointing a client felt like the worst thing that could happen.

And I don’t even look back at those versions of ourselves with embarrassment anymore, because when you’re young and trying to establish yourself, sometimes you genuinely don’t know where being committed to your craft ends and abandoning yourself begins.

Then, of course, there are the clients who become entire chapters in your personal development.

The one who taught you that you could actually say no. The one you had to fire even though you needed the money. The high-paying client whose money you returned because you realised that some relationships cost more than they pay.

And somewhere between all those experiences, you begin to understand that being good at what you do is only one part of the equation, because you also have to learn how to protect the person doing it.

You know what I’ve come to call those years? My years of service.

And I don’t mean that in the sense that anybody should tolerate exploitation or accept being treated badly because they’re young. I mean service in the sense of showing up, doing the work, learning people, learning yourself, making decisions with the information you have at the time, and sometimes discovering through the consequences that you still have quite a lot to learn.

There is a kind of education that only happens when you’re actually in the arena, and no amount of watching someone else’s journey can completely substitute for it.

I think that’s why I’m always a little concerned when I meet young creatives who are in such a hurry to arrive at the destination that they begin to resent everything the journey is asking of them.

And listen, you might genuinely land an eight-figure client in your first year, and I hope you do, but getting the opportunity and having the emotional, professional, and commercial maturity to sustain it are two very different things.

Sometimes success arrives before the parts of you responsible for managing it have had enough time to develop.

The interesting thing about the lessons we try to avoid is that they have a habit of finding their way back to us, usually when the stakes are much higher.

That inability to say no that you never confronted when you were charging fifty thousand naira becomes a much more expensive problem when you’re managing a fifteen-million-naira project. The people-pleasing you thought was simply excellent customer service begins to affect your team, your relationships, and eventually your ability to lead.

It’s almost as though life keeps presenting the same examination in different forms until you finally understand what it’s trying to teach you.

And perhaps that’s what I appreciate most about having spent a decade in this industry, because when I look at the woman I’ve become, I can see traces of almost every experience I once wished I could erase from the story.

The difficult clients, the money I left on the table, the opportunities I was too afraid to negotiate, the times I gave too much, the many opportunities I could have asked for help and did not, and the moments I finally found the courage to choose myself have all contributed something to the way I think, the way I work, and the way I move through the world today.

I have earned my badge, not because I’ve mastered everything, but because I’ve allowed the experience to change me.

So when I tell a younger creative that they have to pay their dues, I’m not telling them to romanticise struggle, or that they have to spend ten years suffering before they’re allowed to succeed.

I’m saying that there is something to be gained from the season you’re in right now, even when it doesn’t look particularly impressive from the outside, and you shouldn’t be so desperate to become the person you admire that you overlook the experiences that are helping you become your own person.

Because one day, you may discover that the things you thought were delaying your arrival were quietly preparing you for everything you were asking for.