We recently re-launched our online community The District dedicated to African creatives.  District member, Lulu Kitololo, shares some gems of wisdom if you are ready to take the jump towards creative independence. If you are searching for additional support, resources and advice please join our groups Career & Education and Freelance Pros for the best tips. Take some time to also network with Lulu as well. Enjoy!

5 steps towards creative independence

This week marks one and a half years of freedom. That’s 18 months since I took the biggest leap of faith I’ve taken in my life so far: the decision to become self-employed. From the outside, the timing was horrible – economic downturn, tightening of purse strings, people looking for jobs not leaving them. However, from the inside, it was a decision that I couldn’t help but get more and more excited about as the transition date loomed. I was anticipating having more control over my own time, over the projects I worked on and how I worked on them and perhaps most importantly, having more time and space to pursue self-initiated projects. Talk about tell-tale signs, I looked back at a blog that I had passionately started several years ago and noticed that I’d last posted on it, the week before I started my last job, about 3 years earlier.

In the past 18 months, I’ve started a new blog, Afri-love , that I post on daily; an independent design practice that has paid my bills and; partnered with a friend to relaunch and run a creative agency, Asilia , with a base in the UK and in Kenya. I have started making art for myself again and have had work shown in a group exhibition, as well as my own solo showcase . Along the way, I have met a whole load of interesting, inspiring people who I have had the opportunity to dialogue, share and collaborate with. All this has taken time which, I previously found it incredibly difficult to make. Now, I am more productive than I’ve ever been and I feel that, even though I no longer have a monthly paycheck, my quality of life is better than it’s ever been.

If asked for advice on moving towards greater creative independence, I’d summarise my experience in the following 5 steps:

1. Just do it … but have some sort of a plan

My transition was quite dramatic in some ways – I left my job and skipped town. After all, some do say it’s best to make changes at the same time. But there was some pragmatism to my approach. I negotiated a deal with my previous employer that suited both our needs at the time: I would continue to do some contracting with them while I settled into my new arrangement and they looked for somebody to take over my responsibilities on a more permanent basis. This meant that there was some money coming in while I worked on establishing my practice, taking care of all the admin that goes with being self-employed, settling into a work routine and getting the word out.

2. Tell everybody about it

It still surprises me how lucky I’ve been when it comes to getting new work. Soon after I took the big jump, I got in touch with all who’d been there before me and were now on various new professional journeys. Soon, they started approaching me with project enquiries and invitations to collaborate with them. I started talking about and sharing my work on social networks and next thing I know, I was hearing from friends of friends and even relatives of friends, wanting to commission work. Perhaps the most unexpected opportunity has come from Twitter. I follow people that have interesting things to share and whose passions, activities and mindsets resonate with mine. It’s been personal rather than strategic. Imagine the serendipity when, one of the people I follow sent out a tweet looking for a designer with a specific style and, I just happened to be looking at the updates on my list! It was the beginning of a fantastic ongoing partnership with a truly wonderful organization.

3. Do you, first

There are moments where I feel myself almost slipping into the same patterns that I experienced while employed. Patterns that caused me unhappiness – patterns I meant to escape. During these moments, I take a breath, put things in perspective and then do what’s necessary to pull myself away from those situations that I don’t want to be in. Okay, that may all sound a little bit cryptic so I’ll give a few examples:

• A potential client who does not really value your work and who you know will be more trouble than the fee you’re asking will compensate for. Money is never more important than your mental (and physical) well-being.
• Working, working, working without making time for rejuvenation of your body and mind. Taking time out to stock up on inspiration and to let your imagination play and grow is especially vital for those of us in the creative professions. It’s so easy to prioritize client work neglecting the fact that it will suffer in the long-run if we don’t nurture our creativity.
• Not making time for self-initiated projects that will really show off what you can do and importantly, the kind of work that you want to be doing more of. Instead, taking on more and more work that you will be less and less proud to put in your portfolio.

Keeping at the front of mind, at all times, what’s most important to you will help you to make decisions that are in your best interests. As a self-employed creative, you are the most important asset that you have so it’s even more imperative that you take care of number one.

4. Consider it as a lifestyle choice

Many people make a hard separation between work and life. Work exists out there – you go and do it and then you come home. I now work from home so it’s no longer that simple. It’s not just that the two things have been brought physically together. It’s that I look at my life in a more integrated way. Work is not only the projects that I undertake for some sort of payment, work is a title I give to all my creative endeavors. Work is not a negative, burdensome word but one that evokes expression, exploration, adventure, achievement and so much more.

Having so much control over my time means that I no longer have to schedule life around work but that I can break up my days and my weeks in ways that suit the tasks I need to complete, whether they be work-related or otherwise. I can take Monday off and work Saturday instead (I usually find Saturdays very productive because there is less pressure to be available to clients and respond to emails). I can take a couple of hours out in the middle of the day to Lose Weight Exercise and prepare healthy meals – important activities that are central to my well-being and no longer have to be marginalized to when, and if, I can fit them in. As a result of this freedom with my time, I appreciate it more and find myself being very protective over it.

5. Do what you love

I’m not going to lie and say that this self-employed thing is easy, or that it’s for everyone. You’ve got to be proactive, you’ve got to be self-motivated and you’ve got to be determined. There is nobody to answer to but yourself and there is nobody to catch you when you stumble. I know for sure that I could not do this if I wasn’t doing work that I love. There are times when I work weekends and late nights in order to achieve what I desire and, because I love what I’m doing, it has not felt like a chore. Because I am doing it for myself, it’s hard to feel unappreciated and I’m proud with the results of my hard work. It makes the difference between finishing something up any which way so that you can wrap it up and relax and, taking the time to do something until it is satisfactory to that difficult judge inside you that determines success. Delight over complacency. Flow over struggle. Love over labour.

I figure that it all boils down to faith. Faith in your passion will give you the inspiration to go for it; faith in your abilities will give you the confidence to know that they will carry you past the obstacles. It would have been very easy for me to stick with what was in many ways a comfortable situation but, I placed a greater value on the few ways in which my situation wasn’t as comfortable as I would like. If you have a vision for how you could live and work better; if you are a self-starter who desires the freedom to control your own time; if you are passionate about something and want to devote as much of yourself to it as possible; if you have a plan for keeping food on your table, I cannot recommend self-employment enough.