Panzigo turns eight this year. And sitting with that number, I find myself less interested in cataloguing what we've built and more drawn to what I've learned about this industry, about myself, and about what it actually costs to build something creative in Nairobi and the region.
We've operated through COVID. Through two election cycles. Through the seismic shift that AI is still mid-conversation. Each era arrived with its own particular pressure, its own particular test of whether this was worth it.
But here's the thing I keep coming back to.
When I started, there were no clear templates for what success looked like in the creative industry, not in this form. You figured it out by doing, often by doing it wrong. I was part of a generation that was sold the dream of exposure. So yes, I took the five-thousand-shilling shoot. I said yes to the brief with no scope, the client with no timeline, the rate that wouldn't cover the cost of what I'd bring to it. Because you were grateful. Because you were hungry. Because no one had taught you to price the knowledge, not just the deliverable.
The industry benefited from us not knowing our worth.
Eight years later, we have worked across the continent. I say it because luck is part of the honest story. But luck met craft that had been sharpened over years of showing up, of iterating, of doing it wrong enough times to finally do it right. The work we do today is the work I used to wish we could do when we were just starting out. That elevation is real. And it didn't come from a shortcut.
So when a young creative asks me what it takes, my answer is: systems. Parameters. The same professional architecture that lawyers apply, that doctors apply, that any skilled trade has developed over centuries to protect both the practitioner and the client.
But also this: be honest about where you are. Know your skill level. Know your capacity. Don't overbid what you can't yet deliver. Because your reputation is the longest thing you'll carry in this industry.
And then hold on. Because your time is coming.
This isn’t about being difficult. It’s about recognising that your life has value, and so should the things you create. Set the terms and build with intention, because no one is coming to do it for you.
Eight years has taught me that boldness and boundaries aren't opposites. They're the same instruction.