PassTheAux with Otegha Uwagba: when brand partnerships don’t make sense, and the myth of perfect productivity

A very honest chat with best-selling author, journalist, speaker and money guru Otegha Uwagba about the smoke and mirrors of the creative industries

When I was trying to make it as a journalist, I remember someone telling me about how Twitter was my “shop window”, and that I should “market” my work and personal brand on the platform as regularly and carefully as I could. 

I try my best, when I have the confidence and the time, but honestly sometimes I find the “marketplace” us journalists have turned Twitter into exhausting and demoralising. Every time I see the phrase “some personal news!”, I brace myself for that familiar feeling of panic: who has a book deal this time? Who got promoted? Who won the award? Of course I am happy for them, but sometimes my insecurities get the better of me. Have I done enough? Am I doing the right things? In an industry where every milestone feels so public, where do I compare?

When it’s not announcements about accolades and exciting new beginnings, it’s a drip-feed of productivity: look at this article I have read, this book I have finished, this newsletter I launched, this brand I partnered with. Drip, drip, drip, work, work, work, like, like, like. I can spend hours on Twitter scrolling, liking, congratulating, marvelling and envying: how have they found the time to read that? How many side hustles is that now? How much money are they making? Sometimes journalism Twitter can feel like a rat race to burnout, but still we all stay posted at our shop fronts, smiling and showing, smiling and showing, as cracks spread out beneath us.

I say this, of course, with the comfort and privilege of being able to work in the creative industries in the first place – and with the luxury of being in full-time employment at a national newspaper. I have side hustles, and no doubt I have bored and deflated others with my parading of them on Twitter, along with all the things I have read and done to keep my “shop front” glowing. Sometimes I don’t know if I am reading that New Yorker long-read because I want to or because I just want to tweet about it later. And take this newsletter: I have not yet monetised it, because monetising it means fewer subscribers, which means fewer likes and retweets and a less shiny shop front. Because sometimes I forget that actually making money is more important than looking like I am making money. Creative Twitter is insane in that way – you forget which way is up.

Twitter isn’t really the problem, though – this is just the smoke and mirrors of the creative industries, of the game we all signed up for. Which brings me onto this month’s Pass the Aux guest: author, journalist and speaker Otegha Uwagba, one of the smartest, most successful and straightest-talking creatives who is doing wonders for busting some of the myths and fallacies that accompany the creative hustle. It was so comforting to hear that she too feels panicked by our creative productivity complex, and that the online carousel of everybody else’s achievements made her lose sight of her own.

Otegha began in advertising before making the freelance plunge and setting up a platform for working women, Women Who, which, unlike most such platforms, actually gave women the tools and resources to navigate the working world through a series of workshops, rather than selling them sexily breezy aspirations, sweetened with a free cocktail and branded tote. I love what she says to me in our interview below, that she wanted to see women at her events scribbling notes – more useful, surely, than an Instagram story about “loving women”, captioned #respectthehustle.

Otegha is the author of three books, her first, Little Black Book – a modern career guide for creative working women – was self-published, while her follow-up, Whites: On Race and Other Falsehoods – which tackled uncomfortable truths around genuine allyship – was named the Guardian’s Book of the Year.  Last year she also published We Need to Talk About Money, a brilliant memoir about the veil of secrecy and shame that often surrounds money, and her experiences around race and class. I also recommend reading two eye-opening Guardian articles she’s written in the last six months, this one on our obsession with productivity, and this one on toxic dream jobs. And check out her former podcast In Good Company, in which she interviewed successful creatives about their careers – particularly this excellent episode with Liv Little.

She’s also a treat on Instagram – alternating snap TV reviews on her story with impeccable style and interiors inspo and most recently sending High Low fans into meltdown after jokily posting about a “reunion” along with a picture of her friends Pandora Sykes and Dolly Alderton. So if you don’t already, follow her @oteghauwagba.

Anyway, enjoy our chat, in which Otegha generously revealed how much money she actually made through her (now archived) women’s platform, podcasting, brand partnerships and all those alluringly opaque things creative people seem to make their living from (but not really). Plus, her most meaningful failure, her relationship with productivity, her writing routine, and her best editing tips. Enjoy!

E: How did you get your first job?

O: I didn't do any internships after university because I just simply didn't think I could afford it – even though my parents live in London. I initially wanted to go into journalism, but I knew that that was going to be months, if not years of working for free or low pay. The first job I had in pharmaceutical marketing was a temp job as a receptionist, and then after two years I was like, “Ok, I'll go into advertising proper, because that kind of pays a good salary, it’s supposed to be creative and interesting”. I went to AMV, and then I moved to VICE. 

What was the pivotal moment for you, taking the freelance plunge after VICE?

I was six months in when I handed in my notice. I just really hated it. There was a very toxic lad culture, which I think people are quite aware of. I found myself on the receiving end of that. And so I just decided that I couldn't work there anymore. And for years, I wanted to try writing – I'd been accepted on to this writing programme while I was at AMV but I hadn’t been able to make it work around my hours. 

So I didn’t leave VICE to write, I left to give myself a kind of gap year to try and explore other things. I didn’t really have a plan but I decided that if things weren't picking up after a year, I would try and find a job in marketing or working for a socially good brand. But I was quite fortunate that I set up my platform Women Who a few months after I left VICE, and that was a success. I also self-published a mini handbook for working women at the same time, Little Black Book, and then that got picked up by a publisher.

You said that Women Who was launched at the right time. But its success is surely not just down to timing – what was your strategy?

A good question, because if I think about it, there were definitely other platforms for working women around at the time. But I think I was really clear on what turned me off about them. They were either fluffy, talking about empowerment in really nebulous terms, or seemed to exist as a vehicle for collecting brand money and as an in-group for cool creators.

Then there were also the professional women's groups which were for creative directors and really senior, quite corporate advertising groups, which wasn't what I wanted at all, because I had just become self-employed and was trying to think of how I could forge a non-traditional career. 

So I pitched Women Who as very practical, in terms of helping women figure out how to navigate the workplace and talking about quite boring things like, how do you reach out to someone for a coffee meeting? And how do you get them to reply to emails? How do you follow up to an email? When you have this coffee meeting, how do you approach it?

I also made it very accessible. The thing about something like Lean In is it’s like, “how to negotiate your stock options and equity”, when in reality, I would just like to be paid. So I pitched it at an accessible as well as an inclusive level. It was always either free or very low cost to access the resources.

I also put a lot of energy into curating these events. There were a lot of panel events running at the time, and I would attend them and find there wasn’t much value. I always found the sign of a good event was when people are literally scribbling notes. I didn’t just want to “inspire” people, I wanted to give people workshops. So our most popular workshops were about accounting and protecting intellectual property.

When did Women Who become profitable, and how did you recoup the money you put into self-publishing Little Black Book?

I would say that they were never really my main sources of income, but they paid themselves back pretty quickly. The book sold out straightaway, which covered my costs. My initial plan had actually been to give it out for free, but then I got the quote for the printing costs and realised I couldn’t do that.

I think overall to set up Women Who it cost me about £3000, which was from my savings. And I was also freelancing at the time as a sort of contractor at an ad agency, which was paying me really well. And I was also living at home. The lack of mental burden from not paying rent definitely made me bolder with making certain decisions. 

Women Who was never a huge money maker – probably only thousands per year from various events and online resources. I think it was probably more of a money maker in that it helped raise my profile and opened up other opportunities. It was never my main source of income and I was always quite clear about that because I didn’t want others to think they could start a platform without a proper business plan. 

Do you remember the moment Women Who suddenly felt like a “success”? Was there a piece of press that got the word out there, a collaboration, or a meeting, that suddenly catapulted it to the next level?

I don't think so to be honest. It did well from the get-go. I pitched it to a couple of journalists, and it got press write-ups straightaway. I never had to advertise it, the events always sold out very quickly. But it was always very scrappy… I had a paid intern/assistant at one point, helping me with events, but mostly I did everything myself.

At one point I thought that the way to achieve success with it was to scale up and get investment and professionalise it into a big platform. But then I realised that the things that I would need to do in order to make that happen, I just wasn't willing to do so. 

What kind of things?

Well, such as partnering with brands. I think I worked with one brand at the end, who basically gave me money to put on an event, and covered the costs of an event, such as the booze. But there was no pressure to weave in an empowerment narrative about it. I would get approached all the time – Pantene would want to do a partnership, for instance. But the whole thing just made me cringe.

Wow. I don’t think many people could turn down that kind of partnership! Was that a tough choice?

It’s not that I have anything against brands – I work with brands in a more personal context. But I felt very protective of that platform. And I didn't want to dilute it. I just couldn’t stand up there and like, shill for Dove. I considered it a few times. We would have so many conversations and get far down the road but then I realised I kept putting up road blocks and it just clearly wasn’t something I wanted to do.

And when I think about the amount of effort and time that I put into it, I didn’t want this brand to come along and scoop all that up with, let’s be honest, not that much money, in the grand scheme of things. 

I notice in the reviews of some podcasts, listeners get really grumpy when they feel like the content has been compromised by too many ads. How did you feel about working with brands on In Good Company?

I actually don’t mind it so much with podcasts as it feels more clear cut. I did have sponsorship for In Good Company, but I had quite firm rules. I didn't provide personal endorsements. So I'll read a script, and you can buy the ad space, but I'm not going to say I've been using this product. And maybe it's kind of an implicit endorsement, obviously, having allowed them to sponsor my podcast in the first place, but I was always firm about not saying I had used the product. It’s very much a case-by-case basis. I’ve happily worked with fashion brands on my Instagram, because, well, you look at the clothes, and if you like them buy them, if you don’t, don’t. 

On his podcast Diary of a CEO, Steven Bartlett laid out really clearly how he made his podcast into a multi-million pound business through sponsorship. He said the money came as soon as he started putting out episodes weekly, at the same time, on the same day. Did you notice what ‘hacks’ made In Good Company successful?

Well I had an audience through Women Who already. And the podcast was initially on NTS radio as a monthly show and then I would upload it to iTunes afterwards. So I think I was probably getting some kind of interest from there as well. But it was always quite a small podcast that punched above its weight in terms of who listened to it and how it was received. It wasn't a juggernaut by any means – it certainly wasn't making £100,000 a year! It was between £1000 and £2000 per episode in terms of sponsorship. And then I had to pay producers and my agent took a cut... It wasn’t a money maker, it was just something I really loved doing and a skill I wanted to hone. And I wanted to speak to those people. So the podcast has always been a side income. I think you need to be having about 60-70,000 downloads per episode to be making any kind of serious money, and my podcast was not at that level. Podcasts are a lot harder to monetise than people think they are. I know lots of podcasts that appear popular which don’t get many downloads at all.

How did you get your first podcast sponsor?

They came to me, and then I got an agent who managed all my podcast sponsorships.

The side hustle has become such a fetishised idea in the creative industries, and to many women it would seem like you have nailed it. But juggling so many hustles can be exhausting. Have you ever dealt with burn out?

To be honest I don’t see anything I do as a side hustle – it’s more of a portfolio. I saw my public speaking, newsletter and podcast as different slices of the pie. I definitely do think I am narrowing down the number of things I do. So I closed the podcast, ended my newsletter and Women Who. And it wasn’t so much burn out, because I never did everything at the same time as that can be unsustainable – my podcast had seasons for instance. But I brought it to a close because I wanted to focus more on writing, on books but also TV writing. I wanted to make a bit of space for that.

What has been your most rewarding achievement to date?

I think my writing is probably the thing that I feel proudest of. My most recent book, We Need to Talk About Money, took about three years from the proposal to publication. And there were definitely a couple of moments when I thought, I just can’t continue with this anymore, it's too hard, and 18 months in I had to take a month off, and we pushed the publication date back. Because I just couldn’t write anymore. 

How daunting was it asking for that extension?

It sounds like I lead such a charmed life when I say this! But, my editor was really great, and very patient, which is rare for editors and publishers. She’d read a couple of chapters and said, if you need longer to make the rest of it as good as these chapters, then that’s fine. She was very invested in the quality of the work. I think it even just happened over text! I didn’t even have to go through my agent. I just said, look Michelle, I  can’t deliver this on time, and she said, cool.

You’ve written about how draining the creative industries can be. What’s the hardest thing for you at the moment?

I think the pressure to always have a big project to announce, to be constantly churning out work. Seeing your peers and contemporaries get shiny new book deals, announce this amazing accolade, or they've made the Sunday Times bestseller list. And I think that can be really tough to navigate. So I think watching your own horse can be really difficult to do. Because we're all kind of in this fishbowl, as, you know, looking at each other's successes and work and not seeing our own.

I definitely felt it after my recent book was published. I thought, what now? What do I do next? It's taken me a little while to figure out what I want to do next. But I felt very at a loose end this summer. I felt unemployed. But it’s cyclical – sometimes you’re working on a project and sometimes you’re not. It took me a lot of conversations with other people to realise I needed a break, to potter along with little jobs here and there.

I totally agree. I constantly feel panic when I see yet another one of my peers get a book deal and I think, should I be trying to get a book deal too? Why has no one approached me? But then I have to remind myself that I have a million other things going on and you don’t need to be doing it all, right now.

The other day someone said, “you’ve been really prolific”. I was so surprised that it seems that way, because that's not how I feel. And then I just had to reckon with the disjoint between how others perceive you and how you see yourself. Because I was comparing myself to people who are even more prolific. I am now trying to focus on what I want to have to show for the next five years rather than just jumping on anything that catches my eye.

You mentioned TV writing earlier - how do you even get into that? Creatives always mention things like that so nonchalantly but in reality the process feels so opaque. 

No, I'm not into it at all yet. And I find it quite opaque. A lot of what I'm doing at the moment is trying to figure out how to get into it. I think I'm lucky in that I know people who have done it, but right now I just have questions. I’m going for coffee with people to figure it out. I probably need to write a spec script. So I'm definitely not into it yet. There’s no secret door. 

Do you have a daily routine for your writing?

I feel like I am always writing from bed. I've even recorded episodes of my podcast in bed, which just felt utterly luxurious. When I'm in writing mode, I don't really have a set routine. I tend to wake up quite late, and I have these apps that lock me out of my phone when I’m on deadline because my screen time is just appalling. I use the app FLIPD. And I would use the Self Control app on Chrome which can lock you out of all the websites that distract you for 90 minutes. And I would work four or five hours a day, according to my energy levels – usually in the evening. For me one of the absolute joys of working from home and being self-employed is actually not having a routine. I know how much work I have to do per week, and it gets done. But I never have a word limit per day as I’m too slow a writer.

Has there been a tricky experience in your career from which you’ve noticed the most personal growth?

I think probably working at VICE. It was just such a traumatic experience. At the time, I just didn't think I would recover from it or that my career could recover from it. I didn't know what I was going to do next. Now with the benefit of hindsight, I can see that it militarised  me in a way to set up Women Who, because I was going from this boys club and feeling like I wanted to be around other women and to have a community. But at the time, it very much felt like a failure. I had quite a traditional mindset around employment, and I felt you have to do a year minimum, so the fact I could only hack it for six months felt like a huge failure. I learned a lot from that experience.

And, parting words, what’s the best piece of writing advice you’ve come across that you’d like to pass on?

The writer Jami Attenberg has said that she reads edits out loud. This has massively changed the way I work on my books, as I can really identify which sentences are working and which ones aren't. Try it and it will make your prose so much cleaner.

This week in links

I’ve been watching Liz Kingsman’s brilliant One Woman Show at Soho Theatre, an “anti-Fleabag” parody that pokes fun at the trope of the twenty-something woman with a sex problem and a wine problem and only one best friend who she snuggles naked in bed with and a “trauma from her past” that makes her self-destructive and mad. I would tell you to go and see it but it’s sold out, so just KEEP YOUR EYES PEELED for whatever she does next. Or, if you’re a journalist, butter up the PR.

I’ve been binging the second season of Euphoria, which is out today and completely amazeballs. Zendaya will surely win an Emmy for her outstanding performance as a teen drug addict, which becomes almost un-watchably visceral in this season. I have also developed the most enormous girl crush on Sydney Sweeney, whose descent into tragicomedy is just brilliant.

I can’t stop thinking about the next Sex Talks event hosted by my friend and fellow journo Emma-Louise Boynton, at the London Edition. I went to one before Christmas about the orgasm gap and it turned into an intimate sex therapy session where everyone felt liberated and comfortable to share their fears and desires. Slightly awkward was locking eyes with a colleague across the room, however. Tickets here.

And for the shameless plug, check out my conversation with Bastille frontman Dan in the latest episode of my podcast Straight Up, which talks to celebs about the highs and lows of being famous. Along with why he hates fame, he shared one of the funniest fan stories I’ve ever heard, and what happened when someone at the Brits spiked his drink before he met Frank Ocean…

Thank you for reading all 4000 words of this absurdly long newsletter. (Can you tell I’m rebelling against my day job as an editor?) If you’ve got this far, then you may as well go the whole way and say hello, either on Twitter @eleanorhalls1, or on email eleanorahalls@gmail.com