Tebo Mpanza, co-founder and client director at Unfound Studio, reflects on the pressure for certainty, the cost of constant momentum, and the slow return to creative meaning through restraint, relationships and purpose.
The start of a new year has a way of demanding certainty. There is an unspoken expectation that in January you should have perspective, energy, and a clear sense of where you are heading – not just personally, but creatively. You’re supposed to arrive with answers, with confidence, with momentum.
It’s February now, and I’m still not entirely convinced that certainty arrived on schedule.
If I’m honest, I have felt that pressure every year, but this year it landed differently.
The past twelve months were not defined by collapse or burnout, but by something quieter and harder to name. Nothing was broken, yet something needed attention.
2025 was a year of near-misses and missed pitches. We encountered strong conversations that did not convert, and had honest (and sometimes uncomfortable) debriefs between co-founders after calls that did not land as we had hoped. These moments don’t make headlines, but they do shape you. They force you to ask whether the way you are working is still aligned with why you started in the first place.
What became clear over time was the cost of saying yes too often. Not recklessly, but subtly, and often for understandable reasons.
When you are building a studio, there is a period where alignment and survival do not always overlap. You say yes because the work pays, because momentum matters and you feel a responsibility to keep things moving. You say yes to projects that are adjacent rather than truly aligned; to work that drains focus, energy, or conviction; to momentum for momentum’s sake. None of it is wrong in isolation, but over time it begins to blur the edges of the work you actually care about, and the reasons you started in the first place.
Creative confidence doesn’t disappear overnight. It thins out quietly when too much of your attention is spent performing, converting, producing rather than building and connecting.
At the same time, we were watching familiar patterns across the industry. Content for content’s sake, activity without substance, the sense that if you simply did more, something would eventually break through (though it rarely did).
Audiences are not short on information, but they are short on patience. They can spot noise quickly, and they move on just as fast. That realisation forced us to pause and reset.
Instead of doubling down on output, we doubled down on relationships. We spent more time in rooms, in conversations, and in places that required presence not just performance. From London to New York, we showed up to listen, to learn, and to reconnect with why we do this work at all. Of course, none of this was free. It required time, resource, and a willingness to invest without immediate return, but it mattered more than any campaign or piece of content we produced, because it reoriented the work around people.
We also began protecting the work more deliberately. Publishing cultural insight not to chase relevance, but to articulate what we genuinely see and care about. Sharing more of the real story behind building a studio, including the uncertainty, the tension, and the long conversations that shape decisions behind the scenes.
Not only did it help us stay honest with ourselves, it also slowly motivated returns. Not necessarily through big wins, but through alignment. Confidence followed because the work started to feel true again thanks to a change in pace and a clearer sense of purpose. This is where I find myself now, moving into 2026 with less noise, more intention, and a lot more confidence in how the work is taking shape.
What the last season reminded me is that falling back in love with your creative work does not always require a dramatic reinvention. Sometimes it requires restraint and the courage to say no. It requires the discipline to choose depth over noise and the humility to admit when something no longer fits.
For small studios and freelancers especially, resilience often matters more than visible success. The ability to keep going without hardening and to stay curious without becoming cynical. You always need to protect the relationship with the work itself, not just the outcomes it produces.
As we move forward, I am less interested in chasing certainty and more committed to protecting meaning. That does not come naturally, and it is not something you decide once. It requires choosing a sustainable pace, prioritising human connection, and being more deliberate about the work we take on. Choosing projects that ask something of us creatively, not just commercially. Letting the work earn its place rather than filling space, even when the pressure to do otherwise is still very real.
The old formulas are loosening their grip. You can choose to see that as an invitation to build more intentionally, create with care, and remember that creativity, like any relationship worth keeping, needs attention, honesty, and time.
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