Introduction
Pilar Nalwimba was rejected by the industry she loved before she ever built the career she has now. She had done the unpaid internship, learned which knife to use at dinners she wasn't raised for, and shown up wanting to belong. Then a colleague told her, out loud, that people "celebrate Christmas in the ghetto." She didn't get the full-time role. She got a two-day-a-week digital assistant job instead, and she carried the shame of that rejection for years, unable to even pitch to her old industry peers.
What she did next is the real story. She rebuilt through freelance work she didn't love, ran her own agency into financial exhaustion, landed a six-week ITV contract that turned into her real break, co-hosted an award-winning podcast with nothing but her own hustle behind it, and eventually reached a point where she says no to full-time jobs on purpose. On this episode of Everyday Leadership, Pilar Nalwimba talks to Sope Agbelusi about what it actually costs to build a career on your own terms, and why she now treats time, not money, as her most important investment.
Rejected for not fitting the culture
Pilar's first real shot in the music industry came through an unpaid year at Warner Music Group, working in artist relations during a sandwich course placement at university. It should have been the start of a straight line into the industry she wanted. Instead, she found herself in management and marketing meetings where she "wasn't looking like the people around me," and full-time roles never materialised. The only offer that came was another part-time role, two days a week.
The moment that stayed with her was smaller and sharper than a rejected job application. In conversation with colleagues about Christmas plans, one intern told her that "they celebrate Christmas in the ghetto." She still remembers it. That single comment, more than any formal rejection, is what she points to when she explains why she walked away from the music industry for years.
Learning to adapt without losing herself
Pilar is clear that the unpaid internship only worked because she had family in London to fall back on. Many of her peers on the same placement didn't have that support, and she watched them burn out trying to pay rent, attend every industry event, and work part-time jobs on top of an unpaid role that demanded everything. She's blunt about what that means in hindsight: it wasn't really about talent or effort, it was about who could afford to stay in the room.
What she took from that year wasn't a technical skill. It was learning to adapt to environments she hadn't grown up in, from formal dinners to unfamiliar class codes, without losing her sense of who she was. She credits a boss and a team who "leaned in" and advocated for her when she didn't know how to navigate the room herself. That lesson, she says, is what has carried her through every industry she's worked in since: know your environment, and know how to bring yourself into it without alienating the people already there.
From redundancy to building her own client base
When Pilar was eventually made redundant from her music industry role, she describes the shame as "so deep." Her first instinct was to swear off working for anyone else again. What followed was a period of scrappy reinvention: she started picking up small freelance clients outside music, in restaurants and consumer brands, using her music industry experience as a credibility hook. It was, in her words, easier to sell to people outside the industry that had rejected her.
That work eventually led to a contractor role at an advertising agency, and later into television. But she's honest that none of it gave her the same excitement as her old life in music. She watched her old peers still going to shows and gigs while she built small clients from scratch, and admits plainly: "I missed it."
The hard lesson in cash flow
Before landing in television, Pilar ran her own social media agency with staff and an office. She wasn't prepared for what that actually meant financially. Cash flow, not creative work, was what nearly broke her. She had people to pay, rent to cover, and payment terms she couldn't control.
The turning point came when she scaled back, handed back contracts, let staff go, and moved into contracting instead. She was making more money doing less, and for the first time in years she had disposable income she could actually spend on herself. The lesson she took from it wasn't about ambition, it was about self-knowledge: not every freelancer is built to run a team, and knowing which kind you are matters more than how big you can grow. She now only works with recognised companies with clear, predictable payment terms, and treats every budget as a list of people she has to pay before she gets paid herself.
Landing Love Island and learning the weight of "just live-tweeting"
Pilar's route into ITV came through a freelance platform connection that was meant to be a six-week contract. It turned into years, working across live social for Love Island and other shows. From the outside, live-tweeting a show sounds minor. From the inside, she describes it as one of the highest-pressure parts of the job: every channel has its own tone of voice, every broadcaster has editorial guidelines that get stricter the bigger the company gets, and every evening shift ends with her best-performing tweets being reported up to a team watching overnight ratings.
She had to adapt her voice across shows she'd never watch by choice, from Britain's most loved dogs to live football, because she wasn't hired for her taste in television. She was hired as a creative who could adapt. That distinction, between personal interest and professional adaptability, is one she returns to throughout the conversation.
Building The No Approval Podcast and a team trusted to run itself
Pilar's move into podcast production started with an existing partnership. She and her colleague Raj had built a reputation as a creative duo, talking so much in the office that people kept telling them they needed their own show. When a reality podcast opportunity came up, Raj brought Pilar along, and a chemistry test turned into one of the best experiences of Pilar's career.
What she's proudest of isn't just landing the show, it's what she and Raj did with it. Two freelancers, without the infrastructure of a bigger production, ran their own press, booked their own guests, and wrote their own scripts. They built enough momentum and trust that the show went on to win an industry award. Pilar is clear about why that mattered beyond the trophy: it proved to the people they worked with that they could run a production independently, without being managed. That reputation is what opened the door to her own show, The No Approval Podcast, which she describes as a celebration of saying no to seeking approval and yes to living life on your own terms.
Saying no to build the life she actually wants
Asked when she last said no to something and yes to herself, Pilar doesn't point to a single dramatic decision. She points to a pattern: turning down full-time job offers, and specifically saying no to long-term projects in favour of short-term ones, because she has an idea of what she wants her life to look like that the people around her don't fully understand yet.
She's direct about what that costs. Creative work takes investment, and the investment isn't always money, sometimes it's time. She's building infrastructure and stability on purpose, so that when a project she actually wants finally shows up, she has the freedom to take it. She names the trade-off plainly: people tend to focus on the sexy, visible parts of a career and miss the unglamorous groundwork that makes those moments possible. Her next ask of the industry is ownership, specifically an executive producer credit, because she wants more say over the work she's built her name doing.
Leadership is knowing yourself first
When asked how she defines leadership, Pilar doesn't reach for a management framework. She says leadership is leading by example, and that starts with knowing yourself thoroughly. Without that self-knowledge, she argues, you can't know how you affect the people around you or how to build a team that actually fits.
She ties this directly to how she runs production teams now. She isn't a micromanager, and she doesn't want to be micromanaged either. She trusts specialists to do the work they're expert in, gives them the grace to fix things when something isn't working, but still has the tough conversations when needed. For Pilar, that trust is only possible because she knows her own working style well enough to build a team around it rather than against it.
