Introduction

Ayokunu Odiniyi runs a photography studio, pastors a church, leads a men's community that started with four men and now draws 50 to 60 every Monday, and is a new father. Ask him which of these he prioritises most and his answer cuts through the usual hustle-culture script: none of them. He prioritises himself first.

In this conversation with Sope Agbelusi, Ayokunu explains how a wife's advice about doing the harder things first turned him from an overwhelmed generalist into someone who assigns each day of the week its own purpose, and why, after years building a wedding photography career, he chose to step back from it deliberately to protect time with his family.

The harder things first

Ayokunu used to be the guy who did the easy things first and became overwhelmed by what was left. His wife taught him the opposite: tackle the top three hardest tasks of the day before anything else, because the easy stuff gets done later regardless. He now structures his week by day rather than by task list: Mondays for men's ministry work, Tuesdays and Thursdays for photography, Wednesdays for church member check-ins, Fridays for church prep. Fixed blocks of time, matched to fixed responsibilities.

But the real shift is what sits above all of it. Asked which of his roles matters most, he refuses to rank them: each serves its purpose in this season of his life. The one constant he checks first is himself. "Am I okay? If I'm okay, then what I need to do is serve its purpose." Lead self, lead others, as Sope puts it: you cannot pour into everything else if you are not looking after the source.

From no plan to a calling at seventeen

Growing up, Ayokunu had no aspirational picture of his future. He describes himself as disruptive at school, more suited to creative expression than academic structure, drifting through music and sport with no clear "when I grow up" answer. Two things changed everything in the same year, aged 17: an English media studies teacher who saw something in him and encouraged him to apply for a specialist media production university, and, that same New Year's Eve, giving his life to Christ. Both gave him, for the first time, a why.

Self-taught, and why weddings need anticipation

Ayokunu calls himself a self-taught photographer built on trial and error. His edge, he says, is twofold: an innate, divergent way of seeing beyond what "the average Joe" notices, and years of deliberate practice merging that instinct with technical craft. Wedding photography in particular demands anticipation, knowing where the next moment will happen before it happens, so you are already in position. That skill only comes from experience layered onto technique.

Stepping back from a craft you have mastered

During lockdown, when weddings stopped, Ayokunu did not fall out of love with photography the way some peers did. After roughly nine years in the craft, he had reached a level of mastery where the work no longer needed to prove anything to him. That clarity let him make a harder decision: he decided that year would be among his last doing heavy wedding photography, choosing instead to protect weekends with his wife and new baby and lean into teaching and workshops. His goal was blunt: work less, earn well, and free up the physical hours weddings demand, 14-hour days on your feet, for family.

His mother's words shaped the decision: "the child's not gonna remember how hard you worked and what you brought him. It's gonna remember whether you were there or not."

Building 412 Men from four guys to sixty

412 Men began from a pattern Ayokunu kept seeing in discipleship and premarital counselling: men without reference points, without other men willing to be honest about their failures, in a Christian culture saturated with women's ministries and starved of equivalent spaces for men. He and his then-fiancée decided to build the space themselves. It started in June 2017 in London Bridge with four Black men. It now averages 50 to 60 every Monday.

His explanation for the trust it generates is simple: transparency from the top down. He never teaches or confronts anything he has not first confronted in himself. That, he says, is the difference between people you tell what's wrong with them, and people you actually help change.

The church, and a wife who initially said no

Shortly after marrying, Ayokunu felt led to plant a church, a calling confirmed independently by a friend and his pastor the same week. His wife's first reaction was blunt: they had been married three months, this was not what she signed up for. She came round, and the church they built together is geared towards creative expression of the gospel, training actors, filmmakers and poets to be lights in their industries.

Substance over appearance

Ayokunu traces the trust his communities generate back to what happens away from any audience: his relationship with God. He is wary of leaders who start feeding off the size of a crowd rather than the source that fills them, an idea he and his wife had literally been debating that same morning, whether Jesus was an introvert, since Jesus repeatedly withdrew from crowds to reconnect before returning to serve them. The lesson: it was never about the group size. It was about staying rooted in the source, then flowing outward.

What marriage and fatherhood taught him

Marriage, Ayokunu says, is a mirror you cannot hide from, and it taught him that love is not about being strong but about being able to admit when you are weak, in a space where your flaws are met with grace rather than ammunition. Journaling and counselling helped him build the emotional vocabulary he did not grow up with; scheduled weekly check-ins with his wife, sometimes literally after intimacy when he is more emotionally open, gave that vocabulary somewhere regular to go.

Asked what kind of father he wants to be, his answer resists a common trap: giving his son everything he himself lacked, rather than what his son actually needs. His deepest personal work has been confronting a lifelong fear of failure, one he traces partly to his relationship with his own father. His reframe: failure is an event, not a person, and his own successful life is a repeated argument against the fear that once nearly stopped him starting anything at all.

Leadership, defined

Ayokunu defines leadership as leading by example: being a reference point people can look to and say, this is how you can do what you are called to do, even if what they are called to is different from his own path.