We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Kiara Maharaj. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Kiara below.

Kiara, appreciate you joining us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?

I have been earning a full-time living as a creative for the past 2 years now. It has been a super turbulent and challenging journey to get here, and sometimes it is still challenging. Old obstacles resurface, and my own triggers are often tested. But I wouldn’t change a thing: I am rather grateful for these “problems”. I’d rather deal with these problems than have a 9-5 employee job. Here’s why.

I graduated with a Bachelor’s in Computer Science. While I was adequately skilled at programming, I didn’t really enjoy it and I couldn’t see myself sitting for hours, using my skills to create software for a company only to make the CEO wealthy. University was a little miserable for this reason: I didn’t have the time to draw and paint and write as much as I needed to and wanted to. It made me miserable to think of my sketchbook withering away in a corner. And on top of that my degree felt like a ticking time bomb. I felt as if I would be thrown into the corporate 9-5 employee desk job as soon as I graduated. And, like Newt Scamandar (from Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them), it was my worst fear. So I felt pressured and desperate to look for another option as soon as possible, and in hindsight I have realized that my desperation was my superpower. It motivated me like nothing else could.

In 2020 I was in second year of university and dealing with the ticking time bomb, I was also making content of my art on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, Tiktok, Pinterest. I had watched an interview on YouTube with Gary Vee and a popular YouTube artist named Jazza; they were discussing about having an “art business”. Since then I learned I can use my gift of creativity to think of new ways of earning an income. It didn’t have to be the way everybody said it had to be. I used Twitter to get Gary Vee’s attention, and was invited to his show “Tea with Gary Vee”, which changed my life. I discussed content creation with him, and being an artist and learning about business. I asked him to follow me on Instagram, and he opened my page, and his live reaction to my artworks caused my page to blow up from 500 followers to over 3000 in a few seconds. It motivated me immensely to keep up content creation, post my work, invest in my skills and use it to make myself wealthy.

I got my first viral video in August 2022; a video about my sketchbook. Since then the basis for my content has been my sketchbooks. It snowballed from there. I continued growing on different social media platforms, posting consistently, upgrading my content and painting skills, and writing more unique fantasy stories that were trapped in my imagination. I graduated in 2022 and began introducing income streams as my social media grew. The biggest major step was a mindset shift: that the traditional route was not for me. I entered dozens of competitions for funding, and in Dec 2022 I won first place in Nedbank’s YouthX Entrepreneur competition, for my publishing business idea “Slyspore Publishing”. It was my dream to start an indie publishing house to give life to the stories that often get rejected, because my stories was the one always getting rejected by publishers. As my prize, I received 1 year of business training, and 1-1 mentorship to grow my business. With this mentorship I learned invaluable knowledge about business, mindset, opportunities, and networking. It gave me the business cap I needed to complement my artist cap. Then, thinking like a business person, I attended Comic Cons, published my books, launched an illustration course, collaborated with brands, launched my online shop and sold my artworks on my website throughout 2023 and this year.

I still feel fairly new to everything and especially my own artistic voice, but I’m so excited to take these lessons into 2025.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’m a fantasy artist and writer. I spend most of my time in my sketchbooks, creating other world settings, trickster characters, and misadventures. My artworks are based on my written short story series: The Polkadot Files, which follows a cowardly assistant (Thug) and his god-like boss (Polkadot) as they travel the multiverse collecting tales. Thug has been a friend of my imagination since I can remember. He was in primary school with me, and now he’s matured into a the unreliable narrator and protagonist of all my daydreams.

My online alias is “Kiara in the Forest” because the main setting in my stories is a forest called the Island of Doors, a hub for tree portals which Polkadot and Thug use to travel. So most of my paintings feature these tree portals, mushrooms, foliage, and other eerie aspects of the forest. I primarily paint using gouache and cotton paper, but recently I’ve been experimenting with watercolor techniques. I am always studying! I love studying art, history, science, math. All these topics inspire me to write more stories and incorporate more meaning into work.

Have any books or other resources had a big impact on you?

A book that deeply impacted my thinking, and leaked into every aspect of my life from creativity, education, and business, is a book called “Mastery” by Robert Greene. This book is all about the masters of history from various disciplines: from Einstein to Mozart to Darwin. And the key idea that struck me was something that I already knew intuitively (by feeling) but couldn’t put into words because the world defines success very differently: that success is studying a high paying subject, getting a “stable job”, a good salary, and saving for retirement. This book enlightened me about true mastery which is digging deep into your unique interests and fascinations, and acting on it to the best of your ability with full focus and concentration at all times. Undergoing an apprenticeship with a skilled older mentor, absorbing their wisdom. And combining your interests to make discoveries nobody else would have noticed, because they didn’t have the same interests as you. This book also taught me a lot of about luck vs skill, and even fate. And I’d recommend it to everyone.

We often hear about learning lessons – but just as important is unlearning lessons. Have you ever had to unlearn a lesson?

My biggest challenges were my own mindset about money and wealth. I grew up in a family who has a deep lack mindset about finances. I didn’t realize that the way my parents, and grandparents talked about money around me would leave such a deep scar, and once I started earning an income in this untraditional way, I’ve had to unlearn a lot of those things holding me back from my own success. Such as self worth (that I am worthy of a good, happy, stress free life), spending money (that money is only as valuable as the thing it can be exchanged for), gift-giving, money management, investing, saving, and a whole host of issues. It’s still a work-in-progress but I’ve been able to show my parents a better life with an abundance mindset, and we’re all working on it together.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://kiaraintheforest.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kiaraintheforest/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kiara-maharaj21/

Image Credits

Kiara Maharaj