2020: The Starting Point
I was charging $15 an hour on Upwork. Getting clients was a grind — I spent 2–3 hours a day writing proposals for jobs I knew I was overqualified for, bidding against developers from India and Bangladesh who were charging $8.
My monthly income was inconsistent. Good month: $600. Bad month: $200. I was working 60+ hours a week and earning less than what I needed.
I had one skill: I could build decent websites. I had one problem: I didn't know how to value that skill or communicate its value to people who mattered.
The First Shift: Niching Down
A business coach I followed on YouTube (not Nigerian, didn't understand my context, but the principles applied) said one thing that stuck: "The riches are in the niches."
I stopped calling myself a "web developer" and started calling myself a "Shopify specialist for fashion brands."
Within 3 months, my hourly rate was $35. Within 6 months, it was $60. Within a year, I was charging $4,500 for complete Shopify stores with a defined scope and 10-day delivery.
Same skills. Completely different positioning.
The lesson I lived: generalists compete on price. Specialists compete on fit.
2021: Building the Team
At $4,500 per project with 2–3 projects per month, I was making $10,000–$14,000 per month. More money than I had ever imagined but still capped by my time.
I hired two junior developers — both Nigerian, both found through LinkedIn. I paid them ₦150,000/month each ($90 at the time). I kept the client relationships and quality review. They did the execution.
This was uncomfortable. My first instinct when their work wasn't good enough was to just do it myself. I had to fight that instinct constantly. Every time I took work back from them, I was preventing them from learning and preventing myself from scaling.
I documented my process meticulously. Every client onboarding step. Every design review checklist. Every scope clarification template. The documentation was painful to write. It was the only thing that allowed me to hand work off without constant oversight.
By the end of 2021, I was managing 4 developers, doing 8–12 projects per month, and making $25,000–$35,000 per month in revenue with about $15,000 in expenses.
2022: The Transition to Products
Everything changed when a repeat client asked me to build them a custom Shopify app. Not a store — an actual application that would sit in the Shopify App Store.
I'd never built a Shopify app. I spent 2 weeks learning. We built the app over 6 weeks. The client paid $18,000.
Then they asked: "Could this be sold to other Shopify stores? We don't want exclusivity."
I released the app on the Shopify App Store at $29/month with a free trial. Within 4 months, 200 stores had installed it. 45 were paying. $1,300 MRR from something I'd built once.
I had stumbled into product revenue by accident.
2023: Going All-In on Products
I made the deliberate decision to build 2 more Shopify apps while maintaining the service business to fund development.
This was hard. Building products while running a service business is genuinely difficult — the service business demands attention, clients need responses, projects have deadlines. Products require deep focused work and long feedback loops.
I hired a product manager — also Nigerian, found through a referral — who owned the product development process. I focused on the client relationships that funded everything and the strategic decisions about what to build.
By the end of 2023:
- Service business: $20,000–$25,000/month revenue
- Product revenue: $8,000/month MRR across 3 apps
2024: The Shift in Identity
This is the part that doesn't get talked about enough: the internal shift.
For 3 years I thought of myself as a freelancer who had gotten good. I didn't think of myself as a founder. I was cautious about calling what I did a "company."
In 2024, I stopped doing that. I formalised the business. We incorporated properly. I started describing myself as a founder. I started making decisions based on what was right for the company rather than what was most comfortable for me personally.
This shift sounds cosmetic. It wasn't. It changed how I hired, how I priced, how I talked to clients. People treat you differently when you show up as a company rather than as a talented individual.
Where Things Stand Now (Early 2026)
- Service revenue: ₦25,000,000/month (~$15,000)
- Product MRR: ₦20,000,000/month (~$12,000)
- Team: 8 full-time people (all Nigerian, fully remote)
- Apps: 5 live, 2 in development
- No external funding, profitable from day one
Total: roughly $27,000/month, $324,000 ARR.
This is not a unicorn story. I'm not raising Series B. I am running a profitable, growing business that I own completely, with a team of people I've helped build careers for.
The Three Things That Made the Difference
1. Niching ruthlessly. Every time I've niched more specifically, rates have gone up and inbound leads have gotten better. Breadth is comfortable. Depth is profitable.
2. Documentation before delegation. You cannot hand off work that isn't documented. The documentation feels like a time cost. It's actually the infrastructure that makes scale possible.
3. Products require patient capital. My apps took 8–12 months each to reach meaningful revenue. Funded by the service business. The patience was only possible because I had service revenue. Founders trying to build products with no financial cushion run out of runway before the products find traction.
