Ojuelegba, is a song that was released by Wizkid in 2014. The year later in 2015, on OVO Sound Radio, Drake premiered a remix of the song that also featured a verse from Skepta. In Skepta’s verse he says:
“I love the sun but I respect the rain, look forward to good times, can’t forget the pain”
I was listening to that while driving the other day and it made me reflect.
I don’t know who will read this, so may or may not know anything about me. You can read more about me on the bio of this website but I will summarise in this post.
Who am I?
When it comes to what I do for work, I am doing my own thing. Independent. Entrepreneurial. Chasing Invoices to be paid occasionally.
When I finished college, I co-founded a startup after meeting my co-founder on an entrepreneurial scholarship trip in Portugal. In the last 3 years of building this company, there have been ups and downs. Our company builds SAAS (software as a service) products. We have explored different domains: retail, real estate and most recently shipping and logistics.
Outside of this, I have done a few things over the years to make ends meet. This is because we are bootstrapped (self-funded). One of my goals when starting this was to be able to find a job that was flexible enough and not too demanding that I could have alongside my startup.
In the first year of my business (2023), I worked as a software engineer. The contract for that job ended in December 2023. After not finding anything going into early 2024, I decided to get a job as a van driver for a fish company. This was a very new experience because as a teenager or in college I never worked in a manual labour/delivery sort of setting. Being in a van 7-8 hours a day, 3 days a week got very isolating. So in late 2024, when I saw a job posting for an after-school coding teacher, I applied immediately.
My first job a teacher
I got the job in December 2024. Learning how to teach children was an interesting thing. Looking back now, there was a lot of guidance and training but I realised that the most important thing was teaching effectively and classroom management. It was also very important to develop my own style and mechanisms when it came to teaching.
In April 2025, just before the Easter break, I got an email. It was one of those emails that just said “For the Attention of All Employees” in the subject line and in the body there was a “Kind Regards” at the bottom. I opened the letter attached. It explained that the company had reported major losses over the last two quarters and that the parent company (in America), no longer found it saw its Irish subsidiary as a viable investment to continue to supplement.
The email also mentioned that there would be a 30 day “temporary” layoff of all the employees. In this 30 day period, there would be meetings with the board of directors, as well as employee representatives.
Reading this, my stomach dropped. It was difficult because I was in a bit of a limbo because I had a job but also I didn’t have a job. I had one pay check left. The 30 days had passed by very quickly and I realised that the company I had worked for was going into liquidation.
This was not part of the plan at all. I had gone into teaching after driving a van because I preferred to be in a job that I felt less isolated in. Teaching also made me feel like I was giving more of an impact on the students. It was also more flexible and aligned with the goals that I mentioned.
Money struggles
Losing a job and a main source of income makes life incredibly difficult. When this first happened, one way I tried to take my mind off of things was by looking at the silver lining. I was motivated by the fact that I could focus full time on my business. I even made a tiktok about it (insert link). This motivation quickly faded as my account dropped closer and closer to €0.
I decided to start looking for part time jobs (mainly in software and teaching/tutoring). I didn’t really know what a serious job search looked like, considering the last time I had looked for one was in 2024 and even then, it was short lived. A job search is a job in itself, so I had to balance that with working on my startup.
Not having a reliable source of income made me feel like less of a person. I underestimated how much of a dehumanising experience it is. I wasn’t able to show up how I would like to as a partner, friend, sibling and co-founder. There was self inflicted pressure or an image that I felt I had to uphold. The question of “how are things going” became very difficult to navigate. This was also because at the start of 2025, I decided to start posting daily tik tok videos about what it was like to build a business in my 20s. In hindsight, I should have continued to do these videos, as it would have been more honest and realistic of what it looks like to figure things out.
At the time it also made me hyper aware of the relationship I had with my parents when it came to borrowing money. If I was ever stuck or in an emergency, I know I could ask them. I appreciated the ability to be able to do this but I didn’t view myself as being in an emergency, I viewed myself as having made a foolish decision to take a job that I lost because the company closed. I started feeling like maybe I should’ve started a business when I was older and when I had more money. I had this pressure to have everything figured out. I heard somewhere that when you tell a Nigerian parent about a problem, you now have two problems. Looking back now, I think they were just worried about me.
I also didn’t think I would go MONTHS without finding an opportunity. May became June, June became July and July became August. 5 months at this point. I had applied to 40-50 jobs and had two interviews.
Upon reflection, I realise that I might not have done as much as others who have been in the same position as me. So maybe 2 interviews after 50 applications is a good ratio. The funny thing also is that this experience was just a microcosm of the economy and job market, so I take comfort in the fact that this wasn’t a unique experience. I understand now what Kamala Harris meant when she said “You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you”.
Money struggles continued
It wasn’t all terrible. There were some good moments. I started running and ran my first 10KM for charity. I learned the basics of DJing and one of my friends let me DJ for his birthday party. Unfortunately, after these moments I would be reminded of the glaring issue, I wasn’t in a great financial place.
I was tired of feeling how I did and I wanted to control the situation I was in. In August, I gave my co-founder an ultimatum: start selling what we had built or else I might have to take a step back from the business. This didn’t make sense but I said this because I wanted to feel like I had something to show for the work I had put in. This also reflected in freelance work that I did for a client. From the first call, I came across so desperate. The client could tell and they took advantage of this.
Getting back on track
I’d love to say that there was a big shift or a lightbulb moment that changed all of this but there wasn’t. I got a text in September from someone who got my contact details from a principal of a school that I had taught at. He invited me for an interview. The interview went well and after being impressed with my background, they invited me for a training day to observe how they delivered lessons. I really liked how the tutors taught as well as their lesson materials. I attended a few more training days before starting my new role there. Since October, I have run 3 classes a week with this company.
It’s smaller than the last company I was at so there are clearer communication paths. There is a lot more room to grow in this role. I earn more money and can spend more time on the content that I create for students. I have found a real liking for teaching.
On top of this, the flexibility from this job has allowed me to start doing some freelance work and this freelance work has snowballed into opportunities that I can use for future work. I also have more time for my startup. I’ve realised that having less time to work on things for my startup during the week has helped me to prioritise the things that move the needle. I feel more fulfilled.
Learnings
April to September 2025 taught me a lot about myself. It wasn’t the first time that the insecurity of not being financially stable had come up. In fact, this came up early in 2024 before I started driving a van. I think part of me took that job because I didn’t want to sit with my fears. Back then, I didn’t want to not have something. This time, I was able to sit and exist in these negative feelings. It also taught me to be patient and go towards things that align with what I want for myself.
I have also learned to make the most of opportunities and use existing opportunities to make more opportunities. I plan to combine the experience I have teaching now to get into further education teaching. With freelance work I’m exploring repeatable offers that I can sell to a specific type of client.
There are a lot of things that you learn in low moments. I think that was what Skepta expressed in his verse. In fact, I think the entire song (except for Drake’s verse lol) is a song of reflection of how pain makes the good things feel even better.
Writing this has made me realise that I really enjoy writing and sharing my thoughts. It also made me realise that I really miss making the daily videos that I started making at the start of 2025 on Tiktok. At my core, I am a creator. I have a system of how I would like to go about things when it comes to writing as well as making videos. I’d like to stick to this as it reduces my screen time. We’ll see in due time how things go.