Eight years ago I had big dreams of being an "independent woman." I just had no idea how to get there.
What I had going for me was the right circle and a lot of curiosity, so I started learning skills. And then I stayed in the learning phase for… a while. Take a course, try to do something with it, get stuck, stop, repeat. You know the cycle.
In 2019, on a bus to Ibadan, I heard about Fiverr and Upwork. People said they'd change my life, so I signed up to Fiverr that same day. I kept that account for ages and no matter what I did, it just wouldn't click.
Then 2021 happened. My friend started getting actual humans to actually pay her, and I was inspired. I picked up software development hoping to make it big in tech, and learned technical writing alongside it. I did a fellowship with Tech4Dev's Women Techsters, interned as a software developer at three different startups, and felt like I was finally moving.
Working at Paycrest, surrounded by genuinely fire developers, taught me two things. One, the well of tech was far deeper than I thought. Two, I wasn't ready to give everything it would take. So I pivoted.
I sat down and listed everything I was good at, and a surprising amount of my self-taught skills overlapped with management, admin and operations. On a call with Francis Ocholi, I decided this was the path, and that I'd stick with it until it paid off.
After spending time and resources sending proposals, I finally figured out how it works, did it multiple times, and became Top Rated, then Top Rated Plus — within months. All while studying engineering at Obafemi Awolowo University.
Last year knocked me down a bit. My biggest contract ended abruptly, and around the same time a different client left me a bad review — a genuine mistake. So I did what I always do. I sat with it and dug into what actually worked.
And I found it. There's a formula for going from no skill, to properly skilled, to landing clients.
So what's better than me making good money on Upwork? Me and a whole lot of other people doing the same. I've always loved it when people reached out to learn this, and I've always been happy to teach. But only a few ever applied what I showed them — usually because of information overload, or because they were too used to the standard classroom learning structure.
That's the gap PixelsnFiles exists to close.
Enough yapping. It's lovely to meet you. — Goga
