What’s your earliest memory of money?
When I was eight, I was involved with my mum’s soft drink business. I was always in the shop with a salesgirl, so I knew how the business worked. It was also my first significant introduction to money — I learned how to count money and balance the books.

I liked the control handling money gave me, so it wasn’t a surprise that I started exploring ways to make money for myself, too.

Do you remember the first thing you did for money?
In JSS one, I mended shoes for my classmates. I was a very curious kid, and every time a shoemaker mended my shoes, I paid attention to how they did it. One day, I went to the market, bought the needle and thread and started practising on my own. That was it.

I charged my classmates ₦50 for every shoe I worked on, and it happened until I got bored after a few months. This was 2006.

Fascinating
The next thing that caught my attention was computers and the internet. When I was 14 years old and was in SS two. My mum gave me a phone that had internet access. Somehow, I stumbled on how to build basic websites with HTML and XML. I’d pay people to build a demo website, study the code and try to implement it myself.

There wasn’t a plan to make money from this at the time, but I knew it could be a source of income later.

It appears you started thinking about money early
My parents drove that awareness. For example, my dad’s parents didn’t leave anything for him, and he had to find his way as a mechanical engineer. My mum’s father was better off, but she didn’t bring any of his wealth into our home. She was raised as a Muslim, and when she decided to marry my Christian dad, she had to forfeit almost everything and start over.

It’s probably why my mum made sure that I was involved in her business for as long as I could.

By the time I finished secondary school in 2012, my mum’s business had grown into a food canteen. I was awaiting admission, so I managed the business. I wasn’t being paid, but I could take money out of the business if I needed anything. On the side, I was also learning how to build websites.

The good thing about this was that, when I got into the university in 2013, I knew how businesses worked, and I also had some tech skills. I leveraged this to make some money for myself in my first year.

Tell me about this
I studied my university community and found out that there were lots of Christian fellowships that needed bulk SMS services. I got to work and built a bulk SMS website and put the word out. I was buying an SMS unit for 90 kobo and selling it for ₦1.50. From this, I was making an average of ₦3k/week.

I wasn’t even doing this full-time — I had a weekly allowance of ₦5k, even though I went home every weekend. Selling SMS was just a side hustle, so it was easy to leave it altogether when it got frustrating.

What happened?
The service provider I bought the unit from increased the unit price from ₦0.90k to ₦1.20. It made sense to raise my prices, but I didn’t think my customers would appreciate it. Ultimately, I decided to end the business. It was the end of my first year and school was closing for the session anyway.

What happened after?
My immediate elder sister was studying for her Master’s Degree at a university in the southwest, and I spent the session break with her. While I was with her, she randomly asked me if I was interested in learning about photography. When I told her I was, she took me to a photography studio at her uni and paid the owner ₦10k to teach me the basics.

I hardly learned anything about photography the whole time I was there.

Haha. Why not?
The guy who owned the studio was busy, and the boys who worked for him weren’t the best teachers. Luckily, the studio also had a cyber cafe, and my computer skills were useful there, so I paid more attention to that part of the business. I was helping people do stuff there and making some small changes — about ₦1k – ₦2k/day. I thought that was a fair trade-off since I always had money in my wallet.

Fair enough
After about three months, I returned to school for the new session. My allowance was now ₦10k/week, and I didn’t do anything else for money during the year. I just focused on school and website development.

But my interest in photography was growing, and I was looking for opportunities to learn. This came when I was in 2015 when I was 300 level.

How?
I found a guy — a studio and wedding photographer — on Instagram and liked his work. He worked in the town, so I approached him and offered to work for him for free. That’s how I started interning with him.

Man, he used me, but I learned everything I know about photography during the year I worked for him.

Were you being paid, though?
₦1k transport stipend every time I went out to work for him. It didn’t matter if he wasn’t even at the job, I didn’t get paid beyond that. I was pretty much paid in “experience”.

Haha. We’ve all been there
After working with him for a year, I had enough confidence in my skills to start looking for my gigs, so I left him. But we were still in contact and occasionally worked together. Now he was paying me between ₦5k-10k every time I worked with him.

The first job I got for myself was to shoot a wedding. I was paid ₦3k.

Sir?
Haha. I rented the camera I used from a classmate, and I gave him ₦1500. So really, I got ₦1500 from the job.

Subsequently, I got jobs that paid me between ₦5k and ₦10k. But the downside was that I didn’t have my camera, and I’d usually part with half of my earnings to rent a camera. I didn’t mind this very much because I still had my allowance. That said, I started thinking about getting my camera. It was the only sustainable way.

I agree. What was the plan?
The camera I wanted cost $2k, and a dollar was trading for ₦300 at the time.

You needed to raise ₦600k
Yes. I turned to my family for help. My mum gave me ₦300k and two of my siblings gave me ₦100k. Luckily, I got a big wedding gig that paid me ₦200k, and my profit from the whole thing was about ₦150k. I had the money I needed.

I paid for the camera in July 2018 and got it in August.

Here’s where it got interesting.

I’m listening
I grew up in a state in the north-central. It so happens that the governor of my state in 2018 used to be our neighbour. His wife — the first lady — was my Sunday School teacher at one point. On a whim, I contacted her on Facebook and offered to photograph her. Two weeks later, she replied with a number to call. I called the number and her P. A invited me to the governor’s office.

Coincidentally, the first lady and her photographer had just stopped working together, so the role was open. The first time we worked together, we went out for an event. I didn’t get paid for that event, but she promised to call me back.

Read full article here: https://www.zikoko.com/money/the-nairalife-of-the-documentary-photographer-with-tech-founder-dreams/