You are building in the wrong order

My life has been a funny one.

I cannot stay in one lane. Never could.

If I do not have multiple plays running at once, I start feeling like I am wasting time. It is almost like an addiction — not to money exactly, but to doing. To building. To testing things.

For a long time I did not understand the point of my obsession with tech. But as I got older and hungrier, I started looking at the game more seriously. Not just coding. Not just products. The whole picture of how wealth actually gets built.

And when you look at it clearly across different industries, different generations, different geographies — the winning formula is mostly the same.

It just shows up in different flavors.

Here is the thing most people get wrong though: these levels are not a straight line. Most people think the path is Side Hustle → Product → Enterprise, in that exact order. Build the hustle, save up, build the product, blow up, become a big company.

That is not how it actually works.

The real path is Side Hustle → Enterprise → Product.

Enterprise is not the destination. Enterprise is the bridge that funds your product properly. And most people skip it entirely, which is why most products die quietly.

Let me explain.

Stage 1: the side hustle

In any market, the most important thing you need is capital.

If you did not come from money, the only way to get that capital is to earn it. That is just the reality of the game.

The first version of anything you do is chaotic. You are in a market full of possibilities and you are just swinging at whatever feels like it could work. Coding projects. Design gigs. Fixing things. Making things. Whatever the market will pay you for.

This is the side hustle phase.

And honestly, it is the most fun.

The money is daily. Your cashflow is decent enough to feel alive — eat out, flex small, do nice things for yourself. The cycle is short. Do the work, collect the bag.

If you are on a 9-5, you are also in this phase by the way.

But here is what nobody warns you about:

the market decides the price of your work. Not you.

You cannot sit down and declare "I am a premium developer, I charge premium rates." The market will humble you. You will price yourself out of deals or price yourself so low you are running on fumes. Until you understand what the market actually values and why, you are just guessing.

And even when you figure that out, the side hustle has a ceiling.

The way most people run it — task by task, client by client — your positioning is weak. You are selling your time and your execution. The day you stop working, the money stops too.

You can survive on this. Many people do.

But it will not buy those things you have been dreaming about. Not at this pace. Not with this model.

Stage 2: the product trap

So the natural next move people make is to build a product.

A scalable thing. Something you build once and sell forever. Something that prints money while you sleep.

Ahh, that shiny piece of scalable software that can make millions if you just distribute properly. God come finish you, na software you dey do 😭. Blood money.

But here is the part they conveniently leave out:

building a product to profit requires someone else's profit first.

In other words, you need capital my G.

You need marketing. You need engineering. You need distribution. You need supply. Scaling a product is not just about writing good code — it is about all the machinery that gets the thing in front of people who will actually pay for it.

You think Americans raise so much money for fun? They are not naive. They know you cannot code your way to millions in revenue without serious resources behind the effort.

But somehow we convince ourselves otherwise.

So we build in the dark. We spend months — sometimes years — on products that never see real users. We swear off clients, reject side hustle work, talk about "building the thing." And then look who came back to work with the client he swore never to work for again 😂

This is the trap. Not the product itself — products are real and they work. The trap is trying to build one before you have the capital, the credibility, and the relationships to actually distribute it.

The people who build successful products do not start with the product. They start with enterprise.

Stage 3: enterprise

Enterprise means big businesses. Organizations. Institutions. Companies that have been operating for decades, run on yearly budgets, and control billions. These are the entities that govern the majority share of whatever market you are trying to play in.

They are usually set in their ways. They move slow. They have layers of approval and procurement and legal.

But they have capital that changes lives overnight.

From Drake to MJ, they all signed enterprise deals that multiplied their stack in ways that years of daily hustle could not. One deal, based entirely on your credibility, can print more money than most people see in a decade.

And that is the price you pay to get in the room.

Credibility.

The positioning game

Here is the thing most people never understand about their side hustle years.

All that chaotic, daily-money, task-based work you have been doing? It has been building your credibility the entire time.

You just do not know how to position it.

Because there is always a high-level version of everything. Enterprise players operate at the highest level. To reach them, you need to stop positioning yourself around execution and start positioning yourself around the scalable idea inside your work.

Not "I code websites."

Not "I design logos."

"I help organizations fix operational problems with simple technology."

See the difference?

One is a craftsman. The other is a business-facing solution.

In my own experience, I started with coding websites and apps. Then I ran an engineering team. Then I went deeper into operational systems. Eventually I positioned Backyard Studios around the idea that most operational problems in a business can be solved with simple technology.

That is literally what a developer does. But for enterprise, that positioning changes everything — because it is business-facing, not craft-facing.

Get deep into the business dynamics of your side-hustles. Look for the scalable idea inside the chaos. That is your positioning. Not the hustle itself.

But positioning alone is not enough to get you through the door.

You also need the backing of an enterprise player who has more credibility than you. Enterprise does not start with your product — it starts with the product of another enterprise player who chooses to partner with you for a specific goal. Sales. Implementation. Expansion. Acquisition.

These deals happen between giants but they are executed through smaller intermediaries.

That is why positioning is so important. It is literally your location in the flow of enterprise revenue.

How to survive the wait

One more thing people underestimate: enterprise deals take time.

Sales cycles can run six months to a year. Sometimes longer. The money does not come fast. It comes in large amounts, but you have to wait for it.

That is not a reason to avoid enterprise. That is a reason to structure your life properly while you pursue it.

Here is how the whole thing fits together:

Set your enterprise goal — a partnership, a deal, a contract. Build and maintain your positioning: your socials, your website, your case studies, your credibility stack. And while you are waiting for that deal to land, let your side hustle quietly fund your lifestyle. Daily money to keep you alive. The patience to play the longer game.

You can even experiment during this period. Test things. Learn the market more deeply. The enterprise goal is your north star. The side hustle keeps the lights on.

Eventually, when the enterprise money starts landing, you step back from the hustle and pour that capital into your product.

Now you are not building blind. You have capital. You have relationships. You have a market that already knows your name.

And when the product takes off?

Deals start cascading between you and other enterprise players. Revenue becomes recurring. The stack starts compounding.

You become your own enterprise player.

The real formula

Side hustle → credibility → position yourself for enterprise → land the deal → fund your product → become the enterprise.

Most people stay in side hustle mode forever because they skipped the middle.

They thought the product was the bridge.

It is not. Enterprise is the bridge.

The hustle was never the problem.

The missing piece was always strategy.