My calendar has a block every day labeled “deep work” that my co-founders have learned means “do not schedule over this, he’s writing code and will be insufferable if interrupted.” I’m aware this isn’t a scalable way to run two companies. I’m working on it. Slowly.
As CEO of Hustlrs Nigeria and Nadiron Technologies, my actual job is supposed to be strategy, hiring, partnerships, the unglamorous adult stuff. My instinct, nine years of engineering deep in my bones, is to open the terminal and fix the thing myself because I can see exactly how to fix it.
The tension nobody warns you about
Every hour I spend in a codebase is an hour I’m not doing the CEO work that only I can do — the vision-setting, the hard conversations, the fundraising conversations that require a version of me that isn’t mid-refactor. But every hour I spend purely in “CEO mode” is an hour further from the technical instincts that got me here in the first place, and I refuse to become the founder who can’t read his own product’s pull requests.
What’s actually working
A hard rule: I review architecture decisions and touch code that shapes the platform’s direction — the stuff where my judgment is actually the scarce resource. I don’t own tickets anymore. Somebody else’s name is on the commit that fixes the button color, and that’s correct, even when my fingers itch to do it myself in four minutes flat.
The honest confession
I still sneak in late-night commits some weeks, the way people sneak snacks on a diet. My co-founders roll their eyes. But there’s something true underneath the joke: I don’t think I’ll ever be a founder who’s fully removed from the craft, and I’ve stopped apologizing for that. I’ve just gotten better at making sure it doesn’t become the excuse I hide behind instead of doing the harder, less comfortable CEO work.
Both companies are growing. So, slowly, is my ability to let go of things that aren’t mine to hold onto anymore.