The story

My Story

Back in 2015, I wasn’t a web designer. Not even close. I was working as a pneumatic technician at Polyoaks, turning wrenches on machines. On the outside, it looked like a solid job. On the inside, I was crumbling. Years of anxiety and depression were grinding me down, and eventually, I hit the wall. I couldn’t fake it anymore. I quit.

That decision didn’t just leave me jobless — it blew up my entire life. My parents weren’t impressed. To them, quitting without a plan wasn’t strength; it was weakness. The fights got bad, and one day, they threw me out. Just like that, I was out on my own. No plan, no safety net, nothing.

A friend took me in. Between us, we had one laptop — not a shiny MacBook, just an old workhorse with enough life left to boot up. He was a graphic designer, working for some company, and one night while he was doing his thing, I asked him how he got into design. His answer still rings in my head:

“Anyone can be a graphic designer.”

It didn’t sound profound at the time, but those six words cracked something open in me. If anyone could do it, why not me?

So I flipped my world upside down. Days became for sleeping, nights for grinding. I didn’t know a damn thing about design or code, but I was stubborn. I started scavenging HTML snippets from Stack Exchange, random tutorials, and whatever scraps Google could throw me it was before the time of AI chat Gpt and the likes. I stitched them together, piece by piece, until I had my first website.

It was awful. Broken layouts, clashing colors, text boxes that wouldn’t align — but it worked. For me, that was the win. That ugly site was my first step into a new life.

The Long Nights and Small Wins

After that, I fell down the rabbit hole. I taught myself WordPress — easier than raw HTML, but still frustrating as hell. One broken plugin after another, late nights debugging, but each site I built looked less like garbage and more like something you could actually show a client.

Then came PHP. Suddenly, I wasn’t just hacking together pages; I could tweak the engine under the hood. That lit a fire. I started taking online courses, digging into programming, design, analytics — anything that would give me an edge.

But it wasn’t just skills I was building. It was a new perspective — and that became more than a phrase. It became the name for everything I was trying to do. New Perspective Design wasn’t just an agency-in-the-making. It was my way of saying, “I’m rewriting the script.”

Turning Hustle Into a Business

At first, it was survival. I freelanced. I built sites for anyone who’d give me a shot — small businesses, side hustlers, family friends. I didn’t care about the money; I cared about proving to myself that I could build something out of nothing.

Over time, clients started coming back. They told other people. I started charging more. Suddenly, what began as desperation was becoming a career.

The first time I landed a “real” client, I remember sitting there thinking: This is it. This is the crack in the door.

Bit by bit, freelancing turned into an agency. I built a small team. We didn’t have fancy offices or unlimited budgets, but we had grit. Late nights, trial and error, plenty of mistakes — but we were delivering.

Johannesburg and Pretoria: The Big Stage

Moving into the Pretoria and Johannesburg markets changed everything. These cities run fast. They don’t wait for you to catch up. Pretoria web design clients demanded precision. Johannesburg website design clients demanded speed and adaptability, web design in Johannesburg was tough. I had to evolve or get left behind.

And I did evolve. Each project sharpened me. Each client raised the stakes. From startups trying to get off the ground to corporates who had been burned by big-name agencies, we built websites, ran SEO campaigns, and delivered branding that actually moved the needle.

That’s when I realized something powerful: we weren’t just building websites; we were shaping the way businesses show up in the world.

Looking Back, Ten Years Later

Now, a decade later, New Perspective Design isn’t just a side hustle anymore. It’s one of South Africa’s most recognized digital marketing agencies, with a client base spread across the country — especially in Johannesburg and Pretoria.

I still catch myself in moments of disbelief. Driving through the city, I’ll see signage, branding, or websites we built, and it hits me:

“Holy shit. I actually shaped this. I left fingerprints on the world.”

And here’s the truth most bios won’t tell you: it wasn’t clean. It wasn’t easy. I wasn’t always okay. But I fought, I built, and I kept moving forward.

That’s my story. From a broken kid with nothing but anxiety, one laptop, and a friend’s couch, to building a company that helps other businesses grow.

And the funny thing is… I feel like this is still just the beginning.

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