In a culture obsessed with scale, Funmilayo Olajide chose a different path—growing her Lagos interior startup slowly, on her own terms, after hours and without the 24/7 hustle.
On a humid March evening in Lagos, Funmilayo Olajide drafted an unexpected message to her clients. She was pausing her business; effectively quitting, at least for now.
In only her mid-twenties, this young founder had been juggling a full-time job at a law firm by day and running her interiors startup, Luxeberry, by night. From the outside, Olajide’s life looked polished: Instagram posts of sunlit living rooms, perfectly hung drapes, a company seemingly on the rise. But behind the scenes, she was exhausted. “I told people I’d stopped completely; I was even referring clients,” Olajide admits of that breaking point. Burnout had caught up with her, and the glossy façade was cracking.
That pause in 2025 forced an uncomfortable question: What did she actually want from this business? Olajide wasn’t giving up on Luxeberry so much as she was rejecting the way she’d been running it. In an entrepreneurial culture that worships nonstop hustle and hyper-growth, she chose a contrarian path. Instead of pushing harder, she stepped back to rethink.
When she returned to Luxeberry after months of soul-searching, it was with a new rulebook—one built around sustainability, focus, and doing things on her own terms. Inside With CareerBuddy finds out how it all went down
After Hours in Lagos
By day, Olajide is a poised business development executive involved with legal marketing at a Lagos law firm. By night (and on weekends), she transforms into the hands-on creative lead of Luxeberry Interiors, sourcing elegant curtains or installing statement mirrors while the city sleeps.
“Most of Luxeberry is built in the ‘after hours’,” she says. Late-night strategy sessions and social media posts drafted at midnight are the norm. It looks, in her words, “glamorous and put-together online,” but the reality is decidedly less glossy. Behind every Instagram-worthy photo is “discipline, exhaustion, and constant recalibration.”
The origin of Luxeberry itself traces back to those after-hours passions. As a university student in 2021, Olajide was the friend with the impeccably styled dorm room—despite four cinderblock walls and a meager student budget.
“Even in university, people paid attention to how I styled my room, even though there wasn’t much to work with,” she recalls. She hung beautiful orange-patterned curtains that her hostel mates coveted, arranged thrifted décor just so, and soon friends were coming to her for advice on sprucing up their own spaces. What started as a hobby—helping a classmate choose new bedsheets or reorganize a tiny hostel room—quietly planted the seed for a business.
Funmilayo dabbled in other hustles too (reselling sneakers, braiding hair) as many enterprising Nigerian students do. But she noticed a shift as graduation neared.
“My ideal clientele was growing up,” she says. The same friends who once splurged on sneakers were now moving into first apartments and cared “less about shoes and more about their spaces.” The demand for affordable style and setup was right in front of her. Luxeberry was born from that intersection: “what I was naturally good at, and what people around me suddenly needed.” She started small, sourcing attractive home accessories and décor pieces for peers and young professionals who wanted Instagram-worthy spaces without the luxury price tag. Business picked up quickly, validating her hunch that people will invest in making their lives easier or their homes better, even if they’re not “supposed” to afford such luxuries yet.
Pivoting from Burnout
Success, however, came with hidden strain. In those early days, Funmilayo Olajide tried to do everything herself. She was retailer, designer, delivery coordinator, and customer service rep all at once; all on top of her new 9–5 job. The biggest challenge, she confesses, was logistics.
“Managing suppliers, deliveries, delays, artisans — all of it was so exhausting,” she says. The strain of running a product-based retail operation after office hours nearly broke her.
“Combined with working a 9–5, it actually pushed me to pause the business entirely for almost a year,” Olajide recalls. Luxeberry’s initial model simply wasn’t sustainable for a solo founder with a day job.
The solution, when it came, was a strategic pivot. Funmilayo realized she didn’t need to offer full-scale interior design or sell every kind of décor item to have a viable company. In fact, her earlier assumption—that she needed to “master full interior design before leaning fully into service-based work”—had been wrong.
“Waiting to be ‘fully ready’ slowed me down,” she says now.
So she flipped the model.
Luxeberry evolved from a retail shop into a specialist installation and sourcing service. Instead of trying to stock and sell countless accessories, Funmilayo focused on a few high-impact offerings that busy young professionals genuinely need: made-to-measure curtains and blinds, mirrors that open up a room, rugs, lighting, bespoke furniture sourcing. These were the flourishes that transform a space, and importantly, they didn’t require her to be an accredited interior architect to deliver value.
By narrowing the scope, she also improved the business’s health. “I should have restructured the business earlier into a specialist installation company the moment I started working a 9–5,” Olajide reflects. The leaner focus meant fewer supply chain headaches and more manageable projects. She brought in installers and artisans on a project basis rather than keeping a large staff. Traditional interior design firms might carry heavy overhead with showrooms and full-time contractors, but Luxeberry stays intentionally lean and adaptable. Clients still get what they want—beautiful, custom-fit pieces without the hassle.
“Luxeberry makes money by removing friction,” Olajide explains. The company handles sourcing, coordination, installation, and quality control that customers either can’t handle or don’t have time for. “We basically offer peace of mind in exchange for your money.”
That peace of mind (for both client and founder) was a direct result of Funmilayo imposing limits on what Luxeberry would do. She stopped trying to do everything herself. Delegation, she learned, wasn’t a luxury; it was a necessity to save time, money, and her own sanity. It’s a lesson she wishes she’d embraced on day one. But learning it the hard way may have been necessary. When she finally returned after that long pause, she had a clearer vision of a business that could run with her life instead of against it.
Slow Growth in a Hustle Culture
Funmilayo Olajide’s approach defies a lot of startup clichés. In Lagos, a city where entrepreneurial energy crackles and the prevailing wisdom is to scale fast or fade away, she openly preaches patience.
“That slow, thoughtful growth beats aggressive scaling, especially in a creative business,” she says, fully aware that such a statement might make other founders think she’s crazy. But her experience taught her that growth without a solid footing is a recipe for “chaos,” as she puts it.
“I’m optimizing for controlled growth,” Olajide explains. “Growth without margin creates chaos, and margin without growth creates stagnation.” So she’s steering a middle course; building at a pace the business (and its founder) can sustain. After nearly burning out, she’s no longer seduced by the gospel of move fast and break things.
Part of this philosophy is setting boundaries that many go-getters might balk at. Funmilayo Olajide flatly rejects the idea that you must hustle 24/7 to succeed.
“Burnout is not a strategy,” she says with a wry laugh, dismissing one of the most pervasive bits of business “wisdom” out there. She is disciplined, yes, but not interested in becoming a martyr to productivity. If an early morning doesn’t demand her attention, she unapologetically sleeps in on her remote workdays (“I sleep in with my full chest,” she jokes). Her actual morning routine is refreshingly simple: no 5 a.m. cardio, no predawn CEO journaling—just a quick prayer and the basics.
“On physical workdays, I wake up, read my Bible immediately, get ready, and leave. No elaborate rituals,” she says. The real key, she’s found, is consistency over intensity. “Showing up imperfectly is better than disappearing to ‘prepare.’ You also don’t need to do everything to be valuable, you just need to do the right things well.”
Her tools are unglamorous yet effective: WhatsApp Business for client communication, Notes app for ideas and planning, Google Drive for organization. Nothing too fancy, just the infrastructure of someone who figured out how to build in the margins.
Olajide also draws sharp lines between business and personal life, an almost radical stance in a world where startup culture often blurs the two. She refuses to mix business with pleasure, even if that makes her seem stern. “People say I’m strict, but I believe boundaries protect relationships and the business,” she notes. Friends won’t get mate’s rates on Luxeberry services, and weekend social events might get skipped if there’s a client install to manage. These choices, in her view, prevent resentment and burnout before they start. It’s all part of designing a venture she can live with for the long haul, not just until the next sprint of venture capital or viral growth.
Her contrarian streak even extends to the aesthetics of her industry. Lagos’s luxury interior scene is booming, but it’s often a copy-and-paste affair—what Olajide dubs “aesthetic recycling.” Trendy apartments across the city tend to follow the same Pinterest-approved formula, indistinguishable from one another.
“We’ve normalized duplication. Every space looks like a Lagos Airbnb, and we pretend it’s fine,” she says, equal parts amused and dismayed. In her view, true design isn’t about flexing the most expensive fixtures; it’s about reflecting the client’s personality. That belief in originality guides Luxeberry’s work and sets it apart. Funmilayo Olajide isn’t interested in cookie-cutter luxury. She’d rather help a young professional make a bland rental feel like home than outfit another generic showpiece flat.
By championing personal taste over prevailing trends, she’s cultivating a brand identity that resonates with clients who feel overlooked by the one-size-fits-all approach to “luxury.”
Ambition on Her Own Terms
