Some years later, I was teaching a business studies class at the school where I worked and had this feeling of discontentment in my gut. “Why am I teaching business studies, when I haven’t experienced what I teach?” I asked myself. So I began a degree in business management and start-ups. At the end of it, I secured funding for a laptop, some raw materials and started an online fashion company, designing the clothes myself. Before long I was learning web marketing, branding and business development and Richible.com was born.

 

Did your family, experiences and culture influence your journey as an entrepreneur?

 

In Nigeria, my birthplace, my mother was a TV presenter and my father a successful car salesman running his own business. As a result we lived a privileged lifestyle. But all of a sudden things changed dramatically. My mother was (and still is at 68 years of age) a very ambitious woman. She decided to relocate to Britain.

 

Life in our new world was not easy. Our family went through several difficult experiences. My mother ended up working three jobs just to make sure she could put food on the table for us. We experienced homelessness on two occasions. I remember myself and three siblings sleeping on the floor of my mother’s rented office space. I saw my mother absorb the shame and reduction of status from African celebrity to cleaner and care home worker in the UK. Most of my childhood was spent in relationship with the twin sisters of wealth and struggle.