Meet Feso Adeniji, a 30-year old lawyer who runs Arcee Realty, a commercial real estate brokerage firm and founder of Red Caramel Dance & Fitness Studio, both located in Lagos, Nigeria.
In her interview on our maiden edition of Hippie of the Month, Feso tells us how she’s been able to navigate her corporate and creative passions.
Hippie In A Suit (HIAS): Hi Feso, please tell us a little bit about yourself.
Feso: I would describe myself as an introverted extrovert who loves peace of mind and structure. I believe presentation is key and I hate it when people approach life or do things with half a heart.
HIAS: What drives you everyday?
Feso: The smell of success in the morning! I am driven everyday to undergo a continuous transformation and become the best version of myself. There’s always room for improvement in various areas of our lives.
HIAS: What are your goals and aspirations? Career and otherwise?
Feso: My goal is to create a lifestyle and a paradigm shift through my work and everyday life.
HIAS: So what is your inner Hippie?
Feso: My inner hippie is called “Brown Sugar”- she is an RnB and Alternative Afrobeats DJ who would travel the world and if given the chance to, lay in a bed of roses all day and soak in a goat’s milk bath by night, drinking Iced coffee and burning incense for leisure.
HIAS: Brown Sugar seems like someone we would love to hang out with!
So Feso, everyone has something they’d love to be known for. What is that “thing” for you?
Feso: The one thing I wish to be known for is normalising your passion as part of your lifestyle without losing your core essence and maintaining your “other side”.
HIAS: If you could go back in time, say before embarking on your current career path; what decisions/choices, if any, would you be happy to change, and why?
Feso: If I could go back in time, I would have found another job that was location and time-sensitive enough for me to manage Red Caramel Dance and Fitness and still work because, what’s a Hippie without a Suit? Incomplete!
HIAS: Haha! So by that statement, is it fair to assume that you would classify yourself a Hippie In A Suit?
Feso: Oh definitely. I fully subscribe to the Hippie In A Suit ethos. I believe creativity should not be seen as youthful exuberance. Creativity should be a normalised culture for those who have it and are free to embrace it. Do everything with passion or not at all.
HIAS: What’s your “side hustle” and do you see the Hippie In A Suit community as a platform to redefine the term “side hustle”?
Feso: The truth is, I do not consider running a pole dance fitness studio as a side hustle! It’s actually a fulltime operation because you have to worry about paying bills, health and safety, maintenance of equipment, training of instructors, class curriculum, managing different personalities, potential collaborations, creating your brand and manifesting that through the ambience of your space for fun and for fitness.
HIAS could redefine side hustle but this means different things to different people. A side hustle could be something you merely invest in to get returns while other people manage the operations or something you have to be physically present to indeed “hustle”.
HIAS: Express yourself. Please tell us more about your creative side.
Feso: The creative me has been tagged as a different Feso altogether! It gives me joy and a certain satisfaction knowing that through an activity, the Red Caramel Studio can bring like-minded people together to workout, improve their self-confidence and encounter a new, undiscovered energy.
Over the past 4 years, the journey to redefining or normalising pole dance as a fitness option has not been easy but gradually people have seen that pole dancing as alternative fitness does not have to be associated with negative connotations or indecency.
HIAS: Thank you very much Feso. This has been an enlightening conversation and we hope to catch up with you soon!
To know more about Feso and her passions, go to:
Arcee Realty: Twitter & Instagram (@arcee_realty) and LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/company/arcee-realty/)
Red Caramel: Twitter & Instagram (@redcaramelng)
This is inspiring!