Alexis Oladipo is a fashionable woman. She rocks up for our interview at her ultra-modern office space in Shoreditch, east London, wearing a black, cropped Nike jumper, jeans, and Calvin Klein briefs. She’s here to talk about her startup food business, Gym Bites, which has absolutely skyrocketed in the three years since it was founded.

However cool her life now might seem, the 29-year-old is happy to admit her journey from a 16-year-old sales assistant at Selfridges to having her range of freshly prepared, healthy meals sold on its shelves 13 years later has been far from “glitz and glam”.



Through it all, though, one thing that remained constant was Oladipo’s desire to work for herself.

During her shifts at the high-end department store she often found herself wondering what it would be like to be the boss and not the hired hand. “The owner [was] probably on a private beach while I’m just slaving away for minimum wage,” she says. “But I was starting to realise my potential.”

Listening to her talk, it becomes clear that in every job she worked, whether her heart was in it or not, Oladipo was prepared to give it her best shot. After graduating from university, she wanted to pursue a career in fashion but application after application was rejected.



Aged 23, inspired by the bestseller Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, which encourages financial independence, Oladipo “began to take control of my thoughts and what I could be. You know, really go for it and make something of myself”.

So she decided she would just go it alone and become a freelance stylist. “You see, I learnt that if you can’t get a job, create one – and that's what I did,” she says.

Oladipo secured consultations with stars like Mel B and Iggy Azalea and held meetings at Tom Ford. “If you're going to start anything in life you can’t do it half-hearted,” Oladipo says. Business was OK and she was making the right connections, but her passion was waning and a freelance income was unstable.



Eventually the media and communications graduate took a job as a cleaner at an investment bank in the City, getting up at the crack of dawn in order to make ends meet. “It wasn't ideal and I felt ashamed,” Oladipo says.



It was the start of a period of depression, she said. She went through a painful breakup, had problems with her health, and lost a lot of weight. There were times she felt useless. Mental illness wasn’t a common topic of discussion in the Nigerian community she grew up in, but today she is happy to talk about it to let people know it is nothing to be ashamed of.