The Diaspora Advantage: Osas Imafidon on Building Luxury Lifestyle Brand Across Continents
Meet Osas Imafidon, the visionary behind The Enjoyment Minister, a luxury and lifestyle travel brand founded in Nigeria and has since expanded its footprint to the UK and the US. It all started as a passion for authentic, high-touch travel experiences and then evolved into a trusted global brand that blends elegance, precision, and an instinct for reinvention. Thanks to deliberate systems, and an unwavering belief in greatness that have propelled her to excel in billion-naira corporate sales, business development, and customer relationship management. She brings the speed, creativity, and resilience of a founder into the boardrooms of global brands to create change and inspire traction. In this conversation, she opens up about the mindset, strategies, and lessons that have fuelled her rise, as she offers a masterclass in vision, grit, and the power of staying true to your calling.
Driving enterprise-scale revenue growth in pajamas
When Steve Jobs made his quote that has since become famous, I’m convinced that about half of what separates the successful entrepreneurs from the non-successful ones is pure perseverance, it was to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs to think beyond their limits. This is because a significant majority, like 95 percent or more, of individuals with remarkable ideas may never execute it. And not every startup survived beyond the first few years. But Imafidon is one of the few who persevered in five years and counting.
While some heroes wear a cape, others rock their pajamas like the PJ Mask cartoon to save the day. One such individual is Imafidon. From answering client messages in the dead of the night to driving enterprise-scale revenue growth and orchestrating cross-functional success, Imafidon’s journey is equal parts audacity and strategy. Along the way, she has mastered the art of reinvention, turning challenges into platforms and personal passions into profitable ventures.
Now, her first sale didn’t happen because of a fancy pitch deck. It began with a free travel consultation, a noble act of service she offered without expectation. The receiver came back for more, and this time asked to pay for it, an offer she was more than happy to accept. Before her transition into sales and CRM for multinational corporations in the UK and Nigeria, she paced about her living room in pajamas, answering clients’ questions on WhatsApp at midnight and planning luxury experiences armed only with a well-structured spreadsheet and an unshakable belief in excellence.
Imafidon is the type of professional who changes the narrative and challenges the status quo. Her odyssey feels like a case study in Reinvention – as an example that entrepreneurial resilience is not only for small businesses, but an enterprise superpower. She has indeed done both. And in doing so, she carries with her a rare playbook – the experience of someone who has built a brand from the ground up and then used those same tools to excel in billion-naira industries.
“The Enjoyment Minister was more than just a business to me; it was an education. In those early days, some brand strategists told me to change the name if I wanted corporate brands to take me seriously. I declined. I understood my vision better than anyone else in the room, and I knew people would eventually catch up. They did, and that name has opened doors I never thought possible.
Back then, most of my clients came through recommendations from friends, family, and even strangers I had helped with their travel plans. They couldn’t hide how satisfied they were or how much I had transformed their travel experiences. I was doing everything myself writing marketing copy, scouting vendors, negotiating luxury partnerships, managing finances and somehow, it all came together. It taught me resilience, adaptability, and the power of owning your unique lane,” says Imafidon.
Her fledgling business, The Enjoyment Minister, was beyond business. Whether it was developing marketing and promotional copy, vendor scouting, negotiating luxury brands partnerships, or managing the finance dashboard, Imafidon literally did it all. And it worked. She developed a reliable brand within the luxury travel/lifestyle space, offering high-touch experiences with seamless delivery.
What the outside world perceived – magnificent images, packaged “experiences” – only skimmed the surface of what she constructed in terms of systems behind the scenes. She was building sales funnels. Developing SOP’s. Managing influencer campaigns, improving pricing mechanisms through feedback loops and analytics. “I knew I didn’t just want to build a brand; I wanted to build an operational muscle,” she expressed, oozing enthusiasm and determination. “I have always been adventurous and naturally curious about the world.”
Imafidon identified a market gap and struck while the iron was hot. She recounted the moment of realization. “While building my career in the corporate world, I often found myself working closely with travel agents. One thing stood out: most of their recommendations came straight from desk research. Many had never set foot in the places they were sending clients to. That realization lit a fire in me.
“I wanted to create a travel brand rooted in real experiences—where every recommendation came from someone who had actually been there, felt the culture, and lived the story.”
Travel has always been part of her DNA. The Enjoyment minister founder acknowledged. She is constantly on the move, curating moments, exploring hidden gems, and soaking up the energy of every destination.
Owing to her determination, friends and colleagues started calling her the “Enjoyment Minister”—and the name stuck. “That’s how the vision for my brand was born: a promise to give people more than just trips, but journeys shaped by genuine experience and unfiltered discovery. The Enjoyment Minister was born. I love what I feel when I travel and I want to help others feel the same.”
Imafidon, the graduate of Westminster University, maneuvered her way into corporate sales and business development she didn’t have to begin, she began from strategy. Hence, at the LegalTech giant Axiom Law, she was able to quickly identify a new target sector that increased revenue by 30% within a fiscal quarter. There was no magic wand to her methods. It was this method: segmented, driven by CRM data, and done with the same speed she learned as a founder when trying to sell to her first 10 customers.
She created outbound campaigns. Set new opportunity records every day. And had great relationships with General Counsels – figuring out their pain points strategically and being able to provide them solutions. But it wasn’t only closing transactions. The focus was on listening, diagnosing and customizing.
This theme of turning the grit of founders into scale for the business enterprise is something she cycles through in her career. At Harvard PR, she managed the pre-production, writing, creative execution, and client relations for a Cisco-funded animation project for climate education in schools, completing the project ahead of schedule.
These are not the average sales and marketing victories. There are cross-functional wins that required product, operations, and communication – all of which she has done solo in running a business.
And while now she flourishes within systems, Imafidon has not forgotten how to create systems from the ground up. Her experience serving the public in the Ministry of Justice also provided her with sufficient people skills and diplomacy to deal with various audiences. Working at Sahara Group in her early career, where she was responsible for travel arrangements of over 3000 employees and vendor contracts of several million, she learned to “negotiate without making noise”.
So when she creates a campaign or books a deal, she takes all of that with her today: the diplomacy, the data, the storytelling, the structure. Her story is evidence that growth doesn’t have to be linear. Sometimes it is a loop, a pause, an invention. And in each of those moments she made the decision to create something new, a new campaign, a new system, a new sense of self.
She is now a Marketing and International Business Management Specialist, who moves with the speed of a founder, and with the precision of a strategist. She understands that influence isn’t about going viral, it’s about having value. And she does that with quiet consistency in board rooms and backends.
Her work history looks like an industry map: energy, public service, lifestyle, tech, legal. But, a set of cohesion exists to her skill set. Whether it’s designing workflows within HubSpot, navigating sales cycles with ZoomInfo, or brand storytelling on Instagram she has one levelheaded clarity of message; Know your audience, design for purpose, and execute with intention.
“My mantra has always been—do all the good you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can, as long as you forever can. The money, value and reward will find you,” says Imafidon.
Whether in Nigeria or London, on vendor calls or in venture pitches, Imafido has proven that business isn’t about titles — it’s about traction. The same grit that fueled her startup now drives enterprise growth. She embodies the belief that when you build your own table, you never forget how to sit at someone else’s — and still lead from the head of it.
