Peace Obinani didn’t plan on becoming a full-time entrepreneur. After years of working her way up to a leadership role in a fintech company, severe burnout and a desire for new challenges pushed her to step away. Her plan? Take a six-month break and use her side business — an event company — as a financial stopgap. Two years later, that stopgap has morphed into a full-scale event production venture with over 50 completed projects and a 15-person team.
Here, Peace shares her journey from making ₦5k as an event runner to building her own company, navigating the harsh realities of entrepreneurship, and her straight-talking advice for 9-to-5ers planning their exit.
In 2024, after almost five years at Piggyvest, I suddenly decided to hand in my resignation.
On paper, it was a risky move. There was nothing wrong at work; they wanted me to stay. A salary review was right around the corner. But I’d been restless for about a year and couldn’t suppress the urge to move anymore.
Startup life is no joke. I was deeply burnt out and felt I had hit my peak in my role. I had secured my UK Global Talent Visa and wanted a fresh challenge and an international career.
Leaving felt like stepping into the complete unknown. To manage the anxiety of having no income, I built a plan.
First, I’d take a three to six-month break to rest and recover from burnout and live off my savings. While that was happening, I’d use the event company I had registered on a whim in 2023 as a financial stopgap before moving to the UK.
The irony of the situation? I was never supposed to be in a 9-to-5 in the first place.
I never dreamed of corporate life. The idea of sitting in an office all day in formal outfits didn’t appeal to me. My foundation had always been in events and hustle.
Back in 2013, while struggling with JAMB after secondary school, I went for a runway modelling audition and failed miserably. But the casting director liked my energy and offered me a job as his personal assistant. That marked my entry into event production.
I started as a runner — running errands, posting on social media and doing whatever was needed for ₦5k – ₦10k per event — before finding my groove in technical front-of-house production, managing sound, lights, screens, and stage cues.
When I got into UNILAG in 2014 to study Microbiology, I kept doing event gigs and, for extra cash, I managed social media accounts. In my third year, I launched a ready-to-wear clothing business. I sourced fabrics in Yaba, sat with tailors, and hauled clothes back to campus at midnight to meet delivery timelines.
The business paid me enough to rent an apartment after I graduated in 2018. But in 2019, the business completely tanked. It was one of the worst financial years of my life. I was living on a single ₦40k/month social media gig and barely surviving.
Later that year, after serving my NYSC three-week orientation camp in Katsina, a friend sent me an internship opening at Piggyvest. I applied for the fun of it.
To my surprise, they hired me at ₦75,000/month.
Piggyvest wasn’t the rigid corporate environment I feared. People wore sneakers to work, the energy was young, and I loved the work. I started as an intern handling fire-and-brimstone customer support on Twitter, fell in love with growth, and eventually climbed the ranks over four and a half years to become Head of Online Marketing, earning roughly 25x to 30x my starting pay.
As I climbed the professional ladder, my event production background never really left me.
Most events at Piggyvest naturally routed through me. End-of-year parties, brand activations, and Big Brother house integrations, I championed all of them. Even when we hired external event vendors, I managed them because I knew the ins and outs of showrunning.
I was the “events person” at work, and I enjoyed it.
When I finally took the leap and resigned in 2024 to begin my rest period, the plan immediately fell apart.
The rest never happened.
In the same month I quit, client inquiries for event production began rolling in. While I was supposed to be on a relaxing holiday, I was answering client emails, hiring an admin assistant, managing vendors, and coordinating projects. One gig led straight into the next one.
Every time I said, “I think I’m ready to move to the UK now,” another project would land. I would tell myself, “Okay, after this one, I’ll go.”
A year passed, two years now, and I still haven’t moved.
My temporary stopgap somehow became my primary, full-time venture.
Going from employee to business owner tested muscles I didn’t know I had.
If fintech was intense, event production in Nigeria is a different beast. It’s a ghetto inside a ghetto. My mental health during peak event seasons is practically non-existent. But unlike corporate work, this gives me a direct creative outlet. Watching an event space transform satisfies my creative side and makes the operational chaos worth it.
Running a business has also come with steep lessons.
In the beginning, I gave out too many discounts out of excitement. If I forgot an item in a budget, the cost came straight out of my personal pocket. I only realised how bad things had gotten when I hired an accountant, and we reviewed previous projects and saw a lot of red. It genuinely triggered me. Today, we have structured pricing and an accountant auditing everything.
Also, I lived on my savings for months after starting the business. Then I started paying myself random amounts every couple of months. I eventually realised that wasn’t sustainable in the long term. Now, I treat myself strictly as a company employee. Today, the business pays me a monthly salary equivalent to what I earned in my 9-to-5 job three years ago, leaving company profits intact for growth and end-of-year reserves.
I started the business without a team, but now we’ve grown to a 15-person team, 6 of whom are full-time employees. Over the past two years, we must have completed between 50 and 100 event projects.
If you’re sitting at your desk right now feeling burnt out and contemplating a jump into full-time business ownership, here is my advice:
Peace Obinani will lead a workshop at the Naira Life Conference 2026, offering practical insights and strategies from her playbook on turning a side hustle into a sustainable business. Secure a seat in the room here.
The Naira Life Conference is returning on August 22, 2026, in Lagos! Come learn from finance experts and industry leaders, and partake in unfiltered conversations about building wealth and diversifying your income stream in a country like Nigeria. Real stories, expert advice you can actually use, and a community ready to build wealth together. Secure your spot here.
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