The Part-Time Studio

Noor Fasi: Small Practice, from The Rightup. I'm Noor Fasi. Oluwaseun Bello co-founded an interiors studio in Lagos with a friend from university, and both of them work three days a week, by design, not by circumstance. Seun, welcome.

Oluwaseun Bello: Thank you, Noor. Monday to Wednesday for me, Wednesday to Friday for Kemi. Wednesday is the day we both exist.

Noor Fasi: Why three days?

Oluwaseun Bello: Different reasons. I have two small children. Kemi paints, and sells her work, and was not willing to give that up to run a business. We set up in 2019 and decided early that if the studio needed five days from both of us, it was the wrong studio.

Noor Fasi: How did clients react?

Oluwaseun Bello: Fine when it was in the contract. Badly when they discovered it. Our first restaurant client found out on a Thursday that I would not answer until Monday, and he was furious. Since then the appointment letter states who is on the project which days, and who covers.

Noor Fasi: Do you lose work because of it?

Oluwaseun Bello: Hospitality clients who want a reply at ten at night, yes. We lost a hotel group in Victoria Island because their general manager wanted daily site meetings. Our work now is mostly residential and offices, with programmes of six to nine months, which suits a slower rhythm.

Noor Fasi: How do you hand over between you?

Oluwaseun Bello: Wednesday is the handover. We spend the morning walking through every live job, then site visits together in the afternoon. And a shared notebook, a paper one, which sounds old-fashioned, but it is quicker than our project software and it never crashes during a power cut.

Noor Fasi: The money must be different too.

Oluwaseun Bello: We charge by fee, not by time, which helps. Our turnover is perhaps sixty percent of a full-time studio of two. Our overheads are lower because we share one desk, and one site car on a schedule.

Noor Fasi: Has anyone tried to change your minds?

Oluwaseun Bello: Our accountant, every year. And a developer who offered us a whole block of apartments if one of us went full time. We thought about it for a week. Kemi said she would rather paint than manage forty kitchens, and so would I, honestly.

Noor Fasi: Oluwaseun Bello, thank you. That's Small Practice.