Tobi Ojora has transformed her life after a tragic accident, shifting her focus to wellness, fitness, fashion, and self-trust. She offers a thoughtful perspective on goals, growth, and life for the new year.
For many, Mondays are a drag — busy, demanding, and weighed down by the weekend just passed. Hardly the ideal day for a conversation on mindfulness, but not for the 28-year-old, Tobi Ojora, who welcomes it without hesitation. In fact, it’s not even her only meeting of the day… but it is her favourite.
With over 100,000 followers on Instagram, Ojora is many things: a fashion, travel, and fitness enthusiast; a content creator; and a brand owner. Despite her dedication, one thing she is not is rigid.
Fitness is often framed as a destination — a smaller waist, visible abs, a fixed aesthetic. For Tobi Ojora, it is different, more flexible, creative and courageous. It is not about having a strict and straight path. It is more expensive, and wellness goes beyond the body.
As a content creator, she has built a platform that feels refreshingly calm and multidimensional. She showcases her personal style and fitness routines through her main page and “Tone with Tobi.” Simultaneously, her business page offers behind-the-scenes insights into her hair attachment brand.
Her content invites softness, intention and consistency. These are values shaped by a life that has always existed between places, identities and expectations. This is Tobi Ojora.
The becoming of Tobi Ojora
There’s a saying, “It takes 10 years to be an overnight success.” Ojora’s life and career clearly exemplify this. . Beyond the glamour of social media lies a young woman with a history of wellness and perseverance.
Growing up between Lagos, London, and eventually, Los Angeles, Ojora’s relationship with wellness began long before she discovered the internet. Raised by a mother who is a health and nutrition specialist, it was simply part of life. She competed in track from age eight, eventually reaching national and international levels. Sport taught her discipline, resilience and structure — but it also taught her when to stop.
Tragedy struck in university as an ACL injury forced her to confront a difficult truth: loving something does not mean sacrificing your long-term health for it. Walking away from competitive athletics was not easy, and it changed her career trajectory. “Being thrown off course isn’t necessarily a bad thing,” she explains. “Most of your growth happens when what you planned stops working.”
That rupture — the end of track — planted the seeds for Tone with Tobi, the page that would later become her entry point into consistent content creation.
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Mastering Influence through creativity and intention
Having grown up between Nigeria and the UK, Ojora moves fluidly between both worlds. She is honest about the differences in how influence is understood and valued. In the UK, she found that brands prioritised learning — storytelling, strategy and long-term positioning. In Nigeria, while the influencer economy is powerful and globally competitive, the infrastructure for understanding that power is still evolving.
“Nigerians don’t realise just how influential they are,” she playfully declares, “Nigerian influencers rank among the highest in global engagement.” A fact she believes is deeply underestimated. “A lot of people’s favourite influencers are Nigerian,” she affirms.
She never set out to become an influencer. With a degree in psychology and a minor in culture, media and entertainment, her interest lay more in understanding people than performing for them. Even as her following grew during the pandemic — aided by candid hair content filmed at home in Lagos — she resisted the label.
It wasn’t until she worked in digital marketing and influencer strategy in London that she fully understood the mechanics behind the industry. She discovered the art of content creation, audience engagement and marketability from the other side of the table, giving her clarity. Eventually, the numbers spoke for themselves. Creating content for her platforms became more lucrative than managing campaigns for brands.
Still, she speaks about influence with caution. “It took me years to say ‘I’m an influencer’ out loud,” she admits. In Nigeria, especially, the word carries dismissive undertones. There’s a belief that the job is strictly a game of pretty privilege.
She admits that it is a visual platform for pictures, so yes, appearances play large roles. However, she insists on learning marketing because it’s a great skill for building a strategy in content creation.
Ojora is clear-eyed about the labour involved. Creativity, consistency and emotional regulation are not accidental skills, but learned and practised ones.
She measures her approach intentionally. Although she spends significant time in Lagos, she avoids posting in real time, choosing safety and privacy over immediacy. It is a decision rooted in self-awareness rather than fear. “Social media often makes people feel like they know you, so I avoid fueling that .”
Identity in fashion and beyond the screen
Perhaps the most striking part of Ojora’s philosophy is how firmly she separates self-worth from online perception. Despite being in an industry built on visibility, she refuses to let numbers define her. Grounded by family, friends and a strong sense of self outside the digital space, she does not internalise online criticism.
“I never fight with people in the comments. The version of me people see online is not all of me,” she says. “It’s a digital representation. It has nothing to do with who I am inside.”
With her background in psychology, Ojora understands how easy it is to collapse identity into performance — especially for women. “We are constantly expected to perform for societal expectations.”
Her advice to aspiring influencers is blunt: be willing to create a version of yourself that people can criticise without losing who you are.
She highlights the importance of this because the internet is a mirage. “When I was younger, I responded to hateful comments. Almost everyone I replied to would have the commenter immediately apologising in my DMs,” she explains. “Over time, I learned that it is an attention game, and I’m feeding into it by responding.”
A few of the negative comments discuss her style, something that’s truly dear to her. Fashion, for Ojora, is about expression. Influenced by a lineage of women who never believed in dressing down. “My grandmother would show up in fur coats to my sports day,” she laughs, “ My mother embraced maximalism unapologetically, she sees clothing as a language.”
Tobi inherited this fashion ideology. What she wears reflects her inner feelings. A black dress on days that require simplicity. Bright colours when joy needs amplification. Even casual clothing signals rest. Fashion, in her world, is emotional punctuation — and she believes it should remain playful, accessible and shared. “I don’t gatekeep,” she says simply.
A scroll through her TikTok reaffirms this, as she shares the brands behind her looks and her shopping spots.
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On building and maintaining fitness goals
As conversations turn to New Year’s resolutions and what physical challenges she has in store, Ojora offers a gentler framework for fitness — one without pressure. She encourages people to abandon identity-based goals (“I want to be disciplined,” “I want to look a certain way”) in favour of practical, repeatable habits.
Twenty minutes of movement a day. Three workouts a week. Clothes laid out the night before. “Clothes can motivate you to do the work; there is something about looking the part.”
These are not glamorous goals, but they are sustainable and achievable. Motivation, she reminds us, is fleeting. Environment and routine are what last.
More importantly, she urges women to detach fitness from aesthetics alone. Weight, she explains, is a poor metric, especially in bodies with muscle mass. Instead, she advocates tuning into how movement makes you feel: stronger, calmer, more present. “When you focus on how you feel inside, you show up differently for yourself.”
What comes next for Ojora
Ojora is currently preparing to launch a hair brand, Knott, with her sister, Temi Ojora. The formulations are nearly complete, and a launch is planned for April. Hair has been a large part of her identity, from her 4c Afro to her French curls. It feels like a natural extension of everything she represents: intention, care, and self-expression without apology.
Tobi Ojora embodies a version of wellness that challenges conventional expectations. . One that allows for pauses, detours and reinvention. One that reminds us that a good life is not linear, and that sometimes, going off course is exactly how you find your way.
