Charles Nwaoguji

Starting a business in Nigeria can be difficult when there is no capital to begin. People are filled with great ideas, equipped with business spirit, want to start this business or that. In a further aspiration to start it all, many proceeded further to the extent of securing loan, yet there is no single bank in Nigeria ready to loan average Nigerians money to start a business.

It is more depressing when you are loaded with great ideas and you were unable to utilize it, you are loaded with business ideas but can’t start due to money.

As an entreprenure   to be, there are major things you need to consider before talking of the start up capital, neglecting the basic things could be the same reasons why you have not been able to start your business.

Develop a great business idea1

Your first and most important task is to have the right business idea. Take your time to determine what you really want to do, and if you’d be able to put in the work to achieve it. In arriving at your business idea, ensure that the business would be solving a problem people experience everyday, involves a skill that you can easily hone or are already good at, and is something people are willing to pay for.

Write a business plan

The next thing is to write a business plan. Your business plan will help you determine what key problem your business is going to solve, how it adds value to your target customer, the business lifespan, how you intend to generate revenues in the short term & subsequently profits on the long term, how you intend to achieve market penetration & growth, how you will raise startup capital, and a lot more. A comprehensive business plan will keep you focused on the goal and guide you towards achieving what your business has set out to become.

Choose a location for the business

After you’ve written a comprehensive and highly intuitive business plan, you must determine where your business will be located. Ideally, your business must be close to your target customers, not your competition. Where you choose to locate your business office, customer demographic, and all, must be decided.
The location you choose must be around the people with the highest chances of paying for your products or services.

Raise a business startup capital

Before you start out your business, you must have a clearly defined means of how to financially run your day to day operations, acquire merchandise, promote your brand, and a lot more. These things require capital to be executed.
There are various ways of raising money for your startup capital, these could done through  personal finance, friends & family, and a lot more. Once you have a clear means to raise your business startup capital and have acquired a part of it, you can move on to determining the kind of legal business structure you want to setup.

Register your business with Corporate Affair Commission

Registering your business with the Corporate Affair Commission is must. If you’re going to be registering a company, you’d need to get an article of association. This usually contains a lot of information about your business. To register a limited liability company, you’d have to use a lawyer for everything. If you don’t want to register a company, you can simply register it as just a business.

Register with the Federal & State tax offices

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After your company or business registration, you’d have to register with the federal and state tax offices.
When you register with the Federal Inland Revenue Service (FIRS), you’d be provided with your Tax Identification number which you will use for many other purposes like opening a bank account and a lot more.

Get a business bank account

After successfully registering your business and getting your Tax Identification Number (TIN), you’d need to setup a business bank account to save your business startup capital and revenues.

Hire the right team

The next step is to hire the right employees to co-run your business.
If you’re starting a small business in Nigeria, you’d mostly not need more than one employee to take off with. But no matter how many employees you need to work with, make sure they’re the smartest people you can find.

Start your business

After all the legal paper works are complete and thoroughly validated, you’d need to focus on growing your brand and acquiring customers. At this stage, you’d need to let your target customers easily and quickly identify the problem you’re solving for them.

Let them know how your business adds value to their lives, so you can start generating some revenue, and get feedback on what you’re doing right and wrong.

Grow your business

After you’ve started running your business and have successfully satisfied your first set of customers in your initial test market, the next step would be to reach a wider audience. At this point, you’d need to create more awareness, expand to newer locations, and a lot more.

Invest in Time

Have time for it, I once read about Aliko Dangote how he spent 20 hours of every 24 hours on business in 80s and 90s. Time is important, I am not saying you should be on business mode all time, but you can figure out the suitable to monitor your business since it is definitely at the starting up stage.

Develop passion for it

Passion is the key to success in any business, for you to have passion for that business, you must love it, there must be enough time for it. When others are falling your passion will make you stand, I mean you will have 100% confidence in yourself that you will definitely make it from the business.

Passion is what can make a good investor to go any length of getting capital for His business, I know you’ve read about Big Business men in Nigeria how Many of them borrowed Fat loans to invest in different group of companies. That’s passion, they started one day.