Five Steps for Starting a Business for Under #100,000 in Nigeria

1. Strategic Plan. All of us have heard of a “back-of-an-envelope” story, how many businesses are formed—and these stories do happen. However, it is typically the concept that happens on a back of an envelope, not the actual plan to bring that concept to the market. The first step is to develop a well-thought-out business plan that addresses key success factors such as:

Name of firm. Descriptive of your service or your name; companies with a description of their service or products generate more web visits than ones using fictitious or personal names.

Owner or owner-to-be. Are you going to be the sole owner or will you have investors or/and partners?

Information on the business. Information about the type, nature, and products of your business.

Market analysis. Consider customers, competition, and barriers to entry and success.

Market strategy. How will you generate sales, promote your product, and what media will you use to promote your product or services?

Management. Can you manage the business and also serve your customers?

Financial. Can you make money?

2. Web Identity. Everyone is on the web. Customers access and search the Internet for services and sellers through searches. Suppliers and banks look at your website for credibility and presence.

But your web identity is more than a website. It starts with an email address with your business name such as Jim@legalconsultants.xxx and a domain name such as legalconsultants.xxx.

A few years ago, creating a website was expensive and required outside technical consultants. Now it is quick and easy to do it yourself. Consider many companies to choose a domain name, email address, web hosting, and website design.

3. Office Space. Even if 52 percent of all small businesses are home-based, that does not mean you need to look like you work from your home. Customers looking at an office address can usually tell the difference between a professional address and a home address. Also, if you’re meeting with clients, you’ll project a more professional image if you meet in an office setting versus a suburban home.

4. Business Cards: Believe me, you will need them. A paper carryover from the past, they are still widely used and critical to a new business. There are many online business card services, but companies such Office Depot and Staples offer quality cards for as low as $10.

5. Social Media: Depending on your type of business, you will want a social media presence. LinkedIn, with more than 380 million members, is regarded as the business site for connecting with other business people and offers excellent posting features for articles and blogs. Facebook is more of a social friends site than a business-focused site, but it’s also an excellent tool for “getting your word out” to your friends and customers. Both Linkedin and Facebook allow you to set up a commercial page for your new business.

To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to provide a service or product that customers want to buy, that you can provide at a profit. And of course, it’s not all about the money—it takes very hard work and long hours. But with a bit of planning and a little bit of money, you can beat the odds and create and grow a successful business.
Feel free to add your comments. Thank you for reading.

The Harsh Reality of Running a Business in Nigeria

As someone who has launched a few successful startups in Nigeria, I know all about the late nights and diminished savings accounts. However, it is just as hard getting your business off the ground as it is keeping it there. Here are a few tips to keep in mind that might help:

Be loyal to the business before any individual
Loyalty, something I place tremendous value on, should flow freely in a healthy startup. A group of people who are in the trenches together and dreaming together form really tight bonds. For me, it’s one of the best parts of being an entrepreneur. That said, too often leaders get blinded by the somewhat nostalgic connections they have to early team members. For a business in Nigeria to thrive beyond startup success, its leaders need to be loyal to the business first. This sometimes means reorganizing and upsetting people you feel closest to.
Update on the things you know
If you’ve gotten to a stage where you’re considered a “successful startup,” you’ve likely learned a few things. You might have a good sense of your audience, revenue model, cost structure, product roadmap, etc. That’s awesome, but you should continue analyzing and refining the things you know. It is just as important to operationalize curiosity and experimentation. There’s something very humble, hopeful, and helpful in being slightly loose in how a business might evolve. I think this is true for big, established companies and certainly for those that are at an earlier stage.

Not all nairas are created equal
Whether the initial capital for your startup came from a loan or faithful friends and family, you should always be driving to make every naira matter. So, assuming you’re still fundraising and can be selective, be meticulous in evaluating the strategic value of each naira. How patient is the capital? Does it come with concrete resources or attached revenue? How much do you like the people and want to spend time with them? You should be factoring all of this in.

The key to Startup Success in Nigeria

Every businesses in Nigeria require a lot of detemination and focus because the road to success in not always smooth. Here are a few things to keep in mind that might help:

Don't go broke
Businesses fail when you run out of money. Watch your burn rate and make sure you are spending your cash wisely. Make sure every naira you spend will generate a positive return for the business. Many venture capitalists are looking to fund businesses with sustainable growth that have a clear path to profitability.

Reinvest
Often times we rest on our laurels when the business starts yielding. Reinvestment in of utmost importance for the business to survive and grow. Many promising startups in Nigeria have collapsed due to the failure to save part of the profits made, every penny should be accounted for. Give your business time to grow.

Continue to innovate
The only constant thing in life is change. The market for your product will also experience change at one point or the other. During this time, the market you’re focused on will change, and it may be completely out of your control. Be aware of these market changes and be reactive to them. If customers are demanding X, listen to them and consider adding it to your product. Continue to add features that are useful for your customers and disrupt yourself with innovative ideas before your competitors disrupt you.

Focus on your customers
Customer retention is key for businesses that have recurring revenue. Even if you are adding a lot of new customers, it is difficult to grow the business if customers are churning out. Spend time with your customers. Listen to them and make sure you’re building a valuable product that fits their needs. It’s a good idea to create a customer advisory board to collect feedback and exchange ideas with your customers. Happy customers also make the best marketers. If they love the product, they will advocate for you and help put you on the path to success in a capital-efficient way.

Stay humble
Finally, stay humble. Every great business has gone through multiple rough periods. Remember to stay humble, get help, and make changes to the company. You will be able to overcome these challenges and put your company back on the path to success.

Pigs Eat Grasses!

I have written extensively in one of my posts about how pig farming business is very lucrative in Nigeria. But little is known to farmers about the ability of pigs to eat grass. Indeed, pigs are monogastric animals rather than ruminants, but they thrive well on grasses as they don’t digest grass the way that cows do. There are many species that eat grass and even harder to digest cellulose (e.g., beavers). Some animals have four stomaches compartments, some have two, some have one – There are many strategies. The fact is the pigs get a lot of food value out of grass.

Additionally, pasture is not all grass – there are clovers, alfalfa, shrubs, young trees and a lot of other forages. Cows, sheep and goats also enjoy the above forages. Pigs thrive on pasture as the majority of their diet and they can even do very well on just pasture/hay. They simply grow a little bit slower and are leaner than grain fed pigs. Pasture is lower in calories and lysine – a limiting amino-acid.

It is impertive to know that all pastures are not grasses. It is possible to plant a monocrop of just grass, a lawn like pasture, but natural pastures are a wide variety of plant species. Most of the time we also feed dairy which provides lysine and added calories. Dairy also makes the pork taste sweeter. We grow and feed pumpkins, other veggies and apples. But these things are a small part of our pig’s total diet. The fact remains, pigs do eat pasture, hay and grass with high digestibility and they can thrive on it. Cassava, pawpaw, pineaple, banana leaves and pawpaw leaves are also part of pigs diets.

Pig farming business in Nigeria

Pig farming business is very lucrative not only in Nigeria but in the world. This is due to their high rate of production. A pig(sow) can farrow(birth) up to 15 offspring at once and with their gestation period of 3months, 3weeks and 3 days, one sow can have 45 piglets in a year, giving the pig farmer a very high return rate on his investment. This makes pig farming one of the most profitable agricultural businesses to start in Nigeria today.

Pig Farming Business Guide
Male pigs are known as the boar, while the females pigs are known as the sows and the little pigs known as the piglets or the farrows. Group of pig is called a herd and pigs time of maturity is seven months.
Starting a pig farming business in Nigeria requires lot of determination and preparation. With good feed formulation and good management, a good live weight can be achieved within seven month of rearing.
Starting a Commercial Fish Farm – Sample Business Plan Template

1. Location-: The first thing you need to take care of is finding a suitable location for breeding your pigs. Please, do not try to do this at home. Why? The reason is because pigs can be very smelly and you will be sure to receive a lot of complaints and protests from your neighbors because of the smell and noise your piggery would generate.
So instead of causing great discomfort to others, look for a farmland for your piggery. Just one plot of land would be enough for a small scale piggery but if you are opting for a large scale pig farming business, make sure you purchase a land that is large enough to allow for spacing, grazing and feeding.

2. Housing-: The shelter that you would build for your pigs is known as a pig pen. This would keep your pigs safe from the elements of weather and other diseases or contamination. You may build your pen with iron or concrete depending on which one you prefer and find more affordable. When constructing your pig pen, ensure that you build a proper drainage for the pigs where all the wastes can pass through.
You should also make sure the drainage is kept clean at all times to avoid insects, pests, diseases and contamination. Pigs love playing in water, so you should consider building a water pool in your pig pen for them to play in and stay healthy. The water in the pool should be changed regularly and kept clean at all times. You can also allow the pigs to come out of the pen and play outdoors sometimes but be sure to guide them closely, so that they don’t wander off.

3. Piglets-: To start your piggery, you would need healthy piglets which you can get from other pig farmers around you. Ensure that the piglets you buy are healthy and have been well taken care of. You should also ask for their vaccination history records to be sure that they have taken their vaccinations up to date. You would need both male and female pigs. The number of piglets you need to purchase would depend on the size of your pen because pigs can multiply very quickly. Pig farmers start with as low as one each (male and female) or as many as 50 each depending on the scale of pig farming you want to go into.

4. Contact a Veterinary Doctor-: You should engage the services of a veterinary doctor who would act as a consultant for your piggery. The duties of the veterinary doctor would include giving the pigs the right vaccination regularly, checking up on the pigs from time to time to ensure that they are in good health, offering nutrition advice and treating the pigs when they fall ill.

5. Pig Feeds and Feeding-: Pigs can eat most of the things that human beings can eat which means that you may not have to start worrying about getting some special feed for them. However, it is important to pay special attention to their nutritional needs. They need to be fed a balanced diet with classes of food like protein for body building, carbohydrate for growth and strength, vitamins, minerals and fiber.
You should also provide them with clean water all the time. I already mentioned that pigs love water and this includes their drinking water. They would also play in and mess up their drinking water, so you should opt for a water supply system that cannot be messed up by the pigs and ensure that they are checked upon and their water is changed regularly.

6. Pig Marketing-: Pigs can be sold live to meat sellers or used to make sausages and bacon. You can approach other pig farmers for assistance on how to sell your pigs. Pigs are usually sold per kilogram so the bigger your pigs, the more money you would earn.

The Language of 21st Century

FLEXIBILITY
I was once planning and organizing a project for school, when I had the strangest idea. I had never made a plan in my life that had worked 100%. This realization at first got me feeling disappointed, but eventually it led me realize a vital aspect about life. I discovered that life was bound to change and that there was nothing I could do to stop it.
I also discovered that the only reason why 100% of my plans didn’t work was because I wasn’t fully ready for change in my plans. So the only way I could prevent all of my plans from being kaput was by adapting to life’s moments and being prepared for changes.  All of this led me to discover the importance of Flexibility.
Flexibility in psychological terms is the same as in physical terms; it means to be elastic or pliable.

Here are some reasons why flexibility is so important:

Flexibility allows you to face challenges
By being flexible you have the ability to change yourself when needed. This is fundamental when it comes to facing challenges.
Say for example you are typing up a report for work and your computer stops working. A flexible person will go the local library and finish it but a person who is not as flexible will simply stop.

Flexibility makes you more successful
If you are more flexible you have an advantage over the people around you. You adapt better to your surroundings, you face challenges more easily and most importantly you are more effective with changes. By having this edge over people your chances of success are a lot higher.

Flexibility gives you peace and reduces stress
Every “problem” in life is only worrying if you can’t adapt to it.
So if you are flexible, you will be able to mold yourself and will be able to overcome all of life’s problems. Knowing that you can face life’s challenges will reduce your stress level and bring you peace.
Try to become more Flexible.      

ADAPTABILITY
I honestly believe that there will be some kinds of skills that will always be required and they don’t necessarily need higher educational degrees.  Those are the ones that must be delivered personally.  You can’t outsource the plumbing in your house.  You can’t outsource the fact that your electricity isn’t working.  So we’re always going to need trades people close to home and we should never denigrate their value, because without them we are really stuck, and we know that because it’s so hard to get a really good one now.

So the future is not all about college education, higher education, things that can be outsourced, even at the more advanced levels.  You could spend so many years developing the skills to become a radiologist, but if that can be digitized and it can be shipped anywhere in the world, then you are at risk in terms of what you thought was a great set of skills and competencies.

So in the end, if we were to come down to the few things that you would need, regardless of what the future is going to deliver, in order to be successful the most important one.
Adaptability has become a personal trait that is so important for people, because you’re not going to be able to predict what’s going to happen next year.  Nor will you have one job or one career your whole life, you’ll have many. So adaptability is one of the most critical skills we need to survive in life and succeed in our various businesses.

CREATIVITY
Why is creativity important in everyday life? Simply put, it is because it makes life infinitely interesting and fulfilling. Creativity is a way of living life that embraces originality and makes unique connections between seemingly disparate ideas.
We often think about creativity as making something, but in fact the root meaning of the word means ‘to grow’. When we are creative we feel as if the world and all that is in it is vibrantly alive.
Human beings are essentially born creative–from infancy on we find innovative ways to negotiate life. The most creative people find ways around obstacles because they see them not just as roadblocks but also as opportunities. Creativity expands our perceptions and along with expanded perceptions come new ways of problem solving–from making an exquisite meal when you don’t know how to cook to painting an extraordinary landscape when you are living in a freezing attic and can’t afford a full box of paints.
Remember the words of Samuel Becket, on the secret to life-long creativity: “fail, fail again, fail better”!

Prove them wrong!

    One of the deepest joys in life is to be creative; to put yourself into something innovative and worthwhile, and then to see it come to fruition. But the process of creating can be a roller coaster of highs and lows-ectasies and despairs- before you experience the rewards.
Principles that enable the art of creating include
• Vision
• Innovation
• Quality

VISION
    All things are created twice. All things. Vision is the first creation. For a house its called the blueprint. For a life its called a mission. For a day its called a goal and a plan. For a parent its called a belief in the unseen potential of a child. For all, it is the mental creation which always precedes the physical, or second, creation.
    Vision not only helps us spot present opportunities where others might not see them, but it also points us toward the future and inspires us to ask, "where do I want to  be five years from now? Ten years from now?" To answer these questions takes time-it even takes some dreaming. Vision takes a purpose and starts to turn it into specifics. So always believe in yourself and set realistic, yet challenging expectations for yourself-even if it takes a bit of "wishing upon a star."

INNOVATION
    The act of innovating can generate many emotions. It can bring agony, sweat, tears, and exhaustion. But, yes, it can also bring great thrills, satisfaction, and joy. But innovation does not come without a price.
It is not uncommon to come across a great little invention and think, I wish I had thought of that. But bringing even simple ideas to full fruition involves a process, one that is not always as easy as it may appear.
    Certain people seem to have a knack for being creative. But if you observe them for any length of time, it becomes quickly evident that their innovative powers do not appear by magic or luck. Indeed, it is no coincidence that innovative people also tend to be constant learners with broad interests.

QUALITY
    Who does not like the feel of quality? whether it comes in the form of a well-made car, a fine woven piece of clothing, a stable building, a delectable meal, an intricate technological device, a precise musical performance, finely tuned work team, or a solid piece of furniture,  quality has an appealing feel.
    Over the past few decades, the word quality has predominantly been relegated to a business term. And businesses do need to pay attention to quality as a matter of survival. But quality is a way of living, it affects how you speak, dress, work, entertain, and eat. it impacts how you walk, teach, listen, exercise, learn, and play. it is one of those principles that weaves itself throughout the entire tapestry of life, both directly and indirectly touching everything you are and everything you do. And, no quality does not require a lot of expense, but does require a careful attention to detail.

What makes a Great CEO.

Finding the Right market for your product and services
Figuring out the right market fit for your product maybe really, really hard. It may take a couple of years for your product offering, audience, marketing messaging, and sales process to align in a way that felt right and delivered results.

Once you found the right market, however, hold nothing back. All of your teams will rally around one battle cry and pressed on toward one goal. When your mission is clear, there’s no point in proceeding with caution. You’ll learn more, achieve greater things, and grow quickly when you charge ahead fearlessly.

Never rest on your laurels
When you’ve gotten your first taste of success, it’s all too easy to slip into an attitude of complacency. Great leaders always push their teams to pursue change—even when things are going well. If you don’t experiment, keep pushing your organization to try new things, or find different ways to achieve your business’s mission, you’ll never realize your full potential.

If your organization tends to default to routine, here are a few things you can do to stir up change:

Ask hard questions of your executives, your team members, and yourself.
Ask for outside opinions on an idea to gain a different perspective.
Push people to think and act outside of their comfort zones.
Make a change to your seating arrangement or office layout to mix things up.