How to Form a company from scratch in nigeria (step by step)
How to Form a company from scratch in nigeria (step by step)
Step 1. Pre-Incorporation (Action 1-4
1. Idea Generation:
Define your business idea, mission, and vision. Think, write down and visualize the idea, possiblity and potential outcome of what you want to put yourself in.
Think about the opportunities your ideal business will bring, the problems it will solve, and obstacles it might face. Document all these and have them in mind. This is a roadmap, which will remind you of your vision, on the process of bringing your idea to life.
2. Market Research:
3. Business Plan:
4. Choose a Business Structure:
Decide on sole proprietorship, partnership, LLC, or corporation.
As you are writing your plan, decide the structure of the business.
Depending on what you want, and how you want it. This also depends on the nature of the activities in the business. For example, if your business will require many people as employees, share holders, or as owners.
And if the business can be owned, run and managed by one person or very few persons.
The structure of your business determines whether it is going to wax as a big business company, small business company or micro- enterprise.
Step 2: Registration (Action 5-8)
1. Choose a Business Name:
2. Register Business Name:
3. Obtain Business Licenses:
Business licenses are permits issued by the government agencies which allow individuals or companies to conduct business a business operation within an area covered by the government jurisdiction and control.
4. Register for Taxes:
Obtain EIN/TIN (Employer Identification Number and Tax identification number.
The Internet EIN application is the preferred method for customers to apply for and obtain an EIN. Once the application is completed, the information is validated during the online session, and an EIN is issued immediately.
EIN is used to identify companies while TIN is used to identify individuals that can be taxed and what type of tax applies to you.
Step 3: Incorporation (Actions 9-12)
1. File Articles of Incorporation:
2. Create Bylaws:
3. Appoint Directors:
4. Issue Stock:
Private placement: These are usually done through an investment bank or a stockbroker, and typically the purchaser will be high-net-worth individuals / institutional investors. These methods are typically used by unlisted companies (those not on the stock exchange).
- Analysis of the funding needs
- Appointment of an underwriter and timetable
- Due diligence by a financial adviser
- Determining the offer structure and pricing
- developing a marketing strategy
- Preparation and marketing of prospectus
- Receipt of funds
- Approval by stock exchange
Step 4: Post-Incorporation (Actions 13-16)
1. Open Business Bank Account:
1. It makes your business more trustworthy.
You’ll need it to apply for loans and credit. Some banks just won’t have it any other way. It helps keep your books in order. You’ll have more financial security. It makes your tax returns easier.
You can sync your software.
It’ll help protect your business credit score.
You’ll have business-friendly transaction limits.
It’s easier to tell your cards apart
2. Obtain Business Insurance:
3. Establish Accounting System:
4. Hire Employees:
Ongoing Compliance
1. Annual Reports:
"An annual report is a comprehensive report detailing a company’s activities throughout the preceding year. Its purpose is to provide users, such as shareholders or potential investors, with information about the company’s operations and financial performance." -- Corporate and finance institute.

2. Tax Filings:
3. Business License Renewals:
4. Board Meetings:
Additional Resources
1. Small Business Administration (SBA):
Government resources for entrepreneurs.
2. Business Incorporation Services:
3. Accounting Software:
4. Business Attorney:
Good reasons to start your own business
15 Powerful Reasons to Start Your Own Business in 2025 (Even If You’re Afraid)
Starting a business is one of the most rewarding — and terrifying — decisions you’ll ever make.
But here’s the truth: most successful entrepreneurs didn’t wait until they felt 100% ready. They started when they had just enough time, money, courage, and conviction.
If you recognize yourself in the signs below, you’re more qualified than you think.
1. You Actually Have the Time
Entrepreneurship demands focus. If your schedule is consumed by distractions, hobbies, or side hustles unrelated to growth, you’ll struggle to wear all the hats: CEO, marketer, accountant, and salesperson.
Successful founders treat time like their most valuable asset. As Shopify notes, early-stage entrepreneurs often work 60+ hours per week — but they choose where those hours go.
2. You Have (or Can Access) Startup Capital
Trying to bootstrap with zero capital is like planting seeds in dry soil.
Money buys runway. It lets you fail fast, recover, and keep improving. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration, most businesses need 6–18 months of operating capital before turning profitable.
3. You Already Have Strong Connections
The right network can 10x your speed to success.
Trusted suppliers who extend credit, early customers who believe in you, or a co-founder who complements your weaknesses — these are gold. As Harvard Business Review explains, warm relationships beat cold outreach every time.
4. You Have Real Courage (Not Just Motivation)
Elon Musk famously said he gave Tesla and SpaceX <10 a="" anyway="" because="" but="" chance="" href="https://www.barchart.com/story/news/30167379/elon-musk-didn-t-expect-tesla-or-spacex-to-be-succesful-but-he-did-it-because-they-were-important-enough-to-do-anyway" of="" rel="nofollow" started="" success="">“they were important enough to do anyway.”
Courage isn’t the absence of fear. It’s moving forward despite it.
5. You’re an Innovator, Not Just an Imitator
Facebook wasn’t the first social network. Google wasn’t the first search engine. Uber wasn’t the first ride-sharing idea.
They won through better execution and timing. As Forbes says, innovation is about making existing solutions 10x better — not inventing from scratch.
6. You’re Great at Building and Keeping Relationships
Business is people. Customers, partners, employees, investors — all relationships.
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Sara Blakely all credit likability and trust as core reasons for their success.
7. You’re Willing to Master the Required Skills
You don’t need an MBA. You need the humility to learn.
Read books, take courses, shadow experts, or work for free if needed. Skills compound faster than money.
8. You Can Afford to Take Calculated Risks
Every successful entrepreneur has failed — often spectacularly.
Sara Blakely lost $120,000+ learning how to manufacture Spanx. Jeff Bezos warns that if you can’t afford to lose the money, don’t risk it. But if you can survive failure, you can win big.
9. You Refuse to Stay Comfortable at Home
Skills, ideas, customers, and opportunities live outside your comfort zone.
The garage startup myth is real — but only because founders left the couch.
10. You Understand Success Is Never Guaranteed
90% of startups fail. The ones that succeed do so because their founders kept going anyway.
As CB Insights research shows, running out of cash and lack of market need are top killers — both solvable with persistence and adaptation.
11. You Read Voraciously
Warren Buffett reads 500 pages per day. Elon Musk taught himself rocket science from books.
Reading = unfair advantage.
12. You Want to Be Proud of What You’ve Built
There’s a special kind of pride that comes from saying, “I built this myself.”
No boss. No ceiling. No permission required.
13. You Can Do All Things (Mindset of Unlimited Potential)
Your beliefs shape your reality. If you believe “nothing is impossible,” you’ll prove yourself right over time.
14. You’re Ready to Solve Real Problems
The biggest businesses solve the biggest pains. If you see a problem that frustrates you daily — that’s your million-dollar idea.
15. The World Needs What Only You Can Offer
No one else has your exact experience, perspective, and passion.
The market is waiting.
Final Thought: You Don’t Need All 15 — You Only Need One
If even one of these resonates deeply, it’s time.
Stop waiting for perfect conditions. Start before you’re ready. Adjust as you go.
As Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn co-founder) says: “If you’re not embarrassed by your first version, you launched too late.”
Now go build something you’re proud of.
Related guides:
Things to consider before starting a part-time business. Should you even try it?
Decide on whether to start a business part-time.
Starting a business part-time lowers the pressure on you immensely. It enables you to work on your business, while you still have a steady pay check. Just in case things don’t work out. Do you understand? Building your business part-time allows you to work along with the business through early morning hustle, evening hustle or week- end hustle; these will help you to fund your wallet with cash during the larva stage of your business.
If you are an employee, this formula is good for you when you have the approval of your boss. You can start your business as part-time and gradually make it strong and carefully drop your job as the business wax stronger.
And if you are unemployed, it can also work for you even better and easier. See why you have the spare times for side hustle, which you will use to support and develop your business you manage your time as you wish, going to hustle when you should.
The business part-time is for starters trying to raise capitals for their new business. And not those who already have viable prospects and customers
Business part-time enables you to make more rational decision on having your own business. You can shut down either your job your business if you are not ready for any one of them.
Few reasons you should consider business part-time
Activeness: you don’t have to sit down, waiting for somebody to be giving everything. It makes you look dull and shortens your personality. Mean while, having more to do per day makes you more industrious, more skilled, more courageous, more confident and perfect person.
Motivation: you can afford to make more mistakes and learn under the confidence of part-time. When you fall your side income source will wake you up. More mistakes, more knowledge.
Leverage: it gives you more time to test your ideas, if you will re-think issue you have the chance when you still have steady income source.
Flexibility
Flexibility in itself is wisdom, in the start-up world; people call the ability to change “Pivoting.” The point here is that you will not go into your journey with a lot of assumptions. You should follow thing as they are, and change when things change.
Relying on assumptions will destroy your business even before it emerges. Your goal now is to replace your assumption with facts.
Away with those a wishes that might or perhaps might never come true; And embrace something that works. Change those negative-expectations that kept you romancing your awkward Comfort zone. As you arm yourself with facts, you can pivot.
Some entrepreneurs fail, because they fight or ignore flexibility. If you will succeed, you should become a master at pivoting
Your ability to pivot enables you to:
1) Change your target market as customers situations change
2 Change your product as consumers taste change.
3) Adjust your pricing according to the behavior of the market and the economy.
4) Change your sales and marketing as your product, customer or pricing change
The key Idea here is that there are so many possibilities in business that your business might fail if you are not ready to drive it forward according to changes in those factors that make it up.
Best ways to avoid constant business failures. Learn from your past mistakes.
Here are the examples of invisible impediments
How to lay a strong business administrative foundation as a business leader.
G = Government policy
- The government can decide to do anything that may affect your business negatively,and if you aren't careful, it maybe the end of it. So decide wisely.
C = Competition
A = Age
T = Technology
Other places to look into:
Marketing.
Your team
Financial section
Importance of Network in selling, and how to harness it, for more effective selling.
In this social media era, you can find out now, that most products, services and ideas sell more or become more acceptable when they become popular, viral or are trending. To achieve this, you need other people to talk about you and your product.
That is network in marketing.
Story of a stupid loner (and why you should network)
There was one story that our Parish Reverend Father used to tell us in most of his religious sermons.
The story is about one very Religious man, who lived in a city with abundant riches. The man had storey buildings, and many other riches. And one of the days, a terrible storming tempest befell that city, in which the man lived in. Then, the local officials sent out an emergency warning that the river banks would soon overflow and flood the nearby houses.
They ordered everyone in the city to vacate immediately. That rich man‘s house was among those that will be affected.
But that Religious man heard the warning and decided to stay; saying to himself, “I believe in God and when I’m in danger, then God will save me by divine miracle.
The neighbors came by his house and said to him, “we are leaving and there is room for you in our car, please come with us”, but the man ignored them again, saying “I have faith in God that he will save me.”
As the man stood at the front guard of his house (porch) watching the water rise up the steps, a man in a row boat came by and called to him, “Hurry and come into my boat, the waters are rising quickly” but the young man said again, “No thanks, God will save me”.
The flood waters rose and covered the first floor, and the man climbed to the second floor. A Police motor-boat came by and saw him through the window. “We will come up and rescue you” they shouted.
But, the man refused by waving them off, saying, “Use your time to save someone else! I have faith that God will save me”.
The water rose higher and higher and the man had to climb to the roof top of his storey building. A helicopter spotted him and dropped a rope ladder.
A rescue officer came down the ladder and pleaded with the man “Grab my hand and I will pull you up!” But the man still refused, folding his arms tightly to his body. “No thanks, God will save me!” Shortly after, the house broke up and the flood water swept the man away and he was drowned.
When this stubborn man reached heaven, he stood before God to judge himself, He asked God and said, I put all of my faith in you. Why didn’t you come and save me?
And God answered and said, “Son, I sent you a warning, I sent you a car, I sent you a canoe. I sent you a motorboat. I sent you helicopter. What more were you looking for?” End.
So what are we learning from this story? There is no way through which God will save you in this life except by your fellow human being. What you will say is that He uses the right people.
The greatest mistake the man made is his foolish over-confidence, or his blind faith, bad attitude, hopelessness and arrogance.
And after a long wait on God to make him disappear and nothing happened, he remained stubborn and even used badmouth and boundaries to keep helpers away. God forbid this kind of attitude in human life style.
Benefits of networking in selling and advertising.
Creating a group of acquaintances or associates and keeping the group active through regular communication for mutual benefits can be so much advantageous and can soon gear your business to an unexpected boom of success. That’s net work.
You need to be good at networking, if you really want to move ahead in today’s competitive business world. Business networking is really a practical way to expand your knowledge, when you learn from success of others; you can also reach new clients and share your own business success story with the people who matter to you indeed.
Business networking is hereby highly recommended especially to this country’s business men and women both in local and global business levels.
The following are the benefits I have seen those who network earn from the process.
People like Donald Trump of USA, you know he was a business man before he found interest in politics; another person like Jack Moore, who owned the ‘Aim global business network that you hear about, and many more people.
I myself, I network, and I started when I found out the great benefit in it. First benefit is:
Personal growth and development: It is of no doubt that when you meet a lot of people from different walks of life who has many different talent, skills, abilities, you can learn many different things to help you succeed in life.
I must tell you that before I join network marketing, I was very dull, shy, boring, stiff, and unyielding; but today, all the areas I was lacking have been improved.
Post Referral:
How to discover your potentials as a business leader and set a goal you can achieve.
Generating of referral: Everyone knows that through networking, you get referral especially in occasions like public presentation. If you want to know what word of mouth can do for a business, create a large network, with people especially those who reach your target customers easily.
A wonderful truth here is that the referrals you get through networking are normally high-quality and most of the times are even pre-qualified for you. They are more reliable than others.”
Opportunities:
The benefits are huge here. With motivated group of business owners comes an abundance of opportunities. There are many opportunities that come from networking, those opportunities may include; partnership, joint ventures, clients leads, public speaking, writing and travel opportunities and social development chances, selling of business and assets are also among the opportunities.
Fame:
Do you know about how Jack Moore of Philippines reached out around the globe? In far years after he started his networking business, it wound not have been any other thing if not by the networking company “Aim-Global int’l. I’m just telling you about how rapidly networking can spread your business fame.
And note you that the more famous you are, the more successful you become. When you are famous, it shows some positive signals you have started giving to the universe.
Unlimited Growth and unstoppable success:
If something can hinder one person, it can’t hinder the public. Two heads are better than one. No matter how your enemy can fight you. He can’t hold you and also hold your team in tyranny at once. MEGA= Multiple Efforts Gear Achievements, to the benefit of all contributors. T.E.A.M = Together Everyone Achieves More. Form a mega team that will be called network.
My dear, it’s all about face oh. Who you know really impacts how far you will go. Net-working requires devotion, hard work and persistence, for awesome success. Nothing can take you higher in life than when you identify a way to help someone, which can’t also in return yield you a high reward.
There is something I want to tell you. For you to succeed in this world; you have to be known to a lot of people. Effective networking is an essential means for building those acquaintances that will help you survive and also build a long lasting wealth, and possibilities.
The more new friends and acquaintances you meet the farther your start-up will grow. Network in the way that works for you, some people think that effective networking is one that is done face to face; but not all can be face to face.
You can use social media and other communications means to network. All you need is to do your networking in the way that works for you. Nothing will stop you from success.
Remember, that the best way to network is do work for you team, and your team also work for you. It is pieces of sticks that make a bunch of wood or broom. You can’t just do it all alone, but you just have to do your own. Don’t keep scores, that’s just the rule.
However, it is not all that good to network when you don’t have a product, you can be used-up. Just like those things happening in some mushroom network marketing and MLM networks.
Those are not the kind of network I mean; in those, you are just serving one person or few people on top.
You should Network with a great aim of meeting people, learning more new things, growing more social skill, advertising and selling your products.
If you don’t have your own product to sell, network with, but don’t expect the result coming to those who have.
Opportunities within networking are really endless
So, just grab the right one at the right moment and don’t go jumping into every opportunity that comes your way. Versatile opportunities are sure to come; but each one you grab, you have to make effective use of it. The opportunities that are right for you are those that align with your business goals or vision.
Networking makes things come easy :
Everything in business management comes easier when you network. Selling is not an exclusive. Two is always better than one as I always say. Network in sales in order to maximize profits and productivity; E.g. There is people who send someone or other people to foreign countries to be buying for them and they will stay around and sell goods. That’s good network.
Now in conclusion, I want you to think experimentally, about when you want to buy a particular product, you have the money, you need that product very much, but the problem is that you are having double mind, and the seller has done his best to convince you that such product is the authentic one, and is exactly what you want, but you kept waving your head sideways, and suddenly someone from outside came in and testifies to the seller about the efficacy of the product.
Now what will be your reaction? Of course, you will be positively moved or totally convinced to buy that product, even if the testifyer was a set-up, you have no time to weigh that option.
That is the power of network marketing.
Why should unethical business management be curbed from our society?
These are two most powerful tools in selling out a product, learn how.
These are two most powerful tools in selling out a product, learn how.
1.Outspokenness:-
-- Use words and actions.
--Where to start:
-- Essence of words in selling:
2. Visibility/availability
Give gifts to your customers, to maximize sales.
Give gifts to your customers, to maximize sales.
Also read: how to discover your potentials as an entrepreneur
How can unethical business management be eliminated from our society?
How can unethical business management be eliminated from our countries?
Let us create policy and social responsibility:
Let us practice it.
Let us make our people understand the policy we made and why we made them.
Let us build a culture of transparency and openness:
Nigerian politicians must comply:
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