If you stumbled upon a brilliant small business idea, you’re most likely pretty excited to bring it to life. But how to start your own business while keeping expenses under control? It can be tough. Here are a few money-saving tips and tricks when starting your own business.

Research the market of your business idea

Whatever the area of your future small (or big!) business is, before starting, it’s always reasonable to conduct thorough market research. Who are your potential customers? What problems will you aim to solve for them? Does anybody else do that and if yes, then how?

Without proper research, it’s hard to keep your businesses expenses under control in the future — without a plan, you’ll be winging it most of the time. But, with a plan in place of what and how you are going to do, you can turn your small business idea into a true success story.

How will you cover your business expenses?

You’ll need some cash to bring your business idea to life. Like it or not, there’s no way around that. First of all, you’ll need to figure out (roughly) how much you’ll actually need. Secondly, if you don’t have that amount on hand, you’ll need to either find some funding or borrow the capital from a bank or some other financial institution.

A money saving tip: choose a name you actually like

“It really doesn’t matter what I name my company.”

Sure, it may not matter what you name your business in the beginning, but if you end up rebranding your company for large amounts of money in the future, you may feel some regret not putting some thought into it at first.

Finding a perfect name to reflect your business idea is not easy. You want it to carry your values, your mission and create trust in future customers. If you’re out of ideas, you can use a Name Generator to help you out.

And, when you have a name picked out, be sure to check that there aren’t any namesakes in your area of expertise.

Time for some paperwork

This might be the scariest step on the road to starting your own business. But, actually, there’s nothing to be scared of.

How to start a business in Nigeria

The Corporate Affairs Commission is the agency tasked with the registration of all businesses in Nigeria and the process for opening a business is below.

• Choose a name for your business and check that it is available. To check the availability, use the free tool on the website of the Corporate Affairs Commission. You can also reserve a new name if you’re not ready to complete the registration process.
• Register the company online at the company registration portal. You can complete the pre-registration form and pay filing and stamp duty fees (detailed here) through the portal.
• Prepare, sign and scan the pre-registration documents. It is advisable to work with a reputable lawyer in preparing these documents.
  • Application for registration form (Form CAC1.1)
  • Memorandum and Articles of Association (MEMART)
  • Recognised forms of identification for directors/subscribers and secretary
  • Evidence of payment to CAC.
• Upload the scanned documents for processing here.
• Submit the original copies of the documents to the CAC office you selected during registration in exchange for your certificate and Certified True copies of the documents.

Though the process is fairly simple, engage a reputable corporate lawyer who can help you through all the steps.

For more information on registering your business including business names, trusteeships, and limited and unlimited liabilty companies please refer to the CAC.

Be smart about marketing

After you have all of the paperwork done and the bureaucracy behind you, it’s time to think about your brand and marketing.

Bad marketing is one of the easiest ways to send your business expenses through the roof. As a money saving tip, invest only in channels that your customers actually use and learn a bit about SEO. It’s a killer combination of targeting the people you need for your success.

Cut down on your business expenses with Bolt Business

When you’ve already been on the road with your business for quite some time, you may have noticed that there are some extra costs you did not bargain for when starting out. And there’s a lot of bookkeeping, expense juggling, receipt storing that may give you a headache from time to time.

However, fortunately for you, there’s a solution that can help to keep your business expenses for daily commuting under control, while also cutting down on the hassle (for you or your accountant) with receipts and reports. It’s called — Bolt Business.

We’ve simplified everything related to work travel:

• You can either request a ride for yourself or book a ride for someone else using our Ride Booker feature in a matter of seconds;
• You’ll save time on reporting by receiving monthly summary of all your expenses and rides instead of going through piles of taxi receipts;
• You can set rules and set clear monetary limits for all of your team members in one place – no headache with exceeding the budget.

If you wish to discover more, here’s everything you need to know about Bolt Business. You can easily sign up for free. Good luck with bringing your business idea to life!