Starting a Business as a Teenager: Our Advice

The teen age is one of the most sensitive periods throughout a person’s life. Here, there is a lot of learning, experiment and growing.

When a teenager decides to start a business, it is a step worthy of applause, to step out of your comfort zone and try your hands at something.

Doing business in Nigeria is not an easy task, doing it as a teenager with little experience is even harder. As a result, we’ve written this to help teenagers navigate the difficulties of starting and sustaining a business, because truth is, regardless of how great your business idea is, without proper steps, it won’t perform as well as it should have.

Here’s our advice for teenagers looking to start a business:

Figure out a Task or Chore that Could Become a Monetizable Service

This advice is directed at teenagers who have no skill that can be monetized or no business idea. If there are tasks that you think you can be paid for, then you could do this.

This is a simple business model that involves turning your chores into tasks like carwash, laundry, pet sitting or home cleaning services.

Consider Your Skills or Learn One

If you have a skill, you could make money off of offering them as services to people. For example, you might be an artist or a tailor, or be really good at a digital skill.

If there’s no skill, you could also learn a skill you think would sell.

Come up with a Business Name

If you’ve figured out what you’re business is going to be offering, then you should come up with a business name. Your business name is one of the first things that leaves a lasting impression on your customer, so make sure it’s worth it.

Be creative but also make sure your business name reflects what your business is going to be about. If you’re unsure how to come up with a business name, we wrote an article to help. Click to learn  Seven easy ways to come up with a business name

Talk to Your Parents and Friends

If your parents are supportive, they’ll be proud of you and may also offer some advice that you might find useful about running a business.

If they don’t, intentionally ask them for advice. Also ask them for whatever support you’re going to need.

You might also have friends that could give you the best idea or offer to even help. In all, make sure you’re not alone, it will be difficult.

Research The Market

This means that you should find out what people need and who else is offering the services you want to offer. There will always be someone else doing something similar to what you have in mind, study their methods and try to find out their flaws so that you can correct it with your business. Also try to figure out why the customer chooses one competitor over the other, this will give you an idea what customers are looking for in your market.

You could simply Google “car washers near me “ or “tailors near me “ and see what comes up. Remember that the point is to learn. So, if you can reach out to them for guidance, then do so.

Also do some research on your target audience. Who are the people more likely to buy what you’re selling? Write a list and include the age, marital status, gender, income capability etc, of your potential customers.

Financing

Your parents can help finance your business or you can get your friends to contribute at least N1000 each on your behalf.

Another option is to save to buy some of the things you’ll need.

Finally MARKET! MARKET! MARKET!

Go all out with your marketing. Tell the friends of your friends, and family. Talk about it at church or in school. Go on social media and create pages for your business for people to find.

If you have the resources, have fliers and business cards created and printed. Post your flier in places you are sure they will be seen.

Of course, there’s still so much to know, but for starters, this is good. As your business grows, you can start to seek more knowledge.

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