Its important from the start to be sure that your small business will survive and hence grow.

Every investor or starter has a dream of what outcome they expect of their investment. But depending on the size of your business, how do you actualize this dream?

One of the things to clear is what most Nigerian entrepreneurs consider to be a business.

Most Nigerians imagine a business to be a venture where you put money in and get more out of it. Well, the answer to this is YES and NO.
I would say a good business is that venture you put money in when it has a potential to yeild more.

When I started my hospitality business about 2009, I was already into interactive video gaming, Poultry, barbing and hairdressing, retail selling including drinks and foods from 2005 or thereabout.

In all of this, Video gaming wasn't very profitable but I did it with a passion that people admired but I couldn’t grow it into having mature customers over about 15% so the power to improve on pricing was very low. Again this business was very power (electricity) intensive.

I stopped investing in the poultry business because I did not have the time to source for the market for it at the time and suffered some setback in 2005 due to the bird flu scare at the time.

Barbing and hair dressing had to go because what the barbers of hairdressers wanted in order to be dedicated was like a pound of flesh and they were never satisfied. I realized here that businesses that require skilled personnel require a bit of knowledge and just being an investor wasn't enough to sustain the business. You have to be ready to do some hands on and show some know-how.
I set everything down to just a bar and the interactive game business. But still had to put in some money to meet up overheads and it still needed a lot of my own personal skills to solve some real technical issues.

After spending some years working in the oilfield I thought it was time to push things up a bit see if the income could cross over the expenditure line, of course by investing further and giving it more of my time like over 25 times more.

Now its mixed stories, sometimes its good sometimes I just wish I never started in the first place.

With 3 bars, a 24hour kitchen and an 11 room Guest house in a very bad electricity zone, my story as a business man depends on how I want to view it.

When I started, a friend rented a space from me and set up a cyber cafe, he stopped within the first year because of cost and the fact that he wanted the business to make money while he had to mind something else. This is always where most of the concern comes in.
WHO SHOULD TAKE CARE OF YOUR BUSINESS?

You are the best employee to take care of your business but if you do not have expertise to run the business please hire.

I can confidently tell you that you didn't strategies on this business.
I have ventured into 2 of the businesses you mentioned and I did very well.
Barbing and poultry.

Tell me which of the businesses u still operate and I will give you only one strategy to grow it.
Lesson...DO not start a business without proper feasibility study( E.g Why would you open a Barbing salon in an area where Barbing salon is saturated? then if u must, you should create a value preposition