Many startups and businesses often start in the bed room, basement or garage of their owners. Well whatever room you are using these 5 steps should help you get yourself and work environment ready to go from home.

1. Wake up before 8:00am
   First off you want to wake up as early as the rest of the house or if you live alone get up the same time as your neighbor going to work, it creates the same atmosphere of seriousness as going to the office, very important!
   new day, new money to be made and since you are still working from home I’m guessing you really need the money. Also bare in mind that the clients you are contacting majority of them if not all go to an office with a structured 9 to 5 so you do want to be at 100% game mode to operate in the morning.

Please shower and brush up! It makes you more active during the day and sets the environment right. Plus you don’t know the opportunities that can bring you out during the day so be prepared!

2. Eat light
Since you are working from home you probably won fastest finger first to the kitchen than the other guy who went to the office. Good for you but that does not mean you should eat heavy meals. Tell you what happens if you eat heavy meals in the morning, you feel sleepy as you begin to work and it can be a 2 to 3 hour sleep which can span into afternoon, you wake up feeling angry with yourself for not accomplishing nothing all morning and half of the afternoon is gone. Eat light, make a sandwich and drink a Nescafe 3 in 1 it’s quite sweet compared to the normal black Nescafe, don’t like coffee or sandwich find something else that isn’t heavy to eat. Don’t take beans and bread or a heavy bowl of rice that is a no no.

3. Have a work desk
You want to have a desk you can call your working desk at home. You can make use of your dinning table if it’s not close to the TV set. Having this gives you your thinking and planning space and that is where you create magic while working from home. Once you sit on that chair in the morning you are good to go. Make sure it’s excluded from where family and friends pass through like a corridor or hallway because if it’s close by to one of those you will be disturbed regularly at least once every hour and that can impede your effectiveness. So make sure your working desk is in a secluded place in your house.

4. Read the news
When you wake up as early as 8, shower, and have a light breakfast you are good to go before 9. That gives you time to read the news, remember while you’re going by your daily hustle, firms in your industry are coming up with new innovations and things you knew yesterday about your field my just be irrelevant the next day so you want to be up to date on information. I always go with Business insider it keeps me up to date with business, political, tech and other general news. I do this with my Co-founder (working on something new) and then we have a few minutes to discuss strong points form what we read. We call it morning meeting.

5. Get office facilities and materials
Lastly you want to get all the things necessary to run a full 9 to 5 from home. Pens, paper, sticky note, flip charts, white board if possible, printer, phone, WiFi, laptop or desktop e.t.c Also you should have a generator or inverter because when PHCN plays their games you must be ready to turn on the generator and not slow down your effectiveness due to lack of power. When they take the light and your laptop battery goes off it seems like the perfect excuse to end work by 1:00pm. You should be ready to solve this issue and lack of electricity should not be a stumbling block because it will take a toll on your daily effectiveness.

Running your business from home and taking it as serious as a 9 to 5 office shows diligence and in no time you will get your own office outside your home and you will be apt in running it effectively with hired staff simply because you succeeded with it when it was just you and your guys in a room or the basement of your house. Its an office not a house as long as its between 9am to 5pm try working with that.

Before writing this I thought it would be nice to research and see what the classification of entrepreneurs are out there, but I stumbled on studies and research on it, which was a bunch of heavy duty stuff so I will try and keep it simple.

Living in a city called Lagos is quite exiting, really if you ask around the word on the street is that it is the New York of Nigeria. Everyone who wants to make it big and beyond borders has to come here. But let us forget about the city itself lets look at what the city is doing especially the young ones in it.

Last year Mark Zuckerberg visited Nigeria and this is due to the fact Nigeria is an emerging market and new start-ups are being created each day from Tech start ups which caught his attention to textile & clothing, Education etc. all delivering value and meeting needs.

At this point if you are an investor and you are looking for the next big long-term investment to hold investing in a start up is where you should be looking to put your money into, trust me we keep on looking for stocks and bonds but have you ever sat down to listen to these young entrepreneurs talk not even having pitch to you, I’m saying a normal conversation and you would be impressed. So what kind of young entrepreneurs should you look for?

Types Of Young Entrepreneurs

Pre-entrepreneurs (15–19 years old): Now these guys are just leaving the security of their home and school to start working, majority of them had start-up businesses while in university now they are faced with the decision of whether to go on with their start up or to avert the risk and find a regular traditional job. Only some of the youths interested in becoming entrepreneurs emerges from this stage as still interested in entrepreneurship

Budding entrepreneurs (20–25 years old): They have been in the game for about a decade and they capitalise on experience, skills and capital accumulated during previous stage, which enables them to set up their own businesses properly. At this stage there is still the probability of dropping the whole idea of doing business and this occurs when the start-up fails to start and take off but does that survive this stage are those who persevere, focus, build up a robust entrepreneurial spirit and are strong on delivering value which will lead to the maximisation of wealth in the long run.

Emergent entrepreneurs (26–29 years old). With valuable experience in business, emergent entrepreneurs have a higher level of maturity than youths in the previous phases. Hence they are more likely to run viable enterprises than younger people.

That classification was more or less based on age, I am an entrepreneur and I have been offered the opportunity to work on several projects and start-ups such as DonaldSelfa which I am the C.C.O (Chief Creative Officer),

I have also worked with Paqpaper as a corporate strategist and I’m still with them as a stakeholder etc. although both companies are currently in a lapse period due to internal reconstructions. Working with entrepreneurs most of my age bracket I have been able to simplify the types of young entrepreneurs out there, their characteristics and I can say I’m well informed to give an advice on which one of them to put your money into.

The Instagram Entrepreneur
He/she is only in business to increase their social life status, they are mostly into fashion photography, graphics designing. While less than half of them are actually thinking of creating a sustainable business others are just in it for the fame and the money that comes in the short run

The Basket Mouth Entrepreneur
They have the ability to talk about their ideas from morning to night and keep asking people in a joking way to invest in them, they can go as far as creating a brand but without value talk less of a product. They spend more time creating great ideas but don’t get serious enough to see them through and at the end of the day see them as unachievable. This is because they are never prepared to meet opportunity.

The Shortrun Guys
They love fads getting their hands into any business they can get into majority of which is seasonal. They are more into quick money. Creating businesses just to provide solutions to challenges which pop up once in a blue moon for example creating a back to school inspired website which enables students to purchase what they need all in one place before getting to school, creating value but not long term. Many a times they keep their regular 9 to 5 job.

The Old Money Entrepreneur
You know this believe that old money never dies somehow wealth amassed in the 90’s found its way to the 2000 era through it investments or the actual money. So entrepreneurs in this category have old money invested in them through their parents or relatives, they have the idea but lack the skills, business knowledge and technical knowhow. They really don’t know what they are doing neither do they really care.

The Copy Cats
These guys only had an idea because they saw someone else launch a business and they taught it was cool or it is simple to do and brings in the money. What these guys expect are the keys to the kingdom and even if they get it and eventually start how do you want to compare a company that started with a vision in mind and one that is a mere photocopy without a vision. The latter is bound to fade away in the long run.

The Tech-Geeks
These are the mechanical engineering and computer science majors of the entrepreneur world. All they know it has to do with science and the technical side of things, but what they have is math and coding skills, they lack even basic business management skills. The business savvy entrepreneurs love to partner up with them.

The Hustler-preneur
All they ever needed to know they learnt on the streets, their hustler mentality cannot be taught in any university or school. Great hustle-preneur are the ones who aren’t only street smart but book smart. Trust me they know how to create value, why? Because they are from the streets and the only needs they meet are the street needs which is every one and not just a segment. When you have answers to everyone’s problems you have access to everyone’s money

The Value — preneur
Whatever business these class of entrepreneurs do you can see value. They are not copy cats because their business model stands out from the rest in that line of business, they show results and not the process therefore they are not basket mouths. They are interested in creating value building business models that will surpass the existing ones and also stand the test of time. They are also hustle-preneur with strong business spirits.

How Do I Invest In Value-Preneurs

1) Have a hunger for long-term value and not trends
2) Take time to see what the young ones are doing also no forgetting value
3) Take time to have a chat once a while with them, It costs you nothing. From there you can do your first due diligence by just having a simple talk which is not a pitch.
4) Question their ability to create value so that you don’t make a mistake because many are eloquent in speaking grammar and poor at creating value
5) How many years of experience do they have?
6) Ask for their team, do they have professionals working with them in their line of business. Investors invest in management (people) before ideas

From a long chat with them also keep in mind you can deviate outside business to see their thinking on social, political and economic issues and doing all of the steps listed above you are about 20% sure if you want to invest in this guys or not.

7) Finally give them the chance to make a formal pitch of all they have; business model, product, value proposition and financial projections.

That’s it, you just invested in a start-up!