business owner

A lot of business owners in Nigeria keep one account for the business and their own upkeep, and calmly pay themselves whenever cash is sitting there looking idle. Fuel for the generator comes from that account, school fees come from that account, stock for the shop comes from that account, all mixed together like one big pot of soup. It feels harmless because it is still their money after all, they own the thing.

But that habit is exactly why so many businesses stay small forever. If you cannot tell what the business earned last month because your personal spending is tangled inside it, you cannot price properly, you cannot plan, and you certainly cannot convince a bank or an investor that this is a real, countable business.

Being a business owner simply means you hold the equity, the actual ownership stake, in whatever the business is. A woman who started a small poundo yam processing business in Ibadan with her own ₦300,000 savings is a business owner. So is a man in London running a Nigerian food delivery service registered as a private company, even if he still drives the deliveries himself some evenings. Ownership is not about title, it is about who carries the risk and who keeps what is left after everyone else is paid.

This is different from a manager or a chief operating officer, who may run daily operations brilliantly but does not own the equity and does not personally lose sleep if the business fails. The owner is the one whose money disappears first if things go wrong, and whose money multiplies first if things go right.

The fix for that mixed account habit is simple, not fancy. Pay yourself an actual salary from the business, however small, and leave the rest of the profit inside the business or in a proper savings pot for it. Once you do that, you finally see the business as it truly is.