I will never forget how this started. I was living in Ibadan and looking for a side hustle that could supplement my salary. After some indecision, I came across a video online of a woman named Amanda who sold small chops in Lekki, Lagos. In the video, she said she was making at least ₦400,000 a month from the business.
I saw that figure, got excited and immediately began thinking about starting the same type of business in Ibadan. At the time, I lived in Agbowo and worked as a sales representative at Pick & Pay Ventures, a wholesale drinks business. I earned about ₦70,000 a month.
After paying for rent, food, mobile data, transportation and other basic expenses, I was often short of money before the end of the month. That made the small-chops idea even more attractive. I assumed there would be less competition in my part of Ibadan than in Lagos, and I believed a business that sounded profitable could quickly improve my income. I did not test that assumption. That was my first mistake.
How I Put Almost ₦500,000 Into the Business
The following week, I checked my savings and found that I had accumulated about ₦400,000 over the previous two years. I was excited because I believed it was enough to get started. A friend and I went to the market to price the equipment and ingredients I would need. I also secured a kiosk at a junction in my area and paid ₦120,000 for one year.
Based on what I can reconstruct from memory, my main startup costs came to about ₦440,000:
One-year kiosk/space fee — ₦120,000
Fryer — ₦90,000
25 litres of vegetable oil — ₦40,000
Chicken — ₦80,000
Half bag of flour — ₦60,000
Banner — ₦30,000
Packaging nylon — ₦20,000
Other miscellaneous expenses pushed the amount of cash I committed closer to ₦500,000. Because I had only about ₦400,000 saved, I borrowed ₦100,000 from a close friend, expecting to repay him within two months. At that point, I was convinced the business would work quickly. Instead of testing demand on a small scale first, I committed almost all my savings at once.
Then Reality Hit Me
On the first day I started selling, I made about ₦20,000 in sales. On the second day, I made another ₦12,000. Then the electricity went out for three straight days. I had stored chicken in a freezer at home, and without reliable backup power, some of it spoiled. I estimate that I lost about ₦50,000 worth of chicken.
That was when I realised I had never properly budgeted for one of the biggest operating risks in a food business: reliable cold storage and backup electricity. I borrowed another ₦50,000 to restock, hoping things would improve. They did not. For five straight days, I had no paying customers. Rather than allowing more food to spoil, I began giving some of it away. Within two weeks, I was exhausted and deeply worried about the money I had committed and the debts I had taken on. The business was consuming cash instead of generating enough of it.
The Advice That Changed How I Choose Side Hustles
During that period, a senior colleague, Mr Akin, noticed how overwhelmed I looked and asked what was wrong. I told him what had happened. His advice stayed with me. He told me not to enter a business simply because I was excited about it. I needed to research it first. He compared choosing a business to marriage. You do not make a lifelong decision after one exciting first date. You take time to understand what you are committing to. That comparison changed how I think about side hustles.
I realised that I had effectively “married” the small-chops business before dating it. I bought equipment. I rented a space. I bought inventory. I borrowed money. I committed emotionally and financially before proving that enough people around me were actually willing to buy what I wanted to sell. Since then, I have developed five rules I use before investing serious money in a side hustle.
5 Rules I Now Use Before Investing in a Side Hustle
Rule 1: Can You Get One Stranger to Pay You?
The goal of this test is simple. Before I invest heavily in a business idea, I want evidence that someone outside my personal circle is willing to pay for the product or service. Friends and family may support you because they care about you. A stranger has fewer reasons to buy from you unless they genuinely see value in what you are offering.
I tested this rule when I started selling thrift clothes in 2025. I bought 15 first-grade polo shirts for ₦20,000 from Dugbe, washed and prepared them, photographed them with my Tecno Spark 9, and posted the pictures on WhatsApp Status and Facebook Marketplace. I deliberately asked friends and family not to buy during the test.
For the first two days, I did not get a customer I did not already know. Early on the third day, a man in Ojoo messaged me and bought two polos for ₦5,000. That one sale did not prove that the business was guaranteed to succeed. But it gave me something my small-chops business never gave me before I invested heavily: Evidence that a stranger was willing to pay.
My rule now is simple. If I cannot get even one stranger to pay during a small test, I treat that as a warning sign and investigate the demand further before committing serious money.
Rule 2: Can You Handle Complaints and Difficult Customers?
In any business, complaints and difficult interactions are part of the work. I learned that it is not enough to like the product you are selling. You also need to handle the problems that come with serving customers. One experience from my thrift business made this very clear. A customer ordered a polo shirt and jeans through Facebook Marketplace. After delivery, he told me the clothes were too tight and angrily accused me of scamming him. I offered to exchange the size L items for XL. The conversation became heated, so I stopped replying at that point.
He later returned the clothes, and I sent the larger size. We eventually resolved the issue. That experience taught me to judge a side hustle by its difficult days, not only its exciting days. With thrift sales, I discovered that I could still deal with returns, complaints, repetitive preparation and customer messages. With the small-chops business, however, the combination of spoilage, unreliable electricity, weak demand and constant pressure made me realise that its day-to-day problems were not a good fit for me.
Before committing to a side hustle, ask yourself:
Can I handle this business when customers complain, things go wrong and the excitement disappears?
Rule 3: Can You Sustain It Around Your 9-to-5 Job?
A side hustle has to fit around the job or responsibilities that already pay your bills. At the time I was working as a sales representative, I started work around 8 a.m. and closed around 6 p.m. That left only a few hours at night for my own business. With thrift clothes, those hours often went into washing, ironing, photographing items, responding to customers and preparing deliveries.
Some nights, I worked until midnight or 1 a.m. and still had to be back at my day job by 8 a.m. I also watched a friend try to combine a demanding banking job with late-night baking. After several nights of very little rest, I received a call that she had fainted at work. I cannot say what medically caused it, but the experience made me take workload, sleep and recovery more seriously. A profitable-looking side hustle can still become a bad decision if your existing schedule makes it impossible to operate sustainably.
My rule now is to ask:
Can this side hustle realistically fit around my current job and responsibilities without making the rest of my life unsustainable?
If you are considering leaving your job because of a business idea, you may also find my guide on 4 Reasons Why You Should Not Quit Your 9-5 Job Yet useful.
Rule 4: Are You Making Profit or Just Making Sales?
This is one of the biggest lessons I learned. Revenue is not profit. A business can have customers and still lose money. When I started paying closer attention to my thrift business, I realised how important it was to separate the amount coming in from the amount I actually kept.
Here is a simple reconstruction of one batch from my thrift business:
15 polos — ₦20,000 total, or about ₦1,333 each
Transport — ₦1,500
Washing and ironing — up to ₦6,000 when outsourced
Revenue if all 15 polos sell at ₦2,500 each — ₦37,500
Estimated profit after those listed costs — about ₦10,000
And even that calculation does not include every possible expense. There could still be delivery costs, mobile data, unsold stock and the value of my own time. That is why I no longer look at sales figures alone when judging whether a side hustle is working.
My small-chops experience is also difficult to describe as one precise accounting loss. Some of the approximately ₦440,000 I initially spent went into equipment and rented space. The money I borrowed increased my debt, but borrowing money is not automatically the same thing as losing that money. I committed roughly ₦440,000 in listed startup costs, spent additional money trying to keep the business running, and recovered very little in sales before I stopped.
That distinction matters. Money invested, debt, revenue, expenses, cash flow and profit are not the same thing. Before entering a side hustle, calculate as much as you reasonably can.
Ask:
What will the product cost me?
What will transportation cost?
What will electricity or fuel cost?
What will packaging cost?
What will delivery cost?
What happens if some stock does not sell?
What price must I charge to make a meaningful profit?
A business can look profitable until you start counting the expenses you ignored.
Rule 5: Can You Handle the Boring Part for Two Hours?
The exciting part of a new side hustle is easy to imagine. The repetitive part is what many people overlook. With thrift clothes, I may need to photograph and edit more than 100 items, iron them, post them online and reply to many different types of customers. It is repetitive. But I can tolerate the routine.
That matters because most businesses require you to repeat certain tasks long after the initial excitement is gone. Before I invest heavily now, I use a simple personal test:
Can I spend about two focused hours doing one of the boring, repetitive parts of this business without immediately wanting to quit?
Two hours is not a universal business rule. It is simply a test that helps me judge whether I can live with the day-to-day work involved. If you hate the routine required to operate a business, enthusiasm alone may not keep you going for very long.
Final Lesson: Test Before You Invest
If a side hustle fails most of these tests, I do not invest heavily in it. If it passes three, I prefer to run a small test first and collect more evidence.
- Can I get stranger sales?
- Can I handle complaints?
- Can I fit it around my schedule?
- Is there real profit after costs?
- Can I tolerate the routine?
Even if an idea passes four or five of these tests, I still prefer to start small. That is the lesson my small-chops experience taught me. I did not fail because side hustles are bad. I also did not fail because a small-chops business cannot be profitable. My biggest mistake was becoming financially and emotionally committed before I had properly validated demand, understood the operating risks or calculated the economics of the business.
That is what I mean when I say: Do not marry your side hustle too early. Test it first. Learn what customers actually want. Understand the costs. Experience the boring parts. See how you react when something goes wrong. Then decide how much of your time and money it deserves. That approach may not guarantee success, but it can help you avoid committing your savings to an idea you have not properly tested.
Note on the figures: The amounts in this article are approximate and based on my recollection of what I spent at the time. They are included to explain my experience and should not be treated as current startup-cost estimates for a small-chops or thrift business in Nigeria.
Disclaimer: This article shares my personal experience and is for educational and informational purposes only. It is not financial or professional business advice. Startup costs, demand, profitability and business risks vary by industry, location and individual circumstances.
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