The South African Idea That Helps Tradespeople Build a Business

A shelf is a relatively simple object until you ask three people to agree on whether it’s level. Then somebody fetches a spirit level, somebody blames the wall, and somebody says it looked fine before everyone started helping.

Knowing how to put up the shelf properly is one skill. Working out what to charge, buying the materials, arranging the job and making sure the invoice gets paid are a different set of skills entirely. That distinction is at the heart of Fix Forward, a South African nonprofit that helps people in the construction trades develop businesses of their own.

It’s a good idea because it starts with something people can already do and asks what would help them make a living from it.

The qualification is a beginning

Fix Forward’s history traces the organisation back to founder Joshua Cox in 2012. Its first pilot training programme followed in 2014, in partnership with The Business Place in Philippi. By 2016 it had developed its own programme around training, coaching and mentoring.

The organisation describes a two-year programme for construction trade graduates under 35. Alongside business training, it offers coaching, help with formal business requirements and access to seed capital. That last part is easy to skim past, but it changes what someone can do with the advice. It’s difficult to take on a job that requires buying materials upfront when you haven’t got the money to buy them.

There’s a point here for anyone who has ever advised somebody to “just start a business”. The word “just” is doing an impressive amount of unpaid labour.

There’s a second job inside the first one

Imagine a fictional tiler pricing a small bathroom. She can work out the cuts, spot where the floor is uneven and tell you why that lovely sample tile might be a menace in a wet room. She also has to allow for travel, consumables and the time it takes to clear the old tiles. If the customer changes the layout halfway through, she has to explain what that means for the quote.

The bathroom is imaginary. The difference between doing a job and running one is the reason the example matters. The next bit of support she needs may have little to do with laying tile. It might be someone to walk through the figures with her, or a way to fund materials before the customer settles the bill.

That’s what makes the programme’s combination of coaching, training and capital interesting. A workshop can explain how to price a job. A coach can help somebody work through the quote sitting in front of them. Those are useful at different moments.

Ask what happens on Monday

There’s a lesson here for creative teams designing programmes, campaigns or services. Before you put “empowerment” in a headline, try describing what somebody will be able to do on Monday that they couldn’t do on Friday.

Can they send a quote they understand and stand behind? Can they talk to someone when their first job goes sideways? Can they buy what they need without taking an order that leaves them short? The answer will tell you what to build, and it will probably give you better copy than the headline you started with.

For a communications team, that could mean spending time with the people the programme is meant for and finding out where the process gets difficult. The answer might be as ordinary as a form that assumes everyone knows what paperwork is needed. Fixing it may be a better use of the budget than making a film about how easy the form is.

Good ideas give people something to work with

Fix Forward’s model sits alongside a very different local idea, Book Dash’s creative day for making children’s books. Both invite a closer look at what makes existing talent useful in a new setting: the time, materials, collaborators and practical support that let someone get on with the work.

If you’re in the mood for more examples of South Africans taking everyday problems seriously, meet ten inventors whose work travelled further than their names.

For more stories about the people behind good ideas, sign up for The CreH8ive Times. And if your team helps make those ideas easier to find or use, list your agency on CreH8ive.

As for the shelf, let the person with the spirit level finish. They’ve probably already thought about the wall.