HHow They Do It?
Step 4 of 4 · Get your playbook
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The Playbook

What to do
on the hard days.

The things someone should have told you before you started. Read the part you need today and go do it.

01

Before you start

Build for one person you can name.

Pick someone real. The woman who sells vetkoek two streets down, the shop that loses stock every time the power goes. Solve their problem first. You can worry about everyone else later.

Decide what your first win looks like.

Give yourself 30 days and one thing to hit. One paying customer. One panel installed. One crate of sorted plastic sold. Write the date on your wall so you cannot argue with it later.

Tell three people what you are doing.

Put it on your WhatsApp status, tell your cousin, tell the friend who always checks on you. When people expect an update, you keep going on the days you would have quit.

Write down what you are not doing.

Most people do not fail from laziness, they fail from chasing five things at once. Pick the three requests you will turn down this month and say no properly when they come.

Ask yourself if you will still care next year.

If the honest answer is no, keep the idea but do not build your year around it. Something you already notice every day will hold you longer than something that just sounds good.

02

When you get told no

You are going to get told no.

Probably more than once, and probably for reasons nobody explains properly. When it happens, do not disappear for two weeks. Go back and ask what would have made it a yes. Half the time you learn something useful. The other half, you at least know it was not really about you.

Give yourself a number to hit.

Thirty no's this month. Now every no is one closer to done instead of proof you were wrong to try.

Do not read it as a verdict on you.

Somebody made a decision on a Tuesday with the little they knew about you. That is all that happened.

Keep a list of people to go back to.

Budgets change. The office that had nothing in March often has money in October. Write the name, the date, and what they said, then follow up.

03

Posting about your work without burning out

One place, one kind of post, one day a week.

Pick WhatsApp status or one page and stay there. Posting every day for two weeks and then vanishing helps nobody, least of all you.

Show the work, not the plan.

A photo of the tank you fitted, the crate you filled, the light that came on during load-shedding. People believe what they can see.

Answer every message for the first year.

Your first real customers come out of replies and DMs, not view counts. Answer even the ones that look like they are wasting your time.

Look at the numbers once a week.

Checking every hour will wreck your head and change nothing. Once a week is enough to see what people actually responded to.

04

Working with other people

Do one job together before you promise anything.

Take one small paid job with them and watch how they show up. Do they answer the phone. Do they finish. That tells you more than any conversation about splitting the business.

Write down who decides what.

Who handles the money, who hires, who has the final say when you disagree. Two lines each on paper, both of you sign it. This is the part that saves friendships.

Bring in someone who covers your weak spot.

Not your closest friend, the person who does the thing you keep putting off. If you hate chasing payments, find someone who does not.

Pay people something from the first job.

Even a small honest amount. A promise of a share later is how good people quietly stop answering your calls.

05

When it gets hard

Make the day smaller.

One phone call. One repair. One post. On a bad week that is the whole job, and it is enough to keep you moving.

Go talk to one customer.

Hearing someone say the thing you built actually helped them will do more for you than any advice, including this.

Work out if you are tired or off track.

Tired means sleep and come back Monday. Off track means change the plan. At 2am they feel exactly the same, so do not decide at 2am.

Give it more Tuesdays.

Nothing you do this week will look like much. It starts looking like something after two hundred weeks of the same small work.

Programmes you can apply to this month

Training, funding, and employment programmes open to Southern African youth.

See the full funder map

  • NYDA Grant Programme

    Grant · ages 18–35

  • SEDA (Small Enterprise Development Agency)

    Programme · ages 18+

  • SEDCO (Eswatini)

    Programme · ages 18+

  • Eswatini Youth Enterprise Revolving Fund (YERF)

    Loan · ages 18–35

  • Anzisha Prize

    Competition · ages 15–22

  • Tony Elumelu Foundation Entrepreneurship Programme

    Grant · ages 18+

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