Thabile Makhoba’s second career began with a missing signal

Losing work can make the next application feel like the most urgent task in the world. For Thabile Makhoba, even getting online to make it was difficult.

An Innovator Trust profile published in September describes her return to a rural farming community after retrenchment from events work during the pandemic. Unreliable connectivity meant driving to town for Wi-Fi. She wrote to mobile networks, and the problem helped open a route towards telecommunications work.

Makhoba used part of her retrenchment package for occupational health and safety training. Makhoba Professional Services followed, with support through the Vodacom supplier development programme implemented by Innovator Trust. The profile includes compliance work, early costing mistakes and the decision to hire experienced technical staff before paying herself.

That account comes from an organisation involved in supporting the business. Its most useful detail is the sequence of practical changes rather than the promise of a universally repeatable success.

A second career can require two kinds of learning at once. There is the new field itself: its standards, customers and technical work. Alongside it is the commercial task of delivering a service at a price that covers what it actually takes to do the job.

A quotation can look profitable while overlooking travel, supervision, administration or the time needed to correct a mistake. A growing order book does not remove that problem; underpriced work can make it grow faster. Makhoba's reported costing difficulties give the profile a more useful edge than a simple account of determination.

Hiring people with experience is another important choice. A founder may understand the customer and organise the company without personally possessing every technical skill. The business becomes stronger when those gaps are recognised early enough to fill them.

This does not make the previous career irrelevant. Coordinating events can involve suppliers, deadlines, budgets and unexpected changes. Those habits can travel into a new setting, even while the founder learns what is different about it. The title changes more quickly than all the experience behind it disappears.

For someone contemplating their own change, the helpful question is specific: which part of the new work can I already do, and what would I need to learn or pay somebody else to do? That is a better starting point for a decision than assuming enthusiasm must cover every gap.

Makhoba's account is a story of rebuilding through training, support and correction. The missing signal started the search; learning how to deliver a dependable service gave it a business direction.

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