Meet urban designer Joel from Yes Make

Tell us in a few words what your business does…

We used reclaimed materials from the city to design and build beautiful public spaces with and for local people. We get the local community directly involved in the design process and physically involved in the build stage too – for example, we’re just finishing at a school in Muswell Hill in north London, where we spent eight months doing educational projects with the kids, so they essentially designed the space themselves.

What was your lightbulb moment?

It started off as a side hustle; I certainly didn’t set out with the aim of starting the business that I now run. I was working in local authorities in London, delivering infrastructure projects as an urban designer and doing things a bit differently, by getting the local communities involved and engaged. Then someone asked me to help on a regeneration project on a housing estate near where I grew up in Peckham. Using pallets salvaged from a local building site we built a bench in a new courtyard on the estate.

My next side hustle was a project in Lewisham during Covid, where they’d blocked off 12 car parking spaces to make the pavements wider, but it wasn’t working as people didn’t understand how to use the space. So we came and built a structure that allowed the cafes and businesses to spill out onto the street. At that point I’d gone down to 2.5 days a week, so when I completed that project I handed my notice in, as there was loads of work for me and it would have been too much to keep both going.

What’s the best thing about running your own business?

Autonomy, being my own boss. If there’s an ambition I have over the longer term I don’t have to ask permission to pursue it. I just do it. I may not have much control over my diary but, creatively, I have a big sense of freedom.

What’s the biggest challenge you’ve faced?

Lack of time is my biggest challenge. Juggling running the business with actually doing the work – the design side of things, the physical production of objects, being on site to manage projects – is really tricky.

Why did you choose ANNA as your business account?

We got an ANNA account three years ago, and I'm still with ANNA now because it makes the day-to-day accounting for my business outrageously easy – take the VAT function, it would be such a nightmare if I didn’t have that. We recently moved on to using the PAYE to do our payroll for our three employees through ANNA too, and that’s golden. The fees are reasonable; it’s just a good product.

What advice would you give other business owners facing this same challenge?

I’m trying to underbook my time – assuming that I will be able to do less in the day rather than assuming I will be able to squeeze everything in. ANNA obviously helps with financial admin too!

What’s your superpower at work?

Looking at something and knowing what I can make from it and how to do it. I can make anything from anything and that serves me well!

Tell us how ANNA helps your business achieve its goals

I am very short of time so anything that makes essential jobs quicker and easier means I can spend more time actually doing the creative work that I enjoy.

Do you have a motto or mantra for your approach to business?

We only do public projects and the ethos behind that is that access to beautiful things shouldn’t be limited to your ability to pay for it and that’s fundamental to doing what we do. The things we do and make are seen by thousands of people every day, whereas if we made furniture it’d only be used by one or two people now and then.

What’s next for you and your business?

We’re just about to build two new play parks in Stratford. Pretty exciting! We’re also setting up a youth programme with the aim of creating the ultimate first job for the 21st century. We’ll take 6 young people from the local area and they will establish a company and use the materials we have available to us to market, design, build and sell products for Christmas next year.

Who would your dream customer be? 

The two new playgrounds in Stratford, and a new playground at the Hornimann museum are all dream projects. It’s become a sort of unintentional niche for us, and we also work in schools, so to be able to get to a position where we could provide every school in London with inspirational play spaces would be a real dream.

Finally… Do you prefer cats or dogs?

Dogs! They’re more like me. They love to run and are pretty soppy.