Tell him to go into residential and old house restoration and preservation. There are all these new historic districts being added where you can only do historically accurate repairs to the outside, and there are not that many people who are good at doing it.

Look up the HPOZ map of LA. Those are areas where it is hard to find good qualified tradesmen. They're out there, but the good ones are always busy and never call you back. There are lots of niches like this. There's one guy that only does doors. He's always busy.

If he has experience overseeing, he could start by doing the work himself, and then on the side he could train workers to do the work so that he can have several projects going at once. It would be a good thing to do for the community. If you are good with paperwork, you could take that part of the business off his back.. If you guys are close, you could register a company in your name. The federal govt has to give contracts to women first. Like for example, the agency I'm working for needs someone to re-roof old barns with wood shingles. We call back women owned businesses first. Bonus points if they are minorities. You could form a GC partnership where he's the qualifying individual and you are the owner.

There are lots of ideas and alternatives to explore.