Latest / Sarah Knows Support Workers / From Mugs to Matchmaking: A Support Worker Tale

Transcript

From Mugs to Matchmaking: A Support Worker Tale · Sarah Knows Support Workers

• 0:00
  So I am not great at the elevator pitch to be honest with
• 0:04
  you. I don't.
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  It's not the way I roll. And the reason why it's not the
• 0:08
  way that I roll is because I'm better at listening to you.
• 0:12
  To be fair, I like listening to what you're doing, why you're
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  doing it, how you're doing it, like all that passionate stuff,
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  the reason why you do what you do.
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  And then from the information that you give me, because I'm
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  really good at getting in that information, I figure out
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  whether I can work with you. And if I can't work with you,
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  who can I network with you with next?
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  That's it. So today I've got to talk about
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  the support Worker store. And it turns out that the
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  support worker Store has been up and running for three years,
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  which took me by surprise because in that three years I've
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  had to pivot, I've had to move, I've had to change the way that
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  I do things in between. And if you've been following
• 0:54
  along for the support Worker Store, it started while I was
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  pregnant with my third, and I hadn't.
• 1:00
  I started with creating funny, humorous mugs about support
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  work. And while I was doing that, I
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  realized I could actually offer a lot more because my years of
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  service to the sector, I knew more than what I was giving and
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  I knew that I was playing too small.
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  So once I figured out the playing too small things, I
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  developed and grew the brand to where it is today under the
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  support worker store Lie. Sarah knows Support Workers,
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  which is the podcast. To be fair, I was trailing
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  around and I was kind of like, you know, one of those things
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  stuff around and find out. I found out I'm 70 episodes in
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  and I have been able to have the opportunity to interview some of
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  our sector's greatest. So it has been that when I'm not
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  doing the support worker store, I'm actually the Co founder of
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  Swifty matches. Swifty matches an app that
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  connects any is participants. We support workers whether they
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  are independent or with a provider.
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  This came about because I was watching one too many.
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  I was like a whole thing to how we got to Swifty Matchy.
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  But in fairness to the story, I was watching one too many maths
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  episodes and there was this one episode that really like screams
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  to mind was kind of like with a penny drop for me.
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  In this episode, the bride was walking down the aisle.
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  She was so excited to get married.
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  She was really wanted love all those things in between and it's
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  like the voice over. So you can see us slowly walk
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  down this aisle. The guy turns around and his
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  voice over was that's not what I ordered.
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  And at the time I was ahead of a service, whereas delivering 1 to
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  ones at that time, it made like the penny dropped.
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  I was like, I wonder how many times a person that we should
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  have opened the door and went not what we ordered, not what I
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  wanted You said this and I got that and it made me think how
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  can we deliver that part better? So that's Swifty Mac cheese
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  origin story was that, but it was also the times that I spent
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  in intake where I got very good at it.
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  Don't get me wrong, I got good at intaking NDIS participants
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  into service and matching them up with support workers that
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  they liked. But the most common thing that I
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  got out of like feedback from people that we serve was I'm
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  changing services. I don't like the support worker
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  that I've got. And this kept getting repeated
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  and repeated and repeated. And that became my course of
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  action after hearing it so many times.
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  And then bits and stories would come along.
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  And I know that we can do a better job than what we're
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  serving at current. So that's the origin story about
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  Swifty Matschi. Exciting times ahead.