Latest / Sarah Knows Support Workers / 10 Years, No Shortcuts: Vision, Hustle & Balance with James Bennett

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10 Years, No Shortcuts: Vision, Hustle & Balance with James Bennett · Sarah Knows Support Workers

• 0:00
  We're back for 2026 first episode.
• 0:03
  Congratulations, James, you are it and I cannot wait to talk
• 0:08
  about what you do. So poor.
• 0:10
  Everybody listening to Sarah. No support workers.
• 0:12
  Can you tell us a little bit more why you wanted to start
• 0:16
  Evergreen Disability? Yeah.
• 0:18
  Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thanks for having
• 0:20
  me on the stream. And yes, I can't believe it's
• 0:23
  2026. We're already halfway through
• 0:25
  January, so the the reason why I changed from the corporate world
• 0:30
  and everything and went into disability of all things.
• 0:33
  I try to keep the story short, but as a lot of people know, I
• 0:37
  had a very big business career and my youngest daughter got
• 0:41
  very sick. I sat by a hospital bed for five
• 0:44
  years. Actually.
• 0:45
  It was quite traumatic. But my oldest daughter is
• 0:47
  severely disabled. And the quality of the care not
• 0:50
  to be maligning. Because I think working in
• 0:52
  disability, if you really try to do it well and take it
• 0:55
  seriously, it's probably the hardest job you're going to
• 0:57
  have. It's emotional.
• 0:58
  It takes a lot of physical energy.
• 1:00
  But I went to go back to work and a really good friend of mine
• 1:03
  said something to me. You're not excited about getting
• 1:04
  back to work. I was one of these silly
• 1:06
  workaholic guys that was doing 60-70 hours a week.
• 1:10
  And I said, and I still remember it now a decade later, I said I
• 1:13
  just want to do something better.
• 1:14
  And when I mean better, I mean just better for everybody.
• 1:17
  And I said I'm tired of just trying to make money for people
• 1:20
  that have got money. Oh, I went on this amazing
• 1:23
  journey. Now by this time my life really
• 1:26
  fell apart. Five years sitting in a hospital
• 1:28
  bed, I had no money. I had a marriage break up.
• 1:31
  All the terrible things you could think could happen.
• 1:34
  I had $112 in my bank account. I was selling my furniture to
• 1:37
  pay the rent. But I thought, you know what?
• 1:40
  I'm not going to be one of these people who complains about
• 1:42
  stuff. I'm going to be someone who
• 1:43
  actually does something about it because one of my pet peeves in
• 1:46
  my whole life growing up, the people that complained about
• 1:49
  stuff but never do anything about it, you know?
• 1:51
  So I went on from that and this is how crazy it was because this
• 1:55
  is how crazy the story is. So I was working with clients 15
• 1:58
  hours a day and designing a business for about 5 hours a
• 2:01
  night and doing all the book work and things.
• 2:03
  So I was working like 140 hours a week.
• 2:06
  I was sleeping for 40 minutes a day and I did that for like 5
• 2:09
  1/2 years. So it was a crazy story, but I
• 2:11
  was driven. I really wanted to make a
• 2:13
  difference, and I know how corny that sounds to people and they
• 2:16
  think it's some sort of sales pitch, but I don't think you can
• 2:19
  do that for money. I think you have to really want
• 2:22
  to make a difference. So after all this time, I made a
• 2:25
  difference. I run a statewide organization
• 2:28
  that really does make differences to people's lives.
• 2:30
  And I know a lot of people do that whole sales pitch.
• 2:33
  We care and all that sort of stuff, but we're not perfect,
• 2:37
  but we do a lot of good and really proud of that.
• 2:39
  And I know a lot of people like to be boastful, but I'm really
• 2:42
  proud of what we've done. Because you have your daughter
• 2:44
  that has a disability, have you been able to when you were first
• 2:48
  beginning your company able to like measure that on what type
• 2:52
  of support you think like will you believe as a parent and as a
• 2:55
  business owner that would be of quality?
• 2:58
  Well, I think, I don't think you need to have a disabled person
• 3:01
  to care, right, First of all, but I've been around lots of
• 3:04
  different companies, lots of different people in the health
• 3:07
  industry and I found the quality was was lower than expected.
• 3:11
  And I had realistic expectations.
• 3:13
  I did not expect anybody to have a magic wand and solve all my
• 3:18
  family's problems. And there are families out there
• 3:20
  that do really think you have a magic wand, right?
• 3:22
  But overall, in the industry back then, and I do find it now
• 3:26
  as well, I would really hate to say it's hard.
• 3:28
  It's not perfect. There's a lot of political
• 3:31
  correctness that gets in the way of actually helping people.
• 3:33
  I find that very frustrating personally, as a parent.
• 3:36
  So it's all sort of stemmed from that sort of feeling.
• 3:39
  Now, to answer your actual question, I think we're all just
• 3:43
  doing the best we can. And if we do the best we can,
• 3:45
  you'd actually be surprised just how well you can do.
• 3:47
  So prior to this, I am nosy. What was your job before the
• 3:51
  disability sector? What type of business were you
• 3:54
  in? I had a number of different
• 3:56
  jobs. I ran a brewery at one stage, of
• 3:58
  all things. Well, that's terrible.
• 4:01
  It was terrible because I couldn't keep on any weight
• 4:03
  because I ran from one thing to another.
• 4:04
  So it was a pretty tough job. Didn't.
• 4:08
  I was in the communications industry for about 15 years.
• 4:10
  I worked for large corporations. I did IT incident management for
• 4:14
  Telstra for 911 actually, which was very interesting.
• 4:18
  I got home so I worked at the Global Operations Centre for
• 4:20
  Telstra for a number of years. I worked at Telstra in the
• 4:22
  corporate world for about 15 years.
• 4:24
  I had many other jobs as well, but that was predominantly a
• 4:26
  large chunk of my actual corporate career.
• 4:29
  I was working to them and then I moved across to change
• 4:32
  management. I was the operational enabled
• 4:33
  management for manager for Australia.
• 4:36
  So they were quite decent jobs. I wasn't the CEO of, you know,
• 4:40
  Vodafone or anything, but I had some really serious jobs and it
• 4:44
  was a very big shift after my, you know, as my told you, my
• 4:47
  daughter got sick, I couldn't get work.
• 4:49
  That was a really funny thing. I was taking diplomas out of my
• 4:52
  resume and everything because when you are at a high level and
• 4:55
  you had a family member that's been ill and you've left work
• 4:57
  for a long time, people don't, they lose confidence in high
• 5:00
  level positions so they don't want to hire you.
• 5:02
  So it was really an interesting time in the transition, but I'm
• 5:06
  glad I did what I did in moving into disability.
• 5:09
  I do, I think as opposed to the corporate world, I think that
• 5:13
  disability was really dysregulated in the beginning.
• 5:16
  No, it was, it was a cowboy show and it still is in some regards.
• 5:20
  But I think I've been lucky or I guess I've worked hard at making
• 5:25
  connections with really good people in the in the industry,
• 5:28
  people that have high standards but are realistic and great to
• 5:32
  deal with. I never liked that nepotistic
• 5:34
  approach people had of I'll scratch your back if you scratch
• 5:37
  my back, but that's how all businesses actually work, right?
• 5:40
  I found the value of networking with people that I trusted.
• 5:44
  Things didn't become political football every time we had a
• 5:47
  care team meeting because if you have people that you're not
• 5:50
  aligned with, everybody's pointing the finger, everybody's
• 5:53
  trying to steal the business. It's it's really not good.
• 5:56
  It doesn't serve the client. Participants are the ones that
• 6:00
  miss out. So I try to align myself with a
• 6:02
  lot of people these days. Just my personal LinkedIn
• 6:05
  account has something like 6000 connections.
• 6:07
  We run media through a company and all sorts of things.
• 6:11
  Networking is very important as a business person.
• 6:14
  But on a personal level, because of what I do that I feel is so
• 6:18
  important, I feel what I do is more a vocation than a job.
• 6:21
  So with your extensive backgrounds, what skills have
• 6:24
  you been able to bring from your background into opening your
• 6:28
  NDIS business? Because they, they do complement
• 6:31
  each other. And I, I know for me being a
• 6:34
  support worker originally, I, I never really had a business
• 6:37
  background. So there's a lot of things that
• 6:39
  I've had to learn to be a business.
• 6:41
  As the owner, what did you bring from your business background to
• 6:45
  your business? Yeah, it's a great question
• 6:47
  because people have this assumption because you're in
• 6:50
  allied health or disability, that you're not a business
• 6:53
  person. You've just got to care about
• 6:55
  people and that's all you need. You need a number of things.
• 6:57
  You need to have a really good business background or business
• 7:00
  understanding. You need to really care about
• 7:02
  people to to actually do the job, but you need to actually
• 7:06
  have the skills as a support worker.
• 7:08
  We train our staff extensively to do these jobs.
• 7:11
  A lot of companies don't do the in depth analysis on their
• 7:15
  clients beforehand. We have a lot of things like
• 7:18
  that. My business background's really
• 7:19
  quite interesting because I've had some really decent jobs,
• 7:22
  right? So I don't have an MB AI base.
• 7:25
  Nearly everything I do business wise on the golden rules of
• 7:28
  business. So much so that I actually have
• 7:31
  a book out 101 golden rules of business because it's as a very
• 7:35
  old philosophy of how to run businesses.
• 7:37
  These are proven things that have been around for a long
• 7:40
  time. One of the per people that that
• 7:42
  actually inspired me to get into more of a business type mindset.
• 7:46
  When I was younger I worked for a company called Sendata and
• 7:50
  then the guy that ran it was a guy called Jim Grossard and he
• 7:53
  was an old style business guy. He didn't coach me or mentor me
• 7:57
  but I did ask him lots of questions throughout the time I
• 8:00
  knew him and then upon his advisement I went and did night
• 8:03
  school for a couple of years while I was working.
• 8:05
  It was a waste of time, but I learnt that if you tried hard
• 8:08
  and put your nose to the grindstone in the right way, you
• 8:13
  could be successful at almost anything and business is one of
• 8:16
  them. So that's what got me into my
• 8:18
  business mindset. I did many courses working in
• 8:21
  the corporate world about how to do certain things in the
• 8:24
  business world. But I honestly judge everything
• 8:27
  I do after 101 golden rules or the golden rules of business.
• 8:30
  It's tried, it's tested, it works.
• 8:32
  And I, I actually got a pre release in my book out right now
• 8:35
  for free for people who just want to see how old school
• 8:38
  businesses work. And I found in the modern world,
• 8:41
  I think we're losing a lot of the networking skills or the old
• 8:44
  skills that we have that that work.
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  People I deal with these days are more looking at short term
• 8:49
  business, not long term relationships and running a
• 8:52
  business successful. I run a multi $1,000,000
• 8:55
  businesses. People know it is have to have a
• 8:59
  long term vision to make it work and I think that's why a lot of
• 9:03
  businesses now, especially in our sector, are failing.
• 9:06
  So when we talk about a long term vision, how do you do it?
• 9:10
  Like is it one thing that you're around the home one day doing
• 9:13
  something and go click, oh, I wouldn't mind doing that for my
• 9:16
  business, Maybe I can expand on that.
• 9:18
  Or is it a little bit deeper where you go into research mode?
• 9:21
  How do you get to that point where your long term vision is
• 9:24
  for your company? So every business needs to pivot
• 9:27
  and do things short term. So I think a classic example
• 9:30
  that I teach to people is there's a right now there's a
• 9:34
  gap with holidays. Holidays are very lucrative for
• 9:37
  companies, for disabled people. While the people can't manage
• 9:39
  the risk, you have to act very quickly.
• 9:42
  Yeah, that heightens your risk. If you act very quickly on
• 9:44
  anything without analysis or sorting it out or thinking about
• 9:48
  how to do it, long term strategies makes businesses more
• 9:51
  solid. You don't have a short win, but
• 9:53
  you have a long term win. So a long term win in this
• 9:56
  example as opposed to the short term holiday, which is very
• 9:58
  lucrative by the way, financial long term, you'll have someone
• 10:02
  10 hours a week for the next 5 years, right?
• 10:04
  That's a long term thought. But with these long term things,
• 10:08
  it's not just about clients or revenue streams.
• 10:11
  It's about cash flows for margin versus the money that comes
• 10:15
  through. You can have a business that
• 10:17
  puts $10 million through the books and still go broke.
• 10:20
  So you've got to think about training, you've got to think
• 10:22
  about how the business operates. You've got to think about
• 10:24
  integrity. You know, I think you have to
• 10:29
  think about, I don't know how to explain it in a simple way.
• 10:32
  You should read the book. You have to think about people
• 10:35
  over profit. You hear that a lot, but people
• 10:37
  don't understand it. You've got best values in
• 10:40
  getting people on board even before you try to sell them
• 10:43
  anything. Give them a value.
• 10:45
  Make that value worth more than they're going to pay long term.
• 10:49
  Be a communication company. Have integrity, get people to
• 10:52
  trust you, be a known entity. All these things set your
• 10:55
  business up for a long term success.
• 10:58
  To beat have long term success. What type of a leader in your
• 11:02
  company do you try to beat? Because we all try to do our
• 11:05
  very best. Have you got a preferred type of
• 11:08
  leader or is it something that most of us would just give it a
• 11:11
  crack and hope for the best? Well, look, there, there's a
• 11:13
  real value in doing things and trying things and putting
• 11:16
  yourself out there to do that. I think it takes a lot of it
• 11:22
  actually genuinely takes a lot of things to be a good leader.
• 11:24
  First of all, you need to be the person that's prepared to do
• 11:27
  whatever you ask people to do. So if you're asking them to jump
• 11:30
  off a Cliff, you've got to be prepared to be the first person
• 11:32
  to jump off. You've got to assess all the
• 11:34
  risks that you get your staff to do.
• 11:37
  I think a really big one for me is to empower people.
• 11:40
  I empower my staff to make decisions.
• 11:43
  So I don't just tell people this is your job role and this is
• 11:47
  just scope and punch out 20 nails a day, right?
• 11:51
  That's not how to have a successful company.
• 11:54
  Now. That's not how to have a
• 11:55
  successful company. Even if you've got a guy that
• 11:57
  punches out 20 nails a day, you have to have a different mindset
• 12:00
  to how you treat these people. You got to treat them how you
• 12:02
  want to treat them. You got to tell the truth even
• 12:05
  when it's not convenient. You've got to train them to
• 12:08
  complete the roles that you want.
• 12:09
  You've got to set them up for success.
• 12:11
  You've got to set them real time frames.
• 12:13
  You've got to show them how to do things, mentor them, make
• 12:16
  you, make them want to come to you.
• 12:18
  Even if they've made a mistake. People can come to me and I've
• 12:22
  heard people come to me and say, oh, sorry boss, I've lost this
• 12:24
  $10,000. I'll pack my bags.
• 12:27
  Learning experiences for your staff matter.
• 12:30
  Now, that person that came to me in other business structures or
• 12:33
  business companies, they would have tried to hide what they
• 12:36
  were doing. They wouldn't have wanted to get
• 12:37
  in trouble. They wouldn't have wanted to
• 12:38
  lose their job. It's about culture as well.
• 12:41
  You really do have to be a good human to have the good culture,
• 12:44
  but you have to have all the business skills that people
• 12:46
  trust in what you're doing, believe in your vision.
• 12:49
  You have to be very clear about your vision and you have to be
• 12:52
  very clear how we're going to get that bus to that next bus
• 12:54
  stop. You said something that really
• 12:56
  hit and I hope you don't mind me.
• 12:58
  I'm totally off topic, but one thing that I had learned over my
• 13:02
  period of time and especially with managing staff members in
• 13:05
  our sector is that I would never align somebody or pair people up
• 13:10
  if I wouldn't do and support that person myself.
• 13:13
  And, and it speaks volumes of you and your company that like
• 13:16
  you said that if you wouldn't do it, why would you expect others
• 13:19
  to? I look and I, I learned very
• 13:22
  long time ago and I was told this by a very smart person.
• 13:25
  There's going to be no one like you in your company because you
• 13:28
  know, I worked crazy hours and did all crazy stuff.
• 13:31
  But I support my staff and I know that I can call my team day
• 13:38
  or not if I had to, to do things for me because they're on the
• 13:42
  bus. You know, I think once you don't
• 13:46
  want, OK, worker bees are very important for some organizations
• 13:49
  or industries, right? I don't want worker bees.
• 13:52
  I want people that are part of it and I bring them in to be
• 13:55
  part of it and I engage them to be part of it and I get them to
• 13:59
  buy into it. And like I was saying before,
• 14:01
  the way I get them to buy into it, I give them power, I give
• 14:03
  them decision making rights. Now I may veto them if I if I
• 14:07
  think it's you're not correct or whatever, but I'll tell them why
• 14:10
  I'm not going to go with it. But once you get people feeling
• 14:14
  part of something rather than just rocking up 9 to 5 and
• 14:17
  serving coffees for people, and then you go home and the owner
• 14:20
  doesn't really care about anything you do or any value you
• 14:23
  add, it's just a money making machine, they get
• 14:26
  disenfranchised. People get disenfranchised very
• 14:29
  easily in our industry because they're in the field, you're not
• 14:33
  there with them, and you do get bad behaviors as well.
• 14:36
  I'm not denying that part of it. But if they feel that you have
• 14:40
  them close to your chest, they'll want to be part of it.
• 14:43
  Like I have carers who will turn up a minute late because of
• 14:46
  traffic and be ringing me apologizing.
• 14:49
  Now I don't want them to apologize to me, but that's
• 14:51
  opposed to other companies that they rock up half an hour late
• 14:53
  and won't even try to tell you it's because they're part of it.
• 14:56
  Now here's another classic example.
• 14:58
  I had a carer come from another company recently.
• 15:01
  They'd been in the industry for a decade, right?
• 15:03
  Carer, we do a thing, we call a safety check, not a police
• 15:06
  safety check, but we bring up make sure that they're on site.
• 15:09
  This we know they're there because we track them, right?
• 15:11
  But we make sure that they're on site.
• 15:13
  The, the person that they're looking after, there's no
• 15:15
  problems. They got all the files, they had
• 15:17
  all the training, but we make sure that they know that we're
• 15:20
  listening and what our staff will tell us if there's
• 15:22
  something unusual, not just in the shift node.
• 15:25
  Well, not just something to cover themselves.
• 15:26
  Now, this particular lady, she got called a couple of times and
• 15:31
  she said to the offices, why are you always checking up on me?
• 15:33
  You know, I'm doing a good job, blah, blah, blah.
• 15:35
  And we turned around and said to her said, we know where you are,
• 15:38
  we know what you're doing, but we want to make sure that we're
• 15:41
  looking after you because if we look after you, you're looking
• 15:44
  after the client. And a whole mindset, you could
• 15:46
  hear it change. I was listening in the office to
• 15:48
  the lady who was speaking to her.
• 15:50
  And you could just hear the whole mindset changing this lady
• 15:53
  and those sort of things that you pay attention to.
• 15:56
  I've got staff that have been with me since the beginning.
• 15:58
  You know, that's not because I pay $1,000,000 an hour.
• 16:02
  I pay very well, don't get me wrong, but it's because of how I
• 16:05
  feel. I feel part of it and I feel
• 16:07
  valued. Yeah, so many things there
• 16:09
  because I'm somebody that was a leader of service at one point
• 16:12
  and checking in on support workers was a norm somewhere in
• 16:17
  between when I've been out and about doing what I do best.
• 16:20
  That wasn't the norm for support workers.
• 16:22
  And I find that wild because I agree with you.
• 16:24
  Happy support workers do more and willing to do more for you.
• 16:29
  And the more happier support worker is, the more support and
• 16:32
  hours you can give them as a company, the likelihood that
• 16:35
  like to you retain them and the turnovers not so high because
• 16:39
  they got what they needed and that validation as well.
• 16:42
  It's more than money like people being people.
• 16:45
  It's more than money like you have to pay people.
• 16:47
  Well, don't make that the reason people leave by not paying them
• 16:50
  what they're worth. There's something I always think
• 16:52
  of when I have a really good worker, right?
• 16:56
  And this is a so this is a manager or a team leader mindset
• 16:59
  that just still baffles me to this day because I see it all
• 17:02
  the time. Let's take two workers.
• 17:04
  You've got Johnny who rocks up late to every shift, doesn't do
• 17:06
  things properly, doesn't read the documents.
• 17:08
  You're always like on his back to getting to do the job.
• 17:11
  You'll expect Johnny to just rock up late.
• 17:13
  It's a known thing. But what happens when I've got
• 17:15
  you as my best worker that's always on time?
• 17:19
  Does the extra stays back if they need to?
• 17:21
  It's never an issue to do an extra shift to cover someone
• 17:24
  when they take a day that they're late.
• 17:26
  These managers that that I see that aren't managing correctly
• 17:30
  jump on them. Oh my God, I've had this
• 17:32
  expectation. So we do set expectations as
• 17:34
  people, but you've got to manage up and you've got to manage
• 17:37
  down. If you're at any level in a
• 17:39
  company above someone else, you've got to manage up and
• 17:42
  manage down. So you've got to meet
• 17:43
  expectations of the people above you, but you've got to have a
• 17:46
  voice. So I one thing in the corporate
• 17:48
  world that used to drive me insane, I'd have all this
• 17:51
  responsibility, but no decision rights.
• 17:53
  And I learnt that having decision rights and a voice
• 17:56
  makes these people really enamored with the organization.
• 18:00
  They see it more than just a job.
• 18:01
  Now I listen to people that are in the field, in my position.
• 18:05
  Some people would think that's not appropriate.
• 18:07
  People come to me with ideas, right?
• 18:09
  I might shoot the idea down. I dispense ideas all the time
• 18:13
  that I don't think are going to work and I'll explain to people
• 18:15
  why they are all not going to work.
• 18:17
  I had a very honest conversation with one of my team today.
• 18:20
  They wanted to go one way with a client.
• 18:22
  I explained to them why it wasn't good business, business
• 18:24
  decisions to do what the client wanted.
• 18:26
  What the client wanted was ridiculous, but we could have
• 18:29
  taken the tact of doing it. But if we did it, that client
• 18:32
  would have been asking for this ridiculous stuff all the time.
• 18:35
  So I shut it down. Now, if I had a company where
• 18:39
  people were afraid to tell me what they thought, or I wanted
• 18:42
  to walk into a room where everybody says yes, that person
• 18:44
  wouldn't have put the ideas to me right now, if they've got
• 18:48
  better ideas than me, I'm running with it.
• 18:50
  Stand on the shoulders of giants.
• 18:52
  You don't have to always reinvent the wheel.
• 18:54
  And you know what? You may be the most learned
• 18:56
  person in a room, but if you've got a better idea, we're going
• 18:59
  with it. So with that, how do you make
• 19:02
  sure that the people that you support stay the center of every
• 19:05
  decision? Because I know support workers
• 19:07
  can come to you and your managers and I'm not quite sure
• 19:10
  what you call each person needs sick like your sector of your
• 19:13
  business. How do you keep it that it stays
• 19:16
  client focus in decision making? That's a really good question.
• 19:20
  It's hard and I'll tell you why it's hard.
• 19:22
  We do a lot of pre prep onboarding processes.
• 19:26
  You find out what people like to do, what they need, what the
• 19:28
  disabilities are, what they're trying to achieve.
• 19:31
  We have a lot of things we talk about and try to go for
• 19:33
  directions in. One of the directions we do is
• 19:35
  we tell people who want them to live the life they want.
• 19:38
  Now, a lot of companies preach capacity building and community
• 19:41
  access. They don't do it.
• 19:43
  A lot of them don't do it. A simple thing is someone wants
• 19:45
  to make a sandwich but can't cut the sandwich.
• 19:47
  It's got that premise. A lot of companies out there
• 19:49
  will just go, OK, I'll make the sandwich for you.
• 19:52
  And sometimes you may have to, right?
• 19:53
  We'll find a solution. Get a silicon knife, help them
• 19:57
  how to cook, whatever it may be. So you have to listen to
• 20:00
  clients. One of the biggest things I
• 20:02
  think we do as a company, and this is something I teach to
• 20:05
  people, be a communication company first.
• 20:08
  I don't care if you're a roof Tyler and you're in allied
• 20:10
  health. Let people know where you are,
• 20:14
  what you can do. But listen to the people and
• 20:16
  what they want and then tell them what you can do.
• 20:19
  Under promise and over deliver is a very important thing in
• 20:22
  business. So there's quite a few things
• 20:24
  you can do to stay client centric.
• 20:27
  Now here's the flip side. There's a lot of people in our
• 20:30
  sector, clients, participants, and they don't have the decision
• 20:34
  making abilities to, to be making good decisions with
• 20:37
  things. That's, that's the honest truth,
• 20:39
  right? They may want to do something
• 20:40
  that's just like crazy, right? It might be just, it might be
• 20:44
  unsafe. Now in our sectors, a lot of
• 20:46
  people know you have dignity of risk and duty of care.
• 20:49
  So dignity of risk is allowing them to do anything anybody else
• 20:52
  would normally want to do. And the duty of care is to step
• 20:55
  in and see if it is really dangerous or something that they
• 20:58
  shouldn't be doing. Be the voice to talk to your
• 21:01
  advocates. They're care team, they're
• 21:03
  guardians. And I think a big problem in
• 21:07
  this industry, we talk about client centric, but what does
• 21:10
  that look like in the real world?
• 21:12
  I come across people, a client says, I want to, you know, just
• 21:15
  do something really dangerous. And the care team go, oh, yeah,
• 21:18
  yeah, it's their choice. Or we know they need care every
• 21:22
  day of the week to make sure they go into the bathroom, you
• 21:24
  know, and they say, oh, I'm fine, I don't need anything.
• 21:27
  And they're paying the bed. So it's a really tough balancing
• 21:30
  act. I think treating people with
• 21:31
  dignity is very, very important. I think in or probably 20 years
• 21:36
  ago, it wasn't even a consideration making it clients
• 21:39
  and trick in any way. I think it is now, but I think
• 21:42
  people's understanding of it. I think the biggest problem is
• 21:45
  people are worrying about the risks to them as an organization
• 21:49
  and forgetting to actually make the person's life better.
• 21:53
  You know what I over my period of time that I found really hard
• 21:57
  to engage with and I'm, I think I am, or I'll say I am a quite a
• 22:03
  communicator. I always found it really
• 22:05
  difficult when I have an NDIS participant, but then they've
• 22:08
  got the support coordinator and they've got allied health
• 22:11
  services and we've got families. And sometimes it would felt like
• 22:14
  the missing part was we weren't together, working together for
• 22:19
  that person's well-being or having a whole life approach.
• 22:23
  How do you manage that type of stuff in and out of your team?
• 22:25
  Because it it is difficult. And especially if you're like
• 22:28
  us, we're communicating people that would love to have a team
• 22:31
  wife, but also like to have people informed.
• 22:33
  How do you deliver a service like that?
• 22:35
  Well, I think it's a balancing act.
• 22:37
  I remember a really famous thing where I was at a TAC work cover
• 22:41
  care team. There was 20 people at this care
• 22:43
  team, right? It was, it was been her and they
• 22:46
  all had their own directions. They wanted to take things in.
• 22:49
  And people that know me, I'm quite respectful, but I'm
• 22:51
  certainly not shy. And I said to them, I said,
• 22:53
  look, you know, there's twenty of your people here and we're
• 22:56
  still not meeting what the client wants.
• 22:58
  I said, so I said, so you've all got your own agendas and you've
• 23:02
  all got your own perspectives. And I'll tell care team people
• 23:04
  what I think. And traditionally as a
• 23:07
  disability support work person, you're supposed to be the toilet
• 23:10
  cleaner. That's how they see you in a lot
• 23:11
  of cases. We spend 90% of the time with
• 23:14
  the clients. We're the ones at the coalface,
• 23:16
  so it's very frugal opinion on our skills and our knowledge to
• 23:22
  not listen. So I piped up and got what the
• 23:25
  client needed. So there's there's a whole lot
• 23:27
  of dichotomies that you have to take into play.
• 23:30
  How disability support workers are interacting, how the care
• 23:33
  teams were interacting. Client centric is really it's
• 23:37
  just it's an unknown thing for a lot of people.
• 23:39
  How to really attack it. So my goal when I think of it
• 23:44
  and how I'm going to emplace it is this.
• 23:46
  Most people think client centric is taking someone to the pool,
• 23:50
  sitting there playing on their phone, watching them in the pool
• 23:53
  to do their OT, even though we've got an OT plan for them to
• 23:55
  do exercises or whatever. My client centric idea is to get
• 24:00
  in the pool with them like we should.
• 24:02
  And then 12 months down the track, that person's more
• 24:05
  ambulatory, they're happier, they're healthier.
• 24:09
  So it's really getting some and it's what I said before, living
• 24:12
  the lives they want, but working the steps to get there and
• 24:15
  especially if they can't do that themselves and giving them
• 24:18
  options. You want to play guitar?
• 24:20
  OK, we'll get you lessons in over a year.
• 24:22
  We'll see how that happens and you can practice and get better
• 24:24
  and better. Whereas a lot of companies,
• 24:26
  especially in our field, Oh yeah, you go do that.
• 24:28
  And we don't care how it turns out.
• 24:30
  It's very narrow a vision. And so you've got to look long
• 24:34
  term. Are you helping them with lives
• 24:36
  they want? Are you helping them improve and
• 24:38
  get the skills they need to be there?
• 24:40
  And that's called capacity building.
• 24:41
  And that's so overused by people that don't do capacity building.
• 24:44
  Did you get this mindset? Because it wouldn't have.
• 24:46
  I hope you don't mind, but you've had a background in
• 24:49
  business and a lot of the conversation that we're having
• 24:52
  tonight is about building skills for long term for the people
• 24:55
  that we serve to have to be as independent as possible.
• 24:59
  How did you get get to that point?
• 25:00
  Because I find sometimes not every business owner understands
• 25:04
  that point or gets to that point where it's about the long term
• 25:08
  goal of getting people as independent as possible.
• 25:10
  Look, I think a lot of people confuse one thing, and this is
• 25:13
  where I think a lot of people go wrong.
• 25:14
  And this is good carers too. I'm not having a go.
• 25:17
  They think that them coming in and washing someone's dishes is
• 25:21
  making their life better. Now you may have to come in and
• 25:23
  wash someone's dishes, but teaching someone how to do the
• 25:26
  dishes makes them more independent, makes them more
• 25:29
  capable to do that their own thing.
• 25:30
  And it's the same thing. A lot of care has fallen to the
• 25:33
  habit with friends. It'll be on the support plan.
• 25:36
  I'm Jimmy and I'm a bit different and I can't make
• 25:39
  friends and blah blah blah. I want to care and it's going to
• 25:41
  be my friend. Carers move on.
• 25:43
  Carers aren't your friends. They may be professional and
• 25:46
  really care about you, but they should be looking at doing
• 25:49
  capacity built, taking you to groups, making sure you have
• 25:51
  pathways to make friends, teaching you skills to have
• 25:54
  friends. So I think it's it's very
• 25:56
  complicated. And to answer your actual
• 25:58
  question, I'm the parent of a severely disabled person.
• 26:01
  So I built a lot of strategies because back in the early days
• 26:03
  before NDIS, the government was like, oh, you're doing a good
• 26:06
  job as a parent, Just keep it up.
• 26:07
  And you know, you know, that was it.
• 26:10
  Yeah. So I, when I got into this, I
• 26:15
  went and saw every expert I could, Geoff Ellery, always
• 26:18
  different people. I had a lot of different ideas
• 26:20
  about how to change things. Classic case, one of my very
• 26:23
  first clients and there was a big talk back then about being
• 26:26
  non Maleficent. Don't force people to do things
• 26:29
  they don't want to do. Don't force eye contact.
• 26:32
  I went through all the specialists.
• 26:33
  I had a client back then who wouldn't make eye contact,
• 26:36
  wouldn't let anybody in the room, wouldn't let anybody in
• 26:38
  the house, kicked bit, screamed, the whole bit, right at a
• 26:42
  special school, been in the system for years.
• 26:44
  So I went and spoke to the experts, ran millions of
• 26:47
  different ideas by all the experts back in the day and
• 26:50
  figured out what I could and couldn't do.
• 26:51
  I still use a lot of those things to this day.
• 26:53
  So here's a classic one that we use.
• 26:55
  I don't even know if anybody else uses it.
• 26:57
  If you have a, say, an autistic client or a person with phobias,
• 27:00
  PTSD, anxieties, you know, as someone who's been a support
• 27:04
  worker, it's hard to get them out of the house because they're
• 27:06
  trepidatious, right? Turn up on time, never turn up
• 27:10
  late because you're going to make that person anxious.
• 27:13
  We drop to our staff when we train them Zumba.
• 27:16
  What does doing Zumba for 5 minutes do?
• 27:19
  It creates endorphins, lowers anxiety.
• 27:21
  You have a social plan or social story to get that person simple
• 27:25
  steps of what they want to achieve at the shops.
• 27:27
  Sounds sounds basic, right? I don't get come across
• 27:30
  companies that do it. So I ran a lot of these things
• 27:33
  by experts in the early days. I came up with a lot of my own
• 27:37
  theories just today. I was on a care team meeting
• 27:40
  with a person who can't regulate sleeping.
• 27:43
  And it's it's so bad that they get the carers.
• 27:46
  I don't come at 9, come at 11, don't come at 11, come at 8.
• 27:49
  This has been going on for a while.
• 27:51
  So they don't sleep. So I said in the care team
• 27:54
  meeting, I spoke to them about the Cadian rhythm and sleeping
• 27:57
  and cortisol waking people up and melatonin.
• 27:59
  And I asked some medical questions and they're all
• 28:01
  looking at me like you're not a doctor.
• 28:03
  No, I'm not a doctor, but I did some research.
• 28:05
  Another big thing we put into place with people that need to
• 28:08
  have better sleeping patterns, besides actually having a
• 28:10
  structure and plan on what they're doing when is we make
• 28:13
  sure they ease into sleeping. You can't just turn the switch
• 28:17
  all the time and go to sleep because you've had a melanin
• 28:20
  tablet. And I asked them what's their
• 28:21
  diet like and they're all looking at me strange.
• 28:23
  Like, why are you asking cheese? You know the old myth about
• 28:27
  drinking milk? That's rubbish.
• 28:28
  Cheese is packed full of melatonin.
• 28:31
  I have people that have been insomniacs.
• 28:33
  Care teams are pulling their hair out.
• 28:35
  This actual person actually has a sleep specialist.
• 28:39
  They don't eat cheese, so. I hope you don't mind me asking
• 28:42
  this question because you were so back in the heyday.
• 28:46
  You were a parent. You are a parent of a child with
• 28:49
  a disability. So you've gone from block
• 28:50
  funding to NDIS funding? Yeah.
• 28:54
  So my child has funding, yeah. Have you noticed the difference
• 28:59
  in the amount of support that you have now to what you had
• 29:03
  previously? And a lot of people I find very
• 29:07
  quick to talk about all the woes of the NDIS, but nobody actually
• 29:12
  talks about the fact that people get a lot more than they've ever
• 29:14
  had. OK, I'd like to answer that in a
• 29:16
  few stages. Yeah, I hope you don't.
• 29:18
  Might be kicking your brain. Sorry, no.
• 29:19
  It's fine. It's incredible.
• 29:22
  And when the NDS came out, I actually read the legisl
• 29:24
  legislation. I read the whole legislation
• 29:27
  because I had to quote the NDIS when they were telling me
• 29:29
  something wrong, what it was, you know, back then, I didn't
• 29:32
  want to give people the option to go exercise, right?
• 29:35
  I think it was page 64. They had the right to exercise.
• 29:38
  I did read it. So here's about the NDIS, what I
• 29:42
  like. And my daughter's funding is the
• 29:43
  same, by the way, because I keep fighting for it.
• 29:45
  One in three people now are losing funding, right?
• 29:48
  Yeah, and it's a big deal. That's huge about the NDIS
• 29:51
  though, and I'll tell you why it's good and why it's gone
• 29:53
  wrong. It's not all bad news.
• 29:54
  I read the NDIS structures and everything.
• 29:57
  I think there was three of them that did it in the beginning,
• 29:59
  wasn't there? Bill Sucker, Bill Shorten, And I
• 30:01
  can't remember the other guys names, but I've spoken to Bill a
• 30:03
  few times. He's actually quite a smart and
• 30:05
  caring person. By the way, just as a sidebar,
• 30:07
  it was basically built on the tax system structuring of how
• 30:11
  things work. It was built as a real insurance
• 30:14
  model, not one of these ones where they cut your coverage,
• 30:16
  but a real, actual insurance model, one that was actually
• 30:19
  built to serve people while they needed it.
• 30:23
  Right. Then what happened?
• 30:25
  You had the Commission get involved and I'm not looking
• 30:29
  everybody at the Commission, but you have the end the NDIS and
• 30:34
  the Commission just two separate bodies that don't even know what
• 30:37
  each other's doing. So that's going to cause a
• 30:39
  conflict in itself, right. They had a lot of shortcomings
• 30:43
  and the media plan for that was to slam every provider as a bad
• 30:47
  provider. And that's why service providers
• 30:51
  became from being shining nights, we should go to a BBQ.
• 30:55
  You look after handicapped people.
• 30:56
  You're a God right now. I tell someone that at A at a
• 30:59
  party, you'll just want to make money and you just want to treat
• 31:02
  people like rubbish and blah, blah, blah.
• 31:03
  That's because of the media, but I think the government has
• 31:07
  driven a bit of that to protect themselves.
• 31:10
  We're going to down on fraudsters.
• 31:12
  Here's the reality, right? I can't get away with fraud.
• 31:16
  All right, I'm fully registered for the NDA, AST, SE work cover,
• 31:20
  SSR audits, financial audits, you name it.
• 31:24
  So ask yourself how those people are getting away with fraud.
• 31:26
  They're just simply not giving the proper service and cutting
• 31:31
  corners. I built a number of policies,
• 31:34
  processes, strategies, implementations.
• 31:37
  It costs me money to do it properly.
• 31:39
  So the thing that rubs me the wrong way is when they say every
• 31:42
  provider is bad or unethical, that's that's horse pucky.
• 31:47
  It was a fantastic system. The system hasn't been managed
• 31:50
  correctly. That's the the real issue now
• 31:52
  and I don't want to point fingers at individuals, but I
• 31:55
  think the way it is run, if I ran my business like that, I'd
• 32:00
  be closing shop tomorrow because it's just absolutely.
• 32:03
  And big organizations and government organizations, I'll
• 32:05
  tell you now, they're big, they're top heavy.
• 32:07
  They have big structures. The NDIA, NDIS have realized
• 32:11
  this in in some fashion and they're trying to make
• 32:15
  everything as automated as possible.
• 32:17
  You've got assistants who don't even know what a disability is,
• 32:20
  overriding OT report. So the best advice I give people
• 32:24
  when they do fight for their funding, have as many official
• 32:27
  doctor's assessments, specialist assessments, so that when you go
• 32:31
  there and when you go there now they have a bit of paper now
• 32:34
  that looks totally different to the old NDIS plan With all these
• 32:37
  points why you can't use your money, that's how they do it.
• 32:40
  And they tell you what you're going to get.
• 32:41
  So you used to get 100,000, you're now getting 35,000.
• 32:44
  So if you go there with your proper funding modelling as in
• 32:51
  doctors reports, no, I haven't gotten better.
• 32:54
  I'm not going to magically get better from autism.
• 32:56
  And in the early days when they decided they wanted to save
• 32:58
  money in the old days, I had to reprove my daughter was
• 33:00
  autistic, which was just ludicrous because I mean, if
• 33:03
  they could wave a magic wand and make a not autistic, I'd be all
• 33:06
  for that. But they're going through that
• 33:08
  cycle again. I'm going through that cycle now
• 33:11
  where they're trying to save money and it's happening on a
• 33:14
  non linear way. Now if if someone's really deep
• 33:17
  in the industry, you will see TAC work cover NDIS major
• 33:22
  alignments over the last two or three years with pricing even
• 33:26
  they're also doing the stopped cross funding.
• 33:28
  So here's a little thing. A lot of people don't know if
• 33:30
  I'm entitled to TAC and NDIS and one of those pools needs to be
• 33:35
  funded for my housing. What happens is they'll deny one
• 33:38
  of those pools for you to get into.
• 33:41
  Well, they don't want to use two funding pools even though
• 33:46
  legally you're to them. Now here's another complication.
• 33:49
  This is why I mention it. I'm fully registered for TSE
• 33:52
  work cover. I'm a multi $1,000,000 business.
• 33:54
  I made all the criteria to have TAC work cover.
• 33:58
  They won't give it to me. You want to know why I'm
• 34:00
  telling? Because what happened is big
• 34:02
  companies like Scope etcetera got given houses to do DFFH and
• 34:08
  TAC work cover. All right, that funding is now
• 34:11
  ending, yes. So you're going to have a big
• 34:14
  problem now with still housing and NDIS thought they would
• 34:19
  cover themselves by changing all the rules around still housing.
• 34:23
  Most people that invest in property in the disability
• 34:25
  sector, they do SDA housing because that's where the money
• 34:29
  is. If you're going to invest
• 34:30
  1,000,000 bucks, you've got to make some return.
• 34:32
  I don't expect people not to be business people as well.
• 34:34
  So the incident reporting now in housing is so astronomical that
• 34:41
  people don't want to do it right.
• 34:43
  So you're going to have a big problem now with housing.
• 34:46
  I, I envisage in the next two to five years still housing is
• 34:49
  you're going to see a lot of disabled people on the street.
• 34:51
  I don't think they're going to re give companies money for
• 34:54
  housing but they're trying to get rid of the smaller players
• 34:59
  out of NDS, TSE and work cover. Take house cleaning for example.
• 35:03
  Company like mine would lose $7.00 an hour by cleaning your
• 35:07
  house. Now we've warned the cost for a
• 35:09
  long time because the margins allowed us to.
• 35:12
  The big companies can put in a one page form to get paid more.
• 35:17
  I've had meetings with the two guys that do the TAC and work
• 35:19
  cover funding and they've told me no.
• 35:22
  I had meetings with them. I found out who The Who they
• 35:24
  were and I said, look, you know, you keep wanting us to clean
• 35:27
  people's houses, but I'm losing money.
• 35:29
  Can't you just pump it up? So there's a lot of things in
• 35:31
  the industry, like any industry that you, if you delve into it,
• 35:36
  you can go, it's not kosher. But I'd really like to believe
• 35:40
  in the goodness of people. Personally, I like to give
• 35:42
  people the benefit to make mistakes.
• 35:44
  I like to give people the benefit to do better.
• 35:46
  But I also support them, train them, guide them, mentor them
• 35:51
  and make sure they're in an environment where I try to set
• 35:54
  them up for success. So as an example, if I have and
• 35:56
  we don't shy away from high intensity clients, not a lot of
• 35:59
  companies are these days, they won't deal with them.
• 36:01
  So I make sure if I've got someone who's not experienced,
• 36:04
  there's no way I'm putting them with a super high intensity
• 36:06
  client, especially someone with behaviors of concern.
• 36:09
  But when I do have staff that I know can do the job and they're
• 36:13
  trying to do the job, I won't just drop them in with the high
• 36:15
  intensity clients seven days a week.
• 36:17
  We normally try to have people that are working like full time
• 36:20
  type hours with three clients, someone who is high intensity,
• 36:24
  fine, but we have some someone in the mix there that's easier
• 36:28
  and that longevity with the staff and you stop that whole
• 36:31
  burnout structure that I see in our sector.
• 36:34
  I see a lot of people that get into the industry and I would
• 36:36
  probably say 6 out of 10 don't last 12 months.
• 36:40
  And that's not because they don't care.
• 36:42
  That's because the company they work for doesn't spend dollars
• 36:46
  in EAP, doesn't invest time in training them, doesn't support
• 36:49
  them because every time one of my people ring one of my staff
• 36:52
  members, that's time they could be doing something else to make
• 36:55
  dollars new streaming for me. So you've got to equate
• 36:58
  longevity and this is where that whole long term vision comes in
• 37:01
  that we were talking about earlier.
• 37:02
  You've got to invest in the long term and all these things seem
• 37:05
  intangible. But if you really think about
• 37:07
  it, there is a, if you want to be nitty gritty, there is a
• 37:09
  dollar amount at the end of it, but there's also being a proper
• 37:13
  human being to get there. And once you have people buy
• 37:17
  into that, for me as a leader, I can ask them to do all sorts of
• 37:22
  things that they may have thought he just wants to make
• 37:24
  money or you know, that sort of thing.
• 37:26
  They come along for any. So with your experience and like
• 37:30
  you said, you reckon it's like 6 out of 10, is it now a good
• 37:33
  time? Anybody that's listening to the
• 37:35
  podcast, is it a good time to open it up an NDIS business in
• 37:39
  2026? Honestly, you have to diversify.
• 37:42
  You can't do just NDIS anymore. Yeah.
• 37:44
  So you said that you did TAC or you do parts off, you don't do
• 37:49
  the full TNC you do, I do most. Of it, I do, most of it I do.
• 37:53
  I do pretty much everything except they won't give me
• 37:55
  housing rights and I'm a titled housing rights.
• 37:58
  So is that under TAC or is that a seal a seal provider?
• 38:02
  No, no, there's ways to do SEAL. There's a lot of, there's a lot
• 38:05
  of things in our industry that I think we could improve.
• 38:08
  But at the same time, like I've said earlier in the interview, I
• 38:11
  hate people that don't want to fix it and just complain about
• 38:14
  it. So I try to fix things, you
• 38:17
  know, I try to give people information, whether it be
• 38:19
  clients, participants, staff, management, other companies.
• 38:23
  Up until last year, I used to have on our website a total
• 38:27
  e-learning section for free to teach other companies how to
• 38:31
  teach their staff. And it came about that we
• 38:33
  actually started to give it for free because we used to have,
• 38:37
  say, a high intensity client, we'd do some of the shifts,
• 38:39
  another company would do some of the shifts because the support
• 38:42
  coordinator said it's better to have seven companies.
• 38:46
  Now, that's not true, by the way, but.
• 38:48
  I know it's not true, I've lived it.
• 38:50
  You're taking other people's mistakes, liabilities and risks
• 38:52
  because they don't even give you a shift note.
• 38:54
  You don't know what happened to the client that day.
• 38:56
  So we actually got to the point where we actually started to
• 38:58
  offer them free training. We try to avoid working with
• 39:02
  other companies, but sometimes they just say no, no, you have
• 39:04
  to work with the other company. But we make it very clear from
• 39:07
  the get go we're not accepting their risk.
• 39:09
  So for instance, if we're working with the client from
• 39:12
  9:00 to 5:00 and they're working from 5 to 10 or whatever it is,
• 39:16
  we don't accept that risk and we put it in writing to them now
• 39:19
  and it makes people listen and they go, oh, but you're just
• 39:21
  trying to duck shove. It's like, well, if I'm not
• 39:23
  there and no one's telling me what's happened, how can I
• 39:25
  accept that risk? You need a process or the other
• 39:28
  company needs a process to manage that risk.
• 39:30
  If you think this is a high risk climb and we do what I call a
• 39:34
  DSW report, I think we're the only company in Australia that
• 39:37
  does it. I actually regularly write
• 39:39
  reports for other companies and OTS and for assessments and
• 39:43
  planning. When you're going for planning,
• 39:45
  you've got to have things written down because if it's
• 39:47
  just verbal, you will get nothing and they'll take money
• 39:49
  off you. So we provide those reports.
• 39:51
  Now, a lot of OTS, et cetera, will have a QR code.
• 39:55
  You do a Google thing and they do pattern matching, right?
• 39:58
  I still find it inefficient. It's actually better for a human
• 40:00
  to go through the shift notes, see the patterns where we've
• 40:03
  made gains, where we've lost gains.
• 40:05
  I will write a report. Yeah, give it to the support
• 40:08
  coordinator. And not all support coordinators
• 40:11
  are created equal. Some people don't have the
• 40:12
  experience. They need me to be part of the
• 40:15
  care team and actually step up and do what I should be doing
• 40:18
  and help them and tell them. And like I said before, because
• 40:22
  we're the ones that are there most of the time.
• 40:24
  And it is to people when they get a bit snotty and they think
• 40:27
  I'm just trying to be on my soapbox.
• 40:29
  But that's, that's really how it is.
• 40:31
  And personally, I'd want someone to give me the report.
• 40:34
  It's setting people up to fail I and I'm so I'm somebody that's
• 40:39
  speaking to like notes and journals or whatever you where
• 40:43
  in your sector, whatever you name it.
• 40:44
  I'm somebody that loves to read them and spot the pattern
• 40:47
  recognition, especially with people with complex medical
• 40:50
  complex behaviours of support. Because there are signs and
• 40:53
  there are patterns and it does show and you can put that
• 40:56
  together with technology these days, it really isn't that hard
• 41:00
  to write. 1 So the excuse is no longer there.
• 41:02
  There's no excuses there anymore, whether you're doing a
• 41:04
  QR code thing or whatever. But the thing we even this is
• 41:08
  the thing that I think the nuance between the QR code
• 41:11
  Google type thing as opposed to the DSW report.
• 41:15
  We train our staff that they don't have to write.
• 41:18
  I went to the shop and had an ice cream Johnny Modern ice
• 41:21
  cream train them. We train them to only keep the
• 41:26
  thing brief. What's working, what's happened
• 41:28
  that's not working, what they may have identified that we may
• 41:31
  need to investigate how that's panning out in the shift with
• 41:35
  the person. Often a lot of these things are
• 41:37
  three lines long, but the data I can pull out of that reading
• 41:40
  that month worth of reports, I can go, OK, that's a trigger for
• 41:44
  this person. They don't like pool.
• 41:46
  They love the pool, but every time they get there, they play
• 41:48
  out why it's too noisy or waters, the tactile sensation of
• 41:52
  the water or, you know, and then we can identify what's
• 41:55
  happening. And a lot of the times it's just
• 41:58
  purely common sense. Yeah, as a part of a support
• 42:00
  workers role to do them. It's no ifs, no buts.
• 42:04
  It's a. Right way because not everybody,
• 42:06
  not all ducks, can swim on water day one, so you have to set your
• 42:10
  staff up for success. But also the standard of what's
• 42:13
  expected as well, that it is an expectation as a support worker,
• 42:17
  we require this to make sure that we've got the right
• 42:19
  supports in play for this person.
• 42:21
  Because what you went to actually creates a bigger
• 42:24
  picture when it comes time where families or guardians or support
• 42:27
  coordinators need that extra detail to be able to submit
• 42:30
  these plans to the NDIS for funding reviews also.
• 42:33
  Yeah. And with staff, you know, I
• 42:36
  think a lot of the care team meetings I go to and I, if I
• 42:41
  have a staff member there or I have a staff member involved, I
• 42:44
  set very clear guidelines with the care team about the value.
• 42:47
  And they're not just the silent party sitting in the back of the
• 42:50
  room. I want them to ask them
• 42:51
  questions. I want them to get engage them.
• 42:54
  I want them to set an expectation of what they're
• 42:57
  hoping they can achieve and why and how.
• 43:00
  Another thing that we've been doing probably in the last year,
• 43:04
  you'll have like an OT or someone come out and instruct
• 43:06
  our staff how to use a wheelchair or something, right?
• 43:09
  We'll give our staff a link to the actual wheelchair and work
• 43:13
  out how to use it if they need to refresh it as well.
• 43:14
  A lot of companies don't do anything like that.
• 43:16
  But what I'm doing now is I'm asking the OTS, etc, permission
• 43:20
  to do what we call sound bite clips.
• 43:23
  So just like a little one minute click on how to do the important
• 43:26
  part of something. Now, why do I do it?
• 43:29
  It's not just not just for the refresher for the staff.
• 43:32
  What happens if I have three staff with someone?
• 43:34
  There's super high intensity, one of the staff decides they're
• 43:37
  going to fly over and live in Spain.
• 43:40
  I've got a new staff member and they I couldn't need someone
• 43:42
  straight away if someone's had a medical incident or something.
• 43:45
  Now I do backup staff in the way we roster, we make sure we have
• 43:49
  people that have already met the person already know about them.
• 43:52
  They can say, hey, John, you know you're going to this person
• 43:55
  today because the other person has had a car accident or
• 43:57
  whatever it might be. But we're now asking the OTS and
• 44:00
  now we're very hesitant probably a year or two ago about doing
• 44:03
  these little standby clips because not, and you probably
• 44:07
  can figure out why they don't didn't want to do it.
• 44:09
  It stops them from coming out earning dollars and retraining.
• 44:12
  But do encourage them now very strongly so we don't lose
• 44:17
  continuity of service with the client to allow us to do these
• 44:20
  clips. And these clips really do help a
• 44:23
  new staff member that might be very competent but hasn't worked
• 44:25
  with this person. They've been called in for an
• 44:27
  emergency every say everybody, all the backups are busy and we
• 44:30
  need to use someone who might be very experienced but doesn't
• 44:32
  know the client. They'll read the client notes
• 44:34
  and all that sort of stuff. If you set my clips and they're
• 44:37
  not stuck and they're feeling more comfortable too.
• 44:39
  And that's a really part of it. Especially with high needs
• 44:42
  clients, you don't want to be doing the wrong thing.
• 44:45
  I. Did it, James, what you were
• 44:47
  talking about? I, I've done it and, and maybe I
• 44:49
  was a bit more mean and assertive about it, but it was a
• 44:52
  expectation. And for me it was a multiple of
• 44:55
  reasons, but it was to make sure that the person we serve is
• 44:58
  safe. And if they're safe and I can
• 45:00
  guarantee that the staff members were trained and they were safe
• 45:03
  too. Because if I couldn't guarantee
• 45:05
  that both parties weren't safe, then I didn't want to see it.
• 45:07
  I wasn't for me because that would keep me up in the middle
• 45:10
  of the night, that type of stuff.
• 45:11
  So I'm all for it. And I, and I get what you're
• 45:14
  saying when they're not wanting to do it.
• 45:16
  But at the end of the day, when, like when I was having some very
• 45:19
  difficult conversations with allied health people, it was to
• 45:23
  serve that person the best way possible.
• 45:25
  And by doing that, I require this as a provider to make sure
• 45:29
  that anybody that I send in the front door of that person had
• 45:32
  the best quality support whatsoever.
• 45:35
  I yeah, I'm with you. I'm for it.
• 45:37
  And I and I've done it and it does work.
• 45:39
  So as a provider, we can ask those questions of allied health
• 45:43
  because they're there to to deliver as well.
• 45:45
  And how you present it, how you present it to them really makes
• 45:48
  a big difference. If they don't, you're trying to
• 45:50
  take over their ship. Because historically, you know,
• 45:53
  I've been to uni, I know everything.
• 45:55
  Well, that's not really necessarily the case.
• 45:59
  Sometimes experience can be a big factor, sometimes the fact
• 46:02
  that I really did go and talk to all the experts.
• 46:05
  Professor Tong, Jeff Ellery I went and had meetings with these
• 46:09
  people. I read every book, I did
• 46:11
  everything. I developed a million theories.
• 46:13
  So not everything I ever thought of would fly.
• 46:17
  But if you've got someone who's put that much effort into trying
• 46:22
  to see these things for what they are and they're presenting
• 46:25
  to you in a very professional, and I'm always professional with
• 46:27
  these people. You know, it's very, it's very
• 46:29
  rare that I wouldn't be professional, but we're all at
• 46:32
  different stages of the journey. And I say to the care teams now
• 46:35
  I want to be an active member of the care team.
• 46:38
  I want to be your eyes and ears. I want to bounce ideas off you.
• 46:41
  And I want you to tell me what's appropriate.
• 46:44
  But you know, and I tell them our staff are there.
• 46:47
  Let us let us help you when you present it like that.
• 46:50
  More and more people come on board as the care teams these
• 46:52
  days. I think the mindset's changing
• 46:55
  purely because there's a lot of new people in the industry
• 46:59
  coming out of uni and they are now more appreciative of value
• 47:04
  you add. Whereas just a few years ago if
• 47:07
  you talk to someone, support workers or you know, don't worry
• 47:10
  about them, they're all, we're all crap.
• 47:12
  They never turn up. But I think it's slightly
• 47:14
  changing and I think it's the good providers that are really
• 47:17
  shining the light on a lot of these things, not just with care
• 47:20
  teams, but with other providers. I call Pi called a CEO of a
• 47:26
  company out for gouging the client.
• 47:28
  They couldn't afford Saturdays. And I just put my foot down.
• 47:31
  I said no. Now in this industry, as you
• 47:34
  know, a lot of people will go, oh, I'm going to put a complaint
• 47:37
  in with the NDIS if you get in my way.
• 47:39
  I haven't happened to me all the time.
• 47:40
  I actually had to go to the NDIS about this, which was ridiculous
• 47:44
  because I'm protecting the a very vulnerable client who
• 47:47
  doesn't have an advocate, right? And this guy was using their
• 47:51
  funding that they didn't really have, and he's the CEO of a very
• 47:55
  big company like this can cause a very big business issue.
• 47:59
  Yeah. And he thought he was going to
• 48:01
  bulldoze me by threatening me. And he lost, of course, because
• 48:04
  I just wasn't having a bar of it.
• 48:06
  But I had to have a meeting with the NDS about it.
• 48:09
  I've had to have meetings with the NDS about clients getting
• 48:11
  sunburned. Yeah, yeah.
• 48:13
  But it's, it's, I know it's common sense stuff like I, I,
• 48:17
  and it's so frustrating because you feel like you're spending
• 48:21
  all this time on things that shouldn't, like I shouldn't have
• 48:25
  to have a meeting on. And it's just like, yeah, it
• 48:28
  feels like a waste of time. But if I don't do it, then the
• 48:32
  same thing happens and it repeats itself.
• 48:34
  So I'm, I don't know about you, James, but I'm somebody that
• 48:37
  really loves small problems and I like to squash them because
• 48:40
  they never have an opportunity to be a big one.
• 48:42
  Look, and we're very preventative.
• 48:43
  We're very proactive. Thankfully, we did a whole
• 48:46
  summer scheme of keeping people safe and all that sort of stuff.
• 48:50
  We actually rolled out trail training on how to deal with
• 48:53
  environmental things such as cold weather, hot weather,
• 48:55
  hydration. So that saved us, right, Because
• 48:58
  we had been proactive. But, you know, I've had meetings
• 49:02
  with the NDS. I had at one stage, I had five
• 49:05
  meetings with the Commission. They called me aggressive
• 49:08
  because I said to them, these claims are just not even
• 49:11
  realistic. Some lady was saying we wanted
• 49:13
  to control a life. She had a mental illness.
• 49:16
  It was very odd that she had a mental illness.
• 49:18
  What she was claiming was just ludicrous stuff.
• 49:21
  And I said to them, I said, look, you know, this is my fifth
• 49:23
  meeting about this. We've done nothing but assist
• 49:26
  this person. So there's that big thing where
• 49:29
  a lot of companies I deal, I deal with companies bigger than
• 49:32
  us who aren't ready for these very reasons.
• 49:36
  Yeah, that's yeah for another day.
• 49:39
  For another day. It might take a whole podcast on
• 49:41
  it. Well, I'm trying to give you 3
• 49:43
  podcasts in one year, but as you can tell you'd like people in
• 49:48
  the industry and yourself know I I don't show away from the the
• 49:51
  truth. I'm very diplomatic and I am a
• 49:53
  businessman. I do good business acumen and
• 49:55
  all the rest of it, but I'm not afraid to call things out when I
• 50:00
  think we should just be trying to do better.
• 50:02
  Yeah, especially when it affects somebody's ability to live a
• 50:05
  normal life and an ordinary 1 instead of sinking funds into
• 50:08
  something that's not realistic, let alone again, like draining
• 50:12
  somebody's funds completely like you said before.
• 50:14
  I do have a question for you. How many NDIS participants do
• 50:18
  you serve in your company? I won't give you exact numbers
• 50:21
  because that's a business thing, but it's only 24% now.
• 50:26
  Yeah, and how many support workers do you have?
• 50:28
  Under 100. Under 100, that's quite big.
• 50:31
  I think in the scheme of things were were small to medium.
• 50:34
  Yeah, if I'm messing the way that I'm mapping.
• 50:37
  So how do people come to you like any guys participants?
• 50:41
  Is it through referrals from support coordinators?
• 50:43
  Is it websites? Is it social media?
• 50:45
  Is it from a friend? What's the way that they come to
• 50:48
  you as to be a provider? Revenue streaming that should be
• 50:52
  in my business coaching course. Revenue streaming it is.
• 50:55
  Yeah. I'll actually answer it.
• 50:57
  So in the old days, you used to have to go through support
• 51:00
  coordinators. You used to have to buddy up
• 51:02
  with the support coordinator and just knock their socks off with
• 51:05
  how good you did. Then very early on in the pace
• 51:08
  and support coordinators realized they had a lot of
• 51:10
  power, lined themselves with this particular person or
• 51:12
  particular company. A lot of the times they were
• 51:16
  financial incentives and I don't offer anything other than coming
• 51:20
  to lunch with me or something like that.
• 51:22
  I don't give trips to Fiji, I don't give a movie, no, a
• 51:27
  theater ticket. So I don't put people up at the
• 51:29
  Crown Casino. These are the things I've been
• 51:30
  told that I can have a media client.
• 51:33
  Very tempting for a lot of people.
• 51:34
  A lot of companies in the early stages, plan managers used to
• 51:38
  ask for 8% big, big plan manager companies.
• 51:42
  I'm not going to name them on the podcast.
• 51:44
  They used to do agreements with people.
• 51:46
  Some of the big job boards used to ask for a gratuity if you
• 51:50
  get, if they gave you a client. Now you're paying to be on the
• 51:53
  board where clients find providers.
• 51:55
  There's a lot of funny things in every industry and to get to the
• 51:58
  next part of the question, I build relationships.
• 52:01
  OTS have their own particular people they want to deal with
• 52:04
  and companies that they deal with.
• 52:06
  Sadly, like I said, a lot of it's about money.
• 52:09
  It's not about the quality of the provider.
• 52:11
  That's the bit that really ticks me off.
• 52:13
  But I find if you give crazy knockout service, you make the
• 52:18
  OT or the support coordinate his life so easy.
• 52:21
  Yep. They just go, Oh my God, this
• 52:22
  company's just like so helpful and and good quality.
• 52:25
  I will tell someone else about them.
• 52:27
  Parents do not tell other parents like they used to as
• 52:32
  they don't want to discuss their private lives.
• 52:35
  In the early days, parents used to say, oh, this company's
• 52:38
  great. He's looking after, you know, my
• 52:40
  son and you get a lot of word of mouth.
• 52:42
  I think in the future you're going to see branding being the
• 52:46
  thing, not just sales or sales funneling branding.
• 52:50
  So I deal on networking with people.
• 52:53
  Yeah. And you have to have real
• 52:56
  integrity for people to want to keep dealing with you.
• 52:59
  Could see that because I like from our experience and our
• 53:03
  conversations between LinkedIn, I could see that you're very
• 53:06
  much on par and you're your company in that sense because it
• 53:10
  is not like the ability to keep going with networking and it's
• 53:14
  not just about the sale part with networking.
• 53:17
  It's also remembering things and moving, like moving things to
• 53:20
  the better good for somebody. Yeah, look.
• 53:22
  And like I said, the whole idea of having friends in the care
• 53:26
  team, it's not just a business thing, it's really a good way to
• 53:29
  serve the client because you can actually have honest
• 53:31
  conversations. Not everything a political
• 53:33
  football people can focus on helping the client, even if it's
• 53:37
  not, you know, PC correct, you know, so and there's a reality
• 53:43
  to that for the client because you're going to service them
• 53:45
  better if you can do that. And I'd never begrudge making
• 53:49
  someone, you know, have a living and earn a living and things
• 53:53
  like that because you know, the amount of hours that I've put
• 53:56
  in, I still work 80 hours a week, right?
• 53:59
  So, and I don't get paid like, I mean, honestly, I could, I
• 54:03
  should be getting paid $200,000 a year easily.
• 54:06
  I actually invest and I'm not going to paint myself as a St.
• 54:10
  I actually put a lot of that money back into helping people.
• 54:12
  If you know the honest truth. Yep.
• 54:15
  I support all sorts of things that I normally don't talk
• 54:17
  about. And this year someone actually
• 54:19
  said to me, you need to start promoting this, if not to
• 54:22
  promote your business, to promote the fact that other
• 54:24
  companies should be getting involved.
• 54:26
  So we sponsor all just the sports parts alone, that we
• 54:29
  sponsor multiple lawn bowls, basketball leagues, soccer
• 54:33
  leagues. We never used to promote it.
• 54:35
  I promote it a little bit more now because I want other
• 54:39
  companies to get involved in supporting the community.
• 54:42
  And it's not that you're making money and you need to put money
• 54:46
  back, it's that you're part of that community and you should be
• 54:49
  part of the ethos of us all being in the One Direction.
• 54:52
  That's what I want. Does it feel good when you do
• 54:55
  it? Often it's a bit of a drain to
• 54:57
  be honest, but I'll tell you a good story.
• 55:01
  We support one very big basketball league here in
• 55:07
  Victoria and it was a Friday night and I was invited to, you
• 55:10
  know, go to the awards thing and watch the games for the finals.
• 55:14
  And I was tired. I'd been working that day since
• 55:16
  about 3:00 AM and I went there and when my daughter did
• 55:21
  basketball, they didn't even have tops.
• 55:23
  I saw the jerseys that I'd sponsored and all this other
• 55:27
  stuff. And one of these, you have to
• 55:28
  say, all inclusivity. Now there's term changes, 5
• 55:32
  minutes. But he came up to me goes who
• 55:34
  are you? What are you doing here?
• 55:36
  Why are you always sitting here? He was a disabled person, right?
• 55:41
  But he was so funny. And I told him, I said, well,
• 55:43
  you know, I pay for your uniforms and things like that
• 55:47
  and help the league and. And I bought another space
• 55:50
  invader machine that's from me. I bought a tabletop machine
• 55:53
  thing for them. You know those tabletop.
• 55:55
  Yeah, like proper professional. I don't.
• 55:57
  The guys in the office wanted to keep it.
• 55:59
  I had to fight him to get it out of the place.
• 56:01
  And I explained this to him, and then he went off and talked to
• 56:03
  one of his other friends, and then they were all talking.
• 56:06
  And then the game was great, by the way.
• 56:08
  The quality of the game was amazed because I was expecting
• 56:11
  like the old days where nothing was organized and it was really
• 56:13
  just going to be an event for the sake of having an event.
• 56:18
  You know, where the kid didn't really engage and we didn't
• 56:21
  direct them or focus them or help them have a good time and
• 56:25
  stuff or handle the anxieties that a lot of these kids have.
• 56:28
  All that was managed really well.
• 56:30
  And I'm not saying everything has to go perfect for it to be
• 56:32
  good for me, but at the end of it, they were flocking to me to
• 56:36
  have their photos taken with me. I thought they were all MVPS
• 56:40
  because the here's the, you know, here's the big sponsor and
• 56:43
  he's come to watch the game and it just lifted me up.
• 56:45
  So things like that, the things that get me are the things that
• 56:48
  I look, I've been around, but the things I don't expect.
• 56:52
  I expected to be exhausted. To be honest, I was exhausted.
• 56:55
  I expected to watch the game and, and, and support the league
• 56:59
  as their sponsor, but it was just the fact that they were
• 57:02
  just so happy and so had such a good time and felt really
• 57:07
  special. Everybody what needs to feel
• 57:09
  special? And this is one of the reasons
• 57:11
  why we started doing holidays. I didn't want to do holidays at
• 57:13
  first. I looked at the risk and I
• 57:14
  thought, this is just the risk is phenomenal.
• 57:16
  They're not even my clients, They're other people's clients
• 57:19
  that God knows how they've been treating them or have they been
• 57:23
  addressing their issues. So you're walking in blind.
• 57:25
  So I have to do all these assessments on what the Hell's
• 57:27
  going on. But then I thought to myself,
• 57:29
  everybody needs a holiday. Yeah.
• 57:31
  Now it's financially, it was financially lucrative, right,
• 57:34
  Which was the part I really didn't think too much.
• 57:36
  I was assessing risks. And another thing that I love
• 57:40
  now, I sponsor a number of lawn bolt.
• 57:42
  You know, the old ladies doing the lawn bowls.
• 57:45
  Yeah. Autistic kids love taking their
• 57:48
  shoes off and feeling the grass. I sponsor a number of lawn bowls
• 57:50
  places, so some of these things that I've always done in the
• 57:53
  background. So I'm trying to raise more
• 57:56
  awareness now because I want other people to do it.
• 57:59
  I want other people to get involved.
• 58:01
  I want other people to go to these clubs and say hey, we want
• 58:03
  to support you. It can't just be us forever.
• 58:05
  There's companies that are 10 times bigger than us and they
• 58:08
  sponsor Jack crap, right? And I'm not saying I want to
• 58:11
  shame them into having to do stuff, but get involved at some
• 58:15
  level, whatever it is. I mean, this year alone, we gave
• 58:18
  away 483 meals to people they were handicapped that weren't
• 58:21
  eating. This is the first time I've
• 58:23
  publicized this, but this is the sort of mentality, if you can
• 58:26
  help, you should help. And I, I think it's been
• 58:28
  lacking. And I think in one of my posts I
• 58:31
  wrote about the whole history of this disabled people and how
• 58:34
  they were looked after. As you from from I'm sure you
• 58:36
  know, it was very institutionally based.
• 58:38
  It used to be ladies at the church, the Christian churches
• 58:41
  who used to look after people and people wanted more of a
• 58:43
  professional thing for the kids families that did have the
• 58:47
  children at home, the mum or dad would die.
• 58:49
  The other partner would be looking after the handicapped
• 58:51
  kid till the kid was 40 when they died 90.
• 58:54
  That sparked a whole thing too, by the way, with aged care homes
• 58:58
  about the rules about having people in there as well, to have
• 59:01
  family members that were beside them and stuff.
• 59:05
  Because don't forget, back up to the aged, aged care, if you're a
• 59:07
  husband and wife, you didn't even get into the same care.
• 59:10
  Well, you know, things like that have all changed.
• 59:12
  So with everything that you do and you you do quite a lot for
• 59:16
  your community, how do you not suffer from like passion
• 59:19
  fatigue? Because to be honest with the
• 59:22
  people that we provide care to, our support workers, our
• 59:25
  families, and all the extra stuff that you do in between,
• 59:29
  how do you level it out so you're not fatigued?
• 59:32
  You know, the only time I ever doubted myself, I was working 10
• 59:35
  hours a day with clients coming home, organizing a, a, a, a, a
• 59:40
  statewide organization. Let's call it what it is.
• 59:42
  It wasn't some local fish and chip shop I was organizing.
• 59:46
  I'd had pneumonia for three weeks.
• 59:49
  I'm still going to work working 20 hours a day.
• 59:51
  And I was in the park with one of my clients, and this was a
• 59:55
  client that I spent three months getting them to sign another
• 1:00:00
  client in the system for a long time, the first one I taught
• 1:00:02
  this boy was ball because he loved the ball.
• 1:00:05
  He was now having fun. We're at the park, he was on the
• 1:00:08
  swing. He was very safe.
• 1:00:10
  I was near him. And I put my head between my
• 1:00:12
  legs and just cried and. I said to myself, I said you're
• 1:00:17
  going to do this or you're going to die.
• 1:00:19
  And I've never doubt myself ever since.
• 1:00:21
  Now some it's stupid, but I just wanted to make a difference.
• 1:00:25
  And it drives me. It's I know it sounds corny to a
• 1:00:28
  lot. I've had people say you're a
• 1:00:29
  used car salesman, but it's all real.
• 1:00:32
  I can prove it all. It's all genuine.
• 1:00:34
  It just I came from a very religious family.
• 1:00:36
  I'm not religious, but I have all those religious habits and
• 1:00:40
  it was ingrained in me as a kid. And my dad used to have all
• 1:00:42
  these sayings, do one good thing a day, you can change the world.
• 1:00:46
  And, and you know, I've got stories throughout my life that
• 1:00:49
  have perpetuated this feeling. And there's one story that I
• 1:00:52
  when I am tired and I feel burnt out, I draw on this story to
• 1:00:56
  keep myself going. I had a friend of mine, his wife
• 1:01:00
  asked him to leave. He couldn't have children.
• 1:01:02
  He was a very young man. I had two children.
• 1:01:04
  I was fairly young. I was living in an 11 square
• 1:01:05
  house, two kids, the sister-in-law living there.
• 1:01:08
  There was no space. He didn't know what to do.
• 1:01:10
  I said come and live at my house while you sort stuff out.
• 1:01:12
  He was with us for 8 weeks, 6 or 8 weeks, didn't ask for rent or
• 1:01:16
  anything. I was only $24,000 a year at
• 1:01:17
  that stage, didn't ask for any of him.
• 1:01:20
  And we did lose contact over the years, right?
• 1:01:23
  So that's life. And I bumped into him like 8 or
• 1:01:26
  10 years later and he was with this beautiful woman with a
• 1:01:30
  daughter. And he explained to me that he
• 1:01:32
  met this lady, her husband had, I believe, passed away and he
• 1:01:37
  fell in love with this lady and he was a proud dad to the
• 1:01:40
  daughter. But that isn't what impressed
• 1:01:43
  me. What impressed me was this,
• 1:01:44
  sorry, I'm almost just crying thinking about it.
• 1:01:47
  He told me he was thinking of suicide.
• 1:01:48
  He was, he felt life was going nowhere.
• 1:01:51
  And just me being positive, giving him the sense of, you
• 1:01:55
  know, here you feed my kid the, you know, the mushy peas and get
• 1:01:59
  part of it, change this person's life.
• 1:02:01
  And I think about those unknowns, those unknown things
• 1:02:04
  that you do for people as you, and just by doing something
• 1:02:09
  positive, you can change someone's life.
• 1:02:12
  And those sort of silly people call them silly things.
• 1:02:15
  That's the sort of stuff that keeps me going.
• 1:02:18
  And trust me, in the insane hours that I did and I had
• 1:02:21
  pretty much big health complications, relationship
• 1:02:25
  complications, all sorts of bad effects.
• 1:02:28
  But even now when I see that we've helped someone, you know,
• 1:02:31
  I've had people that tell us aren't going to walk, talk, do
• 1:02:33
  nothing. And then the next thing you
• 1:02:35
  know, you see them doing something.
• 1:02:37
  But it tastes just like I take in my business approach.
• 1:02:41
  It takes a long term view. It's not a short in every time.
• 1:02:47
  Are you obsessed with your business?
• 1:02:48
  I try not to be, but you're saying.
• 1:02:50
  I am, so I get it. I find a lot of founders are
• 1:02:54
  obsessed with what they do and that's why they go that extra
• 1:02:57
  mile. I do try to delegate a lot more.
• 1:03:00
  Yeah. Especially with my management
• 1:03:02
  team, I try not to drain them but I do try to make.
• 1:03:07
  So I have a rule now that 9:00 PM unless there's a super duper
• 1:03:11
  emergency I'm going to try to do normal.
• 1:03:13
  I do try to have every 3rd weekend off and this to 2025 I
• 1:03:18
  actually had some holidays which I haven't had for a decade I
• 1:03:21
  had. Where'd you go?
• 1:03:24
  I went to Hong Kong, Japan, my partner's successful person, and
• 1:03:30
  they had a seminar thing over there.
• 1:03:32
  So they said you've always wanted to go to Japan, let's go
• 1:03:35
  to Japan. So I spent five days in Hong
• 1:03:37
  Kong, 8 days in Japan, and then they had another business
• 1:03:40
  seminar in France, which was supposed to be for a few days.
• 1:03:43
  And I said flying 30 hours for a few days, that's just
• 1:03:46
  ridiculous. And we saw France, Paris.
• 1:03:50
  Yeah. So.
• 1:03:51
  But I hadn't had a holiday for, like, a decade.
• 1:03:53
  The only holiday I had, I had a week off when I had a heart
• 1:03:56
  surgery. And I was still working at that.
• 1:03:58
  Oh. Goodness.
• 1:04:00
  So. You are obsessed with your
• 1:04:02
  business. Yeah.
• 1:04:04
  And look, I know. I know how crazy it sounds.
• 1:04:06
  I know how crazy it is. Yeah.
• 1:04:09
  And I am trying to have a life now.
• 1:04:11
  But don't forget I started this with $112.
• 1:04:14
  Yeah. And and I was eating once every
• 1:04:16
  3rd day. And here's the real funny thing
• 1:04:17
  about that. Yeah, I was.
• 1:04:19
  I was often eating rice and beans, but I never lost weight.
• 1:04:24
  Sorry, how does that work? It's not fair, is.
• 1:04:28
  I don't know. So I've done a lot of crazy
• 1:04:31
  things, but people try to call me out or they try to make you
• 1:04:37
  responsible for something. I remember early on when I was
• 1:04:40
  doing the insane hours, I had a an OT.
• 1:04:45
  It was OT, I think it was. You've got to go there and do
• 1:04:47
  the Saturday because they really need the extra help and blah,
• 1:04:50
  blah, blah. And I said no problem.
• 1:04:52
  What time am I picking you up? Oh, no, I've got commitments.
• 1:04:55
  I said, look, I'll do it for free.
• 1:04:57
  That's fine. But you're coming with me.
• 1:04:59
  Yeah. So I've never been, look, I'll
• 1:05:02
  help people and I'll be respectful.
• 1:05:04
  I really am. I know I'm hamming it up a bit,
• 1:05:07
  but I'll call it out as well. But I will be your biggest ally
• 1:05:11
  to help people and I'll be your biggest ally for you to be
• 1:05:14
  successful. So there's a flip side to
• 1:05:16
  everything. And I have a lot of people on
• 1:05:18
  LinkedIn and it's. Great things when you've got me,
• 1:05:21
  you've got me, I suppose. Yeah, and I get abs all the
• 1:05:24
  time. People want to spend time with
• 1:05:26
  me telling them how to do things and half the time I don't even
• 1:05:29
  build them. You know, like I'm giving my
• 1:05:31
  latest book away for free is a pre release because people want
• 1:05:34
  to know what it's all about. So I do try to give back.
• 1:05:37
  At the same time, I am obviously a business person and I need to
• 1:05:41
  survive myself. But I think if you conduct
• 1:05:43
  yourself from, I always say this to a lot of my people that work
• 1:05:46
  for me, there's a right way and a wrong way to do everything.
• 1:05:50
  Yep. You know to get to your book, is
• 1:05:53
  it on your website just so anybody that's listening that
• 1:05:56
  would like to download your book or is it on any other platforms?
• 1:06:00
  No, you have to ask for a copy. And if you're OK with it, is it
• 1:06:05
  all right to put your LinkedIn in below the show notes so
• 1:06:08
  anybody that's listening can go to your LinkedIn, drop you a
• 1:06:11
  like? Yeah.
• 1:06:12
  And look, the book came about for a number of ways.
• 1:06:15
  People were always asking me for business advice.
• 1:06:18
  People are always asking me, oh, well, I've got a lot of diplomas
• 1:06:21
  and things, but I never went and got the traditional MBA or
• 1:06:24
  anything like that. And what I do works, and it's
• 1:06:26
  worked for a long time. I didn't invent all this stuff
• 1:06:29
  myself. This stuff's been around for
• 1:06:31
  ages. I think there was a, I call it
• 1:06:33
  the sandwich certificate. I'll explain what I mean by
• 1:06:36
  that. So what happened is actually in
• 1:06:37
  Australia, probably about 1985 or something, I don't know who
• 1:06:43
  it was, but someone in the learning community went to some
• 1:06:47
  senators and said, hey, we need everybody to have a certificate
• 1:06:50
  to cover our risk. It was nothing to do with
• 1:06:51
  learning. It was a cover risk, but these
• 1:06:53
  people wanted to sell their RTOS and make money.
• 1:06:57
  So you actually ended up having to have a certificate to make a
• 1:06:59
  sandwich, a hygiene certificate, right?
• 1:07:02
  So all all these things are now become mandatory almost.
• 1:07:07
  I got certificates in washing my hands.
• 1:07:09
  Yep, that actually doesn't surprise me at all.
• 1:07:12
  Yeah, you're right. There was.
• 1:07:14
  I've got, I've got the, I've got the nurse's certificate and
• 1:07:16
  giving medicine. I think a lot of it's common
• 1:07:18
  sense, but all these people that bang on about having an MBA or
• 1:07:24
  going to university and I'll tell you, you know, university
• 1:07:26
  is dead. Unless you want a profession
• 1:07:28
  where you're going to be like a doctor or something like that,
• 1:07:31
  or a civil engineer for most things, I professional business
• 1:07:36
  advice would be to not necessarily have university as
• 1:07:41
  your pathway. I'm not saying don't do it,
• 1:07:43
  saying look at other things, right?
• 1:07:45
  And I'm not a financial person, but people are constantly asking
• 1:07:49
  my financial advice. The world's going to change soon
• 1:07:52
  and I've written articles and posts about it.
• 1:07:54
  So I give a lot of stuff away for free.
• 1:07:56
  I've had other people say to me, hey, give all your IP away for
• 1:07:59
  free because I still need to come to work out how to use it.
• 1:08:02
  Yeah. So I always thought of that.
• 1:08:04
  And the book was just a manifestation of getting people
• 1:08:08
  in line with how I think and not repeating the same questions
• 1:08:13
  over how can I have two hours of your time to ask this and then
• 1:08:16
  you repeat it to someone next week.
• 1:08:18
  So I've made the book deliberately that if you're a
• 1:08:21
  super business person, you can get something out of it.
• 1:08:24
  But if you're a newbie, you can go, Oh my God, never thought of
• 1:08:27
  that. I teach us when people ask me
• 1:08:29
  how to run NDS businesses and things.
• 1:08:31
  So here's one for free that a lot of people just don't think
• 1:08:33
  about. So let's just say you're a small
• 1:08:35
  company and you have 1020 staff or whatever the case may.
• 1:08:40
  And you, you, I call you, I'm a support coordinator and I say
• 1:08:43
  I've got a really great client. I'm based out of, I don't know,
• 1:08:47
  S part of the city or whatever. And this client's way up the
• 1:08:50
  north part, right? Most companies will turn around
• 1:08:52
  and say I can't service that client, right?
• 1:08:54
  They design this very simple thing.
• 1:08:56
  I call linking where I'll have a staff member run them in links
• 1:09:00
  where they work. Now a lot of clients you get
• 1:09:02
  there could be a 2 hour client, 3 hour client, they have a
• 1:09:05
  client, I can run this person from 1:00 to 1:00 and they could
• 1:09:09
  work a 10 hour day. The benefits to me, yeah,
• 1:09:12
  benefits to me is I've got a very happy staff member because
• 1:09:15
  that staff member might begin doing uni part time and only
• 1:09:18
  want to work three days a week. We've done 30 hours.
• 1:09:20
  The other benefit to me is I build my range.
• 1:09:23
  I'm in, I'm now in another area. So the next time someone asks
• 1:09:27
  for help out there, that person, I can maybe make their their
• 1:09:30
  rings smaller. Yeah, I make the people that ask
• 1:09:33
  me to service a client want to talk to me more because they'll
• 1:09:37
  ring you up and go, oh, you only work in, you know, S Yarra, is
• 1:09:40
  that right? Yeah.
• 1:09:42
  Because they're used to hearing it.
• 1:09:43
  So I teach a lot of these things to people, even it sounds basic,
• 1:09:47
  right? But if once you think of these
• 1:09:50
  things, you can be I'm statewide because of these sort of things.
• 1:09:53
  You know what? You just gave a name or
• 1:09:55
  something. I did, but I never named it.
• 1:09:57
  Look, I come up with names for stuff all the time because I've
• 1:09:59
  never heard of it before. Yeah, I just didn't.
• 1:10:02
  I, yeah, did something similar because I was really for me is
• 1:10:06
  once I knew what the support worker wanted.
• 1:10:09
  And then because you want to know why people work for you,
• 1:10:11
  right? There's not always income.
• 1:10:13
  There's a little bit to it that might be that they're studying
• 1:10:16
  to be a teacher, an OTA, speechy, all sorts of things in
• 1:10:19
  between. It might be that they are, it is
• 1:10:20
  for money because they're saving up for a house.
• 1:10:23
  Once I find what they want, and this is like in provider land,
• 1:10:27
  you know what I want as a support worker and their ideal
• 1:10:30
  participant that they're willing to serve.
• 1:10:32
  Some people are happy to drive it and OK to drive it because I
• 1:10:36
  really enjoy working with that person.
• 1:10:38
  It's just really knowing everybody at play and the person
• 1:10:41
  that we do serve, knowing them inside out, that I could answer
• 1:10:43
  that and automatically know who is the best person for, you
• 1:10:47
  know, to support them. Hidden question that you're
• 1:10:50
  extrapolating on if you want to know.
• 1:10:53
  Gather. Staff when I at work 2 minutes
• 1:10:57
  from the house. I have, I've had staff that say
• 1:10:59
  Oh yeah, I'll work as far as the shopping centre around the
• 1:11:01
  corner. Realistic Right now in NDIS
• 1:11:04
  land, unless you're like a care team professional, you can't
• 1:11:08
  claim for those travel to work kilometres.
• 1:11:11
  No, you can. I'll tell you how to do it.
• 1:11:13
  Yeah. The tax system.
• 1:11:15
  No, the tax system. I cannot give financial advice.
• 1:11:17
  I just want to make that really clear.
• 1:11:19
  Yep. So in the tax system, you can
• 1:11:21
  actually claim kilometers. I think it's up to about 8 or
• 1:11:24
  $10,000. I don't even think they ought
• 1:11:26
  anything under 4 or 5000. I don't even think they ordered
• 1:11:29
  it because you can claim go go to work.
• 1:11:31
  So talk to your accountant as long as it's legitimate and you
• 1:11:34
  can prove. Prove.
• 1:11:34
  Keep your book. Keep your log book.
• 1:11:36
  Yeah, have it available. Do it online.
• 1:11:39
  Before every tax year we ask people to talk to their accounts
• 1:11:42
  about these sort of things. We have a news feed that we give
• 1:11:44
  to our staff. And The thing is we also
• 1:11:46
  explained to our staff very transparently, if we do linking,
• 1:11:49
  that we're always going to be looking for things closer to
• 1:11:51
  home or closer together. Because I may have a staff
• 1:11:54
  member where I can only give them that 6 hour shift or
• 1:11:57
  something and they want to work, you know, 12 hours or whatever.
• 1:12:00
  So we asked them to be patient. We'll start linking, they'll
• 1:12:03
  start doing their days, they'll get often with the linking, they
• 1:12:06
  get along the day so that, yeah, that they, you know, they're
• 1:12:11
  doing that sort of thing. And we have a lot of students
• 1:12:13
  that love it, you know, yeah, they wouldn't want to work three
• 1:12:16
  days a week and then go to their uni the other couple of days or
• 1:12:18
  whatever and still be. But you get that really cool
• 1:12:22
  feeling because after they've finished their course and
• 1:12:24
  they're often the world being teachers and speeches and OTS
• 1:12:28
  and everything in between. It was the time that they spent
• 1:12:30
  with us as an NDIS provider that they got those skill sets of how
• 1:12:34
  to talk to people in, you know, people with disabilities.
• 1:12:38
  And we are some of their best learning that hands on
• 1:12:41
  experience. I have people now that did
• 1:12:45
  courses in the in the health industry and they still ring me
• 1:12:48
  up and ask for advice. I have one particular lady who
• 1:12:52
  helps people get jobs and things to work from injuries.
• 1:12:57
  She'll still ring me and ask me how do I do this or you know and
• 1:13:02
  she tells me the best time she had and she loves her job.
• 1:13:05
  Don't get me wrong, the best time she.
• 1:13:06
  Could be that hands on experience.
• 1:13:08
  It was working with us and learning and you know, I went to
• 1:13:13
  I went to a company, I won't say their name without their
• 1:13:16
  permission, very big company, much bigger than mine.
• 1:13:19
  And that was super excited to see me.
• 1:13:22
  Like I went in there for, you know, just a quick catch up,
• 1:13:25
  like I'm talking out the door, excited to see me.
• 1:13:27
  If you would have thought I was a movie star and I wish I could
• 1:13:30
  be, it would be nice. But they said, I know we've got
• 1:13:33
  one of your ex employees is now one of the the management team
• 1:13:36
  here and they haven't shut up because they heard your name and
• 1:13:39
  they haven't shut up about you coming down.
• 1:13:41
  So I've got superstar treatment because every bit of information
• 1:13:45
  that I freely gave this person when they did work for me LED
• 1:13:49
  them. And I didn't have a position for
• 1:13:50
  them at that time, so they didn't stay with me.
• 1:13:53
  I always try to train people to replace me.
• 1:13:55
  I think that's the best way as a leader, trained people that are
• 1:13:58
  better than you, that they can replace you.
• 1:14:01
  Because stunted growth has people, disengaged people.
• 1:14:04
  They've got nowhere. Oh, go.
• 1:14:07
  Yeah. So anyway, so he was so grateful
• 1:14:09
  that they said he'd been talking about the fact that I was coming
• 1:14:12
  down for two days and wouldn't shut up.
• 1:14:14
  So that's why I got the superstar treatment, because I
• 1:14:15
  said, what's going on, guys? Like, they'll give me chocolates
• 1:14:17
  and why? I mean, I know how to, you know,
• 1:14:23
  have people come over and have a cake and a coffee for a business
• 1:14:26
  meeting or whatever, but this was like, really next level.
• 1:14:28
  And because of that, now this company and they shouldn't do
• 1:14:32
  this, but I do these sort of things to build relationships.
• 1:14:36
  They're going to put me in touch with the hospital.
• 1:14:37
  Now hospitals like the Holy Grail of revenue streaming for
• 1:14:41
  people in allied health and our industry in with hospitals is,
• 1:14:47
  is impossible. It's almost like you have to buy
• 1:14:49
  them a house. I'll give you a house if you put
• 1:14:52
  me on your your books. It's that difficult.
• 1:14:54
  And to have some avenues into hospitals and things, but that's
• 1:14:57
  another story. But the fact that this person
• 1:14:59
  wanted to introduce me to help my business because of just
• 1:15:04
  because I was doing the report, I don't think I'm amazing.
• 1:15:06
  I was just doing the right thing with the staff member.
• 1:15:08
  You know, it pays dividends. And this is again, long term
• 1:15:12
  thinking. You should be doing it anyway,
• 1:15:13
  but this is long term thinking. Make every single person that
• 1:15:17
  leaves your company remember, and this is a slogan I say, and
• 1:15:21
  I hate it, but it's true. Don't have them remember you as
• 1:15:25
  the bigwig guy and all that sort of stuff.
• 1:15:27
  Remember how you treated them. You'll see that on all the
• 1:15:30
  LinkedIn posters and stuff. But it's true how you treat
• 1:15:33
  people no matter level. And this is, you know, scaling
• 1:15:36
  up and scaling down in management and how you manage
• 1:15:38
  it. If if I have a guy now that
• 1:15:42
  hasn't worked for me for years who still rings me and tries to
• 1:15:46
  integrate clients to me, he doesn't get paid any money or
• 1:15:49
  nothing like that. And we're talking about, you
• 1:15:52
  know, years down the track and he's in a very big, successful,
• 1:15:56
  decent position. And that's because of how I
• 1:15:58
  treated him, how I trained him, how I acted.
• 1:16:01
  And, and don't get me wrong, because I'm definitely not
• 1:16:03
  trying to paint myself as a St. because I can be very ruthless
• 1:16:07
  in business if I have to. You know, if someone's doing the
• 1:16:09
  wrong thing by me, I'm not going to be, I'll have this saying I'm
• 1:16:13
  a Pussycat at home, but I'm a tiger in business.
• 1:16:16
  And all I mean by are. You a Capricorn?
• 1:16:19
  No, I'm a Gemini. All I mean by that is one
• 1:16:22
  business skill you have to have know when to be ruthless.
• 1:16:26
  Yeah, it's it's not. People talk about know when to
• 1:16:29
  be ruthless because there are there are people out there that
• 1:16:32
  want to destroy you. Other businesses, other
• 1:16:35
  companies, people that don't just hate the fact that they
• 1:16:38
  think you might even have some success they don't have.
• 1:16:41
  I have all the same troubles as everyone else, trust me.
• 1:16:44
  But people don't like it. And business leaders do it for
• 1:16:47
  money, power. You've got to be ruthless and
• 1:16:50
  destroying them. It's something no one ever talks
• 1:16:52
  about, but I'll talk about it because it's real.
• 1:16:54
  I always try to the path of bringing people towards me, to
• 1:16:57
  network, to work with me. And I don't try to destroy
• 1:17:00
  people for the fun of it, right? Because that's not having
• 1:17:02
  integrity. But every single business leader
• 1:17:05
  at some point has to be ruthless to protect their house, you
• 1:17:09
  know, and, and that's, that's the truth.
• 1:17:11
  Yeah, I've definitely had some interesting people over my 17
• 1:17:17
  year career and disability that yeah, it's more politics than
• 1:17:22
  people. And that's again, coming to the
• 1:17:24
  whole thing why I try to bring people into my network.
• 1:17:27
  I want to have better care team. And yes, there's a financial
• 1:17:30
  incentive because they'll think of me thinking, you know, he is
• 1:17:32
  doing the right thing easy. But it, it works.
• 1:17:37
  And I do the things that work, but I do try to build them on
• 1:17:41
  foundations that are going to last.
• 1:17:44
  Classic example here. I had a support coordinator
• 1:17:47
  begged me for work. I really need work.
• 1:17:49
  And then stole a whole heap of clients off me.
• 1:17:52
  Yeah. Now word got around and she
• 1:17:54
  wanted to get in with the big housing company and she would
• 1:17:56
  have made a lot of, she would have had millions of dollars,
• 1:17:58
  right. And because she did the wrong
• 1:18:00
  thing to me, I was ruthless, you know, and I don't like to be
• 1:18:02
  ruthless, but this is a whole thing about, you know, thinking
• 1:18:05
  long term. And I find so many business
• 1:18:08
  people these days think of the short term dollar and they'll
• 1:18:11
  burn you for it. And well, I'm going to make the
• 1:18:13
  dollars out of this client. I'll just screw this person
• 1:18:17
  over. But they forget that people that
• 1:18:19
  are long term thinkers in business, it will have a
• 1:18:21
  ramification. You know what's interesting
• 1:18:25
  because I was talking about this the other day that when it like
• 1:18:30
  with people that we serve, we talk about, you know, there's
• 1:18:33
  for every action, there's a reaction and there's a
• 1:18:35
  consequence. But it's the same thing that
• 1:18:37
  goes for business as well. Every action that we put and
• 1:18:40
  what we put out there can have a reaction.
• 1:18:43
  And if you haven't got the vision or the foresight to see
• 1:18:47
  the future of what that could actually happen to you, I could
• 1:18:50
  bet you you make me worry that. Yeah, well, I try to not do
• 1:18:55
  business with people that can't foresee a reaction from a ban.
• 1:19:00
  Yeah, and look, and that's exactly true.
• 1:19:03
  You can avoid a lot of those problems just by being a good
• 1:19:06
  Yemen. Yeah.
• 1:19:09
  That's that's and that's what the the 1 golden rule I have
• 1:19:12
  actually have in my book. The most famous golden rule of
• 1:19:15
  all is do unto others as you have them do unto you.
• 1:19:19
  And I explained that you may think there's a financial
• 1:19:22
  reward, but if you deliberately, and I actually use the word
• 1:19:26
  screw over in the book, if you deliberately screw over someone,
• 1:19:29
  they will remember. They'll remember.
• 1:19:31
  Look, people can make mistakes with me and I hold no graduates,
• 1:19:35
  right? But if people deliberately try
• 1:19:38
  to do stuff to you, people remember.
• 1:19:41
  You might not think they're a big wig now, or higher up the
• 1:19:45
  corporate chain than you, but when they get there, they're
• 1:19:49
  going to remember you. And it won't be a very fond
• 1:19:51
  memory and it won't be a very fond experience for you.
• 1:19:54
  Because, like you say, there will be for whatever action you
• 1:19:57
  deliberately did. And there'll be a reaction.
• 1:20:03
  This is I do. There's people that I won't tell
• 1:20:05
  me during a period of time and it's like I visually put a
• 1:20:09
  sticky note on their forehead and it's like a little remember,
• 1:20:12
  Yep, I remember what you did and how you acted towards this
• 1:20:16
  person that we serve. And it wasn't with their best
• 1:20:18
  intention. And it's, and you remember that
• 1:20:21
  moving through because it is a small sector and we all network
• 1:20:24
  with each other. And if if I've got that, I know
• 1:20:26
  that sort of person that I would support somebody to use in the
• 1:20:30
  future. And that's across all parts.
• 1:20:33
  It's not just support workers, it's provided allied health.
• 1:20:37
  It's the hot doctors. There are people that I was like
• 1:20:40
  Matt, I remember that situation and how that didn't serve that
• 1:20:43
  person to have a fullness of life.
• 1:20:46
  Well, look, I I try to balance it and this is another one of my
• 1:20:49
  golden rules is to only ever try to be better than yourself.
• 1:20:52
  Sometimes in business must outperform other companies.
• 1:20:56
  That's the reality. But if you focus on rather than
• 1:20:59
  just tearing people down for the fun of it to folk being better
• 1:21:03
  than yourself, that's a real key to success.
• 1:21:05
  And there's a very old saying that we've all probably heard
• 1:21:08
  success is the best revenge for these sort of people because
• 1:21:11
  it's the thing that hate for you to be successful because they
• 1:21:15
  were jealous of you in the first place in many cases.
• 1:21:17
  But really keep it balanced with the fact that the person, the
• 1:21:20
  only person you should really be trying to get better then is
• 1:21:23
  yourself. Keep it grounded.
• 1:21:25
  Having these tiff wars is a lot of waste of time and resources.
• 1:21:29
  It can backfire, people. But yeah.
• 1:21:33
  Sometimes you've got to understand that if you
• 1:21:35
  deliberately do the wrong thing down the road, then someone
• 1:21:38
  says, do you know James? You know, it might not be
• 1:21:42
  classic example, I went to that office and now we're just giving
• 1:21:44
  me chocolates. And now if I was master to that
• 1:21:47
  person and I would get over them and stuff, I may not have even
• 1:21:50
  been invited down there. Yeah.
• 1:21:52
  So it's it's the cosmic lore of the universe.
• 1:21:55
  I think by just trying to do the thing.
• 1:21:57
  I really, look, I'm not spiritual, but I think that's
• 1:21:59
  just how people work mentally and psychology behind it.
• 1:22:03
  And I use a lot of psychology. Read the book.
• 1:22:05
  You'll hear a little tidbits of how I use psychology to get
• 1:22:09
  people to do what I want without them even knowing that I wanted
• 1:22:12
  to do something or I made them think something was their idea
• 1:22:15
  or how I made them feel comfortable with me.
• 1:22:18
  So there's a lot of things you can do, and I teach this in the
• 1:22:23
  book. There's a lot of things you can
• 1:22:24
  do or know, but if you come from the right place and even put all
• 1:22:30
  that aside, you'll still often have the success that make.
• 1:22:34
  I don't know if that makes sense.
• 1:22:35
  No, no. Yeah, we have covered a lot in
• 1:22:38
  this episode. I'm trying to give you Kim's
• 1:22:41
  podcast. Now you've given me heave.
• 1:22:44
  Thank you so much for tonight's podcast.
• 1:22:48
  I can't wait to deliver this. I'm going to press the red
• 1:22:51
  button so I need you to stay on the line so it uploads and I've
• 1:22:54
  just. Grabbed.