Turning Online Connections Into Real Relationships, with Ali Chahine (Ep 50)

What does it actually take to turn LinkedIn connections into real relationships?

In this episode of the NDIS Provider Growth Podcast, Michael sits down with Ali Chahine to talk about moving beyond surface-level networking and building genuine connections that actually lead somewhere.

Ali shares how he started on LinkedIn by posting content and building an audience, but realised that likes and comments are not the same as real relationships. Now, his focus is on taking those connections deeper through conversations, value, and showing up in a more human way.

The conversation gets practical fast. They break down simple ways to stand out, like sending voice notes instead of text, leading with curiosity, and actually paying attention to what matters to the other person.

From there, it shifts into something bigger. How do you go from being just another support worker online to someone people trust, remember, and want to work with?

They talk about creating real value, understanding what directors actually care about, and why solving real problems is what opens the door to better opportunities and higher income.

There is also a real look at the support work industry. The good parts, the hard parts, and the reality that often gets left out online. Ali shares his goal to shift the standard of support work and help others show up better in their roles.

This episode is honest, practical, and focused on what actually works. It is about building real relationships, creating win-win connections, and thinking bigger about where your career can go.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

So I'm sitting here with Ali and Ali's doing lots of big things, and Ali you want to connect with people at a not just a service level on LinkedIn. Talk me through what your goal is there, and then we're going to show people how you can do that.

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Yeah, absolutely. I think my goal, I jumped on LinkedIn about I'd say a year and a half or two, or about two years ago. My goal then was to just post as much content, whether that's educational tips and tricks, or just my opinions in the NDIS space, which is cool. It's gotten me a lot of traction, it's gotten me a lot of organic followers. But my goal now is to take it one level up and take those connections to ultimately an in-person or a connection call. So we can deepen and strengthen these relationships because at the end of the day, we can type each other, we can say, hey, this is what I do. This is would love to have a chat. But one, people don't have time to text all the time. And two, a connection call is like tapping more into the human side of things and just really deepening the connection. And yeah, ultimately that's my goal apparently.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

So I guess you're saying you want to go from the fake surface LinkedIn relationships to actually people who are in the real world with relationships. Here's the thing when you do that, somehow you need to give them something. So if you turn up wanting to contribute, you'll have a hundred people who want to hang out with you. If you turn up wanting to meet up, there's not the value there for others. So there'll be some way that you can contribute to others. Another way for you to stand out apart from those meetings is you go and grab, you go grab your LinkedIn and you just give people a voicemail. No one else does this, like they just don't send voicemails. So I'm gonna click on message, it comes up with whatever we've been chatting about. And then see that button just there, the microphone button. Okay. So I'm just gonna hit the microphone button and I'm just gonna leave you a voicemail. It sounds like this Hey Ali, I can see you doing lots of really cool things. I think the world needs a few more of you. I liked your post where you know you're talking about how it hasn't been an easy journey. Just wanted to say hi and just encourage you to care about the good work. Thanks a hey, bye.

SPEAKER_01 2:06

I think I like that because it breaks the norm of just, hey, this is what I do, would love to find more about you. I think for me, I always enter the chat with a level of curiosity. Always, or even if it's something that I saw, whether it's on a podcast that you were on or a post that you did, something that really resonated with me. What I usually do is I introduce myself, I'll open with curiosity, and then I would mention something that really resonated with me, like truly. And I think with that audio message, it's a completely different ball game because you're taking it from a text to audio, which can be very powerful because we can read these phones and we can see them as like robotic words, and it's it's not really connecting with us. So breaking that cycle can be very powerful.

SPEAKER_00 2:49

I find yeah, but also like you can take it from a whole nother level if you want. Somehow you need to help people, so you can go from being just another name on someone's LinkedIn to genuinely an ally if you just find somewhere to help people. So think of the resources that you've got from me, even by accident, because I just post them up of those podcasts or whatever. Some of them are really helpful for you, some of them are not relevant. But we would we would learn to care about each other if we can somehow help each other. So the question for you is how do you, as an independent support worker, be helpful to others? What can you do for them beyond just leave a voicemail?

SPEAKER_01 3:25

I think this is something I've thought of as well in the past, and I am working on. It's funny you mentioned that. I'm working on a little a like a mini self-help art little ebook in a way. And it's this is like all the things that I've learned as a support worker. Some of them would be content like nervous system regulation, which I'm a huge advocate for. I think nervous system regulation is so important. So it's gonna be like a mini guide, like a mini practical tips and tricks. I do want it to be providing value in a way that they could read it and they can retain something from her, and then a quick little hey, if you ever want to jump on the connection call, his his the invitation essentially. So I think that's the route I want to go moving forward, and I do want to introduce myself with a level of curiosity, whether that's on the audio message or other ways. I'm gonna also give them that resource that they can actually see and provide value to them.

SPEAKER_00 4:16

All right, let's take that to the next level. Okay. Are you feeling brave today? Yeah, so it is. Are you feeling brave? Yes. All right, you're feeling courageous, as courageous as as Indiana Jones or Luke Srail Walker. All right, your mission here is to give them something that is so valuable they can't go past it. Independent support workers. Okay, so let's say if your target is directors, you want to get to know directors because somehow you want to connect with them. Go to the pain. What are people what do directors hate about dealing with independent support workers, or actually just support workers in general, is they don't freaking turn up to their shifts and they embarrass the snot out of us as leaders when we told someone that there was going to be someone there. And they let us down suddenly. Um let's pretend I'm a director of support workers, suddenly I'm leaving my kids at home in front of the TV, so I can go down and cover for someone because they're gonna be two hours late, but they were disorganized.

SPEAKER_01 5:07

Yep.

SPEAKER_00 5:08

Do you see the pain that is? So what the pain. So what if you were to give them a document that is five ways to choose support workers who'll actually turn up? Or what about five five reasons why your support worker may be flaky as hell and driving you stupid?

SPEAKER_01 5:23

Yeah. It's just also gonna be very powerful because it's coming from the perspective of a support worker. I'm not just gonna be the other support workers that don't rock up to their shifts. I'm gonna be the one that's saying, hey, this is a certain pain point of yours. I'm a support worker, I've gone through it, I know what it's like, is some valuable information. And it might give them an insight that they'd never thought of because it shares different perspectives when you're a frontline worker as well.

SPEAKER_00 5:48

That's right. But your mission here is to show them you understand their world. Yeah. Because if you can articulate, if you can speak out the pain that someone else is experiencing and put if you can explain it in a way that it is as if it came out of their mouth, we'll trust you and you'll have massive rapport. And to be honest, support workers need to own their crap. I don't understand how hard it is to turn up to a shift. I don't I didn't not turn up to this meeting. You know what I mean? And obviously, you're not that type of support worker, but you can empathize with your audience by putting their pain into words, but also there would be reasons support workers don't turn up, sometimes that are the director's fault. Crap communication, last-minute communication, poor systems or things that don't have an automation for reminding people.

SPEAKER_01 6:29

Yeah, I've noticed a lot of support workers don't feel like badly to appreciate it in the industry. And I feel like there's a lot they carry a lot of weight on their back, and which is a part of me that can empathize with them. But also, if service providers play their role, support workers also need to play their role. If we can combine and collaborate together, we can we can make some powerful things, but those pain points can either be from support workers or from service providers as well. It just depends on what the situation is as well.

SPEAKER_00 6:57

Yeah, and the other thing is so much of his attitude, there's such an entitled attitude among our our younger support workers. It's like, hold on. If you're working for someone else, you're being paid nearly 50 bucks an hour, if you're working for yourself, you're being paid 70 bucks an hour, yeah, get off your phone, care about someone, and start making life about you because your friends who aren't support workers are earning only two-thirds of what you're earning. So if you can take those sort of words and go, here's how directors feel, and here's the solutions, what is every director who needs support workers down the track or needs some sort of help down the track going to think about you?

SPEAKER_01 7:35

I think that this guy knows his stuff and there is a few things I can learn from him. Let me give him the time of day and a quick connection call. I feel like that's right.

SPEAKER_00 7:44

And you want to also connect with people who you could help, but who can help you? There's not there's a thousand people out there that you or I could help, but not all of them can help help us.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Because everything has to be win-win.

SPEAKER_01 7:56

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:57

Otherwise, you're just making more strangers in your life or more acquaintances. We don't need that, okay? We've all got in laws, we've all got friends from high school, we've all got people who would want to hang out with us, but who are the people who who are going to really help us in the long term? So say I don't like who is your audience? Who are the people who, if they connect with you, they're going to end up employing your services?

SPEAKER_01 8:18

And even for me, my audience right now or my niche is support work. I've recently also noticed that there aren't many support workers on LinkedIn. I've noticed that they're scattered on different platforms, which I've experimented with TikTok now, but I've noticed there is so much more engagement in TikTok with support workers in the niche. I've just jumped on TikTok. I started making videos on like practical tips and tricks, things that I've learned, mistakes that I've learned as well, and common misconceptions about support working and how you can do better. Ultimately, I want to plant that seed and I want to shift the narrative for support workers. We've already got such a bad view, and I'm not saying that came out of nowhere. There are support workers on their phone. We all know that. There are support workers that show up and only get paid. But my target audience would be the support workers that A don't have guidance from the service providers, or B, genuinely want to do better. Because I know that there are support workers out there that don't that have that in them. And I want to be the role model and the person that can actually make the influence in their life. So that would be my niche.

SPEAKER_00 9:21

Okay. So you've nailed your niche.

SPEAKER_01 9:23

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:23

You've got your platform, TikTok. Okay, great. Okay. So if you want directors, you're on LinkedIn. If you want support workers, you're saying TikTok's working. Great. So what you want to do then, if you want to be leading people like that, is you need to cause them to feel like champions just for engaging with you.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 9:38

So you're like, in all your videos and stuff, you're like, hey, you are a leader or you're a future leader or you're someone who's going to have impact. Here are the things that that you could be doing. Because you don't want people going through your stuff going, oh, I feel like a failure, so I'll go and look at Ali stuff. You want people to be aspiring. Oh, I'm going to make it, therefore, I'll look at Ali's stuff. Does that make sense? Yeah. And somehow you need all your communication to be around the language of champions. If you're in the top 5%, this video is for you. Why do you think I'd recommend that your mission is to cause people to feel like champions when they're engaging with your work?

SPEAKER_01 10:12

Because I feel like that would be my calling, my my influence that I have on the platforms. And yeah, I feel like that would be amazing.

SPEAKER_00 10:23

Okay, you can you can do that because what you're gonna do if you if you talk in that language, you are gonna attract the top five, 10%.

SPEAKER_01 10:29

But the thing is for me, I also I'm seeing a lot of fluffed up versions of support work online. A lot of people like they're like, oh, we went bowling, we did this awesome community access. I want to show the reality of support work. The reality is you're gonna be dealing with meltdown. Reality is you're gonna rock up and there's gonna be days where you're burnt out. Saying that I want to address the reality of support work, but also give them practical tips and tricks to save them because as well, support work has such a high stuff turnover in the industry, whether that's providers not provide giving them training, whether that's burnout, there are multiple different reasons, but turnout for support work is too high, and I want to lower that in the industry. Yeah, the baseline.

SPEAKER_00 11:10

Yeah, and it's a hard job. The other thing is it's a boring job half the time. There's nothing glamorous about sitting around waiting for someone to get out of school. There's nothing glamorous about sitting around waiting for someone to decompress a bit and slow down the meltdown and be able to re-engage, and you know it's gonna take them an hour. Yeah, so here we are just killing time while they play Minecraft because that's what that person needs to decompress.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

So there's nothing glamorous about that. A lot of what support workers are doing is whinging and whining about how underpaid they are, how hard it is, all that stuff. It's like they're looking for affirmation from others. If you can equip the leaders, like the true leaders among your support workers, the people who in 10 years' time are going to be running companies, if you can equip them with their mission is to serve, serving is not glamorous, but you've got it in you, then man, that audience will love you because they know it's not glamorous. Again, you're articulating what they're experiencing.

SPEAKER_01 12:00

And I've noticed the more raw and unfiltered content I put out there for support work, the more engagement it is. Because when I first started my journey, I wanted to show all the positives of support work. And then I've like really, this was like a year or two ago when I first got into content creation. I thought I want to show more raw. I love the fact that support work can have this beautiful side of it, like doing awesome community access, but I want to know, I want to show them that this is authentically what support work can be. And we see too much fluffed up version. So I think people on the platform can appreciate the reality of support work because they've experienced it themselves. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:37

I love this. So, really, what we're looking at, Ali, is your mission, your goal right now is to connect with as many people as possible who are going who you can create win-wins for. So you're gonna get to your support workers through TikTok to create that community, which is helpful. And someone like Sarah Harriet is she's done that before. You just need to ask her how she did it, and you can do it too. And then the second thing is you also need to be, you're also a director, so you need to be connecting with other directors and you go to LinkedIn and you find ways to help them and you watch what happens. And there are people who come to me ask, Michael, can you do some business coaching here or consulting there or whatever marketing there? Who I've never even met. But a year ago, I sent them a message, and then I just sent them in that last year, maybe two or three posts that are relevant to what that what I know their industry, their part of the industry is facing. And then they come to you and you're like, I didn't even how did this happen? So if you plant the seeds now, in a year, you'll harvest those seeds.

SPEAKER_01 13:36

Yeah, and I've seen the capacity of like the capability of what can happen. I've had coordinators reach out to me, I've had OTs reach out to me. It's not only just for referrals for like you really giving me the confidence to say, hey, you're I love your content, like you really resonated with me. And it's good, it's refreshing to see that it's not only hitting support workers, it's also reaching a broad scope of the NDIS realm, whether that's coordination, OTs, LOTELS, everything in between. I'm glad that it's not like it's resonating with the a wider audience, but that is my specifically support work.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

I love it. And so if you're gonna put all this time and energy in, you need to be well paid for it. Otherwise, you won't be doing this in five years. Right. So let's imagine, and by the way, everyone who's watching this podcast, it's like you can ask yourself this question as well. Let's say, Ali, you wanted to triple your revenue, triple your profitability within 18 months. Okay. How would you go about doing that? For a start, the people who can lead you to massively grow your revenue, massively grow your profitability, are not the support workers. Referrals don't come through them. Yeah. So what would your plan be? Who would you connect with? How would you help them? And what would be the end result of you helping them? What are they going to do for you? Because everything should be win-win.

SPEAKER_01 14:53

Okay. So currently, my position right now is the independent support work side of things, which is keeping me my baseline, obviously, it gives me a bit of purpose to show up and do what I do and make some money in the process, like everyone else in industry. And um, so that's it doing its own direction. And then once the uh what's it called, the community building side of things start to kick in, I would need more service providers, more people who have their own set support workers. Yes, I can reach out to independent support workers, but independents are like scattered everywhere. The service providers would be the ideal target market because they've got their own community network of support work, they've got their own workers. And like you said earlier, hitting those paint points, giving a solution, educating them in the process would give them a bit of value. Once they see that value, that's when I can sell them the service or whatever else is implemented.

SPEAKER_00 15:50

Okay. So if we look at that, yeah, remember I'm on your side, okay? I'm throwing ideas out, but I'm for you, okay? More than I have words for. You're when you do those services, you're gonna only be able to charge, say, 75 bucks an hour or whatever, right? Whatever the price cap is for that. I'd like to see you earn 300 bucks an hour. There's a way you could earn 300 bucks an hour. How would uh what's one way you could earn 300 bucks an hour?

SPEAKER_01 16:15

One way with the work that I do currently would be to sell these, essentially. Sell this as a bundle, as a course, as a community, as on a platform that can get a wider reach. There's only so much you can make as an independent support worker. You'll cap that a certain amount of clients before you use your mind and you're burnt out. I think if you want to hit the extra level of the 300 mark, like we spoke about, it would be expanding the reach towards more the more content creation slash education slash community side of things and selling that.

SPEAKER_00 16:49

Okay, cool. That's one way that could work. You're putting your destiny in the hands of the platforms. You have a look at what's happened to LinkedIn reach in the last six months. Okay, you have a look at at the end of the day, as soon as you put your destiny in someone else's hands, we've got a problem. That is one way. And I guess you're talking about a subscription model. That could work. Could I throw another crazy idea at you?

SPEAKER_01 17:08

Absolutely. I'd love to hear.

SPEAKER_00 17:09

What if you became the go-to consultant for support worker direct directors of support workers? Okay. Say companies that have got 20, 30, 50, 100 support workers, you be the consultant for how to deal with their underperformers and how to recruit correctly and how to have the best possible stuff they have that they could have. But basically, if you want to charge big bucks, you have to solve big problems. So these directors are sending a support worker out to someone, they never arrive, they lose that client just because they've got a process problem and they've also got a culture problem that they pick the wrong people, right? What if you were the consultant that goes and fixes that?

SPEAKER_01 17:49

I think that'd be great because I've seen I've had the experience of working for multiple providers before I went independent. I worked in Silhon's before as well for quite some time. I've seen firsthand what it means to have that pain point. And a lot of the time service providers don't really realize they have that because they need that second opinion. We can service providers can say, Hey, I provide great service, my staff are okay, why I support work is leaving. It's always good to get a second opinion for someone that's actually been in the industry, that's worked in all these homes before, to give them a different perspective on things. So I think consulting is also on the clouds for sure.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

Okay, it's on the cards, ISA pay. Take yourself a two-month time frame.

SPEAKER_01 18:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

Because the thing is, it's not that they need a second opinion, it's that they need to know what the hell's going on and how to fix it.

SPEAKER_01 18:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:38

Because if they could fix it themselves, they would.

SPEAKER_01 18:41

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

But if they was like, sorry, where's that?

SPEAKER_01 18:45

I feel like also it costs service providers more to train and develop and hire new stuff as opposed to retaining long-term stuff and what they want to do ultimately.

SPEAKER_00 18:56

And the mess of shadow shifts and all this onboarding crap that you have to go through when someone starts, you can make that problem disappear. That's worth more than 300 bucks an hour. Yeah. But we have to get away from this price capped mess of uh how we view how much we can charge for it. But the thing is, you don't get to just demand more money. You need to go and solve a bigger problem. And it's if you solve someone's problem that's this big, you can charge whatever. If you solve a problem that's huge, you can charge whatever times a million. You know what I mean? Like just but we have to be of massive service to people like that. So I guess if I was in your shoes, I'd be looking at how quickly I can go from where I am to where I want to be at as that consultant, and basically offering packages, as in like support worker organization, rescue your culture packages, a bit like Amy Gray does. Yeah. Okay. But Amy Gray is more like at the leadership level. You'd be more at the level of I will meet with your problem five staff and I'll work out what the core issue is, and we'll either fix it or I'll let you know that person can't be solved. And then you'll have to act accordingly and go leave with boss, whatever. But it's like it how to go from where you are to there, let's say that's a two-month time frame. What would happen if you connect with a hundred directors of decent-sized support worker organizations, connect with them ISAP, and then you send them something useful in say three weeks, and you send them a voicemail at say two weeks later that just lets them know do you have any things that you can help with? You give each of them a free strategy session, they sit down with you for 20 minutes and you just answer every question you can, be as helpful as you can. How do you think I get my clients? I sit down with them for nothing, I'll just solve a few problems. They're like, crap, I need Michael. All right, here's the cost. Let's go, and we're good. That's a bit of an oversimplification. But you do that, and then you get your first, say, three clients on board at a rate that is good for them, and it's not your 300 bucks an hour. Yeah, out of them you get your testimonials. But also, if you've solved their problems well, you've then got the experience to go forward and help others. And then I'm like, why should that even take two months? You already have the knowledge. The only thing you don't have yet is in you don't have the seed planted in a hundred directors' minds that you can make their support worker problem go away. Yeah. Remember, and for you, you need to understand you're not solving a$200 problem. If they just lost a participant, they probably there goes, I don't know, a thousand bucks of profit in the next month or two months, depending on how many hours they got. You're solving a big problem. Yeah. Okay, so what's going through your head when I'm saying you can do this and you can do it straight away? What are your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 21:30

I think my thoughts currently is I know I've got the experience for it, which is incredible. I know that I'm in the time of this being a support worker, which has been three and a half years, I've seen a lot, I've experienced a lot, and I've seen the pain points of both a service provider and the support worker. So if there's a way I can give them both the answers and help both sides of this victim, as opposed to demonizing one. Because I feel like a lot of support workers feel demonized right now. They feel like a small, a little I'm not gonna say a small, there is there are support workers out there that go on their phone and do what they do. But I know that there are support workers as well out there that want to do better. And I know that there are service providers as well that want to do better as well. So if I can somehow give them both solutions and make an impact in both of these stents, I think that would be ultimately the most rewarding feeling for me.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Well, you remain with a plan. But your target audience must be directors because they can pay the big bucks. The support workers can't, and why should they? It's not their job type skill. And to be honest, 20% of support workers deserve to be damnised. They deserve to be like spoken of badly because they're terrible at what they do. Yeah. And then the other 80%, maybe 40% of them are good, and then 40% of them are angels. Okay. They're amazing. But your market is not them. Your market is your directors because they can pay you the big bucks. But in order to have the credibility to speak to the directors, you need to build the community among your support workers. And then suddenly you're serving support workers, you're getting you're serving directors, you're getting well paid by directors, and you're still achieving your life purpose or what you would view as your own mission by helping support workers.

SPEAKER_01 23:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:07

All right. When are you gonna start?

SPEAKER_01 23:09

When are we gonna start? I think I'm gonna start planning as soon as possible and really action this because I know when I first started my TikTok, I started zero followers, like from the very, very ground up. I was inconsistent for quite some time, but now currently it's at almost two and a half, almost two and a half thousand followers. But mind you, I didn't post a lot for last year. That's okay.

SPEAKER_00 23:34

But even those followers, they're still the support workers.

SPEAKER_01 23:37

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:38

Where you're missing right now is the relationship with the directors.

SPEAKER_01 23:42

Yeah, absolutely. In saying that, I was like more so if I can achieve that zero to two thousand five hundred in a matter of a year with no inconsistency. Imagine what I can do if I really nailed down on the service provider side of things.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

Your mission on this weekend is to go out to a cafe with a pen and piece of paper, work out what your next steps are, and they'll make it happen Monday. Whatever's on your calendar for Monday, get rid of it. Okay, be the flaky sport worker who cancels. I don't care. But that's right. This is your mission, okay? You're a man with a plan. All right, this has been the weirdest podcast ever because all we've done is look at how one guy can massively transform his business model. And I believe you'll do it, Ali. I believe you'll do it. If someone wants to get in touch with you, Ali, how do they find you?

SPEAKER_01 24:26

You'd find me at Ali Shaheen on LinkedIn. That would be the best platform to find me.

SPEAKER_00 24:30

Love your work. I'll send me a message and I'll put you in touch with him. All right. Good luck on your quest.

SPEAKER_01 24:34

Thank you, Mike.