How Communication and Systems Set Top NDIS Providers Apart from the Rest, with Matt Sevier (Ep 52)

Explore the journey of growth and success in the NDIS sector. Discover how effective communication, transparency, and robust systems can transform a provider's practice. Learn from real experiences and insights shared by Michael and Matt Sevier. Get in touch with Matt or visit steppr.com.au.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Okay, it's the NDIS uh Provider Growth Journey Podcast. And I'm here today with Matt Sevier. Matt, why would you and I be sitting down talking on a podcast? What's your skill set?

SPEAKER_01 0:18

Mate, uh where do I start? I am the founder and director of Stepper PBS. We're a positive behavior support provider here in Perth, WA. Yeah. I only got the registration back in October, and we've been up and running in December, and it is yeah, it's scaling. And I thought I would come on here and talk about our provider growth thus far.

SPEAKER_00 0:42

Yeah, and see what people can learn from it. So, guys, I've known Matt for three months, I think, Matt, and he's gone from one staff member himself, a very tired, exhausted, hardworking staff member, to now effectively there's four of you. Like, wow. Other people would say that's not possible, or it's not possible to grow quickly and well at the same time, but you've proven that wrong. How do you go from one very tired staff member to four staff members and the original very tired guys no longer is tired? Yeah, uh, it's a good question.

SPEAKER_01 1:12

So I started this company on on the principle that I wanted to do things right the first time. So, you know, I I wanted to come into this with a sort of fresh outlook and things through automations, set up our systems right, create a pipeline where you know things run smooth because as you know, our our time is our most valuable resource. So in my mind, doing the admin task that slow you down that creates um a poor service.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Okay, so really when you look at how you've done things, you've built your back end systems as though you've got ten people, even though you've only got four. Okay. Some people would say you you overspent too early or whatever, but the reality is it's built to last, it's built to grow. That's a good thing. What what are the other things that were behind you being able to grow so quickly from one to four? And I would assume in about three or four months you'll have another four. Like, how did you do that?

SPEAKER_01 2:13

Yeah, so we started off obviously me taking care of the bulk of our caseload when we when I started growing to to you know like delegating sort of tasks. We we looked at third-party administrators. I brought on contractors as well. Contracting in PBS has helped me a lot. And you know, start starting off slow and and not scaling too quick, I think that's been the the biggest win that we've had, you know, because it's it's it it's easy to you know be a provider where you where you just take referrals after referrals after referrals, but you might not be ready to do that. So yeah, we we sort of set myself a cap and I was I was like, this is where we're gonna sit until we get you know our feet on the ground. Um and you know, uh just just make sure that everything's running smoothly before we scale, before we expand. So yeah, and and trying to keep as much choice you can control as well, you know, throughout the whole process, making sure, you know, our like our our practice and and the you know the quality of our output remains the same and doesn't diminish the more we scale. So that was like a you know really important thing to me because you know coming into you know the NDIS as a new provider, obviously this is my first time starting a provider, so you know I didn't really know what to expect. So I thought, look, if we can keep the quality and you know keep our output the same while scaling, that's a good thing. But yeah, it was all about like maintaining those connections, maintaining um our relationships with people.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Yeah. And you've done that. Okay, so the thing is, this is not your first radio being PBS, positive behaviour support. This is your first radio, though, of running an NDIS provider. So you survived the audit, it wasn't as bad as everyone makes out it is, you got through it, well done. You've got you tried, yeah, you're welcome. I'm I'm impressed. You you tried hard to get, you know, external people to to do with your admin or your bookkeeping or whatever. You hit a few rough spots, like you hit some bumpy things where people would make promises and not deliver, and you have to drop them and start again with someone else. But you've come up with people now who you're really happy with. What was it like for you to try and then not succeed and then try again with things like your bookkeeping or your Splose integrations or your virtual assistants and stuff like that? How did that go?

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah, look, there's there were a few hard times. We sort of got got to a few forks on the road, but it's just a matter of doing one little thing really well each day. I realize in these positions you can think about all things and that can take up a lot of your brain space and you wait until you're working until midnight or 2 a.m. or something, and you're just thinking about all things. But just as long as I did one little thing each day, then that's sort of how I got to this point. You know, just doing little things each day, working on um, you know, prioritizing the right things. Uh yeah, that's basically it. Yeah, and with throughout the audit, it was pretty much the same thing. You know, learning exactly um, you know, how to how to reach our compliance and governance governance standards. Yeah, setting up our systems, it was all one little thing in a day.

SPEAKER_00 5:33

Okay, so I'm hearing you say you set one goal a day, like one thing that needs to get achieved each day, on top of the fact that you're dealing with your caseload and all your day-to-day stuff. And if you take one step forward after a year, that's 365 steps. Well done. Hopefully, you're not working all of those days. So, like, just just well done. That's good. Because that avoids the overwhelm. A lot of times when I'm talking to directors in the first say year or so of what they do, they're very overwhelmed because they think everything has to be done. But really, what has to be done? Your caseload needs to be done, and I guess your staff, they need to make sure they have systems at work, and then just one win per day. Is that what I'm hearing?

SPEAKER_01 6:11

Yeah, exactly. Yeah, and doing things right the first time. You know, obviously we mentioned before time is a valuable resource, so so it's like if I if I had to go back and you know change a bunch of things, then I'm sort of chasing my tail. So it's you know I see it like building a house. You you build the bricks and the foundation and you take your time, you know, because uh if if things are sluggish and you know fragmented, uh I that's when I've noticed the forks in the road. So it's a matter of a matter of getting those things right once. And yeah, you mentioned before we might have spent a lot of money and there's you know, at the start, and there's always going to be a profit dip, and you know, it's just a matter of um yeah, pushing through that and and we're we're building for scale. So we're not we're not we're we want to build it right the first time and then and then move on.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Yeah, and and so that people who are listening, by the way, thank you for listening. I hope you get so much out of what Matt and I are talking about here. So that people are getting something out of this, it's like Matt, you've you've deliberately avoided using hack jobs with your systems. Like we don't we use Excel spreadsheets, okay? We don't use any of that stuff. We do like when you went to get a virtual assistant, you got someone who's already worked in the NDIS for a long period of time. They cost about twice as much as other VAs would cost. But you know what? They know what they're doing, and they can work with say my a lot of people in Allied Health are using Splos. She's familiar with SPLOS, you know, great. Those sort like you pay for good advice, you paid as well to whatever you had to to get through things like your legal stuff or your audit or whatever, just throwing money at stuff, people go, Oh, but you know, you could have done that stuff yourself. It's like, sure you could have, but then you're just gonna have to rebuild stuff, and that's what you're saying. The catch comes, once you've got about eight or ten staff members, Matt, you're gonna have to rebuild anything every like all over again. Like you're gonna have to start like because whatever systems you have now won't won't do so well at that point. But most people just they're not even thinking a few people ahead. For you, you've got all this space to grow before you have to rebuild. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah, that's right. Yeah, and the thing I'm mainly building right now is like a good experience. So with us, you know, the referral comes through, you're you're reached out to straight away because internally we have those notifications and we have those systems ready to go. So, you know, we've got our automated email where once we've gone through triage and you know it's the referrals you know accepted, wait list, everything, you get an automated email and you get either a link to you know start start an online meeting or you know, a link to book a you know onboarding um administrator or practitioner, someone to come out in person. You retain that choice and control, but you're still you know making your processes faster. So the beauty of of that is you know it's it's it's speed, it's efficiency, it's communication, it's transparency as well. The thing I've been doing is is working on a client portal because in the PBS world, we're we're monitoring behaviors, we're monitoring restricted practices, everything's uh lost in emails half the time. So client portal is was a big thing for us. You know, you come on board, you can see what the practitioner is doing. You have that communication, that efficiency. So that's just sort of how we do things a bit differently, and and the the that's where my effort goes.

SPEAKER_00 9:33

I love that. So a lot of people have this idea that you know they're gonna their days are gonna be glamorous, they're gonna be buying billboard space on the side of the highway or something. That's not it. For you, it's like no, we'll just pay the extra couple hundred bucks a month in software, have some sort of really efficient way of keeping track of everyone's notes and making sure everyone's getting their texts and emails ASAP. Positive behavior support is known for being really dismissive of new inquiries. In the same way that if you go back two or three years ago, speech pathology was and OT was so dismissive, it's like you can fit our calendar, we don't actually care about you. Now they've changed their tune because the work's dried up and the date will come when that happens for PBS as well. But for now, PBS is still very, yeah, we might get back to you if it suits us. Whereas you've deliberately built something that's not like that. So how does that feel? Like to know that you know you're building something, it costs you more, the communication's better, the experience is going to be better, the trust is gonna be there straight away, but it is more costly and it and you are spending a lot of time building it. Like, how's that feel? Yeah, it keeps me busy.

SPEAKER_01 10:36

That's that's for sure. Um it feels good though, because it feels good to do things differently and and see a tangible sort of response in the people we're supporting. Because that's that's who we're doing it for at the end of the day. We're trying to bring the NDIS into 2026. Um it feels good to sort of give a fresh sort of outlook on PBS. But in terms of building the systems, I've I've learned a ton along the way, and that's that's gold for me, you know. And I'm I'm always learning, and that's that's the best part about running a provider, you're always learning, you're always meeting new people. Yeah, yeah, always, always just refining what we do. Um so it's built me personally and and you know, as a practitioner as well.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah, awesome. So you and I were talking before off-air that in the next year you're most likely just going to skyrocket because there's no shortage of work for PBS work in Perth, and yet there's not many PBS positive behavior support people who are just good communicators who get back to people. So wow, that puts you in your own niche, uh, a PBS person with social skills. So there are some dangers though with growing quickly, and one of the dangers is cash flow. And I'd love to be real with people about this. So I've coached a couple of uh Allied Health through the early stages of going from one staff member to three or four, and what happens is they'll get their new staff members on board, they'll start the work, but there's a big gap between when they've had to pay their staff member and when they get paid. Unless you've got, say, in the early days, at least say 20, 25k in your account, you're gonna watch your bank balance go precariously low. So and then the at month three or four after that moment, you're flying, you're in a great spot, and then you're like, oh, let's do it again. And the same process happens, but at that point you probably want to have about 40k in your bank account before you take on more. Because there's a time lag between delivery of service and actually getting paid for it. What would you say to people who are in that spot where they're like, oh, we just grew, we took on staff and we've started invoicing, we haven't been paid yet, and we're worried. Did we make a mistake? What would you say to people in that spot?

SPEAKER_01 12:48

Listen to the NDIS provider growth podcasts. Yeah, you could do that. So um, I I mean, I was a big fan before before coming on here, so a little plug there. But um, what I would say um would be you just um have a look at your your priorities and and and how you're billing because for me I found like sure I was the only practitioner when we started, but because there was all these other tasks, uh I didn't actually I wasn't able to meet the KPIs that I'd say in my my own mind because I was you know my time was being pulled elsewhere. That's when you know in like investing your money into services that are out there, like a VA or um you know, some someone that has experience. Like it's always it's always great to ask for help and having someone in in your corner to talk to is just a huge benefit because these these positions can be isolating. You tend to you know ruminate on your thoughts half the time and and getting them out, even just writing them down, and and in terms of invoicing, um, you know, invoicing and finance was a huge learning curve for me. So it wasn't until I you know reached out to to VA, you know, that helped me with that was when I yeah, really started like connecting the dots and yeah, um and and again just making sure you have accounting, a really good accountant at the start, really good processes, understanding how you're going to bill, when you're going to bill, what days you're going to say bulk bill or send out bulk invoices, just getting the finer details of how am I going to start my week and how am I going to end my week.

SPEAKER_00 14:27

Yeah. And I guess you're balancing doing with learning. Like you're saying, when you first started and you use SPLOS, and and I'm guess do you use Xero as well?

SPEAKER_01 14:36

Yeah, yeah, Zero integrates.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

So it's great. Yeah, got it. Okay, so you've got your SPLOS, you've got zero for someone who used to be an employee, now you're an employer, and and here we are learning two systems, and then on top of that, you've you've probably got at least a dozen other software systems. So you you're learning stuff, you're doing stuff, and you're keeping the day-to-day going, and then you're just hoping you don't get sick, pretty much, because like at the moment the business is built on you, as opposed to you know, it'll get to a point probably in a month or two, I imagine, at your scale, that the business is built on the business, not you. And and it is it can be nerve-wracking, and people lose their nerve and they go, I wish I'd never done this. But it's like at those moments, they're remembering the easy bits of like the regular paycheck and stuff, they're not remembering the crappy bits of working for someone else. You know, how have you gone in terms of time? When you first started, your time was maxed out in this, and that's chase. Can you talk us through the sort of skills you've learned along the way or the ways you've learned it to handle your time? Because there was a season where you were really wearing out. What can people learn from you there? Great question. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:42

What can people learn from me? Uh, what not to do would be would be a good one. You know, I started and uh as you said, I was I was flat out, you know, I was trying to do all things at once, but it wasn't until I started uh, you know, just you you can you can delegate your time, you can pay more attention on the process itself. Like you mentioned before with um zero and splows, you know, we we use zero and splows because it natively integrates with each other. So native integrations are an amazing thing. You know, Slack has helped, so we're you know, that in integrates with Google Workspace, just creating that little integration environment there. You know, you can you can have your task manager, everything set up in Slack. If you set up, you know, your internal structure really well, everyone can communicate with each other, and you can see when an incident report is created, you can see when things anything's put in the task manager. Like that that helps a lot, but I guess in terms of my own time, it it uh just taking taking a moment to have have my own weekends as well was a was a big thing because if if uh you know if I'm not work if I'm working past 5 p.m. If I'm staying up until midnight or working on the weekends, not having my own life, I'm not gonna be any good to anyone. Especially in um especially the culture in our in our you know small team that we've created, you're you're not gonna be any good. You're you're gonna burn out. Yeah. So having having my own personal time, and that comes into you know, having time for my partner as well. Just everything outside of business, take care of that, take it care of yourself. It goes better.

SPEAKER_00 17:26

Yeah, good on you. And and it is a process. And as you're mentioning, all these different software systems and stuff, people are like, hold on, but you know, it must be too hard to work in Matt's team because you've got all the software. It's like, no, Matt knows how to use all this stuff, and but members only need to know how to use one or two or three of those systems, and they like those systems because it saves some time, you know. You were doing huge weeks. If you go back, like say two, three months, you were basically doing 60-hour work weeks every week. But that's not you now. Now you're back into the world of science and sensible and you're in control of it. What have you stopped doing? One of the things that you're saying you have done is you've built systems that do the work that you have to do all this manual work. But what have you and you've also said that you've staffed, you know, like you've got the VA who's dealing with the emails and stuff like that. What what have you stopped doing so that you can get your life back?

SPEAKER_01 18:16

What I what I s stopped doing was scattering uh ourselves everywhere in tons of little places. We didn't really have any SOPs at at the start, you know, because it was myself, I didn't have enough time. I knew how things run, but the difference is when you bring other people on to help you out and to work as practitioners as well, you know, having SOPs and say say Loom. Loom's a great service. You do one video on this is how you know, say you do a form insight forward forward slash form, um, or say in Splos, you can send out an automated email and has forms, and then it creates them, and this is where they live. You make one video and it's done. And then we have a SOPS channel in Slack, and people can just see it, and it's always going to be there, you know.

SPEAKER_00 19:10

By the way, Matt, just for people who aren't familiar with the terminology, SOPS is standard operating procedure. So what Matt's done there is he's given his staff here's the steps to do this, here's the steps to do that, and he's used Loom to make the video, which is usually just a one or two minute video of him screen sharing how to use the software or whatever so that they've got it. They don't have to think hard, they don't have to go searching, especially they don't have to phone you and ask how to do it. Awesome. Well, what else? What if what if I stopped doing? Yeah, what if you stop doing? Because you need to get your life back.

SPEAKER_01 19:42

Yeah, I mean, weekends was a big one. Stop working on weekends. I mean, I do sometimes work on weekends, you know, you you you still make yourself available, you you're still, you know, in this position, like you have to run the provider, but just any any free time you know you can get for your for your own life, you know, say gym, yeah, stuff like that, you know, just I mean, it's a really good question. What what have I stopped doing? Uh to be honest, to be fully transparent, I stopped catering to the needs of you know, the the well, I guess the expectations that tend to get put on you as a provider. There's a there's a lot of you know, you're you're always going to need to be somewhere. You're always not going to need to be doing something for someone else. But it's it's prioritizing and saying, hey, look, you know, I I'm running, I'm I'm running this, I'm I'm sitting at the helm. I need to have this priority because it's gonna benefit the whole thing. It's gonna benefit the uh yeah, every every single client or participant we have.

SPEAKER_00 20:45

What you're saying is so good. And I do this too. Like before we jumped on this, I thought I could put in five minutes prep time and think through some of the questions I'll ask Matt, or I could respond to this email from someone who was a client of mine two years ago who's now making a request of me now that I'm he I don't even work for him. I'm like, I'll deal with that email tomorrow or the next day, because my priority is the hundreds of people who listen to this podcast. And what you're saying is like you've set out the priorities according to what should be the priorities, not the needy support coordinator who was disorganized and suddenly they want their emergency to be your emergency. You know, is is that what I'm hearing?

SPEAKER_01 21:21

Well, basically, yeah. I mean, it's a reality of life. You're going to, you know, you're going to upset a few people along the way. And it's just how we manage conflict and how we retain relationships, but also stand our ground when it comes to like, you know, hey, I'm I'm I need to have I need to be running this provider myself, you know, like because we're we're improving the quality overall and profit is a taboo subject, scaling is a tab taboo subject when you're talk talking about supporting people. But if if uh if every single coordinator, you know, or or you know um any anyone that has some expectations of how we should be running things, you know, it's it's Like if we gave into that every single time, our quality would be dropping for for everyone. So it's it's a matter of sticking your heels in the ground and and being like, you know, this is how we do things. So I love it.

SPEAKER_00 22:18

Because because a lot of people have this need to people please. Most high achievers, and let's be real, in your industry you're a high achiever. Okay, you've spent years doing positive behaviour support, and now you're doing it for yourself, and now you're leading others in so many ways you're a high achiever. High achievers tend to be people pleasers because we're used to being affirmed for saving the day, helping someone, solving someone's problems. But there's a lot of people who will put a problem on you when you're a business owner, and it's like, hold on, but that's outside of the scope of what I do, and that's also outside the scope of what I charge for. And I'm just not going to do that because I could sure I can like you could meet their goal, but then someone who's actually paying you is not gonna have their needs met. And uh it's like a lot of people use their inbox as a to-do list on their emails. Well, your inbox is just someone else's to-do list that ended up in in your court. So I'm I'm hearing you say you're beating that people-pleasing thing by resetting who am I here for, what do I do, what do I not do? And if if what if people are gonna make requests or to be honest, demands of you for things outside of outside of scope, well, that's okay, but they're just gonna have to choose a different PBS practitioner. Um how how did you how did you develop that skill set and that mindset? Because you you wouldn't have had that a couple months ago because you didn't need it.

SPEAKER_01 23:32

Yeah. Um I mean it was it was quite a steep learning curve for for leadership. Because it, you know, it's it's it's not something that it's it's something you have to go through to understand it. And I guess in in the world of PBS, you know, this is relevant as well. You know, positive baby support practitioners work against the NDIS capability framework. But you know, our scope, uh, as I moved up as a practitioner, I realized like scope is a very confusing thing for a lot of people of what PPS do. So yeah, it was just understanding my own scope. Yeah, and working out how to be a leader. I guess things I did was I got I got a business coach. So yeah, Michael, you know, you you've been you've been helping me along the way as well. Even, you know, um, sorry to plug plug the podcast again, but I was listening to podcasts before I even got registered. You know, before I even made the decision to do this, I was I was listening to NDIS podcasts, familiarizing myself with the NDIS, you know, uh how to become a better practitioner before I can, you know, move into say proficient or or core and anything like that. Like just just uh LinkedIn, even LinkedIn, saying hello to people, saying g'day, you know, and and not not feeling worried about reaching out to a director or or someone, you know, just having a chat with people, not not coming into things, you know, sort of desperate or you know, needing something, or we call that Machiavellianism, you know, using people as a means to an end. Just just reaching out to people, having a genuine conversation, like how hey, like how do you how do you find this? How do you yeah, um, just just stuff like that. Just really if you love the sector we're in, you will naturally in your spare time go out and see things.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Yeah, good work. And I mean, all of those, all the time you spent on that, whether it was on getting coached or whether it was just learning from podcasts, I think there's like 50 of these podcasts episodes that people could learn from. It's like all that stuff pays off because you it's like you're you're planting an hour of your time here, but you're gonna harvest 50 hours in savings of time later. But it's it's a hard thing to get your mind around because when you're used to working for dollars for hours, like most employees are, you're not thinking about I'm here to build. Like something that worries me, Matt, is there's a there's about a four-hour training that I need to do that I've I've been wanting to do for three weeks, haven't done it yet. And I looked at myself today in the mirror and went, what Michael? You have not invested four hours in yourself in three weeks. What's wrong with you? But it but I mean, those are the decisions you make so that in a year or two life life is easier. Matt, hat off to you. Like, and the stuff that you're talking about of growing your leadership skills, learning how to build systems, learning how to lead people, like you said, of leading people but not being needy about it. It's like, oh, if if this is not for you, it's not for you. Or if it is for you, great, let's let's team up in these ways. This has probably been like the biggest learning six months of anyone's life. Like, I guess for me, what what I think here is how are you gonna go from where you are now, which is busy but not out of control, but busy, focused, but not ludicrously focused, like focused on the right things, helping people, etc., not on the stress that used that all of us used to be in the early days. How are you gonna go from that to a business that you can basically have running smoothly in the background while you go and have a long weekend with your partner and not have to think about it? What's that gonna be like for you? And what what do you think your steps are to get to there?

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Yeah. So there's three buckets. Well, there's probably more than three buckets, but you know, there's the usual marketing, investing time into marketing is is huge. There's such returns in marketing, and and even you know, thing things like YouTube's how to do a Google search campaign for Google Ads, just teaching yourself sort of little things along the way, so you can at least sit at the table and have a conversation about these things when you do bring in someone to marketing or you know, but the important thing for me is is um you know being different as well, sort of like having having our own sort of feel, our own way about doing things, bringing sort of a new new uh breath of life into into PBS. Because unfortunately, I've you know I've seen a few um few providers in my time that it's just it's like how do they even get registered with NDIS? You know, so it's it's like I I want to come in here and make sure that you know the people that are on board with us have someone in their circle, have someone in their corner. So that that attention to detail, the fast faster systems, I guess also keeping things lean while we're at this stage is is an important thing to me. So as you mentioned, not growing too fast and and keeping our overheads low is quite an important one. But yeah, I I guess um culture as well. Um I'm really working on having a having a culture, having a team culture. In our Slack, you know, um channels, we have uh little social one and I'm getting ideas for what we can do for regular cat regular catch-ups because you know we are a work from home company right now. We might have an office one day, but um yeah, just whether that be coffee catch-ups or or virtual coffees or any anything that breaks out of the mundane is is important to us.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Okay. That makes sense. So I'm I'm seeing your brain's ticking with I can relax when, and then it's almost like your mind's wanting to tick off all these things. Okay. The challenge is going to come that you'll you're succeeding and you will succeed, and the growth will mean there's always more boxes to tick. Okay, so and that's that's the hard bit. So that's where directors, like not at your stage, but maybe two to three months down the track, they they can wear out because instead of just instead of knowing when it's harvest season we harvest, but when it's like it's not harvest season, we we slow down a bit. Being able to pace ourselves, like so when you said you do one positive step per day, that's beautiful pacing. But also to have people that that will run the system. So while if you're if you were to go away for say Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, pre-planned, your virtual assistant who's highly effective at at what she does, would make sure that nobody's gonna die. It's gonna be fine, and that if something goes wrong, she knows who to call. Okay, so they can all get get built in and stuff like that because you've been sprinting, but we can only sprint for so long. Do you know what I mean? So that there'll probably need to be like a season of of a bit of rest come up soon because that way our relationships outside of work don't fail. You know, our our relationship with our partner or wife doesn't fail, our relationship with friends don't um become depleted. I can also hear that like this part of you, you're not quite sure how you're going to market yourself or whatever in in some areas, but the reality is not many PBSs out there are responding to people's emails the same day. So you you've already found a niche, and the niche is we we treat you in a way you want to be treated, and very quickly you'll get more word of out of word of mouth out of that than anyone else will. And then until that becomes industry standard, maybe in a year or two as the work dry dries up, then that's when you'll need to to go and like re-niche into something a bit more specific. Does that make sense?

SPEAKER_01 30:42

Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Yeah, but the the quality of what you're doing speaking for itself. So and that that saves you so much money in marketing anyway.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

Yeah, yeah. Um, you know, the thing is, is like how do you how do you uh how do you know what provider to go with? There's there's a million providers out there, how do you break the norm? And to us that that was having a presence on you know LinkedIn, having our branding as well has has been a big thing. But yeah, having that transparency, you know, from the get-go when when a referral comes in, right? At least having an automated message or or a message saying, you know, like, hey, this is the process, this is the steps, here's what we're gonna do from here. This is the waiting time. But just just having that from day dot is the important thing to us because you know, no communication, you know, it's just in the dark. And to me, that's not that's not very good positive baby support. Having that communication is is uh the way I don't know, we're gonna break out the norm. There's a whole range of things you know we can do from here, but you're you're right. Just uh taking our time, having that slow approach, not taking every single referral that comes through the door, you know. Yeah, just uh doing it. Yeah, good work.

SPEAKER_00 31:54

Yeah, I just think it's I think it's awesome because your story is such an encouraging one because there's plenty of people out there saying NDIS is hard right now, NDS is not profitable right now, NDIS is impossible. It's like, well, you've just proven it's not the truth. Because you've gone from one to four staff, your revenues are going accordingly, and the profitability will follow that because you know, let's be honest, PBS, there's a good profit margin compared to say a lot of the other areas of NDIS, but you're doing things well. So, pretty much if I lived in Perth and I need a PBS, positive behaviour support, you'd be the first person I'd get in touch with, okay? Like, just because I want to be well communicated with. How do people find Stepa? And it's STEWP R.com.au. How else would people find you, Matt?

SPEAKER_01 32:35

Yeah, you can find us on the website. So yeah, steppa.com.au, we're on LinkedIn. Um you can find us on Instagram, Facebook, yeah. So and even on our on our website, you know, there's a there's a uh link to join our community. So you can join our MailChimp. Um, you know, we we sort of have an updated sort of resource that comes out once a month.

SPEAKER_00 32:57

That's that that's that's helpful. So and if if you're driving, you can't remember all that, send me a message and I'll put you in touch with Matt. Well, Matt, it's not every day, like this is such a privilege to sit here with you and because because you and I have known each other for a couple of months now and to see how far you've come in your leadership skills and all this other stuff, but to also have you be so transparent with people about what the hard bits were. We didn't sit here and go, here's seven things that weren't perfectly. I don't think we've mentioned one that went perfectly. By the way, lots of things did go perfectly, but this that's not the purpose today. The purpose today is to go, it's hard, but it's doable, you know. Is there anything else you'd add to that? Is there one thing that people need to know before they step out and do it on their own?

SPEAKER_01 33:35

Yeah, I mean, profit isn't isn't going to be great at a start. You're you're gonna have dips, and you're probably gonna have to reduce your own salary as a director. The main thing is is having the engine running and doing things day by day, doing things properly as well. Not just being an NDIS provider, but being a a human like and having that compassion and you know goes a long way. But the profit of I guess setting up your systems, um yeah, integrations. That was one we talked about before.

SPEAKER_00 34:10

Yeah. I'm hearing you just say, do it, do it right, but have expectations that initially you the profit's not there in the early stages, but but it's gonna work. And also to sit down, do your maths at the start and know whether or not there's profit in this or not. Because the worst thing you could do is scale something that's not profitable. That would just be a horrendous problem. Well, Matt, I hope heaps of people uh get in touch with you. It's S T E Double P R Stepper. You'd get in touch with Matt or send me a message, I'll put you in touch with you. Matt, thanks for being so real. I appreciate it. Oh, thanks for having me.