Live Coaching Session: Fixing Profitability & Getting Your Time Back with Jackson Morton (Ep 61)

In this episode of the NDIS Provider Growth Journey, Michael sits down with Jackson Morton, founder of Better Support in South Australia, for a very different kind of conversation. They had only met moments before recording, and what followed was an honest discussion about the questions many young NDIS business owners are asking but do not always say out loud.

Jackson shares what it has been like building a support business in his early twenties, growing a team of 13 staff and supporting around 30 participants while trying to get the systems, compliance and structure right. The conversation quickly moves beyond growth for growth’s sake and into the harder questions around profitability, workload, identity and whether the business is actually giving enough back to the person running it.

Michael challenges Jackson to look closely at where his time is going, what could be handled by software or a virtual assistant, and why running a great service is not enough in a price-capped industry. They also talk about the danger of building a larger business that remains unprofitable, and why Jackson needs to create a business that can support his upcoming marriage rather than constantly pulling him away from it.

This is a raw and practical conversation about making better decisions before growth creates more pressure. It will be especially useful for NDIS providers who care deeply about the people they support but are starting to realise that passion alone will not make the business sustainable.

You can learn more about Jackson and Better Support at:

https://bettersupportsa.com.au/

If you want some one-on-one support, get in touch with me, michael@athletickoala.com.au.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:06

Welcome to the podcast. This is the weirdest podcast you will ever see. Jackson and I met about 40 seconds ago and we decided we're going to make a podcast of his hard questions because Jackson's started his support business about three years ago. And the questions he's got right now, the questions that everyone asks me on podcasts and stuff. Jackson, you're running better support in South Australia. You're doing it because you want to help people. I get that. What are the things that are making it hard for you to grow right now? What are the questions you've got? What are the things that make it tricky for you?

SPEAKER_01 0:37

Yeah, it's a great question. Look, happy part of the weirdest podcast. Hopefully, we can make it one of the best ones as well. Look, I honestly, I think for me, it's trying to find that sense of being a younger guy, I mean 22, 23, I've been always trying to find the balance between getting that legitimacy. So really good systems, making sure those things are tight and then also facilitating new growth. It's a weird thing of I don't want to just grow for the sake of just wanting to accept everything. I want it to be within my scope. But there's always that level of if you believe in what you're doing, and I really do with how we're serving people and looking to grow, I guess, what we're doing, there comes a time where you've got to take on a bit more and you've got to stretch what you think your team's capable of doing a bit. So I guess for me, getting that clarity on what's the best way to navigate, getting those systems right, so I can actually facilitate new people coming on board so we can actually do that well, I guess is like a bit of the balance of what I'm trying to juggle up on mind at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 1:35

Yeah, you're asking the right question. Okay, because most people are coming and they'll ask, how do I grow? It's grow what? Grow revenue, grow profitability. Like, how do I grow? Where you what you're saying is how do I grow within the scope of what we're good at? And how do I get my systems in place to be able to do that? And so how many staff do you have, roughly? 13. 13. Okay. And with 13 staff, you're serving what, 100 people? How many people are you serving in your in what you uh about about 30 at the moment, probably. Okay, so we've got a small number of people and we're doing more work with them, which is fantastic. That's way better than having a hundred clients and then having to service that. So 13 staff and that many clients. So your mission is to have systems that work so that you can disappear for a week. And the only thing you need to do when you're away is payroll, is hit the button that records stuff. So I love how you're saying stay within your scope. The the main thing for you is to look at where do you put your time and how much of that could be done by others. Because every second you spend doing admin or something like that is a second you're not spending growing the business. So when you look at how your time's being spent, how's your time currently being spent?

SPEAKER_01 2:44

Yeah, look, for the first couple of years, it was really doing everything. It was working a lot of the shift myself. It was the admin invoicing, all that side of things. Right now, as we're getting to a point where there's a bit more revenue there for me to actually upskill some of our team to do some more stuff. I've trained up some people to do some more of the accounting and bookkeeping, as well as someone who's going to take over the invoicing soon. My day-to-day probably is making sure that like the systems are doing what they're meant to do. So I guess going through there and making sure that our onboarding process as well, I've changed that service agreement. So making sure I'm looking at those, make sure they're strong. Probably a lot more like admin compliance stuff, especially because my focus right now to the medium term is look, I want to be around, I want to make sure that we're established, I want to make sure that when the changes come in the future that we're set up well. So I'm putting a lot of thought into registration side of things as well. And a lot of the a lot of the growth, I guess, would also come for me as well. So a lot of marketing stuff would go through me and growth. That's a lot of my my two things that are juggled in the air there of the kind of systems and registration and then the growth and marketing side of things at the moment, probably.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so you're gonna be paying Australians who are on your team to do your bookkeeping, is that right? And your invoicing. Okay, so one of the areas you can save some money is you can use a virtual assistant to do that skill because it's a very easy skill for someone who's not in your business to be able to use. So, for example, my bookkeeper, I've worked with her for 12 years or 13 years, she lives in the Philippines. If I was paying an Australian to do the same work, I wouldn't be able to afford to use her anywhere near as much as I do. I never even think about my bookkeeping or my invoicing, I just send her a text message and oh, what's that message? And it's hers to solve. So when you've got solutions to internal admin that's very cheap and very easy, you can afford to overpay people, and to them it's huge money. It means you can put your focus elsewhere. So the first thing I'll be looking at is getting a virtual assistant who's awesome at accounting, and you can you can do that. Another thing is software. As soon as you're talking about, say, registration, whatever, every second you spend on registration is and compliance, it's another second you're not spending marketing. Right? So people like it's the menu, not the meal. You don't go to a restaurant to look at their menu, you go there to have the meal. And registration is the menu, not the meal. Registration is the ultimate distraction. Yeah, you've got to find the way to get it done cheaply and quickly with minimal involvement from you, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:15

What's your thoughts when it comes to because I think another big distraction that's coming through as well is maybe a bit of the AI movement and integration in the AI space as well. But it also it's a weird one that the AI's capability is probably higher than the registration capability. So the the the swings are so high to there. Do you think that's something that's worth still looking at?

SPEAKER_00 5:37

I think any software you can get that does your work quicker for you or more cheaply than you can do is worth doing. So when you're saying you're doing marketing, it shouldn't take you more than three minutes to draw a post because you should be using AI to dot point it for you, and then you put in your own words. Okay. So it's a tool, it still functions like a 16-year-old work experience kid at the moment, but it's a tool you can use it, but you should not be pulling thoughts out of your head. Okay, you should see you want to get good at either Claude or Chat GBT, probably Claude, because it seems to be better now. But it's a tool, anything you can use that frees up your time is worth gold. AI that I use is WhisperFlow, W-I-S-P-R flow, which is like AI voice recognition software that types for me so quick.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Oh, nice. I I have monologue for that.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah, great. Okay, so you're saving hours there. But again, it's probably a distraction. Okay. The the bigger thing is the principles under this is you want a virtual assistant out whatever you can. Okay. And it doesn't mean that they're the ones finding people. That's not it. They're the ones filtering the work so that you can stick to your main thing. You want to pay big money for software, whatever it costs, to buy back your time. Okay. I love that you're training up your staff. The reality is if you've got multi-skilled staff, that looks great on paper, but it means you've got people who are average at a whole bunch of things doing average work. So that's why we're better off getting people to specialise in things. What sort of scale are you at in terms of do you have enough free cash flow to be able to take a full wage? Or do you not have enough free, like sorry, profitability to take a full wage yet? Where are you at, roughly?

SPEAKER_01 7:08

Well, the first couple of years I didn't draw anything from it. And I worked another job just to live because I wanted to make sure the business didn't die. And then I started paying myself for hours that I worked, and then now I've just paid myself. I'm getting married next year, so I'm preparing for that, but I'm drawing a wage from it now, which is nothing crazy. It just gets me by and it gives me enough money to save for the wedding. But that's only probably been the last probably since the seven that I've done that I've actually been able to start doing that. But it's still making a profit while still drawing a wage for it, which I guess is really encouraging.

SPEAKER_00 7:39

You're pulling a wage out and there's a profit as well, right? Yeah. And how long have you had that? How long have you been taking a wage?

SPEAKER_01 7:49

Maybe six months.

SPEAKER_00 7:51

Okay. So what that means is up until that point, you had a very time-consuming hobby. Yeah. Okay. And so you it's like you're nurturing a baby. We need to think this through. Is this a baby that you actually want to nurture? So are you drawing for me? I have to compare everything I do against the fact that I could just go and work as a school teacher like I used to be and earn 110k with my eyes closed, right? So everything I do has to be compared to that. Comparable to say what your staff are being paid per hour, are you getting a similar hourly rate? Are you getting a higher or a lower hourly rate?

SPEAKER_01 8:23

That's a good question. Um there's a couple of guys doing a fair bit of work who are probably earning more than me. I'm doing a good amount of hours, but that's also because I'm not paying myself a crazy amount, so that would make sense. I'd probably say a couple of people are right up there for what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_00 8:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:40

But it's also Yeah, I don't know. I'd have to look more into that.

SPEAKER_00 8:44

So the reality is you need to be earning one and a half times what your next staff member is earning per hour. That's very hard to do in the early stages. But otherwise, why are you doing it? The reality is I get that you've got a faith, and I get that this business is almost an expression of your faith. You want to serve people, okay? So effectively you're running a ministry but not being paid for it now. A bloke is getting married, like NGIS sort of support work, it doesn't switch off at 5 p.m. No, yeah. So if you're gonna be getting married and trying to build a life with your fiance and then wife, and you've got the phone ringing at 7 p.m. text at nine, what's gonna be the impact on your life?

SPEAKER_01 9:28

Yeah, it's it's hard to turn off, and even now. Like, I I think I'm front-loading a lot of the work now to can we get someone involved who can be a first call too? Like, what are the ways we can make it so I want better support to be beyond me? Like, it should be beyond the the visibility and impact of just Jackson. And I think I've always wanted that to be the case where there can be a level of separation there. Because at the end of the day, the teams better support is a team that we have actually working with people, and I think me being able to actually spend time thinking of that with the systems side of things to get someone with the first call to action who are good at it, who wanted to learn more and want to help out and be involved, means that it doesn't just die on the sort of me if I'm responding or not. It's also interesting as well, because when it comes to the money side of things, like there's probably a point where I've always believed that if I just make sure that the product, in this case, I guess the service we do with people is good, then we'll be okay. Like that that stuff will come as a byproduct of it, but it's certainly not being like the thing right now, because I guess the goal of it isn't to make us super profitable, it's to do what I need to do to grow. But that's maybe more of a seasonal thing than there's something that is actually helpful because what you're saying makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_00 10:47

Yeah, what we're out there, and Jackson, I know that I don't know the full story because I've only just met you, but you've fallen into this enormous pit, this enormous trap that catches 80% of people. Okay, and you can dig your way out of this very quickly because you can see it now. So the the thing is people want to scale, they want to grow, and they go, if I just do a great job, the money will come. And that's true in most industries, but you're in a price capped industry. So the government is incentivized to minimize your profitability. So if you run a pizza shop, it's up to you what you charge. If you just build do great pizzas, you're gonna be fine, right? It doesn't work like that here. You have to run super streamlined, super intelligently, super strategically, very deliberately, all within a very specific niche. Otherwise, you're not the pizza shop. All you're gonna do is have a very expensive hobby. So, what that means is you need to sit down sometime and look at every task you do and work out how you can get someone else overseas to do it, ideally. Work out every manual process you have, work out how you can pay software to do it. Okay. And we need to stop worrying about growing and start worrying about extracting the maximum profitability from what we've got. Otherwise, you're gonna grow a great big unprofitable machine that you're not gonna want to run. Okay. Let's go through your head when I suggest that.

SPEAKER_01 12:07

Yeah, look, it's it makes sense because the biggest thing is we want the doors open because I believe what we're doing, so we want to keep doing that. So we don't want to get to a place where I'm forcing my hand not to be, but also I don't know, it gives me a sense of freedom that I can actually do what I need to do to get tight on systems to make it efficient, and being it being profitable is good because it allows me to do what I need to do to maintain the quality and to maintain what I'm doing, but yeah, it's definitely it's an interesting, it is slight reapproach of what I'm probably doing because it it's never really been a honestly a huge needle mover for me, but it's also important, so I don't disregard that. It's just naturally, it's never been the thing for me. So it's always been about other things involved with the part. I think it's protecting that's really important.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

I get that. So this is time for a recalibration, Jackson. Okay. Up till now, first throwing your profile, you what's what you said, you're faith driven. What is that faith? Like, why are you doing the work you're doing? It's obviously bigger than just earning some dough. What's the story?

SPEAKER_01 13:16

Yeah, look, I'm a Christian. Um, pretty reluctant to go up from Christian family. My dad's a teacher as well, he teacher at Uttendale, and he's been there. And I think for me, I thought, oh, do I want to be a teacher? Do I want to help out with that sort of thing? I love the idea of working with younger people. And to be honest, I had an opportunity break for me where I had someone to reach out to me seeing if I wanted to do it. And I thought, you know what? This seems like the balance of what I want to do. And I think with that, it allowed me the opportunity to actually just walk alongside not just younger people, but also Christian families as well. I definitely felt like there was a need of people with children of the faith who want a mentor who can walk alongside them with a similar one as well. And a lot of our team ended up being Christian. It wasn't always specifically meant to be like that. It just I get it.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

I understand because what happens is you invite your friends and they come from the same pool. Okay, so is it all right if I'm completely real with you? Is that okay?

SPEAKER_01 14:11

You're gonna go for it.

SPEAKER_00 14:13

If you compare okay, if you compare what you're earning right now, and I love the mission focus of what you do. A lot of everyone in this industry seems to have some goal. It might be like you're saying, you're trying to do what Jason said of love God and love your neighbor. Okay, that's what you do. Okay, whereas someone else, their thing is they might have a sister who's got really significant additional needs and they're trying to help others who everyone's got their thing. So the core issue is if you were to take all the hours you put into your business right now and just charge yourself out as a one-on-one independent support worker, I've got a feeling you'd earn pretty similar money to what you're earning now. Am I right or am I mistaken?

SPEAKER_01 14:51

Let's have a quick look. I would be earning more doing the hourly versus the wage right now.

SPEAKER_00 14:56

Okay, so what does that tell you? You would earn more as an independent support worker, which is pretty darn easy to organise, yeah, than you're earning right now running 13 staff and 30 participants.

SPEAKER_01 15:11

Like, what does that tell you? It tells me the structure of things could be different if I wanted to be more profitable, or if I want to be taking home more money from what I'm doing.

SPEAKER_00 15:19

Yeah. And what's more stress?

SPEAKER_01 15:23

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Not running everybody.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

You literally could be earning the money you need if you were just an independent support worker, yet here you are taking enormous responsibility, enormous risk. You're about to get married, you need to buy a house, you need to have immense amounts of quality time with your new wife. The setup and structure of this is a bit problematic, right? So the spot you're in is, and just being as real with you as I could be, is if I was in your spot, I'd set myself a goal of I'm gonna make this situation way more profitable, I'm gonna shut it down. Because I can shut it down, go be an independent support worker, put my heart and soul into my marriage, my new marriage, instead of like because you're getting married in how long?

SPEAKER_01 16:09

Next February.

SPEAKER_00 16:09

In February, alright. Put your time into your marriage instead of providing other people with jobs. Okay, so if that's February, and say right now it's in June, I reckon three months. You make this massively profitable in three months, or you call it a day. Because 20 years from now, you're not gonna care about a business you had when in your early 20s, you're gonna care about your marriage and your kids at that point, okay. What are your thoughts on the possibility, just the idea of going, I'm gonna wrap it up? What are your thoughts there? Because you'll have a whole bunch of emotional things pulling you in seven directions.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

Would it be Oh no, I I can't wrap it up. It's my it's my passion, and this is a thing like, and maybe this is just something I've got to I've got to learn to get over. Is even though the money's on a needle driver for me, it's important, and I've never forgotten that. But there is an aspect of looking at it, it's important. I if someone came to me to buy the business for a certain amount of money, I'd say no, because it's my response, like it's my responsibility, and I think I would be worse off with my fulfillment wise if I was left with the packet and not with the people I work with better support, and it's been like that for years, so it's for me, it's it's probably just a good bump in that like even if it doesn't phase you, and even if it's okay, like it is worth looking at because if you if you don't, like the fallout of it is no money, no better support, and that's a worse outcome. So it makes sense to look at, but it's probably the balance of everything.

SPEAKER_00 17:40

All right, so there's two things at play there. So the first is you've associated your identity with your business.

SPEAKER_01 17:45

Yeah, definitely part of it.

SPEAKER_00 17:46

Yeah, you are not your business. Your business is a is no different. I don't associate my identity with my golf clubs. There's just a set of golf clubs, or my soccer boots, or the backyard trampoline that my the kids jump on. That it's completely separate. And for as long as it's not feeling separate, what'll happen is you'll make poor decisions. Okay. So that's work that only you can do at a coffee shop with a pen and piece of paper for 30 minutes and undo that, okay? Because who you are is not that. And then the second thing is if you're gonna wholeheartedly commit to this business, then it must serve you back. Right now, it's like a one-way relationship where you're giving the business everything and you're getting backless than you get as an independent sport worker. So the profitability must change, okay? Because when you look at your priorities here, the issue you've got is you don't realize how hard it's gonna be to stay married. Getting married's actually really easy. Staying married is way harder, okay? Especially when you've got kids, four hours sleep with in their first couple of years, not a second to yourselves. It's hard. And this business is going to be more difficult on your marriage than you can even imagine. Okay. So what that means is you need to accelerate how quickly you get this business to a state that it barely needs you and that it's really profitable. Okay. So it's like there's a hundred things we could do, and one of the questions you had for me just before we started this was, Michael, should I put more time into social media? Should I put more time into what's like whatever? It's like, no, no, don't put any more time in. Maximize the results of what you've got, right? Okay. Only take on clients who are highly profitable. Okay. Get that virtual assistant ASAP. You'll probably have to try two or three before you find one that you're happy with. So be it. Use software for everything you can. You're gonna need a source of revenue that's not from NDIS. There are people out there who are made of money, who have kids or young people with massive needs who will pay whatever it costs to have super awesome support. Find them and charge them appropriately. Appropriately is not the price guide rate. Okay. You shouldn't be earning this headline rate of 2%. You should be earning big bucks if you're doing a big service for someone. Okay. I think it would be wise to find those people, give them the best possible service they can get, and charge them double what you charge NDIS clients. Suddenly it's worth doing this business. Okay. Don't stay stuck to the system. The system is not on your side. Okay. You're smart, you're driven, you've got all this. Okay. I know you can do this. It's just, it's reframing what your priority is. Your priority is to make good profit so that you can put your time into your marriage, which is way more important right now as you're getting married. And then the second priority is to minimize the amount of time you have to put in. There's systems like say AirCall or something like that, where you can have a centralized phone system that, or say Sakari for text messages or whatever, centralized so someone else, ideally overseas, can be monitoring those texts that come in during the night. Can be your staff, any any one of your staff be picking up the phone. It should not be coming to you after five because this is not the stage of your life for this, right? Okay, there's all these steps that you need to take, and I know you can do it, but we won't do it unless we see the cost of it. You're going to halve the likelihood of your marriage working out if you don't fix this before, well, before February. I have no words for how hard this is. This is such a hard industry. You can help yourself a bit with systems and with profitability that you can use to pay for systems, but it's like your challenge right now shouldn't be growing, it should be maximizing. Yeah. What's going through your head? I know that I've thrown a whole bunch of stuff at you. It's not the and it's the first I've ever done a podcast with someone the first time I've met them. But it's like, what's going through your head right now? What are your thoughts? And you're welcome to say no to anything because this is your life. This is not me. But what's going through your thoughts?

SPEAKER_01 21:29

First, I love it. I love that you can just challenge you can challenge me on things and hold your line. I think you should, I think you should do that, and I respect it because I don't want to hear, oh, how can I help? And then maybe try this, or you could give this a go. If you believe your experience and that that is something to look at, then it would be foolish of me to not spend time looking into it. And I think it also gives me a sense of a bit of confidence in the sense that a lot of my focus has gone into the system side of things with trying out different software, trying the plots, like trying the claw integration side of things. How can I keep things confidential, private, and take away my mental bandwidth being the the way we get quality? It shouldn't be that it should be simple where someone can come up and say, I need you to do this for a day, can you do it? And it should be able to do it. And because I'm not that I'm not that smart. I'm not, it's not like I'm that sharp or anything, it's just I've committed to doing something for long enough. So, yeah, I think it's very important, and my marriage is very important to me. So, getting that right and setting myself up, I will do anything I can to do that well. So, absolutely worth looking into.

SPEAKER_00 22:36

Wow, it sounds like today's been awesome for you. This conversation is the sort of conversation I have when I'm coaching people, okay? Um you're gonna need external people who are speaking to your life, helping you be aware of what you don't yet know. You're very wise because I can see you want to learn. Today you've got to recalibrate. Okay. Now, obviously, people who are hearing this can hear that you're awesome at your support work. Okay. What's your website? How do people who are listening to this podcast get in touch with you?

SPEAKER_01 23:01

Yeah, look, I'm on better supportsa uh.com.au, uh online. My social medias are the same, or you can just find me at Jack's Morton. Although I'm not linked, my identity is not linked to me and my business. But yeah, better support is where you can find me. And I really appreciate your time, Michael. Like going through all this has been really encouraging.

SPEAKER_00 23:17

Might you if anyone can win this, you can. All right, good luck on your quest.