Values-Aligned Visibility in the NDIS with Kristin Rieck

Craig Minter (00:00.898)
Hello everybody and welcome to the Healthy Business Lab podcast where we interview awesome people in the allied health and NDIS related space, business owners, business connectors and the like for all their insights and knowledge. And today I’m super excited to have Kristin Rieck from New Wave Care on the episode today. Kristin, welcome to the call.

Kristin Rieck (00:21.654)
Thank you so much for having me Craig and hi listeners, how are we?

Craig Minter (00:26.326)
Yes. I’m excited for our chat. because we got connected through networking and connections and all those sorts of things. And you know, That’s definitely what you are, an absolute, an amazing connector, is what I’ll say already having experienced, what you do and how you go about it. I’d love for you to fill the listeners in on a bit of your background and where you fit into the, the NDIS and allied health space.

Kristin Rieck (00:52.906)
I started in the industry quite a while ago now. I lose track of the years, they all blend into each other. Initially, I got into the industry after caring for mum. She had stage four breast cancer. I had never worked in any line of care.

After going through that journey with her, I decided I’d work a couple of other jobs after that, and then landed on my feet with an amazing disability equipment store that gave me the start out, and then moved into support work and did quite a few years in support work and now working in essentially a BDM role, but I’m known as the hype girl at New Wave Care.

Craig Minter (01:32.204)
Love that. I love that terminology. We’ll get to experiments and stuff later on, but even experimenting with labels and businesses, and the like, because you’ve also in amongst that, you’re now the hype girl in that regard, but you’ve also run your own businesses well in the NDIS space. You’ve got a pretty vast experience in the space at the end of the day.

Kristin Rieck (01:40.798)
Yeah.

Craig Minter (01:58.434)
Let’s jump into the experiments. The experiments that you’ve done in business, whether it was on your own and that evolution going from support working into your own business, into what you do today. What are some of the experiments that have stood out for you that you’ve tried along the way?

Kristin Rieck (02:14.898)
Yeah, I guess so. Being a sole trader was incredibly daunting. right? I was working an amazing full time opportunity when I sort of dipped my toe in doing a couple of hours, you know, support outside of my standard job just to see if it was something that I could do. That’s an experiment in itself, right? You’re taking a bit of a risk and you’re stepping away from what feels safe and what’s normal.

Kristin Rieck (02:39.948)
I actually feel like I want something more from my career. I worked for a provider very briefly, but was transparent with them. I wanted to be a sole trader, and they were very supportive. actually. They were like, okay, well, you you do need to get some experience with a provider. We’re happy to be that person. And when I launched my business, I was like, how can I be that point of difference? You know, How can I be different?

I guess I was a disability PT as well. I was doing support work, but also showing up as a disability PT. So, getting to share the journey of my participants obviously with consent, of course, you know, their fitness journeys on social media became a really great point of interest. When I had the business, people loved checking into the page to see you know, what my participants were up to, which was really, really cool. And I guess moving into New Wave Care, that was something that had always stayed with me and I’d worked for another provider and had social media control but like just wasn’t really myself. like We weren’t values-aligned, unfortunately. When I came to New Wave Care I said, you guys are my people. One of the conditions of me taking on the job was, hey, I wanna actually run our social media.

When I sat down with the directors, they’re like, okay, well, you we’re paying a contractor at the moment. We’re happy to talk about this. What does it look like? When I told them what I wanted the socials to look like, they were like, this is amazing. And I said, New Wave Care is doing all the things. You guys are incredible. Your team’s incredible. Your participants are. We’re not seeing it there from our participants, let’s celebrate them. Let’s celebrate our staff and show the world what you know, an incredible provider actually looks like and what it feels like to be supported by that provider as well.

Craig Minter (04:34.676)
We love that. I love that in so many ways and we will get to that social media and what you’re doing there now. But I’d also love to go back to the kind of moments and that transition from running your own business to then going back and working for a business that what you’ve just shared there is so super aligned. That’s a very interesting thought process, because many business owners, I know I’ve said to myself and I struggle, it’s like, “I could never work for somebody else” idea. And therefore, I know we start to tell ourselves stories around that. Then what in some ways experimenting, going back into working in somebody else’s business, how did you work through that process and how did that evolve around that time?

Kristin Rieck (05:23.404)
A bit of a personal story actually. I guess for me, I was loving being a support worker. I absolutely loved all my participants, you know, we were making great achievements in their lives. Unfortunately for me, behind closed doors, I was going through a really hard personal time and I made the decision. I woke up one day and I thought, I’m not showing up for my participants 100%, you know, and I’m not in this industry to show up at 80%, 50%, whatever. Like I’m there to be 110% giving my all.

That day, I contacted all my participants and I said, look, I’m really sorry. I am actually going to take a step back from the business and close it down. I obviously didn’t share what was going on behind closed doors, but I was there to support them, reaching out and saying, okay, I’m not just gonna close up the shop today. You’re not gonna have support. Let’s find you the right support and get that in place. Stepping back into someone’s business was really hard, but I guess at the same time, I knew it was the right thing to do for the participants I was supporting at the time and I wasn’t sure how long of a pause I would need. I was like, “how would I go getting another job in the sector? Because I didn’t want to leave. I love what I do. I love connecting with other providers, helping participants, like every part of what I do, I love. And so, that was when I looked into being a BDM for a business. Cause I’m like, okay, well I want to still be connected to the people we’re supporting. I want to help support workers as well. So not close the door on them and be like, I’m a manager, go do your job. I want to be the BDM that they can pick up the phone and say, hey, I know you’ve been a support worker. Talk to me about what you would do in this situation. When I landed at New Wave Care, all of that happened. Everything that I wanted, these guys have basically said, absolutely, we’re going to back you 110%.

Whatever you wanna do with the job, we love who you are and what you bring to the table. Finding a provider that values-aligned is probably the biggest part of finding how to separate yourself from your own business and integrate into a new one because it’s difficult. right? You used to be your own boss, you made your own hours, you did all the things, and you took on the complex clients that are often providers will go, no, too many red flags, turn away. But with New Wave Care, there was none of that. They see those challenges and they wanna help people. So hey, complex care is not an issue for us. “Kristin, can we sort of help these people? Who can we bring in?” And I just love those conversations. So The values were so aligned.

Craig Minter (07:56.334)
Yeah, That’s cool. And I really appreciate you sharing and highlighting that part of the process all came from a self-care perspective. “How do I look after myself?” And you looked after that first, it’s the old, you know, aeroplane analogy oxygen cord there, but then, you know, the next thought was, well, how do I make this a nice smooth transition for my people? I’ve built a business that you know, is very caring and centered. How do I actually approach that? There’s many business, different points going, is that an option? Here’s a process I could look at. If they’re in a sitting on the fence point, do I continue in business or not? Some people might think it’s a failure or failure in business, but it’s not, it’s actually a transition that’s actually progress and really positive because you’ve managed to look after yourself as well as looking after the people that you’ve been involved with and it actually has more potential to then amplify what you’re doing. So yeah, It’s brilliant.

Kristin Rieck (08:59.757)
Absolutely, and it was just so heartbreaking to close that chapter, but at the same time, we have to remember it is a human support service, so for me, it’s like when carers go through burnout, obviously it is hard as well to make a call at that time, but realising you need to be at 100% for the people we’re going and supporting. It’s a really hard call to make, but one I still am so glad that I did for my participants more so than myself.

Craig Minter (09:48.046)
Yeah, really appreciate that. I think moving on to that of finding the aligned component of where to next, which is no different to being in business yourself, you need to be aligned in what you’re doing and what you’re trying to achieve. Being out to explore the opportunities to say, well, here’s what else he’s out there, who aligns, how does it work? And then moving forward, and you touched upon there, that notion of still being able to continue to tell your stories and using social media to do that. I’d love to jump into that exploration of the experiments in the social media space that you’ve done over time, some of the things that have worked well or what you’ve learnt over time.

Kristin Rieck (10:28.533)
Yeah, so I guess more so obviously we’ve capped off on like the being a sole trader and using social platforms to kind of share those stories and obviously always with consent. I’m a big consent person. I don’t want participants to ever feel pressured to share their story, but a lot of people also love being able to know that they’re a part of your business, but also having their story out there like celebrating their milestones. I guess I have my previous provider to thank for taking that to the next level.

When I started as a BDM within the sector, as I mentioned, I was working for another provider and they said, look, we use LinkedIn. And I was like, I had LinkedIn when I was 20, I’m very far from 20 now. And they’re like, we found your profile. you know, it’s there. I’m like, that’s 20 year old me. If I look like that now, I wish. But anyway, so thanks to them, I obviously got thrown into the LinkedIn world.

And initially, I don’t know how to navigate this. But Over the past I think I’ve been on there now for maybe 15 months, I could be wrong. But I’ve sort of started to find what content I need to share. And I talk to a lot of BDMs and a lot of people in the sector because they kind of reach out because they’re like, I love your content, but how did you actually get confident to share some of the things you share?

And you know, Craig, I am very public about being neurodivergent and breaking stigma, but also being an advocate for people with disabilities and also just not being scared to talk about BDM’s doing things wrong in the sector, providers doing things wrong in the sector. Joining New Wave Care, I sort of said, during the interview process, can we have look at my LinkedIn profile and it wasn’t because I wanted to celebrate that I was the connector queen of people. It was like, can we just accept that if you hire me, this is the kind of content that I share. This is me and I think reality was, like the previous provider was great and I wish them all the success and you know, they’re gonna be fantastic, but we just didn’t values-aligned. And then when you kind of move into another provider, you want to sort of say, this is me and it’s take it or leave it. And because I had been diagnosed, many years back now, I’ve kind of dealt with the diagnosis, how I needed to become very self-aware and gone, okay, well, how do I use how I’m feeling and who I am as a person to tell others, you know, we don’t have to spend our lives masking.

But to also be confident to say, this is what I need from a company and this is how I want to show up. Are Are we on the same page here? The directors at New Wave Care looked at it they said, we just love you. You’re just such a little ball of energy. That leads into obviously the title, which we’ll get back to. My job title is not BDM, as we all know.

I actually trained all of our staff at New Wave Care when I started on how to use LinkedIn. I’ve done a post before about professional but also personal branding, because we’ve got a platform at our dispense where we want to show what the business does, but we always want to show who we are as people, as well, because what we find, or at least what I found is with my content.

Obviously some people or some of your listeners might look me up and go “this chick is crazy” and not want to follow, but that’s okay. because We’re obviously not values-aligned or I’m just not your person and that’s okay because everyone has their circle of people. And I think when we are sharing who we are and what we do as providers, we get those people gravitate towards us that need to be in our space as well.

Craig Minter (14:18.114)
Yeah, I love that. And I think that’s that notion of just being and you’ve already said this before, it’s that super aware and understanding of who I am, where I’m at, where I’m going, and then going the right people will align with that. Again, if I share who I am, then that’s great. It just makes it nice and straightforward. We’ve talked about LinkedIn, there’s a few people that obviously, because most of the people I guess, are connected via LinkedIn.

What are some of the experiments that you’ve found? If I go a little bit further on that idea of the business and personal branding, what are the experiments that you’ve done? Across those sort of two areas that you’ve found worked well or that you’ve learned from when you’ve tried things, say on the personal side versus the business and making sure that that is still aligned. How do you go about that?

Kristin Rieck (15:10.903)
When your values are aligned with the provider you’re working for, it’s quite easy, really. Your content’s obviously going to be quite similar to what you share as a person. But for me, when people look me up, I live on a farm. I do share a little bit of funny kind of posts about how my chickens teach me things or what fences on a property, how that interacts with NDIS world, which sounds crazy until you read the post, right?

I’m also the girl that has a cowboy hat on in her profile picture, but those types of things are conversation starters. With LinkedIn, I guess I was always a bit of a numbers girl when I started. I was like, how many people are liking my posts? How many people are you know, engaging with comments? I sat down with an expert in LinkedIn and I said, I’m done, I’m not posting anymore. I remember him saying, don’t get caught up in the bars, don’t get caught up in the likes, don’t get caught up in the comments. It was so weird that after that comment was made, I started obviously increasing networking because people were gravitating towards my content.

They weren’t liking it, they weren’t commenting, but I’d jump on a networking call and they’re like, Kristin, that post about whatever, and it could have been a month ago, but they’ve remembered it. Now I always say to people, LinkedIn is a funny world where it don’t actually focus on who’s liking every post because the reality is, they might have taken the time, and I write some lengthy posts, I’ll tell you, but people will read like this novel. They haven’t liked it, they haven’t commented, they’ll inbox me, they’re chatting with me a week later, a month later on a networking thing. I guess, finding who you are. So like, I live on a farm, I want to share that chapter with people, because I love the farm and it’s quite funny to share different things that happen. But also then going into the business side of things.

New Wave Care is Brisbane, Sunshine Coast based. We’re very like beachy, coastal, so then shifting that and going, some of it needs to be related to like the ocean and our incredible participants down there as well. But I think When you look at a business, I always say with LinkedIn, again, if you have a business page, as a personal or a staff member, whoever you are within the business, you need to be sharing that content from that business page to your personal page. because In my experience, the algorithms don’t favor like your business pages, they’ll favor the personal pages. That’s where you’re getting that exposure by saying, hey, here’s New Wave Cares post and like you might write a bit about it, you might not, you might just throw it out there.

Kristin Rieck (17:48.673)
That’s how your business will get exposure. Training the team and saying, you know, I want you to show up exactly who you are. I had full backing from the directors. They’re like, we want everyone to be who they are because we love who all of our staff are and what they bring to the table. How do we get that onto social media? Doing those one-on-one sessions with them and saying, okay, tell me about you and let’s sit here now and adjust your profile to reflect who you are. Talk about content and get them really set-up. Building that confidence in the team too.

Craig Minter (18:19.928)
Yeah, I love that. And I think what you touched upon there, just that idea why, again, LinkedIn is quite good in the NDIS and allied health space is that the idea of the separation where you do have the business profile and your personal profile and LinkedIn obviously likes the personal profile but there’s a clear distinction there between notably, what could be business, what’s personal, and then you can sort of show how they interrelate as to why you are with the business. It’s a nice synergy between the two of those I find.

Kristin Rieck (18:53.611)
Yeah, Absolutely.

Craig Minter (18:55.532)
Yeah, cool. Talking about social media and LinkedIn, but I do want to get to, you know, more experiments. And I know you’ve been doing some cool experiments right at the moment as well. What’s the latest experiments that you’re working on in across business and personal branding?

Kristin Rieck (19:10.517)
Yeah so, a bit of both is happening. really. And I know when we spoke last year, and this is embarrassing, I had my own personal stuff in the works. And I guess I kind of pumped the brakes because I was changing across to New Wave Care and I wanted to sit down and kind of make sure they were okay with my little hobby project.

But I can safely say now that it has all been happening. So, I guess with part of my role is and my lived experience as well, I get to connect with so many people and create a safe space for them to talk about their journeys, whether it be in the sector or like I can go to the shop and someone will be talking to me about some empowering story. And I’m like, this is crazy. There’s so many incredible people out there doing wonderful things.

It was peer pressure in a way, Craig. It was peer pressure. Last year, a lot of people that connect with me on LinkedIn were, Kristin when is your podcast dropping? Everyone’s doing a podcast, where’s yours? And I was like, I’m studying. I don’t have time for that. You know, We’ve got a farm. We don’t have time for that. So all the excuses happened. But I guess having those conversations day in, day out with people that are working in different providers or you know, outside in the community, I was like, right, I’ve got to do something about this.

I started my own podcast called Rise Riot and basically that’s what we focus on. I’ve created a space where empowering stories are basically heard. That is not necessarily within the NDIS sector. We will have people that can share their journey through the sector, but also reaching out to the world, like who has these empowering stories and how can that help people kind of see the light at the end of the tunnel of what they’re going through. But also being neurodivergent as you know, Craig, I love breaking the stigma around that and being like, hey, I’m a leader, I’m neurodivergent. How do we start getting directors to realise that actually neurodivergent people can be a massive asset to your business?

And so there, the conversations that were sort of leaning into at the moment. Really excited for people to jump on board and listen to that and hopefully love the content that we throw out there.

Craig Minter (21:16.332)
Yeah, that’s super cool. And again, I’ve shared many times on this podcast that this podcast itself was an experiment for me. I plan to do a hundred episodes, see what the impact is, see what the outcomes are and then then where to from there. So, if I put that lens on, you know, as you go into doing these podcasts, it’s kind of a bit of a evolution and again, a bit of a few taps on the shoulders. and the like. But once you became serious you’re going Hey, cool. I’m going to do this podcast,

I guess, how have you sort of then position that out as to you touch upon some of the outcomes you’re after? and the like, how you then evolve it and you know, do you have a I don’t like using the word endpoint, but you know, milestone points that you’ve got along the way as to shaping how you might pivot and change course with the podcast over time?

Kristin Rieck (22:11.073)
Look, I don’t think that we’re there yet, but I’ve been talking with a lot of people that are quite successful podcast hosts, I guess understanding what directions they’ve taken the podcast as well. For me, Rise Riot is very much a hobby at this stage. Who knows what it will be. So I guess for me, It was just being that voice and that safe space for people to come and have conversations and having my lived experience in different topics. It’s really nice to be able to connect. and

I know even yesterday I was talking to a friend and she was hounding me, because as you and I are recording this, I’m sort of ready to launch it, it’s gonna happen. But she was like, Kristin, what’s going on? Why isn’t it launched yet? And she, I was checking in on her mind you, and she turned around and she said, “I’m gonna flip the script on you because you’re having conversations that people need to hear and you’re gonna do something amazing and you just need to stop being neurodivergent, Kristin. Hit publish and let it go to the world because I think you’ll see in time, it’ll be really, really amazing.” So, look, I just have to kind of hope that everyone that’s peer pressuring me as I call it into doing this, but all the people that have backed it as well along the way are right. And we just see what happens with it. Like I have been told so many times to write a damn book about my life. And I’m not writing a book. Like I’m neurodivergent. I struggle. Like, I don’t know if anyone else that’s neurodivergent struggles, but reading is not my forte. Like If I listen to a podcast, I could listen for seven hours a day. If I’ve got to read it, you’ve got about five minutes of my attention span and I’m like, yeah, I’m out. so I couldn’t imagine writing it.

Craig Minter (23:47.362)
We’ll watch this space. Who knows what we’ll have in the future. We’d love to get returned guests on and see how these experiments have gone. You know, the continuing social media and the podcasts and who knows? I’m not going to say a book, but you never know what might happen in the future.

Kristin Rieck (24:01.329)
Don’t wish that upon me.

Craig Minter (24:02.19)
We always like to round our conversations off, as well here with, you know, some of the transformations you’ve seen as a result of, you know, what you’ve been involved in and what you’re doing in your businesses and the roles that you’re taking on. I’d love for you just to share anything and as you know, know, the personal details or anything like that, but just those some of those outcomes that you’ve seen because of the work that you do.

Kristin Rieck (24:31.435)
Yeah, so I guess transformations, let’s go New Wave Care focus specifically. Joining them, obviously, like I said, I sat down in the interview and I sort of Got to the point in my career where I was like, I really know what I want from a job. I do love working from home for a lot of reasons. I don’t like the distractions. And obviously at the time when I took on the role, there was a lot less BDMs working fully remote, but I’m starting to see a trend now where people are realising that team sessions mean that we don’t have to jump in cars and drive 30 minutes and lose hours within the day where we could have been networking or we could have been doing more. But when I sat down with New Wave Care, I spoke to them about Rise Riot and I was like “this is what I want to do with my hobby and a transformation out of that was, hey, can we do one for New Wave Care as well?” I love that idea. Now being that business where they’re like taking on my ideas and saying, we actually love this and we want to be that business that’s a point of difference as well. How do we do that? Allowing me to gain control of social media and actually drive that. And I think that’s so important for a BDM. And I did a post, you know, back in May about, this where I was like, BDM sometimes are missing the mark. right? And It’s really about you’re out there to tell people about a business. How do we tell people about a business if we don’t know how to show them how we’ll make them feel if they work for us or if they’re supported by us? For me, that’s where that social media element came in. Those transformations for the New Wave Care was me joining and going, okay, well, you’ve got all these great ideas.

We love this. We’re paying other contractors to run social media that aren’t an employee through our business. They don’t see the ins and outs of everything as well. Yeah, let’s do what you say. That’s great.

Craig Minter (26:20.322)
Love that. And you know, The ripple effects that happen off the back of that by people sharing those stories, getting that out into the world more. I only hate that, you know, flow on effect down the river, so to speak. That’s awesome. I really appreciate you sharing today, Kristin and excited to hear as we do here.

We always want to know how can people connect. We’ve talked about LinkedIn and obviously podcasts, which we’ll obviously put in show notes, but just to reconfirm and share anything else that we haven’t touched upon here. What’s the best way for people to connect with you?

Kristin Rieck (26:55.991)
Obviously LinkedIn and Rise Riot has its own email address. Always looking for people with empowering stories at riseriotpodcast@gmail.com, but more importantly, connecting with New Wave Care. I’ve actually thrown our director into the mix of doing our podcast for New Wave Care as well. So creating waves podcast, we’re hoping to have it launched by the time Craig drops this podcast.

We’ll have to get all that over to you but also check us out on Facebook, and Instagram, as well as LinkedIn. Brendan and Brad, the directors are absolutely fantastic. I love, you know, that I’ve basically said, well, If I’m doing this podcast, we need a director involved and Brendan’s like, yeah, cool. I love that idea. So poor Brendan now has to co-host with me.

Craig Minter (27:46.124)
Love it, love it. Looking forward to following them along ourselves.

Kristin Rieck (27:57.343)
Like always, you know, Craig, happy to help everyone. So anyone in the sector, I get a lot of people that are new community engagement partners or you know, BDMs or whoever, drop me a message on LinkedIn, connect with us. We are always looking for amazing support workers and we’re always welcoming new participants as well. So, yeah, kristin@newwavecare.com.au is how you can reach me, if you want to drop me an email as well.

Craig Minter (28:27.566)
That is absolutely awesome. I can’t recommend people enough to do that. Thank you again for sharing your insights and knowledge on our podcast today.

Kristin Rieck (28:40.449)
Thank you.

Craig Minter (28:50.068)
Like, subscribe, do all the things you should be doing and all the social media people tell us to do and we’ll see you again next time. Bye, everybody.

Kristin Rieck (28:58.593)
Thank you so much.