Some risks are spreadsheets and strategy. Others are lightbulb moments while sitting in the car, overlooking the beach.

For Carly, founder of the Support Workers Association of Australia (SWAA), the biggest risk of her career was not opening her first allied health practice Beyond Boundaries Rehab, or hiring a 22-person team. It was stepping away from a successful business to build something that did not exist yet: a national membership organisation for support workers.

“Definitely starting the Support Workers Association of Australia,” she says. “I have had to trust that my staff…will be able to continue operating with me, splitting my time, and knowing that I can still manage both of those businesses and be a mum to my three kids and a wife.”

So far, that risk is paying off.

The Light-Bulb Moment at the Beach

SWAA is a national movement designed to give support workers the training, connection, career pathways and respect they’ve always deserved. It’s fresh, it’s bold, and it’s already filling a need many people didn’t realise was missing until now.

But it did not come from a five-year plan. It started with a stormy day at the beach and a business book review.

“I was actually in the back of my car, sitting in the boot parked over the beach, listening to a book review for a business development group that I’m involved in,” Carly says.

“And as I was listening to that, it just kind of bloomed, that that’s what we need, that that’s what’s missing. I had this moment where…the rain was pouring and the view was beautiful. And that was it. It was a done deal.”

The beach was Redhead, just south of Newcastle. The idea was SWAA: a national association to support, train and champion support workers across Australia.

“It was the easiest decision in the world because it was so meaningful.”

Seeing the gap from the inside

Carly is not new to business or to support work. She started as a support worker in regional NSW, later becoming an Occupational Therapist and spending 18 years working with people with complex needs.

She also spent almost ten years building Beyond Boundaries Rehab, a multidisciplinary allied health practice in Newcastle.

“It’s a small practice based in Newcastle, New South Wales. I thought, ‘That’s doing really well, and they don’t really need me that much anymore’. So I figured, why not take on a new project?”

Working alongside support workers every day, she kept seeing the same problem.

“I work side by side within that practice with support workers and see how undervalued and under-supported they are. And decided it was time to step up and do something about it.”

SWAA was her answer.

“It’s really about connection and community. It’s about boosting the professionalism for the industry and getting the recognition that support workers deserve. It’s got to be one of the most important, if not the most important, jobs we have. So I think that it should be recognised as such and backed.”

Building something that has never existed

Unlike Beyond Boundaries, which launched into an existing NDIS landscape, SWAA is creating something new.

“It’s brand new,” Carly says. “It’s not something that’s been needed or required within the industry until now.”

That meant getting stuck into research.

“We spent a lot of time talking with employers and support workers as well to really gauge where they’re at,” she explains.

“Something we heard regularly was, ‘I want to learn more’ or ‘I want it to be my career pathway, but I don’t know where to go, what it could look like.’”

There was no neat survey or massive data warehouse behind that discovery. But it was built on the back of years of experience and some pretty honest, deep conversations and asking lots of questions – coupled with Carly’s entrepreneurial intuition and “lets do this” attitude.

“I tend to be a bit of a fly-by-the-seat-of-the-pants person,” she laughs. “I did record them and transcribe them, so I had the data to go back to, but generally speaking, we went wherever they led with their answers.”

Technically, as Carly points out, “you could say it was qualitative.” In practice, it was listening really well, and letting support workers define what they need.

Learning to ask for help (and say no to shiny balls)

Carly describes herself as a “yes person” which was both a strength and a challenge when she started Beyond Boundaries.

“If there was an opportunity to do something or try something, I was there every time,” she says. “When I started BB Rehab, I made some mistakes along the way for sure. If an opportunity was there, it was just always ‘yes’. My business mentor used to say, ‘Carly, no more shiny balls”

Her biggest lesson as a founder?

“The ability to ask for help early on. I probably have never been great at it. I just tend to try and figure it out and do it myself. It slows things down, and it leaves room for error.”

Now, she’s learnt to press pause first.

“I’m better at making myself pause and thinking, okay, what does this mean, what would that look like? I guess that’s my method – actually going back and thinking, in a few years time or in a few months’ time, what’s that going to look like? And do I actually have the capacity to commit to that?”

And it is integrity that drives a lot of her decision-making.

“I truly am a big believer in not letting people down. Integrity is really important to me. So if I say I’m going to do something, I have to do it. I want to make sure I can do that well and not let those people down.”

Culture, coffee and giant Minions mugs

At one point, Beyond Boundaries had 22 staff. “I really didn’t know what I was doing in terms of nurturing a team and team culture at the start,” she says. “I’ve learned that managing complicated scheduling is not my strong point, so I tend to avoid that now.”

What she leans into instead is purpose and connection.

“For me, it’s been about listening to your staff, seeing and identifying what they need and why they’re showing up at work every day,” she says.

“My staff show up every day, one, because they love their job and they love their clients, but they show up because they believe in what we’re building. They see the vision, so making sure that you share that with clarity with your team and make sure they feel a part of it.”

She backs this with a weekly “pulse” survey so people can give feedback and flag issues early.

“Our scores on that are consistently around 9.9 out of 10. Very occasionally, it might drop to an 8.9 or a 9.8. I’ll be like, no. Then I look at it all and go, oh no, that person’s really sick or they’ve got a client that’s really sick. It’s probably a reflection of stress levels so we can check in with them.”

There is structure – daily check-ins in an online platform, weekly team meetings and monthly face-to-face – but there is also play.

Carly tells the story of an online team meeting that felt strangely “off” until she realised something was up.

“One of them picked up her coffee and started drinking, and it was like a Minions mug, but it looked the size of a popcorn tub,” she laughs. “Then the next person picked up their cup and it looked really big too. After a couple of minutes, joke’s on you, Carly. They all had this challenge to turn up with a random object from home to drink out of – a margarita glass, a vase, a milk jug, a popcorn bucket.”

“Little rituals like that add a bit of fun to what we do, because it can be heavy sometimes.”

Routines, rituals and staying human

As a founder, clinician, mum and partner, Carly has had to build non-negotiables into her week.

“Connection with the people I work with, definitely,” she says. “Making sure I pause every morning and connect with those around me so I know, otherwise I just get stuck in my little bubble.”

Working from home, she needs to plan in breaks, too.

“A walk for me is the best thing ever. That’s where my creative brain starts to go into overdrive, and I start to process everything. And I’ll voice-to-text ideas so I don’t get stuck in front of a screen.”

Her teams use co-working calls and online platforms to avoid feeling isolated in remote work, and Carly brings in external facilitators for development days on topics like burnout and imposter syndrome.

“We do those a couple of times a year. They are really fun and so important in our industry.”

Books, movies and a message to her 18-year-old self

Carly’s recommendations for anyone building purpose-led teams:

Clockwork by Mike Michalowicz “It’s an amazing book about making sure your systems are really organised. The best test for your business is to take a three-month holiday, then come back and fix the problems. My team know the guts of how things operate better than anyone, so we work on it together.”

Out of My Mind (Disney +) “A magnificent movie about inclusion and empowerment. I made my whole team watch it at a team development day. They all cried. One of them went home, watched it with her kids and husband, and I got a very firm text from her husband because it was the first time in 22 years he had cried.”

If she could go back and talk to her 18-year-old self, the advice is simple:

“Don’t be in a rush to grow up,” she says. “Enjoy being young and do all of those things before you have so much responsibility.”

She still wishes she had worked overseas and travelled more. But she does not regret being the person who says yes.

Now, she is saying yes to a different kind of challenge: building a movement for support workers nationwide.

“Everything is fixable,” she says. “If you make a decision and it’s not the decision I would have made or it’s not the decision that’s worked the very best way, that’s okay, we just fix it.”

SWAA is Carly’s next big fix – for an industry that quietly holds up thousands of lives every day.