#awinewith Kristine Hewett
MEET Kristine, Co-Founder of Adamas Nexus.
You can find them here:
Transcript
Danielle Lewis (00:07):
Amazing. Christine, welcome to Spark tv. Hi,
Kristine Hewett (00:12):
Lovely to be here.
Danielle Lewis (00:13):
I am very excited to have you here and share your story. Let's just dive in and tell everyone who you are and what you do.
Kristine Hewett (00:22):
My name is Christine Hewitt and I am co-founder and director of a charity that is called Adamus Nexus, which is a post-crisis support group for women who have been through domestic family and sexual violence.
Danielle Lewis (00:38):
Wow. So how did this come about?
Kristine Hewett (00:42):
That's a very good question. My business partner and I, way back in probably, I don't know, probably 2015, we decided we wanted to try and get out from working for other people and we had a couple of little dabbles in different things, but somewhere along the way the journey kind of changed a little bit and we decided we wanted to try and help women who had been through what we had. We both have childhood domestic violence backgrounds and we were wondering why some people can get on with life and thrive and some people can't. And we were wondering why we were two people that were able to seemingly do that. Not perfect by any means, still seeing a psychologist. Don't get me wrong, it's not perfect at all. But what we've figured out was that we had support. We'd found support in different ways and we were supporting each other. So we thought, well, how can we do this and help other women to do the same? And my domestic violence childhood consisted of having an alcoholic parent and I ended up going to a 12 step program called Al-Anon, not aa, which is for the alcoholic Al-Anon is actually for the family members and the friends that surround the alcoholic.
Danielle Lewis (02:03):
I didn't even know that existed.
Kristine Hewett (02:05):
I know, and a lot of people don't. So it is myriad very much on that 12 step program that is aa, except it's a support group for people who are living with or have lived with or have grown up with an alcoholic. So it was very much an eyeopener for me actually attending that group because no matter how much your brain tells you that you can't be the only person in the world that feels the way you do and has been through what you've been through until you sit in a circle of people and hear them saying something that you thought or felt or reacted in a certain way, you don't really actually believe it until you literally are sitting in that group and hearing it. So we very loosely decided to model a group on that sort of semi 12 step type program very loosely, but that's what we thought we would do.
Danielle Lewis (02:53):
I love it. So then, okay, talk to me about then, if I was someone in need of support, what would I do? How would I find out about you? What process would I go through? What's kind of put me in the, I don't feel like saying customer's shoes is right in this space.
Kristine Hewett (03:13):
No, that's right.
Danielle Lewis (03:14):
Disciplines,
Kristine Hewett (03:15):
Attendees.
Danielle Lewis (03:17):
Yeah, exactly.
Kristine Hewett (03:19):
So we've been going now for five, nearly six years. We only became a charity in the middle of 2021. We were sort of running it under a company prior to that, which is its own little business. And another set of challenges, as many of your listeners would know. Sorry, what was the question again? I've just had a green
Danielle Lewis (03:40):
Wine. No, I know. Oh my God, after you were talking, I was like, I feel like a bit naughty now that we're sharing a glass of wine together. No. So if I was a potential person that needed support, how would I find out about you and what would the process be that you would take me through? Yeah,
Kristine Hewett (03:58):
So these days if you Google domestic Violence Support group, we'll actually pop up in your search, which is amazing considering we have done no SEO ourselves. But what we did do, and we did a lot of in the first couple of years, which we went out and saw other services, other services that were in crisis. So your domestic violence crisis services or your rape centers, your victim supports, all of those sorts of services. So we went out and face-to-face, met with them and told them what we were doing and we get a lot of referrals from them. But yes, as a result of having a lot of those back links as a lot of your business people would probably know and understand, a lot of people find us through that or they might be seeing their psychologist and they get referred. They might be seeing one of those in crisis services and get referred lots of different ways. But yeah, it's pretty much a word of mouth a lot of the time.
Danielle Lewis (04:49):
Yeah, amazing. So then now that you're official charity, how are you funded? How do you actually get the funds to make this available to women?
Kristine Hewett (05:00):
So originally we self-funded ourselves to get everything set up and it was probably running on a bit of a shoestring as a result, but that was fine. Now we do live a lot on grants, so we do a lot of grant writing. We've been very lucky that we have always got enough to help to pay for the back office invoices, which again, all of your listeners will know they're a lot of them and they add up, but also why do they
Danielle Lewis (05:25):
Keep coming?
Kristine Hewett (05:26):
I know they're always there, you need to keep up. But also to fund perhaps something that we might be wanting to do, getting better branding. Once we really got going and got a quorum of people coming, we wanted to just look that little bit more professional given that we had branded ourselves and build our own website and done all of these things ourselves. And we are not gurus in any of that, by the way. So yes, pretty much grants and donations when we can get them as well. So that's a bit of a constant thing in the background for us is looking for grants and getting the money in that way.
Danielle Lewis (06:00):
And I guess that's interesting. If you are a type of organization that doesn't require or rely on sales, as in customer sales and customer revenue, you still have a sales role in a sense because you are revenue raising, so donations, the grants, so you still kind of have to have a salesperson hat on at different points.
Kristine Hewett (06:22):
Absolutely, absolutely. And one of the things just before covid started, we'd actually built a corporate sponsorship package and booklet and got it branded and printed and everything, and then everything came to a bit of a standstill like everything did during Covid. And we're still in the process of trying to pick that back up because as you are absolutely correct, it's all about getting in front of people doing the hard sell sometimes to try and get them to put some money into your hands instead of into their pockets or into something else that they might have for their business. So it's a bit of a constant one. And from a sales point of view, we also found that a lot of people find that groups like ours have started up. Usually when somebody, a family member or somebody close has unfortunately been a victim, hopefully not a death, but a victim and they will set up some kind of charity.
(07:11):
So we had to get past that. You're only little, you're not going to be around for very long, et cetera. So we really had to get a good grounding and get people to know that we weren't fly by nighters. We were in this for the long haul, and it was really important to us that they understand that. So that's that other constant sell job is making people understand that we're here. We've been here for six years now nearly. We're not going anywhere, unfortunately. There's still a need for us and there continues to be a need for us, so we'll keep going as long as we can keep going.
Danielle Lewis (07:41):
That's a really interesting point because I also think that's something that small businesses face is that how many runs on the board? Are you only how many people on your team? I remember when I first started scrunch, so my other business is an agency, so it's now been around for 10 plus years. But I remember that in the early days that always like, who else have you worked with? How many team members do you have? And where's your office? And all of these questions is, how big are you? Legit so mean. So funny now because over the 10 years where we had the big fancy office had the big team, and now I've gone back to smaller team, completely remote, completely virtual and you wouldn't know it. People don't care anymore. But it is, I feel like being in business, you are kind of always defending yourself a little
Kristine Hewett (08:36):
Bit. Possibly. One of the things that helped us ride up front was we've modeled ourselves loosely on this other sort of format. We had been to see one of our local in crisis services who weren't terribly excited about what we were doing. They have their own challenges, et cetera, but they did give us some good information, which was to have a questionnaire to screen people to make sure that they're in the right place, which was really good. But what we also did was we went and ran past some psychologists, what we were planning to do, someone with lived experience. I don't have any counseling experience or anything like that. I just have lived experience of myself. So we ran it past them and they actually got us to present at the local psychological society group that next meeting that they had. And having that I think was really beneficial because when you've got the tick in the box from psychologists who are going, this is awesome, people can't come to us forever, they can't afford it and they don't have anywhere to refer them on if that's the end of them being able to see them sort of thing.
(09:47):
So they were very excited, which was great for us. But having as you say, that legitimacy and having somebody say, yep, these guys are okay, you can kind of trust them, I think made a big difference, a big difference.
Danielle Lewis (10:00):
And it is funny, isn't it? I think there's different ways to do that depending on the time of business you have, because I think sometimes, especially I always find this, I have a tech startup background sometimes when I look at logos on a website, I think everyone in the tech world's got the same logos, just copied and pasted onto their website. I don't even believe it anymore. But I think when you are in a specific industry in a specific niche or skill or whatever it might be, aligning to a body in that industry that's very credible is such a great idea.
Kristine Hewett (10:36):
Yep, yep. That's exactly right. The other one we have, we started off in Canberra, we ended up getting onto the Australian federal polices. They've got, I guess it's a system called Support Link, which has a whole heap of organizations in there that can provide different kinds of support. So when they're actually out there at the coalface talking to someone, they can refer them to one of these services, and we are on that list. So that's another credibility tick for us as well. They don't just put anybody on there. We had to go through a series of stuff to get that to happen. So that made a big difference as well. But as I say, it's that constant salesperson hat on pretty much all the time, even as a charity. And as a charity. I hate it. I hate having to do that because you just want the charity to stand on its own feet and people just throw money at you, but strangely that happen. So you do need to do that. Look, I've been a salesperson in previous lives. I know what needs to be done, but it's not my comfort zone, but I can do it. So that makes, well,
Danielle Lewis (11:38):
Sometimes as well it's like, why don't you understand how important this is? Exactly. Why do I have to pitch you? Why do I have to explain this to you? This is clearly a huge problem.
Kristine Hewett (11:50):
The other challenge is a lot of grants, they don't want you to use the money for back office.
Danielle Lewis (11:56):
Oh my god, this is the biggest bugbear of mine. When governments grants say, you can't use the money in your own business, what the hell? Like, hi, I'm the business that needs the support and you'd like me to spend grant money on somebody else's business. It drives me up the wall. That's why we invented the Spark grants where I'm like, no, spend the money on the shit that you know, need the business owner and you know that you
Kristine Hewett (12:20):
Need it. We can't keep going if we don't have the back office stuff. So if you want us to keep going, you've got to help us fund the back office stuff. It costs several thousand dollars a year just to have all of those software licenses and the mobile phone and the this and the that. So yeah, it's extremely frustrating when you get creative, but
Danielle Lewis (12:40):
Yeah, that's
Kristine Hewett (12:41):
Right.
Danielle Lewis (12:42):
That's right. No, but it is really true. I think that there is a big misalignment between grants, the grant worlds sometimes, not all the time, don't get me wrong. There's certainly really helpful grants out there, but I just feel sometimes the headline of what they say they're trying to support, there's a disconnect between then what actually gets funded, what you can spend the money on, the types of businesses that get funded. Yeah, I do have a little bad taste in my mouth if you couldn't
Kristine Hewett (13:15):
Tell. That's right. Yeah. Well, I'm with you there. And responding to grants takes a chunk of time as well, chunk
Danielle Lewis (13:22):
Of time.
Kristine Hewett (13:22):
And when you try to run a business or I'm working so that I can actually support myself in my other job, it must be bloody hard not to just cut and paste, copy paste, because you're not going to get them that way. So it's very time consuming.
Danielle Lewis (13:40):
So how do you balance running a business or running the charity and working as well? That's huge.
Kristine Hewett (13:49):
Yeah, not very well a lot of the time I have to say.
Danielle Lewis (13:52):
I love the honesty.
Kristine Hewett (13:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Look, we were fortunate when we started, both my business partner and I, we both didn't work Fridays, so Fridays became our day for the charity. Our data guide and visit people was the main thing upfront. And we would just say, look, can we come and visit you? It has to be a Friday, it has to be a Friday. And then we would work nights, building websites, figuring out how to use active campaign, all the other things, weekends, et cetera, which when we lived in the same city and had that bit of time was easier. Now in different cities it's a little bit harder. Luckily we have this kind of technology that we're using right now, but it can be quite challenging and I dunno about what your desks look like, but I've got my work stuff over here, the one that pays my bills, and then I just get slide over here to the right and I'm in front of another screen that's like I've just spent eight or nine hours doing one thing there. And Christ, the last thing I feel like doing is sitting in front of a screen again. But that's where a lot of the work has to get done, right?
Danielle Lewis (14:58):
Oh, it really does. And that's like I commend you for having it in the same space because you'll turn around and go, oh, I haven't gotten up yet for the last eight hours.
Kristine Hewett (15:08):
Did I eat today? I'm not sure. That's okay. I
Danielle Lewis (15:11):
Need to go to the toilet. Why is that?
Kristine Hewett (15:14):
That's right. Haven't been to the toilet all day, haven't drunk anything. But look, it is really hard and I mean there are some very amazing women out there who are doing multiples of jobs, have lots of creativity going and raising children and doing all of that. And yeah, it is hard. I raised my daughter as a single mom. It's challenging. As you get older, I think you do get a little wiser and I just, I'm
Danielle Lewis (15:44):
Waiting for that day to come.
Kristine Hewett (15:46):
I'm much more rigid with my time, I guess I would say. And I'm also kinder to myself if I have a day where it's like, I know I need to be doing X, Y, and Z, but I can't today, so I'm just not going to and I just have to let it go sometimes. So yeah,
Danielle Lewis (16:05):
It is, I must admit as a serial awful to myself person, I have recently learned the value in being a little kinder to myself. And it's so funny, I was having this chat last night actually, and sometimes I find if you just let yourself let it go, or sometimes I find if I'm spinning my wheels on something, I'm overwhelmed. I'm just staring at the screen, not getting anything done anyway. I go, you know what? I'm going to go and lie in bed or I'm going to go and sit in. I'm doing nothing anyway, so why don't I go and not stop beating myself up and go totally away, get myself out. And I'd find, usually if I've closed my eyes for five minutes, I then go, oh, okay, I'm bored now. Let's get into it. Let's get back. It's almost like giving yourself the permission to walk away is almost what you need sometimes. Yeah.
Kristine Hewett (17:03):
I also tend to schedule specific things, like if I have a yoga class that's scheduled in, if I have dance classes that's scheduled in and I try not to not go to them unless it's something important. I didn't get to my dance classes last week because work was just going nuts load over here on the left, so I just had to miss it that time and that's fine. But actually putting them in my diary.
Danielle Lewis (17:28):
Can I ask what you do for your day job?
Kristine Hewett (17:31):
That's a very good question as well. I have one of those jobs which a lot of people don't hear about or understand in the IT world. It's called program management office. So looking after the project managers who are running projects, making sure that they're getting everything they need, doing everything they're meant to do, reporting as they're meant to, checking on their financials, making sure everything's running okay. Basically I'm the admin person behind the scenes that cracks the whip on people, which I really enjoy.
Danielle Lewis (17:57):
Do you know what? I had never heard of the PMO before and there's a fabulous Spark member who is A PMO and I, my other business scrunch manages her social media and I had to learn all about PMO and I'm telling you, trying to get my head out of, it's not project management, it's project management office. It took me a long time. She's like, okay, no, not quite that. Think about it over here. It took me so long to get my head around it.
Kristine Hewett (18:27):
You think about all the administration that a project manager has to do and if you talk to any project manager, they hate it with a passion, the admin side. That's pretty much what a PMO does for them.
Danielle Lewis (18:37):
Yeah, that's so good. I know. Do you find that there are skills that you have in that work that actually are transferable to the business?
Kristine Hewett (18:46):
Absolutely. Yeah. Just organization planning, writing lists, using all of the software tools, all really good. And I think you have to be really adaptable in that kind of role to sort of roll with the punches. So, oh, we need to build a website, right? Let's learn how to do that. So you just jump in and do things. And I started my career way back, I'm not going to say when, a long time ago in an administrative position and I went through to one that I absolutely loved and it's probably still the most favorite job I ever had. The admin people are the grease to the machine. You can have a machine, it can be running, but it's going to run a hell of a lot smoother if you've got good admin people. So I think that's just really important too. And so wherever I go, I make really good friends with the administrative people because they are the grease for the machine and once they get to know you, yeah, it's good.
Danielle Lewis (19:46):
That's so good. I love that too because I often find people sort of say, I want to start a business. I've kind of got an idea, but I just don't know. I don't know how to run a business. I didn't go to university to run a business. I'm like, you don't know. I think running a business is the epitome of jack of all trades. It's like when you get started, you just have to try and figure everything out and then you'll be good at some stuff. You'll be very ordinary at a lot of stuff. And then the hope is at some point you can outsource the stuff you're bad at or you don't like doing to other people.
Kristine Hewett (20:22):
Yes, we've just got to the point where we got a grant, which was awesome, and we've got some virtual assistants helping us with just scheduling posts, writing blogs for us for drafts because time was always our enemy and always has been our enemy, and I'm sure it's exactly the same for all of your members. So as you say, being able to get to the point where you can outsource is huge
Danielle Lewis (20:45):
Virtual
Kristine Hewett (20:45):
Assistance. My strength is not social media and putting that stuff out and scheduling it. It's actually getting out in front of people and talking about it. I also do run the meetings that we have. They run online now.
Danielle Lewis (21:00):
Okay. I was going to ask you if they were in person or virtual or how that worked.
Kristine Hewett (21:05):
We started in person and that worked really well. We started with one meeting and then we moved to two and then Covid, so we got a grant. So we had been quite fortunate with grants, which was all about helping during Covid to try and get online in Safeway. So we were able to actually get a proper database in place and set it up. So it was all very safe and functional. And yeah, we've pretty much been online ever since. I did start face-to-face once again in 2022, but then I moved, so it became a little bit challenging to be face-to-face when I don't live in the city where the meeting is. But yeah,
Danielle Lewis (21:41):
I find, sorry, you go.
Kristine Hewett (21:44):
The interesting thing is that a lot of people prefer online because they can be in their own environment, they can have their cat on their lap, they're comfortable. It's a known place. They haven't had to find somewhere new, be exposed to potentially a situation where they don't want to get to a venue. So online is still a preference for a lot of people. So we will definitely want to get back to running face-to-face, but it also has its challenges online. All of a sudden we are not just having people from Canberra, we're getting people from all across the country. And one of our things was that we do want to get out to rural and remote areas as well because being able to get to a meeting when you're out in the middle of the country is very difficult. Or even if you're in a small country town, seeing 10 women rock up one night puts a little bit of a look at this type thing. So it can be quite challenging.
Danielle Lewis (22:40):
It is hard finding. So I've been living in the middle of nowhere for the last two years, so I understand it's one thing I find confronting is that you just become so known. The community is just so small that you do think about, I'm having lunch at the pub on a Tuesday, or I'm at Woolies in my pajamas, or whatever it might be. And so it is interesting. I can imagine that that would be super confronting for people not wanting to perhaps expose themselves or whatever's going on in their home life to other people in the community. That would be super fun.
Kristine Hewett (23:21):
That's right. Yeah. So online was always where we were going to go. So we've got online, but now we've got to try and actually reach those women who are out there in the remote areas and let them know that we exist so that if they think that this is something that we can help them with, they can come along to some meetings and just join us on the line as it were.
Danielle Lewis (23:38):
Yeah, no, I love that. That's so good. Oh, amazing. I feel like I could talk to you all day, but let's leave it with one last piece of advice for women in business. So I always love to just reflecting on your time in business, would there be a piece of advice that's either seen you through the tough times or a piece of advice that you would give to another woman in business who's just on this journey with us?
Kristine Hewett (24:07):
Probably the first one I would say is doing something exactly like this, networking. It's one of the best things you can do. Also, one of the things that I really am not good at and do not enjoy as a bit of an introvert, but so good to have that tribe of people. And that's in fact what the group is about. It's finding that tribe of like-minded people who can support and help you. And I think if you can do that in whatever you are looking for, these virtual assistants that we have, they've actually got a VA community. They meet once a month online together when they can. So finding those people who can help you because as you say, we can't be good at everything. So even if you can get some pointers on, well, if you're going to set up a website, I'd recommend you start with using this one because it's really simple and you can just get something up and running really quickly. I think that's probably the thing and go for it is the other thing, what is the actual worst that can happen? You'll have learned something along the way and if it didn't work, it wasn't meant to work, but you can use what you've learned and go on to the next thing.
Danielle Lewis (25:11):
I love that so much and I could not agree with you anymore community and just bloody do it.
Kristine Hewett (25:19):
It was funnily enough, when we first started, the company name we set up was JFDI.
Danielle Lewis (25:25):
Oh my God. I wanted to ask you about your current company name. So tell me about that too, when you're telling the
Kristine Hewett (25:29):
Story. Yeah, JFDI is just do it.
Danielle Lewis (25:33):
Oh, cool.
Kristine Hewett (25:34):
Okay. So Adamis Nexus, my first, my friend and I, we are wordsmiths, but we can get very bogged down. So finding a name was something important. We didn't want to just call it domestic violence support group. So Adamus is a Greek for diamond. Sort of that indestructible and nexus is connection. So what we were always thinking is that hidden in these women is this diamond that's been formed under pressure and time and we want to help them unearth it through community and connection. So that's where came from.
Danielle Lewis (26:07):
I love that so much,
Kristine Hewett (26:08):
But we still love it.
Danielle Lewis (26:09):
It's gorgeous. I absolutely love it. You are absolutely amazing. Christine, cheers to you. Thank you so much. Coming on Spark tv. You are the best.
Kristine Hewett (26:22):
Thank you for having me.
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