Unlock Free Money for Your Business | 015

Hi and welcome to the profit connections podcast. We're so glad that you're here today. My guest, Christine Hebel has a treasure trove of information for you. Let me tell you about her. Christine empowers business owners with the tools to write winning proposals, navigate funding opportunities and overcome the overwhelm that holds 60% of applicants back be in the top 40% listen to Christine through her proven process. She helps entrepreneurs take action unlocking free money that fuels their business growth. Everybody needs this. Christine, welcome. I'm so excited to talk to you today. Tell me a little bit about give us an overview about what you do and how you help business owners. Oh,

absolutely. And thank you for having me here today. I just get really excited about this, because I know that the statistics are that 50% of businesses are out of business by the second year, and the number one reason that they're at the business is lack of funds. So I know, as the mother of a 14 year old who started his own business, that we quickly came to a point where the Bank of mom and dad just wasn't going to make it. And I feel like a lot of businesses feel like that, like if I could just get an infusion of some cash, I could do amazing things in the world. And so I have a friend who started educating me. She has written millions of dollars in grants herself, and so she said, reach out there. There's tons of grants out there, and she helped us learn how to write them. And his third grant, he won $10,000 that that helped just put that infusion of life into his business, pretty soon, people around my community started hearing about our successes as he as he won more grants, and started asking me, and I realized I love doing this for other businesses, so that's how I got started. And we've written six gpts.

Okay, hold on one second before you go there, I want to hone in on a specific word. We keep throwing this word grant around. Tell me what a grant is and whether or not you have to pay it back. So

the beautiful thing about a grant is that you can have corporate grants, or you can have government grants, and the This is money that's set aside that will be given to you without the need to pay it back. Now some of your large grants do have reporting requirements, and if you don't meet those requirements. Some do have a caveat that they can take the money back, or maybe won't. They'll be distributions along the way, and you'll quit getting your distribution. So make sure you pay attention to what your reporting requirements are. That's awesome. So

the cool thing about grants, and the reason I wanted Christine here today is this is free money. This is money that comes to you that you do not have to pay back. And I love that you delved into that some of them do have reporting requirements. Because just because it's a grant and it's free doesn't mean there's not anything that you need to do on the other side of it. So I love that distinction that you really need to figure out, what is the reporting requirement? What are the things that they're asking you to do so that you continue to get the grant or they won't walk back the money. So great point. I just wanted to make sure everyone knows when we're talking about grants. This is not a loan. This is not something that you have to go, you know, to somebody and they have to approve you, and then you get the money and you have to pay it back. So love, love, love, grants. What else do we need to know?

So it is surprising how many people who are in for profit businesses do not realize that they also are eligible for grants. It's not just for nonprofits. This

is key, because as a for profit business, you know? And you see those crazy ads that are like, oh, there's billions of dollars for you. And you're like, is that really true? Is that? So love talking to you about this, because you are not some in you know, I've met you. You are a real person, everyone. Christine is a real person, and she's amazing at what she does, and she's got a heart to not only help her son build build his business, but to help you build yours as well. And this is, you know, this is a gift that she's she's offering to you. I'm sure it's not free, and it's because. Is in business as well. However, this insight, these to actually go through and and figure out all of the intricacies. Because if you get that giant book of all of the grants, that's more work that you're going to have to do. So Christine, you've done the leg work. Tell us a little bit about that.

Well, you know, you talk about the book of grants. Um, that's such a great point. When we first started, somebody gifted my son the book. It actually came in the format of of a spreadsheet, and about four hours after he received it, he came walking out in tears because he had spent four hours looking for grants, and the ones that did align with what he his mission is, most of them were already closed, and he felt like he had just wasted four hours of his day. So we have leveraged AI, we've written gpts That will ask you certain questions, and then go out and scour the internet for you and bring back grants that align and are open.

Wow, oh my gosh. Those two things. I have chills. I have chills on my entire body right now, because that is the worst. That's the hardest part of doing the research. Is is just like your son four hours for nothing, and then you get discouraged, and then you don't do it, because you don't have four hours to attribute to something that might get you some money that you know isn't. This is brilliant, the take out all of that garbage, all of the the roadblocks, all of the work that doesn't give you any any traction, and give you a system that works, that will align with what you're doing, will align with who you are and who you serve in the difference that you want to make in the world. And they're actually available. This is brilliant. I love it.

It's so great. And for the people who don't think that they have time, we have also written five other gpts. Now you this isn't just having chat GPT go out and write your grant. In fact, there are many grants funders that are saying, we no longer we will not take AI generated grants because they would pull up and there'd be five of the exact same grant that people had just used GPT to go in and write it for them. So we're not doing that, but we are leveraging AI to take and weave your story into each one of the questions. Take your mission, your vision and everything else, and do it like so much faster than when my son and I used to sit for days and wordsmith it ourselves. So Right? We are in an amazing time, and so people can write their own grants relatively quickly. The first one may take a little bit longer because you need to get the wording down, but once you have that down for one, you just take and grab it and manipulate it into the next grant. And our goal is for our clients a grant a week, and then to reach for a big one once a month. Awesome.

Let me just break that down a little bit. When you say, write a grant, what are you actually saying? Are you saying that I'm going to write a grant that I want to say, somebody give me money? Or is this an a grant that I'm applying to? And this is the application

submissions, because there is key things that grant writers are looking for. So we teach you that, and we teach you how to to write your grant proposal to be an award winning grant, right? Because you put all the effort into it. The goal is to receive that grant. Now let me ask you, when grants are available. Are they typically, hey, we have one grant available, or do they have like, five grants available. Does it vary? Like Tell me a little bit about what the landscape is out there? Yeah,

it definitely varies. It varies between your government grants as well as your corporate grants. We like to start with the what I call the micro grants, or the mid. Grants, or also called the low hanging fruit grants, between 10 and $50,000 and they are grants that are easy to write. And the cool thing about going through this process is it really is more than just writing grants. What we found is that by sharpening the acts because you only have a short number of words that you can answer the questions in, you actually really refine your pitch. You refine your elevator speech. It changed everything about the way that my son talked to his clients, and it also helped in there's that term out there that we've heard speak into the listening of your customer, because you have to listen to what the funders want and be able to speak into their listening.

That's That's an amazing point, and I loved what you said about the refinement that comes with the creating these applications and actually speaking what the language that your customer is using, and being in their head, being in their listening like, what are they saying? As business owners, we often forget to think like our customers think, because we're so into doing what we do and providing what we're providing, and we're so focused on how we're making a difference, we forget to turn to the listening of our clients and what is, what's going on for them, and what's going on for these funders, and how do we speak to them to accomplish what they want to accomplish? Because they are giving out money, and they're probably giving it out for a reason. So you need to be really into, in tune to that. And so if you don't have, let me ask you this question, do you think that you need to have a stated mission, vision values for your business to get grants, or more? Is it more along the lines of your elevator pitch and your you know what you want to accomplish?

Oh, I don't think it's an either or. Those are just the basic building blocks that I think every small business should have and have down on paper. And it's not a document that just should be filed away. It's kind of like your small business plan. If you've ever done one, and I recommend it. It's something that you quarterly, you should be going through and revising. These are living documents, and the more that you can start working off of those documents and really paying attention to what you're saying, it's really going to benefit you. So one thing that you were saying that I really want to highlight and and is is a great giveaway to all of the people who listen to your podcast, not only when you're writing grants, but when you're talking to a customer and they're asking you a question. And we heard this. We heard this when we were younger, take and rephrase their question into the answer that you're giving them. This is a major key, because it shows them that you heard what they just asked you, and it will keep you from going off, off the trail, onto a topic that they weren't even thinking about. I

love this so much because it is one of the things that I ran into with my employees, was that they would often answer a question they thought they were being asked as opposed to answering the question that was asked of them, because we as business owners, we hear the same thing all over and over and over again, so we assume the question before the question has been answered asked, and therefore formulate an answer that might not be correct. So I love this tip. I love reframing what they said into the answer so that you can tell your brain, hey, focus on this and not the pattern that has been established, because I know what they're asking when a lot of times they're not actually asking that at all. I love that. Thank you

absolutely and and don't be afraid to ask. You know, I'm not sure that I understand what your question was. And I'll tell you a funny story about this. When my son was probably four, he came up and he asked me a question. I thought, holy moly, here we go. It's talking about the birds and the Beast time. And I was just on the verge of opening my mouth and probably saying something stupid, and I thought, you know, let me just make sure I understand his question. And Oh, am I so glad I did, because it was not even close to where I was going to go with my answer.

Oh, my gosh. Got it. I love that. What a great example, because we can all relate to that, and we do that with our customers. So I love that. I love that the RE clarification, asking questions, being sure that you are actually on the right topic, on the right journey with them, as opposed to because what happens whenever you don't do that, when you don't make sure that you're answering questions that they're asking, is they hear you're not listening to me. You don't hear me, you don't see me. And that creates a barrier, and actually will keep them from buying from you, because they have had an experience now that denigrated the trust that they may have had because you were an expert. So it really is very important in general customer service to be listening with that listening ear, as well as writing grants, as well as doing everything in your business, it step out of your comfort zone and actually listen to what's happening, pay attention and and respond that way. I love that. Such an amazing I love that. Well, Christine, I hear that you have a guest, a guest, you are my guest, and you have a gift for our listeners. Can you tell me about it?

Yes, actually, I put together a webinar that I do. It's called from idea to impact. From idea i DEA, I DEA, so from your idea to impact and it's all about how to write award winning grants. I would love to have your your people come on, it'll be an hour of how to impactfully write your grant, and they can go to www dot grant. Webinar 101, dot com

grants. Webinar 101, dot com, so 101, for grant writing for your business. This is so amazing. I this is a power tool. You're gonna want to go to Christine's webinar. So what we're gonna do is, if you wrote it down, awesome, I'm gonna also include this in the show notes. And of course, Christine's bio, her photo, her contact information and her free gift link will be in the profit connectors dot club portal. So that's profit connectors dot club, because you are about connecting to your profit so you are our profit connectors. So we'll have her free gift in there and all of her contact information and how you can get on her webinar. I think that there is zero people out there who should not do this? Did I say that? Right? Do it. Everybody. 100% of you, you should get on this because 100% of you are eligible for grants to build your business. This has been an amazing, amazing conversation. Christine, thank you so much for being here. Do you have any last words before we go?

Well, I just want to thank you, Sharon, for all the work that you do. You know, bringing information into one concise place for entrepreneurs is always beneficial. So thank you for everything you do.

Thank you so much. Christine, thank you for listening and we are out. You.