The Grants Hub is Seven!

The Grants Hub is seven!

It feels like an incredible milestone to reach. We have not only survived the first few gruelling years of business (there is no other way to describe them) but continue to grow year on year. We’re now helping thousands of organisations across Australia find grants, and we love being a part of something that’s supporting the Not-for-Profit and small business community across the country. It’s truly a great thing to be a part of.

But this year is a dual milestone for me personally. Because seven years ago I launched The Grants Hub, and seven years ago, our son was born. Our seemingly healthy baby was actually incredibly sick. When The Grants Hub was 19 days old, our 11-day-old son was diagnosed with Congenital Heart Disease. He had an aortic valve that was barely functioning and needed open heart surgery. The scenes you see in the movies of someone being rushed into surgery and medics everywhere, that was us. Except instead of watching it from the comfort of our couch, we were living every pain-staking second of it.

Justin – my husband and now Operations Manager here at The Grants Hub – and I were thrown into a world of disarray. We had a baby boy who was incredibly sick and teetered far too close to death, a 23-month-old daughter who couldn’t understand why we couldn’t be the ‘normal’ family we had been just days earlier, and to top it off, I had a brand new business that couldn’t be shut down overnight. The Grants Hub already had paying members whom I felt indebted to. I can’t thank those earliest members enough for being willing to sign up to my startup. You gave me something else to focus on during the tumultuous first years of my son’s life – preventing me from falling completely into a world of pain and struggle.

I can still remember the cardiologist’s words in those early days, “If we can get him through to seven…”

Despite needing two Open Heart Surgeries at four weeks and seven months of age, if we could get him through to seven before needing his still-looming biggest operation, his chances of longterm survival would be far greater.

If we could get him through to seven, we would delay the clock on every other surgery he will need during his life.

And the seemingly impossible has become possible, because we’ve made it! The Grants Hub is seven, which means in two weeks our son will be seven! It’s almost inconceivable.

During 2020, which has been a year of complete disarray and heartbreak for many of you, I’ve been thinking about my journey with our son’s health situation combined with starting and running a business. So many of you are trying to keep something going which you’ve poured your heart and soul into, but the mountains just keep stacking up against you. You feel like you’re dealing with one massive blow (like bushfires) and then get thrown something even bigger (like COVID). You are needed more than ever in the community (think of domestic violence support organisations) but most of your resources to meet those needs are depleted. The task before you is huge, and there is no clear path ahead. It’s like a long dark tunnel of repeated difficulty. Saying your situation is ‘hard’ is an understatement.

Others of you are wondering about starting something new, either by force or by choice. You might be out of work, so need to come up with a new plan. Or you might have loved working from home so much that you are wondering about taking a risk and starting your own thing. While COVID has been difficult for so many businesses and organisations, it’s also opened up opportunities for others, so the time is right to launch a concept you’ve been working on.

Whether you’re struggling in your situation or are on the cusp of something new, here are ten things I’ve learnt from the whirlwind of a ride I’ve been on.

1. Know your ‘why’ and keep it front and centre

Making it easy to find grants is why The Grants Hub exists.

That’s our purpose, and it’s the central focus behind what we do. Yes, we’re a business and need to make money to keep growing and reaching more people, but ultimately our focus is to make it easy to find grants.

Almost all of our conversations, meetings and projects are focussed on making it easier to find grants. We talk about new products, improvements, reaching people better, sending out grant information that you are interested in, thinking of new ways to share stories, and some of the individual stories that you share with us. We’re purpose focused, not dollars focused.

2. Sometimes, you’ve just got to take the leap

I’m a bit of a perfectionist. I like products and new features to be exactly right before they’re launched. And while this generally serves me well, I’ve learned that it can slow things down. There is a point where you just have to take the leap and fix bugs later. Sometimes, you won’t actually find an issue until people start using a product and let you know something isn’t quite right.

The same goes for launching. Being 39 weeks pregnant with child number two isn’t an ideal time to launch. But if I hadn’t pushed through and made that crazy decision to click ‘live’ at that point, then given everything that happened afterwards it’s extremely likely The Grants Hub wouldn’t exist today.

3. Respond to issues quickly

This relates to product and people issues. If you adopt the principle above, the key to making it work without damaging your business is to have plans and systems in place to fix bugs quickly.

The same goes for people issues. In an online space, people can be very bold because they’re not having a face-to-face conversation. Until you can respond, they’re having a one-sided conversation and people seem to forget that while they’re typing into a computer, it’s a real person receiving the message on the other end. So respond to people issues quickly. It helps people realise that you’re a ‘real business’ with ‘real people’, and it also reduces the likelihood of social media rants!

4. Grow a team who is better than you

We aim to recruit team members who are far more knowledgable in their areas of expertise than us. Make sure every employee is working in their field of excellence, treat them well, and you will build an incredibly loyal, dedicated and high functioning team.

The same goes for outsourcing. If you’re not an accountant, don’t attempt your own accounting. If you’re not a designer, don’t do your own designs. If Google Ads is your main lead generator in the early days, then don’t do it yourself. These are areas where it’s worth paying experts who can ‘do their thing’ and get you set up correctly from the get-go. Don’t get stuck trying to learn something that you’re not interested or skilled in, which ultimately takes you away from working where you work best.

5. Know your values and stick to them

Think about your values, write them down, and stick to them.

Our values form the basis of everything we do at The Grants Hub, from recruiting decisions, to business decisions, to pricing decisions, to budget decisions. Get your values right and use them as the foundation to everything.

Never, ever, waiver from your values.

6. It will be a long time until you can take a holiday, so look after yourself along the way

If you’re the Founder, you can kiss holidays goodbye for a long time. By holidays, I mean completely work-free breaks.

There are so many things that only you know, and if you’re launching a lean startup like I did, chances are you will be working off a very tight budget and won’t be able to employ other people to cover you for years.

So look after yourself in other ways during those first few years. Buy yourself a treat, work from a location you love, take long baths, read a good book, go for walks, go to the movies. Whatever it is that gives you a mental break, do that and do it often. The startup journey is a long one, and you need to make sure you can be in this for the long haul.

7. Don’t buy what you don’t need

There is a big temptation to be fully equipped and spend big from the get-go. I strongly advise against this. You don’t know if your idea will work until you have taken it to market and tested it, so don’t use all your savings or get yourself into unnecessary debt.

Think about the bare minimum you need, and start with that. Initially, I got letterheads printed because every business needs a letterhead, right? Wrong. We have a box full of letterhead that our kids now use as scrap paper! We’re an online business, so that printing was a complete waste of money.

If you recruit right, you can also achieve a lot with a very small team. Despite everything we’re delivering at The Grants Hub, we only have the equivalent of three full-time employees. And this is easily the biggest team we’ve had.

To operate lean, incorporate automation wherever you can, engage freelancers rather than employees to begin with, work the hard yards yourself, be humble, drive older cars, only upgrade your phone when you have to, be willing to do every job (even the most mundane) yourself, enjoy simple pleasures in life.

Not buying what you don’t need means you have more money to spend where it’s really needed.

8. Give

Give from the outset and give generously. If you’re an NFP, your ‘why’ is highly likely connected to giving. However if you’re a small business, I implore you to build giving into your business.

Don’t make giving an add-on, or something you will do once you have ‘enough’ money in the bank. There will never be ‘enough’. Give small amounts when you have little, and give larger amounts when you have more. Give time, give money, give through a spirit of generosity in your customer service.

In 2018, we released our first grant. It was one $500 Volunteer Support Grant. We attracted over 3,000 applications for that one grant and copped a lot of criticism for not giving more. I received more abusive emails during that grant round than at any other time of the business. Little did anyone know that when we made the decision to give $500 away, we had about $4,000 in The Grants Hub’s bank account. Do I regret it and wish we hadn’t given away the money? No way. That $500 grant made a big difference to the recipient and the organisation she works with.

People will criticise you regardless of how, or how much, you give. So focus on what you’re giving to rather than what a vocal minority has to say about it.

Giving isn’t always easy, but it is worth it.

9. Be real

One of my biggest personal struggles in the role I’m in is being the ‘face of the business’. I very reluctantly started using the ‘CEO’ title last year because it made the most sense and reduced some confusion. I also thought if I started using the title, I would ‘make myself be more like a CEO’! I had an impression of what a CEO should be like, and I don’t particularly like the impression I’d created in my mind.

But one of the most attractive aspects of starting your own business or organisation is that you lay the ground rules. You’re the one who gets to break the mould. There is no such thing as what a CEO ‘should’ look like.

So be yourself. Don’t change who you are and don’t adapt or skew your story to make it sound better. The lack of authenticity will catch you out at some point.

Be you, be real, and the people you like will be attracted to that, so you’ll end up working with, and serving, people you align with.

10. Resilience is the key

You have to be incredibly resilient to survive the entrepreneur/small business/founder path. You can learn all you want, have the best plan in place, have your budget lined up, and have done all the research in the world. But the longer I’m doing this, the more I realise that nothing except resilience can get you through the journey.

While a subscription-based business like The Grants Hub has strong elements of predictability, there are so many business and life factors that can’t be predicted. No one knew that week three of The Grants Hub would see me sitting in a hospital wondering how the heck I was going to survive both the personal and business challenges in front of me.

No one knew that COVID was going to strike and have the deep and wide-reaching impact it has.

You might have had no idea that 2020 was going to be the year that you would be on the cusp of taking the leap and starting your own thing.

I know one thing for sure: there is no perfect time to start. There is no perfect moment to launch.

Sometimes, you just have to start. Then keep going. Keep going through the hard times and the great times. Keep working out how you’re going to get over the mountain, and then don’t forget to stop and enjoy the view along the way, because it’s incredibly fulfilling working on something you love and believe in.

Jessie Ballantyne
Founder & CEO