Meredith is an entrepreneur, community leader, and outdoor adventurer. She is part of Geeks in the Woods, a new wave of pioneers building technology companies from remote, yet connected Valdez, Alaska. Meredith is modernizing how grant writing is taught, helping those looking for a career change become freelance grant writers. Her expertise has been featured in Fast Company, and her book, How to Write a Grant: Become a Grant Writing Unicorn, is a #1 bestseller for nonprofit fundraising and grants on Amazon. Meredith has secured over $42 million in grant funding, and her students have secured over $250 million – a number that grows daily.
Please tell us a little bit about your company – what is Grant Writing Unicorn Collective all about?
We help those looking for a career change become freelance grant writers so they have the flexibility to build a life they love.
We are home of the Grant Writing Unicorn Collective, a membership that provides online education, coaching, and an unbeatable community. Our members use their freelance grant writing experience to land a fulfilling new job, bring in additional retirement or side hustle income, and build 6-figure consulting practices.
We are an Alaska based startup building remote yet connected tech companies from Valdez, Alaska from an outpost called Geeks in the Woods.
I published my first book, How to Write a Grant: Become a Grant Writing Unicorn in Fall of 2019. I never aspired to write a book. In fact, it is a marvel I ever published a book after what happened.
I was sexually assaulted at a conference by a man who taught me how to use a book as a marketing tool. While it was tempting to never publish a book, it was my way of leaning into my career instead of getting pushed out of it because of a horrendous experience.
I lead my business today to inspire other women to try their hand at entrepreneurship and not let roadblocks deter them from reaching their goals. I am also committed to creating a modern work environment where women can have more flexible lives, where work harmoniously syncs with the rest of your life.
Tell us a little bit about your background and how you started your company?
I had a much sexier business idea in mind when I quit my corporate job. Within two months, I realized I didn’t have a business model and was running out of cash quickly. To avoid getting a job at all costs, I started teaching others to write grants through workshops. That was my previous role where I had secured $42 million in grants throughout the US and western Canada for large infrastructure projects.
I soon grew frustrated with live workshops as an individual can only take in so much information in one sitting. They weren’t achieving the transformation I hoped. On a whim, I decided to try out teaching online. I fumbled along, guessing what to do next, and made a whopping $2,000 in my first year.
I made every mistake a person can make. I then took Amy Porterfield’s Digital Course Academy training and that is when I turned around my business. I then grew the course to $100,000 in revenue but hit yet another ceiling. At this point, I brought on a co-founder and together we shifted the business a few degrees and found riches in the niches. We now focus exclusively on helping women (and cool dudes!) learn how to get paid as grant writing consultants. It is a wildly fulfilling company to run!
What would you say are the top 3 skills needed to be a successful entrepreneur, and why?
#1: Focus. Focus, and then focus some more. Trust me, I know the struggle. I like to try new things as well, but often we quit an idea before it has time to get perfected. This also applies to who you serve and what you do. You should have one product for one customer. You can build a $1 million dollar business keeping things simple and focused.
#2: Solve for your customer’s deep desire. Our original product taught our customers the technical skills behind grant writing, but that was only a fraction of what they needed and wanted. They wanted to know how to actually pull off a career transition. After 25+ deep-dive interviews and dissecting the exact words used by our ideal customer, we discovered what they really wanted: a flexible and fulfilling life.
Here is the tangible tip for you to run with: schedule 20 interviews with your ideal customer. Record the call. Use a service like Temi to transcribe the call. Aggregate all interviews into a single Google Doc and study it! Highlight the deep pains and aspirations. Then put the entire interview document into a unique word counter (lots of these are free online), and figure out which words are used most often. Build your single sentence describing what you do, and who you do it for, with those words/phrases. Use those words and phrases in your email copy, website, and talking points!
#3: Dial your business model. We didn’t charge enough and were losing money. I thought scaling meant thousands of users. Now I understand that scale is having a profitable business. Look closely at how you charge (i.e. is it a one time sale or recurring subscription model) and if your pricing is appropriate to grow.
What are your plans for the future, how do you plan to grow this company?
Such a fun topic! It is pretty much all I think about. Our current focus for growth is establishing partnership campaigns with others that have a similar audience to ours. We jointly host webinars and provide a percentage of sales back to the partner.
In a few months, I’ll also update a second edition to my book, and run a ‘world tour’ marketing campaign with that product.
We also focus on YouTube as that means a prospect is already comfortable with online video learning. We are always focused on SEO improvements to our website.
We have stopped spending a ton of time creating social media content. It was taking a tremendous amount of time and not showing a direct correlation to sales. The only channel we focus on consistent content is YouTube, and even that is batched twice a year.
How do you separate yourself from your competitors?
Well, who else can claim they turn people into grant writing unicorns? 🦄 We differentiate ourselves in three ways:
- Showing you how to pay for our program with your first one or two projects.
- Teaching you a bullet-proof approach to finding great clients and jobs.
- Provide the roadmap for how you grow a side-hustle into a six-figure consulting business.
- Train you in managing your time and energy to avoid burnout.
- Be home to the world’s coolest community of grant writing unicorns.
We deliver those promises with a pledge to creating a 7-star experience. We think about how we can provide every interaction with an extra ounce or two of fun flair. For example, we mail hard copy certificates once members complete their technical grant writing training that includes confetti, glow sticks, stickers, and an encouraging note. We also have swag for when students reach certain financial milestones like a unicorn hot chocolate bomb at $15,000 and a custom unicorn sweatshirt at $100,000 in revenue.
What were the top three mistakes you made starting your business, and what did you learn from them?
The first mistake I made was assuming I knew my customer. I had a successful grant writing consulting practice, but that was not the same customer as someone that wants to learn online. The only time I finally made progress was having a series of deep dive interviews with my customer or prospective leads to understand what they were looking for.
That segues into mistake number two. I spent six months building the original product and it sucked! I thought I needed to build a product before I could have customers. Now I know this is a common and tempting mistake!
I have struggled with this ever since, feeling like the product needed to be exceptional and updated often.
Mistake number three was trying to figure it out myself. Our natural inclinations are NOT correct. I have immense gratitude for the educators that have helped us see a roadmap for growth.
Those mistakes all came from my first year of trying to figure out online education. The latest mistake that took far too long to identify was not getting the business model and pricing right. I was subsidizing my course business with my consulting income. When I took away the consulting income, I lost thousands of dollars a month.
When we finally figured out how to package the product as a subscription, tripled our pricing, AND solved the pain point our customer wanted solved – we have since taken off like a rocket!
What have been your biggest challenges and how did you overcome them?
This business has been hard to build. There is a lot to learn to sell a knowledge-based product. I don’t share that to be discouraging! I share that to inspire a certain mindset, where you anticipate challenges and welcome them.
The only way to shortcut the learning process is to follow the road map of others. It can be hard to find the right person and organization to trust, but once you find a resource that speaks to you, you can move immensely fast.
My biggest challenge personally has been letting go of having the perfect product and business processes in place and leaning into the only thing that matters at the end of the day: sales.
I am proud of the craftsmanship behind everything we put out into the world, but perfectionism is a horrendous trap. To overcome this, I have started tracking my time again so my co-founder and I can audit how I spend my week. We are looking for me to spend 75% of my time (minimum) on growth activities. I can definitely get sucked into the minutia!
What are three books or courses would you recommend to entrepreneurs?
Amy Porterfield’s Digital Course Academy was absolutely incredible to go from $0-$100k. Her particular strength is in how to build your online product. She has an excellent process for outlining and building your course. She serves the beginner niche very well.
Where she lost us was the intense emphasis on creating never-ending content. It sucks your soul! And all your time and money. We believed that the health of your business was in your email list, but after running Facebook ads and growing our email list (with lots of testing!), we did not see a correlating spike in sales.
Wickedly stuck on how to continue growing, we stumbled upon Haley Burkehead’s Recurring Profit program. This was a scarily large investment for us, and I’m glad we didn’t find this until we had already achieved growth. Recurring Profit videos aren’t always as clear as you would hope (a little rambly), but the program is excellent.
In 15 days, my co-founder, Alex, and I overhauled our entire product offering after 25+ intensive message mining interviews and developed a highly effective webinar. Recurring Profit helped us realize we needed to simplify our entire sales machine.
I also can’t live without Sarah Histand’s Ski Babes training for winter sports! She provides three workouts per week, that makes a huge difference in having the fitness to thrive in the outdoors.
If you only had $1000 dollars to start a new business, knowing everything you know now, how would you spend it?
I would start with 25 informational interviews to deep dive on the problem I think needs solved. Based on that feedback, I would develop a single transformation sentence to describe who I serve, what we help them achieve, and the pain we help them avoid by doing so.
I’d then get a single landing page up with sign up information for the beta program, discounting the program for early adopters. With at least ten signups, I’d move into building the program. To keep costs at an absolute minimum, I would host the training on YouTube as unlisted videos. I would film the videos live with the beta testers to get their feedback as I went.
At this point, this model would have only spent about $100 on a video conferencing software that allows you to record and a domain/website.
At this point, the only thing that matters is getting more leads and incorporating their feedback into the program’s development. I would launch a partnership campaign looking for strategic partners that you can kick back a percentage of sales to the partner.
What is your favorite quote?
“Make each move count.”
A quote from my father when I was working in the hay fields as a teenager.
Move fast! Don’t let perfection get in the way. You will publish a second edition anyway. Focus on building a book launch team with 100 people on it that can help promote your book and leave a review. Bring your book launch team on the journey. Share your progress and they will feel like they helped you publish it (which is true!).
How can we get in touch with you?
Yay! We would love to connect with you. You can drop Alex and I a line at info@senworks.org.
Author Interview: Joseph A. Michelli – Ten Books and Stronger Through Adversity
