Grant Writing & Funding

Holly Rustick: 00:00

Hey there. It's Holly Rustick here with Grant Writing and Funding, and I have another bonus episode for you. And this is one that has come up because I've been having so many sales calls with people interested in joining the Grant Professional Mentorship and joining. It's been so fun. And one of the things on the calls that I really am able to see in real time, and this is one of the reasons I love doing sales calls, and I encourage all of you guys to do sales calls with your potential nonprofit leads or business leads, is to ask questions.

Holly Rustick: 00:31

Right? You ask questions, you get a lot of information, and then you start seeing trends. You start seeing patterns. You start seeing, like, are these the people right for this program or this retainer or whatnot, and what do I need to add to it to get them the results they need? And why are they really joining?

Holly Rustick: 00:47

What are the real issues going on? So some of the main trends that I've been seeing, I've been seeing a couple, but one of the biggest ones, and this is true for people inside the mentorship as well for many of them, is that as you grow your business and a lot of you out there, a lot of you grant writers, I know there's statistics on this, are in that Gen x kinda era. And, yeah, we have a lot of millennials. We even have some Gen Zs, like, coming up very interested in it. Love it.

Holly Rustick: 01:13

We have some boomers too. Absolutely love it. But I would say a majority that I work with in my programs are Gen X. We're, like, in that I don't even know the age group at point, but 45 to 60 year old kind of kind of, you know, moment. Right?

Holly Rustick: 01:29

And what happens at this age, especially when there's a lot of women, is a lot of the women and one of the trends I'm over and over again, I'm having to take care of my my mom or my parents. Right? And a lot of people that are coming in and that I'm having sales calls with, they also are at that point where they're like, and my kids, if they have kids, are, you know, teenagers or a lot of them are also in college, young adults, that sort of thing. So sometimes they're not as much taking care of their kids at this point in life, but they are still taking care of their kids' financial responsibilities as far as like a lot of them still have their kids at home because their kids are in college, or they're paying for their colleges, etcetera, while at the same time now having to navigate and make appointments for their moms, for their parents, right, drive their parents around, take care of all of that. And there's this real coming into it where you're feeling the squeeze in a different way than you did, say, you know, a few years ago when you first started your business or ten years ago when you started your business.

Holly Rustick: 02:37

And that was like getting your first client and you had very different maybe you're a stay at home mom, we also have a lot of stay at home moms. Right? And you're having to balance, like, I only have x number of hours in the day to also take care of my kids and to run a business. So, this has been really interesting that we've been seeing more and more people in the mentorship, like, once you start getting up to about 50 k a year. And once you start thinking, no.

Holly Rustick: 03:02

I really want to double my revenue. I wanna get to a 100 k. I wanna get to 200 k. I wanna get to 3 k in my business. You're starting to become more mature in your business, and you're starting to also make different decisions in your business.

Holly Rustick: 03:16

And we have a whole other bonus podcast I just released on that. And part of it is you may be also in a different life situation. Right? No longer are you just thinking about taking care of the littles. No longer are you in that position, but now you're like, I need to save for my retirement.

Holly Rustick: 03:33

Maybe I wanna work another 10, another twelve years, another three years. Maybe you're retiring for your full time job and you've been doing this now as a consultant, but you're also starting to think, wanna retire my consultancy. How do I create a legacy business that I can close down in ten years and five years, etcetera, while also having the revenue to maybe having to put my parents in assisted living or just have the opportunity to be able to drive them to different places, make their appointments, pick up their prescriptions, etcetera. Right? And also take care of my kids in college and make sure that they're set and they're taken care of.

Holly Rustick: 04:12

So you're like taking care of two different generations at the exact same time. And a lot of you will fall into the trap is that's all you do. But the thing that's so important is you got to take care of yourself as well. Right? And looking at this, you know, to say, okay, did my parents have the, you know, retirement or have the funds or have the financial literacy to even care for themselves right now or are you not just time wise responsible for your parents, I.

Holly Rustick: 04:43

E, the doctor's appointments, etc, health, etc, but are you financially taking care of your parents too? Now I know in my situation with my mom, she's done a lot of work. She has her retirement. She's she's retiring next year and she's already 73. She's like worked way longer.

Holly Rustick: 05:00

Right? And part of that was because of all the of all the things or a generational things like she could only as a teacher, you know, back in the day in the early nineties or eighties in in Michigan where we were in rural areas, I mean, you're getting paid maybe 20 a year and that's good. I don't even know if she got that much. It's just like the amount that she was able to even contribute to her Social Security for years in the profession as an educator was so small. Right?

Holly Rustick: 05:30

So she's really having to look at how do I budget this? She's had to work a lot longer, etcetera, because of those things. And that's really sad. Right? Especially when you're looking at, like, some of the jobs that, you know, we have that you entrust children to get and we like, anyways, that's a whole other conversation.

Holly Rustick: 05:49

But going back to this as far as, like, a lot of that generation, our moms, maybe they didn't have jobs, maybe they don't have the highest social security right now, maybe, they just didn't get paid as much as men either, right? Or have those kind of jobs that paid as well. So all of a sudden, they're what they have to live on is very paycheck to paycheck, if even that. So you already know you're going to be taking care of your parents maybe financially, but you definitely know you may be taking care of them as far as driving them to those appointments, helping them with prescriptions, especially if they have any health issues, those type of things. So, it's really interesting to have that kind of stress that we have on ourselves while also the kids now are in college, college prices have gone up, the kids are doing x, o, y, and z, they may still be living at home, it's very normal now for kids in their twenties to still be at home, all of that.

Holly Rustick: 06:53

And there's a lot of pressure there. There's a lot of pressure in between that then of how do you then set up your retirement when you're trying to, like, put out fires on both ends of this. Right? When do you put aside for your retirement? When do you put aside for your investments?

Holly Rustick: 07:10

And what actually do you need? At the core of this is you need more money, but you don't have more time. Your time is actually being reduced. Maybe you got more time because the kids are in college, but now all of a sudden you're taking care of your parents. Right?

Holly Rustick: 07:23

So this has been happening more and more and more. I've seen more and more trend trends of this of, alright, gen Gen x women, let's have a conversation. Right? Let's have a conversation of what it means to actually grow a grant writing business right now and why you need to have very good policies, why you also probably need to have at least one part time team member, and I'm not talking an employee, I'm talking someone you can hire as a contractor, you need support, right, in your business. You need systems in your business.

Holly Rustick: 07:57

You do not need to work more. You need to work actually less, so you need to have more systems in your business. You need to have more support in your business, and you need to not be undercharging and customizing everything. Right? At this point, you built a business, you have a reputation.

Holly Rustick: 08:15

Let's grow it. Let's keep it. Let's let's ahead and make sure you're charging right, make sure you're not over delivering, while still keeping quality of work. That's what we do inside the Grant Professional Mentorship. We help people just like you so you can save up for your investments, so you're not overpaying someone, and so you do have the time off to be able to take care of your life, your your parents' your family life, and you're able to earn more money.

Holly Rustick: 08:46

One of our main aims inside the program is to double your monthly revenue. We do that over and over and over again. More than 50% of the people in the program have doubled their revenue within a year, and more than everybody else is on the way. Right? We're not just gonna wait till the end of the year and be like, did you double your revenue?

Holly Rustick: 09:08

Every single month, we track what you're bringing in. We track how many sales calls we're doing. You're doing your we track how much marketing you're doing to get those sales calls. We track what you're actually selling, and we're able to course correct throughout the year. That's why we're helping people double their revenue.

Holly Rustick: 09:23

That's how we're doing it. So you need to have a plan of your investments. Like, one of the things that I know I'm passionate about and I know a lot of you are passionate about too is we also do wanna take care of our kids and we want them to if we're in the position of our parents where we have health issues that come up, if we need to be driven around, and if we're even financially secure but we just want that support, we want our kids not to feel like they have to financially support us and physically support us at that time. Like, I'd rather have my daughter, like, want to be able to drive me around if she needs to to any appointments and spend time with me, but not have to think about financially taking care of me and having her success to where she can take a Friday off and be able to do that. I want her to feel in that position where she's not feeling the stress of financially taking care of me or if she needs to like we can hire like assistants to help take care of me, right?

Holly Rustick: 10:24

That's already taken care of. And that's the legacy I really wanna leave with my daughter, and I know a lot of you also wanna leave with your kids. But at the same time, we need to also take care. Like, I know I'll be, also supporting my mom. Right?

Holly Rustick: 10:40

Abs 100%. And, and supporting my daughter. Right? I'm in the exact same position as a lot of other people are as well. And for me, what that means is, okay.

Holly Rustick: 10:50

I'm the one who has to figure this out. Right? I'm one the who has to figure this out. Like, no one else is gonna figure this out for me. And part of it is just getting educated.

Holly Rustick: 11:00

It's get knowing what to do. Right? And I think a lot of us, what happens is we fall under the pressure. We get stuck under the pressure of, oh my gosh. Now I have to take care of everything.

Holly Rustick: 11:11

I'm spinning out. I'm tired on sales calls. I'm not doing it. I'm just burned out because we just don't have a plan. And it's not because, oh my gosh.

Holly Rustick: 11:19

The universe hates me. Oh my gosh. Like, nothing ever works out of my life. Oh, we've always been poor, so I'm gonna just carry this cycle. I can't I'm not good at sales.

Holly Rustick: 11:26

Blah blah blah. All the things you tell yourself. Right? Instead, just get a plan. Just get a plan and be like, okay.

Holly Rustick: 11:35

I got this. This is just the situation it is right now. Like, I'm I'm fine with that. You know? And I'm I'm good because I have a plan and I can change what's happening.

Holly Rustick: 11:44

And it's not an emotional roller coaster. It's not an overabundance of stress of why me? Why am I the one to have to do this? Yes. I have asked that question, and that's why I can go so deep here.

Holly Rustick: 11:55

I've had this self pity. Come on. I'm a single mom. I have my moment. Let me have it.

Holly Rustick: 12:01

But I'm also over it. Right? I'm also like, I can't stay there. I if I would've stayed there mentally in the victimhood of why is this happening to me, why didn't everyone else have their shit together, why do I have to be the one to get my shit together, if I would've stayed in that mentality, guess guess what would've happened? I wouldn't be where I am at today.

Holly Rustick: 12:22

I would not be where I am today. I would not be talking to you about this because I'd be stuck in my own stuff. Right? But I can talk to you about this today because I've gotten over the drama of it. Took a while.

Holly Rustick: 12:38

You can you can hear like some of that. Right? Yeah. Because I went through it. I get you.

Holly Rustick: 12:42

I got you. There's some of it that's just like, okay. This is the reality of what I'm dealing with and then there's the deeper part of like, but why me? Right? Once you get over that deeper thing of like, why me?

Holly Rustick: 12:55

And you can be like, okay, well, I can earn more money. I'm fine with that. I can figure out how to hire someone and to have them help me out with this. I can put SOPs in my business, like, this is all just doing the plan. There's no emotional chaos around it.

Holly Rustick: 13:13

There's no victimhood around it. It's just like, okay. This is what I'm doing. Right? And that is so empowering because you can control that.

Holly Rustick: 13:21

You can direct that. You can change things. Right? And is that does that take so much work? Is it such a burden?

Holly Rustick: 13:29

No. It's just working a plan and it's actually really empowering because you can do it as a freelance grant writer, but you know where you can't do it as much? When you're stuck working sixty to eighty hours a week as, you know, a development director or a grant writer inside a nonprofit. That's where you can't do it because you only have a certain ceiling of income coming in every month, and you only have a certain amount of time. So it's easier to stay stuck in that victimhood because it really is hard.

Holly Rustick: 14:00

It really is hard. But when you have your own business and sorry, y'all. I just I'm going off on a rant here. Unscripted rant. Clearly, not using AI for the podcast episode.

Holly Rustick: 14:16

Alright. So here it is. Like, if you guys want a real human, tune into our show. Alright. So you want to have the freedom, but to have that freedom, you have built the business that will provide it.

Holly Rustick: 14:32

Now you're stuck in another situation though where you're having these different stressors, taking care of the parents, taking care of the kids. You need to take care of yourself. And do you need to do that first when your parents are going you know, your mom went to the emergency room? No. You gotta handle that.

Holly Rustick: 14:45

You gotta do like, you've and you wanna put yourself in a position where you can deal with that. Right? And we can do that. So what we help you do is to help you first get rid of all the and then we also help you get the plan in place and just work the plan. And if you're like, oh, but the job was so much easier.

Holly Rustick: 15:07

Listen to me, your job sucked. Okay. It sucked. That's why you started a business. And your job wasn't actually empowering yourself with an actual plan.

Holly Rustick: 15:18

It was giving it was making well, it had a plan, but it was for somebody else's life and somebody else's business and for somebody else's ideas. Even if it was an amazing nonprofit, it wasn't doing what you can do with your life today. It can't rip off the the glass ceiling so you can earn more money, so you can make decisions on hiring people, so you can have more time in your own schedule. You've already done that. You've already proven to yourself that you can do that.

Holly Rustick: 15:42

Now we need to actually get you saving some money. We need to get it in investments. We need to give you more time back on your plate. Alright. So if you wanna do that, the doors to the mentorship right now as I'm recording this are open, but they do shut.

Holly Rustick: 15:56

Friday, August 14 for the last time in 2026, you're gonna wanna get in if you've had a business for a while and you're like, oh, but I got things going on and it's feeling hard. Come in, we're gonna help you. We're gonna give you the plan and you're gonna be fine. You're be taking care of business and it's gonna feel good, it's gonna feel empowering, and it's gonna feel just simple. Okay?

Holly Rustick: 16:19

Neutral, calm. Alright. I got you. We'll see you inside the mentorship. Bye bye.