Are You Grantable with Peter Hurd-Watler

Are You Grantable with Peter Hurd-Watler

Kelly Kennedy: Welcome to episode 88 of the business development podcast. And on today's expert guest interview, we are talking all about grant funding. Stick with us. We're chatting with CEO and co-founder of impact applications, Peter Hurd-Watler. Stick with us. You're going to love this show.

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Let's do it. Welcome to the Business Development Podcast, and now your expert host, Kelly Kennedy.

Kelly Kennedy: Hello, welcome to episode 88 of the Business Development Podcast and on today's expert guest interview.

We have CEO and co-founder of Impact Applications, Peter Hurd-Watler. Peter Hurd-Watler is a dynamic serial entrepreneur, boasting more than a decade of hands on experience in launching and managing successful ventures. His journey has been punctuated by impressive achievements, including securing a remarkable 300, 000 in grant funding for his prior software company.

This success laid the foundation for Peter's latest endeavor, co founding Impact Applications, where he channels his passion for helping pioneering companies access the vital funding needed to advance technologies and enhance the lives of individuals. Beyond his entrepreneurial pursuits, Peter is a seasoned globetrotter, having explored the diverse landscapes of over 60 countries.

These experiences have nurtured a profound appreciation for different cultures and a deep understanding of the global tapestry. Peter's academic journey has been no less impressive. As an alumnus of Draper University in Silicon Valley, he honed his skills in one of the world's tech epicenters.

Currently, he is on the verge of completing his business and arts degree at the University of Lethbridge. This unique combination of education has sharpened his superpower, the ability to blend big picture financial thinking with meticulous research and writing. Peter Hurd-Watler isn't just an entrepreneur.

He's a visionary, a globetrotter and an academic with a unique knack for transforming concepts into reality. Peter, it's a pleasure to have you on the show.

Peter Hurd-Watler: It's a pleasure to be here, Kelly. Thanks for that warm introduction.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, you're very, very welcome. Thank you for joining us today. I know you're incredibly busy.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, yeah, no, I appreciate it. Yep.

Kelly Kennedy: Oh, man. Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on today. Big reason, obviously, is we live in we live in Edmonton, Alberta, or at least I do. And Huge epicenter for startups and, you know, grant funding is on the minds of basically all startup businesses. How the heck do we find our great, brilliant ideas?

And I know it's an insane challenge. So you know what you're doing with impact applications is incredibly commendable, and I'm excited to talk about that with you today.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

Kelly Kennedy: Take us back to the beginning, Peter. You know, like, what started, you know, this passion for entrepreneurship? Have you always been an entrepreneur at heart?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, I would say I've always been an entrepreneur at heart. I'd say it really started when I was selling Coke in junior high. Coca Cola, by the way. Coca Cola, by the way. So this was when I was in junior high at John Ware in Calgary. You know, they because of health they stopped selling pop in the vending machine So I saw an opportunity a market gap you could say And started selling coke and it was pretty funny got called to the principal's office.

He says hey peter I heard you're selling coke and i'm like Yeah. What's wrong with selling Coke? And he's like, Oh my gosh, I don't want to have to call the authorities. I'm going to have to search your locker though. So I opened up my locker and he's like, what are all these kids doing here? So that, that was, that was where it started from.

And from there, you know, did, did the, you know, any, anything I could get my hands on really in junior high and high school, snow shoveling mowing lawns. Then when I got my license, I got a minivan and I started window washing, which was really awesome because. You know, not only did I make good money window washing, I was able to employ my peers.

I paid them above minimum wage. I had a really good incentive structure. It was awesome. Did that until about first year university where I was like, you know, I'm kind of getting tired of this physical labor work, you know, 50 pound ladders putting a toll on my shoulder. So I'm like, I got to do something else.

So that's where I founded Varas Technologies, Inc, you know, a software company. We were going after blockchain voting. And, you know, we won the 150 startups pitch competition in 2020, the innovation rodeo, which was awesome. That's where I got my full ride to Draper university in Silicon Valley.

Actually Lethbridge County approached us to, you know, supplement their municipal. Election with our, our blockchain technology. However, you know, after looking into the municipal elections act and other legislature, we found out that there's no online voting is illegal in Alberta. So at least for general elections, we're like, ah, if our business model is legal, what are we going to do?

So, you know, we kind of pivoted a little bit, but we pivoted to. You know, kind of a survey insights engine and that that's kind of where it started. So, you know, I just saw him, the founder with a business idea in software, you know, I'm like, I gotta raise, I gotta get some money to pay my developers. So I'm sure every founder has been in that dilemma, you know, how do you get money to pay for your employees?

And if you're pre revenue where you're in a business that requires a lot of research and development, you're, you're pretty much faced with three, three options. You either, You know, borrow money and with today's interest rate, it's not the best idea either. You, you raise investment, you know, fundraise or you get grants.

So I, so I went for the ladder option with the grants and that was awesome. We raised over 300, 000 in grants, allowed me to pay for the developers. It was great. However, the problem was. Because all my focus went to, you know, researching, writing, applying for these grants, it really distracted me from the business.

And, you know, that's where, you know, earlier this year, I got the idea for Impact Applications where I'm thinking, you know, I'll let someone else you know, develop the innovative technology and we'll focus on the grants. So that's where I co founded Impact Applications and that's what we do is we Help innovative founders you know, focus on the business activities they do best while we work hard to get them grants and other non dilutive funding.

So we do all the researching, the writing, applying, and the reporting.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. So do you guys also put together the actual proposal for the grant as well? Oh

Peter Hurd-Watler: yeah, yeah, we do everything. Yep, so. Wow. Everything. Yep. We, you know, the first thing we do with our clients, once they become a client is we create, you know, a tailored grant research report for them and then a grant plan.

Like, hey, here's the roadmap of all the grants we're going to go for for your company that we know you're eligible for because we've We've vetted them and then we apply for the grants. We write them, we submit the applications. Once they're approved, we do all the followup reporting, which is a big step.

A lot of people don't realize all the followup reporting and requirements to make sure you get that money. And, and yeah, we do full service grant management.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. Like very, very forward thinking. I, I haven't come across that before. Had you like in your market research before you kind of launched it?

What, what kind of competition did you even have in that space?

Peter Hurd-Watler: There's it's it's definitely there's more there's more demand than supply, which is awesome for my business for sure And I would say That there are some service providers for sure But in terms of those that do the full service, that's one of the ways we differentiate ourselves a lot of grant writers, they'll, they'll write the grant for you and they'll submit it, but they won't do all the follow up reporting.

They won't be constantly, you know, doing research for you. So there's, there's some out there, but we haven't come across one that's quite like us, that provides full service grant management.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, for sure. You know, I was going through your profile kind of before we started here and your first kind of venture into this.

Was it GrantYou?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, that that was kind of a stepping stone that led to impact applications. So with GrantYou that was more student focused, you know, I got some student grants as well as a student Lethbridge. I'm going to be graduating soon. So with GrantYou. Yeah, that was a business, you know, tailored for students where a little bit of a similar idea where we would, you know, provide students with, you know, a list of grants or we'd help them apply for it.

And Chase Miller was my first customer with GrantYou. And, you know, he, he said, Hey you know, I've got this web design company. A lot of my clients are asking about grants. You know, do you do any corporate grants? And that's, that's kind of what sparked the idea for impact applications. That's what we co founded the company together.

So GrantYou served as a nice, a stepping stone. I'm glad we did GrantYou, but I prefer impact applications. You know, business owners are a lot better to deal with and have a lot more money than, than students.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, yes, no, for sure. You know, I, like, I always love to see the journey, right? Like. I feel like they're all stepping stones to kind of where you need to go.

You know, how has Veras Technologies factored into impact applications? Do you still use a lot of information from that in your processes moving forward? Or was it were you able to integrate the two?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, for sure. Definitely was able to. It was a great stepping stone. Like first of all, just the fact that I was able to secure 300, 000 over 300, 000 with Veras, that's what, you know, sharpened my teeth in terms of grant writing and being able to do this with full service grant management.

And then just a lot of lessons from Veras just in general business, I was able to transfer over to impact applications as well as a few people on the team. On the Veras team, we've transitioned to impact applications versus still going. We're still conducting R and D on the side, but I would say impact is my main focus.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. Can we go back into Veras for a second? You know, obviously you created the blockchain with regards to the voting, the voting structure strategy that you'd kind of tried to accomplish. It seems to me like a great idea. Was there any potential future push to try to get that implement or try to get those laws waived or changed?

Peter Hurd-Watler: We tried like it's like we we were literally lobbying like we we were lobbying with let's bridge county. We were caught this was this was man I don't want to get too political, but I might as well. It's it's pretty entertaining. So the past Minister of municipal affairs. This was during covid. I forget her name But she put this was during covid in the lockdown.

So she's posting. Hey, stay at home Posted from my iphone in hawaii. So she posted that and of course the public is in outrage So she had to step down as the minister But that was our minister. We were lobbying to change the act. So just a bit of a, it's kind of funny looking back at it, but like we still, we tried, I do genuinely think it's, it's a good idea and it's, it's notable.

As well as I, I'm really looking forward with Veras you know, we're with the, MITACS funding, we got, we're, we're going to be publishing a paper hopefully early next year. So, you know, these papers, they have, they have very long academic titles. So I'll, I'll go through it kind of slowly. So it's called social media with a purpose.

Leveraging blockchain, AI and other innovative technology to create a new form of political communication amongst you. So in layman's terms, think Instagram, but instead of users posting and responding to pictures, they post and respond to politically related surveys. And that's the experiment we did with our technology where, you know, we So we think of that Instagram type platform where there's users and they make their posts and that's saved on the blockchain so you can't edit or delete them because it's blockchain and then the AI, you know, gathers all of those texts, those written responses and analyze them kind of like chat GPT to really synthesize large amounts of qualitative information.

And that's, that's pretty much the technology we're, we're, we're pursuing. And Hey, at least we'll have this research paper. Maybe someone else will be able to take the baton. And the interesting thing that we found is with, with voting, although blockchain voting is a great idea of voting is a very infrequent form of political communication, you know, it's only once every four years.

So, you know, imagine how successful your relationship would be if you only communicated once every four years.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, that's that's pretty valuable.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, exactly.

Kelly Kennedy: You know, I think it's kind of funny that that you were kind of involved in the blockchain side of things as well. You know, we're talking cause it's only hours ago for me, but literally I, I just interviewed Adam O'Brien with Bitcoin. Well, who you mentioned is also one of your clients.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, it's, it's great. Small world for sure.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, totally. So it's funny cause this week for you, his show will have been. The previous week, so I think it's kind of it's funny how it we're kind of talking about blockchain there and then we're kind of getting into blockchain here and it was completely unrelated.

It just kind of happened that way. Yeah, for sure. All right. Well, you know, what I really wanted to talk with you about here is, you know, getting into Impact applications and talking about grants. You know, I wanted to give a bit of an educational segment. You know, you're an expert in grant funding. You're an expert in acquiring grants for people, and I know that, like, lots of companies apply for grants and then are like, Oh, crap, like, we don't know what to do past that point.

I guess one of the questions that I wanted to start out with is what should companies consider before even thinking about taking on a grant?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, for sure. I think there's a few things you want to consider. The first thing, if you're a company, is you want to consider are you grantable? So are you grantable?

So what that means is, first of all, do you have the The funding for the grant. So most grants work kind of like a gift card or a reimbursement. So you've got to make sure you have the funds. So if you're, so if it's a hiring grant, for example, do you have the funding to pay this person five, 10 K a month for one, two, three months before the grant actually kicks in to reimburse you for that?

That's the first thing. The second thing is does it align with your business strategy? So you shouldn't pursue a grant just for the sake of pursuing it should align with your business strategy. For example, if you're a company that does business in America and Canada and there's a grant to do business in Asia, but you have no business going to Asia.

It doesn't make sense for your strategy. You probably shouldn't. Put all that energy into that grant. If it's not going to align with your core strategy and then third is the information. So you're you're these grants agencies require a lot of information. So you got to make sure. Do you have your business plan?

Do you have your market research? Do you have your tam? Sam? Some? Outlined and calculated. Do you have your previous three years of financial statements? Do you have your next three years of financial projections? And and all of that is is really important information to make sure you're grantable if you're applying for a grant for yourself or even if you're You know hiring a service like impact applications like media because we're going to need that information from you And if you don't have it, then we're going to have to get you to that level You know, you're kind of starting off negative and we got to get you to just zero to make sure you're grantable.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, for sure. Agreed. And I think a lot of companies aren't considering any of that. So I think those are really good points. One of the other questions that I had was, You know, how are, how are, so, you know, we typically hear about grants through word of mouth. Like, frankly, that's how I think I've heard of most of the grants that we've ever applied for at Capital or the Business Development Podcast for various things.

It's like, oh, like, oh, this is available. Have you thought about this? How did someone like you end up an expert in this space? Like, what does that take to become an expert in trying to understand? Because you have to be aware of what all the grants are, what's coming up, what's coming out the door. And, you know, how, how was that learning curve for you?

How were you able to stay ahead of the curve with regards to knowing what's even available for people?

Peter Hurd-Watler: That's a great question, Kelly. I think, you know, how we've been able to, you know, really keep a pulse on these things is, you know, we apply for one grant and then we keep a pulse on that grant agency.

So whenever they're releasing new grants, we find out about them. We're keeping a pulse on all the grants in Alberta, such as Alberta Innovates. We're keeping a pulse on the federal grants, such as IRAP. There's also grant research platforms out there. So such as Alberta business grants with David Kincaid.

I'd highly recommend his advanced grant writing course. He's been a great contact and partner of ours. He's been great. As well as like I mentioned, Kelly Como from Funding Essential. She's been an awesome partner and mentor with us. She's always posting grants on her LinkedIn. Pocketed is another platform that releases grants.

So just signing up for all the email newsletters of anything to do with Canadian grants really lets you keep a pulse on this. And, you know, the trick is, it's, it's, it's old saying, you know, entrepreneurs don't starve, they drown. Same thing goes with grants. You're going to be drowning in grants. So the real trick is figuring out, you know, which ones to apply for.

So once, once you got, you know, say it, you know, we, we probably sip in terms of the total number of grants, maybe even a thousand grants a month, you know, come I read and, and we sift through, but then once you narrow it down for our clients, you know, who's eligible for what it narrows down, you know, from a thousand to maybe 10 or something like that.

So that's the real tip to is just. Sign up for all the email lists for all these different grant agencies and grant researchers.

Kelly Kennedy: Are you able to, like, look at a grant and be able to say, yeah, like, I think, like, with, like, a 80 to 90 percent Success rate here that we can accomplish this grant. How have you been able to like make that call?

Because I get that, like, you know, you're going to have to give some type of commitment to your customers. Like, yeah, we know we're at, we're 80%. We can get this one. How are you able to grade out what, what you're going to be most effective at, or what's going to be a little harder to do?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, for sure. So it ties into my first point of getting grantable.

So once the customer gives us all of that detailed information, then the grant comes across our desk and we match the eligibility criteria of the grant to our client. So that's how we can determine if our client is eligible for the grant and we can get a good idea. Not at a 10 grants that we read.

We're like, Oh, our client is an eligible and we move on. Then that one out of 10 grant, we're like, okay, this is worth exploring. So then we discuss, we bring it to our client's attention. We discuss it with them. And then we set some go or no go milestones of, okay, step one. We think this is good. Let's fill out the intake form.

Okay. We've passed the intake form. Let's meet with the grant agency. And actually talk with them and, and get their thoughts on it to see if we're a good fit. Okay, step three, let's actually do the hard work of submitting the application. So by the time we get to the second or third no go milestone, it's usually, you know, like you said, that 80, 90 percent chance that we're going to get it.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Is it, you know you're, you're operating primarily in Alberta at the moment, correct? Do you operate across Canada?

Peter Hurd-Watler: We do operate across Canada. Yeah, for sure.

Kelly Kennedy: Okay, perfect. One of the questions that I had was, You know, obviously in Alberta, a lot of the grants are very much formulated towards tech startups.

That seems to be the thing that we really want to fund right now. Is there the ability to work with companies that aren't just part of tech?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, for sure. Yeah, there's, there's a lot of different organizations that aren't just tech that, that we do work with as well. The important thing to understand about the grants is they're from the government and the government has certain priorities.

So, you know, there's kind of like A tier, B tier and everything else. So A tier would be things like tech obviously is huge, environment, agriculture, you know industries like that. Those are the A tier industries that the government wants to fund. thEre's the A tier, the B tier, there's other ones, maybe transportation obviously some industrial and manufacturing, things like that, even, even non for profits and charities there's always grants for those, but it depends on the non for profit and charity that they're going after, so.

You know, unfortunately, you know, a charity for you know geared towards child care or senior care would be prioritized over a charity like the humane society For example for animals, you know, I really I really like animals. I I foster cats myself, but that's that's the way it is. So It is important to understand from a business Owner's perspective what industry are you in?

And is it an a tier industry that the government is giving grants towards and tech is definitely an a tier industry It's not the only one but it definitely is the 80 in the a tier

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, you know, I always wonder that because we deal with lots and lots of service based companies or companies that are creating, you know, products or or are building items, but since they are not necessarily in the tech side of the world, they just don't qualify for any of these grants.

And it's kind of too bad because, you know, there's a lot of industry outside of tech that still needs that government support that is still profitable and has benefit to Canada.

Peter Hurd-Watler: For sure. And hey, that's, that's where we come in because there, there's some grants that are open to all industries for sure.

And, and I'd say if you, if you, if you're, if you are a business owner and you're a grantable, meaning you have the, not only the funds set aside for the grant, but your revenue generating and you have those documents that I mentioned earlier. There's, there's a grant out there that exists for you that you'd be eligible for.

Kelly Kennedy: Interesting. So, you know, run us through, run us through the impact applications process, right? Like, let's say that you've made a connection with a company and they want to engage you. Can you run me through a start to finish process?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, absolutely. So if a lead wants to engage us, we'll schedule an intake meeting with them where we'll learn more about their business.

How many employees do they have? What's their revenue? What's their business model? You know, what industry are they in? Are they in the A tier industry? And then from there, we'll decide if we can help them or not. So our target is innovative founders. of revenue generating Canadian companies with five to 50 employees.

So innovative doesn't necessarily mean tech. You know, we have companies in the agriculture space or manufacturing. But there's, there's always innovation. There's innovation in every industry. So it doesn't have to necessarily mean tech. And then from there, if we think we're a good fit, we'll offer one of our you know, business plans are our pricing plans for our full service grant management.

And, and we'll, we'll move from there. So they'll, they'll pick a plan. That has, you know, a monthly service fee, and then also a tiered success fee, depending on the plan that they choose to go with. And then from there you know, they're a client of ours, and we, the first step is getting them grantable. So we're gathering as much information as we can, identifying those documents, like I said, getting it from them.

If they don't have them, we do offer supplementary writing services. And then once we have all those documents, we, we provide them with a grant research report and say, Hey, this is our three month plan to get you grants that can fund the things that you need most. So that's one of the questions we had is have for our clients is what are your biggest expenses and what do you need the funding for?

And we find the biggest expense is employees, which is great because there's a lot of salary wage subsidy grants out there. So that's what we do is we go ahead and apply for those grants for them. We, we go in three month plans and, and yeah, that's what we do. And then we meet with our clients either once a week, once every two weeks as needed to just keep them posted on how we're working hard to get them those grants.

Kelly Kennedy: That's really, really interesting. So essentially. You're paying yourself off just by essentially getting them the grants. Like you, you really are a cost neutral service.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, for sure. That's, that's a great way to, to look at it for sure. And we, and even with our service, our monthly service, we have a money back guarantee, we don't 1.

5 X your money within the first 12 months. We'll refund the difference.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow. That is a hell of a commitment.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah. Well, well that's, that's like, we, we get that. Within the first quarter, let alone the first year, all of our clients, we've been able to do that within like the first quarter. So it hasn't been a problem for us.

Kelly Kennedy: Wow, that's an, that's amazing. Like, congratulations. That's an absolutely amazing statistic, Peter.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's, it's been awesome. Like every, yeah, literally every one of our clients, we've been able to do that, that have, that have been with us for the first quarter, that have worked with us. And cooperated.

We've, we've been able to do that for them.

Kelly Kennedy: Interesting. And so you mentioned that it's a, it's, you have a, essentially an intro fee, like obviously your base fee per month, cause you have a certain level of effort and you have employees that you need to cover. And then there's a success like essentially a commission or a profit share with the sheer amount of of Loan or sorry of grant that you're able to acquire, correct?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, so our success fee is calculated based on the grant, but it's not paid out from the grant So how they pay us is the money that? You know, say we get them a grant for 100, 000 to subsidize their employees, the money that they would have had to spend on their employees. That's what they pay us with.

Kelly Kennedy: I see.

I see. Okay. Okay. Interesting. Interesting. So it does, it does require a lot of trust and openness in the, in the conversation and negotiation between yourself and your clients.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, for sure.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome. You know, one of the other questions that I kind of had with regards to grants and such was, You know, if you are out there helping companies get the grants, you know, are you having to work directly alongside Alberta innovates?

Like, do they kind of work as a partner with you? Or how does that relationship work for you?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, how it works is we're like a strategic consultant to our clients, and we will advise them on how best to Interact with Alberta Innovates or these other grant agencies, but the clients themselves do interact with the grant agencies.

And that's one of the things we advise is, you know, have a really good relationship with your technology development advisor from Alberta Innovates or your ITA from IRAP. You know, foster a really good relationship with them, invite them to any company events you have to make sure you're really you know, treat them like the advisors they are in a trusted business advisor.

And that's, that's exactly what we're doing too. We're a consultant, like funding consultants.

Kelly Kennedy: It's crazy. Cause like it makes so much sense, but I haven't actually come across it before, like. You know, I've heard a lot about the grants and that side of thing. I haven't really worked in tech aside from marketing for tech.

So it's a little bit of a different world. But yeah, it's something that like seems so needed. And yet I've literally never come across it until we made our connection.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Well, I didn't even know about it myself, you know, back when, when I bought with with Veras you know, that's why I applied for it myself, because I didn't, I didn't know the service existed.

Kelly Kennedy: What were some of the lessons that you learned in that time? You know, like, obviously, you've been doing this, you've done this for a lot of companies. What has been like one of the, you know, two or three big lessons that you've learned to be more successful with Grants?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, I'd say in terms of top lessons There's a few like I mentioned make sure you're grantable and you have that information there.

I would say another lesson is You know, just make sure you've really got your idea outlined, you know Make sure that you're a good writer and if you're not a good writer Hopefully someone else on your team is where you can put pen to paper. Okay. This is the project we're pursuing this, this is where the money is going to go to help support our employees.

This is going to be the outcome of this product. Because that's what the government wants to see. The government wants to see that, you know, the government's giving you our tax dollars and they do want to see a return on it in the term, in terms of job creation. So you really got to explain how this money leads to innovation, which leads to job creation.

Yeah, I'd say those are the top lessons that I've learned. You got to be really concise. And then probably even more important lesson is make sure you develop a relationship with the grant agency. So one statistic is 70 percent of all grants goes to someone the grant agency knows. So you really want to establish that relationship with the grant agency.

So the first step is identifying the grants that you want to apply for. The second step is meeting with the grant agency. And fostering that relationship and getting an idea. Okay. Are we actually eligible for this grant? Do we have a pretty good chance of getting it and then do apply. But, but the, the most, most people who think when they think of grants, like, Oh, I got to apply and start writing that that's step three.

You, you want to do step one and two first, especially you don't want to waste your time. So that's the big thing.

Kelly Kennedy: I love, I love that you touched on the relationship aspect, right? Business development podcasts. We're all about relationships. They're absolutely critical. You know, explain a little bit, you know, can you give me a scenario where that has truly helped you or that that gave you that edge you needed to win?

Peter Hurd-Watler: For sure. Even, even with Veras for example. So we were working with, with MITACS and Hannah Scott, shout out to her. She's the Lethbridge BD is this development for MITACS. And at some points I was meeting with Hannah, you know, once a week or multiple times a week, just to check in with this grant, she was giving me a lot of advice and feedback on the grant, continue to revise it.

Yes. It was a lot of work, but, but, but it paid off because that's, that's how we're able to win is. Because we had that relationship with Mitacs, they were giving us feedback on our application and our business strategy. And that's what, at the end, I really contributed to us winning that over 300, 000.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. Yeah. Amazing. Amazing. And it makes so much sense because if you can get that feedback from somebody to say, Hey, like, have you considered this? Or you're just meeting their application standards that much better, right? Like But like you said, those relationships, they take time to foster. You know, how would, what would you recommend people do to start to establish those relationships if they don't have them?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah. So the first step is just, you know, submit the intake form for whatever the grant agency is and get connected with the advisor and then just start meeting with them, just have an initial consultation, talk about your business, ask them for their advice on your business model, on your innovation. On which particular grants they recommend.

And, you know, the nice thing with post COVID as we we've shown now is, you know, you can develop those relationships over video call, which is really awesome. And yeah, that's, that's the big thing. And then if you have that in person aspect of. You're doing business in person, say in Alberta, so you're going to, you know, big events like in ventures or innovation week or, or really any of these big events, you know, the grant agency is most likely going to be there.

They might have a booth or something like that. Make sure you talk to them. Say hi to your BD your advisor while you're there and yeah, that'd be my advice for building those relationships.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah. No, amazing You had mentioned earlier the Veras tiers of industry what you called tier a tier B tier and C tier You know for the company's listening or the founders listening.

How do they know what tier they fall into? Are you able to define those tiers for them?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, so yeah, to define those tiers, I would say it's, it's not, it's not, it's not necessarily me defining those tiers. So, so, our philosophy is you know, we, we don't make the rules. We just, we just use them the best we can.

So, it's, it's the government really identifying the tiers. You know, this isn't necessarily a hard and fast rule, but for ourselves, the A tier industries is just think, what, what's the government talking about of all the grants the government releases that are industry specific that the government does release general grants.

Such as the Canada summer jobs grant. I plug in. That's that's a general grant for summer jobs for that will subsidize a youth subsidy. Anyone from age 15 to 30. They don't have to be in school. It's up to 50 percent subsidy for a summer job, like grants like that are industry agnostic in terms of, you know, you take all the grants that either the provincial or federal government releases that are industry specific.

What percentage are going to what industry that's that's how you really identify this. So like I mentioned the tier a Industries would be tech Agriculture, we got to eat, you know agriculture is a big thing environmental manufacturing the b tier, you know might be things like transportation And then like in those non profit charity sectors such as senior care or child care things like that And then, you know the other industries that might be a little bit less it just really depends on on the industry, but Some of those that I don't want to be mean I don't want to discourage anyone from applying for grants But some of those other tiers if they don't fall into what I mentioned, they're probably You know not the a tier b tier, but you should still look at applying for some grants But just know that your business might not be in that a tier So you're going to have to apply to non industry specific grants.

Kelly Kennedy: Sure, sure.

Yeah, no, I think it's just important to give people an idea of where their businesses fall because I think everybody wants to try to find. Yeah, where can we get some help? You know, I mean, I think all business owners are always looking for whatever help they can get because running a business is a challenge and it's very expensive.

And if there is help available, we want to take advantage of that. I think a lot of us to are just yeah. Afraid of the effort that it's going to take to get the grants to, or like, what, what are the obligations? Like if, you know, just being awarded a grant, isn't the end of the obligation. It's the very beginning.

Can we talk a little bit to some of the risks companies could take on by taking on some of these grants?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, for sure. You definitely want to watch out for the risks. So you definitely don't want to embellish anything. You want to make sure you meet the criteria. Cause they're going to check. And they're going to ask for your documents.

They're going to thoroughly go through your website go through your social media profiles So make sure you do meet the eligibility criteria And that's that's what I mentioned about step one is identify the grant and make sure you meet the criteria I'd say the risk is is it's a balance with grants because on one hand you're making this big proposal for the grant, especially if it's a big grant where we're going to do this this and this And but on the other hand, you know business is fluid it changes so priorities can change So what you want to do to mitigate that my my strategy, you know for our clients is you've got the grant Do focus on the project but also focus if this grant is a wage subsidy make sure you're hiring this person That is is a really great hire.

So that way If something needs to pivot, this person's able to pivot their work as well. So I'd say the risk with the grant is just make sure that you're, you're being honest about your eligibility criteria, making sure you meet it. And then make sure 100 percent of the grant money that you get. Is a hundred percent spent on what you said it would be spent on and make sure you have the receipts to prove it for the reporting or if they do follow up with you.

Kelly Kennedy: Yes, like they're not just going to give you whatever a hundred grand and say, there you go. Good luck to you. They, they need to know that it's audited and that it's going where they, where they, where you said it would go.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, exactly.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, no, that's amazing. That's very, very great advice. You know, I wanted to ask you talk to me about like.

You know, you're a serial entrepreneur. What launched you into, what was that initial kick that made you start your first company? Tell me about that moment. What was that like for you?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Hmm. That's a, that's a good question. Technically speaking, my first job when I was, I think I was like six years old was, was picking up dog poop for one of my mom's friends.

Like, I don't know if that counts as, you know, launching into entrepreneurship. I'm glad I didn't do that for too long and I'm glad I quit doing that. So I think the biggest kick was probably around the time I was selling pop and there was a few reasons behind that. The first reason was I was, I was 12.

So I actually did go to, you know, my local grocery store and applied for a job. They said I was too young. I think you had to be 14 or something like that or 15 to work. You know, a minimum wage hourly job. So I was too young. So I'm like, well, I'm too young to work this job. So, so what am I, what am I going to do in terms of getting money?

So that I'd say that was the first kick of like, okay, I see this opportunity with selling pop in my. Junior high school and then I think another example was the the final I don't want to say nail in the coffin But maybe nail on the ship is a better analogy, you know the nail on the ship of my journey to entrepreneurship Was in kind of my third year, Accounting class in university.

I wanted to be an accountant when I first entered university, which was great. I recommend everyone take some accounting classes when they go to university, no matter what their major is, you know, accounting is the language of business. Whether you have a business role, a marketing role, even if you're arts or graphic design, it's really important to understand accounting.

So I, I'd highly recommend it. But, you know, when I was in accounting at the University of Lethbridge, I'm in my third year class, you know, we all bombed the first midterm of this advanced financial accounting course, and I'm looking at my grade and my teacher, my professor, you know, she's telling us, hey, not only are you competing amongst your classmates, but you're competing With every accounting student across Canada who wants to be a CPA.

So you guys make, got to make sure you do better. So I'm just thinking to myself, man, I don't know if I want to do that. We compete with all of them. So I'm like, how can I, you know, kind of like the blue ocean strategy. It's like, how can I situate myself? So I'm not as in such a competitive environment.

I thought, well, if you're an entrepreneur and you develop a niche business where you provide a unique value, then you're just. Your own competition. So that, I think that was the thing that really solidified my entrepreneurial journey. And I decided, Hey, I'm not, I'm not going to be an accountant, just going to be an entrepreneur for the rest of my life.

Kelly Kennedy: That's amazing. Yeah. I always ask because everyone seems to have a very interesting story, but you know what? I don't think I've talked to an entrepreneur yet that didn't have that dog poop story. I like every, almost all of them did something at a young age to earn money. That was kind of outside the box.

I really think that it's a, it's a gene. We all have a little bit of a, in us. Amazing. Well, hey, you know, I also wanted to ask, you know, you've been doing impact applications now for seven months. So congratulations. I know it's still relatively new.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Today is actually the six month anniversary from our incorporation.

Six months.

Kelly Kennedy: Holy cow. Okay. I had seven. I don't know where I got that one from, but six months since incorporation. Tell me about your marketing strategy. What has it been like to launch impact applications? Like, obviously, this is a great idea. I know, especially being right here in Edmonton. It's an amazing idea.

So congratulations. You're right. I haven't come across it before. So I think that you have relatively little competition. I'm sure there's some, but you know what I mean? You're not competing in a big pool of competition in the space. What is your marketing strategy been? How have you been doing your business development and your marketing?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, that's, that's one of the challenges we're, we're, we're going through right now. So definitely appreciate any advice you have after the interview, but I would say our strategy is mostly spear marketing as has been the success of our strategies. So first of all, I went through my own network of people.

So one of our clients actually he, I was in a, I'm in the fraternity at the university of Lethbridge, Kappa Sigma, and he started his own business, timber ridge firewood. And, you know, he, he actually reached out to me. You saw, I was writing grants on LinkedIn, saw impact applications and became a client.

So that that's been really great is just leveraging your existing connections, having the spear marketing strategy of more one to one outreach. That's that's been really good for us. We've been doing also as well attending a lot of networking events So platform calgary has a lot of events. I know innovation week is coming up that we're going to be attending So those have been really effective for us We definitely need to ramp up our online kind of more net strategy in terms linkedin Getting the seo going on our website.

We have a blog page that we're doing so we've been leveraging that and, you know, we've just gotten started with that, but we, we definitely are continuing to up our marketing efforts, business development efforts to just get the word out that, hey, we offer this service of full service grant management with impact applications.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely amazing. No, what I would suggest potentially doing and I'll just give you some advice right on the show because people like to have that. What I would suggest doing would be to start making lots of friends with the people who are helping with the accelerator programs or, you know, who are being the mentors to some of these businesses just getting off the ground because that's not their space.

However, someone like you coming in to be able to say, Hey, like we can help, you know, the startup you're working with to get X number of grants is going to be incredibly beneficial to them and their mentorship programs. So I think that like it's a little bit different than marketing to like already established businesses because most of them they're flying a little bit under the radar because they're not necessarily public information yet.

For the most part they're going to various pitch, pitch competitions or other things like that. They have mentorship or they might be part of an accelerator program, but unless you're part of the tech community. And you're keeping up with it. It's sometimes hard to even know who your customers might be.

So I think in your case, making really great friends with some of the mentorship programs or the various mentors that operate across Canada, and I can even feed you some of these names after the show of people that we've had that that are amazing that could probably use your service would be really beneficial for you.

I really think that. Getting, like you said, well known in that startup space, especially right here in Alberta and especially with the people that are helping these startups accomplish certain levels of success of success is going to be your best bet for marketing because they're already working with 15 20 startups at a time who could all use your service.

Peter Hurd-Watler: Awesome. Yeah, I really appreciate that, Kelly. And yeah, feel free to send us those names. I can even do a follow up email to follow up on that.

Kelly Kennedy: Yeah, absolutely, Peter. Absolutely. No, this has been amazing. If people want to use your service, Peter, people want to get a hold of you, impact applications, they want to potentially consult with you about applying for some grants.

What's the best way for them to go about doing that?

Peter Hurd-Watler: And so the best way you can email me directly. peter@impactapplications.ca is my email. Feel free to email me anytime. I'm also on LinkedIn, Peter Hurd-Watler. And you can see right on my LinkedIn. Need grant funding? Click the link and you can schedule a meeting with me.

Kelly Kennedy: Awesome. Awesome. So there you go. If you're looking for grants, you're in Canada. Peter Heard Watler. He's your guy. Impact Applications. You're out of Calgary. Is that correct, Peter?

Peter Hurd-Watler: Yeah, we're based out of Calgary. We operate all across Canada though. So if you're an innovative founder of a Canadian business that generates revenue and you have around 5 to 50 employees, you're right up our target.

But even if you're not, feel free to give me a chat anytime.

Kelly Kennedy: Amazing. Amazing. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Peter. This has been episode 88 of the Business Development Podcast. We will catch you on the flip side.

Outro: This has been the business development podcast with Kelly Kennedy. Kelly has 15 years in sales and business development experience within the Alberta oil and gas industry and founded his own business development firm in 2020.

His passion and his specialization. Is in customer relationship generation and business development. The show is brought to you by Capital Business Development, your Business Development Specialists. For more, we invite you to the website @ www.capitalbd.ca. See you next time on the Business Development Podcast.

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