​My ongoing research through the years includes why some of my entrepreneur graduates succeed in business and why others are less fortunate. Business success is defined in many ways, but the bottom line is profitability. 

Profit is considered the money remaining after a product or service is sold, earned revenue and paid out its cost of operating the business.  Costs are everything from buying supplies, paying employees, liability insurance and all of the overhead expenses incurred in the operation. 

If a business isn’t producing profits, then it means that more money is being spent than earned. Businesses can’t go on very long when operating at a deficit.  

There are many opinions by experts about why a business succeeds or fails. I have tracked my entrepreneur graduates for years and the ones who have succeeded in business demonstrate certain skills such as the following:

• Target the right group of customers
• Stay informed about whether or not they have enough customers 
• Aware of their customers’ wants and needs
• Have a clear purpose of their business in writing
• Utilize an updated Business Plan
• Have written specific goals and objectives
• Keep abreast with their full operating costs
• Familiar with their specific business expenses 
• Adhere to their budget
• Accumulate data about their competitors’ strengths and weaknesses
• Aware of their own strengths and weaknesses
• Carefully calculated their prices and continue to sell at a profit
• Use effective leadership and management
• Stay involved in professional groups and the community 
• Bring in above-average profits due to exemplary planning
• Maintain the image of a “winner”

Where do you begin?

I’m Dr. Pat and I have written hundreds of proposals and been awarded over fifty million dollars in grant funds. There are certain secrets that I will share with you if you want to succeed as a successful proposal writer.

The first thing that you must locate is the Request For Proposal (RFP) because without this, there is no reason to write a proposal.  This is a request for a proposal and states that the grant maker is seeking an organization that they will give grant money to in exchange for implementing a specific service or project. Without the RFP there is no reason to write your proposal.

I have always predicted that a grant is awarded to those writers who exhibit energetic and leadership skills that include being an expert in the field of interest that you want funding for, can accept challenges or problems as opportunities and be the “take charge" grant producer. Problem solvers and effective communicators tend to bring a proposal to successful fruition.

One of the major dilemmas that I have found over the years is that there are great proposals written that “never get off the ground". Many times an organization seeking a grant award will gather together several talented individuals who comprise the proposal-writing team. I usually find that they have omitted one winning factor; they lack the leader whose job is to pull all of the proposal sections together and to get the proposal submitted by the deadline. 

I strongly recommend that to produce an award-winning proposal, one person must be clearly designated as the team leader whose sole responsibility is to get the proposal written, assembled and submitted on time. It’s as simple as that, yet many times, organizations do no have that specific person and the grant-writing process fails. More of my winning secrets can be found in my book called “How To Win At Grant Writing" found on Amazon or Barnes & Noble sites.