It’s the last Friday of August, which means everyone’s inbox is either “back to school chaos” or “panicking about Q4.” No judgment either way. This week is grants-heavy in the best way, and fair warning: the biggest check on this list closes Sunday and a whole cluster of monthly grants close Monday. So maybe read this one before you pour the second coffee.

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A woman stands up at her own birthday lunch, in a restaurant, surrounded by her entire family, and tells them she got into a master’s program in creative writing in Glasgow, Scotland. She’s moving across an ocean. She’s starting over at 40, right off the back of a divorce, on the strength of a book she wrote during what was probably the worst year of her life. And her aunt just keeps eating. Never looks up, not once, just fork to mouth to fork to mouth while the biggest news of her niece’s life happens about three feet away from her.

I sent that video to my boyfriend, then to my friends, then to my group chat, and I said, “this family has to be from North Carolina,” because I knew. I would have put money on it. And I was right, because Amanda Wilson is from North Carolina, and that lunch is every single family gathering I have ever sat through in my life.

The joke in my family is that I could run for president, and win, and call home like oh my god, y’all, I’m the president, and my mom would say “okay.” And then my brother could announce that he’d been constipated for four days and finally took a poop and the whole table would come completely unglued, we’re so proud of him, somebody get this man a cake. That’s not a bit, by the way. That is literally the dynamic.

In January I got my first real office in eight years of running MJPR. Eight years of working from wherever I could, and then last Friday I finally got a door with my logo and my name on it, so I took a picture and sent it to my family, because that is what you do when a thing you built out of absolutely nothing turns into an object you can go stand next to.

“Okay.”

That was the whole response. And listen, my dad did not know the name of my company for years, and I need you to understand that my company is my legal name with PR on the end, and he asked me what it was. He also did not know I have a Grammy.

So when I watched Amanda’s aunt keep eating, I didn’t laugh at her, I clocked her, because I have an entire family of her. I love them, but they are simply never going to be the ones screaming in my comments.

The part the internet missed

Everybody piled on the aunt, which, fine, fair. But the aunt is honestly the least interesting thing about Amanda, so I slid into her DMs and asked her to come on the podcast so we could trauma dump at each other for an hour.

Here’s what I got.

Amanda wrote her debut novel, Mixed Tapes and Mixed Emotions, mostly in 2023, and 2023 was the year her marriage was ending and she was deep in a depression and several people she loved died. She told me the only two things getting her out of bed that year were writing this book and TikToks from the Eras Tour, and I want to be clear that was the whole list. That was it.

The book is about a girl named Hannah who’s been homeschooled her entire life inside a very conservative religious bubble, and she goes off to a public university where her roommate turns out to be a witch and the girl across the hall is Jewish, and those girls basically take her in and teach her pop culture and sex ed and all the regular stuff everybody assumes everybody already knows. Then she goes back home to her church, where a boy named Ryan has been sitting on the prayer request list for a year and nobody will tell her why, and she starts falling for him, and eventually she finds out exactly why the church pushed him out. It’s set in the mid-2000s. He’s an emo boy, she’s the good Christian girl, and the whole thing is religious deconstruction with a Warped Tour soundtrack.

I need everybody to understand that I am not the target audience for this book. I am this book.

Okay so let me tell you about my own deconstruction, since we’re already here

I grew up Pentecostal, and in my hometown we had a tiny Mormon church and one Catholic church and that was the entire extent of our religious diversity, so I knew Jewish people existed the way I knew Norway existed. I did not meet an actual practicing Jewish person until I moved to Los Angeles and suddenly worked with a whole bunch of them. I know how that sounds and I have never found a nicer way to say it, but it’s just true, that was my entire frame of reference at 22 years old.

And before LA I went to Campbell, which is this tiny, tiny private Baptist university in the middle of nowhere, North Carolina, and that is where I became a liberal. My dad is still convinced California did it. It was not California. It was having to take upper-level religion classes and slowly working out that a huge percentage of what I’d been taught was just flatly wrong, and that all of it had been handed to me by a preacher who did not have a divinity degree, which is who we were all holding up as the highest possible authority. Some guy. Very confident about it.

The one that actually broke my brain was finding out there are books that got cut out of the Bible. Cut out. Somebody was holding out on additional information. And then on top of that you learn how many times the whole thing has been translated and retranslated and translated again, and you’re just sitting there going okay, so who’s to say what any of this actually says at this point.

I’ve basically been floating since 2005. Never fully landed anywhere and never fully left either, which I think makes me a rare bird, because I deconstructed and then stayed. I just went and found churches that are more my speed.

I do still question everything though. This past Easter I put a thing up on my stories asking whether people thought Jesus was maybe just in a coma, like not dead dead, just a coma, and the millennials came out in absolute force to tell me they’d been thinking the same thing for years. Then I posted a bunch of memes of Jesus riding dinosaurs and Dave Grohl Jesus and wished everybody a happy zombie Jesus day. Am I going to hell for that? Possibly. It’s fine.

But here’s the thing, we grew up in the satanic panic, all of it, and then we got to college and found out most of it was nonsense and there was not one single adult in the room who wanted to have that conversation with us. Amanda is right that none of this is new either. We were finding the cracks in high school and college, we just didn’t have the language for any of it, so nobody said a word out loud until their late 20s or 30s.

Which is exactly why her book is going to hit. It’s the first fiction I’ve come across that puts the deconstruction and the nostalgia in the same room, and she saw that hole on the shelf and wrote straight into it.

And for the record I was a MySpace kid, so freshman year I cut my hair into a mullet and dyed it pink and started dating boys in scene bands, which means I already know I’m going to see myself all over these pages.

The publicist part, since some of you are here for that

Amanda queried literary agents for a few months and got the “this is interesting but it’s just not quite right for us” letters, which she took as a real win, and she’s right, because it means a human being actually read the thing. Then she gave herself a deadline and self-published through Amazon KDP.

No editor, because a decent one runs two or three grand and she did not have two or three grand. No industry connections, because she doesn’t have any and never did. She made the cover herself in Canva, pulling up old Blink-182 art for reference, the checkers and the CD and the Vans, and then somebody in her comments said “that looks like it was made in Canva.”

It was. It was the only free software she had.

And my professional opinion, having done book PR for a long time, is that it’s a good cover, it looks like the era the book is set in, and that is the entire job of a cover.

Then she spent two years yelling into the void, which is how she puts it herself, because she was mid-divorce and still living with her ex while they untangled everything, and that is not a season where you feel like putting your face on the internet every day.

Last year she sold one book. To somebody she knew.

Since the video she’s sold over 150 copies to complete strangers, she’s working with someone on an audiobook, and real people are leaving real reviews telling her they see themselves in her characters. And she still has not spent one penny on this book. Not one. Just her own time and her own elbow grease, which is what bootstrapping actually looks like when there is nobody funding you.

While I’ve got you: Amanda mentioned she’d read somewhere that most authors never sell 100 copies of their book, and I’ve heard that number floating around for years too and I’ve never once seen it sourced cleanly, but I will say it tracks with what I have watched happen to real books. What I can tell you firsthand is this. I did book PR in LA for years and clients would come to me absolutely desperate to land on the New York Times bestsellers list, and what the average person doesn’t realize is that plenty of people get there by buying cases and cases and cases of their own inventory and then moving it themselves at signings and trade shows. The metrics are a game. Please do not organize your self-worth around them.

What actually moves a book is slower and a whole lot less fun to post about. Somebody finds it and hands it to somebody else. Amanda’s best friend Jordan, who she’s known since middle school, bought it the weekend it came out and then texted her that he remembered the exact sermon she’d written about, which, come on. And then eventually, 150 strangers.

Colleen Hoover wrote her first book in her spare time while she was working as a social worker and living in a single wide trailer, and the first person who bought it was her mom. I met her years later at a book signing in LA that was going so sideways that I ended up stepping in to organize the line myself because I could not help it, and then I helped her at signings for the next three years. She’s got a compound now. And movies.

Nobody is promising anybody that. The point is just that the beginning always looks like nothing.

The line I have not stopped thinking about

Somebody left a comment on Amanda’s video that said if you’re breaking generational curses, you don’t need approval from the people who are keeping the curse alive.

Amen. Oh my god, yes.

Does my family love me? Absolutely, without question. Are they ever going to react to the door with my name on it? No. So I posted it on LinkedIn instead and got around 200 comments from people telling me they were proud of me, and that is what I needed, and I took it, and I felt great. Any therapist on earth will tell you the same thing. If you’re not getting it at home then go get it from your friends, and then go build the thing anyway.

I’m also weirdly obsessed with North Carolina settlement patterns, so bear with me here (and prob fact-check me). The Scots and the Scotch-Irish sailed into Wilmington and came up the Cape Fear River and spread out from there, and I grew up right on that river. Amanda grew up in the part of Charlotte that was founded by Scottish Presbyterians, where she had friends who learned to play the bagpipes and the local church had the founders’ tartans hanging in it, and her family is from the mountains near Highlands, where they still run the Highland Games. So everybody came over here, and she is the first one going back. She’s never even been to Scotland. She applied anyway.

I graduated in 2009, which is its own kind of joke, and I moved to LA anyway with no money and nobody to call. I was competing against USC and UCLA kids and also against people who had just been laid off from real studios and were applying for entry-level jobs, and it took me a year and a half of free internships and part-time work before anybody would hire me full time. The whole time I kept telling myself I could always move back. I just wasn’t moving back to my hometown.

I’m about to turn 39 and I still catch myself doing the math on grad school abroad literally every time I travel somewhere. Amanda actually did it.

So no, she’s not unhinged. She’s the only person at that table doing the math correctly.

Listen to the full episode of Unhinged Founder wherever you get your podcasts.

Buy Amanda’s book. Mixed Tapes and Mixed Emotions is on Amazon now, and if you were a scene kid or a church kid or both, this one is for you. I’m buying copies for the founders at my event next week.

Chip in on the move. She’s raising money to get herself to Glasgow, and by now you know exactly how much of this she has done with zero dollars: Bridge the Gap to My Master’s at Glasgow

Find Amanda on TikTok and Instagram at @so.im.amanda. And here’s the video that started all of this, if you’re somehow the last person on earth who hasn’t seen it.

And if you’re sitting on something you made and yelling into the void about it, keep yelling, because sometimes the algorithm finds you at your birthday lunch.

If you’re reading this before 5pm ET today, move fast: two grants close tonight. The Rooted In Growth Grant ($50,000, four winners, for haircare founders) and the LIFT Beauty Accelerator ($10,000 plus about $25,000 in-kind, for beauty founders) both shut their doors at the end of today. Verizon’s free AI Accelerator closes Monday, August 24, if you want 12 weeks of hands-on help applying AI to your actual business instead of just poking at ChatGPT alone. Then a cluster lands right at month end: Hey Helen ($10,000, $15 fee), Amber Grant ($10,000, $15 fee waivable on request), HerRise’s monthly MicroGrant ($1,000, $15 fee), and the Women Founders Grant ($5,000, $25 fee, the steepest one this issue but genuinely open to idea-stage founders). I’m also on a panel in Atlanta tomorrow, more on that below. Every fee and every funnel is flagged so you know exactly what you’re signing up for. Let’s get into it.

xo, Melinda

WORTH A SHOUT

WomenTech Network wants founders on stage. Their Women in Tech Global Conference is virtual-first, global, and actively looking for speakers for the next round: panels, keynotes, technical workshops, the works. If your founder story involves actually shipping a product and not just talking about shipping a product, this is worth ten minutes of your Friday. Deadline October 16, real runway to put together something good instead of throwing a paragraph at a form at midnight.

Apply: https://www.womentech.net/form/apply-to-speak

SPEAKING AND MEDIA

Mile High SHRM’s 25th Annual HR Conference is looking for speakers on employment law, culture, and people leadership for its Denver gathering (400-plus HR practitioners, CHROs and VPs in the room). Not founder-specific, but if you’ve built a company and have real opinions on hiring, retention, or culture, this is a legitimate national-caliber platform, not a pay-to-play. Concurrent session tracks are open to domain experts; the keynote slot is competitive but carries a modest honorarium. Deadline August 28.

Apply: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfOzjpXKQBrmhio0irPDQmKtVSink9AWZEgCbcdHE4As_dsgQ/viewform

ON THE POD THIS WEEK

New Unhinged Founder episode is up: “How to Self-Publish With No Money, Go Viral, and Start Over at 40.” If you’ve ever thought about writing the book but talked yourself out of it over money, timing, or just being “too old” to start something new, this is your sign to actually listen.

Watch:

GRANTS AND FUNDING

Rooted In Growth Grant — $50,000, four winners. National grant from Amika and the Fifteen Percent Pledge for haircare founders. US-based, under $2.5M revenue, at least 51% owned by an underserved founder, already selling a real product. No application fee, no funnel. Heads up: winners commit to a mentorship program running October through February and travel to NYC on October 20 (covered by Amika). Deadline: tonight, August 21. Link: https://15percentpledge.org/award/rooted-in-growth

LIFT Beauty Accelerator — $10,000 cash minimum plus roughly $25,000 in in-kind product testing and design services, through Rare Beauty. For early-stage beauty founders (cosmetics, skincare, haircare, fragrance) from underrepresented backgrounds, under $1M revenue, no institutional funding yet. No application fee, no funnel. Deadline: today, August 21, 5pm EST. Link: https://rarebeautybrands.com/lift-beauty-accelerator/

Hey Helen Grant — $10,000 unrestricted cash, one winner per cycle. Privately funded by Visionaries, open to 100% women-owned US for-profits under $1M revenue. Heads up: $15 application fee, and after this cycle the grant goes monthly with your application kept on file for a year. Deadline: August 30. Link: https://visionaries.co/helen-grant

Amber Grant — $10,000 a month, plus a $50,000 year-end bonus pulled from the year’s monthly winners. WomensNet’s long-running grant for women-owned businesses; one application also enters you for that month’s category grants. Heads up: $15 fee, waivable if you email and ask, and applying adds you to their email list. Deadline: August 31. Link: https://ambergrantsforwomen.com/get-an-amber-grant/

HerRise MicroGrant — $1,000 a month, focused on women of color entrepreneurs, under $1M revenue, 51% women-owned. Heads up: $15 non-refundable fee, and HerSuiteSpot members get priority review. Deadline: last day of every month, so August 31 for this cycle. Link: https://www.hersuitespot.com/herrise/

Women Founders Grant — $5,000 a month. Unusually honest about being for the very beginning: no registered business, no website, no revenue history required, just a business idea and a two-question application. Heads up: $25 fee, the steepest one in this issue, no waiver mentioned anywhere. Deadline: August 31. Link: https://womenfoundersgrant.com/apply-now-women-grants

Social Shifters Global Innovation Challenge — Up to $15,000 for youth-led, impact-focused startups tackling a UN Sustainable Development Goal. No fee mentioned on their page, but I couldn’t fully confirm it, so double check before you apply or pass it along. The catch: founders must be 18 to 30, so this one’s a pass-it-to-a-younger-friend play for most of us. Deadline: August 31, 5pm UTC. Link: https://www.socialshifters.co/global-innovation-challenge/

Galaxy Grant — $2,500, no application fee, no funnel, takes about 30 seconds to apply. Genuinely welcomes founders who haven’t started yet, our favorite kind of clean option. Deadline: October 31. Link: https://galaxyofstars.org/galaxy-grants/

SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant — $5,000 to $10,000, no fee, no funnel, rolling deadline. For Black women and Black nonbinary founders with a legally registered business. Comes with lifetime access to the SoGal team. Link: https://sogalfoundation.org/blackfounderstartupgrant

Entreprenista Evolve Grant with IT Cosmetics — $5,000 for revenue-generating women founders doing $100K or more annually and in business at least a year. No fee disclosed on their page (verify before applying). Deadline: November 11. Link: http://entreprenista.com/evolve

NO-FEE, NO-FUNNEL SPOTLIGHT

If you just want the zero-strings options, start here. As always, verify before you apply, terms change without much notice.

• Rooted In Growth Grant — $50,000 x4, haircare founders, no fee, no funnel. Closes tonight.

• LIFT Beauty Accelerator — $10,000 + in-kind, beauty founders, no fee, no funnel. Closes today, 5pm EST.

• Galaxy Grant — $2,500, no fee, no funnel, open to idea-stage founders. Closes October 31.

• SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant — $5,000 to $10,000, no fee, no funnel, rolling.

• Giving Joy Grant — up to $500, no fee, optional email signup only. Window opens September 1, closes September 30.

• Verizon Digital Ready AI Accelerator — free 12-week program, confirmed no cost to participate, 50 spots. Closes August 24.

FOR THE JUST-GETTING-STARTED FOUNDERS

Pre-revenue or still at the idea stage? Here’s what’s honestly open to you right now, plus a few to skip until you’ve got some traction.

Galaxy Grant ($2,500, closes October 31) is the best fit in this section. Free, fast, and explicitly welcomes founders who haven’t started yet.

Women Founders Grant ($5,000, closes August 31) is the most direct about it: no registered business, no website, no revenue needed, just your idea and two questions answered. But it carries that $25 fee with no waiver mentioned, so budget for it before you apply.

Giving Joy Grant ($500) has no business ownership requirement at all, just that your idea focus on women, girls, or families. No fee. Mark your calendar though, the window doesn’t open until September 1 and closes September 30.

SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant wants a legally registered business but nothing beyond that, no fee, rolling deadline, for Black women and Black nonbinary founders.

Skip HerRise and Hey Helen for now if you’re truly at zero. Both carry $15 fees that add up fast when you’re applying everywhere at once, and both want at least some revenue history.

AWARDS AND RECOGNITION

Stevie Awards for Women in Business — The 23rd annual edition is open right now, genuinely global and genuinely prestigious, 200-plus categories covering everything from Female Entrepreneur of the Year to Woman-Owned Company of the Year. Heads up: this one has a real entry fee (varies by category, plus a late fee since we’re inside the extended window), so it’s not a casual submit-and-forget. Worth it if you want a legitimate credential to put behind your name. Deadline: extended final, September 3. Link:

https://women.stevieawards.com/

Everything else on my radar this week (Enterprising Women of the Year, the Visionaries V-List, Cartier Women’s Initiative, Tory Burch Fellows, She’s Connected by AT&T, Inc.’s Female Founders 500) is either closed for its current cycle or not open to US founders. Skipping those rather than listing closed doors. If you know of one I’m missing, reply and I’ll feature it next scan.

OPPORTUNITIES

Verizon Digital Ready AI Accelerator — Free 12-week virtual program for 50 small businesses to apply AI to real operations, with expert coaching and implementation planning, not just intro-level education. You’ll want established revenue and about 10 hours a week to give it. No fee. Deadline: August 24. Link: https://digitalready.verizonwireless.com/static/aiaccelerator

SXSW Pitch — For early-stage founders who’ve raised under $10 million. Heads up: real application fees here, $105 through September 13, then $225 through the final deadline of November 13. Worth it if you’re SXSW-bound anyway; steep if you’re not. Link: https://sxsw.com/pitch/

NEWS AND INSPIRATION

The founder who built Uber for the school bus. Forbes profiled Ritu Narayan, founder of Zum, a $1.7 billion company modernizing school transportation after she couldn’t find reliable rides for her own kids. Revenue hit $333 million in 2025, up 35% year over year, and 5,000 schools nationwide now pay for it. Proof that unglamorous, unsexy infrastructure problems can build enormous businesses. Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2026/08/12/this-entrepreneur-built-uber-for-the-yellow-school-bus/

Forbes drops the 2026 class of 50 Over 50. Two hundred women, and the reasoning behind the list is worth reading: a recent survey found 70% of women say they feel increasingly invisible as they age. If you’ve ever worried your best building years are behind you, this one’s worth a look. Link: https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2026/08/11/age-is-their-advantage-forbes-2026-class-of-50-over-50/

Women get penalized twice as often for using AI at work. The Female Quotient dug into a study where identical AI-assisted resumes were reviewed under a man’s name and a woman’s name. 97% of reviewers considered “James” a strong candidate; only 76% said the same for “Emily,” and she was 22% more likely to be seen as less trustworthy. If you’ve ever hesitated to mention you used AI to move faster, you’re not imagining the double standard. (via The Female Quotient newsletter, August 18 issue)

VIRTUAL AND NATIONAL EVENTS

KNOW’s FOCU$ED Conference Tour — Atlanta, tomorrow, August 22, and Chicago, September 25. A one-day conference built for aspiring and early-stage founders: storytelling panels, a mentor power hour, a business marketplace, a grant giveaway. I’m on the Atlanta panel, “Strut Your Stuff: The Art of Telling Your Story.” Come say hi if you’re there. Link: https://theknowwomen.com/know-focued-atlanta-conference/

National Working Motherhood Week — September 21-25, virtual and free. Expert conversations, networking, and resources for working moms, founders, and women leaders. Entreprenista is a partner with Mothered Media. Link: https://www.motheredmedia.com/national-working-motherhood-week

Renaissance Women’s Summit — September 10, Nashville, TN. A day of actionable business strategy and connection for ambitious women entrepreneurs. Link: https://www.therenaissancewomenssummit.com/tickets

Visionary Conference — September 27-29, Los Angeles. Visionaries’ boutique conference on ethical business strategy and operational tactics for founders ready to grow. Link: https://visionaries.co/live

ONE QUICK PERSONAL NOTE

Quick update on the cohort I teased last week: the DIY PR Lunch & Learns kept selling out, so I’m building the bigger version, a small group for founders who want to run their own PR and actually run it well. Real pitching, a real media list, feedback on what you actually send, not another course you buy and never open. A few of you have already emailed asking to be first in line. Still locking the exact details, October is still the plan. If you want in: https://forms.gle/5VjkxoX7SokFs9SU7

QUICK LINKS ROUND-UP

THIS WEEK

• Rooted In Growth Grant, $50K x4, haircare founders, NO FEE, NO FUNNEL, closes tonight August 21: https://15percentpledge.org/award/rooted-in-growth

• LIFT Beauty Accelerator, $10K + in-kind, beauty founders, NO FEE, NO FUNNEL, closes today August 21, 5pm EST: https://rarebeautybrands.com/lift-beauty-accelerator/

• KNOW’s FOCU$ED Conference, Atlanta, August 22, Melinda speaking: https://theknowwomen.com/know-focued-atlanta-conference/

NEXT WEEK

• Verizon Digital Ready AI Accelerator, free 12-week program, 50 spots, closes August 24: https://digitalready.verizonwireless.com/static/aiaccelerator

• Mile High SHRM HR Conference call for speakers, closes August 28, not founder-specific but a real national platform on people leadership: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfOzjpXKQBrmhio0irPDQmKtVSink9AWZEgCbcdHE4As_dsgQ/viewform

• Hey Helen Grant, $10K, closes August 30, $15 fee: https://visionaries.co/helen-grant

LATER THIS MONTH

• Amber Grant, $10K/mo + $50K year-end bonus, closes August 31, $15 fee (waivable), adds you to their list: https://ambergrantsforwomen.com/get-an-amber-grant/

• HerRise MicroGrant, $1K/mo, closes August 31, $15 fee, for women of color founders: https://www.hersuitespot.com/herrise/

• Women Founders Grant, $5K/mo, closes August 31, $25 fee, idea-stage friendly: https://womenfoundersgrant.com/apply-now-women-grants

• Social Shifters Global Innovation Challenge, up to $15K, closes August 31, fee unconfirmed (verify), ages 18-30 only: https://www.socialshifters.co/global-innovation-challenge/

NEXT MONTH

• Giving Joy Grant, up to $500, window opens September 1, closes September 30, NO FEE, NO FUNNEL: https://givingjoygrants.org/grant-application

• Renaissance Women’s Summit, Nashville, September 10: https://www.therenaissancewomenssummit.com/tickets

• SXSW Pitch early-bird fee ends September 13 ($105 through then, $225 after): https://sxsw.com/pitch/

• Stevie Awards for Women in Business, 23rd annual, extended final deadline September 3, entry fee applies:

https://women.stevieawards.com/

• National Working Motherhood Week, virtual, September 21-25: https://www.motheredmedia.com/national-working-motherhood-week

• KNOW’s FOCU$ED Conference, Chicago, September 25: https://theknowwomen.com/know-focued-atlanta-conference/

• Visionary Conference, Los Angeles, September 27-29: https://visionaries.co/live

• Women in Tech Global Conference call for speakers, deadline October 16: https://www.womentech.net/form/apply-to-speak

MARK YOUR CALENDAR

• Galaxy Grant, $2,500, closes October 31, NO FEE, NO FUNNEL, welcomes idea-stage founders: https://galaxyofstars.org/galaxy-grants/

• Entreprenista Evolve Grant with IT Cosmetics, $5K, closes November 11, needs $100K+ revenue: http://entreprenista.com/evolve

ALWAYS-ON, CLEAN

• SoGal Black Founder Startup Grant, $5K-$10K, rolling, NO FEE, NO FUNNEL: https://sogalfoundation.org/blackfounderstartupgrant

• Verizon Small Business Digital Ready Grant, $10K, rolling, NO FEE (2 free courses required first): https://digitalready.verizonwireless.com

• IFundWomen Universal Grant Application, ongoing matching database, no fee found: https://www.ifundwomen.com/grants/apply-for-grants

• Free grant database, updated monthly, no cost to search: members.visionaries.co

xo, Melinda

Here’s what I know about myself: I burn out, and I burn out big. But I never let myself recover. I just keep going, because there’s always a reason to keep going.

There’s so much on my heart I want to do. I want to grow the business. I want to grow Raleigh Female Founders. I want to keep showing up for people the way I know how. And I have finally accepted that I cannot do any of that from where I’m standing right now.

The other day I realized this isn’t new. This is a pattern.

In college I wasn’t doing well in my classes. So what did I do? I took more classes. Harder classes. As if volume would fix a problem that volume created. As if something would magically change if I just piled more onto a foundation that was already cracking.

Now the version is: if I sign more clients and work harder, I’ll make more money, and then I’ll be able to hire help, and then I’ll be able to take a vacation, and then I’ll be able to do X, Y, and Z. Same equation. Different decade.

The core of it is that I cannot outwork this. There is no number of clients that fixes it. There is no amount of hours.

So let me name the two lies I’ve been living inside, because I suspect I’m not the only one.

The first one: if I work more hours, I’ll make more money. That’s not even how my business works. I run on retainers. The hours are not the lever. I’ve known that for years, and I still behave like the math is different.

The second one: if I delegate it, it won’t be done right.

And underneath both of those is the real thing. I’m not trusting myself. I’m not trusting my team. I’m not trusting my clients. I’m not trusting God. I’m not trusting the universe. I’m just white-knuckling all of it and calling it work ethic.

And I am so exhausted. I sleep well every single night, and I still wake up in a panic. That’s not a sleep problem. That’s something else.

I don’t think I’m alone in this. I put enormous pressure on myself, and then the outside world adds its own layer on top. And I take my responsibility seriously in a way that compounds it. My clients are spending some of the only extra money they have to invest in me, so I can help them grow their businesses through visibility. That is not a small thing to hold.

So I hold that. And I run the business. And I run the group. And I try to stay present for my family and be a supportive stepmom. And then I wonder why I wake up in a panic.

But who has the time? Genuinely. Who has the time to go on the retreat I keep saying I want to go on? I want to do a silent retreat. Four days off my phone, four days completely disconnected. And when I picture it, I cannot see how it’s possible.

I work twelve-hour days. Today isn’t even one of them, and I’m still behind. I’ve only got about four hours in the office, and I’m trying to sort everything out before I get on a plane tomorrow to speak at an event. I’m paying for the flight, the hotel, all the Ubers. I genuinely do not know if I’ll make money on this trip. I’m going anyway because I believe in the work and in not gatekeeping what I know.

But I’m starting to understand that not gatekeeping can tip into self-abandonment if you’re not paying attention. Generosity that costs you your recovery isn’t generosity anymore. It’s just a slower burnout with better branding.

I don’t have the tidy ending here. I’m writing this from inside it, not from the other side of it. But I think the first honest step is saying out loud that the way I’ve been operating has an expiration date, and I’d rather choose the rest than have my body choose it for me.

If you’re a founder reading this with your own version of the same math, I’d love to know how you’re handling it. Or if you’re not handling it either, that’s useful to hear too.

- Melinda

Quick heads up before anything else: the Galaxy Grant is back. It closed its July round and sat quiet for weeks, and it has reopened with a $2,500 award, no fee, and it explicitly welcomes founders who haven’t started yet (deadline October 31, so no rush, but don’t lose it in a tab you’ll never reopen). Closer deadlines to watch: the Sky Is Not the Limit Social Impact Grant ($10,000 in branding and marketing services) closes Wednesday, August 19, and the Rooted In Growth Grant ($50,000 for haircare founders) and LIFT Beauty Accelerator ($10,000 for beauty brands) both close Friday, August 21. Then a cluster lands right at month end: Hey Helen Grant ($10,000, $15 fee), the Amber Grant ($10,000, $15 fee waivable on request), and HerRise’s monthly MicroGrant ($1,000, $15 fee). Speaking and media stayed quiet again this week, more on that below, but I’ll be in Atlanta on the 22nd and there’s a teaser at the bottom about something coming in October. Fee and funnel flags are on everything. Let’s get into it.

xo, Melinda

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Quick heads up before anything else: AltCap’s Your Biz Pitch Competition closes August 9, just two days out, with a $35,000 grand prize plus additional cash prizes on the line, the biggest number we’ve seen all month. The catch is you have to pitch live in Kansas City, so it only makes sense if you’re already planning to be there. If you’re chasing something with a real deadline this week that doesn’t require a plane ticket, LIFT Beauty Accelerator ($10,000 for early-stage beauty brands from underrepresented communities) and The Sky Is Not the Limit Social Impact Grant ($10,000 in branding, marketing, and AI services) both close August 19 and August 21 respectively.

Correction on last week’s scan: I told you the Black & Brown Founders Empower Growth Fund closed August 6 or August 31, our sources disagreed. It’s confirmed now, August 31, so if you haven’t applied yet, you have more runway than I gave you credit for.

Two travel opportunities to plan around this week too. I am speaking at Stand Out & Sell Out, a free 3 day virtual conference for women entrepreneurs, August 11 to 13, and Entreprenista AI Week runs right alongside it, August 11 through 14. And I am so excited to be speaking at KNOW’s FOCU$ED ATL on August 22 in Atlanta, on the panel Art of Telling Your Story, I would love to have all my Raleigh ladies there with me. Hotels and flights are both cheap right now, so if you have been looking for a sign to make a girls’ trip out of it, this is it. Quick note on our own gathering: there is still no Raleigh Female Founder Happy Hour this month. I am taking August off to recharge, and I promise that is the right call for me and for this community. We will be back in September, rested and ready. As always, every fee and every email funnel is flagged below so you know exactly what you are signing up for, the No-Fee, No-Funnel Spotlight is there if you just want the clean options, and the Unhinged Founder Substack is waiting at the bottom.

xo Melinda

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Quick thank you to Adriane at Visionaries and the Entreprenista team, whose grant roundups fed a chunk of what’s below.

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It’s the middle of July, the inbox is full of “back to school” emails already, and yet somehow the July grant cycle is still wide open! Two of the entries below close in the next 48 hours, so don’t let this one sit in a tab. Grab the ones with real money attached, skip the ones that just want your email address, and let’s get into it.

xo, Melinda

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Sorry for going quiet last week, I was at the beach. Full disclosure, the laptop came with me anyway (we’re working on it), but the ocean did its job regardless. I come back bearing a stacked issue.

There’s $30,000 sitting in a form right now waiting for a CPG founder to claim it, and the deadline is today. If you’re reading this over coffee, finish the coffee, then go fill out the form. Also in here: a $50K grant from AT&T, a $40K check for food and beverage founders, a conference calendar that’s about to eat your Q4 travel budget, some personal news I’m still a little excited about, and a splurge-worthy retreat pick if you’ve got the budget for it.

(Thank you to Adriane at Visionaries and the Entreprenista crew, two of my favorite weekly reads, for a chunk of what’s below.)

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Happy June, and buckle up, because this is a loaded one. June is apparently when the grant gods open the floodgates. There is more than $500K in funding closing this month alone, and a real chunk of it is no-fee, no-strings, idea-stage-welcome money. The big ones to circle: Jobber Grants (up to $100K, closes June 11), Cartier Women’s Initiative (June 16), and the Entreprenista Evolve Grant (June 19). I have flagged exactly which ones are clean and which ones quietly sign you up for a fifth email list, because that is the whole point of paying for this. Pick two that fit, knock on the cleanest doors first, and let’s go.

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Here is the deal. Every Friday, you get this. Grants, awards, opportunities, speaking calls, and a couple of must-reads, all national, all curated so you do not have to wade through 14 newsletters yourself. I read those, so you do not have to. The Raleigh-specific stuff stays on RFF. This is the national scan.

Some weeks will be loud. Today is loud. There is a wall of May 31 deadlines hitting in the next nine days and a stacked June ahead. If you have been sitting on an application, this is your sign. Some weeks will be quieter. I will not pad. If a category is thin, I will say so and move on.

One more thing for this issue. I went through every grant and flagged which ones cost money to apply, because that genuinely was not on my radar until this week. Reciprocity is a beautiful thing. Grab a glass and let’s dig in.

For the embryonic-stage founders. If you are pre-revenue, just-set-up-your-LLC stage, here is your shortcut. Several grants below explicitly accept idea-stage applicants. Start with The Big Idea Grant (literally built for women turning early dreams into businesses), HerRise MicroGrant, Hustler’s MicroGrant, and Freed Fellowship ($500, no strings, with feedback that actually helps at the start). Amber Grant also accepts idea-stage and pre-revenue. Skip the bigger grants that require $100K+ revenue for now and stack the smaller ones.

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Every week, my inbox fills with notes back. “Such a gift.” “Saved me hours of digging.” “Thank you for compiling this.” Last week, one founder replied with this:

“No joke, you should pay for this newsletter. Looking at all the grants now!!”

I read it, filed it away, and sat with it for two days. I talked to my partner Jeremy about it. I talked to two of my business besties about it. I talked to Claude about it. And then I was like fuck it. Messy action! Let’s roll!

Unhinged Founder is expanding. Same voice. Same mess. But now there’s a national version of the resource I’ve been sending Raleigh, plus everything that makes Unhinged Founder, well, unhinged.

What’s actually changing

When I started this Substack, I told you I wasn’t trying to get rich off it. I just wanted to overshare. And then a funny thing happened. Female founders started showing up in my inbox, DMs, and comments. Same questions, same wounds, same Sunday dread. The burnout. The money fights. The friend who unfollowed when you started winning. The decision fatigue. The 2 am spirals about whether you’re actually building something or just running (that’s been me all week).

It wasn’t just me. It isn’t just you. So this turned into something bigger.

What’s free, what’s paid

Free still gets you the podcast. Real founder stories, no LinkedIn voice BS. The episodes where founders tell me the parts they cut from the highlight reel. Free also gets you the occasional public essay from me on PR, founder life, faith, money, and whatever else I’m working through.

Paid is $10 a month. Here’s what’s actually in it:

• A weekly Friday Resource Roundup. The expanded national version of what my Raleigh group has been getting. Grants, awards, fellowships, opportunities, tools, and news every female founder should be tracking. Wider net. More options. Pulled from the corners of the internet that most founders don’t have time to search.

• A subscriber-only chat where paid subs can ask, share, vent, and call each other out with love.

• Biweekly virtual coworking, because most of us are working alone in our houses and that is genuinely not okay.

• Subscriber-only essays from me on the stuff I won’t say publicly. The unfiltered version. Plus some PR tips and tricks along the way.

A taste of what a Roundup looks like

Here’s a slice of what I sent my Raleigh group last week. National-friendly version:

GRANTS, live this month:

Dream Makers Founders Grant. $25K, five winners, for underrepresented founders ready to scale. No equity. Deadline May 30.

Amber Grant May cycle. $10K monthly plus a shot at $50K year-end. May’s category is Mental and Emotional Support. Deadline May 31.

HerRise MicroGrant, Big Idea Grant, Freed Fellowship, Hustler’s MicroGrant. A stack of $500 to $1,000 quick-applies, all closing May 31. Lower effort, surprisingly stackable.

AWARDS:

Stevie Awards for Women in Business 2026. Nominations opening this month. One of the longest-running international awards for women execs and entrepreneurs. Have your materials ready.

MUST-READ THIS WEEK:

“Your Niceness Is Costing You” by Sara at Freelancing Females. On scope creep, with a reframe that’s gold: “I love that idea! That will fall outside our initial project fee. Should I send over a quick addendum?” Save this one for the next time a client says “just one more thing.”

That’s a fraction of what’s in a typical issue. Every Friday. Plus the chat. Plus coworking. Plus, the essays that aren’t going public.

When this starts

• The chat is open as of today.

• The first paid Friday Resource Roundup drops Friday, May 22.

• The first virtual coworking session will be announced in next week’s Roundup, based on what works for the most paid subs.

If this sounds like something you need, you can subscribe for $10 a month below. Honestly, it's cheaper than the fancy coffee you’ll drink while reading it.

If this isn’t for you, no hard feelings. Free subscribers still get the podcast, the occasional essay, and my full love.

xo, Melinda

I met Emily Burnette at a retreat where she was doing color consultations. I had never had one done. I sat down; she put colored fabric swatches near my face in what I will describe as not ideal lighting, and something in my brain permanently changed. I now own a little card that tells me what colors I’m supposed to wear. I refer to it while online shopping. I have texted Emily to send me the graphic, just so I have it on my phone. I am a winter, and I will never shut up about it.

We became friends the way you do when you meet someone who is direct, funny, and has no time for a soft sell. This week marks one full year of us. So this episode felt like a celebration.

Emily is a personal stylist and color consultant. But her story does not start there. It starts in Virginia, then jumps to New York two weeks after graduation where her first job was at Diane von Furstenberg’s meatpacking flagship. Then Barneys. Then the RealReal, where she went into strangers’ apartments across the Tri-State area, toured their closets, and transported their Rolexes and designer handbags on the subway back to a warehouse. Nobody bothered her. It’s New York. Everyone minds their business. Then Neiman Marcus Group in both cities. Then three and a half years of celebrity styling in LA, which she says she had to walk away from before it swallowed her whole. She watched it happen to other people. She got out.

We cover a lot in this episode. Why she chose New York over LA first and what she actually found when she got to LA. Why calling a retail sales associate a stylist makes her blood boil, which I agree with completely, which then led me into my own rant about everyone in Raleigh calling themselves a model now and I need it to stop. The psychology behind why what you wear changes how you carry yourself and how other people read you before you say a single word. Tailoring, closet edits, knowing your colors, and why shopping without a plan is exactly like going to the grocery store hungry.

She also told a story about a client in LA who had an episode over boob tape right before an event and took the whole thing out on Emily, who was just trying to make the look work. I will not say who it was. Emily has signed NDAs. What I will say is that I recently saw this actress in something on Netflix and she looked incredible and the costume designer deserves every award.

My favorite moment was quieter than I expected. We were talking about growing up in the South without a roadmap for what we were trying to do, and we both landed in the same place: even when you have people who love you, you are often still the first person to do this specific thing. Nobody to call. You just trust yourself and figure it out.

Emily had supportive parents and still had to build it alone. I watched my parents hustle and still felt alone doing it. Same person, different starting point.

Episode 16 is out now wherever you listen. Find Emily at emilyburnettstylist.com and on Instagram and TikTok at @EmilyBurnettStylist. If you have never had your colors done, start there. It will change your brain chemistry. I promise.

Short version: a manager wanted a freelance PR partner to secure editorial placements for an actor across Italian, Arabic, Indian, and international markets. Payment terms? You get paid when a live link appears. Not before. Not for the pitching or the outreach or the relationships you’ve spent years cultivating. The link goes live, you get paid. It doesn’t; you worked for free.

The brief said, paraphrasing only slightly: “I don’t care if you work for a year. If I don’t see the link live, you get zero.”

I’ve been in PR long enough to have a physical reaction to that sentence.

Here’s what the actual work looks like. You start by researching the right outlets for a specific client in a specific market, which across four international markets means understanding four completely different editorial cultures, beats, languages, and submission norms. Then you find the right contacts, because a good pitch to the wrong person is the same as no pitch at all. Then you write it, which, for an actor, means finding the angle that makes a journalist in India, Italy, or Dubai care about this person right now. You have to make sure it’s in the correct language. Then you send it. Then you follow up. Then an editor responds with interest and asks for photos (all while you’re translating their emails). You send them. The editor gets reassigned. You start over.

That’s not a worst-case scenario. That’s just a normal pitch cycle on a responsive outlet.

At no point in that sequence is the outcome guaranteed. PR is a gamble. Sometimes you do everything right, and you don’t get the ROI. A good publicist recognizes when something isn’t landing and pivots, changes the angle, tries a different outlet, and adjusts the approach. That doesn’t always happen, and when it doesn’t, that’s a real problem. But the solution to that problem is finding a publicist with enough self-awareness to course-correct, not deciding that labor only counts when it converts.

The “product is top-tier” line is the clearest tell in the whole brief. The logic underneath it is: if the story is good, placing it is easy. So the effort shouldn’t cost much. What this misses is that a compelling story still requires a real person to pitch it strategically across four markets, follow it through every stage, and manage the relationship on the other end. None of that work becomes free because the material is strong.

The brief got taken down before I could screenshot the rate, but I’d bet my retainer it was somewhere around $500 for the whole project. For four international markets. Four completely different editorial landscapes. If you want that kind of intensity done properly, you’re looking at $2,000 to $3,000 per market, minimum. That’s not PR being expensive. That’s PR being priced for what it actually is.

I’ve gotten on calls with people who post briefs like this. It’s usually men. They usually talk down to me within the first five minutes. They act like the work I’ve spent years building is negotiable, like I should be grateful they’re even on the call, like there’s a line of people behind me who will do it cheaper, and I’d better get humble fast. The implied threat is always the same: take the bad deal or lose the opportunity.

I’d rather be broke than scammed. And I mean that.

Pay-per-placement is a real model. But it’s priced to reflect the risk the publicist is absorbing on your behalf. You’re not getting a deal. You’re shifting your financial exposure onto someone else and paying for the privilege of doing that.

There’s also this: no ethical publicist guarantees placements. Anyone promising you a guaranteed placement in exchange for a fee is either running a pay-to-play operation or lying. Real media relations runs on relationships, timing, and fit, none of which anyone fully controls.

I don’t think the person who wrote this brief was trying to be exploitative. I think they genuinely believe performance-based pay is fair. Why pay for work that doesn’t produce results?

But the live link is not the only result. Results include the pitches that didn’t land this round but warmed up a relationship. The editor who passed but saved the name. The story that got picked up six months later was because someone filed it away. You can’t measure any of that with a link counter, but it’s real work that produces real value over time.

If you want to hire a publicist, pay them for their work. If you want placements only, be prepared to pay above market to compensate for the risk transfer. If you want four international markets covered for free unless they convert, you’re going to end up with someone too green to know better or too desperate to push back. Neither one is who you want running your client’s press.

Set your expectations.

We became fast friends the way you do when you meet someone and immediately know they don’t have time for BS. And when I finally got her on the podcast, she showed up exactly the way I expected her to: no filter, full chest, chronically honest about the mess that actually goes into building something real.

Roxanne is the founder of Hawa Images, a brand photography and storytelling business based right here in Raleigh. But her story doesn’t start here, and it doesn’t start with a camera. It starts in a classroom on the South Side of Chicago. Then it jumps to a tiny island off the coast of East Africa called Zanzibar, where she bought a DSLR with birthday money and started learning what ethical storytelling actually meant when she watched photographers exploit the communities they claimed to love. She moved back to the States, had four kids, became a foster parent, went to India alone, went to Taiwan, got diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and rebuilt her business from scratch when she landed in North Carolina a year and a half ago with zero clients and a husband who was already ready to go back to Chicago.

That first year? She invested everything. New website. Social media manager. Brand photos. Systems. Her bank account tanked and she almost quit. The year after that was the biggest year of her career in a decade.

We talk about a lot in this episode. We talk about white saviorism, adoption, chronic illness, what it means to price your work in alignment with your actual value instead of what you think people will pay. We talk about the female founder pressure to hit seven figures or bust. We talk about how burnout is a choice, which I hated hearing and also needed to hear. We talk about why your brand photos should not be you with a laptop and a coffee cup looking into the distance like you’re thinking about synergy.

She also told a story about falling over at the park at 10am, coffee in hand, and screaming “I’M NOT DRUNK” to a crowd of strangers before remembering that the only person who screams that is a drunk person. Her daughter told her to get in the car and shut up. I haven’t stopped laughing since.

My favorite line from this whole conversation: someone else’s definition of success will never feel as good as alignment with yourself feels. She said that and I had to sit with it for a minute because I’m still figuring out what that means for me.

Since we recorded this episode, I actually did a brand shoot with Roxanne. And everything she talks about in this conversation? She lives it. She is kind in a way that makes you feel genuinely taken care of. She moves fast without ever making you feel rushed. I had over 300 photos in my inbox within five days of our shoot. Three hundred. I’ve included some of my favorites below because I want you to actually see what this woman does.

Episode 15 is out now wherever you listen. It’s also on YouTube if you want to watch Ollie make multiple appearances throughout.

Go find Roxanne at hawaimages.com and on Instagram at @hawaimages. Book the discovery call. Let her help you actually show up.

We met in an online women’s networking group, and when I saw she was living in Tulum, I thought, okay, she did the Tulum thing. But Jackie is not doing a trend. She’s doing a complete life overhaul from the inside out, and her tool of choice is human design.

I already knew about human design going into this conversation because Jackie had done a session with me, and I will tell you this: she didn’t know I run a monthly female founder happy hour with 350 women. She didn’t know anything about my life. And it still came up in my chart. So when people tell me this stuff is just woo-woo, I’m like, explain that then.

Jackie spent 13 years in health and fitness, built an in-person brand in Philadelphia, made $100K online in nine months during the pandemic, and then realized she was at the surface level of transformation when what she was really craving was the deep work. So she pivoted into human design and built something called the Body of Wealth, her signature methodology for using your chart to understand your messaging, your money energy, and the type of leader you’re here to serve.

In this episode, she breaks down all five types (generators, manifesting generators, projectors, manifestors, and reflectors), explains what a 4/6 profile actually means (and yes, she used me as the example), and talks about why emotional regulation is the single biggest thing blocking momentum in your business. She also built a custom GPT called Ignite Your Voice that’s trained on her human design methodology, and her clients use it every single day. Way better than my janky little chart GPT, I promise.

But the thing that sent me over the edge? She told me about how she ended up with her current partner. She was biking to a human design class, took a wrong turn, and literally crashed her bike right in front of his house as he was walking out to teach the class. She was the only student. Three hours later, they were still talking. They are now together and running their human design businesses in Tulum. And a month before all of that, she had found his chart left at a cafe and didn’t think anything of it. The universe left her a clue, and she didn’t even know it yet.

That’s the energy I want us all walking into every single day.

We also got into money mindset (specifically, whether you actually have the capacity to hold the amount of money you say you want), what the ego center in your chart says about how you value yourself, and the absolute chaos of a retreat attendee who decided to run a two-week hate campaign on Jackie after her event. She coaches women on shame and then went and publicly shamed Jackie on the internet. The projection field of a five-line people. It is real.

This episode is funny and deep and honest, and I think you’re going to love Jackie as much as I do. Watch the full episode on YouTube here:

And if you want to find Jackie, she’s on Instagram at @iamjackiesmythe. Tell her I sent you.

Something I’m manifesting for all of us after recording this one: the courage to trust the wrong turn. Sometimes the universe is just rerouting you to exactly where you’re supposed to be.