 in today's video we're going to be interviewing Helen Steele. Helen is the founder of Streamline Consulting, a consultancy based in the United Kingdom. Helen has been running Streamline since 2015 and she mainly works with startup businesses but businesses in general and her main job is to help businesses to find available grants and loans that they can apply for to grow and scale to the next level. This interview is very valuable. Helen's got a lot of experience working in the grants and loans sector so make sure you watch it and if you want to get in contact with Helen her link is below this video you can contact her directly. Thank you for watching and make sure you subscribe to the channel to stay up to date with all the latest content. Yeah so I'm effectively termed the grants lady that's what people call me and that's the speciality of my business is to help my clients apply for grants so I source the grants for them and I find the best fit for grants because you get grants in all shapes and sizes and each grant has different scope different eligibility criteria so I know my clients I know what the businesses are and I make sure that I present grants to them that are the best fit you know for their businesses so help them find the grants and then I help them with the application process which can be quite onerous. Some of these grants are really chunky you know if you look at the Innovate UK ones or some of the big European ones they are a lot of work I say that even some of the small ones are a lot of work they all seem to be a lot of work so I help them navigate the process go through everything and then you know make sure we submit the application together. Nice I work with sports coaches and what essentially do you help them with? So with sports coaches there aren't very many grants available for them I'm afraid at the moment we always search and see what's out there you know sometimes there are a few regional and county grants that pop up but in the past when I've worked with sports coaches it's been through the startup loan scheme which is another part of the business of my business that I that I deliver I've been working with the startup loans for oh since 2018 so for quite a quite a few years now and the scheme it's a brilliant scheme you know well I've been working with them the interest rate was six percent you know in interest rates went down it was six percent when they went up it was six percent and it's still six percent interest rate and it's a great it's a great scheme you know for for those businesses that are starting out and just want a little bit of cash just to get them going and I find it's really good you know for sports coaches particularly when they're setting up their business yes it's a loan you know we'd all prefer to have a grant wouldn't we but if there aren't grants available it's nice to go after some form of affordable funding and if the the sports coach has got a good um good financial record and a good credit score and knows and a solid you know business proposition uh then you know that that grant that money is certainly achievable for them the maximum they can get is 25 000 and the beauty of it is that you can you can use it to build up your business so for example if you're a sports coach and you want to have your own studio for example then you can use the the the startup loan money to pay for the deposit and the first three months rental you can pay for it to be painted and kitted out as you wish you know you may want to have you know proper you know absorbable flooring you know so your your your plants can bounce up and down and then you survive and all the rest of it um and then of course there's all the equipment which costs the fortune you know I mean kettlebells if you're doing kettlebells I know how expensive those are you know they're really expensive to get a whole suite and then you have your multifunctional trading machines don't you which you know costs quite a few thousand pounds so you can use the funding you know for you know for all of that you know to stock and equip your studio okay fantastic so when when for example when you work with coaches what's the what's the requirement they need to have in order to get your help so they really need to have an idea a very very good idea of what their business is now I say a good idea we've we've helped quite a few coaches so we know the business models so we'll be able to advise and um and guide you shall we say because we'll say oh we had a client who did such and such and would they work for you so we'll be able to give you you know the basis of other models we've worked with but we need them to be to be well thought out you know who is their target market you know in which demographic you know are they are they aiming to please are they going to be concentrating on maybe over 50s for example you know are they going to want to work with you know your generation's ease you know you're generating for example the younger generation so I need we need to know sort of what what's demographic they want to concentrate on and who they want to attract because that does affect you know the type funding of the type of equipment you know that they will want with and also the type of premises the location what sort of marketing they'll be doing so even though we're not marketeers ourselves you know we have networks with marketeers so you know depending on which demographic you are you know they are targeting then that will affect you know how they want to reach you know those end users who they are attracting to their business but just what is the really good idea of what they want to do I mean even if they say you know I've thought about this but I also thought about that but I've also thought about that and I'm very happy you know to brainstorm with them and come up which is the best solution I love a brainstorming session you know always up for throwing ideas around but they do need to have a good idea you know of where their their passion lies and you know what they want to to end up doing ultimately because as we all know life is too short not to do something we really enjoy I agree that's great and and also I know you mentioned as well head in that you know at the moment there isn't much you know grants going out for full sports coach but it's not to say that there never will be right and it's about knowing it's about knowing okay when all the new kind of grants will come out and things like that which obviously is a great time to you know speak to yourself and they can then have an idea of you know because yeah sometimes grants is not available for a certain industry but it's when to know when when new grants will come out and I know we know we spoke earlier about you know when do grants come out and that could potentially be opportunity for for new businesses and establish businesses as well and that's absolutely right Andrew absolutely because at the moment there's lots of they're quite a large number of grants for creative industries you know and I've spoken to creatives in the past they've said oh there's never anything out there for me you know there's never anything available for me but you know this this last six months and this continuing year lots of availability and it will be exactly the same you know for your sports and your coaching industries you know they sort of it's sort of you know it's a sort of cyclical you know when it's their turn they'll be so much to choose from that you won't know which ones that you want to go after but they're and as I say it's snapshot you know a grant is a snapshot in time so at the moment there might not be anything that's that's appropriate but who knows you know next week next month you know something will come out and these grant competitions open and close some stay open for three weeks some stay open for three months so you know it's all about you know if you said being on top you know of the new grant competition releases and then being able to get that insight and that that knowledge through you know to potential clients amazing fantastic so with the with the grants is that do they come out in a certain time of the year or they are available all year rounds how how would a coach watching this be thinking right when can I apply for them they come out all year round so all year round I mean to be the government background which of course many of them are those do tend to follow the tax year cycle so you'll probably find in a few sort of lessening a less a lesser amount as we get towards the end of that tax year so that's your January February March period you know of each year and then you'll see you know quite a few more come on we'll meet when we hit April oh pretty similar to your your cycle Andrew as an accountant there we go so we'll find more coming out in yeah in the April time frame but um what I find quite interesting is that um the grant writing periods or the where they allow you the time to write the grant is over holiday periods so we've had some big grants where the most of the writing is done over the Christmas period and the submission date has been sort of the 17th of January and we've got some big grants at the moment where the writing period was all over Easter and the submission period is you know the third week of April so um yeah it seems to sort of follow follow that flow I presume it's so that um the applicants do all the work over the holidays and the assessors can mark you know when it's not holiday period so that's probably the way the way that that works but yes they come out all through the year and I would say anyone who's watching here the podcast just just hop onto google every now and again you know or if you have access to your grant finding tool many there are many grant finding tools which are free online I just caution you with with some of the information you put in there because if you put in your industry and geography you might come up with nothing at all but play around with the industries you know so so put in different industry selections or different geography selections and just see you know what's available because you could be on there one evening and there'll be nothing and as I two days later you'll find something so um yeah just just hop on every now and again and see if you can find something that's available that's what we do we troll on a regular basis we we don't use AI you know we use humans and we go in there we put in lots of search criteria and we update our our sort of master spreadsheet with all the opportunities and we just go in there regularly I mean today for instance we found one on AI that had come up just just been released so so yes again you know just go get to that discipline they're just going in and having a regular look okay so what's what's a good website to use if you want to stay up to date with all all these grants um I don't think there's anyone that's particularly great I have to say sorry to be honest I just think if you I always find well it depends who likes chat GBT I know the new fans of chat GBT out there but you can you can put into chat GBT you know they'll find me a grant you know in my industry um of this of this size of this value and it will come back it'll do one of the scrapes for you so you can use that means we just use we just use Google so we use a Google scraping tool um it's a it's a free tool that one of my um that's a my colleagues um has developed and it uh is that it just scrapes Google or you know the the current competitions that are around at that particular time that you're searching so I would I would just you know simply just use Google I would go in there and I would put in your requirements you know do your your long chain searches within Google and just that's the best that's the best means we found because some of the tools out they just just bring back rubbish or they bring back you know the issue could apply for the horizon EU grant scheme you know for a 20 25k loan which is just nonsense I mean no one would want to apply to one of those massive schemes for for a tiny amount of grant funding you know they are for huge multimillion opportunities so yeah we we think just you know the long long chain questions you know inside the Google search works best for us okay love that love that and what would you say for for any you know sports coaches new businesses or even established businesses as well what would you say would be the difference in the kind of application process and the kind of how to make the application more successful from a apply for a grant versus you know a loan through through loan funding yeah so with the loan funding if I can can I break that into into three because you've got the startup loans and then you've got what I call traditional loans where a business has been trading for more than two years and then you and then you've got the grants so with a startup loan you can get that right from the beginning of your of your journey so you don't have to have any trading history so a business applying for a startup loan the applicant I'll call them the applicant needs to have a fair to good credit score because there's no company history you know for you to pass the first financial gate of the application so in order for the the lenders to appreciate that you are you are a good lending you're not a lending risk you know you are a viable applicant to proceed through the process they will look at your own personal credit score you know and see how you've managed your own personal credit you know to make that evaluation and then you have to your bank statements have to be in nice order so you know no direct return direct debits no gambling all those sorts of things even bitcoin is you know classes gambling so none of that either oh wow I didn't know that good good good bank statements um so bank statements are clean and in an orderly fashion and then of course a comprehensive business model so it needs to be a good business plan and all the all the coaches the sports coaches I've worked with have had good good business opportunities so we've always been able to craft you know a very robust and a very good business plan and financial forecast for them so they they you know they viewed as very as good commercial models moving forward from a loan perspective so that's a start-up loan then when you get to the traditional business lending if you went to your bank we went to and you know an alternative broker um then you need to have trading figures so they asked for the last two years of your annual financial statements so your your statements to see your trading figures and they look at your turnover and your profitability and then the amount that you would be lent will be based on your profitability so as a rough guide it's sort of roughly about you know twice you know the profitability uh that you have achieved in the last two years on average as a rough guide but I said that's very rough because they're taking to all other you know situations into account you know that wouldn't be fair in the COVID time for them to have relied on you know previous trading figures because you know many businesses you know in the sport and health sector weren't able to trade were they so you know you can't rely on those statistics completely and then they also look at your last month your last six months bank statements as well for a traditional business loan so it's the last two years of trading those figures and your last six months of bank statements and then the amount of the amount of lending will be will be based you know on that business trading history that you have then with the grant we're looking at different things entirely so again normally grants you're looking for you know is the business um what what's unique you know what's the business delivering in the marketplace that's unique you know they talk about innovation they talk about disruption so for example you know if a if a sports coach was using AI to be you know disruptive for example you know within the industry then that would be something that would be very grant worthy and then there are a number of um you've got to look at um value for money especially when it comes to a grant because depending on which authorities issuing the grant is normally coming you know from the public purse so it's taxpayers money so you have to justify why you think that you know your business should be supported why is it a good use of public funding so that's there'll be some pull through so yes you'll be awarded a grant of say 30 000 for argument's sake and it's to deliver you know a certain new capability you know into your sports into your coaching practice and what is the pull through you know what it was the value to the greater community so you have to make sure that you have that within a grant competition there are other things as well for scope and legibility that you need to tick off I always call it buzzword bingo because you need to look at what they're asking specifically make sure that you answer those questions and each grant and competition is different but in essence it is about you know the um you know the the value of your business and is it a good use of public spend for for a grant application that's that's really great insight and knowledge there so now the question is obviously with grants it's free money isn't it but with a loan it's free money I remember reading a book there's no such thing as a free lunch and I'm wondering if there's no such thing as free money but yes it is it is but you do need to put it yeah to you need to spend it what you say you're going to spend it on basically correct so well essentially you don't have to pay it back right no you do not have to pay it back okay so with a loan obviously it's a little bit different because you're you're paying it back yes you're paying it back when when um when coaches want to apply for loans what's what's a few things that in terms of risks that you would maybe talk to them about or or you can give them a bit of advice before taking out a loan yeah so I definitely want to make sure that the loan is affordable to them so you know we we look at um their own personal income and expenditures there's nothing to do with the business it's just their household expenses that they as an individual you know have to have to spend on each month so whether it be mortgages you know utility payments you know your your water bills, insurances you know running the car you know children but they have school fees or you know how much and you know how much money they spend on their children each month clothing food etc so we take all of all of that into account and then see how much income comes into the household so that will be from the drawings that the uh that the coach the sports coach takes from their business and just make sure that repaying a loan is affordable to them so even though a loan would come from from the business so you know it would come the business would pay a loan in both situations in a startup loan situation and in a traditional business loan situation it would be revenue coming into the business that would ultimately pay you for the business loan on a monthly basis it's still down to the individual the individual applicant to make sure that the loan is repaid so you have to make sure that it's affordable you know to that person on a monthly basis and they're not going to be financially stretched because we don't want to put anyone you know in financial jeopardy that's not that's not the way to move forward so it has to be it has to be you know an easy additional amount for them to pay on a monthly basis for the benefits it provides and just going back on the the grants is there ever a situation where once uh you know a grant has been given to a business is there every situation where the that grant can then has to then get paid back like for example you know you have to put in your your application and things like that is there ever a time where you know the the scheme has to look into the you know the books or whatever after the grant's been given so um I've never I've never heard of a grant in the UK having to be paid back I've heard about having to pay back grants in other countries but not in the UK um so that's that's just you know from my from my personal knowledge so if so there is an independent accounting review of the way the grant money has been utilized by the project and by the company that that is performed at the end of the project um a project closed date from the project it's being completed so this is done for a number of reasons if there are a number there are companies that apply for multiple grants you know in order to progress them through um you know the the the buildings delivery stage you know of the of the business growth cycles so if they're applying for a second grant then the grant issuing authority will rely on the independent accounting review to make sure that the funds were used in accordance with the project plan that was submitted when the grant was applied for so many of these grants you know the larger grants I'm talking about you have to upload a risk register and a project plan and it's that project plan that's used as the guidance so you know the independent accounting review would look at the milestones in that project plan and see whether or not they were made you know during the project duration and if they were missed you know what were the reasons why they were missed there could be very viable reasons why they were missed but you know you do have that um you know that that original project plan as your guide you know for how the project should have been implemented and that is verified in the review at the end yeah okay brilliant and then I guess just to kind of um bit of an overview as well um taking a bit of a step back is I guess that's the beauty of um you know businesses working with you is that you will see helped um you know applications for for loans for grants and you know as you said the buzzwords um and you know just having that extra kind of extra support and increasing you know the six potentially success rate doesn't do it by themselves they may not get that um that you know that's exactly the the situation I mean I'm helping I'm working with some creators at the moment apply for a grant granted they're not they're not you know sports coaches they are creators and um you know all four who I'm working with currently have been over the last couple of days have said that if I hadn't been with them going through the process they've been given up they would have said I can't I can't do this you know I can't I can't manage the grant the grants portal that they have to work on either they didn't have the process there's just all too confusing that they would have they would have given up so absolutely so that's my you know my mission for my company is to make sure that I I sort of make that process easier for those that I believe are truly deserving of the grant funding yeah that's fantastic so last question Helen when you work with with someone has there ever been times where it hasn't been accepted and if it hasn't then what's the next step so with grants or loans or with everything with everything in general with everything yeah so we have got really across the board of all of our funding we have a 92 success rate it was 100 for quite a while with the with the loans but then with COVID and then with situations cropping up you know regarding you know people's personal you know credit profiles then that's when application started to not be approved the first time most of them we've managed to get approved when they've on a resubmit but not the first time and because you know set up loans it can take two to three months to get the application through and during that period something could happen you know to you know in the applicant's lifestyle you know they may you know they may be financially stretched and they may miss a few direct debits and you know they may have some something that happens in their bank statements which means that we have to wait a few more months for that to clear before we can continue so yes there are extenuating circumstances I can say that all of the business plans and cash flow forecasts we've produced have been for viable you know businesses to move forward so they they've been accepted but sometimes as I said due to you know the the issues that we've been through over the last few years with lockdown COVID etc etc sometimes the you know the personal situation has been affected for applicants which is shame is it has been rough for many many people out there so you know we appreciate that grants so I save to grants I save the grants that I I can give you the best possible chance of success I can put in we can answer the questions we can do everything to make it a terrific application but I can't guarantee that it will be awarded because it's in the you know it's the assessors that do the marking so once we've produced you know the grant application it really is in the you know in the hands of the assessors as to whether you know they they will award or not based on what else they see so because it's a competition and they can only award you know to a number of successful applicants you know I can't I can't guarantee the you know the client will get an award but they can have you know the absolute best chance of getting that award and often with grant competitions you are allowed to have two or three or even even four or five you know chances at applying for the same grant fund you know some of the of the of the funds I think the British Fashion Trust you know you can apply up to four times so you know you can keep on applying so you know we will polish and and review and revise you know for that client you know if they weren't successful in a particular round and then we submit for the next fantastic so where where do you see Streamline consulting in the next five years where do you want to be with your business yeah that is one of those well those questions isn't it should I yeah should I be retired and sitting on the beach you know sipping margaritas I don't know but um no I'd like I'd like Streamline to continue with with the focus that we've had right the way through you know is making sure that we support you know those those really impressive entrepreneurs um in getting the funding the early stage funding that they that they deserve and we don't want them to be freaked out you know by by laborious you know application processes and red tape so I would like to be helping you know a significant number of of client of grant clients we have a retainer model you know so I'd like to have at least 30 clients who are retained by us on a regular basis on a monthly basis and then continue you know to work with the loans the startup loans and also some of the other offerings that we offer which which support you know companies who are bringing innovation into the UK so so yes a rounded you know a rounded company which supports um entrepreneurs you know with funding from a variety of different angles love that summary perfect all right well thank you very much Helen for coming on and sharing such insightful information with us thanks Andrew for hopping on as well um so all the best and look forward to to connecting with you again in the near future super thank you and you know if anyone wants to to reach out and have a chat very happy to chat to anybody yeah we'll put all your information below below the video so any coach can reach out to you directly yep no no obligation just just a chat I'm happy to give there we go thank you Helen thank you very much thank you