💼 August 2025: August’s Power Move (You Can Do It in 15 Minutes)

Estimated Read Time: 5 Minutes

Why, hello Caty!

August isn’t about going big—it’s about being smart with your time. 😎 This is your moment to sneak in one or two simple shifts that set you up for a smoother fall, including finding space for yourself to rest before the busy holiday season kicks in. In fact, consider it Doctor’s orders. 😉 🩺

(And if summer is your busy season, carry on, Queen! But be sure to save this newsletter, and apply these tips during your slower time of year.)

To support you in taking some time to rest, this month’s newsletter is full of quick wins: 

• 2 grants that you can apply for in under an hour

• A couple of upcoming events to mark your calendar for

• A handful of listens & reads with smart ideas for you to implement during your slow season

• One, 15-minute challenge that’ll save you time (and sanity) in Q4

Also, we’ve changed the format of this newsletter a bit since our last edition and added a new category. Make sure to give us feedback so we can keep building what’s best for YOU.

Take it easy, but make it count! 💪

We’re here for you,
The Ladies Who Launch team

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🤑 GRANT DEADLINES (US-ONLY)

• [$5K] WOMEN FOUNDERS GRANT. The Women Founders Fund makes it simple, and straightforward: answer two simple questions about your business (or idea for one!!) and submit an application fee of $25. That’s it! There’s no strings attached. Just unwavering faith in YOU.  DEADLINE: AUGUST 31, 2025
  

• [$10K] MONTHLY AMBER GRANT. WomensNet gives away $435K in grants to women-owned businesses each year. Apply for one of their monthly grants with a single, two-question application and a $15 application fee. Your application will stay active in their database for 12 months, making you eligible for upcoming grants as they roll out. Easy, peasy! DEADLINE: ROLLING

Ladies Who Launch maintains a free database of available grants for US-based businesses. If you are not based in the United States, please reach out to the funding organization directly to learn if your business qualifies.

📅 UPCOMING EVENTS

• 💻 [SEPTEMBER 10, 2025] NAVIGATING EMOTIONAL DEMANDS IN BUSINESS. In our upcoming webinar, author Dina Denham Smith joins us to talk about how the emotional demands in workplaces are higher than ever before. She’ll teach us how to better navigate emotional events in our businesses, and offer strategies and tools to help us handle triggers as they arise. Mark your calendar, and keep an eye on your inbox for the official RSVP coming later this month!
  

• 🤝 [OCTOBER 14-28, 2025] AUDACIOUS: THE BOOK TOUR. Coming to Plano, TX; Dallas, TX; Washington, DC; McLean, VA; Charlotte, NC; and Chicago, IL in the month of October, author Marty McDonald brings an immersive experience that will help you rewrite the stories you’ve been told about fear, worthiness, visibility, and ambition. As the founder & CEO of BossWomen Media, and entrepreneur extraordinaire, Marty is absolutely one of the best to learn from. To learn more about the upcoming book tour, or to pre-order Audacious, visit: https://bosswomen.org/audacious

Events marked with a computer emoji are virtual, and events marked with a handshake emoji are in-person. Not every event featured is produced by Ladies Who Launch.

🎧 HELPFUL LISTENS

• ☀️ HOW I USED 8 WEEKS OF SUMMER TO SET UP MY MOST PROFITABLE Q4 EVER (AND YOU CAN TOO) Don’t let the title fool you, in this podcast episode host Eleanor Beaton advocates for the power of slower summers to set yourself up for success in the fall. She balances the tension between productivity and pause in a beautiful way, and offers simple steps that any entrepreneur can take in these last few weeks of August to grab a bit of rest and truly relax with peace of mind that their business is running in the background.
  

• 📺 HOW CHATGPT MAKES GRANT WRITING 10X EASIER (INCLUDES PROMPTS) Seasoned Fundraising Coach and YouTuber, Joanne Toller, gives really great example prompts to help you speed up and strengthen your grant application process by leveraging the power of LLM tools like ChatGPT. (You could also use Claude, Perplexity, Gemini, or any others!) Though she’s primarily speaking to a non-profit audience, these same prompts and strategies are applicable for Launchers, too.

📚 INTERESTING READS

• 👀 WHAT GOOGLE INDEXING INSTAGRAM MEANS FOR YOUR BUSINESS VISIBILITY ICYMI: On July 10th, Instagram allowed Google to begin indexing public posts (i.e.: photos, videos, and Reels) from business and creator pages and surface them in Google search results. This is a huge win from an SEO standpoint, but it may add a slight lift to your workflow as it makes captions, sub-titles, and alt-texts all the more important to optimize with every post. There’s a lot of information about this change available online, but we like this Forbes article for a balanced overview.

• 🕔 THE 5 AM TRUTH ABOUT ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND MOTHERHOOD. This powerhouse article from Arjita Sethi says the silent parts about female entrepreneurship out-loud, and challenges all of us–both with and without children–to think about the legacies we want to leave behind with our work. A strong read to ponder during a late-summer rest, if we do say so ourselves. 

🚀 AUGUST CHALLENGE

Share your progress and support other Launchers on Instagram using the hashtag #lwlglobalchallenge!

This month’s challenge is all about working smarter, not harder. We’re inviting you to pick one repetitive task in your business—and find a simple way to automate it. Maybe that’s:

• Scheduling your weekly social media posts

• Setting up an auto-reply for your DMs (perhaps using something like ManyChat?)

• Using Claude or ChatGPT to draft responses to customer FAQs, and saving them as templates in your email inbox

• Automating invoice reminders (because who has time to chase payments?!)

Even one small system can free up mental bandwidth and help you step out of survival mode and into thrive mode. We’ll be sure to share a few tools and templates on Instagram through out the month of August to help you get started. 

Remember to post using #lwlglobalchallenge to let us know what you’re automating, and how it’s helping you!

🩵 LAUNCHER SPOTLIGHT

KAHINDO of @kahindo_nyc

2023 LWL Grantee & Launch Program

"I’m headed back home to DR Congo next week—it’s been six years since I’ve returned, and I’m deeply looking forward to reconnecting with my roots: the culture, the food, the fashion, the music. Travel always fuels my creativity, and truthfully, I’ve been feeling a bit uninspired lately. This trip is exactly the spark I need to reset and get into the right headspace to prepare for Q4.

During these quieter summer months, I’m taking small, intentional steps: working on a brand refresh, updating SEO, and prepping production for our limited Fall Collection, which will be handcrafted with our incredible artisans in Kenya and DR Congo.

I believe rest and reflection are just as powerful as planning. So while I’m doing the behind-the-scenes work, I’m also giving myself grace and space to dream again.

You don’t have to sprint into Q4. Sometimes the best preparation starts with a return to self."

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🩵 🚀 Love what we’re doing at Ladies Who Launch? Here’s how you can support our mission to provide tactical support, funding opportunities, and capacity-building programs to under-resourced women and non-binary entrepreneurs, everywhere.

• FORWARD TO A FRIEND. A rising tide lifts all boats! If you’ve got a friend who might benefit from our educational newsletter, please forward them this email or encourage them to connect with us on LinkedIn or Instagram.

• RECOMMEND AN EVENT SPONSOR. Ladies Who Launch events are offered free of charge to attendees, as we never want a lack of finances to block someone’s ability to access business-building education. Partnering with sponsors helps us to offer our elevated, high-quality events on our non-profit budget. Know of an organization that might be interested in contributing? Send your recommendations to: hello+sponsor@ladieswholaunch.org.

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