Hey, it’s Dan. Welcome back. This is IAllegedly. And as promised, one thing that a lot of people have asked for is grants. Grant money. How to get grants to start a business. How to get grants to pay your bills. How to get money that you don’t have to pay back. And I’m going to do all that today for you. So hit the like button, subscribe to the channel. Just to remind everybody, I started this channel with getting people grant money and access to things during COVID. And I ran medical conferences and biotech events that help people do this.

And I’m very good at it. I met a lot of good people that I learned a lot from doing this. And there’s a lot of programs that you can use. And we’re going to talk about everything from starting a business. If you want to start a business, the key to getting any type of grant money is to have a very thorough plan. Don’t just say, I’m going to be the best pizza maker. I’m going to be the best cabinet installer. We do awesome work. We’re destined for free money. No, it doesn’t work that way.

You need to have a plan. You need to have a business plan. And I’m telling you guys, there is free money out there to just start a food truck, this free money to start manufacturing. And in this economy right now, you’re going to start to see more and more of these things get offered. So I’m going to cover a lot of these things for you and just cover it all. But I want to remind everybody of a few things that are out there that are really, really good. And number one, the SBA, the Small Business Administration, is a resource.

And I have given them a very hard time through the years. And you guys know that. But they are a very good resource to get yourself started. They have a lot of events where they will tell you how to write grants and how to help get yourself alone. And they will answer your questions. And because they’ve been under the microscope lately with the new administration, it seems like they’re more and more helpful right now. So that’s a good thing. Next thing is the SBIR, which is the Small Business Innovation Research Program. Now, let’s say you’ve got some type of biotech product, some science product, something that is going to be, you know, doesn’t have to necessarily be biotech related, but just something that is tech related.

That’s where you would go for that. You know, you’ve got small business technology, STRR, technology transfer, and national association of the self-employed. A great resource. Now, here’s the thing. I don’t believe in paying for anything. Do not pay for grant writing. You know, when you go out and get a government grant, people say, oh, you’re never going to get this without having somebody write your grant. I have seen people pay as little as $5,000. I saw one woman pay $18,500 and was told she was inches away from getting the grant for 80 grand, by the way, $18,500 to get 80 grand.

It wasn’t worth it. And she didn’t get the money. I never would have got that far without them writing the grant. No. Now, there are a tremendous amount of places and with chat GPT right now, you can say, what are the things that you need to prepare my business? And it will walk you through step by step on what to do to prepare your business for this. Now, make a list. Have a grant packet. Prepare yourself. Be able to explain your business. When you apply for one grant, apply for many. I have seen it happen over and over again where people apply for a grant and they go, oh, we’re perfect for this.

We’re a technology company. We’re in the right county. We’re this, we’re that, and then they don’t give it to somebody else. It’s the bell of the ball that doesn’t get the date, that type of thing. So it takes a lot of work, but the money does not have to be paid back. During COVID, I had hundreds and hundreds of people that got grants through my channel. I had lots of twos, lots of three grants. The record was I had one woman get four grants out of Arizona and she got over $300,000 that she did not have to pay back.

And again, there’s certain times that you have more of this money available than others. And just do yourself a favor. Start in the city that you’re in. And are there any grants in Wichita, Kansas? We’re just going to use Wichita. And then you can sit there and you can answer, you know, they’ll let you know, yeah, there’s grants for farming, there’s grants for this, there’s grants for that. Look at the county that you live in. I live in Orange County, California. So you can look in Orange County and see what grants are available out here.

Now they’ve got areas. I am in North Tustin, California right now. The next city over is Santa Ana. Santa Ana has tremendous amount of grants to start a restaurant, fund businesses, low income help, as far as paying bills, paying your mortgage, things like that. There’s just a tremendous amount of this stuff. So remember, city, the county, and then go to your state before you go national. And look at the requirements of what they want when you do this. Now this is the same thing with contacting someone wealthy, whether it be a wealthy individual or a family office.

Wealthy individuals that write checks to technology and startups generally have a pattern. Now sometimes you’ll see one guy that says, hey, I’d like to put $25,000 into a new business. I worked for one of these guys and he had, he’d write $25,000, no more than $50,000 to different businesses. And he didn’t care what it was. I mean, he made a killing from a business where the people spoke Spanish. Now my, my, the guy I’m talking about was bilingual also was half Cuban. And he found a business where these people would go door to door and they sold portraits, family portraits, and they needed money for the canvassers, the people that go door to door for certain equipment.

And they needed it so that they could have, you know, the mobile equipment set up on a moment’s notice, pull up the back screens and take these pictures. And I think he put 50 grand in, but he made a killing in that. And they just would write him a check every quarter. They’d bring their money in and they did really, really well. Then they wanted to sell the business and he got paid out at that point too. So there are people that do that family offices a little bit more. They have a, normally a reputation.

Roth Capital Partners does technology, does biotech, things like that here in Southern California. You know, then you go to venture capital and you have, you know, that, that sit there and look for startups. And again, these startups are technology-based generally, you know, what separates you from everybody else? It’s just, don’t use hyperbole. Do something that’s going to innovate you from everybody else. And have they fleshed it out? Yes or no. Before you can even talk, before you should talk to these people. I know one place that used to attend my events, and I attended theirs, and one of these guys was just a brilliant guy.

He’s a brilliant investor named Daniel as well. And Daniel had, at one price, hey, how much do you have invested right now in all these startups? Oh, six and a half million dollars. And he would do 300,000 here, 200,000 there. He was all over the map with it. But this guy that did that had certain things he wanted to do in the biotech and technology space. He then, with his company, set up an incubator where they would have a contest where they would sit there and they would have company supply that wanted to raise money.

The winner would get $300,000 and they would get connected with the main fund that had half a billion dollars, $500 million to invest in technology. Got the hay. I mean, it was crazy. And, you know, Dan, if you ever want anybody us to look at, we’ll move them to the front of the line. They can just come in. And, you know, there’s certain things you do with the event business. And you’d say, listen, I’ve got this wealthy individual. I’ve got this group. I’ve got this venture company that’s got 500 million. Oh, we want to meet them.

We’re ready. We’re so ready. Now, the one thing that they told me was, if these guys come in and they get shot down, they’re never getting invited back. Never, ever, ever. And this has been my mantra for everybody. Now, you may apply to 20 different people and get turned down every time. That may happen. But you need to understand that you’ve got one chance at this. It’s kind of like a first date where, hey, listen, if I like you, I’ll see you again. If I don’t, just lose my number. Okay, we do that. Harsh, but true.

So, these guys went in there and just got clobbered. I guess it was embarrassing was what I was told. Because, you know, the engineers didn’t have the answers. And people don’t practice pitching to people because they’re smarter than everybody else. And they’re not. So, a few of these grants that are right there, the NASC Grant, Growth Grant, some of these grants come and go throughout the year. Search for them. Search for the deadlines for the application. Small business grants near me. Small business grants for women. Small business grants for minorities. Small business grants to start a business, small business grants to increase my manufacturing.

Just search it. Search it, search it, search it. The NASC Grant quarterly gives up to $4,000 for various businesses. And again, guys, I hate writing checks to anybody for anything. So, you know, don’t sit there and go, oh, hey, our application fee is $88. And because you can spend a lot of money very quickly for this. Then most small business grant offers $20,000 in funding for small businesses. Amazon Small Business Grant does $25,000 a year. The Etsy Emergency Relief Fund, they were offering $2,000 to Etsy sellers to start their business and to make sure the businesses were going to stay open.

You know, and then you got the American Express Grant, the Tory Burch Grant, and all these other things. But again, research this stuff thoroughly. You know, tailor your application for what they want. Now, think about this. You’re not, if you want to run a pizza company, you’re not going to talk to the biotech guy. You understand? Don’t waste your time. Don’t waste the energy of them ripping up your application. Just don’t do it. This is very easy. I’m telling you guys this because the thing about this is that people go and borrow money at the wrong times.

They get money at the wrong times. I’ve done this. I’ve borrowed money to put out fires only to have things pop up someplace else and get a hotspot someplace else in my business that just, you know, was going to create another problem. So I’m telling you, you have supplier issues, you have issues where you think it’s growth money. Try to negotiate that. Nobody wants to have anybody go out of business right now, which is going to be the consensus. You don’t want to borrow money to get yourself deeper in debt just to try to keep the train going when, you know, all hope is lost with your business.

A lot of people run things into the ground and don’t realize, ah, this is really a losing proposition. What can you cut back on? What can you do to run it more efficiently? Grant and startups. It’s like the food trucks, I’m telling you, it’s such a hot industry right now, but people don’t put pen to paper to it. How much is the food truck? What’s the maintenance on the food truck? What’s fuel and service on the food truck? You know, who’s going to cook the food? Who’s going to be your sous chef? Oh, I’m going to do it all, Dan.

I’m going to drive and I make these great Cuban sandwiches just like the movie Chef, but mine are 10 times better. No. Okay. You saw that. John Leguizamo in that movie and his kid were the sous chefs for that thing. And everybody had a job to get people into it. People don’t realize that’s what you have to do as well. Okay. Network, seek support, you know, the small business development center, the SBDC was a great resource run by a bunch of good people when I was running events. And again, just get yourself out there.

This takes work and it takes time. My friend Fran that runs the Joseph Dreamhouse charity, she has done a tremendous amount of grant research and she finally got grants through Walmart of all places. They would give her food. Costco would give her 500 dollar gift cards every now and then from Costco. And then you can sit there and say 500 bucks Dan, what’s that going to do? Well, when you’re giving food to people, it makes a big difference, things like that. But research question. If you have an organization and you have a few people, who is the most organized person that works for you, I am not an organized man.

Okay. I’m the salesman. That’s what I do. So I hire people that can put things like that together. And then once you see a pattern on what they want, if you have your grant file, instead of it taking three hours to put the first one together, it’s 15 minutes. So for your individual needs, there are grants and you need to look at within your city, your county and your state. How can I pay my health insurance? How can I pay my electric bill? How can I pay my, you know, cell phone bill? There’s things for all this stuff right now.

And I’m telling you, I’ve seen people get this over and over and over again. You know, Lisa, when she was alive and she was ill, she had to rely on certain things for her parents because she was taking care of her parents too at one point. I’m like, what do you mean you’re getting aid to pay the electric bill? Yeah, she got it. Okay. There’s all these different organizations out there. And if you are in trouble, they will help you. So seek help, seek help, ask for it. Okay. But the problem is people, oh yeah, just stuff’s not out there.

It doesn’t apply to me. It’s only for certain people. No, it doesn’t work that way, guys. They’re giving this money away. So hope this was helpful. Reach out to me. Look at the description below. It will give you ideas. The thing about this is that I used to share like individual grants, like, oh, these grants are flying in 14 days. I’m telling you, start with your city, county, state, and then national. But get an idea of what your company does. Now, think about this. The other thing is that if you’ve ever ran a business, it’s all the stuff that we don’t put pen to paper to that costs us a bloody fortune.

Going to FedEx office, going to all these different places like that, you know, shipping, packaging, things like that, stuff’s outrageous. And it’s the dead cost of running a business. Well, if you could win $2,500 in shipping expenses and having them do printing, because that’s what FedEx office does now. It’s the old Kinko stores. That’s a great thing to have. So let me know what you think. Hit the like button, subscribe to the channel. You want to
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