The U.S. Government is Literally Paying People to Start Businesses in 2026

Do you know last year the US government had over $50 billion they were going to give to small businesses and more than 30% of it never got used. That's the part nobody talks about. I complain all the time about how government makes things harder for small businesses. They do. But here's the other side. There are loans, government programs, grants, mentorship opportunities all around. There is money that the government has and it is waiting for you. So in this video, going to teach you how to take it. State programs nobody's talking about. Let me tell you some secrets. One of our entrepreneurs in the boardroom used workforce training and funds and wage credits. That's like free money to employ people to grow their first employees to over 15 in one year. And they got most of their payroll reimbursed. This was especially crazy because they were bootstrapped, had no investors and no money to start. So they kept putting all the money back in the business. Which means that they didn't have any money to hire except because the government gave them. Now cool part. Red state, blue state, doesn't matter. Economic development agencies want businesses like yours. You just have to ask. In fact, if you look at this map of the us every state has its own version of this. We'll pay you to build something is what they're telling you. These are called state business and sector incentives. So tax credits, wage reimbursements, training grants. Your employees aren't good enough, train them up on the government's dive. Some examples. Texas will give up to 500k for workforce training through TWC. Indiana, 5k per full time hire plus 50% off training. Florida, 1000 to 5k per rural job. Yes, just for hiring locally. Tennessee, 50% of payroll reimbursed in high poverty areas. New York, where we're sitting today, 75% back on employee training in clean energy. So how do you get them? Let's give you the secrets, huh? Wait until you see the end of this video. I've got way more for you. One, search your state and go look up economic development incentives. Two, find programs with names like workforce training, credit, job tax credit, capital investment reimbursement. 3. Go apply online. Most take less than 30 minutes. What do you need? Not that much. You need to file before you hire or expand. Submit some basic payroll or expense stocks to make sure you're not lying. Claim the credit at tax time or get reimbursed to Direct. Obviously talk to your accountant about all of this to make sure that it's applicable for you. We've taught 14,000 business owners, and before us, 99% of them, they didn't do this. But the 1% that do, well, they get to build with these guys money. You get to use the government's money? Yes. The government will actually give you money for a business or even to buy one. I kid you not. I was going to invest in a nail and hardware business, you know, like this type. And I was about to give them a couple hundred thousand dollars for this business, and then all of a sudden they told me they didn't need it. Why? Because the government gave them the loan instead. The SBA allowed them to take multiple investors and use their money for the loan instead of mine. So they got debt, debt, which means they hold owned the company outright after a period instead of if I was to give them the money, well, I was going to own a slice of that bad boy forever. You could say everyone thinks the system is rigged against them. But when you learn the rules, you realize these rules are actually written for you. If you know the game that you're playing and you play the right one. What's fascinating is this all actually started after the Great Depression, which almost wiped out a majority of small businesses. So obviously the government staff steps in because it needs to save them. They saved 110,000 of these businesses with grants and loans. So you guys today have resources your grandparents and mine never have. And the reason is simple. The small businesses, well, they're the backbone of the U.S. and the economy overall. And after World War II, these businesses, they were about to be eviscerated by the war. They didn't just want a bunch of big corporations and monopolies. So the government, they wanted to create some rivalry. They were trying to help the little guys make sure they still existed, not create other camp kings that would vie for power with them. Today's politicians are smart. And they know that 99% of all businesses in America are small. They create two out of three of every jobs, people with jobs.

What do they do?

They vote. So when the economy stalls, small businesses, well, they restart the engine. And there's just one problem here though. Entrepreneurship is really risky, especially now. So the government, they decided to put their hand on the scales. This is sort of this balance between risk and incentives. So they use grants, tax credits, cheap loans to talk me and you into doing more small business. So that means if you know where to look, you can build your businesses all on the government's dime. Just like the guys who took the government's money instead of mine. Now they own 100% of a business that does millions of dollars a year. Let's do their homework. This part I know from experience. Let me tell you why. The QSBS, for instance, allowed me to make 300k tax free from a fortune cookie advertising company called Open Fortune. What is qsbs? It's basically the government saying if you put real skin in the game backing a small C corp, we'll let you keep a chunk of your upside tax free. If you buy original shares in a US C corp, that's just a company structure, when it's still small and actually operating as a real business, and then you hold those shares for at least five years, the IRS can let you exclude up to 100% of the capital gains. That's like the upside. When you sell to the tune of 10 million bucks or 10x what you put in per person. That means if I put in 500k, grow it and sell that company for 5 million, that entire $4.5 million gain can be federal tax free when the rules are met. So instead of writing a big check to the IRS and that cash, well, it stays in my pocket and gets rolled into the next deal. It is literally a cheat code for people who are willing to build or back small businesses. So always get a good tax pro to talk to you about this to make sure your company is set up the right way and that your shares actually qualify. The last thing that I'll tell you guys, I've done this so many times now and I learned it from some billionaires like Peter Thiel, who made hundreds of millions of dollars this way. Now, most people think tax credits are just for the big companies like Peter Thiel, but the truth is they're actually written for us. Most founders just never read the fine print. So I want you to think about the good stuff you can get when you take the really hard risk. How do you get the actual cash? Let me give you some examples. Working Opportunity Tax Credit, what's called the wotc. When you hire someone from a qualifying group, like a veteran or someone who's been unemployed, then you get anywhere from 2,400 to 9,600 back in tax credits. Section 179 deduction. Buy equipment or a vehicle, write off up to 1.25 million instantly. Now you got to do this the right way. Lots of people defraud the government this way. Don't do that. Make sure that you are doing it on the up and up. There's also the historic rehab credit. Renovate a commercial space, get 20% back new markets tax credit. Invest in low income zones. Earn up to 39% back in tax credits. Here's how this could look in real life for you. Let's say you buy an H Vac business, you hire a vet, that's up to $9,600 back via the WOTC. Just have them fill out a form before or on their start date. So let's say then you buy two trucks and 75k of new equipment. Section 179 lets you write it off immediately. You don't need to wait years. You get to do it right away, even if it's financed, which is pretty wild. So then you go and remodel an old building in a historic zone that's 20% back with the historic rehab credit if you follow the guidelines. And if you expand into low income zip codes, then you partner with a cd, you get cheap capital to the new markets tax credit program. Wow. That is how you turn a boring business into a tax efficient cash printer. Most founders miss this, but you won't.

Actually, I thought I'd share a secret with you.

So you want to know how I.

Got started when I had $0 and I wanted to make my first 100k online. And actually it's how this guy, my friend sing, I made $25 million before he even looked like this. He was selling hot dogs prior. So the secret is something that nobody really talks about. But it is so simple. It's a newsletter. You write down your ideas, you send.

Them to the world.

And this platform, Beehive, grows your audience. It links up with advertisers to pay you. And you have to be zero technical to do it, you know, because we can't really trust the government like we've.

Talked about in this video or other platforms. You can.

You want to own your audience with email. So when I started my whole newsletter, now I have one to source deals, get investors attention, sell offers, you know, turn my knowledge into my cash flow and asset.

That's also just so you know how.

Warren Buffett got famous. He started with investor letters. So if you're looking for a lean way to start that can actually scale and make you money, you got to check out Beehive. I believe with every fiber of my being that newsletters are the future. So you go to Beehive, which is B e e h I I v.com coty and use code CODY30. It'll give you 30% off your first three months.

And I think this is the way.

We own our online assets. And nobody's Talking about it. Okay, I want to teach you one other thing.

Let's talk about how taxes reward entrepreneurs. Most founders quietly tip 15.3% to the IRS every year just because their entire entity is set up wrong, not because they made too much money, but a founder who is doing for instance 500k in profit a year as a solo LLC. By default, every dollar is hit with 15.3% self employment tax. That's for Social Security and Medicare, et cetera. That's about 76,500 bucks straight off the top. Just an SE tax. So our founder, we tell her to switch switch to an S Corp election. Now she pays herself a reasonable salary of let's say 150k. Still hits with the payroll tax, but takes the remaining $350,000 as distributions. Payroll taxes now only applies to $150,000 wage piece, not the full 500k. So the 15.3% bite drops from roughly 23k on the salary all the way down and and doesn't hit the $350,000 in distributions. So she completely avoids this self employment tax. Now I know this stuff all sounds kind of boring. Tax this, tax that. But how does it sound to keep $350,000 off of the government taxing you pretty good. To me it's the same business, same revenue, same profit, just 50,000 per year. Captains that have donated to the government stretch that over a couple of years of growth and it's very realistic to say you've saved six, six figures purely by changing the entity type and how the cash is labeled AKA salary versus distribution. That's the game. The broke founder only thinks, how do I make money? The rich founder also asks, how do I keep it? This is the difference between being rich on paper and staying rich after taxes. The rich don't just make more money, they play the tax system, they play it like a chessboard. R and D credit up to $250,000 back, even if unprofitable. Google dropped $49 billion on R& D research and development last year. Microsoft 30 billion. They lobbied for full write offs so they could expense it all up front. Now they get a massive tax break just for building smarter QSBs. We talked about that. Sell your business, stack cash. That would be like Roblox founder for instance. David used it dozens of times and legally dodged millions in taxes at his company. He even gave qualifying shares to a family member and allowed them to make the same amount. The S Corps, that's also really smart. You can do that because if QSPS only allows for 10 million for you. I know that's a lot. 10 million for you, but 10 million for your husband if you make 20 mil. There you go. The S Corp split avoids the 15.3% tax on non salary income and people secretly working multiple six figure remote jobs. Use this. These aren't hacks. This is the US tax code. It's just using it smarter. If you are not talking to your accountant or attorney about this, well, I guess you're just giving money to the government. I don't like doing that. Let's say that you want to go out and buy a business. Well, we teach thousands of people every year how to do that. For instance, you can go to the SBA and they can give you a loan to buy a business and you put down 10% or even raise capital from multiple people. Let's also talk about how there are low rate state programs where individual states will pay you to buy a business in their state. Check out what Alaska does. It's pretty wild, so you don't have to take on all the debt yourself. In fact, our members have done about $300 million in deals, most of these using the SBA. So seller financing or other people's money, often the government's. Because everyone wants to bootstrap or raise vc. But the real move, borrow like a business owner, not a consumer. Let's compare a couple things. 14% APR credit card versus a 2% SBA loan, or maybe in this climate, an 8 or 12% SBA loan. If you start a business with debt that can be terrifying and less in the right kind of debt for an SBA microloan, you can get up to 50k, no down payment, 8 to 13% interest. State run low interest rates, 2 to 5% rates in PA, Ohio, IL. This is perfect for equipment and facilities and to be able to use loans to buy that. Let's say for instance you have a 17% interest rate credit card. Well, bank loans, you can negotiate those maybe 8, 12%. And if you go direct, sometimes you can get loans for small business owners. 2, 5, 6%. You know which one is I'd take. And I know that everything I told you right now sounds simple on paper. But the real unlock is seeing this done live with real deals and real people doing that. That's exactly why we host Main Street Millionaire Live. It's not a motivational conference. This is real operators doing deals to buy businesses and showing you step by step how to do it. In fact, you get to watch people who used to Be nurses, doctors, engineers, and employees closing deals that are averaging two and a half to $5 million. And they're breaking them down on stage, how they structure them so that you can steal their homework. So if you want to stop watching YouTube videos and actually learn from people doing this right now, go to www.msm.live. i think if you guys give me 72 hours, I can change your life. Mentorship that's actually useful and free. You see, every single successful founder I know had someone that gave them a cheat code. These programs are the cheat codes. You just have to show up. One of my favorites is business education deduction. Do you know you get a tax write off for business education if you own a business? And guess what? I realized this early. So I did this in my business. I started paying for consultants and advisors to help my business grow. And then I wrote it all off. So I got smarter. I used my money to make me more money instead of giving it to all Uncle Sam, this is called your business education credit. And then I started something called the Boardroom, where our members, they've seen their businesses grow by 2x, in some cases 47% in one month. And they use our program as a tax deduction. So our consultants help you improve your pricing systems, increase profit margins, and Uncle Sam lets you write it off. So keep your invoice, categorize it as a professional business consulting, hand it to your bookkeeper or CPA at tax time and talk to them about if this is applicable for you. Most of our members deduct it as an ordinary and necessary business expense. You can do the exact same thing. So if you want your 2026 to be your most profitable year yet, you can apply here. I'd love to extend you an invite into the boardroom if you're a fit. And if not, we'll keep helping you on YouTube no matter what. Because the movement here is speed four for you. If you're trying to win without mentors, I don't know, I think you're just playing on hard mode. If you think about it like a chess game. You want to make sure that you actually know the game you're playing with the right person who can teach you how to get there faster. This isn't charity, but it is available for all of you. It's not just free money from the government. You do have to do the work. You can't just fill out a form and get a check. But if you're building something real, creating jobs, jobs, making money, adding value, the government wants to help you. So don't wait for permission, because this already exists. It's just waiting for you to take it or leave it. Like the billions that were left last year. That's not going to be you. So I hope to see you get some business tax credits this year or join us in the boardroom. Because the truth of the matter is small business is too hard to do alone and with no help.