MBA1664 Are Government Grants Worth Applying For?

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Hey oh. Welcome to the Hundred Dollar MBA Show. Because a better business begins with you. That's why we deliver daily 10 minute business lessons for the real world. I'm your host, your coach, your teacher Omar Zenholm. I'm also the co founder of the Hundred Dollar MBA, a complete business training and community online over at 100mba.net. Go ahead and visit our website and download our Break Business roadmap and know step by step exactly what to do to build a six figure business. It's absolutely free. Just go to 100- MBA-NET in today's episode you will learn Are government grants worth applying for? Government grants are one of the things you know exists out there, but you're not sure if it's worth the effort or even how to apply for one. Is there real money out there for the taking? Is it impossible to actually get them? What are your options when it comes to applying? And at the end of the day, is it worth all the time and effort it takes to apply for a grant? That's what we'll be discussing in today's episode. I have applied for many government grants in the past and will share some of my experiences. So let's get into it. Let's get down to business. There are many grants out there. Some are government, some are private. But today we're going to focus on government grants. So there's a good chance, no matter where you are in the world, that your government will offer some sort of grants to businesses like yours, small businesses, startups. And these grants might be something that you can apply for once or many times over, like every year. So let's start with how do you find out what is available, like what grants are out there? So my best advice when it comes to this is that you should make this a part of what your accountant or lawyer does. So if you have a lawyer on retainer, or if you have an accountant on retainer, which is more likely then when you're in the hiring process of finding this accountant, make sure you find somebody that is in the know. In the grant business, accountants are usually tapped into what's happening in the government when there's funds available, when something gets passed, new laws, all that kind of stuff, tax incentives. So if you have a good accountant, they should actually let you know and send you an email or a message and say, hey, there's a new grant that you can apply for. Here are all the grants that you can apply for for this year. This is the easiest way because you got a ton to do to build your business and you need somebody just to put it on a silver platter. So if you have an accountant, ask them, and if you don't have an accountant, try to find one that knows about this, that's tapped into the grants in your local community or in your country. This also applies to, again, if you have a lawyer on retainer. Now, of course you can spend time to kind of search what grants are available online, but there's new things that come out all the time. And the interesting thing is that it's kind of hard to stay up to date unless it's your job. So that's why I refer to those experts that you're paying for anyway. So they might as well do this little extra service for you. Now, once you know there is a grant available, what are your options? So the cheapest option is you applying for this grant on your own, meaning that you complete the application process, you put all the paperwork together, you put all the evidence or all the information or, you know, resources they're asking for to apply for the grant. This can be time consuming. This can really be a lot of effort and that's why a lot of people shy away from applying for grants because frankly, it's just a very long winded process and sometimes it's quite complicated. The forms are not very straightforward. And you're just hoping that you're doing it right. The advantage of doing it yourself is of course it's free to apply. You can do it all yourself, and you're going to save the money, but you're going to be spending a lot of time. Now there are organizations though, that do apply for grants for you. And this is something that you can really Google in your local area. There's a ton of these companies because they know how to apply for these grants. They know exactly what to put in these applications to get approved and what to do to greatly increase your likelihood of approval. So these are great organizations to work with. Now, I have applied for grants or we have applied for grants as a company before without a service like this. And we've applied with services like this and the likelihood of approval is much higher with a service because they know how to fill out these applications, they know exactly what makes a good application, what increases your chances, and all that kind of stuff. Plus, they do all the legwork for you. They just basically send you a bunch of emails asking you for a bunch of information that they can't come up with themselves about your company, what you do and what you offer, and why you should get this grant. But they do all the paperwork and fill in everything else and make sure that it's filed properly and all that kind of stuff. Now a lot of these organizations, you could just find them in your local area and Google, they have different pricing schemes. Some people will pay a flat fee, some people pay a little bit up front, and some organizations will just ask for a flat out percentage of the grant. 10, 15, 20% of the grant. Now for many people that are busy and running a business, if a company takes 15% of whatever grant they get, say for example, the government gives a hundred thousand dollars for the grant, they're going to pay this organization 15 grand, which is a lot of money, you know, to do this process for them. But it's almost like 85 grand with minimal effort because you're, you're doing about, you know, 15% of the work versus 100% of the work because you know, you're just filling out the information that applies to your business that the organization needs. So if we were, you know, buddies having a drink together and you're asking my opinion, I would say go with the organization because it just saves you so much time and time is in business. And they will increase your chances of getting the grant because of that. They'll also be able to steer you in the right direction for which grants you should apply for. You know, you shouldn't be applying to everything that you see. Some are going to be more applicable to your business. Some of them are things that you can apply over and over again every year, like I mentioned. So feel free to, of course, ask this company or this organization which grants are the ones that you should go for. So if you do work with a grant type of company, company that helps you with grants. This is kind of a two birds, one stone. If you don't have a lawyer or an accountant to help you with this, they can actually loop you in when a new grant is available or when you can apply. So of course they're incentivized because they're going to get paid or get a percentage of the grant. So you're definitely going to get some correspondence from them. Now, of course, when you apply for a grant, it's not guaranteed you will get approved. You, you could put a lot of time and effort into putting the grant together and then you just simply don't get approved. And that's kind of money down the drain, especially if you're working with an organization that's asking for something up front. Some organizations will ask for a bigger percentage because they're taking all the risk. And that could work for you. But at the end of the day, I think you should try to apply for two to three grants a year if they're available, especially if they're like standard grants that are every year. This increases your chances of getting one or two grants out of the three. And it's just a numbers game, in my opinion. And we've done this, you know, we've gotten R and D grants, we've gotten grants to help us with marketing. And again, if you're trying to apply for many grants, this is why working with a company can really help you. Because you're doing this process over and over more than once, and they can use all the information that you already gave them to apply for the next one. This makes it a whole lot easier. So in my experience, it is worth it because it definitely can give you some boost in cash. It also allows you to understand that there are opportunities for you to grow. Now, grants take a while. They're not like instant, where you get cash, you know, in 24 hours or something like that. It can take months to get approved. So it should be something that you work towards or that you plan for. You put in your calendar and you kind of make it a regular thing throughout the year. I also want to mention that, you know, when you're getting a grant from the government, a lot of times you're going to have to keep record of how you're using the grant. Every grant is different, but often grants stipulate, hey, how are you using this money? They might check back in later on, say, hey, how did you utilize this money? What were the results? All that kind of stuff. So it's not actually, you know, free money. They want to make sure that they granted the grant to people that actually are making use of the grant and not just, you know, pocketing the money.

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They're a lot of work, they take a lot of time, they require certain language to put into the application so you can get approved. So in my opinion, get some help. Get an organization that can help you get approval and it's incentivized to get your grants approved. And don't just go for one. Go for two or three in the year and your chances of getting one or two of them, or even all three is pretty good. It's a great way to get some cash in your business to take you to the next level and work on those new projects you've been wanting to work on. Thanks so much for listening to the $100 MBA show. If you love what you hear, hit subscribe right now so you don't miss a beat. We're on every podcast app and it's absolutely free to subscribe and you get access to over 1600 episodes in our archives by hitting subscribe. So do that right now. Before I go, I want to leave you with this. Entrepreneurs are notorious for hating paperwork and forms and things that just are boring, right? We want to create, we want to be excited, we want to be creative, right? So if form filling is not your thing and you're turned off and you're kind of like, ah, grants, that sounds boring. Then get somebody else to do it, right? It doesn't mean that you have to do it. Okay? Part of being an entrepreneur is understanding that if you want to get things done, especially things that you don't want to do, you hire out, you get.

Other people to do it.

If there's an ROI at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Thanks so much for listening and I'll check you in tomorrow's episode Q and A Wednesday. I'll see you then. Take care.

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