Advocate and author Matthew Lesko shares some of the best, free resources for finding government grants and assistance for business owners, entrepreneurs and freelancers across the nation.Hear Matthew's full interview in Episode 480 of The Action Catalyst.
Chapter 1: Why is there apprehension about seeking government help?
I think that there is such a natural apprehension to go to the government for help. You're either all in or you have this apprehension. How do you address that? How do you get people over that? And where do they start?
Chapter 2: How can you get started with finding government assistance?
Yeah, well, that's two points. I mean, it weren't as easy getting over that other thing. I've been wrestling that 24-7 for 50 years. But yes, I got a couple of places to start. But you have to believe it's there, you know, because you can't just say, oh, I'm going to try. I'm going to call one or two people and see what happens. And that's probably, well, it's like getting a job.
Chapter 3: What is findhelp.org and how can it assist you?
You're going to knock on one or two doors. And nothing's going to happen. And they're not hiring today. So you go home and, yeah, nobody's hiring. And you can't do that. Go to findhelp.org. Put in your zip code on the left-hand corner up on top. You have community organizations that help you with money, help housing. They're all important things, right? Labor, work, health care, everything.
Chapter 4: Why is getting help considered a people business?
These are nonprofit organizations. Every one of them will never ask you for money. They just give you money. They give you services. They give you. Now, the next hurdle is now they're not all for you. So you have to start calling and asking for help. See, getting help is a people business. It's not an Internet business.
Chapter 5: How can local resources assist in starting a business?
You have to find the people in your community that get paid to help people like you. They know what's out there. So you have to learn where these people are and use them. So starting a business, let's say you want to start a business, okay? Put in sba.gov and then slash local dash assistance, sba.gov slash local dash assistance. And there's a place to put in your zip code.
These are all nonprofit organizations that get paid to help anybody, anybody. Start a business. Start a nonprofit. Work on your invention. Be a freelancer. Be a real estate inventor. Any way to make money. And they help you for free. Help you find money. Help you find legal help for free. Everything. Now, they're all not perfect. And that's why you call them.
To me, you call two or three of them, four of them or whatever. But everyone will never charge you money. Here's a couple other ones. Another website is called Apex, A-P-E-X, and Accelerators with an S and then .us. So that's a place, again, in every city that if you're in business, small, big, whatever, the biggest market for anything is the government. They buy anything.
And the problem is learn the bureaucracy. And they even have grants that help you figure out how to get those contracts. Now there's another good one for businesses. It's called careeronestop.org. Okay. Now what they do is train your employees for free. They pay for that because businesses don't like paying for training. So the government does.
So if you hire people without the skills they need, they'll pay the salary up to 80, 90% of the salary while they learn, or they just give you I mean, you get hundreds of hundreds of thousands of dollars to train all your call center people or your marketing people. It's phenomenal. And that's training money. And as an individual, too.
Now, in our country, you could, without a college degree, you could get paid $40,000 a year to train for a $100,000 a year job. Not going to college and paying them $40,000 a year. The government will pay you $40,000 a year. That's awesome.
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