 What's happening guys? It's Shane here. So as someone who wrote their first grant application over 10 years ago and has a lot of experience in this field, I'm going to go over the top five best grants to start a business. So we're going to skip the long-winded introduction and jump in right now. So there's a lot of information out there that's honestly just a waste of your time, money, and energy. And usually it's from people who try to charge you for this sort of thing. So I made this video in order to save you from wasting your time and hopefully get you started on your way to getting some free cash so that you can start a business. And who doesn't like free cash? Smash like for free cash. So the best way to get a grant for starting a small business is actually to start with your local, either city or county, as they have special offices that are set up by elected officials to do two things. One, to keep them elected, of course. And two, to attract people to start a business which would make people that might otherwise be unproductive, be productive members of society that can take care of themselves and help the economy flourish. So these websites that they set up are going to be different in every single state. And you're going to have to do a little bit of research in order to find them. But this is actually a good thing because the government is not going to advertise free money to people. You have to do that work in order to find them. But that means that 99% of people aren't going to do the work and they'll never find this free resource. But I'm going to show you how. And the first thing I want to mention is all of these websites are going to end in .org. If any website ends in .com or .net or anything other than .org, chances are it's probably someone who is going to upsell you or try to charge you some amount of money in order to help you find these grants. So just ignore those websites. So just for the purposes of this video, let's say you live in Hawaii because the weather sucks outside and I wish I was in Hawaii. And you're looking to start a business there. So the first thing you want to do is you want to type in Hawaii Small Business Development Center and boom, it's the first one that pops up. And there's even one for each island. So you'd click on that and they'll help you do basically anything you need to do as a small business. Whether that be finding loans to start a business, grants, consulting, helping with taxes, accounting, setting up your business structure like creating an LLC or an S Corp or a sole proprietorship, doing accounting, managing your money, getting low interest business loans, advertising. And the list goes on and on and on. So starting local is the most important thing. And that is the most important step for finding grants in your area. Now, the next thing you want to do is to use good old Google to find opportunities and remember only click on the ones that end in dot org. So for instance, you might type in Small Business Grants Hawaii and then see what pops up and you might find opportunities that you missed in the last step. And you want to type in things that apply to you specifically. So for instance, let's say you're someone who doesn't make very much, like let's say you're unemployed, maybe you would type in low income business grants Hawaii. And if you want to start a food business, maybe you would type in Hawaii food business grants on Google. And let's just say you're a felon. Well, there's grants specifically for that as well. I think you get the idea here. And after doing about 30 seconds of research, a great site that I found for Hawaii is Pacific Gateway Center.org. Another one that I found was HTDC.org. And on this site, there was a $150,000 grant for small businesses to develop a great idea. $150,000 for an idea. All you need is an idea even if it's a bad one. Another keyword that you should look for when you're searching in Google is accelerator organizations. And these are basically organizations that will give you money because they think that your idea is going to help out the state. Now, the next step after doing this is to call your elected congressman by going to votesmart.org. And this is really awesome because these congressmen want to get reelected. And so they have entire teams of people that are answering phone calls pretty much all around the clock. And they will do research for you. They'll do basically anything you want them to because the congressmen want to get reelected. And a lot of the time they will have, you know, secret back office numbers or they'll have connections to different important people that know what grants and opportunities are available. And they'll do all the research for you on what the state is offering in terms of help for small businesses. And these politicians do it out of the kindness of their heart, not because they want to get reelected. Just kidding. They do this for a few different reasons, but the biggest one is of course because they know this will help them get reelected. So it's definitely worth it for you to call them and see what the state has that could help you. And sometimes they'll even do research into federal help as well for you. This is an incredible research and all those websites that claim they can get you free grant money, this is what they use. They literally just call the congressmen and ask them what's available. They write it down and then they make a little automated report and they send it to you and they charge you like 500 bucks or a thousand bucks for that. So go ahead, skip the middlemen and just do it for free. Now the next thing you want to do on the list is you actually want to go to your local library and check with them to see what grants are available. And the reason for this is because libraries oftentimes will have very, very expensive databases that they pay thousands and thousands of dollars a year in order to keep updated. And these librarians know how to research stuff in these databases. So sometimes they'll have it all available on the website itself. Sometimes you don't even have to go into the library, but if not, then the librarians can help you look up on these databases what grants are available for you. Sometimes these librarians are so bored that they'll just do the research for you. And these databases will often show government grants as well as profit and private organization as well. Now after you've exhausted all of those resources, the next step is to go to your state or federal government. And these grants are going to be much more competitive because more people know about them. But with that being said, these are still really great to apply for. And sometimes these are some of the better grants that offer more money. So you might be good to go at this point, but if not, that's totally fine. Apply for these as well. But you're going to probably have to apply for more of them because they're going to be a little more competitive and a little less likely for you to win them. And a great one here, for instance, is careeronestop.org, which will give you $250,000 in order to train yourself or your employees on valuable skills that can help your business out. Stuff like customer service, marketing, sales, all that sort of thing. Just ask Dan Locke who will charge you nearly $2,500 to be a high ticket closer. Another great one here is NIST.gov, which is basically an organization that will audit your business. And then they'll give you a free half day of consulting that would usually cost about $5,000. They'll do it for completely free. They'll do it for completely free. And then if you need anything beyond that, they'll do it for a fraction of the price that any other organization like big consulting companies like McKinsey, for instance, anything like that, they would charge much, much more. And there are a bunch of government organizations like these that you can find, and they're much, much easier to find than local organizations. So a lot more people are going to know about them. But at the same time, these are still worth it for you to apply to. And another thing that's worth it for you to check out is my videos right here, because I'm going to be dropping some really great content on great opportunities that are available right now and how you can be successful. Thank you so much for watching this video. Go ahead and smash the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell, comment down below any videos that you want to see. Thank you so much for watching and bye for now.