 I have seen so many business owners who have missed out on funding their business could have gotten. I don't want to see any more small business owners not get the funding they need. The biggest mistakes small business owners make when it comes to applying for these stimulus programs is they don't have up-to-date financial information. If you're just throwing receipts in a shoebox and handing them to your accountant then you don't know how much your business may be making. So one thing I'd encourage you to do is pull out that schedule C and look at line 31. That's your net profit. Your net profit determines how much you may be able to qualify for for a PPP loan. Another common mistake we see is that people don't know where to apply for these programs because these are SBA loans they think they all go to the small business administration. Only the economic injury disaster loan goes directly through the SBA. For other programs like the PPP you need to go through a lender and many online lenders are trying to help business owners especially those who may not have strong banking relationships and may not know where to get one of these loans. A lot of small businesses mingle business and personal funds in the same bank account and many don't even have a business bank account. This can slow down your ability to get stimulus programs as well as to just get traditional bank loans. So if you don't have a business bank account you need to start right now. It's really important that you spend the money from these stimulus programs properly. I've talked to small business owners who did not understand how to properly spend their PPP or EIDL money and now they're worried about getting in trouble with the SBA. You can head that problem off by just looking at the acceptable uses of funds before that money hits your bank account. I've heard from a lot of small business owners who missed out on the stimulus funds the first time around. We may not see something like this again soon so if you have not really looked into these programs there are deadlines and there is limited funding. You want to do so as quickly as possible because if you qualify you don't want to miss out on this round. Leave a comment and tell us about your experience or questions about these programs. We'd love to hear how they're going for you.