Help Me With Sign Illinois Banking Document

Help me with industry sign banking illinois document free

all right so I have some really exciting news for you guys just recently and by recently I mean last week I was awarded a small business grant to fund my business next year I'm adding some new streams of revenue to my business overall and I mean and I needed a little bit of help funding those endeavors so earlier this year actually really late last year and into earlier this year I started looking for opportunities to apply for different business grants and I came across one that was fitting for my business and what I do and it was really just a great opportunity so I applied for it and six months later I was awarded that grant many people think getting business grants are unlikely everyone says that getting a business grant is as likely as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow but I'm here to tell you that is not the case I didn't think I would get a business grant to be honest when I first started coming up coming across this opportunity was something that was kind of unexpected for me so getting this business grant really opened my eyes to the opportunities for free money out there for small businesses in the United States so if you need free money to fund your business if you want to know how to find a grant to help you fund your business then watch this video because I'm going to give you lots of interesting advice and tips to help you along the way in finding additional funding for your business so if this is interesting for you keep watching [Music] welcome to my channel if you're new here my name is Neil Lewis and I help freelancers and solo entrepreneurs build successful businesses and cultivate lives of freedom along the way through self-improvement so I'm super excited to have you here and more importantly I'm excited to help you build your business when I initially started looking for grant opportunities I thought and I was mistaken when I assumed this I thought that there were really only two avenues to go down when it came to securing a business grant and in looking at these two opportunities and I'm about to mention it's difficult to imagine actually getting a grant because the competition is really high and well let me just get into it and I'll explain here why it's difficult to imagine getting a grant based on these two most common ways of looking for grants and finding them so the first commonly known grants or common grant opportunities are offered by the government and typically these grants in securing these grants you have to meet very specific criteria and a lot of small businesses don't meet these criteria which means that most small businesses are unlikely to get government issued grants now there are also grant opportunities from large organizations like FedEx that's just a really popular one popular business that offers a grant every single year to help fund small businesses they offer a limited amount of funds every year to fund small businesses to offer different grant opportunities and again the competition for those grants are so high hundreds of thousands of businesses apply for these grants through organizations like FedEx every single year and very few actually end up getting grants so when again when I started looking into these opportunities I was like oh my gosh what are the chances that I'm actually gonna get a grant I mean again it seems as likely as finding a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow but the more digging I did into this world of grant opportunities the more I realized that there were other opportunities out there to secure funding for small businesses so once I got really deep into looking for grants I discovered that there were local community organizations around the nation that had funding available to fund small businesses in their communities so you really just have to know who to reach out to and where to look for these funds and sometimes it's really just about who you know so I ended up on a whim last year or actually was earlier this year around March or April on a whim I actually went to a presentation on securing business funding by a locally funded organization here in Charleston South Carolina and they told me about you know different opportunities to apply for loans and how to secure an SBA loan and you know other ways you can find money to fund your business and then low and behold they told me about another local community organization who receives government funds and a part of the funds they receive every year are allocated towards funding local small businesses I've never heard of anything like this before but it really opened my eyes and I was just like wow so just like you know college students can get scholarships from local organizations to go to college small businesses can get the same types of funding from local organizations to fund their businesses so I ended up reaching out to this local organization I have it linked down below and they told me about the small business grant opportunity they had available they have a limited amount of funds every year that they allocate towards funding local small businesses and there really weren't any stipulations or any hoops I had to jump through to qualify for this grant it was a thirty five hundred dollar grant and I'll tell you more about how the program worked and how it was structured in just a second but the only criteria I had to meet to get this money were that I had show that my business had a financial need I had to prove to them that I actually needed this money okay I also had to provide documentation of having an LLC I also had to provide a business plan and I'll talk more about the significance of that business plan in a second and then after providing those things that was pretty much it so the program was called a match program and what this meant was that they would match a certain amount of money that I had to save into a specific type of bank account over the course of six months so it was a match program where I saves $500 into a bank account a special bank account called an individual development account through their organization and at the end of six months after I'd saved $500 into that account they would then match my $500 with thirty five hundred dollars giving me a total of four thousand dollars to fund my business out of that $400 $500 of it was my own money and thirty five hundred dollars of that money was a business grant I don't know what the significance of this match program was but that's just how it worked they wanted to see that I was able to save money and maybe they wanted to see that I was financially conscious enough to be able to spend the money that they were investing into my business wisely I really don't know but basically again how it worked is they told me how much I need to save every single month to put fight to keep to get five hundred dollars in an account in six months I actually ended up putting the five hundred dollars in the account really just from the very beginning because I already have money and savings to put the five hundred dollars in the account and then it just sat there for six months and then at the end of the six months they wrote me a check for $4,000 total giving me my five hundred dollars back and an additional thirty five hundred dollars through the grant I'm sure every business grant program is a little bit different so I don't want you to assume that every grant program is going to be exactly like this but again I got my business grant through a local community organization which is actually linked down below and I'm gonna walk you guys through the exact steps I had to take in order to get this grant so first I had to provide tax returns that's a pretty standard just like when you go and get a loan for your business if you're applying for some sort of loan I had to kind of go through a similar process and getting qualified to receive this grant so I provided them with my tax return they looked over it told me how its approved once I was approved the organization assigned me to a bank account again called an individual development account through TD Bank and I was told that I had to save X amount of money every single month in order to meet the requirements of this account I had to make a deposit every month until I reached $500 I put a lump sum in there at once myself actually I did like to lump sum payments to meet the $500 requirement I didn't have to put in you know a hundred some dollars a month for six months whatever no I put in like $250 one month in the next month I put in another $250 and then that was the end of it and I had to wait six months for that money to mature and then they write me the check for for $3500 once the account reached five hundred dollars and it reached maturity even well actually again I had the $500 in the account before the six months was over but I still had to wait the entire six months in order to be awarded that money I didn't really have to do anything to get the money other than provide the organization with a very detailed business plan about how I would use the money what my numbers were projected to look like in my business for next year they didn't want to give me the money and then I just go blow it on things that weren't gonna benefit my business so I was actually assigned a business mentor and he went through my business plan with me helped me see different things I could do in my business to be more successful it was actually really beneficial having that business mentor to kind of help me look through my business plan and give me different ideas to help me grow my business he also helped me with the numbers because numbers have never been my strengths so I had P&L statement and everything else is supposed to be in a business plan in addition to a detailed overview of what plan to use the $4,000 total for to help me grow my business and really get results in 2020 and then of course I forgot to mention this earlier but I also had to why I already had a business bank account but in order for them to write me the check I had to give them proof that I had a business bank account so that they knew who to write the check to and they wrote it to my LLC at the end of the six months which was just last week they wrote me the check and I basically had to promise them that I was only going to use this money for business expenses and if for example this organization gets audited I have to provide proof next year of what I spent the money on so I'm gonna keep receipts and documentation for everything I spent this this grant on to fund my business to cover my tail in the end just in case I get audited and have to show proof of what I spent the money on so when you get a business grant you have to make sure you spend the money on which you say you're gonna spend the money on and be sure you're able to spend the money on those things and that you can provide receipts for spending the money on these things otherwise you may end up in a little bit of trouble and you may actually have to pay this money back so again grants are free money but if you don't spend the money on what you say you're gonna spend the money on you may have to end up paying that money back and they made that very clear to me if you need fast money a grant is not a good opportunity for you it's not something you really need to look into because for me it took six months to get this grant I wasn't like desperate for the money but I was looking for free money types of opportunities to fund my business I found one I hopped on the opportunity and I got the grant and I was patient and I waited six months for it and this grant has allowed me to upgrade my youtube equipment it's allowed me to create my podcasting equipment it's allowed me to add other revenue streams to my business for 2020 and this is money I don't have to spend out of my own pocket to do great things for my business so this is not fast money if you need money tomorrow you may need to look into other options like business loans but if you're willing to patient and wait then a grant is a great opportunity for you so if you want other ideas to help you find money to start your business or grow your business I have another video link down below with different ideas you can use to help you find money for your business and I hope you guys enjoyed this overview today about how I got a grant where I found the grant and how you can look into other opportunities to find grant again reach out to local community organizations they may actually have funding to contribute to investing in small businesses in your area you really just never know but you have to seek out these opportunities in order to find them I link the organization down below that helped me help connect me with the local community organization that offers the grant funding and from what I have been told there are other local community organizations around the country that offer small businesses grant opportunities like the one I got so you don't always have to look into these like tricky government issued grants and you don't always have to apply for these national grants that everyone's applying for like contestants you know they're it's very unlikely that you'll get those look locally and don't overlook the small organizations in your community that have funding for these types of things now I will say that these local organizations are funded by the government so this is technically govern these are technically government funds that I acquired but these grants are not directly from you know a government type grant I don't I don't really know how to explain it it's from a community organization so these are great places to look if you are looking for grant opportunities don't overlook these small organizations in your area so number one I would recommend reaching out to local organizations that provide funding for small businesses they do exist and typically you can find them through your local SBA type organizations they can connect you with other organizations that offer funding that are based locally I find I found so far that these are the best opportunities or the best organizations to reach out to if you're looking for free money to fund your business so I hope these tips help you and your journey as an entrepreneur and working to fund your business that is all I have for you guys today comment down below if you have any questions about finding business grants if I come across any other opportunities I will let you know the organization that I got my grant from and through still has funds available for 2020 don't hesitate to reach out don't hesitate to click their link down below and reach out to a representative to ask them about securing these funds I don't know if you have to be located in this area to get it I'm in Charleston South Carolina so if you are in South Carolina specifically I would definitely a hundred percent recommend reaching out if you know you need additional funds for your business all right that's all I have for you guys today comment below if you have any questions don't hesitate to reach out to me I'm always a resource to you guys you know I'm a business coach don't forget to subscribe to my channel give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed the content and I will talk to you guys in my next video continue to move onward upward and forward have a great week