Regardless of whether your business is 1 hour old or 10 years old, every business can qualify to get up to $50,000 in loans and up to $250,000 in grants. Notice I said "UP TO" and not a set amount. The biggest scam going are companies wanting to charge you money "to help you" get a loan! What a load of crap!
Businesses get declined for loans or grants because they fail to do the things necessary to prove their business is strong, vibrant and resilient to the dynamic economic strains. It’s usually not the fault of the business owner, because attorneys and tax professionals that do the necessary things to help them get funding usually charge excessive fees that are often in excess of $10,000. If your business is one of the lucky ones that can afford to pay those excessive fees, you still lose up to 45% to lending brokers that charge you backend or success fees, not to mention excessive application fees! So in the end they don’t care if you get funded or not, its big $$$ business because they smell desperation and whether you get funded or not, they laugh all the way to the bank while you are left holding the bill!
DO NOT GET SUCKED INTO THOSE FEES!!
For instance my attorney wanted to charge me $1500 - $2500 to do my business plan! Are you kidding me?!!! If you click here you will see that these guys did the same thing for less than $500. Not only was the business plan and executive summary done professionally, but these guys did it in a way that was readily lender compliant. Right off the bat I just saved myself $1000!
Banks are all about risk management and as a business owner you should ask yourself what can I do to eliminate as much exposure to risk for banks? I mean think about the number of businesses going to banks begging for loans - do you appear more or less of a credit risk? I mean just getting a business plan these days wont get you anything, but it’s a combination of things put together. So what I did was create a second website that was specifically targeting lenders SPECIFICALLY with information we thought banks would want to see. For instance if you click here, you will see the company I chose to have my website done and hosted with which was great because it only cost me about $20 and you are done in MINUTES!! A web developer out of India wanted me to pay him $10 an hour and told me it would take about 40 hours - Riggggght! Like I have sucker written all over my head!
See the problem really is that banks, when they decline you don’t give you specific reasons as to why. Have you noticed that? All they say is something along the lines of "Thank you for your application, but sorry we can’t approve you at this time". I just found out WHY! They are avoiding liability. Luckily I have a friend and she works in the credit decision of Wells Fargo and you know what she tells me? I hope you’re sitting down for this! She said the first thing they check is to see if the business is ranked on the 1st page of Google! I was flabbergasted, to say the least. She explained because if they are not on the 1st page, then its obvious they are not getting a lot of customers. Not knowing the first thing about Search Engine Optimization I asked her who I should use which brings me to my next point.
There are 1000’s of SEO people and companies, I know I get calls from them all the time each wanting between $500 - $1500 A MONTH! WOW! So I asked if I should use those more expensive ones versus an SEO company that charged less and she said so long as you are on page one, who cares, but warned me not to do pay-per-click.
See how easy it is? Even if you don’t have the time to do it yourself, just pay someone from your office $8 an hour! They just need to spend 4-6 hours a month... and I found out one SEO company that is charging $800 is using 1st Page Google Rank Robot system, lol. So what he basically does is sells the service to you and pays them and then charges you $800 a month and asks you to sign a 12 month contract too.
I know it’s a dizzying prospect to go for a loan or grant; I know you feel you need to hire someone to do all these things for you because you are worried you might screw it up. So what? I mean even if you don’t get a loan or grant, you are still better off because by doing these things you save valuable money, you are not just another customer of theirs since you are your own customer and you ARE in control of your own company. Just whatever happens don’t let them scam you in with promises they have no control over.
Learn more about how to get free business loans and grants. Stop by John McDonald's site where you can find out all about free business funding.
