[imwllc]

When i started my machine shop i treid to do it with as little borrowing as possible, and almost two years later im still living paycheck to paycheck a lot of the time, a friend of mine wants to start a small shop and wondered if there is any grants availible for this trade

[One of Many]

When i started my machine shop i treid to do it with as little borrowing as possible, and almost two years later im still living paycheck to paycheck a lot of the time, a friend of mine wants to start a small shop and wondered if there is any grants availible for this trade

From what I have seen, the proprietor or certain percentage of employees must have a social status acceptable to the purse strings all grants are regulated by. Fitting that profile becomes a very limited opportunity the "average American" can take advantage of.

For the sake of promoting diversity in business ownership, there is a far better chance of being excluded from that form of opportunity. Grants for specific purposes and criteria to unlock them are often manipulated, IMHO. I don't resent those that fit the required profile for taking advantage of them.

Being an average American, it is hard not to resent becoming part of the exclusions we have been taught not to put toward others ourselves. So goes life! What are ya gonna do......see the blessing in what you do have at hand and work smarter. No one is looking out for you except you.

Everyone has a dream. The most succesful Business people I have known seem to have the Taker mentality to achieve it and a Giving mentality to keep it going. A loss of either character trait seems make their success problematic at best.

DC

[Geof]

I did the check to check thing for four years when I started my business, then had six years when things were not bad but this was followed by another three years of check to check when the distributor of my product went into competition with me. He is gone now and things have been very good for the past six years. I have a sign on my office wall:
"It is easy to be successful. You just have to starve a little, be good at what you do ... and work your butt off." Hang in there.

[miljnor]

Most people consider me fairly lucky because I did so well opening a business. Lucky is not the word I would use, persistant, hardworking, sleep deprived, ect.... and yes luck does play a factor but persistance usually can overcome bad luck.

I had to work about 5.5yrs paycheck to paycheck. So, there you are!

persistance!!!!

I looked into the grant thing and the 1 piece of advice I can give you is don't use a grant agence that fills out your paperwork! They do it for the money weahter you get the money or not. They are a scam.

Grants IMO are little loop holes government officials make so that they can legaly give money to family and freinds. The other type of grants or for the others who arn't excluded from applying (kinda vague, buts that who they are for) as someone mentioned earlier.

[ViperTX]

The grants are bogus.....I believe the last time a grant was granted was some 30 or 40 years ago. The government does have competitive research grants and they generally require you to already have something developed that the government is interested in funding for a few months up to a year.

[imwllc]

out of curiosity how long did it take to make enough for comfortable living, and on average how many hours a week do you guys put in, i would estimate i work 60-65 hours per week, and might get 30-40 actual machine time with all the paperwork and other responsibility i need to take care of

[jhwatts]

Please see the following links.

http://www.nist.gov/

http://www.sba.gov/

http://www.ornl.gov/adm/smallbusiness/

You need a tax ID.

You need a DB number. You need that to bid on goverment contracts.

http://smallbusiness.dnb.com/Default...cd2=1127415169

You may need a product liabilty bond. (depending on what contracts)

If you want to bid on goverment contracts go here (NASA, DOE, DOD, etc. )

http://www.ccr.gov/sba.asp

Dont be played by the guy who wants you to pay a fee to bid on goverment contracts.

Starting you own business is a long slow process. Hang in there I still am.

I have lots of info. Let me know if I can help.

[Geof]

out of curiosity how long did it take to make enough for comfortable living, and on average how many hours a week do you guys put in, i would estimate i work 60-65 hours per week, and might get 30-40 actual machine time with all the paperwork and other responsibility i need to take care of

You have to define comfortable and I think that is impossible because everybody is different. I think your distribution of total time to machine time is pretty good; it is comparable to what I did at around the three to five year mark. The only advice I have is keep your eyes open for a niche or speciality that you can slip into; I lucked into a manufacturing opportunity in a specialty market. It took a lot of hard work but now we are quite stable and have a steady business that is distributed over hundreds of customers so we are not dependent on just a few buyers.