As a small business in Canada, starting up or expanding – running your business can get pretty frustrating. Having to deal with all of the financials, trying to figure out what to do and what not to do, trying to find funding to help you further improve your business, what a mess. Here are 3 steps that will supercharge your business funding search and help you get funding that you can use towards your business to hopefully make your life a little bit easier.

3 Steps to Supercharge Your Business Funding Search

While everybody will have something to tell you when it comes to starting a business, building a business plan or even searching for funding, these 3 steps are proven to work as demonstrated many times via experts here at CanadaStartups.org and from the hundreds of members who have been able to successfully obtain government funding or private funds for their business in Canada.

So here we go:

Step #1: Creating the perfect startup business plan

You may think that you can start a business without a business plan, and you are right. There are many small businesses who have started up and never wrote anything down anywhere that they could call a business plan. You have these type of businesses every day (mechanics, plumbers, cleaning companies, website businesses..etc), maybe even your business, whatever the idea is that you have can be started without having a business plan.

BUT if you’re looking to get funding for your small business, and not the kind of funding that your family or friends will give you, but the kind that may come from private investors or from government funding agencies; then you will need to create a business plan.

Yes a business plan is complicated to do. It can be expensive, you may have never written a business plan before so it can also be scary, but there are so many non-complicated ways to build a business plan these days that not creating a business plan should never be an option.

While there are so many options to create a business plan, it can also get confusing and complicated.

Take a look at our very own Business Plan Builder Tool.

Our tool has actually been rated as the most user friendly business plan builder tool, which is great news for you.

With no experience, no real business plan writing experience needed, just get in and start filling out the blanks, step by step and soon after you will have a well developed business plan on your hands that you can use to supercharge your funding search!

But don’t worry, you are never on your own.

Our Business Plan Builder tool while it’s easy to use and has a very intuitive interface, it comes with expert support as well as dedicated business plan review service from the pros. Simply complete your business plan, download a copy, send it to our experts and you get actionable feedback how to further improve your business plan.

Especially useful if you are intending on searching for government funding!

Developing a business plan that shows your business idea is the quickest way that you will get your point across and a great tool to help you in your business funding search.

Step #2: Your Funding Needs

Your business funding search doesn’t have to be complicated or hard at all, but the mistake that many people make in the beginning of their funding search is what hurts them in the long run.

It’s actually that mistake that causes all of the misconceptions which come with government funding, government grants…etc

These are the misconceptions that cause a lot of people to fail in their funding search, to give up too early or to not take the necessary steps to find funding.

That mistake is grouping funding needs into one lump sum.

A real example of that so that you can see what we mean would be:

Joe’s Construction Company  Inc; needs funding to help Joe startup. He needs a total of $125,000 from 3rd parties such as government funding sources in order to start his business. Joe completes his business plan, shows exactly the need for $125,000 and he starts the funding search, but it seems that every program keeps denying him. 

What is the mistake?

Well in this case, Joe needed $25,000 to buy a truck, $30,000 to pay for wages of employees, $15,000 to develop a website, $50,000 for other tools and equipment and $5,000 for marketing but he grouped the funding needs together and asked for $125,000. This isn’t always bad to group the funding needs, but in order to be able to apply to multiple funding sources, Joe would have been better off to break down the funding needs as mentioned here. If that was done, Joe would have been able to apply to programs not only to help him startup, but to programs that help business owners pay for marketing/adverting, programs that help startups purchase tools and equipment, to pay for development..etc

This mistake, is one of the top mistakes that small business owners make when doing a business funding search and applying to funding programs.

Now that you know – you can ensure your business plan is adjusted and corrected for the best funding search.

Step #3: Using 3rd Party Funding Databases and Services

Funny how this is the 3rd step of supercharging your business funding search, isn’t?

You are probably saying, “if I want government funding i’m going right to the source”. And you are right, you should go to the source if you know which program is right for you, if you know the criteria, if you know how to apply, what to provide, when to apply and you have it all figured out.

In fact, here is the government of Canada website to help you.

So why would anyone want to use 3rd party sources to get the funding information and assistance searching for business funding?

Well the truth is the government of Canada is HUGE. There are hundreds of funding programs from so many funding agencies that you simply just won’t even know where to search.

The government does an okay job of displaying the funding programs and the options, but what 3rd party websites such as our Canada Startups Small Business Startup Portal do better is we specialize in this kinda stuff – so we help you startup, to build your business plan, our experts review the plan to help gear it towards the business funding search and then on top of that you get access to the #1 rated business funding database as shown in Google.

So what does that mean?

It means that once you join on, not only do you get expert help but you get all of the government funding programs listed in one place; broken down and made easy to search so that you as a small business owner can spent less time searching, trying to figure out what’s right for you – and focus more time on building your business.

Our funding experts also help you find funding programs so that you don’t have to do it all on your own.

This is the perfect step to help you supercharge your business funding search, right from home.

We are not the only ones though that provide funding info, but we do know what our customers say to us and we have to warn you about a few things as well:

• if using 3rd party databases ensure that you’re getting up to date information
• don’t buy into somebody telling you (pay) and you’re guaranteed funding
• always read the reviews (social media, BBB, Trust Pilot, SiteJabber)
• if unsure, ask a lot of questions

There are 3rd party sources that will greatly help (for a fee of course), but nobody will ever ask you to pay to get government funding (only information and help), so be sure to be careful of who you deal with.

These are the 3 steps that will supercharge your business funding search – so now that you have them, what will you do?