How to Find Grants for Your Podcast and Business w/Matthew Lesko

In this episode, I talk with Matthew Lesko.  For years I watched him on TV in his colorful jacket covered in question marks.

This is a fun conversation with a man who has spent decades pointing ordinary individuals to free money from the government available in the form of grants and mentorship.

If you're looking for some funding for your podcast, this episode is for you.

• (00:00) Passion Leads to Success – Matthew Lesko emphasizes that to succeed in life, your heart has to be in whatever you do.
• (04:30) Government Grants Are Available for Almost Anything – Lesko explains how people can access grants for rent, business, car repairs, and even free laptops.
• (12:45) Avoid Google When Searching for Free Resources – Lesko advises against using Google for financial assistance as most results lead to paid services. Instead, he recommends government and nonprofit resources.
• (18:20) Finding Business Support Through SBA and Local Organizations – He introduces SBA.gov/local-assistance, where entrepreneurs can find free business mentorship and funding opportunities.
• (40:00) Giving Back Through Lesko Help Community – Lesko’s membership platform provides financial support to struggling members, redistributing 40% of revenue as grants.

Connect with Matthew:

• Website: LeskoHelp.com
• Twitter (X): @MatthewLesko
• YouTube Channel: Matthew Lesko’s YouTube
• Facebook Group: Lesko Help Community

Listen on Spotify: https://www.connectwithjrosemarie.com/tools-lesko

Listen on Apple: https://apple.co/4huJPGG

Watch all our interviews on https://www.YouTube.com/@toolsofthepodcasttrade

Transcript

J. Rosemarie Francis (00:00)
To succeed in life, your heart has to be in it, whatever it is, so says today's guest, Matthew Lesko. For decades, Matthew has shown the ordinary person how to get government grants for doing anything from paying your rent, to buying a laptop, to starting a business. So, if you're looking for money,

This episode is for you.

Yeah, you should. Yeah. Yeah, that's a nice... I used to go around to government offices and interview people who were giving out money. And so maybe that's... Yeah, that may be interesting that way. Yeah, that'll be interesting. Yeah. Well, how can I help you? Okay, but before we get into what you do, could you tell us who is Matthew Lesko?

He's an old fart. about maybe 10, 12 years left in me and I'm going to spend every waking minute I can just doing my work. have nothing better to do in life. I love doing it. It helps people and it's the most rewarding thing I could ever do. I do it for free. But I have to pay the rent. I enjoy that.

I used to sell books and nobody bought reference books anymore. So now we have a community of helping people and that I stumbled into by accident and it's more profitable than books or anything. we were, I thought I'd just make a living out of it, you know, kind of, but it became so profitable. We give away 40 % of our income. We give up like $70,000 every month to members, you know, and grant money.

Yeah, they could apply for $500,000. We just give it out. But it's in areas like for $1,000 to do anything. And we have another grant. have four different ones. One for paying rent, it'll help you pay rent. Another one for paying car repair. And we give out free laptops, 30 free laptops every month too. Because when people are looking for grants and applying to things, they try to do it on the phone, but you can't as well. You can.

people do it, but you really need a laptop to do that. So I'll spend the rest of my life trying to educate people about the programs that are available in government that people don't know about. Okay. All right. Okay. So I got an idea about that because I have heard your name before, but maybe somebody hasn't tell us exactly what you do. Matthew less. Well, I show people.

government programs that they could use to get out of financial trouble or to do things what they really want to do in life, like start a business or buy a house or fix up a house or get a job or get training, anything to improve your life. I mean, the way I see it, and I was a consultant, I got an MBA and actually in computers, I had a software company back in the seventies that failed, thank God. said, fail teaches you that you're in the wrong place.

And that's the only way we learn somehow because we're not smart enough to know what to do. So we take advice from people and that's advice may or may not be for you and usually isn't. Maybe you could learn a little bit to refine, but I find the older I get, the best advice I get is from my heart, not from any expert. You need that expert stuff so you don't fall off a cliff or some stupid thing.

So that's not bad, but to really succeed at something, you have to have your heart there and trust that. Because I think anything you do in life is a pain in the ass. It's hard. Life is hard and it's going to beat you up no matter who you are, how smart you are, or whatever. So for you to stay there, to learn it, and we're all smart enough to learn almost anything.

But we give up too early because it's a pain in the ass. So that's why if your heart is there, and I think personal relationships are the same thing. Hanging in with somebody, your heart has to be there, because none of us are perfect and we're all screwed up. And the only way you get through something is if your heart is in it. That's why I used to wear question mark suits. think this is question mark, I think I have hearts on this one. But I'm really into hearts now. Because without your heart in it,

you can't really achieve what you want to do, what you should be doing, because that's the biggest thing is how do you take, how do you try to figure out what you should be doing in life and then figure out a way to earn income from it. it's an income is important. I enjoy capitalism because that tells you if what you're doing is of value to anybody else.

Because if we're making stuff or doing stuff nobody wants, what the hell are you doing it for? We're here to help other people to give as much as we can. so that's why capitalism quantifies that to me. Otherwise, I'm just trying to force things that I think other people should have. And that's not love. Love is helping people do what they want to do, not what you want them to do. We're all scared as hell and don't know what to do.

So what gives us the right to tell somebody else what to do? So what I'm trying to do is show you tools to do what you really want to do in life. Because once you find that, you can grow as much as you can, you can get the most out of you, and give the most to the rest of the world. That's the important part. How much are you going to give to the rest of us? And it's not work when it's coming from your heart.

And, you know, because that's your art. And if you have an art in life to do something, it's not work. You have to do. Like Picasso, didn't retire at 60, right? Collect social security. No, you had to do that and give as much as you can to other people that were surrounding with us. So to me, that's all I think. Yeah, that's what we should be doing is giving forever. Yeah.

And how much, mean, my 39, how much can I give before I die? Yeah, Yeah, it makes sense. And you mentioned that some of the things you do is to help, is to show people how they can get grants for their company. I'm not going to ask you to go into details about it. No, you can find anything you want. But what I'd like to ask is, you know, because it's one of the first things we think about when we're going into business.

Can I afford to do this? Right. Podcasting is different because we have a message and we might just dig in, right? And hope we make some money. When we're entrepreneurs, we usually want to know how we're to get the money to function so we can get our tools to market. Right. What kind of preparation mindset does an entrepreneur need to actually approach

finding funding? The only thing you have to know for sure, because it varies for everything, is don't use Google. Okay. That's a goddamn truth. Unless you have money. I mean, this is, if you have money, go to Google and you'll get a billion people there, take your money to solve any problem you have. If you don't have money, if you go to Google, you're screwed.

and you'll get two billion websites that promise you to do what you want to have done. They're all going to ask for money or they're scamming you or something like that. So you'll call a few and they'll tell you how much, know, they'll be polite and nice and kiss your ass to make sure they try to get money from you. And you don't have money. So you say, well, I can't do this because I don't have any money. So you'll give up. That's the thing. OK.

Now, are you online too? Can I show you a website? Yes. Okay. Go to SBA.gov, G-O-V. Now, we don't want to use anything in the SBA, but they have a database that you should know about that will help you find information. SBA.gov, then a slash, and then local, all small letters, local-assistance. What do you see there now? Find your local something? Yeah, get business help nearby.

Okay, put in your zip code. What do you see? So it gives you a map of where you are. It should be how many people you have like stars on a map. So there's all people. You may have five, 10, 20, something like that. Can you tell how many on there? How many addresses and stuff? It should be on the top of the list of numbers hiding in there. That gives you the total number. It actually doesn't give you a list. It gives you

It gives you the map and it gives you the closest district office where you can find local assistance. Okay, and there's nothing below the district office? it says no SBA resource partners are available with your current filter setting. okay. So that's it. I think what you should do then is go back and head 25 miles. I did. Yeah, see. I did. Okay.

put in a bigger radius because you're out in the middle of nowhere. And you could help get this help over the phone anywhere. So put in 50, 100 miles or something like that. Okay, I put in 25. Yeah, but you want more. Yeah, and it gives you one, two, three, four. Yeah, a lot. Okay. So these are all... See, what's important about this, Google is all people that want to get you money.

Get your money. These are people want to give you money Okay, but more importantly these people not only may or may not have grants what they really have that's more important It are mentors for free These are consultants that already got paid by a nonprofit organization or the government to help your business grow your podcast You want that to grow you call as many of those people you can and make an appointment to talk to them and

Hey, I have this little podcast I'm trying to grow. Not too sure. Because they'll brainstorm with you and also they know the stuff that's out there in Texas to help you because most of this money is local. There's a lot of money for businesses. And how do you, you you don't know what to ask for. That's why you never ask for money in my mind because then they'll have to look for money and you want more than that. Right, right. And also just asking for money sounds like

knocking on a door on a date and ask them to go to bed. You want to have dinner first before they help you and things like that. And so you ask for help because they get paid by the government to help you grow a business. So you take care of yourself, hire other people or whatever that's called economic development in that parlance. So they spend a lot of money doing that. Yeah.

And for small business, it used to be just big business, but now it's for small businesses everywhere. So that's where you start because the programs, the economic programs come and go all the time. they'll have, it just, you're in a rural area. I'd also go into the USDA in your area and their local county cooperative extension service.

So I would contact them too because they helped you start businesses and particularly home businesses and small businesses. So they will help you. want to know, you want to find people who are in whose job it is to help people like you. In other words, so you could like you're an analyst and know, Wall Street, mean, well, I could go and Google and find out, you know, information. But man, if I found you, you've been sending this 20, 30 years, right?

Yeah, yeah, And you would tell me the three best things to go. Instead of 200 billion, whatever they're going to show me on Google. It's the same thing when you use. And the problem with the 200 billion, it's all people want money from you. Now, the way I see the world is when you look at the GDP for the United States, two thirds of that GDP is in capitalism. now there's a third. That's what I call the community.

These are in community structures, whether it's the church, nonprofits, the government, everybody who's there to help their neighbors in some way. And that's in the giving society. So that's why I say, and nobody knows how to use that unless they go to church or something like that. So there's no, they teach you how to use Google in the capitalist society, but they don't teach you how to use our giving society.

And the rich people know that. That's how I learned this. That's why I ran into people on Wall Street and everything, because I show them how to get money and stuff like that. Man, they're first in line. Rich people. That's why I stopped doing that. I was helping millionaires become billionaires. That didn't feel good. Particularly when I found this stuff, I got so excited about it. What does everybody know? So I just made...

I said I have nothing better to do in life than try to educate every time. I do this and somebody gets them. Here I got a letter. Where the hell is it? From a member, he says, I would like to tell people in Illinois to call the HUD number for questions. I finally became proactive and called on Thursday and I reached the call center. I was presently surprised that I had a very nice lady that took all the time.

I needed to get the information for the 203K program. It was a housing program. And I wholly understood why Mr. Lesko says to call. If I hadn't called, I wouldn't have known that this lady said there were grants. I never said I wanted grants. just said what Mr. Lesko advised me, that I was looking for help to make my bathroom safe. She went into a great deal about the information available and she sent me an email.

so I could follow along the instructions on how to get this money. And actually she showed him two grants, one for $35,000 and another for $75,000. I really can't get down to see my... So he says, so the name of the game is to call, call, call and make sure you thank Mr. Leskov. That's the best part. But that's it. People don't know they could do that. People don't realize they could call the government and people don't know there are people there. Man, just think, if you had a job to give out,

$20,000 to people. You make a little, yeah, that's a happy job to have. That's like Santa. That is, yeah. You mentioned you have a membership. Tell us about that and how people can connect. Yes, it's $20, and for $20, we got about $12,000 or so, and it's people helping people. When I started this, because I was looking, oh, I got a great revenue. Oh, I'll start a membership somehow, because nobody bought books anymore. And this community thing,

really, I didn't know anything about that. So you follow your nose, you just do something and stumble into genius after you've tried 150 things. And what happens, and I thought, well, even if it's a membership, can't grow, but I could probably make a living out of it. And that's what I wanted to do. But it just grew so much. And it grew because it doesn't require me. People are helping people get the government programs. It's not me.

That's people like, whatever. So people like that are available online. They go, yeah, okay, I'm available. You can ask me any question you want. So every day on our community, we have three or four hours of people just sitting there telling you how they got money and advising you on what to do. And that seems to be the magic that happens on this. And the magic, used to charge rich people, you know, they'll pay anything if they make money at it, right?

And so I charge $10,000, $20,000 to do some, the same stuff I charge $20 for now. I get information every day and then we have our own grants. know, the profit is amazing, even on the $20. And so we give back, profit back to members. And now we're up to giving members every month $70,000.

of grants to members, either $500 or $1,000. Because a lot of these people are struggling. And that's what we do with a profit. I didn't think I'd make a profit. That's after we pay us. And I saw a report the other day that Facebook is giving a grant, $100 million to small business. $100 million. So I looked up their sales.

And it's like 140 billion. So 100 million out of 140 billion is like 0.007%. And they're getting probably a billion dollars worth of advertising for 100 million. And what we do, we give 40 % of our sales back as grants for people. So there'd be guys brag that they're giving.

I'm proud of that. thought you had to be Jeff Bezos or something like that to be able to give grants like that. it's very fulfilling, at least from my heart. And that's what, you know, as I get older, and I don't know if you feel this, but I know everything will not get better. I'm not going to get smarter. I'm not going to get faster. I'm not going to get stronger. Everything's going downhill.

but I could love harder. Yeah. That's the one thing you could keep doing and getting better at no matter how old you are. Right? Yeah. It's true that. All right. So that's what we have to work on. Loving each other harder. Yes. Yes. And we'll put the link to your website membership so people can... It's letshgohelp.com. Yeah. Okay. All right. I appreciate you. So what is Matthew grateful for today?

You, I mean, such a sweet lady that seems to talk through her heart and not, you know, trying to be something you're not. And that's rare nowadays. You know, you are on Wall Street. Everybody's trying to be somebody else. And that's not the best they have. That's too bad. Yeah. Because the best we have is to me is what is us. And that's why.

To me, failure was great, getting all that stuff that I thought I had to do to be successful. And once, thank God I wasn't successful because then I thought I'd be mediocre. So was able to get rid of that and start listening to my heart instead of all the experts and stuff because that's where the good stuff is. And that's where I think we can give the most because that gives us the energy to give the most because we want to give that. Yes, yes. Absolutely. I really appreciate you coming and sharing with us.

My pleasure. Yes. Any parting shots for our listeners? Yes. Your heart is smarter than your brain. I believe that. Okay. All right. Thank you, Mati Lesta. I really appreciate you coming and talking to us today and I appreciate the work you do for people, you know, because a lot of people don't really realize how much helps out there.

And the banks are taking them to town. Exactly. Oh, God. I was a bank for three hours a day and that was terrible. But your son is lucky to have you nearby. I should call him so you could tell him that. See, that's another thing to get through life, man. You got to have fun because number one, nobody's going to throw a party for you. So you might as throw your own party.

And number two, life can be so shitty, you gotta look at it comically. That's sort of like the lubricant to get through all this stuff. But we're here to help each other, okay? Yeah, I appreciate it. And hopefully you'll come back one day and say something to us. Come down, you cook me dinner. How's that? There you are. Now, you might not like what I cook, but... Probably not. I'm a fussy eater.