Real Talk on Winning
Government Contracts

The VA is legally required to prioritize SDVOSBs under the Rule of Two. Most veteran-owned small businesses have never seriously pursued a VA contract. Here is why and exactly how to fix it.

Every piece of government contracting advice tells you to register on SAM.gov and start bidding. That is not the real path. The contractors winning prime contracts built their position over 18 months before they submitted their first proposal.

Most small businesses spend two years chasing contracts they will never win. The contractors generating real revenue found the fast lanes — contract vehicles, set-asides, and agency relationships that compress the timeline from zero to paid.

You have the certification. You have the set-aside advantage. So why is the work not coming? Here is the exact six-step process Marcus uses to surface real SDVOSB opportunities — not the ones that are already wired.

The official SAM.gov tutorial will teach you how to log in. It will not teach you how to find contracts you can actually win. Six techniques that separate the contractors getting awards from the ones downloading PDFs they will never bid on.

Most small businesses decide to bid on a contract based on one thing: can we do the work? That is the wrong question. Marcus evaluates seven factors before recommending a bid — and the ones that kill deals are never the obvious ones.

Sources Sought notices are where 80% of federal contracts are decided. Most small businesses scroll past them. Here's exactly what to do the moment one posts in your NAICS — and why the winner of that future contract is already positioning while you're waiting for the RFP.

You can get a $4.5 million federal contract with zero competition. No bidding. No proposals. Most 8(a) companies have had this authority for years and have never used it once.

Most contractors spend hours trying to understand a government document. Here is the exact framework a 20-year contracting officer uses to read any solicitation in 30 minutes and identify every compliance trap, evaluation weight, and incumbent signal.

Get on a winning team as a subcontractor. Learn the agency. Build past performance. Come back as prime next award. Here is the exact playbook for turning subcontracting into a pipeline for priming.

Pricing too low makes you look unqualified. Pricing too high gets you eliminated. Awardable pricing is about finding the range where you win — and how to build a CLIN structure that tells the story your price needs to tell.

The VA is legally mandated to use SDVOSB set-asides. Most of that money goes to the same 500 companies. Here is exactly how to break into that list — the agencies, the contract types, and the one move most SDVOSBs never make.

I spent 20 years executing government contracts for big companies. When I started my own SDVOSB, I had no idea how to win them. This is the honest story of what I found — and why I built Marcus.