I want to tell you about a woman I know.
She found out about government contracting on Instagram. Watched a few videos, got excited, registered her business, got her SAM number. She told her sister she was going to land a federal contract by the end of the year.
Six months later she had submitted zero bids.
She still had the tab open in her browser. She still saved the posts. She still told herself she would start on Monday. Life kept moving and the contracts stayed on the vision board.
I see this story every single week and I want to talk about it honestly because I think we do beginners a disservice when we only share the wins.
So today I am going to tell you exactly where people get stuck and what to do instead so you are not still waiting a year from now.
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You are probably starting at the wrong door
The government contracting world has a learning curve. There are acronyms and portals and set aside categories and a whole language that sounds foreign at first. And when you hit that wall of information the natural response is to keep researching. Keep preparing. Keep watching videos.
But research will not teach you what actually submitting a bid feels like. You will not understand a solicitation until you read a real one. You will not know if you can fulfill a requirement until you sit with an actual opportunity. Confidence in this space comes from doing, not from knowing.
So the first move is finding the right door to knock on.
Most beginners are looking at federal contracts worth hundreds of thousands of dollars and wondering why they cannot get traction. That is like walking into NBA tryouts before you have played a single pickup game. The real entry point is much more accessible than that and most people never hear about it.
Go to your city or county website right now and look for the procurement or purchasing department page. Most local governments post their upcoming needs publicly and many of them have a micro purchase threshold between $500 and $10,000 where a buyer can purchase directly from you without a formal bid process at all. They just need to find you. That means your job at this stage is visibility, not a perfect proposal.
Register as a vendor with your city, your county, and your state. These registrations are usually free and they put you on lists that procurement officers actually search when they have a small need to fill. If you have not done this yet, stop reading right now and go do it. It takes about 20 minutes and it is one of the highest leverage actions you can take as a new contractor.
Once you are registered, look for upcoming vendor fairs or procurement events in your area. Your local Small Business Development Center usually posts these and many cities host them quarterly. These are rooms full of procurement officers who are required to meet with small businesses. You do not need a perfect pitch. You need to show up, introduce yourself, leave a capabilities statement, and follow up. That is it.
Read a real solicitation this week
One of the most common things I hear is that solicitations feel overwhelming and impossible to decode. And I understand that feeling but it goes away faster than you think once you start reading them regularly.
Search for opportunities in your industry. Filter by your state. You do not need to bid on the first one you find. Just read it. Look at the statement of work and ask yourself honestly if you could fulfill it. Look at the evaluation criteria and notice what they are actually asking for. Look at the questions other vendors submitted and the government answers. There is so much information inside a solicitation if you slow down and read it like a document and not like a test.
Do this once a week and within a month solicitations will feel completely different to you. The language becomes familiar. The patterns become recognizable.. You start to see the opportunities inside them instead of just the intimidating words.
Submit something before you feel ready
Do’nt make the mistake of waiting until you feel fully prepared before outreach. What I did not understand then is that the first submission teaches you more than all the research in the world. It shows you what questions you actually have. It shows you where your capabilities statement needs work. It shows you how your pricing compares. That information is invaluable and you cannot get it from watching.
Your first bid does not need to win. It needs to happen. Pick a small local or state opportunity that fits what you actually do. Write the best response you can with what you know. Submit it. Then debrief yourself afterward. What was hard? What did you skip over? What do you need to know more about? That debrief is your real education.
Stop going at it alone
This one does not get talked about enough. Government contracting is not particularly complicated but it is genuinely hard to do in isolation. When you hit a confusing clause and have nobody to ask, you stop. When you are not sure if your pricing is competitive and have nobody to bounce it off of, you hesitate. When you get a no with no explanation, you absorb it quietly and start wondering if any of this was ever going to work.
Find your people. Get into a community of other contractors who are in the trenches alongside you. When you are around people who are figuring it out in real time the whole journey gets faster because you are pulling from a collective intelligence instead of trying to figure everything out from scratch by yourself.
The people who push through that first season and come out with a contract almost always had someone in their corner. Not just cheerleading but real tactical help from someone who had already been through the portal they were stuck on or had already submitted to the agency they were targeting.
If you have been in that in between place where you know this works but have not been able to get your first win yet, that is completely normal. It does not mean this path is not for you. Sometimes you just need the right structure and the right people around you to finally cross the finish line.
I have a small group program opening in July for exactly that. Six weeks, ten spots, bid submissions and real accountability with me doing the same work right alongside you. If that sounds like what you have been missing you can add your name to the interest list right here. :)
Your first contract is closer than you think. You just have to start.
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