Bobadilla v. The Government Contract
On the client that pays its bills, the certifications worth getting, and what nobody tells you before you win.
Here is something nobody told me (but became fairly obvious) during my time spent inside a government contractor: the government is just a company. Regardless of how well it is or isn’t run, it needs to buy things. It has budgets and procurement processes and vendor relationships and preferred suppliers. It has people whose entire job is to find businesses to purchase services from. And unlike some private sector clients, it pays its bills.
The administrative quirks are real. The paperwork is genuinely a lot. The compliance requirements that come with a government contract reach into your business in ways that will surprise you if you're not prepared for them. But the pipeline is reliable and the client is stable, and for a small founder-led business that qualifies, the door is significantly wider than most people think.
Most founders who dismiss government contracting as not for them are operating on a misconception about who it's actually for. They picture defense contractors and large manufacturers. They picture classified facilities and security clearances and decades-long program development cycles. Some of that exists. It's also a very small slice of what governments actually buy.
Governments at every level, federal, state, county, and municipal, purchase professional services, training programs, legal services, consulting, staffing, IT support, marketing, facilities management, research, and hundreds of other categories that small founder-led businesses sit in every day. The federal government has a statutory goal of awarding 23 percent of its contracting dollars to small businesses. Washington State agencies are actively looking to spend money with small, diverse, and women-owned businesses. The opportunities are real. The founders who find them are the ones who took the time to look.
The Two Registrations Worth Doing This Week
Before you can pursue any government contract at the state or federal level you need to be registered. There are two registrations that matter for most Washington State small businesses and I just did both of them. Here is what it actually takes.
The first is WEBS, Washington's Electronic Business Solution. This is the bid notification system that Washington State agencies are required to use to post solicitations. Registering in WEBS lists your business in the Statewide Vendor Database, which means state agencies can find you directly when they're looking for vendors in your category. It also signs you up for automatic email notifications when opportunities matching your commodity codes are posted.
WEBS took me five minutes. It's free. You need your EIN, your DUNS number, and your NAICS codes. The EIN you know. The DUNS you hopefully have. The NAICS codes are where most founders slow down.
NAICS stands for North American Industry Classification System. Every business has at least one NAICS code that describes what it does. Yours might be obvious, 541110 for attorneys, 611430 for professional and management development training, 541611 for management consulting. Or you might have several that apply to different aspects of your business. WEBS will ask you to select the codes that match your services, and those codes determine which bid notifications you receive. Spend a few minutes on this step. You can go back and add codes later, but getting them right upfront means you start receiving relevant opportunities immediately rather than missing them while you figure it out.
If you're familiar with classification code lookups the whole process takes five minutes. If you're not, give yourself twenty. Either way, do it today. There is no fee and no downside to being registered.
The second registration is SAM.gov, the System for Award Management. This is the federal equivalent, the registration required to do business with the federal government. SAM.gov is more involved than WEBS but less intimidating than its reputation suggests.
I put off registering on SAM.gov longer than I should have. I'm going to save you from that same mistake right now.
SAM.gov has three registration levels. The low effort option is very low effort but it excludes you from financial assistance programs including grants. Given that the federal government offers a range of grant and funding programs for small businesses, excluding yourself from those before you even start is not a trade-off worth making. Go with medium effort at minimum.
Medium effort took me about thirty minutes. You'll want to have your EIN, your banking information for payment setup, and your IRS information ready before you start. The process involves multiple open tabs and a fair amount of back and forth between screens, which is not my favorite, but the helpful downloads they offer at various points in the process exist for a reason. Use them.
A few things worth knowing before you submit. First, use a business email address, even a separate Gmail, not your personal email. Your SAM.gov account is a business asset and should be treated like one. Second, spend time on your NAICS codes before you submit. Once your registration is in submitted status you cannot edit it until it's fully processed and active, which can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks depending on how quickly the IRS verifies your EIN. I learned this the hard way when I realized I'd missed a couple of training-related codes after submitting. They'll get added once my registration activates but the lesson is to get them right before you hit submit.
Third, when you're looking for opportunities on SAM.gov, go to Contract Opportunities, not Financial Awards. Financial Awards is grants and loans. Contract Opportunities is where agencies post solicitations for services they want to buy. That distinction is not obvious from the interface and it's worth knowing upfront.
Total time for both registrations: thirty-five minutes. I should not have put it off.
The Certifications That Open Additional Doors
Registration gets you in the big room. But then the right certification gets you into smaller (read: less competitive) rooms.
For federal contracting, the Women-Owned Small Business certification, known as WOSB, is worth pursuing if you qualify. The federal government has a statutory goal of awarding five percent of all federal contracting dollars to women-owned small businesses, and agencies use WOSB set-asides to help meet that target. A set-aside is a contract competition limited to certified firms, which means instead of competing against every small business in your category you're competing only against other certified women-owned businesses. That's a meaningfully different pool.
To qualify for WOSB certification your business must be at least 51 percent owned and controlled by women who are U.S. citizens, meet SBA size standards for your primary NAICS code, and have women managing day-to-day operations and making long-term decisions. Certification is free through the SBA's MySBA Certifications portal. It requires SAM.gov registration first, which is another reason to get that done now. The SBA typically processes applications within 90 days of receiving a complete package.
But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. WOSB certification doesn't guarantee contracts. It qualifies you to compete in set-aside pools where the competition is smaller. Winning still requires a competitive proposal, relevant experience, and the operational capacity to deliver. But being in a smaller pool with verified competitors is a real advantage, and for service businesses in professional services, training, consulting, and legal services, the set-aside opportunities are substantial.
For Washington State contracting, the Office of Minority and Women's Business Enterprises, known as OMWBE, offers state-level certification that signals to state agencies that your business has been verified as minority or women-owned. State agencies actively seek OMWBE-certified vendors and some contracts include diversity participation requirements that make certified businesses more attractive as prime contractors or subcontractors. You can reach OMWBE at 866-208-1064 or through omwbe.wa.gov.
What Nobody Tells You Before You Win
Here is the part most guides leave out. Government contracts come with compliance requirements that reach broadly into your business, and if you're not prepared for them they can be genuinely disruptive.
Depending on the nature and value of the contract, you may be required to have a written drug testing policy. Specific signage requirements. Accounting practices that segregate contract costs in ways your current bookkeeping system may not support. Pricing rules that restrict how you bill for certain categories of expense. At the federal level, contracts often include FAR and DFAR flow-down clauses that impose requirements from the prime contract onto every subcontractor in the chain, sometimes several layers deep, and the requirements can be extensive.
I spent more hours than I can count navigating these requirements from inside a large government contractor. I watched companies build compliance programs around the questions they thought to ask rather than the actual shape of their obligations, and carry that mismatch for years until an audit or enforcement action made it expensive. The compliance requirements that come with government work are not optional and they're not small. They are, however, manageable if you know what you're signing up for before you sign.
This is not a reason to avoid government contracting. It's a reason to understand what you're agreeing to before you agree to it. Read the contract. All of it. Understand the compliance requirements before you submit the proposal, not after you win.
Where To Start This Week
The first move is not certification. It's not even registration. It's simply looking at what's out there.
Go to WEBS at pr-webs-vendor.des.wa.gov and browse the current solicitations. Filter by the commodity codes that match your business. See what state agencies are actually buying. You might find opportunities you didn't expect. You might find that the void you can fill is larger than you thought. Or you might find that government contracting isn't the right fit for your business right now, which is also useful information.
Then go to sam.gov, click Contract Opportunities, and do the same search at the federal level. Browse what's being solicited in your NAICS codes. Get a feel for the scope and scale of what's out there before you decide how much energy to invest in pursuing it.
After you've looked, if it seems worth pursuing, register in WEBS and start your SAM.gov registration. Together they'll take under an hour. Then look at WOSB and OMWBE certification if you qualify. Then, when an opportunity that fits comes along, read the whole contract before you bid.
The government is a reliable client with a predictable pipeline and a statutory obligation to spend money with businesses like yours. The barrier to entry is mostly administrative. The founders who figure that out early have a real advantage over those who assumed it wasn't for them.
It wasn't for defense contractors only. It never was.
- m
