Ever won a contract you wish you hadn’t?

In this episode, I interview Katie MacDonald from Unanet about how government contractors can catch delivery risk before it eats their margin. One of her best tips is a simple change to your project reviews. Instead of asking “Are we on budget?”, ask what’s changed, what it will cost to finish, and whether you need to do something differently.

She also walks through how a $4M fixed-price contract can lose half its margin while the customer may not even know anything’s wrong (and how AI can flag it before your finance report does).

What if your real customer is the prime and not the government? In this episode, I interview Rick Stengard from EBWATER, who took a business unit from zero to about $55 million a year in federal revenue and an exit to private equity. More than 90% of that revenue came as a subcontractor, and that was by design. Rick walks through the 18 months it took to win the first contract, why his company had 8(a) and SDVOSB status and built the business around the primes instead, and what debriefs and CPARS taught his team. He also coaches drivers at the Porsche Experience Center in Atlanta (yes, we talk about that too).

In this episode, I walk through the four rules I give every client before we start working together. Be a good communicator. Follow through. Have high integrity. Stay solution focused. My clients have won more than $14.6 billion in government contracts, and these rules are how we work together to get there.

These rules start with me! I hold myself to them first (and you can steal them for your own team and clients).