The Beginner's Guide to Making $500K on Sam.Gov

0:00The beginner's guide to making $500,000 on sam.gov because you've been staring at that website for weeks and you still don't have a single contract to show for it. You're typing keywords into sam.gov like it's Google, getting thousands of results that make no sense, clicking around, getting frustrated, closing the tab, and telling yourself you'll figure it out tomorrow. Tomorrow never comes and the contracts keep going to somebody else. That stops today. My name is Jeff Cole. I'm a Navy veteran, a chef, and the CEO of the Admiral's Experience. I started with a $900 a month janitorial contract for the California Department of Food and Agriculture. Hired somebody

0:38for $800, pocketed $100. Not because the money was good, it wasn't, but because I needed something called past performance. That one small contract is what unlocked everything that came after it. From $900 a month, I got to $300,000 for 2 weeks of work feeding 500 troops in Sioux City, Iowa in minus zero temperatures with barely enough cash for a hotel room. Then million-dollar contracts, then $600,000 a month in revenue. I didn't get there by doing what the gurus on YouTube teach. I got there by learning how this game is actually played and that's exactly what I'm showing you today. Here's the thing nobody tells you when you're starting

1:13out. By the time a solicitation shows up on sam.gov, the game is already over. Think about it. The government didn't just wake up and post a contract. Months before that solicitation went live, a contracting officer was already talking to companies, already forming opinions, already deciding who understood the work and who didn't. When you find a solicitation and start writing a proposal, you're walking into a race where everyone else got a 3-month head start. In 2015, I started submitting contracts. Sent five, got four. In 2016, submitted four, got three. By 2017, I submitted 12 and won seven. That kind of win rate doesn't happen by grinding harder. It happens because I stopped

1:53chasing solicitations and started getting into the conversation before the solicitation existed. That's the whole game right there. You're not losing because you're not qualified. You're losing because you're showing up too late. Hold up, real quick. I'm doing a live training this week and I'm going to show you exactly how small business owners are using the right strategy to land contracts worth $500,000 and more right now. Not theory, not textbook stuff, real contracts, real money, the

2:19same kind I've been winning since 2015. Link in the description and pinned comment. It's live on Zoom. Bring your questions. Bring your doubts. Bring whatever's been holding you back because I've been exactly where you are, not contract ready, no money for a hotel, borrowing cash from family members just to execute my first food contract. And I'm going to show you how to get to the other side without figuring it all out the hard way. And here's what everybody who shows up is getting, the exact blueprint I used to find, bid, and win government contracts. Plus, exclusive

2:48early access to richgirlfinder.com. It's a platform I built because I got tired of watching people waste hours digging through government websites with no real strategy and nothing to show for it. This thing pulls real opportunities, federal, state, local, over 26,000 live contracts matched to your business, updated every few hours. You don't hunt for the money, the money finds you. I'm only giving this blueprint away at the training. So, reserve your spot. Link in the description and pinned comment

3:16below. Write it down. Set your alarm. Tell somebody. I'll see you there. So, if solicitations are a dead end, what actually works? Two words, sources sought. Before the government writes the contract, they put out a notice. It's called a sources sought notice. It's the government saying, "We've got a need coming and we want to know which small

3:34businesses can handle it." That's it, market research. And it happens before they even decide who gets to bid or how the contract will be structured. This is where the real game is played. Almost nobody is here. And the ones who are, they're winning. When I I building my business, I wasn't sitting around waiting for solicitations. I was getting into the conversation months before the solicitation existed. That's how a chef from San Diego ends up running food service contracts in Nebraska, El Paso, Vermont, Indiana, Alaska, and Atlanta all at the same time. You know what I mean? You can find sources sought

4:10notices on sam.gov for free. Filter by notice type, select sources sought, then set the date range to the last 30 days so you're only seeing what's active. Sam.gov is the official source and it costs nothing. But I'll be real with you. It's clunky, the filters are buried, and the results aren't always clean. If you want something that cuts through the noise, richgovfinder.com pulls from official government portals, federal, state, and local. Over 26,000 live contracts updated every 4 hours matched to your NAICS code and business type. You're not

4:45digging, you're finding. Either way, sam.gov for free or richgovfinder.com for speed, the move is the same. Get the sources sought before the solicitation drops. Here's why this matters so much and how it directly connects to a $500,000 contract. When you respond to a sources sought, the government is counting how many qualified small businesses exist in that space. If they see two or more, they're required to make it a small business

5:11set-aside. That means the big companies are locked out. You're in a smaller pool. Your odds go up dramatically. This is written into the Federal Acquisition Regulation, FAR 19.502-2. Your response to a sources sought literally helps trigger that protection. And here's what most people sleep on. I'm a service disabled veteran owned small business, SDVOSB. With that certification, I'm not competing against thousands of companies. I'm competing against a

5:39handful. There are over 14,800 SDVOSB certified businesses in the country, but almost none of them are in food service. That's why I keep winning in the space most people never even look at. Whatever your certification, woman-owned, minority-owned, veteran-owned, HUBZone, that's not a checkbox. That's a weapon. Use it. Beyond the set-aside, responding to sources sought lets you shape how the solicitation gets written. When you describe your capabilities to a contracting officer before the RFP

6:11exists, you're planting seeds. A smart company describes their approach in a way that naturally shows up in what the contracting officer asked for later. You're not cheating. You're being useful before anyone else thought to show up. That's how you get remembered. And every sources sought has a point of contact, a name, an email, sometimes a phone

6:30number. That's the contracting officer, the person who decides what gets bought and how. Most people never reach out. You're going to be different. Send the email. Introduce yourself. Ask a smart question about the requirement. You don't need to be best friends with the contracting officer to win. You just need to not be a stranger. I flew to Iowa with no money for a hotel, but I had already made myself known to that office. That's the only reason I got the shot. And that shot was $300,000

6:56for 2 weeks of work. So, you found a sources sought. Here's what you do. Read the whole thing. Don't skim it. What is the government actually buying? What's the timeline? Who's the contact? Decide right now. Can your company do this work? If yes, keep going. If no, move on. Don't waste their time or yours. Write your response. This is not a

7:20proposal. It's a capability statement. Who you are, what you've done, why you can handle this specific job. NAICS code, business size, past performance. Two to four pages. If you don't have past performance yet, start small. My first contract made me $100 a month in profit, but that contract gave me the credibility to chase the next one. You build a resume before you go after the big money. Confirm receipt after you

7:45submit. Government email systems block attachments all the time. Send a short follow-up just confirming you received our response. Let me know if you need anything. Two sentences. It confirms delivery and puts your name in front of them one more time. Request a meeting. 10 minutes, a phone call, whatever they'll give you. That conversation is worth more than any proposal you'll

8:07write. Contracting officers are people. They buy from people they know and trust. PDF doesn't build trust, a conversation does. Then set an alert for the solicitation on sam.gov or richgovfinder.com. When it drops, you're not starting from scratch. You know what they need. You know the person reviewing your proposal. Your submission will be sharper than anything your competitors put together because you've been in this since before the race started. Now, here's where people blow it even after doing all of that right. They respond to the sources sought. They have a solid conversation and then life happens and they forget about it. Six months later, the solicitation drops and they've moved on

8:44to something else. The opportunity they built is gone. I lived this. In 2018, I scaled too fast, submitted 25 contracts, won 14. Sounds good. It wasn't. I went from $600,000 a month down to $80,000 because I didn't have the systems to manage what I was winning. The overhead kept running. The bills kept coming and the government doesn't care about any of that. The fix is simple, but most people will skip it. Use a CRM built specifically for government contracting pipelines. Track every opportunity by stage. Log your sam.gov and richgovfinder.com links in the record so you can get back to them fast. Set milestone dates. Set reminders. Nothing

9:27slips through. And hear this clearly. Government contracting is a 12 to 18-month game. That is not an exaggeration. From sources sought to contract award can take a year or more. I started in 2015. By 2017, I had my own contract department running out of the back of my restaurant plotting million-dollar opportunities. The people who win consistently are the ones who treat this

9:50like a business, not a lottery ticket. Discipline beats talent every time. Systems beat hustle every time. So, let me put it plain. The losing process, find a solicitation, write a proposal, submit it, hear nothing, try again, give up. That's what most people do. That's what the YouTube gurus teach, and that's why most people who try this

10:13never see a dollar. The winning process, find a sources sought, respond with your capabilities, confirm receipt, get a meeting, build a real relationship, monitor for the solicitation, and submit a proposal that already speaks to exactly what they need because you've been in this conversation for months. I went from $900 a month to $300,000 for 2 weeks to $600,000 a month. Same process every single time. Show up early, be useful, build the relationship, win the contract. You know

10:45what I mean? Losers find solicitations. Winners find sources sought. Go to my Stan Store and grab the free Gov Contract Cheat Code, link in the description, and go to richgovfinder.com right now to see 26,000 plus live government contracts, federal, state, and local, updated every 4 hours, match to your business. Stop searching. Start finding. My live training is this week. I'll see you there. Drop a comment below. What's your biggest question about government contracting? I read

11:14every single one.