The Most Profitable Government Contracting Business You've Never Heard of transcript

Would you believe that one man and a pressure washer could make $100,000 a month selling to the US government? We're going to look at one company doing just that. In fact, we're going to show you different types of pressure washing services that the US government is buying. I'm going to show you exactly how much you can make doing this. I'm going to show you actual awards, how to sell to different agencies, and we're going to break it all down and get really specific.

So, if you've been thinking about government contracting or interested in maybe adding a government contracting line of revenue to your business, you want to stick around for this episode. All right, if you want to follow along, you can go to USASpending.gov, a free resource where the government shows you every single thing that they are buying and gives you a lot of information on how they're doing it. So, when we're selling to the government, this is the one advantage we have, right?

No other industry actually provides that type of information. And by the way, my name is Rick Howard. I'm a former government acquisitions officer. I managed over $82 billion in federal contracts for the US Air Force and other federal agencies before retiring and starting GovClose, the professional development and training program helping companies and professionals learn government contracting and turn that into revenue either as a consultant or a business owner or even for a high-paid W-2 position.

So, I'm going to share my screen here. Let's get started. All right, so the first thing I did here is I just ran just a simple keyword search on pressure washing. Okay, and why pressure washing? Well, it's about 100° here in Massachusetts, which is >> [clears throat] >> not typical. And so, I wanted to do something involved with the water. So, you're getting pressure washing. These are the amounts the government's spending.

Now, see from $4 million, and I already sorted these by small businesses. So, these are all small businesses uh winning these awards. But, we have this one company here that has an obligation of $734,000. This is just one contract. This isn't how much they made that year. This is just one contract. Pressure washing washing services for Fort Bragg. Now, there's a couple things that I can do here. I can look at the company itself or I can look at the contract itself.

Now, we can see here over the past 12 months they've made 315 uh thousand dollars over 41 transactions. Of course, in FY23, they did 1.2 million dollars in obligations. We can see that, right? And we can actually see a decline. Now, we don't know exactly why there's a decline. And that's okay. That's not the intent of this video. It's to show you some of the options out there and get you thinking about government contracting in different ways.

Now, if I was advising this company, I would probably dig into exactly their sales practices and see exactly, you know, what could be possible here. Would did they get one big contract in '23 that gave them that 1.2 million dollars that year? 854,000. FY25, even though it's right now it's July of 2026 as I'm doing this, um we don't know yet if that's the exact number from fiscal year '25 because there is a lag in reported spending.

So, there's a lot that goes on there. In FY26, again, we probably won't know till a year from now. So, I can see that, you know, they started back in 2014 and they're screwing around trying to figure it out. This is very common with businesses. Remember I have told you many times how difficult selling to the government is, right? It takes a lot of companies a long time to figure it out. You can see here 2014, it's really 2021 before they start doing anything consistently.

And I mean, that's years, right? I can see that they're selling to the Department of Defense primarily and we can see the US Army biggest purchaser 2.7 million, right? Um National Institute of Health and then So, these are all around the same, NIH, DLA. So, Army's clearly the big purchaser there. Now, I'm in the contract page here. So, this contract obligated amount was 734,975 dollars. These are the codes it falls under, but these codes aren't really descriptive.

I had to type power washing uh or pressure washing into keyword search um in order to pull up some contracts that I was actually interested in taking a look at here. Otherwise, I'd be getting a bunch of housekeeping contracts. We're going to take a look at contracts like the following. $734,000 award for pressure washing services at Fort Bragg. A $420,000 obligation for garage pressure washing services. And by the way, you can check all of these on usaspending.gov.

We're going to look at a $300,000 job to pressure wash an airfield. And here's one, $72,000 for trimming and pressure washing headstones, which I assume is at a cemetery. If we have enough time, we'll look at a $4.3 million obligation for federal contracting isn't something you learn from a textbook. It's something you do. At GovCon, you build real capture plans. You work real pipelines. You learn the tools and systems companies winning federal contracts at the highest level actually use.

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All right. Now, let's get back into it. Duct cleaning and solar panel pressure washing. Now, most people probably don't think about pressure washing an airfield when they think about pressure washing. But guys, you know, you got to not only think outside the box, but we're selling to the government. We don't create what the government needs. The government tells us what they need, right? So, now we can see here's a $300,000 job for pressure washing an airfield.

Let's take a look at that one and see what some of the specifics are. Okay, so the first thing you we're looking at, we can see the obligated amount here. You can see this is falling under uh commercial and institutional building construction. Again, pressure washing falling under construction code, right? So, a lot of people get hung up on the NAICS codes and product service codes. But again, you can you will see the exact same thing put on contract under a variety, dozens of different codes, right?

And the product service code is architect and engineering construction. We looked at another one earlier that was under what? Janitorial services or something. So, again, these can fall under anything. Let's take a look at the competition. So, this is a full and open competition after exclusion of sources. It no set-aside. And it doesn't tell us how many offers were received. Which could mean they only received one. It could also mean that they just didn't upload the number of offers.

And that's very common, right? So, it doesn't always tell us even though I want to know. It tells us here the awarding agency was the Army. And look at this. This is the office. This is the exact office. You guys can plug that into Google. Actually, let's do it right now and see exactly where that office is. Hey Google, tell me where this office is. This is a code from USASpending.gov. I'd like to know what base where I can find more information.

I just cut and paste it in there. And look, this office code corresponds to Army Contracting Command Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama, right? So, now and I it's giving us even more information. It's telling us the building it's in the Sparkman Complex building 5303. It's telling us where the address is. It's telling us where I can find more information, right? It's giving us a link to the Army. So, again, just want to show you guys there's a tremendous amount of information.

You got to think outside the box here sometimes, all right? And you got to actually dig in, understand what you are doing. Okay? So, uh funded by the army in this case and contracted. That's the awarding office. The funding office is different, very common, right? For funding not to be with the contracting office. It almost always comes from someplace else. Now, I can't I personally can't wait to take a look at this $4.3 million contract contract for solar panel pressure washing.

Right? We're going to dig into that, but before we do, let's take a look at this $163,000 award for pressure washing miscellaneous buildings and sidewalks. All right, again, we can see the obligated amount is $163,173. We can see that, look, this NAICS code is under facility support services. And the which is completely different from the last one, right? And here's one maintenance of uh miscellaneous buildings. Okay, so we can see that, you know, multiple codes used.

What about the competition details, right? Is it going to tell us? Again, number of offers received, it's not telling us, right? I'm going to I think as a treat I'm going to if you hold on till the end, I'm going to show you exactly how competitive this is. So, this was full uh and open after exclusion of sources. We've seen this before, right? Who actually did the buying here? This time it's the navy. Right? Here's the office code for the awarding office.

All right, and I showed you guys how to look that up. I can plug that into basically anything. ChatGPT, Google, you pick your AI tool and it's going to tell you where that what that code means, where you can find the office. Place of performance, Cherry Point, North Carolina. Look at the acquisitions details. You can see that this was a small business. Veteran owned, but none of that's showing up in the set-aside. A lot of people, by the way, think that the set-aside and the certifications you have for your business are, you know, that that's the game, right?

Um but it really isn't. What really matters is that you are amazing, in this case, at pressure washing, right? That you can perform pressure washing services, right? That you can perform whatever it is, if you're if you're selling a service, you want to be the best at it, the best you can be. So, focus on having an amazing business and offering a great solution, working with the customer in a great way. And of course, in government contracting, you have to learn how to sell to the government, how this is done.

We're going to jump into that a little bit. Now, the one I wanted to check out here, this $4.3 million uh contract for duct cleaning and solar panel pressure washing. So, this one probably uh is a little bit more complicated, right? There's more money there. It's a little more technical. It's very specific. I didn't know solar panel, I guess it makes sense, but I didn't think solar panel cleaning was a a real thing. So, this could be an amazing niche for somebody.

We can see that the government is paying for it. So, you can see this is a over years that they are getting these amounts. 1.2 million, 1.2 million, 278,000. And let's see, 2025, July, 1.2 million. And July 18, 185,000. 2026, received, three. So, this one actually has the number of offers received. Simplified acquisitions. So, this is designed for small business contracting. It's a faster way uh for the government to buy from small businesses.

Um this could be done in a lot of different ways. It can be uh done using something called a blanket purchase agreement. Simplified acquisitions. If you if you ever want to know, and we should actually check it out here, instead of me just talking, right? Because I've told you many times, this all it is complicated because it is regulated by law and policy. But where do we find that law and policy, right? I'm going to the source, guys.

You know, there's There's lot of websites out there, but the reason I go to USASpending and sam.gov a lot in these videos is cuz these are the source this is the source of truth, right? And often we're not getting the complete picture. Sometimes there's delays and whatever. So, anyway, acquisitions.gov this is where I go when I or I should say acquisition.gov this is where I go when I want to look at the FAR. And even though I've had to spend plenty of time in here over my career in the Air Force and acquisitions, you need to understand where the FAR is and how to research different topics.

So, I'm going to go I'm going to browse the FAR and we're going to go to part 13. You can see different parts of simple See how there's a whole section here on simplified acquisitions. So, if you want to know how do you learn this stuff? This is how you do it, right? And of course we teach this in the GovClose program. It's a one That's why it's a one-year professional development program cuz there's a lot here. It is tremendously complex when we look at government contracting as a whole.

We want to take it bite by bite so we understand what we need to to accomplish our goals. Okay, so right now I'm looking at pressure washing and I can see that a company was awarded a contract via simplified acquisitions. What does that mean? Well, we go to acquisitions.gov acquisition.gov and now we can start looking through here to get um the actual definition. It says right here the purpose of this part is to prescribe is to prescribe simplified acquisition procedures in order to reduce administrative costs, improve opportunities for small small disadvantaged, woman-owned, veteran-owned, HUBZone, and service-disabled veteran-owned businesses to obtain a fair proportion of government contracts, promote efficiency and economy in contracting, and avoid unnecessary burden.

Now, here's something that's um that you need to understand. It says agencies shall use simplified acquisition procedures to the max extent possible for supplies or services not exceeding the simplified acquisition threshold. So, it says here, acquisitions of supplies or services that have an anticipated dollar value above the micro-purchase threshold but at or below the simplified acquisition threshold shall be set aside for small businesses.

So, what is that threshold? That's probably the question of the day, right? Well, scroll down. This is what I always tell people. They ask me questions, I'm like, "Scroll down. Just scroll down." Contracting officer shall not use simplified acquisition procedures to acquire supplies or services if the anticipated award will exceed the simplified acquisition threshold or $9 million. Micro-purchase threshold means $15,000 except it'll give you the exceptions.

Then it's telling us here, simplified acquisitions threshold means $350,000 except for and then it's going to give you some of the exceptions. And there's a And there's quite a few of them, okay? So, just that whole thing was just know where to go to find the information. So, we could see simplified acquisitions was used. It's a big contract, so there's probably There's a lot in here we could go in and really learn about to understand how this could affect us.

So, this one's with the VA and it's giving us the funding office and it's giving us the VA awarding office. Usually, it will say like, "Hey, this is a network office." Service-disabled veteran-owned business set-aside. All right, guys. I mean, what does this mean with going through all of this? A tremendous amount of opportunity here for small businesses selling to the government. We're just looking at pressure washing and power washing, right?

And we've seen a lot of different things. We've seen buildings that are being pressure washed. We're seeing runways and airfields that are being power washed, pressure washed. We're seeing something that I didn't even know existed and we see this all the time when we get into the data, this is what we focus on in the GovClose training program, which is now we're looking at solar panel power washing. This could be a amazing niche for a business.

And with the one we just looked at for service-disabled veteran-owned small business, now we'd have to dive in a little bit deeper and we would be able to see exactly how much of an opportunity there is there just for solar power or solar panel pressure washing and power washing. If I wanted to dive in a little bit deeper, we could look at all of this. I could use the GovClose analysis tool and we could look at just for certain keywords like pressure washing.

In fact, why don't we do that now? I always feel when I look at this, kind of like remember the movie WarGames where they're uh you know typing in, "Hey, do you want to play a game?" and they want to play thermonuclear war. So, it's basically asking me, "Do you want to add an organization filter?" No, I'm just going to um search through keywords. The keyword is pressure washer. Now, what this will if everything works out okay, this is going to give us a spreadsheet when it's done and it's already done.

Perfect. Okay, so this is just contracts that have those words in there. This does not include all the power washing and pressure washing contracts. Keyword that's coming up, two two separate words, uh 1,492. We can see power wash uh used separately 256, but you see I also put them together. And you guys can attack me on grammar if you want to, but remember whatever is in the solicitation in the contract description, that's what a contracting officer or a contracting officer's assistant or somebody that's in charge of putting the data in is typing.

So, they can fat finger things, they can create words that don't really exist. Uh there's no typically no grammar police involved with this, right? So, it is the government. Let's see what we can learn. If I could see from this simple snapshot, I can see average number of offers reported is nine. That's that's pretty high, right? So, you're competing against nine other people. You can see expected revenue forecast. This is something my tool puts together here.

We pulled up $74 million in contracts with an average contract size of 52,000. Okay? And that was 1,400 contracts. 9.2 was the average number of offers that came in. So, when consult We also saw some contracts didn't have the number of offers and some did. This says of the 1,400, 621 had the offers reported. So, that's less than half, right? So, less than half, 9.2. That's high, but it's also less than half. So, we really don't know on the ones that weren't reported.

You see, this isn't a surprise cuz we saw this in US spending. We can see that the Army is the top sub agency, 39 million 94 awards. We can see that top agency for small business is also the Army, right? And slightly lower, you can see the average number of offers here, slightly lower than um average number of offers versus looking at all the federal agencies. That's what we saw where it said 9. whatever at the top. This is interesting, right?

Small business set-asides popped up as a essentially a way to sell to the government. So, we see a lot of these are going to be set aside for small businesses. So, at the end of the day, what we're looking at is if I was working with you to help you win these contracts for power washing, I'd say, "Hey, we First, we need to look at the Army, right?" And that was just based off of a couple keywords. There's going to be a lot more spending there.

And we would see things like small business set-asides are used, simplified acquisitions, which are all great and can indicate a certain pipeline of steps that you're going to take to sell to that agency. But I think the the big takeaway for most people is that there are a lot of things that the government is buying. So, look into the data, decide what you think your niche might be based on the data, not on what you think, right?

You confirm it in the data using something free like USASpending.gov. And always, if you want to learn in depth with a community uh from myself and our other instructors at GovClose, you can always go to govclose.com. We'd love to have an advisory call with you, see if you're right for the program. Guys, happy 4th of July. We'll see you next time.