The hallway is empty
I shut down the ebook site.
Not because it wasn’t working. Because everything in it belongs somewhere better, inside a new community I’m building for serious contractors only.
I’ve been structuring this plan for months. Rewriting it. Scrapping it. Rebuilding it. And I’ve reached the point where the smartest move isn’t more thinking. It’s asking you directly.
So this issue is a question. But first, the context — because the question only matters if you understand what’s happening in the market right now.
The number nobody’s talking about
For years, the average ran somewhere around 60,000 new businesses a year registering to do business with the government.
That average is now closer to 10,000.
Read it again. Year over year, the pool of new competitors thinned out by roughly 80%.
Most people hear that and assume the door is closing. Regulations got harder. Barriers went up. Must be a bad time to get in.
Wrong read.
The door is wide open. The hallway is empty.
Here’s what actually happened: the noise cleared out. The people who registered because someone on YouTube told them government contracts were free money — they registered, sat there for eighteen months, won nothing, and let it lapse. They never built past performance. They never made a capability statement worth reading. They never called a single contracting officer.
What’s left is a thinner field. And a thinner field means the same contractors keep winning, over and over, because there’s nobody credible showing up to challenge them.
That’s not luck. That’s positioning.
Why 2027 matters more than 2026
Look at the forward-looking spend and the pattern is obvious. Money is moving. Priorities are shifting. New requirements are being written right now by program managers who don’t yet have a vendor in mind.
That’s the window.
Because here’s how this actually works: by the time a solicitation hits SAM, the winner has usually already been decided in spirit. Not through corruption — through familiarity. Somebody did the market research call. Somebody showed up at the industry day. Somebody submitted a capability statement that made a CO think this is who I want on this.
The contracts awarded in 2027, 28, 29, and 2030 are being shaped in 2026-27.
The cost of waiting isn’t zero. It compounds.
So here’s my question
I’m building two things at once, and they serve two very different people.
Path 1 — You want the contract, not the curriculum
You’re starting from scratch. You don’t have the time or the patience to learn this line by line, clause by clause. You’ve got capital to invest into your company and you’d rather bring in someone who’s already done it.
You want a firm to run point. Capture strategy. Positioning. Past performance architecture. Agency outreach. Proposal development. The whole build, executed by people who win this for a living.
You’re not buying education. You’re buying speed and a shortcut past three years of expensive mistakes.
That’s my consulting practice.
Path 2 — You want to own the capability
You don’t want a vendor. You want the machine.
Maybe you’re building a GovCon advisor in-house because you’re tired of paying outside help. Maybe you want to become the consultant and build your own book of business.
Either way, that means owning the infrastructure. The SOPs. The capture playbooks. The discovery and diagnostic scripts. The proposal frameworks written to score, not just to submit. Pricing models. Compliance checklists. Client onboarding, delivery cadence, reporting rhythm.
Everything I use to sign clients — and everything I use to get them results.
Because signing is the easy part. Delivery is what builds something that lasts.
That’s the new community.
Both are wins
Path 1 buys you speed. Path 2 buys you leverage.
There’s no wrong answer here. There’s only the wrong fit — and the wrong fit is the expensive one.
The consulting site is being built. The community is being built. Both are close.
And I want to be direct about something before either one opens.
Both are going to be intimate. Small on purpose.
The consulting practice will take on a limited number of clients. That’s not a marketing tactic — it’s a delivery reality. You cannot run real capture strategy, real agency outreach, and real proposal development for fifty companies at once and do any of it well. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling volume, and volume is how people end up with a nice-looking capability statement and zero awards.
The community won’t be a stadium either. It’ll be a room.
Which means if you’re in, you get 100% of me and my team. Not a ticket number. Not a queue. Not a recorded answer to a question someone else asked. Real eyes on your pipeline, your positioning, your pricing, your proposal.
That model only works one way: everyone inside has to be serious.
I’d rather serve twenty people who are all-in than five hundred who are curious. That’s how the results stay real — and in this business, results are the only marketing that’s ever mattered.
So, tell me your thoughts!
What exactly are you looking for?
I read every response, and what you send or select is going to shape what gets built. Not in a vague, focus-group way — I mean the structure, the tiers, what goes in first.
You’ve got a rare thing right now: a shrinking field, a growing forecast, and a window that’s still open.
Let’s not waste it.
— Saint