Ali Hoban ⋅ New York, NY AOL ⋅ 5 years experience

Hi Donnie,

Thank you for the question. ACP's Participating Institutions assist veterans in their transitions by providing Mentors to offer career advice, but they do not act as business partners or customers for veterans' small businesses. However, we strongly encourage Veterans to utilize their Mentors' business expertise to receive guidance on topics such as creating business plans, developing sales pitches, hiring staff, etc.

I hope this helps answer your question.

Best Regards,
Ali, ACP AdvisorNet Staff

Peter Carruth ⋅ Sacramento, CA Strato Communications, Inc - Former USAF ⋅ 15 years experience

Suggest registering with your States' DGS (Dept of General Services Division) - the Agency that mandates state agency procurement.

Further register with respective SLED agencies.

Create and develop value to your supply chain partners: national distributors and mfgs. Essentially, what's in it for them to partner with your firm?

It is truly all about relationship and bringing value, public sector compliance and public policy goal attainment expertise to the entire supply chain.

Consider developing a road map rather than a business plan. With hard work, smart planning and executing your plan, make changes where need be, but keep the goal in mind.

Be prepared to hunker down for three years.

Firms like home depot as an example, just don't give business away because of a specific federal/state certification.

Will still come down to past performance, past history, picking up the phone, rectifying problems immediately and above all, keeping squeaking clean books.

Further, your distributors demand the above before lines of credit are earned. Plus agencies that consider doing business with you get calls all day from similar firms.

In short, take the jobs/RFQs that the incumbents don't go after anymore - and build your reputation - be prepared to put in 16-20 hour days and weekends to do what ever it takes to make it work.. work smart and execute. Anything good for the long haul requires commitment, solid foundations, and knowing there are ups and downs along the way.

As a side note: our first Public Sector project was 265.00. Any thing that could go wrong did. But we rectified the problem(s) immediately, kept the procurement officer in the loop and ate about 800 in the red all said and done (we did not share that info with the agency), but it was the start of learning the procurement process and slowly building past performance in getting the job done.

The end result was also learning and establishing internal procurement processes to drive efficiencies in our operations. Always a moving target, but, efficiencies aside, it is all about people, responsiveness, relationship, utmost professionalism and personal/professional integrity .. can never loose site of that.

Also, network, network, network with the agencies / people you are targeting. You cannot be everything to everybody, but you can be an expert and bring expertise to a few.

There are tons of State/Fed events in the Reno area to participate.

Don't forget... Brand your company/yourself. You are only as good as the people backing you up (Vendors/Supply chain etc)

Lastly, my firm has four Pillars. #2 is "have relationship with those that govern us". Ie. FTB, BOE, SOS, IRS, DGS and the folks that make up the rules/regs of conducting business etc. DGS for State/FARs for Fed.

If it was easy, everyone would be doing it- so welcome aboard to entrepreneurship!

Hope this helps Donnie.

Pete Carruth - President
Strato Communications

Po Wong ⋅ Orlando, FL Johnson & Johnson (retired) ⋅ 40 years experience

Hi Donnie,
Thanks for your service!

It happens there is a J&J Corporate Diversity leader resides in Las Vegas near you. Contact me in private message and I will provide her contact information. You might even arrange a face-to face meeting with her if possible. She can share all current Diversity supplier development program (beyond J&J) with you.

Po