GovCon Unscripted

Mark Amtower has marketed to the government for more than 40 years, and he calls the federal market a vast Where's Waldo picture.

A Partner at Amtower & Company, he has hosted Amtower Off Center on Federal News Network for 19 years, contributed to Washington Technology for 18 years, and written 10 books, 5 on GovCon, including the new Findable.

Your firm can be fully capable and still invisible to the one buying office that matters. In a market of hundreds of federal activities, being capable and being findable are two different jobs, and posting more, connecting with everyone, and giving yourself a bigger title only add to the noise.

Mark's sequence is to differentiate first and connect second. Describe what you do in terms that resonate with a particular agency or type of activity, share past performance if you have it, and build educational content around that expertise. Only then should you connect with the agencies using that technology and the companies embedded inside them. He walks through his annual census of feds on LinkedIn, which by his count covers 820 federal activity pages and about 2.7 million feds. He also explains why a seat on an Army vehicle means sorting through 130 Army URLs to find the actual buying activities. He unpacks Army Directive 2026-17 and why consolidating official accounts does not make the people behind them disappear.

From there, the conversation turns to how he vets every connection request, why content should educate rather than end in a pitch, and why account-based marketing matters more for small businesses as agency information gets harder to find. Mark shares how he uses Gemini to sharpen his own ideas without handing it the writing. He describes the 18- to 24-month runway he puts in front of new entrants, and why the market, not the author, decides who earns a leading voice. If you use LinkedIn for GovCon business development, this one resets where the effort goes.

Timestamps:

02:06 Is LinkedIn still a business platform for federal contractors, or is it turning into Facebook?

03:28 How should you ask an established GovCon voice to connect with you on LinkedIn?

06:57 How do you tell whether a GovCon expert on LinkedIn is legitimate?

07:56 Does refusing most LinkedIn connection requests limit your reach in GovCon?

10:00 How long does it take a new federal contractor to win its first contract, and what does it cost?

12:13 Do small business set-aside programs still help new federal contractors under the current administration?

14:37 Are the recent executive orders actually speeding up federal procurement?

16:03 How should a small business differentiate itself to a federal agency?

16:47 Why is it so hard to stand out in the federal market, and should your content end with a sales pitch?

18:15 How can small businesses use LinkedIn to find the buying activities inside an agency?

19:55 Is the Army shutting down its LinkedIn pages, and what does that mean for contractors?

21:31 Why does account-based marketing matter more when agency information gets harder to find?

22:48 How should GovCon professionals use AI to write content without losing their voice?

24:48 Can you give yourself a leading title in GovCon, or does the market decide?

25:33 Is there a legitimate path to building a subject matter expert platform in GovCon?

Resources:

• Connect with Chelsea Roberts
• Connect with Mark Amtower

Other Resources:

• Federal News Network Website
• Amtower and Company

Listen now on:

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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GSA's new AI clause hinges on whether AI is a material feature of the buy, and "material" is the one word nobody defined.

With Shauna Weatherly, President and Founder of Federal Subcontract Solutions (FedSubK) and a former federal chief of contracting with 35 years in acquisition, and Jaime Gracia, Chief Innovation Officer at The Wolverine Group and a former federal procurement executive at Treasury, DHS, and State.

GSAR 552.239-7001 is a class deviation, not a final rule, and contracting officers can use it now. Shauna and Jaime cover several points with host Chelsea Roberts:

• Why the clause is about protecting government data rather than AI ethics.

• How industry feedback changed it after the first draft treated every contractor using AI like an AI provider.

• How the two-part test and its exceptions work.

• Why the requirement language and the contracting officer end up deciding whether it applies.

From there, they follow the clause past award. They look at who administers it, whether it stays inside GSA once it reaches MAS, and what it does to pricing, no-bid decisions, and MAS discounts.

You come away knowing three things. First, what to ask before award. Second, why the impact analysis is worth reading before you comment. Third, how CO discretion ends up in your price.

This is The Discretion Premium. When a clause leaves the deciding calls to the contracting officer, contractors build that uncertainty into their price, and the government ends up paying for it.

Timestamps:

04:21 What is GSAR 552.239-7001, and when does it take effect?

08:34 Does GSA treat every contractor using AI like an AI provider?

12:06 How do contracting officers decide whether the GSA AI clause applies?

23:24 How does contracting officer discretion create risk for contractors during the deviation?

27:58 How should contractors prepare for the GSA AI clause, and what does it do to pricing?

34:54 Will GSA MAS discounts shrink as new AI requirements roll in?

Resources:

• Connect with Chelsea Roberts
• Connect with Shauna Weatherly
• LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/shauna-weatherly/
• Website https://fedsubk.com
• YouTube https://www.youtube.com/@FedSubK
• Connect with Jaime Gracia
• LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/jaimegracia/
• Website https://wolverine-group.com/

Listen now on:

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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Winning the federal contract is supposed to be the good news. Evan Henris, CEO of Parabilis, explains why it so often starts the cash crisis instead.

The Launch Budget Trap. Contractors budget to win the work and stand it up, but not to carry it until the government pays. That gap pushes the financing decision into a crisis, right when every option gets more expensive.

Evan joined Parabilis in 2018, when the McLean, VA lender had four people, and worked through underwriting, operations, and capital markets before being named CEO in early 2026. Parabilis finances growing small and mid-size federal contractors so they can perform on the work they win. He sits down with Chelsea Roberts to walk through where contract financing goes wrong and what it costs when the decision gets made under pressure.

You will hear how much operating runway a new award really consumes (two to six months of expenses, in Evan's estimate), why selling a $1M invoice to cover a $15K bill rarely makes sense, and why rescue cash taken after a recompete slips usually costs more than the hard call it was meant to avoid. Evan also covers when debt is the wrong answer to a contract loss, what lenders weigh beyond the award itself, how AI can build a cash flow model a lender will actually read, and the calendar test every founder should be able to pass.

If your pipeline is growing, this is the conversation to have before the next award lands.

Timestamps:

00:06:05 How do you spot a lender whose pricing will eat your margin?

00:10:13 How much working capital does a new federal contract actually need?

00:10:56 When does invoice factoring stop making sense?

00:13:51 Is factoring a federal contract invoice legal?

00:15:47 What is a merchant cash advance, and what does it really cost?

00:16:44 Why do contractors reach for rescue cash after a recompete loss?

00:18:39 What should you do instead of taking a rescue advance?

00:21:14 When is debt the wrong answer to a contract loss?

00:25:12 Is your company too small for a line of credit?

00:26:45 Should a capital partner be part of your growth pipeline?

00:28:52 What do lenders evaluate beyond the contract award?

00:30:48 Can AI build a cash flow model a lender will accept?

00:34:49 Can your company run for two weeks without you?

Resources:

Follow Evan Henris on LinkedIn

Follow Chelsea Roberts on LinkedIn

Other Resources:

Parabilis Website

Listen now on:

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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Your capability statement gets you into the room. Then you spend the first 20 minutes introducing yourself anyway.

It's called "The Introduction Tax", and small firms pay it in every meeting and at every event. The cost comes out of the two resources they have least of, which are time in front of the customer and the budget to show up.

Chelsea Roberts sits down with Will McCormick, Editorial Director at Set-Aside Alert and creator of GovCon Games. Will has been a writer for about 20 years and covers federal small business policy for Set-Aside Alert, which has been publishing since 1991. Will explains why he built GovCon Games to help firms lead with personality and expertise before they lead with past performance. He also walks through the problem, cause, consequence, and solution sequence that turns a single conversation into content that keeps working for a year.

The two also cover the policy picture small firms are working in right now. They talk about why HUBZone is holding up better than other set-aside programs, the quieter pressure on WOSB, and why the CMMC Phase II suspension does not take NIST SP 800-171 off anyone's plate. Chelsea shares what separates a post-event follow-up that gets a reply from one that gets ignored.

If your BD plan still depends on handing out cards and hoping someone calls back, this episode will change how you budget your next event.

Resources:

Connect with Will McCormick

Connect with Chelsea Roberts

Other Resources:

Set-Aside AlertLinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/setasidealert/

GovCon Games Instagram https://www.instagram.com/govcongames

Personal Email: will@setasidealert.com

Listen now on:

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

Like and follow us:

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GovConUnscriptedUS

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The FAR overhaul was sold as 500 fewer pages. The person who reads every rule expects it to land back near 2,000.

The rules that bind you get decided before the proposed rule ever reaches your inbox. Almost no one from industry is in the room when it happens.

Chelsea Roberts sits down with David Mullis, Regulatory Affairs Consultant at Gov Contract Pros LLC, who tracks Federal Register, OIRA, and Unified Regulatory Agenda activity for the small business community. His firm has requested an OIRA 12866 meeting on the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul, and by his account it is the only contracting industry group engaging in that process right now.

They get into what the RFO actually removes and what it quietly adds, including new CUI incident reporting, cybersecurity frameworks, and termination protest timelines. David explains why moving forms and examples into the FAR Companion takes them outside notice and comment, why contracting officers' own liability may pull a more flexible FAR back toward large incumbents, and where commercial-first buying lowers the cybersecurity bar. On CMMC, he walks through a 60-day pause that doesn't reach the November implementation date, why primes may require it regardless, and the planned move to NIST SP 800-171 Revision 3 with its supply chain focus.

The back half is The Upstream Window. David makes the case for the 12866 meeting as 30 unfiltered minutes with White House staff and the FAR Council, explains why the SBA size standards methodology white paper now at OIRA is the part that actually binds, and flags why this will be the first size standard reviewed in a post-Chevron, Loper Bright world.

If you run capture, BD, or a small business with a size standard to protect, the time to engage is before the comment period, not during it.

Timestamps:

00:04:20 Is the RFO actually making the FAR shorter?

00:05:40 What does moving forms and examples into the FAR Companion change for contractors?

00:06:50 Will RFO flexibility actually help small businesses win?

00:11:05 Does the commercial-first push create a security gap?

00:15:18 CMMC is paused. Should companies stop preparing?

00:15:52 What changes when CMMC moves to NIST 800-171 Revision 3?

00:23:05 How can contractors actually influence the RFO before it's final?

00:24:38 Will a government shutdown delay the next round of RFO rules?

00:26:52 Are SBA size standards going up or down?

00:27:30 When is the comment that actually changes your size standard?

00:31:35 What does Loper Bright mean for the next size standards rule?

Resources:

• Follow David Mullis
• Follow Chelsea Roberts

Other resources:

• Gov Contract Pros on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/gov-contract-pros
• Gov Contract Pros Website: https://www.govcontractpros.com

Listen now on:

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

Like and follow us:

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In the 1990s, the government decided proposals had become too easy to fake, so it started asking to hear from the people who would actually do the work. That is the oral presentation, and it is now one of the fastest-growing phases in federal source selection.

In this week's episode of GovCon Unscripted, orals coach Lisa Shea Mundt, a 15-year veteran of federal proposals, sits down with Chelsea Reberts to explain why the skill that wins on paper doesn't win in the room. She covers confidence ratings versus adjectival scoring, the solicitation language that quietly grades collaboration, why a corporate representative who cannot survive Q&A is a liability, and how to prepare a reluctant technical expert to carry a live presentation.

Whether you are building your first orals team or tightening a capture plan that treats orals as a formality, this conversation is a practical guide to winning the room.

Chapters:

00:00 Why the government stopped trusting proposals

02:00 What an oral presentation actually is

03:30 The unwritten requirement hiding in “performance risk”

05:30 Why COVID made orals explode

07:30 Confidence ratings vs adjectival scoring

11:00 Writing a script is not reading a proposal aloud

16:00 Logos, pathos, ethos in the room

19:00 “The words need to conform to me”

22:00 Scripts, notes, and teleprompters: what is allowed

27:00 When your best technical mind is your worst presenter

32:00 The Q&A round nobody prepares for

Resources:

Follow Lisa Shea Mundt

Follow Chelsea Roberts

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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Most organizations think they lose performance first. They don’t. They lose capacity quietly, and performance is just the last thing to go.

Robert Rivers has watched it happen from the inside of government for nearly two decades. Here is how to see it coming.

Leading federal teams through budget cuts without gutting capacity is the core of this Success After Service episode of GovCon Unscripted. Host Chelsea Roberts talks with Robert Rivers, Co-Founder of QTR Foundry and author of Running With Scissors, about organizational readiness: the capacity that drains out of a team long before performance ever dips.

Drawing on 19 years inside government, from the flight-test culture at Edwards to acquisition and defense healthcare at Hanscom, Robert breaks down what erodes first. He introduces TOIL, time on inefficient labor, the bureaucratic tasks that quietly consume your best people. He unpacks the structure-versus-clarity trap, where leaders reorganize when the team simply needed clarity. And he reframes culture as community intelligence: how fast a team can regenerate, fill gaps, and adapt under pressure.

The through-line for anyone leading through DOGE-era change: you do not need to get smaller because the mission shifted. You need to protect readiness, separate the human work from the machine work, and rebuild capacity before the performance number forces your hand.

Timestamps:

00:01 — What Success After Service means and who Robert is

01:30 — Running With Scissors and getting through the red-tape maze

03:00 — 19 years in government and the innovation origin at Edwards

05:30 — Top cover, risk, and reorganizing instead of clarifying

09:00 — Resilience and the DOGE-era workforce toll

16:00 — TOIL: time on inefficient labor, and human-machine integration

21:00 — Right-sizing without shrinking, and second and third order effects

23:00 — Inside QTR Foundry: strategy to execution, and AI is not the enemy

26:00 — Why AI adoption fails on the human, not the machine

29:00 — Culture as community intelligence

31:00 — Where to find Robert, QTR Foundry, and the book

Leading federal teams through budget cuts without gutting capacity is the core of this Success After Service episode of GovCon Unscripted. Host Chelsea Roberts talks with Robert Rivers, Co-Founder of QTR Foundry and author of Running With Scissors, about organizational readiness: the capacity that drains out of a team long before performance ever dips.

Drawing on 19 years inside government, from the flight-test culture at Edwards to acquisition and defense healthcare at Hanscom, Robert breaks down what erodes first. He introduces TOIL, time on inefficient labor, the bureaucratic tasks that quietly consume your best people. He unpacks the structure-versus-clarity trap, where leaders reorganize when the team simply needed clarity. And he reframes culture as community intelligence: how fast a team can regenerate, fill gaps, and adapt under pressure.

The through-line for anyone leading through DOGE-era change: you do not need to get smaller because the mission shifted. You need to protect readiness, separate the human work from the machine work, and rebuild capacity before the performance number forces your hand.

Timestamps (provisional, reset in Descript)

00:01 — What Success After Service means and who Robert is

01:30 — Running With Scissors and getting through the red-tape maze

03:00 — 19 years in government and the innovation origin at Edwards

05:30 — Top cover, risk, and reorganizing instead of clarifying

09:00 — Resilience and the DOGE-era workforce toll

16:00 — TOIL: time on inefficient labor, and human-machine integration

21:00 — Right-sizing without shrinking, and second and third order effects

23:00 — Inside QTR Foundry: strategy to execution, and AI is not the enemy

26:00 — Why AI adoption fails on the human, not the machine

29:00 — Culture as community intelligence

31:00 — Where to find Robert, QTR Foundry, and the book

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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🔹 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@GovConUnscriptedUS

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🔹 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/govcon-unscripted/posts/

🔹 JOIN OUR #govcon #community: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14618490/

Resources:

Follow Robert Rivers

Other resources:

QTR Foundry: https://qtrfoundry.com

Personal site: https://robertsrivers.com

Book, Running With Scissors (Robert Rivers): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H4NQ6GMD

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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He spent half a million dollars of his own money, put his platform inside the VA’s own cloud, and then told the government he didn’t want a pilot. In this Success After Service episode, a 100% service-disabled Marine explains why refusing the pilot is the whole strategy.

In this Success After Service special episode of GovCon Unscripted, Mike Schmitt retired from the Marine Corps in 2004, spent years in medical devices at Medtronic, and then did something few small-business owners attempt: he self-funded a clinical toxicology lab, built his own laboratory information system, and stood it up inside the VA Enterprise Cloud through Syncly Direct so it could do imaging, lab, and AI in one place.

As a 100% service-disabled veteran running an SDVOSB, he learned the federal market the hard way. In this conversation with host Chelsea Roberts, he lays out the argument at the center of his approach: the pilot-and-funding cycle rarely produces anything, so instead of asking the VA for money and two years, he arrives already built, already authorized, and sells the result. He talks through the siloed VA and its VISNs, the records gap that leaves veterans carrying binders between systems, the credibility discount a small business faces against Deloitte and Oracle, the commercial dual-use of the platform in substance-abuse testing, and why, for him, this is about veterans taking care of veterans.

Timestamps:

00:00 Welcome and who Mike Schmitt is

01:00 From the Marine Corps and Medtronic into toxicology

02:00 Going in as a 100% service-disabled veteran (2018–2019)

03:00 Crossing the Rubicon: the MOU and interservice agreement

05:00 Building his own lab system and moving to AWS GovCloud

06:00 Syncly Direct inside the VA Enterprise Cloud

07:00 The records gap: a pregnant veteran and the PACT Act

09:00 The siloed VA and the VISNs

11:00 An agnostic platform: “Uber healthcare”

12:00 Lobbyists, the Hill, and why he walked away

13:00 The credibility discount: “if I’m not a Deloitte or an Oracle”

16:00 HIPAA and the compliance gap

20:00 Why he refuses the pilot

21:00 A nine out of ten, and the 2026 FORUM Innovation Award

23:00 Commercial dual-use: substance-abuse testing, the 97-compound panel

25:00 The heat map: reading opioid and health risk by region

29:00 Advice for transitioning veterans

31:00 Veterans taking care of veterans

33:00 How to reach Mike

Resources:

• Michael Schmitt's LinkedIn profile
• Chelsea Roberts' LinkedIn profile

Other resources:

• Central Tox (Semper Fi Labs) Website
• Syncly Direct Website
• Email: mike@centraltox.com

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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She could have become a full-time executive years ago. She refused to stop being an engineer.

Twenty-five years later, that choice still shapes the company.

Dr. Sarbari Gupta founded Electrosoft in 2001, walking away from a steady job with nothing else lined up. Twenty-five years later the company runs around 200 employees, and she is still a technologist at heart. In this conversation with host Chelsea Roberts, she covers the leap that started it all, winning early contracts on relationships rather than pedigree, learning GovCon accounting from scratch, the difference between RMF/ATO and Zero Trust, pursuing CMMC Level 2 as a cybersecurity firm, learning to delegate, and the two things she has never been willing to hand off: the customer relationships, and her own connection to the technology.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

00:01 From electrical engineering to cybersecurity

01:00 The leap of faith: founding Electrosoft in 2001

02:30 Early challenges: GovCon accounting and learning to sell

03:30 Why federal — PKI, NIST and NSA connections

05:00 Has the compliance load grown? CMMC and FISMA

08:00 RMF/ATO vs. Zero Trust, explained

11:00 Barriers, focus, and growth

12:30 Scaling and the mid-2025 rebound

14:30 Learning to delegate at ~200 employees

16:00 The two things she will never hand off

18:00 Staying a technologist, and betting on AI

20:30 What is next for Electrosoft

22:00 Where to find Dr. Gupta and Electrosoft

Resources:

• Follow Dr. Sarbari Gupta
• Follow Chelsea Roberts

Other resources:

• Electrosoft's LinkedIn page

• Electrosoft's website

• Resources page on Electrosoft's website

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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Your bank account cannot tell you what next month looks like. A forecast can. Bud McDonald has spent 35 years proving the difference is the whole ballgame.

Most small business owners manage by their bank balance. Bud McDonald, founder of McMay Business Services, spent more than three decades leading turnarounds, managing P&Ls, and running large teams before he started helping small businesses do the one thing that separates the ones that grow from the ones that stall: see their money before it arrives.

In this episode, Bud and Chelsea get into the 13-week cash flow forecast, why a four-page business plan beats no plan, the receivables conversation every founder dreads, how to price the outcome instead of the hour, and the real signal that tells you when it is time to make your first hire. Practical, unglamorous, and exactly the kind of thing nobody hands you when you start a company.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro

01:00 35 years of turnarounds, and why Bud started McMay

02:00 The business plan that fits on four pages

03:00 Budget, forecast, and the 13-week cash flow

04:00 The bank-balance trap

06:00 Chelsea’s spreadsheet lesson

07:00 Bookkeeping as the foundation

08:00 QuickBooks, Wave, and picking a scalable tool

10:00 The mistake behind most turnarounds: processes nobody uses

13:00 A turnaround story: communication first

20:00 Receivables, and the conversation nobody wants

22:00 When to fire a customer

25:00 Pricing: value your time, then price the outcome

30:00 There is no magic number for your first hire

34:00 Working on the business vs in the business

36:00 Where to find Bud

Resources:

• Follow Bud McDonald's LinkedIn Profile
• Follow Chelsea Roberts' LinkedIn Profile

Other resources:

• McMay Business Services Website

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

Like and follow us:

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Hard tech is hard, and the money you raise to build it can quietly decide which customers you are allowed to serve. This week on GovCon Unscripted, Mollie Jahner makes the case that most defense founders reach for venture capital by reflex, when a stacked strategy of non-dilutive federal, state, and local funding, plus smart teaming, gets them further with more control.

Host Chelsea Roberts sits down with Mollie Jahner (Mission Cultivate, founder of Raise, formerly founder/CEO of Spring & Forge) on capital stacking, why the wrong investor can trip a CFIUS or foreign-ownership review and block your end customer, how teaming unlocks solicitations a single company cannot reach alone, and where Raise fits in helping founders find non-dilutive money faster.

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro

1:00 Why working moms make great operators

3:00 Getting government and industry in the same room

6:00 Founding Mission Cultivate and the Raise platform

10:00 Teaming and consortia: unlocking bigger contracts

13:00 The capital stack: non-dilutive funding beyond VC

15:00 The VC trap and the wrong kind of capital

18:00 Why human relationships beat AI noise

21:00 Who Mission Cultivate serves and the Raise launch

26:00 Wrap-up

Resources:

• Follow Mollie Jahner
• Follow Chelsea Roberts

Other resources:

• Raise Website
• Mission Cultivate's Website

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Everyone reaches for the free federal databases. Almost nobody reads them correctly, and the wrong read sends a whole pursuit in the wrong direction.

In this week's episode of GovCon Unscripted, Chelsea Roberts sat with Eileen Kent, the Federal Sales Guide and President of Custom Keynotes, LLC, who has pulled the SAM ad hoc report thousands of times over twenty years.

She walks through the free public data that most contractors misread: why “place of performance” often shows the vendor’s address or the manufacturer’s plant instead of where the work lands, why “dollars obligated” is the only money figure worth trusting, why a string of negatives is usually an adjustment rather than a vendor being pushed out, and how to hunt for patterns of who buys what you sell from whom.

She makes the case that AI and paid aggregators can accelerate a bad decision because they cannot interpret dirty data, and that the deal is still closed in the field, through relationships. She closes on the discipline she cares about most: a real bid/no-bid process, and the strength to walk away when there is no relationship.

Timestamps:

00:00 Intro · 01:00 The Three-Step Program

02:30 Early tools (FPDS, USASpending, FedBizOpps, CCR)

06:30 Free vs paid · 07:30 The place-of-performance problem

12:00 Inside the SAM ad hoc report

15:00 Reading patterns (DHA, VA VISNs, CMOPs)

20:00 The 2025 shift of commodities to GSA

23:00 Why outreach bots fail

28:30 Dollars obligated and negative adjustments

33:00 Bid/no-bid discipline.

Resources:

• Follow Eileen Kent's LinkedIn Profile
• Follow Chelsea Roberts' LinkedIn Profile

Other Resource:

• https://federalsalesguide.com

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🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

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A $50 million company with 600 employees almost fell out of its own sale. Not because of revenue, but because every decision still ran through two people.

Most owners think exit planning starts when they call an M&A advisor. In this episode of GovCon Unscripted, host Chelsea Roberts talks with Robert E. Jones, CPA and Principal Advisor at Corvata, who has spent 20+ years in government contracting, and says that by then the value of the business is already fixed. The real work happens two to five years earlier, left of the transaction, where structure, discipline, and decision flow still can be changed.

In this conversation, Robert breaks down his Enterprise Readiness Operating Model, the seven decision failure modes that stall companies, why owner-dependency scares off buyers, and how tightening operations can move an EBITDA multiple from the low end of a 6 to 9x range to the high end. He also shows how tools most contractors already pay for can cut a 12-hour payroll run to two or three hours.

Timestamps:

00:00 Does anyone actually plan the exit?

01:00 “You will exit your business”: on your terms or not

02:00 Left of the transaction: where value is still changeable

03:00 The Enterprise Readiness Operating Model (structure, discipline, decision flow)

06:00 The seven decision failure modes

11:00 Due diligence: documents that “magically appear”

13:00 The $50M company that almost couldn’t be sold

20:00 Policy vs procedure vs work instructions

21:00 Getting off paper: SharePoint, Planner, and the tools you already own

25:00 Value growth: profitability, the multiplier, and the multiple

29:00 The 10-year math: working backward from the day you want out

33:00 The three kinds of optionality this work buys you

Resources:

Follow Robert E. Jones

Follow Chelsea Roberts

Other resources:

Corvata's Website

Schedule a consultation

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

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#govconunscripted #exitplanning #federalcontracting #enterprisereadiness #govcon

Your AI pilot probably isn't failing because the model is weak. It's failing because you pointed it at the wrong end of the process.

Doug Averill has spent half his career in government and half in technology, and now serves as Vice President, Global Industry Market Leader, Government at Pega. In this episode of GovCon Unscripted, he draws a line most modernization teams never think to draw: the difference between runtime AI (burning tokens to execute the process you already run) and design-time AI (reimagining the process from the source policy before you build anything).

Apply AI at runtime to a broken workflow, Doug argues, and you pave the cow path: you carry the skipped steps, the noncompliance, and the suboptimal outcomes straight into the new system, only faster. He and Chelsea get into why the fix starts with the source policy document rather than the current application, why the power users have to be in the room from the first pilot, why procurement belongs at ideation and not at the end, and why speed, from OTAs to fast pilots, is never the same thing as the outcome you actually needed.

Timestamps:

• 00:01 — Why the US is now leading on AI uptake while process and policy slow everyone down
• 00:04 — Context is the ceiling: why the smallest gap derails an AI tool
• 00:11 — Blueprint for Government, source policy, and paving the cow path
• 00:13 — Design-time AI vs. token-maxing runtime AI
• 00:16 — Local models, warrants, and where a contracting officer should focus
• 00:24 — Dropping point solutions on the front porch of IT
• 00:25 — Getting procurement, CISO, and ISOs in the room to go idea-to-live in 90 days

Resources:

Doug Averill's LinkedIn profile

Chelsea Roberts' LinkedIn profile

Other resources:

Pega Blueprint for Government

Pega Government Website

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🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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Kodak's own engineers built the first digital camera, and its executives shelved it to protect film. The gap between having ideas and managing innovation is where organizations quietly die.

In this special episode of GovCon Unscripted, Chelsea Roberts sits down with two of the people writing the international playbook for innovation management. Rick Fernandez is President of the American Network for Innovation, chairman of the US technical advisory group to ISO TC 279, and a veteran of Florida Power & Light's Deming Prize win, the first awarded outside Japan. Harlan Bennett is CEO of Ever Evolving, Inc., VP of the American Network for Innovation, and vice chair of the same US advisory group.

Together they take apart the most common misreads in federal innovation: that innovation equals technology, that more ideas mean more innovation, and that a standard is just another compliance flow-down. Rick contrasts idea-driven programs (14,000 employee ideas collected, roughly 100 developed, 13,900 contributors alienated) with value-driven innovation that starts from strategic intent. Harlan shows SBIR performers how to escape the one-lane trap by validating adjacent customers before the build starts. And both make the case that ISO 56001, built on the same harmonized structure as ISO 9001, is a management system, not a control system.

They also preview what's next: innovation ecosystem management, IP-sharing contracts between primes and subs, and why innovation is no longer an individual game.

TIMESTAMPS

00:00 Welcome and guest introductions

01:00 Harlan Bennett: Ever Evolving, Inc. and the American Network for Innovation

02:30 Rick Fernandez: from FPL's Deming Prize to ISO TC 279

04:00 Why innovation needs standards now: the three S's

07:00 Innovation is not a technology: something new that creates value

09:30 The garage tinkerer problem and the one hit wonder

11:00 Managing innovation vs controlling it

12:00 Idea-driven vs value-driven innovation: the 14,000 ideas story

14:30 Innovation portfolio management

18:45 SBIR: escaping the one-lane trap

23:30 The recipe: maximize value, minimize risk, resources, and time

24:45 Ambidextrous organizations: innovating without dropping daily operations

25:30 Case study: an innovation management office, 100 projects narrowed to 3

29:00 Ecosystems: innovation is no longer an individual game

31:00 Primes, flow-downs, CMMC, and fair negotiations

37:45 Standards as enablers, not regulations

39:30 The harmonized structure: why ISO 9001 shops are halfway there

42:15 Where to find Harlan and Rick

Resources:

Harlan Bennett's LinkedIn Profile

Rick Fernandez's LinkedIn Profile

Chelsea Roberts' LinkedIn Profile

Other resources:

Ever Evolving Inc. Website

2020 Innovation Website

American Network For Innovation Website

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

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Say the word manufacturing and a lot of people picture something old and dirty. For rural communities, Chrissy Marucci argues, it is something else entirely: jobs and the federal dollars that come with them.

On this Special Episode of GovCon Unscripted, host Chelsea Roberts continues the #RoadtoHUBZone series with Chrissy Marucci, President and CEO of Elevated Consulting & Development.

Chrissy lives in an entire HUBZone county in the mountains of Appalachia and has spent years connecting rural residents to real federal contracting careers. She and Chelsea talks about what HUBZone was designed to do (bring federal spending back into the communities that need it), why the program is about the place and the people rather than the owner, how the 35% employee-residency rule actually works, and why manufacturing deserves a serious rethink as a source of rural jobs. She also lays out the community development corporation she is building to keep that money at home.

2026 National HUBZone Conference, July 21 and 22 (golf outing July 20) at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and who Chrissy is

01:00 Elevated Consulting and Council back-office support

02:00 An entire HUBZone county in Appalachia

03:00 Building the HUBZone Workforce Program

05:00 What HUBZone does for rural areas

06:00 Manufacturing and construction in rural HUBZones

09:00 Advocacy, land use, and changing the narrative

10:00 Manufacturing is not a dirty word

15:30 Place-based and employee-based: the 35% rule

18:00 Remote work and unlocking rural talent

19:00 The community development corporation

21:00 Conference mode and see you in Chantilly

Resources:

• Chrissy Marucci's LinkedIn Profile
• Chelsea Robert's LinkedIn Profile
• Elevated Consulting & Development's Website

Other resources:

• Holler to Hilltop (community development)
• HUBZone Contractors National Council
• 2026 National HUBZone Conference (register)

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🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

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A multimillion-dollar services contract, awarded in two weeks, with every I dotted and every T crossed. It was not federal, and that is exactly the point.

This week on GovCon Unscripted, Chelsea Roberts sits down with Jonathan Santana, founder and lead consultant of Excelsior Consulting Services, LLC, an SBA HUBZone and Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned small business supporting federal, state, local, nonprofit, and commercial clients. Jonathan earned his contracting warrant in the Air Force in 2003, bought through hurricane prep at Langley Air Force Base, deployed to Balad Air Base in Iraq in 2005 as a contingency contracting officer, and later worked procurement at Miami-Dade County before founding his own firm.

The conversation covers the translation problem between federal, state, and local buying (acquisition becomes procurement becomes purchasing, while the terms and conditions stay nearly one to one), how NASPO ValuePoint works as a state-level analog to a GWAC or federal supply schedule, what it means to compete with Big Four consultancies that have pivoted to state and local, creative contracting inside the FAR (performance work statements over statements of work, FAR 13.5 procedures), why state and local can award in weeks when the incentive exists, and forensic governance, Jonathan's discipline of getting adversarial with program data before leadership bets on it.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro and Excelsior Consulting Services

00:02 The verbiage gap: federal vs state and local

00:03 NASPO ValuePoint and entering state markets through a multi-contractor alliance

00:07 Competing with the Big Four at the state and local level

00:10 A contracting warrant at Langley: hurricane prep on the clock

00:11 Deployed at Balad Air Base: contingency contracting in Iraq

00:14 SF-44s, purchase cards, and buying under pressure

00:19 Creative contracting inside the FAR: PWS vs SOW, FAR 13.5

00:23 How fast state, local, and nonprofit buying really moves

00:27 What is forensic governance?

00:31 AI, governance, and decision risk

00:35 Where to find Jonathan

Resources:

• Jonathan Santana's LinkedIn Profile
• Chelsea Roberts' LinkedIn Profile

Other resources:

• Excelsior Consulting Services' Website
• Excelsior Consulting Services' Instagram
• Excelsior Consulting Services' Company LinkedIn Profile

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

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In federal contracting, most conferences give you a polished keynote you could have read in a press release. Eric Coffie goes to a lot of them, and he keeps coming back to HUBZone for a different reason.

On this Special Episode of GovCon Unscripted, host Chelsea Roberts continues the #RoadtoHUBZone series with Eric Coffie, founder and CEO of GovCon Giants.

Eric attends a lot of federal contracting events, and his read on this one is blunt: most conferences are more glitter than substance, and HUBZone is where he actually gets the real deal. He and Chelsea talk about keeping perspective when set-aside programs come under scrutiny, why the value of a conference is in the room rather than the brochure, and the funding and scale panel he is hosting. The conversation lands on a simple message for anyone weighing the trip: come prepared, extract everything, and make the connections that carry the rest of your year.

2026 National HUBZone Conference, July 21 and 22 (golf outing July 20) at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and who Eric is

01:00 Nothing new under the sun: perspective on program challenges

03:00 Why HUBZone weathers the discourse

08:00 Substance over glitter: what makes HUBZone different

11:00 The exhibitors and primes in the room

12:00 The Building for Scale funding panel

16:00 Extract everything: prep and make the most of it

18:00 Boots on the ground, fourth quarter, and connections

18:30 Manufacturing and made in USA

19:00 See you in Chantilly

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

🔹 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1NL0kFAvmgECLTJpUZYNHy

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Eric Coffie's LinkedIn Profile

Chelsea Robert's Linkedin Profile

2026 National HUBZone Conference (register)

Other resources:

Eric Coffie's YouTube Account

Eric Coffie's Twitter Account

GovCon Giants' Website

GovCon Giant's Instagram Account

The SBA hasn't let a single new company into the 8(a) Program in over 250 days. Federal contracts attorney and educator Steven Koprince explains what that means for the program's future and for the small businesses waiting at the door.

Steven Koprince spent more than 20 years as a federal government contracts attorney, founding Koprince McCall Pottroff LLC before moving into education, writing, and board service.

In this conversation with Chelsea Roberts, Steven walks through the Revolutionary FAROverhaul, the shifting culture around contracting officer discretion and bid protests, why AI-drafted GAO protests keep getting thrown out for hallucinated case law, and the slow-motion contraction of the 8(a) Program: SBA has approved only a fraction of its usual annual admissions and has not processed a new application since August 2025.

Koprince also breaks down a common and costly SAM self-certification misconception that catches contractors off guard.

Timestamps:

• 00:03:00 — Legal environment shifts and the Revolutionary FAR Overhaul
• 00:07:00 – 00:13:00 — Contracting officer discretion, bid protest strategy, and relationships with agencies
• 00:15:00 – 00:19:00 — AI-drafted protests and hallucinated case law at GAO
• 00:20:00 – 00:25:00 — The 8(a) Program's admissions freeze and sole-source pressure
• 00:25:00 – 00:31:00 — Small business self-certification, affiliation rules, and the SAM misconception

Resource Links:

• Steven Koprince's LinkedIn profile
• Chelsea's LinkedIn Profile
• The FedLift Launchpad

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

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In federal contracting, your network is your net worth, and most small businesses are working with one far too small to win what they are capable of winning.

On this Special Episode of GovCon Unscripted, host Chelsea Roberts continues the #RoadtoHUBZone series with Tim Hagerty, founder and CEO of TeamingPro and a board member of the HUBZone Contractors National Council.

Tim started TeamingPro after a lesson every small business learns the hard way: capability is rarely what holds you back, your network is. He breaks down what actually makes a strong teaming partner (past performance with the specific buyer, not just a matching capability), why teaming wins a larger slice of a bigger contract rather than a smaller slice of the same one, and how technology can take the friction out of finding and reaching the right partners. The conversation widens into the fragility of the domestic manufacturing supply chain and the reshoring opportunity, then lands on the 2026 National HUBZone Conference, where TeamingPro is powering the matchmaking so attendees arrive already knowing who they should meet.

2026 National HUBZone Conference, July 21 and 22 (golf outing July 20) at the Westfields Marriott in Chantilly, Virginia.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and who Tim is

01:00 What TeamingPro is and why he built it

02:00 The convention problem: 4,000 people, no blinking arrows

06:00 What makes a strong teaming partner

10:00 The network is the bottleneck, not capability

14:00 The bigger pie: small businesses winning together

17:00 TeamingPro’s role in the HUBZone Conference matchmaking

25:00 Manufacturing supply chain risk and reshoring

33:00 SBA momentum and opening up competition

36:00 How to reach Tim and TeamingPro

Resources:

Tim Hagerty's LinkedIn Profile

Chelsea's LinkedIn Profile

Other resources:

TeamingPro Website

HUBZone Contractors National Council

2026 National HUBZone Conference (register)

🎧 Listen now on:

🔹 Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/govcon-unscripted/id1766384482

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