Leveraging micro opportunities
I recently discovered a cool podcast (well, cool if you're into government contracting) called Game Changers for Government Contractors.
There is one episode where the host interviews a GovCon Founder who used "micro-purchases" to get his business off the ground.
Game Changers - Creating Your 10k Micro Purchase Offer
What is a micro-purchase?
Basically, it's any government government purchase under $10,000.
While it's a small amount, the upside is that there is very little paperwork. The government can basically charge that amount to a credit card.
So if you can offer a service/product for under $10,000, you can sell it relatively easy to the government (administratively, that is).
The interviewee in this case sold a lunch-and-learn workshop.
What's interesting was not the workshop, but how he was able to leverage the workshop.
He was able to:
- Get past performance (establish a track record of delivering work to the government)
- Use the workshop as an opportunity to listen for other problems he could solve by talking to the participants
- Grow his network
Though he was able to generate a decent amount of revenue just from the $10k micro-purchase process, the bigger benefit was using it as a business development tool.
As a solo 1099, this could be a good a way to get a foothold to expand your business.
You could even just build a business around micro-purchases.
But even if you just want to remain a solo-subcontractor, you can implement the lessons of using non-obvious opportunities to discover client problems and grow your network.
This will help you get more gigs and simultaneously expand your network and deepen your client relationships.
Want the full playbook? Check out Going 1099.