A thing I learned this year that surprised me: the federal government has a legal goal to award at least 23 percent of its contract dollars to small businesses (last year it beat it, about $179 billion), and California has its own program with a 25% small business participation goal and a 5 percent bid preference for certified small firms. That includes plain, unglamorous work: janitorial, mowing, painting, hauling, HVAC, machining, IT support.

125,000 small businesses won federal prime contracts in 2010; by 2020 it was under 76,000. That means more money is going to fewer Americans. Sound familiar?

Almost every owner I talk to either has no idea, assumes it’s only for big defense companies with lawyers, bad jobs, or filtered behind a secret who-knows-who decision.

What I’m trying to find out is whether owners like you would ever actually use this. Three honest questions:

1. Did you know this existed? If you knew and never looked into it, what stopped you?
2. What would actually get you to look: seeing real contracts near you for your trade, someone telling you exactly which big contractors need subs in your trade this month, or nothing, because government means slow pay, bad jobs, and paperwork?
3. What do you pay today to get new customers (Thumbtack, Angi, ads, a marketing person)? Does “the government as a customer” sound better or worse than that?