Volume…. What do I mean? We send out 1-3 proposals for contracts/grants every day. Sometimes we have 150 pending at any given time. Spent six months perfecting the systems and 10 years becoming a pro at capture management. Our larger enterprise competitors handle about 12 funding opportunities per day.

Oh, and those days or weeks where you think funding is temporarily closed off due to “just getting back into the office” - yeah that’s a moment to be bidding/fundraising. Think contrary to your market.

I like your industry niche because companies like samsara encourage partnerships with companies that offer patrol services, which is a win-win. I used to handle everything pre-contract (pretty much the entire process before the agreement execution) and win these statewide deals. Our fleet management partner was excellent and would help customize marketing.

The weekly frequency mixed with the monthly payment terms threw me off. I would fix to 4 times monthly for X monthly rate.

Fortunately my wife is not my market, and never will be my market or represent my customers. Love her, but we are good at different things.

Entrepreneurship, at least in my world where I’ve done it for 10 years, means applying attention on the right things at the right times. Family negativity? Perhaps not an important data point.

Trust. As a fellow business owner, the Harvard Business Review’s new edition on Trust completely rearranged my thinking on this. Benefits and little perks will run dry or employees will get accustomed to bonuses, commission, and extras. But trust is the performance gift that keeps giving.

If the benefit is $0, you should spend zero time on it.