Maximize Your Benefits. Optimize Your Life.

September 24, 2026

Quick favor if you use Gmail. The last few issues have been landing in Promotions. If this one did, drag it to Primary and hit reply with one word. Gmail pays attention to both, and it's the easiest way to make sure the next one finds you.

A few pieces of housekeeping before the real thing.

No more ads. You've seen the little sponsored blocks in the middle of these issues for the last couple of months. They're done. They pulled your attention away from the thing you opened the email for, and they paid about enough to cover a tank of gas (but not in this economy). If a business ever shows up in this newsletter again, it will be because it serves veterans better than the alternative, and I'll have written it up myself, in my own words.

So if your company actually serves veterans and you want to reach 5,500+ of them, hit reply. I'll only run what I'd recommend to a buddy, and I'll always tell you when a spot is paid.

I'm certified. Last week the SBA certified The Better Veteran as a Service-Disabled Veteran-Owned Small Business. I'll explain what that means in a minute, because it's the whole point of this issue, and I built a tool that shows what yours is worth.

The first lane I'm running is reselling. Find what an agency is buying, line up a supplier, quote it, deliver it. It's the most boring and most repeatable way into federal work, and the certification is what gets me in the room.

And if you're in a government agency and want some actually decent veteran transition tools built for the government, let me know. I know a guy who can help with that ;)

If you've done this before, I'd love to hear from you. Maybe you've bid on federal contracts, worked supply chain or procurement, or sat on the government side of the table as a contracting officer. I'm learning this in public, and I'd rather learn from veterans who've already walked the road than figure it all out alone, and then pass what I learn on to you. Hit reply and tell me the one thing you wish someone had told you when you started.

After World War II, 49.7% of returning veterans went on to own or run a business. Korean War veterans: 40%. Post-9/11 veterans, so far: 4.5%.

Half, to four in a hundred…

The Census counted 273,542 veteran-owned employer businesses in 2022. That's 4.7% of all employer firms in the country, down from 5.2% the year before, and together they employed 3.2 million people. The veterans who start something do fine. The problem is that almost nobody starts.

Here's what I think happened. Everybody knows what a VA rating gets you: a tax-free deposit on the first of the month. That's real, and I've written about it more than anything else. What nobody tells you is that the same rating is a business credential. It opens doors that have nothing to do with the monthly check, and most of the veterans holding a rating letter right now have no idea those doors exist.

The federal government is the largest buyer of goods and services on earth, and by law it tries to send at least 5% of its prime contract dollars to businesses owned by service-disabled veterans. In FY2025 that came to $32.5 billion. The VA alone sent $10.1 billion to veteran-owned firms, 21.68% of everything it bought, because its own law tells it to look for veteran-owned firms first.

To get in that room you need three things: a service-connected rating at any percentage, including 0%; 51% ownership of the business; and actual control of it.

No rating? You can still certify as a Veteran-Owned Small Business with an honorable discharge and the same ownership and control, and the VA sets contracts aside for those too. And if you got out years ago and never filed a claim, the claim is what moves you from one door to the other.

The certification is free. You apply through SBA's certification portal with your rating letter and your formation documents. Mine came back the same day I hit submit. Don't count on that speed, but don't let the paperwork scare you off either.

Once you're in, agencies can set contracts aside so only certified firms can bid, and when the conditions line up, they can award you work up to $5 million without a competition. You still have to deliver. But you're competing in a room with a few thousand firms instead of a few hundred thousand, and the buyer is legally trying to find you.

That's the door. Here's why I built a tool instead of just telling you about it.

"Veterans can get government contracts" is a sentence. It doesn't move anyone. So I built the thing that turns it into a number for your kind of work.

Put in your rating, your state, and what you'd do. Back comes every advantage you hold as a veteran business owner, and what each one is worth:

It's free, like everything else here, and it always will be.

This spot used to hold an ad. Now it's where I tell you about something I actually do.

Round two of 1-on-1 transition planning has 2 spots left. I've got several intro calls still on the calendar this week and into October. If more of you apply than there are spots, your application rolls into the next round, so nobody gets dropped. If the tool above showed you more doors than you know what to do with, mapping which ones to walk through, and when, is exactly what this is for.

Two reasons. The first is money. Imagine that, an MBA student wants to make money. Roughly 14,000 veterans a month use the tools, none of them will ever hit a paywall, and contracts are how that stays true. The second is the number at the top of this email. I want more of you to own something. So every step of this goes in the newsletter: which contracts I chase, which ones I lose, what the paperwork looks like, what it costs.

If you own a business already, or you've thought about it and stopped, reply and tell me what stopped you. I read everything.

Talk soon,
Zak