PantherTime

The US government paid a guy $41,000 for office chairs he bought at Costco for $19,000, and it wants to do it again next month He's not a furniture company. He has no warehouse. He has a laptop, an LLC, and a free registration on a government website that 99% of people have never heard of Here's how the biggest customer on earth buys things The federal government spends about $750 billion a year on stuff. Chairs, printer paper, gravel, forklifts, dog food for K9 units, port-a-johns, lightbulbs. By law, a huge chunk of it has to go to small businesses, and anything under $15,000 can be bought by a government employee with a purchase card, no bidding, from whoever answers first The website is sam . gov Registration is free. Takes an afternoon. You get a number, you pick the codes for what you sell, and every open contract in the country is searchable The play he runs: Search for small purchase requests. An Army base needs 60 office chairs. A VA clinic needs 400 cases of copy paper. A national park needs 12 picnic tables Find the item at Costco, Sam's, Uline, or a wholesaler Bid at 40 to 60% over his cost. He wins maybe 1 in 8 because most "real" suppliers don't bother with small orders Buy the product, ship it or drive it there, submit the invoice Government pays in 30 days by law. Prompt Payment Act. If they're late they owe you interest The chairs: a federal building in Texas needed 130 task chairs. He bid $41,000. Costco Business had them at $146 each, $19,000 total. Delivered in 9 days on a rented box truck. Profit $22,000 on one order he found on a Tuesday His first year: 14 orders won. $312,000 in revenue. $118,000 in profit. Zero employees "Why doesn't Costco just sell to the government directly?" Costco doesn't chase $41,000 orders. Big suppliers don't either. The government is required to buy from small businesses and small businesses are too intimidated to register. That gap is the entire business The one problem: you buy the chairs before the government pays you. That's 30 to 45 days of $19,000 you need up front. He floats every order on 0% business cards. Government pays the invoice, cards get paid, spread stays. He's never used a dollar of his own money and the bank has never charged him interest (we get 700+ score business owners $150K to $500K in 0% intro APR business credit. link in bio)