Want to sell to the government? Cra, cra

Here's a thought that I had a while back that I'm hoping won't be the biggest time waster for my small business, "selling to the government". It sounds so easy, just register and you will get to bid on projects and generate income. I have no laughter in me after writing that statement. Register for what. Crazy me, I thought there was one registry for all types of government levels, city, county, state, and federal that I imagined to be called "All Government Bids" or something like that. That would be a fat, NO.  

Take for instance, my business is in Sacramento, California. I want to do business with the city, county, and state. I naively believed that I could register at one website and ta da, there would be bids from those entities, but as insane as it is in reality, each agency at every level has decided not to play with each other and have a registry website of their own.  Want to do business with the county? Register with PublicPurchase. Hankering to do biz with the city, there's PlanetBids. Feel the need to pull your hair? The State of California has different ones depending on which departments you want to sell to. 

And that my friend is only the beginning if you want to jump into the rabbit hole. Each registry bid website might require different documents. Some are extensive and very personal, whether about you, your business, taxes, the employees, and possibly a dance routine. And the really fun part are the websites that don't have that knack to be user-friendly. 

"Why doesn't it accept the business address and only allows the number one," asking support one day, "Silly, if you are a small business, you put the address somewhere else. "Then why doesn't it say so on the page?" My poor poor hair. And if you're lucky every page will have an anomaly. So if you have tons of time and you're looking to do a DIY do, join me in the rabbit hole. In my next post: "Still got hair? Government certifications".