Hit Submit: The Playbook for Building a Seven Figure Cybersecurity or IT Practice from Scratch
Hit Submit is the operational playbook for cybersecurity and IT professionals who want to break into government contracting, build a consulting practice, or go independent - written by someone who actually built a seven figure firm from scratch with no outside funding, no connections, and no roadmap.
This is not a motivational book and it is not high-level theory. It is a play-by-play operational guide documenting what actually worked over six years of building a firm in this space, including what things actually cost, what contracts were won and how, and what the hard years in between actually looked like.
What Hit Submit covers:
Finding Government Contracting Opportunities - Most people default to SAM.gov and conclude government contracting is not accessible to small firms. This book covers SLED contracting, Bidprime, state procurement portals, and cooperative purchasing vehicles that most professionals have never heard of and that have exponentially more opportunity than federal contracting for someone just starting out.
The Credential Strategy - How to get credentials ahead of market demand instead of in response to it, including real 2026 costs for ISO 17020, FedRAMP 3PAO, CMMC C3PAO, and PCI-DSS QSA and the order of operations that nobody publishes honestly.
Writing and Winning Proposals - How to read a solicitation, the difference between LPTA and best value evaluations, how to write capability statements and past performance narratives, how to price your services at different stages of the business, and what the technical proposal section actually needs to include to score well.
Breaking Into Compliance Work - PCI-DSS, FedRAMP, and CMMC as recurring revenue service lines, including the path to each credential, the market opportunity, and what ongoing accreditation maintenance actually requires and costs annually.
Building a Managed Security Practice - MSSP as a fundamentally different business model than project work, including tooling, pricing, scoping, liability considerations for compliance clients, and how to staff it without overextending.
Solo Contractor vs Firm Builder - An honest assessment of both paths including why some people are genuinely happier and wealthier staying solo at $200,000 to $300,000 with zero employees, and how to know which path actually fits your personality and goals.
Cash Flow and Invoice Factoring - The gap between contract award and revenue that quietly kills small firms, how invoice factoring works and when to use it, and how to manage debt as a deliberate growth tool without letting it become a liability.
Paying Yourself and Running Payroll - The difference between LLC and S-Corp structures, owner draws, salary plus distributions, and what tools actually work for payroll and HR in a small firm including the state compliance issues most people learn about the hard way.
Marketing Without Becoming a Content Machine - Why organic beats paid for this audience, what actually drives inbound business development for a credentialed firm, and how to stay visible without spending hours a week performing on social media.
Scaling and the Long Game - When to hire, how to build processes that do not depend entirely on you, what changes operationally going from solo to a real team, and what the next phase looks like for a credentialed cybersecurity and IT practice.
Work Life Balance and the Human Side - The hard nights that nobody talks about when they show you the revenue numbers, the decision to draw a real boundary between work and family, and why having something outside of the business matters more than any productivity framework.
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