Companion Book Working Manuscript

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 1 Working manuscript | Terry A. Lucas Character. Grit. Ingenuity. Six chapters follow Leah, a fictional cleaning-business owner, from personal habits through a first order and payment. The topic order matches the course and participant booklet, while the story and business decisions take a different route. This is a developed working draft for Terry’s editorial review, not a claim of a final, published book. Instructor experiences can be added in the reserved spaces. No fictional character is presented as a student, client or testimonial. Contents 1. Succeed Where You Stand 2. Vision & Position 3. Ready or Registered? 4. Search & Rescue 5. Bid & Boogie 6. Deliver & Dominate Story values are teaching assumptions. This four-week model illustrates operating costs and cash timing. It is not a market-rate guide, actual award or legal qualification checklist. Educational use only; not legal, tax, financial or medical advice. Verify requirements and consult qualified advisers. No outcomes guaranteed. Personal learning and internal application allowed; redistribution, resale or teaching from these materials requires written permission, except as law permits. Rights reserved in Aegis Bellator LLC-owned original expression; third-party and public-domain rights remain unaffected. © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Companion Book WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 2 1 Succeed Where You Stand The promise starts at home Leah did not begin with an award letter. She began with a key, a cleaning cart and the realization that someone else would have to trust her after they left the building. In this fictional story, she had worked around office cleaning for years. She knew the difference between a room that looked finished from the doorway and a room that was actually ready for the next morning. She wanted a business of her own. Wanting it did not yet make the business ready. That is where I want us to start. Before the registration, before the bid and before the celebration, look at the work already in your hands. Do you finish what you say you will finish? Do you answer a question while it is still useful to the person asking? When you make a mistake, do you explain it and correct it, or wait for somebody else to discover it? These are business questions even when the first place you practice them is at home. Win Your War is not an instruction to have a perfect life. Nobody needs another door shut because they are still dealing with something difficult. It is an invitation to identify the part you can act on. Your first useful action may be returning a call, completing a record or setting aside time to study a requirement. Small actions become evidence of a habit. Habits determine how much responsibility you can carry without dropping it on somebody else. Character is keeping your word. It includes how you treat people when the answer is inconvenient and how accurately you describe your own ability. Grit is remaining engaged with work that is no longer exciting. Ingenuity is looking carefully enough to discover another workable route. I want those words to become actions a buyer can experience, not decorations on a capability statement. © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 3 1 Carry it forward Leah chose a simple discipline: after each shift she checked her supply list, noted unfinished work and set the next action. The record did not make her wealthy. It stopped her from relying on memory for promises that mattered. When she later described her service, she could explain how work would be checked and who would respond to a problem. She had begun building the behavior before she asked a customer to depend on it. A contract adds obligations. It does not automatically remove the problems you carried into the application. If your schedule is already overcommitted, put that fact into the plan. If cash is tight, say what funding is available and what remains uncertain. There is strength in a true boundary. Confidence that ignores a boundary can become somebody else’s emergency. For this story, all business figures are assigned teaching values. Leah’s later four-week order will earn $2,880 in sales and incur $2,520 in actual included operating costs. That leaves $360 before taxes and costs outside the model. I am telling you that now because I do not want the size of a customer’s name to distract us from the actual work. The question is whether the promise can be carried responsibly. Take one responsibility in your own life. Write what done looks like, what resource you have and when you will check the result. This is the beginning of Succeed Where You Stand. You can bring ambition with you. Bring an honest account of where you are standing, too. Put the principle to work Choose a responsibility, one next action and a date to review it. Terry’s personal story or instructor expansion to add __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 4 2 Vision & Position See the room behind the request The fictional buyer asked for cleaning at two offices, three visits per office each week for four weeks. Leah could have read that as a number to multiply. Instead, she asked what each office needed to be ready for the people arriving the following morning. Were the rooms occupied during service? What surfaces were included? Who handled access? Which supplies did the customer provide, and which belonged in her estimate? Vision begins with the customer. A purchasing officer may be the person sending the document, but the receiver and the end user may be different people. Each can have a requirement that affects the plan. A request for clean floors may involve access, drying time, inspection and a building schedule. Seeing those relationships is more useful than deciding, without asking, that the buyer must want the lowest possible price. The geography matters, too. A hot spot tells you where work appears. A hot market tells you who buys what and why. Two nearby offices can be an appropriate first step. Two offices with the same square footage but hours apart can be an entirely different commitment. Similar wording does not mean similar execution. Find the work that fits the business you can actually operate. Leah had to count visits correctly: two sites multiplied by three weekly visits multiplied by four weeks equals twenty- four visits. She assumed two labor hours per visit for this classroom model, giving forty-eight planned labor hours. Those are teaching assumptions, not industry productivity standards. A real quote would require inspection or other reliable scope evidence before adopting the time allowance. © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 5 2 Carry it forward Then comes position. This is where you explain what you intend to do and how you intend to do it. Leah drafted a four- week service plan, identified the stated tasks and recorded the access and acceptance questions. She did not say that nothing could ever go wrong. She explained the checks and corrective arrangements that would reduce the known risks. Professional does not mean lifeless. A clear sentence can carry your personality without making the buyer search through a personal history to find the price. Tell the reader what matters to the decision. Show respect for their time. If the scope is uncertain, a sensible question can demonstrate better judgment than a confident claim. Seeing a need does not mean you are the right business to meet every version of it. Leah’s long-term vision included a larger service territory. Her first position remained the two-office plan. Expansion would require additional people, supervision, cash and evidence. A prime or subcontract role would have to be evaluated on those facts rather than assumed to be better because it sounded larger. Before moving on, describe a customer in three sentences: the problem, the conditions that make it difficult and the part your business can credibly solve. Then write one question whose answer could change the price. If you cannot identify that question, you may not yet be seeing past the bid. Put the principle to work Describe the buyer’s need and identify one unanswered question that could change your offer. Terry’s personal story or instructor expansion to add __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 6 3 Ready or Registered? Make the paper carry proof Leah completed the registrations appropriate to the market she intended to enter. It felt like progress because it was progress. It was also only part of the work. A registration record did not tell a buyer whether she had staff, suitable supplies, insurance, site access or enough cash to keep serving while an invoice waited for payment. Ready or Registered? is the question I want you to keep asking. What can the business actually do? What supports that answer? If the experience belongs to you personally, describe it as your experience. Do not quietly turn it into company past performance. If a partner has agreed only to discuss capacity, do not describe that conversation as a reserved crew. Proof behind the promise can be ordinary: a current qualification, a written supplier confirmation, a schedule that accounts for travel or a record that shows who checks the work. The point is not to make a folder heavy. The point is to make a claim understandable and verifiable. Keep your records straight for the contract’s sake. For the fictional cleaning order, Leah’s readiness file separates the assumed confirmed facts from the questions that would require real verification. It includes the task list, staffing and supervision plan, product suitability, relevant insurance and permission checks, receiving and inspection arrangements, cost assumptions and the cash schedule. This is an educational structure, not a legal or licensing checklist for actual cleaning work. © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 7 3 Carry it forward Her capability statement becomes shorter as the evidence becomes clearer. She can state the service area, the defined tasks, the planned capacity and the person responsible for correction. She avoids a claim of unlimited availability. A promise that fits on one line can still require a great deal of preparation behind it. Paperwork with a point also means version control. If a task changes, the cost sheet and service plan need to reflect the same version. If the buyer issues an amendment, the original notice cannot remain the only document in the folder. A professional-looking quote based on the wrong requirements is still wrong. Registration to reputation happens in the daily exchange. Reply accurately. Follow through when you said you would. Check a milestone at the agreed time instead of treating silence as proof that everything is fine. Respect a request to stop contacting someone. Grit includes redirecting your effort; it is not permission to ignore another person’s boundaries. Write down three claims you would like to make about your business. Next to each, identify the evidence and the limit. If the evidence is missing, assign a next action. The answer is not to make the claim louder. The answer is to strengthen the business or narrow the promise. Put the principle to work Attach evidence and a boundary to three claims on your capability statement. Terry’s personal story or instructor expansion to add __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 8 4 Search & Rescue Search until the fit is clear Leah’s search returned more work than she could pursue. That is common in a large market: volume can create the impression of opportunity while consuming every hour available to prepare. She needed a method for choosing. She began with service, location, buyer and schedule, then recorded the original source and the latest relevant documents. Search & Rescue means getting your hands into the work. There are requests for ordinary supplies and specialized systems, from broomsticks to bombers. Breadth should encourage you to look, then discipline you to focus. The fastest way to begin is to start today. The next task is to become better at distinguishing a possible fit from an expensive distraction. The two-office order fit Leah’s assigned classroom capacity. Another request required a much larger crew and overlapping locations. She did not try to win it and work out the people later. She recorded the gaps and passed. A decision to pass can protect the resources needed to compete well on something suitable. An extended deadline was another lead, not an explanation. Perhaps the scope changed; perhaps the buyer needed more time; perhaps participation was low. Without evidence, she did not know. An extension did not make qualifications disappear or turn a difficult job into an easy award. She read the amendment and kept the reason unknown where it remained unknown. © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 9 4 Carry it forward Play or Pass is a question about value, ability and commitment. What will the order require? How much cash must be available before payment? What happens to the rest of the business while this work is being performed? If one essential fact is missing, investigate before converting enthusiasm into an offer. Rescue with intent means understanding the burden you can relieve. A purchasing officer is trying to get a legitimate need fulfilled through a process. A prime contractor may need a defined piece of work performed. Explain how you meet that need, with evidence. Do not assume a routine purchase is a crisis or that a friendly introduction substitutes for requirements. Leah kept an unsent question draft before contacting the buyer through the allowed channel. It named the requirement and asked about the specific access condition that affected staffing. The question was useful because the answer could change her plan. A message asking the buyer to explain everything she had not read would have shifted her research back onto them. Keep a search record that includes rejections. Write the notice, date, decision and reason. Over time, that record can show where your estimates were weak and which capacity gaps recur. That is grit doing useful work: effort followed by observation, correction and another informed attempt. Put the principle to work Record a Play, Investigate or Pass decision and the facts behind it. Terry’s personal story or instructor expansion to add __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 10 5 Bid & Boogie Make the math move Leah’s assigned price was $120 per visit. Twenty-four visits produced $2,880 sales. Planned labor was forty-eight hours at a loaded $30 per hour, or $1,440. Supplies added $240, travel $240 and administration and insurance $480. The included operating cost totaled $2,400, leaving a planned $480 operating surplus before tax. The loaded labor assumption includes the compensation and employment burden assigned in this example. Administration includes the owner’s coordination time; it is not free because Leah owns the company. No financing interest is assumed because she uses assigned owner capital. Startup equipment, formation costs and taxes remain outside this short operating example. Do not quietly treat an excluded cost as nonexistent. Know what it costs. Know what you are committing to. Product businesses have their own questions about weight, packaging, freight, storage and unloading. Service businesses have questions about time, travel, supervision, materials and corrections. You pay for what you do not bid. Research belongs in the estimate before the number becomes a promise. The planned surplus was 16.67% of sales: $480 divided by $2,880. It was 20% of included operating cost: $480 divided by $2,400. Neither calculation should be relabeled as the other. With a simple product costing $100 and selling for $200, markup is 100% while gross margin is 50%. The denominator matters. Math is king. © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 11 5 Carry it forward Cash introduced a second question. Leah began with $3,000 assigned owner capital. For simplicity, the four-week model pays $600 of planned operating costs at each week’s end on Days 7, 14, 21 and 28. The customer accepts the completed service and receives the correct invoice on Day 28; payment clears on Day 58, thirty days later. These dates are model assumptions, not universal payment rules. Then a correction consumed four extra labor hours during the third week. At $30 per hour, that added $120 on Day 21. Actual costs became $2,520. Before the customer paid, cash fell to $480. After the $2,880 receipt, the balance was $3,360: original capital of $3,000 plus $360 actual operating surplus. The extra hours reduced the planned surplus by one quarter. A large award number can hide a small return. A separate hypothetical $180,000 over five years averages $36,000 each year, or $3,000 per month. That arithmetic is not a payment schedule. For many people, that barely covers necessities. The apparent windfall may be five years of rent payments dressed in a much larger headline. Love the work enough to love the questions. Ask what happens if a supplier wants payment first, a customer pays later or the second order starts before the first receipt clears. Vendor terms do not automatically copy the customer’s terms. A plan that works only when every dollar arrives early is asking your confidence to do the job of capital. Put the principle to work Build one cost estimate and a dated cash timeline; distinguish revenue, surplus and cleared cash. Terry’s personal story or instructor expansion to add __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 12 6 Deliver & Dominate Deliver the work and keep the record Once the fictional order was authorized, Leah confirmed the service schedule, staff, access and reporting arrangement. She did not confuse a buyer’s expression of interest with permission to begin. The hard work had started before the real work began. Now the plan had to survive actual execution. On a capitalistic court, prepare to compete. I want you faster at finding the facts, smarter about the fit, more resilient when a plan needs correction and better prepared to perform. Dominate begins with an advantage you can demonstrate. A low number without a workable service plan is not the kind of victory that builds longevity. The third-week correction was where the three principles met. Character required an accurate explanation. Ingenuity helped identify a suitable corrective arrangement. Grit meant checking that the correction happened. The additional four hours had a cost, and Leah recorded it. She did not pretend the original estimate had been right simply because the customer eventually received the service. Her actual included operating cost was $2,520 against $2,880 sales. The $360 difference was 12.50% of sales and 14.29% of included cost. The service had generated a positive operating result in the model, but the lesson was not that every order works out. The lesson was that she could explain the difference between estimate, performance and receipt. © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 13 6 Carry it forward Seal the deal with records that connect. What work was performed? Who confirmed acceptance? Which invoice describes it? What corrections were required? When did payment clear? A bank balance cannot answer all those questions. The business needs the evidence behind the number, including obligations that remain unpaid or work still owed. From Delivery to Dollars can be the most stressful part. The labor is already given, the materials already used and the vendors still have their own payment dates. The next order may look like growth while creating a larger cash gap. Do not spend an expected profit twice: once in your imagination and again on a commitment the business cannot yet fund. Oblige the officer by being useful, accurate and professional. Ask for feedback when appropriate and improve the weak part of your execution. Relationships can make communication easier; they do not give you ownership of the next award. Record genuine performance before using it as a reference, and obtain any permission needed to share someone else’s words or information. Your final classroom task is to price a defined requirement and defend the plan. The closest number is interesting. The explanation matters more for the business you will operate after class. Tell me what you can provide, what it costs, what evidence supports it and how you keep the work moving until payment. Character keeps the promise honest. Grit keeps you with the work. Ingenuity helps you find a way worth verifying. Put the principle to work Reconcile an estimate with actual costs and identify one improvement. Terry’s personal story or instructor expansion to add __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses

Terry A. Lucas | Character. Grit. Ingenuity. | 14 The three stories reconcile Story Sale Actual included costs Operating surplus Fuel / course $85,000 $73,100 $11,900 Paper / booklet $4,800 $4,100 $700 Cleaning / book $2,880 $2,520 $360 Different plots, consistent principles Each business sees a need, checks readiness, screens an opportunity, prices the work, funds a gap, handles a cost variance and tracks receipt. Their quantities and numbers are deliberately different. Never transfer one story’s figure into another without changing the calculation. Editorial spaces Terry’s opening dedication or personal context __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ Additional true experience to add with permissions and source notes __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ Pilot questions to inform the next edition __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________________________ © 2026 Aegis Bellator LLC and respective rights holders. All rights reserved. Educational use only; not legal advice. WinGovCon Government Contracting Education & Consulting for Small Businesses