Chelsea Roberts on The Advisory Room: Fractional Federal Business Development

Chelsea Roberts, founder of Collaborative Compositions and host of GovCon Unscripted, sat
down with Tim Redpath on The Advisory Room Podcast to talk about a customer most business owners never think to
pitch, the federal government itself.

Chelsea’s path into government contracting started early. She grew up around her parents’
ocean engineering business, earned an MBA from the University of Washington, and
brokered the sale of that company to a manufacturing firm in West Virginia before starting
her own venture. She launched Collaborative Compositions in June 2020, while commercial
demand was flatlining across the country, because she saw something most small business
owners did not. The government was still buying everything it always bought, and it needed
suppliers.

The conversation centers on what Chelsea calls fractional federal business development, a
retainer-based model built around outcomes rather than billable hours. She walks through
why most companies fail at government sales with a shotgun approach, pitching every
agency at once instead of narrowing in on the specific offices that actually buy what they
sell. She also lays out the real timeline behind a federal win. Agencies plan budgets up to
two years in advance, and a 12-month pursuit before a contract lands is normal, not a
warning sign.

One of the more practical points in the episode is that the government should rarely be a
business’s first customer. It pays reliably once a relationship is built, but it is not a source of
fast cash up front, so a business needs enough runway to get through the early relationship
building stage before the contracts start to land.

For a small or mid-size business weighing whether government contracting is worth the
investment, this episode is a grounded look at what the process actually requires. It takes
patience, the right positioning, and a clear read on which federal offices are a genuine fit.
Listen to the full conversation below, and visit Collaborative Compositions for more on
building a federal business development strategy that matches your company’s capacity