The SDVOSB Handbook

Every guide to SDVOSB certification is written by a company that charges fifteen hundred to three thousand dollars to file paperwork you can file yourself for nothing. They describe the process at the altitude where it sounds manageable in principle and impossible in practice.

None of them tell you where it actually breaks.

They don't tell you that SAM.gov won't register your business without bank account details, so the whole certification is gated on an account nobody mentioned. They don't tell you that a card can fail a state filing four times because of an address record the issuer holds and you can't see. They don't tell you that a five-dollar deposit failing silently can be why every login afterward returns an error that looks like a browser problem.

This second edition follows the real order of operations, company, EIN, bank account, SAM.gov, VetCert, with the SBA's rule at 13 C.F.R. Part 128 quoted where it governs, the delays left in, and an honest chapter on whether the certification is worth pursuing at all.

New in the second edition

• Ownership and control, the two tests in § 128.202 and § 128.203, read paragraph by paragraph.
• An annotated model operating agreement: fifteen clauses, each tied to the rule it satisfies and the denial it prevents.
• Size and affiliation when you own a second company.
• From the examiner's chair: how a reviewer reads your file.
• Protests and appeals before the SBA's Office of Hearings and Appeals, with their deadlines.
• Joint ventures and the mentor-protégé program.
• Change, death, divorce, sale: what happens to a certification when the person it rests on changes.
• A section-by-section map of Part 128.

Dated on purpose

Every regulatory claim is cited so you can check it, and the book carries a current-as-of date. Every source is listed on a page kept current online, along with free printable worksheets that counselors and veteran service organizations may copy for client use.