What’s the secret to landing your first contract? This eco-friendly entrepreneur says it’s getting help from others who have been there.

By Geoff Williams

The bulldozers, cranes and backhoe loaders invaded a lot across from 9-year-old Wendi Goldsmith’s Boston apartment and never seemed to leave. But once they did, two years later, a supermarket had gone up. It may have been a welcome addition to the community, but a price had been paid: A comely grove of trees featuring a vernal pool with salamanders no longer existed. Watching the construction drama play itself out, Goldsmith, who had enjoyed those trees very much, was both horrified and inspired.

Today, as Bioengineering Group’s CEO, Goldsmith, 43, is saving vernal pools while allowing progress to march on. So developers who want their office parks to appear more like a park than a concrete blob of offices, or mayors who want their towns’ rivers to look like something out of a travel brochure rather than something spawned by a sewage treatment plant, call Goldsmith. As Bioengineering Group’s tagline says, they’re “building sustainable communities on an ecological foundation.”

Goldsmith won’t reveal the firm’s annual revenue, but suffice it to say that it’s successful: She employs 52 and has four regional offices, in Salem, Massachusetts; Trenton, New Jersey; Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina; and New Orleans. (She added her New Orleans office after winning a major government contract to help with flood protection in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.)

Hers is, in short, a business that engineers community solutions that embrace the environment instead of ignoring it. It’s the poster child of the type of business that should thrive in the 21st century.

Goldsmith didn’t fall into this; she waded in carefully—first studying geology, geophysics and environmental science at Yale, and later getting her master’s degree in ecological landscape design. She started her firm in 1992 and by 1996 was making her first bid for a government contract. Or, rather, what she calls her first “real” bid, which “propelled us to a new level,” in which she actually had serious competition: She was up against 40 other companies.

“The project was to provide planning and engineering services for a variety of ecosystem and restoration projects including the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers,” says Goldsmith, who was gunning for a project being mapped out by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. What she particularly remembers from that first bid was the kindness shown to her by a subcontractor that is no longer in business. Her business had the chops, but she probably wouldn’t have been able to demonstrate that if she hadn’t received advice on how to put together a proposal—with flashy graphics, photos and carefully “following the letter of the solicitation,” says Goldsmith, using the government’s lingo.

And that is the secret of getting your first bid, says Goldsmith: getting help. “Dream big, and don’t do it alone,” advises Goldsmith, who was recently appointed to the National Women’s Business Council, a staff of 10 women who offer advice and policy recommendations to the White House and Congress. “You need to have an excellent team around you, and that includes teaming up with other businesses. Every small business should have a very clear vision as to what it wants to be when it grows up. But until that happens, don’t be afraid to go out and ask for help. You’ll be amazed at how often people are willing to freely share valuable advice.”

Geoff Williams has written extensively on business for Entrepreneur magazine, Credit-Cards.com, Small Business Success magazine and AOL’s WalletPop.com. He is also the author of “C.C. Pyle’s Amazing Foot Race: The True Story of the 1928 Coast-to-Coast Run Across America.” Reach him at gwilliams1@cinci.rr.com.