 Hey GovCon Giants family, your host Eric Coffey today with another wonderful episode on the podcast. I can't wait to tell you all about Kizzy Parks-Dominguez and her organization K-Parks Consulting based out of Melbourne, Florida. But before we jump into that, I just want to let you know we did on a temporary basis just re-release the GovCon Giants 1.0 course only. So for all those persons who have not had the chance to jump in and take advantage, we have re-released GovCon 1.0 with the course only and on top of that, if you're watching this in the month of November, there is a Black Friday special. So for the price of a half-day webinar, you can get a six-week instructional curriculum that is video step-by-step, all of the things you need to know for business development, capture management and more, 300 plus hours of content from me curated, organized from becoming a consultant to phone scripts, sample proposals and more. So check it out. We have just released a GovCon Giants 1.0 course for a limited time at a very, very deep discounted price. Again, we want to get this information out into the hands of all the people. You will be able to upgrade to the 2.0 later on if you should decide, but this is a way for those persons who have not had a chance to break in and you have limited means. This is a way to stair-step your way up, learn the activities after SAM, which you should be doing to win your first contract. I definitely want to say that. Now, today's guest, Kizzy Parks-Dominguez of K-Parks Consulting. She, for all those people out there who are interested in training, staff, IT, this is the episode for you. She's got an incredible story starting off as a child, collecting golf balls and reselling them to golfers and now as an entrepreneur, helping to now retrain some of the contracting specialists that we know, that we learn, working with folks and helping to facilitate DAU classes and coursework. And if you don't know DAU Defense Acquisition University, we've had some podcast guests before on the show that were DAU trainers. That is the university that all the contracting specialists and contracting officers attend to get their warrants in order to issue us contracts. So, Kizzy and her organization is now providing DAU-trained courses and curriculums. And we're going to talk about all of that plus more in today's episode. I'm so excited to welcome our next giant, Kizzy Parks-Dominguez. My name is Kizzy Dominguez and I'm the president of K-Parks Consulting Inc. We go by KPC. Okay. Hey, Kizzy, how are you today? Doing well. How are you, Eric? I'm doing excellent, excellent, just coming back off of a long weekend. But happy to be here. I'm excited. And particularly, you know, first of all, thank you for reaching out. Let's just get that out of the way. And then the second thing is that I'm really fascinated by what you do in particular, and I didn't realize this until I did my background research today, but you're doing a lot of things that I'm like kind of headed that direction. So this is going to be a great story for me. So I'm going to just like pick your brain and ask all the questions that I want to know. Oh, I love that. I love that. Right? And I hope that the audience wants to hear the same thing. So that's kind of what we're going to start. How's that? That sounds excellent. So where are you at today? Where are you letting everyone know where you're at? Where are you based out of? Well, I'm based out of sunny Melbourne, Florida. That's where we're based. And I've seen members all over, but the home office is in Melbourne, Florida. OK, and where's Melbourne for people who don't know? Melbourne, Florida is just south of Kennedy Space Center. OK, just east of Orlando. Yes, east of Orlando. All right, good stuff. OK, now how did you get to Melbourne? So OK, so when I was an undergrad, I was a psychology major. And initially, I thought that I was going to become a therapist. I thought, OK, I'm going to get a PhD. I'm going to become a therapist. Well, fast forward, I had a course where you actually have a client. And I was so stressed out from that one client as an undergrad student. I said, I'm not doing this. I'm not doing this at all. So FIT, thankfully, accepted me into grad school. They were the only one. And I ended up moving to Melbourne for graduate school. Oh, OK, so the college is there in Melbourne? Yes, yes. Oh, wow. Yeah, and again, the reason why I asked this is just like we were kind of talking offline before this call started. So many of my podcast guests are in and around Melbourne and Cape Canaveral because of the Space Center. Yes. So I thought there might have been some correlation with supporting the and, you know, the federal agencies in around the area and or small businesses working with federal agencies. That was kind of my thought. Yeah, it eventually evolved into that. But it was definitely for FIT. OK, OK, OK. I noticed you have 17,000 LinkedIn followers. Yes. That's pretty amazing. You're like, this guy was not going to ask me. I was like, yes, it's there. There's a little machine in the background around LinkedIn. Yes, yes, yes, I do. I have 17,000 followers and yes, I do. You know, the thing is it's LinkedIn. What's beautiful about it is you can grow organically. OK, majority of people are very friendly. It's a great resource. I'd like going on there. OK, no, no, I noticed that I saw you pop up out of nowhere commenting on some of my stuff. Yes. Yeah, no. And you said there's a machine behind it. Yes, I have like a social media team. OK, OK. Yes, I love it. So there's a lot there. So you know, it's funny that you mentioned the social media team and this is why I think I almost don't need questions. I just like if this thing flows, I was looking at your job opening for social media strategist and manager. Yes. And why did I look at it? Because someone said, oh, that's a really cool job description. Oh. And so I was like, OK, how can a job description be really cool? So let me take a look at your job description. And that is pretty. I like it. I like it. Is that how you write all your job descriptions? Some of them. So it's, you know, what's really important and I think like I made so many mistakes with hiring the wrong people. Like one time, one of our employees had to be escorted out of a government building. So I've made my share of mistakes. And for the social media position and for others, the people, persons ultimately support me. So I have a lot more latitude as far as fit with the culture, the kind of personality I'm looking for in comparison to if it were someone for like a government full-time equivalent or something of that nature. So that's why I was able to have a lot more fun. Plus it actually, it reflects who I am. In that the social media that I put out there must reflect me and vice versa. I like it. And since the majority of people are going to be listening to this audio, they can't see what's on our screen. I'm going to, how about you read up? These are a couple of things that sit out to me. I put he highlighted exude confidence like Beyonce or Drake. Yes, I did put that on there because it speaks and to the audience, it creates a picture to those who are contemplating applying. Must be a visionary and creative like Mr. Beast. So that one's a little tricky because you have to know who Mr. Beast is. Yeah, you have to know who Mr. Beast is. And if you don't know who Mr. Beast is, then maybe you're not as socially active as perhaps you should or maybe you Google him. I really love Mr. Beast. I don't know Mr. Beast. You got to look him up. He's awesome. You're not going to tell him about Mr. Beast? You have to look it up now. OK, but I do know this. The Gary V. I know that. Yeah, looking it up. So that one is it's in reference to first and foremost, which is awesome for all entrepreneurs is the word free, like free when there's no strings attached. Right. So it's a free PowerPoint slide deck. I believe it's around 200 pages and it teaches you how to convert your mainstream kind of media or content and how to take that and then create 64 pieces of content today based on one pillar of information you're coming in. We actually we use that approach, not the 64 pieces. There was one he did earlier that was like 32 pieces. But we do we were doing something very similar to that. And I actually used there's another slide deck that he has that I use that as a reference point to the marketing team. Oh, that's perfect. Because he is so my goodness. I love this so much. Well, I mean, if you look at the content that you commented on mine, that's kind of where it comes from. Oh, see, that's very smart. That is super smart. Take go back and take a look and you'll notice that. That's why you see the two minute snippets. You see the post with my image and a quote. You see a segment from a blog. Yeah, that all comes. That's that's a very similar methodology. Oh, well, I can't wait to take a look to to read. Because we actually so we what we do I start off from YouTube. So I have a YouTube video that they they chop up into snippets that then goes to my Instagram and my LinkedIn and Twitter. And then from that, they extract quotes that they then put image of me in the background with the quote. Smart that. So we actually on I.G. I put on four pieces of content every day. On I.G. every single day. So we have been slowly climbing as an authority on I.G. and LinkedIn as well. Yeah, definitely. That's I mean, that's the way to do it. You've got to just post the frequency, putting it out there. Yeah. So and it comes from these types of things. Congress says one of the people like yourself. So all right. No, no, that's that that was that was cool. Now you said that this job description is for, you know, internally, but obviously for the government, it's more formal, more boring, so to speak. Sometimes. Yeah, sometimes, definitely. Sometimes. Now, tell us about the services that you offer so that we can get into like a deep dive of your services, your business, your organization and then how do you guys start some services to offer? Training and development. Staffing, other professional services, IT, competency, modeling, research. And just I think it was on the other day. We are now certified by Defense Acquisition University because we also provide a ton of acquisition training. So we do a lot of that, a lot of that. And actually, we're going to I want to get into some of those DAU equivalency courses, but I want to save it for the end because that's something that I had someone on. I wanted my guest, Alex Hassan, and that was that was in the beginning, like maybe up to, you know, 20 episodes in and he worked at DAU. Oh, wow. Yeah. So I was fascinated about the program and the classes that they offered. So definitely one of the things that I wanted to do so definitely want to talk about that later. But let's go more into your current instructor and web-based training, curriculum development and executive coaching. So now I was reading some of your the articles that you've written before your published works and it's it's interesting because since like 2012, you've been working on. Diversity, inclusion, you've written articles about the subject and I mean, diversity ideologies in the US military to assume for diversity and inclusion practice standards, inclusion to higher education, diversity and cross-cultural confidence. Tell me about that. Obviously, you know, it's 2020. We know what's happening around. Tell me, like, how did that start and what's that all about? So OK. It may not be exactly what you think, but no, I don't know. No, no, I'm glad you asked because it's it's it's a great thing to talk about. So when I was in graduate school, my main focus was on occupational health and wellness because I'd lost a lot of weight. So that was my focus. OK. And it was like my last about my last year in graduate school. The head of the Department mentioned that Patrick Air Force Base had some paid research kind of assistant, researchy type positions there at this place called Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute. And I thought, oh, wow, paid in an office, real world experience and its military count me in. Let's do it. So fast forward. When I arrived, I was instructed that I would focus largely on topics around human relations, diversity and inclusion. So I really ran with it because in many ways, kind of the tenets of diversity and inclusion overlap with wellness because they're both about empowering and being better. OK. I mean, at the end of the day, that's what both are. And so so at that time, I really just latched on and went with it and being the programmed PhD type that I was at that time. What I knew was to publish and present. So I ended up with an edited book on diversity in the military and tons of book chapters and articles and presentations. And in reality, a lot, a lot of those presentations that I made on behalf of Diyomi ended up opening up doors when I about a year or so later, I went out on my own as a federal contractor. Interesting. OK. And that makes sense, right, because that was like past performance for you. Yeah, it definitely was past performance. And man, I was I don't know. Sometimes I wonder, what did people see in me? Because I remember at this National Guard event in Texas, I like put people to sleep. You know, my training and facilitation skills were OK, but they really needed a lot of work. How did you how did you prove that? Yeah, well, one is I knew like I had to. But in some ways, it just it kind of magically worked out. So at so when I was at Diyomi, I was actually privy to a lot of things that maybe it's common. I didn't know. I mean, I went from literally graduate school and then I incorporated my business. That was that was my my path. So at that time, Diyomi would procure, may it be a speaker or a training or some kind of technology or they would ask me to represent them at an event. And I always said, yes. So they hired an executive professor to come to Diyomi and hold a very intimate course on classroom engagement. And how to facilitate how to better how to just ask better questions, how to pull information out. So that really opened up my mind to what it meant to be a facilitator. And then down the road, different hires I made observations going on YouTube. I put in a lot of time and energy and to making to improving, making me better and by no means. I mean, people on my team are million times better, million times better at it. I like the word that you said people in your team are better at it than you. Those are some of the tenants that they talk about when hiring people, right? Yes. So can we share? A lot of folks are curious, how do you make that first hire? When do you know when to make that first hire? Right. You said you went from graduate school right into starting a business. And I would imagine that that has to be difficult and a number of ways. One is, you don't have money. And two is you really don't have a lot of experience. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I had like nothing. I had, you know, I thankfully, but maybe not thankfully. I thankfully had a what was equivalent to like a 401k and I ended up borrowing on that because I didn't know I had to wait thirty, sixty days to receive payment as a subcontractor. And they didn't explain a lot of these things. And it doesn't mean that they should have necessarily, but there were a lot of lessons learned. So initially I was all about and I still am about free, free, free, free. So I reached out to my alma mater and asked if there were any interns that needed to receive credit in exchange for work. So I had an intern, TJ, he was with me for maybe a couple of years. I ended up with several other interns. I taught online to supplement and to have a more regular pay paycheck coming in. I also use resources from my alma mater to build my website at the time and logo at the time, many, many moons ago. But when it came to that first, like official, official hire, you know, when I knew like I really had to make payroll. So I just felt it had gotten to the point where I had a couple of contracts. There was too much work and I just knew I needed help to satisfy clients. And there were skill sets that this person had. And so I ended up hiring this person. Now there was no, there was nothing formal. I want to put that out there. There was no like, OK, so here's the process. Like in reality, I base like our handbook off of a company I sub to. I base it off of theirs and then it ended up costing me all this money when I let the team member go because of their pay time off policy that I of course just cut and paste it and said, this works for me. I mean, a lot like probably 10 to 20,000. I don't remember the exact amount. It was a lot of money that it ended up costing. And I, you know, eventually, you know, he went off in File Magic elsewhere, but it was it was an awesome experience. It was an awesome experience. I don't know if you're you're ever ready and and you know, often these mishaps have led to so much growth, so much growth. Right, right. Now that I think that was great. And he definitely gave a lot of jewels there because, yeah, the first hire is great. But like you said, in between that, you did, like you said, free, free, free, as much as possible to grow and to build. Now, how did you know in starting out? Or maybe you didn't the direction that you want to go in because a lot of times people are audiences are saying or they're confused about, I have this skill set or this talent set. Is this what I should take to the government? Or should I take another talent set to the government? Or should I do something that maybe I'm not so good at, but that makes money? Yeah, I mean, that's really tough. I I can only speak from what happened with my experience. And in my experience, I became the diversity and inclusion expert because of interest. I look the part and I have an advanced degree. Hands down. Hands down. OK, so through the subcontractors that I met through different other people that I met, it then led to speaking engagements. We ended up with a contract with the National Guard to put on their entire diversity and inclusion conference in Reno, Nevada. I didn't have any background in conference planning and so on and so forth. So I ran with it. But then I started to notice something and I really took notice of the landscape. So at this time, a lot of money was being put into potentially diversity and inclusion and other kind of related like services. So training, data entry. So I noticed the landscape changed and what ended up occurring was I could just tell that, like I had to get I had to I had to move out of diversity and inclusion. OK, and it had nothing to do with politics. Or it was just like it was like a spidey sense. Like I knew if I continue down that path, I was going to be so pigeonholed and I was never, ever, ever going to get out of it. And that's around that time is when we ended up winning work with the USDA and that has permanently changed that. And I just ran with it because it's still around training and development. So to those of you that are listening, it really starts with your why. Why I did this was not only because the opportunity was there, but I knew when I was a little girl, two things. I knew I was going to get a PhD and I also love selling golf balls through this fence in Danville, Illinois to make extra money. And I knew I was going to be an entrepreneur. I didn't think I was going to do it in my 20s. I thought, hey, this might happen way down the road, you know, 10, 15 years in or when I'm a professor, I'll be the professor who consults and makes extra money. I thought that is what I was going to become. So my why has always been and always is to help people. That's why I went in psychology is about helping. So for me, all of the ventures that I pursue, all of the contracts I go after, all the opportunities, it all is round helping. It's all around helping. That's that's my why. So if your why is you just want to make a quick book, then figure out how to do it, you know, or dip your toe in there. If you're your why right now is, well, I have this skillset and technology will try it out, see if that works for you. Just it just takes a little time, takes a little time. Now the the USDA contract, I know now you have like five different areas that you're working, but what area was that in? Was that in staffing or was that in professional training? It was in professional curriculum development, training, IT is where it all was. OK, and then you expanded from that. Yes, yes, and I helped grow that contract because actually it was with an ADA firm that was underperforming and they vetted several eight days. And when I responded to the contract, I added a curriculum development position. They didn't ask for it. I thought, well, this doesn't make sense. They they want these trainers, they want this IT person, but who's helping with the curriculum other than their federal counterparts? So I added it and they said, oh, my gosh, you know, our GS 13 loves it and so we're going to fund it. And many years later, they're they're still funding it. Nice. Wow. Wow. Wow. That's great. That's great. I actually I've just recently brought on a curriculum development person or some of the offerings that we have internally here. And so I'm learning all about that myself. So that's why I said this is a good story for me to hear because. You know, you did that. How long ago was that? Twenty what? Fourteen. Twenty thirteen was the. Yeah, I mean, you're six years ahead of me. Oh, no, you're six years ahead of me. I want to I need a YouTube channel going. Let me tell you. It's a lot of work. Need your help with that. OK, no, it's fine. We can we can borrow services. That sounds good. Yeah, right. So all right, now you said you help the existing A&A firm. Were you A&A at the time or no? Yes. OK, so you were. So we replace them. OK, OK. Yeah, that was that was true, true, harsh, but true. The truth. I mean, but it's the truth. It's business. No, it's business. If let me think about it, if you place an order with your favorite online company, what mine is Amazon? If I place an order, it doesn't come. OK, let me try again. It doesn't come. OK, next time I get it, it's something else. Am I going to continue ordering from them? No, I'm going to stop. At some point in time, I'm going to say, you know what? I love you, Amazon, love you, Jeff Bezos, but I'm going to have to to turn somewhere else. Sure, no, no, no, no. So it's no different. It's no different and it's taxpayer dollars. You should be they should be getting what they pay for. Yeah, or more than what they pay for it, right? Definitely, definitely. Let me ask you this, because I didn't. At what point did you decide to become a day? And when did you become a day? That is, you know, especially for those of you listening, there is no business plan, marketing plan, there's none of this. No, no, there wasn't. It was literally like, oh, you should become a government contractor. Bam, and then boom, all this happened. I mean, there's a little more to it. But what I did was attend every, almost every single outreach, SBA score, everything under the sun to learn more about government contracting. And along the way, at my biggest clients location, at that particular time, a person who worked for the Navy, she said, Kizzy, it would be much easier to get to you if you were an A&A firm. And I was like, oh, what's this? So then I hired a company apply. Nice, that's what I did. And to me, that makes sense, because you are already doing contracts. Right. So like you said, when I went, this is one of the things that I've learned from interviewing guests is when the government asks you to have it, that's to me is when it makes sense. Right. And it goes along with the lean startup approach. We hands down to practice that, which is in essence, you may build a prototype, your minimal viable product, but you don't go out there and spend all this money and resources to build something that nobody wants or you don't know if they really want it. So knowing that this particular stakeholder mentioned, hey, you should have an A&A. I went out there and obtained it. Makes sense. How long have you been in the program? OK, so this is another interesting one, but it's good for listeners because I learned something during COVID that I just I didn't know. Maybe maybe those of you listening, you know, I wish I knew. I suspended my A&A. Whenever there's a national, I think a national disaster, you can legally suspend your A&A. I had no idea. We have a lot of national disasters in Florida. Oh, all the time. All the time. I had no idea. I had no idea. Nobody said, hey, you can. Nobody ever said anything to me. So I now graduate in December of 2020. When did you explain? You didn't explain. When were you supposed to graduate? September 2nd. OK, so you suspended it for the emergency to get by yourself some of the months. No, no, I suspended because I was unable to market because of everything going on with COVID, like because people, all the events. Oh, yeah, everything was cancelled. Right. Ah, that's true. So you suspended it for those months to be able to then graduate. OK, right. Oh, all right. So it's an it's an option, you know, a hurricane or any kind of national disaster. You can suspend your A&A either up to a year or up to the amount of time you have remaining. And then they add it on the back end, but you can only suspend once. OK, OK. All right. Interesting. They know that about you. You kind of beat me to the punt, but. You talked about a little bit about the golf ball story. Yes. Tell me what was Little Kizzy like. Oh, man, Little Kizzy. Oh, man, Little Kizzy, Little Kizzy. I was I think I was I mean, talkative, nice, friendly, you know, weird, I'm still weird. But very curious, extremely curious. And my adopted family always encouraged that. They always encourage a curiosity. They encouraged exploration, excelling in school and being entrepreneurial. So when we lived in Danville, Illinois, there was a golf course that was like adjacent to this alley that ran behind my friend Ria's house. So I would always hang out at Ria's house or in her yard because she had this huge, huge yard. We didn't have a big yard like Ria. So I noticed these golf balls in the alley and my grandmother, my grandma, clump, love playing golf. And so we would often buy her different golf balls for the holidays. So I knew of the value of different golf balls. So I knew that I would go by them and I'm like, well, this is money, you know, just laying here because they all have different values. So I would collect them, take them home, clean them, save the really good ones for her. And then I would sell the other ones through the fence to the golfers. So I could buy onions and nutty bars. Yeah, I would like go up like I'm trying to hustle other stuff. And I'm like, hey, excuse me, I need some golf balls. And there's like this little girl with like a bag of golf balls. I mean, they probably were like what in the world. Right. Right. So I did that often. It would buy treats. How old were you? Let's see. Danville, I was in the fifth and sixth grade. Was it 10, 11? Mm hmm. Wow. I love it. It's been seventh. I think seventh. So you're probably 12. Yeah, fifth, sixth, seventh grade. OK. Yeah. Wow, I like it. Now, you said you always knew you wanted to be an entrepreneur. I always knew it. I could feel it. And it's intriguing because later on in life, Irene, I reunited with my birth family. And so my grandfather Garzoloni was on my birth mom's side, Teresa's side. He was very, very like super entrepreneurial. She shared with me recently how he she showed me at the house like, oh, here's these are grapes that your grandfather grew because he started to make wine. Here's the putting green he created because he and his brothers built a golf course in Muskegon, Michigan. And my grandfather just created the holes based on the designs just in his head. She also showed me, oh, your grandfather had a popcorn cart. She said, you're so much like him. He's always trying to think of these ideas. I never knew any of this information. So I feel like it's always been there to be entrepreneurial. And so it's just there. You say you were adopted. Yes. So you were raised by your adopted family. Yep. Yes, raised by them. And they encouraged all of the kiziness. They encouraged it. Yeah. That's awesome. Yeah. And then later on in life, you reconnected back with your original family. With my birth mom and my birth father. I'm really close with my birth mom and my three brothers. But yes, yes. So then learned about my grandfather more. I keep learning more and more about him. And one of my uncles, my uncle Mike, he was pretty entrepreneurial too. I think he had a couple of restaurants that I'm aware of. Do you think it's genetic? Yes. Hands down. Do you really? Yes, I do. Hands down is genetic. I think it's genetic. There's other, you know, that environmental too. Right. Here's why I say it's largely genetic, because especially now, it's sexy. It's interesting. It's the cool thing to do to be an entrepreneur, right? It's cool. And it's cool if you're a solopaneur or you're like, hey, I just want to be a subcontractor. It's all I want to be. I just want it to be me. I don't want employees. I don't want to do a pay bra. Nothing wrong with that. Absolutely nothing. But what has occurred is this, oh, I own this big company and I'm going public or I have 500 employees and we're bringing it $25 million a year. You know, it's become so sexy and glamorous that everybody thinks, well, this is easy. I just start a business and I sell something and poof, I have all these employees and they don't realize what really goes into being an entrepreneur. It's beyond grit. It's beyond hustle. It's beyond struggle, because at the end of the day, you or whoever owns the entities or entity, you are responsible for everything, for all of it. Somebody gets hurt, you're responsible. Somebody gets sick, you're responsible. You need to make payroll, you're responsible. There's no phone a friend. There's no I'm sick that day. I can't be reached. And so it takes a special skill set and that's often why so many entrepreneurs fail. That's why so many businesses go out of business because there's more than just what you see. We see the end product, right? We see the glitter and the gold and the name on the building and, oh my gosh, you have 200 employees. I remember you when we served together. We all see that, but what we really don't know is, OK, what's their profit margin? What's the duration of their contracts? Do they have any intellectual property? What's their true business model? Do their clients really like them? And do they like themself? Do they like what they're doing? So there's a lot there. And so I think that's often why some fail and then also, this is not like a one-stop shop. It's not, for the rest of my life, I'm going to be a government contractor into my late 80s. No, I'm going to be an entrepreneur and hustle businesses. I already started another business I'm related to government contracting. That, to me, is the spirit of a true entrepreneur that where it's just innate in you. You just keep going. You keep creating and building and creating and building and then that's your path. I like the description. I want to get the description. Can I use it? Of course, you can use any if you want. I like the description. It's all open. It's all open. No, I do. I really do like that description. As we discussed beforehand, one of the things I remember when I could out make payroll, right? And I had a really difficult time and I wasn't sure what was going to happen. And like you said, it wasn't a very warm feeling. It wasn't comforting. I didn't have anyone I could call. I didn't have any friends. It wasn't celebrated. Yeah, my name was in the building. I didn't know how I was going to keep paying for it to stay on the side of that building, right? And my space and so all those things. I remember one of my bookkeepers, Tammy. She said to me once, you know, Kizzy, you sure do have this knack at finding money to borrow. She's like, you have borrowed from some of these companies. I've never heard of them before. Like cabbage. I didn't know what that was in your QuickBooks. I've used cabbage. I've used cabbage. I've used cabbage. Yeah, many of us, probably those of you listening have used cabbage. And it is. It's not knowing if you're going to make payroll. I mean, we had mounds of debt. And I was just doing so many bad things and making so many bad decisions, you know, just overpaying people and not taking care of numbers and just ignoring everything like, oh, whatever. There was just overarching just, OK, I got a contract. And I proceeded like that. And the thing is, rarely does a person pull you aside or in this industry really want to unpackage everything and really want to unpackage. So you realize, oh, OK, they're making 2% on that. Oh, OK. And again, if that's what you want to do by all means, you know, do it. But rarely, too often, again, it's so focused on here's my name and here's the building and here's how many employees do you have? What's your annual revenue? What contract vehicles are you on? And the focus is so on the wrong thing. I draws me to, and I've said it a couple of times, and I forget where it comes from. I have to look it up. But it says something like revenues, vanity, profit, sanity, cash is king. And that's what happened. So a lot of I recently met entrepreneur that was doing $20 million a year, but he's making 3%. And I go, you get $20 million with a liability for a couple hundred thousand a profit. You'd be better for the solopreneur because if one thing goes wrong, you're up like everything is up and ended. You would be better just white labeling and reselling on Amazon. Yeah. And there's nothing wrong with that either. No, nothing wrong with that. There's a huge industry on that, I've thought about it. I'm seriously interested in white labeling something. I mean, I'm there with you, but people don't wanna talk about that. They don't really want to show you that part, which is so odd. It seems so odd because I feel like in so many other industries, people are very open about the profit margin or the amount of money it takes for them to obtain a subscriber or somebody to purchase something. So yeah, there's a lot there. One thing I realized, I had a mentor through mentor protégé program and learned a lot and learned a lot of what not to do. Learned a lot of what not to do. And what I really learned was, I just, it's like it doesn't make any sense to have all this energy going out into trying to win FTEs as if it's like a game show. Like in a game show, sometimes you see that thing they get into and it blows air and money's going all over and you have to grab all the money. And when you come out, whatever is like flowing out of your clothes is the money you get to keep. And you're like, because you're so excited, you know, I'm full of adrenaline. And that's how many approach like FTEs. And as I observed that, I was like, you know, this just doesn't make sense because with people, with people comes liability, HR, benefits. I mean, you're now, you have to remember what you are providing for them is now impacting them and their family. And their family's family. You know, you're impacting where they live. What kind of schools their kids go to. So, and ultimately if these employees are physically, or even if they're not physically, if they're working virtually, the client's going to know them better than they know you and often they're going to want them and not you. So then that provides another layer of client relations that people also don't really talk about. So, share if you don't need to. You just like build something back there. Let's talk about that because I had someone recently who was a janitorial company. And like you said, she's a sub. And then she said that they wanted to start taking her employees. The agency did. And I know, I work at FTEs. I've heard that before where some of the agencies wanted to pull your FTEs. Yeah, I personally love that. I love when they, I do. I love it when the agency wants to hire my team because I see that as a reflection of the company. And I come from a place of abundance. I see the world as full of abundance. So if someone says, hey, we want to hire, fill in the blank. Hey, awesome. I'm Mike, that's one example. They hired Mike. I thought it was awesome. It was great. He was a great fit. He's military. It was great. I love that. Because it's given him something that I couldn't give him. No government contractor, unless there's some special benefits program that you offer that I don't know about, can offer what the government offers. They offer pension. Hands down. You strip away everything else. They get a pension. And if one is looking for security, that's awesome. And then it also shows the client, hey, that KPC, they did a great job. They did such a great job that we wanted to hire Mike. So that's how I look at it. I love it. But it also shows you have to also have humility as well as you have a strong recruiting plan in place or get ready to create one. Because if not, then you will be unprepared to backfill the Mike's that are out there. Interesting. And listening to your story, I've never realized that I've actually placed some of my employees with the government, with the agency. And it wasn't until you just said that that I realized I did the same thing. But I actually helped. I walked them into the agency, got them full-time positions with, like you said, pensions and retirement. Huh. I never thought about that until you made that statement. Yeah, I mean, to me, it's just a blessing. It's such a blessing. That's what I felt about it. And that's why I did it. Because I said, hey, guys, listen. And I did this on my way of closing my organization. I started helping people place them with some of the agency that would work supporting as a private contractor. I was supporting them. And I knew that they had gaps. They needed to fill a full construction manager for project manager and things like that. So I started referring some of my guys to work with them. Oh, wow. But I never looked at it from a standpoint of what you just said until you brought it up to me. But I felt that way. I was like, look, this is a full-time position. They're gonna have benefits. There's no contracts. This is forever. And they've been, they're actually, some of my people are the best members of the team that they're on. Yes. Yeah, which is a testament to you. It's a reflection of you, Eric. Yeah, that's awesome. I never thought about that. Thanks, Kizzie. You made me feel good today. Well, great. Listen, so tell me, now, how do you start? And again, we hear that you're an entrepreneur. How do you keep from shining optic syndrome? Past being dragged. I don't know. I was gonna give a visual of being dragged over. I love your visuals. Keep them up. Everyone says that, like, if being dragged over coals. It's more like, you know, just running into a door or having a door slammed in your face repeatedly. I mean, that's really what does it. So I don't like the shiny, you said shiny, right? Yeah, shiny. Yeah. I don't go after the shiny because there's too much competition. I like to create my own ocean. So I go after opportunities where most people overlook them because it's not sexy. It's not sexy to say, oh, so tell me, what are some of your new projects? Well, I have a Catholic parish member. Oh, oh, Catholic parish? No. Like, it's just like, bam, bam, bam. You know, or, because if you said like, oh, what's your new project? Oh, well, I just got 30 FTEs. Oh, really? Then that's sexy, right? Right. So I go after things that many people overlook. Also, I don't like to get involved in protest and drama and, you know, everyone fighting for the same client. There's too much just because there's so much. There are so many agencies in the government that buy, as well as Sibers and all these other ways to get business that, you know, focusing on that one agency because they're within an hour drive from you, I just, I don't do it. I don't do it at all. So that's why most, pretty much all of our clients are not in Florida. No one's in Florida except for a few of us. Right. Yeah, so I like that. And I also like to look at profit margin. What can be had from this or my strategic plan? How does that fit into the bigger plan? Now you said that you didn't do business plans in the beginning, but it sounds like to me you're doing plans today. A little plan, like every year, I kind of had goals that I'm looking to move toward. And then there's some other things that I'm going to start doing shortly. It's not something that's so, like, here's my 30 page PDF. You can go into our share folder. I don't have that. It's more of every year I put out like the theme for the year and objectives. And I just know, I just have there where we're going as time goes on. And I've expressed it with key team members. So they're aware. Do you have, we talked about some of your hiring mishaps and things like that. Is there something that you can share with us that we can learn from? Yeah, I'll share. Oh my goodness. There's not many. What are those stories that we can learn from? Oh my gosh, there's so many. Let's see which one shall I pick first. Okay, I'm going to share a few, if I may. No, no, absolutely. I'm going to share a few here. So, one of them that I hired is particular person had a lot of corporate experience and behaved in a certain way. So if you came across this person, you would say, oh my gosh, wow, they're very polished. They're put together, all of those things. And I thought, okay, well their corporate experience would be very helpful with our training and development efforts because I didn't know how you scale training development, how you managed it. I just knew that my training skills had elevated to the point where agencies wanted to work with us. I just didn't know how to manage or lead any of that whatsoever. So I brought this person on needless to say. Needless to say. This person really inflated their previous role. This came out with their work. And then on top of it, this person was like very controlling and toxic and I didn't know this. Because the person was so controlling and toxic, they would say, you know, Eric, I talked to Kizzy first thing in the morning and last night for a good of bed. And they would tell everybody these things and so they were like gaslighting and doing all these things like, oh well, there's no reason to tell Kizzy, you can just tell me. And I didn't know, like I had no idea any of this was going on because we've always been very virtual. And so the truth always reveals itself. And so it did as well as, and this is more important, it really impacted the client. And I didn't know what was going on with the client because as you can imagine, she wouldn't have told me. And so then the client removed her from the contract and some other things surfaced and I had emergency meeting with the team. And I mean, so much came out, like there was so much damage she did that things kept coming out for a good three years. Like it was so pervasive, like I just had no idea. And I think that's, you know, I'm very grateful it happened because I'm never having that happen again. Like never, ever, ever. And I've made sure that lots of things have been changed to prevent it. But so many areas were impacted that it was like, I just was like, I couldn't even believe it. It was really sad. I mean, really, really sad. I don't hold a grudge or anything. It's just, you know, it just is what it is. We're all human beings, you know? We're, it is what it is. So would you like me to share another one? I do. I'm learning from you. I told you that, look, this podcast is for me. I'm going to share the podcast with the world, but this is for me. Okay, good, because I'm glad that you, so, okay, so you know, this one, I'm just going to preface by saying. By the way, let me just, let me tell you why I want you to share so you can have some context. I just brought on someone that's developing curriculum as well from the corporate world. Oh, so you see, you don't even know how you're helping or hurting based on, see? But let's keep talking. Good luck with that, because what I learned was, which makes sense, because the company she worked with was so large, they had a standardized process and procedure for creating curricula. So literally, she just followed the process. This person's a little bit different in a sense that they create curriculums for multiple companies as an endocrine contractor. So they're used to developing curriculums for several different Fortune 50 Fortune 100 companies. Well, that's really helpful. And there's nothing wrong with that. There's nothing wrong with following a template. It's just, you know, I, you know, you didn't have a template to follow. Yes, I don't have a template to follow. Yeah, I have no template. Yeah, fair enough. So this next one, you know, there are times where things are just, just things are gonna happen. There's really no matter what, there isn't really much you can do. So we brought on a team member to fill an onsite position. And this person had a ton of experience in the federal government, right? And so we brought them on, they were onsite. I think they were a lieutenant colonel. So I just was like, oh, okay, they're a lieutenant colonel. This is great. This is awesome. Okay, great. I think, I don't even know if it was four months. I think it was in like two months. We get a frantic call from the core and my manager of getting things done, that is her title. She's like my kind of operations queen. She's then informed that they, that if this person is in the building, they need to walk her out immediately because she did not pass the background check. So this is different from, you know, where I mentioned earlier about the back about being walked out. So thankfully she was at a doctor's appointment. So we took care of that. And then I think she sent a text and basically said something like, like alluded to, oh, this happened with the other company that she was with before us. Well, because it turns out, we think because of the code, we don't know. So I don't, you know, I don't, you know, but it seems like she committed some kind of like sex-based crime or sexual. Because of the code that it's kind of gross. I mean, it was like super serious. So I thought, well, of course the other company let you go too, because you were able to get in a couple of months because that's how long it takes for this to come back. And then you never told anybody, and it went to the, But they failed to disclose this on their application, right? Right. So that one, I was like, oh my goodness. And, and on top of it, in case you're wondering, we did not find her. We used a firm that specializes in finding people for government contracts. Like they claim they have this process and I fired them that day. I said, because I'd used them before and I was like, you gave us a person who did not pass a background check. You said you vetted them. Right. You know, how embarrassing is this? Right. So that one, yeah, that was one of many. Those were two great stories. And I'll tell you why. One is, you know, which you hear from an entrepreneur world is trust, but verify. Yes. Yes. And that's a great example. Like you said, of using another company who claimed to have done the verification didn't happen. It didn't happen. And I would also add to that, higher, slow and fire fast. People always say that, Kizzy, but when you need people, you feel desperate. I get it. I've been there and then it ended up turning into I had to get my lawyer or I had to travel to Maryland because of a lawsuit. I mean, it just, but I always win. I'm undefeated in the courtroom. So undefeated, undefeated. I love it. Wow. Now, in terms of your curriculums, are there software that you use or programs that you use to help develop your curriculums? This is more tapping. No, no, it varies. It varies. Sometimes it's the agency. Sometimes it's Adobe Connect. Sometimes it's PowerPoint. It's whatever they're interested in is what we use. Okay, okay. And then when you don't have the knowledge of developing the curriculum, how do you go out and find those missile pieces? That's a great question. So that actually happened with acquisition. Okay. So we won a ton of acquisition training opportunities and I brought on board a woman. She's a Marine and she had served in different contracting officer, contracting officer representative positions and brought her on as an SME and then through her ended up connecting to other SMEs to help because it's not something that you can just obtain. You have to have a certification to, yeah. So we really leverage SMEs. Yep. Also we've done this, which is what I'm about to share. I think this is a nugget that many people overlook and that is you can buy other people's curriculum. I don't know. So you just contact them. Let's say it's a trainer or let's say somebody you know or you know of, you could say, hey Steve, do you by chance have some curriculum on communication? You know, maybe four hours worth. Yeah, I do. Okay, well how much, you know, could I buy it from you? And more than often they're gonna say yes because it may not have crossed their mind. You could also reach out to a bigger company. I reached out to a large company and purchased two courses of their curriculum. Nice. Nice, I like that. Okay, this is good. This is a good Monday for me. No, good, good, good. And there's also, there's other places you can go. So there's like one resource I really like, it's called E-Learning Brothers. They have a lot of resources for curriculum. I'm not sure if, I think they have some free, but there's gotta be others that are similar to an E-Learning Brothers or a place that you can just go obtain the content. And then there are so many places nowadays to download copyright free images like pexels.com. They have amazing photos, so there's a ton of resources. I like it, I like it. Tell me, you said you like purchasing on Amazon. Tell me what your most recent purchase that made you happy. Oh man, it's gonna make me happy when I get it. Okay. So the most recent purchase is a football, NFL kind of grade football. So I always come up with these sports goals. So one goal was to catch one handed like OBJ, so I can do that. And so now I'm gonna throw 60 yards. So I have, I am, like seriously. So I have a football here, but it's a very special football. So I'm gonna use this football, make sure it's legit. I'm gonna run it by my trainer, Derek, just make sure it's a real football and then purchase some more so then I can start practicing my throws. What's that about setting the goals with the sports? What's that all about? I love sports. I'm very athletic. I love sports. I work out like six days a week typically. I love it so much. And it's just something about it. It's just something because it takes a different skill set, different but similar. And it's not like an unrealistic goal. It's not like, oh, I'm gonna get drafted to the NBA. I mean, that's not happening. I do have a goal to play fly football, but right now, fly football is not active. And I think I can realistically play fly football. I think so. But for goals like the catching one handed, I didn't really, it's something that you just learn. So I learn and I practice and Derek would throw the ball to me and he's worked with the U University of Miami and all these things. So, yeah, I know I saw that. You have this, yes. Yes, he's pointing to his helmet there. He has his helmet. And so, yeah, so I just am like, hey, it's fun. And I know I can do it. That's the best part because it's like a business, right? At some point in time, you really, and maybe every day, you have to have that moment with yourself where you're like, I'm gonna do this, I can do it. I'm gonna get through this, this shall pass. And the more that you provide self positive self talk, then the more and more you're gonna excel and better gonna be and your team's gonna understand it. And they're gonna be like, oh my gosh, woo. You know, you're on this train forward. I wanna hop on that train too. And that same mindset is there for football because I know people doubt me or think I'm crazy or wonder, okay, whatever, but I'm telling you now it's gonna happen. It's gonna happen, it will be recorded, and I'm not worried about that. I think it'll probably take a few months. Maybe not. I don't know, maybe it'll take a week. I have no idea. I know I can throw at least 20 yards, so what's another 40? I'll just keep practicing and you will see it. Can you send us a clip with a one handed catch? I can't. I have it on, it's on my TikTok. We will insert it into the video portion of this on YouTube. Oh, please do, yes. It's a- We will. I do, I have it. We will insert it. And then if by the time this comes out, you do the 60 yard throw, we'll insert that as well. Oh good, good, good. Cause we have a whole plan. Like we have a, we have a whole plan of how- I like the plan. Yeah, so. What have you done to keep sane for the last, you know, eight years in business? How have you kept sane? Let's see. You know, here's how I'm- Ways I've kept sane. I mean you talk about the lawsuits and walk the people out. No, no, no, no, not the real. And let me tell you, Kizzy, I'll just be honest with you. I remember the first time Maria met me, we had, and I'll just give you some background. We were somewhere and I got a phone call and it says, hey, my guys, they pulled a power, they connected with a power line, like a cable overhead power cable. They pulled on a light pole, like an electric pole. And then there's a start of big, huge fire like in the middle of the street. And so, and I remember this. And I said, well, did you guys call 911? I said, yep, we called 911, the fire department's in their way. I said, okay, all right, well, let me know how it goes. And then I looked at the phone and I went back to work. And Maria's, how can you go back to work? And knowing that, I said, well, I've been in these situations so much that it's, I'm kind of not, I don't even know the right word, I'm just neutral to it. The outcome is gonna happen and regardless, like you said, the investigation's gonna take place and what happened and what was done with it. I have all the protections in place, the assurances and things that come over me. So I felt okay with it. No, I wasn't happy. How have you been able to handle your sanity throughout the years? Well, I mean, a lot of it has been, like the two big ones have been like, faith has been big, faith has really, really, really been big. And then also like having like an outlet or a group to receive support from. So I belong to the CEO Nexus Group out of Orlando and it's this particular group is made of all female business owners. We're all in different industries, but regardless, like for instance, one of them, I didn't even know this was a business. She helps companies obtain licenses for their restaurants and bars and then she'll also resell them depending on the state law. One woman has a concierge medical facility. Her and her husband are both medical doctors. There's another medical doctor who does something different. There's a woman who owns salt rooms and franchises them out. I mean, it's just the most unique this variety of women entrepreneurs. But what's great about it and what's great about them is regardless of our industries, we all have the same kind of problems. Right, right. There's, you need to hire, you need to promote. How do you let somebody go? How do you deal with when somebody's committed fraud or natural disaster or something like you described when there's literally a fire and how do you handle it or if you're being sued or you're going through a divorce. I mean, we talk about everything in there and we also learn. And so like they've covered estate planning and wills and that's very important because again, we don't talk about that. We talk about, I got that big contract, I have 300 employees, we don't talk about, well, what happens if you die tomorrow? What happens? Especially if you're married, what happens? Is your spouse gonna inherit everything? So that's been so beyond helpful because wow, you know, with the joint ventures and other things, I have encountered a whole new slew of problems and rewards and benefits, but they've been really, really helpful in dealing with those and just keeping me sane and we meet monthly for the most part. Nice, is there, are those, I would imagine, it's called CEO Nexus Group. Yes. Are there chapters around the country? You know, I'm unsure if there are, but there may be something similar. Right. With a different name. Yeah, and... Yeah, I was part of EO, Entrepreneurs Organization, which sounds similar. Okay. Yeah. Now tell us about the faith part. How do you learn to have faith? That's a great question. I have always felt it. Like, so when I was a little girl, you know, remember I'm very curious. So I found these papers that describe, it's what's called non-identifying information. So they describe my birth mom and my birth father. So mind you, I grew up in an interracial household or my adopted family. We didn't know that. We never said that earlier. Yeah, I didn't say it. So they were an interracial couple and I knew I was biracial. So growing up, I had this like rosary and in the non-identifying documents, it stated that my mom was Italian, part Italian. So I thought, okay, so she's Catholic and she must be super religious. She left me, I'm sorry to giggle. Cause I thought she left me these rosaries. Like there was like an Annie moment, right? I felt like little orphan Annie. But then it's funny because when I reunited with her, she was like, what is that? I did not leave you that rosary. She was like, I left you a heart necklace with a message in it that said, I love you. That's what she had left me. But nonetheless, because of her faith, she gave birth to me and she's a very devout Catholic and a very, very religious person. So I always felt that. I don't know how to explain it. Like ever since I was a little child, I always felt a connection to God and a connection to religion that growing up, we lived in really rural towns in the Midwest. I would literally go to church. My adopted parents were not big into church. I would just hang out with a friend and go to whatever church she went to. I don't know the denominations. I have no idea. I would just, you know, kids, you wanna go to church? Yeah, I'll go to church. Hey, you wanna go to this service? Oh, I'll go to service. And so I did that a lot as a little kid, go to Bible camps and Bible studies. And it was just always had been there. So later on in life, that kind of changed. And it wasn't until probably in the past seven years, eight years or so, a lot of that changed. And I really started to focus more on my faith and having a stronger connection to God and working on a lot of things internally just because of things going on in life. And so I've done that through, I love Joel Osteen and through Calvary, the Calvary brand of churches. Okay, all right. No, that's interesting. Any other recommendations that you have for people? I love those too. Anything else, literature, poetry, you know, things that have helped you along the way that you draw back from from time to time, you know, maybe once a year, things that you look back on and you say that really helped me out in terms of building a business, growing, hiring people, whatever the case may be. Maybe an app, maybe a software, maybe a tool. There is a lot, wow, there's a lot. Wow, just okay. So I have to give you two if I may. Okay. You asked for one, but I have to give you two. So one, I love Slack. I love the platform Slack and here's why I love it. Number one, it is an easy way to engage with your team. Hands down, there's an app for it on the phone. And it's great to see their picture, engage with them, have interaction and it's also amazing because it holds documents and other attachments. So what's great is if something happens, it's the fastest way to reach me and it's professional and everything is stored. We do pay for that, but they have a free option. Check it out. I love Slack. It's so easy to use and it's a great way to quickly send messages to the team. The other thing is, I think what's really important and again, it's kind of overlooked in many ways and that is just work on your sales skills. Gotta work on your sales skills, sales skills. You gotta work on your sales skills. You gotta work on those. I really like Grant Cardone. I like the Grant Cardone approach. I pay for his Cardone University. I think it's a whopping $59.99 a month. I mean, if that's outside of your budget, then check them out, YouTube, podcast, what may have you. I love that because I only had a background in telemarketing. I didn't really have a background in this bigger area of sales. And so his techniques have helped tremendously. They helped lead to a million-dollar contract because I used some of his little tricks and tips for the proposal and this is a government client. This is not a non-government client. I just suggest that because I think often we think it's just, we lead with our set aside, our capabilities and you're supposed to open the door and throw money in my face. And maybe I hire someone. And in reality, that is not the case at all. In reality, that is not the case at all. There's still a sales element. They have to want to work with you. They have to be able to trust you. You know, there's all these other little things. There's little techniques to get them closer to wanting to work with you, not just because you're an A&A or service disabled or because you have 20,000 years of experience with the FDA, it doesn't matter. They have to want to work with you because at the end of the day, you have to have a solution to their problem. I like that. I have a ton of more questions, but we've got to both go. Murray already says I'm long-winded on these podcasts. No, no, you're perfect. I like it though. Tell us something that you could use help with right now for yourself. Oh man, I mean, my biggest, I mean, hands down, the biggest area I could use help with, there's two, because I can't, you know, it's... I know, you always gonna get me two or three. Oh, there's gonna be two, three, four. I mean, seven. You want five? Seven, good. Here's my list. One is social media. I mean, social media, and I gotta, yeah, I gotta do that. The biggest one is social media. And then the other one is, so outside of the government, I plan on selling this, like, program, and I just don't know what it should be on. You know, I thought a little bit about motivation. I thought, well, should it be something around motivation, positive motivation in making money, or about, you know, getting like a side hustle? I don't know. So I would love help with, as far as, what are some needs out there? Do you foresee, is there a greater need for people to make money, for positive motivation, who buys this kind of stuff, as well as, if you have social media talents, and you are prepared to really grind, then, you know, contact me. QZDominguez is, I'm easy to find. I'm on LinkedIn with my 17,000 followers. And, but in all seriousness, like just DM me on LinkedIn, or you can, my email address is right there in my profile on LinkedIn. You can just send an email to Info. But to help with either, I would love that, would totally love that. Yeah, it's Kizzy Lightbulb Parks, Dominguez Lightbulb PhD. Yes. Just in case you can't find her. Yes, I put in those light bulbs to stand out. I see you, you're standing up. Yes, that's it. Okay, and then, so the second part, let's expand on the second part. I can stay for more minutes. Okay, that's fine. Let's expand on the second part. So you're trying to create, you want to create something. Create something like a coaching program to sell to help people who want to. Something. They want to make more money or get a side hustle, or maybe there's negativity holding them back in life and they want to become more positive. I don't really know, I don't know. I mean, I don't, I somehow don't think there's ever enough of that. Okay. And what I've learned by being on YouTube personally is that, and so honestly, one of the things that I'm getting to now is actually coaching and executive coaching. Oh, cool. I'm actually creating that right now as we speak because so many people reached out to me for coaching, which I don't offer, but because the demand has grown beyond my capabilities, I guess I have to answer the call, right? It's like, okay, I don't do it, but I guess I better figure this thing out because so many people are wanting more than just a basic how-to course, or even an advanced how-to course. They're like, okay, I have more money than time. How do I pay to get more access to be able to do some of these things? So we're working on that now, but what I would say from my experiences is learning by being on YouTube and on all social media platforms is that people, they identify with you, the person, Kizzy, and there's a lot of people that, so for example, if you look at the lady who wrote the book, White Fragility, you see the timing of that, and now she's a best seller, blah, blah, blah. I think there's so many people that can identify with your story. And I think especially now, Kizzy, I think especially now in the times, I'm sure you have a lot of stories outside of government contracting world that have shaped the person you are today. And I can't imagine what it's like to live by racial. I can tell you what it's like to be black and to be intelligent and to speak proper and live in a black neighborhood where you were outcast and then go to school where you were with the gifted kids and you were not so welcomed as well. So I mean, I can't even imagine being biracial, but I think that any story where we talk about overcoming challenges, obstacles, fears, I think, I just don't think there's enough of that. And particularly coming from your unique perspective. Does that make sense? Because no one has that, no one has that. I guarantee if we go look online, no one's gonna have, there's not gonna be a person like Kizzy biracial grew up in Midwest that volunteered to go to church. All the time. It grows up and becomes a government contractor. I know, I know, I'm sorry, I got super loud. Yeah, I'm there with you, but the same with you too and with everyone, we're all very unique. I appreciate that. It just, it just, I just don't know. I mean, and going back to my why, my why is to help. So it's not to, if my why was just to flip some money then I would start, you know, like I said, white selling white labeling items on Amazon because I looked into it, I have. Yeah, no, I agree. And I, and when you, to me, when you lead with that people, they feel the sincerity that's in the field that you're genuine. And that's what happens to me. Like, sometimes I've had people complain about me like pounding on a table on my YouTube, right? But they'll be like, man, this guy was passing he was pounding on a table, right? Yeah, cause you are. You don't understand like you guys and I'm beating on a table and the guy's like, can you stop? Some people are like, why are you pounding on a table? But other people have realized that that's just the exuding passion. So. It is, it is so needed. No, it is. I almost feel like we need a part two. Whatever, I'm open. I, you, you, I saw you on the, that small business week event. Oh, did you? Okay. Yes, I saw you on there and I was like, oh my gosh, who is, I don't know him. And then I saw everything. And I was like, this is some, I mean, hands down amazing because there is none of this doesn't, this doesn't exist. It doesn't exist out there. If it's, hey, pay me 30,000, pay me 70, pay me a 5,000 a month, it's that. Or it's someone who won one contract and now they become a guru, which, you know, hey, eat your own, but this is so unique. And I was like, oh my gosh, I love this. I can feel it when you were on the video at that event. No, no, no. It's funny because I'll tell you something since you said that Maria texts me, right? And everyone knows Maria, she set this up with us. So she says, hey, good luck to date your podcast. Well, I just got a letter of concern from one of my agencies on one of my PMs because he didn't submit some of the submittals. So I'm like, that, so the point I'm making is that I'm doing contracts in between, like get ready, get prepared for you. I get a lot of concern from one of my agency clients about one of my project managers who has to turn paperwork, which by the way, Kizzy, I offered every which way guidance helps support. And he's like, I got it, I got it, I got it. And then it's like, now we can talk. He doesn't got it. I know it. But you know, but you'll turn that into wine, you know? Or, you know, make lemonade, I love that. Yeah, I will. You'll do it. Cause it's, hey, we got one of those. Ooh, that's a whole another day. We got one of those. And the dude said to me, look, I'm a GS14. I don't normally send these kind of emails or make these phone calls. I was like, damn, shit. So we turned it around. But yeah, we really did turn it around. Cause I was like, wow. No, that's awesome. Listen, do me a favor, leave everyone with some parting notes before we close out part one of our two part. Oh my goodness. So that way we're going to leave, we're leaving a cliffhanger. So now we know it's a part two coming out. Oh man, I say the cliffhanger is... So form these joint ventures and we win this massive project that seems great on paper. You're like, oh my gosh, it's $23 million. You're like, wow, you know, you're scoping out the new Ben Lees. Okay, I'm just kidding, you're not. And they were kind of, they have familiarity apparently with this work. So I thought, this is awesome. You know, I'm the mentee, I'm going to learn so much and we're going to knock it out the park because they know this client, wrong, wrong, more wrong. Had no idea. I go through this project and just my mind was blown because I realized I had been had. So I'll have to share more in the next episode. Kizzy, thank you so much. I enjoyed it thoroughly. I, you throw out a lot of nuggets, a lot of good tips. How can people reach you and find you? Oh, say it again. You can follow me on LinkedIn. You know, Kizzy Dominguez, Kizzy Parks Dominguez. You can follow me there. You can send me an email, send an email to info, info at KPC Inc. So info at KPC Inc.com. I also get on my phone number cause you can text me. I love text messages. Send me a text. I do. Don't give my phone over. What, no? Okay, never mind. Never mind, I can't do, I love the text messages. I love this. You all understand. Go ahead. I love it. I don't care if it's 7,000. Text me, I will text you back. Okay, go ahead. My phone number, it's like liftoff because of NASA. So it's 321-795-1908. 321-795-1908. Seriously, text me what's at me. I really love to connect and to give back. When I was an online teacher, I always gave out my phone number. No matter the school, no matter if they were undergrad grad students, I always gave out my phone number and everyone was very respectful with it. So I know your audience will be the exact same way. I'm here to help. I'm coming from a place of help. I love it, I love it. Kizzy, thank you so much. No, thank you. No, I'm glad, I'm glad you reached out. I'm glad we were to connect today. Same here. All right, thank you.