 Edward, hey Eric coffee. Oh, hi doing Eric. I'm doing well. How are you Edward? I'm doing great. Yeah So I understand that you and your wife have watched a few of my videos, right? Yeah, is she there with you? Yes, she's here. Okay Okay, she can hear me. All right. I can barely hear her. That's fine Listed so we have about 20 minutes today, you know, how do we spend your time? Okay, I'll have a few questions. Okay The first one I have, you know, as a small business, I don't have any employees So will that be an issue in getting contracts? No It will not be an issue at all. No, okay another question I have Do I need to have a physical address or work out at my home? Is that that should be okay, right? That's okay. Yes. Now. Let me ask you this Edward. Um, first of all, tell me a little bit about your business What is it that you want to do? I do Accounting consulting so let's call accounting automation. I built visual basic applications for financial reporting needs The business financial report needs so I'm a CPA by trade But I Build out of the reports to automate whatever financial reporting needs a company may have And in turn using the office application. Okay, so I've never done anything like this for government type Work because we're looking at your videos We came to the conclusion that into bid as a as a new company trying to bid for Contracts probably is not a best way to go about doing it using soft contracting So most of our questions are from the perspective of a soft contractor. What are the pitfalls and soft contracting? What are the things that we should be aware of? um, so the pitfalls of subcontracting include Making sure that you are not a a what's called a third tier subcontractor Um, making sure you're two levels away from the top, you know, that's probably the main thing The other thing I would say is I wouldn't want to understand that I don't understand that part. Can you repeat that first? Okay, when you're a subcontractor The guy who gets the contract they're considered what's called a prime contractor Right. Okay. So the prime is the guy who has a contact with the government Yeah, the subcontractor works for the prime Yes, okay now What the subcontractor that works for the prime is considered tier one Okay, the subcontractor that works for the subcontractor is considered tier two Okay, right now tier one and tier two have protection Against for payments and claims From the government, but anything after that tier three and below do not have any type of protection Okay, that's good. So you want to you want to make sure that as a subcontractor you're tier one or tier two You don't want to be anything less than tier one or tier two How do you know what tier you are? easily because um the person who you're getting a contract from You would know you need to know where they're at Do they have the contact with the government or are they working for someone that has a contact with the government? Okay So, I mean that right there you'll know right away because um If they obviously you'll know if they have the contract the government because you you know that information Will be you a lot of times the clauses that they have from the government are considered flow down So the clauses and their contracts will flow through to your contract That's okay, you know The other way is When you're out there if you're on a project I mean you can ask the person to they you know, I mean I would ask them directly You know, is this your contract with the government? Who are you? You know, who's who you're working for right? So who are they working for who's who contracted them to do the work? Okay And who pays up does the government pay the subcontracted directly or the subcontractors are paid by Whoever get whoever you have the contract with is a person who pays you Okay Do I have to once you stop contracting? Do you have to commit to a certain term? Because I'm wondering like if there is a Imagine you you're getting yourself in a situation. Let's say um dishonest prime contractor or something that effect um Is there easy is there a way out? I mean, I know normally in contract law there Ways out with with least amount of litigation, you know, I mean, you don't want to get tied up in um Going to court or you know, is there easy? Well, does the government have a process that you can get out of a situation like that? Yes and no um Yes, the government does have avenues venues that you can use if you feel like you're being treated unfairly By the government themselves. Okay, however, if your contract is with a private company Those protections don't necessarily hold for you um, again, the only protections that you have Is falls under what's called the Miller Act And the Miller Act ensures that Subcontractors get paid again that applies to love, you know tier one and tier two Now most of the contracts that I've seen or that I've had in my in my history They all want to do mediation So most of the time no one actually wants to go through litigation So there will normally be a mediation clause in your contract, which will allow you to basically um You know resolve it via a third party service. That's minimal impact to both you and or the prime Or the the contractor Is that a common issue? There's a or are they generally resolve quite easily through mediation. I don't because I've not heard anything about, you know contractor prime contractor Um disputes stuff again because I've not been in part of that world. So I'm wondering is that a common uh Uh issue where there will be disputes about job performance or generally the subcontractor is just Let's go if he doesn't perform. Typically a subcontractor is yeah, it's let go if he doesn't perform Um, that's typically the yeah the way that they handle it they don't have The the the contractor with the government doesn't have the luxury to really Baby sit the subcontractor if they give you a contract They're gonna expect you to perform and if you can't perform they're gonna let you go Okay About billing for services that's gonna depend the subcontractor being able to build for services That's gonna depend on the whatever contract he designs with the prime contractor, correct? Uh-huh. Yes Very okay, what if once I decide to um Like, you know submit a bid for a subcontracting agreement What are the ways to contact the the prime contractor? Is there the same the same website that you mentioned? Uh, are you Submit bids to the same government's website or is that a totally separate process between the subcontractor And the prime contractor. Yeah, there's there's no there is no centralized database of prime contractors You'd have to identify projects that you're interested in and then reach out to the people You know reach out to the prime who was awarded that contract And that could be to just phone call or email. Is there preferred matters of reaching them? I would say, you know phone calls and emails are the best way to reach anyone I don't think I would not stop by the office of a prime contractor because you don't know Um, who's handling that particular contract what region what division and there's so some of these these primes are so large that um It would be very difficult to try to find anyone at a physical location So for me, I would the best way I would I would do is whatever contact information they have Online, that's what I would start Okay, so just um, okay We just recently completed, uh um statement of Capability, okay. I guess that's something that you kind of have to once you're submitting it to For you submitting a bid you would include that also, right and whatever else they're requesting Right, so the the capability statements are used when you are dealing with government agencies not so much when you're dealing with primes Okay So typically the government agencies ask for you for statements of capability Okay, what are the main what are the basic things I should have done before I can even begin? um Submitting bids for subcontractors like because we did some of we got like a don's number I mean I'll have And I incorporate and all that What I think that the basic things that you should do before you start submitting a bid is the first thing is finding out what are the requirements of the jobs that you're going after and I would make sure that I was able to Have all of my ducks in a row to meet those requirements So whatever that means for your industry, whether that means you need to have credit with a supplier whether that means you need to have Outside sales people Inside sales people. Do you need to have an engineer on staff? Do you need to have a person with a quality, you know, a qcf certification? Do you need to have a quality control manager field services people technical people specialized cameras or specialized equipment Whatever whatever the type of contracts that you're pursuing I would want to you know In order to you need to be prepared To have all of the stuff that they require in order to complete or fulfill your obligation of that contract And so whatever that means for you and your industry um They may call for you to have your computers meet a certain type of uh Minimum standards, so I would make sure my computers met those minimum standards So what I would encourage anyone out there to do including yourself is take a look at a contract that you're interested in pull down all the requirements And then make sure that you have all those things in place whether it's people products services um accounts Whatever the case may be pull that list down and make sure that you have all those things in place That's more important than being registered in sam Okay, you understand you follow. Yeah, so because a lot of times what people will do is You know, it's very easy to go through and get registered and sam and get registered. You're done All this kind of stuff. However when Someone appears in a government. Let's say the government wanted to give you a contract but you have to have You know, like I said, you may have to have specialized computers specialized equipment cameras technical stuff If they tried to give you a contract and they and they told you that you need to may have all these things in place And you didn't have them then you're not even in a position to accept the contract If we get about bidding, you're not even in a position to negotiate or accept a contract that they're trying to give you So I would encourage anyone out there everyone to make sure that you're ready And that you're in a position to even accept your first contract. Okay And the only one of the last question would be um, and I think you mentioned you and one of the videos that certifications are Not critical, right? It's not that essential to have no like, you know, small business certifications and all that kind of stuff But probably good to have So if I would say what are the essential ones? You know, there's there's not really an essential certification that we need to have I know I've never had a certification. I don't believe anyone needs certifications to be successful Okay, there's no essential certifications because um You can you can always find someone that you can partner with or joint venture with or team with That has a certification that they're not using so you don't need your own Okay, what are the main questions that we have? No, fantastic. Everyone listen what I would do I would encourage you go through the free course Um, and then it'll teach you a lot. I mean it's 18 days of content So there's a lot of content. I put a lot of work and effort into it It's probably two years into making that it took me to build this thing up So go through and get you some information even if you've watched all of my videos I encourage everyone to go through the free course I guarantee you're going to learn something new that you did not learn Um, because there is content on there. There's new information on there And so it's it's some of it's done even you know, it's even newer information than some of my out my videos that were done in 16 or 17 So I would encourage you to go through watch the videos take the course the free course Caught you nothing to do it and invest the time in yourself and in your business. That's what I would say. Okay. Okay I appreciate that. Thank you very much for your time. Listen. Thank you. Have a great one