 Welcome to today's DAV Caffeine Connect. Just before we get started, I wanna remind you all that registration is open for DAV Patriot Bootcamp Spring cohort. It'll be held in beautiful, the beautiful silicon slopes of Lehigh, Utah by our friends at MX. The deadline to apply is May 18, I'm sorry, the event will be held May 18 to 20. The deadline to apply is March 20th. We need mentors too. So if you want to mentor email us at infoatpatriotbootcamp.org, the event is free and thousands of dollars in non-dilutive capital is available to winners of the pitch contest coming out of the event, but back to business. In January 2023, most of you know, certification of veteran and service disabled veteran owned businesses was transferred to the Small Business Administration. However, as a lead federal agency for services to veterans and one of the most prolific sources of potential contracts for veteran entrepreneurs, the VA remains an incredible resource for veteran business owners. The VA is committed to making contracting accessible to veterans. And our guests today play a significant role in making sure you have the opportunity to succeed and participate in the American dream you and your fellow veterans serve to make possible for everyone. We're joined by two extremely passionate representatives from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilizations. Jules Tujon is a retired Army combat veteran who completed two tours in Iraq. He is the senior director of acquisition support team for the office and Navy veteran and retired Mustang officer with 30 years nearly of military service, Antoine Brotten directs the direct access program. And he'll tell us about that today. So gentlemen, I'll kick it off over to you and thanks for being here and thanks for your service. We got you there, Jules is on. Thank you, good afternoon everybody. And for the veterans on the call, I would like to thank you for your service to this great nation. My name is Jules Tujon and I'm the senior director of acquisition within the VA Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization. What the Osdebu office does is we basically under public law 95-507 and public law 109461, we make sure that we provide maximum practicable opportunities to federal contract to small businesses. So today we will discuss with you ways and means method that you can apply when applying or when looking forward to become a vendor within the US Department of Veterans Affairs. And I will turn it over to Mr. Antoine Brotten. Over to you Antoine. Thank you Jules and good afternoon ladies and gentlemen, again as my colleague Jules Tujon has said so eloquently. I wanna thank all the veterans out there for their service. I am Antoine Brotten. I lead the direct access program and the direct access program focuses on trying to connect buyers, which we also call procurement decision makers to vendors like you, small businesses of a variety of socioeconomic categories whether that be service disabled, veteran owned small businesses, veteran owned small businesses, 8A, hub zone, women owned small minority, LGBTQ regardless. We are trying to connect those firms to various buyers. And the unique thing is that we're looking at not just VA procurement opportunities as showcased by our program offices. We also talk about and present information related to subcontracting and teaming with large businesses. And we call that our large business engagement. And then finally we connect with other government agencies to help them showcase their procurement opportunities. So when we do that really it creates a trifecta of wins. It's a win for the small business because that is one less basically ceiling that they have to try to break through one less cold call. It's a win for whether it be the VA office or the program offices, whether it be the industry partner or the another government agency. We do the work, you benefit, we benefit and our customers benefit. So that's just a quick highlight for you. I'll turn it back over to Jules because he's gonna talk to you about the procurement process and everything that goes along with that. And so please ladies and gentlemen, use this time, take some good notes and at the end we're gonna go ahead and open up the floor for questions. Let me turn it over to Jules to get to the meat of the subject which is the procurement process. Jules? Yes, thank you, Antoine. The procurement process is actually made of two big phases. And the first phase is what we call the pre-solicitation phase. Pre-solicitation means it comes before the solicitation. And the second phase is what is called the post-solicitation phase. Well, the pre-solicitation phase is as important as the post-solicitation phase but it's the most important phase because you as a vendor or you as vendors you need to be prepared to meet the solicitation requirements. And talking about the pre-solicitation phase, I'm referring here to a couple of things, right? The government has a need. It's all about the government having a need and you have to meet that need. What is called also requirement. What does the government need? I'll just use an example in the hospital environment, the hospital environment. The government has the need for elevator maintenance. Okay, the elevator breaks down. So that's the service. There's a need for that. So at the pre-solicitation phase, the government establish a document called the PWS or the SOW which is the performance work statement also called the statement of work. And it is a document in which the government clearly writes down what he's looking for. How many elevators need to be maintained? What is the quality of service that they expect? If they have 10 elevators in the hospital, the government may say, we want you to have nine out of the 10 elevator have to be maintained, have to be functional at all times. So that's the need, right? And so here now you have to, and the government goes through in the background, the government prepares the money. In the VA, we do it through a form called the VA form 2237 or the purchase request, the purchase request, which is basically the government is saying, we have the money for this. There's a budget line for that and we have the money. And the program manager, which is the person in charge of the program office, usually an engineer will say, well, we have, I'm just using a number year, half million for that. And we want to award a 100,000 contract, a base plus four years, base 100,000 plus four option years. Obviously there's inflation that can be added to that, but let's leave those details on the side. The big picture for you here is to see that there's behind something going on that is called acquisition planning. The government plans that and the government has to do something called the market research. So basically the program or the engineer has to answer the question, are there any small businesses, are there any businesses that can do this? If it is in Washington, DC, I'm using a hospital, let's say a hospital in Baltimore, Maryland or in Washington, DC, VA hospital, any VA hospital for that matter. So the government has to say, well, we need a vendor that is within, I would say, that can respond within 30 minutes of a call. If a elevator breaks down, we need 30 minutes response time. So that's called the statement of work. So they write all those things in the statement of work. And the law requires that these requirements are posted in something called the FCO, forecast of contacting opportunities. You may not take a note of that because that's an important thing to have. FCO. So when somebody say, that is where you need to go to look for opportunities that are coming. Remember, this is in the pre-solicitation. So the solicitation is not even out, but the government is required under the law to post this in FCO. So if you go in FCO, you should be able to see what is upcoming. You will not see all the detail at this time, by the way, you will not see a completed standard of work or it completed a finished performance work statement. The document here are not finished because in the planning phase, but at least the government is telling the vendor community, we have something coming. And they even put the bracket. They can say it will be within between 250,000 to 500,000 or 700,000. So they put a window there. So you know that this is not a $50,000 job. And they write something called a next code. That is something you need to write down. Next code is N-A-I-C-S. And I'm writing it down so that I don't forget for you. So N-I, it stands for North American Industrial Classification System. Basically, all the things that the government buy, whether it is good or services, they will fall under a next code. This is an important element, an important parameter you need to know. Okay. So the government plans all those things now and does the market research. And the market research is basically, just like when we buy TV, we try to shop around Walmart, Costco, B-Jangs, you know, you list the stores. I'm not making any advertisement for any company out there, but we as consumers, we go and shop for that, right? It's the same thing that the government does. So the government try to find out there what are the vendor out there that can meet the need for the elevator maintenance. The government searches. Another system called SAM, S-A-M. It stands for the system of award management, SAM. So the government goes there and see what are the vendor. The government goes into something else called FPDS. You hear me using a lot of these acronyms. They're important. Those are the things that the government, the tools that the government has. It stands for the Federal Procurement Database System, Next Generation, FPDS. So the government looks into all those and now the government comes around and say, oh, within the Washington hospital, we found five vendors. But out of the five vendors, there are three that are large businesses. Large businesses means big company, okay? And I will not get into the detail now. I'm just giving you a big picture at this point. There are three large businesses and there are three small businesses. This is important for everybody on the call. Out of those two small businesses, there are two veterans owned small businesses. Both are veteran owned small businesses, meaning these are veteran who open their company, they manage, they run their company, they own at least 51% of, they have 51% or more of ownership and so on and so forth. But in any case, they are owned and managed by veterans. Now, the program managers, after doing that market research, oh, just like you would say, oh, I found a TV in Costco, I found it in Walmart, I found it in Sam's Club. The big question becomes, what is the price? What are the price? Do the requirement of the TV, the feature of the TV meet my needs? Something with the government. This vendor can then meet my needs. And the government doesn't evaluate at this point. But at least they know that there are three large businesses out there and two small businesses. And the small businesses are SDVOSB, SDVOSBs. That's you people, or VOSBs, veteran owned small businesses. So under the public law, and you can write it down, the public law is public law 109-461. It requires that whenever in the VA, the VA wants to buy something, good or services. If market research shows that there are two or more service, disabled, veteran owned small businesses, or veteran owned small businesses, that can do the work. There are at least two of them, but this is important. They can do the work, meaning they can meet the price, within the price. The VA will not go to you if you come out with your estimate to do the work at one million. Because remember, the government has the budget from only 500,000. So now the government goes ahead and post something called the solicitation. Usually we even do something called sources sort. Sources sort, SS. If we don't do a sources sort, we do something called an RFI. Request for information. Request for information doesn't obligate the government to buy anything. It is market research. The government is looking if you are out there, if they are company like you are there, we can do the job. And you have to respond to the sources sort. If you don't respond to the sources sort, what happens is that the government says, oh, we posted the sources sort, we posted this RFI, and only one service is obligated on responded or no service is obligated on responded. Well, remember what I told you, on a public law 109461, there must be at least two of you guys out there. So you didn't respond to the sources sort, the government did this market research and say, well, nobody responded. They didn't respond. Now the government is obligated not to follow the public law 109461 and to do something called unrestricted procurement strategy. And I will explain. If there were two, if you guys responded, the government is obligated to do something called set aside, set aside, meaning the setting aside, for whom, for you, for serving several veteran or small businesses and veteran or small businesses. We call it the vet first program because it's for you, that's the law in the VA. But if you don't respond, then the government do something called unrestricted. It doesn't mean that you cannot compete on it. It simply means that a job that was normally restricted to only you were large businesses, women on hub zone, AAs, the other socioeconomic category could not compete. Now you let it to be competed by those. But guess what? The more competition, the less chances you have. And the less competition, the more chances you have. That's the name of the game. Know the rule, play the game. It's a game, but you need to know the rule. And remember, you cannot play the federal procurement game with the rules that you learn from someone else. They don't apply, just like you cannot play American football with the soccer rule. Same thing. Now the government posted, after the RFI, the government post, what is called a solicitation. And the solicitation can be, it takes different name, but it's a solicitation, right? There's something called RFQ, Request for Information. I'm sorry, Request for Code. I'm sorry, RFQ, Request for Code. Remember, we talked about the RFI, Request for Information before. Now we just change. We just move in the procurement phase because that was the question. We are not in the middle. The government posted a solicitation and looking for you. In the solicitation, the government specifically, and it would specifically say that, we want to end this with an award. If the Avento can do it, and if the price is fair and reasonable, the price has to be fair and reasonable. So the post it now, and you respond with your proposers, or with your code. The solicitation takes different name. I told you early, Request for Code or RFQs. RFPs, Request for Proposers. RFPs, Request for Deeds. In any case, the government is saying, we have a solicitation and we want to hear, we want to see how you will do it. You have to respond to it in order for the government to look at your proposer. And I will use the proposer term here. I can use the code, but people use proposer a lot. So I will go with proposer, so that you understand. So now, the government posted a solicitation, and you respond with your proposer. You gave it back to the government to look at it. Take a note on this, this is important. I've seen this over the last 20 years, a lot of problem with this. When you respond to a solicitation, to any government solicitation, whether it's in the VA or out of the VA, in the federal government, under the federal official regulations, you have to meet two criteria. Two criteria. One is called the element of responsiveness. And I'll write it down, responsiveness. And the other one is called the element of responsibility. And I will come at those two with you and close this first part of my speaking. Responsiveness means what? The government in the solicitation would say something to you like. We don't want you, we want you to respond with no more than 20 pages. Your proposer cannot exceed 20 pages. If you give 21 pages or 20, and maybe a line on the 21st page, you are disqualified. Those are the rule of the game. The government will say something like, we want you to respond in the world, 12 font, aerial character or aerial font. Don't use any other. You use any other font, you disqualify. That's called responsiveness. They say 12 font, you put 11 or 13 or 14, disqualify. Those are the rule of the game. And we are here in Osibu, we are here to help you. Call us at anytime, email us at anytime we will help you with this thing. After this conversation today, this meeting you may forget everything I say. Remember these two things, responsiveness. If the government say respond on by Thursday, March 9th by 3 p.m. Eastern Standard Time and you respond at 3 or 1 Eastern Standard Time, you are deemed, your proposer is deemed, disqualify, ineligible. That's the law. You can go all the way to the Supreme Court, you will never win it. Those are the rule of the game. So I'll finish with the responsiveness. It's called responsiveness determination. And the next one I will finish here and give it to Antoine. It's called responsibility determination. The responsibility determination basically, the government is looking if you have the technical management, you just, you cannot just say you will fix the elevators. Do you have the expertise to do that? Do you have the manpower to do that? Another area of responsibility is, well, what if you file bankruptcy last year? What if you have a bad credit line? That is the government that we cannot do business with you because you cannot finish this. You can run into a court, a lawsuit and not be able to complete the work. They look at your finances. That's the area of responsibility. I talk about your capability, your manpower, how the people who work in your office, the people who will be conducting the management of this, are you able to perform the work? The government look at that, are you responsible? And that was the first part of the solicitation, pre-solicitation. It ends and it turns into what you call the award and everything kicks the post-award, which is the post-solicitation, okay? And the post-solicitation is everything that happened. They evaluate your proposal. They do your debriefing. They make the award. They start monitoring the work. They do the Q&A or quality assurance to make sure that you're delivering everything that we agreed on the contract or that we put on the solicitation, so and so forth, including that you are getting paid. Under the Prom Payment Act, the government is required to pay you within 30 days. And you have to deliver it to the government. You have to meet every single area of element of your contract. I will leave it there and then I'll wait for your question. Over to you, Antoine. Hey, Jules and Antoine, I'm sorry. If we could just real quick, while we switch over to Antoine, we're getting a ton of questions about some of the acronyms and it seems like, you know, the VA and DOD have something in common or government contracting in general does. So if maybe you could just prepare to help us with some reminders on those acronyms when we get to questions, that'd be great. And Antoine, I'm sorry for taking some of your time. Sure, not a problem. Dan, if you want, we could maybe address some of those questions now. So that way we can get to that. So if you can give us some of those questions about the acronyms and then I can kind of pick up where you leave off or will you give me the cue? The acronym questions were many, there were many acronym questions. So it's kind of general. Here's a question from Devin Copy. I'm sorry I screwed up your name for sure, but are there, are these opportunities to respond to RFIs sources sought only on SAM.gov or is there another place to locate these opportunities? Yeah, this opportunity under the law if it's above 25,000 have to be on SAM.gov. It used to be called FedBeesOps. They just changed it. It was called FedBees Federal Business Opportunities. They changed it to SAM.gov. And the law says that it is called the Federal Official Regulation calls it, the technical name is government point of entry, GPE, government point of entry. And SAM.gov is the government point of entry that we have right now. Great. Antoine, why don't we move it over to you and we'll have some more questions coming out of your presentation, if that's okay. That is fine, Dan, thank you. And Jules, thank you for that great information. I'm quite sure that the audience found it extremely useful. So ladies and gentlemen, what I wanna do is talk to you very briefly about what VA Osibu does really and truly to help you. We lost your, there you go. Okay, all right. Let me start over again. So what VA Osibu does is we help small businesses do capture management and capture management by definition is the effort to identify, explore and consider business opportunity. Regardless of the equal space, whether it be government or private sector. And truly really that is what VA Osibu does and that is done by two portfolios, my portfolio, the direct access program and also the women's version on small business initiatives. So I wanna talk about our outreach activities and that we're going in a very broad way because whether it be for one type of business or the other, Osibu is committed to helping you not just reduce the level of effort to find contract opportunities but to the fullest extent possible to connect with the buyers that will influence or has a direct input into the acquisition strategy which is basically who are we gonna buy this from? Who is in the type of business, socioeconomic category and what is the basis for that decision? Is it past performance? Is it having relevant experience and things like that? So the direct access program, we work with three different groups like I mentioned in my introduction. We work with the VA program offices, we work with other government agencies and we work with industry, okay? With the VA, basically the demand to engage with industry drives conducting events. What I did earlier, I think the last chat that you may see from me colleagues in the chat box is the list of upcoming events that we have and you'll notice on that list, we have a basically a litany of events that we are hosting as in for the department and that we're collaborating with a industry partner such as IBM which is coming up actually today. We're doing that today. And so the type of interaction that happens at these events really come in two different modalities. The first one is called a business opportunity session, BOS. Some, in some circles you'll hear it referred to as a industry day. I like to really stick with the term business opportunity session because it's not an all day type of event. Typically it's an hour, maybe hour and a half which includes question and answer. And during the business opportunity session, the buyer also called the procurement decision maker will lay out the who, what, when, where and why. This is what we have, this is what we're looking at and they'll talk in very gentle terms because with the government sometimes there is what they call acquisition sensitive information. They will get into those details. So they'll give you enough to help you to understand what it is we're looking to buy and in most cases the on or about timeframe. That's the business opportunity session. Like I said, again, it's a brief. We typically do those virtually. We've been doing them virtually since 2019. And I wanna say that we've done probably a couple of hundreds since 2019 and what we find by doing it virtually we're actually being able to attract not only firms in the local Washington DC area but also those companies located across the country. So that's one of the benefits of doing virtual business opportunity sessions. Subsequently, the program office or the industry partner may decide to do what we call scheduled one-on-ones. The scheduled one-on-ones is a 20 minute discussion between one business representative and whether it be one or more representatives of whether it be the VA as a program office or our industry partners. And during that conversation it's intended to explore from both ends buy the seller and sell it to buyer. What is the likelihood that this company or companies like the one that they're talking to can satisfy the government's needs? Bear in mind as a result of the one-on-one conversation no one is walking away with a contract at all. This is a part of what we call market research to really explore what's out there. So during that particular conversation that is a great time for small business to really talk about what makes them unique. How do they stand out from the crowd? Okay. And what I always suggest small businesses do is talk about metrics, because metrics are undeniable. If the industry standard let's say for a call center requirement is to answer the call speed of answer within 30 seconds if the audience is, let's say a thousand or less and you answer calls based on past performance less than that that's the type of information that you wanna use in your 20 minute conversation. So you wanna help position your company in the mind of the person you're talking to to say, hey, look, this is what we can do. Here's how we compare to the industry standards, okay? So to recap, we have the business opportunity session and then we have the scheduled one-on-ones. Another activity that we do and again, these are all driven by the needs and express desire of the program manager. And again, that could be VA or the government agency or industry are called product demonstrations. And those product demonstrations allow for a company to really show a product. We've had product demonstrations for walkers, for lifts, for wheelchairs, for a hospital beds. And what will happen is the VA program office will give potential providers a list of what they call minimum technical requirements, the MTRs. And so during that product demonstration, you have to go through that list to show. It says that it could hold this particular bed can hold a hundred pounds, you're gonna have to demonstrate that somehow. That it's got wheels that go 360, you're gonna have to demonstrate that somehow. And so we've been doing those a lot with the Strategic Acquisition Center and those again, provide the small businesses an opportunity to show that product. So I've talked about three activities, the business opportunity session, the Schedule 101s and then the product demonstrations. The first two really form the core of the types of activities that we, the direct access program under the auspices of Osibu will conduct, okay? So I've talked about the activities. Let me talk about one other point and then I really wanna open up the floor for questions. The next point I wanna talk about is what we call a large business engagement, LBE. And what the large business engagement entails is us teaming with not just those VA prime vendors who providing us services, but also whether it be large companies or even small, what I call medium sized companies that are successful that are looking for business partners for you to subcontracting and team it. Now remember sports fans, that is a decision that you have to make because it has to fit. You have to be good with that relationship. So during a large business engagement, the large company or the middle-sized company or the small company who's looking for a subcontract and a teaming partner, they'll kind of lay out in very broad terms. Here's what we're looking for. Here's where we're operating in. Here's some of the prospects that we are considering with respect to where we wanna go. We wanna either add some capabilities, we wanna supplement some capabilities in some existing areas or whatever case can be. So they lay that out during a business opportunity session. Subsequently, that program office or industry partner may hold scheduled one-on-ones. And as I talked about before, that's where we're kind of calling it the first date where a conversation is happening, 20 minute conversation. So you've got 20 minutes to sell your business. But again, I would strongly encourage you, think about facts and figures. Think about how you're gonna stand out in the mind of that buyer. I've had a Fortune 50 company CEO tell me one times that Antoine, if you can tell small business anything, tell them, treat every interview like a chance to do business. Every interaction is an interview. So you always wanna put your best foot forward and you always need to be prepared to speak to, you hear it all the time, the elevator speech, but really speak substantively about what you provide and what makes you different. Saying that you're committed to a particular call, saying that you committed to customer service, saying you committed to innovation, that's all in great, but this is business. So let's get to the bottom line upfront. How do you compare? What makes you different than everybody else out there? Okay, so that's really all I wanna talk about because I wanna really open up the floor to get some questions answered. And again, so when you think about VA Osdibu, think about us being an extension of your capture management efforts. We do a lot of work. If you go on our website and I put it on there for the upcoming events, you'll see the litany of companies that we have partnered with. I also encourage you when you go to our webpage, if you click on where it says events, there's a pull down that says archived events. If you go back and look, you will see over the last three years since 2019, consistently, ladies and gentlemen, we are partnering with a variety of companies in a variety of business line, construction, transportation, IT. You name it. Bear in mind, each event, when you go to our events page, we have all of the information as it relates to that event, so you can make an informed decision about attending. One other note before we go to questions, I want you to know if you register for a business opportunity session, and for some reason you can't attend, not a big deal. Everybody that registers will get a copy of the recording, assuming that the program office allows a copy of the recording, as well as a PDF of the presentation. So you won't miss out that way. Another point is when you sign up and register for a scheduled one-on-one, you are putting your hat in the ring. What I mean by that is the program office or the industry partner will look at your capability statement and other questions they have asked us to include in registration, and based on that, they will decide who they are going to meet. Again, this is about maximizing time, so if you're closer to what they're looking for, that way it is an objective assessment, then they're gonna say, yeah, we wanna meet with this company, and then my team will work with you to schedule a time. So just bear that in mind. And a point with that, kind of going back to what my colleague said, if they're asking a question about a particular aspect of your business, provide the information, get in, get out. Don't need a manifesto. You want to ensure that you clearly and succinctly explain to them whatever the question that they're looking for answers, given that information right away. So that said, let's open up the floor, Dan, and let's take some questions. Awesome, let's start with Devin. Devin is working on this in SkillPridge, and he's had a ton of great questions, and Devin, do you wanna come on and correct me for butchering your name? I apologize. Yeah, sure, Dan. Don't apologize. 15 years in the military, a lot of people have had a lot of practice having trouble with the last name. So it's Copey, it's Finnish, but I had a question. I think either of you guys could probably knock this one out of the park. There was some mention, I think you mentioned a little bit, Joel's at the end of your talk, asking about working through the process for receiving funds. We've successfully worked with the VA in the past, and then we've just had some trouble with the tungsten network getting, being able to get through the technical difficulties. Would you be able to speak at all to that process of how you would go about requesting funds? Is there an appeal process? How do you work through that so that you can maintain your relationship with the office that you're working with? But you can also create the opportunity to get the funds back, if that makes sense. Hey, you were muted for a second. We couldn't hear you. Sorry about that. Thank you, sorry. So are you referring to difficulties in getting your invoices paid? That's correct. Yeah, so after, so you said, the main thing you pointed out was there's a time from which the company completes the job as required per the statement of work. And then there's a period in which the 30 days or 45 days or 60 days, depending on how the contract's written, there's a time period in which they should be paid. And sometimes maybe not fault to the VA or not fault of things, but one of the ones we've been working with is working through Tungsten and the payment processing there. And sometimes it's difficult, but sometimes we're just in a current process where we completed a job in December and now it's March and we still haven't been fully paid. And I've been trying to advise my employer on how to work through that. And it's one of those things that I think you have more insight than I do. And so just trying to understand. Thank you. That's actually a great question. I don't know. I'm not good at, how do you call it, beating around the bushes, right? I would say, put it to you as it is. So you, military, you will understand this. So issues with payment, invoice payments, I will pick it, I will take it from the second part of your, that question that you had. How can you do it without, you know, making your program manager, the program office angry against you because you don't want to leave them with a bad, you don't want them to have a bad impression of you. Well, I will say this to you. Osdebu is in the business. That's one of the things that I do, okay? So instead of you going to the contracting officer and being afraid that they will retaliate against you or blackmail you or do anything, you send one email, you send the second email, you send the third one, they don't respond. You don't have to wait one week or one month before you send. You send the first one today, Thursday. You don't hear an answer. Monday you send another one. The second one on Monday. Then Wednesday you send the third one. Those three are good enough with the record, the email, you take that and you contact us. You send that to me, I will take care of that. And the reason is this. I was on the other side as a lead contracting officer, contracting officer audits. So that happens, right? Well, sometimes they can say, oh man, this vendor is giving me headaches and all that stuff, right? That happens. They don't say that publicly. But in the office politics, you hear about next door, next cubic car, they guys say, man, this vendor is getting on my nerves. Well, that's not good for the vendor. So instead of you engaging the program officer or the contracting officer after three attempts, three unsuccessful attempts to get your invoices paid, send it to Osdebu, send it to my email. You can share my email with you at the end of the presentation. But in any case, when you send it to Osdebu, I will make sure that you get paid. We do that. In fact, the law under that, the law that addresses those areas of Osdebu is 15 United States code 644K. If you want, you can write it down. It's under 15 USC 644K. That's the law that gives Osdebu the responsibility to address invoice payment. Now, the requirement for the federal government to pay it within a certain time, and I talked to you about it 30 days, is what is called the Prompt Payment Act. That's the law, right? So you have two laws that, and Congress recognized that this is a problem, and they put in place the laws so that you can get paid. But because I don't want you to be blackmail, I say use Osdebu as your advocate to fight on your behalf, right? I mean, we get this type of question every day. I'm telling you, and you talk about invoice, it could be about solicitation. What if you saw a solicitation out there and the person, let's use the elevator that I mentioned, and I don't want to get off track your question. I already answered your question, by the way, but I'm using it on the, you use it on the post solicitation because the counter was awarded and now you've run into difficulty getting your payment. It can be that you're performing and the contact officer or the program manager is saying that you're not doing what you're supposed to do. Example, the solicitation said, I will stick to the elevator maintenance so that I stay in one example. The solicitation said, and when you were awarded a contract, it said when the call that an elevator is not functioning, you, the vendor, you must respond within 30 minutes. Each time that they call you, you responded within the 30 minutes. But for some reason, the program manager didn't have a good record and here he's telling the contractional officer that when we call this vendor, he never responds. That's a problem because you're not, but the contractional officer is saying you're not performing and the contractional officer has somebody in the program office because there's just one contractional officer for many contracts. So the contractional officer cannot be anywhere. That's why the contractional officer has somebody called the call, the contractional officer, the abbreviation, the acronym is CO. He has or she has her representative or his representative in the program office called the call, contact officer representative, right? So the reason I'm bringing this up is to show you another aspect of it. So now the contractional officer representative is saying that, hey, your company is not performing per the contract. Now you find yourself, how can you argue this? If you argue it the wrong way, you upset the people next time they don't come to you. So guess what? Find a way to get a meeting with the call or the program manager. Usually you will not meet with the contractional officer, it's difficult. I can tell you that, right? And so you find a way. And if you are still not able to meet with them with the call of your contract to address this issue, whether it's payment, impulse payment or whatever the performance issues and all that, you contact us, our office does what it does, my team, it falls under me. In fact, that's one of my duty is that now I will arrange a meeting between you, the contractor, the call, the contracting officer representative, the contracting officer and my team and myself and our office. So now the three parties that are part in the contact you, the program manager, where the job is supposed to be done and the CEO who is supposed to hear from the contractional officer that the job is done before they pay you. I arranged that and I'm the middle guy now, I come in the middle now, I read the contract and I say, look, it looks like we have a problem here. And I don't try to upset the contractional officer and I don't try to upset the call. And at the same time, I want to satisfy you. What is weird in this picture, I will tell you to be honest and let this take the next question. What is weird in this issue that you raise is that you will think that I work for the contracting officer. It's a perception that people have out there that, oh, yes, because I'm a VA employee, I will, what the contracting officer will do in this case, whether it's not paying you or you performing and they say, you know, performing or even issues with the solicitations, you know, which I didn't even discuss that much because we don't have much time. But regardless of the issue, I don't work for the contracting officer. I work for you, the vendor, you see? I work for you. The law says that I should support the small businesses. That's what it is called office of small and disadvantaged business utilization. We work for you. We work to make sure that you are successful. Not to make sure that the contracting officer is successful. No, that's not how it works. Okay? I hope I answered your question. Jules, that was great. And you were so passionate about helping your fellow veterans. It's great. It's just neat hearing your voice. We had a question from Greg McClark who looks like he's located in the bowels of the Millennium Falcon. So he can't hear us, but there's what he had. He had, teaming is a great way for smaller companies to get into government contracting. Can you talk more about how you help and or work with teaming companies or the advantages of teaming agreements? Yes. Thanks for that. So go ahead, you go ahead, Jules. And then I'll plan on. Oh, okay, Antoine. Thank you. I do want to see your thunder there, Antoine. No, Timmin, Antoine mentioned it very well, right? And Timmin, don't, I really want you guys to be successful so this is how you need to see it. Timmin really, you should not team just for the sake of teaming. And I want to take a little bit depth here to sort of see. The government always has a problem to solve. There is, at the beginning of this, there's a need to be met, a requirement. That's where all these things start. The government doesn't have money to throw to you or we want to give 27 billions to service disabled veterans. No, that's not how it works. No, the government has a need in this case for elevator or for any kind of, it can be genitorial services. It can be ambulance services. It can be home oxygens, building a hospital. You name it, buying beds, all that. Regardless of what it is, there is a problem. And what happens is that sometimes the problem is complex. When the problem is complex, or the problem is too big, it can be a simple problem, but it's too big. When it's too big, it means it's too big for small business. Now you find a teaming partner. You find somebody that you can get together with to address this problem. And what you need to ask in the teaming arrangement is this. Hey, Raina, Antoine, use this example, Antoine and me. We are not on this call, both of us, because the government has two people that are not doing anything to put on the call. No, that's not how it works. It's that Antoine is bringing a set of expertise on the table in terms of outreach, in terms of establishing the contacts. Remember this, in terms of establishing the contacts between what he called the PDM, the Procurement Decision Maker or the Program Officers and you, the vendor. So he wants to put you guys together. But guess what? That's a contact. Jules is in this teaming arrangement with Antoine. He's here, he's my colleague. This is not, we are not here on this call again because we have one hour or two hours to waste. No, Antoine is doing the contact and Jules is in the contract. What is the difference between contact and contract? English is my fifth language but I can tell you the difference is the hour. The letter hour, that contact has and that contact don't have. That hour is for what? Relationship. So you're building in a teaming arrangement, you're building a relationship with another partner. That partner has to add value. Okay, that partner has to bring something on the table. I'm bringing my contract expertise. Antoine is bringing his contact expertise. I don't know how to do his job. He doesn't know how to do my job. But guess what? We need each other. Does it, you guys say we need two to come go? Okay, we need to build the contact and after the contact, we turn the contact into the contract. He's here to show you how to set up the contact and I'm here to show you how to set up the contract. So the teaming arrangement, the way it works is I will use another example, home oxygen to explain this to you using an example. In the home oxygen contract, it was about $25 million contract that I awarded back then. So in this contract, the question is if you know the home oxygen, I will explain you. You will see some veterans carrying a tank on their back or on their wheelchair and all that and they're bridging through their nose, the tubes and all that something so. So that's the home oxygen contract and it is in their houses too by their bedside. But the problem is that, well, is this, there are two pieces to this so that you understand. One is the equipment, which is the cylinder, the tank that you see. And the other is the service. The service is what? What if the veteran call at midnight and say that my oxygen is not going through properly? That's where the service contract kicks in. What if the veteran call and say, well, my tank, I fell and something broke on the oxygen tank. That's not the service contract anymore. That become the manufacturer because it becomes the supply. It is a hard part, you see? So you have to put both together. So in this type of contract, you have to look where can I get, who cannot team up with if you're providing the tank? Who cannot team up with to provide the service and you come together, right? So same thing. If you're providing, I will use another case. Ambulance services to the veteran, to the VA hospital. Well, one is the car, the vehicle, with the seat inside, the drivers and all that. But the other part is the scheduling. It's not enough to have that. Somebody has to make the call. Somebody has to recall the call and say they're called at this address and all that. It's not the driver that does all that. So if your expertise, you want to spend 99.99% on what you do very well, which is if it is the hardware part of it, you do it and you team up with the service part of it to meet in the middle so that you can solve the problem of the government because I'll tell you, in a lot of cases, a lot of people miss the contract, they don't miss to have the contract. We're not awarded, not because they could not do it themselves, but because they didn't find the proper teaming arrangement to add value to the government. So in forming the teaming arrangement, you need to look into value added in your relationship. Over to you, Antoine. Thanks for that, Jules. And so let me supplement that too. When particularly with the VA program offices, when they have a requirement and based on some cursory market research that they have done, they may come to us and say, hey, look, we know a lot of small companies or just companies in general, not necessarily small, but companies that it seems like they could do one aspect of the work or it could be their footprint is smaller. It would be great if they could, if we can get this service for a larger footprint. And so they would approach us and let us know, hey, look, it would be great if some of these small companies got together. So we have another tool, which I by design didn't talk about because we don't get those requests often, but we have done this. We have a tool called business to business less connect. And it is very simple. The program office approaches us and say, hey, we have this thing coming up and we believe that if some small businesses get together, they could potentially be a force multiplier to get this thing done. And so we would advertise to small businesses based on the next that the program office provider said, hey, look, we are establishing a next connect, excuse me, B2B less connect event. And it's really not an event, it's just more of a listing. So you as a company go in, you put in your information, your contact information and things like that, right? The event tile will give you the details about what the business prospect is with respect to the contract opportunity. So all the firms that put their information in that listing are basically saying, because we put this on a tile, you have an interest in exploring a teaming relationship with other companies. So you put your information in, the other company based on the contact information you put in that other company or companies will call you and then you guys just have a conversation. So we're just facilitating, I kind of call it like I forget that dating app, but basically it's like we have created this platform so that specifically geared toward, hey, if you want to just connect with other companies focused on X, you have the ability to do that. And the other thing that I mentioned earlier which is just the large business engagement, that's how we help with respect to, we set up those, we actually make the calls, I make these calls to these large companies and say, hey, look, are you interested in offering small businesses, subcontracting and teaming? And nine times out of 10, they say yes. The good thing with that too, because we also focus on the VA prime vendors, not just industry, but VA prime vendors. I want to footstomp that for a minute. So those companies actually doing business with VA, okay? So by working with them, you would get basically what I call two advantages. One, you get to understand how the VO ecosystem works. And two, you help build up your relevant past performance. So I believe that between my colleague and I, we've answered that question and ready to take another one, Dan? Hey, that's great. And I know we're gonna come up against our time, but two very important questions. One is how do we schedule a one-on-one? And then the other one, before I turn it over to you, is what are we gonna do if we need questions? If we have questions and we need to ask you later on down the road. And then if we have time, I'll get to Paul and I'll have to announce our, I have some closing stuff for my team will kill me, but go ahead. Sure, so for the one-on-ones, like I said, that's a specific event. And again, I put it in the chat already. You go to our registration board, like I think the next one I'm looking at it now is a session for the CFM, the Construction Facilities Management Executive Director is gonna do one-on-one conversations with construction firms. With that one, it is a first come, first serve. We wanna get 10 slots, but the good thing is with the CFM, and once you guys who are in construction and construction related activities take this home, he does these every quarter. So if you cannot connect with him and looks like in on actually not April 19th, but it's actually now in May, because he's already filled up the April event, just keep going back to our event page and look for the next upcoming one. So now that's specifically CFM. For the other one-on-ones, particularly with industry, because we do a lot of one-on-ones with industry, you basically register. Bear in mind, like I said before, please take this home. Registration is just saying, hey, I have an interest. The large company ultimately decides who they meet based on the salient characteristics you provide as part of your registration for that. So that's how you sign up for that. Once they decide who they're gonna see, and they do that fairly quickly, you will get an email either saying, yes, you've been selected by the company or they'll send you a declaration email. Those emails are coming right from the program office. I want everybody to also, to bear in mind, we as the Boo that we have no influence and make no suggestions on who these companies should or should not see. That's their business decision. Similar to teaming, like we just talked about, that's a business decision. So you have to make a business decision whether or not you wanna team with a company. Is it the right fit? Do their e-fills match up with your e-fills? Those type of things. All right, Dan, what's next? So I think we're just about out of time. I would encourage anyone who has questions to email us at info at patriotbootcamp.org and we will forward those questions long and connect you with some folks to answer them. And I do have to remind everyone that registration is open for DAV Patriot Bootcamp Spring cohort. It's gonna be in the beautiful Silicon slopes of Lehigh, Utah by our friends at MX. We need mentors for that event as well. Thousands of dollars in non-dilutive cash is available to pitch contest winners following that event. You can email us if you're interested in being a mentor as well at info at patriotbootcamp.org. And if you're interested in registering, please go to patriotbootcamp.org. And if you're interested, if you're on the LinkedIn chat, especially when you're interested in getting into the Zoom chat, please submit for our newsletter and you'll get notifications and we can get you on answer questions. I know Paul had a good question. I'm sorry, Paul, we can't get to it. But thank everyone for tuning in and thank you to these wonderful two veterans who've had very dedicated outstanding careers in the military, great service to our country and they continue to serve us every day. So thank you all for tuning in and we'll see you next time. Thanks Dan, thanks everybody. Have a great day, be safe up there. Thank you, thank you for your service.