 Hey, welcome everyone. Happy holidays. Happy inauguration day. Looking forward to the transition and what's happening. Today we're going to discuss Clubhouse. I did a three hour marathon stage appearance on Clubhouse the other day and I was asked some really good questions. I'm not here to promote Clubhouse. I just want to share some of the experiences. Some people out the audience came up to the stage and asked some excellent questions. This platform is a really new platform that we're trying out and experimenting with so I definitely want to encourage you if you can get an invite to Clubhouse, try and do so. If you're having problems with it, reach out to us and let us know. This is our number on the screen that you can text. One of our associates, I am looking at those texts all the time so if you got any questions you need someone to sponsor you or help you get in, let us know. But the interesting thing today is someone asked the question about whether or not they should be pursuing state contracts, city contracts, or federal contracts. That seems to be a hot topic all the time for people who are just getting started in the government arena. The conversation today I want to discuss with you is my feelings on state contracts, local contracts, as well as federal contracts. I typically tend to have a preference in terms of going federal but giving the nature of events that's been happening in the last year and moving forward, it looks like there may be some opportunities and I may be changing my stance on that. But today let's just jump right into it. One of the recommendations that I gave when I was speaking to folks on Clubhouse was that if you were deciding to go on to the local contract arena, if you've made that decision and you said, hey, I'm thinking about going to a local contracting arena, here in Miami-Dade County we have these advisory boards and I recommended to the person that was asking the question that take a look at the local advisory board for your local city, municipality, and then when you look at that, find out when they are in the meetings and then try and attend a meeting. So here in Miami-Dade County, and I looked up, again, you might have to play around and do some searches, you may have to call the local municipal offices, but definitely take a look and see if you can get some inside information with the local advisory board for your particular arena in your area. Why? Because there's a lot of good things going on. It says here we have a small business development center in Miami-Dade County designed to help small businesses and this is where I started truthfully. When we first got started, this is what I was doing because I didn't know any different. So again, naturally, someone said, go to government contracts, we went here and we started at the local level. We had some folks in there that helped us out and helped us with our registrations, didn't cost us any money, but here you can see here there's recommendations that are made to the small business. This is called a small business enterprise advisory board for construction, but they also have it for goods and services and they also have it here for architect and engineering. And from this, they actually issue reports on their meetings because again, these are a public entity and as a government entity, they have to document everything. So they do issue reports that you can go back and look at. The recommendation that I oftentimes offer up to folks is to attend the meetings. So again, now things are virtual so you should be able to join a webcast of some sort that they have on there, but I recommend that folks attend these meetings. You're going to learn a lot in the meetings. You're going to meet people first and foremost, but then you're going to also learn a lot about how your local government procures goods and services and I think that's so critical for most people. We seem to believe that the attending the government or municipal building is only for when you have parking tickets or paying taxes, but there's a lot of other services that the municipal buildings and your local cities offer that can be beneficial to you, particularly those of us who now want to start our own small business. You have to get active, you got to participate, people have to see your face, know your name, and be able to identify you and say, hey, you are that electrical guy, right? Yeah, I mean, wear your logo. This is the time to carry your brand around with you. So again, when you are on camera, even in your background, I've had people put their logos in the background, kind of like when you go to one of those award shows, but again, let people know who you are so that the more exposure you get, the more opportunities that will create for you and also the more you'll learn about who are the good contractors who are the bad contractors. This is what I recommend doing, but I wanted to show you really quickly on this particular report. And this is going to be like a two-part video. This is the first part of that video. I don't want to make it beyond about 20 minutes because I know people get bored. So I'm going to make two parts to this. This is the first part where we're going over participating in your particular industry, or I'm sorry, your particular city's boards for your respective industry. And then the second part is going to be why I believe that state and local contracts, given if we continue on the path that we're continuing, should create and open up some opportunities for folks out there. So this is again, this is part one of a two-part video series that I'm making. So again, we're here at the Miami-Dade County page for Small Business Enterprise Advisory Board. I went ahead and clicked this March calendar. And this is the March 2020 last meeting that they had. And again, things are changing with COVID, but even if even if there are your local particular group stop having meetings as a result of the pandemic, again, you can still go back in and check archive information. Now looking at this report, Eric, what am I looking for in the report? Now again, they're different. They waiver in terms of the information that's required to put on it. But I think for the most part, it will give you some knowledge and insight into your local government, how it works. By the way, LaWanda Wright Robinson, who's here, she's been doing this since I first started. So God bless her. So she's been doing this a long time. Lori Johnson has been there a long time as well, helping small businesses. Great, great, great advocates. When I first got started on my first couple contracts, they were there. They were probably closer to the bottom of the total poll. Now they're at the top of the charts. So looking here, old business, new business, reasonable opportunity to be heard. You also by attending these events, get your chance to be heard for your voice. And then you can ask questions. But I want to show you something because this is this is the area that I talk about a lot. And one of the things, and it was just coincidentally that they happen to have here on this chart, it says here, assistance provided a small business enterprise program. And then it talks about certification, assistance, year of date totals, needs, assessment meetings, technical assistance, and then payment issues. And they actually created a category entitled payment issues, payment issue related dollars, 1.24 million. Now this is fascinating because at the time of this chart, contract issues and then contact with SB, highlighting contract opportunities. This, when you're looking at it and people after ask me, Eric, well, why do you say those things? Why do you make those presumptions about state local contracts? Because this time after time, whenever I'm speaking somewhere on a professional stage and speaking to folks and there's an audience and there's people that can hear me, not 90, not 80, not 70, 100% of the time someone in the audience, someone that's listening, someone that's watching has had a similar experience. So for me, I've concluded not only in my own experiences, not only in the experience of my friends, but the experiences of those persons in the audience. So right there, 1.2 million dollars and payment related issues is a big deal. And to be frank with you, I believe those are only the issues that were brought forth to the board. If you add in the issues that were not brought forward to the board, you're probably going to get double or triple that number. So again, this particular part one is not really the highlight focus in the payment issues, but it's more of how do you start learning and investigating and making the best possible decision for your business, right? And so that's what I'm here to help you do is I'm not telling you what to do. I'm giving you all the information so that you can go out and do your own due diligence, your own homework, your own research, and then you can determine the best possible path for your particular small business. And that's what we want out here. But if you go through this particular report, which is 156 pages, it's actually a pretty good report. I enjoy the report thoroughly. This also is a lot of the reasons why people ask me about minority contracting. And I'm black on or I'm Hispanic on because at the local levels, they still prioritize those particular things. But you have to learn vocabulary, vernacular, and you have to learn how to speak to your audience. If you are bilingual, and you're speaking to a primarily English audience, I think you would speak English. And if you were speaking to primarily Hispanic audience, I think you would speak Spanish. So the same thing here, we cannot talk federal contracting to the local government, and we can't talk local contracting to the federal arena. And a lot of times folks get their words jumbled, and their messages jumbled, and you would be surprised how many people at the federal level take offense for the words that people are using improperly or incorrectly. So we want to just help you by trying to relate. The more you can relate to the particular your audience members, the folk, the person of your focus over your attention at the time, the more likely there are to like no interest you and believe that you are credible. But this is where when people talk about minority contracting, and they talk about, I'm black, I'm male, I'm Hispanic, I'm woman, female. This is what you're talking about here, right? And this is at the local level. Federal government, you will not see these types of reports. But again, here, they talk about there's the amount of opportunities. There were 87 projects awarded for $61 million. There were seven products awarded for total of $33 million that were eligible for small business participation of the 33 of the 33 million three projects with small business SBE construction measures total three to three million or 10%. And then there were six open market non satisfied projects with 4.7 million talks about the total value of the contracts. And we're not going to get into the integrated reports, but it lists here all the contractors information, all the people who are working on these projects. And then it goes into other projects outside of this particular goal. So then it looks at jobs at the airport. And I mean, I've actually, it's funny, believe it or not, I've used these reports in my past to find subcontractors who I want to work with. So for example, Lunacon, I mean, they're huge, they're prime and a sub just depends on the project. But they're doing 20 plus million dollars a year. Patricia Bonilla was on my podcast. And so you could find her on there. But again, a lot of this information, which people don't understand is public information. You just have to do some digging around and find it. This is how I when I'm looking for a subcontractor in an area that I'm new to these are the places where I go. If this person, I mean, I don't have to ask them for the past performance. If I see them on this list, they're already working on government projects. So they're familiar with government projects. Right. You don't have to take their word for you don't believe what they say. It's here in black and white. Another thing that's interesting about this report, I'm pushing up about 13 minutes. I'm monitoring my time today is again, projects that are operating within Miami-Dade County by some of the major primes and then they're added into this board. So here we look at Jackson health systems. And here you go. This project with Skanska and Jackson health systems, the total value awarded, total value of costs of work, the total value of contract to SBE. Here's the percentage completion. It goes into the breakouts. And then again, it lists some of their major SBE construction persons and their contract values. So all of this information is good information. Whether or not you can make a determination as to whether you should pursue state, local, or federal, maybe not, but this is great information to have to find out also where you can fit your lane, right? So if you go in and you see one of your competitors on this particular list or one of these respective lists, you go, okay, this is where they're going after. So now you know in your brain, who is a potential prime contract that you can work with as well because your competitor is working for that person. So a lot of good research and it just, I always remind people to start with the research. Let the research guide your activities. When, when talking with, I gave an example on the stage on clubhouse, I said that because someone asked me, Hey, what kind of stuff does the government buy? And I asked eight different people on the stage, what services they provided to the government. So Mebs is one of our interns who's works here at GovCon Giant. He sells clay shooting targets. And what he did was he researched a small municipality that was, I was at the New Jersey, New York, a small town area that we're looking for something very specific where again, not a lot of people provided those services. So there are opportunities out here. I think that what happens is we get lazy and we decide to just go with the first thing that someone tells us is, I think step back and do some research, dig around. Look at these companies, IGWT construction, they're sub tier one, tier two, 1.9 million, $1 million contracts. You know, if you are bidding a job at an Air Force base and you're looking for some companies, these folks are used to working as subcontractors. Great. Keep look. Z roofing, $1 million roofing contract. Hey, I'd look at hiring Z roofing here, MMAC, ACM refrigeration, American Industrial Management Corporation. Okay. Caucasian white male. So maybe not, but like you say, construction, but they consider small business. So they're falling into threshold. 16 Hispanic firms, seven African American firms, three Caucasian firms. Miami breakers. My, my con scaffolding, Southern Blossom. So, and then the good thing about the report, like I said, it goes into all of the different, the major opportunities in construction, what they're doing this particular contract value was $133 million. Looks like they take about whatever the difference is, 17 million in fees. And then goals and a goals, CSB contractors. Here are all the contractors. These are people that I would consider using for any of my projects that I had coming down the pipeline. So I think that all of us, all of us have the opportunity to attend one of these events and or find this information online, or at least now you have a point of reference that you can call your local city municipality and say, Hey, do you have any type of advisory board of similar scope and nature? This is part one of a two part series where I'm a tiling state, local, federal contracts, which ones should I do? Which ones should I consider? And how I believe that if we continue along the path of what's happening now with the continuing passing of stimulus packages and funds, that it may become an opportunity where I think that a lot of small businesses, it may not be as bad as it once was in terms of going after these contracts and getting paid because they are being backed by the government's strong arm. So now we're going to look at on part two is the three different stimulus packages and how they are lending a hand to offset the funding shortage falls for the state and local government. So stay tuned for part two of our series. We're going to jump right in right now.