 So, we're here to talk about 12 questions that you want to ask your P-TAC associates and pursuing government contracts. And the reason why we bring up the P-TAC is because the P-TAC is a free organization that is all throughout the United States, it's sponsored or paid for by government tax dollars. So, your tax dollars are paying for P-TACs and they are there to support and service you. However, if you don't know the questions that you should be asking your P-TAC, that's where a lot of us stumble and we fall because we go to the P-TAC and we ask the wrong question. So, today, my goal is to help you start asking the right questions so you can make the most effective use of your time when you are with your P-TAC because I know that from past experiences, sometimes it can be weeks, if not a month or so, before you can get an appointment. So, you definitely want to make use of the time effectively. Now, a student asked me, and again, let's pretend I was a P-TAC. Someone asked me, Eric Coffey, on my YouTube channel, how do I become a small business? And if that's the question that you lead with, how do you become a small business, that's a very wide, open-ended question and it's not going to get you the results that you're seeking. So, the first question that you want to go in and what I would ask the P-TAC is, can you help evaluate my business? What does that mean? That means, tell me where I'm at. This is my situation. This is my scenario. This is what I have. Okay. Tell me where I'm at. I want to know the type of people that I need around me, the type of people I need to partner with in order to be successful. So, again, the very first question I would ask the P-TAC is, you know, lay out who you are and what you do, lay out your experiences and ask them if they can help evaluate your business. And that means looking at whether or not I'm fit to be a prime at the federal level or maybe a subcontract at the federal level or maybe do I need to start at the local level to be a prime or a local subcontractor or do I need to team up with someone to help me to be able to fill in the gaps of what I'm missing? So, that's the first question. Question number two, based on my situation, because now you know me, you and I are sitting one-on-one, Mr. and Mrs. P-TAC, you know me. Based on my situation, my level experience, what do you think I need to be successful? So, now that's a little bit different than the first question. The first question was asking, right, okay, can I be a prime? Can I be a sub? Can I work in the federal arena? Can I work in a local arena? This is different because here what we're saying is I want to put together the best possible team, right? Do I need more training? Do I need education? Do I need to be part of an organization? What things, what gaps are missing to help me be complete, right? To be successful company based on your experiences. Why is that important? A lot of times people are courteous, they're kind, they're respectful, and so they sometimes forget to tell you the areas where they see that you have weaknesses. So, here you're opening yourself up and saying, what do you think I need to be successful? Which is, tell me where I'm weak. Can you help me with market research, not bidding? Man, this is a loaded question, right? And the reason why is so many of us ask about bidding. Bidding, bidding, bidding, bidding, bidding. However, if you were to bid in a market where there's large contractors, there's an abundance of people working, that there's 12 people that respond to each and every bid, you're probably not going to have a good chance coming in as a newbie, as someone fresh, you know, green, they say, wet behind the ears. You probably don't have a very much chance of success. However, if they can help you with market research, they can analyze your situation and who you are, look at the region that you're in, the space that you're operating in, and maybe they can determine where are the opportunities that exist that maybe everyone is not chasing. So, there's a huge difference between market research and bidding, because if you can find a space, right, a safe space in a market where there's no one showing up, there's no one actually bidding, there's a shortage of contractors, like my man, John, found, then guess what? He won four contracts this past week, and out of the four bids, so to speak, that he did, two of them, no one bid against him, no one. So, wouldn't you like to know where is there an error in the market around where I live or in my immediate region, so to speak, depending upon how far you want to go out, where there's a whole abundance of opportunities and no one chasing them. That's more important to me than bidding. All right, what area are you most experienced in, federal, state, or local? So, this is the question that you want to ask the P-TECH person himself, so then that way, right, if someone is giving advice and they're telling you, you know, Darren, I think you should start off doing local contracts. Well, when you get to this question and you find out that they don't have any federal experience, then it might make sense why they're steering you towards the local contracting arena, right? It's not that they believe that you should do local contracts, they don't know about state or federal contracting, so they can't steer you that direction, because they don't have any experience in that arena, so this is to help qualify the person that you're talking to on the other end. Again, we're not looking to judge anyone, we're not looking to ridicule them in any kind of way, we are just trying to qualify the information that we're receiving so that we can make an informed decision for our business, right? Which wrong would make an informed decision for something that's going to impact you and your family and your livelihood? So, again, there's nothing wrong with qualifying it, you just want to understand, and the other thing is, what if that particular person, and let's say you go in with the mindset, I want to start at the local level, and that's your mindset coming into this, and you find out that your P-TAC is really, really, really good at federal contracting. Wouldn't that make a difference to you? Number five, do you have any contacts in my industry that work at the state, local, federal level? I think sometimes we forget to ask, right? And what they say, close mouth, don't get fed, or the squeaky wheel gets the oil. So you have to be the squeaky wheel if you go in, and again, you ask about, oh, I want to learn about proposal writing, I want to learn about bidding, you know, how do I get a contract? Those questions do not show that you have any intention on actually doing the work, right? The questions that we're giving you are saying, listen, I'm not afraid to put in the work, I'm a committed person, I'm dedicated, I just want to be steered in the right direction, so I know what activities do I need to be doing today so that in the future, three months from now, six months from now, I can be successful, I can be further along than where I'm at today. So asking those types of insightful questions shows that you really, truly are a person that wants to learn, that wants to grow, and so now that makes them more likely to want to help you succeed, right? They want to help you and be a part of that success. So again, do you have any contracts in my industry, or contacts, excuse me, that work at the state, local, federal level? Why? Great, you want to know who do they know? I can tell you that we were fortunate enough, a few years ago when I spoke to PTAC, they actually personally knew one of the small business specialists for the Corps of Engineers, and they gave us some feedback based on my meeting with them that we didn't even know about. So again, having this type of insightful information will allow you to be able to maybe go out and pitch or do a presentation for one of these contracting officers, small business people, and then allow you to get some feedback that you wouldn't have had before. Number six, what can I do to increase my odds for success? So now, what can you do to increase your odds for success? How is that different from the last question? This is asking, again, how do I improve based on previous industry persons, previous industry companies? So there's one thing to look at me and look at my business and say, for example, you need line of credit, you need a bond, right? That's one thing, okay, but how do I increase my odds for success means that do I find a strategic partner? Do I need to be part of an organization? How do I increase my odds for success? And again, we're asking people questions that are going to spark something, right? We want to spark something in the mind of that PTAC person so that they can say to yourself, hmm, okay, you know what, I got something for you. So again, we want to come at them and have them be able to help give you like everything they know and sometimes we are humans and we forget that we know certain things, we know certain people and this is a way to help make that possible, right? Help give them another way of asking a similar question to hopefully trigger something in the back of their brain that reminds them of an opportunity, of a person, of a relationship that they forgot that they had or that they didn't think about based on your previous six questions. Number seven, I was told that local cities and municipalities have projects where no one is bidding. Have you heard of anything like that? We talked about this a few slides back. I have friends of mine and I've been saying this for years, I've been saying this for years. Today in 2021, they are still going to projects where no one is bidding, they're the only bidders. Maria went on a project where there was only one bidder. I have bid projects off of BetaSAM that there was no one responded. They put it back out two and three times, no one bid the projects. We have people in our organization that were project managers for the government where they put out bids, no one responded and they had to take it down. So ask the question, don't be afraid to ask. Again, you cannot get the answer to the question that you don't ask. Number eight, I need to establish myself as a professional in this space. What meetings can I attend? Organizations can I join in order to position myself as a professional? Again, take initiative. It shows that you want to take initiative and you're not just looking for free handouts. Number nine, which one of your clients is the most successful at contracting? Can I speak to him or her about what they do to grow their business? It can't hurt, right? If you don't try, what are you gonna get? So again, ask them, listen, you wanna fly with Eagles. In order to be the best, you have to learn from the best, right? So you wanna be around those types of people. If they know someone that's doing 10, 20, 15 million dollars a year, hey listen, let me know what events do they attend? Where do they go? What meetings are they a part of? So I can join those meetings and those organizations and maybe bump into that person. Are they gonna be at this upcoming conference that you recommended to me? Are they gonna be at this particular chamber meeting? Where is this particular person gonna be at? You meet with them, maybe you can't give me their phone number, but can you tell me who they are? Or can you tell me where they're gonna be and their name so I know who to look for? And then hopefully, right? Hopefully we're in the same room, the same space at the same time coming up. Maybe we're in the same teams meeting. Maybe we're in the same Zoom call. Whatever the case may be, but do you wanna find out, again, who are those people? What are some of the common mistakes that you see repeated over and over again among small businesses? This is a great question, right? Because again, they evaluated you, they suggested how to improve, they told you about some of the success, but tell me some of the failures that you've seen, right? If you're a PTEC and you've been at this job for five years, seven years, 10 years, I'm sure you've had people come through the door that were just like me, that were ambitious and excited and motivated and ready to go and like, yeah, I'm gonna change the world. And then a few years later, you hear about them or you call them or you find out that they closed their doors or they went another route, right? So find out what are those experiences? You wanna make the most of your time and you wanna gather all, again, draw upon their knowledge, draw upon the fact that they've been sitting at that desk, at that office, at that table for years and years and years, right? And what is it that you can learn from them? How can you take that knowledge that they've got in their brains, right? And implant it upon yourself so that you can now learn what are some of the things that I should be avoiding or what are some of the things that I should not do? Number 11, can you recommend any free or low-cost training that I can take to further my knowledge? Listen, again, it's not that people are bad. People, sometimes we're just, you know, we have so much that I can tell you from my own experiences. I have so much stuff in my head, so many people that I talk to that I forget sometimes to suggest resources that I know about. And so I don't always remember that and I would expect the same thing. So again, you have to be intentional in your meeting and what you're asking for and ask them specifically this question, can you recommend any free or low-cost training that I can take to further my knowledge? And then number 12, this is kind of one that I put in, have you ever heard of Gulfconn Giants? And yeah, I slit this one in there because why, we are a national organization, we're a national nonprofit and we're growing and we're providing training. And I wanna ask, I was on a call the other day one of my students and they talked to their PTEC about me and PTEC said, yeah, I've heard of that guy before. However, I wanted to go a step further and not only ask about Gulfconn Giants if they've heard of us, but ask them, how can you put in a request to have the organization send out someone to provide training to speak to people like yourselves? Because why? The PTEC receives hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, right? So with their, let's say tens of millions, okay? Let's just, we'll take it down. We'll say tens of millions in funding because they gotta do matching and so we don't wanna exaggerate. So let's say they receive tens of millions of dollars in funding and they can request use for funding to provide speakers and trainers to support small businesses. And if I would be hooved to not tell you this information so that you can find out, right? How is it that you can request us or someone from my organization to come out and spend time with you, spend time and teach and train you and your team? So again, I wanna leave you with that because why part of my plan and part of what we're doing here with GovCon Giants and my program GovCon EDU is we are looking to increase our capacity for students, businesses to expand our reach and expand all of the great things that we're doing. We wanna reach a billion dollars and helping students get through that in terms of contract actions. Not taking credit for things that they were already doing, things that we actually helped them put into place, relationships that we fostered, partnerships that we supported and furthering their business development efforts and helping them really grow, learn and advance. So again, that's part of my plan, my dream. If you or your company wanna go from zero to 250,000 to a million dollars to five million a year, you're my kind of person. Give us a call or send us an email or again, talk to your PTAC. That's the first step in the process. They're already sponsored by the government. Let them know that again, that you are a serious candidate for to be the next multi-million dollar corporation and you need their help and you're gonna watch and witness, be a witness to your success in the next year to come. Thank you so much for enjoying this video and watching. Please leave any notes, comments, feedback below, looking forward to all of the people out here who gained from this. And I wanna hear what does your PTAC say, right? So tell me about what does your PTAC say when you met with them.