 All right, today's video, we're going to discuss how to respond to source of thoughts and RFIs, the do's and don'ts of an RFI and source of thought response. And again, if you want to learn the proper way to doing this, visit us for it, govcon.edu.com. Today's video, we are discussing the source of thought and RFIs. It's one of the common strategies that we teach in terms of how do you get ahead of the opportunity? How do you start having a conversation with the agencies in order to align your company, align yourself in a better position for upcoming simplified acquisition and or source of opportunities or just be able to be considered for a bid with that agency. So again, source of thought and RFIs, let's go over here to our handy dandy website, beta.sam. And by the way, for all of those who've been knocking beta.sam, I'm starting to like beta. Sam, myself. I'm going to start off from scratch. So we're just going to click contract opportunities at the top. And we're going to do a little bit demo. By the way, I noticed something. Someone said to me that they don't have this download button on their screen. And one of my previous comments on YouTube, the reason why you don't have the download button, if you don't see that download button on your beta.sam, that's because you're not logged in. So again, anyone can use beta.sam without a login, but in order to get the download button, you have to sign in. So you have to create an account and sign in to beta.sam in order to get the download button. So whoever asked that question, when we're doing our activities, that's why you don't receive it. Just a real quick reminder, source of thought and RFIs, we're not going to explain what they are. But I will show you beta.sam today, how you find them. So again, beta.sam, and we are looking at the type of notice, and it says here source of thought, all right, and we'll look at source of thought. And again, you can sort it by state or whatever you like category. So currently 13,000 sources of thought. So we need to look at ones that are recent. I typically like to do the past week and hit filter. Sorry, that wasn't on the screen. So yeah, I hit past week. And then I click the filter button. All right. And it gives me 461 results, which is great because now we know the fiscal year just ended in September. Now we're in October, when the fiscal year was ending, it was around 300 plus results. Now we're up to the 400th range. And I can tell you that I personally used the source of thought recently to land a meeting with a government agency on behalf of my, not behalf, but because I did respond to the source of thought, I used that as justification to have a one-on-one meeting. And I did that just recently. So source of thoughts are a great way to kind of break the ground and start talking to these agencies because it's not a contract. It's not out for bid. So that means that there's no cone of silence and you have the right to be able to talk to them. Now what's the issue? Why are we making that video? Well, here's an opportunity that I recently published discussing the request for information for incarcerated motivational speakers. And when I looked at it, they gave you a list here of things that they wanted you to respond to. So here's a list. Please provide detail of these particular items. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, right? And what's interesting is this, and again, we're making a video today because the reason why I make content is because someone has made this mistake in the past. Whether it be me or someone in our community or someone out here in public has made this mistake. And the idea for me in teaching this is to help you avoid making these mistakes. And that's part of the reason why we make these lessons, right? Now, the issue is the government actually, and it's the first time I've seen this, which I love, by the way, they actually went and wrote a disclaimer here. And they all have these disclaimers. Let me just make sure I got on the screen. Okay. So it says, and they all have the disclaimers. It's used for information purposes. It's not requesting RFP. It doesn't mean that you're going to get a contract. It doesn't mean that they're looking for unsolicited proposals. They're not going to pay you for this stuff. You incur your own expenses. Not responding to this does not preclude you from participating. So it tells you all this stuff because why? People have made all of these statements. People have done all of these things. People have tried to use this as a means for forcing the government's hand or turning the government's hand to get them a contract. People have also used this to, like you said, call the government agencies and solicit them for work. And that is not the way that we teach people to use the source of thought notices. Keep in mind, all of the things that this particular contracting specialist said are true. They're not obligated to give you a contract to take your calls. And in fact, the majority of the source of thought notices that I see, I'm going to go to a big screen, the majority of the source of thought notices that I read says, do not call us. Do not email us other than a response to the source of thought. They're very explicit in that. They're not wanting hundreds of calls. And when I did my particular presentation where I showed how I levered source of thought to win contract opportunities, what I showed in the illustration in that teaching video was I responded to source of thought notices, and I never called them and I never emailed them after that. Because you don't have to. And I'm not telling anyone that they're supposed to respond and then call them after. I'm not saying that at all. In fact, I would tell you to not do that because that's not what they're looking for. They have a plan in mind. And there are other outside forces that may or may not be within their control. And unfortunately, you can't dictate to them how you want something to happen or how you want to see it. If they ask you your opinion, then you can give it to them in writing based on what they're stating here. However, so many people ask me this question. Eric, I send a source of thought. Can I call the contract an officer? No. I send a source of thought. Can I send them an email follow up? If it says not to call them, don't call them. If it says not to email, don't email them. This is one of the strategies that's in your toolbox. Again, if you're doing five other things, you don't have to worry about being discovered because the agency that you're targeting is going to discover you in one of these five or six methods that you're using to go after them. So there's no reason to feel desperate. And I really want to put this on there because I want my people, the people that are following me that are learning from me, I want them to educate themselves so that you're not the ones out here making a lot of these silly mistakes. And this is the first time I saw a government agency do a really good job of explaining this. So I want to go over these things and it says what should be included in your response, right? And which should not be included in response. And this was perfect. So here, do submit the requirements, assumptions, conditions, or contemplated approaches. They gave you one through 10. So you submit one through 10. Do not submit information that suggests and encourage a new, different, or innovative approach that would result in a cost savings to the government. I was telling my son, I've always told Maria, if you can read and write, you can do government contracts. You have to follow instructions. You may go back and say, but Eric, in some of your videos, you said you can suggest to government a way in which they could do, yes, depending upon the type of project. Maybe that was IT. Maybe that was a design project. Some of the source of thought and market research, yes, absolutely, they are seeking out ways in which to structure this. And this particular case, that's not what they're asking for. So you can't take and put a blanket assumption across all of the source of thoughts and all of the RFIs. You've got to read the instructions and make sure that you follow. This is your first test. Everyone out there, this is test number one of do you follow instructions or not? Do not submit technical documentation, white papers or system designs. Why? If you were doing a source of thought response or RFI response to a new type of software implementation, they may ask you for a white paper or system design and you don't submit it and they ask you for it. In this case, they don't ask for it and then people submit it. And so again, to me, a lot of these things make you look really silly because it's just following instructions. But Eric, no, but Eric, nothing. There's no buts. But means an exception. There's no exceptions. The government is very clear about their expectations, about what they're seeking and that is all they want and that's all you should be giving them. What should not be included in your responses? Proposals or offers. Who told you to give these people a proposal? Capability statement to other company market materials. Again, they're all different. The agencies are different. This is why I tell so many people to go, I want to work with the Navy. Excuse me, you have 22 different divisions of the Navy. Which one? Which Navy, which branch? Which, I mean, Navy has people that do construction. Navy has people that do IT. Navy has people that buy products and services. So you have to be very clear about the agency, the entity, what you're looking to do and then when you are approaching these things, follow the instructions. So this was very clear, don't send a capability statement. I'm willing to bet somebody's gonna send a capability statement because they're gonna say someone that they know, a friend of theirs told them that they should always send a capability statement. So your friend, Billy, who has maybe one or two contracts in his whole life, said, no, no, no, I always send my capability statements. There is no blanket one answers, one size fits all to the government, okay? That does not exist. We give you templates, we give you guidelines. That's why we analyze each of one of these on a case by case scenario and that's what you should be doing. Doesn't matter your industry. Do not submit requests to be considered for or be notified for a future solicitation. Again, when you do this, there's no guarantees. Don't have any expectations. Do not have expectations. Last night in my video I talked about when as a company and you spend marketing dollars, right? There's no guarantees. If you have a lawyer that's defending you in a case, he can't guarantee you a win. So why do we think that because this is a tactic that someone has explained, whether it's me or someone else, whether it's the PTAC or MBDA person, that well, you told me to do this and I haven't got any results. I told you to do a lot of things. This is one of them. If you do all of the things, you will get results. Sometimes this stuff takes time to work. I've had sources saw notices that I responded to that it took 18 months before they considered me for an opportunity, 18 months. How many of you would have given up, right? How many of you would have hit the wall, right? How many of you would have threw in a towel? It took 18 months for it to pay off, but it paid off. Now that 18 months has passed and now that we're receiving tens of millions of dollars in contracts, people go, oh my gosh, you're so lucky and you know how to do this and you're so smart. No, if you had been doing these tactics and techniques 18 months ago, you will be sharing it on some of the same success stories as the people at Gulfcon EDU learning and having the same results they had. Unfortunately, you decided because they said it wasn't a bid, because they said it was a RFI, because they said they're not paying you for it or there's no guaranteed results, you decided it wasn't worth your time and so you didn't do it. But you went to Beta SAM and bid, bid, bid, bid, bid, which didn't give you any results. So again, do not submit requests to be considered for award. Do not submit requests to be added to a mailing or distribution list. I go in this and I do it. I submit the information and also make sure you're qualified. Don't just respond because I told you to respond. If you're not qualified, if it says you need two million dollars a bond, you don't have two million dollars a bond and don't respond. I've also sent in sources of thought notices and the government totally just eliminated them. So the government eliminated the sources of thought notice. It's gone, the project never happened. Again, I wasted my time. Well, I didn't see this wasted my time. It's a strategy that's effective that works over the long run. I'm looking to be in this for the long term, not the short term. And for people who out here who are looking for immediate results in short term, quick fixes, quick hits, you're in the wrong industry because the government is a long cycle. Yes, have we been able to make these things work and capitalize on them in a month? Yes, absolutely. But it's like anything else, right? You might as well put it the thing, results are not typical. Because most of us, unfortunately, don't have all of the qualifications that the government's asking for that they're looking for. So it makes it difficult for us to be able to qualify when you don't have all the actual past performance and preferences. So that's why it may or may not work for you as quickly as it does for some of the other people. Do not submit questions or comments related to this RFI. And then the last one do not respond via telephone. I think this is pretty simple and I think it's a great set of rules to follow. And I was happy that this particular contracting person put it in there because so many of you have called me and are asking these questions and I was happy to be able to use this particular document as an example of what to do as what not to do. Now, what are the things that you should do? Go back to what they're asking, right? Include answer the questions. So many people don't even answer these 10 questions. If you have no intentions of answering all 10 of their questions, right? Don't respond. I'm telling you now, don't respond. I would not, it serves you zero benefit to half respond. Eric, I know five of the answers out of the 10. Don't respond. Don't waste your time. You're not serving yourself any good. You're not serving this particular contracting person any good. You're wasting everyone's time. So again, I hope that this video helped clarify some things on Source Assault. Hey, listen, if you are not already part of our free course visit us at freegovconcourse.com. If you have been through our free courses and you're ready to solve the Rubik's Cube and the mystery of doing government contracts, you wanna learn from an actual government contractor who does contracts, visit us at govconed.com. It's a new platform that we're building out completely from the ground up where we teach and help hundreds of people when their first contract, second contract, or largest contract. Thanks so much. I hope that you learned a lot for today. Again, go out and vote, wash your hands, or use sanitizer.