 Hey, GovCon Giants family, your host here, Eric Coffey. I just wanna say before we get started, we are taking advantage of the membership sites here on YouTube. If you have not already, join, click on the join button now to find out how to go from just a bystander to becoming a GovCon insider. Today's guest, Raj Sharma. Raj is the co-founder of GovShop Public Spend Forum. He's gonna share with us all about his story and his journey from working at a large consulting firm to founding his own consulting firm, Senseo, and then now GovShop Public Spend Forum where you can claim your free profile there, your supplier profile. They are aggregating all of the world's information on suppliers. They are sharing that with the Governors Association and a whole host of agencies out there. So definitely, you wanna take a look at this episode, listen and pay attention, take notes. It's a great one. Thank you so much. I'll see you on the other side. Raj Sharma, I'm the CEO and founder of Public Spend Forum. Hey Raj, welcome today. Thanks for having me, Eric. No, not a problem. So we actually had the pleasure of meeting a few weeks back and so we talked and I know a little bit about your backstory. And I remember some of the things that you said that fascinated me. Could you share with the audience, how did you get into the world of government contracting and kind of where did this all begin? Sure, I'm trying to keep it short because I don't wanna bore everybody. But really, just a quick overview is I had done work with fortune companies and consulting and I moved back from Pittsburgh. I was at a dot-com there after grad school and I moved back to DC because my family's here. Anyways, being in DC, I went to a consulting firm, Booz Allen, and I got, of course, I ended up working on some government work. I was also doing some commercial work. And I had heard all these things about how boring government work might be, et cetera, et cetera. Now, honestly, I found it really fascinating. The thing that I found most fascinating about it was that these very giant organizations and we're trying to almost move the Titanic and drive change, and that's a challenge in its own. And I'm fascinated by those kinds of challenges of how do you change behaviors? How do you drive organizational change in very complex organizations? So to me, it was like, wow, okay, how do you make this happen? How do you actually deliver real tangible results in an environment like that? So that's what kind of really got me into government and then a couple of years later, really quick fast forward, and I learned a bit about procurement also, and I was doing a lot of operational excellence and procurement type work. And I really had an idea. I always thought I was gonna start something, but I felt like the way I wanted to, some of the pain points that I was seeing government agencies experience, I really felt like we needed to take a real fresh approach to the pain people were failing. And I felt like I needed to do something on my own to really create that kind of approach. And then second motivation, besides addressing kind of the problems that the government was facing in a fresher way. I also, my other motivation was building a new type of firm that really reimagined how you make people thrive. So I wanted to build a place that was exceptional from a standpoint of an exceptional place to work. And so those are kind of the two goals I set out with. Now, you worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, right? And it's been a long time ago. Almost, let's say 18 years ago. Yeah, like 18 years ago. And then you went out and you start your own consulting practice. Is that correct? Yes. Now, okay, first of all, what made you leave Booz Allen? I mean, I'm sure it was a nice paying job. Oh, before we even get there, what's your background? Yeah, so mostly business. I was born in India. And I actually lived there with my grandparents for a while. And we didn't have a whole lot, but they were like my uncles had a little stationary store. I remember right after school every day, I'd be helping. I'd be this weird kid who didn't go out and play with the other kids, but I was always at the shop, right? And helping out all the time. And same thing, eighth grade, when I finally moved back here and to live with my parents, my mom had a little mom in pop store in DC. And I used to go there right after school to help her. And right after I got out of school, I walked to the Metro. I went there to help her and we came home at night. And so I always kind of had this, I think tendency to really kind of do something where I liked the hands-on work. So that's where I always knew I was gonna start something. So in Boos, it just happened that again, I've worked with some amazing people. I have a lot of friends from there and I learned a lot from everyone there. But I always knew I was gonna start something. And so I had these ideas of, again, the pain points in a different way to deliver value. And then the second thing, like I said, was related to how do you manage people? How do you really help each person realize that they're true potential? And that was something that really motivated me. And I said, you know, I can't do this in a very giant organization. Not anything wrong with Boos. It's just hard to right do. So I wanted to create that environment. Okay, so now let's just walk us through it. You leave Boos and then what do you do first? So the name of the next organization is what, how do you say it? So Sencio. Okay, Sencio, okay. Yeah, so Sencio is a management consulting firm. So our focus was organizational and performance improvement. That's the kind of work I was doing at Boos as well. I'll tell you, I actually accepted a job out of Boos. I was thinking about starting something, but I had accepted another job. And I had my computer, Sunday came, I was supposed to fly out on Monday to orientation to Atlanta. And I called, I just had this feeling, like if I don't do this right now, I don't know when I'm gonna do it. I was 30, so I was 32 years old. And so I just, I called up the person that hired me and said, look, I gotta do something different. I gotta do this because I gotta start this thing that I've been wanting to do. So I had no business plan, no contracts. I had barely $50,000 in the bank. But I just went based on, I said, what's the biggest risk I'm taking? I thought to myself right practically before I went and told my parents who yelled at me, like starting and they're like, what are you doing? Do you have any idea? To me, what I thought about was, I have an idea of the problem than what I wanna do. I don't have a business plan, I don't have a contract, I don't have any work. I have about 50K, right? What's the worst thing that could happen? I did my budget, I said I can go sustain myself for about six months, right? And let's say I get no work, nothing, and then I have to look for another job. One, I had supreme confidence in myself, I could go find another job really easily. Two, my equation was even if I spent $50,000 in A in the foregone income, what I would learn in those six months of even trying through the gritty part of trying to build a business and all the learnings, I had, at least I felt that I would learn so much that progress even through failures of not even being able to build, I thought I could take those lessons and then apply them in another job and that would propel my career further. So that's, I felt like there was really, I was just investing in myself and that's all I thought about it. No, that's an actual great answer. Did you, at the time, I know that you have two kids now, was you married at the time, were you single? No, I was, you know, so that was part of what went into the equation of I need to start this. I had just started dating who's now my wife. And I was thinking the same thing, I said, I can make this decision. We've only been dating about five months. I can make this decision on my own right now, but, you know, fast forward a year, if we're married or more serious, then, you know, it's a different equation, right? So that was one of the other things I thought about is, I said, you know, it's less risky, right? If you have kids, et cetera, obviously, there's a lot more responsibility that you have to think of. Sure. So that also went into that equation. Okay, okay. So now you start, you said you took a job, but we're gonna, we'll skip the job part. And you decided to start the actual organization. What was your first hire? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. He's one of my best friends. He's like a brother to me. A lot of people know him in the community. He, you know, I had already started May 13th, 2003. I said, this is my official day. I'm gonna sit at my desk in my own house. And that's my first official day. But I also called him up and said, hey, I've started this thing. Please come join me and be a co-founder. And I don't really have a business plan. I don't really have, you know, customers, but just come join me and quit your six-figure job. And I promise we'll make it work. And I convinced him to quit his job. Oh my goodness. And I think there's a story behind it that's also kind of one of those stories that's told at Sencio, what I'm really proud of. You know, when I met him, you know, to talk about it, you know, he kind of, you know, he thought, maybe I'll have some sort of a plan, right, that I will be going over with him. And he definitely understood like what problems I wanted to tackle in terms of on behalf of customers, et cetera, right? But our first conversation was not at all about that. Our first conversation was, I had written down on a piece of paper what the core values of the firm should be. And that was the whole conversation because I wanted to make sure we were aligned on values. To me, that was the most important thing. And I've always felt about any business. Yes, you know, you can have a strategy and a problem set you're solving, but the core foundation of everything that makes you stronger, even, you know, if you think about it as a human being, right, as a person, it's your values, right? You make a lot of decisions, especially during like when you're facing kind of some tough decision, you rely on your value system knowingly or unknowingly, right? And same thing with the organization, right? I felt those values are the things that, you know, I want the organization to stand for something. And what we do business-wise, et cetera, it's almost inconsequential to the belief that it needs to stand for something that's bigger than us. And that was the goal and that's what we discussed. And I knew he would gravitate to that because we had always talked about some stuff like that. Right. So that was our first discussion. So what were some of those values? And he made a decision and he quit his job and his parents yelled at him too. And so we both got yelled at by our parents and here we are. And I'm sure they're very happy with you now, right? The decision. Yes, yes. That's always the case, right? It's, you know, you're in a borderline of insanity and genius. Yeah, no, you know, they, of course, like any parents, right? They would, they want you to do your best. And so, you know, once we made that decision, they were extremely supportive and helped us in any way they could. So. No, I agree. I was in a similar situation. I remember when I, when my business took a decline and I took a job for a couple of months and my parents said, oh, you should just stay at this job. It's a nice job and got benefits. And I said, well, I can't. Like, no, but it's, they're working with your schedule and they're giving me flexibility. And I, and I said, that's not me. Yeah, no, right? It's, it's something I'm sure you had that burning desire to go out. Right? I said, I don't think you get, I think it's hard to explain to someone who hasn't started something or doesn't have the desire to, right? No, I agree. Right? No, totally, totally. And, and you, I mean, no, for me at least, I work way harder than for myself than I would for someone else. Yeah, it's very true. So I do that. It's a, it's never ending. So tell us, can you, there are any of those values that you can remember that you can tell us, share with us? Yeah, so a couple that, you know, I go to and because we talked about them all at that time, right? It's, it's, that to me, that was again, very important. That's what we started with. So it's something we talked about all the time. And I didn't want it to be some, you know, a piece of paper that hung up on a wall and people walked by that. Honestly, we never did that, right? I didn't care about that because I think those are just, but what the two values that I would point to, one was results driven. And why that was important to me was because, you know, I grew up with very meager kind of, you know, setting. And we didn't have a whole lot and, and as, as kids in India and, and our family was okay, right? And, but, you know, I also saw a lot of poverty and a lot of, you know, kids, like five years old washing dishes outside, right? They didn't have a place to stay. They'd sleep on the streets. And so we didn't have a whole lot, but there were others who didn't have anything at all, right? And so to me, you know, why results driven relates to that is I felt very strongly that whenever you ask anybody or you like any, any money you get, I think it was instilled in me since from, as a child that you have to really earn it. And I wanted to feel like really proud that we have done every single thing we can to earn every penny that we got from anyone. And that results driven is become like, if you go back and look at Sencio, it's like so core to the DNA of the firm because it was so instilled, people over deliver all the time. And, and, and I'm very proud of that. And I'll tell you one quick story related to results driven is I remember three, three years in or something, we had a client at USDA. He, we had a contract with him. I did not feel like the client really knew what was like, what to do. They were paying us. I went back. I won't say the last name, but his first name was David. He was an SCS. I went to his office. I said, David, I don't think you guys are ready for what you hired us for. And I feel like we're wasting money. We're wasting your money. We're wasting taxpayer money. I had the contract with me. I said, I'd like us to rip this contract and cancel it. And we did. And I said, I'd rather you de-obligate the money, take it and put it elsewhere to better use because I do not personally feel this lives up to the value system that we believe in, that I believe in, and I know that you believe in. And I'd rather you find a different place for this money than pay us with it. And so that was one of the examples. There's other example where I actually went to a client and turned away money. So maybe not the smartest business decisions, but I do think there were smart business decisions because I am, I think more of a spiritual person. I believe things come back to you. I don't think about tit for tat. And I just believe in doing the right thing. And I think to me, that felt like the right thing to do. And I didn't really care if it came back or not. At the end of the day, it was more about doing the right thing. Right. And you could sleep at night. Yeah. That's how strongly I feel about it, that I don't think I can sleep if I know that we at least are not doing everything possible to earn everything. And then the second value I would just say is win-win. And that was very, that also came from a real experience. And win-win was about that any relationship we get into, whether it's, you know, with our clients, with our staff, with our community, with our vendors, whoever, it always needs to be win-win, right? And it's because I had seen some examples of very short-sighted thinking, where people, you know, one on one hand, say one thing and turn around the next minute, and basically are being two-faced and being short-sighted. And to me, you know, again, it's all about respect and trust and doing right by people. So win-win mattered a lot. And it's something that, you know, so example would be, for instance, even at work, like employees and salaries. You know, even if somebody was willing to accept a salary, let's say lower than what our pay bans were, et cetera, because they were making less, we knew if they were worth something in terms of the debt value they're delivering and what others are getting, it's a no-brainer, right? They got paid what they were supposed to get paid. And we, you know, even if they insisted, hey, we're already getting a 10% raise or whatever that might be. Right, right. So I can give you countless examples of how we applied win-win in practice at work. How did you, when you started the organization, how did you get your first customer? So, you know, in the beginning, like I said, we didn't have any contracts or I didn't go in with some, you know, and honestly, I was a junior person at Booz when I left. So what I did is I did have like this reputation at least of people I had worked with that always, I will always do my best. And so the first thing I did is I said, look, you know, I knew we wanted to go after government work, but all my previous experience, a lot of it was commercial with working fortune companies. So what I did is I called up some of the people that I'd worked with and I said, hey, you know, I'm out here. I have another colleague of mine. You know, if you need like 1099 type consultants, et cetera. So just to pay the bills, get a little bit. And these were all commercial. So that very first client we actually got was a $25,000 gig. Actually, before that it was a $3,000 piece of work. We probably did $50,000 of work to define some requirements for a construction management firm. So we got $3,000, I still have that check. If I had remembered, I would have brought it. But then the second thing we got was a $25,000 market research assessment of some IT systems for Alcoa. And then I think the third or fourth clients were United Technologies, Boeing, so all Fortune clients. And but that helped us pay the bills. It was kind of us flying out everywhere. I did a merger of two companies in Europe on behalf of United Technologies. I flew out to, not a bad gig to Frankfurt and Paris multiple times. Wow. But how do you even know how to do this kind of stuff, man? I like, it blows me away that you say that. I get presented with so many opportunities from the week. I'm like, I don't even know how to accept all this stuff. Well, you know, that's been my background, right? I had an MBA, I had a business degree. I'd mostly done consulting on organizational and performance type work. So that was my background. So it wasn't that difficult for me to take that stuff on. So I definitely agree with you. If it was stuff like completely outside, I wouldn't have taken it, right? So, but the people I was talking to, I knew they were doing that type of work, right? And so one thing I'll say is the government part, right? I knew that the government lifecycle takes a while, right? So I knew the pain point we wanted to address that I, like the specific area, was around sourcing, strategic sourcing or procurement, right? And so I started writing some papers on what the problem was and what needed to change. So I'm always about really challenging, I always tell people from an entrepreneurial standpoint, if you're thinking about bringing, going to talk to any customer, right? Or creating something new, you first need to think about what are the pain points and what the need is, okay? Don't think about the solution because that's where we start a lot of times. Think about the pain points. What are you trying to solve for? So I knew a lot about procurement, having worked with some of these fortune companies, but also then having seen government. So I wrote out a few thought papers on what I believe are the insights I had on what the issues are and then what can be done. So the Department of Defense, the Office of Secretary of Defense, was doing a DOD-wide strategic sourcing program, right? Pretty big thing. Every major firm, including my previous team of Boos, AT Carney, you can imagine, they had all gone and talked to them because this was defense-wide strategic sourcing out of the Office of Secretary of Defense. So I found the person who was kind of starting to work on that over there because I was going to conferences and stuff and talking about some of this stuff. Anyways, it took me, it took us a year. We had no preference. We had no minority certification, nothing. We had no government experience. So anybody who ever tells me that you need all of those things to work with government, I say bullshit, okay? And because we were able to beat out just on sheer convincing of the client that we knew our stuff better than I don't care which firm you put at the table, right? Whether it's McKinsey, BCG, I don't care, right? And that's what I said. We will know our stuff better than anybody. We convinced them to make it at least a small business. But we still competed against the big players because they all had, right? This is my previous team, et cetera. And we ended up winning. Winning and this small firm that had never won a government contract running the DOD-wide strategic sourcing program. Oh my goodness, that's incredible, man. That was our first government contract. That's incredible. I was really proud of that. I worked on that a lot. I think I actually read a case study that they wrote about it here where you talked about improving contracting portfolio visibility, eliminating redundant contracting actions amongst sub offices. Is that the one? Might be, yeah. So we did a bunch of that work then because we became known for it then. So the business line that's since here, again, I think like one of the things Eric I'd say to a lot of people that listen and talk about whether they want to transition out of some larger firms or they're building their businesses. When I coach a lot of firms and people, one of the things I talk about is you really need to pick your focus areas and become known for what you do. I see too many players just to be very candid in the government space that you ask them what do you do? They rely on their minority certification or some certification and they say, well, I can do everything. What do you do? How are you different? And honestly, it bothers me when people say that and I'll say why it's because it goes back to their results driven value. Because if you are not really, really strong at what you do, why do you deserve the business? Why do you want the money? That's what I ask. And it bothers me when people don't have an answer for that. And then you're relying on some certification. I'm sorry, that's not good enough. That's what I say because I think it's hard earned money. There's a lot of people that deserve it. Why should you get it? So that's my guidance to people. I know it might sound harsh to people, but I'm all for value. And if you are the best at it, you should get it. My audience knows, I preach that all the time. I tell people, you go in there and you lead with value and then you say, by the way, I happen to be whatever status that you have. It's like, I'm a great company first and then I just happen to be a small business. And I do want to tell, I do want to say that we ended up getting an A to A. We did. But that was after this award, all of these things. So it wasn't something we needed. But we did rely on it. I will say how we relied on it. We never went after an asset aside. We never did. Because none of it matched our work. And so a lot of times, but how it did help is if clients liked us, they could use government direct to us then. And that's how we got most of our work. They just came direct to us then. No, I like that. That's a strategic way of using the A to A as opposed to people looking for only set-aside projects. And those companies, from my experiences, and you probably have better knowledge of that, they end up after the A to A program not being successful. Oh, yeah. And you look at Sensea now. It's still a successful kind of because there was always that core DNA. And that's lived on. And there's a bunch of contracts that are competitive, all of that. So now, let's move on from Sensea. So then you have this crazy idea. You want to go start something new. You know, I think I'm a creator at heart. And so I created Sensea. I've built different practices. For instance, we started a higher education practice. Built it really quickly. We were working with boards of higher universities, like some of the biggest kind of universities, like putting cost-cutting programs, other things. So we did a number of so applied kind of the entrepreneurial skill to create new things. But then I was looking at the whole public procurement space after having kind of I took affinity to that. And I saw that I had written a lot about the issues at a broader level beyond just a federal government. Now, let me stop you real quick. You said you wrote a paper. Like, where did you submit these papers to? Because you've said that a couple of times that you wrote papers outlining the problems. But where do they go? So I'm very like, I think of myself as a very practical person who likes to get hands dirty and do things. But at the same time, I like to really diagnose problems as a consultant. So I actually was a fellow. While I was running CENSEO, I ended up being a fellow at the Center for American Progress on the Economic Policy Team. So there was a lot of President Obama's people there at that time. So I was on the Economic Policy Team. And I wrote about, for instance, I looked at procurement at a broader level. And I got a chance to also talk to a lot of people when I did some thinking and writing for another gig like that. I traveled to Europe. I went to Eastern Europe. I went other places. And I talked to people about what's happening in public procurement. So what I came to the conclusion was there's $10 trillion government spend all over the world. And they're all talking about the same set of problems. If you could be in Tokyo, you could be in London, you could be in Kiev, you could be in Washington, you could be in Seattle, it's the same conversation. What's the conversation? It's basically how government procurement is so complex, how there are so many barriers for small companies. I'm like, women, where am I? Like, what city am I? It sounds like the same thing. It sounds like the same thing. And yeah, DC. So that led me to say, you know what? People are spending $10 trillion. That's more than one-tenth of the world economy. What if we could transform the way $10 trillion are spent? And how could we try to solve this problem at scale? So that's led me to, about four years ago, Start Public Spend Forum. With that thinking and thesis in mind, that could we change the way governments across the world spend $10 trillion? And that was kind of my motivation. I said, you know, I want to do something. I've solved problems as a consultant one by one. I want to see now, can we build something at a much bigger scale? They can solve trillions of dollars in spending. So. So how did you start? I mean, again, I'm looking at it and saying, and I love your ideas, because the way that you're describing it is, Elon Musk is, right? You know, and it's true because, you know, because Elon Musk is like, when you listen to people talk about it, he says his whole decision-making goes through a prism of how fast can we get people like to Mars, right? And so that's how he makes a decision. I've, as you can imagine, I've talked to several companies who do forecasting and bidding and, you know, those types of websites, but they're only looking at very specific markets, a state market, a city market, a local market. And you're looking at the whole, I don't even know how to describe it, the entire world market, right? You're saying $10 trillion. But it is a very specific problem, right? Okay. Like so, so again, you know, I diagnosed the problem a lot after we started. I didn't really know how to solve it, to be very honest. Again, this is just like when I jumped into Sencio, it was kind of like, hey, I don't have a business plan, I kind of know a problem. I think we'll figure it out. I kind of took that so, and I do think from an innovation and problem-solving standpoint, it's important that you don't jump in with preconceived solutions because those, I think what happens, those are where the solutions fail. If you have this, because the world is much more complex than some solution you have one on a piece of paper, right? And so when you start implementing that solution, it doesn't work, right? And then guess what? You're stuck if that was the only thing. So I kind of think about it as you need to really first understand the problem and have a sense of where do you want to take it, right? Where's, what's the end kind of north star? And then there's going to be all sorts of potholes and, you know, detours along the way. And, and so I started with that thinking. I had some ideas, but I said, let's start testing them. And first couple of years, honestly, it was writing more, doing more research. I engaged a global, I started engaging a community in Europe and here. And when we started out public spend form, it was more like a think tank. It was, we got funded a couple of research papers like on metrics and stuff around procurement. And by the Volcker Alliance, for instance, you know, I happened to get to know Mr. Volcker who did the Volcker rule and, and, you know, they funded some work. Anyways, we did these papers, et cetera. But then that led us to, as we engaged this community on a global level, a lot of people kept asking about market intelligence and we don't have visibility into markets, right? And what's happening in markets. So that's what led to the main product of public spend form now. Two years later, mind you, right? So we again figured out, I didn't know exactly how do you solve $10 trillion. I'll be the first one to say, I had no clue, right? I still don't have a clue, but I think we're on the right path now. We tested the ideas. We got a lot of feedback from people. That led us to what we're building now is Guff Shop. And Guff Shop is a, you know, a supplier intelligence platform. And the goal there is to, if we democratize the way people access market information and you give it to every single person, not leaders, don't look for policies, you hand it to the people that do decisions every day, make transactions happen every day. What if we just kind of unleash this data in the hands of everybody and get all the bureaucrats out of the way, get all the leaders out of the way, get all the policy makers out of the way, give it to people that actually make a difference and do things on a daily basis, can we empower them, right? And make them the heroes that we know they can be. And that's like, to me, is what gets me, honestly, I'm getting goosebumps just thinking about it. You know, if you give people the tools they need, and I think what we're trying to do is give people the data they need for on markets, and then they can better from a procurement standpoint, if I'm a government contracting person or a program, I can take that information and I can make better decisions with it. And I don't know, there are so many dedicated public servants, all these people that say public servants, public service, lazy, et cetera, bullshit. You know, I only people I know in public sector are freaking work hard as hell. They take calls on the weekends, right? And I know if you give people this information, they will do wonders with it. And that's what we're trying to do now, so. Wow, wow. I was reading, getting ready for this interview, there was a story, public spend informant, talked about Clearview Medical. Do you know the story? Yeah, yeah. Can you share that story? So, I mean, I just think it would be a great way to showcase the power of Photoshop and what it's done for people. Flip side of the problem, right? So there's government people trying to get an understanding of what's happening in markets. Small businesses and companies face the same problem. There's all these amazing companies out there. And guess what? The number one thing I've heard over time is, I think we can probably both relate, right? Is like, who do you target? Who do you go after? Where are the opportunities? I'm sure. Like there's also a market transparency issue, the flip side, that's supplier space, right? So here's Clearview, a small company that pivoted during COVID, right? They were doing, I forget exactly what manufacturing, they pivoted to manufacturing face shields. So not too far from what they're doing, right? And they came on GovShop. And we, you know, they quickly found some opportunities and government customers found opportunities. They had just pivoted into the space, but manufactured a face shield that was certified and got past all the quality approvals, et cetera. They were supplying some customers in New York already and we brought them on the platform. And this is exactly what we wanna do. Some government agencies that would have never found this small new company, they saw that. They did their own qualification of their product. I actually talked to one of the, one of the persons that worked for the Chief Procurement Officer in New York City. I said, hey, there's a local supplier right next to you guys. I think they do really good work. Their product is certified, you should talk to them, right? So they got in touch and boom, we made a connection and they got millions of dollars in business. And I think that's, again, it's not about the money as much as they came up with a solution. Somebody really needed that solution, made that connection, but that's a great example of, what we're trying to do at a massive scale, make thousands and hundreds of thousands of these connections happen. Oh, wow, no, that's remarkable. I have here what it says, it says, public split and form is a global market and supplier intelligence platform for public sector markets. Through GovShop, it's free supplier and contract intelligence platform. PSF provides local, state, federal international government agencies, comprehensive supplier and contract data across all markets. What does all that mean? Yeah, I mean, it sounds great, right? But what does it mean to me? Yeah, very simply stated, right? Like data is a big problem. So if you're a, again, a government person who's a program official or a contracting person, trying to keep up with who are all the suppliers coming in and out of a market, right? Let's say take drones, world and new startups who are new emerging companies, right? Understanding their track record, right? That's all very hard to do when you're trying to do all this paper pushing to, like write all these contracts, et cetera, right? Understanding, I don't think even if you had the time, it's humanly possible for anybody to keep up with all of that, right? I would agree. And so, like markets are complex, you know, Mark? The world is changing way, like much faster than the speed at which we think, right? And at which we can absorb information. So we need solutions where, you know, we can like our goal is to do some of that work for people because it's humanly not possible. And then give something to them, then they can use it to make better decisions. So now let's say take that drones example, if I'm looking for a certain type of solution, I am not wasting my time trying to patch together a hundred sites and Google and all of that. And I still come up with an incomplete answer because I just don't have the time to do it. I get ready made, I can quickly go in, see lists of companies, I can filter them down, I can say which ones I've already worked with government, which companies have they worked with, what are the specific capabilities and solutions they're bringing to the table. And then I can start to work with my, say, if I'm in the national security environment and depending on how I'm using drones, let's say it's for reconnaissance, right? Now I can start to more focus on that, like who are the right partners as opposed to piece-mealing 1,000 sites together. So that's what we're trying to do from a government standpoint. A couple of things, along your journey, along your way, are there some mindful practices that you do in terms of exercise, sleeping well, there's some books that you would recommend. I mean, mindfulness to me is a really big thing. And all of it, like you said, there's ups and downs and business, and again, you have your family, you've got two kids, what are some of your mindful practices? So, you know, Eric, I'm glad you asked that because I love talking about this. So in a very quick sense, I'll say, I think that's been the most important thing I do because, you know, again, I'm a spiritual person and so I remind, to me, I have a very, I learned this from a lot of different people I read about or they coached me, mentored me about a morning routine. And I think that's really, really important, having like a consistent morning routine, for instance, I've meditated like 30 days in a row, right? But I'm missing a single day, no matter how busy I am, I get up around between 4.30 and 5. I usually drink a glass of water. That's the number one thing you do, you read anything. Drink a full glass of water, 16 ounces. And then I do yoga usually. That centers you and then I do meditation after that. But the key, you know, and I think all of those things taking time for yourself, like do not look at email as soon as you get up. Don't jump on your computer. So I think it's really important because life is complicated, right? Running a business is complicated. There's so many stresses. So I think you need to take that 15 to 30 minutes is what I tell people for yourself. Because if you use that time for yourself, believe me, the rest of your day is so much more powerful, right? And a couple of things, you know, I try to remind myself, like spiritually every morning is, you know, yes, all the stuff I do is so exciting and I'm very passionate about it. However, at the end of the day, to avoid that stress and that anxiety that comes with running a business and building things and everything, is I remind myself every day that you know what, if everything disappeared, I have my health, I have my family and nothing else matters, right? Very true. All the rest of the stuff we create is noise and it's noise around us, right? Cars and houses and all these things. It's all noise we create to keep us going, right? And so that keeps me honestly centered and always making good decisions that are values based and always doing the right thing. I feel like that's really important to me as a person and you know what my parents, my grandparents, others have taught me and to me that's the most important thing I do all day, honestly. That's really powerful. Can you say some parting words and then we'll let you go. Well, thanks again for having me on, Eric, but you know, I really appreciate this kind of conversation because you know, I love to, I think building businesses and working in the government space is hard work, but at the same time, it's so rewarding. We need more people that are passionate about public service, passionate about public sector coming in and really challenging the status quo, giving it their all. Because I think our reward is so good. Like I think we're helping everyone. We're, you know, at the end of the day, what we do can help us build a better country, a better world. Yeah, I agree. Raj, thank you so much for coming on today, man. Good talk. I love it. Definitely different than what we did, you know, the previous time, right? We're just getting to know each other, you know? Now I'm happy to jump on just to more chat in general and you know, anytime. Okay, no. I love the work you're doing. Thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you. No, it's, when people say it's a labor of love, man. I get so excited. I enjoy it. You know, you get to meet all these cool people, right? That's what I tell people. I say that, people don't understand. Look, I get to meet all of these super cool people out here that like everyone wants to reach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So when you get to, so I'll give you a real story. One of my guests is now running for mayor. Baltimore, so it's like, what happens if he becomes mayor, right? And then you can post that podcast and call him up again. I mean, I could call him up anyways, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have not met a guest. It's not happy to really meet me in person. That's awesome. Well, hopefully we'll get to meet at some point. Thank you so much. Thanks, Rod. Talk to you soon. Be good.