 Hold on, okay. Glenda, welcome. Oh my God, I think we're ready to work. Hey, techie, techie, I love it. Oh my God. Hi, how are you? Good to see you there. I know, same here. Yes, so on my phone. Yeah, this is way fun. Is it so fun? This is the first. Like, oh my gosh, how we can all connect with each other. This is so cool. So I appreciated the young lady doing a shoutout. Like, I thought Lori would come in. I thought Lori would come in, so I'm like, all right, somebody's like twisting my arm, Lori. Let me see if I could do this. But let me say this. I can tell you that the responses were amazing. And I'm not going to exaggerate, but I know at least 20-something people contacted after that. I love it. I'm still waiting for a new contract. But nonetheless, a lot of folks was just very interested in having. And I think I talked to maybe about five or six of all those people because some of them, their questions were things that we talked about. And so I let them know that because some folks want to be handheld, you and me on real talks or we'll bring real talk. Some people want to be handheld. But what you are doing is providing a means for them to get educated from other people's stories. So they really need to not just listen to it, but sit down with a pen and pad. No different than they would be if they were sitting in a class. Exactly. That's what I do, baby. That's what I do. Get your nut to gut and get your real nuggets and your information, and then do the things that was discussed that you provided in whoever you interviewed. And in my case, there were a couple of them, though. They were asking, well, how do I get started? I'm like, no, no, we're not going there. I tell them, don't call my people waiting. Listen, we all busy people out here. We don't have to find them. You know, I mean, I am trying to build my own. Right. And so, but there was a good five people so that I have spoken to one out of Chicago, which was my hometown, a fantastic group of a family. And we had great conversation, and I know that we had some target things that we talked about and we expect to follow up because, of course, I have a huge interest in doing some work in my own hometown. So leaning in on them in that area. But it was outstanding responses because it let me know for real that people are following you. All of a sudden, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding on my LinkedIn. I'm like, whoa, who are you and what do you want? I saw you on Gumpcon. I'm thinking, oh, I mean, and of course, we had such a good time, but they didn't see us because now they can see us, right? They don't even know. And I'll even share this. I have a cousin in LA. He's an actor. He's been doing that basically all his life in real estate. And he said, Lori, that was an amazing interview. I learned so many things about you. And I thought I knew you well. You know? You know, many people say that. We had a guest on and her husband said, oh, my gosh, you were her husband. Do you think these people know you? Yeah, exactly, exactly. But if he goes to speak to your level of how you know how to do what you're doing. So you're bringing out what is needed to be said, that needs to be shared. And of course, it's a compliment when they're saying they're hearing things that they never knew before, but it helps to find the individual as an entrepreneur in doing all that we do. So I mean, it's just, you did a great job. You really did a great job. And so I want to compliment you for that and tell everybody they need to follow you. So I'm like, so I was like, what is he doing on here? So I just popped right in. You know, I just showed up on my phone. Can you give a two, like a your own elevator pitch of who you are, what you do for the people who don't know you, we know how good you are, but all the people who don't know who you are and all the great things that you've done. Great, thank you. Can you just give your own elevator pitch? Let's see, okay, yes. My name is Lori Sales. I am president and CEO of Civility Management Solutions. We've been in business since 2012 and we're growing. I want to really announce something, but I can't. But we are growing and yet at the same time we are inside of the federal government space. We have a little local as well as commercial work and we're doing program project, financial grants management. We're always looking for teaming partners. And we are in the A&A program as well as being woman-owned and a service disabled, better known small business. So look up Civility Management Solutions and see if there's anything we can do together. Because I love to take your life. By the way, Lori's not a startup company, okay? Lori's got people, she got people working. She's not just getting started. She's not going to graduate, like, I'm trying to figure this out, A&A. She's like, A&A, they going to kick me out if I do any more contracts type of program. And I am so into that. Graduating early, I've said it from the very beginning. I says, I don't mind graduating early because the end result, especially, what's a huge reflection for us all to look at the data and what's coming out in the news is that we as a people really need to strive to do better. And so part of that doing better is that me thinking to be mid-tier size, you know, I'm glad I had that kind of thinking now. I don't think small. And way too many of us that want to be business owners and entrepreneurs, we think too small. Absolutely. You know, keep reaching for the sky and then watch it open up, right? No, I agree, I agree. I go, why would you want to stay small business? I don't know. Why would you want to stay a small business? Yeah, I mean, the mom and pop shops need to be over with. We need, look, it's time for to have some old money in our community. What about that? Oh, I like that. Woo! I like that. I like that. Like, I know I like that. I was, we were actually, I was driving my son the other day and it was funny for all those people that maybe it was little Wayne said I have money from 2002 that I haven't seen since 2002. That's the kind of money we need. That's exactly. That's the kind of money we need. Because then we have impact, right? And we have power, we have influence. So how do you think that we can start doing that? Like, what are some of the things that you think we can start doing? Well, for one, we need to make sure that we're hiring talent, you know, for talent, you know, and remove all of the what other people say and how I feel and all of your, you know, judgmental thoughts, you know, you constantly need to be looking for talent. And I'm not talking about people that just come to you as gifted. Because as we discussed in my podcast with you, is that I hired people that I knew had a lot to offer and I trained them up into their jobs, you know, so their loyalty toward the company is that Lori gave me an opportunity. I've grown into it. I mean, I can brag a little bit, you know, civilian management solutions is growing. And this young lady left the lifestyle of basically homeschooling her kids, even though she had worked in her previous career. She was homeschooling her children and her husband was taking care of them as a family. I brought her in because she was a customer managing the house, the home, the life of her family. And, you know, as operations manager. And so she's been trekking along, trekking along. I was able to give her like a almost $30,000 increase. Because she's handling her business and doing her job. And she is like sitting back going, did this just kind of happen for me? I was like, yes, because you're doing your job, you know, and it's all about finding people that have talent and have skills and opening a door for them, giving them an opportunity. And voila, you might be totally amazed at what they turn around and pull off right before your eyes. You're like, that's it. I didn't think you were going to be able to do all that. Now, where'd you find her? How did you find that person? She was a friend. She's someone I've known for a while and we just have been friends. And the better news, she knows how to separate the two. You know, there's a friendship and then there's me being President and CEO of the company. And she knows how to do that as well, which is also to be applauded. But again, she was a grateful person to like, let me just try this. And now she's in here, she's banging it out and she loves it. That's the better part. It's nothing like, it's nothing like getting up every day, doing something you love to do and you happen to get paid for it. Hey, man. I do that. That's some good stuff. I know me too, I'm with you. I do that. Yeah. And so for you to open up those, so that would be one of the things I'll give as a nugget. Look at people and consider them, you know, and for their character, for who you know them to be as a person and open up an opportunity for them and then let them grow, you know? And then in the end, everybody's growing. It's not just them, everybody's growing, right? So that's some two cents I have for the day on that note. No, I like that. I like that. You know what? Yeah. I have, you know, one of the first hires that I remember that we hired to help me with federal stuff, like through my market research, was a girl that I met on a welfare to work program. See, well, look at that. That's what's up. That's, that's- And you know what I like about her? Because she didn't have any, the prerequisites that people thought. She did exactly what I told her to do. She learned exactly the way I taught her. She didn't come in with preconceived notions about how to do things. Yes! Right? She did exactly the things that I did. And she was a nervous person. We practiced and we ran through. And by the time you know it, we can leave that office, go to lunch and come back. And she'd be like, Eric, I spoke to a couple of contracting officials today. She don't even know what that means, but she would- I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it, I love it! You know, it's like you say words and you don't really know the name. Like kids, you know. And so she said, I spoke to a couple of contracting officials. And that's when we set the call to get forecast lists before they were put on, you know, the list on the internet and things like that. We had to call and get them. So I spoke to some people, they emailed me some of these lists that you talked about and I have them all here, right here, printed out for you. It's impressive. I loved it, I loved it, I loved it. And that's what it's all about. It really is about that. And, you know, some of the problems that we have in the country is that people want to judge folks in advance and not give them the opportunity. And we definitely, I see somebody wrote down here, coachable, exactly. Be coachable, no matter what level you're in. I mean, I have great mentors in my life. And I know when they're talking. Yeah, I'm listening, you know, when they're talking. And I've had one in my life, six of the eight years and now we have a joint venture together that's about to go through, that's going through the process of becoming an 8A joint venture. So we get into land of some technology, work cybersecurity and engineering. I'm on my way into that land now. So it's about sitting and listening though and taking it all in. And then you take what part you want and then what doesn't fit you. You say, exactly. No harm done, you know? Because in the end, you have to develop you, whether you're the president CEO, whether you're the PM or the business development person, you have to develop you. And so, but you have to have a mentor, several. Not just one, because you can wear that one out. You need a few of them, you know? Okay, that actually brings me to a really good question. People always ask, how do I find mentors? People always ask that question. Eric, how do I find mentors? Or they'll say, well, Lori, can you be my mentor? Well, Lori can't be, first of all, Lori can't be everybody's mentor. So don't, y'all don't go behind it, hit Lori up after this call and be like, Lori, I thought you were gonna be a mentor. No, no, to me, I did. You know, because people text me all the time about being a mentor. And I said, I am a mentor, right? I put out a lot of content, a lot of information. Yes. All right, like, there's very few people that have actually absorbed all of the stuff we put out. And my goal is actually for you not to catch up. I don't wanna- I love it. Honestly, I don't. In fact, Maria was one of our other guests. She was saying, you know, I used to follow Eric's content, but he just put out so much stuff that I can't keep up. I said, good, that's what I want. I said, I'm doing my job. Yeah, dibble and dabble in it, but you have some great people out there that have come and participated in your show. And so I know that that's only gonna bring about more people. And I definitely need to think about this as the things go with the joint ventures, an interview with my mentor. She would be pretty powerful for you as well. Woman-owned, service-disabled veteran. She was a Marine, aura, you know, so I got a big shot of her, but she's held on now 20-something years. So, you know, that's good nuggets to share to somebody because as you also know, especially people that get into the AV program, they come in, they climb, and then there's that decline and then they're just off and trying to sell their company and old money just went out the window, right? But I guess that's over with. And so, you know, it's wonderful when we have people that get in this business and have some, you know, time, some tenure in it. Yeah, long lasting success. Yeah, yeah, because I'm not in it just for the money. I'm in it to give people jobs. You know, money just flows along with that. That's the good news. No, it's true. You know, I know, I agree with you. I tell people all the time is that if you just, you know, bury your head down and keep doing good work, the money's gonna come. You don't have to worry about the money. It's gonna find you somehow, some way, it's gonna find you. So, Maria said, make sure you center that person. Yes, indeed. Maria said that person. But it has been a pleasure to just drop in on you. This is pretty amazing. No, I'm happy. I, you know, after, obviously, with all the things that's happened, I thought, I requested from Maria, I said, can you give me all my past podcast emails? Because I was thinking about, maybe we should put together our own, like a conference event type thing for our people. Right, we can get together. If you look at my show list, we can put together our own virtual conference. And I have my marketing team that can organize the whole thing, set up the whole, all you gotta do is show up like you did today. I love it. I love it. You know, because like you said, with everything that's happening out here and people are struggling and people are having a hard time, we, you know, we have something to share and we could definitely put together eight to 10 of us and host our own. Motivate people to not give up, you know. Yeah, we can host our own event and give people ideas out here. Because, look, every time I turn to the news, I spend a lot of money. Yeah. And let me tell you, our phone hasn't stopped ringing. Yeah. Yeah, I love it. I mean, our phone hasn't stopped ringing, you know, speaking of joint ventures. We did a joint venture a few months ago with a company. I personally, my company did a joint venture a few months ago and we raised nine figures. Stop, stop it. Yeah. I love it. Woo! That's a shout out. I need to put some hearts or whatever you can put on this. Some stars and thumbs up. That is outstanding. It's a great show of your leadership. Yeah, we know. I mean, we, Lori, we're out here. We're doing this stuff. And I mean, honestly, it is a lot of work. It's a lot of work. Yes, of course. It's a lot of work. But, you know, we're putting ourselves out there. And like I said, even when I do the podcast, we walk the walk. Okay? We walk the walk. And it helps me to also be relatable to the people, right? So I know, like, look, you know, I've done my capability briefings. I, you know, I go into the meetings. I get beat down on negotiated contracts. In fact, I just, on Monday in my YouTube live, I talked about with one of my guests, he said, hey, sometimes I prefer a full and open bid versus negotiated because they're not cutting down my price, right? Like people don't understand it. Like they want soul source, soul source, soul source, sort of thing. I said, sometimes that's soul source, man. They beat me up so bad on my numbers. I wish I had three, four people to compete against me. You know, the negotiations are so hectic back and forth. But I understand if you've never been in that position and you don't do it every day, right? You can't say that. You can't articulate that because you don't know what that feels like. Only thing you know in here is like, a soul source is just gonna give me something. And I'm gonna get my price and my number. And it's just not. That part is not guaranteed at all. Right. She didn't came and turn my light off. I would have thought she would have turned my light on but she didn't. It didn't darken, dark over. I apologize. It's like you in a club. They tell you to go home. Yeah, no, I know it is. It's like, okay. And then thinking like her entry would open the light up. I think she turned it off. Yeah, but that's powerful what you're saying. And it's true and it speaks to, again, the level of people that you have that want to come on and sit with you and talk through these things is that we all admire you for what you're doing as well as a business owner. And so that's key. Somebody's doing a Instagram for, okay, that's something else. This is also new. I'm like, what is that coming up on the screen? It's new to me as well. So did your new marketing team introduce you to this? No, they didn't. We, no, what they did is they're basically taking all of the content that we have and like I said, putting out to all the platforms. They're taking like clips like from you and then they'll grab, they're grabbing content that we said, messages that we talked about, maybe a quote from you, put your picture with a quote and then put it out to people so that people can identify with that. A lot of times, and again, we know how it is right now, right? Everyone's buying for your attention. And it's hard to sit through an hour conversation. But if we grab two or three minutes snippets, four minutes snippets of something that was pertinent or relevant at specifically, again, like at this moment. So I'll give you an example. Michelle Burnett from the Hubsone Council, they grabbed a snippet of her saying that I like the Hubsone program because of its equity and equality. Think about how powerful that is in today's time. Right now. She said that last year, like a year ago. But- That's powerful, you're right. Right, but to grab that now and insert that into today's world, right? Something she said over a year ago, that's what they're doing. And that's what's happening. And what's powerful also about what you're saying on the flip side of that is that this showing the necessity for having a team to help you get out your message, to help you promote what you have to offer is if you're not able to do it on your own, I mean, if you're able to do it on your own, first of all, to start off your business, you must. I mean, I was doing it all. I mean, social media, if I went to a training session, I was posted it on LinkedIn, you know what I'm saying? If I, I mean, whatever I was doing, I showed my activity as the presidency of Civil Engineering Management Solutions. And now we've gotten to a point, we just brought somebody in, she's been with us about a month now. And I'm just amazed at seeing some of her work. I'm like, wow, that sure is a lot better than the stuff I was posting. But you know, because I've gotten to a point now, that doesn't need to be part of my day of putting all that stuff out there. And the good news is that we're doing a lot of stuff. And so you wanna get the information out because this is a way of marketing. It's not gonna change. No. It is here to stay. I mean, if anything, they're just gonna keep advancing it like what we're doing like right now. This is gonna keep growing. But you're making a valid point for those that are in business, as business owners, you have to be out here putting your face and your name in the place. Otherwise, people don't know who you are. No, I know. I'll tell you something interesting also that we brought up. I asked one of my guests, he's an Alaskan native. And I said, you know, how are you gonna now start doing these conferences versus, you know, the virtual conferences? And it was so funny, Lori, right? He goes, you know, when I used to go to the conference, we could sit around, look at the room, see who's there on business, who's there to get off the office, right? Who's not interested, who's on their phone. He said, I can look at my competitors if they're talking to the agencies, right? You can look at that and see who's doing the one-on-one sessions. You can see which agencies, nobody's at their table, you can run over there. But on the virtual side, right? It's a much harder to do than it would be, right? I have done a few things and it's a little bit challenging. And of course, when you have somebody that comes on and they're talking like this and you're like, oh my God, oh my God. You know, you're like, turn the volume up, turn the volume down. You don't know which way to go but you're trying to hold on. It's like, I need some life to come across. So that could be a little challenging, but it's about staying focused, right? In the end, do you need that information? Then sit there and endure it and believe for the best and try to get some information at the end, like names, phone numbers, contacts. Not often. And hopefully that's listed at the end. You're waiting for the end. And then of course, the other value is you can get to them later because they're recorded. I like that part. That's true. I'm slowly fading away. And so, I mean, I feel like I'm slowly fading away. And I really believe that this woman, she did. She actually turned my light off. She turned my light off. Yeah. The cleaning lady came in the office. Yes, you know who I'm talking about. I'm trying not to say nothing. I'm not trying not to say it. I'm trying to say the cleaning lady and jacking me up. But yes, she turned the light off and said bye. And she can see I'm sitting here looking into a phone. By the way, I don't think anyone notices that Lori is still at her office. Oh, yeah. Did y'all notice that, ladies and gentlemen, where people over here talking about, oh, you can do four hour work weeks time. And don't get me wrong, I like my wife Tim Ferriss, but Lori's still at her office. Yeah. Get me there, exactly right. And need to get off of here with you so I can get out of here because I got a couple more projects. This was the unexpected part of my life. This is good. This is good. It's wonderful. Again, I'm proud of you unless somebody else jump on and share some wonderful stuff and let some follow up. Talk to you soon. Hey, don't forget about my idea. We're talking about putting together something. Just let me know. Email me. I'm all in. All right. Thanks so much. Hey, Maria, hit Lori up for her contact. That's free on the show. OK, great. And now, X out. All right. Yes, I'll ask you out. All right. That was good. That was a good first start. I like it. I like it. That was a good first start. Love it. Good stuff, man. Yeah, no. If you have not already heard the podcast, but Lori Sayles, she's pretty amazing. She came out of a high regard. And she has a fantastic story of how she started her business and built it up. So definitely that was a good first run at my IG live. I like it. All right. Let me know. Who else? Who else is out there? What else we got? What else we got? Yeah, Lori is in the office, man, getting it in. I was in the same position two weeks ago. We were in the office as well, cranking, cranking it out, cranking out, and finally. And for me, the Navy had some extra money. I'll share it with the store, because I don't think I shared it. I shared it inside my private group, but I'll share it here. By the way, if anyone has a question you want to jump on, just let me know and we'll bring you in the chat. But yeah, a few weeks ago, the Navy reached out to me. They even had some extra money that came down. And literally, they called me and said, hey, we have some projects. Are you interested? And it was fast turnaround. We had to put together the numbers and weeks, like literally weeks. But at the end of the day, this was the month of June. We ended up negotiating like $7 million in projects. So that was a nice little run we did there in the month of June. And now, we're getting closer to the end of the fiscal year. So I don't even know what else is coming up between now and September. I can't wait, because the one agency that we did about $5.5 million in negotiations last month says they got more stuff. That was not part of the end of the year budget. I thought it was the end of the year budget. But it wasn't part of the end of the year budget. So it's like, all right, well, what else they have coming on? So I understand what Lori's going through. And this is one of the reasons why, back in 2007, 2008, I learned that, again, when the recession hit, I was in the midst of the recession. I was bleeding money. In fact, I remember my girl at the time, she called me a money pit, because money was just going out the window, going out the window, going out the window. And I remember, I think, I made, I don't know what it was. It was like right about $100,000. And I was upside down. Like, I was literally upside down. I couldn't pay my bills, even with $100,000 in income. So that's when I made the decision to come over to the federal marketplace. And obviously, today now, when the economy fell and the recession happened, all this stuff, we're actually going full speed ahead, right? We're actually putting on the gas, as opposed to putting on the brakes. I'm investing money, putting money out, we're starting new projects, we're winning new contracts. We're hiring people, bringing on people. And that's the same story that one of my podcast guests recently we talked about just on Monday was the same thing. He was in that same market when it crashed. He switched over to federal around 2010. And everything's been up. And during this particular pandemic, he actually hired five people as opposed to having to close his business. So another thing, by the way, again, anybody wants to jump in, talk, ask questions, we'll probably run to nine o'clock and then I'll jump off. And again, if you've got to go, I understand, we'll be back next week at the same time. So if you've got to run, that's fine. Another thing that's happening that I want to just kind of let people know, the last time when the recession happened in 2007, 2008, the state and local agencies, right? They took a really big hit financially. And if anyone has Google on their phones, on their iPads, on their computers, Google right now, you can Google it. The states are struggling to pay their bills. The cities are struggling. They actually are asking the federal government to bail them out and to give them funds. And we're not gonna make this political, but Mitch McConnell was quoted as saying, let the states go bankrupt. So I just want to be warned, everyone out there, be very aware, be cautious when proceeding with a state