 So one of the trends that I noticed recently, I've been reading some reports that were put out on FedBit and by this new 809 panel. And so when I'm reading some of these reports, I've been noticing that the government seems to be over the last, say, five to eight years trending back towards the pact with their bundling contracts again. So at one point the government had to, they were charged with actually taking large contracts, right, and separating them apart and break them into pieces so that they're manageable for small business to be able to do. And the idea was to promote and foster small business growth in the United States. But in looking at some of this new data and reports that's coming out recently, it's suggesting that we're actually going back in the opposite direction. So I want to inform all of you guys today about this trend that's happening and how you can participate and take advantage of what's going on and not be left in the cold. All right, so stay tuned. We're going to go ahead, head over to the big screen and I'm going to talk to you about how to take advantage of the bundling opportunities that are happening and so that your company doesn't get left behind in the cold. All right, welcome back over to the computer screen. What we're looking at here on the screen is two reports that I have. The first report here, this is a jail report put out on reverse auctions. This was issued July of 2018, 82 pages. It's not terrible. I had the opportunity to read through it. And what I like to do is I see that people are making drawn conclusions and giving their opinions based on the information at hand. But at the same time, I like to read through the reports myself and see what conclusions can I draw that can benefit those agencies, those companies, the people that I work with out there help have them give them the slight edge over others that are not watching this information so that they can be prepared for what's coming out of pipeline. And so today we're taking a look at this jail report issued. And then on the other side, we have what's called the section 809 panel. By the way, let me let's talk about this 809 panel because you're going to be hearing a lot of videos coming up from them and what they're all about. The 809 panel is a group of experts that were put together. Here you go. By the Department of Defense, and here's their goals. It says here they're outlined by the National Defense Authorization Act to take a look at acquisition regulations regarding the DOD, which streamline improving efficiency and effectiveness. Also, they're looking at protecting the best interest of the DOD, eliminating any unnecessary regulations. They want to help with the financial and ethical integrity of the defense procurement program. And so this is one of the reports that they put out. They've actually put out three reports, there's three volumes of this stuff. But we're just going to talk about this one particular area of this 809 panel's report. And because I notice a trend happening here. So let me get back to it. Let me zoom out so I can see where I'm at. Okay. All right. And so today, let's talk about this. So the first thing is inside of the DOD's report of FedBid. And trust me, I'm going to try to make this as interesting as possible. But what they're saying is, where is it at? Okay, here it is. This is the chart I want to show you guys. So on this chart, what they're saying is, and a lot of you guys out there are using FedBid. And so that's why I thought this would be helpful, this video today. If you're using FedBid, I want you to take a look and notice this. So what it's saying is that all as the total number of awards below $150,000 represented 94% of the actual awards that were issued or the contracts that were issued. The 6% of the contracts that were issued for products that have 150,000 or greater, right? And I'm going to show you kind of a chart what that means. However, so let's slow this down. 94% of all contract actions on FedBid were below 150. So that's where the most of you guys are playing in that arena, right? And that 94% of all the contracts, the other 6% of the contract actions, right, were for 150,000 or greater. However, however, two thirds of the money was spent with those one, the 6%, one third of the money was spent with the 94%. So what does that look like? It looks like, okay, if you're playing and the 150k or less contract opportunities, you're playing with a third of the money and 94% of the actual actions, right? So it's, this is the best way to show it is that basically, there's a gazillion people out there fighting for those scraps. And then if you are dealing in the 150k and up, which is only represents only a small fraction of the contract actions, however, represents two thirds of the dollar, that means only just like the square show you only a few people are playing in that arena. So what does that suggest? That suggests that for smaller and smaller firms, it's becoming increasingly competitive and more difficult to participate. And so what's happening is, if you're competing at that level, the government's not going to allow you to make a lot of money. Let me rephrase that. It's not that they're not going to allow you to make a lot of money, but just because of the amount of competition that you have, the room for profitability is going to be that much smaller, right? And on the other hand, if you were to play in this other marketplace, then that gives you the greatest leverage and greatest affordability opportunity for generating actual real profits to make yourself an actual business. Now, let's go ahead and compare that to what they're stating over in this other report here. So here, the 809 panel support. And so I want to talk about this paragraph here. And what it says here, let's zoom in. What it says is, right now, it says the DOD is current approach for small business may not support the long run interest. The number of small business contract actions dropped nearly 70% from 2011 to 2016. We're doing the same time frame. The value of small business contracts rose 290%. So let's repeat that again. The number of contract actions dropped by 70%, right? So they dropped by literally two thirds. And in the last five years, well, from the five years from the day of this report, however, the value rose 300%. So how is it that the number of contract actions drops, but the amount of money spent increases threefold? Simply easy. And it says here, because small companies are receiving contracts of substantial value, but it declined a number of small business contract actions, indicates that they're not promoting competition and fostering robustness in the marketplace. So this report concludes, which is, you know, attesting to what I'm stating in this video today is that more and more of the existing firms are getting bigger, bigger pieces of the pie and less and less of you new guys out there are being able to participate in this marketplace. So again, these two reports are kind of reaching the same conclusion, which is the larger companies, right? Or the larger small business companies are eating more and more like the Alaska native firms who can still be small business into 100 million a year. They're getting more and more pieces of the pie and bigger and bigger contracts. While the smaller firms who think they're going to come in and do five and 10,000 contracts, those things are becoming gobbled up into large packages, right? That are then like what they call bundle contracts, which are then given to these large firms that can like one stop shops. So Eric, how does that help me? It seems like you're scaring me here. Well, yeah, I'm not trying to scare you. I just want you to know the facts, because again, without, without having the facts and the information, you can't know what's the proper decision to make and best interests of your company. So what are the, so since you now know the facts, what does that mean for you? And how do you get around that? So let's, let's talk about that. Okay. My conclusion from this is obviously, like I said, the new upstart firms are having a more and more difficult time getting into the marketplace, right? One, you know, mama pop shops, one or two man outfits, they're not getting their fair share of equitable contracts. It seems like it's becoming more of a burden for the government to, to, you know, to stop, to take the bundled contracts and separate them rather than bundle them up into large packages and just give them out. But at the same time, there is opportunity, right? So the silver lining is they create avenues in which small businesses can work with larger firms to go after what, you know, collaborative type efforts. And so we see a lot more teaming JVM partnerships going on than we've seen in the past. So there are ways in which the government has created these avenues. And again, you know, we don't know because we don't have enough data to show. We don't know if a lot of these contracts are going in that manner. Maybe some of the small firms are partnering with some of these larger firms and they're the ones that are taking advantage of these contract opportunities. But again, we don't know because we don't have enough data to suggest that. So the conclusion is if you want to jump into the marketplace and you want to participate aggressively inside, then you're going to need to find someone on your team who has past performance, who has experience, who has someone that they know that is working in this marketplace that you can connect with. Again, and there's many, many reasons to do this. As a larger company, we're always looking for subs who can do specialized services. So if you offer some sort of specialized service or some sort of niche marketplace, you know, the large firms only want to focus on like the big, the big overall macro level type stuff. But if you can handle a micro level type problem, like for example, let's say janitorial services, you know, the as the large company, they don't want to actually do the janitorial work. They want to get the facility's maintenance contract, right, and then sub out the janitorial work. The large business doesn't want to do the actual connecting the computer devices inside of the office space, right? They want the contract to oversee the entire network architecture possibly, but they don't want to actually do the actual interconnectivity. So if you can provide the interconnectivity between the systems, then there's value for you. And so again, and we've talked about this before is identifying a niche marketplace. My niche when I did it was steel buildings, right? So the company wanted the entire contract to do the reconstruction of, let's say, a facility or a hospital, but they didn't want to get into the nitty gritty of doing the actual panels or the specific steel blocks or things like that. So again, within your arena, where is your niche or your niche inside the marketplace? Because again, even though these opportunities are being bundled up, there are still slices of that opportunity, which you can actually take on and do and do a good job at and make a lot of money. What I would say is this, you know, in my professional experience, you know, it was easier for me to tag along with one of these big guys who met all the government's requirements, who knew all the government mumbo jumbo. And so guess what? All I had to do was submit them a price and do my job. I didn't have to write technical proposal. I didn't have to pre qualify. I didn't have to put up bonding. I didn't have to show that I had, you know, they didn't check my bank records or my financials or anything like that. All I had to do was give them a proposal that made sense, tell them it was included, what was not included, and they would give me the contract. So again, for me, I don't see this as a negative. I see it as information that you can use to your advantage so that you're not making missteps or going after things the wrong way and spending a lot of wasted time doing activities that are not yielding results. Maybe this helps someone change their strategy and their approach to how they want to pursue this arena. So again, I hope this video helps as always and we'll see you coming up. Thank you so much for watching. So you just finished watching my video on bundled contracts. We've got some resources at the bottom here. If you like that video, if you're interested in more videos like that, please send me a comment. Let me know. Or if you have some other type of video that you want to hear that you want to see, please send me an email request, the type of video you want to hear. We're always looking for new ideas on types of videos that we should be making, more content that we should producing. If you're interested in a Q&A session, again, let me know. I'm open to suggestions. By the way, the links to both of these, the 809 panels report and the FedBit report, will be at the bottom. Click the link below and it'll take you right to those reports, you can get copies of them. And we will be talking more about some of the 809 panels, other recommendations and upcoming videos. Thank you so much. We'll see you next time.