 So one of the questions people always ask me, Eric, what if I don't qualify for a set-aside? So the first thing is, listen, set-aside contracts are for companies who are looking to be prime contractors. So go back and watch my video on, do you have what it takes to be a prime contractor? Do you have past performance experience? Do you have a team? Do you got vendor credit, supply credit, any of those types of things like that? So if you don't have that, then set-aside contracts might not be the way to go because again, the idea is, you're going to be the prime contractor getting the contract in your hand. So again, if you can't perform, then there's no sense of even worrying about becoming a prime or pursuing a set-aside because you don't have the ability to perform a contract. Now, some other ideas about it is, you could potentially partner or team with someone, but unless you are in that mindset or you've already committed to doing that, if you have not, then you may, this may not be the way to go for you. Again, now if you are a prime contractor or you want to be a prime contractor, then absolutely I would agree that maybe it might be in your best advantage to pursue a set-aside. So again, if you're going to this thing, okay, let's say my company does video production, I've got a small team of people, and we have the ability to be able to do, perform and execute the contracts on our own. We don't need to hire any outside people or maybe a small percent of the work will actually sub out, maybe the video editing, things like that. But we're going to be doing, capturing all of the information ourselves, capturing the video, setting up, we've got our own cameras, we've got our own equipment, we have the resource to fly out to the government site. If you've got all that stuff, then it may be in your advantage, yes, to pursue a small business certification. But if you don't have that, and you're saying I'm confused or I'm unsure about what I should do getting in this government marketplace, but I'm going to go ahead and get service disabled certification, or I'm going to go ahead and get A&A. If you're confused or you don't have a product or service, then I don't see that as your best route to take, per se. And so what we did is I went ahead and grabbed a, I made a video earlier about FBO and how I looked at like all of the opportunities that exist today and then determining how much of that opportunities in FBO are set aside exactly for A&A, HUBZone, Veteran, things like that. So I made that video, we're going to go ahead and take you over to that clip so you can watch it and see kind of what I mean about not being a whole wide range of opportunities in FBO for set aside contracts for people wanting to pursue the set aside program. So again, just touching on the question that people say, well, what if I don't qualify for a certification? That's okay, not to qualify for a certification because chances are 99.9% of us are eligible as regular small businesses to start working in this marketplace. So if you find that you're not particularly qualified for any type of certification, that's no hindrance or impediment to you getting started in the marketplace. There's all kinds of ways that you can jump in, you can work in this marketplace as a technical writer, as a proposal writer, you can actually help out as project manager, you can work as a 1099er, you can work on the teams of other people who are getting contracts so that you can learn their business. There's literally probably dozens if not hundreds of opportunities in this marketplace for those who want to get involved and start small and grow their way up learning along the way so that when the time comes and you're ready to actually open a business, you can jumpstart inside and you already have some experience and you already have an idea of how this thing works. Let's take you over here to the screen right now to watch the video. All right, so what I did just now we went ahead and created this little spreadsheet in Excel based on the information and today's FBO listing really if you pull up all I did was I went into FBO looked at opportunities list it's automatically says 90 days and then you'll see depending upon what you check what will show up if let me just clear the box so we can show you guys right now it shows let's go back to the 90 days so 90 days search now it's at 27,642 opportunities earlier there was 27,612 but we could change that okay so that gives us 27,642 opportunities and then what you could see is I went ahead and typed in or clicked the either 8a HUBZone woman on veteran on buttons and that gave me these results so let's just I'll just show you really quickly you type in 8a hit search gives you 208 as we have take that off choose HUBZone search gives you 137 we've got that number same thing veteran on and again anyone could go out and do this you guys could play with this self because it's 57 results respectively woman on 91 results earlier it was 96 let's change it to 91 as you can see this data is changing rapidly right people are putting information in taking information out so it's changing constantly because again when I first create this sheet is about maybe 20 minutes ago so it's the information is changing but nevertheless more or less this is what you end up with and then the biggest of them all I put in total small business set aside small or small business and emerging small business click search and I ended up the 90 days change hold on all right 7511 at the time of 7505 doesn't really make much difference but you can see here so the point is when we're looking at this particular chart a lot of people they're saying Eric what if I don't qualify for a set aside and so what I'm saying to you is that nowhere in here am I getting an indication that you need an actual set aside to get the contracts in fact the only place where I see that they're even remotely close and again FBO we're talking about people looking at FBO and jobs the only place that I see that the government even remotely close to hitting their goal or exceeding their goal is with the veteran on small business services able veteran on small business so again if I had to make a recommendation for someone to that was eligible for certifications which ones to get obviously based on what I'm looking at the data suggests veteran on small business or services able veteran on small business those are definitely certifications that you need to even be eligible to compete and that marketplace but when we're talking about like a day and hub zone and woman on businesses as you can see the the advertised solicitations what's actually being posted and advertised doesn't warrant getting yourself certified right so and again I'm just looking at raw data here so what I'm telling people out there is because people coming all the time is Eric if I don't qualify for a set aside should I be working this marketplace and the answer is absolutely yes I mean if you're if you have a business that can compete that can do contracts that does a good quality work that has teams and past performance or if you know someone that meets all these requirements they need absolutely 100% unequivocally you should be participating in the fellow guard marketplace however when it comes to the set aside piece there are always always always tens of thousands correctly tens of thousands of companies that are willing ready and able for you to use their certifications in order to facilitate getting a contract award but that's only in the case that you need it this is the chart here and you can see the data clearly shows again if you're again if you're following the data it clearly shows that a company hub zone veteran on these things are not widely advertised in FBO so what does that mean Eric does that mean I shouldn't get it at all no no no that's not what we're saying what I'm saying is this for the majority of people out there who are going to be looking at bidding projects off FBO like just going after solicitations RP's RFQ's without doing any type of business development without doing any type of market research but for those persons or companies out there who plan on doing that then what I would say for you is there's no reason to get a certification I mean you could jump on board right now in FBO and just start bidding products because if you're registered in SAM then typically you're already self certified as a small business so again you're going to be declaring your revenues and income and for the for 99.9% of us out here you're going to be considered a small business under the standard size table for small businesses so again no worry about having to jump on get certification because if your job is or your mentality is hey look I'm just going to bid projects then you don't have you don't need a certification to do that because the majority the bulk of everything that's in here is small business so again I wanted to show this data because again a lot of people come to me saying Eric you know what if I don't qualify for a certification you know and my answer is unless you are pursuing opportunities with the VA hospital then I don't see why you would need a certification to get started all right so that means get started jump on board we're happy to have you we're happy to teach you lessons we want more good quality contracts out there helping our United States government further its efforts and emissions work so again we welcome all of you out here to jump on board and participate in this government marketplace we're looking for great small businesses we're looking for great businesses all together so I hope that this kind of clarifies or adds another level of data to some of the people out here who are confused about being certified now with that said for all the people who have certifications what should you be doing well again if you can see here that the data suggests there are no opportunities presently and let me rephrase it not I wouldn't say no opportunities but there's very far few and but in between opportunities for those persons who are certified on FBO what does that mean that means that you're going to have to go other places to find out where the contracts are because they're out there because we can see when we're looking at those SBAs reporting for the contracts and hitting their goals we know that these agencies are making their goals and their numbers so if they're not doing on FBO where are they doing it at and so that's your job and that's what your task of finding out is okay I know that the government's buying my services I know that they're using women-owned businesses I know they're using NA firms but where are they and so you now our task with okay finding out where these opportunities are how do I get a hold of them who should I be talking to that kind of stuff so you know for those firms that are currently certified as 8A's HUBZone women-owned small businesses you want to know okay listen Eric if they're saying it's a 5% goal and less than 1% of the contracts are published in 8A or 8A contracts are published in FBO where's the rest you know if they're talking about here same thing HUBZone 3% goal 0.5% in FBO you know so where are the rest of all those contracts at same thing with veteran and again well veteran and service table kind of go together hand in hand so for them and I and I don't want I want to make sure I don't misrepresent this the veteran and service table is 3% not three and three so it's not six so let me I really there's really should be clumped together so for the purposes of not confusing people let me clump these together I don't want people to let me take and clump these together and then that way we don't have misinformation out there all right all right perfect so again the veteran on the services table veteran on ours there's 3% goals but when you again when you clump together they're the only ones that it appears that that are actively you can actually literally go on FBO and bid those projects without having to do any type of business development and any market research now again you know history tells me that the person that does that it's going to have a greater advantage over the ones that don't but it's not as though you can't just walk up to FBO and start actively pursuing contracts and be competitive but you know you can however again if you go one or two steps further and start doing some of your business development getting to know people attending site visits attending meetings attending workshops that's going to increase your chances that much more but for the rest of us out here who have no certifications or may have one of these other certifications that are not posting jobs we're going to have to do a little bit more we're going to we're going to need a greater wider understanding of the federal marketplace in order to really take advantage of being our small business status so and we'll and we'll talk about that some other videos but again I just wanted to show you guys here some of the data and what the data suggests so when you're out there and you're thinking okay I'm not crazy you know this you know I don't see anything out there so maybe there's nothing out there and you might find the same situation with your specific NACS code you may go out and search for contracts using your NACS code or FBO and run into the same situation that there's not a lot of active projects that doesn't mean they're not doing the work it just means that they're not posting on the FBO there's a different way that they're buying those contracts and it's up to you and your team to figure out which way that they're buying those contracts that you are looking for so again if you're making t-shirts if you're providing IT services if you're doing network marketing whatever the case may be you've got to go out and find how they're buying that service and then solicit them that way okay hope this video helps we'll see you next time so Eric if what you say is true then why is everyone telling us to go out and get certified well first and foremost there's a couple of reasons why people tell you to get certified one is and I like to say this is that there's all these third party certification companies out there that make their money helping small businesses get certified they don't actually know how to teach how to get a contract so the only way that they can make money off of you is by helping you do your registration and certification not that they're doing anything illegal it's just that they are over they're they're stretching the opportunity for certifications they are exaggerating all that comes with it and they're not exactly telling everyone how much work is involved and actually getting the contract right so again the government being risk averse they're not taking a whole lot of chances on new upcoming and startup companies this is a major concern with the department of defense however they haven't figured out how to fix this problem yet so again and back in the like to say the 90s and early 2000s you know certifications were the thing because again no one knew about certifications and so the majority of all the contracts that were posted they were you know using all these certifications but now that everyone knows about them it's nothing new and so this is being pushed across by some of these major third-party certification companies they're pushing certification certification it's the only thing that they know and so hence it they're not really helping when they're saying okay everyone go out and get certified the government saying okay you know you're just like the other last guy who was certified and then the other thing is that the government's having problems with some of the small businesses their ability to be able to perform their ability to be able to execute work and so what's happening is they're getting they're not getting away from the certifications they're just using companies that are tried and true who have the existing certification so again they're taking their existing companies who are already proven and saying asking them if they have the ability to bring on someone who has a certification to meet the requirement so again that's one of the ways that I stress if you do or if you have a certification or if you want to figure out how to leverage certification it may be your best interest to work with a larger firm or to work with someone who has some experience who's proven themselves so that's the reason why I say you know it's it's not that the people are doing anything wrong however what I'm finding is there's so many people that have certifications and don't know what to do with it that the fact that just getting the certification alone is not going to guarantee anybody work and I just want to be clear on that you know their great certifications are great to have if you know how to use them but at the same time with the amount of paperwork and reporting that has to be done it may you may find that it actually hinders you or your ability to be able to actually go after products because you're so bogged down with trying to keep up with all of the requirements to maintain the existing status or the certification level so again it's a matter of personal preference a matter of personal choice but one of the things I like to say is let your market research guide your activities so again if the market research indicates that the types of projects that you're looking for the types of contracts you're looking for warrant having a certification then I would say go for it if it doesn't indicate that then I would say pursue opportunities as just a regular small business and start to make friends inside the government start to have conversations with people about set aside opportunities about simplified acquisition that is going to far far far exceed all the certifications combined in the near future but for now it's a way for any one of us regardless of who we are to break into the marketplace whether you're small whether you're big whether you're inexperienced or you've had a ton of experience simplified acquisition is a neutral platform that could be leveraged to the full extent and we're not taking advantage of it all right so we'll keep watching we'll keep talking and we'll keep having conversations about how to win contracts using federal arena