 All right, today's question comes from my man, Kevin. And Kevin's question says, I have a floral business. Do you think government contracts I could benefit from? And where do I begin? Great question out there for Kevin and the other people out here who may have businesses and industries that are non-traditional. You know, what I always say is I have a video it's called, does a government buy what I sell? Pop up on the screen. Yep, that one. So again, there's a video of what does a government buy what I sell? You can click on that video and watch it. But I'll be more than happy to answer Kevin's question because I think that an actual verbal response might be more beneficial than watching a video. If you have a floral business, for example, like Kevin does, the first thing that you wanna do is not go to beta SAM and look up opportunities. As we've discussed in some of our videos, the government only posts about 55% of all contracts. So simply going on beta.sam and looking for floral bids, it's not an effective market research strategy. There are a couple of resources out there that you can use tools that I suggest in previous videos. USA Spending is number one and FPDS and G is the second. Free, by the way, free market research tools. So if anyone out there is questioning, right, how do I determine whether or not the government buys what I sell, the tools that I would use are usaspending.gov and fpdsng.gov. And again, if you just go to Google and type in USA Spending, you'll find it up. Make sure it does have a .gov at the end just because there are some kind of shady people out here in this world and they do tend to put up content that does not match. They use the same names, they change the endings, they put .com, they put .tar, whatever. They just do really funny things and sometimes it takes us to places that we don't wanna go and I hate to see you get a virus on your computer trying to follow my video. But what I suggest is, again, there are some content on or surrounding USA Spending and how to use that tool. I do also have content surrounding FPDS and how to use that tool. I will describe them in this video. FPDS has a list of the past contract activities, right? So the past contract activities that the government awarded. So everything that the government buys, and again, we're talking about federal specifically, doesn't apply to state and this does not apply to local. But on the federal arena, all of the contract actions, they are posted in FPDS, that is a requirement. So you will find all, 100% of all of the actions are posted in FPDS. I'm sure there's probably some exceptions like things that involve national defense and security of that nature, but all of the contract activities are go in FPDS. And the reason why you would like to search FPDS as opposed to beta SAM. And if all this stuff sounds crazy, like what are these words and names you're just talking about? We have, again, there's videos I already have discussing these items for clarification, but beta.sam is the place where you find the, it's called the GPO or the government's point of entry, GPE, sorry, government point of entry, meaning that all of the contract actions above $25,000 are supposed to go in beta.sam, which was formerly FBO. However, there are some exceptions to that rule and that's the reason why only about 55% of the opportunities go inside of beta.sam. So if you wanna see all of the possibilities for contracts for your industry or your space, you have to research past awards because the only way to see all of the contracts and all of the activities that happen is looking at historical data. Because unfortunately, they do not have to put in there all of the actual task orders and solicitations that fall outside of the criteria for publicly posting it. So that exempts, again, 40 plus percent of all activities and maybe floral is one of the ones that fall into that 40 percentile that's never gonna be posted on beta.sam. So you've gotta go in and do the research and historical research to find out, okay, did they ever buy floral services? So what it tells me and what I use this information for is first is I look at my PSC code, product service code or NAX code, right? North American Industry Classification Code because that helps me to determine what's floral services, right? More than likely because floral sounds like a product, then I would use a PSC code and then I would take that PSC code, type it in USA spending or type it in FPDS and then see what data populates. I would then sort it by the most recent year like 2019 or 2018 depending upon when they input their data in and then I would see how many opportunities did they yield on the results. Now that you have the number of opportunities that it yields in terms of results, you can make your own determination whether or not this is lucrative marketplace to be in or it's not lucrative. And the same thing applies for anyone else out there who has a product or service that they're interested in selling to government. You wanna go back and look at the historical data and what the government is actually spending their money on in the past and that will help you determine what they're gonna spend their money on in the future. Now, the only exceptions to that would be something that's computer related because we know that computers and IT changes constantly. So yeah, I'm sure if you were selling floppy disks and you said, oh, the government bought floppy disks a long time ago, no, that doesn't mean they're gonna be floppy disks in the future. So don't be silly out there, don't be crazy. We can all pull a wild hair out of our, you know what. But for the most part, this applies for 99.999% of us out there looking at the historical data is gonna teach us about what they're gonna buy in the, what they're buying in the present and also what they're gonna buy in the future. And that's how we determine whether or not the government buys floral services. So I hope this, I was able to help you somewhat and also look who had a similar question. Moving on, Eliado, question about O'Connor's contracts. Where do I find this information? And do you have to be a US citizen to have A-day work in or out of the US? So this is a two-part question. The second part is very easy to answer. You do not have to have A-day certification to get contracts. You do not have to have A-day certification to get contracts. You do not have to have any certification whatsoever to win contracts. The large companies do not have certifications. Small businesses, you don't have to have a certification. The majority of all of the set-asides are small business when it comes to what you're referencing. The majority of the smaller contracts are set-aside for small business. Simplified acquisition is a small business program. So let's just get this out of your head. I don't know where you're getting the information from, but let's go ahead and bury that myth. You do not need a certification to win contracts. It's not true. You don't need a certification. If you register yourself as a small business and you meet the criteria, you're a small business. It's not a certification. You're a small business by definition. There's no certification involved. So again, let's just take the myth out of it. And even at the local levels and the state levels, you still don't need to be certified. CBE, DBE to win contracts. There are people that have no DBEs, no CBEs, none of this stuff, and they're still winning contracts. Zoom has contracts. They're not CBE, DBE. Oh, but they're a monster company. It's just a point, it's an example. I'm just giving examples, because the question prompts me to give a, again, you may say my example is ridiculous, but I think the question is a little bit absurd. And so an absurd question warrants an absurd answer, response. So again, if General Electric or Microsoft or SpaceX or Amazon or, what is the name, Oracle, if all of these people have contracts with the government, they don't have certifications. We have to, I encourage everyone to be a little bit smarter and to think for themselves. Don't go around listening to people who are giving you false information. Unfortunately, there's a lot of people out here who have maybe won a contract or two, and now all of a sudden they claim to be profits. They're not profits. Because they won one contract, doesn't make them a profit. I don't care if the contract was $2 million or $50,000, it doesn't make them an all-knowing, right? Talk to people who've won hundreds of contracts. Talk to people who've even won dozens of contracts. I've got students who've won more contracts than those people that are teaching you guys this. I'm gonna say again, I have students that have won more contracts than the people that you're paying out there for your coaching and your training and your teachings. In fact, for the people who are actually standing on some of these stages, some of these people are standing on stage who've been invited to speak at these conferences, have never done this before in their life. So I'm encouraging everyone out there, please, please, right? Okay, make sure that the people have won the contracts. Make sure they were able to do the contracts, that they kept the contracts because a lot of people who are teaching and training, who claim to be trainers and teachers, have contracts that they've won and lost or been taken away from them. Or they've won contracts that are not what you're looking for. They're not the size, the scale, the magnitude, right? That you wanna be at. Again, you wanna learn from people who are doing at the level that you wanna do it. And you can't build a business off of $5,000 contracts. It's not a business, it's not sustainable. I'm just telling the reality whether you wanna hear it or not, I'm just being honest with you. You can't build a business, you can't pay your bills. I can't, remember this, a $5,000 contract doesn't net you $5,000. A $5,000 contract might net you 20% of $1,000. And again, I'm not above $1,000. I take 1,000 bucks right now. If you offer me $1,000, I take it in a heartbeat. But I wouldn't build a business model around making $1,000. Unless I was making $1,000 10 times a week, 10 times a month, right? Unless I was making $1,000 humanively over a period of time. But to make $1,000 here, $1,000 there, it's not gonna sustain you. It's not even gonna replace your job for the most of us, right? So again, a minimum wage person was at $7 an hour. So if you go out and work minimum wage a couple weeks, you can make $1,000. I don't see, to me, I don't see the incentive for going out there and spending and investing your time and learning and all your energy to learn how to make $1,000. Just don't see it. So again, I just encourage people to think out there. And then also, if people are asking me about being a US citizen, you do have to be a US citizen to have A&A, but you do not have to be a US citizen to win contracts. And so for me, I think the most important part is, sounds like me, this is a foreign person who's asking the question because they're asking about citizenship status. In order to win contracts outside of the United States, you do not have to be a citizen. Again, think, folks, think. We have people, right? Anywhere in a nation that you see our military, we have people that are working there. We're getting our fuel from local people. We're getting our supplies from local people. We're getting all the things to arm our ships, to arm our tanks, to arm our troops. We're getting all that from local people who are not US citizens. So if you sit back and you say, well, how are we doing? We're working in Africa. How are we doing it, right? How are we getting good goods and supplies? So if you think about it that way, you do not have to be a US citizen to work. In fact, a lot of the contracts that I've seen, they want to encourage, help and work from local people. So people like yourself that are asking these questions, they are looking for you out there. And a lot of times that folks that are in these positions don't know how to do US federal contracts. So if you are studying and learning how to do US federal contracts, and you're in another country, you have an advantage over the people who are in your country who may know how to do the work, but not know how to get a contract. And that's what Vicky, Vicky's last name is really hard to pronounce, but Vicky M, who's from Italy, she actually talks about that. And we have a video on there with Vicky where she's over in Italy because we have one of our largest naval ports out there. And she's talking about doing contracts. And I know for a fact, we're looking at strategic partnerships with Morocco. So if you're in or around that area of Morocco, the government is gonna be looking for a contract that's really soon because we're gonna be doing large deployments out there because it's a strategic location. So again, the government's in Australia, we're in Guam, we're in Mexico, we're everywhere. And everywhere we're at, we're looking for local people. So now, how do you find opportunities for that kind of work? What I would say is start off with knowing the bases and the facilities and then reaching out to them to find out where they post those jobs because I don't think there's a single source or place where you can find that. I know in Vicky's case, the Navy has a separate website for O'Connor's work, but then USAD posts on Beta SAM. But then the Army Corp of Aeneirs has a different division that handles O'Connor's, which is outside the Continental United States type project. So if you are in that situation, you're a non-citizen and you're looking at how do you do work in your local country, I would encourage you to look at wherever the agency is, whether it's a military base or a facility, reach out to them and find out where those opportunities are being posted and then that's the best way to do it because there's not a single source like there are areas for work that's in the United States. There's not a single place or website to go to where you're gonna find all of the projects outside of the Continental United States. Hey, I hope this video helped some people out there. If it did, please leave it in the comments and let me know. Also, we have Vicky, so if you're outside of the Continental United States and you want to learn how to get your business registered in SAM to do business as a foreign company, send us an email at service.govconjines.com and I will pass your email along to Vicky, who's been helping register companies in countries like Afghanistan and Iraq to business with the US government. Thanks so much as always, it's been a pleasure. Love talking to you guys.