 Hello GoCon Giants family, welcome. My name is Eric Coffey and today I want to discuss six reasons why I believe now is the absolute best time to get started and embark on your journey into the world of federal contracting. Even better than when I got started in 2007. Even better than when Patricia Bonilla SBA Ward when I got started. Even better than Alex Hernandez who's now got 50 million in bonding. And even better than my most recent guest, David Ramajan who turned the word joint ventures into a household name. So stay tuned for this upcoming video of six reasons why I believe now is the best time to embark on your federal contracting journey. All right, today, thank you for joining me over here on the big screen. We want to discuss the six reasons why I believe it is the best time to get started in the world of federal contracting. One is because let's talk about it. The unemployment rate has now hit a 50 year low. Even though they're talking about hiring is slowing, that's someone spinning it, we're in a spin cycle. The unemployment rate has still hit a 50 year low. What does that mean? There's no one, absolutely there's no one out there who is watching this video right now in the present time that can't drive somewhere in their communities and see a for hiring sign. My mom said something to me the other day. She goes, look, they just don't want jobs. And we all know what that means. If you don't have a job, that's because you don't want a job because everyone and their mama is hiring. In fact, it's gotten so bad to the point where even Amazon is reaching out and saying, hey, look, we will help pay you to come out and work for us. And that's also becoming a really big problem over in the DC area where Amazon moved in and started paying people $150,000 a year. So again, the economy is booming. Even Popeye's chicken ran a chicken. I mean, people had so much money that they bought Popeye's chicken out of chicken. Number two reason the ADA program has been in a steady decline in participation. Again, the ADA program has been in a steady decline in participation over the last 10 years. Studies show that over the last few years they've recognized that. And so there's been an uptick in the number of participants. But if we look back at when I got started in 2007, 2008, there were more than 8,000. Yeah, eight. There were more than 8,000 participants in the ADA program and we were still able to manage to survive and thrive and do well in this program. So again, with the program on a constant decline in participation, that means what? The amount of contracts that are going to small businesses are going to a smaller, a few and fewer pile of particular companies or pile of industries. So again, with the amount of people participating, declining, the amount of people who are actually in the program are getting more and more of the piece of pie. The federal government in 2016, this was created and you're probably saying, why are you putting up an article for 2016? Because in order to know where we're at and to be appreciative of, we need to know where we came from. So before this article, let me go ahead and we wanna pull this up, right here in this particular article, this was put out by the Women in Business blog. So if you wanna check them out and verify it, it's here, the link. But it says in the article that before the American Express partnered with one of my recent podcast guests, I'm gonna pull her up, Lordess Martin Rosa, when they partnered with her and they partnered with WIP, the Women's Association of Public Policy, when they partnered with them, the Women in Business program, was doing less than 5%, which was their goal. So again, it says in the article, at the time they were doing just 3.4% of the federal contracts. And that was short changing women on business owners. So what happened? They got together, they put together this agreement, they went back and they lobbied Washington and it says, again, as of, where is, as of 2016, it was the first time in history where the federal government actually met their 5% contract and goal for women on small businesses in 20 years. So again, for all the women on businesses out there, this was a historic moment. Now, let's go back and take it even further. It says in 2013, due to the efforts of WIP, their coalition partners, they signed into the National Defense Authorization Act and which removed caps for eligible contract awards on the SBA Women on Program that were capped at 4 million and 6.5 million. So they removed the caps from the program. And in addition to that, they passed a new law giving statutory authority to award sole source contracts. So all of these wonderful things are happening out there for the women on business program as well. The HUBZone program, the HUBZone Council, by the way, is doing a great job of leading legislative priorities in terms of educating us, helping us become more informed about the HUBZone actual program. They are doing, making leaps and bounds in terms of what legislation they need to be proposed, working with Congress, working with people in the government to identify why is it that the government is not meeting their goals in certain category management criteria for initiating the HUBZone program. But they have already started making progress in their efforts, helping to put together some instrumental law. And here are some of the progress they've got on their website that you can find. So again, the HUBZone program itself is making strides. The number five reason federal contract spending hits its five-year high. I'm gonna say it again. Federal contract spending hits a five-year high. So let's look at, hold on, let me go on over to the screen. Let's pull it up, do-do-do-do-do-do. All right, this is a report that was issued by Federal News Network, and it says right here, that federal contract hit its five-year high. In 2018, they eclipsed $560 billion in contract spending, the highest level since 2010, where it was 562, so we're just $2 billion off. But it talks about also spending has increased in terms of the GWACs. So the GWAC spending is up. And then a smaller business spending increased along with the overall spending. IDIQs have been outpacing definitive contracts. What does that mean? So the IDIQs, which are the Indefinite Delivery and Definite Quantity. So these are the long multi-year contracts have been steadily increasing as well. And these are great opportunities for people out there, like you and I, to partner with or JV with another firm who may have the qualifications that we're lacking to grab for some of these long-term contract vehicles. Because if the government keeps at this pace, right, this is where the money's at. And then, last but not least, simplified acquisition has been steadily rising. So as you know, simplified acquisition, those are the smaller projects that we can do, right, with our own means, our own resources, our own team. So again, simplified acquisition has been increasing as well. So when you couple all that together, that's a triple net positive benefit, if you ask me. And then let's keep going. Let's keep going. I'm excited. All right. And then, reason number six, the best reason of them all. For the first time in history, the U.S. government small business, I'm gonna quote small business in quotations, but the U.S. government small business program eclips $100 billion. So again, in the 2017 year, they hit $105 billion with small businesses. Never has that been seen. That's a historical mark. It says, eight of the agencies received the A plus grade for hitting their goals. Three got a B and one received a C. So people are hitting their goals. They're spending money with people that look like me and you out there. 2018, they did $120 billion. So again, they are spending the money with people. I mean, when I was in this particular market, and again, I know when people started saying, well, Eric, the value of money was different back then and this and that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's all great, Danny. But again, the dollars in the sense are here and they make sense. Hear me again. The dollars in the sense are here, right? And don't they make sense? They make sense to me. So if they don't make sense to you, then maybe you should tune off and watch somebody else. But again, they eclipse $120 billion in 2018. So it's the first time in history that they've exceeded $100 billion, which means what? A bigger piece of pie for all of us out there. So where does that leave us? Right now, you're at the red light. So you're stopped, right? And then you've got the yellow light, which means what? Caution. And then the green light needs to go. So I'm not doing green, yellow, red. I'm saying you're at red. I need to get you over to green. It brings me to a quote that one of my recent podcast guests gave me. He said it came from his grandmother. When we went back and did the research, I think it came from actual Albert Einstein. But it said, does do what you can with what you have, where you're at, but do it right now. So again, that's do what you can with what you have, where you're at and do it right now. And that quote came from Theodore Roosevelt. I wanna encourage everyone out there. This thing is growing like wildfire. Our organization is growing. The people are winning more and more contracts. We had our first student when they're a million dollar, not our first student, but we had a student for his first time when a million, just a contract just shy of a million dollars in the month of September. And we're gonna have more and more of these types of success stories to share with people moving forward. But I just thought it would make sense to showcase and highlight all of the good and positive things that are happening out right now in the federal marketplace so that that way, maybe if you were thinking about it or you're on the edge, this would help push you over. All right, thanks so much for watching as always. We will be looking forward to the upcoming podcast every Tuesday on Spotify, Google Podcasts, Apple iTunes, wherever you find your podcast listening.