 Happy New Year. Happy New Years. Yes, it is the beginning of the federal government contract new year. Obviously we know it's not December or January, but it is the new fiscal year for the government. While in September, particularly September the 30th, they close out last fiscal year and now October 1st begins a new fiscal year for the government. So what activities should you be doing in the month of October? Over in the whiteboard we've written out five activities that I think people should be working on in the month of October to get them one step closer to winning that first contract, that bigger contract, that project preparing you for the upcoming season leading into 2020. Again, we want to set our goals and work backwards and that's what we're here to help you do today. Number one, let's go over to the whiteboard and see. Number one, target market list. It's never a bad time to be putting together a target market list, particularly when the 2018-2019 fiscal year just ended. All of the opportunities should be in the system for 2019. Now, what does that mean? We want to see if there's any changing of the guard. Obviously what's happening and most of you guys, you know because you watch Fox and MSNBC and CNN, all these new stations, we know what's going on in DC in a beltway that they're reallocating money and spending money in certain areas where they haven't done before and they're taking money from certain places. So we need to take a look at who is actually getting those dollars and what agencies and how they're spending it. So we need to go back, take a look at this revisit to make sure that we are still targeting the correct respective agencies. What's going to help too is also by the end of October, the new forecast list should all be sent into the system. So again, by the time the end of the month, this month comes out, all of the forecast lists should be released so you can see which agencies are going to have what dollars to spend. Right now, they're not really putting out a lot of contracts. It's a very low month for actually awarding contract opportunities. It's a great time to do your market research to actually build some of that intelligence that you need going forward in 2020. Where do we find those opportunities? FPDS and USA Spending. We've got videos on that on my YouTube channel. Number two, Prime Contractors. So the Prime Contractors, as you stated earlier, Eric, and I'm speaking in third person now, right? The Prime Contractors from July to September, the biggest months where they're actually writing contracts, the biggest months where they're writing these dollars and the contracts. Throughout the history of the government, these were the months where they spent the majority of their money. These Prime Contracts just got awarded contracts. So now what's happening is they're scurrying, trying to find the people, the companies, the suppliers, the subcontractors are trying to put all these people in place in order to start fulfilling these contracts. I know oftentimes when you're awarded something in September, depending upon when they actually give you the start date, it could be October, November, December. So again, if they haven't already, they're starting to take a look at who are the people going to be on their team and they're doing shopping around and they're buying down contracts, which means they're trying to get the best price for the contracts and based on the numbers that they submitted to the government. So now's a great time to start reaching out some of the Prime Contractors out there who were just won these awards. Number three, IDIQ and Definite Delivery and Definite Quantity. Those are the long-range contract vehicles. So those are the five-year, seven-year, nine-year, 10-year contract vehicles that are out there. So those will be things like Mateux, Satux, GWACS, Max, BMOs, Brack Contracts, all of these particular vehicles. There are vendors that are already on them and because they were put into place two years ago or three years ago or five years ago, because they were already put in place, guess what? They are still, the contracts are still being let throughout the year. So again, when you can't find a contract anywhere else, if you ever turn to one of the vendors that are on these lists, they are constantly doing contracts because the government, since they put that vehicle together, they can easily buy against it throughout the year. So whenever you're in doubt or you need a contract or you need money or you need an opportunity, reach out to a vendor on the IDIQ list because they're the most likely person to have some opportunities that are going on at any given time throughout the year. Number four, partners. Again, what we're doing is putting together our market intelligence so that we can prepare for what's coming out. I know that we're working with a group out of DC, that they are already putting together a team for some of the upcoming GWACS that are coming down the pipeline. So again, we want to talk about where do you find partners? When we interview Jennifer Namvar from LIDOS, she says that there are constantly, when they're reviewing solicitations, pre-solicitations, and they're looking at the requirements, the first thing that they do is figure out, okay, who are the partners we need? What socioeconomic destinations do we need? And they start trying to bring those people in. So again, for you, you should be doing the same thing as looking at partners. Now where do we go to look for partners? DSBS or Dynamic Small Business Search. It is the SBA site that has everyone who's in SAM, but it has a little bit more information about the particular company than just their SAM profile. It has in their what's the socioeconomic category they may be in. It also has in their contracts that they've won that they've actually manually put in, and they talk about their bonding, they talk about other areas of the business, whether or not they were certified today or in the past or it's expired. So there's a lot of information that you can gather from DSBS. So who should we be talking to? Number one, primes. Let's look at some of the primes, right, and find out if there are any subcontract opportunities with any of the primes. What's different between the primes and DSBS and the primes up here is that these are the people who are just awarded contracts recently. The people at DSBS systems, they're going to be, for example, my company that I represent, we went after an opportunity this past last fiscal year for a May talk, it was a $20 million award, and we were not a successful recipient of that, but there were three recipients that were awarded that contract, and what I did was after they gave us our debriefing, we realized we didn't award it, I reached out to two of the vendors who we knew were potential suitors for joint ventures or partnership, and one of them agreed to meet with us to discuss opportunities moving forward. So again, in that particular case, you can go to DSBS and identify partners for subcontract opportunities. The other type of partner is for socioeconomic reasons. So give you another example, I have a student of ours that at the end of the year, she found a firm to work with, a small business firm that had a socioeconomic designation. She sent out an email to some of the contracting folks, letting her know her capability statement, who she is and what she does, and she picked up six contracts within the last two weeks of the fiscal year. So again, you may be wanting to partner with some people who have socioeconomic certifications that you need moving forward based on your market research. Another thing that we want to talk about is this is a great time to actually start contacting or reaching out to agencies, ostobus, small business liaisons for CAPE statement reviews for one-on-one sessions. So again, when we talk about, when we look at the time where the government workers, right, when they are the most free and the most available, now a lot of their calendars are going to be not as full as they have much stuff on their plate because why? They just finished putting together the hardest month of the year and they may actually not even be there. I know some people take off the first week of October just because they spent so much time in the last few weeks leading up to October and September getting everything pushed out. So again, I know some people are out, but this is a great time to start reaching out and start at least scheduling or getting on the calendar for some of these appointments. I can tell you again, we had been trying to reach a particular contact officer last year and we didn't get, they didn't even call us back in the month of September, like no phone calls, no nothing, but then as soon as the fiscal year changed to guard, first, like it was the first week in October, they called us back, they sent us an email, say, hey, we've got your message. Now that we're freed up, let's talk and figure out a schedule moving forward. So again, I think it's a great time to look at that. One other thing I want to mention, which I think is interesting, and it doesn't necessarily apply to October, this is for any time. One of the ideas that always rings a bell that people that I like to share with people is this, if you have any questions about a respective, let's say an agency, and I learned this not through the actual like a textbook or anything like that, but just looking at modeling successful companies, successful businesses. One of the things that doesn't happen often is, and it's even a tribute to my podcast, is there are former contracting officers that are now since retired from the government and there's not a lot of people reaching out to them. So again, if there's an agency, for example, there's an agency that you want to learn more about, why not go on LinkedIn and try and find out the person from that particular agency who has since retired and see if you can maybe talk to them, do some sort of paid engagement, maybe a clarity call with them for a few hours to discuss some of the intricacies of how that agency works. It's a great way to get insight and knowledge about the inner workings of an agency from a past director, CEO, program manager, whatever the case may be from a past person who's on the inside who's now no longer connected to that agency. So it's a great way to start learning about the inner workings of the agency, who you should be talking with, who you should go see first without actually being, jeopardizing them, their job or potential contract or without having to actually put yourself in any type of, let's say, a legal situation. So again, this is some tricks that I've learned through experience, through other types of mastermind groups, other types of entrepreneurial groups that I've been in that I could see work in the same way. Because when we first started and I started doing a podcast, I know Maria was a little hesitant. She says, well, these people are really big people and they're not going to want to talk to you. And I found out that some of these people were happy that people were even reaching out to them because they wanted to become relevant again. So again, just like a movie star or celebrity, once their career is finished, they no longer consider relevant. They're happy to have people bring them back into the spotlight. Same thing with former past government people. A lot of times they retired and they had all this brainpower and all this intellect that they're no longer using. So again, if you could tap into that via LinkedIn, I hope everyone has a LinkedIn profile, that would be a great way to actually learn some insight and knowledge about a specific agency. Hey, look, I hope that this October Tips helped you. Look forward to November Tips coming up.