 Hey listeners, Eric Coffey here, host of the GovCon Giants podcast. This is episode number 82 and the first time that we've actually interviewed someone from a P-TAC office. If you are not from Eric P-TAC, it is a free service for most services, low cost for some advanced services, but it's a free service paid for by our tax dollars that helps small businesses get started in state, federal, local contracting. They also provide technical assistance for businesses. Today's guest, Melissa Burant is going to talk all about P-TAC, their services that they offer, what they do, some of her experiences as a former contracting officer for US Army Contracting Command and much more in today's episode. By the way, I just want to encourage all of you, before we get started with today's episode, to take a look at our website, govcongiants.com, for its last education to find out about our eight-week bootcamp coming up in the next month, and also for the first 10 listeners of 2021 who leave me a review, I will be sending them a signed autographed book of my new book, GovCon Launch. So just wanted to encourage some folks out there to do the right thing, to help us out, to support us. We really appreciate it because everything does matter. Stay tuned for this upcoming episode of our next giant, Melissa Burant. My name is Melissa Burant and I work for Iowa State University Center for Industrial Research and Services in their Procurement Technical Assistance Center. So I am a P-TAC counselor. Okay. Nice. Now, what did you do before this? For 15 years, I worked for the federal government, the Department of Army, and the last eight of those years I was a contract specialist contracting officer for the Army. Okay. All right. And for those persons who do not know what P-TAC is, can you just explain? Yeah. So the P-TAC, actually, that's a really good question because it's something that's often not understood. Contracting officer, I did not know what the P-TAC was. So the P-TAC program is a program that's funded by the Defense Logistics Agency, DLA. And the sole purpose of the program is to help government contractors interested in federal, state, or local markets or contracts to help them understand that market. So we do a number of different, that support can look like training webinars. It can look like in-person workshops. It can look like probably the most beneficial is the one-on-one counseling that we offer to businesses. We can do market research, show them how to do their own market research, and yeah, I mean, the job is really multifaceted. You said something that when you were a contracting officer, you didn't know the job of the P-TAC. Yeah. So it's an interesting story to me, and I think it comes down to marketing and understanding the power of marketing. The government doesn't always do a great job of marketing, right? They put something out on a website, and they kind of expect people to come to them. So my job as a contracting officer, I didn't necessarily, I'll be quite frank, I had a role to play. I had to get my solicitations out on the street. I had to do my market research to know who was in that market, and then I had to do contract awards. And so one of my really good friends was actually a P-TAC counselor, but I never knew it. Like she never, this is where the marketing problem comes in. She never explained it to me in a way that I understood. She would mention, oh, hey, we're going to, I'm going to have you speak sometime. And I'm like, no, you're not. And you know, lo and behold, a few years later, that program at the Iowa P-TAC had an opening, and so I was looking for something different. And I, so it's been a really interesting transition. It's been a really, I really honestly, every government employee should get out and work in industry for a bit. That's a very bold statement. Yeah. I mean, you know, if you always do what you've always done, you're always going to get what you've always got. Yes. Them to work with industry. I mean, I have an MBA, I have a master's in business, so I'm not completely illiterate of business practices in general. I got that MBA when I worked, as I worked for the government. But the reality is to fully understand the challenges that government contractors face, you know, because the government wants good vendors, right? Yes. Well, you have to understand their side of things, what that looks like, so that you can be a good partner with them in that process. What have you learned? Oh, my gosh. I have learned a lot, you know, probably one of the biggest takeaways for me has been the importance, the criticality of developing your network. And this goes inside and outside the government. You know, I, as a contracting officer, didn't really care who was in my, not a, I'm not a name dropper. I don't, I just never, that was never really something that mattered to me, knowing who's who and different forums. However, what I discovered as I got outside into the PTAC world is that there's a lot of power in knowing and connecting and leveraging that network with others. So, you know, for example, one of my colleagues, Julie Fegel, she's a tremendous connector. And, you know, so she knows, she impresses me with who she knows within the state of Iowa. And as I started observing her and, you know, she was played a great role in connecting some of those smaller businesses with industry partners that, you know, would help them maybe, maybe they could team on a government contract because maybe they're not in a position to do it themselves, right? Unfortunately, the real truth most companies don't want to hear is you may not be a good fit for a government contract. As much as we all want to, you know, take advantage of that opportunity, they're really, you really do need to be suitable for it because the government, you know, while they may be slow and catching up to you, they have a very long memory. I like that. What are some of the common mistakes that you see small businesses making regularly from your PTAC side? So they come into your PTAC. What are some of the common mistakes that you see them making? So I think that one that I see a lot is, you know, first of all, we have as PTAC counselors, we help companies in state, local and federal. So we're across all realms of government contracts. And kind of some of the mistakes I've seen is a company comes in and they don't really have a goal, right? They they're kind of want they want to throw a spaghetti on a wall and something six want to target all the markets or or maybe it's a particular customer, oh, I want to work for the federal government. Well, you're a brand new company. You have no past performance. That's probably not the best market for you to start in, right? Right. And so trying to get that message across with number one, without sounding condescending and, you know, it can be really delicate, a really delicate discussion. But, you know, honestly, most companies, especially if they're newer to the industry, I would push them more towards state and local or teaming opportunities. Right. You know, can be harder to identify because the teaming opportunities aren't, you know, plentiful. Yeah, right. Why do you think that so many of us small businesses, myself included, why do we fall into those same patterns of I want that? Or like you said, I can do everything. I'm a jack of all trades. You know, I think a lot of it, what what I've noticed is it's a lack of strategy, right? So we're in the land of America, land of the free home of the brave. Everybody can work for a dream, right? Right. And truly, the opportunities are there if you work hard enough for them. But what I've found is most of us just and myself included, right? I'm not a great. I'm not a great linear thinker. I'm all my brain is going in 9000 different directions at once. So linear is tough for me. But really, you know, it's really important for some of those businesses to sit down and do the basic planning. Do you have a business plan? And that's not something we help with at the P-TAC, but basic premise, you know, anytime you start a business, what are your goals? You know, do you have goals for a year from now, for two years from now? And, you know, and and a mistake I see quite often is so I do a lot of at one point in person workshops. And I see all these people come and show up and nobody brings a pen or paper. And it it perplexes me. I mean, I shouldn't say nobody. Right. But. But there's a lot of people in the room who don't come with a notebook. And I think that's that's an error because, number one, you remember more. It's been proven you retain more when you write it down. Yes. So I'm a big proponent of note taking and writing it down. And and, you know, the thing is, is a lot of people they come with their dream, but they don't always want to take the time and put in the work to write it down and to kind of strategize, hey, this is where I need to start. And this is my end goal. And maybe your end goal in year one is just to find one solicitation that you can bet on and submit a really good written proposal on. You know, and that's one of the. Kind of one of the observances I've had to in the last I've been doing this for six years is it's really important. People understand how critical written communication is and not just written, but good written communication. If you don't have that skill and if you have to submit a written proposal to your government customer, it essentially comes down to an essay writing activity and you're likely not to pass go. I like the the way that you explained it because I'm over sales guy. I always say if you can read and write, you can do government contracts. But it's you spend it more delicate, which is, hey, if you can do good at written communication, you're probably not going to get the message across because it is like an essay. Right. And for me, I said for me. When people are responding to solicitations, you have to read the instructions. Yeah. And so that's why I say if you can read or write, because really it is reading the instructions, following them and then writing and communicating your ideas, your concepts, your team, your messaging. Right. And and so, you know, what I've seen and this comes back to that comment about how the government needs to work out in industry is what I've seen is a trend in the government to take more simplistic opportunities, things like mowing the lawn, aeration or, you know, weeding, that might all come in one package. And instead of these being, hey, I'm going to bid a, you know, a price for that. They're asking these vendors to submit a written technical proposal. And do you know how challenging that is? I mean, you know, what's your contingency plan? If you're, you know, right. I mean, I helped a vendor with a lawn care. Proposal for the VA at one of the national cemeteries. Wow. Was that requirement a tough, you know, a tough one? Right. For, you know, they just wanted to go take care of the grounds. That's it. You. And so, you know, in working with several companies who, you know, kind of came across that same obstacle, you know, one of the things I try to do as a P-TAC is recognize those hurdles or those barriers. And how can we as P-TACs work to help them overcome them? I can't write your proposal for you and I really don't want to. But if I wanted to propose, I could leave and go to the, you know, public private industry and make a lot of money. Right. Absolutely. So what are some of the services that P-TAC offers that are free and then what versus paid? So, gosh, everything we do is free. We are funded the way our grant works is we're funded in part by the Defense Logistics Agency. So DLA, many people know them. A lot of manufacturers wish to work with DLA. I will tell you they are a tough agency to work with and for just because they're, you know, there's a lot going on in that agency. But so we we have funding in part from DLA. And then the other part comes from our state and that's Iowa State is the the sponsor organization for Iowa. Every state in the US has a different concept of support. We all provide the same type of training. You know, we're also all employers are supposed to have a certain amount of contract knowledge to to do the job. So pretty much everything we do is free. But but the ways that can differ from program to program is that. For example, a couple years ago, back to that proposal writing example I talked about, I recognize that, you know, there's a real problem and most people are when you work with them, they want a sample, right? Well, a sample of that. Well, there's one way you can get a sample. You could submit a FOIA request, Freedom of Information Act request and hope that the agency will release the successful proposal to you. This is a little difficult in the federal market. But if you're looking at a state proposal, the state, the state of Iowa, at least, has what they call an open records request where you can go in and they're very transparent, which is something as a contractor you want to be cognizant of, right? You want to know that whatever you're putting into a proposal could be releasable to somebody who submits one of these requests. And so that's one way a lot of people don't use it. I think it's really highly underused. But it's a great way to see what is a good proposal look like? What is the government looking for? And but what we ended up doing in Iowa was there's a company Shipley Associates and they're considered one of the gold standards and proposal writing. So they're pretty, I mean, they're pretty high. I mean, they are complex. They're giving some really complex, maybe a little bit more than what we needed for, you know, basic proposal writing. But we were able to bring them in. It's not a cheap training to offer, but because we have funds to provide training and to hire consultants, we were able to kind of offset that cost for companies that wanted to come and take advantage of that training. So, you know, we do training all the time. Here in next month, next year, we're going to do we're going to hire another vendor to do a matchmaking facilitated matchmaking session for us. We can do that ourselves. But what I discovered is and this is what I tried to push up to my team is let's let the experts do what the experts do. Right? We're not all I mean, we have some insights, right? As government, as former government contracting personnel and and working with industry, I think we bring a really great we're great liaisons to both of those communities. And really, I really work hard to work with my government agencies that I support to kind of bridge that gap of understanding as well as my my vendors. But we can't be experts of everything. And so we really work hard to try and bring some of that more in depth knowledge into the state, you know, whether they come in via webinar or whether they come in in an in-person event, we work really hard to connect them. Again, that connects that network and connection piece. What are I know you said when you were a contact officer, you were not aware of the P-TAC. What are some of the misconceptions that small businesses have about P-TAC? What what's the misconception? Yeah, so when people come to P-TAC, maybe they have certain expectation, they have something in their brain that they think they're just supposed to do. Anything like that that you come across. So I think in general, most of them, a lot of them don't know we exist. We still have that marketing problem, right? You do have a market comes down to how do we effectively market ourselves so people understand we are a resource that's available to them. Well, I think that first of all, I think for you coming on my show, it's going to help you market P-TAC. Yeah. I mean, you're the first person to agree to come on. So we thank you for that. Oh, absolutely. You know, maybe you could talk to the higher ups and get them to come on the show. What do you want? I mean, I mean, again, we can market them. We we reach a lot of people. So we'd be happy to market. I mean, I look back, I think I just put it away. But in my and in both of my books that I've written, I talk about the P-TAC. I mean, I put them down as a free resource for small businesses. I always speak about that resource. All the time and all my channels. But again, it's one thing for me to speak about. That's another thing to see actual face, like put a name, like put a person behind. Well, and I think to there's a lot of confusion in the small business community, right? There's so many resources and I'm a small business and I have limited time. So you're not going to waste my time. You know, and I think that that's something, again, that I've really tried to push, you know, with our team. Is, you know, it's super critical that we're mindful of how much we're throwing at them. You know, we can I mean, we do for our team, I think there's seven of us, seven counselors in the state of Iowa, and we do 88 events. 88 events, 88 events. And most of those, there's maybe a handful. Those are not our sponsored events, but we're. You know, we may speak for five minutes or a half hour or whatever, but we're not doing all of the event prep and presentation, but yeah, that's a lot of content that we're pushing out and you know, and then, you know, making sure that we're marketing to those vendors so that they understand what's a good use of their time. I always try to spin it, hey, you know, this may not be, you may not see because I find with a lot of companies I work with, with people in general, is we all have a lens we look through life at, right? And so we tend to be pretty narrow minded in that lens, and we only know what we know. And so I used to, I had a supervisor when I worked for the government and he used to tell me he needed to marinate on things. And so I, I'm a marinator. And so that's that whole piece with connection where, okay, I'm at an event and maybe you, you tell me who you are and what you do without the $10 words, because if you can't effectively communicate what it is you do to me, you do to me, I can't sell your product for you, right? And so as a PTAC, I really work with companies on, hey, how do you effectively message first of all what you do and that'll help me better understand what you do so that then I can help you find those opportunities or connect you to those individuals who might need a teammate for that government contract. So, you know, there's a lot of good things that, you know, when you come to those events, you know, come open-minded, ready to connect, ready to say who you are, because maybe, maybe Joe sitting at the table doesn't need what you have, but maybe his business partner does and he can't sell you if he doesn't know you. You started in 2014. Yep. Okay, with Cyrus. What changes have you seen happen over the last six years? In the PTAC program? Not in the PTAC in particular in government contracting. You know, what's really exciting for me, and I've really tried to make sense of this, but what's really exciting for me is I do feel like finally we're seeing the government less afraid of interactions with industry. Finally realizing, hey, you know, an industry day isn't so scary, industry has some really great feedback to give us. And so that is, I think about that, because, you know, I worked with a lot of people of varying ages when I was there. I was there from 99 to 2014. And, you know, it wasn't, there was some point in that time period where they changed the requirement, the school requirement, the education requirement to be in contracting. Okay. So what I'm seeing, yeah, so they, back in the day, they didn't require a degree to be in contracting. Okay, okay. And so I don't know if it was in the 90s or when it was that they made that switch, but what I'm seeing, so, you know, obviously we've had some retirements over time, but what I'm seeing a lot, what's really exciting for me is a lot of the people I came up as an intern with are now in leadership positions. Yes. And then I feel like I see a lot more open-mindedness coming into that realm where people are actually, again, listening to the feedback they're receiving and they're receptive to the messages that, hey, you know, if we work together on this, we can come, you know, for example, the OTAs and the, the rise of those, you know, new ways of doing business, you know, we have to be faster. The train isn't slowing down and the government is so far behind industry, by the time they adapt a process, they're 10 years behind. Yes. He's decided, oh, that doesn't work anymore. Yes, yes. We're on to the next thing. Yes, yes, yes. So yeah, those are some, that's one of the coolest things that I've seen is that it does seem there's a little bit more open-mindedness. I mean, there's still some obviously, I think by nature, contracting personnel are quite conservative and tend to not want it, they're very risk averse. And I understand that. It's a scary, there's a lot, there's some personal liability there as well. So, you know. Can you touch on that? I think that as a small business, we only look at it from our lens, which says, I don't understand them. They have something to get small businesses. Yeah. Right? We assume, oh, I call these people, they don't call me back, they don't like small businesses. So what I would say to that is, you know, as I speaking from the lens of a former contracting officer, I'm not necessarily looking. Number one, lead with your value, right? Okay. Don't lead with your whatever program you might qualify for. Close with that. Hey, I'm great at construction, but guess what? I'm also in 8A. And so that allows you, and so, you know, come to the table, ready to sell them on, do you know the benefits of the 8A program? Because guess what? Not every contracting person does, right? They have the same struggles as we do in industry that they can't know everything about everything. They don't know all the regulations, but you can help educate them in your marketing to them. And so, you know, when I was, I think probably some of, there's just been a lot of eye-opening moments for me. You know, I have a job, as a contracting officer, I had a job to not only be a good steward of a taxpayer dollar. So that meant I always had to look at what's the cost to the US government and how do I make sure I'm not overpaying and that once I pay you, that I'm getting the good or service that I've procured because nobody wants to redo. I mean, if you had any idea, the amount of work, I always explained my role as the contracting officer was I was the guy at the end who held the hot potato because regardless of how long legal took or my upper management took to review and sign off on documents, you know, you're not doing this in a vacuum. You've got all these people along the way, all these potential stakeholders along the way, policy review, pricing review, legal review. You know, like I said, depending on the dollar value, upper management has to sign off on things and it could sit on their desk for weeks. But that doesn't alleviate the fact that your green suitor, your army guy sitting over in the field needs his services delivered by X-Date. So regardless of how long and how well I plan, I can't control for those people in my process, right, in my pipeline. And so, you know, and that's often why you'll find when people ask, well, can I have an extension on this association? I would recommend always ask it if you need it. There's no harm in asking that question. However, you know, you have to understand there's usually a milestone driving that due date for that solicitation. You know, in the case of construction, it might be that I had a client I worked with recently who there was a very specific period of time he had to work on brush removal because the bats come in April 1st. The bats are protected. He had from November to April to get this brush removed, which he failed to do. Not a good story to tell. That is not a good story to tell. But you know, and so, but you know, also that's, you know, that's my awareness too of, hey, you know, how do we educate these vendors? So they understand the criticality of, hey, I can't meet this milestone, this date because I'm waiting on X from the government. Well, you know, there's a process for that too. So that's, you know, we can help as PTAC counselors. We can help kind of, again, Bridge, I like to look at us as partnership partners, right? I can't do it for you, but if you include me along the way and kind of check in with me periodically, because often what you'll see is they'll go away for a year. They'll get so scared of what you've just dumped on them, they'll kind of fizzle and, you know, and nobody's holding their feet to the fires. So I'll just put that on a back burner because it is another duty as assigned, right? Your business development for government, like, it's not your primary duty. And so if you can include your counselor along the way and make them part of the process and check in and say, hey, this is what I'm experiencing, we can help you kind of eliminate some of those, oh, crap moments of, oh, wow, now I have a termination because I failed to execute my contract and what does that mean for me? Well, it's not a good thing. My next question was going to ask you, while you were working at Rock Island, can you tell me a small business horror story? Oh, you know, I don't know that I have one. So my last eight years, I actually supported the contingency operations over in Iraq and Afghanistan. Okay. During that time, I can tell you lots of horror stories about the Iraq drawdown. Oh, no, I mean, unless I just picked that because that's where you came from, how about changing the contract and officer story? I mean, we learn from what other people's mistakes. Absolutely. I want to learn from someone's mistake. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of power in telling those stories and kind of applying it to ourselves. So there's a lot of, you've heard of a lowest price, technically acceptable price. Yes, LPTA. Yeah, people love them. I don't know anyone loves them, but the government loves it. I know, but that was sarcasm. I know, I know. The government loves it for some reason. They say it's a great program. So let me tell you, give you some insight on why the government is kind of hugging those close to their chests. I worked a lot in support of Iraq and Afghanistan operations. So we would have our customer on the ground was a green suitor who was there for six months, maybe. Okay. And then you've got turnover of personnel, somebody else comes in and you've got to re-teach them everything you've just taught them because nobody likes the actual responsible side of contracting, right? You can't just tell a vendor what to do. You have to abide by what the contract terms state, right? Your contracting officer is your fair agent. He should be there. He should be on the two line or on the CC line, any kind of interaction with your COR, all the things to cover your butt. When it comes to past performance, we would go out to what, over to the customer in theater in Southwest Asia and say, hey, I need you to fill out a past performance questionnaire on company XYZ. Guess what? It's either they refuse to put anything negative in writing or their feedback or their response is unsubstantiated. Because there's a lot of what goes on over in, and there's a lot of their close contact, right? And so you're going to have some various personality. The biggest issue I had was personality conflicts where your COR, your contracting officer's representative, the guy who's on the ground, who's kind of overseeing the contract. He may have a personality conflict with the program manager on the ground for the contractor because I just don't see IDI. And so the thing with an LPTA, most per second acceptable, is that that methodology allows the government to take out looking at that past performance if they want to. Because what we found is, or what I found, my personal experience was it was never, the feedback we received was never anything discerning enough to make a difference in whether or not I would pay more for that service. And so when you do a full-fledged best value where you're looking at past performance, you may look at some aspect of technical performance or a vendor's technical proposal, right? And one of the hardest parts about that, and I see this perpetuated in solicitations that I review online for customers or clients, is the government has a really bad job of figuring out what matters. What is a critical component that we want to measure to say whether or not this guy is a good guy to do what he says he's gonna do? Okay. You know, and it's kind of like that whole, you know, when you're writing a resume. Okay, so you did XYZ. Why does that matter? Right, right. Right, what's the impact? And so I was fortunate, I had an attorney who at the time I didn't appreciate it, but she said words matter. And I learned my team at the time, we learned some really hard lessons, you know, in the fact that words matter and you know, developing criteria that was measurable and quantifiable, mattered and looking at things, not asking the vendors to submit all the stuff just because, you know, we're control freaks in the government, you know, because we're risk averse, right? We have a lot of responsibility. We don't wanna be on the front page of the newspaper or, you know, as, oh, look what this person did. You know, there's, and that seems to be, there seems to be kind of an uptick in that in the last 10 years where, hey, let's take the, you know, the head of GSA and throw their name, you know, even though I'm sure that person had nothing to do with a conference. But they lost their job as a result, right? Because they've pushed that back up to him or her. But so, you know, the whole thing with the LPTA is how do you minimize the amount of time the government has to look at that proposal and make what they're looking at meaningful so that they can actually make a good business decision against criteria that have been developed that you can do what you say you're gonna do. And, you know, and I know that industry hates it because they think, well, you know, it allows people to come in who maybe can't perform. Maybe the criteria that have been developed aren't distinct enough to really separate the good from the best. But what I would argue back is that the government has made that decision because they're not willing to pay a premium. The service isn't critical enough for them to pay an extra $2 million. One time in my federal career, did I pay a premium? Was I able to write that best value decision? And that was for a classified contract in Iraq where we were very specific. We asked for a sample to be submitted and we had criteria that were very, very, you know, it must do this, it must do this, it must do this. And, and of course I can't use that as an example because it's classified. Right. But, you know, I wish I could have that document because, you know, it was the one time and I don't know how long I was a contracting officer, but in my contracting career that we ever were able to justify paying extra $2 million for that service. Small business who is wanting to work the federal marketplace, would you say based on your experience, is there a different process for working with DoD versus non-DoD federal agencies? Yeah, maybe. It depends. You don't have an answer before. That's an interesting answer. Yeah, that's every contracting person needs that on their desk. Depends. As far as, is it different? Every agency, even within the DoD is different. Yes. They all, and I think that some of that comes down to even individual contracting officers have different ways of interpreting or doing business. And so it's a challenge, right? It's trying to figure out, okay, who's my customer? First of all, and then how are they doing business? And how do I get in front of them so that they know that I exist so they can buy from me? And that can be hard. I mean, believe me when I say that I recognize the struggle. One of the cool things I've seen in the last six years is that colleague of mine, that friend of mine that I was an intern with who brought me over to the PTAC program. We started in the government together. She was a PTAC counselor for seven years. And now she's back with the government. And I think, and I would say this, I think there's probably not a better small business advocate within the United States government because she brings it all. She actually did contracts. She was a specialist. She worked with industry. So she understands the challenges of small businesses. And then when she went back to work with the federal government, she was able to put a lot of that into practice because what you'll find is a lot of your small business advocates within the federal government, they've never done contracts before. They're not contracting experts. And so there's some friction between small business and contracting because the contracting people don't necessarily understand small business either. So again, I do think that trend is changing and a lot of, like I said, a lot of the people that I grew up with in the government sector, they're more aware of some of these challenges and working to overcome them. The problem is that there's always 9,000 other things that need to be done or changed that probably come first. Yeah, I think you've already answered the question. So if you had a suggestion box for PTAC, I guess, or for the contracting officer, it would be what cross working? What is that called? Yeah, I just think that working together, leaning on your PTAC from both the agency perspective and the industry perspective, we have a lot of great insights to share as far as, and that's one of the great things too, we're seeing in our program, the PTAC program is that our program manager for the DL, from the DLA, she's been really great in kind of helping rid some of those gaps. So, lo and behold, a lot of government agencies, like myself, who worked for a government agency didn't have a lot of awareness of the PTAC program. And so a couple years ago, we had a small business convention and it was an Army small business convention in St. Louis. And it was for the Army small business specialist. They invited the PTACs. That was the first year that it ever happened, but it opened up so many doors, right? Again, it's that connection and that network because you can read, so you can read about a lot of things, right? But I think that there's a lot of people out there who like to represent themselves in a way that you're kind of like, well, are you government or are you a contractor? Are you government or not? And so, we see that with SAM registration, right? We've got websites that will take you all the way through when you think you're on a federal government. Melissa. And they pop you with a $2,500 sign-up fee. I do not, for the life of me, understand how does the government allow this to continue? How do they allow them? I don't think it's regulated. It can't be. It's impossible because how can you allow them to name themselves after SAM registration? Yep. Yep. I've had, gosh, two or three companies who've come to me after they've paid 2,500 bucks. And then they found my name online. And I had more recently, I had a company, was actually really sad because the woman who is the owner is suffering some kind of a dementia as she gets older. And so, they contacted her and had her pay for SAM renewal. Well, she's not even in that market anymore. So they took $500 from her and her former employee was able to come in and say, hey, you know, this is, she said, this is a scam. And the woman on the line was like, we are not a scam. We are a legitimate business. And she needed help. And I'm like, aw, but you misrepresented. Right, right, right. No, I know. I try to, I mean, I put out a lot of content about that all the time. And I try to warn people, they come to me as well. And they said, if I pay this, does it help me faster to get my SAM? So it's just a lot of things going on. Well, and I think, you know, you'll see the same thing with GSA, right? Oh, with GSA as usual. And so I always tell people, not even a contracting officer can promise you a contract. So if somebody is promising you contract awards, run away and, you know, and it's just really about, again, increasing that awareness that, you know, when I, I mean, technically we are, as a P-Tech, we are contractors, right? But we're actually more partners. You know, they describe us as a partnership with the government because we're not bidding on contracts. We have a grant with a cooperative agreement with the DOD. We're not bidding, we're not competing for federal contracts. And we are there as a liaison to kind of help bridge that gap. And so, you know, as the awareness grows company, or not companies, but agencies are reaching out more and more to say, hey, you know, how can you help? You know, or even like, hey, can you co-host this event with me? Because we have the relationship with industry, right? Right. And so, yeah, I mean, let me tell you, the one lesson learned here is when the government speaks, man, people want to listen. They show up in droves when you look at the government. Contracting officer on the call. So, you know, I've tried to use that to leverage that, you know, for good so that we can continue to build that awareness that, hey, you know, hey government, they want to listen to you. But also, are you putting out content that's relevant that's helpful to them? Because giving your org chart isn't really helpful. And telling them to get registered as Sam, it's not helpful either. I've been on those things where the first 30 minutes was, you got to get your done, you get a cage coat. I go, really? Is it what we came to listen to? You know? Yeah. Sam, you can't do business with you. Here's our org chart. I know. And so, that is- We need to help them to get- Yes. Like, they need to send me those presentations and I'll say, okay, we're going to start a slide 28. Yeah. Yeah, well, and they don't, again, back to that government side of things, they don't know either, right? They don't understand what is helpful to industry. And a lot of what they're conditioned to believe is anything they say is, you know, oh, I don't want to give an unfair advantage. Well, you know, talking about general market opportunities is not an unfair advantage. It's just good business, you know? And I actually had a contracting officer at the VA tell me I had instructed my client to submit a four-year request because she would not give us the former contract number. And she said we had fish for it. And she literally used those words, you have to go fish for it. And I said, you know how many contracts there are for lawn care at national cemeteries across the U.S.? I mean, you can't give me the contract number. That's not proprietary. That's public information. She's like, yeah, you have to go fish for it. And so we submitted a FOIA. I said, we'll try submitting a FOIA. And she actually was going to post that on her FB, on her, she wanted to post that on her FBO posting. That was when FBO was in place. She wanted to post what? The FOIA request. Get out of here. I'm not, I can't make this stuff up. I'm going to write a memoir someday. I like it. I like it. I like it. Let's switch over. Any books or anything that you recommend to small businesses that you guys, like resources, things like that, that you guys recommend? You know, I, there's a couple of good... It doesn't have to be contracting books. I mean, anything. It could be, like you said, you talked about writing essays. You talked about writing business plans. If you, if there's nothing that comes to your brain, then it's probably nothing that you... Yeah, I would say, you know, honestly, as opposed to reading a book, although there are some great ones by that Co-Print's law has put out on, you know, joint ventures and doing business with the government. And I really like Co-Print's law because they tend to take complicated concepts and simplify it into like actual English. But I would say that really what's important is, you know, go into LinkedIn. I've been advising a lot of my clients, go to LinkedIn, the content that is shared there, the connections that are made there is invaluable, you know, in this where we're at today, where, you know, we're still kind of on lockdown at Iowa State, but it doesn't mean you can't connect, right? And legitimately, you don't just go out there and just connect for the sake of, oh, I saw your name, you know, have a reason for it. And, you know, connect with some of these content generators like yourself. And start learning. I mean, I look at it as government contracting is not a one and done. You're constantly, I've been doing this for 21 years and I'm still learning and I would never ever make the claim that I know it all. I feel more secure in the federal sector just because that's what I cut my teeth on. But I know that there's a lot out there that I don't know. And it's really about, you know, if you can sign up for some of those attorneys, small business attorney, GovCon attorney blog, they share some great content, you know, about applicability of new regulations and what that means to you. Not just that, hey, there's a change coming, but what does that mean to you? Cause that's the part I think for the government, when they should push information out to us, they never really turn it around and say, well, this is why it matters. Co-prince Law's blog is called Small GovCon. I had Stephen Co-Prince on a few weeks ago. Okay, okay. Yeah, he's great. And I had his formerly main guy, Matt Skinnerville. Yep. He was now with Math and Morarty. So I had him on. I love both of those guys there. Both of them as well. I had him both on my show. Matt was one of the first persons that gave me a chance. He was like episode 10 or something. So he was, you know, 60 something plus episodes ago. We've met at conferences together. We've talked and Co-Prince, like I said, I just had him on a few weeks ago. We actually did, he actually was on, like yourself, and we went live on YouTube together. Oh. Yeah, I'm not asking you to do that. I'm just saying. Thank you for that. Stephen Co-Prince didn't mind. No, I'm just teasing. That's awesome. It's for him. Yeah, he's great. He's good. We're talking about putting some content together. So, perfect question. Since we are all still locked down, tell me something recently you purchased on Amazon that made you happy. Well, it would have to be my recurring purchase of Amino Energy. Great flavored. Okay, tell me. I want to know about Amino Energy. Oh, it's so good. It's a branch chain Amino Acid, BCAA Energy. It's an energy drink. Okay. And I'm a caffeine-aholic and it's great and it's really good. And so it keeps you energy? It does. Does it? It does, yeah. Is there a brand that you like? Oh, it's Amino Energy. It's the brand. Amino Energy is the brand. Well, okay. It's one nutrition, I think it is. It's the company. Okay. Yeah, I'm a repeat buyer of that product. Okay. All right. No, that's interesting. Something that you had to do in terms of when you were a contact officer that you either hated or disliked. Reviewing a solicitation. Before you put it out. Oh, so when you review a solicitation as you would know on the other side of things, when you create that document, the way it's created is you have to go through hundreds and hundreds of clauses in a system and click and read the prescription for every single one. For ball bearings and forgings or all the things. And if it's a certain dollar value, you have to click it and click it and click it. So it can take, you're going through all these clauses and you have to click. And then, so that's why you see a lot of solicitations that have unnecessary clauses in them where you're like, why does ball bearings fall into my solicitation for construction while they didn't read the prescription or and they just click all in. You figure it out, contractor. That's true. No, that's good point. An odd place that you worked or odd job that you worked at. An odd place that I worked. Or job. I think that it's not really odd, but when I was in high school and to college, I worked at a pizza, a local pizza restaurant here in my area and I loved it. The other thing I do, so I'm really, I'm very task oriented. That's my thing is I like to get stuff done. And so my very first job when I entered the government was I worked for DFAS, Defense Finance and Accounting Service. They paid me this and I was a travel voucher processor. So that meant anytime the government personnel went on travel, they had to submit a voucher and you had to review it. And so we had a standard, hey, you have to do five per hour to get an A, right, your performance standards. And I actually had one of the women who worked there who told me I need to just slow down because I was making the rest of them look bad. That's a good story. I like it. Yep. How many were you doing? Her name was Peggy. Peggy's probably gone now. He's probably gone now. I'm sure she's retired. How many were you doing? Oh my gosh. I don't know. I mean, it wasn't hard. It was like the easiest job, you know? I know, but it's government. And check, check, check and I could stuff, man. So you're probably doing like 10 an hour. Whatever it was, my supervisor and Peggy did not. Peggy was like, listen, we gotta check our phones in between. I know, she did not like me. My brother has the same problem. He works at the hospital and he was serving them before COVID, the trays of food. And they say, hey, slow down. You're making us all look bad. Doesn't that blow your mind? It does. It does. I had a job at government for maybe six months and I hated it because they would not let me be efficient. They actually told me one of the, and not even my immediate, this was like the head of the division head. He says, we don't pay you to be more efficient or something to that effect. Like we don't, you don't pay you to save us money. And I'm like, we pay you to follow procedures or like follow orders. And I go, are you, I go, this is insane. But it's, it's 100% true. I believe that they told you that. No, they did. It's crazy. Tell us about your photography. Yeah, so I have been doing professional photography for gosh, seven or eight years. I've lost count. It's kind of my happy place. It's something that I started doing for, for friends. And then it kind of grew from there. I do families. I do, I just did a few weddings this year. I said I would never do a wedding again. But then I actually several of my colleagues, former colleagues from my governments, my servicing government were having smaller weddings and asked for me to pop in. And so it's been, you know, it's one of those things. I look at photography. It's a gift. I think that you should take the picture and get in the picture. And as, especially as parents, get in those pictures. And so it has a lot of meaning for me. It's one of the ways that I try to give back, you know, to others, because I just think that oftentimes, I've lost both my parents now, but, and we never, we don't, you know, the family picture we have is from like the 1980s, I think. And so my dad died right before my wedding. And so we never got the family pictures, you know, with all of us in it. And so it has a lot of meaning for me. I really try, both my parents died of cancer. And so I really try when I hear of people who are going through something similar, which seems very common anymore. I really try to kind of, I've been very grateful to be part of stories for people who, you know, may either have a really good outcome or maybe not, but, you know, it's something that they treasure. So it makes me happy. I love it. Thank you for sharing. Any favorite quotes or sayings? Yes, there will come a day when you can no longer do this. And today is not that day. Oh, I have that tattooed on my shoulder. OK, OK, I like it. I like it. I like it. I said, let's close out some final words for small businesses out there. Do I have final words? My final words are, you have to have some resilience and persevere because this is not for the faint-hearted. However, if you're willing to put in the work and show up and keep dipping your toe in all of the training that's available, the connections that are available, you would be surprised at how successful you can be in this market. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you for smiling.