 Hey everyone, welcome. Eric Coffey, your host, GovCon Giant. Today, I have Cecil Whitlock here with me. And we're having a conversation. Cecil has a lot of experience. He actually purchased a company that was formerly 8A. He took over that company. And I've heard his story several times, but I thought it'd be great for some of you out here to actually hear his story directly from Cecil himself and to find out a little bit about his path and his journey towards now working with one of the very successful tribal contracting companies in the country, Miami Nation. And I definitely want to hear about the path that he took to get here. This is going to be a much shorter episode than we traditionally do because, again, one of the things that I do and all of my messaging and my programming that I deliver to you is I bring you stories of other people in hopes that you can learn through their experiences. And a lot of times, we talk about mentors and what does it look like to have a mentor. Even if you can't have a mentor working with you directly, you have someone like Cecil whose story may inspire you, encourage you, or may trigger something inside of you that makes you look at things a little bit differently. And because I'm very fascinated with a story, I definitely want to bring it to people out there and share it with the world. So thank you for listening. Cecil, take it away. Yeah, I started my career, I need to say, a long time ago, primarily in the federal market and was with a very large company and decided it was just not for me. So I was hired by a company in Florida, Tampa, Florida, called J2 Engineering. They were a company. They did fantastic with their job, the owner of the company who started it. And they were getting to a point where they were getting close to graduating and when I was hired. And I came in and the one thing I wanted to do was build to make sure the company would be there. Most daydays, they go out and they get sole source work or they get on some kind of contracts. And then when they get to their nine years, it's over for them. And I didn't want that. What I wanted is to have this company build on what they had. So we went in and bid Maytalk, Saytalk, Mac contracts. And we won $16 billion worth of contract mechanisms for J2 Engineering. And they had a lot of sole source work on top of that. And they actually graduated in seven years instead of nine years because they think the max at that time was like $200, $250 million and they tapped that out so they graduated early. Well, when we won all these contracts, what that did for us is the owner of the company, he actually wanted to go back to school and came to me and wanted to sell the company. So I bought the company and built on these contracts and was what I call successful because we won a lot of work. But what it did is when the A&A, when we graduated, we got to keep all the contracts that we had, the max, the Maytalks, the Saytalks, all of them. Now, real quick, I'm sorry, Annabelle, you're talking about like IDIQ stuff. Correct, right. So when he's talking about the $16 billion, it was IDIQs, Maytalks, Macs. So they were the contract vehicles that we talk about a lot on our show here. And that's what CISL leveraged to start growing the company even further. Correct. And so what we did is we were getting in RFPs pretty much daily off of all these contracts and we would bid them and we didn't want them all, but we won better than 30% of everything we bid, which in turn led to millions of dollars worth of contract work. So I did this for several years and got it to a point where I was getting tapped out on my bonding to be honest with you and so I was approached by another very large engineering firm in, I think it was 2015 and I sold the company and went to, actually it was going to retire and I just couldn't do it. I had about six months of sitting at the house and playing golf and doing not much of anything. I went back to work. Now I'm working for the Miami Nation and what I'm bringing to the table at Miami Nation is not only sole source work, but even more important, I'm going after these IDIQ contracts, your MAX and your MATOX and we've won several. We bid those as much as we possibly can and what that does is they're usually five, seven, 10 year contracts and even if you graduate, you get to keep those. They don't run out. So it just gives you longevity in your company and you can live off of those for a number of years and then even when you're graduated, you can still bid those type contracts. So I suggest that everybody, especially A&As, learn how to bid these contracts and once you learn how to do them and get involved into them, you see that it's just a great thing and it's the longevity of a company. Right, right, right. And again, just to reiterate, he's talking about the IDIQs, IDIVs that we discussed. Now, some of the questions that people commonly ask is, okay, when you were first getting started and maybe you don't know this because you bought the company, how did you get to the point where you were able to graduate early? Like, how did, do you know what they did? At what point did you come on to J2 Engineering? I came on very, very near the end right before they graduated. Okay. And what it was is they had an enormous amount, they had some really good salespeople, first of all. And they got a lot of sole-source work with Navy bases, Army. They also teamed, actually, y'all heard me say earlier that I was a very large company that was called AECOM, they were one of my teaming partners. And we actually teamed with them on a very large say-talk out of AFSI at that time. And we won that together. And then we also, we won the large business one and then J2 won the small business. So we actually won both of those. Okay, all right. So that's how we did it. Nice, nice. So then you come on. Now, how did you, and again, we don't have to divulge all the details, but did you want to buy the company? What was that like? Actually, I did. I had owned an environmental company earlier in my career and sold it. And I was approached to buy the owner of the company and wanted me to buy the company because I had come in and got all these contracts and we were moving forward and doing a lot of really good things with the company. And like I said, he was actually wanting to go back, he was actually in school, in law school, and he wanted to go back to law school full-time and be an attorney versus the construction business. You know, it's interesting, I don't think anyone, everyone listening to this would say, he's crazy if he has all these contracts and he's done all this tens of millions of dollars of work, why would he want to go to a little school? Well, how'd I say this? I wouldn't want to do that. Okay. There was a couple of little, what I would call little messes that I had cleaned up within the company when I bought it out and I knew it, I knew we had to clean up some stuff, which we did. I think the headache of running the business for eight or seven years, I think it just finally, like I want to go to law school, it's going to be easier. And I think he found out differently after he got in school. I wouldn't want to go to law school. I wouldn't want to go to law school either, absolutely not, no, that's cool. And then you moved over to the Miami Nation and you work at the Miami Nation. And what are some of the things that you've done there with the Miami Nation? Well, the Miami Nation, I came in just heading up their construction company. And the Miami Nation is a 8A tribal-owned company. We have, when I came in, we actually opened up the 8A about six months after I was there. So it wasn't even formed when I came on board. And one of the things that I'm doing is, don't get me wrong, I like sole-source work. I love going after sole-source work, it's good work, but you can't sustain a company with sole-source work. It's just not going to happen. So you need to go after, you need to bid RFPs to learn how to do it. You need these IDIQ contracts. I think those are the easiest way to grow. And it limits your competition, and they're great. One of the things you do have to have, I know a new 8A, one of the hardest things to do is get past performance, bonding. There's a lot of things involved. But you can get teaming partners to do that. That's kind of like what I have done. I've got several JVs and teaming partners with the Miami Nation. At what point or what stage would you say, again, let's say I'm a small business, I have two to five person company, at what stage would you say that I should reach out to someone like you guys to be a potential teaming partner? What do you look for in a teaming partner? Maybe that's a two-fold question, but let's start with what do you look for in a teaming partner? Mostly what I look for is contacts. Do you bring something to me? You would be a surprise. The Miami Nation just got a lot of bonding, a lot of past performance. There's a lot of really good things about the Miami Nation. But when I get a teaming partner coming in, whether it be a JV or teaming or whatever, what do they bring to the table? A lot of companies think, well, I'm gonna team up with this tribally owned company and they're gonna give me business. It doesn't work that way. I don't give people business. I team and we work together on getting business, or I'm out there getting business myself. So if you're bringing things to the table, oh, I'm on top of that. I like people who bring things. I'm not saying give me everything. I say absolutely not what I'm saying, but I really like helping A-day companies grow. I know how to grow them. I've done it for a long time. But we're based out of the Washington, D.C. area. We have a lot of work all over the country, but if we go to areas that we've never done work before, it's easier for me to team with somebody in that area to get the work and bring it in than it is for me to go in and hire people and try to start from scratch and doing nothing to build up an area that I'm trying to go into. That makes a lot of sense. That makes a lot of sense. And we talk about this, make sure that you bring value. You don't just call people on the phone and not offer value to them. That's the quickest way to get door slam in your face. Absolutely. No, that's great. How long have you been there at the Miami Nation? Right at two years. Okay, two years, okay. What do you see like in the near future? What do you guys see your head at in the near future? Oh, we're doing a lot of really good things right now with teaming partners and JVs. We have a JV partner right now that we got, which we weren't in at all until I got there doing modular buildings. Okay. And that has really taken off with our JV partner. And then we have teaming agreements with people with construction companies and all. We have a lot of IDIQ contracts that we're constantly bidding. And we have the Miami Nations, we have six different 8A companies. It's just one company. We have a construction company. We have an IT company. We have an environmental company. We have what's called a fencing construction company. So there's different things that these companies do. But what happens is, is when I'm bidding on a construction contract, let's say this happened actually, I brought in my IT company to do all the cabling and data and everything else. And then I brought in my modular company and we, because this was a modular job and we got all the modular out of that company. Then we brought in our environmental company to do all the environmental on the site. Because when you're putting in these modular units, you gotta have an environmental site assessment or something. So I bring in my different companies to do that work, but it's all up underneath one company. And, you know, past performance on this is, I can't stress how much past performance does for you. And if you're out there and you don't have any past performance, if you team with somebody, you get that past performance for that. Not if you team with somebody and you need to say $20,000 worth of work and the job's a million dollars, you get to say, I did a million dollar job. So that's pretty nice, it's very important. Past performance is very important. No, it's great. No, again, I think that a lot of times we, as small businesses, we think that because we're 8A, people are gonna give us contracts. No, it doesn't work. Our hub zone, they give us contracts. We think that the SBA is gonna call us up, tell us where to go and navigate us and help us part the cease. I got a story about SBA. Yeah, I mean, listen, if you wanna tell it, tell it, we wanna stand at SBA's good side. No, no, no, SBA, don't get me wrong, they're great. Right. Okay, but if you think SBA is gonna go out there and get you a sole source project or a project of any type, you're gonna be sitting at home broke. You've gotta go and use SBA to your advantage. And I like doing that, I like all the SBA people that I work with, they do a very good job, but you've gotta help direct them to do the job for you. So it's not a, and they will, they absolutely will. And that's what I like about it, but you do have to go and get everything prepared for SBA and give it to them and let them do their job. But you have got to develop that because if you're gonna wait on SBA, I'm telling you, you're just, you're gonna be sitting at home starving to death. Hey, listen, everyone, this is just a quick story. I just want to feature a success story with Cecil Whitlock of Miami Nation, give you a little bit about his background, and then let you in some of the insights. This is how I learned, this is how I grow, this is how I'm able to elevate myself and my business as well because again, I sit down and I talk to people like this who have, you know, he was doing this stuff before I was even involved in federal contracting. He's worked for a lot of national firms. He's, again, we're talking about an ADA firm that graduated early. You can learn a whole lot from talking with people like this. One of the things that I want to leave you with before we part ways today is I was reading, and I can't remember exactly where I read that at, but it says, if you want help from someone, you ask for advice. And again, a lot of people like to talk about themselves. If you wanted to reach out to someone, a good strategy, a good idea is to talk to someone who already graduated from the ADA program. Several of my past guests have reached out to former ADA graduates, whether they be good or bad, I mean, they don't have to necessarily have been such a wild success like Cecil and the organization that he took over. But again, you can learn from people's failures as well as people's successes. So one of the things I'd like to leave you with is definitely if you are at the very least, if you're thinking about ADA, you've heard about ADA, or even government contracting for that part, talk to people who've already been there, done that, who have the experience, and then learn and gain insights and take that and apply it to your business and your methodology. And it's part of your strategy moving forward of what things to do and versus things also not to do. So again, just wanted to kind of highlight Cecil, I grabbed him to the side. I said, hey, let's make this quick video for everyone out there. Share a little bit of his story and hope that it inspired some people who encouraged you, gave you some different ideas, things to think about. I didn't want to travel without two logs. So Cecil, you want to just tell everyone, say some parting words? No, I just thank y'all for your time. And if I can help y'all in any way, just feel free, call Eric and I'll try to do what I can. Thank you guys. Take care.