Transcript for:
Opportunities for Small Businesses in Government Contracts

I spent 20 years in the Air Force I was putting companies on contract with my Contracting officers people just aren't aware that the government has to buy from small businesses but yeah less than half of 1% of small businesses are actually selling to the government just have to understand how the government buys what you sell I have never bought something from somebody because of a set aze I cared about who can solve my problem I mean I can remember the Savvy companies would always ask me that and I'd help them hello all my amazing gunon winners we have a special treat today we have Ricky Howard here who is a retired military member and I'm going to let him share more about that and he has a DOD contract Academy and I'm telling you now get ready because you're going to want to watch this all the way till the end thank you so much for being here today thanks KY you got to share with us about your military background and your connection to Acquisitions because I hey as much as I love it and as much as I've been in govcon for 15 years I have neither well a considerable amount of uh about Acquisitions and federal purchasing and if anyone does go check out my podcast you are one of our most popular guests on that episode so you can look for Dr kissy pox on the website or on the um episode links but yeah no I I I'd be more than happy to talk a little bit about uh my career and everything and see where the conversation takes us well definitely cuz I know that there's a lot of veterans who Wonder like what do I do after retire or can I really go from being in uniform to getting millions of dollars of contracts because I heard about this service disabled set aside thing please share with us like your experience and how things really work yeah no we we can definitely hit that up uh yeah so I spent 20 years in the Air Force and first half of that was flying and I got some flying memorabilia uh behind me I flew intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft so 911 kicked off when I first came in so that was I mean I was pretty much deployed for that first 10 years uh flying missions as I went through and you know met my wife and whatnot uh we ended up switching so our switched careers is about halfway through and went into Acquisitions and Acquisitions is the profession of putting companies on contract uh for anyone that's not familiar with that and uh and I'm sure you you talk to your audience a lot about you know who actually Buys in the government I always tell people you know 99.9% of people you talk to in the government probably can't buy what you're selling depends on the product or solution but especially you know in the military we have an Acquisitions career Force so we have Contracting officers which have warrants and they are the ones that can legally put you on contract and then we have uh program teams program managers I was a program manager and they're the leaders of the Acquisitions effort so you know if a company whether it's a small business selling you know cyber Security Solutions or landscaping or you know maybe something bigger like we're building satellite technology weapon system technology you're going to have a team and a program manager in charge of all of that so that's what I did so I was uh you know putting companies on contract with my Contracting officers managing those uh through the life cycle and got to do a lot of different things like a lot of Technology development and a lot of foreign military sales and I guess one of the things that I noticed when I was in is although I wanted to put small businesses on contract they had very innovative solutions so you know we need big companies we do um for a lot of things but when we're talking about whether it's an Innovative uh technology and we had a lot of the MIT startups out there a lot of the you know companies that have just developed something really interesting or even just a service provider like a landscaping company it's the small businesses that are willing to adapt especially with military uh purchasing and Department of Defense purchasing you know they were willing to adapt to what we needed you know make changes they were really motivated to work with us I andan it was really easy to take a great technology with them and work with them on exactly what we needed but very few small businesses were actually even aware that the government was behind what you know they sold cuz most people think weapons and bullets and things like that they're not think thinking about accounting services or legal or you know construction or you know a lot of those things so I wanted to get out and start helping some of those small businesses understand the process understand that the opportunities there teach them what they really need to do uh to win those contracts and stuff so I retired and started my Consulting business and the podcast and then we met and here we are so thanks for having me on well of course and I and I love this because you hit on some very important areas that there there are things that the government wants to buy they need to be flexible as well as knowing that the government wants to buy because some people don't know I think you said something earlier around fewer than 1% of businesses sell to the government could you kind of elaborate yeah and I don't have I don't have the figures in front of me right now but one thing that's very different about the way the government makes purchases and about federal spending is that it's all public knowledge it's we call it the public sector right so everything the government does with the exception of some classified stuff but even most of the classified things they're buying that that contracts themselves aren't classified and so all that is publicly available information and there are a lot of different websites you can go to to kind of look at that there's some paid ones you can can but at the end of the day we know how much the government spends each year who they're spending it on like what companies are on contract what they're buying how they're buying who's buying what in 2021 the last numbers I saw it was around it was a little over $50 billion that the US federal government spent just on small business contracts so just with small businesses now and by the way over half of that was Department of Defense spending so and the reason is the the SBA actually has they have projected percentages of the contracts that every government agency is going to be um you know initiating um that they have to meet for small businesses it's usually 23% or greater so meaning hey Air Force 23% of your spending has to be on on small businesses so most people just aren't aware that the government has to buy from small businesses it's $150 billion just in over that just in 2021 $80 billion plus of that was DOD and it's for everything that you could think of we're not just talking about weapons and stuff we're talking about every service you social media you know advertising I mean if you name it I I could probably find it and tell you how much you know they're spending and you know what you could potentially reasonably May depending on what your specialty is but yeah less than half of 1% of small businesses are actually selling to the government and we know that cuz we know there are over 33 million small businesses in the US and we know exactly how many small businesses sold to the Department of Defense and other government agencies in 2021 so it's just a math drill so you know the bottom line is you have a huge a huge pool of customers out there that most people just aren't tapping into the reason for that is you know knowledge you know that it even exists and federal procurement is not commercial sales it's just it's a completely process which is why people watch your YouTube channel and go to you all the time you know and people listen to our podcast it's it is a different process but it's understandable you know and because of all the information out there we just have to understand you as a business owner just have to understand how the government buys what you sell and that's that is what because a lot of PE companies are overwhelmed when they start looking at all of it some of them have an idea they think that you know they might see sam.gov and think they oh I see all these solicitations I'm just going to start writing proposals it's not quite the the way it works uh so you know it's easy to either assume make assumptions and fail or just to get overwhelmed and what I'm trying to do and I think what you're trying to do at least in part is just to make it simple and say hey this is this is the process let's have some understanding on you know what to expect and and these are the steps you need to take and you can be successful too and win some of those contracts yes and and what is the first step for someone to take especially if someone is a is a vet what should they do yeah and by the way have a lot of thoughts on what vets could vets can be doing when they get out because because there are so there's different setti sides like you mentioned right we can talk about those I can tell you I have never bought something from somebody because of a set asde so don't don't get scared if you've been going through AA or you know trying to get your woman own small business or sdvosb because those things can help you right but it's always the solution first right so I always want put my government hat on I cared about who can solve my problem so if I have a technology that needs to be developed to solve something whether it's small business or other who can solve that landscaping services who can do that like Prov to me that you can do the work now let's talk about okay you're a service disabled debt right so I'll get into that in a minute um but you know the first question you asked is hey what's the first step first step is does the government even buy what you sell why even bother you know and by the way they almost always do right so uh first thing I tell people is let's figure out how much the government spends each year on the product or solution or service that you provide and then we can you know there are I think it's over 300 criteria that get published on most of these contracts so you know we can take it down and start saying okay well if the government spends I'm making these numbers up right because I don't have the thing in front of me but you know we can go okay well the government spends a billion dollars let's say in landscaping services all right how much of that's on small businesses right you can say oh well now 600 million of that is on small businesses okay where is it how are they making the purchases so we can get pretty granular and you kind of get an idea we can look at competitors we can get a really good idea of what you can expect to make once you get the ball rolling so that's the first step do they buy what you sell kind of get an idea of how much you think you can make each year look at some other small businesses if that's what you are and then from there it's you know obvious you have to register your business but it's putting a road map so you know the way I take people through it is if they buy what you sell let's figure out who's buying what you sell let's focus on one agency one or two or three agencies depending on how big your team is if you already have a company and then start looking at uh the purchasing mechanisms do they use GSA do they compete do they do Soul Source contracts do you qualify for a set aside some of these set asides can you know they're not familiar and who's buying what you sell now I'm focused on how they make purchases just if I do usually you don't need a GSA schedule unless you're selling you know maybe office supplies or something but we can see what the percentage is so we can look in and I can tell you hey in your category GSA which is a contract vehicle essentially that you can apply to be on and it takes roughly 6 months or so you don't want to you don't want it you don't need to be on there unless you need it right so if we saw that 80% of purchases in your area was through G GSA well that might be part of your plan going forward that might be in your road map if I see that 20% of purchases go through GSA you don't need it you you don't I mean the facts speak for themselves so we know that or maybe it's you what you sell is wrapped up in bigger contracts which would indicate a subcontracting plan so I want to know what and you want to know what the plan is for what you sell and once we have that once we know what maybe contracts we need once we know if we're going to be involved in competitions or if there there's a lot of soul sourcing that goes on set aside usage we can see all the numbers then what we want to do is find Opportunities all right but and this is different than maybe what uh well your audience probably knows this uh but you know a lot of I guess you could say one of the top complaints that I've heard from businesses that would approach us is hey Rick I've gone to sam.gov I registered my business I see these solicitations for whatever the industry is I'm writing proposals I'm not winning anything it's all rigged these the solicitations look like they're written from my competitors and it's it's obviously rigged and the thing is it's not rigged right but those proposals probably were written for your competitors and and I know that maybe sounds contradictory but what we want to do is we want to and how I help businesses is we find Opportunities ahead of the solicitation so when you get to the solicitation the point that comes out you just need to understand that there's a whole phase of Acquisitions that comes before that called the market research phase and it is the most important phase days for any company any company to be in if they're selling to the government you know and I do have one client I sell their software licenses and stuff for and I can tell you I'm in that I'm solidly in that market research phase and and that's where you know we kick butt and take names cuz I picture it like this I I describ it when the solicitation comes out the handcuffs are on right so an Acquisitions team has to be extremely careful not to show any preferential treatment to any business once the solicitation out which in the solicitation a request for proposal a request for quote it's like hey you're we'll stay on landscaping services I need Hanscom Air Force basing Massachusetts needs a three-year Landscaping contract and here are the requirements proposals are due in two weeks 10 page you know whatever it is so that's that's a solicitation but you know at that point if you ask me as an Acquisitions officer if you ask a Contracting officer any questions if they even answer you it's going to be probably through a post in sam.gov so everybody can see the answers because if they have a conversation with you at this point well now you're potentially getting preferential treatment that other companies aren't getting maybe you're getting information that's and the way everything's written is it's once the solicitation comes out that's when a lot of that goes into effect because now you have requirements now you have something that's out there but in the market research phase that comes before that you know if you have someone like me that's the program manager and let's say that I'm in charge of the Landscaping contract for the base I don't know anything about Landscaping you know what I mean my job is to put companies on contract for the government and manage those and that's program management and contract Contracting and that's the skill set right so and by the way I and my counterparts over there they have a 100 things to put on contract every year right this is not their skill set so how do they find out what needs to be in the solicitation that's market research right they're going to reach out to businesses they're going to say because we do remember we have those um 23% or or better typically has to be with small businesses so I want to know things like can I set this aside for a small business in order to do that I know I have to know that there are small businesses out there that can do the work can I set it aside for a woman owned small business right well again I'm not going to do that unless I know that it's typically two I want to say is what the the regulations say but I need to know there are a couple small businesses out there that are woman owned that can at least us to do the work before we're going to set that aside and you know of course the reason is we don't want to duplicate the work right we need to be efficient as we can when we're putting someone on contract but I also don't know hey what's the latest in technology what are the best mowers out there right what are the bet is there something maybe I have some uh type of environmentally friendly clauses I need to work with maybe there's a you know machine out there that is better for the environment right so there's so much that they don't know and that's where they're either doing their own research or companies are coming in Savvy companies are finding out because they know that contract maybe the last one's expiring so they're in my office you I'll put my hat on again right they're my off saying hey I know this contract's expiring we're small business we have this environmentally friendly lawn mower that reduces emissions and blah blah blah blah blah by the way we can also do so now what you're doing what these companies are doing is they're influencing what is going to go into that solicitation and it's perfectly legal it's perfectly legitimate it's not rigged you know even if I want to hire that company it doesn't mean I'm going to but what it means for that company what it means for ky's landscaping company is well hey she just talked to me maybe she was the only one right maybe she responded to a request for information and now because she responded to that and had said hey I'm a small woman owned business I'm have these environmentally friendly machines that do X Y and Z and I confirm that with my team well now when the solicitation comes out is set aside for a woman own small business I have a requirement for these machines that you know are environmentally friendly which maybe 99% of the other landscaping companies don't have and I mean hey maybe she has certifications that she recommended now I'm putting those in there so anything that you can get that office to put in there eliminates competition for you so now only women own small businesses are going to apply and uh and if they don't they have to partner with one you know a company that's not on small business you're just much more likely to win now you know what the requirement is you've talked to me and my team you've suggested things and I know you and probably like you and as Fair as we want everything to be well of course KY you're very personable so of course you know the teams like you uh yeah but you can't it's hard to eliminate the people out of the pro in fact people the people is everything in this process and I I so love this and I know people listening like their minds are like whoa because there's so much here and I love all of this because you've highlighted how the process happens way over here it's not even on the screen right right exactly to oh I see it on Sam they there's so much more that happens I love the emphasis on the market research because what he shared what Ricky shared I've done that I've watched other companies do that I learned from my mentors to do that and it happens all the time even if somebody's working from home there's still someone reaching out to emphasize oh well we use these special machines or we have this special license and then next thing you know when that procurement comes out it emphasiz these things because somebody took the time to really Market themselves and and and it's great and then the other piece is you have to be likable and nobody I mean some people may be get may be able to get away with it if you kind of fake the funk or you you offer something that's so specialized but nobody wants to work with a vendor who's like not like a Grinchy type person right no no you're right and is federal Acquisitions isn't known for being a fast process right unless where you know doing something like otaa or SBI so more than likely if you're trying to push a deal through you're working with that program office over over a period of time so they're getting to know you you're even if it's during the bidding process the RFI process you're having meetings with them they're getting to know you they're going to know if you're liable if you do what you say you're going to do even as simple as you know um showing up for a meeting on time or sending them you know a white paper when they request it depending on you know the technology you're selling or what your solution is or the capability statement so yeah I mean there's there's a lot that goes into it but um the relationships and the meetings and all of that are are critically important in the market research and yeah it all comes together yeah it's so key and I love that you talked about the responsiveness like if somebody sends an email you're immediately responsive or if they ask for a white paper I mean these are the things like the biggest thing is follow instructions yeah period it struggle with following instruction and don't get me wrong like I hate rules but I follow instruction all day every day right you pass to follow instruction if if they say 12 point font aerial or times new rolling do not use anything else other than that no say no phone calls then don't call them you know if they say you know that hey I'm open to Market Research submit for market research and then this is when you call them you never know I mean absolutely absolutely the the only caveat that I would put on that is for solicitations like you are a million in 1% right it's like you can't got a page count if you put an extra page in there that page is getting thrown in the trash maybe the whole solicitation right if you're not uh if you're not following you know the criteria that they have in there down to the letter you're you're giving them reasons to either grade your proposal poorly or to not look at it at all and you know in a in a competitive environment you don't want that but if we if we take a step over into the market research phase I would still say you're 95% right I mean you still want to follow the rules and not piss anyone off if you cuz again for that exact reason it's about people and relationships and influence right but you do have the ability there you're not being graded on the RFI response or the source of sought solicitation to the like a proposal there's a couple that I you know in a weird category I'm going to get into that right now but for the most part we're talking about they're just doing market research so I would still follow all of the rules but if they don't ask me and this is just my personal technique with my clients or me if they're not asking me and they might not be for how I think they should put it on contract or if they're not asking me for the environmental machine right they might not even be aware of that exists I'm going to put that stuff politely in there right like hey couple recommendations um you know if I was on GSA I might say you might use GSA to put this on contract or if I had another contract vehicle like a NASA soup or ites or you name it you might you know consider these mechanisms for putting me on a contract if I was 8A I would absolutely you know some of these certifications allow for Soul Source Contracting which is which is putting someone on contract without a competition it's pretty difficult to do as a Contracting team unless you have a reason so that typically that's reserved for you have the only solution out there that we can put on contract right so that's rare right cuz you know we live in a big world a lot of people have a lot of you know different things there are some unique Technologies and whatnot but anyway you can make it easier for the government to put you on contract you want to let them know how you've made it easy for them so so you could be 8A now you're letting them know you're letting the contractor officer know hey you know I could satisfy an 8A requirement and I could put you on contract a little bit easier um maybe you have another contract with that agency right like hey I'm on contract already with Air Force research lab or hansam Air Force based peo c3n I'm on this contract well they might have a way to get to you through that contract um so there's lots of different ways but if you have anything like that you know you can recommend it or if you don't be like hey I recommend an open competition cuz you want this thing to get set aside for GSA if you don't have any of that and you can recommend that too so I do like to insert some things there to make sure that I'm try to get them into the solicitation at the end but only during the RFI sources of s part of myket research phase this is where it allows companies to really this where you really highlight your differentiate those lovely differentiators you want to throw on your capabilities put on your website or tell your friends family this is where they come out about the equipment or the ground of their team or the Partnerships that you have I know for some opportunities they love it if you're connected to HBCU or to certain colleges or they'd love that maybe you're connected to like a Google they love those kinds of things and this is where you emphasize that or if you have certain certificat they will love this and then it could definitely start to shape that potential opportunity really giving you a leg up so instead of being frustrated man this is set aside for my competition now it's kind of set aside for you in some ways and it happens it's it's happened for my clients it's happened for my businesses and it just it can definitely happen by putting in the work that's what's no it really is it really is then of course once you're on contract I always say that the easiest way to sell the government is once you're already on contract because now you have a relationship in place you probably have a contract in place so regardless of what you sell you know hey you know you have some area there that you know if it's a landscaping example again you know that this isn't being done over here maybe we can add that to the contractor hey you know you can always have the conversation and see if there's any need and then you can ask them you have anyone you can recommend to me within you know in other offices that could use our service or cyber security services you know everyone needs them I mean I can remember the Savvy companies would always ask me that and I'd help them you know I'd be like hey you know my buddy over here you know has something coming up or maybe you should look if this contract vehicle or now that you mention it I wasn't cuz everyone's busy right they're not thinking about your next sale or your uh or your qbr right they're thinking about the mission if it's the military what the next thing is on their plate on the government side but if you ask them they'll start thinking they'll pause to think about it especially if they like you and they think you do good work they're going to they're going to help you out so I mean there's a lot of work to be uh gained while you're when you're on contract with the government too just by talking to people and having those conversations which is excellent to hear because there have been I know some of my students had the mindset of just like oh it's the government I have to be very proper I have to just come across like as this Ultra business owner and you you just reinforce what I shared and it's we're all people right and that's what's important is we do business with people as long as you have the solution that is needed and that's what's key yeah agreed agreed what is something that those watching today could immediately do besides of course going to deod contract.com and listening to your podcast at dood Contract Academy of course I'm a guest but in addition to that on that podcast he has amazing information because you know one of the again one of the reasons I have you on here your retired lieutenant colonel you're pilot you in Acquisitions these are all things that we see in the movies or maybe we have like cousin cousins cousins cousin but none of I mean I have no connection or background to the wealth of knowledge and experience that you have and you know grateful for you grateful for your service and so please everyone go to these places dldc contract.com check out the contract dld contract Academy podcast because you bring all this out not just from yourself but from all of your guests and the way to keep growing and growing and growing as a business owner especially in this space is to continuously learn because it's not just this is how things are done and then that's it like there's this constant learning yeah no i' I'd be happy to point some people in the right direction and then I you want to say I was a navigator not a pilot so I don't want all my all my avator buds going hey man you trying to what you trying to do there um but uh no I had had a great time uh flying but yeah there's a lot of free resources uh that you can check out right so whether it's your Channel or the podcast or whatnot and certainly there are paid resources as well and you can find those on probably both of our websites I would imagine but I would go to usaspending.gov to start out because that's a free website that walks through how the government is spending and you can start taking a look by year you can look by keyword so you can start you can go by nes code so there's a lot of different criteria which is a North American industry classification code um but it will help you out you can start typing in whatever it is you specialize in accounting and it's going to pull it up and then you can start looking at that okay well how much is the government spending by a year and you can look at the agencies it'll also list them out um in order it's not going to give you the Contracting Office you know and that's you know something that you know I help people walk people through but it gives you a start so now you can start going okay well maybe the dod is who I'm focused on or it's the VA you know you can start looking at who's actually doing the spending see how much of it's occurring each year and that's going to give you a good inclination as to whether this is for you right is there an opportunity there for what you're selling um you know because there are there are some things that the government buys but it's in it's you they're not $20 million contracts out there and you're going to see that right um but good example we had a a documentary film company as a client right and they came in and we started you know crunching the numbers for them and at the end of the day you know the $20 million contracts weren't out there but you know they could still expect to make you know we saw1 $200 $300,000 $50,000 purchases um from the government and you know it was you know more than that over time but you know so they could they could expect a u additional line of income and that's all they wanted right but if you were in it for hey potentially I want to build up to those bigger contract so you're going to get an idea if if that's the case for you or not right which is good to know because often the size of the contract doesn't necessarily dictate your profit margin right as time goes on I mean that's that's key is profit Marin cash flow with your business so it's great that you mentioned that I mean hey documentary companies can get government contracts pretty sure that you know many of you watching the same applies as well as there are those who are like look you know my main a business is hair care products but I'm onural so now I sell cyber security and there are people who have gone off and done things like that or your background is just drastically different than the business that they set up and if that's what someone's interested in it's it's great to do that I know I did that I'm a have a PhD in Psychology and most of what my main businesses my government businesses do now is is really become a lot of Staffing yeah in reality it's a lot of it and it's like hey why not you know it's something of Interest yeah no absolutely I mean part of what we do with our um our higher ticket courses or offers where we we have a five-week launch program now where you know one of the first things we're doing is developing the niche for the company and you know when you really get into the details and this is what's amazing about about selling to the government is there's so much information out there as long as you know where to look for it you can really have a high probability of being successful if you about it the right way so you know if you take something like an accounting firm right you can go in and start looking at well you know maybe um you know you're doing bookkeeping or something along those lines and you know when we dig into it we see that because you can see in some cases how many offers are coming in on average as well so when we look at the numbers for small businesses winning those type of contracts we might see well hey there's a little bit of money there but you know there's a lot of offers it's it's highly competitive when we see how many offers are coming in and then we may look at you know tax preparation services and see that oh well on average you're only getting two or three offers uh per solicitation now when you get down to that granular level of detail and you know the office the exact office the name of the people in there that are doing the purchasing the path becomes a lot clear it becomes a lot more manageable especially for a small business and yeah I mean that's it's really important so that's where I would start that's where I I push people uh USA spending it's it's a decent website for the for a government run website um fairly fairly easy to understand it definitely is and and these are great first steps they're easy First Steps help build that confidence and again I thank you so much for being on here today Ricky and I want to reiterate again everyone to please go to dld contract.com check out DOD contract Academy podcast which is great if you're traveling you're working out you're at an airport listen to a podcast you're always welcome to go to profitable contracts. Co I've always have a free download for all my amazing govcon winners and again I just want to thank you so much and if anyone wants to connect with you outside of the website or the podcast what's the best way for them to do that so they could send me an email uh Richard richardc howard.com um and they could also check me out on LinkedIn um if they look up Richard Howard and slap a lieutenant colonel retired at the end of it they'll they'll sign me on there awesome well thank you so much again you got to subscribe y'all got to hit the notification button like share all of those amazing things and don't forget everything is possible