Land Federal Government Projects as an Independent Consultant

[00:00:01] Emily Stringer Hello, everyone, and welcome to today's webinar, Landing Federal Government Projects as an Independent featuring Brad Nestico. Next slide, please. Brad. 

[00:00:16] Emily Stringer My name is Emily Stringer, and I'll be moderating today's webinar. A little background on me. I've been with MBO Partners for over 6 years, currently working as a Consultant Services Advisor would have been in multiple capacities with the company and my composition to respond to requests from independent contractors who are curious about MBO service offering to conduct consultation appointments with our consultants, where we discuss and learn more about your background needs and determine if MBO Partners services can be the right fit for you. Next slide, please. Brad. 

[00:00:54] Emily Stringer India's mission statement is to make it easy for independent consultants and their clients to work together. For a quick, high-level overview of what we offer, we have a complete, all-inclusive business operating system for independent counsel. We take care of the administrative, which are typically outsourced to several different vendors, such as incorporation, contract review, liability coverage, invoicing, expense review and processing, tax withholding and payroll, and access to tax-efficient portable benefits. Next slide, please Brad. 

[00:01:30] Emily Stringer Now for a few housekeeping items on our webinar set up, you can see all of our controls listed here. We'll be taking questions throughout. There will be addressed at the end of the presentation. Any questions that we do not get will be answered via e-mail after the presentation. We will also be e-mailing the flight deck out and record a copy of the entire webinar to all of the registrants within the next week. Next slide, please. If you want to follow the presentation on Twitter, use #MBOWeb to submit your questions and comments and handles @MBOPartners. Next slide, please. Now for your introduction to the man behind the slide, Brad Nestico whose a federal government contracting a business development expert. Currently, he leads the Blue Beacon Federal Contracting, an iPhone app to expand your federal network, to increase your contracting knowledge, to win more work. Previously, Mr. Nestico founded Braddick Consulting, a small business contracting firm specializing in operations, strategy and performance improvement. He's worked with Booz Allen, Touchstone Consulting Group and A.T. Kearney Management Consulting. He has extensive experience leading federal government initiatives at the Office of Management and Budget, the US Treasury, the IRS, the General Services Administration, the National Science Foundation and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Mr. Nestico graduated from Penn State University with a degree in business and maintains his involvement in the Alumni Association Student Leadership Society. Right at this time, I'll turn the presentation over to you. 

[00:03:23] Brad Nestico Thank you, Emily, for the introduction, and this is great, I'm excited to be here to talk about the Federal Marketplace and how to grow your pipeline. So if you're looking at the slide 7, the overview, what we're going to cover today, want to give you a sense of how large the market is, talk about some common terms and acronyms. You should understand, tell you about how the industry and contracting works, what drives behavior. Then we're going to talk specifically about Business Development for independents and keys to success for you as a 1099 independent. What are the best times to look for business in federal contracting and how you should position yourself? There was one lesson, one thing you should take away from today that I'd like to communicate is that your greatest opportunity is selling to companies with existing federal contracts. It's difficult to do work directly with the government as an independent, and those agencies simply won't contract with individuals. So let's get started. 

[00:04:37] Brad Nestico So size and scope, so a significant opportunity goes without saying you probably knew this, which is why you signed up for the webinar. But over $400 billion in awards each year are given to contractors over 300,000 sorry, over 30,000 opportunities. The government's the largest buyer in the world and they buy just about every category you can imagine. Every product and service in there is about 500,00 entities that are registered to do business with the government. 

[00:05:17] Brad Nestico So let's talk about some common terms and acronyms that you should know that will help set the stage. So the first one to explore, Contracting. When someone says contracting or contractor in the federal space, it's likely not speaking about an independent consultant or 1099. It's kind of a trick question to say, are you contracting with the government? Prime contractors are companies typically responsible for delivering and carrying out the work defined in a contractual agreement. So primes are responsible for maintaining compliance standards such as facilities, clearance, personnel clearances, I.T., and information security standards, including badging, access to government buildings, inventory of government-issued property, time reporting, and invoicing, resource management. I could go on and on. If you're currently an independent, you don't want to try to be a product, not the right way to get started or to use your ambition as a sub-contractor. So some differences here as some country has a contract for a piece of work through the prime contractor and has obligations to both the government and to the prime contractor. So sub-contractors or companies can be 1 or more individuals will have to be registered with the government and maintain insurance requirements, timekeeping standards and a few other things, but have significant responsibility, but not quite as much as the prime. As you know, 1099 is an individual who is employed, is not employed or subcontracting independence, can have agreements directly with primes or sub-contractors. 

[00:07:21] Brad Nestico So the next term I wanted to make sure you understood, was Contract Vehicle. So this is a broad term used to describe GSA schedules, pre-negotiated rates, labor categories and sets of terms and conditions that will help streamline a contracting process. So BPA is one of those type of vehicles or Blanket Purchase Agreement you should know about used to fill anticipated repetitive needs. IDIQ, similar. One of the differences with IDIQ's indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity, because it's typically for a fixed period of time. So what happens is there's typically Task Orders or delivery orders that come off of those those vehicles, so orders get placed underneath the vehicle, it's intended to just make it much more efficient in the buying process. A task order rewards can be very large contracts not to be taken lightly. I've been on task order rewards that were 3 to 5 years. 25, $30-million-type contracts is a lot of business gets done this way. Typically, the significance of these is that they're with pre-selected groups of bidding, so you can't just have access to these as a general public. The public of publicly available opportunities are all through FBO.gov, which is number 6 on the list here. So FBO FedBizOpps is like the USA job sites for contracts. So all competitive competed requests for proposals are posted here so anybody can access it. Another thing you should know, GSA schedules, you probably heard this before, their GSA calls them and describes them as fast, easy and efficient contracting vehicles for both customers and vendors. So once the business has shown a track record of contracting, you can apply to get on a schedule based on your history and bodywork. So number 8 on the list, the FAR is the Federal Acquisition Regulation, so this is a library of regulations that define how goods and services are purchased. So contracts are bid and administered, almost all contracts and/or bidding most of the FAR for the major agencies and even some of the outside the cabinet agencies. There are a lot of agencies will follow most of the FAR. Something you should know, so DCAA Defense Contract Audit Agency. It is say, they provide the it's underneath the Department of Defense, but also applies to civilian agencies, but provides guidance and oversight on contract pricing and ensures that the accounting and accounting systems and bids are aligned with the regulations. So for government bids, there are specific regulations around recalculations. So as an independent, it's much easier for you to comply with these standards than primes and subs. And then the last thing you should know is Set Asides. So these top 10 things you should know. Last thing I would say is Set Asides for small business. The federal government sets aside 23% of their business for small businesses. And there's a number of different types of small businesses from minority-owned, women-owned to veteran-owned. But it keeps the industry balanced with small and large firms and drives teaming partnerships among the contracting community. So. Each of these topics could take days to cover. I just wanted to give you enough to survive a conversation with companies and understand the complexity of federal contracting. All right, so next slide. 

[00:12:05] Brad Nestico So it's kind of some of the Federal Marketplace in one sentence - it's an industry built around regulations, relationships in the contracting life cycle. We just talked about the FAR and DCAA, small business, Set Asides, team relationships. These are the main drivers for how the industry works. So let's walk through a scenario of getting a federal contract to say you can have a greater understanding of it. So government issues say government issues and agency issues will pick one. Let's say the Treasury requests, issues a request for information. So they're requesting information on how vendors might help keep the personal information safe and secure, a real thing and a real challenge. And there's maybe there's some new ways of doing it. And so they can't quite build the requirements yet. And they say, hey, market, tell us how we might tackle this. So say 8 contracting teams reply, answering the RFI questions, government reviews, the response develops a contracting strategy. They look and see that enough at a firm. Small businesses can demonstrate the ability to perform this work, so they work with the Small Business Office and the contracting officer and they define it as a Small Business Set Aside. So next, the government might start to define the scope of work based on what they received in the RFI, so contract method they'll talk about and they'll think through the GSA schedule or an agency vehicle, along with staffing levels and labor requirements. So 5 months later, issues they first notice of the scope of work, then the contracting relationship start to form a business team with other small businesses or large businesses. They finalize the teaming partnership and then teaming discussions will be based on the contractors to give them obviously the best chance to win so it can take some time to work through that. But the contractors begin to prepare the proposals, staff resumes, and pricing strategies, and then the teaming partnerships will negotiate rules and staffing levels. So this is, and then stayed another 3 months past. They submit their proposals and finally there's a contract award. So this is well over a year in the making and can be a lengthy process. So wanted to kind of describe how this works. Government contracts aren't as easy as they might seem to get. 

[00:15:18] Brad Nestico All right, so. Continue talking about the Federal Marketplace, how contracts are issued. We've talked about this a little bit and walk through an example, but as I mentioned FBO.gov, what you'll see on here is the request for information, the first notice on an upcoming proposal or maybe a draft scope of work. I'm all providing advance notice. Maybe there's a Bidders Conference Industry Day that they publish. So you will sometimes you'll only see a request for proposals. Another point I wanted to make is that you may not get any advance notice. It may be a 2 to 4-week turnaround. Conventional wisdom says that any company without preparing for it shouldn't and will have little chance of success bidding on a 2-week turnaround proposal. It's just simply not enough time to provide a successful, compliant proposal with the right training partners. So the last thing you'll see on FBO is you can get some of the contract awards as well. You'll see some results from bids. As I said, this could take anywhere from 6 months to 12 months to even up to 2 years. The main lesson for 1099 is you probably shouldn't be reacting to and bidding on FBO opportunities alone, but you can provide your resumé, technical expertise, insights on an agency to a company that you might work with. So the other thing, another way that the contracts get awarded are task orders, we talked about these delivery orders and these are only provided to pre-qualified contractors who are on the vehicles. So you won't have access to these. So shortlist companies that get pre-negotiated rates and terms and conditions and receive those proposals directly. So sole-source contracts, another way to get contracts, not competitively bid. It's saying only 1 company can provide the product or service. You'll see small businesses with special contracting status at the 80 or so companies that qualify for these awards, along with companies that have a unique or special capability. 

[00:17:55] Brad Nestico All right, so a few more slides on the Federal Marketplace and we'll dive into 1099. I use this with our clients often talk about their market growth strategy and their business development plans because each agency has a unique mission structure and way of doing business. It's very difficult for companies to expand their business outside of the current agency work. So you'll find companies most often expanding their capabilities within the same agency, or you'll find companies taking their existing core capabilities to another agency. So but we're providing new service types within an agency or office they know best is typically not a successful strategy to go. If you look in the bottom-right quadrant, the penetrate new markets agency with the new capability. So same lessons are true for independents. If you have it in agency experience, capability, focus there. But don't invest too much time in a prime or sub-contractor company that's stepping in the dark. All right. 

[00:19:29] Brad Nestico So let's talk about the kind of maturity of a federal contracting company or even from 1099 through, you know, like the size of a Booz Allen. And this is a simplistic form, kind of how things go. So in some companies can stay in one of these categories and have long successful businesses. But as you begin in the maturity model here, the forming a company, getting registered with the government through SAM.gov, getting a DUNS number, CAGE code, insurances. The path of least resistance is 1099, which we're going to talk about. Getting a sub-contract is the next phase in that process. Very difficult for somebody to get started and then jump into being a prime contractor, as I mentioned before, just too many requirements and simply just very difficult to get that award. So getting a sub-contract often leads to within a couple of years of experience, can establish your rates in your labor categories and relationships. And you can get set up on the GSA schedule, which will give you greater opportunity to expand. So if you get on any type of contract vehicle and you have the ability to get multiple contracts, that's kind of the next progression. And the last phase is scaling business growth through multiple dimensions, multi-dimensional strategy. So this could be priming, subcontracting, and often it takes a minimum of 3-5 years to kind of go through this cycle. 

[00:21:30] Brad Nestico All right, so we've got one more slide, it's kind of a summary slide, Keys to success in federal contracting. It's timely knowledge of opportunities, keen agency capability focus, skilled capture management. After management is that process of getting really smart and an opportunity and helping prepare to bid on it. Past performance, having that specific experience that lines up with a proposal, Advanced contracting knowledge and expertise, and Smart teaming decisions and Compliance, of course, with the federal government. 

[00:22:11] Brad Nestico So now to the stuff for independence. So wanted to set the stage for the federal marketplace. Before we talk about independence, give it some context. What does this all mean for 1099 contractors? So you'll see the keys to success listed here, matching the resume with the rules. To build it from scratch using keywords relevant to the role description. Typically very difficult to just have 1 resume and that applies in all situations and almost every bit up and on. I have developed the resume from scratch and you should too. So institutional knowledge and institutional knowledge. So as I mentioned before, agencies are very unique missions. So even if you're doing IT services, it'll look very different at the CDC vs. at the Treasury. It's just, you just have to understand the mission and how your work fits into that agency. Frictionless contracting, so what I mean here is that don't rely on a prime or sub to teach you how the industry works. Try to learn it on some level on your own. And like I mentioned with the resume, it's one way to be frictionless, but be an easy partner to work with. Know the industry, realistic bill rates, you know, if you want to increase your amount of work, the best bet to do it is to negotiate more hours and a higher bill rate. Government rates are typically pretty competitive. So I would negotiate those hours up rather than the bill rate. 

[00:24:13] Brad Nestico All right. In timing, we'll talk about this in a few slides. All right, so, chips you have to play in the Federal Marketplace as you're an independent, you're approaching companies, primes, and subcontractors. You want to get work. But this is for folks that particularly have some experience working with the federal government, maybe they were a contractor or a federal employee, but here, here's some of the chips you have to play in this conversation when you're trying to get set up with a new project. 

[00:24:54] Brad Nestico Any relationship you've got with senior decision-makers is something that is going to help you advance a unique capability. Obviously, there are a number of different things you can apply here. But this is something that if a company doesn't have that capability, it's going to be a big benefit if you can open up a new opportunity for them. So we mentioned Institutional Knowledge. I have it again here, too, because it's beyond the basics. But if you got an understanding of a program, it's about to take a new approach to a problem and you have some specific knowledge about the agency, it's going to be a big benefit to contribute to a proposal. Obviously, a resume with government experience will help and advance proposal writing in response, so many small businesses struggle to find resources to be able to respond to proposals. So help them out. So these things will all open up conversations with companies and kind of help you move the needle. OK. 

[00:26:20] Brad Nestico So let's talk about the Government Fiscal Year starts October 1st and September 30th. So here today, we're here in the 1st quarter, 35% of which is more than within the normal quarter. 35% of all awards occur within the 4th quarter of the previous fiscal year. So this means that companies are currently trying to staff up projects for those that were awarded contracts. Often you'll see awards coming in and to some contractors, they'd like to be prepared and have been sharing. Some do, some don't. But it's a great time to be looking for work. And I highlighted a couple of points along the Contracting Lifecycle that are great times for you to kind of assert yourself. So you see starting a Planning, a Request for Proposal, Proposal Submission, Contract Award, Performance, Contract Extensions, Re-compete. And so the re-compete means that the contract has an ultimate-end date and the government is putting it out for public bid. And so whether you're approaching an incumbent or someone that's trying to gain the business can be a really good opportunity. As I said, the best opportunity is probably to contract award, even though the most awards happen in the 4th quarter, you will find an ongoing issuing of new proposals and contract awards. So. So you'll see that throughout the year. 

[00:28:24] Brad Nestico All right, so let's talk about positioning yourself for success. So Pipeline doesn't rely on 1 or 2 leads, government contracting can be more difficult and take longer than you might think. Definitely expand beyond just a couple of leads, even if they are promising. The thing is that ask a company if they're friendly to 1099. Some won't if they've got some kind of arrangement with MBO Partners or a large firm, they may be more friendly. But, you know, some companies really want to just hire employees and other companies are OK with bringing 1099s. But you know your audience and don't be afraid to ask the question. So know who's winning work, so. There will be a lot of contractors out there who know who the winners are, billed a lot. Those are your best targets. Some contractors are just exploding and growing. This to make sure you know who those are and approach them. That'll be a big key to success. So we talked about the contracting lifecycle collaborating on proposals, consider new option years, not terrible times to approach someone as well. Typically, you'll see you can see staff transitions at those times or kind of get in on the ground level. Next thing on the right side, you'll see Targeted networking. So what is Targeted Networking? So, network to your connections and folks that that's, you know, definitely believe in the network theory. For the most part, you probably mentioned big firms, unless they have a relationship with MBO Partners, some big firms won't kind of want to try to stack things internally unless you're bringing one of those kinds of chips to the table and make it unique. So what else, so know your audience, your rates in labor categories, NAICS codes, PSC codes, you can all research, you can research those are publicly available and get a sense of the kind of where you fit in, what your strengths and capabilities and how that lines up with the government nomenclature. Definitely need to position yourself for success, highlight your relevant experience, don't highlight everything, be poignant in your conversations and speak the language. 

[00:31:37] Brad Nestico All right, so last piece of advice is in Federal Contracting, it's once you understand it, you can apply your marketing plan as you typically would. No reason why you can't market as you would otherwise. The key things here, reputation building, build a brand for yourself, and your value in the story you want to tell. Truly believe in the network theory. As I mentioned, it's your connections, connections that will you'll probably find the most success. You have to have a digital presence. The first thing people do is they looked up, they look up LinkedIn, the primary tool for recruiters. They're going to check you out. It's many references, recommendations you can have out there, former clients, colleagues, and then staying active on your profile. That'll make a big difference. And then examples work and success stories as part of the building your brand and having a story to tell. So definitely, in summary, focus your attention on contracting companies vs. trying to meet with agency contacts, that's going to be fruitless and then be frictionless to work with by knowing the industry. 

[00:33:04] Brad Nestico So just a little bit about Blue Beacon, my pitch, my company. We provide an iPhone app and iPad application. It's a service that provides daily contracting updates, opportunities, key contacts. We help you track those. There are new words that are coming out so you can make those connections, be smart about the industry and then provide a means for meaningful networking. And the, we'll also do some spending analysis. We'll do company profiles, give you the ability to look up contracts and contract details down to the award and action level. And then we also update you on compliance happenings and as it serves as a bit of an education tool. And it's $55 a month, as I mentioned, available on the App Store. If to sign up on our website, we do offer a trial. But the significance of having it on your phone is you have the ability to quickly click an e-mail or click in a call to kind of make connections and perpetuate your work and grow your pipeline. Emily, I think that's it for me. 

[00:34:36] Emily Stringer OK, Brad, that's perfect. We have quite a few questions. I'm glad we have time to address what we can do that we're going to do for a quick pull-up on the screen so that we can see who needs additional information either from MBO partners, from Brad, or from both. We'll give you a few more seconds here. And that's it. All right, thank you so much for your responses and we're going to flip over to some questions here. 

[00:35:41] Brad Nestico Great. 

[00:35:42] Emily Stringer Quite a list. 

[00:35:44] Brad Nestico All right. 

[00:35:48] Emily Stringer So let's go ahead and get started here with some questions. First and foremost, this is one that I hear all the time from our government-focused consultants, how important is it to register with the SBA as a certified small business or veteran, minority or woman-owned business? 

[00:36:09] Brad Nestico Good question. So as an independent, you don't need to. You can set up agreements as an individual directly with the primes or subs if you want to. If you've been doing that and you say, hey, I want to really establish my own business, my own small business, there's a significant opportunity. We talked about the 23% of the business is set aside, but you're not the first person to see that. There are a lot of small businesses out there. It can certainly help and give you a chip to play in the conversation, having a small business certification. But you want to be able to stand on your own 2 feet. Otherwise, it's a, it can be lengthy. Some you can get self-certified quickly, others are a more lengthy process and it's an investment. And that's why I presented the. Let's find this. But. Can you see my screen still? 

[00:37:25] Emily Stringer We got to 

[00:37:27] Brad Nestico Great, so that's why I presented the maturity model here is that in that second, that 1st and 2nd phase, if you do have some experience and you want to do it, you want to get into starting a small business, go out and get that certification. Otherwise, it's not going to do much for you as an independent. It's the short answer. Does that help Emily? 

[00:37:53] Emily Stringer That does help Brad. That's great, and I really appreciate you sharing that insight. So our next question, MBO Partners' associates are not 1099 noncontractors. So when an associate is hired by a company, they are hiring MBO. MBO is an approved GSA supplier. Does this give associates an advantage in getting government work? 

[00:38:19] Brad Nestico Yes, so just to I guess to tie the, tie it all together. That is the kind of scenario I was describing as 1099 and independent. And so with that, you have the ability to market yourself and it makes you will make you even more frictionless and that you've got those terms and conditions worked out. You've got those the labor categories, the rates, and all of that. It's, you know, typically with that setup, you there's a couple of ways you could go. You could follow what I discussed with the prime and sub-contracts. You can work with those. There are a couple of other scenarios that we didn't really touch on that did come up. One is that you know, there are some agencies that are more friendly to small contracts, SBA itself as an agency, USAID. They do hire a lot of small independents. But there's also this something called Simplified Acquisition, which is I believe it's anything from $3,000 to $150,000. That is a way to you have a small contract set up, would have to be competitively bid. But, you know, we typically find that a lot of contracting organizations are just stacked up with work. And so, you know, over time there's been a consolidation of contracts and things get bigger and bigger and bigger. And it's just a fair amount of work to go through to contract on smaller, smaller stuff. So, you know, the short answer is you got to pick your spots. There are some ways to get business through that Simplified Acquisition and having, you know, being a frictionless partner with MBO and a GSA schedule will certainly help you to. 

[00:40:48] Emily Stringer Perfect. Thank you for your feedback on that, Brad. The next one, and we hear this frequently, what is the best way or place to find a 1099-friendly agency or company? 

[00:41:04] Brad Nestico It's a good question. I think it's something you discover through networking you somebody that actually has contracted with an agency. I know that you know, SBA will have just 2 smaller contracts or a smaller agency. They support the smalls. USAID is, not sure why USAID is that way, but they definitely have more than 1099 and others. That's the International Development Agency. But otherwise, I think it's just a matter of doing some research and some networking and asking folks that I work with specific agencies. It's a massive industry, so I'm sorry I couldn't break it down any further. 

[00:41:54] Emily Stringer Perfect. I think that's exactly what we need. That is excellent feedback. So next, isn't it best to secure an agreement with a prime contractor before the contract is won or renewed? 

[00:42:11] Brad Nestico Yes. It said earlier, the better you can secure an agreement. Absolutely, and I think if you can bring something to the table before a contract is signed, then you can be a part of that conversation. And certainly, that's ideal. But you may not have that opportunity. So if you do have that opportunity, definitely it's better. 

[00:42:47] Emily Stringer Excellent. Next up, you mentioned negotiating the hours and not the rate. Can you expand on that? 

[00:42:54] Brad Nestico Sure. So sometimes there's, you know, with GSA schedules and vehicles, there are pre-negotiated rates and labor categories. So, you know, if you're you do the specialty work and in it, you know, typically you're used to getting paid a couple of hundred dollars an hour. You know, it just may not fit into a labor category. It may be a deal-breaker that it just doesn't fit into the structure of the contract. It's got to know the contract on the labor category and ask what the rate ranges are. And so but one way you can you know, if you're saying, look, I really wanted to do this work in this project, you can look at the duration of that project. So instead of crunching it into a, you know, a few weeks, maybe expand it a bit longer and negotiate, you know, the scope and the level of support along with it, so that you're looking at a, you know, 40 hour a week over multiple weeks. And it's, you know, it's a way to get into a project and work with what's available. 

[00:44:21] Emily Stringer Excellent. That's great feedback. Next question, I am registered as an MBE with NMSDC, also registered on SAM with a cage code recently. Would you advise I pursue the 1099 route or go after the Set-aside? 

[00:44:42] Brad Nestico So recently registered. So, yeah, not bad to register and SAM go through that process, get a DUNS number, you can a CAGE code. It depends on what your long-term goals are in terms of building a business. And so that would be one thing. The problem with trying to go after a quote, set-asides is that you're going to have to start out by subcontracting. It's just going to be really difficult for you to win work as a prize and set aside. And you're going to have to try to establish partnerships. And so and I've been in situations in the past where it might depend on their preferences. If the type of work is a preference, meaning preference of the prime or sub that you're working with the company, because I think just getting started is almost out of the question, but might depend on the company's preference to work with you. If, you know, maybe they've got a relationship with MBO Partners in a contract set up, they can. And it's pretty seamless. They if this work involves multiple FTE full-time equivalents and not just yourself, then a subcontract might make more sense, in which case you'll need to have a SIM registration and DUNS number and proper insurances set up to have that agreement in place. 

[00:46:28] Emily Stringer Thank you for the clarification on that, Brad, we have a question from an IT consultant. Can you address how and if an SFW is prepared when it is awarded one year, for example, and technology has advanced since that year, do you deploy the original technology or redefine and wait another year and go through the same process of a year waiting? 

[00:46:53] Brad Nestico Hmm Yeah, so technology is always advancing. I think that that may be more of a government acquisitions question. I'm not sure if I'm fully qualified to answer that, I mean, typically you're typically what I've seen is that the scope of work may not be that specific down to the technology level. They may contract with an I.T. consultant and or a firm and they may begin to, you know, and they have the flexibility to change requirements on some level. You can also do that if it is big if it is specified, you can also do a modification to a contract. Seen that before. So but that sounds like a pretty specific government-type contracting professional question. 

[00:47:57] Emily Stringer Thank you for the clarification there. One quick thing that we've been asked to revisit, can you repeat the information related to registering on SAM, DUNS number, CAGE codes, etc. for us? 

[00:48:12] Brad Nestico Sure, so to get registered as a small and small business, new business, any business, even large businesses will have multiple subsidiaries and separate same registrations. But you go to SAM.gov, you can register there. The first step, I believe, is to get a DUNS number through D&B, they have an agreement. So that's one. And of course, you've got to be incorporated before that. And a corporation DUNS number and then register through SAM and then through the SAM.gov registration process, you get a CAGE code and that is issued through an organization and Department of Defense that's based on your physical location, making sure your real company and have a real location. But not sure exactly what you were looking for there, but I hope that helps. 

[00:49:17] Emily Stringer Thank you, Brad. We've had a request for contact information to advance to your contact information slide, please. 

[00:49:25] Brad Nestico Sure. If I have the, we have of our website here. And my email address, I can give you is brad@bluebeacon.io 

[00:49:47] Emily Stringer Perfect. Thank you, Brad, to wrap up here, we have a couple of questions about you and your app. So first and foremost, do you have a trial period for your phone app? 

[00:49:57] Brad Nestico We do, it's 2 weeks. 

[00:50:01] Emily Stringer Excellent. And this Blue Beacon offers a web interface or just mobile? 

[00:50:08] Brad Nestico We are just mobile. 

[00:50:10] Emily Stringer OK, excellent. Thank you for clarifying that. And one last question regarding the MBO Partners, can your company or MBO Partners find independent consulting opportunities with the government? So I'm happy to speak to the MBO Partners view and the answer to that is that we are not a staffing agency. We do not find any project opportunities. We generally leave it up to our consultants to do their own business development. However, we do have something very cool coming called MBO Connect, which is our proprietary marketplace that our clients can use to post-project opportunities that they would like to sell from our consultant base that will be released to the general public here within the next couple of months. So keep an eye out for that and we will have several of our government contracting clients who will be contributors to that marketplace. 

[00:51:05] Brad Nestico Great. 

[00:51:05] Emily Stringer Brad, like you, speak to your piece very quickly, and then we'll get things wrapped up here. 

[00:51:10] Brad Nestico That sounds good. So I will cover that quickly. That's what we do. We help find opportunities, knowing our tools designed based on our expertise in Federal Contracting. It's simple in federal contracting is just saying, OK, here's an opportunity job posting. It is much more complex. And so we have designed a tool to support that. We do post opportunities, but knowing that you may not bid on them directly yourself, it may be about finding partners, it may be about collaborating, forming teaming partnerships. And that's sort of what our app is designed to do. 

[00:51:56] Emily Stringer All right, excellent. Thank you, Brad. We really appreciate the fantastic content that you've provided us with this afternoon and for joining us. This is an excellent and informative presentation. And thank you, everyone, on the line for joining us as well. If you have any further questions or comments, please be in touch with us. And we are happy to help in any way possible. For those who have requested information, we will get that out as quickly as we possibly can. And please keep an eye out for your slide deck within the next week. 

[00:52:29] Brad Nestico Thanks, Emily.