Win Government Contract Without Writing Proposals

i'm brittany rivera i am with emfcc um and today you're in for a treat uh with this lunch and learn with serena um so i'll start with her introduction serena moore thomas is an experienced mompreneur author strategist and water walker despite being a teen mom of twins with no college degree and very little resources she has led several small businesses to multi-million dollar revenues won hundreds of federal contracts and continues to empower individuals around the world she has an innate ability to help her clients consistently find success in seemingly impossible situations serena's entrepreneur accomplishments coupled with her infectious energy and ambition and ambition quickly caught the eye of national media including new york times the cover of black enterprise magazine essence magazines and nbc nightly news and others serena has received a migraine of awards highlighting her business proficiency and next generation leadership her ability to deliver deep level transformations to individuals who are trapped by their ideas and paralyzed by their self-imposed limitations is evident in her high demand this dynamic wife mom and business ninja is truly a woman on the move you guys are in for a treat today and without further ado i'll let serena take over good day everyone hello there how are you so i'm going to check this good chat um and i see some of you have already shared where you are from if you could right in the chat if you can just put what industry you represent so i want to see who we have in the room today i want to make sure that i um i know who we're talking to so what industry are you in and while you do that i am gonna go ahead and share my screen all right i'm gonna go ahead and share my screen while you do that okay we have a couple different industries represented on today's presentation great great great um you are in for a treat and i'm not just gonna say that because i'm doing this webinar but that's the truth you are really in for a treat we have um quite a bit okay we have i t i t trucking logistics still coming in sema from philly landscaping jump junk removal i t okay okay we have a great representation uh on the line today so i am going to share my screen and um get to know you a little i'm going to introduce myself just a little more you've heard a little bit from brittany and first of all it's an honor to be here with the eastern minority supply development council miss valerie cofield is one of my favorite people in the whole wide world and her team is just outstanding so i am excited to be here and have this opportunity to talk about a subject that i am extremely passionate about so we have about 60 minutes together today and i'm gonna tell you now you want to pay attention please don't have this as your background music you want to grab a pen and a piece of paper there are going to be lots of notes for you to take um i'll tell you this i'm a very interactive person and so um please respond in the chat if i'm saying something that makes sense to you um or an aha or something or just a you know yes yes or that was good well thank you you know the response in the chat is really good now i know i'm asking you to do a lot because i am asking you to take notes but i am asking you to respond if i ask you something too okay or if something hits home for you i look to provide you extreme value today all right so let's get started we're going to jump right in and we're talking about winning federal contracts without writing proposals okay very important so here's what you can expect our agenda is very straightforward i'm going to do a quick introduction of myself and really more of my experience because that's what matters and then i'm going to lay the groundwork i'm going to try to redefine federal contracting for you and then we're going to discuss three ways to win without writing proposals okay sound like what you came for i certainly hope so uh so let's let's go ahead and um and and dive in so this is part of our mission 500k initiative uh where we are on a mission to teach 500 000 small businesses how to succeed in the federal marketplace with a concentrated effort on winning without writing proposals so we focus a lot on simplified acquisitions micro purchases purchase card purchases things like that all right i am um the ceo of serena speaks llc as well as the highmark group i am affectionately known as the destroyer of comfort zones okay the destroyer of comfort zones that's what i do it's like my superpower as you see my superhero picture right here i look like i'm about 6.464 maybe six feet four inches or so i'm probably like really 411 in real life but i do big things okay but this is my um this is this is my thing this is what i do um i help you to escape your comfort zone and do what seems to be impossible i am also gifted at demystifying things that seem very very complicated okay and a lot of people when you approach federal contracting it can seem intimidating and complicated so as we redefine what that looks like for you um i'm hoping that you will discover that there's opportunity here that you could be uh overlooking okay now i am like i said the ceo of serena speaks in the highmark group i have a podcast and i've written a book and i've done some things but i didn't start that way um and it's very important that you understand my journey because this is the heart that i teach from i make it my point never to teach you what i heard what i think what i'm you know read but i teach you what i've done what okay period just what i've done what i absolutely know um and i use my experience to do so and so i didn't start here with that good bio that mr brittany shared with you i actually started right here um i started as a teenage mother of twins okay um i had twins at 17 while my friends were planning to go to college and planning to have an incredible summer i was preparing for single parenthood as a teenager i have lived on my own since i was 18 years old and i've never been back my father and i worked on a construction site together we started a business together that business ended up turning into a multi-million dollar business in less than about six years or so i taught myself how to pursue federal opportunities and basically here's what happened we started this construction site cleaning business out of my brother's old bedroom it was everything was broken we had no money we didn't have investors we didn't have we didn't have anything we had uh faith and we believed um that god had created an opportunity for us to create opportunities for other people we kept serving at the forefront and that's still in my businesses today serving is at the forefront doing everything that we can with all of our heart and serving uh to the best of our ability and so in doing so we were able to employ um as many as well i mean one year was like 83 people um and that was you know full-time part-time sometime job time um just all together but we started this company and i learned about all the different certifications you can get mbe wbe dbe h i j k l m o p q r s t u you get it n double a c p e m s d c all of them right so i i acquired every certification they said i qualified for and i decided that i was going to um help grow this business i knocked on every door i showed up in rooms like i was meant to be there because i was and that led to me being able to do some pretty incredible stuff i fulfilled the childhood dream of being on the cover of black enterprise magazine i've been in essence and 40 under 40 in two cities um sba's region three young entrepreneur of the year uh you name it and all of this with no publicist no press kit and no social media well how is that i show up in every room like i was meant to be there i have a vision that is just not about my vision board and my vision for myself but it is a vision to help and serve other people i put people before anything else um and there are a couple other things uh and i'm gonna share some of those uh tips and tricks and things with you today okay this is my family now um i am uh currently the mother of four and i have a wonderful handsome husband here and we are all entrepreneurs we our whole family everybody we're all entrepreneurial um even the kids if i had a cat my cat would be in commercials i mean everything in my house has to start something um so these are the twins that i was holding at one time they could now absolutely hold me okay and i do have a one-year-old grand baby all very important information for you to know but at the end of the day i'm a regular old family girl but i am a um dedicated and committed small business owner and my husband is as well and so we understand the ups and the downs we understand not having time for foolishness we understand having payroll um and not having the funds for payroll we understand what it looks like to be you know knocking on doors and trying to find opportunities and meeting brick walls i get it on so many levels and that's why i teach and do these webinars kind of the way that i do it's it's it's serena style okay so like i said earlier experience matters and i have experience on both the service side of federal contracting as well as the product side so in our service business elohim cleaning contractors incorporate it right that company we supplied labor on it as needed basis to general contractors so if you're in the philadelphia area our company did the final cleaning for the comcast building locust towers broad street avenue north um what else a bunch of them a bunch of the targets target on air mingle target on city line just a a large commercial cleaning contracts right on the construction side and then once we got eight a certified that's the letter eight then the letter e the number eight the letter a eight a we got into the eight a per uh program right which is a certification designation through the sba um you guys should be familiar with at least some of these acronyms hopefully i'm not losing you but when we got into that program that really opened my eyes to what was possible in federal contracting and i was able to win uh four or five sole source 8a contracts and i resigned from the family business about eight years ago nine years ago now finish the program so the 8a program is only 9 years but i resigned from the business to move on had my son got married things happened and then i ran another company providing aircraft parts boeing aircraft parts to the federal government and so then my product experience came in because i learned how to now supply product to the federal government we were doing service as a janitorial kind of service janitorial security grounds keeping those kind of things but then now um i was instrumental in negotiating our boa so that we could provide boeing parts directly to the dla i've won hundreds of dla purchase orders okay and so those are opportunities where there are no proposals necessary proposals make me itch okay i i prefer not to do proposal writing if i don't have to and so for you this is good because i get to bring my service experience and product experience together um and provide you some pretty you know decent information here uh so i talked about all the different certifications the mbe the wbe dbe wosb bpa boa all the things right um but that's me let's talk about you for just a second as we dive into the content uh for today you you are the common denominator all right in your business everywhere you go there you are you are going to have to take personal responsibility for the progress that you make the income that you produce um and and the way you show up every day in your business period right and you know this sometimes we just need to be reminded more than we need to be informed okay you are a very important part of whether or not your business succeeds or it fails or um it meets it reaches the goals that you have set for it okay so you are going to have to participate in your own rescue and i say that because that was something that i said to myself as a young teenage single mama right there's nobody coming to save you serena you will need to participate in your own rescue okay which means you are going to have to show up you are going to have to dirt determine and purpose in your heart and in your mind that this is not the place of always you are going to have to make some decisions okay and so i'm going to give that to you today the destroyer of comfort zones is here for guess who you all right intentional you're going to be intentional about your time about your money about your resources about how you show up you're just going to have to be intentional important okay i'm not going to go too much into that but you know what it means write it down be intentional even when you show up on webinars like this you register for this webinar let me tell you what the types of things that got me ahead of opportunities and people calling me and sharing my story and all of that i'm intentional with every encounter if you register for this webinar you should have already googled serena you should have been all over her website all over looking at everything about her business you should be here right now with very intelligent questions to ask based on the experience that you know your webinar your webinar um facilitator has do you understand what i'm saying that's intentional and think those are the types of things that allow me to move and grow very very quickly because every encounter i'm intentional all right so you're going to talk to me a little bit now i'm going to ask you a question in the chat and i need you to answer this question right here what makes a good client okay what makes a good client i need to see what your answers are i'm gonna go over to the chat okay okay who else client that wants to solve a problem okay what makes a good client what makes a good client okay so i'm going to rephrase the question i'm going to ask again yes thank you okay thank you right realistic budget those we can serve best per our expertise someone that i can effectively address their um pains and build partnership good thank you client that needs no education okay interesting what else makes a good client if you were selling your product or service and you said you know this is ideal um they pay on time praise the lord yes clear on requirements and expectations thank you that's what i'm talking about knows what they're looking for all right all right right client someone you can help solve their problem all right so you said some really good things thank you so much for participating and answering my question um so you said they have a realistic budget um those that i can serve best per my expertise um a client that play pays on time a client that has money right that's ideal you want somebody that has money and is not going to run out in the middle of the project right um they respect you as they get the job done they communicate somebody else said someone that's clear about what they need all right so um guess what guys you have just just described my favorite clients the federal government yes how so serena well let's talk a little bit okay 80 of success and anything is psychological it's gonna be your mindset that's what we're gonna talk a lot about today um 20 is the strategy the specific steps needed to accomplish a result so just know this keep this in mind as we dive now into this um into this content so what makes a good con uh what makes a good client i don't know why my slides are out of whack but it's all good what makes a good client is someone that has money someone who knows their expectation knows what they want someone who is who we know we can serve right they're clear about what the expectations are all of those things absolutely describe the federal government okay and i'm going to get into that in in just a minute right um right before i do so i want to share with you this right here this is a very important slide because this is a slide taken directly from a p-tech presentation on doing business with the government if you've been in business for any point for any amount of time you have been to probably 455 different seminars webinars or conferences on how to do business with the government on how to do business uh yeah with the federal government local government whatever right so when you go to p-tech and i like p-tech they serve a specific purpose um all of my students are empowered to know how to use the free services of places like ptac and um sbdc and places like that so they know what to go in there asking for rather than showing up at ptac saying how can you help me grow my business right but in this particular case ptac had a um a conference doing business with with the government free webinar or free seminar sorry workshop and this slide came up and i don't know about you but just in looking at all of this i was totally overwhelmed um and it seemed nearly impossible to do so this is the the way that the process goes there's the planning and the identifying of the need then there's the requisitioning of the requirement then the set-aside uh set-aside decision and then this and then that and then the bid proposal preparation then you receive the offer then you re-evaluate the offer then the notice then the pre-award debriefing and then the proposal revisions then the source selection committee meets and then the award and then the post award debriefings anybody else just is this a lot to anybody else this a lot does this seem like a lot to anyone um so i remember sitting in the back of the class like this is doing the absolute most there must be another way but what i was actually saying to myself or saying to the person that was giving the seminar um was this right here this is actual footage of me sitting in the back of class i promise you actual footage just me right there what you talking about willis what in the world is going on here there's gotta be a better way right and so many are intimidated and so for these next 20 minutes i'm just gonna make this so not intimidating i'm gonna get you so excited about this um so that you can join us for six weeks because i want to work with you all um for the next six weeks and we'll talk about what what we're doing with emsdc it's gonna be so um so different than what you may have experienced in the past okay so here we go let's redefine federal contracting so you already told me what a what a good client uh looks like right what an ideal client looks like and so let's talk about what you don't need because that slide talked about all the things that happen and it makes it you know it's just you know 55 thing checklist 55 point checklist that's that's not what you need um so let's talk about what you don't need to do business with the federal government and i need you to listen carefully to what i'm saying and what i'm not saying okay you do not need certifications to do business with the federal government and to and and really i'm i should have put designations the certifications that i'm talking about here are um your designations your mbe your wbe wosb sdv osb all of those 8a you do not need them they're not requirements okay and actually even professional certifications and i'll show you why in a second but you do not need them it's not an absolute requirement proposal writing team you do not need an office in dc you do not need um past performance i know you probably are like what is she talking about yeah past performance you do not need now i told you in the beginning i don't teach you anything that i heard or read or thought i teach you what i know and what i've done okay so here it is you do not need these things um what does the government buy well everything literally everything from dog food to aircraft parts from chicken wings to paper clips okay from i.t services to um kennel services like yoga instructors you name it and i can show you all of them um they literally buy everything this is one of the reasons why they are her great client the other thing is that they actually don't run out of money people they print their own i don't care what anybody says they don't run out of money when i talk about federal contracting or if you hear me say government contracting if it's serena talking serena is always talking about at the federal level right so government contracting is really really broad so that can include state local municipal all of that i don't teach state local municipal city although i've won contracts in all of those places school districts i've done school district contracts and things like that i don't teach that i teach federal because i decided that i wanted to go where the money resides okay and at the federal level is where the decisions are made and that money is then dispersed down to the low to the states and local and all of that and so i decided to play at the federal level so anytime you hear me talking i'm talking federal okay very important so they're the nation's biggest customer they spend 500 billion a year approximately 195 set aside for small businesses like i said they buy everything they are bound by what's called the prompt pay act so at state and local level you can actually get you know responses like you know our budget you know was cut it's not approved uh you know we're going to get you your money as soon as we can we can no no prompt pay act 30 days 30 days okay prompt pay act the the federal government is bound to pay small businesses within those 30 days then you have something called the foia which is extremely important that's the stands for the freedom of information act you know what that means that means that i can see a contract that was awarded to someone and um i can actually see exactly how much the contract was for um and i'm going to show you a system in a second that shows you the award history of in within the solicitation so the dla for example would look to buy something and they put out this solicitation and you can look in the solicitation and within the solicitation is the award history for what they've paid for it in the past that's freedom of information right so it's not so hidden and mysterious like it is in other areas of government contracting another uh important fact right now the biden harris administration released their fax sheet back in june and i think they confirmed it december 2nd their commitment to their words used the federal government's buying power to increase the number of contracts going to small disadvantaged businesses by 50 over the next four four years four one two three four over the next four years equating to approximately a hundred billion dollars in contracts to small businesses over the next four years extremely important information valuable information for you to position yourself there's endless opportunities right so there are all these different ways that you can do business with the government and that slide that i showed you that ptac usu uses in their presentation that slide is really talking more about idiq's and long five-year contracts and g-whacks and things like that subcontracting opportunities there is there's a longer cycle and proposal but not for everything so federal the federal government buys so many different ways that's why there are so many different opportunities for you and several of them include no proposal writing no long contracting um or no long lead times okay this is about the goals you can pull this up this is very um i'm not gonna get into that um these are the certifications that matter in the federal marketplace when we work through the next six weeks um we go through these and talk about which ones are best for you in 2022 because there are certain programs that are getting lots of love this year and you should know what they are okay i don't have time to go into them now but we will discuss it during our six-week cohort um so i'm going to talk to you about simplified acquisitions because this is how you win without writing proposals simplified acquisitions uh speaks of a a specific far part right so far far stands for the federal acquisition regulation it's like the bible of federal contracting i play serena more thomas she plays in far part 13 okay um so the far has many parts but part 13 talks all about simplified acquisitions simplified acquisitions is a contracting method okay and it's used specifically to reduce the amount of paperwork that the government needs to do so any opportunity that's under 250 thousand dollars falls under the simplified acquisition threshold okay and that means there's no source selection team there's no contracting officer oftentimes there might be a contract specialist or something like that but there's no long drawn out um process under the simplified acquisition method and if the contract again equates to 250 000 or blue it falls under this procedure okay so we're going to talk about the different ways that you can win without writing proposals here we go purchase cards the gpc program we're going to discuss that micro purchases purchase orders and then we'll we'll do a little bit on bpas but we're going to really focus on these three the rest of this is all discussed in detail during our six weeks and i'll just say now um this program that we're that we've put together with emsdc is um amazing okay it is amazing because i'm really really challenging you in six weeks and teaching you in six weeks in fact every single person that attends the cohort will pursue at least one opportunity during the six weeks i'll talk about that all right so let's dive into the first way of our three ways okay and gosh you guys got questions in there and i'm going to get to them i promise you so the first way that i want to talk to you about how to win without writing proposals one way okay government purchase card program the gpc program very very important program this is all googleable guys you can definitely google this um but the gpc program is a streamlined payment procedure it is when the government uses their government issued credit card okay to buy from industry to buy from you by both product and services it reduces the administrative burden so there is no proposal there is no solicitation this is a way that the government can make purchases using our taxpayer dollars of course and provide on the spot purchasing okay the program spends 30 billion annually okay they use 100 million transactions and three million cards there are more purchase card holders than there are contracting officers people okay so the government purchase card let me let you in on a little secret here my very first federal contracting opportunity for janitorial services was done on a government purchase card okay and it the government purchased card threshold at this time is ten thousand dollars it used to be thirty five hundred dollars it was changed during the um trump administration right that that threshold was increased to ten thousand dollars and so when i won my first opportunity um i knew we we knew a government purchase card holder that sat at a little office at the veterans administration building and she had a government purchase card she was a purchase card holder with all authority to use this credit card and we did some light cleaning two days a week whatever it was empty trash do some office cleaning stuff and she was able to per to buy it buy our services on her card for years okay guess what no solicitation doesn't have to go out to the public no announcements necessary i have an opportunity i have an opportunity because i have a relationship during the six weeks i actually give you a list of purchase card holders i tell you how to find them and what to say to them okay because this is a missed opportunity for many small businesses and sometimes if you even know someone at a government agency and you can ask you know who to purchase card holders in your office um and then inquire about what they buy um in our mission 500k group one our other group we actually have a purchase card uh purchaser somebody that actually buys um and she's getting ready to transition out of government and so she's given us a lot of um intel on how the the the program works but this is the opportunity this is one way that you can win without writing proposals that good stuff yeah the max is 10k um the air force has a very specific program and i'm not going to get into too much of this today i'm just going to put it up here for a minute as it relates to purchase card holders and purchase cards the air force base right now has a program called first look program where they are looking to redirect about uh 1.8 billion because they spend about 1.8 billion in purchase cards hear me closely and so the first look program what they're looking to do is redirect that money to uh small businesses that are that are in proximity of the base so it's giving a first look to the companies that are located right outside of the base so you would want to be associated with your nearest air force base find out who they are what they buy when they buy how they buy and who's buying and i'll position yourself for opportunities there so that's just an example that's one um that's one example okay but for purchase cards um really it requires a lot of networking you're gonna have to network you're gonna have to um you know yeah you're gonna have to you're gonna have to network and get to know who these folks are but like i said i i show you how to find these you can find purchase card holders online um i'm gonna pause for just a second before we get to number two and see about these questions um but has this been valuable so far okay we got 20 minutes um okay so let me see if i can answer these if i cannot answer guess what i will tell you i will tell you i cannot answer that what should i ask is a vendor for fluid we supply tires and oil what should i ask um i'm not sure i mean i'm not sure fatima but fatima do we know each other i feel like your name is very familiar um but i can say that actually one of the girls on my team um here my company we we've supplied oil um we've supplied oil up in where was it new cumberland or something um like that to a to a was it an army reserve base or something but um i don't know what you should ask we also supply junk removal should we go from city to state right so we're located in okay 195 billion set aside for small businesses how can we apply all right so i think some of these i've answered within okay what are the program fatima girl all these questions is from you you need to join us for the six weeks um how can we get some yeah uh yes yes yes okay okay so i'm going to i'm going to mark these as done because i think most of this i've answered or will answer um brittany i don't know can you make or are you host can you clear this q a so that i can tell what questions are new can somebody do that yeah sure i'll do that okay thank you um that way i can tell what questions are new um and let me see what else i have here how do we join for the six weeks i know y'all all excited it's about to come right now um brittany's gonna drop the link uh someone from emsdc is actually gonna drop the link into the chat um now and you can see that but i'll get into the details also okay because this is a special partnership that we're doing with emsdc to get this information in the hands of our small business owners with the biden harris administration having the um having the the very concerted effort um to redirect these funds to small businesses to kind of close the wealth gap that's what they've intended to do if you read the small business uh spec sheet you can just look that up um the small business fact sheet by dan harris administration or google that federal contracting binding harris you can kind of see what they're looking to do and at the same time my job really or my role is to make sure that our small businesses know that there are many ways to accomplish doing business with the federal government and so that's why i'm highlighting these three ways could you team and should you do subcontracting and all that stuff yeah you can do all of that um but i focus specifically on the low-hanging fruit like what gets you in the door what how can we start building your past performance the fastest and so for six weeks i'm going to be working directly with you me and my team we'll be working directly with small business owners for for six weeks we'll show up live on zoom we'll be on a zoom i mean a zoom classroom and if you're okay with my teaching style which is you know straight direct layman's terms clear cut uh then you're great for our class okay because it's hands-on and we also give you some self-paced work to work through and then we get back together um uh the following week so we meet every other week for six weeks and so you have me to hold your hand um during the six weeks and like i said every person every small business will pursue at least one opportunity and when i say pursue one opportunity that means you're either going to put in a price on something so i'm going to show you how to find something and price it and put in a price because some of you just need to overcome the fear of pressing go um okay so we'll do that or for somebody else it might be answering a source of thought opportunity or source assault notice or request for information if it's that then that's what you would do but you're going to do something it's not a course that you take and put on the shelf it is it is active okay um so the other pla the other thing uh the other way that you can win without writing proposals is gpc the government purchase cards so getting to know your purchase card holders there's micro purchases micro purchases are opportunities that are ten thousand dollars and under okay those are micro purchases the thing about micro purchases that that's a little different from gpc gpc is the actual program that's the card right they actually can use the card but a micro purchases micro purchase does not have to be paid for with a government card it can be paid for by purchase order by purchase card it can be paid for by a letter contract it could be well not paid for by a letter contract but it can it can be a letter contract so it it's just got to be under ten thousand dollars but at the same time it does not require competitive quote process or a procurement officer this is really really important too because most of you that learn about doing business with the government are instructed to go to sam.gov and find opportunities within your next code right that is the slowest possible most intimidating most frustrating way to ever find a federal opportunity period okay period it just is um not only that sam.gov tells you right when you when next time you go look at it it says that the requirements here are for requirements over 25 000 so you know what i started doing i started asking myself some questions i said sabrina if everything on sam.gov which back which you know used to be fbo gov um if everything is 25 000 and above on here where does where's 25 000 and below i mean that's just what i'm thinking right where's 25 and below if uh if this is 25 and above and so that kind of got me into looking into other ways to do um to find opportunities and so as i develop relationships with these different agencies i started asking a very important question where does your agency post opportunities that are 25 000 and below super important question the answer to that question is usually we don't or we post in our office or because posting they're not required by law to tell you they're not required by law to post anything um under the at the micro purchase level they don't have to because it would just be too much paperwork and so as you develop relationships with these which are as dubu and then they put you in contact with buyers you want to know about the the micro purchase opportunities that's where you want to inquire okay and so micro purchases is another way again we will get into more details in the course more accessible affordable all right so that's another way it's one way um they don't require competitive bids right micro purchases and um agencies can of course use their purchase card if that's what they if that's what they choose to um choose to do okay um all of this is found far apart 13. i'll click on it one time you guys can kind of see what it looks like how am i doing on time oh i'm doing pretty good i think i am okay thank you for the time check 15 minutes okay last one this is number three how do you win without writing proposals well my favorite system in the whole wide world is dibs and you do not hear this spoken about often at all and i have i have a whole course on this um but dibs it stands for the dla internet bid board system one of my absolute favorite systems okay um because there's a section on divs that's dedicated just to simplified acquisitions 250 000 and under and it's rfqs um the the the dibs is a um it's an internet well it's the internet big board system but it's a web-based application that's the word i was looking for it's a web-based application i'm going to show you what it looks like right now okay i'm going to show you what it looks like relax second um but it's connected to dla right so it's dla's way of saying to the small business community hey we need some stuff do you have it okay and they say this every day all day in the thousands so the dibs bid board system there are solicitations i mean over 800 solicitations issued every day for things like repair parts food clothing medical supplies construction material all kinds of things there's all kinds of opportunities on dibs and um it's my favorite agency it's my favorite system and this is where i've won hundreds of purchase orders okay so purchase orders and just another thing it's on it's the it's under this simplified acquisition method so can i show you something real quick can i just do a quick on what dibs looks like then i'll tell you about how you get involved with this six weeks and um and then we go from there okay so i want to make sure that you can see my internet screen you guys see me moving around the internet here hopefully that's a yes uh because i okay cool so i'm at dibs right now this is i'm only going to show you this by for demonstration purposes most people this is totally intimidating they don't know what they're looking at but i'm just going to show you something real quick so this is what today today's the 7th 1017 records found right so these are all solicitations you can see some of them are have a sb here that means they're set aside for small business this is unrestricted fast awards dibs has so many benefits um one there's only the only quote that you have to enter is all on one screen so there's no attachments there's no proposals they're not asking you for no extra anything they're asking you um for very specific information so like this is a refrigerator freezer okay right so i'm gonna click on here basically what they're saying right here is that they're looking for this item it needs to come from this company let's be clear right so it needs to come from this it needs to um be manufactured or come from here this company and this is the part number that they're looking for or whatever and as you open up like solicitations and things like this this is what i was telling you um this particular system they give you all kinds of stuff i mean award history and everything is right in the solicitation it's like my favorite system for a lot of different reasons okay i don't know if this one has award history because i didn't have um these queued up for you might be a new purchase or whatever but anyhow the sheer number of opportunities there's medical stuff a specimen cup a bedpan dental i mean all the things and there's only one um there's only one quote screen necessary clippers oh hat company okay um yeah so that's that's the screen that's dibs this um this rfq system i can't get into it too much um during the six weeks we do um we touch on dibs we won't go um too far into it but we do definitely like touch on it and i'll show it to you and after we get over this through the six weeks i'll kind of introduce you to some more um about uh about dibs but that's that's that's a whole nother system but that's another way that's our three ways guys so you have purchase cards right you have your micro purchases so inquiring about opportunities that are under 10 000 right and then you have a system like dibs these are three different ways that you can identify opportunities without writing proposals okay quick question another quick question how different would your business look if you applied just 20 of what you learned today see i am convinced as busy business owners you guys jump on webinars like it ain't nothing just because um and unfortunately many of you do not apply what you've heard for the last five years and i'm just gonna be straight with you because i'm the destroyer of comfort zones and that's how i am right but it is time for a new level of ai how many of you know what ai stands for we have some i.t people on here right ai well i have a different definition of ai um it is certainly artificial intelligence but for to me um if you attend a webinar a conference a workshop whatever and you don't seek to apply the information that you've learned you have officially become that much more artificially intelligent the ai that i'm most interested in is working with the folks that are ready to be activator of insights ai okay accelerators of information ai right want you to apply the information that kind of ai so how different here's what you can expect during the six week outline so we're gonna have some meeting times and all of it i think is on that link and this is just some of it some of what we're gonna do everything that we will do though will be dedicated to simplified acquisition so we'll go through certifications and registrations we'll define micro purchases how to find those purchase card holders that's not something i can do in an hour or i could if that was the only thing we were talking about we will go through um capability statements and briefings and things like that there's tips and tricks that i can share with you um to help you you know to help you in that area um we will talk governees right um and i'll i'll give you an example of governees we did something with our student group um talking about doing business as a cosmetologist with the federal government and um for those of you that are on the call you might you know you know what i'm talking about or you might even have one i don't know but with the cosmetologists and barbers we talked about lace fronts okay lace front wigs they're wigs for people that don't know but they're lace front wigs okay and cosmetologists in in the predominantly black community um do them all day every day well guess what the federal government buys lace fronts they just don't call it lace fronts people you know it's a cranial prosthesis but it's a lace front again governees if you just know the words to look for what to look for you could find opportunities for those that are into let's say service a construction um company i believe that every con every company that is a service-based company can also leverage relationships to provide products to the federal government as well and so the same way that you do let's say construction yeah construction so you use sheetrock to do what you do but the government also buys sheetrock by itself without your service and so why not leverage the same suppliers that you use for your supplies for your jobs and then just become a supplier so that you can supply that to the government same with i.t i mean you provide an i.t service but the government buys laptops and tablets and wires and things that you use to do your service do you see what i mean and so a lot of what i do personally guys is help you to see your business through fresh eyes and uncover opportunities that you might be overlooking governees the forecast will go into the forecast how to get ahead of opportunities um sourcing products uh how to quickly make a bid no bid decision and you do get homework and stuff um we go through a checklist it's all unteachable i give you a strategy map you name it you name it um so that's it i am done um i am going to look at some of these questions i don't um let me see okay i think with the information we could go further expanded uh dla are recordings available okay somebody answer that wait hold up i can answer that so this is being recorded um it will be available um once this is over on our website at the mscc.org we do have a video tab where you can view anything that we have previously recorded so uh serena's first line to learn is on there as well but this one will be oh brittany you just muted yourself i said this one this lunch and learn will be available also okay so guys was this valuable or what um i believe it was i've had a lot of fun with you guys today and um with one minute to spare are there any other questions so again we squeezed a gallon into a pint in this um in this hour but i believe that if nothing else you should be thinking about your business um in a different way how many of you are interested in joining us on the um for the six week cohort um brittany will go over kind of the details so it is for businesses that are certified through emsdc right so you have your mbe certification or your emsdc certification that it is for so we the program is 8.99 per company 899 dollars per company emsdc is doing a scholarship for the first for the next nine people because we're almost full from the last class so the next nine folks um will be able to get the scholarship and only pay half right brittany now i only pray half i'm telling you now if you come to serena on her own um it's it's a whole lot different so our course by itself is 1700 1797 something like that um so this is a great and you don't get me live that's the other thing like i don't work live um when you buy from me it's it's it's the self-paced course so getting into this cohort at 8.99 for six weeks that means if you win one opportunity it pays for itself i mean but i don't guarantee wins because i don't guarantee contracts i don't write contracts people okay or i would guarantee them but i can't um but i can guarantee that you will be better positioned and best positioned to succeed in this space so this is where you want to be so i do see a question in regards to who qualifies and who's eligible for the partial scholarship um the partial scholarship is available to those emscc certified those who are certified within another network but are subscribed to our council um but for further details on that you can be um you can reach out to me via email i'm gonna drop it here in the chat um i will say it's not limited to um just those who are certified it is open but unfortunately you will not be able to qualify for a scholarship um mwbe certified fatima i would just have to kind of like verify your certification so please email me um there is a verification process before the scholarship is actually applied um the core cohort begins actually monday february 21st so it's coming up soon um so you know if you're you're in it you're ready you know register as soon as possible um the information will be given out correctly a week before the actual event is starting yes yes yes so we need to get the get the names and get our roster together um because we have work to do over six weeks yeah so i think you pay hats do you pay half of the 8.99 yes they pay half of the 8.99 for those that qualify for the scholarship um their ems dc is giving you half off the 8.99 if you don't qualify for the scholarship and you're you're here you can still join you would join for 8.99 which is less than my normal outside of emsdc stuff okay so it would be the great and it's live like we said and just to give a little bit more background um the first week is live it's monday uh from 10 to 12. um the second week is self-paced we'll return back live the third week fourth week self-pace fifth week live and it'll alternate so um i know people you know have some time restraints and things like that but if that is something that you're available and commit to do um please please join us yeah so it's live every other week yeah so you'll be supported still but it's only live every other week because the way that my course is set up it's not informational it's application so you're going to have work to do so when we meet the first time there's work to do to get done and it's all working toward you pursuing an opportunity so week one live i'll introduce do orientation make sure everybody understands what they're doing and then week two it's all self-paced you'll get self-paced course you'll work through the activities and and they're short they're shortened to the point like serena all right um i'm i'm gonna ask one more time meg if you're on here can you please drop the link below um for those who know they're not qualified for scholarship you can register directly through the eventbrite link for those who of you who are inquiring about scholarship email me at brittany well b rivera emfcc.org i'm going to drop that in one more time um i will verify your certifications that you have that qualify for scholarship and we will get you guys going yep all right and if you want to follow us on um follow me on instagram or anything like that part of mission 500k that's what we're doing um so you can you know kind of see some of the information we've been sharing but this is this is a great opportunity awesome partnership with the msdc really excited to get started and again brittany will take all of your questions and i i hope you have found extreme value today go tell a friend go tell someone i was on this webinar this girl she crazy but it was good it's always it's always good information when serena's on um again this is being recorded it will be available at emscc.org for your viewing for anybody who wants um to just keep this on hand because there's some great information shared um as always thank you serena for joining us we are looking forward to this cohort that we are about to dive into i'm excited i will be your point of contact for that for those who are joining the team um and we look forward to seeing you within the next two weeks yeah all right have an awesome awesome week you guys bye-bye

Channel: Eastern MSDC

Views: 11,200

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Id: 0PMCNWTde6U

Length: 61min 52sec (3712 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 07 2022