Today, we're going to kick off a new series we’re calling friends in the industry, where we ring up our friends, chat about today's market and talk about what they're up to and what we've worked on together.
Today, we're going to kick off a new series we’re calling friends in the industry, where we ring up our friends, chat about today's market and talk about what they're up to and what we've worked on together.
Hey there, industry and welcome to Episode seven of GovCon Growth Bytes. Your source for expert advice and key strategies to grow your business one bite at a time. I'm your host, Maggie Bennett. And today I'm joined by Mike Anderson, director of advocacy for the Nakupuna Companies, which are a family of 8(a) and small businesses. Today, we're going to kick off a new series we’re calling friends in industry, where we ring up our friends, chat about today's market and talk about what they're up to and what we've worked on together. So with no ado whatsoever, Mike, greetings. Thank you for your time today. Yeah, it's great to be called a friend. I mean, love it. Well, we're really, really thankful for your time. Could you give us a quick introduction and just tell the listeners kind of who you are, your background in government contracting and what your current role is? Yeah. And you know, director of advocacy is a is a term because in effect, I'm advocating for our company. I'm advocating for native Hawaiian organizations as a whole. I'm advocating for 8(a), which is essential to companies to be able to grow and to be able to contribute. So that's kind of a name that kind of puts around there. In effect, I do business development. I also with a very specific focus on GWACs for my company, that's what I do. But in the meantime, I've done the whole gamut of capture activities for BD, lots of experience in not only in this company but in another company, the previous company for that Alaska Native Corporation. And I've also done government contracting from the other end of the from the other side, having a contracting squadron that worked for me that that was part of my organization when I was in the Air Force, for example, as well as working at it at the policy level, primarily both at headquarters, Air Force and also as a staffer, a chief of staff to a member of Congress where government contracting was extremely important to his constituency. So I've kind of done it from the strategic level, if you will, the strategic level, policy level, all the way down to the application level and the day to day kind of level. And in a large effect, I'm kind of a of a kind of a numbers walk to a data wonk in terms of getting to the debt, the procurement and federal procurement data system and that information. Great. Great. Sounds like you have a lot of expertize in a lot of areas and can bring that all together into one role. It's fun. Yeah, well, from that from that vantage point, with all that background as well as the current experience, what do you see as some of the most pressing issues that small business have in today's market? I would label them under what I would call to three Cs. The first issue is compliance issues about the time. There are some inconsistencies, for example, where you might have something that SBA puts out and 13 CFR 121 124 whatever it's going to apply to you. And, and it's ahead because it's being responsive to whatever Congress puts out and says, Thou shalt do and go do. So SBA will immediately put that up. But then the FAR Council or end or deFARS takes a little more time to do that. So there's potentially an opportunity in where you might have something in 13 CFR that says one thing, and yet in the FAR it says something else. And you're putting you're putting contracting officers in a tough position because most contracting officers at the 90% to say, well, it's in the FAR this is what we're going to follow. And yet you've got to provide them with that other information showing how that's going to help that. So so it's going to help their agency if you allow them if take a look at this 13 CFR rule that helps out small businesses within their agency and provides more competitive opportunities or competitive companies, you've got to be able to help that contracting out. So there's compliance issues with respect to that. And there's another part of that too, which says in compliance there's a lot of stuff to the small businesses to comply with. So in a small business, when the first thing they're complying with is paying their employees right, and it's going to be 30 to 60 days before they get that first paycheck from the government, whether you're a subcontractor or prime. It's kind of a tough position to be with in terms of compliance. The second C would be certifications because if we take a look at some of our GWACs that we've had, there are certifications that they're asking for, particularly with small businesses, that as a general rule, small businesses may or may not have. Certainly they're going to want to have some sort of ISO certification. Right. That's almost universal, not just in a GWAC, but pretty much in any anything. So you're going to want to go get that. And then the next thing is, if you're an I.T. company particularly well, there's this thing called CMMI. Well, you know, CMMI as a as a certification is can be costly. It can be extremely costly. So therefore a company is going to want to be more mature so that they've have a little bit more play room in terms of that overhead costs, which in turn affects rates, which in turn affects their competitiveness. And another good example of that was, for example, CMMC, those companies that jumped out ahead of schedule on CMMC. I had to kind of get ahead of the game because they want to be competitive. Yeah. Which is extremely our company, for example, did just a rough order of magnitude and we estimated that the cost of implementing CMMC was around$200K to $250K for our company alone. Goodness. Yeah. So, you know, the little listing that they do with that and oh, by the way, that goes against your rate. So the companies that are getting ahead of that, the smalls are putting that cost against that. That in turn affects their rates and that in turn affects their competitiveness. And yet, as we have seen in terms of certifications, that competitiveness or those certifications have been pushed out another X number of years. So, in effect, hurting those companies that jumped ahead so they could be competitive. Now, they've kind of hurt their competitiveness over the past three years. Right. So so certifications would be the second thing and keeping up with those and determining at what point you're going to be certified and how certified you need to be. Do you need to be level one, two, three, four or five, whatever the case may be? So those are our questions. And the last thing is, is just competition, competitiveness. You know, we start with one of those, but as a as a company, you're torn in many different directions, whether it's customer related compliance related certification or related . Another C, by the way, customer to to determine how you're going to be competitive in that industry. And for starters, what industry NAICS code, PSC code, whatever the case may be. What industry are you going to be competitive in? And we you can do all the research you would like to, but sometimes it's sometimes better to be be a blind squirrel that gets lucky and finds that right rather than somebody that goes to its expense. All the money that you can sometimes do it and come up with nothing in terms of how what what part of the world of contracting are you going to be a part of and you're going to play it? So three CS, that's a very excellent summary. Is there any particular one of those that you feel like your company is is leaning into at the moment? Our company has taken kind of a wait and see perspective with respect to certifications. We we we we've decided to manage that risk as best we can because it's all part of risk management. Compliance is kind of a black and white thing. Our company doesn't like to play any games in the gray. We want to make sure that if it's a compliance issue, we're going to do that. We're going to do we're going to go with that. So, you know, one's kind of a wait and see. One's a no questions. It's it's you either comply or not. So I would have to answer that. The third area is going to be competitiveness. Or how do you how do you better establish yourself competitive in the government market? And we've really focused in on that both from a strategic perspective as well as using data as much as we can to kind of make sure we understand what that market is, what that agency is doing. And the fundamental three basic questions who's the customer? What are they buying and how are they buying it? We're making sure we take a look at that very carefully. Excellent. And I know that you're you're a numbers man. So the data will come in a lot into that conversation. It has been, yes. Reflecting on our on our brief chat before we hit the record button, I know that we talked about how some of these platforms where you get a lot of this data for data procurement can be very tough to manage and tough to get into unless you're an expert on that particular platform. I know you've looked briefly into Fed Pipeline, which was one of rTurner's service offerings. Have you been able to glance into that and or any of the reports that we've been able to release and gotten any profit out of those? To be quite honest, yes, I have. The platform that you all have put together looks very good. And in the time that I've had with Robert to kind of go over some of the things that it provides, I think it's geared at a quick and easy, easiest, probably easy relative, right. But a quick and direct way to provide information that's going to be relevant, that's going to be actionable, and that's going to be accurate. So I particularly like because unless you know how to work the system, I particularly like how this system sifts through all the contract actions and distills that information down to just the. Contracts themselves. Because if I'm going to look for information, number one, I want more information to get a better idea at a higher level, a higher degree of accuracy. I want more information. I want more lines of data to be able to look at. I can't download hundreds of thousands of lines. Well, I can't download all the information that's out there in a federal procurement data system. However, I can look and specify just looking at contracts, which is what this platform, your platform does. It distills it down to the contracts. I have the benefit of multiple, multiple lines of code, thousands of lines of code. What is distilled down to that contract, which is really what I'm looking for because it's all there, right? I don't have to look at all the mods. I can look at the overall contract activity and make some decisions based on that. Excellent. Our CTO will be thrilled to hear that. I know Jim has spent a lot of time getting a substantial amount of data poured into that FedPipeline platform so that it can give you the concise bits that you're really looking for. Well worth the time. Well worth the time. Yep. Excellent. I'm so glad to hear that. I know you've also given a fair bit of your time to the webinars that we've been hosting recently. Have you? What sort of things have you particularly enjoyed or profited from that our team covered in a recent webinar? Well, it goes back to us talking in threes, right? I mean, it's got to be relevant. It's got to be accurate and it's got to be actionable. You can't walk away from one of your webinars without having relevant and accurate information now. Initially, you know, the first one I went through, what, two, three years ago, kind of a thing. Of course, as a new customer, you kind of compare it against. You're going to compare. Well, I've had time to compare. I've attended other GWAC type things, type webinars. And I can tell you the the trio that you have, Robert, Kathy and Josh, when you put that all together, there is there's no comparison with the others. The others are more reported. They report all this GWAC is going to do. This is going to do that. Okay. I can read that. Don't waste my time and tell me that what you all bring together is okay. Here's the nuance of that information. Here's some of the things you need to think about. Here's the kind of information that's going to help your company perhaps win this. And oh, by the way, which. The other thing that you provide is the teaming you know, the teaming report that that information's there, as well as the opportunity for those who are not subscribe, but to be able to have reports based on your platform that shows that which is a great purpose, right. On both advertising and at the same time, you're providing information that they can use that's actionable that says, okay, here's the data I can use to go find the right companies that maybe I'll want to team with, maybe I want a joint venture with. So all in all, I look forward to it. Well, a good one, Polaris. Every time there was a wonderful change that came out of NITAAC that was nonprofit. Let's go let's go see what Polaris CIO-SP4 That's the one that's that's the the one that we will benchmark forever, right? Oh, it just never stops. We're waiting for the next change. Good grief. But you know, the worst year CIO-SP4 came out with something you had the boom there was you could depend that there was going to be something coming out that's going to say from from rTurner Consulting that was gonna say here's what you need to know is it here is the questions you need to be asking. Here's what you should be doing. And and it was all it was like spot on. It was spot. I ran that around that, that proposal for my company and I found it as a as the proposal director, just there. Very spot on, loved. Thank you. Thank you, Mike. That's incredibly helpful to hear. And I look forward to the rest of the team listening in to to your very, very kind words. We're thrilled that it was so helpful to you. And I know Robert also likes his trio of words. His his brainchild was value integrity, excellence. And that's what he wanted every part of his company's efforts to revolve around. And so to hear that the webinars and the teaming reports and things like that are relevant and accurate and actionable, I think that will just be an absolute treat for him to hear. So thank you for that. Well, that. Yeah, thank you. Appreciate that. Thank you. Are there any upcoming topics that you'd like us to to cover in the future? You know, I know we had just a little previous conversation, but, you know, whenever McDonald's tries to sell something other than hamburgers, it becomes, you know, a huge investment question for me. Right. So if I'm going to go get the best chicken sandwich out. You know where I'm going to go? I'm going to go Chick-Fil-A and in Virginia, if I want the best hamburger, I'm probably going to go to five guys. As far as fast food goes, right, that's where I'm going. I'm not going to go to fast guys, to get chicken. They don't sell chicken. And I'm not going to go with Chick fil A to get hamburgers because they don't sell hamburgers. I think you guys produce the best. GWAC type reports and the GWAC reporting in the industry, you're the go to as far as I'm concerned. It's fun to see the audiences that you have up in the numbers that you have on your on your Zoom meetings, because I take a look at that. That means a lot of other folks are agreeing with that that that with that conclusion, that that assessment that I've made. So I would say, just keep doing what you're doing because you're doing awesome. Take a look at that platform. Keep that platform going and getting it out there, the information. But there's plenty of GWACs coming out there that we're going to need help with. And you guys are huge advocates, not just for us, but also for us to be able to go to folks like the SBA and folks like those agencies like GSA or NITAAC or whoever it's going to be and say, hey, you ought to be thinking about this. You ought to be thinking about that. And I think stay with that because that's your niche. Those are your hamburgers. Go, go, stay with it. Excellent. Well, we'd love to be the five guys of the market or the the Chick-Fil-A of the GWAC seminars. I'm all about it. I'm all about it. Yeah. To to that end, we look forward to helping you further in the future. And if the if the listener is particularly keen on learning more about your company, where can working the listener find you? And I'm going to spell it Nakupuna.com. And that's where our business lines are. If you want to look at our foundation and what we do to give back to the native Hawaiian community, we're at the Just Google the Nakapuna Foundation Nakupuna Foundation. We're a group of families that believes in doing incredibly great things and providing incredibly great solutions for our for our for our clients and customers. I love it. That sounds incredible. Thank you again, Mike, for your time. And with that, I think we're going to call it a day and get back to work. All right. Thank you, ma'am. Good talking with you, Maggie. Thank you, Mike. I appreciate your time. All right. Bye bye.