E054 - AI or Not - Carroll Bernard and Pamela Isom

Welcome to "AI or Not," the podcast where we explore the intersection of digital transformation and real-world wisdom, hosted by the accomplished Pamela Isom. With over 25 years of experience guiding leaders in corporate, public, and private sectors, Pamela, the CEO and Founder of IsAdvice & Consulting LLC, is a veteran in successfully navigating the complex realms of artificial intelligence, innovation, cyber issues, governance, data management, and ethical decision-making.

Tired of watching incumbents sweep up federal work while your proposals stall? We sit down with Carroll Bernard—Navy veteran, former SBA insider, and co-founder of Govology—to unpack a practical path small businesses can use to win today: start where you can win, build real value, and put AI to work on the right problems.

Carroll traces his journey from supply officer to educator, explaining how Govology has trained over 25,000 learners and why early pursuit beats last-minute bids. We dig into the hidden power of micro purchases as a low-friction onramp, the bigger opportunity across state and local markets, and the mindset shift from chasing certifications to delivering best-value outcomes. You’ll hear why proposals are the final step—not the strategy—and how conversations about gaps, goals, and pain points can shape buyer demand long before a solicitation hits SAM.gov.

We also get tactical with AI. Instead of dangling six-figure platforms, Carroll shows how to map processes, target bottlenecks, and decide where simple automation is enough and where AI’s reasoning adds lift. From using ChatGPT to flag contract risks and sharpen copy to activating Microsoft Copilot and SharePoint, we focus on tools you likely already have. We talk governance, security, and change management so your investment doesn’t gather dust. And we preview Govology’s SAMI chatbot—an AI concierge that turns a course library into a guided learning experience, hinting at a future where every small contractor deploys AI agents to inform buyers, surface past performance, and accelerate decisions.

If you’re a small or disadvantaged business owner looking for a playbook you can afford, this conversation will help you design a value ladder, pick your first winnable targets, and integrate AI step by step with human oversight. Subscribe, share this episode with a fellow founder navigating procurement, and leave a review with the one workflow you’ll automate first.

Transcript

[00:00] Pamela Isom: This podcast is for informational purposes only.

[00:26] Personal views and opinions expressed by our podcast guests are their own and not legal advice,

[00:34] neither health, tax nor professional nor official statements by their organizations.

[00:42] Guest views may not be those of the host.

[00:50] Hello and welcome to AI or not, the podcast where business leaders from around the globe share wisdom and insights that are needed right now to address issues and guide success in your artificial intelligence and digital transformation journey.

[01:06] We have a wonderful guest with us today,

[01:09] Carroll Bernard.

[01:11] Carroll is co founder of Govology.com 

[01:17] And we do business together and I have been a guest on his wonderful show.

[01:23] There's more that he and I have done together and there's more to him and his entrepreneurship,

[01:29] so I'll let him talk about that. Carroll,

[01:32] thanks for joining me and welcome to AI Or Not.

[01:35] Carroll Bernard: Thank you so much. Pamela. Thank you for having me. I'm excited for the conversation today.

[01:40] Pamela Isom: Yes, excited to hear what all you have to say. And let's go ahead and get started. And let's have you start by talking about yourself,

[01:48] your career journey.

[01:50] I'm curious about your experiences as an entrepreneur and how that's going. And last, if you can remember,

[01:59] tell me more about your trajectory, particularly with Cabology.

[02:04] Carroll Bernard: Yeah, absolutely. And so,

[02:06] well, in a just a brief kind of nutshell, I'll try to go through it very fast. So let's go back to the year 2001. Well, and even before that I was in the Navy.

[02:17] I had two tours of service, but my second tour of service I was a supply officer in the Navy and I did about 13 years in total service in the Navy.

[02:26] And when I was in the Supply Corps, that's when I started getting involved with the acquisition community.

[02:32] And after I came off of active duty, I continued to work in procurement. I worked for a local city agency up in Washington State,

[02:40] went back into federal service working as a contracting officer for the Department of Veterans Affairs. My last job in the government was at the U.S. small Business Administration and there I worked with a lot of the small businesses trying to get government contracts from small disadvantaged businesses.

[02:56] The 8A program service disabled veterans, veterans, women owned business, HubZone business, those were the big programs that I really worked to help people with. But really any small business that called our office,

[03:09] I was really trying to do my best to help them out to navigate opportunities inside of the government marketplace. And there's a lot of them. But the challenge is we didn't really have a lot of education to give them at the time.

[03:21] So seeing this left the SBA and we set off to develop robust website that small businesses could access to really learn the ropes about navigating the government marketplace.

[03:34] Initially our business was named Waypoint America llc. That's still our parent company. But when we came across the name Govology, we really liked it. So that's really most of what you're going to see from us is Govology and our website govology.com and, and we have over 165 classes now on all kinds of different topics related to government contracting.

[03:54] And I'm so glad to have got to meet you Pamela, last year and have you come on board and teach some cool classes on cybersecurity. And we got another one,

[04:04] some more coming up this year in cybersecurity and then AI thing. So I'm really excited about the topic of AI. I'm really excited to talk about it.

[04:13] And that's about where we're also looking at our business. So basically the last decade plus we've really been focusing on developing this educational platform. We've got over 25,000 students that we've trained through the platform.

[04:27] Since then we've worked with a lot of, you know, centers, grant funded centers, apex accelerator centers across the country that can get our education through our partnerships with those centers at no cost to them a lot of times.

[04:41] And so it's just really been a great ride and but I'm continuously looking to how do we basically continue to help businesses navigate this marketplace because even with the education there's still some challenges.

[04:57] And I got excited about education like more than a decade ago and we had a great run. And I'm really now excited again about this opportunity within AI because I'm seeing some things that where small businesses could really start to level the playing field for themselves instead of trying to wait for government to level the playing field for them.

[05:20] It's like there's a lot of tools that people can put into play and some of the big companies, they can't move as fast and they've got more people that they need to deal with.

[05:30] And so I can't wait to see what the future has in store. But I also am a little bit concerned at the same time from some of the businesses that I still see that I've talked to last year, they're like sitting on the sidelines.

[05:43] They don't like it, they don't trust it yet. And so I know we can kind of dive into a lot of these topics inside of today's show, but thank you.

[05:51] And that's where we're looking to really go next year and beyond is really now to take our educational content and see how we enhance our platform with AI to really bring better value to our customers.

[06:05] I think that's at the core what every business owner should be thinking about right now. It's like,

[06:12] yes, you can use AI to save money to do some different things. Yes, you can use it as a force multiplier for your team.

[06:19] Yes, you can use it to maybe help yourself stay relevant. But at the end of the day, and when we talk about government contracting in particular, where it's a lot of times about best value,

[06:30] think about how can a new AI tool that you can bring into your company not only serve you, but also serve your client in ways so you can get maybe a best value advantage in those competitions.

[06:43] Pamela Isom: I don't believe we think about the best value advantage as well as we should and AI being a contributor to that.

[06:50] So that's good insights because like you said, we are using it for. We are considering it for some things,

[06:56] but I don't believe I've heard some of my clients speak to best value advantage like you put it. So I believe that that is a really good point to bring out.

[07:08] Carroll Bernard: Yeah.

[07:08] Pamela Isom: So speaking of that,

[07:10] you must have some success tips and strategies that you can share with us.

[07:16] I'd like to hear the success tips and strategies relative to your career journey, which also ties to your AI experiences.

[07:26] So go for it.

[07:28] Carroll Bernard: Yeah. You know, I think one of the biggest things that I think about a lot,

[07:33] and it, I mean, in all this journey that I've been on over a decade,

[07:37] really, a couple of things really started to kind of like,

[07:41] resonate with me or maybe show up more and more the longer I've been doing this. And one of those things is that everybody's journey is going to be a bit different.

[07:52] And so you cannot base your journey off of somebody else's journey.

[07:56] You see and you maybe hear online,

[07:58] I know there's a lot of influencers, like, I made this much money, a government contract, and everybody's like, running over there to sign up for their program.

[08:06] But the reality of it is that their journey's different.

[08:09] Their starting point was different, their resources was different,

[08:13] their relationships may have been different,

[08:16] how long that they've been in business could have been different.

[08:19] The specific items that they sold could have been different.

[08:23] And so what we really talk about a lot and what I teach a lot, I've got a cohort called the Procurement Readiness Academy. We also partner with some of our APEX centers on this Procurement Readiness Academy.

[08:34] But that's a big part about finding your own pathway.

[08:39] Now you might look similar to another person's journey, but you need to find your own pathway and also need to find your fit.

[08:47] I think what happens too often is that when small businesses come in, they're going straight for the millions and they're passing up the a hundred thousand dollars opportunities, you know,

[08:57] and it's very hard to go from zero to multimillion dollar contracts. And we could talk about that for another podcast. But people are missing opportunities that are a lot easier.

[09:11] For example, I mean you do cybersecurity.

[09:14] It's enormously expensive for cybersecurity stuff nowadays with the government.

[09:20] But there's also areas where a lot of small businesses can compete, like under the micro purchase threshold, which has now moved up to $15,000 for federal contracting.

[09:30] Before that move, it was like $92 billion spent with small businesses on micro purchase P cards. Purchase cards, you know,

[09:38] but they're never going to really put those out as a solicitation because they don't have to. So you have to have a completely different strategy in navigating your own sales channels to get that type of a business other than maybe a big company that's been in it for years.

[09:57] And they're really, they're just waiting for those recompetes to come out and they're doing their big huge proposals. They got a 6 person to 10 person proposal writing team,

[10:08] et cetera. So that's, I think one of the biggest tips that I would say is like for any business coming into this market, just think about what your starting point is and don't get too frustrated if you're not seeing it right away materialize for you into those big contracts.

[10:25] Because there's a pathway and there's a lot of opportunities to participate.

[10:30] And not just in the federal,

[10:32] but if we look at expanding out beyond to state and local, their spend is like three times the size of the federal government. So you're talking about like 700 plus billion with feds,

[10:43] like probably about 1.5 billion with state and local.

[10:47] And state and local can also be a little easier for folks to access as a starting point. So that's the one thing that I would say is that don't try to do the one size fits all strategy.

[10:59] And really that's why I'm such a advocate for education, because I think we really without the education,

[11:06] if it's not impossible to succeed, it's very hard.

[11:10] And if you do succeed without the education and you're setting yourself up for a lot of bad things that can happen within non compliance of meeting certain terms. And we see it every year where like, oh, this contractor didn't pay the prevailing wage rate on their subcontractor.

[11:27] They owe now a million dollars.

[11:29] Pamela Isom: I agree.

[11:30] So I think the point about find your own pathway.

[11:36] I know when I first launched my small business,

[11:42] I remember thinking that this is gonna be so good,

[11:49] right.

[11:50] I went through the typical cycle where you're like, okay, we're gonna go out here, we're gonna do this, we're gonna launch and we're gonna kick off this, we're gonna do that.

[11:59] And then it started out like I thought people would invest faster because I knew who I was from being from government. Da da da da.

[12:09] All of that took time.

[12:11] Carroll Bernard: Oh yeah.

[12:12] It's kind of funny because,

[12:14] you know, I went to try to sell some of the folks that I used to work for.

[12:18] That was the hardest business to get for me.

[12:20] Literally sometimes took me four or five years on calling on them.

[12:24] And you never know who's going to give you a chance.

[12:28] Yeah. Again, even our journey, like when I started out,

[12:32] just because I was able to understand those procurement thresholds and I basically purposefully set the pricing of what we had at the lower tiers below those micro purchase thresholds so that if I design my journey and design my sales process that I could activate and execute on at the end of that journey,

[12:57] if I could convince somebody that what I had was value to them,

[13:01] the purchase could happen without having to go through competition and a bunch of hoops. You know,

[13:06] once you go over certain thresholds now, the competition has to kick in and the bigger that the contracts go, the more the government is going to be reliant on those past performance and past experiences.

[13:20] Pamela Isom: I do think that what you described is a success tip.

[13:24] Right. So form your own way, establish your own pathway, know that it takes time,

[13:30] keep at it,

[13:31] and then go for. It's okay if you want to be a part of a larger organization, but a larger contract. But like you said,

[13:41] sometimes the starting point may be the,

[13:44] the micro opportunity. So I believe that that is a good tip. So I appreciate that.

[13:52] Carroll Bernard: I will give one more tip that's related to AI since we're going to be talking about AI today,

[13:58] I think a lot of opportunities don't really exist in the world of incumbency. Which means that like, here's what the government's always been buying, like here's the construction, we always buy this.

[14:10] But they do have the people that they like to buy from. And sometimes it's hard to come in and unseat incumbent contractors that's been working in there for a long time that's had the relationships.

[14:22] So what I like to look at is where are the gaps or where are the challenges that are not being resolved? So if you're talking to customers or prospective customers,

[14:33] this is something important to ask them, like, what is the challenges and gaps that are not being resolved?

[14:39] And I think that with the AI tools coming into play that small businesses can now employ to help to solve some of those challenges and gaps like they've never been solved before.

[14:52] I tried to do this with the acquisition education at the va, which I used to work for.

[14:58] By the time I got to the director of a particular place, they're like, oh, we have somebody for that. I'm like, yeah, but are they going to be here forever?

[15:06] But, you know,

[15:07] people don't like change in the government too much, so they would like to keep working with the contractors. But sometimes that competitive cycle is not always fair, in my opinion.

[15:18] Pamela Isom: How do you use AI to help you add value to your services that you bring to the table and also communicate and convey that value?

[15:28] Speaking of AI, we have talked about the use of AI tools in past conversations. So we've talked about that. I am wondering if you can talk about more about what you are finding available and relevant for government contractors and think about it from early pursuit.

[15:48] You talk about acquisitions,

[15:50] so the early pursuit to acquisitions, to performance and beyond. What are you finding that's useful and give us some examples.

[15:59] Carroll Bernard: Yeah, So I haven't used a lot of the proposal writing. I haven't used any of the proposal writing tools. But right now I'm not pursuing prime contracts. Most of my work in government contracting is on the subcontracting level right now.

[16:14] And again, my journey is different than others. Right.

[16:17] But one of the things that I have seen that's been more popular out there is some of the AI proposal writing tools. Just a few names that I've heard of rogue AI.

[16:29] There's another platform called Cletus. I met the owners of that company out in DC last year. Seemed like really nice guys. And I intend to have a meeting with them and see maybe how we can collaborate.

[16:43] One of the interesting things about the proposal writing thing,

[16:47] everybody wants to rush to the proposal writing.

[16:50] Everybody wants the proposal writing training. If I send out a survey right now to our community,

[16:56] I can guarantee you the top request would be for proposal writing training. And we do proposal writing training.

[17:02] But I think that it. There's a miss there because the proposal writing is the last step in the formalization of you putting in an offer to an agency that's going to consider that offer.

[17:18] And what a lot of people miss is all of that preliminary legwork that takes place.

[17:23] And a lot of the savvy contractors are not just sitting back waiting for things to arrive in their email box and then they're going to bid on them. They're out there networking,

[17:32] they're meeting people, they're developing relationships, they're talking to their prospective customers about challenges that they might have. What are their goals, you know, what are the gaps, what are their needs?

[17:44] And then they're going back and sharpening their pencil,

[17:48] coming up with some solutions for them and then coming back to them with that.

[17:53] Well, if it's an incumbent contract, it basically, you know, repeats incumbent means there's a,

[17:59] like a cyclical contract. Some of these go for five years, and then another five years there's going to be a competitive cycle, by the way,

[18:07] which incumbents typically have an advantage, about 60 to 70% win rate, from what I've heard and looked at and observed.

[18:15] So you could see coming in to try to unseat an incumbent is quite challenging.

[18:21] But what I'm saying is that for some of the new opportunities that are happening out there, maybe where there wasn't an incumbent, there's typically a conversation that is being had between two entities, the government and a business.

[18:34] And there's some back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And then their government's like, oh, I really like what you're proposing here,

[18:41] but it's going to be over the $25,000,

[18:44] so we're going to have to take it through competition. So be ready.

[18:48] So what I would say is don't think just of the proposal phase and don't just be sold. If somebody's calling you up,

[18:56] it's like, hey, we could submit a hundred proposals a month on your behalf.

[19:02] Okay, well,

[19:03] that sounds good.

[19:05] But without really understanding the agency's requirements and what the compliance metrics are and preparing yourself in advance, I mean, look at you teach cybersecurity, Pam. I mean, it's like,

[19:18] okay,

[19:19] if you want to sell to the DoD and what you sell requires you to be CMMC,

[19:24] like Level 1 or Level 2 certified,

[19:27] and all of a sudden you buy a proposal writing tool that's going to send out a hundred proposals,

[19:31] that's not going to do you much good because you're not going to be eligible to get that contract because you have not done any of that preliminary legwork in preparation for that opportunity.

[19:45] You could pay 20, 25 bucks a month to have a chat GPT teams account which does not get trained. They don't use that data to train on models. Now you don't want to put sensitive information in those models.

[20:00] That's why AI is not a push button solution. And there's a lot that goes into the thought of employing an AI system into your business. That's why you're a consultant family that people should call you to talk about the governance that's going to be required,

[20:15] the security that's going to be required,

[20:18] the change management to making sure that like your employees, if you're going to buy this tool are going to be using it. I had a buddy that went to work for one of the biggest contractors in a specific category.

[20:30] I'm not going to name the contractor, but they bought a $45,000 a year contract management system.

[20:37] But the contracting director was adamantly against using AI and so they never used it. Two years they paid so $90,000 down the hole.

[20:50] Nobody ever used that system.

[20:53] And then when my buddy that went into this place started having these conversations up the chain of command,

[21:00] you know, then they put him in contact with their IT department and said, look, we can do AI things. And like they realized that they had everything that they needed right within their Microsoft environment.

[21:11] They had SharePoint,

[21:12] they had Copilot, they just didn't put any of those tools into play. But all that was needed to happen there is for one person in the department to go and talk to the IT person.

[21:25] Now IT people are very up to speed on AI these days and they could do a lot of things.

[21:30] And basically they were able to start to put together things that was really helping that one department get out of the 1980s. As my friend like to say it,

[21:41] they were literally working like 60, 70, 80 hour work weeks, you know, and he's like, I'm not going to work that much.

[21:49] So I think, I guess to answer the question, I mean that kind of goes to the AI tools, but you'll see a lot of big things out there. But I think what I would point folks to is to look at what is really generally accessible and available that you can use.

[22:05] Like there's a lot of things that you can do with ChatGPT and I got a few case studies, some of my favorite ones that I like to use.

[22:13] Number one is just brainstorming and guidance.

[22:16] I work with Chad GPT almost on an Hourly basis throughout the day.

[22:21] I'll use it for strategy. I'll use it for helping me assess things that I'm going to buy both in my personal life and in my business life. It's probably saved me thousands of dollars.

[22:32] I've used it for contract review and contract creation. It works great for that.

[22:37] In fact,

[22:38] you know, I'm a service disabled veteran. I've got the certification.

[22:42] Last year, somebody was proposing a partnership with me and I'm like, all right, we'll send over your contract. They did.

[22:48] And rather than having to go back and forth with my attorney five or six times, which cost a lot of money, I basically put the contract into ChatGPT and I said,

[22:59] you know, show me what red flags might exist here.

[23:03] Also, because I'm a service disabled veteran owned small business,

[23:07] show me any way that this document might put my certification in jeopardy. And this is something important for small businesses to really take into account when they start signing contracts with people,

[23:19] because the government looks at those contracts and how things are interacting between parties. And so it also flags some concerns.

[23:28] So without even having to go to my attorney,

[23:30] I just sent them the document and I said, hey,

[23:34] address these.

[23:35] And they never really came back to me with it. And that partnership never happened. But that could have been five or six trips back and forth to the attorney. Now, I don't want to devalue attorneys.

[23:47] No,

[23:48] I would have certainly want, like what my plan is now is to kind of go back and forth with the party that I'm having a contractual discussion with,

[23:57] iron out as much as I can, and then get maybe a finalized clean document to my attorney because I fell into that hole.

[24:06] Like the year before last, we went after this huge grant. I was working out with a D.C. attorney because I wasn't very versed in the grants world as I am in the federal contracting world.

[24:16] And we went back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.

[24:20] And boy, I tell you what, I paid a lot of money. So I really like that component. ChatGPT could do a really good job, things like that,

[24:29] writing sales and marketing copy. We use a lot now for creating titles and descriptions for some of our training on our website.

[24:37] But just overall, one of the things that I'm really excited about that we're adding in 2026 here and it's going to roll out any day now.

[24:45] But@govology.com we're adding our first AI enhancement to our platform,

[24:52] which is a chatbot named SAMI.

[24:54] And SAMI is going to initially start out as a concierge Slash support assistant. So we're kind of tying it in with our.

[25:04] Our support desk. And so people can kind of look from FAQs to kind of get self service without having to submit a support ticket. And if they kind of run the course and they can't find that help, it can just create a support ticket for them.

[25:20] But it's also going to help people start to come to the website and ask, like, for example,

[25:26] like, what do I need to know about cybersecurity? It can tell them a little bit, but then it can lead them and help them find some of the courses that are in our on demand library, where sometimes once we get those on demand,

[25:40] people don't necessarily know to go and look for things over there. So it's going to be a nice enhancement to sit on that front page and basically help people find things better.

[25:51] But then as. As we go through the year and into the future,

[25:57] we're really looking at, like, how can we use Sammi to enhance the value of educating our students?

[26:06] And I think about the ultimate form of education. Have you ever seen the Matrix?

[26:12] So that little scene where like,

[26:14] Neo asks Trinity if she could fly this helicopter, she's like, oh, hold on.

[26:19] She links up and like, downloads and she's gone. You know,

[26:23] that's the ultimate.

[26:24] And like,

[26:25] some people would say that, like, we may not be that far from that kind of a thing, but that's kind of freaky, to be honest.

[26:33] But like, how fast can we help somebody know what they need to know to go off and do what they need to do is my goal.

[26:41] And I think this next enhancement of Sami that Elena and I.

[26:45] Elena is my wife, business partner and CEO of our company,

[26:49] and the technical architect of that. And we've been putting in a lot of work into that, and we're excited to get that rolling out.

[26:57] Pamela Isom: That's exciting. I look forward to hearing more about what. How SAMI is being helpful.

[27:03] Carroll Bernard: Yeah, absolutely. I'm sure we'll be talking about it a lot next year.

[27:06] Pamela Isom: I look forward to working with you, period. But I'm really interested to hear how you are collecting the information from SAMI because you realize you've now got a repository that you're creating.

[27:17] Yeah, we'll learn from that. But then there's a lot you can do with that. While we respect people's privacy, there's a lot you can do with that information to make your platform even better.

[27:27] Carroll Bernard: Yeah, but this is just one of the ways that I see a big opportunity and I think about small businesses and websites right it's like for a while it took a lot of small businesses.

[27:38] There's still some people that struggle with getting a basic website up. There's AI tools that basically you can basically speak into, chat GPT,

[27:47] tell it what kind of website you want and get instructions and go into a tool like Gamma IO,

[27:54] plug that instruction in there and it will create a website for you that all you need to do is tweak it, you hit a button to publish it and you're,

[28:01] you've got a website.

[28:03] So that's the kind of thing where it's like, it's making just simple things like that used to be hard,

[28:10] simpler. Right.

[28:12] And now I start to think about like what will with what we're doing with SAMI. And I can see into the future where everybody's going to have an AI agent or a little bot right on their website that can interact with customers.

[28:26] And if government contractors, like, if somebody's come in there, it's like, okay,

[28:30] look at our products and services and past performance. But maybe once they start to plug all of their past performance and information about their projects into the repository and their approach and all of these things,

[28:42] their customers can go right to their website to just learn more about that contractor and how they operate and where they serve and the whole nine yards.

[28:51] I think that's actually a big area of opportunity for a small business that wants to be a website enhancement person. Of course they're probably going to have a better title than website enhancement person.

[29:02] I don't know what they would be called. AI Enhanced Website Architect,

[29:06] who knows?

[29:07] Pamela Isom: But at least the opportunities. The thing is that there are opportunities and it's based on keeping up with what's trending and the small businesses then going after that. Because sometimes those that are really, really big don't really have the bandwidth.

[29:21] So there's an option,

[29:22] the small businesses to grab it and capture it right away based on our experiences.

[29:28] So we see that there's that need. So I think that that's good.

[29:31] Since I heard you mention some of the challenges as well as you've talked about some of the opportunities,

[29:36] you gave some good examples of AI investments and the example.

[29:42] So here's the thing with the investments.

[29:44] So I'm big on governance as you mentioned.

[29:48] Yeah,

[29:49] I think that it's really important to understand the business case up front. The business case, also the research that happens up front. But what you were, or at least some of what I heard is the discussion needs to happen on why AI instead of a non AI solution, what business problem Is it really going to solve?

[30:09] What does success mean?

[30:11] Right. So you say like these kind of conversations with who's involved in the decision making and how will it benefit them.

[30:19] And when you start to not think about who will benefit from a holistic perspective, then that's when we end up making investments or you invest and no one uses it.

[30:31] And so. Yeah, and then who bears the risk? Who bears the reward?

[30:36] Who bears the downside of the benefits? So there's benefits. And if who bears the Dow,

[30:42] who's accountable?

[30:45] How are the risks gonna be treated? Are they gonna be treated as a technical or organizational situation? Right, organizational risk. Because we gotta be prepared to know what to do about it.

[30:55] And a lot of times.

[30:56] So you've heard me say this before. Like, I say this, like I learned this years ago, like when I first started my career, the happy path. Like, we just think everything's gonna work like we intended it to work.

[31:09] Why do we do that? Yeah, why do we do that? We know that that's not the case. That's not even life.

[31:16] Carroll Bernard: Yeah.

[31:17] Pamela Isom: I can hardly do something one day one way and repeat that same path the next day.

[31:24] It's just not life.

[31:26] And so I think that variety is an opportunity.

[31:31] Variety is that opportunity is right there. Right. Because things are not always the same. And when we're vetting and testing,

[31:40] small businesses could help with understanding, like, what are some other things to consider?

[31:45] It's not that they're being negative,

[31:47] they're considering all different pathways.

[31:50] Right. And so that's an opportunity, I think, for, for small business. But you heard me talk about that before. Right, so. But this is so important. And you alluded to that and mentioned it a couple of times.

[32:01] I just wanted to reiterate that.

[32:03] So you also talked about how you're integrating AI into your business model. And I like SAMI. I like SAMI already.

[32:10] And then we had talked in the past about just assigning roles. AI. A specific role. Like the AI. I have an AI agent and it's responsible for governance. It's responsible for ensuring that the governance practices that I teach are reinforced.

[32:31] Yeah,

[32:31] it does. But we also have explored the concept of having an agent that's there for a specific purpose or a specific role.

[32:41] What's your take on that? Are you still leaning that way?

[32:44] Carroll Bernard: Yeah, we haven't got that advanced yet into it where we have been able to implement it. But the way that I look at our small organization, I mean, we are like two full time employees that do a very big job.

[32:58] Like a lot of times people think that we're bigger than we are. You know, we have two full time employees, myself and my wife and a couple of like part time helpers and we've got some contractors and like our education partners like yourself.

[33:13] But we're able to do a lot. And what's interesting about things is that it doesn't always have to be an AI solution to get to the next level. A lot of the ways that we've been able to expand and do the things that we've been doing is because Elena has really become an expert in automation and using automation tools to make things happen together.

[33:37] Right. So when you're looking at workflow of a small business,

[33:42] a lot of times those automation tools have been there for years, just as nobody has taken the time to put the automations into play inside of their business. And so when I think about an organizational structure, I think about workflow and then I think about the people that are in the organizational chain.

[34:00] And I know you and I had talked about this, it's like,

[34:03] let's just say like for cybersecurity,

[34:07] like I don't want to be the cybersecurity expert. I'm not inclined to kind of do that thing.

[34:13] Can there be an AI agent? And a lot of people don't even know what an AI agent is really these days, which is different.

[34:20] Which is basically think about a person in your organization that maybe you don't have now. The big companies are just replacing people with AI and agents.

[34:32] So where there used to be a human, there's now an AI that is doing that role.

[34:36] But with small businesses I think we never had that person to begin with and that was always one of our challenges. Like if you're a business owner now, you're doing like wearing all of these hats and you cannot effectively serve your customers.

[34:51] At the same time you're doing full time sales and marketing and when you're not sales and marketing, you're not getting new business and new growth.

[34:59] So I see where we can now start and this is where we're going to be looking at in 2026 to take a look at like who's in our org chart.

[35:09] Like where is Elena and I doing five different jobs in the org chart.

[35:15] Where can we maybe now leverage an AI agent to plug in that can functionally process the workflow required for that activity?

[35:26] But we also still give it oversight. You always want to have the oversight of the AI by the humans, you know, so it's always going to be this, this oversight and collaboration between AI and I Think that that's what a lot of people are kind of missing this, this day.

[35:43] There's just, there's a lot of education that needs to happen out there and that's why I'm going to be sharing. You know, before we end this, I want to give a couple of points of direction for folks to maybe go to.

[35:56] If you want to really start getting up to speed with the AI things.

[36:00] I've got a few suggestions before we go today, so make sure we circle back to that one.

[36:05] Pamela Isom: So that was really good. I like the fact that we want to use AI. We want to assign AI a specific role within the organization and we have to strategically think through what makes sense.

[36:17] Is it a business analyst? Right. Is it the business atlas role?

[36:20] Because is it a mini researcher or the early stages of research? Maybe we give that to the AI agent to do where we have to think through that very strategically.

[36:33] Carroll Bernard: And I think sometimes. Where do you start?

[36:35] Yeah, I think sometimes you start to look at what's your biggest bottleneck or what's your biggest challenge. Right. If your biggest challenge is basically working even a part time effort in your sales department, then maybe you look at some kind of tools that'll help you generate more outreach to your prospective customers.

[36:54] Like the big contractor that I was telling you about that had the $45,000 a year AI tool. They weren't even solving their own little challenges of having to work 80 hours a week.

[37:05] But they were doing things very manual like administrative contract functions, like simply going to a government website to look up the most recent prevailing wage rates and matching those into a database and a report.

[37:20] They were all doing that manually. So now you take a look at that, it's like, hey,

[37:24] we don't need somebody to do that manually.

[37:26] We could set up an AI agent to do this and it could do it like lickety split instead of taking days.

[37:33] Right? It could do it. And now we can have the human just oversee to make sure that the functioning and the, the the result is accurate.

[37:43] That's just an example. Right.

[37:45] One little thing that you can plug into one little piece of that workflow business process or chart can really make a lot of awesome benefits.

[37:56] Pamela Isom: Do you think you've uncovered the need for the businesses to really lay out their workflows and those business processes?

[38:05] Carroll Bernard: I think that's the first thing Elaine and I had started to look at the potential to help people do automations in their business and implement AI. Just because this is something that we've been doing pretty good at.

[38:18] But I don't think we have the bandwidth to do that just yet. But as I thought about how would I help a business do that,

[38:26] what I would say is that, okay,

[38:29] first let's look at a business process end to end. That's the first thing. Let's map the entire process so you tell me like what steps are involved with that workflow having to happen and who are the people involved.

[38:43] And then you could start to take a look across that workflow of like, okay,

[38:49] where can pieces in that workflow be automated now? Now you don't even have to start talking about AI just yet.

[38:55] You could just simply do some stuff with automation that would make things run more efficiently.

[39:03] Now AI comes in when it kind of needs a reasoning component where it needs to think a little bit instead of just like a,

[39:10] an automation where it's like if this, then this happens right where it kind of wants to think about it or maybe it can access some data and come back and do a thing.

[39:20] So that's the way that I think about it when you look at the entire process and I think that that's where like if you were out there shopping for AI and you were going to a consultant and said like I want to this end to end process to be done by AI,

[39:37] well they'll sell you something and it's going to be very costly. But I think where I would start out with somebody would be to say, hey,

[39:46] okay, yeah, you can spend $300,000 looking at this from end to end, but why don't we analyze this and look at where your bottlenecks are and maybe the best opportunities to add automation and AI within this process.

[40:03] And then over time you kind of maybe add more in phases.

[40:08] And so I think the end result becomes a hybrid of human automation AI aligned inside of the process to get the end result.

[40:18] That's how I see it.

[40:20] Pamela Isom: Excellent. So more of a value centric AI shopping approach, right? Yeah, more of a process centric approach.

[40:27] Carroll Bernard: But really, yeah, micro really is what I look at. And I think about micro because we, we only have a micro budget. It's a small business, you know,

[40:36] and when I've talked to some, I was on the phone with like some AI, another veteran owned business and I'm like, hey, how can you help us?

[40:43] Well, or how much does it cost me to, you know, have you helped me out with some things?

[40:48] A hundred thousand dollars a month was the immediate number that they rattled off to me. And I'm like,

[40:54] there's no way I'm going to ever afford a hundred Thousand. And what I want to say is that if anybody talks to one of those companies that says something like that,

[41:02] you're not in their market.

[41:04] So you need to find somebody that serves small businesses. And there's people out there that serve small businesses. I know, Pamela, I know you do a lot of work with small businesses,

[41:14] but there's a lot of companies, because this market is so new,

[41:18] a lot of the companies want to go after the big dollars first and then they will maybe kind of come in and have something for small businesses later. So we kind of usually get the scraps and we can't always afford those big things, but we're a little.

[41:32] We. We can get scrappy and we can figure out some cool things to do ourselves that'll keep us in that game.

[41:38] Pamela Isom: Yeah, I'm all about supporting this small business because that's what makes the world better. Right? So absolutely not all for supporting the small businesses. It's just what we do. And it's pretty cool.

[41:48] Right? So we can be as creative and as innovative as we can,

[41:52] and there's not a whole lot of bureaucracy. I mean, you still have to be compliant. But I am definitely in favor of the innovation and the entrepreneurship that small businesses bring to the table and that flexibility.

[42:04] So tell me if you could give one piece of advice to the listeners, because this has been a great conversation and actually we've covered quite a bit here.

[42:13] So if you could give one piece of advice, which you already have, by the way, but if you could give one more piece of advice to the listeners, what would that be and what's your final call to action for us?

[42:25] Carroll Bernard: Yeah, so the one piece of advice, and this is kind of just general for government contractors and new contractors and specifically small socioeconomic and disadvantaged businesses out there. So again,

[42:39] small disadvantaged businesses, minority owned businesses,

[42:43] service disabled veterans,

[42:45] veterans, women owned businesses, hub zones.

[42:48] The one piece of advice if you're coming into the the federal marketplace is that don't think that diamonds are falling out of the sky for your certification type.

[42:59] You know, it's not that easy. And I say that particular phrase because I literally had one of my former clients send me an email that she got that that was the subject line that diamonds were falling out of the sky for women owned small businesses,

[43:14] when in reality, unfortunately, women owned small businesses is the one of the least used set asides within the federal marketplace.

[43:23] But I see a lot of people that have a certification and they think that that's going to be the thing that gets them the contract. And it's not it is the value that they bring to that agency.

[43:35] And if they happen to have that certification, then great.

[43:39] And I think it does open some doors and does have some help.

[43:43] But we're seeing a lot of a diminishing of what was the 8A program inside of government contracting right now being more diminished. A lot of people that are in that program or have been looking for that program are like, well, how am I going to get business now?

[44:00] And I think at the core, when you think about why is this small business certifications exist in the federal marketplace.

[44:08] I think the intent was to create a sheltered marketplace where small businesses could pete up against other small businesses and get some, some wins early on and then kind of grow and then get that past performance and experience that they didn't have to go on and do bigger and better things.

[44:29] And so when you look at the 8 program, we've seen a lot of people come out of that program and do good things. We've seen maybe 50% of the businesses shut down because they never figured out or never tried to figure out how to get business outside of having a certification tied to them.

[44:47] And so what I would say is that yes, go after and get those certifications,

[44:53] but don't let those certifications be the one thing that's going to define your business.

[44:59] I have an SDVOSB certification and I intentionally don't use it. I mean I don't need it for the type of businesses that I go after.

[45:11] I've had like one training contract with the va,

[45:15] but I didn't make it all about like, oh, I'm a service disabled business. I got preference with the va. I'm going to put all my eggs in that basket.

[45:23] I didn't look at it that way. I looked at it like,

[45:26] okay,

[45:27] where can I be of value?

[45:29] Where do I want to operate and where do I not want to operate? And I think that third piece is really important because when, especially when I was a solopreneur, my wife was, you know, part time in the business and full time professor at the University of Portland.

[45:47] I didn't want to have all of the administrative burdens directly with a big contract.

[45:53] And we've built a nice little business just within micro purchases and so that's easy business.

[46:01] And it's business that kind of like helps you sleep at night because you know,

[46:07] it's not like, I can't explain it, you probably know what I'm talking about, Pam. But like I've worked with thousands of businesses over the last 10 years and there's just a certain look in the eyes of a government contractor small business that looks just like,

[46:24] I don't know what. And I've seen a lot of my friends,

[46:28] they just have a lot of challenges administratively with the bigger contracts. It's tight as the certification. So I guess that would be the one piece of advice. Like, and if, even if I was given that to my kids, I'm like, like, find somewhere small to start.

[46:43] And I actually later this month on the golology platform,

[46:47] redoing one of the trainings that I've did in the past, which is called how to get your foot in the door with micro offers. I might have changed the name a little bit,

[46:56] but that's the whole part of it. It's the strategy of coming in below the threshold where you don't have competition.

[47:04] You don't usually have those, like,

[47:06] kind of big taxing cybersecurity requirements for CMMC if you're doing DoD acquisition. But it's easier business and it's less competition. It's no competition when you're able to do it.

[47:20] And I even tell this to people who have big product to sell.

[47:24] You look at something that's called the value ladder in business where it's like, what is the first thing that you can offer to your customer that's low risk and get your foot in the door,

[47:34] right? So like a dentist, like if they're doing a teeth cleaning, right, that's the foot in the door.

[47:38] And then when you're in,

[47:40] they might upsell you on whatever braces or what, right?

[47:46] So basically that's the key, I think. And it's like you have bigger things that you want to sell, but if you could have some foot in the door offer now that gets you into the circle of somebody that doesn't usually want to talk to you in the government, because everybody in the government is,

[48:01] is bigger, is busy. I mean,

[48:04] especially now with ever so many people being cut.

[48:07] They're busier than ever, so they have less time than ever before to sit there and take a meeting with somebody.

[48:14] But if somehow you could get that micro offer in. The two things I ought to think about, like, don't get hung up on the certifications and think about how can you come in and play the game at the easier level and then graduate up into the major leagues.

[48:30] Pamela Isom: And so what's our call to action? Is it to go? Is it to look for the micro offers?

[48:35] Carroll Bernard: Well, the call to action is this.

[48:38] Number one, I would say get to know Pamela Isom,

[48:42] look up her background and she is an awesome person and I'm so grateful to have her on the platform.

[48:51] And I hope that with whatever she's doing on Govology in the future,

[48:56] be sure to come in and take those trainings that she's going to be doing both on AI and cybersecurity.

[49:02] I know I'm planning on launching a group pretty soon. A monthly,

[49:07] kind of like a monthly meetup just to talk about AI. I've already kind of started this with the Apex Accelerator groups, but in 26 I want to broaden it out.

[49:17] So if you are not a member of Govology already and you want to kind of get on our distribution list just to see what we got coming out for courses and trainings,

[49:26] a lot of it you can get at no cost to you, either because we do it for free,

[49:31] or you can go through an Apex Accelerator that basically sponsors the training on your behalf.

[49:38] If you don't know what an Apex Accelerator is,

[49:41] look it up. This is a DoD grant funded program to get people out there in the field in your local areas to support you in government contracting.

[49:50] So I would encourage you to get the education,

[49:53] join whatever groups that we're starting. Listen to Pamela's podcast,

[49:58] start to wrap your brain around this stuff, right? I think that that's the starting point is like you got to start to wrap your brain around it,

[50:06] maybe go and read some books, watch some YouTube videos. But in terms of being able to kind of level up your AI game,

[50:14] there's nothing better really than to getting in there and doing it.

[50:19] You know, going in,

[50:21] set yourself up with a Chat GPT account. I'm not a ChatGPT salesperson,

[50:27] but like for 25 bucks a month you could do some amazing things like run your capability statement, ask ChatGPT to review your capability statements.

[50:36] Remember though, don't put sensitive information inside of an unsecured system.

[50:41] This is some of the things that Pamela consults on,

[50:44] on what is the right way to manage your AI governance. And depending upon if you have an AI tool that you're wanting to sell to a government agency,

[50:56] there's a lot of requirements to line up.

[51:00] But even if you are not necessarily selling an AI tool to the agency, but you're using AI in the performance of a government contract,

[51:08] you got to be ready and prepared for that customer to ask you, how are you using AI? Tell me about it. Because they want to understand that the systems that you're using are also secure, especially if you're going to be processing any kind of data inside of that there's all kinds of AI all over the world.

[51:28] And I mean, we have adversaries, we have people actively spying.

[51:32] That's why cyber security is such a big topic. And I mean, it's almost hard to talk about AI without talking about the cybersecurity components of that as well. So that's another reason why I'm so glad to have got to know Pamela, because she can really blend those two together.

[51:51] And I know we're going to have her on to do some really great training this year. So I'm looking forward to that. So that would be my call to action is just like dial into everything you can get and absorb it and then start to just functionally practice it and learn.

[52:07] Be a kid again. You remember when you were a kid and you used to have a million questions until people would tell you to shut up, you know?

[52:15] Well, I think that that's one of the things that I've really loved about AI is lets me be a kid again. It's like anything that pops into my head now, I'm like, well, let me go ask AI about that.

[52:25] And it's just like I can learn almost anything now.

[52:28] And that's where also, by the way, Pamela, see the future of golology where SAMI becomes more than just a chatbot.

[52:35] And is that kind of like the answer bot now?

[52:40] ChatGPT provides some pretty darn good answers, but you always need to validate them. And there's still some things that are. It doesn't produce 100% accuracy on but that's a work in progress.

[52:51] And to get there with govology because we want to make sure that when we're there. But that's how I see it. It's like it's the future for us is going to be a blend of learning like we do now.

[53:02] Some like on demand courses,

[53:04] we're doing more micro learning, more learning pathways,

[53:08] but we're also leveraging AI so that when you come in and interact with our AI tool in the future,

[53:16] it also educates you.

[53:18] And I can see a day in the near future even where agencies perhaps start to give their people credits for learning that they are doing inside of an interactive AI environment.

[53:36] Pamela Isom: Right.

[53:37] Carroll Bernard: But why not? Because you're learning. You see,

[53:39] that's where I'm curious about the future is of learning.

[53:42] Like,

[53:43] and when is that going to come around where it's like if you spend an hour going back and forth to learn something on Chat GPT,

[53:51] shouldn't you get an hour of credit for taking that learning opportunity?

[53:56] So Anyway,

[53:58] Pamela, I really appreciate you having me on today, and I look forward to working with you this year.

[54:03] Pamela Isom: Yeah. Yeah. Well, this year is here, so I

[54:06] Carroll Bernard: could ramble on all day. I'm sorry.

[54:09] Pamela Isom: That's okay. This has been great. So thank you for being here. Really do appreciate it. And you've done a great job. This has been a great conversation.

[54:20] Carroll Bernard: Sa.