Gov Contract & Business Growth-For Caregivers, Widows, New Chapters!

Welcome to our first Gov Contract & Business Growth- Live Q&A discussion! 😊

In this conversation, we discuss real-world experiences navigating healthcare, caregiving, entrepreneurship, and government contracting — including the lessons, pivots, challenges, and opportunities that come with building a business while helping others along the way.

Topics discussed include:
• Government contracting for beginners
• Caregiver and healthcare-related opportunities
• Entrepreneurship and business growth
• Starting over and creating new opportunities
• Real-world lessons learned
• Building through challenges and uncertainty
• Community, networking, and support

The Caregivers & Gov Contracts Hub was created to provide a supportive space for caregivers, healthcare professionals, entrepreneurs, and small businesses interested in learning more about government contracting and business growth in a less overwhelming way.

Join our free New Caregivers & Gov Contracts Hub Community 
 https://www.skool.com/caregivers-gov-contracts-6441

Download the CFS App for healthcare resources, educational content, blogs, videos, and updates: On Apple or Google under CFS Medical Supplies
 

Thank you for being part of the journey 😊

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Hey everyone! Oh my gosh, I'm so excited, you guys. We uh just launched our caregivers and government contract hub, and uh we're totally excited about it because we are going to be sharing information about government contracts and how you, as a caregiver or a small business, or just someone who wants to start a new business um can learn about government contract and how uh government contracting can help you stabilize your business, grow your business, um, or just add extra income. Now it's not a get rich or something that just happens overnight, it is a process, but I have to tell you that it was definitely um something that helped stabilize our business in a time where we were not sure, you know, which way we were gonna be going. And so uh I always felt like every resource or information you can give someone can be a blessing and can be helpful for them. And especially I know for caregivers, because they give up a lot, you know, and they're taking care of their loved ones. Now, you may not have time to do it. That's just something you would have to figure out on your schedule. But if you're in the evening time and you're you're done with your loved one and and you just have some time to just kind of relax and then look through some try to learn about government contracting, it could be a definitely a game changer for you. Uh, it is a lot of work. Hi, Diane. Hi. Welcome, welcome to our new launch here, the caregiver in government uh hub here. And I was just sharing that you know how government contract helped stabilize our business and help us in a time where we weren't sure where we're gonna, you know, what we were gonna, where we we were doing, we knew what we were doing. But sometimes, as you know, in business, you pivot, you uh make changes, you restructure all these things, and that's where we were um in a restructuring phase, and government contract helped literally stabilize us, and so I just feel like it's something that we can definitely share with uh the community, share with people who wants to get into it, and all those things. So, you had any words today, Diane? Thank you for joining.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

I tried to it was can you hear me? I can hear you, I can hear you. Okay, good, good, good. No, I'm really excited about this because my business is um I'm in a f in flux right now, as you know. And I was looking for an opportunity that uh may give me some momentum in my business. So I I started um I think it's a week or two weeks ago. And I have to tell you, thank you for the the book that you made. Um, one of the things that I do for my caregivers is I feel like I have to spoon feed them step by step so for anything that they do to support them and and not let them feel overwhelmed. And that's what you've successfully done with the book that you put together for us to follow. So I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_01 3:21

Well, thank you, Diane, for that. You know what? You never know how things are going to uh turn out. And I have to tell you, I created that book back in 20, was I think 2023, 2024. It's been a while. It's just it was just been sitting. Let me say that. It was just sitting until I said, you know what? I'm gonna do something with this book, I'm gonna add things to it. And what I did is that we literally took information that we had learned along the way because when we first started, it was crazy. Like I had I was told, like, hey, just go get these certifications and you know, you will be good. And I'm thinking, and and I did, and we went and we got these certifications, and we were like, okay, now what do we do with these certifications now that we have them? Um, and so that was a roller coaster ride. And then I remember back in actually 2022, I happened to be on Instagram, and there was a gentleman named Um, oh my gosh, not his name just like literally Desmond. Uh Desmond was on, and I was like, I really because you know I don't I'm not really I'm always like skeptic. I'm a skeptic sometimes about yes, me too. Right. And I said, you know what? Let me let me listen to him, and I did, and he had a lot of great information, so I really appreciated him, and I learned a lot from him. I had my profiles and things were set up, but they weren't set up properly, and so after I listened to him, I was able to go back and um make sure that my profiles were set up properly, and then just kind of start learning things, and it was so crazy. I'll tell you, one of the first times um I had received after I got my profile set up properly, I received this email, and when I got it, I'm still a skeptic because I'm like, is this real? Like, and it was a uh a state agency asking for some product, and I was like, I don't know if this is real or not, and I'm not gonna be clicking any links, and so I called because it was inside of the DSC. So I called to the state and I asked the people, and it was so funny because they was like, Yeah, they do work here, and I was like, Okay, that's all I needed to know, and then the rest is history, and so and ever since then, we've been doing government contracts. We love it. We did a pause a little bit because we needed to in the process of the restructure of our business, we kind of went through made some changes and we were doing government contracts. We paused a little bit, but we're right back into it again. But in that process, we've been doing them for the last what three years, and it has really been awesome. And I just felt like it was something that we could share with people to add things on uh to their financing or maybe want to start a new career. I tell people it's never too late, I don't care how old you are, you know. And so that's um, and that's pretty much how we got started. And and so with the book, it's to help people just to kind of tell people what it is. Is it's nothing fancy, it's not not trying to be fluffy with all this stuff. I'm just telling it like it is. This is what we went through, this is what we did, and hopefully this can help you not make the mistakes we made.

SPEAKER_02 6:35

I appreciate that, and I just want you to know I'm 73 years old, so um, I don't think that was good, and I'm still looking for ways uh for things to do when I grow up.

SPEAKER_01 6:48

So you sound good and you look good, Tamiya. And so I I you know, hey, I'm in the 50 club, girl. So let me tell you, it's never too late to start over. And sometimes when you're going through a restructure or you have things going on in your life, you feel like you're starting all over again, and so that's why I said it's never too late. Um I agree.

SPEAKER_02 7:13

Yeah, yeah. I I do. You know, you talk about the certifications. Um you know, I do I am I gonna need them in the future? Are they something that I should consider, or is that something I should look at later after I go through all of this?

SPEAKER_01 7:31

I would say later, Diane. And I'm gonna tell you why you don't need a certification to bid on a contract to submit a bid at all. Right. You need to have, of course, of course, you know, you want to make sure you have your, you know, your cage or UE number, those type of things, which you've already, I think, completed already. So you definitely want to make sure you do those things, and then of course, in the book, it tells you steps on how to set up your business, you know, how far you want to take this. That information is there. Uh, your capability statement. I even shared with um inside of the program my capability, our capability statement, and what we use. And so, you know, it's not uh you don't need certifications, and it's kind of crazy because at the time, and I spent quite a bit of money too. Let me let me say that I spent a lot of money on certifications. The people who did my certifications are amazing. Um, I would if I had to do it all again all over again, I would have them do it again. Now, my situation was a little bit different because in the process of me getting these certifications, I had some things going on that I had to restructure everything um you know in the business. And so it took a little bit longer for some of my certifications to come through. But normally you can get those certifications anywhere from sometimes uh to uh 60 to 90 days, just depending on how it makes sure that you have things set up properly. You don't need certifications. Now they have been some people say, Yeah, you want to go ahead and get those, but it doesn't hold you up from bidding. Okay, if that makes sense. It's something down the line, but you don't need certifications. Um, great, yeah. So, and if you're now if you're gonna if you see something and as the um contract says they want you to be a set aside of a WSOB, SBZOB, 8A, you know, Indian owned HUD, all these things, then of course they want that primarily, they want that doesn't mean you can't bid on it, right? Because just think if they're asking for that, and then that person or no one under that set aside bids on it, then and you've done so, then there you go, right? You know, so you never know you have to be in it to win it. That's what I tell people. Like, right, I'm a true believer in I need to be in the game, and I don't care what I'm doing. Like, if I'm not in it, I can't win it. So that's how I look at it. And Silas, I'm gonna uh stop for a second and uh thank you, Silas, for joining us today, too.

SPEAKER_00 10:04

Yeah, I'm really excited to um you know go deeper into government contracts because uh, you know, I'm a person that does a lot of government contracting myself, and it's you know, it's a very powerful thing. Um, and I'm really excited to kind of just dive deeper into this school, you know, as far as information on how contracts, you know, work, how you acquire them, uh, knowing the ins and outs of you know which kind of contracts to go after. You know, you start looking at, you know, like based on what you what product or service you offer, you start to understand like what contracts are you know, good benefits and there's different approaches. So I'm really excited for this.

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Yeah, and uh it's so crazy too, Diane. I tell you, one of the other things too, when we first start doing this, we were going after everything. Well, I tell you, we were going after stuff, it was like that didn't make any sense, Tara. But you know, we did because we didn't know, right? So you don't know, you don't know, as we always say, but as we learned and the experience and all of that, and then Silas is so funny because when he had graduated college, he was like, I can't believe that nothing in my in college was talked about government contracts.

SPEAKER_00 11:11

Like he's an I knew Yeah, that that's the thing about it, is like, you know, government contract is one of those things that's very hidden. Um you know, like for example, I graduated in 2022, um, in the year 2022, so pretty recent, um, you know, three years removed now. But it's interesting that throughout the whole time I was a business major, so I was in there with professors that, you know, worked in Silicon Valley and things like that, and they never mentioned government contracts at all. You know, like it never, I mean, the only the closest thing to contracts was, you know, the defense contracting. You know, everyone kind of knows about that because that's you know the biggest thing, you know. But uh outside of that, you never knew that you could even sell to the government unless you were selling weapons.

SPEAKER_01 12:01

Yeah, and that's a misconception because a lot of people think that you have to be a big business or you have to be um into certain type of industries in order to sell to the government, but the government buys everything. Uh, one of our contracts, we sold Samsung phones. Now, we don't we do medical equipment and services, right? And consultations has nothing to do with that. But we were able to sell the Department of Defense Samsung phones, and so you you'll learn that as you go and as you get into it, you'll kind of learn like what's what's your niche is, what is what you what's a benefit, what's not, what you want to really waste your time on, what you don't really want to waste your time on, and that only you only learn those things by doing it on hands-on, and that's what I believe. Like, you can't, I could tell you all these things, but until you actually experience it yourself and do it, then you start understanding it. And so, um, yeah, and Silas, can you share what your first contract was when you went after it?

SPEAKER_00 13:00

Yeah, so I first my very first contract was uh it was a big one, it was a convergent contract. It was close to a million dollars, nine hundred thousand. Um, it was a really big contract. It took me a while though to get it because uh in the beginning it was they put it out, it was like a source of salt, which we'll get deeper into that in the school about you know what a source of salt is, but essentially just on the surface, it's basically where the government um they basically do market research on what vendors are out there that can do the job, right? And then if you send, let's say, uh just a rough estimate, uh quote a rough estimate of you know, you show interest that you can do the contract, what they'll do is they'll put it on hold for a while and they'll try to see, like, okay, we're gonna have to spend like around this X number to get what we want, right? Based on what kind of quotes come back with the vendors. So it's not an official contract, it's like a market research. And then what they do is that let's say, like during this contract, my first one, that it I waited almost five, almost four to five months before they actually made it like an actual contract. But what I did throughout the whole time was I stayed in contact with the contracting officer, just following up with him, and then what I did was I uh made sure to make a good connection with the actual the vendor who was doing the installation part for me. So with the conversion contract, is essentially uh you have like almost like wheel, like ADA uh accessibility. So you take the uh let's say a transit van that's 15 passengers and you gut it, and then you turn into like basically a wheelchair accessible van that's uh like powered, uh like electronic. So what oh I did was uh this is my first contract. So what I did was uh with the knowledge I had, I knew that I had to uh contact a vendor that can actually do the work for me. So what I did was I just made like I think I made about four or five phone calls in that local area where the contract had to be done at, and then I um you know I landed on a really good uh company. I made a good connection with the sales rep there. Um and the interesting thing about government contracts is that when you're I would say when you're doing the middleman approach, because this is what I was doing in the first contract. I was pretty much doing the middleman, where essentially I'm responsible for the payment and acquiring the product, like the product itself, but when it comes to the installation, I'm relying on a subcontractor, which is the vendor who does the installation. So that's essentially what that company was was the subcontract doing the installation and the logistics for me, and then I was responsible of actually acquiring the lifts that they would convert to the vans. So I made that good connection with him, and then uh he gave me pricing and everything, and I was able to get it to the government, and then like I said, four or five months passed. Uh, but during that time I was just keeping a real tight connection with that uh vendor who was doing the subcontractor. Because one thing to know is when you're in the middle man, like sometimes when you reach out to some companies, they would kind of just look at you as a one-off, right? And so I knew that that was something that I kind of did a lot of research on. So it's like when you're dealing with a subcontractor, a larger company who's doing some of the logistics for you, you really want to make sure you're not coming off at just uh you're just here just to you know help me help you win a contract and then you're gone, right? So I wanted to build an actual relationship with them. And once I did that, when it was actually time for us to do the actual you know submission of the quote and the actual contract, it was a lot smoother, and then fortune I was able to win.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

And it's a lot of work. Let me say that. Not that's a lot of work nobody, but I don't want people to think like, oh, you just they're just doing all the work. No, it is a process you do, and then once you do one, once you follow that, because technically that was a what you consider a product and service contract, product service contract, right? And so, but it is work that goes into it. So when you think about, oh, I'm just gonna send this work off to somebody else and they do it, no, it doesn't work like that because we were involved every step of the way, had to be involved, and we're involved anyway. Because it it for us, it's just like what we do anyway. We have clients, we have families, they need product, they need a certain type of service, and we get it for them. We do an assessment, we do all that. So, like, for instance, with the government, they'll send you the scope of work telling you what they want, and you have to give them exactly what they want, not what you think they want, not what somebody else may think they want. You have to follow the roadmap because they'll tell you exactly specifically what they want, and you give them what they want, and that same thing applies to what we do in every day. We have clients, they need a particular uh item, a product, or some type of service, and we listen to what they want, analyze the situation. Well, that's a little bit different because we analyze the situation, and sometimes we have to tell them what they really need versus what they want, right? But my point to that is you're still solving a problem for someone, you're still getting uh a solution to something that is needed for someone that now is the government, right? And let me say this it could be the state, it could be federal, it could be local municipalities. I know people who don't even do federal contracts, they only do either state contracts, and some people just only deal with a local municipalities. This is anywhere, I don't care where you are in the United States, you can do this. Do you have any questions, Diane?

SPEAKER_02 18:38

No, I I'm listening and I'm f I'm fascinated by it. I I'm trying to coordinate it or correlate it with what I do now. And I did case management and or I've been a nurse liaison where you prove and I've done sales and marketing. So I know that you have to. I love Silas's saying, you know, you have to maintain those relationships. And networking is so important to uh this type of thing. And uh knowing the right people and staying on top of them and making sure that you feel like you you have an interest in it is really important. So I get all that and I like it. Uh, I'm not afraid of hard work and it's already something I do. It's just good customer service.

SPEAKER_01 19:24

Yeah, it is, it really is. It's just pretty much get it. You know what I'd say? It's like we're we're here in the United States and we're just helping out, right? We're just helping people with, you know, of course, it's taxpayers' money. So I always tell people that too. When you're talking about taxpayers' money, it is lowest price acceptable. Now, of course, sometimes lowest price doesn't always mean um that you will win because you need to be responsible for to it also. They want to make sure that you are responsible lowest price as well. So you want to make sure that whoever you deal with, if you sub the if you're doing the work yourself, by all means, you whatever, you know, you want to be you want to do good work, right? So that you get on this naughty list on this list that they have. But if you want and you also want to make sure whoever you sub workout to, that you deal with companies that are legitimate, that will do the work, make their reviews, you know, and all those things. Talk to them. You know, there's questions at part of the program that we'll talk about that, where we have you, you know, ask certain questions. You know, we do that right now, period period, with suppliers. So we I don't we don't deal with certain suppliers if they don't if we can't pick up the phone and talk to the manufacturer or their rep, then we don't deal with them. Why? Because we want to make sure that whatever is needed, if there's a problem, we can handle that problem and solve it for our client. So that being a patient's family, that being a government agency, whomever, we need to be able to do that. And so we follow these processes across the board when it comes to that. And um, yeah, so and but yeah, I think it's a great opportunity for many people out there. I know a lot of people think of government and they like, oh my God, you know, it's a lot of red tape and all that stuff, but it's not scary at all. Um, it's not, it's really actually when you do when you see that first award, you're like, oh my God. You know, you're like really excited because you're like, man, you know, and then you're giving back your you're solving, you're doing something for the states, right? And you're you know, giving back and whatever it is they need uh to provide that product or service. And there's all kind of stuff out there that people do. I mean, stuff that people wouldn't even believe, chaplain work, you know, you talk about what you do, Diane. You know, there's I mean, consulting, it all kind of stuff. Like, I mean, it's just endless of what it is that you do, uh, what they need, and that the you know, what we can solve the pro solve the problem and the solution of what the government needs. And so uh I'm excited that you're excited, Diane.

SPEAKER_02 21:54

I'm very excited. I'm very curious to learn. And uh, I also have the ability. to to look do the work on a regular basis so that I can um pick out the right uh right tool right uh contracts and stuff. It's gonna be fascinating and interesting and um I I'll I'll as you say you know the more you do the more you do it the more you get experience at it and the more you feel comfortable doing it. The first one's always gonna be uh I'm gonna be nervous but that's with anything new with me.

SPEAKER_01 22:30

Anything for all of us it's new it's new right so you know we've always we've sat in some rooms be like oh my god how's this gonna go but you know it's it's not even what what you think you know I tell people you just make those communications you just you learn it and that's why the we created the program and so the program is really simple and easy as well it's pretty much you know you read through it you follow the steps and of course we talk about it and we help you with it uh if you find one that you need uh we go over all kinds of things dealing with funding you know what do you how do you because a lot of people like oh well wait a minute if I saw a contract and I can't um and they want because you have to may have to pay money up front you know you may call a company a supplier and you're like well if you don't have a net 45 or net 30 then how are you going to get the products if you don't have the money right we talk about those type of things we go over all of that we talk about uh you know a proposal how do you write a proposal you know all these different things so there's a lot in the program that's really really helpful to people and one of the things why I was really really wanting to make sure that we uh did this and I wanted to was because there's a lot of companies um you know and of course everybody has their own thing that they do what they do but a lot of people is just complaining that they can't afford it right because a lot of times these programs cost so much money that people just don't have it you know to and you know to do it like right and so that's why we started the program it's literally $24.99 per month and um and that's what it is and I did that because I just feel like when people are trying to pivot grow scale whatever it is they need to do or just need a hand up then it should be something that they can you know they can do. It's almost like giving back to the community if that makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 24:23

So it did for me it made it very affordable.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

Yeah yeah that and that's the goal too because we're it's all about how do we you know help people grow and we're still learning too like we don't know everything so don't think we don't so basically we're all learning together right have won uh multiple contracts and we're in the process of actually submitting one today and uh tomorrow uh a couple of them we have in the pipeline right now but we um it's just like I tell people you learn something new every single day even in a healthcare spot right so even in my regular industry I mean every day I learn something new every single day um to help people or figure something out so you're never um one of these people that you're gonna be sitting around here thinking like okay we know everything because we don't so let me tell you that right now so we're learning together so but we do know enough to get you started get you going um to get you some wins and all those things so um Silas did you have anything else that you wanted to share today um I'll say the last thing is uh the government contract the the government contracting uh sphere is huge right there's millions of contracts out every single day so um literally even if everyone bidd a contract there's still tons of extra contracts out there so there's no so what I love about it is that basically government contracting is the sky's the limit because there is no saturation um of course there are certain pockets that may be saturated right but but that's like in any other industry but overall there's so many there's millions of contracts there's so many contracts out there to the point where they just take some of them off because no one responded you know so that just goes to show you how big the opportunity is in this and you know whatever product or service you offer or whatever lane or type of um you know uh way you want to do it you can pretty much uh achieve that in government contracting because it's so huge. It is it is and then just so I'll tell you this too Diane that uh some of the bids like literally the one we just uh we bid it on about what's about three weeks ago Silas it was only uh another another company two just two people showed up two wow so think about that all in this huge United States only two showed up and so and I would also add and I'll also add too that for example like if you're get depending on what state you're in I would say state contracts is a great way to get a easy uh an easier win I won't say not easy but easier uh so for example if you're if this is your you know if you're just getting started I would say yeah definitely starting off with like a state contract is really good because I can get your feet wet and then once you get enough wins and you get enough um you know like financials where you can then move the graduate to the federal contracts because one thing I do see that federal contracts do are a little bit um they do require a little bit more effort on federal contracts and there's a little bit more competition but like if you just if you do state contracts like no one really even looks at state contracts half the time and so that's a good way how you can rack up some wins is through state contracts.

SPEAKER_01 27:43

And your counties don't forget about the counties and sometimes I know for here in California we have some uh that's they may be listed on the state but they may be buying for the county it's kind of weird how that works um but we see it and so yeah don't forget about your counties your counties you even have a local like they buy everything like pencils paper um notepads they they buy all this stuff and they buy everything people to get it so when you if you're in your state your county local whatever go on there and look doing business with your state doing business with your county doing business with your city doing business with whomever with a part of your county state what have you and mind you there's crossover you don't have it's called reciprocity I think reciprocity yes I know that word because I needed to use reciprocity when I reapplied for nursing reciprocity is there for government contracting meaning that um you can be in the state and you have your SBE DBE and all those things that sometimes the gut the state will do allow you know want so they can get that extra um five percent or what have you then you can do that and you don't have to take and provide all of the information that you provided initially if you go to another state and I know a lot of things have changed so yeah check that out too because a lot of things have you know some there's been some changes but all ultimately you have um and you have your local too it's free it's a free service that you literally can reach out to your state county representatives and ask for help through SBA I'm already doing that here in South Carolina they have the South Carolina Apex and and I've signed up I'm I have a course I was supposed to have it this Wednesday but I had a client I have to do a podcast when they're doing it.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

So I'm doing it July 3rd but they've been very they're gonna assign me a rep and everything.

SPEAKER_01 29:54

Exactly see you just got to do just got to follow the steps.

SPEAKER_02 29:59

That's it.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

Yeah yeah I felt really comfortable about that I thought well that's nice they're gonna have someone that I can call and cry to but I don't understand what I'm doing well but you know what's good is that also too once you get set up and you know just decipher which one of your next codes your PSC codes and things like that do you want to go with they also would do what's called a my match because I get them every day. They send you out things that match what you want to do or what you can do right yeah you'll get those now of course some of them you you still want to go in and look at it on yourself like sam.gov or your state uh sites and things like that. But ultimately you can have them do that and they'll pull things and you'll get them every day that you can look at and see like hey let me just bid on this and stuff like that. So you uh and then of course you know in the program we talk about also within your state there's other um layers of portals and agencies underneath there that you want to also register so that when they're looking for a particular the buyer is looking for a particular um next code or product then your name your company will come up under there so that's another way because like I know for the state if you look on the eCal percur it's about I think about 300 to 400 average uh solicitations that's there but they do other solicitations that they have underneath other portals that you wouldn't see right so knowing to how to register on those and getting your name on those and then also making sure you reach out to some of those buyers to say hey you know I'm over here here's my capability statement if you guys get anything you need can you reach out to me and there's a small business uh omspudsman all these different things that uh Ostabu I'm thinking about Ozbudsman I'm thinking about yeah so I mean the Ostaboo okay so that's different but uh yeah so what we'll be talking about more and having these conversations we just wanted to jump on here today and invite everybody to the school because what we wanted to do was make it things a little bit easier for people to be able to access things because right now we have the podcast we have the app and you know we have our websites and things and it's just so you know it's it's just kind of hard for people to track it's hard for us to track it too so our team we just like okay you know what let's put everything under school and then that way if people's on school they can actually we can go live on these things they they can also see everything is under one hub and that's why we did it and you don't have to be just a caregiver you guys out there it could be anyone and there's no age limit I think what is 18 probably 18 and over 18 but you can be young you can be older what have you you may be looking to start a new business you may looking to add something on to what you're doing already um and you're thinking like or you have a business and you're thinking like oh my god I don't know it may be slow right now for you and you're thinking like am I gonna have to close my doors you just need to look at government contracts because you will be surprised how you can add that on to your business your current business right and so we have we learned the hard way that you have to be diversified in your business you literally do across the board like so we you know when you're doing things in business there in those slow times you're gonna have have to have other things you know going on as well and government contracting has helped a lot of businesses you would be surprised of the companies that do government contracts that have government contracts right now got started and they are who they are behind government contracts silas do you want to talk about that real quick yeah I can talk about that yeah like all your major companies your major Fortune 500 companies like you know Tesla Amazon Target you know all these massive companies they got to where they are primarily because of government contracts um you know I know for Amazon you know Amazon was doing really well in the early 2000s but what really helped them get to the net like to the level they are now what helped them was they won like a multi hundred million dollar contract you know and then that after that you know it's been the rest is history.

SPEAKER_00 34:18

So like all the major companies at the highest level they all do government contracts like you know we even see that they even when you look at the way they move in politics and things like that they you know they understand that for them business wise they do what they do to go in and you know they can get those contracts right and so that's the major thing um on why they are who they are so they primarily didn't get to where they are just from consumer they got to where they are because of doing business with the government and then of course being diversified you know like for example Amazon's a great example they have really done an excellent job diversifying themselves to pretty much being every aspect of the customer experience you know from just buying commodities online to entertainment music movies you know you just see them everywhere right and so that goes back to like you know being diversified to like in times where maybe people are not buying as much from their platform they can rely on entertainment right and then if entertainment is kind of slowing down then they can rely on something else. And then now we see that AI is a huge thing right now. So a lot of the major companies are building infrastructures around AI to use AI as an advantage to continue to diversify even more so I would say the companies that last the longest are companies that for sure have done an excellent job of doing business with the government and also diversifying. I also will add to that you know in this school we'll definitely tell you guys that you know government contracting is excellent but based on what you're doing you definitely want to have some income coming in from somewhere else in the beginning for sure because government contract as great as it is when you bid a contract unless the government just said here you go here's the contract you definitely it's 50-50 no matter what like no matter how much research you do because it's lowest price acceptable there's always that off chance that a company that you didn't even think of is coming down over and you know submits a lower number and it could be just one cent or one dollar one number under your number and then they win right like actually I just experienced that um we did a contract last year and though I'm not sure how they did it they pulled it off but they came in out of nowhere and you know under undercut everybody right and they won right and so of course then you don't win the contract so definitely having making sure that you have income coming in from multiple other sources as you keep going is very helpful. So that way when you do bid a contract you're not bidding con bidding a contract out of desperation you're bidding it out of sheer like okay you know what I'm this is a great add-on but if I don't win this particular contract the world is not over that's something that I learned is you know like when we um I would say like last year we took a quick pause on it because we were focused on the commercial side because we realized okay yeah government contract is excellent but you know like I said you know the wins and losses it's uh you know it's 50-50 every time right and so you want to make sure you have that diversification of income coming in from other sources so that when you're bidding you're bidding from a place of uh you know comfort and more in a in a mindset of okay this is a great add-on versus desperation like if I lose I have to win this contract or it all is lost right if you're bidding it from that perspective that's where government contracting becomes very uh can be discouraging and very difficult but if you understand like you know I have other sources coming in and this is a great add-on then that's where government contract becomes the most beneficial because always when you're really not counting on it is when it really takes off.

SPEAKER_02 38:07

And I think that's what anything yeah did you have anything to say on that Diane no I appreciate that information and and anytime you start a business you should you should have that philosophy anyway.

SPEAKER_01 38:23

So yeah I I I agree yeah I really should yeah so and and it's not to say that you can't eventually make it a primary thing. I have associates right now that they worked for years doing other things and they did a great job um over the years with um doing this on the side and now financially they're in a place where they're like we're going all in and so for some people that works you know and it just depends on what you do right so for what we do we love what we do so we wouldn't stop doing what we're doing to do a government contract full time you know it's just right we're into patient uh advocacy work we're helping people uh that's a whole different lane right but uh so it's not for us to stop combat but it is definitely part of our it's 50% of our what we do so you know what I'm saying like so it is so it's one of those things what Syla said is you definitely want to make sure you have other things um on on board and of course maybe you get to at least in the beginning in the beginning yeah I'll say in the beginning yeah yeah so all right you guys well if there is nothing else uh we're going to wrap up you guys this is the caregiver and government contracts hub on school and so if you're out there and you want to join these calls are free we get on here if you have some questions about something Diane did you have any other questions that you wanted to ask us um before we get off because we do these once a week but of course you get in this in the community which is why the school community is so awesome too is because you can ask questions inside there and we can you know talk about it answer it and all that kind of stuff um throughout the week until we get on our calls I'm just getting started still learning and um I'm moving forward getting everything ready so uh I I'm looking forward to uh my um apex call yes and uh learning for more about that and getting a a rep.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

So that that'll be my my big next step.

SPEAKER_01 40:28

Yes and of course you know you have the program there and of course if you have any questions you know how to reach me so you just let me know and all that good stuff and then we're gonna answer and if we don't have an answer we get the answers that's what we do with CFS Solutions. Absolutely and I appreciate that. Okay all right you guys heard it here on the school on CFS Medical Supplies and Equipment CFS Solutions and we have the caregiver and government uh good hub um school system that you guys can go on there and join the community it's free and so welcome to it and uh we'll see you guys on the next call thanks Tara thank you have a good one