Cleaning Up The Governments Mess. For $16 Billion Dollars!! (Podcast Transcript)

                         [00:07] Richard C. Howard: Hey, guys, Ricky here with the DoD contract academy podcast. Today we're going to talk about cleaning up for the government. And before we get to that, if you are interested in selling products and services to the US. Military and other federal government organizations, head on over to Dodcontract.com. We have some free training, and we have a variety of services that we provide to our clients. We also have transcriptions of all the podcasts there if you're interested in kind of reading through that to gain a little bit more information. So let's talk about remediation services. So there's a lot of different things the government's buying. And if you've learned or listened to this podcast, you know that we've gone through some of the crazy ones that you normally wouldn't think about. We've talked about some of the higher end technologies that the government buys and the different ways that the government either invests in innovative technologies or makes kind of mundane purchases buying products. But today we had a great coaching call with our students in the DoD Contracts Academy talking about remediation services and some of the related things that fall under there.

                         So just talking about how much the government spends in remediation services over the past three or so years, what we have is about $16.6 Billion spent in remediation services. And so what is in remediation services? It's a lot, right? So I'm looking at a category of spending which encompasses a lot of different things. It could be asbestos removal. It could be just regular cleanup activities that go beyond kind of janitorial services, mold removal, soil remediation. Some of this goes into environmental. So some environmental remediation services. Then of course, there's also some more extreme, like toxic material removals. There is oil spills and things like that, which I think would go fit under a toxic or oil spill cleanup. So a lot of different things are going to fall under remediation services. But the important things to think about are can you does your company specialize in any type of remediation that you could potentially engage on?

                         Now we want to know. Hey, so we know they spend a lot in mediation. It's over $16 billion. Who's doing the spending? Right? So let's talk about that. This is probably not going to be a surprise. Well, it may be. So Department of Energy is the leading spender, intermediation services. So they spent over $9 billion since roughly 2020 or so. And again, when we're looking at federal spending, just know that federal spending analytics are not perfect. So there's a lag in federal spending reporting, usually six months or so. Every agency is different depending on when they're reporting they're spending. And also some of the sites that you can use to find these spendings, they have different ways of basically combining everything that they're looking at, trying to find all the information out there in contracts. It's a good way to get a big picture of what the spending looks like, but a little more effort needs to be put in if you're trying to kind of fine tune that, especially to a specific service. So typically, I'm going to look under different codes, NAICS codes, North American industry classifications codes, which are broad, or product service codes, which are pretty specific.

                         So for this particular one, I am doing a combination of those, and we see Department of Energy and again, a lot more money has been spent in remediation services than I'm seeing here. Contracting officers can classify things really. They have a lot of subjectivity, I guess you could say, and how they are going to classify a contract, meaning which codes they're going to put on it. And I've seen I've said this before, but I've seen the same exact thing being purchased by the government under multiple codes. So just keep that in mind. But $9 billion spent by the Department of Energy, not insignificant, followed by the Department of army, who basically so we're talking DoD, right? They spent $3 billion. EPA. I actually would have thought EPA would have been kind of leading here. I'm not surprised to see the military, because the military is involved in a lot of different things, but especially with things like oil spills and whatnot. EPA spent $2 billion, and then we are followed by the Air Force and the Navy. So 987,000,820. 8 million with the Navy. So DoD is certainly a significant spender, over $4 billion. And then we have EPA and the Department of Energy.

                         Really interesting the different types of things that will fall under here. So we could see I mentioned asbestos. We have hazardous material removal. We have the treatment of wastewater. There's a lot that falls into here, removing mold and mitigating mold. That might be something that your business does. So how do you get on to one of these contracts and what's the best approach? A lot of people lately have been approaching us with products like, hey, I want to sell this product to the government. And you can do that, right? There are ways to sell a lot of that goes through GSA products, typically. I mean, it depends on the product. But other ways of thinking about that is if you have a product or solution, you can approach these opportunities kind of from the perspective of, like a program manager or an integrator. So in a lot of cases, the government just wants to hire somebody to do the job. So your products might be used in oil spill cleanup services, for instance, right? Maybe you have a solution or something that helps with that. But the government probably wants to hire somebody that can do the whole job.

                         Now, for smaller jobs especially, you might think, hey, how can I approach this with the skill or the specialty that I have or the product? And maybe find the opportunity and then find people that can actually do some of that work. Maybe you're looking at a business that has past performance with the government doing some of that work. So now you find the opportunity, you subcontract Some of that work out, and now you are kind of managing it. So certainly there'll be A degree of profit from the products that you're using, but you're going to make a lot more money because you are managing the entire effort. You're hiring the people? You're making sure that the whole project comes to completion. So remember, selling to the government isn't about you as much as you want it to be, right? You have certainly personal objectives. You want to make money, you want to make profit. But especially in with the military, I take more of A hard line, right? So it's not about you. It's not about the company, and it's not A Jobs program. It's about putting the best solution in the hands of the warfighter. How do I inevitably make this country more secure? How do I keep our troops alive, safe, secure? How do they execute the mission better, faster, et cetera? And everything that we do leads to that, right? So when I say that, I mean you might have an airman who's in charge of finances, right? Well, they're also supporting the troops that are in combat, right? So what they're doing Isn't insignificant, and you selling to the government isn't insignificant. So if you were selling to the army asbestos removal services, you're helping our soldiers stay safe, right?

                        You're getting that asbestos out of it. So we want to make sure that your solution, what you're offering is a top tier solution that's really going to Help The soldiers, the men and women in uniform. And we're also looking at, hey, what's the best value to the government and to the soldiers? So if The Army wants asbestos Removal services, it might be In Their benefit to just hire a company to do the whole project, right? Because they want it done right. They're busy doing what they do in the army. They don't need to buy your solution, your product that only Satisfies 5% of the job, right? But they may hire you if you're willing to take the whole thing on. So You May want to broaden your perspective and look at, hey, what are they actually buying? And I guess that's really what I'm getting at here, is look at What the government needs, look at what they're buying. It's great to have a good idea. You could be the Good Idea Fairy, right? But Especially In public sector where B to B or B to C. And I Do this because I sell B to B to C, in addition to selling to the government, B to B to C.

                         Sometimes you can do market research, but at the end of the day, you got to Test out somehow what you're doing. You make an offer, you advertise, you make a pitch, you see if it resonates, you talk to your customer, your client, with the government, although some of that is certainly necessary. Everything is public, so it's not a guessing game. I can see if there we go in all the time and we look at someone came to me, was like, hey, I sell trampolines. How does that look in the government space? And yeah, they buy them, like very small degree. You're not going to win million dollar contracts selling trampolines to the Air Force, right? So you got to know how much they're buying and what are they buying, right? So now with something like this, you might take that asbestos product or oil product and package that into more of a service, and you take on the whole effort so you can make a lot more money that way. I think you're actually providing a better service to the government. And again, I don't want to detract you from trying to sell products because I have a personal bias there, right? So usually there are a lot of people selling it is competitive, and price is always going to be a factor, especially with commodities, everyday products, right?

                         If you have something that's completely unique, that's kind of a technological revolution or something that's cutting edge that maybe they're not even looking for yet, or that's in development, that's a different story. That's something that we can talk about, how the government could potentially fund you to do that. That's not listing office supplies on the GSA schedule. That's, hey, this is something that nobody has yet. How do we get it in front of the right people? So again, there's a lot of factors in here, so don't take what I'm saying as discouragement. I'm just offering my perspective. And again, hey, if you're in remediation services, this could be a big thing here. If you want to clean up for the government, I'll clean up for the government. It's $16 Billion, roughly four or $5 billion spent every year in this. Absolutely. There's going to be a lot of areas. There one final note, right? And I think it was Mike Rowe on Dirty Jobs. I don't know if you guys ever listened to him, but he said something once, I think it was in, and I'm paraphrasing very badly, but he was talking about how everyone wants to be inspired and follow their passion. I think he was talking about a pig farmer who is making millions. Right? People don't want to be pig farmers. Right. But it's a need. We need that, right? And if you're willing to do something that other people aren't willing to do, a lot of times you can make a lot of more money doing that. And I remember being in the Air Command and staff college, and this is before I transitioned from flying to acquisitions.

                         This was actually like right before. And I was talking to a contracting officer, and he was talking about a specific skill set. I won't disclose what that is here. But he was saying, hey, look, I can't find anybody to do this work. And it was kind of that dirty job work, like Radar Long Remediation services, right? And that's why I'm thinking of this, right? If you think about a toxic material removal and that's not what it was, but it was kind of related to that. No one wanted to do it. So he could not find people to do the work. He had to go out, the government had to go out and find the companies and then offer them he had to pay them what they wanted. Because especially with something we need, right? It's not a nice to have to have toxic cleanup services. You need that. So if you're willing to do something that the government needs and other people don't want to do, you're going to find yourself in a profitable niche. So I'm done with my rant. We have some great guests coming up over the next couple of months. I know you guys are going to love it. I know you guys are going to learn a lot. Please keep listening to the podcast, recommend it to your friends. We're actually in the top 5% of all podcasts right now, believe it or not, which is amazing. But we can do a lot better. I know we can. Please leave a review so that helps. Absolutely rate it. Leave a review, recommend it to people that you know and please also, if you have suggestions, you can shoot me an email or [email protected], go to Dodcontract.com and you can go there and you can leave suggestions. You can read through our things and see some of our services and training. Hopefully this helps you guys and we'll see you next week.

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You can also check out Servant Leadership & Winning Contracts: An Interview with Dr. Joe Trahan , Lt Col (Ret) who has served this country for his entire adult life. He spent 20 years as Army officer and then transitioned his military career into a profitable government contracting business. This episode is with a servant leader who truly shows how selfless giving is the real key to a successful life and amazing business.