Govly: A Possible Game Changer! (Podcast Transcript)

[00:00] Richard C. Howard: Hey, guys, Ricky here. And on today's episode of the Government Contract Academy podcast, we're talking to Mike from Govly. Now, if you've ever wondered how you can find out about the opportunities that don't come through Sam.gov, opportunities that are already set aside for GSA, for some of the big contract vehicles, then today is the episode for you because that's one of the things Mike is trying to solve with Govly. They have a very unique solution which I haven't seen before. So he's walking me through what that is, how that can help small businesses. And I think you're really going to like today's episode. Now if you want to learn more, you go to Dodcontract.com. Our open enrollment is going to be coming up soon, so you're going to be able to enroll in the DoD Contract Academy. We also have a new special offering. So I've been kind of teasing this out here where we're going to work with a few companies one on one to ensure that you are successful selling to the government. Now this is a much more in depth opportunity. Typically we're not offering, so be on the lookout for that. Go to Dodcontract.com when you get a chance. And now our episode with Mike at Govly. Today I'm with Mike from Govly, and we are going to talk about a lot. We're going to talk about his background. We're going to talk about this product, the solution that he has that people in the federal procurement arena are using. It's something that I've just started checking out. So a lot of this is going to be him teaching me a little bit about what it does because there are some interesting features here that I want to talk about that I haven't seen in some of the other tools. And I know I recommend a few on this show over and over again. So, Mike, great to have you on.

[01:56] Mike: Hey, nice meeting you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. This should be fun.

[02:00] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, no, we're looking forward to it. And Mike and I were talking a little bit before this and so Mike, you're out in Hawaii right now?

[02:06] Mike: I am. I'm on the Big Island. My wife and I moved here a few years ago when we had a little one. It's just a cool place to raise a kid.

[02:16] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, it's one of the few places I actually didn't make it to in my Air Force career. So maybe we can talk a little bit about I always want to try surfing. Maybe we can hit that deal.

[02:27] Mike: Let me know when you get here.

[02:29] Richard C. Howard: Cool, man. So we were talking a lot about like, you didn't serve in the military, but you grew up as a military brat and you kind of have a rich military tradition. Why don't you explain everyone what a military brat is? So I'm not being derogatory.

[02:43] Mike: Yeah, no military brat means that you were the appendage of your parents, one or both that was being dragged around by one of the arms. And for me, both my parents were Air Force. My father flew C. Andrews. I guess both parents Air Force. I was born in Southern California, so it was March Air Force Base and then Oklahoma, then Virginia, which would be the three air force moves. Mom worked the Pentagon. Mom was medically retired as a major and father retired as a major as well and then went commercial. But military has been in my family for a long time. I had two uncles that were pilots, one Navy, one Air Force, and then my grandfather was a full bird colonel out of the Marines. I think he ended his career with 500 combat missions and wings and 31 aircraft, about a third fixed wing and two-thirds kilo.

[03:57] Richard C. Howard: Wow. Yeah, that is a lot. It's really impressive and interesting too. I always think that the child of a military person that grows up that way, I mean, you're born into it, really understanding kind of the language of at least living on military bases and know what a commissary is. You know what a BX is?

[04:18] Mike: Oh, yeah.

[04:20] Richard C. Howard: A lot of the small businesses that listen to this podcast, I would say that they fall into two different buckets. They're either selling to the government and looking to improve what they're doing or they're thinking about it. And one of the common fears is that they don't understand the language, right. So they don't know anything. In fact, I've had people on here that have been very successful that never knew anything about the government, never talked to anyone in the military, and yet went on to kind of learn that process and do that. So you have a little bit of an advantage, though, just growing up there. You already understand the terminology.

[04:53] Mike: It's true. Every time we hire somebody, one of the first lines that when you onboard them is kind of the illustration that, listen, this is a new language. There's not many professions where you can speak sentences in acronyms. Right?

[05:08] Richard C. Howard: Yeah.

[05:09] Mike: And talking to the right person, it's a coherent sentence and it makes sense. And someone sitting from the outside, it just sounds like Gibberish.

[05:17] Richard C. Howard: My wife doesn't even want to be in the same room with me and a military buddy, or if I'm just talking with a client or doing a podcast, it's like, hey, I don't even understand what you're talking about and I'm going to walk away.

[05:30] Mike: Yeah, no, exactly. From the acronyms to the challenge coins to being able to spit off locations of bases and people have no idea what you're talking about.

[05:40] Richard C. Howard: What was your favorite base?

[05:42] Mike: So before it closed March, we went back and forth. To be totally blunt, my favorite place to go back to is the Air Force Academy. My father was a graduate from the Academy. I sabotaged my own application to the Academy because I didn't want to be a pilot. A different story, but I think the Colorado Springs Air Force Academy is one of the most beautiful locations of a military installment ever.

[06:15] Richard C. Howard: No question, no question. A lot of the Air Force bases depends on where they are, but there's a few kind of show places of the Air Force. Colorado is amazing anyway, and the Academy is a great location.

[06:28] Mike: Well, I'm actually going to Coneyoe later today. Okay, so that's also if you haven't been, the Marine Corps base on Oahu is also that's a pretty special place.

[06:42] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, no, I got to get over there. Like I said, I haven't made it to Hawaii yet. So hey, let's take it from because we're talking about we're going to get into Govly for a bit and we talked about a little bit about how you grew up. So you obviously didn't want to go to the Air Force Academy. So why don't you just give us a little bit of a, hey, where did you go to school and then how did your career take you from there to Govly?

[07:04] Mike: Yeah, perfect. At that point in time, I graduated high school in Reno, Nevada. Both parents. Mom was medically retired. Luckily she's cancer free, so we're all good there. Dad just retired from FedEx last year, but at the time Reno went from there to Santa Clara University and graduated with a degree in finance and business and ultimately wanted to go down the kind of investment banking route. And really long story short was the bank I worked for folded six months after I joined, which was a special event. Bounced back up to I was definitely a boomerang kid. Bounced back up with mom and Reno and started a soccer equipment manufacturing company with a friend of mine that he actually still runs. But during my time there in that first year, I got a call out of the blue from a company called Sierra Nevada Corporation. And they're a very large privately held defense contractor. I adventure to say they're probably the largest privately held defense contractor, but I don't know that for sure. They're an impressive company and got a call out of the blue originally turned them down and then was like, wait a second, that actually sounded kind of cool. I called them back and I will never forget walking through the security doors for my interview. And as you walk through the doors, on the walls were the giant I don't know what you call them, but the pictures of the three dimensional sketches of every Air Force plane that has ever been made. And there was just a hallway with 30 of these maybe not maybe ten of these things. Point being was I walked through the doors, I saw those and was like, oh, these are my people type of thing. Because it, you know, the military. Being a military Brett was it was hard. I mean dad you know, dad overseas in theater a number of times and mom and the Pentagon, it's a tough gig. And so never really saw my parents. I mean obviously every night with my mom but eight months at a time with dad being gone, it wasn't what I wanted to do. And so being able to connect to the military and the arms like I have on the contracting side checks all of those boxes from feeling patriotic and feeling civic duty and truly wanting to better the nation but doing it from the commercial side it just kind of fit a lot better. Yeah.

[09:44] Richard C. Howard: And I guess that's the point too. That's why I'm in it now. And I think first of all there's a misconception about what a defense contractor is. Sure. Certainly that's from some movies that have led people with stray or maybe like you've heard of hey the Sleazy defense contractor. But in reality it's these businesses both small and large. I don't want to use the political term making America great but these businesses are contributing to keeping your service members safe. They're contributing to making the country stronger, making our government agencies run better. I always tell companies is like, hey if you have a great product or solution I will absolutely help you sell it to the military. But if you do not, I'm not going to help you because I don't want inferior products and solutions in the hand. That doesn't help our country. It doesn't help what I consider my fraternity which is the US military. But that's the thing. Most people have good intentions and they're unaware of just how much. We focus on small business sales mainly. And most small businesses are unaware of the huge opportunity there is selling to the government. I mean less than 1% of all small businesses in the US are selling to the US government. US. Military and the government they also don't realize have to buy from small businesses 23%. Typically they're exceeding 23% of their discretionary budget on a small business contract. So there's a lot of work out there. The numbers are increasing every year. And of course it can be complex if you don't have either a guide. You spend time learning the way the government makes purchases. So you're involved in that a little bit now. So talk me through working at Sierra Nevada which is for those that don't know it is, it is one of the big defense contractors. Most people think of the Lockheeds and the Bass and the Raytheon, but it's right up there with those guys and have some great solutions. So you're working there. What are you doing that you can talk about and kind of where did that meet you?

[11:47] Mike: Yeah. So ultimately it was the right place, right time. I got into the finance department and the finance department that I kind of settled into was the program finance. So it was basically keeping a pulse on the numbers for the hundreds of government programs going on simultaneously. So Sierra Nevada was doing all sorts of anywhere from aircraft modification to land based radios to satellite communications, to Humvee modifications. I mean, it was all over the map. We had at the time, there was seven divisions. They have branched off into space. They spun out Sierra space most recently. I mean, I've been with them in well over a decade, but they are still doing some really incredible stuff. And so what's funny is thinking back to that time, I remember learning about contract vehicles. That's a new term and basically it's an avenue or a means for the government to procure stuff, fill in the blank from paper to Star Wars stuff. And I remember learning then and sir, Nevada was a big user of sole source contracts and kind of just learning the deep dive of how procurement exists. And I remember thinking like this is insanity. To call it a beautifully broken system is, I think, accurate, because it's broken that it's the way to sell to the government is so hard, you know, from anywhere, from the big guys using lobbyists to using, you know, colors of money to contract vehicles, to, you know, contracting officers not having the right warrants or other vehicles, etc, etc, etc. It was just nuts. And so I, I remember thinking then, like, there's got to be a better system. Like there's something here and you know, fast forward 15 years, I I'm not going to say I've come up with a magic bullet by any stretch of imagination, but I do think there are ways to make it more efficient. And so getting back to the beautifully broken in that, it is beautiful. It is amazing how much money gets spent on an annual basis.

[13:57] Richard C. Howard: Sure.

[13:58] Mike: And it works. It's just there's a lot of room for improvement.

[14:04] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. I don't even get too much into Colors of Money on the podcast because I don't want to throw people off. But contract vehicles we talk about a lot and that does directly relate to Govly. So I guess just for listeners, if you're just tuning in and we're talking about vehicles and maybe you heard a little bit about maybe past podcasts about how the government makes purchases. The government can't just make a purchase the way you or I would, right? We can't just go to I could go to my buddy's Deal, sheet up and buy a Jeep if I wanted to. In fact, I think I actually told this story on a podcast. I can go buy this car that's probably not the most reliable and I could buy it from whoever I want to. But the government can't do that. There are a lot of regulations that dictate how the government buys. Now, one of the things that the government can do, we can have open competitions and that's like the Sam.gov. Right. But the government has ways of restricting that and doing things faster. Like a full blown competition could take twelve to 18 months or longer to put something on contract. Right. So when I was an acquisitions officer, I knew for instance, that I did not have 18 months to put something on contract. Right. So if I was in charge of cybersecurity services for a section of the Air Force, I knew that anytime I needed a vulnerability assessment, I couldn't spend twelve to 18 months competing that out. So what we do is we create these things we'd call contract vehicles. It also is referred to as category management, depending on who you talk to. And basically I can put something out that looks like a solicitation. I might get two or 300 companies applied to be on my Ricky Howard Cybersecurity contract. And then you have the competition, you whittle it down and maybe 50 companies are on there, or 20. And now the competition has already taken place. You're on the vehicle. It doesn't mean you make any money. It just means that I, as the government, when I need something, I can go to these companies that I've already vetted. I don't have to have a competition. I might have a small one within the vehicle itself, but it's not going to be public. Or I might just put a delivery order on someone. That gives me flexibility as the military to go do something quickly because it doesn't have time for everybody to spend 20 months making everything fair. Right. The fair competition part already happened. A vehicle. Now what do you do if you're a company? We have a lot of these vehicles out there. Some of them are huge and you have competitions on them and you don't in GSA is another I would say falls into that category. But you don't always see the competition piece for these the opportunities that are coming out that are just on these vehicles. Sometimes you do. And if it does come out on a vehicle and you are not on it, you need to partner with somebody that is on it. Exactly. And I probably don't understand it completely, but why don't you tell me a little bit about Govly, what you guys are doing a little bit differently than some of the other bid matching tools?

[17:00] Mike: Yeah, absolutely. As a quick history lesson on how Govly came to be was from Syria, Nevada, to embedded crypto, to getting really into the government procurement system, Govly realized that, hey, there is a network of organizations that have all of these contracts and the government issues a prime contract to prime contractors. Prime contractors may or may not be able to fulfill what they're requesting themselves. Generally not. They have to go to the next layer of resellers. Resellers are the ones that are reselling technologies to the government. They're the ones that actually have the sales force knocking on the door when an actual order gets placed. Those resellers buy technology from distributors. Distributors buy from OEMs. So call it to pick on someone large like HP. When the government purchases HP equipment from a small business on Soup, for example, Soup SEWP, if you've talked about that on your podcast, is one of the big contracting vehicles NASA Soup? Yeah, that's NASA soup. And so the government call it, the Air Force buys HP equipment from Soup through a Soup Prime. That prime buys from a value added reseller, reseller to distributor, like carisoft and carousel to HPE. Well, all of that transaction occurs generally via email. And the sharing of information is entirely disjointed. It can be. We have nightmare stories of people printing off the opportunity when it comes out, and it's seven pages long of a request from a government, and then there's seven modifications. And so now you've got 49 pages describe an RFQ, and then you're trying to share that information downstream to your supply chain. It's nightmarish. And so Govly was like, hey, why don't we create this network so this information is Govly can't publish RFQ information. We can't just publish it to the world. That being said, if you are a prime contractor and you have access or bona fide reason to have access to that information and you forward it to your supply chain, that is a legit and bona fide reason to do so. You are sharing. It's not classified by any means, but it is sensitive information that it's not public. And the vast majority of government contracting opportunities generally occur in non public, non sam means, especially in the It space, because as you said, the efficiency associated with It purchases is a requirement. If the Air Force said I needed to buy 1000 computers, they should call Dell and buy 1000 computers, but they can't. And so the quantity of protest and the length of time that it needs to be available is just incredible. So using someone like SOUP, they can say, no. My 130 something, I'm not sure how many contractors are there now, but 130 to 140 contractors on suit get access to this opportunity. They can turn it around and get the quote, turn the quote to the government. We're talking less than I've seen it in less than about 8 hours. That's generally at the end of the year, but I'd say more often than not, it's a week or two week procurement.

[20:21] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, that's about right.

[20:24] Mike: From Goblin's perspective, it was, how do we get this information to be able to be shared downstream immediately? And so what we've done is we've created the prime contractors that have come on to Govly and have said, oh, these are my resellers, and these are the resellers that get this type of information. So the opportunity hits, it gets ingested, it gets parsed, it gets labeled and some metrics and AI gets put on it of this is the type of opportunity it is, it gets sent out to the appropriate people downstream like the reseller. And the reseller then has the ability to take the opportunity still inside of Govly and send it to the distributor for using their technology or solutions architect to build out a spec. And it can go to the distributor or it can go to the OEM. But the fact of the matter is all of the information and all modifications and all timing is listed inside of the devli portal and so that everyone can seamlessly talk. And so when someone presents a quote, it can be from Disney to vendor or vendor to prime, and it's in a one secure, two segregated manner. So that pricing is sensitive information between those organizations, but all of the source information is there. Everyone is looking at the same bill of materials, everyone is looking at the same spec, the contracting officer, everyone knows what's going on and it's not getting lost in translation.

[21:46] Richard C. Howard: Interesting. So do the Primes on these contract vehicles use Govly as a way to find subcontractors, as a way to find some of the providers of that information? Is that the benefit to them?

[22:00] Mike: Yes, the short answer is yes and that's where we are headed. The longer answer is the prime today have more brought their networks, their existing networks. The platform now we actually just launched it a couple of weeks ago has created a partnership portal so that you can now find every prime that is on the platform. You can find companies so a new user to the platform can go and say hey, I'm looking for a Soup Five contractor that has a hub zone set aside and you can actually request a partnership right then and there new company, it's a game. The new company is still selling to the prime because the prime just doesn't want to open their feeds up to anybody in the sun. They want to know that what somebody is bringing is this technology that is going to be desired by the government.

[22:59] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, it's interesting just maybe for some people out there just on some perspective at least my perspective is because I do a few things, I have a consulting business and I have DoD Contract Academy and I help small businesses sell the government sometimes those kind of blend. So if I'm actively business developing so for instance I'm on a list with companies that are primes and they will send me emails whenever they have a need for something that's on their vehicle and that's kind of what you're talking about, right? So that's kind of traditionally how they're going to do that. When you say it's by email I get probably five to ten emails every day from different people like hey, this is what's coming up if you're interested, submit, name your company. They all do it a little bit differently what you bring and typically that's the way that they would do that they would develop these lists of potential. They would vet them a little bit on their end and then try to bring those in. So this seems like a way to make it easy for them and maybe easy for you if you are a small business that has a product or a solution that could potentially fit with one of these companies on a vehicle.

[24:11] Mike: Yeah so generally what happens when a new small business comes onto the platform. We're able to do a demo or trial license too. We want it to be mutually beneficial right? Like a company that comes on and we can search all of our opportunities. We're ingesting anywhere from 500 to 2000 net new opportunities a day across about 24 contract vehicles and so all of this information is being aggregated and stored and so new company comes on and says hey I sell law. Right now we are focused almost exclusively on the It sector so anything that relates to It goods and services and if a new small business comes on and says I sell fill in the blank we're going to search it live. This is not a smoke and mirrors game like we're going to hope and find opportunities that the new small business can bid hopefully immediately because small business would generally be able to present a competitive bid to something that's being requested. So if it's an intrusion detection platform there's some big boys that are always going to be asked for. But if a small business comes on that is actually making some really cool stuff this is an avenue for them to get in and they don't have to set up their Sam.gov profile or fill out all of the fire requirements or et cetera et cetera. We can align them with a prime contractor and they sell the prime, the prime sells the government. If it's one do you align them.

[25:47] Richard C. Howard: So when they come in there, is that something that when you say we align, you mean that Govly like the software they can use the software to kind of align themselves or do they actually speak with somebody that no, we.

[25:58] Mike: Will actually we will do a, you know, we call it white glove now. I mean in theory down the road will be fully automated but for the time being it's more it's, it's relationship based. I know every single prime on the platform. And the day that I come to a prime and say, hey, I've got this really cool technology, I think you're going to be interested in it's the let's have one quick conversation, let's share the feeds. And then it's on the burden on the small business to find the opportunities that they think they can bid. And now the avenue and the connection is there. They could sell or bid a government contract in a matter of days because if they find the opportunity they're going to inside the platform say hey soup. One, two, three or five. I got this from you prime contractor. I can bid this. Can we work together? And this communication is going to happen inside of Govly. Here's my quote then the prime contractor say great, I'm going to submit it.

[26:57] Richard C. Howard: Okay. Interesting. So did I hear you say this has been up for only a couple of weeks now? Is that correct?

[27:03] Mike: The partnership aspect, so Govly in itself being able to ingest has been up for a couple of years working with Primes Large and Small and their supply chain all the way down. So we've got Primes, VARs, Distributors and OEMs all on the platform today being able to sign in. There's a new banner or a new navigation link that says partnerships and that partnerships. One of the first thing you're going.

[27:31] Richard C. Howard: To see is I have it up right now.

[27:33] Mike: That's why I'm oh yeah, no please. There's going to be a fine partners. And so if you are in a perfect world you small business have maybe gotten some level of interest from some government agency and the government agency is like hey I'd really like to buy your stuff or I'd like to buy through you X, Y and Z, what contract vehicles do you have? And then the appropriate response from small business would be well what contract vehicles would do you prefer buying off of and they're going to spit off one of many or give you a couple and you take those names. You come to this partnership aspect and say hey I need to find a CIO contract holder or FS two or a soup. That's where it gets and it turns into a little bit of art and this is more of an experience thing. Over time you can talk to your customer and be like hey I hear you need a HUBZone credit or you need to sell to an Fdbo or others. We can align you with any of these set asides available so that you basically are tending to your customers needs and fulfilling their requirements.

[28:45] Richard C. Howard: Interesting. And you have some other features in here too because you also have the Sam.gov feed.

[28:52] Mike: Yeah, so we get the sam.gov fee away for free that's everybody could sign on. And from our perspective it's a much easier navigation. You can set up your own search terms and get a daily digest or you can be pinged via email the moment something matches your search terms. But the real power of Govly is basically aligning and aggregating all of the non public feeds. And again we can't just publish that. That's why when you sign on you don't see any of that information. But when we have a conversation or do a demo we can learn more about your system and then help you navigate to the right prime contractor feed and go from there. We have never run into a situation where we haven't been able to connect to a. Prime contractor to get the feed that is of interest to you.

[29:42] Richard C. Howard: That's interesting. Let me ask you, does this I think I know the answer, but maybe not. Does this include GSA opportunities or no?

[29:50] Mike: So we are ingesting two Git and GSA schedule 70 through the Ebuy platform. Again, GSA is a little bit more on the messy side, but yes, we.

[30:03] Richard C. Howard: Do, you do that through. And again, I might get this wrong, but I'm still understanding here. So do you get that through companies that have the GSA schedule? Because I'm specifically referring to sometimes you might see in a Sam.gov a GSA opportunity. But by and large, if you have a GSA schedule, which is something you can apply to be on if you're listening, we've talked about whether or not you need it or not, but a lot of times those opportunities are not appearing on Sam Gov. And by the way, GSA owns Sam.gov, which is interesting in and of itself. Maybe that's another conversation. So the GSA opportunities don't pop through Sam Gov. I would say that I feel like I see more of the other contract vehicle opportunities pop through there. So if I was listing for the government something and I intended to award it on NASA Soup, that would still most likely, at least from my experience, come through on Sam Gov. You might be in fact, companies come to me all the time like hey, this thing came through, I'm perfect for it. I think this is great. And we'll see there what does this mean that we intend to award this on NASA Super, we intend to work this on NetCents or ITeS or whatever, all of those. Right, and that's when we get into that conversation. Right. But GSA separately, like you don't even see a lot of it and you don't see some of the bigger ones either that you're referring to. So that makes this interesting in a lot of ways and the fact that you're potentially seeing some of the GSA stuff. Okay, I talked around what my real question was, is that a company that has a GSA schedule and now they're posting the opportunities that they're getting through GSA that they need help on here?

[31:46] Mike: Basically, yes. Ultimately they're not doing any of the posting. What they're doing is a GSA Prime contractor has come to Govly and is using Govly for their internal systems, for their sales team being able to find the opportunities their sales team is looking for. So if they have a GSA schedule and they're getting 100 net new opportunities a day and they have five salespeople, those five salespeople are generally broken up either by agency or by technology type or who knows. And if you just have a feed of these hundred opportunities coming into your system, it's going into a shared mailbox. And so all five people are now looking through all 100 emails and who knows, maybe one gets lucky and they find 20 they're interested in or maybe all five find nothing. But now they've spent 3 hours parsing through all of this information and that's where Govly comes in is like no don't go look at the shared mailbox. Like let Govly sit on top. Let it be this data layer that is going to get to the information and once you're on board, ongoing it is a bit of an art and we can help you through that art of setting up the platform so that it's working well for you and your team. And so all five salespeople no longer look at the 100 emails. They only get notified of the emails of the opportunities that meet their requirements. So now they're only focused on those opportunities. And when a GSA prime contractor has a sub that say the prime contractor has five people going after cyber security's but they've got a really good sub or they have an interest in going after storage, they can basically align their connect their Govly instances so that the subcontractor will get notified of storage opportunities. Okay. And so that's how the sharing of information and all we're doing is making it putting some structure automation and some polish on what's already occurring. So we're not breaking any rules and sharing this information because the information is going to be shared anyway. We're just making it efficient for the entire supply chain to use it.

[34:04] Richard C. Howard: Well one of the basic premises of the Federal Acquisitions regulations is fairness and government purchasing. Right? So exactly. It's not playing I have a secret and a lot of people feel like a lot of people I should say, that haven't cracked the code yet feel like there's something shady going on when they see it looks like a contract was written for a certain company or they realize, oh I couldn't even bid on that. Nothing shady is going on. You just don't understand that there's a whole process before a solicitation ever comes out whether it's where the government is determining how they're going to purchase something. One of those things is we determine a contract vehicle and I help companies actually shape that before they even get to hey, this on NASA Soup. If you're not on NASA Soup you want to make sure that the government doesn't choose that direction. Right. So if I want to buy your product and I'm thinking about NASA Soup because it's a vehicle my office uses and maybe you're on another vehicle like maybe or GSA or nothing, there's nothing that stops you from saying, hey, I recommend you do it this way or sole source. To me you probably won't do that but sometimes I will.

[35:07] Mike: It would be nice but the burden on the customer is much higher.

[35:11] Richard C. Howard: Yeah look and it happens. It just depends on what it is that the government's purchasing, how large it's going to be and how common it is that other companies are selling it. So this is really interesting. In like my email example, I get these emails from companies that have they're looking for help with these opportunities on vehicles. But like I mentioned, even ten emails, I'm not reading half of them right, because I get 200 other emails every day. Right.

[35:39] Mike: So this is interesting.

[35:40] Richard C. Howard: You take care of that. I can only imagine what a prime sitting on a NASA Soup is doing, all the opportunities they're getting. So you can kind of sort through that for them and help them out with that a little bit. And you're helping maybe the smaller businesses or the subs that are joining here just have general awareness opportunities and maybe some ability to engage when normally they wouldn't.

[36:02] Mike: That's the perfect comment of its general awareness. It surprises the vast majority of people we talk to, the quantity of opportunities that are not public. I mean, there is a belief that, hey, no, everything is through Sam.gov and it's not the case by such a large stretch of imagination the Soup Opportunities. It's funny, I don't know that I've ever, not for any other reason, I'm not in Sam.gov because it was more of a necessary evil for us to put it on there. We wanted to be just the private contract fees, but a number of our customers were like, oh, but I still like seeing Sam Gov. So we've added it. I've never seen a Soup opportunity come out on Sam.gov. Partly because Soup is publishing 50 to 150 opportunities a day. Sometimes they're just to HUBZone or sometimes they're to all small businesses. Maybe they're large businesses, but all of these should and only go to the 130 or 40 contractors that bid the Soup Five opportunity when it published on Sam.gov exactly a couple of years away from Soup Six. I can't say that Soup Six is a goal for any of your listeners unless they're already selling. Just because that is a massive undertaking.

[37:31] Richard C. Howard: It's a big one. Part of the things that we go through when we're helping business, and I've done it on some of these podcasts too, is because the information is public, we can go in right away and see what's going through, how the government makes purchases, right? So we can go in relatively quickly and say, okay, if we look at something like, I don't know, someone came in with documentary filmmaker, I'll just show that I'm just kind of making this up, right? But we can go in and say, okay, well, this looks like most of this was simplified acquisitions, sole source contracts, and maybe 30% publicly competed. I can look at another area like let's take office supplies, which I know this a very large percentage of that's going through GSA, which means you're not even going to see those opportunities unless you're on a GSA. And that's kind of what you're getting at and we can see the same thing with contract vehicles. And usually you can break it out with kind of the big, like government wide acquisitions, contracts versus IDIQs versus you name it. So depending on what you're selling, you got to do that research ahead of time. And if you see that a significant portion of the government spending is through GSA, is through some of these contract vehicles, yes. It is largely going to be unavailable for you to either bid on it or know that it's there unless you're partnering with someone and someone's kind of helping you out with that. So I can definitely see the benefit of this. It could make it a lot easier to find some of those opportunities, especially if you're in a niche where the government does these purchases through these vehicles.

[39:03] Mike: Yeah, exactly. And that's actually a great point on just talking about some historics and one of the things that we do when we onboard is we look for the products that you generally sell to the government, but we also look for your competitors products. And we can kind of do we have years of this data that we can run some analytics on and we can start to see trends of, hey, these are the OEMs you would be competing against. These are the agencies that have requested this information in the past. And if you show a graph, hey, the government's trending down on these type of procurements. That means either that technology is no longer being needed or that they're procuring through means that even we don't have access to. And so it's all intelligence, right?

[39:48] Richard C. Howard: Yeah. We always tell our client, I mean, I always tell them the relationship is a big part of this. Right. Because we're talking contract vehicles right now. At the end of the day, the successful companies spend time building relationships with government purchasers and the program managers and whatnot. But one question that especially sales people are usually interested in the next sale, and if they're good, they're always asking about newer opportunities. One thing that often gets missed is maybe you're used to selling to the government through GSA and you're on GSA, or maybe you're used to selling, maybe you have a blanket purchase agreement set up. But government agencies often pivot to different purchasing mechanisms. So you could be used to sell to the government in one particular way, not realizing that they are moving towards either building their own vehicle. So we're talking about some of the bigs, but you can put together your own IDIQ, your own contract vehicle. They just didn't tell you. Maybe nothing nefarious is going on, but they just didn't think of it. And you didn't think to ask. So you got to ask that because the government having this knowledge is going to be good because the government can pivot whenever it wants.

[40:59] Mike: We get the request pretty regularly. I mean, a couple of times a month. A well seasoned government contractor, even a prime, is like pulling their hair out because they can't find an opportunity. They are driving. And once it gets to a procurement decision, the communication between seller and buyer effectively stops because it's got to go through a contracting shop and the end user is like, yeah, I sent it to contracting. Contracting is going to release it.

[41:27] Richard C. Howard: It should be out.

[41:28] Mike: I thought it was out three days ago. And he's like, I can't find it. And it's gone to a different contract vehicle or it's gone to a different set aside in the contract vehicle. That was just a surprising thing.

[41:39] Richard C. Howard: And I mean, if you don't have that relationship, if it's a shop you're working with, you can email the PIA or the contracting officer and hope that they hope it's not a strategy but try to get a response there. But yeah, who do you go to if you can't find what you think is coming out? So very interesting. Very interesting. Let me ask you this. Do you own the system? Did you put it together? How did it come to be just kind of the building of this and the ownership of it right now?

[42:09] Mike: Yeah, no, absolutely. So my business partner and I stood up a government contractor that was basically designed to network Primes because we realized that we didn't have to own the contract vehicle. We were able to network with Primes. And after this idea kind of caught on, we ended up with four Primes with about seven different contract vehicles and we had a network of resellers that we use to fulfill these opportunities and we built software to manage all of this.

[42:45] Richard C. Howard: Okay.

[42:45] Mike: And that software kind of grew legs and we had a watershed moment of about two years ago when we were pitching a new small business or a new OEM to come on our platform saying, hey, we can be your single throat to choke on these seven contract vehicles. Work with us. You don't need seven different relationships to reach these. Just use us. We will manage all of the contracts before you. And they said, hey, that's great. We're going to work with you, but how do we buy the software? Because we want to be able to they were a prime on a couple of other contracts. They wanted Govly or what turned into Govly to manage the feed and management of all of the opportunities they were seeing themselves. Because, you know, the, the three contracts that they had you know, two were a portal and one was an email. And so you know, somebody was logging into the system and trying to pull the information and then the other two portal or the other two contract vehicles were sending emails and it was just a mess. And it's just the, it's the navigation of all of this information, getting to the right people at the right time and making sure that they're focused on what they're good at.

[43:57] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, no, it's an interesting tool. I got to work through it a little bit. I think I could guess as to why some of the people using it want the Sam.gov coming through there. And just as someone who does business development, so I only do that with one client right now and kind of spend the rest of my time at the academy and on the podcasting and whatnot. But I have been dying for a tool that does it all so I don't have to use eight different things, which is exactly what I'm doing right now. Right. I have my CRM tool for business development. I've got at least three different applications that I pay for to find opportunities and find different information within the government. And then there's some free websites out there that I also use depending each one kind of does their own thing and just having everything linked together would really help out. So like with this, it is nice that it has the Sam.gov feed in it as well because for me and for a lot of the people that listen to this podcast and that I work with, we're pretty focused on finding the opportunities ahead of time. And so knowing that and I'm just kind of thinking out loud of how I would use this is knowing for instance, that I could find an RFI on Sam.gov and I would put these out as an acquisitions guy, which is often just the acquisition shop trying.

[45:21] Mike: To figure it out.

[45:23] Richard C. Howard: There you'll often see, hey, we're thinking of using a contract vehicle. You pick the contract exactly. Or maybe it doesn't say anything about that, but you can suggest one, right? So maybe having a place you could go where now I can see the opportunity. Let's say you mow wants. This is probably a bad example, right, because I'm guessing if someone well, I don't know, if someone had a landscaping company, would this be a tool they could use or is this just focused on it and cyber right now?

[45:53] Mike: So right now on the free side, looking at Sam.gov, the landscaping organizations can use Govly to search Sam.gov and get the notifications. It would not be something that I would recommend for them to use on the paid side because the paid side is basically just the vehicles. It's all of the vehicles that you likely don't have access to. And what additional power of the tool is the analytics, the backward looking RFQs, as well as being able to share the information. Once you find an opportunity and you're like, hey, this might be good for my partner or my supply chain, they can share that information downstream or side stream type of thing. That's the value of the paid subscription.

[46:46] Richard C. Howard: Right. And not a lot of those vehicles focus on landscaping services, right? Well, that's a good distinction because there are a lot of people that are in the trades listening to this.

[46:56] Mike: Yeah totally.

[46:57] Richard C. Howard: People are doing something like social media. I mean the government is buying a lot of different things but maybe if you're doing something more along the lines of setting up 5G networks for different cyber related efforts or there's a lot of things that you can do with the 5G network actually. But this might be a place where you could find opportunities in RFIs. Maybe you could start seeing things ahead of time which is what I always recommend and you could see that the government is probably leaning towards one vehicle or another or maybe they'll in that process tell you that hey we like what you have but we're probably leaning towards we've been talking about NASA Soup. They could potentially find somebody to partner with here if they weren't on NASA Soup to go after that. And I will say too I feel like I repeat myself a lot on the podcast but again people don't listen to every episode. So as an acquisition officer in a federal agency or military base or whatever it is the three things you're always asking yourself are okay do I have a requirement? Meaning that's the official the government needs something do I have the money? And it doesn't always come from the same place. Do I have the funding? And a lot of companies think oh they have the money they have the requirement they can put me on contract. But the next thing that they're always going to ask themselves is how am I going to put this company on contract? Because it's not that simple. And if I have a vehicle to put them on contract it's like a gift from God. If I have a vehicle in the company I want to hire or on that vehicle that I control then that's a beautiful thing because that's a very fast transaction for the government but that doesn't always work out. There's a lot of times where there's a company that does something great like 5G is probably a good example because it's kind of up and coming. You might be great at setting up 5G networks. There's been a couple of SBIRs in the past year where these companies have really excelled at setting up that type of technology. I might want to hire this particular company and I have access to a NASA Soup but they're not on it. So now hey can they possibly partner with somebody on that contract so I can get to them? Exactly. And that's a very common thing.

[49:02] Mike: That is a very common thing and that is the partnership's power inside of Govly’s being able to I mean it's got to be a nightmare right? You finally made this effective sale to a contracting officer to an agent and they're like hey yeah I can put it on soup and you're like soup what? And better yet to all of your listeners, if you are in the It space, the answer to a contracting officer, when they say do you have fill in the blank? And as long as it's an agency IDIQ or a GWEC, the answer should be hey, I am not a prime contractor but I have access. Because that's where Govly can help you. Give me a call and I will find that prime contractor because if there's not going to be a prime contractor going to turn you down for driving a business and they just need to push the paper.

[49:56] Richard C. Howard: That's exactly right.

[49:58] Mike: Bear mind me. I'd say the range in fee for a prime contractor to do that ranges from call it one to 5% depending on the list and so that's just 1% on the top line.

[50:11] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, no I think that's a good place to cut it because I think that very succinctly tells our listeners what the value is. Again I would say you're trying to sell to the government. You recognize you're in an industry especially with an It that uses a lot of these type of vehicles and there's a lot of things you're not seeing. This is a great tool to use to gain some insight, make some of those connections, maybe level up. I still got to play with it. So just full disclosure, I haven't used this past playing with it for an hour or so but I think it's worth checking out and you can get in here for free. I've done that. And then I think that Mike, you have something here that is unique and needed. And I'm glad that you're serving the businesses that are selling to this country here in the closing steps here. Why don't you tell people what your closing thoughts are and maybe how they can either contact you or get to Govly. What do you want to say?

[51:12] Mike: Yeah. So ultimately we design Govly to make it easier for the entire supply chain to get goods and services to the government faster and more efficient. And the amount of information out there that is obfuscated or hidden or feeling. Of secret we are trying to unveil in a very secure but in a manner so that the small and medium businesses out there have a better chance to see the opportunities that actually exist to sell to the government. I would recommend sign up for the free platform for Sam.gov and that's what you're able to search on the free side. And if you're in the It space, we'd love to give you a team of people that will give you a quick demo. And it is so immediately clear whether or not the platform is going to be valuable to you, because we're going to search what you sell, we're going to search your competitors, and the opportunities are going to be there or they're not. And we're not going to hard sell you to get on the platform if it's not going to provide you value. That's not why we designed it. There is a need for so many companies out there, and we want to get the name out there so that they know they have a new avenue to connect and align with new prime contractors for opportunities they never knew existed.

[52:27] Richard C. Howard: Yeah, that's great. What's the website?

[52:30] Mike: Goblin.com go v l y.com It was obviously a play on government that started off as a bit of a tongue in cheek and kind of stuck.

[52:42] Richard C. Howard: I like it. It's nice and simple and easy to remember. So, yeah, if you are in the It space and this sounds interesting to you guys, go check out the website and let me know what you think too. I'm definitely intrigued. Mike, thanks for coming on the podcast. This was really interesting, and I learned a lot.

[52:59] Mike: This was fun. I really appreciate the time, and best wishes to you and talk soon.

[53:04] Richard C. Howard: All right, thanks, man.

If you enjoyed this episode, you can also check out Live Workshop: Determining a Government Contracting Niche where I worked with Eytan to help him determine the best niche to focus his government contracting business on!

You can check out our Free Workshop where you'll get access to a free Masterclass to see if Defense Contracting is right for you.