Servant Leadership & Winning Contracts: An Interview with Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret) (Podcast Transcript)

[00:05] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): To me. I'm still serving. I mean, like you are there's something about being in the military. I mean, I come from a military vent. My dad was a marine. Well, he's a marine. He's 92. But, you know, I feel we're called to serve. I feel really good that I feel now that as I move toward the twilight of my career, if I can give anything to our PIOs, if I can help them, I think I've done something. We have a purpose. We defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies. Foreign investment. What greater job could there be?

[00:35] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Hey, guys, this week we have a phenomenal episode with Dr. Joe. Dr. Joe served in the military. He was in public affairs afterwards and has done a ton of training and now selling to the government. He has a crazy, awesome story. I really enjoyed talking to him. And really, you probably could tell when you hear this as a retired military guy, whenever you put two of us into the room, it doesn't matter what service some of that magic comes back from when you served and you bonded and you had a mission. And now we're both kind of doing similar things where he's selling to the government, he's providing his training services, and I'm helping small businesses sell to the government. So still both feeling that call to provide in whatever small contribution that we can to supporting the troops in uniform and people working for the government and serving this great country. Again, you are going to love what Joe has to say, and it's also going to offer you a fresh perspective on selling to the government, right? So depending on what you sell, there's a lot of different ways that you are going to get involved in selling. You're going to hear some of the strategies that he uses, how important relationships are in what he does and why he now can be picky about what he takes.

[01:58] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): So when you're good and people want you to do work for them, then you can have the ability to drive the price that you want and to pick and choose what you want to do. So, again, strap in. This is going to be a great episode. Remember to head to Dodcontract.com if you're looking for any help selling to the US. Military or other federal government agencies. All right, now on to Dr. Joe.

[02:20] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Well, my background, of course, I'm an army officer, retired army officer. Initially, I was an armor officer. I killed people for a living. I like my Italian grandfather who worked for the mafia. I did it legally for a year. And then the army said, hey, you really speak well, and you're right. Well, how would you like to go to be a public affairs officer? In 1981, I went to the fort Ben Harrison, the defense information school pinfo's train killer. I'm one of those did that in 1981, and I did it for another 21 years to the public affairs officer, retired as a lieutenant colonel, and then I did a stint in the federal government. A friend of mine sent me a resume of an application form to apply for the Defense Information School to be the master public affairs instructor and the Department of Defense media relations training trainer. And the school was moving from Fort Ben Harrison all the way to Fort Meade, Maryland. And it's kind of like the inmates now take over the asylum. So I was hired. It took 15 interviews to get me on board. It was a grueling process, but it was it was a wonderful experience. For nine years. I again the school stood up at Fort Mead. The Defense Information School. I'm sure your listeners know that it trains all public affairs officers, enlisted and civilians and allies currently friendly from the United States in public affairs skills and training, also photography and videography.

[03:47] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): They actually might not be aware. So we have a lot of small businesses that are selling, maybe have some initial sales or selling for the first time. Maybe you could talk a little bit about what a public affairs officer is in the end.

[03:59] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): To me, a public affairs officer is three tools. That's what I was taught in 1981. It's still the same. We do community relations, advising and counseling, strategy and tactics. We do media relations strategy and tactics, and we do what we call command information. And you've been in the Air Force understands that command information is internal information. So it's the same thing that a corporation does. It has to involve itself and be part of the fabric in a community. It has to talk with its employees, which is critical. Internal information is so critical. And media relations, which has evolved so much from when I started in 81, nine one, when we had traditional we had newspapers, radio, TV, billboards, kind of a one way flow. Now we have Twitter, LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook, all those other we've got all these tools at our disposal. Public affairs officers to me are the people that basically developed a strategic communication plan for an organization that has objectives that are measurable attainable realistic. I also am a contractor for FEMA, and I've been doing that now 14 years. The gentleman who hired me, God rest his soul, passed away in 2019. Phil Palatano. I'm missing terribly. I do all the public affairs training for FEMA, public affairs officers, from the basic to our master class, which we're very proud of. It's in its 9th year. We have 135 master PIOs. But these people to me are the people that should sit next to the incident commander or the CEO and say, hey boss, this is our strategic communication plan. This is what you need to do. And hopefully they listen to us. Of course, a lot of times they don't. And then we see the failures in organizations.

[05:42] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Sure, yeah, I think a lot of people listening might be surprised to find out that if you've never been in the military, that military personnel can't just take interviews with a news organization or write an article or a book even sometimes after they get out. What does that look like? I know, but you could probably actually teach me a little bit something here. So what does the public affairs officer because I would always have to talk with them first before I gave you something as an active duty guy, what does that look like? How are you kind of shaping that for that outside I don't know, outside narrative?

[06:22] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Well, to me, having been a public affairs officer for 21 years, you're the commander's representative. The commander is basically the person who runs the public affairs program. All we do is administer it. And you know as well as I know, Rick, that I was on the command staff, so I was special staff to the commander. I reported directly to the commander, and that's where CEOs and organizations, you should have your public relations person right there at the policy table with you. And we fought for that. And you're right. If you're going to do an interview, we're going to work with you and say, okay, Rick, let's train you. Let's make sure you're ready. You're the subject matter expert. I know two organizations that I've done training with over the years. One is the United States Coast Guard, and they unlike any other service other than the Marine Corps. And I'm the son of a Marine, so I know how to talk Marine. I got it. My dad's 92. He's a Korean War veteran. And again, the Coast Guard trains everybody in media relations from the lowest rank to the commandant, and their policy is a little bit different than ours. And I think the Air Force, the army, the Navy need to adopt that policy. The Marines have adopted it. If it's your job, you could speak about it. If you know about it, you could speak about it. However, we do say at the end, make sure you talk to your public affairs officer before you do that so we know you're talking. It's critical.

[07:45] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Yeah, that's a much more open policy than at least I experienced. I may delete this little side note from the podcast, or I don't know, maybe I'll leave it. But this is how I found out about the public affairs department. So when I joined in 99, the Air Force so I joined as an officer, went through officer training school, and then my next excellent. Next stop was flight school. Right. So I got reached out NBC, in the city we were in, reached out to me and said they were doing a show called Bachelor's in Uniform. So I was I was 24, you know, and had a flight suit with no wings on it yet because I hadn't even got my wings, like, yeah, yeah, and can you just come on in in uniform? And I went down there and I was like I was full on like goodwill hunting Boston. And I still remember coming into the flight squadron and talking to by a flight training officer and telling him, hey, what do you guys do? I'm like, I just gave an interview with NBC. He's like, what uniform? And I could see there was a.

[08:48] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Flight commander and assistant flight commander.

[08:50] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): The assistant flight commander was Navy.

[08:52] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): We were a joint school.

[08:53] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): And as I went on telling the story and the amazing BS that came out of my mouth, the Navy guy smile was just I mean, he could barely contain himself. And the Air Force major was just.

[09:03] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Like heads in his hand about to.

[09:06] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Explode, like what had just happened? Needless to say, I was told not to do interviews.

[09:15] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): How did they come out? Did they air it?

[09:17] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): No, our public affairs department called NBC and was basically like, hey, because I wasn't one. And first of all, you can't do this. We aren't going to approve it, and we are in charge of improvement. So you have to go. It never made the light of day.

[09:34] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Although your moment of fame, your 15 second of fame, it seems like a.

[09:42] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Really interesting career, interesting job, and obviously what you're doing now that you're out of the military still ties into that.

[09:49] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Yes.

[09:50] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Maybe we could talk a little bit about hey because obviously you progress from being Lieutenant Colonel. And I do have a couple of questions because working with FEMA and the Coast Guard you mentioned as a contractor. Do you mean as your business has a contract with those agencies or you are like a government contractor, like a GS or contractor. You go into work every day.

[10:13] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): No, under FEMA they advertise courses and FEMA, they don't have the instructors. So they reach out to academy. You have to be certified by them to become an instructor. So I went through the program. Phil Palotono accepted me and registered me as a contractor. Has a registered, valid Credential instructor. You have to go through that program. And I did that 14 years ago. And then they do bid. So there's a bidding period that goes for like six. The window is going to open up again in November and it'll be for the courses in 2023. And they'll list them. I'm qualified to teach the basic Pio course, the advanced public affairs course, and the masters. And then just recently, I got a dream come true. I had two dreams when I left the military. One, I wanted to be a White House press secretary. That will never happen. But secondly, because I wrote my dissertation on James Hagerty, Eisenhower press secretary, who's the greatest press secretary ever and still is. But that's a different story. And the second one, I wanted to be. I wanted to be not only a FEMA and contract instructor. I wanted to be an executive academy instructor at Emergency Management Institute in Emmetsburg. It is the creme de la creme of Emergency Management Institute. It trains all the incident commanders like we saw, and I hate to say this, all these terrible active shootings we have, an incident commander comes in. Those are the people I wanted to train. And last year I got selected. I'm already on that contract. But for the FEMA public affairs ones, you have to bid. You have to send in a bid. There's a form, how much you can bid on. And I always push the envelope because I think I'm worth a little bit more than but I get a lot of them. It looks like I'm locked in on the master one. I'm the lead instructor for that one. The Executive Academy folks, when they hired me, the person who hired me, Dr. Kelly Garrett, said, as far as I'm concerned, because I'm 68, he said, as far as I'm concerned, as long as you got breath in your body, you're going to teach here. But the other one is a process where you actually bid, but you have to become a certified instructor. You have to go through the process. Okay, but it's not day to day. It's a long way of answering your question. Courses are anywhere from four days to five days, and you have to say, and you bid on that. Sometimes I don't get it.

[12:44] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): I got you. No, it's interesting. There's so many different opportunities within the government, across industries. And we were just talking on a podcast the other day. We were talking about just kind of things that people wouldn't normally assume or associate with, like military spending. Right. Like, we were looking at things like speaking of social media, facebook Live training, tai chi instructors, yoga. It really runs the gambit and gambit. And with yours, with training is something a lot of people do in different areas. Could you talk a little bit about how you first got into it? Because you obviously registered your business. I think I saw that your service disabled better and owned small business.

[13:23] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Yes, I am.

[13:24] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): You talk a little bit about what inclined, how you got into it, how you found out about it, and kind of what your process for winning contracts look like.

[13:35] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): I left the Defense Information School in 2003, and I remember the commandant of the Defense Information School said, you're crazy. I was at GS 13. I was making great money. I traveled the world. I actually trained Rumsfeld in 2000. I had him for 4 hours. I failed miserably in that four hour block of instruction, but I got to go to places like Norway and England and France. I traveled all over Paraguay, Mexico. I mean, I was the DoD media relations trainer. But in my soul, I thought, well, I really want to do my own thing. And it was scary because being in the military or being a DoD civilian. You got to check every two weeks. You had great. The pay was outstanding. I went from being a college professor making 36,000 a year to a GS employee making 96,000 a year. And then I didn't have to have the political BS that universities have, which absolutely infuriate me. I'll never forget that meeting felt like but long story short, I decided I wanted to do it. It was scary. I went ahead and registered. My company became an LLC, and I told my clients, I have to have so many months that I can't work with you. I think there was some sort of clause or something. And after that was up. My God, they started lining up. So a lot of those clients I still have almost 19 years later. The relationships I formed the Army Corps of Engineers, has been my client for 19 years since I left, and I did stuff with them as a DoD civilian, as an army officer. As a matter of fact, I've got one in Alaska. I'm on a contract for another five years. I'm thinking I'll be 73. Are you sure? You want me to say, yeah, but it's closed and Anchorage, so I tell them I'll go in May. So to answer your question, I did the LLC. It was scary initially, I'd be very honest, because if I don't work, I don't have money. It became I saved a lot, but then it started, and it just exploded. I think the big key to me is a relationship. I think I've built this relationship with them, that they know what they're getting, and again, I give them everything I can. But that's a long winded way to answer, and I think an LLC is important. And then I got the million dollars insurance that I pay for. I'm not in a business that well, you fall down and stick a pin in your eye or something. I don't know. But I just want to COVID my personal assets that they can only sue so much. Yeah, I know.

[16:06] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): You bring up a lot of good points there. Small businesses tend to struggle initially because they don't realize it is a relationship game.

[16:14] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Oh, God, yes.

[16:15] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): And what they'll do is a common mistake, is they'll hear that there's a lot of government spending in small businesses. They'll register their company, and then they're just kind of waiting for solicitations to come out and bidding on them. And for most businesses, that's not an effective way of consistently winning work. It's more kind of building those relationships ahead of time, learning what the upcoming opportunities are. And then for small businesses, everything isn't a competitive win, either. There's a lot of simplified acquisitions and whatnot. So how did you approach that initially with because you had a lot of relationships in place already. So was it more, hey, I'm reaching out to these clients and seeing what's coming? And then when you did. Were they initially competitive? I know some of them are now just based on what you told me, but or were they giving you sole source contracts? How did that kind of work out?

[17:07] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): I think I got a combination of what you talked about. I'd had relationships with people in the government. They can write a sole source contract. Trayhand and Associates is the one we want. And this is the skills. Yes. I did a lot of work in Canada, which I still do, and even the Canadian government, when you cross the border. When I went into St. John's the first time, I had to have a letter from St. John's Airport that I had a skill that a Canadian vendor does not have. They brought me in a room. I thought, I'm getting interrogated. Who are you? And I thank God I had this letter because I guess the government wants to make sure and rightly so, they want to make sure their own people get those contracts rather than bringing somebody from another country. Sure. The sole sources. There the other thing, too. I was beaten out by some contracts, too. I remember there was a lieutenant that I taught at Denfos that left Info the same time I left, and he was in contact me for two years. He went to anchor Turkey. He was an Air Force public affairs officer, became a captain. And he was so impressed with the way I taught. So he wrote this contract for me, basically. So I applied. And now turkey. I've never been to Turkey. I don't know if you've been to Turkey. I looked at the flight and everything. I mean, it was pretty expensive for me to fly over there, no less, make some money. I put in my bid, and this company in Virginia who has 100 to 200 former military public affairs folks beat me out by $100. They underbid me by $100 just to win. And I called the contracting officer because, like you said, I'm a disabled American veteran, small business, and supposedly there's a set aside. And he said, well, you lost. That's what he told me. I said, oh, really? So this is a very large firm that could I mean, they've got much more power and resources to me, but yeah. So contract, so source contract, I've done that. I've also bid open bids with people as well. Sometimes you lose.

[19:10] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): It's good to talk about that, too, because I often will say that I knew what company I wanted to hire before a Solicitation ever went out. Almost always true, but a lot of people just listen to that piece and interpret that as well. I knew this was all rigged. Well, it's not rigged because I didn't always get to hire the company that I wanted when I was an acquisitions officer. So I might know that I want to hire Dr. Joe. You might help me write that Solicitation and put all the requirements in, but often I was not the one reviewing the proposal. Like, a lot of times you have a team, you have contracting officers, and it's very regulated. And if that's not written, sometimes it prices. The answer sometimes there's a requirement in there that just wasn't hit hard enough by a small business or a company, and maybe they just assumed they had it, and they lose. You can absolutely lose during that proposal process because you're much more likely to win if you wrote the solicitation with the CEO.

[20:05] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): And you're right. I mean, I thought I had the contract in Nashville Corps for a long time, and I did it for like, five or six years, and then all of a sudden, a new contracting officer came in. As a matter of fact, when I talked to him honestly, he pretty much told me, well, you better get your pins ready. You're going to have to redo this. I didn't get it. Okay. And of course, the public affairs officer was kind of upset because he was used to having me come there. So they brought in some other people, but when they brought in three years of other people who were in, Pao said they didn't deliver the product. So he went back to the contractor. I'm sorry, I need Dr. Joe. Our people aren't being trained. So then the guy changed. But I've lost a lot. I've failed on some, which is frustrating because now at my age, I don't worry anymore because FEMA keeps me pretty employed, and then I get solicitations from people I don't even advertise anymore because I reached the point. I mean, I get Social Security, I get my army paycheck, and I'm fine. But when I was getting started, it would frustrate me because I was used to a certain lifestyle, and then all of a sudden, I'm not getting the money. So for anybody going in small business, you need some sort of reserve to me. And I I taught myself from 2003, I would pay myself. I would invest my own money. I would put aside a certain amount, and I'd put the rest in there. That's what I did.

[21:31] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): It's really good advice. It's nice having being in a position you're in, right? If you have a military retirement, if you have Social Security, if you have other streams of income coming in, then that can offset some of the fluctuation in selling to the government. What a lot of small businesses do is they will start with their commercial sales and then start slowly expanding into government. One question I have for you is, are you involved with commercial sales at all? Do you sell to other businesses?

[22:00] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Yeah, I do. Corporations. I get calls, as a matter of fact, while we want the phone, while we want to call, I've had three people contact me. We want a proposal from you. And I'm being very selective because I've got a granddaughter. I want to goof off with. I got quality and I'm being real restrictive, I hate to say. And sometimes I give a price that's even higher now because something why, if they tell me no, I'm okay with that, next week I'm going to Dallas, and next week I'm going to Florida to work for the core. They contacted me out of the blue, they want me to do this next week. And I said, well, it's going to cost this. They said, okay, they just sold contract. I'm flying in on the 1 November to West Palm Beach, doing the training on the second, flying out on the third plane ticket was unbelievably hot. They said, that's fine, this is how much we got, which is much more. But to me it comes a point. It's really scary as an entrepreneur, I mean, commercial sales, I charge more. If you're a major corporation like Coca Cola or Delta or something like that, I'm going to charge you my top fee.

[23:07] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Sure.

[23:08] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): I do cut the rate for the government. I cut it for the national government, I cut it for the state, county, city. I mean, I just feel that I should if I do nonprofits, I charge like a small honorarium in travel, right?

[23:22] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): That's all.

[23:23] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): I mean, I don't know, but if you're a major Fortune 500 company, I'm sorry, you get my full rate.

[23:32] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Look, that's in line with it's not with every kind of I'll call it industry that sells to the government. But a lot of businesses selling to the government will have a GSA schedule. They have their published GSA rates and that's what they use for the government, right? But then when it's going to maybe a subcontractor or just commercial, regular commercial sales, those GSA rates do not apply.

[23:55] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Right.

[23:57] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Something else interesting, and maybe you have or have not experienced this, but with training, and I've seen this with one off trainings where, hey, we just need you to come in for a week and teach X, you know what I mean? But a lot of times what will happen is a small business will build their travel costs into their pricing for the bid. Do you ever get to do that or is that usually well, the Core.

[24:21] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Gives me one rate and like what I'm doing the first weekend in November, and they said, here's the amount, which covers quite nicely my travel. And also a fee. That's a good fee. Now, with FEMA, we've been discussing this. There's one fee when you bid on it, you can only go higher. Well, the top is 3500, which isn't a lot of money, and I'm usually going to have to fly someplace. They were just in Washington. State of Washington in August. I couldn't go. But by the time you flew out there, by the time you stayed in a hotel, food, rental car and all that, you know what the travel costs are? It eats up your profit. You might walk away with $500. So we as contractors have been pushing FEMA to say, you got to raise this because it's been that level for a long time. And so that includes your fee plus travel. Now, if you teach it at Emmetsburg, at the Emergency Management Institute in Emmetsburg, Maryland, on the border of Pennsylvania and Maryland, then you get free lodging. So, again, that's not the greatest, but at least you have your own bathroom, but it's not your bed, and they don't pay for your travel. The meals are discounted, but they're still high. But to answer your question, some people say, okay, I want you give me the full amount, and I bid the full amount include my travel. And then some people said they break it out by what's your professional fee and what's your travel expenses. I've done both. I've done both.

[25:57] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Every acquisition shop is a little bit different, so it could certainly just kind of got a pivot to what they want, what the flavor of the day is.

[26:06] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): And one thing, Rick, before you go on that one, and you know as well as I do, every place has a per diem rate. Of course, when you work like Anchorage, Alaska, the per diem is pretty high. So I try to stay within, I guess, because of my old military waste and being a government employee and you know, this you only get so much per diem rate because that's why people go to McDonald's and big meals. They try to make up that per diem. But, like, Anchorage is a high per diem rate. Washington, DC. I mean, you know the places that are so a lot of times, if it's with the federal government, I try to stay within that per diem rate. For hotels, I do the best I can. Sometimes I don't do it. Sometimes I do.

[26:47] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Yeah, man, you're throwing out a lot of gold here that we haven't talked about. It just reminded me of a small business I worked with. That, again, it was with the training and the way we built their travel into that, because a lot of small businesses will say, well, how do I come up with the pricing information? One thing you can do is, depending on what you're selling, you can go look at the GSA, scheduled published rates of different companies, and sometimes they underbid those. You could start getting an idea of what the pricing looks like. Another thing you can do, like with travel, like you just said, is look at the per diem rate, the government per diem rate, or the military per diem rate associated with, like, if you're teaching at a base or if you're going to a certain area, they'll tell you what it is and you can see, like, hey, what are you going to get a day? What's authorized as far as hotel fees and whatnot certainly when me and you were in the military, we had to. Get all that approved, and I could only stay in certain hotels.

[27:43] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): That's right. And then you had to get authorization if you had to go above it. My unit, I was in the 314 press camp. We deployed for Hurricane Andrew, and they told us, well, this is your per diem rate. We showed up after the hurricane. It was only certain hotels open to house my unit, so I had to go before the finance people. Well, why is this rate $200 higher? Well, where do you want my people to stay?

[28:05] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): We don't have tents.

[28:06] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): This place just went through a hurricane. This hotel is operational. Well, it's $200 a night. So what? Well, they ended up I had to get authorization to do just what you said. They were not happy with me, but I didn't care. I wanted to take care of my people. I said, hey, you want us here? We'll just pack our bags and leave. We're here to help deal with this and help the people doing this after this hurricane.

[28:28] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Yeah, no, again, that's a good point as well. We would say, typically, if we were going to a base, we would first shoot for the base hotel and grant the Air Force hotel.

[28:42] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Whenever they said, you train it on the Air Force base? I go, yeah, I'll stay in their hotel. That's a five star hotel.

[28:48] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Absolutely. If I'm going to McDill in Tampa, I mean, I'm right on the ocean right there. That's a vacation for me and my wife.

[28:56] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Man, that's a nice place.

[28:59] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): It really is. But if the base hotel isn't there, we would just get a hey, where a letter saying, hey, we don't have any Occupancy. If the hotels that they're recommending don't you get that? And then we start going kind of right up the chain. And the small business probably wouldn't even have to go through that rigmarole. You could get the fees, what's available, and just know that depending on who you're working with, you could probably get that added to certain contracts.

[29:24] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): No, that's awesome. That's awesome.

[29:25] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): So, Dr. Joe, what do you got going on now? What's next for you? You talked about some contracts.

[29:31] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Yeah, I'm going next week to the to the core. I'm doing that. And then December, we're kicking off the first week of the three week master class for FEMA. It'll be in Emmetsburg? We have 22 new master PIOs. We described already. That class in September. And it looks like 2023 is shaping up to be really busy. I've got a friend of mine who was in the Air Force who started his own firm called Fireside Partners that deals with a crisis. I met him when he left the Air Force and went to work for the National Transportation Safety Board. He was a training officer, and he's a retired Air Force person like yourself. A great guy, don't you? And he's got me something, I think, in March, and then it's just filling up all of a sudden. Joined by 2023 and then the core go back to Alaska in May. I'm glad it's May. I went in February, 1 time in Anchorage. It was cold.

[30:24] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): I bet. Yeah.

[30:25] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): I said, hey, let's go back in May and it's okay, let's do May. The ice is breaking up, so I think my schedule is still going to be pretty robust. The master class has three of them. One in December, then there'll be one in April or August and then one in September. The executive Academy has got me four times in Emmanuelsburg, so I'm not lacking for anything.

[30:47] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): It sounds like it. Sounds like it.

[30:49] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Well, hey, if somebody, if there's a.

[30:50] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Small business out there or somebody wanted to see if you are available for your services, what's the best way to contact you? Is it through LinkedIn email?

[30:59] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): They can do LinkedIn. They can do my email. [email protected]. They can call me. I like talking on the phone. 410-98-3036. They can also go to the website, www.doctreyhandmedia.com. They could do that. But an email and directly to me is fine. I'll be glad to chat with them.

[31:21] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): Fantastic. Well, we will put all of that in the show notes so anyone can reach out to you. It's been an honor and privilege. It's been awesome talking with you and I love talking with other veterans too.

[31:33] Dr. Joe Trahan, Lt Col (Ret): Thank you for doing this. Thank you. And thank you for your service. God bless. I appreciate that.

[31:39] Richard C. Howard Lt Col (Ret): I appreciate that. Well, thanks everyone for listening to DoD contract Academy this week. We had a great conversation with Dr. Joe. Everything's going to be in the show notes. Remember, if you want help selling to the US government or the US military, go to Dodcontract.com. There we have a lot of different programs you can register for and we are going to be opening up enrollments in a couple of weeks. So we will see you then.

If you enjoyed this episode, you can also check out Sometimes You Need to Help the Government Know What It Wants where I discussed suggesting your solution to the government, even though they may not be asking for it!