Can I Sign West Virginia Electrical Services Contract

Can i document type sign electrical services contract west virginia

hey guys what's going on derek here and in today's interview i'm speaking with ron who has an amazing story ron's been a member of our community for quite a while and i've been very excited to get this interview with him um and really what we're talking on is today we're talking thinking big um ron started from humble beginnings in uh real estate flipping houses and he actually parlayed that momentum into a very successful government contract and construction business uh where he's actually won uh several contracts that we're going to be getting into today for his construction business but he started out in real estate and i thought that was a really cool thing that people could relate to a great you know kind of humble beginnings success story starting from you know point a going into government contracting when maybe that wasn't even the plan from the get-go so let me go ahead and add ron to the stream here and uh ron if you can hear me let me know thanks for being here today thank you thanks for having me awesome uh yeah and and uh ron is uh on the up and up uh overcoming uh kovid so he i'm so you know grateful to have this opportunity with him getting his strength back and uh you know it's it's just the real thing unfortunately what's going on and that's why we all have to stand strong stand together that's why we're doing these interviews to help each other out because everybody needs to help more than than ever and uh you know ron's story i believe is really gonna touch and help a lot of people in our community so hey ron i think we can kind of just get into it um why don't you just take it from the top um i know you got started out in real estate i think you said it was 2003 um and eventually you got into flipping houses could you kind of just take us back then to get us started at i know you've been self-employed for quite a while um take us you know starting from there and we can kind of build on it from from when you were in real estate uh you know i'll take it a step kind of like further oh yeah and right below that because i think it it frames who i am as a person um i was born in the states but i was raised in guatemala and my parents are uh entrepreneurs i i guess in a lot of latin american countries because of the way the systems are set up you are almost forced to be an entrepreneur if you want to have a reasonable lifestyle and so my parents were that but i come you know my dad didn't even finish elementary school he went made it to the fourth grade and uh my mom uh learned how to bake cakes in high school so that that's kind of like the setup for for very very early beginning i was given the believe that education is the key to you know making and breaking through and i kind of agree to that but i would have to say a self-education is much more powerful than a structured education so once i got out of the marine corps i had the the opportunity to go uh with a scholarship to usc and i i studied business at usc and i was introduced to a lot of usc university of southern california one of the top business schools in the country and uh in there i was introduced to a lot of people with you know millionaires and entrepreneurs and so forth and i kind of got a taste of it and one of the things that um that i always wanted to do was to be an entrepreneur but when i graduated school i went to work for corporations because that's kind of like the way the system pushes you through right on the ladder and then you know i remember trying to make it and and i was i'm pretty well-versed and you know i have some pretty good strong set of skills so i was able to kind of like climb very fast but also bump and you know create too much uh trouble for a corporate environment so i when i was working as a banker uh in the early 2000s uh i realized somebody mentored me or gave me the advice to become a mortgage broker and i got my license and i guess this is i wanted to share this because it's good for your audience that are at that point where they have a job but they're trying to be entrepreneurs right so what happened at the moment is i got my license and i learned how to do loans and i did a couple loans and i made like ten thousand dollars in a month and i was kind of like wow like i can make that much money right and then the next month i did three loans and then the next month i did four loans and then for the first time in my life i was making 20 30 000 bucks a month not consistently but and at that time cavian here at the time of the mortgage crisis like a dog you can give a dog a social security number and and get a loan so there was money coming very easily right right and but at that moment i started making more money in my in my mortgage business than in my bank business and i quit my my bank business uh and that's when i became an entrepreneur and self-employed and then after that kind of died down i focused more on real estate and helping people with with the real estate uh crisis that it was doing short sales and and i went to law school because a lot of people were doing bankruptcies and this and that and i was kind of like okay i need to empower myself with legal knowledge and so i can help people better and i went to law school but then after that i bought a property i flipped it i made a whole lot of money in that and i was like wow i can do this and of course this is not the case anymore like if you're flipping properties you can probably make twenty thirty thousand dollars per property and it you have a lot of risk and a lot of times you don't make money and so you're you make more money as a real estate agent than as a flipper so it's not as easy as saying oh yeah flip properties and make a lot of money it's very difficult uh but i realized that the people that were helping me fix their properties um were mainly spanish speakers and and knew how to do drywall really good knew how to do carpentry really good but didn't know how to pass an exam really good and i was like you know i was blessed with that and so let me study for the contractor exam and help these people so i got my contractor exam and my license in 2006 at the time i was a veteran i had a real estate license i had a construction license but i didn't know much about anything else so i'm i'm you know slaying away trying to get my business going um a little disorganized and and growing it was not until uh 2019 uh beginning that i i was asked by a friend of mine hey why don't you get certified and i said well i don't have time for that now when you're saying certified are you talking about um like a service disabled sort of or a vosb certification or like sam registration like what type of cert like service disabled better and old business and then and then also a small business and also disadvantaged business and at the time you know the price of ignorance i have to say is really high and i was interested right and i was paying a very high price and i say for since 2006 when i was a service disabled vet already and a contractor already but i didn't put them together right since then i've been driving um around i liked the analogy driving around the truck with the lottery ticket in it that i never checked and it's the winning numbers right because that's a great analogy being certified allows you the opportunity to to get access to government jobs more quickly and better and um i need to i i took advantage of it and and it opened up a new door so ron i actually want to stop you right there because that's such a great point talking about the the sdv osb certification it's something that i get a lot of feedback from members in our community and a lot of them find it uh you know either challenging or they're they're curious about maybe you know finding if it's a right fit for them if they're able to qualify for the service disabled veteran owned small business set-aside status um could you just take a quick minute to share a little bit about your experience and your process getting that certification for your for your business i think it would be huge for others to hear it yeah a couple technical issues right uh the number one thing you need to have a service disability rating with the va as a veteran and that in itself can be very challenging process because you're dealing with the va but there's a large number of veterans that already have it like it doesn't need to be it can be zero percent uh because it goes from you know zero to a hundred uh you can get right rated right like like you can have a scar on your face and that's a service disability or a scar in your arm and that that can be a zero percent disability rating like you know they recognize that you have a scar but you don't rate any compensation for it so um that process can be a little challenging and i recommend that you get with with an expert don't try to do it yourself i did it many years ago and i try to do it by myself and it was not until i found somebody that works for the county here that knows what they're doing that he walked me through it and the results were great now assuming that that you have it um you have that button that app already the process is actually quite simple you get your service disability uh rating letter and you go to the va website and you submit it and you get it going uh you can also be a veteran owned business and you don't have to be a service disabled better our own business right so um as with anything else i think is as challenging as you wanted to be is not insurmountable it's just you need to take the steps to do it uh you know if anybody of your audience has a question they can contact me and and i can point them in the right direction uh every state is slightly different as to how they assist veterans but um is is not insurmountable is doable and the benefits are incredible so i would say just get it going and don't give up until you get there and about how long did that process take can i hear three months six months uh so it really depends on each individual and what documentation they have ready uh once you know for me it wasn't that difficult it was a little difficult because i'm a corporation and and i was already in business and i have to prove that it is my corporation and one one of the challenges that i had for example was that um you need to be the highest paid person in your corporation or in your business and i was not the highest paid person uh as usual the leader gets what's left over right in many years there was not a lot of things left over so i had employees that you know made forty thousand a year that made more than me on paper right so uh that was a little bit of a challenge but it's not trying to prove to them and i guess this is broader advice for the government you're not here to try to push what you believe is true you're here to check in the box that they have you're not going to convince them to do things differently you know i'm not going to convince them about why i'm not the highest paid or whatever right there's a workaround method one of them told me just submit a letter and say that you forgot compensation because you're reinvesting the money in the business and that'll check the box so just do the letter check the box move on so just like with so many of these set-asides it's the paperwork it's checking the boxes and that's really what and from my experience as well is what the majority of the time is spent on kind of gathering getting all that stuff ready to go because then once you submit it and you've got everything you know ready to go and say they're not going to kick it back necessarily because you did it right the first time because that's another thing that can cause time uh tie ups if things get kicked back and you didn't check all the boxes and they're like you missed this and you missed that so it really sounds like doing that you know kind of right from the get-go before you're ready to submit um and then once you submit it it doesn't take too long after that to finally get in the game um which has been my experience for a lot of set aside so i think it's good for everybody to hear that it's not impossible don't try to don't try to convince them that you're right don't be emotional about it don't be offended about it just check the box man the smartest way possible and move on awesome yeah there we go well that's all said um let's get back to the story um so we kind of left off uh it was around 2019. i think you said it was a friend or a colleague that said hey why don't you get you know certified get into government contracting um let's pick it back up from there so i did i got certified and then i got an email from the va or the national cemetery administration saying hey we have some opportunities for service disabled veteran construction companies and we really think you should come to dc and be in this uh presentation we're going to give oh wow and i was in la and i was kind of like oh wow that's this sounds very good and then lucas who's my friend who then came and worked for me he's an army vet and uh he's the one that helped me or gave me the idea to get certified once i became once i got win of the benefit of it then i became very involved in it right and i i joined veteran groups and i started networking and getting a little bit more paying attention to it the city of los angeles has a very good contractor and bonding assistance development program that i became part of i educated myself all this resources are free right generally speaking so once i got that call i told lucas hey uh he's like i'll go and lucas got on the plane to his benefit and you know i told him he's my friend forever nice he got on the plane that morning no he got in the plane at midnight flew over there landed at six because he was in dc this is prior to lockdown uh got in there got an uber went to the meeting got out of the meeting grabbed a sandwich on the way back to the airport and came back to la the same day and you know i didn't ask him to do that he just did it himself and uh he said yeah this is a great uh project it's called may talk a multiple award task order contract you know if we get it we will we'll be part of a group of four three or four contractors that will be getting all this task order work for the next five years and um and we should do it and i'm like okay uh let's do it we did the paperwork we submitted it uh i have to say i have so much faith in it lucas after it took like six months and we didn't hear anything and lucas came back apologizing that he had done it wrong and this and i said no we haven't heard about it and i'm going to show you how much faith i have in this i said that marine corps tattoo that i never got i'm going to go get it now i believe that we're going to get this contract and this is success and i have a big tattoo here now and i got the the tattoo prior to the contract so i believe we were going to get it and you know probably about a week later we we got a letter saying congratulations you've been ordered and that was her first uh wow we were part of this multi-year contract with the national cemetery administration and uh and you know i've gotten a few since so so where was the uh the period of or the place of performance for that contract um because he flew out to dc was the work being performed back in california or yeah it's a good thing you you bring that up is the pacific region in um it encompasses california oregon washington alaska idaho arizona and hawaii and a lot of that may seem intimidating to a regular person uh the way i kind of looked at it because of my real estate broker experience i go i'm kind of being like a broker my job is to find a local contractor to subcontract the business to local trades people i should say an electrician a plumber a roofer and and have them do the work and i'll make sure that the work is being done and i manage it and supervise it and i do the the paperwork uh with the government and make sure everybody's paid make sure everything is being done properly so i became a construction manager so one of the things that i think is important that for people to understand is you have to pay probably more attention to your capabilities and growing as a business person yourself and being able to deliver because once you get certified you'll get a flood of opport nity and you're you're not limited by what work you can get you're limited by what work you can uh perform so make sure you're you're setting yourself up for performance as well and i was just pulling up while you're explaining that because this is definitely a point i want to touch on for a second so guys as you're listening to this ron was and is a prime contractor okay so he's a prime contractor and since he's in construction he's you know he's a gc he's a general contractor he you know he said he got his gt license earlier in the day um what that means is he's working with sub contractors to perform uh within what's called the limitations of subcontracting where he himself you know has got to manage and self perform a minimum amount and then subcontractors you know the different trades on the the job mechanical electrical plumbing uh demo all these different trades uh the ones that ron was touching on they are allowed to do the rest of the work and this is a very typical way of how um you know whether it's in the commercial space or the government space how a gc works gc will oversee they will manage they may even self-perform some of it but then it's their job to basically as as ron said as a broker basically bring these these subs and these trades together to get the job done in accordance with the statement of work and you know the timeline and make sure that there's not liquidated damages on the job and that they're you know if there is you're finishing before that all those things um that require uh a lot of importance and attention to for the success of the contract that's what ron is talking about um 15 i believe is the limitations of subcontracting for construction which means you know up to 85 can be sub contracted out and 15 is you know ron's actual company so um that's exactly for anybody who didn't understand that um that's exactly what ron was explaining and that's what it has enabled him to do uh this this may talk multiple award task order contract on the entire west coast like you know i asked the question to kind of take us here like hey was it in just one area well no this is multiple states guys and this is how he's able to oversee and manage that and be successful and once you get into the game you realize this is all normal this is just par for the course but if you're new to this this is the sort of ways that you need to to be thinking and learn about so so thanks for sharing that ron i think that's a huge takeaway for people yeah one one of the things i guess you wanted to think about think big right and i think i'd be remiss if i don't share this um as i was going through the opportunities one day i was like well who do i know that can provide me capital because business needs capital and i i have a lot of uh clients that are orthodox jewish in my real estate practice so i was like they have a lot of money and they like jewish causes and let me key in some jewish cause words in in sam and beta.sam.gov and find out what kind of work i can get there that way i can probably get some capital well make the story short israel popped out and it was an israel industry day and i went to uh to it and i realized that there's a tremendous opportunity and it's very complex to explain and maybe we'll do that some other time but the bottom line is i submitted a may talk they have a may matak in israel to do construction work in israel to have israeli subcontractors work for you because they have the work has to be done by a u.s construction company so i'm like well i can do this i can see the map i can see the points i can connect them let me go for it and i submitted the application the contract has not been awarded i feel very optimistic that we will get it oh wow and there's a couple may talks it's uh a four-year maytag i think one is it's 50 million dollars and the other one is real north it's 50 million dollars now it's important to say this is 50 million dollars budget for construction they have and that is allocated to all the people that are in the maytag which is usually you know for contractors and the work is spread across all of us and and the task orders are the actual contracts that are assigned and those can be in this particular method anywhere between 50 000 to 10 million dollars per project so yeah so here i am thinking big going international going may talk because i see the formula and it's very scary there's a limitation on the bonding ability being able to bond that contract and i'm trying to structure some ways in doing that and you know work around it's not our resolve it's in process but everything is possible i'm a man of faith and i believe that you think big and you take action you can go get it i mean absolutely and i mean we're just talking since 2019 here so um the amount that you've been able to accomplish just since you know kind of getting certified getting set up and um getting into that first may talk and then everything since then has been huge i do want to before we go any further i do want to touch on may talk in bonding um probably not a whole lot of time in bonding but um may talk and binding again just for our viewers here that are new um guys ron already explained it but if if you if you missed it may talk multiple award task order contract what this means is an agency a base somewhere you know and it's not necessarily construction made talks can exist for services or base operations um however they are very prevalent in the construction industry specifically and what this is it's basically like it's almost like a license to hunt so you respond to the may talk as a competitive bid they may ask you to um you know include your rates things like that that they're going to use to to evaluate you if you get on the may talk since it's multiple award that means you basically get a license to hunt along with other you know your competition other vendors other small businesses so once you compete to get on the may talk if you win okay now there it goes from everybody to a very selected few like a small pool of contractors that doesn't mean you win anything you've got nothing you still have zero from that point on now based on you know the rates and the things that you submitted on that initial response to the may talk and you won you use that information to respond to task orders that come out over time so the base may say hey we need a new roof put on this building or we need we need a new uh parking lot paved well only those who are on the may talk and in ron's case three or four or five companies maybe are going to bid on that and they're going to win so it goes from a big pie to a very very you know relatively small pie which makes your chances of winning you know pretty much through the roof and so you want to make sure you're being very active bidding on everything because you'll get emails all the time saying hey we got this coming out on the may talk you know here's test order number one here's test order number four bid on it bid on it so that you can at least win you know a few of them win your fair share so that's what a may talk is if you're not familiar and like i said in the construction space it is a a critical strategy for for many to get on these may talks because as ron said they're for four or five years and sometimes they're for 10 years and they will do like on-ramping and off-wrapping to the contractors that aren't being active they'll kick them off and they'll bring on new ones that want to be active if it's like 10 years but otherwise if you're not you miss out and you can't do business with that particular you know agency or base or whatever because you're not on it so um you kind of got to watch for these if you're in the industry so that's may talk um we never really talked about that much on the channel which is why i spent a minute to just talk about it here and then ron bonding um ronding is also bonding is something that's also specific to your industry you know it's a form of insurance that that's you required to take out can you just talk a little bit about bonding um for those who don't know and why it's something that's essential to actually do business in the construction arena in government contracting yeah so by law i think it's called the miller act or something like that yeah the the government whenever they give a contract at least in construction they the com the service provider needs to be bonded that means that our surety or insurance company needs to guarantee the work that you're going to do so let's say we have a project of a million dollars we'll have a bond of a performance bond of a million dollars and that bond basically the insurance company is saying if ron doesn't do it we will pay for anybody else to do it even if it is a million two thousand a million twenty thousand i mean sorry one point two million dollars yeah it really if it's more expensive we will pay for it and the job will get done so from the government's perspective they're entering into a contract with a guaranteed outcome basically right if the job will get done if ron doesn't do it the insurance company will pay for somebody to do it or we reimburses whatever it make us whole we're not paying more than one million dollars um so that's that's a bond let's just say now the challenge for most small businesses they have no like me they have very skinny past performance and very limited cash and working capital uh you know i what happens if i get a 30 million dollar job oh my god i need to fund materials people offices trips hotels this that and if i don't have the money to do that i'm not going to succeed so the bonding company is going to underwrite me as a business and say how much working capital does he have and how much experience does he have and they will set up what is called abundability and they say okay ron is good for like three million dollar projects up to one project will be three million dollars but all together if he has a few projects going he cannot exceed six million dollars let's just say yes is what they would call it right correct and and and you know i'm just throwing those numbers out there but it can be four hundred thousand dollars it can be whatever uh it is absolutely positively important that you find a bonding broker that has a passion for small business and small business growth so my first bonding broker expressed that uh but they were very kind of limited and and they were like oh my so based on my credit alone i qualified for four hundred thousand dollars so she was you know okay i was at a six hundred thousand dollar limit for like a year and i was trying to bid on million dollar projects already right because it takes me the same amount of time to do a million dollar project that it takes me to do a hundred thousand dollar project because i'm managing the construction right i'm managing a little project or i'm managing a bigger project same amount of time so i'm trying to get out there on my vulnerability and my broad limits and there was no way that she was going to get me to a million and she kept saying no and no and then through the people that i know calling people i got a hold of a solar person and i have a new bonding person now and you know my vulnerability right now is is around three million dollars per project and it went up really quick i was on a 1.2 million dollar drop of a hat just because she's able to to share my passion and she put me with a surety that feels comfortable and then it's important one of the things that i did personally is i became an open book with my surety and i shared my my financials with them i share what projects i'm bidding on right periodically every week i tell them how much we're advancing on on our projects and you know they give me some advice and i listen to it and i incorporate it so you have to have a very good working relationship with your bonding company and with the charity and we have a weekly call with them and they understand where i'm going and i understand what they want but it is important to find a bonding company that shares a passion for small business and growth because not everybody's going to do that and they may try to keep you artificially limited i think that's huge you explained it having that key relationship is so important specifically for construction businesses specifically for those who want to do construction with the va or any other federal agency um even state or city you know bonding is something that pertains to the commercial world as well it doesn't go away so if you're you know if you're in construction you probably already know about this but for anybody who's listening that's who doesn't that's why bonding is so important and as ron said having that relationship and this you know understanding and a passion for small businesses it's going to allow your business to kind of grow instead of maybe being fixed into a cap because the government's going to ask you guys when you're bidding what what is your your bonding capabilities you know that's why i called that out like three million single or six million aggregate the government's gonna say what they need you to be at and if you don't have enough bonding you can't bid on it so you need to go to your you know your your uh surety uh broker and see if you can get your limits raised or if you can't then you just can't bid on it so it will literally limit the growth of your business and your ability to bid on contracts if you don't have it um this is something that's very very real so i wanted to spend a minute there i think that's a good amount of information to get people to knowing what they need to know to look around if they don't have a bonding company to start looking for them and finding what's going to be a good fit for them yes so um now i believe you had also mentioned uh you you did you also win a contract well with the va for um i think you said it was 1.4 million it was that the may talk was that that's outside of the mate once you're in it and you perform and you develop your relationships you become uh it becomes easier to you you speak the language you fill out the forms properly you do all that right and i mean the the process is still highly regulated and and you know out forbidding for everybody they they bid on it so the national cemetery administration came with a a project and we've been on a couple of projects outside the maytag that we didn't get uh but we got uh bakersfield national cemetery expansion project which we're doing a lot of graining work and we're doing a street and we're setting up for future growth and it is a 1.4 million dollar project that we're in the process of doing we're probably about 40 done with it already wow it's going good it's uh yeah i'm very very happy i i think providence faith whatever uh it was the perfect project for us because it's simple this perhaps is it's another opportunity to pack a little bit of information not every client is the same and the city of la for example is very cumbersome and we have another project where make it and it's doing some street work and a very busy street and it involves you know eight cable companies that have a cable that runs through there that involves concrete it involves rebar it involves electricians traffic control safety this that and it's submittals where the city believes huge it's very difficult whereas the cemetery one there's no traffic it's grading it's uh some irrigation system you know it's a lot easier to handle and and uh it was the right project for us to bid on so yeah we're set up and down and we're bidding on an other uh primarily as we grow and we understand other other clients we're trying to stay narrow and say we're just going to do federal contracts for sure there's so much wisdom in that um and even though you've only been in this particular space for a few years um i definitely get the sense that you you've hit on a few points i get the sense that you're already acquiring the wisdom um of kind of not going after everything as you said uh customers are different and especially in the construction field because i do have a number of projects under my belt in the construction industry as well and i had to learn some lessons the hard way you know i mentioned liquidated damages lds um other thing you know near mi ses you know god forbid you don't want anybody to get hurt on a job construction is just an animal in itself and you need to be attuned to what you're doing but you also need to know your customer and know what they expect and also know the the intricacies of maybe uh like you just said the differences between the two jobs you know i may want to take a smaller job if it means maybe it could still be more profitable or or have higher profit margins and less risk for the job being delayed or prolonged unnecessarily because i'm waiting on maybe three other jobs that are going on at the same time to finish and they're delayed so i'm delayed it's just really messy so the wisdom that i love that you're talking about is it's like hey everything may not always be about going after the top dollar or chasing every customer um choosing the right job for you as you said there's a lot of wisdom there and folks who take that for granted they're gonna learn the hard way potentially um unfortunately we all do sometimes uh and one thing that i can share is we we had a construction job out in uh pennsylvania national guard um mechanicsburg area and we were doing a firing range job and we had you know a site super you know safety officer there pm um that would be at the office uh estimators we had our own in-house construction team um but we had an employee that was local that way we weren't you know paying per diem and just to send somebody from michigan over to pennsylvania so like you said finding a local team is huge so we we found some local subs but uh we also found a local uh super for that job and he knew that the job you know is eventually going to come to an end right and that's that's how construction is one job ends you know the game of construction you've got to keep your employees working right that's that's the name of the game you don't want to be laying people off and bringing them back on it's it's tough but it happens it does happen and it is normal but this particular individual and i'm sharing this story because um hopefully you can't relate uh but others may or at least something you can look out for but kind of managing your own people because because the super new the job is going to end say in three months he thought it would be smart to start delaying things without kind of letting us know the details because you know it's kind of hard to manage things from michigan and that's what his job was and then he would report back to us in michigan at a high level um and once we realized that this job is going on months and months past the the actual completion date and we only found out after that there were liquidated damages um to the tune of like i don't know i don't remember what it was between 600 and a thousand dollars a day um he was just prolonging the job so he could keep his job and it ended up being a loss we had to take this job was not profitable at all it was a total loss and say this was our first contract it would have put us out of business you know but we had working capital we had other things built up that we could handle this but um i kind of got a front row seat to something like this and it's just like hey guys if you're gonna be utilizing this strategy you you know like ron said even with his bonding company he's having weekly calls right he's having weekly calls with his bonding company you you you know for damn sure that he's speaking with his employees even if they are remotely located on these jobs on a very regular basis um and i'm sure he's very in tune with the project milestones and and deadlines for the jobs because things like this happen unfortunately um and it's really a tale that i'd like to tell so that hopefully others don't go through this on their own but um again i think my main point is coming back to picking the right job for you and a job that you know that you can manage and do a good job because you don't want to take something that's either too big for you or too hard for you to manage because it could actually end up doing more harm than good one other things thank you for sharing that and one of the things that comes to my mind is uh i think it was jim rohn who said uh you're the average of the five people you spend most of the time with right so i think to that the lesson is learn who you're spending your time with and learn who's working for you and et cetera et cetera what subcontractors one of the things that we're starting to apply right now at our company is a subcontractor qualification process to make sure that we are partnering or subcontracting to yes companies that are actually better than us so they can pull us up yes because uh we have an example where we you know we all want to be helpful right and this guy's just getting started and and we gave him an opportunity and now it's a nightmare the guy doesn't show up his submittals are not submitted i gave instructions to my superintendent to basically become this guy's babysitter to go to his office to turn on the computer and to print and to do the report himself we're doing his job why because we selected him and you know we got in bed with him now we got to sleep with him so it's kind of like his limitations become our limitations so it's important to be uh to be disciplined and strategic in your decision making and partner with the strong subcontractor or strong employee so that you can uh grow with them and they don't pull you down they push you up instead of pulling you down 100 a recent interview with with jeff that we had earlier on the channel he actually and i thought this was just awesome and i don't know that it's always a practical thing to do but he was looking at working with a subcontractor so he actually went and worked for them unbeknownst to them he did an undercover boss thing for a month just to see how they did did their business and how they operated and if he liked it and then after the month jeff let them know hey you know i'm actually you know the owner of the company and you know so it was you know maybe an extreme example of of what needs to be accomplished is you need to make sure you're vetting your subcontractors or teaming partners whatever and you because everything seems good on paper you get the quotes maybe they're the lowest price or you know they weren't the lowest they were the middle guy and they have you know great past performance themselves and you want to work with them and everything's good and it's cheery and it's you know whatever sunshine of rainbows and then the job starts right and then they're not they're not on the site or you can't get a hold of them or you know they're not doing certified payroll or or whatever like they're not jumping through the hoops they need to jump through things can turn to hell really really fast especially in construction um and it's why i get i get asked so many times derek do some videos about you know joint venturing or talk about teaming and it's like my first response is if you have a strong relationship even that doesn't protect you but if you have a strong relationship you can consider it but if you don't don't go out looking for trouble like and kind of unless you you have to um because a bad relationship can not only ruin what's going on but it can ruin your your cpar's rating it can run your reputation with the government just because you're associated with this this other company that you're working with um and it's so huge we never talk about that but but yeah it's definitely something to be wary of you know the way the government pre-qualifies you is the way you should be pre-qualifying your subs so we we don't go work for them but we are asking them uh for the financial statements yeah and we're asking them for what jobs they've done and who was a point of contact on the job and we call and we check you know if they haven't done a job that is similar to this in size and you know i mean it sucks because we get it on the other side right we're trying to do a larger job and we're limited in experience but we have to kind of go through that process so then we turn around and we hire a sub without even checking what jobs they've done without even checking if they have accounting and a balance sheet and a profit and loss statement and we shouldn't be doing that so we're becoming right now very uh we're working very hard at a prequel finally and we still divided our contractors into what we call a prefer sub somebody that we already work with and we basically loyal to and efficient with and then we have people that are we're trying to get into the preferred sub uh pool that's so close that's really great so um i think i mean you've been through so much in the last the last few years if you had to just pick one thing and i don't want to put you on the spot here but let me know if you have something that you could share um for those that are wanting to get into government contracting whether it's construction or not as you know as you said you know you kind of started from humble beginnings and you didn't even have you know government contracts on the brain until it was kind of you know the idea was brought to you but like you said you were driving around with a lottery ticket without even realizing it so so for those who maybe realize they have the lottery ticket but they're they're afraid or they're overwhelmed or they don't know you know maybe they don't know what to do or how to get started for themselves what would you say to that small business owner or that potential small business owner um who's maybe overcome with a lot of the the barriers and fear and and challenges of anxiety that a lot of us go through when looking at getting into the government contracting industry do you have anything that you would would say to that person to maybe help them out yeah i think we are all victims of our emotions and our ego and what i mean by that is you know we're fearful about failing we're fearful about not being able to pay the rent we're fearful about different things so then we don't take a step or we take a step and we're very anxious or we have an ego and we think we know it all and we don't listen and there's people around us that have the experience that they want to help you and don't mind but we go for whatever reason we just don't listen to them and we just think we have a fear now and we're gonna do it our way so i have to say um take inventory of how you're making your decision and make your decision from a place of strength of faith of selflessness of service right say okay i'm going to make this business because i'm going to help xyz right i'm going to create a business that transcends me and then once you do that you have to have faith in your outcome and take it for granted kind of like i got the tattoo before i got the contract right it's like okay i believe in this and i'm acting like it already happened important to have faith and then take action or call it inspired action so you just go at it and don't quit until you get there right and somehow the tony robbins likes to say the universe conspires to create the new reality which is what you seek right once you're in alignment with all those different things uh so surround yourself with people that have the experience of people that want to help you be mindful of who your relationships are be open to learning be open to listening to good advice have faith and don't don't act with anxiety you know act with strength with courage you know it's okay to be fearful but you have to have the courage to overcome your fears right so jump at it the opportunity is there everything is possible i you know i'm short ugly guatemalan and uh and i'm making it happen right so if i can do it you can do it but it is important that that you keep an open mind and then you listen to people and and surround yourself with people that can compliment you and make you grow i have somebody who will be my partner pretty soon who i call him the whip because i i tend to be chatty i think to be inspirational i tend to be all there so we spent a lot of time talking he's like oh here are the action items why hasn't anybody done anything and he starts going at it and he already sent me texts about me reviewing my financial statements today and all the stuff that i said i was going to do and i haven't done and i gave excuses so you know he's a whip i need a whip and he compliments me and because of his uh devotion to the business and to the cause we're gonna grow faster and because i i have the humility to learn and to be open and and to do what he's asking me to do he's whipping me into performance so uh you know be be that i guess be an open book be ready to learn and have faith and take action absolutely i mean you're definitely a leader who leads by example you know thinking big is definitely the theme for this not only this this particular video today but your your entire story and i'm so grateful that we were able to uh document it you know um even though we were capped to the amount of time we're capped to because because of youtube um i think we got a lot of great stuff out that will help to inspire motivate and let others know what is possible whether they're going into construction or some other industry i think so much of what you share today relates to everybody and i knew that i was going to that's why i was so excited to be able to sit down and virtually talk with you today ron so thank you so much for for agreeing to do this interview and spend some time with me you know i want to thank you i use your your capabilities template and and i use it and still use it and i pay for it and i want everybody else to pay for it because because it's very helpful and i use your consulting advice as well some time ago i guess we got on the phone and you helped me out for 45 minutes and you know uh i understand you're a business and you you've got bills to pay and responsibilities and i gladly did that right and spent some of my money with you and uh also the advice and the connections from some of the people that you're referring to so i can be a lot more professional and my proposal writing so definitely you're one of the people that that is in my circle by design right by you make me better and i want to thank you for it and i'm really willing to listen and to contribute back to your cause oh thank you very much i'm blessed to be able to serve you know that's what i asked for so many years um when i was working in my government contracting job but i was very unhappy because i'm entrepreneurial and it's working for somebody else was not making me happy at the end of the day even though i was making a lot of money winning a lot of contracts it was just not what i wanted so i just i kind of kept asking god to allow me to serve like what is it that i can do and that's why almost three years ago now i um i set out on this journey and it's every year it's been so much growth and been able to reach so many people and um you know share stories like this more and more and so i'm i'm blessed to be able to serve and i'm so happy that i was able to even in just a small way you know help help you along in your journey and um you know we're not we're not going anywhere lots of big um ron i think we can uh call it here um thank you again and we will definitely be in touch i look forward to hearing about all your success and maybe you'll even get that israel job or one of these other jobs will i will not yet but i'll get it yes absolutely well we'll be in touch and thanks again thanks everybody bye