Sign Missouri Banking RFP Myself

Industry sign banking missouri rfp myself

all right so good morning everyone and welcome to our webinar uh this afternoon um focused on the u.s small business administration surety bond guarantee program my name is crystal irons and i'm the director of the missouri small business development center at missouri state university and i appreciate everyone taking the time to join us this afternoon this program is is being offered in partnership with the missouri small business development center at msu the u.s small business administration and the missouri procurement technical assistance centers we have a great lineup of speakers to give you information on all these organizations as well as specifically the surety bond guarantee program so a few housekeeping things to note before we jump in um the slides from each of our presenters including their contact information will be emailed out to everyone after the the program um and i i get all those so give us probably till tomorrow morning and i'll get that to everybody that's registered um we have four presenters including myself and so to kind of avoid disruption of the flow of information we'll do all the presentations and then we'll have q a at the end but feel free as you have those questions to just type those in the chat as you think of them and then when we get to that q a part i will go through as many of those as as we have time to so i'm going to kick things off real quickly and just talk real quickly about the missouri small business development center we are here to assist you and your business um we offer one-on-one small business consulting which is confidential and at no charge to our clients and we do this for people that are at really any stage of their business from feasibility and startup to growth and expansion and even planning a successful transition for what comes next so we provide a variety of different training seminars on different topics throughout the year we work with our clients on a lot of different things including business planning and strategy financial management projections market research so really whatever those businesses need to get started and grow successfully we are so privileged to be able to work alongside of them um and coach them as they grow successful businesses at our center at missouri state university we also do a variety of course projects to where we utilize our our students and our relationship with missouri state university and we're really able to dive in um to projects with clients and and give them a good deliverable at the end so different things like developing a marketing plan we do feasibility studies each semester with our college of business uh we also do some management assessments and some human resource services through our course project so if you ever have a need or work with a business that has a need if you're a partner on the call with us as well please don't hesitate to let us know or send the business our way and we always keep a running list of people that need those types of services and then of course over the the last several months our team has been focused on uh disaster recovery and really working with small businesses to understand you know what's available to them ways that they can look toward recovery currently so that's a little bit about what we do we are part of a statewide and nationwide network so we have colleagues of course across the state of missouri here to assist small businesses through our partnership with both the sba and university of missouri extension and of course missouri state university in the southwest region so our specific center serves the area that you see in blue and we have three offices in greene county we're part of the e-factory team at missouri state university we are working with university of missouri extension over in taney county and then we have a satellite center over in west plains on our missouri state university campus as well so several offices to serve the entire southwest region we are providing ongoing assistance um with with kind of everything that's going on we're doing mostly virtual appointments right now but people can visit our website at sbdc.missouristate.edu and immediately schedule an appointment online with any one of our consultants we have have made the scheduling and appointment process pretty seamless we have a variety of upcoming webinars scheduled so i would encourage everybody to take a look at those the webinars that we do have are all in an online format and they are mostly designed around helping people grow their grow their existing business so we we are excited about some of those in particular we have our financial management series happening right now several courses under that one specifically focused around making that successful transition that i mentioned we also have some business resiliency roundtables coming up talking about pivoting your business model and also human resources in response to covid19 so some good things coming up and of course if we can help anyone our contact information email and our website again is there we do have a resource page on our website where we have a webinar library and we are recording this webinar and so we will have that up on our webinar library as well for everyone to access so that is a little bit about the missouri small business development center and now i would like to welcome and introduce ron bassnet with the u.s small business administration rahm is the branch manager for the springfield missouri branch office in the kansas city district and he is going to give us a quick overview of sba and lead us into our surety bond guarantee program so rom you can take it away all right um thank you crystal can you hear me okay okay yes we can and the slides okay perfect well thank you crystal and good afternoon everyone um ron bostner with the small business administration here in springfield missouri branch office i'm just going to use a couple of minutes to provide a high level overview of sba and then we'll lead into the surety bond guarantee webinar so we are spa or small business administration um sba in short uh is an independent federal agency which was established in 1953 with the small business act of congress uh the mission of our agency is to help small businesses start grow expand and recover we aid counsel assist and protect the interests of small businesses we operate across the united states and its territories including virgin islands and puerto rico and guam we are based out of the kansas city district office the springfield is the branch office so now how we do it right so the first is the helping small business owners that know how with the know-how of the business basics that's education information training and counseling so we normally deliver this through our resource partner network like the spdcs we also partially fund the school mentors women's business center and the veterans business outreach center as well and then the sp also has a government guaranteed loans um which helps small businesses to start or grow their existing business these are guaranteed loans that go up to 5 million dollars and then for renters homeowners and small business owners there are low interest federal disaster loans available in um areas that are declared disasters and this also includes some qualified non-profits as well and then the sp also helps small businesses uh with um try and get into government contracting and also small business certifications so speaking of uh government contracting uh the federal government spend more than 500 billion dollars on prime contracts in fiscal year 2019 and the small business act uh of congress requires that federal government set aside 23 percent uh contract dollars for small businesses now um that translates to 115 billion dollars that went to small businesses five percent of that is set aside for eight days certified businesses so um the 8 a business development program is for businesses that are owned by socially and economically disadvantaged individuals and um those companies that are 80 certified uh can apply for sole source contracts uh for general contracts up to um 4.5 million dollars and for um contracts in construction up to uh 7.5 million dollars we have um carolina vargas uh the kansas city spas business opportunity specialist on the call if you have any questions with regards to this program or if you're interested in this program so you'll be able to um be more than happy to answer any questions you have towards the end now five percent of that is also set aside for women on small businesses and economically disadvantaged women on small businesses three percent for businesses located in historically underutilized business zones and then three percent for a service disabled veteran on small businesses now the sp can help you get certified for the first three the last one you certify yourself at um sam.gov and then if you are seeking um va contracts or faa contracts then uh the certification has to come from the va and again that is disclaimer here is certification does not guarantee you'll receive a contract uh we'll share these slides if you click on this link and put your zip code you can find all uh resources that are closer to your area including the sbdc's p tag and and a host of other resources as well now uh well thank you for uh your time today um now our next presenter is uh tamara murray uh she is a sorority born guarantee specialist with a small business administration tomorrow you can take it away thank you thank you rahm and thank you crystal i appreciate the opportunity to be here today to speak to some of missouri's small businesses about the surety bond guarantee programs i'm happy to be here as rom and crystal mentioned uh we will have an opportunity for q a at the conclusion of today's webinar as we get towards the end so if you have any questions during the course of my presentation please do feel free to enter those into the chat and i'll be happy to hang around for a little bit and address those once we get to that point in the program now um ordinarily when i have uh access to much more stable wi-fi um i would like to play a video about our first 50 years the surety bond guarantee program is 50 years old this year in 2020 but for this particular event i'm going to skip over that but this link here with our tagline about opening doors to bonding for small businesses once you receive copies of the slides from this presentation today this will be a live clickable link the video is available on youtube it's about seven minutes long and um it's really i think a very fun and interesting video and we welcome you to um log into youtube access the video through this link and take a look at that if you're interested in doing that but we're gonna get to why you're here today you're here to learn a little bit more about bonding contract bonding and how sba can open doors to bonding for small businesses so when we talk about bonding that's really an umbrella term surety bonds encompasses hundreds of different types of bonds a couple of the types of bonds that small businesses who typically need contract bonds will need are license and permits bonds and those are provided or required by a municipality like the city of kansas city from a small business in order to perform work within that jurisdiction so think in terms of a plumber who is doing work in the city of kansas city and they have to be licensed and bonded as a plumber that's what we're talking about when we're talking about license and permit bonds and that's again just one type of bond that's out there in the marketplace that a lot of small businesses require those license and permit bonds are typically very simple to qualify for and secure from any local bonding agent you typically complete an application pay a premium and you walk out the door with your license and permit bond the types of bonds that we're going to be talking about today are contract surety bonds and contract bonding is a very different form of bonding than license and permit bonding qualifying for contract bonding requires a small business to demonstrate good character experience in their field of work strong business management skills enough capital within the company good credit and a strong financial presentation so when we talk about contract bonding you can think of that in terms of being very much like securing a loan or other form of credit and small businesses sometimes struggle to meet the requirements necessary to qualify for contract bonding the advantage to you as a small business owner is that securing contract bonding helps to pre-qualify your small business to your project owners it assures your project owners that your firm is the best option for their job and that you will successfully complete their project if that doesn't happen if there's some sort of a hiccup or a challenge along the way on your project there's a third party the surety company who will step in to remedy any performance or payment issues on that contract so it's the surety company standing behind your small business that assures your project owners that you're the right option for their job so if you're willing to take the plunge performing bonded work really can be a lucrative revenue stream for a small business not all small businesses out there are going to be in a position to be able to perform bonded work so it's a pretty select group that you could have access to now when we talk about contract surety bonds there are four types of contract surety bonds and sba can guarantee each of these bonds for a small business so the process of securing a contract typically starts out with the bid process and that's where the bid bond applies when you're bidding on a project and what the bid bond does is it assures the project owner that you will provide the required combination of performance payment and maintenance bonds that that project owner requires to secure that contract if the contract is awarded to you so a bid bond is essentially a form of pre-qualification if you want to think about it that way you essentially have pre-qualified for the performance payment or maintenance bonds that that particular project owner requires now those remaining three bonds apply in various combinations once you've been awarded a contract and in some cases you might actually start out in this particular area if you're negotiating for a contract for instance or if you are an 8 a firm as rom just mentioned a few moments ago you have the availability to access non-competitive contracts where you don't have to compete with other businesses out there in the marketplace so you might actually start out in the negotiation or the award phase and that's where these other three bonds come into play so the performance bond guarantees that you will complete the project in accordance with its terms and conditions you will perform the contract the payment bond guarantees that you will pay your subcontractors and your labor and materials suppliers for their work on the project you will pay your bills on that contract and then the maintenance bond guarantees that you will remedy any defects in the workmanship and materials that have been installed on that project within a specific time period after you complete your contract usually that time period is one to two years but it does vary based on the regulations in place in the state or city or county where you are performing your contract now the combination of contract bond requirements whether you have to provide a bid bond whether you have to provide a performance and a payment bond and at what level you have to provide those bonds some smaller contracts may not require any of these bonds so that requirement is going to vary from place to place and project to project because of different public laws and regulations and internal requirements that have been established by private project owners so it's really important that you as a small business owner check the specifications on each of your projects for any bond requirements before you submit your bid or begin negotiating on your contract you know we sometimes hear um and get panicked phone calls from small businesses who uh really want to bid on a contract or they've already signed a contract and they idn't realize that there was a bond requirement in the contract and then they're reaching out to us because they have a deadline to provide these bonds and they're kind of behind the eight ball um so make sure that you don't put yourself in that particular position you can prepare yourself and be ready to provide contract bonding even if you don't have a current project that needs a bond so you can actually go through the process of pre-qualifying for bonding and be prepared so that when you do have a need for a bid bond or a performance and payment bond you will be ready to do that and all you have to do is apply for that bond so you can prepare yourselves uh that's a probably the biggest recommendation that we have here at sba for small businesses is be prepared and be alert make sure that you're checking those specifications and don't put yourself into a panicked state where you need a bond and you have to get that as quickly as possible so start that process as early on as you can when it comes to sba's bond guarantee program which is primarily what we're going to be talking about today we assist many different types of small businesses through the surety bond guarantee program some of the types of small businesses that come to sba for assistance with bonding are startups and newer firms so if you're a new emerging small business it can be a bit of a struggle to qualify for contract bonds because you are new because you are an emerging small business and you don't have 5 or 10 or 15 years of successfully completing contracts assist small businesses with limited or insufficient capital so if you've been struggling to obtain contract bonding because you don't have sufficient capital having a bond guarantee from sba can help with that and we can also help small businesses that want to make the leap to larger project sizes or increased bond limits we sometimes hear from subcontractors who are interested in establishing bonding today so that when they're ready they can bid as a prime contractor in the future sba guarantees 80 or 90 percent of each bond based on the demographics of your business and it is that guarantee from sba that allows our partner sureties to provide bonds for small businesses that they would otherwise consider to be too risky and that's going to help provide you with new contracting opportunities now sba's bond guarantee provides your business with several advantages that help to make it easier for you to qualify for contract bonding the first relates to bonding capacity and working capital so sba's working capital requirements the amount of capital that you need to have in your small business is lower than that of a standard surety company and that is going to allow you to qualify for up to twice as much bonding capacity with sba support than you could without secondly a working capital bank line of credit if you have one is beneficial to your surety relationship your surety company is going to be happy to see that you have a working capital bank line of credit in place in the event that you need to draw on that for some cash flow but it takes on much more significance in sba's surety bond guarantee program that's because sba counts the available balance on that bank line of credit the unused portion of that bank line as actual working capital that's available to your business and that is going to allow you to qualify for even more bonding capacity because you have more working capital available we can also provide opportunities for small businesses to secure bonding for larger projects where your financial statement presentation may not meet the surety's typical requirements so sba can give you the opportunity to perform a larger contract that may require a cpa prepared financial statement and allow you to perform that contract because you have sba's guarantee and then give you the time that you need to upgrade your financial statements if you want to be able to perform future projects at that level so let me just give you an example of how those two main advantages working capital and the bank line of credit might apply to you i mentioned just a moment ago that that bonding capacity the amount of bonding that you can qualify for is typically based on your available working capital that's because working capital measures your business's ability to meet its current and future financial obligations and you can estimate your current working capital from your balance sheet if you're curious what that is just take your cash and add to that your accounts receivable and subtract your current liabilities so cash plus accounts receivable minus current liabilities that's going to give you a pretty good idea of what your available working capital is to be able to qualify for contract bonding so in a non-sba supported bonding relationship if you just went to a surety company today you might be able to qualify for bonding capacity that's about 10 times that available working capital from your balance sheet with sba support however the working capital from your balance sheet is combined with any amount available on that bank line of credit that we just talked about so that increases your working capital for bonding purposes and in addition to that with sba support you can typically qualify for bonding capacity that's about 20 times your available working capital because sba's capital requirements are lower so let me throw some numbers at you that'll help that make i think a little bit more sense so let's say the working capital that you have available on your balance sheet right now today is a hundred thousand dollars if you were to approach a surety company and apply for bonding capacity you might be able to obtain bonding capacity of about a million dollars ten times that hundred thousand dollars in working capital that's not a lot right a couple half million dollar jobs and you've maxed out your bonding capacity if you were to obtain sba bond guarantees on your projects that bonding capacity could potentially double to two million dollars just by virtue of having sba bond guarantees on your projects so that's double the bonding capacity just by having sba support but let's say you've also got that bank line we've been talking about you have a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar bank line of credit and a hundred and a hundred thousand dollars of that line is available is unused in sba's bond guarantee program we would take the hundred thousand dollars from that bank line add that to the hundred thousand dollars in working capital that you have on your balance sheet and you now have two hundred thousand dollars in working capital which could equate to four million dollars in bonding capacity so i think you can see why we believe that these are two of the biggest advantages of obtaining sba bond guarantees and they're only available through sba's bond guarantee program hopefully i've piqued your interest a little bit at this point and you'd like to know more about the eligibility requirements and the cost of our program and bonding so the first step in qualifying for sba's surety bond guarantee program is determining if sba considers your business to be small this is going to be based on your average annual revenues over the last five years if you are a construction service or supply firm or number of employees if you're a manufacturer you can locate your size standard on our website at sba.gov if you're interested but you don't even have to know that we will make that determination during the very first initial stages of the application process for our program so that's the first step is to be small by sba standards the next step in the process is determining if your contract qualifies for an sba guarantee and we provide several different options for guaranteeing contracts of different sizes for instance we have a quick app that is great for first-time applicants because it doesn't require financial statements and other documents that are typically required to qualify for bonding which i'll talk about in more depth here in just a few minutes and i'll also give you more detail on our quick app program here in just a moment beyond that quick app program though sba can guarantee any contract type up to six and a half million dollars in size and up to 10 million dollars on a federal contract that's awarded directly to your firm so a lot of small businesses think that because we're a federal agency which is a federal program that we can only guarantee federal jobs and that's not true sba does not just guarantee bonds on federal contracts we guarantee bonds on federal state local and private contracts and subcontracts all the way up to six and a half million dollars in size to better assist you with all of your bonding needs so the final step in the process is to pass the sureties and sba's evaluation process which is going to include a review of your character your capacity and your capital what we call the three c's of surety so again it is a little bit like applying for a loan the surety company and sba are going to evaluate your character the financial condition of your company the credit of the owners of your company and that's all going to go into that evaluation that we just talked about now a little more on that quick app that i just mentioned the quick app is designed for small simple projects up to four hundred thousand dollars in size and it has a few limitations and exclusions which you can see here sba's partner sureties typically underwrite the quick app just based on the business owner's credit so if you have a fair to better personal credit history you have a small project that fits in this program this can be a very simple quick way to obtain an sba bond guarantee on a project up to four hundred thousand dollars in size on sba's end of the process you would just complete a simple two-page application to apply for the bond guarantee from sba all right so unless you're interested in just bonding smaller projects under that quick app program you should be prepared to provide some financial information to qualify for bonding over and above that level that's typically going to include your business financial statements for your last three fiscal year ends unless you haven't been in business that long if you haven't been in business that long the surety and sba are going to want to look at the financial statements for the number of years that you've been in business and if you're a brand new emerging small business you haven't even made it to your first year end yet you'll at least need to provide a financial statement a balance sheet that shows what your current financial condition is you'll also be asked for personal financial statements from all of the owners of your company and a reference letter from your bank outlining any available lines of credit that bank letter is going to be especially important in increasing your bonding capacity with sba's support it's from that bank reference letter that we find out how much of that working capital bank line of credit is available for your use so we can apply that and increase your bonding capacity now when you're applying for an sba bond guarantee you'll be asked to complete one application form for sba each time you need a bond while you're using our program so you may need to provide some additional information beyond what we're talking about here based on your specific circumstances if you've been in a bankruptcy or something like that there may be some additional documentation that's required but this is the basic information that you should expect to provide when you begin this process of qualifying for contract bonding all right so let's talk about the cost the good news is that bid bonds generally have no cost to secure and sba does not charge a fee for a bid bond guarantee if you remember back to our discussion of what a bid bond does a bid bond is an opportunity to secure a contract you don't actually have the job yet so if you were to be paying sba a fee for that bond guarantee that could be a drain on your working capital so we're not going to do that to you when you will incur bond costs and sba fees are when you are obtaining performance and payment bonds once you've been awarded a contract that requires those bonds you'll be asked to pay sba's fee it's 0.6 percent of the contract amount through a free website that's provided to sba by the us treasury and that website allows you to choose how you pay your sba fee you can pay it through a draft out of your checking or savings account you can pay it with a debit card or you can pay it with a credit card now while sba's fee is fixed at .6 of the contract amount regardless of the type of work you perform or whether you need just a performance bond or a performance payment and maintenance bond it doesn't matter that point six percent is fixed it's based on the contract value however the surety's premium charge is going to vary based on the state where your project is located and the type of work that you're performing now i can pin that down a little bit the surety's premium charge is typically going to fall between one and a half and three percent of the contract amount and you'll be on the higher end of that at kind of that three percent level if you're using a credit based program and not providing financials so for instance if you're applying under our quick app the surety company may charge you that higher three percent rate since these rates vary you should ask for your surety premium rate you need to know what your bond rate is in each of the states that you perform work in so that you can include your total bond costs in your bid estimates and your first pay requests to qualify for reimbursement from your project owner if your contract requires bonds these are allowable billable bond costs and you don't want them coming out of your profit on the project so make sure to include it in your bid takeoff and bill for it in your first pay request with your project owner one note of caution don't separate out your sba contractor's fee sometimes you'll get pushback from the project owner if you separate out that sba contractor's fee it is a cost of bonding for you so use one total bond cost or one total bond rate when you are submitting that fee for reimbursement with your project owner all right so how do you get started the application process for sba begins with locating an sba authorized agent and i'll tell you how you can do that here in just a moment you'll begin by applying to the sba authorized agent of your choice and that agent is going to evaluate the information that you provide to them and then they will submit it to an sba partner surety company that they work with and that's when it's going to go through the surety's evaluation they're going to look at your character your capital and your credit once the surety agrees to bond your firm and is going to place you in sba's bond guarantee program usually that's a discussion about whether or not you need sba's bond guarantee the agent that you have chosen to work with will apply to sba for that bond guarantee on your behalf so you'll complete the application form return it to the agent and then the agent will use our electronic application process to apply for your bond guarantee sba staff review and approve bond guarantee applications in less than two days on average once we receive them from our agents and those quick apps that i mentioned we typically approve the guarantees under those quick apps in just a couple of hours once the agent has sba's approval they can then provide you with your bond so you can submit your bid or get started on your project sba currently partners with 41 surety companies that are represented by over 350 agents across the country you probably recognize some of these big name companies but probably from their insurance commercials on television maybe you didn't know that they also write bonds and that they partner with sba to help small businesses obtain the contract bonding that they need all right so when it comes to bond agents not all bond agents are authorized by sba we work with about 350 agents across the country and there are probably thousands of bond agents out there your agent is your partner and your advocates in the bonding pr cess they can help guide your business to success they can get you from point a to point b and to where you want to be 10 years from now they can refer you to a qualified cpa in your area if you need that so we recommend that you conduct an interview process with the available agents in your state so that you can select the best agent for your small business you can find a list of sba authorized agents on our website at sba.gov osg and we currently have five authorized agents with offices in the st louis and kansas city areas if you're looking to work with someone that's more local that can be an advantage for a small business though it's not necessary you are welcome to work with any agent who writes bonds in the states where you perform work but sometimes you might want to have a sit down and have a face-to-face post pandemic with your agent or you know maybe you have a rush bond need and you need to go pick that up there can be some advantages to having a local bond agent but again it's absolutely not required you can use any sba authorized bond agent that you would like and with regard to interviewing a bond agent what we recommend is that you come up with some questions that are important to you to ask your bond agent when you're interviewing some of these agents to choose your best partner the first one might be where their office is located if having a local agent is important to you you might want to ask them what states they're licensed to write bonds in if you're doing business in all 50 states you want to make sure that your agent and your surety are able to bond all of those projects for you maybe you want to ask them whether or not they provide additional services if they can refer you to a construction cpa if you need one or you know if they're willing to really kind of sit down and explain this whole bonding process to you and how you can qualify for contract bonding now or what you need to do to prepare your company and change things up a little bit so that you can qualify for contract bonding in the future and you know how you can grow your bonding capacity these are all important things to ask of a partner that is your surety bond professional agent think of this as very much like having an extended long-term relationship with a banker the longer you've been working with your agent and your surety the more willing they're going to be to take that extra risk when you need them to do that all right as i mentioned and crystal mentioned when we began our virtual seminar today if you have any questions please enter those into the chat and i will be available to answer answer any questions about bonding in general or the surety bond guarantee program once we reach the end of our virtual seminar today if you don't have any questions for me today i will be sharing my contact information with all of you you can feel free to reach out to me by phone or email and i'll be happy to have a conversation with you in a much more private setting in case you kind of want to discuss your current challenges with bonding in a private setting i would be happy to do that in the meantime i'm going to turn it over to alan waldo of the missouri ptax to share with you some more information about missouri's ptac offerings waldo over sorry allen over to you hey i've been called a lot of different things at the waldorf so thank you i'm working on sharing my screen real fast i am really privileged today though because i've actually got two of my colleagues from the state of missouri with me today so uh shout out to both the chris bachman and uh adelia marin who are both ptac counselors across the state and i'm always uh thrilled to have them join us we have a great team with missouri p-tech and uh kind of depending on where you're located in the state uh it would be a good direction for me to kind of kind of point you those ways i don't know if you want to say hi today or hi chris or just thumbs up whatever so hi everyone there you go chris your turn chris still there maybe he hung up on me oh well i'm there i had to find the unmute button alan thank you and everyone i'm in columbia missouri hello so alexa great to have you all here okay so i don't know i guess i'm gonna go this is the most exciting part of the entire presentation even though i will tell you what i learned a whole lot about the about sardi bond process so tamarid i you were teaching me things i had not heard before and that's actually a question i get quite often when i'm working working with p-tech and looking at people in government contracting but so we're missouri p-tech and basically what that means is we're the procurement technical assistance centers we are tasked with helping out people pretty much with just government contracting we can also help out with what they call the sbir and sttr grants which are which are high tech grants i am probably very lucky though because me working out the springfield area i've got an expert with the sbdc office here in town uh sandra that if i ever have an st sttr or sbir question or client i usually work directly with her but we've got offices across the states we've got the one in springfield which i represent and i serve probably oh 16 or 17 counties i go all the way down to joplin down to mcdonald county uh we have a have a counselor over west plains willis we have a fairly brand new counselor up in the raleigh area traven we have a couple counselors or three counselors up in the kc area uh we've got uh their i got jackie we've got shelley cunningham we've got dalia uh i've got a couple different councillors the columbia area between mark and chris and then my boss jana and then we've got a couple folks in the st louis area i got don and jamie in the st louis area and we are close partner organizations with the sbdc which is a small business development center which crystal represents and we're also with tac which is the trade adjustment center out of kansas city and that's basically there for manufacturers have seen a decrease in sales uh based upon foreign competition our national organization is aptac stands for association procurement technical assistance centers and if you are an out-of-state business you're looking who your local p-tech might be that aptack website's a great place to start or the other thing that i always give offers on when i'm on a call not knowing if everybody's from missouri or not if you'll reach out to me after the call if you're one we say in fact last week i had a similar type call and i had somebody reach out to me from california i was able to introduce them to the california p tax and then the nice thing about the ptac is we do work very closely with the federal agencies i mean obviously we have a great relationship with the rom and the sba i get a lot of referrals from the army corps of engineers i get referrals um from uh department of interior uh lots of different places we get referrals from they see us as being kind of the uh liaison as far as helping people out there maybe getting a little bit confused or like to learn a little bit more about government contracting we are funded in part through a cooperative grant with the defense logistics agency which is part of the department of defense so about 50 to 60 of our funding comes to the department of defense and then we are employed by the university of extension's business development program so the nice thing about us being taxpayer funded our professional services i do and i do mean professional services at no cost to our clients in other words free um and that's very very important to keep that in mind because there are a lot of companies out there that would like to charge you greater than 500 for some what i call some simple basic services like a sam registration so if you are considering getting the government contract and you start researching for example the system forward management of sam and you start getting on these websites that would like your credit card information just say no and then start looking for the for looking for the ptac offices and we can help assist you so already so our services are anything from registrations i probably do as many sam registrations just about anything else i've probably have done roughly 14 to 1500 of those throughout my career now i also assist people with missouri buy so if you'd like to sell to the uh state of missouri we'll get you registered missouri buys had mentioned earlier some of the socioeconomic certifications so we got like the woman-owned companies we've got the minority-owned companies uh or ada companies we got hub zones we got service disabled veteran owned companies um we are also kind of trained to be brutally honest with you so if i get a call from somebody that truly is not ready to become a government contractor i would just assume get that out in the open now and have you spend a whole lot of time going through a bunch of registrations which at this point you may not need but we can also outline for you maybe the state the steps that you need to be taking to to get yourself into position to start government contracting um we can help you out with what's called a capability statement in fact i was just drafted a capability statement earlier today which is kind of a marketing tool that we can share with government contractors uh look for past performance reviews i mean we can we can help out with what they call the defense logistics agency which we just mentioned or gsa the the general services administration we can help figure out how to market your product or your service we've got a services called bid match that will help find both federal state and local solicitations for you to bid on we've got many many educational resources including both live seminars and presentations and gavology which is a online training course with approximately 100 different courses out there right now we can help you look at the solicitation i mean just about anything that you can think of government contracting wise we can assist with um important considerations if you are thinking about becoming a government contractor now this is not a firm and fast rule but typically a little bit more longer longevity can't say that word in business so probably a little bit greater than two years um you've done some similar projects in the past the government really does not want to work with a company that's doing like for example construction project they may be wanting to build a dormitory at fort leonard wood but if you've never built a dormitory or a or a multi-level housing type facility like that before the odds of you getting hired to do that job at fort lunderwood is very slim you gotta have good reputation a lot of the same things that tamra was talking about with the sba sba sorority bonds i have to have good financial stability and you know the bonding capacity is what we've been talking about today if you've got a two million dollar project you're wanting to bid on and you can only bond up to half a million i'm going to tell you right now do not waste your time trying to bid on that thing you need to have some patience if you're planning on being a government contractor and then you also kind of have to have the mindset that it may be better off to start out as a subcontractor working for larger primes that is a great place to get your feet wet and a great place to kind of learn the business other considerations to know before bidding on something you need to know your cost so for example you do not want to start doing business with the government if you're going to lose money every time you every time you make a bid you need to have a very good accounting system you can separate out your your your costs you can separate out your profits uh you've got to be understanding if you're doing construction work you've got to be paying fully burden what they call prevailing wages so what we say that you're normally paying your carpenter's 15 bucks an hour for a government project it may be a 30 to 35 dollar job based upon where it's at and what type of work the carpenters are going to be doing you need to be able to bid an estimate estimate you need to make sure that you understand the deadlines that you have to meet because many times the government government projects there are liquidated damages at the end if you do not meet their goals um got to do the ability to meet the requirements so for example if you've got to have access to get on a military base but you've got construction workers that perhaps have had like a felonies in the past they may or may not be able to get out gain access to the military post to actually do the building and then at some points too you've actually got to pay attention to the us products um there are there are some some projects out there where they would like to prefer to have them have us-made projects or at least maybe trade agreement project products excuse me but we and we can kind of help sort through those through those for you basic registrations i'm just showing you these quick pictures so if you ever get on something that does not look like the sam one on the left or look like the missouri one buys one on the right you're probably not in the right location you probably aren't at a location where somebody's going to try to actually charge you to register in those in those areas social economic certifications rom did a great job covering this also um and he kind of put out the percentages but small business the federal government on a yearly basis is required to award at least 23 of all federal contracts to small businesses based upon your next code your north american industry classification system code five percent to woman-owned small businesses five percent to small disadvantaged businesses but the set-asides are only what they call for eight days and a a is based upon being both socially and economically disadvantaged um service disabled veteran on small businesses are three percent and then hubzone and that's that that is the one that is kind of an unusual one that is based upon where your business is located and then at least 35 percent of your employees must also live in a hubzone you know we could do an entire presentation over an hour and a half doing nothing but talking about these socioeconomic certifications key components over certification uh we've talked about being a small business he's got to be owned by a u.s citizen 51 percent unconditionally owned by us citizens and then generally whoever who so if you're a service disabled vet you've got to truly control the day-to-day and strategic operations of the business and you don't have to go to other people to get permission to do whatever types of work you want to get done state of missouri for example also has certifications they have a minority business enterprise a woman business enterprise both through the office of equal opportunity they've got the service disabled veteran enterprise the sdve through the office of administration and then modot's got the disadvantaged business enterprise which is based upon either the owner being a being a minority or being a woman and if you happen to like apply and get certified by modot as a disadvantaged business enterprise and you also meet that same category for any kind of u.s department of transportation um before diving into government marketplace there's my suggestions take a really honest assessment of your business including your past performance your financial statements your bonding levels are if you truly can perform on these jobs uh keep in mind that there are more rules and regulations the government market in commercial you may have civil liability but you could have both criminal and civil liability with the government based upon what you're doing you got to pay the prevailing wages i know i mentioned that earlier in a slide but that is so stinking and stinking important if you're planning on bidding a construction project uh i also tell people do not buy government business in other words do not take a loss on a job on purpose just so you can get the next job because the government really doesn't care they'll take the loss in the next job and then award it to another contractor the next time i also like to recommend you look for subcontracting opportunities i mentioned that before also but that is a great way to learn from the big boys and then uh also consider the american-made products i've mentioned before uh so my next steps to you if you're interested in government contracting is become a missouri p-tac or your home state's p-tech client uh educate yourself being a being a p-tech client you do have access to the gavology courses for free take some of the sbdc and the sba educational offerings i mean the one that you're taking today is an outstanding um step in the right for right direction all the ptac counselors typically give what they call like like basics and contracting course i know i think chris may have one coming up today you may have one coming up but my next one is on december 8th and you can actually register for that online uh at the missouri p-tech website uh work with your partner organization such as the sbdc and then and i always kind of recommend anyway that it's always good to register in salmon missouri buys but the samler registration allows you to actually be re listed what they call the sba's dynamic small business search and if you are eligible consider having social economic register registration there is my contact information and i am currently working out of the office most days i think i'm in on mondays so the best way to contact me currently is probably through my email so that being said i will shut up and see if anybody has any questions for any one of the panelists all right thank you alan and it looks like i do have one question in the chat let me get to that real quickly here we go tamara this one is for you um does the contractor have to approach the surety bond partner or agent asking to use the sba surety um guarantee program or will they look into all programs without having to ask um well i hate to say it depends but it really kind of does um so you know what i would recommend is uh you know firstly when you begin your conversation with your sba authorized agent let them know that you found them on sba's website that's going to be a clue in to them that you might be interested in the surety bond guarantee program but ultimately it's really kind of up to you as a small business to approach the bond agent and let them know that you might be interested in the program that you want to explore all of the options that are available to you including sba's bond guarantee program um you know if if they feel like they can get you the bonding capacity that you need without sba they may not suggest it uh but i think it's important for all small businesses all businesses in general to weigh their options even though you might not need sba's surety bond guarantee program to get the bonding that you need right now you may be able to get more capacity with sba guarantees and so you know it may be that you don't need it now but six months down the road you do and if you've already got that in place then you're already ready to go so i would say if you're interested just approach the bond agent and let them know that you're interested in exploring what your capacity might be with sba bond guarantees thank you tamara um i don't see any other questions in the chat so just a reminder we do have uh a minute or so so throw those in the chat if you do have a question i'm also going to put a link to a quick survey in the chat so if everyone would take some time and just fill that out there's just a few questions there give us a little bit of feedback if there's anything else you would like to learn about please also include that information and we're always looking uh to provide some updated programming for our clients so seeing no oh here we go let's see will you have this weather again i'd like to share with you so um there's a question in the chat about will we offer this again and um how will you be able to share it with clients so everybody's presentation that you saw today we will follow up and and everybody that was registered will send an email with that information we also are recording this and it will be posted on our webinar library and so in that follow up email i will include a link to that webinar library as well so it will be available on our website and you are free to share it with people um and appreciate you doing so so we can continue to provide this information to people so thank you for that question i just want to add on to that uh kelly if if you would rather prefer another in-person webinar we do have one scheduled for march 11 at noon great thank you ron no problem all right we are right at one o'clock uh i want to thank thank you all so much for attending ron tamara and alan really appreciate your your partnership and putting this program together and everyone have a great afternoon thank you thank you appreciate it