Geoff Orazem is the co-founder of Eastern Foundry, an incubator for growing defense oriented technology companies, and Federal Foundry, a software and media company for defense contractors. Geoff discusses the $500 billion government contracting market, the federal innovation programs, and how innovation can help provide better touch points for government customer-service.
Geoff Orazem is the co-founder of Eastern Foundry, an incubator for growing defense oriented technology companies, and Federal Foundry a software and media company for defense contractors. Geoff talks on the $500 billion government contracting market, the federal innovation programs, and how innovation can help provide better touch points for government customer-service.
More about our guest:
Geoff Orazem is a cofounder of Eastern Foundry, an incubator for growing defense oriented technology companies, and Federal Foundry a software and media company for defense contractors. He is a decorated Marine Infantry Officer and holds a law degree from Harvard Law school.
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Episode Guide:
1:12 - What Is Innovation
2:31 - Recognized patterns and shaping career
3:19 - Problem-solving like online dating platforms
5:47 - Analogy: Government contract problem and 'dating' problem
8:12 - The 500$ billion- a year- government contracting market
11:22 - Perception: 'Malicious' interest on keeping people out
13:31 - Keeping it classified or unclassified
15:10 - Innovation INSIDE the government to address systematic issues
17:36 - Case Study: the Jedi contract
18:56 - Gov't: most innovative and most risk-tolerant in technological space
20:02 - Small businesses, Deep-tech projects, Venture capitalists
21:22 - Synergy of government and innovators
24:38 - Long-term plans and bad customer service
25:14 - Average Americans and their Government touch points
26:09 - Number of registered government contractors
29:45 - Disneyfication of news
31:13 - Twitter feeds, representatives, senators, and contract winnings
32:47 - How someone could take advantage of the work
34:13 - Advice to future innovators wanting to get into the federal market
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Resources Mentioned:
Book Mentioned:
Contract:
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OUTLAST Consulting offers professional development and strategic advisory services in the areas of innovation and diversity management.
/This transcript was automatically generated using AI; please forgive any inconsistencies. We are working to provide the correct and more concise copy of the transcript. For urgent need, please send us an email.
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Jared Simmons 00:05
Hello, and welcome to what is innovation. The podcast that explores the reality of a word that is in danger of losing its meaning altogether. This podcast is produced by Outlast consulting, LLC, a boutique consultancy that helps companies use innovation principles to solve their toughest business problems. I'm your host, Jared Simmons. And I'm so excited to have Geoff Orazem.
Jared Simmons 00:29
Geoff Orazem is the founder of Fit Scout. Fit Scout provides federal market intelligence and business decision support to small and emerging government contractors. Before starting fed Scout, Jeff was an engagement manager at McKinsey and a Marine infantry officer. He holds a law degree from Harvard and a computer science degree from St. Mary's College of Maryland.
Jared Simmons 00:52
Geoff, so glad and excited that you were able to join us on the show today been ages, but you know, time flies and I'm just excited to be able to reconnect and get your thoughts on innovation.
Geoff Orazem 01:02
Jared, it's too funny. It's been a decade and it's just so nice to see you and hear your voice again. Thank you for having me on.
Jared Simmons 01:09
Likewise. All right, well, let's dive right in. What in your mind is innovation?
Geoff Orazem 01:16
That's great question. And sure a lots been written about it. I think my my big insight is that everyone makes a big deal about kind of the zero to one innovation to borrow a Peter Thiel-ism, you know, it's this idea that you're going from a blank canvas to some intuitive brilliance or insight to ensure that that exists is great. I'm super skeptical that it happens very often. I think 99% of innovation is incremental. And it is the borrowing of an insight that some other industry had maybe decades earlier and bringing it to a new context. I think it's a form of pattern recognition, that is bringing a pattern of success or change from one setting and bring it somewhere else that nobody else has thought of.
Jared Simmons 02:11
I love that, because in the context is really kind of part of the equation. Definitely. And so when you change that, that sounds like the the pattern recognition and bringing it over to the new domain is part of innovation. It's not just necessarily just this lightning bolt revelation right now makes a lot of sense. I love the pattern recognition part. So what kind of patterns have you recognized? And how has that shaped your career? You know, what you're currently doing? Tell me more about that.
02:38
Yeah, I think I have a fair number of thoughts, you know, that just sort of everyday, I'll just be walking down the street and see something and Geico, gosh, why are we doing that somewhere else? I think an easy example and the one that's near and dear to my heart. So a lot of my time is spent trying to help business interact more effectively with the federal government having to explain why I'm Pat, that's my passion, but I'm taking it at face value. That's where I spend my time. There's a central challenge within the industry of helping government contractors connect with government contracts. It's a very challenging marketplace, right. And we have a product that tries to address this problem. But the the the situation I saw was that the existing government, federal market intelligence platforms, the other platforms that were trying to solve this problem reminded me a lot of the early online dating platforms. So you know, my, my memory, I'm old enough to remember when you know, match.com came out? Oh, yeah. And the old days, you have plenty of fish and eHarmony. A lot of these. And my experience of the my perception of them was that they believed that if only they could get enough data on the the men and the women on the platform, that they would eventually be able to get such precise predictive matches that they would be able to pair people off very effectively. And I think that that was broadly never really panned out. And then this platform called Tinder came along and kind of took an opposite approach and said, Hey, we can't do this. There are too many variables. There are too many unknowables. Yeah, how many people have you met in your life? Or it's like, oh, we went on my first day with my now husband or wife, I never would have dated someone like this. And here we are, happily 10 years later. Mm hmm. And I thought Tinder did brilliantly was to say, look, we can't we machines are really bad at making these sorts of evaluations, but they're really good at it. And so what are they really looking for? It's like, Well, is there attraction? Okay, we need a picture. Is there general Are they close enough to go meet up? Okay, we'll put the location and you know, maybe is there some like intellectual socio economic filter that you know, is helpful? Yeah. So he will put their college or workplace but that's all you get. But what they did was they made it extremely easy to filter 1000s of people a day. You swipe left, swipe right and you're filtering so you're alone. allowing the computer to be really good at this other computers are good at ie some course filters, right? And then you're letting people do good work people are. And we just stole that insight and apply it to our platform, which was knowing which government contract is going to be good for a company is extremely difficult, and no amount of machine learning and data will ever get a precise match. So instead, our app, the the mobile version of our app just makes it very easy for people to swipe left, literally swipe left or swipe right on contracts. And then the other ones they like go to their like lists, they can go in, go learn more about.
Jared Simmons 05:36
Wow. So that's, that's really cool. That is a that is a perfect example of your definition of innovation. You know, as you as you think about kind of having that insight and applying it to this. What about the government contract problem made it such a great analog for the dating problem?
Geoff Orazem 05:54
Yeah, so your question, so I think it's the messiness of both, you know, they're dating and attraction and compatibility, I really anything, anything involving people, yeah, really messy. And there's just so many factors. And you know, unmeasurable variables. No surprise, anybody that pairing with people romantically is very challenging. Right, right. The challenge of government contracting is actually not dissimilar. Because while the government has a robust set of codes and metadata, that they connect to each opportunity to say, Oh, this, it's in this industry code this way. It's in that product code that way, it's under command this customer, and they have vast amounts of text associated with each each opportunity. The problem is, is that identify, be able to say, hey, this cybersecurity government contract, and this other cybersecurity government contract have the exact same coding for the same customer. But one of them has subtle differences that make it attractive from one vendor or another. No, it's the it's the type of cybersecurity work. Is it cybersecurity work that is? Is it service heavier? Is it product heavy? Is it of the particular flavor of cyber that my company does. And frequently, the government likes to release almost kind of omnibus contracts. So within one government contract, there might be 10, or 12 distinct types of work embedded within it. Okay. And so if a company is looking at it, they can relatively quickly say, oh, you know, section seven of the statement of work is actually a good fit for me, only to team and partner to fill out the remainder of the capabilities, right, but that section seven is really interesting. So we're trying to help people figure out that here, all the sections, we're just gonna make it really easy for you to say yea or nay.
Jared Simmons 07:47
Interesting. You're not trying to project some level of knowledge into the situation, you're just helping to sort of expose people to the surface the information that they need to make an informed decision.
Geoff Orazem 07:59
That's right. So we're really iView Our job is to get rid of the obviously wrong ones. And then make it really easy for people to accurately evaluate the potentially right one.
Jared Simmons 08:12
Got it? Got it. And how big of a market is government contracting? Well, today,
Geoff Orazem 08:17
the tons of how you cut that in March, it doesn't really cut that number, the the the most conservative number, which is what I like to use is $500 billion a year
Jared Simmons 08:26
$500 billion
Geoff Orazem 08:29
a year. Yeah. And that's the that's the most conservative way to measure the market. Wow, there are ways to measure the market. And a lot of people do it this way, which I don't entirely agree with, they'll get you closer to $2.3 trillion.
Jared Simmons 08:41
Yeah, I've heard that too. 2 trillion number 500 billion is more than big enough to get have struggled to wrap your head around. That's a huge market. You're kind of helping people make sense of this $500 billion market space marketplace. Is there a rough number of contracts that sort of is associated with that? Or is that does that fluctuate a lot?
Geoff Orazem 09:04
Well, it fluctuates a lot day to day, but you go year over year, it generally kind of flows around the same place. And so the number that you have for your audience who are not government contractors, a good rule of thumb is on any given day one to 2000 contracts will come out. And that's not counting and then there's there's an entire vast piece of the government contracting market that's obfuscated from that number. So that there's there's actually, probably 5x more contracts coming out every day. But unless you're an established contractor, you don't even get to see
Jared Simmons 09:42
those. Oh, okay. These are the ones where you've, you've demonstrated a certain amount of, you've got a certain amount of spin that that has been spent with you as a government contractor or something like that. Some sort of hurdle.
Geoff Orazem 09:54
Yeah, exactly. It's there. There's some there stage gating and the government has created a variety of walled garden through that you kind of have to like, get in the door to the walled garden before you can even take advantage of the other contracts in
Jared Simmons 10:07
there. Got it? Got it one to 2000 a day. Yeah. Which, you know, which,
Geoff Orazem 10:11
which on the one hand, yeah, no, it's a staggering number. Yeah. Yeah, I was I was gonna try to rationalize who knows, it's to the south,
Jared Simmons 10:19
that is huge, huge. And I, you know, it's such a black box to me, we do product development, innovation work, we did facilitation and all sorts of things. And you know, it really when they, you know, it's on my, on our glide path as a, as a company to be able to get into government contracting, but it just feels like a huge mountain to climb. And I think that's what's so exciting about you being in this space is, it feels like you're reducing the barriers to entry to kind of understanding what it is, what government contracting is, where to find it, and how to how to play in this space. Because I can personally attest to it just looks like more trouble than it's worth. And sometimes, you know what I mean,
Geoff Orazem 11:03
someone will have to remember, I'm trying to get this quote, right, because if I remember correctly, it was never attribute to malice, what can be explained by incompetence? And it's, you know, everybody laugh. It's funny, I don't I don't mean to use be too negative on the governor on this one. But there is a perception, I think that there is a it's a malicious interest in keeping people out that there is a, you know, a cabal of super wealthy defense contractors from your your, your favorite top 10 risk beneficiaries of the government market that are conspiring? I don't think that's the case. Oh, good. I don't think it's deliberate. Yeah, I think it's just like you see with any other large institution, you know, large institutions are, in my experience, quite reactive. And it's been going on for a couple 100 years. And so, you know, 50 years ago, there was some malfeasance in it, particularly as government contracting space. And so they put a very prescriptive solution in place. And there's always an incentive to ratchet the regulation forward. But nobody has an incentive to ease off that ratchet.
Jared Simmons 12:19
I see. So it's sort of organizationally and maybe bureaucratically expedient to add elements, another hurdle or another walled garden. Exactly. There's no market motive to reverse any of that. Absolutely.
Geoff Orazem 12:33
I imagine you're a mid level administrator, you know, you're you're somebody in Congress. I know, there's some you see some gross malfeasance happening and you know, spending in Iraq over the course of the wars, one very reasonable position would be Wayman, this is the first time that that malfeasance is happens in 100 years, we, we hammered the hell out of the bad actor. Okay, that seems like enough, we've made the example. And we're done. Or the response can be, yeah, we did all of that. And we put another check in place, we put another regulation in place, you know, we've created a new role or position stage gate to prevent that from ever happening again. So everyone chooses the ladder, because they want to go tell their boss story, we tell the story. Yeah. Well said, they want to tell the story about how they were tough and how, you know, they took a proactive stance against this tide of corruption.
Geoff Orazem 13:32
In this community, there's, you know, kind of the old joke that nobody ever got fired for classifying a piece of information. Right. There's no downside to the person making the decision. If somebody writes a report, is it classified or not? If they decide it's classified, and you'll nobody will ever get in trouble for that. But if they say, let's, and let's keep it unclassified, and they get in, they somebody just somebody identifies some classified information or, you know, something negative happens with that information, they that person will get hammered. Right. So, the incentives of the individual arbiters at and this isn't one person, this is just, you know, this, this midst of decisions that are happening across the literally millions of federal employees every day. This very well intentioned, you know, personal incentives, maximizing decision making is happening. And next thing you know, you have an insanely bureaucratic and destructive system
Jared Simmons 14:34
built almost like one brick at a time by people who had no intention of building the example and they were just laying bricks, putting them down. That's a great explanation and it sort of really helps to paint the picture of you know, how something can can come to life how this could because it looks designed from the outside looking in, it does. It is so organized and structured and specific, it's hard to understand how you could get to that level of specificity without intentionality. But that's exactly your explanation really makes that real. What role do you think innovation could play internally with the government to sort of address that?
Geoff Orazem 15:15
It's so important. Let's start off with some really some praise government, I would say, Well, let me let me do so I'm 10 years old and get really focused on the federal market. So so my, you know, what happened kind of pre 2000? Way choose number 2010? Let's call it in round numbers. questionable at best. But so from where I said, you know, with that perspective, he really does seem to sort of under Obama. And my sense is that, you know, he came in with this message of change, brought in a lot of young staff people coming in from the private sector, people who early they was under him that they started the Presidential Innovation Fellows. They had they distorted, and then that permeated down, he started seeing this blossoming of innovation units across the agencies. Oh, wow. So at this at this moment, I mean, I'm, I'm hard pressed to think of any government agency that does not have an innovation team. Wow. Or the case of DOD felt like 12 innovation teams,
Jared Simmons 16:19
I had no idea. Mm hmm. That's encouraging,
Geoff Orazem 16:22
isn't it? Yeah. And so it's, it's this really interesting David and Goliath story where you've got these. And by the way, everybody, it's not even a David and Goliath story, because in this story, both David and Goliath are well intentioned and thinking they're doing the right thing. And there's no, there's no villain in this story. Although, again, you have our previous conversation of whether it seems designed intentionally new there, it's easy to assign brownie that, you know, evil intention, you know, anyway,
Jared Simmons 16:51
you got it right.
Geoff Orazem 16:52
answer your question more directly what's happening. So there has been a real effort over the last man at least well, probably accelerating more of the last five years, definitely going back into the 10 year mark, where he started seeing just a lot of efforts at being more customer friendly. There's been a lot of changes in the acquisitions, procedures, people have authorized new mechanisms to purchase and engage with industry in a much more recognizable way, in ways that you know, you and I would see, as you know, this looks like these look like commercial term sheets. Oh, okay. These look more like commercial timelines. Oh, and you know, they're not there. They're definitely not there. And especially on big contracts.
Geoff Orazem 17:36
If you just if you want to see a case study in what's wrong, your listeners can go do a little bit of exploration of the Jedi contract, just a mess. But, you know, but at the same time, I love that the Jedi team, the people behind the Jedi contract for trying right now trying to do something different. And they want, they had the best of intentions, and it just went sideways. But you know, what that's gonna happen inside of inside of any innovation experience. Right? And so I don't know what happened to those individuals. I don't. But I do know that because I listened to the speeches being made by acquisitions and other innovation leaders within the space. They're saying the right things, things like if you mess up, but with a clean conscience will defend you. You know, as long as you're trying and you're, you're doing your best to play by the rules. If, if something goes wrong, you know, we won't throw you under the bus. So that I think it's really important because there is a strong culture of risk aversion inside of government. And, and I'm quick to defend that risk aversion in some ways. But in this particular case, it's gone way too far. Right. So we are seeing those sorts of innovations. We're also seeing a lot of labs blossom across the way.
Geoff Orazem 18:56
One thing I will I will stick up for government around in the innovation space is I think that government is the most innovative and the most risk tolerant organization I know of when it comes to technological risk. And I think this is something that people overlook a lot. Because, you know, there's people get excited about billionaires firing themselves into space, and you know, these big business model innovations that result in you know, me getting this iPhone that I love, right, but let's be real. If Apple had had to pay to develop each of the pieces of this iPhone, we would not have iPhones in our hands. Hmm, that is so true. Almost every component of the I'm not I'm not exaggerating, almost every component of the iPhone traces its roots to decades of investment by government into touchscreens into micro cameras into semiconductors. What am I let's see here. Well, it's a Siri the internet.
Jared Simmons 19:57
I mean, the government is the ads Great, great grandfather of the internet.
Geoff Orazem 20:02
And so I where I work one thing, one message I know, I'm doing a lot of work with small businesses that are trying to move deep tech, deep tech projects. And like no VCs want to invest in them. Because no VC is willing to take 10 years on a moonshot bit of technology that's just not there and not a criticism. That's not what they do. So whenever I hear people laud the merits of private sector innovation, and the risk taking, you know, animal instincts of the free market, and all the capitalist red meat that people love, and that there is a kernel of truth to right, I just want to tell them, it's like, okay, cool, what private sector company was going to build Silicon Valley now, right? Because there isn't, right or your what private sector company is underwriting space. 30 years from now, we're all going to be taking vacations to the moon. And we're just gonna, we're gonna give all the credit to the Elon Musk's of the world, you know, who certainly deserves to be on a pedestal. But let's not throw government under the bus as being this, you know, the gang that can't shoot straight, right? When they were laying those bricks, those technological foundational bricks that other people stood on, that finally led to a commercial to you and I product? Yeah,
Jared Simmons 21:18
yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah. So glad to hear you say that. I just finished reading Walter Isaacson's book, the innovators. And he talks a lot about how the world wide web and the internet came into being and a lot of the equipment, a lot of the teams a lot of the the mandates and the money came from the government and the federal government. And when people like Bill Gates needed a computer to you know, do his programming and things on, it was government funded computers at his university that, you know, he started, he started out working on government funded computers in his own, you know, his hometown. So yeah, so I couldn't agree with you more. That's very well said. And the space example is easy to see,
Geoff Orazem 22:02
you're just good thing for all of us. Keep in mind, in the 1960s, the US government was sending people into space. In the year 2020, the private sector finally started sending people into space hmm, in the government sending people into space back when they were launching rockets and launching space shuttles, using like, you know, whatever the computing power that's probably on your wristwatch today. So when we talk about when we look at, you know, SpaceX, like, let's not let's not overlook all of the advantages in material science, in the physics in the rocket science and everything, that the 16 years worth of investment from DOD and NASA and other government agencies that, you know, kind of gets overlooked. Yeah. Why is Why is Elon Musk getting all the books and all the praise and ticker tape parades? Right? We are the NASA administrators over the last 60 years have just as much ownership of that of SpaceX his success as he does.
Jared Simmons 23:02
Yeah. And I think the people who do the work at SpaceX, and probably musk and probably Bezos, and Branson, and all of them would agree with you. It's just Yeah, popular culture can't for some reason latch on to that. Yep. Because it's a bit of a rockstar culture, in general, and then around innovation, it has suddenly become, you know, there's a list of five or 10 people who are innovators these days, you know, and everybody else is just watching them work, I guess. Yeah. So I think that's really kind of what is so exciting to me about you sitting at this intersection with this novel idea and novel opportunity for people is that you can kind of invite people into this space, this $500 billion space that not only needs innovation, itself, but also needs innovative solutions to its problems. And the more diversity you can bring into the process, the more diversity of suppliers you can bring into the into their world, the more diverse and more unique and fit for purpose. Yeah, solutions will come to be because our government is big, but its footprint is bigger, you know, Space Race is a great example. Because there were a lot of people that work for the government directly. But yeah, hundreds of 1000s of people across America, you know, built the Saturn five. So all that to say, I really think what you're doing is important for innovation as an ecosystem, because it allows other people to kind of come to the party.
Geoff Orazem 24:32
Absolutely agree. It's a it's such an important role that gets overlooked. And you know, in the IRA, one of the ironies to me is that government is really good and making long term decades long, no pun intended moonshot investments into technology, and then they turn around they try to they try to open a website and it's just a disaster. And it's it's i which is your I gotta be awesome. I'm very sympathetic to all the government haters out there without naming names there's government has a bad rap right now. And I attribute it largely to really bad customer service.
Jared Simmons 25:10
Hmm.
Geoff Orazem 25:11
You know, the other day if you ask me, I my mindset is that the average American their touchpoints with governments will be their taxes once a year. And maybe they have a son or daughter in the military. You know, they're probably sending some stuff through the US mail. And all of those websites are just a mess, the touch points that the average American will have how the consumer, the government, the G to C, side of government is deeply broken, just which, unfortunately, sort of having this really, really awful facade on an organization that's doing some truly astounding work.
Jared Simmons 25:52
Got it. Got it. And I guess, by extension, because of the number of small businesses, it is a staggering number. I didn't I had no idea. Because of the number of businesses there are in America, the contracting side is also part of the big part of the perception of the government.
Geoff Orazem 26:08
Enormous. Yeah, the number of registered government contractors, I believe I looked in last I was right around 800,000. I think that number is a little skewed because people just register because a tape doesn't take a lot. They, I think that you in a safe number is 100,000 to 100,000 are actively beating the pavement every day looking for contracts. And you might you know, we said $500 billion. You know that I did the math one day I kind of I, my memory was I landed on 2 million employees. Hmm, that $500 billion reflect again, that's the most conservative percentage. So you know that the more generous $2.3 trillion dollar version, IBM, let's say, times five. So you're easily talking about 10 million Americans that are government contracting in one form or another. Right. So that's a that's a significant portion of the total workforce. I don't blame them. It's Seo, those are your experiences. Of course, you think that the government's incompetent? Mm
Jared Simmons 27:09
hmm. Yeah, I think you really put your finger on it in terms of the customer service aspect of it, and just the reputation management that I think is maybe underestimated. The government is the government, and it's going to be what it is. But it doesn't have to be perceived the way it is perceived. And I think there's an element that's independent of politics in terms of government perception management. And I think that's the problem is all of our perception of government is dominated not only by the our touch points, but also there's no distance between politics and governance anymore. So and so your perception of it is colored by the Greater blue leaning or what have you that you might have and what might be who may or may not be in charge at any given moment. But government is is different from politics.
Geoff Orazem 27:59
Yeah. I would love to see big billboards all over America, and to saying no, the next time that Google Maps tells you which way to drive, thanks, GPS, that we built that the next time that you're you know, excited about that new, you know, taking that selfie on Instagram, remember that the camera in your phone came from this came from NASA's work to macro, the micro eyes, cameras go into satellites. Yeah, the government has so many good stories to tell you they touch on people's lives. You know, if we look around the industrialization of the country is a direct result of government contracts that were being put in place for the war effort in World War Two. The National Highway System is like, Hey, are you enjoying taking a trip down? You know, I five getting getting places fast? Thank Eisenhower. Yeah, this is all so much of the story of America's prosperity and the the consumer packaged goods that we just come to rely on and that we idolize trace their roots back and nobody tells that story.
Jared Simmons 29:03
Huh, that's so true. Wow. That is a great point. I hadn't really thought about that. If you are a marketer tasked with telling the story of the government and its impact on your life, how would you tell that story? That's a great way you might go about doing that. There's a lot of, say misplaced credit, but incomplete credit. I like that incomplete credit. And I think there's space in there to acknowledge that role. And the innovation aspect of changing the way you talk about something, you know, that's a form of innovation. Yeah, absolutely. And I think it's just some it's something that hasn't really made it to the forefront yet. Probably because it's such a cyclical environment in in Washington.
Geoff Orazem 29:45
As funny whenever I talk to my friends about this, I talked about the Disneyfication of the news. I just feel like you know, one of the great things about Disney movies in your for children is that there's a very clear villain who can do no, right. And there's a very clear hero that can do no wrong. And I think that we apply that same basic framework to our political lives. And the way that we tell stories in modern in modern communication is like, you have to have a hero that you can root for, and you have to have a villain, and the villain can only kick puppies. And you know, it's just, there's, there's, that's never people are not that simple. And stories aren't that simple. But there's a lot of investment in the political space in creating simple stories. Yeah,
Jared Simmons 30:36
yeah. Yeah. And probably the best outlet for that insight around Simple Stories wouldn't be telling the story of the government or telling the story of this small business, then, you know, 70% of their business comes from government contracts. Yeah. And, you know, they're employing these people in this community. And, you know, I think there's just no shortage of stories to tell, and there'll be more stories to tell thanks to you. And, and this amazing tool you built, you're building for people to experience to be able to leverage this app to kind of make that connection.
Geoff Orazem 31:13
If any politicals are listening to this. I would love to collaborate on Twitter feeds for every representative and every senator, that just tells all the wins that have happened in their district. I've looked on congressional Twitter feeds. Yeah, nobody tweets when one of their constituents companies wins a big contract. Ah, it just blows my mind. Wow. I mean, my God, like, especially, you know, not to make the song left and right. But like, if you're a pro government politician, why aren't you saying, hey, this government contractor just won a $10 million contract in my district is going to create this many jobs. Hmm,
Jared Simmons 31:54
man. Why wouldn't you do this, though? Why wouldn't you tell the story?
Geoff Orazem 31:56
That is a dinner table conversation.
Jared Simmons 32:00
Yeah. Yeah. And it puts a face and a knee? Yes. And isn't humanizes the humanizes? Well said, Oh, my goodness, it would never have occurred to me. But you're, you're exactly right. I hope someone takes you up on that offer.
Geoff Orazem 32:15
I will provide the data. Yeah, I really understand government data at this point. Yeah. Anybody out there wants to tweet about when a company wins in their home district, I will provide the data free of charge like that. I just, I just want this to happen.
Jared Simmons 32:28
Yeah, yeah, that's an amazing offer, because it will immediately differentiate whomever it is from everybody else, because it's just, it's just not happening. We need more of it. So I really appreciate you taking the time out. My pleasure, the conversation is really just sort of sparked a lot of additional thoughts in my head, I want to ask you two kinds of questions. The first one, I just want to ask you to just kind of walk through how someone could kind of take advantage of what you're doing. Because I do think it's a huge black box for a lot of people. Yeah. And so I really want you to kind of walk through that. And then just any advice you have for innovators more broadly. Well, thank
Geoff Orazem 33:05
you, I don't want this to become a pitch for my services. But I say this with sincerity. So come to my website, it's fed Scout comm we have a lot of educational content that's just free, it's under our resources tab, just come there read it, there's no gating on it, just consume the content. I've started a couple different government contracting businesses, you know, we we met each other at McKinsey, I come from a private sector background. And so I really tried to shape all of the content that we created around the questions and the urgency that a young entrepreneur has knock on wood, we've made a bit of a pivot in the last month and a half, to focus more on those days, zero contractors, the people who are just kind of kicking the tires on the market. So by getting knock on wood, first week, in January, we're going to be releasing a suite of free tools to just help curate someone's entrance into the federal markets. But in the meantime, you know, feel free to reach out, you know, send us an email. There's a lot of content that's already there. And you'll always have to have these conversations. That's number one. Number two, to answer your second question, which was, you know, what is the advice on the roadmap to go into the federal market? Yeah, remember putting out tools that answer these questions in tactical Deloitte gives tactical leaves per person based on what kind of company Bosshard type answers. But in the meantime, the best advice I have is, is to treat the federal government like any other customer, at the end of the day, a sale to a customer happens when somebody has a need. They have money to pay you and you have a solution. And for some reason, people seem to lose track of that. I partially blame the breadth of the government's purchasing like, you know, there aren't many organizations on artists that on earth I get that get to buy heroin and fighter jets and everyone's one of them. So, you know, when you when somebody is buying literally everything, right? It can be very tempting to say is like, Oh, I could do that. I could do that they and I see people, they're like, you're either like a dog chasing rabbits, they're just beaming around a field seeing contracts pop up. It's like, Oh, that one's calling for janitorial services. I know some people who couldn't do janitorial services and they their way. And then it's like, oh, wait, I know that contracts for you know, whatever, you know, new tires. So number one is really understand the market. And number two, so figure out what it is that you want to do and understood. Don't say that that trifecta that what is it that you can provide? What is it the government's asking for, and who's got money to pay for it, which is your business 101. But again, people seem to forget that. And then the second thing that I think that people should do is understand why the government should choose you. As we said, there are literally hundreds of 1000s of companies out there. And people come to me all the time, like, Oh, I'm a service abled veteran, or I'm a, I'm a woman, I'm a minority member, I'm gonna, you know, they should just give me contracts, because of the set aside programs that benefit these organs, these groups. It's just, it's just not the case. I mean, I hate to say it, but there are a lot of all the above. Yep, there are 1000s and 1000s of women owned small businesses, minority owned small businesses, service disabled veteran owned small businesses. So don't rely on that. Understand the differentiator. And typically the differentiator in government is going to look like on two things. It's your lower risk, which means you know, you have more credentials, you have more letters after your name, the track record is some guy exactly, you have a tangible, the past performance and certifications that say you are lower risk, and you know what you're doing, or you're more innovative, it means you have a different perspective on the needs and the solutions in the space. So I think the number two is really figure out what your message is to the customers. I know, the government almost certainly has an incumbent vendor that they're currently purchasing the product or service from. So why should they choose you, right, and get really crisp on that. And then the third thing, I pound the table about this all the time, right, and people don't listen to me and I, Mike, my feelings get hurt. But the thing that people should be doing is to figure out how to create a minimum viable service. And the best way I know how to do that is to right, it's to just sit there and you'll write on posts on LinkedIn, and medium and Twitter. If you if you really are more innovative in your solution, or you're really more low risk and more credentialed in your space, then you should be able to write about it, you should have no problem writing a couple tweets a week, and you know, maybe a couple 100 words about a particular topic, you should be able to do that for three to six months, every week. And if you can't do that, if you don't have enough perspective, and like enough depth in your market in your service or product to do that for six months, you probably don't have enough depth to win a government contract.
Jared Simmons 38:04
Ah, that's brilliant. That is That is brilliant.
Geoff Orazem 38:11
I'm a huge believer in writing. Yeah, just start writing. And the good news is that if you really, that that's not wasted time, that's six months of building your audience at six months of credibility. That's six months of people saying, Oh, wow, Jared is got an interesting point of view about blank. I want to go talk to him. Yeah, this is your business development that you can do, while you're employed by some other corporation that's paying your benefits and giving you a nice salary. So those are the three things,
Jared Simmons 38:41
man, Jeff, that was that was solid gold. I mean, oh, that was amazing. That last one I hope people really take to heart because writing is hard. It's hard. It's painful. But once you've written something it's written. And I think that's the piece that is really powerful about that is when you go to make these, try to get on these contracts, you've got content and pull from, you've been refining your voice refining your message. And because you're doing it in writing, you've got the whole evolution at your disposal. Yep, I think that's a really under leveraged use of that a lot of people think about it in terms of marketing, but it's really, it's really a great tool for organizing and advancing your thinking.
Geoff Orazem 39:19
organization. So you're thinking and proving to yourself that you know your industry and you know your business and you know your differentiators so well, because it's very easy when you're, you know, you're sitting in bed at the end of the day, you can make some hand wavy. Oh yeah, I'm really good at this. You know, I'm so much smarter than everybody else. But okay, cool. Write 500 words about that. Write 500 words about why the current way of doing X is wrong and that you're you've got a better way. Right? Right. Right. Because if you can definitely attract attention. You can't better figure out that you can now while you're still gainfully employed, then figured out that you can't after you've quit your job
Jared Simmons 40:00
Hmm, wow. It's been 10 years, but it feels like it was yesterday. It really does picked up right where we left off. Always insightful and fun conversations with you, my friend and I appreciate you, you know, sharing your thoughts. So my pleasure connection to pattern recognition and, and context, in particular in your innovation definition in the focus on writing in your advices. I mean, those two things alone, I think are solid gold man. So thanks for your time. And thanks for making space for us in your day.
Geoff Orazem 40:30
Thank you so much for having me. And it was such a treat to get to reconnect with you. Yeah, yeah.
Jared Simmons 40:34
We'll have to see if we can get down from 10 years. 10 year cycle, whittle that down a bit. I hope so. Alright, take care.
Jared Simmons 40:49
We'd love to hear your thoughts about this week's show. You can drop us a line on Twitter at Outlast, LLC. Oh UTLST LLC, or follow us on LinkedIn where we're at less consulting. Until next time, keep innovating. Whatever that means.