Eric Coffie: 00:00:00 Episode 35

Speaker 2: 00:00:09 Welcome to the Govcon Giants podcast, federal contracting for people on the outside looking in. If you are here to learn how to win a piece of the pie without getting your face smashed in, then you've tuned into the right place. Now the giant that not only walks the walk, but talks the talk, your host Eric Coffie

Eric Coffie: 00:00:29 In today's episode, the table's a turn. You're going to hear me being interviewed as a guest on another show with Jay Jones from the BEB podcast. Listen, as he asked me all the tough questions, including how did I get started? How did I make millions of dollars in contracts? Where did I learn all this stuff from? And the most important question, what led me to teaching it on YouTube. Stay tuned for today's show, an episode with Jay Jones and myself on the Govcon Giants podcast.

Jay Jones: 00:01:11 Hello.

Jay Jones: 00:01:11 Welcome to the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint show. I am your host Jay Jones. Black Entrepreneur Blueprint was created specifically to educate and inspire black entrepreneurs to launch, build, and grow successful businesses. Join us as we help build an economic power base in the black community by promoting business ownership. If you are currently an entrepreneur or want to be an entrepreneur, we invite you to join us every week here at Black Entrepreneur Blueprint.

Jay Jones: 00:01:52 Welcome to the Black Entrepreneur Blueprint, episode number 281 I'm your host Jay Jones, and today we have a dynamic and outstanding show in stored for you. First and foremost, if you want to watch me do the show live with the interview, please go to YouTube and it's episode 281 with the YouTube cover. Now, today we're going to be talking to Mr. Eric Coffie. He's the founder of Govcon Giants and he has an amazing entrepreneurial story where he almost lost it all two times, but he used government contracts to come back and his business has done over $5 million in government contracts. So if you've ever were interested or thought about trying to work with the government, make sure you tune into today's episode via on all the podcast platforms or you can watch the video on YouTube. Now before we get to today's episode, I just want to share a few

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things with the BEB family. First and foremost, if this is your first time listening to Black Entrepreneur Blueprint, welcome to the BEB family. Now please stick around the end of today's episode and I'm going to share all of my social media information and also a resource guide, which includes my new book, a new book, Black Wall Street, and also the different eCommerce platforms I've created to help circulate the Dollars in the black community. So let's get ready to listen to my interview with mr Eric Coffie, founder of GovconGiants.com.

Jay Jones: 00:03:24 We are live with Mr Eric Coffie, the owner of GovconGiants.com. Eric, how are you today brother?

Eric Coffie: 00:03:31 I'm doing well, Jay. Thank you for having me today on your show. I know we been working a while. I'm trying to get together and hook up, but you know, pleasure, happy to be here, excited. You know, I want to rock and roll and share some information for the people out there and your community.

Jay Jones: 00:03:47 Yes, it was. So I appreciate you sharing your time, man. One of the things that I always get on the show I get a request for is government contracting. So when we connected several months ago, I said, man, this is going to be perfect for the BEB family because so many people reach out to me and I'm not proficient in government contracting. And obviously this is what we do at the a BEB family. We bring people in experts to help us elevate entrepreneur IQ. And I know you're going to do that today, man. So for the listeners who aren't familiar with Eric Coffie, tell us a little bit about yourself personally and then we'll get into your entrepreneurial journey.

Eric Coffie: 00:04:25 Okay. Well personally in terms of, you know, I started back in 2007, 2008, I was a realtor. And then as a realtor I wasn't really satisfied or happy what I was doing. Someone came to me, a older gentleman season on a bunch of properties and he talked to me about becoming a developer. And so I said, okay. I listened to him and I respect him because I know he had a substantial wealth and he had accumulated over the years. And so I looked up to him and, and I went out and he said, listen, if you get your contractor's license, and I, you know, I'll put the money up and then we can start building houses for like community development programs. And so I said, okay. I went

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out study, got my GC license, and then the market fell from under us. That's when the real estate market crashed. The banks were closing. And.

Jay Jones: 00:05:17 I remember that time. That's when my mortgage business went down.

Jay Jones: 00:05:19 You remember that time? Yeah.

Eric Coffie: 00:05:25 No, there wasn't nobody building any homes anywhere around the country. There was no development going on, anything like that. So I I was stuck with having a pass my general contractors exam, State of Florida, and really nowhere to hang that and do anything with it. Fortunately for me I had a couple of properties and I was introduced. My air condition guy actually introduced me to another gentleman who was looking into the government contracting space. We hooked up, met and he talked to me about the world of federal government contracts and then, you know, I took off from there

Jay Jones: 00:06:01 To go from there. Cool. And it's kind of funny how we get positioned for certain things. So you weren't even thinking about government contract, real estate business. So sometimes you know, things providence happens and make us move into a certain, a certain area that obviously you're blessed to be in now because you've been so successful. Right. So we want to, we want to kind of dive into that real quick. So how did you get started in government contracting after everything had gone down with the economy and what was your first foray into that? So you can just share that with us.

Eric Coffie: 00:06:38 All right. So our first foray we, the gentleman that I met, the older gentleman which by the way, and we'll talk about this, Jay later on, he was actually just on CSPAN two weeks ago with the president of United States, Donald Trump and talking about the new opportunity zones. He has since built his business up to about $50 million a year. So that, that gentleman, so him and I, we got together and we essentially, he, he didn't, he knew about the opportunities, but he didn't know how to maximize them or take advantage of it. And so when we got together, he said, look, this is, this is billions of dollars of billions of dollars. And I had personally never heard of billions of dollars or

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anything, right? Opportunities. I mean, it looked like I'm an engineer. You know, you come out of school and you're making $60,000 a year, you get up to, you know, executive, you make it $130,000 years.

Eric Coffie: 00:07:30 So that's about as high as I thought you could take it. But then he, you know, he talked about all these billions of dollars and what he did was he challenged me to go out and say, look, if you can figure out a way to wrap your hands around of these opportunities, you could bring it back to my organization and we will fulfill them. Right? And so I didn't realize I was doing business development, right? I had no idea what you call it. You just, you know, I didn't know. Now we also call it consulting, but he said, look, if you could figure out how to wrap your hands around some of this opportunity to bring it back down. We have the back office staff, we have the people, the team, to be able to execute and perform the work. So again mind you, nothing else was going on, right?

Eric Coffie: 00:08:16 There's nothing else happening. The market was dead. Banks were dead, you know. And so I just started going to conferences and events and learning everything I could get my hands on, everything about government contracts and I would just stay up at night studying it and studying it and studying how it works. And then I start reaching out and talking to people and asking them. Right. And we were fortunate because we had this little known certification at the time called 8a. So the number eight, the letter a is an Apple. An 8a certification is a federal certification. It's a socio-economic program that allows the government to you set aside contracts and negotiate contracts. And so he had that certification. So when I started talking to government agencies and I mentioned that, Hey, you know, we are a good company and by the way, we have this 8a certification thing.

Eric Coffie: 00:09:11 They said, Oh, you have 8a, And with that certification they were able to negotiate contracts with us. And so we literally just by talking to agencies, letting them know what our capabilities were, letting them know what we could do, they started giving us an opportunity and giving us a chance. And they gave us a bunch of small projects.

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Jay Jones: 00:09:36 What type of projects?

Eric Coffie: 00:09:38 So for us, we were in, so the company was an air conditioning company that was but we were doing construction projects. So we were doing small construction, like for example, a replacing carpet, replacing cabinetry, painting buildings inside painting walls, like very small, minor stuff. And then as we started learning more about the industry and the business and start proving ourselves, they start giving us bigger and bigger projects so that he happened to have 8a and his brother happen to have a unfortunately we separated because his family was tied to the business.

Eric Coffie: 00:10:16 And so it was a conflict between the family and myself and you know, so I end up working with his brother who had his own painting company and then we really like just blew it out the water. I mean we got to the point where we were down at the incumbent at that military facility, Homestead Air Force Base. So people were now targeting us and saying, Hey, how come these guys have all the contracts out here? We went from no, nobody. So basically the leader, the contract leader out there on the base. Cool. Yeah.

Jay Jones: 00:10:49 Let me just ask you real quick, cause I know some of the BEB family members may be thinking about this. So when you have your contracts, do you outsource the actual work and do you work as a GC, a general contractor to manage the project or did you have people in house that did all of the work?

Eric Coffie: 00:11:07 No, we, we essentially what we had, what we did was the project administration. And that's a very good point to bring up. And this is great for the BEB family. Everyone listening. One of the things that people toss around is the word middleman or broker, and I hate to use that word because it has a negative connotation to it. We sent, we outsource all the work to experts and professionals to do it. However, however, the value that we deliver to the government was we manage the actual administrative side and the project side. Because when you're working for a government agency, right, these people are doing what they call mission critical tasks. So the things that the government does, even though we're looking at just from the

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money, monetary standpoint, they're really highly important to protecting the efforts of the United States warding off threats.

Eric Coffie: 00:12:01 You know what I'm saying? Like, we may see it as just putting a flooring, but the flooring is for the office, the medical office that services the troops, right? So you, you know, if you think that far out, you realize that this is really an important function of helping protect our military, helping protect the United States and secure them. So one of the things that they're really big on and where small businesses failed, Jay is on the administration. You can do a perfect job on your work and if you do a bad job on administration, you're not going to get called back, right? So we, that management side is so critical and I've seen so many people say, well, Eric, you know, we kicked butt. Like, man, we're the best painters or we're the best. Janitorial staffers or we're the best. But if your paperwork is subpar and your reporting is inferior and your responsiveness is low, you won't get called, you won't, you won't be invited back. So what we did was we brought in the best people experts to come in and do the actual work. But guess what? Just like everybody else, they didn't know how to do a government contract in terms of the paperwork. So we took care of all the paperwork part and that's why it was a successful venture. And so that's how we continued to grow and build the businesses. .

Jay Jones: 00:13:18 Okay. Now I know there comes a point in the story where you break off on your own. So how did that happen? It sounds like you guys were doing well with the, with the brother of your initial partner. And so what made you decide to break out on your own? Was it instincts?

Eric Coffie: 00:13:33 No, what happened was, I mean, we were, we were making the money. I mean, the guy, you know, listen, the guy had made over $1 million profit in three years and I mean, we're killing it. But it came a point for me where you know, he didn't want to go after bigger and bigger contracts and he didn't want to grow the business. He was happy at the level where he was at. He's like, look, Eric, we're making great money. Let's just stay where we're at. And I, for me, it wasn't even the money. I just got bored. I wanted more. I wantede to challenge myself and see how far can we take this, forget about the money side. How far can we go if we have the ability to do double or triple the

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revenues, why not? Why not? Why not, you know, why, why remain stagnant and only pursue projects within our comfort zone.

Eric Coffie: 00:14:16 And that's kind of the where we differ. And he just wanted to pursue projects within his comfort zone. And his motto at the time was, Eric, you know, $5 Million project, 5 Million dollar headache, 10 Million dollar project, 10 million dollar headache. That was, you know, that was his, his train of thought. And so for me, I said, well, I don't know, maybe that's not the correlation, right? Maybe that doesn't necessarily you know, that's an assumption or he's making because he's afraid. That's out of fear. He's talking about a fear, which most of us do, is that we say for example, some of your listeners said, well, I can't do government contracts, but they're speaking out of fear. Right. Right. Because these people and I, and I, and one of the quotes that I use in my book is my friends that went to college and not millionaires and my millionaire friends never went to college.

Jay Jones: 00:15:07 Right? Yeah.

Eric Coffie: 00:15:09 And so it's not about education. It has nothing to do with education. It has nothing to do with even not even experienced because they, no one had experience. None of us had experience. Right. So it had nothing to do with education, another new experience. Cause no one knew anything about government. Like all of us were brand new and getting started. None of us knew anything about this at the time. None of us had any contracts. And so again, we had done construction, right? But we didn't have government contracts. And so we learned it as we learn it as we went. But we knew that you know, we respected the government. I never, I took pride in my work. I deliver excellence. I didn't, you know, I was very always responsive and so those were the things that really will help develop us out.

Eric Coffie: 00:15:56 So to answer your question when I saw that, I said, look, I, you know, I've got to move on and I have to see what all I could be right? I just wanted to see what all I could do. And so I essentially what we did was we won a project to renovate some airplane hangars. And it was about $2 million, 2.3 million, 2.4

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million. And about 30, maybe a few months before that, when I was looking to go out on my own, I said I wanted to get into a niche, right? A niche market. And again, you know, for some reason, whenever I put my mind to it, it's like the people come into my life, into my world that helps support what it is I want to do, my efforts. And so when I said that, I met older, another older gentleman who said to me, he said, look, you know, I've done steel buildings, metal buildings, and he had been doing it for 30 years.

Eric Coffie: 00:16:49 And he said, Hey, if you want to get into, if you're looking for a specialty area in construction, this is a specialty area where he's basically raised his family, taking care of himself and had a nice life in that particular industry. But he was older now and he was tired. So he talked to me about it just so happens that a contract came out for building a steel building, which was a hangers. He got me certified with with one of the largest manufacturer in the country. Oh, cool. Got me credit supplier credit with the large manufacturing country off of his name and his relationships. And so when we bid that project, we were able to be the low bid because I was a direct supplier of the manufacturing provider products. So we won that job. We beat out the incumbent who's designed the government used for the project. So we beat them out, which they were mad cause they actually protested the job because they were so pissed off that we beat them because it was their hangar design that was the one that you had to match. Right. So we'd beat them on price or their own design.

Eric Coffie: 00:17:52 Yeah. Yeah. It was awesome. We went through, they protested. We won it because we didn't have any specialized, we didn't, you know, we didn't have any secrets or nobody helped us out. Right. We just beat 'em flat out beat 'em. And so that was the first time where I said, okay, I told my, my partner at the time, I said, look, I'm going to go ahead and do this with my own resources, my own people. Right. And so I picked up a company that was doing steel buildings. I basically put all their guys on my payroll and because I had this contract, my portion was like 1.5 million. Okay. Provide the building and the labor and equipment. And so I basically parlayed that contract and to building myself a company and a team. And I brought on at

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different times it was start off with like five guys, but then it worked up to 15 guys.

Jay Jones: 00:18:46 15?

Eric Coffie: 00:18:46 Yeah. Yeah. But again, the contract supported me paying everybody and everything like that.

Jay Jones: 00:18:50 So I have a question for you. So the partner, the brother that you were working with before you started doing this were you 50, 50 partners? Cause he was saying that, Oh, we're making a lot of money and he was comfortable where you 50, 50 split.

Eric Coffie: 00:19:05 So initially we started out 25, 75. Right. And so that's when we made some really hefty profit numbers. But then I told him, I said, look, I'm doing all the work. You know, you're just out in the field and like, listen, I, you know, I need more. So we ended up becoming 50, 50 of the profit. But then, you know, it's still, he didn't want to hire a team. Right. And this happened and listen, everybody listening, this happens to, for some reason and our community, we decide like we'd want to keep all the money, but you gotta, you gotta grow your business. You gotta reinvest your money back into your business, back into your team. And I was like, look, the government will come. I'll be honest with Jay, we were doing about 2 to 3 million in sales, right? The government and this particular program called us a failure. Wow. Cause you weren't government cause you were not doing enough. They're saying you should be doing 10 million.

Jay Jones: 00:19:59 Wow.

Eric Coffie: 00:19:59 And the government's, you know the government saying this is a business development program. It's design. If we're giving you sole source contracts, negotiated contracts. We're giving them to you to build your business, to build. Your team is supposed to be taken advantage of economies of scale. Hey, you make $100,000 on this job because you're supposed to bring in an engineer, bring in a project manager, bring a project superintendent. That's the idea of the program. So that because what, what happened, what's happening Jay, that I think a lot of

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us don't know is that the very top of all the contracts, there's only one or two people.

Jay Jones: 00:20:37 Really, get out of here.

Eric Coffie: 00:20:40 50 it's 45% all contracts have one or one or less bidders.

Jay Jones: 00:20:46 Damn. Really?

Eric Coffie: 00:20:49 So cause at the very top, no one's there saying there's no one up here that could do these jobs.

Jay Jones: 00:20:53 Get out of here. So that's opportunity.

Eric Coffie: 00:20:55 I'm so, so with the government, so whoever designed his program, my theory is that they recognize that this would be a problem and they said let's try and build some companies up so they can compete at the top where we can really start saving the tax payers dollars. Because you know, at this at the bottom level of 10, 20 million, you're not saving, you're not moving the needle. But we can start providing competition to the bigger farms that are doing $100 million dollar contracts and $200 million contracts. Now we can save a taxpayer dollars from these companies that have been abusing the government for years and years and years.

Eric Coffie: 00:21:25 Wow, that's great. So that to me is the theory behind, or the concept behind these programs is to ramp us up, scale us up so that we can start competing at a 50, 75, $500 million level.

Jay Jones: 00:21:36 Okay. And so yeah, that's crazy man.

Eric Coffie: 00:21:41 We're talking big numbers.

Jay Jones: 00:21:43 No, that's great.

Eric Coffie: 00:21:43 This is real. This is how the government works.

Jay Jones: 00:21:46 And people have to understand, you got to expand your horizons to be able to do the deal in that ballpark. It makes a whole lot of sense. When I when I came out of college and I was a financial advisor for Dean Witter and Merrill Lynch, and I'm

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talking to the guys and young ladies that investors that have millions of dollars, and to me, you know, back in the day, you know, $30,000 was a lot of money with investors, with multimillion dollar portfolios and stuff like that. It kind of made me rethink what money is. And so yeah, I get it. I definitely understand this, the being able to understand that, you know, there's always levels at a higher than where we currently aren't and we don't you know, try to get there then, you know, we basically shortened ourselves. Now, let me ask you this, Eric, when you started off and you partnering with this gentleman right now did you continue to stay partners with him and are you partners with him now or are you totally separate?

Eric Coffie: 00:22:44 No, so I, I just, I after that particular project, I, I walked away and I said, I'm going to,

Jay Jones: 00:22:51 Why did you do that?

Eric Coffie: 00:22:51 Because like I said, he didn't want to scale. He didn't want to grow. And and the government was coming to me saying, Hey, Eric, look, you have, I mean, you have something here. And you know, and so I was like, okay, if I could put a team of people together, I already knew how to leverage the certifications.

Jay Jones: 00:23:10 Right.

Eric Coffie: 00:23:11 One of the thing is, listen, Jay, I've never had a certification.

Jay Jones: 00:23:15 Oh Really?

Eric Coffie: 00:23:15 Never. Personally, I've never personally had these certifications, but all my contacts have come through those certifications.

Jay Jones: 00:23:21 Get out of here.

Eric Coffie: 00:23:22 I tell people like, I already knew how to leverage those certifications to get contracts. So for me I felt as though I didn't need one. I already proven that I could successfully do millions of dollars in contracts without a certification. Right. So I said, okay, I'm going to go off on my own. And I fixed that crew from that project and while we're doing that project, I was out, you

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know, putting together a pipeline of work. And so we've just started doing projects for other, other entities.

Jay Jones: 00:23:49 Oh wow. Okay. So even to this day, you don't have the certifications?

Eric Coffie: 00:23:53 I've never had a certification.

Jay Jones: 00:23:55 Okay. Would that preclude you from any jobs though? Prerequisite?

Eric Coffie: 00:24:02 No. It's not a prerequisite, but it will preclude you from certain jobs where they're looking for, yes. But it's not a prerequisite to do business with government, and that's a miss notion that people have sometimes is that you have to have a socioeconomic category, whether it's women or minority or anything like that, that is untrue. Okay. The majority of contracts that all of the small business contracts represent only 20% of the contracts. The other 80% are wide open. Wow. We always seem to focus on the, the minority stuff, the small business stuff. And we forget there's 80% of the meat. Right, right, right. It's like we, you know, we hang our hats on the, Oh, I got to get this certification, I got to get this certification.

Eric Coffie: 00:24:49 I gotta get this. That's 23. That's a sliver. That's 23%. And then, and then if you and Jay be honest with you, it's even less than that because out of the 23%, probably 66% of the 23, there are major companies in here that are eating that up.

Jay Jones: 00:25:08 Really?

Eric Coffie: 00:25:09 They are small businesses, but what happens is they fall under a, what they call tribal companies.

Jay Jones: 00:25:15 Okay.

Eric Coffie: 00:25:16 So there's Alaska Natives, they're tribal, Native Americans. The Indians, they're eating up. They all considered small business, but they're part of a large conglomerate of hundred million dollar companies. They're a multibillion dollar organization that operates on the hospice of a small business firm.

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Jay Jones: 00:25:35 Wow.

Eric Coffie: 00:25:35 Guess what? If you're only going, if you're, yeah. So if you're only going after that, that 23%.

Jay Jones: 00:25:43 Is competitive. I presume.

Eric Coffie: 00:25:45 It's. I mean, it's just, it's just not it's not the only path to take. I would not limit, I would not be limit myself or my ability to just focusing in on that.

Jay Jones: 00:25:57 Now I wanted to ask you in terms of financing your business, okay. So how did you finance your business when you stepped down on your own?

Eric Coffie: 00:26:05 So that's a, that's a great question man. And I'm happy you asked this because this is an important point. One of the things, Jay, that I learned now these guys, these, they taught me some good stuff. I ain't gonna lie. Hey man, these guys taught me well. One of the first things that we did was, and I'm going to tell you this, I don't have that somewhere I don't have here. I have never had a 700 credit score in my life. Even today. I don't have a 700 credit score and I have apartments and buildings and all kinds of stuff.

Eric Coffie: 00:26:39 I don't have a 700 credit score. I've never had a 700 credit score. So I'm just setting the stage to let people know it's not credit. It's people always think you gotta get a credit. You got [inaudible] you got to get a bank line. You've got the banks. They never gave me no money, right? The banks never gave me a loan. What I did today and what I teach people is you get supplier credit, okay? Vendor credit, okay. When I did my steel building project, my vendor gave me $1 million credit worth of steel, right? I don't need $1 million cash, right? I got the million over with the steel. Why don't you deliver it to the government? The government pays you back, you pay the creditor and you're good. So now supplier credit, most of the supplier credit, and I mean, when I say most, I'm talking about like 90% that I've ever done filled out forms, right?

Eric Coffie: 00:27:35 And I want everyone to pay attention to this. This is really important. It doesn't matter if you don't have two years in

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business, it don't matter. You can start your business Monday. Most of the forms that I've ever seen for supplier credit ask for three references, okay? Not your credit score, right? You know, now that you've been in business minimum two years, they saved three references of people that you've done business with. What I learned, Jay was most of us have done business with someone, right? Whether you believe it or not, if you bought an air conditioning for your house, you did business with air conditioning, company roof on your house, you've done business for the roofer. If you put, you'd get me. Most of us don't see that as having done a business transaction with someone.

Jay Jones: 00:28:20 Makes sense. Wow.

Eric Coffie: 00:28:22 And so what they, what my the, the partners that I had at the time taught me was that Eric, if we've ever exchanged money for services, we did business with that entity. And so what we did was we put each other down as references, right? And so I put down my, my friend's AC company with a reference. I put that on my other friend's painting company as a reference. And then I had another friend with electrical company and I put them all those down as references. And we put down 10,000, 10,000, 10,000 or 10,000, 15 and 20,000. So now when I went to, let's say Granger supply, Granger says, Hey, you did 10 with this guy. 15, this guy, 20 all accounts, pay zero balance paid on time. Then when they called them or email them back then it was faxed, they faxed him, they set up a form, put it in, sit, turn it in, boom, you're approved. So we got credit from the suppliers. So guess what? If you are doing air conditioning company, the supplier gives you credit.

Eric Coffie: 00:29:20 So now you can fill your order for the customer. The government pays you, you paid supplier. And that's it. The reason why I believe that is different from actual personal credit or personal debt is because what supplier credit, they're not going to give you something unless you need it. Right? You can't go out and just buy roofs. Without having a contract to like to order it, you get me. So that's why to me it makes sense why it's easier, I guess to get an actual like personal consumer debt because you wouldn't order like if I got credit with the say a rental company, I'm not going to get rental equipment if I'm not

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putting on a project. Exactly. You're not going to get bolts or equipment or screws if you don't have anywhere to to install the screws or the bolts. Does that make sense? And so we always use supply credit throughout our business.

Jay Jones: 00:30:12 That's a great tip. So let the light bulb go off to the BEB family. Well, if you decide to get into the government contracting business, that's a great point. Also, let me ask you, is the strength of having a government contract, does that play into the decision making for the actual vendors too?

Eric Coffie: 00:30:31 I would say yeah, definitely. I would say yes, but not, there's some, there's some notions floating around that if you get a government contract that the bank will finance you. Banks don't finance us. Okay. Banks don't finance banks finance people with money.

Jay Jones: 00:30:47 Right. That's it. Yeah. People that don't need the money.

Eric Coffie: 00:30:52 Thanks. Listen. People that don't need the money. My, we had so I'll tell you, I'll share this since you asked about that. The first part of mine had a bunch of real estate properties. We went out and got him like 400,000 line of credit. Right on his promise because he had no debt. He didn't, they were paid off and they've lent him 400,000 but they use his properties as collateral. Right. When the market crashed, they pulled all that back.

Jay Jones: 00:31:17 Yup. Yeah.

Eric Coffie: 00:31:18 So how was that like the collateral is still there, but they just closed his lines of credit. They cut them off. And then my second partner that I had, he had an 800 credit score. He had hundreds of thousands of dollars in a bank punches. You know what they told us was that he was too liquid.

Jay Jones: 00:31:35 Too Liquid?

Eric Coffie: 00:31:39 You go, who do they want to give money to? Exactly. If you, you know, he had everything that they said, but then that's what I said, Oh three C's, credit collateral and cash. But then they say he was too liquid and he didn't have enough collateral. So it's

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like you have, I'll have a perfect trifecta to get these people to give you any real money. And so for me, I just found it was easier to get money to get money from the suppliers and just get, you know, finance to jobs based on, you know, what's your materials? You get materials financing, you put it on a job and any build the government, they pay you back and then you've got money to work with.

Jay Jones: 00:32:14 So the government pays you in drawls?

Eric Coffie: 00:32:17 Yes they pay us in drawls. Yes.

Jay Jones: 00:32:18 Okay. And how frequently are the drawls? Do the drawls come out.

Eric Coffie: 00:32:23 You know, when you, for us it's when you bill, they would pay within 15 days.

Jay Jones: 00:32:29 Okay, cool. And how frequently would they come out?

Eric Coffie: 00:32:30 Based on construction. Based on performance, based on a performance, we typically build 30 day cycles. It's based on how you accomplish things, right? Because most projects less than 30 days, you're not going to get much more accomplished. Right? So you're going to get to a certain point. Let's say we're in November 20th now, right? So we build to the 20th. You're not going to have enough accomplished by December 1st to bill another again. Right. So typically we build on 30 day cycles, but they pay us and 15 days or less.

Jay Jones: 00:33:07 Okay. That's cool.

Eric Coffie: 00:33:08 Now we got paid a seven days before Jay by the way.

Jay Jones: 00:33:11 Oh that's great man.

Eric Coffie: 00:33:12 So I just want to put that out cause people keep saying, Oh the government pays slow. They take it for that is again, most of the time it's state and local governments. Not federal.

Jay Jones: 00:33:21 Not federal.

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Eric Coffie: 00:33:22 I just want to make that distinction. I focus on federal, not state and local. Okay.

Jay Jones: 00:33:27 All right. So I'm glad you made that differentiation. Now how about paying the workers? Cause I know a lot of the workers get paid weekly or biweekly, whatever. So how did you take care of them? If you were waiting on the draw from the government.

Eric Coffie: 00:33:41 So for me personally, like I said you know, I had built up money and this is an approach that I tell people. If you don't have any cash, I start, remember I started off as a consultant, as a BD person. So I was eating what I kill. So I basically, I had saved up a couple of hundred grand already before I started my business. So I had a couple hundred grand in account, you know, to be able to front, you know, the, the basically float until I got reimbursed for my monies.

Jay Jones: 00:34:04 Okay, cool. Cool. All right. So just to let people know that you, you know, you may need some cash up front,

Eric Coffie: 00:34:10 so you might put off, you've got workers or staff, you're definitely going to need some cash. Okay. But what, but, but I will say this, Jay the last project that I did on my own was a five minute dollar project and I basically outsourced the whole job to a company and I was able to do it with no cash out of my pocket.

Jay Jones: 00:34:32 Get outta here. What type of if you don't mind me asking, like when you do a job like that, what type of percentage do you normally take in terms or make in terms of that?

Eric Coffie: 00:34:42 So I started out, I had put 15% in there, but I ended up at 12. Okay, cool. It was like 600,000 profits.

Jay Jones: 00:34:50 That's a nice, thats some nice paper.

Eric Coffie: 00:34:52 And I went to, I went maybe three times to that job site.

Jay Jones: 00:34:56 Wow. And how long did the actual project take?

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Eric Coffie: 00:34:59 Two years. Two years. Okay. But as you can imagine, you're making like 30,000 a month profit for two years. Who doesn't want that?

Jay Jones: 00:35:08 Sign me up.

Eric Coffie: 00:35:10 You know, I was, I could find 10 of them.

Jay Jones: 00:35:12 Exactly. Man. So one thing I want to BEB family to understand, and Eric touched on it, and it's about being able to broaden your horizons when it comes to making money. So a lot of times when we think of small business, our mindset is at a, at a level here when actually if we put the due diligence in and we in the right industry, you know, we can actually be at a different level. We'll talk in five and 10 million large contracts. Like what's the largest contract you've ever worked on?

Eric Coffie: 00:35:42 That one for 5 million was largest single contract that I've ever worked.

Jay Jones: 00:35:45 Okay. Yeah. Cool. That's a nice piece.

Eric Coffie: 00:35:48 But I will say this, that was so just for clarity sake, the contract was 20 million. My portion was five. Okay. It was like 4.9, cause some people might say, Oh I heard him say it before is it's like 4.9 million, whatever. But the contract itself, the job was $20 million job.

Jay Jones: 00:36:07 So they had other contracting, other firms,

Eric Coffie: 00:36:11 Other firms out there. We're working as well. Right. So that, so it was a 20 million dollars scope, but my piece was only five and 4.9.

Jay Jones: 00:36:18 What would you say that your average contract, or piece of contracts go for? What do you think million, 2 or 3 or something like that?

Eric Coffie: 00:36:25 No we were doing, listen, when I was working with these guys, we were doing, when I was working with and with these guys when federal, we were doing a hundred, 200,000 to 500,000 contracts.

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Jay Jones: 00:36:38 Okay. Gotcha.

Eric Coffie: 00:36:40 You know, and so now the stuff that, I mean, the same thing whenever you start from the beginning, even coming into the industry, like right now I consult with a couple of companies. Both companies do over $20 million in revenue. Okay? I'm helping them get into the federal marketplace. However, when we go out and meet with the government agencies, they're like, Hey, that's great that you do 20 million in the private sector. But if you've never done a dollar in our sector, we want you to start off something small because it's different. The rules are different, the regulations are different. Our expectations are different. And so, you know, there's got to be a lot more paperwork. Okay. That'd be heavy with paperwork, which is why I say the administration is where small businesses fail. So again, we always have to start over, improve ourselves. Before the show, I showed you that negotiated contract that's going to be over 750,000.

Jay Jones: 00:37:41 Right?

Eric Coffie: 00:37:41 But before we got that we had to with that agency well, we're still doing it now. We, we went out and bid and won a $3 million contract with them. Okay. But we bid that and competed and in it proved ourselves. And so now that they see our performance and our work, now they're saying, okay, we trust that you guys, we can start negotiating other jobs with you at different numbers. But every time we approach a new agency, they always start us off small because they, we've, we've never worked together and they want to see how we work. And then also, and this is to me, it's important for people to understand the government. Believe it or not, they believe in a win, win, win for everybody scenario at the federal government. Federal. Gotcha. Today I, I personally hate state and local. I just want to say that to the BEB family. I like state local contracts because they leave you out there floating, which a money and they bankrupt you and stuff. The federal government, when they tell you, say, Jay, look, okay, you want to work too busy with the Navy. All right, you never did this with the Navy. Say we want you to be successful. So we're not going to give you a complicated project to start with. We're not going to give you, you know what I'm saying? We're not going to have you

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building docks in the middle of the river, right? As your first project, we're going to let you paint inside of a building that's 500 square feet so you can have good past performance and we can say, Jay, man did an excellent job.

Jay Jones: 00:39:12 Right

Eric Coffie: 00:39:13 And once you do that, then we will give you more and more challenging projects. But we want you to understand, because working with the government, all employees are not made alike. You might have some problems with one of the engineers, you may have a problem with the contracting specialists. Maybe they don't respond to UJ, right? So we want you to understand how our ecosystem works. And then once you get a hold of that and you know, okay, this guy is going to be a jerk, this guy's not going to be responsive and you kind of figure through that on a small scale, then we'll start gradually moving you up. Okay. So we always start off small and every new agency that I work with.

Jay Jones: 00:39:50 So if you can clarify agencies and I know in the government is probably hundreds of different agencies. So what is an agency?

Eric Coffie: 00:40:01 An agency would be, for example so you have, we all know about the Department of Defense. We know the Army, the Navy, you know, Marines, things like that. But within the Navy, the Navy has, breaks down further. So depending upon the industry that you're in, the Navy has different, what they call agencies. So Navy has like sub-sectors for low them and we, I could show you that that handles specific types of projects. So for me, since I do construction, that's called NAVFAC, NAVFAC and NAV FAC handles construction. Okay. Now, if you were trying to sell intelligence or some sort of a product to the Navy, NAVFAC doesn't handle that. Okay. That might be under NAVSEA, which handles like the underwater stuff.

Jay Jones: 00:40:49 Gotcha.

Eric Coffie: 00:40:49 And then you have NAVAIR, the handles, the stuff that's above air. It's like planes and things like that. Okay. So it's also, if you look at, for example, all of us, a good example would be TSA, right?

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Jay Jones: 00:41:02 Right.

Eric Coffie: 00:41:02 So TSA , everyone goes to the airport. So you know, TSA, that's an agency, but TSA falls under Homeland Security.

Jay Jones: 00:41:09 Okay.

Eric Coffie: 00:41:10 Right. And then so does Customs and Border Patrol falls, you know, may fall in homeless security. So the agencies are, are the specific people who are going to be like at your localize areas where you are going to, where you're actually at, like in your town, your city, things like that. But they may fall, they fall in a bigger umbrella of Crmy, Navy you know, whatever. Marines, Goast Guard. But then at your local area, there's a specific like branch that handles those opportunities.

Jay Jones: 00:41:39 Okay. Yeah. I just wanted you to make the define exactly what the agencies were. So BEB family members then are interested in getting into government contracts. Would have a little clear understanding that in terms of your actual business itself, it sounds like you've been rocking and rolling man. And we know he had to be, be family, not all businesses go straight to the top man. Can you share a time, a time with this where you had a situation or failure or something that almost puts you out of business? I know in your bio you talk, you talk about you went broke twice and rebound and both times using government contracts. So you're a man of my own heart. I almost lost it all twice too. So we definitely connect on that. So can you share a little bit about that if you don't mind?

Eric Coffie: 00:42:28 Yeah, certainly. When I left from my second partner and I went off on my own, I had my team of guys out there working you know, I was doing federal contracts, but then I wanted to expand. So I'm thinking myself, you know, I'm the big man now. I've got, I'm killing it, you know, and I'm doing all this stuff and I've got cash flow coming in. I've got a team, I, you know, I built up to 23 people, five girls in the office. And so we had crews working in Texas and, and we had crews working in Georgia, Florida. And then Boise, Idaho. And I was working, you know, so we had crews all over and I started doing private sector work. So I started going after private sector jobs. And that's really

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where things took a turn for my business is again, this is still, you know the collapse happened.

Eric Coffie: 00:43:18 So you're talking about four or five years after the collapse. I mean, that was still, there was still carnage left. I mean, there were still victims and, and so the projects that I was working on in a private sector were given to these companies during that same era. And so they had to bid them really low to almost no profit because there was no other work. And so if you're 100 million company, they just took work just to keep the doors open and keep people busy. So what happened was, two of the projects that I worked on, the companies their intention was to come in and try and get the money from the subcontractors. So they want it to, and this is, and if anyone is in construction, I'm sure you've, you're not surprised you've heard this before. Their objective was to get your bond, default the subs, and then take and make money off of you, off your contracts.

Eric Coffie: 00:44:14 And so that's how they would profit their jobs off of us little guys and they will call our bond and get the job. So I was working on a project in Savannah, Georgia, and it was a police cadet, cadet facility and the company Elkins, Elkins construction. I don't mind mentioning Elkins because I'll tell you the story in a minute. So we were up there working on a facility, building a metal building for them, and my contract was like a half a million, so it wasn't terribly big. And there was a lot of issues about the changing of the colors of the roof and things like that. And we had ordered a new roof. And so there was a lot of things that were in the beginning phases that they didn't necessarily sign off. They change people. This person didn't approve that and so they kept getting us stuck holding the bag. Gotcha. and so they eventually kicked us off the job. They brought someone else in to finish the project and and they turned around and they owed me $280,000 on the job. I knew the company that finished it, so I know that they didn't eat up all the money, but they turned around and sued me anyways for $1 million.

Jay Jones: 00:45:24 Wow. How does that work?

Eric Coffie: 00:45:27 So my contract, 500,000 owe me 280 and then you sue me for a million. And I'm like, what is wrong?

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Eric Coffie: 00:45:36 How could I cause a more damage than a value my contract less what you already paid, like, right. It just didn't even add up. Fortunately, and I think this is a really good story for people to hear. The vice president of Elkins told me, he said, Eric, you know cause I was already like, I, you know what, I didn't hide from these guys. I'll go to meetings. I would go there and I said, listen, I didn't do anything wrong. I'm like, look, I have defended my, listen, maybe my guys made some mistakes, but it wasn't, you know, $1 million worth of mistakes. You guys chose to go into the different path because and from the very beginning I've got notes, documents, you delayed us in the beginning, your project was 60 days behind schedule then you, so I had to change erectors to come in and try to fill this gap. We operate our schedules, right? So if you were 60 days behind my, I got to sit my guy somewhere else to go work.

Jay Jones: 00:46:30 Exactly.

Eric Coffie: 00:46:31 So now when you decide you're ready to go, you're like, Oh, you need to get out here next week. I mean, they start blaming, not feasible. They start blaming me for it, start telling me to talk to me with delays and making threats. So the guy said, well, why don't you call your insurance company? See if they'll pay the lawsuit. I'll call my insurance company. They said, of course they won't pay no lawsuit cause it wasn't a lawsuit at a time. They were threatening to do it. They said it sued if they do actually do a suit we will cover the costs of your attorney's fees.

Jay Jones: 00:47:03 Gotcha.

Eric Coffie: 00:47:04 And I was like, Oh, this is sweet. So now so when they did Sue me then the, that clause kicked in on my insurance policy and they, they the insurance company hired a lawyer to represent me and defend my case. And so what happened was at the end of the day, I think six months went by, three months went by, my attorney call me and say, Hey, you know, we're at stillmate, you know, they're still trying to say, you did all these things. He goes, but don't worry. We'll just wait them out. And because Hey, the insurance is paying for it. So it didn't cost me anything at that point. I was like, all right. So I was able to continue. Yeah. We just, I just, and then three, like a few months later, I want to say three months maybe to my attorney calls and says, Hey,

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we've got great news. And he says they want to settle with you. And I said, okay. He says, but I got, you know, I said, well, what's the settlement amount? He said, 10,000. That'll work. Yeah, that'll work. And so they went from $1 million to 10,000.

Jay Jones: 00:48:08 10 K.

Eric Coffie: 00:48:10 Wow. And the best part was that my insurance paid the 10 K all I did was pay my $2,000 deductible. Wow. Out of pocket. It was 2K. So again, if you had jumped off a building, you know, it was killed by suicide. Like people, cause people get under pressure and they don't know what's going to happen at the end outcome. So, you know, if you had wasn't I, and I try and I tell people this now, like I try to have stillness and, and be stoic. And also kinda say, well, let me see how this may turn out. Like I don't know how it's going to turn out anymore so I don't lose my cool or get upset, or I just, you know, I just continued on my path and it worked out. And so what happened was the company filed bankruptcy. Oh wow. And so now the company who had done 150 million the year before who sued me was actually going bankrupt and I, my little company was still afloat.

Jay Jones: 00:49:06 Wow, That's crazy. Do you know, you had mentioned something about being sued, and I've said this on a couple of the podcasts, if you're doing, if you're doing business at a certain level, being sued is, is that's par for the course. Something is going to happen. All your major companies have been sued multiple, multiple times. So it doesn't mean that you did anything wrong. It's just a dispute. So in terms of being sued, don't you scare it and you hit it right on the head, Eric? Cause it can look real ugly when you get a big stack of legal papers looking like this. And you're like, Oh, so, but yeah, let it play out. So if you're in the game making moves and doing big things, you are where your company is liable to be sued. So make sure you have all your stuff in order. You also mentioned man, that you almost went down again for the second time. Man. Can you share that with us?

Eric Coffie: 00:49:55 Yeah, no. Well, I had another, so after that I had another company, private company that same thing, you know, the project you know, they did a bunch of crooked stuff on that project and and so they accused me of doing it and essentially

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they outlawed me. They had more lawyers. And so what happened was they had, that project was closer to 800,000. And that one was tough because I ended up, they didn't pay me, but I had to finish the contract to be able to recover my monies that they didn't pay. So I ended up staying to the end. I went broke. Literally, I ran out of money. I got some people to come in and finish it on the promise of them being paid on my next contract. So I got guys that come in and finish the project and it was tough.

Eric Coffie: 00:50:52 I mean, on that job, Jay, I'll tell you man, and this is something I write one of these stories, but literally I had my equipment vendors come out and put equipment on my job because I didn't have any money after about a month and a half. They, they would call me, I couldn't pay the bills. They come pull equipment off. I use my other credit account for another equipment company. They didn't come out in a job. They stayed for a couple of months. They pull that equipment off. That happened to me three times in that job. And then the fourth time I didn't have any, I ran out of vendors. So I had a company, a friend of mine, his company that owed me money on a contract that they didn't pay me like 14 grand. So I called their equipment company vendor and put them on the job.

Jay Jones: 00:51:28 There you go.

Eric Coffie: 00:51:30 And then and I ended up finishing the job with their vendor and the bills went back up to them. But I figured, Hey, look, these guys owed me money. They ain't pay me. They weren't trying to pay me. I'm like, alright, I got you. So let me call. And I mean, you know, it was that, it was to that point, you know, and you know, I remember the day that I said one of my articles, I almost took a gun to work because I didn't have the money to pay my employees and I knew these guys would be coming in and looking for their paychecks. And I just didn't have any way of paying him. I had no money to pay them. And actually, you know, when I was talking through it, you know, my mom and my family, they actually stepped up and lent me $5,000 to pay.

Eric Coffie: 00:52:13 And by the way, that didn't cover my payroll, that cover what I did was I stopped paying the the government's, I stopped paying the matching piece. So I had, I did internally. I went, I

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internally, I had the girls in the office figure out what was the balance that they received after we took out their portion of taxes. Right. And I was only able to cover that piece. Gotcha.

Jay Jones: 00:52:35 I hope you covered it back. Now I want to, I don't want to add is man and the feds come looking for you.

Eric Coffie: 00:52:41 I listened, I paid all my stuff's that come forward. But yeah, that and that situation, that company essentially at the end of the day I had a bond in the project. They they want, they threatened to Sue me. The body company told me to settle. I ended up settling with them and that really hurt me because because I had a bond, my bonding company did not give me the option to use the insurance trick that I used before to get the attorney's fees.

Eric Coffie: 00:53:13 And the bonding company said, Hey, if you don't have $100,000 to cover, because they sued me out of Georgia. The project was in Florida. So that that way you had to have two attorneys to represent you. And then because I had a bond, I'd have four attorneys cause I had for me and two for my bonding company to defend these guys. So as you could imagine, they put me in a no win situation. Right. And that they essentially I had to settle with them because the bond company said, if you don't settle, I'll settle. And it'd be for way more than you could ever you would ever do. Right. So I ended up at end of day Oh and $200,000 because I was, so I went from having plus 250 in my account to owing to 20. So it was like a half a minute swing. Right. I end up getting a job at Miami Dade County and doing Uber on the side for about six months until, yeah,

Jay Jones: 00:54:01 Until I made a comeback. There you go thats what's up.

Eric Coffie: 00:54:04 Yes, until I made that comeback. But I will say this, one of the suppliers that I owed money to was the one who put that shining light in me. And he's called me and said, Eric, you know, I told him the story. He, I owed him like 30 grand. And he said, look, I'm sorry that happened to you. It happened to me. And he said he had a construction company happen to him and he said to me, Eric, where were you successful at when you first got started? And I told him federal contracts, he says, go back to that. And so when I was working at Miami Dade County for

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those few months, I knew that it was, it'd be one contract to get me out of the hole. And within about six months I got my first contract and that basically that was about four or $500,000 contract. I parlayed that, went into the big one that I told you about, the $5 million one.

Eric Coffie: 00:54:51 And I walked away from Miami Dade County and I never looked back.

Jay Jones: 00:54:55 That's how long ago was that man?

Eric Coffie: 00:54:57 It was actually, so that was around 2016. Okay, cool. That was a few years back. I mean, literally when I won the second contract, the one that was a half a million dollars and I knew that I had all this free time on my hands. I said to myself that I could continue down this path or I could do something to help change the direction for other people. And so I wanted to start sharing my knowledge and my wisdom and that's when I launched my YouTube channel 2017. So I was still being paid from that contract. Right? The residual income from that up until last year.

Jay Jones: 00:55:33 Oh, that's what's up. Yeah. I want the light bulb go off to the BEB family. So brother Eric had gone through a couple of tough times there, but the whole key is he didn't quit. So it is, it's only over once you quit family. So you got to keep pushing forward. And when we talk, you know, when we first connected a couple of months ago, we were sharing stories with each other. And it's funny, once you talk to like seasoned entrepreneurs, you'll, you'll see that there's a lot of commonality in this type of thing. Cause once again, business doesn't just go straight up. You know, you're going to have your twists turns and you're going to have your obstacles, but you have to stay diligent to be able to push through that. And now, you know, he's sitting over there and doing this man, what you sitting on about a hundred million now?

Eric Coffie: 00:56:22 Let me tell you. Its funny you said that. So now I'm looking we're launching a venture capital company where we're trying to raise 100 million. So you're not, you're actually, you're joking, but you're not far off. We are. Yeah. We are looking at a venture capital company and where we are now because of the

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YouTube channel, because of the network and the community. I have such a, like, man, my, my network is insane. We have people coming to us, with opportunities that they want to sell to the government. Right. And I've had students of mine introduced me to venture capitalists companies and in efforts to help us launch our own VC firm. And so we are in the process of trying to raise $100 million.

Jay Jones: 00:57:07 That's what's up now. I want you to give you a YouTube channel and your website information. And before you do that, I just want to say, so BEB family, if you look where Eric was in 2016 right? We're closing out 2019. Look at the growth coming back from that last setback where he is right now. So that's a Testament to, you know, this intestinal fortitude is believing in yourself and believing in your vision. So even if things like this happen, you can still make a comeback and you coming back in in a big way, brother, what's your, what's your YouTube information? And I also know that you have a book coming out and you're going to do a little something for the BEB family when your book comes out. But tell us your YouTube channel.

Eric Coffie: 00:57:51 Yeah, I mean, my YouTube, again, if you just, if you Google my name, Eric, E, R, I, C Coffiee, C, O, F, F, I. E you'll find me everywhere on YouTube. GovconGiants.com that's my platform. And so if you type in govcon giants that's, that's the place to start. That has all my information on it. Blog articles, things like that as well. But I will say, Jay, I do have a podcast where we interview successful entrepreneurs such as myself, but I go out and find the biggest, the brightest, the best people that are doing government contracts so that you can hear stories from people in different types of industries. Not just my, I'm in construction, but you've got people in there. Just last week we interviewed the small business representative for Collins Aerospace. They were our United technologies company. They are the largest maker of parts for the defense and aerospace industry in the world.

Eric Coffie: 00:58:47 And I had her on my show talking about how you could do business with her particular organization. And so definitely if you wanna hear more stories like mine, the Govcon Giants podcast is the place to go. Yeah. Jay I am, I'm working on a new

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book and I actually this is the first place that I've announced it publicly that I'm working on a new book.

Jay Jones: 00:59:07 Breaking news family. Breaking News.

Eric Coffie: 00:59:09 So no one knows about this. I haven't even announced it on my own YouTube channel yet, Jay. So this is the first, but yeah, I'm launching a new book. It's gotta be called the Govcon Launch Book where we teach you how to launch a government contracting business. Take you from start to finish. I'm going to share some case studies stories of some of my students. You've heard my story, but I want to share some of the stories of students of mine who have started within the last months and they're breaking into this industry.

Eric Coffie: 00:59:41 When you hear government contracts and you hear starting a business, I know it's, it seems daunting. But some of the things that we do and we tell people. I have a really unique way, a method that I, that I teach that I think that I have not seen anyone else teach anywhere. Like, I mean, I haven't seen it and I've read a lot of books on government contracting. In the same way that I, like when you asked me, Jay, how did I get started? I start off as a consultant, as a business developer, I'm working with a farm that was much bigger than mine that already had the structure, the organization, the capital to finance everything in place. And so I was able to parlay that, save enough money to then launch my own business. And so that's the strategy that I teach the people that want to get started that may not have capital.

Eric Coffie: 01:00:27 I may not have any knowledge, you know, may not have any money, may not have the team and they want to get into this space. You know, I teach people how to link up with companies that are already doing, you know, two, three, four, five, six, seven, $8 million of business. And you learn how to do the government contracting from me, go out and impart and connect with a company that's already has scale, that is not doing government contracts and then you bring them to this space. And that's, that is something that I've found has been extremely successful for all of my students out there is essentially connecting with the larger firm and then agreeing to get a percent of the sales. And then that now you have the

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ability to go after 500,000 million, $2 million contracts and learn the business in the process.

Jay Jones: 01:01:14 And learn the business in the process without all the risks.

Eric Coffie: 01:01:16 Yeah.

Jay Jones: 01:01:16 So that's GovconGiants.com and also for the BEB family. When Eric's book, you can do a prelaunch and order his book Govcongiants.com And that's forward slash. BEB right? Yep, yup.

Eric Coffie: 01:01:31 Yeah. We're going to do something special for you guys and you know, just visit us over at govcongiants.com/beb. And so what we're gonna do for you guys special, I will do a prelaunch. Everyone that signs up there I'll go, I'm going to go and give you the book for free. Plus you just pay the cost of the shipping and we'll send that out for free. It's, it's going to be, it's, it's going to be, it's going to be big. I'm not holding back anything even recently the government has changed their new systems that they're using. They've changed the ways that they are buying technology products. So if you are a person who has a technology or product or service that you want to introduce to the government we're going to talk about that in the book if you are a veteran.

Eric Coffie: 01:02:18 And so you know, we've got a lot of veterans out there, Jay. Listenwe're going to talk about how you can get the veteran, the VA and their benefits to pay you back to actually learn this coursework. So the Veteran Administration actually will pay veterans Jay to take, you know, coursework like mine and like yours to better themselves. And so we talk about that in the book as well. We're going to talk about supply credit. Like I said, how do you get supplier credit? How do you get access to base? So we're, you know, we're covering the whole gamut to take someone and, and from no knowledge to actually being able to not just start the business but grow the business successfully.

Jay Jones: 01:02:57 That's what's up. Yeah. And I liked that concept as I just touched on, man. So you're teaching people not to go in and leverage the everything they have, but learn the business first, get your feet wet and then eventually break out on your own if that's

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE

what you want to do. But I know you probably have consultants that are making a ton of money right now. They may not even want to venture out.

Eric Coffie: 01:03:18 No, no. And again, that's, you know what, I have people exactly what you said, Jay. So right now I have students that are consultants and they don't want to start a business. Like they don't want to run a business, they don't want to deal with it. And I'll be honest with you, I mean, listen, right? Even myself, I don't want the headache and hassle of having to deal with HR issues, having to deal with an administrative staff and team. You know, it's a lot to deal with and we're not all necessarily cut out to be business owners, but you can still make the same monies, right. Without having the hassle and headache of running a business. So yes, I have students now. My, one of my students just last week won a million dollar contract. And again, you know, this guy was debating between going back to college, you know, and he said, Eric, I this, you know, and, and so now he just won his first contract.

Eric Coffie: 01:04:07 That was $1 million because he was working with a company that had the past performance that had the experience. And so all he had to do now is take them to the agencies, right? And then introduce them, you know, make his pitch and say, Hey, this is what we have and this is what we want to do. And then put it together. And so he was able to get a piece of a million dollar contract and that's way better than doing a $50,000 contract and you havin to figure out where to get the money from. Where are you going to buy the stuff from? How are you going to pay? If I could just say, how are you going to pay the employees? How are you going to pay back the loan? How are you going to turn in a report to make be compliant? All you gotta do in this scenario is match them up with the contract. They'll do the work, the heavy lifting, and then you get a check.

Jay Jones: 01:04:53 What's the normal for the a consultant? What's the normal fee that the consultant would charge the company?

Eric Coffie: 01:04:59 What we teach is 5.5% of the revenue, the sale or 25% of the profit.

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE

Jay Jones: 01:05:04 Okay, cool. So on that deal right there, I was, what, 50, 50 grand, 55 grand or whatever?

Eric Coffie: 01:05:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's nice. Without all the headaches,

Eric Coffie: 01:05:15 Without all the headache.

Jay Jones: 01:05:18 So a couple of those. So definitely guys Govcongiants.com and for the free book, govcongiants.com/beb. We appreciate, definitely appreciate you hooking up the BEB family, breaking that news with your new book coming out, man.

Eric Coffie: 01:05:34 So, no, no, no, that man. No, actually, yeah, It's a, again, with all the stuff that I've got going on, it's, you know, it's difficult to do it, but I knew from the, you know, my, first book Billion Dollar Playbook is essentially a list of websites, free websites that you can use to grow your government contracting business. But I knew that people wanted a step-by-step publication that actually actual steps that took them through it. And again, most of the books that I've read out there talk to you about technical law and technical procedures and you know, and nothing tells you how to actually get a contract, you know, and that's what I think is missing is people want to know like, how do I actually win a contract? And that's what we're going to do differently is tell people actually how to go out and win contracts. What to say, who you should be talking to and things like that.

Jay Jones: 01:06:26 Oh man, that's great. Oh, we're not going to hold you too much longer, man. Just have about two questions for you. Where do you see your business and yourself in five years? Right now? I know you've got a lot going on, a lot of moving pieces.

Eric Coffie: 01:06:39 Well, you know Jay man, where we are, I mean this thing is going fast, so I can tell you this. We, you know, we have a course out and we see taking our course and building it to a full blown platform where we, not only, you know, because one of the things that we find out now is business owners are coming to me to look for people to do business development, to do consulting work for them. So like Space X, I don't know if you guys know space X or Tesla. So Space X, when they were trying, their rockets weren't working and they were losing money. They hired a consultant to bring them into the government space so

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE

they can get a government contracts. And that's what kept, that's what basically took them from the red to the black on their business.

Eric Coffie: 01:07:25 And so people are coming to me asking for consultants. So one of the things what I see in the future is essentially, you know, we're, we are already the largest YouTube channel on the planet for teaching this. But I want to be the largest in every category. So we see building a national network of businesses that need assistance of students that want to work with businesses of we want to capture all of the information and past data that the government has on history of contracts so that we can put that all into a database and be able to do analytics on it, do AI. And then what we see is happening is we're going to be eventually, let's say like if you were to come onto Facebook or LinkedIn and they say, check, make friends suggestions. If you'd come onto our platform, we're going to make suggestions for people who you need to network in the industry related government contracts. So people that may be in your same space, people that may be doing what you do in terms of, let's say they're in your region or if you want to work with the Navy, they're former Navy people, things like that. So we see this as being a full fledge platform like a Facebook or LinkedIn for government contracts. That's where I'm heading.

Jay Jones: 01:08:35 That's what's up. It's like a dual sided marketplace. You have the actual contracts and then you have the, you're bringing people together and matching them up. Yup. Makes a lot of sense.

Eric Coffie: 01:08:45 Which by the way, the government has tried and failed at doing that, but again, you know, they are not really good at developing these types of programs. So we, we are, we're doing it from a practical standpoint from actual app, like applicable, like how, you know, because again, they're saying, they're talking about the rules and the nuances of how the, how the rules work and things like that. And we're talking about, again, taking steps towards actually, you know, what things that you should be doing and the steps you should be taking and following to get results.

Jay Jones: 01:09:15 And before I ask this last question, I forgot to bring this up. Before we started recording, you show me an email and most

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people think that all you have to always bid for government contracts. But can you explain to me prior to the recording that sometimes the government will reach out to you if you position yourself correctly for bids that aren't even out there live yet? So can you just talk about that real quick? Yeah,

Eric Coffie: 01:09:43 Yeah, definitely. No. So we, the majority of my contracts are actually negotiated contracts. If you are in one of the socioeconomic categories, which is Woman Owned, Veteran owned HUBZone a day, then the government can do direct negotiations with you. It's also called sole source contracts that are non-competition, not compete. So you are not competing against anyone for these particular contracts. And so what I showed you before, the email, let me before the call was an email that I received for a government agency had sent me an email to give them a price for a project that was not publicly posted anywhere. And so that's what I teach my students is how do you position yourself to where you are actually negotiating direct contracts with the government. One of my students right now is headed over to the Coast Guard base and where she's given them a price and a job that they didn't post publicly.

Jay Jones: 01:10:42 That's what's up. So we're talking about somebody that's doing the business, not just teaching the business guys. And so that, that's a big difference. So you're going to find a lot of information out there, but it's always best to get it from somebody that's in the business and making money in the business, which he's teaching. So definitely make sure you guys check out govcongiants.com/beb for the book. Before we also close out on one more question, man, and we're going to let you give all your, your contact info.

Jay Jones: 01:11:13 If you had the opportunity to talk to one person living with date, who would it be and why? We want to see inside Eric Coffie and see what he is thinking in there.

Eric Coffie: 01:11:21 Who I would talk to living or dead and why? Yeah. That's very interesting, you know. That's a good one .

Jay Jones: 01:11:36 You are on the clock, man. Man, it's ticking.

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE

Eric Coffie: 01:11:38 That's interesting. You know, I guess for me, if I had a person, I, you know, I'm not into dead people. So I mean, I, you know, if I had a chance to talk to someone I would want to talk to let's say like a Jay Z for me personally because Jay Z has interacted with Warren Buffett. He's interact with people in the entertainment industry and for me, and now they're getting into investing. And so for me personally, that's the way I see myself, my friends, like I told you, is that we were all, when I listened back to the old hip hop songs, right? They talk about riding bicycles and being raggedy cars. Right? And you know, the dog, I mean, again, I listen to these guys. And so if you look at Jay Z and Trey and P Diddy and these guys, right? And they all came up together in that era. And I remember hearing an interview by even one of the Wayans Brothers kids who said we were the first like wealthy black kids of our generation, because again, if you go back to history, we didn't have black men to have wealth back back in the 60s and stuff. So these were the, like, we're still living in a era where these, the first generation of like really wealthy, you know, black kids.

Eric Coffie: 01:13:00 And so for me, I feel like I'm in the same position as where these guys, or maybe 15 years ago, right? Where my friends and I, we started this government contracting the same way these guys started. Like I remember my friends having, you know, raggedy cars and I had an okay car and, and so I remember them living in regular houses and then I remember everyone also elevating themselves, right? So better car then. So, you know now, you know, if I go to my friend in Miami, you know, and we go out, we're riding in Lamborghini. And so I see that transition. But for me, I don't do that cause I'm, I'm more of a low key kind of guy and you know, I'm not, but it's just, I would love to find out from them, okay, how do you know, talk about that experience because that's where I see myself going. And one of the things that kept me out of trouble was if you've listened to my story, I always had older mentors that were more successful. Every, every path, you know, that I've taken every turn. It's always been someone older than me, wiser, that kind of led me. So I would, even though I know where I'm going, I don't know what challenges are going to be in my way, what obstacles can be my way and so what to expect. So someone that can tell me kind of what to expect because I know that you know, there's got, there's some, there's like I say, there's a jungle out here, man,

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE

there's snakes and lions and tigers and bears, like, I, you know, I don't know what's gonna be coming at me when I embarked on this new adventure.

Eric Coffie: 01:14:26 And so you know, obviously I'm, I'm, I'm concerned and it would be great to hear from someone, Hey, look, you know, if I'm, cause again, we're talking about raising $100 million. There's going to be people I'm going to, I'm going to have a target on my back. Definitely. Definitely. And so, you know, I would love to talk to them to see, find out how did they, how did they make that transition and how, and who did they speak to, who do they talk to, right? How did they make that adjustment and what kind of things that like kind of pitfalls I can avoid. Right. And I, in my journey,

Jay Jones: 01:14:58 That's a great answer, man. It's when my kids were younger and when they were starting to, you know, start to go out on their own and all types of stuff they want to do certain things and I know probably wouldn't lead to good endings right there. They're always like, dad, why, how do you know? I said, look, I said, she, that door right there. So I was pointing to like the the door in the pantry and they like, yeah, dad. And I said, what do you see? And he's like, I see a door. I said, yeah, but I see through the door. I said, that's my experience. So everything you're talking about, I've been there, done that. So you're looking at this, but I'm looking through it because I know certain actions are going to result in certain results and stuff like that.

Jay Jones: 01:15:39 But you're right mentorship talking to your elders or people with more experience and things that are five steps ahead, 10, 20, 50 steps ahead. I always say that we can all be mentors in some form or fashion. So all you have to do is know more about something to somebody else and you can be a mentor, you know? Yeah. And so that's big. So I'm, I'm big on mentorship and being able to, you know, help those that are coming behind us. Brother, I appreciate your time. Eric. Before you close out man, just give your contact information again with your website and all that good old stuff, man. We're going to close out.

Eric Coffie: 01:16:14 Yeah, no, I mean, again, every, all my contact, everything is on govcongiants.com. And so you can find me there. Really. that's the best place to find me at YouTube channel. Eric coffee

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE

GovCon Giants Scorecontracts. Again, you know, if you just type in my name and Google you, you'll find me. I'm all over web. I've, I've got a lot of content on there. I have a lot of free content. I've got, you know, the free course ww.FreeGovConcourse.com. And again, so I have a lot of content that's already on the web. Learn it, absorb it. Before you decide, you know, which way you want to go. I, you know, I don't recommend you go out there and hire a consultant or someone that you think to teach you because you don't know how to judge a good consultant. You don't know how to judge a good person's going to look out for your interest.

Eric Coffie: 01:17:00 And so a lot of times people are being taken advantage of by people that are so called consultants. And that's why before we started, I showed Jay an email that I received yesterday for a contract opportunity that was given to me because I want you guys to know, I want people to know that I'm, like I said, I, you know, I walk the walk. I ain't just talking and talk. I mean I'm actually out here walking it and doing these things. Which can, helps keep me abreast on what's the changes that are happening as they are happening, the rules, the regulations and things like that. So yeah, like I said, Eric, E, R, I, C Coffie, C, O, F, F, I. E. and you can contact me through any one of the channels in the websites there. There's always a help desk or, or email that you could put in the computer and they'll send it to someone on my team,

Jay Jones: 01:17:47 My brother. I appreciate you man. This is a great episode because once, as I said earlier, a lot of people been reaching out to me about government contracting is no better way to get information than somebody that's in there making money and doing it in the business that they talking about. So I appreciate you brought a man when you anything you got coming up, man, just let me know. We'll definitely get you back on the show. Don't forget BEB family, govcongiants.com/beb Get your free book. Eric's new book. Just played it. Pay the shipping and handling and I'm sure it's going to be a dynamite book, man. I can't wait to get my copy, man. Can I get a signed copy bro?

Eric Coffie: 01:18:24 Yes sir. You can get a signed copt. I got you a signed copy. All right, I appreciate, I appreciate you man. And a baby family. Hey guys, look, I wish you guys the best. You know, like I said, I've,

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE

I've seen more millionaires created in this industry than any other industry personally.

Jay Jones: 01:18:41 That's what's up. I brother, we'll be in touch, man.

Eric Coffie: 01:18:44 Thanks Jay. I appreciate you. Thanks guys.

Jay Jones: 01:18:47 All right, family. That was an amazing interview with mr Eric Coffie, founder of GovconGiants.com. Now I just want to give a few takeaways that I got from the interview. What before I do that, I want to make sure that you go to Govcongiants.com/beb for the gift. And that is Eric's new book, that's Govcongiants.com/beb for Eric's new book. Now, one of the biggest takeaways I got was a lot of people always talk about business credit and Eric mentioned something that was very important. He didn't get a line of credit for the business. He got a line of credit from his suppliers. Okay? And he said a truism, banks only give people money who don't need money. All right? That's the true is. So if you tick off all the boxes, the banks are going to give you money.

Jay Jones: 01:19:40 Most small businesses and entrepreneurs, when they start out, they're not going to check all those boxes. So I'm not telling you, don't go look for financing or lines of credit. But as Eric mentioned, maybe you can go and get supplier lines of credit. Now as he mentioned in the episode, he talked about who do you do business with? These suppliers want references. So anybody you've done business with, even if it's going to Staples and buying supplies for your business. So that was something that was really highlighted. Another thing that really stuck out to me was Eric's ability to get back up every time he got knocked down. And so if you have that within you as an entrepreneur, nothing can stop you as long as you're on the right path and the right plan. So once again, people think that you go into entrepreneurship and you go from zero to a hundred like that, but it doesn't work like that.

Jay Jones: 01:20:34 You've heard my stories and you've heard the stories of other entrepreneurs on the show. So you have to be prepared for setbacks. But once again, like my dad always say, winners win and it's a simple, you know, phrase, two words, winners win. And I asked him what it meant and he said basically winners are

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going to do whatever is necessary to win. So if you have to go up, over, around, under, through or whatever, winners find a way to do that. And to be a successful entrepreneur, you definitely need to have that skill with you. So also make sure that you check out all the Eric's resources. They're going to be links on the video below if you're watching this on YouTube and also my resource links. Now if you need to connect with me, you can go to BEBconnect.com everything I'm about to tell you is going to be on that page.

Jay Jones: 01:21:24 That's a page on my website. Go to BEBconnect.com and you will see all my resources, but I do want to share them with you first and foremost. So my new book is out of New Black Wall Street, circulating the black dollar worldwide by building successful eCommerce businesses. You know, Black Bntrepreneur blueprint is all about the economic empowerment of the black community. So this book talks about how you can actually create eCommerce business as businesses and support other black businesses. So it's the new black wall street, new technology, new date, new age, new time. So we need to leverage the technology. Now if you need additional assistance building your successful sustainable eCommerce business, I've created a compatible online course title, EducatedEcommerce.com just go to educated e-commerce dot com and enroll in the course. Now the outset of the show, I mentioned to you two platforms that I've created to help facilitate, you know, the, the movement of the black dollar in the black community, the circulation.

Jay Jones: 01:22:25 So if you are a black product producer, you can go to besmartbuyblack.com, be smart by black.com you can upload your product information on the platform. It is free and you can connect with black consumers worldwide. Now if you're a freelancer, if you do anything like on Fiverr or freelancer, I haven't forgotten about you guys. So I've created a platform titled hireblackfreelancers.com once again, put your information on there. It is free so you can connect with black consumers in black businesses that are looking to hire black freelancers. Also, if you want me to come out to speak to your church, university, organization or from my book talk, you can go to a book, Jay jones.com fill out the short form and I'll get right back to you. Once again, BEB connect has all of this

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE

information. Now I invite you guys to also hook up with me on social media, so let me give you all of my social media contact information.

Jay Jones: 01:23:24 If it's anything long family, I get DMs letter like long, like crazy. If it's anything long, just hit me on my email is [email protected], jayjonesatblackentrepreneurblueprint.com Facebook. Just go to a Facebook type in Black Entrepreneurial Blueprint. Connect with me there. Twitter JayJones001, J A YJ O N E S 001 Instagram JayJones4Real, that’s J a Y J O N E S. The number 4 R E a L a. Youtube. Please subscribe to my YouTube channel. I have additional content on YouTube that is not on the podcast, so go to YouTube, type in Black Entrepreneur Blueprint and hit the subscribe button. Also, if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn, just go to LinkedIn, search for Jay Jones, Black Entrepreneur Blueprint and if you want to be included in the BEB text line for notifications and special reminders. I'm not going to bug the bejesus out of you, but this is only for special things.

Jay Jones: 01:24:24 Texts BEB to 555888 B E B to five five five eight eight eight. Once again, family, everything is under BEB connect everything I just read out to you and told you, just go to BEB, connect and link up with me and I always say this before the end of every show, each and every show family, we get more and more downloads. Then that's because of you to be BEB family, so I appreciate you guys. Please continue to spread the word via social media. Word of mouth, smoke signals, whatever you gotta do. But I love you guys and I'll see you same time next week. Peace.

Eric Coffie: 01:24:57 I had a good time making it. Jay's a good guy. He's been teaching me along the way cause he has five years of podcasting experience under his belt. I just got started. As you know, I'm only 35 episodes in, but as always, the show notes to this episode and more can be found at govcongiants.com/podcast. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, feedback, send me a tweet, send me a message, let me know. This is how I can improve and this is how I continue to learn. Have a Happy holidays. Enjoy your family for the holidays. Enjoy spending time with them and we'll see you in 2020.

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE

GOVCON GIANTS PODCAST ERIC COFFIE