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Beyond the Bid: Bashar Haddad on Customer Service in Federal Contracts | Staffing Series · The Inspired Stories Podcast

0:04
Welcome to another edition of Inspired Stories, where leaders
0:07
share their experiences so we can learn from their successes,
0:10
how they've overcome adversity, and explore current challenges
0:13
they're facing. Welcome to another edition of
0:18
the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their
0:20
experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired
0:24
by how they've overcome adversity.
0:26
My name is Anthony Kotaspodi and today's guest is Bashar Haddad,
0:31
COO of SSI. They are a woman owned small
0:35
business started in 2002 and located near the nation's
0:38
capital. They are a prime contractor who
0:41
manages staging for large scale and complex contracts in over 45
0:46
states, 5 continents, 22 countries as well as throughout
0:51
80 government installations in hostile, extreme and high threat
0:55
environments. They have a DCAA approved
0:59
accounting system and specialized in providing
1:01
specialized personnel for the DOSDOD, Special Operations
1:06
Forces, Intelligence and Healthcare community.
1:10
They provide a wide range of support roles including
1:12
linguist, translators, intelligence analysts,
1:15
counterintelligence specialist, security professionals,
1:18
logistics specialist program managers, and much, much more.
1:22
Their clients include all kinds of government agencies you've
1:25
heard of and many you probably haven't.
1:28
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1:31
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1:57
Now back to our guest today, the COO of SSI, Bashar.
2:01
I appreciate you making the time to Share your story today.
2:05
It is my pleasure. I certainly appreciate you
2:07
allowing me to be on your program.
2:09
All right. So Bashar, tell us in your own
2:11
words, what does SSI do and how did this company 1st come into
2:15
existence? Well, it was a the brainchild of
2:20
my sister. She and I both work for
2:22
recruiting companies. She did, She was a recruiter.
2:26
I was a, you can call me a program manager.
2:31
I did the sales, she did the recruiting.
2:33
I I called the clients to see if they had any openings where we
2:36
could help them fill them and she dealt with the candidates
2:41
that were looking for work. She made the last company she
2:45
worked for, she made them over $1,000,000 and they paid her I
2:48
believe something like 60,000 a year.
2:51
Well she approached me and said how about you and I start our
2:53
own recruiting company. I said great.
2:56
So in 2002 June we started the company and we tried to get
3:02
clients and recruited for them. Had a few little successes here
3:05
and there until I got hired as a contract recruiter for a company
3:10
called Titan Corporation. They had just received the
3:14
contract to provide 2000 linguists to go to Iraq.
3:19
Now from my background, I was somewhat fluent in Arabic and
3:24
they literally hired me within a minute and 1/2 that's how long
3:28
the interviews took. They said just go grab a phone
3:31
and start calling because they just needed to recruit as many
3:34
linguists as possible and they were under a very tight time
3:37
crunch. The fact that I lived in Detroit
3:40
for almost a year and a half also was a huge plus for them.
3:44
Bottom line is I worked there for nine months.
3:47
I got tired of the commute. It was over an hour each way and
3:53
I said how about you make me a subcontractor?
3:56
They said we can't make you a subcontractor.
3:58
I said why? They said you don't have a
4:00
security clearance, you're not an 8 a company and you don't
4:04
have ADCA approved accounting system.
4:07
I said, OK, why don't you just make me a vendor?
4:09
I know how to recruit these people.
4:11
I have I have great connections. And they said, you know, that
4:15
doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
4:17
They made me a vendor. In the meantime, I went out and
4:19
started to work on my 8A status. If you're not familiar with the
4:24
8A program, this is a designation the Small Business
4:29
Administration gives to small companies if they qualify.
4:34
You have to be part of the protected class of people that
4:40
are disadvantaged, and if you're not, you can write a letter to
4:43
the SBA explaining how you've been discriminated against.
4:47
Considering my sister and I are from the Middle East.
4:50
Considering the company is majority owned by my sister, she
4:57
wrote a very compelling letter giving real life examples how
5:00
she's been discriminated against as a female and as a foreigner.
5:04
My sister and I were both born overseas.
5:08
We went back and forth with the SBA.
5:10
They asked us to make a bunch of Corrections.
5:12
Then they finally gave us gave us the 8A status.
5:15
OK, so we have 8A. What does that mean?
5:18
The advantage of the 8A program is that the government, instead
5:22
of, you know, they bid, they put everything out for bids.
5:25
And when you're in 8A, the government has the ability to
5:29
sole source a contract to you. They could literally just hand
5:33
you a contract. Just like you go to Walmart, you
5:35
pick up something off the shelf, you go and pay for it.
5:37
The government can give an 8 a company a sole source as long as
5:41
the dollar value is under three and a half million.
5:44
It's basically a way the government gives small
5:47
businesses a little push forward so they can hopefully become
5:51
successful. The program only lasts nine
5:55
years and there's many requirements that you have to
5:58
meet during those nine years to keep it going for the full nine
6:01
years. Well, we worked on our 8A.
6:04
We finally got it. When we called Titan, we said,
6:09
hey, we're an 8A, can you make a subcontractor?
6:13
They said we're in the middle of an acquisition.
6:15
L3 Communications just bought them out.
6:17
They said we can't make you an 8A just yet.
6:19
Just stand by, keep doing what you're doing.
6:22
And eventually the contract got awarded.
6:24
Titan bought the company. They bid on the recompete.
6:27
They lost it to a company called GLS.
6:29
We were put on hold. We kept kept us on hold for a
6:34
couple years. In 2000, the beginning of 2008,
6:38
L 3 lost the contract to GLS. We were out of business.
6:42
We almost closed our doors and I said to my sister, I said that's
6:46
it. I'm not putting all my eggs in
6:48
one basket, I said, and I'm not going to rely on a prime
6:51
contractor for our success because we have no control.
6:54
So I started to, I call it, smile and dial, pick up the
6:57
phone, call every contracting officer you can, introduce
7:01
yourself as an A day. One day.
7:03
A lady in NSW, I didn't even know what NSW was, Navy special
7:08
warfare. That's basically the Navy Seals.
7:12
I'm leaving her a message, She picks up the phone.
7:15
She says did you say you're an A day company?
7:18
I looked at the phone. I said do you have an analog
7:20
answering machine at your desk? She said well they leave the
7:23
high tech stuff for the boats and planes.
7:25
They give us this crappy equipment.
7:28
She said we have a contract, it's only for about 3 months.
7:31
We have the guy who we'd like to do the work, we can't tell you
7:34
who to hire, are you interested? I said absolutely.
7:39
She gave me the guy's name. I called him up.
7:41
I said are you willing to work on this contract for 3-4 months?
7:44
He said yes. The problem was the company the
7:46
government was dealing with was making the government jump
7:49
through hoops and give them a hard time.
7:51
I can't tell you how many times I've heard this story.
7:54
OK, so we hired the guy. The government loved it.
7:59
About a month later, they gave me another training contract.
8:02
It was a small one. Again, because we were in a day,
8:04
they're able to hand it to me without going through the
8:06
bidding process. So when the government is up to
8:09
a very tight time crunch, like they have to execute it in a
8:13
week or two or a month, they don't have time to put things
8:16
out on bid and receive proposals, evaluate the
8:19
proposals, make an award, companies protest.
8:22
It's a long process. So that summer of 2009, the
8:27
government gave us our first $1,000,000 contract.
8:30
It was for Navy SEAL instructors and it was roughly, I think
8:36
1.61.7 million. Well, Fast forward to today,
8:40
we've been awarded over 100 prime contracts.
8:44
We went through the entire A Day program the full nine years and
8:47
graduated and it was a huge success for us.
8:51
We've actually, I, I, I, I, I, I can't tell you how great the A
8:57
Day program was for us. Not that we got a ton of sole
8:59
sources, which we did, but it also taught us how to run our
9:05
company. We function completely
9:07
independent of any outside resources.
9:10
In other words, our accounting, our HR, our payroll, everything
9:14
is done in house and here we are today, 22 years in business.
9:19
So this is interesting. So you and your sister both had
9:22
a background in recruiting, but didn't have any any kind of
9:26
background in any sort of government work?
9:30
No government background, no military background.
9:32
Yeah. And so the obviously I can
9:34
understand how the A, A was good for you, right, because it got
9:38
you a foot in the door. But as you were telling that
9:42
story, now I can see how it's also very useful for government
9:46
or military because like you said, when they're up against a
9:49
tight timeline, they don't want to go through the process of
9:51
having to bid. And this apparently this 8A is
9:54
sort of like a shortcut. It's the only thing that sort of
9:56
allows them to bypass that open bidding process.
10:00
That's correct. Now women owned small
10:03
businesses, which we are a certified women owned small
10:06
business. Technically when Obama was
10:09
president, he he put into into place that women owned small
10:14
businesses should receive the same advantages as as as 8A.
10:19
By the time it gets all filtered out and put through the FAR,
10:23
it's not quite as powerful. And when the government, when
10:26
the government wants to sole source something, they have to
10:29
write up a justification. And it's much easier to write up
10:33
a justification for an 8A because it's so well known.
10:37
Women owned small businesses. They're supposed to get the same
10:40
advantages, but they they're not there yet.
10:43
And I think there's a lot of government contracting folks
10:45
that are trying to get them there.
10:47
And yeah, I don't know if you know this.
10:49
The government also has goals that they have to meet.
10:53
There's every agency in the government has a certain
10:55
percentage, whether it's 3% or 5% of all their business they do
11:00
must go to women owned small businesses.
11:02
There's usually 5% must go to 8A companies, another 5% to SDVO
11:08
service disabled veteran owned small businesses.
11:12
There's also the last category is hub zone, historically
11:16
underutilized business zones. Like if you have a town or a
11:19
city that used to be a booming town and then other towns around
11:25
it grow and that used to be booming town is no longer
11:28
booming there. There's a, you can look up a hub
11:31
zone map and see where the hub zones, where the hub zone areas
11:35
are. There's a lot of requirements
11:37
for hub zones. I'm not going to get into it
11:39
just because it's, I don't know them all, but most of your
11:42
employees or at least half of your employees or a third must
11:45
live in a hub zone. So, you know the the government
11:51
has a lot of requirements for small businesses and we outgrew
11:55
our small business size standard for many years and now we've
11:58
kind of come back down. Our revenue has gone down the
12:03
last several years just because we we can only compete on the
12:06
full and open side, we can't compete on the small business
12:09
side. But because our revenue came
12:11
down, now we're able to compete in the small business realm
12:13
again. So a few things I want to unpack
12:17
here. First of all, the smile and dial
12:19
portion, is that something that you had sort of developed thick
12:24
skin in previous life for or was this kind of your first go round
12:27
with the smile and dial? To be completely honest with
12:32
you, when I was 18 years old, I became a real estate agent and
12:36
one of the training sessions that I listened to, there was a
12:39
guy who is a master. I forget his name and I feel
12:42
bad. I'm not giving him credit.
12:46
He used the term smile and dial and he used to say when someone
12:49
hangs up on you, that's a plus because you have to go through
12:53
the Nos to get to the s s. It's a numbers game.
12:56
Any sales is a numbers game. So I knew that I was just going
13:00
to call every contracting officer I could.
13:02
Sooner or later one of them is going to pick up.
13:04
Sooner or later one of them is going to have a need for my
13:06
services or have a requirement for an A day.
13:10
So it's just a numbers game. So if you're into sales, don't
13:13
get discouraged if someone says no, Don't get discouraged if
13:16
they hang up on you. Don't get discouraged if they
13:18
just curse you out and say, ah, don't ever call me again.
13:22
That's a positive because you got to get through the nose to
13:24
get to the yes. And so you're saying you got to
13:27
get through the no of that person to find the yes from
13:30
somebody else? Smile and dull when you're on
13:33
the phone, if you're smiling, people can hear that in your
13:37
voice on the other side. If you answer them, if you pick
13:41
up the phone and you're like, hello, Mr. Jones, can I speak?
13:44
You know that that tone comes across if you're answering, if
13:48
you're talking on the phone like hello, Mr. Jones.
13:51
Well, now your tone has changed and you sound much better.
13:55
Excuse me. You should also try to mimic the
13:57
people you have on the phone. If you get someone who's mild
14:03
mannered. So let's say a lady answers the
14:05
phone and says hello. This is so and so you're not
14:08
going to come at her at her in a very aggressive way.
14:12
Oh, hello. Is this Juliet, you know, and
14:14
you talk to her at her tone if a guy answered the phone.
14:17
Hello, Sergeant. So and so you say good morning,
14:20
Sergeant. How are you doing today?
14:21
Now you're talking to him at his level.
14:23
There's going to be more of a connection.
14:25
There's little tricks of the trade that I learned in my life
14:28
that I use when I when I pick up the phone and dial There's
14:31
there's some finesse and some techniques that will give you a
14:35
better chance of communicating or getting them to receive you
14:39
better when you're on the phone. Well, those are great little
14:42
Nuggets. I'm curious if you got any more.
14:45
I know one thing that you know, I, I've heard some friends
14:48
struggle with over the years is trying to figure out the right
14:51
cadence in which to follow up with people.
14:53
Talk to somebody, they're interested or they're maybe
14:56
interested. You're supposed to connect in a
14:58
week. You don't hear from them.
15:00
Are you calling that person every day?
15:02
Are you giving a week in between those follow-ups?
15:04
Do you have any rule of thumbs there?
15:07
I'll give you my opinion. It's not the law, just my
15:10
opinion and it's worked very well for me.
15:13
First of all, if you get somebody on the phone, be
15:16
respectful of their time. Some people when they get on the
15:19
phone, they want to ask as many questions as possible and leave
15:23
them on the phone as long as possible.
15:25
Next time your number comes up on their caller, Idi guarantee
15:28
you they're pushing it to voicemail.
15:29
They're not going to waste their, you know, be respectable
15:32
of their time, only be on the phone for a short period of time
15:36
because guess what, they're busy doing something.
15:39
The fact that they picked up the phone, it's awesome.
15:41
So if I get somebody on the phone, they'll pick up the
15:43
phone. I'll introduce my cell phone.
15:46
First of all, have a reason to call.
15:49
I don't believe in cold calls. OK, Obviously I had to make cold
15:52
calls, but what I did is I used to search what used to be
15:56
Fedbizopps, which is a basically a directory of all or most
16:01
business contracting activity. So when the government puts out
16:04
a solicitation, it used to be put out on fedbizoppsokfbo.gov.
16:09
They've changed that. Now it's on under sam.gov.
16:12
So you can search every government contract that's going
16:15
to be solicited, or at least most of them.
16:17
Some of them are clear, some of them are, you know, you don't
16:20
have access to, but you could search them on this database.
16:24
So what I did is the people that I decided to call, I would
16:28
search for opportunities that we can perform on.
16:31
And that gave me a reason. Oh, you put out the
16:32
solicitation. I just want to ask you a
16:34
question about it. You know, so you got to have a
16:37
reason to call people you don't want to call.
16:38
Hey, I want to introduce myself. I'm Bashar, you know, I work for
16:41
an A day company. You got any work for me?
16:45
Your, your success rate in those types of calls is going to be
16:49
almost 0. But if you have a reason to
16:52
call, you strike up a conversation.
16:54
That's where you learn information.
16:57
Don't ask more than 3 or 4 questions and then say, look, I
17:00
know you're busy, I don't want to keep you on the phone.
17:01
I really appreciate your time. If I don't hear from you, do you
17:04
mind if I follow up with you in like a month or two?
17:06
You don't want to follow up every week, you know?
17:11
I think. I had one contract, Sir.
17:13
I went and met her down at Fort Bragg and I gave her a business
17:17
card and she said OK, well, when we have something, we'll let you
17:20
know, you know, kiss of death. I said, look, I know you get a
17:23
lot of people to come and visit you and I know you're telling me
17:26
the exact same stuff you tell them.
17:28
What are the chances you're actually going to call me?
17:30
She said I'm going to keep your business card on my desk.
17:33
When we have training exercises, I will let you know.
17:36
I said if I don't hear from you, do you mind if I call you in
17:38
like a month or two? She goes, well, I told you I'll
17:41
call you when I have something, but if you want to follow up, I
17:43
have no problem with that at all.
17:45
I followed up with her about six weeks later and she goes, I
17:49
still got your card, your phone number is boom.
17:51
And she read off my phone, my cell number on my card.
17:54
I said, you know what, I'm never going to bother you again.
17:57
I'm just going to stand by for you to call me.
17:59
Just remember we can execute immediately, you know, give her
18:02
a couple little sales pitches and then get her off the phone.
18:05
She called me a month later, Give me an exercise.
18:10
We executed excellent perfectly on the exercise and then she
18:15
gave us another one and another one.
18:17
These are pre deployment training, so before the troops
18:19
get deployed overseas, we used to provide all the language
18:23
speakers to play the terrorist or actors, whatever.
18:26
It was like a movie scenario. We provide makeup artists to
18:29
dress up like serious wounds. Our makeup artists were some of
18:32
the best in the industry. They worked on like horror movie
18:35
sets. We provided AK-40 Sevens, a pyro
18:38
team that, you know, did the explosions and stuff.
18:41
And so we put together a full scenario before these guys get
18:45
deployed overseas. So a young kid from Kansas,
18:49
before he goes over to Afghanistan, it's not culture
18:52
shock to him when something happens and he's prepared to to
18:56
do the job. Well, she end up leaving her
19:00
post. But before before she left her
19:01
post, she told her replacement, Hey, do yourself a favor, give
19:06
SSIABPA for the next 5 years. ABPA is a blanket purchase
19:10
agreement. So they sole source to us a
19:13
blanket purchase agreement because we had executed on like
19:16
30 different role-playing missions.
19:18
And then we basically did all the role-playing for, you know,
19:22
one of the higher end military agencies for five years.
19:27
There's a few cool things here. The first thing you said that I
19:29
really liked was have a reason to call, right?
19:32
So you're calling and you're not just saying, hey, do you have
19:34
any work for me? It's hey, I saw this particular
19:36
post, I had a couple of questions about it and it's just
19:40
an excuse to sort of start up a conversation.
19:42
Maybe you didn't actually have any questions about it, but you
19:45
made some up so that you could develop some sort of a personal
19:47
rapport with this person. Exactly.
19:51
And then obviously. I mean, it's it's, you know,
19:55
imagine the phone calls that you receive on your cell phone or,
19:57
you know, hi, I want to talk to you about, you know, I don't
20:00
mean to make fun of anyone. It's just those phone calls are
20:04
they're nonstop. And even those folks have a
20:08
reason to call you. 99% of the time you're hanging up on them.
20:11
You're tired of these sales calls.
20:13
But the government has to deal with industry.
20:15
They don't have a choice. OK.
20:17
But if you're calling them, just saying to them, hey, can I get a
20:19
handout? I'm an 8 A company.
20:22
Can you sole source? Do you have anything you can
20:23
sole source to me? Without them knowing anything
20:25
about you, they're not going to do business with you.
20:28
If you call them up and you're asking about a specific reason,
20:31
a specific item you want to discuss with them, well, then
20:35
their guard comes down a little bit, there's a little bit of
20:37
rapport, and then you get your 3-4 questions out.
20:42
You show respect to them, you bow out gracefully, and then you
20:46
follow up a month or two later. Hey, I hope you Remember Me.
20:49
You know, this, this and that. I was just wondering if anything
20:52
new had come up. I remember I called you about
20:54
that, you know, and just make your calls quick.
20:58
But you know, but you got to have a reason to call.
21:01
Mishar, what is a prime contract?
21:03
What does that mean? Just a good contract, no?
21:07
No, no, no, no. So the government awards
21:09
contracts to prime companies only.
21:13
OK, Those prime companies can have subcontractors doing some
21:17
of the work. Most ADA companies, because when
21:22
a large company, let's take Northrop Grumman, OK, large, you
21:27
know, aerospace and military company, right?
21:30
Or Lockheed Martin. When Lockheed Martin wins a
21:32
contract, the government stipulates in their prime
21:36
contract, they're the prime. They're the they're the company
21:39
that received the award. The government stipulates that
21:42
you must give 5% to 8 a 5% to women owned, 5% to SDVO.
21:48
Those are called subcontractors. So we've done subcontract work
21:51
where we have a prime and we support that prime.
21:55
Let's say they get 100 full time employees on the contract.
21:58
They give us 20 of them. They give us 30 of them.
22:00
Whatever the number may be, we're a sub, they're a prime.
22:03
The prime is the one who receives the the work from the
22:06
government. And so you've got sort of A2
22:11
tiered level of sales, I guess going on here, right?
22:15
You're trying to sell to the government agency or to the the
22:19
defense agency that you know has the work.
22:22
And then you've got to go out and you've got to find the
22:24
people that know how to do these specific tasks.
22:28
And I'm going to guess now that you've been in business for over
22:30
20 years and you're probably providing a lot of the same
22:33
kinds of services over and over again.
22:35
You know, the right places to go and find some of these people.
22:38
You've got some relationships that you can tap into.
22:41
And correct me if I'm wrong on that part, but how did you first
22:44
get started in? Yeah, we need people to do, you
22:47
know, the, the makeup art to the, the play actors, the the
22:51
linguists. Like this wasn't stuff that I'm
22:53
going to guess you had any background in your previous
22:55
recruiting world. Well, I tell you what, you hire
23:00
good people underneath you that will do the legwork to, you
23:03
know, I don't do any of this stuff myself.
23:05
I mean, I'm, I'm the COO, so I manage the company.
23:09
I have a great VP that works for me.
23:11
I have great program managers that worked for me that went out
23:16
and found the right pyro guys, the right, you know, gun guys,
23:21
the right makeup artist. So you know, and we have we have
23:24
an incredible recruiting company.
23:27
The great thing about our recruiters is they come
23:29
experience that we've hired and Linda and I give them pointers
23:32
and help them maybe get just a little bit better.
23:36
Most of what we recruit for, you know, in the older days when we
23:39
started the company, everybody used monster and career builder.
23:42
Those were basically and dice. Those were the three websites
23:45
that companies would go to and there was basically a giant
23:48
database of anyone who had a resume.
23:50
Nowadays it's a lot more diverse.
23:52
You have indeed, you have LinkedIn, you have, you know, I
23:58
think it's called Upwork or something.
24:00
There's a whole bunch of others. I don't even think I don't.
24:04
Does Monster even exist anymore? I don't even know.
24:06
I but you know. I haven't heard anybody talk.
24:09
About it in a long time, yeah. What we recruit for.
24:13
Like when we started working with linguists in 2003, these
24:16
are guys who worked at gas stations, but they had the one
24:19
special skill the government needed.
24:21
They were bilingual. They were fluent in Arabic and
24:24
they were fluent in English. And the fact that they work in a
24:27
gas station is not that these guys aren't educated.
24:29
I've hired guys with bachelor's and master's degree and women as
24:33
well, younger and older, who got their degrees overseas.
24:37
But they come here and, you know, remember that movie, A
24:40
Bronx Tale? Wasted talent.
24:41
It's the worst thing in the world.
24:43
These folks, you know, they just wanted to work and they had all
24:48
these skills. They knew the lay of the land.
24:50
They knew the tribal regions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and they
24:55
were incredibly valuable. They got paid very, very well.
24:59
And so how did Linda and I, how did Linda and I go and recruit
25:02
for these people? We were the only two people in
25:03
the company at the time. We had no employees.
25:06
So we went out and targeted certain groups within Iraq.
25:11
So we went to there like the, let's say the Assyrians, the
25:15
Syrians are basically the original Christians, the
25:19
Assyrians and the Chaldeans, those are the two Christian
25:21
groups in Iraq. And we targeted these folks and
25:27
we, they started inviting us to their New Years, I think it was
25:30
in April, if I'm not mistaken. And there's very large groups
25:34
from the first Gulf War. There were very large groups of
25:37
Assyrians. And we discovered this in our
25:38
recruiting. There were very large groups of
25:41
this of, I'm not going to say Assyrians, Iraqis, like this is
25:46
a large group of Iraqis in Nashville.
25:48
Who the heck brought them to Nashville after the first Gulf
25:51
War? And we brought in a ton of
25:53
refugees. We put them in certain areas,
25:56
large group of Assyrians over in Phoenix, AZ, Modesto, CA,
26:01
Chicago. So, you know, we didn't, we
26:04
didn't know any of this. We just had to go and find the
26:06
right people that would support EU s s policies.
26:09
We're fluent in both languages and would pass a background
26:12
check because they had to get a security clearance to work
26:15
overseas. Even if they weren't qualified
26:17
for a security clearance, they still had to pass a background
26:20
check. We can't send violent people
26:22
over there. They had to pass a medical exam
26:24
as well. There was a whole bunch of
26:26
requirements that we had to get through.
26:28
But you know, you have to look at, you have to look outside the
26:32
box to try to find these people who are very specialized.
26:35
We used the same concept when we started finding role players and
26:39
Moolaj artists and you know, the pyro guys and the Moolaj artist,
26:43
the makeup artist. We use the same people over and
26:45
over. These, these guys, these guys
26:47
and girls would travel all across the country from we did
26:52
missions in Hawaii and Hunter Liggett, which is in California
26:56
to Camp Shelby in in the South, Eglin Air Force Base in Florida,
27:04
AP Hill in Virginia, I mean all over the country, Fort Bliss in
27:07
Texas, so Yakima and Washington State.
27:11
I mean, we've been everywhere. It's it's been a very impressive
27:15
ride. I mean, I look back in the last
27:17
22 years, I'm like, how the heck did we do all this stuff?
27:21
But again, I, it's not me. It's certainly the people that
27:24
work that have supported SSI for 22 years.
27:27
We have hired some of the best employees, some of the best
27:30
people I've ever known in my life.
27:32
So we're truly grateful. And so you're not, but are you
27:36
just placing folks here in the States, you're also placing
27:39
folks in overseas environments? So all the linguists in the 2003
27:44
to 2009, all those linguists worked in Iraq and Afghanistan.
27:52
In 2012, we won a State Department contract where we had
27:56
to provide personnel overseas as well in Iraq and Afghanistan and
28:02
Saudi Arabia. We have several other contracts
28:06
going on right now that I can't discuss that are overseas and
28:10
elsewhere. But yeah, what whatever the
28:13
government wants. You asked me one quick question.
28:15
How do you find all these people?
28:17
You know, government contracting is not the most complex thing in
28:21
the world, OK. Most people who are a lot of
28:25
people who retire from the military, they think, hey, you
28:28
know, I have a lot of friends on the other side.
28:30
I'm going to start my own company.
28:32
And they can get the work. They have the connections, you
28:35
know, they have the experience and they're liked and they don't
28:39
have the accounting background, which I don't have that either.
28:43
But they don't take care of their back end of the business.
28:46
And that's how they unfortunately have issues
28:50
executing. You know, they can execute some
28:53
of the some of the missions better than I can, but where
28:58
they fall short is they don't have the back end.
29:00
We've got the back end. We also have the experience to,
29:03
you know, execute the contract as they as the government wants.
29:07
And I've been to backward. I've been to over backwards to
29:10
make sure the government gets exactly what they want.
29:13
Whether I make money or not. That's always secondary because
29:16
again, I don't have the military or the government background to
29:19
fall back on. I don't have friends on the
29:21
inside. So the only thing I could rely
29:23
on is my past performance. My sister and I, this was this
29:27
has been our mission set since day one that hey, we take care
29:31
of the customers. The business will take care of
29:33
itself. When was it that the 8A ran out
29:36
for you? What year was that?
29:39
We received our A day in 2006 and it it expired in February
29:46
2015. OK.
29:48
And then when that expired, is that what eventually led to some
29:52
of the sales decline that you saw because it wasn't sort of as
29:56
easy to kind of get your foot in the?
29:57
Door, that's correct. Now most a day companies to be
30:01
honest with you after the nine years they fall flat off, flat
30:06
on their face because they rely too much on the sole sourcing.
30:09
We actually won several competitive bids before our 8A
30:12
expired. We won several contracts that
30:14
were small business set asides. So we didn't even have to rely
30:18
on the 8A for some of our work. So we were positioned well that
30:23
once the 8A ran out, we were still able to grow in two.
30:30
But when you grow really fast, you lose the small business size
30:35
and you can only compete on the full and open market.
30:39
Now I have to compete with the Lockheed Martins and the
30:41
Northrop Grumman's and the, you know, the big companies out
30:44
there. That's a very difficult place to
30:47
be. That middle level is really,
30:49
really difficult. So you either have to completely
30:51
blow up after the 8A or right before the 8A expires or you're
30:57
going to have several years of struggling.
30:59
Now I'm thankful to say that we, not only have we survived 9 1/2
31:04
years after the 8A finished, we also acquired another company in
31:10
April of 2020, a company called McManus.
31:14
We, we bought them in like I said, April 2020.
31:19
They were out of Erie, PA and so currently out of our office
31:24
under SSI. They're they're under the SSI
31:26
umbrella in our office. We basically run two companies
31:30
and it's been a huge success. And do they do basically the
31:34
same thing that that you do or did they bring in a different
31:37
kind of set of skills? A little bit of the same, but a
31:41
lot more different skills and different agencies.
31:44
Like we never worked with NIH before.
31:47
We have a contract with NIH. We do a lot of business with
31:50
Indian Healthcare Services. Indian Health Services do some
31:56
interesting stuff with them. McManus had been doing it for
31:59
close to 20 years and we just basically kept the exact same
32:04
people that McManus had and they're continuing to do a
32:08
phenomenal job for us. When was it that you dropped off
32:11
sort of that small business status and then when were you
32:13
able to sort of regain that? OK, so let me explain this to
32:21
you. The government, when they put
32:22
out a solicitation, they have to use what's called a NAICS code.
32:26
NAICS NAICS code is an industry categorization.
32:31
There's like 47 pages of NAICS codes.
32:34
Anything the government wants, whether it's limousine service,
32:38
transportation, agricultural service, mechanical service,
32:42
accounting, scientific engineering, anything you want
32:46
has to have a NAICS code attached to it.
32:48
OK. If you look up Nix code size
32:52
standard, every Nix code has a different size standard.
32:56
That size standard depends on what your five year average,
33:00
what your business has done in the last five years.
33:03
That Nix code will determine whether you're a small business
33:07
or not. Some Nix codes are, let's say $9
33:10
million, OK, That means if your five year average is 9 million
33:13
or less than you're considered a small business.
33:16
You can bid on that opportunity. Some NAGS codes are $41 million,
33:22
like shipbuilding for the Navy. You can't be a small business at
33:26
9 million, you know, to to build ships.
33:28
If they put something out, which I don't think they put out
33:31
shipbuilding at 9, at at 41 million.
33:35
These are billion dollar companies.
33:36
But when they have engineering work and they have very
33:39
scientific, very technical work for these ships and stuff like
33:42
that, airplanes, you know, tanks, those size standards are
33:49
much higher. And there are a lot of
33:51
specialized companies that do very specialized work that are
33:55
considered a small business in those NICs codes that make
33:59
sense. Yeah, it does.
34:00
So where I was going to go with that and maybe this question
34:04
then is off the mark as I sort of understand that, that small
34:06
business threshold is different depending on which of those NICs
34:11
codes that you're participating in.
34:14
Because I'm curious like you lost the small business status
34:17
because you got so big, now you're back in the small
34:20
business status. And so that helps you to get
34:22
some of these other contracts is the goal, is the strategy to
34:25
sort of stay in this tier now and just try to remain as kind
34:29
of healthy as you can and in the size of business that you are
34:32
today? So here's a little rule in the
34:36
government that we weren't quite aware of when we acquired
34:40
McManus. Immediately after acquisition,
34:44
we inherit their revenue. So now we just added our revenue
34:49
and theirs together completely blew us out of the size, small
34:53
business size standard and we have to go back five years.
34:57
So their revenue for five years plus our revenue for five years
35:00
added together divided by 5. The average was much bigger than
35:05
some of the stuff that we go after, but we've lost a couple
35:08
of contracts and we've gone down a little bit in revenue.
35:14
The most important thing is that those older years, every time we
35:18
pass another year, those older years get erased from our
35:20
average. So that's what brings the
35:23
average down. It's not necessarily that we're
35:24
in, you know, that low in our revenue, It's just that we got
35:28
the biggest years because in 2016 we had our best year.
35:32
And so those years are slowly coming off, which allows us to
35:36
bid on small business contracts. Again, not all of them, but it
35:39
brings us down below a few of the NYX codes that are crucial
35:43
for us. Is there a strategy to be had
35:46
where you split off into two different companies so that both
35:50
can have sort of the small business status or is that not
35:53
really a thing? No, you can't.
35:56
You can't do that. Technically I forget the I
36:00
forget the right word, but. There's there's still common
36:04
ownership between the two. Exactly.
36:07
And that's the way the government looks at it.
36:08
Because you know what, if you could do that, everybody in
36:11
their mother would do that. Someone who's probably much more
36:14
savvy than I am has found a way to do it.
36:16
But you know, I look, I'm married.
36:20
I have eight children. I want to make sure I'm not on
36:23
the cover of The Washington Post.
36:25
I do everything by the books. That's a good way to live.
36:28
But eight kids, huh? And I say that as being one of
36:31
eight myself, but that's that. That's quite an undertaking.
36:35
What's the age range there? Youngest is 10.
36:39
Oldest is 25. All right, well.
36:44
It's kind of crazy, but I tell you what, I would I wouldn't
36:46
change it for the world. Yeah.
36:48
So when you get a contract and you're placing folks at these
36:52
jobs, do they remain your employees that are are sitting
36:57
there or you know, that's correct.
36:59
OK, so you're not it's not like what's the term I'm looking for
37:02
contract to hire? It's it's a, it's a contract
37:06
placement. And then those folks remain
37:08
yours that you can use on a a different contract if they agree
37:11
to do that. That's correct.
37:14
Most of the people we hire are specialized.
37:16
When we win a new contract, most likely there's there's people
37:20
there who are already doing the work.
37:23
So our first, first obligation is to offer those people their
37:29
jobs if they want to continue doing the work they're doing in
37:32
the place they're doing it, just to different companies signing
37:35
their checks. So we usually hire most of the
37:38
incumbent staff. And then we have to be in a
37:41
position to be able to backfill any of those people that are not
37:45
willing to, you know, stick around.
37:49
So yeah, they become our employees, their W2 employees,
37:54
they sit on our payroll, they get our benefits, they get our
37:57
PTO, everything. Yeah.
37:59
Is it hard for you to fill some of these roles sometimes?
38:04
Oh, yeah, there's been, there's, there's been some challenges.
38:07
Some of the contracts we have are very specialized and you got
38:11
to find that needle in a haystack.
38:13
Just finding people that are willing to do certain jobs and
38:16
go to hostile environments like Iraq and 2007 and 8.
38:22
You know, not everybody wants to go to a war zone.
38:25
No, no, let's I, I think one of the questions that that I sort
38:32
of had as I was doing a little pre research here in this, I, I
38:36
think I can sort of guess the answer, but I'd like to hear it
38:38
from you is, you know, you're dealing with big government
38:40
agencies, big military operations.
38:43
You know, why aren't they just going out and finding folks
38:45
themselves like they've, you know, hired lots and lots of
38:49
people during the course of their time, Like they, they have
38:52
certainly an infrastructure for that.
38:53
What? What brings them to SSI to have
38:56
you sort of? Fill in well, the government for
39:01
many years they have hiring freezes.
39:03
You know when the when the government, you know, you've
39:05
heard the expression or the saying, you know once you work
39:09
for the government, you'll never leave or you can't leave.
39:11
They can't fire you. There's all the, so when the
39:13
government hires someone, they've got them for 20 plus
39:17
years, they've got their pension or whatever you call it, their
39:21
retirement and the benefits. It's just it costs an
39:25
unbelievable amount of money to hire someone.
39:28
When they hire a contractor, if the contract ends, those people
39:33
are gone. Government washes their hands.
39:36
That's it. If they don't like a contractor,
39:40
like I'll give you an example we had to do, we had to provide
39:44
linguists of a certain language out in California.
39:48
We hired them, we won the contract and the government
39:51
called us up three weeks later. They said, hey, these linguists
39:54
are not doing a great job. And I said to the the customer,
39:58
I said, no problem, I'll get you two other not linguists.
40:01
I'm sorry, language instructors. I said, I'll get you two other
40:04
language instructors. I flew in these two other
40:06
language instructors from other locations.
40:09
Put them in a hotel, paid their per diem, got them a rent a car.
40:12
Government called me back a week later.
40:15
These instructors are the best we have ever seen.
40:19
Next time we bid on this, make sure you put these instructors
40:22
in there. And I told the customer, I said,
40:25
Sir, this is a competitive bid. Next time I bid, you know, I'm
40:29
not looking to recoup what I've already spent, but to keep them
40:33
in these hotels, it's going to cost a lot of money.
40:37
And you're the, the, the competition was LPTA low price,
40:40
technically acceptable. So the government basically
40:43
picks the lowest price and if it's technically acceptable,
40:47
they give the award. It was a competitive bid.
40:50
And I said to him, I'm not going to be the lowest price.
40:53
I'm, you know, I can give you these instructors all day long,
40:56
but it's going to cost a lot more money just because I have
40:58
to pay these expenses. He said, don't worry, I'm going
41:01
to evaluate according to the resumes and you make sure these
41:07
resumes are in your proposal and just, you know, give me a fair
41:12
price. And all I did is give them the
41:14
exact same price and just added the cost of the hotel and the
41:19
per diem and the rent a car. And we ended up winning.
41:21
And the other three companies that we were competing against
41:23
were much lower in price. But one of the companies
41:26
actually submitted the resumes of the two instructors that the
41:29
government got rid of. OK, so they were out.
41:34
Yeah. So, you know, it's you, you,
41:37
you, you got to take care of the customer.
41:39
You got to do what's right, you know, and it it comes back to
41:42
you because they get sick and tired of dealing with
41:45
contractors that don't perform. So I'm sure when people find out
41:50
what you do, they're always eager to hear the stories that
41:53
you're actually not allowed to tell, right.
41:55
You know, Oh, just tell me. I, I would love to hear some
41:57
good secrets. I'm not going to ask that
41:59
question, but tell us about something that you are allowed
42:03
to talk about that would blow our minds.
42:05
That would just fascinate people.
42:06
Some interesting. Pick one, pick two projects that
42:09
that sort of fall into that category.
42:13
All right. In 2009, the government gave us
42:15
the contract, as I mentioned, for Navy SEAL instructors, it's
42:18
called BUDS, and they gave me the contract.
42:21
They had a budget in mind and they had 10 positions that they
42:26
needed filled. My sister and I were still
42:31
working out of our house, out of her house at the time.
42:34
We had very little overhead. So I went back, I went back to
42:37
the customer. I said, hey, listen, how would
42:40
you like 11 instructors instead of 10?
42:44
She said, what do you mean? I said, look, I'm a small
42:47
company. I have low overhead.
42:48
I can't charge you a lot of money.
42:51
I'm going to get it. I'm going to get audited one day
42:53
by DCAA, which is Defense Contract Audit Agency.
42:57
They audit every DoD contractor to make sure the government's
43:02
not getting screwed over. I said one day, I'll get audited
43:06
by then. And they're, you know, they're
43:09
going to say I'm charging you a lot of money.
43:11
If I charge you what I can charge you for these 10
43:13
instructors, your budget is going to be much lower and
43:17
you're going to lose that money next year.
43:20
I said I can give you an 11th instructor and still stay within
43:23
your budget. She's like, are you freaking
43:26
kidding me? You're giving me more than what
43:28
I asked for. Well, you know, US SOCOM has,
43:35
you know, a little more than 4 branches, but there's really 4
43:38
main branches, NSW Navy Special Warfare, USASAK, which is U.S.
43:43
Army Special Operations Command, AFSOC Air Force Special
43:47
Operations Command and MARSOC which is the Marine Special
43:50
Operations Command. Well, that story that I gave her
43:55
an extra instructor, that story went from NSW and Navy Special
43:59
Warfare to US SOCOM headquarters.
44:04
And eventually I'm getting calls from AFSOC, MARSOC, they all
44:07
want to do business with us. And they're like, this is an
44:10
honest contractor. You know, we like this guy.
44:13
And you know, we did more work with US SOCOM, this is a long
44:18
time ago than probably any other agency we've ever worked with.
44:23
I mean, that's the good old boys network and we were never one of
44:26
the good old boys, but. I love that story.
44:28
I mean, it was just you. You bent over backwards to to go
44:33
above and beyond you. You had this creative thought
44:35
process, this creative solution that helps you, helps them, and
44:40
it just cemented this relationship that carried on
44:43
into much bigger things down the road.
44:45
I love that. You got another good one for us.
44:53
All right. We did a training mission at
44:56
Fort Polk, Louisiana. The government needed twenty
44:59
role players, paramilitary role players from another country.
45:04
We provided the role players. They needed 10U20 uniforms and
45:11
10 helmets. So the day of the the day before
45:15
the mission, the government called me up.
45:16
They say, hey, we're missing 10 helmets.
45:20
And I said, what do you mean? They said we only have 10
45:22
helmets. I got 20 guys.
45:24
What am I going to do with 10 guys without helmets?
45:27
And I said, Sir, the solicitation set required
45:30
requested only 10 helmets. He goes show it to me.
45:35
I emailed it to him. He looked it up.
45:38
He said a few choice words. He was pissed that the
45:41
solicitation went out wrong. I said, Sir, don't worry about
45:44
it, I'll order you 10 more helmets.
45:46
I'll have them overnighted to you.
45:48
He goes, I don't have time to go through contracting, mission
45:51
starts tomorrow night. I said, Sir, I'm not going to go
45:54
through contracting. I'm paying for these out of my
45:56
pocket. I'd rather pay for this out of
45:58
my pocket and have my guys working than 10 guys sitting
46:01
around twiddling their thumbs. And I said I just need you to
46:06
give me a because mailing to a military base is not an easy
46:09
task. I said you got to give me a good
46:12
address where these can be delivered.
46:14
And so I sent it to him. This guy wrote us a gleaming
46:17
letter saying the government doesn't always do things right,
46:20
but this contractor feels our pain and gets us.
46:26
And he delivered for us exactly what we needed.
46:28
Another customer which I can cannot even mention was sending
46:34
instructors to a foreign country.
46:36
The problem with the contractor he used to work with, they would
46:40
expect the instructors to pay their way in that foreign
46:44
country and then come back and fill out an expense report and
46:47
get reimbursed with the receipts.
46:50
This particular customer asked me, is there any way you can
46:53
give these guys money upfront? I said, Sir, with your approval,
46:58
I could do almost anything. I said that's not a problem.
47:01
I said as long as they keep all their receipts and they know
47:05
they're, they're only getting reimbursed for what they have
47:07
receipts for. I said, I don't mind fronting
47:09
them the money. If there's receipts missing,
47:11
it's coming out of their pay. So they signed a letter saying,
47:15
I understand, you know, these are the stipulations.
47:18
And we fronted these folks like $15,000 because they had to pay
47:22
for their hotel, their food, their rent, a car for a month at
47:25
a time in in foreign countries customer, I mean, just was
47:32
tickled pink and gave us word for many years.
47:35
I think, I mean, you shared several stories in this
47:37
interview that are just great examples of just doing the right
47:41
thing. It's going to cost you some
47:44
money out of pocket. It's going to, you're going to
47:45
risk some money out of pocket, you know, with prepaying these
47:48
folks, but you're making the customer happy.
47:51
You're forging that long term relationship.
47:53
You're showing them I'm a guy that you can work with.
47:56
I'm not going to be super rigid and in the box.
47:58
I want to do what's good for you and I want to help you, and that
48:02
pays dividends for you down the road as well.
48:05
It's customer service one O 1. Just because it's the government
48:09
doesn't mean the government doesn't deserve customer
48:11
service. I had a customer call me on a
48:13
Sunday and I was driving with my wife and my kids and I pick up
48:19
the phone and she says to me, what are you doing answering the
48:23
phone on a Sunday? You should be with your family.
48:26
And I said, Lieutenant Commander, I am with my family
48:29
and you called me. So I answered the phone.
48:32
I said, what are you doing in the office on a Sunday?
48:34
She says, I just don't have enough time to get all my work
48:37
done Monday through Friday. I come in, there's peace and
48:39
quiet. I could catch up with all my
48:41
work. I said, look, you're my
48:43
customer. You call me, I'm going to
48:45
answer. I don't care what time of day it
48:46
is. And I said, everyone say hello
48:49
to Lieutenant Commander. My kids all said, hi, Lieutenant
48:51
Commander. She got the biggest kick out of
48:53
that. You know, the government,
48:55
they're human being is just like, we're human beings, you
48:58
know, just treat them like you would treat any other customer.
49:01
Some people have just this mindset that, oh, the
49:04
government's evil and the government's this.
49:06
I'm like, they're your customer, you better treat them right.
49:10
I want to shift gears for a second, Vishar.
49:12
I'd like to ask this question of all my guests.
49:15
I want to hear about a particular challenge, either
49:17
something personal or professional that you went
49:19
through, and then some of the lessons that you learned coming
49:22
out the other side. Personal challenge.
49:28
When I was 11 years old, I lost my eyesight and my left eye and
49:35
the eye just went completely black.
49:38
I went and I told my mom, I'm like, I can't see anything.
49:40
It's all black. They took me to the doctor,
49:43
doctor or the emergency room. The emergency room took me, sent
49:46
me to a specialist. The specialist sent me to Johns
49:48
Hopkins University in Baltimore and the doctor I met there, he
49:55
said we need to operate on him immediately.
49:58
My first eye surgery was 11 hours.
50:01
I'm sorry, 9 1/2 hours long and my retina was detached.
50:06
Just got 65% of my retina torn away.
50:09
So they pieced it back together. You know, I don't have the
50:12
greatest eyesight in the world. I still don't see that well out
50:15
of my left eye. I see light and like, you know,
50:18
take a old camera with a film, take out the film, cut it up,
50:22
cut away 65% of it, crumple it, put it back together, put it
50:26
back in the camera and take a picture.
50:28
That's what I see. All right.
50:32
And everyone always, you know, oh, are you OK?
50:34
And I'm like, hey, you know, I accept whatever God throws my
50:38
way and I just keep moving on and see in my out of my right
50:42
eye. So it works every time.
50:45
I have to get a driver's license.
50:46
I do have to go to a doctor. They have to sign off on it and
50:49
everything. But that's really the only
50:51
challenge. But I think it's made me a
50:54
better person today because of that one quick story.
50:59
When I was in the hospital, they say when you lose one of your
51:01
senses, the other senses make up for it.
51:06
Well, when they did the surgery, they patched both my eyes.
51:10
I had both eyes patched up for two weeks straight.
51:13
And when nurses used to come in, I used to greet the nurses.
51:17
They're like, Bashar, how do you know it's me?
51:19
I said I could tell by your walk and I could tell by the smell of
51:22
your perfume. So, you know, it gave me an
51:26
appreciation for all, all my senses and you know, so OK, so
51:35
that's a personal. Story yeah.
51:36
So at this point in your life, you've kind of gotten used to
51:38
that, right? You you've had this limited
51:41
eyesight, your left eye for so long, you've compensated for it.
51:44
But what was that like as a kid, first adjusting to life with an
51:49
eye that was only working partially?
51:53
It was just, I don't know, not a big deal.
51:56
I never I, I don't dwell on things.
51:59
I mean, I, I just, that's just my personality.
52:02
I don't, you know, like I said, and I don't wanna, I'm not gonna
52:05
keep bringing this up, but I just trust in God and I keep
52:07
moving forward and I don't, I don't let things upset me.
52:10
Everyone in the office, they're like, how are you always in a
52:12
good mood, in a positive mood? I'm like, I woke up breathing.
52:15
How bad could it be? You know, I love that so.
52:20
But yeah, you know, I maybe that wasn't a good story because it
52:25
wasn't all. I mean, it was challenging.
52:27
Like right now, if you see me driving down the road, most
52:30
likely I'm in the left lane because I don't have to worry
52:32
about traffic on my left that I don't see.
52:35
I'm more comfortable driving in the left lane because my right
52:37
eye sees my peripheral to the right.
52:40
I can see everything on the road.
52:42
If I drive in the right lane, I'm not seeing much of the road
52:45
because the I can't see traffic on my left.
52:47
I have to literally turn to look at my rear view mirror.
52:50
When I check my blind spot I got to turn like all the way around
52:53
so this eye can see all the way to the left, but you know.
52:59
I feel like you were getting ready to share another story
53:01
there where I where I kind of jumped and asked my question.
53:04
Let. Me.
53:08
Think of a story that has to do with work, challenges with work.
53:12
I mean, a good one might be when you guys almost went out of
53:14
business pretty early on. That had to be pretty scary.
53:20
Yeah, I went personally. My wife and I, we went into
53:24
debt, $80,000 on credit cards just to survive.
53:28
We went from making 850,000 in 2007 between the both of us to
53:34
making 54,000 2008 bills, houses, cars, whatever you know,
53:42
And my wife said how about we cash out our four O 1K and pay
53:46
off our credit card. I said Nope.
53:48
I said we'll pay off the credit cards.
53:49
We're not touching our retirement.
53:51
And you know, we, we not only we started making money in 2009, it
53:59
was very little, but our revenue went from 1 million to 4 million
54:04
to 9 to 15. This is year by year to 22 to 38
54:11
to 42. So there's a magazine called Inc
54:15
500, I'm sure you've heard of it.
54:17
It's the 500 fastest growing companies in the US.
54:20
We made the list. They, they look at the last
54:22
three years of your revenue, how much you've grown.
54:25
We made the list in 2013. We were #421 then we made the
54:32
Inc 500. It's hard to sustain.
54:34
That was over 1000% growth in three years.
54:37
So it's hard to sustain that kind of growth long term.
54:42
But we made the Ink 5000, the secondary list the next four
54:46
years in a row. So 13141516175 years in a row we
54:53
were in the magazine. So tell me a little bit more
54:57
about what that was like going through those lean years there
55:00
in the middle and maybe something that you sort of carry
55:04
with you today as a result of that.
55:11
You got to stay positive because you got to stop.
55:14
You got to keep moving forward. I mean, we could have given up
55:17
and closed, closed our doors and gone and gotten another job.
55:21
You know, that was the easy route.
55:24
The easy route isn't always the right route.
55:27
You know, we, I just, I stayed positive.
55:33
I kept calling. I didn't give up.
55:35
There was a lady that used to work with my sister before we
55:39
started the company. She was a recruiter and her goal
55:46
every single day was to make 100 phone calls.
55:51
Whatever the outcome was, she would not leave the office till
55:54
she made 100 phone calls. And after my sister left, she
55:59
was literally the, the most successful recruiter in the
56:03
company 'cause she just, you know, she was structured make my
56:09
100 phone calls. I can go home for the day.
56:12
Some of the days were, you know, duds.
56:14
Some of the days were incredibly successful.
56:17
But if you give up after 60 phone calls, then you don't know
56:21
which ones. You know, you don't know when
56:22
that yes is coming in. And you know, I, I kind of used
56:27
the same mentality when I was calling contract info.
56:29
I was trying to get some business.
56:32
I just, I just kept calling, smiling dull.
56:36
Where do you think this positivity comes from?
56:38
You're just born like this. Do you have good teachers
56:40
growing up? I had great teachers growing up.
56:45
My father died when I was three months old.
56:49
My mother never remarried and I was raised by my mother and my
56:53
aunt Surya, who is my father's sister and my father's family.
56:56
They obviously took us in and helped us and had incredibly
57:01
positive role models. I have a deep faith in my
57:05
religion. I'm Catholic, and I tell you
57:08
what, it's got me through every single day of my life.
57:11
You know, God looked out for me when I didn't look out for him.
57:17
That's my famous little note message.
57:20
I love that. Is there more to that?
57:22
God looked out for you when you didn't look out for Him.
57:26
Yeah, when I was, when I was 25 years old, I moved out of the
57:30
house. I moved down to Florida.
57:31
I lived the bachelor life in Florida for four years before I
57:35
got married. Thank God I never got involved
57:39
in drugs, but I used to go out with my friends, drinking at the
57:42
bar and driving home, which I think that I look back and I'm
57:45
like, how did I even get home? You know how stupid of I, how
57:49
stupid was I? And you know, God never I, I
57:53
never got into trouble, and God always looked out for me.
57:57
And you know, I look back today, you know, hindsight's 2020.
58:01
It's easy to see these things later on, but when you're going
58:04
through it, you don't recognize. But man, did he look out for me.
58:09
That's great. So where do you see SSI going
58:12
now? What's what's the future plans
58:14
for it? You know what we're going to,
58:17
we're going to win some more work and we're going to keep the
58:20
train going. I love what I do.
58:23
I mean, I've, I've done all kinds of different things in my
58:26
life. I was an Allstate insurance
58:28
agent. I used to own a beer and wine
58:29
store. I was a real estate agent.
58:31
I worked in the jewelry business, retail.
58:33
I've done all kinds of stuff. This is the only thing that I do
58:37
that I've done that I've enjoyed this much.
58:42
That's great. So, you know, and I'm, I'm 55
58:45
years old, I'm not ready to retire and just want to win some
58:49
more work and just keep the train going.
58:53
Bashar, I just have one more question for you today, but
58:56
before I ask it, I want to do 2 things for folks listening
58:59
today. If you like today's content,
59:01
please hit the like, subscribe or share button on your favorite
59:04
podcast app. Bashar, I also want to tell
59:06
people the best way to get in touch with you.
59:08
What would that be? You can go to our website,
59:12
groupssi.com. Feel free to give me a call.
59:17
Our phone number is on the website.
59:19
Ask for me, Bashar Haddad. I'm very open.
59:23
All my employees, the doors open.
59:25
They walk in whenever they want. I'm very accessible.
59:28
I've called companies where where I try to speak to the COO
59:32
or the CEO and the receptionist will say they're not taking
59:35
calls at this time. I take all my calls, people
59:38
reach me, the government reaches me on Sundays.
59:41
You know, this is what I do. I love what I do.
59:44
Anyway, you know, don't call me with a scam, please.
59:46
I don't have time for that. But if it's something
59:48
legitimate, I'd love to hear from.
59:51
You only scam free calls for Bashar folks.
59:54
All right, last question for you I'm.
59:55
Not the only one, yeah. Last question for you, Bashar.
1:00:00
I'm curious how you see your business or maybe the larger
1:00:03
industry that you're participating in evolving in the
1:00:06
next 5 years. What do you think the big
1:00:08
changes? Are that are coming?
1:00:12
That's a good question. I wish I would have had this one
1:00:15
beforehand. So the government does sometimes
1:00:20
make some mistakes, OK, when they put out solicitations, LPTA
1:00:24
low price, technically acceptable.
1:00:26
You know, the government buys products and the products could
1:00:29
be as small as a pencil or as big as a ship and they buy
1:00:33
services. Products are tangible.
1:00:36
You can you can compare them Services, different companies
1:00:40
provide different services. It's very difficult to put out a
1:00:44
solicitation for services on a LPTA basis.
1:00:48
Some companies provide the reason.
1:00:50
We got our blanket purchase agreement from USASAK, one of
1:00:54
the companies who was supporting them.
1:00:56
They were providing role players that just, they thought they
1:00:59
could just bring in actors. We brought in real people that
1:01:03
did the actual job. And you know, they would make a
1:01:08
lot more money because they'd bring in just college students.
1:01:10
OK, You got to act like an Afghani, whatever.
1:01:13
You got to act like this. And it's harder to act when you
1:01:16
don't know how to speak the language, You don't know what to
1:01:19
say. You don't know.
1:01:21
You know, you think you're given a script.
1:01:23
And there's no scripts in these missions.
1:01:26
But the government, I think has been burned several times with
1:01:30
low price, technically acceptable, and they're starting
1:01:33
to put more and more things out. Best of value, It's a trade off,
1:01:37
OK, The government will pay a little bit more to get exactly
1:01:40
what we want. We don't want the cheapest.
1:01:42
The cheapest is not good for the boots on the ground.
1:01:45
And that's really the most important thing that the guys
1:01:48
who get the training, the guys who need the mission, have the
1:01:51
mission sets. They get the training and the
1:01:53
service they need. Or they're going to go overseas
1:01:56
and they're not going to be prepared to deal with whatever
1:01:59
might come their way. And I, I, I, I hope the
1:02:03
government has learned that LPTA is not always the best solution.
1:02:09
Best value is is the best value for the government.
1:02:12
Do you see yourself bidding less on LPTA because you guys are
1:02:18
providing this kind of quality and it's hard for you to compete
1:02:20
on the price I. Don't think I'm going to bid
1:02:23
less. You know, when, when you're a
1:02:27
small company, you bid on whatever comes your way.
1:02:29
As we get bigger, we're a little more selective.
1:02:32
You know, what are the chances we're actually going to win who
1:02:34
the incumbent is. There's a lot of factors that go
1:02:36
into play when you're deciding on what to bid on, what not to
1:02:40
bid on. So I don't know if I would bid
1:02:43
less if it's work that we're confident in doing.
1:02:46
I, you know, I've told, I've told my old program manager, I
1:02:48
said, hey, I'll always give our competitor an opportunity to
1:02:52
fail. And one of the contracts we had,
1:02:57
it was a, a multi award IDIQ, which means they awarded to
1:03:01
three companies. Then all the task orders get
1:03:03
competed between these three companies.
1:03:05
We end up winning 50% of the task orders the first year, 80%
1:03:09
the second year, 100% of the task orders the third year.
1:03:12
So the other two companies, just, the government didn't want
1:03:15
to do business with them anymore because they couldn't deliver
1:03:17
what the government needed. So they didn't.
1:03:20
They, the government learned that they can't always go with
1:03:23
the lowest price. It's not just because it's the
1:03:25
lowest price. You're not getting exactly what
1:03:27
you want. Bashar, I want to be the first
1:03:30
one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story
1:03:33
with us today. I really appreciate it.
1:03:36
I certainly appreciate you reaching out to me and having me
1:03:38
on your program. Thank you very much for your
1:03:40
time and I look forward to talking to you soon.
1:03:44
All right, folks, that's another wrap on an episode of the
1:03:47
Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us
1:03:50
today.