[45] Selling a Product to Governments w/ Greg Berry

Hey, hey, this is the Productize Podcast. My name is Brian Castle. Thank you for tuning in today. You're going to hear my conversation with Greg Berry. He's the founder of munisibid.com. They are a marketplace for government organizations and agencies to sell their stuff like cars and trucks, police cars, educational equipment, furniture, electronics, lawn and leaf maintenance, just engines, electronics. I'm just scrolling through it here and I'm just seeing just about everything. It's amazing. Well, anyway, Greg has built this into a pretty impressive business. He's been at it for over 10 years here and has really grown just a really impressive operation. So we got into a lot of stuff. It's really interesting to hear Greg's story. He actually comes from a background in running and winning and serving in public office. And then that led into his kind of discovery of this major problem of all this stuff accumulating in government organizations and they're not really getting the full value for it. So that led to him starting Munisipid. But we really talked all about building products for and selling to governments. And I really picked his brain all about that, but also just what it's like to work inside government and the mentalities and the problems that they're facing that need to be solved one way or another. We talked about the inefficiencies and the— at least my frustrations with technology and how governments approach technology and maybe why they seem to be living in the Stone Age. Greg had some insight into that. But then really at the end of the day, I wanted to really understand aside from learning about Greg's story, how we can take some insights from this and actually build solutions and create inroads in selling to governments. That's actually an opportunity that most people, most entrepreneurs are not thinking about and this conversation really gave me a lot to think about. I'm sure it will do the same for you. So here you go. Without further ado, here's my conversation with Greg Berry. Enjoy. Okay, I'm here with Greg Berry. Greg, how's it going?

Ah, pretty good, man. How you doing?

Doing good.

Glad to be here.

Yeah, yeah. So I think it'll be interesting to kind of hear your story. You're of course the founder of Munisipid, which you'll tell us all about. But, you know, I think it'll be really interesting to hear just in general building products and selling products to governments of all shapes and sizes. I think that's, that's a topic that I haven't really heard talked about much until I heard you recently on the Tropical MBA podcast. So I invited you on here to maybe dive a bit deeper. So, uh, Greg, welcome. Why don't you tell us a bit about Municipid? Sure.

It's a, um, well, I started it way back in 2006, which I know makes me sound old at this point, but, um, It's gone— it's 11+ years have gone by pretty quick. Basically, and we can kind of get into the founding story in a little bit, but Munisipit is an online auction platform governments use to auction— governments and schools use to auction off vehicles, heavy equipment, tools, IT equipment, furniture, anything they could possibly think of that they no longer need. And in some small cases, things that they've confiscated to the public. So only government agencies can sell. And it's open to the public both in the United States and Canada. And by governments, we deal mostly with state and local level governments. So anything from the state level down, so states, counties, cities, you know, local municipalities, school districts, universities, water sewer authorities, transportation authorities, that sort of thing. So any, anything kind of sort of quasi-government related, we allow to sell on MuniciBid.

Very cool. And yeah, I mean, like when I'm browsing the site, like there is just so many different types of things up for sale, you know, like from cars to trucks to like electronic equipment, engines, like all, like I'm seeing a safe here. Like, um, I'm kind of curious, like who buys this stuff? Is it just consumers looking for deals or like who, or businesses or? Yeah.

So as you mentioned, it's pretty, it's a pretty big array of items that can be sold and I'm always surprised what pops up for sale. Um, you just never know. And quite frankly, how much things sell for. It seems like the weirder things, the more money they get. But, um, yeah, so, uh, you know, it started out in the beginning sort of the professional buyer who sort of knew about these government auctions, and now it's anyone really. So we've kind of done a good job of cutting out the middleman, which really increases the sale price of the item because it's going to the direct end user as opposed to a middleman that's, you know, kind of flipping it. Although we still have a bit of that. It kind of really depends on what the items are. Cool.

Can you give us like a sense of size here, like, and whether that's revenue or people or products or?

Yeah, so we, um, we serve going on to 2,500 government agencies and schools across the US. And, you know, really depending on their size determines how much they really have to sell, both in revenue and number of items, obviously. And we tend not to get into the revenue numbers too much just because we're privately held and, uh, have sort of a highly competitive landscape that we operate in. And so that's kind of an interesting story in itself, but we're continuing to grow. We're growing year over year and we're in our 11th year. In fact, we're going to have our best month ever again this month, which will be the 3rd time this year that we've surpassed that sort of best month ever record. So we're continuing to grow constantly and consistently, even in our 11th year going into our 12th year.

That's great. So, you know, just looking at this business kind of on the surface, if somebody just heard about it, I'm just seeing all these things that scream to me like this is a really, really just for someone like me, like an impossible business to start. First of all, I'm seeing it's a two-sided marketplace, which is like an uphill battle. You're selling to governments, which to me sounds like a big black box. I don't know how to crack the code there, which I'm hoping to pick your brain about. And then the other side of the marketplace is kind of selling to consumers and all different types of all walks of life here and so many different types of products. It's pretty impressive that you've been able to kind of put this all together.

Well, I guess the answer to, or kind of the reason that has all come together is sort of have a passion for this weird problem. So, it kind of drives getting us over some of these hurdles and challenges, the biggest of which is actually working and dealing with government. So, maybe it's probably best to kind of go into the story about how I started this.

Yeah. So, kind of take us back because like actually even way before that, like where did you come from before all this?

Sure. So, I really consider myself an entrepreneur for my entire life. I've just always kind of was into tinkering with things and obviously, the classic yard sale type or lemonade stand and going door-to-door selling magazines and doing whatever we need to do in high school or middle school even. And—

Up here in the Northeast, for me, it was going door-to-door doing snow shoveling in the winter.

Yep. Same deal. Definitely. Shoveled a lot of driveways in my time, mowed lawns and that sort of thing. But kind of going into more into high school, I had some pretty good opportunities that I took advantage of, including this mentorship apprenticeship program, which really gave me some valuable real-world experience that allowed me to get started at a pretty early age in the information technology industry. So in 11th grade, I had the opportunity to go work for a pharmaceutical company in their IT department. So this is back in '96. And I had an interest in computers since probably like '91 and '92, somewhere in there. My mom ran a help desk and my uncle was kind of a computer nerd who got me into it. And so it was very early on in the early '90s before the web. And so the internet was really around, but the web wasn't. And I'm not even sure I knew what the internet was at that point. I was 11 or 12. But just really, my mom would bring home books, computer books, and I would basically break the family computer and try to, you know, repair it. So anyway, I got— I had some great opportunities in high school where I went into this apprenticeship program, worked for a large pharmaceutical company in their IT department, and then I moved on to a small business kind of doing their IT stuff, you know, with respect to networking, computer repair, doing some stuff with servers. And then my naive self right out of high school, I decided I was going to start an IT company while I went to college. So this was like pre-Y2K. So this was '98 and there was a lot of opportunity with everyone freaking out about Y2K stuff. So I started this company, went to college kind of the same time. And then when I graduated college, I really decided to get serious about the business. Rearranged all my college classes so I can work during the day. So I was really building up a nice client base and then decided, all right, this is it for me. Like, you know, I'm doing this business. And long story short, I sold that in 2010 to focus on the growth of Munisipid, which I, again, I started in 2006. Wow.

So I guess let's just kind of like skip into Munisipid a bit. But like, how did you come across that problem? I mean, whether it— and it was the problem that people in government had all this stuff that they couldn't get rid of or that was the problem on the other side of the market where there were like buyers looking for this stuff that's kind of like going to waste in government?

Well, so in 2004, I ran for public office in the town basically I grew up in, which was a really interesting experience.

So let me try to understand that. So this was after college, but you're still running the IT business and you decided to run for office?

Yeah. So I was 24, 25 maybe when I was elected, which again, I think I might have been like the youngest person on council. I'm not sure, but it didn't matter. You know, I wanted to give back. I had an interest in getting involved and I ran two very competitive campaigns or, you know, election cycles and won. But when I got on council, you know, I started seeing all these problems, you know, just kind of as an entrepreneur and sort of a problem solver in general.

Actually, can I just stop real quick? Like, I'm just really curious about that because I haven't really Honestly, I haven't talked— I haven't spoken to many people who have run for office and held office, but yet it's something that I'm really— not for myself, but I'm just really interested in government and politics and all that kind of stuff. So like, and especially on the local level, I always feel like I'm so disconnected from my local government here. So what drove you to decide to run for office and what position was it?

So some of the people that I look to as sort of mentors were involved in government at all levels. I helped work on a federal campaign and then a state campaign just out of pure interest in politics, probably from watching The West Wing or something. So, I just got involved with it and really liked the process and liked the ability to get things done and get things moving. So, this position opened up after this guy who's been on council forever retired. So the position opened up, these mentors encouraged me to run.

And was it a big town?

A relatively large town, a population of about 30,000 or so. So pretty decent size, small town, and with a lot of media coverage for some reason. But I guess that's kind of a different story. So like you said, you really don't hear much about what goes on in your local town, but in our case, we had media coverage all the time for literally everything. But in any sense, so being an elected official is an interesting thing. I mean, I've learned so much in the 4 years that I did it, probably most of which was that I did not like being an elected official.

Yeah. Like, what is it like to work in public elected office? And like, how is that different from just working in the private sector or running your own business?

Well, I think there are a lot of similarities. I think the one thing with us, since we had so much attention was that it got weird just being out locally and people knowing you and always wanting to complain. No one really ever came up and said like, "Hey, I really like how the streets were plowed this morning." Right.

They only come to you with problems.

Right, right. But you kind of got used to that. I learned a lot of lessons with sort of managing media and understanding that process and working with constituents and with other counselors. We had a very divisive group of council people. And so you never knew what was going to happen from one meeting to the next. So it was just a really interesting process. Again, learned a ton about a lot of different things over the course of the 4 years that I did it, but a lot of similarities with respect to negotiating, teamwork, leadership, communication, those sorts of things.

The thing that I think about here is that running a business the last few years, I'm learning that it's just really truly all about solving problem after problem after problem. Like, first it's finding a problem to solve for customers, and then kind of once you establish that and build a business around that, then just building the business itself, you've got to solve day-to-day problems, big picture problems, all this kind of stuff. And like, in government, it really— at least, you know, what people would hope for is that government solves people's problems and solves, you know, the larger problems at play. And so how— like, can you speak a bit to that about like solving problems working within government versus solving problems as a business? I feel like that's a— obviously these days I know there's a ton of frustration out there with government in general, but I feel like that's one of the biggest things is I could look to all these problems out there and I know what the logical solution is. I could see the set of facts, but the problems aren't being solved, or at least that's the general— How does that play out?

[Speaker:SHAWN_BILLINGTON] Yeah. I mean, I think you hit the nail on the head. I mean, so every month in our meetings, so we had— Basically, we had 2 meetings a month. We had one that was considered a work session and then 2 where we actually voted on the agenda items, which was always kind of a circus because we had public comment and TV cameras and this and that. And really everything was a problem. You know, every month we had a list of agenda items, which all, you know, was just a bunch of problems that we had to solve. And within those agenda items were problems. And then we had to negotiate and deal with, you know, working with people's personal or political agendas mixed in. So it, you know, that's where it kind of differs with running a business. Than running a town council.

Yeah. I guess with a business, you can just go straight to the best, most efficient solution.

Correct.

Whereas in government, there's just so many different stakeholders, I guess.

Definitely. And so, one of these problems that I saw, which is how I got started with Municibid or came up with the idea for Municibid, was that we were selling stuff like old police cars and equipment and that sort of thing for nothing. And so we'd sell an old police car for $300 that had a Blue Book value of $3,000. And I'm like, "Why aren't we getting $3,000?" And the reason was that no one knew the stuff was for sale because all we legally had to do was put an ad in the local classified paper or section of the local paper. And of course, no one sees that. And then the process to bid requires you to come down to the borough hall, fill out a bunch of paperwork, and it just wasn't convenient at all. And it scared away just normal people that, you know, even if they would know about it. And then of course, the next agenda item, we would be struggling to come up with $1,000 to fund the police or something, you know? And we just gave away, you know, $2,000, the agenda item before, for, you know, for no good reason. So I started noticing that a lot of towns were having the same problem. And I'm like, why aren't these towns selling online? And at least for Pennsylvania at the time, They had just, the state just had made electronic bidding legal. So it was kind of timely being in 2006, you know, for kind of seeing this problem and then seeing what we can do about it. But also some of the other options like eBay, you know, like why aren't we selling on eBay? And that really came down to cost, to customer service and compliance with respect to working with them. The cost was just kind of prohibited for the type of items that the boroughs were selling. The customer service aspect was really the major part because no one at eBay is going to handhold the government agency's hand to list these items and deal with people and that sort of thing. And then really the compliance issue with respect to transparency and open government and that sort of thing.

It's interesting. It sounds like part of the problem there, as you saw it, was that just like— this obviously needs to get done. Somebody needs to take care of listing these items and selling them and finding buyers for them, but nobody in these government organizations is is actually tasked with doing that or it's not really part of what they're there for, so it just doesn't get done.

[Speaker:SHAWN_BILLMAN] Yeah, I didn't recognize that as a challenge until a little bit further down the road. I mean, the biggest challenge was trying to get governments to try something new. So I've seen this problem in our town and then noticing that, you know, literally tens of thousands of governments across the country were having the same exact problem. You know, with my IT background, I put together the website, got some local municipalities to try it. And it worked so well that they thought there was something wrong. I remember one particular situation where the town was selling a Crown Victoria, an old police car, and it had a blown engine. And they were really just hoping to get a couple hundred dollars for it and really kind of get it out of their driveway, so to speak. And so they ended up selling it for $2,000 and they thought that there was a problem. And then there's no way someone's showing up with a check and taking this old police car away for $2,000 until the guy actually showed up with a check and took the car away.

And he gets to ride a cop car around now.

Exactly. They do, they do remove the lights and sirens, so don't get any ideas. But in any case, so they were thrilled with, with that result, and obviously we took that result and they gave us a testimonial, and we kind of went to the next municipality and the next municipality, and then we had one municipality sell like 30 different things, all sold, all for more than they ever thought they would get. So they gave us a really nice testimony and we took that on the road and really just kind of built like that. It was a kind of a snowball effect. And now we're adding about 30, you know, 11 years later, we're adding about 30 agencies a month that come on pretty much without us even talking to them. Uh, so they're coming on through referrals from their neighbors and that sort of thing.

It's amazing.

Yeah, early on with what you were saying about, you know, the person in the, you know, in the government, was there that person? And yeah, they're, you know, typically, actually a lot of them thought it was fun to do.

Yeah. Once they see that it's working, it's—

Yeah. And they, you know, they see that it's easy and, you know, as easy as it was then, it's even easier now. We like to say it's surprisingly simple. And that was the challenge is to get governments to try something new. You know, a lot of them, you know, this is the kind of the famous saying is, you know, this is the way we've always done it. And with that mentality, it's very tough to get through to them to show them a better way because in their mind, change could equal headaches or more work.

Yeah. You know, it's like that— I could see that mentality of this is how we've always done it. So I mean, like in a minute, I want to really pick your brain about how you went about selling to governments early on and how you continue to do it, maybe how we could do it as entrepreneurs. But just sticking with that idea of like this is how we've always done it, I am curious about this This is such a frustration for me and I'm sure so many other people listening, especially at least here in the US, that dealing with just tech in government. The other day I had to go onto a state government website and deal with a payroll tax for an employee in a different state. I mean, the website was just archaic. I mean, we've all seen these things, right? Oh yeah. The thing wasn't working and I couldn't figure out just a simple way to basically see my payment history. What have I paid in the last year? And I click on the help link. It launches this browser popup and it's— okay, I'm not even joking here.

It's—

I know what you're going to say. It's telling— it's giving me instructions on how to use the computer mouse to navigate the form fields and then use the keyboard to type my answers into text fields. Like, it's— that's the help section. And I'm like, are you— this is 2017. Like, how am I even looking at this on a screen here? And it's insane, you know? And I'm, I'm just thinking like, how does that happen? How can And this is a website that serves just thousands and thousands of businesses every single day. It's not like just an obscure thing that has no user base. This is like— that's insane to me. And believe me, like, I tend to fall on the left-leaning side of things, but when I see how inept government can be at implementing just the most basic tech, you know, it's tough.

Just imagine being in it on a daily basis. I won't say which state it is, but there's a state that has their vendor portal. So like if you want to do business with the state, you have to like register and that sort of thing. And in order to go through one part of the process, which is required if you're going to work with the state, it literally pops up and says Internet Explorer 6.0 is required to go to this website. Like I have a screenshot of it and all. It's outrageous. But so, you know, those are the challenges to work with government. You know, it's another one of those things where the challenge of Government is the opportunity. And so if you can kind of navigate your way through that, in the end, you can have a nice business, but you're going to deal with just the government's moving at a snail's pace. They're 10 to 20 years, literally, I'm not even joking, on the technology side behind, 10 to 20 years behind on that. Some people, depending on who you're dealing with, have a, "It's not my money" mentality. So even though here at MunicipalBid, we're increasing their revenue on these items, in some cases by thousands of percent more, if they perceive it, if that particular individual perceives a change to give them, cause them more work or whatever, doesn't matter how much more money we're saving or returning to the government.

[Speaker:TREY_LOCKERBIE] It's incredible to me because so many of us who run these small online businesses, little apps, we would kill to have 10x or 100x the user base of what we have now. Government websites, even just the local town website, but you think about, you know, just these massive federal government websites, I mean, millions of users. That's such an opportunity for some state-of-the-art tech and user experience engineers to come in and really build something great, but, you know, and we're left with these completely outdated systems that cause all these extra problems.

And it's— Well, one of the challenges of dealing with government of many is the requirements that they have in order to work with them. So if you're a company, let's say less than 5 years old, you might be disqualified from even, even considering you. There's a lot of requirements, you know, in our business. We, you know, even though, I mean, we've been around for 11 years, thankfully, because sometimes the requirement, you know, even though we have a superior product and utilize latest technologies and super efficient and easy to use and a great user experience, if we weren't around for more than 5 years, we wouldn't even have an opportunity to be considered. So, a lot of these governments have this 5-year requirement. You must be in business for 5 years. And so, a lot of young companies have a lot of trouble getting started and getting traction with government because of these sort of outdated requirements.

[Speaker:TREY_LOCKERBIE] And one thing that I— not to just keep kind of listing out my frustrations here, but maybe this actually relates to how you sell to different agencies or go from agency to agency. I mean, one thing clearly that I just notice all the time is that at least at the state level, these different agencies do not talk to each other, both the people and the tech, right? The websites do not sync, the records do not sync. I have 3 different logins for the state of West Virginia because I had one employee there once. And then I call up the unemployment insurance and they're like, "Oh, you have to talk to the Department of Revenue. That's a different phone number." Nobody's talking to each other, right? So I guess the question that I have is how much of that Do you see, like, if you sell, let's say, to a local, to like a board of education, does that tend to come in the same sales package as the, you know, the police department in that same town? Are they completely separate? And like, how do you kind of go kind of navigate that?

I hate to say it, but it really does depend on the larger agency itself. So we, what we kind of do is we look at it as not really an agency in total. We look at individual job titles. So we have 5 job titles that we, or roles, I'll say, that we typically target, which is typically the administrator or town manager or a business administrator in a school, a director of purchasing, director of public works, police chief, and fire chief. Those are generally the people that we sort of talk to. And with that, we have different messages for those people because they kind of have different agendas. So we really try to match up our content, our sales material, let's say, to each of those job roles. And in government, I will say that a lot of times the employees are wearing a lot of different hats. So they're doing a bunch of different jobs and more and more as budgets are cut, they're continuing to have to do more. So, you know, you really have to keep that in mind when you're working with these governments.

It's interesting that you pointed out about figuring out what each of those individual people's goal is or their incentive or the things that they're faced with. I'm sure for every one of those positions, it's completely different. I mean, as a business selling to the private sector or selling to businesses, it is kind of the same thing about figuring out what's the customer's agenda, but selling to governments, I'm sure that agenda is probably much more complex.

Well, it definitely is. So for example, let's say we talk with the public works guy. Who really just wants to get the stuff out of there so he has room to, you know, wants to get his equipment out of there so he has more room to put the new equipment. And then you have the purchasing person who wants to make sure they get the most money for, you know, for their items. And then you have the administrator who just wants to make sure that it's efficient and everything's above board and everything's working correctly. So then once you have all that, like, let's say you have all three of those on board, then in some cases it needs to go to the governing body for them to vote. So then there's a whole other debate and we see it sometimes more in the smaller agencies where they start getting into a debate because Bobby has a friend, his friend Joe down the street is an auctioneer or something. So we kind of deal with that local level stuff, but the decision by committee can also get in your way as you work into selling the governments.

Right. So from a marketing perspective for municipate, I guess starting from the early days and then kind of progressing into more recent years, what have been some of the biggest strategies or turning points that have really kind of moved the needle for you guys?

Well, it's evolved for sure. So early on, it was whatever we had to do to get the word out. So if I had to drive to one town to the next and either talk to someone or leave our paperwork or ask for referrals from the people that had success to then doing direct mail, which by the way, direct mail still is probably our number one marketing channel for getting government on board. And then also conferences. So we would exhibit at conferences, in some cases speak at conferences, and then do advertising in local public— or not local publications, but industry publications, state organizations, things that municipalities or government agencies are involved in.

Is the fact that by their nature they are public agencies and these are public officials, does that make them more accessible to go network with them and build those inroads than some other market?

Definitely. So because they're public and all their information is out there, and again, we really don't market to elected officials directly. We market to the people that are inside, you know, the employees of government. And the reason we do that is just simply because, one, we don't want to be involved in the politics of it. And two, you know, those people change all the time where typically the internal employees sort of stay even if regimes change or whatever. But kind of going back to the previous question with respect to marketing, early on, it was all about the trade shows. So literally, I would go to as many trade shows as I can and exhibit there and stand out in the middle of the aisle and literally drag people over to the booth and ask them if they've heard about us. And if not, here's what we're doing and here's some people that you might know that are using it. And just a little bit more of an aggressive technique. Now, most of our growth is from referrals and direct mail, and I'll say outbound marketing.

Interesting. So you just touched on your marketing efforts. What about the sales process? I mean, you mentioned decision by committee. Is it a lengthy sales process to get them on board, and how have you managed that? And what's unique about that in selling to government?

So the bigger agencies, the larger cities, state departments, counties, they tend to go through a request for proposal, RFP process, and that is a little bit more of a structured thing. So, you know, we have competitors, so, you know, we all submit our proposals in response to the, to this request for proposals, and then they, they go through a process of evaluating them, maybe having us come in to to interview us, but it's not really so much of a sales process. We don't have a sales team in the sense that one might think of a sales team like dialing for dollars, knocking down doors, that sort of thing. One, we found it just not to be super effective. We have some other business development strategies that we utilize that are much more effective with respect to cold and warm emails, follow-ups, demos, that sort of thing. So kind of the old school cold calling approach just doesn't work with these governments, mostly because the people that we're targeting are extremely busy and really don't like that, don't like to be bothered, don't like, you know, salespeople in general. So with the larger opportunities, the RFP process, that, that could take anywhere from 2 months to a year. We're working on an opportunity right now where we submitted a proposal in June and we're finally now Even though we were, we were notified that we were in the running and we were invited to come meet with them, we still haven't met with them. They've been running into delays and it just is what happens. So finally, in the next couple weeks, we'll be meeting with them. So that's, that's a scenario where it's 6 months. Now it could be longer and we just don't really know about it. But like I said, for the most part, I would say for 80% of our growth, as far as new agencies coming on board, they just come on board without us ever talking with them. We make the onboarding process super simple. And so they hear about it from their neighbors and they log, you know, go onto the site, register, and we get them onboarded.

Yeah, actually, that was going to be my next question was like, I guess making the sale for you is getting them to list some items on MunicipBid, right?

Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the way we look at sort of an activated user. So, you know, we have, you know, these governments will come on and register, but they may never sell anything. So we have a process that we keep in touch. To try to encourage them to list their items. And sometimes they're gung-ho about it and then they get busy with something else or they forget about us or they might just be interested in seeing sort of what the backend looks like.

Do you have any sort of like service that goes on like done for you or concierge to get your stuff listed or is it more just kind of training or?

Yeah. So we offer that, but it's very rarely used. For one, the site is super easy for them to do it themselves. So they don't have to schedule or wait for us to come out. And we've, you know, sort of aggressively offered that to our customers and just not— they're just not interested. Now, in some cases, it's sort of a requirement. So we do do that. And the nice thing about that is we tend to get better listings because we have more experience with, you know, getting these items listed. As much as we help these governments along and, you know, show them best practices and that sort of thing. They just really want to get the items listed quickly. So then we review all the items when they come in and make sure that they look good and that they're set up for success.

Yeah. So I guess, you know, as we start to kind of wrap up here, like, what are some things that we can be thinking about? So let's say we're selling any sort of like productized service or a SaaS software or anything like that. What can we start to think about to maybe start to make inroads in selling to government if we've never really been involved in government before? Like, what would kind of be some some first steps to think about?

Yeah, I think if you really have an interest in going to sell to government, I think you really need to get an understanding of the terminology and vocabulary they use, like, you know, the RFP, the RFQ, understand sort of the contracting process and that sort of thing. And you can go on to pretty much any— I would maybe start at the state level or even a larger city because they have tons of resources available for that sort of thing.

It is unique in that way. You look at businesses and they're purposely— they don't share how they make buying decisions, but public governments, it's all right there. You just got to do the research and find their process right there.

Definitely. And I would take a look at a budget. Maybe I would search for a budget for a smaller town, like the size of the town I was on council for, somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 population, maybe a budget of $40 million or something like that, just to get an understanding of what they're buying and their income and their expenses. And that'll give you an opportunity and can give you some insight into opportunities.

And how about even just coming up with product ideas in general? Do you think just finding those pains and problems that government officials are dealing with, you really have to be on the inside or can an outsider somehow find these inefficiencies and go after them?

[Speaker:SHAWN_BILLINGTON] Yeah, I think you really need to think about the long term when you're selling to government. So if you're looking to make a quick buck off government, that's just not the opportunity. So when you're dealing with government, you're going to have to plan to be in it for the long haul, at least 3 to 5 years at minimum. And it could take you a year of research and understanding to figure out if there is even an opportunity. But there are tons of opportunities. Governments buy all kinds of things. So the federal level is kind of an entirely different animal, but they, they buy everything. Like 2 years ago, they bought $800,000 worth of pancakes. I think in 2015, they spent $3 million to study World of Warcraft, to give you an example. Just all kinds of different things that they, that they buy.

And I'm sure just tools like, like software tools just to— they're running jobs just like any other organizations are running jobs, right?

Yeah. So you can get an idea and honestly, you could just call and ask what these government agencies are using or look up some of the conferences, the government-related conferences and check out the vendors that are exhibiting. So each state has typically a conference for the municipalities. I was saying before we hopped on the call that I'm going to be up in Connecticut for Connecticut Conference of Municipalities. So, all the municipalities converge and there's a trade show with a ton of exhibitors from a wide range of offerings. But there's even opportunities that don't really exist right now, which I think are the big opportunities and obviously, ones with fewer competition. So, I mean, I just think from on a product side, there's opportunities for Sporting equipment and parks and rec, and then there's the packaged food and beverage on the services side. There's a ton of need for web design, for information product development, for initiatives that they're doing, translation services, that sort of thing, social media management, marketing. You know, there's just, there's so many, so many opportunities on that end. And that's even before you kind of get into the technical stuff. That they might not be truly considering, like maybe, you know, mobile app development or just, you know, mobile optimization. And as I said, translation services and that sort of thing. Absolutely.

I mean, just looking at it just from the outside looking in, there are so many inefficiencies like everywhere you look. And that's— that can mean opportunity.

But yeah, I mean, sorry to jump in there, but I think probably the biggest point to remember is when you're dealing with government, don't look at it as like this big monstrosity because in the end of the day, you're dealing with human beings. And I think probably the one thing, if there was one piece of knowledge I could share, is just make sure that they think they came up with your idea and not that you did. So, you know, especially if you're dealing with someone who's more publicly visible.

Makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And you're right. Like at the end of the day, all business, it's people selling to people trying to get a job done. So that's great. Well, Greg, thanks so much for doing this. I think it gave me a lot to think about. I'm sure the listeners will have a lot to think about from this one. So, of course, your business is at munisabid.com. We'll link it up on the show notes. Anywhere else people can connect with you?

Yeah, sure. They can connect with me pretty much anywhere at Greg M. as in Matthew Berry. And always happy to help or talk shop with respect to just, you know, sort of business in general or doing business with government. Happy to help out.

Awesome. Well, thanks, Greg.

Yeah, thank you, Brian. It's been a pleasure.

Hey, before you go, did you know that in my newsletter list there's a select group of folks who receive what I call my Friday notes emails? That's where I share some behind-the-scenes updates about the businesses that I'm working on in real time, some personal updates, and some tips. They're kind of a change of pace from the other stuff that I usually send out, and so my last Longtime subscribers really enjoy these emails. I get a lot of feedback on them. But if you're not getting them yet, you can actually get my next one by going to castjam.com/friday-notes. That's Friday-notes. I'll connect with you soon. Thanks for tuning in today.