The Hidden Playbook: How Top 1% Entrepreneurs Attract Mentors Worth Millions

surround yourself with the top people. And you could easily do that regardless of where you're at, regardless of where you start. If you surround yourself with the best of the best, okay, and you find a way to add value to them or to even have a big enough vision of some idea with how crazy it is that they can attach themselves to for the potential for it to be great or excellent. That's the biggest lesson I took away from those experiences.

Welcome to Big Hitters. I'm Larry Weidel, and this show is for people who are done playing small. Each week we break down what it actually takes to win at a high level— the decisions, the discipline, the adjustments that separate those who almost do it from those who do it. No theory, no fluff, just straight talk from someone who spent 50 years building winners. If you're serious about momentum, You're in the right place. Let's get into it. Hello everybody. We're talking today with Eric Coffey, who is currently in Washington, DC. And I think there's a reason for that, uh, that'll come out during the, uh, course of our interview. But hello, Eric.

How are you, Larry? I love your energy. Uh, you're already being cranked up, man.

Yeah. The thing is that, uh, You know, you have to wake people up before you can talk to them.

That sounds about right.

You know, the people got to know we're awake if they're going to pay attention to us.

That's all right. I like that. It's a good start. Well, I'm awake. You know, I'm wide awake. Okay.

Eric, you got a big story to tell, but why don't we go ahead and start off? Why are you in Washington, D.C. today?

Because I actually moved here last year when Trump won the presidency. I knew It was gonna be a lot of craziness and I wanted to be right in the middle of it. So I said that I could not watch this from far and still do what I did. I had to jump in right into the flame. So I, I came to the center of all of the, uh, epicenter of all the craziness and madness that the whole country is talking about every single day on every news channel all over the world. They're talking about Washington, DC.

And where'd you move from?

Florida.

You moved from, uh, you said Miami earlier?

Yeah, I was, I grew up in Miami, lived in Palm Beach my final 6 years. I was close to Trump back then as well. Well, I guess I'm following him around, Larry. You see, that's a pattern I guess I got. I was close to Mar-a-Lago, now I'm close to him in the White House.

Well, you were close to me too, because I'm right in Palm Beach.

I love Palm Beach. It's a beautiful place. It's gorgeous.

Where did you live over here?

Downtown Delray, baby. Smack dab in the middle of all the action, all the bars, restaurants, everything. It was in my backyard.

A lot of, uh, Marky Mark, uh, Mark Wahlberg has got a $45 million place there. Lots of energy all through South Florida, but you left that behind to go to Washington, D.C. Fortunately, uh, Trump has cleaned up the crime in town, so at least you can walk around town and not get killed.

I heard it was pretty rough before he got here, so I didn't see it, but I heard about it. I'm thankful for that.

So let's talk about what in the world you've done in your, your life, young man. You know what I, I've seen about your history is what you did was you started off like most people And kind of ran into some brick walls, but you figured a way through. You know, there's a lot of people out there right now listening that are frustrated in their career. They're wondering what to do, how to do it, but they know they're capable of bigger and better things. You were somebody who knew inside, I'm not like everybody else. You know, like we have a Big Hitter community, and I hate the word community, but we have a Big Hitter group. And that's where I do the bulk of my coaching. I do the podcasting, do a newsletter, and I do the bulk of my coaching anymore inside this group. But it's for people that you would relate to, Eric, the movers that you've always, without knowing you, I know you've been this way your entire life. Some of us, in spite of ourselves, whether it pays us to do it or not, whatever we get into, we wind up being the 20% that do 80% of the work. We don't necessarily always make 80% of the money, but there's something in us where we just cannot be around and see things that need to be done and not get in there and get it fixed and all. And I'm sure you grew up in situations where you looked around and said, people are not taking me as serious as the contribution I'm making here. Plus, I don't have a window up and out. And that's not acceptable for— when I was in construction, you're in construction, I've got a degree in building construction from Georgia Tech and built 100 houses in 4 years. I had to switch industries because oil embargo in the '70s got to the point where people couldn't get financing. And I said, I got to get in an industry where you don't have— work 80, 100 hours a week and you're not going to reach some point in the future where you're out on the street because of something you can't control like the oil embargo. OPEC was never inviting me to be one of their decision makers about the price of oil. You know what I'm saying? So in my 100-hour work weeks, I didn't need to worry about that. And so I had to find a different industry. And so You know, all of us, we go through those transition times, which could terrorize the crap out of you, especially if you got responsibilities. So you've lived that life and you're somebody, you are somebody who has found a way out. And one thing we want to make sure we talk about today is that website that you've got for small businesses. Why don't you give a little preview right now and hopefully we'll come back to that.

One thing, you hit everything on the head. So Larry, that's perfect. I appreciate that because yes, That is my story, right? My mom always said, you somehow, you're gonna, wherever you go, you're gonna find yourself in a leadership role, whether you want to be there or not. And let me tell you, that has been the true story. But the other part she said is you don't necessarily get compensated for that role. In fact, probably you're not gonna get compensated for the role. You're just gonna have all the responsibility and none of the profits to go with it. So I will agree with you wholeheartedly, but You know, Larry, I've been training small businesses for the last 7 years, um, through my different communities, my podcast, my YouTube, different platforms, and, um, helping them with teaching them how to do certain things. But now with all the tools out there, when we start this about 2 years ago, hiring engineers to start building us tools that were affordable for small businesses, because when I came into the space of government contracting, everyone says, Eric, you can't make money helping small businesses. There's no money there. Work with the big companies. That's where all the money's at. You know, the Deloites, the Accentures, the, the, the Boeings, they got all the money. Small businesses don't have money. So none of the products that help small businesses learn this industry, they weren't geared towards what actual small business could afford. And so the premier product in our industry costs anywhere from $15,000 to $50,000 or $60,000, $70,000 a year subscription. If you don't have any revenues, Larry, how can you pay a $15,000 subscription? And unfortunately, as I learned in doing government contracting, the government doesn't really make it the easiest to do business with them. So they're not putting out the best products either. They're free, but they're not easy to use. So, but unfortunately, that's what I had been teaching. So I've been working a couple years now to bring tools that small business can use that were very affordable, if not free, because I just believe that we need to help our country. We need to help grow our industrial base. So, um, I built a, a tool called Market Intelligence. It's on my website, govcontractgiants.com. It's free to sign up, and you get access to the same government database of all the contract opportunities And it costs you nothing.

And that's G-O-V-C-O-N Giants, right? Is that .org or .com?

.com. And it's, you can't miss it. It's right on the website to sign up. It costs you nothing. It's free. And what it does is, Larry, it walks you through it. Tell me what your business is. Explain to me your business. It will identify the appropriate codes to choose based on your business and then start sending you daily or weekly alerts with government contract opportunities For free.

Make this simple for me to understand because this is not my world. So basically you get in there and you can kind of get yourself on an alert feed. It's almost like if you were looking for a job, you'd say, I want these kind of jobs, send me, you know, whatever. But if you're looking for— so folks, if you're out there right now and you want to maybe expand your business, or maybe you've thought about getting in, you know, the government Contracts out all kinds of things, everything. And so the deal is you may be missing an opportunity you're perfect for just because of the complexity of it and just because of the time delay of going. You can imagine getting on the phone and calling the government, trying to get an answer to anything. You know what I'm saying? Even the post office, if you want to mail a package. Oh, sorry. You can't. But if you're trying to get something on a contract on a government thing where you're going to be able to get the forms, fill the forms out, and get paid during your lifetime to do it, you know, good luck. And so into the picture comes a young man named Eric Coffey. And so what are the kind— get people excited about the possibilities of things they would find on their website.

First of all, Larry, you don't have to be registered with the government to get these alerts because I'm, I'm the one that's bringing the alerts from the government and then distributing them out to you guys. So you don't even have to be registered to get them. You just have to sign up, put your email address in, and we'll start sending you the alerts automatically.

What are the kind of things that might entice people?

A painting contract to paint a wall, striping contract to stripe a parking lot, pressure washing. If you want to pressure wash a building for the government or pressure wash cars for the building, janitorial contract. To clean buildings. You have contracts to build buildings. You have contracts to repair buildings. You have contracts to deliver furniture. You have contracts to, um, again, when I think about one of my students who's recently on another podcast, she got up, found, identified a landscaping contract in another state. And then she, because she understood the contracting business that I, we trained her on, she was able to then identify a small business in that state that could do the contract. She won it and then hired them to do the actual work. So all these type of opportunities exist where you just being aware that they are out there, because most of the case, 99% of us don't even know these things exist. So you find it and you go, again, even if you just look at it, you don't have to do anything with it. You sign up, you look at it and you say, I wanna target whatever, medical supplies, whatever you wanna target. They will send out all the alerts for all of the opportunities that the government's putting in their website. You're gonna get all of them, and then you can decide if one's interested or not. You click it, it takes you to the actual FOIL, and then you can investigate to see if you have any interest in actually pursuing it. So it's all kind of things in there, Larry. They're, they're literally, I think right now in the database, there's over 10,000.

Wow.

So at any given day, there's over 10,000 bids federal government-wise in that system.

How long would it take for someone to, like, they bid, how long does it take to get a turnaround on that to find out if this could actually work out?

Most of the bids, the turnaround to find out are 30 days.

Really? So pretty quick turnaround.

Yeah. They're finding out in 30 days for most of them. Again, the majority of these are bids that the regular small business could do. Then you've got some, you know, much larger bids, which again, if a company has some substantial size and revenue, Then those bids take a little bit longer because again, they're, you know, they're probably over 7 figures. But majority of the bids are $100,000, $200,000 or less, $10,000, $20,000. Those things turn over fast.

What I'm thinking is like, if I'm out here, maybe I'm working, maybe I'm like working where you were when you would get started and say, I want out of this thing, but I don't know how to get out of this. You know, I need, I need some other income. I need to open some doors. You know, I need to expand my horizons some way, but to get in, to this thing and maybe pick up a couple of jobs. You don't have to do them yourself. You brought that up. You'd be like an agent. Like you go in there and you do the, you know, like a broker, you know, it's like somebody who's bringing in furniture from foreign countries into the United States, you know, or sending things out. You know, these are middlemen. You know, you could use this. You could be the middleman and still have your full-time job or your other occupation or your other business. And I would imagine once you get into this, you start getting comfortable with it and you start meeting people and other doors open up. Would that be too much to assume?

That's exactly the strategy that we teach people is that you go after an opportunity. Once you start making a relationship, because the government's risk-averse, they're scared, but once they trust you, they'll give you everything, Larry. I mean, they'll give you You, if you went in there and you cleaned up a sidewalk, next week you might be ordering pots and pans. The week after that, you might be delivering books. There's just no, they'll ask you, hey Larry, we've got this project, we can't find anybody. Are you interested? Yeah, sure. And if it's a certain dollar size, they can give you the contract without any other competition.

I'm visualizing this like when you're a homeowner and you have odd jobs. You know, I've been, in the last month or so, I've been, have property here, and I go back and forth to Aspen every 3 months. And so I've got to have property managers to keep things running for me, keep the housekeeper, keep the supplies, keep plumbing. Everything's breaking if you have any kind of property. And so it came time, I just had to change property managers, but I didn't know who else to get. So anyway, I've had first-class— I've gotten reintroduced to doing everything my own self. And the thing is that When you have a property, things are going to go wrong. Things are going to need to be maintained. They're going to have to be replaced. They're going to have to be bought, refreshed, painted, whatever. And so it's a lot like owning your own house or your own farm, and you need people to work on it. And if you find somebody, one of the great things is when you find somebody who could do multiple type projects for you, or they can find someone, become like a property manager.

No one says, I hate handyman. We love handyman. Like, oh, can you fix this? Can you fix that? Can you go do this? Do you have a friend who's a roofer? Can you recommend the AC guy?

Yeah. And by being the middleman, you can be somebody who gets paid to be a middleman and the government trusts you. They know you. They don't know all these other people, but it just seems like a great opportunity. So when you were growing up, what was it about you that caused— let's talk about how your decision-making kind of got you in this situation. You were on the way up in life. And what, what did your, your parents see in you that said you're going to be a leader? You know, what triggered that?

My mom always says that she was my chauffeur. You would sign up for things and I would just, just take you there from the time you were little. Mom says, I just drove him around. He signed up for these things. And, um, you know, so I don't know, I kind of had that in me since I was small, I guess, that, um, I wanted You know, more for myself. I wanted bigger things, but also, Larry, I was very competitive. So I've been competitive and, you know, I just always wanted to compete at the highest levels in anything that I did. I didn't know about government contracts, obviously, as a kid, but I wasn't gifted. I was in AP. I was, you know, I did all those trajectories, but I never, I competed in sports as well as education. And so for me, I just always had felt the need to compete.

So what kind of things other than sports projects? I mean, we understand that parents are always driving their kids to sports. What kind of things would attract your attention and all of a sudden you sign up for it? Mom's gonna take you over there.

I signed up gifted. So let's start there. In elementary school, I saw the kids were having extra computer time, right? I think this was around 2nd grade or 3rd grade.

2nd grade, they had got extra computer time?

Yeah, they had extra computer time. This is when they We had the old Macintosh computers with the little apple on it, and I think Steve Jobs gave it for free to all the public schools. Well, these kids had extra time. I don't know if it was 30 minutes an hour. And I asked my teacher, I said, well, how do these kids get extra time? And they said, oh, they're in gifted. I said, what's that? They said, you gotta pass this test. And I said, okay, how do I sign up? And I remember signing myself up and I said, mom, you gotta take me to this, take this test, apply for this gifted thing to see if I can get in so I can get some extra computer time. So that was the first memory that I had of signing myself up for something in elementary school.

You had your eyes lifted up and looking forward at what was around you. You know, I, at second grade, I don't think I was looking around for anything other than to go home and get a sandwich.

Keep this in mind, Larry, that while other kids maybe had computers at home, I did not. So I wanted to play with it as much as possible because it was like a, like a video game to us, right? It wasn't like a, a workhorse thing. It was there, you know, you're drawing on there, you're making characters. So it was more like a game to me. And I was like, oh, I wanna play that game more often.

Where'd you go to school?

I went to Cutler Ridge Elementary in Miami, and then I went to Richmond Middle and I went to Frank C. Martin. But yeah.

It comes time now, you're going to college, you're getting your education. Where'd you go?

But in middle school, I signed myself up for Zoo Magnet, so I spent half my time at school at Miami Metro Zoo, taking care of the animals as a part of a magnet program. But I'll say this, Larry, every kid that was in those programs excelled in life because they weren't just throwing you in class where you did book work all the time. This was like real life exploring and learning about like these huge beasts. And so it did become more of like science, right? Than it was, uh, we don't realize this 'cause we think we just sit you in front of books and make you read all the time, but. We learned by being in the environment with zookeepers teaching us about the animals, what they feed it, their diets, right? What makes it healthy, why they have to stand up and walk around. So all those kind of things to me shaped my life. So eventually I went to college, University of Florida, studied dual degree engineering. I became an engineer through degree, but not through practice.

Congratulations. You've taught me a new word, zoo magnet. I've never heard, I've been around the world, I've done a million different things. I've never heard zoo magnet, but Yeah. So that's good. It's good to know that exists.

It does. And Mr. Horgan was my Zoomagnet teacher, and he would bring in the class, our science class, okay, animals. So I got first introduced to a snapping turtle at Zoomagnet. By the way, I got first introduced to a nurse shark and gifted in elementary school because he— so me being in these classes got me these experiences that I just would—

you would—

regular kids did not get these. So My teacher, Mr. Horgan, he's passed away. He had an illness. But he would say, if you see a dead animal on the side of the road, call me. I want to pick up its skull. And he would go pick up the animal, clean it up, and then you'd bring the skull to school like 2 weeks later. I don't think they do that anymore to kids, but that was my upbringing. We had a snapping turtle in class. For people who don't know, if you touch it, it retracts its whole head back. Yeah.

Yeah.

And snaps. We had that in our classroom, meaning that if we were stupid enough to go up there and touch it, it would've bit our hands off. But they allowed us to have those things. We did woodshop. So, you know, they didn't tell us we can't climb up trees and, you know, all this kind of stuff. We had snapping turtles and sharks in classes.

It's funny you bring that up. I saw some of the short on YouTube of an animal thing. A hyena went up to a snapping turtle. It was, you know, Was on his face there. And then they went out and grabbed it by its tongue. I don't know how that ended, but it wasn't going to end well. The reason you did those things, had those kind of experiences, you were already— I mean, this just, folks, it is what it is. There are people that are 20 percenters that are going to do 80% of the work. They're going to— they're just more interested in life. I don't know if they have more energy. I don't know if it's— I don't even know. I don't know that it's necessarily intelligence, but it's just a curiosity. It's just a freedom, a confidence to go. And they, well, what are— and they're asking, they're asking questions. If you're a 20 percenter, it's like when I started the group, the Big Hitter Group, it's like, I don't want everybody. I don't want a bunch of dead, dull, disillusioned dimwits. Even if they can afford to get in, they're going to be the ones that complain. You know, when I was in financial services for— I've been in it since '75. And the thing is recruit and train and bring people in. And there's always a person in the room that says, Where's the meat? You know, when, when are we going to get the meat training? You know, it's like I said, like, we've been feeding you meat. You just never chew. You know what I'm saying? It's just like, you know, you're just gumming everything today. You know, you're just not getting into it. You're not taking advantage. We put, you know, it's just like you put something in front of someone. If they don't respond to it, they just don't have— you're looking for people. If you want to build your business, you build your network of friends. And you, and you want to be the kind of person You're looking for things, you're asking questions, you notice things, you look for the things that's, you know, I always look for the wow factor. In fact, on these, when I do guests, you know, have guests on my podcast, I have a wow list, you know, of achievements of people. You know, it's just like, what are the, you know, 3, 4, 5 wow things? Because you look for, you look for the wow, it sticks with you. The wow gets your attention. Everything else is humdrum. In life. And so the 20 percenters, like, you can get a kid in second grade, but he's got a little bit different spark. He's a little tougher. He's a little bit more curious. But when you are that way, which is, folks, if you're listening here, you are that kind of person, and you got to realize that that is your strength. And it may not have turned into anything for you yet, But it's that desire inside you that's driving you forward. And you got anybody that wants to put you down or belittle you, you know, you get on the couch with Jimmy Kimmel, you know, the Jimmy Kimmel, his whole life has been to get people on as guests, no matter how big they are, so he can make fun of them. So make himself seem important. You know, don't be so a put-down artist. You know what I'm saying? If you're around put-down artists that you like, get away from them. You need encouragers. You need someone like your mom. And, you know, I said, you know, you know, somebody who, who, who wants to be a part of the party that you're throwing or you're, you know, or you're trying to put together. What I'm talking about, there's a fine line between mediocrity and greatness, and you gotta stretch to get over that line and not let, you know, the, the situations you're in, the opportunities you've got, the people around you pull you back over the line. 'Cause that's what they want to do. They want to get you down in that goo with them. You come outta school, Now you come out of college, you got a degree in, what, EE?

Yeah, I started with EE and CE, and then I midway through changed to ISE.

You get out, what do you do? By the way, if you're still listening right now, you're different. You don't just consume content, you're actively looking for an edge. And that's who I build the Big Hitter Community for. Not people chasing motivation, people chasing momentum. Not theory, proximity. Proximity to operators who are actually in the arena making real decisions and winning at a high level. Inside Big Hitter, you get conversations we don't have on the podcast, direct access to people who build what you're trying to build in a room that holds you to a higher standard every single week. This isn't a hype group. It's not networking for the sake of networking. It's where serious people go to sharpen their thinking and compress their timeline. If you're done just listening and you're ready to be in the room where it actually happens, head to joinbighitters.com or click the link in the show notes. The right room changes everything. I'll see you inside.

Larry, everything you're saying about me is true. You must know me, man. While I was in college, I co-founded the Entrepreneurs Club at the University of Florida. Now imagine this huge prestigious university. One of the top in Florida and top in the Southeast. They didn't have an entrepreneurs club. And I go, wait, what about some of us who don't want to get a job and we want to go out and start businesses? Where's the training for that? And at the time they didn't have an entrepreneurs center. And so myself and 2 other guys started the entrepreneurs club at the University of Florida. After we started that, Larry, we started 2 companies. One flailed out, the second one did well. We raised capital. And so while in college, I had a startup company me that was worth a little bit over $1 million while I was in college.

Really?

Yeah. I had a board of advisors that consisted of one of the deans from the colleges, one of the most successful entrepreneurs, 2 of the most successful entrepreneurs in Gainesville were on both on my board and also first clients to give us money. And then we raised another, I think we raised about the time about $300,000. So I did that in college, Larry. I've been doing some stuff, Larry. I've been doing some stuff.

You know, you were getting your real education early on. And what, what did that prepare you to do and what did that set you up for once you got out?

So, you know, going back to what you said earlier, it taught me, Larry, to surround yourself with the top people. And you could easily do that regardless of where you're at, regardless of where you start. If you surround yourself with the best of the best, okay, and you find a way to add value to them or to even have a big enough vision of some idea, whether how crazy it is, that they can attach themselves to for the potential for it to be great or excellent. That's the biggest lesson I took away from those experiences is I, I was like, like you said, I felt like I was no one, right? When I first came to this huge, massive institution, 45,000 students, they relegated us to, you know, the, they wanted us to be like part of a fraternity or part of the, you know, the Black group or the Spanish group and like these things. And I started a group for entrepreneurs that again encompass what the 20 percenters, I didn't care what they looked like. I don't care if it was a male, female. I think I was looking for people who wanted to read resumes, not write resumes. And that was our slogan.

You exploded out of the university. What good happened to you as soon as you, your first year out?

I still have the company. So I had raised a bunch of money. I attached myself to a young entrepreneur who was 29, who was doing $40 million a year, and he was our first investor.

Wow.

$40 million.

A University of Florida graduate himself?

No, he was not a Florida graduate. He just happened to live in Gainesville, and that's where his business was based out of. So he had a big office. He hired a lot of college students who ran his office. They were basically reselling computer hardware, and he was our first investor, wrote us our first check. So it just gave me a lot of confidence that I could basically do anything. Um, so when I left, uh, unfortunately, um, my partner and I, we decide— I decided to leave the business because my partner, there's some, uh, personal issues. So I left the business. But you know what all the investors said, Larry? They go, Eric, if you wanna start again, we'll write more checks. Tell us your next idea. We're in. I'm like you, I'm in construction later on in life. And if you mess up a hole in the wall or a piece of tile or a piece of baseboard, Yeah. they wanna string you up. This venture that I walked away from, everyone says, call us again if you got another idea. So I learned there's 2 different worlds out here. Okay? No one was mad at me. I said, hey guys, you know, I'm gonna have to leave. I'm sorry about your investments. I'm sorry this thing didn't work out. My partner, he's got some other issues going on. I don't feel safe. I wanna leave the business. Eric, we understand. We support you. You're a great guy. We know you didn't do anything wrong. We didn't squander the money. They said, if you have another idea, call us up.

That might've been a negative that you ran into along the way, and people need to be aware. Part of learning is skills and this, that, and the other. But Eric, I've got a book I wanna write for graduating kids out of high school and mainly college, and it's Monsters You'll Meet in the World of Business. Sometimes they're your co-founders, but you know, the thing is we haven't seen the last Bernie Madoff. They come in every Kind of, you know, like Kathy Ireland, which I don't know if you know who she is. You know, she was a swim, you know, a Sports Illustrated swimsuit girl from like 20, 25 years ago. And then she went in and became a Martha Stewart type business entrepreneur person, built almost a half a billion dollar business. She was in the news. Her business manager stole $432 million from her. Cleaned her out. And the thing is that these people are out there and they all smile and they're funny and they're great looking and they're a lot of fun to be around while they're robbing you blind. You have to be aware things change and people change. Sometimes it's their fault, sometimes not their fault, but you don't have to sit there and put up with it. And you found yourself in that situation right off in college, right?

My friend says that we're in a jungle and there's lions and tigers and bears and monkeys. You got to get the monkey off your shoulder and either snakes. And he says, it's like walking through a jungle. You just don't know what you're gonna step on and what's gonna come out the woods and attack you. So that's the vivid imagery that I keep in my mind when approaching businesses. You know, I don't know what's next gonna attack me.

Let's kind of jump ahead because, you know, time's getting away from us. People would wonder, how do you scale multiple businesses from zero to multimillion-dollar Uh, revenue. How do you do that?

Surrounding myself with great people. I always, Larry, have been attached to people that were senior, more senior than me, that had already seen and done things. And then I brought a piece of value to the table.

Okay.

So let's talk about my first venture, um, outside of— let's, let's skip into my first venture into government contracting. I was in real estate selling houses, owning, buying, selling real estate. I got introduced to this gentleman again, 20 years my senior, who had a successful air conditioner business. It was residential, and he was the first one to tell me about government contracts. He says, I know about them. I don't know how to do them. He says, but if you can figure it out, we could be partners. Well, this gentleman was running a $2 million a year business, and I'm a, you know, 29-year-old kid that's, you know, getting by. And I go, okay, let's do it. And so we sat down and put together a partnership where I would go out, and bring in the business for the government contracts. And then I, in turn, we would both own a piece of the contract itself. He would fulfill it and then I would get paid.

How was your first dive into the pool of the government information and find out what's out there?

I can read. I bought every book on the subject, Larry, and read them all.

Wow.

I went online and just bought all the books.

One of the things we like to do here, Eric, or I like to do is investigate what people were thinking at certain points in their life.

Right.

And what caused them to trigger them to go off in one direction or the other. And when you have successes, you wind up doing more of the right things than the wrong things. We all, you know, you never know how things are going to turn out, but you know, you, what was at the root of you saying, I can read and I can figure this out? In other words, here's how I would look at it. Okay. If I was in that situation, I would look at it and say, oh, God Almighty, the reading. I'm having trouble to read a manual for the toaster. Right now, I'm looking at an ice cream maker sitting over here on my sink right now. It's got a one-page manual about how you make the ice cream. I don't know, it's sitting there for 3 weeks. I can't get myself— It's just like, oh, I got to read and things. And, you know, 'cause usually these things don't make sense. You know, they're written by people that they don't make sense. What was in your mind that how you looked at it and you said, I can unravel this? 'Cause some of you had to have that confidence.

When I started this, it was during the middle of the real estate crash, '07, '08. So everything shut down. No bailouts, no PPP, no EIDL, none of this stuff except the banks got bailed out. Regular people did not get bailed out. So I had more bills than I had money coming in. And someone said that government contracts is a billion-dollar industry. And I said, I'd never heard of a billion dollars of anything. I'm gonna figure this out.

How bad was it for you in 2007 and '08? How bad did it get?

I moved back in with my parents.

Oh, really? How humiliating was that?

Very humiliating, especially when I had a wife and a son. My parents loved me and they said, you could stay as long as you want. And they wanted me there. And I said, Mom, but I don't feel comfortable being here as a grown adult man. And again, I'm still in my 20s, you know, but still, I still, I had lived away from home for over 10 years.

I could see now why you had to, had to say, well, I'll figure this out. Billion-dollar business.

Yeah. I'm not sharing toilets much longer. And Larry, by the way, I moved from a very exclusive area to where my parents had lived for 60 years, which was not a great area, community to be in. It wasn't great for my mental health. It wasn't great for my family. It was still like you said, right? Like before Trump cleaned up DC, it was similar to that kind of environment. And so I just feel like I had fell off the cliff.

How fast did it come crashing down?

From the time that I moved?

Yeah. From the time, I mean, till it imploded on you where you had to make that move back. Yeah. How fast was it gradual or was it happening pretty quick?

It was gradual.

Before you saw the writing on the wall, it was like, oh Lord.

It was about 6 months.

There's some interesting evenings at home with the wife, I guess, during this time. Yeah.

So my wife is from another country that's a poor country. And so for her, she was like, it was no big deal. She's like, listen, to them, in their culture, living with family is normal. So she saw it as a great thing. She's like, oh, this is great. We get to live with mom and And I will say, Larry, it did show, which counts for something, that, you know, I had a wife that wanted me for love, not for money. So she was like, hey, I'll stick with you under a tent. And I was like, I don't want to sleep under a tent, but I appreciate, I appreciate that.

Appreciate the sentiment.

Yeah. I said, I don't want to sleep under a tent. That's not who I've been. I'm not built to sleep under tents.

Well, you got a chance to find out about her, which is great. You're around somebody who's making $1 million a year, And you say, well, I could never be like them. But here's what you say. Can I be half that good? Can I get to be quarter that good? It's like right now, maybe you're making $50,000, $75,000 a year, and you look at somebody who's making a million or $2 million. You don't have to be as good as them, but you don't have to be as disciplined as them. You don't have to be, but you could say, can I be a little bit of that? Or whatever. And then here's what'll happen to you once you get in there. You find out They ain't as special as I thought they were. You know, once you get in there, but, but you're never gonna find that out unless you give yourself the thing. I don't have to be as smart. There's a lot of things, you know, you can learn a lot on YouTube, but there's a lot of things I get on YouTube, learn about AI, learn about this, learn about that. You know, you know, expert, here's how you do this. You know, I turn a lot of that crap off. It's just like, oh, that just wears me out. It's too many things, too many steps, too, you know, too much stuff to remember. You know what I'm saying? You know, that's not for me. And the thing is, you don't— what you find out, you don't have to get everything down to a science. You— well, folks, what you gotta do and what you've heard from Eric here, you gotta get your butt in gear. If it's something good, it's something, you know, good times, bad times, or whatever, you gotta move forward and you gotta move forward with whatever options are in front of you. Now, when Eric was out there, he first, he did related industry. He talked to someone. There's an advantage of going to people that are older than you and have been successful because they've probably been through what you're going through 1 or 2 times. And that's what they do. Attorneys, accountants, doctors do. They get out of school, they go hook up with a veteran, they work in that office for a while, and then if they're motivated and everything, they get the chance, go and hang their own thing out, take their clients over there. And so it's Why not do that as an entrepreneur? Why not find people that you, you know, because you've said many times here, associate with super people and attach yourself there. And so I was going to ask you, how are you, how do you look for opportunities to do that?

Larry, these people keep pulling me up even till this day. Larry, the people I'm associated with now, they want to go to a billion dollars. And so they're pulling me up with them. So every iteration of my life that I make, I keep finding the next level people, or they keep finding me because of all the good stuff that I do and keep pulling me up with them. And we all know this, the higher you get, the lonelier it is. So they're looking for good people that wanna be pulled up as well, that they can attach themselves to. How do I do that? Uh, for me, again, I, one is I get out the house. Everybody thinks they can make their whole life and business from behind a computer. I necessarily agree with that philosophy. So I tell people, you gotta get out the house and you gotta open your mouth and talk Do you know the big YouTuber guy that sells all the real estate? The big heavyset guy, he's on YouTube, sells a bunch of real estate. I forgot his name. Ben Mala, Ben Mala, something like that. My son met him at a restaurant in South Florida. Nobody said anything to the guy. My son went up to him and said, hey, you're Ben Mala. He says, who are you? I was like, no shit, who are you? And he And guess what, Larry? Check this out. This guy, you look him up, he's got— owns a bunch of apartments. He's worth whatever, a couple hundred million, let's say, whatever it is. My son said that, he goes, what do you do? He goes, oh, I work with my dad and we help people do government contracts. He said, do you think you could find me a contract? The government does this. He goes, yeah, maybe I can. Take my cell phone number. This YouTuber who's worth $100+ million Gave him his cell phone number because why? He saw something, a way he can add value to what he was doing. If you can do that, Larry, people will give you their number. They'll be happy to be attached to you because why? They know you're not calling 'em to go out on a date.

So where else?

So you're only gonna call them if you can bring something of value. And that's how I trained him. So for me, for everyone listening, if you make that your north star, The people will find you.

The thing is, even the people that have had incredible success, they still got to keep, you know, they're still living. They're still looking for stuff to do. You know, they still get excited about a new project or a new adventure or something. And so Tom Brady won all the Super Bowls, but he's still out there, got new projects, new adventures. You know, he's, you know, he's got new friends, new business people he's doing things with. In all walks of life, you have people that have got the big names, big success, and a lot of experience, but they're looking for things to do. And so as long as you're somebody who's in the same mode, you're moving up, you just may interact with people like this. So don't be afraid to partner. Even the big companies partner up with each other and do things together. Meta just bought Manus AI, the big, one of the up-and-coming AI things. But Meta just bought Manus because, you know, why duplicate what they've got? You know, plus they've got all those personnel there, so they do it with companies.

I do believe that anyone can do this. Everyone can do it. And there's a lot of people out here that are very successful that are looking for young people that are hungry, that can basically come in and show them another way, create an additional stream of revenue for them, and they will share in on the profits with you. I've seen people so gracious, um, so good to be so kind that again, they sometimes can see a bigger future for you than you can even see for yourself. And that's what continues to happen with me, Larry. So, you know, they continue to make me wanna elevate and soar higher and set bigger goals for myself. And that's what I continue to do.

Let's wrap up. I'm gonna give you a chance to do a final word by telling people how to find you and all the variety of things they've got on? You said you had a podcast, you got the website. Let's review that stuff.

Yeah, my name is Eric Coffey. Uh, my podcast is called GovCon Giants, like government contracting giants, where we interview the top small businesses across the country and a lot of the federal agencies. Uh, and then you can visit our website, govcongiants.com, where you'll learn about my new market intelligence platform that will start sending you federal bid alerts every single day for free to your inbox, customized by your profile, your industry, your location. Uh, you'll get And you do not have to be registered in SAM or any of these other government websites. You just go to my website, put your email in, and we'll send you daily alerts for free. And then if you see something that you want to actually go after, you can take the next steps and we can help you go after the opportunities. But we want to first get you interested, find something that excites you, and then we can help you go after it. So that's what we're doing.

It sounds exciting. So the podcast matches up with the name of the website?

Yes, correct.

Thanks so much, Eric. Wish you the best and safe, uh, safe travels up there in the streets of Washington, DC.

Thanks, Larry. I appreciate it, brother.