Hey listeners, Eric Coffey here, host of the GovCon Giants podcast. This is episode number 82 and the first time that we've actually interviewed someone from a P-TAC office. If you are not from Eric P-TAC, it is a free service for most services, low cost for some advanced services, but it's a free service paid for by our tax dollars that helps small businesses get started in state, federal, local contracting. They also provide technical assistance for businesses. Today's guest, Melissa Burant is going to talk all about P-TAC, their services that they offer, what they do, some of her experiences as a former contracting officer for US Army Contracting Command and much more in today's episode. By the way, I just want to encourage all of you, before we get started with today's episode, to take a look at our website, govcongiants.com, for its last education to find out about our eight-week bootcamp coming up in the next month, and also for the first 10 listeners of 2021 who leave me a review, I will be sending them a signed autographed book of my new book, GovCon Launch. So just wanted to encourage some folks out there to do the right thing, to help us out, to support us. We really appreciate it because everything does matter. Stay tuned for this upcoming episode of our next giant, Melissa Burant. My name is Melissa Burant and I work for Iowa State University Center for Industrial Research and Services in their Procurement Technical Assistance Center. So I am a P-TAC counselor. Okay. Nice. Now, what did you do before this? For 15 years, I worked for the federal government, the Department of Army, and the last eight of those years I was a contract specialist contracting officer for the Army. Okay. All right. And for those persons who do not know what P-TAC is, can you just explain? Yeah. So the P-TAC, actually, that's a really good question because it's something that's often not understood. Contracting officer, I did not know what the P-TAC was. So the P-TAC program is a program that's funded by the Defense Logistics Agency, DLA. And the sole purpose of the program is to help government contractors interested in federal, state, or local markets or contracts to help them understand that market. So we do a number of different, that support can look like training webinars. It can look like in-person workshops. It can look like probably the most beneficial is the one-on-one counseling that we offer to businesses. We can do market research, show them how to do their own market research, and yeah, I mean, the job is really multifaceted. You said something that when you were a contracting officer, you didn't know the job of the P-TAC. Yeah. So it's an interesting story to me, and I think it comes down to marketing and understanding the power of marketing. The government doesn't always do a great job of marketing, right? They put something out on a website, and they kind of expect people to come to them. So my job as a contracting officer, I didn't necessarily, I'll be quite frank, I had a role to play. I had to get my solicitations out on the street. I had to do my market research to know who was in that market, and then I had to do contract awards. And so one of my really good friends was actually a P-TAC counselor, but I never knew it. Like she never, this is where the marketing problem comes in. She never explained it to me in a way that I understood. She would mention, oh, hey, we're going to, I'm going to have you speak sometime. And I'm like, no, you're not. And you know, lo and behold, a few years later, that program at the Iowa P-TAC had an opening, and so I was looking for something different. And I, so it's been a really interesting transition. It's been a really, I really honestly, every government employee should get out and work in industry for a bit. That's a very bold statement. Yeah.  I mean, I have an MBA, I have a master's in business, so I'm not completely illiterate of business practices in general. I got that MBA when I worked, as I worked for the government. But the reality is to fully understand the challenges that government contractors face, you know, because the government wants good vendors, right? Yes. Well, you have to understand their side of things, what that looks like, so that you can be a good partner with them in that process. What have you learned? Oh, my gosh. I have learned a lot, you know, probably one of the biggest takeaways for me has been the importance, the criticality of developing your network. And this goes inside and outside the government. You know, I, as a contracting officer, didn't really care who was in my, not a, I'm not a name dropper. I don't, I just never, that was never really something that mattered to me, knowing who's who and different forums. However, what I discovered as I got outside into the PTAC world is that there's a lot of power in knowing and connecting and leveraging that network with others. So, you know, for example, one of my colleagues, Julie Fegel, she's a tremendous connector. And, you know, so she knows, she impresses me with who she knows within the state of Iowa. And as I started observing her and, you know, she was played a great role in connecting some of those smaller businesses with industry partners that, you know, would help them maybe, maybe they could team on a government contract because maybe they're not in a position to do it themselves, right? Unfortunately, the real truth most companies don't want to hear is you may not be a good fit for a government contract. As much as we all want to, you know, take advantage of that opportunity, they're really, you really do need to be suitable for it because the government, you know, while they may be slow and catching up to you, they have a very long memory. I like that. What are some of the common mistakes that you see small businesses making regularly from your PTAC side? So they come into your PTAC. What are some of the common mistakes that you see them making? So I think that one that I see a lot is, you know, first of all, we have as PTAC counselors, we help companies in state, local and federal. So we're across all realms of government contracts. And kind of some of the mistakes I've seen is a company comes in and they don't really have a goal, right? They they're kind of want they want to throw a spaghetti on a wall and something six want to target all the markets or or maybe it's a particular customer, oh, I want to work for the federal government. Well, you're a brand new company. You have no past performance. That's probably not the best market for you to start in, right? Right. And so trying to get that message across with number one, without sounding condescending and, you know, it can be really delicate, a really delicate discussion. But, you know, honestly, most companies, especially if they're newer to the industry, I would push them more towards state and local or teaming opportunities. Right.  Yeah, right. Why do you think that so many of us small businesses, myself included, why do we fall into those same patterns of I want that? Or like you said, I can do everything. I'm a jack of all trades. You know, I think a lot of it, what what I've noticed is it's a lack of strategy, right? So we're in the land of America, land of the free home of the brave. Everybody can work for a dream, right? Right. And truly, the opportunities are there if you work hard enough for them. But what I've found is most of us just and myself included, right? I'm not a great. I'm not a great linear thinker. I'm all my brain is going in 9000 different directions at once. So linear is tough for me. But really, you know, it's really important for some of those businesses to sit down and do the basic planning. Do you have a business plan? And that's not something we help with at the P-TAC, but basic premise, you know, anytime you start a business, what are your goals? You know, do you have goals for a year from now, for two years from now? And, you know, and and a mistake I see quite often is so I do a lot of at one point in person workshops. And I see all these people come and show up and nobody brings a pen or paper. And it it perplexes me. I mean, I shouldn't say nobody. Right. But. But there's a lot of people in the room who don't come with a notebook. And I think that's that's an error because, number one, you remember more. It's been proven you retain more when you write it down. Yes. So I'm a big proponent of note taking and writing it down. And and, you know, the thing is, is a lot of people they come with their dream, but they don't always want to take the time and put in the work to write it down and to kind of strategize, hey, this is where I need to start. And this is my end goal. And maybe your end goal in year one is just to find one solicitation that you can bet on and submit a really good written proposal on.  Kind of one of the observances I've had to in the last I've been doing this for six years is it's really important. People understand how critical written communication is and not just written, but good written communication. If you don't have that skill and if you have to submit a written proposal to your government customer, it essentially comes down to an essay writing activity and you're likely not to pass go. I like the the way that you explained it because I'm over sales guy. I always say if you can read and write, you can do government contracts. But it's you spend it more delicate, which is, hey, if you can do good at written communication, you're probably not going to get the message across because it is like an essay. Right. And for me, I said for me. When people are responding to solicitations, you have to read the instructions. Yeah. And so that's why I say if you can read or write, because really it is reading the instructions, following them and then writing and communicating your ideas, your concepts, your team, your messaging. Right. And and so, you know, what I've seen and this comes back to that comment about how the government needs to work out in industry is what I've seen is a trend in the government to take more simplistic opportunities, things like mowing the lawn, aeration or, you know, weeding, that might all come in one package. And instead of these being, hey, I'm going to bid a, you know, a price for that. They're asking these vendors to submit a written technical proposal. And do you know how challenging that is?  If you're, you know, right. I mean, I helped a vendor with a lawn care. Proposal for the VA at one of the national cemeteries. Wow.  Right. For, you know, they just wanted to go take care of the grounds. That's it. You. And so, you know, in working with several companies who, you know, kind of came across that same obstacle, you know, one of the things I try to do as a P-TAC is recognize those hurdles or those barriers. And how can we as P-TACs work to help them overcome them? I can't write your proposal for you and I really don't want to. But if I wanted to propose, I could leave and go to the, you know, public private industry and make a lot of money. Right. Absolutely. So what are some of the services that P-TAC offers that are free and then what versus paid? So, gosh, everything we do is free. We are funded the way our grant works is we're funded in part by the Defense Logistics Agency. So DLA, many people know them. A lot of manufacturers wish to work with DLA. I will tell you they are a tough agency to work with and for just because they're, you know, there's a lot going on in that agency. But so we we have funding in part from DLA. And then the other part comes from our state and that's Iowa State is the the sponsor organization for Iowa. Every state in the US has a different concept of support. We all provide the same type of training. You know, we're also all employers are supposed to have a certain amount of contract knowledge to to do the job. So pretty much everything we do is free. But but the ways that can differ from program to program is that. For example, a couple years ago, back to that proposal writing example I talked about, I recognize that, you know, there's a real problem and most people are when you work with them, they want a sample, right? Well, a sample of that. Well, there's one way you can get a sample. You could submit a FOIA request, Freedom of Information Act request and hope that the agency will release the successful proposal to you. This is a little difficult in the federal market. But if you're looking at a state proposal, the state, the state of Iowa, at least, has what they call an open records request where you can go in and they're very transparent, which is something as a contractor you want to be cognizant of, right? You want to know that whatever you're putting into a proposal could be releasable to somebody who submits one of these requests. And so that's one way a lot of people don't use it. I think it's really highly underused. But it's a great way to see what is a good proposal look like? What is the government looking for? And but what we ended up doing in Iowa was there's a company Shipley Associates and they're considered one of the gold standards and proposal writing. So they're pretty, I mean, they're pretty high. I mean, they are complex. They're giving some really complex, maybe a little bit more than what we needed for, you know, basic proposal writing. But we were able to bring them in. It's not a cheap training to offer, but because we have funds to provide training and to hire consultants, we were able to kind of offset that cost for companies that wanted to come and take advantage of that training. So, you know, we do training all the time. Here in next month, next year, we're going to do we're going to hire another vendor to do a matchmaking facilitated matchmaking session for us. We can do that ourselves. But what I discovered is and this is what I tried to push up to my team is let's let the experts do what the experts do. Right? We're not all I mean, we have some insights, right? As government, as former government contracting personnel and and working with industry, I think we bring a really great we're great liaisons to both of those communities. And really, I really work hard to work with my government agencies that I support to kind of bridge that gap of understanding as well as my my vendors. But we can't be experts of everything. And so we really work hard to try and bring some of that more in depth knowledge into the state, you know, whether they come in via webinar or whether they come in in an in-person event, we work really hard to connect them. Again, that connects that network and connection piece. What are I know you said when you were a contact officer, you were not aware of the P-TAC. What are some of the misconceptions that small businesses have about P-TAC? What what's the misconception? Yeah, so when people come to P-TAC, maybe they have certain expectation, they have something in their brain that they think they're just supposed to do. Anything like that that you come across. So I think in general, most of them, a lot of them don't know we exist. We still have that marketing problem, right? You do have a market comes down to how do we effectively market ourselves so people understand we are a resource that's available to them. Well, I think that first of all, I think for you coming on my show, it's going to help you market P-TAC. Yeah. I mean, you're the first person to agree to come on. So we thank you for that. Oh, absolutely. You know, maybe you could talk to the higher ups and get them to come on the show. What do you want? I mean, I mean, again, we can market them. We we reach a lot of people. So we'd be happy to market. I mean, I look back, I think I just put it away. But in my and in both of my books that I've written, I talk about the P-TAC. I mean, I put them down as a free resource for small businesses. I always speak about that resource. All the time and all my channels. But again, it's one thing for me to speak about. That's another thing to see actual face, like put a name, like put a person behind. Well, and I think to there's a lot of confusion in the small business community, right? There's so many resources and I'm a small business and I have limited time. So you're not going to waste my time. You know, and I think that that's something, again, that I've really tried to push, you know, with our team. Is, you know, it's super critical that we're mindful of how much we're throwing at them. You know, we can I mean, we do for our team, I think there's seven of us, seven counselors in the state of Iowa, and we do 88 events. 88 events, 88 events. And most of those, there's maybe a handful. Those are not our sponsored events, but we're. You know, we may speak for five minutes or a half hour or whatever, but we're not doing all of the event prep and presentation, but yeah, that's a lot of content that we're pushing out and you know, and then, you know, making sure that we're marketing to those vendors so that they understand what's a good use of their time. I always try to spin it, hey, you know, this may not be, you may not see because I find with a lot of companies I work with, with people in general, is we all have a lens we look through life at, right? And so we tend to be pretty narrow minded in that lens, and we only know what we know. And so I used to, I had a supervisor when I worked for the government and he used to tell me he needed to marinate on things. And so I, I'm a marinator.  And so as a PTAC, I really work with companies on, hey, how do you effectively message first of all what you do and that'll help me better understand what you do so that then I can help you find those opportunities or connect you to those individuals who might need a teammate for that government contract.  You started in 2014. Yep. Okay, with Cyrus. What changes have you seen happen over the last six years? In the PTAC program? Not in the PTAC in particular in government contracting. You know, what's really exciting for me, and I've really tried to make sense of this, but what's really exciting for me is I do feel like finally we're seeing the government less afraid of interactions with industry. Finally realizing, hey, you know, an industry day isn't so scary, industry has some really great feedback to give us. And so that is, I think about that, because, you know, I worked with a lot of people of varying ages when I was there. I was there from 99 to 2014. And, you know, it wasn't, there was some point in that time period where they changed the requirement, the school requirement, the education requirement to be in contracting. Okay. So what I'm seeing, yeah, so they, back in the day, they didn't require a degree to be in contracting. Okay, okay. And so I don't know if it was in the 90s or when it was that they made that switch, but what I'm seeing, so, you know, obviously we've had some retirements over time, but what I'm seeing a lot, what's really exciting for me is a lot of the people I came up as an intern with are now in leadership positions. Yes. And then I feel like I see a lot more open-mindedness coming into that realm where people are actually, again, listening to the feedback they're receiving and they're receptive to the messages that, hey, you know, if we work together on this, we can come, you know, for example, the OTAs and the, the rise of those, you know, new ways of doing business, you know, we have to be faster.  Yes. He's decided, oh, that doesn't work anymore. Yes, yes. We're on to the next thing. Yes, yes, yes. So yeah, those are some, that's one of the coolest things that I've seen is that it does seem there's a little bit more open-mindedness. I mean, there's still some obviously, I think by nature, contracting personnel are quite conservative and tend to not want it, they're very risk averse. And I understand that. It's a scary, there's a lot, there's some personal liability there as well. So, you know. Can you touch on that? I think that as a small business, we only look at it from our lens, which says, I don't understand them. They have something to get small businesses. Yeah. Right?  So what I would say to that is, you know, as I speaking from the lens of a former contracting officer, I'm not necessarily looking. Number one, lead with your value, right? Okay. Don't lead with your whatever program you might qualify for. Close with that. Hey, I'm great at construction, but guess what? I'm also in 8A. And so that allows you, and so, you know, come to the table, ready to sell them on, do you know the benefits of the 8A program? Because guess what? Not every contracting person does, right? They have the same struggles as we do in industry that they can't know everything about everything. They don't know all the regulations, but you can help educate them in your marketing to them. And so, you know, when I was, I think probably some of, there's just been a lot of eye-opening moments for me. You know, I have a job, as a contracting officer, I had a job to not only be a good steward of a taxpayer dollar. So that meant I always had to look at what's the cost to the US government and how do I make sure I'm not overpaying and that once I pay you, that I'm getting the good or service that I've procured because nobody wants to redo. I mean, if you had any idea, the amount of work, I always explained my role as the contracting officer was I was the guy at the end who held the hot potato because regardless of how long legal took or my upper management took to review and sign off on documents, you know, you're not doing this in a vacuum. You've got all these people along the way, all these potential stakeholders along the way, policy review, pricing review, legal review. You know, like I said, depending on the dollar value, upper management has to sign off on things and it could sit on their desk for weeks. But that doesn't alleviate the fact that your green suitor, your army guy sitting over in the field needs his services delivered by X-Date. So regardless of how long and how well I plan, I can't control for those people in my process, right, in my pipeline. And so, you know, and that's often why you'll find when people ask, well, can I have an extension on this association? I would recommend always ask it if you need it. There's no harm in asking that question. However, you know, you have to understand there's usually a milestone driving that due date for that solicitation. You know, in the case of construction, it might be that I had a client I worked with recently who there was a very specific period of time he had to work on brush removal because the bats come in April 1st. The bats are protected. He had from November to April to get this brush removed, which he failed to do. Not a good story to tell. That is not a good story to tell.  So they understand the criticality of, hey, I can't meet this milestone, this date because I'm waiting on X from the government. Well, you know, there's a process for that too. So that's, you know, we can help as PTAC counselors. We can help kind of, again, Bridge, I like to look at us as partnership partners, right? I can't do it for you, but if you include me along the way and kind of check in with me periodically, because often what you'll see is they'll go away for a year. They'll get so scared of what you've just dumped on them, they'll kind of fizzle and, you know, and nobody's holding their feet to the fires. So I'll just put that on a back burner because it is another duty as assigned, right? Your business development for government, like, it's not your primary duty. And so if you can include your counselor along the way and make them part of the process and check in and say, hey, this is what I'm experiencing, we can help you kind of eliminate some of those, oh, crap moments of, oh, wow, now I have a termination because I failed to execute my contract and what does that mean for me? Well, it's not a good thing. My next question was going to ask you, while you were working at Rock Island, can you tell me a small business horror story? Oh, you know, I don't know that I have one. So my last eight years, I actually supported the contingency operations over in Iraq and Afghanistan. Okay. During that time, I can tell you lots of horror stories about the Iraq drawdown. Oh, no, I mean, unless I just picked that because that's where you came from, how about changing the contract and officer story? I mean, we learn from what other people's mistakes. Absolutely. I want to learn from someone's mistake. Yeah, absolutely. I think there's a lot of power in telling those stories and kind of applying it to ourselves. So there's a lot of, you've heard of a lowest price, technically acceptable price. Yes, LPTA. Yeah, people love them. I don't know anyone loves them, but the government loves it. I know, but that was sarcasm. I know, I know. The government loves it for some reason. They say it's a great program. So let me tell you, give you some insight on why the government is kind of hugging those close to their chests. I worked a lot in support of Iraq and Afghanistan operations. So we would have our customer on the ground was a green suitor who was there for six months, maybe. Okay. And then you've got turnover of personnel, somebody else comes in and you've got to re-teach them everything you've just taught them because nobody likes the actual responsible side of contracting, right? You can't just tell a vendor what to do. You have to abide by what the contract terms state, right? Your contracting officer is your fair agent. He should be there. He should be on the two line or on the CC line, any kind of interaction with your COR, all the things to cover your butt. When it comes to past performance, we would go out to what, over to the customer in theater in Southwest Asia and say, hey, I need you to fill out a past performance questionnaire on company XYZ. Guess what? It's either they refuse to put anything negative in writing or their feedback or their response is unsubstantiated. Because there's a lot of what goes on over in, and there's a lot of their close contact, right? And so you're going to have some various personality. The biggest issue I had was personality conflicts where your COR, your contracting officer's representative, the guy who's on the ground, who's kind of overseeing the contract. He may have a personality conflict with the program manager on the ground for the contractor because I just don't see IDI. And so the thing with an LPTA, most per second acceptable, is that that methodology allows the government to take out looking at that past performance if they want to. Because what we found is, or what I found, my personal experience was it was never, the feedback we received was never anything discerning enough to make a difference in whether or not I would pay more for that service. And so when you do a full-fledged best value where you're looking at past performance, you may look at some aspect of technical performance or a vendor's technical proposal, right? And one of the hardest parts about that, and I see this perpetuated in solicitations that I review online for customers or clients, is the government has a really bad job of figuring out what matters. What is a critical component that we want to measure to say whether or not this guy is a good guy to do what he says he's gonna do? Okay. You know, and it's kind of like that whole, you know, when you're writing a resume. Okay, so you did XYZ. Why does that matter? Right, right. Right, what's the impact? And so I was fortunate, I had an attorney who at the time I didn't appreciate it, but she said words matter. And I learned my team at the time, we learned some really hard lessons, you know, in the fact that words matter and you know, developing criteria that was measurable and quantifiable, mattered and looking at things, not asking the vendors to submit all the stuff just because, you know, we're control freaks in the government, you know, because we're risk averse, right? We have a lot of responsibility.  You know, there's, and that seems to be, there seems to be kind of an uptick in that in the last 10 years where, hey, let's take the, you know, the head of GSA and throw their name, you know, even though I'm sure that person had nothing to do with a conference. But they lost their job as a result, right? Because they've pushed that back up to him or her. But so, you know, the whole thing with the LPTA is how do you minimize the amount of time the government has to look at that proposal and make what they're looking at meaningful so that they can actually make a good business decision against criteria that have been developed that you can do what you say you're gonna do.  Maybe the criteria that have been developed aren't distinct enough to really separate the good from the best. But what I would argue back is that the government has made that decision because they're not willing to pay a premium. The service isn't critical enough for them to pay an extra $2 million. One time in my federal career, did I pay a premium? Was I able to write that best value decision? And that was for a classified contract in Iraq where we were very specific. We asked for a sample to be submitted and we had criteria that were very, very, you know, it must do this, it must do this, it must do this. And, and of course I can't use that as an example because it's classified. Right. But, you know, I wish I could have that document because, you know, it was the one time and I don't know how long I was a contracting officer, but in my contracting career that we ever were able to justify paying extra $2 million for that service. Small business who is wanting to work the federal marketplace, would you say based on your experience, is there a different process for working with DoD versus non-DoD federal agencies? Yeah, maybe. It depends. You don't have an answer before. That's an interesting answer. Yeah, that's every contracting person needs that on their desk. Depends. As far as, is it different? Every agency, even within the DoD is different. Yes. They all, and I think that some of that comes down to even individual contracting officers have different ways of interpreting or doing business. And so it's a challenge, right? It's trying to figure out, okay, who's my customer? First of all, and then how are they doing business? And how do I get in front of them so that they know that I exist so they can buy from me? And that can be hard. I mean, believe me when I say that I recognize the struggle. One of the cool things I've seen in the last six years is that colleague of mine, that friend of mine that I was an intern with who brought me over to the PTAC program. We started in the government together. She was a PTAC counselor for seven years. And now she's back with the government. And I think, and I would say this, I think there's probably not a better small business advocate within the United States government because she brings it all. She actually did contracts. She was a specialist. She worked with industry. So she understands the challenges of small businesses. And then when she went back to work with the federal government, she was able to put a lot of that into practice because what you'll find is a lot of your small business advocates within the federal government, they've never done contracts before. They're not contracting experts. And so there's some friction between small business and contracting because the contracting people don't necessarily understand small business either. So again, I do think that trend is changing and a lot of, like I said, a lot of the people that I grew up with in the government sector, they're more aware of some of these challenges and working to overcome them. The problem is that there's always 9,000 other things that need to be done or changed that probably come first. Yeah, I think you've already answered the question. So if you had a suggestion box for PTAC, I guess, or for the contracting officer, it would be what cross working? What is that called? Yeah, I just think that working together, leaning on your PTAC from both the agency perspective and the industry perspective, we have a lot of great insights to share as far as, and that's one of the great things too, we're seeing in our program, the PTAC program is that our program manager for the DL, from the DLA, she's been really great in kind of helping rid some of those gaps. So, lo and behold, a lot of government agencies, like myself, who worked for a government agency didn't have a lot of awareness of the PTAC program. And so a couple years ago, we had a small business convention and it was an Army small business convention in St. Louis. And it was for the Army small business specialist. They invited the PTACs. That was the first year that it ever happened, but it opened up so many doors, right? Again, it's that connection and that network because you can read, so you can read about a lot of things, right? But I think that there's a lot of people out there who like to represent themselves in a way that you're kind of like, well, are you government or are you a contractor? Are you government or not? And so, we see that with SAM registration, right? We've got websites that will take you all the way through when you think you're on a federal government. Melissa. And they pop you with a $2,500 sign-up fee. I do not, for the life of me, understand how does the government allow this to continue? How do they allow them? I don't think it's regulated. It can't be. It's impossible because how can you allow them to name themselves after SAM registration? Yep. Yep. I've had, gosh, two or three companies who've come to me after they've paid 2,500 bucks. And then they found my name online. And I had more recently, I had a company, was actually really sad because the woman who is the owner is suffering some kind of a dementia as she gets older. And so, they contacted her and had her pay for SAM renewal. Well, she's not even in that market anymore. So they took $500 from her and her former employee was able to come in and say, hey, you know, this is, she said, this is a scam. And the woman on the line was like, we are not a scam. We are a legitimate business. And she needed help. And I'm like, aw, but you misrepresented. Right, right, right. No, I know. I try to, I mean, I put out a lot of content about that all the time. And I try to warn people, they come to me as well. And they said, if I pay this, does it help me faster to get my SAM? So it's just a lot of things going on. Well, and I think, you know, you'll see the same thing with GSA, right? Oh, with GSA as usual. And so I always tell people, not even a contracting officer can promise you a contract.  But we're actually more partners. You know, they describe us as a partnership with the government because we're not bidding on contracts. We have a grant with a cooperative agreement with the DOD. We're not bidding, we're not competing for federal contracts. And we are there as a liaison to kind of help bridge that gap. And so, you know, as the awareness grows company, or not companies, but agencies are reaching out more and more to say, hey, you know, how can you help? You know, or even like, hey, can you co-host this event with me? Because we have the relationship with industry, right? Right.  They show up in droves when you look at the government. Contracting officer on the call.  But also, are you putting out content that's relevant that's helpful to them? Because giving your org chart isn't really helpful. And telling them to get registered as Sam, it's not helpful either. I've been on those things where the first 30 minutes was, you got to get your done, you get a cage coat. I go, really? Is it what we came to listen to? You know? Yeah. Sam, you can't do business with you. Here's our org chart. I know. And so, that is- We need to help them to get- Yes. Like, they need to send me those presentations and I'll say, okay, we're going to start a slide 28. Yeah. Yeah, well, and they don't, again, back to that government side of things, they don't know either, right? They don't understand what is helpful to industry. And a lot of what they're conditioned to believe is anything they say is, you know, oh, I don't want to give an unfair advantage. Well, you know, talking about general market opportunities is not an unfair advantage. It's just good business, you know? And I actually had a contracting officer at the VA tell me I had instructed my client to submit a four-year request because she would not give us the former contract number. And she said we had fish for it. And she literally used those words, you have to go fish for it. And I said, you know how many contracts there are for lawn care at national cemeteries across the U.S.?  That's not proprietary. That's public information. She's like, yeah, you have to go fish for it. And so we submitted a FOIA. I said, we'll try submitting a FOIA. And she actually was going to post that on her FB, on her, she wanted to post that on her FBO posting. That was when FBO was in place. She wanted to post what? The FOIA request. Get out of here. I'm not, I can't make this stuff up. I'm going to write a memoir someday. I like it. I like it. I like it. Let's switch over. Any books or anything that you recommend to small businesses that you guys, like resources, things like that, that you guys recommend?  It doesn't have to be contracting books. I mean, anything. It could be, like you said, you talked about writing essays. You talked about writing business plans.  Yeah, I would say, you know, honestly, as opposed to reading a book, although there are some great ones by that Co-Print's law has put out on, you know, joint ventures and doing business with the government. And I really like Co-Print's law because they tend to take complicated concepts and simplify it into like actual English. But I would say that really what's important is, you know, go into LinkedIn. I've been advising a lot of my clients, go to LinkedIn, the content that is shared there, the connections that are made there is invaluable, you know, in this where we're at today, where, you know, we're still kind of on lockdown at Iowa State, but it doesn't mean you can't connect, right? And legitimately, you don't just go out there and just connect for the sake of, oh, I saw your name, you know, have a reason for it.  And start learning. I mean, I look at it as government contracting is not a one and done. You're constantly, I've been doing this for 21 years and I'm still learning and I would never ever make the claim that I know it all. I feel more secure in the federal sector just because that's what I cut my teeth on. But I know that there's a lot out there that I don't know. And it's really about, you know, if you can sign up for some of those attorneys, small business attorney, GovCon attorney blog, they share some great content, you know, about applicability of new regulations and what that means to you. Not just that, hey, there's a change coming, but what does that mean to you? Cause that's the part I think for the government, when they should push information out to us, they never really turn it around and say, well, this is why it matters. Co-prince Law's blog is called Small GovCon. I had Stephen Co-Prince on a few weeks ago. Okay, okay. Yeah, he's great. And I had his formerly main guy, Matt Skinnerville. Yep. He was now with Math and Morarty. So I had him on. I love both of those guys there. Both of them as well. I had him both on my show. Matt was one of the first persons that gave me a chance. He was like episode 10 or something. So he was, you know, 60 something plus episodes ago. We've met at conferences together. We've talked and Co-Prince, like I said, I just had him on a few weeks ago. We actually did, he actually was on, like yourself, and we went live on YouTube together. Oh. Yeah, I'm not asking you to do that. I'm just saying. Thank you for that. Stephen Co-Prince didn't mind. No, I'm just teasing. That's awesome. It's for him. Yeah, he's great. He's good. We're talking about putting some content together. So, perfect question. Since we are all still locked down, tell me something recently you purchased on Amazon that made you happy. Well, it would have to be my recurring purchase of Amino Energy. Great flavored. Okay, tell me. I want to know about Amino Energy. Oh, it's so good. It's a branch chain Amino Acid, BCAA Energy. It's an energy drink. Okay. And I'm a caffeine-aholic and it's great and it's really good. And so it keeps you energy? It does. Does it? It does, yeah. Is there a brand that you like? Oh, it's Amino Energy. It's the brand. Amino Energy is the brand. Well, okay. It's one nutrition, I think it is. It's the company. Okay. Yeah, I'm a repeat buyer of that product. Okay. All right. No, that's interesting. Something that you had to do in terms of when you were a contact officer that you either hated or disliked. Reviewing a solicitation. Before you put it out. Oh, so when you review a solicitation as you would know on the other side of things, when you create that document, the way it's created is you have to go through hundreds and hundreds of clauses in a system and click and read the prescription for every single one. For ball bearings and forgings or all the things. And if it's a certain dollar value, you have to click it and click it and click it. So it can take, you're going through all these clauses and you have to click. And then, so that's why you see a lot of solicitations that have unnecessary clauses in them where you're like, why does ball bearings fall into my solicitation for construction while they didn't read the prescription or and they just click all in. You figure it out, contractor. That's true. No, that's good point. An odd place that you worked or odd job that you worked at. An odd place that I worked. Or job. I think that it's not really odd, but when I was in high school and to college, I worked at a pizza, a local pizza restaurant here in my area and I loved it. The other thing I do, so I'm really, I'm very task oriented. That's my thing is I like to get stuff done. And so my very first job when I entered the government was I worked for DFAS, Defense Finance and Accounting Service. They paid me this and I was a travel voucher processor. So that meant anytime the government personnel went on travel, they had to submit a voucher and you had to review it. And so we had a standard, hey, you have to do five per hour to get an A, right, your performance standards. And I actually had one of the women who worked there who told me I need to just slow down because I was making the rest of them look bad. That's a good story. I like it. Yep. How many were you doing? Her name was Peggy. Peggy's probably gone now. He's probably gone now. I'm sure she's retired. How many were you doing? Oh my gosh. I don't know.  It was like the easiest job, you know? I know, but it's government. And check, check, check and I could stuff, man. So you're probably doing like 10 an hour. Whatever it was, my supervisor and Peggy did not. Peggy was like, listen, we gotta check our phones in between. I know, she did not like me. My brother has the same problem. He works at the hospital and he was serving them before COVID, the trays of food. And they say, hey, slow down. You're making us all look bad. Doesn't that blow your mind? It does. It does. I had a job at government for maybe six months and I hated it because they would not let me be efficient. They actually told me one of the, and not even my immediate, this was like the head of the division head. He says, we don't pay you to be more efficient or something to that effect. Like we don't, you don't pay you to save us money. And I'm like, we pay you to follow procedures or like follow orders. And I go, are you, I go, this is insane. But it's, it's 100% true. I believe that they told you that. No, they did. It's crazy. Tell us about your photography. Yeah, so I have been doing professional photography for gosh, seven or eight years. I've lost count. It's kind of my happy place. It's something that I started doing for, for friends. And then it kind of grew from there. I do families. I do, I just did a few weddings this year. I said I would never do a wedding again. But then I actually several of my colleagues, former colleagues from my governments, my servicing government were having smaller weddings and asked for me to pop in. And so it's been, you know, it's one of those things. I look at photography. It's a gift. I think that you should take the picture and get in the picture. And as, especially as parents, get in those pictures. And so it has a lot of meaning for me. It's one of the ways that I try to give back, you know, to others, because I just think that oftentimes, I've lost both my parents now, but, and we never, we don't, you know, the family picture we have is from like the 1980s, I think. And so my dad died right before my wedding. And so we never got the family pictures, you know, with all of us in it. And so it has a lot of meaning for me. I really try, both my parents died of cancer. And so I really try when I hear of people who are going through something similar, which seems very common anymore. I really try to kind of, I've been very grateful to be part of stories for people who, you know, may either have a really good outcome or maybe not, but, you know, it's something that they treasure. So it makes me happy. I love it. Thank you for sharing. Any favorite quotes or sayings? Yes, there will come a day when you can no longer do this. And today is not that day. Oh, I have that tattooed on my shoulder. OK, OK, I like it. I like it. I like it. I said, let's close out some final words for small businesses out there. Do I have final words? My final words are, you have to have some resilience and persevere because this is not for the faint-hearted. However, if you're willing to put in the work and show up and keep dipping your toe in all of the training that's available, the connections that are available, you would be surprised at how successful you can be in this market. Thank you so much. You're welcome. Thank you. Thank you for smiling.


Welcome to Access to Trader, the number one community for those who are committed to taking control of their trading in order to achieve success, profitability, and longevity. Thank you for joining us. Here's Dan Shapiro to help you find your edge, master your process, and own your future. Hey, everyone. Good morning and welcome to another edition of the AccessToTrade.com weekend update show. Hope everybody is doing great. Hope everybody is having a great weekend. So another crazy week and a really, really crazy week of trading. Again, anybody who talks about that the summertime trading is slow and uneventful, you really have to really reconsider the stocks that you're trading. With all the IPOs have been going absolutely bananas, with all the beta names having really good, really good ranges most days. It really is setting up to be a second coming of last summer. If you guys remember last summer, you guys were trading. It was very, very aggressive. So I think anybody who talks about that summer is slow, uneventful, lethargic and all good stuff. Yeah, you can have slower days because people are vacationing, kids are out of school and all that good stuff. Absolutely. But I think if you already put it into your mind that summer is going to be uneventful, you're really missing the boat. So far it's been some really good action. So let's talk about the tape, right? Let's talk about what happened last week. Again, very strong, right? Very, very strong moves from the indexes. And we'll talk about the individual ramifications in a second. Aggressive move by the IPOs.  And it really is a testament how people will continuously bid up aggressive, exciting shares, right? Aggressive, exciting shares. You had the Fed this week, talking about a promise of potential easing. You had China and the United States continuing, right? The two and a half year courtship continuing their progression to trade deal. And this led to really good aggressive action this week. We did have a couple of days that you kind of had to scratch your head because the price correlation did not kind of meet up with the indexes. I'll show you guys in a second, especially with the technology names. But overall, very, very aggressive action. You see here how the NASDAQ 100, everybody talks about a V-shaped recovery. Well, this is as V as you can get. I mean, there's nothing else you can look. This is as V as you can get going from an incredibly oversold scenario to an incredibly overbought scenario. But the difference between this market rally versus the generational market rally or decline that I saw when I started trading is that the indexes don't matter. And again, if you've been watching these updates for even a couple of years, you kind of know my stance on indexes. Indexes are just a guide. There's no such thing anymore as a bull or bear market. They're strong bear intervals. They're strong bull intervals. And it's all about individual process, individual timeframes. Again, for all you guys who don't know, again, I trade the 60-minute channels. These are my ranges. These are my micro channels with a macro range. And it keeps me safe. And more important, not only does it keep me safe, it gives me a very, very long-gated view of potential and measure potential. That's the most important part for what I do, the stocks that I do trade. But I think the most important part I think that we saw this week was the continuation of individual technical analysis. And the way I started out, for all you guys who don't know when you're watching this, I started out a generic trade with Carl and Equities. We had, between 99 and probably 2000 and 2001, one of the strongest desks, proprietary trading desks, during that time. During the time of Schoenfeld and Broadway and World Co., all these really heavyweight trading desks. And the greatest part about that time, when you were trading at that time, you really needed to be on a desk.  And the one thing that we had a tremendous advantage of that time, everybody was on the same team. No matter what personal relationships people had, strong, negative or indifferent, everybody wanted to win. And everybody wanted to see their buddy to the right of them, buddy to the left of them, win as well. And we kind of really fed off of each other's energy because it was a natural comradity because everybody knew how challenging this markets was, but we wanted to win together. And the information flow was so good that most traders would develop a lot faster because you had that personal interaction. These days are completely different. Majority of traders right now are trading from home. They are really put in a negative tone that they feel like they need to learn everything right away. They feel that they have to cram 20 years of knowledge into two weeks. And if they don't pick it up in two weeks, they can feel their failure. And the problem is, and I continue to talk about this because it's the reality. The problem is most traders, especially sitting at home, their only exposure to the stock market or the trading world is social media. It's just the truth. Social media. It's very rare that a new trader, unless you're getting hired for a very specific desk, it's very, very rare that you have that social interaction with another human being that can kind of show you the ropes, might not show you everything, but will give you a little bit of tidbits here and there that you could build a foundation organically. Now the problem is, the majority of new traders, again, I classify anybody's trading less than three years as a new trader, that they believe that their progression needs to be done, not today, but yesterday. And unfortunately, because of such deeming information, you are really collecting bad information. And I can tell this by some of the responses to ideas that I have that I'm trading on social media. So for example, I could be short, you know, I could be short Tesla and I'll get 50 responses while I'm wrong, right? Or I could be long Tesla and I'll get 50 responses while I'm wrong. And the problem is, you're trying to fight reality. You're trying to fight reality and technical analysis, because you feel you need to be right. Okay, you need to be right. You need to be right right now.  You have to prove something yourself. The problem is the stock market doesn't work that way. Trading doesn't work that way. The trading gods, they don't care if you're 45, 25 or 15.   And the most important part, and I see new traders really, it's pretty obvious when somebody's telling me that I'm wrong on the trade. Okay, it's pretty obvious that your information or your information intake is just flawed. And it doesn't matter if you're trading the year, two years, three years, hell, even five years. Okay, if you're processing wrong information, then your experience level is a mood point. Okay, the trading journey is completely different from everybody. Okay, you could be trading for a year and you'll really get it, right? You'll really, really get it. Okay, you could be trading for five years and don't have a clue whatsoever. And that's okay. In both cases are okay. And the problem is that people put so much pressure on themselves that they need to figure everything out now that they missed the big picture.  Nobody trades the same. It's very, very rare that you find two traders, two random traders that can be trading exactly the same. So why put yourself in a position, why put yourself in the corner that you feel that you need to be better than somebody else, that you need to be smarter than somebody else, that you need to impress somebody else. It's you versus you. The stock market has nothing to do with your imminent success or failure. It's all about you taking information, processing, and really seeing if that information is actually proper for your trading stock. Because again, remember, I trade pivots. You could trade, you could trade for us. What do we have in common, right? What do we have in common? But the common bond, okay, no matter how you trade, the common bond because you don't have that personal relationship sitting on a trading desk. You don't have the ability to go out and have a drink and really pick the brain of a seasoned trader. The one common denominator, no matter if you're trading options, stocks, forex, crypto. Whatever you're trading is technical analysis. And for the most traders who are trading at home and the only exposure you have is the social media, well, you better make sure that the information you're processing is correct. Because if not, okay, you're going backwards. You're not going forwards. And then at some point, your mind is going to start forcing things, the walls, the proverbial walls, they're going to start closing. And if you're processing wrong information, you are really a walking corpse. You just don't know it yet. The one thing that can save you, okay, the one literally thing that could save you is technical analysis. And we've been talking about the foundation of any trading system that believe in anything worthwhile technical is the pure technical analysis. Okay, our opinions, again, they don't matter.  I'll be the first person to admit this.  Again, as I say it, I am king of the idiots. Okay, so nobody can have that title. Okay, but the one thing that I do know is that I could trust. Okay, I don't need another trader's opinion. I don't need to, you know, I don't need to, you know, to pull 12 traders if I should go along with short Tesla.   This is all information that everybody's on the self playing field. Everybody has exactly the same information in front of them. Your choice, okay, as an aspiring trader or a professional trader, whether to accept technical analysis or brush it to the side. Again, it's no matter, it doesn't make a single difference. Okay, what another trader is doing? What another trading is saying? What another trader's opinion is? It's you versus the collection of data that we talk about every single week and seeing how it plays out in real time with your hard earned money. So if you're trading at home, okay, the last thing you want to do is go on a message board to try to figure out what the opinion is, what the gauge is, what the landscape is of a stock that you want to trade.  It really is.  You don't need anybody. Okay, you don't need anybody to succeed if you believe in the power of technical analysis and I'm not talking about pivots. My pivots, the way I trade my pivots are completely different than anybody else trades theirs. This is a fact. Okay, this is a fact. This is not something that I found off YouTube and I'm running with. I created this stuff. It works for me. Will it work for you? Maybe, maybe not. I have no idea. Okay, every individual trader is completely built different. But at least I have, at least I have the process of looking at a chart and really seeing in three seconds whether it's bad, good or indifferent, and if there is an edge for me to capitalize.   Okay, guys, new traders. Just understand this. All traders, we're a tribe of idiots. We really are.  The only thing that can help us are all these little squiggly lines or all these little bars, they're all these little candles. They're portraying a story for us. They're telling us what potentially could happen next. Your goal is to completely omit the olive branch of 19 different opinions to try to figure out how this, how all this information right here that you see in front of you is going to play into your future endeavors of a trader, whether it's good, bad or different, if you want to go long, whether you go short. But the idea that you need to, you need to put yourself in a situation that you have to prove yourself to anybody is ridiculous. It's all up to you. Okay, whether you sink or swim in this business, it's all up to you. At the end of the day, it's like golf. You could be like Team USA versus Team God knows, Team Europe in the Ryder Cup.    You're playing for yourself. At the end of the day, nobody's going to remember you. Nobody cares, guys. It's not about being social media famous. It's about being correctly positioned that your journey is positioned the right way. And you are in a position to win 10 years from now. So again, technical analysis, folks, technical analysis, technical analysis, these charts matter. Okay, this is the difference between you having a trading career or a winning trade. Okay. And again, you don't need to talk to another trader telling them that they're wrong. Again, I said this many times, no professional trader. We laugh at you. Right. If you're telling a 30, 40, 50 year old man and you're 21 years old that they're wrong on the trade, we're laughing at you. Okay, because it doesn't make a difference. You're trying to prove to yourself that it matters. You don't matter, at least not to us. Matter to yourself. Okay, matter to yourself. Take this business seriously. Trust technical analysis, fall in love with technical analysis, and you'll see your training getting better and better.  Okay, I promise you, I'm not listening to his opinion on my Tesla trade. So again, fall in love with technical analysis, look at charts daily, and again, slowly but surely that light bulb will sink in. Okay, so let's talk about the tape, right? Very, very aggressive, very, very aggressive cycle of buying and selling this week. V shape recovery, is it? Is it not? I don't know. It looks like that way for certain. Again, bear case, too much, too fast. We're going to go lower. Well, we just trapped a whole bunch of shorts on a very, very long trend line. We're going higher. We'll go higher next week. We have no idea. Again, this is what we use technical analysis for. We trust the charts and we try to figure out what happens next. 3%, pretty much 3% all across the board on all indexes. Again, you have progression of a Trump China settlement. You have potential easing for the FOMC. And more important, you have ridiculous amount of strength and speculation money, especially for these IPO stocks, probably one of the strongest IPO market I can remember in a pretty, pretty long time. One thing, and again, I always play doubles advocate. The one thing I did not like. Okay, you would figure after 3% move, you would have really ridiculous strong moves in beta. Here's what I didn't like. Again, I always like to play doubles advocate. I always like to look at the market from, you know, from, from the bad side, right? So, if you look at stocks, for example, like Amazon, even though Amazon had really, really good week, right? Really good week and is gapping up and all that good stuff. If you look at the 60 minute view on Amazon, just to give you an example, right? You'll notice, you'll notice something very, very, something stands out, right? Gap of on futures sold off the rest of the day.   And again, this is direct correlation with China. Gap ups sell off the whole day. Gap ups sell off the whole day. Gap ups sell off the whole day. And the one thing that, you know, you can make an argument, okay, that this market, because we are putting in such an aggressive V shaped recovery, at least from the lows, at least from the lows of June, okay, you can make an argument that all these gap days that will fade for the rest of the day are just trapping more, you know, trapping more bears. But again, at some point, you have to look at the futures and say to yourself, well, there's something under the hood that might be a little bit skewed. And if you look at the NASDAQ 100, right, if you look at exactly just as a, just a correlating top of this area here, we're very, very close to having a pretty important day. Okay, a very, very important day. The top of this channel right here is roughly the 191 area. Okay, and you can see how close we're getting back to this 191 area. And because of, and because of what we're seeing in the stocks that had really major, really major ranges to the upside that are really not participating outside of the big gap up in the futures, it's starting to really make me think, and this is where we talk about gathering information and collecting data. We're starting to look like a potential double top could be forming. Okay, we're not there yet. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, it's not going to cost me any money. But at least, again, I'm starting to formulate an early opinion. So for example, Roku, one of them, you know, one of the bigger, stronger moves, you know, in the last couple of months, again, if you look at the 60 minute view, you keep on seeing really, really aggressive sellers right after the open. Again, and this is despite pretty aggressive coal buyers coming in, aggressive sellers being cleaned up, all these things. And if you start getting one or two stocks that are doing this, you say to yourself, well, maybe it's just isolated, you start getting a whole group of stocks doing this, maybe you have something more. So I think going into this week, it's very, very important for us to kind of continue to see what happens if this trend continues, what happens if Monday, we gap up again, right? We gap up again, 150 points. Again, if Amazon starts selling off again, that's a problem. If Alibaba starts selling off again, that's a problem. If Apple starts selling off again, that's a problem. And then it goes from a problem to a trend. And that's when I think we start looking on the downside, because again, at the end of the day, and again, we have to prepare for this, nobody's saying it's going to happen. But at the end of the day, the market is just not going to tap us on the shoulder and say, hey, by the way, we're going to sell off, we're going to sell off aggressively, and you better have a chair in the game of musical chairs or you're going to die. And it's a very, very important part of not giving back weeks and weeks of profits because you were, had your blinders on, you had your rose-colored glasses, and you didn't believe it's going to happen. This has happened right in front of us. Whether you choose to accept this or not is a whole different story. And this is why we talk about how technical analysis is the most important part, except for our, for our opinions, they'll make a difference. So I think going into this week, I'm starting to get a little bit, a little bit biased to the sell side. Okay, a little bit biased. I want to see this week how, I want to see this week how these names handle prosperity again. Again, for a perfect example, Disney had a chance to break out like 68 times this week. Okay, like Louis, 68 times this week, the 143 went only up 50 cents, crashed, went up again, above the 143, went down $1.50, went up again to 1.142, took out a range, went down another $2. So you're having strong stocks that everybody was bidding up just two months ago, or excuse me, three weeks ago on this really, really good aggressive V-shape recovery, they're starting to lag and they're starting to lag very, very noticeably.  If we gap up and these stocks do not rally on this gap up, it's very, very important to start looking at 60 minute ranges to the downside. Because again, if these things start to pull, okay, like perfect example, like a Roku, right? If they start to pull, you have a lot of room to the downside, as you can see here, right? Technically we're starting to get a little bit of damage here, and we're starting to look like we're going lower. Disney, the same thing, all it takes is one more day of selling, and you've got a confirmation back to the downside. You've got Amazon who's, again, looks great. Again, $3,000 a share in a year, $12,000 a share, whatever you want. Okay, I believe you. Yes, I agree. But if Amazon starts losing the 5-day moving average, which is the shortest part of sentiment for me, we're going to go low. Okay, we're going to go lower. And this is not an opinion, this is technical facts. So I really want to keep an eye on all these beta names, especially Monday at the Open, and we want to see what happens when the futures rally. If they don't participate, I think we will start looking at the sell buys. Strong week, Thursday and Friday were a little bit slower for me. The liquidity, especially Friday, the liquidity was not what I wanted. Okay, let's just say that. The fact that it was quadruple-witching, the open for me was really, really tough. You guys notice like Tesla was trading at a $0.60, $0.70 spread. Netflix, for example, even though I caught a pretty good trade on Netflix, and we'll talk about the individual pivots, it was so hard to buy, because number one, there were like a $0.20, $0.30 spreads, you were hoping for offers to come in. Okay, because of the spreads and because of the liquidity, I was hoping in a weird way that more sellers would come because I knew how good the chart was. And Friday was a little bit tough to get really good liquidity, especially at the Open, but it was so important just to kind of realize the landscape. And the more I looked at the market, especially from Friday's session, the more I realized that it wasn't going to be an advantageous day. We did catch some things. There were a couple of good bounces. I caught some Tesla. I caught some Netflix. I had one losing trade. I started a swing on a half position on, I think it was CTVA. It sold off when I logged back today. I noticed I got stopped out. I think I lost like $0.25, $0.30 on it. But it was really kind of one of those odd days that the stocks that I did trade, or I do trade on a daily basis, really didn't participate, right? Especially, you know, and again, we had a great red day for indexes. It really shouldn't make a difference. If you look at all the 60-minute charts, for example, on an Amazon, and on an Amazon look bad, never rallied, NVIDIA, Alibaba, Roku, right? Roku, Apple, right? Apple, Disney looked, you know, Disney just something, something's wrong with it. The only one that's done that, actually, there's two that stand out. The only two that stand out for potential strength going into this week is Tesla, right? Tesla, because you could see the 60-minute channel forming, right? You could see the 60-minute channel forming, and Netflix, right? And Netflix that had a pretty good run. Good call buying all week, especially in the July 375s. There were active buyers in there as well. So again, going into this week, I am at least initially sell bias. I do like the IPO game continuous. I think the morning will provide good opportunities for us to buy stronger names into a 60-minute rising support. And then once that first candle comes, if these stocks still can't rally, I will start looking for confirmation ranges. So let's talk about Friday's session. It was a really good trade. It could have been a lot better if the liquidity was good. So Netflix rejection, 360, 660 twice, needs to confirm, 367. I took this as a second entry. It was just not enough stock for me to buy. It just wasn't enough stock for me to buy at 367, and it kind of took it right really quickly. So it put an initial move to like 367, 30s or 40s, and it was still no liquidity. It was just so tough to buy, it retraced. And this is what we talk about a second entry. Let it go through the pivot, let it establish a new high, let it retrace, and once it goes through the high, that's called the second entry. So I was trying to get stock above like 367, 40s, 50s, and I started buying some in the 40s, and then I added more in the 50s, and the stock finally went. The stock finally went, and it did fine. There was nothing wrong with it. It went to like 371, but man, it was just so tough to buy stock. And again, the one thing I always tell traders, it doesn't make a difference how good the move is. If you don't have enough liquidity, if you're not properly to your size, what's the difference? Stock above 10, if you don't have enough size, what's the difference? So it was very, very frustrating. It did what it had to do, but again, not the liquidity that I really wanted to, but again, as I say all the time, let your worst trade be a green one. Tesla Tesla, that 316 level, never confirmed. Again, we're looking for that second entry above that lowest print, never confirmed, got stronger. We'll talk about that. I actually had a Tesla pivot right here, and I actually bought this thing. It was right over here. I actually bought this thing coming above this 21 area. And again, I didn't post this. I didn't post this. We only did this trade in the live webinar. I didn't post this on the Twitter feed because this wasn't a true pivot. I bought this because a buyer came in pretty aggressively. I think he paid, I think he was buying the 232 weekly calls. I think he was going into the 232 weekly calls. So I bought it off that option sweep, and it ran up like a dollar and changed. I had some good cash flow in that as well. And then we were just waiting for that second wave that never came. What else? What else? What else? What else? What else? Kern, it went red to green, went up like a dollar and change. I don't really play this stuff. PSNL woke up really, really aggressively. Congratulations to you guys who took this towards the end of the day. 2950 needs to build if it wakes up later. And here was PSNL, that 2950, right, the big move, 3160 had a $2 push. Chewie, good job for you guys I didn't trade this thing. I don't have a locate for these things. Negative comments, I forgot by who. 3315, 33 for builds below. It can flush. Here was the Chewie chart, right? So you had that 3315 area, 3315 area, went all the way down to like 3120. Good job for you guys who caught that as well. TRI really exploded towards the end of the day. We talked about a 2920 build. And look, TLR wise, this is the greatest thing in the world. No, it's not. But it put in this initial move of that 4920 pivot to 4950. And once it broke that 4950, went to 5103. So good job for you guys who caught that as well. And here's a perfect example of like, this is why really, I just don't trade a lot of random names. I really like the setup here. So I bought the CTVA. I bought the CTVA. I started to swing on it. It was, you know, supposedly a swing on it, right? So I bought the CTVA and I knew the bottom of the channel was going to be only 30 cents or 25, 30 cents, whatever it was. So I bought it and it just never, it just never, it never did anything. Very, very liquid stock. So I love the liquidity, but never did anything. I think I took like 25, 30 cent loss and I got stopped out on this thing. I'll rewatch it again this week. A little disappointing again, considering it's coming off a bottom channel, that it potentially all it needed to do is reclaim this level and it just really couldn't do so. A lot of sellers there, maybe it'll be better this week. Amazon never confirmed went up like two, three bucks and then the market weakness. And this is kind of how I really, I was looking at the table. I said, well, if they can't rally, especially after the really, really big move, you know, one of the gonna rally, this is kind of why I started collecting data for a possible, you know, possible sell off this week. And I still like Tesla. I really like this Tesla, especially if it starts building, especially if it starts building over this channel here, close to the 223 level, if it gets above 223, it does have a lot of potential. So let me give you guys some plays that I do like this week.  Let's talk about some plays that do look pretty good. For all you guys are training these small cap stocks, look at this KPTI, really nice looking chart, guys, really, really nice looking chart. Look at the tight flag here. If it starts building above this like 645, 650 level, gorgeous, gorgeous chart potentially can go by the congratulations for all you guys this week in the live webinar and not only did you guys catch it on the long side when the stock closed right here, a lot, I know a lot of you guys got one, the 185 and the 200 calls huge, huge move. But then there was a mass massive pivot on the 182, 182 area. And we talked about the 160 that broke below. And again, everybody loves the growth story. But look at the six, you know, look at the 60 minute view, look at the daily chart. If this thing confirms 150 and starts building below guys, yes, I love meatless meat, right? That's what she said. Okay, once this thing starts building below 150, you have a measured potential all the way down to this 130, 128 level. So keep an eye on that. Roku, I like it lower. I like Roku lower. Again, it closed below the five day close below the 10 day. If it starts reclaiming, if the bulls give up that 102 30 102 level, it has room to 99. So keep an eye on that. I kind of like this PRVB. It looks like a, you know, it looks like a recent actually, it's not a recent IPO thinking just get above this range here. 1280 13 maybe starts this next leg up. And I kind of like this ST okay, it looks like a recent IPO as well. Look at the 60 minute view guys, right? Everybody see this? So the top of the range here, 2755, 2750, 2740, if they could start building above like 2760, right? 2760, maybe 28 with this crazy IPO market, who knows, maybe this thing tests the IPO high. So guys, having great, awesome weekend for those you guys who are joining us in the live webinar, please get there at nine o'clock. We start morning strategy then for all you guys who are trading via the live Twitter feed. It's an awesome, awesome alternative for not being in the live webinar because again, the pivots, right? Begin the pivot. So guys, have a great, great weekend. Have a great Sunday. God bless and I'll see you all in the future tomorrow. Take care. Congratulations for putting in the time to take control of your trading. You're one step closer to owning your future and achieving the success you desire. Want daily trade ideas directly from Dan straight off his personal watch list? Unlock our free PS 60 vault where you'll get nightly updates on pivot opportunities we're watching for the next day's session. Click the link in the description to get started today.