How to Survive the End of the Government’s Fiscal Year

Hi, this is Lindy Kyzer with ClearanceJobs.com and welcome. One of my favorite things about working in the national security space is happening upon new, innovative, cool things that are being done across the GovCon space. That’s a theme we’ve had on a few episodes recently, kind of like is there life outside of just the day-to-day focus of what we’re doing? So on that note, was really excited to have Shane Prosser on the show today. He is the co-founder and CEO of FalconTek and also the founder of a really cool newsletter that maybe you’ve come across called GovBrew. So I just wanted to have him on the show to discuss a little bit about his role, what he does in national security, working in the national security space, his support of obviously the security clearance community comes in a few different forms and one of those is quite frankly just to inform and entertain us through GovBrew. So kind of walk us through, Shane, what is the origin story of GovBrew? What was kind of the need that you saw for this and what do you hope to accomplish with it?

Yeah, well thanks for having me on, Lindy. Excited to be on. So yeah, so GovBrew. I have to go back a little bit to talk about the origin story. I was in the army for a period of time after I got out of the Army. I came to the DC area and was hoping to go get on contract, potentially go back to Afghanistan. But what really happened is I got a job doing corporate development at what used to be CSC and I was grossly underqualified for the job and I had no business having that job. So I had a lot to learn in a very little bit of time. The good thing is I had a amazing boss who showed me the ropes and very early on he gave me access to a lot of different websites and things to go read.

(02:11)
So early on in my GovCon career, I started reading every morning for hours just ensuring that I knew what was going on in the space. I could sound educated and actually know what I’m talking about. When I was talking to the executives that we were working with from there, we started Falcon Tech about seven years ago, and naturally I continue to just read what’s going on in the space. Because we’re a small business, we have a lot of conversations and just trying to add value to the teams that we’re on and understand what’s going on in the market space. As we started bringing on Junior folks, I began to have them read what’s going on every morning. So there’s a recurring theme of every morning I was reading news for years and years and then my team started reading news and then so myself and then my older brother, who’s a partner with me in both of these businesses said like, Hey, let’s try to put a newsletter together that curates some of the news because part of the problem is there’s a hundred new sources, I can’t tell what’s real and what’s paid for marketing.

(03:12)
So I started to put together a newsletter and send it out to some friends in the industry just to get feedback like, Hey, would you read this every day? And they really liked it, started to share it, and then we began our journey probably two years ago now on Brew and just having it be a curated newsletter of real content. All the marketing fluff is gone and all the pay for play stories are gone, and we always wanted to have it delivered in a human manner. Occasionally it can get a little bit stuffy on the corporate side, especially in the government contracting space. Me personally, I like to have fun. I like to talk to people. I do business with just a regular conversation that I would have with any other friend that I have. So it’s important for us that we educate and entertain. That’s kind of high level quick on how we started Go Brew and what it’s today.

No, I love that. And you kind of mentioned that though, the importance of information. I feel like that is so critical to this industry and I think sometimes people might not appreciate or understand how much government contracting the breadth of sources and information that’s out there. I’m pulling all of those in and there’s a ton around the data analytics information and how we use that to kind of strengthen companies. But why is just following the news important kind of why did you set up that pattern of just tracking the news and checking it out every morning?

I mean, I think the public sector is a unique space because there’s so much publicly available information, there’s so much data that it’s almost overwhelming. So one, you can start to drown in the data if you’re not looking at the right resources or trying to find the right information. And you can waste a lot of time, and I’ve done that waste a lot of time going down a rabbit hole on something just to find out that it was an old news story or it was actually a paid marketing campaign that a company put in place to really push a product or something like that. I think it’s important to have access to the right information and to do it in a real time manner. It’s different depending on where your space is in the industry. If I’m a job seeker, I think it’s very important to keep track of what’s going on with companies.

(05:22)
Was there a merger and acquisition? Was there a huge new contract that was one is in the capability set that I have? If so, I might reach out to a recruiter at that company as a business owner, executive or growth leader at a GovCon company, obviously you have to know what’s going on. You’re having conversations daily, you’re trying to develop your strategy for the years moving forward, and all those little pieces of information on a contract when a competitor that got acquired by a large company, so on and so forth, play a really large role in how you might set your strategy up moving forward and what you might be doing on a day-to-day basis.

I think diversifying where we’re getting the news is really important and we see a lot of that today, but not diversifying through your social media feed, which is another problem entirely, but drawing in different sources, and this is big for me at ClearanceJobs. I mean, I’ve had this conversation about what kind of news we’re producing. We have a big focus on the security clearance process, but our bread and butter is not as a news outlet. So in that, how do you decide what makes the cut to include and what doesn’t really kind of news that you can use that you really want to pull in and include and offer up to folks, and how do you kind of curate and find all those different sources out? There are so many, I mean, think that is what’s hard. There’s so many places to get news today.

I may be biased. I personally think GovBrew is the best place to get diversified news from multiple sources. Why we created it, I was spending my time going to 20 different websites that I really thought were great places, plus all this other government stuff, and when we started it, it’s like, Hey, let’s go to all these places where the interesting and relevant news is and pull it in so somebody can quickly scroll through and understand what’s important to them. And if they want to go look at the full story, they can go there. But how do we determine what to include in Guru? And honestly, for us it’s very easy because we are the readers of Guru we created it for. So we own a government services company and we understand what individuals in our place are looking for. Really, it comes down to we’re looking for not marketing, pay for play articles, we’re looking for articles that are not just kind of reported on that everybody’s putting a new headline on just to get some more clicks.

(07:55)
We’re looking for interesting takes on certain subjects, and that doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be coming from a media outlet. It could also come from somebody on LinkedIn that has a very long post that’s very well thought out on the security clearance process or the new Oasis contract vehicle. So we really scour the web and various GovCon sources to go out and pull an interesting topics, topics that lead towards potential stories you might not have otherwise seen. Because I think obviously there’s a bunch of different ways you can use this information. You can use it to pursue more contracts, you could use it to go get a job, but also it’s good just to have interesting takes when you’re out there talking to your customers, whether it’s a prime contractor or a government agency. If you’re selling to the US Air Force and you have a very interesting take on this small little story that just happened with them, it can just make the conversation easier. Hope I answered that. But that’s how we go through what we include. I feel

Like you’re not willing to share your trade secrets. You’re not giving us direct sources. You’re basically saying go to Gov Brew because we’re going to go to all of these hundred sources first and find them, but we’ll take it. I’ll take that. I’ll take it. It’s nearing towards the end of the fiscal year. So as someone who works in the GovCon space, I always kind of like to ask, so survival tips for as you enter the end of the fiscal year, this can be kind of a stressful time. I feel like we always have maybe an August Lowell where folks you get a vacation in and then you barrel through and kind of die all the way through September. So as someone who’s kind of worked in this space and been in that bid proposal life, do you have any survival tips for making it through the end of the fiscal year?

For sure. I’d say one, you want to load up on the coffee and you want to buckle up. Obviously there’s a lot of things that get thrown at you again, depending on the role that you’re in. But with us, if I look at it from the FalconTek angle, which is our government services company, there’s a lot of deals that have already been submitted that we’re waiting on award. So we’re hoping that we’re going to get award and our project teams are going to be really kicking off new efforts. But additionally, there’s a lot of last minute efforts that are coming through and we’re already seeing those now. So it’s really just kind of be ready for whatever. Going with an open mind from Guru though, this is really our most exciting time of year because there’s so much happening. It’s tough to even capture it all on a weekly basis. So you’re seeing a lot of m and a happen. You’re seeing a lot of contract awards, new hires, you’re seeing new government programs come up, changes in regulations.

I always love the contract awards. I used to work at the Pentagon and I was at the Department of the Army in the public affairs office, and remember seeing them, you’d get the consolidation of all the awards and you have to announce them. Now, it’s funny on ClearanceJobs I get the other side of it where I’m waiting for the government to announce it, and I’m seeing the September contract award is the announcement that doesn’t end. You’re always like, why did they do it like this? But that’s just how the money gets dolled out.

So obviously ClearanceJobs, it’s a career site, so we have to talk about careers, your story of having come out of the military, that’s a common one for folks who end up supporting the GovCon space. But obviously if you’re curating a new source like Gov Brew, if you’re founding a company, you kind of have a commitment to national security in a pretty significant way. In kind of an era where we talk a lot about the competition with the commercial sector, why do you choose GovCon? Why do you choose the support federal government, despite some of the complaints that we might read about in brew and the funny things about working in this space, why is it a place that you’ve kind of chosen to establish your career in?

You’re right. I mean, initially it comes back to I was a veteran. I had a clearance. My buddy who was from DC was like, Hey, if you have a clearance, you should move somewhere close to DC and you can get a job. And so that’s what I did. We moved to Virginia for a period of time and I got a job. So naturally it was an easy transition, and as a veteran, it’s honestly a fresh place to land. And because you have a ton of veterans, you’re still supporting a mission. Maybe it’s not the same mission you were in the Army, but you’re supporting a government mission. So you still have folks, even if they didn’t come out of the military that are mission driven and mission focused on making America a better place or supporting the defense and national security, whatever that is. So that’s really where I transitioned over, which gave me my start. And from that point, I realized that I really liked the people in the industry. I really liked the ability from the gut brew standpoint, I’m really interested in all the various missions that are going on, all the things that are happening, the different projects that agencies are rolling out. So it’s very interesting for me as a person, and really that’s ultimately what led me to be as passionate about it as I’m

Awesome. I love that, and I love that clearance story because I still feel like that’s true. I mean, it ebbs and flows, but right now, security clearance processing times are not as bad as they used to be. But already having that as a credential and I think treating it as a credential, it can definitely help get your foot in the door. So security clearance stories, obviously we love those at ClearanceJobs. So outside of it being kind of an avenue to help you get a job, do you have any kind of security clearance stories to share?

So I have a very funny one. I joined the Army as a mechanic and I was in basic training. I didn’t know that I was going to get a clearance. You don’t know what unit you’re going to or if you need a clearance or anything like that was, I don’t know, a few weeks into basic training and my drill sergeant’s like Prosser, you need to go down to the first sergeant’s office, which is not a good thing when you’re in basic training. I was like, Roger, Sergeant, is there anything you could tell me? What’s going on? He’s like, I don’t know, but whatever it is, just make sure you tell him the truth. I was scared going down there. I ran down there and the first sergeant was in there and he was like, Hey, this lady’s here to talk to you. I don’t know why she’s here, but whatever you did, you need to tell her the truth and you better not lie. And so then the lady comes in, she’s actually an investigator because the unit I was going to was a signal unit and I needed to get a clearance. She was nice. She left and told me, Hey, they’re just messing with you. We’re just going to go through your security clearance process. Yeah, I was so scared leading up to that moment.

That’s a common thread that we talk about, and I think people joke about it, but I started out the Department of the Army is an intern, so a GS civilian, but equally ignorant of the entire process. So actually did not know that I was getting a security clearance, and now that I work in this space, people don’t realize if you’re onboarding, whether it’s the military or the federal government, there is so much paperwork you have to fill out. And they don’t tell you, nobody told me we’re putting you in for a security clearance. If they did, I was just so dumb and 20 something that I didn’t hear it, but I don’t ever remember them saying it. I remember them saying, Hey, this is the paperwork you need to fill out to get the job. And I wanted to a public affairs officer, and that’s what I was doing.

(14:53)
But literally, I don’t ever remember hearing the term security clearance as a GS civilian up until the point I started working at the Pentagon and they realized I had a public trust and not a security clearance. Somebody had jacked up my paperwork. So I’m like this. So I always loved those stories of like, yeah, you’re joining the military, you’re not joining security clearance. That just happens to be a credential. And I feel like I hear from a ton of people who are like, do not realize what they’re going through in the process, and we don’t have a great system for explaining it. And unfortunately, based on current news headlines, I don’t know if we’re doing a better job and sometimes explaining what people are getting, but hopefully there’s some improvements there. Well, that’s pretty much the end of my main questions here, but I love chatting with you. I love learning about brew. I think finding innovative news sources, getting that m and a and contract information, it is like hunting for nuts to put secret squirrel terminology around it. So the fact that you can kind of gather those and give those in a consolidated news source, it also is a little fun to read and bring some humor into. It definitely speaks to my heart. Are there any questions I didn’t ask or anything you wanted to highlight?

No, I mean, I think this is great. It’s been a great conversation. I would just say if you’re not reading GovBrew I believe you should. It’s five minutes. We scour the web to find information from multiple sources on the federal government contracting marketplace. So it’s just gov brew.co, that’s gov Brew. Do co. Hopefully some of the listeners will get something out of this. If you have any questions, you could also reach out to me anytime@shaneatguru.co as

Well. Again, I love that again, finding news is really important. Finding the right news is really important, and then just I think passionate about the work that you’re doing and the job you’re doing. I love, so I love, again, hearing a career story for somebody who came from the military, gave back to the industry, founded a company. I mean, that’s a great narrative and one that we see happening in the GovCon space. So it gives near and dear to my heart as we continue to kind of move national security forward. We got to have the right people in right places, and then innovative ideas and fun things happening. We can have fun and national security. Our job is serious, but we don’t always have to be. So thank you so much, Shane, for joining the show.