Growing up we were told to brush twice a day, and we should eat apples to keep doctor’s away. Vitamin supplements and meals including beets were hard to choke down while my friends munched on sweets. As a kid, healthy habits were quite the big deal, so today MY daughter gets beets with her meal. And spinach, and broccoli,  and squash, and…

Good hygiene means creating the conditions or utilizing the practices conducive to maintaining health. In life, we do this by completing small actions such as:

• brushing our teeth;

• taking supplements;

• wellness checks, and;

• fitness activities.

In business, identifying the right small actions is a good way of maintaining and improving the health of your organization. But, it’s often easier said than done.

The alternative to healthy habits is unhealthy habits, and from experience, you will want to work really, really hard to avoid those. Here’s why.

If healthy habits feed business growth, unhealthy habits starve it. Your best plans don’t stand a chance without good processes to support taking action, smartly. We see this happening with novice and experienced companies of all sizes in government contracting. There are multiple causes, but the most notable one is context.

“Without context, a piece of information is just a dot. It floats in your brain with a lot of other dots and doesn’t mean a damn thing. Knowledge is information in context… Connecting the dots” — Michael Ventura

In federal contracting, achieving good results requires good decision-making throughout the Business Development Life Cycle. A lack of context will hinder, or outright kill, good decision-making. In too many instances, the Achilles Heel plaguing companies, their people, and their processes, is not understanding, and not being able to effectively use, information essential to their decision-making. This preventable weakness is why we created Ethical Stalking for Government Contractors® Bootcamp in 2009.

“I believe attending the Ethical Stalking for Government Contractors® Bootcamp was a turning point in our government contracting journey. The two days were intense while we studied the tradecraft of using the tools publicly available to gain better insights that have ultimately reaffirmed our strategies and allowed us to adjust our corporate direction with more focus on competing for opportunities that were in our wheelhouse.”

CHUCK DICKENS, IT Availability, 2023 Bootcamp Alumni

Bootcamp is about tactics, terminology, tools, resources, and healthy habits a/k/a processes. There’s nothing unimportant happening during Bootcamp, but there are frequently unique elements that standout for each attendee. In short, they achieve meaningful context during Bootcamp, empowering them to take action, usually before the end of the 2-Day Immersion. The realization of this new empowerment presents as audible gasps, quiet smiles, and even high fives, all before lunch on Day One.

Here’s your call-to-action:

1. For Market Research, Marketing, Business Development, Capture Management, and Proposal Management, understand what it takes to complete each step, successfully. If you don’t know these activities, develop a fundamental understanding of them, first.

2. Take note of the decisions to be made, and what information is needed during each phase of growth activities.

3. Be sure you understand the tactics, terminology, tools, and resources that will help you through these processes. If you come across data, information, and tools you don’t know, or don’t know well enough, ASK SOMEONE! Fake it ’til you make it can get expensive and demoralizing.

4. Looking at tools to help you streamline and scale? Check them out carefully, and stick to your processes. Don’t get distracted by the ones that look sleek and cool… this is about functionality and accuracy.

5. Buying a market intelligence subscription? Verify their data sources, and how they marry data from different sources to ensure the message you receive is accurate, timely, and relevant. In other words, trust but verify.

Building your company includes building processes to empower growth. Don’t forsake good habits for easy fixes. Remember, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it, well.

Peace, Health, and Good Habits,

Go-To-Guy Timberlake

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