Month: September 2019

Corliss Udoema aka Mama U as many people call her holds a special place in my heart, Corliss is witty and humorous but the joke stops at the door of outside her office b/c when it comes to business she is as tough as they get. Her motto, “deliver excellence” and she expects that from all of her employees at Contract Solutions Inc. She is the Inc 5000 winner 2019 for the last consecutive 3 years, 2019 USDA SB Contractor of the year, 2017 Virginia State Small Business Person and has received 2 congressional awards. But more than her accolades she is a down to earth mother, grandmother, great grandmother, business owner and community leader.

Corliss has over 35 years of contracting, training, and business development experience in the private and government sectors. In her professional career prior to founding CSI, Corliss traveled the world doing procurement for the US government in place like Japan, Italy and Puerto Rico. Her experiences include Legislative and Executive Government Acquisition, Business Development, Planning, Project Management, Logistics, Procurement Assessment, ResourceDevelopment, Career Development and Contractor Business Facilitation.

This episode is heartfelt, will make you laugh, teach you life lessons and business best practices. I would like to give a warm welcome to our next Giant, Corliss Udoema.

Today we are bringing you a treat with another woman “Giant” that is kicking butt and taking names in the biz. Patricia Bonilla, President of Lunacon Construction Group is from my 2nd favorite country in the world behind the United States, the Dominican Republic. She founded “Lunacon” in 2007, now has 5 office locations including Puerto Rico and serves more than 300 customers worldwide.

She is tremendously special for what she has accomplished (Woman Contractor of the Year, State of Florida Minority-Owned Business Person of the Year, Government Contractor of the Year, Good to Great, ABC’s in Excellence) and how she continues lead from giving back to her community.

Over the past decade, Lunacon has built an impressive resume of diverse company experiences, a long list of satisfied and repeat clients, and a bonding capacity of $15M single and $50 aggregate. Lunacon serves their clients with a commitment to excellence in every service that we deliver, and strives to be considered among the best construction contractors in the industry.

During the interview she discusses walking away from her job at a not so convenient time and the role of faith in her life and business.

Elliott Branch is truly a once in a lifetime individual who is absolutely brilliant.

He was the Director of Contracts for Naval Sea Systems command, which is the largest or next to largest single buying activity in federal government. And our team over here at Govon Giants just happen to catch him a cool 6 weeks out of retirement at the time of this interview so we got lucky to be the first ones to have him on our show.

During the interview we discuss 4 critical “to­-do’s” for small businesses. 1.Special emphasis programs vs socio economic programs. 2.How the government buys inputs 3. Ross Perot firm EDS 4. Democratization of work and the acronym Noggis ­ a term that I will quiz you about if you ever meet me in person and reference this episode.

For show notes visit: www.govcongiants.com/podcast

One of the interesting things about Social Media is how far your voice travels.Apparently, there are no boundaries and I found this out by becoming acquittances with our guest.

“Buongiorno Eric” the email reads, along with the subject line “From Italy”

Vicky Mangano reached out to me back at the end of 2018 all the way from Europe, Sicily, Italy to be specific. She was a consultant helping companies do business with the U.S. Government over in Italy, and she has been quite successful.

Her story is remarkable. She is well versed in our procurement process as well as in international registration.

In today’s episode we discussed how to do business internationally as a foreign entity. Vicky tells us about the international bid sites that are available and most importantly how American Firms can participate in working internationally.

Vicky generously gives of her skills, knowledge and resources. We can definitely all learn a lot from this Giant.

For show notes visit: https://govcongiants.org/podcast/