Month: April 2022

Jackson Dalton and I met at the VIB Conference in San Diego California last year. During that time he was being celebrated as the VIB Advocate for winning the John K. Lopez Award!

Jackson Dalton, a Marine Veteran and owner of Black Box Safety, was providing PPE to government agencies before the Pandemic. As fate would have it when Covid19 struck, his company was in line for the huge tailwind of opportunity coming his way.

But that is not how he started. Jackson a former 3M Corporate Safety Engineer tells the tale of how he first got started with no past performance, no experience and a big dream. Sounds like most of us out here taking a chance on our business and ourselves.

In today’s episode Jackson and I discuss how entrepreneurs can position themselves to be in line for the next wave of opportunity in the government contracting arena.

Founded in 2017 Black Box Safety is authorized by manufacturers to distribute safety equipment such as eye, face, and head protection; hearing protection; respiratory protection, hand protection, foot protection, and high-visibility garments such as vests and jackets.

Stay tuned for this candid chat with our next Giant, Jackson Dalton.

Likia Hawkins is President and CEO of Steel Point Solutions, LLC, an Information Technology and Business Solutions provider that specializes in delivering digital transformation, cybersecurity, and professional services. Ms. Hawkins possesses a wealth of business ownership, technology, analytics, policy, an economic insight central to positioning the company as a boutique business disrupter in the public sector space. She represents an award-winning small business that is recognized in the public sector for its customer satisfaction and delivery excellence. Ms. Hawkins has over 25 years of experience managing and delivering enterprise information technology and business services and solutions for DoD and IC clients.

Additionally, Ms. Hawkins is highly experienced with the IC Information Technology Environment And with Digital TransformationTechnologies. She is adept at managing multiple projects while working with various stakeholders to accomplish mission objectives and maintain financial health across contracts with values upwards of $50M. Moreover, she leverages her awareness of automation technology, industry standards, and key partnerships to streamline processes and solve complex customer challenges.

Ms. Hawkins utilizes her experience as a government civilian, federal contractor,and entrepreneur to influence Steel Points Business strategies with a keen focus on operational efficiency, economic stewardship, relationship management, strategic teaming, and delivery excellence. Her leadership hasled other firms to receive several awards and recognitions from clients; sales totaling $37M; several industry certifications; and performance/customer satisfaction ratings of excellence where her firm was the prime contractor.

Some key takeaways from today’s episode to listen out for: talent acquisition ecosystem, strategic teaming, cross-domain solutions. Ms. Hawkins shared some tricks to evaluate cybersecurity companies, her three tenets to business building and how she set up her firm to success before starting her business.

Tune in to our next giant, Ms. Likia Hawkins.

For the last 7 days I’ve been at conferences here in Miami as it is Miami Tech Month beginning with Miami NFT week. Followed by Solana Miami, NFT CON in the Metaverse, Bitcoin Miami, and we even had time for a Cybersecurity Summit by DarkTrace.  While I did not personally attend Miami Bitcoin I did get a chance to speak at Miami NFT and NFT CON.

So you’re probably imagining what Eric is doing at an NFT conference? If you haven’t already heard, I announced the mint (that is bought in Web3 world) of my new project OSDBU. With the intent of expanding our govcon community into the meta verse and bringing the blockchain developers into the govcon world. I figured why not converge the two ecosystems.

Over the last few days I’ve met a lot of computer engineers, solidity and rust programmers, blockchain developers and entrepreneurs. My message is the same: why not bring your talents to the government sector to help serve the mission at hand?

With that said I’ve decided to bring back an episode that we did with Pierce, the CTO of Govcon giants to discuss non RFP contract opportunities for IT companies.

Pierce Robinson is also the Director of Innovation for the Start Center, former US Army Intelligence Analyst and leading the charge on a new venture Safe Source Energy.

I hope you enjoy this upcoming episode between Pierce Robinson and myself.