This episode of the Grow Fast Podcast featuring Melina Cardenas, Project Management Professional and Proposal Writer Expert, primarily focused on best practices for writing successful proposals, especially for government contracts. Melina shared her insights into the complex and often overlooked world of RFP (Request for Proposal) writing, emphasizing the importance of understanding the procurement process, creating structured responses, and building strong internal alliances. She explained that proposal writing is a team effort, requiring input from various departments to ensure compliance and meet technical requirements. Melina also highlighted the critical decision-making process of whether to pursue an RFP, advising companies to assess their capacity and the RFP’s alignment with their expertise before committing.
Another key discussion point was the role of tools and strategies for streamlining the proposal writing process. Melina discussed her experience using databases and AI tools to organize past proposals, allowing for quicker turnaround times on new submissions. She emphasized the importance of clear communication within the team and with RFP issuers, including maintaining consistency in writing style and leveraging graphics to enhance readability and engagement. The conversation also covered strategies for building relationships with government entities and following up on RFPs, noting the value of seeking debriefs whether or not a proposal is successful.
You can find the whole episode of the Grow Fast Podcast with Melina Cardenas here:
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This is the transcript for this episode:
Mark Shriner [00:00]
Welcome to The Grow Fast Podcast where we talk with leading sales, marketing and personal growth experts about how companies can accelerate sales, optimize marketing, and grow their businesses fast. Let's go.
Mark Shriner [00:14]
Hi Melina. How are you?
Melina Cardenas [00:16]
Hi. I'm doing well!
Mark Shriner [00:18]
Awesome, awesome! I mean, this is funny, because you have this amazing kind of light show going on behind you, and I have the most low-tech setup possible, because I'm in a hotel room with tech week. Where are you located?
Melina Cardenas [00:30]
It's nice, Long Beach, Long Beach. California. It’s always sunny.
Mark Shriner [00:35]
Sunny and 70 degrees.
Melina Cardenas [00:38]
I was in San Francisco a little bit. It's great weather up there too.
Mark Shriner [00:43]
It is, it is, um, you have any food recommendations for San Francisco?
Melina Cardenas [00:48]
Yes. Um, well, so many things. Ghirardelli Square. Okay, got to check that out. Um, there's a lot of good fusion food. There's a food there's, like, a food cart Park area where you can go and, like, get things really quick, fast, if you like sourdough. I forget the name. It's like sourdough bakers up there. And then there's this place called Goat Hill pizza, and they have sourdough crust pizza.
Mark Shriner [01:14]
You had me a pizza, but now it's sourdough crust pizza.
Melina Cardenas [01:19]
That's so good.
Mark Shriner [01:21]
We're going to do this podcast, and I'm just going to go straight there, and I hope they're not closed today, right?
Melina Cardenas [01:27]
Oh, good point.
Mark Shriner [01:28]
You know, I'm really looking forward to this conversation, because you are a real subject matter, deep subject matter expert on proposal writing, and, you know, best practices related to putting together proposals. And, of course, Breezedocs, we help companies, you know, with the platform to submit RFP security questions, etc. Let me just take a step back though, yes, maybe you can just talk a little bit about your experience. How did you get into proposal writing? And, you know, in some of the like high-level points of things that you've done in this space.
Melina Cardenas [02:01]
Sure, let's see. It kind of feel like it all kind of started with my dad was a federal contractor, so I started working with him, like, after my work would go in and, like, help do certified payroll. And then I think the idea was I was going to do like, accounting, but not for me, and I got put onto proposals, and I was like, wow, this is really fun. There are deadlines are super-fast, always under stress, always talking to a lot of different people. The subject matter is never the same. And I just thought it was so interesting and a lot of fun, and it could keep me engaged, and in a way, a little bit different than like project management, because you're always changing. There's always something new going always changing. There's always something new going on. And I thought it was really fun. So, working with him, I was doing at the start, like proposal coordination, just kind of helping put pieces together. And then I got a little bit more into kind of project assistant project management, working with our construction project managers. And then I started actually writing more and more. And I was working there, like seven years. So then after I left, I started working with my own clients, doing, like, state and local type of bidding, and then just helping them enter the market, doing like more business development and capture. And that has been that was, sorry, the first half was maybe like seven years. And then me helping other people in a variety of industries has been maybe like another seven and that's been a range of poo like psychiatry, disease research, Epidemiology, catering, higher education services, just anything you can think of, and it's actually super fun. And I feel like the biggest factor of success there anywhere is just understanding the landscape.
Mark Shriner [03:52]
Let’s talk about that. I love I love you. You know what you're saying, because for a lot of companies and a lot of people, RFPs and proposals. The putting together proposals is very challenging, and very rarely does anybody say that they are, quote unquote fun. Okay, in most cases, it's kind of like a necessary evil. In fact, one of the biggest things is like, oh, should we, should we pursue this RFP or not? The whole go, no go thing. And a lot of people say, Ah, but it's going to be hassle, and we don't know if we're going to win. But I love this attitude, that it's fun. The other thing that I love about your answer is you highlighted something that we've found is that RFPs and proposals go across all industries. So, you know, we were doing research for breeze, the market research before we decided to develop the platform, we will go into a lot of the state and county RFP portals, and of course, you see things like construction management or IT services, etc., but we've come one in the state of California for rodent disposal. So, you wouldn't think that you know, the state would put an RFP out for some service like that. But what that means is, if you are selling those services, you do need to be able to put together a decent proposal if you want to be competitive, right?
Melina Cardenas [05:10]
Yeah, I've seen some. I went to, like, a small business award ceremony, and there was somebody there. He sold bugs like that was his thing. That was his whole business, selling bugs for, like, lizards or something, I don't know, but like, you can do anything, there's RFP for everybody to any industry.
Mark Shriner [05:25]
So, so let's start at the beginning the process, which would be, where are the best places to look for RFPs? And, I mean, if you're in that, that pure business, you know, development mode, where should you go?
Melina Cardenas [05:41]
This is my favorite. I am thinking of doing sort of a talk about this, because I think it's very important to put into a frame of reference who the government buyers are. So, there's like fed and sled like the federal government, state governments, local like city counties and other like quasi government things. So, I think that's the number one question you should ask yourself, like, if it's federal, SAM, that's a very easy platform that aggregates a bunch of different federal agencies, but if you're doing things like smaller it may make sense to just talk to somebody at PTAC in your state, or maybe do a little bit of market research to find out, like, where there are opportunities, a large swath of opportunities, I suppose. But to say that more simply, I think the easiest place to start is maybe just going to PTAC and asking them to sign up for bid matching, because it's like, it's free, not pitching them, not related to them, but they, they've always provided a really good service, I think, to the community, and they can just give you bids for free that show you what's available to you. So, I think that that's an easy way. Or you can sign up for all kinds of different platforms. But I think first thing to consider is who you want to work with. If you want more money, but more complicated, federal, you want something a little bit easier, easier to break into, maybe, like state or local,
Mark Shriner [07:04]
When you say, more complicated? How so just the accreditation or approval process to become a certified vendor.
Melina Cardenas [07:13]
All of the above. I think, working with the federal government, I have observed that the more money any sort of entity has, the more complicated it is to do business with them, because they do it so often that they have, like been through all sorts of risks and problems that they've had to solve. So that's, I think that's one of the reasons why it's one of the reasons why it's so complicated to do business with the federal government. They've already been down several different roads of hiring people to do all sorts of things, and to the greatest extent possible, they're trying to manage the risk. So, it gets more complicated, but it is. I think it's worth it if you can figure out how the process works. But it's very, very much a pretty significant time investment, though. So, also something to consider.
Mark Shriner [08:05]
Okay, so imagine I'm a small, medium sized business, and I go to the state, local, RFP portals, and I find something that, you know what? Hey, I think this is something that we could have a chance of being competitive at then, what are the next steps? In fact, how do we what are your what's your advice in terms of, like, the whole go, no decision. Decision like, do you have, like, a heuristic or process that you follow?
Melina Cardenas [08:34]
That's so good I have kind of somewhat of a framework. I think Shipley is a good industry standard, they do have, like these 96 points. I don't even know it's so many. It like goes through literally every single detail you could do, but it's more of like a rough guideline. But generally, you can just think of a standard sales funnel, like we're looking for leads. We're somewhat qualifying them, kind of moving them to the point of purchasing something. So, when you're looking at an RFP, I think you may consider like, where are you going to put that? Do you want other people to look at it? Like, what kind of things would make it absolutely no, because it gets those questions get a lot more granular as you kind of move something along. So, I think it makes sense to do at least one or two kinds of passes of reading through the documents to see if it's a good fit. So, let's say, like a first example for a first go at it would be, do we have enough time to do it? Is it related to our skills? Can we do it by ourselves? Like, it'd be like, okay, initial questions, then second questions could be, do we have the equipment, or do we have the team? Is there some weird insurance requirement here. Do we need a bond? Do we need, I don't know. Can we do it in X amount of time partners?
Mark Shriner [09:52]
So, and then that's where the complexity comes in. Because a lot of times at SMB, or even enterprise, you have one person who take, you know, receives the RFP or finds the RFP, there might be some like, you know, hard requirements built in there. But they might not know, because it's very hard for one person to know the capacities throughout the company. Like, okay, do we have this insurance? Do we can our product, do this? Can, you know, can we deliver, you know, on their time requirements, etc. So, so then you have to start to reach out to other people, other stakeholders or subject matter experts in the organization, and that can, that can be a challenging process, because a lot of people, they're, I'm busy with my regular job, and you're bothering me with these questions. Yeah, exactly. So how do you do that in a tactful, diplomatic manner?
Melina Cardenas [10:37]
Ooh, building alliances. I think if you can just try to make friends with everybody, or just get on everybody's good side. But I think one difficult thing about the proposal process is some you want to just put a proposal writer in there and say, okay, here you go, have at it? But it's very much a team sport, like, you really need a lot of people.
Mark Shriner [11:02]
Make magic happen.
Melina Cardenas [11:05]
Yeah, I’m trying my best, and it it's really like a group learning curve, because if you have subject matter experts or other experts that you need to get information from, it's often the time that maybe they don't understand the procurement process, and they don't maybe there's, Like, a misunderstanding about the level of detail required to get something up to par. Or maybe timelines are a really serious thing. There's no universe in which you can submit something late most of the time. So, take that with a great self. But if other people aren't understanding that importance, that's also a huge issue. Also, the RFP is, like, so much bigger than just the words on the paper. You know what I mean. It could be referencing, like, oh, you have to look at these standards. Or, oh, you have to look at this, our five-year plan, or Oh, XYZ, that's all in the fine print that could easily be missed.
Mark Shriner [11:58]
So maybe then your job is to kind of go through initially and say, okay, here are the must haves or the critical points. Check with the key stakeholders if you need to, or at least alert them to say, hey, can you please review this and let us know from your point of view, get back when you start, because, I mean, you work with so many different organizations when you initially start. Do you have some kind of kickoff meeting where you either virtually or in person, talk with all the stakeholders and say, hey, this is, this is what our process is going to look like going forward, and this is my expectation from you. Or do you just reach out when, when an RFP comes in and say, hey, I'm, you know, Molina, and I need your I need to take a look at this.
Melina Cardenas [12:40]
I think I kind of have to, like, play by ear. Some kind of depends on people's comfort level, or, like, understanding of government contracting, if there's not, if people haven't had the time to, like, familiarize themselves with requirements, which I understand why you wouldn't. That's why you're hiring me. That's kind of a slower process. To say, okay, this is how it works. I'm not trying to be mean; this is really, I can't fix the requirements. This is how this is really what we need to do to win. Sorry, but if it's other people who maybe have been before, or do you have an understanding, then I'll say, okay, this is our pipeline. These are the stages. This is what the questions we're asking for stage 123, we're going to meet every week to move them through. I still do that with other people who are newer, but it's just a little bit slower to, like, get everybody up to speed about what's going on and try to do, I try to do, like, other conversations, to just make it easier to understand.
Mark Shriner [13:37]
Awesome. What are some best practices in terms of, you know, you've responded to similar questions or similar RFPs in the past, and let's assume that they don't, the company doesn't have like a, like a breeze type platform where they're just kind of doing things manually, but there are some still ways that you can do that kind of an efficient manner. What are some best practices that you use, or that you've seen in terms of being able to leverage content that you've created in the past.
Melina Cardenas [14:09]
There's a couple of ways. One way is, the reason why people probably hate proposals is just fishing into your old folders and trying to find, like, what you need, right? It's awful. It's extremely time consuming, and it just adds way, way too much unnecessary time to your timeline. Or I've seen other people kind of like, centralize the answers in a place where you could just do some sort of a database. Or other people who are more tech savvy, so this would be like a writer who's also a programmer could do maybe some sort of query type database where they can just give it a list of questions and they'd get back the answers.
Mark Shriner [14:52]
But that's like advanced and again, I've said breeze, like three times. I'm not here to promote breeze, because there are several platforms out there that do things similar to what we do. Yeah. But there's also just going directly to AI and saying, for example, here's a security policy, or here's our insurance policy. Can you look for this clause instead of you going through a 20-page document? You know, there are ways to use AI to kind of do that work for you. Are you doing that yourself? Are you seeing that?
Melina Cardenas [15:22]
I think you'll find a lot of people who have been in this industry, whether they're proposal writers or not, have mixed feelings about, yeah, like, it's, it's a helpful tool. I think it really depends on how you use it. Like, it's a very helpful tool, but I can the way, that I use it, it can be more efficient, opposed to somebody who may not understand the nuance of reading a document. So, if you're giving, if you're giving that, your AI tool, something and saying, help us find and manage risk. I would not recommend doing that. I would say, maybe still find somebody who understands what's going on and have them at least run through it once, and then you can use the AI to help them save time after like a real human has looked at it and understands there's nuance. Sometimes they hallucinate. Sometimes the language isn't consistent across pages. Sometimes people are using different words to mean different things, or sometimes the person who's writing doesn't really know how to articulate what it is that they're trying to say. So, you kind of have to, like, read into the lines and the AI isn't, isn't always good at that. I think it could be if you're trading it. So, I think that might be something that breeze can do if you're, like, giving it the same type of documents, you can learn about catching that type of nuance.
Mark Shriner [16:39]
Or, I mean, we, as part of our platform, we have an approval process, and we highly recommend that the RFP Manager, you know, tag the subject matter expert on an answer and say, can you check this? And once it's been approved by the subject matter expert, then that's approved, and it goes to their permanent knowledge base. But before that, we're like, you know, because it's hard when you're in that project management or the writer's role, you've got to pull information from so many different parts of the organization, and again, you don't want to bother people. So, you try to do as much as you can yourself. But if you're relying just on AI or just on what you think it is, maybe humans can make mistakes. AI can make mistakes. So, your kind of do it in the loop, in the subject matter expert, at least for that first iteration, definitely.
Melina Cardenas [17:35]
Yeah, yeah. That's why the first ones always take so long.
Mark Shriner [17:38]
Yeah, yeah. And the more you do, the better you get at it, and then you can leverage the work in the past, and then you get more competitive, and then you win more. And it's a win-win. It's that virtuous cycle, but it's, it's an effort in the beginning to get that flywheel going, you know, moving forward,
Melina Cardenas [17:53]
like, understand. Okay, so here's a metric that's generally true for me. It takes me about eight proposals of working with any given person to increase my output by like, 50 to 80% faster. Wow. Yeah, well, that's because, like, the way that I organize the information and the type, like, way that I'm extracting the content and, like, getting it prepared for future use. It should be the case that after a handful you've already kind of interacted or been presented with the types of questions you're going to be answering, and so that means you should have at least a solid foundation. So now that every time, every new time that you're answering, you're not just building up your foundation. You are now just tailoring to that person's unique need.
Mark Shriner [18:39]
So, it's funny, because when you say that number up to 80% faster. That's actually, one of the metrics that we quote on our on our website, because basically it's almost exactly so the which makes me feel good, because we just didn't make that number up. We did our research. But the critical thing is, is doing that initial work and getting that knowledge in the knowledge base. And in your case, the knowledge base is, you know, your process for reusing information that's also up here, and so on. Let me, let me ask you, though. So, you're also a writer, and so in a lot of companies, you have an RFP Manager, and they're not necessarily a writer, but sometimes you have an RFP writer who's not the manager, but sometimes you do both. And so, you know, we look at it from different things, but when you're talking about like, government RFPs, how important is the writing style compared to just, just give them a factual answer? Do you want to put kind of a marketing spin on it, or not.
Melina Cardenas [19:41]
I think you want to give people what they want from you, and sometimes they don't know what that is, so you have to kind of read into that based off of what the requirements say. But I do think it makes a lot more sense for there to be a consistent style across the board. Because if you're sending this to somebody I know, not all proposals are read in depth. All the time, but you're sending to somebody who catches their eye on something, and they read for a living. They may be off put by a lack of consistency, or they may just remember, like, if you can't do this well on the proposal, maybe that's reflective of your work quality, which I think can be kind of risky.
Mark Shriner [20:22]
I totally agree with that. I did a lot of work in the marketing industry in Asia, and early on, yeah, it was a lot of fun. I love just traveling and working everywhere, but I had a lot of conversations with ex Korean and Taiwanese exporters back a long time ago, where they would create these amazing products, but their ad copy was broken English and but they're and I'd say, you know, you need to pay somebody that can do, you know, a better job. And they're like, oh, it's not important. We have this amazing product. And I said, you're right, but the way the consumer, when these are the volume importers, would look at it, is, if you can't, you know, use the appropriate language, then they probably think that your product is not very good. I mean, it's not really logic, but it is a kind of logic. So that's kind of what you're saying.
Melina Cardenas [21:17]
That’s heuristic. People are going to do it, whether it makes sense or not, unfortunately, like, if you see a typo on a resume.
Mark Shriner [21:26]
Oh yeah, and I sent resumes out and then realized there was a typo and I feel like, let me ask you, because I mean, you obviously enjoy language. You're very articulate. And so like, how much time do you spend making the text, making it yours? You know? Like, this is something I'm kind of proud of. Or do you say, you know what? I just got to get this done.
Melina Cardenas [21:56]
I feel like it's never enough time. I don't think there's ever been a proposal where I feel like I spent as much time as I wanted to do on this, unless it's a sample I make for just showing some client. But I think kind of like a balance. I think I have run the gamut. I've done coordination, management, the writing, managing subcontractors, compliance, meeting, debriefs, whatever, anything, you name it. But if I'm the only person doing all of it, then quality overall of all of those items will go down. So, what I try to focus on is compliance and then writing to make sure that we are giving ourselves the competitive edge or are really pointing to our strengths. I think over time, you can make it nicer with graphics. I love to incorporate graphics because, I mean, they're easier to read, they're easier to understand. You can get, like, a full picture just looking at something really quick. So over time, it's nice to add, but not just generic ones, like you can customize them a little bit more.
Mark Shriner [22:59]
Can you give me an example of a graphic that you've added.
Melina Cardenas [23:03]
Yeah, I was doing like, data governance, and there wasn't a good one that we could find online. So, it was like custom relationship between, like governance, data science, data engineering, and then the input from all the different departments. And it wasn't, it was just something that we were making for that specific proposal to make it easier for the reader to understand, or you can even say, like a workflow kind of thing, like this process starts here with Person A, then goes to B, then goes to department C, something. It's just something simple like that can make it really easy for someone to understand what you're writing about, so that it's kind of like an introduction, almost like, oh, this is what we're going to be talking about, this connection of steps. And then you read about it, so then it kind of solidifies what you're saying.
Mark Shriner [23:44]
I love that from a couple different points an image will draw people in, so it elevates their level of interest so that they can power through the text, because it's a lot of work to go through the text, so it creates that initial interest, but it also it tells them, hopefully tells them what they're going to be finding out in the text, and then helps reinforce it so they can remember it, right? Because, you know, if you've seen 10 different proposals, and one of them has these amazing graphics that that's going to stick in your mind, I mean, we're human beings at the end of the day, right? And so, it's like, it those hooks are really, really important. Another hook though can be, like, interacting with the RFP issuer, and some of them are kind of strict, and they're like, hey, you know you we're not allowed to or that we have, like, a window of opportunity to ask questions. How do you, or do you have a strategy to kind of, hey, get noticed, and, you know, get on their radar.
Melina Cardenas [24:42]
I ideally you would be, like, making connections, for meeting people before you send an RFP, or, like, not having to send one cold. I've one cold once, but it's better, you know, to warm people up and, like, build a relationship, maybe checking some forecasts, or even just sending an email saying, hey, I plan on bidding this. Just wanted to let you know, and then let's. End it, make sure they got it. Just give them a call. Hey, did you get my thing? Great. Or send them an email, follow up, and then just keep checking back in with them to make sure that, or just to ask if what the results were and if, whether you won or not, it's always a good practice, I think, to ask for a debrief, because you may not, may not always find out, like the exact details we want to know about our competitors, but at least we can kind of understand how kind of understand how we fare in the group overall, like technical.
Mark Shriner [25:27]
Massively important. And I find that sometimes people are reluctant or shy. Is probably not the word, great word, but they're like, oh, I might be crossing some boundary, if I like. You know what? The only thing they can do is say No, right? So, you might as well just ask. It's just business, right?
Melina Cardenas [25:44]
Oh yeah, the worst thing it could happen, yeah, that's fine. Just keep asking. Or go, just come back the next time ask somebody else.
Mark Shriner [25:50]
Exactly, exactly. There you go. Okay, so I want to jump tracks a little bit. What do you think about like SOC, two questionnaires and security questionnaires and things like that. Because those aren't proposals, but those are kind of a necessary thing that gets to get done.
Melina Cardenas [26:04]
Like the super, super long just sales of questions that you have to have to answer.
Mark Shriner [26:11]
Yeah. You know, a lot of people are trying to get SOC two compliant these days, or they have to do security questionnaires. Like almost any business. They're like, okay, before we can send you our information, you need to fill out the security questionnaire, things like that, but it's, it's something that needs to get done.
Melina Cardenas [26:25]
It feels like it, yeah, I think I was, yeah, I'm helping somebody with that right now. So, like, you did proposals you would be good at this. And I'm like, okay, it makes sense. I'm just making sure we're doing all the things that we're instructed to do. But I think one of the issues there is, I think he's we're not like clear on all of the things that we have to do, so it's like some reading learning curve. But I think I would probably go the route of using Breeze or making some other type of database to help answer those because you don't want to be recreating the wheel every single time. So, I would maybe try to put some time away with the with your smear subject matter expert, maybe once a week, or as much as they will let you, and then promise them you won't bother them that much. After this, after these interviews, help me out with this exactly.
Mark Shriner [27:20]
Yeah, well, you know I mean, but you're actually helping them, because in a lot of organizations, it might go to the, you know, the CTO or the COO, like one of our first customers, we met at an event. The CEO was giving a presentation, and he kind of casually mentioned that it had a really rushed week because he spent six hours filling out a security questionnaire myself and our CRO Billy here, what we what we were we were building, because breeze was in the, what they call that the self-mode at the time. But when he said, six hours fill out a security questionnaire, we both looked at each other like, okay, he's on, he's on our radar. And now, and now, they're a customer, right? So, you know, and you know when they can, when they can outsource it to a specialist like you already. They're like, nice, okay, so a lot of organizations, you know, they it. Let me ask you this, let's go back to your business side for an organization, and they're like, we can't really afford a, you know, a software to respond to RFPs or an RFP writer or a specialist like you, we're going to try to do it ourselves. In that kind of scenario. You do kind of have to justify or promote your services as a matter what's the conversation you have with them.
Melina Cardenas [28:33]
I try to, there's okay, there's this, like, American Express study. I don't know if you remember to come by it. It's, I think they did in like 2014 age or something. And they found that it takes government contractors somewhere roughly, like one to three years to win anything, and their investment should be expected to be around like $120 sorry, $120,000 per year. But that was like 2010 money. So, I think now it's like 160 or even I've read other books that say three to five years, and that kind of reminds me of this quote I heard that goes something like, we didn't do this because it's easy. We're doing this because we thought it was easy. And I only tell people, only tell people about the figures to say, like, that's the only way I feel like I can get the point across that this actually is complicated. It takes forever to do. So, you can either get me to do it and do it fast, or you can just take the whole five years and try to do it yourself. Bless you. It, but it can be good if it's like a skill that you wanted to learn anyway. But you can't expedite it with help from other tools.
Mark Shriner [29:36]
You know, you want to build widgets. You want to be the best widget manufacturer. It doesn't need you need the best proposal writer, right? And that's your subject matter expertise. And then, and it also goes back to what you were saying before, that after you do three or four or five of them, you get 80% faster-ish. But then, which allows the company that you're working with to if they want to participate in more RFPs? I more business, right? So, you know, you mentioned books. So where do you go to, kind of, you know, as a books, webinars, associations to kind of keep make sure that your game is up to date and that you're learning any kind of new best practices, tips, etc.
Melina Cardenas [30:18]
Oh, I think I follow like Shipley and APMP, I look at, I also look like DAU resources, like Defense Acquisition University got really awesome stuff there. So lately, I've been just been trying to look at what contracting officers are looking at, because they're looking at my stuff. I want to be relatable to them, and then I just have other, like, general books about, like, Writing, Rhetoric, logic, because the end of the day, I want to make sure that what I'm saying is understood and it's understood to be the best choice. So, I feel like just having other perspectives that maybe aren't always about writing, but could be selling, or it could be just persuasion. Those things also help tremendously.
Mark Shriner [31:06]
That's awesome. You, I mean, you clearly enjoy what you do. I mean, it's just, it's awesome. It's what's the word? Your enthusiasm, or your excitement about what you do is infectious or contagious? I don't know what the right words, anyway, when you are struggling, though, what do you how do you work through it and stay motivated?
Melina Cardenas [31:35]
Know what? I think the if it's me against an RFP, I don't feel struggle. You get an RFP; I don't feel struggle. I just feel excited, excited for the challenge. But I think one of the ways that I do struggle, it's more of like a team dynamic, or maybe a misunderstanding of the amount of effort it takes to win, or like what realistically can happen let's say if you do have an RFP, and then maybe you have a questionnaire, but you don't have a software or you don't have a database, and also people want graphics or all sorts of fun new stuff, but you kind of have to be the bad guy and say, I'm sorry. We can't actually do that. We have to focus on the content, the writing, to make sure we can win. I think that's a struggle, but I think over time, people learn, like, generally, how much it takes to do something which is way longer than you could ever imagine. I feel like that applies to everything in government. Like, however long you think something should take, just multiply that by five, and then you'll trust, maybe in the area of how long it'll actually take.
Mark Shriner [32:37]
I was involved with the government project, and we won the contract. But that was just the beginning of it, because then we had to go through and get on a couple different platforms to actually get paid somehow. And the process literally took six months. I mean, because we were so excited, we won, we won, we got it. Yeah, and then, and then there were just the different platforms and everything like that. But at the end of the end of the day, it's nice, because the contract was almost renewed, almost on an annual basis, right? So, like you said, you do the work, and ideally down the road. Melina, I really enjoyed this conversation, and let me ask you, if any of our listeners wanted to reach out to you. What's the best way to do that? Is that LinkedIn, or do you have a website?
Melina Cardenas [33:23]
Or LinkedIn, my website needs work right now, but it's prettypaperworknetwork.com, or email me at Melina@ppn.email, just the word email, and that's it. Try to shorten it a little bit awesome.
Mark Shriner [33:39]
And I'll put, I'll put links in the show notes to your LinkedIn, your website, and I probably won't be great now, because those bad guys that go out there.
Melina Cardenas [33:47]
Oh yeah, spam, thank you. Thank you for that.
Mark Shriner [33:51]
Hey. Really enjoyed the conversation. I love your backdrop. Thank you for my boring hotel room, but I am a tech week. That sounds kind of cool, I guess.
Melina Cardenas [33:57]
Super exciting, super exciting.
Mark Shriner [33:59]
Yeah, very nice talking to me. Thanks so much for coming on The Grow Fast Podcast.
Melina Cardenas [34:02]
Okay, thank you. Thank you for having me.
Mark Shriner [34:04]
Cheers.
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