Hey friend, welcome back, or welcome to the Trend Report. I'm excited that you've joined me for today's conversation. I'm Sid Meadows and I'm a business advisor, coach and longtime student of the office furniture industry. My goal is simple to provide information with you that will help you and your business move forward each and every day. And I'm really excited about today's conversation because today is actually a podcast takeover, when I hand the mic to my longtime friend and colleague, Michelle Warren, the owner of Catalyst Consulting, and Michelle is joined by one of her team members, Ryan, where they're going to dive into a really important topic for you today and a way to help you grow your business. Yes, we're entering the fourth quarter and now is the time for the push to make sure you end the year on a high note, and Michelle and Ryan are going to dive into the strategies that you need to understand about how to sell to the federal government. I hope you enjoy today's conversation.

Hey, welcome to the Trend Report. This is a podcast takeover. In case you didn't realize that I am not Sid Meadows, I am Michelle Warren and I'm excited to take over the podcast with my guest, Ryan Hay, who is a colleague from Catalyst, and we're going to share our thoughts today on why you need a public sector focused program and how public sector can help you grow. So I'm going to start with a little bit about myself For those of you who don't know who I am. I'm the founder and president of Catalyst Consulting Group. I'm also the co-founder of the Collaborative Network with Sid Meadows. 

Next year will be 30 years that I've been in the commercial furniture industry. I can't believe it. I was just a babe when I started. This industry really has been so great to me and I've had just a wonderful career. I started in business development at the dealer level. I ran a dealership. I led manufacturers, become a specialist in selling public sector. I now say I'm a subject matter enthusiast about public sector and now I'm an entrepreneur and I love it. And, as I mentioned, I invited Ryan so that I didn't have to talk to you all by myself. He is a consultant with Catalyst and he's going to kind of join us today for the takeover, as we talk about public sector. And so, Ryan, why don't you give us a little introduction to yourself?

Sure, thank you, Michelle. I'm Ryan A. Realistically, I'm probably going to be the entertainment part of the podcast, which I'll be the factoid stuff, so we're gonna have some fun. I've been in the industry since 2008. Before that I was in medical supply industry, so very familiar with the government landscape. That's all I've done in this industry. So I like to say, in terms of furniture, I'm not a furniture expert, I'm a government expert. So uh was with night yell within skate. Now I'm with Michelle and team and we're having some fun working with some good partners, you know, educating the masses about public sector and, in particular, my expertise is federal.

And I always tell people that I hate the word geek, that we're public sector geeks, but we kind of are. But I always just say we could talk public sector for hours and never grow bored if you give us enough questions. So we're going to try to limit it to 30 or 45 minutes here. I did mention Catalyst Consulting and Ryan mentioned it. So we help manufacturers grow their sales through public sector programs. So we partner currently with 11 manufacturers where we're helping them create a public sector program that inevitably grows their sales. Today, as I mentioned, we're going to talk about why you would have a public sector focus and how it can help you grow your sales. So with all of that, Ryan, let's get started.

So Ryan and I do like to banter, so we'll see how this conversation goes, but I thought we should start off with why we think public sector is a good focus for manufacturers, dealers and reps. So we don't want to limit it to just manufacturers, but why focus on public sector? So thoughts on your end, Ryan.

So first thing I always do is try to kind of explain the landscape that people are looking at. I mean, you look at our industry as a whole in terms of the North American market and say, okay, it's exponentially, it's what are we? 15 billion, now, that's what furniture is roughly. So if you look at that, you say, out of that 15 billion, if you add commercial, it's everybody that's in there. So if you're a small manufacturer, even if you're a large manufacturer, you have so much competition, there's so much out there. 

There's big box stores, there's, you know, you got to worry about foreign investors and companies, no-transcript. So in terms of understanding the enormity of what the public sector market is on the federal side, furniture is in between one. It's about $1.4 or $1.5 billion a year. That's what the federal government in the United States spends on furniture a year. They take that to state, local, municipal and you know, higher education, things like that, that market triples. So if we want to put it that way, the whole public sector market within the just in the united states is about six billion dollars a year total so a little more conservative and I say four to five just to be safe.

But I think the point is if the furniture market is truly around $15 billion and it's somewhere between $4 to $6 billion in public sector, you're a third or a little over a third of our total industry is public sector. That's crazy. If you're not in public sector just on that alone, then you are missing out on that much opportunity.

And then the other side. What I always say to people on the public sector side when you're talking commercial, I mean you got to go out and you got to find your target market. In some situations you almost have to create a need. I mean furniture in and of itself. If you take seating and desking and things of those nature, they're products that you have to use. Everyone needs them, everyone's got to sit, everyone's got to have a work surface. In the commercial landscape there's so many different options for it. There's so many different configurations. You have designers with different ideas. 

In the public sector market it's more cookie cutter. It's more the offices are designed a certain way. There's a spec you have to follow. There's things like that. Those rules become rigid. Creatives get stumbled, they stumble and they tend to go whatever. But I find it's one of those things. Once you know the rules and it's a game you know how to play it. So then you get into it and then you know how to sell. So for me it's an easy market for anybody to look at and say will I succeed or fail? Rather quickly Anybody can do that at and say will I succeed or fail, rather quickly.

Anybody can do that. And I smiled when you said cookie cutter, because to a lot of people, especially on this call, that's going to be a bad thing. And we used to joke I think we still can say this although they have come a long way, especially on the federal side. But we used to say look at what the commercial was doing 10 years ago and that's what Federal is doing. I think it has come a little like it kind of got pushed during COVID into some maybe you know different spaces and a little more creative. It's not all blue and gray anymore, but I do. I agree with your point that there are specifications. Right, it's more spec driven and as long as you have products that meet the specs or can create products that meet the specs, that's how you and I have been successful in. Some of this is hey, there's a spec out there, we work for a seating company, we can make a chair that meets that spec. Then go market that chair that meets that spec and sell a million dollars, right.

Well, I think that's been, that's always been my, you know my, cautionary thing to any manufacturer getting into, especially the public sector if, for example, let's take a single manufacturer, if they're going to sell, say, a single manufacturer has 25 lines of chairs, different chairs from all the categories, you know, executive, whatever you want to call it and they end up selling one side chair. But they'll sell $10 million of that one side chair a year. Does that really matter? Does it matter that they're not selling the rest to someone that owns the company, to whoever that is? 

I mean, bottom line is the creatives are the ones that are going to be like well, but I really think that this chair should work. I mean even the government, I think I always say, especially if you're just launching and getting into it pick your best product, what is your best product, what do you do better than anybody else? And then go okay, that's the one you market, that's the one you with them that it might not even end up being that, because everyone might say, okay, you know what this fits our needs. So, as long as you're willing to do that and I think that's where the cookie cutter thing can work to your advantage you know what they want. They're gonna use this, they're gonna use that.

It's something you can employ yourself into yeah, and I'm thinking specifically of someone that, um, we used to work with I can't remember if you were on the team at the time or not, but they had like some older products that they were trying not to market anymore.

And then they had all these new, pretty designer focused products and they really didn't want to sell this older product and I was like, guys, we've got to sell this older product, this is government product. This new stuff, maybe they'll buy it, maybe they won't. This old stuff, we know they will buy this right, and so it is a little bit of a different mentality on that and I almost feel, like you know, we've worked with some customers maybe a little too early on in the process as we were growing that they were more innovative products and they're really hard to position, especially in the federal side of it, not so much in the state, local education, but really in the federal side. When you're getting into some of the newer product types, especially prior to COVID, but even since COVID like they're slow to adapt. Maybe Is that the right term for the federal government.

Yeah, well, no, I don't think it's necessarily that. I think it's the spaces that they're in the federal government doesn't have the ability to. I mean, the way things are right now, especially in real estate, they don't have the ability to go and do a new building. You know, out of whim, I mean you take a company, like you know, one of the Fortune 500, it's Apple, google, anybody you want to talk about. If they want to put a new office building, at least buy an office building, design your office spaces and the way you go, because they have the ability to jump around Federal buildings, any of those federal property.

It's not that easy. They can't just you have plumbing, electrical, all those things you have to, you know, factor in yeah, outdated, so, and that's and that and that all has to be compatible to that. So I think a lot of times people find the frustration with government that you know they, like you said, they're 10 years behind in industry in terms of design. But I mean it's a limited case of the way they are and, plus, it's also the nature of the aircraft. They are still very much dependent on the cubicle system, the old school stick systems. That's still the nature of what they do.

Yeah, someone asked me today, actually right before this call, if I thought that there was still a market for a new system manufacturer to enter in. That was a small business, us-based company, and I was like, was like yeah, if nowhere else, the government, yeah, so yeah well, it's just one of those things, I mean, everything goes forward to a certain degree and then gets pulled back.

I mean, there was, you know, we want to talk commercial landscape and get away from all the experience I could. I mean, oh, there was that huge push for open spaces, right, everything was open, open, open, open. And then something happened in 2020 that was like, oh wait, now we've got to go the other way. So now people come back to the offices new design or combination of a blend and you find that in federal spaces too. I mean.

I think you just find more panel systems, I think in federal, at least today, than you do in commercial.

Well, I think what's interesting with that, Michelle, is we're talking about federal spaces that we know of, right. Do you know what I mean? Like, if we're talking about, if we start talking all the acronyms and you start getting into different agencies where you don't see what's in those offices and things that go in there other than people that and you got to remember if anybody's a designer, manufacturer, architect or someone from one of those you know acronym agencies, they have to sign documents saying that they won't release anything about the stuff that went in there. So I mean, on the federal side, I think they're really, and I think, when it comes to public sector, on the higher ed side, I think there's a lot of innovation that's going in there that we don't really think about because that's constantly changing. I mean that's an yeah definitely.

That's a quick change.

Yeah, definitely that's a good change.

Yeah, I agree, I agree and I would say so, your first point being, or the first point that we've discussed has been just the size of the market, right, but I would say the second point that makes specifically the federal a good market is the fact that it's basically recession-proof, and you know this because you help me with my data.

I am a data geek, for those of you guys that are listening to this, and I jokingly say data is my love language. But pretty much anyone could tell you give me some data that supports it, and I can't really argue it. But we used to say that federal government was recession-proof and then one day I was like, hey, ryan, run a report for me because I've been saying this for many years. So could you look back at like 2007, 2008? Could you look at, you know, all thecom, all that stuff, and even look at during the pandemic and it showed that during those recessions that were happening commercially, that the furniture was at the worst case flat furniture purchases, worst case flat, sometimes up in a recession, as far as the federal government spends. So to me that's a really high number two reason for a federal strategy.

Yeah Well, I mean to that point, well, and even on the state and local and municipal side, I mean you're going to get pockets that have slow growth and all that other kind of stuff, but really just with population growth, those things are just going to continue to move up. I mean, that's what kind of got to understand. The government government in general is going to spend less money in certain areas, but certain things they're not going to stop spending money on. And again, furniture is one of those necessity items. I mean, yeah, not all things in our marketplace are necessities, but a lot of it is. And I mean I'm finding spaces are being created for all of that. So for me it's a market that you know, you can second watch, buy and there is more. There is different competition, but it's not as much and at least it's a known competition. It's things you know, and that's the other side.

Yeah, that would lead me to point number three, um, as our top three reasons. That well, I don't know if you agree with this is makes it one of your favorite things, or why you're in public sector, but I just love the access to all the information, right, like they're spending public money, so somewhere there's a trail that shows you their budgets so you can kind of anticipate, you can watch the news, read the see what agencies are getting money, which ones are not getting money, right, because that obviously changes. And then just the ability to go in and access, like you can literally go in and find out who your competitors have sold to in the federal government, who wrote the PO. I feel like it's so much easier to find the information and to have, if you're willing to do the research, to have all that research handy when you go in to meet with a client.

Well, realistically, that's how I ended up in this industry. That's how I ended up where I am, just because, like I said, I came from medical supplies, used to working on RPs and RFQs and red tape, bureaucracy, all that kind of fun stuff. So I just found you know the translation to it it's I've always found what to do isn't sales, it's connecting some. They have to buy products anyway. So I've always found the solution that you know you come in, they're going to spend the money, they're going to spend something on myself. You know, when I was with the manufacturer and selling something, it's just a matter of me. Can I help them sell my product? And as long as you work for a manufacturer that sells good product, that you stand behind, whether you're a dealer or a rep, or a manufacturer rep or a manufacturer yourself, and that's one thing that you know. 

Not to sell catalysts at this point in time, but that's one thing we always pride ourselves on is working with good people or with good companies, and if you're one of those people, you're like-minded selling to the government. That goes over a long way. Integrity, those type of things, you know, all those little good old, traditional value type things, those go a long way, because a lot of things are sold on a relationship and that's one of the things I like. I don't like pandering. I don't like you know, I'm not a salesperson. That's never going to happen In this arena. You could be honest and you could be a hothead that could have it work. So for me, that's what you're meaning.

Yeah, I agree, and I feel like we're going to spend a lot of this conversation on federal. So I'm going to just do a real quick plug for State Local Education Cooperative. Obviously, ryan mentioned the scope of the business that goes to federal, of being, you know, $1.4, $1.5 billion and then like almost three times that at State Local Education. So there's a bigger market in State Local Education. But there's so much going on in federal right now that when we sat down to figure out what we wanted to talk about, I was like this is going to be really heavy federal, because if you guys follow any of the news for the past year, you know there's a lot of change. We refer to it as chaos, but I think it's going to be really good for furniture and so I just wanted to kind of throw that out there. We do love State Local Education Cooperative. We think it's a fabulous market If you have products that they need, which pretty much you know you've got back office as well as you know education and then state and local. So I'm sure if you're listening to this and you're in furniture, you have something that someone needs in that market. It is also a great market, but you will find out through the rest of this conversation that we're going to go heavy on the federal. So okay. 

So top three reasons basically to wrap that up. Or they represent public sector represents about a third of our market. It's recession-proof, pandemic-proof, however you want it. And then it's really just me with number three. I know, Ryan, you're a data guy too, but I just love the fact that there's all this public information and you can be prepared. I'm a prep girl. So, okay, I know some of you on this call and we have this conversation a lot are questioning the federal side of things I mentioned. You know, watch the news, read the papers chaos. But I would love to take some time, ryan, and just talk about what we're seeing in the federal segment. Is it doom and gloom, is it? Hey, there's good things. How do we find the good things? What are the good things? So I'm going to let you start with what you're seeing federally, that let's just say what excites you federally right now.

Well, it's the chaos. It's the thing. It's. Any good analyst will tell you. A financial person will say in times of chaos, in times of flux, those are the times you buy, invest and do all those kinds of things.

And right now we're in the federal government. That is very much what's going on. So, if anyone you know, if you pay attention to the news you heard about the decentralization of the big agencies in DC and they want to move to different markets, some things, some wheels are in motion on that. Some things are happening, others aren't. But regardless, if there's any movement, you know there's going to be furniture buys. It's the one thing the armada does is, and it's not even is the, you know, the repurposing of furniture. That doesn't tend to happen because you know different amount of people, different type of people, different work, all those things, the cost. So, and here's the other side. Sorry, I want to kind of jump around a little bit, just because the other things you've heard about and everybody listening, I do this a lot, I go here, I go there and I kind of go all over the place, but it's worth it.

I'm going to try to wrangle you in a little bit, so I'm listening intently. Go ahead, worth the journey.

So you've heard about or you know that was pushed off into the ocean. The biggest expense within the federal government in the United States and truth of probably most governments is really in the logistics and transportation and the movement of our military. That is the biggest expense. It's just you think about everything that goes on behind that. I mean, if you've ever planned a vacation for a family of six, you know, you understand the logistics and everything that goes on behind it. So, realistically, you think about every tank, every plane, every missile, every grenade, every, just every boots, whatever you want to call it, everything that moves. 

So when they go, when they're in a militarized war zone and they leave, for them to bring everything back it's way more expensive than for them to leave it there. So when you hear the government's being wasteful, they're not. They're actually being cost-sensitive to that. So the same thing happens nationally, locally. So if they're in one building and moving to another, even if there's an agency in that building, when they move, for them to reconfigure or repurpose the furniture that's in there, it's going to be more expensive for them to do that, to buy new. So that's the one thing. So the logistics and there's agencies within the federal government that are dedicated to that. So, as any time the government moves, especially on the military side, cost falls, and furniture is one of those costs.

So for me, I'm excited to see what happens, to see where we go. I think it's going to bring back a lot of that legacy furniture that was purchased, you know, in in the aughts and you know, in the late nineties and things like that. You are going to get some things that are new, that you know are like that. So that's what I'm excited about. And in terms of do you want me to talk about the numbers right now, in terms of the growth, no, let's hold that.

Let's hold that for a second, because I think you know well, the government's laying off all these people. All these people are taking early retirement and there that is happening. But I think what we have to look at is what you said. One, they're decentralizing, which means they're moving agencies. A lot of them are moving out of DC, which is good for everyone. That's not in the DC market, which is we refer to as Mecca. But there's also the return to work, right, and I know that they're not. It isn't 100% back, but there has been that mandate in place. So I think you've got decentralization, you've got a return to work. The percentage of people that have left the government is probably lower than you think. If you really dug into it, you've got huge DOD growth right. So there's so many good things that are going on for us as furniture sellers.

Yeah, well, and actually that's, and truthfully, what we should touch upon. I mean, everyone, you probably, everyone's probably second-party here at Doge. But realistically, what happened with Doge is not it's not the first time that's happened in the government where an administration came in and like we're going to clean house, we're going to do this, we're going to do that. It's the first time that there was ever a billionaire of the chainsaw on the stage saying that was going to happen and that's what. That's what caused everybody to kind of have the spotlight on it for one and for two, for what we freak out now. You know, a lot of things did happen. A lot of bad and negative things happen. I won't say that, but to that point the government did lose people, but they're they're rehiring those people and they're rehiring card card. If you look at the agency levels, things are happening and money is being spent. And if you look, the federal government has spent more than already. You know Trump's administration has spent more than Biden's did in the first year and also compared to last year.

So yeah, so go ahead. So talk about just the numbers now that we're here. Did you do this for me the other day?

Yeah, so overall federally, I mean we're talking right now we are at the end of the first month of Q4. Okay, so Q4 started July, runs until September 30th, so Q1 through Q3 is where we actually really have numbers for it's overall federal spending for everything is up 18% versus last year. On the furniture side Overall it's about 13% Through GSA contracts. Those numbers we only have Q1 and Q2 for. Just based on reporting of sales and things like that and how those numbers get transcribed, that number in Q1 and Q2 are up 3% From people that we're talking to, different manufacturers and most of our partners. There's been growth, so I expect that number again we're kind of comparing, so we're going back pre-pandemic levels and back and sales are increasing. We had a huge jump back to normalcy in 2023. So 2024 was flat, 2023, which was actually, in terms of trends, very much still growth. So I'm expecting 2025 to be either flat or slightly up from 2024, which again is a trend to extreme growth, which is good yeah.

Well, I just think, like you said, you know 3% and people might be like ah, 3%, that's not really a lot of growth. That's just Q1 and Q2. And if you remember because I know you remember but the listeners might not remember we did not have a federal budget for a long time at the beginning of this fiscal year and so we are expecting a very I mean, it's always heavy like 50% of what gets spent gets spent in the fourth quarter for furniture, but we're expecting a very heavy fourth quarter which, as Ryan just mentioned, starts technically tomorrow. So I think that there's a chance that we'll be up even more than 3%.

Yeah, at which start? I mean if anybody goes through data and if you start looking at tables or anything that would put out there. When we say spend, you know that's when the money is allocated, when the money actually drops or when it's invoiced and what it's paying for and all that kind of fun stuff. That's when it gets thrown into the bucket, and all that kind of fun stuff that's when it gets thrown into the bucket. So that's why you will see if you look at any table of federal spending Q1 through Q4, it's more of a straight line as opposed to dips and valleys. You'd have to look at more of what things are awarded. 

So right now to Michelle's point. What you're going to see for the next two months, basically starting tomorrow, is an increase in the purchase card system and if anyone on the call doesn't know, purchase cards purchase cards within the federal government are now widely becoming the go-to spend for pretty much everything. Cardholders a minimum of $10,000. You've got some cardholders that have up to $50,000 and they can put pretty much anything on this thing. So that's where you're seeing a lot of that spend going.

Are they still talking about raising that $10,000 to $25,000?

Yeah, I think it was actually $35,000.

Ryan's like my fact checker, like if the sky's falling, I go to Ryan and he tells me the sky's not falling. If I hear something on the street, I go to Ryan and he fact checks it for me.

So yeah, so they are looking at doing that starting next fiscal. But I mean again, it's you know something. It's it's a rumor in government and that typically doesn't happen when it's supposed to, but it does happen, yeah. So keep an eye out for that. So, anybody that holds a GSA contract, if you do GSA sales right now, keep in mind that you know what you're seeing in terms of credit card spend and you're getting that 3% fee that you have to pay. That's only going to keep increasing. It's not something that's going to go wrong, so that's something that everybody should be mindful of.

Yeah, but if you're on here and you don't have a GSA contract, we're not saying run out and get a GSA contract. There's pros and cons to that and there's investment and that kind of thing. So I will say, of the $1.4, $1.5 billion annually that gets spent on furniture, probably a third of that is not on GSA contract. Maybe even more than a third of that is not on GSA contract. And so there are ways to sell to the federal government. P-cards is one of them where you don't have to have a contract. So we're not saying run out and get a contract. 

Everyone I am saying that everyone has federal sales in their market, because that is a myth that I've had to bust a couple of times. We have a great map that shows you. Everyone has. And I think, as this decentralization occurs, people in some outlier areas might have more federal than they've had in the past. So I think that there's federal in every market. It might not always be as obvious as you think it is whether it's a prime contractor like a Boeing, a Lockheed or a military base or that kind of stuff, but there's federal business in every market. It's a big market, right? So get your piece of it. And what we're looking at. Obviously, everything is not, you know, rainbows and unicorns in the federal government right now, but we see a lot of opportunity with the stuff that is happening. You just have to kind of look through and kind of find the stuff and read between the lines to see what's going on there, anything that you want to say, Ryan, because I do have one myth that we're going to tackle before we finish this.

No, we're good, let's roll into the myth.

Okay. So when I say myths, I'm sure you guys all know this, but there used to be a show called Myth busters. I loved it. It was more science stuff.

But when I first started this consulting company four and a half years ago even actually before then part of the reason that I started the company was I would talk to manufacturers. They would ask what I did for the company I worked with. I would tell them that I was the VP of government sales or vertical markets, whatever it was that day, and I would get like they would. They would automatically say something like they would have a statement, whether it's you know we have contracts but we don't know what to do with them, or you know we got the contracts but nobody's selling them, or so all these different things. And I would literally think to myself oh, I know how to solve that. Or I would think to myself oh, that's not true, but you think that, and I'm not going to fight with you about it right now.

But I was writing articles when I first started for Delve Magazine so grateful to Jeff Carlson and the MRL team for asking me to do that and so I did some Mythbuster series and I loved them and I just think they're fun. But this one, had you asked me, maybe even a year ago, I would have probably said, well, yeah, it probably does, and now I have a different answer. So the myth that I chose for us to talk about, ryan, is having a federal contract handcuffs you commercially, and or we don't have a federal contract because we sell commercially and we don't want that compliance issue. And so I'm going to let you start, I like I start with. In the past that was true, but some things are changing. So, um, I would love to talk just about the big change that's going on, and it's very controversial but and that is, this is the big.

I won't, even, I won't, even, I won't even. You know, bust the myth that before this happened, because that was always something I disagreed with.

Anyway, but however, on the go forward, but you could see how people would think that didn't really understand the GSA or their GSA contract. You could see how they would think it had handcuffed them.

Sure.

Without a knowledge of what you knew.

I will say sure, okay, I will say yes.

Sometimes you just do it to appease me, I think.

I think so, and in this scenario, definitely that case, but it's also because that in and of itself is another 10-minute conversation that just gets into a call. We don't even need to do that anymore thanks to what's going on right now. More thanks to what's going on right now. So the big topic of the day if you have a GSA contract and you get your mass mod emails, is TDR transactional data reporting. So for anybody that doesn't have a GSA contract and is not familiar, quarterly you have to report your sales to GSA and you pay your IFFB and away you go. And the way it works right now is you just basically give them a dollar amount of your GSA sales, you pay your IFAP and then that's it and the way you go. And every so often maybe once a year, every two years, three years, four years, whatever you'll get a GSA audit. They'll come in, they'll scrutinize your sales, they'll look at your commercial sales practice, which is known as your CSP, and compare that to and make sure that you're following what you said you would do commercially to GSA when you got your contract. And that's the way the system's going Now. Transactional data reporting means you report your sales monthly to GSA. They have a standard form you fill out with pre-populated line items and things that you have to give them, and now that you do that, the CSP portion goes away. So now all they're looking for is to make sure what your price is. Are you giving a discount? That you said. Are you selling items that are on contract? And that's it. That's all they're doing. So they're no longer going to be scrutinizing your commercial sales practice. Commercially, you can sell your products for whatever you want to sell them for, and realistically. So that myth is definitely busted. It's done. It's over with. All furniture. Sins are now being splintered over in TDR. That's going to happen. The start of this 26, october 1, that's going to happen. So that's just done. So there's no more CSP. There's no more worried about your commercial landscape. Commercially, you can do whatever you want. Now there's a bunch of worry. Michelle wants to jump in, but I'm not going to let her for a second because I'm on a roll.

So there's a bunch of reasons for this. We've all heard, you know, coming back from the 70s and 80s, the $500 hammer, the Pentagon, all that stuff. So that's where the GSA rules came from. It was basically to develop fair and market and go to commercial landscapes and say, hey, if you're going to sell to the government, you got to give us the best price, which was never really the case, but it was just basically they were trying to create a fair and urban landscape. Now what you're seeing happen. 

Naturally, with the amount of competition that's out there, it would behoove somebody to basically take their product and then market up to try and sell it to the government, because you're never going to sell it, because the government is now buying things in more of a lowest price, technically acceptable manner than they were at any point in time, so that the federal government is now acting more like a scrutinizing, commercialized beat than, you know, a per se government.

So if you want to sell your product for more in the federal government than you would commercially, you're not going to sell it. So if you want to sell it to the federal government, you're going to have to give them discounts, you're going to have to get to a fair ceiling just because the amount of competition because if you don't, somebody else will. So that is kind of the industry is taking care of it more like itself in terms of the CSP and the government's acknowledging that and they just want to make sure, with their transactional data reporting that they're doing monthly, that they're getting clear and concise data of what they got. And really what they're looking for is to make sure if you charge them $50 for that hammer in July, you're still charging them $50 or less in September, not more. That's really all they're doing in terms of reporting right now. There's a lot more to it than that, but that basically boils it down. So that's done. So we can now sell commercially very healthily and to the federal government with no issue. Just have to do more people.

Okay, so you didn't let me jump in, but that means I get the last word. So I do want to say that this was something that had me on the ledge the sky was falling because I had talked to some people and they said the sky was falling. And I talked to Ryan and he said it wasn't falling. And then I talked to GSA and now it's not falling. I'm still thinking about it, but it's not as horrendous as it was originally positioned to me and I do think regardless. I think the benefits outweigh. Like I was telling Ryan the other day when I first heard about TDR, which was six, seven years ago when they implemented it in some other SINs, I had said to my company at the time if we ever get the opportunity, we want to do this. We need to figure out a way to make this happen, because it eliminates the CSP, the commercial sales practices. It eliminates the price reduction clause, which is the compliance issue that you're really concerned about, and the basis of awards. So to me that outweighs the challenge, potentially, that some people are going to have with figuring out okay, how do we do the reporting? We have to report monthly instead of quarterly those kinds of things that have us, especially as highly configurable products. The line items are bigger, the options are more, and so there is some concern, or a lot of concern, around that, as well as some other stuff with TDR. But I do believe for most manufacturers that the elimination of the CSP, prc and BOA outweigh the potential negatives of TDR. 

So, having said that, I'm going to recap for you kind of what, hopefully, you got out of this conversation, and then I'm going to tell you about an opportunity to learn more about TDR with us and how to reach out to us at least to me as well. So one I hope that you left this with. It is not all doom and gloom. The sky is not falling. There is obviously potential in public sector as a whole. It's a big part of our market, of our industry, and there's a fair amount of potential, if not a lot of potential, in the federal government. I really think the key is that you have to have someone on your team or know where to find it, or work with someone like us that does to help you identify where you should be looking for that business and who you should be partnering with for it. And then TDR I think the verdict for Ryan is in. He's two thumbs up. I'm maybe one thumb up, one thumb down, I'm not sure yet, but we are going to have a conversation about TDR for the industry. So first of all, thank you so much for listening to us today. Hopefully you enjoyed it and you found it helpful. 

If you want to learn more about public sector, we do offer free monthly webinars called Catalyst Conversations, and we would love to have you join us. Our next webinar is on TDR, so we just spoke to a person at GSA that is highly involved in it. I've had some conversations with some consultants, I'm going to have some conversations with some manufacturers who've been on it, and then we're going to share all that information with you at that webinar. So if you connect with me and or Catalyst on LinkedIn, then you will see we will start posting about that and it's free. You just sign up to join us for it and I'm going to have Ryan myself and then a friend of ours, Patrick Carr, who is the president of North America Marketing, who is a consulting company that helps people with GSA contracts, is going to be on to talk with us about it.

But you can connect with me on LinkedIn Personally. It's Michelle-Lynn-Warren. Our catalyst is catalyst-consulting-group-llc. Or you can email me, Michelle, at strategic-catalyst.com, or learn more about Catalyst at strategic-catalyst.com. 

Thank you, guys so much. We appreciate you hanging out with us today and hopefully we did Sid Meadows proud in our podcast takeover. Bye.