The Red Review - Growth Ignition new partnership with the Proposal Industry Experts (PIE) community
Transcript
[00:00.9]
Welcome to the Red Review with me Jeremy Brim. The Red Review is brought to you by Growth Ignition, the transformation and capability development business, all in the work winning space and the bid toolkit, its product set in bid process and training videos. So welcome to the Red Review with me Jeremy Brim.
[00:21.7]
An exciting episode. So we're recording this just before Christmas, so excuse me me if we feel a bit festive. I promise you we've not been at the eggnog already. And this episode will go out in early January. As we're doing something exciting together.
[00:38.0]
I'm joined by my friend Ben. So Ben, let's do a bit of an intro about you and then we'll get to talking about PI. So tell, tell me a bit about yourself. First of all. Chap. Sure, absolutely. My name is Ben Klein. I am the owner of Geek Proposals. We are a proposal response, firm, in British Columbia, Canada.
[00:58.5]
So a good, you know, part of the crown, I guess. Member, of the crown. I don't know. Anyways, just about. Yeah. Yeah, just about. I've been in business, I want to say 15 years approximately. 15 years.
[01:13.9]
And in that time, I've had everything. I've had construction, proposals, commercial proposals. I've done some government business. I've been on the other side. I was asked by the city of Vancouver briefly to help them build a proposal, and help manage some, some contractors stuff.
[01:29.5]
So I've really seen a lot of the industry but like I think many of us, I just kind of fell into it. Right. I was actually running a different company at the time. My wife and I owned a property management firm. I think you would call it like an estate management firm maybe or an estate planning firm or, or something like that in the uk.
[01:51.1]
But ultimately we, we managed condominium, developments on behalf of the Strata Council. So the internal members, and we also looked after property is on behalf of the owners. And in the part of managing those condominium rentals, we released RFPs.
[02:06.7]
So we would, you know, do really small construction RFPs for like managing their weatherproofing or like any major upgrades that they had to have re roofing and stuff like that. We'd send out tenders. And one of the construction firms actually reached out to me after one of them and said hey listen, I just want to say, like, it's such a pleasure to respond to your RFPs.
[02:24.9]
Like they're so well put Together I don't have any confusion about what I need to deliver. Like, I feel confident in, like, that, you know, what I'm sending across to you, like, makes sense because everything is well laid out. We thought through a lot of it. And he's like, have you ever thought about responding to them? And I said, no, of course I haven't.
[02:44.1]
And he said, it would really be helpful if I could have someone on my team, that would be willing to help, respond to these. And I said, sure, I'm really busy right now, but maybe in the future. And the future came a lot quicker than we expected. And so I reached out to him at one point and that's how I kind of started, down this path.
[03:03.7]
It was really kind of a learning process. I think, like most of us, he didn't have an internal team. It was himself as the owner of the company, plus a, business development specialist. Kind of like throwing these two things together on the fly. They didn't have a library. I, didn't understand the concept of a library.
[03:19.1]
Like, what did we say previously? Like, none of that, was, was in existence. But that's how he got, into the business and it's how he got excited. And then over time that developed into like, more customers taking me on through referral business. And then I was like, oh, well, I need to actually start, a company around this and I need to build infrastructure to support this.
[03:38.9]
And, and that's where we are, now 15 years later. So. So there you have it. That's me in a nutshell. Very good. Yeah. Well, congratulations. Congratulations. It's good fun, isn't it? Yeah. Hard at times being a consultant in this space, but generally good fun.
[03:57.7]
Although when we, when we catch up on calls and things, you've lots of plate spinning. There's a lot going on in there that you're a busy chap. Yeah, yeah. It's true. I've said in the past that I don't do a whole lot of marketing because I worry that I might get overly busy and not be able to satisfy clients.
[04:18.2]
And sometimes it does feel like that, strangely. Like, knock on wood. I saw your post on LinkedIn about one of, the major organisations releasing an RFP over the holidays. And you feeling like that was just bad form? That is my life normally over the holidays.
[04:34.6]
Like, it is just an expectation that I will have like 12 or 13 municipalities shoving bids through the door to try to get a project on the books before the Start of the next year. And that's just the nature of my industry. So I'm excited that you called it out because it is very poor procurement.
[04:52.6]
But. But yeah, yeah, it's definitely, for some reason or another in the uk, it's worse this year than ever before, I think. I think it's to do with our new Procurement act coming into force post Brexit. It was meant to be October and it's now going to be February next year.
[05:10.3]
So I think clients are punting stuff out willy nilly all over the place. And so lots of my friends are very, very busy. So I'm really pleased. I don't do that for a living anymore. Just train people largely and just pick a handful of tenders to play with each year just to stay shar, because it sounds horrendous.
[05:29.6]
But anyway, we won't dip into, you know, the horror show of Crown Commercial services bids here and all of their fun and games. I think within two weeks of attenda being out there are 800 odd clarifications on it because their documents are so pants. But anyway, we'll, we'll move on.
[05:46.6]
We'll move on. So, we're here to talk about PI Ben. So not the refreshing dessert, proposal. Industry experts, A, community. So, we've had colleagues on the podcast a couple of times in the past in different flavours.
[06:06.1]
But we best start again in terms of what PIE is about, where we find ourselves now and then we can talk about where we're going with it next year. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So, PIE was founded two years ago, by myself, Rin, and a woman named Olivia. And in that time we've had some changes, in the leadership structure.
[06:24.4]
But right now it's myself, Michelle. But ultimately it goes back to my background. Right. Like I fell into proposals. There was no academic rigour or pathway that took me to this place. There was no real training outside of mentorship by individuals that I met with in the industry. There, there really wasn't a lot.
[06:42.1]
And so to say that I did a number of missteps in my journey, is such an understatement. And I think that a lot of us, don't really understand the, the role very well and don't understand the positioning and there really felt like there was a need to, to help in that area and like bring some people together, to start talking about the industry, start thinking about like the industry in different ways, and advocating for themselves and Also just to, like, support each other, you know, from an emotional bent, like, for example, I.
[07:15.3]
I go into clients sometimes and I will see individuals who, And I think the UK does a really good job of this, where they've really indicated that there is a bid and there is a proposal kind of profession. And those have slightly different, you, know, areas of responsibility.
[07:32.5]
But in a lot of organisations within North America, that is not true. You could have an admin specialist, running proposals and stuff like that. You could have a very experienced salesperson or you could have someone, you know, who's had, like, communications or marketing writing.
[07:47.7]
Anyways, long and short is that I think that we've done a disservice even to, corporations. They don't understand where the proposal role fits. And so we wanted to create PI as this positive community where we could start, like, thinking about these things, thinking about these thoughts, delivering really innovative training, but also delivering support on how people can, like, advocate and make a position for themselves solidly within, inside their organisation.
[08:08.9]
So we aren't just looking at, like, what are the technical skills that get you there, though of course we supply that and a lot of people ask for it. We are also looking at, like, how do you position yourself, from a career standpoint, inside your organisation? Like, how do you, how do you approach your leadership? How do you look at the proposal role, the proposal processes, and help develop, what is honestly a, really fun role when it's done right.
[08:32.0]
And a really. Can I say shit on this podcast? No. We can bleep that out. Yeah, we can. Sorry. It used to be really sweary in a previous generation. I'm trying my best to be, a good boy. So, I try not to swear so much, but you're very welcome.
[08:49.1]
People don't take offence. They're probably too, too used to me doing it. But it could be, it could be a really bad role when it's not structured correctly. And that's why we wanted that community. We want people to, like, come in and be able to ask those questions, like, hey, this just happened to me. Like, this was the experience with a procurement specialist or something like that, and be able to, like, talk to people who've been in the industry for a long time and, like, walk through that.
[09:11.8]
When I first started responding for proposals, I assumed that every letter inside that document was like, effectively the word of God and I would respond in that way. And of course, that level of perfectionism did not help us win bids. Right. It you know, but at the same time there is a, there is an understanding that has to be developed around what is the customer asking for, how do we message properly, how do we actually find like value and fit and everything like that.
[09:37.8]
Like all of these are learned things. And that's the difficulty is that there aren't a lot of organisations just providing more casual nature. And that's why we wanted pai. We wanted a place that was a little bit fun, a little bit enjoyable. A place where they could form friendships but more importantly form networking professional opportunities, for them to really help accelerate their career by seeking advice or mentorship within this organisation.
[10:03.7]
So that was long, rambling. I apologise. No, but it was bang on. It was good. Thank you. And the interesting bit I found as a member in the community, and people that reach out to me separately and talk about the fact they're members etc, is very often they're quite high performing people.
[10:28.9]
Very often with professional associations and things you get a lot of people attracted to them to try and give themselves a badge for credibility in their organisations or whatever because they're fairly junior or perhaps not such a high performer.
[10:45.8]
And they're trying to close those gaps I guess. And I guess you get people who are looking to build their careers and all of that kind of stuff. But actually there's some really senior people in yours, and some really high performing people, like the scary Clients that I actually wince a little bit about working with because I wonder if I'm going to be able to add any value when they bring me in to train their people and I'm like, Christ, am I actually gonna know teach these guys anything?
[11:15.4]
So, yeah, the, the support for one another in the network, how your platform works, although I know you're looking to update platforms and things like that is, is really very good. And of course I, I spoke at your online conference. You sure did back, didn't I?
[11:31.2]
Yeah, yeah. How, how, how did that go? Sorry? Your specific performance or the conference itself? The conference. The whole, the whole, the conference itself. Yeah. Don't worry about my bit. It was, that was mixed. But how did the show go this year? Because obviously you've been scaling the thing.
[11:48.2]
You're only two years old. Yeah, absolutely. So, we increased our speakers, by about 20% for some reason. We actually increased the number of keynote speakers as well and I thought that they were really solid individuals. I got to interview Dr. Joseph Guillaume, who was the Advisor to President Obama on AI data, retention.
[12:09.4]
So, just interesting, interesting people who have a lot to say. You, of course, brought on Mike Redding, from the UK Reader. Yeah, yeah. And he was fabulous. I, honestly, I was a little bit nervous about his presentation, but then when he brought in how important it was, to be looking about, about the aspects of procurement and the value that, proposal individuals can bring to, municipal government, I thought that was solid.
[12:36.7]
Like, that was a message that everyone in that audience needed to hear. So, really, really good work. And actually, when I come out to London, I wouldn't mind, you know, buying him a pint or whatever is allowable, in the UK parliamentary system. But, yeah, so we have had, almost a 600% increase in re watches of that conference over the previous year.
[12:59.3]
So we know, like, we try to make our conference very accessible. It is all online. And the reason for that is not everyone has the budget to travel. We try to make all of our educational content very accessible as well, for that same purpose. So we measure how often people return to the material, or are like, looking at the material.
[13:19.7]
So, like, sometimes registrations, like, I think that, we had something in the neighbourhood of four or five hundred people register, but the actual number of attendees on the day of the event was like, somewhere in the, you know, mid-200s. Right. But the number of rewatches has increased from the previous year, 600%.
[13:38.1]
So definitely there's. There's been a lot of individuals who are like, going back to the material. They're seeing it, they're like, oh, now that I have spare time, I can look at this again. So, yeah, it really. Well, actually, we're very happy with it and fantastic.
[13:53.4]
I mean, sorry, go. No, no, you go, you go. It's just I was not to blow smoke and stuff, but genuinely I was really impressed with the prep for it. So as one of the speakers, I was offered a place in a working group with a professional public speaking coach, and was offered coaching on my speech and on my deck and all of that kind of stuff.
[14:21.0]
Which, as somebody that does a lot of this stuff, I kind of thought, well, you know, I'll go along and show a bit of willing with the others. Yeah. But you know what? I employ her as my coach now. No way. Yeah, yeah, So I have a monthly session with her.
[14:39.0]
So she lives in Colorado or somewhere. So we have a Zoom call, 8 o' clock on a Monday once a month. And she's coaching me in and we're going to develop another work stream of the business of me being a public speaker. Yeah. On this growth and business and all that kind of stuff.
[14:57.0]
But also on the financial freedom stuff I do with Destination Freedom and it's, it's been an absolute joy. And she is absolutely elite, like terrifyingly good. Really, really very, very good. Yeah. Rebecca Mullen, she's, she's awesome.
[15:14.8]
So for, for your speakers to have that opportunity to prep like that, is worlds apart from other things I've seen in similar worlds. So that, that was among. Among many other things like the analytics and the platform you use and all those.
[15:30.4]
Sor me as somebody that puts on events and webinars and things. I learned a lot actually. It's really good this year. So, thank you for that. I'm sure the members appreciate it. Yeah, well, I'm really glad you said that actually because as you know, like that is, that is definitely an expense for us.
[15:48.0]
But we. There are individuals like yourself who are kind of accomplished speakers and can be taken to the next level. But we also have a lot of people who are just afraid to speak. And we want to get that diversity of voices out there in the procurement world a little bit more. And so the addition of Rebecca was specifically to help people kind of get over their hump of like, do I have anything to say?
[16:10.2]
And she is so good at helping people develop. Yes, you do have something to say. Let's work through how you're going to say it a little bit. And I could see you. I mean if you really are using her, maybe it's not so long for us to see Jeremy Brin TED Talk. Funny you should say that.
[16:29.2]
That's, that's the target we have in mind. I've just had to pause our prep for running up for a pitch for that for three months while I sort out a bunch of other stuff in the business. But, I'm, I'm looking forward to hopefully securing something like that in, in the future if I'm lucky enough.
[16:45.3]
You. It's a very competitive market, that space. Obviously Rin did one very well last year or the year before, didn't they, in Vegas. And a bit, bit of an inspiration. So, and I've, I've watched that a number of know what Rebecca's approach is and how public speaking works.
[17:03.9]
I, can understand how the story unfolds and all that kind of stuff. It's it's really clever. As somebody who's a professional trainer that spends most days standing up training people, it's fascinating how public speaking is quite different actually, even though it looks a very similar sport.
[17:19.1]
So I, I thought the preparation of your, your cast of speakers to do that was very clever. And in fact I've got a call tomorrow with somebody who's giving a speech at another conference. And they sent me their script and I just thought oh yeah, they could do some time with Rebecca.
[17:37.9]
There's no story and there's no what she calls a sort of sensual aspect to it. What was it like? What did it feel like? So you know, I've learned a lot about that stuff. So that was really cool. Anyway, we digress. But I, I should just say I, I thought that was really cool.
[17:53.0]
So well done and look forward to next year and all of that good stuff. So. Yeah. So not to, not to put a pin in it, like, I know that we're probably going to go on to what we're doing in 2025. Right? Is that sort of is sort of the next beautiful segue.
[18:08.2]
Yeah, go for it. Beautiful. So it's, it's funny that you talk about the RF win conference because on the 15th of January we will actually be holding our first ever town hall. So a big thing for us is like making sure that the, the community actually feels like they have ownership over what is happening in this community and they have the ability to kind of push for things and move things along.
[18:30.8]
And so our very first town hall is actually going to be around naming the theme for this year's RF Win Conference. As well as giving some ideas about what they would like to learn, what they would like to get involved in. So yeah, we're, we're, we're taking opportunities like really hit up the, oh my goodness, approximately 1700 proposal professionals that we now have in the community and getting their ideas so that we can make that conference even better.
[18:57.3]
Because we've got a, we've got a group of of individuals who have agreed to form kind of the, the bases basic working community that will form the conference all the way along. And so this will be our first step in getting them the data they need to make that a success. So yeah, I'm looking forward to it.
[19:14.6]
Yeah, that's, that's very clever. I like that. Actually sort of soft market testing or community engagement to actually shape things that people want. Quite clever isn't it, how, how you engage with vendors appropriately and all of that kind of stuff.
[19:33.4]
So, Or tell me about that in 2025, what are you having? Sponsors of your conference and vendors and all that kind of stuff. Because you hadn't before, had you? I don't know whether you were going to change. Yeah. So the conference for the most part has always been, paid, for by ticket sales, as well as we, make sure that if we have special education that is part of the conference and everything like that, that is always invested back into the conference and to the speakers themselves.
[20:05.9]
We actually, because, we're a nascent organisation, like, we're a little bit fledgling and stuff like that. Even though we're financially stable, what we try to do, is we. In our speakers contract, every speaker agrees to, they can either get a payout right at the end of the conference based on the ticket sales for that specific conference, or they can wait and then we will pay them a quarter of all memberships, that we earn over the course of the year.
[20:32.3]
So anything that is done, like, because typically the conference is a big membership driver for us, any memberships that are created out of that process, we will pay to the speakers. Like, we will set aside that pool. And the goal of course would be to get to the point where we are hopefully pushing across very, very large speaker fees, because of that membership growth.
[20:51.2]
So we try to avoid sponsorships. Now, that's not to say like, we aren't, we aren't, completely against, taking corporate money. Like, that is not the idea. We just need to make sure that we always take it very, very carefully. Because it is very important to us that pie itself stays relatively product agnostic.
[21:11.5]
That we are willing to, that we are able to say to something, hey, you're not a good product, or yes, you are a good product and really be able to like, put our, our, our will behind it. And so with that in mind, we have, certain customers have in the past like sponsored specific educational pieces for us.
[21:28.4]
And then, you know, we're very clear, hey, we're going to put your logo on this. You know, it will put like one single marketing link in here. But this does not give you the right to like, market to our customers or anything like that. We do have a promotion section in the community where people can like, flag things. But yeah, we try to keep it very, very level.
[21:46.6]
Now, with that in mind though, like, obviously really, really good education as you know, because you, you built it, does require additional dollars. And so we're looking at innovative, way innovative ways of either investing with corporations or looking at like other methods of like raising those funds, to make that happen.
[22:08.0]
But yeah, anyways, that, that's, that's, that's sort of the idea. So. Yeah, well I, I appreciate the transparency and the good governance around that because it's super important in running an organisation like yours. That's, that's a very sensible thing or approach to take.
[22:27.3]
So, so beyond. So we've got the town hall. When was that? 15th of January. Sorry. Yeah. And then we're going to have three town halls, this year and they're all going to lead up to an AGM that will be held in the last quarter of the year. And that AGM will be where we have any kind of major votes that have been brought forward by the community and then the entire community can vote on them.
[22:48.8]
And this will be actual like governing, decisions that will be impacting our community, that the community as a whole will be able to take part in. So it's really important to us that we get more involvement this year. Like we have built kind of the general upswing of us, on enthusiasm and excitement and a lot of individuals who are like, I would like to do a better way of doing my job.
[23:13.3]
I would like a better way of existing in this proposal space. But now we want to take it a little bit further and we want to people to really, really get involved. And so we're giving these opportunities to touch base with us at certain points throughout the year, to really make this happen.
[23:28.3]
So yeah, it's it's looking like really quite, a good year. I think that's really cool. Okay, what else is going on in the community in 25 then, in terms of content and approaches for, for the community beyond the engagement?
[23:43.8]
Okay, absolutely. So we have been building a speaker series. So this is something that is both for our, so the differentiators in our community. We have free membership and then we have a paid membership. We operate sort of on a freemium model where a certain smaller portion of paid members kind of support, like the overall community as a whole.
[24:05.8]
And then for that we try to offer special benefits to our paid members. So every month starting in February, we will have two special speakers, presenting different topics each and every month, outside of the RF Win month. So, there will be a free one that is Offered to everyone within the community.
[24:23.1]
There will be a paid one that is behind a paywall, free to our paid members. Someone can pay for a ticket to get to it and stuff like that. But these are high quality individuals that will like bring additional information to the fore. Last year we had some pieces on how to build your global, proposal department.
[24:40.2]
We had individuals who talked around, like the challenges of SME management. Anyway, so we're, we're, we're just tasking those individuals and we'll, we'll be announcing those in the month of January, with like the lineup of individuals. So, and those will be typically interview format, though some of them will be based on panel format, just like industry experts bringing stuff forward.
[25:04.0]
So yeah, it, it, it'll be a nice piece of educational series and those, so those be two really high quality sessions, every single month, that we are offering. Very good. Yeah, very good. Oh, and I forgot wasn't it, was it right that if you're a paid member, did you get free access to the conference?
[25:24.3]
Of course. What was the connection? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So for the, and the ticket price for the conference isn't wildly different to the membership price anyway, so you might as well become a member. A paid member was, I think where it is at or there, thereabouts. I, I feel like you're a better salesperson than our sales team.
[25:41.4]
So it's, it's almost like I do this for a living, mate.
[25:49.1]
I'm not, I'm not trying to necessarily just push the product, but it's just, it's interesting, that approach actually I, I, I don't think you charge enough and I, I think you're freemium model is all very quaint, but I, I think there's an incredible amount of value you're giving away there compared to conferences in other, in other worlds.
[26:08.6]
So fair, fair play to it. Incredibly valuable. Good for you. But yeah, why not become a paid member? So, oh, just, just on the sort of events and things, just for people who, who are aware of some of the stuff that I used to do because it's in the back of my mind, I'm likely to rejuvenate my breakfast events that I was running in person in London before the pandemic, which I used to do with Mike Reader.
[26:36.6]
Yeah, so we, we did those quarterly, I think for a few years. We had a half day conference arranged and paid for. And then the pandemic came and wiped it out. So it would literally have been the, I think it was the April that year and so you know, the shutters came down and killed it off.
[26:56.6]
I don't think I'm going to go that far in terms of, of trying to arrange a conference. I, I considered that last year and got let down by some partners and things. So. But I just think, you know, maybe twice a year doing one of my breakfast events, is probably a thing, you know, 20 quid a ticket or something for non friends.
[27:16.5]
But I suspect we should probably have the chat about it. Ben. I'm obviously winging it on the spot but I could probably do free tickets for PI members I should think. Yeah. Or something like that. Or certainly a discount. So we might like try and partner on that for your, for your members.
[27:31.9]
Well sure, UK people like Spy, like we can sponsor this in some way like if you're giving our team free tickets. Like let's let's get some pies into that organisation. Like in the UK you have the, the proper meat pie, right? Like it's the. Oh yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, that's right.
[27:48.1]
Yeah. It's not just the apple variety or whatever. We don't do the savoury pizzas or savoury pie so much here. So yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll get you sorted. We'll do a deal. I'll figure that out. But anyway, for my followers, I guess without sounding too wanky, you know, keep an eye out for stuff on breakfast events and my usual webinars and drop in calls and all of that sort of stuff next year.
[28:14.2]
I wouldn't call what I do a community or community building. It's you know, but it's something of that sort of flavour. But I think across crossovers with our friends in PI would be sensible, wouldn't it? So anything else going on in 25 before we move on, we still have the weekly podcast.
[28:34.2]
We call it the Temperature Check. And the idea is it's a combination mix of everything that we try to think about what's happening in the industry, things that our community is bringing to the forward. We do some housekeeping items on anything that's happening within PI itself.
[28:50.4]
And then we try to add an element of the tales from the pitch. So this is when we bring an expert on or anyone on, we try to hear some sort of humorous or funny story just to add some levity to what we do. So anything from a Woman whose GPS betrayed her on the day that a printed bid had to be delivered.
[29:10.3]
All the way up to people who had to poke themselves to keep themselves awake because they'd been working all night on the bid, and they were afraid of falling asleep before the submission was, was, finally done. So, yeah, anything, anything we can do to just remind people, hey, we're all human here.
[29:25.6]
This is, this is not world ending, but it is, something that you can still have some fun with. So. Yeah, very good, Very good. It's good, it's good. Yeah, it's maybe a competitive podcast and probably concerningly for me, probably much better run than mine.
[29:42.2]
So I hope people enjoy that one too. Yeah, well, listen to it. There's probably something to do there. So I guess the other thing that we need to announce for 2025, is a new partnership.
[29:58.1]
Yeah, let's do it. My business growth ignition and PI. So, as you can tell, we're very excited about this. So I guess I should do the talking on this one. To a point, Ben. But, it's probably a conversation that's been going on for a while.
[30:15.2]
I've been looking for a new home, I guess in terms of people, to partner with who are, the right sorts of partners, the right levels of integrity, professionalism, you know, the right sorts of elite people in the community to work with and partner with.
[30:32.3]
And I'd had a long standing friendship with Rin anyway, one of your, your previous leaders and got me introduced to you and Rochelle, etcetera, in more recent times. And so, and I've been a fan, I spoke at this conference and the one before from memory. And so, we, we decided that perhaps a conversation about training for your members was, in order.
[30:58.5]
I, I like the fact I was, I was put in my place early doors in the, this is not about stealing the march and me being some sort of, you know, hardwired training partner for the community. This is the start of a journey of you onboarding official training partners to bring their content for the benefit of the community.
[31:18.1]
I just happen to be the first through the gate and I think that's the right thing for our discipline. And so we will be looking for more partners to bring on board. And I can help with that process as much or as little as you need. But you've got a whole panel of grown ups as your advisory board and, and all of that kind of stuff that I've had to satisfy all the due diligence and all of that kind of stuff, looking at my content with you guys.
[31:42.3]
So, so we're, we're announcing a new partnership for my business growth Ignition with PI, giving your members discounted access to our training. And so we will be releasing a, page of my website that will be accessible through PI's community, where your members will be able to access discounted versions of our training.
[32:11.5]
The beauty of it is as well that PI, we're transparent in terms of the finances on these things and good governance. Some of the money that I invoice or is paid to my organisation will be passed back to PI to support the development of the community and its products.
[32:30.2]
Kind of social value, I guess, for a. Our discipline. So you guys are getting a percentage back and your members will get a bit of a percentage. It will vary depending on different courses and things off. But, you know, for the first time, I guess it gives us, you know, a genuine share of best practises that are free from sort of influence or entanglement of previous stuff.
[32:53.3]
The legacy in our, our discipline, it's new fresh content, fresh pair of eyes. It will, it's going to start off with my fairly standard content, but we're looking to bring in other panel members who are experts in areas like AI.
[33:10.4]
So we'll develop training in areas such as how to be a great prompt engineer, to get the best out of AI. And we'll obviously do a next level of detail in bid and proposal writing, in writing skills beyond my standard theory.
[33:27.9]
So I'm quite excited to see where you guys take it really, or where we take it as, as a partnership and build a kind of collective of hopefully some of the best trainers in, in the world in this space. It will be, I guess for the first time it's, it's equally consumable by Americans and North Americans and non Americans.
[33:50.6]
So the content is dual purpose, I guess, or able to be used around the world because I think we'd probably agree, Ben, we tend to find that there's. The American or North American market operates as it does, fairly siloed, fairly linear, a certain type of language and then the rest of the world is different largely, one way or another.
[34:11.2]
So, you know, we've got content, we've built the content with that in mind so it can go both ways. It's not overly American or North American, no offence.
[34:24.5]
And so hopefully we're Doing something that's useful and the right sort of thing to do for, for the community, 100%. I couldn't echo or like add or I couldn't support your statements more.
[34:40.7]
And obviously I hope that you won't mark any of our team down if they use, zeds instead of S's, or, you know, or in their, in their. Any kind of like, verbal presentation they say aluminium instead of aluminium or whatever. You know, we'll, we'll get through those.
[34:56.6]
But I just, I just wanted to, to be like, to really highlight, PI always has wanted to be an educational source inside the industry. Like, we believe that the, the lack of sort of academia in this area is really preventing the industry as a whole or the profession itself from growing.
[35:16.5]
And what we looked at with your organisation growth Ignition is honestly a willingness to kind of like look at what is innovative but with the eye of all your experience, like all of your years and years of experience that allow you to kind of like, use the wisdom of those moments to be like, yes, this is innovative, but honestly there are some problems here and like sort of sort through those pitfalls a little bit and really help, help bring a better generation of, of education to this, process.
[35:47.3]
Something that's not like so high bound, that, you know, it's not workable in a modern world that like uses response tools and procurement portals, but also something that is not so like untethered that we're just like, yeah, just drop it in AI and let it go.
[36:02.7]
Right. Like, of course it'll answer perfectly right. We need, we, we need the adults in the room with a careful eye like yourself to say, yes, this is, this is what a customer is looking for. This is what we should be thinking about when we want. When we think about disruptive communication or when we think about bid and procurement or tender response.
[36:20.6]
So we are super, super excited about this. As a matter of fact, I will tell you right now, when RIN announced to us, that you were interested and that you had said, yeah, we can set up a meeting, like we did virtual high fives for at least ten minutes.
[36:38.9]
You bullshitter. Yeah, no, no, for real. We were like, no way, no way, no way. Anyways, super, super excited and we're super happy that you're willing to, to come on. And, and honestly, sometimes it is first through the wall, a little bit of messiness and stuff like that.
[36:57.4]
It wouldn't be a proper pie if we didn't half bake it sometimes. So anyways we're, we're, we're really excited about this relationship and about getting some students in front of your training, getting that information and getting that kind of, that cycle going of like oh great, this is what you taught us.
[37:14.8]
Hey Jeremy. This is what they want to learn next. How can you help us with that sort of thing? And like is it, is it out of your team? Is it out of another partnership that we form? Right. And just like building on that to like create an organisation that's really helping the profession forward. So yeah, thank you so much.
[37:31.0]
No, no worries at all. So in terms of the, the different sorts of training or the, the catalogue we're putting forward, we're going to launch actually a new Bidding Basics video training module which is just a two hour webinar in the real basics of bids and proposals.
[37:48.7]
So it's a bids and proposals basics piece. I should say there's no certification. We might you know do sort of badges and stuff but it's, this isn't about collecting certificates, it's, it's about personal development first and foremost.
[38:05.6]
And so we, we've got that little two hour bite size bit for people who are starting out or you could show it to stakeholders who you want to upskill in bidding so they're better at working with you as a, you know, perhaps sales people or other SMEs or contributors.
[38:22.8]
So that, that will be there as the entry level point I guess. And then we've got our full blown bid writing training programme which will be accessible as group bookings in the UK and we will look for partners to deliver that kind of content in the US and obviously you'll on board other partners for that market too.
[38:43.6]
We can deliver that online via interactive webinars. It's about two days worth of content for four mornings or four afternoons. I tend to do it as and there's a video version of the course which is about five hours worth of content in bite size chunks all aligned with our bid toolkit platform, that we have with then outside of bidding or up the funnel we've got a capture management programme which is either in video form, a three hour video or again we can take that as group bookings from corporates.
[39:18.2]
We've got the same key account management training which we can do as a group booking piece and then a runoff of smaller modules in terms of presentation skills, exec summary writing, that kind of stuff. Oh, and lastly, actually one that would be of interest that's unique I think in the world.
[39:35.7]
We've got a bid team excellence training workshop, that we run with corporates where we'll get the proposals, function together for a day and workshop through what excellence and high performance looks like for a bid team in how they manage bids, how they engage stakeholders, all of that kind of stuff.
[39:56.1]
So particularly how they manage storyboarding sessions and those sorts of things. It's about getting the best out of others and managing the process more than bid writing as it were. So that's, that's all up for grabs, for, for the community, you know, the first two, the, the, the, the bidding bid and proposal basics videos obviously accessible for anyone.
[40:17.3]
The bid writing training is accessible via webinar or video course for anyone anywhere. And we can do group stuff in, in the UK for now and we'll, we'll see where we go from there. But yeah, thank, thank you for the opportunity in the platform. It's, it's, it's great to be able to do, give back a little bit.
[40:33.2]
Obviously I'll be getting paid for this stuff but it's good to be able to give back some of that to the community and have a bit of synergy, really benefit. Looking forward to it. Yeah, no, it's going to be great. And honestly I think that you'll be surprised at some of the uptick.
[40:48.2]
Like we have, we have relationships with organisations, we did some training out in well, very close to San Francisco, early on in our pie. And what we were surprised at is just individuals who are responding to government bids. But like, even at the reading or comprehension level of the, like understanding what the bid was actually asking for, even that was kind of missing.
[41:10.6]
So anything they can like do to help people like address that gap I think will get people a long ways. And then you mentioned at the beginning that there are individuals inside our organisation that are very high level, and that is great. But internally inside their chats and stuff like that, they're asking a lot about like, how do I take my team to the next level, how do we measure, quality?
[41:30.5]
How do we actually, how do we actually move our proposal process forward? And so I think, you know, in PI, we have roughly 33% of our membership are entry level individuals. About 40%, are senior individuals with more than 10 years of experience in a proposal function.
[41:48.4]
And so I think a lot of them have just been kind of like, honestly like just coasting and really looking for a way to upskill, their. Their entire department. And I think that the bidding excellence is going to do that. So anyways, really, really looking forward to, to all of those and seeing people run through them and seeing what, what develops out of that.
[42:09.4]
So thank you very much. Well, thank you for the opportunity. So I, I guess that was the extended sales pitch for today, everybody. I mean, we, we had. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Important, Important stuff to, important stuff to share.
[42:26.5]
So, yeah, thank you very much for coming on, Ben. It's. It's been great to hang out and, I'm. I'm really excited about the partnership, and where we take things moving forwards and how we help grow the community as well. Of course. And look forward to catching you on town halls and the RF Win conference next time around.
[42:46.1]
You know, keep your eyes peeled, everybody. It's the place to be. Perfect. Well, thank you so much. Jeremy. Loved being here in the red room. So, yeah, hope that everything is going well. Thank you. Take care.
