Doberman Emergency Management Group llc

Overview

• We are lead by a former National Strike Team member who managed numerous national crises.

• Emergency management is an emerging market. The field and the product demand is growing rapidly.

• Government contracting in emergency management- top growing field with little competition.

• We combine experience with data to design new products to support emergency services operations.

• We fly drones and analyze geospatial imagery for State and Federal agencies.

• We are dramatically changing how emergency managers will react in throughout the disaster life-cycle

• We own the number 1 rated emergency management podcast on Apple, globally and it's monetized.

Answering your questions about our business:

What does your company do?

Doberman creates customized emergency plans, training and products based on the unique circumstances of our clients. We also run the number one rated emergency management podcast on Apple.

We view research, analytics and experience as invaluable. Doberman provides capabilities in every phase of the disaster life-cycle, including on-site expertise. Excellence is paramount.

Our mission is to provide organizations with the capacity to meet the demands of disaster readiness.

Where do you want to be in 5 years?

We will have secured several multi-year federal and state government contracts to review and write emergency plans and training (this has begun).

We will have a Hazard Mitigation Team that focuses on county level HMPs (this has begun).

An R&D department focusing on grants and engineering products (this has begun).

Disaster Tough Podcast covers all in-house expenses for the company (already monetized). Doberman will have non-competitive status for contracts.

Why did you choose this idea? Why do you care?

We care about life-saving life-sustaining operations. We have seen too often that communities are unprepared for emergencies. Any crisis can become a disaster without great preparation, response, and mitigation efforts. Emergency managers must have the best tools and data to build these protective systems. We provide solutions that work.

How far along are you? What's your biggest obstacle?

The owner started full-time on this business in late 2019. We use 11 free-lancers to help complete projects, as needed. The company is new, so when COVID-19 hit, it was both a huge obstacle and opportunity. As agencies and communities became more aware of disaster readiness- people started paying attention to our work.

We have two incredible obstacles to overcome. The first is just getting the word out, especially building those relationships with government agencies, our primary target. The second is related to the first, we need more people on staff full-time. We need staff who understand emergency management contracting, who can speak the language and build relationships/ contracts that can successfully be awarded work.

Who competes with you? What do you understand that they don't?

There are three main tiers in my field. The top tier is the DOD leaning contractors - they go for huge contracts worth 10's of millions, but the overhead is a major concern and the plans are cookie-cutter. Due to overhead, when they need to customize, they will subcontract it out.

The bottom tier is retired fire and police who grab city level contracts and try their best without adequate training on an all hazards approach. The overhead is low, but it's almost impossible to expand.

Then there is the middle-tier, which has almost no competition. These are the low seven figure contracts that are too small for the top tier, but too difficult for the bottom tier. This is where we find an amazing niche.

How will you make money?

Our pitch is that we are lead, operated by, and use expert emergency managers with ample field experience. We use this to drive towards customization. We have a multi-prong approach to making money:

• Government, Business, School contracting for emergency plan writing and training. (emergency operations plan, active shooter course, hazard vulnerability assessment, etc.)

• Product delivery to agencies and communities. (security cameras, fire alarms, office go-bags, radios, etc.)

• Drone team for disaster response. (search and rescue, damage assessments, surveillance, etc.)

• Disaster Tough Podcast. This podcast currently has a paid advertisement and plan to increase this to 3 per episode.

• Grants for research in new tech.

What are the biggest risks? If you fail, what would be the reason? What has to go right for you to succeed?

Our biggest risk is time. COVID-19 has made it extremely difficult to provide traditional networking opportunities- we have overcome this partially though online presentations and our number 1 rated emergency management podcast on Apple. Government contracting, especially to become a prime, can require a multi-year process to be awarded. We require a staff to develop product and legal to make sure our emergency response plans and products are protected.

The great news is that the experience and training needed to provide quality work towards government agencies, schools, and businesses already exists within our organization- if we can survive long enough to be awarded contracts, our team can handle the work load effectively.

What avenues are you using to generate cash flow?

Disaster Tough Podcast- The number one rated emergency management podcast on Apple, globally. We sell advertisement space on the show and rent out the studio when we are not in production.

Gear- We have begun listing products on our site, including drop-shipping options for the general public. This includes our Doberman EMG made Office-Go-Bag. A popular item after each training.

Training courses- Active Shooter Awareness, Sexually Exploited Youth Sensitivity Training, Traditionally CPR and First Aid, etc.

Emergency Plan Writing- Hazard Vulnerability Assessments, Continuity of Operations Plan, Occupant Emergency Plan, Hazard Mitigation Plan, County Evacuation Plans.

Drones in Disaster- We fly drones to capture preliminary damage assessments in large scale disasters.

Grants- We are currently collaborating with university partners to develop proprietary software and hardware for emergency managers.

Business Model

Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. We started our business right before COVID-19 hit. So, we had to apply those emergency management skills and innovate. Our original goal was to utilize national level contacts and public speaking events to generate business. In fact, all but 1 event got canceled this year. The single event we spoke at, the Wildfire Management Conference (virtually) generated several leads that we are currently working through now. Including a potential drone contact to fly drones after disaster strikes.

However, because emergency plan funding shifted to the response and conferences drying up- we started other tactics. This included the thought that we should begin selling products on our website to the general public and starting a podcast in order to reach potential clients. Both have required considerable lift as we have addressed social media and working as a public facing organization- a goal that was not in the original design. Because of the success of these two areas, we found an additional bonus, using the podcast to generate direct leads through our guests! So we consolidated efforts and heavily focus on this side of the house.

Our podcast is highly popular for our field, generating 30k-50k downloads a month to emergency managers and first responders. We leverage this audience to receive paid sponsors for the show. We also leverage this to find and interview our own potential clients. We identify which projects we want to work on and then invite the decision makers onto the show. This way, we can talk for an hour or so, prove that we know what we are talking about from a professional level, and after the recording during our chat- we make the pitch to work with them on those pre-identified projects. If we get the client interested, it’s a win. If they pass, we still make money through the viewership, which is a win.

Here’s the problem:

Despite this consolidation, we are still missing out on those contracts that are currently open, we do not have the bandwidth to support both the podcast and learning how to write contracts. We also have the additional issue of growing our social media presence to promote the show (a direct correlation of money to viewership)… as well as using social media to promote products to our audience. We have video recorded all episodes, but due to this bandwidth issue, we have seldom to produce a video.

Here’s the solution:

We want to be taken seriously and to do it right. Doberman has contacts with high level government workers who understand the contracting process as well as the hazard mitigation requirements. We would like to hire full-time, a contracts management specialist, a hazard mitigation county liaison, and a media advisor. These three individuals would dramatically alter our trajectory by allowing us to fully embrace our place in the emergency management contracting sphere. It would free us up to focus the way each project requires to be successful.