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Learning, Sharing, and Teaching => Ask a Mustachian => Topic started by: Mavenger on December 09, 2015, 08:31:56 PM

Title: Contracting with the government....
Post by: Mavenger on December 09, 2015, 08:31:56 PM
Hi everyone! Long time listener, first time caller, and all that.

So.

I'm getting out of the military in about a year, and I'm looking at my prospects on the outside. I'm a Chinese linguist, fluent in Mandarin. There are some good opportunities out there working for the government or contracting companies, but I'm really, very tired of expending energy to make other people money, and I want to finally be my own boss.

Long story short, I've discovered that contracting directly with the government has the potential to be worth a metric pantload of money, in my field and related ones. I want a piece of that, and I have some big plans about how to fill the contracts, how to bid, etc, but the biggest issue I'm running into is that I'm not sure what initial steps to take.

My situation:
The initial company will be just me, although I might have a partner. I have zero assets - renting all the time because of constant military moving from location to location - and a hell of a lot of liabilities - mostly paid off dumb debt from before I grew a mustache and my wife's student loans, all together totaling $50k, and three children that eat a lot.

Business situation:
1. The company consists of just me, or me and one other person. There is very little to zero overhead, I don't need to rent any office space or buy any equipment. I already own a nice suit for conducting important business. I'd be contracting myself out, and these contracts, to the best of my knowledge, are done on a one year basis, with an option to re-up if the position still exists and it was filled satisfactorily.
2. Expenses are few, although about $50-75k is needed once every five years per employee, to pay for security clearance investigations and polygraphs - I just had all of my stuff redone in 2014, so I won't be running into that until 2018-2019. And my potential partner is the same.
3. Income is unknown. I know for certain that market rate salary for linguists at contracting companies is $90k +/- $10k for demonstrated ability/experience/education. I don't know exact dollar amounts for payouts to the contracting companies, but I have good reason to believe that it is right around $250k/12 month contract. A friend of mine just got hired by a contracting company for a similar analyst job that pays $104k to him; the contract pays $350k to the company. As well, I have plenty of bodies to fill contracts, if they are plentiful, and profits from contracted employees will also go to me/the company.

I think an LLC is probably my best option for this venture, but I'm going off of a combination of friendly advice and self study at this point, and I don't know how to organize everything. What legal loopholes are there? Do any of you have experience doing gov't contracting? Are there any pitfalls I need to watch out for? Should I abort, eject, get out now?


Basically, I need advice!