If you’re solely in the defense contracting space for the money, there are easier paths to take.
1. Get job at a defense contractor, get a high level clearance
2. Be invaluable to your government client. Tech skills are good but also having a good relationship with the client and having an eye for business needs is even better. The bar is low here.
3. Once you’re invaluable become an independent sub-contractor. Can flip your job or find another gig and collect most of the bill rate. If you make 150k you could bill between between 120 and 180 per hour likely.
4. Get your prime contractor to sponsor your company for a facility clearance.
5. As vacancies on the contract come up, hire people in your network. On a straight time and material contract you can probably make around $40k-$60k per person.
6. When you have a big enough company you can bid on smaller contracts and become a prime.
If you’re interested I wrote a book on the first phase of this plan (becoming an independent contractor). Currently have 6 employees and a business partner. Working on growing it so I don’t have to billable work anymore.
For a niche book, self publishing and distributing it yourself seems to yield the better return. Combined with a higher price point, you can "earn back" any money you invested much faster.
- I have sold about 50 books at a $100 price point.
- My cost to drop-ship print and ship, transacation fees, sales tax, etc. cost about $25
- This leaves $75 gross profit / book, or a 75% gross margin
- Gross profit over 1.5 years has been about $3750
- I have spent about $2000 for someone to help with generating the PDF, Shopify Fees, ConvertKit e-mail sub-scription, etc.
- This leaves me about $1750 so far in profit.
The amount is trivial, but here are the other potential benefits, both from a monetary and non-monetary perspective
- It was a lot of fun to write the book. Writing a daily newsletter for marketing purposes is also fun
- There is still a decent amount of financial potential. I can see a path to selling 10 books a month in the near future, and maybe 50 books a month in the medium term. A few thousand per month in side income would be cool!
- It's fun talking to readers
- I could see this turning the book into an online course or something
- I'm learning some new skills (next task is to tinker with LinkedIn advertising)
- Very rewarding to get positive feedback
Overall selling a book online feels much more rewarding than billing another hour to my clients, even though I'd have to sell like 2 books an hour to match the money.
But, I'd also caution I probably wouldn't have written the book if I didn't get a sense that I could make a significant amount of money. Writing into the void is the most frustrating thing for a writer. So I also mitigated the risk by writing a guest post on a few relevant websites and asked people to e-mail me if they were interested in an "upcoming book" on the topic. I got about 20 or so e-mails before I decided to write it. Small number, but enough to make the time investment.
Ambitious and cool project! Over my head as I’m not a coder but I think one bullet you should emphasize is the impostor syndrome part. I think that would resonate strongly.
You might like Rob fitzpatrick’s write useful books:
I’m a bit allergic to marketing that tries to cover up weaknesses and I feel much better just telling the truth. Then people can make their own decision.
As far as the price I agree it is premium but with such a niche audience and focused value proposition I thought it was worth it.
It is a barrier for some though but no one who was initially worried about the price and then bought it regretted it.
Some do! But the more typical route is people find me through a few articles I wrote for another website (job boards for folks with security clearances).
I tried Google ads but the terms I wanted to use had such low volume that I literally got 0 traffic from those.
I self-published a book about becoming a solo 1099 federal sub-contractor.
It's about 60,000 words, full of typos, has a boring cover, and is on an ugly looking shopify site. Oh, and it costs $100.
BUT, I knew if I waited to catch all the typos, add in additional material that would be useful but not necessary, and build a beautiful website, it would never launch.
So I published it and just mentioned on the website that you shouldn't buy it for all the reasons I listed above and described exactly what was in it.
I've only sold about 50, but the feedback is good and already people are implementing the strategies and techniques in the book with successful results.
If you have something of value to offer, it's also easy to forget that someone else is potentially NOT getting that value now if you decide to perfect it and keep procrastinating on launching it.
The "About the book" page is below in case you want to see how I described the book and all its flaws:
I started off as a soloist in the government contracting space which is a bit of a different beast.
But, I would focus on business development efforts where you have a good existing relationship with the customer and if possible, the person who had enough pull to make the admin weenies and middle management bring you on.
In government consulting, that would be the program manager for the contractor.
I’d also focus my efforts on companies that have previously brought on independent consultants. In your case maybe web development agencies. They will take a cut, but you can use that to get relationships with the end clients too.
You might want to do a little business admin like form an LLC and such but prioritize getting leverage via relationship building with potential clients and identifying companies that you know work with soloists.
If you happen to get in the government contracting world I wrote a book on the topic. A few people who are not I. The industry have found it useful for general freelancing/consulting advice as well.
I’ve been working for myself in the government contracting industry. Started off with a job, switched to 1099 sub-contracting, and now still bill myself out with a few employees.
If you have tech skills and a clearance you could probably bill around 200/hour for full time work which would be pretty healthy income.
I work in the cleared DoD contracting space with my own small biz. If you’re even a little better than those other guys just sitting around doing nothing, you should go out on your own as a 1099.
Feel free to ping me [email protected] if you’re curious about going down that path.
Responding to quieththrow’s response to this comment:
1. My thinking was basically posing a question about take-home income of an American vs a Swede and to what extent a higher take-home pay can buy some of the same benefits.
2. Don’t know why choosing policies that do not force Americans to pay higher taxes in exchange for government-mandated benefits makes legislators “uneducated.” Seems like you simply disagree with the preference for lower taxes and less social benefits and are calling people who disagree with you “dumb.”
3. I’m not sure why you think traveling will make Americans think like you. Also not convinced that Americans travel less than others. Happy to look at any evidence you supply.
4. No one claimed anything about righteousness. Personally, I find left-leaning folks always speaking in moral terms “evil capitalists/rich, stealing form the poor, etc.” I’m trying to gather quantitative data (net income) to help further the discussion.
Note: Responding to your post addressing my response to the claims I was curious about. For some reason I can’t respond to that comment directly.
I’m not making the claim that all parents can have 1 parent stay home or that there is no risk to a career for doing so, or that everyone has extended family that can help.
I was only trying to counter the claim by the other commenter that daycare at 3 months was the only option.
Overall, there is not going to be a perfect situation where you can mitigate the risk of losing your job, still get paid a high percentage of your salary, and be at home.
But, there are high costs associated with the Swedish model as well as risk. Some are explicit, like the higher tax rates. Others costs and risks might be less so. For example, maybe there are less higher paying career opportunities in Sweden because of the high risk to employers that they have to guarantee employment for new parents for a significantly long period of time. Or consider that people that don’t want to be parents will have to subsidize parents, both directly though taxes and most likely through picking up the slack of the parent on leave.
I asked my original question about any studies or models about net income in the US vs Sweden after childcare costs because I want to know to what extent a US household could replicate the benefits of the Swedish system with their extra income, if any. If you have an extra 100k after 10 years of working life when compared to Sweden, you can “pay yourself” 50k for a year while you don’t work and have at least a few years of daycare expenses saved up.
Now, I genuinely don’t know whether that is close to reality, which is why I want the data.
That is more or less what my US based health insurance plan is like, if a bit more expensive ($1200/month for me and my wife, $1500 if adding 1 child).
No deductible for in-network care, usually just some small copays of $20.
Is this supplemental insurance to national healthcare or the standard cost based on your income?
What I gather from your comment is that you believe Sweden is superior to the US in the sense that culturally, they are not as enamored of the rat race and reinforce their preferences for a more balanced life with social policies funded by relatively high tax rates (when compared to the US).
Whereas in the US, we are more into “getting ahead” in our prime years and this is reinforced by our social and tax policy allowing Americans to keep more of their money and make decisions on their own that support the individual’s values.
My original comment was simply asking if anyone has as data that can show what the net income of an American vs a Swede after paying for the costs associated with raising a child. I made no value judgements there, simply wanted to source the data.
Claim 1: Parents have to put their 3 month old in daycare.
My response to Claim 1: (Parents have options, one of them is daycare. Another is to have a parent stay at home with the child. Extended families can pitch in. Many range of options here. Those are just examples.
Claim 2: The bottom 80% of Americans don’t have better options.
My response to Claim 2: Not sure what better options you’re referring to or what evidence you’re providing to support that the bottom 80% (by income?) have no better options.
Claim 3 (from your most recent comment): If you’re not making passive income, you’re worried.
My response to Claim 3: Most families make something work without having passive income. One or both parents may have a normal job or jobs.
I agree that paying for all health care with insurance leads to quite a bit of surprise billing and opaque pricing.
That being said, I’m not sure how often the average person deals with a bill that they are on the hook for beyond their deductible.
I’m still not sure what average medical costs per person over a lifetime are in the US compared to a Swedish person’s costs if you’re counting the proportion of their taxes that go to paying for national healthcare.
- Americans are uneducated and under-traveled
- There are other values other than money
- I think my opinions are correct and Americans are deluding themselves
One way to “get around” this is work it as a 1099, charge a high bill rate, and then just work less overall.
But, if you’re trying to move outside of a major contracting area like DC, youre probably better off just getting a remote private sector job.