I'm done with jobs - let's talk money.

[foadi]

like my friend said he was paid $40 to pick up 30 cheeseburgers at in-n-out earlier today. and that he is currently headed to a job to change some lightbulbs or something that will pay $120

[exploited]

That's neat, thanks foadi.

[Stratego]

[NAB]

[gla22]

If you are planning on investing in the markets or in property you won't be able to depend on that as a source of income for a while. You will need to keep working for a few years just in case things don't happen as expected.

[Professor]

If you want more info on writing proposals to respond to RFPs, let me know. It'd be a good fit for you, I think. You need to be pretty good at writing, very good at proofing, somewhat good at graphic design and formatting (inserting pictures, setting columns, etc.), and very good at working to a deadline. Typically, the company that is responding will gather all the pieces necessary to respond, then forward them to you. You will have to assemble them into a coherent paper. You won't have to be doing a lot of original writing, but you will be editing. The typical RFP will ask for:

- exec summary
- past experience
- qualifications
- work samples
- resumes
- statement of process (how you plan to do the work)
- financials

The company will provide all of that information. But, they will send it to you in crazy ways. You'll get 5 resumes that all look different (different fonts, margins, styles, etc.). You have to make them all look identical. You will get a past experience summary (10 pages) that will have 2-3 paragraphs lifted from the qualifications summary, so you will have to catch that and delete them. You will have to take plain Word documents and make them look nice (create an impressive cover page, insert graphs and pictures so you don't have pages and pages of only text, etc.).

And, you will be doing all this at night and on the weekends. If an RFP is due on a Monday, the company will work until Friday at 5pm gathering the info. They'll shoot it to you at 5:05 and tell you they need it by 8am Monday.

The money can be pretty good, though. Yes, it's glorified clerical work. But, the stakes are VERY high. For instance, when we bid on the Superstorm Sandy recovery, it was a $70 million proposal. But, all RFPs state that if you neglect to include a piece of required information, your bid can be thrown out. That means that if we'd forgotten to include a single resume, we would have lost $70 million just on that technicality. And, they will do it too, because they know that after the award, the other companies that bid and lost will pick apart the winning RFP looking for something to protest.

So, while you would normally only be able to charge something like $50/hr or so to put something like this together, you can charge a bit more once you get a few out the door. Also, you can lessen your hourly fee, and insist on a bonus if the company wins. Say, something like .01% of the total award. On a $70 million contract, that'd be $7000. That's entirely reasonable for a company that just got a $70m contract (and will likely make $10m profit).

[exploited]

[Professor]

Cool!

Your target should be companies that are large enough to DO the work, yet not so large that they have a dedicated staff to prepare RFPs. Say, between 100 and 300 employees.

Also, those companies are relatively easy to find. Look at vendors on GSA.gov. They have some various "small business" categories. Most of those have upper-level execs that write their own RFPs. It's a pain. It's highly important, so you don't want to foist it off onto an admin asst. But, it's essentially admin asst work.

Another place to look for clients are various regional "Disadvantaged/Minority Business Enterprise" (DBE and MBE) sites. Here are a few to peruse:

LAMBC Louisiana Minority Business Council
HMSDC Houston Minority Supplier Development Council
GMBC Georgia Minority Supplier Develpoment Council
SRMSDC South Region Minority Supplier Development Council
SMSDC Southwest Minority Supplier Develpoment Council
NYNJMSDB New York & New Jersey Minority Supplier Development Council
NMCB National Minority Business Council
NCTRCA North Central Texas Regional Certification Agency
SLDBE City of New Orleans Office of Supplier Diversity
DFWMSDC Dallas/Ft Worth Minority Supplier Development Council
SCMBDC Southern California Minority Business Development Council
NYCHAMWSBE New York City Housing Authority
MDMSDC Maryland/District of Columbia Supplier Development Council

Pretty much call any company registered with them (might have to call them to get a member list), and sell your services.

[NAB]

Wait, companies outsource RFPs? I have to write them all the time (and RFQs) with the assistance of our marketing people, but I didn't know people outsourced that. Weird.

[Professor]