When I was still working as a Contract Specialist for the government and retirement was approaching, I wondered what would be next after leaving the government. I knew I didn’t want to manage contracts in industry (basically what I’d been doing for the government for the past 20+ years). But I really couldn’t think of any other skills I might have that I could use start a new career at this stage in my life. I thought briefly about becoming a consultant but had absolutely no idea where I might fit in.
I got lucky, though. A guy who was the Procurement Technical Assistance Center (PTAC) representative in Tampa, Florida, decided he’d like to retire from that job and he was looking for someone to take his place. For those who don’t know, the PTACs are funded by a grant from the DoD to help small businesses do business with the federal government. Amazing! The perfect job for me! I spoke “government-ese” and I knew government contracting from my many years of experience with US Special Operations Command and the US Army. More than that, I’d managed many Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) contracts, and had awarded and administered my share of 8(a) contracts, both competitive and sole source.
The other up-side for me was that I got to learn “consulting” with a safety net! I had a regular salary, and the PTAC had a bunch of training I went through to learn the ins and outs of consulting. I soon learned, for instance, that you can provide the best advice ever to a client, and they can absolutely ignore every word you’ve said and that’s ok! It’s their right to either use the advice that they’ve asked for or not. Frustrating? You bet! But for the most part, my PTAC clients not only asked for my advice, but hung on every word because they absolutely loved the fact that someone who’d “been there” could help them – for free!
If this sounds like a commercial for the PTAC system, it’s not intended as such. But for new small businesses with no clue where to start in the government contracting arena, the PTACs can offer some direction and advice on where and how to get started. Sometimes that meant telling the small business owner to start with pursuing local government contracts with their state, city and county agencies. Sometimes it meant helping them figure out if a GSA Schedule was for them, or which (if any) small business programs might be available to them. I even helped more than one small business submit a competitive proposal for the service they provided – and they won!
Now as with all organizations, some PTAC offices are better than others. And their focus is really on the very small, very new to government contracting, businesses. So after learning what they could from the PTAC, they’d move on to find experts that could help them actually do the work, not just provide advice. I began to feel like I was telling the same thing over and over, which I was, though to a steady stream of new clients.
So after three years (I had promised to stay at least one, and ended up staying three!), I decided to go ahead and start my own proposal consulting business. Yes, I had finally found my niche during my time at the PTAC and I was on my own as a consultant for many years before joining the Skyway team. Our clients are often larger, more experienced small to midsized companies, with much more challenging issues they need help dealing with, which I love. One thing still hasn’t changed, though. I can offer the best advice I have, and I can even draw on our entire team of former Contracting Officers for their advice as well. But it’s still up to the client to either put the advice to use, or not.
That PTAC job is still my very favorite job of all time, and maybe when I get tired of the stress of managing and writing competitive proposals, and dealing with the challenges that confront all businesses large and small in dealing with the federal government, maybe I’ll “retire” and become a PTAC again!