Most competent aspiring entrepreneurs reverse engineer the requirements necessary to achieve their definition of success. Nearly everyone who does this will almost certainly complete this exercise by defining the same starting point.

Before anything else, a corporate entity that may legally perform business with the Federal Government must be established. This requires all the filings and paperwork to register with the SCC, pay taxes and perform on contracts with the Federal Government. Many people believe that it also includes all the “window dressings” to make your company look real, “legitimate” and sufficiently capable to operate.

Yet, Government Contracting Academy founder, Randy Wimmer, mostly avoids discussing these screaming requirements with aspiring entrepreneurs. Most folks, including Randy, focus way too much time and effort on these administrative and legal requirements. Filing Articles of Organization with your state’s SCC office does not make you a real company. It might in the eyes of the IRS and your state, but not in the real world.

Randy once met a very successful serial entrepreneur who set him straight on this matter. During conversation, Randy told him that he had recently launched a company. The successful entrepreneurial asked him a single simple question, “do you have anybody paying you for a good or a service?” Randy sheepishly answered “no.” “Then, you don’t have a real company. You have a dream” His bluntness shed a harsh light on Randy’s reality. He had simply completed a few forms and paid $100 in filing fees.

Reenergized to create a “real” company, Randy devoted countless hours developing his logo, website, marketing material, business cards, etc.  Simply stated, he focused an incredible amount of time and energy creating window dressings for a window that did not have a house holding it up!  He still had no company and was not an inch closer to creating one. He had not done any of the hard work to create a “real” company. He had only completed the “fun” things that you can do after creating a worthless “legal” company.

Randy stresses this point because the overwhelming majority of small businesses that have filed Articles of Organization never make a single dollar in revenue. They were never companies, only legal entities and unsubstantiated dreams.

Having just dwelled on the fact that addressing these necessary legal components of starting a Federal Government contracting company are not strategic requirements, they are still urgent ones. Please note the difference between strategic and urgent. A strategic requirement is something that the success of your enterprise depends upon. Urgent simply means that something should happen right away but may have little meaningful impact upon the success of your enterprise.