By Debbie Gregory.

There are no limits on who can become a great entrepreneur. If you fancy yourself an entrepreneur, odds are you already have the drive, but, you might not know where to start. Launching a business takes planning, decision making, goal setting and action. So before you jump into self-employment, here are a few key questions to ask yourself.

What is my talent and who is my customer? Whether you are offering goods or services, make sure you are offering a solution people are looking for and are willing to pay for. Write up a business plan, which will serve as a roadmap to your success. Maintain your focus and don’t try to be all things to all customers. Your target market is the ideal client looking for what you have to offer.

Do I have the discipline it takes to make it as a business owner? Are you disciplined enough to report for duty, even on the days when the sun is shining and the temptation to play hooky is strong. Being your own boss often means working longer and harder than you would if you were an employee. Success in business requires passion, a lot of hard work, staying power and drive.

Can I assemble a team that will help drive my business success? You can’t go at it alone; a team will help you build and grow your business. Even if you plan to be a sole proprietor, you’ll probably need an outside support team to keep you focused and on track. These people may include a lawyer, accountant, sales rep, web developer, etc.

How will I finance the business? Your business plan should give you an idea of how much funding you will need to cover not only your startup costs but also ongoing expenses before you are generating a profit. Evaluate your options, including business credit cards, lines of credit, vendor credit, a business loan, or a combination of these sources.

Congratulations to Halfaker and Associates, LLC on the $10M VA Software Engineering Support Services Revenue Cycle Management contract award.

The technology solutions provider received the award under the Department of Veteran Affairs’ (VA) Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology Next Generation (T4NG) contract vehicle. Halfaker will work with VA’s Office of Community Care (OCC) Revenue Operations (RO) to improve user experience and the quality of Veteran-facing systems by providing project management, requirements analysis, design, development, integration, and testing focused on the Accounts Receivable (AR), Integrated Billing (IB) modules of Veterans Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA), Consolidate Billing Statement System (CBSS), and Veterans Billing Statement System (VBS). The SE RCM task is a two-year, $10M program that will support VA’s OCC Revenue Operations.

Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, Halfaker was founded by Army veteran Dawn Halfaker, who also serves as the company’s CEO.

“As the OCC RO continues to assess, monitor and drive VHA compliance with healthcare regulatory requirements, the systems that enable these operations must continuously mature and evolve in a rapid and scalable manner,” said Ms. Halfaker. “We are ready to support VA’s OCC RO in every aspect of enhancing critical VistA modules so that they can continue to serve our Veterans.”

With a track record of strong VA customer relationships and outstanding performance across large, enterprise-level modernization programs, Halfaker delivers feature-driven agile development, leveraging automated build, test, and deployment processes to guarantee rapid, reliable, timely, and high-quality software releases. Halfaker leverages diverse teams to conduct operations and achieve all program objectives in adherence to VA’s Veteran-focused Integration Process (VIP) guidelines. Their cloud technology experts engineer customer-centric solutions by adapting the latest tools, standards and techniques to meet the client’s strategic goals, modernize mission-critical applications, reduce backend risks, and increase scalability for future optimization.

By Debbie Gregory.

The U.S. Army is looking for ideas on how to develop a non-lethal weapon capable of knocking out remote weapon stations on enemy vehicles without endangering nearby civilians.

Instead of blowing up hostile armored vehicles and the surrounding city block, the Army wants to have the ability to disable them by using nonlethal force, keeping civilian housing, hospitals, schools, mosques safe, avoiding the strong negative sociopolitical ramifications should they be attacked in the normal manner.

“The sociopolitical ramifications of collateral damage, especially the type of damage that can be inflicted with traditional anti-armor assets, have made it increasingly difficult for the dismounted soldier to engage lightly armored vehicles,” according to an April 20 solicitation.

The April 20th solicitation was posted on a government website for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, which is designed to encourage small business to engage in federal research and development.

Remote weapon stations, or RWS, are “often highly instrumented to provide vision, range finding as well as weapon stabilization,” the Army explains. “If the instrumentation can be blinded or the stabilization destroyed, they become far less dangerous to the dismounted soldier and the civilian population as a whole. If the entire electronics of the RWS can be disrupted, even basic traversing and firing functions become disabled.”

The solicitation, which closed to submissions June 20, suggests another soft spot, targeting a vehicle’s mobility, such as its engine. “It is imperative that these mechanisms are not viewed as lethal to bystanders,” the Army says.

The armor disablement weapon also needs to have enough range (more than a hundred yards) to keep dismounted U.S. soldiers far away enough from heavily armed vehicles. Other specifications include less than five pounds in weight, the ability to disable a vehicle in less than five minutes, and capable of targeting buildings.

By Debbie Gregory.

An Airman from the 92nd Maintenance Group used his innovative ideas to potentially save the KC-135 Stratotanker fleet more than $1 million in parts and man-hours by creating a unique piece of equipment.

Tech Sgt. Shawn Roberge has developed a mechanism to hold the landing-gear doors closed on the nose of the 1950’s era plane, a problem persists with every KC-135.

“The KC-135 has areas prone to damage,” Roberge said. “One of the major areas is where the nose landing doors catch on the outside fuselage skin, tearing it from the current frame design.”

The mechanism could potentially save the Air Force about $1.5 million if Roberge’s invention is used on the entire fleet of 431 Stratotankers that are still in commission.

Roberge created the part with aluminum, keeping it simple, sturdy and durable. The design incorporates three arms that are connected by hinges. Two arms secure it to the underside of the wheel well of the aircraft’s nose, and the third arm hangs down below the doors. When Roberge swings the doors up, a latch on the third arm locks them into place.

Roberge’s design is one fourth the weight of his previous steel design.

When the plane is in flight and preparing to land, two doors open on the bottom of the plane’s nose, and out spring the landing gear and its wheels. But when the plane is being taxied around the air base for repair, the doors must be held shut.

The old technology, which consists of a webbed strap to keep the doors closed, causes the edges of the doors to snag and peel back the sheet metal. Each time it happens, it causes about $3,500 in repair time and material costs.

Roberge’s invention solves the problem.

“The Air Force is empowering our airmen to think outside the box,” Roberge said. “In the past, you couldn’t do that.”

By Debbie Gregory.

Since 2001, California has lost more jobs to China than any other state. Approximately 562,500 of the state’s jobs, a 3.34% share of California’s 16.8 million jobs in 2017, were outsourced.

The main losses are due to technical outsourcing by Northern Californian Silicon Valley companies, as well as Southern California’s apparel industry.

According to a recently released report entitled “The China Toll Deepens,” the trade deficit in the computer and electronic parts industry grew the most.

This comes as President Trump’s trade war with China continues to escalate, with the administration imposing $250 billion in tariffs on Chinese goods.

The report, coauthored by Economist Robert Scott and Research Assistant Zane Mokhiber states that the growth of the U.S. trade deficit with China, which has increased by more than $100 billion since the beginning of the Great Recession, almost entirely explains why manufacturing employment has not fully recovered along with the rest of the economy. And the growing trade deficit with China isn’t just a post-recession phenomenon hitting manufacturing: it has cost the U.S. millions of jobs throughout the economy since China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, a finding validated by numerous studies.

Scott said that Republican-supported tax cuts and spending increases will turbocharge the U.S. budget deficit with “a sugar-high that pushes up interest rates, attracting capital from abroad and strengthening the dollar.” He added, “Hitting China with 25% tariffs is not the solution.”

Los Angeles economist Sung Won Sohn said that even as much of California’s computer and electronics hardware manufacturing moved to Asia, “a lot of software jobs were created in Silicon Valley, and a lot of the hardware we import from China and Korea uses software manufactured in the U.S.”

Sohn cautioned that the numbers in the institute report may be “overstated,” but he added, “the conclusions are correct: We are losing jobs as a result of the huge trade deficit, and I blame much of it on unfair trade practices by China.”

After California, the states with the highest losses were Texas (314,000) New York (183,500), Illinois (148,200) and Pennsylvania (136,100).