for government professionals in the DMV
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Following is my checklist of Solopreneur strategies and startup tips for federal workers in 2026. Government contracting is a logical Solopreneur step for former feds. But it is a crowded market, and one in some cases where entire agencies (and their support contracts) have been decimated.
Private Solopreneurship is another good option for feds. But given the long transiton from the public sector to a highly competitive market, a solo enterprise should not be your primary income source, at least not for a few years. In fact, government professionals might want to consider part-time soloentrepreneurship, either as a complement to a job search if mid-career, or as a way to stay engaged as an early retiree apart from personal and family activities..
To give you some ideas of broad private sector possibilities, check out the wide variety of small business options shown in the Membership Directory of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce. It is easy to scan the directory by business category. Service businesses range from accountants and lawyers to property managers and wedding planners, and the great majority are solopreneurs.
As a tumultuous 2025 has drawn to a close, let’s take stock of the employment challenges and opportunities facing current and former Government professionals in the Washington DC area for 2026. I will share what I have learned from my own post-retirement, public-private sector transition, and I look forward to learning from readers’ own comments and experiences in the process…in fact, I have already gotten many of your stories by following colleagues on Linkedin!
In this three-part series, my focus will be on solo entrepreneurship options in Government consulting and business services, plus tips (and related resource links) on planning, digital marketing and local support resources for solopreneurs in the DMV. I will also examine platforms to volunteer across the US in the non-profit sector, where government professionals can readily apply their expertise in planning, program management and service delivery, and even membership in non-profit Boards of Directors.
An added benefit of launching a solo business (SOHO) is reengaging with your local community. For those of us who have commuted to jobs in downtown DC for years it has been easy to “fly over” the communities we live in! In owning a small business I have learned how to reconnect with charities, schools and local government where my family and I live, in large part through membership and support by the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce (GGCC).
I will offer some time management tips in running a solo business from home and based on my and other’s experience. A footnote in this series will be how AI tools such as ChatGPT can play a useful research, design and “testing” role, and act as a “virtual partner” with the solopreneur.
Lastly, you do not need a big budget to launch a SOHO consulting or other service-based business. Perhaps your biggest expense will be in upgrading your home computer, plus other small fees for software, home-office supplies, and local transportation. Most online social media, marketing, research or support resources or at free or nominal cost. Your biggest “cost” will be your in-kind hours spent in forming, managing and marketing your business!
Just a few words on my own career and perspective for this article:
My first job out of grad school was as a credit analyst at Mellon Bank in Pittsburgh. That preparation served me well when I became a Peace Corps Volunteer with Colombia’s small business program. PC service then helped me join USAID for a long Foreign Service career as a Program and Project Manager. In my last years at USAID I became interested in knowledge management, a good segue in 2006 to IT contract work with the State Department, where I supported SharePoint and WordPress website applications.
I left full-time work at State in 2022, my second “retirement”, joined the local Chamber in Germantown, and began part-time consulting – initially in website design and digital marketing, and more recently, a rebranded focus on advising new Solopreneurs in the DMV in business planning, web and social media promotion, and personal marketing through business support organizations.
Apart from activities with family and friends, and some occasional overseas travel, I also have carried over some hobbies and pursuits from my workaday life: biweekly meetings with a State Toastmasters Club, monthly Leadership group seminars (with the Virginia-based Leadership Breakfast), and continuing education to maintain my PMP project management certification.
My hope in writing this blog post series is to share a variety of free tips, resources and lessons learned to enable you to “make the leap” into solopreneurship, which I have found to be both challenging and rewarding!
The Washington Informer cites a recent Brookings study on the 2025 Trump Administration job cuts: the DMV lost 4.5% of its federal work force in the first six months of 2025, or roughly 17,000 jobs. Another WUSA9 article estimated a total of 50,000 jobs lost in all of 2025, including private contractors. In a regional economy dominated by the federal workforce most of these losses were well-paid professionals in such fields as policy analysts, program managers, IT experts, acquisition specialists, scientists, administrative professionals and lawyers. The Administration’s down-sizing has also had a broader impact of the regional economy – for example a 64% upsurge in home sales since last June.
In October 2025 the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments and its partners launched Talent Capital in an attempt to marshal local resources to help professionals find jobs in the area. The initiative combines trusted employer networks with Celeste, its advanced AI Agent, to match job-seekers’ skills with opportunities in DC, MD, and VA instantly. The site also lists free coaching and employer-vetted training from various Partners.
Government professionals also face major global change and uncertainty. In its November 2025 issue, The Economist shared its 2026 World Ahead report, and an apropos cover image of a circular vortex with missiles, currencies, politicos etc. In his Medium summary of the report (see Economist World Ahead: Decoding the Signals of a Restless Year), Andrea Belvedere concludes that 2026 “is not the year of collapse, but of recombination. Crises will overlap, alliances will mutate and technologies will negotiate their power…and in 2026, adaptation is power.” In one cautious note of optimism, he states that “complexity isn’t chaos. Its a sign of systems evolving.”
In these articles I will try to address some key first-time Solopreneur questions:
Know Your Market: A logical place for a government professional to start is to reflect on your current expertise, most of it public sector, and think how best to package that for the private sector market. However, it is easy to fall into a trap, and project your skills onto the market, rather than to drill into what your prospective market needs, wants…and will pay for!
Target marketing, focusing on “niches that bring riches”, will be key to your success, and tools such as determining your “value proposition” and testing a short elevator speech will be helpful. SCORE webinars, while now subject to a $15-25 fee, can guide you in your own target market analysis. You can also access SCORE’s vast library of past recorded webinars on a variety of small business topics, some for a small fee, but many are still free.
Engage on Linkedin: rather than jump into launching a website, first update your content and engage your audience on social media. Linkedin ranks high by search engines, and is a first stop for many professionals. As you probably already have resume data there (or if not, it is free and easy to get started) it makes sense to expand LI content, sharpen your solopreneur profile, and grow and interact with your network there, which may include many possible customers! A personal, branded website can come later as you become more confident in your small business focus and how best to frame, package and price your services.
Join a Local Business Organization: Once you become a Solopreneur you will need a new private sector support system, in addition to organizing an office in your home. A local business organization such as a Chamber of Commerce can provide professional development, business leads, and feedback from colleagues as you continue to shape your business vision and gain early customers. I have found the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce to be a great support system for me, but there are many Chambers throughout the DMV, as well as other organizations such as Business Networking International (BNI) or the state supported Maryland Innovation Center that offer collegial support and lead generation or incubator-type help in pursuit of new customers.
Plan your Solopreneur “Road Map” with Project Management: Lastly, as you answer these questions for your own small business, you may find it useful to draft your own step-by-step road map to plan out business implementation. In managing your Solopreneur launch project, and focusing on the PM “triple constraint” of scope, timeline and budget, a simple, graphical software like Trello can help guide your efforts.
Also consider online management tools such as Google Workspace to separately organize small business communications, documents and designs from personal email and online drives.
This is an overdue post on my productive visit last July 31 to tour the Maryland Innovation Center and get acquainted with its support programs and facilities for MD small businesses. MIC’s Jillian Joseph led me on a personal tour of the building as well as an explanation of all its resources.
MIC is located at 6751 Columbia Gateway Dr, Suite 500, Columbia, MD , and is administered by the Howard County Economic Development Authority (HCEDA). The building is 60,000 sq ft innovation hub with coworking, private offices, classrooms/training rooms and event space.
The following outlines MIC’s key resources for small business:
MIC publishes simple, tiered pricing (“starts at” levels):
Member perks: Discounts on BRITE classes (10–50%), HCEDA events, and more.
MIC –
What MIC is: an incubator/accelerator + workspace backed by a county EDA—i.e., space plus structured programming (BRITE), curated mentorship (EIRs), investor/pitch pathways, and community partnerships. If you’re a solopreneur seeking education, mentors, and a startup network—not just a desk—MIC’s bundle is unusually robust for the price.
What mainstream coworking is: workspace-first with amenities and community events, usually à la carte for meeting rooms and no built-in mentoring. Examples/prices in DC:
Bottom line for a solo consultant:
Choose MIC if you want affordable space + structured growth support (classes, mentors, warm intros, pitch opportunities) under one roof. The $200–$300/mo tiers beat many DC coworking prices when you factor in mentorship and programming value, and the office-from-$550 path is a low barrier to a private office inside an incubator.
Choose WeWork/Industrious/Spaces if you mainly need flexible urban locations, day-to-day desk access downtown, or day passes near clients/metro, and you’ll source education/mentors separately.
My thanks to Jillian Joseph and the MIC staff for a great tour of their facility, which may well be a great resource for my MD Solopreneur clients in future.
In recent weeks I have refocused my business, DCWebRevolution, away from general website design for small business and non-profits to a more targeted market of Washington D.C. area Solopreneurs (especially in services and consulting) who need simple, sustainable digital marketing tools and templates.
My new approach as “Digital Marketing Mentor” for Solopreneurs is summarized…..
I see these Fiverr Gigs or short-term tasks as building blocks for new DC area Solopreneurs who wish to start up (or rebrand) a solo consulting business, as their “next step” after a career in government or the private sector. My methodology is to help clients move from general business and marketing planning to production of online tools, media and websites, as shown below.
See the following brief descriptions of each of my dcwebrevolution Fiverr tasks or “Gigs. “
— Please address initial inquiries about my Fiverr Gigs to me via email at gary@dcwebrevolution.com or you can start a discussion on Fiverr via the “Contact Me” button on any specific Fiverr gig (which will lead you to create a free potential “Buyer” account on Fiverr). You are also welcome to call or text my cell at 703-899-9940 (just reference “dcwebrevolution Fiverr gigs”).
— Any Gig takes from just a few days to a few weeks to complete, and Fiverr helps ensure Buyer satisfaction! Note that Fiverr currently charges Buyers 5.5%, plus another $2 fee for small orders. See How the Fiverr process works for Clients.
Why?: A solid Business and Marketing Plan can focus your website content, sharpen Social Media outreach, and convert more web traffic to solopreneur sales
This Gig offers the following Packages:
Why: A basic set of physical or virtual Freelance Marketing Tools focuses and enhances the impact of your online brand as a Solopreneur.
Let me expand Digital Reach, enhance personal Branding, and enrich your in-person Networking with these Freelance Marketing tools:
Why: Your Website and Social Media need to work together for best online results.
I will provide the following assessments for any web platform or social media:
I will produce the following on WordPress.Com or Google Sites:
I look forward to your comments, questions and feedback!
Heads Up! For my next Post on “My Rebranding”…..
I plan to share my story on why I decided to rebrand my business from web design to digital marketing, what advice I got from friends, family and Chamber colleagues, and what sequential process I am following in my rebranding testing and deployment I will also note online models, tools and tutorials I consulted, and plans for my own website’s redesign. The article will close with tips from my experience and resource links that should help others who wish to rebrand (or start from scratch) their own Solopreneur business, esp in the DC area. ….So say tuned!
Did you know that Dog Beach in San Diego CA was the first beach in the 1970s in the US to allow dogs to roam free without a leash! It sure makes sense to me given the laid back CA vibe! But enough about dogs and beaches, and more to the point of this continuing AI chronicle: U sing ChatGBT to solve a practical purchase of a computer desktop microphone…..
A. GBT Question or “prompt”:
I want to improve sound quality for an audio-narrated slide deck of 5 minutes long. What equipment or software do I need to buy in addition to my PC and iPhone?
B. GBT Results:
C. Next Steps:
I did a Google Search on the 3 equipment options, and also ran across Reddit user feedback on Blue Yeti vs other alternatives.
I then tentatively selected Blue Yeti as the lowest cost most versatile option, and went to Amazon to check availability and their customer reviews. Lastly in my Google Search I found an expert blogger (at
https://www.thepodcasthost.com/equipment/blue-yeti-podcasting-review/) who had a good review and tips on Blue Yeti, and that confirmed my decision to make an Amazon purchase.
Total time investment: only about 30 minutes!
P.S. I also did further iteration on ChatGBT, for example…what are software recommendations for better audio recording? In fact I could have further iterated or drilled down on GBT to get individual reviews of each equipment option, etc vs following up on Google Search.
Last April 17-18 I attended the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference in Baltimore – see this summary blog post on my attendance and what I learned, plus my short video reaction on Facebook to this worthwhile event.
I attended in person a number of excellent sessions plus later viewed other virtual presentation recordings. These included a total of 5 sessions about AI which I plan to discuss further in future website blog posts. I learned a lot about how to use Chat GBT, Google Gemini and other AI tools as practical aids to my web design consulting business with both solopreneur and small non-profit clients.
I conducted a subsequent AI “experiment” during an early morning break of no more than an hour (with interruptions!) during a recent family vacation trip to San Diego, where we stayed at an Air B+B in the hippie Ocean Beach area, with ready access to Dog Beach . We visited there to catch the sunset, see a young Dad supervise his little girl in the sand, and watched as dogs of all shapes and sizes roamed free without a leash and cavorted all along the beach! This Beach and the relaxing vibe in San Diego was my inspiration to try ChatGBT…hence this post’s image and subtitle – which, of course, were AI generated!
Here is how I went about testing ChatGBT:
1. Spontaneity: I was relaxing on a couch using ChatGBT on my iPhone – a good example of the handy, informal, 24×7 nature of this AI resource!
2. Questions: in my two use cases I posed a real business question that I wanted advice on, adding context and specificity with question “prompts”.
3. Iteration: I then refined my original question with other conditions
4. Comparison: upon obtaining (in seconds!) a good Chat GbT answer, I further used Google Search and other reference sites like Amazon to check or follow up on the AI result.
5. Decision: Make a decision on how best to edit/apply the AI result.
In subsequent posts on these “Dog Beach AI Chronicles”, I would like to share my two early ChatGbT use cases:
1. to get recommendation for a microphone to improve audio recordings on my PC, and
2. to generate a rebranded elevator pitch for my web design business.
I will then conclude with final lessons learned and thoughts on my future expanded business use of AI as a Solopreneur.
NOTE: in my later use of ChatGBT…
Your feedback or comments on these posts most welcome!
I enjoyed attending the Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC) in Baltimore MD last Wednesday through Friday, 4/16-18 of 2025. It was hosted by the non-profit NTEN (based in Portland OR) and was well attended by around a thousand nonprofit representatives and private consultants. I was impressed with the breakout sessions and keynotes, and I had some great conversations with both attendees and sponsors. This year’s format offered the option one day to make a 15 minute appointment and speak individually with an array of sponsor consulting firms, and I got a variety of useful tips re SEO, branding, web design, social media, or non profit market conditions.
Held at the Baltimore Convention Center, this event did not have as fancy food, exhibits or SWAG as some of the WordPress conferences I have attended. However, the quality of all presentations was excellent, and NTEN offers attendees access for another 3 months on their platform to recordings of all the sessions, including several I flagged but was not able to attend. While this event did mention WordPress in a few talks, by and large it was tech agnostic and covered a variety of tools and apps, esp their relevance to the non profit community.
Elements of the conference were very informal: groups of folks with common interests (“Birds of a Feather) or Meetup groups (one on WordPress, another on Non profit Tech) seated on couches or scattered around chairs and tables. I came late to a couple of these sessions of interest, but found it difficult to break into a convesation – I think the secret is to try and come early to a session of interest, or to just be bold and strike up a conversation on the fringe!
Last Friday I posted on Facebook my 5 minute video recap of highlights of the conference. Over the next several weeks I plan to share on my Blog reviews of the best breakout sessions (grouped by common themes) that I attended. Here are their titles and summary reference links below (in order of presentation at the Conference) :
Opening Keynote: Rethinking technology, communication, and access, by Allissa V. Richardson, USC Annenberg
Expert Sessions:
FYI the NTC is an annual event, and the next Conference will be held in Detroit on March 11-13, 2026.
Your feedback and comments on this Post welcome! Gary
ATTENTION all my Blog Subscribers and Social Media Connections!
I have answered these questions myself as a new Solopreneur! In 2022 I retired from full-time work as an IT contractor with the State Department in Washington DC, and in 2023 – 2024 I completed my transition from Government Contractor to part-time Solopreneur and member of the Gaithersburg-Germantown Chamber of Commerce.
I AM ALSO HERE TO HELP YOU! Check out my quick, economical Fiverr Gigs…with their new 2025 low prices good through February 2, 2025 (Groundhog Day!).
See four quick “Gigs” or tasks where I can assist in planning or jump-starting your own small business. All these Gigs are processed through the online freelance marketing site called Fiverr (which you may also wish to explore as a “Seller” for your own small business!). For an explanation of what the competitive Fiverr platform is, why useful, and how to access, see my past Blog article.
My basic Fiverr services (under “dcwebrevolution”) are as low as $20 and most are doable in about a week.
Click on the links below to see these Gigs and their “Basic” packages. Note that your first step will be to Create a New Account as a Fiverr Buyer. This registration is at no cost to you – just submit your email address and a Password, and briefly message me wIthin Fiverr about your Gig interest:
And all my Fiverr Gigs include an extra, free 2-week follow-up support by email!
The FAQ section in each Gig provides more information about the task and various “package ” options (Basic, Standard or Premium).
You are also welcome to just email me at gary@dcwebrevolution.com with any questions and how to access any Gig on Fiverr.
I recently listened to a WP.COM webinar on AI-Assisted WordPress. For example, it provides some good tips on how to use an AI-embedded block in your blog post to enhance idea generation, improve readability, and speed up drafting. This AI tool is built on another WP.COM plugin called Jetpack, and is available for all WordPress.Com sites, but limited in its usage on their free sites. A key skill for using the AI tool most effectively is to ask it explanatory or leading questions in the form of text “prompts.”
The Webinar presenter gives some specific examples on how to use the AI tool within WP.COM to get feedback on how to improve an existing Post, and to generate content for a demo coffee tasting blog, and then quickly format such areas as a coffee tasting table within the post. He also uses AI on Pages, for example, automatically generating a Contact Form or an FAQ Page.
See below an example of my using this WP AI tool to answer the following broad question that I posted in the prompt: “Give a brief description of what are Artificial Intelligence tools and how they might apply to website design and maintenance?”:
Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools refer to software systems that leverage algorithms and data to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. This includes capabilities such as understanding natural language, recognizing patterns, making predictions, and automating processes.
In the context of website design and maintenance, AI tools can enhance both the user experience and the efficiency of the development process. Here are a few applications:
By integrating AI tools into website design and maintenance, businesses can streamline their processes, enhance user experiences, and adapt quickly to changing needs in the digital landscape.
I would welcome any User feedback on my blog article, or your own experience with AI such as the WP AI tool or Chat GBT in blogging or other fields!
Last month I attended the big national WordCamp US conference in Portland, Oregon. Apart from an opportunity to tour attractions in downtown Portland, take in a few wineries in the scenic Willamette Valley, and drive along the beautiful Pacific coast, here are some takeaways from the key sessions I attended (mainly on business management tips for WP design agencies):
Growing and Sustaining a Digital Agency in Uncertain Times by Jessi Gurr, Iceberg web designer (see the talk video here). Following are the key points made by Jessi based on experience with her small (9 employees + contractors) WordPress agency:
Scaling your Agency: Lessons Learned the Hard Way, by Karena Kregar of OpenSky and Gina Deaton of Clockworkwp (see the talk’s video here). Karena and Gina reflect on lessons learned from growing their two WordPress companies: one, a solopreneur who expanded to 6 employees, and the other, an agency that went from 3-4 staff to 15-20 employees now:
Innovative Pricing Strategies to Grow your WP Business by Brian Rotsztein of rotsztein.com (see the presentation video here). Brian, a speaker, author and consultant, gave an engaging talk on practical pricing strategies for a web agency or solopreneur – here are his key tips:
New Solopreneur Transition