Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in business development but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Andrew Clarke, President of Ground Floor Partners, located in Chicago, IL, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Ground Floor Partners is a small business consulting firm located in Chicago. We provide strategic business advisory services to three constituencies:

  • Startups
  • Established businesses
  • Counties, municipalities, and non-profits

Services include strategy consulting, business planning, market research, feasibility studies, and management consulting. We are generally industry agnostic, but most of our business clients tend to be involved with food, retail, hospitality, or services.

Tell us about yourself

In the late 1990s, in the relatively early days of the internet, I started an online real estate marketing business. My idea was to disintermediate the real estate industry by allowing individuals to rent, buy and sell properties online without paying huge fees to brokers. I also advertised products and services such as insurance, moving van rentals, packing supplies, etc. I was ahead of the curve, but I was also extremely naive and also undercapitalized.

Within six months of starting, four groups — the National Association of Realtors, a national mortgage group, Microsoft, and a national newspaper group — all came out with their own variations of my idea. Each of them had over a hundred million dollars in startup capital. To say the least, I got crushed. And to make things worse, the economy then went into recession, and the funding sources I was talking to pulled out. It was a major lesson in the school of hard knocks. I decided I wanted to help others learn from my mistakes — that was a major reason I formed Ground Floor Partners.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

I cannot really point to any one “biggest” accomplishment as a business owner. I have helped a lot of small businesses and some non-profits save lots of money and grow stronger and faster over the past ten or fifteen years. Recently one of my non-profit clients received a $2,000,000 grant after I worked with them on their business and funding plan. Several other clients came to us when their small businesses were stalled, and within two years after hiring us, their revenues doubled or tripled. Then there are a few cases where we saved clients millions of dollars by convincing them not to go ahead with really badly conceived projects.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

I think one of the hardest things about being a business owner is riding out the ups and downs. When things are going great, it is fun and exciting, but the downtimes can be really tough. You have to keep faith in yourself and your vision, but you also have to adjust to market realities when they go the wrong way.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

  1. Plan for the worst and hope for the best. Every organization eventually deals with disasters and unexpected challenges. That is just a fact. The successful ones have some sort of plan, and if the plan doesn’t work, they adjust on the fly. The unsuccessful ones, on the other hand, are completely surprised. They often either ignore the problems hoping they will go away, or overreact and cause even more problems.
  2. Keep your ear to the ground and listen to your customers, partners, employees, and vendors. It is all too easy to become complacent and think you know everything about your business. But things change, and you have to adapt. Your customers are the lifeblood of your business. The customer may not always be right, but you still have to listen.
  3. Nobody is good at everything, so know your strengths and weaknesses. Don’t hire people who are replicas of yourself. Hire people who complement your strengths and weaknesses. If you are great at thinking big but terrible at details, hire someone who loves dealing with the details.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.groundfloorpartners.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewclarkechicago/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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