Posted Under: Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship, Our Heroes, Startup

This time for “Our Heroes” we have ex-paratrooper and ex-associate Chris Brusznicki. He started his website GamedayHousing.com during the recession. It was worse than the 9to5 jail for Chris who spent 15 hours a day at Goldman Sachs & Co. Let’s see how he broke out:

DD: Who are you and what kind of corporate job were you at?

CB: My name is Chris Brusznicki, and I was an associate at international investment banking powerhouse Goldman Sachs & Co.

DD: What made you leave the job? When did you realize that you wanted to be an entrepreneur & why?

CB: I had always been an entrepreneur and ran my own landscaping business, web design business, and eventually a small real estate portfolio.  Even though I did those things and knew that “one day” I wanted to have a real business of my own, I didn’t realize it was time to make that change until I had something that could grow.

At Goldman, I came into work every day and wrangled with the debt crisis, housing bust, and every other kind of financial nightmare for 15 hours a day and then headed home to my wife and children exhausted.  I loved the people I worked with and believed in my firm, but I didn’t love what I did on a daily basis.

That, coupled with some kind of overactive brain disorder. led me to work on a website in my spare time that would eventually provide me with a way to entrepreneurial freedom – GamedayHousing.com.

DD: What did you do to break the corporate jail? How did you prepare for the employee to entrepreneur transition?

CB: Great question.  First off, I am a family man, and the comfort of my loved ones is very important to me.  Next, I wanted to make sure the business could grow without outside capital.  In either case, I looked at our finances and figured out how we would be able to bootstrap our first year of operations.  We’ve been cash flow positive since day one, so that wasn’t a problem for the business, but there wasn’t enough income to both grow business and pay myself.

Thankfully, we had the savings and other income opportunities aside from GamedayHousing.com to make ends meet.  It was exceptionally helpful to create a monthly budget and allow for random expenses.  After checking our budget vs. our monthly income, I saw that we could make it happen.

Just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should do so.  My wife and I talked about the opportunity we’d be walking away from at Goldman and about the 2 years of month-to-month income we’d have to live on.  We felt very fortunate to have this opportunity at a time when millions were out of work, so we decided to move forward.  To this day, we’ve stayed on budget every month for 17 months despite huge expenses, like the birth of our son, and one family vacation each year.

DD: What is one resource (person, coach, book, organization anything) that helped the most/best?

CB: First and foremost, I am grateful for my experience as an officer in the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division.  My experience as a paratrooper taught me the value of outworking competition and gave me great perspective on what’s important.  I also learned that failure is not an option and how to organize myself and others to accomplish the toughest of tasks.

I’m also grateful for my experience at the Kellogg School of Management.  My Kellogg Professor Steve Rogers was excellent.  He teaches a class called Entrepreneurial Finance that is great for both the anecdotal advice it provides as well as the education on small business finance.  My experience in the design program in Kellogg’s MMM program has also been extremely helpful.  We focus on rapid design disciplines and collaboration with all of our team members when pushing out new versions of the site.  These practices have allowed us to create a great site at about 1/10th the normal cost.

DD: What do you know now that you wish if only you knew when you made the transition?

CB: Be more patient.  My business partner Geoff is a great counter balance to my “make it happen” unbridled enthusiastic personality.  There are times when I want our growth to be completely linear and for our business to grow x10, year after year.  That can’t always happen, and I have to learn to be more realistic in my expectations and planning.

DD: What are your suggestions for aspiring entrepreneurs?

CB: Don’t write a business plan until you’ve conducted a recon!  In the Army. you learn not to sit down and plan a major mission until you have some very basic information on the situation.  A good recon applies to business as well and can mean a few different things based upon whether you’re selling a product or service.  Got an amazing new self-warming baby bottle that every new parent will want to have?  Make a working prototype or at least sketch it up.  Once you’ve done research on pricing, positioning, and placement, try and sell that sucker!  Want to start a website to aggregate social media connections for small businesses?  Pitch the idea to a small business owner and provide the service for a month or two without building the site.  You clearly wouldn’t need a website to perform these services for one or two clients so have a go and learn.  In either case, you’ll learn valuable information about pricing, service levels, and features that you need vs. features that are nice to have.

DD: How are you doing and how do you feel now?

CB: Awesome.  We are doing great and can’t imagine doing anything else.

DD: Chris Brusznicki utilized his training as a paratrooper to help his business get off the ground. He offered some new insight on how to start a business: Recon. Chris suggests doing some basic background research into your business before just diving in. Without that research, he says it’s harder to get things off the ground. Perhaps a little recon eliminates some obstacles that may otherwise hold your new business up. His previous experience also helped him keep an upbeat attitude instead of giving up on himself and his business in times of trouble. Never give up on your business if you believe in your product! Need tips on how to start your new business? Send us an email via contact form here!