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[ MAKING IT ]
How one entrepreneur created a business in his basement
Enterprise
[ MAKING IT ]
One radio station is thriving despite industry slowdown
For Anthony Thompson, working over the weekends has paid off. Thompson, 41, is owner of St. Louis-based Kwame Building Group Inc., a provider of construction management, contract-claims management, estimating, scheduling and engineering services. The company was formed by Thompson in 1991, on a Saturday morning in his basement-where he initially ran the business while he was employed as an engineer at Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc. Nearly a decade later, Kwame-which means "born on Saturday" in Dagbani, a language spoken in Ghana, Africa-is landing construction contracts throughout the Midwest and other U.S. regions.
The road to Kwame's-and Thompson's-success wasn't a smooth one. In the early years of his company, he often had to revamp his business strategy due to the rapid growth and constant changes within the construction industry. Thompson also had another hurdle to overcome: the color barrier.
Thompson says some potential clients were initially reluctant to award contracts to a minority-owned business. "There were some clients who refused to do business with an African American-owned construction company regardless of your reputation," he says. It took aggressive self-marketing and persistence to convince potential clients that his firm could do as good a job as a non-minority-owned business. Despite his best efforts, certain clients still avoided doing business with him, so instead he focused on those who would.
Thompson, who has an MBA in finance from Webster University in St. Louis and a Master of Science (MS) degree in civil engineering from Washington University in St. Louis, believes he had to create opportunities that weren't...