Making The Tradition…Nontraditional

I am not usually one who usually suffers from writer’s block. I love to write and, as I found out more recently after graduating (from years of being forced to do so)…I also love to read.

After milling around the office thinking of something to write about this week, The New York Times Small Business Section quietly chimed as it entered my inbox. There is an article titled “Introducing Building the Team: Flower Power” that held exactly what I was looking for: inspiration.

I’ll let you all read the story but to summarize, it’s about a 28-year-old CEO of an $18-million dollar floral delivery company based out of NYC and the somewhat bizarre story of how it all came to be. He basically took a traditional business and applied some outside the box thinking and the business wireframe of a tech company to make it his own masterpiece.

After making the impossible decision to leave a very lucrative and quickly growing software start-up company, this guy wanted to create something big, something different that would affect the world. Bryan Burkhart, the article’s author and main character, simply put that “I’m not Mark Zuckerburg. I don’t know how to code, and I have no idea how to create a market that doesn’t exist already,” yet he found enormous success in starting a company now in five major U.S cities and even better, featured in The New York Times.

Although The DSM Group has not hit this exact caliber (yet!), I can’t help but admire and feel a closeness to Burkhart’s innovative do-what-you-can-with-what-you-have attitude as it reminds me of the work we do here everyday. We are an office filled with people who want to do things right by taking traditional practices and sometimes turning it on its head.

We have a team of diverse minds and personalities here at DSM, but the product and culture that our collaborative efforts produce are pretty amazing, both big and small. 

About the Author: Dayna

Dayna graduated from Ramapo College of New Jersey, where she earned her self-designed B.A. through a contract major in Contemporary Arts: Advertising and Public Relations, in addition to what should be a doctorate in multi-tasking and masters in sports obsessionism. Dayna would like to think of herself as a go-getter and believes it is the reason she landed this gig. It was her determination to contact Darren and create a position for herself, when one really didn’t exist yet.

Dayna has put her plans to take over the world on hold and is now Darren’s new sidekick, focusing on writing new business proposals and estimates, managing client accounts, researching, putting her two cents in with the creative team, making sure our growing pack of dogs (in which she added her puppy, Kayah, to) have water, among many other tasks. From here on out, Dayna is now referred to as “D2” and her new favorite color is officially…orange.