By Aman Singh
Thirty-seven years ago, just out of
active duty with the U.S. army, Brian Drum had no idea
what was next. He had no experience except a short stint
with a truck company, Same Day/Next Day Delivery, which
he headed for two years before leaving for active duty
with the National Guard.
Suddenly, he felt tomorrow wasn’t
planned.
Finally, with “a few friends”, Drum
began a recruiting company called Drum Associates on
John St. “I wasn’t terribly smart or old and was unsure
of what was next,” he said. Today the company has a
staff of 32 people and clients spanning Asia and Japan.
What began as a small friendly venture, with more
willpower than knowledge or resources, became a
well-accepted place for jobseekers.
It also earned him the U.S. Small
Business Association’s Small Business Person of the Year
Award for the year 2004 in the New York District. Highly
competitive, and hugely selective, Drum was selected
from about 200 nominations from the city for his
perseverance in bringing back Drum Associates on the
success chart, post 9/11, amidst collapsing businesses
and a chaotic economy.
Drum’s growing company is at 150
Broadway, one block away from the World Trade Center
site — a factor that makes his story stands out from any
other hardworking entrepreneur’s success story.
On September 11, 2001, Drum and his
employees fled from the building’s top floor, made his
employees’ evacuation, tough, stressful and
forced.
“We were literally forced out of our
space,” he said. They did not know when they would be
back into work, if at all. “We had no idea when we would
be back into the building. Until they didn’t determine
that the building west to us [One Liberty Plaza]
wouldn’t fall too, we couldn’t even think of returning.
The horror of the terrorism was shocking, chaotic, and
dreadful.”
While many businesses closed in the
area, Drum remembered the chaos of the bombing in 1993
and decided then and there that he would not give up
without a struggle. He would persevere, he decided and
he did. “It’s like we were heading so good on September
10 and a day later, there was no sense of what tomorrow
would bring,” he said.
He made the decision when he saw
everything crumbling around him, that he would not
terminate any of his 32 employees. “I was getting more
and more annoyed- I had used 33 years to build up the
business. I couldn’t just give it all up. 9/11 wasn’t my
staff’s fault, why should they suffer?” Drum remembered
asking himself.
He believed in his business, which
became even more family-oriented when his Penn State
graduate daughter Carly Drum left her job with ESPN to
join his team in 2002 to help him jumpstart the firm
again. “In between the low receptivity economy, everyone
closing down around us and the sudden lack of space for
ventures, anyone asked said, we should close down too.
But I am a fighter,” said Drum. He continued to pay all
his 32 employees through those initial post-9/11 months,
even though his personal revenues continued to
dwindle.
Along with his daughter- who also
nominated him for the award with her marketing
department- Drum decided to reorganize the company. From
a hierarchical structure, he introduced a matrix
structure, where the team worked as one very large team
instead of individual filers.
“We had a hole in the boat and we had
to keep rowing together to make it work. I didn’t have
much capital but I was driven to keep it going because
we all together believed in the firm,” he said.
Fortunately, all his employees decided to
stay.
Finally after two years of grit,
willpower and working as one large team, Drum Associates
began its ascent once again on the revenue charts in the
beginning of 2004. “We were able to turn the business
round because now instead of two people on a project, it
was 20 people on a project. It made us faster, much more
efficient and highly competitive,” he said.
Another contributor to Drum Associates’
rebound was the introduction of a Japanese recruiter,
also a former client, who helped Drum Associates expand
into the Japanese market. “We were already present in
the Asian market. But with his coming in, and we
becoming accessible to the large Japanese-speaking
population, our clients also expanded,” he said.
However, he acknowledged that he knew
they were taking a risk, but one that turned out to be
successful.
From among a million small businesses
in New York alone, 200 small business entrepreneurs and
companies. A panel of internal officers of the S.B.A.
along with some external people investigated the
integrity of the nominations, scanned six influential
references for each nomination and decided on the final
winners.
Drum credits his award to his family.
“It is a totally family-oriented business. Along with
Carly, two of my brothers also work with me,” Drum said.
“I am a fighter and I did not want to
give in to it…and I guess the staff didn’t either,” Drum
said.
He will receive his award in a special
ceremony on April 22, as part of the National Small
Business Week 2005 organized by the US Small Business
Administration among 200 business leaders, economic
development officials, family and friends. Other awards
to be honored include Family-Owned Business of the year,
Women In Business Champion of the Year and Small
Business Journalist of the Year among four other small
business categories.
