The determination of a township resident to keep his business afloat and

provide for his employees after 9/11 has earned him an award from the United

States Small Business Administration (SBA).

Brian Drum of Mountain Avenue was named Small Business Person of the Year

by the SBA’s New York District Office in February and presented with the award

at a breakfast on April 22 in New York City. He was selected for the honor from

about 200 nominations for his perseverance in bringing his recruiting company,

Drum Associates, back from the brink of disaster—literally and figuratively—in

the wake of Sept. 11.

Drum’s 32-person company is located at 150 Broadway, one block away from

the World Trade Center site. On Sept. 11, 2001, when the Twin Towers fell,

Drum and his employees were forced to flee from his building’s top floor.

Although 150 Broadway remained standing, all services, including cell phones

and computer hookups, were decimated, and soot and debris covered the

surfaces in the offices.

About seven weeks elapsed before business people were permitted to return to

the area, and even then, services were not fully restored. Until the offices were

habitable again, employees were forced to operate out of other firm’s offices.

As Drum described the situation, his company, founded more than 30 years

before, was having its best year ever prior to the disaster. In an instant,

however, demand for recruiting services came to a complete halt. No

companies were hiring and no employees were changing jobs.

“We were looking at zero business,” Drum said in a telephone interview this

week. “But I wasn’t about to give in to the economics of terrorism.”

“We focused on rebuilding,” Drum continued. “I pulled people into my offices

and said, ‘We have a choice. We’re in this lifeboat together. We can row

together or we can sink.”

To a person, his employees decided to continue with the business, Drum said,

and he was able to keep the group together. He restructured the company so

that instead of relying on commissions, each person would be paid a salary. Any

profits would go into a pool, and depending on performance, employees would

be paid bonuses.

Drum said he himself did not take a salary and he took out loans to make ends

meet. The company finally became profitable again last year, and revenues so far

this year are up about 35 percent from 2004.

“We’re almost like a phoenix rising out of the ashes,” Drum noted.

Drum’s daughter, Carly, a 1999 Millburn High School graduate, joined the firm

shortly after the World Trade Center disaster, and Drum made her project

manager for a new division that focuses on the Japanese market. The success

of that division has also helped fuel the company’s recovery, Drum said.

Carly Drum said she had always wanted to join the firm, although her father had

encouraged her to work elsewhere. She worked for several years for ESPN in

advertising sales. The events of Sept. 11, however, propelled her entry into

Drum Associates.

Along with another of the firm’s employees, Drum’s daughter nominated him for

the award. As part of the nomination, she gathered financial figures and

assembled six letters of reference for submission to a panel of SBA officials and

outside auditors.

Because of her father’s fighting spirit, she said, “The whole team worked really

hard for him.”