How culture and strategic decisions helped Digital Resource double in size

Digital Resource is a company where things are done just a little differently.

Being a digital marketing firm, content is certainly king, but for this company culture is the queen. The company was able to double their employee count and during the pandemic and once again be named as one of the country’s fastest growing companies.

Just months post graduation, Shay Berman, Founder & CEO, moved from Michigan to West Palm Beach, Florida. Only 22 years old and working out of his apartment, Shay took the leap and founded Digital Resource in 2014.

The company grew from just 16 employees in 2016 to 130 as they closed out the 2022 year. What you may not realize is that half of those employees began employment within the last 2 years – in the midst of the pandemic. In 2020, DR had 65 employees and has doubled in size since then.

In 2019, Nate Mendenhall, Director of Client Operations, previously described DR as “this big rocket ship. Kinda shaking and getting ready to take off.” He said that in the “next year, we’re going to be going into orbit.” I think he nailed it!

Employee count is one thing, but revenue growth is another. DR has been Inc. 5000 Ranked since 2018. In 2022 they celebrated their 5th ranking in a row! That’s pretty impressive considering the company has only been in business 8 years. Appearing on the Inc. 5000 list for over half of the company’s existence is no small feat.

• 2022: #3917 (125% 3-Year Growth Rate) 
• 2021: #1810 
• 2020: #747 
• 2019: #334 (1,400% 3-Year Growth Rate) 
• 2018: #262 (1,855% 3-Year Growth Rate) 

Highly respected companies were honored in their early days by Inc. 5000 such as Zillow, Dell, LinkedIn, Domino’s Pizza, Yelp, and even Microsoft, yet few received the honor five times. Appearing in the Inc. 5000 list five times (even if not consecutively) gives a company bragging rights of ‘Honor Roll’ status and less than 10% of companies obtain that title. You have a better chance of seeing a unicorn. . . or you can just watch the video at the end of the article. 🦄

In 2022, Digital Resource joined the Inc. 5000’s 10% – and did it consecutively to boast!!

Digital Resource was built on search engine optimization, quickly branching into social media marketing, website development, and more before becoming a full-service marketing agency. Over the years, DR has added photography, videography, integrations, lead management, and other services to the lineup.

Additionally, upon acquiring the dental marketing agency Hi5 Practice based in Nashville back in April 2022, DR brought on remote video shoots and internal practice management services.

DR went to full-time in-office to hybrid during the pandemic with a handful of remote team members across Florida, Virginia, Tennessee, and Utah.

The company made some strategic moves that helped them propel their growth over the years, but the biggest decision to date was to prioritize company culture. The work hard – play hard mentality of the team is felt immediately upon engaging with them.

Berman says, “DR continues to invest in our team’s education and happiness. All managers enrolled in Torch leadership training. We continue to provide continuing education opportunities to all team members. And we just revamped our benefits to make the lives of our team members even better!”

Plus, the company has pretty sweet office spaces, cool networking opportunities, team outings, and internal contests such as the “Luck of the Lit” wheel.

From humble beginnings with a home-office setup to soon growing out of their small office in downtown West Palm Beach, Digital Resource now has total of 16,000 sq ft of office space between 3 spaces with 12,000 sf in West Palm Beach, Florida  and a 4,000 sq ft office space in Nashville, Tennessee. 

In October 2022, DR revealed their 2nd floor buildout during a networking event open to the local community. The buildout added 3k sq ft to our physical space, taking us to 12k sq ft total in West Palm Beach offering more desk space, additional conference rooms, games, and a multimedia studio w/ an infinity wall.

Through organic growth and a successful acquisition, the team continues to push forward and excelling beyond a milestone that even Berman didn’t expect to hit so soon. They have opened up Director level roles within the company introducing Director of Operations & Human Resources, Director of Client Operations, and Director of Creative Operations.

In November 2022, DR introduced the new Vice President of Sales, Jeff Gasparoni, who will be developing the Sales Team and expanding the firm’s reach into more verticals. They also named a Head of Partnerships to assist DR with building deeper connections with experts across various industries to further our clients’ growth.

Want to learn more about Digital Resource or the other awards they have? Yes, they have more! Click here.