Petals and Purpose: the B Side

At nineteen years old, Steven Dyme was selling flowers out of a cart outside his own high

school graduation — one year after he'd stood on that same stage and delivered the

commencement speech. He didn't have a business plan. He didn't know anything about flowers.

What he had was a friend with a truckload of surplus stems, a fanny pack full of cash, and an

idea that would eventually turn into one of the first B Corps in the country.

Today, Steven is the co-founder and CEO of Flowers for Dreams, a florist with locations in

Chicago, Milwaukee and Detroit that's given away close to two million dollars to grassroots

nonprofits since 2010. In this episode, host Shannon Sims traces how a summer hustle became

a business built on a bar napkin — and what it actually took to turn "give away a quarter of

everything we make" from a joke between friends into a permanent commitment.

This episode is part of The B Side, Rising Forward's season-long look at Wisconsin's B Corp

movement. For a primer on what a B Corp actually is and how certification works, check out our