Tune in to the Magic City Business podcast, a space dedicated to celebrating the people, systems, and technology behind the top businesses in Birmingham, Alabama. In this episode, along with co-host The Magic City Cowboy, Jason Will chats with Madison Coleman and Chris Nam, founder and CEO of Project Sunflower.
Chris begins the conversation sharing the founding story of Project Sunflower. He had a vision for something that would make people more happy and joyful in life and give students an opportunity for volunteer hours. Project Sunflower takes flowers from weddings and repurposes them into bouquets for hospital patients and nursing home residents. Quickly after starting, he had fifty volunteers signed up and a handful of people interested in making Project Sunflower a part-time job. Now, florists and other businesses around town have gotten involved in making this project a reality.
While they don’t have the capacity to pickup flowers every week, he takes regular phone calls from couples, florists, and event coordinators interested in donating the flowers from special occasions. Even though he didn’t have a huge interest in flowers at first, his knowledge has grown with the help of local experts. Now he hopes to begin reaching out and receiving donations and perhaps eventually making this his full-time work. When he first started Project Sunflower, he assumed it would just be UAB students, but now sees it as an expandable opportunity to spread more joy.
As the episode ends, Chris touches on the issue of age. He’s only twenty-five, and says he believes we all have our time when we can make an impact and give back. Madison agrees that when not in a business setting, Chris is a kid. We all live on our own timeline and have our opportunity to find a great idea and be called to service.