Today we’d like to introduce you to Melis Steiner.
Melis, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
I was born and raised in Hawai’i, where I met my husband and business partner, Dainon. We started dating in high school 24 years ago and have been traveling and building a life and businesses together ever since.
We have road-tripped by car or RV through nearly every state in the country and across much of Canada. Our first cross-country road trip happened in 2005. We drove with our first dog from UC Irvine to Syracuse University, where Dainon completed his master’s degree at the Maxwell School. Many people know me as a Syracuse basketball fanatic. That is when it all began—a couple of years after the National Championship in the G Mac era—and it has only amplified with time. This shared passion for ‘Cuse athletics is how I first met Lynden from M&L Tonight, whom you featured in a recent article.
In the years since then, we lived in Houston while I was in business school at Rice University and made a home for ourselves in DC while Dainon attended law school at George Washington University. We eventually moved to Austin, Los Angeles, and NYC for work. And we also enjoyed opportunities to travel to Japan, China, South Korea, and Europe.
When the pandemic hit, we left NYC to RV full-time with our youngest pup—the last of our 4-dog pack. For 14 months, we traveled throughout the United States and had incredible experiences, living in stunning places and meeting wonderful people. We sold our RV about 16 months ago and now travel via Airbnb, changing our location every month or so.
With complete flexibility, we can travel to clients nationwide and spend extra time in certain places as opportunities arise. Our company exemplifies work-from-anywhere, with team members based throughout the US and Canada. Our new location and “home” office tours are often the opening topics of conversation on video conferences with our clients, who enjoy the change of scenery almost as much as we do.
Professionally, I launched my career as a marketing director in the start-up tech space. I enjoyed the challenge and camaraderie that came with developing a three-person company that operated out of an actual garage into a respected first-mover that partnered with companies like Google and Autodesk. During my eight years there, Dainon worked as the Executive Director for a non-profit and gained experience on Capitol Hill. We worked diligently toward the goal of combining our talents and launching our own business.
The first company we started was a photography and media production company called Melis+Dainon (naturally), which focused on advertising and publicity campaigns and talent development for models, actors, musicians, entertainers, athletes, and other public figures. We primarily worked in the Los Angeles and New York markets with the top fashion agencies, managers, and PR firms. We creative directed, produced, photographed, and cast campaigns with a focus on the fashion and beauty segments. Our work has been published across media channels and in magazines like Elle, Marie Claire, Condé Nast Traveler, InStyle, The Hollywood Reporter, and People, as well as on Times Square billboards and storefronts internationally.
BrandPartners Collective came along a couple of years later, but it has since grown to encompass Melis+Dainon as its media arm. BrandPartners is a brand strategy and management consulting firm that works with a broad range of companies and brands across industries, including technology, sports, entertainment, design+build, healthcare, e-commerce, marketing, non-profits, and more. Our clients include public figures (e.g., business leaders, entertainers, athletes, models), venture-backed start-ups, and businesses recognized on the Inc. 500 and Fortune 50 lists. The education and experience that Dainon and I have gained over our combined 30 years as business and media professionals were vital to establishing our company as a best-in-class provider of business solutions and brand development and management services.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
We built both of our companies during the Great Recession, when the economy was going through a significant and, in many ways, permanent change. Corporate budgets dropped rapidly, the advertising landscape shifted toward social media and influencers, office spaces shrunk or were eliminated, hiring practices were dramatically altered, and companies from tech to fashion were operating super lean. Every business we spoke with was actively re-evaluating how their company would structure and market itself going forward. This was the first significant shift toward remote work, contractors, maximum efficiency, and minimum overhead that I witnessed since graduating from business school.
With budgets low and jobs scarce, it seemed like an insane time to try to start not one but two businesses. But we saw this challenge as an opportunity for an entirely new way to do business. We became generalists in ways businesses desperately needed and specialists in the branding skills they had the hardest time creating in-house or hiring for. Companies could no longer hire 20 specialists responsible for a piece of the puzzle. They needed one company to handle all 20 things, and we were that company.
We started by contributing our subject matter expertise, which was already broader than most of our competitors and the reason we won contracts. Starting out, we could strategize and execute nearly every step of building a brand from scratch—not just from a design perspective but through communications, PR, sales, marketing, consulting, strategy, and even technology implementation and integration. Over time, we learned which other services companies needed and where we could make the largest impact. Then, we filled in any gaps in our skill set and started to provide that as part of our standard offerings.
BrandPartners was truly built for the modern company with an agile, remote-first structure that is highly customizable. Ultimately, we became stronger by accepting the challenge and developing for the future of business rather than the past. Keeping that in mind, I advise business leaders to welcome change, view problems as opportunities for growth, and embrace the chance to pivot when they know it’s best. Agility and a willingness to adapt are superpowers—especially in today’s rapidly evolving business environment.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.brandpartnerscollective.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/melisdainon/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissteiner/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/brandpartnersny
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@melisdainon
Image Credits
Melis
Dainon
