Beyond the Award

Earlier this month, Zeno Group was bestowed with the honor, for a second year in a row, of PRWeek Mid-Size Agency of the Year.    Extraordinarily special for many reasons but mostly because of the industry luminaries who vote on and bestow this recognition.

Awards are fun to receive, but what matters are the deeper implications and what one does with the recognition to inspire others.

Over the years, I have been fortunate enough to find men and women who have inspired me, in big and small ways.  At the top of the list is my 87 year old father, a fearless entrepreneur in his own right who built a successful business as a “peddler” (a popular profession in the 1950’s among Jewish men of Eastern European descent) -- knocking on doors in Brooklyn, soliciting customers and shopping for them on New York’s Lower East Side. Each week he would visit his customers, mostly women, collect a small installment payment and hopefully book another order which would run the gamut from socks and underwear to bedding and drapery.

As a young child, I was amazed that he was up and out the door, six days a week, by 6:30 a.m.  I am more inspired than ever as to what my father accomplished because of his determination and passion --  a World War 2 veteran with no college education who raised three daughters and put this one through Barnard College, a game-changer for me.  My mother went back to work in fashion when I was in kindergarten and did everything in her power to inspire her daughters to be independent, speak up and stand on their own two feet, no matter what hand life dealt us.

That’s inspiration. 

The truth is, at Zeno we inspire each other. We make each other better. We are not afraid to defy convention, for ourselves and our clients.

If I can play even a small part in inspiring someone to think differently, help them to ‘go for it’ – whatever that may be - then I will do it every time.