Sweet Symphony

Rick Lott and Tom Frederick won the entrepreneurial equivalent of the Super Bowl earlier this year when they sold Zeno Office Solutions, the office equipment supply firm they founded in 1996.

Document management giant Xerox bought Zeno, with $65 million in annual sales, for an undisclosed sum in April. The firm still exists today, now under the name Zeno Office Solutions, a Xerox company. It has about 280 employees and nine offices across Florida, from its Tampa headquarters to Fort Myers, Sarasota, Jacksonville and Orlando locations.

Longtime business partners Lott and Frederick, however, didn't spend too much time on the celebration. In fact, their next go-big mission is already underway: to attack another business-to-business service-oriented industry, IT support. “We know how to deliver a very high-end service,” says Lott, who is also a Plant City commissioner and former mayor of the east Hillsborough County city. “Now we want to do it in the IT world.”