Cornerstone Design and Development, Zernco named top small businesses

Women-owned and -led companies won both of this year’s Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce’s Annual Small Business Awards.

Technology firm Cornerstone Design and Development won the Tier 1 award for companies with one to 25 employees. The company is owned by Joy Eakins.

Construction company Zernco won the Tier 2 award for companies with 26 to 100 employees. Ashley Thill is company president and part owner.

The awards were announced at a luncheon Wednesday at the Hyatt Regency Wichita.

The companies were judged on their business practices, growth and community involvement. They must be headquartered in Wichita and be a member of the chamber.

Chamber president Gary Plummer said that six of the nine final businesses in the competition were led by women.

“It certainly demonstrates what we’ve all seen if you’ve been in business for some time: Women are playing a much more important role,” he said.

He said the two firms and their owners were pretty special in what they had achieved.

“They’re both very deserving,” he said.

Overwhelming win

Winning the award was pretty overwhelming, said Eakins, who is also a member of the Wichita School Board.

Eakins’ voice broke as she recognized and thanked her parents, her husband and her son for coming, but her voice grew stronger as she talked about her philosophy of business, which is the same as her philosophy of life.

She said she took the Bible, and particularly two powerful rules found there, as her guide.

“I am not perfect, but my whole life has been trying to live out those two commandments: love God and love others as myself, and everything follows from that,” she said.

Afterward, she and her employees spent many minutes accepting congratulations, handshakes and hugs. She said she was surprised to win.

“In that category, there are four other businesses that have incredible stories about how they started a business or what they’ve done with their business,” she said. “I was blown away reading about what they were able to accomplish.”

Living a moral life is really her main advice on how to run a successful business.

“When you run your business based on profit only – there are people who do that and do very well – but I think the lasting part is when you decide there is some purpose that is higher than what you’re doing on a daily basis. It plays out for us in the way we treat our customers and the way we treat our team and the relationships we have in the community,” she said. “At the end of the day, I have to go home and face myself, and I want to be able to do that in a good way.”

Reasons to grow

Scott Marko, vice president of Zernco, accepted the award for the company – and admitted that Eakins’ acceptance speech was hard to follow.

He recognized Thill and the company’s employees as key to success.

Afterward, people at the Zernco table were all smiles.

“Proud,” Thill said about the win.

“Yeah, very proud, excited,” Marko said. “We’ve been working really hard just to get to this point.”

Zernco has gone through the award process at least two years. There’s a lot of documentation of business practices and performance, plus interviews, site visits and several chamber meals.

Marko said the process is beneficial, not just because it gets the company’s name out but because it forces managers to take a look at their practices from the outside.

Thill said she is widening the scope of the business beyond being a building contractor.

“We are really looking forward to doing things outside of construction,” she said. “Development, consulting in business processes; I have a strong organizational background, distribution. … Our industry needs a lot of advancement in organization and technology.”

Cindy Carnahan, president of the Carnahan Group real estate group, was the keynote speaker. She talked about her experiences learning about the business from her father, and she offered advice about adopting new technology to operate more efficiently and more competitively.

This story was originally published May 13, 2015 at 5:41 PM with the headline "Cornerstone Design and Development, Zernco named top small businesses."