WORDS Amy Deskin

Zack Teperman

Follow Zack Teperman’s outdoor adventures and travels with Chloe on Instagram at www.instagram.com/zackteperman, or learn more about his work through ZTPR at www.ZTPR.net.

Where the Water Leads: Zack Teperman
Life in PR, paddling and the outdoors

For Zack Teperman, some of life’s biggest decisions haven’t been made behind a desk, inside a boardroom or during a business meeting. They’ve been made on the water.

Sometimes that has meant sitting quietly on a dock in Canada. Other times, it’s been paddling across a remote northern lake, kayaking near a glacier, cruising a Tennessee river or simply escaping onto the water after a long workday.

Now 39, Teperman has built a career that has taken him from radio studios to Hollywood and eventually into entrepreneurship as president of the award-winning American-based public relations agency ZTPR. Along the way, he’s become an entrepreneur, investor, best-selling author, speaker and, most importantly to him, a father.

Yet throughout the different chapters, one thing has remained remarkably consistent: when Teperman needs to disconnect from the noise, he gravitates toward water and the outdoors.

His connection to paddling can be traced in part to one of the earliest – and most remote – stops of his career.

Before PR campaigns, international clients and entrepreneurship, Teperman was a young radio disc jockey, working on-air in places including Miami, Florida; Bracebridge, Ontario; and, for one memorable summer, Yellowknife in Canada’s Northwest Territories.

Surrounded by an extraordinary landscape of lakes and waterways, including Great Slave Lake, Long Lake, Frame Lake, Reid Lake, the Lower Cameron River and Tartan Rapids, Yellowknife offered an outdoor playground unlike anything Teperman had previously experienced.

“I wasn’t in Yellowknife for too long, just one summer, but it was one of the most incredible summers there,” he recalls. “Going down the Ingraham Trail and paddling in all the lakes was just mind-blowing. The water and air are just so fresh. You could just put your hand in the water and drink it out of your palm, and it tasted better than anything out of a bottle.”

His weekdays revolved around broadcasting. His weekends became something entirely different.

“Working on-air at the radio station weekdays, I was able to spend my weekends just exploring all the nature around me,” Teperman says. “It was an experience I’ll never forget, and probably where I fell in love with being out on the water in just a canoe or kayak for some ‘me time.’”

From the City to the Cottage
After Yellowknife, Teperman returned to Toronto and continued working in radio while developing the marketing, sales and public-relations skills that would eventually define his career.

Toronto offered opportunity, but Teperman never felt completely at home surrounded by concrete.

“I was never really a ‘city guy,’ but that’s where work was, so I had to be there,” he says.

His counterbalance was his family’s cottage near Algonquin Park in Gravenhurst, a few hours from Toronto and close enough to offer an escape whenever his schedule allowed.

“Being able to work in the city and drive a few hours to relax my mind in nature was a real perk,” he says. “Whenever I could get away, I would.”

That pattern – working intensely, then retreating outdoors to reset – would follow him across countries and throughout his career.

Eventually, an opportunity in Hollywood brought Teperman from Canada to California. He climbed the ranks of the public-relations industry before launching ZTPR in 2014.

What began as a Hollywood-based agency expanded across the United States and internationally, representing clients in entertainment, music, technology, fashion, sports, food, health and business.

Eventually, the professional and personal sides of Teperman’s life crossed paths in an especially fitting way when ZTPR began working with Canadian paddlesports company TRAK Kayaks, known for its portable performance kayaks.

“When I first spoke to [TRAK CEO] Nolin Veillard, I just knew they had something special,” Teperman says. “Being someone who likes to travel myself and kayak, I was blown away by everything TRAK had created and been doing. I had to get involved.”

For someone who had spent years figuring out how to combine work, travel and time on the water, representing a company designed around taking a kayak into far-flung places felt particularly natural.

Building a Life Around the Water
California may have helped build Teperman’s career, but eventually he traded proximity to the Pacific for the lakes and rivers of middle Tennessee.

Today, he lives outside Nashville with his eight-year-old daughter, Chloe, at a lake house he jokingly calls ‘Camp Teperman.’

The name is fitting.

Paddleboards and kayaks make it easy to get on the water, and Tennessee’s network of rivers and lakes has become part of everyday life rather than something reserved for vacations.

His enthusiasm extends beyond paddle power. Teperman also has a relationship with BRP, the maker of Sea-Doo personal watercraft, and regularly rides around the Cumberland River, Old Hickory Lake and Cheatham Lake.

Cold weather isn’t necessarily enough to stop him. He has been known to head onto the water even when Tennessee temperatures drop and snow arrives.

For Teperman, however, the appeal isn’t simply recreation. Water has become a place to think.

“Being able to work, travel and do the things I love has been a blessing,” he says. “Everything in my life, from my days being an intern getting people coffee at radio stations, to being on-air myself, to working in PR for someone else, to now owning and expanding my firm, has happened for a reason.”

When business gets complicated, or a major decision is looming, he often returns to the same environment he discovered as a teenager in northern Canada.

“Through all the big life choices, I have always taken the time to think it through while out on the water, whether it be on a boat or jet ski, a kayak, or just simply sitting on a dock to zen myself and my thoughts.”

A Passport Full of Water
As his career became more international, Teperman’s love of the outdoors followed him around the world.

adventures have ranged from paddling Canada’s famous Lake Louise to time on the water at Lake Arrowhead in California. He’s explored near Alaska’s Spencer Glacier and ventured among the icebergs and dramatic scenery of Iceland’s Jökulsárlón Glacier Lagoon.

Next, he tells us he’s taking on the waters in Norway and Finland this winter!

At the opposite end of the climate spectrum, he’s enjoyed the warm, clear waters of the Bahamas, Mexico, and other regions across the Caribbean Sea, while also exploring around Bora Bora in French Polynesia.

These days though, collecting destinations isn’t nearly as important as who gets to experience them alongside him.

As Chloe has grown older, Teperman has increasingly brought his daughter along, transforming what once served as a solitary escape into a way for father and daughter to experience the world together.

“And now that Chloe is old enough, being able to take her wherever I travel to enjoy the great outdoors has been so fulfilling,” he says. A recent trip through the Canadian Rockies provided one of those moments.

“Watching her hike recently at Moraine Lake and then canoeing those turquoise waters instead of being on an iPad is just a forever memory I am happy to have made with her.”

And apparently, Chloe is developing her own outdoor independence. “She loves the water activities so much that when we went to Sparrow Lake in Muskoka, she took her other two young cousins paddleboarding with her instead of wanting to hang out with me!” Teperman jokes.

That’s not a bad problem for an outdoors-loving father to have.

Success Beyond the Office
Teperman’s professional life continues moving quickly. ZTPR has expanded beyond its north American roots, working with clients in countries including Australia, the United Kingdom, Singapore and Switzerland. ­Outside the agency, Teperman has invested in health brands, waterfront properties and paddling-related companies while continuing to speak at colleges and other events.

He’s also added ‘best-selling author’ to his resume a couple of years ago through Enough of the Bull$hit, a book written alongside contributors including entrepreneur Mark Cuban, David Meltzer and Jordan Belfort, widely known as ‘The Wolf of Wall Street’.

There are always more businesses to build, campaigns to launch, investments to consider and places to visit. But Teperman’s story also makes a larger point about what success can look like.

A career doesn’t necessarily have to compete with the outdoors. Sometimes the outdoors is what makes the career sustainable in the first place.

For Teperman, paddling isn’t about chasing records, conquering the most difficult stretch of whitewater or proving how far he can travel under his own power. It’s something simpler.

It’s perspective.

isn’t the centre of attention. It’s watching a paddle break the surface of a turquoise Canadian lake. It’s seeing icebergs from water level. It’s a weekend in a kayak after a week behind a microphone, or an evening on a Tennessee lake after a day spent running a company.

And increasingly, it’s watching his daughter discover that same feeling for herself.

Family life with Chloe and his girlfriend, Maddie, remains at the centre of Teperman’s world, even as his businesses and travels keep expanding. There will undoubtedly be more destinations, more ventures and more decisions ahead.

Chances are, when Teperman needs to figure out where he’s going next, he won’t be staring at the walls of an office.

He’ll find some water. And he’ll get out on it. Maybe even create another ‘camp’ or two!