Tampa, FL – The Tampa Bay Chamber is one step closer to selecting winners of the 43rd Annual Small Business of the Year Awards with today’s announcement of finalists!
Startup Business
5-20 Employees
21 – 50 Employees
51 – 250 Employees
- Happy’s Home Centers, Inc.
- MidFlorida Armored & ATM Services, Inc.
- Sanwa Food Group
- Westcoast Brace & Limb
- Workscapes
Outstanding Business Leader
- Robert J. Clark, Jr., President, Tampa Steel Erecting Co.
- Kim Farmer, Owner, Mile High Fitness
- Elaine Myrback, President/CEO, EMS Consulting
- Greg Zolkos, President/CEO, Atlas Professional Services, Inc.
The announcement comes after last month’s intense interviews with semi-finalists at the Chamber headquarters in Downtown Tampa. For the SBOY Committee Chair, Samantha Abraham it was a unique experience that took her down “memory lane.” Five years ago, Abraham was the business owner on the other side of the interview table – vying for Small Business of the Year. “In 2018, we went through the process, and I remember that just being nominated and going to the first info session was sheer excitement,” recalled Abraham, who admits the excitement was also mixed in “with terror and a bit of imposter syndrome! Look at us! We were 5 years in business at that point.”
Abraham is the Founder and CEO of My Paper Pusher, a full-service bookkeeping company that provides expert weekly and monthly services for businesses and nonprofit organizations throughout the country. She says preparing for the three phases of her company’s own SBOY journey made them different by the time they reached the last step of prep work. “I remember having to complete the application and feeling a little daunted by how thorough it was, but also feeling so empowered! I knew we could conquer this if we put our brains together and really put our heart and soul into it,” said Abraham. “Because I’m a perfectionist, dog gone it, I was going to write the best application I could! It was a great bonding experience, especially for our leadership team, working to put those elements together.”
The application was step one. The in-person interview with an SBOY Committee panel of judges was step two. The memories came flooding back to Abraham as she welcomed this year’s crop of semi-finalists. “That was THE most nerve-wracking part of the process, even more so than the site visit because of the time constraints,” she recalled of her 2018 interview.
Start to finish, it takes the Chamber approximately 9 months and more than 50 SBOY committee members and volunteer judges every year to go through the process of examining approximately 400 applicants. The last step of the three-phase process is an on-site visit to finalists’ businesses. Five years after receiving the Chamber delegation of SBOY judges, Abraham still believes it was the site- visit that “sealed the deal” for them – earning them the coveted 2018 Small Business of the Year in the category of 5 – 20 employees. “That’s one of the hardest categories! When you think of small business, that’s how many employees most small businesses have. It’s an incredibly tough category and there were so many great competitors that all had very creative site visit ideas! I thought how the heck are we going to make accounting interesting? We sit in an office and look at excel sheets and quick books all day, but we found our way!”
They certainly did! “We coordinated a client appreciation event and got more than 50 people into our tiny little 2,400 square feet of office space. We hid them from the judges! As the judges were walking out, our clients lined up at the exit. Each had a little poster that had their company logo, our company name and hearts! The judges were completely taken aback walking through the lobby where more than 50 clients were chanting ‘We love My Paper Pusher!’ and really excited,” said Abraham. “It brought our clients together – the ones that came that day! Most of them are still our clients today.”
It’s that SBOY thought process that Abraham says took her company to the next level. “The questions that the application process takes you through require so much introspection and reflection that you don’t do on a regular basis - even if you have a business consultant, even if you have the best business partners in the world. That application was something we had never done before. That was a turning point and a pivot for our scalability,” said Abraham. “We added even more processes than we had before, and the camaraderie was completely irreplaceable! I feel the way the questions are written and the way you interact with the judges during the whole process, it’s business coaching that you can’t buy!”
Abraham and committee members have their hands full judging this year’s SBOY Startup, Small Business, and Outstanding Business Leader of 2023 finalists. Earlier this summer, the committee announced the business leaders on the short list of candidates for the coveted Outstanding Business Leader of 2023. The finalists are Robert J. Clark, Jr., President, Tampa Steel Erecting Co.; Kim Farmer, Owner, Mile High Fitness; Elaine Myrback, President/CEO, EMS Consulting; and Greg Zolkos, President/CEO, Atlas Professional Services, Inc..
The diverse pool of small businesses has not made judging easy – each one as impressive as the next. With the business categories narrowed down further, from semi-finalists to finalist, SBOY judges enter phase three: the on-site visits. Once that’s completed and final deliberations by the SBOY committee, the stage is set for the big reveal at the star studded event at the Seminole Hard Rock & Casino Tampa. Winners will be announced at the 43rd Annual Small Business of the Year Awards on November 16, 2023 . For this year’s SBOY Committee Chair, it’s sure to spark another trip down memory lane. “This made such a big impact on our business,” said Abraham of the SBOY nomination and win five years ago. “What we learned in the application process, in the site visit, and the way it brought us all together and created that “buy in” in our team like nothing else had done before!”
