FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE 
April 30, 2003

Jacksonville, Fla.- "It's humbling to be recognized for doing what you love." Amy Lynn Calfee, free agent consultant and entrepreneur, is the first winner of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s Regional, State and District 2003 Home-Based Business Advocate of the Year. 

Individuals who have experienced the rewards and difficulties of home-based businesses and have volunteered to improve the climate for these businesses were eligible for nomination. Calfee's regional award covers eight states. 

Calfee, along with just two other award winners from the district, will be formally recognized at the SBA 11th Annual Small Business Week Awards Luncheon Thursday, May 8, 12 p.m. at the University of North Florida University Center.

An established creative consultant and communication strategist, Calfee is a long-time volunteer member of the Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce where she has chaired the SOHO Pros Business Resource Group since its inception in June 2001. She was recently named to the Chamber’s Board of Governors. She is also a partner with the Jacksonville & the Beaches Convention and Visitors Bureau where she participated in the multi-cultural marketing sub-committee.

SOHO Pros, short for Small Office - Home Office Professionals, is one of several Business Resource Groups (BRG) facilitated by the Small Business Division of the Chamber. BRGs were created as a value-added benefit of Chamber membership to facilitate communication among members of similar interests, demographics or industry type.

"The fact the SBA is recognizing home-based business people is indicative of how this industry segment is not only growing, but making a measurable impact and evolutionary change on the world of work," said Calfee, the first winner of this newly established award.

Calfee has provided creative advertising and marketing services from her home-based design studio since July 1994. She specializes in design, production and implementation of integrated communication programs including image development, print, display and broadcast design, copy and script writing, strategic market planning, media relations, and all types of photography. 

Her experience includes contributions to marketing and communication programs for several economic development initiatives, business start-ups, product launches and promotional campaigns throughout Northeast and Central Florida. She has also served national and international accounts headquartered in New York and Britain.

Calfee's broad communications background spans over 20 years and includes graphic design, commercial photography, sales, consulting, sports information and marketing, public relations and video tape editing. She holds a BA degree from the University of South Florida with a double major in English and mass communications (visual communications sequence in photography, film and video).

Most notably, Calfee’s community service includes her role as creative director of "Transformations - A Celebration of Everyday Heroes," the annual, premier fundraising event for the I.M. Sulzbacher Center for the Homeless in Jacksonville. This full stage production honors former clients and volunteers of the Center. Involved since its inception in 1999, Calfee helped to name and brand the event and continues to provide all creative services and consult on planning, promotion, production and staging. 

"To be nominated is humbling enough," said Calfee, "but to actually receive this level of recognition is not only encouraging, but affirming. I must be on the right track!"

The affirmation is especially meaningful in light of the kinds of advice Calfee received when she decided to become a solo practitioner. "Don’t tell anyone you’re a freelancer, it sounds like you can’t get a real job," she was told.

This was the sage advice Calfee received when she first step into the uncertain and oftentimes, isolated world of consulting.

Fresh from a layoff and motivated by her mortgage payment, Calfee began her consulting career using her direct sales experience and contacts made on the job.

Why not call it freelancing? After all, the historical context of the word comes from medieval times. When a king or land baron needed extra help warding off encroaching armies, he would recruit "swords for hire," or "free lancers." While their services were not "free," these entrepreneurial guards became known as reliable, honorable and effective sources of service.

So what happened to that perception?

Starting a home-based business is daunting enough without having to overcome the stigmas and negative perceptions of fly-by-night, over-promising, under-delivering charlatan-types who may have left more than a bad taste in the mouth of a prospect.

Enthusiasm reigns as the key ingredient to all Calfee’s business relationships. Through networking and a penchant for selling concepts on the spot, Calfee may have stumbled into consulting career, but has since earned a reputation for an uncanny ability to peel through the layers of a question and apply communication strategies and tools to come up with a creatively practical answer - a kind of structural engineering approach to what most would consider a very loose and "outside-of-the-box" exercise. 

When networking revealed an unlikely market, Calfee expanded her target audience to include other consultants, entrepreneurs and free agents like herself. "I learned early on, in order to thwart feelings of isolation and increase my available billable hours, I needed to interface with other folks like me," Calfee recalls. Virtual partnerships - working behind the scenes as a contractor for a contractor - has proven to be one of her most valuable assets.

"These relationships are based on blending compatible skills in an environment of trust and mutual respect," she said. 

Having earned a reputation to deliver creative solutions error free, on time and under budget, Calfee was given the opportunity to launch and re-brand the Small Business Center (SBC) in 2001. The SBC is a cooperative initiative between the Chamber, City of Jacksonville, U.S. Small Business Administration and multiple state and local business advocacy groups. 

Calfee’s work jump-started the SBC to serve more start-up and existing small business owners than ever before, skyrocketing past every projection. While over 90% of Chamber members are small businesses, the SBC is now a more valuable Chamber asset uniquely designed to serve small businesses throughout the community.

It was Bob Baldwin, vice president of the Chamber’s Small Business Division and director of the SBC, who called in early 2001 to ask Calfee to chair a new kind of committee at the Chamber: a business resource group designed for home-based businesses. From a small contingency of 15 interested Chamber members, SOHO Pros has grown to just over 100 participants.

"SOHO Pros has evolved into an interactive support group where participants can network, form trustworthy business relationships and address the challenge of the day with an informal and unpaid board of directors." Calfee admits, while her own practice of working with other consultants in an exchange of free-flowing ideas is familiar territory for her, many SOHOers hesitate to leap out of their comfort zones to include others in their own projects. "We’re working on building trust," Calfee explained.

Home-based business advocate indeed!