The South Florida Business Professionals hosted its second annual Professionals in Paradise event in Key West Aug. 18-21. Business owners Andy and Vanessa Rodriguez created the organization during COVID to help Florida businesses work together and help each other while navigating the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic.
A catered dinner by Bill Lay’s Catered Affairs of Key West took place Aug. 20 at Truman Little White House. The four-day gathering featured speakers and sessions about marketing, social media engagement and potential business connections. But it wasn’t all work for this group. There were tours of the Key West Butterfly & Nature Conservatory, drinks at Irish Kevin’s, dinners at La Trattoria, poolside cocktails at Opal Key Resort & Marina and “working lunches” on the water with Florida Keys Sandbar Adventures and stunning drone photography by Aerial Recon, LLC.
“When people ask what we at South Florida Business Professionals do, the answer is simple,” founder Andy Rodriguez said at the Aug. 20 dinner. “We create opportunities. And we now have people all over South Florida doing business with other people in South Florida.”
Lay also spoke to the dinner crowd, reminding them of the early days of the COVID pandemic, when there was some ill will between Key West and Miami, particularly while the checkpoint on U.S. 1 was prohibiting visitors and non-residents from entering the Florida Keys.
“But we overcame that and this group helped foster what we needed most: unity. We now have unity,” Lay said, emphasizing Florida’s and the Keys’ successful recovery from COVID’s devastating economic downturn.
The title sponsor of the Professionals in Paradise weekend was attorney Lillian Ser, founder of Ser & Associates, a boutique law firm that specializes in the needs of small business.
