Business Observer_May 2015_Al B

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BUSINESS OBSERVER | MAY 15 – MAY 21, 2015
BusinessObserverFL.com
MAY 15 – MAY 21, 2015 | BUSINESS OBSERVER
ENTREPRENEURS OF THE YEAR
VINNY
ANTONIO
Victory Marketing Agency
Fort Myers
WHY WE CHOSE HIM:
Ten years ago, Vinny Antonio landed a job
traveling around the country dressed as a
green lizard.
Little did he realize that the gig would lead
to the creation of a fast-growing business in
Fort Myers that hit $3.6 million in revenues
in 2014.
Antonio, 32, was
the Geico gecko at
festivals, donning a
REVENUES
costume, posing for
2012: $2.2 million
photos and spinning a
2013: $2.9 million
prize wheel. “It’s brutal,” Antonio laughs.
Ç32%
But the job paid
2014: $3.6 million
well, and A ntonio
Ç24%
saved his pennies,
often sleeping in his
EMPLOYEES
truck so he could
2012: 5
save his per-diem hotel allowances.
2013: 12
At each event, An2014: 20
tonio would hire a sixman crew to set up
the Geico tent. “A lot of these people never
showed up,” he says. “I kept a spreadsheet
of all the people that did a good job.”
Over time, that database of reliable freelancers totaled more than 1,000 names.
That database became the foundation
of his business, Victory Marketing Agency, which he launched in 2007 out of a
500-square-foot condo in downtown Fort
Myers. “It was just me for two years,” Antonio says.
The company now has more than 25,000
names of freelance workers who will work in
trade-show booths, serve drinks, distribute
promotional materials and model products.
The key to managing all these freelancers
with a staff of just 20 people is technology
to keep track of events and people. “We do
1,000 events a month,” Antonio says.
A project that vaulted the company’s
reputation was the Maxim magazine Super
Bowl party in Dallas in 2012. Victory hired
75 models who passed out hors d’oeuvres,
played carnival games and danced with
guests who paid thousands of dollars for
the privilege to party.
On average, Victory pays its freelancers
$17 to $30 and sometimes more per hour
because Antonio looks for people who are
punctual and reliable. “It takes a certain kind
of person,” Antonio says.
– Jean Gruss
GROWTH
THOMAS HARRISON, third from left, chats with residents at Aston Gardens at Pelican Marsh in Naples.
NEW
3 QUESTIONS
DISCOVERY
Thomas Harrison’s pay-for-performance model at Discovery
Senior Living helps create happy customers in the apartment
communities it operates.
GROWTH
REVENUES
2012: $73.8 million
2013: $83.8 million
Ç14%
2014: $129.5 million
Ç55%
EMPLOYEES
2012: 993
2013: 1,197
2014: 1,606
E
very month, Thomas Harrison
organizes a team-member appreciation event for the employees of Discovery Senior
Living.
Harrison hands out bonuses in the
form of paper checks, a meaningful
gesture in an era of the impersonal
direct-deposit wire transfers. “Yearly bonus plans are old news to me,”
Harrison explains. “People want the
immediacy of a reward. I want them
to know I really care about them.”
It’s not a job Harrison takes lightly.
“It’s a lot of work,” he says. “As a management philosophy, we pay at the
high end of the spectrum.”
But there’s a clear business strat-
BRIAN TIETZ
egy here: “By keeping turnover low,
you keep residents happy,” Harrison
explains. “Residents vote with their
feet.”
This helps explain why Discovery
Senior Living communities fill up
before the company even finishes
building them. Because they’re rental apartments, residents can move
out just like they can with traditional
apartments.
Fact is, Harrison is among the
sharpest operators of senior living
communities. Bonita Springs-based
Discovery Senior Living grew revenues 55% in 2014 to $129.5 million.
Discovery Senior Living recently
opened or is developing a half dozen
WHO IS THE UNSUNG HERO
IN YOUR COMPANY?
“The caregivers and servers
are the unsung heroes,”
Harrison says. “They’re the
No. 1 reason for our success.”
WHO ARE YOUR MENTORS?
Don Ackerman, the now deceased chairman of Bonita
Springs-based homebuilding
and development company
WCI Communities. “For 15
years, I could count on him
to provide insight,” Harrison says. “He was a great
sounding board.” Today,
Harrison says he counts his
wife, Michele, as a mentor.
She’s the former president
of the Collier Building Industry Association and is now
regional director of sales at
WCI Communities.
WHAT’S THE BEST ADVICE
YOU’VE EVER RECEIVED, IN
BUSINESS OR IN LIFE?
Harrison cites Ackerman:
“Integrity is the cornerstone
of any organization,” he
says. The definition of integrity is doing the right thing
when nobody’s looking.
senior-living communities under
the Discovery Village brand from
Tampa to Naples and on the east
coast of Florida on land that Harrison acquired in the depths of
the recession for pennies on the
dollar. The well-appointed apartments include a busy schedule of
activities and amenities such as a
movie theater, an exercise facility
with a walk-in pool and a physician’s office on site.
Backed by private-equity firm
Kayne Anderson Real Estate Advisors, Discovery reacquired the
Aston Gardens apartments it had
sold eight years ago. It’s now expanding into Texas with acquisitions such as three Conservatory
Senior Living communities in
Houston, Dallas and Austin and
adding other communities in Alabama and Georgia.
“There are a lot of operators…
in Tom’s business, but there are
very few that are excellent,” says
Max Newland, managing director with Kayne Anderson, which
so far has invested $1.2 billion
in Discovery projects totaling
5,000 units. “He’s very hands-on,
but he’s built a very strong team
around him that’s very capable.”
Harrison had sold six Aston Gardens communities in Florida in
2006 to a joint venture of Sunrise
Senior Living and General Electric
for $450 million. It was a record
price on a per-unit basis, he says.
But instead of calling it quits,
the 67-year-old Harrison and
his business partner Richard
Hutchinson scouted new opportunities in the recession. “What
Richard and I did was we started
buying land,” Harrison says. “We
started entitling it right away.”
Even though the financial crisis clouded the economic outlook, Harrison and Hutchinson
reasoned that Florida’s economy
would eventually recover. “It took
a lot of intestinal fortitude,” Harrison acknowledges.
One of the early investors in
Discovery Senior Living was Al
Hoffman, the former CEO of WCI
Communities who built t hat
company into a powerhouse on
the ashes of the recession of the
early 1990s. Hoffman and nowdeceased WCI Chairman Don
Ackerman had enlisted Harrison
to turn Aston Gardens around.
Before cutting his teeth in the
homebuilding business with companies such as Kaufman & Broad,
Harrison was a U.S. Navy hospital corpsman who was embedded
with the U.S. Marines in combat
during the Vietnam War in 1969
and 1970. “I had more responsibility as a 19- and 20-year-old than
I’ve had my whole life,” he recalls.
Harrison cuts an imposing figure, but he’s soft-spoken, often
closing his eyes while he speaks to
find the right words. “Tom is very
good at espousing the vision,” says
Hutchinson. “He’s a great motivator.”
T he sen ior-l iv i ng busi ness
model Ha r r ison helped create is groundbreaking in many
ways. “This industry was born
in the not-for-profit world,” says
Hutchinson. “Our pay for performance system is very strange for
this industry, but it does attract
super-talented folks.”
Newland says Harrison is detailoriented and can recite a property’s financials from memory.
But more impressive is that employees beyond the C-suite know
the numbers, too. “He runs a very
performance-based operation,”
Newland says. “It’s music to my
ears to have a partner who pays
attention to profits.”
– Jean Gruss
BusinessObserverFL.com
AL BAVRY
Kimal Lumber
Venice
WHY WE CHOSE HIM:
The independent lumberyard industry,
trampled by the recession and left with facilities that are costly to operate, inches toward
extinction.
But Al Bavry, 77, provides a remedy
for the struggling sector. He’s done that
through a series of counterintuitive moves
at Kimal Lumber, which he co-founded in
1981. Revenues
are up 175% since
2011, to more than
$33 million, and
REVENUES
while that’s off from
2012: $20.3 million
the boom years, it’s
2013: $24.8 million
healthy recovery-era
growth.
Ç22.1%
Beyond more de2014: $33.1 million
mand
for lumber, the
Ç33.5%
recent success also
stems from Bavry’s
EMPLOYEES
ability to foster cre2012: 86
ativity and then lead
the execution. Indi2013: 100
ana-based industry
2014: 148
co n s ul t a nt G r eg
Brooks, who has
known Bavry for 20 years, is one of many
who pay Bavry high praise when he calls the
Kimal executive “the Steve Jobs of lumber.”
A noteworthy Bavry-led innovation is the
Kimal Event Center in Venice, a $2 million
project built in 2006 under green building
standards. Another example: A drive-thru
lumberyard Kimal opened in late 2013.
One of the few like it in Florida, the lumberyard sells products in strategically designed
aisles that accommodate vehicles up to a
full-size, four-door pickup truck with a trailer.
The project, along with an 8,400-squarefoot hardware store connected to the building, cost around $4 million.
Longtime Sarasota construction executive Jon Swift, who worked on the drive-thru
lumberyard, says Bavry also balances creativity with a pragmatic, workmanlike focus.
So when the downturn hit, Kimal Lumber
conserved resources. “They survived the
recession,” says Swift, “and were able to
come back on the other side.”
– Mark Gordon
GROWTH
“THE STEVE JOBS
OF LUMBER.”
– Greg Brooks, Indiana-based
industry consultant on Al Bavry
9
LOUIS
BRUNO
Bruno Air Conditioning
Bonita Springs
WHY WE CHOSE HIM:
Entrepreneurs like Louis Bruno don’t give
up easily.
“If we’re not failing, we’re not trying,” says
Bruno, 26, president of Bruno Air Conditioning.
For example, Bruno
says Florida’s humidity, salty air and freREVENUES
quent power surges
2012: $71,000
corrode and degrade
2013: $2.5 million
many par ts of airconditioning units inÇ3,420%
stalled today.
2014: $10 million
“How about makÇ300%
ing a unit that’s designed for Southwest
EMPLOYEES
Florida?” Bruno won2012: 2
dered. “We live in the
swamp, right?”
2013: 30
Together with his
2014: 140
staff, Bruno designed
a unit that would replace metal air handlers with tough plastic
and include surge protectors. A sterilizing
light prevents mold growth that corrodes
other parts.
Bruno then approached the air-conditioning manufacturers with his idea. “They
all shot it down,” he smiles. But the young
entrepreneur didn’t give up: “When we get
told no, we try another way.”
Bruno overcame the manufacturers’ objections by showing them that he could make
improvements to their units without altering
the manufacturing production lines. Today,
he sells about 50 Bruno Signature Series
air-conditioning units a month since he started selling them six months ago.
The new unit designed for Florida weather is just one way Bruno is shaking up the
air-conditioning business. He guarantees
customers they’ll be cool within two hours
of their call and loads each repair truck with
10,000 parts, a mobile printer and computer. “It’s really helped us scale,” Bruno says.
Bruno Air Conditioning, which counts
investors such as tomato magnate Larry
Lipman, serves residential customers from
North Port to Marco Island and commercial
customers all over the state.
To build his staff since starting the company in 2012, Bruno attracted technicians
by offering full benefits such as vacation
and health insurance and up to $5,000 in
no-interest loans. “They want to be part of
something,” Bruno explains.
– Jean Gruss
GROWTH