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Florida Shores Bank in Venice had been open a mere three days in November 2007 when the chief financial officer suddenly quit.
Bank President and CEO Jim Kuhlman was stunned. But instead of panicking, Kuhlman, a onetime U.S. Marine, immediately went into problem-solve mode. “A lot of guys would have flipped out if you lost the guy who counts the money,” says Florida Shores board member John Dowd, a Venice accountant. “But he stayed calm.”
Kuhlman interviewed several candidates for the position within days and a new CFO was in place by Monday. That kind of decisive execution is vintage Kuhlman, say several people who know him in the Venice business community. “He's a steady warrior,” says Venice real estate developer and Florida Shores board member Brad Baldwin.
“Jim is tough, but very fair,” adds South County YMCA President Ken Modzelewski, who has known Kuhlman for a decade. “He will put his heart and soul into it, but he expects heart and soul back.”
Kuhlman's ability to execute with unwavering precision has also paid dividends for Florida Shores. The bank is a clear leader in its class, both statewide and on the Gulf Coast. Annual revenues, for example, grew 229% since 2008, from about $2.58 million to about $8.48 million last year. The bank has three branches and 32 employees.
Florida Shores also earned $1,035,000 in 2010, its first profitable year. It lost $2,444,000 in 2008 and it lost $1,039,000 in 2009, according to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. Only 76 out of 219 community banks based in Florida were profitable in 2010, states a report from Financial Management Consulting Group, a Kentucky-based research firm.
Moreover, the bank posted a 5.56% return on equity in 2010. Tampa-based American Momentum Bank, with 7.03%, was the only Gulf Coast community bank with a better return on equity last year.
“We are very happy with the way things have turned out,” says Kuhlman. “But we aren't sitting still.”
Long-range future plans include going public, which Kuhlman says will likely happen after the corporate entity behind the bank, Florida Shores Bancorp, hits $1 billon in assets. The initial strategy was to grow a family of four banks with independent charters and boards in pockets of the state.
But the recession dented those plans.
Florida Shores-Southeast, based in Pompano Beach, opened in late 2006 and Florida Shores-Southwest, Kuhlman's bank, followed in late 2007. Other Florida Shores, including one for Orlando, stalled because regulators aren't issuing many charters these days, if any.
Kuhlman, 53, says the plan now is to grow the Southeast and Southwest banks to $500 million, then go public. Florida Shores-Southwest had $271.2 million in assets through March 31, according to FDIC data, while Florida Shores-Southeast had $134.7 million through March 31.
One strategy Kuhlman says the bank will likely not pursue is to buy a failed or troubled bank, a move some other successful banks have taken. Says Kuhlman: “There are too many problems there.”
True grit
Kuhlman's core problem in 1979, meanwhile, was he didn't know what to do with his life.
He had just graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in finance. But the last place he wanted to work was a bank. Kuhlman instead sought a life-altering challenge he didn't think a bank could provide. “Going to work at a bank didn't make sense to me,” says Kuhlman. “I had seen too many John Wayne movies.”
Kuhlman found his challenge when he visited a friend stationed in the U.S. Army at Fort Benning, Ga. He was swept away. He got chills when the entire base stood at attention during Taps. “It really struck a chord with me,” Kuhlman says.
Within months Kuhlman was a U.S. Marine. The Marines put his finance background to good use: After boot camp, he was appointed a financial manager for various departments.
Kuhlman left active duty in the Marines in 1985, although he remained a reservist for 15 years. Like many Marines, being one for Kuhlman resonates for life.
“It had a very profound experience on me,” Kuhlman says. “You don't think you're learning business skills while you're in it, but you sure as hell are.”
The real life-altering moment for Kuhlman, though, came Oct. 23, 1983. That was the day 220 Marines, including several from Kuhlman's unit, were killed in a terrorist attack on U.S. military barracks in Beirut.
The attack crushed Kuhlman. He was back on base in North Carolina, a number cruncher — “staff puke” in Marines parlance. “They were the ones fighting the war, and I was buying the grenades,” recalls Kuhlman. “I was in the rear with the gear.”
Adds Kuhlman: “I felt the need to be on the front line, driving an organization.”
Big title
Kuhlman found his front line in banking, despite his original turnoff. He interviewed with several banks in Florida for commercial lending jobs. All but one offered him a junior trainee position, despite his six years in the Marines.
The one bank that offered Kuhlman a senior trainee position, along with a pay raise from the Marines, was NCNB National Bank in Tampa. Hugh McColl, who later built Bank of America into a national banking power, ran NCNB back then, in 1986. McColl, it turns out, served in the Marines.
Kuhlman liked his first job in banking. To a point.
“There was always this little voice in my head telling me I had to be an entrepreneur,” Kuhlman says. “I had to find an opportunity to invest my own money and lose it all or reap the rewards.”
That opportunity arrived in 1995, when the board of directors at Premier Community Bank, a Bradenton startup, offered Kuhlman the CEO position. Kuhlman took it. He was 38 years old.
The autonomy and authority were intoxicating. Kuhlman especially loved that he could lead a group of men and women to do great things. That leadership, in the tough-love Marines style, has stuck with Kuhlman through Florida Shores. “People who work at the bank will lay down for him,” says Dowd, the Florida Shores board member. “It's amazing what he gets people to do.”
Montgomery, Ala.-based Colonial Bank bought Premier in 2005. The sale brought Kuhlman a hefty payday, but it hijacked his happiness. Kuhlman stayed with Colonial for two years, then, stifled and hamstrung, he left.
“I had a great big title, but the ability to make decisions like I used to was gone,” says Kuhlman. “The money was really good, but everything changed.”
Kuhlman took a few years off. He went out West with his teenage sons in an RV. He played golf. He fished. In the fall of 2005, Kuhlman spent a few weeks in a shelter in Biloxi, Miss., where he cooked dinner for families displaced by Hurricane Katrina.
Life was good. Still, Kuhlman was all-in when he met with former Premier board members in 2007 about Florida Shores. The board and Kuhlman believed the economy that crushed several other banks left an opportunity for a community bank that wasn't tarred with bad real estate loans.
Kuhlman backed up his beliefs by investing $500,000 of his life savings in Florida Shores. Given the bank's three-year results, Kuhlman hasn't blown the second chance at an entrepreneurial life.
“I wear a banker's suit,” says Kuhlman, “but at the end of the day, I'm a entrepreneur.”
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