Lee-Collier Runner-Up 2

Lee-Collier Runner-Up 2

Jerry Williams

Chairman, President and CEO, Orion Bancorp

Is there an entrepreneurial gene?

If so, it's dominant in Jerry Williams' family. In Athens, Texas, Williams' father and grandfather created numerous successful ventures, from steel construction to auto-parts stores.

Jerry Williams knew he had that entrepreneurial gene from early on. "I never understood I had a choice," he says. "That's what you did."

After a training stint with Huntington Bank in Columbus, Ohio, three Huntington board members asked Williams, then 27, to run a small bank in the Florida Keys in 1987.

The four paid $2 million to buy First National Bank of the Florida Keys, a bank with just $25 million in assets.

Now based in Naples and renamed Orion Bancorp, the bank recently surpassed $2 billion in assets. Along the way, Williams bought out his partners. "I borrowed everything I could borrow and wound up giving them some preferred stock," Williams says.

When he started in the Keys, Williams says he never thought Orion would become the largest privately held independent bank holding company on the West Coast of Florida. "Looking back, it was going to work every day and trying to grow the company like any other small-business person does," Williams says.

His advice to budding entrepreneurs is to take risks with their careers and their savings while they're young and can still recover from any setbacks.

From his banking perch, Williams sees all kinds of businesses succeed and fail.

"We have never seen a pro forma that doesn't work," he jokes. But his advice is always this: "People need to spend all their time on the execution."

In the end, Williams says, successful entrepreneurs recognize that finding the right people to grow the business is the key. He illustrates the advice with his own bank's experience.

"We can build buildings anywhere, but it's all about who builds that business," he says. "That's how we got to Lee County, Sarasota and Palm Beach."

-Jean Gruss

Revenues 2003: $51 million 2004: $64 million 2005: $101 million

(25% increase) (57% increase)

Average annual growth: 41%

EMPLOYEES 2004: 190 2005: 250 2006: 280