The Kforce Story: 50 Plus Years of Great People Delivering Great Results

or the hype.” When the negotiations were completed, both Dave and Howard had an equity ownership in the south Florida franchise under the name Romac and Associates of Fort Lauderdale and an agreement that if Howard met certain objectives in the south Florida market, he would have an opportunity to have equity ownership in the Orlando office when it eventually opened. When Howard and Terrie told their parents they were going to move with their two small children 1,500 miles away to an area they had only been to once before, where they had no friends or contacts, and start a new business he knew nothing about with a partner he had only met a few times, they thought he was crazy. As Howard recalled, “It was just a gut feeling and I had to follow it.” That was 1982 and Howard won Romac and Associates’ Rookie of the Year Award his first year. When Howard exceeded their objectives in south Florida, Dave came to him with another proposition. “We’re going to rip up that agreement we had about Orlando,” Dave told him. “My father wants to retire so we’re going to put together a holding company to buy him out. I want you, and I, and Cooch (his nickname for Rich) to be members of the holding company and you’ll have an equity ownership in everything we open, not just Orlando.” At Howard’s suggestion, they named the holding company FMA—Future Millionaires of America—after an investment club from his college days. Since that name had actually been registered, they chose FMA International. “We were young, we were energetic, we were cocky, and we were naïve. I didn’t know what I didn’t know— that was probably good,” Howard recalled. “I thought, we won’t fail because of a lack of effort, that’s for sure.” Working twelve to fifteen hour days, six and sometimes seven days a week, Howard often got home just in time to kiss his wife hello and goodbye at the same time. “Terrie was walking out the door to work the 8 pm to midnight shift as a part time pharmacist,” said Howard. “That extra money came in handy as we reinvested any profits back into the business.” At least a portion of their confidence came from John Naisbitt’s well-known book entitled Megatrends, published in 1982. Among his many forecasts, one in particular caught Al Dunkel’s attention. Naisbitt predicted that Florida, and more specifically Tampa, would become the seat of future economic growth. While he was accurate where Florida and the Sunbelt in general were concerned, in subsequent editions he retracted his predictions about Tampa. In the final analysis, however, they all took the risk on the strength of the relationship they’d formed and the confidence they had in each other’s abilities and ethics. FMA International became the holding company that owned the Providence, Rhode Island, office; the Tampa and Fort Lauderdale, Florida, offices; and a satellite office in Miami.

23 The Next Generation