Editor’s Note: This is the first in a five-part series on winners of SRQ Magazine’s 2018 Localpreneurs of the Year.

He’s created national home services brands and launched Sarasota’s newest family of restaurants. Now, Jim Abrams can also boast he’s among the first-ever SRQ Media Group Localpreneurs of the Year. “I’m getting ready to retire, and I appreciate being able to get recognized one last time,” he says.

Abrams, the force behind BizZoom, Fyzical Therapy and American Dreams Restaurant Group, has a long history of launching companies. While his career began working with major corporations Weight Watchers and Trane, he founded Home Energy Services in 1981 and grew it to a company earning $12 million a year by 1988, and ultimately to a public company with a $220 million valuation by 1999. Then he launched Clockwork Home Services, which bore such brands as Mr. Sparky and Benjamin Franklin Plumbing, before selling the company in 2011 for $183 million.

He’s continued to launch successful companies including Fyzical, Pricefixer and Praxis-10, the latter of which became the fastest growing franchise in history after setting up 110 locations in the first three months after launch. “It has been my desire to build the largest brands and make them household names,” Abrams says.

Now, Abrams has focused his attention on the restaurant world. After starting Duval’s Fresh. Local. Seafood. in 2011, he opened two more restaurants in downtown last year with Element: Modern Mediterranean Grill and PBnT: Pizza Burgers Tacos. While these companies may eventually become franchises themselves, Abrams says he’d like to prove the concepts first.

Abrams says the biggest challenge for up-and-coming entrepreneurs is student debt. “We are burdening our best and brightest with huge amounts of debt they will live with for a very long time,” he says. When asked about building strong teams, he advises “Being able to illustrate the future tosmart capable people is critical to having them see their place within our organization. We provide a clear strategic vision as to how being a part of our enterprise will fulfill their ambitions, with boundless opportunity.”