The TrustPoint Chronicles

Hi, my name is Bill Pohl, my company is TrustPoint Financial Group (TFC), and I have found Dean and DG.com to be a breath of fresh air in the real estate industry. I ordered his books in March 2010, even though I saw his commercials for months. After reading his book and visiting DG.com, I had an epiphany. I decided to rewrite my company’s focus by stripping away all of the negative energy that had accumulated over the last 10 years and begin anew. I didn’t take this endeavor lightly.

I have been involved with real estate since 1981 (can anybody say Carlton Sheets) and had some successful and creative purchases. However, I always kept real estate as a side business, spending most of my time operating my 3 state (OH, KY and FL) public accounting practice. As my accounting practice grew, I found myself spend less time with real estate and at one point had sold everything I had accumulated over the decade from 1981 – 1991. However, I also found myself unhappy simply doing accounting and tax work and I was fortunate enough to sell my practice the following year, in late 1992. I took the next couple of years off and contemplated what I wanted to be when I grew up. My focus was going to be just working by myself. To meet this expectation, from 1994 to 1999, I did a little consulting but I spent most of my time daytrading the equity and options market. I had a great time during this period, but as a daytrader, you spend so much time looking into a computer screen, it starts to consume your soul.( I can’t explain it any better but if you daytrade, you know what I am talking about)Everything started to take a back seat to daytrading. I even started to trade foreign markets just so I could trade. It was at this point that my very being seemed to no longer be mine. I had to quit to get myself back and I did so as a full time trader on 12/31/99. I took the entire year of 2000 to reconstitute my life (again!) and I decided to focus back on real estate as it was always good to me. I incorporated TFC in Jan 2001 and haven’t looked back since.

I focused on lease options (actually sandwich leases) as they were the easiest to do, they quickly built up a portfolio of homes, and it allowed me to talk endlessly to people about something in which they could relate.
While I spent a lot of time in Ohio (my home state), I was lucky enough to be involved with the Florida RE market while the market was flying. There was a point in time where my portfolio of homes included homes in OH, FL, NY, SC, VA, GA, KY and HI. I was like a kid in a candy store holding multimillions of dollars worth of homes. However, when the market turned (and it really did turn on a dime), my company’s net worth dropped over 2 million dollars while I attempted to reduce my exposure to the vicious teeth of the recession.

I survived. I decided to start the rebuilding process in 2009 and used most of that year to finalize and stabilize my company. 2010 was the year that I started to build TFC 2.0. To that end, it was the reason I ordered the book. Along the way, I jettisoned a lot of company baggage. I am down to 2 offices (Cincinnati and Orlando), I have reduced the internal people I do business with to 3 trusted individuals who get it, and I have streamlined my marketing, my portfolio and my thought process. My goal is to use this unique time in history to grow my business to a large regional real estate firm having annual revenues of $25 million by 2014. It will take some smart work, some awfully good networking and great business plan. I think I have all of those.

I am starting this journal as a way to interact with the members of DG.com as I feel that DG.com “gets it”, and it was also an interesting way to hold myself accountable. I have also set up social networks on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and Blogger to relate my progress to people with whom I will be involved with during this process. (I invite everybody to search me out in whatever forum they choose as I would be happy to interact)My websites are in flux with some of them updated and some of them in the final process of being updated. I just completed a rework of my email system. In essence, I have taken the last 6 months to plan my work and work my plan.

Lastly, some personal notations: I'm 56, I love life, I have been married for 36 years, I have 3 kids, and I don’t believe in the no-win scenario. My pet peeve: stupid people. As you get older, you’ll understand how much life they try to suck out of you.

Anyway, here goes nothing and wish me luck!! Today is the first day of TFC 2.0.