HOW A 37-YEAR-OLD BECAME OTC's PRESIDENT

HOW A 37-YEAR-OLD BECAME OTC's PRESIDENT

By Jean Gruss

Editor/Lee-Collier

John Pollock really didn't want to work for Oswald Trippe when he graduated from Eckerd College with a B.A. in business administration in 1990.

He was ready to be a manager. He had interned at the Fort Myers insurance agency when he was home from college in the summers, had acquired his insurance sales license and was ready to start near the top.

Instead, the agency's owner and founder, Gary Trippe, offered him a job as a commercial lines processor for $18,000 a year. A processor takes paperwork from sales agents and makes sure everything is properly filled out for the insurance company.

The job wasn't exactly what an overconfident Pollock had in mind. But after six months of fruitless job searching for that elusive management position, he returned to accept Trippe's offer. To get enough money to move out of his parents' house, Pollock took a night job at the membership desk of Sam's Club.

Pollock soon grew restless and wanted to start selling and make more money. So Trippe sent him to the company's Cape Coral office. He was handed the Yellow Pages and told to start cold calling. "I was 22 and didn't have a clue what I was doing," Pollock recalls.

But he started with the Zs instead of the As of the phone book, thinking that most beginner salesmen start with the first letter of the alphabet. Looking back, Pollock says he's not sure it made a big difference, though he thought so at the time.

Still, Pollock learned valuable lessons as a young salesman, the most important being always follow up on your sales calls. He meticulously logged every pitch and made careful notes to call back potential customers, winning some new business.

Despite some progress, Pollock quickly became discouraged because he couldn't sell enough insurance policies to justify even his starting salary. He considered quitting, but friends and family persuaded him to give it two years.

Around that time, Trippe saw Pollock was struggling and paIred him with Dick Lewis, an experienced agent who had cornered the condominium insurance market. Together with some sales coaching by an outside consultant, Pollock started to bring in more business.

After gaining confidence in the condo-policy business, Pollock started working harder, coming in the office early and working on weekends. In 1993, he became one of the youngest agents awarded the Certified Insurance Counselor designation, a challenging achievement that consumes a year and a half of study and culminates with a test that only has a 50% pass rate.

In 1995, the Florida Association of Independent Agents named Pollock Producer of the Year, and Oswald Trippe promoted him to manager of the condominium insurance department.

"I haven't looked back since," Pollock says. By 2002, he was president of the company at age 34.

"We've had confidence in John from Day One," says Trippe. "He's always impressed me with his leadership abilities and desire."

Trippe says age was not an issue with Pollock because he's got the drive and energy to lead the company. Trippe himself became president of a Miami insurance company called D.R. Mead in his mid-30s before starting Oswald Trippe.

In April 2000, Trippe and the Oswald Cos. decided Pollock should have an ownership stake and sold him 3% of the privately held company. The owners created additional shares for Pollock and diluted their own holdings to do so. Pollock says he took out a bank loan to buy the shares but declines to say how much.

Because Oswald Trippe places such a big emphasis on building business through community organizations, Pollock serves on a variety of local nonprofits. He's currently president of the Greater Fort Myers Chamber of Commerce and was the 2004-2005 campaign chairman for the United Way of Lee County. He has had perfect attendance at Rotary meetings since 1994.

Pollock says he's glad he stuck it out while struggling the first years. That experience gave him an understanding of every part of the business. That's something he would not have appreciated if he had started higher up in the business.

"There's nothing I would do differently," he says.