Our founder and CEO, Attorney Joe Seagle, started practicing law in North Carolina in 1996. In 2001, he moved to Orlando, FL, and joined a law firm that owned a real estate title insurance agency.
He struck out on his own in the late summer of 2004. His law firm and title agencies quickly grew during the great real estate boom until 2007. While the law firm focused on representing private lenders, real estate investors, and timeshare developers, his title agency (PCS Title) and land trust company (TRSTE, LLC) cranked through hundreds of closings each year.
In August 2007, the music stopped on the real estate boom, and the title agency dropped from 100 closings a month to 20, to 10, to five. The title agencies had grown to three locations and over 20 employees. When the Great Recession started, it wasn’t easy to accept that good times were over. Joe had to reduce staff and locations while pivoting the business focus. The firm moved into a new office building, which it had purchased in 2005, and renovated from a restaurant into an office building over two years.
Once in the new offices, the firm shifted its focus to mortgage foreclosure defense and prosecution, bankruptcy, and estate planning. The law firm brought more attorneys on board, and the title and trust companies continued to operate. One title agency shifted its focus to timeshare closings for large, brand-name developers and owners who wanted to convey their timeshares to family members or other purchasers.
Over the years, the economy improved, and — by 2012 — bankruptcy and foreclosures were dropped from the firm’s repertoire. The firm once again focused on real estate closings and land trust services. Its two title agencies handled Florida residential and commercial closings plus timeshare resale closings in over 20 states and the Caribbean.
In 2020, during the pandemic, the firm shifted to a paperless work-from-home strategy with the help of its outside coaching program and mentors. Within days of the nationwide stay-at-home orders taking effect, the firm and title agencies operated entirely in the cloud, and paper files were a thing of the past.
In January 2021, the firm’s leadership team agreed that it was time to adopt the entrepreneurial operating system as its operating platform. Having grown slowly and inconsistently for over a decade, the firm decided it was time to focus so that growth would be faster and more steady. EOS provided the platform to do that. The leadership team renovated the companies’ structure and became more disciplined in its marketing, financial tracking, sales, IT, HR, and operations processes.
In 2022 Q4, private equity firms approached the leadership team with offers to purchase the title agency focused on timeshare closings and foreclosures. The leadership team shuttered the Florida-only residential title agency at the end of 2022. After that, the parties consummated the sale of the timeshare title agency in 2023 Q1.
The sale of the timeshare title agency provided plenty of capital to grow the law firm and land trustee company. In April 2023, Joe Seagle purchased Land Trust Service Corporation and most of its subsidiaries from Mark Warda, the grandfather of Florida land trusts, having written the book about it decades prior. Over the next year, Mark was able to focus on his retirement but remained available for internal consultations with the company’s crew members from time to time on complicated or historical issues.
Land Trust Services Corporation, combined with Mr. Seagle’s trust company, TRSTE, LLC, now operates under a unified brand name, “My Land Trustee.” The combination of resources created the largest land trust-focused company in Florida, if not the Southeastern United States. With over 1,500 clients and 2,100 trusts under management, the companies focus on providing anonymity and asset protection for property owners in 65 of Florida’s 67 counties.
Currently, the land trust companies work hand-in-glove with the law firm, providing services for and representing — respectively — clients who need trustworthy third-party land trustee services, statutory registered agent services, and legal services related to real estate transactions of any type.
At the start of the firm’s second decade in service, it changed its name from “Joseph E. Seagle, P.A.” to “Aspire Legal Solutions PLLC.” The firm’s mission is to help everyone aspire to a better life, and one of the company’s core values is to “be humble.” Mr. Seagle felt that having his name as the firm’s name was not exhibiting humility, and the new brand clearly stated the firm’s mission.
As the firm heads into the end of its first 20 years, it continues to operate under the EOS paradigm, growing carefully and intentionally to ensure it continues to earn its clients’ trust and confidence for many more decades to come.