About Glenn Sanford
Early years: I was born in Peace River Alberta Canada on October 15, 1966 and grew up in the lower mainland of British Columbia until I was 13 years old. I grew up the son of a true Entreprenuer. My father and his brother pooled about $8000 that they had earned in partnership with my grandpa raising honey bees. Using that money they invested in 1971 into a granola manufacturing company which they renamed Northern Gold Foods. During the following 8 years they took a company that at the time was only doing $8000/month in sales to over $16 million in wholesale sales.
Kelloggs Canada ultimately bought out the company. At the time in 1979 Northern Gold Food had 16% of the Canadian Cereal market and was on the shelves all across Canada and in a number of stores in the Northern States of the United States.
In 1979 we moved from Langley British Columbia to Oklahoma City Oklahoma and went into the Oil and Gas business. At that time Oil was getting close to $40/barrel and money was relatively easy to make until the Penn Square bank failure in 1980 and the plummetting of oil prices which took most of the money that had been earned during the 1970′s with it.
During this same time starting around late 1977 early 1978 I was first introduced to computers by a math teacher in the middle school that I attended in Langley BC. My math teacher brought in one of the first Apple ][ computers ever built and as a student I could rent time on the computer for 50 cents per hour. I brought every quarter I could get my hands on to school and would spend two to three hours after school writing Integer basis and Applesoft basic programs. Fortunately at the time we were doing well financially and my dad bought an Apple ][ computer for the home office. Well I essentially took over the computer and I've been a technology geek ever since.
I graduated high school from a small high school called Bethel High School just outside of Shawnee Oklahoma. At that point in my life there were only three things in life that I cared about: Athletics, Computers and Girls. Everything else was secondary. As a result I got straight A's in my computer classes, typing classes (because using a computer involved typing) and Sports (long distance running and wrestling). I was in gifted and talented because the teachers knew I was smart, but I didn't engage in studies like english, social studies, geography or other classes that I judged as totally unnessary for my eventual carreer path which would involve computers. I graduated high school with a 1.92 average however I ranked in the top 5% on scores for my ACT and SATs at the time and got in to the University of Oklahoma because of my SAT scores not my high school grades.
Well my first year my priorities didn't change. Computer classes were my easy A's, but stuff like Political Science, Sociology, Psychology and other classes were C's at best, but more likely they were D's and I even failed a couple of classes. I got put on probation my first semester of the following year and dropped out mid semester.
I dabbled in community college and my path eventually led me to Phoenix Arizona for about 6 months. Soon after I turned 21 I started as a assistant manager at a quasi biker bar. I got the job because on the athletics side I had become a solid judo player and the owner of the bar was a black belt in judo and I had tossed him a couple times at the local judo club. He was also a student at Phoenix College, a junior college in Phoenix Arizona.
A few months after working in the bar and going to community college, my father came down with a business associate of his and they stopped in at the bar. I don't think my father was too happy with the fact that I was now a really good pool player and a manager in a bar. At this point in addition to being a business person he was also a pastor in a church.
Anyway he asked if I wanted to go to Las Vegas the next day. I said sure. In Vegas I gambled most of the evening away on the blackjack table and turned in around 4:00 in the morning. Around 7:00 the phone in the room rang and my dad said he had someone picking me up to come and catch up with him and a couple of the people he was visiting with.
What I didn't know is that I was going on a job interview to a job I had already been hired to. I became a stock broker in Las Vegas...
Ever watch the movie boiler room? Well I worked there. To make matters even worse the branch manager was also my roommate in Las Vegas and this guy had a work ethic I had never been exposed to before.
The gentleman, Herman Graulick, was in his early 60's, from New York. His wife was back in New York. His son was a doctor and his daughter an attorney. He was of Jewish decent and the guy woke up at 5:00 in the morning and didn't go to bed till midnight and worked every single minute of every single day.
I had one month to study for the series 7 and 63 exams and he was a task master.
I remember one morning he was going over questions that I was working on through about 1:00 in the morning. He had went to bed around midnight.
At 5:00 in the morning I woke to a screaming voice... "Sanford, how the $%^& did you miss this question? Get your ass out of bed."
To say the least I had never been exposed to this type of intensity at home and over the next six month I grew to fear Herman's wrath, however he gave me one hell of a work ethic.
I did get licensed about 60 days after I started with Herman. I worked the phones getting prospective clients on the phone for senior stock brokers until I got licensed. (We were a bit smaller a firm, but it was right out of the movie Boiler Room). Once it became obvious that the paper that was being pushed out of that office was the most speculative stuff on the planet I finally packed up and went back to Phoenix.
I eventually wound up back at the University of Oklahoma somewhere around 1989. With my new found work ethic I now set all the curves on all the tests in every class I was in. School was easy, however I now took it seriously. Unfortunately financially my parents were hurting because of the downturn in the oil and gas industry and they were the ones who had been footing the bill for my education. Ultimately I moved back home to the Pacific Northwest for about six months before getting a roommate in a waterfront home on Lake Whatcom.
In the summer of 1992 I got married. My wife Penny thought it would be a good idea to go back to the University of Oklahoma and finish up my degree.
At this point in time I was an active participant on Prodigy and America Online. I spent 2 - 3 hours in the library researching stocks and posting on the ones that I thought would do well. I became a bit of a stock picking celebrity and in fact AOL contracted me to be their Investment Chat Host. I got lots of questions as to how I knew so much about stocks and I told my online followers that I used to be a stock broker and I did research for myself and posted the ideas to the boards. Ultimately I had a lot of people suggest that if I ever got my license again to let them know and they would open accounts with me.
Well I figured I was leaving money on the table so I got my license and I went from doing 2 - 4 hours of research in the library to spending 10+ hours a day on the phone with clients. My initial ideas worked well, but because I really didn't yet have a handle on time management I let my research time go and eventually my stock picking abilities slipped. A year into the business I was back out of the business.
What I took away however was the idea that if I ever went back into the business I would do the research and I would have a team of stock brokers passing that research onto clients.
The next few years I spent time doing IR (Investor Relations) work; starting a couple of small tech related businesses including "Interactive Cafe" which became the largest bulletin board in Western Canada. Ultimately in 1995 the internet started to show up and was kicking our revenue model for iCafe and I learned about web design.
First of all: Initial web design was incredibly easy. But since no one knew how to do it, and those who didn't decided to hire someone, web designers were in huge demand. I was earning $60/hour doing design work for companies.
In 1996 a buddy of mine wanted to get me into a network marketing company. I didn't want to join, but he wouldn't leave me alone. I said let me build a web page, you guys close my leads, put them in my downline and leave me alone.
Well in the process it dawned on me that if I could use a webpage, so could every other network marketer. So I did templated websites for Network Marketers for about a year or so. It was a pretty good gig, until one of the top money earners in the company wanted to start doing bulk email.
He asked if I would do it. I initially resisted but when he wouldn't let up on the idea I relented. He invested $30,000 into the hardward and software and I managed the sending of upwards of 500,000 emails a day. I was in email heaven. First we were on the front end of the business so there wasn't much of a barrier to entry. There was a backbone, Agis, which didn't mind hosting bulk email folks since we paid more to be on their backbone and we sent out legitimate emails. However within 2 months of us sending out emails other backbones were dropping their peering agreements with Agis and Agis had to cut off all of the bulk emailers.
It was disheartening at the time because I was seeing a run rate and profit margins into the $300,000 / year +.
Well after a few months of getting over the depression of that not working I went back to what I knew and that was building websites for clients.
In early 1998 I met with a warehouse that wanted a website for their freight fulfillment business. I immediately recognized that they were part of the ecommerce revolution. I recommended that they in addition to providing warehouse and pick and pack space sell an ecommerce platform to their clients.
He passed on the idea, however a buddy of mine called and asked if I had any internet projects looking for money. I said, I had a great idea. If he could keep me alive I would write a business plan. He had committed to raising a specific amount of money but unfortunately it ended up being 1/10th of the amount that he had committed to. We had run out of money and I made one last pitch to a group that I sourced and they committed to investing $2,000,000 into the company as well as raising the next round of financing.
The money didn't come in quite as fast as we had originally planned but they were true to their word they did raise the money and we were in business. I went out and negotiated strategic relationships with a major warehousing and logistics player, as well as sourcing our ecommerce platform and credit card processing system, however with all the money we had raised we never actually populated our office with furniture so we were never ever to able to bring everyone together to work on the project effectively.
By September 2001 we hadn't raised any additional money and money had all but dried up for dot coms.
It was time for me to go back to what I knew; web development and design. For the next few months I did sites up for local companies around the Birch Bay Washington area. One person I started to work with was a REALTOR, Hugh Brawford, and he suggested I get my real estate license. After a lot of negotiations I finally agreed to get licensed and bring my skills to bear on the real estate space.
Hugh and I were partners for two years at which point I went out on my own. I haven't looked back since.
(more About Me to come)...