Glen Thornborough

Chris:

Welcome to the Let’s Get Personal Podcast. On this show, we bring on guests to discuss topics that will challenge us to grow personally and professionally. I’m the host Chris Abella, and today we have a truly inspiring story to share with you. Joining us is Glenn Thornburg, the Chief Revenue Officer of the Boston Bruins. Glenn’s journey from growing up on a farm in Canada to becoming a key executive in one of the most storied sports franchises in the world is nothing short of remarkable. Well, happy to be joined by Glenn Rnbo in studio this morning. Thanks for joining us, Glenn.

Glenn:

It’s great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Chris:

And what I’m hoping to accomplish today is to just give our listeners a little bit of insight into your background and kind of the story that of somebody like yourself living in a very small town of five, 600 people to rise to the level of accomplishment that you have achieved in your career working with the Boston Bruins. And I’m just hoping to get a little peek behind the curtain and maybe a little insight that we can share with our listeners about how your journey took place.

Glenn:

Perfect. Perfect.

Chris:

So I just want to start back, so I know we go back a little bit. I know some of your story and which is why I had you on because I love your story. Bring me back to your childhood, so where you grew up and share some of that with us.

Glenn:

I grew up in a very small farm town just outside of Winnipeg. When I say just outside, probably two and a half hour drive outside of Winnipeg. The town was at that time, roughly 600 people we lived in, grew up on a farm for three or six miles due north of the town. So even the town was small, but of course we lived on a farm that it was a working farm. So we had cattle, we had grain farm, worked the land. My dad worked at himself until the kids got old enough to help and then we could contribute. But from the smallest age, and we grew up in Canada and you’re getting the theme of my journey will be a hockey kind of theme obviously. And growing up in the very great prairie provinces of Canada, you could literally skate on a ditch. So whenever we had an opportunity to do so, we were always on the ice. My brothers and I, my sister, any chance you can get, we would try and place up the skates and get out there.

Chris:

So I always associate living on a farm with a very difficult life, a lot of work all the time up all day, all night. What is that contributed, if at all, to your work ethic, to how you view your current job? I

Glenn:

Think a small business like that is mother nature driven too. So when you have an opportunity to actually work the land, whether it be through harvest or seeding, which is the two really heavy times or haying season, you would literally have to work it until from dust all dawn, because that timeframe can be very short. So what we learned probably from an earlier age is that is a priority. So everything had to drop whatever else there was an opportunity to do. It kind of became secondary to the seeding and the harvest. And our parents, my parents were fabulous as we grew up. We really didn’t understand the opportunities maybe some of these kids have today, but we wanted for nothing on a very modest income being a small farmer, but we didn’t recognize that because we believe we had everything we needed. But get back to your question, the work ethic, there’s no choice from that.

There’s not an opportunity to be, I’m going to stick around in the house for vanilla a little bit longer. Video games, I don’t give my phone. Which phones didn’t even exist I don’t think at that time. But that was priority and we all understood it and that’s how we behaved. And you get that intrinsic value I think growing up that the priorities, whether it be work related, whether it be family related friends, you start setting priorities hopefully in the right way. And I think that’s one of the greatest takeaways from mom and dad growing on the

Chris:

Farm. Well, it’s funny and life seems to have come full circle, especially during the pandemic. You see everybody doing these raised gardens at their home and trying to, because of these short supplies at the grocery store, they’re doing them at their home now. But that’s the way you grew up. I remember your mother, you telling me stories about your mother being very involved in gardening and having vegetables and fruit at your disposal on the property. Tell me about that.

Glenn:

Yeah, everything. We didn’t know any different. There wasn’t an opportunity for us to go to the grocery store because the grocery store was six miles away and that grocery store happened to, it wasn’t a Wegmans. So everything that we had was really that sustenance. So we had probably almost an acre of a garden that was really built for survival. So you dug your potatoes, you had the peas and the corn and the beets and everything else, and then you harvest ’em and then you freeze ’em or you blanch ’em, you put ’em in the cellar to sustain the winter, whether it be you’re hunting to do the same thing where we had a vast farm where there’s a lot of deer and other things out there. So literally that is, which is now become full circle based on I think all understanding that’s how you probably should live fresh vegetables and different ways than it is today running to Panera Bread. Yeah.

Chris:

Well, I mean, I know just from an outside view of how involved you are in health and nutrition, and that’s obviously shaped a big portion of your life today. But just so it turns to the next point in your life, you’re a young man, teenager, and you’re obviously very close with your family, you’re all living and working in this small community. How do you take that next step? And hockey parents may be the only person that understands this, but as a young man, you now make the decision to leave the home in further your pursuits in the hockey career.

Glenn:

Yeah, so again, you’re up in Canada, a small farm, so the hockey is just part of the existence of what people do. I was fortunate enough to kind of mature in that world and mom and dad were like all of us, and I can both relate to this, the amount of time, effort, money spent on the sport for kids that are kind of doing it at the time for enjoyment. But then you find out later there might be an opportunity to host enjoyment to just do it related to opportunity for some kind of a career. So I was fortunate enough to be selected to go play juniors in Canada at that time, was in grade 11, went to high school in never town, and you stay with these billet families that just adopt you because obviously you’re not old enough to live on your own and you’re going to high school. So you have that. You create a great relationship most of the time. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful relationship with Billett family and lived there for a couple of years and we had some great success in the junior world at that time, and I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship and had even further north, which I didn’t think was possible to play hockey, which got the anchors Alaska.

Chris:

Well, that brings me, my next question is obviously, so you make that first move to your billet family and then you leave the country for another opportunity to play college hockey. And was that a hard decision to leave Canada? Was that just specifically hockey related?

Glenn:

It was hockey related for sure, but at that time I could have been the only, I think one of the very few, if not the only kid that actually went to college out of my grade and my grade was like 18 people graduated when I was back in my farm town and went to, but fortunate enough to get a scholarship to go to Anchorage. Didn’t even really know what Alaska represented or it just seemed like it might as well have been in Siberia at the time. But a backstory on that is my mother for some reason, any place, and we didn’t travel a lot growing up, but the place you wanted to go to most was Alaska and it wasn’t part of the decision process, it had in my back of my mind, but it was also the only one that gave you full scholarship so that it a lot easier for the decision making process. And I wanted to play in the WCHA because at that time went well, believed it was the best league and he played against Minnesota and Wisconsin and North Dakota. And I could get, even though I wasn’t close to home, I played a lot of teams that were in the lower 48 that mom and dad can get to and drive.

Chris:

That’s true. So mom and dad are, just to give people context, so you’re in Glen Burro in Canada and that’s above around North Dakota, so you’re still traveling 3000 miles just to go to Alaska. So mom and dad probably have a better chance seeing you if you’re playing in the Dakotas or somewhere there than they do traveling to Alaska.

Glenn:

They would make almost every game when we were traveling to the lower 48, it was out in Wisconsin, Minnesota, North Dakota, Minnesota, Duluth, Michigan Tech, they would come and support it, which they always have. They always did. My entire life, A quick little story of my, again, a relatively pretty naive farm kit going to Anchorage, Alaska and the kids from Ontario, we caravan up there. The Ontario kids would pick up, the Manitoba kids would pick up Saskatchewan kids. Most of us are Canadian. And we’d head up to Anchorage and of course I did it the first time in a little S 10 truck and we put a mattress in the back of a cap on it and we would sleep. We’d drive straight like 50 some hours straight, we’d stop only for gas and if it was late, we’d just sleep in front of the gas station until they woke us up and off we go.

But the day one, and you’re nervous too, a different place, and Alaska mine, it’s a different country obviously, and Alaska even further, the first day I arrived, everyone in became appreciated more now with Covid, but everyone was wearing masks and there was no one in the streets and it was this haze throughout the city, couldn’t see the mountains. I’m like, where am I going? And it found out at that time there wasn’t a lot of communication like we have today. The Mount spurred disrupted, so all the ash had been falling from the sky for two days and everyone was, you weren’t allowed to go outside. Engines don’t work very well and there’s volcanic ash running through ’em. It was interesting. But again, after that disaster, I found a home in Gron. It was a wonderful experience for four years.

Chris:

Well, that’s amazing. I know you had a great career there. Where do you go? So was that your first foray into the United States?

Glenn:

Yep. Yeah, so there’s a visa. Visa. You’re Canadian, other student coming from Canada. From there I tried when you’re playing division one, I was a captain the last year you thought maybe there was a chance to play for money and I went to San Jose’s American Hockey League camp in Lexington, Kentucky. I ended up spending literally a month there at Rina going through the process. Didn’t make it that sent down to the ECHL. So you’re now kind of in the deep minors and you’re kind of finding your way through what may or may not be a hockey career for the next several years of your life. I landed in a CHL in a team called the Memphis River Kings, played there for a couple years, coached hurt My back, wasn’t really kind of going anywhere anyways, but I hurt my back, which gave me an opportunity to kind of fast track into the business setting and landed a job.

And of all places, Jackson, Mississippi, which is, or two and a half hours south of Memphis, Tennessee, they were just starting A-E-C-H-L team at the time, brand new. The ECL was East Coast Hockey League, so it’s in reference of this setting. It was like a double a baseball, went there, tried to get a job there as a coach. They weren’t hiring coaches and they hired me as a very unqualified director of corporate partnerships. Ended up taking the job and you’re trying to sell hockey in the deepest part of the south, which was an interesting process, but we found a little niche to it and we ended up being successful From there, I ended up going to the league in which the Jackson band its played for called the UCHL. It was headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey. And I was probably in Jackson like nine, 10 months before I made the move and then was in Princeton for 10 years as every vice president of sales and marketing.

Chris:

So one of the great stories that I think a lot of our younger viewers would appreciate and actually probably learn from is the story you told me about how you actually, so when transitioning from playing in the sport to working in the sport, how do you land that first job? First question, they want to do it, but how do you get in? Everybody’s got to know somebody. How do you break in that first?

Glenn:

Well, there was two things about it. I didn’t know anyone, but I was very fortunate enough to make a connection at the league level in the UCHL with the commissioner who’s turned out to be one of my best friends today. But at that time I literally, Cole called him and said what my name was. I’m looking to coach in professional sports, professional hockey, can you give me a call back? They had like 28 teams at the time. I thought maybe he’d be a great place to start. He calls me the next day and puts me in contact with the guy at the Jackson Venice, the gm, who then it took me, I would say perseverance is one of the areas that you need to continue to because it is a tough arena to break into, but you got part your humility and perseverance to get you through that first opportunity, that first open door because once you get through that first open door, then it’s up to you how hard you’re going to work. And I was fortunate enough to communicate to the guy in Jackson, begged him to have lunch with me. He denied meeting about four or five times. Eventually he took the meeting and had a great meeting and I was fortunate that he hired me. That’s really started my opportunity in sports, in the professional side of sports business, not playing.

Chris:

Was it tough making that transition because at some point you’re witnessing the death of your lifelong pursuit, but you’re still staying within the industry that you

Glenn:

Love. I was ready to not play anymore. I kind of lost that burn to compete when you’re 24, 25 and you’re not going to probably play for any significant level of money. So you understand that there’s an end coming. So I just kind of made that choice at that time and I was a hundred percent okay with it and it turned out to be a little bit of a kickstart for me in my career, getting an opportunity to get directly into the business. I love the sport, a business. It is an intriguing sport in general and it’s also a communal sport. So I think that was another thing that I brought from the farm. That sense of community, whether it be your superiors, whether it be with the actual marketplace that you’re living in, whether it be with colleagues or peers, that foundation I think helped me in that world of revenue for Jackson and it kind of forayed me into an opportunity at the league level.

Chris:

So if we were to throw a map up here and follow you very, so how old are you at this time? 25,

Glenn:

Maybe 27, 28 going to Princeton.

Chris:

So you’re a young man growing up on a farm very quickly, make your way to Alaska, then to Kentucky, then to Mississippi, and then to Memphis, and then eventually you find your way up to New Jersey.

Glenn:

Yeah.

Chris:

So you’ve covered a good chunk of the map of the United States very quickly as a young man.

Glenn:

Yeah. Don’t think it just happens though. You don’t even have that in the back of your mind as how it relates to can I see more land or can I experience more opportunity in geography? You just go to the job is the opportunities you have and the restrictions. At that time, I had no restrictions. So my wife at the time, Bonnie and I, she was from Alaska. She went down and got her master’s at Memphis State when we were there at the same time I was moving to Princeton. So she stayed in Memphis and joined me in Princeton later, and we were kind of like nomads and it worked really well. We had unbelievable connections at every stop. So we’re immensely blessed with at every location that we’ve been at for the few years that we were there to make connections that still live today.

Chris:

And that’s amazing outlook or perspective to have as you’re a young man entering the business world is following those opportunities wherever it may bring you, we know where it has brought you today, but very early on you moved to wherever the best opportunity was for you.

Glenn:

But I think I didn’t have the benefit of growing up in a city or a location that had a great population. The opportunities were ripe. I grew up in a town that there wasn’t going to be a lot of opportunity. The farming was probably the best opportunity and it probably wasn’t for me, even though it created an unbelievable childhood, unbelievable opportunity for mom and dad, but it just probably wasn’t for me as I had interest elsewhere. But it would’ve been a tough to if you didn’t, in order to grow professionally at what I want to potentially do, that opportunity didn’t exist in my town, so I had to to move regardless.

Chris:

So you hit on something earlier. So you’re at Mississippi trying to sell hockey, and so how do you stand out? How do you make that work and how do you parlay that into the next job? How do you find success in a place like that?

Glenn:

It was weird, I think, not that it’s in that pursuit of happiness kind of model, but I literally just worked as hard as I could every day. So I would make phone calls, cold calls to businesses in Jackson, Mississippi for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday to set up meetings on Thursday and Friday. And we had a forecast of revenue that we thought we were going to meet in year one. We crushed it in probably four months, and at that time it became, it was enjoyable. And then you meet a lot of people in that journey of that short time and they become the sponsors of something that’s new in that space. Like hockey coming to Mississippi, it didn’t survive, but at that time when it was new, it was fun, it was energetic, it was intriguing for people that didn’t know about hockey and the community supported it extremely well.

And because of that, I had an opportunity because the success to move up quickly to the league level. And the irony of it is the guy that I called to ask to put me in touch with someone is the guy who hired me literally a year later, which we’ll talk maybe in a few minutes about what advice I may or may not give someone trying to get into the sports business. And one is trying those connections. Fill your hand up with five people that you think are influential and could be influential even if you don’t know ’em today, find way to connect with them of professions that you would like to be in or people that you admire and try and create a relationship. That is how I think individuals and talents now continue to mature.

Chris:

So is it from that comment, is it fair to say there’s a select few people that helped you attain some of the goals or mentor you in certain ways that helped you move up in your career?

Glenn:

But it was a hundred percent, but it was more stepping stone, like one individual helped me get or help direct me to UCHL. And from there, another individual helped me get into the Reebok space. Both powerful individuals that were big influencers and I still keep contact with today, that they allowed me the opportunity to take advantage of something that at that time was kind of fearful, but it turned out to be the right decision. And again, because we weren’t specifically locked down to one location, it makes it a little bit more flexible and making those moves.

Chris:

So you make the move to New Jersey, so you’re with ECHL at that point and you make a decision to go back and extend your education at that point. Yeah. Why was that important at that time

Glenn:

That when I enrolled mentor was Rick Adams. I asked him it was a commercial leave at the time in order to sit in your space, what are the things I need to do? And he’s honest as he is today, and he just said, I think you need to go back to school, get your MBA, get your jd, whatever you think is gravitate towards. So I applied to three schools applied to Stern. I applied to Temple, I tried to St. Joe’s got accepted into all three, but St. Joe’s needed someone right away and it was a great opportunity. It seemed like it was a little bit of fate. So I decided to lead in one day how the timeline was and drove to Philly and went through orientation and went back to school. So it’s a two year program. It was a grueling two year program, but again, I have made friends there that I keep today through our process. And my daughter was born literally the day I graduated.

Chris:

So you do that all while you’re at the ECHL?

Glenn:

Yeah. So it’s Fridays and Saturdays every Friday and Saturday for two years

Chris:

You’re commuting from Jersey to

Glenn:

Pennsylvania. So I’d go to work, I would work all day, then I’d go to the library and study in Princeton. As you know, it’s a community of education, so the opportunities are there and then I go home and just rinse and repeat that for literally two years.

Chris:

So your crazy schedule of grinding and cold calling only extended as you now take a full-time job and add a full-time education to that?

Glenn:

Yeah, again, it goes back to I’m the farm work ethic and that’s really how I try to continue to live my life, create connections, create relationships, nurture relationships, work hard. It’s not a secret serum, it’s are you relatively capable of doing the job and are you going to outwork people? And if you can do that and live within a context of point, your moral compass north, those three things can really potentially set you aside and work ethic just being one of ’em. And I use that baseline with the farm and the raising in the upbringing, that space, and I try and use that with the communal component and relationship building component to everyday life, whether it be work or social.

Chris:

So how long were you with the ECHL?

Glenn:

I was here for eight years, eight years in the ECHL and then we decided to move to Montreal to take a job at Reebok. Okay.

Chris:

And your role there was,

Glenn:

I first got there, I was the vice president of sports marketing, which meant I oversaw all the relationships with the leagues and the athletes. So it was a hockey group, so it had two brands, CCM and Reebok. And I was responsible for most hockey sport, so non-retail at the time only sports marketing. So we’d sign the athletes, whether it be the highest level with Sydney or Sydney Crosby or Ovechkin relationships, relationship with the WYHF, the National Hockey League. I given me an opportunity to actually really expand my business intelligence a little bit as it relates to global business. So I would hit an office in Moscow and dealt a lot in Stockholm and Prague and Helsinki anywhere there was hockey.

Chris:

So ECHL as you had mentioned, you’re in the Meyer Lee, so you make a jump to a major corporation at that point. Is that because of relationships you were able to develop while you were at the ECHL?

Glenn:

Yep, that is exactly what happened when I was at the ECHL, we’ve made some pretty remarkable moves. One of ’em being an exclusive equipment supplier with Reebok, with Reebok CCM. So all 32 teams had to wear head to toe equipment skates, but everywhere sticks.

Chris:

That wasn’t being done at that time?

Glenn:

No, at that time, companies just sold product and they’re on the ice and we flipped it on its head when the first, I think we were the first league to ever did it, and mostly because the relationship we had with Reebok and the guy at the time, Matt O’Toole was the CEO and Len Rose was the head of his first lieutenant, and our relationship with them was really, really strong, but it was a wonderful deal for the league and I think it’s a wonderful deal for the equipment company, CCC on robot. And so it worked out. There’s some bumps along the way, but it worked out to be a fantastic relationship, but it wasn’t without its hurdles and I think those hurdles, you understand how strong a relationship is and we kind became stronger and stronger as we kind of continued to grow the business. And when there was an opportunity with them, they called and asked if there would be interest in coming to Montreal and heading up their sports marketing group and back to Canada, back to Canada, back to Canada. I took you back.

Chris:

So in doing a little digging and due diligence on your background, I came across a really neat little tidbit on Yahoo Sports, which is back from December of 2012, and there’s a sports article in which you’re mentioned and it references your involvement with signing what at the time, at least to the lay person like myself, was a very unknown 15-year-old. Tell us a little bit about that.

Glenn:

When we first got exposure to him, it was our local pro rep who had seen him play in Toronto and he was like, can you just come out and take a look at him? He’s like, he literally is off the charts.

Chris:

So you got to see him play at 15.

Glenn:

Yeah, yeah. So he was playing for, I think it was Toronto, Marley’s at the time, underage. He steps on the ice and he’s literally at the time is smaller and not as filled out obviously as he is today, but just an absolute talent. His name’s Carmic David and we at that time realized that he was special and I worked out a relationship with Bob Yore, who was his agent at the time, my first introduction of Bob or who was just a wonderful human and we worked out a deal with his dad, I think at that time be an eight year contract as an amateur and a fourth pro

Chris:

As a 15-year-old

Glenn:

As I think it was 15. Yeah,

Chris:

Remarkable.

Glenn:

Yeah.

Chris:

So how long are you with Reebok at that time?

Glenn:

So I was at Reebok, so at that time I started sports marketing. Then they advanced me into all marketing, so then I can end and close, which would include product marketing in the consumer goods space like skates and skates, going to retail, the retail business and as well as sports marketing. So I guess my title, I think it was maybe CMO at the time, but again, that was a wonderful experience. You got to learn a lot from a global business like Reebok. We were down in Canton and we were in Herso, Germany because at the time Reebok was owned by Adidas, which is why we had opportunities to do other things that the small equipment companies weren’t allowed to do or couldn’t afford to do. So it was a great, great learning experience just from a sheer business perspective. So

Chris:

Your next stop on the journey is here to the home of the Boston Bruins and on the radar. How do you make that?

Glenn:

That was from an individual, a friend of mine who became used to run marketing for the National Hockey League, who kind of spun off and created his own, it’s called Proje Sports, which was really in the employment positioning role. He had called and asked would I take an interview for him because he’s getting into the space and he asked me could I be interested in this role. I said, I didn’t know if we want to go back to the US or not. But anyways, we came in, we had a conversation with ownership. Charlie Jacobs at the time, president of the TD Guard and Amy Latimer and Cam Mealley. Those were my first interviews and then they brought it back to have a few more a week and a half later, and they offered me a job and the time Bonnie and I had a lot of decisions to make, but if that’s really what we wanted to do, we ended up taking the role and coming to Boston and then at that time was I think it was a senior VP of sales, which quickly transitioned into adding marketing and now I’m the chief revenue officer, which would include retail and the business strategy group, marketing for the Bruins, marketing for the garden sales, all sales, all revenue for the chief garden in Boston Roads.

Chris:

You’re now at the Garden with the Bruins for about 10 years.

Glenn:

Yeah.

Chris:

So you’ve grown into the role of Chief Revenue Officer and I know you’re just starting to get into it. So what if you had to give a job description, what does the chief revenue officer do?

Glenn:

Well, one thing that’s different by market, so we’re a little bit different because Delaware North owns the TT garden and then the family, Jeremy Jacobs, they own the Boston Bruins, so it’s a little different dynamic, but it works for Martha will be well. But so the chief revenue officer’s responsibility, at least mine goes outside of revenue. So like I said, marketing for both the T Garden and the Bruins. Our business strategy team, which is really the analytics arm, all the data warehouse data scientists that are in that space looking through reams of data to make sure we’re making the right business decisions on daily basis, score partnerships, all ticketing, ticketing, operations, and all sales.

Chris:

So just in the time you’ve been there, which is just over a decade, I know I’ve been a season ticket holder for a long time and the last 10 years to me in that building have been monumental changes. I mean to me, if you haven’t been to the garden, you’re missing out because I mean that whole experience, it was always amazing. That whole area is developed unbelievably, but just to think of the things that blow your mind, my kids are still blown away by the Amazon store. You walk in, you just pick up what you want and you walk out and you get a receipt. They’ve made the experience so seamless in the last five to 10 years. What have you seen over your timeframe there?

Glenn:

Well, you experienced this probably along with me. I got here and we just started the expansion and there the studies for it, and it was the benefit of working for a private business and a family business owned by the Jacobs. You have opportunities to do things that might not be allowed under a different ownership structure. Not to mean it needs to work out financially obviously, but the flexibility and the interest they have in making the TD Garden the best in class is what Charlie calls it, is real. They live by it, and so that gives opportunity to do things that a lot of markets aren’t allowed to do, whether it be reconstruction of all the concourses, the expansion of the building, what happened and what’s transpired with the build out from level nine all the way down to the parking, the elevators that can use this vertical transportation to move people around the digital ticketing situation. It is all done at the benefit of the consumer at the end of the day, and that’s what they believe. We want to be able to create an environment for people who can come experience our product, whether it be Celtics games, ruins games, events, concerts. They can do it. They can do it as efficient as possible with understanding there is care and safety and we deeply valued Entertainment

Chris:

Springs. I’ve been blown away by the way. They really hit every little niche. I mean, you can go into banners and see one of the largest TV screens there is around, or you can go into a shared the hub area where you have a bunch of different eateries and hos available to you. It’s just there’s so much available to so many different people that are looking for different things to enjoy there, which I’ve been blown away by what they’re offering.

Glenn:

The hub on Causeway has really transformed the West North, and so the benefit is you have the MBTA there from a transportation perspective, you have parking at the Guardian and you have all this now district entertainment around, but the glue is the teeter garden. That’s where the events are held. So you kind of have this opportunity to live and play in now space that also would host one of the best calendars as far as entertainment, probably two of the most iconic teams in sport. It’s special. And you’re seeing people now as coming out of Covid really start to attract in that space.

Chris:

Is there anything even left to do?

Glenn:

I’m sure there is. I’m sure there is. We can always advance at the duty garden. It’s been under Amy’s Lattimer’s leadership. We’ve been able to really transform that building and we host visitors coming in to look at what we’ve done and how we’ve done it and the financials around it on a weekly basis from other teams, not just in America, but Australia and Britain and other places that are coming in to take a look at how this house building operates. And that’s an absolute call out to the Jacobs family and Amy for literally living a vision that they created years ago.

Chris:

I appreciate everything. I do want to bring us full circle and kind of wrap it up by just again, hitting back to our younger viewers, understanding where you came from, where you are now at the height of your journey. What advice, if any, would you give to a younger version of yourself or someone stepping out of college and saying, I’d love to work in the business side of sports. What few things could you offer to them?

Glenn:

I think my path is unique to me. I think everyone has to create their own path. Just because it worked for me doesn’t mean it’s going to work for everyone. If you’re fortunate enough to get into that area, it is work ethic and find a way to stand out somehow. And that could be through multitude, different areas is, but humble, hardworking head down is, I know it sounds simple, but it is really what will set these kids aside. And we talked earlier about the networking. I think it’s really important to try and create a network of people, peers, and mentors that can help you go through it and being open to the flexibility of understanding that it might not be exactly what you want to do, but to get in might have to be the pathogen.

Chris:

And what you might have to worry about after your story is somebody cold calling you.

Glenn:

I get to talk to the interns. We have I interns coming in, obviously on a yearly basis. I try to meet with people whenever I can to try and help through their journey, whether it be through friends or contacts. I was fortunate enough that people gave me time, so I want to do the best I can to pay forward.

Chris:

Well, I thank you very much for joining us today. I do want to leave us with a little bit of a fun fact. I know that you did some coaching in the minor leagues, but it wasn’t in the minor leagues where you had your most fiercest opponent as a coach, and that was in your son’s hockey career.

Glenn:

So as you know, we’re all immensely engaged in hockey, but one of the times, the last couple of years, I had the opportunity to coach against Marty St. Louis, who coached his boy at the same age as my boy in the Fed League, and now

Chris:

He’s the coach in the Canadian

Glenn:

And it’s Coach Canadians. I keep trying to tell Cam that I’m qualified.

Chris:

He doesn’t believe. Thank you again, Glenn. I appreciate it and wish you best of luck in the future. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for joining us for another episode of the Let’s Get Personal Podcast. I hope this episode inspired you in some way to realize your full potential. Make sure to share this episode with someone you think needs to hear today’s message and make sure to join us next time.