So yesterday I was driving a bunch of teenagers to the mall, and in the car it dawned on me. I asked all of these kids, 'If you could ask a billionaire anything, what would you ask?' It was so cute watching them think and ask all these different questions. Today I get to interview Glenn Sanford, who is a billionaire. And some of those questions, FYI, came from 16- to 17-year-old teenage boys in the car, and some are mine. I didn't want to have boring questions, like the usual eXp conversation with him. I really want to have questions like, 'Have you ever had your heart broken? How did you get over it? Do you have goals and dreams that you haven't achieved yet?' Those kinds of things. So I literally have like 30 questions on my cell phone, and when he comes on, I'm going to just fire, fire, fire, fire and get some really cool, quick answers from him. This way we get to know the real Glenn Sanford, the founder of eXp Realty, but also a human who happens to be a billionaire. So let's figure out what it takes to be a billionaire in 2024. Come meet Glenn Sanford. Welcome to GoGoPreneur, where your host interviews badass rockstar entrepreneurs of the world, figuring out who they are, how they got to where they are, and the lessons they learned along the way, so you can learn those lessons and turn it into money. Let's go get them.
So yesterday I was sitting in the car. My son, my youngest, turned 15, so I had a full car of 15-, 16-, 17-year-old kids, and I was leaving voice notes to myself — I do it all the time. I text myself, I forget things. So I was leaving voice notes to myself of the questions that I want to ask you today, and then I was like, 'Hold on a minute, wouldn't it be cute if I asked these 16-year-olds if they could ask a billionaire questions, what would they ask?' So everyone, Glenn Sanford, let's get to know him. Question number one: how would you describe yourself?
I just answered this question for somebody else the other day. I'm an INTJ, which is an introverted engineer — that would be kind of my Myers-Briggs, I think. It's actually an accurate one. I'm a bit of a systems guy, I'm an introvert, but I've learned extroverted sales skills, which have generally in the past been more uncomfortable places for me to live in order to propel the things I'm doing on a more engineering-type basis.
I always say I'm a paid extrovert.
There you go, because I turn it on for money, but if I had to choose between a party or a documentary home by myself, documentary home by myself is going to win every time.
Okay, next question. At what age did you realize that you were smart?
Pretty young. I think smart in that I knew I was going to be an entrepreneur, and that I wasn't really going to work for somebody else. Not saying that's technically smart, but just knowing who you are is part of being smart. If you know who you are, you're going to look good because you're doing the things that you should be doing.
Do you think it was middle school, high school?
I started my first software company when I was 15 years old. I had played with some ideas prior to that, but at 15 — I'd only had a personal computer since I was 12. That was 1982, I think, when I did it at 15, so you can do the math. That's when I did my first company, and I did companies after that. By the way, knowing what you're good at — if you're an entrepreneur, and maybe you'll relate to this — entrepreneurs do not do really well as employees. So I got fired from most of the jobs I had.
I remember applying for a job at NSF International. I loved that job. They had all the levels in Corporate America. Since I had no college education or job experience, I had to apply for level one, a warehouse position, putting boxes on shelves. In the application they asked, 'If we are organizing the warehouse, are you the person on top of the box barking orders, or are you the one putting the box on the shelves?' I totally knew what job I was getting hired for, so I'm supposed to answer right now that I'm going to be putting the boxes on the shelf. But I can't lie. I'm like, 'I'm definitely going to be in the middle of the warehouse, pull up a box, I'm going to be on top of it, I'm going to be telling everyone what to do.' I still got the job, even though I probably should have lied and said I'm going to be putting the boxes on the shelf.
Next question. What was your personality like through high school or through school?
I was involved. There were certain things I enjoyed. I didn't make friends easily; part of it was I moved a lot when I was a kid — we moved seven times in about nine or ten years. As a result, I made some friends quickly, but they weren't as deep a relationship as if I lived somewhere my entire life. But I was into all the nerdy stuff: chess club, computers. I was into athletics — long-distance running, which I really enjoyed, which again is a very introverted sport. You're on a long run, you're in your own mind. So a lot of introverted activities. But I had friends — the nerdy friends or the people I'd run long distance with.
Love it. When did you realize that you were going to be a billionaire, or did you always know?
I never put a number on it. The way I thought about it, around 2002 — actually before that — I had a number in my mind that represented financial freedom for me and my family. I did the math, and the number I had in my mind at the time was $30 million. I figured that was more than enough for me personally, but also enough to help and do different things and have the financial freedom piece dialed in. So that was kind of my number.
So you're saying you're a little bit of an overachiever?
Maybe. The flip side is, if you get to where your number is, then you start to work because you want to, not because you have to.
So let me ask you this way: how and when did you realize, 'Oh, my $30 million goal was a cute little number, I think I'm going to be a billionaire'? Did it ever cross your mind?
2016 I think was the year. At that point, eXp had been a public company for about two years — we went public in October 2013. So all of 2014, 2015, and early 2016, eXp stock went over $5 a share. I had 20 million shares pre-split, and that was $100 million of net worth. I was like, 'Oh my freaking God, this is not a normal amount of wealth. This is crazy.' I was emotional about it because it was a big number — it's not a number that's normal. For about two weeks I was emotional because it was overwhelming. I don't want to say it felt like hitting the lottery — it definitely didn't feel like that — but it was overwhelming to think I had achieved something that... I'd achieved from starting from basically scratch to going to that level.
This is one of my questions, but I want to ask it because I'm kind of being faced with it recently. I've started to kind of feel what people mean by 'it's lonely at the top.' By 'the top' — my top is your bottom. So have you ever gone through that? Who do you call when you need to discuss a situation you've never faced before? Whose opinion do you value? Who do you call? Because I can at least call another multi-billionaire and be like, 'What would you do in this situation?' But who does a billionaire call? And also, I feel like I can't complain to my best friend who is just trying to figure out how to make their car payments about, 'What do I do with this tax liability?' How do you maneuver that at your level?
I think it's just a rite of passage. You kind of go through it, and then you actually find a tribe that you can connect with. I think having a good hobby outside of business is helpful. My outlet for years was judo — I did judo for 27 years. I would go to practice three to five days a week. This was a group of people that I would train with, and we didn't talk business stuff. So that was one outlet. The other outlet was I was also part of Vistage, a CEO peer group organization. Vistage ended up being valuable for probably two or three years that I was involved. But I was in such high growth mode that I was passing even them up, so it's hard to actually have a conversation with them. And I kept coming over the top: 'You should do this, you should do that, you guys are not thinking about this.' I was very opinionated. Eventually you just find folks that you truly connect with. But keep in mind, even when you get around some of those folks, the reason they got there is because they've been working the angles.
What do you mean by 'working the angles'?
Working the angles — becoming successful is not an easy feat. You have to come up with marketing plans, unique value propositions, and enlist other people into your mission. You have to do a bunch of things to get where you're going. A lot of these other people are still in that mode, and you are their person they're going to try to leverage to get to their next level. So sometimes you have to take even their advice with a grain of salt because they're still working their angles, and you are part of their path to the next level, as opposed to just providing you real advice without agenda.
You mentioned at the CEO level you were a part of — did you say Vistage? And then is there a Vistage for billionaires?
I think there are. I get the most connectivity through Abundance 360 and Peter Diamandis. What we who are involved with him call the 'Peter-verse.' The Peter-verse includes X Prize — I'm on the Vision Circle for X Prize, so I give a fairly large philanthropic contribution to X Prize every year. That puts me in the room with a ton of these really high-net-worth individuals: folks like Chip Wilson (founder of Lululemon), the guy who started Psychedelic Kitty, Anousheh Ansari (the first female private citizen astronaut). They're just very big thinkers. In some respects, that's the group of people least likely to work an angle, because they've made it to such a level that there's almost no reason to try to work an angle on the people they're talking to.
They're not looking to make the next commission. What is one goal you have not achieved yet?
My goals now are around connecting and helping the next generation of entrepreneurs succeed. So one goal is how many can I be of value to? I haven't put a number to it, but similar to eXp — think about over a thousand people who have become millionaires because of the eXp model. And then I spent last weekend mentoring the CEO of Clearwater, Jason Sherman, and some of his team on how to think differently. So helping entrepreneurs become better entrepreneurs — if I can help 100 entrepreneurs truly scale their businesses over the next 20 years, that would be a pretty cool thing.
I love it! As the Zig Ziglar quote goes: 'You can have absolutely anything in life if you help enough other people get what they want.' What are three personality traits that you believe made you who you are?
One: being willing to take risks — a huge one. Two: deep thinker. Three: positivity.
I'm going to ask you about the deep thinker part. Where and how do you do your deep thinking?
A lot of it is the standard ways: out on a run, thinking about a subject, going fairly deep, getting into an alpha brainwave state on a long run. I do a lot of meditative work where I go deep — almost like in 'Think and Grow Rich' where you build your rooms and have masterminds. I also did some esoteric courses a couple years back, probably in the late '90s, and then another in 2013. I learned how to access the intuitive self and gather information in a non-logical way. That was an interesting approach to deep thinking.
I am so excited in the background because I always say I talk to what I call the 'collective consciousness.' I remember the very first time this happened to me when I realized it wasn't my idea — it was like a download, a gift. I could tell it wasn't forming in my brain because I know how I think. I also think one of the reasons for my success is that I listen to the guidance and look at the signs, and I take them for what they are and go for it. I believe God wouldn't have given me the idea if it wasn't for me. So what do you call those esoteric courses?
Going way back: I was raised Christian, so I asked a lot of questions through the Christian lens. But I'm also a — I don't want to say jaded Christian, but a lot of what I was taught was manipulative rather than spiritual. That played a role. But I always looked at things like the New Testament — Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, the life of Christ. I thought, 'He's preaching a Buddhist message to a very legalistic society.' In the early '90s there was a show called 'Sightings' that had UFOs and all kinds of stuff. One theme was near-death experiences where people came back with abilities. Through my Christian lens I asked, 'If God wanted us to have this ability, He would have given us a way to access it.' And a 40-day water fast is probably a controlled near-death experience. I'm not going to do that, so are there other analogs? Near-death experiences are similar to out-of-body experiences. So I went down that rabbit hole.
I love this. We could talk until the cows come home because I feel like I'm getting to the end of the internet on this subject. I'll just sit back and listen.
So I spent nine months focusing on reading books, trying techniques, listening to audios. Then I had what I considered three legitimate out-of-body experiences. It's way too much freaking work, but I had that experience. I didn't get anything beyond that, but there's an organization called the Monroe Institute that developed Hemi-Sync technology to balance brainwave states. I also read about the remote viewing program at Stanford Research Institute. In the '90s I bought a video course by Major Ed Dames on remote viewing. I did the whole thing. What I realized is that if we know how to filter out the noise, we can get fairly accurate information from meditative states or asking the right questions. There's a Bible verse: 'Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened.' That's basically a biblical version of remote viewing. I was able to get accurate information — I drew some things and got it right. I used those techniques to some extent to intuit eXp. The way I came up with some of the original pieces of the model came from that same process: asking, writing down the first things that come to mind without questioning, organizing, and then coming up with what it is.
So basically the idea is to ask questions and write down the very first thing that comes to mind without questioning it. Do you always listen, or do you ever question it?
I just learned to never question it, no matter how crazy the idea. If that's what I think I can do, then I sure can do it. But I've tried enough stuff out that I've learned a lot of it is noise — I haven't figured out how to filter it all out. But in there are the seeds of some good ideas. When you're in flow, the ideas match who you are. If you haven't clearly identified your true alignment, your subconscious feeds you information from multiple viewpoints. About two-thirds of the stuff that comes up is okay but not great.
I've figured out what works best for me: I go to the beach to talk to God — I call it God or Universe, but they're kind of the same collective consciousness. I have a very busy brain, like a computer with 100 tabs open, pinging between ideas all day. To turn it off, I listen to music. I put my earbuds in, my busy brain listens to the music, and then I have my quiet brain to think with. I walk the beach, the world doesn't exist. I always have a notebook, or I text myself in the moment. I think we could talk about this subject for a whole year's worth of episodes. I really want to go back to our fire questions to make sure we get to the end. What is a quirk — a personality quirk — about you that if someone really knows you, they'd say, 'Oh Glenn, why do you do that?'
