Building a career beyond the code does not necessarily mean leaving technology behind. Sometimes it means learning how to take technical knowledge and apply it differently. That might involve sales, leadership, consulting, or eventually building a company of your own.
In this episode of Develpreneur, we talk with Glenn Poulos, an entrepreneur who started his career as an electronic technician before moving into technical sales. That transition eventually led him to start, grow, and sell multiple technology distribution companies. More recently, Glenn took a different approach: instead of starting another company from scratch, he bought an existing business.
His experience provides an interesting lesson for developers and technical professionals considering entrepreneurship. The biggest opportunity may not always be building something new. Sometimes it is finding something that already works and figuring out how to make it better.
About Glenn Poulos
Glenn Poulos has spent more than four decades working in technical sales, entrepreneurship, and business leadership. After beginning his career in electronics, he entered technical sales in 1985 and founded his first technology distribution company in 1991. He later co-founded Gap Wireless, which grew into a major Canadian distributor serving the mobile broadband and wireless industries before being acquired in 2022.
Today, Glenn is President of ProgUSA, a U.S.-based company serving power utilities and service organizations with electrical test and measurement equipment, technical support, service, and calibration. He is also the author of Never Sit in the Lobby, which shares practical lessons from his career in sales and business.
Connect with Glenn on LinkedIn or learn more about his work through his website.
From Technical Skills to Sales and Entrepreneurship
Glenn began his career working with electronics, including repairing equipment used at Canadian weather stations. He soon discovered that the role was not what he wanted long-term, and his boss suggested that he consider sales.
That advice changed the direction of his career.
Glenn moved into technical sales in 1985, selling test and measurement equipment used by engineers. Because he understood the technology, he could speak the customer’s language while learning the business side of the industry.
He eventually realized something important: sales could dramatically expand his earning potential without requiring him to abandon his technical background. A few years later, he saw another opportunity. Instead of simply selling products for someone else’s company, he could build the company employing the salespeople.
In 1991, Glenn left his job and launched his first business focused on technology for the growing mobile wireless market. He would spend the next several decades building businesses around a similar model: find useful technology, understand the market, and connect those products with customers who need them.
For developers, there is an important lesson here. Your technical skills can be the foundation of your career without defining its boundaries.
Starting a Business Versus Buying One
After starting companies from scratch more than once, Glenn eventually decided he would take a different approach.
He bought an existing business.
The experience showed him how much infrastructure entrepreneurs have to recreate every time they start from zero. A new company needs banking relationships, insurance, employees, vendors, customers, processes, credit, and a reputation. An established company may already have many of those pieces.
That does not mean buying a company eliminates the work. Glenn changed much of the business he acquired, including its branding, systems, vendors, staffing, and processes. He also had to manage something founders do not encounter in quite the same way: an existing culture and employees dealing with significant change.
Still, he started with an engine that was already running.
Glenn believes there is an overlooked opportunity in smaller established businesses whose owners are ready to retire but do not have someone prepared to take over. In some cases, a new entrepreneur may be able to structure a transition in which the existing business helps finance the owner’s eventual exit.
Instead of spending years creating everything from scratch, the entrepreneur can focus on improving what already exists.
AI Changes What a Small Business Can Do
The other major change Glenn has experienced is AI.
When he acquired his current company in 2024, AI was already becoming useful. In only a few years, however, it has changed how he operates the business.
Glenn described using AI across financial reporting, accounts receivable, marketing, planning, sales training, and internal tools. Rather than hiring full-time employees for every specialized role, he can combine fractional experts with AI-supported processes.
The important distinction is that AI is not running the company.
People still make decisions, review information, manage relationships, and provide judgment. AI increases what those people can accomplish.
Glenn gave a simple example with trade shows. Coordinating a trade show means tracking booth reservations, travel, hotels, equipment, marketing materials, deadlines, and dozens of other details. Instead of buying another software package, Glenn had AI help him build a tool specifically around his company’s process.
He has created enough internal tools that he eventually needed another tool simply to keep track of them.
That is both funny and revealing.
AI removes many of the old barriers to creating software, automating processes, and increasing productivity. The new challenge is deciding which problems are worth solving and making sure we finish what we start.
The Opportunity Beyond the Technical Work
One thing that stood out in our conversation with Glenn is that none of these transitions required abandoning technology. His technical background remained useful throughout his career. What changed was how he applied it.
He learned sales. He learned how businesses operate. He learned how to build companies, manage people, work with vendors, and eventually evaluate an existing company as an acquisition.
Now he is adding AI to that toolkit.
That is exactly what building a career beyond the code can look like. The technical skills get you started, but the opportunities become much larger when you combine them with communication, business knowledge, sales, leadership, and the ability to recognize a problem worth solving.
You do not necessarily need to build the next startup from nothing. There may already be a good business, product, or process waiting for someone with the right technical experience to see what it could become.
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