About Terrence Branley…
Tuesday 27 January, 2009

My name is Terrence Branley and I want to welcome you to my Blog website.  I am married, with two young boys, living in beautiful Huntington Beach, CA.  I am a volunteer reserve deputy with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department, which is my way of giving back to the community where I have lived most of my life.  I have a diverse background with experience in solution selling, sales management and marketing.  I look forward to sharing my thoughts with you and hope that you find my entries to be a benefit to you and your own endeavors.   Feel free to contact me with any questions, comments, suggestions partnership or business opportunities.

Instead of a typical bio, here are 25 things that will help you get to know me:

1)  I attended Catholic school for 12 years (grammar through high school) and made it through, unscathed.  School administrators might have a differing opinion.

2)  I had average grades throughout grammar school, high school and college.

3)  My sophomore year in high school (Mater Dei) was the first year I played tackle football and only because a friend talked me into playing.  I was the only kid on the team who didn’t get to play a single down all season.

4)  After two years in junior college (repairing my grades), I got accepted to UCLA for grades and UCSB for football.  I was a defensive MVP and team captain for the Gaucho’s from 1991-1992.

5)  Immediately before meeting my now wife, I dated three girls (one after the other), all named Amy.  It got to be a little weird and I was relieved to finally date a girl named Beth (my wife).

6)  I had to beg the admissions department at Pepperdine to let me into their MBA program.  I went to the Dean’s office to convince her that I would not only make it through with flying colors (I did), but would be a valued alumnus.  It was one of the most impassioned sales pitches I have ever delivered.

7)  My undergraduate degree was in Sociology.  It was supposed to be an easy major, according to my football coaches.    My GPA would prove otherwise.

8 -  I never worked in a restaurant, prior to opening an Irish pub (www.auldirisher.com) in Orange, CA, yet I raised $1 million in investment funds.

9)  Most of my family (brother, cousins, aunts/uncles) are police officers (LAPD).  I was going to follow in my family’s footsteps and go LAPD as soon as I graduated college (1993), but my family advised me to hold off for a few years.  A certain incident in 1991 had created a lot of problems inside the department, as well as the entire City of Los Angeles and I thought it would be a good idea to wait until things calmed down.

10)  In 1996, I was on the same flight with Rodney King from L.A. to Philadelphia.  He was in First class.  I sat in coach.  I should have thanked him for indirectly steering me into the business world.

11)  At age 37, I became a reserve deputy with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.  It is definitely something that runs in the family blood and a calling that I could not ignore.  Besides, it provides me a great opportunity to give back to the community where I have lived most of my life.

12)  I bought my first property at age 27, with a good friend of mine.  It was a 4 unit property on the beach and we lived in the front unit and rented out the other units.  I learned the joys of home ownership and the headaches of being a landlord at the same time.

13)  My first job out of college was for a Fortune 1000,  specialty alloy manufacturer, as an entry level inside sales position. Four years later, I was running the same office.  Very green and responsible for managing the same people I started with four years prior, it was a real learning experience.

14) I took an opportunity with a dotcom company (during the “gold rush” era), that had very little revenue, a burn rate of $1 million a month and a constantly changing business strategy.  I started in February, left in November (I learned to follow my gut after this experience) and they went under shortly afterward.  The lessons we learned during those years are extremely important:  you must have revenue in order to have profit!

15)  During my college years, I was a camp counselor every summer.  My greatest memories were from the summer at Camp Frazier when I was  responsible for a group of four-year olds , nicknamed the Guppies.

16)  One year at camp, one of the kids in my group had a dad who was a famous college and pro football player.   On the first day of camp, he and his wife came up and introduced themselves.  They were very nice and seemed like a normal family from Orange County.  It was unfortunate that years later, I saw him riding in the back seat of a Ford Bronco after his wife had been murdered.

17)  I was first introduced to rap music by one of my college football teammates, on a bus ride to one of our first games.   I still have a number of CDs in my varied collection from those cross country trips.

18)  If I won the lottery, I would be a high school football coach and in the off-season, a SCUBA instructor in the Caribbean.

19)  Beer is my drink of choice (I love Guinness and micro-brews), followed by Irish whiskey, then wine.  Drinking all three in the same sitting will cause a tremendous headache (I’m Irish, so I know from experience).

20)  My father grew up in Ireland and literally walked to school every day, five miles, in the dark with snow falling.  He wasn’t barefoot, but that didn’t matter…imagine how many times I heard that story while growing up.

21)  As a kid, I dreaded the time of year when we were required to sell candy for school fund-raising.  It was the “selling” part I hated, not the candy.  Who would have guessed I would go on to a career in sales and marketing.

22)  I think the internet will remain one of the greatest inventions of my lifetime (Thank you Al Gore!).  I hope that some other invention will eclipse it, but when you think of how the web has revolutionized our lives, it is hard to imagine something that will have a greater impact.

23)  I enjoy watching movies at home, but not at the theater.  I miss the days of the drive-in theaters and some of my best memories as a kid are of mom and dad packing up the station wagon and taking us to the drive-in to see future classics like Star Wars, Rocky, Grease and Jaws.

24)  In my late 20’s, I went on an annual trip, snowboarding in Europe with ten of my friends.  We skied the French, Italian and Swiss Alps; some of the most beautiful landscape and scenery I have ever seen.   I paid for the trips by purchasing one or two Rolex watches, bringing them back to the US and selling them for a nice profit.

25)  My proudest accomplishment is being a father to my two sons.  Parenthood is not a requirement in life and many people choose not to have children.  However, when my first son was born, I truly understood why I was put on this Earth.  It has been the most enjoyable, challenging, fulfilling and difficult time of my life….and worth every minute.