In celebration of Father’s Day, SparkVision got to know some dynamic young professionals who work directly with their Dad and meet Ted and Brad.
As the saying goes, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” and these stories highlight the unique and special experience that’s created when children collaborate alongside their parents. We hope you’ll enjoy a look inside their day-to-day experience as family and colleagues!
Brad Davidson is a Principal with Spardata. Brad is a leading expert on managing “unique assets” in a trust environment. Brad also is an instructor at Cannon’s school at Notre Dame on Administering Unique & Hard-to-Value Assets.
Ted “Teddy” Davidson is a Principal with Spardata and serves as its Chief Marketing Officer. Trained as a Certified Valuation Analyst, Ted leads a team responsible for supporting financial advisors and their closely-held business owner clients. He also serves as a Principal with Par Collective, a real estate development firm focused on commercial and mixed-use properties in Baltimore City.
Describe your business. Brad: Spardata provides independent, unbiased valuations of unique assets. We help wealthy people manage non-traditional investments, such as real estate, family businesses, artwork, oil wells, antique cars, etc. These type of investments are very valuable, but require different skills to manage than traditional stocks and bonds. Unique Asset Partners is a consulting unit of Spardata.
How did you get it started? Brad: Spardata and Unique Asset Partners started completely by accident in 1990. At the time I was a stockbroker with a firm in Annapolis and elected to the City Council when I was 25 years old. Here is the very abbreviated version: One particular council meeting went on very long and I was struggling to stay awake. At that point the city attorney, who was a Trusts and Estates Attorney by day, leaned over and said, “Brad, you’re a stockbroker, right? Well, in my day job I’m a Trusts and Estates Attorney and I have this property. Everything has been distributed except these limited partnership interests…. If only I knew how much they were worth, then I could distribute them to the beneficiaries. Could you help me value these Limited Partnerships?”
I didn’t know how to, but I said, “sure!”. I did my best and provided him with two reports on the Limited Partnership Interests. I was so struck by the enthusiasm he showed upon receipt of these reports that it led me to wonder if there were more people like him with the same problem that I could help solve.
After a little library research on what type of publication Trusts and Estates Attorneys would be reading, I decided that I would take a ⅓ page ad for $300. It said, “I will value your Limited Partnership Interests. Call Brad”. To my astonishment, in the days after the ad, I received $6,000 in checks for the work. That became the foundation of Spardata and it grew from there. Our consulting unit, Unique Asset Partners, has morphed off of that.
I’m proud that it’s around 30 years later and has provided jobs and helped people manage non-traditional investments.
How did you get involved in your father’s business? Teddy: Frankly, working with my father, Brad, happened by default rather than by choice. Growing up, I never really understood my dad’s business and had no interest in learning more. I studied communications and journalism in college, only to take an interest in business my last semester at Boston College. That was 2009, so due to my poor planning and a terrible economy, I didn’t have a job lined up. So I graduated on a Friday and my dad said, “OK, so you’ll start on Monday.”
I began working with the mindset that I would use the opportunity as a springboard to get a job I was actually interested in. But the funny thing was that the longer I worked at Spardata (the business valuation firm he started in 1990), the more engaged I became in the work. For someone who wanted to learn about business, it was a terrific way to interact with a wide range of businesses and understand what made them successful.
My time with Spardata has also connected me with two other mentors who have now become my business partners (along with my father). We are a great team with strengths that make us far more effective as a whole than we are as individuals. I’m incredibly fortunate in how my path has unfolded before me. I could never have predicted it, but I’m delighted by how much I learn each and every day.
What did you see in your child as a kid that serves them well now as an adult? Brad: Interesting question because obviously I love him. He was a funny kid. When he graduated from college in 2009 the economy wasn’t doing very well. It was the absolute bottom of the recession. He had arranged to go work for M&T bank who had a commercial loan officer training program. I always encouraged him to learn finance because it’s a wonderful life skill and you would get to know a lot of privately owned businesses. All of a sudden banks were not hiring, they were firing. Suddenly the position he thought he was going to take didn’t exist anymore. I don’t think he wanted to do that at all, but it was a paying job and a few years later he foudn that he enjoyed it. Then he started buying real estate in Baltimore and he’s good at it and builds cash flow. He is far advanced in terms of his balance sheet.
He seized the opportunity. He always wore socks. Fastidious. Extremely reasonable, always funny. He is very amusing.
What qualities do you see in your dad that you now see in yourself? Teddy: First and foremost, my father is a family man. He treats my mother, sister, and me as the most important things in the world. That kind of love is tremendously powerful. It gives me the strength to do what I feel I cannot, and profoundly shaped who I am as a person. My family is the most important thing in my life.
My father has a remarkable ability to sense and seize opportunity. Whether as a business venture or on a cross-country road trip, he’s always searching for something a little off the beaten path. As a pretty conservative person, it usually makes me uncomfortable. But when I look back on my fondest memories, so many are from times where he pushed me or my family to do something I thought was crazy at the time. Pushing yourself just beyond that point of comfort makes all the difference.
What’s the best part of working with your child/Dad?
Brad: Watching him grow and flourish. That’s what every parents dream is for their kid. Years ago my wife and I went to the Evergreen House for a poetry reading called Learning the Bicycle. The great pleasure.
Teddy: I’ve really enjoyed getting to know my father as a professional and a peer, rather than just as my dad. He’s quite innovative in his work and for most of his career has traveled around the country presenting to impressive industry groups. But he never takes himself too seriously. He’s the funniest guy I know, and he incorporates that humor in everything he does – for better or worse.
He holds a sense of urgency and decisiveness that I often lack, so he pushes me to be better and to find a new way forward. But when I fail – which is often – he is the first to offer me praise and encouragement. Not just to pander to me, but because he knows how much I care and how I hate to let others down.
What do you want your legacy to be?
Brad: I would like for Teddy not to have to support his mother and me.
Teddy: I am proud of my family’s entrepreneurial heritage. I think the world of business is the ultimate game – you build something from scratch with blood, sweat, and tears, and just hope that customers like what you’ve created. But the act of building something – whether that’s an actual structure or a business concept – is very gratifying. So, I hope to continue to build worthwhile things throughout the rest of my life.
But my father also taught me that doing something just for yourself is selfish and short-sighted. You must engage and support the community around you, and he has done that in his adopted home of Annapolis. Whether as the youngest alderman ever elected to the City Council, or serving on countless nonprofit boards dedicated to historic preservation, education, and more, he is a fixture in his community and that is a huge part of his legacy.
While I grew up in Annapolis and still love it, Baltimore drew me into its community in much the same way. It is so much easier to tackle big problems as a community than as an individual, and I love Baltimore’s resilience and pride. I guess at some point I’ll have to figure out if I want to return to Annapolis and add to my father’s legacy down there. But that’s a very tall order. He’s a big deal, you know.