Speaker 1:

Coming up today on David versus Goliath. I promise you this interview is awesome, not what you’re expecting. There’s a difference between a boss and a leader.

Speaker 2:

The world of finance is not for the faint of art. I can tell you that much.

Speaker 3:

Welcome to today’s episode of David Versus Goliath, a podcast dedicated to helping small businesses leverage technology to not only help them compete against their large competitors, but win. Your host is currently the CEO of Anthem Business Software, a three time Inc. 500 recipient and a serial entrepreneur with a passion to help small businesses everywhere find, serve and keep more customers profitably. Please join me in welcoming your host, Adam Degrade.

Speaker 1:

Hey everyone, it’s Adam Degrade from the David versus Goliath podcast. Welcome, hopefully you’re having a fantastic day. It’s beautiful here in sunny, central Florida. Anyway, today’s episode is brought to you by Automate My Social, where you can automate your social media if you’re a business and never have to think about it again. It creates, distributes and automates all of your posting, including your strategy. Check it out today@automatemysocial.com. Visit us online at DavidvsGoliathpodcast.com. There you can subscribe to receive updates on the podcast and also apply to be on the podcast. Today we have Drew Spaventa from The Spaventa Group an investment… I promise you this interview is awesome, not what you’re expecting. Get ready for it. Here it comes. Drew, welcome to the David versus Goliath podcast.

Speaker 2:

Thank you, sir. Nice to meet you man.

Speaker 1:

Nice to meet you too. And very rarely, as matter of fact, never have I ever started an episode with quite an epic photo like that. That is amazing. You got the Ghostbusters hat on. Clearly you’re a character much like I am by the way. I’m a character as well too.

Speaker 2:

[inaudible 00:01:57]. Definitely tell by the hair.

Speaker 1:

It’s exactly right. So obviously we can’t continue until the watchers and listeners know the picture. Describe the pitcher behind you for the listeners. The watchers can clearly see it. Tell us a little bit about this photo.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, man, I mean, I’m very self-deprecating. I make fun of myself. I looked a little bit about your background. You’re very well aware of the financial sphere and in the world of finance, there’s really this stigma of wearing a suit and tie and being an asshole, for lack of a better word, and all that good stuff. So I’ve got this for myself as a joke just to kind of make fun of myself. And every time somebody comes in here and I meet somebody or I do a podcast now moving forward, I got that just as my backdrop and my chief technology officer [inaudible 00:02:43] said, “Listen, any podcast that we do moving forward, you got to have this bad boy as a backdrop.” And again, I’m not full of myself. I just think it’s really funny. Like you said, I’m wearing a Ghostbuster’s hat. I always… I’m a big fan of pop culture. You come into my office, it’s like a child from the nineties.

I got Bob Ross in the corner over here, Batman poster over there. I got a poster that always remind myself how to run my organization, the difference between being a boss and a leader. And then I wanted to get something with a picture of myself like this. If anybody is a movie buff, you ever see Dodge B all with Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn?

Speaker 1:

Oh, it’s going to be, first of all, I knew exactly where he it was from immediately. And I have to… You’ve inspired me. I got to get something similar now. I mean I have to. I mean, if you came to my game room, by the way too, by the way, true, you’d see I’ve got signed Arrested Development. So all my favorite comedy shows of all time. I’ve got Seinfeld signatures. I’ve got Arrested Development, I’ve got Office. Anything that type of humor I love. And a long time ago, by the way, Drew, I used to wear suits as well too. But I earned my way out of that. And for the love of God and country, I don’t throw them on. As a matter of fact, I don’t own a suit. I won’t own a suit. You want to know when I need to wear a suit, what I do? I rent it and I always fit into it because it doesn’t matter if I’m fat or if I’ve lost weight, I go get measured and boom, I look great for that night no matter what shape I’m in.

And I absolutely love that. So I was reading some big words on your promo, by the way, 65 securities license transformative Investment. And I love all these things because at the end of the day, I think it’s really great to have someone like you in the investment world that’s trying to help people out and help grow their businesses. Tell us a little bit about Spaventa, the actual group that invests capital, what you do, how you do it, why you do it, and how you got there with that crazy bald head in the background.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, well I still got the bald head and I see all the guitars. I

Speaker 1:

Knew you did. I knew you did.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, I mean, I’m in my late thirties. I’ve been shaving my head for 20 years. But as I’m assuming you’re a music buff with the guitars and the drum set behind you, I actually started off in… My first business was running a DJ company, [inaudible 00:05:05] I worked for a bunch of DJs. [inaudible 00:05:08] Love music. I’m a big music and a movie aficionado. And from there I wanted something to scale. And ever since I was a kid, I wanted to own businesses. yes, it is a part of money because I was always obsessed with wealth. I grew up without a father around single parent, what I like to call Americanized poverty because I was on welfare because even though the poorest person in America has it better off than other countries, which is true poverty. So to be candid with you, I was obsessed with wealth and how to make money and what it generates and everything like that.

I always wanted to get in finance, but I didn’t have really a route to go without any guidance or anything. To make the long story short, I was working odd jobs as a teenager and I was looking for something that I could create from the ground up. I wasn’t surrounded by high net worth people. I wasn’t surrounded by very educated people. So I decided to mesh my passion with the business by starting a DJ company. All cash business, Long Island, New York, plenty of opportunity, plenty of money going around, plenty of parties. So I was able to make a nice amount. At that point in my early twenties, started trading stock, a cookie cutter story. Eventually met somebody that had a nice house, nice car that was a stockbroker, took me under his wing, wanted to screw me over royally years and years later. But that was really my entrance into the world of finance and-

Speaker 1:

That’s good.

Speaker 2:

Ultimately, I learned a lot. So I didn’t get a financial degree or anything like that. I took the less traveled route by really learning on the job under somebody else. And it took me a good year and a half of really not making anything, which thank God again for my DJ business because that was my bread and butter. That’s what I was providing for myself. But then it got to a point where, and listen, I have previous stockbrokers that work for me. I have other financial professionals that work for me and there is a stigma. People watch Wolf of Wall Street and what was the one from the eighties? Oliver Stone, Gordon Gecko Wall Street. Simply Wall Street.

And they have this picture of the finance individual as these grimy scumbags that just want to rake you over the coal so they can take your money, buy the Ferrari and then sail off to the sunset. Right? And there are good guys, and good gals out there in the industry. They are out there. And luckily enough, they work for my organization.

Speaker 1:

That’s great.

Speaker 2:

The bottom line is from being exposed to the more nefarious things because of certain individuals I was around, especially my previous senior broker at the time, I started thinking, well there’s got to be a different way to make money. And as a stockbroker, how do you make money by commissions? You invest six, seven, eight figures with me and the only time I’m going to make money is if I charge you a percentage to buy a percentage to sell. I don’t like that.

I like buy and hold. That’s my predominant strategy, which is what we do here at the Spaventa group. So I was looking for a different model and something different to do. So ultimately what I decided to do is launch a venture capital company and Quantum Global Partners, which I did back in 2018 with an ex business partner of mine. Unfortunately, he passed away recently. And from there it was a lot of lessons, man. We launched it together. And I’m not trying to talk ill of somebody who passed away, but again, and in the effort of being transparent, I was doing 95% of the work. He wasn’t doing a lot of it. So what I realized was, you know what? Now’s the time for me to launch my own company branded with my last name. And that’s how the Spaventa Group got created, where we were getting involved in VC deals, predominantly secondary market investing of late stage VC companies.

And then from there we just exploded. Now we have an asset management arm where we do wealth planning and financial planning, which can be used interchangeably, retirement planning, estate planning. I have a very handsome gem of a human being. Shout out to Sal Cruso. We very nicely call them the godfather of Norfolk, Connecticut. So that’s the moniker that I gave him. So he’s running my registered investment advisor. I’m concentrating more on the fund side of things. And as far as the future is concerned because using transformative, right, that’s a bold statement and you got to back that up, right? So are we doing anything entirely different from our peer group and our competitors right now? Not exactly, right. We do have a great culture here as you could clearly see by this handsome gem behind me. And if you go on our website and a lot of things that we’re involved in and what we do have on the future, and we are on the cusp of a lot of cutting edge investments.

That being said, the transformative comes into play because we are really building a name for ourselves in the world of alternative investments. Right now, venture capital is our bread and butter. We are in the process of starting to get allocate capital into real estate. Eventually, we’re going to get into digital assets. Right now, the regulatory environment’s not there. And again, we’re even learning more about the technology as well because a lot of people that I speak through that say they know crypto or this or blockchain, they can’t dumb it down for a five year old to understand. And even though I might understand something, if you can’t articulate it to the point that a five-year-old can to the greater masses, guess what? I don’t think you know what you’re talking about. You’re just throwing a lot of big words out there.

So where the Spaventa Group stands right now is we have a robust fund division where we’re heavy in venture capital, we’re getting involved in other alternatives as well within the next few months. We do have that registered investment advisor as a subsidiary of the organization did the more traditional financial planning. That got created because our current clients wanted us, hey listen, can you manage our finances? My financial advisor isn’t really satisfying my needs. So we created an RA.

Now we have that aspect and even more exciting, we are looking to bridge financial technology with the human component. And we’re actually in the process of developing our own proprietary software. So I’m getting [inaudible 00:11:12] and developing a team that we’re looking to bring to market probably by the end of the summer.

Speaker 1:

All right, ready? [inaudible 00:11:20]. Take a breath. Take a breath. You are so pumped up and so fired up about your business. I love it. Probably the greatest explanation ever here on DVG of what somebody actually does. And you can tell that there’s passion in what he’s saying. So Drew, we got to take a break from one of our first corporate sponsors. And when we come back, I got three very specific questions I want to ask you about your life experience and working in your business. So stay tuned, you’re with Drew, your handsome host Adam Degrade will be right back.

Speaker 3:

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Speaker 1:

And we’re back with Adam Degrade and the bald wonderman, Drew Spaventa. Am I saying that correctly by the way, Spaventa?

Speaker 2:

Oh, I thought you were saying… Were you saying bald wonderman correctly? I was going to say, yeah, you’re saying bald wonderman correctly. Drew Spaventa. Yes. You’re spot on.

Speaker 1:

That’s awesome. Well, there’s a few things that I’ve… As you were speaking that caught my mind and I didn’t want to interrupt your train of thought, but I wanted to bring these to the viewers and listeners’ mind. You said something early on when you were talking about the picture behind you that you have a saying on the wall to your right hand side. Could you repeat that saying one more time?

Speaker 2:

[inaudible 00:14:42] displays the difference between a boss and a leader.

Speaker 1:

There’s a difference between a boss and a leader. Where did you first hear that? Was that something that you discovered yourself or did you hear somebody actually say that over time? Or where did you get that principle from?

Speaker 2:

It’s just a diagram and on the top of it displays ancient Roman warriors and on the top of it shows the Warriors pushing I guess a cart that their king is standing on and he’s just pointing at them, telling them to push. And that says boss. And then on the bottom it’s different. He’s not on the cart. He’s actually ahead of all his men pushing and pulling them them, and it says leader. So I have that in there to always make myself and to humble yourself up and make sure that you’re running your organization the correct way.

Speaker 1:

And what’s really important about that too is that, like you said, a boss has to dictate. People follow leaders. And so there’s a lot less management involved when you have a strong leader and people are following because they believe. It always reminds me of the scene in Braveheart, one of my favorite movies, when William Wallace played by Mel Gibson at the end screamed freedom and he was the very first one charging and he didn’t have to tell the people to charge. As soon as he screamed, everyone went with him. And that’s the difference between a boss and a leader. Now, number two, the other question I have is you’re the second person that’s started their professional career as a DJ. Now, did you have a name for your DJ company? This is very important.

Speaker 2:

DJ Spavy. So I shortened Spaventa and just said Spavy, S-P-A-V-Y.

Speaker 1:

S-P-A-V-Y.

Speaker 2:

That’s it. It wasn’t sexy. I didn’t care about that. Just give me a gig to go to so I could play music. And let me tell you. That’s a learning experience doing it for seven, eight years itself.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no doubt about it. And I think it’s important because I started as a paper boy, I worked as a dishwasher. I’ve worked… I’ve been a bus boy, I’ve been you, I mean, you name it, I’ve done, I’ve done it in my life. I stocked milk shelves. All of these things taught me things. What was probably the most important lesson you learned when you had DJ Spavy out there? What was probably the biggest business lesson that you learned doing that, that you’ve taken into your current business now?

Speaker 2:

People, people. And that’s the constant, just understanding how human beings react and just understanding people in general man. It’s kind of really hard to explain, but every interaction, circumstances change. Even bringing it back to the boss leader thing. You can be a leader to a certain extent, but once [inaudible 00:17:31] hits the walls, we really see what you’re made of and how do you react and how you lead your organization. And honestly man, I don’t think there’s a lot of leaders out. I think there’s a lot of bosses out there and being a part with a company that’s been around for barely three years now, trust me when I tell you when a lot of people say, how did you go from being Americanized poverty single mother and not having all these connections to building? Obviously we’re not a multi-billion dollar company, but we’re slowly tracking [inaudible 00:18:01] towards there.

You know what I mean? And my answer is, I have fucking no idea. Excuse my language. I have no idea how I built this. You know what? I just go and I always figure things out. And as things happen they pivot. You could put a business plan together and there’s an ancient… An old saying that you make a plan and God laughs. So to use that, you could put a business plan together. I guarantee you that 99.9% of the time, it’s not going to go exactly the way you want because things happen. There’s externalities that happen that aren’t going to affect what you do. So ultimately I learned how to quickly have to pivot and quickly have to understand when things go wrong. And the world of investing, it’s not just like we’re selling a product. It’s not like we’re just selling a piece of software, we’re providing a service.

And there’s a lot of other externalities that affect what we do. If I put my clients into a fund that has exposure to several different companies or just one company and we make a VC investment, all of a sudden the market does what it does. We’re upside down on our positions. I can’t affect that. Right? I can’t change that. I have to pivot. I have to pivot. So even, and again, the market is a beautiful thing. The so-called Mr. Market, because ultimately it really humbles you and you got to be humble. You can’t be arrogant enough think thinking that, yeah, I’m bulletproof, whatever I pick’s going to turn to gold. The bottom line is you make a decision. And as the market transpires and as people react, you have to be confident in yourself to strategize, all right, we’re up in this, what are we going to do? [inaudible 00:19:29] to book a profit or we going to hold, all right, we’re down in this position or we going to sell out or we going to continue to hold. And it’s really a mind… I’ll put it to you this way.

There’s a reason why I have a bald head because I’d rather not go gray. And at the end of the day, it keeps you on the toes. The world of finance is not for the faint of art, I could tell you that much.

Speaker 1:

No, it’s definitely not. I think you’re running a business in general. Anything related to finances, making a payroll is not for the faint of heart. That’s why you’re going to take the 300 lion or whatever that is, a wolf or tiger, lion, whatever it is. And you got to grab it by the teeth and just say, “I’m going to fight this thing to the tooth and nail.” And clearly you [inaudible 00:20:08].

Speaker 2:

In real time.

Speaker 1:

That’s amazing. Question for you. [inaudible 00:20:12].

Speaker 2:

That’s my real body. That’s a real three-headed [inaudible 00:20:18]. And that’s a real tattoo of my logo right there. So that is a hundred percent highly accurate. I don’t know if anybody believes it, but I’m going to roll with it.

Speaker 1:

You should totally roll with it. How many people are working in your organization right now?

Speaker 2:

Just under 40.

Speaker 1:

That’s great, man. You’ve built an amazing business and you’ve been doing it for a little under three years, this particular venture?

Speaker 2:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

That’s exciting. Well, we’re going to take another break from another amazing sponsor because we have to pay the bills here at David versus Goliath. And where else do you learn about the amazing realistic 100% accurate, totally true picture behind him other than the David versus Goliath podcast with Drew and Adam. We’ll be right back.

Speaker 4:

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Speaker 1:

We’re back with the self-deprecating Drew and Adam of the David versus Goliath podcast show. This is going fantastic. I’m loving it. Now Drew, one of the stories that I relate the whole podcast to is a story of David and Goliath. Clearly David was the underdog, and clearly with your background coming from a single family and as you had mentioned, Americanized poverty, you’ve obviously been able to achieve a lot in your life and get to a place where most people could wish that they had a bald pitcher of themself behind there riding on the three headed monster as well too. When you think about the courage it took David, right? Saul even offered him his armor and he said, “I don’t need that. All I need is five smooth stones.” And I liken the five smooth stones to you have to have plans, the right people, the right tools, the right process.

And then the final stone, which is the one that I believe that David used to slay Goliath was a stone called courage. It takes a lot of courage to start your own business, takes courage to start your own DJ company and call yourself DJ Spavy and get out there and make it happen. What is the intangible for you, do you think? And the fact that you’re a uniquely created being that God has obviously gifted in many ways. What is the one thing for you that gives you the strength and the courage to say, “I’m going to go for this. I’ve been burned in the past, I’ve been hurt in the past. I’ve seen difficulty in the past, but I’ve also seen success. I’m going for this right now and we’re going to be the best at what we do.” And to your point, making you that leader versus the boss so people want to follow. What is that in you? Tell the people the story.

Speaker 2:

It’s one thing that I tell my entire workforce constantly. One day we’re going to be dead and none of this is going to matter.

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Yeah. And listen, that’s the one thought that always kind of helps me because even going on a podcast, I always get a little jittery. It’s like, oh, okay, hopefully the personalities align or is this going to go down south or whatever? Yeah, you never know. You never know. I could start talking about your hair and all of a sudden you don’t like that.

Speaker 1:

[inaudible 00:24:38]. Before you continue, I had a guy once say, “What are you 16? Cut your hair.” I said, “Hey, I’m losing my hair every day, buddy. I’m going out with a bang.” That’s kind of the way I feel about it.

Speaker 2:

I agree. I agree. But that’s the one thing that I always think about. One day I’m going to be dead and none of this matter. I’m approaching 40 and statistically speaking, half my life’s over. That’s extremely scary to me. My biggest fear was being in my seventies and having a life full of regrets and mindset and your attitude about life has been the major differentiator. So I was saying maybe 10, 15 minutes ago about growing up on a single parent. Unfortunately, my mother and I don’t really speak anymore. And again, I learned from her because she always victimized herself. So ultimately, with me being surrounded by that as a teenager, I played victim. Then it got to the point where I figured, you know what? I’m not going to let anybody walk over me anymore as I was approaching my late teens.

But I switched out one negative mindset with another negative mindset. So I went of thinking about myself as a victim, poor me, I don’t have the nuclear family and I don’t grow up with money, yada yada BS, cry, cry, cry. And I flipped that to being just the most angry person in the world where you look at me the wrong way or say good morning at me. And I’m like, oh, I’m going to kill you. You know what I mean? Which is not a negative attitude itself. So really, I guess the aha, the breaking point for me was as I approached my late twenties, which was barely 10 years ago, so it hasn’t even really been that long of a time when metaphorically speaking, I looked in the mirror and I said, “Listen man, you weren’t dealt a good hand, but there’s a lot of people that have a lot worse. And ultimately you got to control … Change your mindset in your attitude.”

Maybe your attitude sucks. How about that one? And I tell you, man, it was still rough [inaudible 00:26:29], but when you change your mindset and your attitude, things change. It’s wild. I’m a spiritual guy. I don’t want to get into the religion talk unless you want to, but I’m not like a hardcore religious dude. I’m spiritual.

Speaker 1:

Sure.

Speaker 2:

And I’ll explain that because I do think what you want to call it, God or whatever it is, I do think there is a higher power that connects the entire universe. If you come into our offices in Long Island or our office in Jersey City or the office in Florida that we’ll be launching in a few months, it’s covered with invest. Anything [inaudible 00:27:06] is relating to investing, technology, pop culture, and positive affirmations and mindset. Over here I have what I call my three true fathers. Earl Nightingale, Napoleon Hill, and Andrew Carnegie, because that’s what I started soaking myself in.

I know it’s cliche and everybody says it, but not having guidance, I wanted to soak in what was written from previous people that could really change my attitude. And I tell you, man again, and that’s why I believe that it’s your mindset and your attitude that changes. When you’re running a business, you can’t have that backup plan. There’s no backup plan. There’s no failing, right? I tell everybody, I say, “Listen, if I took you and I dropped you in the middle of the ocean,” well not in the middle. If I dropped you in the middle of the ocean, you’re screwed either way. But put you in the ocean where at least you could see land and you know for a fact that at least you could swim to land. You got two options. You could swim to land and survive, or you could sink and die. There’s no backup plan, right?

Speaker 1:

Yeah.

Speaker 2:

So to me, that’s the approach to life and mind you we’re just talking about business. Not everybody has to start a business. Not everybody wants to start a business. Honestly, as a businessman, yourself, as a businessman myself, I don’t want everybody to start a business. I don’t want there to be more competition than need be. But the bottom line is, whatever you’re doing in your life, you got to make sure that at least you have enough money to lead a comfortable lifestyle and have enough to save and invest so you could build that nest egg, eventually retire if that’s what you want to do. And always focus on something that could get you up in the morning. There’s a reason why [inaudible 00:28:44]. There’s a reason why a lot of retired people pass away after retiring because you don’t have a reason to get up in the morning. So that’s the best thing [inaudible 00:28:52].

Speaker 1:

I think the advice you’re giving people is fantastic. It’s amazing. Congratulations to you. It’s been so great having you on the podcast. How can people find you?

Speaker 2:

TSG as in The Spaventa Group at invest.com. So that’s TSGinvest.com. We’re restructuring the website again. The one thing that we are going to be changing, if you go to the bio, you see a few members of our management team. I am wearing a blazer. I’m taking that off. We’re doing something now.

Speaker 1:

You got to take it off. You got to do something new. Drew, have you had fun being on the David versus Glide podcast?

Speaker 2:

I did. I spoke to a few people that their personality was really… They had a personality of a doorknob, I could say, but you’re very, very lively, very passionate. I could feel the energy. I had fun.

Speaker 1:

I love it, man. There was a podcast I listened to a couple of weeks ago. I was getting ready for interview and this guy was interviewing this business owner, and he’s like, “So tell us what you do.” The guy tells him what he does with his passion, and this is exactly what the host does. “Wow.” And I wanted to go, “Say something!” It was like, dear God, please say something. Well, Drew, it’s been awesome having you. Thank you so much for tuning in. This is Adam Degrade with Drew as well too. What a blast. We’ll see you next week. Have an awesome day.