You know him from Money Talk on WTMJ, but how did Annex Wealth Management’s Dave Spano get his start? WTMJ’s Libby Collins sat down with him to discuss his early life, starting his business, and the ways he works to enrich the city of Milwaukee. Listen in the player above.
A partial transcript is provided below, courtesy of eCourt Reporters.
DAVE SPANO: We had Frankie Valli at the Amphitheater, right? I mean, I absolutely loved it, and this is a great story. So, we had, I don’t know, 10,000 people at the Amphitheater and Frankie Valli was performing. My mother, now 94 years old, said, “Take your mother to go meet him.” I said, “Mom, please, I got 10,000 people here, I’m trying to put on a show.” And she grabbed me around the arm, and she goes, “I’m serious, take me back there.” So, I walked to the back and I knocked on the door, and Frankie — and I had promoted the show, right, so I knew him, and I said, “Frankie, great show.” He says, “Thanks, Davey.” I go, “Will you do me a favor?” He said, “Sure.” I said, “Will you come and meet my mother?” And he jumps up and he walks out. And my mother is 5’2″ on a good day, right. And so, Frankie Valli comes out, right, without his high heels on, and they’re the same height. And so, they’re having this conversation, it was classic. I thought I was Kareem talking next to these two.
LIBBY COLLINS: Love it.
Aside from Frankie Valli, who are some of the other celebrities that you’ve had an opportunity to meet when you’ve been involved with things like Summerfest and Festa?
DAVE SPANO: You know, there’s so many great people that we’ve met, not only celebrities, but, you know, there’s people who have made a difference, people that you don’t know, the people who move the needle with cancer research.
You know, we were involved with sponsoring the Vince Lombardi Cancer Foundation, and that’s always been an amazing experience. Mason Crosby is the chairman, I had a chance to play golf with him a lot, and we’ve been out. We went to Potawatomi gambling one night and we did some things. And so, Mason — I’m a huge fan of Mason, of course, all-time leading scorer of the Packers.
And then we also had the Pro-Am for the AmFam, which is Steve Stricker’s event, and I had a chance to play golf with Mr. Stricker, you know, one of the greatest golfers of all time.
LIBBY COLLINS: How’d you do in that game?
DAVE SPANO: Oh, my God.
We also fished together. This is a good story — probably if he hears this, he’s going to hate me. But we also had a chance to go fishing prior to that, and then we went golfing. And after we were done golfing, I didn’t do that particularly well, and he sent me a picture, and he signed it and it said, “To Dave from Steve Stricker,” and underneath he goes, “We should probably just fish from now on.”
