David Hunt
_________________
A Master Craftsman
Highly profitable professional firm serving
attorneys and legal support staff. Excellent client list
and growth record. Substantial cash required. Call
Wendell Swan.
“I’ve found it!” Dave announced excitedly,
circling the notice in the Businesses for Sale section
of the Washington Post
Despite the apparent gravity of the
discovery, his wife, Amy, barely looked up from
her section of the paper. Her parents were
similarly unenthused, perhaps desensitized by
comparable announcements from their son-in-law
in the past.
Dave will admit that, yes,
he had been the man who cried
wolf before, but something in his
gut felt different when his eyes
fell
across
the
newsprint.
Leaping up from the chair, he
hurried into the other room to
dial
the
number
in
the
advertisement—perhaps
the
single most transformative phone
call of his life. Now the CEO of
Landon IP, Inc., the very same
legal support company he saw in
the paper that morning, Dave has built his
professional journey from the ground up and with
his own hands, drawing on diverse materials and
tools and synthesizing them into a formidable
masterwork that rivals those of even the greatest
craftsmen.
Yet he couldn’t have done so alone.
Though Amy may not have leapt to her feet that
day when her husband made his proclamation, her
skills, support, and enthusiasm soon became a
primary determinant in whether Dave’s visions
would persevere the transition into reality, and it
was evident early on that the two were as ideally
suited for one another in the business world as
they were in home life. “From the very beginning,
Amy has kept me grounded. I’m a bit of a risktaker,” he explains. “I had always wanted to start
a business, but I was working at Freddie Mac at
the time and knew it would be difficult with a
mortgage and a young family. But Amy had a
good job, and we both had our educations to fall
back on. I figured life was too short not to go for
it.”
Dave had actually taken that risk once
before in 1988 when he and two friends went into
business selling documents from the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission. It had gone
well until an electronic system named EDGAR
came along and transformed the industry. He had
seen a similar trend later on working for Freddie
Mac, when an automated
underwriting system threatened
the livelihoods of mortgage
underwriters. Some might call
Dave opportunistic, but the
scope of his skill far exceeds the
simple
ability
to
identify
potential opportunities. Rather,
he is more of a craftsman, and
his
craft
is
synthesizing
opportunities
by
bringing
together
like
ideas
and
information across a wide range
of experience. In this sense, he
had been training to take over Landon IP his whole
life.
Dave was born in Michigan but moved to
Island Park, New York, with his mother shortly
after his parents divorced when he was four years
old. They lived on Long Island until he was ten,
when they moved to New Jersey and then to
Virginia. His mother worked as a saleswoman
who sold door-to-door, and it is to her glowing
influence that he attributes the entrepreneurial
spirit driving him today. “She and my uncle are
ambassadors of business,” he describes.
His
grandparents were both German and couldn’t find
work during World War II because nobody in New
York wanted to hire Germans, and his grandfather
had died unexpectedly. Struggling to make ends
meet, his grandmother had to put his uncle in an
orphanage. The boy then struck out on his own at
David Hunt
age 13 working for a carnival, eventually starting
his own roofing company that evolved into a real
estate developer and then took on real estate
management. Within two decades, he had become
the largest non-union contractor in the state. “It’s
so much better to work for yourself,” he would tell
young Dave.
His mother, a devout Christian, always
underscored this sentiment. Having worked her
way up from a salesperson, to local manager, to
regional manager, to division manager of the MidAtlantic by the time Dave was in high school, she
was also a staunch advocate of hard work and
leadership. “My brother and I were conditioned
since we were kids, and it’s part of the fabric of
who we are,” he points out today.
Also deeply ingrained in his character was
a firm conviction in his own capabilities. “I
remember particularly well a time when I bought a
present for my uncle for his birthday,” Dave
recalls. “Someone told me I didn’t need to do that
because he had more money than I ever would. I
was young at the time, but it stuck with me. I was
thinking, ‘I’ll show you that you’re wrong.’ It was
motivational rather than discouraging, and even
today I feel that it’s nonsense when people try to
tell me that I can’t do something.”
This mindset served him especially well in
high school, when his guidance counselor told him
that he might not be college material based on an
assessment test he had taken. “I’m a quiet person
who thinks deeply but not necessarily quickly,” he
explains. Making a mockery of the counselor’s
suggestion, Dave got straight A’s in school and
earned a degree in government from William and
Mary, where he also attended graduate business
school. “I may not be smarter than anyone else,
but I push myself and work extremely hard,” he
says. “With this persistence emphasized by book
smarts and street smarts, there’s a lot I can do.”
Dave struggled at first to find a job after
graduating in 1987 but soon landed a gig as a
paralegal. It was also around this time that he first
met Amy. Then, after earning his MBA, he took a
job in Houston, Texas, as an internal management
consultant for American General Corporation, a
large financial services company. In this capacity,
he took a three-month training program taught by
senior executives that equipped him with the core
principles for how to lead and manage an
organization. Individuals coming out of that
training program were then placed in a subsidiary
and assigned to a senior officer to help make that
organization better, and Dave was placed with a
subsidiary called the Variable Annuity Life
Insurance Company (VALIC).
Dave’s
experience
there
proved
exceedingly frustrating because the senior officer
he was placed with was uncooperative and didn’t
believe in the breakthrough aims of the program.
This didn’t hold Dave back. He resigned after a
year and was immediately flooded with calls from
four other subsidiaries offering him positions. He
turned these down too, however, feeling that his
future lay elsewhere. It was this feeling that led
him to Freddie Mac, eventually paving the way for
his path to cross with Landon IP.
Landon IP was actually launched as an
information company in 1949, selling patent copies
and patent file histories. Patent file histories can
range from a hundred to a thousand pages in
length, and Landon IP would retype these
documents before the time of Xerox machines.
Even after the machines became available in 1971,
patent stenographers had become so good at the
process that they continued to retype documents.
When Dave and Amy came across the business in
1998, they were already well aware from prior
experience that it would soon be disintermediated
by the advent of the internet. Noting that patent
searching could be made profitable by
emphasizing the mental work over the clerical
work, they knew they would have to diversify the
business from a copy service to a research service.
The couple’s first obstacle, however, was
procuring the company. At the time, Dave was
instead planning to open a restaurant and had
secured several investors for the project. The
owners of Landon wanted $1.2 million for it, with
a $400 thousand down payment. The Hunts only
had $5 thousand socked away, but Dave was
convinced they could swing it after conducting a
cash flow analysis and with the help of investors.
He then launched an all-out campaign to win over
both the investors and the owners. “At some
point, the light bulb went off and the owners
decided they wanted to sell to me,” Dave
remembers. “One investor, however, was not as
cooperative, and Amy ultimately put her foot
down and resolved that the bargain would do
more harm than good. It was a very tense time,
but in the end, and through a combination of
resources and heart, we reached a deal with the
owners that worked for everyone.”
Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area
The deal closed on June 1, 1998, and the
company drew $1.4 million in revenue that year.
Amy joined the team in 2000, and aside from the
devastating effects of the Recession felt in 2009,
Landon IP has grown steadily since 1986. Today,
the company earns about $25 million in revenue
and employs a team of 160 people. Known as the
800-pound gorilla in professional patent searching,
it remains fiercely competitive and firmly
committed to making a difference in its industry
by creating real value and great return on
investment.
Now specializing in legal and
technical translations and advanced patent
training in addition to searching, Landon IP has
recently opened offices in England and Japan,
lending a worldwide presence to an already
world-class service.
In advising young entrepreneurs entering
the business world today, Dave stresses the
importance of pursuing a career path in line with
one’s true passions and interests—something that
he feels is often overlooked today. “Young people
will tell me that they want to go to law school, for
example, but they really don’t know why,” he
points out. “They think lawyers are prestigious
and make a lot of money, but they can’t tell you
what type of lawyer they’d want to be, or why.
We condition our kids to do well in school, to get
involved in a wide set of activities, to work hard,
and to get a good job, but we don’t do a good
enough job at teaching them to ask that
fundamental inner question of themselves: why?”
Asking this question is what has allowed
Dave not only to live life, but also to create it. By
fusing opportunity from the raw material of
circumstance and experience, he and Amy have
synthesized a business that their employees and
clients can count on. “I try to learn from every
situation and opportunity I’m faced with, whether
it’s reading a book, interacting with someone, or
observing the news,” Dave explains. “Regardless
of what I’m encountering, I’m always asking how
it can change our lives or benefit the company.”
Remaining constantly in tune with life in this way,
Dave not only lives it to the fullest, but also invests
himself to the fullest in all that he does.
© December 2011 Gordon J. Bernhardt. All rights
reserved. Reprinted by permission.
 By Gordon J. Bernhardt, CPA, PFS, CFP®, AIF®
About Gordon J. Bernhardt
President and founder of Bernhardt Wealth
Management and author of Profiles in Success:
Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the
Washington D.C. Area, Gordon provides financial
planning and wealth management services to affluent
individuals, families and business-owners throughout
the Washington, DC area. Since establishing his firm in
1994, he and his team have been focused on providing
high-quality service and independent financial advice to
help clients make informed decisions about their money.
For more information, visit www.BernhardtWealth.com
and Gordon’s Blog.
________________________
David Hunt
Profiles in Success: Inspiration from Executive Leaders in the Washington D.C. Area