By Steve Garmhausen
Getting traction in the wealth management business was harder than Kayvon Samardi, had anticipated. But Samardi, who joined UBS nearly 16 years ago, had been toughened up in another business: He'd sold cars in his father's automobile dealerships, heard "no" plenty of times, and lived through the 2008-09 financial crisis. "We would sell cars, and the banks wouldn't finance them, time and time again," says Samardi, who is based in Washington, D.C. "Those experiences made me very strong."
Speaking with Barron's Advisor, Samardi, 38, explains why youth is an advantage for his seven-person team, which manages $1.4 billion in client assets. He explains the virtues of private infrastructure investments, and argues that delaying wealth-transfer planning is a big mistake.
Where are you from? I grew up in Roanoke, Va., about four hours southwest of Washington, D.C. My dad owned car dealerships when I was a kid, so I grew up in that business.
What role did you play in the business and what did it teach you? The plan for me was to eventually take over the business. So even when I was little, I was in meetings. If I was at the dealership, I was usually sitting in my father's office observing and learning. No matter how big or sensitive the meeting, I was never asked to leave. It could be a meeting negotiating the price of advertising with a TV network or newspaper, a meeting with a bank president to negotiate an inventory loan, or even a meeting to settle an employee dispute or terminate someone. From the age of 14 to 15, I was in almost every meeting of consequence if I wasn't in school or playing soccer.
When I was old enough I started selling cars. I always had more money than my friends because I got commissions, which was nice. I was into investments even as a kid; I started trading stocks when I was nine. But selling does help you learn that rejection is not the end of the world. You hear no a lot, and I became OK with that very early. I felt when I started in this business that I was way more prepared than my peers, and I didn't feel intimidated asking for business or talking to wealthy people.
Was your dad disappointed when you chose another path? It wasn't my decision at the end of the day. My family ended up selling the business right as I was graduating college. It was postfinancial crisis and a very difficult time. But that was the best thing that ever happened to me, because the car business is not what it used to be. But the lessons and the skills I learned from it helped me transition into this career.
What was it like starting with UBS as a solo practitioner rather than joining a team? When I started I was like, this is going to be so easy, I can do this in my sleep. And it was not easy. But I had developed resilience. The financial crisis was hard in this business for sure, but as a car dealer it was extremely hard. We would sell cars and the banks wouldn't finance them, time and time again. Those experiences made me very strong.
Can you talk a little bit about your collegiate soccer career? Soccer was essentially my whole life. From the time I was 6 or 7 I would play every day. Every season I was one of the top goal scorers in the league, if not the top. I had my middle-school and high school goal records. I was getting lots of Division I looks for college soccer but wound up playing at Roanoke College, a very good Division III. I played in the NCAA tournaments, but more importantly, the school was down the street from the dealership. I had a great experience, but the college decision was not really about soccer, it was more about academics and continuing my education in business.
What about being part of soccer teams applies to running a team in finance? I was the captain of a lot of teams, and the leadership characteristics are the same. Getting everybody on the same page and having a vision for where you want to go is very similar to soccer. The visualization aspects are similar. In sports you have to see yourself winning. In business you have to see yourself going where you want to go. My manager a couple of years ago congratulated me for making managing director. In my mind I'd been a managing director for 10 years. I play scenarios in my head 100 times before they happen. High-pressure situations don't really bother me because I feel like I've done it 100 times before.
Who are your clients typically? We've developed a nice niche with entrepreneurs because of our focus on preliquidity planning and post-transaction management. But what differentiates our team is working with multiple generations within families. I'm 38; my partners are 42 and 31. We work with $100 million clients who are 65 years old, but we are the same people working with their adult children -- we don't pass them down to some junior person. That makes bigger clients very comfortable. When we compete against other firms and win the business, I always ask, why did you pick us? And a lot of the time it comes down to us being younger while at the same time having a lot of experience. Another unique aspect is that I serve a lot of Iranian American clients. One unique aspect about them is a very strong focus on education and passing wealth to their children. While there are other families with this mentality, this is almost true across the board for our Iranian Americans. I'm the premier advisor in the D.C. market for Iranian Americans with big money. All of them are entrepreneurs, and I resonate with them because I'm very entrepreneurial too.
What's an example of something big you helped a client achieve? We had a fairly young client with a good tech company. I had just happened to read all about QSBS -- the qualified small business stock exemption. We hooked him up with the right people to convert his LLC to a C Corp. If you hold it for five years, for example, you can offset tens of millions of capital gains. And the scenario played out exactly like that. Not only that, but we got him to run a process and engage an investment bank, and got him over 20% more than his original offer. And it was a better structured offer too, which he would have never even thought to do -- he was going to take the offer as it came. We also helped set up a foundation in which the whole family is involved. We brought in our philanthropy team, did family meetings, and set up a board for him. I still don't think most people understand how powerful that QSPS exemption is, but we've now done it a handful of times, and it's incredible.
What are some of the best alternative investment opportunities you see right now? We really like infrastructure. So many alternatives now tend to move with the equity markets, and we like infrastructure's lack of correlation. I like its inflation protection. I like its scarcity -- you can't just build an airport next door to one that already exists, or replace a city's water system overnight. It has lower volatility than equities but a similar return profile. Its cash flow is a bit better than bonds'. I read every alternative deal that comes to the firm; I'm a nerd about that. I like some niche deals that are not standard private equity or credit; we did a litigation finance deal where one tech company is suing another for IP infringement. That deal had no correlation to anything, and as of September it showed an internal rate of return of 29.41%.
You served on the UBS financial advisor advisory committee, which is a commitment not every advisor would want. Has it paid off? So much. The bad part was that it was three years of free work and a lot of time away from my business. It was almost counterproductive to building a business. I did it because I thought I was helping the firm as a whole and helping my peers, and I was honored to be nominated. But also I got to know everybody. The heads of every department. I'm close with senior management. Now everyone returns my calls. Plus, the person who was basically managing the council at the time was so good at her job that I hired her, and she's my business manager now. Having her is almost like a cheat code because she knows everybody at the top and everyone in between. So we get things done so much faster.
If you're an ultrahigh-net-worth individual in the U.S. right now, what's the biggest risk to your financial security? There are a couple. I've seen clients who you would think are very sophisticated with their approach to estate planning and transitioning their wealth, and then you find that there's no plan. I'm not even talking about from a financial and tax perspective. A lot of times their kids don't have any idea how much money they have and are ill-equipped to deal with it. So that's something we focus on.
Some of our best client events are next-gen events. For example, I have a lot of clients with younger adult children who are in finance in New York. So I'll rent out a private room at a restaurant and bring all the next-gen people together, and we'll all just talk about what we're doing, how we can help each other, different topics regarding money. The parents really like that. I've gotten referrals based on that event alone. Helping families educate the next generation and bring them into the process is really important, and not doing that means taking a big risk. The second big risk is risk itself. We've had a market that's mostly gone one way, with little blips here and there. I don't believe people really understand the full amount of risk they may be taking in their portfolios. I don't think people are as diversified as they think they are. In this market it's more important than ever to be properly diversified. For the ultrahigh-net-worth person, I think the days of just owning the index are over.
Do you have time for a life outside of work? My lifestyle is pretty crazy because of the way I do my business. I'm very close personally with a lot of my clients. I was in Paris with a client in January. I was in St. Barts with a client in February. I'm going to a client's 60(th) birthday party in Miami. I'm constantly with clients, but I do make time for myself. I never miss my workouts, even if I have to do them at lunchtime. I don't miss my kids' sporting events. And we do travel a lot; I make a point of going on a couple of nice family vacations a year. It's nonnegotiable for me. I started traveling when I was very young, and it has been a huge part of my education -- I've probably been to close to 50 countries at this point. My kids have traveled to 20-plus countries already. But also I'll work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then events on Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes I'll go 20 or 21 days without having a real day off. But it doesn't feel like work to me, so it's all good.
Thank you, Kayvon.
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April 06, 2026 15:32 ET (19:32 GMT)
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