How Advisors Can Leverage Their Leisure Time

What if your local sailing group organized a “Recreation Pitch” to the local business community? Apparently, there are people in need of recreation, not just for pleasure but for professional success.

In this report by Alix Stuart published in OnWallStreet.com, she notes how accomplished financial advisors cultivate their activities outside of work into business achievement…

His father built boats as a hobby, and James Hilton developed a passion for watercraft early on. “I’ve been in all sorts of boats since I was one month old,” says Hilton, a financial advisor with UBS. “I love boats and everything about them.” Now based in Newport, R.I., Hilton not only sails and races regularly but is also involved in the nearby International Yacht Restoration School and is a past trustee of Sail Newport, a community sailing center.

Not surprisingly, boating—specifically yachting—is a useful passion for a financial advisor to cultivate, considering the affluent crowd that this pastime attracts. Indeed, Hilton says it is often hard to tell the dividing line between work and pleasure, since many of his clients are also part of his yachting world. “We start off with a natural common affinity,” he notes of the clients he meets through boating, “and that is a great step in building relationships and trust.”

It’s standard advice that financial advisors should be involved in activities outside of work to expand their networks and ultimately, their business. Few, though, can claim such a longstanding and fitting pastime as Hilton’s, and many have a narrow view of what counts when it comes to developing a new hobby.

“We hear advisors lament all the time that they don’t know how to play golf, but that’s ludicrous,” says Matthew Oechsli, head of a research and consulting firm serving financial advisors. In his view, almost any interest—cooking, gardening, wine, triathlons and even medical conditions—can become a platform for meeting new people and prospective clients. The only hard and fast rule is that the interest be genuine. “The worst thing you can do is to contrive a passion, because it will be obvious,” he says. – Read on