David Edwards was interviewed recently by the Wall Street Journal on how his love of sailboat racing promotes his wealth advisory practice, contributing to a 40% growth in assets and revenues since January 2013.

Transcript: 

David Edwards, President of Heron Financial Group.  We take CARE of families, - $100 million in assets.

We have a very precisely defined target client.  We are looking for time-stressed executives between 45 and 55 years old with at least $1 million in investable assets.  They are looking to us to not only take care of their financial lives, but indeed advise them on insurance, estate planning, college savings, buying a second home, marriage, divorce.  Anything that involves money in their lives, we're there with an opinion.

I began sailing as a child on Sunfishes and Hobie Cats in the 1970's.  I took up sailboat racing about 15 years ago.  I had the opportunity to take a clinic in sailboat racing up in Nantucket, Massachusetts.  I knew literally nothing about the boat, but I was hooked immediately and have committed myself to becoming an ever better racer. 

Sailing and investing have a lot in common.  You have your plan, your skills and experience, but when bad things happen, you just have to deal with it.  For example, the 2009 financial crisis was a lot like a storm that none of us expected, and quite a few firms sank.  We certainly struggled in that environment; our portfolios came way down in value.  But luckily, we build all-weather portfolios, so that when our clients are dependent on their portfolios for retirement, their monthly draw is paid out of low risk, non-volatile assets like money markets, which are reloaded a couple a times a year from higher returning assets like bonds, which by the way went up during the financial crisis.  And when the storm passed and the calm returned, and the stock component came back up in value, we continued reloading the bond bucket from the stock component. 

Another element where sailing and investing have a lot in common is that the sailors who anticipate rather than react will have a better experience.  In investing, the investors who anticipate rather than react will have a better experience.  So we spend a lot of time looking into the future, and I'm not talking about tomorrow, I'm talking about the next year to five years, thinking about what might happening and prepare our clients accordingly. 

Sailing and Prospecting - it's very hard to make more than a fleeting impression on somebody if you simply have a banner up or our logo on a t-shirt.  We're not going to get the impressions that we're interested in.  So what we do instead is bring in a video crew to record the regattas.  I appear on camera before the start of the day with a producer.  We talk about the day's events to come, and then I go out and race.  By the time I get back to the bar in the afternoon, there is already a 15 minute video running and I just stand close by the video screen with a beer.  People say: "you're on the screen, you're here, you're on the screen, let's talk a little bit!"  Again, we're trying to make more than one impression.  We find it take about nine impressions before someone comes on board as a prospect. 

In addition to seeing our video, we always have a case of Champagne, or a case of Rum available in a raffle at our table next to the video screen.  To enter our raffle, you have to give us your name, e-mail address and cell phone number.  We get back to the office, put that information into our CRM and start sending people our monthly commentary.  Roughly 25-35% will unsubscribe immediately, and that's OK, because the ones that remain on the list are interested and they'll connect with us when they're ready. 

Advice for Advisers - in general, if an adviser wants to prospect to the kinds of clients we have, they need to find commonalities.  In my case, I'm very good at sailing, and so that's where I address my focus.  Other advisers might be very good at golf, some might be very good at tennis, some might be very good at wine-tasting.  What you need to do is create opportunities for prospects to get to know you in a non-salesy environment.