Bonsai With Clients? Here Are Advisors’ Favorite Pastimes

Advisors love a good hobby — anything from skydiving to the ancient Japanese art of Bonsai.

But it was golf, camping, and fitness that topped the list of the most popular pastimes for advisors in a recent survey by AdvizorPro. The data confirmed long-standing assumptions about the industry — namely, that golf and business go hand-in-hand — but also listed more niche hobbies that advisors take part in to cater to specific client interests, like knitting, quilting and fencing.

With a sport like golf that takes four to five hours per round, on average, advisors recognize that’s a lot of one-on-one time with potential clients, said Dustin Echenique, an executive at AdvizorPro who worked on the report. “It may be more influential to get [clients] into one of these unique hobbies where they can invite them for more hours to actually have an open and honest conversation,” he added.

Hobby Lobby

It’s no secret that advisor-client relationships often blossom on the golf green or in other non-office environments, and that this face-to-face time often pays off: CEOs who regularly play golf earn 17% more than those who don’t, according to Forbes. But hobbies can also cater to specific client demographics, Echenique said, noting that some activities are more popular in certain parts of the country. “If you’re in a golf-heavy location like South Florida or California, you’ll see more of those interests aligned where they’re trying to find equal ground with the high-net-worth individuals they’re targeting,” he said. “Advisors in mountainous regions, the Rockies, the Cascades, we’re seeing [more] skiing and winter sports as hobbies.”

The AdvizorPro report scraped data from more than 75,000 licensed advisors’ LinkedIn profiles, biography pages, and personal websites. Other findings included:

• Astronomy, ceramics and skydiving were among the activities listed as notable “niche” hobbies by the report, meaning at least 15 advisors mentioned partaking in them.
• Golf, camping and fitness made up the three most popular advisor hobbies, with volunteering and fishing finishing fourth and fifth, respectively.

OOO. The post-pandemic client development landscape took a decidedly out-of-office turn as workplaces shuttered and remote work became the norm, Echenique said. “[Covid] spurred the element of, ‘How can I actually get out in front of clients, whether that’s grab a cocktail out at a tiki bar in the back that’s open and airy, or play a sport,” he said. “That is absolutely something that we saw take off during the pandemic years, and I think it’s continuing.”