Advisor launches Health & Wealth circuit sessions to get clients healthier as they approach retirement
An up-and-coming advisor has launched Health & Wealth events to get clients in shape so they can enjoy their money in retirement.
Steven Furtado, 32, of PEAK Financial Group in Montreal, has enlisted the help of personal trainers to put small groups through their paces in 45-minute circuit sessions.
He believes everyone can spare 45 minutes of their day and wants the CEOs, executives and entrepreneurs on his book to get fit after noticing a worrying trend of clients getting ill as soon as they stop working.
He told WP: “Now I’m dealing with bigger portfolio sizes I’ve noticed a lot of these guys and girls have spent their lifetime accumulating a certain amount of wealth. But when it comes time to step back and enjoy it, they are getting these diagnoses of illness or ailments that inhabit their ability to do that.
“If it happened once, I would chalk it up to being an anomaly but it’s happened so often that I feel the stress of building a business and creating wealth brings on sickness. [It affects] your eating habits, physical habits, all these other things and we don’t take these 30-60 minutes a day to try to make it better for our bodies.
“We spend a lifetime accumulating wealth and then I have people who are diagnosed with leukemia the year they retire. It’s a s***** situation but it’s a reality.”
He added: “They then wish they had taken that extra vacation, been to all their kids’ games, done all these things, but they were working and told themselves they would have time after. You are better off stacking the deck in your favour and trying your best to remain healthy.”
Furtado, who has grown his practice to $16 million and a shade under 100 clients in three years, said the sessions are as much a bonding experience as a longevity and discipline exercise. He believes they perfectly encapsulate his holistic approach to being an investment advisor and believes that if his clients are feeling good and looking good, they are more confident and make better business decisions.
He explained: “It’s holistic – that’s pivotal and it’s what I’ve based my whole practice on. A stockbroker is dead now – no one cares about that anymore. You don’t need me to look up a Nike stock to tell you whether it’s a good one to own. You can do that by yourself.
“What you need is someone who is going to keep you in check on every facet of your life to make sure all the pieces are working together. I’m not interested in losing the assets, I want you to live longer and want your kids to know I am taking care of you.”
While acknowledging he is not the first person to notice this trend, his own active lifestyle means it is something top of mind. The level of wealth is largely irrelevant, he added, and that someone’s $250,000 is equivalent to someone else’s $3 million in terms of the amount of work it took them.
Furtado said: “What I’ve found is we are stuck in this mentality that having more is better but having $2 or $5 or $10 million dollars in the bank is equivalent to zero if you can’t enjoy it. I’ve had people tell me, I’d be willing to give everything, every single penny, every single house, to be at my daughter’s wedding or to see my first grandchild being born.
“We always think more is better but it’s the people who have more who realise there is zero value if you don’t have everything else that surrounds it.”
