Billy Peterson, former jockey and current financial advisor, discusses his three pillars to a successful life—wealth, health, and happiness.

Billy Peterson is not affiliated with Hartford Funds

Julie. I’m excited for our audience to hear from Billy Petersen today, who we recently had on the podcast, is going to talk to us about his journey in financial services. Now, his life as a jockey actually influenced the way he developed his business. Why don’t you tell our audience a little bit about Billy Peterson?

Billy Peterson Road Race horses for nine years as a professional jockey, becoming the number one quarter horse jockey in the USA. After retiring, he became a financial advisor and as a five time member of the Raymond James Chairman’s Council, he was also named to Barron’s list of top advisors in the United States and has been selected to America’s best in-state financial advisors by Forbes six times. In short, the author knows all about winning, and it’s a lot easier to outpace your peers when you’re prepared from the starting gate.

So let’s hear from Billy Patterson. Hi, I’m.

John. And I’m Julie.

We’re the hosts of the Hartford Funds Human Centric Investing podcast.

Every other week, we’re talking with inspiring thought leaders to hear their best ideas for how you can transform your relationships with your clients.

Let’s go.

Billy. Welcome to the Human Centric Investing podcast. We’re so excited to have you here with us today.

Thank you very much. It’s an honor to be with you.

So, Billy, it’s been a while since we’ve seen one another. And one of the things I wanted to share with our audience is that Billy, what I remember probably most before I ever even met you was when I walked into your office. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an office that seems to tell an advisor story even without them being there. I mean, it was like your your office, the environment, everything there almost led me into Billy Peterson’s story. And then when I did meet you and I heard your story, the office made even more sense. It was like an extension of you as a person. And what I was hoping that you could share with our audience today is a little bit of your journey in becoming a successful financial advisor, kind of the stops along the way, if you will, and how important it is to you that your practice is an extension of yourself, not something that is separate and apart from it.

Well, that’s that’s a great question. There’s a lot that goes in there from an answer standpoint. But I guess going back to early days in my career as a jockey, it was there is so much that, you know, you learn and I learned about paying attention to the little things. And, you know, you’re getting a feel for how you’re you’re handling every horse. And it’s kind of similar when you’re talking to clients. Every client is different. Just like every horse you’re going to ride in a race is going to have different tendencies and different preferences. So I learned a lot about individual customization, understanding, picking up on little cues, but also happen to stay true to myself of who I am. I can’t be everything to everyone, right? I have to be who I am. I have to rely on my strengths of who I am and who who I want to be and not nough flap with the wind trained, you know, maybe like some advisors I saw early in my career who, you know, they flip their hat around and all of a sudden I’m a bond trader. You know, I’m a stock trader and I can do options, I can do whatever. And it was just to me, it was kind of like a shallow presence. I really didn’t feel like they were really good at anything. They were just trying to be everybody. And I wanted to be known to be who I am. And and, you know, when I was back as a as a jockey, I wrote for a very famous trainer. Some of your listeners may recognize the name Duane Lucas as his name, and he’s a Hall of Famer. He’s he’s won everything. He’s he’s won I don’t know how many Breeders Cup. He’s he’s won all kinds of titles. I think he’s a 11 time training champion. But I remember one day he had me on a on a horse show coming back from the racetrack. And and I was just kind of talking with him, shooting the breeze. And and he’s very serious all the time. He says, look, hold onto that horse, Get all that horse and make them make him mind his manners. And it’s the first time a trainer can ever told me that I’m pretty accomplished rider myself. And he’s kind of scolding me for not doing my job or what he thought my job should be. And then he was talking to me about how I looked at my appearance, what I was wearing, all these little things that I felt like, first of all, it kind of took me back. He’s kind of insulting me in a way. But in the end, the other hand, he’s trying to help me and he’s trying to explain to me that, look, it is what you you are what you portray yourself to be. So if you’re going to come here wearing dirty jeans, scuffed up boots, you know, an old dirty sweatshirt. The owners and trainers that are around this racetrack are going to treat you accordingly. On the other hand, if you want to show up polished, your jeans are ironed, cleaned, your boots are polished, you have a good attitude, a good air about you, and you have confidence. And everything that you do is for a reason and precise. The horses that you’re riding, reminding and behaving. You’re paying attention to your job every second of the way. It’s a small things. And he taught me that I’ll never forget it. And I watched his from then on, I watched him and how he interacted with people and how just his dress, his appearance. He was always perfect. His shadow is perfect. The way his grooms rake the shed row one way and then the other. It was always in the herringbone pattern. Nothing out of place. Perfect. Immaculate. And guess what? He trained the best horses in the world. Everyone wanted to hire him to train. He was turning people away. So, hey, why not learn from that in the business I’m going into?

That’s so interesting that creating that sort of personal brand or that foundation and how that translates into whatever we’re doing, will you share with us a little bit more about what you learned from your days as a jockey and sort of how that launched you into your journey as a financial advisor?

So as a jockey, there were a lot more there were many more obstacles that I had to deal with on a daily basis. Number one, dieting and making weight. I had to weigh in maybe 12 to 15 times every single day. You weigh before the races and then you weigh out after the races. So it’s not like a wrestler where you you weigh in maybe 30 minutes to an hour before the contest and then you go gorge and hydrate and get strong again and then go have your match. Now, this is an all day battle. So you you weigh in, you tell the clerk scales what you’re going to weigh for that day. And then every race that you’re going to ride throughout the day, you might ride ten races. You have to check your weight again. And then after the race to make sure that you didn’t somehow cheat and and pack less weight than you were supposed to. So all of this is regulated right down to the fine details and you’re constantly worrying about, can I eat that? Can I even have a drink? Can I have a cup of coffee? Know that that carries about 6 to 8oz. How am I going to lose that? Can I have something to nourish myself? Well, what does it weigh? Typically, you’re always thinking about that. You know, it was a difficult lifestyle and one that made me appreciate just having what I have today, which is I can I can eat. I can worry about other things in my life rather than that. Things seem actually rather simple to me today after going through that kind of a battle. I’m not normally supposed to weigh 110 pounds, and I got down to a light weight of 106 pounds. It was actually just a scary time in my life. I was more or less an anorexic because I kept wanting to go lower and lower to be able to ride any and all horses that might be assigned a very cheap low weight. We call them cheap because they’re cheap horses. And I was so terrified of being overweight or being listed as overweight. You know, that’s just kind of for me, what did it do for me? It taught me discipline. And does discipline have a place in our business? I would say absolutely. Discipline for investors is one of the foremost, foremost criteria that you can have discipline and patience and being able to teach others how to carry those same. So those same characteristics with their life is you can’t always do things and expect a result immediately. And I fear that a lot of so-called investors today are going about it the wrong way. I think there’s more speculation in the world than I’ve ever seen in my entire career. So I don’t know how that’s all going to play out. But I know that good things come to those who know not only put in the work, but have the patience to wait for the results to develop and not just expect them overnight.

So, Billy, obviously horses your time as a jockey. It obviously is was, is and was a passion of yours. So what was it that caused that transition in your life from being a jockey to becoming a financial advisor, or was it something that you opted for or was it something that happened to you? How did that occur?

And that’s a great question, and it takes me all the way back to the time I was 14 years old when when an old rancher in our hometown decided he was going to do something for me that was going to change my life. Now, obviously, he had no idea at the time that it was going to transform my life or nor neither, nor did I, because I’m 14 years old. I’m making some money, galloping race horses and riding a few in some match races for guys and making, you know, what was considered to be a pretty good income for a kid my age. And this trainer, this nut trainer, but this old rancher, he asked me one day, I’m sitting there with the old man listening to it and I never talk. I just listen. But I’d always go over with my dad to the coffee shop in the afternoon, and there maybe 15 to 20 different ranchers from around my little town. And he asked me one day, I see you’ve been riding a lot of horses. You must be making some pretty good money, Billy. I said, Well, I’m doing pretty good, you know, Kind of bashful about it. What are you doing with that money? I said, You know, I was pretty proud about that. I was answered. Perked right up. I’m putting putting in the bank. I’m saving most of it. And he said, okay, well, that’s not a bad idea, but that’s not a good idea either. And that kind of confused me. What are you talking about? He said you come back here to mine and I explain what I mean. So I went back the next day, of course, and. And he pulled out a newspaper, and he showed me the investment section. And then he showed me the mutual fund section, and he circled a couple of mutual funds. And he said, This is what you call investing. What you’re doing is saving. It’s not going to get you anywhere. So why don’t you think about investing? And he brought an application actually for me, for this mutual fund company and showed me how to fill it out and showed me how to select the box that was going to dry up, draw money from my bank account and invest it into the mutual fund on a monthly basis. So I started that and I’m 14 years old. Now I can I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt, that changed my life. Because from then on, I was interested in investing. I was watching that investment I was seeing grow and obviously seeing sometimes go down, but relying on what I was learning and listening and paying attention and starting to try to invest more when things were down. So it’s kind of taking that whole thing and I felt like it was so I was so enamored now with the investment world that I still didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. You know, going first few years in college, I didn’t know what I wanted to do maybe accounting, maybe marketing. And then I settled on just a business administration degree, and I had my degree while I was a jockey, which was very uncommon. I think that’s I’m the only one that ever achieved a degree going to college and riding racehorses at the same time. But what happened was I get to I get to California, I’m riding now out there the kind of the end of my career. Little did I know it was toward the end of my career at that time. But the general manager, big Rice racetrack, called Hollywood Park. He asked me to come to his office one day after the races. I’m like, What does this guy want? What do you want? So I went in there and he says, you know, why are you writing race horses? And I thought, well, kind of, you know, is that an insult? What are you trying to get at? And he said, You’re too smart to be writing race horses. And then I thought, well, I’ll listen now. What are you talking about? So he says, You have a degree. Why are you still doing this? All you can do is get busted up. Yeah, you’re doing well, you’re making money, you’re getting all the fame and everything. But what’s in it for you for the long term? And you need to think about. How you’re going to take care of yourself and your family. If you were to have a life ending accident. So I thought I thought that through a little bit. And what do you know? I have I had a major accident about a month later, and it almost paralyzed me. They thought, you know, there’s there’s a chance you won’t walk again. And that made me stop and think, this is this is dangerous. This is, you know, please, God, just let me ride this. Let me finish this out. I have to ride this horse to the best horse in the world. Please let me continue to ride him. And then I will retire. I’ll be done. And, you know, I was able to get off that bed. It took me about 6 to 8 weeks to walk again. And I was able to finish that year out. And I kept my deal. And I had an interview with a company called PaineWebber. I’m sure you remember that, John PaineWebber. I in the day Long Beach, California. And they they had me come in. I’m a 110 pounds, you know. What do you know about investing? What do you know about doing any of this? And they said, well, who do you know? And I started rattling off names. And these are all people I know. And I started talking about investment world. And I think they were kind of impressed with my knowledge of investing back then, even as a jockey. So the branch manager, long story short, said, I’ll hire you whenever you’re ready. And I came back the next week and said, I’m ready. And this was probably November. And I made the decision and they hired me and I started studying for the Series seven. That’s what I needed. And they allowed me to keep riding. And so I was starting Series seven while I was riding, finishing out the career. And by the time end of December rolls around, I had passed the test and I announced my retirement to the world. I said, you know, I’m done. And I moved into this this role and had all these different clients lined up. And I knew a lot of people in the horse racing industry. It was a great niche. You know, it was a great niche, helped me get started, but it still took a lot of work and nothing was handed to me for sure.

How, Billy, would you say having a major life changing health event like that at such a young age has impacted your conversations with clients and prospects about thinking about their planning process and their own retirement and longevity? How do you do with that in into conversations, do you not? How do how does that play into your perspective in in the role in your clients lives?

Yes, it. It opened my eyes because before that accident, I knew that things could happen. Matter of fact, I had some of my good friends I’d seen, I’d witnessed have either life ending accidents, permanent permanent disabilities. And two of my friends actually died from racing accident while on the track. This is not this is not a sport for the weak minded. I knew it, that my mind, I knew it, but I. It was never in my conscious mind. Right? It was right. You just can’t think about those types of things. It’s just out of your mind. Hey, that never happened to me. It’s kind of like, you somebody. Somebody had a car accident. You know, a good friend of hers died. Somebody had their. Their house burned out. Well, that’ll never happen to me. That’s kind of our that’s our go to that’s how we reason and rationalize it out so we don’t sit and worry about it all day. The books that worry about it all, they’re not much good to themselves or anyone around them. So I knew that and I knew that worrying about it was going to be bad. However, going through that. It started to bring perspective and it started to make me more aware and really appreciate that you don’t know and none of us know when things could tragically go wrong for us or those around us that we care about. So we better start making plans and better do our things that we need to do. And I do use that occasionally when I’m talking to clients, as you just you can’t put this off. This is this is important. And I talk about that from the standpoint of not only the estate and dealing with where your money is going to go or who who’s going to benefit or who’s going to take care of you or who’s be in charge of things, but also preparing for your life. Too many people push it off for far too long before they start taking things seriously about their wealth. And you know what’s more important? You have your health, your wealth and your happiness. And I call those the three pillars of a successful life. And all of us want all three, I believe. And the thing is, is they all require a little sacrifice, right? You have to find it to be happy. You have to find little things. You have to find joy. You can’t always be in search of it and say, I’ll be happy when this happened. You have to be happy with what you have. And then more of what you have will find its way to you. More of those types of things. It’s just it’s a law of attraction. And then with health, yes, you have to be paying attention. You have to be wanting to be healthy. You have to know what you’re eating. You have to get exercise and you have to know who to listen to and who not to. And that’s what I learned a great deal about when I had some serious health conditions on my own. And finally, with our wealth, what about sacrificing today for tomorrow and let that accumulation take to take your future and give you that comfort and give you that financial peace of mind where you can actually have an enjoyable life without wondering where every dollar is going to come from. Too many people rely on. Whether it’s handouts or the government. I don’t know how to differentiate sometimes. But think about it. Our government is broke. We’re $36 trillion in debt and going getting worse every day. We spend five times as much on the interest of our debt in this country than we do on educating our youth. That’s twisted. That’s backwards. So why not take your matters into your own hands and start at a youngest age? You can so you don’t have to rely on these other sources and wonder if Social Security’s going to be around or wonder if you’re going to have any sort of help or the ability to to live a comfortable life. I want to teach my clients and all the youth and that I can talk to how to manage things on their own and how to find a way to do that. And it’s just knowledge and then discipline.

Billy, one of the benefits I think of, I imagine because I know you’ve written several books and you do refer back to your love of horses, the, the your life experiences, a jockey, you incorporate them. And how important are using those stories that kind of help shape who you are and communicating concepts to your clients? I assume it’s something you do fairly regularly. Do you find that they retain some of those nuggets of wisdom when they’re couched in the real life examples of what you yourself have experienced?

I’ve found that people love stories and they they can relate to stories. So rather than just preach and tell them something, go deeper. And I’ve always found it to teach teach with stories. So I have a lot of stories, obviously, from my time as a jockey and how they can relate to the subject matter that I’m trying to convey. Horses have a way, I don’t know, just being around horses, they have a way to calm people. They have a way to communicate and it makes you actually stop and actually start being present. Now, when you’re around horses, you if you want to communicate with horses, you you have to be present. You cannot be thinking about yesterday or tomorrow worrying about what may happen in the future or or ruminating about what had already happened. See, horses don’t do that. Horses teach us to be present. Horses don’t care about what’s going to happen tomorrow. They don’t know that there’s going to be a snowstorm and they’re worried about where they’re going. They just they live each moment and they enjoy it. And now imagine why horses don’t have all these thousands of different diseases that we’re all doing with as humans. Where does that come from? So I would submit to you that 98% of the diseases we’re dealing with are all produced by us, by worry, stress, anxiety, tension. They’re all produced right here. And the greatest organ ever created, never known is the brain, the human mind. What what a great thing. Because you know that if you can produce something there, you can also remove it. It can also be removed just by how we think changing in the way we think. I love being around horses and the biggest reason is it’s just because it brings me back to center. I remember being on a run one day with my wife, who used to be a big runner’s trail running Lovett in the mountains. And this was the time years ago. This is we’re about ten years past my struggles with all my chronic pain. I was labeled with a chronic disease that I would never be cured from. This was the medical community that told me I would never cure from this. It was an incurable autoimmune disease that I had. And I think there are tens of millions of people who are out there that are doing something similar. Autoimmune diseases are everywhere now. So anyway, I’m dealing with this chronic disease. I mean, pain all the time. I’m dealing with one thing after another. And the only thing that kind of give me some relief is Google running, you know, just like being out there, just getting away from everything and relaxing my mind is being it forced me to be present. And I remember being on the trail and we’re in the mountains and then come across and come around this band. And here comes a couple, a man and his wife on horseback riding your horses. Now, remember, I’ve been with horses my whole life, but in my career as a financial advisor, guess what? The first thing to drop horses. I had no time for horses anymore. So all I could think about was building my business, being a successful advisor, doing all the things that I needed to do, and I didn’t have the time. And I knew I didn’t have the time to dedicate the horses. My kids grew up without horses like I did. So we see these people coming toward us. And I stopped and it was just like a mesmerizing moment for me was just, whoa, wait a minute. Here’s two people on horses. It’s like, here’s a guy that’s been around horses his whole life, and I’m looking at people on horses thinking, that’s what I need. That’s what I need in my life right now. And I told Heather, I said, Heather, I know what I need. I need to get back to my roots of who I am. And the next month we started, we sold our cabin and we started to build a ranch. And I started buying horses. And today I think we have 35 horses. And when a little bit out of hand. But, you know, I love it. We raised horses. I have all these broodmares and raised babies and we have horses that we ride in the mountains. And it’s just something that we’ve just started to do together. And everything we do now, there’s something involved with the horses, isn’t it? My my diseases. That was a large part of me recovering. I don’t have any diseases anymore. I’m 100% healed, cured, whatever you want to call it. So they know this is my standing on the soapbox telling people who are out there listening, You don’t need to believe everything you’re told by the medical community if you’ve been diagnosed with something. They say you’re never going to get better. You know, that’s not that’s not who you have to be.

It’s an incredible story. Wow. Well, thank you for sharing that. And I would imagine that you share more of that in your new book called The Starting Gate.

From the Starting Gate.

Excellent. Well, I know I can’t wait to read it. And I’m confident that our listeners can’t as well after hearing in that those snippets and just the thumbnail sketch. But because this is the human Centric Investing podcast, we do something a little bit special that we call the Lightning Round. So if you’re willing, we’d love to get to know you a little bit better as a person. I know you started to share some of those tidbits, but if you’re willing just top of mind answers to some of the questions that we’d love to start asking you here in a moment. Okay, John, do you want to take it away?

Sure. So, Billy, are you a morning person or a night owl?

Definitely not a night out, John. You know, they they say you used to put your babies to bed at nine, 9 p.m. and just couldn’t wait to become an adult. Or you could stay up and do whatever you wanted all night long. And turns out bedtime is about nine, 930, you know.

So right there with the ability to say, yes.

I love the mornings up early, I see the sun come up. I mean, hey, I spent my whole life on the racetrack or the times I was at the time, I was a jockey. That’s when everything’s peaceful and that’s when you really feel like you’re alive.

Totally agree. Okay, So on a scale of 1 to 10, how good are you at backing up a horse trailer? That’s what I want to know.

See, I want you to come and watch my wife try to do that. That’s. That’s the funny.

I can’t. I can’t. I my be Taylor, and I’m a zero out of zero. I cannot. I can’t visualize it. That’s my problem.

It’s always in reverse. You like, wait, what? But yeah, I figure I’m probably I’m going to give myself. I’m going to give myself an eight and a half. I’ve seen them guys that are really, really good. I pretty darn good. But, you know, I, I’m sure I can be better, but my wife.

Is.

Ex my wife is under under under one. She’s, she’s 0.5. I mean, I really I feel bad for her, you know, but.

I’m so she and I would get along I.

She laughs about it.

Directing. A little to the left, a little to the right. That’s where my skills.

Ed Yeah. 30 minutes later, it’s still a little more to the left.

Billy What’s your favorite holiday?

Boy. You know, I love Christmas. Christmas, you know, we love the lights and just the celebration with family and friends and and I know some people like the Halloween. I mean, I see some people in my neighborhood, they love to decorate of the skeleton. They go all out for Halloween. And I’m thinking, man, you know, how about we put some lights on us so dark at night? And how about we celebrate something like that? So my wife has nine Christmas trees, I swear nine, and she start decorating for Christmas Day after Halloween. So everyone in our in our community knows because our lights are crazy. I mean, we have it’s like the Griswold. So we like we like.

You and have a lot in common with the Gen Jack family. I can guarantee you.

That we we actually start before Halloween. We just skip Halloween and the inferior holiday and we just get right to it. We actually had to have extra circuits put in our house to accommodate the Christmas. Wow. So we’re right now you.

Hey, Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Halloween.

Just take down the Christmas decor behind me for this recording today. So we’ll just leave it at that.

We got that. A huge story. I think we have 30 boxes of 30 storage boxes of Christmas decor that my wife has to have me haul out every year. So yeah, it’s an event.

It’s good news for the Costco bins, right? Yeah, right. Well, Billy, we can’t thank you enough for joining us here today on the Human Centric Investing podcast. And for our listeners, if you’re interested in finding out more about Billy, there are three ways to do so. First, you can check out his new book from the Starting Gate. Second, you can access his podcast, which is called Harnessing Your Wealth. Or third, you can visit his website which is Peterson wsc.com. Thank you again for your time today and for sharing all of your wisdom and insights with us.

It was fun being with you guys. Appreciate it.

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The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the guest who is not affiliated with Hartford Funds.