Wayne Gretzky, Financial Advisor: Retirement Advice from The Great One

You're the greatest hockey player of all-time, the leading point-scorer in NHL history, the only player to score 200 points in a single season -- you did it four times -- and you held 40 regular season records, 15 playoff records and six All-Star Game records. Then suddenly, after 20 seasons in the NHL, it all comes to an end.

This was the situation facing Wayne Gretzky when he retired in 1999. As a hockey player, all he had to do was focus on being the best player and athlete he could be, but, upon retirement, the game which defined every day of his life was no longer an option.

"The first thing you notice is that we're so used to a schedule that is so regimented from August 1st or July 1st all the way to the end of May to early June," Gretzky told an audience of financial journalists who watched him be interviewed about retirement and financial planning by Lee Bennett, senior vice-president of TD Waterhouse Financial Planning.

"It's basically like going to school. You get up and do the same thing every morning, whether playing during the season or training in the off-season to physically get ready for the season, but it completely changes when you retire because all of a sudden, now you have to set your own schedule. You have to make those decisions of what you're going to do. You can't just sit around at 40 years old and play golf every single day. Although, I tried it for one year."

What was The Great One to do, and what can his experience teach us about planning for our own retirement and financial future?
If golf wasn't going to do it for Gretzky, he realized that he needed to figure out what was. He knew he wanted to stay active and used the various connections he made during his career to cultivate his post-NHL path in ventures like Wayne Gretzky's Restaurant and Wayne Wayne Gretzky Estates Wines. He also got more heavily involved in charities, such as The Wayne Gretzky Foundation.

"Quickly you find out that it's nice to be active and I think if you are active, it keeps you younger. I was lucky that there were so many good people I knew over the years and then you just sort of have to balance between business, family, charity work and travel. You have to make sure it all evens out and you don't put all your time into one area and not in another. Balancing it all out is probably the hardest part when you do retire," he says.

The other hard part is leaving the game you love all together and no one understands just how fleeting the experience of being a professional athlete can be more than Gretzky himself:

"I always tell every hockey player I meet, 'Play as long as you can' because there's only a short lifespan for being a professional athlete, so if you can keep playing and participating play for as long as you can because we're so taught at a young age that's our life and all of the sudden, I skated since I was two, and, all of a sudden, at the age of 39, it's over. For the first five or six years after that, I put away my equipment and I never played, but now I periodically get on the ice. I have a fantasy camp that I host every year with my foundation and I play the odd pick-up game with my older son, so you sort of jump back into it."

As a player, Gretzky never really understood why everyone around him was so nervous before a game. For him, even during The 1987 Canada Cup and the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, all he felt was the excitement of being able to represent his country. It wasn't until he really started coaching behind the bench that he really understood what it was like to be nervous before a game.

"The thing about coaching that's so different than playing is, when you're playing you got to get ready, so you come in the morning, follow the game plan and prepare yourself to get ready for the game, but as a coach you're handling 22 players, so you're getting 22 guys ready every single morning for practice and every single day for a game and the stress level of being a coach is so different from being a player," he says. "When you get on the other side it's nerve-wracking, but I'm glad I did it. It was a big part of my life. but when I was in Vancouver in 2010, I was glad I was just a fan."

Now Gretzky's biggest focuses are his restaurant and his wine business, both things he knew nothing about when he first started them. Because he kept them small and family-oriented he is still able to make them successful.

"Back in the early '80s, people were always telling me, 'You should open a restaurant' and I was always like, 'You know, I don't know if that's a good thing to do because I don't know anything about the restaurant business.' But then Tom Bitove of the Bitove family came to me in the early '90s with the idea of building a new restaurant in Toronto near the Hockey Hall of Fame and the new arena," says Gretzky.

"What really worked for me was, it was going to be a family-oriented restaurant and most importantly, because I couldn't be there all the time, I knew we'd have that personal touch because my dad would be there quite a bit. The success of the restaurant is because when I'm in town I go there, but my dad spends a lot of time there and through that a lot of baseball teams go through there and a lot of hockey teams go through there, so we have that personal touch that seems to make the restaurant work. Consequently, we've only opened one restaurant for 18 years."

Other than his grandfather making homemade wine when he was a kid, Gretzky had zero experience in the wine industry, but that didn't stop him from getting involved. "When I got in the wine business, it was the same thing as the restaurant. I wanted to make sure I partnered with the right people and the Peller family are some of the greatest wine makers in this country. The great thing about the wine company is, you're going to sell the first bottle because people are curious about the brand and what it's about. But, what has been really great for us, people are really enjoying the wine, so the wine makers are very conscientious about making the best wine they can possibly make and people have really enjoyed tasting our wine."

In addition to business, Gretzky is deeply involved in charity work, thanks to the values his father instilled in him and the people in his family and community who've directly touched his life.

"My dad always said that my life was kind of mapped out and by chance, the Canadian Blind School was in my hometown of Brantford, Ontario. So, one of the things I did from the very beginning was to host a charity tennis tournament for the blind kids and to this day my dad still hosts golf tournaments to raise money to put blind children through college. Growing up my dad's sister had Down's syndrome and in those days they would put Down's syndrome kids into an asylum. My grandmother was very frightened of it and basically kept her daughter hidden, so my aunt had a severe case and she lived until age 65. So, those were the two charities that I grew up with and that's how I got involved in charities."

But he didn't stop there, starting The Wayne Gretzky Foundation in 2002 to help kids participate in all levels and types of hockey by paying for equipment for inline hockey, ice hockey, sledge hockey and ringette.

"My dad always said, 'Whether you're a good athlete or an average athlete, if you participate, the game keeps kids out of trouble.' so that's what we try to do with our foundation money. We try to help kids who can't afford to play to get equipment and ice time."

All in all, Wayne Gretzky knows what a blessed life he has had and has no regrets about how he spent his career or his retirement. To those looking to end their career, or for those just beginning, his advice is to live in the moment.

"It has been a wonderful life," confirms Gretzky. "My dad always told me, 'Never look back and never say, I can't wait for tomorrow.' Enjoy the moment and enjoy the time. but it goes quicker than you think. I remember people used to come to me in Edmonton when I was 22 or 23 and say, 'Here's your pension plan and here's what we're going to do when you turn 50, 55 and 60.' I remember thinking that's forever down the road, but here we are at 51 and it goes quickly. So, financial planning at a young age is vital and very important."

In part two, Wayne Gretzky discusses his financial plan and what you can learn from it.