David Lesnick

California’s Yosemite National Park is David Lesnick’s favorite place on earth, and through his newest hobby, oil painting, he’s found a way to connect with it.
InvestmentNews talked with Mr. Lesnick, principal of Sound Advice Financial Planning in Goodyear, Ariz., about his newest avocation and his other hobbies: travel, teaching and guns.

IN: Tell me about your favorite place on the planet.

Yosemite. If I had to be envious of one person in the entire world, it would be Ansel Adams, because he spent his life photographing Yosemite. There are awesome sights there. I’ve been there a dozen times.

IN: What does it do for you?

It’s a very spiritual place. God took all of his best works and planted them all in one place.

IN: Is that what prompted you to start painting?

I was inspired when a client invited me to her house a few years ago and I saw her paintings, which were phenomenal. I asked her when she started painting, and she said she had started about a year earlier. To look at her paintings and find out she had only been doing it for a year just blew me away. For years, I had wanted to learn to paint, but kind of figured I’d do it when I got around to it. But after seeing her work, I decided I just had to take lessons.

IN: What sorts of things to do you paint? Yosemite?

Mostly landscapes and flowers. The painting I’m working on now is a scene of the Red Rocks in Yosemite.

IN: Changing gears, you also have an extensive gun collection, right?

My father taught me to shoot when I was a kid. I was 12 or 13. He had been in the Army in World War II and had been a good marksman, so he taught me how to shoot. It’s just something I’ve always been interested in. I’ve raised my [three] children with a house full of guns, and now my two sons have quite an arsenal, and my daughter has some guns.

IN: What’s your most prized possession in your collection?

I guess it would be my Colt AR-15, which is like a commando version of an M-16. I probably have about 30 guns in my collection.

IN: Do you mostly do target shooting or hunting?

I haven’t hunted recently, so it’s mostly target shooting.

IN: How do you teach your children and grandchildren about gun safety?

We go out in the desert when they’re young. The last time I was there to teach was with my grandson who was 8. We took a gallon of red paint and put it about 20 feet away from us. I took my smallest pistol with me because I wanted him to understand that even a little gun can do a lot of damage. I shot the can. The lid exploded off, the back of the can was blown out, and red paint went everywhere. I used the same words with him that I’ve used with all of my kids and other grandkids: “If you shoot someone, this is what happens. You’ll make a hole in their body, all their blood will come out, and they will die. I make it clear that this is why you never point a gun at a person.

IN: On another subject: You’re 63. Any thoughts of retiring?

Clients have asked me that too. In a traditional sense of the word, I don’t see myself retiring completely. I’m constantly taking continuing-ed classes. I teach classes, I do seminars [in several aspects of financial planning] and I just can’t envision myself one day stopping cold and letting all this knowledge and learning just end and go to waste. My idea of retirement is keeping a small core of clients and working two or three days a week, two or three weeks a month.

IN: What would you do with more free time?

More painting, more traveling. These days, of course, anyone can travel and still be working. I could literally work from Yosemite and no one would know.

Related Topics: Spotlight On