Providing financial advice to the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Kobe Bryant or George Clooney may sound exciting.
It is. At first.
But 2 a.m. phone calls, the need to tutor clients in money management 101 and your pleas that they not spend their entire signing bonus in one week are all things that can get tiring.
Yes, there may be glamorous parties, but the ultimate payout for working with an actor, entertainer or athlete tends to be less profitable than it is with the average client. Because celebrities, even the easiest ones, are usually more labor-intensive.
"They are a little more demanding; they are used to having things their way," says Todd Morgan, a senior managing director and founding member of Bel Air Investment Advisors in Los Angeles. "They are more work than the traditional clients and not as profitable as the rest of the business."
So why work with them?
Sometimes the answer is simple. Advisors in L.A. work with celebrities just because that's where the TV and film industries are, and people who work in those industries likely make up the client pool.
Others have personal reasons. Andre Mirkine, associate vice president of investments with Wells Fargo Advisors in Connecticut, says he wanted to advise athletes because he was one himself: He played Division 1 soccer and was a professional freestyle skier. When an injury ended his skiing career, he decided to become a financial advisor.
For Jason Cole, a certified financial planner who heads the New York office of Abacus Wealth Partners, the desire to work with athletes started when he worked as an accountant and got a job auditing the books of the Philadelphia Eagles.
"While I was there, I was so excited every morning to get up, be at the facility and experience being in that atmosphere," says Cole, who decided to combine his love of numbers with his love for working with people into a career as a financial advisor to athletes.
Thomas Carroll, the senior vice president and managing director of the sports and entertainment specialty group at SunTrust, the bank and financial advisory, has a somewhat different perspective on the profitability of this type of work. That's because SunTrust does more than just manage assets. It also gets fees from mortgages and other financing, insurance products, credit cards, lines of credit and cash sweeps.
"Our platform is much more comprehensive than just asset management would be," he says.
Focusing specifically on musicians, athletes and motor sports, this unit specializes in a number of products designed just for celebrities, such as business valuations for NASCAR racing teams and loans based on intellectual property and royalty rights.
Carroll says that since its meager beginnings in the late 1980s, his group has grown to a team of 70 in 11 offices across the country. He agrees that it is not easy work.
"The advisor can't view this as just a job," he says. "Accessibility is very important. It literally is 24/7. You have to be willing to get on a plane at a moment's notice, to take calls at off hours. … If a client is out and about late and his debit card is inactive for some reason, you have to reactivate the card."
For many of SunTrust's clients, he says, that kind of service is even more important than large increases in their investment portfolios.
Since celebrities are used to having a cadre of agents, managers and other advisors catering to their every need, some expect a financial advisor to be available around the clock too. But many advisors won't accommodate such requests.
"I had one client who used to call with no regard for time or day," Morgan says. "I had to fire him. It was too crazy. He thought you should be there at his beck and call."
Expectations of special treatment are only one of the challenges facing advisors who work with celebrities. Others include the clients' lack of knowledge about investing and, frequently, their inability to handle the large sums of money they make. Athletes in particular often come into this money when they are very young.
Mirkine blames the lure of "that hyper-consumptive, glitzy lifestyle" for many of the problems athletes and celebrities face. "No one dissuades them from that," he says.
Says Cole, further explaining the mentality: "If you pull up to the practice facility in a $100,000 Mercedes, I can't pull up in a Camry. … They have to have a sports car, a Range Rover and a German sedan, even if they're paying 18% interest."
Mirkine says he once turned away a veteran basketball professional, playing on a three-year, $30 million contract, who refused to consider going on a budget and following a reasonable financial plan. The athlete had been either denied a mortgage or offered one only at a very high interest rate because he had an abysmal credit score due to his spending, which included multiple houses and cars, expensive jewelry and three child-support payments.
"I said, 'Let's clean your act up, then we'll tackle the mortgage,'" Mirkine recalls. "He didn't want to hear it. He just wanted a loan."
Mag Black-Scott, president and CEO of Beverly Hills Wealth Management, says many athletes and entertainers do not understand even the basic principles of money management.
"I know a football player who got a huge contract and went on a spending spree: He bought his mother a house and himself a house; he bought cars; he bought the bling stuff. So when his contract was not renewed, he still had the houses and the property taxes to pay and, as he said to me, 'Nobody told me this could happen,'" says Black-Scott. "This is, unfortunately, a more common scenario than you would like to think."
That's one reason why the list of athletes and entertainers who have earned millions but wound up bankrupt is so long. According to reports, boxer Mike Tyson, basketball player Sheryl Swoopes and baseball's Len Dykstra have all had financial difficulties, sometimes coupled with legal problems as well. Singers Cyndi Lauper and Jerry Lee Lewis and actors Burt Reynolds and Kim Basinger all reportedly declared bankruptcy. And at the time of his death in 2009, pop superstar Michael Jackson was said to have been hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.
Sometimes celebrities can be victimized by unscrupulous advisors like Bernard Madoff. This past January, former National Basketball Association star Vin Baker sued his financial advisor for mismanagement. In 1999, Baker signed an $87 million, seven-year contract with the Seattle SuperSonics. Less than a decade later, he lost both his home and business in Connecticut to foreclosure. He has meanwhile struggled with alcoholism, he says.
But even though other parties are sometimes to blame, advisors say clients have to take responsibility by monitoring their investments and not simply trusting their handlers.
"There are one or two super-wealthy celebrities who truly go through their books, line by line, once or twice a year," says Black-Scott. "That's great. No one watches your money as well as you would."
But frequent travel and busy schedules mean some athletes and entertainers don't pay their credit card bills on time, much less read their financial statements.
According to Cole, a quarter of those players with careers of three years or less wind up bankrupt within a year of retirement. More than three-quarters of those who play more than three years are bankrupt, divorced or unemployed two years after they stop playing. Several news outlets have reported that 60% of NBA players will go bankrupt within five years after retiring.
Carroll says a major hurdle advisors face is convincing a young athlete that he is not likely to keep earning the kind of money he is being paid at the start of his career.
"When they're in their early 20s, they think they are invincible," Carroll says. "They think, 'So if I make a bad decision, I've got four years to make the money back.' Sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't."
Football players tend to have the shortest careers, retiring around age 26 after a little more than three years in the NFL. A financial plan must take this into account.
It's easiest to influence players when they are young and signing their first contracts-before they have gotten the taste of living the high life. That's when they can still be persuaded to avoid buying gigantic houses, $100,000 cars, yachts or jets.
"It's much harder when you're the second or third financial team brought in," says Cole. "It's very difficult to cut spending when you've been dealing with a certain lifestyle for a number of years."
Cole does not blame celebrities' problems on their jobs, but on their youth and inexperience. "If professional athletes started their careers at age 30 or 35, the results would be different," he says. "Any of us, being young and given all that money, would not know what to do with it."
Not every athlete's circumstances are the same. While the top basketball and football players go from college student to instant millionaire overnight, baseball and hockey players generally don't make as much early in their careers and can struggle financially when playing on minor league teams. Tennis players and golfers can wind up spending more on travel than they earn.
"The instant millionaires are the ones who seem to get in the greatest trouble," Mirkine says. "You are talking about, typically, a Type A person used to taking risks on the playing field. They will also take risks where money is concerned."
Former football pro Jimmy Verdon, a seventh-round draft pick of the New Orleans Saints in 2005, saw that first hand. "There were times you would see players making bets with each other, and it would be for, like, $30,000 and up, on stupid games that didn't even mean anything," he says. "Me, I just wasn't going to do that."
Because celebrities' careers and their earning potential are so different from the average person's, it is important for anyone advising them to have some training and experience.
"It's a very complex issue," says Mirkine, who founded the Sports Financial Advisors Association seven years ago to help those financial planners working with professional athletes. "For instance, [athletes] have to file a tax return in every state in which they play a game. No two athletes are going to play the same way. They have different skill levels. The length of their careers will be different."
An advisor also has to anticipate injuries and know if the athlete is guaranteed payment when hurt and off the field.
It's easier to devise a good financial plan for an entertainer than it is for an athlete, Cole says, because the average entertainer tends to be better known and thus more marketable. He also typically has a longer earnings window and often residual income streams.
Morgan says a celebrity advisor needs to have "tremendous patience," because many people working in the entertainment industry are not well versed in investing or asset allocation.
"You have to ascertain what do they know about money, and very often it's not that much because we don't teach it in schools or colleges," agrees Black-Scott. "You have to be prepared to teach them about money. … You may have to explain the difference between stocks and bonds."
She says some people do not even understand that, regardless of who they voted for in the last presidential election or whether they support the current administration in Washington, they still have to pay taxes. "That may sound like a ridiculous statement. It isn't," Black-Scott says.
About a quarter of Morgan's clients are in the entertainment industry and they tend toward extremes even more than the typical investor. "In good times, they are overly aggressive; in bad times, they are overly conservative," says Morgan.
Black-Scott says many clients, particularly those involved in the movie industry, will invest only in bonds-even though they will not make as much money there-because they want the safety.
On the other hand, some celebrities are easily swayed by the fads their peers may be promoting. For instance, they ask about investing in gold more than any other group of clients, he says.
"We have clients who come up all the time who want to do some pretty risky things in terms of investing," he says. "We tell them to take a couple of deep breaths and forget about it."
Morgan says he was able to talk several clients out of investing with Madoff, whose celebrity victims, according to The Wall Street Journal, included movie mogul Steven Spielberg; actors Kevin Bacon, Kyra Sedgwick and Zsa Zsa Gabor; and talk show host Larry King.
While there are many circumstances unique to celebrities, they are still investors, and the basic rules of advising apply.
"You have to know what their aims and objectives are," Black-Scott says.
Rather than dealing with the client directly, advisors often work with a celebrity's business manager and it's easiest dealing with those who are experienced.
"They tend to be very conservative," she says. "They tend to understand that fame can be fleeting."
While advising a celebrity can mean invitations to some star-studded parties, Morgan says the glamour quickly fades.
"After you've been doing this for 20 years with celebrities, it's not a big deal," he says.
Taking that a step further, Black-Scott says it is important for advisors not to mix business with pleasure-or they run the risk of losing both the client and the friend.
Weighing all the assets and liabilities, advisors to the stars are not quick to recommend this specialty to others.
"It's like having a mixed portfolio," says Black-Scott. "I wouldn't specialize in it, but I have it as a piece of the business. Some of my best clients are people who have been in the business world. They are easier to deal with."
Cole agreed: "Working with athletes is not the best business decision. You have to put in a lot of sweat equity before you reap the financial rewards."
He says one can make money by signing a superstar and persuading him to invest a significant amount, or by signing a number of lower earners, although "you need a lot of those to make a viable business model."
Still, working with celebrities, despite its challenges, can pay more than just monetary dividends.
"When you do a good job for the client, they end their career with a pile of money that will last until the end of their life," Carroll says. "That can be very rewarding."
"I'm going for the knowledge that my client is not going to be the next name-brand athlete to file bankruptcy," says Cole.
In that, Cole has been successful.
His client Verdon retired after three years playing as a pro. While he did not make the big bucks, he was tempted by the money. He purchased a house after signing with New Orleans and "bought a lot of stuff I probably should have waited to do," Verdon says. His wife estimated he was spending $3,000 a month eating out. Compared to other players, though, he "didn't go crazy spending a lot of money." And he was smart enough to know he needed help figuring out how to save when he met Cole.
"It was kinda hard to put money away," says Verdon, who is 30 and has three children and who is now seeking a full-time coaching job. He is grateful he heeded Cole's advice. "He helped me."
He may not have had the kind of career that NFL Hall of Famers Johnny Unitas or Lawrence Taylor had, but unlike those stars, he didn't go broke.
