Tips For Professional Athletes Investing In Business Ventures
Professional athletes can earn a good living from their talents, but their careers are limited in duration because their bodies eventually wear down. To continue earning a good living after retirement from professional sports, many athletes turn to business ventures. If you're an athlete and want to invest in business ventures, these tips can help maximize your potential earnings.
Develop a Relationship with a Private Equity Group
While you might be a professional on the court or field, athletic prowess doesn't necessarily translate to financial understanding. Before you invest in any business venture, you'll want a financial professional on your side — and the perfect financial professional to work with is a private equity group.
Private equity groups specialize in investments that aren't available to the general public. The groups are managed by financial professionals who invest clients' money in businesses, real estate, and other ventures.
When you partner with a group, you'll both get access to the group's business investment opportunities and you'll develop relationships with professionals who can help evaluate opportunities that are presented to you. The group will already have many opportunities to consider, and they might appreciate the ones that you bring to them through your connections.
In order to partner with a private equity group, you must meet certain federally dictated criteria. If you're making good money playing professional sports, though, you likely either already qualify based on your salary or will soon qualify based on your net worth.
Leverage Your Connections
Money that's invested in business ventures is commonly termed either dumb money or smart money. The terms don't refer to the investor's acumen or intelligence, but rather to their role within the business venture. Dumb money comes from investors who provide financial support and nothing else. Smart money comes from investors who provide other benefits as well.
An investor who provides smart money might give the operational manager of the business wisdom and mentorship, or they might help in other ways. One common way that smart investors help businesses is through their connections — and this is how you can be a smart money investor.
As you evaluate different investment opportunities, look for businesses that would benefit from the connections you have as a professional athlete. If you can open doors for other partners in the business, your value to the business and the return you might see will extend beyond the mere dollars that you put into the venture.
For more information, contact a professional athlete investment service.
Share