Take Your Clients To Vegas

Forget partner retreats. The newer concept is to take a retreat with clients. Kelley Drye's sports entertainment group recently hosted a three-day getaway in Vegas. The group reps close to 40 NFL players. Practice head Adisa Bakari (above greeting Kansas City Chiefs linebacker Dee Ford) says the concept came from the idea that their model is only successful if they create sophisticated business clients who continue engaging in business after their NFL careers. Adisa tells us the conference, in its fourth year, builds camaraderie among the athletes and affirms their importance in the clients' lives.

In addition to seminars like "Managing Sudden Wealth" and "Identifying Franchise Opportunities," Adisa showed articles of successful athletes turned NFL disaster stories after losing millions in business deals or investments gone wrong. "Just because you're a Hall of Fame quarterback doesn't mean you're going to fall out of bed and be a successful real estate developer," he tells clients. His group handles compensation, charitable trusts, litigation, corporate, tax, real estate, trusts, and estates, and IP. Here's Kelley Drye DC managing partner Lew Rose with Broncos tight end Gerell Robinson.

Social media is key for athletes, says Adisa, to communicate with fans and a measure the significance of their brand—the better with which to approach sponsorship and endorsement opportunities. Adisa and practice vice chair Jeff Whitney (above with the Colts' Cam Johnson) also covered the entire retreat on Twitter and Facebook. For longtime clients like Matt Forte, Maurice Jones-Drew and Antoine Bethea, the retreat included for the first time presentations from companies looking for investors. It went so well they're considering opening it up to athletes who aren't their clients.