Determination, Resiliency, and Entrepreneurial Spirit: Ex-Professional Football Player Andrew Kline’s Journey to Business Success

The world of finance tends to be one of the elite and privileged, in which those with the best pedigrees from the most impressive universities often dominate the landscape and culture. The road to investment banking remains a reasonably consistent, predictable trek: expensive private school to Ivy League to Wall Street. Growing up in Southern California, Andrew Kline knew little about this precedent. Moreover, he endured several hardships that complicated the journey to his long-term goals. Not to be deterred, though, Kline carved his own path to a prestigious position in finance, and he did it with persistence and fortitude.

Born to an insurance company owner and a stay-at-home mother, Andrew grew up comfortably with a well-to-do family in West Los Angeles. However, fortunes eventually turned amidst a recession in the state’s insurance industry. As insurance firms began to go under one by one, the Klines’ company soon suffered a similar fate. With what they had worked so hard to build gone so suddenly, they were faced with the reality of starting over from scratch. The fallout led to friction in the family and uncertainty about the future: “We went from being a wealthy family to having very little. All of a sudden I went, ‘Wow, I don’t have that company to take over anymore, we don’t have money anymore, and what are we going to do?’”

Because of the resulting difficulties at home, Andrew left and spent most of high school living with friends. One day early in his freshman year, he stumbled upon a new interest, telling his mother and brother, “I found football, and I love it. I’m going to get a college scholarship and I’m going to play in the NFL.” Not only did he love it, he was great at it gifted with the rare combination of size, speed, athleticism and motivation that is so rare at such a young age. With all of the problems surrounding his life, Andrew poured all of his energy into football. It became the most important part of his life. Within a few years, scouts and college coaches took notice, contacting Andrew and his coaches about playing at the next level.

Though he had been let down many times during his adolescence, Andrew refused to let himself down. He backed up his confidence by earning a full athletic scholarship to play football at San Diego State University. His play at the guard position was impressive enough to get him drafted in 2000 by the St. Louis Rams, the defending Super Bowl champions.

Andrew continued to ride the high of accomplishing his goals and immediately impressed the Rams’ coaching staff with his ability and determination. The team’s head coach, Mike Martz, told the media that Andrew was the most impressive rookie on the squad. Assistant coaches praised his knowledge of the game and labeled him a future force on the Rams’ offensive line. Sure enough, he earned a starting spot as he inched closer and closer to fulfilling his considerable potential. Just when everything seemed to be working out, another tremendous obstacle emerged.

One day during practice, Andrew suffered a devastating hit that left him with a severe concussion, which gave him fits of seizures and vomiting. Ever the competitor, he did his best to play on in spite of the injury in hopes of holding his starting position. But when he found himself unable to remember even the simplest of plays, he saw the team psychiatrist for tests. The results came in as he was preparing for what would have been one of the biggest games of his life: Monday Night Football against the Oakland Raiders. His brain had endured too much trauma, and the next hit could have been his last: “The doctor said that if I had played in that game and taken another hit, I could have had permanent brain damage or even died, because my brain was in such a fragile state.” Andrew would never play football again.

Everything his life had revolved around for the past ten years was taken away in a heartbeat. The concussion left him a shell of the man he was just months before. He had taken an IQ test before the NFL draft in 2000 and scored in the 90th percentile; after the injury, he was in the 40th percentile and remained there for more than 18 months. It would be over a year before he felt normal again.

Again facing a crossroads in his life, Andrew was forced to consider his next step. Damaged and defeated, Andrew returned to San Diego and spent the next 18 months rehabilitating his traumatic head injuries.  Eventually, he went to work for a real estate developer, earning only $400 a month. Depressed with the monotonous work, frustrated by the recurring side effects of the concussions, and seeking a change, he took a trip to Indonesia hoping to come to some sort of realization.  There, he met a group of professional surfers and spent the next month getting to know them. He wondered to himself, “What if I started a surf school with these guys?” The Australian Surf Academy became an instant success, and Andrew was able to add some money to what he had saved from his time in the NFL.

Having lost over $17,000 a year earlier in the stock market when his broker made risky investments with his money, Andrew had become inspired to learn about an alternative real estate investing. With some cash to comfortably invest for the first time in years, he decided to enter the real estate business himself and started buying property in San Diego and Arizona. His timing and ability to find a deal could not have been better. He showed a natural skill for flipping properties—buying houses or tracts of land, fixing them up, and reselling the properties for substantial profit. Timing the market perfectly, Andrew founded a land-investment private equity group that returned over 700% in three years: “I was buying hundreds of acres of useless land for $2,500 per acre and selling it back to large developers for $25,000 acre. It was such an amazing time.”

Following his success in real estate, a young and confident Andrew Kline joined up with a team of high net worth investors and attempted to buy a professional hockey franchise. As the deal fell apart, Andrew recognized a clear need in the marketplace to effectively value sports franchises and handle the ensuing transactions: “Even the most sophisticated investment banks on Wall Street were unable to properly value a professional sports team or lead the acquisition process for potential owners.” As a result of this experience, Andrew founded Park Lane, a sports investment bank that has worked on transactions with teams from all of the major sports, including the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL and MLS. Park Lane typically concentrates on deals of values between $100 million and $1 billion.

With relevant experience, specialized knowledge, and a propensity for capital raising and deal closing, Park Lane has built an impressive reputation in the narrowly defined market of sports finance. The boutique investment bank provides corporate finance services, mergers and acquisitions advisory, valuations and restructuring to its clients—leagues, franchises, sports businesses and wealthy sports investors. The firm additionally offers financial advisory, research, consulting and business development.

Having settled down in Los Angeles with his wife and young son, Andrew Kline now runs a thriving sports investment bank worth millions. Only 32 years old, he believes he still has much to accomplish. Though the odds were stacked against him for much of his life, Andrew has overcome the obstacles thanks to humility, a relentless work ethic, and a strong business vision. He has made a few mistakes and wrong turns along the way, but he has learned from them and moved on as a more well-rounded individual. Andrew Kline’s underdog success story of courage and perseverance not only explains his inevitable rise to the top, but it also should serve as inspiration for those who have fallen on hard times and see no end to the adversity in sight.

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Written by: Wes Culp (for uwemp.com)

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